California should just put a 300% tariff on any ICE vehicles being shipped into their state to be sold. That seems like a great plan!

We absolutely need to do a whole hell of a lot to combat climate change. This would be a step in the right direction, and I wish other states would follow suit. In reality, CA banning the sale of ICE vehicles isn't going to do a whole hell of a lot. Remember back in the stone ages when Tesla first came around, and states were banning the sale of vehicles without a dealership? What did people do? They went to a nearby state where they could purchase the vehicle they wanted, got it there, and then brought it back home. They'll do the same here.

Regardless of how you feel about GTA as whole - whether you like it, love it, or hate it - we have to give props to a studio willing to delay a release by 6-8 months so they can release a more polished product. Especially one with as much hype as GTA 6 has. Far too often the studios just drop whatever they've got at release date and then patch the hell out of it for the next year fixing issues that should've been ironed out before release.

It's a sad day when we have to give a studio kudos for doing the right thing, but here we are.

I played GTA 5 a decent amount, and I enjoyed it a decent amount. I'll definitely be picking up GTA 6 when it's out, as soon as it's in a relatively stable and playable state. Hopefully that's on launch day, but I'm happy to wait if it still releases as a raging dumpster fire.

Gamer's Nexus put out a 3 hour documentary on how the tariffs are affecting the computer industry recently.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3F...

Is it long? Absolutely! But the information in it is really good. You see numbers that you would never get to see otherwise. Manufacturing costs, tooling costs, shipping costs, retailer margins, and profit margins on cases. It's definitely worth a watch, even if you only have it on as background noise.

They travel around the country and talk to various manufacturers about how the tariffs are affecting their business, costs, and ultimately, the price the consumer pays. Hyte, iBuyPower, CyberPower, Corsair, 45Drives.... are the ones I can remember off the top of my head. I know there's more.

Their slogan isn't their problem, their reputation is. It's been non-stop news story after news story of massive problems with Intel for the past year, or more. Largest, and most egregious, are 13th and 14th gen CPUs self-immolating by drawing way too much power (325W+ when rated for 253W max). Not far behind is the absolutely woeful performance of their Core 2 Ultra CPUs. They're performing about on par with 12th gen.

I just built a new system, and for the first time ever, in the 30 years I've been building systems, I went with an AMD CPU. The 9950X3D simply obliterates anything Intel has put out recently, and without all of the question marks that follow in the wake of all of their massive fuckups of late.

I was ride-or-die team Intel. But until they do some massive reputational rebuilding - not the PR kind, the putting out good products free of massive defects kind - I can't bring myself to use an Intel CPU, or recommend one to anyone that asks.

I think these fell more into the "solution looking for a problem" category.

Before cell phones, a lot of people wore watches - me included. Once people started getting cell phones, we all just got accustomed to pulling our phone out of our pocket to check the time, and ditched our watches. Now the thought process is that we'd be thrilled to pay a few hundred dollars to go back to wearing watches? It wasn't until I tossed my watch that I realized just how much more comfortable it was to not wear one.

There's no "killer app" for smart watches either. Nothing that really blows your mind and makes you really and truly want one - not counting the status symbol-types. The blood pressure monitor, and other health/medical sensors are nice, but they're not going to be a primary selling point for many. For seniors? A bit of a different story. The health/medical sensors alone are likely quite valuable. Not to mention being able to call and/or text from the watch in case they fall and don't have their phone with them. The rest of us? It's just a second monitor for our phones - a very small one, at that.

Doom gets my vote.

Certainly there are arguments to be made for others - Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Tetris, Super Mario Brothers. I'd even be willing to let Diablo, Half-Life, and WoW enter the discussion.

Just give it an external power source and plug it directly into the wall. Power requirements for GPUs are getting so high, it's going to happen soon enough anyways.

I'm one ad away from dropping Disney+.

I subscribe to the ad-free tier, but recently they've announced that even the ad-free tier may start seeing ads. I'm just going to keep watching stuff on Disney+, and the first time I see an ad when I'm subscribed to ad-free, I'm gone! They're already pushing their luck with the price hikes and charging more for ad-free. If I start seeing ads, that's it.

It's just a nice way of saying that they're going to allow companies to pay for higher QoS priority. There's no other reason why it would only be for specific applications, instead of everything.

Super competitive gamers playing games where every millisecond of lag matters (FPS, primarily), would pay dearly for that. So they'll probably also get charged a premium for it too. Then Comcrap gets to charge twice for the same "service."

I'll be upfront about this. I'm not a parent. The idea of spending $1700 on a bassinet seems absolutely ludicrous to me, short of the damn thing coming equipped with an auto-feeder that prepares bottles for the baby, sticks the bottles in the baby's mouth for you, burps it, rocks it to sleep, and then changes its diaper afterwards.

That said, just because something was/is very expensive, doesn't mean it's ok to extort the people who purchased it after the fact. I don't care if they can easily afford it, it's still extortion.

But here's the thing. I think they chose the wrong group of people to piss off. If someone can afford a $1700 bassinet, surely they can afford a lawyer to sue your ass, or at least tie you up in court for a pretty significant amount of time when you try to screw them over - and I hope that everyone who bought one of these bassinets does exactly that. It's the only way this bullshit ends.

When it comes to games, I much prefer to the purely digital route. However, I totally understand why physical copies are necessary.

Some people - a lot of people if you're in the US - have really crappy internet connections, and probably a monthly data cap to make it even worse. For them, a physical copy is almost a must. But it also begs the question, why is an internet connection all but a must for consoles? Even with a physical copy, a lot of games need to download various assets (not talking patches here) required by the game in order for it to be playable. What are people with no internet connection supposed to do? Yes, they're out there. No, I don't know how they do much in today's world without. But that shouldn't preclude them from being able to own and use a console.

Then there's the game preservation aspect. I have games for the original Xbox that you will never be able to purchase again because lawyers are a scourge of the land. Obviously there are tons of games in that same category going much further back. Sony has a pretty spotty history with backwards compatibility, what happens to all those games when they shut down the PS4 store? Or in however many years when they shut down the PS5 store? Anything that they deem unworthy of being made backwards compatible with the PS84 Super-Ultra-Pro disappears into the ether. If you bought any of those games and want to play them sometime afterwards, or only just heard about how great all these old games are/were and want to check them out.... sucks to suck.

Now, when it comes to movies, you'll have to pry the physical copies out of my cold, dead hands. I'm sorry, but streaming - even 4K content - cannot hold a candle to the quality you get from a 4K blu-ray. Streaming is nice for the convenience factor of not having to get up to put the disc in, but that's where the benefits end in my eyes.

When they announced that this change was coming however long ago, I immediately switched to Brave. So happy I did! Eat a bag of 'em, Google!

I'm not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, I would think that it would help with traffic flow. Everyone going the same speed should, in theory, mean smoother traffic flow. You won't have to worry about the a-holes doing 90+ in a 65 zone weaving through all the other cars, which is nice. Also the safety stuff - lower speeds mean less damage and fewer deaths.

On the other hand, I'm one where I'll drive over the limit, just not by a crazy amount. I'll go 8-10 over on the highway, and if there's traffic that's going even higher, I'll join them and go whatever speed they're going. So not being able to go above the limit, increasing the amount of time I have to spend going from point A to point B, makes me not like this.

Then there's the question of what happens when things go wrong? Car's on the highway in a 65-70 zone, but thinks it's on that little residential side street running parallel to the highway just across that ditch - is it going to suddenly slam on the brakes and slow down to 25? You'll be roadkill. Car doesn't detect a new speed limit sign? Navigation system isn't working? What does it do then?

They found fraud on a massive scale.... great! Now, what in the actual hell are they going to do about it? Shrug their shoulders and just say that they're going to be more diligent to try to prevent more fraud?

Yes, be more diligent and try to prevent further fraud. But they need to go after those responsible and hold them accountable - that will deter others from engaging in fraud in the first place, because.... if there's no consequences, why not?! Claw back whatever amount they were fraudulently sent, and then double it as a penalty to the company. Then you need to go to those offices and put on a big show of perp walking anyone responsible out of there and into the back of a police car.

You can't just say "oh, that's haaarrrdddd," and let them get away with $50B in fraud. Or maybe you can, and they'll get elected to the Senate to join the other convicted Medicare fraudster that's sitting there. Maybe that's the retirement plan for Medicare fraudsters is to join the Senate. Hell, we're a coin toss away from putting a convicted felon in the White House, so what's another criminal joining government?

I can't think of any reason I'd need or want this feature. What I can see happening, is a year or two down the line, Microsoft deciding to "anonymously" collect "certain" data about how you use your computer and selling it to advertisers. Or them just doing targeted ads themselves.

I can also see that data being a huge target for attackers to try to get. Malware will start packaging up that data and sending it back to the authors. Absolute disaster waiting to happen. I'll pass.