While the card itself may be fine, calling it a 4080 isn't fine. The model # typically designates a chip configuration, and the memory obviously indicates the amount of VRAM. In this case the graphics chips are different between the 4080 12G and 4080 16G. By calling it a 4080 and only changing the VRAM amount, one would deduce that the only difference is the amount of VRAM. This is not the case. Take a look at the 30 vs 40 series.

The 3080 TI / 3080 12 GB are both GA102 chips. This makes sense because the only change is the RAM.
The 4008 12 GB is a AD104 chip, the 3080 16 GB is a AD103 chip.

Despite carrying the same number convention they are very different chips..

If links are your thing:.
https://www.techpowerup.com/29...

He's in a STEM field? Use an analogy he can understand. Explain to him it's like the conservation of energy or something, lol. IE. Given a certain project IT work costs cannot be created or destroyed, they just take a different form. The work and cost is always there, it's just a matter of who is doing it and who is getting paid to do it.

So I get to waste time on a commute for free?
Yeah, sign me up! /sarcasm

What's with these companies thinking I'll return to some shitty office for a few trinkets... let alone if I'll ever go back at all?

If that's the case Sony, Nintendo, etc. could just sell direct to consumers. If there really is a shortage of a product then they won't have a hard time selling everything and most people are just buying online now anyways. It's not that big of a deal for me to go to the Sony website instead of Best Buys website to punch in my shipping and payment info to have the console delivered. They have control of how they send their products out for distribution. If they haven't done anything about it, maybe they don't care or they don't think it costs them as much as you say.

It's a stupid model to begin with. What brainiac thought people would want to share rides with total strangers? It's pretty obvious it was always going to be a glorified taxi service via an app.

I have a *personal* vehicle for a few reasons, convenience and comfort are the two biggest ones. Know what isn't convenient? Instead of just driving to where I want to go instead you open an app... enter in my destination and look at the route.... then try to identify someone who is on the way but still might have a slight detour... re-plan my route and timing around this detour... accept the ride... get a confirmation it's accepted.... etc. I'm not looking to do all of that. I just want to get in my car and go where I need to go, that's the whole point of having personal transportation.

On the comfort side of things I like not having random strangers next to me. That's one of the benefits compared to using public transportation. Taxi driving is a dangerous profession, turns out picking up random people has risks, who would have thought of that eh? Also no I have to worry about this person, maybe I just want to jam my music but this rando is going to complain about it, maybe they smell because they haven't showered in 2 days.

The big reason this even came up for discussion is electric vehicles. We've used the gasoline tax as the built in way to pay for the roads and their maintenance and it's more or less fair as a whole. You drive more = you pay more gas tax because you use more gasoline. You drive a bigger vehicle that is harder on the road, well those burn more gas from bigger engines which means more gas tax is paid. As a whole the system worked. Enter electric vehicles. They still use the roads which results in wear, and potholes still need to be filled, etc. but since they don't use gasoline, they use and wear the infrastructure systems without providing the needed financial support of those systems. How do you fairly make those users contribute? In this case a mileage tax makes sense. This can still be pretty simple, you categorize vehicles by gross weight and each different category pays X amount per mile in use tax.

Absent the lala land of the IMF and in the real world there are investors, many of them with money in banks. They want a return on that investment with responsible stewardship of their capital. No way in hell they're going to allow a bank to dump looking at financial history to replace it with your web browsing history and some arbitrary items such as what brand and model of hardware you are accessing the web with to determine if they should lend you money or not. If I was lending out money I'd want to know how much income a person has, their debt load, their payment history (on time & how long), their credit utilization, etc. and I'd use that to calculate a score using statistics and weighting to determine a level of risk for a given loan... oh wait we already have that, it's called a "credit score" and it works. Want to know what is a part of a good indicator of someone paying you back money on a loan? If they have an income and pay all their other bills on time. Want to know what isn't a factor at all? If they access twitter on a Samsung cellular phone.

You let me run my leafblower or I clear cut my 2 acres of trees. Pick one.

Can't blame them, these remote services companies are making a fortune with the boom in demand for their services. They can afford to provide proper protection for their workers. Location shutdowns of grocery stores for 14 days might be a bit much - perhaps a 1 days closure as you can properly sanitize with bleach, etc. However providing proper PPE shouldn't be an ask, it should be a mandate... a mandate as in you provide it to your employees or your business can't operate.

If this results in the cancellation of golf it just might be worth it.....

The biggest problem with BT audio isn't, "I can't listen to it on multiple devices at once", the biggest problem is bandwidth for uncompressed audio.

Parts need to be up-gradable/replaceable. What are you going to do when a DRAM chip that's soldered on goes bad and the manufacturer won't sell you one because it's "custom"? You'll be wishing for a memory slot then won't ya?

Furthermore, if a vendor does this they are going to overcharge out the ass for easy to install upgrades. Oh, you want an extra 16 GB or RAM, that will be $250 please. Meanwhile you can buy the same amount of RAM on the open market for $60 or less. Oh, you need more RAM than your PC already has, well... you can buy a new one for $1499. Non-upgradable PCs are a suckers ploy. System provides like Dell, etc. are drooling at the thought of the cash stacks they could make with equipment that can't be upgraded. The only reason they don't do this is there are so many provides of hardware their business would dry up if they tried. The last thing we need is the Cell "Phoneization" of PCs where they get junked frequently.

For a good while now I've been buying a 1 year old or less used phone for a steep discount when I buy my phones. I tend to keep them for ~3 years.

I bought an unlocked LG V30+ in Jan 2019 for $220. It was about a year old with an tag of around $700. The thing works great and has great specs, I can't see eating that depreciation. I plan on keeping it for another 2ish years.

Side note, keep your battery charged between 30-80% instead of charging to 100% overnight. Your battery usable lifespan will be significantly extended. Cheers.

Executives vs. Engineers.... yeah, sadly it's not hard to predict who is going to win that one.

Can forgery or falsifying information to put you in a negative light screw you? Well yes, captain obvious.

Seriously, do we really need to study this type of crap?