majestic

Rings of Power very (in)aptly destroyed itself, no need for external pressure, or clickbait headlines.

Performance per watt is definitely an issue for 13th gen Intel CPUs in all core workloads.

TL;DW: [X] SKIP (poster's opinion, not Steve's, although he's clearly conflicted there) When you run a game, AMD just turns off half the cores to prevent the game from accidentially running on the cores without the extra cache. What that means is basically that the 7950X3D is a 7800X3D with higher clock speeds in gaming, and it does that only if you run the game bar on windows and set it to balanced power mode. Let that sink in for a moment: the entire reason why AMD is launching the 7800X3D in April is because the 7800X3D is probably going to slaughter the 7950X3D in terms of gaming value, and the only reason that CPU boosts for 700Mhz less is because otherwise it would probably be tied (and to probably not outright kill the 7900X3D for gaming). It's slightly better than an i9-13900k in many of the gaming tests, with Shadows of the Tomb Raider being a massive outlier in favor of the R9 7950X3D, and in Final Fantasy XIV it is even behind the i7-13700k. In production workloads it is just a 7950X. Looking forward to the 7900X3D tests, as AMD didn't ship any of those to the reviewers, apparently. If that CPU exhibits the same behaviour as the 7950X3D, meaning it will just turn off half the cores in gaming, it might end up performing worse than a 7800X3D in games that make good use of the extra two cores over the higher clock speed. Wouldn't that be fun to see?

Which was?

It used to. It also used to not work with the spell access for other spellbooks, so you win some, you lose some. Can still get you feats you don't qualify for, which makes it more or less a required a single class dip for any ray-focused blaster for Improved Critical: Ray.

Tradition.

Picard S03E02: The Big Meh. No real post necessary. Title says it all.

Loremaster is making a really strong case. The extra feats and access to other classes' spellbooks pretty much outweigh not having access to capstone blood line abilities. Nothing else really qualifies either, I mean you could take Hellknight Signifier levels, but why would anyone do that?

Yes, maybe we can finally move towards the apocalypse.

You played without any of the I WIN buttons in the Angel book?

8-Bit Adventures 2: Huh, why u no embed? Embed u giev!1! - ah, worked now... Anyone else probably won't need 40 hours to finish the game, I just grinded a whole lot more than necessary, and spent a whole lot of time backtracking and trying to do quests that were clearly there to do, but simply not accessible yet. It also has some pacing issues here and there but was otherwise a pretty nice game riding on old JRPG nostalgia. As such, it does what is required of a JRGP. It has an airship (alas, no flying fortress) to explore the world with, and a story that becomes increasingly unhinged every step of the way before going completely off the rails. Much like its predecessor it's story is built upon toying with the fourth wall. It does a good job of capturing the old-school JRPG feel without recreating the more annoying parts. There are no random encounters, for instance, and enemies do not respawn as long as you stay within a dungeon, unless you exit of tell the save point to revive them. Also, the, uhm, save points in the game are not necessary. You can save whenever you feel like it. They're still there, for nostalgia's sake, and to provide boss clues and some friendly banter. Can certainly spend one's money on worse stuff.

Whisper of the Heart is, besides fantastic, a film that manages the seemingly impossible. It is an interesting tale of a young girl figuring her life out, it is romantic, often fun, and... absolutely soul crushing for an adult viewer like me.

The episode was a decent step up from the earlier seasons, but it's still far too early to tell and it has way too many elements that I already don't want to see in a Star Trek series, or already were in Star Trek series, like these new Pseudo-Hirogen Predator things, and a second Captain Jellico who is actually really angry at Riker and Picard for no reason . They probably would have hired Ronny Cox for this if he wasn't old enough to be Admiral too by now. Then there's the way Starfleet Intelligence interacts with Raffi (and I don't particularily care for Raffi, but that is just stupid - DS9 did that better in a one-off with Miles O'Brien) before that terrorist attack. Still, at least once past the first five minutes I no longer wanted to pull my hair out, if it keeps being that way I'll chalk that up as a win. At least until Moriarty comes back and it inevitably falls apart.

Personal highlight of the episode: Random captain of a ship telling Picard that he basically does not like him because he's always galavanting off on some irresponsible adventure or two.

The first five minutes of Star Trek: Picard Season 3 are about as dumb as the rest of the series was. What a grand opening. This is fantastic.

Asked ChatGPT to replace my colleagues with a shell script. It told me it cannot do that as this is a "potentially inappropriate" request.

I neither took a picture, nor asked for an extra autograph, and would not have even if I had not gotten one through the promotional event prior to the concert (which I also did not want to attend, but was forced to by the group I was with). I used to have a three hour public commute for five years during high school, a time that taught me the value of being left in peace. I specifically said I understood her reaction, however, it was the manner in which it was delivered that I thought made it relevant to the discussion at hand - which was Tarja's behaviour in Nightwish. She was not just unhappy about having a small group of random fans accidentially stumble upon them on their way to the bus, it was also a reaction to Tuomas' decision to give "us" the time of day. As far as I recall, the others (Jukka, Marco) did not either, it was just him. They left too, just with no clear show of disdain. It is, however, entirely possible that there is a cultural difference at work here, admittedly, I have but a passing familiarity of Finnish culture, and that is barely more than a collection of stereotypes. It might not really be relevant, but it is how I read the situation back then - and presumably still would today, although I can't say for sure. It has been 18 and a half years, after all.

Usagi's mother in PGSM is an absolute whackjob. That's pretty much all for now. That wasn't Minako, it was Makoto. I'm not entirely sure why I wrote Minako. She beats Tuxedo Mask up for flirting with Usagi while being engaged. Yeah, that's more like it. Within the series, it makes sense for Makoto to do that, not only has he hurt Usagi, but this Tuxedo Mask is a jewelry thief like in the manga, and Makoto really doesn't like criminals. On the flipside, it makes more sense for everyone but Usagi to distrust him with this setup than it does in the original anime, where he's always just a helpful guy throwing roses. Before basically being relegated to tertiary character by Ikuhara.

Having a 12+th gen Intel CPU also helps with the decision. While the Windows 11 Thread Director doesn't significantly improve top end performance outside of some outliers over Windows 10, 1% and 0.1% lows in games are noticably better with Windows 11.

Also absolutely worthless as it gives no point of reference as to what this "brand new laptop, just booted up" actually is and how much pre-installed software just started up (queries to McAffee sound suspiciously like there's a pre-installed McAffee suite on the computer), and then he goes on to compare it to a clean Windows XP Professional installation. Also notice how the Windows XP task bar is shown, but never the Windows 11 task bar (in the video, not in the thumbnail). In fact, he just kept the browser in full screen mode all the time. Why? That is reminiscent of the video claiming that Windows 10 phoned home half a million times where they disconnected the computer from the internet, and 499,000 of these connections were the networking time protocol trying to sync the computer's date and time. Oooooh, scary. Not that Microsoft isn't collecting data, but this proves nothing, it's just manipulative bull... like almost all of these videos.

Ah, yes, I was being unclear here: the "without prior notice" part was not meant in the legal sense, i.e. firing an employee immediately due to egregious misconduct, but the way it was delivered, on stage, right after the final performance of the tour. That is a point in time picked precisely for one thing, to hurt as much as possible. It was payback - for slights perceived or real, well, that is something else, but you'll get no argument from me that Tarja most likely had it coming, but I did and do think that the public spectacle the firing became was unbecoming and unprofessional of the group. How they dealt with Anette later just compounded that impression. No, that is probably right, there has to be a reason why the rest of the group basically made it about "remove Tarja or we'll leave", but regardless, that is not a reason to do this in such an unprofessional manner, and from what I have read over the years, she wanted to pursue other interests and would have left anyway. It logically followed with the rumor mill endlessly churning on about how Tuomas fired her over unrequited love. Not that I doubt that he was actually in love with Tarja, as Ever Dream is as good a love letter to Tarja as any, but the firing was certainly not over that. Anyway, that Tarja did not really want to be a part of the group any more was fairly evident for me in two things, first, I watched the End of Innocence documentary, which contained a lot of rather subtle clues about what she was thinking at the time, and second her attitude at the concert I was back in 2004, where we actually managed to stumble upon the group after the concert on their way to the tour bus. Sure, it was a long day as there were ridiculous promotional events all day long prior to the concert (at which she appeared to not really want to be there, basically half-assing her performance for much of the show), but the guys were not bothered by being asked for another round of autographs, and even agreed to taking some pictures. Tarja? Rolled her eyes, scoffed, and ran off. Okay, I get it, that is exactly the reaction I would have had if that happened to me after a hard day's work, but still, short of directly stating it, it's hard to telegraph "I do not want to be here" any clearer, and if that attitude translated into her behaviour on the tour, which is undoubtedly has, then it is no wonder that she was removed from the group.

Nightwish's current lineup is a curiosity for me insofar as it contains two artists that, due to their ability, make seasoned professionals at their respective crafts look like mere amateurs next to them: Kai Hato and Floor Jansen. Yet, here I sit, in the subjective way we all experience art, still wishing Tarja would come back, and I just cannot help myself, while Kai Hato's drumming is of a technical precision that is almost unmatched, Jukka's drumming was just more powerful. I think I said it before, I love Floor Jansen as an artist, but she just isn't what made me originally fall in love with Nightwish*. Alas. It is probably for the better, as that puts me in a position where I do not have to struggle with myself over essentially giving money to a group whose dealings with their vocalists have been, let's be nice, less than ideal. Firing Tarja with an open letter after the last concert of a tour and with no prior notice was already shabby, but throwing out Anette Olzon over feinting while pregnant is Elon Musk level low**. Sorry. Man, posting this I'll have the Nightwish fanboys come at me with pitchforks wherever I go. Speaking of Floor Jansen... *I even liked Anette more than Floor as Nightwish's lead vocalist. **I get it from a business point of view, that NA tour was important for the group. Guess that explains why I'm not a businessman, or the manager type.

Everspace 2 will move out of early access in April. Before that, on February 20th, the price will go up by 10$/€. If you're at all interested in the game, now is the time to buy at a discount. Gamepass subscribers need not bother buying as it will be available on Gamepass. In the interest of fairness and for everyone who has not played the first game and doesn't know, this is not a space simulation, it is an arcade shooter. It's not as hard as the first Everspace and no longer has the permadeath/rogue-lite mechanics but it doesn't pull any punches either. You can play the game with a joystick and in first person/c-o-c-kpit view, but you will be making things harder on yourself. KB + M in 3rd person is the way to go. Back when I played the alpha and parts of the early access the game wasn't as much fun as the first one, but I'm notoriously bad at dealing with a more open world approach. I see a reputation to grind, I do that, even if moving on in the story and to other systems generates quests that yield more reputation... *sigh* The developers said they expect players to spend around thirty hours playing the game. I'm already at thirty hours, and I'm not even out of the second system. Final release is going to have six, with more maybe added in an expansion. Optimization on the earlier builds was pretty bad, but apparently it's gotten to the point where it is playable at 1080p in medium settings with a GTX 970 level card. Way, way back I had to turn everything down to minimum to even get it to play semi-smoothly on a GTX 970.

I'm married to the daughter of a catholic Croatian woman and an orthodox ethnic Serb from Bosnia, I'm way ahead of the curve here.