Not necessarily for sound, on industrial fans and drives, we can program in skip frequencies to avoid any resonance issues in the system. I’ve never done it for noise reduction. But I do some tweaks for efficiency and power consumption reduction. There’s some wild industrial design stuff out there, and in the end, it’s because it provides something the customer wants. I won’t go into specifics, but you can design the same components the same for multiple manufacturers and do some slightly different things in its construction to give the vibe the OEM wants, or to fix some inherent characteristics in the manufacturers platform. It’s REALLY cool when you think about it. Sorry to be so vague, but I have to be.

Admitted, I haven’t read all the comments. I bought a refurbished M2 Mini to use as a cheap media server last week, and so I can use AirMessage with apple users in my life. The M2 Mini is a step down in every way from my ancient mid 2012 MacBook Pro except heat and efficiency. RAM, gotta pay extra for it. Disk space, gotta pay out the ass for it too, and you can’t even get a Mini with the amount of apace I put in my mid 2012 MBP. (4TB)I want to like it, but it’s SO LIMITING without paying out the ass and getting nickel and dimed for everything. I love macOS, especially compared to the disaster that is windows 10 and 11, but it’s ridiculous and so anti consumer nowadays! Which to be fair, Steve Jobs’ ultimate goal with all their products was to make it this way. Want to backup an iPad and iPhone? Good luck. You run out of space almost immediately with the 256GB of storage. Want to use an external disk for those backups? Use symbolic links and terminal, but you’ll have to manually move them to the Mac if you ever need to restore. I have a 6tb external disk attached to it now, but I’m afraid I’m still gonna be hamstrung somehow. All my photos, time machine backups, and media are on the external for obvious reasons. I was also going to pick up a MacBook Air 15" m3 (with upgrades) from Apple, but I’m really rethinking it right now, macOS or not.

I definitely want more storage, and will be using external disks with it.

This is a valid point, but I also want to keep it on macOS for the AirMessage apps. And it feels like the Intel Mac’s are all on life support right now. But a used Mini is much cheaper on eBay than a new one!

I thought parallels could run Windows 11 ARM version? What about QEMU?

Thank you much, that’s my biggest worry.

My mid 2012 has been upgraded to the max. It’s got the 2.9GHz dual core i7, 16 GB RAM, 4 tb of storage thanks to a data doubler, and is running MacOS 14.4. I’ve been getting kernel panics lately, and sometimes struggle getting it to turn on, I’m afraid it’s getting time to retire it. It’s unfortunate, but this has been an outstanding laptop for me. I dual boot windows and macos on it. Perhaps I’ll put fedora on it shortly and see if it behaves any better.

As others have said, Inductive Automation 's Ignition is a fine SCADA platform that runs on Linux. I used it for years until my employer decided we should get rid of Ignition and use OSISoft Pi for data visualization. It’s a ridiculous idea, as they are different products with different use cases, but I lost that argument and have been told to drop it. Still salty, all those development hours and useful tools gone.

macOS: Lack of official support for models that are still relevant. I’ve got the last MacBook Pro that was fully upgradable, a mid 2012 model with a dual core 4th gen i7. You can upgrade everything in it, and I have. 16gb of RAM, two disks, one an SSD, and the other a large HDD. But the latest official version of MacOS is Catalina. But I’m running Ventura on it now with no issues. And in similar respect, no upgradability at all of the new Macs after purchase. It’s very anti consumer.

For those of you who were confused by Maya, like me, it is the Mayak or Kyshtyn accident.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyshtym_disaster

That being said, I don’t think the nuclear industry of today should be hamstrung by Soviet incompetence and corruption from the 1950s. I mean these guys at this location were running open loop cooling circuits into the lake and river. We know better than this nowadays.

There is also a PC based offline barcode generator called Zint. I’ve used it a lot over the years. It can generate regular barcodes, QR codes, or other ones. It’s very handy. You can generate using batch files with it also, if you have a lot to do.

Yeah, Morrissey is a dick for sure. Such a shame as I love a lot of The Smiths and his other work.

I would highly recommend the hand of thrawn duology as well.

Ditto. At least with gas I’m not paying Alabama Power’s rates.

Not too far off of it.

Most of the ones I’ve seen don’t have most of, or any of this. I’d suspect that’s the problem.

You got it right I suspect. Most of these that I’ve seen are a single course of blocks with no discernible vapor barrier or anything. And maybe a thin layer of paint.

I’m genuinely curious. I am in the southern US, Alabama specifically with the heat and humidity that entails. There are cinder block homes here, but they’re mostly looked down upon and almost always have mold and mildew problems. How is that handled with brick and mortar or concrete construction?

Haven’t read the article yet, but the quote irks me. I live in a home built in 1920 by a rural “house doctor” with a barn and stalls and all that jazz. Electric may be the future, but gas cars will still be around a while. The same way horses didn’t immediately disappear from rural areas when cars became affordable.

Even this way, $200+ per month electricity and gas bills are normal. I am working on making some wooden storm windows that should help. Still iffy on spray foam insulation, I’ve heard of older homes having moisture problems afterwards.