hfm

I think the reality will probably be somewhere in the middle. Even acknowledging the threat to my own field (been in software engineering and infra for 35 years) I see the benefit from a tool to be used perspective as much as I'd rather it didn't exist. Just like a lot of things, moneyed interests in its existence will cause the tool to be abused and allowed to flourish unchecked to the point that it's a major detriment to our society.

I was watching my local microcenter when the news first broke about the 5070 Ti. At first there were still plenty available around MSRP, about 5 days ago there were some MSI models for $834 and $840 and the rest were $1K+. Looked today and the MSI model they have ~25+ of is $990 and the rest are $1K+. I fully expect within a few weeks you won't be able to get one at all. The DDR5 kit I bought in august is 4x the price.. thankfully I decided it pull the trigger on an upgrade at that point (got the 5070Ti at MSRP) .. i was waffling on waiting. At this point I don't think things are going to be a sane upgrade path until well into 2028.

Been checking out Skyrim curated modlists as I had a hankering to go back to Skyrim for a bit (Lorerim, GTS, etc..) some of them are a bit. ehh.. too over the top in the "looks" department. Not that I'm opposed just seems unserious and juvenile for my taste.. too distracting. But currently doing a playthrough of Nordic Souls PBR edition and it's just the right amount of changing it enough to be different and fresh without going overboard and adding a bit extra challenge. It's kind of amazing how much just making combat and movement feel like they have more weight and impact makes the game better. I also enjoyed Gate to Sovngarde and Lorerim was also pretty good but took forever to load and was crashing a bit too much. I think no end of tweaks and pagefile settings can truly make any heavily modded Skyrim 100% stable. I enjoyed the challenge in GTS, but I have to admit the fast travel restrictions and constant attention to the survival elements just became more tedious than challenging after the novelty wore off. It just added the extra inventory management of carrying around travel packs, camping and food at the end of it all. Meh.. Nordic Souls also includes Beyond Skyrim: Bruma and Wyrmstooth both of which I hadn't experienced so those are new to me. Having some fun revisiting it. I'll probably just do a finally finish it new run through BG3 after at some point

MSI 272URX, works for everything I need it to. Looks great for productivity tasks (all day and some music prd at night), text rendering quality is stellar vs 1440p OLED, and gaming is off the hook. So far the only quibble I have with it is sometimes my M1 Max MBP 16 isn't detected via the USB-C DP KVM and I just have to power cycle the monitor by cycling the mains, powering it off by power switch doesn't work, rebooting the macbook seems to work as well but that's slower. But it's a minor quibble given everything else is stellar. The M2 Pro MBP and my old desktop (3080) and the new build (5070 Ti) both work every time..

Been playing Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader. Fantastic game if you like CRPG.

Still playing Starfield when I get a chance to play something, I think I'm getting close to finishing it. Was going through the recent history and noticed Grim Dawn being mentioned. Saw that it is on sale on Steam for $4.99 until Sep 9! That game should run on a potato basically so anyone that has even a remote interest in ARPG Diablo-like games should definitely pick that up it's a fantastic ARPG. Plus they are releasing a new expansion for it, Fangs of Asterkarn, in 2025. It's great to see this game is still being heavily supported by them with patches and expansions. I'm definitely going to do a brand new full game run when that exp drops. Now that patch 7 dropped for BG3 I'm going to pick that back up next as I had set it aside somewhere in Act I thinking I'd play it with my other but that isn't happening any time soon so going to jump back in that.

I started it back up again now that they've released some patches and I'm digging it all over again. The only aspect I still don't like is fact that most of the randomly generated locations are a lot like.. if you've seen like two or three of them you've seen them all. I have quite literally seen THE SAME EXACT structure on more than one planet/moon. It was a sizable factory with multiple buildings. Aside from that I do run into the odd more novel location on a planet. I've been doing a lot of running around scanning all the stuff on every planet I land on. lol. Some of the quests are pretty good. I'm really getting into it this time I'll probably just finish it off and see how many planets I can scan until I just can't take that anymore. Right now I'm just trying to get to the point where I can start flying Class B ships. In the main quest I'm at the point where something pivotal happens at the Lodge+Eye.. it's getting pretty interesting.

Finally got a chance to start this. They did such a great job on it. 10/10. I as well played the original when it released. Truly a game changer, nothing else was like it and it basically along with UU series kicked off the whole immersive FPS/RPG genre.. then perfected in System Shock 2 and Deus Ex. Such a fantastic series of games.

Agree. Really dug all the new Wolfensteins. Machine Games pulled off quite possibly one of the most bonkers series of events ever to grace a video game. Can't wait for this.

Been a while. Trying to remember what I've played recently. Uncharted 4 Legacy of Thieves Collection. Installed Fallout 4 with a texture mod was playing that again for a bit. Got back into Starfield since that patch dropped, been digging it. The planets are generally somewhat repetitive and barren except the odd thing that I find that is more novel but ignoring that the rest is good.

D4 was good enough for a one run playthrough, which is typically how I play Diablo.. Run it once and then play it again a bit down the line after expansion.. Grim Dawn is fantastic, they are still pumping out patches and there's an expansion coming. I had backed that when they were crowdfunding on their own site before kickstarter was a thing. 100% due to how great Titan Quest was. Good to see they are still making it happen. Path of Exile 2 also looks like it's going to be good. Gonna be good.

Yeah... the full name of the game is "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim" Enhanced Edition (Anniversary Edition these days I guess..) Yeah hah

lol rdr2 has flaws.. or i wouldn't have uninstalled it after 35 hours to free up SSD space... i'll probably eventually get back to it, just got bored of it for some reason.. I definitely liked the first one better.

Played BG3 somewhat early into Act 1. Set it aside for Starfield, played that for a bit.. just set that aside for AC:Mirage. I'll be finishing AC:M and then maybe jump back to BG3. I'll finish that and do another CP2077 run with all the new patches. By the time I get those done we'll have a bunch of Starfield patches out probably and then I'll finish that.

Nowhere near close. It'll probably take me a while as I stopped playing it for AC:M which will also probably take me a while as I played it yesterday for maybe 30 minutes and I probably won't get back to it till next week. EDIT: I think it's a fine game. Typical Bethesda. Not my favorite so far by them but worth the price. I really don't care much about the base building and ship building so some of the work of upgrading things is knocking it down a peg because I don't feel like spending my time on the grind and drudgery of building things and gathering materials. But it seems so far I've gotten away without too much fuss except for my ship (I got a unique one from a quest) isn't up to the task of beating one of the quests i'm on where the final test is taking down like 4-5 ships at once. I'm kind of waiting on that one to get enough credits to just buy a better ship, I first have to kill enough other ships to upgrade my pilot skill. I MIGHT be able to just straight upgrade it with better Class compnents once I do that as well so we'll see. So kind of stuck a little bit in that drudgery corner and kind of ignoring that angle. Hopefully I keep just finding good enough gear to not have to go through the monotony of using the various workstations to upgrade. I've basically completely ignored all of that right now hopefully I can keep it that way. I really rather liked the more straightforward approach to the crafting in FO4, it's expanded and more nuanced here and I don't care about it much. If I'm forced into it I'll probably just quit playing it as I really don't feel like interacting with that part of the game. If it's a sign of things to come for ES6 it's not looking good. We'll see I don't think I've played enough Starfield to have a final verdict, but every time I see one of the 5-6 stations for upgrade/research laying around I roll my eyes and sigh.. I was largely able to ignore all that in FO4 except for setting up a simple trade network for barebones storage sharing and using the two simple stations to upgrade things (worktstation and power armor repair bay).. but I was already at about max capacity with crafting and resource management with that as I don't find it that fun. I'd rather they just allowed something simpler here. We'll see. If I can play it by just straight up buying and doing simple upgrading instead of dealing with all the base building and different types of crafting tables I'll be good. If not.. well.. it'll gather dust.