Zoraptor

Scott Morrison gave Lukashenko a run for his money on press suppression before hand. Always the best way to deal with war crimes, raid the offices of those reporting on them and nick all their documents, just a shame from their POV that the documentary was already broadcast. (There were also accusations that the NZ SAS committed war crimes, and the journalist who exposed them had previously been raided by the police for 'receiving hacked documents', when he published a book embarrassing to our then PM John Key. Those accusations were a lot less overtly war crimey than the Australian ones though, and the inquiry we eventually got when the government changed to one less angry at Nicky Hager could not determine that any war crimes happened, or that they weren't done by the US instead. It did establish that the Ministry of Defence and politicians lied consistently though)

'Whacky' thumbnails drive clicks which is why more serious reviewers than Linus look like they're half a second away from outright gurning and the product they're reviewing just turned into Genghis Khan/ Marilyn Monroe. Videos will also always be over ten minutes long if at all possible because that hits the optimal monetisation bracket even if the subject matter doesn't really warrant the length. That's just the way they make money. If I was told I'd get a significant wage increase by pretending to be Amazed At What Happened Next I'd be perpetually surprised too.

And you're most certainly entitled to your own opinion of quality*. It can't objectively be better than native though unless there's something very odd going on in the native render, or a few odd situations eg multi image interferometry (which only gives an improved composite, the original images are still the same). And it being the internet most people don't couch it in subjective terms. *since it is subjective no one can be wrong about it. I find motion blur on games when you're running and some of the over the top bloom/ hdr effects hilarious because they aren't what you actually see in real life. Others think they're great, and that's all good.

You can blame the electoral system too. You'd have to suspect that most Nader voters would prefer Gore over Bush at least and a decent proportion would change their votes if they could go back in time. While a lot of people advocate for Preferential/ Ranked as a system I personally will always shill proper, multi member electorate Single Trnasferable Vote. Gives proportional results, can't be gerrymandered, goes a long way to breaking the entrenched power of political parties. And as a result, not at all popular with politicians.

Still holding out for a 6969XTC SUPER DUPER 16GB HBM2e card with more than 80CUs. The new Instinct has 120CUs*, after all (and tensors, for anyone wondering if AMD was doing anything with them). Vulkan performance isn't surprising. AMD cards used to be powerhouses there due to being powerhouse Compute cards, this time around with its core doubling nVidia is unbalanced towards compute instead. Plus all the development effort for RDNA has gone into DX12U for the Xbox and Sony's proprietary libraries, not Vulkan despite its history with AMD. As for performance in general, let's be frank here. People** were saying that AMD would only be competing with the 3070 and have raytracing performance around a 2070- that was most of the internet, it seemed- don't have much scope to talk about bad performance when they're competing with 3080s and have better RT performance, yes mostly in theory at present, than a 2080Ti or 3070. It's notable though that they perform to theoretical expectations, or above, in both the games developed for console RT, WD:L and Dirt 5, and a 6800XT is even better than a 3080 (!) at Dirt 5. That is the model of the future, not games developed when nVidia was the only RT in town with for, all anyone knows, the RT equivalent of 64x tesselation enabled by default. Stock levels are disappointing, but certainly better relatively speaking than 3000 series. By market share nVidia should have had 2-3 times the stock on hand, and didn't, they seem to have been near parity numbers wise. Just too much demand, in part due to nVidia still being nowhere near fulfilling orders even 2 months later. Neither were paper launches, both were just massively oversubscribed. The AIB release in a week and 6900XT in early Dec will also sell out, inevitably. OTOH, we got AMD reference cards here, and the whole of New Zealand got one (1) FE. And there's the small matter of 3080s (albeit AIBs) selling for 400$ more than the 6800XT here... *Not a serious comparison since they're CDNA. **I'm ready for the deluge of how DLSS is, lol, 'better quality than native' over the next few months. Who knew the writers for CSI: Miami enlarging and enhancing 2 pixels reflected in a dude's baldspot into a fully legible number plate, circus parade and a mafia dude burying Jimmy Hoffa were such visionaries?

I picked that section because I knew the number already, and you seemed skeptical of the EFF's claims. And yes, it is an example of the US trying to alter IP agreements for its own benefit, it just doesn't cover every aspect of that. We're legally allowed to format shift here, and back up computer programs etc, we wouldn't be able to do that if DRM can't be circumvented. We'd also have to rebuy media whenever the DRM scheme stops working. There certainly would be a workable alternative where circumventing DRM is illegal, but rights holders are in return obligated to support licence holders access rights when their DRM schemes fail. That's not what the US or IP holders want though.

Near 20 years is surely enough for doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results. Near 17 years is surely enough too. Whether it's Obama or Trump or Biden, at some point you have to stop kicking the can down the road. Trump's a gigantic hypocrite in some things but he's right that there has to be an end point, and sometimes you just have to declare victory and cut your losses. If the troops were staying chances are there would be zero progress in the next 4 years, so you have to keep the troops there even longer, etc.

That's a completely false dichotomy though. Every TPP country is already a member of TRIPS, we already have patent and IP protection. It's not the US trying to bring order to the wild west of IP and combat rampant IP theft, there's already order there. It's the US trying to alter those existing IP agreements for its own benefit.

...the rest of the world has IP protections already. I'm not sure how that's news but apparently it has to said again. If you think that saying consumers have rights too and countries upholding those rights is advocating IP theft then you're very much mistaken, if you think that pointing out that patents/ copyrights are grants of limited term exclusivity is advocating IP theft then you're also very much mistaken- and falling into the classic mkreku trap where everyone who dislike DRM etc ipso facto has to be a pirate. What the US wants isn't IP protection, it's the perpetual right for its companies to collect licensing fees despite copyright and patents being concepts that are intrinsically limited term and limited scope; and the removal of the consumer rights part of the equation. If you buy a product you have certain rights, if you licence an intangible you have certain rights. The US approach is to protect and extend only the rights of the IP holders, while extinguishing the rights of the end user. That's what the problem with 'technological protection measures' is, they mean that as soon as the DRM system goes obsolete you lose the licence to play you've already paid for, without compensation. And of course, it's actually in the best interests of the IP holder to have constant planned DRM/ media obsolescence as it means they can then charge you every 5 years for the same work. "Article 18:68: Technological Protection Measures. IP creators have the right to not have their work stolen. If someone knowingly tries to steal IP, creates technology that helps with stealing IP, provides technology that helps with stealing IP, sells technology that helps to steal IP or sells stolen IP itself, or promotes stealing IP, then that person will be guilty of committing a crime. Each country in the agreement should come up with rules about what will happen to said criminals." That's what you posted , as a quoteblock, so I assumed it was a quote, from somewhere. The quote from the actual document, is what I posted previously, to whit: "Article 18.68: Technological Protection Measures (TPMs)821.In order to provide adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies against the circumvention of effective technological measures that authors, performers, and producers of phonograms use in connection with the exercise of their rights and that restrict unauthorised acts in respect of their works, performances, and phonograms,each Party shall provide that any person that:(a)knowingly, or having reasonable grounds to know,83circumvents without authority any effective technological measure that controls access to a protected work, performance, or phonogram;84or (b)manufactures, imports, distributes,85offers for sale or rental to the public, or otherwise provides devices, products, or components, or offers to the public or provides services, that:(i)are promoted, advertised, or otherwise marketed by that person86for the purpose of circumventingany effective technological measure;(ii)have only a limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent any effective technological measure;87or(iii)are primarily designed, produced, or performed for the purpose of circumventingany effective technological measure,is liable and subject to the remedies provided for in Article 18.74 (Civil and Administrative Procedures and Remedies).Each Party shall provide for criminal procedures and penalties to be applied if any person is found to have engaged wilfully88and for the purposes of commercialadvantage or financial gain89in any of the above activities." Your 'quote' isn't a quote of the document and isn't even a proper summary. I did you the credit of presuming it was some pro TPP summary rather than the exact equivalent of what you've been railing against, just from the opposite position. Cracking DRM on a CD so you can play it on a computer isn't IP theft, as you've paid for the CD/ licence. Unless, you change the definition of theft to make playing something you've a licence to illegal because... the companies' DRM doesn't work, and work back from there. End of the day if you think the US patent etc system is so rubbish why on earth do you want it extended elsewhere and why on earth do you think the opposition to it has to be based on IP theft? You cannot simultaneously say that the US system is rubbish, but should be adopted/ honoured by everyone else. Opposition isn't based on wanting to steal IP, it's based on it and provisions like 18:68 based on it being an awful system that no one else wants to adopt.

At the moment we have all 5000 series (except 5950X, which we haven't had a single one delivered yet) and at least some 3070/80/90 in stock though the GPUs are all at massively inflated prices. We also had big shortages of PSUs and MoBos a few months ago but plenty of stock now.

Phoenix Point is confirmed for a GOG release as of a few hours ago.

Trump is pulling some troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, 2000 or about half the total from Afghanistan and 500 from Iraq (don't know what that is proportionately), to update a thread from the previous page. Yep, the ultimate problem is that healthcare is not really miscible with the free market except for things which are elective like cosmetic surgery. If you're having a heart attack you're not able to make a rational balanced decision on the costs and benefits of various providers as you might if you were buying lunch or a car or a house. You just want it to be treated as quickly as possible, so you don't die. Outside the US such funds make very attractive targets for borrowing against or even directly raiding during economic crises when a government needs money.

... If you're going to complain about editorialisation etc you should not be posting summaries, you should do as I did and post the actual text. Unsurprisingly the authors of the TPP wanted to market the TPP. Yes, if you read pro TPP press it was an enlightened document that would usher in world peace and prosperity. And if you read defences of slavery the poor slave owner was generously providing shelter, religion, education and food to the lazy uncultured savage. Everyone has seen the standard defence of IP absolutism, that the hoi polloi and imitators steal shamelessly off hard working creators and rights holders, it doesn't need to be reiterated. The DMCA is not well regarded, even in the US. It's regarded as highly draconian, whatever your personal opinion. No one else wants it, and it is not the international norm. US demands are for IP rights to become, effectively, eternal and absolute which is a massive loss of rights for every except rights holders. This is also not the norm and has never been, it is a shift. Consumers have rights too, and the US lobbies extensively to have them extinguished. No one wants $1000 epipens eternally because the US issues patents- protection for novel inventions- for incremental changes, no one wants to buy a tractor then lease the software for additional charge then buy another tractor when the software gets deprecated in 5 years time just because that's great for John Deere shareholders. No one wants Monsanto running around suing people for IP infringement because they stuffed up and their RoundUp Ready corn is not actually sterile and has infected seed stocks as a result. No one wants to have to rebuy media constantly because the IP holder used DRM that, shock horror, goes obsolete and they want the best of both worlds from the product/ licence dichotomy.

Well OK, have fun. I'm not generally too keen on posting such links without more specificity but that is precisely the reason why you don't get line by line citations- because the document is absolutely fricking massive and written in terse and opaque legalese that is very difficult for anyone let alone a layman to parse. But as it happens I can draw your attention at least to the DMCA like provisions the EFF mentioned as someone else once asked me for them. "Article 18.68: Technological Protection Measures (TPMs)821.In order to provide adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies against the circumvention of effective technological measures that authors, performers, and producers of phonograms use in connection with the exercise of their rights and that restrict unauthorised acts in respect of their works, performances, and phonograms,each Party shall provide that any person that:(a)knowingly, or having reasonable grounds to know,83circumvents without authority any effective technological measure that controls access to a protected work, performance, or phonogram;84or (b)manufactures, imports, distributes,85offers for sale or rental to the public, or otherwise provides devices, products, or components, or offers to the public or provides services, that:(i)are promoted, advertised, or otherwise marketed by that person86for the purpose of circumventingany effective technological measure;(ii)have only a limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent any effective technological measure;87or(iii)are primarily designed, produced, or performed for the purpose of circumventingany effective technological measure,is liable and subject to the remedies provided for in Article 18.74 (Civil and Administrative Procedures and Remedies).Each Party shall provide for criminal procedures and penalties to be applied if any person is found to have engaged wilfully88and for the purposes of commercialadvantage or financial gain89in any of the above activities."

The IP thing was about getting everyone to agree to US rules. US rules favour the US. If you want to refresh your memory from the US perspective the EFF has a handy summary up that seems to cover most of your questions briefly, including peripheral to IP issues stuff- like all the human rights provisions being optional, unlike the IP provisions. Otherwise there's a longer pro TPP IP section take here (which frankly still makes it sound awful, and certainly illustrates how it was being driven by the US) and one specifically on the medical implications here. China's IP theft was completely irrelevant, as they were never a party to the TPP. The TPP countries adhere to the international standards of IP, the US doesn't and is desperate to rewrite them for their own benefit. So, OTOH, the US's habit of issuing patents continually for things that simply aren't inventions- and in some cases are absolute and literal theft every bit as much as anything China has done- and expecting everyone to pay their companies royalties perpetually 100% was. The go to examples of exactly how broken and exactly how extortionate the US system is are (1) Basmati Rice patent, since accoridng to the USPTO Basmati Rice was invented by a US company (2) Mexican Yellow Beans are a unique US invention, in that case the guy who bought them from Mexico literally went back to the market he bought them from to demand royalties for his 'unique invention' from the traditional users. Sure they got fixed, eventually, and after a load of money was spent. If the TPP had been in effect we would have had to adhere to those patents no matter how utterly incompetent and outright scummy their issuance was, and have had to adhere to the constant patent renewals on things like epipens which aren't even approaching novel inventions any more.

Bombed the general (Soleimani) in Iraq, after asking the Iraqi PM to set up a meeting to discuss de-escalation, according to the Iraqi PM. Which was borderline if not outright Perfidy, if what the PM said was true. I'm usually skeptical of rumours supported only by anonymous sources since there's zero accountability but there must be some reason he got rid of Esper, and it won't be because Trump wants to stage a military coup. Even money on whether he wants to attack Iran or pull all troops out of Iraq/ Afghanistan/ Syria arbitrarily, he probably won't actually do either but he is exactly the type to set the house on fire on his way out, if he has to leave.

And that's why you add a sweetener if you want the kids to take their medicine or get their shots with minimum fuss. The IP provisions can hardly be compared to medicine though as they benefited the US to the detriment of everyone else, if they didn't they would have stayed in after the US left like the other provisions did (including some unpopular ones like the investor/ country arbitration system). If the US wanted back into TPP/ CPPTA (or whatever it's now called) they'd have to offer a sweetener again, and probably a bigger one than in the initial negotiations given that the agreement is working fine without them. Trump's protectionism may have had mixed results but it has been popular with a lot of people in the US, so politically it would be very difficult to give even a similar sized sweetener, let alone a larger one. Even the good geopolitical reasons to go for it are not so much in effect now; many of the countries in CPPTA are also in RCEP and hence are tied to China in precisely the way TPP was meant to stop/ be a competitor to.

It was fairly tame compared to what the US wanted, certainly, but the fact that the IP provisions got chucked as soon as Trump pulled the plug shows pretty conclusively that nobody else wanted it. Everyone else was just willing to swallow that dead rat to get a fta with the US. (The healthcare related IP stuff was the really big negative, since the US was trying very hard to get both single purchase models (eg Pharmac here which buys all publicly funded medicines) and patent standardisations that would make buying cheaper generics a lot more difficult. The reputation of the US healthcare system in terms of cost/ admin is absolutely dire outside the US and no one else wants 1000% increases in the price of (not even funded by Pharmac, bought off the shelf) epipens because the US keeps issuing new patents every time the formulation changes slightly and the company is free to gouge as much as they like)

Yep, major scandal here. Not only were there a bunch of fraudulent votes for the Little Spotted Kiwi but the eventual winner's* representative and spokesbird is a well known sex pest. "When you're a Kakapo they just let you do it. You can do anything. Grab em by the head". So much less class than the Hoiho whose only real blemish over their rule was invading a Fish & Chip shop looking for a feed. And even that was disputed as fake news and it may have been blue penguins instead. *Not great quality in the rest of the options either. Of the other top 5 Albatross/ Toroa aren't even proper NZers and spend most of their time away just flying in for the election campaign, Black Robins are all inbred yokels, Karearea (NZ falcons) are pretty cool but a bit aloof, Kereru are fat lazy drunks. Also, if you know anything about Kakapo the "OK, Boomer" headline is hilarious (the males make a distinctive 'boom' noise to attract mates which carries absolute miles).

Since the Pfizer stats came out two others have as well- also non peer reviewed, so grain of salt the same as Pfizer's: Sputnik (92%) and Moderna (94.5%). Either should be a lot cheaper and easier than the Pfizer vaccine too.

Non paywalled CNN article. To be honest, Obama tried to impose a crappy situation on all the other countries in the TPP via all the IP etc provisions. It's no accident that it was implemented smoothly and quickly once Trump pulled out, every single controversial provision was in at the behest of the US. The RCEP agreement barely raised a murmur here in comparison, about the only thing that got any coverage was India deciding to pull out (unsurprising since they're comparatively vulnerable to imports and way less geared towards exports). A lot of people seem to think that Biden will join the TPP, but it doesn't seem likely at all. Too much domestic opposition, and no one else wants to add the provisions the US will want added before joining, and the US's leverage is massively reduced now that it's in force.

Historically the stock AMD systems have used good components but had rubbish blower style coolers. If you do end up with an AIB I'd be cautious of ASUS, even Strix, until someone's done a decent in depth review. They tend to make sloppy copies of nVidia designs for AMD, albeit with nVidia cards being more power hungry that should be less of a problem this time around. Most of the problems are fixed if you're putting your own cooler on but it isn't a great look for people to have to add thermal pads to Vega64 Strix VRMs because yours are too short, or (iirc) having to tighten screws because you haven't tested which screw pressure works best for a 5700XT and just used AMD's rec pressure for the completely different stock cooler. (Personally I've had two Strixes and they've both been fine including a Vega64 with proper length thermal pads that overclocks fine; the best AMD card and graphics card overall I've had is still the relative no name HIS 5770 ?IceQ? though. Default recommendation for AMD cards is almost always Sapphire)

Finished watching Hannibal. I'd seen a few episodes of the first two seasons on broadcast when it aired originally but none of the 3rd season at all. It was an interesting watch and I find it extremely difficult to credit that it got 3 seasons on mainstream US broadcast TV given how different it was to the more typical police/ hospital/ reality shows that dominate that medium. It reminded me a lot of Legion: it's all very nicely shot, well acted and scripted, great use of musical motifs and the like but probably got a bit too stylised for its own good, they both had one or two contrived plot twists that relied on people acting massively out of character; and the relationship between Hannibal and Will is ultimately pretty similar to that between David Haller and Farouq except for the one very important detail. I'd suspected that the series Prodigal Son was inspired by Hannibal in some way, and having seen both now it's a pretty direct inspiration.

They will give it to old (and other vulnerable) people first, especially if it's expensive and in low supply. 40USD is expensive for a vaccine, but it's a massive saving vs a day in ICU. There is also the vaccine side effect vs virus 'side effects' to consider. If it's, say, a 1% chance of vaccine side effects vs 10% chance of organ damage from the virus you'd be better off risking the vaccine. Indeed, the ultimate stupidity of anti vaxxers is not that there are no potential side effects from MMR and other vaccines, it's that those side effects are way less dangerous and way less prevalent than getting mumps, measles or rubella are. Actually making a vaccine can be really cheap. I buy sheep vaccines, and they're ~10c US per 1ml dose. And they're 5 in 1 vaccines, so could be seen as ~2c per dose. Then again no one throws a wobbly if the odd sheep has an adverse reaction or if the odd sheep still dies from pulpy kidney despite being vaccinated.

There will be a decent number of cards available. The only stocking info I've seen was similar levels to RTX3000, with a week still to go which given market share should seem to be a lot more than the nVidia equivalent. It will probably be similar to Zen 3, there will be a fair bit of stock but they'll sell out quickly resulting in lots of people shouting 'paper launch'; and since they make less money the gpus will have less restocks than zen 3.