Andrew

hopefully going to go look at a car next weekend

20 minutes ago, UltraMega said:

 

I think there's more than just cost keeping VR from taking off. 

 

The amount of space it requires is a big deal, but mostly that most people don't tolerate it for more than an hour or so before they get a headache or feel nauseated. 

You don't need a large area for VR. My VR area is in my chair in front of my computer. If I'm playing something that requires standing up, like HL Alyx, Skyrim, FO4,LA Noire, etc., I simply just move my chair back slightly and stand where my chair was. The area I use is about 1.5x1.5 metres. It would be nice to have a 10x10 metre area for VR, but it's not required.

South Korean certifications do seem like a good place to find new things coming out. Things get certified there before anywhere else in the world for some reason.

I went on the internet and made a list of potential cars that I can go with. I did remove the secret one in case I do end up actually buying it because I want to make a funny meme joke but it won't work if you know what it is.

(year, make, model, engine/spec, purchase price, estimated insurance costs, annual tax)

3 hours ago, TonyBombassolo said:

2022 Forester after I sadly hit a deer. Looks to be about $22000 in damages. One of the few times in my life I feel insurance was worth it. 

 

Oofies. Also yeah, if the airbags go off, that's pretty much a guaranteed total. Airbags only go off in a crash if there's chassis damage.

Mandatory insurance. What really made it worse, was there was an official petition to the government to cap insurance costs to people without a NCB and they haven't made a claim. The government officially discussed it and said no. Since then, insurance has been slowly creeping up in price, especially for new drivers. Including people who have been driving for many years, have never made a claim but lost their NCB due to them not having an insurance policy for 2 years.

Some personal news:

You can call me Chains, because I'm in a pickle right now. I do need a car kind of soonish, and one that both works and won't cost me £8000 a day in fuel. Fortunately, I have found someone who is selling a 2009 Ford Focus for £300, which in the current climate is an absolute bargain. There's nothing wrong with it, but he's willing to sell it to me for that price. However, I just got some insurance quotes. Because of the way insurance works here for some reason that makes absolutely not sense, other than a great way to get more money from someone, no claims bonus discounts are only "active" for 2 years. If you don't have an insurance policy for 2 years, you lose that bonus. Because of this, I'm effectively a new driver as far as insurance companies are concerned.

The insurance quotes I got for that Focus starts at £400 a month and goes up to £750 a month. The insurance companies are effectively telling me, even though I've never made a claim in over 10 years, I will completely write this car off 16-30 times in my "first" year driving, or an average of 1.3 to 2.5 times a month. At the prices they're quoting, and I've looked this up. I will be financially better off financing a £28,000 car than outright buying a £300 car.

I'm not going to do that though, I have got quotes for cars that no one wants because of the brands history of unreliability and rust which hasn't been true for over 20 years. Insurance companies don't really have that much data on this one specific car I'm looking at, and I can buy it for £1500. I'm getting insurance quotes on that car ranging from £150 a month to £250 a month, so I'll likely end up with one of those. I'm not saying what it is right now :3

I actually just had a look at the phones available from my network provider. I sorted with price being the highest first. These are the top 20:

1. Google - £1749
2. Samsung - £1749
3. Samsung - £1479
4. Sony - £1299
5. Samsung - £1209
6. Apple - £1169
7. Samsung - £1049
8. Apple - £1019
9. Samsung - £929
10. Google - £849
11. Apple - £829
12. Motorola - £799
13. Samsung - £789
14. Apple - £759
15. Apple - £729
16. Apple - £689
17. Google - £599
18. Apple - £584
19. Samsung - £449
20. Apple - £449

Beyond that, they're all pretty much the same price until you get to the 8 year old Windows Phone Nokias.

The top two Android phones are tied at £580 more expensive than the most expensive iPhone and the iPhone doesn't even make it in the top 5 most expensive phones available. The only feature those two have that the iPhones don't have is they can fold, not sure why anyone would want that anyway. Those folding screens are made of plastic and scratch incredibly easily. The £1479 Samsung doesn't fold and doesn't do anything that the £1169 iPhone can't but despite that, it's £310 more expensive.

General Motors are cowards.

In 2001, they were going to make a 450hp V8 hatchback for the road. This is because at the time, they were racing in DTM and wanted to have a road version of their DTM car. It would have had a 4L V8, front engine, rear wheel drive based on this.

Instead, they decided against it for whatever reason and the best version of this car available to the public is a front wheel drive 2L turbo making 160hp. The V8 version would have looked like this

They didn't even have to make it mass production. Mercedes did that exact same thing except actually made the thing. This is what it looks like

So did BMW with the M3 GTR Strassenversion

11 hours ago, Snakecharmed said:

The idea of what it means to "be into tech" is entirely subjective. There are Apple cultists (not the regular users) who would claim to be into tech but they never venture outside of MacRumors.

 

I've mentioned before that I had a former coworker who was "into tech" and a huge HP and Samsung superfan, but wasn't bright enough to realize that the one time it makes complete sense to choose Samsung over HP when they have any competing products (SSDs), he completely screwed the pooch. This was in the SATA 2.5" SSD heyday when Samsung 8x0 Pro SSDs had no equal.

 

Everyone has blind spots. Not everyone will own up to them.

 

Back to the topic, aside from being better than the soft/paper launches that other companies do, these Apple product release announcements are almost always fluff. The only reason I'm even aware of this one is the big deal about the iPhone moving from Lightning to USB-C because it's been discussed everywhere. Thank EU.

Rumours are USB-C is only going to be available in the EU. On the one hand, I can see Apple doing this. See: mmWave 5G only being available in the US and I believe Canada. But also, it seems like a waste of money to not making all of them USB-C, like they did with the iPad Pro. We'll find out soon enough anyway.

Quote

 

The iPhone 15 event will take place on September 12th, 2023, at 1PM ET / 10AM PT. As shown in the invite sent out by Apple, the company has named the event “Wonderlust.” It will take place live from Apple Park in Cupertino, California.

...

One of the biggest changes coming to this year’s iPhone lineup is the addition of USB-C

...

This time around, the most significant changes coming to the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max are reported to be a titanium frame, thinner bezels, and a potentially more expensive price.

 

It's always interesting to see what new and innovative features Samsung are going to put on their phones in 8 months time

There should also be some news on iOS/iPadOS 17 as well as macOS Sonoma, possibly a new iPad, and maybe the M3 announcement for their computers.

And it was only £38.

I really do need proper controller for this. I've been using my Xbone controller, but I'm unable to get one that lasts more than a year before it breaks. I'm not even abusing it, it seems like Microsoft aren't making controllers like they used to.

I'm thinking of getting the full Honeycomb setup because it's great for GA planes as well as Boeings. It's going to be a while before I'm able to buy one, so it looks like no MSFS for me for a while.

Cities Skylines

TreeSize Free.

Cities Skylines:

I named the university after the creator of Spongebob.

Congrats everyone who won prizes.

When is the next event?

Smoked salmons

It's nice that I had good folding weather all weekend. It's a shame I'm a moron and switched my computer off for the first night, not realizing that if I do that, the folding stops. At least I remembered to not switch it off for the other two nights.

WUs I'm getting are pretty inconsistent as far as PPD goes, at least compared to what I'm used to. The last time I folded, I was consistently getting 2.2-2.5M PPD but over the last few days, it's been jumping between 1.2-3.5M PPD.

This is running on empty, stolen intro. I bought some Five Guys because they're new in the area.

Bacon cheeseburger with onion and mushroom is 6/10. Better than McDonalds but the price pushes it down a couple of points. If it were the same price as a Big Mac, then it would be an 9/10. For £1 more I could have got what's basically a very good home made burger.

Fries are 7/10. I don't get the hype. They're the best I've had from a fast food place but could do with some improvement.

Milkshake is 10/10. I'm pretty sure this is just Haagen-Dazs salted caramel ice cream blended with some milk. It's also 8 inches and thick

I was hoping for "good" weather for this and (first is C, second is F)

Normally this time of year, it's a good 10-15c hotter. Pair that with my GPU throwing out 50c air and a well insulated house with no AC and it makes it impossible. Normally when I work my computer this hard in that kind of temperature, the inside of my house gets up to 105-115F with 60-70% humidity. It's literally deadly.

10 hours ago, UltraMega said:

I love Cities Skylines, I have 170 hours in it not counting the game pass version that I started playing on before I bought it on steam. 
 

How many DLCs has it sucked you in for?

I've got these ones