Nov 6^th 2024 · 1 min read · #comeback #democracy #election #politics #trump #usa

Trump's improbable comeback ➹

I had a lot on my mind today (my recent change is taking a much bigger toll than anticipated), but this was, of course, inescapable, even for someone like me who abhors politics and never mentions it.

To my US readership: I didn’t get a vote. And I understand that the US is a deeply divided country, and that at least half of you actually thought using yours to bring this about was a good idea, somehow–in a way that I just can’t fathom.

The only thing I can say is that, from the outside, it was agony to witness his first presidency and how it impacted the world, and that it is fundamentally incomprehensible that you’ve allowed this to happen. Again.

I now fear the worst where it regards Ukraine, Taiwan, and the bubbling pot of madness that is North Korea, and see us all sliding towards a dystopian future where the US is no longer neither a beacon of democracy and freedom nor a reliable economic partner–and that will hurt everyone.

All the small town jobs, all the tech startups, all the farmers, all the people who just want to live their lives in peace, are now at the mercy of someone who has shown time and time again that he is not fit to lead a country, let alone the world, and who has in place a cadre of sycophants and enablers that actually have a plan to undermine the government apparatus from within.

And I am also very sad to read through the news and see that leaders in the technology industry are actually celebrating this.

But hey, stocks are up, right?

Too bad that will never help most of the people who voted for this.

Nov 5^th 2024 · 1 min read · #ai #edge #hardware #llms #m5stack

M5Stack LLM Module for Edge AI Applications ➹

I think this both vindicates my year-long interest in running LLMs on industrial “edge” hardware and signals that it’s time to step back and re-assess how to address that space.

3.2 TOPS isn’t exactly stellar performance when compared to what you can (nominally) get out of a RK35xx’s built-in NPU and way below the target for things like Copilot PCs, but the fact that we’re starting to get what is effectively commodity hardware at very low wattages changes the game a bit–AI is going to get cheaper and cheaper to deploy at the edge, and I don’t expect that trend to be limited to low-end hardware.

The stated compatibility with various small LLMs and the promise of future updates is commendable, but the real test (and hints at solution TCO) will be in short-term execution and software support, as always.

Nov 1^st 2024 · 1 min read · #acquisition #apple #editor #graphics #pixelmator

Apple Acquires Pixelmator ➹

Well, this came completely out of left field.

As someone who relies on Pixelmator daily since they shipped 1.0, I am happy for them, but sincerely quite afraid Apple will botch this–their track record with acquisitions is dismal (just look at how they gimped Shortcuts even as they folded it into the OS, how Dark Sky essentially vanished, and what happened to the AI startups they acquired).

To be honest I would be surprised if it still exists a year from now, and even more if it keeps shipping new features.

Nov 1^st 2024 · 3 min read · #apple #m4 #mac #mini #premium #ram #storage #upgrades

My Take On This Week’s Mac Updates

Since I’m changing jobs without even taking a proper break, I haven’t been able to take part in the blow by blow as Apple “phoned in” the Mac updates this week, but I still have feelings about them.

I must confess I have zero enthusiasm for the iMac update. But I did chuckle at Nilay Patel’s take on Apple’s latest work of art in the unlabelled charts space, and think it is a very good example of how Apple’s marketing can be completely out of touch with reality:

Excel productivity with the M4 — the unit is probably `VLOOKUP()`s per second

But re-focusing on the hardware, I found most of it meh. For starters, the iMac is not for me anymore (even if I did find the “desk cam” feature very neat), and the new Magic Mouse is still… just badly designed.

My years of using iMacs since the original, lovely G4 Luxo-like “lamp” and from then through the G5 and the 27” Intel i5 (which is gathering dust in a corner) have shown that the iMac is a flawed machine if you value long-term maintenance–and any sort of upgrade ever since the M-series machines took over.

The MacBooks are… nice, but mine is plenty good enough for quite a few more years, even if Apple Intelligence evolves apace (like I wrote the other day, it is very far from either useful or impressive).

the new, more compact mini — Power button included, but not shown because it was designed by the folk who did the Magic Mouse...

The new mini, though, is the thing. The M4 Pro models almost nail the sweet spot a few notches below the Mac Studio (which will, of course, move the goalposts again when it comes out), and I am very tempted to get one once I can scrounge up enough money to spare, since my M2 Pro is starting to feel a bit “tight” in terms of CPU and storage.

However, the mini remains a hostage of the Apple tax on storage and RAM.

I know how much 1TB of decent SSD storage costs–in fact, I recently bought four times that amount for roughly €200, and it just stinks that Apple still charges through the nose to have a decent base amount of storage built in and gimps the entry-level at 512GB.

The real story, though, is the baseline amounts of RAM–starting at either 16Gb or 24GB (for the Pro), they simultaneously remove the stigma of the 8GB entry-level and make the available upgrades (48GB for €460, for instance) seem like a rip-off.

This was definitely a conscious decision to make the base models more attractive while ensuring they will fully support Apple Intelligence (which will likely require your machine to have local models permanently loaded in-RAM), but the SKU tiering is still a bit too rich for my taste.

And, of course, having to pay a premium for a 10GbE network interface (with mini-PCs and €100 SBCs shipping with 2.5GbE) just sours this particularly cute Apple.

But hey, at least the Mac mini got a real upgrade, unlike the iPad mini. It is finally a machine free of most of its previous compromises, and if it weren’t for the power button being on the bottom, it would be perfect.

Nov 1^st 2024 · 2 min read · #career #consultancy #microsoft #remotework #travel

Back to the Grind

As of today, I am back at Microsoft Consulting–or, as it’s known these days, Industry Solutions Delivery, in the role of a Principal Program Architect.

And even with today being a local bank holiday, I already had two calls and have a deadline for Monday.

The first time it happened I completely re-vamped my office, the pace of things changed markedly and I finished the fiscal year pondering about how moving to consultancy and advisory was something that didn’t really sit all that well with the engineer in me.

I know I will go through all of those mindset changes again–a bit more willingly this time simply because I need to get my kids through college, although it does come with the bittersweet benefit of working with people whom I’ve known for a long time now.

The scenario is a marked change, again: Instead of doing niche technical stuff in the telco industry (AI-centric, but with very tightly focused use cases), I’m going back to large-scale, cross-technology program management.

And instead of doing it with US engineering and product teams for a global market (in the telco industry), I will be doing it with Western European folk for the “local” market–but cross-industry and focusing on improving our customers’ business, which seems like a great way to leverage the soft skills I’ve picked up in the intervening years doing startup advisory at Bright Pixel and the odd bit of industrial systems design.

So yes, there is going to be a lot of Excel (and Powerpoint) in my life again. And calls. And discussions about governance, processes, timelines, people and outcomes, with tech going back to being “just” an enabler and having to field a fair chunk of sales madness and constant, short notice pivots.

And it is going to drive the engineer in me absolutely crazy, because I really liked the engineering bits of my old role and I’ve always known what I like to do.

But things change, and these days you can’t just commit to doing bleeding edge technology in a niche. I’ve always been mildly skeptical of LLMs and where Generative AI is going, so even though I would love to do pure ML/AI work in a few very specific use cases where I know it makes a difference the truth is that there just isn’t an opportunity to do it outside the US.

And sticking to a single industry (especially one with growth pains) isn’t a good survival strategy, so this would ordinarily be a good thing.

The Travel Thing

Except that I am currently freaking out about the fact that, somehow, we’re back to the completely stupid idea that we need to have to take an assorted set of meatbags, fly them thousands of kilometers across a continent to a single location by leveraging the most time-wasting and environmentally-unfriendly processes known to our civilization (at which airports still excel), and then fly them back home after a set of meetings that could have been an email.

This is the bane of consulting, especially since it is still done at too short notice and without even considering the meatbags might have a life–and personal plans, and a family, a pressing need to unwind, daily, in the face of a stressful occupation, or just health issues that make flying (and disrupting their personal routines) an ordeal.

So yes, it seems that face-to-face meetings are back on the menu, and I am going ballistic since I happen to both hate traveling for business purposes and the hypocrisy of building vapid pseudo-relationships.

It’s as if a part of the industry has forgotten we’ve spent the past five years being almost supernaturally effective working remotely and sharing information much more effectively through video calls (and never mind that audio conferencing has been with us for many, many decades).

It is not an auspicious (or even sane) way to start a new role, and I am already dreading the first time I have to fly somewhere for a meeting that could have been a Teams call, seniority be damned.

Oct 31^st 2024 · 1 min read · #ai #apple #iawriter #tools #writing

Staying in Control with Apple’s AI Writing Tools ➹

What little I can use of Apple’s “Intelligence” in the EU right now (mostly on my Mac) is barely useful (especially when compared to the ones I built myself), but iA Writer has an interesting take on how to keep tabs on it (pun intended) and is going a little further.

I’ve always liked using it for my drafts (including this one), but I wasn’t really aware of some of its niceties since I don’t typically use LLMs for writing–word or sentence completion is just about where I draw the line.

But this does make me think about Apple Intelligence and how it’s being rolled out (and advertised): The promise of a “Friendly, Professional, or Concise” tone is nice, but if the AI can’t accurately capture your intent, you might end up with something that sounds good but means something entirely different, and I’m not looking forward to the notion of turning human communication into a sea of AI-generated fluff.

I get enough of that at work already.

Oct 29^th 2024 · 1 min read · #apple #design #ergonomics #madness #mouse #usb-c

The Indefensible Location of the Magic Mouse’s Charging Port ➹

I wasn’t terribly excited about Apple’s announcements yesterday, but the fact that the Magic Mouse’s charging port was only “fixed” by making it USB-C was definitely a low point until I read this, which I rate as either a perfect piece of satire or a self-infliced massacre on the one hill you wouldn’t want to die on defending Apple’s design choices.

I’m just not sure which yet.

Apple seems to think that forcing users to go wireless is a feature, not a bug (which is a bit rich, if you ask me), and I would have stuck to my old AA battery model if it wasn’t based on an old Bluetooth version that now throws up a warning on modern Macs. So I switched to a Logitech M720 and never looked back.

And yeah, it’s kind of funny to read John’s defense and realize he’s been using a Lenovo mouse all along.

Oct 27^th 2024 · 3 min read · #cooling #copper #heatsink #intel #n100 #radxa #sbc #x4

Making the Radxa X4 Even Cooler

Back when I reviewed the Radxa X4, I went to some trouble to go over its thermal characteristics and how well that massive heatsink worked.

At the time, I resorted to using my own thermal pad to get the best possible contact between the CPU and the heatsink, but apparently that was not enough, because the board still ran a bit hot under load.

This weekend I decided to do something about that–I took one of the SSD copper heatsinks I had lying around, verified that it was thin enough (it was exactly 1mm), cut it to match the heatsink contact plate, and applied some thermal paste:

Copper shim in place — Checking the shim size after cutting. I also padded out the VRM "trench" to ensure they had some cooling.

And behold, the X4 booted to a nice, cool 28°C:

# sensors
coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Package id 0:  +28.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 0:        +29.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 1:        +29.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 2:        +29.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 3:        +29.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)

To verify that this was not a fluke, I ran the same load test I had used in my original review, and the temperatures peaked at 48°C, staying well below the 96°C I got last time:

temperature chart — A vastly improved result over the initial benchmark

Even better, the board had a steadier CPU boost to 3GHz at the start, and held up nicely at 2.5GHz for the duration of the test, without the slight throttling I had observed before:

I’m quite pleased with these results, and I’m going to leave the shim in place to (finally) do some testing with Windows. It’s a simple, effective solution that doesn’t require any permanent modifications to the board, and it seems to work quite well.

Caveats

I should note that the original testing was done in August and at higher ambient temperatures (even if, according to my office thermometer, by only about 4°C), but even then the difference is quite noticeable. I’m not sure if the thermal pad I used was sub-par (it was what I had on hand that bridged the pretty wide gap between the X4’s CPU and the heatsink), but the shim definitely seems to have done the trick.

Also, I kept the heatsink fan, but I’m not sure it’s even necessary anymore. I’ll have to do some more testing to see if it makes a difference in practice (I suspect it will, but I’m not sure how much).

Oct 26^th 2024 · 14 min read · #arm #debian #friendlyelec #hardware #nas #nvme #openmediavault #review #rk3588 #rockchip #zfs

The FriendlyELEC CM3588 NVMe NAS Kit

This one took me a long time, and it was actually the third or fourth RK3588 board I got to review–but the timing of its arrival was completely off (it was in the middle of a work crisis) and I had to put it on the back burner for a while.

Oct 23^rd 2024 · 1 min read · #apple #ios #ipad #mini #review #technology

The Third Place ➹

The reviews for the 2024 iPad mini with A17 Pro are coming out, and Federico’s is, as usual, very positive and optimistic, but IMHO both him and Jason Snell stray a bit too far into the realm of fantasy and try to draw a dotted line to a future foldable iPhone, which I think is a bit of a stretch.

A foldable (any foldable) would not replace the iPad mini neither functionally neither price-wise (when it comes, it’s going to be the most expensive iPhone ever sold), and would be in stark contrast to Apple’s current approach at building the iPad mini out of binned parts–the current iPad mini is, as someone else put it (besides David Pierce, who also generally agrees with this sentiment), “a product that only a supply chain would love”, and very much a staple of the Tim Cook era.

And that is just not the Apple I grew up with.

I do agree with Federico that the iPad mini has always been my “third place” away from the phone and laptop–but for me, it’s actually the first thing I pick up every day and a device I always travel with instead of my iPad Pro, and as such I think this upgrade does it a major disservice by having a gimped, binned surplus CPU and lacking a few key Pro-like features (like Stage Manager on an external display).

I would even go so far as to claim that the iPad Pro (not the mini) is the true outlier in Apple’s product range–Apple has crippled iPads so much that having Pro features on the mini and using a laptop instead of the Pro actually makes much more sense–I could do without my Pro, but I can’t do without my mini, and that is exactly why this particular upgrade cycle sucks so much.

Oct 20^th 2024 · 1 min read · #coding #emulation #entertainment #golang #networking #notes #sbc

Notes for September 30-October 20

Other than my link blog, I usually start writing about stuff weeks (if not months) in advance, but due to all the recent changes my stack of drafts hasn’t been tended to properly.

Oct 19^th 2024 · 1 min read · #ai #anthropic #future #governance #health #optimism #technology

Machines of Loving Grace ➹

Dario Amodei’s essay is a fascinating dive into the potential upsides of powerful AI, but it feels a bit like a tech utopia wrapped in a cautionary tale. While he rightly emphasizes the need to address risks, the optimism about AI’s ability to solve complex global issues—like health and governance—might be a touch overzealous. Sure, AI could revolutionize biology and mental health, but let’s not forget the human element (or lack thereof) in these grand plans.

The idea that we could compress a century of progress into a mere decade is enticing, but it raises eyebrows. After all, history has shown us that technological advancements often come with their own set of challenges—think of the unintended consequences of social media. So, while the vision of a “compressed 21st century” is compelling, it’s essential to remain grounded in the reality that technology alone won’t save us; it’s how we choose to wield it that will truly matter.

And we just don’t have a good enough track record of that, honestly. Furthermore, LLMs still feel like a party trick gone viral–as token shuffling and prediction machinery, they lack true understanding, the ability to truly learn in real-time (associative memory, for starters), and, more importantly, any kind of agency. Which is why I am convinced that a second AI Winter is increasingly likely as we continue throwing money (and brute force compute) at these problems without understanding them.

Oct 15^th 2024 · 1 min read · #apple #intelligence #ipad #performance #technology

Apple unveils "powerful" new iPad mini ➹

I added the quotes because no matter how they sugarcoat the A17 Pro, it’s not the upgrade I wanted for my mini 5 in either CPU, display, camera or anything else short of the USB-C port and TouchID (yes, I prefer TouchID).

Given the PR-only prerelease and outrageously spaced out refreshes it’s obvious the mini isn’t a priority for Apple, so I have to figure out if I want to address the fact that the 256GB cellular model is closer to €1000 than I would like or wait another two years to upgrade.

Update: Also, there is no SIM slot–the cellular model is eSIM only. That’s a dealbreaker for me right now.

I’m definitely going to wait for the reviews on this one.

Oct 15^th 2024 · 7 min read · #balance #career #life #memoir #microsoft #personal #reflections #work

Nine Years at Microsoft

Let’s not beat about the bush: I have no compunction about classifying this as my worst year at the company (and believe me, there were a few doozies before that).

Oct 14^th 2024 · 9 min read · # #gaming #gateron #keyboards #keychron #linear #magnetic #mechanical #purple #review #switches

The Keychron K2 HE

I don’t think I’ve ever used so many different keyboards in a year. But I am happy that things have been improving so fast that I can actually feel the difference between them.

Oct 9^th 2024 · 1 min read · #apple #engineering #ios #mirroring #privacy #screen #security

iPhone Mirroring Creates Local App Stubs on your Mac ➹

My initial thought when reading this was “this is just stupid”. Then I thought about the added complexity involved over just mirroring the display, and I thought it was probably a great idea UX-wise (on the lines of Continuity), but, in the end, I still think it’s a profoundly stupid implementation, for the following reasons:

Screen mirroring shouldn’t require creating local application stubs at all.
Even if it does for ease of use, there’s no reason to manage them like this. This is just lazy engineering, they should be in a database (where encrypting the contents and metadata with the user’s keychain would be entirely doable).
I shudder to think what will happen if this isn’t on-demand and if you try to sync hundreds of app stubs.

Oct 7^th 2024 · 6 min read · #arm #armbian #benchmarking #cooling #hardware #linux #ollama #power #reviews #rk3576 #rockchip

The Banana Pi M5 Pro

I’m down with the first flu of the season, so I thought I’d write up my notes on the Banana Pi M5 Pro and how it’s fared as part of my increasingly eclectic collection of single-board computers in the post-Raspberry Pi age.

Oct 5^th 2024 · 12 min read · #ai #bazzite #distrobox #emulation #gaming #nintendo #notes #nvidia #podman #proxmox #steam #zelda

Notes on Bazzite, Steam Link, and Rebuilding my AI Sandbox

Gaming hasn’t exactly been one of my most intensive pastimes of late–it has its highs and lows, and typically tends to be more intensive in the cold seasons. But this year, with the public demise of Switch emulation and my interest in preserving a time capsule of my high-performance Zelda setup, I decided to create a VM snapshot of it and (re)document the process.

Oct 2^nd 2024 · 1 min read · #ai #clearview #facial #gadgets #glasses #llms #meta #pimeyes #privacy #ray-ban #recognition #smart #wearables

Our Smart Glass Nametag Future, Accelerated ➹

The amazing thing for me is that only last week I heard Nilay Patel say on the VergeCast that virtual nametags would be the killer app for smart glasses.

Well, two Harvard students took that notion and ran away with it, using Ray-Ban Meta glasses to dox people in real-time using AI and public databases. And, get this–most of the tech and databases already exist. They’re just paired with consumer gadgets that make them easier to abuse.

Even as an exercise in raising awareness, it’s plain that the horse is already out of the barn, so… Welcome to the panopticon, I guess?

Oct 1^st 2024 · 1 min read · #dotnet #emulation #gaming #nintendo #ryujinx #switch

Ryujinx emulator taken down after agreement with Nintendo ➹

After yuzu and Citra, the last working Nintendo Switch emulator is now officially gone.

Fortunately, I had the forethought of writing a release mirror script that was keeping local copies of the latest 5 releases (which I’m also using to also automatically download OrcaSlicer and custom CAD software builds that are squirreled away in weird repositories) and I know that some people had gone the extra length to actively mirror the git repositories of every emulator they used, so… I have faith that Nintendo’s whack-a-mole game isn’t over yet.

As far as I’m concerned, though, and given that I am quite enjoying slowly trying to finish Breath of the Wild in glorious 4K (my kids have already finished both BOTW and Tears of the Kingdom, but I have lagged way behind), I will be safekeeping all the binaries.

Furthermore, we will move full-on to PC gaming with Steam family sharing (the AceMagic AM18 is quite likely to move back into the living room next weekend).

After all, investing time and money on console games that have such a limited shelf life and are created by a company that insists on destroying its own history (remember the 3DS?) feels like a fools’ errand, and I’m definitely not keen on getting another Nintendo console ever again.

Sep 30^th 2024 · 1 min read · #hardware #music #raspberrypi #synthesizers #zynthian

Zynthian V5.1 ➹

I’m still playing catch-up on a lot of things, and I just noticed Zynthian upgraded to the Raspberry Pi 5. The kit is on the expensive side (even without factoring in the Pi itself), but seems like a solid upgrade–I just wish they had a more compact version with TRS MIDI and smaller audio jacks.

Sep 29^th 2024 · 3 min read · #3dprinting #artificialintelligence #balance #books #burnout #career #computing #games #life #neovim #work

Notes for... September

I’m starting to bounce back from the last couple of weeks, but am still not fully there yet. Work remains far too much of a rollercoaster (mostly because I care too much, to be honest), and I’m still trying to find my footing.

Sep 29^th 2024 · 16 min read · #hardware #homelab #ipmi #kvm #pikvm #reviews

The AURGA Viewer Wireless KVM

As much as I love virtualizing machines in my homelab and putting the hardware as far away from my desk as possible, the truth of the matter is that there always comes a time when you need “physical” access to the host to deal with boot issues, change BIOS configurations and other types of housekeeping–and regular remote access just won’t cut it in those times.

Sep 26^th 2024 · 1 min read · #ads #advertising #lg #privacy #smarttv #tv #webos

LG adds ads to screensavers ➹

Good luck with that. My next TV might still be an LG (just because I usually like their hardware and price points), but like the current one, it will be blocked at my router from accessing the Internet (HomeKit still works, of course, and I use my Apple TV and NVIDIA SHIELD for media).

But this is something the EU should really look into and regulate. The amount of data TV manufacturers are collecting and brokering seems to have fallen off their radar, which is just plain stupid considering all the privacy and GDPR implications.

And it’s a bold move on LG’s part, considering most folks just want to see their family photos or some calming art while they’re not actively binge-watching. Even if you can turn it off, the default setting is a bit of a slap in the face for anyone who thought they’d bought a premium product free from such annoyances.

This shift towards monetizing every idle moment on your TV is a slippery slope. It’s not just about selling hardware anymore; it’s about squeezing every last cent from customers, and brokering the data to get more revenue. And while LG claims this will boost brand awareness, one has to wonder if viewers will just tune out entirely (or worse, switch to a platform that respects their downtime). As the lines blur between content and advertising, it feels like we’re all just one step closer to a world where even our screen savers are working overtime.

Sep 26^th 2024 · 1 min read · #ai #edge #llama #llm #mobile #models #open-source #vision

Llama 3.2: New Edge AI and Vision Models ➹

The timing for this is great, as I’m starting to get back to shoving LLMs into single-board computers. The 128K token context length seems to be becoming a standard of sorts (which is also nice), and I might actually try the vision models as well (with the usual caveats about SBC NPUs being quite limited in both TOPS and data formats).

And, of course, the “open” part is… Interesting. I’m becoming somewhat skeptical as to anyone’s ability to guarantee either the lineage of their training data or the feasibility of fine-tuning atop newer models trained on what are essentially summaries of data from older models, but time will tell. For now, it’s nice to see Meta pushing the more pragmatic parts of LLMs (i.e., availability and performance at small scale).

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