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Your Computer Isn't Yours

sneak.berlin

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Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#501

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

ubercow13 wrote: post #474
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet rather than take at their word that Linux is unsuitable for their use case or seek to remedy those problems, people insist that it must be because of one or more of the reasons I listed above. Alternatively, they attempt to change the user's use case to one that fits Linux better. It's extremely tiring to watch this happen for as long as I have been watching it happen.

They didn't say Linux is unsuitable for a particular use case or give any meaningful criticism or definition of a use case, they just said that it 'just doesn't work'. Is it any wonder people call out that tripe.

The implication being that it doesn't just work for them. They know that, that's why they asked if they'd personally tried Linux lately. Nobody cares if it "just works" for your grandma or whatever, because that doesn't help them at all.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#502

Post by ab8 »

Nullabillity wrote: post #397
marvin wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exceptionally good touchpad on the macbooks are almost half the reason you’d buy the machine in the first place. Wish it was as good on the alternatives. Hopefully it works 100% out of the box, but I wouldn’t bet my life on it.

What are you on about? Apple's touchpads feel like mush, even by touchpad standards.

I dont believe people have many complaints when it comes to the usability of Apple hardware. Touchbar excluded of course. And that keyboard.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#503

Post by driverdan »

bovermyer wrote: post #387
jrib wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Next laptop for me is going to be from a company that explicitly supports linux. Probably dell or lenovo. A lot of people like to rag on Ubuntu. I agree with some of the criticisms. But the one thing they have done right is broker partnerships with hardware vendors like dell and lenovo. https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/overview/cp/linuxsystem... https://news.lenovo.com/pressroom/press-releases/lenovo-laun...

I'm personally quite fond of System76.

Unfortunately System76 still uses 10 year old LCDs. Let me know when their displays are at least as good as an 8 year old retina MacBook Pro.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#504

Post by amalantony06 »

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #406
amalantony06 wrote: post #354

I'd strongly advocate fellow hackers/technical users to move out of the Mac ecosystem and get yourself a Thinkpad. My Thinkpad X1 Carbon that I got a few months ago runs Fedora as seamless as the Macbook runs MacOS. I haven't had a single hardware compatibility issue to date. I don't even miss the Apple Trackpad since I've gotten used to the Thinkpad Trackpoint which is an order of magnitude better as an input device…

> My Thinkpad X1 Carbon Are they easy to repair? And is 8/16GB enough? Looking to buy something similar too.

16GB is enough for the sort of work that I do. But if that's not sufficient for you, you could get the X1 Extreme which is the "Pro" version of the X1 Carbon, or you could get the Thinkpad P1 (ultra-portable workstation) or even a Thinkpad T series (corporate focused - cheaper than X1 & P series). X1 & P1 have a Carbon fibre chassis which is why they are more expensive than the T series, which has a magnesium alloy chassis.

The newer Thinkpads are not as extensible/repairable as back in the day. However, anything is a significant improvement when compared to the horrible dictatorial ecosystem of Apple.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#505

Post by imtringued »

ben_w wrote: post #433
Nullabillity wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$100 isn't cheap for a curious kid with no income, especially if they're not already sold on it as an interest. There's a big difference between buying a computer explicitly for the purpose (even if it's cheaper), vs being able to play around with the hardware that you already have, for no new monetary investment at all.

If a kid with a phone but no money wants to know if programming is something they might like to study, and somehow the school also can’t afford a Pi, I’d point the kid at something like https://js.do/

I don't know why a raspberry pi is supposed to be a good device to learn programming other than the fact that it forces you to use Linux. Do kids really ssh into their raspberry pi from their phones? Or do they really buy an expensive screen, expensive cases and expensive peripherals adding up to $200?

I also doubt that raspberry pis are actually the type of device that schools are interested in. What they'd want is the TI-84 equivalent of a laptop. It should be easy to reset the laptop to factory conditions and it would only run a few specific preinstalled programs (one of which would be a barebones IDE, probably for Java). To me it feels like the raspberry pi fails at all of these. You have to mess with hardware and then mess with the software. A school provided Chromebook with student accounts managed by the school would be way more practical.

However, if you actually want people to learn programming organically, it's much simpler to just get a Windows laptop and use that as the main device.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#506

Post by rootsudo »

Even worse once you consider the implications of TPM, and not just the code signing/hash sending of Apple telemetry.

Just "how" hard is it to break into a computer, sure the hard disk may be encrypted. How strong is the encryption? When Truecrypt when dark, that was a a sad day in the community.

But this just goes to show the sheer scale of Apple, and how much reach they have, that, even they, with all of their resources, talent, intelligence could not have foreseen their systems breaking up like this, over hash checking and providing a OSX update.

It really makes the whole scale of iphones, ipads and other apple devices out there really, scary.

It also highlights what you/I don't know about apple and the hardware I run.

Scary times in the world of tech, each advance we make, it seems ten steps backwards. All this discussion about human rights, but no discussion about keeping, securing and ensuring privacy.

Makes me wonder if it's all a distraction.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#507

Post by pjmlp »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #143

What we poor souls didn't understand all these years is that we're effectively helping other companies to steal from Apple by running software that isn't distributed via their app store [1]. I think now that Apple has learned from iOS how profitable a walled garden business model is they are trying to bring that model to the PC world as well. Shipping hardware with their own processors is an important step in that di…

The PC world only happened due to singularity point that IBM was unable to prevent, even though they tried it.

Everyone else was vertically integrated, if anything Apple is the survivor of those kind of systems, and now everyone (OEMs) else wants that model back.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#508

Post by api »

Windows is just as bad if not worse. None of this behavior will change until consumers demand that it changes and start not buying things because of it.

Linux is still yours of course, but the if I value my labor at $100/hour (which is low) then a Linux machine will cost me in excess of $500/month to operate since I will probably spend at least 5 hours dinking around with little edge cases, driver issues, etc. That's really expensive compared to a Mac or a good Windows laptop when you average it out.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#510

Post by pjmlp »

zanny wrote: post #178
ThePhysicist wrote: post #143

What we poor souls didn't understand all these years is that we're effectively helping other companies to steal from Apple by running software that isn't distributed via their app store [1]. I think now that Apple has learned from iOS how profitable a walled garden business model is they are trying to bring that model to the PC world as well. Shipping hardware with their own processors is an important step in that di…

Good thing said hacker culture spent 15 years buying inflated laptops and desktops from them ultimately for convenience to give them the market presence to do this in the first place. Its the same thing with Windows. People will preach all day that they won't make any personal sacrifices to try to avoid feeding literal cancers that are eating the software industry and are shocked when said all consuming voids take aw…

It won't change anything switching to RISC-V, if those same hackers just build SaaS placed behind a server wall with a pretty Web interface implemented in WebAssembly talking over gRPC.
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