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Didn't see one, so I figured I would create one, just to say Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all you lovely saints, sinners, heretics, heathens, faithful, lost and found people out there. I haven't been active online much the last month and a half, because crunch time and projects going live at years end. Comes with the profession Hope you guys are going to enjoy some time off with family, friends, loved ones or favourite spider pet, whatever you fancy

I'm sorry but everyone is doing it now, even if they say they don't. It's more honest of them mentioning it than just going "nooooo, we would neeever use ai!!1" while the truth is that their devs sure as **** are using ai to some extend.

I don't count everything under one umbrella as they do. I was thinking of ChatGPT, Copilot and Gemini. Image and Video generation is a separate thing in my head. Also I am really bother by the markets insistence of calling it Artificial Intelligence, when it ain't...

Im not trying to justify Trump removing Maduro because of the nationalisation\theft of American assets, that is a BS reason. But I support Maduro being removed because he has destroyed Venezuela and lacks legitimacy as a leader. If he had won the last election fairly then I wouldnt be supporting this regime change because my point would be " the people of Venezuela voted for him despite his policies". Removing Maduro is in the best interests of Venezuela as long as the regime change is done correctly with a new government that has support of Venezuelans and regional and international support. All these things currently exist or will happen once Maduro is gone But forced nationalisation can definitely be seen as stealing from a country, you could have a state owned global oil or mining company that gets nationalised from a regime And then even private sector companies generate taxes so you now denying the country that tax revenue But the main problem with forced nationalisation on any level is how it is implemented. All foreign investment works more or less the same way and it should be protected under all cost. The process is typically A government invites foreign investment the foreign investor has to spend large amounts of money setting up the business they hire local people which now have a job and spending power they create ancillary businesses associated with the investment they pay tax in the country on the revenue they generate That is how the country benefits and its massive. But then a government decides " we want to own asset " but they didnt setup it up and pay for the initial investment Its theft and there is no justification for it. Agreed on nationalisation is different because the investor agrees to the ownership change or a different revenue contract. Thats what happened in Botswana recently with De Beers and everyone is happy https://www.angloamerican.com/media/press-releases/2025/25-02-2025

I noticed Lee Pace plays McCone (I like that chr in the novel), which I can't decide if that's good casting or not. I have nothing better to do right now, perhaps I'll rent/watch it. And yeah ... wouldn't surprise me if they change the ending to be more positive re: main chr. I say that because I think it'd be hard to make it more negative than the novel. Unlike The Mist, the novel wasn't ambiguous. Haha. These films usually just make me want to pull books out of a box and reread them.

Peter Greene, 60 - chr. actor. Probably best recalled re: his unsavory role in Pulp Fiction, but for some reason I always think of his tiny role in The Usual Suspects or maybe The Mask.

update: I went out with Marisol and Aza, came back to the ship, and Inez was still standing on the landing pad. when I approached, it triggered the convo again. I'm just hoping the constant (Lie) response just to get out of the convo isn't doing something to my affinity with her even though I've finished her personal quest at this point.

After the 12/10 patch every time I land on Eden Inez yells at me about the Vox Relay. Even if she's not in my party; she appears outside the ship with the "I know it was you" (even though she was in my party for the actual relay quest).

Stereotypically you'd expect Argentina to elect the descendant of a literal literal nazi who fled Germany as president instead of Chile.

The problem with the hobbit/ gandalf plotline is that you fundamentally cannot really do anything with it to justify the time spent. Gandalf ain't going to kill Sauron or the Balrog or whatever; and it's got no overlap so far with other events*. I have some sympathy for the mystery box aspect, silly as it was, because that was clearly mandated by Amazon because the algorithm told them it drove engagement. Wheel of Time had exactly the same issue. The only issues I have with Numenor and Lindon/ Grey Havens is the scale factor I described earlier- just not enough people there to make them feel real. Plus weedy evil numenorean is complete caricature. I do have another Celebrimbor complaint after watching another episode. Firstly, I'm not sure why Sauron even needs rings if he's already powerful enough to make an extremely prominent and powerful elf- Feanor's grandson, iirc- quite literally hallucinate that everything is fine. And secondly, at that level of control why not eliminate the root problem and make Celebrimbor hallucinate that the Dwarf Rings are all fine, or that actually humans deserve rings- or why not make Adar hallucinate stuff and prevent getting ganked originally; the possibilities are endless. As previous, the plot has to happen in order for, well, the plot to happen so Celebrimbor has to be deceived somehow; but the way it's being done introduces a lot of unnecessary problems. *given the current trajectory I have a sinking feeling we may get a hobbit baby towards the end, who grows up to be buddies with Deagol.

so larian are start to use ai art as inspiration guess it is inevitable

chile choose self destruct when it is in better shape by south america standard guess they find the collapse of argentina somehow aspirational

Fallout 1 even had multiple timers. Water chip one and the 'invasion' one. And of course both could be modified by other actions too. There's a worse example from the same game, ie chapter 6. Your very soul has been stolen! But %charname% has all the time in the world to go do (nearly) every single side quest you could have done in Chapter 2 as well as a few C6 specific ones before doing anything about it... You can justify not going after Imoen quickly quite easily, even for a non evil character. You're clearly not strong enough just after escaping and need more resources; which works for either a good or neutral alignment. It's probably more difficult to justify going after her at all, if you're evil or selfish neutral. "Idiot gets herself captured again immediately after escaping? Sounds like her problem, not mine". Bit harder to justify being slothful or even tardy in C6 though. Does also have to be said, I think, that when you do have an imminently critical issue as a plot driver so make tardiness have consequences you do get a lot of people complaining- eg the Spirit Meter in Mask of the Betrayer.

Eh, there are use cases. Chatbots and image creation might have the spotlight at the moment because they're rather visible and easily accessed by the public, but they're far from the only ones out there. Back in 2024 the Nobel prize in chemistry went to a group of scientists behind an AI project called AlphaFold used to predict protein folding. The potential for AlphaFold 3 is basically endless, down to creating custom proteins for specific individuals to treat their medical conditions (and for everyone outside the US for reasonable prices even). AI models are already better at finding tumors than humans. That doesn't mean that OpenAI and the other tech companies aren't at the heart of an insane investment bubble at the moment. OpenAI is bleeding money by the tens of billions each quarter but still wants to buy 40% of the world's DRAM waver supply and buy northwards of 30 billion dollars worth of AWS computing power. Datacenters are being built with no hardware, no power and no water to supply them. It's probably no longer a question of if, but rather one of when the overheated market will correct itself, and a lot of people will lose a lot of money in the process while a few will gain a lot. Like with every gold rush and investment bubble, ever since ye faithful tulips of yore. Or, for a more recent one, the NFT hype. AI on the other hand, that is here to stay, and not all of it is bad.

usa and uk own oil field of mexico and iraq was theft one of their many colonial crime they should be paying reparation for the trick is so old it is hard to expect venezuela to fall for it without install puppet first

In a similar vein I'm playing a Crackling Energy Sorceror. Basically just press one button and watch everything die. Fun, reminds me of Season 2.

I am playing on Xbox series x.

Arbiter build for my Paladin in D4 is fun, I enjoy just clicking a button and letting my wings melt everything.

A US company isn't the US, not sure land makes any sense. But still the marketing for this is rather dumb, sure will make UNSC meetings funny if the Euros start pontificating about international order and so on. So Chavez was bad economically, not sure what that is the concern of the US insofar as they need to use bombs. Hope Maduro's stocking up on FPV drone weapons, I guess.

Well, also Fallout1. Still, I fundamentally don’t understand why the common need for “you do this now or you DIEEEEE. Also here is a world full of sideactivities to explore.” I mean I do get it. Universal thread of destruction is an easy narrative hook for a custom protagonist. It still just doesn’t make sense. Surely, your hook should be about exploration and discovery, and reason to engage with the world, not the opposite. Obsidian usually is good with this stuff, though I felt both Pillars did have this issue as well.

If there is an uber hard optional boss, I agree. I like having something to test the max leveled build against.

I agree. I actually enjoy being over leveled for the main quest. It's the reward for diligence

I think Expeditions: Viking managed to achieve it - the time limit was generous but present and made sense for the story. I suppose, the same could be said about the tutorial in Tyranny, but the scale there was smaller. For Larian's D&D game, if I am not mistaken, the party discovered that the illithid transformation is delayed quite early and from there it was trying to find a cure at a more leisurely pace. Then again, even if it continued to be urgent, every other NPC was promising solutions at the start, so going along with them could be in-character. Well, also looking for a high-level cleric, a pickaxe, and the True Resurrection spell, which would be travelling straight to the nearest large city.

I have finished Atlas Fallen on the highest difficulty in NG+. The interesting part is that the tools available (the weapon upgrades, new armour sets, and the more powerful Essence Stones) effectively offset it - while the bosses could 1-shoot me, I also was almost instantly and constantly at high Momentum (which additionally meant higher damage to me) and able to use the Shatter attacks with a lot of i-frames repeatedly. The longer battles were somewhat challenging, especially as the screen was getting more "noise" (from the weapon particles to the number of opponents), but, overall, it was easier than the first playthrough. The only issue is one of the randomly appearing battles with various modifiers. The foes to be faced vary, but the reward progression is static and carries over between the NG cycles. The thing there is that it is not hard to get hit once and the battle despawns after that. I assume, if I reloaded, the same battle would have been accessible at the same spot, but I have not tried. The regular random battles have an auto-save nearby and the main story ones can be restarted from the start of the encounter which is incredibly convenient. I am satisfied with the experience and might try replaying it in a few years. On a random note, the NG+ armour sets look much better than the NG ones. They are more detailed and more fitting.