majestic

Bruno is in Deadfire?

Clint continues to be funny: "The Eastern Green Mamba has the mildest venom of any mamba. Which is a bit like being called 'the least dangerous hand grenade'."

If the current rumors are true (and the 14700K leaks suggest that they probably are), Intel is going to give the i3-13400 six performance cores. Single core uplift doesn't look good, so the new i7 and i9 are going to be largely uninteresting. The real killer is going to be the 14600k with eight performance cores. Depends on the pricing of course, but the 13600k is already really good value, if the 14600k is in the same pricing ballbark it's going to kill, and the 14100 is going to be hard to beat as a budget option - can still slap the thing on a cheap ass DDR4 board, after all. Until Ryzen 8000 and the inevitable 7000 price drop, at least.

If you have more than one 4K display, then it does. Suck your power, that is. AMD's latest "fix" to the idle power draw issue made it worse by 10%. Some things will never change. Should be fine with a single monitor setup nowadays though. But don't worry, actually lowered idle power draw, FSR 3.0 and HYPR-RX are just around the corner. Like Star Citizen, or Half Life 3. *snark* Other than that, the XTX is an RTX 4080 with more rasterization but less raytracing performance - for cheaper. Can't really go wrong with it, unless you have an AMD allergy like I do.

But rises again harder and stronger.

I have not kept up with Iron Maiden since Brave New World, which I now realize was 23 years ago, but it really is sad to hear that they are growing too old too keep up with their music. My personal favorite, in terms of (power) metal, Blind Guardian, should be safe for a while yet. They are a tad younger, but also creeping up on sixty by now. As for Peter Cornelius, his arrangements are not the most complex, so unless he eventually develops arthritis like Ritchie Blackmoore, he will probably be good enough to keep playing for a while yet. His voice is the bigger problem, he always had lung problems and even as a young man and had to undergo long bouts of therapy during his career as part of the German Hair ensemble - and that was before he became a heavy smoker. He also had a bout of burn out where his doctor prescribed him, to quote, "any- and everything he could without risking the loss of his approbation (German medical license)", which lead to an episode of paranoia and weird interviews about conspiracy theories. At least he is still alive, which cannot be said for some other local artists that I enjoyed who began their carreers in the late seventies. A heavy smoker who died of lung cancer back in 2007 and one who died of a heroine overdose in his early thirties. Then there are the others ruined by alcohol, hollow shells of their former selves. I generally do not post any of their music here because it does not make much sense to do so: they are and were all gifted songwriters, but there is barely any appeal for anyone who does not understand the language, and even then, well, one would need a certain cultural understanding to truly appreciate the lyrics*. The music of Peter Cornelius is somewhat different, like I said, it is maybe possible to enjoy his music even without understanding a word. The guy who died of an overdose could have had a pretty good carreer, even internationally. Alas. *In case anyone's interested. Put in spoiler tags as this post is long enough already.

I originally wanted to comment on the performance and how a certain, say, lifestyle, combined with age can have a detrimental effect on one's ability to perform on stage, but on the other hand, the guy was 71 at the time, so cutting some slack seems in order. Plus, it is still a pretty good song (potentially even if one does not understand the lyrics).

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, season two, episode two. We do have an idiom that literally translates to "even a blind chicken sometimes finds some grain", the meaning of which should be clear and which applies rather aptly to this episode, because this was the best Star Trek episode of nuTrek by a very fair margin. Never had to pause, never facepalmed and never felt like venting. If I had to name something negative, it was that the episode was derivative. The complaint that the episode plot has been done before is rather minor considering that it made good use of all the characters and their backgrounds, and was thankfully almost completely free of the jovial teenage crew dialogue that I despise so much about this series. It even took current social issues and highlighted them without being obnoxious about them, and even though they prominently feature the Federation, it does so while staying well within the Star Trek canon. Dare I say it, this was not just a good episode of Strange New Worlds, nay, it was a good Star Trek episode. Good sci-fi. Color me orange and call me sunkist, never thought I would ever say that about anything called Star Trek after 2009. Guess all it took was writing a writer who worked on Once Upon A Time, of all things. Now make her write all the other episodes too.

That usually ends up being a death sentence for me - he generally only spawns whenever I run nightmare dungeons and enemies are 15+ levels higher. Never saw him in a regular dungeon. Sigh.

Hey, my Gedonia character is at maximum level, kills even the most frightening enemies in seconds and has still yet to complete the main quest in the second zone.

Speaking of Diablo 4, while Blizzard introduced a debuff on overlevelled players in PVP areas, it does not work properly. The logical conclusion: high level players ganking lowbies on lower difficulties. For anyone who does not know, PVP in D4 consists of playing in a PVP area, collecting Seeds of Hatred that are purified into Red Dust (the PVP currency) in an event that is broadcast through the zone and marked on the map. Just spent an hour protecting others from gankers. The only problem is that years of playing ARPGs conditioned players to click on anything with a red health bar, so there was some unfortunate collateral damage. I doubt it is ever not going to be funny to see Bully McAssface explode, spilling all their ill gotten seeds on the ground.

I have one just for you:

Well, since posting the cover fun was such a hit that it got mentioned, here's another one: 90ies original: Aughties cover: Meme:

I was awash with joy when I found out today that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season two began airing last week, and I am currently enjoying episode one. Episode two is going to drop tomorrow, I think. I remain hopeful that everything will keep being as great as the first ten minutes of the first episode. I am positively ecstatic. So much that I had to pause after the cold opening to post about it. Helpful summary of the first ten minutes: As I am unable to properly express my feelings, I will just let Beethoven speak for me:

Got my car back, all nice and shiny. Well, sort of shiny, lots of pollen in the air.

It was the first time Takeo and Toshio drive through the fields (if I recall correctly). It was pure magic, and the moment the film really clicked for me. Edit: Of course, the ending manages to be even better.

Music evolution in three videos. 80ies original: 2020ies cover: Internet Meme:

D4 has a hilarious bug when trying to co-op nightmare dungeons. Players in the same party do not get into the same instances, and one ends up losing the sigil, or if by any luck you end up in the same instance after leaving and going back in, it does not work properly and the glyph experience cannot be assigned. Great, like the one and only thing that justifies the always-on multiplayer mode of the game does not work properly. I was pretty pleased with the server performance so far, not counting the recent lagging and outages, but this is ridiculous.

They're like 450€ here. 600+ not long too ago. Sure, € price includes VAT, but still...

Well, one thing's for sure, they're not going to be the apex of efficiency or computing power. They're most likely going to be better value than the RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 4070, but good value? Eh. What did you pay for the 6750 XT?

Looks like I'll be going out to eat on Saturday or Sunday and have a steak tartare in honor of this thread.

I get it, y'all like your steaks well done.

How are you all done with the campaign already? It takes ages to clear each area, find everything, and move on.