I don't want it, and I'm not going to buy it (in fact, I just bought a new fridge the other day and sought out a non-"smart" model), but as someone who's only recently started experimenting more with cooking, I can see the appeal.

It would be pretty neat if my fridge knew what foods I have and could recommend recipes based on it. And though it sounds ridiculous, it actually would be handy if it could remind me what I just used the last of or am running low on. Sometimes, you forget to write something down, and then you're stuck come lunchtime without mayonnaise (one guess what I'm low on). If it could warn you that the milk is close to the expiration date, because it has a camera that can read it, that would be genuinely useful.

Is any of that necessary? Obviously not. You can just use your eyeballs. But everyone has been in the situation where you don't know what to make, or forgot you ran out of $X, or $Y expired, etc. If (and it's a big if; I'm highly skeptical of the current tech) one of these smart fridges could address all that, it would be genuinely useful.

But I'm not going to buy it. We're only a few steps from fridge microtransactions. I'm not giving it a nickel every time I want some cream.

Since you clocked it as an opinion, the phrase, âoein my opinion,â isnâ(TM)t needed.

(That said, itâ(TM)s objectively true that no one needs these, as evidenced by the entirety of human history.)

It's impossible to say what might have been, because we don't know what, e.g., Apple would have done if BSD used GPL. Maybe they would have used it anyway and opened their contributions, but it's perhaps just as likely we'd see many different closed implementations and even more security issues across the major platforms.

Perhaps they were lazy. I read on HN (can't find the post) that even simple tools were failing 3/4 of tests, yet Canonical pushed them out anyway.

Genuine question: is it any different from us calling Deutschland “Germany” on our maps? Different countries, or at least countries that speak different languages, often have wildly different names for other locations.

I can't find exact numbers, but I did find a recently published Princeton study. According to it, grant submissions for the Competitive Grant Program closed in September 2024 (for a bill passed in 2021), and "[a]s of January 2025, over fourty (sic) entities, including a varied mix of municipalities, school districts, trade associations, and a hospital, among others, have been recommended for award of a combined $369 million pending 'budget review and processing.'" There's also a table showing grant status.

Additionally, it says "[a]pplications for [State Digital Equity Capacity Grant] sub-grants have opened in several states, including New York and Idaho." Since Texas "paused its sub-grant application process in March of 2025," we can likely conclude this part of the process, where the remaining $1.44B is allocated, is still ongoing.

It looks like the answer to how many people have been connected by the Act is probably zero. This shouldn't surprise anyone; however, proponents might point out we should judge the program's success after the funds have been allocated. Based on how these things often go, I won't hold my breath.

The program may well be a boondoggle, but Trump is, as often, his own worst messenger.

I'll ignore the "WTF" aspect of this, as that ground is well-trod by this point.

The videos and images they have are not representative of him. Not really. Not completely. They are representative of his best moments. Friends and family aren't keeping videos of the times he was angry, or argumentative, etc. This is fine and normal. But if you're going to feed those into an LLM and pretend that the result is "him", you've only got a simulacrum of part of his persona.

The whole thing is weird and, IMO, morbid, but I hope it gave the family closure.

It’s thin enough most can squeeze their finger under there, but it will probably be tight. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they, you know, tested the design and found it acceptable. It’s definitely a head-scratcher, though.

From what I can tell, the power usage during standby on a modern Mac is barely any higher than the phantom power draw you have just by keeping it plugged in. I found a discussion page indicating it’s less than 1W during sleep. That number is pretty astounding to me if true, though I admit to some skepticism.

It’s rare that I ever need to power cycle my Mac. About 90% of the time I do, it’s through the restart menu. But there definitely are times I have to hard-reboot. I need the power button maybe 3-4 times a year, if I had to guess.

I’m looking at the Mac Mini promo shots right now. It’s 5cm tall, so I zoomed on my display until it was actual size (using a ruler). Looking at it that way, I can definitely squeeze my finger under it to reach the power button, but it would be a squeeze.

I’m curious about the change. On the face of it, it seems like an idiotic change, but we can safely assume the designers are not, in fact, idiots. This suggests one or more of the following:

1. They had some sort of mandate to move it from the back. “Why” is an exercise left to the reader. Were people accidentally hitting the button while blindly plugging things in? It’s the only thing I can think of that would necessitate it.
2. Something about the design forced them to orient the power supply so the button had to go on the bottom. This is a very small machine, and it features a new thermal design. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the case, and it’s a necessary* evil.
3. They genuinely think this is a better spot. See #1 about maybe people were accidentally pressing it. Or maybe it’s easier to find by touch if it’s on the bottom corner? I haven’t used a Mac Mini in a long time, so I can’t quite remember if I ever had a problem blindly finding the button in the old position. I expect not.

*Assuming, of course, you agree it was necessary to make this exact enclosure, and also assuming you accept the apparent need to keep the button off the front, top, left, or right sides of the device. I know many here lean much further toward the “function” side of the form vs function debate than Apple does, and that’s fine, but I think it’s only fair to consider things from Apple’s self-imposed contraints.

Iâ(TM)ve never understood the debate, but I assume there are historic reasons from before my time.

These days, however, I donâ(TM)t see how tabs arenâ(TM)t inherently superior. With tabs, companies donâ(TM)t have any need or even ability to mandate an annoying indentation policy. Like super wide indentation? Set your editor to do so. Like super narrow? Ditto. Want to copy some code you found on a GIST? Your indentation automatically matches.

The iPhone 4 was a huge release—new form factor, 4x the resolution of previous iPhones, and a significant camera bump. It may seem quaint now, but the iPhone 4 was amazing at the time. Apple testers even had special cases made so it looked like the then-current 3GS. That was a major leak.

This laptop? Seems like a spec bump. A welcome spec bump, sure, but just a spec bump. If this is the worst leak Apple's had since the iPhone 4, then they've done a great job keeping things under wraps since.

Oh, I certainly use my phone for 99% of my photos, and for some workflows, its image processing pipeline definitely makes it easier to take better photos than with the old Sony.

I actually only got interested in photography when I got a trio of poison dart frogs and was disappointed by the quality of the photos I got of them from my phone. I tried the A6000 with the kit lens and was pleasantly surprised by how much better the shots were. I later bought a $700 macro lens (more expensive than the camera!) and was blown away by the quality. Now I’m toying with getting an A7R V, but I expect there’s likely to be significant diminishing returns.

It might be a fad, but I wouldn’t call it analogous to the vinyl craze. Vinyl isn’t actually better than digital (and is in many, many ways worse). Dedicated cameras do produce better photos than do phone cameras. Even my decade-old Sony A6000 (which only cost me $500—far less than the cameras discussed here) blows my iPhone 14 Pro’s camera out of the water with just the cheap kit lenses it came with.

The real issue is that physical games can usually be found cheaper than their digital counterparts. The price difference is often significant, too: RE4 is $10 less, RE8 $14 less, SMT5V $20 less, and so on. These are new prices on Amazon. Even brand-new games are often appreciably cheaper. You can save even more buying used. Every time I buy a game, I check the digital price first, and it's only been cheaper once. If you buy more than a small handful of games (which I hope you do if you're spending $700 on a console), then you're just throwing money away if you go digital-only.