bluescrn (u/bluescrn)

bluescrn commented on UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16 alecmuffett.com/article/1... · Posted by u/nvarsj

idle_zealot · 4 days ago

> And who gets to decide which platforms count as 'social media'?

The voting public via their elected representatives, as with literally all laws.

bluescrn · 3 days ago

The very people with the most to gain from silencing dissidents or suppressing certain viewpoints given the power to restrict access to selected social media platforms while encouraging the use of others.

None of this recent crackdown on social media is really about 'protecting the kids', is it?

bluescrn commented on UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16 alecmuffett.com/article/1... · Posted by u/nvarsj

idle_zealot · 4 days ago

It's way easier to justify banning social media entirely than banning it for under-sixteens. Paradoxically it infringes on freedom less, as it bans a type of business model for being too harmful rather than restricting people's rights to view and share information.

bluescrn · 4 days ago

And who gets to decide which platforms count as 'social media'?

This is a problem with Australia's attempt to ban kids from it, where there's some surprising exemptions from the restrictions.

bluescrn commented on Bikeshedding, or why I want to build a laptop geohot.github.io//blog/je... · Posted by u/cspags

RealityVoid · 8 days ago

Electronic devices usually get thrown away because nobody wants them anymore because they are obsolete. Having removable RAM will do you little good if you can only fit ddr3.

bluescrn · 8 days ago

Easily replaceable batteries would certainly extend the useful life of many devices, though.

bluescrn commented on BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive evclinic.eu/2025/12/04/20... · Posted by u/mikelabatt

jinzo · 10 days ago

Is it insane? I'm working in this field, and I know how quickly you can come up with such a number if you are BMW and you are deathly afraid that someone will get electrocuted while working on your car, driving it or rescuing someone in a crash. It's a safety and liability issue, where they go to great lengths to actually re-certify a battery after crash. The whole thing is setup so, that even the dummy electricians in an average BMW shop can safely certify that this battery is still safe. It's a lot easier to kill yourself (or someone else) when working on a EV Battery than wet belt. Also a lot harder to repair said battery than wet belt. And that goes for all EVs and manufacturers that actually care about people (Tesla, demonstrably does not).

bluescrn · 10 days ago

Many people drive older cars worth less than £4000.

Sticking to old/cheap cars seems like an increasingly good option with so many scare stories about the pain and extreme expense of getting modern cars, particularly EVs, repaired.

And the impending ban on new ICE vehicles seems likely to lead to more older cars being kept on the road for a lot longer.

bluescrn commented on Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm theverge.com/report/82065... · Posted by u/evolve2k

levocardia · 12 days ago

Valve is one of the few companies regularly seen on HN where the headline is something like "[company] is secretly doing something really great" as opposed to "[company] is secretly doing something evil"

bluescrn · 11 days ago

It's an interesting case study. They're essentially another 'App Store middleman' raking in a huge 30% cut for selling games digitally. But they do enough really good stuff to keep both gamers and developers generally very happy.

bluescrn commented on Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months pcpartpicker.com/trends/p... · Posted by u/zekrioca

lmc · 12 days ago

I just checked my go-to stores in Europe. Holy shit. I bought a 5200-speed 16GB DDR5 kit in October for 55 eur. Now it's selling for 240 eur. The 6000-speed model is now 390 eur.

bluescrn · 11 days ago

Starting to make Apple's RAM upsell prices look competitive...

bluescrn commented on Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business investors.micron.com/news... · Posted by u/simlevesque

httpz · 12 days ago

I'm half joking but if this AI boom continues we're going to see Nvidia exit from consumer GPU business. But Jensen Huang will never do that to us... (I hope)

bluescrn · 12 days ago

Might almost be a good thing, if it means abandoning overhyped/underperforming high-end game rendering tech, and taking things in a different direction.

The push for 4K with raytracing hasn't been a good thing, as it's pushed hardware costs way up and led to the attempts to fake it with AI upscaling and 'fake frames'. And even before that, the increased reliance on temporal antialiasing was becoming problematic.

The last decade or so of hardware/tech advances haven't really improved the games.

bluescrn commented on After Windows Update, Password icon invisible, click where it used to be support.microsoft.com/en-... · Posted by u/zdw

askl · 13 days ago

> When Windows 12 is announced, Windows 11 may finally be usable.

I'm not using windows anymore, but at least since Windows XP I felt like only every other release of Windows was usable. So my upgrade path was XP, Vista, 10, completely skipping over the bad releases Vista and 8. So just skip over 11, Windows 12 might be an okay release again.

bluescrn · 13 days ago

Not holding out much hope for a good Win12 given the priorities seem to be to wreck the UI/UX, remove customisation options, turn things into advertising billboards, and force AI into everything (even bloody Notepad).

bluescrn commented on Last Week on My Mac: Losing confidence eclecticlight.co/2025/11/... · Posted by u/frizlab

usefulcat · 13 days ago

I regularly wait almost a year after a given version of MacOS has been released before upgrading. I don't care about new features, and I already spend all day fixing bugs of my own creation. That leaves very little time for debugging other people's software.

bluescrn · 13 days ago

Meanwhile in Windows world, Win11 has been out for what, 4 years?, and we’re still clinging to Win10