The Infinite Mac site linked from this story is also impressive, and runs the actual OSes.

Yes but it’s surprisingly convincing given how it actually works. It’s more impressive than useful, and it’s a huge waste of energy.

Thanks. Both of those look interesting.

I had to set up Windows 11 on a new work computer yesterday and this was exactly the purpose of Edge. It’s incredible how hard you have to fight during the setup process not to be railroaded into accepting settings that work against you and for Microsoft. By the time I was done I felt sick and angry and there was no way I’d use Microsoft’s browser after all that. And then it turned out I wasn’t done, because it had defaulted to putting all my documents and pictures in Microsoft’s cloud even though I hadn’t asked it to, so as soon as I migrated my documents I got a warning that my cloud storage was full and I should pay them more money. So I had to undo all that, but Microsoft already got to see all my documents. Infuriating from start to finish. I am very glad to use Linux on my own machines. Windows feels like a hostile environment with traps around every corner.

Sorry for the rant. I have to go back to that machine today and I guess I’m still angry.

I see they’re promoting something called the Helium network. What’s the relationship between that and Meshtastic? Are they completely different things?

I’d use a Kill-a-Watt or similar to check how much power it uses, before deciding whether it’s worth installing anything on it. Also check how much noise it makes, unless you have a separate room for servers. Enterprise servers aren’t always a good fit for home use.

For now, Android is the best compromise between functionality and openness that’s suitable for daily use, especially GrapheneOS. Hopefully some of the Linux alternatives will develop to that point soon, but by all accounts they’re not there yet. So it’s worth fighting to keep what we have until we can use something more open.

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Heliboard seems decent, though I don’t know anything about the developers.

Yes, I think that’s reasonable. The midrange CPU in the Beelink you linked is already significantly more capable than the Intel N150 etc., though it has a TDP of 15W compared to the N150’s 6W. I haven’t dug into which specialized features they support (hardware codec support etc.) but for a general-purpose computer I’d definitely prefer the one you linked to those N100/N150 minis, even if it uses a little more power. Others might have a different opinion but that would be my choice.

I’ve found that you don’t need to go that far above the $200 cost of an Intel N100/150 system to get a mini PC with a significantly more powerful AMD processor. It won’t be the latest generation but it will be capable of a lot more than those low-power Intels, and from my measurements many AMD processors of the last three generations or so are good at saving power when they’re idle, so it won’t use a ton more electricity. Sometimes you find used ones on eBay at a decent price because someone upgraded.

Will they be able to circumvent Google’s restriction?

The article suggests that if VPNs are banned, businesses will have to find other ways to secure their connections and that would be expensive. But it’s not even clear that anything could do that job without, by that very fact, counting as a VPN according to this bill and/or others like it. Effectively, they’re proposing an end to all securely tunnelled connections across the internet, and that would just make the internet useless for a lot of things businesses (and the rest of us) need to do.

These AI systems are brought to you by execs who don’t know the joy of creating anything but lines that go up.

CEO of AI music generation firm Suno claims majority of people don’t “enjoy” making music

This was exactly the concern of the TV and movie writers who went on strike. Instead of being paid writers’ wages they’ll be paid much less as editors to clean up AI slop, while effectively doing the same job because what it writes is so bad.

I like the bit where they wheel in the equivalent amount of data in stacks of punch cards, and the hard drive takes up more space.

(Not fair I know because they didn’t show the punch card reader, but the bits on these platters must be ridiculously large.)

RAID0 doesn’t give you any protection or redundancy, just speed.

Went there to update my password but got reminded what a horrible experience Plex is these days, so deleted my account instead.

Actually, I’d be surprised if the US govt didn’t already have access to twitter.

Edward Snowden basically proved they did with his revelation of the PRISM program plus the NSA’s use of backdoors in 2013.

Never heard of them. Is this a generic beige box PC-compatible desktop? There were thousands of those brands in the 1990s, just small shops building PCs from standard parts and sticking their badge on the box.