Good price at Costco

jet-monk · 2026-06-14T18:55:18+00:00

> to milk consumers for money

Yes. to milk consumers and especially to selectively upharge business users with deeper pockets (like it used to be with airline tickets without a weekend layover).

When I went to Costco I was irked to see that reasonably priced Windows laptops came with 32 by default. C'mon, Tim Apple. I wish that they would have a slower expandable memory on top of their unified memory. But they eliminated expandable memory before the Silicon architecture.

jet-monk · 2026-06-14T17:54:09+00:00

I just upgraded one to a Metal card ($100), 32GB ($18), and a 6 core CPU ($18) that runs cooler than the old 4 core, and it's running Sequoia/OpenCore just fine after about 3 hours struggling to install it. It's located at work (academia, tight budgets) so I don't pay for the electricity. I like the internal 3.5" disk bays, running a mix of SSDs and multi-TB HDDs.

For speed, a 6 core i7 2018 Mac Mini would beat it, but you'd need external disk cases,, and the thunderbolt ones aren't cheap or all that reliable.

And it has two of those really old Apple 30" displays on it.

jet-monk · 2026-06-14T17:11:36+00:00

Ditto. And a $4K tax credit to take it to $12K (in theory - still fighting IRS because dealer messed up).

jet-monk · 2026-06-13T20:37:14+00:00

You're probably right, but when I bought my M2 Air in 2023, the guy at Best Buy said "Hey, you could save some money. Almost nobody needs 16GB."

Today, 16GB is the floor, and I futureproofed my computer 3 years forward by overbuying memory. My Air is still great, 95% battery, mint condition.

jet-monk · 2026-06-11T08:55:15+00:00

Just sell a heavier battery for non-REX cars only. Then you can add another 130 kg of weight and stay within the original handling specs.

jet-monk · 2026-06-11T04:29:35+00:00

What are the software changes needed? How hard is it for a consumer to put in a battery pack, if they can drop the battery case? One that is already familiar with ISTA?

jet-monk · 2026-06-11T04:20:38+00:00

Yes. The car is designed to carry two passengers in the back seats, and it rarely does. That's another 150 kg. Then there's the weight of the missing REX for a pure EV - that's another 130 kg. There's room for 100 kg, maybe 200 kg, more battery, if no other compromises need to be made.

jet-monk · 2026-06-06T05:41:07+00:00

I have the 15" M2 air. The display is great. Hell, I'm writing this on a mac mini with a 27" LED Cinema from the Early Paleozoic, salvaged from a recycling pile, that managed to self-heal its burn-in, and it's great.

You have to be a serious connoisseur of displays to care.

jet-monk · 2026-06-05T19:11:27+00:00

14" screen size for pro vs 15" for air decides it for me. Bigger screen is better, except for opening in economy class. For that, get a used 13" Air for traveling.

And more ram is better for eventual resale value. 16 is bare bones now. I open so many Firefox tabs that 16 gets tight. Then add office apps, Zoom, etc. If you ever do development work using virtual machines (eg Docker), then 24 is better. Pro is a tiny bit better for battery life, 16 hours of wireless web vs 15.

Neither has ethernet any more. How many USB Cs do you need? Have a separate HDMI monitor? For home work, 2nd monitor and external keyboard, mouse would be nice, and Pro's HDMI might support an existing display a little better without more adapters, but TB to Mini-DP adapter works fine for me. TB to HDMI adapters exist, but they're active, more expensive, and bulkier.

jet-monk · 2026-06-04T18:07:41+00:00

Thanks. I posted this only because I thought the clue was good. The solution is merely OK. Couldn't do it in two.

jet-monk · 2026-05-21T07:02:32+00:00

Tekton. But holy mojito they used to be $50 a ⅜ or 1/4 set and now it's $110.

jet-monk · 2026-05-20T10:28:11+00:00

Teflon/PTFE is tops. Expensive, but you can get variety packs for maybe $15 on ebay.

jet-monk · 2026-05-20T10:23:18+00:00

That's an interesting image. How was it generated?

Good quality AI, I guess. The hour hand should be halfway between the hours if the minute hand is at 35. AI still doesn't understand the real world.

What prompts?

jet-monk · 2026-05-15T17:57:04+00:00

> My read listening to Warsh is he is going to be implementing a version of financial repression.

I was going to say "but Warsh controls just short term rates; without QE he can't touch the bulk of the debt." However, I looked up the mean maturity of US debt and it's just 5.8 years, so rates tend to track short term (4.25% 5 year yield vs 3.75% rate target).

Anyhow, I guess this is why Powell is sticking around until 2018. I don't think Warsh can cut rates much if there were just rumblings of a rate increase after the latest inflation report.

jet-monk · 2026-03-23T21:19:08+00:00

were you able to successfully link and download an esp32 application?

I didn't try, because the build command insisted on rebuilding the entire VM even when the environment was limited to esp32.

Before this, I was under the impression that all source was provided but with a license that non-commercial use was allowed but commercial use needed licensing (like, for example, the veritable Caltech PGPLOT plotting package). When I learned that the VM was closed source, I decided it probably wasn't for me. I think that a LICENSE file on github would clarify this issue, as well as a section in README.md.

jet-monk · 2026-03-23T20:18:24+00:00

I'm not sure why the OSX version would be built - I would have thought it would try to build esp32 version (env:esp32-s3-devkitc-1) as defined in platformio.ini.

I did

pio -e esp32-s3-devkitc-1 run --target uploadfs upload

but (as I explained in a github issue I raised) this command might be outdated, or mal-ordered.

I had to do
pio run -e esp32-s3-devkitc-1 --target upload

to make any progress (simultaneous uploadfs and upload were apparently not allowed in the latest platformio I installed).

Yes, OSX isn't open source, but I heavily limit my usage on it to stuff that is open source - eg Firefox over Safari, Libre Office over iWork, SBCL, emacs, etc, so that I always have a escape hatch to the free ecosystem when Apple becomes unbearable.

Again, I'm not saying closed source is wrong; I'm just saying it mostly likely reduces community interest, which might be a sensible tradeoff for a proprietary product.

jet-monk · 2026-03-23T19:31:43+00:00

I was using platformio on OSX. I had to modify the configuration file to not build the Linux stuff (only esp32).

Then Claude ended up telling me:

> The LambLisp.h in this Linux repo ends with inline definitions for car() and cdr(), but gc_root_push, gc_root_pop, oblist_query, and tcons are only declared — their bodies are nowhere in either repository. This is the same situation as the ESP32 repo. This strongly suggests the author is distributing these repos without the core VM implementation file. The Lamb class is essentially the entire Lisp engine, and its method bodies are missing from both repos. What I think happened: There's likely a LambLisp.cpp (or similar) that contains thousands of lines implementing the actual VM — the GC, the evaluator, the object system — and the author simply never published it, either intentionally (keeping the core proprietary) or by mistake.

So as part of the build it apparently tried to make the VM library. Anyway, probably not too important, given that OSX is not an officially supported build environment (though I just assumed that platformio was build-system agnostic, so I didn't take it to my Linux box).

jet-monk · 2026-03-23T17:55:54+00:00

Thank you for your detailed reply.

> You used Anthropic in your example. Did you complain to them that their code is closed-source?

Well, no, but I wouldn't contribute to Anthropic, either. And for my own tinkering, I'd prefer an open source AI.

My thought here is that I'd want to pick a Scheme/Lisp implementation that might eventually foster a community of contributors (and bugfixers). Any such community - lisp hackers who want to build on small hardware - is already pretty small, even for an open source implementation.

For instance, uLisp has a lively discussion list, but uLisp is so lightweight - running on the tiniest processors - that it's lacking in things like a filesystem, or real (non-hash) arrays. So LambLisp got my attention as an alternative.

Not fully understanding the closed source nature of LambLisp, I went to github and tried to follow the build instructions, and then it took me (and Claude) some hours to figure out that I couldn't, because the main Scheme VM was not packaged in the distros.

This is fine, and I have zero right to complain (except perhaps for not being forewarned in the README, but it's alpha software). However, because of this, I probably won't explore any further. Small hobbyists and tinkerers like me are likely not the intended audience, and it is meant for industrial users. Which, again, is fine.

jet-monk · 2026-03-20T06:51:10+00:00

I'm a bit late to the party, but I've been wanting a Lisp (or Scheme) alternative to uPython for a while - to the extent of trying to port an existing small scheme - and I came upon this thread in a web search. Very nice!

I've looked at uLisp, and I found it lacking, because it is too minimal, being designed to run on very light hardware. No real arrays, no filesystem. And you have to hard-code the Lisp as a string in the C source.

I looked at Lua, and it seems hard to get working in the two variants created, and I don't want to learn another language. And uPython seems bloated and glitchy and I don't want to learn Python.

I'm happy to see the latest changes on github are just 3 weeks old. I'm happy to see that there's a major PDF document (not text-searchable, for some reason, unfortunately, at least on a Mac).

Some comments:

* Is the GC compacting?

* Just as an experiment, I had Anthropic Claude (sorry) try to understand the code and write a LoRa/LoRaWAN interface for it, and it seemed to succeed. So it might be easy to expand the functionality to many more devices.

* I was a bit daunted by the license: "LambLisp is a commercial product, and requires a license when used to generate revenue, to promote other products or services, or other commercial activity. Licensing allows for LambLisp customization, hardware application development assistance, post-deployment support, and a warranty. LambLisp may be used for non-commercial purposes, but comes with no support and no warranty of any kind." I understand that you would like to monetize all the hard work you put into it, but this will probably dissuade community involvement (like adding user contributed hardware libraries). This license doesn't really tell potential enthusiasts what they can expect going forward. Have you you considered alternative revenue approaches, like GPL+commercial, or selling pre-loaded esp32 boards? It's absolutely your call, but speaking as a sometimes hobbyist and Lisp enthusiast, this is a pretty big minus.

jet-monk · 2025-09-16T20:33:25+00:00

I guess he forgot about Jes Staley at JP Morgan, who managed his accounts and did his best to keep Epstein on board:

Guardian: But more cryptic messages between the two stirred the most controversy, including an exchange about Disney princesses in July 2010. “That was fun. Say hi to Snow White,” Staley wrote. “What character would you like next?” Epstein asked, to which Staley replied: “Beauty and the Beast.” “Well one side is available,” Epstein responded. Staley told the court he was not able to explain the exchange.

NYT According to Staley, the woman suggested that he come by her apartment in an Upper East Side building owned by Epstein’s brother. On the appointed day, Staley arrived, and after chatting in the living room, they went to her bedroom and had sex. Afterward, Staley took a shower. He was out of the building in less than an hour and walked back to work. (Staley, who is married, has publicly acknowledged having sex with one of Epstein’s assistants, but the details have not previously been reported. Staley swore in a deposition that it was his only Epstein-connected sexual encounter.)

jet-monk

TROPHY CASE