Writing this on a PC from 2017. Admittedly it has had a mid-life CPU and GPU upgrade as well as additional disks but the core is still the same. The only reason I will be retiring from active service is that I'll be f'ed before I get Windows 11. Just waiting for next year's AMD video cards (AMD tending to work slightly more easily in Linux) and then I'll build a new one which will finally be a Linux daily driver again for the first time in like 20 years.

I have heard that actually, they often don't. They run so hot they often don't last more than 2-3 years before they starting failing.

Be that as it may, if they throw it away after 3 years even though it works because it's now 3 generations old and the new ones have 8x the compute for 90% of the power then depreciating over 6 years *is* fraud.

Ideally, yes. I was being somewhat sarcastic. :-) Personally I'm mostly annoyed they don't have a DisplayPort.

Why would it ever be cheaper to own a gas car? As the demand drops for oil due to increasing electrification the oil companies will start shutting down wells, expensive ones first, so that supply doesn't outstrip demand. They aren't going to *give it away*: they're going to keep stiffing you for as much you will bear for as long as you will bear it. But at some point the cost to run the infrastructure for the ever-decreasing pool of vehicles that use it will start to become the limiting factor. When you're the only guy still driving a petrol car, are you going to be able to afford to run the oil refinery single-handed?

You're right about AI slop increasing electricity demand, for now. But the bubble will burst and a ton of companies are going to end up with racks and racks of useless GPUs that they will simply switch off and throw in the trash. A criminal waste of resources, sure, but I think it'll happen before we kill the grid. And if it doesn't, well, people care about their lights and fridge working a lot more than they care about ChatGPT, so I think that situation will take care of itself as well.

Parasites parasitising parasites parasitising parasites parasitising parasites ... It's parasites all the way down, baby.

Yeah it was the 10.5" Pro model. So pretty decent, and lasting this long it's not that expensive after all once you spread the cost out.

My 2018 iPad has only just started to show signs of not having enough grunt. I ran a new game that looked interesting the other day - first time I've bought a new game for it in ages - and it got itself so bogged down that I had to restart it to recover. But that's one game, and I can ignore that. The battery is getting a bit weak. So maybe, *maybe* I will replace it next year, after 8 years.

My iPhone 15 will probably go at least 5 as well. Prior that I did 5 years.

There's just no reason to replace them anymore. There's nothing new in the 16 or 17 I care about.

"An AI Podcasting Machine Is Shitting Out 3,000 Episodes a Week"

There, fixed it.

Why even buy? Why not just keep playing last year's that you've already paid for? I mean in CoD arguably there could be new maps - which AI would be crap at making - but in Madden? Why do you even need AI when the only difference between last year and this year is a shuffling of player names which you could handle with a 10 line AWK script.

Nothing except players refusing to buy it. ... So yeah, the hobby I grew up loving has been infected by zombie fungus and will never be good ever again. At least I will save a lot of money not buying new games or the PCs to run them on.

Or, they need to say 'F*** you, I'm not paying you for AI slop' and spend their money elsewhere. If I wanted uninspired repetitive quarter-assed rubbish, I could do that myself for free.

EA wants to make players pay for "content" at full price that those players could have generated for themselves for free by typing a prompt into ChatGPT, so they can fire actual artists to increase their profits. At the very least it is deceptive trading: EA is selling it just like every other human-created Codblops when it is not.

If I try to sell you a "Ferrari" that is actually a 1997 Toyota Corolla with a body kit glued on then the fact it may have put some Italians out of work isn't really the point, in my opinion. Nor does the fact that some people don't notice or care that it is a 1997 Toyota Corolla with a body kit glued on make it any better. I'm deceiving you, and I know it.

So is EA, and they know it.

Wow, I thought my bank's ATM fees were ridiculous.

Well yeah, I wouldn't want to move to China. But I certainly don't want to move to the US either.

OMG don't give them ideas!