iRandomize

They did not make a profit of £7bn. They had revenues of £7bn. Big difference. Most of their profit was taxed in Luxembourg. The European union allows this, and it is one of the core principles of the EU.

For one, tax is not based on revenue but on profit. Many European corporations are paying a 0.1% tax in relation to their revenue. Those turning a negative profit is effectively receiving tax in comparison with their revenue. I work in a very low-margin business, and some quick back-of-the-envolope math puts our tax at 0.7% of revenue (which just so happens to be 21% of profit). Secondly, that is simply not true. Amazon is based in Luxembourg (hence the Sarl in their name). I believe they pay tax of approximately 30% of their income, which is clearly stated in their annual report. Moving income across borders does not mean that the income is not taxed. Join taxation rules ensure that this is not the case. The reason for Amazon to be based in Luxembourg has to do with the rules regarding deductable costs, that vary greatly between countries. This calculation quickly becomes very complicated, but these rules are also the reason that Amazon added "fulfillment" to a lot of their marketing back in 2006.

No reason to upgrade then! Yes - FHD is significantly higher resolution than your current monitor, and your performance will most likely drop. But it's hard to say by how much, we would need full system specs to make an educated guess. Ahh! I get what you were saying now! That we can agree on! Basicly - if your CPU is the bottleneck in your current system, the framerate will stay roughly the same. But if the gpu is the limiting factor, the performance will decrease as you up the resolution.

No need to triple-post. The first one is sufficient. Please, for the love of god, get rid of that 5:4 monitor and get a 1080p monitor! You will not regret it. The 1050ti should be able to handle 1080p fairly well. You may need medium settings on the most recent triple-a games. But then again, you need 16:9 on those games as well! If performance becomes a problem, you could drop the resolution to 720p (which is easier to drive than 1280x1024) and have no problems with performance whatsoever. To me, a 1080p display is a no-brainer. If the CPU is not a bottleneck now, it definitely won't be when he upgrades his monitor. I think it's safe to ignore CPU constraints for this discussion.

My Mac agrees (and btw, 50g is a better choice than 32g):

It's the same machine. A 2015 MacBook Pro so the SSD is about as fast as they get. But the story is the same when comparing to my W10 desktop. On macOS, Firefox really doesen't perform as great as on my Windows installs. I think it may have gotten a bit better with the latest patch, but still far from the smooth performance i get on W10.

I've been using Firefox 57 (Quantum) exclusively since launch. On both Windows and macOS. Long story short, on Windows its amazing. I see no perceivable difference between Chrome and Firefox, except for much less ram usage in Firefox. I do not switching back to Chrome or Edge. And on top of that, i really like being on an independent browser. However, on macOS it really sucks. It may be really snappy at times, but sometimes it really bogs down. And i have no idea why. I had to switch back to Chrome which just seems to perform much more consistently. I'm probably the only one on these forums finding myself on a mac at times (and btw, i prefer Windows 10, and spend like 80-90% on Windows!), but if anyone else have any experience with sluggish performance on a mac, please let me know! I would really love to switch to Firefox, and completely leave Chrome behind! Also. I like the look of Firefox 57 better On the entire 1080p vs 4k discussion: I do see a difference between 4k, 1440p and 1080p Youtube content, and i have nowhere near perfect eyesight. Someone should make a poll on this, and when it turns out 99% to 1%, it has to be more than just placebo...

In Denmark the phone operators stopped sim-locking phones by themselves. One operator did it for a competitive advantage, and soon after the remaining competitors had to follow suit to avoid bad press. To be honest, it baffles me that American operators are still sim-locking phones. It's such a big deal amongst customers, that it's an actual competitive advantage to stop doing it.

50/50. Kind of a cliché with Russian crime - but at the same time very believable!

I see that i have been burried in the booring, inactive subforum that is "Phones and Some-device-that-was-popular-for-a-few-short-years". I thought theft related to general discussion rather than this subforum. I am sorry for my wrong choice of forum. With 0 warning points, I suppose it was borderline anyways :). DO NOT FOLLOW THE LINKS POSTED IN THIS COMMENT, UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING! The links posted below is merely kept in for educational purposes. I accessed them though a virtual machine without access to the rest of my system. There does not appear to be any vira or similar attached to the website, but be careful! I take no responsibility for the contents of the websites! A little update. I just received a text message on my alternative phone number (after adding it to the Locked Phone message along with a finders reward) with the following text: And a few minutes later (notice the exact same link...): In my curiosity i had to follow the link. From looking at the url (vtf1.pw) it is obviously phishing, but my account has 2-factor authentication enabled, and Apple shows the location of 2-factor authentication attempts, so i thought i might just try to see what happened. And sure enough, instantly this popped up on my Mac: And it seems that bigjohnthescot was right when he said: Someone in Moscow is already attempting to unlock my phone. Of course i did not allow him to, but i found it interesting that in less than 24 hours, it has already been sold off and someone is trying to access it. I wonder how many people falls into this trap. The website is an exact replica of the real iCloud website, and it appears to be secure and properly signed. Unfortunately my phone still doesen't show up in iCloud. Impressively enough they managed to turn it off and access the internet long enough for my contact information to show up, without allowing it to get its current location. I guess they were indoor in some kind of insulated room, preventing the GPS signal from working.

Yeah. I guessed parts as well. Don't think my boss will be too happy to learn that my 2 week old 800 EUR phone is being sold for parts. Shitty world we live in. I feel really sorry for those who have their personal phones stolen. That must really suck.

So, as the title says, I've just had a brand new iPhone 8 stolen. I'm currently on a business trip in Barcelona, and while at a coffee shop, it was grabbed off my table while I wasn't paying attention. I know I'm stupid and it is entirely my own fault, so don't event bother telling me I'm an idiot - I know. The thing is, I don't really care that I lost it. It was a company phone, so I will just get a new one when I get back. What annoys me is that I don't get why they would steal it. The lengths apple go through to make sure the phone has no value, means that they will never be able to use it. So my question is; why do they steal it? Will it be disassembled for parts, since apple still refuses to sell replacement parts to third parties? Or did they just steal it because they are envious of my phone? What is the market value of an iPhone 8 shaped paper weight? And yes, I tried find my iPhone. But the thief was clever enough to turn off the phone. Less than 24 hours since it's been stolen, someone is trying to access it from Moscow, see my latest reply:

When money was bound to gold, it had value because it could always be exchanged for gold at a known rate. Back when the gold standard was still used, there weren’t that many practical uses for gold - except for it being pretty. So gold mainly got it value because it was a limited resource. As gold fluctuated in value, so would money. Not a great attribute. Today, regular currencies are valuable because everyone agrees that it has value. The fluctuation in the value of regular currencies are (mainly) controlled by the interest rates and thus controlled by central banks / governments. Bitcoin has value because it is a limited resource in much the same way gold was. And in the same way gold did, bitcoin can fluctuate in value as the demand for bitcoin changes. I am very fond of the principle of a limited-resource based currency. I think there are some significant shortcomings of the current central bank system (the Austrian School raises some very valid concerns in my opinion) and think the potential for alternative measures of value is interesting - and the apparent interest in bitcoin/etherum would suggest I’m not the only one. I do however not believe that bitcoin is a perfect solution. The power usage and significant transaction time are reasons why bitcoin will never be a viable alternative to cash for everyday transactions. Not to mention the huge fluctuations (increases) in price. But as a proof of concept that currency/money does not have to be run by a government I think bitcoin is very fascinating, and opens some very interesting possibilities for future currencies.

Cost of electricity was related to the availability of used graphics cards. Low cost of electricity -> many miners -> high supply of used hardware.

I obviously can’t comment on the situation in your country. But where I’m from, electricity prices are reasonably low, and mining is happening at a somewhat decent scale. This means that with every new generation of graphic cards, the old cards are replaced in a huge scale. So the used market is flooded with previous generation video cards, to the point that I just gave away my 670 and 780 when getting my 980 at launch, and I think the situation is pretty much unchanged. From now on I will be buying previous generation cards at every new launch, cause buying cards at 0 resale value sucks... my friends kinda liked it though. Build a crapload of nuclear power plants, and the environmental issues should be solved... I guess you have knowledge that makes this statement look stupid (you are after all studying the subject) so I will just leave this as a joke. I just hope the solution to sustainable environmentally friendly energy is not to simply stop using energy...

I guess you are referring to the rising prices of graphics cards? And falling prices on used graphics cards, that enables budget games to afford significantly higher end second hand graphics cards than they used to? Seeing that they have no had a significant influence on the price of electricity, i am guessing the power usage is an issue because you care about the environment. Fair enough - I'll give you that one. I choose to focus on the job creation and investments that follow higher demand for electricity. But this is a question of personal beliefs, either is valid i guess. And lastly, "IDGAF about that money." I'll just leave that one here for all to enjoy

Why? Sad that you didn't buy any? In what possible way does Bitcoin make your life that much worse, that you hope for those of us with bitcoins to lose them?

Google. https://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

GPU-Z shows the usage of the iGPU. Definately different from the CPU. Thank you! Shared resources is definitely an important aspect! But the iGPU and CPU are definitely two different things.

Could we please get a second opinion on this one? I'm not sure what you just wrote makes sense. The CPU is not rendering the game, the GPU is, whether its the internal HD4600 GPU or a discrete GPU. The CPU usage shouldn't be affected much by installing a new GPU? That being said, 100% CPU usage in CS:GO sounds a bit strange...

Am i the only one very sceptical of these rumors? Why would they move the consumer-grade cpu's to a prosumer platform? As much as i would like hyperthreading on an i5, i am not at all ready to pay the premium for the X299 platform, assuming it will be the same premium as the current X99 platform. I doubt that will be the case for anyone in the "i5" segment, since they tend to be very cost focused. Intel may very well be working on an upgrade for the X99 platform, and they may as well be planning a slight bump in the clock speeds with the i7-7740k and i5-7640k, but i don't believe they will be connected in any way. It would simply not make sense in a cost/performance perspective. Ryzen offering an amazing value, and Intel responding with a significantly increased cost for a very slight performance increase? Nope. Not buying it. (Also, what Swatson said, if this would be Intels move, it would change nothing)

My YouTube front page right now.

Spoiler alert: If you cannot be bothered to read, basically it all went haywire, and then i fixed it. This all went very well, up until the nvflash part. I have had no blue screens since i installed Windows 10 (approx 13 minutes after launch), but for some reason, that damn computer decided, that in the middle of the nvflash procedure was an appropriate time to do so. And thus followed a couple of hours of trial-and-swearing. Basically the computer completely refused to output any kind of video signal. No output through the iGPU. No output through the (apparently bricked) GTX 980. No output through my old GTX 670. No nothing. Or, i guess a black screen is nothing. A whole bunch of nothing. (yes, i did do a CMOS reset, to no avail). My current computer is built in a BitFenix Pandora with a Noctua NH-L12 right next to the GPU. I used to run water-cooling, which made PC maintenance very easy, because there was so much room around the CPU. With the NH-L12 that is not the case. There is more or less no space between the cooler and the GPU. Not even a piece of 3-week-old balloon would fit through that gap. This makes it impossible to reach the tap holding down the PCI connector without removing the CPU cooler. However, that requires removing the CPU fan. This is impossible though, because you can not reach the fan bracket because of the GPU. Stupid as i am, i did not think of this when i installed it. I thought my measurements (read: luck) were perfect, when i leaned back looking very satisfied at my creation of a near-silent pc, in a very respectable form factor - a perfect fit! After a whole bunch of [profanity removed] i finally got the [profanity again] fan removed. Then the cooler, and i could finally get to the [you get the point] damn PCI tap. Out went the GPU. Perfect. After a quick temporary install of my trusty old (easy to remove) H100, i successfully booted up the computer, with display output and everything. Perfect. First bit of good news since i started this [bad word] tutorial. Refusing to give up the 980 (i could hardly afford it the first time), i digged out the trusty old Q6600 setup. You'd be amazed how quickly you can get a computer running, when you are mad as [profanity]. Booted up the nice-to-have Windows 7 USB stick and got that thing installed. By the way; installing and booting a computer from a HDD really makes you appreciate the invention of the SSD. Still no output from the 980 though. But i could successfully get the computer booted up with the 980 plugged in, and had video through the 670. The nVidia display driver kept crashing, and the GTX 980 had an exclamation mark in Device Manager - but at least it was recognised as a 980! I instantly fired up nvflash, found the appropriate command to use, in order to flash the second card in the system and profit! Flash went through just fine. Then i threw the 980 back into the main rig. Fired it up with great success and SILENCE! - the fan on the 980 was completely off! After another 15 minutes i had the NH-L12 back in, all the panels closed up, and i am now writing this in near silence.

I have a split opinion on this matter. I don't need to render anything but graphs in Excel, which isn't exactly GPU intense. All of the work i do on my computer the iGPU handles just fine. Especially since the El Capitan update, that made animations more fluid. This is still not perfect though, and i do experience notable stuttering just rendering the OS X animations, which i really think is a shame, and takes away from the overall experience. Most importantly though, i don't find a discrete GPU to be a worthwhile compromise. It takes away from the battery life, which is one of the most important features in my day-to-day use of a laptop. What annoys me the most though, is how Windows is so much more efficient in their graphics implementation. I hardly every experience any kind of stuttering or lag on Windows.

Nope. 2560x1600 as pointed out by farhanorakzai