Pumped storage is a good option. Nuclear won't be economically viable, ever. It will be cheaper to use gas and capture the emissions, assuming you care about reaching net zero.

For all the whining, in the end renewables will win on economic grounds.

It's not exactly a controversial position. Most of Europe at least partially funds education through taxation, because capitalism doesn't deliver what the country needs. It's the tragedy of the commons, every company wants to use the pool of existing skilled labour, none of them want to contribute to maintaining it.

It's always been the case that 99% of stuff is crap. We occasionally have periods where there are multiple good shows airing, but they are rare. It only looks better in the past because we remember the good ones, not the rubbish.

There are a few current shows that are worth watching.

Thanks to streaming shows often get cancelled 5 seconds after the last episode of the season airs. They have all the metrics instantly, and don't wait for DVD/Bluray sales figures.

I do buy physical media, but I've given up treating it as a way to support shows. As you say, too little of the money reaches the creators, and it has no impact on the renew/cancel decision. If there is other merch that helps the creators more directly, I'll go for that.

It's the usual failure of the capitalist system. There is little benefit to investing in younger staff and training them. Once they gain skills they want more money, so either you pay them or they leave. Companies prefer to just hire experienced staff, and now can try to replace the graduates with AI.

It used to be the norm to train people out of skill and employ them for decades. Now they expect the graduate to train themselves, at their own expense, and treat them as disposable.

I like the idea of supporting creators to whatever extent I can. As an anime nerd I know that Blu-ray sales are the main metric whether a show gets another season or not. That and merchandise sales but I don't really have space to set up merch and I don't like buying it just to put it in a corner of a closet. Plus buying blu-rays gets me high quality video on a pressed disc that will more than likely outlive me.

I have no illusions though about how the people who make anime get treated. I know only a tiny fraction of the money I spend ever makes it into their pockets and more often than not they are run out of business repeatedly by rapacious corporations. So at the same time I don't really begrudge anyone who doesn't want to buy into that literally.

I think the correct solution is to buy the official release to support the creators but also change how you vote so that workers stop getting exploited. Worker exploitation is a political problem after all not an economic one.

Of course I have to live in the world the way it is now not the way I wanted to be so again if you're not buying blu-rays I don't be grudge you in the slightest. Although it's an anime fan like I said without the blue ray sales and the merch sales you're not going to get more of that show you like... And it really is the Blu-ray sales the drive the next season even more so than the merch a lot of times.

People who are using headphones jacks are people who probably do not care the DAC sucks or have high end headphones to use on a $699 laptop. For example for a video conference meeting, a headphone jack is fine for that fidelity.

I would say most people who are buying a $699 laptop do not know what a DAC is nor care about buying one. What they will see is this budget laptop requires an adapter to use wired headphones. Will it completely stop someone from buying this laptop over another model? Probably not, but it is a negative.

[sarcasm]But it will have Windows 11, the most beloved version of Windows right now.[/sarcasm]

WiFi 7 is more robust. The problem is if your network isn’t WiFi 7, then the benefits are negligible over WiFi6. But consumers can buy any new WiFi router right now so that shouldn’t be a problem . . .oh wait. Yeah . . .

Dell says the processor will be an Intel Core Series 3 for the budget $699 model and has up to 17 hours of streaming battery life. We will have to see if it lives up to battery life and performance tests. Noticeably absent from the advertisement was how well this laptop would do in benchmarks.

Dell can't match Apple because Win 11 wants 16 GB RAM to boot to desktop and 32 to be useable.

MicroSlop designed the os before the AI boom. They can't fix that without giving up their spyware and they're not gonna do that.

Mind you Apple really need 16 GB but that's still half Windows

I saw the movie. It was fine. It was not the best, but it was not the worst. From my perspective the movie did not have a main singular plot but multiple ones; it seems to been designed to break broken into pieces for serialized content like TV episodes. My guess is that this was intentional so that Disney+ could have another season of The Mandalorian and a movie. Basically the movie is really to generate some box office revenue that it could not generate as a TV season.

Come on, don't do that. This narrative that somehow the new stuff is retroactively ruining your childhood, that it's specifically designed as an insult to your fandom... That's toxic.

Last Jedi is a good example of that. Some people complain that Luke isn't a Marty Stu anymore, he's not just waiting to be unleashed and go defeat the First Order with a laser sword. That would have been a terrible movie. How unsatisfying would it be that all the Rebels needed to do was find the guy who saved them last time, so he could do the same thing again. It would also prove again that the only people who matter are Skywalkers, everyone else is just waiting for them to resolve their issues.

The whole point was that everyone in the Rebellion matters, they all contribute, and The Force isn't just something that a few privileged people can use to shape events on a galactic scale. Rey is revealed to be nobody special at all, just someone who has the opportunity to do something meaningful. Then they blew all that up by writing a movie that was supposedly based on "fan feedback", and it was the worst one of the lot. Undid all the interesting ideas from TLJ.

Probably one of the worst examples of fans ruining a franchise. It's never really recovered. Andor was only good because it ignored all that stuff, didn't have any Force stuff in it, just ordinary people trying to make a difference, and not because it's the right thing, but because the Empire hurt them and the people they care about.