Keyrock

Continuing to slowly build my empire in X4. I modded all the weapons on Kresusiso I, my flagship Rattlesnake Destroyer. They're only tier 1 mods, but that's still a major upgrade. Now every part of the ship is modded (tier 1 weapons, tier 1 shields, tier 3 engines, tier 3 hull). My flagship's damage output is staggering, and this isn't even its final form. I fought a couple Xenon K Destroyers. In the past, I had to be very careful about what angle to approach at and keeping my distance, maneuvering around it when they turned to point their main guns at me. Now, I am still careful to approach at an angle where the main guns are pointed away from me, but after that I don't really need to do evasive maneuvers because I chunk through the K's shields and hull at such a staggering rate that they never get a chance to point their main guns at me. I destroyed a couple Xenon stations and probably a couple dozen Xenon frigates and at least a hundred Xenon fighters (they just kept sending fleets of fighters and frigates to their doom), all in friendly space, so I got paid for all the kills. I was tempted to spend the small fortune I accumulated on another Rattlesnake Destroyer, but instead I invested in further expanding the production capabilities of my HQ. I am currently in the process of building antimatter cell production, hull parts production, and engine part production. The last 2 are direct wares in producing ships. While I don't yet have the facilities for building ships (the blueprints are absurdly expensive), I'm another couple steps closer to a self sufficient shipyard. To be perfectly honest, given the cost of blueprints for production facilities for small ships, medium ships, large ships, and extra large ships, all the blueprints for the production facilities to make ship components, the production to make intermediate wares, and the production to make basic wares, and the blueprints to make the ships themselves, building a self sufficient shipyard is definitely not worth it unless you intend to produce a ludicrous amount of ships. I guess I'll just have to produce a ludicrous amount of ships.

Another Death Come True trailer from a few months ago. No English dub or subtitles for this one. I have no clue what is happening but I'm into it. Knowing that it's from the director of Danganronpa, it's a pretty safe bet that this game is going to be really ****ed up. Japanese studios certainly aren't the only ones making really twisted games, but IMHO they are the worldwide leaders at it. Stay weird, Japan.

Sałatka Jarzynowa Potatoes, eggs, carrots, peas, pickles, mayonnaise, salt, pepper, and paprika. The key is getting the balance between sweet and sour just right. Add more pickles if it's too sweet. Add more peas or carrots if it's too sour.

Sleepy axolotl is sleepy. Alternatively, axolotl is hitting the high note from Toni Braxton's Unbreak My Heart.

Given that this game is 100% narrative, it's hard to post screenies without spoilers.

The only MMO I've ever played that had a story that hooked me was The Secret World. That game has writing better than a lot of single player games. Unfortunately, it also has some of the most soul crushingly boring gameplay ever. The flip side is that Tera had by far the best gameplay of any MMO I've played but a completely forgettable story and the most bog standard quests imaginable. Can anyone make a MMO that is both fun to play and has good writing? *sigh*

I was exploring in X4 and I ran into Turquoise Sea, which was most definitely a Boron sector in the previous games (Boron sectors always have aquatic names, Paranid have religious names, Teladi have business or money related names). Turns out the sector is teeming Xenon, which paints a grim picture as to why Boso Ta is the only Boron I've encountered in the game. Hopefully the Boron make a full return in a later expansion, I like their ships. I found a Xenon Wharf (manufactures small and medium ships) in that sector and a Xenon Shipyard (manufactures L and XL ships) in Scale Plate Green (used to be a pirate sector in earlier games). If I could destroy the wharf and shipyard then it would deal a crippling blow to the Xenon in that part of the galaxy, since they would be unable to replenish their fleet (unless they have another wharf and/or shipyard nearby, I doubt it). As you can imagine, such critically important stations are very heavily defended, so I can't do it just yet, but I will. I'm going full on Exterminatus on the Xenon eventually.

Quite sweet and fruity with a very mellow finish. I'm also drinking White Claw. I'd frankly rather be drinking beer, but beer has a ****ton of calories and I'm trying to get back into shape. The struggle is real.

Sherlock Husbando

Big Navi is confirmed to have HW ray tracing, as to what form it will take and how it will stack up against RTX... As for DLSS, the implementation on the RTX 2xxx cards is pretty trash, but DLSS 2.0 is supposedly much better. No clue if AMD has an upscaling solution to counter. Honestly, I have doubts I'd make much, if any, use of DLSS, but it's cool tech. I think the best case scenario for consumers is Big Navi releasing with the top card slightly beating 2080 Ti and at an attractive price point (similar story down the line to mid and low end segments). That would force Jensen's hand to release 3xxx sooner rather than later and keep the prices from being completely preposterous.

Are we entering a new Golden Age of FMV games? From the director of the Danganronpa series. Launches June worldwide.

To be clear, what was announced here was not gaming cards. Now, will Ampere gaming cards eventually be made and sold? Most likely, but it's uncertain when. I guess it depends on how competitive Big Navi winds up being. Right now, Nvidia has little motivation to put out Ampere gaming cards, since AMD has nothing that can compete in the high-end.

I've been pouring a lot of money into Kresusiso Headquarters in X4. I currently produce several high-tech products and intermediate wares, all without having to purchase any raw goods. The ultimate goal is to turn my HQ into a fully self sufficient shipyard, though that's very far off; there's a ton of different high-tech wares it takes to build a spaceship. I've also been going through more of the main story once I stumbled into it (this game does not hold your hand at all). I'm likely near the end of both the Split and the Paranid plots, but both are on hold for now. In the Split plot I'm at a point where I have to choose 1 faction or another. I mostly have my mind made up as far who I will chose, but I fear the choice might lock me out of some things, so I'm not going to make it just yet. In the Paranid plot I need to provide a Paranid Zeus Carrier with a specific loadout. I better get to keep the ship because I'm not exactly enthused about spending 25-30 million credits on a ship to just hand it to somebody.

I had no idea this was in development, but it just released and I'm super excited to play it once the Linux version comes out. I'm loving the recent mini-revival of FMV games and I thoroughly enjoyed this company's last game The Shapeshifting Detective, which introduced the Poe & Munro characters.

I'm gonna try for a full pacifist run.

Intel's gaming dominance is mostly just a statistic. The biggest difference comes in very niche use cases (e.g. you are a MLG CS:GO player so you play on medium settings at 1080p on a 240 Hz monitor because the difference between running at 180 FPS snd running at 192 FPS will make the difference between you nailing that headshot with the AWP [no scope, naturally] or missing it). In more common gaming scenarios (i.e. gaming at high resolution, bells and whistles turned on at modest to moderately high framerate) the CPU makes very little difference since the GPU is the bottleneck. Intel is still ahead in those scenarios, but the difference is essentially negligible. The "10th gen" Intel chips are a decent value if you are building a system right now. They hold the gaming lead and have closed the gap somewhat in many other applications. AMD still holds the price/performance lead in most areas, but these Intel chips for the most part hold their own against Ryzen 3xxx. If the supposed 15% IPC increase in Zen 3 Ryzen 4xxx chips turns out to be true then AMD will widen that gap Intel just closed significantly, but that obviously remains to be seen, plus that's 3-5 months away, so it does nothing for someone building right now. Anyway, pretty good chips ftom Intel overall. Nothing revolutionary, but they're hanging in there better than I expected with the ancient Core architecture.

If there's a silver lining to this pandemic, maybe this has/will inspire some companies to restrusture their work force and have more people work from home that don't really need to physically be at the office.

I think there are several subsets of people that are vehemently against the opening up of states. There are those that are legitimately scared, and I feel for those people and have nothing bad to say about them. There are those that are in states continuing the lockdown and are jealous of people living in areas opening up and they feel if they have to stay home on lockdown, they want others to have to be locked down too. Then there are some that have grow accustomed to not having to go to work and collecting unemployment and wish they could just stay home and collect unemployment forever. I'm not a scientist, I can't tell you if it's too soon to open up, I guess we'll know in a few weeks. I'm hoping for the best. Here's the thing though, if we don't start opening now, what are we waiting for? Flatten the curve? Curve is already flattened. Prevent hospitals from being over run? Most hospitals are at half capacity or less now, some are having to lay off staff because they are so empty. Availability of testing? Most places AFAIK have plenty of tests readily available now. What do we wait for, a vaccine? You're not going to see a vaccine for at least a year, if we ever get one. We can't stay locked down forever, we have to face this eventually.

If the DDR4 to DDR5 changeover will be anything like DDR2 to DDR3 and DDR3 to DDR4, then initially there will be nearly zero performance upgrade. It's usually about 2 years after the initial switch that the new memory standard starts pulling ahead.

^ Ani, nooooo! Meesa scape the ashes off and put on cream cheese.

The way I hear it, DDR5 is what's going to determine when AMD moves to a new socket, presumably AM5. It's entirely possible that if things get delayed then Ryzen 5xxx will still be AM4 Zen 3 7nm+(+).

The Charlotte area, where I live, is set to reopen this Friday. Hopefully people stay level headed and don't go overboard when they can enter a bar again for the first time in 2 months. I'm on the road right now and it's interesting how different regions are. I was in the northeast recently and that part of the country... I won't go so far as to call it a police state, but it's not that far off. As I've been traveling west, I could see it easing right before my eyes. Ohio about half the people were wearing masks, in Indiana, less than half and much less on edge. I'm in Wisconsin now and if you just woke up from a coma, you'd hardly know there was a pandemic. I get home in about a week and a half. I'll get to see my sister for the first time in over a year. She's moving down from Massachusetts to stay with me for a while. Earlier this year she had the same thought I had 4 years ago "What the hell am I still doing here?" Originally, she was going to come down to visit at the beginning of April to check out the area and also to visit friends she has that live near Raleigh. Obviously, the pandemic put the kibosh on those plans. I had told her earlier that if she ever wanted to move down to North Carolina, she could stay with me for a while if necessary and my folks made the same offer to her if she wanted to move to southern Florida. The Covid happened, she got furloughed, then the place she was working closed down, so she decided to just take the plunge and take me up on my offer. I'm happy to have her, plus she'll have the place mostly to herself since I'm on the road most of the time. Ultimately, she wants to move to the Asheville area, since my sister is an artist and Asheville is low key famous for its art scene, plus it's a gorgeous area. I'm thinking of moving there myself in the future or Tennessee (no state income tax!). I want to buy a house in the mountains eventually, I'm not yet sure whether the North Carolina side or the Tennessee (think Gatlinburg or Pigeon Forge area) side, both are breathtakingly beautiful areas. As an aside, it makes me sad how many people I see online (not here necessarily) that seem to be rooting for the states opening up to falter and have a second wave. It's a sickening attitude. I'd like to believe that the vast majority of people are not that awful and I'm going to chalk it up to the fact that the fringe wackos are the ones that tend to yell the loudest on social media and such.

If you saw it on TV then you probably missed out on some high quality nudity. Zardoz was like some bizarre fever dream. I can only imagine that A LOT of drugs were involved in the making of that movie, though likely not nearly as much as the amount of drugs that fueled Cats.