aprettycooldude

Hey I worked at NVIDIA and can chime in here (since my NDA is long gone)! The numbers are actually similar to how NVIDIA names chips in house, with that first number being the iteration of chip architecture (Fermi, Kepler, Kepler v2, Maxwell, Maxwell v2, etc.). The 700 to 900 difference is actually directly tied into this. NVIDIA launches each new GTX product line with the high end first (*80, *70), and works their way down. Part of this is die size and power draw, the other part is Make That Money. The 700 series is abnormal in this regard! Both 400 and 500 series cards used Fermi arch. 600 and 700 both used Kepler. It stands to follow that 800 and 900 would use Maxwell. BUTTT for reasons (probably tied to mobile but I'm not sure), the GTX 750 actually launched with Maxwell architecture. This was a selling point and everything! It was the first Maxwell card NVIDIA had released, the power/performance was on point for someone looking for a $150 card, etc. NVIDIA skipped 800, and from what I gather that was a combination of Apple/Samsung buying all the available silicon at the time, and also Maxwell being optimized kinda poorly. There was an 800M line released for laptops, but NVIDIA basically skipped 2014 as a "model year." The 980 and 970 dropped in September of 2014, about a year and a half after all 700s had released. So rather than go along with the 800 branding again in 2014/2015, they bumped it up to 900, and that's the first card series with 100% For Real No BS Maxwell arch in all cards. Pascal arch is coming in 2016 (maybe!) in GTX 1000, which I imagine they'll rebrand. GRAPHICS CARDS!

dinosaurssssss and I are gonna HANGGGG at TLC! Also, this is the Gif Of The Year

Someone did a Sable custom and it's equally incredible. http://imgur.com/a/t7m4n There are some generic shared events between characters (Today I went shopping!), but each one also has unique character-focused events as well. Mabel's got one where she and Labelle buy a new sewing machine for Sable, Tom Nook has one where he teaches his kids how to bleed people dry, K.K. gets recognized in the club... The whole thing is super cute, is what I'm saying here.

Guhhh they're so cute

You hit me right in the "things that will pull me back" You monster

Hey a game that focuses solely on amiibo is out tomorrow (It is Animal Crossing). It looks medium-boring, but will probably be slightly less friend-killing than Mario Party, and easier to play if one is inebriated. Also, the amiibo are super cute! I bought all of them, and will post pictures tomorrow. In case you are wondering how much the game matters vs. the amiibo, this is literally what Aya Kyoguku (franchise director) said in an interview a few months back. Points for honesty.

I'm with video games on this one, actually. If someone needs me, send a ping (I'm in the Idle Thumbs slack channel always), but I've gotta get cracking on other games before I lose even more time to Xenoblade at the beginning of December. I finally finished Kirby and the Rainbow Curse yesterday, which says something I think about how bad the backlog is for 2015 alone. Gotta get ready for the GOTY list.

The red line is actually intentional! It indicates that a note is on the "and" beat (the "off beat"). So if a pattern is a straight "1, 2, 3, 4" with quarter notes, all of those will be yellow lines. If it's "1 and 2 and 3 and 4," the three "and" notes will have red lines to denote that they're on the off beat. Red lines also tend to show up for any other syncopated rhythms. Triplets are all red lines as well, and I think some other things that don't fall cleanly into a 4/4 or 3/4 (I don't think Dancing all Night has any time signatures other than those, maybe 6/8 which doesn't make a huge difference) downbeat structure also end up getting "red lined." Music!

Black Spindle is the Daily today. I already have it (and the accompanying ship), but am happy to run again with anyone who needs it! I've got one non-Thumbs buddy who's got a hankering, and I dunno if anyone else here is up for some Taken slaughter. As a side note, I've almost finished the main story on my Warlock, which means I will soon be blessed with yet another iteration of the sword quest, which means I will have three swords that need the Sunless Cell Deluxe Special Edition quest in the near future. So uh, might throw something up on the the100 to gauge interest.

Wrestling video games are historically awful, but this is one of the coolest things I've ever seen in a Create A Character system. The fact that we live in a world where I can put my own tattoo in a video game is mind-boggling. Middle School Me would have had his brains fried.

Destiny is NUTS. I thought I could go a week without playing and didn't even come close. Do we want to try to run King's Fall Regular anytime again in the future? It's been two weeks since our last run, so I thought I'd bring it up.

Myself, Mechanations, and remadeking are all signed up for a VoG run tonight to kill the heck out of Atheon and crush an eyeball. Anyone else game?

I think you were not part of the last "Hadium Flake Harvest While Talking About Life And Whatever, Brought To You By The Nightstalker Keen Scout Ability And Squarespace" session, and we are probably due for another one of those if other people don't have all three of their swords yet. Do you need Hadium Flakes outside the sword quest?

Weird, did you join up with FWC and donate banana bucks? I'm gonna throw up a VoG for the Atheon kill and maybe Sunless Cell Hard Mode after for anyone else who needs/wants their Exotic Sword. I was trying so hard not to play this week and get through my backlog, too...

I popped on briefly in the AM and got up to Kill Atheon.

I'm putting my money on it being a dockable tablet, similar to Microsoft's "new" dock-thing where you can plug in your phone to what is effectively a port replicator. The dock has all the Modern Standard Outputs: HDMI, Optical, USB 3.0 A, 3.0 C, 1GB/s Ethernet, and the Wii Sensor Bar. Also, the dock has a blu-ray drive, and a replaceable 500GB 5400RPM HDD. The dock has a PowerPC chip in it. The dock is not small; it is roughly as large as the tablet, which slides in to dock, as opposed to standing up. It is roughly the size of a PS4 lying on its side, with a little shaved off the top, which the tabgl All the tech is contained in the tablet itself, which will have exactly 1 hour of battery life before purchase of a Bigger Battery which boosts it to 3. The tablet has 64GB of internal flash storage, which is non-expandable. NX games (and "Compatible With Tablet" ports) will be loadable onto the tablet itself, allowing those games to be taken on the go. There is a touchscreen for the requisite Cut The Rope games, but also a Bluetooth controller for Serious MLG Pros (and games like Zelda, VC games, Mario 64 Remastered, whatever). The same controller is used when the tablet is docked. The NX is backwards compatible with both Wii U and Wii games when the tablet is not docked (Wii U touchpad components are mapped to the tablet alongside a touchscreen control scheme a la Mega Man/whatevet, owing to the PowerPC/AMD chipset in the dock itself. Nintendo touts this as a big feature during the announce, pointing out that it is the first console with three generations of backwards compatibility. Sony makes a snide tweet, which results in Nintendo firing back that Sony removed PS2 capability almost immediately. In two years, Nintendo announces the NX Lite, which removes backwards compatibility. Sony makes another tweet. Nintendo does not respond.

People have tried. There's no real determining factor so far, it's just "cross your fingers and pray."

Big ups to remadeking and spork for our successful spindle run last night. Took three (maybe four?) tries, and we finished with about 45 seconds left on the clock. Having a Weapons of Light bubble turned out to be the Difference Maker. I set up a PoE 34 event for tonight; there are three Ultras throughout the sucker, which means three chances for a 3oC to proc (also, strange coins!). I'm raided out for the time being, I think. I need a week to recharge before diving back in, but next weekend I'd be happy to run with both Crota Today and maybe another group on my Hunter.

I think Bungie primarily shilled the Spark of Light as a "start a new character" for returning players and "get your friends up to your level if you want to play together right away" for newer players. I'm of the mindset that if I were to roll a new character around the same time as a friend started playing, I would absolutely go through the story again (especially with Nolanbot!). That said, it's also true that grabbing the quests from the "abandoned quest" kiosk is one of the best ways to level a new class, and combined with the Skip Cutscenes function, it takes a lot of the slog out of what used to be an incredibly tedious process.

I didn't think about level boosters; I wouldn't be surprised to see Sparks of Light (the "Jump To 25" item included with TTK) go on sale for 1,000 silver or something around the time of the next expansion. Similarly, I wouldn't be surprised to see Focused Light Bundles or just straight 50% increase to subclass levels items show up. That skirts the edges of P2W, and is definitely not cosmetic, but it doesn't affect competitive play the way selling exotic unlocks (for example) for bundles of silver would. The real shocker is that transmog isn't available yet, you'd think they'd have that purchasable out of the gate. I'd be extra-surprised if they didn't do the same thing they did with silver; give everyone one shot for free, and then charge an exorbitant amount ($10-15) to do it again.

Real talk, if Bungie sticks to promises (haha) and the tradeoff is "Silver exists and pays for dumb cosmetic garbage that chumps like dj will buy, all story expansions are free," I'm okay with this. It's the FFXIV model, and oh dang whoops, looks like I'm extolling the virtues of FFXIV again. If Bungie pulls off 2-3 Dark Below/House of Wolves-sized expansions a year, with a Destiny 2/Taken King every September or so, I will be happy as a clam. Bonus points if they pull this off without a subscription fee (which would almost assuredly be a deathblow for the game).

Don't worry That problem is still alive and well

Emotes (and silver, by proxy) are up! Currently 18 available for sale at Tess' sleek new booth. Legendary emotes are 500 silver, rares are 200. You have 400 silver to start, and the rest can be purchased in bundles: $5 for 500, $10 for 1100, $20 for 2300. You can still only overwrite Point. You *cannot* double purchase from Tess, purchased items have a checkmark and will just repopulate into your inventory (a la kiosks). There is a separate emote kiosk by the jukebox in da club if you don't want to have "BUY SILVER" flashing at you while you swap out your emotes. Silver shows up next to Legendary Marks on your currency screen, but I cannot remember if there is an additional "buy silver" mouseover there (I don't think so). Available: Legendary: Enthusiastic Dance (The Carlton) Slow Clap Rare: Pumped Up Blowing A Kiss Swing Safe Booyah Formal Bow Bring It On (the Morpheus) Victory Cheer Come At Me Congrats Oh, Please Evil Scheme Cower Sorrow (Crying on the ground) Watch Your Back Tantrum I am part of the problem, and immediately shelled out $20 and bought Carlton, Slow Clap, Victory Cheer, Congrats, Formal Bow, Bring It On, Sorrow, Pumped Up, Watch Your Back, and Oh, Please.

Related: I think Omolon designs are my favorite of all the foundry weapons. I'm pretty okay with my Sci Fi guns being outrageous, and Omolon fits that bill. Weirdly enough, I'd take Hakke over Suros. Opinions: 1. Crux/Lomar 2. Omolon 3. Tex Mechanica 4. Hakke 5. SUROS N/A (Haven't had enough time/seen enough non-blue guns to form an opinion) Cassoid Daito Nadir

Class items you cannot, but weapons absolutely. My Titan is FWC and Hung Jury all day every day.