Maybe not to the rest of us, but it is news to the MAGA crowd!

To the best of my understanding, AMD/Nvidia/Intel each run their own forms of architecture (eg. AMDs RDNA) which are probably closest to RISC for simple instructions and SIMD/SIMT (single instruction, multiple data/threads) for more complex vector calculations.

I am assuming that’s a GTX 480 and not an RX 480; if so - kudos for not having that thing melt the solder off the heatsink by now! 😅

Honestly, if you don’t mind gaming at 1080p, and keeping graphical settings reasonable in order to maintain a playable frame rate - you could be OK for a couple more years.

Otherwise if the upgrade itch just becomes too much, the Steam Machine could very well be a suitable entry point - provided that RAM model prices don’t continue to skyrocket.

I truly cannot wait for the day that the current AI bubble bursts.

Pre-COVID, when the Ethereum mining went crazy… so around the time of the RTX 2000 series? Which honestly was pretty lacklustre compared to the GTX 1000 series…

So yeah, it’s been a while!

It’s interesting to see what people genuinely consider to be bad, or maybe they just missed that word? 😅

For me, it would have to be Under The Skin; a solid 6/10 game, in a world where 7/10 is considered average!

It’s not as much a “feel-good” story as comments who haven’t read beyond the headline might make you believe:

The PIF values its total investments at nearly $1 trillion in assets, but a significant percentage of these are hard-to-sell assets with no public valuation; as a result, the NYT reports that the PIF reps have told international investors that it is “unable to allocate” for the near future.

Despite this, a spokesperson for the PIF, Marwan Bakrali, told the newspaper that it had $60 billion in cash and “similar financial instruments”.

ETA: Its not as though they’ve lost a significant chunk of the fund, but rather that a sizeable portion of it is tied up in illiquid assets that can’t be readily sold, or valued and loaned against.

Though there is some mention of some of their investments being in “distress”, so there is at least some good news?

This, I think, is the big open secret about the push for consoles to move towards pure digital distribution.

It’s easier to not have to compete against your back catalog for gamer attention, if you cut off end-users ability to access it!

Rockstar already tried something like this, when they released the Definitive Defective Edition.

It failed successfully, in no small part to the remaster being absolute garbage, but for the AAA publishers, it’s merely a small setback that they will try again in the near future.

It’s literally a laptop CPU with a laptop GPU.

Not trying to have a go at you, actually genuinely curious: Do you have a source to confirm this, or is it more of an educated guess on your part?

All I’ve seen so far is that it’s a semi-custom AMD Zen 4 6c/12t CPU and RDNA 3 28 CU GPU.

I meant relatively simple in the sense that it shouldn’t require a full re-write of existing laws - just an addition to, knowing full well that enforcement would be the biggest challenge.

Hefty fines (over and above the value of the assets used as collateral) on the lenders if caught not reporting could help ensure compliance.

Another way to tackle it might also be to treat the end of every financial year as a Capital Gains Event for assets over a certain threshold? That way, it just becomes part of people’s annual tax returns and taking out loans wouldn’t necessarily help avoid it.

eg. If FY26 saw Elon Musk’s wealth increase by $10bn, he would owe ~$2bn in Capital Gains to the IRS.

Also, to head off possible arguments: Given that the US taxes its citizens even if they live/work abroad - there would also be negligible risk of capital flight.

To each their own, but I miss not having that tactile browsing experience.

Growing up, my mum kept an actual catalogue of what was on each one of our home-recorded VHS tapes as well as their timestamps!

But back to OPs original point - it is strange how we have just normalised not obtaining our own copies of media as they’re provided to us. All the more reason to fully support pirating any materials you can (legally) access.

There is a (relatively) simple solution to this; Make the act of taking out a loan against the value of your assets (which the wealthy tend to do, for liquid cashflow) a Capital Gains taxable event.

…and the world was a better place for it.

You know, I’ve always thought of Metroidvanias as 2D experiences - but reading your comment and mulling it over, I have to agree: Arkham Asylum is very much a Metroidvania, and a great one at that!

Just to clarify, the alkaline batteries like below are not rechargeable, and if you try you will have a bad time:

Energizer have their own range of rechargeable batteries, that look like this:

If you have an IKEA nearby, their LADDA (I think?) branded rechargeable batteries tend to be a quite affordable entry point.

Millionaires billionaires.

It’s a dick-measuring contest from more civilised times.

…lol, yes! Unless it’s the EU, they managed to get on the USB-C standardisation pretty early - there’s a chance we might see something like this out of them before 2050 🤞🏻

I do worry about the Monkey’s Paw nature of capitalism though, with the regulations on vaping here accidentally causing a surge of ‘disposable’ vapes equipped with lithium ion batteries - ending up having something similar occur as a result.

Duplicating charging circuits also seems a bit wasteful, especially if manufacturers cheap out and use the lowest quality components - rather than having a high-quality centralised GaN charger or similar.

It was rough, back of the napkin math - primarily intended for those in places where EV disinformation is highest (the US).

Those of us that primarily use metric are more than capable of roughly converting in our heads as required! 😅

Not intentionally being misleading, as I do have a footnote calling out not including carbon emissions from electricity generation as they vary so wildly based on the energy source.

But unlike ICE cars, EV emissions from energy sources are improving over time as nations build more and more renewable energy sources. Your linked report is correct, but potentially out of date already - the UK for instance was already at 58% in 2024, with a goal of full of 95%+ by the end of this decade.

Here in Australia, our uptake of residential solar has been so high that our energy providers are offering free electricity during peak daylight hours to all customers to help use up all of that excess production. It’s quite feasible for a significant portion of us here to be able to not only recharge an EV for free, but with next-to-no CO2 emissions.

Additionally, we now have a big Government subsidy in place to install batteries in our homes as well: ~£4,000 for a ~30kWh system, fully installed!

I share your love for older cars, but with a toddler and another one planned - we need to have a modern, safe car for peace of mind. But believe me, I will be ensuring that I disable as much telemetry as possible due to privacy concerns.

But for a secondary/weekend car - there is always the option of electrifying an older car, allowing for the best of both worlds - in a sense!

Metric tonnes, as that seems to be the generally used format when discussing CO2 emissions.

Which I know may be confusing, given that I quote imperial values in the rest of the stats - but it was just quick/dirty math and I figured that EV disinformation is highest in the US, so I tried to tailor the values for them.