Zoraptor

What We Do In the Shadows TV trailer (mirror, since the official FX one is region locked) Looks more a straight TV adaptation of the movie than Wellington Paranormal was.

As knobish as hijacking a friend's wedding was to make it all about her she did also literally nuke a city which is probably a bit above omelettes and monomaniacal narcissism. Havenrock, never forget; unlike Felicity who forgot about it the same episode. While Arrow isn't exactly Shakespeare at the best of times she really has been a dreadfully written pet character. Objectively she's written as (at very best) deeply deeply selfish, if not an outright sociopath yet you're meant to like her...

Not so sure about that in this case. Derp Silver are now themselves owned by THQ Nordic, if they don't like what DS does with their managerial independence then said independence could be pulled. And since Nordic has deliberately cultivated a relatively distributor agnostic and 'neutral' approach over the past few years I cannot see them being overly happy with a controversial exclusivity deal.

10 minutes plus -> higher monetisation tier.

That was because I watched Daredevil S1 before it and both shows made a big deal of their villains randomly eating omelettes in their beautifully appointed penthouse suites. Didn't help that Titans was clearly very much a post Daredevil show when it came to its general approach to things like violence and production values as well- as compared to Gotham/ CW shows/ Krypton etc.

Finished Titans. It was OK, not as good as it was made out to be and at times oddly derivative (bad guy makes omelettes) and a bit... tepid as if they were worried about going all out with stuff. Also did not like where it ended, don't think they should have cut the last episode. OTOH had to laugh at STD's latest episode's

The Aegis Ashore system is in Romania, which isn't close to Kaliningrad. The Polish system isn't operational yet. ...or SS-N-30 launch from a Kilo-submarine of the Black Sea Fleet. Either which way both Aegis Ashore facilities are fixed sites, which make them poor platforms for offensive weapons. They're fine for a first strike weapon though, which is exactly what the Russians say about them. Yeah, there are other options for first strike weapons as well but everyone always wants more options and, to be frank, those bases make basically no sense for their stated purpose either- missile defence against Iran and DPRK, set up in Poland? That the Russians should just take the US's word for it that they won't be used as such would be moronic and naive, pinky swearing that they won't be used as such is trumped utterly by the signed treaty stating outright that the launchers should not exist in the first place. As for nuclear tomahawks, the 109G existed so the warhead and system is already designed. Indeed, the W84 nuclear warhead from the 109G definitively existed as late as 2011. I guess they could have been scrapped in the intervening 7 years; but that seems fundamentally unlikely if they hadn't in the previous 24, and since the US has been gearing up to drop INF since at least 2014. Depends if they're actually violating airspace or not. The vast majority of airspace 'violations' on both sides aren't actually violations but intruder runs or intelligence gathering and just getting close to the airspace (except around northern Estonia, where both sides violate airspace more commonly due to the complex situation). If you're actually violating airspace you tend to get a more overtly aggressive response than responding to someone coming close which is typically just an escort and photo op. Collisions do happen though, there was that Chinese jet that crashed into the US spy plane off Hainan for example though whose fault that was has not been independently verified. If I were to be facetious, NATO responds by shooting down intruders well after they've left their airspace and blatantly lying about the circumstances while their buddies run post facto interference for them (Turkish radar data showing a Su24 cruising at ~250kph, pull the other one it's got bells on)- but really, that was just Erdogan thinking he'd get in with the cool kids.

Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty. It isn't as recent a withdrawal (Bush jr era)

The Aegis Ashore system is in Romania, which isn't close to Kaliningrad. The Polish system isn't operational yet. It doesn't matter if it makes zero sense to put tomahawks in the Aegis Ashore launchers, if you can, and if they are land based then they're simply non compliant with INF and the US is in breach. It's trivial to put nukes back on tomahawks and I'd bet pretty much everything that that is exactly what will happen- not that it matters with respect to the INF, since as previous land based launchers are exactly as illegal as missiles of any type. After all, the US had BM109Gs and Pershing IIs for a reason up to 1987, same as the USSR had their versions. Mostly though, this is about blaming the Russians so it doesn't look like it's the US unilaterally bailing on yet another agreement after ABM, Paris and Iran. And what is good for the goose is also good for the gander. If it makes little sense for the US it also makes little sense for the Russians. Their country and nuclear arsenal is large enough that they can just fire ICBMs at everyone and anyone without abrogating the treaty, quite apart from their own air/ naval cruise and ballistic missiles. And despite the US being clearly in breach at very very least exactly as much as the Russians- and in terms of the provable, a whole lot more- it isn't the Russians threatening to withdraw, it's the US.

US to withdraw from INF Treaty in 180 days if Russia doesn't do, well, it's irrelevant since no one actually knows if Russia has the system it's accused of while the US has definitely been violating it for at least two years (and by the text itself, for literally literally decades). And since no one in the media has bothered to read the treaty, craftily hidden away as it is on the State.gov website, some selected highlights for those who get their geopolitical analysis solely from the stupid, lazy, paid off, or all three simultaneously journalist polity. Article III This text obviously includes drones. Doubt it was intended to, but a drone is 100% an unmanned self propelled vehicle that sustains flight through the use of aerodynamic lift and is in the case of Reaper/ Predator etc a weapon delivery vehicle. No way to weasel it. Article IV This is blatantly violated by Aegis Ashore and it's tomahawk capable VLS. Note again, being merely nuclear capable and not using that capability/ not having warheads is not enough for compliance, otherwise every single launcher would be compliant including the one the Russians are accused of having- just by saying that you don't have nuclear warheads for it. Conventional ground based launchers and missiles are banned; and that 100% includes Tomahawk launchers based on land. Yet all you'll get from the media is some mumbling about Russian claims, when their accusations are extremely easy to verify as being true, if you can be bothered to. Note again again, since no one in the media seems to want to mention it, 'nuclear' missiles only being covered is not specified at any point in the treaty text. Conventional missiles and launchers are banned same as nuclear, anyone with even vestigial knowledge of military matters knows anything else would be pointless. And of course China, while not bound by it, couldn't get close to hitting either western Europe or mainland US with ground based IRMs. The threat there is entirely from China, uh, treacherously putting their country near US bases in a dangerous escalation?

I laughed loudly when they beat the UAE in the UAE to get to the final. Doubt think it's their academy system though, if it's anything like their successful athletics program it mostly consists of poaching people from other countries rather than home grown talent. Suppose it's good news for the World Cup, since Qatar was at risk of being the weakest team ever to be in a WC via their automatic qualification.

To be frank, what a load of old bollocks. PR and politics 101 is to repeat what you want to be true ad nauseum because some people will believe anything if told it authoritatively enough times- and those who won't, won't believe it anyway. Every single politician in existence does that and a quick viewing of any interview will show politicians saying what they want to be true and repeatedly answering the questions they wanted asked rather than the ones that were actually asked. Trump wants 3 million illegal voters all voting D because it would mean he won the popular vote, not because he's going to send them to the ovens or deport them in cattle carts, indeed his compromise proposals involved most illegals having a path to citizenship. Goebbels, Hitler and pals said Jews caused Germany's WW1 defeat because that's what they wanted to be true as it meant Germany was still Undefeated Champion stabbed in the back treacherously by [convenient enemy] rather than getting curb stomped fair and square; and it's little different from the far more mainstream theory that civilians in general caused Germany's defeat by not being hard enough and just quietly starving to death; but that discourages many people from voting for you as you're saying it's their fault. US claimed Iraq had WMD because they wanted that to be true and knew that enough people would believe it if they repeated it enough times from enough sources, May claims her Brexit plan is the only one possible because she wants that to be true (in that case, it probably is, but that's coincidental not fundamental), Democrats claim repeatedly that Hillary lost because of Russians not because she was dreadful, Bolsonaro repeatedly claims that all of Brazil's problems are due to Lula and friends, Israel claims all Palestinians they kill are terrorists, Soviets claimed only to kill enemies of the state involved in grand conspiracies against the revolution etc etc. You can literally project whatever you want onto each of those. Clearly the US producing a load of cow pats to justify the war on Iraq was a smokescreen for their clandestine creation of ISIS and the death of 100,000s of people, and thus anyone else who talks about chemical weapons to justify attacks in the future wants to recreate ISIS and wants to kill millions. Yeah, nah, they fudged or outright fabricated the evidence for the invasion using tactics Goebbels would have been proud of, but that doesn't make them literally nazis; it just means that everyone uses the same PR tactics including literally literally nazis.

That is basically what Windows already is on a gaming PC. As far as I know that was a byproduct of Aspyr's Android port. It's a bit weird though. Compare to, say, NWN1/2 and Beamdog. It would be the equivalent of Beamdog doing an android NWN1 port but leaving NWN1 PC alone; yet releasing a patch for NWN2 PC and doing nothing with it on android. I presume there are Legal Reasons for how it's turned out but it's an odd situation. Especially since GOG has 'patched' K1 to get it running.

I just tried the GOG version on Windows 10 with a GTX 970. Worked without a hitch. Saw Taris and quit though, so that's one issue that's not ever going away... Yeah GOG version is fine- that is after all their niche- and has the 'full' suite of OS supported; it's the steam version which can be tricky to get running and is XP/ Vista only. Funny thing is that the less popular K2 actually did get patched on steam for modern OS and officially cannot be run on older than 7. Then again K2 was always easier to get running than K1.

The name is fundamentally broken when it comes to shortening. (Star Trek) Dis is not much better than STD, as it makes me think the franchise is about to get served in a rap battle due to its shortcomings instead of have their winkle drop off. I was not a fan of the S1 Klingon aesthetic so that's one change I can get behind.

IIRC the main problem is not with xp/ vista vs 7/10 per se but that the version of OpenGL the engine uses is not supported by any modern drivers and hasn't been for nearly a decade- and I've been told that it's non trivial getting it working on modern GPUs due to hardware changes as well, though I have no way to verify that. I guess the fundamental problem is that steam is now selling games that require (or at least 'require') OS that they no longer actually support. K1's system requirements are for XP/ Vista, neither of which are supported any more by steam, and while it isn't that onerous a task for someone with some computing knowledge and confidence being able to set up a VM to play a game is not something most people would be comfortable with.

"Steam has alot of haters but they are very few and far between.." Most Sonic start to a post ever. All companies that try to compete with Valve will have a 'bad' reputation. Example: GOG probably has the best reputation overall at the moment, but in order to really compete with steam in the mainstream arena they'd have to cave on the DRM issue to attract the big titles. Once they do that their point of difference, their reputation and goodwill is gone; and they're in the position of having as bad a reputation as Valve has, probably worse since they would have 'lied' all that time about hating DRM. So they pick up 5-30% of steam's sales on almost entirely low volume titles and get some big titles 2-10 years after their release. Which is nice and is an alternative for some titles, but in terms of actual competition it's very insignificant. Valve set the standards for competition in the PC gaming sphere by being sharp or shady, depending on your pov- doing things like trying to bundle steam with every game in existence. If you want to genuinely compete with them you can't do so with one hand tied behind your back because the market is way too distorted and steam has far too much ingrained leverage.

Is the Speaker of the UK Parliament the best ring announcer since Michael Buffer? I think so. Ayyyyyes to the left twooooo hundred and EIGHTY nine. Noooooooos to the right threeeeeee hundred and twenty ONE. The Noooooooooos have it, the nooooooooos have it. UNLOCK!!!! Next amendment from Rrrrrraaaaaaachel Rrrrrrreeeeeeves...

Fortnite is a lot bigger than ME3 though; of EA's properties maybe the Sims and FIFA would come close but that's about it. EA came up with Origin because Steam tried to strongarm them into essentially becoming a subsidiary of Valve on PC- a tactic which worked for smaller players like Paradox who had to drop Connect or be kicked from their most lucrative store. The reason they did it is simple enough, if they sell 5 million copies of a game on Origin it's the financial equivalent of selling more than 7 million on steam even without taking into account them being able to control their own product instead of being beholden to Valve. As for security, let's not forget that apart from the myriad of long term minor issues steam has and had they were also outright hacked, multiple times. On the more fundamental level, all this stuff illustrates perfectly that a lot of PC fans and game franchise fans are actually just steam fans. They want the fripperies and appearance of competition so long as no one offers an actual alternative and so long as any 'competitors' can be shut down by Valve at a moments notice by revoking their right to steam keys or are niche like GOG. There'd be a decent amount of overlap; it's pretty uncool for a 'core PC gamer' to admit to playing Fortnite but also 'core PC gamers' are nowhere near an actual majority of people who game on PC and are a self appointed and self selected group.

Well it has a serious edge over Steam - Deep Silver needs to make like 10%(?) less sales for the same profits. At the same time, exclusivity is the strongest leverage that'll bring people to use Epic store, therefore allowing Epic store to cut more exclusivity deals. They will be paying them directly for the exclusivity as well, I don't think there's any doubt about that. Given the success of Fortnite Epic already has a very large install base to leverage much as Valve had after HL2. I suspect there will be some deep sales on their exclusive titles during the year of exclusivity to really test how committed people are to steam. And let's be honest, PC gamers have not exactly got a stellar record of sticking to boycotts...

I doubt that many companies properly comply with GDPR, to be honest. Well, GOG.com and Steam does. So far as anyone knows. Steam had and has some pretty dodgy wording in the SSA with respect to 3rd parties accessing data, and GOG tried to bring in default fully public profiles less than a month before GDPR would have made such a default option illegal. Hardly anyone wants to follow GDPR properly because it costs money and the more properly you do it the more it costs, and it costs money because you can't monetise your customers so easily, so everyone cuts corners as much as they can. And that's not even the Facebook and Googles of the world whose entire business model is based on selling personalised information to 3rd parties.

I doubt that many companies properly comply with GDPR, to be honest. I thought Clifford was long gone from Epic? The issue with Epic is... well fundamentally it's the issue with PC gaming in microcosm. Many PC gamers love to look down on consoles- while feeling morally superior for choosing to turn an open platform into a closed one and screeching whenever someone dares to compete with steam. And don't get me started on idiots preaching the church of DLSS who complained about checkerboard upscaling and 'fake' 4k on consoles... So the problems with Epic are that they aren't steam, basically, with some weird contortions to justify it. Stores that exist as steam key resellers are 100% competition for steam so it isn't a walled garden and doesn't have exclusives and said stores don't 100% exist at the sufferance of steam; but Epic Store exclusives make them a monopoly (!) rather than competition. Oh, and Epic are also owned- no racism of course, some of their best friends are Chinese- by China and you'll probably be monitored by Winnie the Shi himself (though tencent is a minority owner only). They also have a fair few genuine problems, but then so does everyone else. Not like with all their billions in revenue there aren't literally 10 year old bugs in steam no one has bothered to fix; or the perpetual mythic GOG Galaxy Linux version/ crappy forums/ awful reduced functionality redesign.

Metro Exodus not only has denuvo, it's now Epic Store exclusive*! Have to admit, I kind of like Epic Store. Not because it's good or anything but it's one of the best butthurt generators I've ever seen. Steamtards, RTX fanboys upset that their second raytraced game is gated, everyone is triggered who I like seeing triggered. They just need to buy GOG now and the circle will be complete. *for a year

Would they though? If Hillary runs it would be as The Anointed One again as in 2008 and 2016, and with the full support of the party's hierarchy. You'd have to be very brave or have no asterisks to give/ be outside the hierarchy to take her on seriously knowing that doing so and failing will put you at odds with the people deciding much of your political future. There would also be blatant attempts to keep problematic candidates away from the public and debates and to shield Hillary from them; and let's be frank: they'll label anyone taking her on as being The Russian Candidate and a stooge. So basically what happened in 2016, but on steroids since they seem to have decided the problem in 2016 was not that they foisted a crappy divisive establishment candidate and ran an awful campaign but that they didn't go all in enough with the terrible divisive candidate and awful campaigning.

Yeah. I've seen a lot of people say they think S2 is a big improvement but to me both have been pretty much run of the mill Voyager/ TNG S1 level, which isn't great.