I got a Spectre TV (pretty cheap, they sell it at Walmart). It's a little more expensive than other TVs in the same class, but has no smart features: you plug HDMI into it and it displays it. You hit "Source" and are greeted with a no-nonsense menu that lets you choose the HDMI port, composite input, etc. It's great.
Back in the day when Xeon Phi was around, I'd run `make -j 256` to run on the ~240 available hyperthreads. Those things were build machine beasts, assuming there weren't too many dependencies. For example. the Linux kernel would build files approximately ~240 at a time, which greatly sped up the build process, but linking was extremely slow (single-threaded on one very slow Phi core).
Even more interestingly, the Knights Landing series had a PCIe coprocessor version, which ran a stripped-down Linux kernel, and you could SSH onto it. One of my friends got one for free at a conference, and I really wish I'd picked one up!
“So they don’t have to experience insects whatsoever”
You don’t live in an area where mosquitoes are a problem, do you? They can get so bad that you simply don’t want to go outside because you’ll have multiple biting you at any given moment. So yes, there is a benefit to consumers spraying for mosquitoes: those consumers can now enjoy their yards! A treatment of Bifenthrin every few months, and the mosquito problem is greatly reduced.
I don’t disagree with the point of your comment, though.
I bought a first-generation Framework a couple of years ago, and it's been perfect for me. I don't especially need a thin/light laptop, but what I care about is that it's snappy and sturdy, has a nice keyboard, and can be repaired to last long-term (like the Thinkpad T430 that it replaced). The Framework fits the bill on those fronts, so it earns a long-term position on my nightstand.
I agree with using a single car for a household: my wife and I have done that for the past six years (living in Tennessee, Oregon, and Arizona) with a 2006 Toyota Highlander that we paid $7,000 in cash for. The last two years, we've had a baby/toddler. We've encountered a few (one or two per six months) situations where we might have _preferred_ another vehicle, but the inconvenience was so minor (I Ubered, or someone picked me up) that another vehicle couldn't remotely be justified. Recently we got a beat-up F-150 to haul lumber and soil, but don't use it day-to-day and have never _needed_ it as a second vehicle.
Regarding the sub-$5k car: it depends on your definition of "decent used car." Most people are unwilling to accept a used vehicle with a slightly broken interior or other minor issues. Just today, I was looking for comparative prices for a 2003 F-150 that I've got, and I found multiple in the $2-3k range in my area that are in good condition (running motor, A/C works, non-necessary repairs required). And that's a pickup truck: if you want a coupe or sedan, there are even more options below $3,000. You just need to be willing to accept some flaws: right now I've got several tabs open of good "A-to-B" cars with under 200k miles.
As with all things, this definitely deserves some context. His daughter later said that she used some rose mist before visiting him, and admitted that she did smell like a toilet (as in, a fragrance often used to clean toilets).
Yeah, this is what I use, and I've not been banned or anything.
I have been locked out of my account, though. There was a week during which I got locked out, and had to re-authenticate with 2FA to get into my account, once a day. However, they eventually stopped doing that after enough support tickets rolled in, and Ripcord has been rippin' along ever since.
That's almost exactly what the Xeon Phi was, both in coprocessor form and in machine form. It included MCDRAM, too, which was a high-bandwidth memory. Very efficient, but lacked sales; people didn't want it.
Part of that, I think, was lack of parallelism in applications: in order to fully take advantage of those cores, you need to have a nearly-embarrassingly-parallel problem. Otherwise, you're not going to get the performance that you'd expect (but you'll get power efficiency!).
The fact of the matter is, that's not "all anybody wants."
I think we can simply imagine a common scenario: some employee working for Company X, developing a compiler suite, and adding necessary optimizations for Company X's processors. Meanwhile, Company Y's processors don't get as much focus (perhaps due to the employee not knowing about Company Y's CPUIDs, supported optimizations for different models, etc.). Thus, Company Y's processors don't run as quickly with this particular library.
Why does this have to be malicious intent? Surely it's not surprising to you that Company X's software executes quicker on Company X's processors: I should hope that it does! The same would hold true if Company Y were to develop a compiler; unique features of their processors (and perhaps not Company X's) should be used to their fullest extent.
Oh, for some reason I read that bit as "the Linux kernel non-consensually personalizes." You're right, though: it's definitely referring to userspace libraries, not the kernel itself. And yes, you can still easily avoid GNOME, Unity, and anything else you don't want to use: Openbox, i3, dmenu, and countless other window managers and GUI applications exist and work perfectly well (as they did a decade ago). That plethora of choice makes "Linux" nearly immune to the effect that the author's talking about.
https://perfwiki.github.io/main/top-down-analysis/