Zoraptor

It has arrived, anticipation builds... and its shroud is snapped off. Literal lol. Serves me right for buying MSI instead of putting in the extra for a Sapphire I guess.

Knighthoods were abolished under Helen Clarke's Labour government and reinstated by John Key's National government a few years later- he's the politician Eleanor Catton had a very public spat with a few years ago. We kept the replacement Order of New Zealand as well because you can't have enough things to award to ex politicians, business leaders and judges (plus Sir Edmund Hillary when he was alive). Perhaps unsurprisingly John Key is now Sir John Key. AKA Sir Xian Qi after having his house bought for twice its market value by a Chinese government affiliated individual...

Australia sure*, but we get on pretty well with the Chinese. They'd never bother invading when our politicians would happily sell the place to them wholesale in the name of 'investment'. *well, not absolutely sure. They do have a notable predilection for sucking up shamelessly to the US in a manner that would make even Tony Blair embarrassed so it may well be that as main motivator rather than actual fear. One of the reasons we get on with China a lot better than Australia does is that so long as we have our anti nuclear policy we'll never be seen as a US stooge- same most definitely can't be said for our trans Tasman cousins.

Must have been horrible having such neighbours on your land borders. With much sympathy, Æthelred Unræd

Decided that this gen's actual mid tier cards are likely to be crap, so picked up a 6750XT for cheap. So it's now guaranteed that the 7700/7800XT will be the apex of efficiency, value for money and computing power.

I don't know why they'd regret it, they probably use dies that would go to the recycler otherwise, and AMD still gets their money. The 6700/10GB was the 'budget'* card I seriously considered getting when my V64 packed up (XFX version though, not sapphire). *Still more than twice what I paid for a 5770, and 50% more than I paid for the 580 I'm using now so air quotes very much deserved.

95% sure that conversation is from Downtown? But it's been a fair while since I've played...

The Intel cards also need resizable BAR, or you leave ~ a quarter of their performance on the table. Though I'd suspect most people have a resizable BAR capable motherboard nowadays.

Meh, don't employ sociopaths and give them a feeling of impunity, simple enough. And strangely enough, not talking about the guy who pulled the trigger, but the head cop. Yeah, I'll spare a thought for the poor police force in their hour of tragedy and how terrible it's been for them her dying.

That probably just means that Paradox got very little per sale for PoE1- not surprising since they were essentially acting more as a distributor of Obsidian's title rather than a publisher. Tyranny may have sold less copies, but they'd have got far more return per copy sold.

One suspects that the 4060 will be an absolute steal. Compared to the 4060Ti 16GB

6650XT, with about 10% lower clocks (excluding boost, which isn't sustained) and 10% less draw. Which would be fine (ish), if it were the 7500XT as it 'should' be and 50 bucks cheaper, as it should be since it's on an older node as well. Dropping the XT but still calling it a 7600 doesn't really cut it. Looks like the rumours of something Going Wrong with RDNA3* are pretty much borne out now. Very little improvement either in terms of efficiency or computing power. *even taking into account it not being 'proper' RDNA3.

Possums are generally too big for cats to hunt, but Australia has plenty of native lizards and the like that they go after happily. If they weren't too big we'd have a lot less possums here* where they're a pest species, unlike Australia where they're protected. We also have a lot of feral cats. I've only ever seen one of our cats kill a possum, and it was almost certainly its proudest moment on the planet. That's with 2-3 cats, for 30 odd years. *Indeed as a New Zealander it's almost impossible not to read "hit by cars" instead of "hit by cats" given the number of roadkill possums we get.

On the subject of Bakhmut casualties Prigozhin says Wagner lost ~20k dead with around 50/50 pros/ convicts. Then again he also says that Ukraine lost 50k dead and 70k wounded... I suspect one figure may get some traction, but not the other.

Quite apart from his roles in Rome and Black Sails the man made a post Lithgow season of Dexter tolerable. One of those guys where I never actually thought he was acting well because I kind of forgot he was acting.

Ah yes, the people who were wandering around bravely shooting up children a couple of months ago, led by the MMA enthusiast and self proclaimed neo nazi Denis 'White Rex' Nikitin. Do I need to repost the same links about them being an acknowledged part of the Ukrainian military as I did that time too? Probably not, since their 'liberation' video involved them, uh, wearing Ukrainian uniform.

Eh, Ukraine released footage of fighting in Soledar after it had fallen too. Pretty much every time Prigozhin has announced something territorial we get a denial from Ukraine, then pictures from Wagner then a lot of "doesn't prove anything maybe it's been retaken"* type stuff on Twitter. Well yeah, maybe. *or for Soledar, been staged in a Russian salt mine.

Prigozhin claims to have taken Bakhmut. He's been pretty much 100% with Wagner progress at least, and there's some ancillary evidence. Denied, at this point, by Ukraine. We also now have a Ukrainian equivalent of Shoigu/ Gerasimov is dead!?!?!?!???? with Zaluzhny and Ihor. About as likely to be true, too.

In the latest round of incredibly badly researched propaganda from supposedly reputable sources: China's Loans Pushing World's Poorest Countries to Brink of Collapse. Which then forms the basis for a lot of other people not checking the actual facts, including those who at least supposedly are actual financial journalists. But let's see what the statistics actually say, shall we? On average for the poorest/ most debt laden 3 times as much debt is held by western private institutions than China, and they charge more than twice the interest rate. But you say, surely the nice western institutions offer debt relief? Uh, yeah, nah. They want China to forgive their debt so that they get paid back and China doesn't based on... their debt being more expensive and thus more important to pay off. Actually dropping their interest rate though so their debt isn't oppressive... yeah, nah again. Far cheaper to feed ludicrous bollocks to inept- being generous- journos. But you say, surely you've got those figures from a Chinese source which is biased, or they're cunningly hidden away in some dusty tome. Well no, they're from the World Bank, and cunningly hidden on the, uh, internet. You'd think financial journalists at least might have heard of it. And as always, classic cite: The IMF's Role in Zaire's Decline

That wasn't exactly a risky prediction since every leak about Navi33 had a 128 bit bus. They may well have a 16GB version like nVidia does with the 4060Ti- whether they charge an extras 100usd for it as well, who knows.

I've heard of half of them at least enough to recognise the names andor faces. That list is pretty weird to be honest, especially if it's actually for most famous. Both for order and for roles played... Zendaya is far better known than most above her, and a most famous list but no mention of Spiderman or Euphoria for her? Indeed, no mention of Davis in the DC films/ Peacemaker (OK, that was a cameo) or King leading Watchmen. Which didn't rate that well, but was critically acclaimed. Maybe the writer doesn't have an HBO sub? Perhaps the oddest is Candice Patton being only one place below Lupita Nyong'o, who has won an oscar.

There is the potential for other unannounced systems to be there as well as the two announced ones. Probably not though*. No one seems to be sure how many launchers per battery there are, I've seen 4/6/8 all stated with absolute authority. At least some** of the missiles are PAC-3CRI which would potentially be 16 missiles per launcher and (marginally) it could have been one (patriot) launcher present. If they did supply PAC-2 and -3 missiles the launches could all be Patriots, but I'd agree that something else seems likely for the smaller ones. Also, you'd really hope that they'd have been told not to bunch the systems the way that video implies. In any case, it's fair to say that the 100% interception claim from Zaluzhny is pretty much, uh, shot down at this point. At least three confirmed hits. *So no chance of any in Mikolaev as per MW (though also, the video implies the supermarket was storing something a lot spicier than borscht) **and if you want evidence of PAC-2 being present too that first kinzhal 'downed' was meant to be via PAC-2 due to the damage done to its warhead. Though obviously I'm not exactly convinced personally by the value of that evidence that is what is meant to have happened. Or using the term 'system', like the US military did. Designed to imply slight damage to a single launcher, but could just as easily mean half the battery is gone but the rest is still working. I'd say the default from the video is that something else (NASAMS? IRIS-T?) got hit and a Patriot took some damage

One other thing that is worth mentioning about that 'Patriot' being hit- it very likely isn't a kinzhal doing the hitting whatever the Russians say. That isn't a very big explosion for 400+kg, especially when night typically makes them look bigger, not smaller, than daytime. Also, wreckage of the Patriots seems to confirm at least some are PAC-3, which might reduce it to a single launcher present. Two still more likely though.

Not really possible to tell anything for certain from that video- but if it was Patriots it seems extremely unlikely it was a single launcher due to the volume of shots. I think I'd be more worried about how the Russians were able to target it on the fly more than any actual damage, since that suggests it's repeatable. Not really possible to say. A kinzhal doesn't fly hypersonically for its full flight path and there are multiple missiles of similar size but slower top speed. Assuming they aren't out and out lying then they'd know they brought down something- but, well, to put it another way: German pilots always shot down Spitfires, never Hurricanes; Russians hit HiMARS and Patriots, not Grads and IRIS-T. Even debris isn't exactly foolproof. That 'warhead' from a couple of days ago was hollow even in early pictures and bears an uncanny resemblance to a (decommissioned) BETAB-500 dumb bomb. Which weighs the right amount for a Kinzhal warhead, but is over 2m long and decidedly not hollow. And designed for subsonic penetration, not hypersonic with 25x the KE minimum. Indeed, a couple of days ago where the motor engine is on that tweet MW linked is where the warhead was (and if it were the warhead then that is where it would have to be). Perhaps more 'objectively' the Russians/ Syrians did a very similar thing after US/ Brit/ French airstrikes and the claim then was that no missiles were shot down and the debris was from missiles that hit. If I were the Russians I'd be jury rigging old (ish, don't think the 75km models would cut it) S-300 missiles to MiG-31s and firing them off every night since they're same size and ~same speed but essentially 'free' since they're so old- and there are a lot of them. Certainly a lot cheaper than the interceptors that would be fired at them, and the production rate for Patriots is not that high.

That is... not very convincing. Yeah... nah. They'll have better optics than most Russian tanks, and better speed especially in reverse. To be fair to it, the Leo1 is a bit better armoured than a sardine can, but not actually by that much- and it stores ready use ammo in the turret. (You can penetrate a Leo1 with a sniper rifle round from a decent distance- something you can't even do with a T-34. Not from the front, but there you could at least in theory be in trouble to... the WW2 era 50mm pak 38 or equivalent. The Panzer IV had more armour, so did the Ronson Tommycooker Sherman and neither was renowned for their armour even in WW2. We also saw exactly what happens to Leo2s with ammo stored in the turret in Syria- ie big boom, turret goes flying- and at best Leo1s are in the same situation for that as the Leo2s)