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I'm off to donate blood again tomorrow. It usually just takes an hour of my time, and at least I feel like I'm contributing something. I have that universal donor O-negative blood that is much sought by emergency rooms. At my age it usually takes a few days to recover my energy, but at least I'm getting rid of more senescent cells. (Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.) It's just in time too; there's more snow on the way in the forecast. We may get up to three inches by Friday. I think I'll plan on staying home and reading a good book (The Bookseller of Florence by Ross King).

From the trade show last month. Bad lighting in the hall. As an architect I feel offended by how bad the lighting was. Even worse attendance. Complete waste of money.

Trump is such a master wordsmith. Makes it sound as if Ukraine started it.

Droid factory in KOTOR 2 should have been left out of that restoration mod, good grief what a tedious experience

Well, was nice knowing you all

0900 PST tomorrow some new additions are coming to the fora 'nuff said ...

Eeeexcuuuuse me. Are you trying to label me with the xy gender... I was just making some fun. Happy that the forum is getting some foot traffic and new blood. Hopefully we get some interesting new trolls, because the good ones left and the ones we have I'm afraid aren't trolling. For starters they need to move from AWS and get them some of that free Azure goodness. That's what I find puzzling. Like not even a discount?

More reason to wait for next generation (any gpu brand). Or never play any new games, forever. I don't think all of this re: gpu/performance value/cost/AI-upscaling reliance stuff (not just nvidia related) is going to get any better any time soon. Oh well. I'm just an ossified old fart, what do I know.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-reciprocal-tariffs-coming-thursday-2025-02-13/ Also, Trump doesn't know what VAT is, as he wrote on Truth Social. "For purposes of this United States Policy, we will consider Countries that use the VAT System, which is far more punitive than a Tariff, to be similar to that of a Tariff. Sending merchandise, product, or anything by any other name through another Country, for purposes of unfairly harming America, will not be accepted"

As of the last few months, over an additional 1.5k apparently February is already on the way to make that even more awesome imho

https://buddycarter.house.gov/uploadedfiles/redwhitebluelandact.pdf "To authorize the President to enter into negotiations to acquire Greenland and to rename Greenland as ‘‘Red,White, and Blueland’’. Sherman didn't burn enough.

KM3NeT Telescope Detects Most Energetic Cosmic Neutrino Yet A particle that rarely interacts with normal matter yet its "energy was roughly a 100 million billion times the energy of visible light photons..." Whoa. It's something called a cosmogenic neutrino.

Ha, my company sent out an all hands message regarding Trump pausing enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act saying that even in the absence of legal requirements, ethics and integrity have strong business benefits. Our practices around bribery and corruption are not changing lol.

More news from the Mos Eisley administration: Trump administration set to purchase $400 million worth of armored Teslas Hahahahaha...

From what people say though, the 50-series isn't getting that problem fixed soon, since they've designed the power connection badly

Just waiting for Trump to suggest they can solve the problem with bleach… He obviously doesn’t have a clue (Im Westen nichts Neues), but people keep making the mistake of giving him free rent in their brains. It’s what he wanted. He’s first and foremost a reality tv showman and a narcissist. Any attention is good attention. As for the actual subject I suspect the Ukrainian rhetoric of borders back to pre 2014 status as well as Russian ambitions of recreating the USSR are both unrealistic. The former would require Ukrainian troops to hold a victory parade on the red square and the latter train departed the station when Gorbachev led the process of disintegration

You're just jealous because he's finally found the true love that you never have.

QED

Nvidia having problems again with toasty connectors. If I were one of the 10 people with a 5090, this would definitely worry me. I hear some people are already saying you should underclock your card. Imagine paying that sort of money for a GPU, and then having to underclock it for fear of the connection combusting...

I've taken up the neckbeardiest of hobbies, painting Warhammer figurines. I don't play the game, I just like coloring in little dudes. It's like playing dress up with really small dolls who are evil robots. It's fun and I can watch Star Trek at the same time.

Hey everyone. Hope y'all are doing well! We're in Jamestown New York for a family function. We're picking up Bri from the airport in a few hours. I dislike New York mostly but it's nice around here. We drove up from Texas which was pretty miserable this time of year. After this it's back to cheese land for a while.

Looks like a NWN2: Enhanced Edition is happening, developed by Aspyr.

Ok, the Indiana Jones game is pretty dang good. Is this the rebirth of adventure games? I know there is some action, but really the best part is the puzzles and exploring. It might be time to re-launch Dr. Brain.

I ended up loading a mod that increased my party size to 6, I like 6 people in my party https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/288?tab=description

My early thoughts are that Deadfire feels like Neverwinter Nights 2 and it's expansions in the Infinity Engine, in a really good way. I noticed that there are Critical Role portraits and voicepacks, I wonder if the popularity of shows like that and LA by Night had anything to do with Obsidian going so heavily for that pen & paper vibe with all the skill checks and little details like everyone reacting to you being a godlike. I think that's amazing by the way and I'm all for it, but it's crazy to think how much effort that must have taken, they went way above and beyond anything I've seen before in an RPG. It's super impressive to see how much work and talent Obsidian poured into Deadfire. I've made it to Neketaka and I'm overwhelmed and intimidated by the size of the city, let alone the rest of the game. I have a list of all the companions and sidekicks and where to recruit them, so I'm just ticking those off initially, so far they all seem like an interesting bunch. Did Obsidian say why they reduced the party size to 5? I'd guess it's because it's easier to balance the roleplaying side of things but for combat it's a bit like losing a limb.

"That was about as useful as a bump on the pickle". I quite like that Eora is populated by a wider range of accents. Dyrwoodians (and Readcerian's) using American accents felt appropriate considering certain similarities between once real life colony of a distant world power. While it is no PoE1 cast, I have warmed up to PoE2 companions, especially after reputation was tweaked (and even more so in my recent playthrough, where I slowed down reputation gain even further - though it did prohibit a few inter-party banter to trigger) so they won't all try to pounce on my poor Watcher as soon as they join the party.

Im 45 hours into W3 and Im loving all the different side quests and activities apart from the main narrative. W3 really is the best example of an open-world RPG that aligns with the broader Witcher narrative and lore. Some key points I have just completed the Bloody Baron quest and it was brilliant, very nuanced and thought provoking around what the Baron did and the botchling. I also decided to help the Baron free his wife from the Crones. The Crones really are diabolical even though I worked with them around killing the tree\druid evil spirit but I now want to kill them. I laughed how they flirted with Geralt..imagine having a foursome with them I like how you can get so many different Witcher contracts, this is exactly what the Witcher is about. Killing beasts and monsters and having to plan how to do this before you engage EE and Redux makes the skill advancement realistic and I prefer it to level advancement. You gain skill points when you use them so you have to focus on the type of build you want if you want to progress The economy has been rebalanced with EE and Redux and I like it, you cant sell everything for maximum money and special item upgrades and crafting is expensive but thats a good thing because Im always short of money and I have to go on quests and hunt for gold. It encourages exploration Triss is so beautiful aesthetically with my advanced graphic settings and 4K mod , its going to be difficult to decide who to support between her and Yen but that is a decision I will make later once the narrative unfolds

So consumer protection agency is gone now too? Man, I've never been happier to live in the EU.

The "WTF weird ending" really just felt like the product of lame storytelling that wasn't able to effectively tie together the grounded reality of the world/universe that the movie had constructed and the simple, relatable human story that it wanted to tell. We have a hard sci-fi story that should have concrete issues and solutions (or lack thereof), but it in the end, it just comes down to...the most base character emotions and beliefs driving us towards a magical resolution that is only the most tenuously connected to the real physical world. Which, hey, if you at least enjoyed the preceding two hours and if you liked and cared about the involved characters, that might just be alright and you'll get into that emotional ending and accept it for what it is, or you'll at least forgive it. I...did not.

Swen Vincke likes this. (KCD II also managed to soar past the 1 million units day 1).

Doesn't seem like they've learned much. https://twistedvoxel.com/ea-ceo-dragon-age-the-veilguard-failed-due-to-lack-of-live-service-elements/

Successful marketing where they blame issues to some population that isn't really blame of those issues, but it is easier to sell than trying to tell that in past we have collected too little pension money, which now causes issues because population does not grow but gets older causing increase of both pension and health service expenses And failure to increase value of goods and services that we export, causing problems when it comes to increasing salaries in such extend that inflation has started to eat people's purchasing power. Failure to act on research about changing climate in past 50 years, which has lead to need to try find fast ways to fix infrastructure and policies that are designed to different kind of climate Failure to understand we can't lean single supplier in important products like fertilizers, gas and oil. Failure to see that tying large parts of economy to few big companies is as dangerous if not even more dangerous than tying it to public sector, because it both makes difficult to refocus economy if there is global issue and people's livelihood is tied to entity which they don't have any say over. Failure to see that we need to invest to future not pump billions and billions to sectors that are dying, even if that would cause short term problems. Failure to understand that short term gains from privatizing public infrastructure will lead to monopolies that will cause issues Failure to ensure bureaucracy of people immigrating to work does not prevent creation of jobs and cause people to go else where. System where seeking asylum is easiest way to get residence but with prohibition to work, will lead situation where migrants are see only as burden. Failure to create rules to prevent tax havens, unchecked imports, equal postal fees, need to have same standards for imported goods than domestically produced goods have, have same refund rules for imported goods than domestic goods, have equal tariffs. Failure to have coherent clear foreign policies that are same for all and lots of other issues.

KitGuru about to test Arrow Lake after Intel fixes, some preliminary results: Very poor showing by Intel here, sorry to say. If I want CPUs that default to mobile CPU settings just because Lunar Lake was developed before Arrow Lake and somebody forgot to flip the switch, I'll go directly to the company for fall-on-its-face launches like that and buy AMD (lolno I won't, but eh, obligatory dig has to be here). So boo Intel, don't do that again. Besides, the poor release is done and dusted, and nobody will remember Arrow Lake for anything but failures and poor showings. Anyway, here's the TL;DW: The 9800X3D is obviously still the fastest gaming CPU Arrow Lake game performance figures are now in line with Intel's marketing material What that means for gamers is the same conclusion that was reached earlier. In gaming, outside of the X3D models, it is a close race between the 14900K, the 9950X and the Core Ultra 285K. As far as upgrading from prior CPUs goes, this generation is a complete bust. Outside of the 9800X3D that is, whose existence in the wild is basically as confirmed as Bigfoot's. So if you're already on 13th gen or on AM5, there's zip all reason to upgrade your CPU. Especially with gaming on the 14900K still being, uhm, somewhat faster in many games. Time to wait for Leo's productivity tests. According to Intel's presentation, the poor showing in Photoshop should be fixed now. Productivity-wise the 285K was pretty good regardless, able to compete with the 9950X. The 9950X is still more efficient, but the difference is power draw between teh 14900K and the 285K is massive and certainly a step in the right direction. Suggestion for Intel: hire tech channel personnel for QA tests before launches.

TLDW: more testing needed but overhead issues, so don't pair with older gen or maybe lower end CPU, or something, may/likely get 30-50% less performance vs. picking/using, say, a 4060. eg, ryzen 5 2600 and one wanted to replace their 1660. It's not just simple bottlenecking. So decent budget gpu upgrade for some, not for others. (original reviewer/tester/vid they're referring to)

Well, look at that. Gains over the 7800X3D look pretty good, but Steve's chart shows that AMD is doing an Intel here now that moving the cache around increased their thermal headroom. Gains in performance of the 9800X3D come from a pretty steep increase in power usage over the 7800X3D: On the flipside that doesn't look like there's a Zen 5 bottleneck. The increase in performance just comes from using more power on a similarily performing architecture. The CPU is, of course, still more efficient than Intel CPUs in gaming due to their much higher framerates at a still lower power budget. Again this is something that will never change for gaming until Intel - or any other competitor - can get a gaming focused CPU with equally large caches out there.

Well, and then you benchmark a bunch of games, and factoring in the also existing - but less pronounced - gains on Intel CPUs, and Zen 5 CPUs catch up by ~2%. Of course there are outliers, but they exist on Intel too, whatever the update does, it certainly boosts Jedi Survivor performance by a lot. Funny how that goes. Anyway, nothing really new to see here. The 7800X3D remains the top pick for a gaming CPU. I'm really interested in the upcoming 9800X3D's performance, the larger cache will show if there's a bottleneck situation that is holding Zen 5 performance back.

Please, for the love of god, do not use the Admin account unless you really have to (hint: if you would, you would know - just forget it even exists). Getting ten frames per second more is definitely not a use case. Love how much work the tech channels have to put into these videos simply because the DIY tech bubble can't get over the fact that Zen 5 isn't a good product outside of some productivity workloads. Fair enough, I mainly used the NSA as an example because of their confirmed supply chain attacks.

tl;dr: Supposed power efficiency gains with Zen 5 are largely non-existent in gaming workloads (though it is improved for all-core/production workloads), so given that performance is essentially the same, this new generation looks fairly pointless for gaming, go get a 7800X3D if you're building a new PC for that, which performs better and is more efficient for gaming.

Hi AzureG, If you hold tab to bring up interact able objects are you seeing a compass icon to the left side of the area in the Ruins Exterior? Thanks!

The fact the forum is still running and hasn't crashed means it is doing better than previous releases.

Real Men and Women.

Then again, who asked for a fairly "standard" cinematic action adventure in the Dragon Age universe? Those type of games are dime a dozen. Unlike say, a D&D type of game... Ever since the Witcher 3 hit it big, almost every other action type of game has incorporated RPG elements. This is a crowded space. If Veilguard didn't have the Bioware nor Dragon Age label attached -- would it have gotten much attention in the first place? In terms of gameplay, tone, visuals (considering the reactions to the first trailers already?) And even then, the Bioware brand has seen better times itself... people don't buy into Bioware games blindly anymore after an odd ten years without a truly hit. To me, that's also why the likes of From Software, Larian or now Warhorse are hitting it bigg/er: They came out of niches uncatered to, each in their own way. Gradually builded a (loyal) core audience -- and then managed to expand that without changing the core of their games, possibly alienating the core PLUS losing their edge. Which means that, unlike most, they don't see direct competition on their level of production. Companies like Bioware have been like: "We want Call Of Duty's audience" from the go. I mean, if Obsidian's Feargus hadn't been around back then, even what eventually became Baldur's Gate would have been an RTS/MMO-ish type of affair, two of the largest trends to chase in the mid to late 1990s. It was he who saw the D&D in the demo the doctors had pitched to Interplay... and suggested the change in direction. Despite RPGs being considered deader than dead at that point, and even parts of Interplay marketing having serious doubts. The rest, as the say, was history. And miniature giant space hamsters.