I occasionally “refresh” my PC with new board, CPU etc. I never buy the top of the line stuff and quite honestly there is little reason to. Games are designed to play perfectly well on mid range computers even if you have to turn off some graphics option that enables some slight improvement in the image quality.

I saw a video on Gamers Nexus about how shitty a company they are. Hopefully word spreads amongst gamers & builders that they’re no good and they should be avoided.

The weird thing to me whenever anyone complains how much memory a browser takes up, is what do they think the free RAM is doing otherwise? It’s free so why can’t an application use it? And that’s what browsers do, taking the memory to use as a cache, and releasing it back to the system if available memory dips below some threshold.

The EFF has some info about the practice - https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-display-tracking-dots.

I imagine there are ways and means of obfuscating / anonymizing the dots such as blocking the printer from emitting them (e.g. an empty yellow cartridge that the printer perceives as full), modifying the firmware, using a burner printer, or using a mono laser jet.

As a side issue, most modern bank notes have a bunch of yellow circles integrated into the design on each side. They look random but they’re in a recognisable pattern called a constellation that enables devices like copiers / scanners to recognize when people are trying to copy money or other financial instruments like checks.

Haven’t been to Thailand since my 20s (with girlfriend) but there were plenty of bars where the hostesses seemed like they would perform other services if the clientele had money for them. Not to mention actual brothels and sex shows. I went looking around Pattaya on Google Maps to see if it was still like that and was disappointed to see that many of the streets had been knocked and big resort hotels built there. Still a few dodgy areas though still.

Cash is off the books so there is an incentive for certain kinds of businesses like tradesmen to take cash because it still works out cheaper since they don’t have to declare it to the taxman.

Not necessarily. It might be privacy but it could also be a combination of other reasons too - a cultural aversion to paperless transactions, a lack regulation for electronic payments, lack of a decent indigenous payment system, lack of financial safeguards, prevalence of fraud / skimming devices etc.

Some European countries were more into electronic transactions than others but with stuff like SEPA, chip & PIN, contactless payments I think most people are just fine using electronic payment unless they have reason to control the transaction in some way. For example I usually pay pretty much everything electronically but I still pay taxis and most restaurants with cash. Also tradesmen if they’ll give me a discount for cash.

Not to mention the impending massive economic crisis they’re about to go through - Japanese automotive industry is heavily in debt and watching China eat their lunch. While China was building battery plants and electric cars, Toyota was chasing hydrogen and other go-nowhere technologies.

I live in Europe where trucks are fairly rare but you still see large SUVs, 4x4s and vans around. My own feeling is that certain classes of vehicles should be considered commercial for the purposes of insurance, taxation, VAT, inspection, tolls, permitted usage and everything else. The legislation already exists for commercial vehicles so extend it to these kind of vehicles.

So is someone must have a stupidly oversized vehicle purely for personal reasons they can enjoy all the bullshit and restrictions that goes with it. Doesn’t stop them complying but making it more onerous to do it will take demand for these vehicles off the market entirely.

The issue is that Rockstar never remade GTA.

They outsourced that work to Grove Street Games who had already done the mobile ports and said have at it. Grove Street Games took their mobile ports (which were already compromised) and adapted them back to console & PC with a new engine. I assume everything was done on the cheap and to a deadline and what they produced is what they produced. For Rockstar it wasn’t a labour of love, it was money for old rope and if they had given a damn they wouldn’t have outsourced it or at least had stricter quality controls & acceptance on what someone made for them.

Rockstar made a slightly better job with their RDR port in that they didn’t completely fuck it up but it was still outsourced and a minimal effort.

A company like Paradox should certainly be able afford testers who run the game on a variety of configurations to see if optimization is necessary.

One thing I would say and this is a broad statement - generally you don’t do optimization unless you know you need it. And you only do it after the thing you’re writing is working correctly non-optimally. Optimize too soon, or when you don’t need to just makes code an unmaintainable mess. That doesn’t doesn’t preclude writing efficient code in the first place but efficient is not the same thing as optimal.

I only use Spotify for a couple of exclusive podcasts I like and maybe some comedy. I certainly wouldn’t pay for a subscription since I don’t listen to much music and I hate the user interface especially through Android Auto.

The only time I really listen to music is late at night in front of the PC and I have a music collection for that. It’s amazing how cheap you can pick up old CDs these days second hand in car boot sales and similar. It’s just cheaper to buy CDs and rip them rather than fork out 11 euros every month.

I think if you know Rust then I think Rust + async is going to perform better and consume less resources than NodeJS by a LOT. It should also work more reliably on embedded devices, or even docker containers because memory isn’t going up and down like a yoyo because of GC.

That said NodeJS is more immediate and might lend itself to better prototyping / RAD and you might not care enough about performance to justify using a compiled language. A lot of web servers aren’t doing enough that you would even notice a difference in performance.

Another reason for Rust might also be because it’s more energy efficient. I wish Amazon and other cloud services would put a heavier cost penalty on efficiency. I wonder how many cloud web apps are running bloated stacks to serve up content which could be done with a fraction of the energy.

Gambling, alcohol, nicotine, and prescription medicine should all be banned from advertising. Sponsorship should count as advertising and thus be banned too.

egalize abortion the first and second time? When did the US legalize abortion? You don’t actually have to answer this, it is a rhetorical question, but you should know the answer

Sure thing comrade. Go back and finish your first year political studies semester. That, or emigrate to one of these socialist paradises.

If you overlook the surveillance, political oppression, the beatings / torture / disappearances, the labor camps, the subjugation of minorities & religions, the squalor everyone is subject to, the censorship, the run down infrastructure, the lack of luxury goods, the imposition of “social” systems to punish non-compliance, the lack of free enterprise. It’s also amusing you hail women’s rights when the USSR banned abortion and made divorce practically impossible. Or LGBT when was and still is marginalized and persecuted in most Communist countries. Maybe ask the Uyghurs think of their lives in their re-education centres. But maybe you’re hailing Cuba taking enormous strides to recognize LGBT rights… in 2022. Well that certainly makes up for 70 years of life under Communism.

Oh they’re all such a veritable workers paradise! It’s weird why so many people attempted to escape, enduring arduous journeys, even risking drowning, being shot or entangled in barbed wire. It’s weird how so many countries got rid of Communism and the people rejoiced about it. Strange that.

When you find yourself comparing to the USSR I think you’ve already lost your argument. Since it boils down to “eradicate capitalism and rent becomes cheaper”. Maybe it does and everything else becomes a lot shittier too.

How is that the landlord’s fault?

I’ve rented plenty in my life. Then I bought a house and paid it off. Sobbing that people who rent properties actually want to make money or that they’re all “parasites” is laughable nonsense.

Imagine being so out of touch that you think people who rent property should do so out of the goodness of their hearts.