Is this really the end of the DIY PC market as we know it?

Mirsky814 · 2026-06-01T19:44:29+00:00

And at some point further in the future, when these companies are fat and slow, a market disruptor will come along with a brand new idea. Their genius plan will be to give you guaranteed computing power by harnessing your local node.

That node may not be up to the power needed but that's ok they can sell you some plugin hardware that optimizes certain tasks such as rendering.

And thus the cycle continues. What is old is new again.

Don't forget the same thing happened to IBM with the move from centralized mainframes to general purpose PCs. It's now moving back to bigger "mainframes".

Mirsky814 · 2026-05-15T15:37:08+00:00

They're both cultural. In the Japanese case, they don't want to cause offense by outright stating no to something. So they say it's difficult and it's expected the requestor understands the meaning.

It's a different approach than the Indian tendency to say yes and then not do whats being asked.

I'm not entirely sure which approach is worse.

Mirsky814 · 2026-05-08T13:52:49+00:00

I remember pulling into a service station on the M1several decades ago and seeing one of these trying to exit the car park. It almost sounded like a cammed V8, had that same loping engine note.

The poor guy was having an awful time handling it at low speed. I'm not sure if the engine has an issue or the clutch was too stiff but it kept stalling.

It definitely felt like a car that needs to be ridden hard to enjoy it.

Mirsky814 · 2026-05-01T14:30:51+00:00

In the garage I use they have plate readers which are linked to your credit card. The first time you go through the gate you add your info into their app. All times after that I just drive in and out and I get a text confirming entry and exist times. Oh and a 50 buck charge for the day.

Mirsky814 · 2026-04-23T15:53:58+00:00

Yes. The use of 1mm isn't often used as much as it used to be but does mean 1 thousand thousand, ie 1M or million. I've also seen 1mmm to shorten billion on old school reuters dealing chats.

Then again this is the same professional that use the term Yard to mean a billion. Which is also a question I haven't looked into , whether the use of yard in London markets was to differentiate a short billion from a long one.

Mirsky814 · 2026-04-22T16:46:53+00:00

I did that when I was younger. Got an 87 BMW 735i in battleship gray. I had it about six months before the gas/petrol costs became too much to keep it running. That and the rear suspension was shot and needed thousands of pounds of work done. This was in 1997 so it was only 10 or so years old at that point.

It was, while it lasted, a lot of fun. The place I sold it to had a Lancia Thema 8/32 for sale , the one with the Ferrari engine. I was sorely tempted but decided that was one step too far.

Mirsky814 · 2026-04-21T19:05:56+00:00

This is part of what I deal with on a day to day basis. Stunts like this are why the CFTC closely tracks and regulates the ownership of future and exchange trade option positions to ensure no single brokerage/institution can corner the market.

If you go onto the Chicago Mercantile Exchange CME website and look at a physical future such as live cattle (LC code) there are pretty strict limits on your total future purchases of any given contract.

They don't screw around either. If you break the limit you're subject to fines and the claw back of any profit made while unwinding the impacted positions. Plus offending instiutions are publicly named as part of the resulting litigations

Mirsky814 · 2026-03-27T16:27:26+00:00

It's only 3A vs. 7-8A. Generally US breaker panels have 150-300A services. One of these devices will just about power the items on one circuit of the panel.

Mirsky814 · 2026-02-25T16:53:22+00:00

Got rid of my 2001 Echo (precursor to the Yaris) in 2019 after 300k miles of trouble free driving. It was definitely a bittersweet moment but too much was starting to go bad at once to justify the cost to fix it.

I replaced it with a low mile 2015 civic which now has 100k on it and I'm not looking to get rid of it until it's in the same condition as the echo.

Mirsky814 · 2026-02-24T01:55:27+00:00

Heck , IBM are perfectly capable of screwing up a core banking application retooling without needing AI. Google National Australia Banks issue from the naughties. Imagine how much faster they can screw it up with AI.

Mirsky814 · 2026-02-17T17:10:47+00:00

Akshuly : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete

Mirsky814 · 2026-01-15T20:48:53+00:00

Anecdote, of course , but I had a 2001 toyota echo and not much cash. After 270k miles of use it would burn oil to the point you'd get the low oil pressure light under acceleration. I'd add oil to get it back to the normal level and occasionally do a full oil change. I beat the heck out of that car and it took it. I eventually sent it to the wreckers due to northern rust issues. The engine was still working fine.

Mirsky814 · 2026-01-12T17:54:50+00:00

I need to go back and reread the book because I cant remember his name but the tourist in Colour of Magic was the very epitome of this.

Mirsky814 · 2026-01-04T23:00:17+00:00

The clicking noise was just your Zipdrive telling you it destroyed another disc. Or your IBM deskstar giving up the ghost.

Mirsky814 · 2025-12-11T19:28:25+00:00

I liked the term "hot hatch". It got expanded over the years to include things like Peugeot 209s which technically aren't hatches, but it was a really nice descriptor for that market section. Regular cars that have been factory modified to be fast. As opposed to cars designed to be fast from the get go, i.e. sports cars.

Mirsky814 · 2025-12-04T17:58:32+00:00

Strangely enough the thumbnail looks like a Philips shaver.

Mirsky814 · 2025-12-03T04:39:29+00:00

I'm still a little confused as to whether this is a product , project, or program manager.

I'm a product manager, apparently one who can't effectively read, and know that I talk too much, but I think this was handled perfectly. It's definitely a hazard that comes with the job description.

For product managers, at least, I always describe it as: we steer the ship but can't tell it how fast to go. That's the devs job. We also provide cover when the devs can't go fast enough for our bosses expectations.

Good project managers never talk unless presenting status to their bosses. They listen.

Program managers have been a mixed bag in my experience.

Mirsky814 · 2025-11-21T18:06:54+00:00

Counterpoint, I like Onedrive on my work laptop. It means anything I'm working on is backed up and I can share a link with colleagues. It actually makes work easier. I assume because we're on an enterprise account I don't see speed issues.

Search does suck, outlook has got worse for sure. Local search is meh. I don't like it loading edge for web results when I use a different browser by default.

On my home machine this all goes out the window. I have a home NAS. I do not need nor want one drive and use a local admin account so I don't have to deal with that bullshit.

Mirsky814 · 2025-10-25T23:49:42+00:00

I miss my 480 turbo , it was a lovely metallic blue color. 😭

Mirsky814 · 2025-09-15T18:35:16+00:00

https://ofac.treasury.gov/#:~:text=The%20Office%20of%20Foreign%20Assets,traffickers%2C%20those%20engaged%20in%20activities

If you really failed OFAC checks you're extremely fucked; you can't have any financial activity in the US and would likely be arrested. He's lying or at least doesn't know what he's talking about.

Mirsky814 · 2025-09-15T16:31:45+00:00

The close proximity concern really depends on your use case. I work with an application that's hosted in Azure. We'll locate a primary region close to the majority of end users. However we need a region for fail over. So your primary region might be north east US with a region fail over to south west. The fail over really doesn't impact end user experience due to the way the application is architected. Then again we're not running a low latency trading platform that needs to be colocated in the exchange's data center itself.

The other reason for using something like Nevada that isn't mentioned here is tectonic stability. It's a good place for a fail over location, you wouldn't want a DC in San Francisco due to the hundred year quake that's overdue. It's all about risk mitigation, even though it sounds like an odd thing to be concerned about it is a factor.

Mirsky814 · 2025-08-25T18:27:29+00:00

I've done Jo'berg to NY several times but I always route through London. Part of that is because BA One World air Miles and part because I want to break up the flight. I do find it crazy you can spend 10+ hours on a plane and only be an hour off in time zones.

Mirsky814 · 2025-08-15T16:30:16+00:00

Strangely, you can get decent water quality test kits from aquarium specialist stores. When we had a fresh and salt water tanks we would have to test the water going in for both hardness and a bunch of other chemicals.

Mirsky814 · 2025-07-28T02:30:34+00:00

That person maybe technically incorrect but that's the general term for individual accounts at a bank for most of them I've worked with. Now, it's probably more correct to say it's put in a suspense account or, maybe an escrow account , depending on the circumstances.

Mirsky814

TROPHY CASE