Yep, same problem with the flush valve. American Standard sent me a replacement valve. The fill valve stopped shutting off. They sent a replacement for that also. Fluidmaster was once the very best. Champion & American Standard once had impeachable quality. But this is what we get with the multinational corporate structure with 10-20% cost-out requirements. The team had better find that money every fucking year, even from ancient product lines that have already been cost reduced into errrr the toilet. Profits above everything, no matter what. The worst part of product engineering is cost-outs.

Yeah a million years ago I replaced my mom's toilet & she complained about how the low flush doesn't clean the bowl. She resorted to using an in tank "blue water" toilet bowl cleaner. That meant I was back there replacing her fill & flush valves a year later because the chlorine corroding everything. The Toto doesn't have that problem. It would be interesting to work in in their engineering department.

I've had to replace many toilets over the years. In my wife's bathroom she wanted the colors to match & the only matching toilet I could get locally was a Toto. The very best (& most expensive) toilet I've installed. It's super quiet & has had no problems.

The American Standard had Fluidmaster (the king of flush!) flush & fill valves & both had to be replaced in the first year. Pain in the ass but American Standard had excellent CS.

I got no clue what this has to do with chips or AI though. Maybe I could RTFA.

Okay. Funny how it ran so choppy without reducing the graphics quality. Skyrim ran like a champ on a lot older hardware & looked okay back in the day.

Yes, this is not knew. I look at my son's games on his desktop, with his RTX4070, 32 gig of ram, his 2K monitor, & I just do not see the graphics much better, if at all, than 15 years ago. I was playing one of the Wolfenstein games, a game that cost me around $20, & my nephew was amazed over the graphics & wanted to know what I was playing.

$1000 for a video card one would expect that the graphics would be advancing better. Fallout 4 was choppy using a RTX970. Upgrading it to a 2070 made it play well but the graphics were good but not that good. I would expect to be blown away like I was with HL2. Good thing there are dozens of titles out there for me to play. My current hardware should last quite some time.

Except that's not what's happening. You seem to have a mighty big house with lots of people, some of which are inviting desperate folks to "break in" to work for them. When they do, they work hard, buy their own food, pay taxes, doing work in "your house" that you & other members of your massive house don't seem to want to do.

Those "evil employers" are the real problem. Even those that are requiring a S.S. card as they can easily check legal status with E-Verify. They are the real criminals. Here & there they arrest some bakery owner or a restaurant manager, but big business gets a pass.

Snow Crash & Ender's Game. I had to look that up although I knew I bought books.

As I remember, it was 2001 for my first purchase on Newegg. It was two video cards, identical, for my wife & I. Newlyweds playing video games together! What video cards? I don't remember but I think it was Gforce 3. I do remember that they both had to be replaced under warrenty by PNY. Bad capacitors. Newegg dumped customer's older order history & it kina pissed me off. I used to be such a Newegg fan. I really loved their UI, search & filtering tools. Something Amazon has never had. Amazon has pretty much always sucked.

Again, listen to the podcast. If they laid off every single federal worker, all of them, not including military, it would theoretically cut only 4% of the federal budget. The federal workforce is not where the money is at.

Searching & reading articles about wasteful spending that Elmo claimed to find & it seems fairly weak to me. Some low hanging fruit but it's quite likely that a decade from now, the data will show the Elmo's DOGE cost more money than it saved. Yes, there is likely still some waste out there, the federal government is massive, but IMO Elmo showed that there is not as much waste as he claimed.

Not that I think this much, if anything, to do with Prime Day selling less fucking crap but...

You think it's necessary. Why? Do you have data to support your opinion? Some areas of our government might need cutting but do you think the IRS should be cutting 50,000 jobs? IMO they should be adding agents & upgrading their whole IT system. Veterans Affairs? Adding, not cutting.

You should listen to the linked podcast. It's entertaining & informing. From the podcast: "The number of federal employees, hasn't changed much in 50 years. 50 years ago, there were 2.1 million federal employees. Today, there are 2.3 million." From google: The actual peak year was 1990 with 3.4 million. So are these job cuts actually necessary?

I'm sure there are parts of the government that could/should be cut. What President Asshole did with the across the board cuts were just plan stupidity & done just for the optics. In the end, it will likely cost us more money, certainly in unpaid taxes the IRS won't be getting. It's likely they to pay someone to do the work that will get neglected for months, even years, when it becomes a massive problem that can't be ignored. Maybe even sooner, like an emergency manager meteorologist position that was not backfilled.

Al Gore ran the Reinventing Government program. Yes, they cut more than 400,000 jobs, but it took the better part of two terms to complete it. Nothing like what President Asshole & his minions have done with just taking an axe & cutting people, offering expensive buyouts to the most experienced workers. Planet Money has a great episode on this called The last time we shrank the federal workforce.

Vigilante: "a member of a self-appointed group of citizens who undertake law enforcement in their community without legal authority, typically because the legal agencies are thought to be inadequate." That is exactly what Kyle was doing, "guarding" a used car dealership, "patrolling" the area, walking blocks away, trying to "undertake law enforcement ".

Kyle intentionally walked around a fucking riot, armed with a rifle. If that's not "seeking conflict", what exactly is it? You keep jumping to the actual shooting incident that has zero to do with your claim, that Kyle was no "seeking conflict". Long before the incident, he was wandering around with an AR15 during an active riot. Who the fuck would do something like that?

Holy crap, there's a lot to unpack right there. None of what you said actually upholds your statement the fatboy Kyle "didn't seek conflict". I never took any stand on the shooting. A jury found the crybaby not guilty. I don't blame everything on Kyle & never said I did, you assumed that. You continue to call the people that were actively rioting "vigilantes". They were not, they weren't even protesters, they were lawless rioters. Kyle was, by definition, was a vigilante that night.

Personally I don't believe in open carry unless your headed into the woods to cull some deer or hunt something else. But your fucking gun away, it makes you look like a fool trying to be a bad ass. If someone takes a rifle & starts walking around a riot, "patrolling", they are actively seeking conflict. You've made a lot of assumptions for god knows what reason. Hoplophobia? Oh please, being against the stupidity of open carry hardly makes that true. I enjoy going to the range & am actually a decent shot. Endorsing the actions of rioters? Pease quote me where I did that. Go ahead & keep it coming, your silly assumptions, your name calling, your expanding on the debate to be more that what it originally was. Rittenhouse carried a firearm, walking around a riot in progress, obviously seeking conflict. He could very well have stayed doing what he claimed he was there for: guarding the dealership.

The truth here is that someone here believes that walking around a riot with a AR15 is "not seeking conflict" has established themselves as "dumb as a rock ". Now that I've read about fat boy crybaby Kyle & "learned the facts" my opinion of him has got even worse. Thanks for the link. So his mom didn't drive him. He drove himself to a riot with a rifle but was not "seeking conflict". Who the fuck endorsed rioters? Who the fuck calls rioters vigilantes? How did you establish that I was "no Boy Scout"? Because I drop F bombs? Fucking hilarious. Please keep it up, it's mildly entertaining.

If he was seriously not seeking conflict, he would not have been open carrying a firearm. A fucking rifle. Walking around looking to help people, with a rifle. Personally if I was walking around a neighborhood where there were riots happening with a med kit, I would not open carry a firearm. It's obvious to me that yes, he was seeking conflict. He got bored & "went on patrol" when according to him, he was there to protect the dealership.

It is amazing that people want to defend this little whiny ass vigilante shit kid who did his damndest to put himself in conflict.

Okay, thanks for clearing that up, he drove himself to Kenosha. However, after wasting my morning reading about the incident to "get my facts straight" I find that the claim that he didn't "seek conflict" is disingenuous. I suppose he left the car dealership to go "on patrol" just to seek folks in need of medical attention, amiright?

Sure he didn't "seek conflict" when his mom dropped him off at a riot with a rifle & he directly walked right into conflict.