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Not to mention that they confuse RAM with storage. The iPhone 14 certainly doesn't have a minimum of 128 GB of RAM.


Depending on context and the audience, it could be fair to use "RAM" to refer to SSD storage.

SSDs are random access, just not volatile like DRAM.


The only context in which the technical difference between memory and disk can be glossed over is one where the audience is made of laypersons that wouldn’t understand the first thing about seekable vs random-access memory in the first place.

A tech-illiterate author/editor is the much more plausible explanation.


On the other hand, a modern SSD is probably faster than RAM on a spaceship from the 90s. (Don’t quote me on this, I didn’t double check).

All of a sudden I had an urge to get MS-DOS to run with a SSD as memory. Unfortunately I know DOS can’t address 1TB of memory, but the mental image of it is hilarious.


I'm not sure you'll see this, but just in case: the Apollo Guidance Computer used RAM called "core rope memory", and the cycle time was 11.7 microseconds[1]. This isn't too far off from what the best SSDs can achieve for random reads at 8-10 microseconds[2], although these numbers are likely for their minimum block size of 512 bytes.

[1] https://history.nasa.gov/afj/compessay.html

[2] https://www.tomshardware.com/news/micron-finally-rolls-3d-xp...


This is how I want them to use AI in the coming game: give me a prompt to ask questions about my civilisation and everyone else's.

* Which one of my industrial zones has no workshops yet? * What luxury resources am I receiving via trade? And with which players? * What bonuses am I getting from the wonders I've built?

I can get all that information myself, but it takes a lot of clicking around - provided that I remember where to source it. Make it a Q&A, and playing the game will feel much less like working with spreadsheets.


That would be really neat if you could use that to have advisors who don’t feel so pointless - let you give instructions, perhaps with a confirmation rather than having to micromanage the things which don’t matter as much (“build x, y, and z in cities which have lots of culture and aren’t near the border”).


That’s a really good fit, seems chat AIs would be really good at it.

Next we’ll have a game where that’s the only interface for this information, and enemy spies makes it lie to you.


We use spreadsheets because they are extremely good for this, what you suggest seems like a downgrade (at least for those examples).

I would prefer more open games so that it's much easier to run queries like this myself.


I noticed no mention to it, so here's the Debian-based OS used by this government programme:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huayra_GNU%2FLinux?wprov=sfla1


Since Substack is currently down, the following Ars Technica article on the same subject (AFAIK) is a good alternative:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/10/how-indiana-jones-fou...



Here are two anecdotes to explain why I'll never buy an Apple computer again, as 'sexy' as they are:

1. My brother has a old iPad (3rd generation). Somehow its battery is still good enough and the screen is in great shape, but the OS hasn't been updated in years. IIRC, Chrome is stuck on version 60 something. I could jailbreak it, but apparently I'd need a Mac to do that.

2. A friend of mine sold me an iMac 2010 for 50 bucks last year, peripherals and all. The hardware was in excellent shape. When November came, Apple stopped maintaining the latest version of the OS I could possibly get. Due to that iMac's finicky graphics card, installing a user-friendly Linux distro such as Ubuntu wasn't trivial. I ended up donating the computer to a repair centre.

So here's a company with no interest in its hardware being of any use a decade after it's released.

Planned obsolescence is bad enough when done to phones, it should never apply to full-on computers.


3rd gen iPad was from 9 years ago... show me a 9 year old phone or tablet for any other manufacturer which still gets updated


Apple markets the iPad as a computer, so we can compare it to competing touchscreen laptops.


A dual-core Cortex-A9 with 1GB of RAM chokes at almost everything today even when updated.

Source: Surface RT today is still getting security updates. And will continue to get them until 2023. However, it doesn’t matter much in practice. And that’s a quad-core Cortex-A9 clocked 400MHz higher with twice the RAM.


The iPad 3 was not being marketed as a computer like the new ones are


Not my point at all, though still pretty appalling.

It's quite trivial to install LineageOS, for instance, on an old Android phone. Apple completely blocks this route. If your iDevice is no longer supported, it becomes a shiny, expensive paperweight.


That's fair. I'm not complaining about their update policy, though.

My issue is that I see tablets as computers, and yet I can't even run an updated browser on a fairly decent computer released only nine years ago.

Apple also makes it very hard for more savvy users to install something else on their hardware, so once they stop supporting it one's forced to recycle it.

Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned the iPad, but a thousand-dollar iMac from 2010 no longer being useful is quite sad, IMHO. My 2005 NEC laptop is still going.


> My brother has a old iPad (3rd generation). Somehow its battery is still good enough and the screen is in great shape, but the OS hasn't been updated in years.

Try to update the OS on a 9-year-old Android tablet, see how it goes.


You really can't complain about their update support when iPhone gets support twice as long as Android. And I'm using Android personally so don't think I'm just an Apple shill


Not good work at all.

Tabrizi's approach is to tackle a bunch of different subjects with the same attention span of a child on Xmas morning. Each new subject is treated as 'the' most important one, but he drops it unceremoniously after ten minutes.

Then there's the cherry picking of interviewees and their arguments, which is a disservice to the cause – and completely unethical. Even environmentalists interviewed as 'the good guys' complained about this[0].

If Tabrizi is genuinely a fan of the likes of Cousteau and Attenborough, he should watch and listen a lot more before making another documentary.

[0] https://twitter.com/christinachicks/status/13753901779133726...


Following an article shared by a friend (1), I spent a couple of hours reading about fungi, mycelium, etc. Then I came across the book Entangled Life, read a review of it on the NYT (2), and decided to visit HN to search for related articles. No need, this was on the home page. Fascinating stuff.

Thank you for sharing.

1. https://theprint.in/world/handbags-hamburgers-bricks-how-mus...

2. https://nyti.ms/3diORoF


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