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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • tankplanker@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.worldTypeframe
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    3 days ago

    I have always loved the concept of computers like this one.

    I have a picocalc on order but I am aware I am unlikely to make such a restricted use platform work for me day to day.

    I also have a GPD MicroPC 2, its just about perfect for me for actual travel usage as its just a small PC, and when plugged into a docking station will drive 2x4k screens fine. It fixes everything I do not like about smartphones, I just want it smaller still but the keyboard is already a big compromise for me.

    However I like the fact its based on a PI as it has a wide range of options for expansion and a large base of support to take it further if you need it to.



  • Quality of the system is such a massive dependency here, I can well believe that someone watching old reruns from a shitty streaming service that is upscaled to 1080p or 4k by their TV they purchased from the supermarket with coupons collected from their breakfast cereal is going to struggle to tell the difference.

    Likewise if you fed the TVs with a high end 4k blu ray player and any blu ray considered reference such as Interstellar, you are still going to struggle to tell the difference, even with a more midrange TV unless the TVs get comically large for the viewing distance so that the 1080p screen starts to look pixelated.

    I think very few people would expect their old wired apple earphones they got free with their iphone 4 would expect amazing sound from them, yet people seem to be ignoring the same for cheap TVs. I am not advocating for ultra high end audio/videophile nonsense with systems costing 10s of thousands, just that quite large and noticeable gains are available much lower down the scale.

    Depending what you watch and how you watch it, good quality HDR for the right content is an absolute home run for difference between standard 1080p and 4k HDR if your TV can do true black. Shit TVs do HDR shitterly, its just not comparable to a decent TV and source. Its like playing high rez loss less audio on those old apple wired earphones vs. playing low bitrate MP3s.


  • Cars have also gotten much bigger, generally speaking more reliable, and stuffed with extra technology, some of which makes the car safer than before. Little of that technology is really optional now in the EU but still adds to the price.

    A cirrent polo is the same size as a mark two golf, a three series is same size as an old face series. Most could downsize and not notice.

    New cars are purchased on the monthly cost than anything else where I am, with a balloon for the final payment. Manufacturers make money again on the same car at the second sale but can only do so if they protect the resale price, which means ever increasing sales prices.





  • Thats because they are without fail massive grifts ran by the IT firms.

    UK already has an ID system that about half of all adults already own that is fully integrated and trusted by the police and other services, the driving license. It even operates at a profit.

    It would be pretty damn cheap in comparison to implementing a new system to just require everybody who doesn’t have the driving license to get a special one thats a different colour and confers no driving privileges.

    Of course that would be too simple and wouldn’t allow scum to skim huge sums of money so here we are…

    Obviously I don’t actually want a mandatory ID but if we getting one then might as well make it cheap and already mostly implemented.


  • I would buy a feature phone today, preferably something eink, if it was painless to switch my SIM between it and my smart phone. Having to take the SIM out of one, put it in the other, then turn on the phone is not painless and they do not design the little draws to support thousands of open/closes against the contacts to read the SIM.

    There are times I want the smart phone to have the SIM because I will want or need the extra functionality and if you just make the feature phone do everything then its just morphed into a smart phone with extra steps. I want the feature phone to be basic as I can get away with.

    That said, I really want google wallet or similar that I can share between the two phones for my passes and tickets, audio streaming support, and maps. Something like a Hisense A9 would fit the bill but the temptation to add more apps than the basics would be too great, plus I still need a way to switch SIMs between the phones.

    I cannot replace my smart phone, rather than supplement, with any feature phone because I use it for such a wide range of things. I can ssh from it to my home devices, I can manage my bank accounts, it tracks my health, it provides video and audio streaming on and offline, I can read and write documents/spreadsheets, plus anything you can do via a web browser.


  • What this chart is missing is the impact of the quality of the screen and the source material being played on it.

    A shit screen is a shit screen, just like a badly filmed TV show from the 80s will look like crap on anything other than an old CRT.

    People buying a 4k screen from Wallmart for $200 then wondering why they cant tell its any better than their old 1080p screen.

    The problem with pushing up resolution is the cost to get a good set right now is so much its a niche within a niche of people who actually want it. Even a good 4k set with proper HDR support and big enough to make a different is expensive. Even when 8k moves away from early adopter markups its still going to be expensive, especially when compared to the tat you can by at the supermarket.



  • Yeah it pushed me to finally put in an order, got to wait till December now as I’m in the third batch.

    I wanted to wait till we had proof thst the graphics card would be updatable and a better one would be available as their AMD card is a bit too lightweight for me.

    I would rather it had been a better AMD card, I have a 7900 xtx in my desktop, but i will take what I can get at this point, especially as I know I can upgrade later.


  • With CDs they were negatively impacted by the loudness war as it became much more widespread. Having to hunt around for the right recording, often the earlier ones, can be expensive. Normalisation of the recordings by streaming companies is just an awful idea as it doesn’t fix the bad parts of the mix just turns everything down.

    I prefer SACDs to CDs, mostly because they tended to be mastered and mixed better than the CDs of the past two decades. The surround audio mixes are mostly just gimmicky, although they are a good fit for some records, but they almost always had a two channel mix that you could pick instead. The higher frequency range is mostly pointless.


  • But how do you pay the overseers to enforce it when money is no longer valid? And the overseers are bigger and tougher than your average billionaire?

    Slavery only works when there is money to pay the overseers and a legal system to protect the owner class from being extorted by the overseers.

    ICE is in a similar boat and they have to pay significant amounts to attract people to carry out ICE fascism.


  • Who is he going to staff it with? There is zero chance he will cook and clean for himself and he will need a substantial army to protect himself from the collapse of the human race.

    If he goes with people how long before the security guards realise they can dump his scrawny ass off a cliff and have a better quality of life as money becomes irrelevant? If he goes with robots how long before they break beyond what they can self repair? If he goes with robots with human engineers, how long before the engineers realise the same thing as the security guards and program the robots to kill Bezos?




  • It has always been the main aim of legislation like this to nobble VPNs, they just needed the “child” “violent pornography” etc. excuse to do so. UK government already monitors all of the internet traffic for the UK, except for MPs who are exempt, VPNs are a blocker for this.

    Obviously, not even the UK government would expect a private VPN ban (work VPNs would likely need an Ofcom license) to stop everybody from using a VPN or suitable alternative, its not the aim. The aim is to stop the majority from doing so and criminalize the minority who do still bypass the block as it gives them the power to seize equipment, ask for your logins (its illegal punishable with jail time to not supply this in the UK), request ISP logs etc. to deep dive into your life.