I guess I'm happy being dumb if it means I deserve a laptop with a battery that lasts all day, a trackpad that doesn't feel like it's covered in dry syrup, a case that doesn't make noises when I pick it up, and a processor that feels like alien tech.
I haven't used a laptop in the last decade that wouldn't last a whole day on battery, or would hold any of those qualifiers for that matter, from Apple or other manufacturers. Not that Apple are bad devices, but they are flawed like the rest of them (often less, and sometimes more in areas that may matter less to you, the software being a major and increasingly one to me).
Also good to remember that Apple is a company of good devices and tremendous marketing, not a company of tremendous devices per se. That entails a lot of subjectivity and awkward tribalism.
Any mid- to high-end pro-line laptop from the usual manufacturers (dell latitude series, lenovo T series, hp pro/elitebook series) gives you that, really (rigidly built body using magnesium/aluminum alloys, good input devices and IO, high-end config, …) and some practical perks (hot swappable batteries, repairable/expandable, on-site warranty, …)
What $900 laptop with a similar form factor and build quality to a Macbook Air am I supposed to buy instead? I did quite a bit of research on this a couple of months ago, with a strong preference for a Linux compatible device (I've never been a MacOS user, and I'm done with Windows after 10 dies all the way). After weeks of research, I came to the conclusion that my best bet was to buy a Macbook Air and hope that Asahi support for M4 chips comes sooner rather than later.
Please stop trying to trick us into reading AI generated text.
"This isn't a textbook or a tutorial. It's a mental model — the abstractions you need to reason about ML systems the way you already reason about software systems."
It's not a trick bud. The github page shows my user name and Claude. The content is intended to be read by an AI agent and explored through a text interface. That is explicit in the readme and the primer itself.
If you think you can generate this artifact with a prompt then show me. This was 2 days of exploration and research.
If you think that "2 days" makes it sound a lot... You'd be surprised how long it takes to actually make learning materials. I don't want to be too harsh, in case you're a high school student etc. I see it's good faith, but do note the reaction here.
I read a couple of good analogies to predict how you and others will feel about your AI content: 1) telling people at the breakfast table about the dream you just had, 2) showing all your loose acquaintances the photos of your newborn baby.
That is, it's very precious and interesting to you, but it really isn't to anyone else. This is true about generated text, images and songs. I've generated a lot of what I think of as bangers with Suno but learned quickly that they have zero value to anyone else. Part of the value to me is the thrill and dopamine hits of having generated it. This simply doesn't translate to anyone else. It will take a while until society internalizes this.
This is not to say that AI can't have any role in the creative process. But the effort will be still high and original human thinking and intent and input is still very important.
it's a worthwhile lesson. thank you. There was a great deal of effort on my part, but not in the prose. You've taught me something and I appreciate it.
it's not that you're teaching the AI, it's that you're framing the conversation on a reference material and having a conversation around it. Exploring a problem with referential framing, like a white paper or a dense blog post is a useful cognitive hack. You just have to be careful to pin extraordinary claims to extraordinary evidence.
You don't have to go back that far! Even now just listen to how they talk about cryptocurrency. Most people on this website hate anything they don't understand.
But yeh, never thought this was a problem anyone else delt with. My passwords are all a variant of my on "master password" and sometimes forget which session I'm in so trying to save keystrokes, count backward to where I think the cursor should be.
They are saying that things that have already been dumbed down can't go back. Obviously that's just their opinion, but I would guess that most people agree with them.
A lot of times I can't tell if I'm the idiot or if everyone else is. Says that this isn't an interesting question at all and the article was horrible. I studied data science for a few years but I'm no expert, but it seems pretty obvious to me that if you make a series of 50/50 choices randomly, that's the shape you end up with and there's really nothing more interesting about it than that.
I don't think "obvious" is the right word here. It makes perfect sense when you understand it, but it's not a conclusion that most people could come to immediately without detailed, assisted study.
Yeah, like, it's not even that difficult to re-compile your media player in order for it to support a new format you want, like FLAC.
Yes yes, I can already hear the naysayers "it's not that easy". It actually is! Just make sure you have the appropriate GLIBC version and a specific version of either clang or GCC that is compatible (hey it's Linux, you can choose!). Then do the usual ./configure --with-openssl=<CUSTOM_SSL_LIB_BECAUSE_THE_STOCK_ONE_IS_TOO_OLD>, make, make install (remember to use sudo on that one because we write some system files).
Honestly, the whole process took me just two hours from start to finish. Easy peasy.
I'd much rather do that than buying hardware that is massively overpr... oh, you're saying they're cheaper than Linux laptops now? Idk man ... I would still not buy any of that, those are definitely for brainwashed cattle.
As a long time user of all 3, it's hard to understand why people would use Linux as a main driver, especially if they aren't just programmers, but also dabble in video or music.
Really? When every thread about linux on a laptop includes comments like “palm rejection doesn’t work but I use an external mouse so I don’t care” and “the laptop gets hot in my backpack because sleep/suspend doesn’t work so I just power it down” you’re still not sure why people are using a windows or a mac?
At this point I’m beginning to suspect that linux users have stockholm syndrome. Or is Tux standing behind you with a gun?
I know, I know, you don’t have any of those problems. You have the Blessed Configuration that has the right tradeoffs for you. But like… most people don’t want to spend waking hours reading Archwiki to figure out why their wifi drops when they move from one room in their house to another…
what you need to consider is that only those people who actually do have problems will talk about them. the rest of us stay silent. also, linux users are more vocal, they don't stay silent about problems. that's what gets things fixed
People make choices based on information in the market. The question in the thread was “why are people using Mac and Windows?” One answer is: linux is not well known, and what is know is that Linux is a hassle.
Great article but it should have included some remarks about how unnecessary, fruitless and a waste of time and resources it all was.
Are people on average still not able to accept the whole thing was idiotic from start to finish? The very idea masking ever helped a single person avoid getting covid is just stilly at this point, right? Otherwise we'd still be doing it or at least getting the vaccine, I don't know anyone that's gotten it the last 3 years.
Article would have been better from the angle of, "look at all the stupid stuff people were doing, ha" not, "these people were HEROES!" At best they were misled, at worst, profiteer idiots.
That is a bold claim contrary to the consensus of evidence I could find. From what I've read, masks were generally effective at reducing the spread of COVID, found mostly through observational studies, but backed by some random trials as well.
You should either cite evidence or amend your claim.
I think the main point was to flatten the curve, as hospitals were overloaded.
Masks (at least the better ones) did reduce the likelihood of getting covid, and people didn't have the antibodies they have now.
And if you lived in a state that published open data you could see this happen — hospitalization rate goes up and bed count goes down, and we’d go to tighter restrictions until the trend reversed and the bed count went back up. A lot of the public health response wasn’t about stopping COVID transmission, it was about limiting the effect on a hospital’s ability to provide care for things like life-threatening injuries.
Viruses get less dangerous over time. Hospitals absolutely were overwhelmed back then, and anything to reduce spread helped.
Virus spread follows exponential/logistic growth. Something could reduce spread 5% per month and that would still have an extremely big impact in a pandemic that lasted years. It's not necessary for any of the precautions to have been remotely close to 100% effective to argue they were helpful and important.
Elderly in Sweden got hurt really badly while the very youngest didn't have the education losses seen elsewhere.
However, Swedes, unlike dumbass Americans, took sensible precautions even though there weren't required by law.
> Swedes were not forced to take action against the spread of the virus, but they did so anyway. This voluntary approach might not have worked everywhere, but Sweden has a history of high trust in authorities, and people tend to comply with public health recommendations.
> In its final report on the pandemic response, the Corona Commission concluded that tougher measures should have been taken early in the pandemic, such as quarantine for those returning from high-risk areas and a temporary ban on entry to Sweden.
This seems extremely reductionist in a reckless manner.
You're taking some partial truths (sure, some responses were overblown, though some were frustratingly half-measures too) and making an enormous logical leap that the entire response was "idiotic from start to finish".
You can't assume that because we eventually ended certain interventions, they never did anything at all. You're retrojecting.
That's the nuance missing from the parent's snark, masks are most effective at preventing the wearer from transmitting infections to the people around them (especially important in an operating theater). Masks may also help prevent the wearer from inhaling airborne pathogens, though they're less effective there.
Also missing from the discussion is that it is easy to prove that an N95 mask works because the effect is so dramatic.
The fact that the efficacy of a surgical mask is more difficult to prove does not mean that it doesn't work. And, as you point out, the major benefit is to the people around you so that you don't unintentionally spread the disease before you realize you have it.
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