Zoraptor

Won't post screenshots, as I've uninstalled most games. I'll put the focus on 2019 release games since I've actually played some, with a couple of honourable mentions for other games played in 2019. Metro Exodus I've been pretty negative about it elsewhere so I'll focus a bit more on the positives here. It's certainly pretty but was almost completely smooth, nearly bug free, the gunplay is good too and well written enough that I can actually identify pretty much the entire crew. The stealth gameplay is worse than Thief certainly, but equally certainly not actively bad as it too often is in other games and works pretty logically. While I prefer a 'proper' open world system like Stalker(s) and their open world sections are a bit too small for my tastes they've done a good job with the environment. They are Billions I bought this mostly because I liked Lords of Xulima and it was the same devs, but it's a pretty good game on its own merits. It's a very typical 'survival' builder though, you're likely to lose the first playthrough of any level since you don't know what is coming or where the resources are or just where best or how much defence to invest in but will usually fly through a second with lessons learned. Dawn of Man A good time killer builder game probably best compared to Banished, and prehistoric man is an interesting and little covered time period. It's pretty well balanced and still being actively added to, if there's one major criticism it's that- much like I found with Banished- you tend to end up playing every game the same way which reduces replayability. The Outer Worlds Yeah, it's good, though not the 2nd coming. Think I described it as being a sort of archetypal 8/10 game and I'd stick with that. Doesn't really do anything superbly but at the same time doesn't do anything badly either. I had horrendous level loading crashes but it was still an easy game to finish. And Honourable mentions for non 2019 games played this year Prey (2017) A worthy successor to System Shock (2) and while I thought it dropped the ball a bit in the latter third of the game- ultimately too much backtracking and too little enemy variation- it would come very close to being a top 10 game of all time for me despite that. Frostpunk A builder that oozes atmosphere, interesting setting and is well designed and balanced. Rather like This War of Mine it has some... false/ gamey feeling moral choices and some well thought out ones. And rather like They are Billions you will stuff up the first playthrough of a scenario most of the time and it's a lot easier once you know what is coming; but as a 'flaw' that's hardly limited to those two games. Egypt: Old Kingdom Bit of an odd one for me but I really enjoyed this and found it almost infinitely replayable. Certainly not a typical strategy builder like Pharaoh or Children of the Nile and it feels rather like a directish adaptation of a board game or a FB/ Flash game but I love ancient Egypt and the simplistic feeling gameplay gave surprising depth. Probably a bit too deterministic for my liking overall (ie doesn't matter how well you're running your empire, it will fall apart when scripted to) but that's just the game's style. I also enjoyed the previous game in the series. Atom RPG Very much a direct Fallout spiritual successor, considerably more so than TOW. Not as memorable or gripping as Fallout and has some of its flaws too (hello clunky pop culture references) but it's clearly a labour of love. Assassins Creed Odyssey which I'm not 100% sure I played this year rather than last, but I'm adding it because I loved the atmosphere and I really do have to go back and finish it if only because I suspect I'll be sticking a knife through Cleon sometime. I also never thought I'd see a AAA game where history is (more or less) respected and I'd fully believe the writers had actually read Thucydides rather than just trawled wikipedia. Surviving Mars Last but not least, another flawed but enjoyable strategy builder. I could write an awful lot about this game's flaws but I did enjoy playing it a lot so won't except for the main one- lack of challenge and content in the later game. It must have been awfully, er, barren content wise without before terraforming was added since most of that takes place in the later parts. I'd also have to note that it's likely my most played game by time is actually Stardew Valley, probably for the 2nd year in a row.

Think I might be finished with Metro Exodus. It's a game I should like a lot in theory given how much I like StalkerSoC/ CoP and even the much maligned Clear Skies and even though I tend to dislike straight out shooters, but... dunno. You're kind of forced into stealth gameplay quite often which is theoretically fine since I liked Thief but it simply isn't as good at it as Thief was, the open areas are theoretically an improvement but practically tend towards being just wider corridors than 2033, the objectives are sometimes far too opaque and there isn't quite enough variation, atmosphere or story to keep me interested. I'd probably have soldiered on through but (and it's a bit of a rant since it's a pet peeve of mine)...

Yeah, I mean what exactly do people think Half Life 2 was, other than a Steam exclusive designed to force people including those who bought retail to use Valve's new online game launcher? What was the last Valve game that didn't require Steam? Sheesh, they've trojaned steam into their pre steam products as well, imagine the reaction if suddenly Dragon Age Origins required Origin or CiVI suddenly required Rockstar Launcher to get updates. People reward Valve for being first with the exclusivity and forcing them to use Steam first when- in reality- if you really hate exclusivity instead of just exclusivity that isn't Steam exclusivity you should hate Valve above all others for introducing, pioneering and popularising the concept in PC gaming... brand loyalty: it's a hell of a drug. OTOH and more on topic, nice to see DLC actually confirmed. I'm not a 100% convinced fan of TOW as it exists now and I played on gamepass so am not likely to be buying dlc there for obvious reasons but TOW's got a very good base to build on for sequels or DLC.

Have to admit I wasn't that impressed with Watchmen. It's always been something I've liked the idea behind more than the actual implementation, but when it comes to the TV show... I just really don't like narrative determinism ("this had to happen because it had to happen") much at all and by its nature there's a lot of that.

I would have said TLJ since Rian Johnson obviously hated Star Wars; but then again no one hates Star Wars like Star Wars fans.

Purchasing Power Parity. It's a measure of what can practically be bought with the economic activity and takes food/ house prices and the like into account so places with cheap food and housing do better; and in most cases it's the best measure to use for that reason- after all someone in China doesn't have to buy a house or food in, say, the UK, Australia or the US they buy in China itself. GDP nominal/ gross is a raw figure of economic activity that doesn't take purchasing power into account. The per person measure used for both nominal and PPP measures is 'per capita GDP'.

That video is using GDP/ capita PPP though- or at least the thumbnail is using that, and I ain't actually going to watch it- where China is still a stunning 20ish places behind relative powerhouse Kazakhstan and battling it out with African behemoth Botswana in the 70s. Having said that, GDP in any form is and always has been an extremely limited measure for determining economic power

Bit more than that. Too few overworked and poorly paid doctors/ nurses and general staff with too little equipment and not enough beds not just make everything slower, it leads to mistakes and worse results when you do get treated; plus a lot of talented staff will leave for greener- better paid- pastures overseas. Constant complaints also lead to lower morale and a perception that the whole system is imploding even if it still (mostly) works. Taking longer in a queue is pretty important in medical care, if that queue is for a Specialist appointment or an important treatment. If you notice a lump and it takes 3 months to see an Oncologist and he wishes he could have seen it 6 weeks earlier when it was still treatable...

They aren't fascinated with Russia though- indeed the country itself is almost totally irrelevant- they're fascinated with Putin himself and, effectively, want a scenario with (idealised) US President Putin, ie an effective leader who 'gets stuff done', isn't particularly bothered with the niceties and doesn't take any crap from anyone while doing it. They don't care about Russia having a bewildering array of minorities or about Chechnya because they don't know about that, and if they did they still wouldn't care. They care that Putin took a disintegrating bankrupt nation that was heading seemingly irremediably towards irrelevance- which is how they view the future of the US if things don't change- back to the diplomatic and geopolitical high table, and they aren't bothered by how he did it.

Best way to make sure Scotland leaves is to include the rest of the UK in a vote. Realistically with a big Tory majority they can laugh at any SNP demands, and laugh at anything Ireland related too. Boris could even tear up his proposed agreement if he wanted to, since he's effectively purged the pro EU wing of his party. Conservatives were always likely to win because it was essentially a single issue election and the remain vote was splintered which is a disaster in a first past the post system. Even if the support for remain/ leave had not just reversed from the referendum result but gone a bit further 45% committed to leave will beat 55% remainers in an election if the remainers are split between multiple parties. It would have been a second referendum, but Labour was always on a hiding to nothing given the split between the cryptoTory centrist Blairites who are hard core remainers and the more traditional Labour voter in the north who voted to leave and largely switched to the Tories based on that single issue. They had to try and placate both and failed to appeal to either.

Exit polls in the UK predicting a landslide Tory victory. After the bad polling last time I would be taking that with a decent grain of salt though. It was certainly uniquely stupid to have asked for a quid pro quo on a monitored call then follow it up with his personal attorney. In terms of actual effect it was pretty minimal- most US military aid to Ukraine including high profile items like Javelins sits in a warehouse unused- and accusations such as it endangering the vital national interests of the US are, charitably, hyperbolic but in terms of being provable it's basically there. If we did take a broader interpretation to include benefits to donors as well as direct personal benefits it wouldn't even be Trump's worse case in terms of morality or practical effect.

The difference between Clinton/ Yeltsin and Trump/ Zelensky is that Clinton was not asking Yeltsin to dig up dirt on Dole. US foreign policy doing favours for powerful companies has been so widespread it's coined a descriptor for countries of a whole geographic region- 'Banana Republic'- if US presidents were impeached for that there really would have been an impeachment per semi modern President. And given how much current US foreign policy is about pushing Raytheon/ Boeing/ Lockheed etc weapons quite possibly an impeachment per month. Frankly, the US would have interfered anyway, the chance to permanently break Russia via that vodka soaked sot and imbecile Yeltsin was simply too great. The problem with the Washington Times publicising US interference in 1996* was much the same problem people have with Trump outright saying he's staying in Syria to take their oil- you're not meant to say that sort of thing otherwise you face more resistance next time you want to do something similar. Yeltsin being reelected is meant to be the Russian people expressing their new democratic rights to freely elect their favoured candidate rather than an incompetent drunkard bribing his way to victory via IMF loans, overseas interference, overspending the spending cap by 1000 times and in places literal ballot stuffing. *before the election was over; once finished it was fine to crow about how it was 'the yanks wot won it for him', in a perfectly legal way and unimpugnable way, per Time.

As the publisher 2k is, technically, killing Battleborn rather than Gearbox. For the latter, buying from somewhere that gives you offline installers has always been the best option- and if you don't, don't spend more than you're prepared to lose. You could also imagine all the people who buy extremely expensive DRMed products like Tractors at 250k a pop which can only be used at the sufferance of John Deere and friends for their entire lifetime...

Steel and food production are also both genuine strategic assets, though not so much coal any more. Food is also a very good 'leverage' commodity for international use via USAID and to influence pricing overseas. There's plenty of good arguments for maintaining both above what pure market forces would require/ allow. I'd say that the main change for US farming under Trump is how much it's been targeted as a sector by retaliation for Trump's various trade wars largely because it is seen as a Trump voting bloc. Trump is exactly the sort of guy who will take that personally and has always said the idea is to use tariff money to prop up sectors that are being 'unfairly' targeted. And to be fair to him, China's modus operandi for 20 years definitely has been to flood a market with cheap goods, drive out competition then raise prices and drop quality as soon as there's no competition left (and if competition picks up again due to crap prices and quality, repeat step 1). For most agricultural products they simply aren't capable of flooding the market of course due to their huge population; not so much for steel.

Week to week releases are probably going to be more common on streaming platforms as there get to be more streaming platforms. They will want you to stay signed up continuously, but there will only be so much you'll want to watch and so much money to spend on services overall. If you have to watch The Mandalorian week to week Disney will get three months (or whatever) minimum of subs from you; if they drop all the eps at once they'll get one. I'll probably get PrimeVideo* for The Expanse next year, watch The Boys and maybe The Back Episodes of The Grand Tour; then cancel it after a month. Depending on what intro offers they have at the time it might not even cost me a cent to do so. OTOH, weekly releases and I'd have to be subbed for 3 months, and at that point I might as well take advantage of their 6 month promo offer which is like getting 3 extra months for free... *We don't have an NZ native Amazon, so there's no bundling with Prime itself unless you have lots of relatives overseas.

You can turn off automatic graphics driver updates in windows, it's just obfuscated. If I don't windows happily installs some ancient Catalyst driver over the top of my shiny new Adrenaline drivers which completely breaks pretty much everything since it doesn't bother uninstalling the Adrenaline drivers first. I doubt that's your problem though and not just because your card is nVidia instead but I'll dig out how to do it later since I don't have time now.

Not exactly? The indications are that the US is going to pressure the UK to drop the NHS as part of negotiations for a FTA, and Boris swears blind that that won't happen. That is absolutely standard US practice, they went after Pharmac (NZ's single payer drug buying agency) as part of the negotiations for the Trans Pacific Partnership- but even that supine bootlicking jelly John Key knew it would be electoral suicide to give in on that. Then again, we have a 3 year electoral cycle, not the UK's 5 year one where a lot that happens in the first year can be forgotten by the time the next election rolls around. You can pretty much guarantee any trade negotiation with the US will involve them trying to force you to buy drugs from US companies at inflated prices because, lobbyists. The Tories have certainly systematically underfunded the NHS and are philosophically opposed to it on principle, but dismantling the NHS would be near revolution inducing and Boris knows it.

Finished Prey2017. Excellent overall, though the ending twist was perhaps a bit obvious- and there was perhaps a bit too much back and forth fighting against the same set of enemies towards the end which was a bit of a drag and led to me sprinting past everything I could. I'd certainly replay it, and if it came to GOG or similar outright buy it. Now, on to Metro Exodus...

Having an independent body rule that what Trump's doing was illegal multiple times definitively supports him marginalising that law. Indeed, repeatedly overstepping the law would be just about the definition of marginalising it when you're theoretically an upholder of that law and theoretically should know better. Doing everything he can to marginalise the 1st amendment isn't true in the literal sense, of course. (Twitter blocks though? What next? Dear Supreme Court, Donald J Trump kicked me from his Minecraft server...)

He tried banning certain news organisations from the WH wholesale? Which got rescinded because it was unconstitutional? And worked around by 'just' refusing to issue credentials to some reporters? Or am I not remembering correctly? [OK looks like I am, more or less] (Trump's rhetoric is a considerable step up from Obama's spat with Fox News, but istr a lot of equivalent 'traitor' 'terrorist enabler' 'saddam lover' talk from Bush's White House directed at any media or reporters who weren't toeing the line with the War on Terror or build up to the Iraq invasion- but as with most neocon/ neolib adventurism there simply weren't many media organisations or reporters not toeing the line to be targeted. And, of course, outing Valerie Plame which was actively illegal revenge for her husband debunking of the yellow cake story in the media)

Yeah, Gabbard is/ was the rumour. It's a Shareblue meme that she isn't a 'real' democrat and will run as a spoiler 3rd party candidate so I never put any real stock in it; but the reaction would certainly fit the term interesting and from some sections, crazy.

There is one rumour going around that would certainly be interesting if true, though I put it down as Shareblue disinformation and still do.

Battery power is already DC, wall power is AC and has to be run through a transformer to get to DC? So if the transformer (or rectifier maybe?) is bad... it causes fluctuating current and the over/ under volt protection in the laptop kicks in? I mean, I would have thought that would cause outright crashes/ dying rather than BSODs or revert to using battery power, but 'bad' power from a dying psu can give some pretty baffling symptoms as well. I've also had plenty of non computer stuff fix itself by changing a power cord.

Yeah, it will be expensive for sure. The 3960/70 certainly are relatively expensive considering the prior threadrippers and Intel's price drops but they do have great performance. On clocks, most of the 3960/70X reviews did get to an overclock roughly equivalent to a 3900/3950X, though of course the cooling requirements were... significant and will only go up more as the core count increases. If they bin the 3990X same way I'd expect it to overclock up to the 4.5- 4.7 range at least theoretically, but you'd probably need an Intel style industrial chiller to do it. I'd have said it was a halo product mostly made because they can and because it makes Intel look bad much like the 3950x on AM4, but they always seem to find a market for more cores.

No one could possibly believe Donald Trump had a heart attack, even at 70+ the man still has the physique of Rocky Balboa in his prime.