I daily drive an AMD Framework 13 with Fedora. I do light software dev, writing, some gaming, and run a variety of local LLMs without pain. I'm happy with the machine and Framework's support, and I do like their vision of repairability/upgradability and I've taken advantage of that already. On the downside, it just clearly isn't as good of a machine for the cost compared to what you could get -- several aspects are just middle-of-the-road: the webcam, speakers and the battery life stand out for me as not great. The AMD chip is also new enough that I still run into glitches with kernel updates on occasion, and power efficiency was initially much worse but has been improving.
In the past, my jam has always been to buy used Thinkpads and run them into the ground. If my Framework got stolen today, I don't think buying another Framework would be a slam-dunk decision for me but I'd still consider it.
tl;dr: happy enough with the laptop and Framework support; hopeful that the dream of repairability/upgradeability pays off; but it does feel like a bit of a compromise on quality.
p.s. I'm quite sensitive to noise and really did not want a machine that ran its fan all the time; the AMD Framework 13 is pretty good for this unless gaming or under some other high load and then it's a rushing sound not a whine.
I used to volunteer with Software Carpentry to teach and create lessons. Wonderful project, and so, so needed as many researchers (eg grad students) never get to properly learn fundamental data crunching skills and instead bumble along with poorly crafted spreadsheets and lots of cutting and pasting.
> Just a few years ago, paramedics in Germany were routinely (and probably not entirely legally) using WhatsApp for communicating with the hospital
Here in Canada, WhatsApp is routinely used in the hospitals for doctors to communicate with each other about patient care. We aren't supposed to send identifiable information but... it happens all the time, of course. And for the same reason: no sanctioned system to replace it.
Ditto. We developed a nice set of high-res hippocampal atlases[1] and multi-atlas segmentation method to use them[2] and compared it with FSL, and freesurfer and found FSL and freesurfer would often over-estimate segmentations. Good for a first pass because they are both dead-easy to run though.
Thank you for posting this. I'm just starting out on a career in medicine myself, and I often wonder how to make it through this with my sanity intact. The idea that the career demands "the subsuming of my inner life" seems cruel and, I hope, not inevitable. Isn't there room to feel our feelings in this job, and not necessarily be ground down by them?
https://github.com/m-bain/whisperX