vozka

Gaming laptops are generally bad, but there used to be office style laptops with dedicated GPUs that work reasonably well. I have an 11 years old HP Probook 6xxx like that with aluminium frame that's still working well, that particular line used to be really good and cheap. That's a thick brick from before the style of super thin "ultrabooks" though, which are even worse for cooling than laptops before that. No idea if somebody still makes laptops like that, maybe Lenovo, but those are going to be expensive.

Having limited second hand knowledge of how politics actually works in my country from various friends and acquaintances who are politically active, I find any theories about a "plan" fabulously optimistic. Ime when any significant change happens it's either chaos or greedy people who do not care about anybody else, but almost never any actual plan.

Savefile for The Black Mage here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CHXidcfVLtxcF2JebQjRB5kXfebOL1pE/view?usp=sharing This is the non-crashing bug, where the bow merely doesn't work. I have a water arrow in my hands in the savefile and when I try to fire it, it doesn't work and the animation is broken. I'll try to record a crashdump if I reproduce the arrow in the face crashing bug. EDIT: The bug happens when loading the save in a clean install, at least on my machine. After "fixing" it through switching weapons and reloading the same save it doesn't happen again, like I already mentioned. However if I "fix it", restart the game and load the save it does happen again. So the issue lies in some state that doesn't reset through loading but does reset when launching the game.

I haven't been able to reproduce the crashing bug yet. However I encountered this again twice in The Black Mage and I have a save where it happens after loading a game. I can upload the save here if you want. However I observed that when I switch to a different weapon and back, the bug gets fixed and doesn't happen even after I load the same savefile again. When it happened first in this mission I fixed it by switching and then loaded the save and tried to reproduce it but couldn't. However until I switch weapons I can load the save repeatedly and it always happens. I didn't try shutting down the game and then starting it back up and loading the savefile again. Maybe that would work and reproduce the bug. But I'm not trying it just yet because it's possible it would just fix the issue again and I'd lose this save that reproduces the bug. Is there anything I can do now? Look at some logs, post the savefile so somebody can investigate?

I'll just offer some encouragement - I played Thief Gold (and later Thief 2) for the first time maybe 3 years ago and I think the game aged very gracefully overall. I don't have any problems with old/retro games in general, so I may be a bit biased, but apart from the graphics (for which I recommend the AI texture upscale mods, less blur without changing the overall graphics direction) it felt I'd even say fresh compared to many modern games.

Since I posted about this in 2 different threads, to sum up: 1. Non-crashing bow bug: sometimes after loading a game I cannot use the bow at all. Pushing left mouse button brings up the bow and immediately puts it down again, releasing does nothing. Switching to a different weapon and back fixes it. Happened definitely with broad arrow, maybe with water arrows, and I observed it in Iris and Hazard Pay. 2. Crashing bow bug: the game would crash immediately after headshotting an NPC with a broad arrow, when the arrow made contact with its face. In all cases it was a close shot, from a meter or so when the NPC was either already attacking me or about to. Observed in Iris (don't remember which NPC, but it was a human) and Hazard Pay (a zombie). I do not use the bow aimer. My Darkmod.cfg is attached. Now this is pretty interesting because I also run MSI Afterburner. I use it to slightly underclock my GPU and turn up the fans because the GPU is an older GTX 970 and it runs too hot otherwise. However I do not experience crashes in any other games (some more demanding than TDM, some less) and I also didn't get any crashes in 2.09. And I didn't get any crashes with water arrows. Darkmod.cfg

The same crash (right after headshotting an NPC that was attacking me with a broad arrow) happened to me in Iris. So that's probably not it either.

For the record I do not use the bow aimer so that's probably not it. I may try the other changes you suggest.

A very nice mission! I admit it felt a bit underwhelming at first when I thought that it's "just" a well-made city mission, after playing some of the other recent amazing missions... But it wasn't, it was something else, so good work! By the way the secret Grayman's area was beautiful. Great idea. I encountered some bugs though, although some may be 2.10 bugs, so here they are:

Great mission! I'm not a big fan of horror missions, but I can play underground zombie adventures anytime. And this was a great one. Very much enjoyed the size, verticality, the way you get to see different places from more points of view in different parts of the mission and really the level design overall. Beautiful. Grouping zombies and blowing them up with a fire arrow was very satisfying. Played on hard because I wasn't in the mood for save rooms and the difficulty was fine, not too difficult, although I did savescum quite a bit to land headshots. Found 3 out of 5 secrets. Question: I encountered a few bugs, some of them possibly 2.10 bugs not specific to your mission:

In the words of the great poet Sir Mix-a-Lot, it's so... Big! Fantastic mission, it's not just about the size of course, it's so well made, detailed and cohesive. Surely one of the best missions so far. Sometimes I'm a bit unhappy that TDM tends to be a bit less lighthearted and more serious than Thief, but how could I complain with missions like this. I'll probably go back at some point, I'm sure I've missed a lot. Got less than 5k loot, but still spent over 3 hours playing it. I don't have the patience to fully explore everything right now, so maybe a second playthrough in the future will provide even more than this one.

Nah, I did my best tinkering with it. I guess I was just unlucky with crappy displays. I hope that OLED technology improves enough to reduce the effects of burn-in so that it can become mainstream. I'm moderately happy with my IPS panel - those things are absurdly cheap for the quality nowadays, I edited photos on a 100 USD Samsung monitor and had few surprises when I had them professionally printed - but the contrast of OLED displays is really exciting.

Damn, all the CRTs I used back then were bright with vivid colors but had terrible black levels, they were more dark grey. Did we just use poor people equipment?

I don't think Russia could be self-sufficient with success because it lacks the infrastructure to reach a lot of its natural resources and to refine them. It's only rich in theory in a similar way that many African countries are "rich". It also lacks high tech industries in general. Tech can be supplied from China, but what's more probable than China and Russia vs the rest of the world is that China will economically exploit Russia because that's just what they do (they're doing it already, buying and extracting resources in Siberia and creating pockets of Chinese population, so far small ones) and they have the upper hand now, hurting Russia in the long run. China may be trying to become self-sufficient with imports, but their whole economy is based on exports and there's no way that's going to change. For that they need the west to exist in a non-collapsed state because the Russian market is not going to be big enough to replace the west in decades even in a best-case scenario for them. This situation could in fact easily be used to sow discord between Russia and China by the west and it would be the smart thing to do, but I don't know if any western leaders have the balls to do that. Warsaw pact was a coalition of totalitarian states that even used it to oppress and murder its own citizens. That is not a useful comparison. Even in the stupid Iraq war with made up weapons of mass destruction "we" managed to depose a murderous dictator. This is true of most NATO operations, even the ones that are seen as screw ups are rarely black & white. There's is nothing to redeem the invasion of Ukraine, that's what makes it strange and why the reaction to it was so strong.

I think you overestimate the political culture and activity of common citizens in Russia. It's hard to describe how much common Russians outside of the largest cities are used to suffer under whatever tzar is currently leading the country and mind their own business. And Putin is just one person in a whole huge interconnected structure of oligarchs and ex-kgb mafia. He may be a level crazier than the rest of the structure at this moment, but I don't see any significant change happening if somebody gets rid of him. Long term maybe, but certainly no revolution or immediate positive development. In any case Putin being removed or NATO going into war with Russia is nothing more than fantasy at this point and I don't see that as particularly useful.

I don't think it's reasonable to say that the situation with refugees from African countries is the same as the situation with refugees from Ukraine. I'm not saying that African refugees are somehow "bad" because I understand they have no interest in dying in a war that they probably don't care about and don't view it as "their" war. I wouldn't want to do that either and I never spoke against accepting them. But at the same time with Ukraine the situation is quite different. The message is pretty clearly "we want to take care of this war and return to our country ASAP, just let us get our families to safety and give us as much military support as you can". Also Ukrainians are culturally closer to us and most of the countries that the refugees are going to already have sizeable Ukrainian minorities, so the citizens have a feeling that they "know them". The transports are more organized and most people have legal documents. It may not be fair, but it's obvious that in such situation the refugees are much more accepted. Your list of military operations is nice, but I don't think it tells much on its own. I don't know about all of them, but those that I do know about I'd argue none are nearly as black and white as what's happening in Ukraine. But to be honest I don't really want to go into it further. Arguing about what NATO or the US did wrong while there are people dying under Russian aggression, some of whom I met in person, somehow doesn't feel appropriate. The first wave of refugees is already here and me and my family are collecting aid for Ukrainian mothers with children sleeping in a gym not far from here, will be driving it to them in the evening. That's a better use of time than arguing anyway.

This is not at all about reelections, this is about starting world war 3. As soon as NATO units get involved, that means an all out NATO vs Russia war, and since in a conventional war Russia would obviously eventually lose, it would probably mean a nuclear war because Putin would think he has nothing to lose anyway. There isn't much more the rest of the world can do than supply Ukraine with a shitton of money and weapons and sanction Russia to hell. It probably won't be enough, Russia still can drain Ukraine through sheer numbers even through its incompetence. But there are situations where no good solutions exist, only more or less bad ones. What would have helped is if we had at least half as strong of a reaction to Russia occupying Crimea, the "separatist republics" or even Georgia in 2008. But it's too late for that.

I see your point and respect that your experience with NATO and the US army is different than ours. But I think this is a bit simplistic point of view. The primary reason for the existence of a strong army is not to win wars, it's to deter others from starting wars. If you look behind the borders of Europe and US, there's still a surprising number of more or less armed conflicts regularly happening, sometimes significant ones and sometimes smaller ones like violent border disputes. All of that has big consequences on the economy, human development etc. Pretty much nothing like that is happening to NATO members, and while that has more than one reason, being backed by the best military alliance in the world is a big one. This is a bit like having a good IT department in a company - when it's doing its job, you don't even notice it's there, but when it actually stops working, things go to crap fast. You can of course have a different opinion, but most geopolitics experts would disagree with it.

I believe that's just a red herring. I know Putin claimed that's what he wants at some point, but like a week later he demanded that NATO gets out of central and eastern Europe altogether and returns to its pre-1997 state, which again seems like an excuse to start the war more than anything because he must have known that's a completely unrealistic demand.

What do you mean? Ukraine being invited into NATO was never really on the table, NATO knew it, Ukraine knew it as well and Putin made sure of that by creating disputed territories by annexation.

I agree that an European military would be great, but I don't see it like you do. NATO is a defensive pact and I'm very happy to be a part of it because I believe it's the main reason why Europe has been so stable for decades. My country has been invaded by both Germans and Soviets and being in a military alliance with the US and western Europe who are our allies and haven't done wrong to us since 1938 was a big achievement of our foreign politics. For this reason I don't think any comparisons like "what would the US do if it was surrounded by xxx" make sense. Firstly Russia is only "surrounded" from the European side and secondly the only reason why my country and others in central and eastern Europe are in NATO is that Soviets repeatedly invaded and oppressed us and other neighbors and Russian federation keeps doing the same. Mexicans and Canadians have no reason to enter a military alliance to defend themselves from the US because in the grand scheme of things the US is a good neighbor. I agree that geopolitics is often ugly and unfair, but I don't think one side doing wrong in any way justifies other sides doing wrong.

I really don't think this is a fair assessment of the situation. The 14k dead are afaik on both sides, and many of them are Russian military, among other things. The fact is that Ukraine is a sovereign country which had its parts annexed years ago and now suffers from the most violent invasion since WW2. What we should be thinking about right now is how can we help them. Me and most of my surrounding are doing our part by donating things useful for refugees at the border and donating money to organizations supplying medical and military equipment. I'll leave you with this hilarious video of a few Ukrainians with balls of steel asking the squad of a Russian military transporter if they need a tow back to Russia:

Man, this is fucked. Some of my acquaintances have ties to Ukraine and it's so shocking to watch. In the last decade I was watching them help poorer regions with economic development, do business with Ukrainian companies, make friends, watched the country slowly get better, only to be fucked overnight. Horrible thing.

This is a really weird take. Ukraine is way more democratic than Russia and while it's still corrupt and many things are dysfunctional, it has made great progress since Euromaidan, which was nothing more than young populace being unhappy with being in the sphere of Russian influence and wanting to go their own way. There's no chance Ukraine will join NATO any time soon and Russia knows it very well. But it's not surprising that Ukraine sympathizes with NATO and the west, having parts of their country annexed and being at war with Russia for the last 8 years obviously they want to be allies with people who could help protect them. I really don't see how being members of NATO, a defensive alliance, is so offensive unless Russia wants to maintain dominance over its neighbors hoping to invade and annex them like they already did several times. But like I said, Ukraine in NATO is not realistic and nothing more than a red herring and there's no way in hell any of the middle european countries will leave. The experience of being invaded by the soviets is too fresh and we consider our membership as the biggest foreign policy achievement of free and independent Czechia.

I would be careful when judging whether you actually predicted and identified it or whether you were just coincidentally right this time. Impossible to know from my point of view of course, but both is possible. That said, I agree to a degree. And from reading the opinions of foreign policy experts from the US, Israel and Czechia, my own country, they see it kinda similarly as well. It's just that the actual elected politicians refuse to acknowledge it unless they've been already elected when the danger existed (like in Israel) or unless things are already happening, which is too late. It was the same with the pandemic really.