Weird place to mention that. But thanks?

I’m not trying to defend anyone here, though it might seem like that, but I’m not sure why valve is lumped in with this, especially since that’s the steam logo.

Steam, as a platform, hasn’t released much of anything, ever. Valve has been sitting mostly on the sidelines since half-life 2 episode 2 and HL:Alyx.

Steam itself is just a marketplace.

I get that a lot of publishers on steam will fall into the categories of games that are the subject of the meme, but I have a hard time piling steam with the games that are published on it.

And yes, corporations are not our friends, and all billionaires are bad billionaires, eat the rich and all that… I’m just saying. There’s a lot of bigger, much worse, fish to fry than gaben, valve, and steam in this discussion. That could have been EA’s logo, or the Xbox logo (or ms game studios or whatever) or any number of massive publishers that are relevant here. Using the steam logo is lazy at best.

I end up doing both and then management sees a gap in my time entries where I was helping someone, and they come down on me for not doing enough.

It’s as if, if I’m not doing billable tasks, then I’m lazy and I’m not working… Because y’know, I show up to work and just fuck around all day unless I’m being watched constantly by management.

Oh. Yeah. That’s not ideal, but IMO, no less ideal than ejecting the heat into the atmosphere as steam or something… But we do that all the time. Pretty much all power generation relies on making water hot and using the steam to make things spin…

Oh yes. There’s a ton of other considerations for sure, I’m mentioning these because I feel like they’re pretty significant hurdles to the entire idea being practical.

The design of these particular buttons didn’t allow for that. That’s usually what I prefer too.

The button itself didn’t have any conductive material, it was a small piece of metallic material on the PCB, that when pressed, deflected to connect the circuit. The rubber/polymer buttons just mechanically pushed down on the small metal disc that made that contact happen.

It was easy enough to pull the small disc off of the PCB, but I don’t think the process can be reversed, or at the very least, I don’t think I’ll be able to keep track of the items removed in order to reverse it.

I don’t actually plan on replacing the TV at all. It’s job might change, from my main TV to a spare TV in the office or basement or something, but I don’t think I’ll be getting rid of it until it stops functioning.

See, they could meet power demands in space, solar panels are much more efficient in space vs on the surface of the Earth. I don’t know that even modern panels are efficient enough to supply what is needed, but the numbers are going to be better than what we would need on earth.

But datacenters? In space? The whole idea is half baked at best. Data center equipment isn’t light; and heavy stuff doesn’t like to go up into orbit. Then you need to consider how much thrust you’re going to need to keep that stuff in orbit… The numbers just don’t work in my mind…

If we had a thruster system that didn’t require burning a skyscraper worth of fuel to get into orbit, then maybe? But we don’t, so …

I could maybe see it happening on the moon, because then you wouldn’t need to worry as much about your orbit, but then you have at least three big problems to solve, how the heck are you getting the equipment there, how are you powering it, and simple latency.

Getting it there will burn so much fuel that I’m not sure it’s a valuable thing to do at all. For power, yes, solar will be pretty good on the moon, just like in orbit, but the moon rotates. One of the faces of the moon is always towards the earth, so when it’s between the earth and sun, that face is in darkness, and if you build on the other side, it will be in darkness when it’s on the far side, away from the sun. You would effectively need an array of solar that runs a loop around the whole surface so at least something is in the sun pretty much all the time, especially considering the moon rotates every 29ish days. I don’t know of any power storage system that’s robust enough to store the power requirements of a datacenter for half a month while the moon slowly orbits back into the sunlight.

The last thing is latency. Light is the fastest “moving” thing in the known universe. We have yet to observe anything that can propagate faster than light. Some things can match the speed, but nothing goes faster. The Moon is approximately 1.3 light-seconds away. Regardless of all other factors, it will take no less than 2.6 seconds, round trip. I don’t know of many applications for data center tech that is ok with that kind of delay. Super computers, maybe, but datacenters, not so much.

The whole thing is wrought with issues from the ground up. And I’m not even a scientist, and I can see the obvious problems here.

Meanwhile, we have 2/3rds of the planet covered in water, which is basically unused space by humans. It’s vast and plentiful, and as a bonus, has built in cooling. Microsoft was testing datacenter stuff at sea and AFAIK, it went pretty well. I believe they’ve discontinued it since it’s still not as practical as land-based datacenters, but the idea is solid at least. Space based stuff is even less practical. I don’t see why anyone would want to take on the cost of something like this when there are cheaper and more profitable alternatives.

I get all of the comments here. I understand the anger and distain that so many of you are feeling over the current state of things. I share in many of the frustrations and anger.

But it depresses me that Trump won’t run for office again. He will be replaced by someone and the entire pool of former Trumpers will see that person and think that they can do all the things they hoped that Trump would do.

Even if Trump exits office without doing any further significant harm, the people who have made these kinds of revelations, like in the OP, will probably still vote for the same party, in spite of it all. Sure, they may never vote for Trump again, but they’ll never get the chance to anyways, so who cares?

This was calculated.

Don’t be surprised if the next candidate follows the same playbook as Trump, and don’t be surprised if the MAGA crowd falls for it again.

The only way forward, to ensure that this kind of damage is stopped, is to rally together in sufficient numbers to ensure that these folks don’t get into office any more. The absentee voters need to get out and vote.

I am confident that the numbers would work out if we could get enough people to the voting booth.

Yeah. 45k starting.

I’ve been doing the job for over a decade.

I was unable to find a way.

In any case, the buttons don’t work anymore and I’m fine with that.

Thanks buddy.

Belly rubs

Considering I’ve been doing this stuff for over a decade and have met less than a handful of people with the same technical expertise as I have, and I haven’t met anyone that’s more skilled… I’m pretty sure I should be making at least 6 figures… Nobody will pay that much for what I do.

I’m not trying to brag or anything. It’s just that I keep ending up in the position of having to educate everyone around me on how things actually work, and how to fix them. I spend more time in the bowels of Windows operating systems that the registry makes sense to me.

My understanding of the message in the OP is that phone companies are making phones suck after 2 years using updates that make the phone slower, etc.

… Y’know, like Apple did a few years back.

Also, cats.

I still do this.

I also pulled the little contact pads off of the back of the Netflix button and the other pairs services buttons that are a fixture on my remote that I don’t use. I kept accidentally hitting them and it would rip me out of whatever content I was watching and send me to a service I didn’t subscribe to.

Not anymore.

I’m much the same.

I can’t leave my geographic area for very good reasons, and I will in IT support. I’m experienced enough to be a “senior” support tech. But the average going rate in my area for my job is about 60k/yr. That sounds great until I tell you that I’m in Canada and that’s Canadian dollars, which is about 43k/yr USD.

The state of the market here is embarrassing and I can’t find jobs hiring for remote workers, or anything local enough that I could feasibly commute, that pays enough for it to be worth it to even apply.

If I do find a posting that’s close it’s a 1.5hr commute away and pays about the same as my current work from home gig… Despite the toxicity, why would I take a job I need to spend an additional 3+ hours in a car to do the same work, with potentially the same toxicity, for the same pay?

I fucking hate everything.

All of these have been true at every point.

It depends on where you are in your life’s journey, which one you hear.

That’s fair.

Laundering snap into cash seems like an enforcement problem.

But then again, we don’t want more cops… So I’m a bit split on it.

It’s one of those rare 5 cylinder in-line engines with a 3.6L displacement.

Oooooooo