fonix232

Meta sold Quest headsets at a loss to cover the market. Valve sold the Index for profit.

And beyond the aggressive pricing, the one major benefit over other miniPC makers is the extensive support.

I have a Minisforum mini PC. Took Minisforum over a year to release BIOS updates that were finished in March 2024... and against all CS promises it still hasn't fixed the initial discrepancies (advertised as the only 8945HS mini PC that can go over 57W due to their improved cooling, and the only Ryzen 8000 series APU that can handle RAM at 5400-5600MT/s - still can't get power over 57W and even though I have compatible RAM, it refuses to clock over 4800MHz, and there's no option to configure it either).

Meanwhile Valve is still dropping improvements on the Steam Deck, 3.5 years after release.

Based on the specs it is a bit bumped up Ryzen 7000/8000 series (Zen 4 arch), with a beefed up GPU (sounds to be about two 780Ms soldered together with a bit of overclocking).

I wouldn't be surprised if MS wanted a mid-generation upgrade to the Xbox but the current economic situation put a damper on it before the hardware could fully materialise and AMD ended up with a practically ready for production APU they couldn't sell to anyone before Valve strolled up.

The real craziness is that some 97% of current US citizens (latest statistics put Native American population around 9.7 million, or approx. 2.9% of the population), are essentially children of immigrants. And the very same people boasting about being X percent German/Italian/Irish/etc., are now demanding that similarly immigrants to be deported? The whole American landscape of nationality/ethnicity and immigration status is just laughable.

You're incredibly wrong on your assumptions here.

First of all, ZFS (the file system TrueNAS specialises for) is best used with at least 3-4 disks. The more the better. A dual disk setup for ZFS (or any other kind of RAID) is super wasteful.

Second, no, 4TB won't be enough. You think it is today, but soon you'll be downloading ~~media~~ Linux ISOs and quickly realise that even 16TB is a stretch within a year.

My recommendation would be going for at least 4x 4TB, but 3-4x 6TB or even 8TB would be probably preferred. And similarly, I'd rather overshoot the initial purchase rather than realise 6-8 months in that oops, the 2-4 disk system you got isn't enough... Even if you don't fill the bays, I'd recommend you go for at least a 4 bay system, but rather, for 6. Sadly, SOHO NASes aren't designed with easy expandability down the line.

I wouldn't say employing. That presumes the 'employee' was aware of the intentions of the 'employer', and acted based on that.

Inciting is a better term, as it conveys the clandestine nature of the real intentions behind the actions.

Oh I fully agree with you. Marketing in general is one of the most evil business segments - only a notch above phone scammers, really. All of it is edged out not to actually market a product but to sell it to you no matter what. Doesn't matter if you need it, or if you can afford it, or if what they say about the product is true or not, the goal is to sell sell sell. Nothing else matters but taking your money.

I feel incredibly split on ads.

On one hand the incessant need to market things can be actually positive, offsetting service expenses, allowing things to be cheaper. Streaming is a perfect example of this, as people don't seem to realise just how expensive it is to maintain the infrastructure for it compared to traditional cable infrastructure, not to mention keeping the apps maintained and bugfixed etc., and then we haven't even talked about things like content licencing fees, residuals, and so on. Residuals alone mean that a single user can stream enough in just one month to "spend" their whole annual subscription fee on a single actor's residuals (this is technically unlikely, as one would need to stream a singular TV show or movie 24/7 for 30 days, but still possible).

And obviously people want to pay less. The least possible, that is. Netflix at $5.99 was a steal. Disrupting cable, globally. But that price was also only possible because of various venture capitalists investing heavily in Netflix, which allowed them to pay for the service mostly from that money, and keep prices low to acquire more users. The recent hikes (all the way up to what, $20?) are the result of venture capital drying up, as Netflix went from a market-shaker startup to revenue generating machine. Which is the point of capitalism, isn't it? Take an ide and make profit/revenue off it.

So how do you offset these increases? By involving a third party who's willing to pay you, in return for inserting their service into yours, essentially providing your userbase to them. This would mostly be... Advertisers. Marketing.

The problem is that advertising is a cutthroat business, with intense (and incredibly dumb) KPIs to fulfill. For which they need targeting, for which they need data. And this constant crusade for absolutely pinpointed ads that result in the most sales is what's making it such a disgusting business. It's not enough to shove ads in your face, those ads HAVE to be perfectly tailored to you, and for that, every smidge of information will be utilised against you.

And this is where I'm torn. On one hand, taking these fuckers' money to make services we do want, more affordable, is great. On the other hand, them wanting to know literally everything about us, and weaponising it against us, is fucking disgusting.

Not really just short form, it's more of a take on video feeds rather than just the limited length quickcontent Vine was famous about.

Obviously the focus is still on short(ish) content format, but I see more and more people transition to longer videos to deliver content. On YT/Facebook most videos I see nowadays are 10min or above.

Which part of "series" did you miss?

You want a specific model? 8945HS. There you go. Mini PCs as cheap as $400 with that one.

A 1050 can barely play modern games at 720p 30fps.

Add on top of that the fact that the headset needs to:

• drive 2x 2K displays
• provide a 2K virtual interface rendered 2x, one for each eye
• do this at 90-120hz
• and still have left over capacity for running the games

add the overhead of the various Proton translation layers and such, and that 30% extra GPU capacity is gone.

Fortunately, "I don't think so" is not a legitimate argument, so off you feck.