genius_mac

Apple CEO Tim Cook personally invested $1 million in Trump's inauguration

genius_mac

January 4

retrogusto said:

ike22w said:

Tim Cook did the same thing with Biden. Also, why did Wesley coin the President-Elect as controversial? He won in an electoral college landslide and also won the popular vote by over 4 million votes. I’d say the country clearly stated who they wanted. No controversy here folks. Maybe let’s just stick with tech news and not show our biased political views in a tech article.

He won the popular vote by 2,284,323 votes. The country stated who they wanted, but for perspective, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2,864,974 votes in 2016. It’s not a big margin in the scheme of things.

Actually, just 1.5% ahead of Kamala, not even 50%, just 49.8%. The country decided they did not care about corruptness, narcism, bulling, retribution, criminal acts, insurrection, nor misogyny.

Last time around Trump lost to Biden by 4.5% and he decided not to accept results and urge an insurrection, creating a huge controversy. Kamala lost by less and graciously accepted the results. Now Trump had to rescue Mike Johnson so he could certify the results of the election to allow him to be president. Will see how long Trump lets Mike Johnson be speaker.

Now everybody knows that to get something done, you have to pay for acces and favors. So greed and hate won this time. It will be interesting to see how many MAGA fanatics are thrown under the bus every day for lack of money, access, brown-nosing, or influence.

AirPods Pro crackling issue target of new class-action lawsuit

genius_mac

November 2024

I had an Airpods Pro 1st generation that was denied the fix because their service program had expired. I had not used them much while exercising or in calls. The buzzing got worse if I used the airpods while moving or spoke. When i found about the service program it was too late.

The Apple staff acknowledged it was a common issue and recommended buying new AirPods rather than repairing them since they were no longer covered by the service program.

Apple closing seven Apple Stores in Texas due to COVID-19 spikes

genius_mac

June 2020

Even the governor that has downplayed the virus and has rushed to reopen Texas in early May, is now calling for people to stay home:

https://www.click2houston.com/news/texas/2020/06/24/texas-governor-says-state-facing-massive-covid-19-outbreak-expects-state-to-pass-5000-new-cases-again-wednesday/

Houston area is at near capacity in hospitals. Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio metro areas have had significant increases in cases and hospitalizations.

Texas has had 5x increase in daily positive cases since reopening, and is now #5 in the nation on number of cases:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/texas-coronavirus-cases.html

Also WHO clarified their comments to indicate the difference between asymptomatic and presymptomatic:

On Tuesday, Van Kerkhove and her colleague Mike Ryan, MD, executive director for health emergencies at the WHO, explained that there are two distinct kinds of silent transmission: “asymptomatic” (spreading a disease when you don’t have symptoms) and “presymptomatic” (spreading it before symptoms start). Both are difficult to stop. Presymptomatic spread is believed to be far more common than asymptomatic spread.

Van Kerkhove said published and unpublished studies discussed in WHO briefings suggest that between 6% and 41% of people who test positive for the virus will be asymptomatic. Even less is known about what proportion of these people go on to infect others.

The new coronavirus can infect the upper respiratory tract -- the nose and throat, said Ryan, adding that any situation where a person is expelling air under pressure may drive the virus out. He gave the example of someone shouting at their friend in a loud nightclub.

“Some studies have been done on this -- singing, speaking loudly, exertion, maybe in a gym where you’re breathing very heavily,” he said. “Clearly that is playing a role in transmission, there’s no question.”

While true asymptomatic transmission might be uncommon, what’s likely to be more common is presymptomatic transmission. Presymptomatic transmission also occurs with the flu. Studies have shown that people with COVID-19 can infect others anywhere from 1 to 3 days before they get sick, Van Kerkhove said.

Ryan also pointed out that in COVID-19, a person’s viral load, the amount of the virus they have in their body, appears to peak right as they get their first symptoms.

“That means you could be in a restaurant feeling perfectly well and just starting to get a fever, but you’re feeling OK, you didn’t think you needed to stay home. That’s the moment when your viral load could be quite high,” said Ryan.

That’s why masks are important, he said, especially when you can’t stand or sit at a distance from others.

“There is this period of time, you know, where even a professor of infectious diseases themselves wouldn’t know that I’m getting COVID,” Ryan said. “You’re not aware of your status.”

“It’s because the disease can spread at that moment that the disease is so contagious,” he said. “That’s why it has spread around the world in such an uncontained way."

https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200609/who-clairifies-comments-on-asymptomatic-covid-spread

Why Apple uses integrated memory in Apple Silicon -- and why it's both good and bad

genius_mac

June 2023

melgross said:

Ok, so the writer gets it wrong, as so many others have when it comes to the M series RAM packaging. One would think that’s this simple thing would be well understood by now. So let me make it very clear - the RAM is NOT on the chip. It is NOT “in the CPU itself”. As we should all know by now, it’s in two packages soldered to the substrate, which is the small board the the SoC is itself soldered to. The lines from Apple’s fabric, which everything on the chip is connected with, extend to that substrate, to the RAM chips. Therefore, the RAM chips are separate from the SoC, and certainly not in the CPU itself. As we also know, Apple offers several different levels of RAM for each M series they sell. That means that there is no limit to their ability to decide how much RAM they can offer, up to the number of memory lines that can be brought out. This is no different from any traditional computer. Every CPU and memory controller has a limit as to how much RAM can be used. So, it seems to me that Apple could, if it wanted to, have sockets for those RAM packages, which add no latency, and would allow exchangeable RAM packages. Apple would just have to extend the maximum number of memory lines out to the socket. How many would get used would depend on the amount of RAM in the package. That’s nothing new. That’s how it’s done. Yes, under that scheme you would have to remove a smaller RAM package when getting a larger one, but that's also normal. The iMac had limited RAM slots and we used to do that all the time. Apple could also add an extra two sockets, in addition to the RAM that comes with the machine. So possibly there would be two packages soldered to the substrate, and two more sockets for RAM expansion. Remember that Apple sometimes does something a specific way, not because that’s the way it has to be done, but because they decided that this was the way they were going to do it. We don’t know where Apple is going with this in the future. It’s possible that the M2, which is really just a bump from the M1, is something to fill in the time while we’re waiting for the M3, which with the 3nm process it’s being built on, is expected to be more than just another bump in performance. Perhaps an extended RAM capability is part of that.

Having the memory as close as possible to the CPU allows the memory to be clocked faster and less latency. Also minimizes other issues that slow down the system like electromagnetic interference, signal integrity degradation, and complexity of routing to many signals on a board. Moreover, every time you turn or pass through a via on a board, add solder joint from connectors and connections to memory boards, it adds more delays and areas where the contact might fail due to corrosion, cracked solder joints, flex from heating and cooling, etc..

Routing on the package and die mounting allows most density, faster speed, greater reliability, and reduces cost since you do not incur in additional cost for extra memory packages, large packages with many pins, complicated board routing and simpler cooling of CPU and memory due to proximity. However, you give up flexibility for future expansion. Nevertheless, by the time you outgrow your system the CPU is so dated, you end up buying a new computer..

Google pokes fun at Apple's Jony Ive design videos in new headphone jack ad

genius_mac

August 2021

It was silly funny. But, I am one glad for wireless headphones. Really in 2021, Google is pushing for headphones!

Should have added clips of the people dealing with those nasty headphone cables:

Coiling and uncoiling those cables that tended to form knots.
Trying to hastily put those away by bunching them into a pocket or a bag,
Snagging the cable on a door handle, exercise machine, or some other object and ripping the headphones out of your ears or strangling you with the cord
Breaking a plug in the device due to the previous snag.
The constant bang of the cable on your body while running and how it was pickup by your headphones
Forgetting you left your phone on the table, getting up and pulling the phone with force so it sails crashing into the floor.
Needing adaptors because not every device had the same connector
Trying to connect the device to the car cable in the dark at night

Man pleads guilty to stealing naked photos from iCloud accounts

genius_mac

August 2021

Too bad most of the media tends to report phishing and stolen passwords as hacks. It is very, very different: this here is password hijacking, and not breaking and entering.