I don't disagree with anything you said. If you not the comment to which I was replying, I am addressing the specific point that the M1 was a revolutionary boost in performance, which it was not. Apple's Pro stuff (Intel) at the time was a year behind everyone else on specs. When their Pro stuff came out - sorry, but even the M2 isn't "Pro" anything.
What I am doing is comparing top of the line from Apple, to top of the line period. And consistently, Apple is always behind on workhorses, to get work done. They are better in your "light quiet slightly longer battery" category. At 50% more cost. The free laptop from work - I want the most powerful portable thing available. For personal life, now way I'm paying the Apple tax. So - no use case in my life. I do always get my wife iphones and macbooks though. She teaches languages to little kids and I don't want to spend my time helping her with tech stuff, so the Apple tax is worth it. But never for the hardware - just for the walled garden and fisher-price UI for kids.
The Precision is not light, but that's because it's thick metal that you can run over with a car, and extremely durable. No one complained about a thinkpad being built sturdy. For the use case you describe, an XPS with an I7 at the time was super light, got about over 10 hours of battery life if you just did regular office work (no compiling or large data processing), and has similar specs. I used to take that with when I'd go internationally. It absolutely did not get hot - the key was to turn off turbo boost if on battery by setting max CPU at 99%.
The thing is, if we compare pricepoints, you could have a Precision for the cost of an M1, and now you have desktop power on the go. It's not super-light, but it's still light and thin enough to put in a shoulder bag and not get neck pain.
Yes, a company sign-on bonus being dependent on staying with the company for a set time, is not only a reasonable arrangement - it is the most common type of sign-on bonus. Any 2-year interest-free loan is a great loan, and you can turn that into about 10-20k just by putting it into a treasury bond or an HSA. Have you ever, in your life, received a sign-on bonus?
They call it a loan, because it is a loan. Just like PPP was called a loan, and forgiven on a predefined condition.
I hear myself fine. I hear myself observing some people who I believe have not had a professional job in sales or presales, never had a sign-on bonus, never received stock options, and are calling a great thing bad, and being outraged on behalf of some rich asshole playing victim. I hear myself laughing at some people who have no clue about the subject matter, but like to create fake anger and outrage online, so they could feel superior by painting "evil" all around them to avoid dealing with the actual reason for their own failings - themselves.
>There is a thing that we all by convention understand
yes, and by we all you are including people who don't deal with sales bonuses, presales bonuses, or sign-on bonuses. the takeaway here is if you don't understand something, don't start talking like an expert and correcting people about it.
what do you call the most common type of sign-on bonus - stock options that you lose if you don't work there for a couple of years? is that a "benefit?"
Benefits come with the job. A one-time benefit based on some criteria is called a bonus. Yes, a chunk of cash is also a bonus. A Cash bonus. This was not a cash bonus. It was the most common type of sign-on bonus that exists - one that is only fully realized if you stay with the company for a certain time. And you're free to not take it. But you can't take it and complain it's somehow a scam.
repeat after me - loans at 0% that you may even get forgiven after 2 years, are not predatory. they are The best loan you are able to ever get - the opposite of predatory. and someone giving you the ability to take this great type of loan, for the event of signing on, is giving you a bonus. Put that 100k in a 5% HSA for 2 years, give it back, and you just got 10k in cash. Predatory loan. You people will twist and turn reality just to double-down.
Yes, the interest-free loan with possibility of it becoming a grant is a bonus. At a job, a bonus is an extra benefit outside of base compensationn.
But that's not what you're arguing here, is it. Since there is no actual argument you can make here, you're making up added details that make you right, then attacking those made up details.
"but somewhere deep in the fine print" - there is Zero chance the bonus recipient had no idea that this loan is only forgiven is he keeps his employment. Zero. Companies give bonuses - more commonly as stock options - that can only be cashed in if you keep your employment for a certain length. Literally every C-corp does this. In fact, the bonus described here is more common than the "here's some cash, even if you're no longer working here tomorrow."
"If the company touted "free food" - and again with the making stuff up. There was no free food. In your example, the company offered you $500 in cash to use as you please, said you'll have to pay it back if you get fired within two years, and you said thanks and took the money. Then you got fired.
Douchebaggery is making stuff up about a scenario because you have no actual argument in the scenario presented. Watch a lot of newsmax by chance?
ah yes, a predatory loan is a a loan where you pay no interest, have a chance to have it forgiven, and at worst just return the original amount almost 2 years later, gaining the inflation amount.
so any bonus that is not just cash in your pocket is not a bonus? what is the correct word for a really good freebie that a company gives you? you know, a great minimum reward, a possible much bigger reward if you are one of the top performers, so you have an incentive to perform.
Let's say you pay $5 for a lottery ticket, where you're guaranteed to win $5 but can win $100. Is it predatory and unethical to you if you don't win the $100?
Wait, so the fact that banks offer loans to people, which they don't have to take is predatory then? The 0% APR for 2 years offers I get in the mail are predatory? This indeed must be terrifying for you, since those terrifying zero-interest offers of credit are in every store you go to, every bank you go to, and omg even in your own mailbox.
So again just to be clear what you're saying. A loan with interest is ok. A loan with zero interest where you might get a chance to have it forgiven if you are a top performer at work, is "incredibly predatory and terrifying?"
And by the way, for a guy selling his house for $3mil, having to give back $100k that he knew he might have to give back, after using it free for almost 2 years, is not "a massive loan." My wife and I spent $80k on refugee aid last year, and I don't have a $3mil house. It was an unplanned expense, but it changed our other spending or lifestyle in zero ways. It just means last year we didn't save as much for retirement as the year before.
The people making and passing these laws are 70-100 years old and not only have no idea what encryption or p2p is - they start deleting their gmail emails in their browser when their laptop pops up an out of space message.
My favorite goto in these discussions - the Australian PM saying that the laws of Australia override the laws of mathematics, when talking about encryption. You heard that right an old bald guy who doesn't know how to use the second mouse button because mice don't have buttons - they have ears and a tail - is legislating to break AES256. You just have to pass a law to break it you see, and then the math law will have to obey the overriding Australian law.
Here's the thing though - that's not what this is all about, and these old hags have a very well-versed body of people behind them pushing the agenda. The reason the old hags sound like clowns, is because they are puppets with clown makeup. The goal here, is exactly what you said. Prohibition of encryption, because the people in power want more till they're kings, and they want to see everything you do so they can stay kings. In reality, none of this is meant to be enforced. It is however meant to pile up bogus charges and remove you from the public eye where you can make noise against them, once they decide to remove you for any other reason they want.
This is exactly on point, but it has nothing to do with dating apps. The article claims dating apps are "soul-destorying" yet the first example it gives is of a woman solidly into her menopause who gave up on dating apps because she likes clubbing and one night stands instead of relationships.
There are low effort dating apps to get laid. To get laid, people don't want to put in a lot of effort. To get laid with a young guy, gramma Does have to put in a lot of effort, and it probably helps if her young lay is flipped out on E at an illegal underground club in London, as opposed to sitting in an office on his break between presentations.
My wife and I met on a paid dating app. It took me a day's worth of hours to fill in my profile, and what my requirements are. For my match, I defined education level, minimal number of fluent languages and what they are, age requirements by race (some age faster, some slower), political views, religion, even the types of makeup they usually wear (none in my preference).
I got about 20 matches per week, and could only write my matches. There was no swipe, no "like" button. Only a text box. I went on a date with a phd student in english lit. I went on a date with a french-american doctor chick who graduated Stanford with an MD at 22. I messaged about 2 girls per week and always got conversation going, usually mutually deciding not to meet. I got messaged by about 2 girls per week, and always replied. I went on one date per week for 2 months and met my wife who speaks 4 languages, has a master's, and is 7 years younger than me. We did have some incompatible things, which were flagged in the match profile, but we decided those could be worked on and got married 6 years ago, 6 months after we met. The only photo she had on the app was the one she took for her passport.
But on this app I used, you would not only have to pay $25/month, it would be next to impossible to get a piece of ass and you'd have to invest hours in text and phone conversations before you met.
There are different tools for different things. This absolute crap article points out that you can't win a formula1 race in a uhaul, and calls automobiles bad. And it's blatantly obvious in their very first menopausal opening paragraph. The article is the bad app here, and that type of "reporting" is what is "soul-destroying" our society. Shame on them.
If you read the entire comment before replying to the comment, you would have your answer before you asked the question.
"They are free to ignore any request I shout at them"
I don't have any opinion on, nor care about their latest announcement to do with their hardware as they please. Their announcements are theirs and of no concern of mine. It's just a random website the has content duplicates available at a hundred more places. Bing video search has fifty times more results than youtube for example for any item I search.
Given that, of course, they're always going to show me their videos, because about a day after whatever change they make, software (that runs on my computer against my data) will catch up. They've made changes like this many times over many years. For about a week awhile ago the ads were not blocked and I stopped clicking youtube videos and just typed the title into bing and in 5 seconds played the same video from another source. Worked 100% of the time.
Sorry if that's not the gotcha you were going for.
This is false logic. Youtube is free to not show anyone anything - once they send me data and it leaves their system, they have no claim to it.
When I shout on a public street "sing me the Francoise Hardy version of I'll Be Seeing You," no one has to reply. If they do reply, but they decide to sing a 2 minute ad for a pyramid scheme first, I am free to cover my ears till the song comes on.
Google's servers have a public internet IP. I can "shout" a request to them. The data they send back to me, is mine to do with as I please. I am free on My computer, from the memory buffer on a RAM stick I own, to ignore some of the bytes, in My RAM change some of the bytes, or save some of the bytes to a file on my HDD. They are free to ignore any request I shout at them, but they have zero say in what I do on equipment they do not own.
So when I go to Australia I can click "download Australia" in google maps before I board my flight? Or does it still let you only download a little zoom square like it did in the year 2013 to which you are referring? Does search work in those maps as it Didn't back then? I specifically gave an example, you then purposely ignored most of what I wrote to create a claim I did not make, and then said that claim is false. Do you do this often? Word on advice - this works on fox news where people only see the out-of-context sentence. It does not work when the people who read your reply, first have to read what I actually wrote.
Now, speaking of reading, I unfortunately stopped reading after your first sentence. This is because you immediately made it clear you are not communicating in good faith.
You have a good day, and enjoy winning all those arguments you yourself made up. The adults in the room ignore people like you and just move on.
I don't use google search (most of the time) as it's inferior - it ignores what I'm searching for, and substitutes what it thinks I should be searching for - and it's been doing that for years. There were free search engines before there were ads.
I don't use gmail because why would anyone want to use gmail for anything but temporary throwaways that'll get spammed.
I don't use google maps. nokia heremaps and openstreetmap (I use magic earth) are better in most ways, worse in others. When I go to a different country, I click "download country" and have a fully searchable map. No, I don't want a map that needs a data connection. No, I don't want to have to visually search the map for the thing I'm looking for, because someone barfed up a salad of dots that are place ads for things unrelated to my search. Google maps is not usable to anyone who has used something else. People who always use google maps don't know any better.
I do use google translate. This does not support your argument, because that's a service that is free, and does not display ads. You saying that the current ad-free service will disappear if ads were blocked from it... Can't make the comment on here that I want to make, so I'll let you imagine <words>
Youtube... Who give a crap. There were sites with videos before, there are other sites now. No, no one can host a huge expensive platform like that for free. So how about the people posting stuff, pay for their stuff being hosted. Then those people can inline talking ads or put a coke can on their desk, in their videos. You know, how ads in videos have been done since the existence of the video format, in 1920 all the way up to right now.
Google products, google customer service, and google the company, are inferior to the competition in almost every way. Except for google translate. Which again - has no ads.