I don’t see them ever working in city traffic because as much as I hate to admit it, you literally need to break traffic laws to get around sometimes, especially during rush hour. In like 2017 I took an Uber to a concert and it was when they were doing extremely early prototypes of self driving cars. Didn’t even know I was taking a self driving car until I got in.

This thing couldn’t drive on highways so we went downtown instead and it waited to yield for a left hand turn for no joke like 10 minutes before it was possible. Bunch of people just honking and going around us (illegally). The only viable way to take that turn is to creep forward until you’re a sitting duck in the middle of the intersection, then gun it and run the red light.

This also is all in Pittsburgh which we have some of the oldest and most fucked roads because of the geography and the paths for them were laid out in the late 1700s / early 1800s. Uber picked Pittsburgh because our roads were the most “challenging” to learn on and do R&D then one of their cars killed a pedestrian who was walking and they canned the whole project.

It’s really dumb but it holds true. I work for a company that profits tens of millions per year, and we’re owned by one guy. I’ve worked at places that are owned by hedge funds or giant corporations like GE and you can just tell the difference. Here I’ve been told that if the shop needs something, it’s basically a blank check. The owner gave everyone in the company a $3 raise last year, and we get a 10% bonus of your salary annually as a profit sharing initiative. Annual raises are good, wages are excellent, benefits are some of the best in the country and they do everything they can to keep them as a low cost. We just happen to manufacture things that nobody else in the country does.

Compared to other other more typical companies it’s really night and day. I used to get a 3% annual raise and a “I can’t get you more even though I want to”. And some of the shittiest health insurance imaginable. My coworker broke his foot and they wouldn’t wait on him until he saw a specialist like wtf he literally just needed a cast

Just throwing it out there but why not go DDR4? Your motherboard and CPU might be slightly older but I’ve literally used the same mobo for like 10 years. Currently I have a Ryzen 5800x, Radeon 9070xt, 32gb ddr4. I upgraded the CPU in 2020 and the GPU this spring, selling my 6700xt to make up some of the hurt from GPU prices.

I can play cyberpunk on like max settings. The rig works great on Linux. I don’t know how much of a difference DDR5 really makes since I’ve never had it but I feel like it’s getting into diminishing returns for PC gaming, it can’t really be noticeable that frames load 5-10% faster or whatnot.

On top of that, the 5800x3D is still regularly recommended despite being 4 years old. For arc raiders and older titles, some slightly older hardware could do wonders for you. I’d probably go this route than dropping $2k on a pre-built unless you really want Nvidia for some reason.

I’m very pleased with the specs I listed, like I said I can play the newest titles on max settings. You can prob build it for somewhere around $1k, mostly due to GPU prices. And if you build it yourself you get a better power supply, cabling, case, etc.

On the topic of garbage cans, I love my giant ass contractor bin meant for like construction sites in my kitchen. I take trash out once a week, it’s great.

Hello fellow yinzer, I agree with all that you said. Summer Lee is great. Happy to vote for her

It’s very new technology to reduce overall energy costs of the entire building.

So imagine instead of two 30A circuits you had two 10A circuits.

I’m not so sure. I’m involved in power, cooling, HVAC of data centers as an electrician. Some of these server racks are all liquid cooled and not like an AIO you slap in a desktop, it needs to handle tens of thousands of kw of heat per rack. They don’t run on typical home power, often running on high voltage like 700v DC as a source, are loud and power hungry, relying on industrial grade UPSes and power distribution units or diesel generators in the event of loss of power. They’re built for hundreds of gigabits per second networking via fibers.

I’m not involved in the nitty gritty of what every motherboard or GPU is like but these places absolutely design high level industrial enterprise gear that is specific to doing the task they need. It would take some massive redesign to be able to re-use boards but anything’s possible I guess if a company had a method of taking decommissioned gear.

The problem is they say “we will buy out your entire production capability for the next 4-5 years” to RAM and GPU and chips manufacturers, so consumer grade equipment is kind of an afterthought and thus they scale it back and jack up the prices

My friend’s boomer aged parents got a divorce at like age 75. Nobody really saw it coming. His dad sent us a picture of some stew he tried to make and I didn’t even know you could make stew so bad. I could just tell from the picture. My chef roommate went over and showed him some instructions and tips on how to cook.

I know the days of driving to the factory when it’s dark out and leaving when it’s dark are coming for me soon. It sucks. I try to cozy up and do more comfortable leisure activities in the winter, esp with my dog who loves to cuddle. It’s written into us as a species.

People say that a lot about harbor freight / cheap tools but what actually happens is you end up always having either the cheap one or then two of the same thing. It’s actually really hard to break a tool. I am always working on stuff and I’ve only actually broken a tool to the point of being unusable like a handful of times.

I’m not saying go out and get top notch stuff either. My tools collection is a random mish mash of stuff I’ve acquired over the years. I am absolutely terrible about losing drill bits so I tend to buy cheap ones for example lol. I agree second hand tools from flea markets, pawn shops, or yard sales is a great way to start a collection.

Also harbor freight has really stepped up their game in the past few years. They still have the reputation of being the budget brand, which they are, but there’s some great stuff there. I personally don’t like the feel of some of their hand tools, but I just got a carpenter’s vise that feels like top of the line despite being $70.

My dick claims nuclear fart by my ass

If there’s a 200A subpanel that is kinda weird tbh. But if they only have lights and a few receptacles or whatever on it, then it’s effectively drawing no current and can be ignored. If it was for things like welders and saws, there’d still be outlets for that stuff mounted on the walls. Probably a grow operation tbqh but no concern now that it’s gone. At least you have a big ass sub if you want to add some more workshop type stuff

Seems very region dependant. Unions are notoriously hard to get into around here for highly skilled trades like plumbers, electricians, steam fitters. There’s a few like sheet metal workers, boilermakers, carpentry or masons that would probably take anyone, but I have friends in them and they are absolutely worked to death. Body crushing 60+ hour weeks every week, one kid I know fought through cancer as a 20 year old in the boilermakers, dunno how he did it but he’s better now.

The union plumber I know is similarly worked like crazy the past few years. Seems like if you’re good and get your journeyman card and then master’s license like he just did, they’re gonna dump a lot on you. He barely has time to see his kids because he also lives over an hour from the city so he commutes that each way, sometimes is fixing a water main break in the middle of the night in the winter. It reminds me of my dad, he was always out of state in the IBEW when I was a kid.

Trades can be rough, on the body, on the mind, no time for yourself and you get covered in crap a lot, construction can be a culture shock, etc. I’ve worked in some of the sketchiest steel mills in the country. You do not wanna be even near a pickle line haha. Hot, humid, sticky, nasty, acidic, just gross the whole time. You can taste it in the air.

Think of the worst dude from your highschool, that’s what most construction sites are lol. Guaranteed you’re gonna have an asshole for a boss quite a few times over the years.

I’d encourage anyone to take up the career path if it’s something that interests them. Just know what you’re signing up for is all I can say. I love it and don’t want to do anything else. I’ve turned down promotions to work in the office because I just don’t see myself as that guy, maybe when I get older.

Unions can be tough to get into. I took my apprenticeship test twice for the IBEW (electricians), passed twice, had experience the second time and my dad was in it for decades which is some sort of plus (even tho I think it shouldn’t be because it leads to nepotism for selecting apprentices), still didn’t get selected either time.

This was 10 or 12 years ago so it’s way too late in my career now to go back to starting apprentice wages. I fell into a niche of controls work anyway that they wouldn’t recognize my hours.

Sucks, but it is what it is. Unions aren’t the end all be all. I’d encourage folks to find something else in the trades if getting selected for an apprenticeship doesn’t work out.

There is a massive gap of skilled labor, experience, and knowledge in the trades right now. What I mean by that is there are green workers and first year people in them everywhere you look but not as many experienced folks. Especially with all the boomers now retiring. Getting experience is what counts right now.

This is the dumbest shit. I’m doing home reno stuff constantly and we live in a world where everyone looks up info online constantly. Sometimes I need to reference an old reddit thread or whatever. It’s usually better than whatever garbage Google AI spits out at you by default.

Sure just guide people to doing stuff wrong. I’m so glad a few decades ago we invented this amazing source of knowledge and information and communication that is easily accessible for the first time in human history and yeah let’s just purposefully fuck it up.

Seriously, it is a huge pain in the ass exploring a niche subject and you get some scrambled comment because “reddit bad”.

I did this a few years ago. I knew as soon as I walked out of the interview I didn’t want the job, it was literally just stripping cables building harnesses all day in a room in the back by myself. They also started at like 4 AM “to beat the traffic” and it was in a part of town that would be miserable to drive in the snow to. Lots of turns and bendy roads through the woods.

But for whatever reason they still offered me a higher pay rate than my job at the time which included control panel assembly, wiring, fabrication, testing, design work. I still acted interested and had them put the offer in writing and egged the dude on for like 3+ weeks as if I was interested.

Reason I did this was I knew I was quitting my job, and there was a different one I had interviewed at that paid better than both, has way more responsibilities and career opportunities, is way more interesting custom work where every day is something completely different. Also my old job knew I was quitting so it felt better to have something in my back pocket if they just told me to get fucked. But after my first interview the manager wanted me to come back for a second round to meet his boss and carve out my role in more depth.

Well they were both in the field so scheduling another interview took another few weeks. I felt a little bad for the wiring harness guy especially when I finally called him and told him I accepted my current job, he was like yeah I was holding off on making offers because I thought we were gonna hire you. He was a super nice guy

Oh well, life goes on, I’m sure they found someone. Companies do this kind of crap to people every day.

I have 8k albums in my personal collection, but I’ve been building it for years, most everything is pirated or shared between friends or purchased on bandcamp. I stream it while via plexamp when I’m working or not at home, it’s very nice.

I can also connect to my friends Plex servers. My one friend has 35k albums.

in case someone doesn’t believe me haha

Edit: damn he’s up to 39k

I did something that you might find viable as an option but there was a lot of work involved to do it, including running wires through my walls and automating some things and writing scripts. But I have a button in my living room that turns on my gaming PC and I can play all my games over LAN via KVM

So basically when I press the button, I have a custom launch screen I built that times down from 30 seconds. This means if I turn my PC on at my desk I can still just choose desktop and use it as normal. If I choose “big mode” or let it time out then it runs a script and turns off PC monitors, sets my video to the TV, sets my audio sink to the TV’s HDMI port (pulseaudio is a motherfucker, why do I have dozens of dynamic audio sinks??), and launches emulationstation. Which is a very nice UI that launches all emulators from NES era up to PS3 and Nintendo Switch. It also launches all my steam games. I use the USB ports on the KVM for controllers.

I fine tuned all my emulators quite a bit. Upscaled graphics to 4K, a couple scripts to make sure controllers don’t get stuck to only controlling emulationstation after launching a game, my original wavebird GameCube controller was pretty bad about this haha. I think it had something to do with the adapter. Most of them work great though, esp if it’s just wired straight to USB

The KVM I got is great. It does 4K @ 60hz with no latency that I can tell. Here is a link. $160 was a small price to pay to be able to play all my games in the living room with a banging sound system, etc. https://a.co/d/07NeJ4NH

I did have to run a dedicated Ethernet wire just for this. It goes from the transmitter to the receiver through my basement. I’m considering running a long USB from the receiver back through my basement to plug in controllers next to the couch, but that’s down the line a bit once I start running speaker cables for surround sound.

I text plenty of people as well. It’s a good mix of close friends and relative strangers and everywhere in between.

If my account got banned I’d make a new one. My husband has done this several times lol

I’m not exactly tryin to sing discord’s praises or anything, it has its problems as a service, especially in regards to privacy. I just think having friends outweighs being a (privacy focused) loner

I just looked and there’s 86 members in the discord. The channels we have are vidya games, music, TV & anime, IRL happenings, fishing, creative endeavors & self released music, news around the world, specs / PC tech posting, food, sports, I think you see where I’m goin with this. It’s very active, and a 86 member group chat sounds absolutely miserable. I have discord notifications turned off, I log in every once in a while as I don’t even have social media any more.

If someone likes anime and doesn’t like sports, they can tune out of those conversations all together v easily by muting a channel

Like it or not discord fulfills a niche that goes beyond texting or social media, which I think fills the role a million times worse as it’s just posting updates for some likes and random ass comments compared to conversations