News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

FlagsAreFun

Re:M4 near 4000/15000 in Geekbench 6 on Sunday May 12, 2024 @10:30PM (#40339286)
The current top results for single core performance are ~3,100 so it is, on paper, a substantial gain. The M3 in the iMac achieves around 3,053.

However, Geekbench is not that great (imo) so it does not necessarily indicate what you can expect overall performance to be or improve by between CPUs.

Re:Features lost across versions of macOS on Tuesday March 12, 2024 @10:52PM (#39687616)
I do find my Macs increasingly difficulty to use, but like many things, Apple would consider quite a few of these features 'lost' as upgrades or part of the natural evolution of platforms. For example, getting rid of kexts is probably a good thing while the Settings app is straight garbage.
Re:Quest 2 is outselling Quest 3 on Wednesday December 13, 2023 @08:41PM (#38636772)
Thanks for sharing your experience.

My time with PCVR streaming on the Quest 2 dramatically improved when I upgraded my wireless network, to the point now where I only wirelessly stream except for very high movement games e.g. F123. I thought there was nothing wrong with my previous setup and streaming (PlayStation and Xbox streaming included) was just terrible, but it turns out it was my setup all along.

Re:A Raspberry Pi 5 is better than two Pi 4S on Sunday October 08, 2023 @08:55PM (#37815803)
They did release the Zero 2 W, which is much improved from the first model: https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero-2-w/
Re:It’s Time To Subsidize E-bikes on Monday June 26, 2023 @11:21PM (#36488504)
This is the same for e-scooter rideshare schemes. Much of the evidence points to escooter use replacing walking short distances, so environmentally it can be a net negative overall.
And meanwhile, more and more USFF PCs will roll out into second hand markets, which offer a much more compelling option than the Pi, unless idle draw is your main consideration. Its an unfortunate state of affairs, and I hope a Pi 5 can come around soonish to reinvigorate this market.
Android is not for everyone, just as iOS is not for everyone.
Re:Testing Raspberry Pi's New Debug Probe on Thursday February 23, 2023 @12:49AM (#34907234)
I find it fascinating to see what the Foundation is turning its mind to now it has a seemingly high-volume, reliable supply of its house-design ARM chip.

I wonder if the future of Raspberry Pi products will be going even lower-end, rather than dealing with the complexities of making a competitive Pi n+1

Re:Australia's Weird Little Time Zone on Wednesday October 26, 2022 @10:31PM (#33352333)
If you’re interested in this odd Australian time zone, Lord Howe Island (10km long, population 350, hundreds of kilometres east of the mainland) also has its own time zone for half the year.
Re:Backyard approaching lighting at Adelaide Airport on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @01:11AM (#30915510)
The Australian Government also has controlled substances laws, you’d just be prosecuted under those if it was federal land.
Re:Apple’s Frontline Employees Are Struggling to Survive on Thursday December 02, 2021 @07:24PM (#29425015)
It reminds me of rideshare companies, where even though the ratings are a 50-point scale, (0.0-5.0), in the end it is a thumbs up/thumbs down system where anything less than nearly perfect will destroy you.

It provides a false sense of accuracy to corporate, while on the ground causes major issues, with confusion from customers about what rating to give. Not to mention applying these scores to experiences which don't really need one.

I was unaware of the advanced menu, thanks for the heads up. Could have used this last week with my new Pi Zero 2 W
Re:macOS Monterey on Monday October 25, 2021 @11:02PM (#28995944)
"Other" may be some local Time Machine snapshots, which are purgeable.

It may also be an APFS snapshot, which is _not_ purgeable (indeed macOS boots of signed snapshots now)

Re:Steve Jobs: Let's force Amazon to use our payment system (2010) on Thursday September 16, 2021 @12:16AM (#28547940)
Re: Photos - if you have a Mac you can run your Photos library off an external drive. I have a 1TB NVME SSD attached via USB and it runs perfectly fine. The Photos Library is just a big folder so it is always possible to get at the raw files if you need them.

Re: Music - I still have my original MP3s and AAC files from ancient versions of iTunes (originally imported via LAME) and have travelled across many Macs and even across to Windows and back. If you've lost the originals I'm not sure what Apple can do about that

Re:Morrowind rebooted the original Xbox on Thursday April 15, 2021 @08:09PM (#26827734)
16GB of GDDR6 is pretty expensive - moving to 32GB for a 2020 device would be cost prohibitive on already expensive devices
Re:Mac Chimes of Death on Thursday April 15, 2021 @08:04PM (#26827702)
I've noticed this with quite a few devices I own - they ramp their fans to 100% presumably as a safety mechanism to try to ensure there won't be overheating while normal systems may be non-operational.
AFAIK in my jurisdiction the QR codes are a simple number, which the app reports along with the names of the people who have checked in or you are checking in. The number represents all the data that UK code is trying to convey. Not sure why the UK code needs all of that within itself rather than having a lookup table of some sort the number points to.
Re:Show HN: Keyboard Simulator – virtual keyboard designer on Sunday September 27, 2020 @09:53PM (#24612153)
I've been keeping my eye out on the subreddit for a long time for something like your 50% - except with a function row. Really wish it were more popular
Apple make my favourite operating systems and some of the best hardware but are increasingly doubling down on dubious platform control.

This is an unsustainable position going forward, and smacks of being not only arbitrary (see Steam Link) but perhaps anticompetitive. Is the idea that no games subscription is allowed except their own Apple Arcade (which are local downloads, not streaming)

Re:Why “I don’t have time” is a lie on Tuesday July 07, 2020 @11:01PM (#23766505)
I agree - I read this less as "you have time" and more as "I have time, and I assume my experience is universal so it applies to you."

I hope this blog stays up for 10 years so the author can look at it then in retrospect with years of accumulated knowledge.

Re:NextDNS Is Out of Beta on Tuesday May 26, 2020 @11:49PM (#23319199)
70% of many audiences, even of tech news sites? Sure. But of Hacker News' audience? I would expect many here could follow the basic setup tutorial relatively easily.
Re:RetroPie 4.6 released with Raspberry Pi 4 support on Sunday May 10, 2020 @10:08PM (#23138225)
Does anybody have an idea how this compares to running RetroArch on an NVIDIA Shield (2017)?
Re:I think Catalina 10.15.4 broke SSH on Tuesday March 31, 2020 @07:22PM (#22743877)
My 2013 Mac Pro does this too - it's actually (at least in my case) a kernel panic.
Re:Australia uses new technology to catch drivers on phones on Monday September 23, 2019 @09:22PM (#21055543)
This is simply not true. You can report any incidents via Crime Stoppers here: https://www.crimestoppers.com.au/give-information#block-view.... Each jurisdiction's specific reporting forms are different, but you can usually upload small files as attachments.

If you do want the footage to be useful though, you'll have to be willing to put enough personal information in so the police can use you as a witness in court. Your witness account is the primary evidence and the footage the supporting evidence.

Re:Motion Smoothing Is Ruining Cinema on Thursday July 25, 2019 @12:19AM (#20522516)
I mainly play video games at 60-144FPS. Panning shots in movies now look absolutely terrible and some shots have become basically unwatchable, looking jerky and unrefined. I feel like I'm missing a lot of information such as reading signs.

That said, content needs to be authored with higher frame-rates in mind. Movies shot at 24FPS are reviewed, edited and produced according to the expectation it will be viewed that way.

Re:15-Inch MacBook Pro Battery Recall Program on Friday June 21, 2019 @01:47AM (#20240159)
I once took in a 15" MacBook Pro to get a SATA cable replaced (my own fault for rushing an SSD replacement and ripping the cable). While they didn't ask for my password, they did make me sign a document allowing them to wipe the drive if they felt like it. This is despite the actual service being purely hardware-related.

Sure enough, after a few days I get the laptop back to see the hard drive's been wiped, supposedly because there were errors with the OS installation, though there were none that I picked up actually using the device.

Not that it's possible with Apple devices anymore, but that taught me I should have just given them the laptop without the RAM or SSD installed at all.

I have worked in the academic sector and been exposed to it for a number of additional years. Reading and disseminating research, and more importantly citations, are a key intrinsic metric for researchers, and a KPI providing extrinsic motivation from administration and research funding bodies.

Research impact is a huge force in the academic world these days, and research can only have impact if read, understood and scrutinised by other researchers - as well as the public.