Everything posted by Zoraptor
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Politics Episode 8: WWF Edition
Dunno, seems to me that if you as a media entity whip up a frenzy yourself then throw someone's name out there in full knowledge that those you've whipped up will be out for blood then publishing a name is dox because you're doing it explicitly to threaten/ punish rather than inform. Funnily enough when Breitbart did similar things without the self interest they were gutter press inciting a mob per the usual suspects, but CNN is somehow just doing their job. And it's perfectly obvious that CNN and their defenders are aware that it's dox as well- that, more than anything was what made their implied threat so abjectly moronic rather than merely childish because it takes away the defence of public interest and makes it clear that it was done to threaten or punish with public interest being a fig leaf. When the news organisation is the centre of a news story they have to be extremely careful with how they handle it, CNN's response is a case study on how not to handle it like a real journalism would. Meh, only time 'CNN' and 'ethics' should be near each other is when 'lack of' is in the middle. Ironically, that's one thing they definitely have in common with Breitbart.
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Politics Episode 8: WWF Edition
I'd count cross referencing reddit and facebook as putting in a fair bit of effort, at least considering how little is usually put in. I'd have a lot more satisfaction about a troll type buckling if it weren't CNN doing it and if the guy was more at fault. End of the day it's a wrestling gif that got exposure because Trump posted it, it was not an assault on the 4th estate and it is utterly trivial. Yet CNN is so self important that they had them tracking down its author as their lead item, and were both smug and hypocritical about it. Ultimately I end up preferring that something bad would happen to CNN, rather than some random redditor. Theoretically, if a site doxs or threatens to dox a reddit user by trawling their posts it's a sitewide ban for them from reddit as punishment, theoretically it's about the worst infraction there is. Doesn't have anything to do with quality, it being reddit quality doesn't enter into things. Happened to Gawker, for example. Won't happen to CNN though, as all the CTR Shareblue bots would throw a fit about it.
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AMD Vega Roadmap
The Founder's Edition may well have been released just to make the deadline AMD set for itself in its investor statements, but they cannot delay Vega much more than they have. If it's a fundamentally poor architecture then they're unlikely to find a silver bullet this far down the line to suddenly make it better, and at some point they have to start getting Navi ready. FE release has been very odd though, it's clearly in some respects a very good value professional card, but in others it's seen genuinely baffling choices and drivers etc are obviously underdone. Mainly it seems like a really odd choice for a first release since at least if you release a fully pro card or a fully consumer card you can focus on getting one type of driver polished up, a prosumer card needs both to be decent since it will be tested for games and professional tasks, and it seems neither really are.
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Politics Episode 8: WWF Edition
There's a fair bit of amusement to be had, starting with CNN having that as their lead story over DPRK's ICBM launch. Also, CNN's actions are potentially at least illegal and it ought to get CNN banned from reddit as well. Neither of which will actually happen, of course, but still. Indeed, it's a both hilarious and yet oh so depressing thought that CNN may actually have spent more time and effort trying to dox someone who posted a satirical wrestling gif of them than they put into fact checking the entire lead up to the 2003 Iraq War.
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Politics Episode 7: Remake of Episode 4
But what logo will Accordion Man's head be replaced with? I do have to admit to being highly amused by descriptions of Trump clothesling Vince McMahon as showing him 'assaulting' someone and inciting violence. Much of the point is that CNN's 'news' is as fake as wrestling, and it's doubly fake violence as well. Pearl Clutching MSM, Sad! After all, the guy being 'assaulted' put Trump in the wrestling hall of fame and Trump employs his wife as Secretary for Small Business or whatever.
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RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS
Risen had mages, thieves (at the ruin/ swamp, with Gimli) and soldiers. Risen 2 had pirates, colonists and natives. G3 had a quasi 'full' faction system, so doesn't fit the pattern*. G2 had mages, mercs, soldiers. G1 had mages, and the two different prison camps. Pretty sure that all of those are joinable- though obviously I haven't played all of them as I need to do things like eat and sleep occasionally. Apart from G3 they all have three archetypal factions; and they're all essentially mages, warriors and thief/ ranger variants. How that works with post apoc will be interesting, but I'd be surprised if the template doesn't remain. *I rather liked the G3 system, though it was rather gamey since you could skirt the trigger reputation levels and the factions wouldn't care until you crossed the limit.
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Steam, Playstaion Network and other digital distribution platforms...
Meh, all those features are about lock in primarily, and Greenlight doesn't exist any more having been replaced by Steam Direct. Plus it was near universally disliked. The monetisation attempt made it clear why Workshop was established, and it wasn't to benefit modders nor mod users but to monetise something which was previously free- Valve even wanted a cut larger than the modders themselves would get. The stuff which would really benefit customers as opposed to Valve always gets short shrift, hence the mess that is their support, curation etc. It's outsourced to the community or woefully under resourced. (As long as you keep the client optional you can do DRM free and a client fine, you just choose to run the game through the client or direct from the exe. Multiplayer and DRM free, that's more difficult though) HOTU? I mean, it and similar were where everyone used to get their old abandoned game fix before GOG. I like GOG, but a lot of their old games are just DOSBOX bundles. You do realize that you just contradicted yourself in the same sentence? Steam isn't Valve and I never said that Valve saved PC gaming so no, I didn't. However, PC gaming is where it's at because of Steam, whether people want to admit that or not, that's up to them. The difference in meaning between 'Valve not saving PC gaming' and 'PC gaming not being anywhere if Valve weren't involved' is minimal. It's also incorrect, Valve did nothing unique except force people to use steam if they wanted to play HL2, and that's the sum total of it. I bought my first download game 4 years before HL2, and download Doom and the like were even older. Starting off with 4 million forced subscriptions gave Steam critical mass. Per top, everything since then has been Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, just as Gabe learned at MS.
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Steam, Playstaion Network and other digital distribution platforms...
GOG actively supports/ curates stuff that they sell, while Steam doesn't. That's the basic reason why stuff off GOG works most of the time, they literally won't sell it if it doesn't while Steam tends to only remove the most egregious stuff and rely on 'the community' and refunds. GOG's approach can have some problems as well though, eg they have removed explicit WindowsXP compatibility listings from a number of games since XP is not supported any more (plus Galaxy doesn't work on XP, so any game using it for MP etc won't have those features work), but they almost certainly still actually work with XP. As for digital distribution itself, I must have games on about ten? different platforms. Don't use any of the console ones, don't use Steam either since it's a software console, don't mind using uplay/ origin etc as single vendor platforms but wouldn't buy 3rd party from them.
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Politics Episode 7: Remake of Episode 4
Come on guys: be a rainbow, not a painbow. The Macron circlejerk really is laughable. Historically low turnout at the presidential election and he could only beat Le Pen, an awful candidate, by a decent rather than comprehensive margin. And 1/8 of the people who did turn up voted for the unofficial 3rd candidate, Monsieur Blanc, so even the low turnout was misleading. Le Pen getting a third of the vote is hardly a resounding victory for anyone, it only looks like one when she was polling 40% instead of 33%. At least he could beat his awful opponent though, unlike Clinton, so there is that as a positive. As for the parliamentary elections, the turnout was utterly dreadful- 42%. Previous one was hardly great at ~55%, except comparatively. Still, hardly fits the storyline when the great inspiration Macron's party actually got fewer votes than the Socialists got last election and only got 200,000 more actual votes than the 2nd placed UMP got last time. The rampant embiggening of Macron is simply a sign of exactly how establishment a candidate he is. You'd think he won with a massive turnout, inspiring millions to re-engage in politics. Instead it was the exact opposite, the Ne Voté Pas Party won a pretty comprehensive majority.
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Build Thread 2.0
I don't think there are any turkeys left in the SSD field, so they're all generally reliable. The main choice is whether to go with a SATA based m2 or NVME m2. Most people will not see the speed benefits of NVME, there is a big improvement from platter to SSD but the extra speed from NVME is unnecessary for most. I personally went with a 525GB Crucial MX (SATA m2) as the NVME options were near twice the price, but given your parts list I'd have to second the Samsung 960. It is a pricey option though.
- Politics Episode 7: Remake of Episode 4
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US attacks on Syria
So the US shot down a Syrian Su 22 yesterday. Most of the articles on it are a load of old bollocks, of course. eg from the Beeb Nope, the supposed bombing happened at 430pm the shootdown occurred at 630pm from OIR's own timeline. Practically this makes it definite it wasn't the same jet, as it would need to be unarmed to have 2 hours flight time in the area; plus time distance to and from, heh, ShayratAB is a third of its loaded range. There were two separate jets, the one which was shot down dropped no bombs. Also, the actual Pentagon/ OIR statement said the first jet dropped bombs "near" SDF troops, not on or at them. There was a bombing incident a week earlier, but that was a one off, about 20km away, almost certainly accidental and didn't result in any US action. The Su22 is not a fighter bomber by any meaningful definition of the term. It couldn't meaningfully defend itself against even contemporary fighters and wasn't ever intended to be used as a fighter. Best evidence is that this never happened and it was ISIS driven out by the government. SDF never claimed to hold Jadin and there were no reports of clashes between the SDF and SAA either prior to the shootdown. There have been some post facto claims of 'heavy ongoing clashes' from twitter (lol) but these have been contradicted by others and are highly unlikely for other reasons- primarily, SDF Afrin canton and Sheikh Maqsud rely on government territories for supplies plus there are Russian/ Syrian troops discouraging Turkey from attacking therm; and on the government side Hasaka and Qamishli are in a similar situation. It's in neither side's interest to fight each other, at least yet. The US definitely wanted SDF to grab Jadin and especially nearby Resafa though, as it's a critical road junction and would make it a lot harder for the government to get to the Euphrates' south bank, close off Raqqa and eventually get to Deir Ez Zor city and the Iraqi border. Is comically out of date and shows the government as being nearly 100km away from Jadin/ Resafa. Whether it's incompetence or deliberate that it was used who knows... It does however illustrate that the claim that the SDF were trying to surround Raqqa- subsequently edited out- is rubbish, as their frontline around Tabqa hasn't moved in a month, which is how it's known that they didn't hold Jadin. They don't want to surround Raqqa, if every ISIS guy left Raqqa through the gap they've left they would be literally ecstatic (note: that's the exact same tactic the SAA and Russia use repeatedly as well, it's perfectly sensible but isn't the story of ISIS obliteration the coalition wants out there). Plus of course the US bombed militia in southern Syria. Funny though, the legal justification for US presence is that Syria cannot control its borders, yet when they try to the US bombs them for violating an entirely self declared 'deconfliction zone'. And of course, no news on the chemical weapon attack in Khan Sheikhoun either.
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Is it going to be published by Paradox Interactive?
Zoraptor replied to dark___devil's topic in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)Meh, at this point I'd argue that Paradox is as bad as any other publisher out there. They're mostly coasting on goodwill/ fanboyism. I don't really care if Paradox publishes Deadfire though, since I backed directly and they won't get any money off me either way. Pretty sure that tech is just (or 'just') modified Unity and some scripting/ dialogue tools. Someone like Larian could very easily do a Tyranny 2 using the same engine as DivOS/2 if they and Paradox were interested in doing it, and so long as the deal with Obsidian allowed it.
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Build Thread 2.0
Other people's builds make me feel vaguely inadequate, the thread. Yeah, it's an absolutely dreadful time to get a 580 with the mining boom. 2nd hand 570s are going for more than I paid for my 580 around a month ago. Surely that bubble will burst soon though.
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RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS
That's the coolest looking feature I've seen added to Madden in over a decade. But will it be realistic? its the real question, unless I can get in barfights and beat my wife I don't think this will really give me the NFL experience. Class action suit dlc for when your player's brain turns to cream cheese from repeated concussions?
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Build Thread 2.0
If you're buying autumn/ winter you'd probably be looking at coffeelake rather than a sky/kaby i7 at that time. They'll have consumer 6 cores which ought to be cheaper than i9 but still have a long life, and not need so expensive a motherboard either. There's not a huge amount of info out about them yet though, and they've slipped release dates before. If you're buying now the only real option is the 6700k or 7700/k on the Intel side if you want any sort of longevity. The non k 7700 is actually slower than Ryzen on a fair number of games though, since it can't overclock while the Ryzens all can, for out and out performance in games you'd need the k version and a decent cooler.
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RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS
Not certain, especially since things may change, but I think he's contracted only for Anthem.
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Politics Episode 7: Remake of Episode 4
Instructions are to stay inside here as well and shelter in place, block door off, etc. - http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/high-rise-fire-1.3966746 Granted I suppose that reasoning presumes the previous four items are not an issue and the building is well made (though with the condos they build these days I am unsure ). Hopefully some heads end up rolling Stay still makes sense with sensible building practices, certainly, and especially if there are suppression measures in place. Though the only large buildings I've ever spent time in all used evacuation plans they were relatively small compared to that apartment building and had other reasons to evacuate (chemicals etc). OTOH there's a lot of evidence that people knew the building was a fire trap before this happened and in that case getting people out ought to be priority one. If you know the building has no sprinklers etc then the risks of evacuation (panic, smoke etc) are less than the risks of being trapped.
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Official E3 Thread (I forged the paperwork)
Consoles basically are PCs this time around. The xbox dev kits have always been PC based as well*, even when the xbox was using powerPC, and they've always used directX- indeed, that's where the 'X' in their name came from in the first place. That is why you can have show demos that won't work on release consoles, because they're pushed via dev kit PCs. *though you can use an xbox1 as a dev kit it is strongly discouraged, and per above it's basically a PC anyway. It's not a 12GB GPU though, that's unified memory and the bandwidth is shared as well. Everything shares the memory and the bandwidth. It has the same flops as an RX580, unsurprisingly as it basically is one, which is a decent upper mid range PC card but that's it. It's wholly outclassed by anything above a 1070 in PC land despite its high flops because that measure isn't everything performance wise. And I say that as someone who bought a 580. It's not a PC vs console thing, frankly if people are only gaming a console has always been better value unless you're buying loads of games on sale on PC (in which case you can use cheap hardware as well), the big plus for PC has always been that you can do other stuff apart from gaming on it. You can have direct hardware access and a skimline OS all you want and just as much as you can put slimline tyres and nitrous into your Civic, but it won't become a pseudo Ferrari nor will the console become a 7700k/ Titan killer.
- Politics Episode 7: Remake of Episode 4
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Official E3 Thread (I forged the paperwork)
Yeah, an RX580 is able to run something like Twitcher 3 at ~high settings, functionally above 60 fps 1080p, on PC. To get it to actual 4k/60fps you need to ~quadruple its power, which cannot happen no matter how many optimisations are applied. It's like tweaking a Honda Civic with a max speed of 150kph to run at 300kph- you might get it to 200 by pimping it but there's only so far you can go before you hit inherent limitations. 2xA10 processors and an RX580 is not going to get native 4k/60 on demanding games with high settings, it simply doesn't have the horsepower. Upscaling is a decent solution, but while it's far less strain than actual 4k it also lacks its graphical fidelity since it is, basically, using an antialiasing algorithm to predict what the 'missing' pixels would look like rather than actually generating the pixels.
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Official E3 Thread (I forged the paperwork)
I'd bet a million dollars that there will be very few games that run at actual 60fps/4k on xbx which aren't Stardew Valley equivalents graphics wise. You need a 1080Ti/ Titan to do that reliably- and even then not that reliably on newer games- on PC, and the xbx's RX580 equivalent just plain and fundamental ain't in those cards' power class. Nor is it, to be fair, in their cost bracket either as a PC card nor as a whole system for xbx. It will inevitably be the same situation as last gen when people thought they were playing CoD Iteration in glorious 1080p but were actually playing it upscaled from somewhat less glorious 960x540. Still, people should as always buy whatever suits themselves best, and for some the xbx will be a good fit. I personally wouldn't buy an xbx, but then I also wouldn't buy a 1080/Ti/Titan either.
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Official E3 Thread (I forged the paperwork)
Think they just wanted SW focus to be on Battlefront 2, since Battlefront 1 was not too well received and it will release before the Visceral game. Who knows though, their use of the SW license hasn't been too impressive.
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Mass Effect Andromeda
If they'd still had the management issues it wouldn't have made any difference at all. Doesn't matter if you have the best people in the world working on something if the ability to put it into a coherent whole isn't present. Having ten times the facial animations makes no difference if the part of the team working on the engine haven't been told to or hasn't been able to implement facial animations, all that work is wasted. And that, apparently, is fairly close to what actually happened.
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18-core Core i9
Intel's R&D budget is higher than AMD's entire turnover- it's certainly sufficient (or should be) to stay well ahead. They also have a host of research agreements with universities and the like. Their big mistake has been focusing on going after ARM's low power business which so far has been an utter failure. It was an understandable mistake though, that's the one market segment they have no real stake in so an obvious target for expansion. Also AMD somewhat sandbagged Ryzen's expected performance increase at 40% above Bulldozer when it was closer to 60% increase in reality, and that transforms it from competitive under certain circumstances to highly competitive under almost all circumstances. AMD's cluster based architecture is also exactly the sort of thing that a monolithic company like Intel would have difficulty coming up with when in a dominant position as there would be no incentive to try new approaches.