Agreed. I ran a small GPT chatbot on Lambda through API Gateway with a dynamodb storage backend and don't recall incurring any cost (or if I did, was just pennies per month).
It "scales to zero" as soon as the request stops as far as billing is concerned.
However, the image remains "warm" and incurs zero cost once the last request ends. So I usually have a `/heartbeat` endpoint for this purpose and point a Cloud Scheduler job at it.
I haven't read the docs to figure out the exact heuristics of when it becomes "cold" again.
The cable can't accelerate data transfers. Either it works, or it doesn't¹. If it works, it works at full speed.
The bit specific to this Apple cable is that it does TB4 at 3m. That's not possible without active electronics to regenerate the signal in the cable; the maximum length for a passive cable is 2m. Passive 2m cables can be had for about $30 (noname) to $70 (non-Apple quality brand).
Fun fact: if you integrate optical transceivers, the cable can essentially be arbitrary length. (Though at some point you run into problems due to neither hardware nor software being built to work with the built-up latency.)
[¹ - for the sake of completeness, yes, these cables can partially fail with either sporadic bit errors or breaking one of the lanes. Both of these failure modes are extremely rare.]
The non-Mini version was such a hassle to maintain¹ that I stopped using it². This looked like a great middle ground, until the subscription part.
¹ I don’t want to become a networking expert and babysit everything. I already practice good security regarding what I install and run, I just want a little more control.
² And if it was a bother for me, there’s zero chance any of my non-technical friends would last an hour.
I forget what it's called but there's a mode you can put Little Snitch into that it allows whatever goes through and you can monitor it by opening and reviewing when you want. I think that's fairly similar to what mini does. This turns off all the nagging.
This is actually what I did last time I used Little Snitch, it helped a lot. When I installed a new app I'd use it for a bit, then review in LS and see what it was doing. From there I could allow or disallow whatever I needed.
It's sort of the reverse of "block everything until allowed"
Are you sure this removes the ability to perform ANY software update? As far as I can interpret from this email this just seems to remove the ability to perform the update remotely.
That's because the old parts are worth money. Check how much extra they want if you request your old tires after getting new ones. Hey, they took money off! Because folks might want your old batteries but they sure as hell don't want your old tires.
The issue is in the combination of data. Could you imagine the value of knowing if your heart rate went up after reading a certain message, or seeing a certain ad?
