vee-kay

FYI, Meta earns billions by showing scam ads.

https://qz.com/consumer-federation-america-sues-meta-scam-ad...

https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortu...

It is unlikely that Meta will suddenly gain morals scruples to avoid profiting from user content, with or without user consent.

This is the same company that invasively spies on its own employees, to train AI models.

https://www.wired.com/story/meta-accidentally-let-employees-...

Meta — the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp — has a long history of abusing user trust. It has been fined billions for illegal activities like unauthorised data harvesting (Cambridge Analytica), illegal facial recognition, and mishandling children’s private information. Beyond what’s illegal, Meta is ethically notorious for emotional manipulation experiments, addictive design targeted at teenagers, rampant surveillance (even of non-users), promoting misinformation, and ignoring research that shows its products harm mental health.

https://leehopkins.com/meta-data-abuse-revealed/

Ah, this reminds me of StumbleUpon.

Before the .Net era, there were millions of programmers who were experts in VB. In fact, VB6 was the defacto tool to build desktop apps.

Then Microsoft decided to compete with the new-age rivals: Java and CORBA. So it expanded COM into DCOM and then further into COM+, and eventually released the .Net platform.

Suddenly, those millions of programmers and their built desktop apps were obsolete, as they had to race to understand .Net and learn how to use it to build new apps and replacements for the old VB6 apps.

And somewhere along the way, many of them decided it wasn't worth the struggle (because .Net was a nightmare to install as client apps on Windows machines; even the deployment scripts had becom3 too complex), and they migrated to other tools (Java, Python, Perl, Ruby on Rails, PHP, etc.) or to non-programming jobs (usually management).

Thus, within a few years, Microsoft had veritably killed the programming industry it took decades to build and nurture (and yes, Microsoft's decision to turn a blind eye - as its Windows OSes, MS Office and Visual Studio (VB & VC++) tools were pirated across the world, churning out millions of programmers and users familiar with its products as they used the pirated versions at school, college. home and office - that was also a deliberate decision by Microsoft during this halycon era).

But I feel .Net became too big of a beast even for mighty Microsoft to handle. As concerns grew over the performance aspects and innumerable dependencies of the .Net platform and related tools (Azure, SSIS, SSRS, etc.), the world started to shift away from Microsoft's tools, and that's perhaps why Microsoft finally knuckled under and embraced the open-source ecosystem it had openly hated for decades. VSCode, etc., are Microsoft's last-ditch attempts to have some relevancy in the programming industry.

What's interesting is that Microsoft BASIC itself was derived from BASIC-PLUS which itself was derived from Dartmouth BASIC (which evolved into a structured programming language called SBASIC (Structured BASIC). But the popularity of Microsoft BASIC, actually halted the standardisation of SBASIC as an ANSI standard.

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

The Altair BASIC interpreter was developed by Microsoft founders Paul Allen and Bill Gates using a self-written Intel 8080 emulator running on a PDP-10 minicomputer.[1] The MS dialect is patterned on Digital Equipment Corporation's BASIC-PLUS on the PDP-10, which Gates had used in high school.

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

Dartmouth BASIC is the original version of the BASIC programming language. It was designed by two professors at Dartmouth College, John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz. With the underlying Dartmouth Time-Sharing System (DTSS), it offered an interactive programming environment to all undergraduates as well as the larger university community.

Dartmouth also introduced a dramatically updated version known as Structured BASIC (or SBASIC) in 1975, which added various structured programming concepts. SBASIC formed the basis of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) "Standard BASIC" efforts in the early 1980s.

In contrast to the Dartmouth compilers, most other BASICs were written as interpreters. This decision allowed them to run in the limited main memory of early microcomputers. Microsoft's Altair BASIC is one example: it was designed to run in only 4 KB of memory (interestingly, it was delivered on paper tape).

Kemeny became involved in an effort to produce an ANSI standard BASIC in an attempt to bring together the many small variations of the language that had developed through the late 1960s and early 1970s. This effort initially focused on a system known as Minimal BASIC that was similar to earliest versions of Dartmouth BASIC, while later work was aimed at a Full BASIC that was essentially SBASIC with various extensions.

But by the late 1980s, tens of millions of home computers were running some variant of the MS BASIC interpreter. It had become the de facto standard for BASIC, which eventually led to the abandonment of the ANSI SBASIC efforts.

Kemeny and Kurtz, however, decided to continue their efforts to introduce the concepts from SBASIC and the ANSI Standard BASIC efforts. This became True BASIC.

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

There are versions of the True BASIC compiler for MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows, and Classic Mac OS. At one time, versions for TRS-80 Color Computer, Amiga and Atari ST computers were offered, as well as a UNIX command-line compiler.

After several years of inactivity, as of February 2026, the TrueBASIC website is officially closed.

He's not wrong though.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5G93ta66xSk

The tribals from the Sierra Madre Mountains in Northern Mexico - called the Tarahumara or the Rarámuri people - are considered to be among the best endurance runners in the world.

Some of the First Nation tribes of the Americas (especially their messengere who ran hundreds of miles to deliver messages) and the traditional African tribals (such as the Maasai tribe) are also among the best endurance runners in the world.

Kenyan athlete Eliud Kipchoge is the first human to run sub-2-hours marathon.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MoxFkJlVZlA

And when we look at exactly how these world's best endurance runners (truly superhumans) run (i.e., their running style), we realise that all the fancy sports shoes we normies tend to run in aren't really conducive for proper running.

The best endurance runners run in such a way that their feet land on the front of their foot during running, but the typical sports shoes cause our feet to land on the heels (ball on the back side of the foot) (which is what causes injuries due to such daily bad way of running).

Humans evolved to be the best long distance endurance runners, compared to any other animal. It is high time modern humans realised what's the right way to run long distance.

Yahoo Messenger had amazing fun animated smileys, and it was a fantastic Instant Messenger as well. Too bad Yahoo went to dogs, I was hoping Yahoo Messenger got bought out by Microsoft so that beautiful UI could be integrated as MS Office chat. Instead, Micro$oft acquired Skype, mainly for its VOIP ability, and it took years to integrate it into MS Office as MS Teams, which is a boring tool (but it is effective for video conferencing and basic chat purposes).

I miss those animated smileys.

Even WhatsApp and other popular social messaging platforms (Instagram, Signal, etc.) don't have them. Instead, we got GIFs (whose online gallery takes ages to load in WhatsApp, in recent months, at least on my phone) and animated stickers. sigh

AI will get access to missiles, fighter jets, attack drones, and even nuclear launch codes - that's the fear.

Even when the bombs drop from the sky, at least those humans who had deleted their OpenAI account can rest easy, knowing that that they weren't the ones supporting the AI that will delete humanity.

Do you mean the same EU whose Euro6 mandate brought powerful auto giants like Volkswagen to their knees, and forced them to build better vehicles that are less harmful to Earth?

Or do you mean the EU that forced Apple to finally ditch its proprietary Lightning port on its iDevices and replace it with the universally compatable USB-C instead?

Or do you mean the EU that mandated the Right to Repair so manufacturers were forced to reduce planned obsolence?

Oh, and by the way, India mandated the same kind of norms too. And guess what? That nation is faring off better thanks to such societal-friendly governance.

"World’s top 1% own more wealth than 95% of humanity", as “the shadow of global oligarchy hangs over UN General Assembly”, says Oxfam: https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/worlds-top-1-own-mor...

Billionaire fortunes have grown at a rate three times faster than the previous five years since the election of Donald Trump in November 2024. While US billionaires have seen the sharpest growth in their fortunes, billionaires in the rest of the world have also seen double digit increases. The number of billionaires has surpassed 3,000 for the first time, and the level of billionaire wealth is now higher than at any time in history. Meanwhile, one in four people globally face hunger. https://www.oxfam.org/en/resisting-rule-rich

And I believe this is useful and thought-provoking reading in this context of how unbridled Capitalism is exacerbating the divide between the rich and the poor, the haves and have nots.

Wage slavery: The illusion of freedom: Exploitation Under Capitalism: Marx’s Analysis of Labor and Profit:

https://philosophy.institute/social-political/exploitation-u...

https://davidlingenfelter.substack.com/p/the-normalization-o...

And no, the solution to the problems are not blind unchecked communism (which itself leads to fascism), but perhaps some more ethical & humane methods are needed for an overhaul of world society, and economic & geopolitical regimes.

Please stop the lies.

You need to read up on history better, especially if you are talking of a country whose history has been ravaged by holocausts of the worst variety: man-made.

Background: India has been among the most fertile and richest lands in the world, since many millenia, due to it having some of the world's biggest rivers (most of them being Himalayan rivers, as perennial icemelts, pushing out fresh alluvial soil, that's very fertile), hence India has had advanced agriculture and complex industries for thousands of years.

3 regions of India are among the most fertile (due to the geography and climate): the Deccan, Bengal and South region (sizeable chunk of it used to be called as Madras during British Raj in India). Please note this, as it is important context of what I'm explaining next.

India gets 2 monsoons and also the Westerlies winds, so it gets a lot of seasonal rainfall. (e.g., Chirrapunji in India was the world's wettest place for centuries, till climate change in modern era changed the wettest wetspot to nearby locations.)

In fact, before the Persian & Turkish invaders (whose descendants called themselves Mughals, as a link to their supposedly Mongol heritage) and European (including British) invaders invaded India, it was India that was the richest land in the world and a global economic superpower, contributing to 25-30% of the entire world's GDP. e.g, Surat was the richest city in the world.

So such immense wealth and fertile lands, and lots of women, attracted the worst kind of invaders from across the hot deserts and the cold seas.

The Muslim invaders (Persians/Turks) invaded and destroyed the world's oldest universities in Nalanda and Takshashila in India. They and the colonial Whites who followed, aggressively raped and pillaged at will, and enslaved the native people, brutally (this lead to further societal problems such as Purdah (veil) system and Sati system (where the native Hindu women would immolate themselves in funeral pure as mass suicide, as the invading barbaric Mughals would rape even dead bodies)).

So atrocious was the barbarism and brutality of these invaders, that tens of millions of Indians died in artificial famines and inhuman tortures.

An entire mountain range begot an evil name - Hindu Kush (the Killer of Hindus) - so called because of the tens of thousands of Hindus (and other natives) who died on its treacherous icy slopes, as part of chain gangs of captured slaves dragged to be sold in Persian and Arabia as slaves, sex slaves or worse (e.g., little children chained to camels for races, many of them died due to injuries,starvation, exhaustion, or sheer terror). Now mention of all these evils is important because that historic information destroys the fallacy that Turk/Persian/Mughal or European/British rule in India were benevolent and just. The reality was that India was turned into living hell.

Within few hundred years of Persian/Turk/Mughal rule and European+British rule in India, those captured regions of India had become impoverished and wrecked by artificial famines induced by deliberate crippling of local industries and agriculture by systematic dismantling of those industries and agriculture and debilitating taxes (jizya, etc.).

India went from being a global industrial & economic superpower, to becoming a poor crippled enslaved nation.

Prior to the pre-medieval era, Indians knew how to deal with natural famines, because the monsoons could fail or be erratic once in a few years (drought years).

One of the earliest treatises on famine relief goes back more than 2,000 years. This treatise is commonly attributed to Kautilya who was also known as Vishnugupta (Chanakya), who recommended that a good king should build new forts and water-works and share his provisions with the people, or entrust the country to another king. Historically, Indian rulers have employed several methods of famine relief. Some of these were direct, such as initiating free distribution of food grains and throwing open grain stores and kitchens to the people. Other measures were monetary policies such as remission of revenue, remission of taxes, an increase of pay to soldiers, and payment of advances. Yet other measures included the construction of public works, canals, and embankments, and sinking wells. Migration was encouraged. Kautilya advocated raiding the provisions of the rich in times of famine to "thin them by exacting excess revenue". Famines preserved only in oral tradition are the Dvadasavarsha Panjam (Twelve-year Famine) of south India and the Durga Devi Famine of the Deccan from 1396 to 1407.The Vanjari story of the great Durgadevi famine, which lasted from 1396 to 1407, is that it was named from Durga a Lad Vanjari woman, who had amassed great wealth and owned a million pack bullocks, which she used in bringing grain from Nepal, Burmah, and China. She distributed the grain among the starving people and gained the honourable title of 'Mother of the World', Jagachi Mata.

But under the Muslim and Christian regimes in medieval India, tens of millions of Indians starved to death on the streets in these artificial famines. Or they became cannibals and robbers. Or they perished in epidemics caused by forced migrations and unsanitary conditions (because the invaders didn't bother to improve civic infrastructure, sanitation, etc.). e.g., Bubonic plague was unleashed in India, due to infected rats that came in European/British ships, and millions of Indians died in such plagues.

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

But why should a fertile land struggle due to few seasons of lack of rains?

You see, the Muslim and Christian invaders followed the "scorched Earth" policy in India and elsewhere. If they lost a battle, they would burn all local crops and destroy villages during their retreat. They captured women and children (to turn them into sex slaves or soldiers), so the local population would gradually dwindle. They forced remnant populations to migrate, and imposed harshest taxes and atrocities on those that stayed. They systematically dismantled the local industries (killed or chopped off limbs of industry experts and artisans, broke their tools of trade, destroyed their schools and books, and banned cultural and scientific education). They deliberately starved and weakened the enslaved population so they wouldn't revolt. They caused caste conflicts and wars (did you know - the word "caste" comes from Portuguese word "casts", meaning societal class). The result was that these most fertile lands in the world, were turned into unlivabke hell.

e.g., In 1630, after the monsoon had failed for two years, the Deccan famine erupted and lasted two years. Abdul Hamid Lahori’s Badshahnama recorded that starvation was so rife that “life was offered for a loaf”. Other desperate forms of survival were not unknown: “Men began to devour each other, and the flesh of a son was preferred to his love.” The English merchant Peter Mundy, travelling near Surat, confirmed that parents sold or consumed their own children, or sometimes gave them away to anyone who would feed them. Ravenous subjects accosted others walking in public to prey on them. Given these wretched circumstances, many chose migration. As Lahori recalled, “Every man whose dire sufferings did not terminate in death and who retained the power to move wandered off to the towns and villages of other [provinces].”

Drastic famines occurred under the Delhi Sultan, Muhammad bin Tughlaq (1290-1351). As described by the thirteenth century Indo-Persian historian, Ziauddin Barani (1285-1357), the primary reasons behind the emergence of famine was the imposition of immense land taxes and the exploitation of the peasants at the hands of the aristocrats.

Gujarat and Deccan Famine (1630–1632): One of the most devastating famines in pre-colonial India occurred during the Mughal era. The famine resulted from three consecutive crop failures, leading to intense hunger, disease, and displacement. Contemporary Dutch records estimate that approximately 4 million people died in Gujarat and neighbourhood (Deccan region) in the ten months ending in October 1631. The overall death toll for the region was estimated at 7.4 million by late 1631.

I will probably add more data and links here, but I think now you understand how awful and horrible those evil regimes of history were.

Modern ndia is slowly rising again, from the ashes of these centuries of devastations.

Indiais making good strides in some industries, its economy is the fastest growing economy, its UPI is the biggest most-successful payments system in the world, and Indian government is standing tall and strong against bullies and terrorists.

DjVu is excellent format for e-Comics and e-Magazines.

Check out the Amazing Science Fiction Stories, Amazing Stories, Planet Stories, Weird Tales and more.. in DjVu format: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Scanned_English_...

Contaminated?! Nobody understood?!

You clearly haven't bothered to do your research.

But we cannot blame you for your ignorance.

It took many years, but modern scientists have finally reverse engineered Wootz steel to understand its incredible secrets, and identified that Wootz steel was the result of extraordinary metallurgical processes with scientific acumen and excellence based on multiple millenia of research, experimentation and practice in ancient India.

"conclusive evidence of the carbon nanostructure in the carburising slag from 400 BCE to 16th century CE, covering 2000 years of technological continuity": https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01675...

"Modern analysis of surviving Wootz ingots has revealed the critical presence of these impurities. Silicon, for instance, is thought to have aided in the complete removal of sulfur during the smelting process, a common contaminant that can lead to brittle steel. Phosphorus, on the other hand, while often considered detrimental in steelmaking, appears to have been essential in the formation of specific microstructures within the Wootz. The exact ratios and interactions of these elements were likely a result of empirical knowledge, painstakingly acquired through trial and error over centuries." https://www.realloreandorder.com/the-ancient-nanotechnology-...

A legend reborn: Additive manufacturing creates Wootz-Damascus steel: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/mrs-bulletin/article...

Carbon nanotechnology in an 17th century Damascus sword Discover the secret behind the legendary Damascus blades and how carbon nanotubes shaped sword-making techniques of ancient blacksmiths: https://www.discovermagazine.com/carbon-nanotechnology-in-an...

You need to research better before forming and sharing wrong opinions about world's most popular payments system: UPI.

UPI will work even without a smartphone, it will work on even with a basic feature phone, using USSD codes! That's called UPI 123PAY.

https://www.msn.com/en-in/money/news/upi-without-smartphone-...

This feature allows rural populations, poor people, small merchants, etc., to send and receive UPI payments, even without a smartphone.

So UPI has no dependency on Google or Apple, it can work on any basic phone that supports USSD codes feature!

Nah, they just bought their drilling tool from whatever was their local version of Walmart in that ancient era.

Thanks for the archive, but the site needs to be mobile-friendly.

Do a web search for "Wootz steel", "Damascus blades" and "Iron pillars India". The ancient world certainly had expertise in advanced metallurgy. Wootz steel was actually nanotech.

Hominin history is millions of years old. 5300 years is merely a drop in the ocean of human history.

I haven't played Terminal Velocity, but I finished the Descent Freespace game decades ago, and I am also itching for modernesque space-sims with 6-degrees-of-freedom dogfights, with some campaigns and explorations.

I liked this teaser trailer of Remnant Protocol, it seems exciting and perhaps a spiritual successor to Descent and Terminal Velocity games: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vemaUWPs6Zo

No Man's Sky was interesting, but its combat is meh, and it is a sandbox with procedurally generated planets made of limited types of biomes. It's inventory management is very clunky, so I finally gave up on it.

I tried Everspace, it is good, but it is more of a roguelite comprising only of dogfights in space. Haven't tried Everspace 2 yet, which I believe has campaign mode and is a better space sim.

I steered clear of Starfield, since Bethesda is infamous for launching buggy games. I will try it after a few years, once the modding community has overhauled it nicely.

Yeah, it is crazy that some cheatcodes are still memorable even decades later.

I still remember the cheat codes from the RoadRash game:

k'thunk! => hit with the club thwack! => hit with the chain drip!drip! => oil And last, but not the least.. spoon! => Nitro boost!

There's later game Road Rage and Road Redemption, which are like tributes to the "bikers on death-race" mayhem we gamers fondly remember as Road Rash.

MEGAHIT

YIPPEEYAHOO

I still remember them. Those was the commandline parameters aa cheat codes to launch the Prince of Persia or Prince of Persia 2 game, so the gamer could use special hotkeys to cheat during gameplay.

The linked article in the OP post is a wonderful tribute to the fluid animations in this game, bravo!

That's some cool footage (gifs), thanks for sharing.

Oh, decades later, we finally learn the game was made by just one guy (and he made Karateka!), and he motion-captured his younger brother's jumps and hijinks into the sprite-based animation of the Prince of Persia game! Awesome!

I liked the Prince of Persia movie too, it was better than that Assassin's Creed movie.

I never got tired of running and sliding in these PoP games, the animations and movement felt so fluid and realistic, but I hated that gross sound when the Prince falls into a pit and impaled into those metal spokes, or when I mistimed the jump through those scary metal-saw guillotine doorways and the poor Prince is chopped into bits by those shiny gates of death, LOL.

I have played the Prince of Persia 3D games (on PC), they were tough, tedious but fun. Their "Sands of Time" mechanic was innovative indeed. And I've played the PoP 2.5D games on mobile as well, good stuff.

There are some mods (mostly retextures) for some of these old PoP games.

Ah, fun times, thanks for the nostalgia and peek at some forgotten history of gaming!

"Identity documents submitted to our vendor partners"..

Yeah, say goodbye to those the privacy and safety of those documents.

Nice site, with apt illustrations and mathematical explanations.

This reminds me of an interesting trivia: For centuries, it was believed that paper could not be folded in half more than 8 times. Until one high school student broke that seemingly impossible limit. And she did so with a giant sheet of paper, and some interesting mathematics.

She won the Guiness World Record for that feat.

"It was an accepted belief that folding a piece of paper in half more than 8 times was impossible. On 27 January 2002, high school student, *Britney Gallivan*, of Pomona, California, USA, folded a single piece of paper in half 12 times and was the first person to fold a single piece paper in half 9, 10, 11, and 12 times. The tissue paper used was 4,000 ft (1,219 m; 0.75 miles) long.

In preparation for the challenge, Gallivan identified criteria for folding and the phenomenon that ultimately limits the geometric folding progression. She derived mathematical equations for single direction – L=πt/6(2ⁿ+4)(2ⁿ-1) – and alternate direction – W=πt23(ⁿ-1)/2 – folding. The equations establish the relationship between the length of paper required (L), the thickness of the paper (t), the minimum possible width of square material (W), and the number of possible folds (n). It is documented in her book *How to Fold Paper in Half Twelve Times*."

Why did the E.T. game such public backlash though?

The E.T. movie was popular among kids and parents. One would think a game about it, would be popular too, if it worked recently.

*hired as private army/security for rich powerful elites.

"Police force" was created not for liberty, justice, and public good - it was created to brutally quell poor folks rising against rich tyrants, it was created as a weapon to ensure the rich stayed rich.

History of how the world got the 40-hours 5-day work week: https://firmspace.com/theproworker/from-strikes-to-labor-law...

The concept of "police" came up through "private militia" hired as.

Most of the world enjoys 5-day workweek (40 hours work per week).

But the world got this work schedule only due to workers (mostly working in mines and railways) and labor unionists who fought and died for favourable work conditions and fair working schedule.

The rich elites even sent Pinkertons to assassinate the "rebel" leaders.

It was Henry Ford who finally saw the writing on the wall, and he announced the 40-hours workweek in his company, and thus ushered in the modern era of work-life balance.

LOL, Tiktok & PUBG addicts are downvoting me.

mRNA vaccines are the new dangerous experiment in Pharma.

https://www.sciencealert.com/largest-covid-vaccine-study-eve...

https://www.factcheck.org/2024/02/study-largely-confirms-kno...

It is awesome that India blocked these dangerous vaccines to be sold in India.

In fact, did you know?.. The Western Big Pharma companies got full indemnity in USA, UK, Europe and many other nations for their COVID vaccines. This means that they cannot be sued for any impacts (loss of life, side effect, hospitalization bills, loss of job, etc.) caused by those vaccines.

But when those Western Big Pharma companies wanted to sell their unproven mRNA-based COVID vaccines in India, the Modi government refused to give them any indemnity, because even the Indian (non-mRNA) COVID vaccine manufactures did not get indemnity.

So the Western Big Pharma finally decided not to sell their COVID vaccines in India, because they KNEW their vaccines and technology (mRNA based vaccine) were unproven and could kill or hurt (side effects).

But the cowardly Western Big Pharma had their revenge. They lobbied with the Western powers and got bans imposed on India's COVID vaccines to be sold in the Western nations.

Ironically, India is the only nation that gave its lifesaving COVID vaccines for free or at discounts to poor or developing nations!

Whereas the uber rich Western powers and their greedy powerful Big Pharma were hoarding their COVID vaccines and refused to give them freely to the poor nations.

Thus, when the world suffered one of its worst crisis ever, it was India that stood tall as a beacon of hope and support to the world.

It is no wonder that PM Modi is the most respected world leader now. He is refusing to bow down to bullies, and he is helping the weak.

This ban happened in 2020: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23679286

[flagged]

Maybe in current era of skyrocketing prices of memory & storage components (due to mindboggling demand by AI-driven tech industry), I would agree that budget gaming laptops are not worth the value.

But for decades, I have found that gaming laptops (decent brands and popular models) gave best bang for buck, especially with AMD hardware. My 12+ years old Lenovo gaming laptop is still going strong, and my 15+ years old Sony Viao netbook is also doing well (with SATA SSD and RAM upgrades few years ago).

But yeah, read/check up on the reviews (from reputed reviewers) before splurging for an expensive laptop.

One nifty trick to identify VFM(value for money) laptops is to check Amazon site/app for "Smartchoice" laptops. It is a special keyword that Amazon adds to listings of popular laptops that are VFM (best deals) and having good reviews.