As someone who just bought a completely maxed out 14" Macbook Pro with an M5 Max and 128GB of RAM and 8TB SSD, it was not $10k, it was only a bit over $7k. Where is this extra $3k going?
Tangential, I bought a nearly identically-spec'd (didn't spring for the 8 TB SSD - in retrospect, had I kept it, I would've been OK with the 4 TB) model, and returned it yesterday due to thermal throttling. I have an M4 Pro w/ 48 GB RAM, and since the M5 Max was touted as being quite a bit faster for various local LLM usages, I decided I'd try it.
Turns out the heatsink in the 14" isn't nearly enough to handle the Max with all cores pegged. I'd get about 30 seconds of full power before frequency would drop like a rock.
I haven't really had a problem with thermal throttling, but my highest compute activity is inferencing. The main performance fall-off I've observed is that the cache/context size to token output rate curve is way more aggressive than I expected given the memory bandwidth compared to GPU-based inferencing I've done on PC. But other than spinning up the fans during prompt processing, I'm able to stay peak CPU usage without clock speed reducing. Generally though this only maintains peak compute utilization for around 2-3 minutes.
I'm wondering if there was something wrong with your particular unit?
CPU performance was acceptable; GPU was the one was that falling off a cliff.
Re: particular unit, I’m not sure - it was perfectly fine during anything “normal,” and admittedly, asking a laptop to run at 100% for any extended period of time is already a big ask. But it’s possible, I suppose.
I’m waiting for the Studios to get the Max and / or Ultra, and will reconsider if I want one, or if I don’t really need to play with local LLM at this time.
I think that's an incredibly reductionist and sarcastic take. I'm also in Product, but was an engineer for over a decade prior. I find that having strong structured functional specifications and a good holistic understanding of the solution you're trying to build goes a long way with AI tooling. Just like any software project, eliminating false starts and getting a clear set of requirements up front can minimize engineering time required to complete something, as long as things don't change in the middle. When your cycle time is an afternoon instead of two quarters, that type of up front investment pays off much better.
I still think AI tooling is lacking, but you can get significantly better results by structuring your plans appropriately.
Glad to see I'm not the only person that this bothers. I've been to more than 75 countries, to 43 US states, more than 2500 breweries, and I have drank more than 10k unique beers. Many beers styles should be correctly served in different glass shapes than a standard pint glass, but short pours are endemic, especially in the United States and in Canada. I always appreciate when I get a pint at a bar and see that they're using actual imperial nonic glasses with a pour line at 16oz/568ml.
This is a bit surprising to me, but I've only ever rented in Europe. In the US, though, it's common to get discounted pricing for paying cash, usually 2-3% reduction in price as that's what they pay for card processing, otherwise anyone will take a card and everything is done with free estimates in writing up front, signed contracts, and payment due on completion. I can't imagine what you're describing in this thread happening in the US, that's a great way to get sued into oblivion as a tradesman.
I literally just had my roof repaired recently, by a reputable(by all accounts) company, it was recommended to me, good reviews on checkatrader......not cheap work either, about £3000. I asked the guy if I can pay by bank transfer and if he can give me an invoice - he said yes and yes. The work was done really well, so I had no issues - until I had to pay, the bank transfer was fine, but turns out it was to his...partner's private account? And the invoice came from a completely different email and was just a word document with "Invoice" and "roof repair- £3000" - that's it. No address, no nothing.
I wish this was a singular occurance, but every trader I ever worked with behaves like this. They are all allergic to paying tax on the money they make.
The 0.08 BAC limit also has no basis in reality for what impairment is. It's a political reality, not a scientific one. MADD and other organizations lobbied to make this a legal limit across the US and many other jurisdictions around the world followed suit.
That's not to say that anyone should drive after drinking, but the basic reality is that impairment is often individual, and cannot be directly measured by blood alcohol content. Many people are impaired with a lower BAC than 0.08, and in many states you can now be charged and convicted of DUI even if your BAC is not beyond the legal threshold on the basis of purely circumstantial evidence.
There's no good answer here, because we need cut and dried evidence in our legal system to prevent abuses, but there's not really good ways to do that. Separately, the leading cause of accidents is no longer drunk driving in most parts of the West, it's inattentive driving due to cellphone/electronics usage while operating a vehicle. Younger generations don't drink as much as older generations, to the point that zero-percent alcohol spirits and NA beer are now becoming broad markets and it's dramatically affecting bar/pub culture, but younger generations nearly as a rule are addicted to their smartphones.
That's the BAC of a healthy male an hour after drinking 2 light beers. That is an absurd limit to set in stone, however there is plenty of evidence to show that /some/ people are impaired at 0.05 BAC.
Ultimately it really amounts to a battle between people who want to operate off fuzzy logic and reasonableness and a people who want to use totalitarian enforcement. There is definitely a significant government-funded (and activist pushed) take where /any/ amount of alcohol /any/ time prior to driving is dangerous, which is obviously stupid and incorrect.
People should not drink and drive, they should not drive while impaired in any capacity, whether its from their prescription medication, a drink, a joint, or simply a lack of sleep. There is also absolutely nothing wrong for a normal healthy person to have a single glass of wine over a steak dinner and to drive home, which will not in any way physiologically impair you.
> There is definitely a significant government-funded (and activist pushed) take where /any/ amount of alcohol /any/ time prior to driving is dangerous, which is obviously stupid and incorrect.
Driving itself is dangerous. Acknowledging this is obviously smart and correct.
And while I'm sure that you can drive safely at 100 miles an hour, or after five beers, some objective standard has to be drawn somewhere. If the line were drawn at 0.16, someone would no doubt chime in to explain about how they've got it fully together at 0.17.
Sure, but that's a strawman of my position. I'm not saying we should not draw a line, I'm saying that drawing a line is required due to how our systems work (in my earlier comment), and then in my reply to /reducing that line which was already nebulous/ I'm pointing out how ridiculous that reduction is. There are people who are impaired at 0.05 BAC. A normal healthy adult male is not. Like many things you can think of them as statistical distributions with outliers. If you slide the BAC level you consider legally impaired (regardless of actual function) you shift how many people will fall in the distribution above the line but without meaningful impairment.
I'm not making some radical point here, I'm speaking basic reality.
Your assertion this was an American pressure group which didn't form for over a decade after the rest of the western world introduced explicit restrictions is just the brainwashing of American exceptionalism.
Every single one of the 50 states had to individually sign laws because there is no national law about drunk driving, and MADD was instrumental in the 0.08 legal limit becoming law in the United States. That's a well-founded assertion.
Why is a bucket of dehydrated food specifically targeting the stereotype/strawman you are constructing? Costco sells buckets of dehydrated food, and Costco is what comes to mind when I think middle of the road middle-class America. Do you think it's unreasonable to have a bucket of dehydrated food and enough water to last a week?
As someone who lived through the "Snowpocalypse" in Texas in 2021, had no power for 11 days and no water service for 6 days, I was very thankful that I had a backup source of indoor heating, a couple of boxes of MREs, and clean water for a week as just part of having good disaster preparedness, as well as the mylar emergency blankets I hung by fishing line from my ceiling fans so to help create a warm space for my family. All that stuff is just part of a prudent approach to disaster preparedness that anyone who grew up in the middle of the country and has a house would do.
I know quite a few people who you'd write off as "preppers" that are not consumed with fantasies of a zombie apocalypse, but are instead wanting to ensure that their family is taken care of with basic necessities, vital medication, and a set of viable contingency plans when you lose power, water, etc for days or weeks.
Also, nobody but the very wealthy have "hundreds of guns". Guns are expensive. Guns hold their value. Guns are an asset in some communities. But they are expensive, and therefore even rather serious gun people have tens, but not hundreds. I'm probably more of a gun nut than the average, and I definitely do not have "hundreds of guns". To even store "hundreds of guns" safely (e.g. safe from theft, if not for other reasons) I'd need enough money to build a dedicated room in my house just to hold them. "hundreds of guns" is an armory, not a collection. I'm in the top 1% of wealth in my community in Texas and used to shoot competitively, so I'm more of "gun nut" than average, and I can't even imagine owning "hundreds of guns". That's such an outlandish fantasy strawman you have in your mind, it's nothing close to realistic.
You're really just smearing people with stereotypes in this thread that have no basis in reality, and it's clear you're completely unprepared for the reality of what life is like anywhere in the middle of America, much less in much of the rest of the world.
Well for one thing - you'd get by a lot better with beans and rice and a functioning garden than overpriced dehydrated meals. And what I'm referring to by buckets (that is a lot/years supplies) of dehydrated food and who is being targeted are companies like this https://www.mypatriotsupply.com/pages/about-us
"We’re taking steps for survival for what we all know is coming. Today." I mean, come on.
Maybe I'm just beating around the bush too much - what I'm making fun of are people that are "prepping" for the end of the world. It is a silly (and strictly American, I imagine) fantasy to think that you're going to ride out the end of days sitting on a pile of guns and MREs. That is who I'm making fun of, and yes those people exist.
Well, even though I am in general sympathetic to and even a proponent of disaster preparedness, there are undoubtedly people preparing to “ride out the end of days sitting on a pile of guns and MREs.” I have brushed against a few in my life. I count them as useful idiots, because now I know where there’s a pile of dehydrated food, if push comes to shove.
That said, I am convinced enough of the decay of western civilisation in general that I moved to a remote island nation and built a self contained off grid community, so I guess I am actually the extreme case of prepping. That’s certainly true, in a way, except it’s where my daily food, water, and power come from, and I am surrounded by a thriving community of family members and good friends. I honestly never thought I would see a cataclysm within my lifetime, so this was a legacy project for me, but it seems I may have been optimistic lol.
But I do agree with you that there are some nutty fruitcakes out there that are actually hoping for something bad to happen so that they can have their moment of glory, I suppose? It’s actually kinda sad.
I would say though it is uncharitable and even foolish to portray everyone who doesn’t have complete faith in the continuity of our Jenga Castle, especially in the context of recent events.
One of the principles of HN is to take the strongest meaning of an argument, instead of the weakest. I am not casting everyone who prepares for a disaster into the same bucket - I have specifically said I think that people who are attempting to prepare for the literal end of the world by stockpiling supplies are silly.
There are IMO a very small set of circumstances, out of many likely full collapse scenarios, where your average American (and make no mistake - I am specifically referring to Americans here) stockpiling junk is going to actually survive for very long.
This has nothing to do with faith in our society or institutions just that is uniquely American to think that you can buy your way out of any circumstance you can imagine.
> Well for one thing - you'd get by a lot better with beans and rice and a functioning garden than overpriced dehydrated meals.
The lived reality of the "Snowpocalypse" says otherwise. "A functioning garden" doesn't produce food when it's 2F (-16C) outside and there is a foot and a half of snow on the ground. Beans and rice require soaking/washing and cooking at high temperature to be edible, dehydrated food does not.
I have beans and rice on hand always as well because they're staples in my diet, but it's ridiculous to consider them comparable in the situation where you don't have power (e.g. no way to heat food easily) and the weather makes the outside dangerous and not conducive to gardening/food production.
You're just doubling-down on a strawman, and it's frankly utter bullshit. Be better.
FWIW, Airlines are actually great /if/ you're a frequent flyer. I get great service from United on the phone and did so previously from Delta, but in both cases I was a frequent traveler and so they automatically route your call into a better queue with better trained staff.
I'd like to recreate this benchmark using Qwopus on my M5 Max. I am curious if the theoretically improved reasoning capabilities from distillation improve its scoring. Adding this one to my to-do list for some point in the next few weeks.
I've been doing a lot of experimentation with Qwen3.5 models locally, and I've found for other tasks that the Opus 4.6 distilled versions of the model ("Qwopus") tend to perform better for other tasks. But this is mostly based on the quality of output, not necessarily from a performance perspective. I'll report back once I get around to running the benchmark. I'm also interested in applying local AI tools onto my local security setup (built on UniFi).
I just received one report that UniFi is using RTSPs, one fix is to loosen the RTSP string pattern, a release version is uploading ( 0.2.7 ).
I'll find one UniFi camera to test secure RTSP streaming.
I tried to run the benchmark just now and ran into some issues. I have screenshots of the misbehavior. Do you have an email address I can reach out to?
My experience with customer support with every major company has always been a miserable one. The fundamental problem from my perspective is that if I've decided to call support that means I've already exhausted any other alternatives, and most likely my issue is one that explicitly requires human intervention because I've found myself wedged into a crack in the self-serve systems. I'm not particularly bothered by waiting 15 minutes, but what pisses me off the most is that when I finally do get a person they're also not empowered to do anything except read to me from a script that is word-for-word identical to the documentation on the website which was written by Legal instead of someone technically competent.
What I really want is something like https://xkcd.com/806/ to be a real thing. In a fit of irony, the one time I got somewhere useful was when I called Comcast/Xfinity. I was able to isolate a problem with my connection to an aggregation router in their network that was not very far away from me, and I happened to know was in the middle of a major public construction zone. I actually managed to get someone on the line finally who could direct information to their network engineering team and it was discovered that there was a partial fiber cut caused by the construction and it was repaired a few hours later. It's hard for me say anything positive about Comcast, but I was pleasantly surprised that day that I was able to get information to someone who could do something with it, even though it was not exactly the smoothest process.
Most companies you just run into a competence wall. Generally speaking, I am not calling because I don't know what to do or don't understand something (unless its a lack of understanding in the sense that the company's process is utterly stupid and therefore incomprehensible). I'm calling because I fully understand what needs to happen, I've thoroughly investigated my issue and identified an appropriate outcome, and I have a good understanding of the systems involved. I simply lack the necessary access to make it happen and resolve my issue, so the customer support line is simply a gatekeeper. In the infinite cost-cutting wisdom of miserable bean counters everywhere, customer support has been so disempowered in most cases that they are then gatekept from actually doing anything also, and are often bottom-dollar workers in cheaper third-world countries, so also lack the competence, context, and care to actually effect any positive outcome even if they have the access.
Realistically, customer support systems are not customer support systems, they are legal compliance systems that are designed to find the cheapest and most defensible way to tell your customers to fuck off after you already have their money.
Unfortunately, my experience with customer support at various companies matches exactly your description.
Having heard many other similar stories, I assume that this is really how nowadays typical customer support is, so anything else, if such a thing exists, is a rare exception.
I used to be the top-level support escalation at a company, and I made sure to brief all the tier-1 support personnel to escalate directly to me any call using "shibboleet" Sadly no one ever used it.
The company had "Nuclear" in the name, and our average customer had at least a masters in physics, so maybe not the typical support situation. But in at least one case, it has been a real thing. It doesn't work at AT&T and Spectrum, I've tried.
Guided missile launchers are weapons systems, because the projectile and the launcher each are a component of a complete system which requires significant technology. This is in contrast to a firearm, which has all of the technology in the gun and not the ammunition (for the most part) or more simply a knife or sword.
I suppose I'd say: well, no, a gun's ammunition does something significant, but also even if that disambiguation were necessary in a particular circumstance, this article is not that.
As someone who just bought a completely maxed out 14" Macbook Pro with an M5 Max and 128GB of RAM and 8TB SSD, it was not $10k, it was only a bit over $7k. Where is this extra $3k going?
reply