Zoraptor

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.

Michael Flynn pardoned by Trump. Not exactly surprising, I guess.

There's a trial on free tampons/ pads in high schools here. It's got pretty broad support from everyone. The other option they were looking at was getting the government's medical bulk purchase agency to do the purchasing and then on sell at cost for older women.

From what AMD and nVidia are saying you'd think there's a massive warehouse in Taiwan or Korea filled to the brim with graphics cards just waiting to be distributed to eager buyers... It's a lot easier to explain poor availability for AMD; GPUs are lowest priority for them as they're the lowest profit item (exc consoles, but there there are contractual obligations) on a manufacturing process which had limited availability even pre covid. Radeon will be getting wafers as and when available and even in normal times would have limited capacity- ultimately that's why the 5500XT was a relatively expensive buy even pre covid. That's exacerbated now by the increased demand, scalping, actually being competitive etc. nVidia though has Samsung 8nm almost to itself yet still hasn't satisfied pre-order demand in many places. So unless Samsung is really, really awful at manufacturing to the extent that most wafers are largely unusable there's clearly either a supply (eg there's only Micron makes GDDR6X, so that could be a limiting factor) or distribution issue. Certainly a lot of shipping capacity is 'stuck' empty in the wrong places (Europe) and air freight is way down due to fewer planes flying; we have issues here as an exporting nation with there being few ships and you used to be able to buy cheap shipping containers for storage very cheaply and they're trying to buy them back now.

Took a while, it was in the 2016 (?) GOG teaser trailer. Weirdly enjoyable game Drakensang, I have quite a soft spot for it despite it being almost entirely generic and cliché. River of Time is the one I'm waiting for though.

AIB 6800/XT are theoretically releasing tomorrow. There are meant to be significantly more stock than the reference release had, but some places (eg here) aren't going to have launch stock anyway.

I'd suspect most countries could make the 'simple' vaccines like Sputnik or the Oxford one. In the end they just need big fermenters (as you'd use for brewing, pretty much) and a bunch of purification steps. Probably too much work for a one off unless you had to, but if you had to you could do it. In a medical emergency/ pandemic you can go the Compulsory Licence route and just make a vaccine as an emergency measure. That would apply here as all the vaccines will be in limited supply for some time and despite the rhetoric poor countries will not be anywhere near first in line. (Kind of lol, Russia announces their vaccine's results and we get a bunch of skeptics trotted out by British State Propaganda saying how it's been rushed and is difficult to store and we can't trust the results as they haven't been published. They're all rushed, it's as difficult to store as the Oxford one- which it's nearly identical to, since they're both based on existing Cold vaccines- and none of the results were published when the others got hyped (don't think any are officially published even yet))

To be honest, even if I don't agree with Blinken on much at all he could scarcely be worse than Pompeo if he actively tried to. Theoretically though all Euro monarchs grant Assent to laws still made in their name. There is a difference (potentially, they can be the same person) between Head of State and Head of Government, since HoS can be a non political position but HoG by definition is political. I'd actually suspect that Executive Presidencies as governmental type are an absolute majority rather than minority. Almost all of Africa, South America and Central America is Exec Presidencies, and most of Asia. There are a few absolute monarchies, Iran, some constitutional monarchies and a decent number of non executive presidential models especially where constitutional monarchies have been replaced in Europe or Commonwealth but even in the Commonwealth itself there are a lot of Executive Presidencies because of Africa. The French colonial model in contrast has resulted almost entirely in Executive Presidencies (only exception I can think of is Cambodia). Though there is a lot of difference in practice between the Executive Presidency as seen in, say, Syria and one seen in, say, South Korea there's also a lot of difference between the constitutional monarchy in Thailand as opposed to New Zealand. Executive Presidencies are definitely rare in Europe though.

Ita vero, requiescant in pace. Caecilius non est in horto. Caecilius et Grumio sub cino erant.

Looks like Biden's cabinet is starting to take shape. Completely orthodox neoliberal picks, with the possible exception of John Kerry in a specific climate change position. Supposedly Defense Secretary will also be a completely standard neoliberal warhawk from the same think tank neoliberal warhawk Secretary of State nominee Blinken was at during the Trump term to complement neoliberal warhawk VP Harris. Because what the US electorate really wants is another 4 years of moronic and pointless military adventurism (with maybe a few brighter spots, like reinstating the JCPOA. Though even there they will no doubt try to 'renegotiate' it). The only speedbump is that Biden is considerably less of a neoliberal warhawk than his picks are.

We can add Astra-Zenica/ Oxford to the list. 70%-90%* effectiveness, but it will be far cheaper and easier to handle than the mRNA based ones. Which is why Pfizer is desperate to get that emergency approval, they self funded and need to make the money back before cheaper options become available. *depending on dosing, 70% effectiveness is just high enough to get to 'herd immunity' anyway though higher is always better.

To be fair to them, they did actually have Georgiu point out that they were mirroring previous events. If there's one thing about the current season I do appreciate it's that they have poked some mild fun at their more stupid plot points. It would, of course, be better if they avoided the silly plot points entirely rather than pointing them out to laugh at, but baby steps. I am enjoying this season rather more than the previous two, to this point at least. It's not what I would exactly call good TV, plots are still rather contrived but at least they hasn't brutally assaulted and murdered suspension of disbelief yet. Last episode would have made a perfectly decent mid range TNG episode, and I suspect may well have been a mid range TNG episode with the serial filed off. I'm very much less than convinced about Trill Wesley (last thing the show needs is a literal teenage genius, all the other geniuses on the crew already have the emotional development of teenagers), the main season plot is just kind of there and anything approaching an action sequence would be done better by an amateur student film plus those bad guys couldn't hit a barn door if they were locked in a barn door warehouse, and their guns are somehow less effective than current ones let alone phasers, but at least I seem to have become immune to the sub Whedon banter and annoying stereotypes. I may be scraping the barrel of criticism a bit here, but Federation Leader Man reminds me far too much visually of Hugh Laurie's Captain in Avenue 5.

There will be ray tracing silly buggers for a while based on whether Team Green or Team Red sponsor the games unfortunately- so RT on AMD sponsored Godfall won't work on nVidia cards for quite some time either.

LOTR wise 5 people used the palantiri. Saruman (ruled out now I guess*); Salman ibn Saud is clearly Sauron, the closeness of the names cannot be coincidence; Denethor; Pippin; Aragorn. If we exclude Pippin (Trump has notoriously small hands and presumably feet, so cannot be a hobbit) then it comes down to Denethor or Aragorn. If he's Aragorn people had better get prepared for him to end up ruling long term- and it has to be said, if Melania dyed her hair dark she'd look pretty similar to Liv Tyler's Arwen. I can't see Trump being Denethor though, too much of a narcissist to ever kill himself. I suppose if Jared somehow 'dies' (flies off to Tel Aviv maybe?) and he sends Don jr off on a suicide mission I'd have to re-evaluate that though. *but we can't forget that Saruman is a Wizard, and does have a reputation for scheming, he could have magically altered that photo somehow to get him and 'Donald' in the same shot, throwing people off the scent.

If you take the Saruman analogy to its final conclusion Trump will end up 'dead' via Rudi Giuliani, who snaps after finally deciding he can't take any more abuse. But who are we kidding anyway, Trump will resign a couple of days before being kicked out ruining all the stationary and commemorative knick knacks saying Biden is the 46th President, get Pence to pardon him, spend the next four years fighting prosecutions anyway then President Ivanka will pardon him again in 2025.

It's based on a lot of the early quests being story related and the main early level area being a pretty small section of Velen. A decent number of non plot quests (or non direct plot quests) are also soft gated behind the initial main plot quests in the area too (eg there's about half a dozen non main plot quests that require you to have met Keira, which is a main plot quest). It's a lot more ignoreable after the first sets though certainly. Some of the early non main line quests are also hard to complete (the ghoul one by the bridge in particular where you have to keep someone alive) and several feature annoying enemies where an extra level or two makes a lot of difference. OTOH, there really isn't any reason to actively avoid the main plot in Witcher 3 and several of its plot lines are really good, while if memory serves me correctly it was really easy to avoid the main plot in Morrowind, even by accident (that was the game where it seemed no one could find Caius Cossades?).

Hmm. The ultimate problem is that Morrowind and Witcher 3 are fundamentally different approaches to an open world RPG. You can't really play Witcher 3 as if you were playing Morrowind. You can ignore the main plot almost entirely eventually, but to reach that point you do have to do a fair bit of the main plot first. First issue would be that Witcher 3 isn't a fully seamless world like Morrowind. You don't start off on the 'big' map, you start off in a far smaller one called White Orchard. You have to do the main quest line there to get to the main map, though it isn't a particularly onerous set of quests. The main issue you'd face with that Morrowind style approach though would be that the 'plot' questlines in Witcher 3 tend to be those that give you lots of experience, there isn't level scaling and the skill system is not an 'improve by use' one but a far more orthodox 'level up and gain an ability' one. If you don't do the main quests you'd run out of level appropriate content and over leveled enemies are exponentially more... well, they aren't particularly hard to kill in most cases, but they have so many HP relative to your damage that they take forever to kill, and if you run into more than one of them or one with the wrong attack type you effectively have to run away or die.

Horizon Zero Dawn is coming to GOG. That's pretty random random video game news. (probably another 'thanks Epic' situation where it isn't any more trouble sticking it drm free on GOG than it is being drm free on EGS, per Outer Worlds/ Metro Exodus etc)

They got generic BAR resize --> AMD SAM(TM) instead of the generic DXR/ VulkanRT --> nVidia RTX(TM) or DirectStorage --> nVidia RTX I/O(TM) situation, which is a win. It really is annoying how often brands try to co-opt generic terms though (see also Adaptive Sync --> FreeSync --> 'Gsync Compatible')

At least under Xi it's absolutely official state policy that China Is Great, and anything to the contrary is everyone else being racist. It was a lot less so under his immediate predecessors though as they were a lot less dictatorial. The policy formulators don't actually believe that of course, but it's good for internal politics to frame anyone supporting reform as anti Chinese, and it is good for deflecting/ changing the narrative when it comes to external relations too.

That is the big difference, and China's focus on suppressing/ monitoring internal dissent within their own already tightly controlled environment means that when they turn their attention to external matters and trying to influence them they tend to be spectacularly tone deaf and counterproductive (eg their awful 'wolf warrior' system which sounds/ works great internally) because they tend to start from the position that the CCP is obviously great and aren't used to having counter arguments or having to actually persuade/ influence people as opposed to using more direct leverage and control. The Russian internet is far more open and they have far more exposure to how people actually behave and think outside the very tightly controlled 1984 style Chinese system. Even then the Russian influence, such as it is, tends to be leveraging idiots as most propaganda from everyone does. The big exception for China and their big advantage is that they are very good at leveraging diaspora Chinese, almost all of whom have relatives still in China or assets that can be used against them. It is for example amazing how completely differently Mandarin language newspapers report things here as opposed to English language ones and they put a lot of effort into fostering the belief that any criticism of China/ CCP is inherently racist. Then there's the more direct political influence. We had a Chinese spy- literally literally, Jian Yang MP taught Chinese spies English at their academy and outright lied about it when he migrated here- in our Parliament up until 6 weeks ago, and both the ethnic Chinese MPs we have now were members of stridently pro CCP groups; and you also have the Australian situation where having said some stuff China doesn't like suddenly a lot of their agricultural products don't make Chinese standards any more, and you have a lot of businessmen whining about how their trade with China is being impacted by pesky human rights and other similar concerns. It's pretty obvious that Chinese influence is both more overt and more directly effective than any Russian influence, it's just by and large nowhere near as politically expedient to expose- much as rich Russians donating to the Tories or laundering money through London financial institutions is a topic the British government doesn't want to talk about; but for most of the world and on a larger scale.

NOLF was hard to get running, and went through a phase of being near impossible a few years after release. Early Lithtech was a bit unstable, and didn't age well. Ironically considering that its contested IP means it's unlikely to get a re-release it's way easier to get running now than it was 20 years ago.

Scott Morrison gave Lukashenko a run for his money on press suppression before hand. Always the best way to deal with war crimes, raid the offices of those reporting on them and nick all their documents, just a shame from their POV that the documentary was already broadcast. (There were also accusations that the NZ SAS committed war crimes, and the journalist who exposed them had previously been raided by the police for 'receiving hacked documents', when he published a book embarrassing to our then PM John Key. Those accusations were a lot less overtly war crimey than the Australian ones though, and the inquiry we eventually got when the government changed to one less angry at Nicky Hager could not determine that any war crimes happened, or that they weren't done by the US instead. It did establish that the Ministry of Defence and politicians lied consistently though)

'Whacky' thumbnails drive clicks which is why more serious reviewers than Linus look like they're half a second away from outright gurning and the product they're reviewing just turned into Genghis Khan/ Marilyn Monroe. Videos will also always be over ten minutes long if at all possible because that hits the optimal monetisation bracket even if the subject matter doesn't really warrant the length. That's just the way they make money. If I was told I'd get a significant wage increase by pretending to be Amazed At What Happened Next I'd be perpetually surprised too.