For computer hardware, it’s uncommon to see major increases — computer hardware has consistently seen dramatic long-term declines — but it does happen. The other major incident I can think of was 15 years back:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Thailand_floods

Severe flooding occurred during the 2011 monsoon season in Thailand. The flooding began at the end of July triggered by the landfall of Tropical Storm Nock-ten.

Thailand is the world’s second-largest producer of hard disk drives, supplying approximately 25 percent of the world’s production.[76] Many of the factories that made hard disk drives were flooded, including Western Digital’s, leading some industry analysts to predict future worldwide shortages of hard disk drives.[77][78] Western Digital was able to get one of their plants, flooded on 15 October 2011, restored and operating on 30 November 2011…As a result, most hard disk drive prices almost doubled globally, which took approximately two years to recover.[77][80]

EDIT: Oh, right, and the cryptocurrency thing drove up some GPU prices for a while.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPU_mining

As cryptocurrency miners increased their purchases of GPUs between 2013 and 2017, the prices of GPUs skyrocketed.[7] The increasing demand of GPU mining and purchases caused a worldwide shortage that continued into 2021 until production finally caught up in 2023.[8][9]

I think that it was more ASICs outperforming GPUs that wound up killing that off.

Alongside the price rise announcement, Microsoft pointed to Buy Now, Pay Later options that break up your payments, as well as interest free financing. It’s also working with retailers to make second-hand consoles available at lower prices, it said.

In all seriousness, if you can’t come up with the cost of a console, do not buy it (a) using an unsecured loan (b) in the middle of a short period of time where you know that the price is elevated. If things are that tight, then that’s just a terrible use of money.

I think that a heavyweight automod feature that works something like SpamAssassin, where one builds a training corpus of known spam and known ham, and then one writes a bunch of rules (e.g. “domain is less than X days old”, “account has less than N votes”, etc) and then runs it on the training corpus to auto-generate score weights for the rules, and then runs the rules on each post to provide an estimated “spam probability score” on given posts would probably scale better.

Doesn’t need to be built into Lemmy or Mbin or PieFed, and running as an automod bot, it’d be able to run on all of those platforms, share effort among them.

Note that the profile picture there is used to create the X profile picture:

Assuming that that image is not itself AI-generated, might actually be the spammer.

Oh yeah, not criticizing.

OP, you can pull more WHOIS data from the whois.web4africa.net WHOIS server for that domain. You only did a single-level WHOIS lookup to the North American WHOIS server; whatever WHOIS client you used doesn’t default to recurse.

The Registry database contains ONLY .COM, .NET, .EDU domains and
Registrars.
Domain Name: PRIMESTORIES24.COM
Registry Domain ID: 3105727536_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.web4africa.net
Registrar URL: http://www.web4africa.net/
Updated Date: 2026-06-19T10:01:30Z
Creation Date: 2026-05-31T12:16:00Z
Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2027-05-31T12:16:00Z
Registrar: Web4Africa Inc.
Registrar IANA ID: 664
Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited
Registry Registrant ID: Not Available From Registry
Registrant Name: Olawale Ashorobi
Registrant Organization: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY
Registrant Street: 32 Glory Drive   
Registrant City: Port Harcourt
Registrant State/Province: River State
Registrant Postal Code: 503101
Registrant Country: NG
Registrant Phone: +234.8032156631
Registrant Phone Ext: 
Registrant Fax: 
Registrant Fax Ext: 
Registrant Email: waleswale13@gmail.com
Registry Admin ID: Not Available From Registry
Admin Name: Olawale Ashorobi
Admin Organization: 
Admin Street: 32 Glory Drive  
Admin City: Port Harcourt
Admin State/Province: River State
Admin Postal Code: 503101
Admin Country: NG
Admin Phone: +234.8032156631
Admin Phone Ext: 
Admin Fax: 
Admin Fax Ext: 
Admin Email: waleswale13@gmail.com
Registry Tech ID: Not Available From Registry
Tech Name: Olawale Ashorobi
Tech Organization: 
Tech Street: 32 Glory Drive  
Tech City: Port Harcourt
Tech State/Province: River State
Tech Postal Code: 503101
Tech Country: NG
Tech Phone: +234.8032156631
Tech Phone Ext: 
Tech Fax: 
Tech Fax Ext: 
Tech Email: waleswale13@gmail.com
Name Server: dan1.host-ww.net
Name Server: dan2.host-ww.net
DNSSEC: Unsigned
Registrar Abuse Contact Email: abuse@web4africa.net
Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +1-646-666-9664
URL of the ICANN WHOIS Data Problem Reporting System: http://wdprs.internic.net/

This does fit with the other material I commented here referencing an “Olawale Israel Ashorobi”.

The primestories24.com HTML source and page text contains multiple references to a “ZWadTech” and to a support@zwadtech.net.ng email address.

Google’s AI Overview on that domain — no idea what data they pull from for it, so I’d take it with a grain of salt:

ZwadTech (also known as ZwadTech I.T Solutions) is a Nigerian-based digital technology and branding agency. Founded by Olawale Israel Ashorobi, the company specializes in website development, custom software, digital marketing, and corporate branding.

Core Services

Web Design & Development: Building business, e-commerce, and organizational websites.
IT Training & Solutions: Coaching on web development, computer engineering, and digital business creation.
Corporate Branding: Creating logos and printing custom merchandise such as T-shirts, face caps, and mugs.

Connect with ZwadTech

CEO/Founder: Olawale Israel Ashorobi
Platform Hub: Selar Storefront

This “Selar Storefront” page also references the same name:

Your Health is your wealth, like they say without your health in good shape no man can thrive Excellently in his or her career, goals, Profession or Vision… My name is Israel Olawale A. I create and also Sell Ebooks On Health, Motivational & Inspirational contents, self discovery and How To. Whatever makes you a better Person, Encourages you and set you up for a Greater End.

EDIT: As I said above, I’d be inclined to take the above Google AI summary with a grain of salt. While the Mastodon StoryLands account is directly associated with primestories24, and posts Christian stuff, and there is an Olawale Israel Ashorobi who has a Christian book out, it looks like there are a number of "Olawale Israel"s out there, and I have no idea what sources of information Google AI combined to generate the above; it may be merging multiple people.

EDIT2: Also, because I kind of feel that it’d only be responsible to mention this if digging up information like this: remember that identities may be real, but that people can also potentially steal identities. Those of you who recall the Nicole saga here…someone apparently was attempting to impersonate a real person, pretending to be a “Nicole”, and then spam many users with direct messages. I understand that some of the admins on the Threadiverse looked into it, and believed that this was an attempt to get users here angry and harassing that person, who was not actually the person sending the messages. While I rather doubt that that is the case here, I’d suggest that going and trying to make this Nigerian guy miserable via attacking him or his stuff may be counterproductive. I’m posting the stuff because it could help filter spam stuff out, not as a call to arms.

Even more accounts:

https://t.me/primestories24

https://x.com/Olawale_gram321

Note that the X account has a profile picture that appears to be derived from the profile picture on the Facebook account, and a matching name.

More accounts:

https://mastodon.social/@StoryLands

https://www.youtube.com/@PrimeStories24news

Other social media accounts that also link to the site:

https://www.tumblr.com/primestories24

https://www.tiktok.com/@primestories24

“It’s shooting pure unadulterated propaganda into our veins,” says another government employee. “Maybe Fox’s editorial standards are too high.”

Necessity is the mother of invention, I suppose.

https://www.nj.com/politics/2026/06/trump-just-hit-a-crazy-approval-rating-in-startling-new-poll.html

President Donald Trump’s approval rating has dropped to its lowest point during his two presidencies, according to a new poll.

A poll from the American Research Group, out Monday, found that approval for Trump stands at 30%, the lowest figure recorded across both of his terms. It is a 1 percentage point drop from May, when 31% of Americans were in support of the president’s performance.

Reminds me of:

There were various Reddit automod bots that went after these, but then you had people trying to evade them by using one of the zillions of link shortener sites out there, so then you also have to ban link shorteners or try to resolve all the links (which may be a good idea as well, but saying that it’s a more-complicated problem than initially meets the eye).

Also, I was banned in a few communities by an automod bot on the Threadiverse, and given that it happened when I posted some comment linking to a number of sites, I assume that one of the URLs must have tripped some automod list, so I’m a little irritable about bots running permabans on blacklisted sites, as users can inadvertently link to them.

You might also consider:

• @Tracy65@nord.pub
• @Teresa39@belgae.social

Searching Google for “primestories24” turns up:

https://www.facebook.com/PrimeStories.24/

Israel Olawale (@PrimeStories.24)

This page also links to an URL on that website about Janet Jackson, as well as some others, so I’m assuming that this Facebook username is associated with the site.

https://primestories24.com/according-to-singer-amaarae-janet-jackson-is-the-true-king-of-pop-not-michael-jackson

I commented here quite some back that I did not expect that Valve would subsidize the console and that it would be for this reason, that subsidizing the console means a razor-and-blades business model, and a razor-and-blades model requires a closed system, where one has to purchase additional product specifically from the vendor of the initial product. They were making an open system, where this isn’t the case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor-and-blades_model

The razor-and-blades business model[1] is a business model in which one article is sold at a low price or even given away in order to increase sales of a complementary good, such as consumable supplies. It is different from loss leader marketing and product sample marketing, which do not depend on complementary products or services. Common examples of the razor-and-blades model include inkjet printers whose ink cartridges are significantly marked up in price, coffee machines that use single-use coffee pods, electric toothbrushes, and video game consoles, which require additional purchases of accessories and software not included in the original package.[1]

Although the concept and the catchphrase “Give 'em the razor; sell 'em the blades” are widely credited to King Camp Gillette, the inventor of the double-edged safety razor, Gillette did not in fact follow this model, nor did it invent the razor-and-blades model, although it did pioneer the production and sale of disposable razor blades.[1][2]

In more recent times, video game consoles have often been sold at a loss while software and accessory sales are highly profitable to the console manufacturer. For this reason, console manufacturers aggressively pursue legal action against carriers of modchips and jailbreaks due to a belief that the resulting possibility of unauthorized or prohibited copying causes a loss in profits. Particularly in the sixth generation era and beyond, Sony and Microsoft, with their PlayStation 2 and Xbox, had high manufacturing costs. As such, the companies sold their consoles at a loss and aimed to make a profit from game sales.[9][10] Nintendo had a different strategy with its GameCube, which was considerably less expensive to produce than its rivals, so it retailed at break-even or higher prices.[11] In the following generation of consoles, both Sony and Microsoft have continued to sell their consoles, the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 respectively, at a loss, with the practice continuing with the concurrent eighth and ninth generations of console hardware.[12][13][14]

Do you get many hallucinations?

If you’re on Linux and aren’t particularly fussed about any issues stemming from power loss, you can probably run it under eatmydata and it’ll disable SQLite calls to fsync().

In general, one can swap in custom outer shells for controllers if one has a particular look in mind; there are stores that sell these.

In the case of the Steam Controller 2, Valve published the CAD files for the outer shell to actively try to encourage this, so I imagine that there will be replacement outer shells.

Well, it’s slower than what one could theoretically achieve if you could run that much at that rate. I believe that the MT rating is per stick and the memory is used interleaved, so it’s not that you put in 128GB and the overall throughput spanning all sticks drops, but rather that you won’t get the throughput that the more-expensive memory is rated for.

I have a Framework Desktop that’s running 128GB of soldered memory at 8000 MT/s. In contrast, my desktop can only manage 3600 MT/s on 128 GB of slotted DIMMs.

$ sudo dmidecode -t memory|grep Speed
	Speed: 4800 MT/s
	Configured Memory Speed: 3600 MT/s