How much should a next gen console cost?

 So...again. I honestly think gaming is at a crisis point in terms of pricing. Underlying this crisis point is the death of affordable computing, and the destruction of the low end market over the past few years. It's what's driving the whole "peak gaming" thing I mentioned. Again, it's like peak oil, but for gaming. With peak oil, basically, oil production fails to keep up with rising demand due to supply limitations, driving up cost. Kinda like now, but less "Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz" and more "we literally can't get enough out of the ground to sustain economic growth at the rate we used to in the past." In a sane economy, we would simply grow less, and use the period of stagnation to reorient our society away from growth toward other optimizations like working less, having a better distribution of wealth, etc. Ya know, those good old humanistic capitalist ideals that I support on this blog.

But...ideological capitalism is like a mental illness. It thinks infinite growth on a finite planet is possible, and keeps trying to push boundaries, even though the boundaries are very clearly pushing back with obvious price signals suggesting that this isn't sustainable. This is the crisis we face now, as we seem to be expecting a new generation of consoles soon despite the hardware that powers a PS5 or Xbox Series X being relatively expensive, and actually getting more expensive. Normally during a console's lifespan, price goes DOWN. A console releases at, say, $500, it goes down to like $250 or even less by the time it reaches the end of its lifespan. These days the opposite is happening. The PS5 is going UP to $650. The 10 year old switch 1 is going UP to $330. The Xbox Series X has already gone UP to around $600-650 too. And then there's talk of them releasing new consoles NEXT YEAR. 

Honestly, with RAMpocalypse causing hardware prices to go wild, and with it spiraling out to affect GPUs, SSDs, etc., I don't even wanna HEAR about a next gen console next year. There is debate over release, some suggest we're still on for 2027, although some suggest a later 2028-2030 time window to allow this current crisis to blow over, which I think is wise. I mean, with tech advancing so slowly, and with it being so expensive, I don't think think it's economically realistic to release a next gen console any time soon. Because let's face it. Let's discuss what, barring RAMpocalypse, the prices should be for a console.

Nintendo

Nintendo already released their next gen console, the switch 2, at $450. I consider this eyewatering given Nintendo is the "cheap" option. I mean, historically, they've charged $200-300, even well into the modern era. And while you get worse hardware, that's to be expected. People who buy Nintendo should know what they get: an underpowered console that's cheap, has great first party support, but poor third party support due to the specs disparity with the other consoles. I mean, if we go by inflation calculator, here are some suggested price points:

Gamecube- $200 ($373)

GBA-  $100 ($186)

DS- $150 ($262)

Wii- $250 ($409)

3DS- $170 (going by discount since it sold poorly at $250) ($250)

Wii U-  $300 (once again going by discount) ($431)

Switch- $300 ($404)

Obviously, I'd prefer to keep the price lower, but honestly, it looks like if you go handheld, the highest acceptable price is around $250, and for a console, around $400. At $450, the switch 2 is a little overpriced. I'd honestly prefer to keep it lower, especially given it IS a handheld more or less, albeit a clunky one. Speaking of which a huge criticism I have of the switch 2 is that it is basically like both a weak and underpowered console AND a big, bulky, overpriced handheld. It's trying to do both, it does them poorly, and yeah, huge reason I'm not a fan. I'd rather see a $250 handheld, or a $400 console. Not a $450-500 hybrid. But I digress. 

With that said, let's focus on the other consoles.

Playstation and Xbox

So let's go by the pricing over the past few generations.

Playstation 2- $300 ($575)

Xbox- $300 ($560)

Playstation 3- $600 (overpriced)- $982

Xbox 360- $400 ($676)

Playstation 4- $400 ($567)

Xbox One X- $500 ($708)

Playstation 5- $500 ($637)

Xbox One X- $500 ($637)

Xbox One S-  $300 ($382)

All in all, even with inflation, the MAXIMUM we can realistically sustain is a $700 next gen console. That's the MAXIMUM suggested price. I'd probably be more inclined to go $600-650. 

But...again, this is what CURRENT GEN HARDWARE still costs. And it's only gone up.

We're seeing talk of the equivalent steam machine being close to $900-1000, and that was before RAMpocalypse. And that thing has around PS5/Xbox Series X capabilities. 

I mean, to build a similar PC, we're talking around $1k, even before RAMpocalypse, we were still talking around $700-800 or so. 

How the everloving fudge are we gonna be seeing next gen consoles next year at an affordable price? And what are PC gamers like myself gonna have to pay to play on par with these machines? It literally took 2-3 years into the current gen's hardware cycle just for prices to normalize from COVID.  

Honestly, again, if the market was sane, I'd just suggest putting it off a few years. Currently, to get an equivalent PS5/Xbox Series X level GPU, it costs around $300 by itself. That's what a 5050 costs right now. Alternatively you can buy a 6650 XT which is...quite literally, about what's in the PS5 exactly. And those are the cheapest GPUs worth buying in the current market. You can maybe get by with a cheaper 3050, but the 3050 quite frankly sucks and is worse than current gen consoles. 

RAM, 16 GB is currently like $200 and 32 GB is like $400. This is why current gen is getting more expensive. Are we really gonna be pushing for an upgrade to what exists in the current market?

Thankfully, a console like CPU is cheap AF, i mean, something like a ryzen 5500 for like $100 probably does the job. But given the platform costs associated with it, that's where the money is.

And next gen is apparently supposed to use like a 12 core X3D CPU so i'm imagining like a 9900 X3D or something, something most PC gamers dont have. The GPU is expected to be 3x the PS5's, so...let's go 3x a 6650 XT. We're talking something like a 5080 or 4090 here. That's a fricking $1k+ card by itself. 

Again, is it just me, or is this BANANAS?!

Like wtf, how can we actually sustain a next gen console price wise? The current generation has 6 year old hardware, and the price has gone UP to what a next gen console should cost, not DOWN. 6 years into a console's lifespan, they should be practically giving these things away for $250, while being able to replicate a console 6-8x as powerful as the previous one's at the previous one's general MSRP. That's the pattern of growth we saw in the past.

But again, things aren't growing like in the past. We've hit a wall. We've hit "peak gaming" or "peak computing" or whatever you wanna call it. And these nutcases keep trying to push boundaries further. Oh, we need BETTER games, that require BETTER (more expensive hardware to run), are MORE EXPENSIVE to make, TAKE LONGER due to the complexity involved, and probably COST MORE too. And, because of the income disparity in this country, someone will pay it. This consumerist society of ours is falling apart at the seams. I mean, we call it the K shaped economy, but let's talk about what that means. It means the wealthy are doing very well, and everyone else isn't. And that's the problem. We used to have the middle class be the main consumers of these goods and services. Consoles would be the envy of every middle class household. But let's talk about what middle class was always like.

It meant having ONE of the two to four competitors' consoles. Maybe one handheld. And you'd get maybe 10-15 games over the lifespan of a console. That's what life was like for most of us gamers growing up. And then, in the late 2000s/early 2010s, stuff became increasingly affordable to some degree, but now it's getting more expensive in the 2020s, where we're regressing back to the 90s and earlier when gaming was a lot more exclusive and increasingly a more upper class thing. And yeah. 

Anyway, I wanted to make this because I ran into the "but but inflation" morons again online, and wanted to actually explain my thoughts on it. As it stands, I really would rather see the current generation be extended a few more years. Maybe even to 2030, depending on how things go. We're NOT in a good state for a next gen console. Current gen hardware has NEVER gone down in price, and the next generation is inevitably just going to be more expensive outright.

I think...in the current environment, the next generation should cost around as much as what the current gen does NOW. So...we're talking $650ish for a PS6 or Xbox 5, and I think the switch 2 should go down to around $400ish. 

If we release a next gen console for $1000, it's LITERALLY gonna be "$599 US dollars" all over again. Those of us who are in our 30s and gamers will know what I'm referencing there (PS3, E3, 2006...the price flopped, to say the least, and it drove people to xbox instead). And yeah, with inflation, that's what it is. That $400 price point back then is closer to $600-700 now. And yeah. I say, no more than $700. And ideally, I'd like to see $600-650ish. 

And keep in mind, I'm not a console gamer myself, but as a PC gamer who tends to upgrade my hardware generally once a console generation, and who generally likes to target at least that gen's hardware, if not a bit above it to account for optimization, I gotta be able to build affordably. 

CPU wise....well CPUs arent bad, but a 12 core zen 6 X3D CPU is gonna be pushing it. That's probably $450 minimum given what the 9800X3D costs now. RAM....don't even go there, but hypothetically let's say I can reuse my 32 GB DDR5 for that. Okay. 

GPU wise...again....that's the kicker. How the everloving fudge is a 40 Tflop GPU gonna be affordable to average consumers given a 12 Tflop PS5 tier GPU STILL costs $300? I mean, this is just unworkable. Even before RAMpocalypse, $300 was like....a 5060 which is 50% more performance. Maybe for $400 you could get a 9060 XT with 16 GB RAM. But yeah. Even that's kinda pushing boundaries on price.

Honestly, I say, let it ride. Current gen is fine. Let it ride until 2030ish. We used to release consoles every 4-5 years. Now even 7 is seeming too short. I welcome a 10 year console standard. It's the only way we can account for the market as it is without just being like "lol F middle class consumers, let's release something only rich people can buy." 

Reminder: the idea that our social contract works as expected is the bare minimum

 So, this is somewhat related to the topic yesterday about AIPAC and the democrats being moderate wimps. Vaush also had a few segments on this, and on this, I'm mostly responding to the section where Elissa Slotkin was speaking and Vaush was dunking on her. This is more economic in nature. Basically, Slotkin didn't come off too bad here, for a democrat I mean, but I have relatively low expectations of democrats. Vaush came out swinging though, and he was dunking on her for pushing the same old liberal BS and stuff. 

I mean, I get it, but....democrats be democrats, right? I like vaush starting to sound like past me on this. I'm only more moderate sounding because...again...with the bar being so low it's literally "just stop the fascism" at this point, I'm kind of looking the other way on stuff. But I did want to reiterate a point I made in a few other posts over the years.

Liberals have this idea of a social contract. They think, well, you put in the time and work the appropriate number of hours a week, and we'll make sure you're taken care of. We act like this is a super progressive position given the alternative in recent decades is basically "we dont care how much to work, if you don't earn enough to live then screw you, have you tried not being poor?" And no, given the touchy political environment, I'm not gonna touch the warehouse fire guy. I mean, I don't support that sort of crap obviously. But I do think, when that bare minimum isn't met, then, well, people sometimes radicalize and that's how you get ACTUAL terrorists. Just an FYI to any FBI agents who might be reading this because I'm on Trump's NSPM-7 craplist. You might wanna focus on like, ACTUAL terrorists here. Not just watching anyone who dares speak out against das fuhrer like you're the pre crime division from the minority report. Ya know, I actually studied criminology before, right? Yeah...so I feel justified in giving an opinion here. If you care about terrorism, go after actual terrorists, not just random people who dare express their political opinions on the internet. 

Anyway, I don't endorse that guy. But I do want to talk about this liberal social contract thing. So...liberals have this idea of a social contract. You work, you get taken care of. Much better than, you work, and screw you anyway, but yeah. Again, it's kind of the bare minimum position, ya know? I mean, you put in the time, you get the benefits back and can afford a comfortable life. If anything, it's a bit quaint at this point. People might wonder, well, what do you suggest, we just give people stuff for not working? ....yes?

I mean, here's my argument. if it's absolutely essential for people to be working all of the time, that's one thing. But, we literally have an economic where the main political debate for most of my life has been "creating jobs." like, we literally talk about creating work and coming up for stuff for people to do, so they can earn a paycheck. Why? because we always did things that way and you dont want free stuff do you? Like, liberals do that a lot. "We don't hate hard work." I do. "We don't want it easy." I do. "We want free stuff." I do! I mean, I'm tired of acting like these are radical statements. This job thing never appealed to me. It's always been like, "okay, if things HAVE to be this way for society to function, that's one thing." but for me, it feels almost 80s Sovietesque. ya know...."I pretend to work and they pretend to pay me"? Like the whole thing is just a farce we still do. It doesn't work, it never actually worked. FDR might've made it kinda sorta work as a huge band aid on capitalism to preserve the system, but as I know, we didn't have to go that way either. 

And that's the thing. As technology improves economic efficiency...maybe instead of obsessing over "job creation", we focus on, ya know, working less? or making work more voluntary? I mean, I've discussed all of this before. And given the K shaped economy, the fact that what Andrew Yang warned us about is happening, how our society seems to be coming apart at the seams...well...yeah. Maybe we need a new social contract for a new century. Maybe that involves UBI. Maybe it involves working less. Maybe both. Either way, I would agree, just insisting on the bare minimum social contract isn't good enough IMO. It's not gonna solve the problems we have. It's not gonna fix society. Maybe it will allow us to keep hobbling on while the fascists keep making ground, because let's face it, their rise to power is ANOTHER cry for help in this sick and dysfunctional society we're living in. But yeah.

Here's what I fear from the dems. We go into 2026 and 2028, win big simply due to being the opposition party. Then...we lose again in 2030 and 2032. And then the fascists come back. And they're worse next time. Because they're the real radical threat that this country is facing. They're the real terrorists. Ya know? And maybe they actually succeed in turning us into a dictatorship for good, putting political opposition in camps, yada yada.

So...my message for those running in 2028 in particular....we gotta do better. We gotta pull a new New Deal out of our butts here and FAST. our own "Project 2029" if you will, which yes, Slotkin talked about and I liked that language. But again, rather than just trying to restore this flawed and broken social contract...I say we write a new one that works with our modern reality. As I see it, the modern economy and the modern job is no longer working. Job creation aint working. Our idea of the economy is fundamentally broken. We gotta rewrite the rules entirely. This doesn't mean abolishing capitalism, fyi, just evolving it. UBI, shorter work weeks, those are still capitalism, just a new form of progressive capitalism centered around updating things for a new century. 

Or we can stick to the same old ideas and watch society sink like the Titanic, which is what the past 10 years have felt like to me. *puts on Celine Dion out of pure 90s nostalgia* 

What happened to the libertarians?

 So...this is a question someone asked, and it is a question that I think is worth discussing. I actually have a few theories myself. For the record, I'm talking RIGHT libertarians here. ya know, the Ron Paul stans who were popular around 2008-2012 but seem to have gotten far less active since then. Anyway, here's some ideas of mine.

1) They were never that big of a faction, just vocal

 If you look at the actual voting share of the population, libertarians typically were around 1% of all voters. At least the ones who voted for the libertarian party. Sure there might have been more libertarians within the republicans, but they've always been a minority. They were more vocal online, ya know, like UBI supporters like me, rather than a force to be reckoned with. 

That said, they arguably still exist. They still vote third party. Heck, they even ended up ruffling the feathers of Trumpers in 2020 when they lost, with some lobbing the same attacks the blue MAGA types lob at progressives and how they didn't fall in line and vote republican. And these guys would just be like "earn our votes." 

2) They aged out

Libertarianism has always been that kind of ideology that sounds nice in theory but doesnt work in practice. It's always appealed exclusively to like white conservative college students and as someone who WAS one of them, I very clearly left the movement after the Tea Party started taking over and I turned on all of conservatism. Speaking of which...

3) Another casualty of 2016

In a way, the final legacy of the libertarian movement of the 2000s and early 2010s was always the Tea party. It was about getting conservatives back to their roots. it was the whole Reagan idea of "government is the problem and markets are the solution" taken to an extreme and it always represented this more pure version of constitutional conservatism that was trendy at the time. Basically, libertarianism was a consequence of Reaganism, when Reaganism went out of style, so did libertarianism. So it only really made sense as a zeitgeist for the time, and society shifted, people moved on. 

4) They're MAGA now

Honestly, I think most of these guys just became MAGA. There's been talk of a libertarianism to fascism pipeline, and I think that this is actually a huge reason why they disappeared. A lot of these guys ALWAYS had a disdain for democracy. And they always, despite the name, had an authoritarian streak. And as they see it, the left threatens their "rights", and they are willing to use force and anti democratic measures to protect their rights. Basically, libertarians loop back around to supporting far right authoritarianism, which is why many of them ended up becoming monarchists, or fascists, or all kinds of weird loopy authoritarian types. And, as we're finding out in Trump's second term, with the likes of DOGE, the "dark enlightenment" people, the elon musk and palantir tech bro crap, smaller government often ends up just meaning returning to authoritarianism. 

5) Alternatively: they're "liberals" now

I think there's a smaller group of people who instead transitioned to liberalism. But unlike me, who actually became a liberal/left libertarian, they ended up becoming the Lincoln project types where they were displaced by the republican party's fascist takeover, and are making their way to the democrats as these weird moderate neocon types. There aren't many of them, but the democrats seem deadset on bringing over disaffected conservatives into the movement, and these guys are prime targets. So a lot of these guys might just call themselves "independents". They might be part of Lincoln Project or "Forward", and yeah, they're kinda taking over the democrats as well as they seem to kiss up to corporate moderates at the expensive of their left flank. 

I dont think there's many of them. but to be fair, there weren't that many libertarians to begin with. I mean, Ron Paul voters were always only like 5-10% of the republican base. And again, if most of them were absorbed back into the base and became MAGA, well, yeah, you're talking like minute amounts of voters here. 

6) What about me?

So...I WAS one of these guys once. To summarize my own political journey, I'll say this.

2004-2006ish- My fundie Christian days. Basically one of the Christian nationalist nuts who are still a huge part of the party.

2006-2007- Moderating due to going to college, become more libertarian.

2008-2010- Conservative/libertarian- Huge ron paul stan. Was also like a 20-22 year old college student at the time. 

2011-2012- Kinda realized something was wrong with conservatism as my entire worldview shifted from Christianity toward New Atheism. Caused me to become very progressive left.

2012-2014- Rebuilding my own ideology. Became a social libertarian. Think proto-Yang gang but with more populist/bernie impulses. 

2014-present- Been some version of that since. There's been moments where I've identified as more "leftist" (2017-2019 for example), there have been times I identified as more moderate, but ultimately, my views have mostly been my views. And if I go back and read what I wrote 10 years ago, I still agree with like 95% of it. I had SOME bad takes once in a while, but eh, at this point it's evolution and not revolution.

Given I AM a social libertarian, can I say my former libertarian phase had an impact in that? Sure. I mean, in a way, I'm still a libertarian, I just evolved. And I do think that some former libertarians were Yang gang in 2020. However, I also dont think this is most people. I honestly am most inclined to say that most of them probably became MAGA of some kind, or they still exist, they're just less vocal given the MAGA direction of the party. Like as a block I dont think they shrank much. I mean, in 2024 they seemed to lose like half to two thirds their normal supporters, but to be fair, third party votes ebb and flow depending on how tied people feel to the party duopoly, and to be fair, they also might've been RFK supporters this time around too. Ya know a lot of third party voters actually voted for RFK despite him dropping out and endorsing trump. Yeah....

So....I guess they're mostly MAGA? Yeah, they're probably mostly MAGA now. That's my final answer.  

Democrats have to shape up or we're gonna lose our democracy

 So this was covered by a few outlets, but TYT was the last one i watched so they get the citation. So...we gotta talk about Israel again. I know, I know, I hate discussing Israel, but they seem to be, for better or for worse, at the forefront of our politics, and have been burning bridges with democratic voters like myself in recent years. And this time, there was a vote among DNC people regarding accepting donations from PACS like AIPAC, and several potential 2028 contenders got it shot down because...well...they wanna take money from this people. 

*inhales*

 *sighs*

Look. I used to be pro Israel. I wasnt pro Israel because someone was paying me, it was because I legitimately thought that they were the one liberal democracy in the middle east, and they had the moral high ground against the genocidal maniacs in Hamas. But...then they outed themselves as genocidal maniacs themselves. And then they started manipulating our politics to disgusting degrees. And then we lost the 2024 election in part because the whole Palestinian genocide thing really does matter with voters. And as it turns out, like 80% of democrats HATE israel at this point, because of this manipulation, including myself. And...as it turns out, we're in this war in Iran, in part because of fricking Israel. So it seems like Israel is a big fricking problem right now. And they've burned their bridges with the American people. Especially the left. And the democratic voters HATE them. And then the politicians are like "nah, F the voters, they'll vote for us anyway, let's take their money and do their bidding."

This is the problem the democrats have had for ten years. And at this point, it's getting scary. Back in 2016, you could give the republicans the benefit of the doubt. Yeah, they suck, yeah, they're insane, but they still respect our democracy, rule of law, and constitutional rights mostly. I mean, remember when the republicans were the "constitutionalists" who cares so much about the constitution they would attempt to procedure police us on LITERALLY EVERYTHING that didnt align with their weird idea how things were in 1789? Whatever happened to that? The modern GOP is openly fascist. They're setting up the groundwork for undermining the midterm elections. They're forming databases on their political critics, including random people who criticize them online apparently (hello, FBI), and potentially might take action against them in the future. They're trying to consolidate power in the executive branch, destroy democracy, and the first amendment. These aren't normal times, and the modern republican party has reached a level of evil where they need to be stopped, period. 

But...here's the thing. It's like the democrats don't care. They have this attitude of F the voters, they better vote for us or else. But at the end of the day, democracy, as long as it exists, still belongs to those voters. It is up to the voters whether politicians and parties get elected or reelected, and this isn't just a moral claim, but a pragmatic one. Most election cycles democrats lose in, are the ones where they fail to motivate their base. 2010, 2014, 2016, 2024. The democrats have a morale problem. And rather than meet the voters where they are, they ignore them, lecture them, berate them, and bully them, but never actually appeal to them. 

At this point, the standards aren't even very high. They're literally in the fricking basement. Even I'm 'vote blue no matter who" and am willing to put up with rather mediocre dems just to stop the GOP. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd LOVE to "hold their feet to the fire" in advocating for my political ideals, but honestly, it's like...gee....let's get rid of this fascist threat first, ya know? my own political strategy kinda relies on the continuation of democracy to be effective. if we're one election from just backsliding into full on authoritarianism where we lose our democracy, our freedom of speech, our constitutional rights, then all is fricking lost. And we're kinda at that threat level now. And I wish the democrats would take this threat as seriously as I am. Because at the end of the day these guys are gonna be sent to the same camps as the rest of us. 

Israel is fundamentally unpopular with democratic voters. Seriously, this faction grew when Biden was still in office, and with Biden gone, and Israel's worst impulses just flat out being out in the open, support is virtually nonexistent. So why keep kissing up to them? Why insist on the same third way nonsense that's cost them every election they've lost since 2016? Seriously. No one likes this stuff, but it's like no matter how much voters make their view clear, these guys just conveniently act like they didn't get the memo. Like the video above mentioned them tabling the democratic autopsy. Gee, I wonder why? because it basically told them that they lost because of Israel, and because of all the crap I've been railing about on this blog for ten years now? 

Look, the democrats are the opposition party to the republicans. It is up to them to stop these fascists trying to destroy our government and way of life. And history tells me a pretty consistent narrative on this. Strong liberalism is the antidote to fascism. If you wanna stop fascism before it becomes a stage 4 cancer that threatens the downfall of our free society, you need a strong unapologetic liberalism that listens to the people. FDR faced these same challenges 90 years ago. And he rose above them. I may not agree with him on everything he did, but he at least saved the country and restored peoples' trust in it again. 

On the other hand, a common refrain is that weak liberalism causes fascism to happen. When the social democrats failed in Germany, it allowed Hitler's Nazi party to come in and break the system, ending democracy until a world war happened that liberates people from them. If the democrats fail here, the same thing is gonna happen. It might already be too late. Its possible that the real test was 2024, and we failed it and now all we can do is watch while the fascists take over. However, as long as our democracy still stands, and at this moment it still does, we can mount a comeback. And the democrats need to be using their time, and using it wisely to come up with a counter strategy to Trumpism. But that involves leaning into a strong vision of democratic leadership a la FDR, not this weak crap we got with Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and fricking Elissa Slotkin, who the dems keep putting out there as if they're setting her up to be the next leader of the party for some reason. 

And they need to stop doing stupid stuff, like letting neocons come into our "big tent", and then lecturing us telling us that "leftists" aren't welcome in said tent. No, republicans should go back to their own party and fix it, not come in and ruin ours. If they wanna temporarily join with democrats to beat trump and restore liberal democracy, I welcome that. BUT, in the long term, they gotta go back and pick up the pieces in the republican party, restoring it to its pre fascist state. Otherwise we're stuck with this crap for the next several decades. Someone sane has to lead those lunatics, or they're gonna run the asylum, which is how we got here in the first place. 

Honestly, the democrats gotta shape up. They gotta cut ties with israel, they gotta stop listening to the donor class and start listening to the people. Or we're gonna lose our democracy to the MAGA faction. Even if we win in 2026 and 2028, if the democrats cannot keep power and restore the American peoples' faith in them to govern, then MAGA is just gonna be back in 2030 and 2032. Just as, just because we were successful in 2018 and 2020 doesnt mean that Biden saved democracy. In some ways, he might've condemned it. Democrats gotta get off their butts and govern properly, take the next few years seriously, and win over the will of the American people to an acceptable degree to stave off the fascist threat. or things are gonna keep going like this until the GOP breaks things enough that we CANT come back from this. Their choice.  

 

Why I'm not overly impressed with intel's new core ultra processors

 So...intel released two new processors lately, the core ultra 250k and core ultra 270k. Basically, these are refreshes of the core ultra 245k and 265k. And on paper, they are a bit better. The 250k and 270k have 4 more ecores than their predecessors and have better gaming performance. I guess what's really getting them attention is that the 250k is releasing for $199 and the 270k $299. I mean that's a good value. Too bad it's coming at a time where PC prices are going insane due to the RAM shortage, meaning that whatever gains you get are gonna be offset by higher prices elsewhere. 

And...I guess that's the point. I'm a price/performance guy, and while these CPUs are a good value, they don't fundamentally shake up the market. People go on about how they have so much more productivity power than equivalent AMD CPUs like the 7600x/9600x or 7700x/9700x. However, this has been the case since like...alder lake. Intel added ecores which gave much more multicore oomph than AMD parts, and people still acted like the AMD parts were the best thing since sliced bread because "upgrade path." 

At the same time, you gotta ask, who actually upgrades within the same socket regularly? Heck, I've only seen two CPU sockets in my lifetime where a full on CPU upgrade got you a huge performance jump, and that was LGA775 back in the day (intel core 2, think late 2000s), and the AM4 socket. And I guess people are glazing AM4's upgradeability, but there's a couple factors there that make it a special case. First of all, it had 4.5 generations of processors. That's almost unheard of. Normally you get 2-3, and they drop them. And normally if you buy the first one, the 3rd one isn't a huge deal. Think of going from a 1600x to a 3600x, that's basically all you can realistically expect from the same socket. But then AMD really hit hard out of the gate with the 5000 series, AND THEN followed it up with X3D. And I think that's also another thing that needs to be discussed here. AM4 was so special because it started out really weak vs intel, being down nearly 30-40% in single core performance in gaming at the beginning of its lifespan, while ending at basically alder lake levels of performance. You got 70% performance uplift per core going from a 1600x to a 5600x, And that went over double if you account for X3D processors. But again, AMD started out down, with an architecture full of design flaws and ended up with sharing the gaming crown with the 12900k, which HW unboxed recently revisited just today, and is part of the reason why I'm writing this.

Which brings me back to the whole 250k discussion. Yeah, $199 is a nice price tag for a 250k. BUT if you've been paying attention for the past 3 years now, you'll probably notice that $199 for a processor of the 250k's caliber, roughly, has been pretty common. Due to microcenter's $400 12900k deal I secured in 2023, I was able to buy that back then....for around $200 for the CPU. AND I got a mobo and RAM at reasonable prices. The same combo existed on microcenter's site until recently, but last I looked it was $549 and running up against arguably better deals. But I digress. It's not just that. It's that if you really wanted an intel CPU with comparable performance to an AMD non X3D processor for $200, they existed for years. You could find 12700ks and kfs for under $200 for a while. The 5700X3D was available for around $200 in early 2024. There were a lot of sales on 13600ks and 14600ks as well for around $230ish. And all things considered, while those deals drove up as those old intel CPUs are now out of production and their prices went up, the performance we're gaining with the 250k doesn't make it that much better. 

I mean, on paper, we're talking something that's 20-30% better. That;s okay...after 2.5 years of owning this thing. And the CPU is the same price, and the other components were much cheaper. Heck with RAM, you're likely paying more than 20-30% more for similar performance. And if we're talking gaming, let's compare the HW unboxed links. The 250k review didn't compare the 12900k directly to the 250k but it did compare the 14600k, which performs similar. And if we go back to the 12900k review from today and add to those results, since we're all discussing the same games, the performance is very similar to the 14600k, meaning we're talking like a 7-10% performance jump overall at medium settings. 

That's....not much. I mean, I guess compared to the 245k it's good, but the 245k was horrible, it was a REGRESSION compared to alder/raptor lake performance wise. So intel finally released their 2nd gen of arrow lake and finally got a tepid 10% gaming jump. I mean, congrats, but that doesn't mean much. 

I almost feel like we're back in another version of the 2010s intel stagnation era, where we just grew at 10% performance each generation and that's about it. The biggest jumps were from DDR3-DDR4 with skylake, and likewise, the biggest jumps since alder lake and zen 3-4 was the transition to DDR5, we can see that just from how the 12900k performs there. 

But again, that means that we've had like four generations of stagnation. And while I understand the 12900k was a high end i9 at the time, it never aged like one, raptor lake bumped it down to i5 status pretty quickly, and its value quickly followed suit. Was never worth it outside of microcenter deals, but again, given I got it for like $200, you seeing why I'd make the comparison here? Like yeah, it's a competent midrange intel CPU. But we've had midrange intel CPUs this powerful since around 2022 with the 13600k. And while I get that was $300 at the time, in 2023 and 2024, yeah, again, you can get stuff like that for $200 if you really shopped around. 

Idk, I guess the 250k is kinda like another raptor lake like bump given the core counts going up, but they dont seem to help a whole lot in gaming and given the architecture is being held back by tons of latency in the way pre zen 3 ryzen was,  ya know....i9 12900k -> 13600k -> 14600k -> 245k -> 250k....again, its feeling an awful lot like we're back in that 2011-2014 zone. And honestly, I just dont think this is much better than any deal you could get for $200 if you shopped around. And while people are going on about how much productivity it has vs AMD CPUs...AMD has been behind on that front since intel added ecores, and they're just falling further and further behind. The only reason it hasnt mattered is because 6 cores and 12 threads is all anyone has been needing since the transition to gen 9, and because people care more about upgrade path than intel CPUs literally giving you tons more processing power for the same money. So again, this isn't shaking up the market, it's literally just the status quo? What's the big deal?

Just my thoughts.  

Discussing Trump's unhinged comments

 So....our manbaby of a president is tired. He wants to go home. He doesn't wanna play any more. The game isn't going his way, and now he's starting to throw a temper tantrum. Yep. That's how I see those comments. It's literally that energy. You gotta treat him like a toddler at this point, and yeah, does that make more sense?

Ironically, he's also very old. So old people have been saying for years he's been showing signs of dementia. One symptom is behavioral disinhibition. It means they cant mask or filter their behavior any more so they just fricking start saying all the things that people normally shouldn't say but because Trump's filter is damaged, well, he's just coming out and sounding increasingly unhinged. 

Yeah. Someone take his phone, and his nuclear codes away from him. Him threatening people on twitter like this is insane for one. And the fact that this guy has access to nukes and people have been saying all day that maybe he's planning to nuke Iran is making this situation scary. I mean, it's bad this guy started the war in the first place, but as it continues to not go his way, since he thought it was gonna be an easy victory and now Iran is digging in for the long term and planning to inflict as much pain as he can on people, he's losing his crap. And who knows what he's capable of. Remember how I said in his first time his advisors were able to control him and reduce his worst impulses and that the presidency was basically a giant daycare for this guy? Yeah. Well, he fired his babysitters and is now surrounded by yes people and sycophants who are scared to stand up to him. Yeah. This is scary.

Anyway, some have been saying they need to invoke the 25th amendment on the guy. I agree. However, his cabinet IS full of yes people who lack the balls to do it.  Democrats in congress introduced articles of impeachment charging him with thirteen different serious crimes and abuses of power. But once again with the house controlled by Mike Johnson and the senate also being run by republicans, yeah, again, not likely to happen. Even if we had the house, we all saw how well the articles of impeachment went the the last few times we tried it. It's why he was able to take power again. We should've impeached this guy over January 6th and been done with it, but NOOO the republicans had to sit there playing candy crush and zoning out, only to basically let the guy go. 

So seriously, how much are the republicans gonna let this guy get away with before they recall this guy somehow? Is he gonna have to literally launch a nuclear war in Iran? I guess we're all gonna see. Either way, this ride isn't fun any more, and I wanna get off. Yeah, I too am just gonna put it in kid terms because it's all I can do at this point.  

Why I don't care about jobs reports

 So...I wrote an article like this under Biden, but it deserves a discussion under Trump as well. I'm so sick of hearing about what the jobs reports say. Libs love to rub it in and use it to attack Trump as if they're really owning him by pointing out that there isn't much job growth any more. The reality? While yes, Trump's terrible policies are largely responsible like that, and his tariffs and war with Iran definitely aren't helping the economy positively, the fact is, our economy is still at "full employment" and functionally has been since Trump took office. Seriously, "job creation" stops mattering when you're under 5% or so. In the macro, you can't really do much better than 4.something percent. And it doesn't make sense to celebrate creating more jobs when you're at that level. Because, again, capitalism is a giant game of musical chairs. It's designed to never have enough. We celebrate them creating more, but after that point it doesn't matter and can actively be harmful to the economy. If we have too many jobs, we end up getting inflation instead, which is bad in another way. Then you got like, the "worker shortages" of 2021. You don't want that either. 

Honestly, we should stop celebrating jobs, and the left should stop trying to lean so hard in the direction of job creation that the right leans into. Rather, we should lean into doing more to reduce poverty and create economic stability for people. Jobs are one solution to that, but the end all be all. 

I get it when dems try to say they do a better job than republicans at it, given the past 40 years, but to be fair, we just got lucky. The republicans ended up with all of the recessions while we havent. It doesnt mean we did much to "earn" having stronger economies though. I mean, if your idea is to sit on your luarels while the private sector creates jobs, that's...the private sector doing it. Government policy has a little to do with it, but not much. And it's gonna happen under either party. 

The only real reason to attack Trump for his weak economy is because he's the first president we can honestly say is kinda suiciding the economy. Because he is screwing everything up with his tariffs, wars, etc. But all things considered? If you really care about jobs, we're still at full employment, despite Trump's weak numbers. That's just how the economy works. if you have a problem with there not being enough jobs, you should also be critical of Biden. But also not, given he started out with, ya know, WAY TOO MANY at the same time. 

Again, I just wish we'd think beyond job creation. We can talk jobs jobs jobs all day but it's not gonna meaningfully make a huge difference. The problem is the economy itself. It's the fact that we rely on a bunch of self interested people who dont care about us to be responsible for providing for the well being of everyone else in the first place. Ya know? Jobs arent made to give people paychecks. I mean, they do, but businesses want to pay people the least amount of money for the most labor. And that's fundamentally, why the economy sucks as much as it does. And it's always been this way, but it seems like we'd rather than talk about anything else, but that fact. 

Idk, if you wanna blame trump for screwing up a perfectly "good" economy, have at it. I just think that the left should offer more than just "better private sector job creation than republicans." I think it's fine, given THEIR fixation on jobs as central to their ideology, all dems need to really do is prove they're just as competent at it (and they are), and then offer more beyond that. I dont want the job creation to be the central goal of the left, rather, it should be the cherry on top. Like "oh yeah, we can manage economies too, and we're actually a little better than you, but we also offer far more than just that." That way we outflank the republicans on literally everything. Instead of catering to their stated priorities. Like, when the democrats run on just creating more jobs than conservatives, they're basically saying they can govern like conservatives better than conservatives can. Which is great if you're a member of the third way and fundamentally conservative, but I'm not, and want something different.