There was a brief cyber-cafe game place here but it crashed and burned very quickly. It that still a thing in Asia or Europe ? There is an old time arcade with pinball and stuff that seems to keep chugging along though.

I recently started tt-rpg again with the new D&D. Getting back to pen and paper is really refreshing and fun. Check your local game shop, or college for active gaming groups. Oddly all the players are older folks with a even breakdown in men/women. All the younger folks play MtG or some other card based game. I think Pathfinder might be the rpg for that genre.

I agree but user awareness is critical and they have the memory span of Dory the goldfish. If you don't keep the problem in the spotlight they will forget before first coffee break.

Email clients could make this problem MUCH easier to deal with if they would just show the DOMAIN instead of overlaying the address with a title that is wholly made up. If you could see that your MS support email came from iamfuckinghack.com and not microsucks.com it would help. The mobile email clients are TERRIBLE in this manner and almost part of the problem hiding the true email address. Hell your client should point out those discrepancies when the mail is received.

It may just be me but I don't want ANYTHING to do with Elon Musk. Fuck him and his cars and his spaceships all in one fast steroid filled gross mess that looks vaguely human.

It's not either/or though - if you're generating more than you're using, then you can redirect that back into the battery (or sell it back to the grid). I have limited winter experience at the moment, but the battery is fully topped up during the day while still powering the house from solar. That said, the darker nights/evenings right now means you kick into battery power earlier, so for me for example at roughly the same lattitude as London, the battery is drained by about 9pm.

It's interesting to watch and fun too if you're in to that kind of thing. Which, quite clearly, I am.

Every data center AND evert petroleum or other fossil fuel refinery or storage/processing facility. Hit the orcs where it will hurt them the most.

Ukraine should be going for the power plants too... Steam turbine blades and reduction gearing begin very sensitive and vulnerable at those RPMs, and all that.

That's increasingly true here too (UK). I'm on an EV-focused tariff which guarantees me up to 6 hours cheap EV charging per day, and in addition there are lower, cheaper overnight rates for the electricity.

What's been noticeable recently is that these periods are now tending to be different. I've been driving EVs for eight years and on roughly the same tariff (the 6 hour cap is new), and usually the "cheap EV charging" and "overnight low rates" coincided. Now however, I've noticed that if I plug in the EV during the day it pretty much starts charging instantly and you're right - I could say that's 100% around lunchtime. My usage means I can't really take advantage of that much since I commute in the day and plug in in the evenings, but it's still a noticeable pattern for the days that I am either working from home or its a weekend.

Completely agree, however this should just be rolled into the "how much does a data centre cost?" bill. Add the solar, add the necessary battery storage...that's your cost. Not "we'll build it without anything and hope everyone else will give the power instead".

It's not, but that's where home batteries come in. I'm a new'ish convert to solar, having had it installed in March and so this will be my first winter with it. I also installed a 12kWh battery to go along side it. The combination pretty much takes care of all my daytime home usage, although it does not take care of my full usage since I also have an EV.

I charge the EV overnight, plus top of the battery on cheap overnight rates. Result is barely any daytime usage for me. How that translates to a 24 hour data centre of course is a question in its own right, would they start affecting the overnight rates? Hmm.

you are probably correct, but luckily I don't play sports games and I gave up on battlefield after 1942...

Don't forget that the teachers' union gets a share of the scam.

Yepp, as I said: The system is built first and foremost to defend itself.

Personally, I don't think that police should have any right whatsoever to enter your digital devices. Yes, including for terrorism and kiddie porn. And I am 100% for us nerds developing defenses against this overreach. This case is a lesson that teaches us distress PINs are a good thing, but we need to improve on them, make it less obvious they were used, etc.

It's not a question of "Germany for the Germans". It's a matter of allowing people who are openly opposed to your culture to become a sizeable minority, while at the same time putting pressure on society in every way in order to extract wealth for the "elites", while at the same time replacing everyone among the "elites" who is actually capable of something with incompetent, corrupt egomaniacs.

If one of these factors were absent, we might yet manage. Competent leaders might be able to keep things together. Not maximizing profit for the few while returning the populations' lives back to peasantry would give ordinary people breathing space to cope with everything and solve issues at the base. Not importing culture war would keep society more cohesive and able to fight back against the exploitation.

I am not sure I kicked it. I still dream about EQ and the old raids.