An orange in an apple orchard
Steam Hardware & Software Survey: June 2019
Not much here is surprising. Only two things really show up as particularly interesting data points: the lack of 4K monitors and how spread around the amount of VRAM is.
Beyond that the data looks about what you should expect for Steam users and PC gamers at this point.
By about three minutes in: I became pretty sure that I am going to enjoy chuckling at this series. Definitely an amusing magical Sempai, lol
Why the B-1 Bomber Is Such a Badass Plane
Growing up, I always found the B-1 a curiosity more than anything else. Here we this large, variable sweep wing bomber. It was and still is rather unique. Meanwhile most folks were mesmerised by the more modern Stealth designs.
Years later, I find it even more curious that people still talk about the Lancer, and that we’ve somehow managed to keep any in service since the cold war era drew to a close.
Screen Rant: The Doom Doot Meme Explained | ScreenRant
Why, oh Internet, am I only just now hearing about this meme? Also someone put this on a T-shirt, stat!
Seen “The Wolf’s Call” on Netflix yet?
If the concept of nuclear weapons doesn’t terrify you: ballistic missile submarines should terrify the living shit out of you. That makes for a decent psychological horror film at sea.
The Wolf’s Call, I think represents either a spectacular binding of pieces gone wrong or an overly daft view of our world. Or should I say, I’d like to think people a little less trigger happy about issuing the order to end the world. The film deals with the implications of a nuclear power being manipulated into retaliation against another. An act that would eventually kick off a potential end of the world scenario–A trap that we hope no one fool enough to fall into so easily.
But it does capture the fact that the SSBN is the most effective means of bringing Armageddon upon the world.
Not so familiar with the French Marine Nationale but America and Russia have enough ballistic missile submarines that I’d say, “Good damned luck tracking them all” even if you had the means our Navy does. Even if you could fell an entire country: you would be long holding your breath waiting for the mushrooms to sprout. As a form of mutually assured destruction I think a sizable SSBN fleet takes it to a near ultimate form.
And if you forget the value of reason, the sanctity of life, those who remain silent under the sea shall rain death upon us all.
I for one would like to believe most people would think a lot more than twice about invoking such a launch. Because even if people are dicks or fools they usually want to live longer than their enemy.
Amanchu! ~advance~ – s02e09 – The Story of Tears and an Endless Dream
Number one thing I like about auto saves: not shouting profanities when the game crashes.
Things that tempt me: the latest XPS 15.
At this point my desktop, Centauri, is old enough that if you buy any variant of Core i5 or i7 laptop: the crunch power will exceed it. Let’s just say I’ve gotten Every, Last, Dollar out of my 3570K and I’m finding its limits as the years go on. I built the system back in 2012~2013 with the plan for it to retire around 2018. Officially it’s re-issued expiration date is 2023 based on it being decrepit for my use case by then.
From a bit of poking around: I imagine between my desktop’s CPU bottleneck and how old my GTX 780 actually is that such a laptop model GTX 1650 is probably powerful enough for my gaming needs. Close enough that I don’t need to spend for a Thunderbolt eGPU dock for the old war horse until bottlenecks actually show up. That counterbalances the sales on the previous chipsets. Games like RE7 and FF15 kinda cause low level fractures in Centuari’s Aging Kick Ass Factor.
Likewise there’s a fairly viable jumping off point for the fifteen inchers. The heavier assed 15s maintain dual RAM slots and a full sized SATA bay. Where as the lighter 13s only have the M.2 and soldered RAM. Thus allowing me to reuse the Centauri’s SATA SSD and its whopping 1 TB of game / video storage. Migrating to 32 GB of RAM is something I fear will happen within the next ~5 years based on my experiences on machines with 16, 12, 8, 4, 3, and 1 GB of RAM that I still use. Which means if I bought an XPS 13 the minimal capacity would be 16 GB.
So sadly the 15″ models become far more attractive to me than the 13″ models. Because I don’t want another couple year and its crap device, if I’m paying that much again: I want a use until fall apart device.
That said, I don’t really like the idea of a laptop that weighs almost 2 kg as much as I’d rather one weigh closer to 0.5 kg, but getting such performance in that light a package is at least a decade or two away for PCs >_<.
The concept of paying off such a war beast makes me groan. But on the other hand Centauri is already past her retirement age. And provided no pancaking: it would be a war beast that could both replace Centauri for the next ~5 years while deep sixing the choke point of the beater I use for work.
My Chromebook 3 cost me about $50, as a decent machine for my lab bench. But it is limited by the dinky CPU which leaves me groaning far to often as the machine struggles to keep up with my flow of terminals, emails, and tabs. So much so that I already delegate a lot to my my more powerful Android tablet, with its cracked screen. Which leads me towards using my development laptop, Stark as a bench box rather than kept safely on my desk. Because while Stark is about as old as Centauri, a a 3360M totally nukes the crap out of an N3060 any day.
Heavy lifting usually lands upon Centauri and Stark. The difference is the non compiling code all day tasks are both what Centauri does and where its weaknesses are growing. I imagine that Stark would remain the development system, and that Centauri would replace my file server, Cream; or end up donated to the office.
Ahh, so much to plan.
Steam Summer Sale – VN Titles and Markdowns
More than a few entries on this sale list warrant a gander for anyone interested in Visual Novels, or you may already own half of them :P.
A few lesser known ones worth mentioning:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/hjAYNvASh6d2hdng7