Fractured Forests Are Endangering Wildlife, Scientists Find - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/science/forests-fragmentation-wildlife.html <comment><USER2> This is not exactly a new finding, and one of the reasons the ecoduct was invented.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildlife_crossing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildlife_crossing)

They work just as well for forests as for other biotopes but the countries where the forests end up slashed into pieces tend not to have the funds to reconnect them.

<comment><USER3> I like the idea of wilderness corridors: narrow connective parks linking larger undeveloped areas.

<comment><USER2> It's a good idea with one major problem, predators soon figure out that other wildlife has to pass this choke point and they will treat it like a walking buffet.

<comment><USER4> Not sure that's a major problem? Predators are generally the animals with the larger territorial requirements for a home range, and thus more reliant on the presence of these corridors to feed and disperse into new territory.

<comment><USER2> It negates the usefulness of the concept.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reading The Overstory right now, which is a Man Booker winning fictional exploration into the survival mechanisms? consciousness? endangered status? of forests.

Edit: I read the title as "fractured forests are endangered wildlife"... which goes to show what this book has me thinking about.

<comment><USER6> That book is incredible, and still relevant to this topic! One big thing in the book is that humans don't understand the complexity of forest ecosystems and it shows when we try to change or recreate them. If we expect that we can just put a highway through a forest and not cause damage because the highway is relatively small (in surface area) we are fools.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I remember learning in elementary school in the 90s that cow birds, which are parasitic breeders(they lay their own eggs in other bird's nests and their offspring pushes other chicks out), live closer to the forest edge, so fragmented forests meant other birds were being wiped out.

<comment><USER8> Doesn't that lead to the cow birds being wiped out too?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There was a popular book about this written over 20 years ago, The Song of the Dodo.

[https://www.amazon.com/Song-Dodo-Island-Biogeography- Extinct...](https://www.amazon.com/Song-Dodo-Island-Biogeography- Extinction/dp/0684827123)

<comment><USER10> This was a great book. I live in the pacific northwest and one thing that boggles my mind is just how cheap forest land is. Weyerhaeuser owns 12.4 million acres and only has a market cap of 21 billion. Crazy to me that for 0.5% of the national budget you could buy out this company and increase the size of the national forests in the lower 48 by nearly 10%.

Everyone wants to spend mental energy on being green and helping the environment, but nobody wants to allow wild places to recover. I would argue any politician proposing a green new deal is proposing a plan that would get less done than simply using eminent domain to form new national forests out of timberland. Much of this land was never proved and was simply granted to railroads, many of which no longer even exist.

If much of the most valuable timberland in North America is this cheap, then what about deserts with no energy prospects?

There are still places in the US that should even be national parks such as the Ruby Mountains in Nevada, which the book mentions briefly as having an island like effect due to how isolated they are from other high alpine mountains.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What can I do to make this better? I would really like to stop ruining earth but it does seem that there is a lot of momentum in that direction.

<comment><USER12> I've been thinking about this a lot and I think our car-focused construction patterns are to blame. In my state we have a grid of roads (whether paved or unpaved) that covers pretty much the entire state. It seems like where the roads go, people will go build. Everyone wants to have their own quiet area and when everyone does it (enabled by the automobile), we end up with incredibly fractured habitat. I think the only real solution is for governments to stop allowing sprawling, car centric, development and possibly get rid of some roads in rural areas. Doing that without impacting wealth might be tough. However, there are plenty of places where roads go that do not need roads. At a personal level though? People underestimate the impact they can have in their local government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's only a matter of time before the only places that wildlife can really thrive, is true wildernesses. National forests, big state parks, dedicated wildernesses, and the like. Little community forests are just not good environments and there's little hope for small, isolated ecosystems to have much diversity.

<comment><USER14> I am all for maintaining large true wilderness. Even so, I think it would be great to have many more "little community forests". My guess is that such forests would improve the diversity of all animal life the size of (say) a hawk and smaller. I also guess that the best path to a medium-sized community forest in an area without one is to start with a "little" one.

<comment><USER15> I'm the steward of a small (10 acres or so) piece of land - small enough that I can hear human activity from most of it - and my leisure activity is trapping for introduced pests like rats, possums, stoats and weasels. It's hard to say exactly how effective my efforts are, but last month I spotted a wild kiwi on a trail camera which was truly exhilarating [https://youtu.be/e_9bSw5yniA](https://youtu.be/e_9bSw5yniA). Anecdotally I've also noticed an increase in birdlife during the day. That's given me the incentive to try for total pest eradication next year. Rats are the biggest problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Cant read this. Does anyone have a working link?

<comment><USER17> [https://outline.com/4FBeKG](https://outline.com/4FBeKG)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> >Animals in places with a long history of disturbances are relatively resilient, the researchers found.

Figures... the species that were less resilient are probably already gone, so the remaining ones are the resilient ones.

<comment><USER19> Yes, this would be natural selection in action, with the selective pressure being human disturbance and incursion.

<comment><USER20> Right, but I bet very few new species have emerged in the last few hundred years because of habitat fragmentation.

More likely we caused the population of many animals to decrease or extirpated them entirely (if not drove them to extinction).

<comment><USER21> Would we even call them new species within a few hubdred years or would they be seen as "just variations"?

Many species are absolutely thriving under human invasion and forming new behavioral and breeding patterns that in some cases are even leading to physical changes. Many burds like crows and sparrows _love_ human environments. Trash pandas love us too. Hawks love cities almost as much as mountains. So many tall places to survey from.

There's also fish who have started being smaller in adult size due to sports fishing and size regulation. Stuff like that.

Oh and crowd are known to have branched into novel food sources because they can use cars to break hard nuts they otherwise couldn't open.

It's not all doom and gloom. Nature is hella robust.

<comment><USER20> This is a well written article on the topic.

It argues that human pressures may be selecting out only the hardiest most adaptable species such as rats, mice, pigeons, sparrows, etc...

If this goes on unabated, we'll be left with an ecosystem with much lower diversity.

[http://www.davidquammen.com/sampler/18-planetofweeds](http://www.davidquammen.com/sampler/18-planetofweeds)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why do WE need forests? All WE need is roads, and houses and buildings for businesses and transportation networks covering air, land and sea to ensure capitalism can reach every corner of earth. How else will Amazon Prime thrive and make boatloads of cash?

Fauna and Flora, aside from humans, are not relevant, we are the superior species and can cut down entire forests, bleach the coral reefs and decimate habitats so we have our nice luxurious houses because THAT is what is _really important_.

So these "scientists" are clearly not too caring of how important capitalism is and how it must take priority over anything else. Masses of species will likely go extinct but as long as we can keep buying stuff it'll all be okay.

/s

<comment><USER23> What it is to do with capitalism? Are (existing or former) communist states better to wildlife? Do you have any facts?

<comment><USER24> Capitalist systems give power/status/wealth to those who generate the greatest profits, and none currently in existence price the costs of environmental exploitation. They therefore incentivise environmental destruction.

You could in theory (if capitalists weren't so opposed to regulation!) price these things into a market, but it is unclear that it is a good idea to do so. You are effectively setting up a world-view based on money/profit being the only motivating/guiding factor, and then trying to blacklist certain things within that by artificially changing their monetary value. It might well be better to build ethics into the system from the start, rather than trying to map ethical value to monetary value, which is almost certainly doomed to be an imperfect mapping in practice, and implicitly gives people the "ok" to exploit any loopholes they can find.

<comment><USER25> Ive been to ex "2nd world countries. They're attitude towards the environment was a bit more man vs nature than what we see in the West. See the gigantic sometimes failed exercises in diverting rivers building dams etc. one of the more spectacular examples is the Aral Sea, connecting the Arctic rivers and in China the three gorges dam... which while a twinkle in Yatsen Sun's eye, became a windmill in Zedong Mao's policies, and finally realized by the current regime.

<comment><USER24> I think we need to get out of this "capitalist" vs "communist" mindset. There are not just two economic possibilities: "everything is an unregulated market" and "everything is top-down planned".

There exist possible future economic systems which use markets where appropriate. Centrally plan where appropriate. And regulate where appropriate.

<comment><USER25> Sure but people seem to have the impression that the "bad things" happen especially in capitalist systems of the west and that other alternate systems like communism would have s different attitude toward the same issues. My experience tells me they had the same attitude but with fewer safeguards and oversight.

<comment><USER24> Well my view is that both capitalism and communism have these problems, but that other alternate systems (which are neither capitalism or communism) could have better solutions.

Specifically:

\- Pure capitalist systems all but rule out strong market regulation. It's not technically incompatible with a market-based system, but in practice people tend to start shouting "but that's not capitalism" as soon as you start proposing regulation as an expected norm as opposed to an unusual exception

\- Communist systems all but rule out market-based solutions, which is just dysfunctional as it centralises power too much, and makes it difficult to efficiently distribute resources

I think it's unhelpful (bordering on obtuse) to assume that people criticising capitalism in 2019 are advocating for communism. Very few people would advocate for communism. What people are calling for is:

\- A recognition that market failures are not an exception: they are common. And strong regulation is needed to counteract that.

\- Large wealth equalities distort markets, and that we need limits on the amount of wealth individuals can control.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Book Review: Clean Architecture by Robert C. Martin - <AUTHOR> https://patricklouys.com/2018/06/24/book-review-clean-architecture/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is probably bad timing with the Uncle Bob controversy on Twitter recently, but the book is good nonetheless.</comment>


Ask HN: Wth is Tony Robbins so famous? - <AUTHOR> Why does he have so many followers -- to me he just talks. When I look into his background I can't find one piece of evidence that shows he has actual experience, he just talks about experiences, but has no actual experiences. Can this be classified as a con-artist? <comment><USER2> good at self-promotion. he practices what he preaches.

</comment><comment><USER3> why do people go to church</comment>


Pinterest Hits 10 Million Monthly Uniques Faster Than Any Standalone Site Ever - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/07/pinterest-monthly-uniques/

<comment><USER2> Pinterest has been around since 2008 according to crunchbase, so almost 4 years, so 4 years to get to 10MM uniques? That doesn't strike me as an impressive enough figure to have a Techcrunch post celebrating, filler article?

2 sites I started would be competing for such "amazing growth" if this was any sort of record breaking bench mark. One site went from 200,000 uniques/month to 8,500,000 uniques/month in less than a year, another did 200,000 uniques/month to 6,000,000/month uniques in under a year. both of these sites are relatively inconsequential in the grand scheme of the internet and I assume many more sites have done way more impressive things. Dumb article.

I'd bet chatroulette.com was doing 10m uniques a month+ at its peak well within a year of it existing.

<comment><USER3> >I'd bet chatroulette.com was doing 10m uniques a month+ at its peak well within a year of it existing.

I run Omegle, which competes with ChatRoulette. Omegle was released in 2009, and it does well over 10 million monthly uniques routinely now.

I suspect ChatRoulette did well over 50 million uniques in a month at its peak, which was a few months after its launch. Omegle's never been that big, but it's had sustained growth, and it's bigger than ChatRoulette is now.

Getting a bit off topic, but here's Omegle vs. ChatRoulette according to Alexa: <http://i.imgur.com/9vW96.png> And Omegle alone: <http://i.imgur.com/lfJHs.png>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pinterest is a new social media infested website. People are getting smarter to utilize such websites.

Don't be surprised with the numbers whether it is from Pinterest or from another hot-up-and-coming "allow-me-to-share-my-view". It's a place to promote your content.

If you can make a website targeting marketers, your number will be off the chart soon too.

<comment><USER5> >> Pinterest is a new social media infested website No, it's not. It's been around since 2008.

The "interest" in that site is new, it's seen an increase in traffic lately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Bullshit. TechCrunch is embarrassing these days.

<http://www.quantcast.com/formspring.me></comment>


William Baumol, author of 'cost disease' theory, has died - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/new-money/2017/5/4/15547364/baumol-cost-disease-explained <comment><USER2> Luckily we solved this by uncoupling wages from general productivity starting in the 70s

[http://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/](http://www.epi.org/productivity- pay-gap/)

<comment><USER3> That graph is fairly deceptive. While labor's share of national income has gone down slightly (mostly post 2000) it's not nearly as dramatic as presented there.

This is a good read on the topic:

[http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=30566](http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=30566)

I think one of the bigger sources of the discrepancy is comparing mean productivity to median wages. If productivity and wages were both normally distributed, this would be fine. But they are not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article presents the reasons behind cost disease as if his interpretation is accepted fact, but that's not the case, right? Elsewhere, I've seen a lot more disagreement among smart people.

For example, he says we have to pay band members a lot more now or they'd leave for better jobs and that this also explains the rise in education costs over the last few decades. Education costs have risen about 2.5x over the last 40 years, after adjusting for inflation. Has teacher pay risen 2.5x after adjusting for inflation?

<comment><USER5> Baumol's argument is that services will become relatively more expensive than goods, because productivity increases come faster in goods than services.

This is obviously true, so yes, the article presents it as an accepted fact because it _is_. We have hard data for labour productivity by sector, manufacturing output, manufacturing employment, etc. We _know_ the number of hours that goes into making a car versus giving a haircut, and how those numbers have changed over the past 40 years.

> Education costs have risen about 2.5x over the last 40 years, after > adjusting for inflation. Has teacher pay risen 2.5x after adjusting for > inflation?

No, which makes it clear that Baumol's cost disease is not the only driver behind education costs. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Quick question for anyone who actually studied Baumol's theories:

Did he bring into consideration how some services, such as education and health care, exist in an awkward limbo between services we pay for (right/libertarian view) and services we're entitled to (left view), resulting in a smash up of public subsidies and political quicksand?

At face value, his theory is totally reasonable. BUT it seems totally reductionist to claim his drivers of cost are the only drivers (even calling them primary drivers seems foolish to me).

<comment><USER7> The article points out that there are many non-governmental professions that show this effect: musicians (look at the prices for concert tickets), post- secondary education, which is not usually free, though it may be subsidized, restaurants...

<comment><USER8> > post-secondary education

In many places, loans for university education are guaranteed by the government. So universities have no worries for charging absurd prices for useless degrees. Even if the graduates go bankrupt the university still gets their money from the government. (And in some jurisdictions bankruptcy doesn't discharge student loans.)

The GP raises a legitimate point that government involvement in just about everything muddies the analysis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm having a hard time understanding the core of Baumol's theory as Vox is laying it out. I identify a few premises:

1) Rising opportunity cost in the labor market raises the boats of all jobs (within a given grouping of jobs with low friction of employee movement)

2) This rising opportunity cost occurred (in the U.S.) due to manufacturing, which was well paying.

3) Consumer goods prices are more affordable due to increased capital efficiency relative to income.

4) The extra discretionary dollars from (3) are being spent on labor intensive goods, which cycles back to (1) again.

One point on which this loses me is the apparently hidden assumption that involuntary un(der)employment is low and stably so, and what markers of inflation we're using. I think there's an unexplained paradox: if we're losing goods-producing jobs, why isn't the competition in the service sector a countervailing force driving _down_ wages?

Not trying to be a critic, I just want to understand this better.

<comment><USER5> I'll take a stab at trying to explain it. :)

First off, let's consider an economy with a single good (widgets), and no services. Any attempt to measure the economy as a whole (eg, to calculate GDP) is simply going to end up being the number of widgets produced per year. Further, the total compensation for all factors of production is going to be equal to that same number, which in turn means that any employee's compensation (whatever unit of currency is used) translates into a share of the widgets being produced.

If everyone gets more efficient at producing widgets, the economy is wealthier (and GDP goes up). And each employee is (all else equal) receiving more widgets as their share. Conversely, if we assume that nominal wages have stayed constant, the price of widgets has gone down.

So that's a basic framework we have: Productivity gains = a fall in real prices = a growing economy = an increase in employee compensation. These are all equivalent things; different sides of the same coin. If we're getting better at making widgets, then widgets will be cheaper, which means we can afford more widgets for the same amount of (real) money. That's what economic growth _is_.

Second, let's consider an economy with two goods: Widgets and sprockets (and again, no services). Let's say half the work force is busy making widgets, and the other half is busy making sprockets. If we get better at making both, but we become much better at making widgets, then the price of widgets will start to collapse. Where 1 widget used to barter for 1 sprocket, soon it'll take 10 widgets to barter for 1 sprocket. Which is another way of saying that the price of sprockets will rise steeply.

That's Baumol's Cost Disease. If you have multiple items, and they experience different productivity growth, the ones which experiences relatively lower productivity growth will become relatively more expensive.

In addition, if you want to take the widget and sprocket example a step further, you might wonder what happens if productivity gains mean we're making more widgets than we strictly need. We'd probably see layoffs, as productivity gains mean fewer and fewer people are required to produce the widgets the economy needs. And of course the people left would probably earn very good wages, since they get to share the returns from the entire widget industry. Although given the high price of sprockets, they might not feel that rich. But where would the laid off people go? Well, into the sprocket industry; it's lower productivity means it can soak up more manpower. But with the returns from the sprocket industry split across more people, wages would be lower. Luckily, those wages would go further when purchasing cheap widgets, but high- price sprockets would be harder to obtain.

Which is, if you squint a bit, basically what we see, with widgets taking the place of the manufacturing sector, and sprockets the services secotr. US manufacturing output is high and (the financial crisis aside) keeps getting higher; US manufacturing employment is low and keeps getting lower. Manufactured goods are cheap and getting cheaper; services are expensive and getting more expensive. Skilled engineers command excellent wages, but struggle to find material goods to spend it on. Workers in the service sector suffer from low wages, although their material standard of living is still good. Etc., etc. Sound familiar?

Productivity gains are always a net good in total, however distributed. But the skewing effect of unequal productivity gains can be extremely wrenching. Telling someone that, actually, the machine shop they worked in is closing, but they can retrain as a hairdresser doesn't make people happy. Nor does pointing out that, even on the wages a hairdresser makes, they can afford a larger flat screen TV than the one they bought three years ago. They don't _want_ a bigger flat screen TV; the last one is actually fine. They don't want to be a hairdresser with a giant flat screen TV; they want to be a machinist. With affordable health care. But that would require figuring out how to make sprockets as efficiently as we've figured out how to make widgets, and we haven't done that yet. (Although the US does seem _uniquely_ bad at it, so maybe we can at least try to be less bad...)

<comment><USER9> Thank you. This helps me better articulate the thorn still stuck in my side.

Putting together paragraph 2 and paragraph 4 from your response, why don't the following things happen:

The widget company owner starts laying off widget makers to increase profit he can get the same output. Is there no diminishing margin utility for buying more widgets? Paragraph 2 by itself implies that the cost of widgets falls, if wages aren't rising and these increased widgets are being purchased. There's got to be some movement in one or both of cost and salary metrics in order to increase widget consumption if the employer is going to ramp up production so long as the net cost of each widget is positive. What's the incentive otherwise to greater production even if the capacity is there?

Paragraph 4 adds another good with these same questions I didn't feel the article answered well, and introduces the variable of product exchange rates. What unsettles me here is the obfuscation between the total resources poured into the industry and the per-person expenditures, especially in service- oriented work where the productivity isn't simply "widgets" or "sprockets".

Teaching is a great example: the number of teachers (in the US) increased about 48% from 1988 - 2012 but the population increased 29%. Did we get voluntarily make education "less productive" by increasing the decreasing the student:teacher ratio? Did we get better educational quality for it? Not so easy to say.

Could it not be that musicians were paid more by the mid-20th century because there a longstanding oversupply had been steadily declining due to cultural factors, or that concert financiers realized people valued and would pay more for music than had been assumed, i.e. basic supply and demand equilibration?

I'm trying not to be ornery or argumentative, I'm just having a hard time understanding what Baumol's assumptions were on these points, and I think they're important.

<comment><USER5> > The widget company owner starts laying off widget makers to increase profit > he can get the same output. Is there no diminishing margin utility for > buying more widgets?

In the simple example where widgets are the entire economy, this doesn't work, because profit is defined in terms of widgets, and because we can assume that there's no diminishing marginal utility for economic production _as a whole_. At the level of the entire economy, you never become richer by cutting production. (Because again, if the only good or service in the economy is a widget, then you have no way of expressing your profit or wage except in the number of widgets you have. If total production declines, the only way for you to increase your compensation is by obtaining a larger share of the overall pie.)

For the more complex example with widgets and sprockets, there's absolutely diminishing marginal utility; I dealt with this in the passage starting "you might wonder what happens if productivity gains mean we're making more widgets than we strictly need. We'd probably see layoffs". And in general we can assume that goods will suffer much more sharply diminishing marginal utility than services.

That, in turn, is what drives the shift in employment from more productive industries (which is another way of saying "industries which don't need as many people any more to fill societal demands") to less productive industries.

If it helps, consider the earlier shift from agriculture to manufacturing: Around 50-150 years ago, we saw an _incredible_ increase in productivity, a very very small increase in per capita food production, a very large drop in food prices, a very large drop in the % of income the average person spent on food, and the utter gutting of agricultural employment. New technology gave us the power to make 40 times more food than we were previously making, or the _same_ amount of food with 1/40th the people. And at the big picture level, that freed up labour ended up in manufacturing, which had not yet had the same productivity increase.

That's a good example of what Baumol's theory would predict. Does that make sense to you? Does your understanding of the theory suggest it would predict something else?

> Did we get voluntarily make education "less productive" by increasing the > decreasing the student:teacher ratio? Did we get better educational quality > for it?

Yes, we did lower productivity. And no, not really. But keep in mind, that when we say productivity here we're talking about labour productivity, so increasing employment will (basically) always lower productivity.

<comment><USER9> > Does that make sense to you?

Yes, but not to Baumol's theory. Your description sounds like an excellent summary of the labor theory of value. How does this connect to musicians making more money? Once all of those former farmers rush into manufacturing because the price equilibrium is reached for food, why doesn't that depress factory wages and thereby reduce the musician's leverage to demand a higher salary for staying a musician? I keep rereading Vox's summary and one on The Economist, but I'm not seeing the evidence that musicians' wages were incommensurate over the century analyzed, or confirmation that other measures of music productivity like audience members reached per year remained fixed. If the musician's general relative economic class is unchanged, why invoke opportunity cost of other labor sectors as a factor? Or, if the general public has higher wages and the demand for music is inelastic, they can be stretched more for it, why not suppose the artists know their talent pool is limited and leverage that to increase their cut? I thank you very much for taking the time to try to explain this to me, in case I've inadvertently gotten you frustrated, and I blame myself for this apparent mental blind spot I can't shake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Link to Wikipedia article on cost disease: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease)

<comment><USER11> One problem I've always had when stumbling upon the cost disease theory is my sense that real wages not only "should" rise due to productivity gains, but also due to the wages of alternative occupations.

If a person has the intellect / drive / grit / possibility etc. to pursue either an occupation as a university professor (where the productivity gain has been low) or a high end engineering job (with high productivity gains), it's obvious that if there's demand for university professors, universities will have to somewhat compete with the engineering firms for labour.

I guess the situation is somewhat different for the arts, but still, if the real wages had been constant since the 1600s I guess very few would pursue a career as professional classical pianists if it would be impossible to make more than minimum wage (even at the topmost levels).

<comment><USER7> That is exactly the point of the theory. Wages increase roughly at parity for equally skilled workers, regardless of their productivity, since otherwise people wouldn't choose to go into careers that under-pay. While costs decrease for goods and services that benefit from productivity increases, they stay the same for goods and services where productivity doesn't improve. Since all other costs are dropping, this has the effect of making prices go UP for hands-on services.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Most of this seems fairly uncontroversial. This, however

> But a lot of service workers are doing jobs that are unlikely to ever be > fully automated. Nobody wants a robot for a teacher or a nanny, for example. > And even if we get software with advanced diagnostic capabilities, patients > are still going to want doctors to explain the recommendations and nurses to > provide hands-on care.

Maybe the author is taking a very short term interpretation of "ever" but I don't know why these jobs are unlikely to be automated of general AI arrives.

<comment><USER13> We're social creatures. We like interacting with other people more than we like interacting with machines, even if machines are more efficient in a narrow technical sense. I think this is especially clear for nannies--the main job of the nanny is to cuddle and interact with the baby in ways that only a human being can do.

There are plenty of fitness videos and apps, but people still pay a lot of money for in-person fitness classes. People wouldn't stop going to Starbucks even if someone invented a vending machine that could produce coffee that tastes identical for half the cost.

<comment><USER14> You must live in a world where people don't make coffee at home due to cost considerations.

The main point of a nanny is to have someone else deal with your kid so that you don't have to.

Machines will almost certainly provide a worse experience than a human at the beginning, but the lower price expands the market significantly to those who could not afford those things before.

Teachers probably won't get replaced for the longest time since they're not paid out of your pocket.

<comment><USER15> No, the main point of a nanny is to enable both partners to work, which is often a financial necessity, not a luxury.

<comment><USER14> I was probably projecting, but I'd say day care, in a home or a centre, is a financial necessity, and a nanny is when you have too much money or too many children :)

But the larger point I was trying to make is that most people who need child care are looking for someone to make sure it doesn't die while they're away, not provide some special level of care.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


All That Cash: On Apple, Twitter And The New Bit Factories - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/25/all-that-cash-on-apple-twitter-and-the-new-bit-factories/

<comment><USER2> Finally a descent analyzes of what Apple will do with all that cash...</comment>


New Platform 3D-Prints Glass with Stunning Precision - <AUTHOR> http://www.archdaily.com/772232/mediated-matters-new-platform-3d-prints-glass-with-stunning-precision <comment><USER2> I'm not seeing the "stunning precision" promised by the headline. The extrusion seems to be ~7mm thick and significantly sags the moment it leaves the extruder.

That being said, the results are aesthetically delightful.

</comment><comment><USER3> Doesn't look like you'll be 3D printing eye glasses (out of glass, polycarbonate sure) for a few years yet. But the fact that they got a tool flow which can keep the glass molten and warm enough that it continues to adhere layer to layer without a huge amount of droop is pretty awesome.

Could make for some very interesting glass artware.

</comment><comment><USER4> Related _Technology Review_ article: [http://www.technologyreview.com/news/540926/3-d-printing- bre...](http://www.technologyreview.com/news/540926/3-d-printing-breaks-the- glass-barrier/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Url changed from [http://mashable.com/2015/08/22/3d-glass- printing/#C2KgF3Zw0a...](http://mashable.com/2015/08/22/3d-glass- printing/#C2KgF3Zw0aqh), which points to this.</comment>


Pattern matching in c++ - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mpark/patterns <comment><USER2> Nice!

 _Matching_ is a restricted form of _unification_ that is available in logic programming languages like Prolog. The difference is that in matching, one side is regarded as fixed, whereas unification works both ways.</comment>


One Year with ThinkPad and Linux (From MacBook Pro) - <AUTHOR> https://drikerf.com/one-year-with-thinkpad-and-linux-from-macbook-pro/ <comment><USER3> I recently purchased a 16" MBP despite significant personal concerns over the future of MacOS, being a strong open source advocate and Linux paying my mortgage.

I did this ultimately for a few reasons. MacOS lets me run Adobe (Photoshop, Lightroom, etc), Fusion360, has a good terminal (iTerm and zsh unix like shell) and Logic.

Mac hardware is still some of the best in the business, no other vendors seem to be able to catch-up. The XPS line is a great example, the battery that Dell chose to put in that laptop can't run the internals at full power when not connected to AC. There are plenty of other comments about Thinkpads here (I have a T480s through work) and find the overall experience just fine.

The MacBook on the other hand, I use for 8+ hours every day. It's the machine I reach for first. It sparks joy. It just works when roaming on WiFi, always. It just works with Bluetooth headphones, always. It just works with external displays, first time, every time. To put it simply, the machine gets out of my way and lets me get real work done. I can SSH to wherever I want and get 'the Linux experience'.

My personal desktop runs Arch and KDE but for a portable, annoyingly, I still think Macs are the only way to go. But damn do I wish they had a SD card slot.

<comment><USER4> I am glad that you like your macbook, but your experience has been very different from mine. It has the worst WIFI radio in a laptop that i have used; one area of my house is basically off-limits to it despite every other Wi-Fi enabled device i own working there (phones and several laptop brands).

The fancy metal case isnt properly grounded- I get occasionally a slight tingling /shock from it when I have it plugged in.

Battery life is on par, at best, with my other laptops.

Macos doesn't let me configure or change the things I want to configure or change. Some programs are usability / discoverability nightmares.

Performance of most programs is, at best, similar to linux or Win10, and is frequently worse against other machines with similar hardware.

I have used several models of MacBook and an Air, and personally will not purchase another again... I am tired of paying top dollar for a mediocre experience.

<comment><USER5> > It has the worst WIFI radio in a laptop that i have used

This is an extremely disputable claim. Wifi chipset used by Apple is by _far_ the best in class in my experience. I have 4 laptops - ASUS, Thinkpad, HP laptop from work and MBP 16". All of them get a visit to the special room once a week at least. If we use my commode as a benchmark of wifi radio performance, when I am sitting on it and watching Monty Python, I can get every single joke with MacBookPro 16 streaming smoothly at 320p resolution. Not so much with other products of similar class.

<comment><USER4> YMMV, I guess. We have a lot of wood paneling, plus the furnace is in between me and the router, so it would be understandable if the issue was universal.

My HP Spectre x360 has not had a problem with the reception once, but I can barely attend video calls or load Jira with the macbook. Likewise, my wife's chromebook and my previous surface book 2 were all perfectly happy.

That said, the Dell XPS 13 was pretty close to equally bad as the macbook, though I haven't had it in a long enough time that I've since re-arranged my sitting area- whether it actually was worse or not I'm not sure.

<comment><USER6> I've had Mac wifi adapters that didn't like certain access points in the past (a specific Ubiquiti AP firmware revision circa 2014 comes to mind). Not sure that's still an issue nowadays, but you might want to make sure your AP firmware is up to date.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am also running Linux on Thinkpad (Debian unstable on T440s).

As to the battery life, this typically requires some work but I found it is generally possible to get good battery life. I am able to get my T440s to run for total 24 hours with the highest option 9-cell, the built in 3-cell and another 3-cell that came original with the laptop. This I did to be able to work on a long yacht cruise with no extra power and required to get backlight almost to minimum and to downclock CPU a little bit.

Now, to get there there are tools that can tell you what is using up the battery and some howtos on the Internet. I don't remember details so it is best if you go look it up yourself.

If you are using i3 you are generally well set up to easily get over 10h of operation.

As to touchpad these are all disappointing on all ThinkPads but probably especially on T440s where it is something called "clickpad". The entire touchpad is a button and you need to press it and try to move your finger while pressing HARD to drag things, for example. Dunno who thought this is a good idea. I always travel with a mouse and a mouse pad to be able to work comfortably:) Still, it is easier to use built in keyboard and a mouse than the reverse, luscious touchpad but keyboard to replace miserable something shipped with Macbook. I don't like typing on something that feels like a solid pane of aluminum with some markings on it.

<comment><USER8> I find that I can tune the battery life on a ThinkPad to be pretty amazing, but it is hard to get my change to stick after a reboot or even a suspend/wake cycle. One of the things that seems to make a big impact is PCIe ASPM. But where do you change your config files so it's always on? At least on Ubuntu there are numerous config files that _formerly_ controlled power management settings, are still referenced in Stack Overflow answers, still exist on the filesystem, but don't actually _do_ one damn thing, which is infuriating.

Used to be able to just drop commands into rc.local but now it's not as simple.

<comment><USER7> I have a bunch of scripts that run on every start and wakeup. Some of those scripts do things like configure my machine depending on where I am (for example, detect presence of my home WiFi).

<comment><USER8> It doesn't seem like you'd be able to do that on wakeup. Don't you have to put those kinds of commands in a hook that runs after a wifi link state change?

<comment><USER7> I am not sure what you mean. As bad as it is, systemd actually supports running stuff on wakeup. One figures, it has support for everything.

<comment><USER8> What I mean is that when the machine wakes up, it's not associated with a wifi network until later, so isn't it a race if such a thing runs at wakeup?

<comment><USER9> OK so we sleep for 30 seconds and try again, maybe give up after 5 or 10 iterations of this. What's the problem?

<comment><USER7> Or have a script running on when network comes up and you check if you just freshly came from the sleep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Can't debug issues in Safari without borrowing a Mac

> Can't do iOS development

Not _legally_ , no. These can be worked around with a VM, just like with the Windows issue. It sucks, but Apple is never going to support their development toolchain on any other platform.

All in all, I think this is a pretty positive review for an "I switched to Linux" blog post. Usually they're more negative about the lack of finish a lot of Linux tools use, but the author of this blog seems to be more tolerant towards the small things in order to gain the big things.

<comment><USER11> The homebrew/jailbreak community have a custom toolchain called Theos ([https://theos.dev/](https://theos.dev/)) which enables you to cross-compile to iOS devices without a Mac. I don't know how legal it is, but it's really frustrating that we aren't seeing more efforts to develop tools like this since so many companies and individuals are scared of pissing off Apple.

<comment><USER12> I think you're going to struggle to publish to the App Store without a mac of some form. There's too much signing and stuff that requires apple devices for authentication.

I solved this with a Mac Mini that lives at home on my desk and was only used for the occasional bit of testing, debug and publishing (I was building using Flutter).

<comment><USER13> You can make a virtual machine very easily but it performs very poorly:

[https://github.com/myspaghetti/macos- virtualbox](https://github.com/myspaghetti/macos-virtualbox)

Or you can lease them online:

[http://macstadium.com/](http://macstadium.com/)

GitHub has some kind of Mac hardware or virtualization for their Actions too so you could probably wire something up to build on GitHub:

[https://github.com/marketplace/actions/setup- swift](https://github.com/marketplace/actions/setup-swift)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Welcome to Linux! ;)

I have been using as my sole OS (except for some very occasional gaming on Windows) for 10 years. The longer you use it, the happier you become with your setup imo.

There is a very detailed blog post about my setup that has grown over the years: [https://tkainrad.dev/posts/setting-up-linux- workstation](https://tkainrad.dev/posts/setting-up-linux-workstation)

It is about Ubuntu, but many sections apply to all distros. The most important productivity boost for me has been to switch from Bash to Zsh. Mainly because of some great plugins for Zsh, such as z, zsh-peco-history (better history search), zsh-autosuggestions, and zsh-syntax-highlighting. The blog post has copy-paste ready instructions to set it up.

<comment><USER15> > Bash to Zsh

Always remember that the whole debacle of people even moving away from Bash is because Apple and others are afraid of GPLv3. They dread having to contribute back to the open source projects they profit from.

Most of the things I see for Zsh have been possible (and more portable) on Bash for decades. It's just the new javascript-like hype for Zsh that is new, not the capabilities.

True, Bash have lots of baggage, but half the portability and performance trickery is also because of that baggage. It's impossible to have the niceties Bash offer without some of the tradeoffs, and every new shell learned that the hard way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What are the cons of mac?

for me:

\- Sluggish UI

\- Inadequate package manager

\- Unintuitive ways to install stuff

\- Slow and large updates

\- Can't do Linux development

\- Can't try server tools

\- Slow boot-to-work time

\- Hard to add memory and ram

\- Limited interfaces

\- Hacker unfriendly

\- Can't have a minimal desktop

\- High memory usage of base system

<comment><USER17> I'm curious how you arrived at some of these conclusions.

\- Sluggish UI -> I've never experienced this in the last three years of using my 2017 MBP.

\- Inadequate package manager -> Somewhat nebulous, most package managers on Linux are available on Unix.

\- Slow and large updates -> I honestly don't pay much attention as I have updates install automatically while I'm sleeping, but what size differences have you noticed?

\- Slow boot to work -> Never experienced this, boot is less than a minute regularly.

\- Can't have a minimal desktop -> Beyond hiding all icons and the dock, what more are you looking for?

\- High memory usage of base system -> Never seen this come close to the main applications I use on a daily basis. What quantified results are you receiving to notice this?

<comment><USER18> At least as far as the UI is concerned:

\- No focus-follows-mouse options means I can't layer windows in a way that accelerates my workflows. Having to switch between windows constantly is a giant speed bottleneck for me.

\- No keybinds for quickly resizing and positioning windows as far as I know. I only use the mouse to quickly position windows and even then just use alt- drag on my Linux desktop.

\- Animations. Anything that doesn't just instantly do whatever I told it is wasting my time. I don't need pretty or shiny.

Of course this is my own personal experience, but I am extremely less productive on Mac and Windows compared to Linux due to these and more.

<comment><USER19> After eight years of using Macs exclusively for desktop and laptop use, I still can't get used to the counterintuitive focus management. I'm scrolling up and down in an app, start using the keyboard, and the keystrokes go to a different app! Arg! It just does not compute for me that I can be interacting with app A, move my mouse to app B, start interacting with app B, see my interactions have effect in app B, then start typing and find that my keystrokes are going to app A.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I love the idea of having a Thinkpad running Linux. But there are a dozen apps on my Mac that I would miss terribly. DEVONthink, OmniGraffle, and many more.

I was thinking about getting a used ThinkPad for Emacs + Org plus terminal only. A companion for writing in Emacs/org and for doing dev work (Python, Lisp, Bash). This article made me revisit that plan. (Been using ThinkPads from 2006-2015 and loved the experience. Solid rock hardware and best keybord.) But I can't think of getting rid of my Mac as it is adding so much quality to my day to day life.

<comment><USER21> I've never thought of MacBooks for the apps specifically, but I checked OmniGraffle which looks like a great replacement for Visio. Visio is one of the few things that keeps me occasionally attached to PCs.

Could you please share the other Mac-only apps that you'd miss, i'd love to see!

<comment><USER20> Software that is unique to MacOS: \- HoudahSpot (search files / documents) \- DEVONthink (document management system) \- Ulysses app (a markdown writing app; I know there are many, on many platforms) \- iA Writer (another markdown writer) \- Alfred App (automating) \- Keyboard Maestro (automating) \- AppleScript (automating) \- MailMate \- Things3 (task management) \- OmniOutliner \- OmniFocus \- OmniGraffle \- PDF Expert (reading / annotating pdfs) \- iTerm \- aText (text macros) \- Timing App (auto time tracking) and many more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I went the same route from Mac to Lenovo Thinkpads. I have not looked back since. Did the Linux swap due to Mac OS X memory pressure issues with virtualization. Basically Mac OS X got a ported feature from iOS where they froze background application memory so that apps would be quick to restart and resume but that did not play nice with virtualization where you want all the memory you can get.

Anyhow since most development is nowadays done for Linux server running Linux on the desktop makes sense. Docker works better on Linux with port mapping.

For the battery time mentioned in the article one can swap batterys on Lenovo and there is a 9 cell battery which should get better run time hours.

</comment><comment><USER23> Things that I like about being on a Mac:

\- The ABC - Extended keyboard layout gives me easy access to diacriticalized letters like é or č as well as typographic characters like – and –

\- long battery life. I'm currently sharing a charger between my work laptop my personal laptop and my iPad and life is easy.

\- access to mainstream software like Office, Adobe etc.

\- I can easily use my iPad as an external monitor while I'm away from my desk.

\- The trackpad is so much more usable than any Windows laptop I've been given from work

\- I don't need to spend much time getting stuff in a workable state. Other than disabling caps lock and selecting ABC - Extended as my keyboard layout, I don't feel the need to do much customization on a new Mac.

<comment><USER24> Counterpoints for Linux:

\- Compose key blows your "ABC - Extended layout out of the water." It's more powerful than anything else.

\- ... I never really use my XPS 13 without a charger, because I don't really travel around much, but it also has USB-C like all the "cool stuff." I would imagine with some tweaking I can get better battery life but I know it does last a while on standby.

\- You won't get mainstream-mainstream stuff on Linux, which is probably a problem for some, but for day-to-day usage many Adobe alternatives exist (Blender, Inkscape, Krita, GIMP), along with commercial and professional things (DAWs (eg. Renoise, Reaper, whatever), and DaVinci Resolve)

\- /shrugs VNC maybe? Although there are some pretty small monitors out there that should work. (I use HDMI monitors). Advantages of not being in the Apple ecosystem is that there is more freedom.

\- Use a keyboard and mouse. It's faster. And more useful. There are only so many things you can do with a trackpad.

\- You don't need to do much customization on Linux either (especially something like Pop!_OS or Ubuntu). Things are a lot better (not perfect, but better) than they were before. Nothing like Windows where you have to uninstall the bloatware though

<comment><USER23> \- I looked up the keyboard shortcuts for compose key and it seems like it takes a lot more typing to get to the characters I need than ABC - Extended: To get an acute accent I type opt-e o, for example, to get ó. The same on Linux is compose-'' o. Everything requires at least two characters with compose held down. There are a handful of characters/diacriticals that are shift-opt to reach, but the most common ones are less typing. Also muscle memory makes a difference.

\- Many of the alternatives to mainstream stuff have compatibility issues. Maybe this is better now than the last time I've dealt with them last, but part of why I use word is that I need to send documents to people who use word and I'd rather not have surprises (smaller thing but still significant—Word for the Mac shows the word count at the bottom of the window. Word on Windows doesn't (or at least didn't the last time I used it) and Pages on the Mac will show wordcount only in a mini window.

I'm much more productive with a trackpad. MacOS also includes a number of shortcuts on the trackpad that don't work as well with a mouse (even Apple's magic mouse).

I'd note that some of it is also that I've been trained into the shortcuts that I have on the Mac (both keyboard-based and trackpad-based). Muscle habit goes a long way towards keeping someone on a platform.

<comment><USER24> Ah, so compose isn't actually held down. What we do is we press compose, then release, then do the combination we want. In this. Now, for ó, it's not actually compose (⎄ is compose's symbol) "o, it's ⎄'o, with an apostrophe, so it's not as bad. Indeed, there, are some pretty bad ones, like ⎄`+o, which gives you ờ (a Vietnamese letter), but it's still usable. The point of compose is the sheer number of combinations it has. Finding a new combination on [https://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.7/doc/libX11/i18n/compose/e...](https://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.7/doc/libX11/i18n/compose/en_US.UTF-8.html) is almost magical.

I mean, I'd just use PDF, but I get the need for Word. In that case... Office Online is an option? You can probably write up everything in a solution like LibreOffice (which is _not_ as abominable as people make it out to be, and some of the horrid bugs it used to have have been fixed, but it's not perfect either), and export to DOCX, then check it through in Office Online and it should be good. LibreOffice does have word count in the bottom as well, which is a nice addition

Linux also supports trackpad gestures, although they are prone to not being as smooth or whatnot. Since I spend my life on the keyboard I use that instead, and it's just as productive. I find it annoying to go reach for my trackball.

Indeed, yes. Although I should probably take that into account too since I'm switching to a 60% keyboard that doesn't have arrow keys, and I'm going to have to relearn a lot of stuff. In the end, as others have said, switching to Linux feels bad in the beginning but you grow to love it as time passes. Sure, it has issues, such as these, but it also has other strong advantages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I was looking at larger laptops to run Linux but they aren't cheap so MBP doesn't look such bad value. I want 15in screen with higher than 1080 resolution, 16GB memory, good battery life and there really isn't much less than $1500 from the main brands that will run Linux well. Any suggestions? Otherwise the MBP16 looks not such bad value as I know it'll be reliable.

<comment><USER26> [https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-15/](https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-15/)

<comment><USER27> I was going to get one of these but the lack of USB-C charging turned me off from it. It's 2020.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I used to use Thinkpads until I decided to switch when the Lenovo Superfish thing happened more-or-less in conjunction with the sharp decline in keyboard quality. In terms of reliability and compatibility they were always very solid, and I got great price/performance results by buying last-year's top of the line models second-hand and then maxing out whatever could be upgraded (memory + disk) from there.

After that I switched to Dell XPS 13s starting with the 9350, buying new. There was an initial issue with the WiFi adapter being unsupported (as I recall the `developer edition` with Ubuntu supported was more expensive but also had a better supported WiFi card) which initially required me to build a custom kernel module (I think? It was a while ago) but support appeared very soon after in mainline Linux. Subsequently I've had no major compatibility issues - except that support for multiple monitors where the laptop is HiDPI but the external monitors aren't is very poor (the Thinkpads I owned weren't HiDPI - I don't think this is a Dell issue). Edit: Battery life is mediocre on all the XPS models I've had.

Just lately I've been using a work-issued Dell Latitude 7490. I'm enjoying this a lot. Support is solid, the screen isn't HiDPI so multi-monitor usage is fine, its battery life is good enough to get me through a working day without plugging in (sometimes I don't even notice I haven't plugged in), and it has plenty of ports (including USB C, HDMI, and Ethernet).

I've used Macs on and off in the workplace but couldn't get used to them. If I needed to do CAD, Graphic Design, or other things where open source software doesn't cut the mustard I guess I'd go for a Mac, but happily I just don't need to these days (the broad move to Web apps helped a LOT, particularly the move to GSuite for a lot of stuff that would previously have required MS Office).

Just my 2¢.

</comment><comment><USER29> I am in the same boat, except my daily laptop is a ThinkPad X1 Carbon instead of a T480, coming from a specced out Macbook Air 11. My feelings are remarkably close to this. For anyone who spends a lot of time in emacs, browser, the terminal, with media editing as a secondary concern, I think it's a great setup. The ThinkPad hardware is stellar.

I would underline what he points out about the battery being a relative shortcoming though. Which is important for anyone who likes being away from a power outlet for a good while.

I think linux has historically really lagged on controlling battery use, Apple has exploited its tight hardware/software integration for years in this regard, and I only see this spread widening frankly. The ARM Macbooks will likely be absolute marathon runners in comparison to any linux laptop, at least for a good while. I'd love to be wrong.

</comment><comment><USER30> There's a lot you can do to improve battery life...

T480 - Larger battery cell (I get >20hrs of use).

Then there's a bunch of configuration options: [https://austingwalters.com/increasing-battery-life-on-an- arc...](https://austingwalters.com/increasing-battery-life-on-an-arch-linux- laptop-thinkpad-t14s/)

On my new T14s after the latest updates and a much smaller battery, I can still easily get 8 hours at ~2.5lbs weight, 16 cores, 32Gb RAM.

</comment><comment><USER11> I love Thinkpads and I love Linux. My current "daily driver" laptop is an old X220T from 2011, which is a tablet hybrid (including touchscreen and Wacom pen/digitizer). I don't use it because of nostalgia or a love for retro computers, I use it because it's still an excellent experience all these years later. No modern laptop in the current price range can beat it.

I don't know if that's because the build quality was so great back then, or because Intel dropped the ball this past decade. I'm guessing it's a little of both, which is why I'm kind of conflicted right now: I love Thinkpads, but I'm also super interested to try out the new ARM-based Macbooks.

<comment><USER31> > No modern laptop in the current price range can beat it.

> I'm also super interested to try out the new ARM-based Macbooks

I'm having a hard time choosing between an old Thinkpad and the Pinebook Pro for a GNU/Linux laptop. Thinkpads have a better battle-tested durability + repairability reputation and Libreboot is a significant selling point to me. But x86 seems like it's just beginning to fade into the past in favor of source-available ARM in the present and open-source RISC V in the future, and the Pinebook isn't exactly terribly flimsy (magnesium-alloy outer shell, maybe inspired by Thinkpads) or expensive ($200).

<comment><USER9> I like my Pinebook Pro, but it is slow compared to my T420, and maybe even slow compared to my X200.

The Thinkpads will also work out of the box with basically any kernel from the past 10 years, whereas the Pinebook requiers a patched kernel, patched u-boot, and a third patched component I didn't even know existed and don't remember the name of.

It's a pretty awesome device for $200 but it can't replace a real laptop IMHO, and hardware support is under active development.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> There's work to make the touchpad better [https://bill.harding.blog/2020/06/22/linux-touchpad- project-...](https://bill.harding.blog/2020/06/22/linux-touchpad-project- update-progress-on-multitouch/)

</comment><comment><USER33> I didn't know about Darktable or Kdenlive, so I'll have to check those out. Peek is awesome for GIF recording.

I've been using a ThinkPad X1 Carbon running Xubuntu since 2016. Before that I was using a MacBook Pro.

The things I like about this machine/Linux are \- It's light \- The keyboard is great/better \- The battery is really good coupled with the low resource usage of Xubuntu (except when I have Zoom, Docker, and lots of Firefox tabs) \- Don't have any trouble with audio when using Bluetooth \- I don't have to worry about MacOS breaking my dev environment \- Setting up dev environment is a breeze

Things I dislike \- CPU is not as powerful as a MacBook Pro \- The most recent X/Ubuntu broke wake up from sleep \- Some software doesn't have a Linux equivalent (Webex) \- If you want to dual boot Linux and Windows, getting full disk encryption on X/Ubuntu is challenging \- Plugging into a non-hidpi monitor is janky because it can't change dpi per screen \- Speakers on this machine suck

For me doing strictly software development, the benefits of a stable and easy to use environment outweigh the warts of Linux.

If I were to get a new machine I'd consider Lenovo again. The new Dell XPS also looks great. I might also give Windows and WSL2 a try in my dual OS desktop. Windows feels a lot smoother compared to Linux (on a very powerful desktop though), but it's constantly notifying you about things which is a distraction.

<comment><USER34> I'm on my 3rd X1 (4th if you count my work laptop), and I would be completely happy, except that it's USB-C ports are somehow broken. Both machines have flakey connections to both USB-C docks I've tried, sometimes dropping keystrokes or network packets. It's obnoxious to use, and there's no clear way to debug or diagnose the issue, and sadly I think my next purchase cannot be a Lenovo.

<comment><USER33> That's a good point. Sorry to hear that. I have the 5th gen which has a USB-C power port and another USB-C and two other USBs. The USB-C power definitely wiggles a lot when it's plugged which makes me concerned though I haven't had a problem. The new Dell XPS 15 has an aluminum chassis, so I wonder if that would eliminate this issue. [https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/new- xps-15-lapt...](https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/new- xps-15-laptop/spd/xps-15-9500-laptop/xn9500cto200s#features_section)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Can disable webcam in BIOS when not used

Purism sells laptops [0] with real hardware kill switches for camera _and microphone_. Welcome to the future.

> Maintenance: T480 is not slim and this is for the better. I can > replace/upgrade most components by myself.

Slimness has nothing to do with repairability / upgradeability. Purism laptops are slim and perfectly repairable. (I'm a happy owner).

[0] [https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-15/](https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-15/)

<comment><USER35> My Lenovo IdeaPad has a sliding cover for the webcam. It's about the same size as a MacBook, sports 32 GB or RAM, an 8 core Ryzen and 2 M2 SSDs for ~900€. The trackpad is fine, and the WiFi reaches about 300Mbps. I'm quite happy with it (too bad they put a large black band at the bottom of the screen instead of a 16:10 one...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> > Can't debug issues in Safari without borrowing a Mac

You can debug layout issues to some extent using GNOME Web (also known as Epiphany). It uses same webkit engine as Safari. [https://webkit.org/downloads/](https://webkit.org/downloads/) way at the bottom.

</comment><comment><USER37> I always find polished Linux DE's like cinnamon, Gnome 3, Pantheon and unity to be top notch and more usable than OSX.

I'm surprised Mac OS has never had an overhaul of the look, on their windows, buttons, icons or anything. On the other hand, I absolutely find it to be nightmare to navigate in Finder - the shortcuts are a mess.. and there is no address bar at all! Other than that I also do find Mac OS to be slower than Linux due to some bloat. On an overall scale, software availability is almost on par with Mac OS. The only drawback for Linux is graphics applications like Photoshop aren't just either available, or not hardware accelerated properly.

<comment><USER38> \- You can get the directory structure in Finder windows.

\- The short cuts are not a mess, they're just not what you're used to.

\- macOS may still look similar to previous versions, but, to my taste, anything touched by gnome is a macOS ripoff that looks downright oversized and is either gaudy or too dark.

\- Today I tried to get a database manager for mongodb on Ubuntu 20.04 that is more than a wrapper around the command line. Nowhere to be found. And let's not mention video editing, music making, and gaming.

You prefer Linux, fine, but please don't diss the rest.

<comment><USER37> Gnome is a ripoff? I haven't ever come across this anywhere. It's been around for a long long time really. It's near perfect for what it is, and it's also nicely customisable.

Regarding the shortcuts, I found Enter, Backspace, using Space Bar for selecting, etc. to be simpler compared to holding down cmd+up/down, and other combinations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The Mac trackpad is very good. Was a key reason I left to Macbook after 10 years of running Linux as on my workstation.

I may go back to Linux someday. I miss focus-follows-mouse. Apple sucks at some things, but gets more core capabilities right.

<comment><USER40> Mac trackpads are unmatched (yay/boo Fingerworks!) but you could always use an external mac touchpad. In any case, shortcut keys are abundant in Linux desktops, and a tiling wm (I like the default one in Pop OS) really changes the game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Personally, it has been really hard to justify the Apple premium the past few years. My company upgraded us to touchbar MBPs a few years ago. I am thankful as it helped me avoid the mistake of buying my own.

Instead, I went Thinkpad+Linux(Lubuntu) for an iteration. Excellent machine as the article details. I was very happy with it for a couple years.

I wanted something with a beefier GPU though, so most recently went to Asus+W10Pro+WSL2. I was skeptical at first, having been off Windows for a decade, but it is pretty decent. There are some minor annoyances, but not enough to push me back to full Linux yet.

</comment><comment><USER42> I often think about returning to a Linux laptop. Things, generally speaking, tend to "just work" on a mac, but it fails for a poweruser, even with various tools such as hammerspoon, since I oft want to morph the GUI to my liking - something apple and its gui fanaticism clearly doesn't abide. The only thing that keeps me here is safari testing and occasional iphone development, two things that are unpleasant but necessary for my job; I hope I'm not forced to upgrade my mac and it's the last mac I buy for at least half a decade more.

</comment><comment><USER43> A sweet spot I found is a generic laptop (a good Dell or Thinkpad, with the least imaginative hardware possible so Linux runs happy) and a Mac desktop (can be an iMac or a Mini) for the Mac-ish stuff.

You need to pay attention to what can and can't be upgraded, however. The newest Mini can't have the storage upgraded (you should probably buy it maxed out), but can upgrade the memory to 64GB, so it's cheaper to get the 8GB and then upgrade it yourself. The 21 inch iMac can't be upgraded, so YMMV depending on what you get.

</comment><comment><USER44> Most of this blog post looks like to be a standard user personal experience report.

Most items make sense in this context I think, but there is one point that surprised me:

<<Emoji support is not 100%>>

Wtf! In my opinion, that it worths mentioning that, shows at what point Apple marketing brain fucked the Apple device users...

You buy a 2k$ computer, with dozens of high speed CPUs, for what? Putting stupid smileys everywhere? And in addition, this is more an application specific issue than a system one. Where do you use them? Emails, professional word documents?

<comment><USER45> If you're on a Mac, you use emojis in iMessage texts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Macbooks have nailed down the basics when it comes down to the user experience:

1\. Best touchpad period.

2\. Good overall keyboards (Ignore the 2016-2020 butterfly keyboards)

3\. Best sounding speakers.

4\. Every display has 400+ nits of brightness with good color accuracy.

5\. Very good battery life per watt-hour of the battery and lasts better with time as well.

The package is what make the macbooks great. I don't have to go through a list of laptops and go through pros and cons of laptops and there are a LOT of cons.

You may think that bad sounding speakers or 250 nits screen is not a very big deal but just try using a macbook for a while and you'll see how these these make a drastic change in the user experience.

People go on about how macbooks are over-hyped and expensive (they are!) but I think that what they offer is a level above anything else on the market.

I am using a MBA 2015 for my dev purposes and sometimes the 8Gigs of RAM feels like it could use an upgrade. (I want to upgrade but it is so much expensive moving on to the new ones). I've tried so many laptops and none of those impress me. This is the only reason that Macbooks, even though they cost a bomb, last for well over 10 years.

Edit: It "seems" windows laptops are catching up, but please list one laptop that would be usable after, say 8 years. For eg. a MBP 2012 will still work very good in 2020 compared to any of the laptops from even 2015. Are there any windows laptops in 2020 that you can say the same for?

</comment><comment><USER47> Cool. I'm running Linux on a Dell Vostro I purchased during their quarterly business sale as my daily driver -- I can't believe the machine I got for the price, and strongly encourage people to look at these sales..

How big of an issue is it to target iOS as a platform on a PC these days with the rise of Flutter, etc? I'm looking to get into app development, but don't have a Mac, nor would I like to buy one if I can avoid it.

<comment><USER48> Depends on the app I guess, but you can get far without needing a Mac with flutter etc. Sadly I think there still is some restrictions for some Apple hardware for the developer part of the app store. I'm not super familiar with that part, but we had some issues with some Apple legal terms which could only be accepted on a authenticated device, which means you need Apple hardware.

<comment><USER49> No.

Whatever solution you pick for iOS dev: Flutter, React Native, Xamarin etc etc, in the end we will always meet the same thing: iOS SDK. And iOS SDK only runs on Mac, unlike Android.

Unless Apple decide to port their SDK to Windows/Linux (which I believe will not happen), you can't practically avoid Mac.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Is there a metric for battery performance while the machine's asleep?

That's been my only gripe in moving from a MacBook Air to an XPS running Ubuntu a little over a year ago.

Battery life is comparable in active usage. But if I close my XPS lid and then, for whatever reason, don't use it for a day or two, I'll be at zero battery.

I don't remember this ever being something to even think about with my Mac laptop.

<comment><USER51> The issue is that you are sleeping the computer vs hibernating it.

Sleep is still powering the ram. Hibernate writes the ram contents out to a file and shuts the computer off.

It often takes some tinkering to get hibernation to work, if at all.

That is why your computer kills the battery in a few days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> As a C++ backend/distributed systems engineer, I cant imagine working on anything except Linux.

I even use Linux on my personal laptop. It's a Thinkpad actually. Yes, the touch pad on Mac is better. But Linux is just so much quicker and lighter, and really the only major annoying thing I've run into is electronically signing PDFs.

</comment><comment><USER53> Devs can spend a lot of time getting Macs and Window computers to behave like Linux.. especially given the idiosyncrasies that pop up with docker on them.

It does seem reasonable to develop on Linux.. for Linux.

I've heard of a few recent experiences specifically using Ubuntu 19/20 on a Thinkpad X1 Carbon/T4xx of some type resulting in a really nice experience, including optimized battery life.

While Ubuntu might not be my desktop of choice, it does seem to have done the most that I can find to work well on laptops from a battery life/driver support/sleep perspective.

I have it loaded on a desktop and it's working flawlessly, and I continue to try and find an issue with it. As a development environment, it may be something to consider seriously.

Part of me is wondering if an Ubuntu/Linux laptop could open up a way to use an iPad as a secondary computing device that where I could continue to enjoy the things that I wanted there.

</comment><comment><USER54> I made that decision in 2011 or so; still use the same thinkpad hardware, and it's still faster and better than the 2017 mbp I was issued by work.

Even if it was a shittier experience (kubuntu is vastly better than osx in every pertinent way), I'd continue using the thinkpad for the trackpoint and keyboard.

</comment><comment><USER55> _" Battery time is not like Macs. ~ 5 hours (after one year)"_

There are different battery choices of 72, 48 and 24 watt hours. I believe the 72 watt hour battery "bulges" a bit and makes the laptop not sit flat.

Edit: You could also disable the MX150 GPU if you don't really use it.

<comment><USER46> What is up with windows laptops battery? Even though a brand new laptop could last for 14 hours it degrades so much after an year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Some tips from someone who's been doing this linux laptop thing for a long while now (6 year's ago, I replaced my aging MBP with a cheap HP)

0\. TAKE NOTES! Make a setup doc that keeps up with the issues of setting up your computer. ie... I have to do some funky things to get my onboard speakers to work, I never remember how to do it, but my notes remember it for me.

1\. The trackpad will suck. Just get an external trackball or mouse, use it instead.

2\. Pay for a good built-in keyboard.

3\. Make sure you can swap your network card. I have my preference on manufacturer. For historical reasons I typically replace whatever it comes with.

4\. If graphics matter to you, avoid NVidia GPU's.

5\. Avoid laptops with restrictive bioses. (wifi whitelists, wont let you change boot order but supports two drives, etc)

<comment><USER56> Wrt note taking for setting up software: I gave up on that in favor of a shell script for initial setup, and pretty much everything else is in Ansible. Works for almost everything, does take some work and sometimes needs updating. But also serves as notes by itself. Anyway the main advantage over notes for me is that I don't have to copy-paste a bunch of commands from notes anymore, and that large parts of it are common to multiple computers I use.

<comment><USER51> Shell scripting is good when you can use it. Some software I use is manually patched and that doesn't lend itself to automation.

The notes are also geared for the times I move distros or change a major component in the system. I include what I did, why I did it, where the info came from, and why I removed it or decided to go a different direction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> t470s currently but have been using linux and thinkpads since the mid/late 90s.

Battery life isn't great agree. My solution currently is a USB-C portable battery which I get an additional full laptop charge. In the past x220 and t60(p) were favourite models.

Other annoyance (still!) is sleep seems to work on certain kernels and not on others.

Was on ubuntu forever but slowly may move back to debian as I don't like snap packages.

Mouse is Logitech MX Anywhere 2S

Only suggestion currently on getting an laptop is usb-c, ips screen, nvme drive and lots of ram. In fact the CPU doesn't matter much. I used the x series for a decade but now moved to t series and they have gotten lighter and are good value.

<comment><USER58> > _Mouse is Logitech MX Anywhere 2S_

This mouse has seriously become my favorite ever. Outstanding battery life, very comfortable, it works on any surface I've tried, and it works great on both macOS and Linux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I simply cannot get over using non-Apple trackpads. The trackpad is such an important part of a laptop's user interface. Obviously I wouldn't drive a car with flat tires, so why would I use a laptop with a crappy trackpad?

<comment><USER60> Under appreciated is that macOS is largely a touch-based system now with the magic trackpads. If you configure three-finger drag in accessibility settings you never have to click. Granted it's not a touch _screen_ , but in my view it's a touch- and gesture-based system. Using a non-Apple trackpad feels like going back in time and using touch screen devices with keyboards (eg Win 10 laptops) is incredibly annoying.

<comment><USER61> I have been using double tap to select (and simply drag) on Linux for years, never had to click. And my touchpad is far from magic...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Half-OT: I'm using a MBP13"(2013) for years now and really like it, but it's not upgradable and it's getting cumbersome to do some more intesive things with it.

Would you recommend buying a new MBP or getting a laptop?

<comment><USER13> I find my dual-core 2013 to still be alright if I SSH into a six-core NUC to work. Visual Studio Code makes this super easy to do and almost exactly the same as working locally, it can be done without it too. I used a remote VM this way as well for about 9 months while wondering what to buy and on wired connection it was also pretty seamless.

[https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/ssh](https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/ssh)

<comment><USER62> I use remote VMs too, but they aren't good for FinalCut Pro and Ableton Live.

<comment><USER13> Have you tried Thunderbolt accessories? You should be able to add NVMe storage and AMD graphics that might speed things up. I couldn't try this out because I have an nVidia eGPU, but using Apple's TB2-to-TB3 adaptor I can actually game quite acceptably in Bootcamp.

<comment><USER62> I will try that, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I have several thinkpads (5) and run them all on Linux. Agree that the battery life is not optimal, even with TLP. Keyboards are typically excellent, but the brand of the keyboard can matter a lot (there are usually 2-3 different manufacturers of Thinkpad keyboards and they don't feel the same). Maintaining Thinkpads is usually a pure joy: super easy to open up, easy to replace RAM, sometimes CPU (depending on the model) and storage. And they are robust (will survive a fall).

Software wise, apart from some rare exceptions (X1 Gen 7?) everything works out of the box on most distros.

</comment><comment><USER64> There are so many small things that really frustrate me with the Mac and understandably considering I am back on Linux. However, I have a 2010 15" MacBook Pro that I bought used. It is god awful to work on, but I can still run scripts, ssh, browse the web (for the most part), and play emulators.

This is thing is slow and bordering useless, but I genuinely never had any tech product for 10 years work for well. 10 years, only changed the charger and HD once. Everything else is still working, including a really nice touch pad.

<comment><USER65> > This is thing is slow and bordering useless, but I genuinely never had any > tech product for 10 years work for well. 10 years, only changed the charger > and HD once. Everything else is still working, including a really nice touch > pad.

Same here! I still do web browsing, mail and audio editing on my 10 year old 15" MBP. My FireWire audio interface still hooks up perfectly all the time.

The 2010 MBP range honestly seem like the last ones that were built to last. I've upgraded the OS HD to an SSD (made a world of difference) and replaced the CD/DVD with a second 1TB storage drive.

Looking to move to a system 76 or purism as most of my development is happening on a Linux desktop. I've been way more productive and enjoyed myself more developing on Linux.

Not overly concerned about the trackpad conversations -- I like me so buttons to tap. Only concern is battery usage, but the system76 lemur pro seems to have that sorted pretty well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I switched from a MBP to a Thinkpad for flexibility & performance: hexa-core processor, 64GB RAM, 3 disks (NVME+SSD+HDD) running Linux (pop-os) with the intent of running OSX in VMs. I didn't like the iOS-ification of OSX, and this will let me run my beloved Snow Leopard, and even run some older aqua UI OSX versions as VMs. I'll probably get an ARM MacBook when they come out, as MacOS and iOS go well together... but 64GB is a HECK of a lot of Chrome tabs, and the 3:2 screen is as good as on my Chromebooks. Linux has certainly matured since I used it as my only desktop back in the comp.os.linux.advocacy days, which is just as well as I can't be bothered futzing with x.org config files any more. My X210 (nb51) "Thinkpad" gets about five hours battery life on a dodgy battery, but if I can find a real TP battery that should rise to 10-15, and I expect the ARM Macs to do 20-24 hours.

</comment><comment><USER66> I'm actually considering either going with the T480p or an Asus for my next work laptop (from a 2018 MBP) with Linux on it. I have a T470p though that has a broken motherboard right after the warranty expired. When picking it up to move it around, it shorts out and restarts, apparently this is a known issue with the 470's. But I really fear Lenovo's reliability these days.

Has anyone else had reliability problems with the T series? How reliable have the T480's been?

<comment><USER67> I've been using a T480 (same as author) and it has been very reliable. I even dropped it getting out of the van a while back and it landed on a corner of the laptop when it hit the pavement. It has still been running just as well as when I originally got it. :)

<comment><USER66> Good to know, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> The interesting thing here is that the absolute biggest disadvantage is the MacOS/iOS development. Apple's walled garden seems to be working as intended ;).

</comment><comment><USER69> I would put an asterisk near battery life as a downside, after switching to mpro 2020 13 realized that I overlooked batter life which is 7h at max, 5h if working aggressively (docker, builds), very disappointing. Macs always were laptops with great performance - battery life for me, so be careful with customizations and stick either to defaults or mpro 16 (which is like a plazma TV for me)

PS. moving to 14" system76/thinkpad too this year

<comment><USER40> if thinkpad is an option do take a look at X2100: a thinkpad chassis & accessories, but with modern internals. it's basically "Peak Intel", a swan song for x86...

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> The hardware on Mac is unparalleled. I can't hardly stand using my Thinkpad touchpad after having a Macbook work laptop. I know the keyboard on the recent macs have drawn criticism, but for me they work fine and I have fewer mistypes than when I am on the thinkpad. And battery life on macos is great, when not on Zoom. And Ubuntu 20.04 doesn't recognize my 2018 Thinkpad camera.

</comment><comment><USER71> I had suunto watch issues, too. I used openambit[1] for a bit, but at some point, I was no longer able to get it to sync with my movescount account. Eventually, I got a new watch that synced with my phone over bluetooth and the issue was moot.

[1]: [https://github.com/openambitproject/openambit](https://github.com/openambitproject/openambit)

</comment><comment><USER72> I'm seriously considering this since my MacBook Air is so pokey. I do use Microsoft Excel though on my Mac, however it's through Firefox and I find it perfectly acceptable compared to the desktop version I used to use. Anyone know if Excel on Firefox on Linux works as expected? I'd assume it did, but just wanted to make sure. Everything else I'm fine with.

<comment><USER73> I think it should work as expected, there is generally parity between different OSs for Firefox. I use Google Sheets on my remote linux machine and that seems to work fine. I don't like LibreOffice though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> > Touchpad is not close to Mac

I'm using l390 and the touchpad feels good for me. Never use mac, does mac's touchpad is considerably better?

EDIT: formatting

<comment><USER75> Yes, Mac touchpads are light years ahead of any other trackpad.

I believe this is because they control both, the hardware and the software side of it.

For me this is the only reason holding me from moving too.

<comment><USER76> I never really got this argument, what exactly is stopping a manufacturer from writing a great trackpad driver?

<comment><USER73> I have heard and read in reviews that Microsoft has more or less nailed the touchpad in Surface laptops. So definitely there is scope.

<comment><USER77> I've been wanting to switch to Windows from Mac for years. The thing that holds me back is the quality of the Mac touchpad vs any Windows laptop, and I recently ordered a Surface Book 3 having heard how great the touchpad is. I've already returned it.

The touchpad is pretty good but it's still not as precise as the Mac touchpad - there is a slight hysteresis that makes it imprecise for short movements. No amount of tweaking settings could overcome this. The only way to be accurate at short range is to slow the overall pointer speed so it takes more than one finger swipe to move across the screen. (If anyone from Microsoft is reading this - why don't you fix it? It can't be that hard.)

The other problem with the Surface Book is the Home and End keys are not accessible at the same time as the function keys - a show-stopper for smooth editing and debugging in an IDE.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> 3 months ago I made the switch to Linux (manjaro) with i3. I currently run off an Intel NUC, which works perfectly fine, but I have a Thinkpad now on the way. I figured I'd do a writeup because I'm a designer and that makes me a little bit of a freak.

First, I was already a vim user for 8 years, so I was used to config files and the terminal. I moved primarily after watching some videos about I3 / awesome WM and browsing the /r/unixporn subreddit. Primarily I liked the idea of designing my own OS from scratch, and the idea of being able to change ANYTHING was really intriguing to me.

I guess it's important to note that as a designer this wouldn't have been possible without tools like Figma and Framer being web based. Put bluntly, Linux native design tooling isn't up to par with what I had on a mac, and without Figma I wouldn't have been able to move over full-time. It's also important to mention that while I classify myself as a designer, I design 90% of the time in code, writing React + CSS. I realize I'm a little different and this likely sways some of my feelings towards linux.

In short, I've really enjoyed the switch. The window management alone has been reason enough. Being able to navigate my windows with key commands, and generally lay things out the way I see fit between polybar + i3 has been fantastic. Don't like a certain shadow? Change it with picom. Don't like seeing title bars on your windows? Change a config. I'm also a designer that believes in heavy focus (think tab focus in a browser) so every window gets a thick focus border. Everything is matched to a color-scheme that I like, and I mean everything. I don't feel like I'm using Linux so much as I've used Linux to build Dave OS.

I was able to migrate nearly $500 of annual tooling to home-made scripts and services that I run through GCP. For example. I used to use cloud app for screenshot / movie snippets. Any designer will tell you something like that is their bread and butter... "hey what do you think of this?". I moved it to Peek / Flameshot + a 40-line bash script that watches a folder and uploads it to a gcp bucket. It took me a half day of learning. At the end of it I had a funny realization... why have I been paying for these simple services for years and complaining about features they didn't have? Now I just add the features.

Performance is hit and miss. Everything I used to do in the terminal (which is where I spend most of my time) feels faster. In general, I had to drop apps and move command line. This was fun! I moved to buku for bookmarks, taskwarrior for todo lists...etc. What I loved about this was it forced me to engage more in the OSS community. I already do mostly OSS stuff for work, but I was in my bubble. Linux forced me out, and I found myself talking a bit more on Github, asking questions and the like. This was the thing that I've ended up loving. In general I've been amazed at the amount of support I've gotten from maintainers by just saying "Hey, I'm a designer, I'm not so knowledgeable about the guts of this code, can you help me out"?

Slack and zoom are slow. They are pretty resource intensive apps and weren't exactly speed kings on my mac, but they do feel noticibly worse on Linux. I'm hoping this is due to my hardware, but I suspect the apps just aren't as considered in Linux. I've really enjoyed AUR / pacman for package management and it feels like brew, but for everything. The one thing I think Linux is missing is a good calendar application that syncs with gcal. The terminal based ones are a little overweight and underdesigned, and I can't find a GUI one I like.

Anyways, I'll probably do a formal blog writeup at some point, and more importantly make some videos of my setup, since it's probably interesting for folks to see how a designer uses Linux, but I thought it'd be worth a quick post to let others know its possible.

Hardware wise I had no trouble with my mac, mostly because I already had my own custom keyboards and the like, but I'm excited about the new Thinkpad on the way more for it's power-to-price.

</comment><comment><USER79> I moved to a Thinkpad from Macbook. Honestly, I love the form factor, the keyboard, and the all black finish.

But the screen is still below par - 400 nits max brightness is too low. And the trackpad is substantially worse than Macbook's.

I'll still keep it because it offers something that Macbook doesn't anymore: reliability

</comment><comment><USER80> I have been a windows/linux user for about as long as I can remember - <USER2> cheap! For the 8 months I am using a MBP and absolutely love it. It is a pleasure to look at it and use - except for the keyboard! The trackpad experience is unparalleled IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER81> TL;DR: if on the fence about replacing a MacBook Pro with a ThinkPad, give the 2020 MBP a try. It's bought me another three years of time to stick with the Mac and see how the ARM transition plays out.

I wanted to let others in my situation (longtime Mac user, avoided the butterfly keyboards so much that I considered a Thinkpad with Linux) know: the new keyboard in my 13-inch 2020 is amazing.

I upgraded from my 2015 to this 2020 a couple of weeks ago under duress: my old machine failed me during an interview videoconference and I couldn't have that happen again. Ran out to buy a new machine and return it if I hated the new keyboard (I expected it to be somewhere between the old keyboard and the terrible butterfly, but at least it has an inverted-T.)

It's spectacular. Key travel is awesome, and it's nice to have inverted-T and dedicated escape key back. This machine is also way faster than my old one thanks to (2x as many cores [thanks to 2018 model]) and the 10th gen stuff (much faster RAM and graphics, etc.).

ARM is coming soon, but there's a lot of uncertainty about that transition and I'm happy to have a highly performant machine that will last me at least three years (when my AppleCare will run out).

</comment><comment><USER82> I find that running powertop on my Thinkpad I can go from modest battery times of like 5-6 hours on my t460 to all day battery times. Really wish it was just built-in to the distro or kernel in a more automatic way at this point.

</comment><comment><USER83> Is it the Linux kernel or userspace programs that make Linux battery life worse?

</comment><comment><USER84> 13 years after Apple introduced their groundbreaking trackpads, I still haven't seen a worthy alternative.

It's the single most important reason for me to stay with a MacBook.

</comment><comment><USER73> I noticed that T480 comes with a U processor. Is this configurable? For a machine that is not going for that ultrabook thickness, M seems like a better choice.

</comment><comment><USER85> Has nobody mentioned Dell xps? I've been using xps for a few years with archlinux.. It's been mostly great so far.

</comment><comment><USER86> My 2013 MBP is chugging along with Linux and OSX dual boot. I haven't logged into OSX in over 6mo. Only upgrade was a 2TB SSD.

</comment><comment><USER87> What are everyone's thoughts on buying a new MBP this year with the announcement of Apple Silicon replacing Intel in the near future?

<comment><USER88> Any Intel Mac is likely to be a paperweight in 5 years; if history is any guide Apple will drop support sooner rather than later, and installing Linux is tricky at best because of the T2 chip. Amusingly pre-T2 Macs may have better longevity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> I've been using the Lenovo X1 Carbon with Debian and I couldn't be happier with it.

</comment><comment><USER90> if you have an iphone:

[https://askubuntu.com/questions/1127798/how-to-run-a- iphone-...](https://askubuntu.com/questions/1127798/how-to-run-a-iphone- backup-with-idevicebackup2)

</comment><comment><USER91> Same experience but reverted to Mac because the hardware is unbeatable.

Had MacBooks since the white clamshells and eventually wanted to go full linux. So bought the X1 Carbon and really regretted it. Screen and trackpad were by far the worst by comparison.

So I've returned. Picked up a Mid-2015 15" MBP a few months back and haven't looked back.

</comment><comment><USER92> Is it not possible to run linux on the recent MacBook Pro's?

</comment><comment><USER93> Why buy ThinkPad if you're going to use touchpad anyway</comment>


UK overtakes Italy to record highest coronavirus death toll anywhere in Europe - rv-de https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/05/uk/uk-coronavirus-death-toll-europe-scli-gbr-intl/index.html <comment> rv-de When Italy was hit hard by the virus terrible news, pictures, witness statements and footage was all over the place. Why don't we see this with UK? Is UK handling the situation more smoothly than Italy/Spain or did the media just shift focus somewhere else?

<comment><AUTHOR> Italy had more deaths from a novel disease than the rest of the world combined. The UK doesn't. What the UK is doing to battle the disease is also not particularly new or interesting. It's just a sixth or tenth repeat of a sadly familiar story, why should it get much newspaper space?</comment></comment>