I'll give a shoutout to the rEFInd boot manager. If anyone has ever had trouble with Grub, rEFInd continues to work for years across multiple machines. I have never had a problem with it.
It is an HP Omnibook 7, model 16T-BH000. Mine is 16", but it also comes in a 14" model called 14T-HG000 with the same 300 series processors if that is your preferred size.
It has an aluminum chassis, and I got mine configured with a 120Hz OLED screen. 70Wh battery on the 16" and 68Wh on the 14", though a 3% difference in battery is probably not enough to be noticeable. The 14" weighs around 1.44kg/3.17 lbs while the 16" weighs 1.96kg/4.32 lbs. I think that is actually a smidge lighter than the Macbooks, but not as light as something like the LG gram or the Asus Expertbook series, though I can't speak for either of those as I have never owned them.
HP runs sales on their website frequently, so while my configuration normally would have cost around $2200 USD, I got it on sale for around $1600.
Edit: though I guess per your criteria above, yes, it does come with Windows installed and I ended up putting in a second SSD and installing Linux on that. Buying my own SSD was cheaper than upgrading to a 2TB option on their website, and it has two NVMe slots, so now I can dual boot as well. Also bear in mind that in a Macbook, the SSD is soldered to the motherboard and non-removable.
I am a little confused by the reasoning here. Is battery life your only consideration at all? Are there any other criteria which influence your choice?
It seems like a shame to jump ship on an entire ecosystem solely because your current machine has disappointing battery life.
I recently got a machine with the new Intel 358H and the B390 iGPU. I haven't used it a ton yet, but it seems like it gets around 8-10 hours battery life on normal web browsing/productivity tasks in my experience, and while not as powerful as an RTX 4060 (Most benchmarks place the B390 somewhere between a 3050 and 4050), I imagine would be serviceable for editing and coding.
KDE. I don't even do much to customize it. I think it looks pretty good out of the box.
I decided to be a bit silly and have it in my rabbit yunomi. This sample I had was quite good. It has a bit of that brothy, rich note that one associates with gyokuro. Shinchas tend to be a bit stronger than normal sencha, and so can often have a bitter edge which I do not prefer. This one was very mellow, though, with very little bitterness.
That is fair enough. Have there been any findings that CPUs are sending telemetry of some kind, or is it more the idea of there possibly being some back door for governments to use?
I guess for me personally, my threat model for privacy is more towards foiling corporate data harvesting wherever possible, but I have resigned myself to the realization that making a computer nation-state-proof is borderline impossible without unreasonable levels of effort, especially for a normal computer user like myself.
That was my first thought about the IME, but I wasn't sure. I guess that is what I am trying to understand.
Your best bet is to probably look into a snapdragon laptop. Based on everything I have heard, RISC V is going to be rough going. Some folks have also converted raspberry pis into laptops, but I imagine the build quality will be much more janky than an OEM laptop.
Also, depending on your philosophic outlook, would buying a used laptop count? You are not really supporting the CPU maker or laptop OEM, as you are using hardware which was already sold, and reducing e-waste in the world.
Lastly, I am trying to understand the meaning behind "protect my privacy." Is there something less private about an AMD or Intel CPU, even if you have Linux installed on it, or is that covered by the Linux part?
Is there some reason why you want to hold an exact temperature for the entire steep? You are always going to get some temperature drop pouring from the kettle into your cup/teapot/etc.
I know in the gongfu method, it is standard practice to do a hot water rinse of the cups, which should warm them and reduce the temperature drop somewhat. You could do something similar by filling your brewing vessel with hot water, draining, and then filling it with the tea and new hot water, but you will not eliminate the temperature drop entirely.
I would assume most recommended times/temps from tea vendors are designed with some temperature drop in mind. I think they are more like recommendations than hard, scientific values.
It is a somewhat old-fashioned choice these days, but Arctic Silver 5 paste is still my go-to. It is very thick and not prone to pump-out or dry-out. I have systems that I have taken apart where the paste was still tacky a good 5-6 years later. I think some modern pastes are a degree or two cooler, but for a 15W U-series CPU I do not think that is as much of a concern.
Most tutorials online will be for desktop CPUs and will tell you to put a pea-sized bead in the center and press down, but this is more suitable for desktop CPUs with an integrated heat spreader and not laptop CPUs, which are typically direct die application and would probably either leave a ton of excess paste from a pea-sized dot, or risk an exposed corner for a smaller dot.
For direct die, I would suggest spreading an even layer of paste from edge to edge of the die using the edge of an old credit card or the like. You want to avoid stirring up the paste too much in order to avoid introducing air bubbles which could cause localized hot spots on the die.
I am a big fan of Zero Japan's teapots. Glazed ceramic, and i have put them in the dishwasher for years with no issues. I think they also go by the name Bee House. The infuser they come with is pretty good, but it turns our that the mouth is also the perfect size for a Finum medium basket strainer.
There is no shame in dual booting. That will give you the freedom to find alternatives for everything in your workflow until you stop needing to boot into Windows at all. The preferred way is with a separate physical drive, because windows updates will sometimes overwrite the ESP partition or do other weird things which could break your Linux install.
Not an expert in that, sorry. There are plenty of articles online for alternatives for all of those.
Linux has no trouble reading NTFS. I have an NTFS network drive, and on my dual boot laptop I can simply reach into the NTFS partition on my second drive and grab files from it from Linux (Windows cannot read the Linux drive, though).
Not sure on those specific models, but I have a Behringer UM2 and Linux detects and works with it just fine.
I apologize for the sub-optimal lighting in a slightly dark corner of my living room.
Does anyone have any thoughts on what this might be? The location is North Carolina, USA. I'm no expert, but looking around at some photos, my best guess might be a grass spider of the genus Agelenopsis. Hopefully this isn't too mundane of a spider for this community.
The size I would estimate is around 15mm or so. Fortunately, they were a very cooperative photography subject and did not move while I went and grabbed a ruler for the last image below.
[Palpatine voice]: "Do it!"