majestic

I watched the new Indina Jones movie, and to my big surprise, it did not suck completely. It was too long for its own good and conveniently dropped a plot point near the end to get it over with, but otherwise I was never bored enough to pick the film apart. Which is as good as it gets in this day and age. Guess following Crystal Skull helped. That turd would make rotten bread look good next to it.

Yep. I walked over and talked to it, then trampled it to death. Actually the game didn't even give me a choice, it just happened. Not having Wyll in my party at the moment, and I usually do all the talking with my PC.

No, it did nothing of the sort. The narrating lady even alled it the most adorable creature I've seen. I could tell Lae'zel was really impressed by it too, she said she'd call me if she's ever beset by rodents. Or something to that effect, anyway. I had similar problems with some of the choices in Planescape: Torment when I did an evil playthrough. Noticing the "drunk" prostitute trying to pickpocket you, then exorting money while she's stammering an apology and finally snapping her neck anyway felt pretty bad. Not sure yet how I want to play my character, but so far I've lied to send some weirdoes to their death, but also made a bunch of children happy. Things progress really slowly though. Constantly walking around checking every nook and cranny and reloading dialogues several times just to see what happens. No idea how large the game area is, but it'll take me a long while to get through the game even once.

Kicked a squirrel to death for no reason. Game was worth the price of admission just for that.

We should rename this thread to "Random tech njuus" or something. Steve put out a piece on LMG's quality standards and business ethics: LMG's channels are the only ones I have blocked on YouTube. I didn't even block Sargon of Akkad or The Critical Drinker, which both are Grade A All-Around Idiots...

More fun with CPU vulnerabilities: AMD: Zenbleed, Inception Intel: Downfall Downfall affects 6th to 11th gen CPUs. Zenbleed affects Ryzen CPUs up to and including Zen 2 while Inception is possible on all Zen based CPUs. The Downfall patch seems to reduce performance on some applications, particularily those heavily optimized for Intel systems (including Intel's own software and libraries). Future software patches may or may not alleviate some of the performance loss*. Updates should be out by now, except for Zenbleed, which will be patched later this year. If you happen to run a datacenter go and install the updates. If not, then you're probably good, unlike with Spectre/Wraith a couple of years ago, as there is - as of posting this, anyway - no proof that anyof these exploits could be possible through JavaScript. The Downfall exploit is based on the AVX-2/AVX-512 GATHER instruction, so researches think there is a possibility that a vulnerability like it could also exist in Ryzen CPUs. *Performance loss is worst with software making extensive use of AVX-512. OSPRay Studio from Intel suffers the currently greates known performance loss at up to 40% increased render times. Other applications are unlikely to suffer as much, due to not being this aggressively optimized.

I don't have performance issues at all, no slowdowns or bad load times. Just random CPU spikes causing the fans to spin up noticably. Making scripts and letting battles play out mostly on their own with only making a couple of impactful decisions here and there was the only sensible way to play DA:O, regardless of whether one liked the camera controls/perspective or not. The game's combat is nothing but frustrating otherwise. Indeed, and don't forget to dig up the mounds of dirt and whatnot.

Uh, right. So first impressions: Larian jus can't make exploration not feel weird for me. I have to zoom in all the way and invert the Q/E default camera controls to make it work... somehow. By pretending that I'm playing a third person game where walking forward is boud to the left mouse button. Sigh. The game, for no apparent reason, has severe spikes in CPU load. I suppose that is what was mentioned as poor performance in this thread. It only lasts a second or two, with the annoying effect of making my case and radiator fans spin at maximum for all but two seconds. That's pretty much all for now. Went Dark Urge, obviously - who wouldn't. But... it is good to see the tried and tue cRGP approach: we're on a really urgent main quest, but also spelunking through dungeons. Because why not. Not like you're literally being consumed from the inside at the start of the game, right?

Funny semi there. Inmates vs. overseers.

Well, with the D4 season almost finished for me (just need to kill one more world boss to get the final season journey rewards), I'll be joining you guys soon.

I never said I was reasonable. It is ridiculous to still be annoyed by all the time I lost supporting cheap prebuilts with AMD's wonderful Super Socket 7 (which is now a quarter century in the past), a platform where what passed as quality mainboards were unstable and buggy at the best of times, never mind the OEM trash. Bonus points when they came with an ATI Rage graphics card. Combine that with Windows 98, and you have a recipe for disaster. Particularily for work computers with special requirements. Was at least once a week I came home from school at 7pm only to be greeted by "I couldn't access <something or another, more often than not the small PBX system through the on board serial port>, can we go check now?" or "My <friend/collegue/business partner/guy I need a favor from has problems playing games, can we go check now?" *sigh*

Had a hearty laugh at Diablo 4's patch notes. Okay then, so these were sort of annoying. Not as annoying as Stormbane's Wrath and Lightning Storm, but it will somewhat reduce my salvaging of sigils. Same patch notes, down a ways: Okay. Why not fix some bugs related to a nightmare dungeon affix that is dropped with the same patch. Patch notes also claim that the Fury of Fate quest is fixed. Yay. So, maybe I can finally finish it, right? Yeah, no. Still bugged out.

Well, regardless of the impressive work, here's the rub: If you buy a prebuilt with a 4090, then... don't manhandle it during transport. Or have an actual shipping company deliver it to you. If they break something during shipping, they're responsible for the damage and have to pay for replacements, at least here in commie Yurop. Edit: With how large coolers have become, mounting on consumer grade hardware should be redesigned. The problem's not just with the 4090, although the enormous size makes it more susceptible to this type of damage. You can get broken PCBs or ripped pads on the larger AMD cards as well (the channel has a 6950 XT repair too), and on 30-series cards too.

Congratulations. ^^

Well, now you made me tumble down memory lane: Oh look, it is also a cover. Sort of. Then there's an actual full cover of the Ultravox Classic that I have lying around here: Of course, there's also the Edguy cover: And for no other particular reason than that it fits with the 80ies vibe even though it is not an 80ies track, here's Edguy's Vain Glory Opera. Can someone just invent a time machine so I can just f*** off to the 90ies?

In an unmodded base game, transmutation effects stack even though they should not. If you cast Reduce Person on a Halfling before casting Frightful Aspect on them, you can put them on enlarged mounts other than horses, so you could try Beast Rider for some more fun setups. Thank me later.

Maybe, but I was thinking about a mounted mercenary with ideal stats using Smite and Mark of Justice to charge for insane damage. Sohei if you want Flurry, Gendarme if not. Well, 17 levels is a bit late, so when that Flurry comes in, it is barely necessary any more. Still can do it with a regular Paladin, of course. But there's a whole lot of overlap with other available divine magic anyway.

That depends. If you run a mercenary, Divine Troth can be worth it, as long as you do something else with the nine leftover levels. As a main character?

As evidenced by Björk. Kidding... mostly. Anyway, sine y'all enjoyed the last Scooter cover so much, here's one I'd argue is even worse:

Yeah, well, I am highly biased, and I'd reckon there are a lot of early AM5 adopters who have no issue whatsoever - the very vast majority, even, but there certainly seem to be issues more often on AM5 than on LGA 1700. Apples and oranges, AM5 is fairly new and will receive updates through 2026 (if AMD sticks to what they've said, that is - that documetary Gamers Nexus made had an interview where an engineer implied supporting AM4 for five years was not their wish, but an economic necessity), and LGA 1700 is on its way out. Yeah, and to be fair, defects happen on any platform and with any manufacturer, and this one is probably not related to AM5 teething issues (like, dunno, needing five minutes to POST at times). Wait, that reminds me, @teknoman2 do you really not get into the BIOS at all, or does it just not POST afterwards? Because that can take some time, and with entry level boards having no debug seven segment displays and, well, mostly useless debug LEDs, you might just need to leave the system until it is done memory training. Because... well, because.

MSI's support hell is becoming legendary. So, you can't access the BIOS at all? You press DEL and nothing happens, or if you set something up nothing works afterwards? #3: Don't buy into a first generation AMD platform if you don't want to deal with the hassle. Wait for the second generation of mainboards. Chances are that even if you could access your BIOS, something with the memory wouldn't work anyway. Not necessary to mention, I guess, but as long as you're on factory defaults, the your system is gimped to a point where it isn't even funny. You should definitely not choose to live with it.

Actually, that might be a good reason. To make loot memorable it does not even have to be particularily great, it just needs to appear impressive to the player*. Baldur's Gate 2 is full of beloved items with questionable effectiveness, like all those weapons with vorpal effects. The Ravager was pretty well received from what I remember from the Interplay forums, for its 10% instant kill effect with no saving throw. The math says the effect is not worth it, because the enemies that it can kill in Throne of Bhaal are also going to die within a combat round whether the effect happens or not. It does have a nice animation and it sounds impressive, and the Ravager is not a bad weapon by any means, but if you want to get the most out of a vorpal weapon, the Silver Sword is certainly going to instantly kill enemies more often (although outside of a few outliers, namely bosses Bioware forgot ot make immune to instant death effects, the same reasoning still applies, it is much less effective in reality than it appears on paper, but instantly killing enemies is kewl, and it is hard to argue against kewl). The inverse can also be seen in Baldur's Gate 2, with items like the Mace of Disruption, which does not sound spectacular at all due to being called Mace of Disruption +1/+2, but it carries a hidden +3 before and a +5 enchantment after the upgrade, making it a quite readily available weapon that works against any of the plentiful undead enemies in the game. Some of Deadfire's loot maybe falls into that category, it works well, is even overpowered when applied properly, but it does not appear too impressive at a first glance. Edit: Some of the items of the Collector's Edition vendor have the same problem. The Sling of Everard is a rather useful tool if one wants to explore very early battles against highly powerful undead enemies, and the Defender of Easthaven is arguably a better shield than any, uhm, actual shield in the game. Hard to know without in-depth knowledge of how the game and the items work. *Well, there's the other option, loot that is funny or has a unique effect that lingers for a long time, who has played Baldur's Gate and does not remember the cursed girdle from the very beginning? Not only did you have to fight a dangerous and large ogre to get it, it also turned out to be totally worthless. Probably plenty of players who just put it on without identifying it. I sure did. That said, the character that put the girlde on was a Fighter/Mage/Thief wielding halberds, arguably the very thing that Obsidian tried to prevent with Pillars of Eternity and Deadfire. Halberds are a terrible choice for weapons in Baldur's Gate 1. Well, how was I to know that starting out?

Well, guess that joke was funnier in my head, dunno, have you watched any of the videos? He just looks like he moved in next to Homer, with a dash of an Albert Einstein vibe. Eh.

My biggest takeaways: Chris Parker seems like a genuinely great person, Josh turned into Ned Flanders and YouTube comments are terrible. Uhm, scratch the last one, already knew that.