Can you have an "anti-"emotional connection to a brand? The iPhone for me is missing a critical feature, which is ability to run the software I choose even if it didn't come from the App Store. Which means that brand is dead to me until that situation changes.
Not particularly happy with Google for other reasons either. There are some days I want to go back to the days of Windows Mobile ROM kitchens and PalmOS. At least it wasn't such a monoculture back then.
Yes, that's a problem, but this is akin to all of the other ways in which things are no longer properly sold but come with all kinds of strings attached. My computers are mine, and I determine what is being run on them. I realize that puts me in a - small - minority but I prefer to own things than to rent them. I don't want an ongoing relationship with vendors beyond the initial transaction and possibly warranty issues.
This informs a lot of my choices. It's the reason my car is old, it's the reason my computer is running Linux, it is the reason why I don't wear branded apparel and it helped me decide where to bank. But I fear that it is a losing battle.
The monoculture that you refer to creates choke points and legislators love those. It gives an illusion of control, but actually it is just a massive security risk.
Whoever bought my old Honda Fit is asking the same question right now; I installed a button in about the same place. They'll have fun figuring that one out. Honda Fit's AC is designed a lot more for fuel efficiency than effectiveness. So I added a resistor parallel to AC temperature sensor (and the switch inline) which makes the system think it's warmer than it really is, so it cools more. But with the risk of allowing the coil to freeze up. I called it the "AC Boost Switch".
Most automotive A/C compressors are either on or off, with the engine ECU commanding an overriding “off” under hard acceleration or when fuel economy or other situations require an interruption in cooling.
Some older temperature dials actually mixed the cold A/C air with the hot air from the heater core to make those in-between temperatures.
Most automotive A/C compressors are either on or off
All AC compressors are either on or off. The compressed gas is gradually released by the TXV. The drop in pressure as the gas exits the TXV is what makes it cold.
Some older temperature dials actually mixed the cold A/C air with the hot air from the heater
As a former Fit owner, I wish I had thought of this! The AC was really bad. We did a lot of road trips and it really struggled out on the long desert highway stretches.
5170 (IBM AT) was a 286 design. The 5150 (IBM PC) and 5160 (IBM PC XT) were the previous 8088-based systems. Sounds like it's described as "based on" because it's heavily reverse engineered, modified to use more readily available components where possible, and then improved to 20MHz capability over the original 5170's 6/8MHz.
>Sounds like it's described as "based on" because it's heavily reverse engineered, modified to use more readily available components where possible, and then improved to 20MHz capability over the original 5170's 6/8MHz.
I wonder if he looked at any clone motherboards from that time, or a few years later? 16MHz and 20MHz 286s were quite common before the 386 took over, and they probably had to make some changes too (and came a few years after the PC AT, and so probably had a lot of improvements; the AT came out in 1984, but the clone 286s were still pretty strong in the late 80s).
I was thinking 286's were faster than was being mentioned, but I suppose his design was speeding up a design from the beginning of the era instead of copying a later design.
286s were quite fast for DOS applications in their later days; they were actually faster than the newer 386SX systems that were competing against them, but of course they couldn't do 32-bit operations.
Oh that's just the start of it. I recently learned there are cheating methods that use sniffing and live modification of system RAM via PCI Express DMA transfers. As usual, physical access to hardware trumps all.
Challenge: Replace faulty RAM on an M1/M2 MacBook. Then when you discover you can't, pull the SSD and dump the data for transfer to another machine. Slight problem there too...
Wear parts shouldn't be irreplaceable. That's like having a car you have to throw away when the brake pads or tires are worn out, because they're welded in place, AND have a computer making sure they don't get replaced anyway by someone who knows how to weld.
"That's like having a car you have to throw away when the brake pads or tires are worn out"
No, it is not like that. Brake pads and tires wear out by design. Quality RAM should last the lifetime of the device.
Apple has been soldering the RAM since 2012 and it hasn't been an issue. Most ultralight PC laptops have been doing the same for years now as well.
SSD failures can happen, but again Apple has been doing it for 5+ years and I have not heard of any widespread issues.
I like my MacBook because it just works. And that is what Apple does really well. If you can work within their ecosystem you generally have a great experience.
I have a desktop gaming PC that I built, and yeah upgrading components can be fun, but there is almost always some weird issue with my Gaming PC because certain parts have compatibility issues/driver issues. I don't want that on my MacBook.
ChatGPT when asked this question answers that its responses are probabilistic, so the responses aren't reproducible. I tested that myself, of course. Since it gave me 2 different (but overall equivalent) answers from the same prompt I'd have to agree.
That’s because it’s configured to with non-zero temperature. I’d you use the underlying model API, or the playground, you can get repeatable results when temperature is zero.
Mostly, yes, but there have been reported cases where even with zero temperature, you get nondeterminism, probably due to accumulation of errors due to different operation order on floating points.
I've used MythTV since something like 2004. Still great to use for Digital OTA broadcasts (and free-to-air satellite / DVB if that's available in your area). Cable DRM has unfortunately made it much less useful for recording cable broadcasts, thanks to them being allowed to encrypt all QAM signals, and now aren't required to support/provide CableCards either: https://www.nexttv.com/news/charter-cuts-off-cablecard-suppo...
That's interesting. I setup a new MythTV box two years ago on a Mac mini running Ubuntu, using a Hauppauge HD PVR 1212 capture device connected over USB. I've been able to record HD cable without dealing with any DRM by using the RCA jacks of my Comcast box, which has worked great.
I did something a little different. My cable box has a 3.5mm TRS jack to connect an external IR receiver to it. I connected the jack to an Arduino, and send serial commands to the Arduino from the MythTV box to change channels.
On page 10, there is a suggestion to enter "STUERBPORAIYSIES!", then enable double-size mode. I can't find any reference for that anywhere. I wonder what it does?
It looks like in double-size mode, every other character is dropped. The manual text hints at the result. "Something strange? Well, just for fun, press CLEAR then type STUERBPORAIYSIES. Now press SHIFT ->. Surprised?"
Completing a "search" SHOULD return a 200 with an empty results set. But a search is "/api/employees?name=Bob", not /api/employees/1199. The former is an endpoint that exists but was unable to find data: it should return the correct data structure normally returned for searches, but with no results. The latter is a direct link to a particular resource, which should 404 if it doesn't exist (as if any other file at a particular path doesn't exist).
Not particularly happy with Google for other reasons either. There are some days I want to go back to the days of Windows Mobile ROM kitchens and PalmOS. At least it wasn't such a monoculture back then.