I bought one of those for $100 a few years ago. Yeah it's big and bulky, but I've used it to jump start vehicles on five occasions since then. It paid for itself as far as I'm concerned and the other incidental uses I've gotten out of it. Apparently I saved $170 buying it instead of some PoS designed to attract idiots.

This is the sort of thing you see in a dying industry, pointless consolidation to delay the inevitable. It doesn't matter which of Netflix or Paramount bought Warner. They're both as creatively bankrupt as Warner and neither is capable of turning that ship around. This is certainly a better value for Warner shareholders though. Now Netflix can take their turn crapping all over the IPs that Warner already finished shitting on. Congratulations, I suppose.

Why were they consuming it to begin with? I like America more than most Americans but will freely admit that our alcohol is shit. In the last few decades we've at least started getting decent beer, but our whisky is still shit. Any popular brand that might get exported is dog water compared to a no name Scottish or Irish distillery's third worst spirit. There are some locally distilled spirits that I enjoy personally, but I don't think they compete with the best of the best in the world or even the mid-rate of the world.

If you don't think the CIA has locals in place to assume control behind the scenes you've neglected the last century of America politics. Trump doesn't have absolute control, but the message is clear. The people who are nominally in power can do what we tell them to and live or find themselves removed. Right now a well armed guerrilla organization is as good as anything else in the country. Some of them are already removing the old guard that won't fall in line.

While the U.S. may not be directly in control of the country, we're setting up a puppet government that soon will be. There are plenty of Venezuelans who haven't fled the country that hate Maduro and will gladly accept the U.S. government butting in to remove him. The U.S. doesn't even need to be exploitative to profit. We have some of the only refineries that can process Venezuelan oil and seeing increased production already benefits us plenty. Not having to deal with an antagonistic nation pays for itself. Trump is no doubt happy to have a good excuse for the roughly half million Venezuelans who fled the country and are in the U.S. to return home as well.

European countries may grumble but will do nothing about this. They're on board with it for the same reason that Iran is falling and will see its government overthrown soon. Both Venezuela and Iran were already pariah countries, but other pariah countries like Russia were happy to do business with them. As much as Europe dislikes Trump, they dislike the idea of Putin on their doorstep or any closer to it far less. They can poo poo the U.S. in public all they want, but privately they are completely okay with this and will do nothing about it. Russia being hobbled is worth more to them than whatever principles you think they possess.

If you think I'm wrong feel free to place as many Polymarket bets about whatever fantasies you may have becoming reality. Go ahead and see how that works out for you.

There's no chance Trump did this without the CIA being given a green light on whatever clandestine shit they've had in the works for who knows how long. It might not look like it, but behind the scenes people are falling in line or being removed if they won't. María Corina Machado will return to the country to a sea of cheers and will be unanimously elected President. If this outcome wasn't obvious as soon as she was given the Nobel Peace Prize last year then you weren't paying attention.

How would that be any different from the current state of affairs exactly. No one can credibly claim that Maduro or Chavez before him did anything to improve life for anyone in the country who wasn't one of their cronies and didn't personally enrich themselves while doing so.

This outcome was obvious since last year's Nobel Peace Prize. That was the announcement that Maduro was getting deposed one way or another. Machado will be back soon and likely elected (or reelected as it were) President when the current administration agrees to resign early.

There were reports of some large bets placed just prior to the event as well. If the government isn't tracking down who placed them and figuring out what kind of hole they can be put in for doing something so foolish. Of course the government can also use this as a means of fooling enemies. Perhaps they did exactly this to set something up in the future.

It's even more stupid. If I really wanted something like this why would I pay $900 when I can buy a 60" 4K TV for $200 during a Black Friday sale and use it to display any number of works of art or other images I wish to as opposed to being limited to merely 2,000 different works. I'd much rather just get a painting though. I can go to a museum to look at something old and famous. I'd rather have something personal to me on my own walls.

It is the sort of plan that the sort of person who has no skin in the game and won't be personally affected by any of the undesirable side effects that they failed to consider. As the OP pointed out there's little chance it will be implemented for the reasons illustrated among others. Private air travel will become more popular over time anyway. Before anyone thinks that some politicians might push for this, they'll never give up the luxury that they enjoy at the taxpayers expense and them trying to carve out special exceptions for themselves while relegating everyone else to coach is a surefire ticket to getting tossed out on their ass next election cycle.

This is what I've been seeing as well. I recently learned of a clever trick to help with the screening. Make a very easy programming question for a lead off but bury a hidden symbol in it that will change the result if someone copy pastes it into an AI. Apparently this is good enough to eliminate about half of the candidate pool.

Even better, get involved with local universities. Most programs have a capstone course or senior project of some kind and plenty are looking for industry involvement. It's a great way to scout for future talent and a good way to get younger developers some management or leadership experience to see if they'd make good leads.

The AI plague will hit everyone so at least there's some incentive for someone to figure out how to sort it out, but it will always be a cat and mouse game.

If you're not playing at 4k, a lot of titles can push 300+ FPS easily, in particular the competitive titles that aren't designed to have the most graphical bling. In the landscape of competitive gaming, response time is what's important. For regular people they won't care about that difference, but the people who are competing are at the tail end of the bell curve and can feel that difference.

I personally think this is pointless for most consumers, but there are plenty of people who buy that marketing. For someone on a budget that wants to play competitive CS or other similar titles like it a 360 Hz IPS is probably in their budget range. Whoever is heading up G-Sync at NVidia is also trying to remain relevant so they're not first on the block when the AI bubble bursts.

Turn off the RT and the performance would be more than fine. Ultra settings often deliver very little uplift over high as is, but ray tracing is so little of an upgrade for the performance cost that the only reason to run it at all is to justify paying $2000+ for a GPU. I think rat tracing is generally pointless for most games as well. The performance cost is not worth the marginally better visuals and most games don't want hyper realistic lighting because it gets in the way of design and game play. No game can truly be designed for it until the technology creeps down into the mainstream and low-end of the market and we're several hardware generations away from that still.

Ryanair wouldn't care about third parties selling tickets for them if they weren't involved in some kind of fuckery of their own. If they want to subsidize certain routes, etc. to draw in customers that's their own business, but Turing around and getting upset at someone else for trying to take advantage of that subsidy isn't any of their business either. While I don't think they're at all obligated to make it easy or possible for any third party to do that, they could solve the problem completely by not engaging in the sort of behavior that attracts these kind of middlemen in the first place. They can have their cake, but that shouldn't act surprised when someone else tries to eat it too.

The CCP doesn't want anyone else to utilize a system that isn't part of their social credit system. Don't mistake an even bigger control freak flexing its own muscles as a sign of actual benevolence.