Zodiark1593

Thats why I still use a 32" LCD TV thats only 720p, or use my PC where I can block all ads and such.

I think there’s some room for considering repayment history (someone with really poor organization represents a higher risk, even if they have money, taking it by force is expensive), though can certainly be weighed less. 
 
One aspect in the US that kind of blows a hole in relying on income, is the fact that most people here are employed At-Will, meaning that a borrower may be fired at any time, for any (non-protected) reason, or no reason. Even for someone not necessarily living paycheck to paycheck, an unexpected loss of job can be quite damaging. 
 
If I was a lender, I’d probably want to see adequate cash buffers to weather a storm (which itself can also indicate financial management), as otherwise I’m merely gambling on the borrower still having a job. A second job (or dual-income household) or side hustle would also provide a level of redundancy that reflects lower risk as well. 

If it’s allowed under law, I’d probably factor in general health of the borrower and family members as well. Many bankruptcies occur due to unexpected medical expenses, so a household placing their health first represents lower risk of medical expenses eating their buffers. I may even require a life insurance contract in more severe cases. 

Genetic factors, while tangibly impactful, are probably a step too far. 

The issue with that is its a pain to do stuff. Want to switch cell carriers? You have to remember to unfreeze your credit at all 3 bureau's. Want to rent an apartment? Same thing. Too many businesses expect to be able to run your credit. I think it takes 24 hours to for them to process a credit unfreeze. Then you either have to remember to refreeze it which I think costs $10 per bureau or you can do a temp unfreeze for a number of days.

Hot take. Credit should probably be frozen by default. 

Given the extremely low power levels that Bluetooth emits (a handful of milliwatts), as well as being non-ionizing, it’s pretty negligible. 
 
Compare that to something we’ve been exposed to since antiquity, the Sun, which outputs vast energy, and kicks out a fair bit of ionizing radioactive such as Ultraviolet, which actually is harmful. 
 

Yeah, everything is electric here. And the stove is legit older than me (30+ years). 
 
At least my cast iron pans help make the electric stove more tolerable (because sheer thermal mass). The frequent heat cycling definitely isn’t great with thinner non-stick pans. 

Yields are probably the largest impediment, as only an ever-diminishing portion of chips can reach higher speeds, at given power targets. At some point (whether power, or finding chips that can go fast enough at all), it becomes not worthwhile to make a dedicated sku. 

Additionally, nowadays, chips are pushed pretty close to the edge out-of-the-box. Unless you’re willing to dump a fair bit more power into it, it’s hard to achieve meaningful gains anywhere. Definitely unlike the C2D days, where you can push a 1.8 GHz chip to near 3.2, or even Celery days, where you can outright double clocks. 

The newest controller I have on hand right now, is a 360 controller I got at a work raffle back in 2014, that is currently connected to my laptop. I keep my stuff for a while. 
 
The next oldest ones are some PS3 controllers that I seldom use outside blu-ray duty, because the batteries last maybe 40 minutes at most nowadays. I can replace the batteries, but never really cared enough to bother, as It’s a bit of work to do so (not that it’s hard, just somewhat tedious), requires ordering online, and I can’t really use them (the controller, and the batteries) anywhere else. 
 
With the AA cells, not only do they take mere seconds to swap out, I’ve some potent flashlights at home that also run on AAs (Some of the Fenix and Lumintop ones use a single AA, and can crank out over 200 lumens at full power), and one of my camera flashes uses them as well. Not only do I benefit from easy replacement and availability, but also flexibility in that I’ve lots of things that can use them. 
 
That said, I’d really like to see controllers adopt more standard lithium cells. A 14500 LiIon cell is of similar form factor to a AA, but more than doubles the voltage, so a controller can easily run a single cell. Lots of single-AA flashlights can also run a 14500 for increased brightness too. 
 
18650 cells are relatively more commonplace (primarily due to vaping) but are too large for controllers, and many other consumer applications we’d want to actually use them in. I’ve a few for my more powerful flashlights. 
 
If we can figure out a standardized LiPo cell that many devices can use, I’d be on board with that too. Though that’s a massive pipe dream. 

In that case, I think a PC with networking disabled will offer OP with the desired level of control. 

I run an i7-4790 here, Haswell being about 11 years old.  

The CPU does limit me a bit on the newest games, but the GPU upgrade (went from a GRX 960 2GB to the RTX 3060 12GB) allows me to run the games I already play, at higher settings and greatly higher resolutions (generally stuff I used to play at 900P 60 fps, I can hit 1440P 60FPS, or even higher now), without putting additional load on the CPU. 
 
Being able to run my favorite game, Final Fantasy XII, at 4K 60 FPS, with a hint of MSAA, really validated throwing the GPU in my old system. Big upgrade from what my old 960 could do. 
 
And surprisingly, my config actually holds its own when it comes to Cyberpunk 2077. This was beyond my expectations for this old platform. This is the most demanding game I play semi-regularly. 
 
Though once Stardew Valley 1.6 comes out, that will probably be my primary game for awhile again, and that runs on potatoes. So I seldom need the capabilities a more modern system offers at this time. 

I run an i7-4790 here, Haswell being about 11 years old.  

The CPU does limit me a bit on the newest games, but the GPU upgrade (went from a GRX 960 2GB to the RTX 3060 12GB) allows me to run the games I already play, at higher settings and greatly higher resolutions (generally stuff I used to play at 900P 60 fps, I can hit 1440P 60FPS, or even higher now), without putting additional load on the CPU. 
 
Being able to run my favorite game, Final Fantasy XII, at 4K 60 FPS, with a hint of MSAA, really validated throwing the GPU in my old system. Big upgrade from what my old 960 could do. 
 
And surprisingly, my config actually holds its own when it comes to Cyberpunk 2077. This was beyond my expectations for this old platform. This is the most demanding game I play semi-regularly. 
 
Though once Stardew Valley 1.6 comes out, that will probably be my primary game for awhile again, and that runs on potatoes. So I seldom need the capabilities a more modern system offers at this time. 

My hopes and dreams involve a room of rich people, bidding obscene sums of money over my “fine art” photos, for the purposes of tax evasion and laundering, long after I’m deceased. 
 
Probably a tad ambitious. 😝

A warranty does not come close to making up the difference in value, between the shit-tier PC that was built, vs one that was built with competent components. 

A warranty may justify a slight downgrade (maybe a 25% performance cut overall), but what is exhibited here is easily an order of magnitude, and arguably, reasonably good vs borderline unusable. No warranty justifies such extreme difference. 

Cell wasn’t super interesting in the end, ngl. The PPE was really no better than netburst (dual-issue, in-order), if not considerably worse at general-purpose code. Sure, the SPEs acted as psuedo compute-shaders, but I think Sony would’ve been far better off scrapping the exotic Cell idea, delaying a year, and launched with C2D, 8800 GTX, and 1 gb total ram. Would’ve flattened the 360 out the gate, be far easier to utilize than Cell, and carried them well into the gen after. 
 
As for the gap between the PS2 and PS3, Sony could’ve probably launched a sort of PS2 Plus, with a 4x sized Graphics Synthesizer unit (or 2x the pixel pipes and double up on clocks). Given that it’s literally just a rasterizer, it should be relatively easy to force games to run at 4x resolution for no performance hit. Throw in some extra memory for texture enhanced games, and you’ve got something that would satisfy the Sony crowd for a bit longer. 

Would sooner buy a motorcycle, than ever paying out current, post-covid prices for a new car (of which, I already have a license for).
 
That said, happily, at 204K miles, my 2013 Mazda 3 is doing pretty decently. 

Case law from Author’s Guild v. Google (https://fairuse.stanford.edu/case/authors-guild-v-google-inc/) suggests that data mining in this particular use case, very likely falls within the Fair Use Doctrine, as the end result is transformative. 
 
https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/

It doesn’t matter if copyrighted data was used to train the AI, rather, what matters is the end result, and if it meets the standard for Fair Use. And with the case law above, the standard is surprisingly lax. 
 

I like the concept of electric cars. I don’t like how they’ve turned out (so many missed opportunities, such as standardizing on batteries and motor components), and I loathe the condescension and classism dripping in this comment. 

Would sooner buy a motorcycle, than ever paying out current, post-covid prices for a new car (of which, I already have a license for).
 
That said, happily, at 204K miles, my 2013 Mazda 3 is doing pretty decently. 

I like the concept of electric cars. I don’t like how they’ve turned out (so many missed opportunities, such as standardizing on batteries and motor components), and I loathe the condescension and classism dripping in this comment. 

I like the concept of electric cars. I don’t like how they’ve turned out (so many missed opportunities, such as standardizing on batteries and motor components), and I loathe the condescension and classism dripping in this comment. 

I like the concept of electric cars. I don’t like how they’ve turned out (so many missed opportunities, such as standardizing on batteries and motor components), and I loathe the condescension and classism dripping in this comment. 

I like the concept of electric cars. I don’t like how they’ve turned out (so many missed opportunities, such as standardizing on batteries and motor components), and I loathe the condescension and classism dripping in this comment. 

I like the concept of electric cars. I don’t like how they’ve turned out (so many missed opportunities, such as standardizing on batteries and motor components), and I loathe the condescension and classism dripping in this comment. 

I like the concept of electric cars. I don’t like how they’ve turned out (so many missed opportunities, such as standardizing on batteries and motor components), and I loathe the condescension and classism dripping in this comment. 

I’m in agreement here. If the US really had the willpower to make rail the dominant public transportation, utilizing and updating existing rail network in addition to repurposing some highway routes, can do the job without needing to acquire private-owned property. 
 
The US simply lacks the willpower to do the job.