Humanoid

I'm a fan of MalwareBytes, which is not an antivirus as such, but is designed to run alongside a traditional anti-virus program (which usually conflict with one another). Unfortunately they've recently switched from a lifetime licence model to a subscription-based one, however you can still find copies of the lifetime version through retailers without too much difficulty. At under $20 for life, I think it's a no-brainer.

It's Unreal Engine 3, apparently.

Maybe this belongs in the blasphemy thread, but I'm glad it was cut, and would be happy if it never came back in a patch. It's nothing but busywork, and if anything, reduces immersion because it highlights how comically short a day is in-game. If there are day-night cycles in the game, it should run at a 1:1 ratio with real time, but that in itself tends to be unnecessary effort since most people don't play games for 24 hour+ stretches.

Today I learned colour #CC6666 is officially named "Fuzzy Wuzzy". So I pick that ending. Will have to upgrade my 16-colour EGA video card though. EDIT: It looks like this

There have been some reports of fake mods being uploaded to the nexus with similar names to popular mods, yeah. But generally they're not too hard to spot - a .exe file is generally a dead giveaway as Skyrim modding generally doesn't require that level of code delving (although there are some well documented exceptions, such as the SKSE framework). That's the thing with modern malware - unlike in the past, infection is normally targetted by way of social engineering, like that ransomware example you provided. But that doesn't necessarily mean an infection because it might just be a nasty but mundane pop-up on a dodgy website.

Huh, never seen them give out a GOG key before. Hopefully it's the start of a continuing trend.

With very little fanfare, it's now been released. DLC additions and patch notes

I think the most interesting point there is what they've done about it more than anything. Rather than the blunt instrument of outright bans, it at least pays lip service to the idea that cheating can be fun with a little moderation. It's a sensible approach compared to that seen previously from EA, where for example a simple forum ban could also mean effectively being locked out of the game altogether.

:teehee:

Yeah, for that kind of money I'd expect the dash to be appointed with mahogany and leather trim at the very least, and at least a few more cup holders.

Somewhat amusingly, the realisation arrives: John Carmack is now a Facebook developer.

Two Titans for the price of three, that's genius. (Hell, for the purposes of most users, it's two 780Tis for the price of five....)

Um, it was a post made in jest, I know nothing about Oculus Rift bar that they're some VR thing, and not much about Facebook other than the usual repertoire of privacy jokes. But presumably the goal is twofold, to, a) show you advertisements, and b) show you to advertisers.

The only change is that it will now have a Google-esque spy camera built into it, the only difference being that Facebook won't tell you it's there.

That said, it's still somewhat of a misleading figure - with multi-GPU setups, the frame buffer has to be duplicated for each GPU. 2x 6GB cards isn't a 12GB card, and that same logic applies here: you still only have 6GB effective memory to play with. Now, is 6GB overkill? Arguably yes, but on the other hand, real gains have been shown for AMD's 4GB rival compared to nV's 3GB versions, and due to the 384-bit memory bus, it locks* them into either doing either 3GB or 6GB - so the latter is the correct choice for a performance oriented product. * Not strictly true, but it's suboptimal to run a mix-and-match combination to get an in-between figure.

My former WoW buddies always thought it was strange that I expressed having no interest whatsoever in Diablo, to the point of not signing up to the theoretically free* copy of it if purchasing a year's subscription to WoW. Given all the shared design elements, the assumption would be that it'd be right up my alley. I guess it's partly a mystery to me too, but I played a friend's copy of Diablo 2 back in the day, and did not enjoy it at all, so despite all the theoretical similarities, I stayed well away. *As it happened, I ended up quitting WoW months short of the one-year point from the start of the annual pass program, so it wasn't as if I had turned down something literally free. Anyway, nearing the end of Stick of Truth I assume - in Canada at the moment - and while I'm still having fun, I think the game was stronger when it still was immersed in the guise of the extended LARP. I get that the intention was to cram as many elements and references to the TV series as possible, but I feel the game isn't at its strongest there as it tends to lose focus as a result. Granted as a non-fan of the series, much of it went right over my head, so the stuff I'm complaining about might be stuff that tends to delight long-term followers. So yeah, best bits of the game for me are the earnest humans vs elves 'war' and the set pieces that revolve around that. In the long run, I might end up viewing this game as I did KoTOR, a game I enjoyed despite the setting, not because of it.

Doubt I'd be able to really do anything since primetime here in Australian time would be something like 2am Pacific and 9am GMT (and I have a very limited range of multiplayer games in the first place). But yeah, probably would be useful for people who do use this thread to state their timezones.

If you had purchased the censored Australian version this wouldn't have been a problem. :D

The kicker there is that the article states the events happened before she even hit age 40, so apparently at 39 you can no longer fall pregnant.

Is there an event where the entire Russian military shows up at the booth?

Bit of everything over the last week. Dragonfall, Skyrim Frostfall, Minecraft, Stick of Truth. Dragonfall. That the campaign is indisputably better than its predecessor perhaps makes me all the more bothered by the UI issues - primarily the combat UI - that they haven't really addressed. Tempted at this point to just set it back to easy and blast through it for the non-combat content. In combat: The number of clicks just to get a spell off, especially a buff spell, is a big offender. The fiddly way to even see the buffs you already have applied exacerbates the issue - as far as I can tell you have to hover over the character model itself (and not while in spellcasting mode), the portrait offers nothing but useless green and red triangles. What's wrong with a bloody hotbar? On a minor note, I keep accidentally shooting with the melee character first up because the pistol is defaulted instead of the claws, grr. Out of combat: The roundabout way in which healing is handled outside of combat is a persistent bugbear, and indeed just seeing your health in the first place is very non-obvious. An occasional issue, and one I can imagine being a rather big one at higher difficulties, is that you have to physically lead with your player character, which is tactically compromising when walking into ambushes. It's a bit of a dilemma, I'm happy that I don't have to manually move each person out of combat, something that turns many a party-based RPG into a chore, but I'd at least like the ability to choose the one person I want to move. Mechanics: I long for vertical cover being recognised, i.e. peeking around doorways, as the very limited amount of object the game counts as cover feels very stilted. Skyrim - don't really plan to do anything meaningful with this playthrough, just messing around with the 'hardcore mode' type mods, being Frostfall and Realistic Needs, as I have been in small doses over the past few weeks. I'm pretty okay with the mechanics themselves, but they can and do frequently fall out of place, survival mechanics being undermined by the game itself, for example, random revellers in a blizzard making merry. I don't blame Bethesda for it since it's obviously mechanically irrelevant for their intended design, but it just feels silly in combination. Minecraft. First time player. Entertaining enough diversion for a couple of days, but I don't think it holds any long-term appeal for me. Sandbox in general isn't really my thing, and if I wanted to build houses I'd rather play The Sims. As a non-fan of South Park, it was always going to be a risk of a purchase, but happy enough with it thus far. The QTEs are making me take relatively frequent breaks though, if not physically then they're at least mentally exhausting. The 'mash A' ones in particular I've just not bothered with, if an attack of mine requires it, I'll never use it again, and if I need to do it to counter an attack, I'll just stop and take it. Obviously the 'consoleised' UI controls are going to draw a reaction as well, I'd say I can live with most of it, but inventory management is predictably the worst part. The sheer number of duplicated functionality potions all just appear in one big list making scrolling a pain - I don't want to choose between a half-dozen separate listings for minor healing potions that differ only by icon. It's one of those cases where flavour unfortunately overrides usability, but even then surely it could be better handled. Maybe pool them together such that you only see one entry, but use the specific item you have the most quantity of automatically. Or try having one big generic stack but have the specific item you appear to consume be random. Add to that the irritation of the list not wrapping, and I'm mostly trying to brute force most battles without consumables. I also wish there were abbreviated animations for the non-interactive segments of the more elaborate skills.

The government of Mongolia has published a list of prohibited words, and phrases banned from use in Mongolian websites. These are a mix of Mongolian, Russian and English words, and while some are what you might expect, others are somewhat more bemusing. Highlights given include such mundane words or phrases as 'bad', 'huts', 'clumsy' and 'bad breath' (not sure why a separate entry is required if 'bad' is already banned in its own right); some mild expletives or insults such as 'idiot', 'jerk' and 'goshdarnit', some baffling non-words such as 'douchewaffle'; and erm, 'feminine hygiene accessory'.

I think you misunderstand the Haswell issue then. It's absolutely nothing to do with the TIM between the heatsink and the CPU - or more accurately, the heatsink and the heatspreader. It's to do with the TIM between the heatspreader and the die underneath. Prior to Ivy Bridge, the heatspreader was soldered on to the actual CPU die, so there was minimal loss in conductivity. As a cost-cutting measure in Ivy Bridge, they opted to machine the heatspreaders with a lot more tolerance, resulting in a larger gap between surfaces, and used pretty ordinary thermal goop in between it and the die to fill out that gap. You cannot fix that without physically prying/levering off the heatspreader, which is obviously a pretty risky thing to do. A picture tells a thousand words, so here's one of a de-lidded Haswell CPU. It's the thick layer of grey goop here that's the issue.

Clearly Obsidian are on their way to diversifying their properties in the manner that 80s powerhouses like MPS Labs and Origin Systems did - they explored every genre under the sun. I mean if you can do F-19 Stealth Fighter and Darklands, Pirates! and Railroad Tycoon, Civilization and Rex Nebular; or Ultima and Jane's Longbow, Wing Commander and System Shock, Crusader and Wings of Glory.

Maybe he'll have a "one more thing" moment. C'mon Justin!