Zoraptor

AMD has a stake in HBM, iirc, which is why they use it. Theoretically its benefit is being able to use less of it for the same effect which ought to use less power and be cheaper even if it's more expensive per GB. They've got stung because it's new, and the main manufacturer (Hynix) hasn't been able to produce the chips they promised so they're using slower chips and trying to make up the performance in other ways- presumably, from the power draw and water cooling, overvolting. If they can get the memory up to speed Vega RXI could get a decent 'free' performance boost and power draw drop at the same time which would help competitiveness, but that's all conjecture and won't help now.

It's competitive, at MSRP. Vega56 especially so. Doesn't look like MSRP is going to stick any more than it has with 580s (and 1070s for that matter) so who knows how competitive the pricing will end up being. The whole production cycle sounds like a bit of a mess though, since it seems they've had to switch memory providers and the like. I'm still pretty keen to pick up a V56 assuming end pricing isn't totally stupid, but it would be around christmas and an AIB rather than reference. Their end goal is obviously to do a 'proper' APU system, this is a rather messy early step along that path.

Libya is Europe's fault, all the big movers were European (Sarkozy trying to Wag The Dog away his single figure approval ratings, and the UK primarily) and Obama probably would have liked to stay out altogether but couldn't let his allies fail. What happened after was stupid and predictable, but neither the US's fault or problem. Of course outside of Libya itself it's mostly Italy- that wasn't keen at all- bearing the brunt of the problems now, not France or the UK. Few people really care about what happens afterwards anyway, not like there's a deficit of people wanting to repeat the same mistakes again as if there would suddenly be a different result. Not really, 'secular' even with the quotes is better than fundamentalist whatever the system. In, say, Saudi Arabia you could be arrested for all the same things as in Syria- supporting reform, not liking the leadership etc etc- as well as practicing the wrong religion or being the wrong sect. You're also far more likely to evolve as a society if you're secular as you don't have to reform both the governmental system and the 'moral' system as well.

(1) Iraq was secular* under Saddam, as baathism is a secular philosophy. Same as Syria is secular under Assad, and Libya was secular under Gaddafi. (2) There was no Al Qaeda in Iraq prior to 2003, and no credible links between Saddam and Al Qaeda. That's as debunked as his active WMD programme in 2003. (3) The Saudis were and are a joke, if a rather grim and unpleasant one. If it had been the Saudi/ Iran War instead of Iran/ Iraq War the IRGC would have been in Riyadh in months if not weeks even if they had to swim the Persian Gulf unless someone actively bailed KSA out. They have money, and use it to buy influence, and they have Mecca; that's the extent of their pluses. Personally I don't have much doubt at all that GWB was more or less honest in his approach to Iraq and believed what he was saying the vast majority of the time, he was just wrong and sometimes handed incorrect information deliberately by others. The neocon wing (Cheney etc) and even Blair (who almost certainly didn't believe what he was saying but may now have convinced himself otherwise) are more morally responsible; Bush's main sin was naivete. *pluralist, actually; even Kemalist Turkey wasn't really secular.

They have a poor grasp on it, and I don't think even the russians would claim the Kuznetsov to be a successful ship. When it sailed to Syria it was the other big ship (Pyotr Veliky) that was far more significant though ignored by the media, and the Kuznetsov was there just for training and evaluation even after all its theoretical time in service. They did have the unique problem of the Black Sea transit and the Montreux Convention barring aircraft carriers though, so it had to be designed oddly so they could claim it wasn't an actual carrier.

DAI GOTY is more expensive than Andromeda, which is a bit annoying- it's the base game that is really cheap. I am pretty tempted to pick one or the other up, but they are probably the sort of game I need to buy and play immediately so that means one only. I'd probably enjoy either well enough since I have pretty realistic expectations and won't be expecting masterpieces, plus I tend to find cringey writing amusing rather than annoying so long as I'm not expecting Shakespeare. I am definitely thinking that a bit of distance between DAI and Witcher 3 may be an advantage though in retrospect.

One of the more infamous ones too, since ostensibly it was sold for use as a floating casino then ended up rebuilt as a 'proper' carrier. I couldn't fault Ukraine for selling it anyway, it was just going to sit and rust otherwise and at the time they had zero loyalty to the US. Selling off rocket motors to the DPRK in 2016/7 is a whole different kettle of fish though, since they put much of the US within at least theoretical rocket range. I won't be holding my breath for condemnation from McCain, Graham et al though.

So Origin is having a sale and I'm vaguely tempted to buy DAI. Anyone want to talk me out of it? I know it's kind of bland, but it's the same price as a coffee, albeit a fairly large coffee from a premium cafe. Also Andromeda is on sale for 15usd in kiwibux, which must be the steepest price decline ever.

I hope Christopher Tolkien doesn't blunder across that, it'd probably give him an infarction given his dislike of the far more faithful LotR films. At least a sexy female humanoid Sauron would make some sense given his history as a shapeshifter able to take pleasing forms. Yeah, up to Numenor, but baby steps. I'd forgive them if they pull another FEAR2/ Alma though, if only for the (literal) wtf factor.

I had a bit of a giggle at some of the articles on the subject trying so very hard to avoid saying 'Ukraine' but using 'ex soviet' and the like instead. Controlling all industry isn't historical fact except from Goebbels 'total war' speech which was Feb '43 just after Stalingrad, from memory, and after which they were on a, well, total war footing. The UK had total governmental control of the economy far far more so than Germany up to that point- anything could be requisitioned, you made what you were told to, ration cards were in effect etc etc. That's why war production in Germany peaked not in 1940, 41, 42 or even 43 but in 1944 despite all the allied bombing and them starting to lose all their mineral resources plus wasting huge resources on dreadful return pie in the sky wunderwaffe; because up to 1943 companies had happily been producing luxury items and the like alongside the tanks and planes.

Sounds a lot like Men of War from that description. Those were enjoyable games, not particularly realistic, but good fun. Yep, they're really dragging their feet there.

It's not about realism in the show vs. real life but about realism in terms of internal consistency, and that's been lacking this season, due to a number of factors. Yep, verisimilitude. To be honest it's lacked whenever they've either not had book material or deviated significantly from it so not just this season. I can criticise George Martin for being a pedestrian writer, but his writing is probably the best for internal consistency I've seen (unlike, say, Malazan) so when they've followed his stuff they haven't had to worry about consistency. If you actually spend any time thinking about some of the distances and timings involved in just the battles the last seasons you find that people literally have to teleport for it to make internal sense eg Euron this and Littlefinger last.

They are basically 'State Capitalist', which is hybrid economic system with elements of western style capitalism but also an extremely strong interventionist streak and many state run companies along with the private ones; and with the private companies being wholly subservient to the state. By many arguments that is what later 'communist' economies actually were anyway, even when they claimed to be 'communist' planned economies (of which DPRK is probably the only current example). Sorry, that sentence doesn't make much sense. They certainly want stability so as to stay in power, but also because every time China goes unstable bits break off and literally millions of people die as well as the ruling clique losing power?

Congrats. I was surprised how easy it was and how consistently the results were good from home brewing. It's also really satisfying when it turns out well. Strangely enough I decided to try my cider from late last/ early this year tonight, and it was really nice. It obviously just needed a few months of being left alone to mature properly. Guess I have a few months of cold weather left to source some bulk apple and pear juice so I can do some more, pressing my own was nice in theory but a real mess for not much reward in practice.

I would have liked to see more single-threaded performance benchmarks: there were only two. Of course 32 threads is likely to beat 20 threads in tasks that actually take advantage of a huge amount of threads...but the reality is that most things that aren't synthetic benchmarks aren't really equipped to handle even close to that many threads... As the article says, you aren't going to be getting a 10 or 16 core $1000 processor and $400 mobo for single thread performance when you could get a premier i/r7 equivalent for less than half that. Plus you can always do multiple poorly multithreaded tasks simultaneously with more cores and save time that way. i9 and TR are also theoretically* the same as standard ryzen and skylake/ kabylake just with more cores, so we already know what their performance is clock for clock. *Having said that, Broadwell-E actually beats the new i9s in a bunch of tests. That I find hard to rationalise since the i9 should have better clock speeds and IPC. 1400 and 1500x are intrinsically different, as the 1500 has more (2x) cache. I don't really have a problem with AMD's binning of Ryzen, if you don't plan on overclocking and for market segments where you don't expect overclockers to buy (eg preassembled for retail or corporate) they make sense, or if you already have a cooler and want a 'better' chip for not much more money. Certainly on a pure value for money basis x chips aren't the best there is for the enthusiast market.

B&W The nookie mention also reminds me; I don't particularly care about whether or not there are sex scenes, but I'd definitely prefer there to be no sex scenes at all rather than near DAO style grundy wearing ones.

Finished B&W 172 hours, 73% achievements on Galaxy (though having a look through there are at least three I should have got but didn't so Galaxy's tracking is off) and a rather satisfied feeling. Not a perfect game by any means, but then none of my favourite games are perfect- and I feel the immediate urge to replay a game it took me 170 odd hours over about 8 weeks to play. I'll buy the inevitable sequel (prequel/ paraquel/ whateverquel; who cares if Geralt ain't the main character) sight unseen. Just please, please don't be an MMO.

HoS B&W

HoS

HoS spoilers. B&W spoilers. Only main game spoilers below.

To me Bronn will always be singing cheesy duets with Robson Green, which makes him a little hard to take seriously. Seems like everyone's military leadership takes turns being hilariously incompetent in GoT. Robb was the only consistently decent commander, and he was as bad at politics as he was good at fighting.

Finished Heart of Stone expansion. Overall... yeah, I liked it a lot. If someone described some of the quests to me I'd probably think it sounded pretty silly, but it's done with charm and panache. Currently in Blood and Wine and it really is quite beautiful.

As above, EA did offer more time. I haven't played MEA so can't judge for myself, but I've got the distinct impression that the game needed more than 6 months worth of reworking anyway. I can't really criticise them for not picking an RGB ending to be canon either, whatever they did there would be a potential disaster with Deus Ex: IW perhaps the case study of complete failure to please anyone. The ultimate problem is that if Bioware Montreal stuffed up around 60 months of development you can't really rely on them fixing that with an extra 6 months. Things like the animations should not have been in the state they were after 5 years so you'd have to either hire a bunch of new animators which costs and is risky, co-opt Dragon Age/ DICE/ other Frostbite animators from other studios which hurts their projects or hope that the ones you already have get competent. In the end EA did the best they could (for themselves at least) from a bad situation. Perhaps they should have outright cancelled it, but the impressions I get is that it isn't technically unplayable nor unplayable due to being awful, it's just kind of... mediocre.

They had plenty of time and enough staff though, neither of which would be provided if EA was trying to tank the IP deliberately. Game was poorly handled, but everything I've seen suggests it was poor oversight and bad immediate management that was the ultimate problem rather than stuff EA could directly influence like budget and time. I'd also have to say that I heard the same thing said about DAI, especially with the Bioware old timers who left at the end of that project, and that IP definitely isn't dead. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there's another ME game in maybe five years time, it's more flexible than Star Wars since they don't have to run everything past Disney/ LucasArts plus it can't disappear off in six years time as the SW licence may. Something like alternating titles with Dragon Age seems a likely approach.

ME3 sold very well, and its MP did well too. Some people were very shouty about the ending, but that was only some people- and they played it to the end so can't have hated the game too much. Andromeda is the problem; late and a poorly run project, not well received from the beginning and while initial sales were OK it's already had a permanent 50% price cut for some time (here at least), always a sign that sales fell straight off a cliff. The closest parallel would be to Dragon Age II (albeit that problem involved too little dev time); give it a few years and it will be back as DA now is. EA ain't the SW studio by any reasonable measure if they've only made one (+ one phone game it seems) SW game in 4 years and the license is only for ten years. There are only a few other known titles awaiting release as well- BF2 and EA Motive's Jedi's Creed game may both release in the next year but the second is probably 18 months off and Respawn's title will take even longer. EA is what it has been for the past decade or so: The Sims, EA Sports plus some ancillary stuff of varying success and importance.