I know for sure Intel server CPUs (for example, Xeons) don’t have integrated graphics and somebody else mentioned that many Ryzen CPUs don’t either.

That said, I’m not sure if they need integrated graphics to have hardware decoding for certain video codecs (though it makes sense that those things come together). Personally when I was looking into buying a mini-PC to transform into a media server for my living room, I made sure to check in the CPU specs if it had both integrated graphics (as it’s connected to my TV) and hardware decoding for the most recent codecs (I ended up going for a mini-PC with an N100 processor, since it has all that plus its power consumption is pretty low with a TDP of 6W so I can leave it always on as it also doubles as homeserver).

I actually have a Mini-PC with an N100 CPU and no dedicated GPU as media server and it uses very little CPU (less than 20%) whilst playing 1080p video even with a torrent server over a wireguard VPN running on the background.

You don’t really need much CPU or GPU for playing or streaming videos from compress video files as long as you have hardware decoding on either processing unit (just make sure it implements all the way up to the AV1 coded).

You only need lots of CPU or GPU power if the codec you’re decoding from or encoding to is not implemented in hardware since in that case it will use software decoding or encoding so it’s down to raw CPU or GPU power.

In fact if all you want is a media server that solution I have is probably one of the best ones, mainly because it uses very little power (tops at 25W, usually much less) and runs silent, which is why I can have it in my living room using it as a media player connected to my TV, and with a wireless remote people can’t really tell it’s a PC since it just looks and works like a store bought media player rather than one I put together myself.

However that option means buying new stuff, and I can see the value in using old hardware if you have it around, plus the old hardware will still likely be more powerful so you can also use it for more demanding stuff or just more stuff at the same time, which is why I didn’t suggest it and instead just suggested some tweaks to make that old hardware consume less and make less noise.

underclock and undervolt

If I’m not mistake only hobbyist level motherboards let you control the voltages and if one knows enough to get one of those they probably don’t need the advice I gave.

Also it’s hard to end up with a non-working or unstable configuration with underclocking, whilst it’s pretty easy to do so with undervoltage.

That said, for those who know what they’re doing, your suggestion definitely delivers lowers temperatures than underclocking alone though at the risk of a less stable system (which can be ameliorated with proper stress testing).

For anybody not doing generative AI with it and not running massive loads on it, if you’re going to use an old gaming PC as a home server, at least replace the graphics card with a cheap one with no fans or use the integrated graphics on your CPU (something I believe pretty much all consumer CPUs of the last two decades have) and underclock the CPU if you don’t need full processing power since even small reductions in clock speed can significantly reduce the maximum temperature.

Each “bit” in the architecture is mainly related to how many different memory positions you can address with a CPU opcode (i.e. an assembly command) that needs to access memory or with a CPU register that holds an memory address (so an 8 bit register can only address 256 memory positions, a 16 bit one 65,538 memory positions, a 32 bit one 4,294,967,296 memory positions and so on) - basically every additional bit in the register size of a CPU that addresses memory roughly doubles the memory that CPU can access and thus use (not considering hacks to go around those limits, such as the Spectrum 128K had).

Meanwhile Moore’s Law predicts that “the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles about every two years” which for integrated circuits roughly means that every two years the amount of memory that can be in the same integrated circuit area doubles.

So if Moore’s Law kept working, each architecture bit roughly gives you two more years until the availability of memory catches up- This means that the transition from 32-bit to 64-bit architectures per Moore’s Law gave us 64 years until we have to move to an architecture with more bits because memory available is so big that CPUs are unable to use so much memory.

Were we are now, 64 bits is enough to address 8 Exabytes of memory.

That said, extrapolating from the current trend in growth of memory in PCs, we will reach the point when we will start hitting the constraints of that in … NEVER - thanks to the AI bubble the newer PCs are coming out with the same or less memory than the previous generation, so the trend of available memory is not upwards but downwards.

All my Windows games that I launch from Lutris (which are most, since I tend to avoid Steam and prefer GOG) are launched by default inside a Firejail container configured amongst other things to have no networking enabled.

All you need to do for it is to setup a “command prefix” with firejail and its launch parameters at the Lutris level and it becomes the default one for all games.

So yeah, this runs Wine inside an actual security solution and since it’s setup at the level or the launcher I use, it does it for all the games I launch from it.

The kernel in Android is Linux but the rest of the OS is not.

In my previous post I meant Linux as the whole OS rather merelly the kernel.

Even in the embedded space Linux is not just the kernel but also at minimum the common libraries and utilities (for example ARMbian is a distro for ARM-based SBCs).

I get the impression that, just like it did on the server-side, Linux has also taken over most of the embedded computing space (except for the smaller microcontrollers that don’t even have an OS).

So that just leaves the Desktop and Mobile Devices.

Well, as two people already pointed out, turns out somebody got Linux to run on the 8-bit ATMega1284p microcontroller which comes in a DIP package, though 44 pin rather than 32.

Not quite just a transistor but maybe something like this (an SOC with 32MB ram which costs about $5 in bulk) though it does require quite a bit of additional electronics to work.

Also somebody also made an embedded Linux for the ESP32-S3 (which is even cheaper and doesn’t require anywhere as much auxiliary electronics).

PS: Yeah, I got the joke. Just pointing out that the reality itself is quite impressive.

I wasn’t aware the US had a Duty Tax for some things that was a fixed minimum price.

Until now, all I had ever seen and learned about Duty Tax and Tariffs is that they’re a percentage on top of total price of a product delivered at the border (so basically factory price + shipping to border costs).

Then again I’m in Europe and only ever imported consumer electronics in bulk here for a small business I had years ago.

That very much depends on the country you’re in: @boonhet@sopuli.xyz found them at €0.13/watt sold to consumers in Estonia, which is an EU country which has 0% VAT on solar panels whilst the EU itself has 0% Duty Tax (aka tariffs) so there is no tax at all on them and their price is just factory price in China + shipping costs (probably by ship, which isn’t actually that much when shipping full container loads of them) + profit margin for importers and sellers.

Even in the US, given that Duty Tax if applied to Purchase Price + Shipping Costs To US Border, if the purchase price of the panels goes down, the price in the US after Duty Tax will go down, though it’s ultimatelly bound by Shipping Costs To US Border (which aren’t actually all that much if shipping full container loads of them from Shenzheng by boat). The point being that the Duty Tax for solar panels would have to be many 100s or percent for them to never be lower than $0.35/watt when factory prices in China are already below $0.12/watt.

I think that the reason for US prices is all the intermediaries adding their margins on top of the base product price.

I checked around in Alibaba and for bulk orders directly from a big manufacturer (with EXW terms, meaning pick-up at the factory, so no shipping and no taxes included) it was actually less that $0.12/watt, quite a bit less if enough units were ordered.

Such consumer price in Estonia kinda dovetails with the indicative prices per watt that I’ve seen in Alibaba being less than $0.12/watt, as even though Estonia has 0% VAT on solar panels and the EU has no Duty Tax on them so there’s no tax paid, what’s left that’s on top of the factory price (so the shipping costs + a little margin for the seller) still requires the panels to be less than $0.12 at the factory to end up sold to consumers in Estonia for €0.13

It’s one of the handful of things that make me be ashamed of my countrymen.

You will notice that it’s such a stupidly car crazy country that 2x the official car parking capacity of that street is used by having all the cars on the right side parked on top of the sidewalk (something offically against the rules but totally normal in Portugal).

Last time they tried it for gaming - with Stadia - it failed miserable.

It makes some sense for things like office applications (though of late the trust in using American and American-owned service providers for that has plummeted, at least in Europe), but for gaming it has so far failed miserably.

Even the whole artificial bottleneck of data centers being the only place where the most advanced hardware can be found would only translate into gaming moving to be cloud-based if game makers did not react to the current PC components crush by reducing the hardware demand of their products and instead all fully bet on cloud-based gaming as the future, a stupid bet at multiple levels not only due to the risk that gamers would overwhelming chose the games of those game makers who dissented and fit their games to the available home PC hardware instead of the cloud-based one but also because it could give massive influence over the success or not of those games to the cloud gaming services suppliers who could just demand more money to run it in their systems at all or to run them at higher speeds.

In summary, the idea that gaming would shift towards cloud-based gaming instead of going in the direction of continuing supporting last gen hardware, isn’t really supported by the results of past attempts at that or the comparative business outcomes for game maker from chosing one over the other.

It dissipates righteous indignation by making sure that people feel the satisfaction and the release of “doing something” (and thus not act any more forcefully) whilst said “something” is the least impactful thing imaginable.

It ultimately makes those who would do more do less instead.

Not only would that solve this little problem, it would reduce Google’s power and remove one’s data from the claws of US authorities (were the Patriot and Cloud acts let them mass track everybody using a Google product).

Just make sure you chose a non-US Linux phone.

Most online petitions are nothing more than a way to safely (for those targeted and for those amongst the authorities who support them even against the public interest) dissipate the common people’s righteous indignation, by making them feel like they “did something” whilst said something is just about the least impactful thing imaginable.

(Some official ones, for example those mandating parliamentary sessions on the subject if they reach a certain threshold, might not be so, though its unclear as it really depends on the legislation around it allowing politicians to just ignore it at will)

This bullshit will require a lot more than adding your name into a list on some corner of the web in some legal jurisdiction where they’re free to sell your private information.

That is not informing the potential buyer in a simple way, that’s hiding the information in a different page, one which is a long text made up of legalese which one need Legal Training to fully understand.

You’re just making my point.

You know what would be a simple, obvious, honest way of in that page of telling the purchaser that they’re buying a license?

• To the left of the discount and the price put the text “BUY A LICENSE FOR:”

“Strangely” Steam chooses not do any such thing or similar and instead chooses to “inform” buyers with a link to a different page which is a wall of legal text.