Consumer DDR5 prices have tripled to quadrupled in the last 6 months.

I bought my daughter a PC in january, and I am building one for myself now.

In AUD the exact same 2x16GB DDR5 6000mT/s CL30 ram from the exact same store has gone from $182 to $699. Most of that increase has happened the last 8 weeks since these contracts were signed.

Yeah the mercedes when the turbo engines came in was just silly for 2+ years.
I'd say 50% of the grid as opposed to 90%, but similar point.

I've used ChatGPT to write code and Gemini to debug it. If you pass the feedback back and forth, it takes a couple iterations but they'll eventually agree that it's all good and I find that's about 90-95% of the way to where I need it to be. Earlier today I took a 6kb script that had been used as something fast and dirty for years - written by someone long gone from the company - and completely revamped it into something much more powerful, robust, and polished in both its code and its output. Script grew to about 20kb, but it's 10x better and I only had to make minor tweaks. Between the two, they found all sorts of hidden bugs and problems with it.

The world is heating up, and we need to continue to find ways to make food and energy production more sustainable, but coming up with these completely un-relatable and nonsensical figures won't help. It's about as useful as a 'carbon tax'.

When costs impact individual consumer wallets, that's when people start paying attention. Food shortages due to lack of water or shifting climates drive up prices and create scarcity. Water scarcity and resulting political instability is scary, and starting to rear it's ugly head in a few places.

Unfortunately, I think people are going to have to get a taste of the impact before they do anything meaningful about it. Time has shown you can yell about it all you want, but sitting down to figure out how you can accomplish these goals without reducing quality of life is the most important thing you can do. Leaning into modern, safe nuclear energy for energy abundance (in addition to solar) is much better than advocating for artificial scarcity and extreme conservation. Figuring out ways to more efficiently grow food at scale, as we have been doing since the mid-20th century, is better than advocating for immediate, drastic changes in diet. Lab grown meat that tastes and feels identical to the real thing but environmentally costs far less to produce once it's at scale? I think it's possible. Keep working on it. Hyper efficient crop growth? I don't think we've gotten close to what we can accomplish with a given acre yet, or vertical greenhouse farming. energy efficient de-salinization or condensing? It appears possible. Space-based manufacturing and asteroid mining? It's far better to mine the asteroid belt than the earth, and send the products downhill to earth. Metals that exist in abundance in the solar system should be gotten from elsewhere if robotic mining and modern delivery systems can make it economical. This is a GIANT untapped economy that will eventually bare fruit, but it may take a while.

There's a lot of things we could push really hard that we're not doing. Markets are lazy and want to optimize today and not worry about tomorrow, if there is no immediate perceived danger. It creates a kind of blind spot that can lead to the world eating its own tail, causing a collapse. We'll either figure it out or we'll collapse and have to start over, or possibly die out completely. I think there's a window of opportunity to continue to lift civilization to great heights, that will close in the next 100 years if the status quo continues as-is.

Just a few weeks ago there was a slashdot post via the Reigster giving a good clue as to why people still pay for it versus LibreOffice/OpenOffice versions or Google Sheets:

"Finance, for example, still relies on Excel because Google Sheets can't handle the necessary file sizes, as some spreadsheets involve 20 million cells. "Some of the limitations was just the number of cells that you could have in one single file. We'll definitely start to remove some of the work," Jestin told The Register."

You might say, "Well, if you have 20 million cells in a single spreadsheet you're doing it wrong" but excel has been abused in all kinds of ways for edge use cases and it will take it, and that's why people still use it. People have found it enormously useful to crunch vast amounts of data, and sometimes it requires astonishingly large cell counts. The world excel championships show just now useful it is for so many things. At an aerospace company I worked at, excel was the primary tool to calculate suborbital and orbital rocket trajectories given initial specific impulse, drag, mass, etc. The person who created the spreadsheet was a math and physics genius, and I referred to him as 'the Excel whisperer'.

Large companies that pioneered a piece of software have a first mover advantage, and then when they get big, they can afford to keep plowing money into improving the software and adding features to keep ahead of the competition that is less well funded, or relying on volunteers in the case of Open Source.

I ran into a similar problem trying to switch from Solidworks to a much cheaper lookalike competitor, as when you started to dig down there were some critical features that I needed that were just completely missing. I have the last bought and paid for version of Solidworks that they offered (2022) with no subscription, works great for my needs.

I use excel these days for a very complicated cost calculating sheet I developed to sell a particular product line with many different options. It calculates shipping weights and volumes critical for international container shipping quotes. It's a godsend. This sheet could be replicated on one of the free pieces of software, but since I own an Office 2019 desktop license outright, I'll continue to use it until I can no longer install it on future computers. You can still purchase a copy of MS Office 2024 desktop outright from Microsoft for $150. They don't advertise it much, but it's there on their website. I don't generally do software-as-a-service subscriptions, with a few very narrow exceptions. That's the one thing that will finally drive me away from Office, when 365 is the only option.

Right... I worked for The Beer Store, the brewer-owned private company which distributes beer across the Province of Ontario. Our Premier (roughly equivalent to a State Governor) made a campaign promise of "A buck a beer!".

So, a new empty can cost roughly $0.20 at the time. The law in Ontario is that shelf prices include tax and deposit. So, the can is $0.30 - twenty cents for the can itself, plus another dime for the deposit to make sure the used can comes back for recycling.

Now, on top of that, you have to make a food-grade beverage, pay your excise tax to the federal government, and then there have to be profits for the manufacturer and the distributor/retailer (that would be Brewers Distributing Limited dba. The Beer Store).

Customers would come to me and - with that "I know more than you even though I haven't held a job in 16 years" expertise - tell me that we were going to be carrying "buck a beer" because they voted for Doug Ford (who also cut their welfare increases).

"When do you get it? It's gotta be soon!"

"The first shipment arrives February 31st, so mark your calendar!"

I must have used that line 500 times. Only one person realized that there's no February 31st. To his credit, he had to come back to the store to tell me. LOL

Exactly ONE brewer made the Buck A Beer - Cool Brewing of Etobicoke, in Doug Ford's riding. We were lucky if we got a single case (24 beers) a month. Promise fulfilled... Right.

Anyway... The Beer Store's shelf tags were printed at the distribution center and sent to stores with truckloads of beer and empties in and out. Of course, you always had too many tags you didn't need, and were always short of the shelf tags that you did need. If a tag was outdated and wrong, you have to - ethically if not legally - honour the price. And, of course, if a tag was damaged or lost, there was no tag for that product. All of this hearkened back to The Beer Store's roots as Brewer's Retail where everything was behind a counter and we had a selection wall. In a newer self-service store like mine, this did not work.

Electronic shelf tags were implemented. It was amazing. Snap the tag into place on the shelf. Scan the tag. Scan the product. Press a button. The scan gun would beep and a moment later, the tag would update with the item description and price.

Price changes? Automatically updated on all tags.

Now, something about selling addictive substances: Sometimes someone decides that the item's price is what they have, not what the shelf tag says. And they will argue with you until the cows come home. You get jaded to it.

"That will be $2.25 for the can of Pabst Blue Ribbon 5.9."

"The tag says $1.95 so you have to give it to me for that. You forgot to update the sticker."

"No sir, I assure you that it doesn't. They're not stickers, they're electronic and tied to the POS."

"It says $1.95."

"Sir, if the shelf tag says $1.95 for Pabst Blue Ribbon 5.9, I will give you a full case of it. On the house."

For a moment, they're elated. And then they realize that I'm coming out from behind the counter to call their bluff. In front of the lineup of impatient customers during the daily 10:01AM opening rush. Catcalls. Whistles. Jeers.

Walk over with the dude... shelf tag says $2.25 for PBR 5.9. Now, at this point, I'm annoyed, and I'm not going to short my till $0.30 for him. Or suggest to him an alternative beer that is $1.95 a can. If he'd just passed me all his change and come up a little short, I would have covered it. Personally, out of my pocket, if I didn't have a few nickels and dimes perpetually floating around my cash. I've spent way too much time on both sides of the counter at The Beer Store, so I have plenty of empathy - just don't be an asshole.

Anyway... Dollar stores are dealing with customers who are on the very bottom economic rung, whether from addiction or for some other bad life event. Now, sometimes these people are a nickel away from being able to afford a can of beer - or a jar of baby food. I have seen split tender three ways for a $2 item - $0.50 from returning 5 empty cans, $0.97 by scraping a prepaid Mastercard from last Christmas to the last cent, and then $0.55 from under the sofa cushions or wherever. Unexpected price changes can drastically upset plans these people have made to get a few supplies with their very last dollar.

"I can get a box of Kraft Dinner at Dollarama for $0.50, and two cans of cat food at A Buck Or Two with the other $0.50..." I've seen it, and I've personally lived it.

The shelf tags, especially at a dollar/discount/alcohol/cannabis store of any sort, must be accurate. As an experienced retail manager, electronic shelf tags are simply essential.

You can sell the boss on implementing them with the operational savings, the labour of having to change stickers with every price change. Electronic shelf tags will pay for themselves in very short order.

I'll keep driving my car that A. doesn't have any of that stuff and B. is to old for anyone to want to steal /25 year old truck with a bulletproof engine /10 year old car with same

You're clearly not talking about American cars. What's a 1-tonne Ford Escort? I did have a 1983 Dodge Ram D150 half-ton pickup truck with a Slant-6 and an A-833 manual transmission; that thing would get 25MPG and hold 75MPH all the way westbound across Michigan... of course, it took it a while to get to 75MPH, merging was just like driving a Peterbilt with a 53' trailer full of anvils. That exact same engine and a comparable transmission were available for the Dodge Trucks line from 1960 to 1987 and was renowned for durability and reliability.

The key point is that Americans typically don't want them. To this day, in Canada, gasoline is cheaper than water. I'm not sure if that's a statement about gas prices or a slam against the sort of fool who feels the need to buy their tapwater in PET bottles, but I digress. So people buy horsepower. People buy large vehicles based on truck platforms.

As CAFE forces vehicles to become more fuel efficient - without addressing the underlying consumer demand problem! - manufacturers are being forced to use smaller and smaller engines. This means adding turbochargers to cute little aluminum blocks, narrower cam lobes and variable displacement oil pumps and smaller oil control rings all to reduce the internal drag, and thinner oils which offer zero cushion on connecting rod bearings. All of this gets stuffed into a full-size pickup truck with a trailer hitch. They're intolerant of real-world conditions and use, and because of their complexity they're expensive to repair. These vehicles will not have a long lifespan - sure, you might get a good fleet average mileage, but if 50% of the vehicles don't make it to the 100,000 mile mark, they're getting replaced faster with all the environmental damage of producing and disposing of the vehicle.

Maximizing vehicle life is an important part of reducing the vehicle's overall environmental impact.

There's a great YouTube channel where the owner of a full-service used auto parts business takes apart modern engines and shows you what failed. No prior knowledge of engines is required to understand this. Some engines are spectacularly broken. And Eric talks about what will last, and what won't, with an entertaining sarcasm.

Recycling? The lead-acid primary battery gets removed, then the car gets crushed and shredded. Only the steel and the aluminum get recycled. Anyone who thinks that any other material in a car gets recycled in any quantity has never seen a car shredder in operation. ASR (Auto Shredder Residue) is a special waste stream now consisting mostly of mixed plastics, smashed safety glass, and the crap people leave in their cars when they junk them. All that plastic gets landfilled.

Channel subscriptions, and I have my own channel that I manage.

I don't use that Google account for anything else though, so there's that. It's not logged in to my smartphone either. I have a throwaway account that holds my contacts in case I lose or break my phone. I got tired of re-entering the contacts by hand each time I got a new phone, so I gave up on staying logged out entirely on the smartphone.

Knowing Google, it's quite the possibility. To avoid that, you would need to stay logged out, use private browsing in a browser that isn't chrome, and use proxies to vary your IP address, and probably randomly spoof your browser type and OS type to avoid other methods of profiling. I don't think I care that much.

Hopefully not if you've left your YouTube watch history turned off.

Go to your Google Account settings, click "my activity" and then there is a button for YouTube history where you can disable it if you don't want them needlessly collecting data about your watch habits.

This will however make your YouTube landing page blank. But your subscription page for following channels still works the same.

And?

I was clicking around Zillow a few days ago and noticed the First Street link. I clicked on it for a few local homes where I know exactly where they are and they gave some of them nonexistent flood and wildfire risks. I don't know how they distill their data but I'd say they're doing it wrong, or erring on the side of paranoia. As both a homeowner and a potential home buyer it's not something I would ever look at. In California you need to rely on the Natural Hazard Disclosure Report for the property you are looking to buy.

Also, flood zone determinations as a general thing are often widely disputed for insurance purposes, sometimes properties are not considered to be in a flood zone when they should be, and sometimes they are considered in a flood zone when they are not.

Folded it's nearly 1/2" thick. Perfectly fine for an inside jacket pocket. but where I live you only wear jackets about half the year. The rest of the time you have to shove it into a pants pocket, no thanks. My S23-Ultra is already bulky enough with the Otterbox around it.

Also, one more hinge point is one more mechanical thing to break.

It would be nice to have on an airplane flight though.