Monkey Dust

A lesson intro why, despite the gaming industry's size and impact on culture, it can still be embarrassing to admit that you are a gamer?

I think the personal & office PC angle is already getting covered (our gaming PCs aside). The processing power most people need has increased far more slowly than power available. Most people for personal use would be fine with a tablet. Servers, with the rise of AI, are another matter. Probably the best solution available now is to use the waste heat for something useful. District heating, or heating for industrial greenhouses, for example.

These things go in phases. Look at TV shows & movies from the 80's, for example. The worst thing about it, is at the office Christmas party. You have a woman talking to you who clearly knows who you are, but you're struggling to figure out who she is, despite having seen her 100s of times before. This problem is, admittedly, more severe the greater your acquaintance with Mr Daniels that evening.

Yes. It's considered a form of communism. A true patriot will just rear end the car in front at 120 freedoms per hour.

I'm on the fence about this. Software that can make itself the default, is a security risk. But I feel MS reasons are not pure. Given that it's only the more tech-savvy users installing 3rd party browsers, I don't think it's much of an issue.

Yes, knowing where the emergency release of your own car is not unreasonable... But, passengers may not, passers-by assisting after an accident may not, the emergency services may not. And even if you look it up when you buy the car, if you find yourself a couple of years later, car wedged in the scenery, in that high stress situation, will you remember? Not everyone will. They create a problem that has no good reason to exist IMO.

If a vehicle has automatic locking, it should auto unlock in the event of an accident. The big issue is when the handles aren't connected to the locking mechanism by mechanical means. If the power fails as a result of the accident, the regular door handle won't work, and the emergency override ones are frequently too well hidden. Making it somewhat infuriating that so many new EVs are SUVs. Rain sensing wiper are a weird one. I thought they should be getting better, but still, the best rain sensing wipers I've ever used was on a 2001 Alfa 147. And as much as I loved that car, its electronics weren't something I normally praised...

Good luck to whoever has to tell the finance teams they can no longer use Excel. LibreOffice's Calc is OK, much better than the abomination that Apple ship with Macs, but it is still a long way behind Excel. A lot of stuff people use in office environments is web based, or can be web based, making it OS-agnostic. IMO ditching MS Office (or 365 as they now call it for some inexplicable reason) would be the much bigger deal for end users. Still, more large organizations using OSS will help push things forward.

It will be full of those AI voiced ads for scammy looking, drop-shipped gadgets, that plague YouTube.

You've paused the content because you need to direct your concentration elsewhere. How much are these pause ads going to be worth? Ad revenue has already dropped across pretty much all platforms. Platforms where there is high probability that these ads aren't playing to an empty room.

I think it's time to release the forum as a podcast.

A lot of the large investors are pension funds, so most retail investors are themselves invested through large investors. Also, there are nowhere near enough retail investors to support markets either. The big problem isn't the investors, IMO, especially when large numbers of them choose not to vote. What drives the short-termism is the short-termism of board compensation. Long term planing is not rewarded, short term spikes in stock price is.

Yes, insurance should have picked up the tab for rebuilding the bridge. I guess if the government is going to generously volunteer taxpayer cash, the insurance companies won't complain.

Anyone else find how empty the engine bay of that truck was, hilarious?

I guess maybe they don't have any optimism about selling a new phone to iPhone X, and earlier, users. I have an 11, and honestly a 15 still feels like a meh upgrade considering the cost. The biggest deal feels like USB-C charging, and being able to get rid of my lighting cables. I'll probably stick with the 11 until it stops receiving security updates.

Another vote for Keychron for ISO boards. Shipping from China to the UK took 6 weeks for me, and was really expensive, to Germany could be similar. But if you don't want one of the fancy Q-series boards, you can get the K and K Pro series boards on Amazon much faster. Just make sure you get a hot-swap board, not all K boards are hot-swap.

To be fair, the Indian government would have a lot of data to check. Makes a mockery of the argument that the Chinese government is harvesting data on westerners via TikTok, and that ByteDance should sell it. If the Chinese really want our viewing habits, they could just buy it off a data broker.

Go Norfolk! Not something I thought I'd ever say.

Is this chip for gaming? Or district heating?

All cases in ye olden days had sharp edges & no cable management features. The hardest semi-recently was a Silverstone SG10. It was a compact mATX case, very clever design, well-made and the best dust filters I've ever used. But like all super compact PC cases, it was a challenging build. Unfortunately, the PC I built in it was a temperamental PITA and the case made it difficult and time-consuming every time I had to open it up. I now have a normal-sized case, it's easier, but feels like such a waste of space.

To be fair, one of the reasons you recommend iPhone to ageing relatives is that it's quite hard to screw up. If they could start downloading apps from links in malicious messages & emails, it would undermine iPhone as the 'safe' option. Yes, Apple are restricting it for revenue reasons, not customer friendly ones. But all big companies, and most small ones, put profit ahead of customers interests. That's capitalism.

They are pushing TikTok shop hard, diversifying away from advertising. I guess with the ad-pocalypse, lots of ad supported platforms will be exploring options. It's hard to say if TikTok profitable now, unless ByteDance have broken down the figures? I suspect it isn't, streaming video is an expensive business. Aren't Google cagey about if YouTube turns a profit too?

I think AI filling the internet with nonsense, and seriously harming the usefulness of the web, is a pretty likely outcome over the next couple of years. It will probably break the ad supported model too, as there will be so much content with ads, each ad will be virtually worthless.

My last PC ran a 1070, and it could run RDR2 without crashing. I don't think the GPU is the problem. I'd first try turning textures down from ultra, that is maybe causing you to run out of VRAM? Seems unlikely, though. Next, I'd try reinstalling the game and the Nvidia drivers. Do you have crashing problems in any other games?

As another long term PC gamer, I have to say PC gaming is so much easier than it used to be. New games pretty much just work. Old games and modding is where long frustrating troubleshooting comes in. Old games and ultrawide monitors can be a real headache. For some old games, it might be worth rebuying them off GOG. A lot of the old games on there have compatibility patches for newer versions of Windows.