Zoraptor

There's definitely US forces in New Zealand as well. The supply for their Antarctic bases is run out of here, and while the bases are (theoretically at least) civilian much of the supply is done by the USAF from Christchurch.

Went shopping today a bit earlier than I had planned today, busy but shelves mostly stocked fine. Half an hour later they announced a move to a total shutdown by Wednesday, cue pictures of queues out of supermarkets and hundreds of cars waiting to get into the car parks...

Eh no. It would be nice if WaPo actually read the material they cite; 2.2 million is their worst case scenario*, and that excludes any extra deaths from other causes due to the health system breaking down. (Technically the absolute worst case scenario would be ~50% infection rate with 3% of those infected dying, or about 5-6 million people for the US. Fortunately, that is highly unlikely no matter how incompetent the response is) *p7 "In total, in an unmitigated epidemic, we would predict approximately 510,000 deaths in GB and 2.2 million in the US, not accounting for the potential negative effects of health systems being overwhelmed on mortality."

BG1's was worse as they took absolutely no account of the awful pathfinding when designing their dungeons. BG2's was still pretty bad, but a massive practical improvement since they (mostly) took the bad pathing into account during area design. BG1 on the other hand had narrow corridors that any two wide+ party formation- ie all but one of them- couldn't fit into, replete with traps, and was a recipe for one character to wander off randomly triggering every one of those trap and attracting every annoying monster in the entire level. That made the Firewine (? been years since I played) dungeon and Nashkel mines even worse than their already poor base design. Even in more open areas it still wasn't uncommon to have one character charge off in the opposite direction when their path was temporarily blocked by someone else. PoE's pathfinding wasn't perfect by any means, but was still near infinitely better than most IE games.

IIRC PS4 and XB1 were a lot more even sales wise in the US than anywhere else (just about everywhere else it was a bloodbath in Sony's favour).

I was pretty surprised going from m2 SATA to m2 NVMe at the difference it made to loading times. They seem to be very keen on 'instant resume' and the like, so a lot of throughput will help with that. I would be surprised if it maintains the 2.2GHz though, same way as a discrete graphics card won't permanently maintain its boost clocks. I'd suspect that the rumoured 9 ish TFLOPs- so a bit under 2 GHz clock- is what you'd get for routine operation.

Following the XXboxSe specs, Playstation 5 specs: So slower on the CPU/ GPU front than the SeBoxXx by a bit (not as much as was rumoured; but they do note variable frequency), but the memory I/O is around twice as good like/ like.

The cheap solder only really mattered because the thermals/ cycling was so extreme though. The trouble I have is how similar the specs are to the desktop equivalents and the level of cooling those desktop equivalents require. Yeah, MS will have some sort of bespoke solution and it will be mass manufactured to reduce costs, but there's a limit as to how small and efficient a 300W single chip cooling solution can be, and the heat has to go somewhere. Poor ventilation or dust accumulation is only going to make things worse. Fundamentally, one of the reasons why consumer chips have overheat protection is that it can and does happen and throttling (or at worst shutting down) protects from permanent damage; but supposedly this chip doesn't have throttling.

Final Xbox Series X specs released... Which theoretically gives the performance of a nearish top line current gaming PC. Practically... if it actually functions to those specs I wonder how on earth they're going to cool it. The closest desktop equivalent parts (3700x, 5700XT*) get to around 290W, or the equivalent of having three old incandescent bulbs inside a console case. Obviously console parts simply cannot be that hot, but the insistence is also that the sexbox won't have thermal throttling and those specs are (again theoretically) about what the desktop equivalents have in terms of frequency and the like. And what happens when its been sitting in a cabinet over summer or picked up a load of dust a year in. It will definitely need something pretty nifty cooling wise to stop RROD 2.0. *which is a gen behind, but 30% extra CUs in the console chip is extremely likely to eat up efficiency gains going from RDNA 1 to 2.

I've definitely seen reports that you can be simultaneously infected by both strains. The 'reinfectivity' may well be like the 'reinfection' people got from Ebola when they recovered and then tested positive- there's a low grade reservoir in areas that are not well served by the immune system such as the fluid in the eye; but it's largely irrelevant as you aren't infectious to others unless you rupture your eyeball. Nobody really knows what the best model for covid-19 is which is part of the problem. Will it be like SARS, or will it be like the 'cold' causing corona virus we already have? While only a minority of colds are caused by coronavirus people tend to get multiple colds per year, and immunity to the version caused by coronavirus isn't permanent. And, if we want to talk worse case, there's always the possibility of a Spanish Flu type event where mild infections prime people for a cytokine storm from a different strain later on. I'm not usually one to agree with Alexander Boris de Pfeffel but the UK approach is justified if the decision has been made that spread is inevitable and will happen whatever precautions are taken.

KOTOR 2 was pretty obviously inspired by certain aspects of the then current SW Expanded Universe, which included a prominent Kreia like figure (Vergere) and a species of force independent inter galactic invaders (Yuuzhan Vong). So killing the force had not (so far as I am aware) been explicitly dealt with, but it was a fairly small step to get there from where they were.

NWN2 had a new renderer, underlying stuff was from NWN1's Aurora though. And of course The Witcher (1) used Aurora as well.

So did I in reality. I was always a bit disappointed either he or Qara ended up fighting you at the end.

While I disagree overall the last bit is the most important reason as to why I would not pick K2; I'd also add that the similarities to Planetscape Tournament are also a factor. K2 is very much a try at deconstructing Star Wars the same way as PST deconstructed the typical D&D game/ campaign and shares some very obvious and direct similarities thematically and plot wise. So if you wanted to play a K2 like game thematically you could always play PST instead. If you wanted the same sort of deconstruction applied specifically to Star Wars you can go read Traitor or some of the other EU stuff dealing with Vergere- as it's pretty obvious Chris Avellone had done before writing K2- or an alternative type of deconstruction like Shatterpoint. So to my mind the question if I had to pick one Obsidian game to save is effectively "which of their best game is most unique?" which is Alpha Protocol. There isn't much to separate it from MOTB*/ FONV/ K2 in terms of personal preference, but those games all have obvious alternatives I could play to get a similar result, AP doesn't really. *Not NWN2 OC though. Don't think I've ever had such a negative reaction to one NPC before but he completely ruined the game for me.

New Zealand has basically gone full Madagascar- technically we haven't shut down all inward travel, but a 14 day quarantine is going to stop pretty much everyone who isn't a returning NZer (or Pacific Islander for some reason). Can't see any tourist, sport and business visitors coming. Guess politically it has to be done, but I very much doubt it's going to do anything other than delay the virus's large scale arrival.

I thought that was going to be a Deus Ex Intro copypasta and am mildly disappointed.

There's no chance it's a bioweapon. It may have been being studied at the bioweapons institute in Wuhan- may as in it's possible, but there's no evidence beyond circumstance. I wouldn't put it past people to use its spread as a smallpox blanket type bioweapon though. Pretty good chance it will. It's got pretty high infectivity, looks to be mutable and even if some places like China or ROK can achieve control by behavioural means others simply won't be able to so there's likely to be a reservoir virus population. The good news is that by and large such things get less virulent over time so a 3% death rate is unlikely to occur again any time soon, and the infectivity will drop once there's some herd immunity achieved- plus a vaccine at at least flu vaccine level of effectiveness is near inevitable*. The scenario where it's both seasonal and has the ability to infect ~half the world's population with a 3% death rate every year or even regularly is not one I'd spend any time worrying about in the same way I'm not worried about earth being hit by a large meteor or the poles reversing or similar. *one of smallpox level effectiveness, ie able to get to eradication, is highly unlikely though. Unlike pox viruses the 'common cold' coronavirus doesn't even generate long term immunity to itself, and single strand RNA viruses inherently mutate, a lot.

1) Malkavian has an argument with a roundabout 2) Visit the Concrete Cows 3) ... handy to London?

Complete reverse for me, I've seen heaps of classics from close up- including some near uniques like the Polikarpov- but basically no modern jets. Modern warplanes don't really make it out here, but I can literally go down to Ardmore and watch Spitfires/ Mustangs or Sopwith Camel (replicas) take off while having a coffee at the cafe (they do paid flights on the classic planes so you see them pretty frequently, bit pricey but something I will get around to doing, once I win the Lottery). I was also lucky enough to be on the Isle of Wight during the 60th anniversary of D-Day, and they had a heap of fly overs.

Coolest by a country mile was the Su-47, especially with the prototype's colour scheme. Backwings just look awesome even if they aren't really practical. There's a fairly well known plane rebuilder at the nearest aerodrome to where I live and they did mock attack runs on me during flight testing for one of their Mosquito rebuilds (I was spraying gorse and they obviously decided a red ute parked at the top of a hill made an obvious and safe target). Pretty memorable experience, but I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end if it were for real.

5 years. Intel is probably too big to fail even if it were seriously threatened, much like Boeing. The big medium term threat is if their 7nm gets delayed or runs into 10nm like problems, they've now acknowledged they'll be behind AMD for nearly the next two years which is bad enough. But they've had problems now with their last two processes, albeit the Broadwell pipecleaner was far less an issue than 10nm, and if they make it 3 in a row there will be serious questions about them maintaining their own fabs, let alone the sort of damage further delays could do to their most lucrative markets.

You've either got the wrong plane or the wrong definition of ground attack*. Su57 is the Russian F22 equivalent. And while P51 could be used in ground attack it was far more useful as a long range escort, and other planes were better at the task (eg off the top of my head, Typhoons for UK. Thunderbolts on the US side. And the Sturmovik for the Russians) I'd have difficulty putting the Warthog first though as it's never operated in genuinely contested airspace. The Stuka too looked great when it was in uncontested skies. *Though I really don't like wikipedias list, way too many listed that can be used but really aren't intended to be used as such.

They probably wish they could just overtly blame the NSA for the problem. I presume at some stage we're going to get books and articles about what's been going on at Intel in the same style as there have been about Boeing's decline. Certainly seems like Krzanich's tenure as CEO was a complete disaster on the technical side that they still haven't recovered from, even if it isn't significantly hurting their bottom line yet.

I doubt Biden would do anything near the more ludicrous Trump feats; I doubt Biden could do some of Trump's more outlandish feats if he wanted to. No hotels so no currying favour by staying at them, it's unlikely that Biden's son in law (does he even have one?) is going to be appointed to write a middle east peace plan while financing illegal settlements for one party to that peace plan and being massively in debt to Mr Bone Saw; as obvious examples. With Biden it would be the same old ways of taking legalised bungs to protect special interests, but that is hardly equivalent to Trump. Which I guess is why Trump's pushing the Hunter Biden/ Berisma thing so strongly, since that would potentially be a lot closer to Trump's behaviour. Funny thing is I actually rather like Joe Biden, but I have very little doubt he'll lose barring some major perturbation. He'd have been a better candidate than Hillary 4 years ago, and probably would have won then.

Yet another ceasefire in Syria. Looks like it's basically a Turkish surrender, Syria gets to keep every bit of reclaimed territory and the rebels effectively hand over everything south of the M4 too. Turkey gets literally none of the stuff they were demanding beforehand- no return to original Sochi lines, no M5, observation points still surrounded. Looks like another 6 month delay to the rebel loss rather than anything permanent. Pretty much everything is being done the same way as last time. Absolutely no lessons learnt whatsoever. Anyone with any enthusiasm is a BernieBro, who couldn't be bothered voting so don't matter, what are they going to do if Hillary Joe is picked vote Trump?, everything has been done perfectly above board, [candidate] is electable Bernie isn't, Bernie isn't even a proper Democrat and will run as an independent if he loses, and, of course, there is absolutely no anti Bern bias. I've seen two different D talking heads on BBC and AlJ run through exactly that set of talking points with barely concealed glee, which also happened last time too. At least Biden isn't actively disliked as much as Hillary was, but then he also wouldn't have the draw of being the first woman candidate. I find the emphasis on being 'electable' particularly stupid since electable for the Democrats always seems to mean run of the mill and inoffensive to party sensibilities. Every single candidate picked primarily for 'electability' has lost, because if you're labeling your candidate as 'electable' it's pretty much saying that there isn't anything better to say about them than that they can win. The successful D candidates of my lifetime- BClinton and Obama- were not the safe options, far from it, they were the ones with some ability to actively enthuse those who aren't apparatchniks. Every time they've gone for the safe candidate they've lost, and lost to extraordinarily flawed candidates like GWBush and Trump who at least had some ability to enthuse.