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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: January 10th, 2024

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  • I’d need to see what comparable x86 processors and graphics are to the M4, but yeah, this seems like it could be one of the first Macs in a while to be really competitive on price. It doesn’t happen often but it does happen. Fifteen years ago, a couple years after Macintosh went to Intel, I bought a Mac Pro. I had a hard time comparing prices at first, but once I finally realized I needed to be looking at workstations instead of desktops the Mac Pro actually came out to be about $300 less than identically spec’d workstations from Dell and HP. That was about the price of a full retail license on Windows Vista Ultimate (or later Windows 7 Ultimate). With Boot Camp and feeling like I could find Windows on sale for less it actually seemed to make the most sense with the added benefit of access to both Windows and OS X. It was frankly the best Windows machine I’ve ever used. No bloat, and all the drivers worked.








  • I think your last point also applies to Valve. Limiting the number of models simplifies things for Valve; effectively they only have two models to support right now between the LCD and OLED models. From a software perspective I assume they’re extremely similar except at a very low level, mainly with the display panel difference. From a hardware perspective that’s only 2 main SKU families (looks like maybe 6 total with 3 of each?) and still probably a lot of parts overlap except with the panel and I’d assume two variants of the mainboard to accommodate different connections for each panel. Even making the OLED variants complicated things I’m sure, but it should be manageable.

    We learned within the past year that Valve is still an astonishingly small company compared to how much revenue it has; I think they were only around 450 employees. That’s pretty doable with software, but dealing with hardware starts to force that level up and would start cutting into the incredible profitability per employee that they’re accustomed to.

    Of course they’ve made plays in the hardware space before, but I don’t think anything’s been near the volume the Steam Deck has. Even assuming that they’re outsourcing the manufacturing, and maybe fulfillment, and maybe even warranty repairs, that still means they need employees to manage and support those programs. They need employees trained to support those products. They need to store spare parts and plan to have enough to legal requirements beyond the final sale date. They need to test software updates against every hardware variant prior to release for as long as the product is supported. Keeping the number of SKUs small makes the rest of that manageable and hopefully keeps profitability high and quality of service good. If they start adding too many SKUs then they need more employees, giving lower profitability and they start cutting quality and service until we end up with the bad products and support we see from so many big PC companies.

    It seems like they’re working towards opening Steam OS up where other companies can make their own devices. Let other companies handle the incremental updates and making the software work with their hardware. Let Valve keep focusing on just making a few things but making them really good.





  • I’m assuming the purchase came from outside Brazil, then? How was the import process? I used to work for a device manufacturer and we had some customers in Brazil. It seemed like import duties were often quite high and there was a good likelihood the customs inspector might want a bribe. Most customers would have us ship to someone in the US and it seemed like they weren’t freight forwarders, just someone they knew traveling to Brazil soon who would bring the device with them. Actually, most of Central and South America was like that.




  • I was wondering why anyone would go to the trouble when you can just buy a different brand.

    In Brazil, you can pick any e-reader you want, as long as it’s a Kindle. (Kobo, Boox, and other brands don’t sell their devices here.)

    That’s too bad, and surprising since later in the article it mentions that Kobo does have a store in Brazil to sell EPUB files, but not their readers.



  • I second this @OP / @Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.com, you’ll want to think carefully about if this is a situation where an open source/copyleft license is what you want to use. A couple concerns:

    • Any Creative Commons license will require the festival to list a credit for your work. That might not be an issue for the app or website, but the festival might not be interested in listing “poster by Tippon, used under a Creative Commons 4.0 license” every time they use something you created on social media, in print, or advertising.
    • An open source/copyleft license will permit other people to use the work you’ve created.
      • The festival might not appreciate this if you’ve created a graphic for them and some third party shows up selling t-shirts without giving the festival any money. You might not be able to use CC BY-NC if you want the festival to be able to sell things as a fundraiser, but then that opens it up to anybody to sell what you’ve created for the festival without giving money to the festival.
      • It sounds like you’re wanting to be able to reuse/sell your work to other clients in the future. If any of them figure out that your work for the festival is available under an open source/copyleft license, they can just take that without hiring you and then have their nephew/friend/AI make adjustments to the work you did for the festival.

    There are great reasons to use open source/copyleft licenses, but I don’t think they can or should be used in every situation. In this case they could be bad for both your and the festival’s interests. Ideally you’d be able to talk to a lawyer who specializes in contract and copyright law; the festival clearly has similar issues with other volunteer suppliers so perhaps they can find a lawyer willing to donate some time to provide them with a template that can be used for all their suppliers. Or if you’re doing a lot of freelance work yourself it’s probably worth finding your own attorney.

    Otherwise I’d try searching online for “example content license,” “example image license,” “example development license,” or similar along with your state/province/country and try to come up with at least something basic to cover you and the festival.

    Of course, if none of the concerns I raised are actually issues, Creative Commons has some great licenses.