I also have regular problems with some subtitles. My solution is to enable using an external player in the jellyfin AndroidTV app (i think its under playback->advanced options) and then use VLC player which i’ve also installed to play the movie. That has never failed to me.

Downside is that unlike the regular exo player i don’t think it supports dolby vision, so i have to change this setting back and forth occasionally. It used to be that there was an option that you could tick, so it asked you everytime which player to use before playing a movie (with the downside that it couldn’t resume playing at a saved timestamp), but after a somewhat recent update this went away.

Capital spending cuts may include German factory expected to cost $32 billion, source says

As a German this makes me sad and maybe biased, but imo that looks pretty bad to me. On the one hand Intel wants to turn around their foundry business including long term aquiring third party customers, on the other hand apparently even a subsidy of $10 billion isn’t enough to see it through. I get that a completely new location might not be ideal and in Germany there also isn’t a big semi supply chain already in place. But still if you get one third of your fab gifted and decline, what more does it take?

Progress is getting more and more expensive each node, so you’d probably want other customers and higher volume to spread out the development costs (like TSMC does). If they can’t stem the burden of building it, then ofc it can’t be helped. But it seems to me like having fewer fabs ultimately makes it harder to stay in the race longterm.

The issue is that would at best “reset” their reputation to zero. But the state that they’d like to go back to would be similar to “nobody ever got fired for buying IBM”, which ofc only works with the existing name. And this line of thinking is what got damaged by the degrading processors (and maybe how they handle it).

But Intel has never been in worse shape. So I think it’s less about Intel considering it and more about if it gets forced on them either by activist investors (I remember seeing an article that Intel prepares to defend against that) or necessity.

I don’t think so. The degrading processors are certainly bad, but in the grand scheme of things won’t move the needle. The reputation loss is probably worse than whatever fine they end up paying (and they will drag it out).

The split would be between design and manufacturing. And it would mean a massive shift, not business as usual.

The design side is probably in better shape and would increase their use of TSMC instead of using the now spun off Intel fabs.

The manufacturing side would have it rough. But we are talking about only one of 3 manufacturers of leading edge chips here (together with tsmc and samsung), not something you “conveniently let go bankrupt”. They’d try to raise more money to finish their new fabs and secure customers (while trying to make up for the lost volume from the design side). But realistically I’d say that similar to Global foundries they would drop out of the expensive leading edge race.

Photo manipulation has been around as long as the medium itself. And throughout the decades, people have worried about the veracity of images. When PhotoShop became popular, some decried it as the end of truthful photography. And now here’s AI, making things up entirely.

I actually think it isn’t the AI photo or video manipulation part that makes it a bigger issue nowadays (at least not primarily), but the way in which they are consumed. AI making things easier is just another puzzle piece in this trend.

Information volume and speed has increased dramatically, resulting in an overflow that significantly shortens the timespan that is dedicated to each piece of content. If i slowly read my sunday newspaper during breakfast, then i’ll give it much more attention, compared to scrolling through my social media feed. That lack of engagement makes it much easier for missinformation to have the desired effect.

There’s also the increased complexity of the world. Things can on the surface seem reasonable and true, but have knock on consequences that aren’t immediately apparent or only hold true within a narrow picture, but fall appart once viewed from a wider perspective. This just gets worse combined with the point above.

Then there’s the downfall of high profile leading newsoutlets in relevance and the increased fragmentation of the information landscape. Instead of carefully curated and verified content, immediacy and clickbait take priority. And this imo also has a negative effect on those more classical outlets, which have to compete with it.

You also have increased populism especially in politics and many more trends, all compounding on the same issue of missinformation.

And even if caught and corrected, usually the damage is done and the correction reaches far fewer people.

I’ve had two USB C ports fail on HMD phones.

Yeah, that’s what got my HMD made, Nokia branded, 7 plus. And from a search at the time this was a common problem

If once you do not succeed, just try again next year. They tried and backtracked putting heated seats behind a paywall not even a year ago see here.

Unless laws are made to make this fundamentally illegal, they’ll just keep pushing until it sticks. And once one manufacturer succeeds, they’ll all follow.

The issue is that I bet modifying the firmware will have consequences on insurance and liability in case of an accident. Regardless of whether or not one is at fault or not, and that it didn’t have any effect

I can’t really see Apple market the usage in kitchens. The reality is way to messy and i’d imagine that you would see dirty or even damaged units in no time. I don’t think that would go well with Apple’s clean design and brand image.

Since he mentions enshittification, I assume he means Plex.

However I am pretty sure both will have some bugs. I use jellyfin, so I can only speak about that. But one annoyance is that the androidTV app sometimes doesn’t have the best subtitle support. However it allows you to open movies in external players, which is a workaround.

But wouldn’t you want to have screens in multiple rooms? Because $1000 seems too expensive for that use case

You actually have a good point there. In another comment here I was wondering where you’d actually need the automatic movement, since you are usually either close enough to move it yourself or far enough away to not be able to read or interact with the UI.

But situations like in the kitchen or maybe a work shop, where you don’t want to touch the screen are where it would come in useful.

However would those be the places you’d want to put a $1000 Apple product?

The robotic arm part seems a bit gimmicky, not sure how much value that will actually add for the average user. I’d imagine that when you are using voice commands and are far away you don’t really need it to turn towards you. At a distance you can’t interact with the ui anyways and depending on how far away it is might not even be able to read anything on screen. And if you are close a normal adjustable arm would do the job just fine.

However I do think there is a market for a well integrated home command center and Apple with their walled garden approach is in a good position to deliver on this.

But it yet again seems like a dedicated device that is expensive might feature good hardware, but is limited to it’s specific use case. Like the iPads that have the same chips as laptops, but Apple purposely doesn’t give them MacOS to not cannibalize their sales of laptops.

The way control centers should imo be setup is to have the “brain” somewhere hidden like next to the router and then you have cheap screens around the house where you need them. Although Apple might love it, if people buy a $1k+ device for each room. Or instead of a dedicated computer for control one could just put their phone into a hub and have it serve as controller.

Personally I think fanless solutions are somewhat niche for stationary computers.

True, it’s a somewhat niche use case where you e.g. need total silence or are in a very dusty environment. But I guess often times the solution is to just place it somewhere else and lay some cables.

Laptops (not to mention smartphones) is a whole different story.

I really wish we would see more fanless laptops. Processors have imo improved far enough, especially in recent times, that you get enough performance for the average consumer. And being fanless is just such a nice feature.

Thanks for adding this context, I have to say by now I have slightly lost the thread with all the different lakes.

Fanless PCs are always cool, but it does seem like a shame to not use the latest processors.

I get that designing something like it takes time, but when your biggest design limitation is heat dissipation, then a more efficient processor could make a huge difference.

But presumably even in it’s current form it offers enough performance for the intended use cases.

How are SMR drives used in data centers? I was under the impression that they are not great for any type of raid setup, which I’d imagine would be typical.

Also without any increase in speed, rebuild times will probably become more of a problem, right?

I always like this answer by Steve Jobs on the topic (here it’s xerox, but this also fits Intel pretty well).

Right, totally forgot about that step.