Zoraptor

Yeah, 7770 equivalent for the baseline xbone, more/ less on specs/ frequency. Fat fingers gave it a bit of an upgrade. PS4 original was roughly 7850 spec wise, iirc. Perform a bit better than base specs suggest due to the direct hardware access etc, but still pretty antiquated either way.

So, that was the season finale of Discovery. Randomly. Guess it was mostly OK as an episode, as always the alt universe bits were a lot more fun than the real universe ones, and the 'cameo' might be a bit polarising, to some. Otherwise, that was a really random stop point for the main plot- presumably due to covid, but it does just stop abruptly. I presume Georgiou is off to a spin off show now but Discovery will miss her being snarky a fair bit given how tepid and inoffensive the rest of the characters are. The one positive I'll unreservedly give to this season is that it has done more much needed fleshing out of minor characters. The other big positive is that it's been a lot more self aware about its flaws and weaknesses; not an unreserved positive because it would be better if it actually addressed those flaws a bit better rather than just acknowledging that they're there. But, they're doing a decent job of leaving it ambiguous whether Admiral Beard/ Starfleet already knows what the story is with the Kiev/ Burn or not, and had some of the Significant Looks in the alt universe actually end up being Insignificant Looks instead which is more nuanced than it has been. OTOH, the episode plots are still bullet points far too often strung together incoherently and inconsistently and they are still awful at conveying any sort of real emotion, though at least thsi episode's dose of over long schmaltz was for a major character. Somewhat relevant to that, I did rather like that they brought back Aeryom (?) in the alt universe (minus cyborg suit), only to near immediately and unceremoniously kill her off again... Overall- not bad enough for me to drop it, but certainly not enough improvement there to get any sort of recommendation.

Don't really know what CDPR was trying for there, it must have been patently obvious there were going to be massive problems with the ps4/xb1 for ages. Fundamentally, if someone tried playing the PC version on a Bulldozer CPU- not exactly inspiring, even when new- underclocked to ~2 Ghz and a 7870 GPU I doubt they'd be thrilled either; yet that is what base last gen console hardware was. Probably should have gone with an AMD partnership instead of nVidia, at least.

Finished Dishonored. Pretty good for a Thief like, and has some decent departures from the direct Thief formula like dialogue. Ran into quite a few bugs for a GOTY type release though and it had similar weaknesses to Prey despite the 5 years of separation in release date. Plot was kind of meh, and pretty derivative structurally- not exactly a surprise that you got double crossed, and unlike System Shock 2 it wasn't by a classic villain either nor was it like Thief (1) where the double cross was just about perfectly executed. None of the antagonists had anywhere near the personality and impact of Viktoria/ Trickster or SHODAN, albeit that is a very high bar to cross. Haven't finished Knife of Dunwall yet, but the first mission was a definite step up. It would be nice if the levels were a bit more continuous/ bigger, but at least they're not Thief 3 sized bijou/ toy sized morsels. Overall, not quite as good as it was made out to be but still more than merely worthwhile.

The new UK strain of the virus has been found in Italy, so it's now confirmed as being spread internationally.

The 'lack of engagement' argument really is a classic of its kind. We have it here for local councils, and it's always used as a way of defending how bad they are at pretty much everything. You think the mayor/ council/ utilities is/ are awful? Why didn't you vote for an alternative then? Hmm, because the alternatives were awful too, the system is broken and can't be fixed by design, so what was the point? You could have had 100% turn out and the candidates would still have been the same bunch of awful options implementing the same awful policies in the same awful system, and you don't get to vote for most of the really important roles either, they're all appointed by said awful candidates when they win and when their incompetence catches up with them they just vote for another rates increase/ fuel tax/ levy... I'd have to admit to not being familiar with the rest of the EU, but Britain certainly used its appointments to get rid of politicians who would be domestic embarrassments or make trouble without a golden handshake, then again the UK was a past master of blaming the EU for everything so running down its reputation with bad appointments was something of a hobby. Here in NZ we're far more wholesome, our embarrassing or potential troublemaker politicians get sent overseas as ambassadors instead...

The only way the MAX got certified in the first place was due to regulatory capture of the FAA by Boeing so it wouldn't be surprising if it got recertified the same way. Fundamentally the MAX will always try and crash itself because the 737 airframe simply wasn't designed for the size of engines they've now stuck on it, so it will always try and crash itself. All its problems flow on from that single fact. If they wanted the big engines it needed a full redesign to be fundamentally safe but instead went with corner cutting and doing it on the cheap. A plane constantly trying to crash itself is far from a unique situation- for a F35 or Eurofighter- but it's not great if you're flying 150 people around. That's a delayed consequence of the last big round of diplomat expulsions in 2017 when Russia reduced US diplomat numbers in Russia to parity with theirs in the US. The US had probably been hoping that some of the extra 755 (!) 'diplomats' the US had in Russia would be let back in at some point so the consulates could be properly staffed again, but that seems unlikely under Biden. Alternatively, and more likely, they're planning on shutting down the 2 Russian consulates in Houston and San Francisco (?) and want to remove the obvious retaliatory targets.

News out of Korea suggests nVidia will be sticking with Samsung for Ampere rather than moving to TSMC mid 2021 as rumoured a while ago. May or may not be related but TSMC is also ending bulk purchase discounts for their big customers, of whom nVidia would have been a pretty big one had they switched back.

Expanse S5 spoilers

Yeah, nah, that ain't a great article to be frank. Perhaps most indicative is that the 10 year MS veteran didn't mention that MS was involved in the hack distribution too. To use Star Wars parlance Imperial Shuttles had been distributing rebel strike teams all across the Empire for six months. Something something older code but it checked out. Reads pretty much entirely like corporate damage control.

It'd probably be estimated number of people exposed- ie those who went to the party, plus their families and other close contacts. Media aren't particularly careful about explaining which numbers they use, and will use whichever makes their point better. Something like "The party caused exposure of 600 people" implies 600 people at the party directly; but may mean a lot less there, and include those with indirect exposure.

Poland voluntarily leaving the EU would be absolutely hilarious- and there's at least one world leader who wouldn't stop laughing until his impending retirement due to Parkinsons.

Meanwhile... It's not so much the kowtowing to Xinnie the Pooh which is the problem- well, it is, though as a business it's certainly at least understandable them not wanting to alienate China- it's thinking that anyone would buy the 'many gamer messages' line.

Expanse S5 spoilers-- explicit plot points present this time.

Expanse S5- no explicit spoilers but better safe than sorry since there's some implicit ones.

I'd suspect Whedon is seen as too tarnished now. To be honest he was probably lucky there was a lot less social media when the situation with Charisma Carpenter's pregnancy occurred back in Angel S4 as it did not, as the marketers say, have 'great optics' whatever really happened.

Given the choice between bringing back Baldwin and having lots of bluechecks on twitter start losing their minds or not bringing back Baldwin the choice is pretty obvious, especially on Disney+.

Picard is on Prime outside the US, pretty sure everywhere. Jane is unlikely barring a recast- can't have the guy who coined 'gamergate' on the payroll. It's doubtful Fillion will be in either given he's got a successful network show already. Even Whedon is pretty unlikely in the current climate, though he'd probably be available. On the more positive side Tim Minear had a deal with Fox that presumably rolled over to Disney, and he wrote most of the best episodes. Plenty of Blake's 7 episodes he can crib more ideas from too. So probably a reboot with none/ few of the original cast. To be frank Firefly is really not playing to Disney's strengths, but then again it wasn't playing to Fox's strengths either.

Legally the settlement with the DoJ meant they just had to add a disclaimer to the compiler/ libraries. Gimping opponents' performance was OK- so long as they told people they were doing it (and didn't bribe people into using the compiler). Should be noted though: perhaps unsurprisingly CDPR wasn't actually using Intel libraries (presumably like most/ all they use MSVC), though the reason for no SMT was perhaps equally as odd; they seem to have included a 3 year old code snippet intended for situations where SMT gives a net loss of performance instead of a gain.

Pricing is so messed up I'm actually semi tempted to get a reference 6900XT since one is in stock here and it's NZD1750 (about NZD50 over direct MSRP conversion from USD which is fine; except for its inherent poor value/ halo pricing) and the 'alternative' is a 6800 nonXT at... $1400. OK, Nitro+ 6800 non XT so some premium to be expected but that's a pretty hefty difference compared to the ~3% mark up for the reference card. But instead I'll just delay any upgrades until March/ April, and probably get a better experience from C2077 etc then as a bonus.

I can only second how much better alt universe Discovery episodes are. It's all very Panto like with the overacting, scenery chewing, telegraphed plot points* and it really does look like everyone is having a great time when normally they look either kind of terrified or like aliens being told to act like humans having only read about humans in a book. Most of the things that are annoying in the normal universe are kind of endearing in the mirror one. Weird though, after spending 2 minutes talking about preferred pronouns in the previous (or 2 back, I forget) ep I could have sworn they completely ignored said preferred pronouns entirely this episode. If you're going to make a big deal of them to show how inclusive you are you need to actually use them consistently across episodes, otherwise it really is just virtue signalling for the sake of it. *you know, I think I may have picked up a very subtle hint or two that Security Lady andor Captain Tilly may be thinking Georgiou has gone soft...

For anyone using a Ryzen CPU, looks like the game was compiled using Intel's compiler which 'accidentally' gimps AMD performance (no SMT usage being most common symptom). If anyone wants to 'fix' performance on AMD you'll have to do the AuthenticAMD <--> GenuineAMD trick which tells the game you're using an Intel chip. that literally changes the flag that tells the game whether its an AMD or Intel chip, for up to 30% free performance in CPU limited situations (so practically, higher minimums and less stutter rather than 30% higher average fps). I'd laugh like a maniac if that were the reason for the poor performance on ps4/ xbone, though at least the backlash there might be enough to stop anyone using Intel's compiler.

The Oxford vaccine is iirc now officially 70% effective after they redid their statistics. Which is enough, but they would like to get it higher hence the sudden bout of scientific camaraderie with the Russians after Brit media has spent the last six months either ignoring it or implying Sputnik was unscientific and fudging the numbers. Which they probably are to be frank, but then as it turned out... so was Astra-Zenica/ Oxford. Theoretically combining two 70% vaccines would get them to 90% combined effectiveness, though that's a 'perfect' case. Given that the Oxford and Sputnik vaccines are both very cheap to make even a combined jab would be ~10% the cost of the Pfizer one, and if it removed the need for a booster it would cost the same* as a two jab series from a single vaccine. If that extra 20% reduces deaths or hospital stays by 20% over a single vector vaccine then it's more than worth it both economically and medically. *[edit] actually quite a lot less if you take other factors apart from the base vaccine cost into account. No need for a second shot should massively reduce storage/ admin/ needle etc costs, no worries about people not turning up for a second shot and having to chase them up, and more.

Teaser trailer- and it really is a teaser, and little more- for the next Mass Effect game has been released:

A surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one: Hayden Christiansen is going to reprise his role of Darth Vader in the forthcoming Kenobi miniseries.