Zoraptor

Useless spam sucks. Whether it's e-mail, phone, forums, or the release and genre lists at a online stores. It's annoying and it makes it harder to notice actual worthwhile games. Valve's discovery updates have done nothing to help this, they revolve entirely around the UI and their joke of a tag system. If it obfuscates 'worthwhile' titles it pretty much has to be worse than merely useless spam. And Valve's answer to it will be the same as Valve's answer to everything, half arsed and minimal effort. You'd think that with their resources they could do some curation given that GOG does it with a tiny fraction of their resources, but I guess with Valve's supposed structure all their curation bods would suddenly decide they really want to work on Ricochet 2 or some VR fad that nobody wants or Steam Machine DOA and forgotten Project 2.0, and then they'd be back at square one. That's the problem with monopoly positions, no actual incentive to fix problems since there's no viable alternative. If too much noise is the problem a moderate fee will do nothing to stop it and it may get even worse, if too many crap games/ games that don't get finished is the problem it won't fix that either and that too may get worse. And if it's a big fee people have to find 5k extra money to enter a system where their game will still be one sardine in a massive school. (Kind of weird though, the 'big change' involving submitters needing to provide bank details and company paperwork before distributing on Steam. I'm not an accountant and a mere layman in such matters, but I would have thought you'd already need to provide such details before publishing on steam...)

People said Trump was ineptly dishonest from the moment he started running. His strategy has worked pretty well since then, despite the criticism. It seems rather an odd strategy to me as well, but you can't really argue results and so far the results have been tremendous, the best results. Thing is, people won't remember the details. Commentators may, and journalists may, but people in general won't. What they will remember is that Trump wanted to stop terrorism, and that it was in the news for ages, and that [people] stopped him doing so. When the next terrorist attack happens- as it will- that is what will be remembered. They won't remember that the Bowling Green massacre never happened, that's detail which keeps the main issue in the headlines. The people who remember such things are never going to support Trump anyway (or are so committed they'll never stop supporting him). By and large you can tell when they aren't doing stoking controversy deliberately, because they then try and kill the story rather than double down. Things like Conway's 'buy Ivanka' are not intended, keeping terrorism in the news is though as it's political insurance in case there is an attack- Trump tried to do something about it- and political ammunition to fire at his opponents too. As strategies go it's fine, albeit somewhat... unpleasant since you're effectively waiting for an attack to happen to have it pay off, but you do get some benefit from it anyway.

Yeah, Mateen himself said he was doing it for and pledged allegiance to, ISIS so there was a link there; and he knew about the death of a reasonably obscure ISIS leader. The CIA said they found no evidence that ISIS knew about him, but they didn't rule out a link either, only said they found no evidence. The FBI also found no evidence that he was a semi repressed homosexual or using Grindr etc either, which was widely reported as being the 'real'/ alternative motive. If reports he was linked (other than self professed) to ISIS are alternative facts/ fake news then so was anything using the repressed homosexual angle. I'm always suspicious of 'x said he did this for y reason, but really he did this for z reason' with no evidence provided for reason z. At least there's his confession for reason y and he showed some knowledge on the subject. I seldom agree with WoD but this definitely ain't alternative facts, not even close.

That's a bit harsh on Muhammed Sahid al Sahaf. He'd have been literally shot if he went off script. Wasn't like those under Bush or Obama were any good either. All press secretaries are awful- it's in the nature of their job to be terrible, they have to lie, obfuscate, embiggen, spin and generally be untrustworthy- and the Bush/ Obama ones at least had the advantage of a more orthodox approach from their boss, and a far less overtly hostile press- even term 2 Bush. Then again, when I see 'alternative facts' I know that it isn't a new phenomenon- Obama's PR blithely defended the murder of civilians with drones, massaged the numbers, 'forgot' to include a significant number of them in stats (only for them to be rediscovered once he left office) etc. Sure, that's different from Spicer overestimating the numbers at Trump's inauguration, Obama's underestimation of the number of civilians he killed was greater than Spicer's overestimation and was referring to people actually dying as opposed to turning up to be bored by politicians talking for hours.

The Flash is too repetitive. At the moment it's probably the worst of the CW hero shows. I was prepared to be disappointed with The Expanse S2, since I liked S1 a lot and that usually means expectations get set too high. This time, I wasn't disappointed. Plus it's nice to see Ashur from Spartacus and Ula from Shortland Street again, though she's probably a bit young for the character she's playing.

I'd suspect at this point most would know him better as Tom Zarek in the remake rather than Apollo in the original. Probably more effective as a villain than any of the cylons, and if he and Gaeta had flushed all the self righteous gits out of an airlock in S4 I would have cheered.

PoE1 works fine on an e6400, which is even older and slower than an e7400. For that matter so does DivinityOS. Indeed, the OP's computer is positively modern compared to mine (e6400, 4GB RAM (but 32 bit motherboard so like 3.25 available), 1GB 5770). On the positive side, my 10 year old hard disk is in better condition than 99.99% of its contemporaries last time I checked. Waiting on (Ry)Zen to release, then I'll get a new computer, promise.

You have to add postage and packaging/ shipping to that as well.

I don't really know why they'd bother putting a few MB of steam installer onto a dvd in a box either. I understand doing that with retail copies as that's how EB and any physical publisher makes their money (and they're often cheaper than digital copies too). I don't really 'get' collecting though, I tend to think that if you're buying a physical tier you want to open the box and get everything out rather than have it sitting on a shelf- otherwise it might as well be empty. I also wouldn't pay well above the odds +P/P to get a box, but plenty of collectors are willing to hence the popularity of the high $ physical/ collectors editions I guess.

Constructor is free to purchase for a day. Never heard of it personally, but it does have pretty good on site reviews and sounds interesting. Plus you can't beat free.

Actually there are more then 1750 physical tier backers. So that's slightly above 10% of all backers that are getting a not so physical copy of the game. I really hope they are going to change this, or at least let us get a proper game disc after the game has had it's initial patching done. I wasn't counting the higher tiers, whether that was fair or not I don't know, but I would expect many collectors not to open the box and those higher tiers do explicitly say they include a digital copy as opposed to the two lower tiers that say they don't. I don't think that 1750 or 300 really matters when it comes to the reasoning as to why it's just a steam installer though, either way they'd have to have separate installers etc for patches for people who have (1) already paid and (2) are likely to be considerably less than 1% of total sales; plus complaints about not having physical copies of expansions and the like. I'd suspect that process was a pain in the arse last time and they want to avoid it this time. *well, theoretically and per description. The physical tier descriptions are a bit of a mess, if not outright misleading, I agree. A steam installer with (presumably) a code is a digital copy of the game rather than a physical one, by any sensible measure. Ceterum censeo steam delendam esse.

There are less than 300 physical tier backers. Presumably they don't want to have to do a separate patching branch with separate installers for only a few hundred people and would prefer it to be handled through GOG or satan instead.

Presumably it includes a disk as "..this does not include the digital copy of PoE2" (presumably) would mean you wouldn't get a copy of the game if there wasn't. "Physical box copy of PoE2"/ "Boxed copy of Deadfire" certainly implies a disk in the box.

Last time you selected which site you wanted the key for from the backer portal (Obsidian's site dealing with getting people their rewards etc from the PoE1 kickstarter), got your code and stuck it into gog.com/redeem to get the game on GOG. There are three editions- hero, champion and royal(?)- on GOG, the version you got depended on tier chosen in the KS. Presumably the system will be similar this time, with some modifications such as GOG now offering an Early Access equivalent for betas. It was pretty simple and easy to do anyway, took about twenty seconds if that.

Changed email recently, or since you pledged last time? If so the address list may not have been updated to reflect that especially if they built it from addresses associated with KS accounts, or even backer portal if it allowed an email address different from the forum (can't remember if it did).

I'll back it, at roughly the level I did P(o)E. I found PoE to be just whelming- neither over nor under- but I'd hope for PoE2 to be the BG2 to the equally plain old whelming BG1. And since there isn't really anything much interesting in the tiers it will be standard GOG key plus minor assorted extras again. I'd hope most of the funding for Deadfire comes from profits of PoE anyway, with any crowdfunding being icing on top. Doubt they'll get anything approaching PoE numbers since it's Fig and the crowdfunding craze has largely subsided but I'd be happy to be wrong.

I don't think anyone would cite Saudi Arabia as a beacon of border security- their Great Wall is on paper, and if it's manned by Saudis won't be at all effective no matter its construction. Meanwhile, shoeless Houthis are still wandering around southern Saudi watching the Saudi border guards panic and run whenever shot at and blowing up a comical amount of advanced gear, including Abrams.

Carbon is a great soil improver- and oil is almost entirely carbon, with addition of some useful traces elements like sulphur, and hydrogen which can be used for clean car fuel! The people of Iowa will be able to grow even more corn now that there's more carbon available. Even better, burning oil releases more CO2 into the atmosphere which increases the rate of plant growth, so it's a double bonus for the good people of the Hawkeye State.

Only people I know from Leicester are Claudio Ranieri and Richard III. Very helpful I know.

Cool, can you do Bolivia now please. For some reason potted rants about the evils of socialism never address Bolivia and I'm wondering why. I wait, with 'bated breath. Has that been a trend? The only one I saw was the SNL writer who has suspended indefinitely for tweeting a negative comment about the son. I've seen plenty, though 'mocking' tends to be in the eye of the beholder. When he had the misfortune to be stuck in shot while Donald was giving his victory (?) address and he looked incredibly uncomfortable and bored throughout there was a lot of comment, mostly just saying that or stuff like how much he seemed to enjoy dad's speech. Some of it in a similar vein to suggestions he was a potential 'home school shooter' though, it just didn't come from a minor 'celebrity'. I just thought he was doing a Pepe impersonation to troll Hillary.

3rd one is Fake News. Only the politically appointed ambassadors were fired- which isn't unprecedented indeed it's usual to replace them- their temporary replacements are the career diplomat deputy ambassadors who do most of the actual work anyway. Where the ambassador was already a career diplomat they weren't fired, eg the Ambassador to Khazakstan is the US representative at the Syrian peace conference at Astana. In terms of actual diplomacy it's probably better to have the career diplomats rather than political appointees whose main asset and reason for their appointment tends to be being donors to the winner. And if there's one place you shouldn't get political news it's reddit's r/politics as it has been taken over by Correct The Record. I actually thought that was Ron Paul for a second.

So you think the Canadian state is behind this? Real sharp. Behind what? The protests, obviously. The Russian interference was (allegedly) deliberate government sponsored interference directed from the top, this 'interference' is a bunch of beatnik hippies/ SJWs/ concerned citizens of the world who are not organised by the Kanadian state and are not directed at influencing the results of an election which has, after all, already been decided. The situations are not equivalent*. *With some caveats, hands off NGO sponsored protests and political interference via front or infiltrated organisations are a favourite approach of western intelligence agencies and are practically identical to Russians potentially using 'Fancy Bear' or 'Guccifer 2.0' or even Wikileaks as fronts, though those intelligence agencies will claim (of course) to not be interfering and that they're all genuine grass roots orgs. But you won't get such an approach vs the US as the stakes are far too high and there's far too much chance of discovery. Trudeau may have sympathy for the protesters, but he won't be supporting them perhaps beyond some carefully chosen words.

Latest entry on the official RPGCodex deviantart page.

That's a bit out of date now anyway, since Assange has said he may turn himself in (with caveats, of course) once Manning is actually released, ie May. Still won't be holding my breath- and as it stands he'd be sent to Sweden rather than the US as soon as he actually stepped outside anyway, so any agreement would likely have to be at least four way which complicates things more.

If I had to write positives on Obama I'd say that he came across as the most genuinely well intentioned President I've seen, and he didn't feel that he had to double down repeatedly on the mistakes he did make. Which sounds like faint praise but is actually one of the most important characteristics a leader can have; you cannot reasonably expect there to be no mistakes made but you can minimise the damage done by them and not make them worse trying to protect your pride. There's obviously a lot of negatives as well, but that's the nature of leading a powerful country- or being a powerful country for that matter.