They will. This optimization will bring a future made of one-man companies who will keep busy vibe coding and asking business decisions to AI agents. The answers will be poor as ever, so on that side nothing will change, I guess.
If your destination is Messina or even Catania, you can can save some time leaving the train in Villa San Giovanni (last stop before the train will be loaded into the ferry) and, literally, jump on the first ferry that is starting, so you save all the time needed to load and unload the train.
No one will ask you for a ticket (no one will ask for anything, actually). Or at the least it was like this some twenty years ago when I did it.
This is also a great way to randomly arrive in Siracusa wondering how did you end up there, in some sort of re-enactment of the last Indiana Jones movie.
Well, I guess I was lucky! More seriously: I just followed a local that suggested this, and he knew the right way but from what I remember, it wasn't that hard to catch the right ferry. And, honestly, after so many hours of train, I was happy to physically move around and not wait another 40+ minutes.
Twenty years ago people went to great lenghts to run the best OS available at that time on cheap commodity x86 hardware with hackintoshes. Fast forward to today, similar efforts are made to run linux on the best hardware available. It's funny how things turn around.
The various Hackintosh projects are on life support not because the interest for that kind of thing has died; it's because Apple doubled down on chain-of-trust and is abandoning x86.
Apple made it impossible to use iMessage on a Hackintosh without spoofing another Mac that's not in use. That pushed A LOT of people away from using a Hackintosh.
The second thing is abandoning x86. Apple has already announced that macOS 26 is the last release to support their Intel machines. That means that next year, there will be no way to run the latest macOS on any Intel machine. That's basically the end date for all these projects, as the Hackintosh crowd has always been about running the latest version of the OS. They're not interested in running System 7!
Even before the AS transition, GPUs were becoming more important and Mac OS GPU support was becoming even worse. At some point you were basically limited to a few AMD options. Very unattractive OS for a custom tower by then.
Like I did put a Nvidia 650ti? in my Mac Pro, and it sorta worked initially under OSX, but way slower and glitchier than in Windows and eventually just fully incompatible.
Well there's that (I think cause MBPs kept BBQing) and also Mac OS deprecating OpenGL and overall being different in ways that often prevent you from taking advantage of a dedicated GPU.
Which I'm fine with on my laptop or Mac mini, but if you're building a tower with a GPU, yeah
To clarify, people then and now have in common trying to run the software they prefer on the hardware they prefer. There's no objective "best"; it depends on what you need.
For the vast majority of customers' utility functions, Apple has the best hardware (both in absolute and per dollar terms) on the market right now. It's not "objectively best", but it certainly meets the most stringent definition of "best" that's still useful in conversation.
Not really, price is still extremely important and doesn't really factor into the definition of the best product. Taken to the extreme, Imagine a laptop a thousand times faster then the best there is now, with an extremely bright HDR screen with perfect blacks and a 1000hz refresh rate. It has a battery life of years, It's made of an unscratchable metal alloy and is fanless. It runs windows, linux and macos flawlessly. It's CPU can natively executable all major instruction sets. It's extremely light. Yet it costs 50 million USD. Sure there will be some super rich who may buy it. But never will the majority of the world use it.
>price is still extremely important and doesn't really factor into the definition of the best
Heh. Who says it doesn't?
>Taken to the extreme, Imagine [...]
Okay. Likewise, imagine a computer exactly like you've described, except it costs five cents and measures a cubic kilometer. Sure, there may be a couple people for whom operating such a gigantic machine is no problem, but the vast majority of the world will never use it. So the size of the computer also doesn't factor into whether it's "the best", right? And so on for any single property you care to name.
Yeah, no. The price is as much a part of a product as its physical shape. If Macs cost about the same as non-Macs, maybe they'd the most popular computers in the world, but they're not. And even in that case, they would not be the best. If, say, the program I need to run doesn't run on a Mac, the best computer for me would not be a Mac, it would be whatever computer is able to run it.
Well, it’s not a formal definition, of course. But most review sites that compare products typically distinguish between best overall and best value categories. For example, if I asked gamers what the best GPU is, most would say the NVIDIA RTX 5090. Its price-to-performance ratio is terrible, but it still holds the crown.
> Okay. Likewise, imagine a computer exactly like you've described, except it costs five cents and measures a cubic kilometer. Sure, there may be a couple people for whom operating such a gigantic machine is no problem, but the vast majority of the world will never use it. So the size of the computer also doesn't factor into whether it's "the best", right? And so on for any single property you care to name.
I’m not describing a computer in general. I’m describing a laptop. What you’ve described wouldn’t even qualify for that category. And even if it did, size and weight are core quality factors for laptops. Portability is part of what defines the category.
> Yeah, no. The price is as much a part of a product as its physical shape. If Macs cost about the same as non-Macs, maybe they'd the most popular computers in the world, but they're not. And even in that case, they would not be the best. If, say, the program I need to run doesn't run on a Mac, the best computer for me would not be a Mac, it would be whatever computer is able to run it.
Price isn’t an property of a product itself, it's part of the product offering. If you have a laptop sitting on a table and you start using it, there’s nothing in the experience that tells you what it costs. If you can’t determine something by using the product, it isn’t an inherent attribute of it. Your cubic kilometer example also falls completely flat here, you can notice it when using the product.
So I'd agree with your point if we would be talking about the product offering. That includes things like pricing, warranty structure, on-site support, marketing message, availability etc.
The best laptop doesn’t have to match everyone’s personal needs. Your criteria may differ, but there are still objective qualities that most people agree are important in a laptop, build quality, display, battery life, input feel, and so on. In those respects, MacBooks tend to push these qualities to an extreme degree, more than any other laptop.
>For example, if I asked gamers what the best GPU is, most would say the NVIDIA RTX 5090. Its price-to-performance ratio is terrible, but it still holds the crown.
Not for me. My 3090 can already max out my UPS. Being gifted a 5090 would be a terrible inconvenience for me. What you mean is that it's the fastest gaming GPU. Is that what "best" means? Something is the best in its product category if it tops the chart on the primary property of that category that applies to some abstract consumer? An abstract gamer with no other constraints would just want the fastest GPU, so the fastest one is the best? Fine. But then I'm forced to ask, where do categories begin and end? The 5090 is the best gaming GPU, but it's not the best GPU. Macs may be the best laptops (I don't know, but I'll grant it), but they're not the best PCs, or the best gaming laptops. Or, if I'm feeling cheeky, not the best laptops for under $(price of a Mac - 100).
>If you have a laptop sitting on a table and you start using it, there’s nothing in the experience that tells you what it costs.
I didn't realize arguing like this was possible. So if the laptop instead of being borrowed was yours, but if you ever type and send an email with "テスト" on the subject and body it would explode, but you never send that email (because you don't speak Japanese), that's a perfectly fine laptop, right? I mean, it's the same thing; in one instance the price is irrelevant to you (because you didn't pay it), and in the other the little lithium bomb is irrelevant to you (because you can't ever set it off). So they're both equally good products, at least subjectively.
>build quality, display, battery life, input feel, and so on
Those are the way they are not in small part because of how much they cost. Do you think Dell wouldn't rather make make much higher quality laptops for the same cost and the same price? Yes, you can get a feel for the price of something by using it. Haven't you ever heard someone say "ugh, this feels so cheap"? It's a vague feeling that's difficult to attribute, but it is informed by real experience. Inexpensive products often "feel cheap" and bad to use, while more expensive products don't, or to a lesser degree.
I see the points you’re making, but I think there are a few misunderstandings in how you’re framing the discussion.
1. "Best" versus "fastest" or "most expensive"
When I said the RTX 5090 is "the best GPU" for gaming, I meant it objectively tops the category on the core property most gamers care about: raw performance. That’s exactly why review sites separate "best overall" from "best value", they are acknowledging that there are multiple ways to judge a product. If you’re defining "best" by convenience or personal constraints, that’s fine, but that’s a subjective criterion, not the same as evaluating intrinsic qualities of the product. Conflating the two muddies this discussion.
2. Thought experiments
The "laptop that explodes if you type a certain email" analogy is clever, but it’s not equivalent to price. Price is an extrinsic property. It doesn’t affect the physical functionality or design of the laptop itself. A latent, never-triggered bug or trap is intrinsic, because it could affect you at any time if the condition arises. By contrast, whether you paid $50 million or $500 for the laptop doesn’t change its display quality, weight, or battery life.
3. "Feels cheap" argument
It’s true that price influences how companies allocate resources, and a higher-priced laptop can often feel better due to higher-quality materials. But that’s a correlation, not an inherent property. You can measure build quality, screen brightness, or input feel directly without knowing the price. Saying "Dell could make a higher-quality laptop for the same price" is exactly my point: price itself is not part of the intrinsic definition of quality, it’s part of the product offering.
I get that you’re making thought experiments and analogies to illustrate points, but many of them subtly shift the definitions or mix subjective preferences with objective qualities. That makes it hard to have a clear discussion about the intrinsic qualities of products versus their price or accessibility. If you keep ignoring this point and try to again shift the discussion I will stop engaging because I don't consider you acting in good faith.
>Saying "Dell could make a higher-quality laptop for the same price" is exactly my point
You understood the exact opposite from what I said. Dell couldn't make a much better laptop for the same price, the same way Apple couldn't make the same laptops for much cheaper.
>Price is an extrinsic property.
No, it's not extrinsic. That was my point. Do you think materials and R&D are free for manufacturers and OS developers? The price is not merely correlated, it's a direct consequence of the build quality. You can't sell a product for less money than it cost to make it. Higher quality -> higher cost -> higher price.
>By contrast, whether you paid $50 million or $500 for the laptop doesn’t change its display quality, weight, or battery life.
In what world could you pay either $500 or $50M for two products which are otherwise equivalent? How do you think the latter one could be viable? Are you serious? Do you actually think cost and price are literally independent variables?
Hate to break it to you but before the term "hackintosh" existed there was an army of folks making linux work well on cheap commodity x86 hardware, the success of which ushered in the dot-com booms - filling datacenters across the globe with cheap x86 hardware running linux. A reality persisting to this day, though with far fewer players thanks to decades of consolidation.
The hackintosh is a far smaller and more ephemeral niche hardly qualifying as ever orienting the proverbial table.
It doesn’t seem crazy to me that someone should be arrested for that! It’s stealing. If someone came in my house and stole my property I’d expect them to be arrested, even if I had stupidly left the door wide open.
A kid showed up a bunch of big names. That's the equivalent of a kid walking into a bank and somehow making it into the vault, alerting security to the fact that it's possible without actually making off with all of the gold. That's on the bank, not on the kid. Nobody came into your house or stole your property. If they had the police likely wouldn't show up, nor would the case make the newspaper even if - hah, as if that happens - they made an arrest.
The only reason you are hearing about this is because someone at 'bigcorp' didn't want to accept responsibility for their fuckups, and so they used the law to come down on some kid which effectively did them a service, which costs society a large pile of money, further externalizing the cost of their fuckup.
> without actually making off with all of the gold
This is the key difference. The comment I was replying to implied that the transaction was actually completed, or at least I thought it did.
If the guy[0] didn't indeed actually benefit from the vulnerability then that is a very different story, and I don't think he should be arrested in that case.
0: not "kid" -- he is 18 which I assume is above the age of criminal responsibility in Hungary.
How did the arrest go? For all you know it was the local cop that took him to the station and put him under arrest. Not to necessarily punish but to imprint that even though the action was minimally invasive for a simple bus ticket, it applied on larger systems, could have a significant effect. So more as a simple friendly deterrent rather than arrest and spent some nights in jail.
I don't think you can call any sort of arrest a simple friendly deterrent, or intended not to punish. That shit's traumatizing. Should he have done that? Probably not. But did he deserve arrest for finding a vulnerability? This could have been a conversation that didn't involve police. The kid could have helped them improve their systems instead of spending taxpayer dollars to send cops to the kid to arrest him.
if the kid could successfully modify the scanned value of physical barcodes a) that would be quite the feat and b) that would absolutely be showing up a bunch of big names
This attack has been done trivially for years - you just sticker over the barcode with the barcode of a cheaper item in the store. If you plan to use self-service checkouts for this scam, pick cheaper item with same weight or with a tag that prices cheaply per unit of weight (produce) etc.
It wouldn't be quite the feat at all. Barcodes for pre-priced items sold by weight (cheese, meat, etc.) encode the price in the last four digits. Replacing those would be trivial.
> Come on, a kid was just fooling around with the developer console and probably had a curiosity just like the comment above
You're failing to address the point. It is also trivial to switch price tags in supermarkets. If a kid rips off the tag of an expensive product, tacks on another price tag for pennies, and proceeds to pay the reported price at the checkout counter, is this something deemed acceptable or even classified as vulnerability research?
Make no mistake: the system was a shit show and all companies involved pulled some "sociopath mid-level manager saving his ass" moves. But the issue is nuanced.
There was no personal profit. He bought a ticket he never used, just to show to people on twitter how bad the system was. He could have silently taken advantage of his discovery and travel at no cost for a long time peraphs. But no.
Sounds more like vulnerability reasearch than crime to me.
IANAL, and furthermore have no idea what Hungary’s legal system is like, but mens rea is a thing. If I break a window by using it as a target for practicing my golf swing (I don’t golf; I have no idea if this is something golfers do) I am culpable. If I break a window because I’m trying to land balls next to the window, I might be culpable. Again, IANAL, so if anyone wants to correct my analogy, please do.
> How do you propose he would have been able to establish that this was indeed a vulnerability?
I could comment extensively on the issue, as it is not as cut and dry as you imply. Instead, I'm going to link to the HM discussion from 2017 , as I think it is insightful and covers nuances.
According to the article the system was developed by a regional subsidiary of a German mobile telco, which already tells you everything you need to know about its quality, but on top of that it was rushed to launch in time for some sporting event and thus even less testing was done that would normally happen.
Here's a better article: https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/25/hungarian-hacker-arrested-... - it seems like this was good faith security research (he disclosed the issue after testing it) and he couldn't use the transport pass he "stole" because he didn't even live in their service area anyway.
This arrest had nothing to do with stealing and all to do with putting well-connected, incompetent people in a very uncomfortable position.
No. It’s if you were selling something in your house for $10. Somebody came in, crossed out the number on the tag, wrote down $1 and handed you a bill.
Then you took their money and gave them the item without saying anything.
Would seem like a weird situation but I don’t see how its theft.
Maybe someone can explain this to me: Since forever Gmail auto-organized my newsletter/commercial emails with the `Notification`/`Promotional` labels, skipping the inbox, without special filters like this one.
Then, by a year or so, more and more promotional/commercial emails appeared in my inbox, and nowadays I delete 10/20 of those emails from my inbox daily. I don't understand as it worked flawlessly before. So, what happened here? Google fucked up this functionality or there is more?
Email sending services now offer tips on how to evade the filters that apply those special labels. And if you buy the expensive version, they'll even help you test whether or not your edits were effective at that. So maybe google fucked it up, but I think it's more the result of a concerted effort to bypass it.
That's a possibility. The thing is, I can't see a pattern. Even from the same provider, some mails are hitting my inbox, others are correctly filtered. It looks totally random and it's quite frustrating.
There are millions of gamers that await to play GTA VI, then you read the news and it looks like the whole word has turned in some silly real life GTA VI already (although, an happy ending is not guaranteed). It's shocking.
