Zoraptor

Yeah, they didn't show 44 hits though, they showed some hits at high resolution, and a low res set of circles on a zoomed out image covering 2-3 km that you can't tell anything about, because it's too low res. If they provided the high res images they (supposedly) had for all 44, then there would be no argument, but they provide proof for a number consistent with the Russian version, consistency with the US version is solely on their say so, not on the evidence they provide. Inverse square law (esp from 20000 km away), and satellite size means that nearly any terrestrial spoof will override GPS; average GPS signal strength is 0.1 femtowatts, ie 1*10-16 W. Inertial systems are inaccurate backups. You can readily jam GPS, or potentially spoof missiles to gradually fly themselves into the sea, and an inertial system will not register that as a significant deviation because it's gradual. Or you can spoof GPS to land drones at Iranian airbases, whatever your jam is.

Yeah, had that out last time. The satellite images released showed nowhere near 59 hits, and were a mix of decent resolution images showing definite hits and a zoomed out master image with circles drawn where you can't tell what is circled let alone whether it was damaged at the resolution supplied. The US military itself only cited those pics as proof, and they actually show ~23 hits on ~17 structures, consistent with the Russian claim. It was easy to prove the right number of hits by showing hi res images of the other claimed areas of damage instead of just three (one of which was a single building), but we never got them. It also didn't help that other US claims around it were inconsistent; Mattis claimed 20% of an air wing destroyed, then 20% of the whole Syrian airforce; the first was likely accurate, the second literally impossible- 20% of the SyAF ain't even stationed there- unless they counted derelict MiG17s, of which there are a lot around Shayrat. Plus of course the base was back in action literally the next day. GPS spoofing or other ECM while over water could easily take out one destroyer's tomahawk quota, they have a known weakness when they cannot use terrain mapping. The Wagner attack was too far from Russian assets to interfere effectively even if they wanted to, and didn't use cruise missiles which can be taken out with no consequences. The strike on T4 is near 100% Israel just like last time, corroborated by there being fire over Lebanese air space (Israeli jets usually hide behind E Qalamoun mountains for attacks. They would have been after the supposed Iranian facility there. Bit risky since the Russians definitely had personnel stationed there to fight ISIS, but they may be elsewhere now. Amusing to hear the BBC say it's an airbase in Homs city though, after 7 years I would have thought they'd have learnt the difference between Homs City and Homs Governate, T4 is way outside Homs city, about half way between Homs and Palmyra. It was very likely a thermobaric weapon removing the oxygen. Suffocations of that sort were very common in WW2 and other fire bombing campaigns in air raid shelters and basements even with conventional type weapons and incendiaries; thermobarics were developed and are particularly used against fortifications for exactly that reason- as well as having a stronger pressure wave they suck the oxygen out of (hardened) structures, suffocating those inside. If strong enough they'll suck the air straight out of your lungs. The supposed attack method is also literally impossible, you can't combine sarin and chlorine without having no sarin at the end as chlorine is a very strong oxidiser; they have to be stored and implemented as CW differently; and you cannot drop a barrel bomb from any aircraft that lacks a loading ramp. Chlorine also requires pretty ludicrously high concs to be fatal. To put it in perspective, given the death rate from the sarin attack in ghouta in 2013 and the relative lethality of chlorine you'd need 12.5 tons of chlorine liquid to get 50 deaths, and that's as a liquid which chlorine ain't at STP, so you'd need a pressure vessel... The only reason there's any fighting at all in Douma is because some in the Jaish al Islam leadership are petrified of being sent to Idlib so there's been infighting between those willing to go and those who aren't. After 10 days the government got sick of waiting, less than a day later the deal is seemingly finalised.

If anyone was going to post that video... Dunno, it's wonderful for hysteria. If i see one more acritical report today which says that you can mix chlorine and sarin then drop them in a barrel bomb from a sukhoi I will... melodramatically roll my eyes at the screen.

Yeah, that's why I'm not going to reinstall Far Cry 2- insta respawn enemies in fog of war went the way of the dodo for a reason; unless your combat is fantastic and you don't have to retrace steps it's exceptionally annoying. I liked the original a lot more in the relatively short time I played it, but it's the only game I've tried that has been insurmountably unstable on this computer. As for people making noises when machetes killed them the devs really ought to have consulted with Sir Christopher Lee on the matter since he was a bit of an expert on stealth kills with bladed weapons.

Should also have mentioned that Sergei Skripal woke from his coma, coincidentally, a day after his daughter was recorded telling her cousin that he was resting comfortably instead of in a coma, and that recovery is inconsistent with the evidence of the US resident ex soviet expert (Mirzayanov) who claimed to have worked on novichoks and said the effects were permanent and recovery would not happen. The cousin also said it was food poisoning, not a nerve agent. While I'd be skeptical of that claim coming from any 'proper' knowledge I do know of one recent case involving wild boar meat (presumed, never fully proven) which had very similar initial symptoms, presumed permanent effects then recovery over a similar time frame for which no cause has ever been identified. People involved were utterly random Indian immigrants to NZ, so no chance of it being any sort of state action. Food poisoning also would not be consistent with other people getting very sick just by contacting the Skripals, but that isn't exactly consistent with CW either*. Said cousin has been blocked from visiting her, and presumably she isn't going to get another phone call any time soon. Shame the cousin didn't ask if she really didn't want consular assistance, to clear that issue up. Let's be frank though, if the situation were reversed it would definitively be stated as the dastardly Russians kidnapping a British citizen and denying access and communication to cover things up. *to whit, a nerve agent smeared on a doorknob seems unlikely to effect dozens of people mostly around a park bench far away, if you have enough on the victims to cause that much effect to bystanders it seems extraordinary that they survived a presumably exponentially higher dose while pets survived at their house, and if you go back to footage of, say, the Khan Sheikoun aftermath pretty much every single first responder has no CW or other protection at all to the sarin yet were not effected. Last one might be a problem with the KS incident and similar ones (eg Douma** 2013) rather than with the Salisbury incident though, most of the accusations of staging those attacks were precisely because the responders showed no effects. **Latest one being reported today is bollocks though, even SOHR says they suffocated because the building on top collapsed (imo more likely, a fire or thermobarics ate the oxygen) not chlorine. Still, a really crappy way to die either way.

It definitely isn't something that only the Russians know how to make as (1) it was supposedly a soviet developed weapon, and the USSR is now a bunch of countries not just Russia and (2) that isn't really how chemical synthesis works- if you know someone synthesised a chemical structure then you know you can synthesise it too (near literally QED; someone has already made it) and if you're looking for a defence to a nerve agent there is a very high likelihood you will have made it, to test it. Admitting that is, of course, not something you want to do. Knowing what a compound is and does almost always makes it a lot easier to synthesise than the initial discovery and synthesis, that's one of the main reasons for drug patents, a chemical that might take a decade to develop can usually be made by a plant in India or China within months or even weeks of release. That's also why claims that nerve agents have to be governmental are difficult to support, may be true for novichoks but the sarins and vxs of the world are basically organophosphate fly sprays that kill people instead, so long as they don't have to keep effective for a long storage time (which as chemical weapons they have to, of course) they're 'easy' to make at least chemically speaking. They likely know the exact chemical used, novichoks is their only name, they don't have short names like 'sarin' or 'vx' and the scientific names for complex chemicals may take 5 minutes to say so just saying novochok family doesn't imply they don't know the exact formula. It is possible though that they didn't get enough pure sample (since they seemed to take ages finding where it was applied) for MS etc, if they had to use samples from the victims they might not know the formula since the chemical would have been metabolised which involves the chemical being broken down into 'common' bits. The poisoning story is inherently quite strong, they haven't done a very good job of selling it convincingly at all though since reflex action is to exaggerate/ lie. Boris lying and covering it up was utterly moronic. Propaganda, well it isn't convincing to those who aren't already convinced and like most propaganda can easily be run in reverse to make it look like (sometimes suspicious) posturing. UK security council person saying that Russia should be excluded from investigations as they were an interested party that would prejudge innocence? Bye bye all UK, US and other experts from countries that prejudged guilt by expelling diplomats then, logically. Only 6 countries backed Russians experts to go on the OPCW mission? Well, you did little better since the majority abstained. 26 countries expelled diplomats? 170 odd didn't, that's a pathetic 12% backing you... Lots of people care, some even 100% genuinely so, since other people were effected. But a lot of those people certainly would not care if the UK had whacked Kim Philby and some innocent Russians had died or been injured, that would have been realpolitik and getting a traitor. And a fair few would only care if it was done by the Russians to 'nice' people and wouldn't care about Israeli Mossad murdering innocent people in, say, Lillehammer, or the French DGSE murdering an innocent guy here.

Looks like Boris Johnson rather over egged the case against Russia for the Skripal poisonings, as per usual, since Porton Down did not attribute any manufacturer and he and the foreign office repeatedly claimed they did. For anyone with knowledge of organic chemistry that was pretty obvious, you cannot get a country of origin from chemicals except in very specific circumstances since a chemical is a chemical wherever it comes from. Full on damage control now though. Pretty stupid approach too, you can over egg while remaining technically truthful and if you can rely on media not to question you can easily get away with being vague rather than specific; and it isn't like the circumstantial evidence ain't enough for the general public. Similar with the Khan Sheikhoun CW attack too, since it was a year ago today. The more actual detail released the less consistent sense is made, such as 40% of victims turning up at hospitals too early and in some cases literally teleporting 100km, and there being conventional rockets that have supposedly diagnostic chemical bomb 'filler caps' (eg, to right of main debris). Not that the Russians are any better at it, but if they're worse it isn't by much.

World building? In my campy time travel show? It's less common than you might think? Per Amentep, there's plenty of ways that Obama could be president at some point. There's far, far worse inconsistencies in the shows than that, which tend to get hand waved by 'speedforce' and similar explanations. There's one other Arrowverse president, Supergirl has Linda Carter playing her as they love their stunt castings even more than Flash does. That was about as blatant a political statement as possible since she's also a literal alien and pretty much everyone made comments about how they'd never vote for 'that other guy'*. That's a different universe version from the other shows though. *Then, ironically (don't you think?), one of the Arrowverse EPs got the chop for sexual harassment as part of #MeToo...

Yeah, consumer products aren't confirmed, but... That pro/ machine learning Vega20 was announced in January. Die shrunk Vega consumer cards actually were mentioned before that, they simply haven't been mentioned since. To put it in perspective, most people expect a new nVidia series to drop in the next month or so, and it hasn't been formally announced either and there were pro versions of Vega10 before the consumer version release as well, given '7nm' is a new process and the margins for pro level cards that's an almost inevitable approach. Advantages to Vega of a die shrink are far too great to pass up since it would fix nearly all its problems bar some associated with HBM; and even there reduced GPU heat will help memory clock a lot (indeed, undervolting the gpu to reduce memory throttling is perhaps the most common 'overclock' approach for Vega). Unless Navi is far further along than thought- possible, but the only 'evidence' for it is the inconsistent and speculative ps5 leaks- they'd be stuck with Vega 10/ Polaris chips for maybe the next 18 months.

Pretty good article that, though a bit wordy. It would be asking a bit much to outright come out and say that MbS is a hubris riddled incompetent given the depth of influence of Saudi cash, but it nicely lays out how many hand grenades he's pulled the pin on simultaneously. In a way it's not really his fault, if you've never been told that your ideas are crap or thrown everyone whose said it into jail then it's very hard to work out why things aren't going as you intended. Worse, you tend to end up with people lying to you because they don't want to be gulaged. It's funny to see Trump outright gouging the guy as well. Just about anyone else and I'd decry it, but I admit to disliking MbS enough that seeing Trump telling him that he's a very naughty boy and needs to spend more money on american weapons (presumably including patriots which are about as dangerous to Saudis as the Houthi rockets they're fired at, should bite the bullet and buy Russian like the Turks) on live TV complete with props was highly amusing, and now he's hitting him up for cash to keep US troops in Syria as well.

Some people almost certainly do starve even after the big food shortage they had, though it's certainly massively overstated how many and how often in the western media. Doesn't matter whether you're a friendly journalist or not, you're simply not going to get to see people who are really short of food. It isn't in China's interests for DPRK to be destitute anyway, so it isn't. China (and Russia, to a far lesser extent) simply ignore sanctions when they want to as there are no independent monitors and what would anyone do anyway; so large amounts of oil etc still get through which would make a real difference if they didn't. Mainly though, DPRK is one of those countries which is always as dangerous or pathetic, as competent or incompetent as the current story needs it to be, and no matter how inconsistent its depiction is. If you want to minimise fears it's a starving country with old tech and no usable nukes plus rockets that explode unexpectedly all the time plus a spoilt cretin of a leader; if you want to up the fear it's got a million man army with 10k artillery pieces aimed at Seoul along with chemical and nuclear weapons plus a leader who's totally cray-cray.

Realistically, Park (?) getting done for corruption ended any practical US prospects of intervention. Her replacement is an order of magnitude more pro peace than she was. Kim's played a weak hand very well, there's a lot of "yeah but, his people are poor and starving and he's isolated!" type comments from politicians but he has to actually care about that enough for it to have an effect, and he doesn't. He cares about having sufficient deterrent to stop the US from invading him, and that he has. The crazy man posturing is absolutely calculated- similarly to some of Trump's posturing- to make him seem reasonable, now, once he's got what he wants.

Yeah, it won't be an IP issue on the game content, it will be: "Game Technology and Toolset © 2007 Obsidian Entertainment Inc." (from the MotB box hence 2007) which would be the problem. Even if Hasbro could give permission for a remake it should require Obsidian's permission to make engine alterations. They might be legally able to back port the content to Aurora or to another engine to end run any Obsidian permissions, but that seems extremely unlikely practically.

They did come to him, the concert was in Pyongyang though Kim was not expected to attend. Kim's only left DPRK once as leader and that was last week (to China). The visit was reciprocation for the cheer team the north sent to the Winter Olympics.

They did Arx Fatalis as their first game and it's definitely an RPG much like Ultima Underworld it was based on. Arx is not without its problems but a pretty good game overall. There's also Dark Messiah Might and Magic which had strong RPG elements (and was based on an RPG franchise). Otherwise their games have generally aped Looking Glass Games- Dishonoured was Thief and Prey was System Shock- and as with the LGS originals they were all RPGish games without actually being RPGs.

I'd prefer to see some actual Chinese do it. CDPR has been good at doing what they know, medievalesque lowish magic Poland, but that's it and that's a fair distance from ancient/ medieval China. And Bethesda... would probably make me long for Bioware's highly respectful and original take. Suppose Arkane might be OK, from the overall Beth stable, but even with them it would be a departure they just have a more varied portfolio.

Vega 20* cards have appeared in some Linux certification, so it looks liker there will be a Vega refresh this year despite it not being announced. That should at least help with efficiency, and that may indirectly help with decently clocked memory. Plus eth is collapsing, so maybe I'll be able to pick up an actual card some time for less than the current $1100 asking price. Ironically Vega has probably been one of the most successful chips ever despite its flaws thanks to mining, it's basically never been in stock since launch nearly a year ago. *AMD's naming conventions really are stupid, since they have Vega8, 11, 24 (Intel), 56, 64 as consumer products which are all based on Vega10 chips '14nm'; with Vega 20 being the 'tock' '7nm' die shrunk chip to Vega10's 'tick'. Ryzen naming is about as consistent.

[insert relevant Tropic Thunder quote] Though it does kind of sum up mid noughties Bioware that their 'unique' Chinese setting somehow results in a game even more generic than their forgotten realms (!), star wars (!!) or deliberately generic space opera game of equivalent era. Kindest thing I can say about JE is that it was mercifully short.

That last one is tradition dating back to 1984- Elite had slaves that you couldn't tell were slaves until you picked them up at which point it was jettison them, or have contraband. They also had the ability to capture escape pods and get slaves which was a pretty nice (well, 'nice') touch for 1984.

Or for those who only read the headlines, 142 total diplomats expelled plus quite a few more Brits to reduce their diplomatic staffing to the same levels as those of Russia in the UK. The number of extra Brits isn't anywhere near the 755 extra americans kicked last time, but it adds considerably to the 23 formally expelled. We ain't kicked any Russians because they don't have any spies here, which generated some amusing headlines overseas. More realistically, we didn't kick anyone because when French agents outright murdered an NZ citizen Thatcher told us to harden up and endorsed French sanctions on us, and memories for such things are rather long here especially in the Labour Party.

You even got the etymology of it.

7/8ths of the world's countries did not join Britain in expelling Russian diplomats, how do people think the UK will handle their diplomatic isolation?

And the guy supposedly had presidential aspirations too. That idea was pretty funny even before the CA scandal, though maybe not as funny as before Trump was elected.

Ask a rhetorical question; get a non rhetorical answer. Indeed, Kaffir Limes are still called Kaffir Limes even in South Africa. I do have to admit I find kafir/ kuffar* being pretty common and unredacted in Arabic language videos on the beeb rather ironic given how they refer to the Afrikaans version, as its connotations are scarcely better in its usual context there. (kuffar/ kafir = 'unbeliever' in Arabic, though considerably more perjorative than merely 'unbeliever' is in English; it's the sort of thing ISIS would call a Yezidi to justify the genocide and rape. It's the original source for both the racist term and the lime variety)

They'd probably imprison Malema for bad words if they could, he was kicked from the ANC for singing the old farmer killer song. Too many militant followers for him though. I wonder if the Beeb refers to Kaffir Limes as [redacted racial slur] Limes on their recipe pages. Though given their name comes direct from Arabic rather than Arabic via Afrikaans they might have to call them [redacted religious slur] Limes instead.