Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

High-End Gaming PCs Banned in Six US States

nichegamer.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 111 posts

Re: High-End Gaming PCs Banned in Six US States

#51

Post by xgbi »

chroem- wrote: post #31
Synaesthesia wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but gaming PC's are far more useful

Are they? With cryptocurrencies I can at least conduct commerce. With gaming PCs, I can... play violent videogames?

You can create an entire VFX short film with an high end pc. You can simulate fluid mechanics and invent a new revolutionary propulsion system for aircrafts with an high end Pc. You can train a NN to recognize perilous situation from webcam footage and distribute the weights freely on GitHub With a HPC. There are Miriam of things you can do with a powerful computer.

This law is stupid, a single EV recharge consumes 100x more than a HPC every single second.

Re: High-End Gaming PCs Banned in Six US States

#52

Post by colechristensen »

_yoqn wrote: post #13

All dark blue states. California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington. Pointless vote-grabbing bills are pushed to get headlines and signal the lawmakers virtuosity. Makes me think of the plastic bag "tax" in LA.

The plastic bag "tax" means I use the same number of pastic bags bug now I pay an extra few nickles when I go to the store and the bags I use and dispose of contain much more plastic than they did previously. I don't know who won there but it isn't me, the environment, or the retailer.

Re: High-End Gaming PCs Banned in Six US States

#53

Post by speedgoose »

chroem- wrote: post #31
Synaesthesia wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but gaming PC's are far more useful

Are they? With cryptocurrencies I can at least conduct commerce. With gaming PCs, I can... play violent videogames?

You can play peaceful games too.

Re: High-End Gaming PCs Banned in Six US States

#55

Post by bayindirh »

NoPicklez wrote: post #18

Having dived deeper, this is under the tier 1 requirements under California's energy efficiency limits. Which the California Energy Commission (CEC) noted to adopt tighter appliance energy standards. However from December 2021, "computers with high-speed networking capability, multi-screen notebooks, notebooks with cyclical behavior, and monitors with high refresh rates" will be covered by the rules" under tier 2 req…

> computers with high-speed networking capability

What's high speed?

10mbps was high speed once, then it got obsolete. Now 1Gbps is standard, and while it's not lightning fast, it can be considered fast.

10Gbps ethernet is becoming bog standard in our servers, and they'll trickle down to consumers systems then.

What's next? MIMO wireless adapters?

Re: High-End Gaming PCs Banned in Six US States

#56

Post by mlindner »

pedroma wrote: post #54
onion2k wrote: post #12

Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27954946 The top comment explains why this is probably a good thing.

Sounds like gun laws. As long as the grip on the gun is shaped in a certain way, it's no longer an illegal assault rifle.

You mean "assault weapon". The laws invent the category of "assault weapon" and then define it arbitrarily to ban it. "assault rifle" is something completely different and actually has a definition, but is also something that's illegal for sale anywhere in the US (if newly produced). Assault rifles are defined by having selective fire between semi-auto and fully-automatic. (These weapons are still sold in the US, but only old weapons grandfathered in, and require special permitting to own.)

For more see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_rifle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_weapon

Re: High-End Gaming PCs Banned in Six US States

#57

Post by chroem- »

xgbi wrote: post #51
chroem- wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they? With cryptocurrencies I can at least conduct commerce. With gaming PCs, I can... play violent videogames?

You can create an entire VFX short film with an high end pc. You can simulate fluid mechanics and invent a new revolutionary propulsion system for aircrafts with an high end Pc. You can train a NN to recognize perilous situation from webcam footage and distribute the weights freely on GitHub With a HPC. There are Miriam of things you can do with a powerful computer. This law is stupid, a single EV recharge consumes 1…

Do the majority of gaming PC owners spend most of their time doing those tasks though? I think if the answer were yes, we would be discussing VFX and ML workstations, not "gaming" PCs.

If we can legislate less environmentally harmful ways of doing commerce, why can't we legislate less environmentally harmful forms of entertainment? This is simply the logical conclusion of that line of reasoning.

Re: High-End Gaming PCs Banned in Six US States

#58

Post by paavohtl »

colordrops wrote: post #29
frostburg wrote: post #9

In this specific instance the consumer is being done a favor by being prevented from buying terrible prebuilts, but the law is absurd.

What's wrong with the prebuilts? Price vs performance?

That, but also:

- Low quality parts

- Bad build quality

- Incompatible & proprietary motherboards, coolers and power supplies

- Bizarre part choices, like severely underpowered cooling and power delivery or using just 1 stick of RAM when 2 sticks would be significantly faster with about the same amount of money

- Windows installation filled with unwanted software and/or outright malware, like McAfee, which can have a double-digit % effect on game performance.

- The purchase process can involve dark patterns, like cleverly hidden support contracts with a monthly fee

The PC hardware channel Gamers Nexus has been reviewing prebuilt systems for past few months [1]. None of the reviewed computers have been great, and the ones from big manufacturers (namely Dell and Alienware) have been the worst of the bunch.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsuVSmND84QuM2HKzG7ip...

Re: High-End Gaming PCs Banned in Six US States

#59

Post by hellotomyrars »

colechristensen wrote: post #52
_yoqn wrote: post #13

All dark blue states. California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington. Pointless vote-grabbing bills are pushed to get headlines and signal the lawmakers virtuosity. Makes me think of the plastic bag "tax" in LA.

The plastic bag "tax" means I use the same number of pastic bags bug now I pay an extra few nickles when I go to the store and the bags I use and dispose of contain much more plastic than they did previously. I don't know who won there but it isn't me, the environment, or the retailer.

Why not just bring your own?

Like, serious question. I didn't do it until I had to but I can fit more crap in my own bags, and they're not going to break on me when I carry them up the stairs. Its kind of just better.

Re: High-End Gaming PCs Banned in Six US States

#60

Post by _yoqn »

colechristensen wrote: post #52
_yoqn wrote: post #13

All dark blue states. California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington. Pointless vote-grabbing bills are pushed to get headlines and signal the lawmakers virtuosity. Makes me think of the plastic bag "tax" in LA.

The plastic bag "tax" means I use the same number of pastic bags bug now I pay an extra few nickles when I go to the store and the bags I use and dispose of contain much more plastic than they did previously. I don't know who won there but it isn't me, the environment, or the retailer.

Exactly. True experience: two weeks ago I was in a Target in Florida and got a plastic bag with my purchase, just a normal grocery store grade bag. One week ago I went to a Target in Burbank and paid for a plastic bag with my purchase. This thing was some sort of fancy heavy-duty tote.

The bigger problem is attempting to modify behavior through an open market by way of legislation. As opposed to using legislation to prevent damaging behavior directly.

Post reply on HN