NuXCOM_90Percent

Conceptually a really fun game reminiscent of the original splinter cell where both stealth and shootouts are viable

But holy crap is it just a mean spirited game. Strongly encourage just ignoring cutscenes and plot.

No no no. Don't you see, Right To Repair means that it is a legal requirement for every single company to provide a button that will fix and do anything you want at zero cost to you!

You know, as opposed to minimizing unnecessarily coupled parts and part signing to prevent third party companies who do have the fancy oven to desolder a chip from charging you to do it. And... some of that is definitely people like Rossman who will gladly switch between talking to consumers and other repair companies as it suits his argument.

Also: While I firmly do not expect a switch to last anywhere near long enough to make it worth doing, it is also totally worth doing a soldering project or two. It is a good skill to have and gives you a lot more insight into what is being talked about when these topics come up.

Honestly? That makes me really concerned about his long term wellbeing and raises a few orange flags for how he can be compromised. Owning individual stocks is very questionable. Investing heavily in a mutual fund or some other managed portfolio is common sense for anyone win a position where retirement is an option.

But also? Fuck yeah.

Yes. And over the past three decades there have been a lot of advancements and improvements as well as a general push for larger engines for both efficiency and "number go up" horsepower. Also structural design to increase safety in the event of a collision.

The reality is that there has always been stuff you can repair just by popping a hood and stuff you need to prop it up for. And there have always been people who decide to reach under the car to drain the oil and pollute their local sewers.

Any form of engineering is a trade off. And if you compare "under the hood" for a car from the 90s versus one from the 2020s, it is going to look a lot more packed. And, at some point, having super easy panels to open up once or twice over the lifespan of a vehicle is just not a priority for anyone other than someone on the internet looking for something to be angry about.

When it is a case of needing to go in for maintenance to re-approve all my parts? Fuck that noise (also why anyone who ever plans to do electrical work should get one of those code readers to reset the error light...). When it is me being expected to do something incredibly basic like "prop up the car and remove a wheel"? If you aren't comfortable doing that then you aren't comfortable "working on" your car.

Then learn how to prop up your car and work on it yourself?

Like, that is the reality of it. Headlight bulbs aren't going to change themselves if you wish really hard. Same with a flat tire. So you either learn how to do it (preferably before you are in the mud on the side of i-95 in the rain) or you pay someone.

The reason why Right to Repair laws are so good in concept (if not execution) is that it means you aren't paying Toyota to come change your tire for you. You are paying a local mechanic who is theoretically not ripping you off.

I mean, basically any car in the past decade or so has LED headlights? And older bulbs would generally be rated for between 500 and 3000 hours of use, depending on the model. Considering people often try to avoid driving at night (... in part because of those LED headlights), once or twice over the decade or so lifespan of a car is pretty reasonable.

Also: Popping a wheel off is not really that hard and is something people should know how to do anyway in the event they get a flat on the side of the road. Finding a place you can do work on your car is a real problem with apartment life but setting the jack, jacking it up, and taking off the wheel is maybe 20 minutes of effort if you aren't experienced with it. Then reach under, swap out the bulbs, and you are done.

Like, this really feels like the usual kind of discourse around this. People want to be able to repair stuff but don't understand what that actually entails. If jacking up your car is not something you are comfortable with, don't do it. Pay someone to do it for you. Same with all the people who think they are going to re-solder every single connection on a tiny chip.

It is going to vary from car to car (can't wait for the person who insists their brand new 2010 car that nobody ever heard the name of doesn't have this problem...). But the general rule of thumb is that the easy stuff is accessible from just popping your hood. Refill reservoirs, look at your engine and say "that ain't right", and swap out batteries. For stuff like draining and replacing oil or swapping out long lasting bulbs? Prop that shit.

That has generally always been true and is a function of there just being only so much space.

Actually open up the hood of your car. Take a look inside. Most of that is engine, battery, and reservoirs. In a sedan or a small SUV there just isn't a lot of room to make everything accessible from the top. Whereas jacking it up, popping off a wheel, and reaching in for the thing you might touch once in the lifetime of a car is pretty trivial.

Back in the day? I remember my dad having the kids sit in the engine of his pickup truck and my mom's giant ass SUV to follow instructions and work on it. But you would need a REALLY small child to do that in a sedan.

Shame on me. If I just believe hard enough that will solve all bandwidth, data, hosting, and discoverability issues.

This is not at all a trivial problem. If it were, then aggregator sites like dig/reddit would have never taken over from message boards and youtube/twitch would have never beaten a tripod site with a relplayer (HISS!!!) video.

And you do know that there is a very big difference between hosting a text based site on tripod, an image heavy site, and a video site, right?

The reason The Old Internet died out is largely because of the middle. When you have zero revenue (because everyone runs an ad blocker) but people are shitting on you because your screenshots are only 640x480 instead of (oh dear god) 1080p? You start looking at aggregation sites that will pay that hosting fee for you. Hence, social media.

And then you have video. Even short clips could make your hosting bill explode. And sites like Rooster Teeth that pretty much existed solely on their ability to host a five minute video every week were basically constantly in a mess. This is why sites like Giant Bomb ended up starting with Mysterious Investors and ended up getting bought out.

Because you know what is also not good for "the 'monopoly' problem"? A site getting hugged to death the moment it is even mentioned on a low traffic subreddit/community. Which is what happens when people host their own video heavy sites. Which lead to adding advertisements and getting sponsored which leads to all the people saying they are an evil site and should burn in hell and here, let's re-upload all their content to youtube or liveleak or whatever.

Even if you feel that no true art can come from anything profitable and all that stupidity that ignores that time and materials have a cost: Hosting also has a cost. If someone's streams can't even support the money it costs them to stream it? That doesn't last long and can lead to a nice payment plan if your VOD goes viral while you are asleep.

And they find that because twitch is one of the biggest sites on the internet and has okay-good discoverability. And even then, it is generally weeks (if not months) of effort to get to the O(10) concurrents, let alone O(100) where it starts being profitable on time alone... let alone hosting.

Versus some random website on a meme domain that nobody will ever find.

Its the same with peertube and the like: The use case for individuals is near zero and it mostly exists as something to fuel sites like Nebula or floatplane that are trying to build their own services.

Aww. The murderous shit stain thought he had any value whatsoever.

Because musk has enough money and lawyers that he can stretch out any court case until WELL after the election. At which point we are either living in Gilead and musk is being given a commemorative plaque while being deported for being African or the Democrats win and "just want to move on from all this divisiveness"