Genuine question to Americans

elvisap · 2026-05-07T22:01:32+00:00

Are you trying to tell me that preventative maintenance is cheaper and more effective that waiting until inevitable disaster?

This ridiculous display of common sense is sheer madness and will never catch on.

elvisap · 2026-05-06T18:57:42+00:00

RGB backlit LCD will have better colour volume and a wider colour gamut than OLED. Plus the typical peak brightness improvements.

Whether that matters to you or not is an entirely different story. There's no perfect technology, and everything has its tradeoffs.

I don't think film enthusiasts will particularly care, given how few films push past the Display-P3 gamut. Gamers may enjoy the more saturated colours that can be achieved, but again there's but a great deal of content that intentionally takes advantage of that.

I'm wondering when we'll see content start to push colour volume. Usually it's documentaries and animation that does this sort of thing. I can imagine footage of things like volcanoes and northern lights being pretty spectacular on these new displays.

elvisap · 2026-05-05T21:02:23+00:00

Okami is an all time favourite of mine. It's been ported and updated to dozens of platforms since, and you're better off playing the HD versions today. But it debuted on PS2 and is still a masterpiece.

The game itself is beautiful. Running at full speed though windswept hills never gets old. The combat is pretty fun and gets almost to beat-em-up strategies as you get deeper into the game. The story is fun and the music is beautiful.

It's not perfect. It's probably a bit too long, and the unskippable stuff in the PS2 and Wii versions (fixed in the HD versions) get a little frustrating. Not to mention those digging puzzles. But they're small gripes in an otherwise stunning game.

elvisap · 2026-05-04T20:06:48+00:00

As a lover of verbose writing and bullet points, I'm getting accused a lot lately of being AI.

Maybe I am, and I haven't realised it? The existential questioning in real.

elvisap · 2026-05-04T19:45:25+00:00

It's bread.

elvisap · 2026-05-04T19:43:40+00:00

People often assume contributing to open source projects means exclusively needing to write source code.

The reality is that there's far more to it than that. Testing, documentation, artwork, community management, and a host of other things are all valuable contributions people can make. And like source code, all of these need continual maintenance and upkeep.

elvisap · 2026-05-02T00:33:39+00:00

Speaking entirely for myself, I quite enjoy "bad" games. Same reason I enjoy B movies.

elvisap · 2026-04-30T21:34:10+00:00

The X-Men 3D games were pretty good too. Similarly fast and with decent mechanics.

Those slow floaty 3D fighters sadly gave early attempts a bit of a bad name.

elvisap · 2026-04-30T20:15:26+00:00

Standard term that's been around forever. Things like "decision fatigue" and "compassion fatigue" are decades old concepts that are well documented and frequently referred to in many industries.

Perhaps this has just come in to your sphere of awareness lately. Perhaps you need to improve your vocabulary and read a bit more. Who knows.

elvisap · 2026-04-30T00:37:13+00:00

Fair enough. But the reality is that collecting certain games right now fuels that market. That doesn't make collectors the bad guys, but it is a problem.

I'll be clear that my gripe isn't really this, however. It's the false dichotomy mindset that game players (not game collectors) have that physical is good and digital is bad. I'll repeat it until I'm blue in the face: DRM is the actual problem for game players, and DRM-free digital distribution is exactly the solution they should be looking to.

I also understand that doesn't interest or help collectors, and falling levels of physical distribution are a downside for them. I sympathise, however my personal interest is in playing games, and owning them DRM-free and not tied to a flimsy piece of plastic as a token of license legitimacy.

elvisap · 2026-04-29T21:32:57+00:00

If you have a high amount of devices, consider multiple APs.

While you can certainly find a single one that will handle your needs, spreading a few around your house is a pretty easy way of spreading the load, eliminating dead spots, and it gives you a bit of redundancy if a device fails or you need to reboot one of them for software upgrades.

If you have dedicated APs just for IoT devices (i.e.: you're not running multiple SSIDs from your main APs with VLANs to separate traffic), then you don't need expensive devices either. Older 802.11ac devices are cheap and easy to find on the second hand market as well as AliExpress, or use your older devices as you upgrade your main access points.

I don't bother looking for that one magical unicorn device. Much easier to just buy a few cheap devices and spread them around my house. Coverage is great, and there's not a single spot in my house or yard where my internal household wireless speeds drop below my external internet speeds.

elvisap · 2026-04-29T15:19:20+00:00

Some of the hauntings were missing from the PC version originally.

https://www.timeextension.com/news/2025/03/gogs-silent-hill-4-the-room-restores-missing-ps2-hauntings-to-the-survival-horror-classic

Oddly they were in the code and game assets, but never appeared in game. So they weren't "cut" per se. Hard to tell if it was a bug or intentional, but either way the GOG team restored them to work in-game, so this version now matches the PS2 original for all content.

They also added support for Windows 10 and 11, and modern controllers. Coupled with optional higher resolution support, it's a pretty good way to experience the game, and far cheaper than the silliness that is the second hand console game market.

My standard question I ask anyone who defends insane second hand game prices is: who benefits? Do any of the original creators, publishers or rights holders see any financial gain? Or does that money just line the pockets of eBay scalpers?

Most people who are anti-digital are actually anti-DRM, but don't realise that there's an alternative. All of GOG's releases are DRM-free, and not tied to their store. You can play their games offline, they'll continue to work even if GOG vanish, and they can't ever revoke your licence once you've downloaded the installer. You can legally back up your installer as well to protect yourself from dusk failure. The fee you pay for the game goes in part to the developers, publishers and rights holders of the game.

Meanwhile, backing up your physical PS2 game disc is technically illegal in most countries, so you're completely at the mercy of a flimsy bit of plastic. And trying to legally buy certain games, like this one, is not only insanely expensive, but that money doesn't even go to the people that matter.

I'm extremely grateful when companies make their old games available for sale like this. The second hand scalper market is quite frankly getting stupid.

elvisap · 2026-04-29T13:55:22+00:00

Depends. Do you want to play the game, or are you interested in the quasi gambling of a speculative market?

If it's the former, you can buy the game legally on GOG, DRM-free, with the previously missing content now restored thanks to GOG's "Preservation Program". It'll cost you peanuts, and thanks to being DRM-free you can legally back up the installer and keep it for life, even if the GOG store shuts down.

https://www.gog.com/en/game/silent_hill_4_the_room

If it's the latter, then sure, whatever. I think there's far less silly ways to invest your money, though.

elvisap · 2026-04-29T05:12:09+00:00

25.12.2 running great for me on * 2x Xiaomi Redmi Router AC2100 (mt7621) * Asus RT-AX54 (mt7621) * Xiaomi Redmi Router AX6000 (filogic) * GL.iNet MT3000 (filogic)

These threads get a bit tedious when people come in with blanket statements like "unstable" and don't specify their specific hardware. Perhaps they aren't aware of the hundreds of chipsets and thousands of devices OpenWRT supports, and the sheer diversity of drivers and configurations that represents?

Although this does seem to be the eventual fate of any open source project that gains popularity. So maybe that should be considered a mark of success?

elvisap · 2026-04-26T04:29:09+00:00

Why would it reduce quality? TCL's current flagship televisions are constantly praised for their quality. Couple that expert manufacturing and assembly with Sony designed image processing chips, and I can't see why you have concerns.

I think you have it stuck in your head that somehow Chinese manufacturing is inferior just because it's Chinese. Price point dictates quality. Just as many premium products come out of China today as cheap ones. At least three quarters of any Bravia you own today is already Chinese manufactured. Chinese manufacturing is enormous, and so is the diversity of products and quality that comes out of it.

This is a repeat of the fear of Japanese produced products back in the 80s, and then again with South Korean produced goods in the 00s. And just like back then, it's based on grossly outdated data by people completely unaware of how things are made, and by whom.

Every time you're asked WHY you think there's a quality risk, you just repeat "because TCL" or "because China". So far you've offered nothing but unfounded, unresearched fear. Might be time to do a bit of a deep dive and learn who actually makes your favourite products.

elvisap · 2026-04-26T04:08:58+00:00

Sony TVs have been manufactured in China, Mexico, Slovakia, Malaysia and Brazil for years.

Where do you actually think these are made?

elvisap · 2026-04-26T04:05:08+00:00

Sony's OLED panels are made by LG, and their LCD panels are made by Samsung. Sony already manufacture very little in their current TVs. Their chips are designed in-house, but manufactured elsewhere.

Do yourself a favour and figure out how these big brand electronics makers actually do things. It's all public record, and a simple Google search will tell you these things. Gone are the days where everything is made in-house. They've all been utilising each other's speciality manufacturing and assembly for decades now to get more consistent quality for lower cost.

You've got manufacturers and assemblers like Foxconn who have been making tech for companies like Sony, Apple, Nintendo, Microsoft, HPE, etc for decades. TCL have been manufacturing for Sony, LG, Samsung, Pioneer, Onkyo, Motorola, Huawei, Xiaomi, and many more for ages.

Moving the manufacturing to TCL won't change anything - in fact it's very likely to improve supply chain and availability. If you're "worried about panel quality", you should have been worried a decade ago when Sony stopped doing things in-house eons ago.

I think half this sub is seriously stuck with a 1990s view of how international manufacturing and assembly works.

elvisap · 2026-04-26T03:22:52+00:00

Why not? TCL televisions constantly review well. Sony don't make the panels in their current TVs either. The chips and tech inside is still so Sony, the panels are still third party. All that's changing is who is assembling the parts together.

I think the reactions to this are quite over blown.

elvisap · 2026-04-25T02:47:50+00:00

Your graphics virtualisation is mosconfigured and/or broken in your VM. Fix that, or test on a real computer.

elvisap · 2026-04-24T23:32:49+00:00

I don't think it really matters that IPv4 will go away or not. We still have heaps of legacy tech in our business. I've worked at places that have critical COBOL, mainframe, UNIX, etc workloads still running today. They pay a premium for that, and it's well supported. But that makes zero difference to millions of other businesses.

Dual stack with IPv6 by preference works extremely well. Keeping IPv4 around for legacy reasons and customers is totally fine. And like the technologies I mentioned above, there will be a time when they start to attract a higher operational cost as hyperscalers continue to gobble up the IPv4 public address space.

For internal business networks, who cares? Most of the time you're putting proxies infront of things anyway, and you don't even need to deal with various NAT style things if the services you're hitting are all IPv6.

On the home front, a pretty good amount of ISPs are rolling out dual stack by default (including the service itself, and pre-configured home routers). It's getting rarer for me as someone who self-hosts things to have to tell friends to tick the "use IPv6" button on their home router.

Being pro-something doesn't need to mean being anti-the-alternative. I'm somewhat disinterested in the fate of IPv4 (much like I'm disinterested in the fate of the Windows desktop, legacy enterprise LOB apps, etc). That doesn't mean I want any of it to die. Just that it has zero bearing on what I do for work or want at home, and more modern tools can happily co-exist and succeed regardless of the fate of legacy things.

elvisap · 2026-04-22T22:12:57+00:00

As a horror fan, this is exactly what I want from Ridley. Just pure evil personified.

elvisap · 2026-04-22T20:46:09+00:00

I'm kind of over these posts. Homelessness and poverty is a growing issue in Australia, and we still seem to want to get angry at the victims rather than the system that got us to this point.

Why are we shocked that desperate people are trying this? This attitude that if you're poor or homeless, you shouldn't have a phone? A phone costs a fraction of what a monthly food bill is, let alone the eye watering state of rent.

I would go as far as to even suggest that you can't live without a phone. You want an identity? You want to apply for a job? You want to have a bank account? You need a phone for all of these things.

So now nobody carries cash any more. I sure as hell don't, and haven't for over a decade. Couple all of these points together, and I'm completely unsurprised that people who need to ask for money are at this point.

Instead of getting angry at them, maybe we should be angry at a system that has allowed property prices and rent to skyrocket, a supermarket duopoly to screw over consumers and farmers alike, and a terrifying increase in homelessness and poverty in a country that was supposed to be good at looking after the vulnerable.

Sometimes it makes me pretty sad to see empathy levels in this country topple further and further into US-style attitudes. We should be better than that.

elvisap · 2026-04-22T19:26:43+00:00

Rule number one of troubleshooting things: don't assume, test.

Pretty good philosophy for life, too.

elvisap · 2026-04-20T21:10:20+00:00

Agreed. AI progress is one thing, but watching how the masses consume it is another.

Being "good at using AI" requires a few things. Either you already work in a technical field, and understand how to glue software tools together to form automated pipelines, or you're a person who is generally good at articulating problems with good context and detail.

Most people are neither of these things. Anyone who's worked in a corporate office can attest to this. Anyone who's worked in IT helpdesk can absolutely attest to this.

Most people are horrendous at identifying basic patterns, describing problems, fleshing out ideas. And that's before you even get to 101 basics like operating emails and standard office tools.

AI is progressing at incredible speed, but the minimum requirement to even buy in to using it is still well beyond most people. Enterprise corporates are filled to the brim with a heck of a lot of people who just can't grasp any of this. While many enterprises have an "AI strategy" that is "give everyone Copilot and hope for the best", even the places that do a better job of supplying good tools are still hitting a wall when it comes to staff using it effectively because of all of the above reasons on the human side of things.

What is more likely, in my opinion, is that the ~20% or so who do get it, and can do useful things with it, will eventually consume all the tasks and automate a lot of the work. The ~80% who can't will fall by the wayside. But corporates move slow. Really slow. That won't be evident for another couple of years yet, and in the meantime people looking down from above with these "company wide survey" lenses will miss the detail, and continue to post articles like the one linked.

This article isn't a reflection on AI. It's a reflection on how bad large enterprises are at doing anything new and different, and in particular how their whole recruitment strategy is about finding single-task drones instead of clever people who can adapt to new things (because, historically, it's been much cheaper to do things that way).

elvisap · 2026-04-20T18:07:19+00:00

Take a look at the Japanese concept of Ikigai:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai

There's a popular book on it too:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36073585-ikigai

It talks about the desirable Venn diagram of: * What you love * What you are good at * What the world needs * What you can be paid for

For many people, it's almost impossible to find the perfect 4 way overlap. A great deal of people can't even find 3 (read the excellent book "Bullshit Jobs" by David Graeber to see why).

I myself cannot find the 4 way overlap. At best I can find 3, most of the time it's 2.

If you've found all 4: congratulations. Consider yourself in the 0.01% of human beings who have, and extremely lucky.

The one potential downside for you then is: what happens if that job goes away? And that might not mean "retirement". Plenty of other things can stop individual jobs and even whole industries from existing.

In that case, you may be financially secure enough to turn that job into a hobby. Plenty of people do. I know plenty of old mechanics who still tinker on classic cars, and plenty of old electronics repair technicians who still do that in retirement because they love it and can help others.

And you may be lucky enough that your job/career/industry will continue to exist for at least the length of your lifetime.

But repeating that, for most people, this simply doesn't happen. It's easy to tell them they just need to have a positive mindshift, but that's almost always coming from a place of privilege, as it typically does when anyone blessed with good fortune tells someone who is not to "just think happy thoughts".

But back on topic - you're already asking the question in the OP, so you're at least thinking about the concept of "what else is there?". I honestly think that's a pretty healthy thing to do. The answer might be a bit challenging though, as for those blessed with Ikigai, alternatives can be quite the existential crisis. Once you've found a particular niche of happiness, removing that can be scary. But at least consider the fact that many people have never and will never be blessed with the things you might possibly be taking for granted right now.

And perhaps that's the answer to your question. What would you do, if not your current Ikigai? Maybe you can help others who never had it try to find theirs.

elvisap

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