The Technology Vent and Rant Thread

[DNSB]

What? You don't want to write a message consisting mainly of <expletive deleted>?

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by Comfy.n

I don't know what to make of it. Even if I knew I wouldn't be public about it.

It's not -- quite -- a scam in that it is a functional vehicle.

But the claims of precision, premium manufacture are a joke. Each panel is allegedly precision laser cut, but frequently the edges and corners are several millimeters -- very visibly -- off of true. Each panel has a slight convex curve but the curvatures are inconsistent across a single vehicle and across multiple vehicles. And there are other fundamental design problems like the sill in front under the lights collecting snow and blocking visibility, and the cameras getting frozen over. The "stainless" steel Tesla are using is a lower grade steel than the 18/8 grades you might be familiar with -- they're cagey about the exact alloy but it's a bit softer than 18/8, rusts and stains more easily, and shows off all the scratches and fingerprints.

Edit:
And it looks even sillier on the roads than it does on a stage with a steel ball embedded in the supposedly steel-ball-proof window.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Comfy.n

I don't know what to make of it. Even if I knew I wouldn't be public about it.

It's a fashion statement, like the original Tesla Roadster.

My seamstress friend tells me that the half-life of a Versace red-carpet gown is a few hours, after each outing most need 'renovation', Musk's truck's the same.

BYD, Chery (Jaguar Land Rover) and Geely (Polestar) are probably working on less extreme knock-offs as we speak.

BR

[ownedbycats]

EA, you had one job. Yet the rerelease of the Sims 2 excluded content and included new bugs. They also stole code created by modders (see this).

[Solitaire1]

Something recent for me: My old PS2 was starting to have trouble running games. Due to this, I decided to seek out another PS2 only to discover that only used ones are available. The irritant was that I discovered that my PS3 can play PS1 games out of the box, PS1 games, but not PS2. I also discovered that some PS3s can be software modified via a Playstation Store download to make them able to play PS2 games but my PS3 is not one of those.

Why didn't Sony just make the PS3 backwards compatible with PS2 games? One of the reasons the PS2 was such a success is that it was fully backwards compatible with PS1 games. This gave the PS2 a massive library of available games even before the first PS2 game was released. I know money might be a possible reason, yet they did make the PS2 backwards compatible with the PS1.

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

Why didn't Sony just make the PS3 backwards compatible with PS2 games? One of the reasons the PS2 was such a success is that it was fully backwards compatible with PS1 games. This gave the PS2 a massive library of available games even before the first PS2 game was released. I know money might be a possible reason, yet they did make the PS2 backwards compatible with the PS1.

Money.

Early block PS3 models have a full PS2 inside, just as PS2 has a full PSX inside. This cost money to manufacture so the executives at Sony told the engineers and programmers to move it to software emulation and eventually to kill it off entirely because...

... PS2 was still a strong seller through PS3's early to mid life. Many studios were releasing their games with parallel PS2 and PS3 editions. And since PS2 games were typically $10 less than their PS3 counterparts with a commensurately smaller royalty for Sony? Follow the money.

As a note, Sony's PS2 software emulation was and remains rubbish. That's not a knock on the programmers. PS2 itself is tricky to emulate, compounded by the anti-cheat device hacks that some studios used in their games which render them unplayable even on PCSX2 today.