> MSFT has had an appalling, frankly embarrassing track record in this regard dating back literally a decade plus now.
IMO, it's all traceable to their decision to lay off their dedicated QA teams in 2014
8,635 karma · joined March 24, 2022
IMO, it's all traceable to their decision to lay off their dedicated QA teams in 2014
Probably considers it as unfinished business from his administration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_Cards_Act_2006
ThinkPads were one of the last major holdouts, they went to the Control-Fn layout in 2024.
E.g.: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/b...
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/insider-says...
I wonder how AMD would have fared against Intel post-Conroe if Jensen was CEO. They were behind but still competitive until the Bulldozer flop, only recovering with Zen (and even then it took a few generations for Zen to mature).
[0] https://www.reuters.com/technology/tsmc-says-all-its-sites-o...
> We trained the models on a mostly English, text-only dataset, with a focus on STEM, coding, and general knowledge.
See Formatting Options: https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc
1) Apple's financial firepower allowing them to book out SOTA process nodes
2) Apple being less cost-sensitive in their designs vs. Qualcomm or Intel. Since Apple sells devices, they can justify 'expensive' decisions like massive caches that require significantly more die area.
> All new motor vehicles, including cars, vans, trucks, and buses now need to integrate intelligent speed assistance solutions, cameras, or sensors for reversing detection, attention warnings in case of driver drowsiness, as well as emergency stop signals. In addition, cars and vans should now be equipped with lane keeping and automated braking systems and event data recorders. To prevent bus or truck collisions with pedestrians or cyclists, these vehicles now require technologies for better recognising possible blind spots and integrate warning systems, as well as have specific tyre pressure monitoring systems.
https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/news/mandatory-dr...
E.g. https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/s...
> No doubt you have noticed my frequent use of terms "nice" and "excellent" and that sums up the performance of Modi+. At this price point, we don't expect objective perfection but competent engineering and that is what we have. Physically, the unit is solidly built and of course supported by an English speaking US company. For people with such preference, the Modi+ provides an excellent option. That they can stay competitive with far east audio companies is definitely a feather in their cap.
> I am going to recommend the Schiit Modi+ DAC. Great to see Schiit continue the (new) tradition of optimizing objective performance as they cater to their traditional audience.
> The policy could cost EU companies more than €10bn annually by pushing them to buy more expensive European components, according to officials familiar with a draft law due to be presented on December 10.
> The bloc’s French commissioner Stéphane Séjourné is overseeing the proposal, which marks a high point for years of French efforts to focus on domestic production as Europe’s ailing industry struggles to compete with cheap imports from Asia, particularly in clean technologies and some heavy industries.
> An EU official said that the scope of the legislation would mirror China’s key industrial policies “Made in China 2025” and “China Standards 2035”, which pushed foreign companies towards joint ventures with Chinese businesses in order to access its market. “What we are trying to propose is a delicate balance between a much needed protection of our industry and openness, which is dear to Europe’s DNA,” the person said.
> Previously sceptical countries such as Germany have indicated that because of the economic situation they would now look favourably on more buy-European rules, which are likely to affect the car industry and clean technologies, such as solar panels.
> Three EU officials said that local content thresholds of up to 70 per cent were being discussed as part of the industrial policy plan but that the targets would vary, depending on how critical the sector was and how heavy the dependency was.
> For cars, for example, government incentives would only be granted to vehicles that met the benchmarks. Batteries would also be required to have a certain level of European content, one official said.
> The measure would apply only to the use of public money, such as procurement contracts and state-backed loans and grants. There would also be an analysis of how much production capacity the EU had for each component, another official said.
> The law, which is called the Industrial Accelerator Act, could yet be changed or even delayed, according to officials involved in the talks, amid divisions in the European Commission over the clauses. The French commissioner ideally wants the definition of “European” to be limited to the EU, one official said.
> The commission’s powerful trade directorate is sceptical about local content thresholds, which are being pushed by Séjourné’s industrial policy department.
> World Trade Organization rules generally forbid favouring domestic producers, though there are exemptions for security related reasons.
> Solar panel inverters, which have shutdown mechanisms that could prove to be a security risk, may have to be mostly European made under the new rules. “That’s when you need more domestic content,” one EU official said.
> But some officials fear that products made in Europe could come with a significantly higher price tag than those imported from Asia, leading to even higher costs for companies.
> Since many imports are used to make finished goods in the EU such as cars, it could also price some products out of the market.
> High energy prices and the pressure of Donald Trump’s tariff regime have led to EU companies becoming increasingly reliant on cheaply produced Chinese products. In 2024 China was the largest exporter of technologies such as solar panels and biofuels to the EU and the second largest for wind turbines.
> European heavy industries, including steel, have also been struggling to maintain profit margins in the face of cheap Asian imports.
> The commission’s proposal is expected to include provisions to mandate public bodies to buy European and efforts to incentivise lead markets for clean technologies. Officials are discussing a voluntary “green steel” label to encourage manufacturers to buy more of the bloc’s lower carbon but more expensive steel production.
> One EU official said that the 70 per cent figure would probably be reduced and that talks over local content rules were difficult.
> The commission declined to comment on the proposal.
| Benchmark | 3 Pro | 2.5 Pro | Sonnet 4.5 | GPT-5.1 |
|-----------------------|-----------|---------|------------|-----------|
| Humanity's Last Exam | 37.5% | 21.6% | 13.7% | 26.5% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 31.1% | 4.9% | 13.6% | 17.6% |
| GPQA Diamond | 91.9% | 86.4% | 83.4% | 88.1% |
| AIME 2025 | | | | |
| (no tools) | 95.0% | 88.0% | 87.0% | 94.0% |
| (code execution) | 100% | - | 100% | - |
| MathArena Apex | 23.4% | 0.5% | 1.6% | 1.0% |
| MMMU-Pro | 81.0% | 68.0% | 68.0% | 80.8% |
| ScreenSpot-Pro | 72.7% | 11.4% | 36.2% | 3.5% |
| CharXiv Reasoning | 81.4% | 69.6% | 68.5% | 69.5% |
| OmniDocBench 1.5 | 0.115 | 0.145 | 0.145 | 0.147 |
| Video-MMMU | 87.6% | 83.6% | 77.8% | 80.4% |
| LiveCodeBench Pro | 2,439 | 1,775 | 1,418 | 2,243 |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 54.2% | 32.6% | 42.8% | 47.6% |
| SWE-Bench Verified | 76.2% | 59.6% | 77.2% | 76.3% |
| t2-bench | 85.4% | 54.9% | 84.7% | 80.2% |
| Vending-Bench 2 | $5,478.16 | $573.64 | $3,838.74 | $1,473.43 |
| FACTS Benchmark Suite | 70.5% | 63.4% | 50.4% | 50.8% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 72.1% | 54.5% | 29.3% | 34.9% |
| MMLU | 91.8% | 89.5% | 89.1% | 91.0% |
| Global PIQA | 93.4% | 91.5% | 90.1% | 90.9% |
| MRCR v2 (8-needle) | | | | |
| (128k avg) | 77.0% | 58.0% | 47.1% | 61.6% |
| (1M pointwise) | 26.3% | 16.4% | n/s | n/s |
EDIT: formatting, hopefully a bit more mobile friendly
DEC etched a great Easter egg on to the die of the MicroVAX CPU because of this: "VAX - when you care enough to steal the very best".
This policy was pushed by David Cameron, who was the prime minister at the time:
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/the-internet-and-porn...
Some further thoughts: two of the use cases AVP was pitched for are content consumption (streaming + offline) and spatial video/photo production. IMO the base storage should reflect that.
Given that AVP sales are struggling, I’m not sure why Apple isn’t trying to throw people a bone and offer a more reasonable amount of storage in the base config.
Apple being stingy with storage (and RAM) isn’t new, but the base $3.5k spec with only 256 GB is extreme.
EDIT: clarity
> Supergrid planners commented that compared to the first Grid build in the 1920s and 1930s ‘we’ve been in a completely different ball game, with planning officers that want to study our proposed routes in absolute detail and then make their own suggestions’. Another engineer complained about a route near Hadrian’s wall, saying ‘It’s a good job Hadrian wasn’t around now…. He’d never get planning permission for all that’.
> What price should be put on ‘amenity’? In a sense the CEGB could never do enough. This was demonstrated one November evening in 1960 when the Chairman of the CEGB, Christopher Hinton, walked into the Royal Society of Arts to give a paper on the efforts the Board was making. In his talk Hinton outlined the basic problem of NIMBYism. The power stations and transmission lines had to go somewhere. For people in the area the benefits were nil, but the immediate and visible impact of the infrastructure was considerable. Reducing the impact on amenity cost money. Underground cabling in one area would inevitably lead to the question why not do it in other areas. Hinton was not trying to win an argument. He concluded that this was a ‘problem that cannot be removed’. No precise definition or set of rules that could be called on to resolve the intractable dilemma.
> The audience was in the mood for a fight. Mr Yapp of the National Parks Commission claimed that underground cabling was only more expensive than overhead lines because the Board hadn’t tried hard enough. He reasoned that the old London Electric Company had been told that a 2,000 volt underground cable was technically impossible. ‘So we go on… we are now told that 275 kV can hardly go underground’. Mr Yapp then fell into the volume fallacy. ‘I am reasonably certain that if only the cable was ordered in large lengths, it would be much cheaper’. This is the same muddled thinking that leads gas companies to claim that if only we properly commit to hydrogen, then the costs will fall. Hinton was one the country’s finest engineers. He pointed out that the laws of physics trumped the volume fallacy. ‘Overhead cable uses air, which is free, as an insulator’.
https://energynetworks.substack.com/p/why-dont-we-just-put-e...