Zoraptor

First Man in Rome is pretty good, so long as one likes (somewhat) fictionalised history. 'I, Claudius' would be the most obvious comparison, though FMiR is both considerably longer page wise and considerably shorter time span wise. Part of a longer series, and the timespans get progressively more condensed the further in. Late but not terminal decline Roman Republic is also an often neglected subject for the more popular triumvirates epoch. It's well written and very well researched, and less dry than reading proper history. (I'd personally go for the first book too though. Interesting subject, and less of a commitment)

Not sure I agree, posting an amp link is just lazy rather than despicable. I'd be surprised if multiple current MKs didn't say similar privately, they'd definitely be thinking it, and there's certainly plenty of effort going into trying to make political capital by trying to implicate Hezbollah from Israel, KSA and the US. Ironically of course, it was KSA/ US patsy Saad Hariri who was in power for most of the time the ammonium nitrate was there. Such is life in the middle east. OTOH kind of hilarious watching Beeb coverage fellating Macron during his visit to Beirut. Thought something was a bit off with Macron's reception, but of course it was Phalange central he visited. Hence them yelling about the President specifically since he's seen as a traitor- Aoun is Christian too, but not extreme enough for them. Would have got a slightly different reception in Sunni or Shia areas. Of course, the Phalange are literally literally genocidal (Sabra and Chatila massacre) though that hasn't stopped the BBC using [Gemayel Iterations] as sources for comment on Lebanon without noting that they are, literally literally, fascists. Unsurprisingly, the Phalange was the predominant western/ Israeli backed force in the Lebanese Civil War, indeed Ariel Sharon actively facilitated the Sabra and Chatila massacre and was cashiered for it, until genociding Palestinians became an electoral asset at least.

Finished Bioshock Infinite. As a game it was fine, entertaining, reasonably challenging on hard (except for the ghost lady, which was genuinely hard), pretty engaging plot and nice aesthetics. Had the same basic problem Bioshock original had with its meta plot; it's difficult to do a compelling plot featuring determinism and pointing out all the 'but thou must' s inherent in games without then doing something different with it to subvert its expectations. It's only a bit different having someone say stuff has to happen because quantum theory says it's always happened and having someone say it has to happen because you've been programmed to obey a phrase by a sociopathic Korean. It's simply the nature of written works that they follow the script so there isn't much point pointing it out unless you're going to do something other than just point it out. Burial at Sea kind of had the same problem. I would say it was extremely high quality in every respect for a DLC and had a lot of very obvious work put into it with new (for B: I) systems etc, but you can't avoid the fact that everything that happened happened because it had to. In a vacuum, your 'choice' may have ended up doing some good but also got a lot of people killed; but that's excused because narratively it had to happen. It's the inverse of the very common trope in pseudo 'deep' games (lately, TLOU2 is a good example) where the game forces you to do a bad thing to progress the plot, then berates you for how bad you are for doing the thing you had to do to progress the plot- in BaS you're actively excused for getting a bunch of people killed because it had already happened.

Yeah, nah. Wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if Trump misspoke (said 'attack', meant 'explosion') and then doubled down instead of correcting himself. It's possible that ISIS or someone knew that there was ammonium nitrate there, but blowing up a container of fireworks on a ship to set it off seems a bit convoluted when a car/ truck bomb would be the trick more reliably. Stealthing in 2750t of ammonium nitrate is definitely non trivial and a bit beyond the capabilities of most, and there is (supposedly, since I cannot read arab script) a report begging for its disposal from years ago which suggests it has been there for years as described. Most likely systemic poor management, and bad luck. Tim McVeigh used ammonium nitrate, but his mix was a lot better as an explosive because it wasn't just ammonium nitrate (ie, it was ANFO). Fortunately the Beirut explosion was not that efficient, since you can see a lot of distinctive brown smoke from the various nitrous oxides, ie there was incomplete reduction of the nitrogen. 2750t of ammonium nitrate is a ridiculous amount- theoretically about 2kt of TNT equivalent, iirc- which if detonated efficiently would be one of the largest conventional explosions ever. Current estimate seems to be about 1kt equivalent actually exploded so as bad as it was it could have been worse.

Supposedly a container of fireworks overheated and went off first, which ignited the ammonium nitrate- that had been stored insecurely at the port since being seized off an abandoned ship in... 2014. Could have sent it over here, we'd have used it as fertiliser inside a few months, then wonder why all our rivers had mysteriously turned bright green. 50 dead was the confirmed figure, it will likely be well into the hundreds.

Probably a fair observation, though Tom Hardy is not in many episodes and for those he is in it is usually a brief appearance. (Hardy is probably more famous, but I tend to think Murphy is more recognisable since he has a very distinctive look whoever he's playing. I didn't even realise Hardy was in Dunkirk until the end credits, but noticed Murphy immediately. There's also a pretty massive overlap between well known movies with Tom Hardy in and well known movies with Cillian Murphy in mostly thanks to Nolan, though I guess recently Hardy has had the bigger roles in them)

The game is based on the TV series Peaky Blinders* which is based on the Birmingham (UK, not Alabama) street gang which was famous for keeping razor blades in the peaks of their caps that they used for, well, blinding rivals etc on occasion. *Cillian Murphy (Tommy) would be the most internationally famous actor in it though the most memorable and memeable character is pretty definitively his thickly Brummie accented on screen brother Arfur 'fookin'' Shelby, and there's a very distinctive style and soundtrack (eg Nick Cave does the theme). Good series, well worth watching, may need to turn subtitles on especially for Sam Neill's overly accurate Ulster accent. Pretty sure it's on Netflix internationally, certainly is in NZ.

"Even if that's true, it makes no sense for country A to allow country B to do something in their own country just because they do it. Afterall, China locks up people who protest China but if a bunch of Chinese citizens were protesting the US in China I doubt China would care. L0L" I'm not Amerikkkan though*. The chances of anyone being effected by NZ apps or hardware with backdoors in them from the SIS is... not substantial. Probably the better argument at least for Tik Tok and software is that China happily 'bans' (technically makes it too hard for them to operate, in most cases) US software companies that have strong relations with the NSA such as Alphabet/ Google or Facebook. *I'd prefer neither country to be trying to backdoor every device I own. And the one that definitely is is the US; for all the looking that has gone on neither Huawei nor Tik Tok has had the allegations against them substantiated in any respect.

To me tik tok is still a song by Kesha. Or Ke$ha, but I feel like my IQ drops every time I type that. If tik tok goes my nieces will be devastated and have to rely on the wholly non data harvesting Youtube/ Google/ Alphabet instead. Well yes, but the existing ones are fronts for the NSA and corporates. Tik Tok is (supposedly, of course) a front for the CCP instead which is bad. Kind of funny really, the rumour that [chinese entity] is doing something is bad, [US entity] definitely doing the same thing on the other hand...

New Zealand took in a refugee from the US* last week, though he'd got here before covid. Caused a mild scandal because he was here at the invite of an MP, and had promised he'd obey his temporary visa and not try for refugee status here (instead, it got fast tracked approval of course). Not sure Volo if has thought his maths through fully anyway; if 99% of countries are vastly worse than the US that means there are a grand total of two countries better than the US. *ok, technically he came from Iran originally, but he had refugee status in the US and traded up.

Bit hard on Jar Jar comparing him to Graham. Can't go anywhere due to covid. That's why Trump is so keen to get it fixed, so all the libcucks can emigrate.

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.