Zoraptor

Hah yes. I got the first few Malazan books on a recommendation but stopped reading after there was some sort of massive continuity error/ retcon. Though to be honest I can't even remember what that continuity error was, so I obviously wasn't that invested.

Witcher 2 was a bit too clunky. Its formula was far better realised in 3. I don't think either 2 or 3s overall plot worked that well as part of a trilogy of games (purely as narrative and individually they're fine) because most (all?) the main decisions in 2 had zero impact on the plot of 3 and 3's plot relied heavily on nazi elves from outer space an alternative dimension which is about as silly as you can get. It was the subsidiary plots in W3 that lifted the game. Even then W3 had problems with some subplots, most notably the ludicrous plot ending for Dijkstra. I imagine it was originally intended to be the elves v humans inflection point that you had multiple times in the previous games, if they'd kept Iorveth's W3 plot, and you would have had a far more sensible choice between backing BRoche/ Temeria and Dijkstra/ Iorveth. As it is it's just stupid, makes everyone involved look stupid and is only there to determine a world end state in a Radovid less scenario. And of course neither W2 nor W3 has consequences for the most major world changing thing you could do in W1, uncurse Adda so she marries Radovid keep Berengar alive when fighting Azar Javed. Still disappointed. So, Witcher 1 is the best game of the three, and it's a hill I'm willing to die on.

As I've said before Martin's chances of finishing writing can be summed up by him stating that if he hadn't finished WoW by the time he visited New Zealand this year we could imprison him on White Island until it was done. 6 months later that island exploded killing 20 odd people, and the whole country is shut down to foreigners thanks to covid. Someone really doesn't want him finishing, and it isn't just him. I think it would be interesting to see how long the typical (single author) SF series takes to write and how much the time taken changes between books as the series progresses. 10 odd years ago Robert Jordan was kind of the stereotype 'slow author that would never be finished' that Martin is today; but Jordan still regularly produced books, they just were subject to a lot of bloat and glacial plot progression. IIRC the average time between those books was not that much over a year with the longest gap (excepting when Jordan died) being about 2, and they were hefty books too.

You mean not as fast as NVMe. M2 is a form factor rather than an interface; there are SATA SSD with M2 form factor but they have the same speed as their 2.5" form factor equivalents. But yes, having shifted from a M2 SATA to a NVMe drive for most things there's almost no difference, though it does make loading a bit quicker. However, there was little practical difference in cost at that time (and as of today, model for model, literally a dollar here) between SATA and NVMe drives so there's no reason not to save that 30 seconds a day.

The fight between China and the US has been brewing for 20 years* and would have happened in some form even if Hillary were elected. The only 'election' which might have put it off was if Xi had stuck to his limited term and someone a little less Xi like (assertive/ aggressive depending on view) had replaced him. Even then it would be delayed only. Hegemons are natural enemies, and both see themselves as hegemons. *ironically, it traces back to the western 'triumph' in Kosovo. That was the final nail in the already disintegrating Yeltsinist approach in Russia when dealing with the west, and blowing up the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade with no repurcussions set the scene for how China's leadership sees the US. Neither would put up with similar treatment again. Just another way Bill Clinton's Presidency looks worse in retrospect than it did at the time.

Their maths is fine. Discounts are always applied sequentially, if for no other reason than it stops 2x 50+% discounts == being paid to buy a game. 100*0.85*0.83=70.55% price, or 29% discount. People may expect a 32% discount from 100*(1-(0.15+0.17)) but that isn't actually what should happen.

Steam Machines never got officially canceled as they were an 'external' project- they relied on 3rd parties making them and to all intensive porpoises they never got made in the first place. You can't cancel something you were never meant to make yourself [taps head]. The other part (SteamOS) still exists. It's not exactly mainstream given even steam's own survey has all Linuces at ~1% market share but exists as a hedge against MS going walled garden. Every once in a while there's something significant like Proton released, and there's a decent amount of work put into drivers/ vulcan etc.

"Violent gun deaths per 100k people in 2017" so it's definitely a rate. Might be some wiggle room on what exactly 'violence' entails- but it is homicide only. For violent deaths (homicides) the US has a rate of 4.8/100k so around 0.4 'extra' non gun related deaths. China has 0.5 'extra' deaths, so they're pretty comparable.

Intel stuffing up triggers a lot of schadenfreude after their deliberate policy of chip stagnation when dominant and obvious hubris about 'always' having the best fabs and best engineers but it isn't great long term. Everyone except TMSC either dropping out of the top tier or main tier (GloFo/ IBM) or having problems (Samsung/ Intel) is not a great situation long term as it gives TMSC far too much influence. Much as I will laugh if nVidia's next GPUs are space heaters again because Jensen played chicken with the wrong people it does illustrate that TMSC has a lot of influence on 3rd party products and that is inherently a bad situation. Then again, Intel influencing that really depends on them also opening their foundries to 3rd parties, and the shift is the other way with them going 3rd party themselves.

The Steam/GOG version of Metro Exodus has a nasty crash bug (lock ups at the Lighthouse and Crane on the Caspian level, and the lighthouse crash is in a mandatory section) that I didn't encounter in the gamepass version, and that's 3rd party. It would be far easier for MS simply not to put their games on Steam than to purposefully break them.

Intel 7nm process delayed until at least 2022, perhaps 2023. Since they haven't yet got more than 4 cores out of 10nm that may mean 14nm desktop for 3 more years. Though they do still seem to be saying that they will have 10nm server chips this year, which implies higher core counts. Maybe higher core counts via a chiplet design, which could get at least some desktop onto 10nm too? [looks like 10nm server (and desktop) is delayed to at least 2H 2021 now as well actually, from the earning reports comments. Guess they could still be getting higher core counts via a chiplet approach though] [and using an (unnamed, but it can surely only be Samsung or way more likely TSMC) external foundry for their 7nm discrete GPUs is also in there too]

Finished Dark S3. All those people who say that quantum mechanics doesn't have a practical use for general people proved wrong, it definitely helps you understand what's going on in semi obscure German time travel and alternative world shows where you can't remember half the characters' names. Might have been a touch confusing without knowing about the Trousers of Time. Has to be said: best casting I've seen in any show.

Peak Gromnir, can't be bothered looking, blames others for his laziness. You like saying you have lots of money, so I'll start charging you $500 for doing your research for you.

Since Hurlshot did Origins, I've played Odyssey and while you wouldn't play it for the RPG elements it is a really well thought out and quite beautiful game that I would think most people would get a lot of enjoyment out of. I doubt most will finish it though, it's really long and at some point the Point of Interest farming gets boring despite there being a lot of variety; you can avoid a lot of combat but sneaking and combat does eventually get tiresome because there is an immense amount of it unless you stick to the main plot where there's only a lot instead. The plot is almost directly based on historical events from the Peloponesian War and does as good a job there as anyone could reasonably expect (toned Alcibiades down a bit, maybe) and the meta plot is... kind of just there, occasionally. If you get it pick the female protagonist, much like female Shepard in Mass Effect she's better in pretty much every respect. It has utransactions, if you care about that, but they're utterly ignorable and unnecessary for progression. I'd say it's definitely worth getting so long as you aren't a compulsive completionist or don't like open world or the perspective used.

No. That which is asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. If it were just about anyone else I'd give them the benefit of the doubt but you've literally used time travelling soviet invasion plans to justify your views before, because you read some dodgy website that didn't expect anyone to check the dates. Peak Gromnir too, you can't be bothered looking up your own source but it's me that's low energy for not doing it for you. And to show I'm not low energy when it comes to sources and why I'm not going to take you at your word: "[the administration] repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent. As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed." Doesn't sound like the Senate Report on Pre War Intelligence rejects my conclusions at all. Indeed, it shows a systematic campaign of such non lying activities as presenting "non existent" intelligence as fact, organised by Cheney/ Feith's parallel intelligence group.

You're the one going on about Blix, not me. So what about December 2002, there was 4 more months of inspections after that, and he said progress was being made and he just needed more time. Which he didn't get. I'll also be frank, your recollection of a Hans Blix speech is not something I'm ever going to find convincing given your propensity for creative interpretation. Wilful stupidity is a key component of a lot of conspiracies same as belief is. If you're conclusion shopping- something you also personally do frequently and something that the build up to GW2 was replete with- the absolute key concepts are being wilfully stupid by ignoring contrary information and stating things you merely believe as if they are objective fact. And yes, those are exactly what antivaxxers do (along with the 'makes you think though?/ 'if there's smoke there's fire' approach, also used extensively in the GW2 lead up, but which is not actual lying just being disingenuous). I could post every instance of outright lies here, but I'd literally hit the character limit. As for official government enquiries, lol. The US/ Brits investigated the US/ Brits and found the US/ Brits did nothing deliberately wrong. I will pick up my jaw from the floor after I recover from the lack of shock. I won't lie, since my lack of shock is complete I may never be able to chew again.

Yeah, nah. Can't prove a negative, can't prove that you've destroyed everything, especially can't when the stuff you're supposed to have include mobile labs that were literally made up by a defector. Showing there was no meaningful wmd program or manufacturing/ munitions was being done in 2003, up until the invasion. And ultimately, there is as good a proof as you were ever going to get that they had no meaningful wmd post invasion when none were found except a few perished artillery shells. Should also say, the vast majority of serious CW- nerve gases for Saddam's stockpile- has a pretty short shelf life and the precursor supply to Iraq was basically non existent post 1991. If your VX isn't stabilised and lasts short term you don't really have to prove that your 1991 era stockpile doesn't exist a decade plus later because science does that for you. Probably wouldn't have mattered anyway, there are plenty of dual use or easy to make CWs- cyanide, chlorine, phosgene- they could have claimed Iraq was stockpiling which it would be literally impossible to show they weren't. (Seeing non chemists talk about CW is often unintentionally funny. My favourite was the french DGSE claiming Syria was mixing chlorine and sarin to make super WMD. If you do that you get no sarin and slightly less chlorine pretty much instantly, as any competent chemist could tell you. Don't know if they'd been reading wikipedia's phosgene entry or watching Bodie make suggestions for drug names on The Wire, whichever it was it was unintentionally one of the dumbest things I've ever read from an 'intelligence' agency)

It was mostly West Germany that sold them precursors and equipment. Which the US knew about, of course, so the practical difference isn't great. The US mostly supplied intelligence and ran interference for the CW program and its use, especially at Halabja. Yes they were. Rumsfeld 100% didn't know where the CW was, it wasn't around Tikrit and Baghdad because it didn't exist. Saddam didn't try and obtain yellowcake from Niger, and they were told he didn't and they ignored it then burned Valerie Plame in retaliation. The 9/11 hijackers did not get support from Iraq. The 45 minute WMD over London claim was inserted from a masters thesis by Alistair Campbell over objections from British intelligence about it being at very best complete speculation. The Iraqis were not authorised to use the WMD they didn't have. Doesn't matter if they really really really believed it was true. They weren't merely innocent mistaken bumpkins blundering into mass slaughter for the best of intentions, they went out of their way to suppress any and all evidence- including using blatantly illegal means to do so- that didn't support their position Ironically, you use pretty much the exact argument many use for defending 5g/ covid/ antivaxxer. They all really really believe the stuff they spout is true too. So what. It isn't true, there is and was plenty of evidence that it isn't and being a moron and conclusion shopping to fit your beliefs does not mean you're incapable of lying. If they'd said they believed that Saddam still had WMDs they wouldn't have been lying. But no, they said he definitely had them when he didn't, systematically removed all nuance and equivocation and told blatant untruths.

There's nothing that stops it being a conspiracy. Doesn't matter if they genuinely believed the bollocks they were peddling, all they have to do is be organised to systematically lie which they clearly did. And outside of the legal definition of big C Conspiracy it doesn't have to be illegal, just dishonest. Though without a UN resolution it almost certainly was, at least for Bliar. If you have any doubt about them being dishonest then perhaps I can interest you in some nice beachfront real estate in Nightcaps. Parallel intelligence apparatus reprting to Cheney dedicated to conclusion shopping that Iraq still had wmds and removing any and all equivocation about it, plagairising a masters thesis and passing it off as intelligence, embiggening whacky yellowcake stories then illegally burning one of your own assets to get revenge when their husband debunked it, making up Iraqi links to 9/11 etc. They "knew where the WMD was, it's near Tikrit and Baghdad" and the Iraqis were authorised to use it, stated repeatedly and consistently. They most certainly didn't know any such thing, they just believed it. Shame they didn't believe they could fly if dropped from 10,000m instead, then there would be only a few dozen dead from their stupidity instead of millions. It was a systematic and organised promotion of falsehood, an absolutely classic conspiracy in every single respect. The media fell for it hook line and sinker and defenders and deflectors can't deal with being taken for a ride themselves- or the media they put on a pedestal being taken for a ride.

Whenever I see someone like John Oliver suggesting to go with media consensus to avoid conspiracy theories I'm reminded of two things. Firstly, Gulf War 2. Anyone who didn't believe the WMD fabrications of 2002-3 was an unpatriotic conspiracy theorist. Except, it turned out, it was the media which fell for an actual conspiracy. Good thing they learned their lesson, after all the media which was punished for their stupidity and cupidity... oh wait, it was just the BBC that didn't buy into it that got punished, wasn't it? Guess there's an obvious lesson to be learned there, it just isn't a palatable one if you don't like male cattle excreta. Then there's mass surveillance. 'Conspiracy theory' says the mainstream media. Then there's Snowden and most of the mainstream media decides that actually it's not a big deal because we all knew it was happening anyway. And meh, let's barely mention the blatant violation of the Vienna Convention involved in forcing down and searching Evo Morales' plane because Snowden might be there. Yeah, antivaxxers, covid or 5g conspiracy theorists are whacky as; though flat earthers are almost all just taking the mick out of po faced science absolutists. Trouble is that the mainstream media will happily parrot utter rubbish if it's in their best interests or, frankly, even if they're just lazy and don't want to be bothered critically examining what a source or press release tells them; and if they cannot do it via the news they'll do it via opinion pieces that can easily be forgotten about or disclaimed away. That's also why 'propaganda' media which pushes conspiracy theories works in the first place, it doesn't matter if they lie so long as they can prove that the 'trusted media' lies too. And that's all too easy. Ultimately that's where reports like Oliver's fall down if taken as having a proper/ deeper message than just trying to be funny. There's a reason conspiracy theories exist which isn't solely because those that believe them are credulous ignoramuses. It's because the mainstream news is far more concerned with being sensationalist, building narrative and a host of other things than just giving out facts. (Difficult to be too critical of Oliver personally there since like Jon Stewart before him he's primarily entertainment/ satire rather than out and out news, and also like Stewart he's typically better at informing than a lot of mainstream news despite that)

Agreed on India, but China and Russia may have a lot of minorities but they both have a large 80%+ majority Han/ 'Russian' ethnicity which is proportionately larger than the 'white' 'ethnicity' in the US is. I think this is the point where I typically wave my arms animatedly while saying there's little objective difference between a lot of ethnicities anyway and most are used as political conveniences for whatever progressive/ regressive agenda is being driven at the time.

"Biden has stated he plans to 'redirect police funds elsewhere'. Sounds like a 'defund the police' mantra with colourful words. I have no doubt Biden will do what the BLM/Antifa Nazis want him to do. " Hmm. But if he fails to defund the police he'd be doing what the police want him to do- which would make him a Police Nazi. What a quandry.

The unbelievable part would be that dry beans and coconut milk would make a pretty healthy meal*. 'Healthy meal' and 'Donald Trump' don't really go together given his stereotypical meals are overcooked steaks and MaccyDs. *by current orthodoxy at least. Not that long ago coconut milk was considered too high in fat to be healthy, now everyone seems to be using out and out coconut fat for cooking...

A Forward looking replacement for the cancelled E3 trade event featuring informational discourse relating to prominent game software releases from the foremost publisher of entertainment software, Ubisoft (TM)(R). Get all your information on watching dogs, assassinating creeds and crying far in one convenient package and receive award winning Watch_Dogs(TM) 2 for free on Uplay! Due to unprecedented demand the free W_D2 offer has been extended, so anyone who missed out on the live event gets their chance. Thanks, Ubisoft! ie basically a Ubi upcoming release event held a few days ago. You were meant to register beforehand to get W_D2 but the system was unsurprisingly- indeed, that was probably part of the PR strategy- swamped so the giveaway has been extended.

No more deaths from covid in the US, all thanks to Trump. Unfortunately, there's been a lot of deaths from totally unrelated causes like pneumonia this year, but what can you do about that? And on other totally unrelated news, China has suggested there's a far worse novel pneumonic disease in Khazakstan than sarscov2, because Khazakstan have no coronavirus but have had a lot of totally unrelated pneumonia deaths this year...