Zoraptor

Do you think you can explain the humor here? I don't get it. It's an ironic lol. Dunno why it's posted now as the article is 18 months old and still has Carter as Secretary of Defence; guess they've just visited Serbia. (Specifically, going to Serbia and saying you're from Kosovo would be like going to Madrid and saying you're from independent Catalonia or Kiev and saying you're from Crimea, Russia. The views on Kosovo in the article all also a bit... controversial; when NATO's version of what happened in Kosovo and the facts match it tends to be pure coincidence)

There probably are more than ten people who think Trump's an idiot, which might qualify as being a hater. Tacitus >> that gossipy, but entertaining, hack Suetonius. So it's pretty unlikely that Nero was even in Rome let alone fiddling during the Great Fire.

I'm starting to think that Muhhamed bin Salman is reverse Midas. Ali Abdullah Saleh was the power broker in Yemen for the best part of 4 decades and it took MbS 2 entire days to get him killed. Same day that Hariri fully withdrew his resignation in Lebanon and the GCC imploded. And it looks pretty definite that Trump is going to move the US embassy in Israel, which will no doubt please his son in law and apocalyptic born agains but pretty much no one else.

The only near direct analogy would be to a postal service which swaps from a mandate to deliver the mail/ parcels fairly to one where they don't have to offer a level playing field but can solicit better payment for better delivery times from both the sender and the receiver. And where the postal service is usually a monopoly, so there's no actual consumer choice except for which particular type and level of reaming they'd like to receive. You either have monopolies and regulation to stop them ripping people off, or you have no regulation and proper competition. No regulation and monopolies is always a recipe for both a rip off cost and a qualitatively bad service. We don't have net neutrality here despite most people thinking we do, and it doesn't matter. Here, if skodafone or telescum decided that you had to pay extra to use unchoked netflix- or tried to get money off netflix to prevent being throttled- you can swap to a dozen or so other ISPs within a day; it literally took me 5 minutes to change, though you might need to have a modem mailed to you so a couple of days tops. So instead of having monopolist base plans and monopolist extra costs you get offered proper bonuses for loyalty. Like free netflix equivalents, ironically enough.

Prequel hate? It's treason then. I actually put TFA into the same basket as Jade Empire. Theoretically it should be a fresh take, but instead it uses rehashed characters and situations taken from previous works- for JE its plot and characters are the standard Bioware template ignoring most of the stuff that would make an oriental setting interesting while TFA ignores the interesting stuff that should happen after RotJ for an almost direct New Hope rehash with a few bits of ESB thrown in. If you thought ME3 had masses (heh) of exposition there is a good reason for that- because ME2 failed to meaningfully advance the overarching plot at all until its last dlc. Which most people didn't play. ME2 would have been fine as Mass Effect: Recruitment but as a sequel and predecessor it was dreadful in retrospect and hamstrung the final installment terribly.

She went to Ohio and especially Pennsylvania plenty. Less than Trump, but for all his faults Trump was a fantastic and energetic campaigner. Wisconsin (zero visits, heh) and Michigan definitely were ignored or close to though in the end those 2 states alone didn't cost her the election, they just made the loss even more embarrassing. In some ways her campaigning was actually worse than ignoring them wholesale anyway. Firstly her insistence on staying on safe ground meant that she only reached those 'safe' voters who were always going to vote for her and she probably didn't even reach those who voted for Bernie- securing those votes should have been priority one. Secondly and most importantly she told a good part of the traditional democrat voter base to, essentially, curl up and die or get with the program. Her take was probably more realistic than Trump's promises (and to be honest, Bernie's too) but people in general will always take the hope that something bad won't happen over the promise that it will- and they hate being lectured by some multi millionaire lawyer politician about the 'real world'. It was a truly stupid thing (and time) to choose to be honest about.

Yeah, there's no chance of areas like the deep south switching to vote Bernie or whatever. Unlike commies the average southern voter is religious and won't vote for a godless commie- and even the democrats there preferred Hillary to Bernie by a large margin. France also had 4 candidates not two. That effect did happen in the US last election, it just happened in a near direct parallel to how it happened in France, ie you had traditional left voters in the rust belt voting Trump. The main difference being that many did so after Hillary was dumb enough to tell them they were irrelevant and offer them no hope while still expecting their vote. Stupidest mistake in a campaign replete with them.

They wanted to build on the legacy of Looking Glass Studios and the easiest way to do that is to throw in an obvious betrayal as per System Shock 2 and Thief*. OTOH Oblivion's plot actively destroyed brain cells as they revolted over the monumental stupid involved. *Aimed for LGS legacy, hit Ken Levine's signature instead. Sums up Arkane pretty well. But then again what can you do when the people in your focus group while testing refuse to try exploring your test level because the fricking guard told them to stay at the party so they just followed instructions and stayed at the party.

The studio that made Descent was not being paid (by Interplay, given that it's still run by Herve that's a quelle surprise situation if ever there was one), that's why they were pulled from steam and GOG, though they're back on GOG as of last week; and NWN2 has been on GOG for years. Steam is a minimum effort for maximum return entity, and working out legal problems is not a high return for low effort formula. Same for properly curating a landslide of shovelware or proper support for their games. It's also why they're so keen on the web2.0 stuff, some random providing support for steam games in their spare time is, after all, free. Wouldn't want a few support guys or people actually testing released games to cut into Gabe's billion dollar profits now would we.

Khamanei would be a better target than Rouhani. I suspect Trump doesn't know who either is though, which might be a good thing. He'd probably end up fatwa'ed inside a week. That reminds me of when ex Brit Foreign Secretary Robin Cook (otherwise a thoroughly decent bloke) decided to hold a meeting with the Irish Prime Minister in front of a portrait of Oliver Cromwell- who infamously slaughtered tens of thousands of Irish.

I'm still playing Elex, though I haven't had a chance to play for three days and probably won't get a chance this evening either. Got around to buying Tyranny from GOG's sale which will likely be next on the list, with the added bonus of getting Starcrawlers free which looks pretty interesting.

I like waiting for other people's lists as I would inevitably forget games if I didn't. I'd almost certainly have forgotten Stalker and JA2 and that would have been embarrassing. Should that be Might and Magic IX? Don't think HoMM IX exists.

They actually did make one here (The Almighty Johnsons). Not a weekday Days of Our Lives style soap though.

Not really, an unbiased strong international body is a good idea, what we have now is an abject joke. Mladic is a maggot to be sure, but selectively applied justice is not necessarily better than no justice at all as it ends up justifying and making precedents for all sorts of things based on current convenience. Ethnic cleansing being OK because Operation Storm was done by a now NATO and EU member and them being convicted would be embarrassing or Kosovo's secession (without even a vote, in contrast Crimea voted to secede from Ukraine twice prior to 2014 they just got gazumped by the USSR breaking up then crushed by 70k Ukrainian soldiers) being legal set precedents if you have international laws yet were done for pure convenience. You're also not going to see Bush, Blair, Sarkozy, Muhammed bin Salman who's busy starving Yemen (or the Mays, Trudeaus, Merkels, Trumps, Macrons etc who are arming and supporting him); or Putin or even Assad so long as he has Putin's backing in The Hague. You'll just see ossified current irrelevancies like Mladic and those like Gbagbo who pissed the French off but didn't have Russian or Chinese protection instead. the problem you are pointing out is that of an international institution not strong enough to act effectively against strong nations. I’m all for making them stronger, which will go hand in hand with an increasing number of nations submitting an increasing amount of their power. You can't make it stronger. Firstly it won't be allowed to get stronger- it's only there in the first place because it's weak and controllable- and secondly even if it did it won't deal with itself if the 'International Community' is the one to overstep the mark. The UN even specifically excludes itself from liability, as seen with the Cholera epidemic in Haiti and the spate of UN peacekeepers caught diddling kids in Africa and not being able to be prosecuted for it. And it will have to deal with the consequences of their poor decisions effectively forever due to their precedent setting nature. If they try to get anyone for, say, the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya in Burma they have to deal with the Operation Storm verdict.

Pay2Win isn't gambling though, is it? If you're buying a loot crate with a chance to unlock Darth Vader then that's gambling as it has that random chance element, if you're outright buying an unlock you're just making a purchase as there's no randomness. Classic gambling requires both a random chance game and a 'stake' or cost to be gambling. So random unlocks based on time played- the classic BF2 example being the 40 hour play time to unlock Darth Vader- wouldn't be gambling either, as there's no stake/ monetary cost, just a voluntary time cost.

Not really, an unbiased strong international body is a good idea, what we have now is an abject joke. Mladic is a maggot to be sure, but selectively applied justice is not necessarily better than no justice at all as it ends up justifying and making precedents for all sorts of things based on current convenience. Ethnic cleansing being OK because Operation Storm was done by a now NATO and EU member and them being convicted would be embarrassing or Kosovo's secession (without even a vote, in contrast Crimea voted to secede from Ukraine twice prior to 2014 they just got gazumped by the USSR breaking up then crushed by 70k Ukrainian soldiers) being legal set precedents if you have international laws yet were done for pure convenience. You're also not going to see Bush, Blair, Sarkozy, Muhammed bin Salman who's busy starving Yemen (or the Mays, Trudeaus, Merkels, Trumps, Macrons etc who are arming and supporting him); or Putin or even Assad so long as he has Putin's backing in The Hague. You'll just see ossified current irrelevancies like Mladic and those like Gbagbo who pissed the French off but didn't have Russian or Chinese protection instead.

Target demographics is pretty important. If gambling by minors is illegal, and if you determine that lootboxes are gambling then it's a big deal if they're also being aimed at minors as that is a more deliberate breaking of the law than an incidental one- you haven't just made the mistake of saying that lootboxes aren't gambling, you've compounded it by having them in a game marketed to children. Trouble for EA is that Star Wars is clearly a kiddie orientated franchise, so as soon as (if) lootboxes are determined to be gambling it instantly looks like they're also marketing gambling to kids rather than the comparatively minor problem of having unregulated gambling aimed at adults. The overall reason for it being a big deal is the same for gambling in general, or for smoking or alcohol. Adults are expected to be able to be responsible for their actions, children aren't- and you're not expected to try and get children to gamble/ smoke/ drink by targeting them either. Perhaps the best example would be something like a casino- everyone knows that a certain percentage of under age people will get into a casino using fake IDs or via carelessness. It's a big deal especially if due to negligence, but it's also expected. On the other hand if you have a casino with daily after school specials advertised around the local high schools you might suspect that they're not entirely aiming themselves at the adult market.

You need to keep your terms clear- are you talking about games being primarily purchased by children or played by them? I presume the latter, since that's what the ESA report is about (bonus for linking directly: avoids hits for Polygon). Their data shows that children are disproportionately game players, even if you include those that literally could not play due to being too young 29% of game players are under 18 while they make up ~25% of the US population. If you exclude those less than 4 as being highly unlikely to play games you get ~18% of the general population but 29% of the gamers. In any case you can and often do aim a product at one group while having a secondary group be the actual largest market. Programmes on TV usually are aimed at young people because they garner the best advertising rates, but they're almost always watched primarily by oldies instead since oldies watch standard TV a lot more than young people both absolutely and as a proportion. In this particular case we also have the game being part of a franchise (Star Wars) that is specifically aimed at children and has most of its other merchandise specifically aimed at children.

Hariri is back in Lebanon and has withdrawn his resignation. No great surprise there. Should be noted though that despite most reports saying his family left Saudi as well his two younger children are still 'guests' there, it's only his wife who went with him, and his elder son was always at uni in the UK.

Don't listen to the square. Sounds like a natural Berserker, that guy. All the cool kids are doing Elex! And it's heading into winter in the northern hemisphere, cold increases are only natural.

40% of them being illegals should not effect accuracy though, and it's certainly not a defence of employers since that just means that those employers are doing two illegal things- rather than one- and hoping that employees won't complain about the first because of the second. That's worse than just clipping wages, it's clipping wages while also illegally employing those you're clipping wages from. I certainly wouldn't trust the survey and chart to be accurate, by their nature those sort of studies are notoriously difficult to do well. Though that could actually mean that they're underestimating the problem rather than overestimating it.

Plot twist, it's the 1991 Neverwinter Nights being remade... NWN is probably my most disliked game ever so anticipation would be at r00fles level anyway, but at this point I also have a pretty strong antipathy towards Beamdog's business model as well.

Yeah, I'd like a transaction tax as well to be honest. It technically goes against my principles on not taxing already taxed income, but there's been a whole new exploitation area with high turnover automated trades and the like which need some way of being discouraged and don't really do anything for the economy except manipulate it, sometimes dangerously so- and generally speaking the less money you have the less you'd be effected by it as well.

Still no custom Vega cards released, but on the other hand the reference v56 are available here for a decent price at 750NZD and ~80NZD less than a 1070Ti. Since I can still sell my 580 for a decent amount a v56 card and a new monitor are on the menu for Christmas. Only drawback is that 1440p is probably the natural res for a v56 card but we only have have 1 IPS freesync monitor available in the whole country apparently.

Some of the laptop Raven Ridges are out now, based on r5 and with a few Vega cores. They seem to be competitive vs equivalent Intel but not a gamechanger except for there being genuine competition again. There are also quite a few 8 core r5s turning up now, so people getting a 1700 in a 1600 box, which suggests that the fabrication process for Zen really does have a fantastically good reliability and they're having to pad out 6 core models with 8 core ones- and aren't lasering off the extra cores either.