I bought a Thinkpad P16s with 64 GB of LPDDR5x ram in October 2024 for just over $1100.
64 GB of LPDDR5x will add $849 to the price of a Framework 13 Pro. Thats insane. I would love a future Framework 16 Pro but that will probably run $3500 for the configuration that I would want if memory and storage prices don't come down.
You need to consider the upgradability aspect too - the next time you want to upgrade, you just need to buy a new mainboard, which would be considerably cheaper than buying a whole new laptop.
A new mainboard that may need new memory. From another comment in thread:
I have 64GB of DDR4 in my current laptop, and replacing that with the same amount of LPCAMM2 LPDDR5X is probably more expensive than the rest of the laptop itself.
And another:
I just had my mainboard die, and I was advised there currently isn't another mainboard in stock that works with my old DDR4 RAM
No you can't do that on a kindle. They have a "send to kindle" feature that allows you to add non-Amazon purchased ebooks to your library. But that requires support from the backend (and an internet connection).
I'm assuming send to kindle will no longer be supported on these older devices.
You can send books to your kindle over USB, and I do that all the time for larger books that are above the size limit on the email system.
The big problem is that Amazon no longer allows you to download books from their site to your desktop, so you have no way to actually get a purchased book and send it to the kindle even over USB. However, if you buy non-DRM books from other book sellers you won't have this problem.
They block you from doing this if you're not logged in (as I discovered after wiping and rooting one to give to a friend recently).
As evidence, note that instructions for rooting them requires the device to be registered - this is because it won't be accessible over USB until you do so: https://kindlemodding.org/jailbreaking/WinterBreak/
> The big problem is that Amazon no longer allows you to download books from their site to your desktop
I've bought a number of books on Kindle that were explicitly marked as being sold without DRM. Does this mean I've lost access to any DRM-free downloads that I haven't already backed up?
If you bought them from Amazon, you won't be able to get them after the cutoff date directly to that Kindle via WiFi. You may not be able to get them in a format that old Kindles can read at all.
Download and back them up now. Or just pirate them if you need them later.
The entire Kindle store system will cease working on older Kindles after the cutoff. Still works as a reader, but expect to lose things like location sync across devices.
I don't buy from Amazon, I don't turn on WiFi on my Kindle because it eats battery life, I always travel with a laptop, and I only use it to read outdoors. So I really don't care. It's my beach book. At home, I'd rather read on my iPad.
Oh, and FWIW, you can install Tailscale to a jailbroken Kindle and Taildrop files to it over WiFi, if it can read the format (for the old ones being discussed, that's mobi or azw3).
I have a Kindle that took a fall about 8 years ago and the wifi has never worked since then. I've been able to load books onto it using USB with no issues.
For keyboards specifically, there are still community run group buys happening on the geekhack forum.
It's both a lot more interesting and a lot more risky than Massdrop used to be in the sense that there is lots of stuff that even the old Massdrop never would have offered but you're sending a random person on the internet money (sometimes hundreds of dollars) and hoping to receive a product many months later. They have added a "vendor trust" program in recent years to better help inform buyers but there is always risk.
I don't think there is any incentive to do so right now because the open models aren't as good. The vast majority of businesses are going to just pay the extra cost for access to a frontier model. The model is what gives them a competitive advantage, not the harness. The harness is a lot easier to replicate than Opus.
There are benefits too. Some developers might learn to use Claude Code outside of work with cheaper models and then advocate for using Claude Code at work (where their companies will just buy access from Anthropic, Bedrock, etc). Similar to how free ESXi licenses for personal use helped infrastructure folks gain skills with that product which created a healthy supply of labor and VMware evangelists that were eager to spread the gospel. Anthropic can't just give away access to Claude models because of cost so there is use in allowing alternative ways for developers to learn how to use Claude Code and develop a workflow with it.
Are the Claude Code (desktop) models very different from what Bedrock has? I thought you could hook up VSCode (not Claude Desktop) to Bedrock Anthropic models. Are there features in Claude Desktop that are not in VSCode/cli?
It appears that OpenAI has blessed third party harnesses. I know they officially support OpenCode and they have this on their developer portal:
"Developers should code in the tools they prefer, whether that's Codex, OpenCode, Cline, pi, OpenClaw, or something else, and this program supports that work."
Obviously, the context is that OpenAI is telling open source developers who are using free subscriptions/tokens from the Codex for Open Source program that they can use any harness they want. But it would be strange for that to not extend to paying subscribers.
I built a new desktop in 2023 and repurposed my old desktop for my daughter. The old desktop had a couple of smaller SSDs so I swapped them out for a 2TB Samsung SSD. Paid $99 on Amazon.
The exact same SSD is $479 on Amazon today. It's not a fancy super fast NVMe. It's a slow SATA drive. I have no idea why anyone would even consider building a PC with prices this inflated.
> I have no idea why anyone would even consider building a PC with prices this inflated.
I did recently, specifically targeting lower capacities for the components that have been increasing (RAM and storage).
It didn’t seem like prices would be going down for a while and I didn’t have a desktop pc otherwise, so just went for it. We’ll see how it all plays out but I don’t think it was a terrible decision, as long as prices stay high for a couple years it still makes sense to just suffer through the increases
I don't think they are going to collapse. But it was only a couple of years ago that many people thought OpenAI had a big (some thought insurmountable) lead in a race to dominate a winner take all markee. Some people did correctly state that OpenAI had no moat in those days so credit there where it's due.
Now it's looking like a competitive blood bath where ever increasing levels of investment is needed just to main market position. Their frontier models are SOTA for 4 weeks before a competitor comes and takes the crown. They are standing on much shakier ground than they were 2 years ago.
A competitive bloodbath plus OpenAI has investment valuing it like it will achieve agi rather than (merely) being a huge advancement in computing, but not a fundamental rewriting of how all work is done.
Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, Nvidia, etc have been able to collect large amounts of revenue from a global customer base so I don't think the assumption was that unreasonable.
Obviously, China will protect its homegrown AI industry. Current geopolitics trending towards US decoupling in Europe might slow it. But under the old status quo, US AI would have been rapidly adopted in the EU (and it still might. It depends greatly on how much of the Trump Doctrine outlasts the current administration).
Developing countries eventually adopt new technologies. First they adopted personal computers and became customers of Microsoft, then they adopted the Internet and became customers of Google, they adopted smartphones and became customers of Apple. Eventually they will adopt AI and become customers of someone. The question is whether it will be US tech or Chinese tech.
You could say that there are Apple devices that do not work well or don’t work at all without another Apple device, and off the top of my head I would say the only ones are the Watch and the HomePod, but most alternative devices work fine with Apple ones, e.g Chromecast, Garmin watches, Google Home hubs, etc.
And even so, the same could be said about Android only features and devices, e.g. Samsung Watch doesn’t work without an Android phone, Google Earbuds are feature capped on iPhone, etc.
IMO, if we are looking at rent seeking behaviors, Google shoving Gemini down the throats of Google Home users, with no chance of rolling back if they don’t like it, is way worse.
64 GB of LPDDR5x will add $849 to the price of a Framework 13 Pro. Thats insane. I would love a future Framework 16 Pro but that will probably run $3500 for the configuration that I would want if memory and storage prices don't come down.
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