Hahaha good one!

<3

I’m on Slowroll though.

Other manufacturers did/do parts pairing as well.

Apple also removed a couple of roadblocks for third party parts and you can pair replacement parts on device now.

Is it perfect? No. My point is simply that most other major smartphone manufacturers are no better (remember Google’s Pixel 4a battery performance program?). But around these parts people seem to be prejudiced and maybe have outdated information. I just feel like it’s more of a “pick your poison” instead of a “grass is greener on the other side”.

I think iPhones have one of the best iFixit repairability scores among popular smartphones. The current iPhone 16 Pro scores 7/10, while the Pixel 9 Pro and S25 Ultra only achieve 5/10. Parts - first or third party - are broadly available.

Neither are “normies” “ready” for degoogled Android.

Speculative execution seems to be the source of a lot of security flaws in many different CPUs. CPU manufacturers seem to be so focused on winning the performance race that security aware architecture design takes the backseat.

Also, it’s more and more clear that it’s a bad idea that websites can just execute arbitrary code. The JS APIs are way too powerful and complex nowadays. Maybe websites and apps should’ve stayed separate concepts instead of merging into “web apps”.

I also wonder if it’d be possible to design a CPU so vulnerabilities like these are fixable instead of just “mitigable”. Similar to how you can reprogram an FPGA. I have no clue how chip design works though, but please feel free to reply if you know more about this.

Sounds about right. There are some valid and good use cases for “AI”, but the majority is just buzzword marketing.

That’s so stupid, also because they have fixes for Zen and Zen 2 based Epyc CPUs available.

Intel vs. AMD isn’t “bad guys” vs. “good guys”. Either company will take every opportunity to screw their customers over. Sure, “don’t buy Intel” holds true for 13th and 14th gen Core CPUs specifically, but other than that it’s more of a pick your poison.

The I225 has several issues in all of its revisions, that’s true. There’s still better and worse implementations, and ASUS seems to have gotten it “more” wrong.

Anyway, the Reddit post I linked to includes a workaround, you might want to try it since you have the same issue.

Should work fine, especially as this mainboard has Realtek ethernet (ASUS sets up Intel I225 ethernet in a way that can cause issues, see this post on Reddit).

You can use https://watchparty.me/ as long as your upstream bandwidth is fast enough for amount of friends * bitrate, or you can selfhost it or get a premium account so their servers stream your file (so you only have to have bandwidth for a single stream yourself).

What the fuck is happening to the internet recently?

Twitter and Reddit CEOs completely losing their minds, and now Google of all companies wants to lock down the whole internet?

This isn’t even close to being okay. It’s 100% bullshit.

Portal 2 is really cheap when on sale these days, so it’s probably not worth the hassle.

If you really want to though, you can get a somewhat recent cracked build of Portal 2 (one with split screen support, which was added years ago iirc), and then use Remote Play Together (ironically a Steam feature, just search the internet on how it works with non Steam games).

Or you can both have it cracked, and then play via ZeroTier or Hamachi (or whatever folks use these days) and use the in-game console to connect to your buddy (or vice-versa), search for “Portal 2 coop lan” or whatever.