If games, modding uses a lot. It can go to the point of needing more than 32gb, but rarely so.

Usually, you’d want 64gb or more for things like video editing, 3d modeling, running simulations, LLMs, or virtual machines.

I work in IT as PM, you’re pretty close.

Modern technology is glued together NOT random shit that somehow works.

Everything created has been built with a purpose, that’s why it’s not random. However, the longer you go on, the more rigid the architecture becomes, so you start creating workarounds, as doing otherwise takes too much time which you don’t have, because you have a dozen of other more important tasks at hand.

When you glue those solutions together, they work because they’ve been built to work in a specific use case. But it also becomes more convoluted every time, so you really need to dig to fix something you didn’t account for.

Then it becomes so rigid and so convoluted that to fix some issues properly, you’d have to rebuild everything, starting from architecture. And if you can’t make more workarounds to satisfy the demand? You do start all over again.

I look into those regularly. Those are credible sources that are often used by our scientists, but you have to be very careful with statistics during war periods.

What do you think the majority of people hear when asked, “Do you support actions of Russian military in Ukraine?”. They hear, “Are you a traitor?” and answer accordingly. The majority (4 out of 5, I believe, if not more) refuse to answer at all. So, it’s not exactly representative.

What we look at instead is questions that are not this direct. Such as “Do you think Russia should continue or start peace talks?”. The majority (58%) is for peace talks. This number has increased since September 2022 by 10%, whilst the number of pro-war people decreased from 44% to 34%. Their quality also changed. For “absolutely should start peace talks” went from 21% (out of all votes) up to 26%, whilst for “absolutely should continue military actions” went from 29% down to 21%.

The longer things continue, the less support Russia’s government has. That’s what can be said for certain. The other conclusion we can derive is that war isn’t popular.

Edit: Oh, and the youth, 67% of the youth (18-24) is for peace talks, 23% pro-war. 65% for ages 25-39, only 25% pro-war.

The vast majority of pro-war people are elderly. Can you guess who also watches the TV the most? And who the TV is controlled by?

For the full picture, I’ll also add “they started it, so it’s their responsibility, we had no choice in it” This phrase explains the whole mentality of Russians very well.

The government claims it’s Google’s hardware getting outdated. Google says that’s bs.

I think that it’s convenient how they’re telling that to us right before throttling YouTube only with certain providers (and seems to be with only certain regions as well).

They’re crap. People will be and are looking for ways to evade restrictions.

Right now, they’re only limiting speed with certain providers in certain locations. There are at least three ways that I know of to avoid it.

The thing is, I don’t know how far they’ll take it. Blocking YouTube is a major political risk. Practically, everybody uses it for one reason or another. So, unlike their “special military operation,” this (as mercantile as it sounds) will potentially have a bigger impact on everybody’s lives. But you really can never be sure with our mafia-in-charge anymore.

Not unless you’re making videos from abroad.

YouTube doesn’t serve ads when viewed from Russia anymore, so there is no revenue from this audience. And you can’t take money out from within Russia due to sanctions.

Russian YouTubers are pretty much screwed and have to re-locate. The only other option is earning from product placements.

My guy, that’s a common business practice. If the third party skewed the results to favor their client, they risk massive reputation and monetary losses.

That’s how any auditing works.

Look up Arthur Andersen and what happened to them.

Xiaomi has been doing that as well, except it’s whenever.

Now, the TV is forbidden to access my Wi-Fi because screw that.

Any info on how to make it dumber would be appreciated.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Price policy is a whole different topic. Only monopolies can afford to increase them just because they’re not meeting the expected quota.

Don’t know about “retaliatory measure”, it’s hard to imagine companies uniting like that over it. Usually, they just play by the rules, and those could be the new rules (strong emphasis on “usually”). In fact, if the management is competent, it’s likely that they have already accounted for it, just in case, after the news dropped.

Let’s assess the effects this change could cause on real numbers.

Note: This is a duplicate of a part of a comment I’ve written here above as a response, but I don’t want it to be buried. Hope that’s fine

I’ll take Nutrien’s 2023 audited financial statement as an example. (Numbers in brackets are what’s deducted to get what’s not in brackets)

• Sales - 29056
• Freight, transportation, distribution - (974)
• Cost of goods sold - (19608)
• EBIT - 8474
• Interest - (w/e)
• EBT - 1952
• Taxes - (670)
• Net earning - 1282

Out of cost of goods sold (2858) is cost of labour, let’s also add (626) from general administrative expenses, and just say it’s all wages.

• Effective tax rate - 670/1952*100% = 34,3% (wow, that’s a lot for where I live, also ignoring mining tax for simplicity)

Let’s see what happens to our efficiency if the changes take effect.

All of costs can be divided into Fixed and Variable ones. Labour, in this case, is Variable because we can manipulate it by employing more staff to compensate for reduction in working hours and keep the sales at the same rate. (Contract workers are usually Fixed Cost, but it’s all relative, as no Fixed Cost is ever truly fixed.)

Going from 40 => 32, we have a 20% reduction in working hours. Mind you, this doesn’t mean there will be a 20% hit to productivity. It may be more, it may be less (most likely less), for simplicity let’s say it’s 20%. So, we need 20% more workers to compensate. (2858+626)*120%=4180.8

• New EBT = 1952 + 2858 + 626 - 4180.8 = 1255.2
• New net profit = 1255.2*(1-34.3%) = 824.7. Mind you, the effective tax rate will probably be lower if employment affects deductibles and/or grants tax privileges.

So, our net profit margin went from 1282/29056 = 4.4% to 2.8%. Looks bad at first glance, but it’s also a bad year. A year prior net profit margin was at whopping 20.3%, so a decrease from 4.4% to 2.8% would be nothing in comparison.

Will it result in increased prices? Yes, but it will also lead to economic growth, because more free time = people spend more money = companies earn more = companies grow faster, but so does inflation. If they can manage the inflation, I don’t see why this couldn’t be possible.

Edit: you said “but nobody’s explaining the economics to me”, here you go, here’s the basics of corporate financial management and a bit of macroeconomics at the end.

Wait, I don’t get it. You’re saying if you pay a worker 1000$ a week and get revenue of 1100$, then you have a profit margin of 10%. But that’s NOT profit margin (at least not the one one would use for analysis). Not to mention that those numbers are unrealistic because you’d be working at a loss for a very long time, almost guarantee.

You can’t just pull numbers like that and say, “unprofitable!”. Of course it isn’t. You made it that way!

Besides, you’re ignoring the rest of the expenses that often outweigh the payroll fund.

Back to what you called “profit margin,” I’d call it “Return on Payroll Fund.” It’s weird, I don’t like it, it ignores all of the other costs that go into creating a product, don’t ever use it. In financial management, we use RoS, which is EBIT/Revenue. That’s probably what you were thinking of. Another name for it would be “operating profit margin,” likewise net profit margin would account for ALL of the expenses and not just operating ones.

Now, let’s look at real numbers. I’ll take Nutrien’s 2023 audited financial statement as an example. (Numbers in brackets are what’s deducted to get what’s not in brackets) Sales - 29056 Freight, transportation, distribution - (974) Cost of goods sold - (19608) EBIT - 8474 EBT - 1952 Taxes - (670) Net earning - 1282

Out of cost of goods sold (2858) is cost of labour + (626) from general administrative expenses, let’s just say it’s all wages.

Effective tax rate - 670/1952*100% = 34,3% (wow, that’s a lot for where I live, also ignoring mining tax for simplicity)

Let’s see what happens to our efficiency once the changes take effect.

All of costs can be divided into Fixed and Variable ones. Labour, in this case, is Variable because we can manipulate it by employing more staff to compensate for reduction in working hours and keep the sales at the same rate. (Contract workers are usually Fixed Cost, but it’s all relative, as no Fixed Cost is ever truly fixed.)

Going from 40 => 32, we have a 20% reduction in working hours. Mind you, this doesn’t mean there will be a 20% hit in productivity. It may be more, it may be less (most likely less), for simplicity let’s say it’s 20%. So, we need 20% more workers to compensate. (2858+626)*120%=4180.8

New EBT = 1952 + 2858 + 626 - 4180.8 = 1255.2 Net profit = 1255.2*(1-34.3%) = 824.7. Mind you, the effective tax rate will probably be lower if employment affects deductibles.

So, our net profit margin went from 1282/29056 = 4.4% to 2.8%. Looks bad at first glance, but it’s also a bad year (operating cash flow went from 8110 to 5066 YoY, cash flow represents transaction of real money, unlike revenue), and this decrease is FAR less than what their investing (+assets = -cash) and financing (-debt = -cash) cash flows were ( (2958) and (2061) accordingly). A year prior net profit margin was at whopping 20,3%, so a decrease from 4.4% to 2.8% would be nothing in comparison.

Will it result in increased prices? Yes, but that also can lead to economic growth, because more free time = people spend more money = companies earn more = companies grow faster, but so does inflation.

I was interested in VR for a very long time. Recently, I got to actually try it out.

I primarily view Apple Vision Pro as a proof of concept type of device. Sales being limited both in quantity and territorially indicate that. It has brought 3 major improvements to the table, compared to other headsets:

1. Quality of passthrough
2. User interface
3. Display quality

When you think about it, however, it’s not that much to make it an obvious choice over other devices.

Passthough is needed for navigating through space. It does not help with productivity as your vision would be focused on the interface and not the environment. Remember warping on Quest 3? Much less noticeable than on videos for the exact same reason.

There is no buts with the user interface and display. They are simply great, best that there is.

Now, for the part that makes Vision Pro from a great productivity device on paper into a “dev kit available to masses” (I like that description, it does feel that way a lot, ty Ghostalmedia)

Eye strain is a major issue. It is very difficult to use the device for more than a couple of hours without getting tired. This goes for all of the VR headsets out there. I guess you can get used to it over time, though.

Limited usability. Quest 2/3, Pico 4, Valve Index, they all do things you wish Vision Pro could. Primarily usage of physical controllers. Imagine sculpturing without controllers because I can’t. Hand tracking is just not up to par.

Battery solution is another issue. Not being able to swap what is otherwise a Power Bank without disabling the device and being unable to use any other battery than Apple’s own is at the very least annoying. Not exactly an issue if you’re too tired by the time it runs out.

Finally, the VR space itself is unfortunately not mature enough. There’s a lot of work still to be done. Even when talking games, despite some amazing titles like Half-life Alyx, the vast majority where controls wouldn’t make you dizzy are all pretty much like arcade mini-games, where you either teleport from point to point or not move at all. Developers simply have yet to figure out an organic way of user navigating through virtual space.

Overall, I believe Vision Pro isn’t really a consumer product, but it did do a lot by bringing more attention to VR as a whole, as well as pointing out additional user-cases for the technology. Because of Vision Pro, Meta started paying more attention to details, which ultimately will benefit the consumer (in fact, it already has yeilded results).

Some windows-specific professional software that cannot run on Linux.

Also, work-related stuff. I may be able to make a custom setup of Linux if I try hard enough, but when it comes to dealing with servers and VPNs it’s a bit beyond me. Not to mention the time it takes to figure it out and set up.

Although, the more I hear about subscriptions from Microsoft the more I want to switch.

First I was “120$ for a keyboard? Sounds very reasonable, I did my 75% build for about the same” but then it hit me that it’s just keycaps.

They do look great, but that’s very expensive, wow.

Here’s the thing, if you reduce the amount of people who will vote, it increases the cost of a singe vote and by extension incentivises falsifications by the ruling party.

Being able to vote isn’t a privelege to cherish it, it’s a right.

When it comes to such things, always remember how they can be abused, because they likely will be.

This is how informational autocracies do it. The deincentivise participation and use state employees to vote for people who didn’t participate. This is how it works in Russia, Belarus, and many more other countries.

Another way that I became quite fond of using is Rufus.

When creating a distro it allows you to customize it. Set up language beforehand, a local account, remove hardware requirements and data collection by simply checking some boxes.

It’s a very handy tool, saves a lot of headache with this bloody install.

A lot, actually

In Russia change org was one of very few channels to bring change into politics.

For some reason our politicians actually listened to those. So it was a very useful tool.

Unfortunately, I don’t have much idea how effective it is since Feb of 2022. Imagine our gov as an armodillo. It has a sturdy shell, so it is very hard to get good changes through it’s head. Now that armodillo closed up in a ball, it lives in it’s own bubble, its being fed by it’s own lies. Nothing good can come out of that head. And it doesn’t.

Russia trying to ban Telegram is a whole epopeya that produced a lot of memes and animated videos back in the days.

Now it’s a piece of history.

A story about what heppened (it’s hilarious, read it):

Essentially, there’s a gov agency called Roscomnadzor (from Russian communication surveillance) that is responsible for “keeping the internet a safe space”, so to say.

After another law, wanted by nobody, was passed, it allowed for Roscomnadzor to request the encryption keys from all social media. Since Telegram “doesn’t have those”, Roscomnadzor took it to court for non-complience.

Telegram lost the case and was ordered to pay 1mil rub (about 17000USD at the time I believe) and to provide the keys. The society started joking about how that’s the cheapest PR a company could get for such outreach. Overall sentiment was “Not only do they get so many people to hear about Telegram for pennies, but they also make Telegram look like a safe place to chat” (which is debatable, but w/e, that’s what people thought, mind you Telegram was a very new product then)

It’s also important to note that Telegram’s creator, Pavel Durov, is also the creator of largest Russian social medial called VKontakte (tl. InContact) which he was robbed of and forced to leave the country.

And so, once Roscomnadzor started trying to block Telegram for, yet again, non-complience, people started beeing dissatisfied and set up a date to let paper planes out of their windows to show their support for Telegram.

Now starts the fun part.

Just in one week over 18mil IP adresses were blocked. Whilst trying to block Telegram, Roscomnadzor managed to accidentially block: Viber, some paying services, some services for selling airplane tickets, a service selling OSAGO (mandatory car insurance), ResearchGate, central repository of Java, Skolkovo Tech websited (aka Russian Silver Valley), a lot of universities’ websited (including the biggest ones), some scientific archives.

They even managed to block some of Google’s services, like YouTube or it’s main page, Twitter, Facebook, VKontakte, Odnoklassniki (Russian social media for boomers and country bumkins, tld as “Classmates”), Yahoo, Some Russian gov sites and I believe even it’s own website.

What did you not see on that list? That’s right! Telegram is still fully operational.

This has caused a massive surge of memes and videos portraying Roscomnadzor as an anime character Roscomnadzor-chan trying to block all of the wicked stuff off the net, but ultimately failing all the time. She has goons, which look kinda like those half life solders, which are all secretly into all that stuff they block.

Roscomandzor also acquired a new nickname, “Roscompozor”, where “pozor” means “disgraceful”, think “I"m ashamed of you and I mean it” kind of meaning.

Since then Telegram was finally blocked, but through use of VPN many people still accessed it. Including government officials (a lot of them). In fact, it was used so much that some years after they striked a deal (involving giving users’ data to Russia ofc) where Telegram was fully unblocked and still is to this day.

Just a couple years ago Meduza was a very prominent news outlet in Russia.

There weren’t that many and they weren’t allowed on TV, but you could always see their presence on the Internet.

Since adoption of a law about foreign agents in 2017 many if not most of such news outlets were deemed as “foreign agents” and faced problems with funding. And yet persisted.

2022 was the breaking point. In February all of the remaining oppositional news started to get blocked. One by one.

By 2023 all of them ceased operation as Russian media and migrated abroad due to de facto being outlawed.

Taking control over media is how Putin started his presidency. This is what came out of it.

If there is nobody to speak, then there’s nobody who’ll listen.