bluemellophone

Would you think it acceptable for a gun manufacturer to make a gun that looked like a Fisher-Price toy, then market it to children? I’m not saying parents do not have a role here, I’m saying there are behaviors from companies that should be explicitly banned because they target children.

There are legitimate materials science, atmospheric sound propagation physics, and climate science modeling questions that are being answered by these tests. I believe it extremely short sighted to think the application of this technology and enhanced fluid dynamics to be limited to “rich people fuck the planet faster”.

I’m not saying that it is never fair to criticize a scientific endeavor, but enhancing our understanding of quickly transporting things through a dense atmosphere is not a bad thing.

I’d expect the laptops would work similarly, you can either pay longer and keep it or trade it in earlier.

To be fair, there are millions of Americans who upgrade their phones with their cell carrier every year. Technically this is a 2-year loan that will pay off the device if you do nothing, or give you the option to trade in the device after 1 year of payments in exchange for a new device. This pays off the original loan, assuming the device is in good working order.

The details matter here, but this is also very similar in the end result as a lease. You pay every month for an installment, get to use the latest and greatest hardware, and can trade it in for a new model. This model works very well for phones. Why not apply a similar principle to a laptop, but amortize the upfront cost over 4 or 5 years with the option to trade-in and upgrade after two years?

It’s interesting enough for businesses that it may be a great model. The amount of older e-waste laptops filling closets and IT departments is staggering.

Get 'em while that last:

“In a major industry shift announced in early 2026, Sony is entering a strategic partnership where TCL will take a 51% stake in its home entertainment division, including Bravia TVs, with a new joint venture expected to be fully operational by April 2027”

It’s the end of an era for the Sony Bravia.

I would be shocked if there wasn’t a single fuse just for that antenna.

Pretty sure at least half of Adobe’s users are on macOS.

I mean, yes, that is bad… but the biennium budget for 2011-2013 was around $60 Billion, which means this project represented about half a percent of the overall budget. The current budget deficit is around $60 Million, but the kicker from 2024 was a record $5.6B in unexpected surplus.

The Oracle debacle is a good representation of why government contracting can be a mess, but I don’t think that project caused such a big long-term financial problem. Putting a toll on the I-5 bridge into/from WA is a massive issue, I agree with you there.

I was asleep in bed one night many years ago and heard a loud bang, startling me awake. I thought for sure somebody was trying to break in a window or something. Went out, checked the house, nothing amiss. Went outside, checked around for any signs of something being off, not a thing. I then sat in my living room for 30 minutes trying to decide if it was a dream or if it would happen again. Still, nothing. I went back to sleep.

The next morning I made coffee and sat down at my MacBook Pro. It was an older model but I immediately noticed something was wrong. The entire laptop was elevated off the table slightly. The battery had apparently expanded in the middle of the night and with enough force ripped the bottom aluminum cover through three of the screw holes. Found the source of the noise, and immediately took it for disposal.

I was very lucky it didn’t catch fire, although it would have quickly solved my midnight mystery.

You seem to be missing the point, the Nintendo Switch is handily the most popular game console in US gaming history. It has officially sold more units than the PS2.

I’m sorry that you don’t appreciate the switch, it’s an amazing general purpose gaming console.

There are some smaller Ollama Llama 3.2 models that would fit on 12GB. I’ve run some of the smaller Llama 3.1 models under 10GB on NVIDIA GPUs

Dang, I used to have so many Juno disks. What a flashback.