Hacker News: stuff4ben

New comment by stuff4ben in "Firefox Enterprise"

stuff4ben — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 12:44:56 +0000

Right?!? There's a lot of negative sentiment on the comments here on HN but probably from people that don't understand locked down corps and other higher-security work environments where these features are needed. Plus not relying on Microsoft/Google is always a good thing. I can definitely see this being useful in hospitals, government orgs, etc.

New comment by stuff4ben in "The American Religion of Self-Storage Facilities"

stuff4ben — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 18:08:05 +0000

I kept my classic computers, 2 Commodore Amiga 500's. One worked, the other didn't after I cut a trace to the Agnus chip to increase the chip RAM to 1MB (or something like that). Anyways, I threw them away around the early 2000s because I was decluttering and I hadn't used them in quite a while. I still kick myself to this day for that. Also threw away a broken 1084s monitor (which was why I never used the amigas).

New comment by stuff4ben in "The American Religion of Self-Storage Facilities"

stuff4ben — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 14:24:13 +0000

I have 2 kids in college and I'm trying to sell my house. So I've decluttered to make the house presentable and I'm waiting for my kids to graduate and get their own places so I can give them their crap back. Storage unit makes sense for me. But this is likely to last only 2-4 years and then I'll have downsized enough.

New comment by stuff4ben in "Giving up on smart rings"

stuff4ben — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 20:14:01 +0000

The OP mentions he switched to a Google FitBit Air which seems like an elastic cloth band which is all I want too, except I want it to operate like an Apple Watch in terms of integration with Apple Health. Anyone know if the FitBit Air and Apple Watch are similar in features?

New comment by stuff4ben in "iPhone Duo"

stuff4ben — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 12:39:34 +0000

> if anything Apple is catching up That's been Apple MO for a long time. They may not be the first to market on a new tech, but when they do deliver, it's more advanced and higher quality than the competitors. It's a good strategy IMO.

New comment by stuff4ben in "Apple debuts iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max"

stuff4ben — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 18:12:26 +0000

Apple iPhone Duo is out

New comment by stuff4ben in "Wiped out: US faces surging toilet paper prices amid trade war with Canada"

stuff4ben — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 14:56:11 +0000

Unfortunately I don't have electrical in my toilet closet in my master bath. I'd totally do it though.

New comment by stuff4ben in "New Mac mini, featuring M6 and M5 Pro"

stuff4ben — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 15:24:05 +0000

Which is more important for AI/LLM stuff, the number of GPU cores or the amount of unified memory? I can choose from a Mini with the M5 Pro 18CPU/30GPU and 64GB RAM or a Studio with a M5 Max 18CPU/40GPU and 48GB RAM for roughly the same price

New comment by stuff4ben in "Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra for a big leap in performance and AI compute"

stuff4ben — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 13:54:29 +0000

True re: the Raspberry Pi, but I was thinking the 10Gbit Ethernet would allow more concurrent streaming in my household. But it's probably overkill.

New comment by stuff4ben in "Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra"

stuff4ben — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 13:36:27 +0000

M5 Pro in a Mac Mini with 64GB RAM and 10Gbit Ethernet seems like the perfect Jellyfin server and Ollama test server. All for just over $3K (I specced with only 1TB local nvme).

New comment by stuff4ben in "Pine64 launch $50 smart speaker for Home Assistant tinkerers"

stuff4ben — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 14:23:25 +0000

I do like my Sonos setup (have a pair of Era300s, an Arc Ultra, Sub4, and Sub Mini) and now that they've fixed the app issues, it works really well. And the sound quality is good enough for me. I just wish the Amp product was about half the price. It doesn't do all that much more.

New comment by stuff4ben in "Pine64 launch $50 smart speaker for Home Assistant tinkerers"

stuff4ben — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 14:21:09 +0000

Doesn't look like the Amp50 is available to buy...

New comment by stuff4ben in "Pine64 launch $50 smart speaker for Home Assistant tinkerers"

stuff4ben — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 14:18:05 +0000

Whoa, yeah that does look very promising!!! Thanks!

New comment by stuff4ben in "CERN bids farewell to the LHC and enters Long Shutdown 3"

stuff4ben — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 13:02:04 +0000

Is that a thing? Can an organization be given sovereign immunity? I thought that was reserved for actual countries?

New comment by stuff4ben in "Pine64 launch $50 smart speaker for Home Assistant tinkerers"

stuff4ben — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 12:44:23 +0000

I really wish someone would come out with a $25 "box" that sits on top of my bookshelf speaker that allows me to Airplay to it and power said speaker with a ~50w class-D amp. Then if I have multiple ones, it would allow them to pair and setup stereo or surround sound. I might even pay $50 for it. Kinda like a Sonos Amp but not at that price point.

New comment by stuff4ben in "Entanglement Builds Space-Time. Now "Magic" Gives It Gravity"

stuff4ben — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 14:43:03 +0000

And also, how does one bend time?

New comment by stuff4ben in "Incident with Actions and Pages"

stuff4ben — Tue, 26 May 2026 13:53:15 +0000

Let us know when your infrastructure sees the load that Microsoft's does and how you've handled it.

New comment by stuff4ben in "Granite 4.1: IBM's 8B Model Matching 32B MoE"

stuff4ben — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 12:38:18 +0000

I listen to NPR daily and I don't think I've ever heard any of them use that phrasing.

New comment by stuff4ben in "Show HN: Brutalist Concrete Laptop Stand (2024)"

stuff4ben — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 17:01:29 +0000

First day on the Internet huh?

New comment by stuff4ben in "MacBook Neo"

stuff4ben — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 19:35:27 +0000

The A18Pro is a very powerful CPU, besting even the M1 in single-core performance (about even in multicore). Saying its just a "phone CPU" is disingenuous.