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It's great news for any shop that keeps its historic unsold stock up on its website though, the nVidia 6800XT from 2005 is finally out of stock after bots scalped its 130nm, AGP 8x goodness.

tss, I am 33 and I am want to retire too xD

I don't know what you're talking about. Late 70's/early 80's was rockin' eyewear. ....not. And those weren't cheap ones, back then, either.

can't die from injuries under BDD if I remember correctly

Juggling between weird things and funny, and I think I'll slide towards the amusement value here.. : Crackpots are buying Faraday cages for routers then bemoaning bad Wi-Fi (inputmag.com)

A few more thoughts on Phoenix Point: The crux of it is, what was promised? A game in the XCOM/UFO genre by the creator of that genre, pushing the boundaries. What is the genre? Squad based, turn based, tactical combat to defend humanity from an alien threat. They changed the aliens to virus based mutations. Cool, it differentiates them from other XCOM clones. They tried to use the theme to build some innovative AI evolution. It didn't work out, but at least they tried. Because they failed at creating the core system that would make the game interesting, they had to push other conflicts into the foreground. Read: the conflict between the human factions. Human factions are nothing new to the genre. Being unable to make everyone happy or to defend all of humanity is nothing new. What is new is the game forcing you within the first hour not just to abandon parts of humanity (because you don't have the means (radar range, enough interceptors, etc)) but to actively work against them. Since Pandorans are not interesting enough to shoulder the conflict (there are... 7 different aliens who may or may not carry different weapons (arm mutations are just a fancy way to say different loadout)), the player is forced to fight humans for variety. Just protecting havens in terror-mission equivalents isn't enough to make factions like them. You have to complete diplomacy missions. Which means attacking other factions. ("I saved 50.000 of your people from mutant attacks!" "Sure, sure, but that is irrelevant. You didn't blow up the granary of those other humans we don't really like." "Why don't you like them?" "Well you know how this virus is spreading and killing people and we are forced to execute anyone who gets infected because we have no doctors and no cure?" "Yes?" "Well, those other humans are doctors and are actively working on finding a cure. We need you to starve them out so we can swoop in and shoot the ******s" "I think I see why you have no doctors." "We don't need doctors as long as we have guns.") Couldn't you just ignore them? No. Because research is extremely limited. Phoenix Point did away with classic research and now most research you get from the factions in one of two ways: allying with them so they gift you their tech tree. Or fighting them and reverse engineering their equipment. You just choose which 2/3s of humanity you want to actively attack. And you are pushed into it right from the start. And the DLC is even more pushy. "Hi, I am the DLC quest giver. I will give you the ability to use cybernetics, just as you could in the XCOM games." "Cool!" "I need you to attack faction A to proceed with this DLC content." "But I was planning on allying with them..." "Wrong answer, no DLC for you." (to be honest: I do not know if later on you get a different way to unlock the tech, because it always annoys me and I have quit three playthroughs at this point) What I see is a game that could be a decent XCOM clone, which wasted resources on an innovative system that didn't work and to still have a game pushed and blew up an aspect that makes it contradict its theme. The response of course of the community ... person was: We always said there would be faction conflict. Yes. And the factions were mostly purposefully overdone caricatures. At least Synedrion and the Disciples of Anu. New Jericho sadly is very real. But from faction conflict being part of the game, the game's story became this: "The virus spreads in areas covered by the funky mist. What are your solution to this?" Disciples: "Let's breath in the mist and become one with the mist!" Jericho: "Let's shoot the mist!" Synedrion: "Well, we have developed this aerosol which can disperse the mist if it isn't too thick. It isn't strong enough to clear areas already covered in it, but if we build a network of towers around areas of mist, we can stop it from spreading, effectively containing the virus to those areas. As we will only need armed forces to patrol the boundaries of the mist and not expect mutant attacks elsewhere, we'll not only reduce the risk of infection for our soldiers, we'll be able to divert funds from our military budget to our healthcare and research budgets and start working on a way to eradicate the mist and the virus completely." Disciples: "Why? Why fight the virus when you could be one with the virus? You have to take a deep breath of the virus and realize you are one with the virus on this adventure. Now take a deep breath of the virus and realize this is me breathing." Jericho: "Shoot the doctors! They want to take away your guns!" Phoenix Project: "You all make valid points. I think I'll need to do three playthroughs to explore all your equally valid positions." I should have started a blog called: "Gamer offended by stupid writing" (edit: mind you, the writing on its own wouldn't be bad. It is the tie in with the game mechanics that makes it bad. And even the viewpoints sadly have been proven not unrealistic.)

Drone footage shows the shocking collapse of the Arecibo Observatory Now if I were really, really paranoid, I might suspect that the CCP had sabotaged Arecibo just to get scientists to start using FAST (Five-Hundred-Meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope). But that would just be crazy thinking. Right? China Built the World’s Largest Telescope, But Has No One to Run It Aren't conspiracy theories fun?

One of those things I've known for years, but it always amuses me when I see/hear references...

Things appear to be going well in Ohio:

Button! Awesome! Connected!

I knew it was going to be bad when they were presenting their direction with the game combat as being "push a button and awesome things happen".

Letting her pick was the first mistake I pay about $500 for mine every 2 years or so, insurance covers about $300 though. Hard to find boring frames these days though.

The fundamental problem with DAI and ME:A was far too much samey content, until you noticed that the games themselves were fine. Inquisition was at least better than DA2.

Had my yearly checkup at my ophthalmologist. Eyes got a bit worse, and I figured it's been a while since I got new glasses, so why not. So my wife and I go shopping, and she's like: "Hey, is this going to be expensive?" and I go "Nah, not really", so she immediately starts picking out frames and we finally find one she likes (that I can live with). A couple of measurements and a bill from the shop later she looks at me and says: "Wait, you said this isn't going to be expensive!" and I'm like... "Yeah that was before you picked the Emporio Armani frame and the diamond glass package, dear."

Do you know how many injuries you had? Some boss abilities add an injury without knocking you out. If you had 3 already and it hit with one more - poof.

I saw someone selling a 5950X for $1600. Bonkers. Hopefully no one was desperate or stupid enough to pay that much.

Nobody knows if the 3080Ti is really coming this time or not. It won't add to availability anyway, it'll pull more chips from the standard 3080 pool, the one that would add to availability would be the 3070Ti since it would use chips not good enough for normal 3080s. Shipping worldwide is pretty stuffed, to be fair, though you'd think nVidia could charter one of the hundreds of planes doing nothing at the moment to fly some to Europe. AMD is definitely constrained by chip manufacturing limits, nVidia shouldn't be.

All of the various fallouts from Covid seem to have altered many people's thinking on how they want their life to be, sometimes quite dramatically. I myself expected I would work until age 70 or death, whichever came first. But now, at age 53, I am already planning for early retirement as soon as that is financially viable for me.

As ridiculous as that may sound, season one has the longest run of decent episodes of the series. Overall it was still terrible, but it's the clearly the season with the best value so far. Season two makes Battlestar Galactica's final half of season three and season four look positively glorious and the current one is... uhm... yeah. It's occasionally okay. Somewhere between the first and second, but incredibly uneven.

If you're still going strong in the first season then I'd stick with it. If you can enjoy it for what it is then I think that's a good thing. I tried to do that but I still kept wanting it to be something that I don't think it can be so I had to stop watching. I did finally watch Lower Decks and I absolutely agree that it is the most "Star Trek" of YellCryPunch nuTrek but I'd describe it as a less good animated Orville

Ok so the 3080 TI is reportedly releasing in January but confirmed 3080 owners aren't getting theirs until mid-February? Something doesn't add up here. You living in Sweden may be a factor but I wouldn't think it would be a huge one.

Scientists just mapped 1 million new galaxies, in 300 hours.

In the last big update they also said that due to player feedback, they have decided to take longer to put out updates, but make them much larger. Trust. They are working very hard to keep content coming out. It takes time to make a masterpiece.

in berath's challenge i gear up and level my companions once i discovered that companions that help during ship fights can also perma-die despite them not being under your control

"For helvede mand!" It was the greeting this morning from the Danish service technician when he met me for the third time in four weeks that a driver from a certain company went and tore off the rear bumper of one of our tractors at work. Same tractor. Same bumper. He had me in stitches with that There's something about Danes being angry/exasperated that makes it sound so funny!

https://www.ign.com/articles/bioware-casey-hudson-mark-darrah-to-leave-studio-all-current-projects-planned-to-continue

Pro Gamer:

make ants carry things for you, maybe for a limited time, i know abbout the ant armor, but this idea it's interesting when u think about the game and "the how to transport materials from one place to another, maybe a wheelbarrow to move things. For example: 1 ANT: 8 Grass 1 wheelbarrow: 2 trunk

I need to post more game pics, I have a rep to uphold! It still makes me sad that Ansel looks to be going/is extinct tho - even if I understand it (proprietary/expense and all that). Every game photo-mode these days is almost exactly the same. Serviceable but no true versatility. Limited range/angles and scope, no clipping thru walls with it (hehe), and most importantly, no Super Resolution options. They're just scene framers and you (typically) still need a screenshot taking program/overlay option to capture the picture.

I still fail at parry half the time. Even on mobs which I parried A LOT before, every once in a while I just fail to do it ... guess I just suck at reflexes. Still. I'm ~lv50 now and the game got a lot easier. There are still mobs that can kill me fast and especially groups are deadly, but all in all it's very manageable. Since Father Gascoigne there was not a single boss that needed more than 2 or 3 tries for me to get done with it. /Edit: I'm in the forest area now, and have to say it's probably the worst so far. Same experience as in every other Souls game ... as soon as you get to the forest area(s), the fun is just sucked right out and I'm craving to get out of there again ASAP.

Still doing Bloodborne. Getting much better at it. It's night time now, and ducking hell, the game is creeping me out. Pretty good idea to reuse the environment like that with new / different mob compositions. You know all the places, but it's still different and you can't feel safe. Hell, I even dreamed about it today... more specifically about Eileen the Crow. Man, that's probably the coolest character in the game so far. Right now it feels to me like it's just the very beginning of the game that beats you down and is super hard. Once you managed to level up a bit, it suddenly becomes A LOT easier. While still harder than the last Dark Souls that I've played, it's really nothing compared to the first few hours anymore. Basically, the first thing you have to do is manage to unlock levelups, then pump points into vitality and there you are - the game is open now... only took me 10 or so hours, though.

Yes, these are the reasons you get a 3D printer...

I chose estoc for added Pen as I wanted to max that out too. A Devoted/Ascendant with a Mythic estoc can get up to a whopping (and ridiculously overkill) 20 while under the effects of a MIG inspiration—or to a completely bonkers 26 when under the effects of the Cipher PL9 power that gives +8 Pen (though you'd need a second Cipher in the party for that.) I did upgrade the BotEP with Marking for even more bonkers Accuracy (indirectly via Deflection reduction, as mentioned), though the extra crit damage was pretty attractive considering I already critted a lot in the first place. That said, I tried this build with Firebrand and the extra lash damage was pretty rad. It can't upgrade to Mythic but can scale up to Legendary which would be awesome squared. Just of course it's got lower Pen (then again, it can deal Burn damage so against enemies with lower Burn AR it could equate to an estoc.)