South Africa has been the exception.

Well yes, it’s really difficult to switch when government only just managed to migrate to Windows 10 on most machines, and still uses Microsoft’s document formats for everything aside from PDF.

Up until a few years ago, UNISA was still using public-facing IIS servers and SARS was paying up the wazoo to maintain old Flash applets that people used to file their taxes.

One government department managed to waste R5 million on a WordPress website that used a $15 theme.

“He’s out of line, but he’s right.”

I would be down for some cajun-spiced KFC right now.

Google’s Pixel Fold is pretty much what I’d like to see in a folding phone, whereas Samsung’s extremely tall aspect ratio is a bit too thin for one-handed use.

Other competitors have figured out the formula for something that works well open and closed, so for the Fold type devices I’d like to see Samsung improve on the design and squish it a little, especially because it is so thick when folded.

Flip-style devices on the other hand, those are immediately cool. If the Z Flip had similar cameras to the S23, I would have considered holding out for one. The battery life on the S23 is what won me over.

This is the basis of the ASUS warranty issues recently when they had exploding AM5 motherboards and vague text about EXPO support voiding warranty, painting themselves into a corner when they only had unsupported firmware that would technically void warranty.

It doesn’t matter that the company says “Oh we won’t enforce that rule” but they still keep the rule in place.

macOS? You gotta be kidding. Windows and Office is huge.

Just the entrenchment of Sharepoint and Outlook alone is enough to make switching to anything else a difficult prospect.

The launcher isn’t really the problem, it’s the fact that Overwatch 2 isn’t making them any money!

Spez has almost never had the gift of foresight.

That’s probably why digital displays still have analog speedometer options. At a glance it’s easier to tell what’s happening with your speed, rev count, and other levels like fuel.

But much of that utility is useful for manuals and ICE-powered cars.

FTC really screwed themselves over building their arguments in the courtroom.

Right at the beginning of the announcement, Spencer appeared in an interview talking about it and started listing old ActiBlizz IP that the company owned, but did nothing with, saying that it would be cool to bring some of those franchises back.

There’s no way you can argue against that. Bringing more games to consumers was always Microsoft’s argument for the deal going through.

They probably looked at Facebook’s latest dumpster fire involving hauling data outside of the EU and decided to just not find a workaround.

They don’t want users to be able to wipe their own chats manually or via GDPR requests.

If anyone asks, they will be told that the data is gone, but we all know that’s not the case. They do have backups.

Oh it’s going to be bad. Really bad. Microsoft said over a billion people were using Windows 10 & 11, but the vast majority of those were on machines that already ran Windows 7/8.1 just fine (and may have been upgraded forcefully).

They tried once to limit hardware compatibility as Intel was switching over to 10th gen by giving people a cut-off point where new versions of Windows 10 would not work on hardware older than Intel 8th gen, but it was so poorly received that they walked it back (and did it with Windows 11 instead).

An actual EOL is going to be very tough to pull off because everyone expects their computers to last more than three years now.

That will see more increases over time, especially as Windows 10 EOL approaches.

Some things to consider for your build:

1. The Core i5-13400 is probably cheaper than existing 12600 stock in your area, and faster overall. The Core i5-13500 is absolutely stupid given how cheap it is.
2. Settle on a 32GB (2x16) DDR5-5600 CL36 memory kit instead. It’s cheap now, and games are going to make use of it.
3. Weigh up the options between the Radeon RX 6700 12GB and the RTX 3060 12GB. The RX 6700 is probably cheaper in your area, and will be faster.
4. You absolutely do not need the Peerless Assassin, but the choice is up to you if you want to pick it up.
5. Motherboard choice is fine, but you would do well to shop around for deals.
6. If you switch to a Micro-ATX motherboard, you have the option of using the ASUS Prime AP201 chassis.

Seeing as you also built your system in 2016, here are some other pointers.

1. Stock CPU heatsinks are perfectly fine. Don’t buy a third-party cooler unless you’re sure you need it for performance reasons. Many people pick one up for aesthetics.
2. High CPU temperatures are here to stay. That’s just how they’re managed now. Don’t worry too much about it unless you’re reaching over 96 degrees with regular use.
3. M.2 PCIe Gen 3 drives are perfectly fine to pick up if your budget is limited. Don’t skimp here, pick a 1TB drive to start with. Games are huge.
4. Front-panel USB-C for cases is not a requirement, but you will get at least 15W charging from them.
5. You can skimp with an F-series CPU that has the iGPU disabled, but a lot of effort is put into optimising video playback and general browser/OS use by leveraging the integrated graphics.
6. 1440P 144Hz monitors are quite cheap these days. Most of them work just fine too.
7. You can use Windows without paying for a license. Having a license gives you access to all the customisation options.

You have reached the limits of what the Skylake platform offers. You don’t have Windows 11 support and your only choices will soon be running Windows 10 unpatched after 2025, or switching to Linux. Modern 2C4T processors are faster in games than your setup. You should think about a platform upgrade.

Obviously your budget will be a key aspect of this, but some pointers in general:

1. Make the jump to 32GB of RAM. Many games are able to take advantage of more than 16GB of RAM and that’s mostly due to how they are streaming assets and optimising performance.

2. SSD storage should be the default. This applies both for primary and secondary storage. A 2TB SATA drive for extra games or hosting media or things like that is always going to be faster than spinning rust, so don’t buy a hard drive for secondary storage unless you need more than 4TB of space for media.

3. Quad cores still have limitations. People buying Core i3 processors are still limiting their performance if there’s even a slight hint of multi-tasking. Only consider this if your budget is really low but even then, the Core i5-12400 is difficult to ignore.

With that said, here’s some options to think about:

Intel Core i5-13400 + ASRock B760M Pro RS/D4 + 32GB DDR4-3600 CL16 memory of some description

Intel Core i5-13400 + Gigabyte B760M AORUS ELITE AX + 32GB DDR5-5600 CL36 memory of some description

AMD Ryzen 5 7600 + ASRock B650M-HDV/M.2 + 32GB DDR5-5600 CL36 memory of some description

Platform costs are more or less the same between the Intel and AMD option, and slightly cheaper on the DDR4 front. For longevity you want at least two M.2 slots and front-panel USB Type-C support if you also upgrade your case. You have some leeway on the budget for the CPU on the Intel side, as the Core i5-12400 is cheap and still very good.

Either of these setups will serve you a very, very long time. Likely just as long as your Skylake chip has already done (almost ten years!).

“Off the record” largely implies that an NDA would be involved, considering “confidential information that should not be shared with others.”

Meta’s decision to work towards federation does need to be taken with a lot of salt. Corporations using open platforms or open source to make their money has always resulted in power imbalances that, left unchecked, may become impossible to solve without concessions from said corporation, or else [X] thing just gets hung out to dry.

You have to hope the people running that company understand that these problems exist, and actively work against ruining everything for everyone else that relies on it.

For the longest time Twitter has been reportedly a fantastic place to work at, and they had some great engineers who would never be lured away to other companies for any amount of money.

Except for the unlikely scenario where Twitter is circling the drain and Meta comes in with an offer to build a competitor from scratch using all the tools at their disposal.