qwebfdzsh

I wasn't complaining just replying to your somewhat silly analogies...

The whole thread was basically about Apple purposefully crippling base/cheapest configs (which most uninformed people tend to buy) to maximize their profit margins and make their laptop less future proof

> Apple sell a laptop with specs you don't want, while they sell a laptop that does have the specs you want

Of course they actually don't. There is no 32 GB or 64GB MacBook Air.

> I think you just want something to complain about.

Perhaps, other people prefer complaining about other people complaining so to each his own, I guess...

I mainly talking about driving styles, modern F1 drivers pull all kinds of maneuvers and drive so close to the limit that would be totally suicidal back in those days (especially for overtaking, you aren't going to fight as hard when you know that any crash might result in death or severe injury)

Of course a lot of that is because of the cars. 50s to 60s cars had basically no downforce and would be undriveable on modern tracks amongst other things.

I'm certainly not implying that modern drivers are less risk-averse these days, just that the risks were massively higher and drivers generally took that into account.

> The base level Porsche is absolutely slow compared to the top-end.

It's still very fast compared to a 100 hp budget car (HP is selling 8GB laptops for $300 and you can get a 16 GB one for $500 with 512 GB of storage, the Air starts at $1000, is Porsche offering models with 100 engines?)

> The base level Tesla has vastly less range than the top-end.

Vastly is an exaggeration but let's say so. It still has a much larger battery than budget EV with ~30 kWh batteries)

> You missed the point entirely.

I don't think so.

> geared towards pros is laughable

I didn't say anything about pros. A 16GB + 512GB laptop is certainly not "geared towards pros" and Apple only gives you half that.

> Companies make a range of products to suit a range on consumers and needs.

Maximizing profits comes first in this case. Apple uses segmentation to up charge their customers for upgrades (at obscene margins) because their clients have no other options if they want macOS. Again an extra 8GB would cost peanuts...

> Early race cars were not paragons of safety

They were death traps, racing drivers were way more cautious back in those days because any slightly severe accident was likely to result in death or severe injuries. Reliability was garbage too so basically just crossing the finish line was a great result.

> Do you complain the base level Porsche is slow?

It's certainly not "slow" though...

> Do you complain the base level Tesla has a short range?

Again, the range is still pretty good compared to most other EVs

> The base model is slow and cheap. I

RAM is relatively cheap and the impact on price would be minimal. However Apple's business model is in large part based on making money from upgrades because they can charge obscenely inflated prices for memory/storage because their customers don't have a choice.

> RISC-V chips from China

Entirely different market segment, I'm not even sure how's that particularly relevant when talking about iGPUs anyway/

> the deadliest natural disaster in its modern history.

Wasn't the 2004 tsunami deadlier?

What does that have to do with ketosis? You can eat a lot of carbs and not be fat...

> had almost none of the diseases we have that are all really metabolic dysfunction/diabetes at their root

True. Unless you were rich. Even heard of gout? But yeah probably somewhat accurate for the whole population. But again, not much to do with ketosis.

I mean is there any evidence even today that someone whose diet is primarily (~80%) grain and other plant products with a lot of carbohydrates can enter ketosis even when practicing "intermittent fasting" while consuming ~2000-3000 calories per day (e.g. the estimate for standard Roman soldier daily rations is 3,000-4,000)? Seems impossible...

You know that how exactly?

Salt was very bulky (less so than grain of course) but I don't think it made a very good medium of exchange. Shipping goods on land especially was extremely expensive.

.e.g according to Diocletian's price edict (so the prices themselves are probably not accurate due to inflation by ratios might be) a laborer could afford to buy ~7kg of salt for his daily wage.

Salt was supposedly very cheap, actually the same price as grain by volume. So it really wouldn't have made much sense to drag bags of salts with you just to sell it for pennies (salted meats or fish etc. probably would've have been a much better option).

> They had to find alternates.

Except they didn't use salt for that. That's a myth. Did you read the article?

> the lack of fiat currency as the reserves of silver and gold were exhausted.

True, they had the same problem in the middle ages. Since we know massively more about the middle ages than Ancient Rome AFAIK they partially solved it through a mix of barter and credit (accounting was done using currency bit might have never changed hands in reality). As long as most trade is local that must be a pretty effective system.

Why? I'm not challenging the validity of the data itself. Just the interpretation.

You do have a point, but directly comparing costs is somewhat dishonest until solar plans start working 24 hours a day.

Just starting build them at a much bigger scaled would probably result in significant decrease in costs on it's own. China, Korea and Russia somehow manage to build at much lower cost.

> risk factors of a meltdown (however small) to tackle which are always working against you. Technology development in the Nuclear area is SLOW.

True, then again these really aren't a big deal. Burning coal is about the same as having a Chernobyl size disaster every few year (even when we 100% ignore climate change) and most people don't seem to mind that much.

Directly comparing solar or even wind with nuclear, gas, coal isn't exactly fair though unless you account for storage costs.

Wouldn't enough storage make it much more expensive than nuclear?

> I dislike the potential for a meltdown of course no matter how 'unlikely'

Why? A meltdown is really not a big deal at all. If we're fine with burning coal we should be perfectly with a having a meltdown or two every few years (even if we 100% ignored climate change the degree of damage caused by either of those is not that different)

> The entire purpose of starting a company is to make a profit by delivering a product or service that the market will willingly buy

Why? People can start companies for whatever reason, also your company itself can be the product and big tech companies might be the market you're targeting. Users might just be along for the ride (and they get cheaper and/or better products because VCs are willing to subsidize their development).

> a thing whose primary role is to store and exchange abstract, agreed upon value.

To be fair that's a hard one. Token? Speculative asset? I mean it's closer in most ways to stuff like gold coins or diamonds than real money.

> role is to store and exchange abstract, agreed upon value

Yet most people only buy it and/or hold it entirely for speculation/"investment" reasons.

> Have you looked at a Pentagon budget lately?

No, but I trust you. However the US tech industry is doing just fine without too much government funding and intervention so it's not such a huge issue (in this specific area of course, not in general)

> Galileo

To be fair one of the reasons his ideas were rejected is because he wrote a book portraying the pope as an idiot. Heliocentrism/his books were banned earlier but a few years later one of his friends and supporters during the initial trial was elected pope. So there was a non insignificant chance that the Catholic church would have accepted heliocentrism a few hundred years sooner had he managed to be a bit more subtle and no alienate him.

Also I'm not trying to downplay the anti scientific attitude which was quite prevalent back in those days (when science couldn't be balanced with religious truths etc. otherwise I don't think it was that bad) but one of the main issues with his theory is that he couldn't really prove it conclusively (e.g. the issue with stellar parallax).

e.g. While the Roman inquisition did ban his theory and books but first they organized a public debate between Galileo and one of their lawyers which which was primarily based on scientific rather than religous arguments

> strategic reasons

Such as? I can't really think of any benefit besides providing jobs and funding for contractors (so kicks backs etc.)

Then again it's not particularly surprising, the EU is well know for wasting massive amounts of money on all sorts of nonsense while ignoring things that actually matter.

> monetary system

Bitcoin is not even close to being that nor it ever could. It's entirely a speculative assets not an actual currency (I couldn't think of a token/system less suitable to be used as actual money even if I tried very hard).

> The HN hivemind is not going to like this

A government gambling taxpayer money in a virtual casino? What's not to like?

But doesn't change the fact that financially Unreal is a side business for Epic (IIRC even their storefront somehow makes more money..). What's the point in making those tools if you can make significantly more money arguably in a much easier way?

This is way Unity pivoted into ads and is/was(?) trying to entire other areas like VFX/industrial etc. stuff. Charging per seat is just a terrible business model for a game engine.

> Heard from a comment on here that all Unity tech demos use extreme custom tweaks on the base engine and then when that demo ships it all gets thrown out

That's true, they didn't even throw out that stuff, demos were made on a separate branch of the engine by team(s) completely separate from the people working on the engine. That and most of the stuff they were doing in their demos is irrelevant for pretty much all of their users anyway (and obviously they weren't very effective at attracting VFX and AAA clients..). IIRC they canned most of their in house demo team back in 2022.

> building having to actually build a real product with the tools you make in that building

Honestly I'm not 100% sure about that. It's not like all teams have the same problems and workflows and it's not like Unity is not getting enough feedback from their users.

So all (addictive or not) prescription drugs for instance should also be available to everyone freely and without any limitations?

Also unnecessary/avoidable deaths are only an issue if they are an outcome of violence or government restrictions if I understand correctly?

They are still massively over-bloated. Realistically they should cut at least another 30% or so (for some reason they still have about 50% more people than they did at the beginning on 2022).

Of course that would turn into a disaster due to obvious reasons (good luck firing the "right" people). So they are kind of screwed, no way can the generate enough income to support 7000 people without massive growth.

It's a bit of an apples to oranges but Epic for instance "only" has around ~4,5 employees yet just Fornite alone is reportedly bringing almost 2x more revenue than Unity's entire business...

Of course that might just be an indication that you can't really make much money (or even be profitable) from selling a game engine (licensing Unreal is just a side-gig to Epic after all, they made less than $300 mil from it last year).

Epson's cheapest plan (printer + 1,250 pager per month) seems to be $14.99/mo. Not if that's a great deal if you only print 60 pages on average unless you need to buy a new printer each year for some reason.

Seems like the subscription might be a decent deal if you actually print quite a lot, though.

I'll try that line at the checkout next time.