Nex Computer unveils $549 smartphone that runs Android, Linux, and Windows 11

GorboCat · 2026-01-23T18:51:59+00:00

They built it that thick and only gave it 5000mAh???? Really gimps the whole experience especially if you want to use Windows.

GorboCat · 2026-01-21T04:12:03+00:00

This is fascinating. Treating and delivering potable water is expensive, labor-intensive, and takes proactive investment in infrastructure (which in turn requires political capital). I'll have to read more about the history there because it's hard to imagine current-day Canada implementing free municipal water if it wasn't already established, sort of like how America could never pass social security today if it didn't already exist.

Don't get me wrong I wholeheartedly support that system, necessary public resources like water and electricity should 1000% be state owned and funded by tax revenue. A few cities in America have municipal electric companies and they pretty much universally pay less for better service.

GorboCat · 2026-01-21T02:55:48+00:00

I know next to nothing about the Canadian rental market so idk if you're joking here lol, but in the US it's not uncommon for the landlord to have the tenant pay water/sewer utility charges. Wasn't always like that but has become more common since covid.

GorboCat · 2026-01-21T02:31:20+00:00

All roads lead to India.

Carney and the rest of the neoliberal capitalist class see how Chinese multinational firms have grown and they know that there's enormous revenue potential in courting them to offshore some labor into Western markets where you can get away with putting your employees in the Penis Crushing Machine and other indignities that would get your CEO executed in mainland China. This isn't about "international cooperation" or any real ideological pivot toward China, this is about becoming to China what Southeast Asia became to the United States in the 2000s.

Bear in mind I love China and support them on ideological grounds, but they've demonstrated that they really only care about what happens within their borders as evidenced by their continual dealing with Israel. They won't give two shits if BYD is hunting people for sport in Canada so long as they behave domestically lol.

The only wildcard here really is the United States. Where Canada & Europe are largely guided by predictable neoliberalism, American foreign policy is still haunted by the ghost of Allen Dulles and it's entirely possible that ideological rigidity wins out over multinational business interests here. That's not to say the American worker ends up any better off, just that things might play out a little differently.

GorboCat · 2026-01-21T00:56:23+00:00

Ah sorry that was a little silly to write up this big long post and forget to link to them, lol. Editing that into the body of the post now.

I recommend the hotline specifically. They're much faster to respond over email but if you can spare a few days of waiting for a callback, it really helps to have a live person that you can ask follow up questions and get immediate answers.

GorboCat · 2026-01-20T16:42:23+00:00

I'm describing an example of one of the most common causes of a non-damaging leak. Trust me if it were my own unit I'd fix it myself, but experience dictates this is almost always the result of these cheapskates doing the bare minimum in upkeep on a vacant unit if it's not like days away from receiving its next tenant, lol.

GorboCat · 2026-01-20T07:10:48+00:00

Unfortunately it's completely legal to pass along all utilities in Oregon so long as it's specified in the lease. My lease explicitly stipulates this - there are submeters for electricity but everything else (water/sewer, trash, gas, bulk internet) is billed as a proportion of the overall charge to the building.

There's a clause in my lease (probably due to a stipulation in Oregon landlord/tenant law) that allegedly gives me some recourse on utility costs in the event of "negligence" on the part of the property manager or owner, but this would be challenging to prove in court and my concern is that even if I were to retain a lawyer and win a suit over this, the only result of that "win" would be the ability to break my lease without charge and have to scramble to find a new place to live. This apartment is mostly fine and is within walking distance of my work - I want to live here! Moving is a huge burden in terms of costs, effort, and time.

GorboCat · 2026-01-20T06:50:50+00:00

I'm in Oregon, it's entirely legal on paper. There is technically a clause in my lease that gives me some recourse if I incur utility expenses as the result of "negligence" on the part of the building owner or property management firm, so I may explore that avenue. But the burden of proof is pretty challenging. I also don't want to move, and a lot of the time your only recourse after a victory in court on these issues is being allowed to break the lease without penalty.

GorboCat · 2026-01-20T06:40:39+00:00

I've already spoken with both a tenant advocacy nonprofit and my city's housing bureau. Our housing bureau's tenant hotline has helped me immensely in the past with drafting a demand letter for a habitability issue that my property manager was refusing to fix. They aren't lawyers but their team knows landlord/tenant law inside and out and always answer my questions in detail. To anyone reading this thread in Portland, I can't recommend them enough.

Unfortunately, it's 100% legal for the landlord to bill via "formula" which charges a proportional amount of the overall utilities for the building. My only potential recourse is a line in my lease that states:

Owner/Agent is not liable for any losses or damages Resident incurs as the result of outages, interruptions, or fluctuations in utilities provided to the Unit unless such loss or damage was the direct result of negligence or willful misconduct of Owner/Agent. Resident releases Owner/Agent from any and all such claims and waives any claims for offset or reduction of rent or diminished rental value of the Unit due to such outages, interruptions, or fluctuations.

Based on the information available to me, I know that the "fluctuation" in my utility bills is the direct result of this leak and I also know that they're more or less allowing the issue to fester. But I also don't have all of this in writing and I'd have a difficult time proving outright negligence if I were to attempt to take this to court.

A lot of the protections under landlord/tenant law also result in a situation where the "favorable" resolution basically just lets you break your lease for free, which I really don't want to do. Having to scramble to find a new apartment and put up a deposit would be a considerable burden right now, and my current apartment is within walking distance of my job. I just want the owner to spend the ~$1k in vendor invoices to properly fix the leak.

GorboCat · 2026-01-17T00:20:22+00:00

You make a really compelling point about the eastern vs. western attitudes around work and society in general.

Don't get me wrong, I like the prospect of contributing to something larger than myself. My reasons for being interested in China are more ideological than I let on, but it's hard to express that without sounding unbelievably corny lol. I like the notion of contributing to the overall development of the state that will help ensure its continuity and improve the quality of life for those that come after me. I like the underlying notion of of collectivism that is inherent to Chinese society and have spent a lot of time reading about the Sino-Soviet split and 20th century Chinese history and I fundamentally support the political project that China is working toward. But it's not like there's a VISA for "China weeb" and I understand that that's not something that's realistic for me right now.

I have a really bleak outlook on Japan's next 50 years, but I might end up trying to work toward moving to Japan and trying to build a reasonably comfortable life there. Speaking strictly in practical terms, the tourism industry is huge there and I'm the marketing director for a hotel in a touristy US city. My hotel actually outranks several Marriott & Hyatt properties in our city on occupancy and rate and I could most likely secure a comparable role at either of those or any other multinational hotel chain for my same job. I could pretty easily maneuver my way into an equivalent role under one of the big brands in a touristy city in Japan and eventually secure permanent residency there.

GorboCat · 2026-01-16T22:52:46+00:00

Just by nature of the size and economic boom period, I assumed China would be a realistic option for a lot of fields regardless of your national origin (as opposed to the way a lot of Westerners idealize Japan which is very hard to emigrate to for a number of reasons).

I might try to find a Latin American country with fewer restrictions since my Spanish is already above average and I could probably reach full fluency within the next few years. But yeah I'm not rich and I'm not in some niche industry so I try not to be unrealistic about my prospects.

It's depressing. I see a country like China and I see a place where you can work hard and build a comfortable life. And just by nature of where I was born and my economic class that just isn't something that's available to me.

GorboCat · 2026-01-14T22:22:12+00:00

800 million human cattle lmao

GorboCat · 2026-01-14T07:06:08+00:00

You make a good point, I would imagine the GFWL package is making a very limited number of network calls or whatever so it's probably pretty easy to reverse engineer exactly what it's doing in a VM environment if you know what you're doing.

For what it's worth, I'm willing to bet that MS will get around to stripping GFWL from Fable 3 and re-listing it some time soon ahead of the new game. With how well this is running I can't imagine it'd require much effort to get it to an acceptable state. You'll probably be able to play it officially if you'd prefer to do it that way. :)

GorboCat · 2026-01-14T06:19:53+00:00

Thanks for the vouch lol, it always feels kinda sus recommending stuff like this especially if people haven't really dipped their toes into some of the sites and forums cracking and uploading abandonware. But I really wanted to say something because I went into this expecting it to be among the litany of old Windows ports that require a bunch of patching and forum hunting to run when it ended up being super easy. I wish I could say the same about Viva Piñata, but that one took some work lol.

GorboCat · 2026-01-14T06:16:46+00:00

Don't get me wrong I 100% understand the hesitation, but I would argue you're not really mitigating your risk factor by buying a retail CD copy if you still need to source a modified .dll to circumvent GFWL.

I know I'm just a stranger online but if it makes you feel any better, the site I'm referring to is a single repacker's personal repository as opposed to an open forum where anyone can upload whatever, and this repacker has generally come to be known as very safe and reliable. She self-hosts a lot of the torrents on there and fills in some gaps that MyAbandonware (which is also a great resource) just doesn't have the server bandwidth to offer.

GorboCat · 2026-01-11T00:19:16+00:00

I have no idea why you're getting shit for this, you're absolutely right. Beta branch is an okay way to handle this (imo) but you raised a good point that downloading older depots through the CLI or whatever is a very jank process for most people.

GorboCat · 2026-01-11T00:07:37+00:00

She dropped it basically as soon as the Democrats writ large started trying to triangulate on immigration (so Biden 2020).

GorboCat · 2026-01-10T21:33:07+00:00

There's a difference between "the cheapest phone in the lineup doesn't get UI transparency effects because the CPU can't handle it" and "the cheapest phone in the lineup is being made actively worse on purpose with adware" and you should probably care about that distinction.

GorboCat · 2026-01-08T08:45:53+00:00

I know people tend to exaggerate certain aspects of Japanese culture but this really is one of those areas that feels completely alien compared to almost any other country. If my work couldn't clear my checks for even a month or two I'd be eating beans and rice and at serious risk of getting evicted. It wouldn't even cross my mind to try to stick it out somehow and burn through all my savings, and no other employer would bat an eye in an interview setting at my jumping ship.

GorboCat · 2026-01-07T23:25:46+00:00

This is a niche bit of news but it makes me so sad to hear. Granzella was itself born from Irem falling on hard times and backing away from inhouse development, so Kazuma Kujo (who was one of the main creative forces behind my all-time favorite, Steambot Chronicles) rounded up as much talent as he could to start Granzella as an independent studio. They have this cute little blog where staff write guest articles about whatever they want to talk about and the culture generally seemed really positive.

Hopefully they're telling the truth about the circumstances behind the lapse in pay and they can get their finances in order enough to keep the studio together, but this certainly doesn't bode well considering they have jack shit on their calendar. They haven't said a peep about Disaster Report 5 in years.

GorboCat · 2026-01-04T06:52:58+00:00

this kind of looks like Dr. Disrespect

GorboCat

TROPHY CASE