I never thought I’d be saying this, but I order from Walmart+ whenever I can - it’s often cheaper than Amazon and often has same day delivery.
The other places I check are Best Buy for anything new and Newegg. They often are equal to or beat Amazon’s pricing, and returns with Best Buy are easy.
Walmart+ has a Paramount+ subscription I’ve logged into exactly once - to claim some $10 new signup deal.
I don't have walmart+ but walmart has the same $35 free shipping thing as amazon. And I usually get walmart stuff much faster than Amazon, unless there's a third party seller involved.
YMMV, but $900 for no crapware is a price I would happily pay. We don't watch TV in our house, so haven't updated it in over a decade, but our next "TV" will be a monitor.
We did purchase a Roku stick a couple years ago, but they wanted credit card info during the set up, which I thought was BS for something that I just wanted to use for our existing streaming apps -- so we never used it.
They would have needed controllers and actually cared enough to support steam on it.
There is zero chance Valve would release HL:Alyx without full steam support on the device.
That being said, I get what you're saying - that a killer game could have helped the value proposition. They clearly didn't design it for that though, even based on how much lower their refresh rate is for hand tracking.
It feels like a consumption device like the iPad, with some productivity mixed in.
The irony is I can use steam link with an ipad. On top of that I can use it as a second monitor for when I am on the go among some other productivity. From what I saw with the vision pro, nothing compelled me in that department. And I have to agree with you, not having some sort of controller interface was an additional no go as well.
The more I hear about it the more convinced I am that we should only allow IP to be held by individuals (and make it non-transferrable). Instead of selling your idea to some company you could instead just sell a promise not to sue them for the duration of your claim (which I'd be fine setting to your natural lifetime under this system).
I really just think that repealing the system that imposes artificial scarcity on ideas would be the best at this point. It doesn't encourage creative work. No one decides to make art because they want to own its likeness. Tons of people have certainly stopped or decided not to start because we aren't allowed to stand on the shoulders of previous generations anymore though.
I wish every software developer who talks about "fair use" in software licensing would learn the first point they make in the video - fair use is a defense for infringement, it has to be argued in court.
This is a survey from gamers. There are a lot of games that only work on Windows, or work much better on Windows.
It's only been somewhat recently that games that support Linux have exploded in numbers. Somewhat coinciding with the release of the steam deck and the massive community it brought with it. There are now launchers for other stores for Linux and more every day.
Still, a lot of gamers don't really have a choice but to at least dual boot into Windows if they want to play some of the most popular games (Fortnite, for one).
It's because you can run native Windows games on Linux with very few issues nowadays, not because developers started porting their games to Linux more often.
Not supported games are mostly online multiplayer ones, and are using extremely intrusive anticheat rootkits. Fortnite is a great example of that. Anticheat devs refuse to support Linux for obvious reasons (too many ways to escape the rootkit).
Your both right. The answer for how you're both right is Proton. Many more game makers started testing their games on Linux in Proton/Wine/Steam to make sure they run on Steam Deck (and other Linux), but they (mostly) aren't native builds.
I wonder how many gamers now run both Windows and Linux. I bet it's a high percentage of Steam Deck owners. ~100% of Steamdeck owners run Linux (they have a Steam Deck), but some proportion of those, which I'm guessing is fairly large, also has a Windows gaming rig.
HN is a large international community with people from many walks of life, and the vast majority have no connection to venture capital or anything like it.
Is it any surprise that people are unhappy that a service they pay for is degraded so the provider can make more money, or they can pay more money for what they were already getting?
If your salary were reduced unilaterally, would you accept that because you make enough?
Obviously an anti-consumer move is going to upset consumers, even on a venture capital forum.
It's a price increase, probably due to inflation, which Amazon is benevolently not imposing upon consumers, who like ads, or don't care about ads.
I'll tell you what I am upset about though. Where's my one click buy button? That's an example of a degradation you couldn't pay your way out of. Amazon used to let me buy things with one click. Now it's three clicks. If I could pay to get that experience back, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But that's not even a choice I'm granted. The whole point of money is to give us choices. No point in raging against the system working as intended. If you truly cared, you'd be rallying support to bring one click back.
"Having enough money" and "thinking something is worth what it costs" are absolutely not the same thing. I'm sure many here could easily pay thousands for Amazon Prime; sure as shit doesn't make them "hobos" for not doing it though.
Maybe it has to do with despise for subscriptions for all the little things which add cognitive load, especially in the presence of bundling. It just evokes a natural "fuck you" reaction.
This is what Framework set out to do (and is pulling it off so far...I'm typing this out on my 12th gen framework). They have an entire marketplace of replacement parts you can buy, including screens.
They've even got battery upgrades (increased capacity), better speakers, new screen type (matte) that you can retrofit into your existing Framework.
They support upgrading from their first gen laptop (admittedly they are a very young company, but their promise has held up thus far).
Hopefully more folks that are interested in upgradability and repairability are purchasing frameworks to show other companies that it's worth it to do (I'm unaffiliated with Framework, just a customer).
I just upgraded RAM(4 -> 12 GB) and HDD to SSD of a 8 years old laptop and it became a lot more responsive. Laptops now a days are not upgradable and companies claim they are doing so to build lighter laptops but framework is proving all of them wrong
> and companies claim they are doing so to build lighter laptops
A framework 13" is 15.9mm thick and weighs 2.9 lbs. A macbook air M1 is 16.1mm thick and weights 2.8 lbs. So it's pretty darn close.
I'm sure that thinner and lighter laptops exist, but yeah, the framework is pretty thin. And at a certain point, it stops mattering. Being thinner wouldn't really provide much utility at this point.
The fact is that repairability is just not profitable for companies like Apple or Dell. They would rather you replace your entire computer when your screen cracks. But I very much hope that enough people do care about repairability to keep Framework afloat (and profitable). As an owner, I was astonished how easy it is to take this thing apart and replace things; I would guess that most of my non-technical friends can probably replace a monitor or a touchpad on one of these laptops with very little difficulty.
I’ve got a framework 13, and am in the “I wish I just bought the MacBook Air” camp.
The battery life is terrible, the speakers are terrible, the thermals are terrible. It may be thin and light, but the different levels of R&D really show.
FWIW, I'm a recent owner of a Framework Laptop 13, 13th gen 1370p. I am extremely happy with it. w/regards to battery life, I'm doing ~4.5watts idling/text-editing, screen on, wifi on. That is more efficient that I got out of my 5850u I had before this. I get about 9ish hours of battery life. You do need to run things like thermald, tlp and set the lower tdp setting in the bios (max battery setting lowers the tdp afaik). Fan barely turns on. I could probably take it further with ectool tweaks. Edit: to add, powertop is your friend! measure. Anything above 6watts usually means something is doing something (this ball-park 6watts comes from experience, last 3ish devices - anything lower than that whilst doing things == great. I do about 8ish watts when using VA-API to play video for example, which I find very reasonable + similar to my previous 5850u).
It is currently - tried a couple of distros (arch, Ubuntu) with different combinations of the recommended (and other) tweaks. Windows seems to sip battery compared to both.
It’s scale, too, isn’t it? At Apple scale you get better materials, better engineering at every level, and better testing processes—for the same or less money.
I admire Framework for achieving what they’ve done, modest though the success is in absolute terms. That said, they’re also probably still burning venture funding. Hardware disruption is hard.
The tradeoff is that the Framework's battery life is garbage. I had laptops a decade ago with 2x the battery life. I'm lucky to get 3 hours of battery doing web browsing, and standby/hibernate on the Intel processor in it is so bad that it'll fully discharge in less than 12 hours doing literally nothing.
I really want to like it, but my Framework is literally a worse user experience than my old 2016 Macbook Air and it's probably 3x the price at this point. Playing even a lightweight game makes the fans ramp to a frustratingly loud level and I essentially have to keep it plugged in at all times.
It's also hard to express how oddly problematic having a 4x3 display in 2023 is. Almost literally nothing expects that.
Yeah, I'm with you on the battery life. Though I don't understand where you get the 12-hour figure for a full discharge while in suspend. In that time period I lose about 20%. (If you're running Linux, try changing from 's2idle' to 'deep' sleep; not sure if it's possible to change this on Windows.)
The thermals are indeed terrible. My 12th-gen has this issue where it will sometimes overheat, and the firmware will lock all CPU cores at 400MHz (yes, MHz) for anywhere between 1 and 20 minutes, even though temperatures drop down to reasonable levels within seconds. Support has been completely unhelpful, and Framework doesn't even seem to be acknowledging the problem (which has been reported by quite a few people on their community forum).
The display is actually 3:2, which is just bonkers. At least 4:3 would be somewhat reasonable (if very mid-00s), but who has ever had a 3:2 display for anything? I kinda get why they decided against a widescreen display: the mainboard needs to be 'taller' to accommodate the RAM and storage slots and the spacing for the expansion ports, and a 16:9 or 16:10 screen would mean a 'shorter' chassis, which would lead us to a much smaller battery. But man, the screen is just weird.
The Framework 13's screen is not 4:3, it's 3:2 (2256x1504), just like a Microsoft Surface Pro 9 (and others). 3:2 is widescreen-ier than 4:3. I had a Surface from work and found no issues with using a 3:2 aspect ratio, so I'd be baffled if the user experience with the Framework differs. Most (all? I kinda stopped caring) iPads, incidentally, are 4:3.
I wish something like Framework could be more popular so it could be easily available on other countries. As is, the impact something like it is small. Hopefully this changes at some point.
It's still very new and working out the kinks in the concept. I wouldn't expect it to take off in the current state. The videos they've done on Linus Tech Tips (Linus is an investor) keep me optimistic about their prospects.
What I really appreciate with Framework is that they have little kits that let you repurpose the old insides of your laptop when you upgrade the processor or SSD.
That's a nice touch that means you're not just throwing that stuff away.
It adds a lot to the cost, and I am not protected by the New Zealand consumer laws in case something isn't right with the product. Way too risky for my liking.
I'm a Kiwi (now in the UK) and you're absolutely right. I always avoided forwarders because: no company warranty, no consumer protection, etc.
Forwarders are just grey market. Good for cheap items, but not so much for devices.
I miss the Kiwi attitude & the paradise on Earth environment, but I certainly don't miss being left out of the rest of the world, no easy access to products & services and long shipping times besides.
Rails seemingly handles it the same way as Laravel and it all makes sense very quickly.
The argument here that you would end up with 'addresss' is silly as you can also quickly handle that with a new inflection and it rarely even happens in practice.
Also, to be pedantic, rails handles this just fine by default:
irb(main):001:0> "address".pluralize
=> "addresses"
Honestly, it's been fine. It turns out a lot of other retailers have almost caught up to Amazon with choice and some even shipping speed.