Zoraptor

First performance leaks for 5000 series have been found from CPUZ and AotS, showing 20-25% overall performance improvement from 3000 series. Still grain of salt for another week though.

Wasn't Aran'gar technically a lascivious bloke rezzed into a hot woman's body as a bit of irony/ punishment? Or am I misremembering? (loads of implied same sex stuff with the female Aiel and Aes Sedai, can't think of any male homosexuality though)

If Trump had condemned all racially motivated groups it probably would not have made much difference to the critic/ pundit reaction. The commentary would be about how he'd dodged the question of condemning specifically white groups and how he was saying that a BLM guy protesting George Floyd's death and Tim McVeigh were the same in magnitude. Weird as it may be failing to condemn the Proud Boys or whoever is almost certainly not a vote loser for Trump, anyone who viewed such things as disqualifying isn't voting for him anyway. As for why workers and farmers would vote for Trump he does offer more hope for them than the Democrats. What really lost Clinton the election- because it lost her those 3 critical rust belt states- was her telling all those desperate people that they were irrelevant and had to get with the program and become web designers/ programmers/ 'new economy'. If you're offered that as an alternative Trump saying he's going to bring back the jobs and take on Chinese manufacturing offers the only hope. Same for farmers, practically Trump's idea of being pro farming is pro corporate farming rather than pro mom & pop farming, but Hillary (and Biden) are 100% economic orthodoxy including things like the TPP which the farmers feared and Trump got rid of (ironically, the TPP also got far more attractive for all remaining participants as soon as the US left). It doesn't matter if you're offered false hope when the other side is telling you you're on an inevitable spiral to oblivion. I always find it far more 'confusing' why US voters are so keen to vote along moral lines and impose their own morality on others rather than they'd vote for someone who offers them at least a theoretical future vs someone telling you you're a dinosaur staring at an oddly expanding star in the end Cretaceous sky.

If the figure bandied about here is true and 100 million people watched it would be an order of magnitude bigger than any other single thing- conventions, rallies, interviews- in terms of influence. A bit above 130 million americans voted in the last election so at least in theory they reached ~3/4 of the voting electorate in a single go. I do agree on them not being in a vacuum, though that works both ways. Part of it not being a vacuum works in Trump's favour, those Trump wants not voting were those with pre-existing reasons for disliking Biden and who are voting for him more or less solely because he's "better than Trump". The debate was the biggest chance for Trump to target those voters with the idea that they're flip sides of the same coin.

It's always amusing watching people say exactly the same things they said in 2016 now, when they were proven wrong then. Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it and so far the pundit class- and to a large extent the Democratic Party- has repeated just about every mistake from last time. Trump's strategy shouldn't be a winning one, but then his strategy in 2016 shouldn't have been a winning one either, but was. The big problem in getting proper analysis is that most pundits are inside the system and all orthodoxy related to that system- except the last election- says you should not campaign as Trump does. The fundamental problem with the polls is that they analyse voting intentions, not what people will actually do. That debate played into Trump's hand because making the tepid Biden voter disengage is what would win him the election, attracting undecideds or getting people to swap votes is mere garnish. Trump only plays to the undecided voter on the most simple of levels, mostly by shouting about the economy which is always the big ticket item and how he's been tough on China and put America First etc. If every single undecided voter stayed not voting that's fine by Trump- after all, Biden doesn't gain then either- if he splits off the tepid Biden supporters too. Which he does by throwing dirt to make Biden look the same as him, by making the process as unattractive as possible- pie fight debates- and making sure Biden gets dragged into the pie throwing and alienates people wanting something more. If Trump is saying to the Biden supporter "he's just like me, really" and Biden ends up behaving like Trump in the debate it's a win for Trump. Critically, most of the people turned off would still say that they're voting Biden if polled, they just won't when it comes down to it.

Yep, Trump's perception already being bad is the key factor. Political pundits always seem to fall into the trap of thinking as political pundits instead of as voters in an unusual election. That's why they got the last election wrong consistently. Trump is an excellent campaigner (not an excellent candidate, he should lose to an Urkel plushie) because he knows what he has to do to win. His support base is at this stage rock solid, so his aim isn't so much to attract new votes but to suppress Biden's vote. In that respect having a bun fight is exactly the right move because it drags Biden down, not because it will get more people voting Trump. Pundits and even polls saying Biden won aren't relevant, far more important are how many people it alienated who would have voted Biden before watching the debate.

Armenia is almost completely irrelevant to everything outside its immediate region, perhaps excepting its enormous and influential diaspora. Azerbaijan is a major hydrocarbon producer. There's no realistic risk of spillover, the fighting is probably the Azeris mostly trying to get the Armenians back to the table on more favourable (to the Azeris) terms. There's no doubt if they could retake Nagorno-Karabakh they would, and that would involve a lot of refugees since that region is 99% ethnic Armenian and the Azeris... well, anyone can duckduckgo Ramil Safarov to find out how Azerbaijan treats its citizens who murder Armenians; even if they didn't actively drive all the Armenians out they'd likely flee.

I could literally feel my brain cells dying while watching. Missed the start, and even then couldn't stick it out to the end. I have to say that the commentators who are seemingly surprised and appalled they got the verbal equivalent of pie throwing rather than a debate certainly shouldn't be surprised. Trump is fundamentally a salesman rather than a debater, and proper political debates don't suit his style at all. Pie throwing on the other hand most certainly does, and you cannot debate someone chucking pies but also tend to look stupid if you start chucking them back.

As someone who grew up in New Zealand in the 80s... Though I feel vaguely dirty posting even a 30+ year old ad for a Nestlé product.

Dragged in in much the same way an alcoholic gets 'dragged' into a succession of bars etc. Erdogan is revanchist, Azerbaijan is literally their only friend in the region and there are an inconvenient bunch of Armenians between the two countries who had better be careful in case they end up taking another long spontaneous walk while forgetting to take sufficient food and clothing. They are operating the Azeri EW systems and drones already, shooting down Armenian planes is a small step. Having said that, the Armenians have good reason to make the claim since they have a defensive pact with the Russians that doesn't cover Nagorno Karabakh Artsekh Republic but does cover Armenia proper.

Finished the new Lucifer season. Not great, not bad; not particularly worried about the relationship drama nor the rather abrupt ending (obviously due to covid rather than writing per se) but it does rather have one glaring flaw which so very many shows have in exactly the same way...

That end bit was kind of the aim, though I'd say not specifically of Carth; given the overt similarities of it to PST which subverted general fantasy tropes and K2 subverting the most persistent SW tropes overtly. The point isn't that he's a gritty Carth, it's more a commentary on the logical end point of the SW stereotype Carth represents. You get a similar commentary on the biggest trope in terms of The Force too, where by any out-of-universe analysis it's outright capricious. Atton is way more a take on the 'noble smuggler' trope and case study Han Solo than he is a deconstruction of the Anomen/ Carth/ Sky/ Kaiden Biostereotype- which is so cardboard it hardly needs deconstruction. Specifically, the stereotypical noble smuggler in SW kind of appears conflicted and nuanced, but never actually seems to smuggle anything 'bad' and never seems to do anything genuinely 'bad' either, including those in the EU who stay as smugglers with their own personal militia etc even after the rebels win. Can't say that about Atton, he has the facade of the noble smuggler trope but whereas if you dig below the surface of a Han Solo or Talon Karrde you find a heart of gold beneath Atton Rand lurks an outright psychopath who gloried in the pain of others. It was pretty obvious Avellone had read a lot of the SWEU because apart from the obvious PST links (Atris/ Trias; Sion/ Ignus; Nihlus/ Vhailor; Kreia/ Ravel) you also had a bunch of subversion of its tropes and Kreia's force philosophy was borrowed more or less wholesale from Vergere's.

British troops were/ are 100% deployed to Syria proper- specifically NE Syria and around Al Tanf in the south. Officially, they're kind of Schrondingers deployment, when Turkey invades it's grossly irresponsible because French and British troops may get hurt, if the US withdraws the French and Brits will have too as well so the US should keep on "taking the oil"; otherwise those French and British troops... aren't there. They were also 100% training rebels in Jordan in exactly the way described. They also (along with other western allies and Israel) 100% extricated more than 1000 (local) personnel from southern Syria when that front collapsed and surrendered, including some from Jaish Khalid ibn Walid (ISIS) areas. They also arranged for payments to groups like the White Helmets knowing that many/ most were active fighters, specifically because they could legally pay humanitarian workers like medical staff or police but not fighters. They also manipulated media coverage to suppress evidence in the media like 40% of nerve gas victims arriving at hospital before the attack even happened and embiggen the impossible 'super sarin' mix of chlorine and sarin Macron made up. The only thing the Anonymous leaks show is what mechanisms they used to do it. You're not going to get UK media talking about how they were manipulated by their own government into supporting cannibals, rapists, ethnic cleansers, child killers* etc- and they're almost certainly under the aegis of a National Security Letter equivalent anyway. *southern front weren't too bad actually, but like most got co-opted by Al Qaeda/ Jabhat al Nusra which was when Jordan cut off support. Having said that, the Turkish supported thugs that media decry in Kurdish areas and are currently being sent to murder Armenians were overwhelmingly... the western vetted moderate opposition, when that existed.

The assurance was post facto though, and more specifically post Lehmann's. The cause wasn't a governmental guarantee, it was peak 'free market' stupidity. It certainly codified the 'privatise profits, socialise losses' mentality but again that was post facto. The fact that it could happen again is because the government did not fix the fundamental issues, if they had fixed the issues a government guarantee would be irrelevant because... it couldn't happen again. It's like the banks setting themselves on fire in a fail proof money making scheme- the government putting it out because the fire was going to take out a load of collateral damage isn't the problem, the problem is (1) the banks starting the fire and (2) when the government doesn't punish the banks nor prevent them doing the same thing again in 20 years time when they believe they've found another perpetual risk free money machine. Neither of those are the consequences of governmental intervention, but rather the reverse. In most developed countries that is actually how things works. the government pays most of the cost (eg 75% here) and recoups it in added tax over the recipients' lifetime.

You had a housing bubble because of speculation largely caused by the repeal of government regulations, not the regulations themselves. It tanked the economy because banks expected house prices to never stop rising and thus did a whole bunch of predatory NINJA loaning which was designed to bankrupt the person taking the loan- but since the house was collateral and appreciating the bank still got the interest over the first few years and its costs could be recovered from the appreciation- which they then bundled up into aggregate future trading schemes on the basis of them saying they were AAA standard and made derivative schemes to eke out more profit betting on their AAA status. If anything the cause was lack of regulation and private entities being 'too big to fail'- with a healthy dollop of scenario fulfilment and wishful thinking from 'experts' who thought they'd discovered a perpetual money machine. You can blame the government for repealing the regulations, and for not doing anything concrete to punish the speculators nor prevent it happening again; but the primary cause was free market greed and stupidity. The US student loan system is obviously stupid, but it's stupid because fees are too high for many to have any realistic chance of paying them back whatever they do. Doesn't happen most places because... government intervention. The problem isn't government intervention in the US, it's that government intervention way too often (always?) gets co-opted into crony capitalism, corporate welfare and porkbarelling. Then there's US agricultural subsidies, sold as being to help keep mom & pop farmers in business but which have actually resulted in massive consolidation via corporate farms designed specifically to milk/ corn/ alcohol/ beef/ ham/ chicken the system. At least EU and the CAP actually does subsidise the mom & pop types properly.

Fighting breaking out again between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Not much doubt that it's the Azeris starting it, as Turkey has been importing their Syrian cannon fodder/ jihadi child beheading rapist kidnapper cannibal ethnic cleansers there over the past 2 weeks just as they did in Libya. Tried it a few months earlier too, since they though Turkish drones would be a game changer but they failed utterly against an integrated defence. That is near exactly what actually happened here. Not just for agricultural workers either, the big scam is 'path to citizenship' stuff where you advertise a position with awful conditions/ reject all candidates/ hide the advertisement then claim that you cannot fill the position and need to bring someone in. That person literally pays for the privilege, since after 3 years they can apply for Permanent Residence and then citizenship. For most of that 3 years their employer holds their passport and pays them nearly nothing while charging them for accommodation etc. If they lose the job, complain, fall out with the employer they get deported; so they don't complain. 'Funny' thing is that the only reason it's stopped now is because of covid, though to be fair we've actually had a few 'slavery' type- one literally for slavery- convictions under the current government as well. Really though, if the workers were eastern european women working as prostitutes it'd be utterly obvious what was going on with forced accommodation and their passports being held, but because the employers are 'small business owners', themselves mostly immigrants- NZ born people just exploit agricultural workers the same way- and the employees are mostly east/ south asians if you complain about it it ends up in a racism debate (and, of course, most Chinese/ Indian immigrants loathe the exploiters because it's their community being exploited and they cop the backlash when it's exposed). And you should hear the wails of despair from the agricultural sector about not being able to import indentured servants from the colonies (Samoa, Fiji, Tonga) to pick strawberries etc. My personal favourite was that 'islanders are strong and can work a full day', as if ~10% of our population isn't islander, double that if you count Maori as well. It's got nothing to do with strength and everything to do with you being able to completely asterisk imports over on pay and conditions without them being able to or knowing they can complain about it.

Yes, though that also has problems since a big cache takes up lots of extra on die space, though much like HBM it should also help a lot with raytracing. The trouble is that a lot of the leaks are mutually incompatible; even with a lot of SRAM 16GB on a 256 bit bus is... unbalanced. HBM would solve all their problems though, not on die, reduced wattage, increased bandwidth; and this sort of situation is what it was intended for. I'll freely admit I'm in a minority expecting it though.

HBM for a main sequence consumer card would be, though to be fair it isn't that expensive. But HBM gets rid of one major potential problem Biggest Navi has with GDDR6- memory bus constraints- while reducing wattage. 1TB bandwidth might be overkill for the RadeonVII, but may well be justified with raytracing added. The alternatives are a 512 bit GDDR6 bus (too hot, too large) 'crippled' 970/ console like VRAM configs andor adding a lot of S/EDRAM cache, which is also very expensive. If they can get a decent top end performance boost from HBM and competitive top end raytracing I think they'd go for it.

IIRC that accusation against MCA got debunked. That mainly left being creepy when drunk, which isn't great but also isn't exactly uncommon. Doesn't really matter if the comparison is to Polanski though, even the worst accusation wasn't in the same city let alone the same ballpark as what Polanski did. That sort of ludicrous comparison is exactly what gives social justice its bad name and exactly why genuine complaints get ignored. I'd never heard that MCA created Oblivion, learn something new every day.

Win95/98 era? Some of those had odd hardware access set ups and are notoriously hard to get working in modern windows, and iirc MGS' windows port wasn't renowned for its stability at the time either. They'd actually teased MGS coming to GOG a week or so ago. Now they just have to bring some of other games they've teased historically like the Rocksteady Batman games and CiV.

Don't know about a ton of money from the consoles since they make very little profit on a per unit basis there, though 20 million consoles would add up nicely. They certainly do get a lot of extra benefits from being the console supplier though, a lot of their research and development costs for RDNA is being paid for by MSony and it's no accident that the Terrascale -> GCN -> RDNA transitions happened around the console generation switches. And they can try to leverage their console standardisation into the windows sphere for things like generic DXR vs RTX. Per last page I'm expecting the 6900XT to land pretty close to the 3080 in raster performance as I cannot see any reason for the power/ performance balance of the 3080 otherwise. I've seen a lot of people claiming they'll only compete with the 3070 but even a 60CU last gen 5800XT card would do that unless the scaling was truly awful. AMD has certainly done a good job of keeping the lid on leaks though. (100CU Big Unit Gamma Cassiopeiae 6969XTX with 16 GB HBM2e and 400+W power draw... you heard it here first)

I can't see any way AMD will match RTX in raw raytracing performance, the approaches are too different. But the dedicated hardware that will give nVidia its performance advantage there also comes with its own costs and AMD's approach ought to be far more flexible. 3600NZD here for a Strix 3090 which is about 2200 USD- and our GST is lower than the UK's VAT too. It really needed a bit more performance lift over the 3080 if they were going to call it a 3090. Expectations for a mainstream (albeit top end) card's price/ performance and segmentation are different from the expectations for a prosumer one like the Titan. Even the extra VRAM isn't that much of a selling point if there really is a forthcoming 20GB 3080.

Let's be honest, the cops would get away with that just about anywhere. At least Taylor's family got 12 million, Halatau Naitoko's family got a princely 225k when some AOS goon who'd watched too much Hot Fuzz decided firing his M16 at a suspect while driving on the motorway (!) was a great idea. At least the 2nd random innocent guy he hit wasn't killed, unlike Halatau. IPCA verdict: perfectly legal and- I kid you not, this is an actual quote- "commendable" action by the officer involved despite the report admitting said officer couldn't control where he was shooting and took no notice of where his shots would go if they missed.

I know, but there isn't really a better term to use without making one up like 'effective electoral popularity'. It's a peculiarity of the US and similar systems that overall popularity with voters is not always the deciding factor, but sufficient popularity in certain areas is. Don't really agree there, though I'd suspect that's due to a perspective difference. I'd broadly regard the US system as being in need of reforms, and when the qualifications for office tend to include a lot of roles that requires you to have been part of that system you're unlikely to get said reform- because those insider roles are what the winner relied on to win. Most qualified always winning reinforces the status quo so is great if you think the status quo is great, not so much if you don't. (Having said that, I will freely admit that Donald J Trump is... not exactly the best advertisement for promoting the benefits of political outsiders/ the less qualified winning. Arguably, Barack Obama would be though, he was a lot less qualified than McCain albeit a lot more qualified than Trump)

You do get the 270 electoral votes by winning individual states' popular votes though, with the few exceptions where the EC votes are done proportionally. It isn't won by having been Secretary of State and a Senator for x years, it's won by mobilising your support in the places that matter. That's why I brought up the tennis match. Who wins isn't determined by who wins the most points, nor by who wins the most games- though typically the winner will have done both. It's determined by who wins the most sets. You can make an argument that Roger Federer is a better tennis player than Joe Bloggs based on his stellar record and qualifications, or him winning more points and games, but if you're looking at a one off match that Federer lost the only objective measure is that Federer lost. Similarly the ultimate measure of popularity is winning the election- elections are popularity contests, including the US one. The way the US determines the most popular candidate may be peculiar to you but the rules were known by both sides beforehand. Hillary getting more raw votes nationwide simply doesn't matter, because that isn't how that popularity contest is determined. It's probably true, similar stuff happens elsewhere though the SCMP is not a great source and they got at least one 'fact' wrong (the US spy plane involved in KAL007 never intruded into Soviet airspace as they imply in the article, KAL007 intruded on two different occasions). Israel spoofs US ID codes in Syria for example and hides their planes behind commercial airliners, and they're not alone in such things either. OTOH, it's kind of pointless if you're going to spoof a code of an aircraft that you've kept on the same altitude and heading and it's pretty simple (well, unless you're on the Vincennes) to look up commercial timetables. And they are spy planes, the expectations for their conduct are more relaxed than for others even if they aren't supposed to break the rules overtly. Buzzing Iranian passenger jets over Syria and setting off their tcas is definitely more egregious recent conduct.