I don't think you can run x64 Windows in Parallels on the M series macs. At least you couldn't do that last time I tried it. Windows has its own x86 emulator that works pretty well within Windows for ARM.

Linux is a hot mess on *all* ARM hardware because of proprietary firmware. Device trees, kernel forks, custom distros, extremely proprietary GPUs.

Snapdragon X supports UEFI, so that should make Linux support easier and more standardized and capable of running generic distros. In theory...

Do you use a ton of existing crates? If so how do you determine what is appropriate to use? Do you worry about supply-chain attacks? It seems like every rust app I try to install with cargo pulls in a dozen or more dependencies. I have no idea how to vet them. As a mere user it seems like I'm trading one kind of vulnerability for another. This is not unique to rust of course. All the modern, hip languages do the same thing.

Not quite sure what you mean about ignoring concepts like RAII. Those go back to the beginning of C++.

Rust's reason to exist has not gone away. Rust will continue to slowly replace C and C++ in systems programming where it makes sense.

In other areas where it seems more like people are creating yet another version of a classic utility but in Rust, the answer is, "yes I sure hope so."

The problem with all modern programming languages now comes down to supply chain risk. Even the simplest utilities depend on dozens of crates to be pulled into my computer from who knows where. Go, Dart, Python, Node.js, all have this problem. I just installed a cool utility (written in Rust of course) that pulled in 50 dependencies. I am to trust that they are all good of course. Still it seems a little excessive for a utility that does graphical browsing of disk usage (darya). But hey it's a modern utility.

Maybe it will settle into just being a useful tool, like it was intended.

1st gen Paperwhite is in the list of devices losing support. DeDRM effectively neutered on it, since you will no longer be able to buy/rent books for it after May 20.

DeDRM only works for Kindles 4 and earlier, which is the biggest reason Amazon is discontinuing support for them. So as of May 20, there is no practical way to decrypt Kindle books and back them up any longer.

Obviously there are some other reasons for dropping support including the fact that older Kindles don't support formats like epub with more advanced layout and formatting options. But it still stinks.

Sadly I don't know of any decent alternative to buy ebooks at a reasonable price that I can back up to my local calibre library. I guess one alternative is to keep buying Kindle books, but then download them from the usual grey market online libraries. Anyway I'm going to make a list of books I want to buy and get them bought before the May 20th deadline and then import them into Calibre from my Kindle 3.

Someone gave a nice tip about picking up a Kindle e-ink screen driver so I can at least use the screens for projects.

That's part of the reason they are discontinuing support for these devices. It's nearly impossible on the newer Kindles to backup your purchases. They really are just rentals. Hence I'll be spending no more money on Kindle from here on. It used to be Kindle plus audible was actually pretty fantastic and affordable and both were easy to decrypt and back up.

Web sites are within their rights to deny access without showing advertising, but the browser is running on my computer and I can have it manipulate the data how I want. That's why I no longer use Chrome or any Chromium-based browser since Google deliberately blocked Manifest v2 extensions such as uBlock Origni.

Firefox is the only browser that has uBlock Origin now. And vertical tabs of course. There's so much to dislike about Mozilla and horrible Firefox UI choices, but as far as safety goes, it's the only game in town.

They survived by manually moving the cattle frequently, using fences and gates. This worked pretty well when you've got lots of cheap labor. Heck people used to live amongst the flocks, keeping an eye on them, and driving them to the better pastures.

I'm not sure you've actually ever seen cattle grazing. They will graze the good grass right to the ground, leaving the other grasses they don't like as much, and then they'll follow each other to some other area. It's not random; you can't just expect that over time cattle will graze equally every square foot. It's far better to move them on before the grass gets that short and essentially removed in favor of the poorer grasses. This is part of what these collars do. They really do work. My family's been using collars like these on some cattle for a couple of years now. It's really been a boon. You can graze more cattle on less land with healthier pasture.

Great points. I forgot about those other aspects. E-sheperd sends a warning to the phone if an animal doesn't move for a while.

That said, herding definitely is a part of it. These systems can actually move cattle around a pasture. The cattle learn pretty quickly what the collar is trying to get them to do.

It really does work. My family's ranch has been using a similar product called e-shepherd for a couple of years now. Doesn't take the cattle very long to learn what they collars want them to do.

I can tell you are not a rancher.

There's a Canadian company doing something similar called e-shepherd. It's more than a virtual fence. It's part of an integrated grazing plan. Currently there's a certain number of acres required for a certain number of cattle. The cattle don't graze randomly, so you end up getting areas that are overgrazed and the grass damaged. With e-shepherd or a system like this one, the cattle can be slowly moved around the pasture. This basically allows you to keep the same amount of cattle in a much smaller area, as you can move them more frequently without a lot of gates and fences. It doesn't take long for the cattle to figure it out, and it's quite remarkable how the collars can train them to move when you (or the AI!) want them too. It really does work.

Who's dumb?

You talk as if NASA just up and went to the moon in a matter of months in the late 1960s. Despite JFK's speech, the preparation to go to the moon began a long time before, and involved three separate families of rockets. Mercury, Gemini, and finally Apollo. It was really Gemini that that developed the technologies that eventually made the moon landing possible. There were a lot of test flights. Granted back then there was more political will than there is now. But it was always a battle with Congress and the president. If you think we can just skip all that development and testing phase now just because we once did it years ago, you are mistaken.

It's hard to talk about goals when the folks controlling the purse keep changing their mind.

For about $3000 USD you can buy an AMD Ryzen AI 395 with 128 GB of integrated RAM, which I'm tempted to do to run coding models. Although it seems to me that 256 GB is more of the sweet spot for local LLMs that can do things at a decent speed. For that size of RAM, the only real game in town is the Mac Studio, will cost about $10k (and rising). Of course even $10k is cheaper than a personal assistant. Now with the true cost of agentic AI starting to fall on the customer, $10k doesn't seem so ridiculous.

Current spacecraft velocity relative to earth is 3697 kph according to the latest spacecraft status display.