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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • Ah - that’s got nothing to do with supported features. Apple has always been a major backer of web based video distribution - a lot of the tech (from video formats to delivery platforms like HTTP Live Streaming to the tag were partially or even fully invented by Apple.

    Your video wasn’t working because the by default Safari assumes (correctly) that most video on the web is an ad. Safari generally only tolerates text/image ads* and to get video to work, you need to make it clear to Safari that the video is a real video the user wants to see.

    Safari also silently blocks something like 99% of cookies… only cookies that behave like login/session/etc cookies are allowed. That’s a lot more problematic than blocking video… since there’s often just no way around it.

    (* even text/image ads are barely tolerated… as far as I know, Safari is the only major browser that includes explicit support for ad blockers - Chrome/FireFox/etc allow extensions to arbitrarily manipulate the page, but safari actually has an ad blocking API - though they call it “content blocking”).





  • It’s not a myth - I just fired up the install of Windows I have in a virtual machine. It’s a clean install, downloaded direct from Microsoft with a license key the gave me through their Developer Program… absolutely nothing has ever been installed on it, and the start menu has ads for:

    • Office 365
    • Spotify
    • WhatsApp
    • LInkedIn
    • There’s a note under that - the more you use your device, the more we’ll show “New Apps” here. So presumably if it wasn’t a clean install, I’d see more ads in the start menu.
    • Even worse - the Task Bar has an ad for Microsoft Teams. I can’t figure out how to remove that one either - right click does nothing, left click asks me if I want to “get started” with installing Teams. At least the ones in the start menu can be removed with a few clicks.

    They are definitely ads - when you click on them it takes you to the Microsoft store page… except for Office 365 which I assume is part of OneDrive - I can forgive that one, since it’s part of their free cloud storage service and probably should be integrated into the OS. If you’re not doing cloud storage of some kind, you should be.



  • It shouldn’t show you as online in discord/slack, but it should be downloading messages/etc so that when you do come online you don’t have to wait for it to sync with all your cloud services.

    Also - consider those cloud services might not necessarily be available when you come online - maybe you open your laptop on a train in an underground tunnel or something.

    Macs do a good job at this. They have “high efficiency” CPU cores which are still very fast (like, very fast*) but draw about half as much power as the regular cores. Software is also able to schedule background tasks based on various things like power level, network connectivity, how often the user actually launches your app on this device (maybe you have an app installed on all your devices but only actually use it on your phone…).

    Background tasks like checking emails, backing up your computer, installing security patches, etc will all run while your Mac is sleeping.

    Anti-theft features run even fully powered off. So unplug the battery, and never plug it back in, if you’re going to steal anything with an Apple logo… the fact you can never turn it on does hurt the resale value, but that’s better than going to jail. It’ll phone home as soon as you boot it up too, and even after a full factory reset is still probably tied to the actual owner. You’ll need the owner or Apple to deregister it - and Apple is likely to call the cops unless you’ve got a good story.

    (* to give you an idea how fast the “Efficiency Cores” are on a Mac — in Game Mode the “Performance” cores are powered down, because the efficiency ones are more than fast enough and generate less heat - which allows the GPU to be pushed to the limit of the cooling system. The “efficiency” mostly comes from reducing features like speculative execution… though they do also run at a lower clock speed - as in ~3Ghz instead of ~4Ghz)




  • They require a license. They have the same road-legal requirements as any other “electric vehicle”: turn signals, head and brake-lights, license plate, etc

    Only in some countries.

    Even where they are regulated that generally only covers on-road use. If you ride them on private property you’re fine, which allows stores to sell high powered ebikes for “private use only”… for about the price of a good motorcycle helmet. No turn signals, no brake lights, a $3 headlight lucky and forget about number plates because there’s no way the tyres or brakes are suitable for the weight of the bike even at regular speeds, let alone the high speeds they can reach.

    They’re not mopeds at all. They’re e-bikes with a throttle and excessively large electric motor. And if you ride them to work every day, nobody’s gonna stop you. Shit will hit the fan when you run into a pedestrian or car though.