majestic

As a grumpy early adopter I still have to chuckle about the idea that AI killed the worthwhile internet that consists of Fecesbook* and the hellspawn that crawled out of the underworld in its wake. People glorify a time period where the internet was already dead because corporate interests had taken over, i.e. some supposed golden age between 2010 and 2020. The actual golden age of the internet died at the turn of the millennium** - if not even earlier. Still, good video, as usual. Kyle makes good stuff most of the time. *The actual progenitor is probably MySpace, but nobody remembers that nowadays. **The YouTube microcosm is a little different as it took a while for hardware and users to catch up (making videos is much more time consuming and resource intensive), but the downward slope started when Google turned into the Umbrella Corporation, and generative AI making videos is just the nail in the coffin.

Well, aren't you Republicans happy that you made Biden immune to save your own candidate from having to deal with the fallout of his indictments?

Eh, there's no way I could get 10Gb here even if the ISP would offer it. We were one of the few households that were asked to participate in our ISP's pilot project, and I am fairly certain we've reached the limits of the cables laid back in the 80ies for TV. Networking CPU overhead is a concern for datacenters and speeds beyond 100Gb, which is why vendors have been pushing out smarkt networking solutions with ARM SoCs that handle everything related to networking, freeing up significant CPU resoures. Not sure how much that woud apply to a 10Gb connection at home, but you could always try to go for one of those cards. They just cost an arm and a leg.

ISP seems to have upgraded my bandwidth for free. What a novelty, instead of everything becoming worse and more expensive all the time.

Biden seems to be resolved to run for election regardless of all calls to step aside. Senile obstinancy (Ruth Bader Ginsburg and now Biden refusing to step aside) and a terrible decision by Obama (indirectly letting the Republicans nominate one more SCOTUS justice) are coalescing into a perfect storm that might just end with Trump becoming Cyrus the Great in more than the fanatsy of evangelical lunatics, and half of the US is cheering it on.

That's probably what Wendell was talking about, also regarding his sample size and how he got the information. It's an indie dev allegedly experiencing problems with every single one of their CPUs in every area of use. Many YouTubers, including GamersNexus, use 13/14900K based systems for video editing and rendering have done so for years now. Whatever is going on at Alderon's can't affect all CPUs, even Wendell's analysis of the data suggest 50% - which is insane enough. 's a bold statement that could bring Intel's litigation hammer down on them, although if even half of what they describe is true it is understandable. It could, however, affect all CPUs shipped to them assuming they buy from the same supplier (which is a reasonable assumption, even for smaller companies) and they got a batch with a manufacturing defect. Anyway, from that statement: Well, it would make sense that 100% of all affected CPUs fail. That wording is very unfortunate.

Wendell: "It's weird, if there really would be a 50% failure rate, people would be climbing the walls." Intermittent issues with no rhyme or reason and no obvious connections and no microcode updates from Intel as a fix. The only reasonable* explanation for that behavior is a manufacturing defect leading to silicon degredation under load, and the lack of more widespread outrage over failing CPUs in game servers might point to it being localized. Wouldn't be surprised if the affected CPUs come from the same fab (maybe even the same lithography machine). 50% of all CPUs going belly up would be noticable, and not even Intel could keep a lid on that. Intel should be able to trace the issue with batch numbers and shipping manifests. The caveat here being that this is all based on Wendell looking through crash dumps and server logs. Wendell mentions that in the video, that is sample size is not exactly fantastic. *Well, there's the explanation that Intel is selling unstable bins for the heck of it, but that seems unlikely, as Intel cannot afford to alienate server providers, and the CPUs pass checks when first activated and then eventually degrade under load. I could see management ordering laxer binning standards for the consumer market, but not for CPUs shipped to companies. Too much at stake.

Brian Tanner died. He was only 46, a little older than I am now.

The King Kong Pro 2 comes with rebindable controls, and it has the regular Nintendo layout. It costs a bit more than 50$, but it's not impossible. Unless you mean your JoyCons, in that case, uh, yeah, you would not really be able to play games requiring precise intputs with those.

's an authentic BruceVC post all right.

Yes. You can probably make that a yes for any third person action (adventure/rpg) game with soulslike in its description. Unless you're religiously opposed to gamepads I really recommend finding out whether you like the hand and finger breaking PS-style controllers or the proper ones, and picking one up you like. Some of them can be a bit pricey, but there's plenty of good ones that won't cost you an arm and a leg.

Yeah, sorry, for a moment I forgot who I am replying to. I'll just show myself out.

Not only did you reply in earnest to a bot spam post, you also somehow missed @Wormerine's link to the video literally called:

I wanted to play Still Wakes the Deep. Alas: It's close to midnight anyway, probably better to not try a horror game shortly before trying to sleep. Thanks Microsoft, I guess.

You guys really ought to watch homberguy's Fallout 3 video, if only to find out whether or not Tommy Tallarico made all the music and sounds for it.

If we stop being outraged by the things Trump says we let him shift what acceptable discourse is, and that is not a good idea. We can see that with the Austrian NSDAP offshoot, the FPÖ, where Herbert Kickl has been calling himself Volkskanzler for a year now. Their constant and unabashed Nazi-inspired discourse has pushed what is accaptable without outrage to the point where they can reuse Nazi terminology with nobody batting an eyelash.

Yes, Trump's mental state is mostly okay. Of course. He is a stable genius after all. The most brilliant mind of the century. Ah, what am I talking about, he's the greatest thinker of the modern age. That half of the US population thinks that this moron with the intelligence of a lobotomized chimpanzee represents and embodies them is a scathing indictment of the US education system.

There, I answered your question. Nevertheless, you are right, that was a disaster and the Democrats should nominate someone else, like, yesterday. What's Bernie doing these days?

Anyway, double post time. Just watched episode 5 of The Boys, season 4. Flying the sheep is the new jumping the shark.

*sigh*

Well, it reads The Acolyte - re:View, but it is a little like part one of the Star Wars Holiday Special re:View. They talk about everything else but The Acolyte. Well, almost. They talk about the show for 10 minutes or so. Speaking of The Acoltye, the show continues to be mostly uninteresting, flat and boring (and Qimir had better turn out to be the titular Acolyte, if he's really Mae's master then the entire creative team needs to be detained). Mike and Rich got it right, the show is pretty bland mostly because 90% of the characters are cardboard cutouts, and it would not change a bit even if all the actors were white heterosexual men. They also really have a point in critics being utterly unhelpful by giving all these shows and movies a pass or even praising them for nothing but being inclusive, even if they are complete garbage, something I've complained about for a while now. It is actively hurting their cause. The incels in the comments are pretty funny though, calling them paid Disney shills. Must have been a rough year for them, first they finally realize The Boys is satire and Homelander isn't a misunderstood hero but the villain, and then they have to watch Mike and Rich making fun of them.

The Goblet of Fire film was tonally different in many ways too, like the angry Dumbledore while book Dumbledore was always friendly and supportive. Not that I would have known, having experienced it the other way around, but he was noticably acting out of character with no explanation. Could have been the best, the basis was there. Whacky, fun characters, a school ball, visiting students from different schools. I don't know if some parts of the novels were written with a movie adaptation in mind, but what I recall having read is that Rowling specifically adapted some parts of the movies for her later books, like Alan Rickman's performance of Snape influencing how she wrote and imagined the character. The first movie came out after the Goblet of Fire book, and while negotiations for the rights to the books might have happened significantly earlier, dunno - well maybe Rowling thought she could get a movie adaptation after the runaway success of the Philosopher's Sorcerer's Stone, but that just complicates things unnecessarily. She's just not that good of a writer, and I suspect that, given the success of the books and films, her audience was not overly interested in class hijinks. What is somewhat noticable is that plot elements keep popping up without much prior notice. I have honestly no ideas how much of the overarching story she had in mind while writing the early entries, but given how the series just keeps coming up with elements that should have always been a part of the universe but just never came up before, it cannot have been a whole lot. If I would want to be especially snarky it was fairly obvious that she didn't even have an idea how to finish the first book, and Quill just defeated himself by touching Harry. Because love. Okay, that is probably something specific to watching the film/reading the book as an adult, but that's a major asspull that never sat right with me. Then there are the titular Deathly Hallows, retconning Harry's cloak and Dumbledore's wand into a group of three items that are only necessary so that Voldemort can inadvertently destroy the one Horcrux he did not intend to make without actually having Harry die in his final confrontation. Not that Chamber of Secrets is free of asspulls, there is enough setup to explain how Harry survives his poisoning, and that the Sword of Gryffindor is enchanted to help brave Gryffindors in times of dire need, but there's zero indication that the Sorting Hat can just act as dimensional portal. Whee, enough of that before Hurlshot says I'm overthinking a silly fun fantasy series with magic (which is probably not wrong), but Chamber of Secrets is a good example that if everything else is good enough, a little plot hole or deus ex machina does not hurt one's enjoyment. I was looking forward to reading The Order of the Phoenix because I expected it to explain the film and fill in gaps - what I got was a novel that I actively had to force myself through reading at times. It was easily the worst of the books, and inexplicably the one with the most pages, with a lot of them spent on going nowhere at all while Harry mopes around enough to get Gary Oldman killed. I guess I should really watch the film again after reading the book, it might really change my view of it.

Not different, just greatly expanded, including various forms of fun torture and mental conditioning. Probably should have said expanded tragic backstory. The scene itself is great because Homelander can just chew the scenery like @PK htiw klaw eriF said (supplemented by great performances and direction for everyone involved). There's a certain irony in that Homelander's upbringing was designed to implement a certain level of control over what they perceived to be a monster, only to create the monster they were afraid of in the process. Now don't get me wrong, it's a fine idea, but it really feels out of place in the fourth season. It is something that should have come up after Homelander just lets everyone on the plane die in the first season, and then use Becca and his son as the focal point of his spiralling out of Vought's control - which is something that worked well enough without the expanded backstory anyway. As it stands, it is a good scene in a really sloppy episode, and that's just the best way to describe episode four as a whole, and perhaps some elements that led up to it. Sloppy. The season suffers from a similar problem as Star Trek: Picard's first season. The authors wanted to make it salient to <current year issue> just a little bit too much. While everything about and with Firecracker (who is basically an amalgamation of RageAfterStorm and a variety of similar alt-right female YouTubers) is perfectly salient, it also introduces a new element that needs time and attention in a season that should primarily focus on wrapping the story up. It clearly takes away time the creative team would have needed to come up with more organic ways to move the plot where they want it to go.

The Boys, season four, episode four: We're On A Road To Nowhere (and going pretty hard!) The episode certainly was a banger, but not in the good way. The plot of the episode was a disjointed mess that looks like they let the creative team of Star Trek: Into Darkness write four episodes, film them without second takes and then edit them into one episode's worth of runtime. Things happen with no prior setup, a lot of things just happen off-screen that would have been much better if actually shown and characters make decisions because the plot demands it, not because they make sense, the worst of which was Butcher getting Frenchie to do something instead of doing it himself, which he had ample of time and opportunity to do while standing right next to the objective (before going back to Frenchie) because one of the plot points of the episode needs Frenchie to be hurt by a supe. So, uhm, yeah. There's also this wholly unnecessary attempt at giving Homelander a tragic backstory to explain why he's so messed up. It was still fun to watch if only for the performance of the cast, but it sure is beginning to drift into the territory where my suspension of disbelief is begining to come apart at the seams, not just having a few frayed edges (like, well, the ultimate problem the series had ever since the end of season one, i.e. why doesn't Homelander just kill everyone; for which there actually is an explanation attempt in this episode).