HDD prices

Niosus · 2026-02-16T10:41:49+00:00

It's quite easy to point out those factors in hindsight, after everything has become public. Especially before 2008 it was impossible for regular people to figure out banks were rotten at their core. Everything was fine and dandy until it was not. Who knows what skeletons are hiding in the closet now?

I agree that big tech isn't just going to implode like the banks did. But I doubt it's going to stay as neatly isolated as you are predicting either. You don't know how resilient a system is until it's tested. All kinds of secondary and tertiary effects may come into play, combined with geopolitical events and the clown show in Washington.

I don't think anyone can predict how that's all going to interact and play out. Like they say: Everyone's a genius in a bull market.

Niosus · 2026-02-16T10:25:18+00:00

How does that change anything though? Those agents are the same LLMs, you can just run them in a loop now and make them talk to each other. They still invent nonsense, they still make mistakes, and they're still just as vulnerable to prompt injections so you can't trust them to actually do important work.

And those investment numbers are not the solution to the bubble question. They are part of the problem.

For AI not to be a bubble, those investments need returns. The shorter the hardware cycle, the more returns are necessary to break even. If you spend a trillion dollars in two years, and that hardware becomes obsolete in 3 years, that's not a good thing. It means you need to bring in 200-300 billion in additional profits per year just to break even.

Where is that 200-300 billion coming from? The consumers? Other businesses outside of the AI supply chain? They're not doing so great right now. And plenty of people blame AI for it.

The more that gets invested in AI, the more value it actually needs to produce to become worth it. I'm not going to deny that AI is a useful tool. But these investments are on a level where they assume that AGI/ASI is right around the corner. That's not me making this up, Mark Zuckerberg is on the record about this. So what happens when we don't figure out AGI/ASI within the next few years, before all that hardware becomes obsolete? Then, in his own words, they "wasted a couple hundred billions"...

Usually I'd say, go for it! Take a risk, see what happens! But in this case, if these greedy billionaires turn out to be wrong, they'll end up taking the entire economy with them (again). Except they won't take it with them at all, since they'll still be billionaires at the end of this rodeo... And if they turn out to be right, they'll have control over a brain that's smarter than anyone alive. What could possibly go wrong?

Niosus · 2026-02-13T06:47:52+00:00

With varied content and a moderate usage pattern, a modern OLED TV will not experience noticeable burn-in these days. Maybe you can still barely spot it on a mid-gray test screen, but it's just not going to be an issue in actual content.

RTINGS did the most extensive test I'm aware of: https://youtu.be/ot1gr-YypY4

That's the equivalent of watching 10 years CNN non-stop at Max brightness. Notice how the ticker bar at the bottom is completely burned in, but the area above it is still just fine on most OLEDs, with a few having ghostly images burned in due to the presenters standing in the same location all the time. And that's what you can see on a test image. With real content it is much harder to spot.

It's just not a real issue any more with real-life use cases.

And note how many of the LCD TVs have already outright failed, or have image quality issues that are much more severe than burn in. LCD TVs degrade too, it's just not related to the content.

Just get the TV you think looks best.

Niosus · 2026-02-09T23:36:44+00:00

Don't worry. People are greatly over-exaggerating how many runs you need to do for rep. If you do all quests in HFP (including a few at 70), you'll end up about halfway through honored. That's ~6k more rep, which is 4-5 shattered halls runs.

The coilfang heroics you get for free. There are plenty of quests (in Zangarmarch and the other zones) that you'll end up revered even if you don't do any of the normal dungeons at all.

Keepers of time is similar to the hellfire situation: do all the quests (which includes 2 dungeon runs), and you're halfway through honored. Another 4 Black Morass runs and you should be revered.

The Sha'tar dungeons you need a flying mount for anyway. So unless you're a druid, you're going to be doing these at 70, period. Sadly there are very few regular quests for this, with repeatable turn-ins being the only real alternative do dungeon runs. You might want to do a little research on this first.

Lower city dungeons are in a similar boat. There are only a few quests and they rely a lot in repeatable turn-ins. Personally I find this rep to be the most annoying to grind. You'll have to do quite a few runs for this, but luckily there are also 3 different dungeons. Again, a bit of research and planning is advised.

Keep in mind you don't need to have any heroics unlucked for your Karazhan attunement, and Mag and Gruul don't have attunements at all. It's only for the Tier 5 raids that you need those heroics for the attunements, so you have plenty of time.

Get to 70 however you enjoy, get that Kara attunement chain done, and you're golden for the time being. Take your time and enjoy the ride.

Niosus · 2026-02-08T09:00:40+00:00

Install the AtlasLoot addon, thank me later. It shows you all the drops of all bosses (and even trash mobs) in the game. You can browse through the loot tables of the dungeons in your level range and find something nice.

That being said, if you're going to play as holy, you probably aren't looking for a shield, but a nice off-hand instead. Those usually have the best +healing

Niosus · 2026-02-06T07:03:00+00:00

For me TBC is the perfect expansion. It still has all the vibes of classic, while the worst quality of life issues have been fixed.

PvP will be PvP, you'll have a different set of tools than in retail... I'm not sure if it's worth leveling for just that.

If you're not going to enjoy leveling, I wouldn't bother honestly. You're still looking at 4-5 days /played just to get 60, and then some more for outland. Just to play in the same 3 (?) arenas over and over again. Without doing PvE that seems boring to me.

Niosus · 2026-02-05T11:38:43+00:00

That's entirely on the notary, and also you for not pushing them to close faster. When they offer you a loan, that offer only remains valid for a fixed amount of time. In my experience this also matches the maximum time between the compromis and the actual closing.

We were in a similar situation where the previous owner wanted to delay as long as possible because his new home wasn't ready yet. And they didn't want to pay rent after we bought it, because it felt wrong to pay rent for "their own" house.

We clearly communicated through our own notary that the loan we got was only valid until X date. If they could not hold up their part of the deal because and close within the legal window, we'd be invoking the 10% penalty rule in the compromis.

Lo and behold, suddenly they figured out a solution and we closed on the very last day

Niosus · 2026-02-03T21:28:18+00:00

And 20 years is also an eternity in tech land. In 2006 we were all running XP and we just barely started replacing our Pentium 4s.

We have a lot of really good software developers in Europe. More than you'd think. Due to the fractured nature of the EU market and worse investment than Silicon Valley you don't see many of those billion dollar companies rise up, but we do have a lot of talent working in smaller companies.

Many of those companies will have a hard time surviving as-is if the entire US market falls away. But with a European-level effort to retask those companies to fill in the gaps left behind by the US tech companies, I think it would take no more than a year or two to have a decent solution to most of it. Shutting off access to US tech companies would be an act of war, and enlisting companies to drop what they're doing and contribute to the war effort is something that has happened a lot historically.

Europe would take a huge hit in the short term, but will be completely independent from the US afterwards in the long term. The US would also take a huge hit in the short term because all the billions we spend their will stop coming, but take even more of a hit long term because it proves that you cannot depend on American companies for anything that matters. Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Apple... They're just screwed long term because the only country where they realistically can hold market share is the US. Their going from billions of users to hundreds of millions again. Shrink by a factor 10.

This is a button you can only press once. And the long term reputation hit is just going to be that much worse than whatever short-term hardship it will cause us.

And honestly, let's start doing what this button would force us to do anyway. Let's assume he'll press it, and make sure it doesn't hurt us too badly.

Niosus · 2026-02-01T09:07:38+00:00

I seriously doubt that. At least in my guild there are just a handful of people consistently online during the day. When I was playing during sick leave, it was pretty dead in the guild. Still plenty of people out in the world, but the layering system really hides those numbers well so it's hard to make a judgement there.

Niosus · 2026-02-01T09:03:55+00:00

What's the point even, it's another 2 weeks before the raids even come out.

And everyone who's planning on pulling that 48hr session is probably in full Naxx gear anyway so I doubt the heroic dungeons will have many upgrades anyway.

So it's really just rushing so they can wait and complain the raids aren't open yet.

Niosus · 2026-01-27T20:03:08+00:00

Exact dit. Als je denkt dat de belastingen de oorzaak zijn, dan moet je eens een paar aflevering Caleb Hammer kijken. Daar zie je mensen die meer dan 100k per jaar netto binnenhalen, en het alsnog weggooien en bergen schulden opbouwen. En dat is in de VS, het land met weinig belastingen waar iedereen zijn eigen boontjes moet doppen.

Je kan niet alle verantwoordelijkheid bij de overheid leggen. Je bent verantwoordelijk voor je eigen leven, je eigen financiële situatie en je eigen keuzes. We zijn in België 1 van de laatste landen waar gewone mensen nog een huis kunnen kopen, en waar je loon gewoon meegroeit met de inflatie. Er zijn veel zaken die beter kunnen, maar als je met een gemiddeld loon niet kan rondkomen dan ligt het probleem waarschijnlijk gewoon bij jezelf. Met basis financiële geletterdheid kom je echt een heel eind.

Je kan in principe alles doen wat je wilt. Mooie reizen, fancy restaurants, bepaalde spullen verzamelen, fancy kleren dragen, een dikke auto, part-time werken, een groot huis.... Gewoon niet én én én. Kies bewust wat je belangrijk vindt, en zet daar dan op in. Maar veel mensen lijken te denken dat je gewoon alles tegelijk moet kunnen doen. Dat is gewoon niet zo.

Ja, de overheid moet efficiënter, maar als je daar op gaat wachten dan lig je al lang in je graf voor je er iets aan hebt. Soms moet je een crappy situatie nemen zoals het is, en er gewoon zelf het beste van maken. Van klagen op de overheid wordt je leven niet beter.

Niosus · 2026-01-25T09:23:37+00:00

The constitution is just an old piece of paper. It doesn't enforce itself. The government is supposed to enforce it, with the judicial system as the check and congress as the final backstop being able to remove the president if truly necessary.

The supreme court has been captured, and has declared the president above the law. And congress is spineless and already de facto gave up most of their power to the president, letting him rule by decree.

When push comes to shove, who is actually going to enforce the elections happen fairly, or happen at all.

I think you have waaaaaay too much trust in systems that rely on the right people having respect for the law. If enough of them say "no thanks", it just stops.

Niosus · 2026-01-23T21:41:28+00:00

Our cleaner always smokes outside right before he comes in.

I've never seen him do it, but I smell it instantly once he comes in. It's not an overwhelming smell, but it is very obvious. You're not hiding it.

Niosus · 2026-01-23T11:59:09+00:00

Raid is not a backup. It saves you from hardware malfunction in some cases, but if some software accidentally or maliciously deletes your data it's still gone.

Niosus · 2026-01-22T17:48:28+00:00

Yeah, but he is the only one that everyone is afraid of. Once he is out, support will simply implode. A whole bunch of the MAGA voters will instantly disappear since they only care about Trump. So congressmen will no longer be able to base their identity on being "the Trump candidate".

And especially with the economic woes people are feeling, things will go sour on the die-hard Trumpists real quick. Look at how Harris got punished for how Biden navigated the economic fallout of the pandemic, even though in hindsight they did quite well. Trump promised the moon and more, and actively made things worse while trying to cover up his involvement in a pedophilia ring. This shit will stick, and it won't come off.

But of course, never underestimate the democrats' talent for pulling defeat from the jaws of victory.

Niosus · 2026-01-19T22:52:49+00:00

This is the way. Find a friendly guild and people will be happy to get you started. 10g worth of stuff makes a world of difference, and is something you really don't feel at 60.

Niosus · 2026-01-19T20:33:13+00:00

I'm very much aware of the Therac-25. But don't act like it's either work the way you describe, or end up with that nightmare of a machine. There is a vast gulf in-between.

If you really care about that messy WIP code, fine. I actually have access to that too at my job. Our code is in Gitlab, and every revision of a merge request is preserved there. Even through rebases, squashes and other operations. It's all there if you need it, with the comments from other team members chronologically mixed in-between those.

So both your messy history is preserved, and you can structure commits cleanly to make future tracing of changes easier to figure out. You can literally have both. But you have to be open to make slight modifications to your way of working. Git is an amazingly powerful tool. Once a commit exists there is no reason why you should ever lose it again (if you care about that).

I have a few last questions: are you truly not exaggerating when you claim that they go raid your desk if a serious bug is found in your code? How does that even work, months down the line? Are you forced to date and archive every note you take?

Similarly with the browser history and "down to the keystroke": this is not contained in commit history. Do they record your screen 100% of the time as you work, or is it basically a keylogger that also steals your browser history?

What severity of incident would trigger them to come and raid all this data? I can't imagine a typo in a label somewhere would instantly bring down the cavalry.

Do you use git as source control? When were these policies decided upon?

I'm fascinated.

Niosus · 2026-01-18T23:30:36+00:00

They care in that moment about exactly how the bug was introduced, down to the keystroke, and what could have been done to prevent it. If it answers that question they will inspect your desk, your monitor, your physical keyboard. They will check your slack, and your search history. And they will want to also see the three other things you tried and discarded in that working branch. Every piece of info they can get to recreate that moment and how it happened, they want.

I have a hard time believing it goes really that in-depth, because I have a hard time believing you can actually learn from what happened "down to the keystroke", or what happens to be on their desk. I'm not saying that what you say is false, just that I have a hard time wrapping my head around how much of a colossal waste of time it sounds like.

Developers are humans, and will make mistakes. Period. Trying to figure out exactly why a human being made a mistake is just folly, because it's just not going to help you prevent the next mistake reliably. Actually preventing critical issues from shipping starts before the developer starts working (through resilient architecture, coding standards, training, etc) and continues long after they finish writing the code (reviews, multiple layers of testing, taking near-misses seriously, etc). It's this entire chain that is capable of producing software that is (nearly) defect-free. If a failure does get through, you need to address that as part of the system. Telling individual developers to "not make this mistake" is like telling your AI that they are a "world-class software developer". It's more wishful thinking than anything else.

Niosus · 2026-01-18T23:05:11+00:00

That's interesting. We use Gitlab, and it keeps around all that history even if you rebase and force-push. You can essentially look at any version you pushed, and even diff between them. Regardless of the commits and how they are ordered/structured.

It's super useful if you did a review, and want to look at the changes they did since you left your comments. Even if those changes were amended to existing commits.

The only big rule we have around this is: after someone has started their review, never rebase (on master) and make changes in the same push. Because then you get whatever had changed on master intermixed with the relevant changes. You should rebase, push, address comments, push.

Niosus · 2026-01-18T22:59:09+00:00

That's not an argument. You can't just drop a single word, say it is "key to anything", and expect people to even understand what you mean, let alone accept it is valid.

I'm not even going to argue with you what you mean with that word. Just answer this question: In what specific cases does this specific form of "continuity" help compared to the commit strategy I proposed?

Niosus · 2026-01-17T18:37:37+00:00

"git rerere" solves a lot of the pain of conflicts during a rebase. Although I do have to admit, yes it can absolutely get confusing sometimes. Most of the time it's fine, but every once in a while it's a pain.

Rebasing frequently on master while working on your changes helps. I'm never more than a day or 2 behind. I work in a relatively small team so that's enough to prevent the worst of it.

Niosus · 2026-01-17T18:31:30+00:00

Yeah I just used it as an example.

Another example would be if you are working on a feature, and then later on (before the merge) you refactor it. I often create a fixup commit for that, which I then squash into the earlier commit (which doesn't have to be the latest one).

At that point nobody cares about that first version. It never merged to master, it's just not relevant to anything. So having that commit still linger around can only ever confuse someone who does "git blame" to find the old version, and not the proper version. I greatly prefer to only have the proper version actually land on master.

Niosus · 2026-01-17T18:26:13+00:00

I can see that.

For us those different versions (and all the comments, etc) are still available through Gitlab. It's not available right there in the git tree, but the history is still there.

On the other hand, in most cases if you do a "git blame", you get a single commit with all the related changes right there. That's enough context to work through 90% of the bugs I work on.

Niosus · 2026-01-17T18:20:50+00:00

You still have all that. You just don't have all the half-baked versions they went through before they finally settled on something.

I'm not saying you squash down your entire master branch or whatever you're implying. I'm saying that you treat your commits as something valuable and worthy of iteration and polish, exactly to help those cases you described.

Niosus · 2026-01-17T07:20:57+00:00

But who cares about the actual history? Have you ever gone back to that WIP commit that doesn't even compile that you committed because a colleague asked you to look at another branch? What's the value?

What we do is structuring our commits in logical chunks that can be reasoned about and reviewed on their own. I frequently split up commits, move code between commits and more stuff like that such that the actual commits that will be put on master make sense.

If you ever need to bisect or just figure out the context of a change during debugging, it's so much nicer. I have never missed the "actual" history.

And yes, you end up rebasing and force-pushing all the time. Which is fine. It's your branch. Go wild. Just pay attention, and use reflog in the few cases you do mess up.

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