What do Data Scientists use to train models fast? - <AUTHOR>

i'm training a machine learning model using SVM in python and it took aages for it to happen on my local machine. (with 10% of the data that i have) i'm getting a 80-90% correct prediction score on the same subjects data so now want to add in the rest of the data. (11 more subjects)
i thought of offloading it to my ec2 instance but i'm on a budget so cant just take a 30CPU instance.. on top of everything the code just uses 1 CPU at 100% always so i'm not sure about how effective it would be.
what do you guys use to train these models? <comment><USER2> Speed comes from two things: implementation and algorithm. Algorithmically, the way to learn quickly is to use some sort of stochastic gradient method, i.e. learn from examples one-by-one, as opposed to as a batch.

As far as implementation goes, you need dense arrays. A native Python implementation will usually be lists of Python objects, which is very slow.

If you just need an SVM implementation, libsvm is pretty good. I'm assuming you need a non-linear kernel. If you're using a linear kernel then there's not really a difference between SVM and MaxEnt (well, there is but not much).

If your data is very sparse then there aren't many general-purpose implementations that are any good. The scipy.sparse module has some key stuff implemented in pure Python, and doesn't interoperate properly with the rest of the PyData ecosystem. I had to implement my own sparse data structures, in Cython.

</comment><comment><USER3> One approach is to convert the code to use parallelism. For an example of how to do it in Python using joblib see this article: [http://blog.dominodatalab.com/simple- parallelization/](http://blog.dominodatalab.com/simple-parallelization/)

Even if you can't afford a 32-core instance, you might get to use 4 cores in your laptop.

<comment><USER2> The problem's pretty obviously the Python implementation...Throwing more cores at it isn't really going to help.

Is it even easy to parallelise SVM training?

<comment><AUTHOR> so the solution would be move from python to go? like python isn't that good for ML algorithms?

<comment><USER2> Python's fine if the heavy lifting is in a C extension. I use Cython for this; others prefer just numpy, maybe something like numba. But you can't just have a Python list of floats.

Java, C++, Scala and Julia are all popular choices. Go is probably fine too, although I know less about it.

<comment><USER4> Actually list support in numba is WIP

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How much data and how long are you talking about? If it fits in memory, then the slowness is likely due to other coding errors causing a bottleneck, not the SVM training. (Unless you wrote that as well.)</comment>


Homemade Hydrogen Motorcycle Is Ugly, but It Runs - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/cars/2009/03/two-college-stu.html <comment><USER2> How cool! $10,000 doesn't seem like that much does it?</comment>


How Clones Can Experience Unequal Economic Outcomes - <AUTHOR> http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2016/10/how-clones-can-experience-unequal.html <comment><AUTHOR> The elaboration on this bit is good:

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---

"[C]onsider two indistinguishable workers, you and your clone. By definition, you/clone have the same gender, ethnicity, years of schooling, family background, skills, etc. In 2006 you/clone graduated with identical academic records from the same university and obtained identical job offers from Facebook and MySpace. Not knowing any more about the future than the analysts who valued Facebook and MySpace roughly equally in the mid-2000s, you/clone flipped coins to decide which offer to accept: heads – Facebook; tails – MySpace. Clone's coin came up heads. Yours came up tails. Ten years later, Clone is in the catbird's seat in the job market — high pay, stock options, a secure future. You struggle. Back to university? Send job search letters to close friends? Ask distant acquaintances to help? The you/clone thought experiment may seem extreme, but recent research that I have conducted with colleagues finds that the earnings of workers with near-clone similarity in attributes diverged so much by the place they worked that rising inequality in pay among employers has become the major factor in the trend rise in inequality. ... The labor market has been dominated by economic forces that pull the wages of firms further apart from each other, motivating our analysis of the role of employers in increasing inequality."</comment>


Gas Plants Will Get Crushed by Wind, Solar by 2035: Study - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-09/gas-plants-will-get-crushed-by-wind-solar-by-2035-study-says <comment><USER4> I hope this is a solid study and not just wishful thinking. I've been looking at pricing, and right now, fracked gas plants are running around $40/mwh, with wind at under $50/mwh and PV solar (no battery storage) at around $60/mwh. Coal and traditional nuclear are running around $100/mwh (these are all rounded numbers from memory, don't get unhelpfully pedantic!).

These numbers are obliterating both coal and nuclear. Coal plants are shutting down as fast as replacements can be built, and nuclear plants are shutting down a decade or more before official end-of-life, because they're losing major customers to cheaper alternatives that are available right now.

The cost of PV solar has dropped over 80% in the past decade, and wind like 50%, due to engineering improvements in operation and economies of scale in manufacturing. But it's a reasonable question how much farther their prices will drop. It seems unlikely to me that we'll see another decade of such radical price drops.

Gas, on the other hand, is vulnerable to markets and availability. How long will it stay so cheap? And what happens if a politically progressive government gets serious about carbon taxing? On the other hand, it's a lot cheaper up-front to build a gas plant, and a lot less painful if it closes early.

<comment> GuB-42 > and nuclear plants are shutting down a decade or more before official end- > of-life, because they're losing major customers to cheaper alternatives that > are available right now

How? My understanding is that most of the cost of nuclear power comes from building the plant and decommissioning it. Running existing power plants for as long as they can seems like the most economical choice.

<comment><USER5> In a word, price. As a consumer, do you want a bill for 2 cents a kWh? Or one for 15 cents a kWh?

This example explainsa lot of what's happening: [1].

By way of a brief explanation, wind is expanding so fast in a lot of places that the combination of wind+LNG is just too cheap to compete with. Iowa is particularly bad, because wind is not "unreliable" in Iowa. There's a lot of wind and it's almost always blowing. So they aren't even using those LNG plants that much. Which only lowers the price to consumers even further.

In some states the government has stepped in to protect the nuclear industry. Sometimes with things like carbon credits, that are given for generating power without generating carbon. Then the nuclear plants sell those credits on the free market to raise funds. But in some places government has had to be a good deal more draconian. In Georgia, they've basically made it illegal for anyone in Vogtie's service area to switch away. That's the only way they could get the math to work. (And it still doesn't work. The federal government is still pumping billions in cash into that project.)

[1] - [https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/iowas- only-...](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/iowas-only-nuclear- power-plant-to-close-the-latest-blow-to-a-fading-industry)

<comment><USER4> An interesting factoid I ran across when researching this stuff a while back is that no one has ever built a new reactor in a deregulated electricity market. Period. The time frame of nuclear reactors is very long - like 50 years. So they're very sensitive to capital costs, and capital is sensitive to risk.

Now, if you were doing the risk analysis on financing for a multibillion- dollar nuclear project, and you just saw the cost of a major competitor (solar) drop 80% in a decade... well, how would that factor into your risk analysis? How much would your interest rates increase?

The only safe way to finance a reactor is government-based guarantees for price regulation - the nation will consume X megawatts for Y dollars, no matter what the market thinks the price should be. And do it in such a way that some government two generations down the road can't just throw it all out and screw you.

<comment><USER6> The complexity of reactors needs to go down and they need to be smaller. Big reactors can only be cooled if they are near the ocean, otherwise they have to be shutdown when the flow rate of the river is too low, this usually happens during heatwaves. It's easier to achieve economies of scale with 16 identical small scale reactors instead of designing a custom reactor for each plant and then building only 2.

I don't see this happening. Relying on new reactor designs to save nuclear power isn't going to solve the problem in time. Right now governments are busy with massive power plant designs that suffer from multi billion cost overruns. After that experience they will probably stop building more power plants and funding for new reactor designs will be reduced.

<comment><USER4> Yeah. A lot of my attitude about pricing turns into pro-nuclear advocates treating me as Treehugging Enemy of Progress, and one of the things they point to is the always-in-the-future dream of small, simple thorium molten salt reactors. But the best I've seen on that is a company that promises 30 cent megawatts in 2030, but doesn't really have a working prototype yet. And it would take, what, two decades past that to really get that going at scale? We can't wait 30 years to do something about greenhouse gasses just because we really really really want to do it with nuclear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My understanding (which is probably uninformed at best) has been that coal, nuclear, etc are used to cover base load, and basically work best when up and running at 100% all the time.

Natural gas has the advantage that it can be spun up and down pretty quickly, which has meant that it is used primarily for "peak" load, which I think used to be covered a lot of the time by things such as diesel and oil plants and have basically been supplanted at this point by natural gas.

Solar and wind have the trouble that they are unreliable, which means you need something to smooth out demand. This is something coal and nuclear are poor at, meaning if you are bringing solar and wind into the mix on a large scale, natural gas becomes even more appealing since you can spin it up / down to balance capacity.

A thing I don't see mentioned very often is the relative density of each power source. One of the things nuclear and coal have going for them, is that you can supply _a lot_ of electricity in a fairly limited footprint.

Wind and solar a much less dense, meaning you need to cover a much larger area, and you need it to be more distributed rather than all concentrated in one place.

All of this is to say that I think everything is inter-related much more than people realize. Shifting to using more solar / wind creates a pressure to move away from coal / nuclear even without considering the "clean energy" aspect.

<comment><USER8> Pretty accurate, but nuclear can spin up and down, by controlling the fuel rods. This is one of the major advantage of the technology and why many suggest it be used in combination with solar, wind, and hydro (many as in the IPCC, which is why CNN pushed hard on everyone during the climate debates). It can be used to provide a base load (greatly reducing the need for batteries (or the need to invent good enough ones!) And can also scale back when it's sunny and windy. All while producing no emissions when running.

<comment><USER9> Chernobyl happened during a scheduled shut-down test that was delayed by 10 hours because there was higher than expected electricity demand. They tried to speed-up the shut-down and the results did not go as expected. I think it may be a little naive to say that nuclear can spin up and down by controlling the fuel rods.

I think Three Mile Island and Fukushima also had issues with getting rid of residual heat during a shut-down that at a minimum damaged the fuel and resulted in a loss of the unit at TMI and a melt-down and major cleanup at Fukushima. It seems to be the basic safety issue with fission and not one that can be dismissed so easily. 6-10 hours for a controlled shut-down seems to be the minimum safety margin.

<comment><USER8> > I think it may be a little naive to say that nuclear can spin up and down by > controlling the fuel rods.

I'm not sure. Because that's exactly what control rods do. The carbon is a neutron moderator. Neutrons are the "heat" in the reaction (that creates actual heat). Less neutrons the colder the reaction is. You'll find this in any elementary nuclear or atomic textbook (which I have read).

As for Chernobyl the show actually got a lot right. But there's a lot of important things that get glossed over because it's dramatized. Like the fact that it had a positive void coefficient and no other reactor operates that way because everyone knew it had a chance is blowing up.

Similarly there's a lot wrong with your analysis about three mile and Fukushima. Both of which killed zero people btw. I'd listen to the experts on this one.

<comment><USER9> I don't know what experts you are listening to, but the idea of shutting down a nuclear reactor by lowering the control rods when the sun shines or the wind blows is just plain silly, for economic and safety reasons. Maybe for some future Gen IV design without fuel rods, but what you are talking about would require doubling the staffing and would defeat any cost savings in fuel use.

Better to curtail the wind and solar or find ways to store the excess energy in batteries, hydro, or fuel.

EDIT: Perhaps you mean something else by "spin up and spin down" but the usual sense of the words implies a complete shut-down. Nuclear reactors do have a normal operating range which can safely be reduced to half-power on a diurnal cycle (typically at night, but could just as easily be during the day.)

<comment><USER8> No I mean vary the output levels. Not complete shutdown and restart. That's how the spin up and down phrase was being used in the context of this thread (I had also used the phrase "scale back"). So you and I are in agreement.

Edit: you also replied to me twice.

<comment><USER9> HN won't let you edit a comment after a certain amount of time has passed, thus a second reply with the links.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 1) I think it's certainly _possible_ , but 2035 is still some time out. Extrapolating battery costs 16 years from now is not at all straightforward.

2) The headline result can be true even if solar/wind/storage have significant annual gaps in availability. If a gas plant was originally built on the assumption that it could run profitably for 5000 hours per year, but in the future there are only 2000 hours a year it can run profitably (due to more solar/wind), it can be financially "crushed." At least in competitive electricity markets. There could be large writedowns as plant load factors decline. Since gas plants are much less labor intensive to keep running than coal plants, I don't expect to see gas plants mothballed and demolished quite the way American coal plants have been over the past 5 years. They may still be profitable to run in the peak-demand season each year even with much more renewable capacity deployed. But they'll make less revenue and profit, burn less fuel, and emit less CO2.

<comment><USER11> I'd venture a guess that solar/wind/storage _would_ have significant gaps in availability in this scenario. The economics of battery storage solutions scales really badly as the length of the gaps they need to fill increases. Not only does the capital cost of batteries increase in proportion to the runtime required, the utilization plummets due to longer gaps being less common and predictable than shorter ones. I can easily see it becoming uneconomical to provide a reliable electricity grid. Unfortunately, one of the other anti- global-warming measures that's being pushed for in this timescale in at least some European countries is switching to electricity for heating.

<comment><USER10> I think that you're probably right about gaps remaining, for basically the reasons you have given. And for that reason I don't expect mass demolition of American gas plants in the 2030s the way there was mass demolition of American coal plants in the 2010s.

The growth of gas capacity is alarming to many environmentalists; the phrase is that we're "locking in" decades of high emissions from gas fired electrical generators. But gas plants release the vast majority of their emissions during operation, not construction. Diminishing the plant load factor of gas plants is as good from an emissions-cuts standpoint as tearing them down. What do you do when the wind isn't blowing, the batteries are discharged, and it's night time? Burn gas. But the number of hours per year where _at least one of_ {batteries, wind, solar} can bid below gas will go up year after year, whereas that number was essentially holding steady at zero through the whole 20th century.

This brief sketch is most applicable to deregulated electricity markets. In markets with regulated utility monopolies, unfortunately, gas plants will be subject to less competition even if the cost of storage-backed renewables keeps declining steadily. The majority of US electricity consumption now takes place in deregulated states but it's far from universal.

[https://www.electricchoice.com/map-deregulated-energy- market...](https://www.electricchoice.com/map-deregulated-energy-markets/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> GuB-42 Gas Plants Will Get Crushed by Wind, Solar _and big batteries_.

Without some form of storage, peaking power plants are required to support wind and solar, and these are typically gas-fired.

<comment><USER12> This assumes that we keep supply and demand pricing models mismatched. The current "fixed price 24/7" model is not set in stone. AC/heating, EV charging, many industrial processes can shift demand and make good forecasts about how flexible their demand is vs average intra-day variation in electricity prices.

<comment><USER13> I don't have a lot of hope for people changing their behaviour based on time of day pricing. Sure aluminum smelters etc might have to flag it for a day once every 5 years but they do that currently because there isn't enough power for everyone so please help us out and shutdown for a day instead cause we are going to dump you anyway because we have to decide between giving you power or this other major load such as a big city. Perhaps there is some gradient to this and it is achieved with price signals - but basically the forecast has to be 1000+ $/MWH for a whole day instead of just a couple high prices intervals or hours, and it has to be order of magnitude higher $/MWH not just $200/MWH instead of $80.

If it is a low-wind evening and prices on the grid are higher than normal what fraction of people are going leave their electric cars with depleted batteries instead of charging them? Say a charge takes say 8 hours, there isn't a lot of room overnight to shift the load around. How many people will refrain from charging because it is going to cost you $50 instead of $10? I think the answer to that can be seen from how much people refrain from driving when fuel costs go up. Given that traffic never gets better I would say none!

1) electricity is cheap. it will have to get a lot more expensive for anyone to care enough to change the way they are using it 2) a lot of the demand is inflexible, regardless of price. lights are going to be on, dinner is going to be made when kids are hungry, car is going to be charged overnight because must go to work tomorrow.

there is going to come a point where all wind and solar must have a certain amount of firm capacity - say it has to be able to deliver 50% of nameplate rating for 5 days straight - and this is going to significantly add to the $/MWH cost of renewables. Then after 5 cloudy days in a row (unthinkable!) the output of the solar farm is 10% of nameplate until it is sunny again.

<comment><USER14> We've had time of day based pricing in the UK for years - it's called "Economy 7" (and there are variants like Economy 10). Historically this was designed for electric storage heaters which were switched on a separate circuit at night and you had two sets of wiring into the house but nowadays it can be done based on pure time of day by a smart meter.

People who have those tariffs do tend to alter behaviour to suit them - <USER2> mainly makes sense for homes with electric space and water heating, where it's more "set and forget" (and people also do change behaviour by eg putting washing machines or tumble dryers on late at night when the cheaper tariffs apply too).

Over time I imagine we might see more dynamic algorithms in use to pick and choose times when electricity is used together with more dynamic per-unit pricing.

<comment><USER13> Great examples.

These measures in the U.K. were put in place to shift demand due to constraints in total system capacity - total generation, total transmission, total distribution capacity. Eg a substation transformer couldn't handle normal daily loads plus heating, so heating load is shifted to night.

What happens when power at night becomes more expensive due to increases demand such as car charging or low supply such as high renewable penetration and no wind?

It's all about having the firm capacity to deliver power for hours on end. So the $/mwh of wind or solar power has to go up because grids are going to say you can only have more if you can supply firm capacity. This is already happening in Hawaii.

I implemented hot water tank load switching through smart meters on at a town with its own power plant of only 850 kw so they wouldn't run out of power at dinner time when the river was low (and we didn't have to fire up the diesel either)

<comment><USER14> Yes, there will always be baseload demand. But I think with the right setup more demand matching is possible for domestic and commercial buildings with relatively little effort.

One way this could work is that you have eg a smart heating thermostat which plans which hours of the day/night to turn heating on and then buys power to cover that in a day-ahead market, with the aim of minimising cost on that basis.

Wind and solar power are relatively preditable a day out so you wouldn't be paying too much to power traders for providing day-ahead liquidity vs on- demand pricing.

Likewise, EVs all end up parked somewhere during the day - the challenge is ensuring that as many of those places as possible (car parks, workplaces, etc) have charging points too; you could do something very similar there with an algorithm deciding whether to charge based on a spot price and how much is in the battery (say, owner programs car to top up to 65% and then only continue charging if power is cheap).

<comment><USER13> How much does it cost to implement and run all the demand matching, how much money does it save the loads who are willing to participate, and how much load can reliably be controlled? The marriage of electrical system reliability to real time control of tens of thousands loads over internet or cellular would be an unholy one. This will limit acceptance as the cost of outages immediately outstrips savings. So I'm back to grids requiring solar and wind to come with energy storage to firm them up. Which is a perfectly fine solution and increasingly viable as the cost per MWH of storage comes down.

<comment><USER14> I'm not talking about real-time demand matching/load shedding here as a consumer solution - as I mentioned, I think matching on a day-ahead (and perhaps also eg 6-hour ahead) basis could well be a lot better than we have now because wind and solar generation is quite predictable on a day-ahead basis, as are outside temperatures (so eg for space heating energy consumption may be relatively well predictable too).

The beauty of this type of approach is that it can be done by incrementally building on things which already exist.

There's already an electricity market, including day-ahead pricing in most pools. Professional power traders already trade these markets. Smart meters already exist and are capable of dealing with pool prices not just flat rates. Smart thermostats already exist. EVs already have the capability to stop/start charging based on more than just whether they're plugged in or not. Even better, most of these already have standardised APIs.

What's missing is the software stack which ties all of these together - <USER3> that can be done incrementally, device by device (on the load side).

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the discussion. The information we are missing is what the percentage of total load can or would be willing to be shifted, and how strong the incentive (savings) is for the load to allow themselves to be shifted versus their inconvenience.

<comment><USER12> We know that the answer is 100% as the price has no upper limit, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I read the headline too fast and thought it said "Gas _planets_ Will Get Crushed by _Solar Wind_ by 2035".

Sounded terrifying.

<comment><USER16> I read it right the second time around, and had to think it over until I stopped imagining _gas plants_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Some time, in not so distant future, we will have abundant, almost infinite, almost free, renewable energy. We will forget what an energy bill is, because administration overhead will be higher than the price of the energy itself. It will just be an inconspicuous tiny item on the city taxes. And we won't think it's amazing. We'll take it for granted. It will become new normal. Just like now we don't remember any more what it feels like not being reachable by phone when you go out for dinner with your friends.

Mark my words.

<comment><USER18> And at that point in time, in a cloudy night, the wind will stop blowing. And the lights will go dark.

<comment><USER19> Improved stargazing and no more blackout curtains? Sign me up. :-)

<comment> 52-6F-62 Hahaha. Maybe by that time we will take it so for granted that time-out periods so we can see the stars better will be socialized. I still remember the blackout of 2003 rather fondly...

Probably not, though...

<comment><USER20> I live in a 3rd world country and had to go to hospital with no power and no lights. It was chaos, amputations by flashlight, doctors unable to see where to hook up IVs, etc etc. How could you honestly think that the power going off would be anything except a horrible horrible thing?

<comment> 52-6F-62 Edited to preface: my intention certainly wasn't to dredge up any terrible memories. I'm sorry if it did so. It was more a remark on North American "go- go-go" culture that was forced to take a pause for a day or so.

In this part of the world many critical services like hospitals run on back up generators if the main grid goes down. It was part of the main grid that went down

There was surely chaos some places where traffic lights weren't on backup power, but otherwise the worst things that would happen were maybe you have to close up the office or the worksite for the day. Transit was down but not much else could be done anyway.

It was bittersweet. I'm sure there were problems. I'm also sure that many people who'd never seen a star in their lives saw the sky unfolded like they might never again. It was a stark reminder how much we've drowned out with things that "matter"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> RMI has been pushing hydrogen cars for a while. I was never a big fan of their analysis there - so take their conclusions with a bit of a grain of doubt.

Ironically gas and solar / wind sometimes go together with gas filling gaps in generation on a more flexible basis. Interesting to read here that gas will be "crushed". That will need some huge battery capacity - not saying its not possible but...

Coal though - if article was coal is going to be crushed - sure.

</comment><comment><USER22> Excess electric doesn't have to be in stored with chemicals like lithium ion, energy is still energy.

<comment><USER23> True, it can be stored in salt for example, as it currently is in multiple operational concentrated solar plants. Some have the ability to maintain output during the entire night.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I downloaded the study - it's long and filled with pictures so haven't read yet.

I expect they made the mistake of not taking into account the increase in cost due to a primarily renewable grid. Such massive changes in the type of generating supply will yield massive changes in the costs to supply power. As you remove all the dispatchable power sources (power generators that you can put on line at will) you have to build really big heat or electricity storage and would have to have emergency generating capacity for the potential of extremely low wind and sun for days and weeks at a time. Basically, you'd have to have all the natural gas generators and pipelines for the eventuality of bad renewable conditions. Who will pay for that? Just leaving them idle 95% of the time is not the best use of money and it's possible the government may have to pay for renewable's storage problems.

Geography is also a serious concern. Texas will have vastly different economics than than Washington or New York.

<comment><USER25> > Basically, you'd have to have all the natural gas generators and pipelines > for the eventuality of bad renewable conditions. Who will pay for that?

Ideally the operators of facilities that tackle the storage problem with power-to-gas technology. It's by far the most scalable storage option and the discharge part of the cycle is already up and running.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Something I'm curious about is how this will affect plant manufacturers. Specifically I'm thinking about generator manufacturers like MHI, Siemens, GE, Toshiba. Do they just shut those divisions down and move on?

There's also a lot of other businesses that exist for building/maintaining/repairing plants and equipment that are non-OE and their futures seem grim.

</comment><comment><USER27> On the week of August 12, the Texas grid, managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) maxed out at around 75,000 MW of load. On one of the worst days, the approx. 24,000 MW nameplate capacity wind farms on that grid produced about 4,500 MW at the absolute peaks of demand. In other words, wind farms produced 18% or so of their maximum rated capacity.

This is a typical pattern during the dog days of August. Winds lull during the late afternoon, and pickup after midnight. Winds farms, on an annual basis, provide 22% of Texas electricity generation. However, during these peak demand hours, natural gas contributed about 50,000 MW, with coal and nuclear distant second and third place. If Texas wind farms are to displace the gas-fired plants, there will need to be 10-fold increase in their numbers, or somehow solar and battery storage will have to step in.

Saying that wind is going to crush gas, is only half true. Currently, the pipeline of new generators being built in Texas has slightly more wind (capacity factor ~ 40%) being installed than gas. Solar, during the next 5 years, is being built (allowing for capacity factor ~ 20%) at about the same rate (~12,000 averaged MW). You could call these technologies the 'three amigos', as they will be appearing, as new generating capacity, in (very) roughly equal amounts. Nevertheless, gas plants are a unique, and necessary part of the future, due to their dispatch ability. They can literally be called upon to deliver electricity 24/7/365.

Importantly, one hour of generation during these peak periods costs 450 times the average generator's fees for electricity. In other words, one hour of a natural gas plant's output, during these near-black-out conditions (properly termed Energy Emergency Alert), earns them as much as running those plants, non-stop, the previous 19 days. These extreme spikes haven't happened in Texas for a few years. Still, there is lots of opportunity for the gas plants to be the 'high rollers' of the Texas grid during their expected 30+ years of operation.

Peak usage week: [http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/164134/August_PUC_Pre...](http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/164134/August_PUC_Presentation_FINAL.PDF) Energy Emergency alert: [http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/164134/EEA_OnePager_F...](http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/164134/EEA_OnePager_FINAL.PDF)

<comment><USER10> The renewable capacity on the ERCOT grid is overwhelmingly wind-based since wind has been much cheaper than solar until the last handful of years. Its output tends to peak at night. I think a lot of the peak-demand opportunity for gas in Texas is going to be blunted by solar and battery projects coming online soon.

"Can more solar help Texas meet peak demand?"

[https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2019/08/13/can-solar-help-ercot-...](https://pv- magazine-usa.com/2019/08/13/can-solar-help-ercot-meet-peak-demand/)

 _There is a truly awesome amount of solar on the way in Texas, with ERCOT's July interconnection report showing 62 GW of solar projects. And while given the highly speculative nature of project development most of those will likely not be built, there are nearly 9 GW of projects that have interconnection agreements, including 3.2 GW that have a full interconnection study completed._

 _Those projects that can secure financing and get built will come online over the next few years. It is difficult to say which ones will be online by next summer, but a June ERCOT report identified 1.3 GW of projects with interconnection agreements and financial security posted that are expected to come online later this year, a number which should grow as the year progresses._

"Developer eyes world's largest solar+storage facility for Texas"

[https://www.utilitydive.com/news/developer-eyes-worlds- large...](https://www.utilitydive.com/news/developer-eyes-worlds-largest- solarstorage-facility-for-texas/548691/)

"Energy Storage Developer Buys Texas Windfarms With Major Battery Retrofit Planned"

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnparnell/2019/08/24/energy-s...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnparnell/2019/08/24/energy- storage-developer-buy-texas-windfarms-with-major-battery-retrofit-planned/)

"GlidePath Builds Merchant Battery Plant in ERCOT, Bucking Industry Wisdom"

[https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/glidepath- bucke...](https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/glidepath-bucked-the- industry-trend-and-built-a-merchant-plant-in-ercot)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> link to 2 page summary of the study [https://rmi.org/wp- content/uploads/2019/09/clean-energy-port...](https://rmi.org/wp- content/uploads/2019/09/clean-energy-portfolio-two-pager.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER29> The report in question:

[https://rmi.org/insight/clean-energy-portfolios-pipelines- an...](https://rmi.org/insight/clean-energy-portfolios-pipelines-and-plants)

</comment><comment><USER30> >"The authors of the study say they analyzed the costs of construction, fuel and anticipated operations for 68 gigawatts of gas plants proposed across the U.S. They compared those costs to building a combination of solar farms, wind plants and battery systems that, together with conservation efforts, could supply the same amount of electricity and keep the grid stable."

If the same amount of electricity is being supplied, why are conservation efforts needed? Has anyone downloaded the reports from Rocky Mountain Institute? They want your email address.

<comment><USER11> I had a look at the report and it looks fishy. They're not actually comparing the cost of gas plants with the cost of wind, solar and storage - they're comparing with a hypothetical "clean energy portfolio" consisting of whatever combination of energy efficiency improvements, demand shifting, wind, solar and storage their model reckons is cheapest, effectively modelling energy conservation as a source of electricity that replaces gas power plant outputs. This makes very little sense; there's nothing inherent about efficiency improvements or demand flexibility that restricts them to being used with renewables rather than gas power.

That's not the only dodgy thing either. Their proposal generates substantial excess energy throughout most of the year. In order to improve its cost effectiveness, they assume that excess energy has a value of $15/KWh and subtract that income from the cost of the renewable program. The actual value of this energy is probably close to zero; remember, we're talking about energy that has gone unused even after substantial use of demand shifting and storage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> When I see studies of this nature I always think that it is such beautiful idea to be living in a clean world. To be clear, I work in the petroleum industry; so this would most certainly be an obvious end to my line of work. I will hopefully be living in the keys by 2035.

At the rate our world population is expanding, I have to wonder if there is simply enough surface area we can turn over to power generation and lose it to things such as farming and other agriculture.

We are learning to farm land previously thought too arid for non-hearty crops.

</comment><comment><USER32> I don't see batteries being able to store the amount of power (for a practical battery lifetime to be cost effective) needed to make solar a practical primary electricity source.

<comment><USER33> To make the system close for a single site (without any geographical diversity) is to produce about 3 times as much solar energy you need and install enough batteries to meet 48 hours of average demand. That's enough to deal with seasonality and with cloudy weather to provide a constant output for an entire year.

The 48 hours of battery would last a really long time as typically only about 12 hours will need to be used, thus you'd get very long cycle life. A battery used so lightly could get 10,000 effective full cycles, so probably would last multiples of 25 years from a cycle life perspective (calendar life may be another thing).

EDIT: If you add in geographical diversity and diversity in sources like wind, hydro, and geothermal, then you need to throw away a lot less energy and you need a lot less storage. IMHO, we should just bite the bullet and install a bunch of transmission lines (which could be done in 2 years, enabling us to decommission coal power within about 2 years in the US).

<comment><USER34> Haha lol.

Even in equatorial Africa 48h is not enough. Neither for actual usage, nor for battery life (and no one ever got marketing-leaflet-aka-datasheet-stated lifetime out of them batteries). Two years max, and hope either the project dies, or the company dies, or someone steals the batteries.

Source: been there maintaning solar offgrid.

And then --- geodiversity can only make it worse, never better.

<comment><USER13> Don't know why you are downvoted. I used to run solar powered sites that would have 5 rainy days in a row in which only about 10% of solar generation was delivered during daylight hours. We started with only enough batteries to last overnight and ended up with 10x that. Then we added 33% more when the first set of batteries had a short life due to getting so deeply discharged.

<comment><USER35> Is 10x overnight demand close to 48h of average demand? If yes then original post was right.

<comment><USER13> My average day and night load was the same so I went from 12 hours to 120 hours worth of batteries and then could get through the 5 day storm, but with batteries depleted so badly they were essentially damaged. Now we have about 150 hours worth of stored energy for our loads.

we added a wind turbine as well which was great since some of the rainy stormy days had lots of wind. I don't understand my original posts parent's comment about (geo) diversity not helping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Sorry to thread jack, but- important question: how are people reading Bloomberg now that they shut down incognito mode as of this week? Disabling Javascript doesn't seem to work either. I'm using Outline for the time being, but it's slow and annoying, and it won't load any longforms that contain multiple pictures or graphs. Anyone else have a better solution?

<comment><USER37> Works fine when I use the uMatrix add-on to disable cookies and JavaScript.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/umatrix](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/umatrix)

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/umatrix/ogfcmafjal...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/umatrix/ogfcmafjalglgifnmanfmnieipoejdcf)

<comment><USER36> Not sure if you'll see this, but this worked like a charm for me. Thank you!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> What are the steps into getting there? What are the biggest roadblocks - scientific or political?

</comment><comment><USER39> No they won't, unless the storage issue is solved.

(A comment someone else made and it got greyed out by the "we hate your poopy face!" crowd.)

And even if it IS solved. After outside wind and solar infrastructure is destroyed by the next continent wide Winter superstorm, how would having a few hours (or days) of storage help?

</comment><comment><USER40> Clean energy sounds good to me!!

</comment><comment><USER41> No they won't, unless the storage issue is solved.

<comment><USER42> When the future arrives, lots of people will be amazed at how little of the solution to this "issue" ended up being storage as such and how much turned out to be demand management and reasonable system architecture.

<comment><USER41> When the future arrives, we will build enough nuclear reactors.

<comment><USER42> Who is "we"? There don't seem to be any investors eager to build these...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'm interested in understanding how this will play out with the electrification of cars. As it stands now, the production and distribution infrastructure is mostly used for homes. But you could easily double your home's electric consumption with an electric car traveling just 10 miles per day. If we see a quick change in electric car adoption, our production and distribution systems are going to be massively strained. We might be keeping gas and coal powerplants online just for capacity reasons alone.

<comment><USER44> 300 wh/mile seems to be about what most electric cars achieve. 10 miles/day * 300 wh/mile * 30 days = 90 kWh.

The average monthly energy consumption per capita in the U.S. is about 1000 kWh[1], so in order to double that with electric cars every individual would need to drive an average of 110 miles per day.

[1] [https://www.worlddata.info/america/usa/energy- consumption.ph...](https://www.worlddata.info/america/usa/energy- consumption.php)

<comment><USER20> 1000 kWh/month? That seems like a buttload to me. I used to live in the US (though I never measured how much I used there) and currently, average between 6-15 KWh/day. I know this because I live in a 3rd world country and must pre- pay for my electricity by going down to the local equivalent of a corner store to add power. And I don't even turn off most of my lights at night.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> There are at least 5 better alternatives to wind and solar, but we don't teach science any more in public schools.

If we did, there wouldn't even BE climate change alarmist hysteria poised to destroy entire economies.

<comment><USER46> Are you talking about natural gas?

I can think of a couple of other renewable resources: Geothermal and Hydroelectric, but Geothermal is geographically limited and Hydroelectric has proven to have more environmental impact than we would like. I have no idea on what the other three could be. I guess you could include Nuclear in the list, but the price points on that make it hard to declare it better than Solar and Wind.

<comment><USER47> What are the severe environmental impacts of hydro?

<comment><USER46> I didn't say severe, but there are environmental impacts:

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

The biggest is the destruction of migrating fish habitat, sometimes reversible with specialized structures (salmon ladders), sometimes not. There is also some evidence for increased CO2 emissions from artificial reservoirs.

<comment><USER47> Hydro is clean and cheap baseload power. Better than nuclear.

The impact of creating water reservoirs must be immense. Because we are dreaming about replacing hydro with vastly inferior power sources.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to lose a customer: a worked example - <AUTHOR> https://np.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/39hqwv/my_coldcall_experience_of_the_day_tigerdirect/

<comment><USER2> What's compelling about the thread?

It's just a private (now public) email flame-war -- between a sysadmin and a sales rep -- that reflects poorly on both sides. The sysadmin isn't acting mature or efficiently by flaming. Due to his sloppy sharing, the sales rep is gettin doxxed with folks complaint brigading the sales rep's company.

The sysadmin has the most to lose -- and for what, Reddit karma on what reads like a writing prompt?</comment>


Ask HN: Should I enable DNSSEC for my start-up? - <AUTHOR>

As the title really. Should I make the effort to enable DNSSEC for my start-up? At the moment I'm currently using Amazon Route 53 but could move to custom DNS servers if supporting DNSSEC is considered important enough.
My start-up is directed at very technical users (developers primarily) so I get the feeling that they will appreciate the extra security that DNSSEC provides but at the same time running my own DNS is an extra expense that might be better used for something else.
Another advantage of running my own DNS servers is that I can supply DNS services to clients as well which would be a nice little add-on for them.
What would you do? <comment><USER2> What compelling business need is there for DNSSEC? The only thing I can think of are some of the compliancy rules for gov/corp work coming up in 2014 & 2015\. Unless DNSSEC makes you money youre wasting your time.

Secondly any comment that trivializes DNSSEC implementation has little real world experience. Go read the DNS OARC archives. Major orgs, .gov, TLDs, etc, _regularly_ break DNSSEC deployments. These are the domain experts who are pushing Wider adoption. If they can't consistently execute why do you believe you will be successful?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think I claimed that implementing DNSSEC was easy.

But I'll certainly take your advice about reading the archives to get some perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Pro: It's not much trouble, DANE and other things will make it worthwhile, and it's easier to do when you can still have a bit of downtime without pain.

Contra: There's always much to do in a startup. Deferring tasks is good, even though they'll be more difficult later.

There are a few providers around who'll do most of the job for you. It's called a "hidden primary", and easydns offers it, among others.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment. I'll look into EasyDNS and see what services they provide.

I may well take your advice and just go with a normal DNS deployment and then later on when I have more time make more of an effort to deploy DNSSEC.</comment></comment>


Why use meta tags when CSS does the job? - <AUTHOR>

Is there some reason for mobile devices to use meta tags to control their display properties when CSS supports physical units, like points and millimetres?
As someone who has been writing CSS for some time, I find that `width=device-width` and `initial-scale` much less intuitive than `height: 15mm` and `font-size: 12pt` and `@media` queries, all of which have been defined for many years.
Instead of supporting these units properly, I find that devices are requiring meta tags to set their viewports to a pixel size, and with `device-width`, often a pixel size that isn't their actual screen size.
How did the world become this way? Did I miss something while I was asleep, and now these fake pixels are length units in the real world? Or maybe everybody is holding out for a real CSS3 standard, and this is an interim solution? Am I wrong for wanting to use these real units in CSS? <comment><USER2> Doesn't CSS define a pixel as being 1/96th of an inch?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, so it does. A "reference pixel" they call it.</comment></comment>


After This Fungus Turns Ants into Zombies, Their Bodies Explode - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/24/science/ant-zombies-fungus.html <comment><USER2> Great photography.</comment>


Intel may be pulling the plug on MeeGo - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/mobile-wireless/199679/intel-pulls-meego-plug

<comment><USER2> And here we find one of the major advantages of open source development: their efforts need not be lost, and that productivity need not be wasted. Instead, there is now an opportunity for someone to stand up and continue making MeeGo something awesome.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, I'm not surprised. I was in their AppUp event. We all got a meego tablet (exopc). All people I know have installed a different OS on it. It was prealpha, and most things didn't work. There was no point to develop for it.</comment>


HN Show & Tell: Feedvolley - <AUTHOR> http://feedvolley.com

<comment><AUTHOR> This is not a startup, just a little pet project. It lets users skin RSS feeds with their own HTML, for example to skin existing web content or complement Yahoo! Pipes etc.

I'd love to get some feedback on this if you find it interesting. There's some more background here: <http://niryariv.wordpress.com/category/projects/feedvolley/>

Please keep in mind this is _not_ a commercial site, so there may be some rough edges and missing parts ;)

BTW, I'm looking for UI input on the following: the real meat of the app is in the Customize page, especially the "Use Custom HTML" option. I have a feeling many users just create a page and never notice they can customize the HTML, URL etc. Any ideas how to make it more prominent yet keep from taking focus from the actual content?

<comment><USER2> It may seem obvious, but the main way you're going to draw attention to that link is by making it bigger.

Also consider styling "Customize" and "Create a page like this" as buttons instead of just links. They both indicate actions, not just another document to load.

Look at what firefox does when you view an rss feed in the browser. Above the feed content is a large yellow callout area with a subscribe button.

You can do something similar and offer an option to collapse the area which gets remembered by a cookie.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We didn't really think of an FF-like collapse area like you suggest, I think it might be the way to go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like the idea of cutting the crap and just displaying an RSS feed. The themes you have there are also really nice. Nice work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Except for the default & Gallery themes, they are all adapted Tumblr themes - the folks who made them deserve the credit :) We chose Tumblr's markup and try to support it as well as we can, to give users a large potential selection to choose from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think I will be using this in combination with my Posterous blog.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sweet :) It's cool to see people use it in ways we didn't think of.</comment></comment>


Credit cards with chips are coming to the US, but I promise it'll be fine - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/oliver-burkeman-column/2015/sep/01/credit-cards-chips-are-coming <comment><USER2> I think Mr. Burkeman should check the facts before he goes on about difficult electronic cash transfers in the US.</comment>


Should I buy an Intel Mac today or wait to buy an Arm-based Mac? - <AUTHOR> https://www.macrumors.com/guide/buy-or-wait-intel-apple-silicon-mac/ <comment><USER2> Buy a used Intel Mac today and it will give you several more years of service while the ecosystem handles the ARM transition. You should never buy a first- gen Apple product, especially the first gen of such a radical change. I expect buyers of the first ARM-based Macs to end up like the buyers of the first Intel-based Macs who were saddled with Core Solo processors and 32-bit EFI.

<comment><USER3> > You should never buy a first-gen Apple product

FUD. First Intel Macbook Pro, first iPhone, first iPad, first Apple Watch... these were all excellent devices.

Also, I believe you are misinformed about the types of processors available in the first Intel macs.

<comment><USER4> > FUD. First Intel Macbook Pro, first iPhone, first iPad, first Apple Watch... > these were all excellent devices.

The 2nd gen were all extreme improvements though

> Also, I believe you are misinformed about the types of processors available > in the first Intel macs.

as far as I remember the initial Intel Macs were a Mac Mini (Core Solo) and MacBooks (Core Duo).

32bit EFI was a thing and made life difficult with a Mac Pro. At some point the MacOS dropped support for the 32bit EFI, and had to have OS upgrades installed with patched installers.

<comment><USER5> The iPhone 3g was hot garbage.

<comment><USER6> The iPad 3 was pretty terrible very quickly as well - I think it was the slowest iPad they ever made. Mainly due to quickly cobbling a retina screen to hardware (GPU and RAM) that simply couldn't drive that many pixels.

<comment><USER4> I never have or had a problem with the iPad 3's performance. I did have a problem with how heavy it was compared to the previous generation

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm pretty keen on buying one of the last Intel MBPs late this year or next year. First-generation Apple products are always buggier than the subsequent versions, so even as a consumer I'd want to wait for second gen. More importantly, as a developer, I'm still deploying everything to Linux on Intel, so I value the ability to virtualize Linux without emulation.

That said, I'm excited about the potential for ARM over time with Apple's performance trajectory, and if Apple holds onto developer mindshare and doesn't totally nerf Mac OS in the name of iOS parity, then there could be a strong halo effect pushing ARM servers and cloud hosting forward. I just don't want to be on that bleeding edge of architecture transition pain.

<comment><USER8> > More importantly, as a developer, I'm still deploying everything to Linux on > Intel, so I value the ability to virtualize Linux without emulation.

Then why not just develop on Linux?

<comment><USER9> Some of us are not masochists at heart, and value the ability to switch between a GUI for my desktop things and a virtualized Linux image for development/testing.

<comment><USER10> Of course you should use whatever works best for you, but I disagree with your characterization of Linux users as masochists at heart.

I'm very much a person who values technology that "just works". While my latest Ubuntu installation admittedly wasn't quite as smooth as running macOS on Apple hardware, the gap has narrowed considerably. Especially for anyone who already possesses a fair amount of Linux experience from working with servers for work, and who sticks with known-compatible hardware, running a Linux desktop can be a delight.

<comment><USER11> Linux on a desktop can be fine, depending on what you want out of that desktop experience. But Linux on a laptop still tends to be Sisyphean: by the time you get all the hardware features working correctly and with proper power management and with all the firmware bugs worked around, at least one of the hardware or the distro will be years out of date. The only way to be satisfied is to decide you didn't need that feature anyways, or didn't need that last hour of battery life.

<comment><USER10> Out of curiosity, does this still hold true if you buy one of the System76 / Dell / Lenovo laptops with Linux pre-installed? I'm currently using a desktop, so don't have any recent experience with this, but my assumption is the experience has also improved quite a bit on these OEM Linux laptops.

<comment><USER12> It's better but not perfect. If you tried Linux on commodity laptops a decade ago, you'd frequently run into awful hardware issues. There's less of that now with the OEM laptops (with some exceptions; looking at you, Killer wlan chipsets!).

UI jank is also reduced but not eliminated. Even Pop!/DE Ubuntu have a fair number of rough edges - not so much that you're constantly tearing your hair out, but there's definite room for improvement. Personally, I live with it because I also think Windows and OSX have regressed in usability and stability, but I'd be a liar if I didn't mention all the time spent yelling at things like DPI scaling w/ hardware dock-attached monitors.

e: also, expect to do some manual power tuning if you want anything close to battery life parity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not fully responsive, but I would just buy a nice Windows 10 computer. Surface, Dell XPS, Thinkpad X1, plus numerous others from various manufacturers, are available. They can run WSL, Docker, various hypervisors and VM tools, and still be fully AMD/Intel compatible for deployment. Furthermore I doubt they will become as closed as macOS is becoming, and Windows will run on them for years and years to come.

I am not looking back. Touchbar, crappy keyboards, regressive and user hostile macOS, and now custom CPUs? The walled garden has become a hellish prison and I am out. I wont miss Aperture, Logic and Final Cut that much. Everything else I use is ... Imagine this ... Fully cross platform! Adobe, Ableton, Native Instruments, JetBrains, etc. Anything I cannot do easily in Windows I have WSL or Cygwin.

Thanks for 12 great years and 4 increasingly miserable years, Apple. I'm out, and once my current hardware dies it won't be replaced. I like my OnePlus phone and Surface Book and Go.

<comment><USER14> Windows comes with a great deal more embedded spyware and adware than macOS, and has a lot more malware targeted at it in the wild. I think the security situation is far better on macOS.

<comment><USER15> Windows really doesn't, it's the OEMs. It's a pain, but I usually spend like 30 minutes cleaning up a new laptop and it never bothers me again. My last few machines have been Acers and they were pretty clean.

<comment><USER14> This is not an accurate statement. Windows 10 includes a huge amount of spyware out of the box direct from Microsoft.

<comment><USER16> Have you looked at the network traffic coming out of macOS lately?

<comment><USER14> Yes, I run Little Snitch with the Apple whitelists disabled.

[https://git.eeqj.de/sneak/hacks/src/branch/master/fixcatalin...](https://git.eeqj.de/sneak/hacks/src/branch/master/fixcatalina/fixcatalina.sh)

The above script helps a little bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As a developer who values running the same docker images as production, I'm out -- no more mac purchases for me.

Gaming on a mac is already a challenge. None of my most valued software is Mac specific anymore. The trend of incredibly locked down software will only continue.

The calculus may be different if I were heavily in the iOS ecosystem, or if the "exciting new Intel-based Macs" buck the trend and represent good value.

If you're not an iOS developer, do you see things the same way?

<comment><USER18> I don't understand how people use Docker on macOS. It's so slow and non of those tricks like UNISON and NFS really solve it.

I do all my work on Linux powered XPS and all my personal stuff on macOS.

<comment><USER19> Absolutely. It's broken. Given that Apple mentioned explicit support for or cooperation with Docker for the new ARM Macs, I think there's a decent chance it will actually perform better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Answer is simple, explanation is complex. Wait, unless you need to run virtual Windows. x86 always sucked. It was always a dog. Everything that ever competed with x86 was technically superior to x86, including 68k, PPC, and ARM will be no different. If you have some burning need to run WinVMs, then you need x86. Otherwise, even this first gen Apple ARM hardware will be better than the Intel Macs in performance, and this even in Rosetta2 emulation, and this has been proven by the developer kit using 2 year old processor competing with today's x86. When Apple releases their first ARM macs, they will be cutting edge, will see faster and far more efficient processing, thus expect battery life in ARM MacBooks that any x86 MacBook or AnyBook can not compete. As far as the "don't buy first gen Macs" folks are concerned, they are stuck in 1994. Apple is a different company now. Except for minor issues like avant garde butterfly keyboards that they're abandoning, the internal hardware has no competition, and you're going to pay for that, but it is not actually more expensive than any hardware comparatively configured. So save your money, get another year out of your x86 Mac, and get the ARM Mac. Otherwise, you'll have 2 gens of x86 Macs, and one will gather dust. Wait for the ARM, and you will continue to use your x86 Mac.

<comment><USER21> Osborne effect.

The Osborne effect is a social phenomenon of customers canceling or deferring orders for the current soon-to-be-obsolete product as an unexpected drawback of a company's announcing a future product prematurely.

<comment><USER20> > Osborne effect.

Totally. Don't buy either, Apple is obviously going under. ><

Thing about Macs is, they have this incredible lifetime, annoyingly (to those that like to save with buying older hw) hold high value in resale. Try pricing a Mac Mini from 2012, or Late 2014. Compare a similar compact WinDesk from those years. Though it is interesting to see a pattern, and moreso when it is famous enough to have a name, I do not think the Osborne effect applies here. Today's current Intel Mac will still be unaffordable NIB or used when the 3rd gen ARM Macs are released. I'm not really happy about that.

<comment><USER21> Right... And the previous transitions in early 2000s was eased by the usage of universal binaries with powerpc and intel code. Same will apply for the universal binary 2 with intel + arm code.

<comment><USER20> 1994 68k --> PPC 2006 PPC --> x86

As I recall, the first switch had the issue of the early PPC chips, 601, was kind of slow, and the boxes not designed well. The second transition in 2006 was annoying because Adobe doesn't like to rewrite their code... they carbonized, and then just kept charging for the same cruft. But frankly, I liked the Classic Environment, and I liked the first Rosetta. I'd like to run the whole shebang in MAME on whatever hw, if others were doing it to make it easier for me. If only MAME had a emulated coprocessor, I'd run A/UX on it.

Apple's current ARMs and OS running on it are already quite amazing, IMHO. So I don't think the new ARM Macs could disappoint. And the same thing here, Universal Binaries, a switch in the compiler to make it easy for devs, and I don't know how it could be easier.

<comment><USER22> > As I recall, the first switch had the issue of the early PPC chips, 601, was > kind of slow, and the boxes not designed well.

I had a first-generation PPC Mac. It was pretty good, I thought. The baseline 601 ran at 60MHz and had a superscalar architecture with 16K instruction / 16K data L1 cache. The high-end 68Ks were not superscalar, ran at 33MHz, and had 4K instruction / 4K data caches.

If anything was slow it was probably because big chunks of code were 68K. My personal experience was that once I switched to PPC, running the same software on 68K felt slow by comparison.

<comment><USER20> That's interesting. I didn't get to touch a 601 until the 604 were common, side by side in a commercial environment, the older machines gunked with more use (old installs) and more users over time, thus my opinion is biased and worthless. Thank you for posting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's awkward. I have a 2013 rMBP which I'm very happy with.

It was bought in part to start developing OSX/iOS software _while also_ continuing to use Linux for the majority of my work, which I now do in a VM on the Mac.

This setup works really well as an "all rounder" machine with excellent hardware.

In a couple of years time, having an x86 Mac won't make sense for developing MacOS/iOS software. Apple talks of emulating x86 on ARM for MacOS, but not the other way around.

But on the other hand, having an ARM Mac won't make sense for running x86 Linux and x86 Windows VMs. And my servers will probably still be x86.

Neither choice is good.

</comment><comment><USER24> To most people I would say that it depends on what you want to do with your Mac. If you also want/need to run Windows I would pick an Intel one. If you think you'd be content to live exclusively in Apple's World I would pick the Arm one as it has the upside of also running iOS apps natively.

<comment><USER25> > it has the upside of also running iOS apps natively

I've been thinking about this lately, and I wonder who the audience is. For example, I've had a Chromebook that can run Android apps for a while now, but I've never wanted to run them when the desktop equivalent is available. Even if a desktop equivalent is not available, it has the downside of not fitting in well with the look-and-feel and ergonomics of the desktop.

However, I think being able to run iOS apps natively is great for developers testing iOS/iPadOS apps.

<comment><USER26> Since it seems like Catalyst is not as popular as expected, I'd _love_ to run streamlined native apps in their own window without having to open a browser tab of everything (e.g. for Reddit, using Apollo instead of the god-awful web UI)

iOS apps on the Mac would give it a robust gaming library overnight.

<comment><USER27> > iOS apps on the Mac would give it a robust gaming library overnight.

It wouldn't. It would give MacOS a library of games optimised for mobile. Why would you want those on a desktop computer? And how would you play many of them when they require touch input?

<comment><USER26> Sure, not 100% of the games will work / some gestures may be wonky, but the vast majority of popular iOS games I can think of would work fine out of the box. (much less APM than games like Diablo or MOBAs)

I'd love to play longer iOS games on a system that doesn't cause it to heat up profusely and massively drain battery life, as there are some _unique_ iOS games that were never ported to a Mac.

<comment><USER27> > Sure, not 100% of the games will work / some gestures may be wonky

That probably includes the vast majority of games that you would want to play on a desktop system: the ones with perceived console quality.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Apple Arcade. It has cross platform games. About none of them have any appeal for a desktop gamer. Non-ported mobile games? They will have even less appeal.

Except some casual games like Monument Valley.

> there are some unique iOS games that were never ported to a Mac

Once again, the vast majority of those will most likely be very foreign on a desktop OS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It depends on how quickly you need to upgrade, how important smooth operations are, and of course, whether you depend on bootcamp/virtualisation.

If you need to upgrade soon and are dependant on the machine "just working", get an Intel based Mac. Obviously the same, if you need virtualisation. You do get a machine, which works now and will do so easily for the next 5 years to come.

The new ARM Macs are very tempting, but it might take up to 2 years until the device you want to refresh is avialable with an ARM processor, and there might be teething problems. In any case, it will take some time, till most software is avialable natively. On the other side, unless there are first-generation issues, with an ARM-Mac you are very forward-looking.

So for me, the answer is easy. For my work, I am going to renew my MB Pro on Intel, but privately, I am going to try to stretch the life of my iMac out, until I can an ARM based one. The iMac is still running on Mojave for compatibility reasons, so if I upgrade, going to ARM shouldn't be less compatible (which probably was the reason for Catalina to be that incompatible).

</comment><comment><USER29> I bypassed the whole decision entirely and after 15 years of using Macs of various flavors went back to Windows for stuff that doesn't run on Linux (Lightroom, Ableton). It works fine and I got used to it within a week. I think quite a few people will do the same thing, especially when it comes to laptops. MBP pricing in particular makes no sense when Lenovo X1 exists and has a vastly superior keyboard, more ports, and a higher density display. Importantly, it also looks great. Similar configs are literally $1K apart. It's time to give MS another chance, IMO.

</comment><comment><USER30> Apple discontinued the use of PowerPC processors in 2006. Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard released at August 28, 2009 was the first version of OS X to be built exclusively for Intel Macs.

So extrapolating on Mac history one can expect last Intel Mac to be supported for 3 years.

<comment><USER31> > extrapolating

 _With a sample size of 1,..._

We don't know.

<comment><USER32> Similar for the 68k to PPC transition, 1996 was the last year for the powerbook 190s, the last 68k, and MacOS 8.5 (which required PPC) was released 1998 (to the month 2 years later).

So going by history we can expect 2-3 years, with a sample size of 2.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I would advise app and mobile developers to wait for the ARM Macs. They will have near native performance for iOS emulation (or even native if everything works out). The demand for people who can do ARM optimizations will also surge.

<comment><USER34> Apple has already said they will natively run every iOS app on the App Store unless devs opt out so I expect this does indeed mean literally native performance.

<comment><USER33> That sounds great for testing and performance. I expect that macOS and ipadOS will merge after sometime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I do want to upgrade my 2016 MacBook to an iMac because although everything on the OS works fine, I'm beginning to do work that's hitting performance ceilings.

If new Macs w/ Apple Silicon are being released this fall, I hope the 27/30-in iMacs w/ Apple Silicon rumored to launch next year count as the "second" revision in context of Apple's infamous first-gen issues.

<comment><USER25> As far as first-gen issues are concerned, I don't think Apple has a bad track record compared to other companies. Which first gen products were bad?

<comment><USER26> The big ones in recent memory are the Apple Watch Series 0 (which got obsoleted unusually quickly) and the 2016 MacBook Pros w/ keyboard and screen flex issues (I keep mine almost-permanently plugged in so it hasn't been an issue for me, yet)

<comment><USER35> What issues did the first gen AppleWatch have? Mine was fine through last year.

<comment><USER26> As someone who had a S0 (in steel!), the battery died _very_ quickly after a year or two and it was impossible to actually use any apps on it because loading them took forever.

I eventually upgrade to a S3 and was very happy with it, although I don't think I am rushing to upgrade, yet.

<comment><USER35> Yes, apps sucked in it for the most part. My battery held on for a long time, maybe because I ran it to zero a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Would it be possible to design a macbook that has both an intel x86 processor and an ARM one? Sort of like how we turn off the discrete GPU when not needed. Too expensive or too complex?

<comment><USER35> Actually existing Macs sort of have both, given they include the T2 chip which contains the same ARM cores that were in the iPhone 7.

It's actually not the cost, though having two functional CPUs would cost more. How would it work? How much time and effort would go into building the hardware so they could interoperate and the OS to make it usable?

Just a massive amount of complexity for very little gain. Apple's Rosetta2 will already run x86 code with very good performance on Apple Silicon, in MacOS as a MacOS app. Hundreds of dollars per Mac cheaper, and far less complex to integrate.

<comment><USER37> This could be fun to make work. Processes would have a flag for x86 or arm, and only be scheduled on the processors for that type of processor.

Most likely pick one processor architecture as native for the kernel in, and the other one has just enough kernel to trap system calls and call into the native kernel, and switch tasks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Seems like there is a pretty straightforward decision tree that one could create by rearranging these questions: Is this business or pleasure? Do you just run windows on it (as I've seen CEOs and COOs do)? Are you a developer? For binary linux builds (including docker)? For iOS? For Mac? Or Java? Do you have a build farm running on the various platforms and OS you support? Do you target just one specific platform and are you already cross-compiling or building on a remote machine? Do you need to debug binaries locally? Do you require a particular piece of software for your job? Is that software available for an ARM Mac?

I think if a person isn't qualified to answer these questions for themselves, then that gives us enough information to recommend that they buy an ARM Mac. ARM is the future for Apple.

<comment><USER39> The main thing, based on what we know now, is that virtualized (or Bootcamp) Windows is a non-starter. That's not to say someone won't figure out how to do something hacky with a Surface Pro build or something, but basically no.

Other than that I agree that if you need a system to write/debug MacOS apps that run on Windows, you probably need a MacOS system if you don't have access to one.

Otherwise, if you need a new system, get an ARM and just deal with the migration pains.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> The great unknown is of course how the Arm based Macs will perform vs Intel models.

Thinking back to the PowerPC to Intel transition then the step up in performance per watt was enough to make the MacBook Pro a very, very clear winner - I don't think that many people were wishing they had bought a PowerPC laptop. There is clearly the potential for this to happen again.

Apple clearly doesn't want to "Osborne" its existing range, but if the gains are only marginal then the justification for the change becomes quite weak.

If you depend on x86 for Windows or for server development then buying a Intel Mac will give you what you need. For everyone else - especially buying a laptop - I would have thought that at least hanging on, if you can, would be a sensible option.

<comment><USER21> > I would have thought that at least hanging on.

it happened the same to the Sega Saturn / Dreamcast, the MakerBot, and the Osborne Computer in the 80s. Customer delayed buys, because a new and disruptive product generation was coming.

That effect is named as Osborne Effect since the 80s. Let's see what happens with the upcoming Macs.

<comment><USER41> It's made all the more interesting by the current MacBook line. For the first time in a very long time it's a good lineup and is close to the 'good, better, best' of the olden times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Shouldn't there be a leasing program for computers?

So you can have the latest model every 3-4 years, give it back if it breaks down and get a new one pronto, and just pay monthly instalments (with some premium) instead of the whole upfront fee.

<comment><USER43> There are programs like that. For example [https://h20386.www2.hp.com/AustraliaStore/Merch/Offer.aspx?p...](https://h20386.www2.hp.com/AustraliaStore/Merch/Offer.aspx?p=leasing)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I need Windows and macOS support, so it'll be Intel for me. I'm working on a Hackintosh right now, so hopefully either x86 is supported for a while, or we can get ARM-based Hackintoshes before the deprecation of x86 macOS.

</comment><comment><USER45> This reminds me of the decision to not support Adobe Flash on the original iPad. It was a huge inconvenience to early adopters but eventually changed the face of the internet.

I wonder what effect ARM Macs will have on other x86 based environments like Windows and Linux. Will we start to see a migration from x86 to ARM or will we retain the split? Ubuntu and Arch have ARM distributions but I can't build a gaming rig out with ARM. It's mostly non-upgradable integrated systems. Will that change?

As an iPad 1 early adopter I would hold off on getting an ARM Mac immediately. Within a year half of the apps in the app store wouldn't work for various reasons. I wouldn't be surprised if that happens here.

</comment><comment><USER46> This is a question that comes up regardless of huge paradigm shifts like changing the CPU architecture. Don't worry so much - what you DO on the computer is much more important than having the latest spec. Intel Mac's will be relevant for almost 10 years, based on my experience with the PPC transition.

<comment><USER47> My experience with the PPC transition was definitely not that. A 2004 PowerMac G5 lost basically all software support and required community involvement (the likes of tenfourfox) to even get a competent browser by around 2010. Snow Leopard released in 2009 and didn't support PPC Macs.

That said, I think the Intel transition will likely be slower. Apple has said they plan to keep releasing Intel Mac's and there's certain things (discrete GPU support?) that might motivate them to do so.

That and upgrade cycles on desktops/laptops have also slowed quite a bit in the last 15 years.

<comment><USER46> I retired my G4-based Mac from everyday use in 2009. I don't recall having major issues. But I suppose it depended on what you were doing. I was doing mostly web, Java, Python at the time.

<comment><USER48> I traded in my iBook g4 around then. It was just too slow and it couldn't keep up with basic things we all take for granted. The laptop was the fastest around when it came out but everything changed so quickly that decade. Not being able to stream video at any resolution higher than "low" was the final straw for me.

<comment><USER46> For something that lasted about 9 years, I'd say that was pretty darn good value for money, at least it was in my case. This led me to continue buying Mac's until today, mainly Mac Mini, Macbook Air and Macbook Pro's. None of them have given any issues except the GPU issue on the 2015 MBP, which was sorted out by Apple. I notice that people complain a lot about Apple quality having gone down, but one also has to realize the complexities of their hardware went up quite dramatically, along with their ambitions to change everything now and then (the keyboard flop comes to mind).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I think it is really a very simple question: do you want to run the software you have now, at the fastest speed possible, with all the current defects? If so, get an Intel machine now. If you want to be able to do future, different things, wait for the ARM machine.

Personally I would use something like an Apple Chromebook. Long long battery life, more secure (from hardware support like the trusted enclave, microarch stuff like tagged pointers, and the OS moving towards unpriviledged applications and code signing), better iOS integration.

I think we're actually overdue for Apple to offer cloud offload processing, especially for iOS, but maybe offload to the edge (your macbook) becomes easier with ARM.

</comment><comment><USER50> Given that the future of mac software will clearly be arm I don't see the point of buying intel now. Unless you plan on replacing it before transition period...but even then the resell value will presumably be shocking by then

<comment><USER51> Given that rMBPs from 2012 and 2013 command a huge premium right now...

You'd basically have to believe that Apple is actually serious about it's non- iOS offerings and is actually committing to perftecting the hardware and software to a degree that we haven't seen in a decade.

Remember when Apple "invented" the trashcan workstation that was going to revolutionize the world of desktop computers? People might prefer to have trusty tech that supports all the software written today and more or less just works instead of incredibly ambitious but half-baked and de facto abandoned tech from tomorrow.

If you take into account that a lot of the impetus behind this transition is so they can reuse their hardware/software stack from the iOS world, you'll see that it is quite a leap of faith to take.

<comment><USER50> >you'll see that it is quite a leap of faith to take.

One that Apple is clearly willing to take. Do you really want to bet against that?

Full disclosure though - iphone aside I'm not in the apple world so my opinion may not be particularly informed

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> > Apple has demoed Rosetta 2 with apps and games, and shown that there's no > apparent difference between running an Intel app on an Intel machine versus > an Apple Silicon machine. Everything works as you'd expect, but if > performance is important to you it may take some time for all your software > to be updated to support the new processors.

Marketing fluff or what? Because if they are emulating x86 on ARM, doesn't there have to be a performance issue? Unless they built their ARM chip with lots of suspiciously x86-looking functions?

<comment><USER53> It's non emulation really. Emulation is like JIT. Only converting code as its running. So emulator and the code have to run at the same time.

This time they are doing AOT — converting the entire app at once ahead of time. Slow to start the first time, but decent speed after. Without the source it is not optimized, but still faster than emulation.

<comment><USER52> AOT / recompile...

Ok, that makes more sense than straight emulation all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you are building stuff on Apple ecosystem and you can wait, better to go for ARM.

Otherwise, why do you want to wait? I don't think Apple is going to drop Intel support anytime soon.

</comment><comment><USER54> If you can wait, then wait. That should always be the motto when buying a mac anyway. But even more so now.

You will either get the Arm, or get a fantastic deal on an Intel mac.

<comment><USER31> That should be the motto for everything.

The odds something will have a newer/revised version in the future is higher.

<comment><USER54> Every now and then it's extra true though

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> The list of things stopping me going to ARM-based macs:

\- OCR software for my scanner (admittedly becoming less and less relevant over time) \- Fortinet VPN client which is intel-only \- Steam library (still on Mojave because half my games won't work on Catalina)

I can resolve the Steam library issues by getting a dedicated computer to be my games computer, but then that it an extra thing to carry on long trips.

</comment><comment><USER56> It highly depends on your use case, If your work require Mac extensively [iOs app dev??]and you also require mobility with device, I will suggest to buy 1-2 year old Mac laptop. else if mobility is not concern, try using Hackintosh based system. There are many known well working sets of hardware combination discussed among hackintosh community.

</comment><comment><USER35> I would like to switch from my 2018 Mini to a 16 inch MBP, I miss being able to code anywhere in the house or being able to code elsewhere while waiting for kids.

But it's not a need yet, so trying to hold on till Q2 2021 when the 16 inch ARM MBP is due. Not worried about buying the first version, Apple has always nailed these transitions incredibly well in the past.

<comment><USER57> Why would you expect that Apple ARM is going to get close to i9 performance of 16" MBP? Nothing from benchmarks shows that.

All the Apple ARM benchmarks I've seen is that they're competitive with MacBook Air class offerings and not the high performance CPUs.

<comment><USER35> Best Benchmarks

MBPs with i9s:

Single Core: 1,119

8 Core: 6,900

A12Z (iPad 12.9 inch)

Single Core: 1,118

8 Core: 4,626

A13 Bionic (iPhone 11)

Single Core: 1,327

6 Core: 3,384

Neither of these ARM CPUs will be used in Apple Silicon. It will be an A14 class chip. It will be significantly faster due to

1) New 5 nm process vs. the older 7 nm process.

2) Greater thermal headroom ie they will be able to use more power in laptops and desktops than in tablets/phones.

3) More cores

It is expected that Apple Silicon will have at least 12 to 20 cores, and more for high end desktop versions.

4) GPU integration

The current A13 has an Apple integrated GPU that's reputedly much faster than the Intel integrated GPUs. The 5 nm process will provide many more transistors for even faster GPU performance.

My expectation is Apple will have a family of Apple Silicon SOCs next year that start around 1,400 single core, and with multi-core starting at 7,000 and going over 20,000 for 30 or 40 core desktop versions.

They will probably include T2 functionality and more, further reducing power draw.

Also remember that i9s are $200-$300 each. A13s are around $100 each.

MacBooks will get the benefits of longer battery life, faster CPUs & GPUs while also being as much as $200 cheaper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Sorry to be boring, but I am wondering about how Arm Macs are going to get on with Microsoft Office. With my mac users their most used applications are Outlook, Word and Excel. Somehow I can't set them getting the same level of support as Adobe is getting. I'm interested what other people think?

<comment><USER28> Considering that they demoed Powerpoint and Excel in the keynote, I would assume, that Microsoft is going to offer Office natively from the start on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> For work, I expect we will buy some Intel Macs, but for myself, I'll probably go with the ARM since I do some Mac App programming. That whole need Boot Camp or x86 Windows is a powerful need.

Question, can someone hang a x86 off the thunderbolt port to help with virtualization?

<comment><USER60> > hang a x86 off the thunderbolt port

What does that mean?

<comment><USER61> I think they're asking "can you hang an entire x86 system off of Thunderbolt like you can an eGPU, and then have x86 binaries execute there?"

Which, no? Probably? If your goal is to run Windows, it'd be cheaper and easier to just buy a Windows box and then screenshare into it.

<comment><USER59> I was more thinking of a Stick without the graphics or I/O. Kinda like the old coprocessor card in some of the early PCs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> It depends on what you're buying for: if you're a professional you buy what runs your software when you need it. If you're looking to play older games under Windows, buy Intel and see how the transition goes to see whether you need to buy a PC next time.

</comment><comment><USER63> I'd say: If you have to ask, then don't early adopt, even if it's obviously the future.

I advise against buying 1st-gen/Rev A. hardware to begin with. It's almost always quickly replaced by something much much better.

</comment><comment><USER64> The promise of ARM based Macs is delaying my next laptop purchase for a single reason - battery life. I want to see the battery life metrics of their new devices, depending on that I intend to decide.

</comment><comment><USER65> Does anyone here have a good source for how fast vector instructions (AVX2 and the like) will compute under Rosetta2 on the Arm-based Macs vs the current x86 Macs?

<comment><USER66> Rosetta 2 doesn't support AVX.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I'll hold out until Apple decides the iPad format is good enough for MacOS

</comment><comment><USER68> I'd buy an Intel mac from 2015. The modern ones all have their well-documented problems. The ARM based macs will almost certainly have a small period of instability and incompatibility when they first launch, just like the Intel macs did.

<comment><USER35> The current MacBooks (Air and Pro) are easily the best they've ever made, and have addressed all key complaints from the 2016 redesign.

<comment><USER25> What do you think of the keyboard? I'm still lovingly holding on to my 2015 MBP which has keys that actually travel. For context, the last new Mac keyboard I tried was the butterfly variant.

<comment><USER35> Lots of people actually liked the 2016 keyboards, less travel is fine for many people, including me. The real problem as the susceptibility to debris breaking keys, and not being easily fixable.

So the new MacBook keyboards seemed to have the debris issue licked, and a little more travel. That's all I need, but if you want more travel I can see it's not there for you yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Of course, the question is a false dichotomy.

Now is the perfect time to switch to something else entirely.

The Ryzen laptops with Linux are beasts and even Windows might be a good developer workstation with their Linux subsystem.

<comment><USER70> That time to switch depends entirely on the target demographic, though.

It might be fine for your web developer type or casual user.

Professionals, however, have a lot invested in certain platforms. Be it the ability to publish their work (e.g. Apple's Walled Garden requires you to use a Mac for publishing to their app stores), workflows established over years, or investment in hard- and software that are tied to the Mac ecosystem.

Switching to something else entirely is of course always an option, but it's not always a realistic or sensible option...

<comment><USER69> In my book a professional that marries a given platform so hard is no true professional. Although it might seem oh so sensible and realistic to give into even more strings to be attached. It should give these professionals pause if they are so utterly dependent on a system.

There are also quite a lot of professionals that could easily switch with some minor inconveniences.

PS: I find it jarring how you are associating the casual user with a web developer type.

<comment><USER70> > I find it jarring how you are associating the casual user with a web > developer type.

How so? Both don't require any special hard- or software environment and in principle only need an environment that provides access to a modern browser (and optionally some tools for office, graphic editing and the like).

You can use cloud-based services like REPL.it to fulfil all your development needs in the browser. Backends are available in the cloud and all your source code lives there anyway. No need for beefy local hardware or any particular OS.

It's the ultimate platform-agnostic development activity and thus your OS or hardware shouldn't matter - just like it shouldn't matter for casual users; every mainstream and even many niche OS these days are usable enough for everyday tasks and running modern browsers.

If you think it's somehow degrading to say that modern web development doesn't require any more hard- or software than casually browsing the web, watching movies, or editing holiday pictures, then you completely missed the point.

It's actually great that you _don 't_ need expensive workstation level hard- and software to do web development and that - in principle - an iPad with a keyboard will do.

<comment><USER69> >> I find it jarring how you are associating the casual user with a web developer type.

> How so? Both don't require any special hard- or software environment

Because you're implying they're not professionals.

Requiring specific hardware / software doesn't make one more professional.

The entirety of Java developers are using cross platform tools. Are Java developers not professionals?

More to the point, all the major IDEs are Java based and you could run them on Linux too.

<comment><USER70> > Because you're implying they're not professionals.

Don't be ridiculous - nowhere did I imply that. If you feel that way, that's more projection than anything else.

<comment><USER69> > Don't be ridiculous - nowhere did I imply that.

You did imply that:

> It might be fine for your web developer type or casual user.

> _Professionals_ , however,....

"However" means "on the other hand" and it looks like you emphasise professionals.

> If you feel that way, that's more projection than anything else.

Could have also been a Freudian slip from you.

<comment><USER70> By "professional" I meant self-employed people who make a living from working with their computer. This should be clear form the context, but alas that's among the things that go by many people these days.

You chose to ignore this meaning of the word and decided to be offended instead. Fair enough, but not my problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Maybe latent Osborne effect?

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

</comment><comment><USER71> Buy a Ryzen today

<comment><USER69> +1

The Ryzen 4800h is the biggest leap in terms of CPU power for me since the Core Duo days. My 2015 MBP seems quite slow now.

And the Lenovo Legion 5 was less that $1000!

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Will this break VMs like Parallel?

<comment><USER73> Yes, until they update for ARM support (they will not run Intel VMs anymore).

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> I am guessing here and hoping some can correct me if i'm wrong: Existing Mac Intel applications need to transitioned to ARM applications and will be either: A) recompiled (buggy) or, B) emulated (slow).

My options are: 1) ARM - which will be buggy or slow immediately or, 2) Intel - which will have problems 5-7 years when Intel apps no longer supported... and by that time I'll be ready for a new computer anyway.

So, Option 2) is the way to go??

<comment><USER75> They are recompiled by Rosetta at install time, leaked benchmarks indicate it's not slow.

<comment><USER76> This puzzles me. Why don't they just recompile the projects to ARM and go with fat binaries? Stop emulating things. It wastes power. Plus the compiler toolchain already exists.

<comment><USER62> That's what they announced, and it's trivial as you'd expect from a company which has at times supported 4 architectures (32/64-bit PowerPC and Intel). Rosetta 2 is for the apps which don't do that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


I did my wedding invitation website in Angular2 and TypeScript, check it out - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/amcdnl/angular2-demo <comment><USER2> Please don't take this as being negative - It's not my intention.

It's great your learning an up and coming framework - BUT - this is exactly what is wrong with modern day web development / developers.

Although it's a lovely page, there is no reason to use a framework like AngularJS 2 for this. Nothing about this page couldn't be done with pure html / css and a bit of javascript for the form. Point being - programmers are always so quick to jump on the latest tech to do what could be done without it.

That aside - looks good to me! The parallax is a bit flickery in Chrome latest but it's "ok".

<comment><AUTHOR> @lsiunsuex, I absolutely agree! Probably the most over architected page like this ever haha.

In fact, it made it MORE difficult by far to use A2 for this and I knew that was going to be the case going in.

This was purely a demo project to experiment with this new technology and wanted to share the results!</comment></comment>