Windows 11

The Hidden Cost of IT Neglect Business leaders frequently prioritize tangible luxury over digital stability. It is common to see owners spend thousands on high-end vehicles while hesitating to invest a fraction of that in their technological foundation. This mindset creates significant blockers to scalability. IT infrastructure is not a sunk cost; it is the fuel for productivity and team collaboration. Without modern systems, a business essentially operates with its brakes on. Connectivity as a Cloud Catalyst As software migrates almost entirely to the cloud, bandwidth has become the lifeblood of the office. Slow connectivity does more than frustrate employees; it cripples the ability to use modern tools effectively. High-speed connectivity ensures that cloud-based applications respond instantly, allowing teams to maintain a flow state rather than waiting for data to sync. In the digital economy, speed is a competitive advantage that directly impacts the bottom line. The Lifecycle of Hardware and Software Technology is never static. With Microsoft ending support for Windows 10, businesses face a mandatory transition to Windows 11. Ignoring these hardware and software cycles leaves a company vulnerable. Upgrading is not just about gaining new features; it is about maintaining compatibility with the rest of the professional world and ensuring that older machines do not become a liability to the network's overall performance. Defending Against the Resilient Threat Cybersecurity requires a shift in perspective. Threat actors are becoming more sophisticated and resilient, constantly evolving their methods to bypass standard defenses. Ransomware attacks can paralyze an organization overnight. Investing in robust security measures is the only way to avoid being at the behest of these actors. Protecting data is synonymous with protecting the brand's reputation and financial future. Selecting a Strategic IT Partner Changing an IT provider is a complex, arduous process, often compared to switching accountants. However, the right partner, such as Connectus, provides more than just reactive fixes. A true partner offers a technology roadmap, proactively suggesting improvements that align with long-term business goals. This strategic guidance transforms IT from a support function into a primary driver of corporate evolution.

The sun-drenched, blood-soaked streets of Los Santos serve as more than just a backdrop for criminal enterprise; they are a living, breathing testament to the chaotic beauty of the modern digital sandbox. For the veteran player, returning to this world after a hiatus feels like stepping back into a familiar, albeit dangerous, dream. The hum of the Xbox controller, the frantic clicking of a mechanical keyboard, and the distant sound of explosions form the soundtrack of a life lived on the edge of the law. This journey begins not with a bang, but with a shower—a moment of quiet reflection before plunging into the systematic dismantling of rival operations. The air is thick with anticipation as the focus shifts toward the McKenzie Field Hangar, a recent acquisition that represents both a financial gamble and a strategic foothold in the northern reaches of the state. The Architecture of Digital Regret One of the most compelling meta-narratives within the community is the concept of 'purchasing regret.' In a world where a police boat can cost nearly four million dollars, every transaction is a narrative choice. The creator explores this through a series of reflections on vehicles like the Zeno and the Police Predator. The former is a masterpiece of design, a car that evokes no remorse despite its price tag, while the latter stands as a monument to administrative disappointment. This isn't just about utility; it's about the 'vibe' and the aesthetic contribution to the player's personal lore. The process of documenting these regrets involves a meticulous ritual: recording the purchase screen, capturing b-roll in the cinematic wash of a car wash, and battling the encroaching darkness of the in-game night cycle. It is a creative process that mirrors the grind of the game itself, turning digital commodities into stories of triumph or, more often, expensive lessons in consumerism. The Guzman Gambit and the Mercenary Shift The rising action of this session centers on the introduction of Oscar Guzman, a character who embodies the gritty, opportunistic spirit of the San Andreas underworld. Operating out of the McKenzie Field Hangar, Guzman presents a series of missions that feel like a throwback to the classic drug-running tropes of earlier titles, yet with the polished mechanical complexity of the modern era. The initial task—intercepting weapons shipments and bringing down aircraft with precision ground fire—sets a frantic pace. There is a raw, unscripted tension when a routine mission is interrupted by the local wildlife; the sudden appearance of a cougar on a mountain trail serves as a reminder that the environment is just as lethal as the rival cartels. These missions highlight the shift from simple street thuggery to sophisticated aerial logistics, as players find themselves stealing Mogul aircraft and sabotaging Everard Munitions, a shadowy corporate entity that represents the 'monopoly' of the military-industrial complex. Shadowing Everard Munitions: Corporate Sabotage As the narrative deepens, the conflict escalates from petty theft to full-scale corporate warfare. Everard Munitions isn't just a rival; they are the faceless giants holding government contracts, making them the ultimate antagonist for the independent smuggler. The mission to steal the Titan 250d requires a multi-stage infiltration involving drone technology and deep-sea diving. This sequence showcases the sheer variety of gameplay loops within Grand Theft Auto Online. One moment, you are piloting a fragile drone through a server room to hack military intel; the next, you are donned in scuba gear, navigating the murky depths of the Pacific to recover cargo while sharks circle in the gloom. The tension is palpable as the player balances the need for 'no witnesses' with the practical reality of escaping a high-security zone. The 'shitty triathlon' of drone piloting, data breaching, and diving encapsulates the exhausting yet exhilarating life of a high-tier criminal operator. The Breaking Point: Technical Friction and the Infinite Void Every great story has a turning point where the protagonist faces an obstacle that cannot be overcome by skill alone. In the digital realm, this is often the 'infinite loading screen.' During a high-stakes heist to board a cargo ship and exfiltrate with heavy-lift helicopters, the reality of 'Enhanced' gaming hits a wall. The transition between phases of the mission results in a technical freeze that threatens to undo hours of progress. This moment of friction leads to a frantic struggle with the Windows 11 task manager and resource monitor, a meta-battle to save the session. It is a stark reminder of the fragile nature of these shared universes. The frustration is compounded by the predatory nature of modern monetization, such as the GTA Plus subscription service, which offers solutions to inventory problems that many feel shouldn't exist in the first place. The 'enhanced' experience often feels burdened by these bugs and paywalls, creating a narrative of resistance not just against the in-game police, but against the developer's own systems. The Prison Break: A Return to Classic Heists In the aftermath of the technical glitch, the narrative shifts toward camaraderie. The Prison Break heist, one of the original pillars of the cooperative experience, remains a daunting challenge for those daring enough to attempt it with a public lobby. This segment is a masterclass in role-play, as players assume the identities of police officers to infiltrate a station and secure transit schedules. The act of calling 911 to lure a police cruiser into a trap is a quintessential Grand Theft Auto moment—clever, cynical, and highly effective. The successful execution of the 'Station Team' objective, characterized by acting 'natural' in a den of enemies, provides a satisfying resolution to the day's chaos. It proves that despite the flashy new updates and the corporate-themed DLC, the heart of the game still lies in the tense, coordinated efforts of a crew working toward a single, impossible goal. Reflection: The Cost of the Digital Crown Looking back at the session, which spanned over three and a half hours, the lesson learned is one of endurance and adaptation. The digital economy of Los Santos is a harsh mistress; a player can earn millions only to see it evaporate through ammo costs, property taxes, and the 'inflation' of the criminal world. Being down to a 'last 20 million' sounds like a luxury, but in this universe, it is a precarious position. The journey from the McKenzie Field Hangar to the Bolingbroke Penitentiary illustrates the cyclical nature of the game—the constant need to hustle, the inevitability of technical failure, and the enduring pull of the community. As the sun sets on this particular chapter, the focus turns toward the future, toward the looming shadow of Grand Theft Auto VI, and the hope that the next generation of chaos will be just as immersive, if perhaps a little more stable.

Nvidia thinks a $4 day pass is the future of gaming Nvidia just introduced a day pass for GeForce Now, and the pricing is nothing short of insulting. To get priority access for a single 24-hour window, you’ll cough up $4. If you want the ultimate tier—which grants you RTX 4080 performance—it’s $8. To put that into perspective, a full month of priority costs $10, and a full month of ultimate costs $20. Nvidia is essentially charging you 40% of a monthly subscription for a single day of service. From a market analysis perspective, this is a baffling move. Usually, a "day pass" is a low-barrier entry point designed to hook users into a long-term subscription. But at this price point, the barrier isn't low; it's a paywall designed to penalize the casual user. It’s hard to imagine who this is for. If you’re a traveler who just wants to game for one night in a hotel, maybe you’ll swallow the $8 pill. But for anyone else, the math simply doesn't work. Nvidia’s justification likely centers on the high cost of server maintenance and bandwidth—this isn't just streaming a video; it's a high-performance compute instance. However, if the goal is user acquisition, they’ve missed the mark. A smarter move would have been a $1 or $2 pass that credits toward your first month. Instead, they’ve opted for a pricing model that feels like corporate penny-pinching in a boardroom. On the technical side, GeForce Now is actually making some impressive strides. They've added variable refresh rate (VRR) support, which is a massive win for cloud gaming. VRR allows the display to sync its refresh rate with the incoming frame rate from the cloud, reducing stutter and latency. Interestingly, this feature is currently locked to users with modern Nvidia GPUs on Windows, yet it works on Macs with Apple or AMD silicon. This suggests Nvidia might be arbitrarily gating features for their own hardware owners—a frustrating but classic move from the green team. Nintendo kills Yuzu in a $2.4 million legal blitz The emulation community was rocked this week when Tropic Haze, the developers behind the Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu, settled with Nintendo for $2.4 million. This wasn't just a slap on the wrist; it was a total capitulation. The developers agreed to cease all operations, shut down their website, and hand over their domain and hardware to Nintendo. The speed of this settlement—occurring just a week after the lawsuit was filed—suggests that Nintendo had significant leverage. Observers speculate the Yuzu team settled to avoid the discovery phase of a trial, which likely would have unearthed internal communications showing the team sharing copyrighted game files or optimizing for games before their official release. This is the danger zone for emulation. While the software itself is often protected under legal precedent, the moment developers touch pirated game data or profit from its distribution, they paint a massive bullseye on their backs. The fallout has been immediate. Citra, a popular 3DS emulator from the same team, was also shuttered. Competitors like Ryujinx have gone into a defensive crouch, temporarily closing discord invites. Even the developer of the DS emulator DraStic has made the software free and announced plans to open-source it to avoid becoming the next target. Nintendo’s strategy here isn't just about winning a case; it’s about weaponizing fear. They want to send a clear message: if you facilitate the play of our current-gen games on non-Nintendo hardware, we will come for you with everything we have. Warner Bros destroys Rooster Teeth and Adult Swim games In a move that highlights the precarious nature of digital media under corporate consolidation, Warner Bros. Discovery is shutting down Rooster Teeth. This marks the end of a 21-year run for a digital pioneer that defined early internet video culture with "Red vs. Blue." While the brand had seen its share of controversies and declining viewership, the cold, hard shutdown—impacting 150 employees—is a grim reminder that legacy media companies often view these assets as nothing more than tax write-offs or IP silos to be pillaged. Simultaneously, Warner Bros. is delisting games published under the Adult Swim Games banner on Steam. Developers have reported that Warner Bros. rejected requests to simply transfer the ownership of these games back to the creators, despite the developers owning the IP. One developer was told he could relist his game only if he scrubbed all mentions of Adult Swim from the credits. This is a catastrophic failure of digital stewardship. When a corporate giant delists a game, they don't just stop selling it; they kill the community. Historical reviews, wishlists, and years of player data vanish. This trend reinforces the necessity of physical media and independent distribution. If a multi-billion dollar corporation can't be bothered to click three times to transfer a game to its creator, they shouldn't be in the business of publishing art in the first place. This is corporate lethargy at its most destructive, prioritizing legal clean-up over the preservation of digital history. LMG spends thousands on an industrial CT scanner Linus Media Group has acquired a Lumafield Neptune industrial CT scanner, and it’s one of the most exciting additions to our laboratory to date. This isn't just a toy for YouTube; it's a professional tool that allows us to see through hardware without the destructive process of a teardown. We’ve already used it to scan everything from Noctua edition screwdrivers to dbrand promotional Rubik’s cubes. The Neptune works by blasting an object with X-rays from multiple angles as it rotates, then reconstructing a high-fidelity 3D model of the internals. We can see the density of the plastic, the layout of the internal gearing, and even the traces on a PCB. For a tech reviewer, this is like having a superpower. It allows us to verify manufacturing claims and inspect internal build quality with a level of precision that was previously impossible. However, owning such a device in Canada brings us back to the most misunderstood topic in our comment section: tax write-offs. There is a persistent myth that if a business buys an expensive piece of equipment, it’s "free" because it’s a write-off. Let’s be very clear: a write-off simply means we don't pay income tax on the money we spent on that item. If we spend $50,000 on a scanner, we still spent $50,000. We just saved the ~25% tax we would have paid on that $50,000 if we had kept it as profit. We don't get the scanner for free, and we certainly can't write off personal items like home pools just because we filmed a video near them. The CRA is remarkably efficient at spotting that kind of fraud, and being a high-profile target makes us the first people they would audit. Samsung makes a mess of OLED branding Samsung Electronics is currently engaged in some of the most anti-consumer branding obfuscation we've seen in the TV market. They are mixing QD-OLED panels (produced by Samsung Display) with W-OLED panels (produced by LG Display) within the same model lines, specifically the S90D series. For the uninitiated, QD-OLED and W-OLED are fundamentally different technologies. QD-OLED uses quantum dots for superior color brightness and purity, whereas W-OLED uses a white subpixel that can wash out colors at high brightness levels. By refusing to label which panel is in which TV, Samsung is effectively gambling with consumer money. You could buy an S90D and get a cutting-edge QD-OLED, or you could get a W-OLED panel that Samsung’s own marketing previously claimed was inferior. This move appears to be a result of a business deal between Samsung and LG. LG needs to move panels to keep their factories running, and Samsung needs cheaper OLED options to compete on price. As part of the deal, LG reportedly asked Samsung not to market W-OLED as an inferior technology. The result is a total lack of transparency. When brands prioritize backroom corporate deals over clear product specifications, the consumer is always the loser. If you’re shopping for a Samsung OLED this year, you’ll need to be an amateur detective to figure out what you’re actually buying. Linux hits 4% while Windows kills Android apps In a surprising statistical shift, Linux has officially reached a 4.03% market share on desktop operating systems. While 4% sounds small, it represents millions of users and a significant upward trend from just 3% a year ago. Much of this growth is coming from international markets like India, where Linux holds a staggering 15% share. The Steam Deck is likely a major contributor here, even if it’s being undercounted by web traffic metrics. It’s proving that when you give people a polished, functional version of Linux, they’re more than happy to use it. Meanwhile, Microsoft is waving the white flag on one of Windows 11’s marquee features: Android app support. They’ve announced they are ending the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA) next year. This feature was dead on arrival for most users because it lacked the Google Play Store. Relying on the Amazon Appstore meant a severely limited selection of apps that often didn't work well on a desktop. Microsoft’s retreat from Android apps is a symptom of their failure in the tablet space. Without a compelling consumer tablet to compete with the iPad, there was no real incentive for developers or users to care about Android apps on Windows. It’s a classic Microsoft move: launch a feature with half-hearted execution, see low adoption, and kill it off. While the Linux community builds momentum through open-source utility and hardware like the Steam Deck, Microsoft continues to bloat Windows with features that they eventually abandon anyway.