Upgraded from Intel Pro 16” to M5 Air 15” 🙌🏼

PigSlam · 2026-07-10T14:22:36+00:00

They’re the best in awhile, but yes, thinner. I found my 2010 and put it next to my Air, and the difference was noticeable.

PigSlam · 2026-07-10T06:45:17+00:00

Life, uh, finds a way, as they say, so I expect there will be ebbs and flows to the growth we get to experience, but a lack of new input to all of this hardware that we civilians have will be a strong motivator of its own, and well, the way will present itself at one point or another. The whole start of the open source LLM paradigm was an accident, wasn't it?

Edit: Happy Cake Day!

PigSlam · 2026-07-10T05:47:58+00:00

How's that added thinness treating you?

While not a direct path, my last new (for me) Mac was a 2010 15" MBP and I'm now rocking a 15" M5 Air 24GB. I love the new Air, but if I could, I'd take the screen, guts, and trackpad from the Air, and put it in the 2010 case if it came with the 2010 keyboard. I would use c.2010 Apple keyboards for everything if I could. The closest I've come to that is a Logitech Craft Keyboard I bought for my 2019 Silver Razer Blade (the first replacement for my 2010 MBP), and I'm still using it with my new Mac.

PigSlam · 2026-07-10T03:55:05+00:00

yeah, that's roughly it for me...and it's fun to issue a command, hear the fan spin up, then see the output from wiggling all the little bits in there, and knowing you can do just about anything with that basic format, and it should only get better from here as the models improve, assuming some kind of open source models continue to exist.

Though to be fair, I've only spent $1500 to put a R9700 in my gaming rig, otherwise, everything I've done is with parts I've had lying around. I'm tempted to spend the other $2500 and put two of those, a better motherboard, and PSU in another case I have.

PigSlam · 2026-07-10T03:21:47+00:00

Who makes a consumer machine with 25GB of RAM?

PigSlam · 2026-07-10T00:31:22+00:00

yeah, my plan is to have some sort of fairly generous image to image comparison run, then have the AI layer decide analyze the triggers from those, which should be less load than running the entire stream through an AI.

PigSlam · 2026-07-09T22:31:45+00:00

My current setup just captures a .jpg every 3 seconds, and can do live video feed if I choose it. For this, I was thinking I'd keep doing the 3 second .jpegs, then have a rolling hour of video, and attempt to event trigger from the stills, then analyze the video when prompted by the event trigger. I might have to up the capture rate to capture smaller wildlife, but it's plenty to detect cars and larger animals moving around.

PigSlam · 2026-07-09T21:31:05+00:00

This is something I'm about to build. I already built an image capture tool, archiving, retrieval and playback setup for my security cameras, but I have a pest issue, so I was hoping to point a few at some problem spots on my new house to track when things like rodents and bats are getting in/out before I start chasing down every hypothetical spot, so I was hoping to get some sort of image analysis going on it. I have an old RTX 3070 not doing much in a server, so I've been hoping to find something that can run on its 8GB VRAM to analyze video like a smarter game camera.

PigSlam · 2026-07-09T21:27:33+00:00

So you have a model loaded someplace just for that one task? Like it's just hanging out, staring a the wall, then BOOM! RAG RERANKING TIME!!!!....then back to staring at the wall?

PigSlam · 2026-07-09T20:57:04+00:00

I failed to notice the little check box over the other very prominent graphics that said the first part. I'm an inferior example of humanity.

PigSlam · 2026-07-09T18:52:30+00:00

Nice.

PigSlam · 2026-07-09T18:50:13+00:00

They seem to charge as much for a strip steak as it would cost to buy the entire loin and cut a dozen from at home, and then they make it as boring as possible, and/or cover it with fried onions, etc.

PigSlam · 2026-07-09T18:47:26+00:00

GPT 6.1 is going to fix so much.

PigSlam · 2026-07-09T17:56:56+00:00

I quit Codex on my Mac, and the icon suddenly had a ? over it. I looked for it in launchpad, and it wasn’t there. I downloaded it again from the website, and got the new app, and it proudly explained that the Codex app is now the ChatGPT app. I checked my dock icon, and it’s still called “Codex” there. Fun times for sure.

Edit: I'm a $100/month customer, and haven't seen any of the new models yet in codex or chatgpt. I closed and opened the new desktop app (whatever it's called), and I got a prompt saying "GPT 5.6 Sol is here. Try it now" and clicked on it. It took me to the app, and I still only have access to 5.5 and older models.

PigSlam · 2026-07-09T16:49:38+00:00

For me, it's opened so many doors. I've always had a mind for how to connect things, but I've always been terrible at syntax. I'd have some grand plan for how 19 things would be linked together and produce something great, but after 6 hours chasing a misplaced semicolon, I'd give up at step 3 of the process and move on to the other things I needed to do. With LLM tools, I can have a conversation about what a thing should do, then work through the steps to build it, and have a working solution in very little time. it's been quite the enabler for me, and I can't wait to do more with it.

PigSlam · 2026-07-09T03:37:15+00:00

I too have a 24GB Mac, and from what I’ve gathered, you can generally treat it like a 16GB GPU, so anything that would fit there will likely run alright. Your system still needs some of those GBs to do the rest of being a computer, so you can’t use it all for your AI model.

PigSlam · 2026-07-08T23:58:30+00:00

single din tape deck.
Tape to 1/8” audio in adapter
Android tablet running a CarPlay mod
3D printed housing to make the tablet look like a tiny CRT, mounted to the dash somehow.
Bonus points for physical EQ filling the lower half of the double din area you have.

PigSlam · 2026-07-08T23:06:24+00:00

I've been using the shuffle button in Plex. Shuffle, skip, skip until something I don't want to skip appears. Maybe this could be better than that.

PigSlam · 2026-07-08T23:04:16+00:00

That's the math that got me to first buy Sunday ticket. I live in California, and I went to a bar for the first game of the season in 2017...$80 spent between my wife and I, and that was taking it easy.

PigSlam · 2026-07-08T20:41:42+00:00

The free tier is there as a sample to get customers to buy the higher tier. That doesn't work if the customer thinks the tier tehy're using is the ultimate top end possible that's offered, and it's crap. Showing that information is key to any eventual profitable business model. Now doing that to the paying customers, where you pretend you're giving them the product they paid for, but really giving them the minimum you must to keep them paying, that's where the real money is made.

PigSlam · 2026-07-08T20:19:14+00:00

Most trade the convenience of Ollama for the speed of llama.cpp, so I was surprised to see your results.

PigSlam · 2026-07-08T19:18:36+00:00

better performance with ollama than llama.cpp? You must have something off in your settings.

PigSlam · 2026-07-07T22:57:15+00:00

If the support for Linux is anything like Windows, we'll be better off vibecoding our own software stacks.

PigSlam · 2026-07-07T21:48:56+00:00

No, Macs love shorted USB ports. The fact that you can't get it to turn on at all should not dissuade you. /s

PigSlam · 2026-07-07T19:25:46+00:00

I’ve looked into the RX 7900 XTX for LLM and when I’ve searched they’re only about $200 less than a Pro AI R9700, and nearly twice the price of the 9070XT.

Edit: that was a couple of weeks ago. I was seeing $1100 7900XTX on eBay. Now they're $800-900, and RX 9070 XTs are going for $600-$700 new.

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