It’s not a big power user feature, and one typically doesn’t sit there using the touch screen for minutes on end. It’s more useful for dismissing alerts or quickly focusing IM windows. It’s just nice in small moments where you’re juggling multiple things at your desk or just sitting back down. Being able to not think and jab your browser window to scroll down a bit is a natural gesture, even on a laptop.
USB-C docks/dongles generally aren’t that big a deal if that’s your only deciding factor. They work fine without any weird hiccups or behavior.
If you’re buying used, it’s worth noting that the earlier M1, M2, and M3 non-Pro/Max chips had some limitations with external monitors. The M1 and M2 MacBook Air only supported one external monitor alongside the Mac’s built in screen. The M3 Air could do two external monitors with the lid closed, or one external monitor and the built in. The M4 Air can do two external monitors and the built in display at the same time. The Pro and Max chips could always do two external monitors and the built in display starting from the earliest M1 Pro.
The big difference between the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro is that the Pro has a built in fan. The Air will passively cool itself and might have to throttle your workload until the laptop cools down. The Pro can kick on the fan to help run heavy workloads longer. In practice it’s actually difficult to get a MacBook Pro to kick on its fan. Anything short of virtual machines or large video rendering can usually be done without the laptop getting so hot it would need to kick the fan on or throttle things. If you’re somewhat price conscious and aren’t pushing the machine’s limits, the Air’s definitely worth a look.
Just mashing together shape primitives and Thingiverse parts in TinkerCAD is entirely underrated. It’s still primarily what I use unless I need particularly curvy corner.
Fusion360 and FreeCAD are the CAD versions of Photoshop and GIMP (if Photoshop had a restricted free tier). They’re both trying to be a legit piece of CAD software, so there’s a bit of a learning curve coming from TinkerCAD. I found it easier to “feel my way around” Fusion360’s UI. FreeCAD has a layer of, “How did Open Source devs decide to be different here?” on top of learning something new.
It’s Linux designed around modern containerization and microservice technologies. The “cloud” naming is a bit of a misnomer, but the same abstracted technologies that help run a modern data center will help make sure your handheld’s launcher doesn’t break because a game or comparability layer wants to use a different database version. https://github.com/cncf/toc/blob/main/DEFINITION.md
I can’t help much on the power draw side of this question, but one thing to look out for with a UPS is some sort of communication option. (Usually NUT over ethernet, but there are some USB options too.) Most modern UPS brands will have a plugin you can install on your Raspberry Pi and Mini PC that allows your UPS to signal, “Hey, I’ve got 3% of battery life, you actually need to gracefully shut down now.” It’s mostly useful for NAS applications with spinning drives, but it could help save your Pi’s SD card potentially.
It’s a pretty standard feature these days, but the cheapest of the cheap will omit it.
What are you talking about?
For a bit more context, this is the fan project “Bloodborn Kart” with its IP serial numbers filed off.
Haha, oh wow, I had somehow missed that. Brian’s done great work with Carrot.
CARROT’s big premium selling point is letting you pick which weather data provider the app references. Darksky/Weatherkit went through a perceived slump after their acquisition, so folks turned to sites like https://www.forecastadvisor.com/ to figure out who was providing the most accurate data in their region.
Other than that, it offers up a few more detailed views, push notifications, and other UI tweaks. They’re one of those companies that tries jumping onboard with things like Apple Watch apps or home screen widgets ASAP.
You probably don’t need CARROT, but if you don’t like the stock Weather app, CARROT probably has something for you.
The two hardest problems in computer science are cache invalidation, naming things, and off by one errors.
My favorite compile error happened while I was taking a Haskell class.
ghc: panic! (the ‘impossible’ happened)
The issue is plainly stated, and it provides clear next steps to the developer.
Long Switch can’t hurt you. Long Switch isn’t real.
Deep Space Nine Young Adult Book #5: Arcade
There’s a new player on the Promenade: a Ferengi shop owner, Bokat. His Games Bazaar specializes in hard-to-find virtual reality computer games. He approaches Jake Sisko and Nog with a tempting offer to play a hot new game called The Zhodran Crystal Quest. No non-Zhodran player has ever won this game, but then, Jake and Nog have the best scores on all the other games at the Games Bazaar. And Bokat is willing to bet on their ability to win the game, and – as a result – win Bokat a lucrative business deal with the Zhodrans.
But soon, kids all over the station are falling into comas, their minds trapped in an ever-changing game. Suddenly, it’s up to Jake to go into the game and rescue them. It he wins, so does the Federation. If he loses, he’ll be trapped forever in a deadly game with a very real Borg!
I’m glad Star Trek novelists were given exactly zero guard rails on what they could write about. .Hack//Trek? Sure, why not!
Scanners indicate high presence of FODs.
Wide Lightening cannot harm you. Wide Lightening is inaccessible without the aid of a SIM opening tool.
These memes are spoofing Reddit’s “Am I The Asshole”? subreddit. The original posts are usually personal anecdotes about someone having to cancel plans at the last minute or stealing a coworker’s lunch. They’ve been replaced here with first person perspectives from various Vulcan episodes, with Illogical being swapped in for Asshole. The acronyms everyone’s using are letter swapped versions of popular responses on that Reddit. (NTA, cars break down. YTA, don’t steal your coworker’s lunch. Etc.)
A third of those screenshots is the Favorites Bar. Is that turned on by default these days? Turning that off helps slims things down a bit.