Zoraptor

That was only one of many tax increases, though particularly ill thought out one at that. Radical people joining in is the least surprising, though quasi fascists and anarchists doing so without significantly fighting each other as well is unusual and probably does show how much people hate what's going on. The reasons are much the same as elsewhere, just coupled to France's enormous tradition of protest. Macron's ideas of reform are precisely what you'd expect from a neoliberal World Bank type- privatise profits, collectivise costs. He's cut taxes for the rich and brought in massively regressive taxes* that disproportionately target poor working people while cutting things like money for public transport at the same time. The fuel tax was great, if you could afford to buy an electric car out of hand; if you couldn't it was awful and came after years of being told to buy diesel by the government same as they're now saying to buy electric. And in ten years they'll work out that the batteries in electrics are awful and cannot be disposed of properly so you should buy hydrogen, and you can pay 10k Euro to scrap your electric car you bought for 5k after saving for a decade now the previous owner decided hydrogen was the future after a tip off. Macron was also nowhere near as popular as media made him out to be to start with. Media love Narrative, and much like Trudeau and Ardern here Macron is a corporate friendly nu gen nu wave anti Trump, and that's what counts rather than being objective about his strengths and weaknesses. He didn't do that well against an awful opponent who would probably have lost to anyone including Mr 2% popularity Hollande if it came to it, and 1/8 of those who voted deliberately spoiled their ballots. His party won the parliamentary election, but with only slightly more votes than the 2nd placed party in the previous election with that result being a moderate landslide for the socialist winners so 2nd place wasn't that close. The reason the protests continue is, to paraphrase what one mayor allegedly told Macron to his face: they out and out hate him and everything he stands for. *why they're regressive: if you're rich you buy an electric car with cash or low interest loan and thus never pay the fuel tax; if you're poor you can't afford to do so, are more likely to be driving an old, cheap, inefficient car that uses more fuel so pay more even in absolute terms and you cannot replace it since you're, well, poor; and you are way more likely to live somewhere with poor or no public transport (and remember, Macron cut funding to public transport) because typically poorer areas don't lobby well for such things and decisions are made by rich people who either think rich people are most important, are pig ignorant and don't have a clue about anyone outside their bubble, andor are terrified of people from the banlieu invading their locale. There's also the problem of public transport in poorer areas typically being unreliable and unpleasant, so you never know when or if you'll get to work on time or in what state. eg, our local government fuel tax here is primarily being used to put in public transport in... high income areas close enough to the city that people actually could cycle and the city centre plus some tourist routes, while mostly being paid by rural people who have dreadfully maintained roads clogged by trucks carrying stuff that could be better carried by the trains which aren't in the plan (and with 1800 truck movements a day approved by ex industry consultants when the road design stipulates 100 a day; council has to pay for road maintenance of course), and poor factory workers and the like who want to go from low income housing to industrial areas, not visit The Viaduct Harbour, Remuera Foodtown or the banking headquarters and Prada outlets of central Auckland- good luck surviving a cycle from Mangere to Penrose too even if it didn't take an hour each way, for some reason the entire route is designed for and clogged by trucks. Yet all transport consultants making the suggestions have offices in central Auckland, used to work for truck companies (hmm, wonder if that's why the whole transport system is designed for trucks, might be a connection?), are lobbied by and mostly know people in 1.5 million dollar houses who drive Cayenne's without caring about tax because it's a fricking 150k$ car what's $10 a week more or have Volvos, Teslas or other premium electrics, and pass decisions on to politicians who used to be paid as much as a teacher 30 years ago but now get paid nearly five times as much thanks to their 'independent' remuneration authority, and in terms of who they care about can add only tourists to the list.

4 cores/ ccx makes most sense since it's simplest and has fewest intra ccx connections and 8 would have a lot, but unless they planned for it back when they designed AM4 I'd question if they could go to a full chiplet design- with 2 4 core ccx- while staying with AM4. If they did plan for that I would be very impressed, and AMD did put a lot of stuff into the CPU package which would usually go into the chipset on the motherboard. That would also give an easy way to get 12 cores, threadripper had dummy ccx in gen 1 so you could get 12 core with 3x4 and one dummy. I guess if they went the 8 core/ ccx route they'd have more failed chips to pad out the lower grade SKUs as well as 7nm probably being a bit less reliable as well; my skepticism comes from the extremely low relative failure rate for Zen1. We got a lot of 8 core 1600s here due to them running out of 'bad'/ partially failed chips.

It is possible Moral objections against genome modification come usually either from religious grounds as genome modification are often seen as thing where humans are playing god, quite similar to issue as why cloning is seen as bad, or from societal grounds where there is fear that genome modifications would be used to pursue goal to achieve ultimate human and kill diversity from the population. Genetic modifications killing diversity and natural ability to adapt to changing conditions isn't necessary unfounded fear as it is something that has observed with genetically modified plants. There's an 'objective' moral objection as well- CRISPR is not by any means perfect and has not worked particularly well on humans so far when tested. Not working well consistently is not so much a concern when you're dealing with lab rats or plant seeds (to an extent, there's potential for accidentally making superweeds), but if you end up splicing genes into the wrong place in a human you will also end up introducing defects instead of removing them. Also, while it's certainly possible he has done it and his technical outline of how he did it was solid nobody is sure whether he really has edited genes as there's no independent evidence of it- it's illegal to do so in China so he would be in a fair bit of potential trouble if he has (and indeed, if recent reports are accurate he has 'disappeared' after going home).

Wouldn't be surprised if it's a Kingdom Come type situation and it does get to GOG with a delay of some kind. Will definitely not be holding my breath for a day 1 release there though, much as I would like one. Not much point having Denuvo any more, cracked first day on JC4 so you're just left with the performance degradation and SSD destroying* aspects of it. *de do de do de do do do

Isn't he an Exec Producer on it? (Which isn't a direct development position as opposed to project management, and is highly variable in terms of responsibility too, but would be involvement in some capacity)

Spoilers since I don't think Keyrock has finished the game yet.

Macron Regime APC off to suppress popular democratic, secular dissent #EyesOnParis #MacronOut Macron Regime forces mobilised and on the way to Paris. 90,000 security forces have been mobilised! How can the peaceful activists survive with tires vs armour? Also spot the obvious evidence of Barrel Bomb usage by the Regime Air Force... #BellingcatAnalysis #NoFlyZone #9K111sForFrance #LastHopitalInParis #SaveTheBoulangeries

I have to admit I set the difficulty to easy for the final battle in Elex, though then it was easy enough. I'm not sure PB has ever done a good end game battle, they'd be criticised more for it if their games didn't also tend to be so massive that most people never complete them.

Ryzen 3000 series (and Navi) rumours... Only a few things I can see there that look a bit suspicious. It seems unlikely AMD would go for both 6 and 8 core ccxs since the beauty of their current design is that basically everything from Epyc to Ryzen 3 uses the same 4 core/ ccx design which makes it both incredibly efficient in terms of (lack of) wastage while being the epitome of KISS design. Then again two complex types makes things more flexible as well, so maybe. Also the integrated graphics would be likely to hit performance limits from using system RAM under current designs though maybe cache can ameliorate it enough. And the supposed Navi improvements are at the top end of expectations. OTOH, calling their Navi cards RX 3060, RX 3070 etc is 100% the sort of thing AMD would do after their chipset namings for Ryzen, and up to 16c/32t 5+ Ghz Ryzen 3850X at 500USD with IPC advantage over Intel is exactly the sort of thing I absolutely want to be true.

In South Africa there would be two problems with that model: firstly money from utility levies would probably end up being used on critical projects like renovating Jacob Zuma's private residence to Buckingham Palace level instead of actual infrastructure and secondly, a lot of people there are absolute poor so no matter how low utility bills are set they could not afford them. Not that things have improved without Zuma, go on strike at one of President Cyril's mines and he might just send the po po around to machine gun you... Cape Province, where the water shortage is really biting, is also being shafted in numerous ways by the national government as well as having an actual and real drought- things like their trains being 'mysteriously' sabotaged causing traffic chaos- because they had the temerity to elect someone other than the ANC to power, and the ANC believes they will be back if they can make things bad enough there so long as people blame the local government rather than them.

Yeah, that's a 100% temporary solution that ensures Erdogan has leverage for the forseeable future. It's also again the bare minimum they could get away with, anything less and Greece would have been forced by simple reality to ignore the EU rules as they are economically- and physically- incapable of dealing with every refugee so would have been forced to let them through no matter what the law says. In truth that 'generosity' has made the EU semi permanently beholden to a despot who can threaten to tear up the agreement whenever he wants something from them. They'd have been better off investing the money into Syria directly and getting people to actually go home rather than feathering Erdogan's nest. No they didn't, which is irrelevant since sure as anything took advantage of said rules and applied them selectively, depending on what was best for them at the time. They issued the invite, took the refugees they wanted to try and fix their demographic problems, then decided that the rules about initial entry had to be enforced, and used collective responsibility to get other countries to accept the excess they'd ended up with. All rules applied as and when politically expedient for Merkel and not done either consistently or fairly. The problems were caused by her invitation. It's like issuing a public statement about squatter's rights laws then being surprised and amazed when suddenly you get a load of squatters moving in who all know the law and want to take advantage of it. If you issue a statement saying that you'll treat each and every migrant as a refugee then you will get an inundation of refugees and an even bigger inundation of 'refugees' who are simple economic migrants. Reminder again, the 2nd largest number of refugees in the crisis were Kosovan, nearly as many as Iraq and Afghanistan combined. How many of them could reasonably be considered refugees rather than economic migrants in a 'country' that is basically a NATO protectorate, and if they are what exactly does that say about NATO and Europe? I'd exclude Serbs worried about being carved up for spare parts by the Kosovan Prime Minister or forced out of their homes at gunpoint while NATO ran interference from that list, but then they were all sent to Serbia rather than Germany.

What does he plan to do, give the moffs direct command of the outlying sectors? She didn't open any borders and she didn't change any rules about immigration or how EU or Germany treats refugees, she only publicly said that Germany will accept refugees according to their laws, laws which have existed over 60 years. Please, she 100% issued an invitation knowing exactly what it would mean practically. Whether she already had her fall back positions formulated at that time is an open question, it seems more likely she was just plain stupid but maybe she was actively malicious as well, who knows. She may not have changed the rules at that time, but she definitely took and has taken advantage of them to the detriment of just about everyone else in the EU and to her and Germany's benefit. Which is what is the fundamental problem with the EU as it always happens with the EU- Germany collectivises her problems while nationalising everyone else's. Merkel's idiotic invitation results in too many refugees? Collectivise the problem by sending them off to other countries to bail her out. But, too many refugees still arriving? Well they have to stay in Greece and Italy since that's where they landed, why can't those countries take responsibility and follow the rules? German banks lent idiotically to Greece? Bail them out collectively via the European Bank, then make the Greeks pay for it! Plus bonus, tons of leverage against Greece when you want the refugee spigot turned off, after all surely refugees love extended holidays on Greek Islands as much as anyone so it's win win. Euro massively overvalued for Italy, Greece etc? Tough noogies, it's wonderfully undervalued for Germany and that's what is important. That's the fundamental flaw of the EU, and it will never be fixed. Every country from Italy down in importance will be treated as vassals, and any benefits to them from the EU are incidental and not the core aim of the organisation. It's also why Britain is better with a hard Brexit no matter what, there's no chance of EU reform and the laughable 'concessions' they gave Cameron to try and stave off the referendum showed it- and, frankly, those pathetic concessions was likely a contributing factor to the referendum loss for remain. While meant to be a sop to get just enough votes to win they were actually an insult and extraordinarily tone deaf, symptomatic of the EU's technocratic rule from the top mentality.

Obviously it will be headed by Louis XX, beloved of the people and legitimate King of France, we do know that much. Shame the Brits dropped their claim to the throne, otherwise we could almost manage a super union of France/ Spain/ Britain.

When will the world wake up to the brutal suppression the Macron Regime is visiting upon its populace? La Shabiha has already injured more than 100 peaceful protesters and the security apparatus has detained nearly 400 yellow jacket activists as well as using chemical agents and armoured vehicles on protesting groups. We need a no fly zone and a UN resolution demanding Macron step down, and if this does not happen I hope the East will step up to the plate with appropriate support for select vetted peaceful moderate groups- AKs, Kornet's, Konkurs, SA-7, Fagots, Malyutka and maybe a Buk-M2 and T72B3 or so. I'm sure the vetting will be so good so we won't end up with L'Etat Islamique Fraternique de France beheading people including foreign nationals publicly in slickly produced videos (albeit that's not as classy as having David do propaganda paintings for you like OG LEFF), or alternatively spending hundreds of millions to have 6 vetted individuals left after the rest immediately defect to Le Front Supportif, a subsidiary group of Le Network. Seriously though, it is kind of amusing watching the Macron Narrative fall apart. Who would have thought that labeling a completely orthodox centre-right economic policy as a startling and new paradigm shift wouldn't work long term? Pas de merde that massively regressive fuel taxes are horribly unpopular, especially in a country with a tradition of protest like France, they're unpopular enough here where we have a tradition of being merely mildly miffed. Just buy an electric car guys, I'm sure you've got the 25k Euro hidden down the back of your sofa, much as you had the 15k Euro a few years ago everyone was recommending the diesels they now want to get rid of. Yeah, nah, of course the people who end up paying the taxes are precisely those who can't afford to just buy an electric car while subsidising people with said spare 25k Euro to boot. At least Paris has a decent public transport system when it's actually running and not on strike, and so long as you don't mind les gamins going through the stuff they're pickpocketed off other travelers in the seats next to you (this literally happened last time I was in Paris going to the Bois de Vincennes, along with them riding a bike up and down the aisle. It was, at least, a memorable trip).

Immersive sims require the two things in the name- immersiveness and simulation. RPG elements aren't really needed at all, though by their nature RPGs tend to have a lot of the same elements that immersive sims have as well. While it mostly has the immediate elements of immersiveness Bioshock's attempts at simulation are basic. There's no real emergent gameplay, enemies and the environment don't behave with much realism, stealth doesn't work well (largely due to the engine used, to be fair) and, critically, it's pretty much impossible to suspend disbelief of Rapture being a Real Place existing outside of the narrow confines of being a game. That's not because it's set at the bottom of the ocean, it's because it fails in terms of verisimilitude- internal consistency/ realism such that even if you start out accepting that Rapture, plasmids, Big Daddies/ Little Sisters exist they do not make consistent internal sense except as part of a game system. In terms of any Obsidian game being an immersive sim, who knows. FONV was probably closest of their current lot, and from Troika both Arcanum and VtMB had elements of immersive sims. I'd suspect not, immersive sims take a lot of effort for not much reward.

Anyone with kids probably would, it will have a massive back catalogue of recognisable brands. Anyone outside the US (at launch at least) or who is interested in a more rounded portfolio or mature content, probably not. Would also depend on price too, of course. Disney+ won't be available here so I didn't pay much attention to it, but I would have thought pro entertainment journos would at least know about it having a PG13 restriction which would obviously mean none of the Netflix series would end up there. Took me literally 2 minutes* when I bothered to look to find that out, and that if they were to go anywhere it would be to Hulu who Disney now mostly own and who already have, for example, Marvel's Runaways there already. *and that included finding out when the Netflix/ Marvel contract expired too (2019), which basically no professionals seem to have bothered checking.

Not Disney+ due to the age restriction. Maybe Hulu now that Disney owns most of it via the Fox purchase, but in any case the Marvel-Netflix contract was running out in 2019 and there's no way it would be renewed.

I wouldn't be surprised if Shield's renewal was influenced by how well Discovery did for CBS. Cult shows- even back catalogue of cult shows- drive subscriptions. I'm unconvinced that any of the cancelled Netflix Marvel shows were cancelled in the conventional sense. The popularity of Daredevil is such that it will be on Disney+ as a headline item once the contract with Netflix ran out, so the option for Netflix is to continue building recognition and audience for what will be a competitor's product, or to stop. Disney has been pulling content from Netflix for well over a year. It's also not like Disney hasn't been known to put pressure on those who hold contracts with them once those contracts become inconvenient and they want them to return to the mothership.

Far from unbelievable, it's pretty clear that all the Marvel shows are done on Netflix now that Disney is doing a streaming service as that needs content and Netflix is its biggest direct competitor by far.

There's a lot of stuff that doesn't fit the other categories. For example Catch 22 (and most other fictional comedy), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or Animal Farm would not fit any category except General Fiction. Pretty much all historical fiction wouldn't either- the Sharpe novels might fit the Thriller/ Suspense category at a pinch (or maybe Action/ Adventure) for example, but something like 'I, Claudius' or many of Cornwell's other non Sharpe historical novels wouldn't. I'd imagine there's a lot of real life/ 'soap opera' type stuff as well that doesn't fit either romance or suspense in there. (not really current releases there, but I guess that's where the General Fiction stuff comes from. If we wanted to go full classic then Charles Di_kens near entire catalogue would be General Fiction)

Their acquired studios aren't doing all that well financially despite generally having well regarded games. BGS may be a terrible mess QA wise and their PR may be economical with the truth but (1) they're financially successful and that's what counts most plus (2) their games have been bug ridden messes with 'inaccurate' promotion since at least Daggerfall and that hasn't hindered them up until now.

The later V64 Nitro+ model only has two 8 pins, earlier ones and the LE has 3. The 3x8 Sapphires were very popular for water cooling and extreme overclocking, iirc. Wish they had the V64 Nitro+ here, but for the last 6 months it was Strix only and now even that is sold out.

Yes, but if you haven't already got cancer then you can't prove you will get it from smoking, people smoke and live to a 100 so there's compelling evidence smoking prolongs life. And if you did get it, it might not have been from smoking anyway. People get cancer all the time whether they smoke or not. So, you can't prove global warming until it's already happened*, and if it does happen it might be due to... volcanoes! instead of us. The planet warms up all the time, it's natural and you cannot prove it's happening or that we cause it so it isn't happening and we didn't cause it. Quod Erat Demonstrandum, Science lady dogs! etc etc. *well, you can of course since CO2, Dihydrogen Monoxide, methane etc emitting in the IR range is 100% scientific provable so increases in their concentration will increase insulation, but we're not really dealing with logic anywayh. Russia has been going to obliterate Ukraine every second month for the past 4+ years, if you listen to Ukraine.

F4 got bad user reviews though nowhere near as bad as F76's obviously. IIRC F4 ended up with almost exactly the same pro review aggregate as FONV, so no bonus for BGS but still good review scores. And yeah, it sold well. There's no chance of Bethesda shutting down any time soon.