Zoraptor

Nobody knows if the 3080Ti is really coming this time or not. It won't add to availability anyway, it'll pull more chips from the standard 3080 pool, the one that would add to availability would be the 3070Ti since it would use chips not good enough for normal 3080s. Shipping worldwide is pretty stuffed, to be fair, though you'd think nVidia could charter one of the hundreds of planes doing nothing at the moment to fly some to Europe. AMD is definitely constrained by chip manufacturing limits, nVidia shouldn't be.

I tend to think the retirement thing is rubbish, but there isn't really a way to retire from a big studio without being in the middle of an ongoing project unless you're planning on a ~5 year cycle, especially if you're pretty senior and have responsibility for multiple games. If you were the game director of Cyberpunk 2077 and planning to retire at its release you'd probably have been planning to retire in ~2017, not 2020, or 2022 (?) after all the dlc is done.

The DS9 episode I used to compare Picard (show's) handling of characters and DS9 was 'In the Pale Moonlight' and it applies to Discovery as well. Sisko's behaviour there is in theory out of character, certainly with how his character started out/ a starfleet captain is meant to behave, but the set up and context is such that it's completely believable for him to cover up a false flag murder of diplomats. A lot of people didn't seem to like Avery Brooks' performance in DS9 as being too 'wooden', but it meant when he showed emotion it counted and had actual impact; the complete opposite of Discovery's current approach. The Discovery equivalent would not be pretty, with the possible exception of Georgiou being a passable Garak equivalent. Burnham would be wandering around looking like a stunned mullet with an existential crisis and having stilted emotional chats with everyone about how terrible it all is (and probably forgetting what happened in S1E1), then Saru would turn around and be fine with it, because that's what the plot needed and who cares that he wouldn't be fine with it having not had the context Sisko had. And Saru would probably go back to being a model Starfleet captain very next episode just to ram it home.

Wow, that's really surprising... ...that anyone could make it through 2.5 seasons of Discovery without noticing how cheap the 'emotional' hits were. The writers' idea of a huge emotional hit can best be summed up by that cyborg girl who got killed off last season. You don't feel anything for her death because she's had about 4 lines in the previous season and a half, you haven't seen her interacting with the crew or anything else, you don't even know her name; you're just told that you should feel bad about her dying and how everyone loved her. The complete lack of secondary character development is one thing wrong with Discovery that could be fixed very easily, but instead we have to have Wesley v3. Ironically, the season guest stars like Captains Pike/ Malfoy and Admiral Beardyman are the one consistent bright spot they've consistently done well with.

I think Darth Bane got mentioned in Rebels. It's kind of 50/50 whether he was ever not canon anyway, since he was a Lucas created character for the prequels' backstory.

A lot of people hated the tonal shift in the later EU, from the Vong war on, which was definitely a darker more 'mature' tone than earlier. There was a decent amount of stuff that could certainly be considered edgy, though I wouldn't personally consider it so except in the context of previous SW. I'd compare it to something like 'The 100' on TV, there's a lot of things happening that fit a description of edgy but... it's a CW show, so the cannibalism, mass murder, biological warfare, organ harvesting etc are a lot 'lighter' than they sound if you write them down and the overall reaction more of a 'what will those crazy kids get up to next?'. While I don't have any sympathy for Disney at all, the old EU was unwieldy, and in theory they can re-canonise whatever they want. So Malachor exists again, because Rebels used it. Not explicitly the Trayus Academy, but certainly something that looks suspiciously like it. There were four (?) conflicting stories of how the Rebels got the plans to the Death Star in EU and some genuinely convoluted attempts to reconcile them. The old post ROTJ EU was largely incompatible with the story they wanted to tell in the sequels (and Dark Empire and Heir to the Empire were functionally incompatible with each other, plus the returning Emperor in Dark Empire would be outright lol funny given sequel context). They simply didn't want to be bound by the old stories, which would be eminently forgivable, if their new content was good. For their high profile entries the only ones which are generally well regarded are Rogue One- the first product- and The Mandalorian. The others have been badly run projects received at best equivocally.

If the rumours of how awful Samsung 8nm is are true they should have a lot of defective GA104s to use. Assuming they haven't sold $200 million worth direct to miners this time I guess.

Of course Morrison wants to stop them. He'd happily turn all social media into his personal mouthpiece, if he could. He can't though, so it's irrelevant. Much as Xi can't get every Winnie the Pooh cartoon banned, outside China. Of course it's hypocritical. Politicians excel at being hypocrites and there quite literally isn't enough time in the day to point out every bit of it. The problem is very much with who is pointing out the hypocrisy, not that it's being pointed out. OTOH, it's absolutely hilarious France joining the complaints post Charlie Hebdo. French political cartoons obviously deserve political protection and promotion, Chinese ones... not so much. Then again, that is from Macron, the guy who wants to make photographing police illegal.

China can tweet whatever it likes, no one is stopping them. Their approach is just counterproductive* in this case and, of course in the context of it being 'freedom of speech' it has to pointed out that access to Twitter is severely restricted inside China so while it might be nice they're practicing their governmental freedom of speech it might also be nice if their populace could too.. It's 100% in Morrison's best interests to be 'trolled' because it allows him to shift the narrative away from his efforts to suppress the revelations and target the whistleblowers rather than the perpetrators, and to instead frame it as part of the larger China v Australia dispute. That's why it's counterproductive. And yeah, Australia perhaps isn't in the best position to criticise others for human rights violations in general given things like its treatment of Aboriginals being (and to a far lesser extent still being) about as bad as you can get. But while Aborigines are to put it mildly massively disadvantaged at least they aren't in huge re-education camps learning to worship Scott Morrison and the Liberal Party while having their organs stolen if they don't re-educate quick enough. *well, the whole 'wolf warrior' thing is targeted at the Chinese diaspora more than foreign citizens generally, to stoke feelings of righteous indignation and threaten any dissenters. In that context it kind of works, usually.

Shaak Ti was the Togruta in the films- very briefly, I think either of the two deleted death scenes would have doubled her screen time. Lekku are, apparently, very difficult to get right even with a film budget. I thought it was strongly implied that they knew or suspected that they were wrong anyway. If I were writing it I'd outright have them refusing to hand the data over.

Come now, Michael didn't single handedly win the logic dance battle- she got help from her very conveniently on notVulkan, very conveniently in a Romulan sect despite not being Romulan, very conveniently staying on notVulkan Lieutenant Kima mother too. The really funny thing about Tilly being promoted is that she ran through a perfectly valid list of reasons why it was moronic when Saru suggested it- a in episode plot criticism role that Georgiou has filled for most of the season. It's a new and bold approach to point out how... odd your plot is, in episode*. A far better appointment would have been the Federation liason lady from the last couple of episodes, or maybe the blonde bridge officer who doesn't seem to have a job otherwise. They're still going to use Burnham for away missions anyway, and as a Commander she'll be ranking officer unless Saru goes so it's not like they'd have to give them (m)any extra lines. Overall though, they would have been far better off developing a character to take the role multiple episodes ago, same as if they wanted to kill off cyborg girl last season they should have spent time developing her instead of just telling everyone how bad they should feel. *similar was done far better for the debate with the Vululans though, since it set out how and why they would not be really be approaching it logically but from a position of their and the Fed's culpability being an underlying tenet of their politics. There have been plenty of other Star Treks in which the rigidity of the Vulkan mindset has caused similar problems, after all.

That really does sum up how badly China reads things internationally though. I'm sure tweeting out photoshopped images and the like seems like a masterstroke if you're some true believer apparatchnik in Beijing looking for a cheap hit that would go down well in China, but all it actually does internationally is give Australia a chance to distract from the main issue and give more exposure to Chinese abuses. Now Scotty from marketing can stand up and shout about Chinese interference, Chinese fake news, Chinese faked photos and appeal to his nationalist base. People aren't going to look at China's input and decide to vote Morrison out, quite the reverse. At some point the Chinese proxies in the mining industry etc are going to decide to cut their losses because public opinion is simply too entrenched to change. And it also means that every western news report on the issue mentions organ harvesting/ re-education camps/ Hong Kong etc etc again to give 'context'. The worst result though is that awful Murdoch puppet who so aptly deserves the sobriquet Scummo can distract everyone away not only from the fact that Australian soldiers murdered people in comically evil ways for comically evil reasons but that he* did his best to suppress it, cover it up and punish the people exposing it rather than those doing the murdering. Sometimes, the best thing you can do when an enemy makes a mistake is just keep your mouth shut and let them suffer the consequences rather than grandstanding. *well, the L/N Coalition government in general, since it started under Turnbull.

I don't think it's the actors. The fundamental problem there is that Michael is intrinsically not a very sympathetic character, but you're constantly being asked to sympathise with her. It doesn't matter if Martin-Green can act or not when she has to try and make you feel something for Michael that the plot has never really established. The acting in general always seems bad when they try to do an 'inspiring' episode with lots of 'inspiring' scenes, and this episode had both in spades. You could have had the entire acting talent of the Royal Shakespeare Company- alive and dead- available and acting in that 'Yes you can do it, Ensign Tilly!' scene and it would still have been pure cringe because there's only so much that can be done with what is scripted and how it's directed.

Anakin did get both his legs amputated after overestimating his power and trying something he really shouldn't have, so direct height comparisons between the actors are a bit moot. The Emperor could make Darth Vader as tall or as short (Dark Helmet canonical when, Disney?) as he wanted, because his legs were mechanical. That does make me wonder how many actors they could have picked to play Anakin that would match Prowse height wise. Not many, I'd think.

In that case it was definitely the Tigrayans who started the latest fighting, since they outright admitted attacking the army first (and lobbing a bunch of missiles at Eritrea to try and involve them too). The Tigrayans were almost certainly getting outside help/ encouragement from Egypt/ Sudan due to tensions over the New Renaissance Dam as well as that, which adds extra complication. Egypt has implied they'd go so far as blowing the dam up, and it would definitely be in their interest to do it deniably via a 3rd party instead of directly.

And now there's a sequel video complaining about the frequency being BIOS limited so he can't go even higher than that. Have to wait until 6900XT releases in a few days to try flashing its BIOS 5700 or Vega56 style. You'd have to think that if anyone was in line to get a 6900XT for testing it'd be him though. No power limits and a bit better silicon and 3000Mhz should be within reach, which would make a nice headline for AMD.

Israel looks pretty desperate to provoke a war with Iran before Trump leaves office. Assassinating a nuclear scientist (probably carried out physically by MEK) and three days of bombing in southern Syria too. Obviously hoping for a retaliation that can be used to drop a dead cow down the JCPOA well in case Biden tries to resuscitate it. Also a lot more fighting from Turkish proxies vs the Kurds in north Syria, with Erdogan another who probably wants as much as he can get before Trump goes. The Syria mercenaries who went to Azerbaijan are also being rushed back.

If you want 2000+ Mhz better get a Radeon. You'd need 3x8pin and liquid N2 to get those big Samsung chips to clock that high.

I already said it was a crime to lie to police here in certain circumstances and listed a few. What you cannot do is find out someone is lying, get them to sign a statement with that lie while interviewing them as a witness, then charge them with lying. If they're a suspect they have to be cautioned and you cannot charge someone for lying to protect themselves. The woman in the article was (effectively) providing a (false) alibi for someone else. Not at all applicable to Flynn, unless the US was planning to throw out the Vienna Convention and arrest Kislyak. Censorship is a power thing. Big C Censorship is a governmental thing, but any entity with enough power can little c censor- the church would be a good historical example, eppo si muove etc. There's plenty of threats leveled against social media companies to do what governments want voluntarily, or be forced to by regulation too. More importantly, tulips are crap. 3 days of mediocre flowers, if you're lucky, 362 days of hiding under the ground then looking like an anaemic agapanthus. I'm no great fan of petunias but in competition with perhaps the most overrated flower in existence they're a sunflower compared to ryegrass.

Here, in a Flynn type situation you'd have to caution him if you suspected he was going to incriminate himself, or if you suspected he'd committed a crime. If you don't, you risk everything being thrown out. Here's a decent summary from the CAB/ CL I'm only using entrapment in a generic sense, not as big E Entrapment. Of course here lying to police is only a crime under specific circumstances (false complaint, wasting police time, misidentification if driving and a few others) anyway, so Flynn would not be guilty of that. OTOH, if he were really guilty of 'espionage' or plotting to kidnap Gulen his chances of getting off via plea bargain here are almost zero since plea bargains are extraordinarily rare. Best he'd get is minimum sentence for co-operating, not the zero jail time Mueller was recommending.

His argument is that lying to the police is not (inherently) a crime in most places outside the US, ie if the police asked you in Finland if you stole a car and you say 'no' do you get arrested and charged with lying to the police along with stealing the car if they think you did it? If they eventually think you didn't do it or there isn't enough evidence to charge you with the theft, but you lied about where you were at the time do you then get charged with lying to the police? If the police already had a recording of where you were and ask you anyway, suspecting you'll lie and they can use that lying to charge you with lying, is that OK, or is it entrapment? At which point do you become a suspect rather than a witness or person of interest if they think you'll lie, they're prepared to catch you lying and lying is itself a crime? If that's the approach the entire interview is an attempt to get you to commit a crime by law enforcement you wouldn't commit otherwise, which is text book entrapment. In this case the FBI already knew that Flynn lied to Pence because they had a recording. They were clearly expecting him to maintain that lie- they're the FBI after all, not someone raised in a convent who expects everyone to tell the truth- and hence commit a different crime from the one they were ostensibly investigating, all based on them interviewing him and knowing that he'd probably lie. In most places those circumstances would mean that you'd have to explicitly treat the person as a suspect, and be very very careful around entrapment laws. In most places Flynn would (could) be charged with some sort of 'spying' charge, but not with lying to investigators because someone who has committed a crime is expected to lie about it. (I don't actually have any strong feelings on the matter at all, since it's near pure US domestic stuff, but Skarpen's view is far from unreasonable)

An actual judicial coup is about as likely as the interim Secretary of Defense staging a military coup, anyone saying otherwise is displaying symptoms of Trump Derangement Syndrome*. *The funniest thing about the situation is how the extremes of both sides suffer from exactly the same fact distortion field just with the exact opposite application. Democrat TDS sufferers: Everything is evidence Trump is going to stage a coup, how terrible! Trumpist TDS suffereres: Everything's evidence Trump is going to retain his position via unorthodox- but perfectly legal- means, how wonderful!

Yeah, they obviously suspected Flynn of a crime since they had the recordings of the meeting with Kislyak. I don't see how there's any realistic argument that they didn't. Obviously they'd frame it as a way to 'clear the air' or whatever and not tell Flynn they knew, but they did already knew that Flynn had lied to Pence.. The trouble with FBI investigations is that they always seem to be primarily fishing expeditions where they hope they catch someone in a lie so they can leverage that against them, and they seem... less than careful about informing someone when they've shifted to being a suspect as opposed to a witness. They are definitely very selective on what constitutes, for example, working for a foreign power. If they applied the same criteria as Flynn/ Russia to Saudi Arabia or Israel I'd have little doubt that half the US government would be in legal trouble. Yes Gromnir, I'll take your objection to that as already said.

RDNA 2+/ 6000 series definitely has transition features towards MCM/ chiplet approaches, eg the massive cache. Personally I'd suspect that the switch to MCM is a big enough one that they'd rename the architecture from RDNA when switching, and '7000 series' has consistently been referred to as 'RDNA3', coming 2021. I'll freely admit that's a pretty tenuous strand to draw a conclusion from though. But I'd expect low hanging fruit to be picked, which will give decent efficiency and performance boosts, but nothing revolutionary. (maybe some tensors added as a proof of concept for MCM? they've got them in the new CDNA cards so I guess it depends on the use case and how the purported dlss competitor ends up performing/ working)

Yeah, for 1080p 60Hz pretty much any current AMD processor will be more than enough so it's balancing budget and longevity. The only other factor would be if there's an upgrade path from 1080p to consider at all. Higher frequency needs a better CPU, but if you go for higher resolution CPU is a lot less relevant. I wouldn't bother with a SATA SSD. 1TB NVMe and a standard old platter HD for bulk storage covers most bases fine. Note that M2 is a form factor rather than a type of SSD, the NVMe versions are a lot faster than SATA m2 and they currently cost almost the same (here, at least, though it seems currently that Europe is really being stiffed on pricing). Most motherboards have 2 m2 slots too now if you need to add more fast storage later. Technically the free upgrade for Win10 is only available for non upgrade version and non OEM win7.