31
Publishers Determined to Kill E-Books
A recent judgement makes it a breach of copyright to sell pre-owned eBooks. Do publishers really want to deter everyone from buying eBooks?
Howard Oakley
Macs & painting – 🦉 No AI content
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Visit eclecticlight.co → RSS feedOn Hacker News Jun 2017 – May 2026
Systems & Performance 77Hardware & Electronics 23Security & Privacy 16Tools & Productivity 12Society, Policy & Culture 7Life, Learning & Writing 7
32
Big Sur is both 10.16 and 11.0
macOS 11.0 will identify itself differently according to the SDK used, and an environment variable does the same for scripts.
33
M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores
A look at some of the factors determining the performance of new M3 chips compared to the M1 and M2 versions, and how not to compare them.
34
M1 Pro First Impressions: Core Management and CPU Performance
The P cores in the M1 Pro/Max CPU are managed in two groups of four, sparing load on the second group, and distributing it unevenly within each group. Its two E cores outperform the four in the M1 …
35
Sonoma's log gets briefer and more secretive
In Sonoma, some healthy Macs are unable to retain complete logs for 24 hours because of the frequency of entries, and even when privacy is removed, some content is censored.
36
What has changed in CPU cores in M3 chips?
Little seems to have changed in CPU cores in M3 chips, if you read reviews. Dig a bit deeper and there are major changes, as explained here.
37
How the Mac didn’t bring programming to the people
HyperTalk, AppleScript, Prograph, Automator, Swift Playgrounds and Shortcuts – all wonderful tools in their day, but none has brought coding to the crowd.
38
How to estimate an SSD’s working life
The life of an SSD should be more predictable than a hard disk. All you need is its TBW, and the total amount of data written to it so far.
39
Using a Mac without a network connection
New version of ViableS runs in a sandbox, with no shared folders, and can now be isolated from networks. So how well does Ventura work without internet?
40
External boot disks still don’t work properly with M1 Macs
Making an external bootable SSD for an M1 Mac has proved tricky. Has this changed in macOS 11.2? If you’ve already got 11.1 running on one, how do you update it to 11.2?
41
The hunt for the M1’s neural engine
How can you tell when software uses the Neural Engine in an M1 series Mac? How much power does it use, and what is Espresso? Mysteries unravelled.
42
How macOS manages M1 CPU cores
From the 8 cores of the original M1 chip to the M1 Ultra’s 20, this is how macOS manages threads from apps, services and other code.
43
Home truths about macOS
True or false? Apple supports macOS for three years. Apple’s security updates are sufficient. New versions of macOS are full of bugs. It’s safer to delay upgrading.
44
macOS has become more reliable
How APFS, the boot volume group, hashes, and Secure Boot all combine to guarantee the integrity of your system, and save you trouble and work.
45
M4 Macs can't virtualise older macOS
A bug, most probably in the early part of kernel boot in guest macOS, prevents M4 Macs virtualising macOS prior to 13.4.
46
Time Machine in macOS 10.15.3 is very slow on first full backup
When making a first full backup of less than 2 GB takes 86 minutes, and you then can’t restore from it anyway.
47
How do you know when macOS detects and remediates malware?
macOS may alert you when you’re trying to open or run a file, with an alert informing you that malware was detected. But what about in scans?
48
Mac OS High Sierra automatically checks EFI firmware each week
Every week, Macs running High Sierra will check the integrity of their EFI firmware, in a bid to detect tampering by malware.
49
Is macOS Becoming Unmaintainable?
Provision of maintenance procedures and tools is at the heart of software engineering, but not in macOS.
50
macOS extensions are moving away from the kernel
Management of kernel extensions has changed significantly in Big Sur and later. This overview for users contrasts kexts with user-level extensions which are replacing them.
51
Smartphone contact tracing has failed everywhere
Even the ‘successful’ contact tracing apps have fallen well below expectations, and incapable of discovering their effectiveness.
52
The M2 is more advanced than it seemed
Apple’s M2 chip uses a newer version of the CPU core instruction set. This increases its capability, thus how well it will cope with future apps and macOS, compared with the M1.
53
How does iCloud work? Plus a new version of Cirrus
Differences between CloudKit and iCloud Drive, what each does, and how it works. New version of Cirrus to test and check iCloud function.
54
Power, frequency, management: how M1 E cores win
macOS manages the loading and frequency of M1 cores according to the QoS set, and rules which differ between the original M1 and the M1 Pro.
55
APFS changes in Big Sur: how Time Machine backs up to APFS
APFS adds 6 volume roles, including one which supports Time Machine backups. And per-file encryption is coming.
56
When an M1 Mac mini is faster than an M1 Pro: contention and core allocation
When running some tasks confined to E cores, the original M1 chip from 2020 completes them significantly quicker than an on an M1 Pro. Here’s the detail.
57
How Secure Boot Works on M1 Series Macs
This article has now been extensively corrected and modified.
58
System settings that aren’t in System Settings
Where would you set the default call handler for macOS? And where in System Settings do you set the default web browser?
59
Is Catalina a Good Upgrade Yet?
Although 10.15.3 fixes a serious bug in Mail and Catalina is steadily maturing, there are many users who still shouldn’t upgrade.
60
Apple has just released the first Rapid Security Response for Ventura
Apple has just released the first of its new Rapid Security Responses (RSRs) for macOS 13.3.1 Ventura. This is indicated as macOS Rapid Security Response 13.3.1 (a), and is just just over 300 MB to…