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Yep. Someone challenged me to do a triathlon at 39 and now I've swam across large bodies of water and traversed mountains at high rates of speed, all with a fair share of near death experiences. Good times.

Phoenix Point is confirmed for a GOG release as of a few hours ago.

Heh, yep.

Pfft. 3 minutes. In Backer Build...4? I had a 45 minute load time.

Hey gang, After 14 months of delving into other RPGs, I've returned to Deadfire; I'm having some trouble readjusting to these mechanics, so I'd appreciate it if you can steer me in the right direction on a build I'm eager to try. I'd like to run a staff-wielding Ascendant/Shattered Pillar, largely because I want to play with the Community Patch and its companion, Balanced Polishing Mod. The biggest changes impacted by these mods are Biting Whip (adds a +20% raw lash to attacks) and Shattered Pillar's Wound cap raised from five to 10 (alongside a fix to Lesser Wounds). As a point of reference, I'll be playing this on Hard/Veteran (technically PoTD spawns with Veteran stats and Deadly Deadfire). Ideally, I'd like to play my character as a hybrid that can go from casting enhanced Cipher powers (Mind Blades, Disintegrate, Amplified Wave, Silent Scream, Borrowed Instinct(natch)) to utilizing Ascendant's +40% attack damage bonus. Wielding a staff should help me avoid losing Dance of Death and I can flip on the modal while casting. With Turning Wheel, Ascended and Borrowed Instinct will last longer. For fun and some AoE Focus, I'd also like to include primary attacks Raised Torment and Skyward Kick. Hammering Thoughts, Penetrating Visions, and Thunderous Blows add PEN. You know the score. My dilemma is in navigating these options while being able to generate consistent Wounds and Focus and maintaining good damage. The considerable lashes this build offers (+20% Raw, +15% Shock, +20% Burn, plus more from Herald Pallagina and Chromoprismatic Staff) is really tempting on top of Ascendant's damage bonus, but I wonder if they're enough to match Draining Whip's strong Focus generating power. I'm also wondering if Swift Strikes would be a better choice than Lightning since Borrowed Instinct will dole out a big spoonful of accuracy. With a slower weapon like a quarterstaff, and considering Focus and Wound generation, would the Shock lash be better than the Swift Strikes proc? Of course Heartbeat Drumming will find its way in later. Also, is Lesser Wounds useful on a Shattered Pillar? I've heard it's not so hot generally, but haven't tested it with this subclass and its modded form - is Shattered Pillar's Wound generation contingent on simply hitting the enemy or is there a damage component to it? Cipher/Monk has a wide spread of abilities so I'd like to cut down the fat whenever possible. (Cat accidentally posted this prematurely - will finish the post in an edit.)

A fun CC/damage hybrid I played recently is a Troubadour/Psion. The idea is that while one resource pool (phrases/focus) is refilling you can cast from the other one. No fuzz with regenerating resources: it's purely automatic. Pick Killers Froze Stiff, Phantom Foes, Ben Fidel's Neck, Secret Horrors, Mental Binding and so on. For the damage part pick Thrice She was Wronged, Soul Shock or whatever you like. You will have nearly no casting downtime. With Killers and Mental Binding I could paralyze-lock one enemy 100% and the rest for a good amount of time, too. If enemies cluster around the tank then I can cast Soul Shock almost non-stop after some levels because the focus regeneration is faster than the spending of 10 focus and the recovery time. Should focus generation stop because I got hit there's always my phrases. Healng can be done with Ancient Memory, Pain Block and Two Fingers of Daylight. You can even revive. I wasn't too impressed with the idea first but after playing it I have to say it was one of the most fun character concepts so far. It may be though that the basic idea doesn't work as well in TB mode. But I think it's still valid. I don't like Barring-Death's-Door- and Salvation-of-Time cheese. The fun of breaking the game only lasts a short while for me.

Still holding out for a 6969XTC SUPER DUPER 16GB HBM2e card with more than 80CUs. The new Instinct has 120CUs*, after all (and tensors, for anyone wondering if AMD was doing anything with them). Vulkan performance isn't surprising. AMD cards used to be powerhouses there due to being powerhouse Compute cards, this time around with its core doubling nVidia is unbalanced towards compute instead. Plus all the development effort for RDNA has gone into DX12U for the Xbox and Sony's proprietary libraries, not Vulkan despite its history with AMD. As for performance in general, let's be frank here. People** were saying that AMD would only be competing with the 3070 and have raytracing performance around a 2070- that was most of the internet, it seemed- don't have much scope to talk about bad performance when they're competing with 3080s and have better RT performance, yes mostly in theory at present, than a 2080Ti or 3070. It's notable though that they perform to theoretical expectations, or above, in both the games developed for console RT, WD:L and Dirt 5, and a 6800XT is even better than a 3080 (!) at Dirt 5. That is the model of the future, not games developed when nVidia was the only RT in town with for, all anyone knows, the RT equivalent of 64x tesselation enabled by default. Stock levels are disappointing, but certainly better relatively speaking than 3000 series. By market share nVidia should have had 2-3 times the stock on hand, and didn't, they seem to have been near parity numbers wise. Just too much demand, in part due to nVidia still being nowhere near fulfilling orders even 2 months later. Neither were paper launches, both were just massively oversubscribed. The AIB release in a week and 6900XT in early Dec will also sell out, inevitably. OTOH, we got AMD reference cards here, and the whole of New Zealand got one (1) FE. And there's the small matter of 3080s (albeit AIBs) selling for 400$ more than the 6800XT here... *Not a serious comparison since they're CDNA. **I'm ready for the deluge of how DLSS is, lol, 'better quality than native' over the next few months. Who knew the writers for CSI: Miami enlarging and enhancing 2 pixels reflected in a dude's baldspot into a fully legible number plate, circus parade and a mafia dude burying Jimmy Hoffa were such visionaries?

OK, for those of you who think we "wasted our vote" on Jo Jorgensen (particularly a certain half-orc bhaalspawn lawyer from west of the Rockies) the numbers are in: In Georgia Jorgensen won 62059 votes. Trump lost by 14163 In Pennsylvania Jorgensen received 78431. Trump lost by 60233. In Arizona the LP ticket got 50636. Trump lost by 12813 In Wisconsin they had 38393, Trump lost by 20557 Now, as I have stated many, many times Libertarians are not Republicans. But they are anti-Democrats on most issues. The Democrats are the party of big tax, big regulation, gun control, eminent domain, suppression of speech, suppression of property rights, collectivism, etc. Libertarians find some common ground with the Dems in social issues but in any sort of "lesser evil" calculation we tend well towards Republicans. If just 46.9% of these 229000+ libertarian voters took the advice, so often given unbidden, about not "wasting" our votes Donald Trump would be starting a second term in 63 days rather than catching a one way ticket home. And to the Republicans who are bitching incessantly about us being "spoilers", if you want Libertarian votes try being more libertarian. You used to be. I'd give the same advice to Democrats but that would be a waste of time.

Not quite true. I was around 35 when I was bored with life and left everything behind to start a new one on the other side of the world. With all my wordly possessions in 3 sports bags and less than $100 in my pocket (and no return ticket). Made a name for myself in my area of work and got more experiences and adventures than you can shake a stick at. Getting past 20 is no reason for not leaving your old comfort zone behind and just "go for it"

President Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign was powered by a cell phone app that allowed staff to monitor the movements of his millions of supporters, and offered intimate access to their social networks. Turns out Big Brother really was watching! This forum (and a few others) is as close as I get to social media. My Facebook account exists solely so I can play chess online for free. I don't do twitter, instagram, or the other stuff. I have few apps on my iPhone and my Kindle is a paperwhite does books only. I keep telling myself one day I'll turn all this s--t off for good. Except the Kindle. And SiriusXM. Never giving that up.

That really doesn't excuse him in the least.

To be fair, he's playing against The Algorithm. He does what he needs to do to get maximum profits out of each video he does, and that includes retarded thumbnails. He went through it on a WAN show some months ago iirc.

You can blame the electoral system too. You'd have to suspect that most Nader voters would prefer Gore over Bush at least and a decent proportion would change their votes if they could go back in time. While a lot of people advocate for Preferential/ Ranked as a system I personally will always shill proper, multi member electorate Single Trnasferable Vote. Gives proportional results, can't be gerrymandered, goes a long way to breaking the entrenched power of political parties. And as a result, not at all popular with politicians.

Linus' segue into advertisement game is strong.

Any chance someone from the team can provide an update on this. Clearly is a mass problem and game breaking that people can't load saves. Not much point playing if its all going to be lost - is it being investigated as a high priority?

While not as... self-sufficient as a BDD Priest, I propose you have a look at an Assassin/Bloodmage. One issue with the Priest, is that the Turn Based action economy is not great for dual-casters IMO. You cast either a wizard spell or a priest spell in a given round. +25 Accuracy from Assassinate is nothing too sneeze at, also for CC. For nuking additional +4 PEN and +50% Critical damage is quite devastating.

Sonce alwais thx ubi

Jayz2Cents and Linus Tech Tips chime in (The holy Trinity of PC hardware Youtube are these 2 and GN).

we mentioned earlier how a republican in north dakota who were running on an anti-covid restriction platform died o' covid-19 and nevertheless got elected over a fellow republican and a democrat. senator elect from alabama, tommy tuberville thinks the US fought ww2 to end socialism and identified the three branches o' US fed government as the senate, house and executive. oh, and before we laugh too hard at tommy's error and the stoopidity o' the folks in alabama for voting him into office, consider the following: link "During a livestream earlier in the day, Ocasio-Cortez said Democrats should "work our butts off to make sure that we take back all three chambers of Congress — rather, all three chambers of government: the presidency, the Senate and the House."" no pass for a few ca voters neither we get the government we deserve. oh, and am gonna once again observe how important is education. an ignorant electorate is the single greatest threat to a democratic republic. HA! Good Fun!

It's not decided yet! Obviously this image is totally correct.

heya! i can answer a few questions directly though opinions can differ the priest class is there not just for healing but also for BDD and Salvation of Time and getting to and staying near death for the +3 PL. Paladin can kinda do it if you pick the right subclass, but IMO because wall of draining comes so late, getting salvation of time slightly earlier has strong utility. a paladin can definitely spam heal a lot better than priest, but because the build focuses on being in near death in late-game fights, the paladin's death shield is less useful since it comes on top of healing and you can't separate the two. as for turn-based, someone else will have to comment. the perennial concern is getting favorable rounding cutoffs. i think with wall of draining you have to make sure you're hitting enough valid targets to meet the right cutoffs. getting a pet like ooblit or getting gear/food that extends beneficial durations might be pivotal. i still maintain that for blood mage you want CON more than other casters, simply because health turns into a casting resource. in fact, in turn-based, i would sacrifice dex to invest more in con and might because turn-based makes dex matter less (and i believe blood sacrifice is a free action) and more con = more blood sac early on and more might = more healing to get more health back. yeah the state of builds is pretty messy, there have been some patches that changed a lot, some that have not, and very few builds get updated for each patch and it's hard to tell from a glance which builds still work and which builds have broken. that's why on this forum when i post a build i explicitly label it as 5.0 so it's clear that it's up to date. at least in my guide they should all be updated to the latest patch.

Im still butthurt that Yang didnt get the Democratic nomination. That 1k/month/adult UBI would have changed my life.

gonna go out on a limb and guess you will be waiting a long time. https://apnews.com/f10420da35394d30b37d69ec27be6bb6 trump's brand is that he is an outsider. even if the ex presidents, not to be confused with the point break crew, were to meet for an event, am doubtful trump would join... unless the occasion were designed to glorify trump. ... perhaps the President's Cup golf tournament... maybe. HA! Good Fun!

At first, Hello nice shrunk mates, and sorry for my bad english skills I enjoy grounded from the first hour, cause i am a kid from the mid 80's early 90's.. and i like it that obsidian updating grounded every month. I've played more then enought early access games which wasnt nearly in that stadium what grounded was by e.a.-release. I am a german player and ive wrote an review on steam for grounded too, to bringing in some points what all thoose starting negative reviews giving an good counterpart. (feel free to visit and read it) and of course obsidian feel free to take my thoughts they are free and they are nice to improve the fun in grounded, i set no copyright to that feel fre to use Okay thats enough of introducing my self Subdivision 1. Sightseen pillars (areas in the garden) 2. Enemys 3. Basebuilding 4. Taming (work in progress) 5. Features (work in progress) 6. Outfits (Work in progress) 7. Equipmentsets (work in progress) 8. World/seasonal- events (work in progress) 9. items (work in progress) 10. Inventory system (work in progress) 11. Perks (work in progress) 12. bugs (work in progress) I do my best to write what i think over thoose points so good i can after a few hours i wil safe this for the moment and write in the next days on it forward 1. Sightseen pillars (garden areas) well if i think back to my childhood their was a movie "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" and the baseball wich activated the original laser is ovously the first sightseen pillar in grounded wich will be revealed after leaving the start spawn an action figure from battle toads can be found in the toadswamp also nice an mc - tape in the backyard remember to our childhood... okay enough with reminisce here come my thoughts and idears to new or reworked sightseen pillars 1.1 did u remember to the movie with this wierd extraterrestrial called e.t.? ive missing an landmark what thematized that one 1.2 more action figures: ive missing some of the most iconic action figures from the 80s and 90s the f..k where the h..l is he-man and skeletor and those wierd power rangers also the gohstbusters and many more of them when counting up i have an area like an chess board in my mind where thoose most iconic action figures standing in duells to each other 1.3 molehills, wich can used as a fast safe route (safe only if the mole not triggered) 1.4 i really missing the mowing machine, it was so nice in the movie "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" when the Neighbors kid come over and used it to punish the hell out of the kids 1.5 functional walkman, it would be awesome if it would possible to bring some iconic songs (if u do that.. please use some nice rock songs(maybe remixed/reworked cause copyrights)) to an functional walkman which changed the tape and his position every second or third day when a child move in the garden used it for a few minutes and trow it back somewhere in the gras (thats the reason for changing positions) 1.6 science project for school, maybe one of thoose trash jelly vulcanos or an advanced nice waterbottle rocket. 1.7 when i think back to my childhood i remember to a small cooler from coca cola for beverages in a corner on the terrace in the backyard 1.8 one or two beehives or an wasp nest even an hornet's nest (Ouch!!) 1.9 a doghouse would be really awesome 1.10 a figure made out of used bubble gum ( maybe one of the main characters (it would be nice if it peters garden when the figure is looking like willow in a cringe look, cause i think willow is peters secret love)) ten landmarks and some of them are very awesome, (i would love to see them all in grounded) ps: a castle/fort made out of lego bricks wich can give us players an savehouse would be another very awesome sightseen pillar 2. Enemys every time when i play grounded iam very excited to discover new nice things under this point i have some thougts about new enemys or reworking some enemys 2.1 flying enemys: bees / wasps / hornets / dragon-flys / butterflys / Firefly / moths( in the night agressive against light sourcess especially moving lights, like the good old torch what we all use ) / mosquito 2.2 enemys on the ground: chinch / centipede / millipede / termites / silver fish / cellar rattle / dung beetle / rhino beetle / mr. long leg (another varity of spider ouhouhu that would be awesome) 2.3 boss enemys: 2.3.1 ant-lion 2.3.2 mouse // rat 2.3.3 mole 2.3.4 mother moth 2.3.5 mother dragon-fly 2.3.6 mother butterfly 2.3.7 Tarantula 2.3.8 Mantis 2.3.9 scorpion 2.3.10 earthworm 2.3.11 snail 2.4 Immortal enemys: (cause they are big like the bird or the koi) 2.4.1 dog puppy: if u move into the dog house it start the puppy event, he will play with the players and drop a ball in front of them (of cause the ball kills an player if they stand under the ball) the players have to hit the ball with a charged hit (a higher tier of weapon let the ball fly further), but the puppy hitting them hard if they are not carefully in movement, if players hit the puppy his mother runs in and kill all with one bite per player, complete inventory lost (no escape possible) when the puppy runs the 20th time for the ball he is happy and give the player one of his treasures ( some kind of toys like bones or nibble toys) and after that the puppy will fall asleep 2.4.2 the frog/toad: he will eat the player if they are in the range of his tongue it need 3 times before u die (inventory lost completly) after ten hits he drop some frog/toad venom/posion and jumped away, maybe in the koi pond, maybe somewhere in the hedge or maybe a stork land and eat him 2.4.3 skunk 2.4.4 marten/iltis 2.4.5 Hedgehog 2.4.6 racoon 2.4.7 snake 2.4.8 squirrel 2.4.9 iguana 2.4.10 ive forgot this one 3. Basebuilding: 3.1 we need a few more materials for new tiers in the base building section 3.2 i need definitive an elevator 3.3 and a cargo lift 3.4 battlements 3.5 round segments 3.6 arrow slits 3.7 a lot more varity in the trap section 3.8 shutters for windows (3.9 taming objectives) 4. taming: cause every one likes pets and mounts, taming is something what we want, but not so easy like in other games search a pet what u like 4.1

There are also other spells and abilities that target reflex but instead of damage, prone or stun cause a debuff like for example "hobbled". Especially the Druid has stuff like Tanglefoot (hobbles) and Nature's Mark (lowers deflection and reflex) that targets reflex. A stun effect targeting Reflex is more of an exception. Usually stuns (and also weakened, also sickened etc.) are defended by Fortitude. Effects that have illusion and 'mind' vibes often target will. But there are also some priestly fire spells that target will. There is no strict systemic rule to this. Honestly it's all over the place and depends a lot on the whole idea, in-game explanation and "lore" of that spell/ability. Like how does char X apply the prone effect? Does he swipe you off your feet? Then he targets reflex. Does he induce a dizzyness right into your head so you fall over? Will. Does he shove you? Fortitude. And so on. Sowithout lots of meta-knowledge (been there, done that) you cannot know which defense the enemy is targeting with a certain spell/ability. I would just dive into it and not overthink it. Most players restart after a few hours anyway because they understand the game mechanics a lot better then and have a better idea what they want from their character. My first ever char was a Fire Godlike Barbarian on normal difficulty. I scrapped him after some hours and restarted after Act I with a Hearth Orlan Rogue on PotD and so on...

Good to see a build that utilizes Explosives. Looks slick, thelee.

Death Stranding looks so good on an OLED screen. Also checked out the one new change to Borderlands 3 that is rather nice - a new Mayhem mode that is M10 difficulty but zero of the weird modifiers applied. You just lose some of the higher drop rate/xp increase percentage that normal M10 would have. Very nice not to have to deal with death spheres, ground turning to lava, lowered crits, and rerolling modifiers forever. I wish you could apply that to all the M-modes. Just not into that weird stuff, give me straight ARPG sponge increasing.

That's a completely false dichotomy though. Every TPP country is already a member of TRIPS, we already have patent and IP protection. It's not the US trying to bring order to the wild west of IP and combat rampant IP theft, there's already order there. It's the US trying to alter those existing IP agreements for its own benefit.

I haven't played since the week of the last patch. There's the basis of a good game in there but I don't feel there's enough to do for CK2 veterans. That, coupled with some long-standing issues around alliances and war in general, and the glacial way in which they're addressing those issues, means the pattern at the moment is to try out a new campaign every patch but end up feeling a bit empty after. At least they've relented and will re-add the attach function to armies now. It was a deliberate omission in the current version as they felt that the AI was smart enough to move and engage intelligently in big melees, but the evidence shows that they vastly overestimated their AI and this is an admission of such.

this might actually explain some odd behavior i saw with the theurge - if i empowered+least usntable coil and got energized, i could also then use the invocation to get energized again. typically the game simply overrides one or the other depending on which it decides is more powerful (or has a longer duration). but instead i had two energized's active. i would do this proactively because the least unstable coil inspiration duration might not be very long but the invocation might easily be >1 minute, so i'd make sure i'd have 100% uptime. [note: this did not work for inspirations of different strength. if i had acute active and i got brilliant from least unstable coil, it would override the acute] in hindsight, i wonder if this means i was actually double-stacking energized through this odd quirk? i never checked my stats to verify and frankly PEN was never an issue between raw damage from venombloom and just one energized +2 PEN plus the shield cracks for everything else, so if i got an additional +2 PEN i certainly didn't notice. i also had odd cases where i had energized but i was no longer interrupting enemies on a crit. re-using the invocation would fix it. i wonder when the least unstable coil energized was wearing off, the odd stacking here was occasionally screwing something up with the secondary effects of energized (adding to matters is that repeated ticks of venombloom might grant me further refreshes of energized and who knows how all that interacts with everything above). if there's ever a pillars 3, they might want to take a closer look at the stacking system again... the current system sounds simple on paper but can be extremely surprising or unintuitive in the details (i'm a big fan of pathfinder 2e's appraoch which is like D&D's named categories, except it's mostly limited to a narrow set of explicitly spelled out categories)

I tested whispers of the depths ring (chance to Acute inspiration on kill) on monk and it stacks with duality. Fair trial (random inspiration) from magistrate cudgel stacks too (if you get Smart). No clue about tactician brilliant but I suspect it should stack too.

i am 100% for most if not all of this, i think this is a really good list of things that would make good additions to the game

... If you're going to complain about editorialisation etc you should not be posting summaries, you should do as I did and post the actual text. Unsurprisingly the authors of the TPP wanted to market the TPP. Yes, if you read pro TPP press it was an enlightened document that would usher in world peace and prosperity. And if you read defences of slavery the poor slave owner was generously providing shelter, religion, education and food to the lazy uncultured savage. Everyone has seen the standard defence of IP absolutism, that the hoi polloi and imitators steal shamelessly off hard working creators and rights holders, it doesn't need to be reiterated. The DMCA is not well regarded, even in the US. It's regarded as highly draconian, whatever your personal opinion. No one else wants it, and it is not the international norm. US demands are for IP rights to become, effectively, eternal and absolute which is a massive loss of rights for every except rights holders. This is also not the norm and has never been, it is a shift. Consumers have rights too, and the US lobbies extensively to have them extinguished. No one wants $1000 epipens eternally because the US issues patents- protection for novel inventions- for incremental changes, no one wants to buy a tractor then lease the software for additional charge then buy another tractor when the software gets deprecated in 5 years time just because that's great for John Deere shareholders. No one wants Monsanto running around suing people for IP infringement because they stuffed up and their RoundUp Ready corn is not actually sterile and has infected seed stocks as a result. No one wants to have to rebuy media constantly because the IP holder used DRM that, shock horror, goes obsolete and they want the best of both worlds from the product/ licence dichotomy.

Dinner last night was most awesome. Sunny & I drove down to the Lauderdale river landing and did some fishing from the bank. After just 10 minutes I hooked a nice sized largemouth Bass. All across the USA & world there are pro shops selling billions of dollars worth of fancy lures and fishing tackle. They can keep all that trash. Nightcrawlers, crickets, minnows, & shiners. That is all you will ever need! The fish was a big enough for two filets. I dipped it in cornmeal batter and pan fried and served up with butterbeans & pear sauce (applesauce made with pears). Freshwater fish is seriously underrated for dinner!

Sorry to hear that. Have you tried telling them the election isn't over? Seems to be working for Trump.

You should put in Grass Shield and Acorn Shield and put it in the weak hand slot so it will have a higher chance of blocking The attack

I think a character creator\teen creator should be added it will work by selecting a gender skin color hairstyle hair color clothes and then you will be able to choose from a few voices depending on the gender

A sequel to the Keanu Reeves Constantine is coming out it seems. I think I'm one of the few people who liked the movie.

I'm playing Might and Magic 6 right now. The intro involves your party of adventurers in a fort being attacked by devils. A dragon arrives and to escape it you jump into the nearest well. Miraculously surviving the fall and asphyxiation, you begin to climb back out of the well. However, midway up, you find some sort of Mr Miyagi who lives in a tunnel carved into the side of the well I guess? He shares some exposition and begins the process of training you up into mighty adventurers. *cue training montage* TL;DR: Wise hermit lives in a well you just happen to jump into.

Mass Effect Andromeda: Lets go to Andromeda! How? Who knows? Why? It'll be fun! We'll hint that there's a real story here but who cares.

Happens a lot in movies/TV too. Family/child in peril or some kind of noble-idiocy are some of the most over-used shortcut devices to create conflict or relatable emotional sympathy/motivation. Not that they aren't ever effective. Just so common I'm personally left rather cold by them at this point. I can't think of specific game examples at the moment but something else that always annoys me is when there's some kind of misunderstanding that could be cleared up by a chr. saying a few sentences, but no chr. ever says them, despite them standing face to face 10 times repeating the same misunderstood accusations over and over. Plot requires them to be at odds, so ... they are.

I'll give Apple this, they have done a wonderful job branding themselves as a hipster status symbol. They will probably never capture the mainstream the way Android and Windows did, simply because the cost of entry for their products is prohibitive enough that it's generally a barrier to anyone who isn't already a cult member, or at least part of their cult's demographic. Still, they are raking money in hand over fist from their brainwashed cult members. By charging premium prices for average at best hardware they are both maintaining their status symbol image and creating a massive profit margin. It's pretty brilliant, to be honest.