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Monkey Dust

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Everything posted by Monkey Dust

  1. If you've been there a couple of months, I'd take my lead from what others are wearing. Dress codes for offices are in a transitionary phase. They vary by location, sector and by individual company. There are firm rules any more, as there were 10 years ago I wouldn't go too formal in an informal office, even if you're looking for promotion. You need to 'fit' with an organization to progress in it. Chinos & dress shoes. I wouldn't wear black shoes with chinos, nor plainer styles like Oxfords or Derbies. I'd go brogues, monks or slip-ons, or smart boots. Colour wise, I'd go dark brown with beige chinos. For grey chinos, I'd suggest dark blue, or dark burgundy if you're feeling adventurous. With the right grey, tobacco brogues or monks would work really well.
  2. I think you're overestimating them. They failed to muscle into gaming with Stadia. Microsoft failed to muscle into phones. Meta have failed to make a commercial success of the Metaverse. And most pertinently to this topic, Apple, despite selling Macs for 30+ years, are still only a tiny part of the market. The big tech giants can, and do, make big bets that they lose. If you need to choose a device, for a tech-phobic elderly relative, a tablet is probably the correct answer. If you want a cheap laptop, I'd still go Windows, just for the software compatibility. I don't get who the Chromebook is for?
  3. They may not be fake, though you may not get anywhere near the advertised capacity, the big problem is are they safe? E-scooters and cheap e-bikes have a reputation for catching fire. I wouldn't trust a random unbranded lithium-ion battery off Amazon.
  4. I'm struggling to see a use case for these. They will have to get a lot smaller and lighter to be wearable all day, so not a monitor replacement. And even if you could wear it all day, you probably shouldn't. Not varying your focus for hours doesn't strike me as being good for your eyes. My prediction is that this won't go anywhere, outside a few niches. It's definitely not the new iPhone.
  5. For repairability, iPhone is probably one of the better ones as you can actually get them repaired. Should be ok with Samsung too, but for more niche Android phones, you're going to struggle for parts. Macs, and their non-replaceable SSDs, are terrible for repairability, I agree with you there. There is a feature in Windows that allows you to link your Android phone. That might give you the functionality you are looking for? I haven't tried it, being team iPhone, but someone in the thread might have done, and can comment?
  6. I thought we all knew, by now, 2 things not to do. 1. Joke about blowing stuff up in and around airports and government buildings 2. Use public Wi-Fi This muppet failed on both.
  7. I think AI may destroy the internet, at least the www bit. My hypothesis is that first vast amounts of AI generated content will crowd out all other content. And the as the new content begins to be generated based on the AI hallucinations that went before it, it will become near impossible to tell fact from fiction. In time, we will just give up on the web. I think the hype right now isn't so much overdone, as premature. It's just a very large statistical model, it doesn't really understand anything, which limits its usefulness somewhat.
  8. The rules https://www.gov.uk/goods-sent-from-abroad/tax-and-duty So it appears not, as long as VAT is charged when you buy the item. Though when I have bought used items from Japan, via eBay, there was a customs charge on the value of the item, as well as a customs admin fee. The admin fee was £20 I think, though this was a few years ago. I think it depends on if the sender pays the VAT or not.
  9. I think it depends a lot on your browsing habits. 30 tabs open at all times (guilty)? You could run 8GB very close to the wire. If you're using an application that isn't well optimized for RAM usage, 8GB could easily prove to not be enough. If you have old tech that you can't, or don't want to, upgrade, 8GB may not seem like an unreasonable limitation. But I wouldn't buy a new PC/Mac with less than 12GB. My hot take. If you just need a laptop for browsing, word processing and note-taking, get a tablet with a keyboard case. Does everything you need with less size, weight and power consumption.
  10. A proper financial audit would have showed up a problem in a matter of days. The expected revenue that Horizon system was generating for the prosecuted post masters was so far in excess of the sales they were making. It would have been pretty obvious if anyone cared to look. It was a problem of culture in the Post Office, far more so than an IT problem. Expecting all government software (not that the Post Office is owned by the government any more) to be open source, as noted above, isn't realistic, or necessary. After Brexit, GBP was deemed 'too metric'. We now use non-metric UKP. There are 19⅔ ounces to the UKP and 14 furlongs to the shilling.
  11. You could try Beatport, a much better selection of dance music than the other streaming services. I've ripped all my CDs onto my PC, but I haven't bought any new ones for years. Still can't bring myself to cull my CD collection in the same way I culled my DVDs though. I still listen to most of my music on Spotify, though, even if I have it on my SSD. A lot of new music, at least the kind of music I listen to, is rarely released on CD now. I could get most of it on 12" vinyl, but that would be both expensive and take up a huge amount of storage space.
  12. Weird how this has been known about for years, but the government only took serious notice when a prime time drama was aired about it. So many people must have known something was up, the finance department being an obvious one, but clearly no one in senior management wanted to hear it.
  13. Why is the power going off so frequently? A new freezer, that turns back on when power is restored, might be a cheaper option? Fridges & freezers do pull a high wattage when the compressor is running, most will pull over 1000W. Either, you need a much more powerful power station, or a portable fridge/freezer that is designed to operate at a lower peak power.
  14. It's amazing what some people are willing to believe & invest in. It never passed the sniff test. Even if it could be made to work, the costs would be so astronomical it could possibly turn a profit. I'm surprised they only burnt through 500 mill. That won't go far if you're buying land, large bits of tube and prototype vehicles. Suggests to me even hyperloop weren't taking it seriously.
  15. Won't someone think of the shareholders? Spending time and money on security is not time and money spent on making line go up. Probably also doesn't help that contracts are awarded on either lowest cost, or who plays golf with who.
  16. So much of corporate culture is fucking stupid. But that isn't a controversial opinion.
  17. I haven't turned on my Wii U for a few years, so my memory of how the Wii mode works may be rusty. If all the Wii U functionality works, I'd 99% rule out a hardware issue. Assuming the console isn't modded, it might be worth asking Nintendo support about it. It might be possible to reinstall the Wii emulator, or do a full factory reset on it.
  18. Looking at the Keychron website, yep on some K Pro boards, ANSI only, soldered is an option. Well Keychron, that makes perfect sense
  19. You have the Apple keys on. The Windows keycaps will be in the box. The 2 should have the " not the @ above it. The 3 should have just the £ with no #. And the 4 should have the $ and € symbols. And that weird double s key should be the ` ¬ button on Windows. There are a few other swaps you will have to make too.
  20. All the K Pro series boards are all hot swappable. It's the regular K series boards that are available as either hot swap or soldered.
  21. Laptop CPUs are hard to review on their own, as they can't be separated from the rest of the hardware. Maybe laptop reviews don't do well enough to justify such a video? I'd expect them to cover it when desktop parts are released. I expect we'll still get GPU reviews, though I think LMG have passed on some of the meh products.
  22. I think watching customers in their own house, would be a step too far, and cause a huge consumer backlash.
  23. Cheap stuff with lithium batteries, you should run far, and run fast. Cheap stuff that plugs in to your mains socket (or outlet for our American cousins) normally has less scope for burning your house down, as it should trip the breaker before reaching that point. Do you feel lucky? Personally I wouldn't. There are so many cheap, dangerous, electrical goods out there that claim to be certified, and even have the CE mark, but aren't. Looking like ones that are for sale in more traditional retailers is no guarantee that they are the same product. They could be the same, but have failed the QC, or they may have entirely different internals.
  24. I'm firmly in the 'from my cold dead hands' camp on the Windows key. But the problem with replacing the scroll lock key instead, or any of the other almost useless legacy keys, is that these are already absent from laptops. The space to the right of the space bar is at a premium already, on smaller keyboards. Many are already missing a right Ctrl & win in favour of function shift keys. It seems like a really stupid place to try to place in an extra key.
  25. Yes, I can see the EU picking this up. E-waste is a huge problem, and devices with an artificially short life due to support being dropped, are a big part of that problem.
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