Bartimaeus

Some synthetic benchmarking of the new micro-code that supposedly fixes the power degradation issues (scroll down): https://tweakers.net/reviews/12320/hoeveel-trager-worden-intel-processors-door-de-nieuwe-default-settings.html tl;dr: Typically a small performance dip (5-10%) versus prior benchmarks, occasionally more significant, occasionally less or even nothing at all...also, occasionally actually better! Mildly reduces clock speeds across the board, reduces power draw significantly in the 14th gen (but weirdly not the 13th). I hope chasing top performance no matter what was worth all this, Intel. (e): Actually, I misread: this doesn't seem to be the new micro-code that just came out (which Asus was the first to release as a beta version of earlier today, and these tests were done with a Gigabyte board anyways), but rather the cumulative micro-code changes that Intel has already made over the past year. Still useful information to know given initial benchmarks of these chips versus benchmarks you might see if they were tested today, but I guess hold onto your horses to see what the latest will actually do. Guess that's what I get for seeing "Asus releases new BIOS beta with Intel's micro-code changes" and then "these guys re-tested and compared 2023 to latest bios update" right after each other and making assumptions from that.

Yes, if you can perform the same at significantly better power efficiency or perform significantly better at the same power efficiency, it's an upgrade...assuming it works both ways. There's always been exponentially diminishing returns as you feed these Zen CPUs more power though, so we'll see how that works out in practice in the coming weeks. AMD should've made sure its release was squeaky clean with good communication of these facts and making sure existing motherboards had stable and functional BIOS updates ready, especially after delaying it for half a month, and that doesn't seem to have happened.

Oh no, it's happening again... Intel falls off a cliff, and AMD immediately rests on its laurels.

Tim Walz, Minnesota's and my governor, is reportedly Harris' pick for Vice President. Very pleased (and surprised!) that he was the choice.

Yeah, Ross' campaign (Accursed Farms) didn't really need to be gaming-specific here, the right to be able to use the things that you've bought seems like it should be pretty obvious and inalienable.

Yikes. As much as I would heartily laugh if Intel were to ever fail entirely, it would be quickly followed by some very grave contemplation. But hey, if AMD survived [insert unending horde of problems they faced for many years here], I think Intel will be okay.

Lily C.A.T. (1987). It's like an Alien and The Thing two-for-one combo rip-off, but instead of being the best thing ever like it should be, it's just pretty alright. It's the only one of these I don't have any misgivings about having watched. A.D. Police Files (1990). (If I could find a not terrible quality poster for this, it would be inserted here.) @Malcador reminded me that this exists. Overall, not a huge fan: first episode (lady cyborg who goes crazy because of being overworked) was pretty meh, second episode (lady cyborg who goes crazy because she couldn't go back to being fully human again) was O.K., third episode (guy cyborg who goes crazy because he replaced his entire body with machine parts and then got addicted to steroids) was pretty bad. None of them had anything to do with each other except for exploring similar ideas, they're standalone stories within the Bubblegum Crisis setting, which seemed to at least be better and more consistent than this, though I've yet to finish it. Windaria (1986). Felt vaguely like a Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind rip-off in terms of visuals, tone, and style...but pretty bad because of atrocious characters and writing, neither elements of which had much if any resemblance to Nausicaa. Look, the girl in the poster even stole Nausicaa's fox-squirrel pet. Not that it does anything throughout the whole film...or, uh, maybe it did and I already forgot. The story is some really basic Romeo and Juliette crap, and I really don't have any interest in describing it further. Golgo 13: Queen Bee (1998). This is one of the worst things I've ever seen. One of those cases I've mentioned before where it attempts to have some kind of story and emotional core that the viewer is supposed to connect with but because it's so completely terrible and at odds with itself (while also offering nothing else of interest), watching mindless action trash would have been less offensive. I hope the idiots that made this stub their pinky toes in real life today.

Everyone loves politics in their entertainment. They just hate it when it's not their politics.

Thanks for the wisdom, Mr. G. I think we should elect that guy, he's clearly aware of the dangers of authoritarianism! Oh...that Joseph G. Well, maybe not.

Trump has openly promised that we won't have to ever vote again if he wins, as he'll fix subsequent elections. I must confess, not having to care and be anxious about politics every two and especially every four years is certainly appealing...

This is pretty topical to me personally because I literally told someone recently that I'd vote for a Shrek .jpeg over Trump.

A couple week delay to make sure everything is as it should be is better than...uh, whatever Intel's been doing for the past couple of years, at least, . Funny comment: "Intel: delays performance-botching patch until after AMD's launch. AMD: delays launch until after Intel's performance-botching patch." Heh.

It's one thing if they're just unstable and the problem can eventually be fixed, but it kiiind of sounds like all these problems are contributing to permanently damaging two generations' worth of CPUs, which is, uh, not great. I guess we'll see when Intel rolls outs its updates in August to see if all the already unstable 14th generation CPUs continue to be broken, or if they're actually able to salvage at least that. Regardless, Intel's communication and transparency has been pretty terrible.

Sorry, KP, . Hope he was loved and cared for...though it kind of sounds like he was fighting to love and care for you guys.

Yes, the courts have license to overrule agencies and how they interpret the laws and statutes that give those agencies powers and duties. But given that Joe Biden currently is legally empowered to imprison and kill all of the judges that might disagree with how he might want those laws and statutes interpreted, I would place his authority as being higher than theirs...at least until such a time as that idiotic ruling is reversed. The scary thing about that ruling is that, depending on those who come into the office of President next, they may act to make sure that the ruling cannot be reversed. It's a Pandora's Box that no sane or stable country should ever open, which we clearly are not.

During times of crisis in the Roman Republic, the Senate would often appoint dictators to take supreme and direct control of the Republic, allowing them to bypass the bureaucracy, in-fighting, and intrigue typical to that time, springing the Republic into immediate and cohesive action in order to avert disaster. Once the crisis had been resolved and the dictator having admirably performed their duties, they would willingly give up their power and return to whatever position (or lack thereof) that they held before, allowing normalcy to resume. It was a system that worked well and saved the Republic upon numerous occasions...until it suddenly didn't. It takes incredible civic virtue to willingly give up power, a quality in dire lack across the world today, and I think there's a certain irony in the wildly corrupt Supreme Court having just enshrined absolute power into the position of President while the one currently occupying the position willingly relinquishes their hold upon it. No matter the impossible political climate and the issues of the day that he faced, may history remember Joe Biden fondly...especially if it results in our Sulla never returning to power.

...We've never had someone serve as VP for more than two terms, right? I'm pretty sure we haven't... (e): Nope: there have been seven VPs who have all tied for longest time in office at 2,922 days.

Yep, it's a mistake to always lock-on with your camera even when using a controller (your movement and camera controls become way too constrained due to being locked relative to whomever you're targeting, which is often very bad when you're trying to maneuver around certain kinds of attacks, get past enemies, or deal with groups), but I imagine this becomes quite a strength when you have way faster and more precise control of your camera with a mouse over an analogue stick. Like I said, even with the initial botched release of DS1 on PC, I knew people who played the game at a high level with M+KB...it just wasn't nearly as easy to learn to get to a base level of competency. But Elden Ring is not DS1, and it might not be a terrible idea to at least try it out for a bit both ways.

It should probably be noted that the Republican Party used to mostly be the progressive party prior to the 20th century. It's complicated, and how both parties evolved starting at the dawn of that century up until their transformations were (more or less) complete at the end of the 1960s is even more complicated still. Shooter was apparently a 20 year old white male registered Republican. Not old enough to legally drink, but old enough to legally own guns and...uh, illegally assassinate former presidents with them, I guess. I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot more information on this fun character in the coming weeks.

Two audience members are reported to have been killed, along with the shooter. (e): Two audience members may have been premature, just one confirmed so far, other in critical condition.

Yeah, an almost successful assassination attempt is not going to help Democrats any...or really, the rule of law. Sigh.

There are no easy or obvious solutions that will bring everyone together. The primaries, as limited as they were, are already over and done with, and there wasn't a serious alternative to Biden during them anyways, who was overwhelmingly and confidently voted for at the time. If there is any hope of not further splintering the various factions that make up the Democratic (which I am sure is on just about every Democratic official's minds as they weigh whether they should speak up for him to drop out), Biden must choose to step aside, not be forced by the nomination process which he convincingly won. If he's obdurate in deciding not to, I don't think there's really a whole lot anyone can do about it. And even if he did choose to step aside, it'd come down to party politics to decide as to whom would replace him, which in of itself is a proposition very fraught with danger and no clear answer to: the Democratic Party doesn't really currently have any popular national figures that are known quantities outside of maybe Bernie Sanders, who would obviously never be the party nominee over Biden for a whole host of reasons I'm not going to get into. I'll remind everyone that Joe Biden won George (16 electoral votes) by 11,779 votes, Arizona (11 electoral votes) by 10,457 votes, and Wisconsin (10 electoral votes) by 20,682 votes, a combined 37 electoral votes won by 42,918 votes which swung the election from a 269-269 tie that would've seen Trump stay president thanks to the U.S.'s silly contingent election (i.e. no electoral vote majority) system. It's fun to look at "he won the popular vote by 7 million votes", but the popular vote has never mattered in the slightest: despite some here saying "Trump is finally finished" and that we no longer would have to worry about this again right after the 2020 election, Biden in reality just ever so barely won the 2020 election (and only thanks to Covid-19 and Trump's largely terribly handling of it), even more threadbare than Trump's already very weak win during the 2016 election. If Joe Biden can't win a majority of Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Michigan, and North Carolina, then the question is who will? Who's going to capture and motivate all the young, Black, Hispanic, Jew, other minority, college-educated, and women voters necessary in order to win this election, especially when we have a major ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine angering and splitting young and most other minority voters from the rest? I really don't know. It doesn't help that when you pick and shine a presidential spotlight on someone, they can turn into a very different kind of candidate than how they initially appeared, which makes me very wary of any "candidate X polls better than candidate Y against Trump" soundbites.

1. What's funny is that smaller forums like these feel like one of the last few holdouts of the old internet where you could actually talk to other humans online. There seems to be fewer and fewer places like this out there as time goes on, and now they're even trying to infiltrate here! 2. Practically every content medium (be it movies, television, music, books, video games, news, artists, bloggers, video essayists...even increasingly niche sub-genres within mediums like "artists who make and post pixel art online") was already over-saturated to the point of it being virtually impossible for any one person to sort through all of it. Generative content threatens to transform that from a waterfall to an endless ocean. 3. I don't really have a point three, but you can't have a list of just two things to say, that's illegal. Form interests and hobbies that don't have much or anything to do with the internet (especially not anything that is brand new and therefore highly subject to online bot interaction and manipulation), because in another ten, twenty years...I just don't know. It's better for you, anyway.