majestic

Tech-YT-Space is all up in arms over how awesome the RX 7800 XT is going to be for it's launch MSRP of 500$. Maybe it's just my bias, but I'm not seeing it. The 7800 XT has 14% less compute units than the almost equally priced RX 6800 XT, and the general uplift in 1:1 CU configurations of RDNA3 is pretty bad when you compare the 7600 to the 6650 XT. So, basically, that leaves the 7800 XT in the same performance ballpark as the RTX 3080, the RX 6800 XT and the RTX 4070. Removing our VAT, street pricing for the RTX 4070 is roughly at 500€, and at 450€ for the RX 6800 XT. Factoring in € to $ conversion rates that makes the 7800 XT look like even worse of a deal. Never mind street pricing in the US having RX 6950s showing up at 550$ here and there. Not seeing anything to get excited about.

That should be game design 101 since the mid 90ies, but it keeps creeping back into games: if any given game system is just there to gobble up inventory space and removing the player hassle results in it no longer being considered worthwhile, it is probably not worthwhile to begin with and should be removed. That includes needing food or drink outside of survival games where it is a core mechanic (this one in particular was replaced by a much better well rested or food bonus mechanic a long, long time ago), vendors having limited gold and currency having weight, all of which this game does for no reason. Quoted for truth. That is just one giant wall of text, only in spoken form. It is somewhat impressive how much he can talk without pausing, but it is just one stream of words with such a lack of inflection and (stress) pitch that it might well be read by some text-to-speech engine. Yikes.

It's really too bad Ylvis will be forever known as the guys with that silly fox song (to the broader public, that is - their elevator pranks are pretty funny). Ah, well.

Probably for the same reason they can't do decent camera angles or make exploration be anything but a pain in the ass, or have a loot highlight key that only highlights half the loot. The first one is pretyt subjective, the other really is an issue, and yes, run down clothes in a freaking wardrobe is loot.

Just download The Force Engine for Dark Forces. It's free and doesn't look any worse than that "remaster"...

You can avoid that battle as a bard.

The game just randomly decided to reset back to default. I started the game as usual, got greeted by the EULA, went through gamma correction and had to rebind my keys. I hope it doesn't do that again, otherwise I might have to go Dark Urge on it. Lae'zel already told me she'll get what is hers at a time of her choosing. I can already see Bruno fawning over her.

Well, my murderhobo (aptly called Murderhobo) drow bard is working his way through the first part of the game, lying, cheating, intimidating and being generally obnoxious. Stepped on a squirrel, killed a wounded bird, a lame woman and caused a venomous viper to bite a child. All with that stupid grin on the face the game does. I didn't bite Gale's hand off though. Companions are useful. Lae'zel loves me, but Shadowheart can't stand me. Some cleric of Shar she is. Pfeh. Not going to lie, kind of looking forward to the acts you guys keep complaining about. Being smaller in scope and having less to do and less to explore is certainly not going to hurt my enjoyment of the game. Far from it.

The narrative in season two is a bit of a mess, but it is made up by Michael Sheen's and David Tennant's shenanigans. I just read that the season is supposed to lay the groundwork for an actual sequel to the story that Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman laid out in '89 before the book was published, so I suppose that explains a few things - the episodes are just there to explain how the characters ended up being where they are in a third season that might never get made. Ending spoilers:

People have an awful lot of problems with our four cases, never mind your six. On the other hand, you cheats have no articles, so at least there's that. In the past, whenever I heard that other languages have many more cases, like Japanese (nine) or Finnish (fifteen, if I can recall correctly), I was horrified. That was before I knew that not all languages use complex inflection rules that expand to attached ajectives and articles to indicate case, number and gender. Japanese is particularily easy (warning, bad pun ahead) as you just attach a particle to the noun and be done with it. It becomes merely a matter of knowing when to use which particle. Which can be a little tricky at times. Japanese's equivalent of the ablative case can be used to describe moving away from a certain point time, or a place, or the origin of a transfer. While you could use the case to describe that a professor gave a lecture, or that a shop opens from 10:00 or that a ship has left the harbour, you cannot use it to say that you left university in the sense of exmatriculating. The ablative, while indicating movement out of a room, only works with physically existing spaces. The particle needed to indicate movement out of metaphorical rooms can also be used to relay the information that someone left a real room. Just as long as that someone is a person. Still beats declension by a mile.

I wonder if @Gorth is allergic to pineapple too.

Shouldn't that be nema problema?

Watched the second season of Good Omens. Certainly hope they'll get to make the third season, because if not that is going to be the worst ending to a series since Eli was left all alone on the Destiny.

Standard procedure in (much of) Commie Yurop. If your car has ABS, it needs to work, and you just don't get a certification without it, and without certification you're not allowed to use your car on public roads. We're just anti-freedom like that, cars also need to have working brakes, tyres are held to a certain minimum standard and most states actually insist on you having to go through a lengthy and expensive course to get your license. If @Azdeus' actual brakes, not just the ABS, would not have worked, he would never have been allowed to drive home with his car. If you have an inspection and the brakes are found wanting you'll have to get your car towed. Brakes work without ABS though, still some cars without ABS on the market too.

AMD Inception fix performance degredation benchmarks. Does not really matter for consumers, but is potentially disastrous for workloads. Databases seem to have been hit the hardest, with degredations varying from 12 up to even 40% on common applications like PostgreSQL and MariaDB (the modern mySQL). nginx performance is down 12% too. Image editing also seems to have taken a hit, at least with Gimp, up to almost 30%, depending on the task.

The same Bethesda that gets passes for bugged games that aren't even games but just the basis for modders to actually create something interesing with them, the same Bethesda that keeps re-releasing Skyrim to make some extra money on every possible platform, including Smart Fridges? Yeah. I'm sure Bethesda would never get a pass for anything.

Speculation:

Halt, there's more!

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.