YellowJersey

My oldest still in operation is a Lenovo T530 that I got in September 2012. I'm writing this post on it, as a matter of fact. She's running an i7-3820QM. I'm currently building/testing/troubleshooting/abouttothrowintheriver a new rig, so this one will probably be retired or moved into some secondary use by the end of the year. I have done some upgrades over the years: 16gb of ram upgrade shortly after purchase because god to manufacturers charge through the nose for it (Lenovo wanted $400, I got it for $120), 500GB msata drive in the vacant WAN slot, and I took the disc drive out and mounted a 1TB SSD in there via adapter (this thing is rocking nearly 2TB of SSD storage internally). She's been good to me. It's hooked up to my 34inch ultrawide here.

I have a tiny mousepad, too; I just have the sensitivity cranked up so I don't have to make large movements. It's also vertical, but that's mostly because I have my mousepad sitting on a Windows XP for Dummies book to give it just a little bit more height so it's more comfortable. But god my keyboard is gross. I really need to take these pads off.

I've been a firefox man for nearly two decades now. I don't quite understand why chrome became so popular in the first place. I hope firefox sees a bit of a renaissance with chrome buggering up ad blockers come the new year.

Probably. That's why I just said it was my two cents.

Probably a good idea.

My 2 cents: I'd never buy a pair of shoes that I haven't tried on first.

That's exactly the kind of thinking-outside-the-box fresh perspective we need around here.

If you want to test it out, I have Topaz AI. If you send me the photo, I can run it through and see how well it works for you

Welcome to the asylum. I'll be your guide. Don't mind the screams, you get used to them after a while.

TBH, I'm with Linus on this one.

It's almost like our entire economic system is completely unsustainable and requires periodic crashes in order to recalibrate once the system that's held together with spit and crossed fingers becomes too cumbersome and bloated to keep upright.

If I understand correctly, I think OP's point is that corporations (the first class citizens of the modern dystopia) get a discount whereas regular Joes (the third class gutter filth) have to pay more; it is objectionable that those who perhaps have a greater capacity to pay get to pay less whereas those with less capacity to pay have to pay more.

I'm loathing the day I have to buy a new electric razor. I've been using a cheap Panasonic for the last 13 years. I'd love it if manufacturers including a pass-through so that you could just run the razor off wall-power instead of having to charge the battery, which inevitably degrades.

Perhaps the intent was to get the backlash over with while planting the seed in our heads to slowly get us used to the idea. Companies have constantly pushed the limits of bullshit, walked it back a bit when things got too spicy, and then brought the bullshit back once the public became more used to the idea. We see this in video games over the last two decades. For, you see, the public are fickle, but not particularly smart.

We're all mad here.

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

Short answer: No Long answer: Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo In all seriousness, though, I don't trust any IOT things. The only internet enabled things in my house are my phone and my computer.

One question I've always had about sub-zero cooling and the condensation problem: Would it make any sense to mount the motherboard upside down? That way condensation would fall off rather than start building up? Or is there something I'm missing that means that wouldn't work?

My laptop was pretty well spec'd when I bought it for $2200 CAD in 2012 and even in Windows today it still does what I need it to do (photo editing). But I found the "leave Windows for better performance" trick back in 2015 when I switched to Linux Mint. 10 years on and the ol' girl's still going strong (I daily drive Mint but I boot Windows for photo editing). But I'll be dead in the cold cold ground before I install chrome. PS: Best intro ever!

It really gets on my plums when businesses and HR wretches complain about employees only doing their jobs and not taking on more. Bitch, I'm doing what you hired me to do. My job is to do what's in my job description, nothing more. I generally don't mind pitching in a little extra now and then, but I'm not a bad employee for doing what's in my job description. They go on and on about "quiet quitting" and "how dare employees only do the job that we literally hired them to do" but then are conspicuously silent on "quiet firing" where employers keep dumping more and more onto employees so that they end up quitting due to burnout or frustration. In Canada, requiring a person to do something outside their job description can constitute constructive dismissal. I have a real hatred for HR. They're the gatekeepers you have to get beyond before you're even allowed to talk to the people you'd actually be working with/for. HR, who don't do anything that the business is paid to do, shouldn't be the gatekeepers or have that much of a say in hiring. The HR department at one company I work for is absolutely atrocious; the head refused to hire someone who was perfect for the job because she didn't like him. It's absolute bullshit. If we're talking intentional inefficiencies, I'd say HR desperately trying to insert itself where it doesn't belong in a pathetic and infuriating attempt to justify its own existence is a prime example of that.

102km today in 4 hours and 29 minutes. Could very well be the last ride of the season. We'll have to see how the weather holds up. Total this year: 2,621km

I think it depends, at least partially, on the size of the business. As a general rule, I'd say the bigger the business, the more mediocrity is silently encouraged.

This is probably only tangentially related to what you meant, but I thought I'd share it. I have a theory that the modern corporate business monster implicitly encourages mediocrity. The better you are at your job, the more it encourages management dumping more and more work on you as well as doing other peoples' jobs as well, all without extra pay. So this burns people out quickly. Everyone knows this, so since hard work isn't rewarded (after all, the real credit goes to your boss' boss' boss' boss) or recognised, it encourages people to not care and to hover around doing the bare minimum to not get fired. If you care, you'll be ripped to pieces. So it encourages people to not be at all emotionally/personally invested in their work, again encouraging mediocrity. I think that hard work only really pays off, potentially, in very small start-up businesses where they need people who work hard and care. However, once a business reaches a certain size or age, the incentives for mediocrity increase.

Crikey by jingo!

No no no no no no no. You just don't understand, my poor, sweet, ignorant, stupid children. Performance is but one factor in what makes this device a wonder to behold. The design! Think of the design! It's all about the design!. /sarcasm