Bartimaeus

While over a third of the voting population couldn't even be bothered to care enough to vote in the first place. Yes, I'm afraid that we get the representation that we duly deserve.

Yeah, I used it to play through the game with a friend across the country, their new netcode worked surprisingly well and we had fun. Speaking of netcode with old games, I tried playing through Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition sometime ago with a friend, purely for the more modern netcode, and it was an absolute disaster, with endless glitches and desyncs that required reloading constantly. Really great, super fun, thank you Beamdog.

(Ignore the messed up colors/lighting, someone that was not me didn't know how to take screenshots of an HDR source.) I don't know about great, but I guess there's some hints of retro design there, even if it kind of looks weird and off-putting to me...and then, we also have this... Modern anime literally scares me.

Frame generation is hilarious to me: you get fake frames that make the visuals seem smoother but actually introduce input lag and make the game noticeably feel and perform worse despite the artificial smoothness. It's brilliant, except that it's total garbage, but hey, at least a bunch of dummies get fooled by it and think their games are better with than without it. Perhaps even more comical is that as the higher visual fidelity that 3D graphics are able to achieve, it inversely becomes easier and easier to notice that animations simply aren't able to keep up. Nothing like pumping all the pixels and ray tracing in the world into models, textures, and lighting, only to be immediately let down by forever wonky animation work that make the whole effort seem hardly worth the bother.

A couple years back, I played the DevilutionX re-build of Diablo 1 (it's very faithful but has some engine and QoL improvements, you can even transfer saves between DevilutionX and the original game), and I tried playing a Sorcerer for the first time: I'd only ever tried a Rogue or Warrior before then. Felt like I was playing on easy mode, the Sorcerer is so much more powerful than the other two classes. Given that I only ever played Sorceress in Diablo 2, you think I would've tried it at some point already... Let's take a twenty to thirty hour game and stretch it into a hundred hour game while diluting and piecemealing out everything fun and interesting that you could do or find in it. I love open world games, they're the greatest.

Not sure if here, the Politics thread, or the "What Are You Reading" thread is most the appropriate place for this.

Mouthwashing. Neat visuals and cool story, but literally half (or maybe even more) of the game is a dream sequence, and the other half is told out of order. 6/10, which is just barely a "pass" for me, coulda been a lot higher if not for all the nonsense. I am once again asking that indie game developers, particularly horror ones, learn how to develop and tell stories, themes, and characters without the non-stop use of dream sequences. You can do it, I believe in you, even though you keep proving me wrong.

Casablanca (1942). I hadn't watched this for like, twelve years, and it was just once at like 1 in the morning with my mom near Christmas on some TV broadcast. I thought it was great back then, and now, re-watching it...it helps me realize how much dumb writing and direction I sit through in movies that don't get anywhere even close to 1942's Casablanca. This is a movie where I don't really care that much about the subject material, the locale, or even particularly the characters or themes, but I sit through it and I have a great time regardless. And my goodness, the whole movie goes by so fast, and it's really hard not to wish that similarly excellent movies could be consistently made every year - even better if they're about things or people you're a little more predisposed to care about. It's kind of the anti-Citizen Kane for me, which I find to be borderline unwatchable despite the two of them being released within a year of each and both being hailed as all-time dramatic cinema. A man after my own heart.

hbomberguy's video on Fallout 3 vs. Fallout: New Vegas was pretty funny in that regard... The former kicks off with you escaping from your vault, and you have to slaughter half of your entire community, all people that your character grew up with and knew, in order to get out, and there aren't any non-violent options presented to you. Fallout: New Vegas, on the other hand, the whole game can be completed while being completely pacifist. Bethesda, not even once.

Only relevant to like the first third of that dunkey video, but watching that a couple of days ago helped me realize, for the umpteenth time, how broken and dystopian the whole online news/media/commentary landscape is. It's like a whole under society where tens of thousands of these "content creators" constantly churn out fake news about everything under the sun - and if one of them is doing it without also engaging in ragebait, then they're actually relatively harmless in comparison to some of the worst offenders. Probably none of us here watch any of that crap, but millions of people out there do. The internet was a mistake... guide me, o Lucifer, to some new road.

The Windows memory diagnostic test is pretty flaky, but in the opposite way: it usually fails to diagnose defective RAM that memtest86 would find quickly. If both sticks of RAM are individually failing the test at both XMP and at base speeds, then make sure you test both those new sticks with the same diagnostic tool to make certain that it doesn't keep failing even with the new RAM, which it hopefully won't. I'm a little concerned that it might not actually be the RAM at this point, but two new sticks should, in theory, illuminate the situation. You weren't kidding when you said you bought a generic, that particular one doesn't even advertise a brand, which I always think is super sketchy for electronics in particular. But I guess it's fine as both a test run and as a bridge until the Apple version comes out.

Nvidia has to charge the prices that it charges...because they keep selling out at those prices. Usually the only way to even get your hands on new and actually good computer hardware releases within a reasonable timeframe (i.e. within the first month or two) these days is by going in person to a Microcenter, because all the normal online options are usually sold out and scalped out the wazoo. The 9800X3D is still not available even two months later after release, and who knows when that will change?

The "XMP" speed is what the RAM is tested and binned for, so it should be what it's guaranteed to work at. If it doesn't, then it's defective, even if it seems to work okay at a lower speed...uuunless there's something wrong with your motherboard and that's what's actually not running correctly. If a memtest86 pass with both sticks in at XMP causes it to fail, but doing two more passes while alternating which stick is in (while still keeping XMP speeds) causes it to not fail, I'd be very suspicious of the motherboard at that point...but if the RAM still fails memtest86, then it's probably the RAM. You can, of course, repeat said tests at "base" speeds. Just turn XMP off and it should revert. I confess that I'm not one hundred percent sure of how that works: does the CPU/motherboard determine the "base" speed, or the RAM module itself, or the DDR standard? I feel like any time I've stuck a DDR4 module into a system, it's always 2133 MHz before you go into BIOS to put it at the correct speeds, but I'm not absolutely certain anymore. I wouldn't manually mess about with your RAM's speed outside of switching the XMP profile on/off, since that profile is not just speed but also latency and voltage settings as well. As someone that very much despises wearing watches and has always stayed far away from FitBits/smart watches and the like, I think I'd actually be able to swing a ring, and I didn't know that it was a thing... Hmm... But it'd have to work without an internet connection: I ain't got time for personal devices that have to be always online in order to be functional.

What I have learned from the last two posts is that Turbo Kid is - apparently - good...though I'm still not confident that I'll personally enjoy it.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a second here... While I probably only fully understand uuuhhii like half of the time (because the consistently flat writing style usually makes it difficult to confidently parse/guess tone and emphasis, which often leads to less than perfectly clear intent and meaning), I can't say that I've ever wanted to hit them a rusty iron rod after finishing reading one of their posts. That's a pretty important distinction that I don't think anyone should forget. They're totally different styles of incomprehensibility anyways.

From what I recall, the protagonist in particular was lambasted for coming across as both whiny and ineffectual but also borderline sociopathic in presentation, and a lot of people hating their main character is something that shouldn't - cannot - happen. Also, the usual contingent of "she's uggo" gamers for people wanting to play the default female Ryder, but I personally thought many of the human faces in the Mass Effect games, especially in 2 and 3, looked like science experiments that had gone wrong already (probably because of BioWare going way farther to model and map real life people's faces onto characters' to, uh, varying degrees of success), so you know, it is what it is. I'd be pretty far down on the list of people trying to argue for all conventionally attractive characters in movies, shows, or video games, but I do prefer it when my brain doesn't keep screaming at me that a supposedly human character that looks like an alien wearing someone else's skin must be destroyed.

It was worth watching for Nanami, at least. Those are fond/traumatic memories that are never going to leave me.

I found Utena to be frustrating specifically because of the story and its awful presentation. The sillier episodes were good fun (who among us doesn't love Nanami drowning kittens, or Nanami transforming into a cow, or Nanami trying to lay literal eggs like a bird/reptile, or Nanami going on an African safari to find some super special curry only to get trampled by elephants and for it to be revealed they had some on hand in the school all along?), but the story episodes were awkward, boring, repetitive, yucky, completely disconnected from any sense of reality, and just generally hot garbage. I also don't really remember most of them, whereas I do remember Nanami! She was a good one. Well, no, she was pretty horrible for like 3/4ths of the show, but she did work pretty hard to make it fun, which is what counts in my books. From what I remember, you've yet to watch the movie, no? I think @majestic at least implied you might find how much more ridiculous it gets to be more fun than the show, which is also just way too long for its story and much more concisely told via the movie. I think: I hated the movie, so I've purged most of it from my brain...but that doesn't mean you will. Also, it looks like Bartimeus was already destroyed about ten years ago, so I think we're okay. There is somebody around here who I tried to @ one time that actually does for real have a doppelganger, with just like one different letter and who even went so far as to use the same avatar as the real member, but I can't remember who it is. It's possible they've been since removed, since I think I saw them like a year or two ago.

They serve different purposes: the "first" outro that's used in the show is just the generic outro at the end of all 38 episodes of the show, whereas the "second" outro is specifically tailor-made for that 2002 OVA. The 2002 OVA is a short little prequel to the show that happens well before she ever receives magic powers (and in my opinion, the outro was by far the most interesting part of it - despite the fact that it has very little to do with what was actually shown in the episode). The first outro, although not particularly interesting or exciting, is really more appropriate for the show as a whole (which is largely upbeat, pleasant, and sincere), while the second outro...I still don't really fully understand exactly what it is they were trying to do. Especially now, because after my previous posts in this thread, I learned that I had previously overlooked that there's actually a 1986 movie (give me a break, this is a fairly obscure show and it can be difficult to find things...), which I just watched a couple of days ago. The context given in 1986 for 2002's creepy outro and end credits was this: Emi's looking back at and reminiscing of when she could turn into Magical Emi...and at the end of it all, her old broken magical mirror gives a little flash of power, the camera switches to her face, and she smiles. See? It's simple, but now I know everything turned out alright and that she didn't get murdered or kill herself or something, and heck, maybe she can even still do magic...if she wants to. Phew, thank goodness writers and directors back in 1986 knew how to properly convey ideas instead of just being creepy and off-putting for no particularly good reason. After all, it's a magical girl show aimed at, like, 6-10 year old girls, not a David Lynch movie/television series. Why they tried to re-create this 1986 scene in 2002 without any of the surrounding context (and when the original audience would be long gone), I'm not sure, but if nothing else, it helped get me to notice that there was a 1986 version and receive better resolution from it. Not that much better resolution, since this movie was also quite strange in of itself and with the exception of the "looking back" scene partially shown above was neither a prequel nor a sequel to the show but rather took place right square in the middle of it with no apparent purpose, but better. I still don't know whether she ever accomplished becoming a magician like she dreamed of, but even if not, I think it's okay. All of that is probably quite a bit more boring sounding than some anime director/writer randomly channelling their inner David Lynch for an early magical girl series, but hey, that's life. There can only be one...

Isn't the only "good" choice for a top end gaming PC the 9800X3D right now? Kinda doubt anyone will be regretting buying a X3D part anytime soon - anyone who's bought one going back to the 5000 series seems to always be pretty loathe to upgrade because of how long their legs are, and it's been repeatedly emphasized by Gamer's Nexus over the past year or two in their CPU reviews how good even the oldest ones continue to be.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/scl/fi/gbc8x8xtzwdmpglvinoya/explorer_8uDDuh2Ob1.mp4?rlkey=y0ufob3bd0xs4ff7u0zw0bcr9&dl=0 I didn't even update yt-dlp.exe, my copy is a year out of date! e: I just realized you said "converter", not "downloader"...so, uh, I guess it depends on what you're converting it to? Video audio -> just audio can be done locally via foobar2000, which is a free music player...so yt-dlp + foobar2000 will get the job done if that's what you're trying to do.

Yeah, I was going to say that that it's probably too little, too late if past bad launches by AMD were any indication. Though AMD has obviously had bad launches for other reasons, they seem to especially love to shoot themselves in the foot by launching with inexplicably poor pricing and then dropping their prices to be more competitive...usually about a week after all the reviews trashing them for having bad price-to-performance have released. Completely needless, but they never seem to learn.

The Wallace and Gromit films are being re-released in 4K! The history of home releases of Wallace and Gromit have consistently been riddled with issues - between wrong aspect ratios, missing lines of dialogue, original music missing/replaced with other pieces because of licensing issues, wrong playback speeds, incorrectly pitched audio...so it'd be nice if... if they just used AI to puke out these new 4K discs while also not fixing any of the other problems, all just to make a quick buck on a $120 collection set. **** you, James Cameron.

Yes, I do suppose it was peculiarly Lynchian in its presentation, even down to the bizarre credits...luckily for me, I already watched the entire show preceding it, so I didn't get the big mad like I might've otherwise, . Who's Left Behind? AKA Kayako's Diary (1991). You know, I always had one big complaint about Grave of the Fireflies: I don't like it when movies start out miserable. End miserably? Sure, great! But starting out when things are already terrible, before you ever even have a chance to get to know and like your characters and see what their normal lives were like before everything goes completely sideways, always makes it a bit difficult for me to care about and engage with the movie in earnest. I've mentioned...upon occasion...that I usually only make it a maybe a couple of minutes whenever I try any of those lousy modern anime drama films where the movie immediately starts out with playing sappy piano music, it's raining, and some sad sack I don't and won't care about is immediately laying into me with some pathetically whiny monologue. Grrr, I really hate the bozos who make those movies...but, uh, anyways, all of that is to say, Grave of the Fireflies succeeded for me despite that major issue, but it would've been nice to see an alternative film where there was a preceding, oh, let's say...30-40 minutes of cute and fun daily life where some bad things are kind of, you know, just vaguely happening in the background but not directly affecting our characters, before things really start to deteriorate. Well...thanks to this film, which so desperately needs a blu-ray or even just a good DVD instead of an awful LaserDisc transfer, I really don't need that anymore. Despite the quality being just terrible, Who's Left Behind? immediately shoots up to one my very favorite anime films. Actually, I was initially - supposed to be - working while watching this, and I just wanted to check it out real quick on my third monitor to see if it would even be worth watching at all, and I kind of just let it keep running for maybe fifteen minutes before I realized I was either going to have to stop working or stop watching the movie, and I decided to stop working. I feel it was a wise decision.