Zoraptor

A decent amount of destroyed equipment on the Ukrainian side is to be expected given they're attacking, the style in which it was lost and it being far enough behind Russian lines now that they can pose casually with the wreckage would be a lot more worrying. Strangely enough (not really), the tactics used by Ukraine seem to be exactly the same as those used by Russia at Vugledar, with the same result. Attacking fixed defences is hard, and you don't have that many options of how to do it.

It was ~380USD with our 15% GST added. 7600s are actually not too bad value here either, since no one is trying to sell them at MSRP let alone inflated prices.

1) The loss of the canals/ drinking water and irrigation effects pretty much only areas held by Russia. Once again, Russia brutalises Ukraine by... punching itself in the face, eh? 2) The Russians evacuated all the civilians on their side earlier once they made the banks a closed military zone, so they don't have (m)any to evacuate. 2a) Which might look suspicious, except they built their defences in those areas, and those defences now don't exist and a lot of their soldiers got caught in the flooding. You'd think they'd build their defences back a bit, eh. 3) Empty canals are a lot easier to bridge for Ukraine, should their offensive go well, and indeed may not even need bridging at all once empty. 4) The drained reservoir will be easier for Ukraine to cross to the north, after a while 5) The lower Dniepr will be safer to cross too, since it cannot be flooded again with the dam gone. And very much unlike if the dam was still there There are plenty of reasons for Ukraine to do it, though I do not think personally they did it deliberately, on balance of evidence. There is however no reason for Russia to have done it beyond this is bad, Russia is bad therefore this <--> Russia. Everything about it is a net negative, for Russia. Hence the requirement for yet more OMG but Sauron. Still actually kind of glad we got another 'orc' post. Not because I get to ask (rhetorically, back seat moderation is at best tiresome) again if the boards would tolerate the use of the racial slurs used against Arabs or Vietnamese* when they were fighting the west. The thing about orcs is, they're fantasy and don't exist. If you have to justify something using fantasy and racist epithets you're fundamentally not on solid ground. *answer: no, at least for the Vietnamese, since that term is on the naughty list. As for the HiMARS 1) it was a Ukrainian official saying they used them to attack the floodgates and why- to show that they could destroy the floodgates, a test which was successful- and I quoted him from a impeccably western and pro Ukrainian source. 2) The section they attacked most had the roadway collapse the day before the dam did, and was the clear point of failure. 3) They don't have to have hit the dam on Jun 5/6 to have caused the collapse, they don't need to have done it deliberately in the sense that they intended the dam to fail; all they have to have done is do enough damage that it failed, eventually. 4) Despite knowing of the potential damage they released more water upstream than usual 5) The Antonovsky bridge doesn't have billions of tons of water behind it 3 also has the advantage of not requiring anyone to be a cartoon villain to make sense. Nah, I didn't think the invasion would happen, but I've always said there was a logical reason for it. Not one I personally agree with, but you don't have to agree with reasons to recognise that they exist.

330USD equivalent. Not really good value in absolute terms, but 25% under what they were selling for a couple of months ago so a decent end of line discount.

Even the extremely pro Uk ISW has the dam collapse starting at least 20 minutes before that and up to 50 minutes before. That's also a non determinative method- it doesn't say who did it, and isn't even determinative for it being due to explosives; they're just seismographs and pick up any ground disturbance such as volcanic activity and earthquakes. With 18bn tons of weight behind it- ie 100x more than the Mohne Dam blown up by the Bouncing Bombs in WW2- a dam failure is definitively not going to be trivial in terms of ground disturbance. [belated edit: for reference purposes, 2 on the Richter scale is equivalent to the explosion of 56kg of TNT, per USGS. Which is utterly useless for determining anything] My new favourite big brain take is that it couldn't have been an external attack, because Zelensky said that was impossible HiMARS and Storm Shadows aren't explosive enough. Which is incorrect, HiMARS are enough per the Ukrainians themselves, let alone Ukraine having other weapons with bigger warheads, but nevermind. The really funny thing is all the people saying that the Kerch Bridge attack was carried out by a boat- in order to avoid the homicide/ suicide bomb stigma- have suddenly forgotten about Ukraine having that capability, as soon as it became inconvenient... The most damning (uh) evidence is the roadway collapse, at the point at which we know Ukraine was attacking the dam, happening the day previous. That certainly appears to have been the initial point of failure, and the only side we know damaged the structure there is Ukraine. One other definitely didn't have a good time of it since it took a direct hit, just no aftermath footage since the drone decided to follow the moving vehicles. The Russians are really odd when it comes to footage though, they obviously have a lot and a lot of drones but insist on releasing it as if it were edited by a 5 year old who has raided the sweet jar. Some of it you even wonder why they bothered, the Ka-52 gun cam footage has fewer pixels than Space Invaders.

Update: refunded, no issues. No replacement option due to there being basically no 6750s left in New Zealand and no plans to import more prior to the release of 7700/7800. God does not play dice- but xe does play Uno and just loves the Reverse card.

Very amusing, now Bruce is complaining about governments spuriously classifying things. All we need now is for Kobus van der Snowden to leak the report and for Bruce to think he's a hero for doing so...

The leaks had ~100 NATO SF on the ground. Just not officially, as soldiers. Indeed, technically, one of the New Zealanders killed there was an ~active NZ soldier too (Dominic Abelen; contracted to the army but 'on leave')

Watched The Last of Us. Weird one that, in parts really really good, in others... not exactly bad, but pretty jarring. Having not played the games I rather suspect it was at its worst when trying to follow its set pieces etc*. Good acting, and the only episode I didn't like much as a whole was the cannibal one which I found extremely obvious in pretty much every respect, from set up to how it played out. They built the setting really well and the main characters were both well written and acted too. Plus John Hannah cameo at the beginning, big ups there. Bit disappointed he wasn't there at season end, though that would have been more than a little contrived and I probably would have complained about that. *since I'm semi interested in whether I'm right or not

Don't think he was implying that, just saying that from his experience with Disco Elysium the world seemed interesting and had had a lot of work put into it. Even with the game's success I doubt many people have read the novel which would be the only non game related way to get the background. (meh, gaming has too many similar acronyms. I'll always read DE as Deus Ex. Memes aren't the only reason they should have kept the ..Furies name)

To make this thread worthwhile: actual news! So yeah, there won't be physical editions, plus please feel free to cancel your pre-orders and here are 5 screenshots, three of which are in generic alleys/ sewers. I guess the one with the tree looks kind of interesting, though it looks more like something from the unannounced Thief: tDP remake. Anyway, please check back in September!

Maybe they could buy the Varyag back from China.

Well since I was talking big brain takes, none of the dam was blown up, according to the Mega Brain BBC security correspondent and the Ukrainians were just waiting to drive tanks straight on across. Yeah, in reality the roadway was gone in two places one due to Ukraine, one due to Russia, and the sluice gates were blown up by HiMARS*, but well, got to claim Ukrainian tanks were imminently going to storm, single file, across the dam as a reason for Russia to blow it up. Of course, if they could do that they just use their ability to literally fly to cross the current gap as well... Funniest thing being, of course, that his own article had before and after pictures clearly showing the prior damage and that they couldn't just drive across. I'd get better analysis from my 3 year old nephew telling me it was Godzilla. Same guy was convinced the Kerch Bridge was hit by 65kg of explosives on a boat too, iirc. As for the rest, well, Ukraine had damaged the spillway, admitted fact. They also released more water downstream from the five dams they control above the NK one than usual while presumably knowing the ability to spill water downstream was potentially compromised. I doubt there's any real difference between the sound of dam implosion from pressure and explosions, and explosions are non determinative anyway in the absence of wreckage. After all, maybe the Ukrainians decided to do an experiment with HiMARS again and things went wrong... or right. Mostly though, again, there's zero advantage to Russia in blowing it up, same as Nordstream they get no benefit from it they don't already have. Their side of the river is lower, their defences get flooded, they have more people to evacuate and while they might stop a cross river attack for a few weeks it's a one off that leaves them with no close in defence and Ukraine able to attack knowing that they can't be flooded out in... the peak offensive season of early July. They will also be able to cross further north far more easily across the drained lake than having to make an assault across literal kms of water- which didn't work out well when they attacked the nuclear power plant (another thing people swore blind didn't happen at the time but later turned out did). Most funny though, no water for Crimea, again, since the intake is off the reservoir. Ho hum. *since there's likely to be disputation, as there was previously: "Kovalchuk considered flooding the river. The Ukrainians, he said, even conducted a test strike with a HIMARS launcher on one of the floodgates at the Nova Kakhovka dam, making three holes in the metal to see if the Dnieper’s water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings but not flood nearby villages. The test was a success, Kovalchuk said.." per WP. So yeah.

Boiled steak? Sacré bleu. Not to be confused with steak bleu, I guess. So much for the 'les biftecks' slang and Asterix books having the gall (ohoho) to criticise the Brits for boiling stuff. Actually, Asterix in Britain has not aged well with the stereotypes considering the French are now far more likely to quit at 5pm and meal times/ breaks/ weekends whatever the circumstances than the Brits.

According to our old friends anonymous US sources speaking to media. Officially: per Reuters Got to make sure everyone knows who did it before there's any evidence though. Really, what does he think is being used there? That's a tiny explosion considering the camera is IR. As one of the commentators suggests, likely to be a mine. Really though, this has brought out all the big brain types. Yes, it can't have been Ukraine because they couldn't blow up 200m all at once. Let's just ignore that every single cubic m of water weighs a ton, and there are a lot more than 1 cubic meter in that dam so a small hole will get bigger very quickly...

Hah, they had that as an email discount two weeks ago. Now that really is naughty, I feel like demanding my, uh, $1.90 back.

Laughable Centrist for steak cooking is probably using a microwave to cook it: pretty much guaranteed to unite everyone else in hatred. I think the thing that really annoys me about Kai Leng is that his problems are completely avoidable. Most of the other complaints are clunkiness, and problems due to ME2 not progressing the plot of the series except in its last dlc. Ultimately the traffic light choice is little different from the ending of Deus Ex (albeit that's often seen as the weakest part of Deus Ex too, but meh, ending things well is hard). Bioware can and did write decent antagonists, and some very good ones too even in ME. There is literally nothing good or redeemable about Kai Leng though, he's a terrible idea with terrible writing and terrible plot with equally terrible plot holes/ railroading. And definitely new sense terrible --> awful, worse than merely bad, not the old sense where it meant impressive but frightening. All made worse by the fact his creators seemed to think he was the most awesomest of things in the known universe. I'm sorry to say it, but Kai Leng is the Star Trek Discovery Season 3 of characters and I'm not even sure which one I'm insulting worse with the comparison. But still slightly better than WoT S1.

It's not like they could 'lose' Kosovo short of pulling their troops out, which won't happen. It's about as literal a vassal state as it's possible to get in modern polities, wholly dependent on aid, remittances and subsidies from all the NATO troops/ bases. If you started getting the same rhetoric applied to Bosnia it'd mean something more. I'd say they're trying to get a condemnation of Russia out of Serbia in exchange so they can say that Russia has no allies in Europe; and more of a long shot recognition of Kosovo so people don't continually point it out as an example of western hypocrisy. The former would be exactly the sort of ultimately meaningless feel good spectacle that von der Leyen and Borrel love, the latter would have more substance but probably be political suicide.

It's attached via small screws through plastic eyelets and the eyelets are all broken, so it will need a replacement. Looks most likely that the screws were overtightened during assembly since the box and card are otherwise pristine.

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.