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You don't need to read this, but I need to write it.
In September last year I completed 25 years at my institution. I never left because we have the best CS theory group in the world. :-) In any case, I couldn't be happier here researchwise and in other respects, including teaching (modulo the pandemic, modulo the rise of LLM's, but this is not unique to this place).
And recently there was a party at the Vice Chancellor's house to celebrate all of us who have been here for 25 years.
All of us got a voucher for a certain generous amount. There weren't many useful ways to spend the voucher.
I ended up doing this: I got a new machine to replace my old personal machine. I sold the old machine, and got even.
Now the way this happened is crazy. My old machine was a Mac Mini M4 16GB RAM and 256GB SSD. The new machine is a MacBook Pro M5 Pro with 1GB SSD.
How can this happen??? The voucher was *not* that generous.
Apple has just increased the prices of their products, due to the shortage of RAM. So I could sell my Mac Mini M4 for *more* than I paid in December 2024. In fact, there is a shortage of Mac Mini's, even in the Apple Store.
At the same time, some sellers of Apple products haven't increased their prices for the products they have in stock. In fact, the seller I got my new MacBook Pro from had it cheaper than the price Apple had originally and further increased recently.
Isn't that crazy?
Anyway. Let me discuss the experience with the new machine.