Inspirational tales of Glorious Unfettered Capitalism

[Mongrel]

EDIT: Wrong thread WTF

[mharr]

Hell, over here they can just apply to a DWP 'Workfare' scheme whereby unemployed people work unpaid positions under threat of having their subsistence benefits removed, often doing the same job for the same company that fired them the previous year. Might be nice if people did generally think of these companies as shameful, instead of slapping that label all over their victims. Wouldn't topple any giants overnight but at least we'd agree there was even a problem.

[Büge]

[Mongrel]

fucking lmao

[Thad]

AT&T to spin off WarnerMedia, basically admitting giant merger was a mistake
WarnerMedia and Discovery to merge, and standalone AT&T will focus on broadband.

AT&T said it struck a deal with Discovery, Inc. to combine WarnerMedia and Discovery's assets into a "standalone global entertainment company." AT&T would receive $43 billion in the all-stock transaction through "a combination of cash, debt securities, and WarnerMedia's retention of certain debt." AT&T shareholders would receive stock in 71 percent of the new media company, while Discovery shareholders would own the other 29 percent.

AT&T expects it to take a full year to complete the spinoff and combination with Discovery. "The transaction is anticipated to close in mid-2022, subject to approval by Discovery shareholders and customary closing conditions, including receipt of regulatory approvals," AT&T said.

AT&T says it will shift its own focus back to broadband.

On the one hand, this is another goddamn corporate megamerger, and corporate megamergers are bad.

On the other, this is still an improvement. While Discovery isn't exactly a perfect fit for WB's kind of content, it's hard to imagine it being as poor a fit for it as AT&T is. At least Discovery is a media company.

[Mongrel]

So, serious question here, if any of us have to build a PC on a budget in the next couple years, what in the fuck are we even supposed to do?

[mharr]

Yeah, same boat man and gods, I dunno. Build it real fuckin' slowly I guess?

I might just get a good Nvidia TV box and stick to whatever games they deign to include in their streaming app, given it's the only one where I'll still have said games on Steam when it inevitably shuts down.

[Thad]

Your best bet right now isn't to build a PC, it's to buy one already built.

May not be an ideal option but probably the best bad option right now.

[Brantly B.]

Yeah I figured last month it was time for a new build (this one's from 2017, good enough run) and woah no nope. Even with practically unbounded funds you still have to contend with supply chain issues and the question of what particular ratfucker you're doing business with.

The absolute worst part of this is that it pushes everybody into low-power solutions where they give up ownership of everything and let The Cloud (read: Google and Amazon) take over. It's a solution to a completely engineered problem and the sort of thing that makes me start sticking pushpins and string into my walls.

[Thad]

Yeah, standard advice for anybody buying a Windows PC: don't connect it to the network until you've already finished the initial configuration and account creation and gotten to where you're booting to a desktop; that's the only way to avoid having it tied to an online account.

Then use it long enough to download a clean copy of Windows (or, ahem, some other OS, but Windows if you really must). Put that on a memory stick, boot to it, and make sure you completely wipe the installation that came with your PC. (And remember, you'll want to be disconnected from the Internet for this reinstallation, too; same reason.)

And turn off as much of the Cortana/data collection stuff as it'll let you.

I can't speak to prices in Canada, but in the US you can probably get a fully-functional (read: not ChromeOS or Windows ARM) PC for under $500. It might not be a bad idea to check secondhand stores once you're vaccinated, either; you might be able to find something used that's Good Enough to work as a stopgap until you can get something better. While I think there are going to be concerns about crypto-related demand for a few years, the biggest problem right now is just supply-chain issues caused by COVID-19, and hopefully those will be somewhat mitigated by next year.

[Brantly B.]

Pfft, why bother?

[Mongrel]

Pfft, why bother?

Well if your computer (or at least the MOBO and CPU) are say - oh, I dunno, let's say ten years old - it might force the issue any time.

[Brantly B.]

I mean why would component manufacturers bother to fix supply chain issues to the consumer market when they can set any price for any amount of supply direct to crypto miners and cloud service providers, at least one of which has a vested interest in negotiating resources away from consumers.

[Thad]

I mean why would component manufacturers bother to fix supply chain issues to the consumer market when they can set any price for any amount of supply direct to crypto miners and cloud service providers, at least one of which has a vested interest in negotiating resources away from consumers.

I mean I can think of a couple pretty good answers to the question of why a manufacturer would choose not to alienate dedicated long-term customers in order to make short-term gains from a volatile fad that could implode the next time Elon Musk tweets about it, but I don't think Mongrel's looking for a high-end graphics card here.

There are supply-chain problems up and down the entire hardware stack. It's not just equipment you can use for crypto mining. Cars, consumer electronics, game consoles, anything with transistors in it is feeling the pinch. And yeah, those are supply-chain issues that a whole lot of manufacturers are really going to want to fix.

SSDs could start feeling a pinch from cryptomining in the coming years -- provided the aforementioned "Musk tweets and the whole thing collapses" scenario doesn't come to pass -- but at a glance they don't seem to be pinched nearly as hard right now as other components are. It looks to me like they're still widely available and their price per gigabyte seems like it's stayed pretty stable over the past few years.

[Thad]

I mean I can think of a couple pretty good answers to the question of why a manufacturer would choose not to alienate dedicated long-term customers in order to make short-term gains from a volatile fad that could implode the next time Elon Musk tweets about it

To the rock bottom and back: Bitcoin bounces back to $40,000
(which still comes out to a 10% loss in one day, for the second time in a week)

There are supply-chain problems up and down the entire hardware stack. It's not just equipment you can use for crypto mining. Cars, consumer electronics, game consoles, anything with transistors in it is feeling the pinch. And yeah, those are supply-chain issues that a whole lot of manufacturers are really going to want to fix.

Toyota Suspending Production at 2 Japan Plants

[mharr]

The absolute worst part of this is that it pushes everybody into low-power solutions where they give up ownership of everything and let The Cloud (read: Google and Amazon) take over. It's a solution to a completely engineered problem and the sort of thing that makes me start sticking pushpins and string into my walls.

What are the chances of this also driving development of open source p2p cloudpunk alternatives?

I bet Cuba already has five of 'em.

[mharr]

I might just get a good Nvidia TV box and stick to whatever games they deign to include in their streaming app, given it's the only one where I'll still have said games on Steam when it inevitably shuts down.

On this note, I just discovered that my crappy old TV box (The Shield portable with the dead screen) is in fact still compatible with GFN via an older app just called 'Nvidia Games', and seems to keep Steam login credentials live for a good long time so I suddenly don't have to keep dealing with Steam Guard on the laptop client either.

We've been using this to play through Disco Elysium on the TV in the den, which has been very nice. A box with usb & network sockets would be an upgrade, but for now all we'll really need to unlock the library is a bluetooth keyboard and mouse. That thing was a good-ass investment.

In related news Valve are having another go at Linux gaming hardware, this time in Nintendo Switch clone form, which could be of great interest if they sell it as a loss leader. Definitely one to watch. (Although I guess it'll have strong competition from the actual Switch, jailbroken and running Android, which is in effect the NVidia shield again wearing a silly hat.)

[pacobird]

Hey, I'm gonna be in the market in the next few months so if anyone has any prebuild recommendations that would be super ! ! !

[Brantly B.]

Prebuilds are getting pretty iffy too. The best bet I've seen is to buy a laptop and commit to having it docked most of the time.

[Mongrel]

That is... bad.