Gift cards are one of the dumbest most brain-dead pieces of scam ever invented. With all kinds of restrictions that resemble "scrip" type payment systems. They only exist to increase a larger entities control over you.
Why take perfectly good cash and change it to something worse in every way? I cannot understand why so many people enthusiastically go out of their way to buy gift cards. Can you take my cash and convert it to something with the same function but with all kinds of restrictions and gotcha's? Sure no problem....
One use for them is to obfuscate my banking information. A few years ago, Sony leaked a ton of Playstation customer information. Since then, if I want to buy games from them, i buy a gift card from someone else, and then use the gift card. It adds a layer of indirection.
Paranoia of the war on drugs is part of it as well. Some are afraid that kids with large sums of cash would spend it on drugs or alcohol and it is more difficult to barter giftcards for drugs.
Not a good reason but it is a real one I have heard.
I have not tested this in real life yet but it seems like all the argument about vendor lock in can be solved, if you bite the bullet and learn basic Kubernetes administration. Kubernetes is FOSS and there are countless Kubernetes as a service providers.
I know there are other issues with Kubernetes but at least its transferable knowledge.
I'm not sure how this is much different then Amazon which has basically monetized the entire Apache Software Foundation and donates a pittance back to them in the single digit millions when they are profiting in the trillions.
Its little things like this that give you laughs. Every company talks about how great their security is. Yet at the same time their CEO is chomping at the bit to cram AI into every aspect of their business. A product that may fundamentally not be able to be secured as we know at this time.
Its not really just that AMD drivers are not that great (they are not) but they have been stable for a long time.
Its that nvidia relentlessly works with game developers to make sure their graphics tricks work with nvidia drivers. Its so obvious you miss it. Look in the nvidia driver updates they always list games that have fixes, performance ect. AMD never (used?) to do this they just gave you the drivers and expected developers to make their game work with it. The same strategy that MS used for their OS back in the 90's.
AMD provides this. Example:
"Fixed Issues and Improvements
Intermittent driver timeout or crash may be observed while playing Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 on some AMD Graphics Products, such as the AMD Ryzen™ AI 9 HX 370.)
Lower than expected performance may be observed in Delta Force on Radeon™ RX 7000 series graphics products.
Intermittent stutter may be observed while playing Marvel Rivals when AMD FidelityFX™ Super Resolution 3 frame generation is enabled. "
Glad to see. Ive been 100% certian that nvidia will ultimately abandon the gfx market since 2022. If AMD doesnt pick up the torch computer gfx will stagnate for at least a decade. Its already regressing.
They definitely do it some, like Starfield came out with FSR out of the box but they didn’t add DLSS for several months. I got Starfield for free when I bought my 7800X3D which was a nice bonus. Definitely to a lesser degree than Nvidia though.
Frankly, this always seemed like dirty hacks - either the game or the drivers don't actually comply woth the graphics API and then the drivers need to hack around that. :P
I don't work in the industry but as I've understood from reading stuff from people that are. Basically the entire industry is dirty hacks from the top down and bottom up.
That is not to say this is good or bad. Just that it appears common.
Even Steve Balmer was smart enough to realize LOC was a dumb metric.
To add some substance. Many regard a great deal of IBM's decline to managements near obsession with developer LOC metrics, driving out skilled employees.
The real thing people miss is not AI replacing Juniors. Its that senior management soured on hiring juniors even a few years before AI, almost across all industries.
AI is now just the scapegoat for an economy wide problem. Execs found "one neat trick", piling junior work on seniors until they quit. While not hiring replacements in order to goose short term profits. Now every company is in the same position where hiring a senior really means hiring 5 seniors to replace the one that had 5 jobs layered on over a few years. This is of course impossible for any mortal to jump into. Now they also dont even have juniors to train up to senior levels.
Maybe its a trick and they are logging all the people on VPN's trying to see if they are blocked over the next 24 hr. Then they can take the data and start blocking it lol. Maybe not lol?
No because it is never a credible bluff. You would not be having the conversation if it was.
In fact having sold stuff If a lead says this, it is a huge red flag for me that I probably don't want to do business with them because they are probably a "vampire customer"
They made the devices. I would say its fair to assume they already had access to the data if they needed it. Other than the fact they legally own it now I don't think this makes much difference from before.
Why are you concerned about china having access to this data anyway? I'm far more concerned about how much access the US gov has to this type of data. They can easily use it against someone in the country they control if they want.
Why take perfectly good cash and change it to something worse in every way? I cannot understand why so many people enthusiastically go out of their way to buy gift cards. Can you take my cash and convert it to something with the same function but with all kinds of restrictions and gotcha's? Sure no problem....
reply