I looked at a few Lenovo and MS laptops to see what they are charging to jumps from 8 to 16 GB.
They are very close to what Apple charges.
So, they are ALL ripping us off!
In my entirely anecdotal experience, MacOS is significantly better at RAM management than Windows. But it's still a $1,600 USD computer, and 16GB of RAM costs nearly nothing, it's just classic Apple greed.
The main metric has been with Adobe apps. 2017 Macs with 8GB of RAM are still able to run Premiere and a few others things smoothly simultaneously. Windows machines with the same config were crashing constantly and kept going.
But I'm still not defending Apple here. It's been 6 years, and their base level MacBook still ships with the same amount of RAM.
It’s not anecdotal in the least. It’s been widely tested. There’s a reason an M1 Mac mini with 8GB of RAM can load and fully support over 100 tracks in Logic Pro. The previous Intel machines would buckle with just a few.
ARM is not comparable to x86-64. The former is totally unified, the latter totally modular.
“Unparalleled”, huh? So I’m sure gamers have fully embraced Apple hardware because it’s objectively better, correct? You surely have links to benchmarks of Apple devices beating the pants off PCs… Right??
Calling this a green move is somewhat misleading. I think the author pretty much read the marketing copy on Bloom’s website, which doesn’t present the full picture.
tl;dr: This is a great step towards building infrastructure which can bridge the gap between fossil and renewable fuels, but as the technology stands this currently cannot be a renewably-fuelled system. This is important but the article buries the lede as to why: it helps to smooth our transition to renewable hydrogen when it becomes available.
Bloom bills their cells as “low or no CO”, which is kind of true. I’m going to focus on the effects on CO2 emissions here, but Bloom also talks about reducing water consumption and particulate emissions, which are very valid benefits. The article states that the data center will be powered by natural gas, with the hope of transitioning to hydrogen in the future, so let’s talk briefly about how fuel cells interact with natural gas.
Solid oxide fuel cells perform internal steam reformation of natural gas (DOE source), where if air is used as the oxygen source, methane and water are converted to H2 and carbon monoxide (DOE source). Yes, that does decrease the amount of CO2 produced, but CO is an objectively worse byproduct. The only realistic thing they can turn it into is CO2 via a water-gas shift reaction (which is standard for methane reformation), so a fuel cell still produces one CO2 per methane oxidized. These do decrease CO2 emissions, but only because they also slightly reduce the amount of methane which must be consumed to generate a certain amount of electrical energy, not due to a fundamental difference in how they process carbon.
Now, moving to hydrogen is a great goal, and that flexibility in fuel is the real progress story here. However, if they’re talking about moving to hydrogen in the near future, the only technique currently capable of generating H2 on an industrial scale is the same steam-reformation process which is happening in the fuel cells when they operate on natural gas. Unfortunately, we simply do not have any renewable methods for making hydrogen currently (98% of all hydrogen produced in the world is via coal gasification or steam-reformation of methane).
A small caveat to this is that if the data center was able to source biogas from a fermentor, this would help in at least closing our carbon cycle, i.e. only recycling carbon which is already in the carbon cycle.
Don’t get me wrong, building this datacenter with fuel cells is a worthwhile thing to do, but not for the reasons that this article (or the Bloom website) suggests. It does not substantially reduce CO2 emissions, even if it is run on hydrogen. However, the important thing that it does do is reduce the barrier for switching to green hydrogen when it becomes available, which is super important! The biggest issue when renewable hydrogen becomes practical will be the infrastructural expense of transitioning to an entirely new fuel source, and we’re currently not prepared for that transition–this is a step in the right direction.
Thanks for coming to my TED rant! Hope this is helpful or interesting to y’all.
I guess what that slide meant was not what the author thought.
Well, yes, Android is a "massive tracking device", but Google Search is not the culprit. Android apps were able to collect user data easily because they didn't have to ask for users' permission (and even today, by using an old Android API iirc).
So, no, I don't trust Apple, but that slide is probably irrelevant.
Nope, the required API to have your app in the Playstore constantly rises, and if you don’t comply you get kicked. The current API version is something around 26, and definitely has the permissions model integrated.
They’re also adding an API version check on devices, which will affect old apps that have gotten around the store checks. Only affects devices that can upgrade to 14, but it’s a solid step.
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