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Frezik

@ frezik @lemmy.blahaj.zone

Posts
2
Comments
313
Joined
5 mo. ago

  • Windows 11 could actually become the same kind of mistake Sony made with the PS3

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  • I'm sorry, is this thread under the misconception that the X360 outsold the PS3? Because that's wrong.

    https://www.vgchartz.com/charts/platform_totals/Hardware.php/

    X360 did win in North America, but PS3 had a small lead globally. The PS3 was completely dominant in Japan, and had a sizable lead in Europe.

    If it wasn't for the Red Ring of Death, the X360 probably would have won. In many ways, Microsoft's gaming division never recovered from that.

  • Why /dev/null Is an ACID Compliant Database

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  • Cloudfare, OTOH, is not an ACID compliant database.

  • Valve Claims Steam Machine Outperforms 70% of Current Gaming PCs

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  • Are we looking at the same link? The one I see is listed for $1099, so I'm not sure how you managed to spend $1k less.

    Though anything with an Intel Ultra CPU should go right in the garbage, but that's a different issue.

  • What is the highest level of mathematics that should be expected to graduate high school?

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  • You could use that same argument for any other type of math. Boolean logic. Linear algebra. Hyperbolic geometry. You have to pick something for high school, and you should pick what's most likely to be useful to anybody.

  • What is the highest level of mathematics that should be expected to graduate high school?

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  • . . . the fundamental ideas about rates of change seem like they’re something that everyone human deserves to be exposed to.

    People understand the idea of instantaneous speed intuitively. The trouble is giving it a rigorous mathematical foundation, and that's what calculus does. Take away the rigor, and you can teach the basic ideas to anyone with some exposure to algebra. 6th grade, maybe earlier. It's not particularly remarkable or even that useful for most people.

    When you go into a college major that requires calculus, they tend to make you take it all over again no matter if you took it in high school or not.

    Probability and statistics are far more important. We run into them constantly in daily life, and most people do not have a firm grounding in them.

  • Removed

    TypeScript imagines type safety in a dynamic runtime

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  • You mean the AI slop that is the entire post?

  • You're given $20,000 USD (or the equivalent in your local currency) to spend, but anything still left by the end of the day you lose for good. What are you spending it on?

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  • Especially in this economy.

  • Five years from launch the PS5 is a roaring success, so why doesn't it feel like it? [Eurogamer]

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  • It's because of this:

    https://www.vgchartz.com/article/465289/ps5-vs-ps4-sales-comparison-june-2025/

    Align PS4 and PS5 sales to their launch date, and you'll see that the PS5 has been lagging behind. Not by a lot, but it's noticeable. This is despite the fact that The Xbox Series X/S is doing a bit worse than the Xbox One, and the One did a lot worse than the 360. Nintendo, of course, is in another room doing its own thing.

    Sony expected every generation to sell better than the last. The market has clearly hit a saturation point, so that expectation is no longer valid. Combine that with the fact that Moore's Law (originally defined as the price per integrated component dropping) is completely dead. That means you can no longer expect better hardware to get cheaper. You might be able to find fabs that can give you more performance, but it'll cost you.

    This is why the GabeCube is a good idea from a business persepctive. It will likely have better performance than the Xbox Series X/S, but not as good as the PS5. What it can do is be affordable with good enough hardware. The specs appear to be a bit Frankenstein, which is what you'd expect if Valve grabbed whatever deals on things they could find to put something together.

  • When we eat the billionaires, we should spare Gabe Newell? No?

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  • I usually put it at $10M, and there are specific arguments for this.

    The Trinity Study used a standard retirement portfolio and then studied its results using a sliding window starting from 1925. Let's say you retire at 60 and expect to have another 20 years of life. This time period covers good stock market performance and bad, high inflation and low. It's a very robust result, and the US and even worldwide economy would have to fundamentally change for it to be invalidated. (You could argue that Trump is driving things in that direction, but that's a whole other discussion.)

    How much of the portfolio can you withdraw each year and be safe?

    The study starts with a percentage withdraw rate, which is increased by the rate of inflation each year. It then checks if the portfolio would have run out of money before the person is expected to die. This resulted in the 4% rule where you start withdrawing 4% the first year and then increase by inflation. It's extremely unlikely that you'll run out of money in a standard retirement period.

    If you withdraw 3% or 2%, you won't run out of money even if you live forever.

    So let's take a 2.5% withdraw rate. This is extremely conservative and should basically last forever. US government bond rates are typically higher than that (but not always), so we're not even that tied to the stock market on this one. If you had $10M, take 2.5% the first year and increase by inflation each year after, you would perpetually have the purchasing power of $250k/year.

    If you have $250k/year, you can live very comfortably anywhere on Earth. This is the part where someone always chimes in "what about the Bay area or New York?"

    First, with this plan, you can live anywhere. You're not tied to an area by a job. Maybe don't chose high cost of living areas.

    OK, let's say there's family or something else that's specifically tying you to those areas. Median income in Manhattan is $106k, and the other burrows are significantly lower. San Fransisco median is $136k. I'm quite certain you can live comfortably on $250k in those areas if you absolutely had to for some reason.

    Also, don't forget that unlike all us working stiffs, you wouldn't have to put another dime into a 401k or any other retirement plan. Your $10M already covers that. Feel free to spend it all on luxuries.

    So that's the limit. We can increase the $10M based on future inflation, but higher than that is just wanking about how much you have, and there's no reason society should respect that.

  • What are examples of "instead of making our own situation better, let's make the other's worse"?

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  • Almost any argument against public transportation or better bike and walking infrastructure.

    You can't improve traffic by adding another lane. People who were using other means of transportation start to move over to cars, and then that lane fills up and you're back where you started. This "induced demand" has been studied by traffic engineers for decades, and is very reliable.

    You can improve traffic by offering viable alternatives to cars. Even if that means taking up a lane for bikes, buses, or rail. The induced demand effect works in reverse, too. People see they're getting passed by the bus on their morning commute and make the obvious choice.

  • Valve has ‘a pretty good idea’ of what Steam Deck 2 is going to be, but it’s not ready yet [VGC]

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  • I'm not so concerned with the instruction set. The differences are generally overrated.

    I'm concerned about monopoly power. Out of three companies that can legally make modern x86-64 processors, AMD is the only one worth talking about anymore. Unless China wants to throw some major weight into restarting VIA's x86 line, that's not likely to change. China seems fine with ARM and RISC-V, and ignoring x86.

    The competition on the horizon is no longer AMD vs Intel. It's AMD vs ARM vs RISC-V.

  • Question: Does a higher refresh rate monitor make sense?

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  • Well, if your setup is right, there won't be 30Hz monitors. Plugging in an old DVI cable you have laying around to a 4k monitor might just do it.

  • Deleted

    Do you follow YouTubers that are part of the "Bread tube" ring? Why/why not?

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  • It popped up as a term for some progressive content creators, like Lindsey Ellis and Hbomberguy. Hasn't been used in a while.

  • Removed

    YSK americans requires 60 votes out of 100 in the Senate to pass any bill. As a result, their government regularly shuts down. But in Canada or Britain, you just need a simple majority

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  • It's an abuse of a rule meant for something else. There is no reason it has to be 60%

    The rule comes from a bit of Senate procedure where you vote for "cloture". What this is supposed to be is "we're done discussing things, and now we should move on to voting on the legislation". It's not supposed to be a vote for or against the legislation itself, but rather just moving along in the process.

    Over the years, it got abused more and more to mean "a vote for cloture is a vote in favor of the legislation". Around the time Obama started his first term, it fully meant that.

    The Senate can simply change the rule to require majority vote. It would require a simple majority vote to do so. There's a lot of fossilized politicians on both sides who don't want that. They know that America tends to be swingy with its votes; the party out of power now will tend to be the party back in power next cycle. They want the power to stop legislation when the cycle swings against them.

    Now, if Republicans in the Senate believed they would have a permanent majority through vote rigging, which is clearly the Administration's plan, then they should have dropped the filibuster rule like Trump wanted. The fact that the idea was stillborn suggests that congressional Republicans don't actually think Trump can pull it off, or perhaps that the plan wouldn't benefit them individually, or they are somehow not in on the plan.

  • What do you think is the best course of action to address cult movements, either as a whole or on an individual level?

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  • FWIW, being an ex-JW, I've very rarely heard any other ex-JW suggest banning them outright. Besides moral concerns, nobody really thinks it would work. By all means, come down on them for specific crimes (like hiding pedophiles), but blanket bans are a no.

  • What do you think is the best course of action to address cult movements, either as a whole or on an individual level?

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  • Anyone can get wrapped up in a cult, because just about everyone goes through a phase in their life when they would be primed for that mindset. Such as loss of a job with nowhere to go, or loss of a loved one.

  • What do you think is the best course of action to address cult movements, either as a whole or on an individual level?

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  • Realize that you can't convince someone to leave in the course of a conversation, but that you can make the little crack that opens up years later.

    The loss of the guy at the center of a cult of personality can quickly disperse the cult. Very rarely, they're able to transition into a cult of an idea rather than a personality. That's a difficult transition to pull off, and there's usually planning ahead of time.

    There's not a lot of quick solutions otherwise.

  • Removed

    Killing SNAP benefits now is demanding a Blue Congress next election.

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  • The Administration's idea is that the 2026 election will be rigged in their favor.

    Which might not work. Congressional Republicans may not be in on the plan, at least not all of them. Even if they are, they might be getting cold feet. Same with Republicans at the state level, and they're the ones who have direct control over elections.

    Don't rely on them falling apart on their own, though.

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    Killing SNAP benefits now is demanding a Blue Congress next election.

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  • Political lean can be a funny thing. States move together. It could very well be that it doesn't shift enough to pick up those extra 3 states, but if it does, there will probably be several more.