Wow I thought I was the only idiot that bought it. Once they started charging for the smart features, it got unbatteried and became just a fancy box.

Road trip? Usually week or night of.

Airline travel within 4 hours, domestic or international is usually 2 days before hand.

Airline travel across the world is usually planned as a time block a month or two ahead of time. The actual destination and activities being planned as the dates get closer.

Exceptions are scheduled events. If I have an event to attend in a location, I’ll make a hotel reservation and book tickets for the thing. Then checkup options for travel there. Sometimes it’s part of a multileg journey.

Often I don’t know where in the world I will even be the week leading up to the thing. So I tend to either not purchase travel tickets, or buy a few different ones from hubs globally that are cheap and easy to get to.

Not even fitted properly.

Cool, so I can bring in a hotplate and sautee them before I eat them. No rule against that

I like the idea of Reddit and it works much better than Lemmy. But the moderation and AI scraping make it a no-go site for me anymore which is a shame.

I love internet forums and have been a mod at some and very high poster at other. But the snowball effect gets them. If there’s no traffic, there’s no posts, so there’s no traffic. You need to have a good community to make it work. One area reddit really shines, small communities exist on a huge platform. Great idea before the enshittification.

I hate discord and the fact that anyone replaces customer support or fan support pages with it, is just fundamentally broken. The idea of a forum is that the question is asked and archived. 20 years later someone else googles the question and sees the answer and all the replies that lead up to it. That’s what forums are for. In discord you ask a question and 30 seconds later it’s gone forever eaten by useless drivel. Never to be searched or found again. Idiotic.

I’d make that deal with the Sharks. Sea bass today, sea urchins tommorow.

The GPU on my laptop is also upgradeable. And when I want to upgrade it, it’ll be time for a new CPU too.

As it is now, very few GPUs in a laptop that can pull almost 200W and have 16GB of RAM. Mine is slower than the newest generations for speed but its quicker for long processing and large memory. When a 24GB GPU based on the 5x architecture comes out, I’ll be ready with a new CPU too.

😂

Freedumb!

Require licensing, registration, live gps tracking, and geofencing with a proprietary app because Freedumb people ruled that’s what the free market needs.

They then rule, nah. Actually just ban em all.

And now even if you bought them, buy them elsewhere, or just try to use them on a US device you won’t be able to. Selling them is illegal both from a company and on third party resale if it passes. Even police departments that are using them as spies and have the DJI alerting system installed all over town to track and log everybody in the sky, will need to get rid of it. But I doubt they will, of course it will be exempted for the pigs in blue.

If you can’t beat em, or even match their capabilities, ban em or implement 100%+ tarrifs. New American motto of the “free” market.

Their hardware is just poor. They can charge whatever they like, I’m fortunate enough to not look at prices for that type of kit. Objectively, their hardware sucks compared to many other brands, especially at the same price point.

Their OS sucks for 90% of my use cases. If your “work” involves you just using a browser then yes you can use a big phone to get your work done. Slap an arm in a big case with a keyboard as a “pc” or a big screened arm for a tablet, or a small screen for a phone. But if you do anything where you use a computer, you need an x86 architecture and you need certain hardware capabilities. Over the time, they have all been lacking in performance even at the highest tier, and the price has been high end. Overall makes zero sense. The locked down *nix systems hide everything useful to make it pretty. Isn’t compatible with real software. And isn’t backwards compatible. I can install windows and my software from the mid 90s or 2000s or today and it just f’cking works. That’s why Windows is king. Bloated absolutely. But it just works.

That doesn’t make me hate the company. That just makes me sad for the uninformed people that get fooled into spending their hard earned money on sub optimal pieces of kit.

What makes me hate them is this game of “we just invented this new feature from 10 years ago!” and then all their fan bois go apeshit over it like they just stepped into the future. And they’re too stupid to know they’re being lied to and manipulated for profits. But they are also vocal and arrogant about their stupidity and ignorance, so I don’t like them either.

My phone has more RAM, more storage, better screen, better camera, faster charging by an order of magnitude (120W wired, 50W wireless…), more radio transceivers for global connectivity, better battery life, and honestly looks better. There is not a single thing I prefer about an iPhone and there is not a single qualitative metric an iPhone beats my phone on.

My laptop has more RAM, more storage, better screen, better camera, faster and more charging, more ports, upgradability, and is a BEAST that will eat even mid range desktop computers. There is no equivalent Apple product. Not even close. And when you factor in the best and beefiest new macs can’t even run my software, it’s not even an option. Now my battery life sucks and it looks like a zombie movie prop, but it is actually functional. I can run a simulation or a LLM/ML algo that stresses the CPU at 100%, the Quadro RTX5000 at 100%, and gobbles up 120GB of system RAM plus the 16GB of VRAM writing TBs of data to the 5 internal M2 drives. And I can do so indefinitely with the temps peaking to 100C and limiting to about 300W of power draw. It blasts air out of 3 sides that I could probably cook an egg in. But it doesn’t thermal limit after 5 mins of web browsing like the Macbooks or the Airs. It’s a beast that is made to beast and it does. Apple can’t even compete in the class.

For a tablet, I don’t have a need. My phone gives me a giant screen and my tiny auxiliary laptop does everything I need. My aux laptop is beefier than most, but it would be slower than a top of the line mac doing basic tablet things of web browsing. If I did need a tablet I’d just get a Xiaomi Pad. But in general I feel that the entire tablet market is a solution looking for a problem that only exists because Apple and fan bois are idiots again. I’ve been taking notes on TabletPCs for 20 years now. Seriously, Windows XP had a tablet mode. As did every one after. My laptops have touch input. My laptops in university the screen swiveled and then laid flat on the keyboard with a stylus to write on the screen. All of those fancy new Apple pen features? I had them in 2005. Pressure sensitive, gyro enabled for brush strokes/widths. Eraser on the other end. It was capacitive and needed a proprietary pen which was evil to say then. Now that’s Apple motto and they stole the idea and people are believing it’s new.

If they release a good product, I’ll try it. I’m not brand loyal. If they keep releasing shit, I’m going to keep calling them out.

When you get to baggage claim, if you then stand directly at the carousel blocking everyone’s view for more than 10 seconds, trap door opens and a system of pneumatic tubes forcibly jettisons you to the furthest point away in the airport for you to walk back.

Stand back, wait for your luggage to appear, then approach and get your bag and step back to the perimeter.

To get my VC funding in 2024, id also pitch that it “has AI” which is just facial recognition and if you get jettisoned twice in the same year, the third time goes into a shark pit or scorpion pit.

For real though, the only sports competitions I’ve been to live in the past decade have been robot sports.

Why would I pay money to see a human take a ball from another human, when I can pay less to watch a robot shoot flames and saw open another robot gladiator style?!

Yes I know. My point is that’s the ONLY benefit over a big brand that is socketed and upgradeable already. And having bought hardware capable of that for 20 years+, I’ve NEVER done it. Anytime I’m ready to upgrade the CPU or GPU, I generally upgrade both and the motherboard minimally. And for a laptop that is everything. The drives are standardized and socketed. The only thing you keep is the enclosure, screen, and battery. Battery dies with age. Screens die with age. All 3 are cheap and I don’t think worth keeping at the expense of just buying a new one when the upgrade comes.

And I love upgrading my desktops and laptops. Just in the real world of doing it, usually components are replaced generationally at the same time.

I love the idea of Framework and I buy laptops that do what they do. But from MegaVendors™

For example my Dell has socketed RAM, now with 128GB in it. It has a socketed CPU and GPU “card” with a mobile Xeon and Quadro rtx 5000. 5 M2 drives inside and a 2.5in area. Battery is pluggable and changeable. The trackpad and keyboard are held in place by a few screws and ribbon cables like everything else. With a small Phillips screwdriver I can replace anything. WiFi card is socketed. Antennas are SMA connectors. I’ve replaced the shell even after a security inspection dropped and damaged the metal enclosure…

I buy it because I can upgrade it within limits as long as the upgraded parts play nice with the main board. A framework promises to do the same except allow a mainboard upgrade. But at that point you’re probably buying everything. How many times, going back to desktop days, have you upgraded the entire system’s motherboard and not the CPU, GPU, RAM, etc…

And at that point you’re really only reusing the shell and screen and battery. The stuff you interact with everyday that will deteriorate or get dirty. And battery has a finite lifespan. Makes sense to upgrade the package when those need upgrading.

I view the framework as a great solution for a picky system user. It’s not for upgrading. It’s for customizing while you have that system. Allowing the maker of 2 or 3 SKUs to sell 1000 different laptops. Versus a Dell that sells 1000 different SKUs doing that internally and some of them allow you to do it externally like mine.

I wish them the best and I may buy one next time I need a beefy laptop. But their current specs don’t come close to matching what I can do. And their parts don’t work for my use like physical 3 button trackpad for example. When they do, awesome. But then, why not just go with the Dell? Who will send a guy to me anywhere in the world for free to fix or swap hardware… ANYWHERE. And no it’s not a corporate purchase, I own it personally and the warranty is standard.

I may buy one to support them once their margins go up and the demand cools. But until then, unfortunately it doesn’t seem to solve an actual consumer problem. It solves a corporate SKU problem that fixes itself as you become a big company.

Poison the data as often as possible. I’m getting kicked off more and more services because my data doesn’t match their fingerprinting. I don’t verify any identity. Even the private databases with addresses, cars, employers, etc are all filled with random junk data making them useless. I can’t “pass verification” because the source is stupid. I take that as a small win.

Biggest part was getting tf out of that shithole country. Life is much better now.

People who use and trust Apple, are idiots. They gasp in wonder when they receive such new advances like arranging icons on your screen. Did this with my Palm Pilot in the 90’s and every phone, even Windows Mobile phones on 2002/2003. But now it’s “NEW”!

Same thing with AI and Apple. Too stupid to actually know any better. But when Daddy Apple says you are going to use it, everyone fawns.

Sending your data, all of it, to a cloud is not privacy. I guarantee this is part of the content scanning and reporting requirements being seen across the globe. It’s under the public relations marketing to prevent CSAM, human trafficking, drug crimes, etc. But anyone with a brain cell knows that’s not the why. That’s the way it can be sold to fear mongering groups.

Just not stupid like you.

Ok go fight them yourself then. Stop dragging other countries in.

There is no such thing as international waters. China’s exclusive economic zone is one of 17 in the world that cannot be sailed through or flown through without prior authorization and only for peaceful transfer. No “war games” and no deployment of weapons. Just passage with prior authorization.

The Dutch and Australians have violated this and are now complaining.

Also this week in the news, Russia is sending ships off the coast of Cuba for similar war games. The coverage in the US is about escalation and being provocative.

Which is it? Stop being such stupid hypocrites.

Also for any of you stupid Americans still wondering there is a reason the US and NATO does this just like a reason Russia does it. You try and provoke a response so that the potential combatant airplane and naval vessels make an appearance. Then you capture and study every reflection and image you can to see if they have adapted or changed. Also why the US and China and Russia all fit extra useless bits onto their ships and planes as both decoys and radar signature invalidators. You want your stuff to look as shit as possible visibly and via radar because you’re being spied on.

Make no doubt this is why this is happening.

Edit: Americans are yet again proven to be fucking stupid.

Lol that piece paper is not a god. It’s useless jibberish written by traitors starting a now failed nation.

You have no rights in the USA. Everything you’re granted as a right, you are also denied as a right by other laws. It’s the playbook of a tyrannical society. Name ANY law that you have a right to, and then look up to find another law taking that exact right away from you.

Just like a tyrannical society, you’re guaranteed nothing. But you can fly under the radar if you agree with the political powers that be. Which is no different than any country at any point in history.

And what is the justification for the US attacking human rights?