havaloc

I do some tech consulting on the side and beg people (literally) to switch from Comcast (US TV and Internet Provider) to say YouTube TV, saving them hundreds of dollars a month. They WILL NOT do it, even though I would do all the work, show them how to do it, explain how it's essentially the same but much cheaper, how to use it, and not charge very much to do so (I bill typically less than $60 an hour, and it would only take a few hours to do all that).

In general, I would agree, but I think some small businesses are romanticized.

I have a house and have been with every small/medium local landscape company in town, finally settled on a landscape company that was bought by private equity.

The pricing is about the same, but they actually do a good job, the employees are nice, and they answer the phone. You don't have to beg them to come do work and hunt them down, and they can usually come out pretty quick.

I picked up a Z Fold 8 for a test device, in order to optimize my app for folding phones (also in anticipation of Apple's folding phone), and the squat form factor really seems like something out of the future (certainly something different), I like it way more than I thought I would, the front is convenient for a lot of quick scrolling, checking things, and the wide 4:3 inner screen is really great for content viewing and web surfing. Even the front screen alone is better for content viewing then the traditional slab phones.

I like it so much I'd consider a non folding phone in the squatter form factor as well.

I would move back to Fastmail if they offered it. Yes, I could muck about with MCP but give me AI light features, such as categorization and perhaps AI conditional rules.

McDonald's. I wish I was kidding. https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/faq/can-i-change-the-emai...

I have an elderly client who sends me links of stuff to buy all the time. One day it's one of these streaming sticks, the next day it's half-price stamps, and I tell her every time, please don't buy this stuff. And yet she does anyway, as if I was almost being mean and saying no just to say no.

So yes, I do want to blame the purchasers of these things, sometimes. To prove her point that her stamps were legitimate, she mailed me a card using one of her half priced (but likely fake) stamps and it made it through!

This bubble too will pop, and life will go on. Costs will slowly drop down, just like the dot com days, but some useful things will be come out of this.

I loved reading his columns at PC Magazine growing up, it's an end of an era. He had such an interesting view of the PC industry as a whole and his column was almost always the first thing I read when a new issue would arrive at my house.

I really like Fastmail, but I wish they offered a lightweight AI feature. Their filtering system is unmatched, yet I’d love a basic, privacy-focused AI filter powered by a small, private model they run.

For example, I could set rules like “if an email looks like a promotion, move it to the promotions folder.” I could roll my own MCP server sure, but that’s not the direction I want to go.

Come on, a one gigabyte Pi is under $50. There's no plot lost, it's just expensive RAM. 2gb is $75. That's where Pi plays well.

The 12gb number is weird, but also telling.

iPhones have 12gb, current Neo has 8gb, the next gen Neo is speculated to have 12gb (as it'll be based on a later iPhone chip).

If you spend more than 1 minute on Facebook, you realize what they are potentially training their data on, and it is not good. Their advertising algorithm is very good, I'll give them that.

And you should have the right to stop them immediately. I don't see how that's controversial.

I like how I can slap up a free Turnstile on my projects in two minutes and not have to worry about endless comment spam and user registration spam. Yes, I understand there's problems with Cloudflare, but there's also a lot of problems out there in the wild west of an open internet.

Now Mac is almost the same if not cheaper up front, and in the long run too. It's a wild thing to see.

Agreed, the only time I did upgrades on boxes is swapping out spinning disks for SSD, that saved me a whole upgrade cycle it was such an improvement.

What's sad is that in my experience supporting 80 users, Word et al work with fewer issues on Mac. The stack integration on Windows is fine, until it isn't.

Yes! iOS 27 needs to categorize notifications using AI. Apps aren't supposed to advertise to you, but some don't allow for that distinction. I want notifications on for when my sandwich is arriving, but I don't want push notifications for a promotion. Some apps are good about this, others don't allow that granularity. I hate the all or nothing.

On the flipside, I have an app that sends notifications. We don't abuse it or use it for promotions, and APNS and Google's version works perfectly fine for us.

Strongbox already got bought out, but it's still very good and you can store the file wherever you want.

I use it more and more as a primary, and it doesn't feel like I've made many tradeoffs at all. I even like the keys better, they aren't transparent, so the plastic feels different, but in a good way.

I think I would cut the line at M3 or above. I think M2 uses an older architecture and it doesn't have WiFi 6E in it, and of course single core is a bit lower. Also M2 batteries are about maybe halfway done already unless the refurb replaced the battery.

I bought a Neo as an out of the house computer and it really is a triumph. If the Air is good enough for 99% of the population, the Neo as is approaches good enough for 90% of the population at half the cost.

I really don't understand why more companies don't emulate Apple in terms of line simplicity. Look at Dell for a great example of a sprawling product mix. I can't imagine having that many product varieties helps with profitability.

In the consumer space, I recently bought a Sonicare toothbrush, and the number of models and combinations is staggering. 1000x plaque removal, 750% plaque removal, it's ridiculous.

The MacBook Neo proves that gadget "shrinkflation" is largely a choice. I own an Neo and I continue to marvel at how capable, nice, and yet inexpensive it was.

I own a business and I go out of my way to respect other businesses, because I know how hard it is to own one.

Maybe California should ask Brightline to take a look at it. They've had some pretty good success in Florida, although it's a totally different model.

I bought a Neo to "replace" an M3 MacBook Air "travel/out of the house/outside" laptop. Are there drawbacks? Most certainly, but it feels like something special, and I enjoy the slightly smaller form factor. The main drawback is perhaps the most surprising, the screen, which is really good at 500 nits, draws a disproportionate amount of energy compared to the rest of the system, so you get about 3.5 hours in bright sunlight / maximum brightness.

As the only IT person in an 80 person unit, I can say the Neo trounces Dell Latitudes in a lot of ways, those have awful 250 nit screens out of the box, and they are nearly $1,200!

However bad you think 65+ users are on social media, it's way worse than you think. Imagine being scammed by ads and grinding the remaining years of your life away with that. Yikes. I've seen it with my own eyes. It's awful.

> The fundamental problem seems to be that screens as a basis for learning how to learn, study, and retain information in kids appears to be detrimental to developing that core skill we have already developed.

As I like to say, AI is great for those of us who "learned it the hard way", be it coding and learning, but I suspect I would not have bothered learning it the hard way if I had it available when I was younger.

> Why are they so powerful in the hands of a curious person, yet making everyone dumber?

Curiosity level varies per individual. I find certain things fascinating that many others don't. AI has been a boon for me and others who may be limitlessly curious, and it may be a negative for the uncurious.