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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...

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...

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

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...

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.

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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.

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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

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)...

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...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...

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

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...

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.

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...

Nope. Never edited video before. I'm thinking it might be something interesting to do in the near future.

Is Pinnacle Studio worthwhile for editing videos? Right now I have nothing. Might be worth it getting the bundle just for that alone.

Can't be any worse than the Deathsquitos in my yard right now. I get swarmed every time I go back there.

I'm into simulators. Mostly train simulators, but flight simulators can be fun also.

I wouldn't expect it to be readable in 2,000 years. It would simply be an artifact of the times, like a spear tip is. In other news from 4,000 AD, Elon Musk is sending probes into intergalactic space. Yes, the research he funded in the 21st century to extend life was successful, and he's still...

Ironically their CDs are starting to become collector's items: https://www.ebay.com/itm/304346527642 I actually find this disturbing on a number of levels. People used to throw these things in the microwave for fun. If they're starting to get rare enough to be worth anything, then that means...

Every cat I've ever had would definitely be chasing that.

I haven't bought gifts for anyone in ages. Both my siblings fall into the category Merc describes. My mother wasn't herself for the last decade of her life, so gifts would have been pointless. She would have lost them or threw them in a closet. The only gift I've given for like the last ten...

Also, NPUs might be able to supplement an iGPU. My understanding is they're designed for massively parallel calculations similar to a GPU, but for less than 64-bit or 32-bit math. Any graphics calculations that don't need 32-bit precision could probably take advantage of an NPU.

Tell the repairman about RS-24. It's a drop-in replacement for R-12, which is getting ever harder to find, and more expensive, as they haven't made it in many years.

My mother and sister both had the carpal tunnel release operation. It's not a permanent solution for everyone. Often, it comes back after a while, although maybe not as severely. I haven't had medical insurance since I was kicked off my parent's plan in college, so I haven't even had the...