Teh stoopid…

Is STRONG these days…

Six states, led by California’s fulltime climate alarmists, this week enacted a ban on the sales of high-end gaming computers.

Niche Gamer reports that Dell is already following the 2017 law that just went into effect. According to the gamer-focused site, Dell has “pulled the sale of seven of its eight Alienware gaming desktops” from California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington.

Full article, HERE.

The real irony of this is that you can buy the ‘offending’ card and install it yourself!

Comments

Teh stoopid… — 19 Comments

  1. There’s some speculation about this garbage. Some of it is thought to be targeting bitcoin mining; gamers (raises hand) have bitched about that for a while because cryptominers have been buying up high-end video cards for use in custom machines. And to use such systems, you do need a fair amount of power and cooling.

    Pixy Misa (AoS’s tech jockey) notes this seems limited to Dell, though, and thinks part of the problem is Dell’s configurations are kind of crap.

    I’m inclined to believe Cali and the other green-weenie states are morons, but Pixy isn’t wrong about Dell’s lack of optimization.

  2. More stupid here. What harm does gaming pose to the general population? As a Latter Day Luddite the subject is beyond my brain power but the cynic in me thinks anything government wants to ban must be a threat to the government and/or elites.

  3. There need to be more legal challenges. Does a state even have the right to limit what kind of computer you buy? We saw the left file a lawsuit every time PDT took a sip of water. Doing it in friendly courts they got injunctions every time, win or lose in the long run (they mostly lost but of course that never got reported). Meanwhile we sit around wringing our hands. I have neither the money nor the skills but I really wish there were more conservative groups out there doing the tactical lawfare the left does. If I knew of them I would help to the best of my ability.

  4. Sacramento July 30
    Assemblyperson Fuffnstuff introduces “High-capacity Assault Graphics Card ban…

  5. There is a principle I’ve heard recently, expressed something like “We should major in the majors,” meaning that we spend our time/energy/resources on the things that really matter.
    I don’t know that power consumption is really a big issue in California; I do know that a part of the Enron scandal was that they manipulated demand in order to force Cali to buy high-priced energy from them, which wasn’t really needed. Maybe Cali needs someone (with no other agenda) looking at whether a problem exists, and how to manage it.
    I have a hard time believing that computer graphics cards are a primary source of power shortages. How much power was consumed to implement the regulations?
    Isn’t this interfering with interstate commerce? I thought we were against that.

    • What California needs to do is to reactivate any and all shut down powerplants and build new ones, preferably nuclear in nature. And add desalination plants like the Israelis have done.

      But, no, get rid of powerplants, go green, stop all repairs or improvements on power infrastructure, go even greener (like not allowing the utilities to clear vegetation away from transmission or distribution lines) and then blame the gamers.

      Meanwhile, there’s like 200 data centers (think big big big big server farms) in California, each data center eating up the power of a town.

      So, of course, go after the little guy.

  6. Ummm…did you do something to somebody recently?
    I ask that, because it seems to me that there has been a different character to some of the comments I’ve seen posted in the past few days. More off topic, more slash, or something; kind of hard for me to define.
    That is not intended as a personal attack on ANYONE.

    • I agree, Pat. I’m seeing more odd, aggressive and/or off-topic comments and not just here. Other small, semi-political blogs and news sites seem to have something popping up as well, and I don’t recognize the names of the commenters. (OK, aside from two over on BCF who have been Johnny-One-Note since I started reading the comments there. Their one note is getting louder.)

  7. Ted- Yep!

    Pat/Beans- You’re both on the money!

    Pat- Dunno, but I’m having to remove comments for the first time in 14 years… sigh.

  8. Pat,
    It is reasonable to suspect paid trolls, and an active information warfare campaign that has decided that this site is a worthwhile target. That paranoia on my part comes from a) being active on MGC, ATH, and to some extent MHN during most of the Sad Puppies seasons b) seeing someone show up on a web novel blog, under different pseaudonyms IIRC, to push clumsy civil war stuff during spring 2020. And on that same web novel blog, similar time frame, some similar new handle out of the blue stuff on covid.

    OTOH, probably there are people managing their mental health issues in the current conditions /worse/ than I am.

    Heresolong,
    Basic question, has the left fixed the courts by meddling with law schools? Or by way of the ABA? Issue is, there is a credential barrier to filing most legal suits, and a small amount of improper systemic collusion could mean that it is vastly cheaper for the left to do this stuff than it is for the right.

    For most suits, you need a lawyer to file, and that lawyer has more future earning potential to lose from being shunned by their peers, or losing credibility with judges, then they might lose from refusing your business, or taking your business, and doing a poor job of representing your interests.

    If professional groups consider frivolous lawsuits filed on behalf of left to be appropriate for the public good, pro bono, and frivolous lawsuits filed on behalf of the right to be appropriate for professional sanction, then a simple reciprocal lawfare strategy is SOL.

    I’m actually significantly more optimistic about remedies for the legal system than I was a few months ago. Even though my ideas are the same, and largely pretty silly.

    Option one is pro se filings under RICO. I originally thought this was purely a trolling option, but BLM seems to implicate a lot of Democrats in qualifying crimes, and organization to support said crimes. Furthermore, that January 12 letter by law school heads, alleging that the facts do not support the possibility of cheating in the 2020 election, makes it seem plausible that a conspiracy could include a great many judges and lawyers. It is easy to show that if there is not a transparent chain of custody for voting machines, and if state level actors might be meddling in US elections, then no electronic voting machine can be secure.

    Issue is, judges hate pro se RICO filings. So, how would you tell the difference between a judge rejecting a flawed pro se RICO filing, and a judge engaged in criminal conspiracy improperly rejecting a sound pro se RICO filing? I mean, they deserve to have to deal with a bunch of these filings, but you would be punishing yourself worse writing them all.

    Option two, states are involved in a lot of professional licensure. If your state legislature was reliable and trustworthy, that could be a means to punish professional organizations and professional schools. At the very least, to ensure that single organizations cannot dictate all possible paths for getting credentialed in the profession.

    Option three, again if your state legislature is somehow on the ball, partly dismantle the public universities. Engineering schools, law schools, and medical schools do not need to be part of the same organization that carries out humanities research.

    Option four, boycott. Don’t send your kids to university. Don’t donate money to your alma mater. Don’t spend anything on your favorite college team. Most extreme, stop spending on other legal services. Yes, the cost would be much greater than if you do not pay those legal fees.

    Related to four, require all legal service providers as a condition of employment to sign a statement affirming that they believe that the January 12th letter was improper and unprofessional.

    Lastly, if you know and trust any lawyers or doctors or engineers, you can talk to them about their opinions regarding how their profession polices itself.

    Fundamentally, if there really were only 25 million actual Biden voters, that is not enough to support the current level of business engaged in by doctors, engineers, and lawyers. Certainly, Biden did not have all the doctors, engineers, and lawyers supporting him. If these professional organizations can’t at least manage to be neutral, then they are not serving the necessities of those professions.

    OldNFO,
    It may be inappropriate of me to be speaking so of engineering professional organizations. I’ve mentioned before Raffensperger’s public comments, his training in /Civil/ engineering, his licensure as a PE, and the NSPE model code of ethics. I know nothing of the work that he has performed as a PE. If he was competent and ethical in all of that, it may well be that I am in error to be concerned about appearances.

  9. Why would the Greens who want to force everyone into asceticism care about computers?

    I recently had the power supply die in a old, weak, computer that I was using. No longer under warranty, but Amazon carries parts that purport to be correct, and are allegedly rated to carry 240W. That is, 4 60W bulbs, and much of it going to heat.

    A greenie who whines about your incandescents is also going to see this as worth whining over.

    My most recent new computer purchase, I decided I needed to spend more and get something that will last me a few years without great difficultly. I’ve been having problems with stuff that does not run on integrated graphics, or software that I can not install because I don’t have an acceptable graphics card. So I spent a little more time trying to find a cheap but good graphics card. It came with /4/ of the same outlets for monitors, and I am only using one on it right now.

    I’ve seen people using machines that really did need two good graphics cards in them, to run the stuff they run.

    If you are into high end computing, heat production and power have become more and more important.

    I was bored enough to watch some video card review videos recently. They actually do stuff with thermocouples, and infrared cameras for those. So, the heating is probably actually important. A search on Amazon for gaming power supplies ran 600w to 1000w. I understand that a lot of the power, and cooling, is for the graphics cards.

    So what are the graphics cards actually doing, and what are they used for? They have specialized processors that are really good at matrix calculations. Matrices, mathematically, can also be systems of equations, or collections of vectors. Games that use graphics in 3D are using a lot of vectors to calculate what color the pixels on your screen should be. The cards we have because of gamers can be used for other things. A lot of engineering programs, even those without fancy 3D graphics, use graphics cards to solve the systems of equations contained by the model that the engineer sets up in the program. ‘New’ AI techniques like artificial neural networks are made based on matrix operations, because graphics cards are now a cheap way to get a lot of matrix operations. Then there are cryptocurrencies, but I do not understand them, and do not really like them. The gamers are always wanting to buy more graphics cards because the newer games need them. The newer games need them, because the game companies are in an arms race, and solve some of their software engineering challenges by using more resources.

    So, it is basically the same logic as washing machines that don’t wash, toilets that don’t flush, and trying to make you drive vehicles that are tin cans without the range that you /need/. For the gamers, it is like being a fan of fast cars, and people wanting you to drive a golf cart.

    Anyway, I do have more computer than I am really using, and do think I am a bad person because of this. This is because I dislike my laziness and tendency to distraction. I do not believe that the greens are correct in any way.

  10. I ain’t going to do the math, but how many high end gaming computers is the equivalent of ONE Electric Vehicle? I expect the answer to be thousands. *sigh*

    • Web search seems to indicate that a lot of the DC motors for EV are 20 kw to 30 kw, and a lot of the DC motor controllers can top out at 40 kw to 60 kw. So, 20 to 30 or 40 to 60 high end PCs running at 1 kw.

      Of course, they are probably charging the batteries at a lower rate, but…

      If you are building a workstation with server parts, you could probably make something that uses more than 1 kw.

  11. Wait ’til the EPA discovers the concept of “constructive possession”…