WTF is a Joule anyway?

A unit of torque, obviously.

It's a victim of its hype. I enjoyed it fine, but I got exactly what I expected. A nostalgia trip, and a pretty decent one.

Comparing it to WFRR isn't fair. That cost almost $200M in 2026 dollars, and I believe it was the most expensive movie in the 1980s. And that's not even comparing fairly. A dollar, even adjusted, doesn't go as far in moviemaking as it did then.

In that context its rating is maybe overblown, sure. But it hit the mark it was aiming for. It's worth watching.

My bias is that while watching these cartoons in the 70s, while my family used the road runner shorts as pee breaks, I loved them the most. Slapstick was my jam.

As we used to say in the security profession, the weakest link is not the software, or the hardware, it's always the wetware.

False dichotomy!

Seriously. The moment you can buy Chinese DDR4/5, jump on it. Vote with your wallet. And you shouldn't spend one single second feeling guilty about it. It's like choosing to spend time with the boyfriend who doesn't beat you.

The gap between "mistakenly and with hostility boarded a vessel" and "started World War III" is so vast as to render the title fucking stupid. China would make hay over the incident, for sure. But they are not interested in being front and centre in a global conflict. It's not in their best interests, and they are a rational actor.

Just be evil . . .

I don't disagree, but I think that's there's a nuance here that needs mentioning.

Trump is a special case. Everything he does is some form of a grift. It's not hidden - it's completely transparent. Those who fall for it are ignorant by choice. If they choose not to examine it, or (more likely) to ignore what's in front of them, they are to blame.

The other politicians would have a different standard to meet because they would have fooled the people. Trump cannot be other than he is, and those who are fooled have chosen it.

Do I think it should be allowed? Of course not. I'm only pointing the finger and doing my best Simpson's Nelson.

Not to be judgmental... but every one of those investors who lost money on the Trump coin deserved it. Okay. Well... yes. Im being totally and irredeemably judgmental. Yeah, I'm judging. Whether it's sycophancy, ignorance, or stupidity, they deserved it. Am I supposed to do otherwise? They bought the Brooklyn bridge from a guy on a street corner.

Unlike your other listed disbursements, they're likely to actually get this. Unlike politicians, companies generally make good on their offers. That already makes this far more legitimate.

Well then, the best answer would be for them to offer to pay directly for upgrades to homes that would help mitigate the effects. Acoustic treatments for instance. And if those complaining were honest, they'd shake hands and get it done.

But most wouldn't use the payout for that. The assumption is that they can be bribed. Which is fine. Absent any legal issues, there's nothing inherently wrong with a bribe. The question then becomes what the cost is to buy off the complainer, not what it costs to enhance the property. Those are two completely different questions, and you shouldn't just swap between them.

They aren't trying to make the problem go away - they're trying to determine what it costs to get people to ignore it.

And I think that's a reasonable starting point. Nobody is forced to sign on. Forgo the offer and press for more, if that's your preference.

But, this being a charm offensive, refusing it probably not going to change the trajectory of the project. So there's that.

It's not lying if you believe it when you say it. And Trump is just bent enough that he believes these things while he's saying them. He's far less a liar than he is just broken.

Yep.

There's especially the people who say "you can get a refurbished mini pc for less".

Well cool. That's also not comparable!

Absolutely, and by "meh", it's often "fine" or "adequate". And there's nothing wrong with adequate it is by definition good enough. Would I like a machine that's 3x as fast for half the price and fully open source? Well of course. Do I need one? Well... no. I don't think I've ever been in a situation were one of those would be necessary and a Pi would be inadequate.

I've used NVidia Jetson Orin AGXs, but nothing is comparable to them anyway, even a 5x faster pi wouldn't match it.

It's a real pity that the ARM world is such a shitshow compared to the x86 world, which is funny to say. Broadly speaking the first and last time I have interaction with the vendor is when I buy it and the hardware will run for decades if it lasts that long with quite possibly excellent support across the board.

You still need a working Raspberry pi to do that :)

https://obsolescence.wixsite.c...

I have indeed now keyed a few basic programs in at boot time (well for the emulator not the pi obviously!). It's amazingly good fun and I then understood why octal rather than hex has such pride of place in unix and C.