Inching closer to the Man in The High Castle timeline, I see.

I think they absolutely can have deep hooks, but how much sway those hooks have somewhat depends on how much stake they own in the company, which AFAIK is undisclosed.

Slate Auto is ultimately a standard corporation so I trust them about as far as I can throw them, which is why I framed the point on privacy in the post body as if they follow through.

It is entirely possible that the privacy aspect is purely a pre-release marketing thing, and at the point of release the story suddenly changes and a modem is integrated.

Bezos is one investor of many, unfortunately, but I don’t believe it’s known how much say they have in the company or not.

There have been a handful of open source car projects like the Tabby EVO, but most of them seem to have stalled out somewhat. The Tabby EVO website appears to be down, though you can see it through the wayback machine.

Kit cars based on common off-the-shelf parts may be an easier route for people wanting to build their own car from scratch.

Gnome is quite good with dash-to-dock and the system tray plugins, but it does kinda suck both of those need to be plugins.

If they really don’t include a modem as they claim, then it would be truly fundamentally different, and apple’s privacy claims would not be an apt comparison.

If a user does not install the Slate app, there would be literally no way for the vehicle to collect any information whatsoever, it would be like driving an EV from the 90’s, if they had better batteries back then. That would make it stand out as the only privacy respecting modern production vehicle I’m aware of, besides toys for the rich like a Morgan.

My family got this set off craigslist to replace an objectively better dining table set that just needed to be refinished. Tried using cushions with them, but they were still a bit uncomfortable.

Saying that, the OP set would unfortunately be quite the upgrade compared to all the MDF and engineered wood that’s so common nowadays :(

As a non-German who has never seen one of those, that actually looks quite nice, I’d gladly put that in my house :p

I’m aware you started it asking about AM6, but I was responding to your comment farther below about regretting going with AM4.

I’m basically just making the case that you didn’t really make that big a mistake going with AM4, is all.

I think there’s some merit in the saying “None of us are making it out of here alive, so be as weird as you want to.”

But if it really bothers your SO then I understand if you’d rather not.

I was using the term upgrade just in reference to the relative performance delta between the two platforms from the perspective of someone deciding between which one to invest in. When I personally am making a buying decision between different tiers of equipment, I think of the more expensive option in terms of ‘if it’s worth the upgrade’, even before any purchase has been made, if that makes sense.

You mentioned that you regret buying into a dead platform, AM4. AM6 does not yet exist, so your only other option when building/buying a new PC was AM5, and I’m pointing out that had you gone that route, it wouldn’t have made a monumental difference in most average gaming scenarios. It only would’ve made a large-ish difference unless you were also able to afford a top of the line GPU and/or stuck with lower resolutions.

Did you mean that you wish you had stuck with whatever you had before you built your AM4 system and waited until AM6?

I’m not sure I understand, you said before you were prioritizing value and longevity. AM4 is the value king, and will last for many years into the future, especially as you have an affordable upgrade path to the AM4 X3D CPUs.

AM5 would only be a meaningful upgrade if you had fairly specific requirements, which would be if you prioritize low resolutions for high FPS monitors (with at least a 180hz refresh rate or above), and were able to also afford a top end GPU so that the CPU and RAM actually become the limiting factor for what the framerate will be.

Is the above scenario what you are targeting? Because if not, an average or good value AM5 system paired with the same GPU you have now would result in very little difference in actual performance, since most games will max out your GPU long before the CPU or RAM speeds can even come into play, and that will hold true going forward as well, since future games are going to be pushing the GPU harder and harder, meaning that is almost always going to be your bottleneck unless you lower the resolution to like 720p and put the graphics on low.

The PC industry is always going to try to push a sense of FOMO onto you for not having the latest system, but in practice old systems last a long time now that Moore’s law is effectively dead, and the pace if improvements has stagnated. We’re now in an era of computing where systems can effectively last virtually a decade between upgrades, and prioritizing the latest and most ‘future proof’ system now may only put off the need to upgrade by a year or two at most, meaning it may last 11 or 12 years instead of 10.

Future proofing isn’t generally worth it, IMHO. I doubt the difference in performance between a top end am4 CPU and a top end am5 system will be great enough that one can play a game well and the other can’t.

And high-end CPU power is generally only really taken advantage of by a small number of games, or at lower resolutions where the game can become CPU bound and push high framerates for high refresh rate monitors.

If you use a 1440p or 4k monitor, then an old CPU is usually more than adequate and won’t be the limiting factor; it’s the GPU that’ll be the bottleneck.

I find it’s better to wait until there’s a significant enough jump in performance to where the upgrade will provide a truly meaningful benefit, and there are games on the market that truly require that extra performance.

Are you often encountering games that your currenct CPU is not able to handle?

They are useful for sun protection in places with a high UV index, as well.

Still waiting for gloomwood (spiritual successor to Thief) to come out of early access. Probably will be a few years yet, tho.

GIMP is honestly a lot better than it used to be, especially with the g’mic plugin, which is insanely powerful.

For Photoshop users, there’s also photogimp, which makes gimp have a Photoshop layout and keyboard shortcuts.

Though personally I use krita most of the time, which has g’mic built in nowadays.

One of those spray-can extension poles would probably work pretty well.

Oof. Well, it hallucinated that (please don’t trust AI summaries, they are often wrong).

It’s a totally from scratch code-base, it’s not based on any existing protocol.

You are describing a Free 2 play game monetized with micro transactions.

At least in Europe, the Stop Killing Games group would argue that those micro transactions would be considered buying a perpetual license to that good (the skin/character), and thus it would be a breach of contract for the publisher to arbitrarily remove your ability to access that content. They would need an end of life plan so the buyer could reasonably still access the goods they purchased after the publisher drops support.

Only a truly free game where no money changes hands would be exempt from the legislation, or perhaps a game that was subscription based up-front, as then it makes clear you are only purchasing access to the content for a finite amount of time.

Thanks for mentioning harper, hadn’t heard of it until now.