AndrewDavis

I remember getting a Radeon card on sale for about $180AUD in 2012ish. And 4 years later looking for an upgrade and discovering the cheapest higher performing card was at least $300 Aud.

I eventually upgraded to an RX 570 in 2018, and hit the same problem 5 years later.

So as far as loe to mid range cards are concerned you can wait 5 years and still have to pay more to replace it for an upgrade.

Another approach is to incentivise middle to high income earners like Australia has done re novated leases on EVs being exempt from fringe benefits tax.

Lower income people aren't buying new cars, they buy second hand.

So be incentivising others to purchase new EVs over combustion, it creates a supply for the second hand market in 5-10 year horizon for those lower income earners. And while subsidies are in place for new models, this further pushes down the price of used EVs.

It'll be interesting what happens to Australias second hand EV market when the subsidies end in 2029.

In Australia it's not uncommon on moderate temperature sunny days for the wholesale price to enter the negatives. Lots of solar production, with minimal heating and cooling demands.

Many plans offer a 3 hour period where electricity is free to encourage shifting your load to that time. Which is amazing if you're able to charge an electric vehicle in that time, a standard single phase charger could provide 21kw/h in that 3 window all for free.

> A few public servants in Australia

A few public servants in Australia? I'm not sure what you mean?

Superannuation may have been limited to a public servants and employees of large corporations in the 1970s, but was expanded to blue collar workers in the 1980s (see industry super funds), and mandatory for all employers in the 1990s. Almost every worker in Australia has a superannuation fund. Whether a given person's fund is invested in fossil fuels is another questio (mine has a radio button to choose green only investments or not).

I wonder if they'll have the same impact they have had in Australia, BYD's everywhere the last year or so.

As of this week the BYD Atto 1 is the cheapest new car in Australia, not (just) cheapest electric car ... cheapest car. $19,990 drive away (ie including taxes and registration). It's not the best car but in a city where most families have two cars having one of them an Atto 1 is a value choice.

On 1.4 "Integration of Fixed Low-Capacity OS Drives"

eMMC bad because un-upgradeable and/or repairable. m.2 bad because if it wasn't there a user could put a big storage device there.

I'm not even sure what the author wants here?

My recommendation for some time gas been get the best value smart TV and don't connect it to the internet. Use devices you trust to play content. Problem solved.

... But this. Is crazy, but has been possible for some time. Years ago I plugged a spare mouse at office in, and it happened to be Razor branded. Within a few seconds I had razor software popup on my screen (at least) asking me to click a button to install their suite. I was horrified.

While I can't speak for other states (though I'd be surprised if they were different), power bills in Victoria are split into supply and usage. Eg each day costs 90c, then 30c per kw/h.

So you could eliminate the usage costs, but not the supply charge.

The whole reason for this is Australia's power grid is a market, where suppliers put in bids for how much they can produce, and at what price. And AEMO then selects the cheapest way to meet demand (paying the marginal price), but also expects residential rooftop solar a given.

As a result we often have an excess of power driving wholesale pricing into the negatives.

The free power is a way to increase usage at times when we're most likely to have negative pricing, and encourage use of high energy appliances like dishwashers etc to be run during that period to reduce demand the rest of the time.

I really liked the land usage discussion. That (for the US) if you took the land currently being used to grow crops for ethanol based motor fuels. Turned them into solar farms you'd cover 80% of current grid demand.

I was already pro renewables for a myriad of reasons. But that put the scale into a much better perspective.

This is something I've never understood. If consent is remaining on the line after a message "this call may be recorded (for training and quality purposes)", the simple answer is in places where you have to have consent have the phone send a similar message.

I'm now at the point I research parts to see where the LED control is stored.

My keyboard LED is controlled internally without software. My mouse requires software to set, but there is open source rgb control software that was trivial to install and set once, uninstall and forget.

The only one I got wrong was my GPU, which apparently isn't rgb but just has a strip of coloured light beaming at all times.

Thankfully my case isnt mesh everything, so most light is kept inside.

> Leave your phone on silent permanently, setup your emergency contacts like partner and kids to ring on silent, and turn off all notifications except email and SMS/WhatsApp. That’s the key to a simple life. You won’t miss anything important and that realization is the most freeing

This is pretty similar to my setup. Always on do not disturb. Typically my family and close friends communicate through a chat app, that doesn't make sound but if it's time sensitive an sms or call will make sound for starred contacts.

Back on the day when phones had notification LEDs I'd setup apps to have specific colours. These days with always on OLED displays I use an app aodNotify to setup a a little spinning circle on the screen. Purple is family/friend chat app, blue is a call, green sms etc.

Everything else I periodically poll for information. ie I go out of my way to check emails etc

I had a perfectly functional Galaxy A71 this time last year, still had great battery life, etc.

I had to replace it because it only has 5 years of support. Samsung offers 7 years of support but only on their top tier phones.

Google offer 7 years, even on their A series phones so I chose a pixel 9a. It's fine, I don't love it or hate it, but it's not doing anything I care about better than my last phone.

Wow! Never thought I'd see my little Alma Mater on Hacker News!