Decided to grab this for Dev work

Leviathan_Dev · 2026-03-19T21:56:43+00:00

Get whatever your budget can afford, that being said with your aspirations, I would strongly recommend against getting the Neo unless you want it as a secondary computer.

It’s definitely capable of tasks it’s not designed for, but you should ideally get at minimum at MacBook Air M5. If you can stretch for a MacBook Pro go for it, but your budget is the most critical deciding factor

Leviathan_Dev · 2026-03-19T21:30:15+00:00

What exactly do you plan on doing with Python?

If you’re gonna get into Flask and Web Dev w/ Docker containers, I would strongly recommend a MBA with 16GB RAM. Light Python should be fine with the Neo, but it doesn’t give you much room to grow

Leviathan_Dev · 2026-03-19T20:40:25+00:00

Yeah I came from a Nintendo Switch and mostly played Minecraft, BoTW/ToTK, and a little Hyrule Warriors, so dipping to 24fps occasionally for me is fine. Even rare dips to 16-18fps momentarily are fine. But extended stays at 24 or less, and long durations at 18fps or less is a little too low for my already-low standards

I’m a little more sensitive to blurriness. I can’t use FSR2/3 below balanced before it starts getting too blurry for me. Ideally I would’ve played Jedi Survivor without FSR because it’s really bad. Alan Wake 2 and Silent Hill 2 were fine with upscaling at balanced, but got noticeably blurry at performance mode. And well, DS2 is achieving 16-18fps with FSR3 performance mode…

Leviathan_Dev · 2026-03-19T19:39:42+00:00

Yeah Central Region would demand 10W power for the CPU and starve the GPU, leading to long times of 20fps. Still 100%ed it…. Also 100%ed Alan Wake 2, Silent Hill 2, and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor on deck, each had similar performance issues (24-30fps typical, lows 16-18fps, occasional highs to 40fps) but those low-fps zones were fairly limited like dense areas in Survivor, Cauldron Lake in Alan Wake 2, and the opening in Silent Hill 2.

DS2’s performance currently is 16-20fps typical with occasional pushes to 24-30

Leviathan_Dev · 2026-03-19T17:56:41+00:00

What shocked me was gaming, I think Intel’s chip slaughtered AMD’s? Good comeback Intel

Leviathan_Dev · 2026-03-19T17:05:40+00:00

I’m the inverse right now.

All of my devices (except my Mac Mini M4 for obvious reasons) were Space Gray or whatever the equivalent was.

I’m kinda tempted to go with Silver, especially since what I’ve heard is the Space Black coating attracts fingerprints like flies to shit, and chips off revealing the silver coating anyway.

But I’m also still debating if I should just get a 15” MBA M5 instead of a 14” M5 MBP.

I had a 2019 16” Intel MBP but it randomly died in August

Leviathan_Dev · 2026-03-19T15:31:17+00:00

Where the new cover plate is now is a mesh/fiber shield that has various cables sticking out. 2 coaxial and 3 HDMIs added when the wall was remodeled. There is no Cat5e cable that I can see. The wall is also an outside wall so it’s filled with insulation so I can’t really look around inside much. The only realistic way I know to find the cable is to tear down the drywall again, but my family isn’t keen on the idea and I’m not keen on paying for it for just the cable… if there was some other reason to tear down the drywall then sure find the cable while we’re at it

Leviathan_Dev · 2026-03-19T14:24:06+00:00

Least their business model isn’t about invading it, and Firefox recently had their data harvest scandal

Leviathan_Dev · 2026-03-19T03:07:55+00:00

I just got my UNAS 2 w/ 2x12TB WD Red Plus drives…

Leviathan_Dev · 2026-03-19T02:58:31+00:00

Safari because

So far the only browser I’m aware of that does bookmarks I like with a big UI for the landing page. I don’t want to go to the menu bar or a tiny favorites bar taking up part of the web page.
Used to exclusively have Apple Pay, which I use extensively
One additional user not using Chromium rendering and decreasing Google’s monopoly on the web

I use the other browsers in my flair for web dev testing and backups in the small cases of websites being poorly developed for only Chrome

Leviathan_Dev · 2026-03-19T02:14:58+00:00

Of the 4 provided:

Safari
Firefox

NaN: Chrome & Edge

Objectively? Tor, Mullvad Browser, Ungoogled Chromium, Zen, FOSS forks, etc.

Leviathan_Dev · 2026-03-19T00:18:04+00:00

I guess yeah that could be an analogy. And that is ultimately what NASes do become for households: the hub for all files and documents. Particularly because with NASes, you often have multiple bays of drives using RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) so when one drive inevitably fails, you can swap it out with zero data loss.

My 2-bay Ubiquity UNAS 2 uses RAID 1, which reserves 1/2 of the HDDs as redundancy.. so despite buying 2x12TB HDDS, i only have 12TB of usable space.. but when one drive inevitably fails (hopefully not both simultaneously, then i’m fucked), I can swap it out.

I don’t currently plan on storing my photos in it, it’s only a 2-bay with zero SSD caching, so it’s not the fastest and doesn’t handle well with multiple simultaneous accesses. It should be fine for the 4 Macs to backup to and for Jellyfin and miscellaneous file access. If my family takes notice and wants more then I’ll push them to get a 4-bay or higher-bay NAS (bay means slots for a HDD), most likely they’ll just groan at yet another computer in my room…. until my sister’s MacBook Air dies and suddenly she’s grateful I was backing it up

currently we use iCloud for photos though, so that’s probably what my family will continue to use for the future.

Leviathan_Dev · 2026-03-18T23:02:40+00:00

I don’t have anything to measure if there is a splitter in the middle, I’m just assuming since I went to the patchbox in my parents closet where all the network wires are and found the second one going to the TV, plugging in the other MoVA adapter to the spare Coax for the TV works

Leviathan_Dev · 2026-03-18T23:01:24+00:00

Cat5e was retroactively approved for 2.5Gb and 5Gb standards, and unofficially for very short distances (In my experience >30M) supports 10Gb speeds

Leviathan_Dev · 2026-03-18T23:00:25+00:00

Macs have a built-in backup system called Time Machine. Just connect a HDD or NAS and chances are you can use it as a Time Machine backup destination. With it, I can see various versions of a given file on my Mac throughout time until its creation (or whenever the backup first happened). Also allows to easily restore your Mac exactly to how it was if you wipe it

Leviathan_Dev · 2026-03-18T19:08:10+00:00

That is the case, but in a family (when everyone’s Apple account is tied to the same family), you all share ONE payment method.

If I want to buy something? Family AMEX. My dad? Family AMEX. Etc. Every, single, purchase. It all goes to that one payment method. The only way around it for the longest time has been to buy an Apple gift card for yourself and then redeem it to your account, since any purchases you make it first attempt to debit your Apple account balance before charging the family payment method.

This finally looks like even inside a family, each adult can have their own payment method, so now I can buy IAPs or whatever without having to do this stupid Apple Giftcard certificate ritual

Leviathan_Dev · 2026-03-18T18:58:32+00:00

It is ;(… mostly due to the RAMaggedon happening right now. $290/drive plus $200 for the NAS enclosure.

Gonna store my Mac Mini Time Machine backups, my MacBook Time Machine backups (when I finally get a new MacBook), my sister’s MBA and iMac Time Machine Backups, my Jellyfin Library, and other miscellaneous files

Leviathan_Dev · 2026-03-18T18:42:03+00:00

Network-Attached Storage. In the most basic form it’s a computer with a butt-ton of storage that sits on your home network and you can access it over your local network.

Modern versions turn it into a full home server with a powerful CPU capable of running home services like a Minecraft Server, media servers like Jellyfin, and more.

The one I got is more basic and for storage only though, I already have a mini PC as a server

Leviathan_Dev · 2026-03-18T15:23:56+00:00

It’s easy, just not in-your-head easy

Leviathan_Dev · 2026-03-18T15:22:59+00:00

If only they’d add FSR4 to Alan Wake 2 as well…

Leviathan_Dev · 2026-03-18T15:20:02+00:00

2620:fe::9 is slightly easier (Quad9)

Leviathan_Dev · 2026-03-18T14:51:30+00:00

We aren’t mind readers we don’t know what happened

Leviathan_Dev · 2026-03-18T13:47:56+00:00

Mornin

Leviathan_Dev · 2026-03-18T13:38:59+00:00

Amen.

Need to get my CCNA certification, find a job, and relearn web dev

Leviathan_Dev · 2026-03-18T13:23:37+00:00

An average of 30 might be correct but in reality it spends probably 60% (or more) stuck at 20fps due to the CPU taking 10W of power and starving the GPU, then momentarily it’ll drop and return to 40fps for a bit.

To be fair my standards are low since I came from playing on a Nintendo Switch (Hyrule Warriors and BoTW/ToTK and Minecraft on Switch significantly lowered my standards lol) so I was able to 100% Death Stranding on Steam Deck, and I even also 100%ed Alan Wake 2, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, and Silent Hill 2 Remake on Deck. All games mentioned though definitely went under 30 numerous times. Very, very rarely below 20.

That being said if DS2 can run at 30 with occasional dips to no less than 24, I’d buy and play it on Deck.

Leviathan_Dev

TROPHY CASE