majestic

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.

I'm merely quoting your post because it is a good way to start. Since bad faith reading of what I write has become normal recently (even at work, for whatever reason), I feel like I have to state this. O tempora, o mores. Anyway, to quote Captain Malfoy: To restate that again, I made a simple observation about Austrian voters of a party whose current party line is basically being anti-vax and Pro-Russian. It was generalized for sure, but it applies to no other group than the people I was talking about. Oh, and by the way, I think Czech consider themselves to be a part of Central Europe. Me, personally? Anything that was on the other side of the iron fence is Eastern Europe. A party directly financed by Russian money. They picked up some 15% voters with that program, which is most of our anti-vax population. The others still go to the dedicated anti-vax party or vote for the greens, because they're all organic vegan lifestyle weirdos whose little Elias, Noah and Leah aren't getting any bad chemicals injected. Funnily enough, the latter group is on average amongst the most educated people in the nation. These voters were also avid consumers of the German Russia Today branch, who flooded YouTube with videos about the dangers of the COVID-19 vaccines. Their talking points were, by far and large, about how they are untested, could be DNA altering and ineffectual (which, curiously enough, have 'some' overlap with the sentiments stated here on the forum, and can all three be considered factually wrong). On a good day they had a veneer of scientific legitimacy by inviting immunologists like Sucharit Bhakdi - someone who should actually know better. Probably does. I'll be gracious and say that he's not just in it for the fame and money but because of his experiences with the dengue vaccinations, which really had adverse effects down the line wtih infections by strains being much worse for vaccinated people (one of his claims was that the COVID-19 vaccines could cause cytokine storms). The same TV station implored Russians to get vaccinated. By an untested, DNA altering and ineffectual (sorry, could not resist) vector vaccine. Indeed, we (Yuro-Peons) should be holding van der Leyen and the EU responsible for wasting enormous amounts of taxpayer money on the overpriced Pfizer vaccine, with equally good, if not better, alternatives being around for cheaper, or even at cost. But hey, Biontech is a German company, there was absoultely nothing untoward happening there. Nothing to see here, let's discuss some more about how the largest clinical vaccination trials in history lead to the distribution of 'untested' vaccines. As always, the real conspiracies are too mundane, and too out in the open. It's not fun when everyone knows about them. Can't be the special snowflake that has everything figured out then. Oh, and one last, final jab: I would never equate anti-vaxxers with Flat Urfers. Believing in a Flat Urf is hilarious, and I sometimes watch their videos to amuse myself (there is one of a guy doing 'high IQ research' on a train, stating directly that the Earth has to be stationary because no one can feel the speed at which it moves through space, and the water in this glas there is completely flat, it's just too funny). Sure, they could act as a potential gateway into other conspiracy theories, but they're mostly harmless - they might burn some books or annoy people with their preaching on the street, but that's about it. People who propagate medical quackery on the other hand are harmless at best ("if it doesn't help, at least it won't hurt to try", right?), and dangerous to deadly at worst. 👎 Oh, final question, if the Earth isn't flat and stationary, why does NASA use a flat and stationary Earth model in almost all of their calculations? Hmm? Can't answer that one, can you? /High IQ research.

Hey, NASA regularily admits that the Urf is flat and stationary in their documents, and they're online for everyone to see. Just sayin'.

So wanna talk about flat urf next?

Well, I thought it was relatively clear from the context, but apparently not: the current iteration of the Freedom Party has built itself around pandering to anti-vaxx and anti-sanction voters. The Pro-Russion demonstrations the Twatter thread talk about were organized by the same people who organized anti-vax rallies during the lockdowns and the brief time period we had a COVID-19 vaccination mandate (which was never enforced and later dropped), and it does stand to reason that if there would not be significant overlap between the two groups, such a pairing of ideologies would not lead to an increase in voters, let alone one in such numbers. So, yes, while there certainly are anti-vaxxers who are more vegan-lifestyle greens, they're not represented in Freedom Party voters. We could now continue to quibble about whether being against help for the Ukraine and against the sanctions automatically makes someone Pro-Russian, but that is a distinction that is morally hard to justify and callous at best when the party in question wants to immediately normalize relations with Russia and drop all aid to the Ukraine (and ideally send all the refugees back home). Casting your lot in with the Freedom Party means you at the very least accept their Pro-Russian/Pro-Putin stance, and their party leader's ivermectin ramblings, and his steadfast refusal to get vaccinated, and actively espouse it at worst*. Still, the distinction is relevant for people who can no longer make ends meet, and yet another failing of our politicians that these people feel that there is simply nowhere else to turn. Those also represent a part of the voters in those potential 25+% - but by far the biggest block (20%) of voters are those who simply believe both, that vaccinations were made for whatever nefarious reason (most benignly to make money) and that going back to the pre-war status quo would fix all of our woes. Also not sure since when calling a spade a spade has become an issue. Isn't that more for the 'radical left'? That all said, here's another fun label for you to tease that bee in your bonnet: (actual Nazi anti-vaxx propaganda) *Not that I believe for one second that this guy actually really believes the anti-vaxxer nonsense he is spewing, that's just something he tells the people because they want to hear it. Such a stand-up guy. Wonderful guy, that is. Everyone is against him. So sad.

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

Well, this is from our former foreign minister's wedding party. I am kind of uncertain how people are surprised by these 'revelations', but some parts of the Twatter thread are (not going to speculate about whether that is intentional or not) misleading. Christian Kern, for instance, resigned his position at the board of the Russian Railways when war broke out, and the reduction in intelligence sharing goes back to an earlier point in time and was related to a hostile takeover attempt where the Nazi Freedom Party (illegally) had the police raid the intelligence service headquarter over some North Korean passports in order to install a leadership more inclined to, say, look the other way when it comes to their connections with far right neo-nazi elements. The Schengen veto has absolutely nothing to do with any Russian agenda and everything with our ridiculous chancellor trying to score brownie points with the right-wing fringes before a couple of very important elections (one of which recently happened and saw his party lose a 50% +1 majority that they have held since the end of World War Two, just to drive home in what sort of dire straits the party really is). If tihs was at all related to any Russian agenda, then Orban's vote would have been different. The spying part is, to borrow from a local idiom, an old hat that is barely worth talking about. Everyone in Vienna is a spy, and has been for two centuries now, and as the thread said, it pretty much was codified post World War Two with certain changes to our laws. It's part of the reason how and why we managed to get the Russians off our territory, and it certainly wasn't and still isn't just for the benefit of Russia. It is also missing a few details, but what can one expect from Twatter. Our politicians were also constantly lobbying to soften or even remove the EU Post-Crimean annexation sanctions. Again, this does not come as much of a surprise, as RBI (Raiffeisen Bank International) is heavily invested in Russia, and it is also heavily invested in the ÖVP*, a party that has been a part of our governmen for 40 years now and is in really, really dire need of a timeout from power. Alas, for that to happen, the centrist and left-wing elements of our political landscape would have to work with the far-right fringes, and there's a better chance of hell freezing over. Anyway, it is hard to overstate the amount of power that the RBI wields. If one is proficient enough in German they could read the Raiffeisen Black Book for a glimpse. They have an enormous amount of money invested in Russia, and act accordingly. Fun fact, the Ukraine recently put RBI board members on the sanction list, with the exception of the one board member who is actually Ukrainian (Andrii Stepanenko). Because... yeah, never mind, I think that's obvious and rather revealing. In closing, because I have no idea what caused me to write this post now that I've reached a natural ending point, there's also the issue of the conspiracy theorists and Putin apologists. Those exist, in scary numbers, and there's a massive overlap with the anti-vaxxers. The FPÖ is openly garnering their votes, and they're rapidly approaching 25% or more according to polls. Politically, this is going to be fun going foward, because our current government it too busy with keeping itself from falling apart to actually address the issues the common people are facing. In the odd case they're actually realizing that there's an issue. To quote our president with his 300k yearly pay: Just grit your teeth. That's going to help for sure. *There's an old joke. To explain, first one needs to know that the BAWAG bank was initially created by prominent members of the Socialist Party as a way for workers to have access to banking services without having to go to the bourgeoise and capitalist other banks. It was held, until a financial scandal and dire straits, by the unions and the Austrian consumer's co-operative had shares too. It is fair to say that the Socialist Party (nowadays Social-Democratic Party) once indirectly 'owned' a bank. So, what is the difference between the SPÖ and the Raiffeisen bank? Well, one's a party with a bank, and the other's a bank with a party...

Well, if you have seen Pocahontas or Dances with Wolves then... you've seen Avatar, by far and large.

I recently threw out a bunch of books for various discontinued pices of software and operating systems from the early 2000s, and while I know they were practically useless, it still felt wrong to dump them. I kept my BeOS R4 book though. Not that BeOS is going to make a comeback, but it's a fun curiousity, at least. Unlike these:

Not having watched any of Spy x Family and not being familiar with anything but Anya's character design and apparently quirky Japanese (which is, giving this the benefit of the doubt, hopefully where those spelling mistakes come from), am I going to regret asking what Anya and the salmon have to do with a Kitsune-dance?

Now reload and try on Unfair.

I'm guessing this is one of those instances where the same word means different things in different places, because there's no such thing is pork kebab here. The Greeks here would probably flay you alive for orderding kebab at their places, you can have gyros or souvlaki, both usually made with pork. You see a place advertising kebab, it's most commonly beef or chicken, and sometimes lamb. In the worst case scenario it is made of old mutton.

But pork is haram. It's the haram food. It's so haram that almost nothing else is next to it... Anyway, kebab pizza is pretty good. It's been a staple of our (numerous) Turkish fast food places for so long that I never would have guessed it originated in Sweden.

Well, look at episode 20 of PGSM. Usagi figures out that Mamoru is engaged in the worst possible way. The writers are really milking that set up for as long as it lasts, and the foregone conclusion that is hovering over all of this makes it kind of feel superflous and wasted. There are some really significant deviations from the source material(s) in this series, but not enough to make anyone ever believe that the romantic core of this series could have any other outcome than the canonical one. This version of their relationship might be the best yet, though. Mamoru isn't a weird creep and Usagi is, while childish at times, a lot less immature and co-dependent than her anime counterpart. With this being a live action series involving actual minors, I also doubt we'll be treated to an implied sex scene where Mamoru has nothing better to do than jumping on Usagi after she calls him a pedophile. Yes, that's in Crystal, in case any of you forgot or, uhm, didn't read my posts. Motoki continues to be an idiot, but now that Makoto has actually talked to him and gave him a scarf for Valentine's day, things are progressing there, although they'll only conclude in a post-series special. I just hope Motoki isn't going to bring his turtle to the wedding. Ami is abudcted by Kunzite, finally starting her path down to DARK SAILOR MERCURY after being the Ensign Mayweather* of PGSM for the past couple episodes. Minako figures out that Mamoru is Tuxedo Mask, while psycho-killer Rei is trying to figure out what Minako's deal is. Mamoru and Usagi take the creepy kids out for what creepy girl calls a double date, only to have Usagi's hopes cruelly dashed by the creepy boy telling her that Mamoru and Hina are engaged. The series seems to have some pacing issues, after a while of not much happening too much happens all at once and way too quickly. *Character on Star Trek: Enterprise who, if he was lucky, got a single line to say per episode, because the writers had no idea what to do with his character.

Ineed, the overzealous backend protection issue is back, and it includes quoting certain characters too by the looks of it, like asterisks and ellispsis and quotation marks. Meh. Meaning that just because something can be posted doesn't mean it can be quoted in response.

Okay. This day is officially over. I am, for a lack of a better term, exhausted by the sheer amount of incompetence of what feels like everyone working in IT. I ask someone from which IP address(es) they are going to connect to our system for the data transfer as we need to white list on the firewall, and the answer is: 192.168.XXX.XXX.

Buy one and find out! Pretty sure that's just the regular keyboard though, the mechanical one is an upgrade option. The XMG NEO is also available with regular air cooling, but you can bet that both the CPU and the GPU will start throttling down the moment you turn it on. Complete waste of hardware and money. Arguably either way, but more so with air cooling.

Indeed, particularily for international communication, YYYY-MM-DD is the only format that is readily understood by everyone. It's a bit of a pickle now because we were told the deadline is in October, and now it is three weeks ago. In the days of yore unused HDDs would spin down to reduce wear, and when they spun up it could take a while for the system to react. Actually, HDDs still do that. My father has some 30 odd TB storage space that is largely unused in regular use, but when opening the explorer they start spinning up. Takes up to a minute until Windows reacts. So, yeah, things taking a while with hard disks, not necessarily a sign of problems.

Found out that we got some wrong information about a certain date from our reseller, because Muricans just can't write dates. 01/10/2023 is somehow not in October.

The ARC suffers from ludicrous price syndrome(tm) in Yurop. The A750 and A770 cost almost the same, which is right around the cost of a RTX 3060 12 GB, and yeah, that makes it a lot less appealing. Should still be good for 1080p gaming for a while though. Could certainly do worse, and an A750 anywhere near MSRP would be a really nice option for the price range.