Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@Heavyarms55 Yeah, upgrading from a 400GB card is a crappy place to be in because the 512GB card is not really a big enough upgrade to justify buying a whole new card, and the 1TB card is just too expensive at the moment.

@Tyranexx The problem with hedges isn't really that it's a hard job - the actual trimming itself isn't terrible hard - at least with the kind we had, new growth is bright light green, so trimming it back you've have to be blind not to know how to cut. The problem is giant mess it makes. Those little green... Are the considered leaves? Needles? whatever, they go everywhere stick to everything thing and if you don't clean them up, they turn yellow-brown and it screams to the neighborhood that you didn't clean up after trimming. We used to put tarps down around them while doing it and it was just took so long. It was such a nice day when we decided to get rid of most of them. We removed all of the ones in the back yard and kept only 4 in the front yard. We borrowed the neighbor's big F-350 industrial truck, wrapped a chain around the base and ripped them right out! Mom got rose bushes and a some more flower bed space and Dad and I didn't need to worry about taking care of the hedges much anymore. Win-win!

I know it's literally poison, but I never much minded using weed killer if I had too. What I didn't like were these spike weeds that always grew in that hurt like hell if you weren't wearing heavy gloves - and if you didn't rip them out by the roots they were back in 2 weeks.

@klingki Right? That's what I don't quite get though, why is there nothing between 512 and 1tb?

@GoblinKing86 I saw your comment on the Platinum article about Steam and didn't think the conversation fit there - but I'm curious what your issue with Steam is? I've run into people who just don't like the platform but never heard of any specific moral complaints with it. Not beyond the usual kind of corporate greed stuff that most big overly powerful companies have.

Nice chair, @ThanosReXXX & the NeoGeo mini looks pretty neat, too ....

@Heavyarms55 Memory usually works as a power of 2 by the way it's designed. So the natural jumps are 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024 (1TB), 2048 (2TB), 4096 (4TB), etc. Magnetic drives (HDD) aren't restricted to the same limitations of the design of static and volatile memory. There are those oddbird sizes like "400GB", but usually those are because some sizes have bad yields, so they take a 512 that had a lot of failed sectors, disable them, and package it as a 400. Sometimes you can get a 1.5TB or 3TB that might be the same, or might be a 1TB + 512 or a 1TB and 2TB stuck into the same body mostly because an overrun of parts existed for cheap, offsetting the cost of using two modules and the circuit to control them sufficiently. Otherwise memory is always in multiples.

That's also the same way CPUs are produced. A given (modern) run of processors is generally all the same processor. They produce one chip that has iffy yields, and "bin" them according to test results. The "perfect" spec ones become Xeons for servers/workstations, and they enable the full error correction controls and server features. The ones that perform nearly at the same spec but run too hot become the "enthusiast" lines. The ones that overheat too much and have to be throttled down become the lower clock speed versions of the various processors and have features and cache disabled (for market segmentation), and the ones with entire core failures become the dual-core instead of quad-core models, etc. They just disable the dead cores.

It's also where the modding/hacking/overclocking bargain hunters come in. Intel sells far more low end chips than high end chips. So much so that often times they don't actually have enough "failed core" output to bundle into the cheap boxes, so they end up taking perfectly good ones and just disabling the cores to box more cheap ones. The bargain hunters know this, mod it to re-enable the cores, and get a full spec chip for a fraction of the price. Assuming it doesn't run super hot, because it wasn't actually tested running the full gambit.

Same for GPUs....and likely, console SoCs.

@Tyranexx I used to talk with a few meteorologists. Nice guys. Deluded beyond imagination. They seem entirely unaware of how disastrously less than worthless their forecasts are, they see themselves as life-saving superheroes, and will defend to the death how they are really great because predicting the future is really hard and they got it so close to right in the atmospheric setup with systems x, y, and z....if only a, b, or c hadn't moved 3 hours early and 12 miles west. It's the only industry where you can defend "completely wrong with worthless results" as being "really really close" because reality turned out different, but if it hadn't you'd have been right.

I should really get the Power Ball million, because I thought of picking 34 before I picked 27, and since the winner was 36, it was so close it was basically the same thing!

The frontal boundary didn't cross the Ohio valley until after dawn, and the mid-level was 14mb lower than expected, so instead of all day rain there was 15 minutes of showers at midnight. But we had it almost right if it the timing were a little better, so it was a good forecast. People just don't understand everything that goes into this!

So in other words, there's no purpose to your job because the job you claim you do, isn't actually possible....right?

They get the "big" things like hurricanes right....but that's "easier" to predict because it's the dominating force in its own setup. NHS should exist. NWS.....maybe not so much. (Then again there was Hurricane Sandy where NHS closed shop and went home as soon as it went hybrid "oops, it's not a hurricane by definition anymore...not our problem...you guys handle it, we're going home!" )

@NEStalgia Rodential = Hamster releases... Way too deep, man. WAY too deep. It was late over here when I had to mull that over... (and when someone says rodent, the first thing that comes to my mind, is rat)

@ogo79 Wow, if I wouldn't be so confident, that might have really put a dent in my self-esteem or it could have been an insult to my cooking prowess. What it ACTUALLY is, is a stir fry of chicken thigh fillet with mixed vegetables (carrot, onion, green beans, zucchini, bell peppers, paksoi) in a spicy sweet & sour sauce.

And because it's kinda spicy, I add the pineapple to counter/balance that.

@Tyranexx Yeah, I'm also pretty satisfied with my own chair. And it looks good in my home as well.
Concerning the bottle trick: I've actually made a tiny mistake: I said to cut the bottle clean in half, but taking off just the bottom is actually better: more reverb, so more annoying anti-mole sounds...

But what you could also do, is make some of various lengths, creating sort of a "wind organ", so you'll have a range of sounds. As mentioned before, not all moles react the same, so making a wider range of noises might just be the ticket to your specific problem.

@BruceCM Thanks. And the chair tilts back as well, so I can relax and play at the same time. Works perfectly with the Neo Geo Mini too...

Great combination, @ThanosReXXX .... Pineapple in something spicy works well, too

@Tyranexx Yeah Universal looks like a great park. I didn’t go there either, opting for the other big Orlando attraction. That Harry Potter section looks pretty amazing. I still have yet to read the books, but from what I’ve seen of the films they definitely nailed the look of Hogwarts.

Oh my God, all the Etrian Odyssey soundtracks are on Apple Music (Play Music too, not sure about other services).

I don't know when were they added, as I found them entirely by chance, but this is a dream come true 😮

@Zuljaras what a great masterpiece you made there!!
Simpely AMAZING

So another controversial news topic appeared in the news feed on NL, at least this time they disabled the comment section. But to me it's like what's the point. If you know a news article (on a gaming site) is going to be controversial and lead to a comment section full of trouble why post it? Doesn't make sense to me.

@Tasuki Well it is not controversial at all. But it is known that it will turn into crap show in the comments.
Many people will start making statement without any context and other people will argue with that.

Soon after that they will start "revolutions" and try to brand everyone "racist", "fascist" etc. That is what happened last time.

Also NL probably has to fill a quota on articles each day and after all this is connected to Nintendo directly.

People are very heroic on the internet and they have the "power" to try and be "influential".

@BruceCM It definitely does. I use fruit in a lot in oriental dishes. Either pineapple, various types of apples, peach or mango.

@Tasuki Honestly speaking, I didn't find that article controversial either. It's just a confirmation from Nintendo that, like Microsoft and Sony, they stand with the black community, which is the only right thing they could have said.

I think @Zuljaras pretty much nailed it.

In this case since it's an official company statement by Nintendo, it's certainly relevant. On the other hand between social media and my inbox, I find it a sad state of affairs, not in terms of "race relations" but in terms of the mental capacity of the American public at large that we need every major corporation falling over themselves to find the fastest, most broadcast method available to basically say "Just a reminder: We, at Big Corporation don't hate black people. And if you also don't hate black people then you should definitely shop with us."

@NEStalgia Yeah, especially that last bit, often injected like some kind of subliminal message, except not so subtle...

In other news, Ew, apparently Sony announced last week that they really are doing a quasi-E3 timed unveiling......tomorrow at 1:00 PM PDT/4:00 Eastern? From 9:00PM prime time to....middle of the work day? It's 2020 and they're still copying Nintendo, I see....

I felt sleepy during playing Dragon Quest Builders 2 PS4. 😪
Dunno why, as i explore some island to unlock some contents after finishing storyline, i started to feel sleepy.

@NEStalgia Far as I know, that has now been put on hold for a while, due to the current goings on, so either nothing's going to happen next week, or next week IS the new date, because it was supposed to have been broadcasted already.

Yeah that probably it that they have a quota on how many articles they need per day and that's in the news right now. But still kudos to them closing off the comments before it became a ***** show.

@ThanosReXXX Ahh, funny I hadn't even heard the 5/4 presentation until about an hour ago....and that didn't list that it was postponed. Good job IGN, way to stay on top of things!

I was kind of stunned they were going to do it at all now, so they can slink back into their hole again now.