Zoraptor

Can't really make any serious predictions about who a publisher is until more is known, which may well be when the game is announced anyway. We don't know much at all concrete apart from it having a publisher, everything else is hints that it's a new IP, possibly some sort of post apoc. We don't even know whether it's AAA and what that entails- the big AAA games often have teams that are far larger than Obsidian's entire dev staff. AAA also has no proper set definition, it's a marketing and expectation management term. As such I wouldn't exclude anyone from being a potential publisher at this point. The best 'fit' for the type of games Obsidian makes would be either Paradox, Nordic ('full' AAA highly unlikely from either) or Bethesda (and FONV is probably still their best '3rd party' seller), and you cannot even exclude someone like CDPR if they decided to get into outright publishing. Most of the big publishers- EA, Ubi, 2k, Activision- rarely use external studios, unless they're interested in buying them up. WB distributed TW3 as well in the US, iirc. It was distribution though, they fabricated the media rather than funding the game. Atari Europe/ Namco Bandai distributed all three Witcher games outside the US, and TW1 inside it. I'd agree that neither is a realistic prospect anyway.

Yep, despite all the protestations that ISIS should be "destroyed on the battlefield" rather than bused off elsewhere (per the spokesman of Operation Inherent Resolve Letting ISIS Get Away Repeatedly; said the one time someone else allowed an ISIS withdrawal) fricking 3750 ISIS members and family were allowed to leave Raqqa in a 8km (!) long convoy, mirroring prior coalition backed happenings in Manbij, Tabqa, and the escape corridor from Mosul. And yes, the Raqqa deal included foreign fighters, plus weapons. All explicitly denied at the time- the local ISIS people were supposedly to be taken to Tabqa Prison rather than bused off to ISIS territory and that never happened. And of course a bunch of ex ISIS joined the western backed SDF. The SDF campaign in Deir Ez Zor was even lead by an ex ISIS guy, up until it became publicly known he was ex ISIS when he was quietly removed for 'corruption'. Which he definitely was, indeed his brother was executed by ISIS for corruption- that was why he left them rather than any ideological qualms- but if everyone else knew he was corrupt beforehand then there's no way the SDF didn't, nor the reasons for him leaving ISIS.

In terms of prosecution Hillary got away with it because she was only provably incompetent, not grossly incompetent or provably deliberately sending classified emails. It seems very likely that she knew what she was doing and didn't care, same as she knew that setting up a private server was wrong but she did it anyway to avoid archiving requirements. But proving that against a 'befuddled granny trying to cope with technology' defence would be impossible to do. However, the FBI accepting examination of the DNC servers by an interested 3rd party instead of themselves is deeply suspicious and should never have happened.

It's certainly a stalemate, but the Saudis are still trying stuff- they've been trying to set up a coup and there are still some pretty bizarre stories coming out of Al Arabiya (Saudi 'Al Jazeera', but worse in every way) about Qatar, intended to sway opinion and build a base for more action. If they got a chance they'd hot it up as it's a fat target with a tiny army, they're just stymied by the US and Turkey being there. Their proxies have also been fighting each other a lot in Syria, with the main Saudi one losing so badly that they're just about irrelevant now and that no doubt stings. Yemen is a similar situation- kind of a stalemate, at the moment, but still lots of potential to flare up.

It was a standardised drop down menu for country selection, though very much iirc. So yeah, some of the results were probably misclicks or edginess. There were also an unspecified number of respondents from North Korea and only a few hundred North Koreans have unrestricted internet access. Though to be fair, Mr Kim is rumoured to be a bit of a gamer.

It's unlikely anything will actually go down, though you never know as the Saudi leadership's ego is only matched by their incompetence. They'd fight Hezbollah to the last Sunni Lebanese if they could, but even their main supporters in Lebanon are annoyed at having their leader kidnapped- and won't accept that he's resigned until he's back in Lebanon. That removes the one significant Lebanese group which could be pro Saudi, the rest are a few moronic Phalangist Christians and a few salafis. Mostly though, very few Lebanese want another civil war especially to benefit a bunch of stuck up Saudis. Any logical analysis says nothing significant should happen and things like the recalls of nationals are economic in nature- gulfies love doing all the vices in liberal Beirut they can't at home, plus invest there heavily- but then there are stories about KSA being all set to literally invade Qatar until Rex reminded them that there's a massive US base there, or Saudi announcing an anti Houthi/ terrorist coalition that none of their supposed partners knew about. With three crises at the moment (purge, Yemen, Qatar) a rational player would not seek a 4th, the real question is exactly how rational KSA is. If anything their policies have been more erratic than Trump's.

For CAR there's a very strong probability that they're foreign peacekeepers or maybe diplomatic staff. It's the poorest country in the world per capita (iirc) and they have a civil war going as well. The vast majority of the population has more pressing issues to worry about than how much they'd be willing to pay for dlc and what type they prefer.

No Italians answered the survey, but 2 people from the Central African Republic did?

I get juice and a biscuit for mine. Or a cup of tea instead of the juice, if you're that way inclined. It's sheer decadence here in kiwiland.

Forms like passports or IDs? They don't have IDs, only driver licence IIRC Yeah, so far as I am aware no anglo country has compulsory ID cards, only voluntary ones like passports or driving licenses. It's a bit of a cultural hangover, even in somewhere as 1984esque as the UK there was a colossal stink when they tried to bring in compulsory IDs.

The gun control movement can rename itself 'pro life', as they don't want any more deaths from gun violence. Then the NRA types can become the 'pro choice' movement, as they want people to be able to choose for themselves whether to own firearms.

They did a poor woman's Magneto last year, might even have been the equivalent episode number. I'm pretty much done with the CW superhero shows anyway, all their crises being solved in the first fifteen minutes of their seasons finally killed them for me. I probably will binge them sometime but it's four hours of the week I can do better things with at the moment.

There are definitely a lot of people in Saudi who'd love for the crown prince to be gone. There's a lot of potential for bad outcomes whether he stays or goes, they differ mostly in the way in which they are potentially bad.

Chances are they aren't going to do anything and it's pure rhetoric. Don't know whether it's meant to distract internally though, there's been some pretty dodgy goings on to distract from internationally as well- the 'ex' Lebanese Prime Minister's main Saudi business partner was purged and died (!) while being arrested, for example, which ain't a good look when you've got accusations of the resignation being forced and the PM being kidnapped. And the most prominent guy arrested is the best known liberal Saudi prince (he owns chunks of Twitter etc) which also isn't a great look for a modernist reformer. If they did go ahead it would be difficult for them to do. Jordan alone isn't enough as they'd need them and Syria or Israel. Syria and Iraq would definitely refuse, Turkey would almost certainly refuse, Egypt has already refused (though a bung might change their mind), Jordan would probably have to accept but would fervently hope not to be asked, and Israel is deeply problematic- no diplomatic relations, it would look terrible to Saudi's population, and the idea of Israel allowing armed Saudi planes to fly over their country seems... fundamentally unlikely. Saudi also need US support and refueling to bomb Yemen, their direct neighbour. As such they'd probably try something like using Syria's airspace without permission. If they really want all out confrontation with Iran they might as well go for Syria as well, that also makes it a lot easier politically for Israel and the US to get involved if things escalate.

Saudi Arabia says that Lebanon has declared war on it. Yes, seriously, though given Saudi's wildly erratic foreign policy- King Salman has Alzheimers, but it's his son running the show and they've spent PR millikons trying to make him look vaguely sane and competent- that could result in anything from being instantly forgotten about to several billion dollars worth of military equipment being incompetently applied in a semi random manner while the rest of the world facepalms. That's after kidnapping Lebanon's Prime Minister and forcing him to read an obviously Saudi written resignation statement (Saudi arabic and Lebanese arabic are pretty distinct; plus they did the exact same thing with Saleh from Yemen) which could easily be an act of war against Lebanon; and in the midst of one of their periodic bitter inter family feuds and while still in a cold war with Qatar and Turkey as well as Iran, and while fighting an embarrassingly badly run war in Yemen.

If owning some shares in a company that does some business with another business that is partly owned by someone on a sanctions list is a big deal then the vast majority of rich people of any type are going to be in trouble. People don't do that level of checking, nor should they. I'd bet any amount in the world that HRC has the same level of business relations with some Russians as that- and god forbid any politician in the UK go to a Chelsea match, since the club is owned by someone with multiple connections to people on the sanction list. You'd kind of hope that these sort of revelations would have some effect on tax havens and trusts and all the other tricks used by rich people to hide their wealth (and which normal people don't have access to to hide theirs), but turkeys don't vote for an early christmas and most politicians' donations come from the people who use tax havens and the like.

The main reason Mosul took so long is simply its size. It's a 2 million+ city and has a big river running through its middle. It's a focus point that has to be attacked and that plays into ISIS' defensive strengths- IEDs, snipers, suicide attacks. Mosul was a pure majority of their population so losing it further crippled their economy and manpower. They cannot replace losses as they have no money and no access to ideological recruits, plus their aura is gone and they're constantly losing population centres rather than gaining them. Much of their remaining holdings were desert, and river valleys with lots of small to medium towns surrounded by desert- and desert tends to strongly favour whoever is attacking as they can pick and choose their targets while the defender has to defend their entire perimeter. All of the SDF, Syrians and Iraqis have systematically chopped the ISIS holdings into bite sized chunks by outflanking their defences, then the surrounded groups are killed or captured and the whole thing repeated; and there's no way for ISIS to stop it. Their ultimate problem is that when they defend in Raqqa or Deir Ez Zor or Mosul they lose. They might cause casualties and delay things, but they lose and the defenders die (or switch sides), and that makes defending what remains progressively more difficult. Then again, the alternative is what happened at Al Qaim, losing a 150k city with probably half their remaining population with barely a shot fired. Result is probably them going back to insurgency, and probably in Iraq rather than Syria.

And ISIS is now down to one decent sized town (Abukamal), and that will likely go today or tomorrow; every other town they have is pretty small with populations in the thousands. Both their last big holdings went yesterday, Al Qaim (~100k pop) in Iraq in less than a day and Deir Ez Zor in Syria- ~250k pop, about the same size as Raqqa- which went from about 40% ISIS held to 0 over three days so it's looking like utter collapse and it's unlikely they will have any significant holdings at all by next week let alone 2018. Presumably there will be some sort of insurgency to come, but as a conventional fighting force holding territory they're finished, and in Syria at least they lack the sort of deep connections to the population that have kept the Taleban alive in Afghanistan. Indeed, there have been a lot of ISIS defections to (ironically, given the rhetoric they produced) the US backed SDF much as the FSA rebels defected opportunistically to ISIS in 2014 previous*. Bit of a different story in Iraq, where it depends a lot on how well Abadi handles the sunni/ shia divide and where ISIS was a lot more of a home grown phenomenon. *and some tribes were literally forced to cooperate with ISIS, plenty of massacres against anyone who resisted them

It's nothing to do with the graphics card anyway, ACO is putting high load even on to 16 thread R7s* and is murdering Kabylake or less i5s like Chinggiz Han with the mother of all hangovers. Up until this year i5s were considered absolutely fine for gaming, there's no way that Ubi is deliberately excluding them and they'd never aim for game release targeting only i7/r7 owners as that's a small proportion of gamers. It's also dreadfully unbalanced, because the CPU load is in some cases so heavy that changing graphics presets has very little effect on actual performance- because it's the CPU bottlenecking, not the video card; which also makes the 1030 reference spurious. It's almost certainly due to the DRM implementation as that would be one of if not the last thing added, so they'd only become aware of the problem at or near release and have a choice between fixing it via no DRM or releasing with poor performance- no doubt as to which Ubi would pick there, even without the evidence. *It's currently one of the oddest releases ever, since it's giving ~70% load on 16 thread r7s and near 100% on anything below that, but also won't work on some threadripper/ i9s as they have too many threads. Ironic. Finally a game that uses lots of threads heavily, but then it won't work if there are too many.

Manafort was always going to be in trouble as he would always get shanked by post coup Ukraine- for supporting and being paid by Yanukovich- if they could. And they could, since Manafort chose to launder the money and Ukraine could and would hand over their side of the paperwork. After openly supporting Clinton it's not like they had a relationship with Trump to preserve, after all. Most of the other charges look like fishing expeditions though. I'd bet anything that there are literally thousands of 'unregistered agents of foreign powers' running around Washington, and a fair few of them are in Congress. No way that people aren't getting bungs from Israel and Saudi, though it may be the internal US Israeli lobby doing the bunging in their case.

And the GOG version still has restrictions on how many cores your processor can have- I presume that turning cores off allows it to run (and that's easy enough with Ryzen, if you can be bothered) but the GOG version is certainly just improved, not fully fixed.

I am clearly a gamer rather than an alcoholic, as first thing I thought of was:

Yeah, they sure did a good job of not making there be an obvious choice for the factions. The way things are going in my playthrough I wouldn't be surprised if I got rejected by all of them. Berserkers ought to be good because they're fixing the planet, but they're doctrinaire and inflexible luddites; clerics have the same rigidity but are pro tech and outright brainwashing; and the outlaws are completely the other extreme, a mess who would end up fighting each other all (even more of) the time if they didn't have to worry about the other factions.

That's pretty much what the trading card system is though, isn't it- a parallel system to the achievement one with a randomised generation event attached similar to loot boxes? Sell them, buy them, craft badges, inflate your epeen steam level etc and every time they're traded steam and the game's publisher get a cut.

I'd hardly forget that photo, it has given me endless amusement to see McCain posing with a bunch of dudes who ended up as ranking members of ISIS, even if the one in the background isn't Baghdadi (and it definitely isn't) as many claimed. Supporting the then FSA was easy though, as Jordan and Turkey could be used and at that time you had a broadly cohesive sunni support group as well. They have support available for the Baluchi and Arab minority areas, but Iran's Kurdish area cannot count on any outside support.