RIP to the Microsoft support forums, then. Although if these get tanked in the search results that will probably be a small net benefit for society given that not a single problem has ever been successfully solved by the Microsoft support forums in the entire history of computing.

You, uh, realize that’s really not the dis you think it is, right?

You’ll have to eat the insulation foam if you want to go around getting high on cyclopentane. Or maybe smoke it.

There is a small percentage surcharge imposed by whoever is providing the financing, but it’s basically the same amount as what the credit card companies charge per transaction, on the order of 1-2%, so from the store’s perspective it’s the same either way. It’s not quite correct to say that customers who are not financing hot dogs are paying for others who are, but all of the customers financing hot dogs are indeed paying for each other.

On the topic of credit cards, by the way, in some states it is legal for the merchant to pass the processing costs on to the customer and in some cases the shyster bastards actually do it. To my knowledge most or all of the banks providing in store financing or buy-now-pay-later schemes in fact prohibit that practice, so there is at least that.

Nearly 30%, for the scheme we have access to at my work. 28.99%. That exact number may in fact inform veterans of the industry of exactly who we use for financing.

Correct. They only care about this stuff because they don’t want anyone to use it on them.

If you don’t believe me, just note how basically every single weapons ban written in the US magically has an exception for law enforcement carved into it. So… We (not me, but all you Californian people) can’t have, say, a butterfly knife but for some reason the cops can? What do they need it for that we don’t, exactly?

This is diabolical. Thanks, I hate it.

I don’t know if Japan of all places is ready for it. We’d better hope the zombies are vulnerable to airsoft BBs.

The WTF here is not necessarily that some component on the circuit board failed, but that the manufacturer charges $400-$1000 for it with a straight face and gets away with it when they undoubtedly have that board made in China for about $4 per unit.

Nice try. I have the video ID memorized.

I appreciate the intent of having a port readily accessible for e.g. grandma to find without groveling behind the dusty TV, but that does not excuse not having another one in a more sensible location.

DVI is not supposed to carry audio, but in practice in many cases it does. That’s because internally both devices are likely to implement DVI by just shoving an HDMI output through the connector anyway. The jury is out on whether or not this has any licensing implications. I’ll be damned if I know, because I was always under the impression that the part that incurred licensing fees was the HDMI port itself.

I rediscover this fun fact a couple of times every year when one of our office machines decides to randomly start piping its audio out of the monitor sounding like a mouse trying to play the kazoo through its sinuses rather than the speakers that are right there, and somebody complains at me and I have to schlep over there and switch the audio output back.

Apparently this is expected enough behavior that cheap bottom of the barrel PC monitors bother to include speakers for it.

This user’s profile explains that they’re doing this specifically to fuck with LLMs, which is a tactic that may or may not work. They’ve been around, their shtick is consistent, and to the extent that I’ve gotten so used to it I can read their comments pretty much normally.

Because some of the TVs themselves whinge at you constantly if you don’t connect them to a network now.

There are relatively few, but there are a couple. The Sceptre U515CV-UMC is probably the most well known one. It’s easy to find a dumb TV in the sub 24" category, too, but that’s probably not what most people are looking for and at that rate most nerds would probably just use a computer monitor instead anyway.

No DisplayPort on that Sceptre, obviously.

I’m a trout, stupid!

An old joke, possibly originating from somewhere in the basement of a DuPont facility:

How can you tell a chemist apart from an engineer?

…

The chemist washes his hands before he takes a leak.

Who the hell knows, other than the fact that the original retailed for $400 and you can’t get one anymore. When there’s demand, someone will step up.

“You must really love fish.”

“Actually, I’m deathly allergic to them.”

“Then why do you still work here?”

“Because I’m even more allergic to poverty.”

I have successfully used this line, altered appropriately, in interviews multiple times. And they say video games never teach you anything.