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Cake day: March 7th, 2026

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  • I have to correct myself. The 140W were the desktop system. With everything included (screen etc) I just checked and had a power draw of 166W at the power outlet. Those aren’t TDPs, that is the actual power draw including PSU losses and it is also the max draw, it doesn’t really get higher than that. My system is only 4060 like in performance, it is actually a Strix Halo with an integrated 8060s, with a combined CPU+GPU TDP limit of 100W. That has the advantage that I basically have no VRAM limitation (in Indiana Jones: The Great Circle I saw pretty continuous 12 GB memory used by the GPU) at the downside of limited bandwith, still quite close to a 4060 but much lower than high end GPUs of course.

    Yes, my system is absolutely not representative. It was one of my goals to get an as energy efficient setup as I could while getting the necessary performance to be able to play modern games.

    On modern gaming PCs 500W actual power draw during gaming does sound possible, on my previous system which had a pretty similar performance, but with dGPU (6750 XT). There I had a power draw of roughly 280-300W without the screen, during gaming, if I remember correctly.



  • That is a choice. My desktop setup, including speakers and monitor (measured at the power outlet), uses below 140 W at full load in games, for 4060 levels of performance. Yes, your system is likely faster but I can play all modern games with it, at a level that is good enough for me. And I don’t sit in a sauna while gaming as a consequence. In other words, for that 5 sec AI video I can play 7 hours on my system and that does not even consider the tons of energy spent on training the model.


  • The US Tech oligarchs are certainly spending a fortune on corruption (ie lobbying) on national and EU level, however to mixed success so far. The biggest threat to us are Russia’s fifth column, right (but also some left) populist autocrats. Those things are going hand in hand however. Those populists are ready to not only sell us out to Russia but to any foreign power willing to pay. Take the lead candidate of the AfD for the previous EU election. He was shown to have been bought not only by Russia but China as well. I am sure, he would have gladly worked for US tech oligarchs as well, if the AfD would not have frozen him out a bit, not for selling out to foreign powers but for getting caught red handed.

    It is up to the voters to vote for or against those people. Sadly, my confidence in this regard is rather low. It is shocking how similar the 2020s are to the 1920s. I am not looking forward to the 2030s.






  • The Volla Quintus appears to be almost identical, to the Daria Bond that is sold in the UAE. Specs look identical from what I could see and the only difference I can make out are very minor design changes in the back side shell. Volla’s marketing and statements are pretty misleading about that. I am not saying they should not work with Chinese OEMs but they create the impression there was meaningful customisation going on from their side, maybe there was but it looks very much off the shelf from an OEM model.

    At the same time Volla also sells Plinius. It is actually a stronger phone, for a lower price than the Quintus but looks very much like the strongest Gigaset phone (which is lower mid-range), so should be actually manufactured in Germany (as much as any phone in Europe could possibly be I think). It is bewildering that they don’t put the Gigaset model square and centre.


  • They might think that they are upholding open source secure communication but what they are really achieving with it is fortifying the US big tech duopoly. There are other aims than theirs, of maximum security, in the EU we are facing the real and very relevant issue of digital sovereignty, which is separate from the ambition for getting hardened mobile systems. Sure, possibly legislation would be preferable to regulate and open up what Google’s Play Integrity API is doing, but as long as that legislation does not exist, creating alternative systems is crucial.

    I can’t shake the feeling that this isn’t really about the UA but the private feud of Graphene OS developers with pretty much every single other alternative OS or degoogled android. Yes, they are all less secure than Graphene OS, primarily because Graphene OS relies on huge man power effort by Google to keep the firmware at the cutting edge with swift security updates. That is all good and fine, for their cause but it is not the only legitimate cause out there.