Qualcomm’s stuff is within single-digit percentage points of the current-gen AMD and Intel chips both in power usage, performance, and battery life

Back in June, the new Snapdragon X processors were a lot more efficient than their x86 based counterparts. I can personally attest to much lower levels of heat generation.

The problem is that the current tradeoff is that huge amounts of the software you’ve been using just does not work, and a huge portion of it might NEVER work, because nobody is going to invest time in making it behave.

I agree with the sentiment, but IMO this is a PC and Windows problem. I would also extend this beyond pure comparability. I say this for a few reasons

• I lose about 5% charge/day with my laptop asleep. It does wake up very quickly, but 5%/day feels like a lot. At this point, I don’t think Microsoft has a strong incentive to really optimize the kernal for efficiency
• Historic massive variability in hardware across devices also makes it hard to optimize efficiency, although the current crop of snapdragon x laptops seem to have less variability
• One of the strengths of windows is that it can run applications written 20+ years ago fairly reliably. There’s a ton of software that’s still floating around that hasn’t been actively supported in years. I don’t see all of these software companies desiring to port their code over, especially without guarantees that the market will adopt ARM (the Apple approach) or until they see the ARM adoption rate go up (the current Windows approach)

All that said, I’ve had zero issues with emulation so far. I never personally used a M1 max when they launched, but from reports of that era the current Windows experience is at least as good as that.

I own a Lenovo Yoga slim 7x Gen 9, which is powered by a Snapdragon X. It certainly checks the “good enough” box. I use it primarily for photo culling/editing (I’m a holdout dedicated camera user). It is more than fit for purpose there, stays cool, is slim, and although I know the fan has come on a few times I wouldn’t have known if it wasn’t on my lap. When I bought mine, it was also one of the better deals - you could upgrade to 32 GB of memory and a SSD for under $125 in total. The SSD also isn’t soldered, but the memory is. The 3k OLED display is amazing, but if you want the ultimate battery sipper it’s probably not the best choice. I still get tons of runtime per charge, but am somewhat sad that I lose about 5% charge per day thanks to the laptop not really being off while asleep.

The biggest downside is linxu support is very hit and miss depending on the laptop in question, which means you’re tied to windows 11. I don’t have the time to tinker with it, so I haven’t looked much further into it than this.

It’s not just the surface devices anymore. In June this year, a fresh wave of ARM powered laptops from a verity of different OEs launched. There are offerings from Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, Asus, etc.

It goes beyond this to the things people print. There’s a lot of… low shelf life dudads turned out by a subset of our community. For example, a coworker printed each of the ten of us a 4" tall Groot as a holiday present pre-covid. I bet most of those wound up in the bin. I totally get the hobby of collecting trinkets, but often wonder about the end state - it will all eventually need a new home or will end up in a landfil.

Plastic recycling is a fine idea, but in many cases the material winds up getting shipped overseas and burned. It’s also the least preferred option of reduce, reuse, recycle. It is cool that some filament companies are now accepting scraps, but that’s not very common (yet?). I also wonder how they deal with contamination. Sorting the different plastic types is difficult today from my understanding. That and low resale value is why plastics recycling is struggling.

All that said, I am a massive believer in functional prints. You can breathe new life into existing things and the things you create can be here for a long time.

No problem!

On Google maps, “CVS photo” will turn up if you search for it. I suspect staples can do photos too, I just haven’t used them.

As for Meijer vs Walmart, we haven’t set foot in a Walmart since we moved to the Midwest - not that we were doing that frequently before we moved here. I have no experience one way or the other with Walmart photo, but suspect most retail locations are probably fairly comparable. The market doesn’t seem that big anymore, so they might even be running similar equipment behind their branding.

All the time, three meals a day

Yup. It can also cause kidney stones..

Note that this normally wouldn’t be a problem, even if you eat a ton in one sitting sporadically, but if you consistently eat decent quantities of peanut butter you may rub into problems. A coworker intentionally at PB&J for their first three years after college to build up a nest egg and wound up in the hospital. Looking back, I wonder if this played a role.

Hi fellow photographers!

👋

Do you render your digital pictures on paper (print)?

Yes! We do the usual 4x6 stuff, make a yearly calendar that I think is 13"x13", and have a mix of larger prints (yearly family photo) and canvases (things that will be on the wall longer)

Do you use a printer in the home for it?

No, we use a mix of local brick and mortar, Shutterfly, and I think CanvasChamp

What printer do you use?

N/A, but if you’re looking to buy the thing to look for is a sublimation printer. This is what photo labs use. It will cost more than an inkjet up front, but will be much lower hassle with no no clogged nozzles.

It might be worth calculating the break even cost vs just using a lab though. I suspect a lab will be hard to beat unless you print a lot.

What printer would you recommend with cost vs quality in mind? (8.5 x 11 prints would be fine)

No idea, sorry :(

Do you send your pictures to a commercial printer?

Yes! See above.

Do you goto the nearest Staples or Walmart and use the printers there?

I have used both CVS and Meijer (Midwest not-walmart-walmart), but mostly for smaller batches where shipping doesn’t make sense. No real complaints, but their machines can be a bit fiddly.

You got a few good replies, but I just want to briefly mention build volume. Nearly everything I print is functional. Splitting prints into sections isn’t the biggest deal, but being able to print things in one shot is nice. Consider the size of things you’ll be printing and ask if you think you’ll be happy.

I’ve never heard of PCTG before. A quick Google search and I’ll probably be ordering a spool.

I’ve had similar experiences. PLA is very stiff, which also makes it brittle. I have quite a few functional PETG that have been going strong for years. Now that I can print ASA too, some of my newer functional prints are transitioning materials.

When you smooth you do give up some dimensional accuracy.

These days, I more or less exclusively print ASA and PETG. I would call the ASA tougher than PETG, but PETG’s ability to stick to itself when printing makes me prefer it for thin parts. In my experience, PETG also allows for more elastic (temporary/recoverable) deformation before the part undergoes plastic (permanent) deformation.

I still view it differently than being locked out of using actual OEM features of the car

Totally agree!

I do find this unsurprising though based on the metric fuckton of spam you get from SiriusXM after buying any new or used car from a legit dealer.

I’ve always wondered how much this costs relative to the number of takers they pull in.

I would love to teach kids. I take any opportunity I can to mentor people at work, but in a school setting would be super cool. The pay cut relative to what I make now just isn’t worth it. Maybe in another decade when we have enough set aside…

Teslas unlimited Internet package is also super cheap at $100/year the last time I checked. Competitors are multiple times more expensive.

SiriusXM does revenue share with auto companies.) Old article, but I’m too lazy to dig through a financial report or find something newer.

Tomatoes, beans, eggplants, and peppers that have already set are still maturing, but the plants are nolonger putting out anything new. The raspberry weed grew like crazy, so we should get a decent yield next spring. We pulled our carrots last weekend. I’m going to have to dig the artichokes out and put them who-knows-where for the winter soon, that’s going to be fun.

All our gourds are either not producing anymore or fell victim to powder mildew.

One of our potted strawberries looks pretty pissed off because I was neglectful with water during a dry spell. It will likely be fine. If not, we have two more pots of them.

I think I missed planting fall snap peas, but am tempted to do it anyway incase I get lucky. I will plant our cover crop soon and leave the dead/dying foliage that’s already there for the spring.

Hence my wonderment, lol. I meant more organizationally, but if you’re putting out a crappy product things probably aren’t great working there.

I currently work on software in automotive. Everything seems completely insane. We have tons of process and technical debt, executives that are super out of touch and all have their own pet projects, we have hundreds of executives so we have 100 number one priority pet projects, we have a very distributed hardware/software footprint due to the affirmationed process/technical debt, each vehicle has a different hardware footprint which means we constantly have to make our distributed software work when a piece of the software needs to be rebuilt in a new controller, etc etc.

There’s also the whole mess of trying to run agile at scale, managinga very distributed backlog, trying to balance priorities across teams that have to coordinate work, everyone leading with “how they want it” instead of “what they want”, total disregard for WIP limits, etc.

I know where I work is a shit show. I really wonder if it’s much better elsewhere. I also wonder if this place has always been a shit show and I just have more exposure to it now.

And yeah, alcohol. I’m trying to cut back but the mood here seems to violently oscillate between “this is OK” to “what the hell” and back again. We’re probably due for another swing soon.

Some days I do think about going back to waiting tables. It took me years of working elsewhere to stop having the waiting weeds dreams though…

Both are windows 11. It wouldn’t surprise me if the older laptop doesn’t support the new sleep state. I would personally trade slower wakeup for less battery use while sleeping. I don’t use the laptop every day and it’s kind of a bummer when I turn it on and find out it lost 20% of its charge between uses.

Even when it’s “shutdown” the Lenovo 7x slim doesn’t appear to actually be off.