The whole point seems to be how to get the most out of today's tooling without "glue getting in your pizza". It's a little flag-wavy (probably because of the author's company) but overall seemed like a pretty candid peek into how it's being used. Did you have a specific critique?
The title doesn't feel accurate: per the article the watches don't actively leak your personal data (e.g. via issues in the Garmin Connect platform), but instead the data they generate is totally readable at rest via USB.
And what can be seen as a loss for privacy is a win for openness. Honestly, if you've stolen my watch I'm going to be pissed you stole my watch, I don't really care if you know I'm a slow runner.
My takeaway is that Garmin could probably stand to put a layer on top of this to stop it being embarassingly accessible while continuing to keep the data in open user-readable standards. This could be as simple as "(optionally, default do) prompt for a PIN on the device when mass storage / MTP is requested".
I don't find Apple's watch offering compelling, but I can appreciate that it won't just dump all your data e.g. at a customs checkpoint.
Any recommendations on getting started here? I'm also early in my career, but dumping almost the entirety of my salary into a plain old savings account.
Choose an online firm such as Charles Schwab or Fidelity. Find a mutual fund that tracks the S&P 500. Put money in there when you can. If you're young and want to take more risk for a chance at higher returns, you certainly can. But the idea behind the simple S&P 500 mutual fund is that the mutual fund will be comprised of the top 500 companies in the market and so your gains will pretty much match the gains of the market itself. It's a simple way to just put money into the market and get safe returns. You can read "The Little Book of Common Sense Investing" by John Bogle for more details on this. I actually have about an 80/20 split between two funds. The 80 would be towards the S&P 500 and the 20 would be towards the equivalent but for international markets.
I daily an Android phone and use Macs exclusively for personal and productivity use, with some Linux machines for personal play as well.
If you start to really 'obsess about the details' -- and this'll mean different things to different people -- you'll start to run into the walls that Apple puts up. It's a very one-sided "my way or the highway" dynamic. It's easier to work around on their laptops, but impossible (or at least unreasonably impractical) on their phones. For context I gave iOS a shake twice, once with the XR and once with the 13 mini.
I've always felt that iOS is the platform you go with for:
- unparalleled high-quality integration with the Apple ecosystem
- a very strongly (and unavoidably) opinionated experience (where the opinions are usually more-or-less correct)
You're setting up a straw man for yourself to knock down; the points they're making are more nuanced than just 'think of the children' and you're being excessively reductive when you frame it that way.
So tell that to my stepmom that made me sit in a car when I was 13 years old with the windows rolled up while she chain smoked on a 2 hour drive because she was on the phone and couldn't hear with the windows down. Despite my protests...
Your freedoms end where mine begin. If you want to smoke, fine. Do it in a location where I NEVER have to breathe it in.
My point is that "consenting adults" aren't really involved here. A "think of the children argument" is when you argue for banning something that adults do because a child might be exposed to it and might suffer harm as a result. An example would be wanting to ban porn (something for adults) because a little kid might see it and warp their fragile young mind, or whatever. The key part of this scenario is that the little kid's exposure to porn is neither intentional nor desired (on the part of porn producers) or common.
Starting smoking, on the other hand, is something that, for the most part, only children do. The entire goal of tobacco companies is to get children addicted so they'll keep buying nicotine for the rest of their lives, without any adult decision-making involved. Here are some numbers for you:
Almost 90% of people in the US who smoke tried their first cigarette before they were 18[1]. Effectively all of the rest did before they were 26 (most by 22), which is around the age where the human brain's capacity for risk assessment and long-term decision-making is fully developed. Two thirds of daily smokers started doing that by the time they were 18, and over 95% did by the time they were 26. Over a quarter of daily smokers started before they were 15. Furthermore, people who start smoking are most likely to do so with the help of their peers (i.e. other children), not adults.
The concept of rational free choice is a bit murky even under the best circumstances. When you add in addiction, it gets a lot more complicated. And when you're talking about children getting addicted, I don't think it's a helpful framework. Children are not capable of consenting to a destructive long-term addiction, and in practice, almost nobody else does.
I've been using mine (min-spec 1135 DIY) for ~4 days on Sway+Manjaro; the hardware feels really good and for all the considerations made towards repairability, it feels like a no-compromises premium piece of hardware. It was nice to be able to take hardware that I have laying around (i.e. SSD and RAM) and put it to use.
The biggest disappointment so far is directly related to the processor offering:
- It feels like it warms up pretty quickly doing small things and starts spinning up the fan
- s2 ("deep") sleep works out-of-the-box but drains battery way faster than I'd like
Some of this kind of stuff may be related to the modularity of the laptop (e.g. bigger power draw of the less power-efficient non-soldered components), but I think a lot of the blame lies with Intel's offerings & hopefully things take a turn in this space for the better. I'd love to see e.g. an M1-style ARM offering from someone that runs linux and is offered in a package like Framework's.
The trackpad is probably pretty good for a 'windows laptop', but just doesn't feel as good as the one on even my 2015 Macbook (and I don't think it fundamentally can be as good with a physical 'pivot-based' click approach compared to the simulated haptic approach on the Mac). It really does feel like a compromise on usability when you see how good the basics can be on e.g. the new Macs. I don't think it's Framework's fault and the ecosystem here just needs to improve.
Based on what I've seen so far, I think this really is a game-changer for people who want a first-class linux-compatible laptop with less compromises (both 'ethically' and from a hardware perspective), and I'm really looking forward to how Framework continues to improve the offering and innovate in this space.
I'm giving it a try as a daily driver for a few weeks. I need a linux laptop for some of my hobbies and the Framework still feels like the best choice for me (including some of the Thinkpads I was looking at... hard pass on the 16:9 offerings, the 3:2 on the Framework is really nice), but I think it'll be hard to swap off of the Mac for the day-to-day usability "basics".
I ordered the module without vPro, so I don't believe that should be the case.
I've heard a ~3% drain rate per hour and that about lines up with what I'm seeing... i.e. if I'm working on one of my hobby projects and want to shelve things with all the same context I can't just "close the laptop" and come back to things a few days later without juggling the laptop on a charger at some point.
No one keeps track of inflation for anything other than consumer goods. Inflation is floating around 1-2% according to the Fed. They conveniently don't track things like fuel prices or food because they are too "volatile". And things like asset inflation simply isn't considered in the equation. But the reality is that upper income people have 401ks with stocks in them and lower income people live paycheck to paycheck. Since 2008 when the Fed start QE, the stock market has gone through the room, including companies like FANG.
If you're not exposed to the stock market or housing market, then you're fucked.
CPI is the consumer price index, which tracks a variety of prices as an estimate of inflation. The sub-categories are tracked individually, and then averaged together into the overall CPI number.
Even if you distrust the Fed entirely, we can use CBOE futures (the futures market), which has historical performance on a variety of food commodities (pork bellies, orange juice) and fuel (sweet light crude oil). CBOE is literally the free market and non-government.
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Fuel prices are down over the past decade due to the uptick in US oil production. Remember $4+ / gallon US averages? (and $6+ in high cost places like Hawaii?)
COVID19 has also decimated oil prices. Other goods have gone up in price, but fuel prices are really, really low right now, pulling inflation lower.
What I meant is that Fed Policy is dictated by Core PCE, so they don't look at that when setting rates. So it doesn't matter if fuel prices skyrocket or drop, it's not anything that gets the headlines. The only thing you hear about is Core PCE or Core CPI. If no policy is enacted by regular CPI, then who cares. The Fed only sees no inflation regardless of the inflation we see all around us.
> Both CPI and PCE are both up slightly in the past year. Both are measures of inflation and clearly indicate slightly higher prices.
Sure, if you consider 1.5% PCE and indication of inflation. By your definition, 0.1% PCE would indicate inflation. But in reality, the target PCE is 2.0%. The numbers that the Fed are using to dictate policy indicate that inflation is not high enough, and yet the evidence of asset inflation is irrefutable.
> Why are you trying to spread misinformation? What's in it for you?
I can say the same thing with you. Why are you spreading false claims about inflation? But such discussions go nowhere pretty fast. As such, I'll take my leave with you. If you have no faith in my discussion points, there's no point continuing.
My final words: the suggestion that the Fed ignores energy prices / food prices is ridiculous at face value. Its listed right there in the statistics and well categorized in the statistics they watch.
All such indices show the same broad inflation trends, usually shifted by a small amount. These trends are also consistent with private replication efforts such as the Billion Prices Project (http://www.thebillionpricesproject.com/), which uses directly-sampled retail-price data.
> They conveniently don't track things like fuel prices or food because they are too "volatile".
They do in fact track these things. They are excluded from core price indices because of their volatility; setting monetary policy based on gas or food prices would result in wild swings from month to month. Core CPI changes show the same broad trends as the full CPI (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=Dtzv), without a persistent level difference.
> But the reality is that upper income people have 401ks with stocks in them and lower income people live paycheck to paycheck.
... and your policy prescription would hurt just this category of people the most. The only lever the Fed has on inflation is to raise interest rates, which also acts to reduce demand in the economy. All other things equal, that throws people out of work and risks causing a recession.
Your concern for ordinary people is admirable, but focus on so-called "asset price inflation" would exactly put the interests of capital-owners (seeking larger risk-free return) over people without existing assets. In fact, unexpected inflation is better for those without financial wealth than those with it.
