Zoraptor

The only people saying that Assange weaponised wikileaks are people with a vested interest in him having weaponised it so he isn't a journalist any more. He basically got kicked from the Ecuadorian embassy for helping expose the corruption of the Ecuadorian President. Actually, kind of amusing seeing the US trying to extradite a journalist for doing their job given some earlier comments about how fantastic free speech protections are in the US. reimagine all you want, what you said were, "In the long term sure, when someone gets the balls to actually call in unsustainable US debt- in the full knowledge that the US would likely tell you to FOAD and a demand would likely implode the world economy you rely on." reimagine which, again, is a mischaracterization o' what can happen. No it isn't. You're just talking about what happens now as if that is what will happen forever and anon no matter what happens; I'm talking about what happens "in the long term" when the debt becomes "unsustainable". Your reading comprehension is, as always, simply dreadful. The US has had a decade of near trillion dollar deficits, if that continues the situation as it is now will only be applicable for a certain amount of time, until someone with clout, most likely China, calls the situation out. Refusal to roll over the debt by accepting new loans is calling in in a system where roll over is not just expected but required. If you are defaulting you're telling your creditors to FOAD, especially if you have the leverage the US has. US fixed term securities are only gilt edged so long as the US is solvent and can pay them back, ultimately due to being in sustained deficit by issuing new ones.

Irrelevant, since i never said loans could be called in nor rolled over, only overall debt. You seem a bit confused by the two concepts, so I'll have another go at explaining for you. US government debt consists of lots of loans, mostly in the form of bonds. These cannot be called in, but money from the issue of new bonds is used to repay the old ones. Refusal to buy new bonds to replace the old ones results in the debt associated with those bonds being called in- it now has to be repaid, without issue of new loans from that lender (China)- whereas previously new loans/ bond purchases would be made rolling the debt over. Using a new loan to repay the old one means that overall debt does not decrease and is not repaid on its theoretical expiry, it's just reissued as new debt and rolled over; refusal to buy newly issued bonds however results in that debt actually having to be repaid; and more reliance on other lenders, higher interest rates due to reduced Confidence and if extreme enough complete collapse of the debt system and outright default. Same as the credit card example, overall debt wise it doesn't matter if you owe nothing to visa and mastercard and a lot to amex, and cycle through taking loans from each. New loans, but new loans covering the exact same debt (plus a bit each time). When one provider refuses to continue the debt is called and you have to repay- or find a way to continue rolling over with higher costs. It's not a particularly complicated idea. (Government) Loans don't get rolled over (in general, since there have been exceptions) but if you're running deficits the underlying debt absolutely does since you're paying off old loans with new ones.

Prism is also used to circumvent protections for countries' own citizens by using a 5 eyes partner to do the 'illegal' spying- which isn't 'illegal' if another country does it- as well. If the US wants some illegal spying done and doesn't want to risk being caught they'll just use CUKANZ (appropriate acronym too*) to do it. Fifty bucks says that US agencies can 'honestly' say that they never spied on the Trump campaign because they outsourced it to canucks, brits (almost certainly), ockers or kiwis. Don't really know why they bother, the head of the NSA can bald facedly lie repeatedly to congress with zero repercussions anyway... *Seven years of the UK insisting they weren't sitting outside the embassy to enforce an extradition, and half an hour after they get Assange the US makes them look like a itty bitty bitch. That is roll over debt. You're mistaking individual loans for the debt itself, the loans are repaid- otherwise you're in default- but the debt itself isn't and old loans are replaced wholesale, plus a bit, by new. You aren't rolling over the loan itself, but you are rolling over the debt associated with the loan e.g: if you always pay off your credit card with the credit from another credit card then you're rolling over debt and you never actually repay the principal. You do repay the loan associated with the credit card regularly, but not the debt itself. If you pay off your visa with your mastercard, then your mastercard with your amex, then your amex with your visa you're rolling the debt over as the debt itself does not decrease; and if one of them refuses to let you keep doing it you're in trouble because at that point you will have to (try) and repay actual principal.

As a connoisseur of passive aggressiveness I was amused by Iran naming US armed forces as terrorists in reciprocation. Refusing to roll over debt is the same as calling it in to all practical purposes since the system relies absolutely on Confidence and for constant deficit spending it ultimately relies on new loans to pay off old ones as they come due. Refusing to roll over makes other lenders less likely to lend, and if they do they want more interest on the loans. If a big enough player expresses No Confidence the system breaks. At this point the biggest player who could do that is China, but we're not close to that happening, yet. If you have permanent deficits in the trillion dollar range p/a the loans will dry up eventually even if you are the reserve currency, and when they do principal actually has to be repaid rather than kicked down the road. It's the nuclear option and will be bad for everyone, but permanently increasing debt on that scale is fundamentally unsustainable and basically a pyramid scheme. At some point people realise they won't ever actually get repaid, then the race is on to make sure you're first in line to get what you can. OTOH, if you can pay your loans and interest back from cash reserves you cannot be insolvent by definition. That's why it was so obvious that Russia would not go bankrupt in 2014 despite many 'experts' claiming they would, they could pay every rouble they owed off multiple times without borrowing a rouble more- indeed, they can still do the same in 2019.

One thing that can unite 95% of the planet: ManU losing. In the long term sure, when someone gets the balls to actually call in unsustainable US debt- in the full knowledge that the US would likely tell you to FOAD and a demand would likely implode the world economy you rely on. That's the perk of being the world's reserve currency and why the US defends the dollars position as such so aggressively- can't call in the debt without making the debt worthless, can't even increase interest rates to what they should be without damaging the world's economy. China (or anyone else, but practically it near has to be China) refusing to roll over US government debt is the equivalent of nuking the US and the world's economy, and everyone knows it. Everything relies on economic confidence being a virtuous circle, when it starts going vicious it can go vicious and circle spectacularly.

Well, the "plot" thickens... Discovery spoilers, in case it isn't obvious

Gary Grigsby's War in the East/ West remakes as a new release. And the reaction to the pricing is hysterical, in both senses. Have to admit, I will have a hard time resisting WitE at any price now it's actually been put directly in front of me and I can't hide behind it being relatively hidden over on Matrix. The SPI version was one of the boardgames I always wished I owned, if only to say that I owned it. Along with Campaign for North Africa and its system for tallying Italian pasta reserves and how much water was required for them.

I got the boss battles down to a manageable amount of hits required by stacking critical damage and hit chance on engravings for all equipment. It's still a bit annoying if you get the timing wrong but at least I'd have only spent two minutes instead of ten plink plink plinking just to get wiped out because I got stuck on terrain or was 0.3s out on a dodge. Plus the Immortals armour set is about essential since you can die once per minute with it on.

The loot booster in AC: Odyssey is completely unnecessary unless you're obsessive compulsive about completing all upgrades but not obsessive compulsive about completing all map markers; and worried about time but not so worried that you don't just buy resources outright. You drown in loot, money and resources with no boosters, you'll just find it difficult to complete some entirely optional challenges like becoming #1, #1 mercenary or getting the top tier boat upgrades. The level scaling means you don't really get an advantage from a booster anyway.

I'd think that Phoenix Point would be the only one to come to GOG day 1, and since the typical GOG user is already patient it being delayed won't have too much effect. Exodus might have been too if Derp Silver didn't have managerial independence from Nordic, but they do so a release after a year is about the best GOG could expect anyway. GOG's problem is their basic model- offering actual support and curating the store- is more costly than Steam and older games fundamentally sell fewer copies at a lower price point than newer ones. TWitcher 3 and Gwent getting older doesn't help either, and Thronebreaker was never going to replace them in terms of being a money driver no matter how many hooks they added for standalone Gwent. The main effect EGS has had directly is that GOG have reduced their cut of sales somewhat, and that must have hurt the bottom line.

Paradox game so they'll just make you their b. Letters i,t,k and w will be available later as dlc. That doesn't spell 'bitch', of course; but don't worry Modders Will Fix It.

Guess it depends on what is considered the Bioware of old. Dragon Age Origins took a similar amount of time in (announced) production as Anthem and was also rebooted multiple times* and it turned out OK as a game and did very well financially- and post DAO the problem became the exact opposite, rushing the sequel too much. *'enslave nations with necromancy!' etc

Lisa Su announced to be giving the keynote address at Computex towards the end of May. Very likely to be a release date announcement for Zen 2/ Ryzen 3000 series at that time*, some chance for them to be launched at the event. Looks like +10% IPC improvement overall (far more on some workloads) so even a moderate frequency uptick should see Intel's performance advantage gone. *Also the Epyc Rome processors and info on Navi

Not every game on EGS will get 'paid' to be there though, the lower cut is to encourage those that won't be being paid to offer their game there as an option. Stores need a differentiation from steam; GOG has a rather different market including a lot of people who won't use steam (and now, a lower cut than steam too), EGS offers a lower cut and theoretically a lot of customers. Steam's strategy involves making itself the default and in many cases it costs money (initially) to go onto a competitor as you have to unpick whatever steam exclusive features you may have integrated, so if you want to compete with steam you have to offer an improved financial return to defray the costs of not going steam exclusive. EGS has three strategies- 'exclusives' via guaranteed minimum sales and offering a lower cut per sale unit to attract publishers, and free games to attract new customers. They cannot just pay everyone to be 'exclusive' in the longer term as it plain isn't practical, they'll do that only for games they think will make them money long term and attract demographics that they think they are lacking. For every other game the customer base and lower cut will be the attractive part.

Brexit is an argument against the EU- it's also an argument for trebucheting 90kg british politicians over a distance of 300m 330yd as well. If you join a monolithic authoritarian entity like the EU you want a way out, even more so if you actually joined the far less monolithic and authoritarian EEC. The EU has made the exit difficult as well as there being political incompetence on the brit side; and the EU (well, protoEU mostly) has a history of ignoring democracy/ end running referenda whose results they don't like. It may not be in the EU's interests to offer an easy way out and to be obstructive pour décourager les autres who might be thinking that the increasingly constrictive EU isn't a great idea, but from an individual country's perspective you always want a way out just in case Germany is looking for another country to Greece. Let's be frank, Article 50 was added as a sop to euroskeptics and was never in a million years intended to be used. As much as the British response was been shambolic the EU also had no plan for anyone daring to leave either, their job is just a lot easier since in the end their goal is to make sure no one else ever tries to leave- so a bad process is a net plus to them and almost certainly part of a plan to get the referendum invalidated or have the UK return later.

It has a much larger throughput than HDMI. IIRC HDMI currently has the higher throughput with v2.1 which was released last year, but needs new cables etc for the increased bandwidth. HDMI requires licensing fees, Displayport does not is most likely why manufacturers seem to be pushing it.

Multiple choice referenda are usually designed to have one question win. Eg 1) Remain in EU 2) Leave EU, have customs union 3) Leave EU, use May agreement 4) Leave EU, no agreement (1) wins easily because all the people who want to stay vote for it and the leavers get split across 3 options. Might not make a majority, but who cares if the other three options are getting 17% each and it's got 48%. And you can do the reverse to have leaving be the most popular choice too. You have to do them using preferential/ transferable vote system, and you can bet the 48% remainers would still get their panties twisted about how each leave option 'only' had 17% support so they 'really' won. We got exactly that reaction here for our general election, the government got 54% but it was split across 3 parties so 'really' the opposition party with 46% 'won' since it got the largest single share. Bet Dave Cameron wish he'd thought of doing a multi choice referendum in the first place, would have made it a lot easier to get his preferred option into pole position.

Discovery spoiler Can't easily fix the Spore Drive though short of invalidating the whole timeline, which does have its appeals. Maybe it's like warp causing the unraveling of the universe, just kind of narratively self contained and never mentioned again.

The procedurally generated quests are generic as anything and can't even be bothered naming the person giving it to you; done one of its type, done them all. Fortunately they're also entirely optional. I have noticed that the lack of a 'story' type questline with named people giving them usually means you're going to go to that place as part of the main quest later and get a bunch of quests fleshing the area out then.

Lol, why don't you run off again to another thread to cry like last time Grommy.

*Bit iirc, as I zoned out every time there was pointless melodrama and there was a lot of pointless melodrama in that episode. Shame that, as it was a pretty solid episode otherwise with only a couple of glaring plot holes. I'm definitely getting distinct 'closed circle resolution' vibes from the main plot.

Going by recent news Vatican City is probably the rape capital of Europe.

Exclusive to GOG... how many zlotys have they thrown at ActiBlizz to exclude Steam? Disgusted and angry at this anti competitive behaviour. How could Bobby K betray us so?

If they don't do anything it will be no deal Brexit just before Easter. That ought to start focusing some minds on being a touch more pragmatic. Kind of funny though, MPs hated May saying that the mess was their fault for being unrealistic so they took control of the process and got zero progress and 8 failed proposals rather than 1. Might as well get Queen Liz to decide, she can hardly do worse- actually, go the whole hog and give every member of the royal family a proposal to champion, then decide which wins in a last person standing tournament held on the Isle of Wight. Added bonus, we might get to see Phil the Greek dabbing.

It's entirely possible it doesn't. She's personally disliked by many because she's in the position where she's trying to browbeat people into voting for a deal that doesn't really appeal to them at all, and since she's politically dead in the medium term anyway offering to resign becomes another negotiation option. It's also part of showing the hard core brexiters who want a no deal exit that she isn't personally going to benefit from them holding their noses to vote for her deal.