Zoraptor

Flawless code? That depends on whether quantum mechanics and relativity are intentional. You'd also never in a million years deliberately design bellows system lungs for your favourite creation having designed the far more efficient parabronchial system in birds beforehand. Checkmate, theists.

I'm not ignoring it as Hannibal was undoubted a superb tactician, I just didn't mention them as they weren't relevant. (I am highly skeptical of some parts of the battle narrative though due to Livy and Polybius both being more than a touch prone to spreading what might now be referred to as 'fake news'. Paullus was almost certainly not blameless- his family was immensely powerful however- and the supposed cavalry ruse in Livy involving a fake surrender doesn't work well timing wise and I suspect exists to give a reason for the terrible cavalry performance blaming perfidy instead of them just being atrocious/ cowardly since a lot of prominent Romans escaped in said cavalry. That it was one of if not the single most complete victories of all time cannot really be doubted whatever the exact details)

..but the last battle would have been so much more epic had Jordan had the chance to write it. I still haven't come across a book/series that has battles/action scenes as...well...EPIC. Yeah, you could tell that Jordan was ex military and had experience with actual war. I give him a lot of credit for having incredibly complex writing/ narratives but also some of the most consistently plotted writing, there was just far too little plot progression in the middle stages for my tastes. But, in general, if he put the gun on the mantel said gun got used, and you could look back and see exactly how it was set up earlier and makes perfect sense later. Rand watching cavalry manoeuvres which turn out to be for use with Gates is probably the one that sticks most immediately in my mind because it's exactly what logically should be done with magic teleportation + conventional warfare, but you still have to think about it and set it up as the author. I'll keep an eye out.

The 'roman' (mostly allied) cavalry was just rubbish, and always was. All the large battles the Romans lost against Hannibal (Trebia, Trasimene) except Cannae involved their centre holding cohesion while the flanks got slaughtered and said centre just chopping their way through the Carthaginian line to escape, at Cannae they lost cohesion everywhere after their initial success and couldn't do that. No quarter given and the winning side having more than 20% casualties themselves led to the massive death toll, usually the losing side either surrendered or ran away. Borodino is usually cited as the bloodiest day in Europe since Cannae. Even with a moderate estimate for Cannae's death toll it's still 1/20 that of a Verdun or Somme, with swords and spears, and over far less than 1/20 the time scale of those battles. And to be somewhat on topic, Vin Diesel as Hannibal in the movies he was pitching would have been a sight to see.

It was probably the reverse of Jordan losing control- his mid series books bear all the hallmarks of not having a 'proper' editing pass by an external editor, likely because of the success of his previous entries and the desire to get a(s many) book(s as possible) out to market quickly. He's pretty much the reverse Martin in that regard, while Martin needs an external editor to tell him to pull finger and stop tinkering Jordan needed one to stick a big red pen stroke through pages of his writing, or at least ask if it was all necessary. Sanderson did a pretty good job of finishing up WoT, but they're the only books of his I've read. Checking a list the last one I liked was The Dead Zone though I didn't regret reading 'It'. I liked The Stand as well, but a lot of the things I disliked about his writing were coming out even then. Carrie and The Shining had the problem of me having seen the iconic movies prior to reading the books. Anything after is like Dan Brown novels, I'm sure I've read some of them but cannot remember which ones nor anything about them. Then again I definitely wasn't reading them in release order as I'm too young for that.

This whole season of FtWD has been pretty stupid- think I've only really liked a couple of the early episodes and the Charlie/ Alicia one in the latter half. Which is a shame as S3 showed a lot of potential. I could understand them retooling it more directly towards its mother show when tWD was a ratings juggernaut, but now they've just brought over all the same problems tWD has and which ultimately caused its ratings to haemorrhage. The S4B villain has to be close to the worst written main villain I've seen in anything but has Negan level plot armour, the grey filter isn't artsy but just annoying and a visual drag, they've given no reason to care about the new characters while killing off established ones for shock and the patented late season tWD lack of even the most basic consistency in the plotting is in overdrive. I doubt I'll watch farther further unless the finale is stellar. To be fair to them though I very much doubt Kirkman would let either show deal with someone being immune or a cure until and unless the comics do, so that bit of potential progression is off the table.

I don't really see how. The details of the complaint are very sparse and rely entirely on 35 year old memories, so there simply isn't much to empirically verify/ refute. There isn't even much threat of perjury given the time elapsed so not much leverage to compel any bad faith actors. The first complaint has almost no details at all surrounding the incident itself and seems to have been denied by everyone else, and in the second the complainant seemed to be unsure it was definitely Kavanaugh until part way through the interview. The whole thing is a classic no win situation for whoever is being honest, with the caveat that all may believe they're being honest after that amount of time. Cannot remember details? Dodgy. Remember too many details? Also dodgy. Can't remember at all? Dodgy. And the goldilocks zone of just the right amount of details being remembered will vary wildly depending on which party you back as well. In that situation I cannot see any sense in having the FBI involved instead of just following the usual Senate protocol which is also under oath.

Is there any realistic way to tell the truth of such accusations from incidents 35 years ago though? If Kavanaugh is a serial sex pest then he's not going to suddenly have qualms lying under oath- and IIRC he's under oath at the Senate hearings anyway. And if they did happen and people were lying to protect Kavanaugh could the threat of perjury have any weight after that time? Perjury does have to be deliberate, and after 35 years proving deliberate lies instead of being mistaken is pretty much impossible. In other news looks like Syria is going to be getting S300 anti air systems from Russia. They've allegedly been there waiting to be delivered for months but the latest Israeli issue seems to have forced things. If what they've said is accurate they'd be non export PM2 systems as well, rather than nerfed PMU2.

Journalists act outside their expertise all the time, especially with interns and lower staffing levels in the internet age. With fake news and SJWs and the rest the immediate response when called on it is to go hyper defensive. That's not really elitism, more just circling the wagons around a non expert 'expert' as they know they may be next. And for this specific case PCMR types tend to hate pseudo expert Casual Tech types way more than outright consolers. Of course, the reason that video got so much traction was that it makers almost every single potential build mistake possible to still end up with a working product like a parody, but was actually dead serious about being an 'expert' guide, and The Verge went defensive and eventually pulled the video just as the 1st wave of laughter and memes was dying down. That's a great 2-in-1 combo of Poe's Law and Streisand Effect. (My favourite part is his anti static device being a completely useless plain plastic wristband, though the thermal paste application is more memeable)

To be fair, you'd still have to be pretty unlucky to get bogus parts at least when they're from core Amazon and they are still pretty cheap, I'd just hesitate to regard them as 'trustworthy' at the moment and that was a stipulation. And they are certainly trustworthy in terms of fixing any substitutions that have been made. Situation has probably improved a bit at least for graphics cards with crypto dying down so prices aren't so inflated.

The German sub site may be better than others for all I know but unfortunately parts often aren't just parts when ordered from most Amazons at the moment, probably 90% of complaints about bogus parts are from 2nd hand buys but 90% of the rest seem to be from Amazon reselling returns without checking that someone hasn't swapped out the graphics card for a GT710 plus some bolts or the processor for a Pentium III or a brick and not properly labeling marketplace sales as coming from 3rd party vendors who are directly scamming. The return policy makes up for it a bit, but it's Russian Roulette as to whether you'd be waiting for genuine or fake parts to turn up far more so than most places and more so than is really justified. Mindfactory would certainly be the best known specific German site, and so far as I've seen has a good reputation.

That's pretty much what happened at Cannae, and that was numerically the worst defeat the Romans ever suffered (not as bad as others like Adrianople or the Allia in terms of actual consequences though). Might even still be the largest death toll in any single day European battle up to and including WW1&2. Oh sure, there's a level of "rule of cool", break from reality, it's just a movie thing going., suspension of disbelief.... But you'd like just a little effort and thought put in when it's a subject you know about and/or are interested in. The problem I have with it is that it always seems that the writers decide to write stupidly and expect you to be OK with them writing stupidly so long as it there are Bayesque explosions or worse, stultifying speeches involved. The Avengers example is far from the worst though, to be fair to it. The end criminal v cops battle in Dark Knight Rises where the criminals decide to charge the cops for hand to hand combat instead of just shooting them with said guns ends up not being 'cool' but just being stupid as a consequence of the writers writing themselves into a corner where any realistic ending involves the good guys getting shot up badly or worse, winning but in a non spectacular way. Or the Walking Dead where Negan and his crew come out into the open to chat with Rick and pals and Rick and pals eventually open up with their assault rifles into the windows above their heads instead of just shooting the entire leadership and winning right there. All because of the meta justification that the writers wanted an excuse to have Rick and Negan chat to each other face to face and couldn't think of a believable way to do it, didn't care to find one and didn't care that even the most cursory examination of that scene would have it not making a lick of sense. That's especially a problem for TWD as a regular TV series rather than a 2-3 hour movie.

Yeah, for absolute performance money no object it would be 2080Ti, but with at least some consideration given to top end value it would be the 1080Ti. For top end power performance balance a 2nd hand 1080Ti from someone upgrading to rtx would be even better. 2080 non Ti on the other hand... would not touch even if I wouldn't rather dissolve myself slowly in aqua regia to a Celine Dion greatest hits soundtrack than contribute to Jensen's leather jacket fund. 0% conventional performance increase for 25% extra cost plus possible dead end tech that will be superceded by a 7nm model next year is plain poor value. If Bruce does want a 1080Ti though he'd better get in quick, nVidia has stopped shipments to peripheral countries to drive 2080 sales.

He was a refugee in/ immigrant to Egypt along with his parents. He was an emmigrant/ refugee from Palestine, who later returned.

It's for sale for the low low cost of a lifetime of haircair products for the Caen brothers? They've systematically sold off anything with any residual worth so it can hardly cost much. They can't really claim the name even has any Goodwill left to it and the revenue stream must be near literally half a dozen people buying Citizen Kabuto every other GOG/ Steam sale...

Dunno how much of it is 'deliberate' as a policy so much as a documentary on Patton single handed reconquering Europe selling better in the US. People love to be told they're uniquely heroic and special, nuanced takes about how the godless commies did the bulk of the heavy listing isn't such an inspiring tale. Most serious docos handle the eastern front fine, but the dissonance between something like 'Soviet Storm' or 'World at War' and some of the puff piece History Channel type WW2 documentaries could scarcely be greater.

I can probably tweak the fan curve, sound isn't a massive issue with headphones. 90% of the time it's completely silent and cools passively, if it's above 50 degrees it's pretty much on full revs but as a result it barely scrapes above 60 degrees even when it's being thrashed. I'd assume the Vega version would be similar. It's still quieter than the Intel stock cooler I had up until a year ago though, it's just super jarring when the computer is usually completely silent. I like the monitor and doubt I could go back now. I thought it was gimmicky too initially but things like straight lines work fine when you're used to it- I'd suspect a non curved ultrawide would have problems there anyway since there's a decent difference in distance to the eye from centre to edge. It did have some teething problems but it's working fine now. That's what freesync is for, essentially. Even a 1080Ti will struggle getting 4k/60 on many games, but if you've got adaptive sync the reduced frame rates have a lot less effect. Vega64 is roughly 1080 level performance so a decent amount faster than a 980Ti- if a 980Ti gives 60fps a Vega ought to give around 80. I also hate some of the more demanding gimmick sfx and would turn them off anyway. I wouldn't try running TW3 on the 580 at that res though except on medium settings. It copes with Kingdom Come Deliverance, just, and actually does pretty well on Mass Effect Andromeda but TWitcher3 has too many gimpworks features baked in to do well on AMD.

Yep. Samsung C34F791 3440x1440 100hz.

Richard must be the most inexplicably well regarded king in English history. A compulsive warmonger who nearly bankrupted the country having fought multiple rebellions against his father previous and who got himself pointlessly and stupidly killed.

Sup all Vega 64 ROG Strix for 900NZD (600USD*/ 500 Euro) yes or no? Yeah, it has crap memory cooling which is about the most cardinal of cardinal sins for Vega and my Strix 580 sounds like a hairdryer under load even in a sound dampening case, but that price is effectively 50 ameribux equivalent less than it is on Amazon/ Newegg and comes with three** free games. I did plan to buy Vega if it got to roughly MSRP which that is, but that was a year ago. OTOH, a 580 struggles with 34" widescreen on anything demanding and Navi is still a decent time away... *500USD, -GST, so basically ref Vega MSRP **Though I suspect two will be steam keys so irrelevant to me.

Bob Page: Your appointment to hurricane relief should be finalized within the week. I've already discussed the matter with Puerto Rico. Walton Simons: I take it they were agreeable? Page: They didn't really have a choice. Simons: Have they got water? Page: Oh yes, most certainly. When I mentioned we might actually get around to distributing it some time they were so willing it was almost pathetic. Simons: This hurricane — the death toll is increasing to the point where we may not be able to contain it. Page: Why contain it? Let it spill over into articles and social media. Let the bodies pile up in the streets. In the end, they'll beg us to save them. Simons: I've received reports of bad PR in editorials. There's not enough Fox & Friends style positivity and obfuscation to go around, and the libtards are starting to get grumpy. Page: Of course they're grumpy. They can smell the deaths- something to do with us not getting around to collecting the corpses yet maybe, can't have an official death count if you never do anything official as the great philosopher Roll Safe might say- and the sound they'll make rattling their cages will serve as a warning to the rest. Simons: Hmm. I hope you're not underestimating the problem. The others may not go as quietly as you think. Intelligence indicates they're behind the problems in Congress...

Ah, an oldie and a goodie. I still get a good chuckle out of 'NATO' forgetting that Kaliningrad is part of Russia while making their sick burn geography correction. Geography can be tough indeed. You'd hope their military side is better informed than their propaganda side. (Plus Canada didn't exist in 1812 and the US invaded not vice versa, though they aren't as funny as a defence organisation forgetting where their enemy is. Kind of sums up the state of media that The Grauniad didn't point out the geogrpahical mistake and added a new one though)

As I recall, Gina Torres character, Jasmine, used Cordelia as a vessel to incarnate herself, so wasn't literally the child of Cordelia and Conner (but I could be mis-remembering, I haven't watched an episode of Angel since it aired). IIRC Gina Torres was used primarily because Firefly had just been cancelled- same for Fillion on BtVS. The whole situation was also rather weird and atypical though as apparently the writing/ production staff didn't know that Carpenter was pregnant until quite a way into the season. Mostly though, yeah, she was an Old One or whatever. Being black was trumped somewhat by also being born as a 30 year old women of any colour.

She got pinged initially for her coach illegally coaching her from the stand via hand gestures which he admitted to doing post match but she probably did not see, and which she insisted at the time on court was not happening. She then broke her racket which was the second violation, and ranted at the umpire which was the third and which cost her a game. I don't think she has a leg to stand on in the 'hard done by' stakes- the penalties were all deserved- though obviously that was a tournament she would have wanted to win far more than most which would have contributed to her emotional response. She also has a history with that umpire, he's penalised her before. But all the ranting and sexism stuff was just incoherent emotional rambling immediately compromised by her coach admitting he had been coaching her from the stand, the accusation of which is what prompted her meltdown.

Don't think Sapkowski is associated with the show any more. You could make the Nilfgardians more sympathetic easily enough- rather than being aggressive invaders show them as a force for order in the chaos, ignorance and infighting that is the norm.