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Welcome to Talk Amongst Yourselves! Consider this the unofficial Kotaku Australia forum. Become a TAYbie today and join the best and friendliest community on the internet!
The Cheapest NBN 1000 Plans
Looking to bump up your internet connection and save a few bucks? Here are the cheapest plans available.
*mashes TAYbies together* now play nice you two
He’s not coming to pax because of a trip to Japan next year. He knows my feelings on this…
That you should come to Japan with me? I agree. You should.
Oh, are you paying? How kind.
@scree As soon as I get my Switch.
Awesome, i totally win out here XD
Very pleased, because you don’t have to put up with his annoying personality? lol
j/k you know I love ya @freezespreston 😀
I need the numbers for pax meat and he’s ruining it!
How typical of him! lol.
I know, right?
He’s just the worst I say, the worst!
I’m getting my brother a Sat ticket to PAX for his birthday so there is a chance he might come to PAX meat as well
Correct answer =P
New week!
Just started a new job, three days a week, within school hours, so I can still look after the kids.
The company wants to move their marketing into ‘the social medias’ so I’ll be setting up Twitter and Instagram and Snapchat accounts etc this week and learning how to use them all :^)
Also will be moving them onto the NBN and replacing their PABX with a hosted PABX, so plenty to keep me busy.
Haven’t been playing many games due to lack of time, but after seeing a screenshot I want the arcade version of Punchout that is coming to the Switch sooo bad! I wish Donkey Kong would get released, but apparently it won’t be coming 🙁
Sounds great man! Glad to hear you found something that fits in to your life 🙂
I’m not really familiar with Snapchat or Insta, but when it comes to twitter, if you’re planning to use it on a computer, I would recommend you check out tweetdeck. https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/ It’s miles better than the standard twitter web interface, and also allows you to have multiple accounts, so if you have a personal account as well, you can use both at the same time without having to log out/in all the time. It’s also got a nice customizable interface which will make management and visibility of notifications etc much easier.
I’m on Tweetdeck in the office, use it to jump across personal/work accounts. It doesn’t do everything I want – you can’t run a poll in Tweetdeck, boo – but I wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on Twitter properly without it, either.
Yeah the ability to set up polls would be nice, but you can at least log in to the twitter site and post the poll (without having to log out of tweetdeck), and then monitor the results in tweetdeck.
Thanks, I’ll check that out.
Depending on the number of platforms you need to manage Hootsuite could be worth looking into as well
Still waiting on my PAX pass to arrive in the mail.
Bought it all the way back in March.
-_-
Finally finished HZD, and got the platinum trophy (for those that missed my repeated twitterings)
What an absolutely awesome game! Also, my first platinum trophy!
I’m thinking I want to play something a bit more linear now, I think I’d send myself bonkers with another 60hr+ open world game, so I’m thinking either Knack, Killzone or Stick of Truth…. Thoughts?
Stick of truth was a great game. I started to play it initially, and although it was funny af, I stopped playing for a while. Perhaps I felt it wasn’t quite all that I expected/wanted from it.
The game really picks up in the second half though. Goes from being a classic, yet somewhat mediocre RPG, to just kicking all kinds of ass! Can’t exactly say why, but I too highly recommend playing it! Way cool stuff!
I started it last night, and couldn’t help myself from laughing continuously throughout the intro levels. Especially references to Cartman’s mums dildos and being referred to as Douchebag constantly.
You’re not the only one, I had to google it.
Which I am having to do right now…
*whispers* horizon Zero dawn
Hazardous Dangles was my favourite of the Uncharted series.
Not Happy Zoo Dongs?
Sounds like the description of the new Donglebook & Donglebook Pro’s by Apple.
It’s the Samsung versions
Far out. Canada Post is slower than Australia Post. Sent a package to my friend in Newfoundland. At the end of August, in 2 days it was in Richmond, BC. Just outside of Vancouver & was cleared by customs by the 4th day of its journey. But then it sat at the sorting centre for almost THREE WEEKS?! Only on Saturday did it start the rest of its journey to my friend, which was annoying because she’s across country atm in Calgary & not back until late tomorrow, at least it’s sitting at her local post office waiting collection 😀
This is not normal. Canadian post isn’t as good as US Post but it’s still usually pretty good.
EDIT: maybe they saw it was from Australia and left it in quarantine for 3 weeks to ensure it wasn’t full of spiders.
Really? Damn. That’s been my experience every time i’ve sent something to Canada :/ Last time sending something to a friend in Nova Scotia it took almost 6 weeks & it was the tiniest little parcel!
Maybe different for Australia to Canada vs US to Canada but the times I’ve both sent and received from Canada to/from the US it’s been pretty normal. Mail to Calgary definitely shouldn’t take that long, that’s a major city. Mail to Nova Scotia I could imagine possibly being trickier depending on how isolated they were.
It was Halifax in NS, which is their major city. Also receiving stuff from Canada takes foreeeeeeeeeeever, I bought some Dbrand skins like a year ago, they took over 2 months to get to me via DHL, it was a joke.
Man they must hate you.
I mailed PAX tickets to a friend north of Vancouver a few weeks ago and he got them in 2 days. Granted that was from Seattle and only a few hours away but still, customs and shit since it’s international…
It seems that way doesn’t lol. I was more annoyed it was cleared by customs in about 2 days of it arriving in BC, and then just sat there saying “Waiting for Canada Post” like come on.. I paid a lot of money to have that thing sent lol. It’s weird though, I can send stuff to England & it’ll be there in no more than 10 days, but eh. At least it has been delivered, well, I just have to wait for her to get home from Calgary tonight and then i’ll know for sure 😀
Is it possible it was carded and they didn’t get around to picking it up from the post office for several weeks?
Nope. I even contacted Canada Post about it, it just hadn’t moved at all. But it finally moved from Richmond on Friday to make its journey to St. John’s in Newfoundland, it was attempted delivery on Monday, but was a failure cause she was off in Alberta for family stuff. She’ll be collecting it later today though!
Organised a four day weekend for the launch of Destiny 2’s first raid, and flew up to Brisbane to meet my raid team in person for the first time since we started playing together 2.5-3 years ago. We all met up and went into the raid completely blind on Friday night.
We hit our first major stumbling block in the third encounter – The Gauntlet – and called it a night after exhausting all our ideas, intending to mull it over and come back for another try the following day. We reconvened a little after midday Saturday, and it still took us a long time to figure out what we needed to do, but once we did, it took us only a few runs to adjust our strategies and get the timing down (and to realise that what we’d thought was a failure mechanic was just something added to complicate the encounter). Completed the first phase at last, then everything went smoothly until the final phase, which we somehow managed to beat in a mad panic with three people dead… and then we were on to the final boss: Emperor Calus.
The mechanics here were much more straightforward, using hints from the previous encounters, although it still took us an hour or two of experimentation to figure out. Although we did end up inadvertently making things way harder than necessary, we finally had two perfect cycles with no deaths and had Calus down to 5% health. Cue terrible heavy ammo drops, 3 deaths in rapid succession, and general panic… but we managed to get people back up and dropped his shield asap. We hit his final stand – everyone out of heavy ammo, some of us completely empty of all ammo and unable to do anything but shout moral support…
We got him with a second or two to spare. The atmosphere in the room was like nothing else. So glad I made the trip – that moment was so worth it.
Overall, a really fun raid, if not as thematically compelling as investigating a mysterious Vex structure, hunting down a Hive god or the leader of a Fallen faction that has been harassing you for the entire campaign. I like the change to the revive system (everyone gets a token that can be used to revive one person, and if they aren’t revived or you don’t finish the encounter within 30 seconds, the team wipes) – it adds a cool bit of strategy to encounters where the team gets split up and one team is in more danger than the other. I like the non-linearity of the design, and I really hope Bungie uses it to mix up the first three encounters in coming weeks. The Underbelly is an incredibly cool way to dish out some extra loot, and is a nice change of pace after a stressful boss. The token system has potential, but I feel it must really suck to not be able to complete the raid, thereby not unlocking the vendor, and missing out on the main source of raid gear/weapons. But the idea that if a group in a clan completes the raid, everyone in the clan gets a raid weapon/gear piece from Hawthorne – that’s awesome, especially when there’s already so few gear sets to choose from.
If anyone wants a Steam key for Oddworld: Abe’s Odyssey here you go:
3C4XL-R963H-36IE8
I’ve been thinking about upgrading my graphics card with the 20% off thing on ebay,
I can get:
1060 6GB $344
1070 8GB $550
1080Ti 11GB $912
AMD580 8GB $407
I am running 1080P, any suggestions as which way to jump?
Personally, I would go for a 1070. I got one back in January, great card, can max out at 1080P no dramas & gives you room to move to 1440P. Mine also overclocks like a beat, I love it.
The RX580, is that the 20% off price? I assume it isn’t because they’re under $400 from a lot of other places like MSY & PC Case Gear.
But looking at $$ to performance, the 1060 6GB is probably the best value, it out performs the 580 for quite a bit less, even if you do lose 2GB of vram, but that shouldn’t be an issue at 1080P. It’s also probably the optimal 1080P card out of the 4 listed, granted you don’t want to move to a higher resolution any time soon.
I have a 1080 and it gives me a solid 60-70fps or more on every game I’ve tried it with so far, at 1440p. I reckon you’d be okay with a 1070.
Definitely agree that for 1080p, no need to go super high. I get over 100fps at 2160p out of my 1080ti.
However, as tempting as the sale might be @poita, if you think you can hold out, I think there’s a 1070ti on the way soon. Most likely it will hit end up at the price point of the current 1070’s, which means the price on the 1070’s will drop when they do hit the market.
Of course, if you can’t wait, either the 1060 or 1070 will be fine. I used to play many many games at 2160p at over 60fps on my 6gb 960, so I think even a 1060 will suffice quite nicely for 1080p gameplay.
A couple of my games ran a bit shite at 2160p, but dropping them to 1440p would push the fps up well over 60.
Yes, that is with the 20% off on the 580, that is the 8GB version, the 4GB ones are under $400.
I’m thinking the 1060, it’s $200 cheaper than the 1070, and that gets me a few games 🙂
Ah my bad, I forgot there was a 4GB version, just like there’s a 3GB 1060..
Yeah the 1060 is a good price. I’d go for that, what brands are they offering it in?
I’ve recently been very seriously buying a somewhat high end SLA resin printer. Wondering if there would be any people interested in possibly having things printed with it? Cosplayers, people just wanting figures printed, engineering/prototype stuff? If you reckon you or someone you know might be interested (either personal or work related) let me know! 🙂
Would be great to get an idea of how much interest there might be out there.
If you need to know any details or have any questions about it, ask away! Happy to answer what I can.
Very cool, we have a FormLabs one here, which printer are you looking at, and what is the maximum print size?
I’m looking at the Gizmo3d series. If I can, hopefully the Gizimax. Has a maximum print size of 400mm x 225mm x 800mm high.
It’s a top down printer, unlike the formlabs ones (so the model sits on a build plate dipped in to a vat, rather than being attached to a build plate above and being dipped in, so there’s no risk of warping.)
Even if I can’t get the Gizimax, they have other smaller options, and they’re modular, so I can upgrade. Max build size on the next one down has a build height of 430mm, and same XY dimensions as the other one (if I get the bigger build platform.) Without the bigger build platform, the XY dimentions are only 200×113, which still isn’t bad, but I think to really be able to maximize my potential to make money, I’ll need to be able to offer big stuff.
What do you use yours for?
Oh, and it also has the option of a super speed addon, which is cool. Uses a second projector to enable you to do rapid prototypes, but with a bit less detail.
And when I say rapid, I mean Rapid! It can print a model that’s 135mm x 76mm x 10mm in just 2 mins!!! :0
We had a prototype of the Gizmodo3D, it has, well, let’s say some serious things you should know about before taking the plunge.
Also be aware that it is very, very messy compared to other printers.
Drop me a line if you’d like details, but I certainly wouldn’t rush into buying the Gizimax.
BTW, have you used an SLA printer in the past?
Ours is used for prototyping telescope and mount parts, jewellery and for figurines for boardgames and all kinds of other things.
Hahahaha, subliminally wrote Gizmodo3D….
I’m definitely keen to hear about these ‘serious things’. There’s not a lot of info around about them that I’ve found, so it would be good to hear from someone who’s experienced it. I expected it would be messy in some ways based on the design, so that doesn’t really worry me so much, but I would like to find out any potential issues it might have so I can weigh up whether it’s worth it or not. Feel free to email me if you prefer that to typing in here. (welbot at polycount dot com)
Also, I haven’t used an SLA printer before, but I figured if I was going to take the plunge, I might as well try and make the most of it. I have knowledge of the process and caveats of resin printing etc., so I’m not going in totally blind.
I don’t know that I will be jumping straight in to like the full blown gizimax kit though. Given you can modify it, I’m probably likely to start somewhere in the middle, and work my way up from there. I think the biggest reason I’m considering them, is they are built in Brisbane. I’ve not been in contact with them beyond an initial few emails yet, but I’m hoping that I might be able to go and see them to discuss a bunch of stuff, as I do have some questions for them with regards to the modular design. The other good thing about them being built in Brisbane for me, is I can likely save on shipping by picking it up myself.
Any way, keen to hear what you have to say based on your experience 🙂
I have looked at the formlabs fuse models, the Wanhao Duplicator 7, Bead 3d, XYZ Nobel 1, and a few others, and while I would easily consider the Fuse the best of the bunch that I’ve seen, the small build volume is a bit of a downer, but mostly I’m turned off by the need to use their proprietary resin cartridges. Generally speaking though, pretty much all of the SLA/DLP printers I’ve looked at, all have tiny build volumes. Only 2 that i’ve found have reasonable volumes within my price range, but only one (the Giz) is actually able to be purchased right now.
I’d love to know if you know of any others that are around with decent build volumes.
I am probably going to get an FDM printer too btw. Plenty of good options around for those though. 🙂
The company is in Brisbane, but they moved the manufacture to China.
I’ll bounce you an email, but I wouldn’t go that route personally, I’ll detail it more in the email, but I think you would have problems to say the least.
If you are after an FDM printer to get started, we have a few good ones on the shelf (A Wombot Excelis that has done only a few prints, and an un-used 3D Beast from Cultivate) that are gathering dust that I could sell cheap, we ended up not using them due to space issues originally, and then found our FDM stuff we do was already being handled by the smaller printers, so they never really got a run.
Looking forward to the email.
I did get an email from the founder saying that the next batch of machines are actually being built in Brisbane (or Geebung). Perhaps they are getting the parts manufactured in China, but sounds like they’re at least being assembled here. Still, keen to hear what else you have to say.
As for those FDM ones you said you have that you could sell, can you shoot over some specs, or links to pages where I can see them? Also how much you’d be willing to sell them for?
lol I’ve been emailing back and forth with the owner all day, and it looks like he might actually be interested in contracting me for some work!
Not quite sure where it’s going to go yet, but could be interesting! Perhaps if I do end up working for them, I can help to improve their gear! Can’t wait to hear what you have to say about the stuff now, so I can possibly address any issues with him when I go have a chat 🙂
Cool! Happy to help if I can!
Has been a mighty weird week. Just got an email from the guy who runs the company, and he’s going to send me an NDA to sign, then I’m going to go chat with them about both the printers, and the possibility of doing some contract work for them! Should be interesting to see where this all leads!
Foo Fighters tickets on sale tomorrow at 12pm Eastern.
With Weezer as the support act, there’s no way in hell I’d miss it.
On Monday, the girl at EB told me my Mini SNES would be in on Friday.
I took today off work, ready to play the shit out of it.
Turns out she lied and I have to wait another week. I lost a day off because of EB. Again.
Mainly for @weresmurf and @zombiejesus.
Finally got to the TNG’s The Inner Light. It would have to be the strongest episode I’ve seen so far. And until now, I’ve been considering The Measure of the Man as the strongest.
I think it also resonates with me as I go by the mantra, knowledge is growth. Those that forget are doomed to repeat after all.
Not gonna lie, I balled my eyes out at the end of The Inner Light. Mostly because it shows how easy it is for the existence of a culture can disappear and never to be rediscovered.
The Inner Light is a great episode (as is The Measure of a Man). There’s a real power to the desire to be remembered, and the sadness that is someone’s existence vanishing from the world’s collective memories.
The episode won the Hugo award for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1993, the first time a television show won that award since the original Star Trek’s City on the Edge of Forever. The series finale All Good Things also received that award in 1995.
Fun fact, the guy who played Picard’s adult son in that episode is Patrick Stewart’s actual son. It’s shown in later episodes that Picard kept the Ressikan flute from the probe, and continues to play.
Looks like I’m in for a treat when I finally reach the end of TNG. But that is a long ways of.
Call me silly but now that I’m in Season 6, I checked online and found an TNG and DS9 episode listing that consider the Star Dates so the events line up chronologically.
I know that Voyager (at least time wise) over laps with DS9 but I might call it quits after DS9.
In the last 16 months, I’ve seen the first six films, Season 1 of TOS and all of TNG up to Season 6, Episode 6 (does Q ever stop being a childish arse hole?)
Might try and finish TNG this year and work on DS9 later next year so I don’t get sick of Star Trek.
Q’s always childish, that’s part of his charm. Every now and then he has moments of faith in humanity that make you smile, and John de Lancie is a great actor.
TNG overlaps with DS9 for about a season and a half, which you’re just coming up to. Emissary (DS9 premiere) sits just after the TNG Chain of Command two-parter, while the TNG series finale All Good Things happens just after DS9’s Crossover.
There’s some overlap between DS9 and Voyager too, but a much bigger overlap. Voyager’s premiere Caretaker happens just after DS9’s mid-third season episode two parter Past Tense, so there are about four and a half seasons of overlap there. DS9’s finale What You Leave Behind happens between VOY episodes Equinox parts one and two.
You don’t need to worry about the overlap though, really. There aren’t really any significant events that align between the series, except for Worf joining DS9 some time after TNG finished.
To prepare you, DS9 is very different to TNG. While TNG’s clean Starfleet visuals and themes are really comforting, DS9 is the darker, grimier Cardassian aesthetic with a more disparate ensemble cast. I’ve watched through all of Star Trek maybe six times, and the transition from TNG to DS9 is always a little hard at first, like it’s grimy frontier Star Trek instead of nice starship Star Trek. The cast take some time to find their feet too, of course; especially Avery Brooks, who felt really quite awkward and aloof as Sisko for the first season or two. Once he goes the shaved head and beard though, you’re into badass Sisko territory and his acting is great from there out.
DS9 is different enough to TNG that you shouldn’t burn out, just expect the first season to be a little messy. Garak is probably my favourite character from the DS9 cast, you’ll love him too.
Voyager, despite its flagged ratings, is still a pretty decent show. It’s nice to go back to real Starfleet and a mobile starship after seven years on a Cardassian station. Of course, the show immediately loses contact with Starfleet, but there’s still that thread of familiarity from TNG that runs through Voyager, despite its differences.
Main criticisms of Voyager seem to focus on some less-developed members of the cast – Harry Kim and Chakotay. I somewhat agree with Chakotay, his acting was wooden a lot of the time and they largely shifted focus away from him in the later seasons, but Kim I thought played an ensign quite well, and the actor Garrett Wang is a genuinely nice guy.
I think Voyager’s worth your time. You can skip Enterprise, no real loss there (even though I do like some of it) but Voyager is basically the close of the TNG era in Star Trek. After Voyager, they went pre-TOS with Enterprise, deeper into the future with Star Trek Online, into alternate timeline bullshittery with the reboot movies, and then between ENT and TOS with Discovery. For me, the TNG-DS9-VOY era was by far the best and it really saddens me to think they’ll never return to that time. Part of why I keep looping through TNG/DS9/VOY series is because I miss that period so much.
To prepare you, DS9 is very different to TNG. While TNG’s clean Starfleet visuals and themes are really comforting, DS9 is the darker, grimier Cardassian aesthetic with a more disparate ensemble cast.
Don’t know about the Cardassian. I’ve only heard mention of them in the DS9 Tribbles episode.
That aside, going in I did ask a former co-worker who is a Star Trek fan. Said very much the same as you but not in as much detail.
And looking at other online sources, DS9 is sometimes called DS90210. So I have a feeling it might be more drama between races in which case it might still put me off. I watch content to get away from the hassles of every day life.
But I will still go into DS9 with a clear and open mind. I did the same with Star Trek 5 and I turned out all right. If anything, I feel like I’ve fallen for a very large prank about that movie being bad.
Regardless, thanks for the heads up.
Hmm, DS90210 seems a bit harsh. The show is much more conflict focused though, its main storyline is the Dominion War after all. I quite like the war storylines they ran, certainly more than the emissary/religion storylines.
You’ve seen the Cardassians before. TNG season 4, episode 12, The Wounded featured an encounter between the Enterprise and a Cardassian captain, Gul Macet, where it’s mentioned the Federation had a war with the Cardassian Empire in the past and are on tentative grounds now. This was the first appearance of Cardassians in Star Trek, and the only occasion where a Cardassian had facial hair. Funnily enough, Macet was also played by Marc Alaimo, who plays the major character Gul Dukat throughout all of DS9. They also appeared in season 5, episode 3, Ensign Ro.
The rest of the Cardassian appearances are still coming up for you. The next one is Chain of Command, 6×10-11.
You’ve seen the Cardassians before. TNG season 4, episode 12, The Wounded featured an encounter between the Enterprise and a Cardassian captain, Gul Macet
???
[Looks up Wikipedia]
Oh that! Yeah, you’re right. Don’t know how I forgot that episode. Might be to do with me watching TNG in bursts then turns to other things like work or other content.
At one point, I stopped to watch some 1960s Batman as a little tribute to Adam West.
Oh, side note: the Cardassian neck ridges were actually designed specifically with Marc Alaimo in mind, because he has an unusually long neck. The race was designed for the TNG episode, at the time I doubt they had any plans to have them recur much, let alone become such a pivotal race for the entire DS9 run.
Steam might finally be adding the AUD currency. I discovered this through the news section on the War For the Overworld Facebook page.
Here’s link to their post that explains it all https://wftogame.com/steam-pricing-2017/
With both the Vive and the Oculus Rift now much, much cheaper, AND coming with controllers included, I’d love to see a new Kotaku article on the state of VR today, and if it is finally taking off or not.
Re-reading old articles, the cost was listed as one of the biggest barriers, and that has now been substantially reduced. Microsoft’s ‘mixed reality’ headsets are also coming very soon from a variety of vendors.
I’m wondering wether HTC getting a billion in cash from Google will free up money inside HTC for a Vive2 with better resolution, and hopefully better ergonomics.
C’mon guys, go research and write a new article on the state of play of VR, I’d love to read it 🙂
Man, rental inspections are exhausting… Went to one place in Maidstone, and it reminded K and I of the apartment blocks in Dredd…. We also went to check it out because the rent was advertised at $350/w, but when we got there, the previous tenants were still moving out. She pulled K aside and mentioned that they’re not allowed to socialise on the balcony for fear of annoying anyone else in the block (what else is a big balcony for?)
In addition to this, there’s $300/m in body corporate fees on top of the rent… Needless to say we did a quick 180 and ran out the door.
Mhmm, for sure! We’ve just been offered a place in Pascoe Vale and paid the deposit this morning. Moving in on the weekend of the 6th.
This is a brand new townhouse (so new, Google Maps still shows it as a construction site) and has a neat little balcony, single garage, recycled water tank, two rooms on split levels etc, where the place we were living in Sydney was $360, was half on top of a cafe that turned it’s stereo on at 530am, and half on top of a thai restaurant that was open until midnight most nights. No garage, no backyard, no balcony, laundry was in the bathroom etc…
This is a marked improvement.
That sounds like a special place in hell. (I like my sleep)
Is public transport access easy enough?
At the new place or the place in Sydney?
The new one
I remember doing that, it is a horrible experience
The worst one ever was when Mrs Tigs had just gotten out of hospital after brain surgery and was having to try and go to mid week inspections while trying to recover
So, in the next few hours (assuming the release is bound to the lock at 1 Infinite Loop), Apple is set to release OS X High Sierra. I know it is stylised as macOS but I refuse to use that rebadging at this time.
On paper, High Sierra is looking to be what OS X has been needing for some time – a more recent version of Snow Leopard.
For those not in the Mac camp here’s the tl:dr version. Snow Leopard was basically the successor to Leopard (10.6 and 10.5 respectively) and sticks out in that very few new features were added. Instead Snow Leopard kept what was on offer and worked to solve the numerous performance issues and bugs in Leopard.
Fast forward to day and it feels like Apple is back on the same stage as it was with Leopard. The current releases of OS X have not felt as well optimised nor as polished as Snow Leopard was.
So the idea that High Sierra is more focused on under the hood technologies to improve and optimise the system is a welcome change.
But, some of changes just simply scare me and I’m tempted to wait until at least the 10.13.2 release before upgrading.
The main point of concern I have is the change in file system. At long last, Apple is updating the file system from HFS+ to a desktop version found in iOS 10 and up devices. Again, on paper, a welcome change and some of the features are clearly inspired by ZFS which makes it a much needed replacement for what is getting long in the tooth.
What terrifies me though is when one installs High Sierra, if the system is using SSD storage the existing file system is automatically converted with no means of opting out.
Granted, I know this is why people have backups to avoid disasters such as file system conversions failing but at the same time I am not happy nor comfortable with the mandatory conversion.
Personally, I would be happy to just upgrade the OS and leave my OS storage well enough alone. It is something fundamental and given the importance of my machine for my work I don’t want it bothered even if I take a bit of a performance hit.
I also do not feel enough testing has been carried out. It has even been reported that those who converted during the betas have to revert anyway as the version of APFS is not compatible with the final version.
And no, this is not my typical flavour of antics. Apple, for some idiotic reason, has made some installations that use the beta of the up coming OS incompatible with the final build.
Will be interesting to see but I’m honestly thinking of even waiting for OS X 10.14 (High Sierra’s replacement) as I do not feel the file system change has been fully thought out.
Worst case scenario, I might just get a cheap SSD and put it in my first Mac Laptop and see what happens. Have it act as the test machine. But again, it looks like I’ll have less tears if I just wait for 10.14.
I’ve been running the beta for a while now, and have had no issues other than FCP7 no longer running. Just image your boot drive if you are worried, and then upgrade, I’d recommend doing that on any system anyway.
Wow. This is fucked. Just got our latest power bill, THREE WEEKS after it was read. We have a smart meter, so there’s no reason for it to be delayed like that. But our last bill was $550 for 3 months, which was for summer when we ran the air conditioners and all that stuff. This one for “winter” was $300 over the last bill, what the fuck. I can see why, when we’re being charged almost 29 cents/kwh for close to 2 months & the cheapest we were charged was only 25 cents/kwh.
I thought the days of those bills were gone, since that’s all we got before the smart meter because they would never come in and read the meter just send us an estimate.
Yep, energy in Australia is bullshit. Even adjusted for purchasing power we’re paying twice what it costs in the US and triple what it costs in Canada. Out of developed western countries we’re really only beaten by Denmark, Germany and Spain.
The system of having stupid base rates and then giving everyone discounts makes no sense. At base rates, it costs almost $400 a year just to have the connection, even if you don’t use a single bit of energy. There are 9 million residential properties in Australia so from residential alone they’re generating $3.6 billion every year just on infrastructure, probably triple that (or more) once commercial and industrial property revenue is added. And that’s before even a single kwh is used by anyone. I don’t believe for a second that the industry has $10 billion in annual infrastructure costs.
Then add profit margins from generation through wholesale to retail. It costs around 8-10c/kwh to generate electricity in a coal power plant, where the majority of Australia’s energy comes from. That’s lifetime cost, so it includes fuel, labour, maintenance, peak/off-peak loading, everything involved in the operation of a power plant. Yet base rates right now are around 32c/kwh, quadruple the cost. And somehow the government, in charge of regulating this essential service, thinks that sounds fair.
The government won’t do shit. They’ve proven that time and again. Might give them a stern warning, but as far as actually doing something? Nope, we’ll just find someone or something to blame instead
Of course not. This whole situation with the regulator approving basically anything the energy companies ask for is driven by backroom deals and shady relationships between state politicians, the regulator board itself, and the energy companies. There’s all kinds of dodgy conflicts of interest going on there that I won’t go into but it’s worth looking at if you can find articles on it.
I’m sure there is heaps on it. But they should hold an independent (And I mean independent) enquiry about the goings on and then have the enquiry set the rate.
It won’t happen but it sure is nice to dream
It’s pretty shit. Are you sure you have your figures about the US correct? I know in states like Washington you can pay as little as 8c/kwh, but then California is up around what we pay, which is just absurd.
Yeah we’re charged a whopping $1.36 a day just for the connection, which is a rort in itself. Then there’s the GST we pay on it, and there’s one or two other fees we also cop.
I fear what our summer power bill is going to be like then. Probably over a grand, which is just stupid.
The most recent figures I could find were still from 2011, and Australian electricity prices have gone up a lot faster than the rest of the world since then.
Your connection fee is crazy, have you looked at shopping around? All the providers are a bit shit, but I switched to Powershop a while back because they let you enter your own meter readings and they have the option to buy power packs in advance (sometimes discounted) to give you more control. For them the base rate in NSW for me is around $1.02/day, but with discounts I think I get around 80c. Which is still high, but not as high.
That’s pretty standard for a lot of the companies around here from what I have seen. Most are higher than that though, my mate pays $1.55 a day with DoDo, Red Energy who every i’ve spoken to about electricity here claim they’re cheaper (they aren’t) they charge $1.39 a day.
I like the non-linearity of the design [of the raid], and I really hope Bungie uses it to mix up the first three encounters in coming weeks.
Well, whadduyaknow, that’s exactly what they did. Encounters last week were “Royal Pools, Pleasure Gardens, Gauntlet, Throne Room”; this week they were “Pleasure Gardens, Gauntlet, Royal Pools, Throne Room”.
Wife called. “Mailroom had a letter for you. Shall I open it?”
PAX PASS ARRIVED!!! (At my old work. S’alright, the mailroom are super chill and happy to drop anything address to me to my wife’s desk…).
This is especially for @weresmurf and relax, mate, I’m not stringing you up with Trekkie Lore.
Finally got to the point where TNG and DS9 overlap the other day and just got the first five or so episodes under my belt.
Would be nice if it had the same treatment as TNG because when I started watching it I though a cable in my setup had done bad but nope, the difference between the old broadcast version and the complete recomposition for the BluRay is wider than I thought.
Fidelity aside, I’m liking the ideas and action in DS9. The only downside is once again the diversity (which seems to be at it’s strongest here) will forever be missed by me unless I really focus. This is because the diversity shown is actually something I see as a norm and the segregation we have in real life is always a surprise to me.
Heck, it wasn’t until near the end of the Emissary two parter I realised the importance of Sisko being both black and in charge of the station.
You’re really going to enjoy Discovery then. The promo crap and casts stuff, plus the fanboys going overboard made the diversity angle really noxious, but happily, its played straight and everything ‘just is’. The diversity angle in DS9 was largely down to Avery Brooks, who said his blackness was to be a huge part of Siskos background.
Sorry, mate. I’ve already decided to stop after DS9 and the TNG movies.
I might finish TOS and the Funimation animated series but I feel that if I keep going I’m going to make myself sick of Star Trek in general if I keep going.
It’s been a good ‘journey’ so far and I wanted to end on a good note.
Also, prequels I’m very wary of as the main problem with them is one knowns how it will end before it even starts. There are some exceptions that escape that shadow (such as Rogue One) but more often than not, prequels tank like the Star Wars prequel trilogy.
Good news is Discovery is part of the ‘Prime’ universe and to be honest, it’s already pretty impressive. I wouldn’t bother with the Abram-verse Kelvin Timeline as it amounts to sweet fuck all in the long run.
Is it prime though? There’s a persistent rumour that it fits into a third timeline unrelated to either prime or Kelvin, and that the creators are worried enough about backlash that they’re calling it prime to try to head off some of the criticism.
Visually it’s taken almost entirely after the Kelvin universe, which bothers me. I appreciate the need to update visuals for the modern era of television, but the only two things in the opening two episodes that even vaguely resembled non-Kelvin Trek are the Starfleet delta and the saucer-and-nacelles ship design, both of which are in both universes anyway.
I think it made for an appealing science fiction show and I enjoyed it in that respect, but so far aside from a few common shapes and names it doesn’t yet bear any resemblance to Star Trek. The first two episodes were designed as a super long cold open, so hopefully Star Trek’s themes will pick up properly in episode 3. I’m sad that the first two episodes didn’t assuage my concerns that this is Kelvin Trek masquerading as prime.
There are a few episodes where they play the race angle so strongly it’s like being beaten over the head with a club. That’s not to say the message isn’t a good one, it’s just the subtlety is thrown right out the window.
The quality jump from the TNG remaster to DS9 is a rough one, but after a few episodes of just DS9 you don’t notice it really any more. We’ve been spoiled with the TNG remaster, it’s sad that DS9 and VOY will probably never get the same treatment.
I think I’ve said this before so I apologise in advance (my memory can be best described as consistently inconsistent).
Long story short, DS9 and VOY made far more use of CGI than TNG and TOS. Personally, I think that is where TNG stands out, ILM were doing fantastic effects before those new fangled computers came strutting in, 😛
That aside, it is still questioned if the files for the effects of DS9 and VOY still exist. Paramount keeps saying they have been lost while the remnants of the effects studio dispute the claim and also say Paramount won’t talk to them.
Regardless, even if the material is there and remaster is possible, CBS BluRay’s complete lack of quality control has basically killed off the market.
Seriously, even if Star Trek: Discovery came out on 4K disks, I myself wouldn’t go near them given how I got five bad disks in a row. Four for TNG and one for TOS.
Yeah, I’ve read the story on why DS9 likely won’t get a remaster. It’s still sad though.
Related note, they did use studio models for all the station and starship scenes up to the Dominion War, where it became prohibitively expensive to use them for that many starships. The station itself remained a studio model all the way through until the season finale though, where I believe it had a single digital shot as the final scene of the series.
So, for some odd reason, the pattern I created for an Okami style dress has become my most popular thing on tumblr. I don’t even understand how …
@scree yeah, pretty good transport options. I’m between Batman and Pascoe Vale stations, depending on which line I want to take into the city (about a 15 minute walk to either) or about a 20 minute walk to Melville road where I can catch a 58 tram down through Brunswick.
(sorry, couldn’t nest any more comments under that other chain)
Mhmm, we’re right near a small shopping village-y thing with Coles, a turkish takeaway, subway, K’s gym branch, liquorland etc.
Small note here for people: an article went up about Xbox Live that wasn’t supposed to, because it’s not applicable here. I’d originally trashed it, but spent most of the afternoon/evening at work doing something else (putting a system together, actually), so didn’t end up getting back to triple-check until … I saw the article up.
Apologies. That wasn’t supposed to happen, and I certainly remember hitting the trash button one point, so I’ve buggered up somewhere along the way. It’s been a long week.
This TAY article was missing for a few days, maybe you dumped this instead by accident?
Only day that this TAY doesn’t have a comment is Sept 24, which was the Sunday. I’m not working on the weekends (well, I’m not supposed to be, but you know how it is) so I don’t think TAY got nuked by accident.
One possibility could be a case where I wake up in the morning and reschedule TAY for the morning, which would pull the story down temporarily. Maybe you tried accessing it in that small window?
Could be. The other day it wasn’t coming up under the TAY tag and a few comments I’d left weren’t appearing in my comment list. Sounds like I just had bad timing.
Yeah this happens for up to 30 mins sometimes around 7:30-8:30 (depending on where in the country you are now that daylight savings is back in the southern states).
Sometimes the TAY post doesn’t actually make it to the daily front page post, but normally you can still find it after that time by going to comments you’ve posted, or by searching.
I felt like I’d checked a few times through the day and it was missing each of those times, but I may just be misremembering. In any case it’s here now.
I… Think so? We had reduced loadings from our EBA and I’m not entirely sure how the penalty rate cut afftects that.
If you’re on an EBA, like me that didn’t affect us at all. Though I worry about next time it comes to renegotiate said EBA, we’ll probably get screwed.
Ah sweet. I’d probably be fine in renegotiations. My new boss is a decent guy.
I honestly didn’t think your shop would be open today, being in Queensland & all. I need to drop by sometime and say hi, almost been a year since we caught up 😀
I only found out it was a public holiday in Brisbane this morning! So far I’ve spent a lot of my weekend playing Knights of Pen and Paper 2, Project Cars, and Tekken 7. Also trying to decide on which 3d printer/s I want to get.
Live music, bushwalking, and a bunch of food. Incredibly chill weekend.
Did you get out and about?
Nope. Just spent some time with Tegan’s parents, made an apple pie for them and had some laughs, but otherwise been working on something all weekend for Tuesday.
Tegan’s on the mend herself anyway, and I wasn’t well the weekend just past, so it’s not too bad. Did catch up with some RuPaul over dinner last night. Christ that show is funny.
My PAX Aus badge came in!
Just have to go and get it. \o/
EDIT: And now I have it! 😀
There was a brand new TAY uploaded yesterday (the 1st) with no comments, and now today we have this one from two weeks ago again! What’s the deaaaal with that?
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