The models you can run on your laptop are quantized to hell, have a fraction of the parameter count, and the context windows are tiny. Youâ(TM)re comparing a skateboard to a spaceship. Sure, they both get you from A to B but the speed, quality, accuracy, and capabilities are borderline incomparable.

> Developed shortly after new for no apparent reason

Some useful information: Apple has a 1-year warranty on laptops. If it's less than a year old, you can bring it to the store, and they'll fix it or give you a new one on the spot. You can also bring it to the store for repairs up to 7 years after they discontinue the model. If you bought Apple Care, you can bring it in within 3 years, and they'll fix it or give you a new one. If you renewed Apple Care, you can bring it in and they'll fix it or give you a new one.

So which one of these is true:

a) You didn't know
b) The issue is so minor you don't care
c) You don't feel like getting fixed
d) This was not a new laptop
e) This never happened

> You traded a stable economy and good solid infrastructure spending and jobs and low interest rates ...

So true. I mean, look at the jump in mortgage rates after Trump took office in 2021::

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/se...

We had a chance to vote that bag of meat out in 2024, and instead, morons gave him a 3rd term? We had a cratering M&A market under Trump's Lina Khan FTA, as reflected in this chart::

https://www.marquetteassociate...

Wasn't that enough? Why choose to continue snuffing out our startups? So dumb. The other issue with Trump is the corruption. For example, in 2021, Trump spent $42B on broadband to connect 0 rural homes to the internet::

https://www.washingtonpolicy.o...

Not a single home? What the heck did his MAGA mini-hitlers spend that money on? Pro-straight white male comic books and operas?

I struggle to reconcile how an senile man, whose physician purposely skipped a mental evaluation because it "wasn't necessary", got elected to a 3rd term::

https://thehill.com/opinion/wh...

We are truly living in an idiocracy, I worry about this country. We should be emulating Cuba's communist paradise where the economy is strong, food is plentiful, and infrastructure top notch:

https://travel.gc.ca/destinati...

I mean, 10% of the Cuban population came here to help us stave off the imminent collapse of civilized society by showing us the wonders of communism.

The nail in the coffin should have been *convicted* pedophile Jeffrey Epstein donations to Republican candidates:

https://abcnews.go.com/Politic...

Even that was not enough to save us from Teflon Don. How anyone could vote Republican after that revelation is beyond comprehension.

The US provides Medicare for seniors 65 and older. While not universal healthcare, it does cover about 80% of healthcare costs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

It's not a solution for the able-bodied under 65, but we're talking about people 65+ here.

I was waiting for this one to come up, but yes, some things are absolutely worth eradicating. Nobody is petitioning to bring back polio or smallpox. Mosquito larvae compete for resources with other insect larvae, so fewer mosquitoes will mean more of whatever they're competing with for resources, which could replace them in the food chain.

You know that French was literally **banned** in Louisiana by a constitutional amendment until 1974, right? Children caught speaking French even faced corporal punishment in schools. So rag about "whiney Frenchies" all you want, but attempts to stamp out French language and culture in North America were very much real until very recently. The French explored most of North America and set up settlements across the continent by the early 1700s, and many places still carry anglicized French names. However, the English scored a decisive victory taking out the French army in North America in 1759, over 100 years before the US Civil War FWIW. The Cajuns didn't start out in Louisiana; they were forcibly deported there by the British. A funny thing happens when you oppress a population for a few hundred years; they tend to remember that oppression:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

So while we bend over backwards to accommodate Spanish speakers today, that courtesy was absolutely not extended to the French that had been here from 1599 onwards, 8 years before the English in Jamestown.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Granted, the French lost the war, and to the victors go the spoils, but the English and French had a long history of war back in Europe, and that meant the French in North America were treated as 2nd class citizens.

Now, I disagree with forcing prioritization of French programming, and I also disagree with language laws in Quebec that restrict the use of English, but I think it's fine to ask that French content at a minimum be featured on the platforms. It doesn't change the complicated history of French in North America, but if we're going to be supportive of Spanish speakers in North America, why wouldn’t we also be supportive of French speakers who were here before the English?

I don't know if you're Archie Bunker or an Archie Bunker parody, but in Mississippi's public schools, the student population is predominantly non-White, specifically Black (48.5%), Hispanic / Latino (5.2%), and two or more races (3.3%), comprising 57% of the student body. White students, while the 2nd largest group, are a minority (43.0%).

Now, which of these groups is the target of your smack down of Mississippi?

Zig does exactly this in a C-like way without the C++-like syntax of Rust, while enabling lower memory consumption and lower-level performance optimizations than Rust. Zig is still young, but I expect it to eventually replace Rust use cases in Linux, specifically because it's a better C rather than a better C++.

Beyond dev work, spatial home video and photos are mind-blowing. The spatial photos alone make it worthwhile to me. The spatial upscaling of scanned photos works incredibly well. I've used an Oculus before, comparing it to the VP is like comparing a Corolla to a Bentley; they're not at all in the same class when it comes to visual fidelity. That said, it's expensive, it does feel noticeable in weight after a while, and the battery pack should have more capacity. Another missed opportunity is that you have to wear it to do system updates and settings, but it really should have an app like the Watch does. The selection of immersive content on ATV is very limited as well. The killer use case would be live sporting events; it's a shame that hasn't happened considering the resources Apple has at its disposal. However, gripes aside, it's an amazing device.

That's less than the federal grants a single university (UNC) got in 2022. [begin sarcasm] I'm assuming the salaries offered to relocating researchers are going to be in the €200K range at a 32% income tax rate with a regulatory environment that is going to allow them to do research unimpeded by overbearing regulations and abundant 2800 sqft family homes near major research centers in the €700K range? [end sarcasm]

There is more to attracting talent than a token contribution to a communal pool. Europe has lower wages, higher income taxes, higher property prices, and onerous regulations. There was a time when the ancillary benefits of Europe exceeded those downsides, but those times are in the past. Regardless of what misguided nonsense our tariff-in-chief pushes through in his imaginary state-of-emergency, I have no concern about a wholesale brain drain from the US.

I legitimately feel for researchers whose funding got cut. It’s undoubtedly a very unpleasant situation for them. I'm sure they have families to feed and this is going to be hard on them. However, the majority of the grants that were cut were not for STEM or medical research, contrary to the narrative pushed by detractors. Researchers whose funding got cut have options, they can seek out private backers to fund their research assuming there's value to be created from it. If Europe wants to bring in swaths of displaced social science researchers, that's absolutely their prerogative, but the cold hard truth is that the net impact on the US economy from this will be imperceptible.

It's a virtual paradise, barely 5000 crimes a month and only 10% involve physical violence!!!

https://www.civichub.us/ca/san...

Last time I was in the city, a guy took a dump in front of the window of the coffee shop I was in, but that was performance art, I just misunderstood it at the time.

That makes a whole lot more sense, so it's not actually 1-bit model after all.

I want to know how a single bit, which, by design, can ***ONLY*** be 0 or 1, manages to add a sign bit without actually adding a sign bit. Did bits grow a 3rd state when I wasn't paying attention?

Automattic will have a hard time hiring competent engineers going forward. I'd bet they're on a whole bunch of "do not apply" lists. Although, if you want to have some fun, respond to a recruiter for them with a watermarked response along the lines of "no way in hell".

That show was so good. If you haven't seen it, see it. Back on topic, after watching that clip, read this:

https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2...

The show set Patient Zero in Indonesia. If they had set it 5 miles north in Singapore, it would have been eerily prescient.

We currently don't have good anti-fungals for these adapted fungi, but I don't see a path to us becoming "clickers". That said, interesting fact, we're actually closely related to fungi, both being eukaryotes, rather than bacteria (prokaryotes) and viruses (acellular). The primary weapon we have against fungal cells hinges on the fact that fungal cellular walls are comprised of chitin rather than proteins. Currently, fungal infections have a ~30% fatality rate under ideal conditions, but if that line of defense falls due to a mutation or mass infections, the Last of Us scenario would move out of the realm of fiction, minus the "clickers", as 80-90% of humanity becomes mushroom fodder.