For good graphics performance in a smallish package, I like Lenovo Legion.
If graphics aren’t a concern, then I have no more specific recommendation, too much choice. I like flip style laptops, but I don’t know if those have proper Linux support. I’d also look for a screen larger than 14", but with thin bezels.
The worst build laptop that I’ve ever held in my hands was from MSI. Cooling problems that made the fans work almost permanently at full blast (even after repasting by the shop), underperforming for the specs, a chassis with too much flex and a broken screen hinge after slightly more than 2 years (just out of warranty). When I looked up the screen hinge problem, it turned out to be an old recurring problem that MSI never bothered to fix when releasing new models, like they couldn’t be arsed to give a fuck.
This laptop was bought in about 2017 or 2018 after which I put MSI on the do not buy list. It’s possible that they’ve improved their quality since then, but I doubt it, given that I can find the same complaints in forum posts from 2024:
https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?threads/are-hinge-issues-still-a-thing.343279/page-5
LTT is entertainment, I wouldn’t expect in depth reporting from them. They don’t have that anal retentive attention to details/all angles that Gamer’s Nexus or Louis Rossman have. If LTT made videos where they attack stuff that they think is wrong, then I’d expect them to go on their face more often than not. And attacking large companies with a poorly constructed case, would always come back to bite them in the ass.
Very few people can do the kind of repeated reporting that Gamer’s Nexus and Louis Rossman do + stay in business. I can’t blame LTT for sticking to what they’re good at (superficial entertainment).
"That might make me look advertiser unfriendly!” Not what I was saying at all. I said that in the context of the time it might have made them look unnecessarily greedy to the public + provide free advertising + extra users for Honey.
I don’t enjoy watching ltt anymore since a good few years, but I’m still going to come to their defence :)
They discussed dropping Honey on their forum in march 2022: "We ended the partnership with Honey due to the way their service interacted with affiliate links. Essentially, if someone clicked on a affiliate link (For example, one of ours below in the video description on YouTube), and then if they “use honey” and search for a deal, Honey will override that tracking link even if they don’t find you a deal. ".
https://linustechtips.com/topic/1415146-weekly-sponsorship-suggestioncomplaint-thread-feb-28-2022/
When they defended themselves against the recent accusations, that they didn’t make enough noise when dropping Honey in 2022, their defence was that they thought that only creators were disadvantaged (a few 100 people?). They claim to have been unaware that the users of Honey (the hundreds of thousands of LTT viewers) were being disadvantaged as well. They also seemed to be unaware that Honey’s behaviour is likely illegal, at least LTT made no mention on the legality of it. https://therecenttimes.com/news/linustechtips-addresses-megalags-honey-allegations-defends-transparency Which checks out with their 2022 post.
If they had known that the users of Honey were being bamboozled as well, I’m sure that they would have made a video about it. But making a complaint video to basically say that an ex sponsor was stealing some of their marbles, might have given a bad look. + given more publicity to Honey, which LTT probably didn’t want to happen.
Trustpilot doesn’t have a way to verify if the reviewers are actual product users, so their system is very vulnerable to review bombing. Allowing review bombing can also harm their credibility. It’s a catch 22 for them: damned if they suppress review bombs and damned if they don’t.
Trustpilot’s method and/or communication could probably be better, but what Google is doing is the worst possible way to go about it: On the chrome webstore page there is no indication whatsoever that anything is amiss, Google is just silently removing all recent negative reviews. Atleast Trustpilot tells visitors that they’re temporarily not accepting reviews and that it’s because of recent news.
Aggregate scores on all sites have become untrustworthy, they’re just poor first indicators now, but reading user reviews is still very much worth it imo. It just takes way longer to figure out whether a product is good/bad than it did 10 years ago. Once ai llm catch up with writing credible texts, then that method will be toast as well and then we’ll be really screwed when choosing a product.
And I kinda understand why they’re blocking new reviews. Trustpilot doesn’t have a way to verify if the reviewers are actual product users, so their system is very vulnerable to review bombing. It’s a catch 22 for them: damned if they suppress review bombs and damned if they don’t.
Trustpilot’s method could be better (Fe: they could allow reviewbombs to happen and show 2 scores, with and without), but what Google is doing is probably the worst possible way to go about it: On the chrome webstore page there is no indication whatsoever that anything is amiss. Atleast Trustpilot tells visitors to go check the news.
I actually can’t believe that I’ve been defending Trustpilot, they’ve always had a repuation of selectively removing reviews, but well, Google is now worse than them.
Honey in the chrome webstore: 4.7 stars. With no clear way to see written reviews, just the aggregated stars are visible.
Honey in the firefox add-ons store: 3.2 stars.
Honey in Trustpilot: 2.7 stars. Closed for new reviews since 4 days, but old reviews and history are still accessible.
Google manages to do worse than trustpilot. Google is once again confirming what a useless company they’ve become.
I read a science fiction book from Iain M Banks over the holidays that was set in a rogue star system that was millions of light years away from the nearest galaxy. No matter how advanced that society could get, they would never be able to travel to the nearest star. They were doomed to isolation in their 1 star system basically. Compared to that, a mere 40 light-years at least gives the hope that it might one day be possible to travel there within a few life times (or less) of traveling.
And I’m not saying that you are. I tried to show with a parable that they do not need to see their machine’s actions to know that some of it’s actions are illegal. That’s what we were disagreeing on: that they know.
I made an automaton. I set the parameters in such a way that there is a large variability of actions that my automaton can take. My parameters do not pre-empt my automaton from taking certain illegal actions. I set my automaton loose. After some time it turns out that my automaton has taken an illegal action against a specific person. Did I know that my automaton was going to commit a illegal action against that specific person? No, I did not. Did I know that my automaton was sooner or later going to commit certain illegal actions? Yes I did, because those actions are within the parameters of the automaton. I know my automaton is capable of doing illegal actions and given enough incidences there is an absolute certainty that it will do those illegal actions. I do not need to interact with my automaton in any way to know that some of it’s actions will be illegal.
You can’t create an automated machine, let it run loose without supervision and then claim to not be responsible for what the machine does.
Maybe just maybe this was the very first instance of their ai malfunctioning (which I don’t believe for a second), in which case the correct response of Brandshield would have been to announce that they would temporarily suspend the activities of this particular program & promise to implement improvements so that it would not happen again. Brandshield has done neither of these, which tells me that it’s not the first time and also that Brandshield has no intention of preventing it from happening again in the future.
If it had been phishing, then going to the registrar would have been the right call, because you want to take that down asap. But according to itch.io it wasn’t, instead it was a a real fansite that was linking to the real website of funko’s game (according to itch.io). Something which most media companies allow since it’s basically free publicity and goodwill, but if they did want it taken down for copyright reasons, then a DMCA takedown request send to itch.io would have been the correct first action.
In the response statement by Brandshield, Brandshield does not deny having send a takedown request for phishing to the registrar (confirming that they did), nor do they dispute itch.io’s statement that it wasn’t a phishing site (confirming that they know that it wasn’t), instead they only speak about “infringement”.
So now we know that Brandshield is knowingly making false accusations that have potentially serious consequences for their victims. And it’s not going to be the first time that they’ve done this, but even this high publicity case will probably not have any legal consequences for brandshield, so it looks like they will continue getting away with it. Unfortunately they’re not alone, it often seems like the entire DMCA industry is rotten.
Why ask the registrar to take down a subdomain of a website?
Those subdomains are not managed or controlled by the registrar, so all the registrar can do is either take down the entire domain or ask their client to take down the subdomain. In this case they asked their client, who took down the subdomain, after which the registrar took down the domain anyhow :D
For a single isolated offence, Brandshield’s first action should have been to report the copyright infringement to itch.io and ask for a takedown of that content, instead they went directly to the registrar and falsely claimed that itch.io was a fraud & phishing site. I suspect that they falsely claim that it’s about phishing and fraud, because otherwise registrars will not take down the site unless there is systematic copyright infringement (like a torrent site). And I suspect that brandshield goes directly to the registrar with their complaint, since that is easier to automate than finding the right contact info on a website.
So my take is that: The registrar was in the wrong for taking down the domain after itch.io removed the problematic subdomain. Brandshield is scum. And Funko is in the wrong for using brandshield.
No real need for further answers from itch.io, nothing new has come to light.
Edit: while under the shower I realized that Brandshield’s posts do contain some kind of news: Brandshield does not deny having used fraud & phishing as reason for the takedown request, thereby confirming that they did. Before we just had itch.io’s retelling of the events, which might have been a misrepresentation by itch.io or due to a cock-up by the registrar, but because of the lack of denial by brandshield, we now have confirmation that it did happen like itch.io said.
Why do people hate Lenovo and Razer? From what I’ve read in the past early Razer laptops had a battery problem, but that was it. I can’t recall systemic laptop design issues. And Lenovo has a malignant bloatware problem, but that’s not a problem at all if going for Linux. So I’m out of the loop on what’s supposedly wrong with these 2.