majestic

And somehow Palpatine SPECTRE/Meltdown returned. https://comsec.ethz.ch/research/microarch/branch-privilege-injection/ Already fixed by a microcode update though, but for some reason people are talking about an unfixable exploit. Not that it matters all that much, really, as it was back when the original exploits came out, this is - at best - only a problem for cloud computing services with shared CPUs where attackers could gather data from whatever else is running on the same CPU (from other users), for anyone else to be affected an attacker would need direct access to your system, and at that point you're already cooked beyond what these exploits could possibly do to you. Still, the concept is pretty interesting, they're basically tricking speculative execution into, uhm, expecting that it will run an exploit with priviledge violation and then caching the results through branch prediction race conditions, bringing back a way to exploit Meltdown.

A long, long time ago in a... uhm, just a long time ago I bought a game in early access called Between the Stars because it looked like it could scratch an itch that I had for a while. The game was kinda really, like, really really unfinished and I shelved it until release. The clock ticked, the Earth turned, and turned, and turned, and weeks turned to years, and back in 2022 I checked to see if any more work was done on the game - and lo! - nope. Read a bit on forums here and there and most posters seemed to agree that the game's been abandoned. I was just going through my library and noticed that it actually had a proper release last year. Well color me orange and call me Sunkist, looks like I'll be playing the game now. Reviews say that it's still plenty janky, but as long as it actually works it's going to be fine, I guess.

No, there just weren't enough, at least not in the state the game launched in. With the combat bugs mostly fixed I can't see myself replaying the game. Looking for ways to break the combat more and more was fun. Playing those encounters in the way they were intended?

Setup and reveal mostly taken from the Outer Limits Remake episode Tempests, so of course it was good. Anything Outer Limits is good.

Done with the Diablo 4 season. As far as I am concerned Blizzard's on probation now. Another season like that and I'll quit playing. Playing the lair bosses in Torment IV was decidedly unfun, even with a full meta build's worth of damage. Making all the mechanics more or less one-shot you in a boss fight is not a great idea when the boss mechanics were never designed to be completely unavoidable, are hard to see and can layer on top of each other. Switched to the sorcerer meta build to top the season off because with a sorcerer at least you get teleport and a four second invulnerability negating the most troublesome of mechanics. I don't know, perhaps these problems existed in the past season too and were just avoided by being able to pop bosses in half a second. I don't really mind the difficulty spike, but the bosses should be redesigned with better mechanics. At least Blizzard's finally fixed the Varashan builds.

Oh, look, we won the ESC. Huh. Well, now I can't complain about the jury votes any more (like when they messed up the winners for 2023 and 2024 ). Video may or may not be region locked for you.

You know, if you're playing roguelike mode then you'll be looking for the final floor for a, uhm, long time.

'S always interesting to see hot dogs in other places, because what is sold as hot dog here in Austria is similar, yet different. If you buy a hot dog at a traditional Würstelstand, you'll get a french baguette style bread with one of the ends cut off, then a hole is punched down the middle, which is then filled with condiments (various mustards, hot sauce, ketchup) and a sausage of your choice - frankfurter for kids, adults usually get grilled käsekrainer or bratwurst. No pickles or any other ingredient added. Wouldn't fit in the hole in the baguette anyway. There are dishes more similar to traditional American hot dogs, but they're not called hot dogs. One of them is the Bosna, which is made with bratwurst, onions and a curry powder & mustard mixture. Still, everything's inferior to deep fried debrecener sausages in lángos dough, painted with garlic oil. Might as well go for something that burns your mouth and clog your arteries while eating.

Not sure Trump and Peter Navarro deserve all the credit here, this was Stephen Miran's idea, incompetently implemented. The two certainly deserve all the credit for botching it, but it was someone else's dream of changing the entire world's financial and trading system by targeted tarrifs and subtle policy changes in four years. That, and the insane idea that Trump understands the words subtle and targeted.

The post itself is also edited, which I haven't seen so far. 's all a bit of a MYSTARY.

I necro 10 year old threads with AI-generated texts. It's the popular thing right now.

I switched to a Necromancer build. I'm not doing extended Diablo IV boss fights on an Earthquake Barb, they have the same problem as Darkness Necromancers at launch. The earthquakes just layer over every damage zone indicator on the ground. Even at full health with all restistances and armor maxed, with full fortification and barrier, most of the mechanics on Torment IV all but one-shot you. EQ Barb worked wonderfully in season 7 when every boss just died in four seconds making the mechanics irrelevant, but this is so... Blizzard. Also, like, Bone Spear Necro might actually be a bit OP. I reached Torment III without a single ancestral item equipped. Almost made it to Torment IV, but the lack of defensive stats on my gear made it impossible* to finish the Torment IV unlocking pit in time. *Maybe not impossible per se, if you get lucky with the elite pack spawns it might even work, but I just got swarms of teleporter lightning mobs. They don't get along with 0 lightning resistance.

The concerns around Kaspersky Anti-Virus stem largely from geopolitical tensions and allegations rather than publicly proven technical backdoors. While there's no conclusive public evidence that Kaspersky is malicious, the risk is geopolitical and strategic - primarily due to its Russian origin and deep access to systems. For high-security or government use, it's generally advised to avoid Kaspersky; for average users, it's a risk trade-off. For most users, Windows Defender (now called Microsoft Defender Antivirus) is actually a very solid, low-risk choice.

I'm impressed. That is a worthy entry.

Well, Laura Loomer doesn't like him too much, so... guess he's at least all right.

It's silly - on the one hand, we have film studios doing remasters with excessive noise recuction to remove film grain, and on the other hand we have game developers with nothing better to do than to add film grain and motion blur options to their games. The games have the advantage here though. I just turn both options off.

India launches missiles at Pakistan Nice. Here's a 2019 paper about the consequences of a potential nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan in 2025.

Bosses on Torment IV sure have a lot of health. Which means having to deal with their mechanics, which in turn means playing an earthquake based barbarian is slightly annoying. The earthquakes your character spawns every few steps makes it very hard to see what is going on. Well, I have a couple of pieces of gear left that could be better and more paragon levels to grind out (and an item to get that randomly doubles earthquake damage), hopefully that'll be enough of a boost in damage to cut down on the boss fight lengths.

Nice, haven't really read the article on Wikipedia, just linked to it. Guess I'll go check TN1's version out at some point.

Once upon a time when the first Star Wars DVD boxed sets were released, there was one that included a laserdisc transfer of the original, non-special edition, films on DVD. I still have those here. The biggest problem nowadays is that they are simple transfers of the laserdic version. Meaning they're a non-anamorphic 4 by 3 nightmare which was fine enough way back when they came out, but on modern TVs the watching experience is not, well, that good. If you're not too queasy about stepping into a legally grey area that probably blurs the lines of fair use, there's always Harmy's Despecialized Edition. A fan project that proves Lucas' assertion that the originals cannot be transferred to modern media because the reels no longer exist in good enough condition a lie.

Yeah, there goes my theory of the even group consistently making better seasons, the grind for the new season's mechanics is pretty annoying - although the season's mechanics are pretty fun. I am also not really fond of the Lair Boss rework. It was fine not having to deal with the boss mechanics at all beacuse you could kill them in half a second even on the highest difficulty. Lilith aside for which Blizzard - after season two's ball lightning fiasco - linked her death with following through her entire second phase spiel even at 0 hit points. Was it really necessary to make Duriel invincible during his phase transitions so he can't skip them any more? Worst offender by far is the Harbinger of Hatred. Not only is the boss fight not interesting, it also takes ages. It was fine as a final battle at the end of the expansion's campaign, but as a farmable fight you have to do for the season? Yeah, can we skip the portal phases please? They also spent a lot of effort on the new season cosmetics "battle pass" screen and how it works, making everything much slower and less convenient to access - and greatly reduced the free premium currency you could get from them. So far I could make do with the free battle pass from buying the game and the expansion and the free plantinum for doing the silly thing and preordering, but this season marks the end of that. Well, there goes one of the bigger motivations to keep playing the seasons. Sure there's still the journey titles and all, but I barely ever turn on titles for my characters anyway. The armor sets made for some nice variety though. Ah, alas, yeah, not going to buy the season passes. The new "premium" pass just gives you the cosmetic armor you really want without grinding for it, but it costs a ludicrous 25€. In hindsight, I guess it was pretty silly to assume that Microsoft taking over ActiBlizz would change things for the better when it comes to fleecing their customer base with microtransactions. At least the season journey no longer has forced party play in it. Instead, it is much more gimmicky, what with forcing players to battle bosses on Torment IV with boss powers their builds potentially can't even make use of. Not sure how that'll go, I'm only on Torment III by now. At least Whirlwind Barbarian is viable this season, there' something viscerally statisfying about being a whirlwind of death and destruction in Diablo.

The finished product itself? Yes. However, this does not apply to the unspecified imported resources used to produce the toilet paper, unless they are also exempt from the tariffs. Unless one or more companies in the supply chain accept smaller profit margins (if such a thing is even possible, as large retailers squeeze manufacturers as hard as possible), a rise in prices of imported base materials is still going to affect the price of the toilet paper. It is a problem that companies like CyberPowerPC are facing. They build their computers in the US, but all the components come China in some way. Take mainboards for instance, even if a company like ASRock would build a manufacturing plant for mainboards in the US, modern mainboards consist of hundreds (if not thousands) of parts, almost none of which are manufactured in the United States. They'd be looking at importing all the components (which are tariffed), while also incurring increased transportation*, energy and labor costs, making the finished product potentially more expensive than just having it still manufactured in China and paying the tariff on the finished product when selling in the US. Global supply chains have become too complex to be easily directed by blanket tariffs. Now, it might be that Trump really believes this will work and usher in new prosperity for American workers (which is funny, given the US' employment rate of roughly 4% - even if all those manufacturing plants would magically appear over night there'd not be enough free labor in the US to staff them), insofar as Trump seems to live in his own make belief world, even more so than during his last term. It might be that he was really just trying to stuff his and his advisor's pockets full of cash with insider trading. Stephen Miran might have wanted to lower the US' debt burden by causing a surge in US bond prices, reducing effective interest rates in a year when (IIRC) 10 trillion dollars worth of bonds expire. Trump's dismal performance caused enough investors to nope out to the point where interest rates were rising, instead of falling. Either way, that is generally why you don't want children - or Orange-Utans with the mental capacity of a three year old - playing with the knobs of your country's economy. Well, generally. I'm sure the MAGA crowd is never really going to be tired of all the winning. *Transportation is also going to cost more than before and is going to be slower since the goods need to pass customs and need to wait for all the paperwork to be handled and the tariffs to be paid. You can already see this in place if you order something from Temu as the package will be held by whoever they choose as parcel distributor until the paperwork is done and the tariff paid (in this case directly by the receiver). You can opt to not pay the tariff, but that would lead to the parcel either being returned or destroyed (both on the customer's dime, obviously).

One does need eyes to see, unless they're going where Doctor Weir went.