Search results

  1. J

    Empire in Decline

    Project 2025 should be enough to stop Trump if the Dems don't bungle the messaging, which sadly they do all the time. I'm honestly at a loss for what I might do if all this comes to pass. Leaving the country would be a huge hassle, plus where to go? I still have cyanide pills from a while back...
  2. J

    Intel 13900k and 14900k chip failures

    About 6 years ago, actually. I tend to pick parts with around 65W TDP, both because electricity costs a fortune here, and I hate noisy fans.
  3. J

    Intel 13900k and 14900k chip failures

    Does this affect the i7-13700h in my new laptop? I hope not. I think a big part of the problem is Intel's ridiculous TDP, at least for their desktop parts. We're on the cusp of liquid cooling being mandatory at the rate we're going. Faster isn't better if you need the output of a nuclear...
  4. J

    Empire in Decline

    The whole Trump near assassination looks like it was lifted straight out of The Manchurian Candidate. Ironic Trump used that moniker for Biden. The thing is let's assume this was planned. Dying as a martyr isn't Trump's speed. After all, once he's out of the picture there's nothing in it for...
  5. J

    Mini PC

    I'm sure it'll happen eventually. As it is that little board has the computing power of a high-end desktop c. 2005 or so while consuming a fraction of the power.
  6. J

    Mini PC

    The CPU on this board can actually run Linux. If a person has fairly basic needs, a nanocomputer based on this might be just the ticket. You can easily stick the entire thing inside a keyboard, for example.
  7. J

    Mini PC

    Both. Generally for most people their needs haven't kept pace with the advances in CPU speed or efficiency. As a result, a tiny bare-bones machine might be enough for the majority. You're old in that you're old enough to remember when a slightly complex Excel spreadsheet bought a 386 without a...
  8. J

    Something Random

    It may not be practical but people are already driving the kinds of vehicles you mentioned on country roads. Despite that, the death rate is still very high. These roads are just dangerous, no matter what you're driving. Well, there are things I don't like about the city, but they're far...
  9. J

    Something Random

    Five-point harness and roll cage. Don't need a lot of mass. Indy cars are the safest vehicles in terms of preventing crash deaths because of these features. They should be standard in all vehicles. Indy cars hit concrete walls at 200 mph and the driver walks away. I never even go to rural areas...
  10. J

    Something Random

    That's true. The highest death rate by far is on two-lane country roads.
  11. J

    Something Random

    Nowadays at least everyone has phones with GPS if they have to navigate a corn field. We grew corn once. I was surprised how big the plants get. Being that far from medical help IS scary. I was thankful when my mother was alive that we are within two miles of multiple hospitals with trauma...
  12. J

    Something Random

    I saw the Macy's fireworks a few times in person. That was worthwhile. Couldn't care less about parades or BBQs though. An unoccupied farmhouse in the middle of nowhere? Sounds like a premise for a grade B slasher flick. Watch out for Jason and his cohorts when you're out there. I get it that...
  13. J

    Ryzen

    I give you credit for getting through all that. I doubt I could have. Living in your car sounds horrible, although the housing situation has become so bad it's often the only option. Some places even legalized this recently. They weren't thrilled about it, but saw the reality of the situation...
  14. J

    Mini PC

    Water cool the PSU also. That way you have a completely silent system.
  15. J

    Merc's Useful Tools of the day

    Does AI also explain why Amazon's search engine is so awful? It used to be when I looked for something, only results for exactly what the search terms were would come in. Now I get mostly unrelated results. It's been that way with Google for a while also. I don't care what AI might think I'm...
  16. J

    Windows 11

    Well, yes, but with only 5GB it's not terribly useful. I'm not a data hog, but even I have well over 500GB of unique data.
  17. J

    Something Random

    That's fine. Honestly, you're not in much of position to afford a new vehicle soon anyway. Let other people get the kinks worked out. That's one reason I'm not an early adopter of much stuff, unless it's fairly inexpensive.
  18. J

    Something Random

    Yes, I'd like to see median versus average myself. My brother actually gets classic car insurance on one of his vehicles, which comes to a few hundred a year, and does all of his repairs. His cars are obviously long paid for. I'd be shocked if his older cars cost him more than $2,000 a year...
  19. J

    dSLR thread

    Well, I fall in the camp that I don't much see the point to cramming 50MP on a sensor for bragging rights unless the sensor is large enough to get a decent amount of added information from those extra pixels. I guess in bright light it matters less, but not all of us take pictures in full...
  20. J

    Windows 11

    I generally store my stuff using my own folder system, not the stupid Windows defaults, for lots of reasons. Among them is making it harder for a potential hacker to find stuff I care about. OneDrive and CoPilot are two features any semi-sophisticated computer user just doesn't want or need. MS...
  21. J

    Something Random

    It's actually worse than that now: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/total-cost-owning-car The average monthly cost of owning a car has surpassed $1,000. The figures are from AAA. A car, even a decent used one, would easily cost me over $10K. Just the insurance alone would...
  22. J

    dSLR thread

    Well, for video that makes sense. All that AI stuff can't be done well in real-time if you're shooting 60 or more fps. I know a larger sensor with the same number of pixels is better than a smaller sensor just from a pure light-gathering perspective. Obviously if I got more into photography I'd...
  23. J

    dSLR thread

    I'm not getting your point. I assume the pixel size is large enough that having more megapixels still adds to image quality. If not, why not just use fewer megapixels? What's better about larger pixels, other than maybe more light-gathering ability? Also, as far as I know, there are no...
  24. J

    dSLR thread

    Here's a $200 phone with a 50 MP camera: https://www.yahoo.com/tech/motorola-200-android-phone-looks-142613366.html
  25. J

    Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

    Been dealing with this since my late 20s at least, possibly longer. In part I blame it on the group punishment teachers used to give classes. I often had to write "I must not talk in class" 1,000 times in grade school because a few rowdy kids did. In any case by my late 20s working full-time was...
  26. J

    Something Random

    Did that multiple times. It worked in that it stopped one collection company from hounding me, only to be bothered by another a few years later. I'm pretty sure all these fees are illegal and wouldn't hold up in court anyway. I also noted the collection efforts got a lot more aggressive under...
  27. J

    Something Random

    Add in the cost of insurance and it gets even worse. Average cost of car ownership in the US is around $10K annually. For comparison purposes the grand total of all my expenses ( utilities, real estate taxes, home insurance, food, clothing ) is less than $20K. A car would basically increase my...
  28. J

    Something Random

    No, I never even had a driver's license. Not about to get one at 61 years old, either. I already mentioned I get car sick on all but the shortest trips, so car isn't a viable mode of transport for me. At all. Plus I have severe CTS. I just can't physically drive. Train is really the only viable...
  29. J

    Windows 11

    I didn't get my first PC until 1998 when I was 36. It was a used 386-33. After that it was progression of faster hand-me down machines. I basically went from the 386/DOS era to XP in the span of about a decade. I learned a lot. It was a hobby to me at the time. I don't regret it, either. I got...
  30. J

    Something Random

    I never owned a car or had a license. I'd be flat broke now if I had. My feet or my bike serve most of my transportation needs. Failing that, there's the subway, commuter railroads, and Amtrak. Keep in mind for about the last 12 years until my mother passed away going out beyond short local bike...
  31. J

    Something Random

    The batteries not lasting is nonsense. The numbers show otherwise. Once we move 100% towards LFP and sodium-ion the battery life will be even longer, probably many decades. Have you seen the prices of used cars lately? I'm glad I never needed to own a vehicle. I couldn't afford it, even a used one.
  32. J

    Something Random

    I think they're both ugly but my point is some people are broke and just don't have $40K to spend on a car. That's the market for these, not people who are doing better and don't mind spending a king's ransom on a car.
  33. J

    Something Random

    First off, that's right-wing FUD which I'm surprised you believe. The real-world experience is much different. Second, LiFePO4 lasts MUCH longer than regular li-ion. Calendar life can exceed 20 years, and they're good for 2,000+ charge cycles. They also don't explode or catch fire. They're...
  34. J

    Something Random

    I don't know. Their $10K EV is getting good reviews: https://www.fastcompany.com/91137050/china-is-awash-in-10000-evs-importing-them-could-have-changed-everything Granted, I think it's fugly but then I hate SUVs and crossovers with a passion. They look like giant roller skates. Something like...
  35. J

    Something Random

    I'm honestly shocked you get that kind of range at that speed. Yeah, they intentionally make things painful for cars in the Netherlands but the cities are much more livable as a result. It's a cycling mecca from what I hear about it. I didn't know they take your car for doing twice the limit...
  36. J

    Something Random

    Just a few more random thoughts on this: 1) I'm sure range anxiety is a thing but on the flip side I've read 99% of car trips are less than 40 miles. To a large extent people focus on worst-case scenarios. A guy on CPF who was a big proponent of EVs had this to say about range anxiety: "You...
  37. J

    Something Random

    To me people are making too big a thing of this. It's just another transition, the way we went from CRTs to flat screens, incandescents to LEDs, HDDs to SSDs, and so forth. By the time you might be in the market for another vehicle, there won't be any real downsides to an EV. Even now there...
  38. J

    Something Random

    The thing is once you have, say, 25% adoption of EVs, that will be enough to put a lot of gas stations out of business. Gas stations are a marginal business. They'll either have to add fast-charging stations to make up for the loss in gas sales, or fold. Enough will fold that it'll probably be a...
  39. J

    Something Random

    For now. If his dream of colonizing Mars ever comes to pass I can picture him being a real-life Cohaagen.
  40. J

    Windows 11

    Maybe. I know I didn't use '95 for long. As soon as I got a free copy of '98 I used that. Yeah, I got '98 up to 768MB on a 440BX. Can't be 100% sure about 1GB. If I tried that it would have been on my Athlon XP 3200 system (I think it was a Soyo M/B-Merc sent it to me with the CPU c. 2006)...
  41. J

    Windows 11

    Not sure of the exact reason but I think it may have had to do with not getting a "free" version from someone. I was broke at the time. My PCs were hand-me-downs. I couldn't afford another $100 or more for the O/S. So that basically means max out those two slots with the largest available...
  42. J

    Windows 11

    Keep in mind by the time I got a PC fast enough for '95 or '98 it was already in the mid 2000s. I could max out the RAM on those systems for maybe $100. Yes, back in the day you would probably be looking at $1K or more to do the same.
  43. J

    Something Random

    For a lot of people who started out in the 386/486 days, even a Pentium with Windows 98 is a "new" computer. Thankfully before the pandemic the idiot who kept bothering me about upgrading his 386 finally gave up. He used to get hand-me down video cards, RAM, and other stuff, and asked me if I...
  44. J

    Windows 11

    Sort of what I always do. At the time I built my present PC, 8 GB was probably enough but I put in 16 just to have a margin. A few years ago I went to 32 because it got cheap enough. A few times I had nearly maxed out the 16. I stopped using page files with Windows 95. Never looked back. Not...
  45. J

    dSLR thread

    For my purposes it's fine. It can take 12MP images, which is plenty for what I do. And the macro feature works great. Here I zoomed in on a quarter: Here's another of one of my circuit boards: I can easily resolve details to about 0.001" (i.e. the wider track is 0.025" for comparison...
  46. J

    dSLR thread

    I just checked the camera (Panasonic DMC-ZS7) I'm using now out of curiosity. I couldn't even find an option for RAW. Anyway, there's a very practical reason people save as JPGs. Before we had multi-gigabyte cards, you might get a few hundred JPGs on your card, but maybe only a dozen or two RAW...
  47. J

    Heat management: Water Cooling in an Apartment?

    I do but no central HVAC. The house was built in 1952.
  48. J

    Heat management: Water Cooling in an Apartment?

    Buildings have had central heat for probably well over a century. Heat is easier than A/C. No ductwork, just pipes and radiators. Central A/C started being a thing in office buildings first. Even now, a lot of relatively new residential buildings don't have it. You have cutouts in the wall for...
  49. J

    Heat management: Water Cooling in an Apartment?

    Yes, that's the model NYC is starting to install in housing projects. Believe or not some of the buildings were still using coal furnaces for winter heating.
  50. J

    Heat management: Water Cooling in an Apartment?

    Here in the typical hot, humid NYC summers they would be completely useless. The humidity is often already 90%. Can't add much more moisture to it. Me neither. So far with the much improved attic insulation I've gotten just about halfway into June without needing the A/C. There were only a few...
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