Interesting Links for 14-02-2015

• The double life of Hasidic atheists
  (tags: viaCipherGoth Jews atheism )
• Virgin are dramatically expanding their cable network
  (tags: virgin cable )
• Stochastic, Nerdtastic Restaurant Bill Splitting
  (tags: random restaurant statistics payment )
• Everything you know about the Scottish council tax freeze is wrong
  (tags: Scotland tax )
• Every Single Dystopian YA Trope
  (tags: dystopia funny )
• What happens when you ask Peter Molyneux if he's a pathological liar?
  (tags: PeterMolyneux games lying interview )

Some computer companies do not want my money

So, my laptop is completely dead, after the motherboard turned out to be cracked from when I sat on it at Christmas.

And I went looking for a replacement - complete with some help from friends who work at large tech companies that _make_ laptops. And I discovered that most of the large computer companies have taken market segmentation too far.

They clearly made the decision, a few years ago that SSDs, being expensive, were only for rich customers, and should therefore only go in the high end laptops.

It is true that solid state storage is still signigicantly more expensive than discs - 2TB of SSD will cost you about £700, compared to £60 for a disc. But very few of us need 2TB in a laptop. If you're just surfing the web, checking email, listening to music and watching the occasional video, you can easily get by on 128GB. Which you can get for £60 - about the same minimum price as a spinning disc, only much faster.

But none of the big PC companies will sell me a low-end laptop with an SSD in, because SSDs are for high-end customers, and so only available in their top-end machines, where they can make a top-end profit.

So I ended up with a nice low-end German laptop maker instead - with this.

Where I can have a 15" laptop, with a 1TB HD, 128GB SSD, and 8GB of RAM. For £459. Which gives me the storage space _and_ the access speed, all without spending a fortune.

Marvel's Regency Period

From saladinahmed and by adifitri33

Nice day

We:
Woke up slowly
Ate left-over chicken biryani (toast for Julie)
Took a bunch of books that Julie no longer needs and posted them to Amazon in exchange for credit
Dropped in some clothes to be dry-cleaned so we can wear them to widgetfox's wedding next month
Went to John Lewis so Julie could try one shoes
Ordered the shoes for delivery as they didn't have the size six and a half in stock
Went for lunch and cocktails
Decided to drop in on the cinema
Thoroughly enjoyed Big Hero 6
Went to a small Italian for gelato and wine
Walked home
Surfed the internet

Loved pretty much every minute of it.

Full-band audience karaoke should _totally_ be a thing

skreidle linked to the following video, showing a band _accidentally_ starting an audience sing-a-long of an AC/DC song:

"Matt Nathanson Aug 22, 2014: 15 - You Shook Me All Night Long [AC/DC] Impromptu-Clifton Park,NY Full" (Watch on YouTube)

And my reaction was "That's awesome! I want to go and see a band and have them play the songs while the audience sings them! Why doesn't this already exist?"

Singing songs as a group is great fun, but most singing groups tend to focus on either choral/classical/religious songs. And they tend to be doing it so that they can perform.

You don't get sing-a-long-a-rock. And you bloody well should!