Well, a Synology NAS would probably consume like 30-40w, so we are talking about an excess of $70-100 a year where I live. Depends on one's budget of course, but not really a big deal for me. And certainly less than what I am saving on the upfront cost.
It's frustrating when a comment is both needlessly belligerent flamebait AND wrong about electricity prices in the US. I guess that's what makes effective flamebait
German electricity prices are around €0.38/kwh based on my quick googling which is roughly $0.44/kwh. I pay $0.12-0.13/kwh in the US so I’m at least right factually up to rounding.
They have failed to have a sensible industrial and energy policy, leading to around net 0 GDP growth since 2019. I’m sure for the degrowth elites though this is not a failure it is working as intended.
After all the USA produces tones of co2, ignores all responsibililties in the world since trump (defunding USAID) and lets not talk about income inequality?
But hey, im pretty sure your cheap energy prices will keep inflation low and living standards high.
Btw. China took over the industry products export 2018 and since 2024 chinese companies primarily buy chines made machines.
The main problem of germany is not energy, its def one topic, but its the market force of a country like china who is huge, has a ton of resources, less worker rights, high work attitude.
China is getting rich now from the same thing which made USA big in the 60is and kept germany high until now.
We are still the 3th biggest country by gdp.
Edit: And germany is so anti innovation its not funny anymore. Even the slow car makers started pushing EVs but then everyone else said "NOOOO". Heat pump? Industry said "yeah ready" and then everyone else "NOOOOO".
While this happend in Germany, in China EVs are normal already...
The author is not suggesting anyone should rebuild their NAS every year. Instead he is investigating which options make sense in year X. I remember reading his recommendations back when I built my NAS in 2021 but that doesn't mean I bought new hardware since then.
I have been running my NAS on the 304 for 5 years. It fits natively 6 HDDs but I think it is possible to cram two more with a bit of ingenuity. It is tucked away in an Ikea cabinet that I have drilled the back of for airflow.
That is also somewhat true for GPUs, hard drives and SSDs. They all usually have different cycles but today AI is making them peak all at the same time.
The article is a bit light on technical details. Can someone shed a light on how hardware decoding is disabled? Do they blow an efuse, disable it in the firmware or in the OS?
It's not disabled in the sense many people are thinking. The codecs just aren't installed by default. The hardware is present and still functional. You just have to use software that directly supports HEVC or buy your own HEVC license on the Microsoft store for $1 to get system-wide hardware accelerated HEVC codecs.
That seems like the opposite of what the quoted Reddit post says:
>those with newer machines needed to either have the HEVC codec from the Microsoft Store removed entirely from [Microsoft Media Foundation] or have hardware acceleration disabled
From this it sounds like it's been disabled at a lower level, but Windows still expects it to be there and so fails to decode streams unless hwaccel is disabled
I don't understand why people downvote questions like this rather than just answer the question. It's a perfectly reasonable question imo given that it's not clear how this feature is being disabled. It appears that most of this is based on reddit speculation and the OEMs don't provide a definitive answer.
Meta: recently it seems like the community has been way too loose with the downvote button, but I'm not sure if I'm just noticing it more because it's getting on my nerves, or if there has actually been a change in behavior.
There has been a change in behavior in the past few years, in fact it used to be that you could only become a HN member that can comment thus vote by posting a select number of threads before being able to comment. This actually kept the community on the more intelligent, factual, and serious side. Now it's not so serious.
This used to be the only place that I could visit to get away from Reddit behavior. It seems like the more obscure a social gathering is, the less Eternal September it suffers.
> Meta: recently it seems like the community has been way too loose with the downvote button, but I'm not sure if I'm just noticing it more because it's getting on my nerves, or if there has actually been a change in behavior.
The term "orange reddit" feels more and more like reality as time goes on.
From what I'd heard, it's the actual HP and Dell OEM'ed drivers they provide for the hardware. If you load the official Intel drivers, HEVC works fine.
It's also reported that HEVC works fine on Linux on these affected laptops.
It's not like what you are describing is impossible today. With the switch to USB-C, iOS devices are compatible with a vast number of affordable adapters. Some of which add features and ports that realistically couldn't be physically on a phone like HDMI or RJ45.
What percentage of iOS users use a midi keyboard with their devices? 0.01%?
My desktop audio interface plugs right in an iPhone (USB-C to C), no hub or dongle needed, and provides audio in/out, 5-pins midi in/out, microphone preamp, etc.
If it comes to the flexibility of improvising a jam session with inexpensive gear, we are in a much better place today than 10 years ago when phones had headphone jacks. And I say that as someone who uses wired headphones extensively and carries a 3.5mm dongle everywhere.
The switch to USB-C was the whole reason I went to iOS personally. Lack of a proper headphone jack does suck (the Apple USB-C to 3.5mm is quite good however). Too bad we can't have both
