Apple’s MacBook Pro includes HDMI and a third usb/Thunderbolt port alongside an SDXC and headphone jack (the latter of which is on all their laptops albeit on the other side). This seems like the perfect balance for most users.

It’s nonsense they don’t include HDMI on the Air, but then “it’s kinda thin and kinda light”.

I was not sad to see FireWire and mini-DisplayPort replaced with usb-c/thunderbolt.

Current port line up on “pro” machines:

Lying liar lied. News at 11.

I can’t imagine that being the case for most users. I’m absolutely a power user and I keep being surprised at how consistently high the performance is of my base model M1 Air w/16GB even when compared to another Mac workstation of mine with 64GB.

I can run two VMs, a ton of live loading development tooling, several JVM programs and so much more on that little Air and it won’t even sweat.

I’m not an Apple apologist - lots of poor decisions these days and software quality has taken a real hit. While 16GB means everyone’s getting a machine that should last much longer, I can’t see a normal user needing more any time soon, especially when Apple is optimizing their local machine learning models for their 8GB iOS platforms first and foremost.

It exists for the outgoing Mac mini. We ran two minis in a 1u, colocated in a DC, for years. They ran Ubuntu server.

Rack mini: https://www.sonnettech.com/product/rackmacmini.html

I’d stoped flying x plane when MSFS came out. Will give it a whirl too.

Haven’t. Will check it out! Thanks.

Recently decided to try Linux for gaming. It wasn’t without a hitch or two, but largely fine. A number of games I play don’t even need an emulation tool like Proton.

The only reason windows was lying around was for gaming.

Looks like it’ll only get used for flight simulation.

For those of us who work in (or love) tech - we (myself included) grossly overestimate how much the general public cares about, or cares to be informed about, this stuff. Heck, even people in tech who know better.

I wish it wasn’t the case but look how long and hard Microsoft moved on Internet Explorer and ActiveX back in the early days of the web.

Google and Chrome is just another bit of history repeating.

As an aside, I’ve been using Zen for about a week and it’s been wonderful. Easy transition from Firefox because it largely is Firefox, so all my containers, extensions, and settings carried over. Zen’s workspaces provide exactly the promise I’d hoped “tab groups” brought with Safari (but never worked right). I just wish there was an equivalent to the Hush plug-in on Safari (even after a year of full-timing FF, consent-o-matic is quite poor).

Sweet. It’s worth it IMO. And definitely fun for either tinkering or just having something solid that works (why not both? ;) ).

We’ve been using monowall - now pfsense since 2008.

I don’t necessarily recommend btw - there are lots of great options out there (like it’s cousin OPNSense and so many more).

Easy to block that - though not with pihole exclusively.

We use another tool at our network edge to block all 53/853 traffic and redirect all port 53 traffic to our internal DNS resolver (works much like pihole).

Then we also block all DoH.

Only two devices have failed using this strategy: Chromecast - which refuses to work if it can’t access googles DNS. And Philips Hue bridges. Both lie and say “internet offline”. Every other device - even some of the questionable ones on a special VLAN for devices we don’t trust - work just fine and fall back to the router-specified DNS.

An ex-Google, ex-Apple, leadership chatbot focused on improving outcomes with data and cat memes, hustling 24/7.

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There sadly isn’t a viable one at the same level of functionality.

Edit: some random other comment appeared here. Fixed.

Pros:

• you run a home lab

Cons:

• you run a home lab

Thanks for the reply. Makes sense. I haven’t had any jobs recently that would push us there.

CC is also priced low enough we can sign back up for a month if we need it.

One feature set of CC I’ll miss is the libraries functionality working across all the apps. Someone on the team needs a client asset in any app ? (AE/ID/PS/AI) There it is.

How so? Genuinely curious what’s missing as someone who tried it on a job, and loved it.

I just sent a job to print yesterday and the printer didn’t bat an eye.

Are we talking specific types of printing? Like booklets or runs with specific imposition needs or something else?

I think ultimately it will depend on what one needs printed. It would easily meet most common printing requirements as far as I can tell.

I tried Affinity Publisher 2 the other day and it convinced me to pull the plug on Adobe and switch on the Affinity suite. Everything was straightforward and far more intuitive than InDesign ever was (which itself was far better than Quark Xpress before it).

I bought the Affinity Suite, exported all my Creative Cloud libraries (they’re just zip files with a different extension), copied all my Creative Cloud files to our self-hosted Nextcloud and off we went.

I promptly cancelled creative cloud. As I’ve said before, I’ll miss generative fill in photoshop - it was very good.

It’ll also take a while to figure out / learn Fusion as a replacement for AE but having spent a lot of time with Shake in the past, it’ll be fine.

Yes indeed.

The last project I did with one was build a moon and tide clock - all written in python with a motor controller, external display and individually addressable led lighting.

They’re also great as diy audio streaming devices for whole home audio.

I’ve had lots of fun with the very affordable Pi Zero 2w. Will pick up a few more before they disappear.

The illustrator tools are terrible. But removing and replacing backgrounds in Photoshop has been spectacular with one caveat - they are less great if you give it any instruction. If you use the generative fills with prompts the results are not at all great. However, if you leave the prompt blank it does a bang-up job matching the existing background set / scene.

Equally impressive has been generating parts of photos that are missing when extending the canvas size.

It tends to work best with photos that are “inside” (interiors) with strong geometric cues - but it has expertly matched lighting, backgrounds and their level of focus (or lack thereof).