Zoraptor

Apparently there's (yet) another security flaw in Intel chips- 'Spoiler' (that's its name, not a warning for GoT S8 leaks etc). Similar attack vector to Spectre/ Meltdown but this one's a real doozy as well, since it seems likely it cannot be fixed except via direct hardware alterations and can at least theoretically be exploited via javascript. AMD and ARM chips not thought to be effected, albeit they only tested an archaic A6 on the AMD side.

NHS in Britain performing badly is a meme thanks to the Daily Fail/ The Scum and the other garbage daily papers, but it does its job fine especially when it isn't being deliberately hamstrung by Tory politicians for ideological (and donor, financial type) purposes. It does have one fundamental advantage over the US in providing healthcare- far higher average population density.

And will happily suck up to 500W from the socket, with no manual overclock... An industrial aquarium chiller ought to do the trick cooling wise, luckily Intel has one sitting around.

I don't think the lack of classic western style 'nationalism' was insurmountable though, if the CPA had been able to maintain some semblance of normality in services and the like they could have fostered it or at least got around the lack of it to keep Iraq stable- and once stable the democratic etc institutions they wanted would have been more likely to succeed. The really fundamental problem was that the US civil administration personified in Bremer lacked the slightest grasp of reality in almost any respect. Which is much the same thing as old world arrogance I guess. (From the national building standpoint I'd say that firing the bureaucracy was more damaging even than firing the army, as that crippled state functions utterly even where the security situation was relatively calm and even amongst those who might have been persuaded to give the occupation forces a chance to deliver. Months of no state functions would cripple 'goodwill' even somewhere 'advanced' like the UK, let alone in Iraq. And to be honest, if the US had invaded France I'd expect them to have most of the problems they had in Iraq as well if they tried the same tactics)

Afghanistan was a bit more complicated even than Iraq (!) since the US explicitly backed almost anyone anti soviet* and it was right at the start of Saudi actively exporting Wahhabi/ Salafi philosophy for political aims. So those getting US backing included loons like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, what became the nucleus of Al Qaeda, plus some of the future Taleban leadership like Mullah Omar- but it also included most of the Northern Alliance who made up the bulk of on the ground anti Taleban forces. I'd tend to excuse the US mostly for the Taleban itself, not Al Qaeda though, since at the time of its rise the US was disengaged almost entirely from Afghanistan. The Taleban was a Pakistani Intelligence project using refugee Afghans from Pakistani madrassas. Also Afghanistan was somewhat different as their outsourcing there was to Pakistan, and Pakistan was practical rather than ideological in their support for radical Islamists; Saudi tends to be both. Syria though illustrates outsourcing problems very well; Turkey, Qatar and Saudi tended to support radical groups and recommend them to the US. Saudis recommended Salafi groups, Qatar recommended Ikwhan (Brotherhood) groups and any radicals not supported by Saudi, and Turkey supported pretty much anyone who would serve their purposes including, practically, supporting ISIS vs the Kurds. They also tended to recommend very strongly whacky Turkish Nationalist groups, which had the US publicly supplying literal child beheaders at one point. That was a lot more effective in destroying any genuine moderate opposition than Assad and the Syrian government was as the only way to get good supplies was to be in a radical group. In contrast the southern areas where Jordanian influence was stronger had far better vetting and a lot fewer questionable actions by US sponsored groups, but Jordan also pulled support a lot earlier due to not having an ideological stake. In the end the US more or less learnt to ignore the recommendations after so many groups defected to ISIS, joined Al Qaeda umbrella organisations, ethnically cleansed, filmed themselves cannabalising dead alawites etc etc and went with everyone's last choice in the YPG/ SDF. Even then a lot of the arab militia in the SDF are the exact same groups that Saudi recommended in 2012/3 and who defected to ISIS in 2014 but defected back last year. *the only real exceptions were pro Iranian factions.

Shia and Sunni didn't hate each other in Iraq until Zarqawi very effectively stoked the flames. There was some score settling due to Sunnis being more privileged under Saddam, but nothing major. The concern was more about the total break down in law and order/ finance/ supplies and the other stuff that makes a country function. As with multiple other middle eastern situations the problems come from the US largely outsourcing intelligence to interested 3rd parties including Saudi; and Saudi's religious philosophy is barely different from Al Qaeda's or ISIS' (though the political one differs significantly) which means they tend to label salafi groups as 'moderate' and thus not a threat. It's a very short step from Saudi's religious rhetoric to declaring takfir ('not real muslims') on Shia or Alawites, and once you've gone that far you can religiously justify doing pretty much anything to them including randomly blowing them up etc. That's also why the vast majority of groups that joined ISIS in Syria were initially 'freedom fighters' supported by US allies and why you got pictures of John McCain et al with future ISIS leaders; outsourcing intelligence. Technically of course takfirism is frowned upon even by Saudi; technically. OTOH there's no real dispute in minority sects that Sunnis are real muslims.

Kind of, but the goal was a lot more complicated than that and that brought the problems. The lack of mandate for that simple goal in isolation meant that bits kept on getting tacked onto it by the civilian side to try and backfill the hole in the mandate, and in the end the military would have to have the goals of making sure those happen as well no matter how unattainable. So the goal of the war was in the simple and initial military case to topple Saddam, but it also had a bunch of hand waving mutually exclusive feel good, 'national security' and neocon dogma goals tacked onto it to sell that to the public. For a military campaign- or any other task really- you need maintenance of the objective and a realistic objective in your goal setting. Gulf War 2 had neither, the objective went from topple Saddam to that and 'nation building', but the nation building objectives didn't take reality into account and were predicated on wishful thinking. Not really the military's fault though as they did the bit they're designed for well, it was the civil admin and political leadership that failed. End of the day it doesn't matter what the military goals were if you have one administrator being fired for being too realistic and his replacement being an abject moron who decides that dropping 100ks of trained Iraqi soldiers into destitution to fulfil ideological whims is a good idea. That's the sort of stupidity that makes goals irrelevant.

I wouldn't even say that Bush deserves the blame for the bad intelligence and its presentation- that was clearly the brainchild of the Cheney junta. The blame that attaches to Bush is that of believing and appointing Cheney et alia in the first place, and a bit of not being questioning enough. Then again Bush was clearly not overly encumbered with that sort of intelligence so I guess the blame defaults back to those who elected him. OTOH Blair knew exactly what he was doing, slimy little louse that he is. Coercion wise we'll never know if anyone in US intelligence/ government was forced to make stuff up on threat of their CIA wife getting burnt or similar, but we do know with certainty that was used as Chilling Effect post facto. If they were willing to do that to someone working for their own country believing they'd actively threaten others is no stretch at all; though by its nature it would be more likely to be coercion to suppress since it's usual to just pay someone greedy or immoral to write what you want rather than coerce them to by more stringent means. And we absolutely know that coercion was tried on Hans Blix and El Baradei, they're just not american so don't count.

That's part of it, see below, but from the financial side Jade Empire mostly got canned because it didn't sell well after its initial launch window*. Jade Empire was a 20 hour game that somehow felt like it was a 200 hour trudge and with a unique setting that somehow felt more generic than the fricking Sword Coast. I'm sure there's potential for a good Chinese RPG in the vast and varied history and mythology of that country, I'm equally sure that JE will not be the franchise to bring it to us. *and allegedly cost MS a lot of money, not so much because it sold poorly in absolute terms but because MS was selling the xbox hardware at a loss and had to sell ~4 games per unit to make the loss leader back. Lots of Bioware fans buying an xbox just for JE (and maybe KOTOR if they didn't have it on PC already) cost MS more money than just the amount they paid for exclusivity.

Definitely, pipelining is essential for efficiency and that's partly why they've gone to 2 teams- but I'm of the opinion that they wanted to transition to a 2 team/ 2 project studio starting with W3 and C2077 rather than C2077 and [unannounced], and that's why C2077 has been announced so long. Witcher 3 had a big team and a fair few of its personnel should have finished there once the plot and bulk art assets had been locked down, and they should have then transitioned to C2077 at that time, now they should probably be on [unannounced] getting its art assets, world/ systems design and writing done. If they still had all of W3's modellers, world designers and writers working on W3 at time of release there was something wrong with how it was managed. I wouldn't say they realistically expected C2077 to come out 2 years after W3 did as some transition problems would be expected, but I would have thought their reasonable expectation was for a release inside the last year with late 2019 as approaching worst case.

Yes, but 2012 was when C2077 was announced which makes it look delayed, and they are shifting to a release every 2 years. I'd be near absolutely confident that late 2019 was near the very latest release expectation back in 2015. The other trouble is that if they're releasing 'Witcher 4' (or whatever it is) in 2 years time it ought to be a full two years into development now, and there's no indication it is.

You can't have a no questions return policy if you're drm free as it would be open to obvious abuse, so they're limited to the system they have. GOG also has a lot of staff, a dozen is not much of a loss for them. Curation and proper support needs time and staff which is why steam does neither and outsources as much to its users as possible. I suspect they (and CDPR themselves) aren't very sensibly organised/ managed though and the visible GOG functions are a bit of a mess. Their forum software is Geocities era, their website redesigns get progressively slower and less functional, they've managed to annoy both sjws and anti sjws and more. Definitely not in any danger of folding though, before Witcher 3 it was GOG propping the game studio up and they've been running at a (small, too) loss only in 2018 without the most profitable quarter counted. The big CDP problem is Cyberpunk taking so long to be produced while W3 sales are finally fading, and there's nothing the GOG side can do about that.

Last Discovery episode was a vast improvement, to roughly forgettable standalone S2 TNG level. Got brutally murdered again in comparison to The Orville*, but still an improvement. *

No. Or at least presumably no based on their analogue. (Red Blood Cells don't have mitochondria as they lose them along with the cell nucleus at hmm, erythrogenesis (iirc), so they- presumably- don't have midichlorians in SW either. You would get some mitochondria from WBCs but there are far fewer of them than RBCs in a blood transfusion)

Or latish Roman Republic: immense capite censi with low political engagement, lots of gerrymandering and back room deals, a political system that was designed well before the country got so big, huge vested interests that effectively controlled the Republic, colossal income disparities, massively disproportionate weight of military enlistment on a specific subgroup of the population and a lot more long term military engagement than was ever considered at the Republic's founding. Which probably makes Bernie Sanders Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus reborn, hopefully without the getting beaten to death by Mitch McConnell part.

Well why not, she only lost last time because of that evil misogynist Putin and not because of her moronic electoral strategy and lack of broad appeal.

Andromeda is very similar to Inquisition. Neither are bad though neither are good either. They're not low effort games, they've got a massive amount of content but would have been far better with less content that was more memorable as after a while both games got tired and dreary. I like some of the ideas behind them but overall they both feel a bit 'off' and too much like an offline (well, 'offline') MMO in single player mode.

I only have Netflix. But, as costs for 'premium' services go I could subscribe to Netflix, Amazon, Neon* and Lightbox* together for less than a monthly SkyTV sub which is the main premium alternative. No Hulu/ CBS/ DCTV etc here, and no 'native' Amazon either so its streaming is limited to their Originals, and comes via Japan (!) *The local Netflix alternatives are a bit lol, Lightbox started using Silverlight after MS announced its discontinuation and whatever Neon was using must have been licensed from Pixelon given its reliability and resolution

Fake news. Hess was already captured by 1944.

Welcome to Project Fear 2.0: this time all the bad stuff will happen for real, promise! Trade defaults to WTO standards in the event of a hard brexit, and plenty of countries trade on exactly that basis. For food, medicine etc imports it's in no one's interests- including the EU if they're exports from there to the UK- for them not to get in. Assuming some basic competence from the Brit authorities, which may not be in evidence practically, as the UK does trade with non EU countries and has inspections and paperwork for them applying that to EU imports should be easy enough. Exports from Britain to the EU are a lot more vulnerable, as at that point once all the attempts to end run the referendum have failed the EU will be looking to stick the boot in any way they can as a lesson to others who may look to leave. Good riddance to the war criminal worshiping Bliarite scum. Should have been purged a decade ago and Tony shipped off to the Hague where he belongs. The Tories are better off with a few less wobbly blancmanges as well. That none of them have resigned their seat to allow their constituents a choice illustrates perfectly what a bunch of utter unrestrained hypocrites they are even if trying to invalidate a binding referendum didn't, and the Tory defectors claiming May is further right than the Cameron/ Osborne austerity junta is laughable.

CDPR literally already tried something like that with Witcher Tales: Thronebreaker late last year too. It sold like **** even though it had the Witcher branding behind it. Yeah, nah. Thronebreaker is just behind Witcher 3 on GOG's all time best seller list, and that after only ~4 months. They may have had unrealistic expectations about its appeal andor expected GOG buyers to preorder and 1st day buy more- badly misjudging their own user base, the essence of the gog user is patience- but it's 100% sold fine by any objective measure and barely been out of the top sellers list since launch. Whereas on steam it sunk without trace beneath their shovelware tsunami.

There are good arguments for both with the 20 series being new releases, but unfortunately it also doesn't represent much of a price/ performance shift and there aren't enough raytraced games to be worth it for 1080p RTX gaming, so... The logic is that GPUs typically improve a lot in price/ performance and you're usually better off getting the monitor first then the GPU to go with it rather than the reverse. Despite price performance not shifting much over the past two years I think it's likely to shift a decent amount over the next year or so with Navi and a shift to 7nm, and the $200 saved getting a 580 instead of a 2070 class card will go a lot further in a year.

I'd basically recommend going similar to the medium build from Sarex's guru3d article. R5 2600- can go 2600x for the better cooler and automatic overclocking, probably not worth it tho B450 Tomahawk* 16GB DDR4 RAM (3000MHz+, any reputable brand on the QVL. Don't bother with B die, not worth the premium) RX 580** (fine for 1080p/60Hz, assuming 60Hz. Think they have a pretty good game bundle with them too at the moment) 550W or higher modular/ gold PSU (any decent quality unit like EVGA G series or recent Corsair CXM, check out a PSU tier list if in doubt) Crucial MX500 SSD That would be a fair bit under budget, I'd put any leftovers towards a monitor/ GPU upgrade later on. *X470 if you need the features, but a Tomahawk's specs are as good as or better than most cheap x470s. MSI has done an excellent job with their 400 series boards. **IMO the GPU market is pretty meh at the moment, so I'd tend to recommend a cheaper card rather than an overkill card especially since RTX is still at meme level adoption/ performance. nVidia's 1660 is also close to release and may be worth consideration. If a monitor upgrade is likely within a year a 2060/70/80 (or Vega 56/64 if you don't mind tinkering, they require a good quality 550W+ PSU though) should be considered, depending on resolution.