seanj

cloudguy said:

Huh? Samsung released a $999 fanless Chromebook with an Intel i5 CPU (in Linux mode a great development and otherwise productivity device, and oh yeah is quite good for Linux apps and PWAs too), 2-in-1 design, AMOLED 13' 4K touchscreen with built-in stylus way back in April. The Google Pixelbook is a fanless device with configurations that include an Intel i7 CPU,13' 4K screen and a 16 GB of RAM that was released way back in 2018. (The Pixelbook 2 was delayed to 2021 so that it will have Whitechapel - the SOC jointly designed by Google and Samsung and manufactured by Samsung for smartphones and Chromebooks - instead of a 10th gen Intel CPU in it.) Who cares about ChromeOS? You should as it surpassed macOS in market share this year - and it surpassed MacBooks in market share years ago - and as these devices are going to start featuring much better AMD, Intel and ARM CPUs starting in 2021 due to Google and its various OEMs promoting them as development and productivity devices, it is going to increase. Google in particular is already positioning Chromebooks to replace MacBooks that will no longer be able to virtualize Windows among enterprise companies and has already attracted their first (small) batch of buyers.

But as for right now, there are already plenty of fanless Windows 10 - and I mean real Windows, not Windows on ARM that tries and fails to emulate x86! - laptops out there. Consider the Acer Switch 7: 16 GB of RAM and Intel i7 processor. There are also a couple of Dell XPS fanless laptops and a couple of Asus ones in addition to more Acer ones.

Get this: folks are kicking around the idea that the new Intel Tiger Lake CPUs with integrated Iris XE graphics will allow fanless gaming laptops to become a thing (because Tiger Lake is Intel's low heat/low power design and Iris XE GPU - which is integrated in all Tiger Lake Core i5 and higher chips - is supposed to provide gaming performance on the caliber of the Nvidia MX350).

So seriously, you guys need to pay attention to the wider tech world more. If you are thinking that Apple Silicon is going to result in these magical devices that the rest of the tech world can't comprehend let alone compete with that is going to result in Apple quadrupling or more its market share and influence, prepare to be sadly mistaken. The tech media might not know this - as Apple devices are all that they use and as a result truly cover - but actual consumers do. 

approx said:

The Covid tracing technology is developed by the Swiss research institute EPFL. Apple and Google adopted the idea. 


https://actu.epfl.ch/news/carmela-troncoso-named-one-of-2020s-global-top-you/

darkpaw said:

Reasons why I'm not going to use this app:

- The development of the app was given to a specific company. It was not sent out to tender. Now, you can argue that we don't have a lot of time and we needed it developed quickly, BUT...
- The reported budget for the app was £250 MILLION... (Not sure on the veracity of that figure, but it's been widely reported. It may just be part of the deal between UK.gov and Palantir/Faculty.)
- It is being developed by both Palantir (run by the right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel) and Faculty...
- Faculty is an AI startup run by someone called Marc Warner...
- Marc Warner's brother is Ben Warner...
- Ben Warner was recruited to Downing Street by Dominic Cummings (if you don't who DC is, he's basically an unelected advisor to our inimitable dickwad, Boris Johnson)...
- Ben Warner was instrumental in the Vote Leave campaign.