Really, a lot of us in I.T. should have seen this coming.

Earlier in the year, my significant other was still gaming on an Alienware laptop that was about 3 generations behind on its nVidia GPU and had issues like a non-working trackpad (someone messed up the ribbon cable inside it while replacing dying cooling fans in it). We found a high-spec upgrade for it at the local Micro Center, selling for around $3500 with an RTX5090 in it, 64GB RAM, etc. Just about all of our friends advised us not to dump that kind of money on a gaming laptop. "Just wait, they said.... You can surely find something cheaper than that." I told her to ignore all of them and to pull the trigger on it if it's really one she liked.

Only a month later? That same machine was up over $5500. There's basically nothing on the market today with the same GPU in it selling for less than $1000 or so more than we paid for that system. And typically, they only have a 1TB SSD vs the 2TB in hers.

None of us have a crystal ball, but I saw this trend started with price increases on RAM and storage with the rise of AI and new data center construction -- and knew PCs weren't going to go down in price for quite some time...

That's why he said "That makes it usually cheaper to use a non-HEPA filter but a higher air throughput rate."

It's a tradeoff, like almost everything in life. Whether his "usually" is correct depends mostly on who wants to buy the system, and only they can tell.

You miss the point completely. The technology is there and unstoppable. Cutting down one company doesn't destroy the technology. Killing Napster didn't kill the technology, it just spread it around, decentralized it, then there were thousands of sites to control, and they never did manage to do that, did they? Killing Flock will do exactly the same.

Killing Flock won't kill the concept or the capability and more than demolishing Napster stopped music copying. I bet within 5 years, this scanning will be common in most dashcams and phone apps will be available.

Lashing out in anger without having a plan or knowing your target is juvenile.

Whoops -- accidentally moderated it. Undoing...

I have to disagree, for several reasons. First off, file sizes just keep increasing. Instead of people thinking their televisions at home look great in "full 1080 HD resolution"? Now, everyone's moving to 4K TV, with 8K being the high-end offering. That means streaming television supporting those higher resolutions is going to use 4x to 8x the bandwidth it used to.

Second, any avid gamer knows how big the downloads have gotten for modern games. The regular updates they push out, alone, are typically 35GB to 350GB+ in size. Now, imagine you've got a family at home with at least 2 or 3 people playing online games on their machines. They don't want to have to wait 20-25 minutes to start playing every time it says an update is required first.

Beyond all of that, though? I've found fiber connections used in an office environment are handled a little differently than what people have at home. EG. I can start uploading 4 or 5 large archives to, say, Microsoft Azure cloud storage, right in the middle of the workday -- and nobody else using the office network even notices. That's largely because we have multi-thousand dollar routers in the office and they're properly configured to prioritize certain types of traffic like VoIP phone calls, and to throttle connections intelligently so everyone gets a fairly equal piece of the total connection "pie" as they work. It's not that reasonable to expect residential users to have similar setups, or to even know how to configure them.

My cable provider now offers 2GB download speed service, but it's problematic in the sense most people still have devices with wired Ethernet ports that only handle up to 1 gig. speeds. I have a pretty expensive Linksys Atlas mesh router at home (cost $850 or so for the 3 piece set, a few years back), and it doesn't have a port on it faster than 1 gig. for the cable modem to attach to.

Obviously, the provider is happy to supply their own combo modem/router to use but with a monthly cost attached.

But there's just not a good reason in 2026 to not make a least gigabit connections a standard offering. Nobody's "unfairly discriminating" against services like satellite with any of this. Those technologies have always been considered wireless alternatives to use when you're in too rural of an area to expect anything else. Invest in building out fiber networks and those techs will just become what you use when you're mobile.

Maybe you should stop panicking lie a wee baby and think from the other end: things are working as well as they can, and the problem is a lot bigger than just snapping your fingers and hoping a genie shows up.

Fabs are expensive and big, and can't be built overnight. Even stupid ordinary homes take months to build, and fans are thousands of times bigger with thousands of times the utility requirements.

Honestly? I think your last statement there is a key point that should receive a little more attention. It seems possible --- heck, even prudent -- for a person to question possible negative outcomes from mRNA vaccines, while still fully recognizing that it makes good sense to use one on an existing disease. Even in a nearly worst-case scenario? You're talking about cancer, which surely kills a person if not treated, vs a theoretical risk of some long-term problems from an mRNA vaccine (some of which even anti-vax types admit aren't showing up except in a certain percentage of vaccinated people).

That has much more to do with people being creatures of habit than being stupid.

I'm old enough to have spent a long time driving cars before voice recognition was a thing. Probably dating myself here, but I remember how excited my friend was when he got a new Nissan Z car and it actually spoke to him, saying things like "Your fuel is low!" and "The door is ajar!"

I spent years trying to utilize voice recognition systems when they came out, and was consistently frustrated. Some required I memorize their specific set of words they understood (cough, Chrysler ...) and didn't do anything else. Others just couldn't understand what I said half the time. By the time any of these systems in cars worked well, I'd given up on them as more hassle or gimmick than they were worth.

At least w/Infotainment touchscreens, you get visual confirmation of what you picked/selected. Voice commands get super annoying as soon as it misunderstands you once and starts the wrong process.

None of that is true. Grow up and learn how to understand and rate journalism. Start with Appling the spj code of ethics to media.
" Anyone who defends that is off the deep end self-deluding and in full on denial of reality. "
So you post a factual incorrect statement then call anyone with facts delusional. JFC, take some actual media course. Like, in a class room.

He's incapably of learning. I don't thing he has learned anything since 1980.

OFFS lease stop lying. You wither didn't read it, or didn't understand it.
Some of us remember when he was alive, and read went o to study him.
If you actually know what you were talking about, you would understand the difference between Marxist communism and socialism.

Liars like you have become tiresome.

No, you did not. Yor just making things up becasue you are likely functionally illiterate, can'[t hold complex thought or idea, and have no clue how to admit you are wrong. I pity you, Because your are embarrassingly wrong.

That's actually not true at all. Please tell me how many American FDR called evil? Literally one of the, if not the most socialist president whose social programs led to American become a technological and industrial power house.

American modern conservatives primary planks are to take rights away from marginalized group; which s fucking evil.

Get over yourself and read some books.