Hi Tildes !

I was passively looking for an refresh of my current laptop (Thinkpad X1 carbon Gen 5; it's still working fine except some mysterious thermal profile¹), and a friend of mine working in retail told me he could sell me a Macbook Pro (the mid-range 14in one with the M3 Pro chip² at a heavy discount (more than half the price; it's a display model but he tells me it wasn't mistreated). It's a too good of a deal to pass on, so I accepted.

¹ it's constantly at 70C; I already changed the thermal paste and the battery.
² does that mean it's Macbook Pro Pro ?
³ and I guess the Thinkpad's going to be recycled as a home server. I half hope that running Linux on it will solve the thermal problem

My use case would be (in no particular order):

• photo/video processing: I know what I need and I already have a CaptureOne license. Davinci Resolve is enough (and plenty) for me
• programming (web dev, arduino; VScode's probably gonna be the second thing I'm going to install)(I'm kinda interested running a LLM locally, but have no experience with that)
• light CAD for 3d printing,
• gaming? My old gaming tower runs Elden Ring fine but struggle a bit with Baldur's Gate 3 (it's really the loading time, and loading textures), and it seems this MBP can run it fine.
• regular day-to-day browsing / office and adulting work

I would qualify myself as a power-user.

Background: I'm not entirely new to the Apple ecosystem. Back in uni I had the first unibody MBP sporting Leopard and then Snow Leopard. I then went with a X220t and then a my current X1.

Some questions:

• I see that BetterTouchTools is still a thing (back then I mapped three fingers swipe up to new tab, three finger swipe down to close tab, and twist to change tabs). I half remember one that was just a staging area living on a sidebar when moving file from one part of the finder to another (the name eludes me). Is there any other handy utilities I should be aware of ? That's also your prompt to plug in your favorite apps :)
• How's the dongle life (and what's the recommended one) ? While most of my stuff can be USB-C, I still have important stuff that requires USB-A (my photo printers, several portables hard-drive)
• Any interesting (gasp!) Android integration ? I'm not currently using any with my Windows machine (having Whatsapp/Telegram/Discord is sufficient), but I'm curious anyway.

I'm in the market for a new wallet. I had used leather trifolds for many years then switched to a cheap Chinese knockoff of the Ridge wallet a few years ago. It's been pretty good, but it's showing its age a bit and I want something that looks a bit nicer.

I want something slim that can go in my front pocket while leaving room for keys and other stuff. It needs to hold 9-10 cards and a small amount of cash. Preferably not more than $80-$90. Though I'd love to know what you all use regardless.

It's that time of year again: October, spooky month! The perfect time to share creepy/spooky/unexplainable stories! I asked last year and we got some neat stories, so figured I'd ask again. Anything goes from creepy experiences with creepy people, to hauntings, to weird memories you just can't explain.

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After several bad experiences lately, I am interested in grinding meat at home. Does anyone have experience in this practice? I have a KitchenAid stand mixer and after some research, I am interested in buying the meat grinder attachment. However, there are literally dozens of weird Chinese brands on Amazon purporting to sell an identical set for much less. AliExpress is even cheaper.

Has anyone bought and used the KitchenAid version? Has anyone tried a cheaper version?

Thank you for your advice.

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

I have an M1 MacBook Air. I use UTM to run a Debian 11 virtual machine.

After the initial setup, updating and upgrading, installing Firefox and a few small programs, (I almost called them apps, d'oh), the Debian.utm file size was about 6GB. Now, less than a month later, it's almost 9GB.

The VM size increases after each use. I haven't downloaded or installed anything close to 3GB worth. I have downloaded files, then put them into the trash and emptied the trash, could the trash not be emptying properly?

I have run ncdu, but nothing stands out. When I drill down into /usr and into each large folder, no sub folder is larger than a few 100MB. I can't see any big files lurking.

I've googled using many search terms, but I can't get past results that are about how to increase the size of a VM that is running out of room.

Thanks very much for reading this, any ideas?