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True but here's the kicker. AI is starting to come into its own now. We're not there, but even in its present state it's amazing. Think in a few years as quantum computing combines with AI. AI can try every permutation to solve a problem. We'll probably solve the fusion problem, cure cancer...

Science fiction has become science fact in our lifetimes.

I highly doubt anything will come along to save my mother before she goes, but it would be nice if it happens. I'd love to have my mother back, both physically and mentally. As for me, if I take decent care of myself I could have 40+ years left just going by natural lifespan. Longevity runs on...

Random question-is film even relevant any more, even for some pros?

I'm not trying right now. There's no way I could make it work with my care taking duties. When would we ever go out? It has to wait until either my mother goes, or I hit a lottery and can pay someone else to take care of her. As for meeting people, I'm in NYC. Once I start getting out after my...

Can't afford it. We're talking $500 a day at least for any kind of round-the-clock care. Add that to the cost of traveling, and being away for even a lousy week the cost would be north of $5K. Now's not the time to travel. As I already mentioned elsewhere, I'd probably also want a SO before...

I have any number of former high school classmates living in CA, mostly LA, SF, and SD. I haven't talked with any of them in decades, but I'm sure if I reached out at least a few might be receptive to me taking a trip to CA to see them, perhaps even offer a place to stay. Of course, I can't do...

Yeah, it is. And frankly I think they should shut it down. However, they're not. Even though it's a second tier airport, it easily gets more air traffic than most first tier airports elsewhere, and should have a rail link. Even more so because of NYC's horrendous traffic congestion. The lack of...

Here's the weird thing-SBN apparently has rail service, albeit a 15 minute walk away, while LaGuardia still doesn't. Just shows how screwed up NYC is when it comes to building infrastructure. Nearly every large airport anywhere in the world has rail service, but not LGA.

No, I never bought a camera to any of those weddings. I was never married, so obviously never divorced. If want to know the entire truth, I had my heart broken when I was 19 and just gave up on girls after that. But anyway, had I gotten married I wanted to start off without all the usual...

I've been to a bunch of them-all family members. My sister, most of my first cousins, some of my second cousins, etc. My only thought at each of them was I'm glad it's not me. ;) Not necessarily because I put off the idea of marrying entirely, but rather because the bride was far removed from...

My guess is all the tricks to increase density cost so much to implement that we end up with the same cost per TB. All most end users care about is cost per TB. Besides that, I don't think the volume is there any more to drive significant R&D of HDDs. SSDs in sizes most people want (i.e. 2TB or...

I'm an EE and frankly that's as far as I'd go on most repairs these days. Maybe I'd also look for blown diodes or MOSFETs, basically anything handling any amount of power, as those are most likely to go. After that, I usually don't bother. Typically a lot of the chips are custom jobs made solely...

Driving in cities is so different compared to everywhere else that I think places like NYC should have an additional qualification required on driver's licenses (both those issued in-state and other states) before you're allowed to drive there. The added training should include dealing with...

Philadelphia, Washington, Montreal are the only ones I recall. I may or may not have been to Boston. I honestly can't remember. I guess maybe add Newark and Trenton to the list, although I don't consider those large cities. I used to pass through Newark daily commuting to college. I rode to...

I don't like being in places where I either need a car/driver's license to get around, or instead have to bum rides off people. I have my independence in big cities where I can walk, bike, or take the train to where I want to go.

Same thing with me, especially when I'm not in a big city.

I never could have lived like that. I hated even business trips of a few days. I like to sleep in my own bed at night.

For the AMD APUs, faster RAM mainly helps with the GPU. I noticed higher frame rates on my system going from DDR3-1600 to DDR3-2400.

My beef with Amazon is the search engine. I search for one thing, and get a whole bunch of totally unrelated items popping up, along with a few hits for the item I'm actually looking for. Ebay's search engine always gives me only what I'm looking for. Are Amazon's programmers so incompetent that...

I get a bunch of them popping up on Newegg when I do a search: https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100011693%20600545605%20600038463&Order=1 The big story I'm seeing lately with SSDs is the fact they're around $50/TB on the budget end of the market. I've seen as low as $40/TB with some specials...

I doubt contacts would go over that well with me, either. My uncorrected vision is in the area of 20/200 but I normally get by just fine without glasses. I only wear them when I need to see fine detail from a distance, like watching TV from the couch. I can ride my bike just fine without them...

For me personally a large screen is a non-starter. I need to sit close enough to the monitor to see it clearly (no, I'm not going to wear glasses when I'm on my computer). For me that's about 11 or 12 inches. A large screen would exceed my field of view at that distance. I've been using a pair...

Kill-A-Watt

Yeah, and at over $0.30 per kW/hr we can't afford to use a lot. Besides, I don't want a system that uses so much power it needs lots of loud fans to stay cool. Nice thing about my system is the entire box uses not much over 100 watts, even at full tilt. I don't even need case fans. The CPU temps...

No idea what the number is for me. I don't have any monitors that go over 60 Hz anyway. Maybe something higher would seem more "continuous" to me but I won't know unless I experience it. Also, since I'm using an APU, I doubt I can get over 60 Hz regardless, except maybe with all the settings...

I would literally die without A/C. On the hottest days the house would easily be over 100°F. Add in NYC's famous high humidity and you're well into the danger zone. Can you do water cooling for all the PCs using a single loop, then run that water to a heat exchanger which exhausts the heat...

I don't even enjoy short trips alone. Trust me, without someone special to share the experience with, I wouldn't enjoy it one bit. I'd probably be crying myself to sleep each night. Everyone is different. Some are fine traveling alone because they're more comfortable mixing up with new people...

The farthest I ever got from where I was born was Montreal. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, I'd consider traveling once I'm no longer taking care of my mother, but that's contingent on finding a SO to travel with. That's not easy thing for me. I've always been amazed how easily people seem...

Nice to see you back, Dave. Smart to get out of CA. That state is heading to disaster. It's overpopulated for the resources available in the area. Since you're playing catch up on what people here are doing, I more or less retired in 2017. I had a good consulting gig with Exxon which ended...

Avoiding the sun is easy for a night person like me. I'm rarely even out of bed before noon, never mind outside. Most of my riding/walking is done at night. Unusual hair colors probably wouldn't work for me. Besides, fortunately as I mentioned earlier going gray isn't a problem in our family...

I agree. Biological age matters a lot more than chronological age. I'd say me and my siblings are probably still in our 30s going by biological age. I'd still rather find someone first before going on any trips but there's lots of opportunity for that in NYC. Just walking the streets and riding...

I'm seeing a major generational shift. Your generation supports this a lot more than mine. As your generation gets into power, it's a lot more likely we'll start to do something. Your generation is really the first to acknowledge en masse the problems with an auto-based transportation system...

Last thing I'd ever want to do is travel with seniors. Ditto for group travel where you don't set your own agenda. I just turned 60 but me and my siblings look 20+ years younger than we are, and can match that in terms of physical ability. My sister is almost 59. She has so few gray hairs she...

Well fortunately the NY Metro area is a major shipping hub, so I'm good to cross the Atlantic at least. If I needed to cross the Pacific, it's Amtrak to the West Coast, then hop a freighter from LA. Since I would most likely stick to major cities overseas chances are great those would be major...

There's ships to the other continents. If/when I ever travel overseas, time isn't an issue. I'm happy to spend two weeks on a freighter crossing the Pacific if it means avoiding flying.

Merc, I know Amtrak sucks in most of the country. The only place it handily beats or matches flying/driving time overall is on the East Coast. I'm talking about national HSR running at 220 mph and averaging, say, 180 mph with stops. NYC to Chicago in 5 hours. Counting the time getting to/from...

Only thing to add reading all this talk about airlines is I'm glad I never was in a position where I needed to fly, much less needed to do so on any kind of regular basis. If I ever get around to traveling, it's Amtrak for me. I flew once, back in 1990, when the airlines were generally much...

By definition you can't brainwash kids to become atheists because atheism isn't a belief system that needs to be taught. You're simply not burdening their minds with the baggage that is religion. When they're adults, they're free to seek out religion if they want. Until then, let them focus on...

That's fine because it's adults studying religion, and doing so for academic reasons, not to be converted. There is definitely value in that, especially if it convinces those who think their religion is the only true one otherwise. True, and this is exactly why I'm against religious...

In my opinion forced religious indoctrination on youth is just another form of tyranny (and child abuse besides). Religion shouldn't be taught at all to minors, regardless of the parent's wishes. Of course, all religions do this because they're far more likely to sway children into believing...

Way too complex. The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything is 42.

It's possible a new old stock power supply board can get it back into working order again, assuming you can find one, and the fire didn't damage anything beyond the power supply/cord. Wasn't that a fairly high-end printer back in the day? I personally want a Game of Thrones style Viking...

For those prices I hope they can render photorealistic games in 8K resolution at 120 fps. That said, are there even any games at this point with such content? I suspect their target audience is cryptocurrency miners more than gamers/video editors/etc.

I keep scratching my head over why it bothers some people who others sleep with. These people must have really empty lives, or they must be super control freaks. Back on topic, I've been using Chrome mostly for a while, and I usually have an Edge session open as well.. Sounds like both of these...

Those numbers are fine for LiFePO4. I actually made a charger which does the absorption at 3.5V and the float at 3.4V. Those numbers translate to 28V and 27.2V, respectively, for an 8 series battery. Sometimes they use 3.6 or 3.65 for the absorption phase just to get faster recharge times but...

OK, no problem, I'm happy to help. I might dig out my APC UPS just to see what the charging voltage is, and if I can adjust it.

Anything 13.8V or higher is enough to fully charge a 12V LiFePO4 battery. SLA needs at least that much or more to fully charge, so most UPSes are voltage compatible with LiFePO4. Yes, a server rack with EVE or CATL would be an awesome backup battery for a UPS. I also have 6 packs with 48 A123...

That's why I would suggest using a standard UPS that takes lead-acid batteries but build your own LiFePO4 battery. You can get A123 cells in packs used for about $1 a cell. "Used" is a misnomer because when I checked the capacity, it was the same as new cells. To replace a 7Ah, 12V SLA battery...

Just a question-how far in terms of miles are those trips? A free car sounds great until you consider insurance costs and possible repairs. When my father died in 2006 some people asked me why I didn't want his car. Putting aside that I didn't/don't have a driver's license, I realized it was a...