Unless I misunderstood something, the PS5 isn’t “true 4k”, but uses upscaling just like any semi-modern GPU can do as well (DLSS and FSR I think is the AMD version). That changes that equation quite a bit.

I would argue that reocmmending a PC over a (new) console has gotten easier, especially for someone on a budget. Because you can actually get an incredibly competent machine these days (used of course). Even if you decide to pay more to get a better PC, you then have access to the vast PC library with all the bundles, frequent and often deep sales, giveaways, … The cost of the console isn’t just the console, but also what you can play on it and what it costs, and this aspect has improved massively on PC in recent years (and was already pretty good before then).

Of course, if you’re interested in exlusives or first-party titles (like nintendo), or you generally play mostly AAA games, the console might just be the better or only option, but you better bring the wallet for the whole journey.

There is absolutely nothing “simple” about that. It sounds simple, but what does “someone has purchased a product” actually mean, in technical terms?

Let’s start basic, since this is a proposal about a federated system, there are instances. Who runs these and why? Does ever seller run an instance? can there be users/customers on those? if not, who runs the customer-instances? Who defines what a product is, and are products like communities? or more like posts? how do you correlate different sellers selling the same item, where a review would obviously apply to both? can you review a shop or seller? Are delivery services their own “entitty” and can you review those, too? When you purchase an item

Now without any answers to any of those question, let’s just go to the next level. Where are the reviews stored? in the instance where the item is sold (possibly owned by the shop)? or with the user? if it’s with the user, how does a webserver displaying an item find all the reviews for it? Does this differ between reviews for items and reviews of shops/sellers?

If a review is stored on the instance of the seller, he can just add an entry to the database stating “user x purchased item y”, and the review is valid. If the reviews are stored with the user, he can spin up an instance, and create a bunch of users there who can leave reviews, because he can mark sales as “valid” as the seller, no matter if there was any item and/or money exchanged.

I wrote all of this thinking about the classic sellers attempt at “creating good reviews to boost a product”, but there is the opposite threat of review-bombing (might be a competing product or seller, or you just don’t like pink shirts and decide to review-bomb those): How you protect against those has similarities, but reverses the roles essentially. Sellers are now the “target”, and reviewers the “threat”.

Aaaand this all is just about reviews, which have no monetary value. The platforms main goal would be to deal with physical items, exchanged for real money, and creating physical effects (like shipping). All those have to also be secured in a much more robust way. If a fake review or two slip through the cracks, who cares. But if just one valuable item goes missing (or is never shipped), or the payment for it, that’s immediately a problem.

I understand that not everyone has the expertise, but for 800$ you can put together a very capable system that will beat the PS5 easily. It will probably include some used parts. You don’t need a 4070 in there, not even remotely close.

But yes, obviously the prices have gone up quite a bit over the last years.

Condescension was not the intention at all. The fact that you mention logistics only as a foot note is what lead me to believe you really didn’t understand, and it was just meant as an explanation. Amazon is just scale, in every aspect, and I don’t think that can be achieved with a federated approach in the physical retail world.

As for being constructive, you can be constructive by talking someone out of an idea. I really don’t believe there’s any viability in the idea, no matter how much I wish there was. I personally value my time, so I assume others do as well. I consider saving someones time incredibly constructive, but that only applies if you intend to pursue the idea to actually get somewhere “real” with it, let’s say reaching “profit” or improving participants existing profits.

You might enjoy spending your time figuring out solutions here, maybe you see it as an economic experiment or hobby project, so it’s fun no matter the outcome. I’m that case my comment really isn’t constructive in your situation, and I’m sorry.

Rest assured I didn’t comment out of malice.

But you’re saying yourself that those are “obviously bots”. It’s easy to ignore those. And just to be clear, I really did mean the reviews, and not the score (where the skew is less transparent).

Everyone leaving a review has to have an account somewhere in the federated network. This includes seeing up an instance just to use it for review bots, or fake votes on something. Obviously there’s is defederation and other mechanisms, and I’m sure there are ways to improve the situation. But the whole base setup is just inherently much harder to get into a trustworthy position. Even the common centralized sites (not just Amazon) have trouble getting it under control when they can “see” will the related data, for finding outliers and such. I’m just saying it’s an even harder proposition.

That’s what I said with “much hotter for longer”. If it’s constantly thermal throttling, that’s gonna be an issue. Of course OC’ing also will. 50°C just isn’t an issue. Also older models have CPUs that either don’t throttle at all, or do it less well/effectively.

The CPU is perfectly happy sitting at 50°C. It is slightly happier at 30, but it doesn’t actually help in any way unless you run into throttling, or run (much) hotter for longer. It’s fine.

Some might state that the CPU is probably gonna live longer, but seriously have you ever had a CPU die on you cause it was old (or even die at all, even)? Again, it’s fine.

Having something that mostly agitates the air (not even really moving it) like a low-hundreds-rpm fan would also work. As would using one of those passive heat pipe coolers that are also overkill (especially with a fan, but just leave that off), but have the same “number looks better” effect.

You are completely misunderstanding what Amazon actually does, and why it’s successful, despite being a shitty company. It’s first and foremost a logistics company. People can order “stuff” in many places, but if they order it on Amazon, they’ll get it by tomorrow if they order it before midnight. They got warehouse everywhere. They do (some) of their own final deliveries for anyone close to those, use the big logistics players for the rest (ups, DHL, …) while having massive volume and the power to dictate price that comes with that. The number of workers in the warehouses is actually minuscule for their size, it’s all automated. Huge up front cost, very low cost once it’s actually running.

Consumers go there because they can get literally anything. Again: warehouses. It’s also a market place but that only works (these days) because it’s THE place the people go. The reviews are also a massive point, and would be inherently untrustworthy in a federated version.

How would you ever get anyone to go to your federated version for shopping that sells like “some” things? Even if you manage to combine all those shops, you’d need a way to agree on what an item is called (or how to assign id numbers) so the same item from multiple sellers is grouped in the same offer, and many similar small things you take for granted it didn’t even ever see/notice on Amazon.