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I've been halfway serious about considering a car purchase. I say halfway because of multiple factors, the most glaring of which being my current 2018 GTI is totally adequate. On the flip side my commute has increased (mostly in time rather than distance) and while I'm currently getting ~30MPG, I believe I could run very large portions of my daily commute on a PHEV's battery range. Also we recently installed electrical panels in our garage that allow for level 2 charging. I bring up PHEV's because I've also decided that I don't want to own another strictly ICE vehicle ever again. Which leads me towards PHEVs or EVs as cars I might consider. Short list of vehicles I've done some research on and seem like they make sense. Kia Sportage PHEV Kia Niro PHEV Rav4 Prime PHEV Lexus 450h+ (same powertrain) Dodge Hornet PHEV Alfa Romea Tonale (same vehicle basically) Ford Escape PHEV One of the other issues is that I've run into is that only the ford escape qualify for the new tax credits - I believe everything else listed above is made outside of the US. While I've heard there might be some workarounds with leases, I don't know how much I trust that, or if I would be interested in leasing. Not to mention, the last time I checked the car market, PHEV sales were fairly impacted by low production volume and huge demand leading to 1+ year waitlists for some vehicles and prices over MSRP. I have some hesitation about going full electric mostly due to my uncertainty regarding my housing in the long-term which could make charging less frictionless than I would like. That's not to say they're completely off the table but I just have very little interest in using public charging infrastructure as my main method for charging a vehicle. There isn't charging infrastructure at my current office location. I also have some silly requirements regarding UX that I don't feel like compromising on. One example being the ID4's overuse of capacitive buttons/sliders for climate control and steering wheel controls, or the tesla designs which rely entirely on a center screen for nearly all vehicle controls. These weird personal preferences may end up making things even more difficult and I can't easily say why I'm less annoyed at KIA's radio/climate control toggle compared to the fully capacitive climate control slider on the ID4 but it is what it is. Some other more broad concerns I have. Ride Quality - I want something on the softer side. I've heard the Hornet/Tonale is rather firm which is off-putting. Size - I'd prefer something closer to my current GTI's size. I know everything I've listed is bigger but I don't want a full size SUV or something overly big. I'm not interested in a 3 row vehicle. Styling - Not that I have much choice but I'm more inclined to go for a hatchback/CUV/SUV style than a sedan or fastback style. Power - I do have a lower limit for power, the subaru crosstrek was basically right at that limit. I don't need 500hp but I need something fast enough to inspire some confidence. Most PHEV's are sufficient, especially with instant torque.

repairing surfaces has always annoyed me, this is impressive to me lol

Really enjoying nVidia's latest super resolution since most of my content is on youtube with varying levels of quality. Huge QOL improvement. I also downloaded an MPC-HC / BE mod https://github.com/emoose/VideoRenderer/releases/tag/rtx-1.1 Comparison difference https://imgsli.com/MTU4MzM1 Definitely enjoying it a lot.

Finished the 2nd age mistborn books. The last book really starts to push some of the meta-narrative of multiple planets and different gods/beings attempting to gain control. I don't know if we're going to see a shift in Sanderson's books being more open about connecting the cosmere, because I have a feeling that could get very old, especially if you only like some of his work. It could potentially make all of his books 'required' reading in order to get it. Speaking of Sanderson, I also finished Tress of the Emerald Sea. This was far more whimsical than his other stuff and while there was still magic with rules this felt far more loosely defined. There's a big cosmere connection in this as well and I have some questions regarding where this sits on a timeline but it was mostly enjoyable. The Poppy War - I hated this book. The first half was mostly ok, with an almost YA style premise of a gifted kid getting into a prestigious school, but it turns ugly quickly. The author is basically writing a fictional version of China/Japan during the Sino-Japanese War and decides to dedicate a few chapters to a graphic depiction of the rape of nanking. Normally I don't mind a darker tone, but this felt like cheap shock value made even cheaper since the author is basically writing fanfiction based on real historical atrocities. It's also very odd how the author (a chinese american woman) somehow manages to push what I found to be rather racist tropes about both China and Japan. The magic was super odd and poorly thought out, there could have been some cool elements but instead it felt threadbare and tired. Half a King - I've seen Joe Abercrombie's books come across my recommendations, so I'll give this a shot.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/motorolas-rollable-phone-is-a-wild-futuristic-concept/ Impressed by motorola's proof of concept expanding/rollable phone display. Best version I've seen yet of how to implement the tech.

Possible leak of new Samsung 57" super ultra wide (7680x2160) resolution. Got me looking into the the claims which I think don't make sense (240 Hz seems impossible even with DP2.1). https://tftcentral.co.uk/articles/a-guide-to-displayport-2-1-and-previously-2-0-certifications-standards-cables-and-areas-of-confusion-and-concern So yeah i'm taking the current specs with a grain of salt.

Piston vs. Direct Impingement

Very interesting to see increased confidence from FWD -> RWD -> AWD

Understand the insurance point, which was a selling point for a lot of people when doing DIY builds but very few actually take advantage of it. The whole ITX limitation of a 2 slot card vs 3 slot however makes a whole lot more sense though

Some additional context that may help: I was on an X370 board. While a BIOS update was available to add support for 5000 series CPUs, I had some concerns about putting a fairly new CPU in a motherboard 2 generations "behind" (x370 -> x470 -> x570). My motherboard was ITX and the case was only sized for ITX with just 2 slots for the GPU. With all GPUs seemingly moving to 3-4 slots in size, I was going to need a new case if I was going to update my GPU at some point without restricting myself to special 2-slot cards like some watercooled cards. I did not have a strict budget. I could have afforded to just go extreme and get a 7950x or 12900k however even if that was possibly better value on paper I would have no real use case. Would be wasted. The DDR5 bundle at Microcenter was a really big piece of this. 32GB of decent timings and decent speed on a new memory standard for free? That seems like good value and doubled what I had in my last build (16GB). Without the DDR5 bundle I had been leaning towards Intel 13600K + motherboard and keeping my current memory.

I understand where you're coming from Jedi2155, but I think a better way of looking at it is insurance. Kuhla bought into an architecture that he had the ability to upgrade, just because he didn't doesn't mean it was a waste, since it was always an option for him. If he had been on an intel platform he would have only had the ability to jump to a brand new socket/CPU. Likewise, he's again choosing a platform that has better longevity, even if he sits with his current setup and never upgrades it still provides him more options than going with an Intel setup. I've seen several people mention that while the AM5 ecosystem is a bit more expensive than going with an intel option, it may be worth choosing AMD and paying slightly more to have an upgrade path in the future. Especially since we've seen a return of CPU bottlenechs at the high end even in some 1440p games.

So I finished Andor last night and I think it was absolutely fantastic in writing and story building of what developed the alliance together. There was a LOT of logical pieces that came together and I rewatched parts of Rogue one and saw so many quips and details expanded in Andor such as Melshi was part of Rogue group that assault Scarif for example, the Rebel "Alliance" that was hesitant to work together in Rogue one etc. I did think the last episode relied on a lot of details that wasn't thoroughly explained though and was confusing in a multitude of ways. The problem was it wasn't until episodes 3 or 4 that Andor got really good, and its a very slow pace world building that people new to Star Wars would not appreciate. Its shocking to me how many people I interact with these days that has never seen a single star wars movie.

Since you mentioned cost was your biggest driving factor, did you ever update your CPU from the 1700x? If not the best price/performance ratio would've been to get you to a 5800X3D which was ~$310 a month ago compared to ~$1100 you did spend. Seeing that mentioned socket early in the life of the system, if you never did take advantage of CPU upgrades then it becomes a moot point and net cost becomes the primary logical selling point. Unless I misunderstood otherwise, I think you just wanted new, rather than optimized price/performance which was the justification you put forward.

The 5900x was $550 at launch. The 5800x3d was $450 at launch. My 7700x was only $350 and puts me on a new socket early in its lifespan with a few years more of support. Adding another $210 on top of that (total $560) got me a motherboard, double the memory I have now and also moved me to a new standard (DDR5).

I did always wonder why you didn't just upgrade to 5900X or 5800X3D simplifying the whole process when those were launched. I'm still running the same general chassis from 2014 build (Intel 4790k, Z97 etc.), but swapped the Mobo/Ram/CPU, and did another CPU upgrade from 3900X to 5900X. Sold the old parts before it lost too much value minimizing net upgrade costs.

imdb -https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8291284/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0 So this comes from a book by William Gibson who is an author I have a lot of respect for even though I do not always enjoy his books. The way I ended up feeling about the show is a lot like how I feel after reading many of his books; A few interesting ideas that do somewhat feel original but as a whole just seems like kind of a mess. It was easy to watch though. If anyone has a passing interest in Gibson's work I think it's a safe recommendation.

imdb - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10278918/ I'm going to watch this..... at some point........... when I'm in the mood for a happy go plucky fantasy......... which I was not in the mood for lately...........