This subthread is about the Macbook Air, which tops out at 32 GB, and can't be upgraded further.
While browsing the Apple website, it looks like the cheapest Macbook with 64 GB of RAM is the Macbook Pro M4 Max with 40-core GPU, which starts at $3,899, a.k.a. more than five times more expensive than the price quoted above.
I’m curious to hear more about how you get useful performance out of your local setup. How would you characterize the difference in “intelligence” of local models on your hardware vs. something like chatgpt? I imagine speed is also a factor. Curious to hear about your experiences in as much detail as you’re willing to share!
Local models won't generally have as much context window, and the quantization process does make them "dumber" for lack of a better word.
If you try to get them to compose text, you'll end up seeing a lot less variety than you would with a chatgpt for instance. That said, ask them to analyze a csv file that you don't want to give to chatgpt, or ask them to write code and they're generally competent at it. the high end codex-gpt-5.2 type models are smarter, may find better solutions, may track down bugs more quickly -- but the local models are getting better all the time.
There are literally hundreds of thousands of TS/SCI cleared government employees and contractors. There is nothing "exceptionally difficult" about any of this.
I don't know who the other two are, but Bongino was already polygraphed and cleared for the Secret Service -- there's no reason to pretend that he wasn't cleared for the job. This article reads like a political hit piece and has no real grasp of reality. It also has statements that clearly betray its author doesn't really understand how security clearances work anyway -- most clearances don't require polygraphs, those are an IC and LE thing, and any OCA can grant any waiver they choose to grant. In this particular case if the AG wanted to review this decision she could do so as his boss, but it really makes no difference.
Given that polygraphs are, again, junk science, who gives a shit.
Completely agree, it's a waste to make a laptop screen touchable.
If there is really a touch "screen" requirement, I would put a screen under the trackpad -- that would be more useful for me at least. I think somebody tried that and it pretty much flopped though.
What country the commenter belongs to isn't relevant because the issue is how readers will react. Most won't react, but somewhere down the long tail there's a segment of readers who will become provoked and rush to the comments to attack back. Then we end up in flamewar hell. The only solution is not to go down that spiral in the first place, much as the only way to avoid a black hole is to steer clear of it.
Being right isn't relevant either, for two reasons: first, it's a category error to call pejorative language (e.g. "insane $country obsession", "bizarre and absurd") right or wrong, because it's emotional language, not propositional language. Second, again, the issue is the effect on the threads. Even if a pejorative provocation is 100% right in propositional content, not everyone will agree with it—indeed everyone feels it is they who are right—so rightness doesn't change the flamewar dynamic I described in the first paragraph. If anything, it makes it worse.
For avoiding flamewars, the issue isn't whether you're right or not, it's how you express your rightness and whether it's a good moment to make that point. If you're introducing or fueling a classic flamewar topic that's tangential to the topic at hand, it's probably best just not to, no matter how right you are or feel you are.
Luttrell didn't have anything to do with it. The writer is a British fiction writer. He did a one hour interview with Lutrell, that's the entire involvement Luttrell had with it.
That sucks if true, although I don't expect everyone military special forcers operator to also be a great author on top of their other amazing skills, I expect it to be somewhat ghost written, but one hour? Perhaps the ghostwriter used other interviews and had access to other reports?
Oh I'm sure he read about it somewhere. But the book is simply fiction. Most of the story as Luttrell tells it to this day is false, but the book is even worse.
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