Zoraptor

Yeah, but... the concentration camps, orwellian re-education, seizure of children and organ harvesting in Xinjiang is several orders of magnitude worse than what's happening in HK. HK is lucky it's a port with a lot of ex pats and foreign businesses or they would have been Tiananmened months ago. Kind of funny though, Han Mandarin speakers genuinely do seem to believe that everyone hates them, because... Han are the best, and people are envious of their superiority.

The reason it works is fairly simple: western media holds itself up as being the best and fairest, so evidence of wrongdoing leads to a disproportionate drop in trust. As time goes on more evidence of wrongdoing accumulates for more and more viewpoints so more and more people loose that trust- and trust once lost is very hard to regain. Now, I'll freely admit that the media doesn't claim to be perfect, but you have to beat an admission of fault or even simply getting something wrong out of them with a broom handle and they would far prefer to either ignore it or if pressed simply change the story and pretend they never got it wrong in the first place. In part that is of course because some will use them getting things wrong as evidence of them being 'fake news' and not a real journalism; but they probably do themselves more damage trying to suppress it than by admitting to fault as more people will be convinced of foul play by a cover up than by an admission of a mistake. That's also why outlets like RT have a credibility advantage despite being Russian state news- people don't expect them to be honest, and all they have to do is make the rest look dishonest to win. It's not a winning strategy in the internet world, but western media has always been a useful tool for corporations and governments and they will run its credibility into the ground (while trying to shore it up via 'trusted news site' lists, fact checks that are really opinion checks and manipulating or legislating to influence google indexing, facebook, twitter etc to exclude non approved sources). Probably 80% of the trouble western media gets itself into is acritically parroting press releases. Unsurprisingly, most press release are PR rather than journalism and thus skewed massively towards the viewpoint of the entity releasing the statement and may not come close to reality on the ground. Take Bolivia for example. Acritically report that police etc refused to fire on protesters and Evo voluntarily steps down as a consequence in what was totally not a coup. The same police who refused to fire on protesters under orders from Evo now... kill 23 protesters in 5 days under order from an unelected 'moderate' 'President' who... wants to deport the indigenous population from all cities? Hmm, just a touch of cognitive dissonance there. Of course you have to dig for those facts, but anyone who does does not end up with a positive view of the media. Yeah, nah. You forget that the original prosecutor- way back in 2010- also decided the case was too weak to proceed with, then, and it was only picked up by Ny once Assange had left Sweden. That was what provoked the whole mess. The reasons the case were weak in 2010 had nothing to do with time elapsed, obviously, and everything to do with the two accusers deciding to make complaints and coordinating their accusations after finding out Assange had boffed both of them in a short space of time; and tampering with evidence by deleting text messages where Assange was mentioned positively after the supposed assaults took place. In any sensible jurisdiction that would have been more than enough to get the case permanently nixed, but instead it got reinstated for some reason, after Assange had left, only to be dropped now when there is still a year left on the statute of limitations. If that happened in Russia/ China/ Syria/ [bad country] there would be zero doubt expressed that it was trumped up.

Lack of formal censorship makes lying worse, not better, since you're lying out of self interest, stupidity, cupidity or base greed rather than because you'd literally be thrown in jail or killed for telling the truth. And in completely unrelated news, amazingly after 9 years or whatever the rape case against Julian Assange is now considered too weak to proceed with. Which coincidentally clears the way for an extradition to the US. Nobody, certainly no credible journalist or media organisation, could have forseen this completely normal and unpredicted procedure (apart from Assange and his tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorising supporters, of course, who'd predicted exactly that for... 9 years).

Finished The Outer Worlds. Overall I'd rate it pretty highly, but it's definitely in the good* rather than excellent category. It was also very unstable for me with the companion map load bug, but I worked around it OK in the end which I wouldn't have if I didn't like it; and the limited support for ultrawide was disappointing though ultimately a minor complaint. Definitely a game where I'd hope for a sequel in the belief that a sequel would go from good to excellent with lessons learned. I can't see myself replaying TOW itself anytime soon, but I'd definitely consider picking up DLC at some point. *Indeed I think I'd rate pretty much every single aspect of it as 'good, but not excellent', which doesn't happen all that often.

Starting a business is something literally anyone can do (well, so long as they aren't bankrupt etc), but for the specific example mentioned which requires a lot of startup cash that is practically impossible. The average person won't be able to raise 300k in capital as the average person is either renting or has a house that is already mortgaged- be pleased, being able to raise 300k makes you well above average. It is also highly unlikely that you'd find 34 people each able to raise 300k who are happy to get a 3.4% stake in a risky venture for mortgaging their house while having essentially no say in the venture due to the small stake. (There are certainly some ventures that could get that level of commitment from enough people but they'd be 'new tech' ventures, not old- near oldest- tech ones like mining. New tech has Google/ Twitter/ Facebook/ (Apple/ MS) etc to point at where they've gone from garage level startup to multi billion dollar in a few years. Mining has not had that in modern times and has a recent trend towards mega company consolidation)

Steam machine tier showing actual number of sales.

Win 10 is only free for some though*. OEM or upgrade versions of previous OS versions haven't got free upgrades for... 3 years or so? Retail win7 still being eligible also isn't advertised so you have to know about it and, the objection might not be to upgrading to win10 but having to install it at all, ie Linux users who iirc have zero chance of running UWP games but can often run standard windows games via WINE or whatever. *I'd suspect most people could get a free upgrade to or purchase of win10 legitimately with the right advice on how to do it, but most also won't get that advice.

The aggro cool down is pretty long- try finding a bed and sleeping for at least a few days.

Haha Hillary Clinton is such an irony free zone. Claim Russian interference in the UK election, while blatantly interfering herself in the same interview. Still hasn't accepted that the main reason Trump won stares her in the mirror every morning.

Serious irregularities were not found by actual independent auditors- the OAS is the US client regional organisation and not independent. Unlike in Honduras the independent statistical analysis in Bolivia is that the end results were what was expected from the initial results- Morales always got a surge in support at the end of a count because his supporters tended to be poor and have fewer, larger polling stations available so it takes longer for their votes to be counted relative to the richer opposition supporters with their relatively abundant and smaller stations. That's also why the Honduran election was an obvious fix, as the 'losing' opposition candidate was ahead and should have gone further ahead as the poorer stations came in. Instead they spent two days stuffing ballots. You've also gone full Gromnir and linked to a 36 hour old article to debunk something that happened... less than a day ago.

Natural instinct is certainly to claim you want to leave a better world than you found. While doing whatever is best for you, now. And in totally unrelated matters, military coup in progress in Bolivia. Given the location hardly needs a spec of 'CIA backed'; hopefully all the natives who backed Morales won't end up like Guatemala's Mayan minority did after the coup there, ie genocided by School of the Americas death squads. Wonder if the US approved 'candidate' for Bolivia's Presidency will be a drug runner like Hernandez is Honduras as well, using drug money slush funds (another CIA staple, lest we forget) to finance his election campaign.

Yeah, the coal mines is actually Akhmetov rather than Kolomoisky I think. Jewishness is only really relevant in the context that neither would be prone to liking neo nazis.

Ukrainian deep state mostly consists of kleptocrat billionaires. Zelensky himself was bankrolled by one who IIRC is also jewish, more or less neutral when it comes to Russia and just wants everything to go back to normal so he can go back to skimming hundreds of millions of dollars per year from his coal mines and port. The whole series of Ukrainian revolutions is just billionaires swapping around the deck chairs of government and who gets to siphon off the most money; whether they're pro Russian or pro West. The Poroshenko side of the east/ west equation did rather love to use Right Sector/ Azow Brigade/ Banderans against the other, but that was not because they agreed with them or they had much power or appeal but for more or less the same reason Turkey uses jihadis in Syria- they're motivated, no one cares if they get killed off, they're deniable(ish) and can be crushed later if needed or if they go too far, and they hate the other side.

I'm playing on hard and I'd be confident I could solo just about every encounter if I had to. My companions die every once in a while but I don't think I've died in combat once except for blowing myself up with mines- and that's with minimal investment in combat skills. I suspect it would be a lot harder with a controller rather than mouse though.

Yeston's new 5700 video card. Sorry everyone, Chinese release only. (I'd unironically consider buying one if it were available here and a 5700XT instead of vanilla, because I cannot look at it without smiling. Which is also why it gets posted here instead of the Junkyard)

3rd gen Threadripper and 3950X release date (Nov 25) and TR details announced. The Threadrippers (3960X/70X) are 24/32 cores for 1400/2000$ and have quite a lot of cache (140/144MB).

Definitely if you have gamepass, which is fair enough since it's a subscription and they have to be able to stop you playing when your sub runs out. Might be fairer to say that's games tied to launchers for you. The number of complaints when HL2 launched and Steam soiled the bed were a sight to behold. The only crashes I've had with TOW were related to the xbox pc app- which is by far the worst launcher I've ever used- throwing a fit and refusing to load any saves then crashing the game. At least it was easily fixed by restarting. I also love how it randomly decides I need to sync my saves in the middle of the game, complete with pop up in the middle of the screen telling me that's what it's doing. The game itself is rock steady apart from some very occasional slow downs but the app is the 100% typical MS 2000+ era half arsed product that will probably be abandoned as soon as something distracting comes along. We have listened to the feedback of our valued customers and have decided that our initial policy of charging for every respec is unreasonable. As such we will be rolling the feature out to everyone in our new 'Unleash your Build' dlc available for $20. This allows up to 3 free respecs per account ($2 or 195 snowflakes thereafter). Due to maintenance and the server being upgraded the old exploitative respec feature will be deprecated for those who do not buy the expansion.

Good thing Tony Abbot reinstated knighthoods or England would have been sure to have won.

Strange as it may seem adding roads etc often does very little to improve traffic. Usually it just moves the bottle neck that was causing problems to a new place, eg new underground parking still has limited in/ out points. By its nature traffic engineering is always trying to fix the problems today that should have been fixed ten years ago because nobody plans anything properly, and there are fundamental problems like everyone having to be at work at more or less the same times rather than being staggered. And unfortunately many of the people running transport networks are far more interested in forcing people to use bad mass transport options than they are actually improving the options so people want to use them. The old adage applies: "you can tell a mass transport system is good not when poor people are forced to use it, but when rich people choose to use it", but most just go for the first part because it's 'easy'. The US has unusually low taxes on petrol. Here and in much of Europe tax can be 2/3 or more of the pump price and that without any other fees. They definitely don't use all the fuel taxes here for road/ transport related stuff, a lot goes straight into the Consolidated Fund for general use. And when the funds are ringfenced that still doesn't mean they get spent on sensible stuff. Example, the local regional fuel tax was introduced last year for a project which has, unsurprisingly, been delayed; so the council is busy spending it on projects of very marginal value because it has to be spent. It's also deeply unpopular in rural areas since it's a per litre tax and the people who mostly pay it are subsidising central city projects they'd never use that were, unsurprisingly, delayed. So, the local rural road which is potholed and has had bend dangerously camber reversed in some cases when they have done botched repairs got new road signs; literally every 20m, which were dangerously positioned, made it impossible to pull over if needed, were distracting, had dangerously high speed advisories on some bends and in some cases reflected headlights directly back at you if driving at night. Locals removed half, they got replaced, then eventually someone from the council actually drove the road and agreed that yes, they were a stupid idea. Company that made and placed the signs still got the money for them and their replacements though...

GPU scaling is the AMD equivalent. (Note that there are two different places you can set the GPU scaling- Display tab which is on/off and on a per application basis via the 'Gaming' tab which has more options. If you haven't already tried it go to the Outer Worlds entry there or scan/ browse to find it and try setting GPU scaling to 'preserve aspect ratio' which ought in theory to get you pillarboxing)

The GoT prequel about the White Walkers/ 1st Long Night has been canned. Not massively surprising given how much the whole White Walker issue was butchered in S8 and how badly that undermined the premise of and potential interest in that prequel. Development of the other proposed prequel series (Targaryens) is continuing.

Gamepass is the cheapest way bar none. Even if your region doesn't have the $1 introductory offer. And wow, it's EGS exclusive exactly as much as it would have been steam exclusive had it been on steam since you can even buy keys from 3rd parties exactly as you would on steam. He's an infamous forum DRM advocate as in the only people who have problems with DRM have to be dirty dirty pirates. Admitting to piracy himself would be perhaps the most amusing thing to happen here, ever.

Only work up to a point. A growing forest sequesters a lot of CO2 as it grows, but a mature forest is nearly in balance in terms of CO2 absorption and release. If you replaced every tree cut down in the last millennium you'd still have the excess generated from burning all the fossil fuels etc, and if you replaced every tree cut down in the past millennium half the world's population would outright starve.

Funnily enough and more or less relevant to current events: if the rest of NATO ever seriously wanted to kick Turkey out this is the procedure they'd have to use- everyone else leaves voluntarily and reforms as NATO2 with Turkey not invited. There's no procedure to expel a member. Not that it would happen anyway.

The soviets did ask for Dresden to be bombed multiple times, so the western allies can at least claim that. Area bombing theory was never a great defence/ reason for targeting civilians though, the Blitz experience in the UK showed that it did very little to break civilian morale, rather the reverse, and that resources were far more efficiently allocated going for military targets. Funny thing about Churchill is how apart from giving inspirational speeches how awful he was at everything else. His military decisions in WW1 & 2 were both almost universally bad or incompetent, he had dreadful man management, and was an inveterate and unrepentant racist. If there were a moderate and extreme solution to a problem he'd advocate the extreme one 95% of the time. He's incredibly lucky that he ended up as the personification of the British Bulldog Spirit as otherwise he'd be remembered very poorly.