You do what you gotta do.
I knew it was going to be Kotick before I even clicked.
Even if you buy a DVD, the only thing you are "buying" is the physical media and a license to operate the softwate. You don't own the software stored on the media, you must use it in accordance with the license agreement or potentially face legal action. The main thing about digital storefronts is that it's easier to revoke the license.
"Real world politics"? Did I miss the news that Undead Demon Margaret Thatcher is running in the next UK election?
The Build Mode features in 4 are pretty good if you're into virtual dollhouse building, and there's a ton of custom content for it (as long as you're on PC).
Live Mode is not very good, but it's functional enough to play dolls in the houses you built if you're willing to do all the story writing to make up for sims not having very interesting personalities/desires/autonomy.
Ordered energy drinks on Amazon because I couldn't find the flavor at the grocery store anymore (Monster Nitro Cosmic Peach). The estimated arrival day got pushed back twice, and then the status changed to say that the item was late enough that I could claim a refund. I punched the tracking number into the UPS website and it said that a shipping label had been created, but the package was never actually handed over to UPS. My guess is that the seller ran out of stock and decided to do nothing about it and just wait for me to refund, but I guess it's also possible that someone at UPS swiped the package instead of scanning it into their system.
Either way, I did get a refund through Amazon support.
I mean, lots of people who aren't particularly well organized manage to at least murder their victims without killing any bystanders. Doing the hit in public and also killing or injuring over 20 bystanders is either intentional or astonishingly incompetent.
The shooting may have been a result of a murder-of-hire plot, Police Chief Scott Thurmond was quoted as saying by local news outlet Al.com.
Isn't this, like, just about the worst possible way to conduct a hit? Even if you have a callous disregard for human life, it should be obvious that more victims + more witnesses = more heat. Single murders go unsolved all the time. Murdering a whole street full of people basically guarantees that the police will eventually find you and whoever hired you, unless you manage to flee the country or something.
I know the murderers are real people and not, like, Agent 47, so they can't be perfectly subtle, but they didn't even make the smallest token effort to avoid collateral damage by, for example, jumping the target while they were alone. It's almost like they were hired to do as much damage as possible... but who would be dumb enough to take a job that's basically certain to be their last?
I know for a fact that Waffle House workers know how to throw hands. Their management should try to keep them happy!
"We are trying to reach you about your car's extended warranty."
I had a Tamagotchi, but it was the original Digimon toys that I was really obsessed with. I got my friend into it too so that I had someone to battle with. We were even raising them in class. We had all sorts of hypotheses about what made them stronger, which were probably based on no real evidence. I had a bulking-cutting strategy where I force fed my 'mon to increase its weight and then trained it until it reached the minimum weight for its rank.
I picked up an anniversary digivice a few years ago, I should replace the battery and raise some more digimon.
I've considered getting a bulletproof jacket or hoodie. But it's so expensive, and can only really be worn half the year.
The stuff like backpack inserts seems like a racket. How likely are you to be wearing the backpack and get shot from behind?
I was way too busy telling Chuck Norris jokes in the Barrens and looking for Mankrik's wife.
Nomura was in high school in the 80s, I wonder what game it was.
It is part of the main gameplay loop. In order to keep your car in a state where it protects you and is reasonably driveable, you must gather materials to craft repair items and replacement parts, in order to maintain the car's panels, doors, and bumpers (which together function as armor), its wheels (which are necessary to get anywhere), and the various add-on systems you can craft for it. Tools gradually break with use, so you'll also craft replacement tools, which are mostly for scavenging materials or interacting with stuff in the Zone.
By collecting a certain resource you gradually unlock upgraded parts and tools for crafting, which is the main way player power progresses during the game.
There are definitely some things it is healthier not to know, and I'm pretty sure this is one of them. It's why I don't ask my mom questions about my dad, who I have never met since being old enough to form memories and I would like to keep it that way.
Why isn't Echoes of Wisdom in the "upcoming" category? It doesn't release until the end of the month.
The headline is a little misleading. The actual article is talking about why, given that Project 2025 is the culmination of 40 years of far-right thought, the media has only begun sounding the alarm bells since the publication of the book, and why the focus is on the most sensational aspects instead of on explaining the pernicious, foundational, fascist ideas it's built upon.
Also, as a huge weirdo myself, I had kind of thought that most people stopped caring how weird I am after high school, and I thought that was pretty neat. Now that it has become a favorite insult to use against fascists, I get the feeling that people only refrain from remarking on it because they're being polite to me, but they definitely still care and would wield it as a weapon given half a reason to.
Can I put myself in the low priority queue so that I only inflict my shittiness at video games on teammates who deserve to be punished?
Yes, this is a 4 hour long review of a hotel that's already closed.
UPDATE: Ahoyoo has confirmed that Trimming the Herbs was uploaded with TAS tools, meaning that The Last Dance was the final legitimate level all along! Congrats to kazeihinn on the Last First Clear! The journey continues in Super Mario Maker 2...
ORIGINAL POST:
Team 0% is attempting to clear every level in Super Mario Maker before the servers shut down on April 8. (New level uploads have been disabled since 2021, so there is no danger of new levels appearing at the last minute.) As of a few days ago, only a single level remains: Trimming the Herbs, uploaded in 2017 by Ahoyoo. (See also Ahoyoo's original upload video.)
The level is short but extremely precise, requiring Mario to use Bob-ombs to precisely remove Piranha Plants and collect coins while navigating a tight space filled with spikes. There have been over 200,000 attempts so far! If you have a Wii U and feel like you might be a Mario master, this is your opportunity to pick up the final First Clear in Super Mario Maker history.
Getting a tattoo is one of the most permanent decisions you can make; it stays with you until you die. But one Ohio company is changing that: preserving tattoos as tributes to last beyond death.
The system:
MSI Raider GE67 HX 12UHS
Intel Core i9-12900HX
nVidia GeForce RTX 3080Ti (laptop)
32GiB RAM
Win11 Pro 64-bit
The problem:
Once in a while (usually 2-3 times per day), the system crashes, usually resulting in a blue screen with one of various error codes. Codes I've seen include:
HYPERVISOR_ERROR
CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT
VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
Sometimes the system hangs but the blue screen never comes, and I have to power it off manually. When this happens, the fans go to full speed and yet the laptop quickly becomes incredibly hot if I don't power it off as soon as possible, suggesting that the CPU or GPU is maxing out for some reason.
Checking with Event Viewer shows nothing out of the ordinary in the lead up to the crash.
Things I've ruled out:
I initially thought it only happened while plugged in, and bought a new power supply. That didn't seem to affect the frequency of the issue, and I also have now seen it happen while on battery. I also initially thought it was more frequent while playing games that use the dedicated graphics card, but I'm not sure that's actually true; I have seen it happen even while just watching Youtube. At one point I felt that it happened more when I moved the laptop or plugged in USB devices, but I think that may be magical thinking; I have never been able to make it happen on purpose by doing those things. It does seem to be true that after it happens, if I let the laptop restart automatically, it often happens again in a short time, but shutting down and then turning it back on gives more time before the next incident.
Solutions I've tried:
I tried updating the BIOS and the Intel firmware to the latest available on MSI's website, but that doesn't seem to have helped. I also updated my nVidia drivers.
A possibly related issue:
A week or so before this happened for the first time, I updated the BIOS to fix a different issue. What happened then was: I was playing a game on battery unintentionally, and didn't notice until that "low battery - switching to Super Battery" warning appeared and began throttling system performance. I plugged the laptop in, but performance didn't improve. I restarted and performance was terrible across all applications, even Firefox. I checked Resource Manager and noticed that the CPU was being throttled down to around 0.16GHz. Event Viewer was showing warnings about this that said the processor was being limited by system firmware.
I tried using various Windows and MSI power management settings to resolve the issue, which persisted across restarts, fully charging the battery, etc. In the end, I solved it by updating the BIOS (to a version that is now one version back from the most current one).
It was a while, maybe a week, after running the update that the crash happened for the first time.
Current theory:
Is it possible I screwed up the BIOS update somehow? I noticed that it instructs you to return clock speeds to stock before doing the update. I don't think I've manually adjusted them, but MSI's "MSI Center" software seems to offer automatic adjustment. It was set to "Balanced" when I did the most recent update, but it may have been set to "Auto" when I did the first one, which I guess could be a problem if the CPU was automatically overclocked.
Communique from a group of anarcha-feminists in Mexico City after they were violently attacked, and their space ransacked and destroyed. Yesterday, those of us who maintain an organizing space in Building T of the CCH Vallejo (UNAM College of Science and Humanities - Campus Vallejo), had organized...
I'm crouched in an empty room, stealing everything. My stealth meter randomly changes to Detected so I stop for a while and wait for it to go back to Hidden. I steal the next item and get a notification that a bounty has been added. I'm still Hidden.
I finish looting and stand up. Suddenly: "You're under arrest!" A cop charges into the room and starts giving me a spiel. I unload my fully automatic Grendel into their chest at point blank range. Somehow this attracts less attention than quietly picking up comestibles did; no reinforcements arrive, and I remain free to wander around.
I come back to this room about five minutes later for an unrelated conversation. Everyone politely ignores the dead body.
I know this is all, like, just Bethesda game things, but for some reason this time it seems funnier than usual.
Also, minor companion spoilers:
spoiler
If all the companions get as mad as Andreja did every time petty theft escalates to murder, my ship is going to get real empty real fast.
Spoilers for the Wyrmway
In the room where you must demonstrate insight by striking down a representation of one of three writers, Amaps is represented as a tiefling:
!Image of Amaps being a tiefling
However, the book he wrote clearly indicates that he was a halfling:
!Image of book description that says Paul Amaps was a halfling
This is halfling erasure!
spoiler
I broke into Wyrm's Rock and assaulted Gortash at his coronation, where Wyll's dad, Lord Ravenguard, was present. I won the fight by falling back to the parapets (by the ballista) and forcing all the enemies to walk through Hunger of Hadar and Wall of Fire to get to me; they really hate pathing through Hunger of Hadar, so most of them waited politely in the main room while I killed the rest a couple at a time.
I knocked out Ravenguard and then shoved him to a safe place so that he wouldn't get hit by any AOEs. However, now that we're done, the post-fight cutscenes are over, etc., he's still just KO'd. Wyll doesn't have anything to say about him, and the quest journal entry about rescuing him is still on the step where it says that he's being held at Wyrm's Rock. Well, yes, I know, I found him.
So what do I do with him now? He's infected, it doesn't seem like I should wander off without him. I tried going to camp and there's still no quest update or word from Wyll. I tried healing him in case we need to talk to him, but I learned that KO'd characters don't get up when healed.
Update: If I long rest, the journal updates to say he is dead and his body disappears. It also implies the existence of a next quest step at camp, but Wyll says nothing about it. Also all my companions had the wrong dialog after a certain camp event, as though I had not yet killed Gortash who is very dead. Curiouser and curiouser. I think it's definitely true that they didn't plan for you to try to use the nonlethal toggle this way.
For context, Extended Information is a mod that shows hit chance popups for every shot, like the older Perfect Information, which (when it works) helps you develop a better sense of how much risk you're really incurring from enemy shots.
I've got a long and complicated mod list which is mostly (but not entirely) cribbed from ChristopherOdd's last Youtube playthrough, and I've noticed that the percentages EI displays, especially for enemy shots, are wrong. The most obvious evidence is that they frequently miss shots that EI displayed as 100%, but it will also show absurd numbers like 89% chance to hit by a basic trooper against a target in full cover while the shooter is wounded, and they'll usually also miss.
I think the problem is with shots that are modified by certain other mods, and I currently suspect EU Aim Rolls (which separates hit, crit, and dodge into separate rolls, as well as offering some specific tweaks) and Complicated Red Fog (which applies penalties to aim and other stats based on missing health).
There is a link in the Steam workshop page to a Discord server where supposedly the mod developer posted an experimental, updated version that solved some of this (at least with regard to EU Aim Rolls), but that link is now defunct (either the server no longer exists or it's private). Does anyone happen to have that version and be willing to share it, or know of another, more compatible mod?
Edit: For now I have disabled EI and I'm using EU Aim Rolls' built-in stat reporting. It isn't as nice, because it's just plain text on the right side of the screen instead of a color-coded popup over the shooter, and it doesn't have some of the extra info on the HUD that EI provides, but it does appear to be right, which is a good start!
Sometimes I can tell when my current DM fudges a roll to miss an attack or reduce damage. He has a tell in the specific way he pauses and breathes before announcing the roll, then tries to hurry to the next turn, which only seems to happen when someone is in a life-or-death scenario, but "luckily" survives.
Should I let him know he has a tell? Will it be less fun (or more stressful) for him if he knows I know?
