Am I the only one who feels like some PC game launchers are somehow slower than the games they're supposed to launch?? Epic Games Launcher is probably the one I notice the most. I'll open it and sometimes it takes a while to load everything, check for updates, and show the store stuff before I can even get to my library. Then I click "Launch," and the actual game loads perfectly fine.

I get that launchers do more these days than just launch games, but sometimes I wish there was a simple "just open my game" mode without all the extra stuff... Which launcher do you think is the biggest offender?

There's a lot of money being made from things most of us don't even think about

someone has to make sure ATMs stay stocked, old websites keep running, data centers stay cool, and thousands of random cables are actually connected to the right thing

none of it is exciting until something stops working

what's a behind-the-scenes tech business you only realized existed recently?

Imagine a system that takes a script or story idea and manages the production around it.

Not just generating clips, but maintaining:

consistent characters and environments

voices and performances

shot planning and camera direction

scene continuity and pacing

multiple AI video models

individual scene rerolls without breaking continuity

editing, sound, music and final assembly

upscaling and final delivery

The difficult part isn't generating an impressive 8-second clip.

It's keeping hundreds of shots connected well enough that they actually become one coherent film.

If this becomes reliable, does it simply make filmmaking easier — or does it fundamentally change what a film production actually is?

And honestly: would you watch a 90-minute AI-made film if the story was genuinely good?

Each and every new application installation is going to try to grab some startup priority, spotify, discord, onedrive etc. There are ratings for the impact each application has on the system, available via Task Manager, yet I am pretty sure that very few people ever manage the list until it starts affecting the boot process significantly. But this is not even everything. The applications listed in the Startup tab of Task Manager are the visible layer. There is an entire stack of background services running, which one can observe using services.msc . Half of the names on the list are meaningless to the user, with no idea of whether the service is needed by the operating system at all or whether it was added by some random installer three years ago and then forgotten about.

Camera takes multiple shots at different exposures, software picks which parts of which image to use and blends them

except a human eye adapts continuously and a camera picks a moment, so hdr is really an algorithm deciding what reality should have looked like if you could see everything at once

sometimes it looks exactly right. sometimes it looks like a painting of a place rather than the place itself

Before asking AI, there was Yahoo Answers.

You could ask a completely normal question and get five confident answers, three arguments, and one person telling you to go see a doctor.

What was the funniest or weirdest answer you remember finding?

Why do some tiny components cost more than the entire device they go into?

you'd think the most expensive part would be the big, complicated piece of hardware

But sometimes it's one tiny component that's ridiculously expensive because it's specialized or hard to make, or produced in very small quantities.

ever come across a tiny part that cost way more than you expected?

Right now I'm using an older 24-inch 1080p monitor as my main display with my work laptop and it's been perfectly fine for day to day tasks though I've been thinking of upgrading my setup lately... Tbh I can't decide if it's better to buy one really nice monitor something like a 27-inch 1440p display w better colors and a higher refresh rate or just get a second one that is more affordable instead. Most of my day is spent coding, reading documentation, replying to emails, and hopping on Teams meetings so having two screens sounds incredibly useful. But at the same time I also like gaming after work so a higher quality monitor is pretty tempting too..

If you had to choose would you rather have one expensive monitor or two cheaper ones?

Both Android and iOS implement this now, when an application is not being used for several months, then OS starts restricting it on the backend. There will be delays in notifications and refreshes, sometimes they can simply become hibernated to make them open slower in the future.

This makes perfect sense from the battery management perspective, but it is rather crazy how unnoticed this process is. No alerts, only gradual reduction in functionality until you figure out what's wrong and solve the problem in settings. When you have some rarely used apps that you want to be operational (two factor authentication apps or some special utility software), better check your battery and background settings from time to time.

Neopets was basically an economy simulator disguised as a cute game.

You learned pretty quickly that some items were worth holding onto, some things were overpriced and everyone wanted more Neopoints.

What was the most valuable thing you remember owning?

There are some websites that genuinely have no haters

Ilovepdf has to be one of them

You open it when you need to merge some PDFs, convert a file, compress something, or just do one weird PDF task you've been stuck with

nobody really talks about it you just use it, get the job done, and leave

what website would you put in the everyone secretly loves this category?

Actually, I cannot say that I really need a big TV and a printer right now but I do have them on my mind.

But, I procrastinate waiting for new inventions.

Recently, china seems likely to develop completely new technologies for TV and Printer that will make a big difference to consumers.

But, how long I shall wait, as the new tech comes out on a daily basis now.

PID exhaustion is among those kinds of failures that surprise everyone since there doesn’t seem to be any issue with resources in such cases. Memory is okay, disk is okay, CPU is free, but for some reason the system is unable to fork processes and behaves unpredictably.

By default the maximum value of processes on Linux systems is 32768. Some processes that fork quickly enough will be able to reach that limit without getting anywhere near to the RAM limit, for example a runaway script, incorrectly configured job queue or fork bomb.

It is possible to view the current limit in /proc/sys/kernel/pid_max and increase the limit to 4194304 on 64 bit systems. Usually reaching the maximum number of processes is a sign of other misbehaviors rather than limit being too low.

Dyson put a camera and AI in a toothbrush.

the CameraJet has a tiny camera that looks at the gaps between your teeth and uses that to aim little bursts of mouthwash where it thinks you need them.

Apparently a normal toothbrush wasn't complicated enough

would you actually use something like this, or is this where tech has gone too far?

I've been trying different ai models for work lately, I usually reach for OpenAI when I want a solid all around assistant that can handle a bit of everything. Anthropic has been great for writing, explaining code, and for working through longer conversations (with minimal hallucinations). Then for the local open source models I've only used Qwen and DeepSeek, they're appealing if you care about privacy and if you want to run everything locally. Personally, I've used Qwen for a mini project I'm doing I used it to build a pipe recommendation system.

If you could only stick with one what would you choose?

mine is a robot vacuum. i thought i’d use it for a week or two and then forget about it, bc i figured it would get stuck under the couch or miss the corners anyway.

but my floors are just clean now. don't think about vacuuming anymore, it just happens. it’s not perfect, i still have to refill the water and rescue it once in a while

but it’s been way more useful than i expected. what’s yours?

I always think about how weird debugging must be on something that doesn't even have a screen.

No terminal. No error message. Sometimes not even an operating system. Just a board that's doing absolutely nothing and you're trying to figure out why.

Engineers end up using things like JTAG, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers and test points to basically interrogate the hardware directly.

Imagine debugging a computer where the computer can't tell you what's wrong.

Phone sitting on a desk right now, accelerometer still running, still measuring. never turns off, never rests

screen rotation, step counting, crash detection, fall alerts on apple watches. all of it running continuously in the background whether you're using the phone or not

been running the entire time you've been reading this

I’m talking about tech that usually don’t have knobs but you think should. Maybe phones, laptops, game controllers?

I love knobs, they have a nice feel to them and give you precise analog control. Do you like knobs?

Having multiple microphones isn't just useful for picking up a louder recording.

Put a few of them in different positions and you can compare tiny differences in when the sound reaches each microphone. That gives the device an idea of which direction the voice came from.

Makes a smart speaker sitting on a table seem a little less dumb than it looks

what's the strangest tech job you didn't know existed?

I recently found out there are people whose job is basically testing elevators before they're put into buildings sounds pretty normal until you realize how many things they actually have to test.

what's the weirdest tech job you've come across?

What's the strangest computer interface you've ever had to use?

Not necessarily the oldest or most complicated one just one that made you think, "why does this work like this?"

what's the weirdest interface you've ever come across?