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Everything I've been reading says it's nowhere even close to as dramatic as platters -> SSD, but also if you are buying new, that it's a no-brainer to go that route. On another note, my Ryzen CPU came in way earlier than expected so all of my parts are now in my hands for the weekend!

Officially arriving on Halloween this year!

Alrighty, did more reading after all of the great advice from @Magness and filled in the rest of the gaps after a couple of hours (such as, why I needed an X570 chipset motherboard for the new Gen3 Ryzen CPUs and PCIE4 compatibility). Final list: AMD Ryzen 3700X CPU Gigabyte X570 Gaming X motherboard G.Skill somethingorother 32GB DDR4-3600 memory Sabrent 1TB M.2 / PCIE4 SSD Fractal Design Meshify C case EVGA RTX 2080, Black Edition GPU Man, that PCIE4 throughput is insane, can't imagine what the OS speed is going to be like and should have enough space left for lots of games, didn't want to spring another $200 for the 2TB version, that can wait. Went with the DDR-3600 memory after reading some about how the Ryzen gen3 chips work with the latest chipsets, seems to be a decent upgrade. And RTX 2070 Super cards are sold out everywhere, so bit the bullet and bumped up to the RTX 2080 😬. No way I was going to pay the premium for the 2080Ti. Going to be about a week before everything gets here, the CPU was the bottleneck since the next shipment is hitting on the 22nd just about everywhere.

She did. And she was not amused.

Looks good to me, lol

Hey this looks pretty good....

As a non-Switch owner, and not about to become one, this is one of the rare exclusives I'm annoyed at. I really want to play a good modern Marvel Ultimate Alliance game.

Really wish this had cross-play. I’m on Xbox and loving it, but it would put it over the top to clan up with y’all.

Hello from the future!* * September 2018 Initial observations: FaceID is really quite brilliant. FaceID + 1Password? Pure science fiction. I want this on Macs. I love the screen. Bright and engaging with those wonderful OLED colours with the P3 gamut. iOS makes brilliant use of these edge to edge displays in a way I had not fully anticipated until I opened up the forum in Safari. It all looks and feels so right. The speed probably tops the list for improvements. Multi-tasking between apps, app loading, and especially Safari browsing is just a joyous experience now that I am free of that 1GB RAM bottleneck. It's the first iPhone I've had that feels as fluid as an iPad Pro. I instantly understood how some of you might want to use it more than a laptop/desktop. There are subtle little animation flourishes throughout iOS that don't even surface under iOS12 on my 6 at all too thanks to the beefier processing. I took to the lack of home button far quicker than I expected. The swipe/gesture navigation just seems so obvious a way forward that it leaves you questioning why we didn't get to this point sooner. Very impressed with the audio from the little speakers. The illusion of stereo even while watching something while holding the phone horizontally is quite convincing. The camera is a mind blowing improvement over what I've been used to. I know this year they will add an ultra-wide lens, but its the telephoto that's always been of interest to me. It seems great and I'd love it if they can bring it down to f1.8 in future to match the speed of the standard lens. Definitely looking forward to getting out with the phone and the Halide app over the coming week. Does the efficiency of iOS differ from one model of iPhone to another? I ask because on the XS it has reduced my used capacity to a mere 24.5GB which is a huge difference to what I had on the 6 (even after moving my photo library to the cloud). A reduction of a little over 8GB by comparison. And to think, iOS13 is said to halve the size of apps to give us even more space back! I guess I've found myself with the last iPhone that will support 3D Touch. I really like the concept of it so hope it transitions well to haptic press in future phones. I do think it would be smart to roll the app deletion option into the pop up menus upon pressing for 3D Touch though. It seems quite easy to press too lightly and trigger the wobbly app deletion option of old. Speaking of haptics, those little haptic feedback notifications that trigger throughout various usage (such as liking a tweet) are unexpectedly satisfying. I knew it beforehand and ordered one of course, but f**k them for not including the 3.5mm dongle in the box as they did with the X. My wifi and cellular signals indoors don't really seem to be any stronger than my 6 which is disappointing, although I am judging that by the display bars as stupidly I forgot to run speedtest on my 6 before erasing it. With that said the wifi signal is certainly more stable (on the 6 at home it would drop out and default to 4G quite often). I'm excited to see how long the battery lasts. I let it deplete to 10% after taking it out of the box, setting it up and playing around, and it's certainly taken a long time to charge back to full power so hopefully that's an indication that it will last a long time too. Tempting to get an 18w charger but we'll see if rumours are true of them being bundled with future iPad Pros before I consider getting one. I don't think I will get a wireless charging pad anytime in the next year or so. Do any of you guys use one?

Saw Spiderman. Thought it was really good. Enjoyed the personal stories way more than the first movie. Liked the iron Man 3 -esque plot. Can't wait to see what the future holds.

Man, switching jobs in my company feels like the smartest thing I've done in a long time. They were bereft of an experienced Oracle guy, so along with my other duties, I've become the "pro from Dover" on Oracle problems. So far, I've been extremely lucky with my recommendations and have optimized and tuned some database processes into order-of-magnitude improvements. The people here think I'm a freakin' genius! I just hope my luck doesn't run out. I'm loving it. So busy, but not bored, and that's what I was looking for. Carlos. P.S. In case you didn't get the "pro from Dover" reference... (and you definitely should!) nsfw language.... Carlos.

Yup. Done. Look at me being all sensible! Should have it tomorrow. ☺️ Just got the code through to unlock my 6 as well so I can probably sell that on Wednesday (will need to source a SIM for another network though. Should be able to ask Carphone Warehouse to put one in to unlock it for me). Need to pick out a case and get the damn lightening/headphone dongle.

We'll, I got the CR-10s assembled yesterday and did a test print with an included model of a lion...turned out pretty well considering I've done no tuning yet: I'm printing a flexi shark right now. I'm watching it happen and I'm still convinced that it's at least partly black magic.

I went ahead and created an LCVG clan on Xbox. Send an invite request if anyone wants to join.

Love the Thor Four logo; someone’s gone very 80s metal.

Cancer ridden Jane Foster is bad ass as Thor. That’s all you need to know.:)

Avatar has fallen. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/avengers-endgame-passes-avatar-become-no-1-film-all-time-1225121?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&fbclid=IwAR1ka3BPhRKjzRKrVRBiDs9tHQTQAlTrIgtGcJZXW8hJ14NUHsadjOh2Vgg Ali casting as Blade is the best shit announced out of all of that stuff.:)

I was more positive on the potential of the game, so I'm glad to see this progressing. Of course we all just watched Thor kill a bunch of bad dudes with that fucking hammer, that just happened!

The “engage” gave me chills. Goodness I can’t wait.

News from SDCC and TRAILER https://www.startrek.com/videos/watch-first-star-trek-picard-trailer-patrick-stewart-sdcc-hall-h

The MCU panel is at 8:15 PM EST tonight. As I see news I will post it here, as I do not think they are streaming it live.

Same. Haven’t played in over a month but would if there was an LCVG Xbox clan.

500. Boom. My buddy was jealous because he was ahead of me most of the time. But I got there first and I think it was off a piece he gave me. He’s only at 499. Sucker.

I had written the game off after that E3 presentation, but this is big improvement. Interested again.

I had my doubts on the casting on Yennefer but man, they did good.

Camera footage but maybe you know...show this at E3 instead of that CG nonsense and terrible messaging cause it actually looks like a pretty decent beat-em-up.

It Chapter 2 looks incredible. So hyped for that. What a cast!

Well damn, I didn't think I'd be interested, but after seeing this protoype I may need to buy this.

Yuzo Koshiro is officially in.... Oh and he just happened to bring the brilliant minds behind the music for Street Fighter II and Jet Set with him.

All I can say is, there better be Monkey Target.

I don't need a car in London, no. At my work desk at home I think, long term, I could see myself getting one purely as I hate cable clutter, and if they refuse to go USB-C on the iPhone in the next two years it'd be worth it just to rid myself of a single use cable (which almost inevitably falls apart). Unrelated... I'm quite amazed how well FaceID works in the dark. I know people have said repeatedly that it works fine, but it's easy to question it until you finally use it for yourself. Really is brilliant. I THINK Animoji and Memoji's are also kind of brilliant too, in an absurd way. That it can recognise an eyebrow raise, and an ear wiggle is really quit ingenious in its own way. Which reminds me, one thing I have yet to try on the new phone is AR! I'll make a point to do that tomorrow sometime.

I did. It (and the phone) just arrived. Just backing up my 6 before embarking into the future.

Bought this last week to congratulate my son on winning an achievement prize at school. So far he's crafted two pretty impressive levels, and has to show they're even possible to me, as they're way beyond my skill level. I've not really done the time on 2D Mario since World and he keeps creating bits that are only possible with deft use of the cat outfit, bone shells etc.

Part of the reason why I wanted the XS over the XR was that it was roughly the same size as my iPhone 7 in the hand. The screen was naturally bigger because of the edge-to-edge screen, but it would still fit in my hand roughly the same way.

I'll stop spamming the board with my Scythe nonsense after this quick update! So the base game came in this afternoon and I immediately picked a fraction and got to work. Painting mechs is pretty simple, so I started there. Now that I'm warmed up, on to the character. Damn, though, those faces are bitty af. Pray for me. Edited to add the character. I might have missed my calling, y'all. Gluing little tufts of grass onto bases is therapeutic.

Season 3 was fun and satisfying. Loved how I didn't put it together until the end that has a double-meaning. The really shameless product-placement was a ridiculous nod to 80's movies. Now excuse me while I go order a New Coke at Burger King. Carlos.

So it's looking like the plan for next February's trip is to do 5d at the 3 Universal parks, and take a day to just do DHS and Star Wars. It'll be an expensive day trip, and not sure if there are any deals to be had if you only do a single day, but it's probably the best chance to go see Galaxy's Edge for the next several years.

I’m not sure that’s what the rumour implies, Cam. All it seems to be saying is that in the story Bond has retired (makes sense after the end of the last film), so naturally another agent would have been assigned his number. The assumption would be he gets it back by the end.

Feb 12 2021 SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS Real Mandarin in the MCU -Tony Leung! as Mandarin

I carry my XS Max on my pocket everyday without a problem.

I had another play with an XR yesterday, just to get a feel for a 6.1" phone if indeed that size is to become the norm in 2020. I THINK I could live with it. Already with the XS I am finding it so quick and powerful that I am using it for productivity and making quick edits to MS Word documents...etc, so it will be interesting to see over time just how much more I use it for such purposes. The size increase over my old 6 is very nice in horizontal mode, so I can appreciate the added benefit there with a 6.1" display. It's a bonus that the XR size allows for excellent battery life too, which is something to bear in mind next year. Alongside a 12.9" iPad Pro it might just make a 6.1" phone ideal as a companion, almost as if once could view an iPhone as an 'iPad Mini Mini' now. We'll see. I'm not convinced it's pocketable. If they added pencil support in 2020 it would certainly up the value of a 6.1" display for me though (since the 2019 phones will apparently be able to charge other devices like airpods wirelessly, then it can't be too much of a stretch to imagine being able to charge the Pencil2 on a future model, and for that model to even have a magnet on the side to hold the pencil maybe). Meanwhile my Macbook Pro battery is totally dead now by the look of it. It's been giving me trouble before, with the service battery prompt being visible for a couple of months now, but I could usually at least do an SMC reset to get it to charge back up to 100%. Now it is fixed at 0% and also seems to be severely affecting performance despite being plugged in. Sluggish response times even just typing on the forum, and beach balling with delays just to add a single row in Excel...etc. I'll have to make an appointment with Apple. I have fewer than 800 cycles on the battery, well below the 1000 Apple declare to be the lifetime performance before recommended replacement. According to the Apple website I SHOULD be protected under consumer law in the UK/EU which covers me for technical faults 6 years after purchase (and I've had my mid-2014 spec MBP since early 2015).

Yep, free 'multipass' each time, with some exceptions for what they could be used for. We had Star Tours all to ourselves one ride, which was awesome!

One more thing to note for people getting into this. Humidity wrecks filament - if you live in a humid area (e.g. Texas in summer...) you're going to want some sort of plastic storage tub that you can seal & through a dehumidifier of some sort into.

I wish this had crossplay too - would be so perfect for this game.

There’s lots to love about FaceID in addition to it working in the dark. I’m continually impressed that it registers my face when I’m wearing glasses, including sunglasses. Also, how it only registers when I look at the device. Really cool. If I have a beef with FaceID at this point, it’s on the iPad. Apple continues to insist that the iPad’s natural orientation is in portrait mode, so the camera and sensors are on the “top” of the unit, opposite the USB-C port. Of course, much of the time I try to unlock it, my left hand is blocking them so it can’t read my face. If I could change anything about my iPad Pro, it would be to move the front camera to the side with the volume buttons. That seems like a more natural location for me, given the fact that most people probably use it in that orientation.

I'm still on the fence -- it looks like so much fun, but I don't have any specific use.

That's a shame. Wireless charging is so convenient on my X. I have wireless charging cradles for the two primary vehicles I drive, I don't think you drive much though. I have a stand on my desk at work that I can plop it right down on anytime and I don't have to fear wearing out the port on the phone. And when I get a call I don't have to unplug it I can just grab it. The Samsung Fast charger is hooked up to my computer at home and goes at a pretty good pace. Fast chargers do make a slight difference, but most charge quickly even on a standard speed.

Th4w (if the plot were about climate change).