ComradeYellow

https://asiatimes.com/2023/06/the-india-china-game-in-the-united-states/ China potentially checkmated? One of my biggest fears for many years was U.S. would secure India in its orbit solidly because whilst India doesn't have the economic clout china does by any stretch, it does have a huge population that is younger and their economy is growing. I don't like Modi and his political views at all it's like the worst of everything, cultural nationalism and xenophobia mixed with economic liberalization, not to mention that Adolf Hitler is openly revered by many Indian students so this could get very ugly if this develops. Not NOW of course, but perhaps 20 years from now India could be an economic powerhouse like china/usa.

This website is seriously messed up

Really want a new motorcycle, and something is pulling me towards a new Kawasaki street bike. There's new models being dropped in 5 days so I'm gonna wait until then before I shop around. Should be fun! Everyone is an outlaw biker in my imaginary IP!

Watch out guyz tho Playstation ports to PC are now uncertain at best, and you need 16 GB of video memory in games that should run very comfortably with 8 GB video memory. I mean yeah it's better than a few years ago where Sony ports were largely off limits, but it's still rocky territory. Another thing. There is something very wrong with Bethesda. I joined the official 'Starfield' Discord server to discuss the game and the moderators literally deleted all of my comments because I was inquiring about the Microsoft acquisition and the actual mechanics of the game and how everything ties together. Something struck me as very "Cult-like" about the whole thing, where critical thinking and discussion is verboten in regards to the Dear Game and Dear Company that makes it. Cults are bad kids, mmmkay?

There's a reason why Interplay is in the proverbial graveyard! I mean it takes guts, vision, and a whole lot of luck to create a successful IP/franchise/whatever, but it takes consistency to keep it alive. You'd think raising the pay of the creators and keeping them proactive in creating sequels would be the agenda after that, but business practices in the U.S. were quite abysmal during that time period.

Ukrainian forces are about to get pummelled by Russian defensive lines as soon as they launch Operation Citadel their offensive, says certain experts who correctly predicted events in the past. The war will drag on but ultimately Russia will win the 4 oblasts in the Donass and Ukraine will remain a rump state, a typical very costly strategic Russian victory. I'll go a step further and predict something truly shocking: The US will eventually side with Russia later down the road once it becomes painfully obvious that they will not be able to stop China's rise without Russia gravitating more towards the US. United Snakes of America is a thing!

https://convergetechmedia.com/nvidia-q1-2023-earnings-hit-8-29b-quarterly-revenue-record/ For context. Not surprising, really. To me anyway. People aren't gonna stop buying Geforce unless AMD finds a way to seriously drop their Radeon prices. There's probably more variables here than discreet GPU's, but I can't help but think it all ties in for equal proportion. I know nobody here wants to here this but the only hope I see for for AMD is for them to be under the yoke of the Chinese government. The Chinese are very skilled at subsidizing key competitive industries and could seriously help them drop prices on their high end GPU's.

The same team that made RE2 remake, which I consider a near masterpiece, should not have done RE4, a game that I hate. It's like trying to take a piece of turd and turning it into a gemstone. The good news here is that Remedy looks to be willing to fill the gap for those people that liked the aesthetics of RE4 but hated it as a game.

Starfield looks great for what it is and I'm glad to see something besides fantasy and post apoc stuff from Bethesda (or anyone) but all-in-all I'm not worried about TOW2 being an appendage of Starfield and should stand well on it own feet especially in regards to story/characters/setting. The only way I would be concerned is if the same team that did TOW was not present for TOW 2. Keep it consistent and improved with a bigger budget.

Certainly can't be any worse than the RE4 Remake, which I considered a huge disappointment. Glad to see Remedy taking that formula and turning it into something decent. Will wait until it lands on Green Man Gaming until I buy it.

Just finished FF7 Remake: intergrade. It was alright, the mechanics weren't terrible, but I'm not sure if fixing the problem of the 1st game (Story that was overly drawn out and took too long to complete) by making it as confined as possible was the proper antidote. At least the characters were well portrayed and this is clearly what they focused on the most. Also, it has those huge shader compiling problems that many modern games do and having your character squeeze through narrow spaces at a slow pace to help compile those shaders is glaringly annoying. I hope there's another breakthrough in tech soon because I'm honeslty getting tired of having to wait for shaders to compile to avoid frequent stutters. Am I the only one kind of excited for Diablo 4? I didn't care for 2 or 3 but this one actually looks like it's addressing the issues I had with those two and actually looks quite engaging, despite the emphasis on co-op.

Probably an off-topic tangent but here goes: Businesses are unfortunately crucial for society, they are one of the 4 necessary evils to keep society afloat along with the military/defense, cultural/family values, and university/education/research. It's also noteworthy that all 4 pillars have to act in unison to keep society functioning properly and that is why you see both the American military and the American business community becoming more "woke" in recent years because the academic and the cultural spheres of society have already been quite "woke" for a long time. Will it all work out in the end? I dunno, but I would say that trying to keep society consistent is probably the better course of action than having it fractured. More on topic: I will have to agree with @majestic that if mid-range is now your bag than Intel is probably your best bet at this moment in time (subject to change). There's some consistency issues with Arc but it's only a matter of time before they iron them out. I really don't see much point in Radeon GPU's at this moment unless you have lots of disposable income and want to buy one just to say you did.

Jeez man even I knew that and I would hardly call myself a tech wizz! Got my 3070 ti laptop breaching that magic 12000 number that puts me at "Excellent Performance" on 'Timespy' with +220 Core and +395 Mem (Mhz) Really can't wait for DX13 in any case, DX12 is just as underwhelming as DX10 was all those years ago.

Oh no, they'll recover alright, they're already learning from their mistakes and Western sanctions certainly aren't gonna cripple them when they have markets elsewhere. Most of the world aren't white and nerdy people living in Western countries and aren't particularly hostile towards Russia (Though most aren't exactly thrilled with the invasion) so Russia will be fine. It's just I can't help but wonder at this point how some people perceived the Russian military as superior when the basic laws of economics are truly telling. You need money and reserves to win a ground war, and Russia did not have much of either. China's the one you really gotta watch out for. They actually have money and are rapidly gaining technological prowess and are keenly learning from Russia's mistakes like lack of reserves and their total failure on the informational warfare. China's military doctrine is rapidly evolving now. I'm generally agreeing Zoraptor but the caveat I have is that the Russian military should have already had an ample supply of manpower reserves in case things go hairy. They didn't and their ability to fight the informational war and gain the narrative was extremely poor. Sure, it's easy to say all this NOW after the fact but this is why I like China so much, they are always right there to learn from Russian mistakes and take notes.

I dunno this one looks certainly improved from the original, and the original did need some improvements. https://fqekj.com/news/dead-island-2-review-the-biggest-surprise-of-2023/

Why? I think it's becoming clear at this point (with the benefit of hindsight). The numbers demonstrated everything even before the invasion. Russia's economy was roughly the size of Italy's and they simply don't have the funds to muster a truly capable and mature military. Add a significant lack of reserves (except for old soviet equipment) to the mix and this should have been fairly easy to assess from the get-go. I do think the biggest variable to Russia's performance though was underestimating the Ukranians ability to fight. I still think Russia will at least win control of the Donbas due to the sheer manpower advantage they have but there was certainly lots of writing on the wall beforehand about the whole affair. If you thought Russia had a superior military because Russian bear man big and strong and brutally effective in war well, you fell into the exact same trap the Russian chauvanits did. China right now is only supplying very basic equipment to the Russians like shoes and bags, it is not in China's geopolitical interests to fully support Russia's cause and they are seeking a diplomatic solution to the war, which would really boost their international prestige tenfold were they able to negotiate.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/02/17/china-spy-balloon-history-explainer/ Looks like the balloons were in fact civilian balloons from the private sector and not tied to any government spy agency. Too bad, I mean, I kinda had a feeling this was the case, just as the Chinese government clarified right away, but I dunno, I do like juicy story and wanted to believe.

https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/3209316/north-koreas-kim-jong-un-orders-military-prepare-war-more-strictly-expand-combat-drills?module=lead_hero_story&pgtype=homepage Unlike V.Put, KJU actually has a sizeable military at his fingertips (Russia is now, after repeated setbacks in Ukraine, finally starting militarize all of Russian society). The problem is that North Korea lags woefully behind South Korea in technology and infrastructure, so in the event of an invasion NK may be forced to go nuclear if things go south (No pun intended). SK, like Ukraine, would be mostly reliant on US support and Intel to keep the fight up, as SK is not a military society like NK. NK could also count on Russian aid for whatever that is worth. China can still afford to remain neutral until the dragon is ready to awaken, in perhaps a few years. Japan, meanwhile, appears to be seeking more strategic independence, because unlike Ukraine and South Korea, Japan is under no illusions that US public opinion can change on a whim with any next election so they want to be ready for anything. Kudos to Japan for being smart.

'Dead Space' remake. I never played the original and that's a good thing, because I just had a great run through the 'Ishimura'. Whilst some of the gameplay elements feel dated (Buying and selling on a derelict ship overrun with monsters? come on now.), the atmosphere is quite good and spooky. Isaac Clarke is a great protagonist and shooting off limbs is a fun mechanic to master. Not quite as good as 'Prey' (2017) by any stretch but sometimes good mindless horror romps through broken spaceships is just what the doctor ordered. There's plenty of weird weapons in the game but honestly even on 'Hard' mode just focusing on dropping upgrade "nodes" into your suit and the starting weapon, the 'Plasma Cutter' is quite doable, and seems pointless to carry around 6 or 8 weapons of various ammo considering how limited ammo drops (ammo gets dropped based on the weapons you are carrying, so if you're carrying 5 weapons, you'll randomly get 5 different types of ammo) and upgrades "nodes" are in the game. I'm simply happy putting all my eggs in one basket in a setup like this. Simplistic mechanics sure, but hey, I had fun lurking in the dark corridors and fending off freaks that come at you from all sides.

Funny how that works, US announces plans to build more naval bases in the Philippines, Chinese breach Apple Pie airspace with balloons. US is going to have to get used to counter moves from a peer rival methinks. Like Pepsi and Coke, except with countries. Also, did they really have to shoot it down? If US tech so world class you'd think they'd be able to neutralize it intact and study it rather than dig for debris to study.

RX 7900 XTX looks promising but seriously, if you have 1000 USD to blow on a card alone it makes literally zero sense not to just find another few hundred and go with the 4090, which could probably last you almost a decade and has boatloads more features. AMD goofed here and people aren't gonna suddenly change their ways because AMD outflanked the ridiculously over priced 4080 with the also ridiculously over priced 7900 XTX. I really think they're overestimating themselves in the GPU arena, Jensen is simply too powerful and universally well respected at this point to attempt to dislodge in extreme high end. Something tells me AMD WANTED to make their latest cards cheaper but production was simply too costly and ambitious to do so and decided to play it safe rather than risk a profit loss and just force a low price with a hail mary. Oh well, maybe next time.

I still don't know why people don't just settle with laptops. I mean you can pick up a 3070TiM, which is miles better than the RX 6800m and priced about the same with the equivalent 'other' specs (16gb DDR5, 1TB NvE SSD) for roughly $1-1.5k, seems like a no-brainer these days where glitzing out on glowing boxes and teh latest cement block of a GPU will cripple ya well and good. JUST THROWING THAT OUT THERE

A different take. Not bad but they really need to get their drivers out ASAP, especially for DX11, DX9, and 1080p. Absolutely blows Radeon out of the water in Ray Tracing LOL. Looking at the 'Control' benchmarks made me chuckle.

Arc's are a laptop gamers wet dream*, but only a fool would divulge in 1st gen, especially with lacklustre Raptor Lake as it's periphery. 'Battlemage' + 'Meteor Lake' will really rock the mid-range world, especially with render latency, frame-rate adjustments, and frame consistency, just you wait and see. *admittedly I can't imagine a desktop enthusiasts being excited for Intel's GPU offerings anytime soon, just stick with Nvidia or Radeon if raw power an 16k 100' screens is what you're after, eh.

https://asiatimes.com/2022/09/ukraine-the-situation-september-22/ 300,000 reserves coming up just as I predicted and nukes on the table. I'd say 300,000 stated publicly could translate to 600,000 in actuality. My advice to NATO: Let Russia and Ukraine deal with the war alone, strengthen NATO borders and keep it contained. I do not want a nuke dropping on my head because the West has some weird 1000 year old civilizational hatred towards Russia. This is getting dumber and dumber and crazier and crazier real quickly.