Zoraptor

George Osborne did at least try to live up to the Tories rhetoric on the deficit via his austerity policies, and he wasn't that long ago. Though that focus was disastrous in just about every other respect.

To be fair to the Battle of Winterfell, it wasn't even the most stupid 'battle' in GoT*, amazingly. That honour goes to Euron Greyjoy 360 noscoping a dragon from a moving, pitching ship, with a ballista, from a distance of hundreds? thousands? of meters, because the dragons had gone blind, and Danaerys had developed a very specific form of early onset dementia which makes her forget about fleets. At least a few things in tBoW worked (well, kind of), that had no redeeming features whatsoever. *and would probably have been better received if everyone had the same a/v equipment as the producers had so could actually see what was going on. Oh god yes. They got a lot of criticism for how they handled Whispering Wood (? when Jaime got captured) and it being offscreen but the Battle of Blackwater was, in retrospect, an utter disaster for GoT longer term. Or at least their need to constantly one up the last battle in spectacle (but little else) was.

Liz Truss is British Prime Minister- and with the perfect situation for stability of the parliamentary Conservatives preferring Sunak while the general membership preferred Truss. Always great when you pick your current leader based on how well they can LARP a previous leader, and always fun when you get someone who is going to (try to; practically she'll be LARPing Meatloaf* at best rather than Maggie) cut taxes, reduce the deficit and subsidise energy, simultaneously. *"two out three ain't bad"; deficit is a problem for the next government yet again

That's always going to be the problem when you have a reputation for killing projects as Intel- though not to the extent of Google, of course- has; people are constantly going to speculate about the future of anything that doesn't make an immediate profit. And it has been ~5 years with not much to show for it. But really, there's no better way to tank your value as a company than to appear moribund and bereft of ideas. Intel's already shown some vulnerability in its own core server/ consumer CPUs and foundry business and really needs something proactive to show they have ideas for growing instead of just maintaining what they have. They couldn't get into the mobile (phone) market at their peak, so GPU is the obvious option. It's just going to cost them a lot to get established and still may not work; and you'll always have people who think that money could be better 'spent' on dividends.

Late to the party but I watched Mr Robot having had it recommended to me. Overall I liked it a lot, but..

The first Shadow of Mordor game is now available. (Note: if you're a Prime subscriber you will probably get a free GOG key anyway)

On this HoonDing is 100% correct, even unironically. Shannara was a clunky low budget (though high for the network) MTV/ SpikeTV show featuring people chosen for looks rather than talent, but it was absolutely fine considering that was always what it was going to be. Same, perhaps more surprisingly, for Sword of Truth- and that's one series where actively avoiding/ changing the source material was a good thing given the source material. Both shows were far more on the, hmm, 'Monkey' or 'Hercules' side of the serious drama scale than the Game of Thrones side too. A particularly bad experience can retroactively improve ratings for other shows. One might not like vanilla ice cream all that much for dessert but it's at least functional and achieves what it aimed for. Though Shannara and SoT were probably closer to a McDonalds Sundae... Something like WoT though? Durian, brussels sprout, anchovy and soy sauce sorbet with a carolina reaper jus and turnip garnish. Makes anything else more palateable just thinking about it, and the inexperienced chef pontificating about how awesome it is and how much he's improved on and updated the original is just the metaphorical icing on top.

Yep, it most definitely can be that bad*. Though most of the reviews aren't as critical as that one there does seem to be a general theme that it's high on great visuals** but low on everything else. *think I've said it here before, but its production had an awful reputation here. You can usually find people willing to praise even 'bad' products that were made here- eg Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell- as being 'nice places to work' or 'trying hard' or whatever; but I don't think I've seen anything beyond the most basic 'gave people jobs' type 'praise' for RoP. All the rumours very much suggest that the showrunners thought they weren't just better than Peter Jackson, but better than Tolkien too. **though from the trailer it looks to me to suffer badly from 'Wheel of Time' syndrome; nice scenery, but everything looks like it's never been lived in. [goddammit]

Yeah- the 'real world' inspiration for HotD seems to be ~ The Anarchy, when Stephen of Blois 'usurped' the throne of England from Henry I's daughter Empress* Matilda. Same as the Wars of the Roses with its four 'illegal'/ might makes right throne changes were the inspiration for aSoIaF/ GoT. Fun fact: if Matilda had won she'd be the only English Queen until Victoria to have had issue themselves become monarch, in Henry II. Liz I, both Marys and Anne had no direct heirs. *at least theoretically by marriage only, though she seems to have largely worn the pants in her marriage. Indeed the HRE fought a war over the possibility of a Regnant Empress as late as the 18th century (Maria Theresa/ War of the Austrian succession; though the actual Austrian candidate was her husband rather than her). Pretty sure both France and Spain never had reigning Queens either- though Russia had a bunch.

I suspect a lot of people (well, gamers) will be waiting for the 3d chips, and others want to avoid Early Adoption Syndrome for DDR5/ a new chipset. Objectively it's not a bad launch, it's just less good than some of the previous Zen launches, and doesn't give a massively compelling reason to upgrade.

Can't see them taking liberties with things like who ends up on the throne. Not after all the distancing they've done from the B&W approach of the last few seasons of GoT and how GRRM is intimately involved in this one etc. Some of that is definitely marketing for the people who hated GoT's later seasons, but end of the day they've gone out of their way to say it's in 'book continuity', and book continuity can't really have a... Blackadder season 1* type scenario of inserting a Richard IV between Richard III and Henry VII and be book continuity. Far more likely to be an 'I, Claudius' or 'White Queen' type scenario where the 'historical' facts are used as a backdrop for fleshing out the drama, but the end results are 'historical'. *not that Blackadder is a serious historical drama, but Richard IV is the most obvious inspiration for Robert Baratheon there is, far more so than historical Edward IV. Despite the great job Mark Addy did it will always be a shame the world was deprived of Brian Blessed enthusiastically shouting 'Rumpy Pumpy' or similar at Ned Stark

Their OPSEC has been pretty rubbish, which is why Zelensky fired a bunch of Intelligence people a few weeks back and why they banned photographing military equipment earlier than that. They just haven't been posting detailed plans to Twitter. They also have an inexhaustible horde of people willing to explain how every move is genius- eg the July Kherson offensive didn't fail, it was just to divert Russian resources. Guess at some stage they're actually going to do something in Kherson, but we're near the Isonzo River number of battles, on social media. eg, the August offensive (1st, twitter, when they recaptured '20 villages'; not 2nd, ongoing) 8 August 2022, after the 1st August Ukrainian offensive (twitter) 22 August 2022 I don't think anyone believes the Russians actually recaptured all that land.

In absolute terms the wages are... OK here, though the cost of living is ludicrously high relative to them thanks to some really stupid decisions (eg see below). The trouble is twofold; firstly stress, conditions, overtime and understaffing make the wages seem really poor and just not worth it for professions like nursing, but also for teaching the the like. Secondly, we have very good training programs but the wages and conditions are better in every other anglo country. So the choice is more stress for less money in NZ, or go elsewhere. And if you've got a student loan 10% of your wage is garnered by the government too which it won't be overseas, and along with kiwisaver contributions nurses are on a ~50% tax rate. The houses here are hilarious, the perfect mix of expensive to build and utter crap when built. Monopoly plaster board supplier, export raw logs and import processed timber for building, cowboy operators who declare bankruptcy every 5 minutes when their homes start leaking. And built on the best agricultural land to add an extra layer of stupid, with utter bafflement when vegetables get expensive... maybe it's because you've allowed crappy McMansions to be built on all the fertile land?

Netflix has cancelled their Resident Evil series after one season. Which, from what I've heard, may well have been one season too many.

You can always go for the New Zealand model of education. Have high fees, have low wages- especially for anything seen as 'vocational' where obviously people want to do their jobs for the benefit of society, so will, equally obviously, accept permanently awful wages and conditions! Wonder why everyone with a useful degree leaves the country and many never come back and thus never pay back their loans, and every, say, nurse is either on the verge of quitting or a south asian import (and after a few years the imports quit too due to the stress). Plenty of money for staff, but heaps of vacancies because the wages are too low. Then be baffled by the 'skills shortage' and why everyone has gone to Australia, the UK, US, Dubai for twice the money and far better conditions- yes brits, even in the NHS. All from the geniuses who didn't think pumping $50bn into rich people's pockets would result in either a housing bubble or inflation (couldn't give it to poor people of course, that would be inflationary...)

WW1 western front strategy game: you turtle for 3 months while your opponent zerg rushes you, then you swap roles and try zerg rushing him while he turtles- wash and repeat for everything except the first two and last four months of the war. I have a great idea for DLC too, Italian campaign selling each battle of the Isonzo (and run out of money/ motivation before getting to the 12th/ Caporetto where something actually happened). Really, pretty much anywhere else would be better than the western front. Let's start with Paul Von Lettow-Vorbeck in Tanzania...

A serving NZDF soldier has been announced as killed in Ukraine, though there are no further details to hand so far (except that they were meant to be 'on leave' rather than active duty).

little bit more (or less?) work and you could have typoed it to septical instead. Dunno, I suspect they wanted someone reminiscent of the, uh, 'original' Viserys's (ie Harry Lloyd, who was also in Doctor Who- and pretty memorably too, for a one shot villain) unusual looks, and if so there aren't that many options. Both Smith and Lloyd stand out in everything they're in for not having a conventional look and for some very distinct mannerisms. Personally I don't find that distracting, but that is very much a Your Mileage May Vary situation. Have to admit I kind of wish they'd gone with Tom Felton, or Jason Isaacs... Eh, the nudie/ sex scenes in early GoT didn't exactly have much purpose either- in general*- except to keep casual viewers 'interested' during some lore dumps. Which you can do without naked Esmé Bianco. I'm not exactly Captain General of the Social Justice Army but some of the GoT sexposition was really, really cringey. OTOH yeah, the violence suffered from huge expectation inflation over the course of the original series with them constantly feeling the need to top the last thing, and just ended up silly in the end. Not a good sign if it's already in shock for shock's sake territory. *no doubt HotD suffers here because Khal Drogo/ Daenerys and Jaime/ Cersei were absolutely critical and both (? iirc) were in the pilot episode. After that though...

The reviews are out for the Saints Row reboot and they're not exactly glowing. Which I don't think will be a major surprise; and while some of the tech issues might get ironed out by the 1 year beta period on EGS the complaints about gameplay and especially characters and story will be a lot harder to fix.

Most assassinations take a lot of planning but aren't all that complex when it comes to the actual, uh, execution. Driving up to Dugin's car on a motorcycle and hitting it with a limpet mine or spraying it with bullets sounds more simple, but it still involves almost all of the planning. You've only really got one more significant step involved here, and that's getting access to the car as setting up a trigger system for remote or timer detonation isn't difficult, even backyard terrorists can do that. You can get around the car issues by cloning the fob though. Which is neither difficult nor expensive, and then the car thinks you're its owner and so does anyone casually walking by. After all, you're not going to smash the key barrel out with a screwdriver like a 13 year old. Bomb under driver seat, then rig it to accelerator or gear shift (if required).

Cheers Bruce, perfectly illustrates the point that "Problem is journalists reading asterisking wikipedia and referencing each others' bad references instead of actually reading/ listening to Dugin himself" I mean Wow, one whole journalist. If you want an example of actual handwaving, can't get much better than that. Thing is, if you, say, called Cheney "Bush's Brain"- or "Bush's Rasputin"- people might disagree, but there would also be a lot of evidence you could point to in support of it. With this there's... *crickets* when you look for similar evidence of Dugin being "Putin's Brain", let alone things like an aide or confidante. Certainly Dugin himself is consistent on one thing, that he's only an indirect influence. Guess "Putin's episode of Neighbours on in the background while he fixes dinner" while more accurate doesn't quite have the cachet though.

No you're not blind, the article was about the attempt to blow up Dugin. Two different issues in the post, 1st was about Dugin, 2nd was about the Grey Zone stuff- they've been posting again as of yesterday. The former... yeah, nah. He's spoken out extensively against Putin in very similar vein to how Girkin/ Strelkov has- he's not going far enough, too populist, too conservative and averse to risk (should have gone to Tblisi, should have invaded Ukraine in 2008 too etc), listens to liberals (like, uh, Medvedev*) too much- something he's repeated many times. Much like Girkin/ Strelkov probably not enough for Putin to bother doing anything about though, as he just isn't very important. Which actually actually makes him a near ideal target since he's got a ludicrously undeserved high profile in the west, but is nowhere near important enough in reality to warrant special protection. The latter... yeah, that's kind of lol really and one of the reasons my opinions of media coverage are so low. He's got far more in common practically with, as above, Girkin/ Strelkov than Putin. Far, far, far more, and despite the fact he'd probably hate the comparison. He's also not an 'aide' or confidante as described in multiple articles, he- by his own admission- has actually barely even met Putin. He's also wildly divergent in terms of even how much 'intangible' influence he claims to have, ie how much he claims Putin follows his dogma. Sometimes contradicting himself on that question in the same interview. Which is because Putin, of course, isn't really following Dugin much at all, it's just that Dugin described the blatantly obvious Eurasian strategy in a book the media has picked up on. Problem is journalists reading asterisking wikipedia and referencing each others' bad references instead of actually reading/ listening to Dugin himself. *ok, technically arch nationalist and complete fruitbat Zhiro was an example of an actual Russian Liberal, but he was talking little l liberal, not big L

Yeah, that was referring to the Grey Zone people (who have now posted something) not Dugin. Yeah, guess it would be fine then if someone blew GWBush up with a car bomb? Probably wouldn't be fine if they blew Jenna or Barbara up instead though, now would it?

Looks like someone tried to assassinate Alexander Dugin, but only succeeded in killing his daughter. Seems they didn't get them either.