Zoraptor

They'd have to expect them to leak, way too many reviewers got the 6 eps rather than 3. I would reiterate that the first 3 are good enough that I'll keep watching, despite my quibbles and more significant dislike of ep1. I'd be pretty sure that they're aware of it, at least. Some of the xray stuff was pretty detailed and explained the differences from the books, and you really cannot miss the Arthurian (or Jesus) parallels in the books without being deliberately obtuse about it. It not being a priority to show is perfectly understandable though, as are things like having Thom sing a very thinly veiled song about the Dragon instead of their legendary stories based on our history. (and on the subject of the real world bases for their legends I always assumed that the 'Salya' story was Salyut, the first space station. Not being American I only knew about Tereshkova and had literally no idea who Sally Ride even was apart from her being in a line from "We didn't start the fire" until I checked if there was any more real world references in the books and they all say that it's a reference to Sally Ride instead. I'd fight the ghost of RJ over it)

Well yeah, but it wouldn't actually matter if the show population there was black, asian or indian so long as it was more or less consistent. The only thing they should have avoided for plot reasons was having the town look like a Bennetton advert, which of course they did because posturing > plotting. otoh (mild ep3 spoilers) (Ironically having the stereotypical 'woke' racial diversity quota in somewhere as isolated as the Two Rivers could only happen- in reality- if the races close to only bred within themselves. Not exactly what the typical adherent of wokeness would want to be implying And for anyone wondering why, apart from genetics the major factors are isolation and slow transportation speeds, and not having any disposable income. You'd get diversity in sea ports and major cities especially on major trade routes or rivers, small villages though would be little i inbred as anything and the vast majority of the population would live and die close to where they were born)

It's very much the visual style that is derivative of the lotr movies. The plot and appearance of the Two Rivers is actually a lot less LOTResque than the source material. Anyway, WoT ep3- nested spoiler would be pretty big for a non book reader so be warned

Non spoiler WoT TLDR: Ep1 is decidedly meh. Ep2 is far, far better. And I haven't watched Ep3 yet. If there's one problem that looks like it's going to linger it's that the whole thing looks like Great Value LOTR trilogy I don't think there are any serious spoilers, but I'm not going to be too careful about obfuscation so... Ep1: Ep 2: And look at that, I managed to get through it without a single comparison to Game of Thrones. I should win a prize.

Yep, that's how I usually do it if a quote doesn't work, but it isn't working. The straight link was the last thing I tried. (Firefox has a pending update and hasn't been shut down for ages, that's probably the reason for it. Can't discount Kurzman having shares in xenforo and messing with me though)

I gave up before the STD S3 finale, and you just feel so much better for it. I certainly can appreciate the, er, dedication that goes into continuing, and the fact that that post has more care and thought put into it than the writers and producers put into the actual product. Indeed, probably more than they put into the entire season of product if not the entire series. Gotta admit I outright loled at that bridge scene pic. Looks like a screen capture from a 2009 video game done in the style of the Wing Commander 2/ Privateer cinematics. Forum software must be paid by Paramount since it won't let me quote it and it won't even do a fresh embed (unless it's the wysiwyg going bonkers), and that's a terrible shame. https://imgur.com/OTEAXrh

WoT spoilers

Specifically, judging from the reviews/ trailers/ synopses for WoT

You're free to use it on your civil population though, you just can't use it on enemy soldiers.

They relicensed some of the songs, iirc there are something like 40 original tracks missing over the three games. Don't know if they've licensed any new ones as replacements. It is, of course, not necessarily Rockstar's fault that they couldn't relicense some of those (for some reason Sony had been very difficult to get song licenses out of, which was why GTAVC got pulled then reinstated with Sony songs missing a few years ago). It is however most definitely their fault that those tracks were included in the media despite not being licensed. Kind of ironic- in the Darth Plagueis vein, not the Alannis- that a company with noxious DRM has to pull a product for flagrantly ignoring other peoples' IP rights, though that certainly isn't the only problem.

Poor quality is somewhat of an understatement, and on PC somehow manages to be the least of the issues. They left an enormous amount of cut and unlicensed content (eg music tracks they didn't renew the rights to) in the files- and hadn't even redacted the hot coffee files. As a result the Rockstar launcher was down for a day meaning people couldn't play any game linked to it. Now you simply cannot download or play GTA trilogy for an unspecified amount of time while they fix its issues over ??? days andor months. Oh yeah, and the Switch version included most of the source code... Makes C2077's launch look smooth as silk wrapped satin.

Meh, Lukashenko is more than capable of doing such things himself. He was very good at playing off Russia and the EU against each other up until recently, in what amounted to blackmail, or at least bid inflation. What he wants fundamentally is for the EU to talk to him, because as soon as they do they've acknowledged that he's still President and they've lost. Anything further is a bonus. Antagonising the countries that are hosting the opposition is, of course, also a massive positive so far as he's concerned. Putin is being Putin, and one thing Putin loves is a good troll.

Yep, but the potential for distortion is a lot higher than it seems on the face of it since ultimately the basis of the 95% efficacy claim resolves down from ~44k participants to only 170 people. I've had other issues with the 95% anyway, since it seldom seems to be compared on a like to like basis. There's more than enough evidence that it's a good vaccine anyway, but its practical performance has been lower than expected given the initial study.

Oh dear, Pfizer (contractor) caught cooking its data*. Wonder if they'll get the same treatment Astra Zeneca got from an admin error? Maybe the same rumours and innuendo from the press as sputnik or coronavac? Don't want to spoil it for anyone, but they won't. It does potentially explain why Pfizer's efficacy drops off so precipitously over time though compared to other two dose vaccines and especially the functionally identical Moderna, if the initial effectiveness was inflated. Also, an absolute gift to antivaxxers. Coincidentally, the Pfizer CEO now wants vaccine misinformation criminalised... Not a safety matter, but most definitely also not just a statistical/ admin issue either. Non independent selection of symptomatic cases to analyse is a very big no no, and the blind nature of the trials was thoroughly compromised. *and unsurprisingly, warning about it ignored/ suppressed by the FDA. Brazil overall has a high vaccination rate, and iirc Sao Paolo was one of the places that went off the reservation with its response when Bolsonaro dropped the ball. It's also a fricking massive city, and even more populous state. Considering how badly thing are going elsewhere at the moment being pleased with zero deaths is understandable. OTOH I do find the various 'covid recovery indices' rather ridiculous. #1, Ireland, with 1100/ million death rate; #38 New Zealand, with 6. (Technically of course Ireland has definitely recovered better- but it's in the same way someone run over by a car has more recovery than someone who stubs their toe. You'd still prefer not to get run over, on balance)

For anyone wondering while that's certainly true of a house- ie good insulation keeps you warm in winter and cool in summer- a human produces heat, it's like having a well insulated house, and running heaters year around. Swaddling in the heat will result in heat exhaustion very, very quickly except under very specific conditions and equipment (though there are some counterintuitive things like why some people wear black in the heat- matt black is actually the best 'colour' at radiating heat away, while white is the worst so if you're out of the sun black is a good choice) The type example for what really happens if you're dumb enough to wear full plate armour in hot conditions would be the monumentally, monumentally, stupid Battle of Hattin. Strip your garrisons, march your medieval knights out into a blasted desert in the middle of summer where your enemy controls the water, be surprised when the bulk of your force isn't even capable of running away a day later. Salah-eh-Din doesn't really need to do anything when faced with moronism that abject.

The realism argument against boobplate was always a bit silly. In reality, the number of women who wore plate armour or even breastplates* was incredibly low, and the number who fought in it so low that I'm not sure there is a single verifiable example at all. Realism says that neither should exist (nor chainmail bikinis**) so it's all a style choice. Now, pauldrons, their abuse in gaming settings is most certainly a subject very close to my heart. *decent number of women in other roles in medieval armies though, since anyone in them was simply assumed to be male. For obvious reasons limited to roles where you didn't need help putting armour on though. **while unrealistic, it has to be said that half the english army at Agincourt fought literally literally half naked. That was due to the rampant dysentery they were suffering from though, not a video game catering to the female eye.

While the effectiveness against infection drops off a cliff after a few months protection against serious infection- hospitalisation/ death- is largely maintained. Kind of ironic though, Pfizer has by far the worst drop off of the 2 shot vaccines- a lot worse than the Moderna mRNA vaccine too- so much so that it ends up worse than Astra Zeneca after a few months.

Looks like there's been an attempt to assassinate the Iraqi PM via 'suicide drone'. (More than a bit skeptical about it, if someone wanted Khadhimi dead there would be far more reliable ways to do it than hitting the Presidential Palace with a drone. Not like there's a shortage of people willing to take bribes in Iraq let alone anyone willing to do it directly for ideological reasons)

I reckon who could win may be one thing where RJ changed his mind on as time went on. The whole thing ended up very deterministic, but didn't look anywhere near as much so earlier. Note: I really hate determinism...

They need Windows11's Scheduler to handle the efficiency cores. Windows 10 can't tell the difference. Of course being MS they optimised it for Alderlake and somehow managed to break Ryzen performance in the process, though I think it's mostly fixed now.

I'm not sure I'd take soldiers' complaint about that too seriously. I've heard pretty much exactly the same complaints... from people in the UK military. And New Zealand for that matter, though that's usually submerged by complaints about not having the latest and most expensive kit and only defending 200 km^2 around Waiouru while being stuck out in a volcanic desert- or worse, Palmerston North- for a year. UAE troops actually have a very good reputation, and not just compared to other Gulf troops. Lots of external training, paid well and mostly come from Fujairah which has no oil rather than the more decadent emirates. That does come with some baggage though, the UAE drawback from Yemen was in part because a large proportion of casualties were coming from one city.

I actually remember the answer to that because I thought it was a bit of a laugh when I heard it.

Well, you could certainly make some changes that would score very highly on the wokeometer if the Dragon could be female

Can't do that though. It's one of the few occasions when economics and practicality are in direct sync: everything is dependent on cheap fuel, everything. The flow on effects of rising fuel costs increase the costs of everything, and make the JIT models that are already creaking from the pandemic even more shaky. There's literally no point going to electric cars running on electricity generated from coal or natural gas, and that's what the majority of the world would be shifting to, but in any case you cannot build electric cars fast enough and especially you cannot build electric ships or electric trucks in volume nor at anywhere near the level of convenience that is absolutely required by the economic model. So instead you focus on moronic things like methane. Which is the practical equivalent of deciding that water vapour is an even worse greenhouse gas than methane, ergo we should all run dehumidifiers to save the planet and tea and coffee should be taxed heavily. Indeed, the main reason methane is picked is for political reasons, since it's a distance neutral measure for agricultural goods that allows subsidies to continue. A cow eating corn grown on ex Brazilian rainforest in France produces the same methane as a cow that is pasture fed year around, but one also produces its own weight in CO2 from transport costs from feeding it in a barn 4 months of the year. In both cases the methane produced will not be methane in a matter of months. Complete and utter virtue signalling, and designed to shift the blame onto those who are not the problem, eg rice as staple countries. Rice produces vast amounts of methane due to growing in water, but, crucially, that's all carbon cycle methane. Starts as CO2, goes to plant material, rots to methane, goes back to CO2. No net effect. Still, we can then blame China and India for the problem and wash our exquisitely environmentally safe hands... You can tell how stupid a focus on methane is because it's being pushed by Germany's free advertisement for leaving the EU, von der Leyen.

The only real negative was indeed games compatibility, and that improved a lot for NT4.0 -> win2k. (I ended up only ever using 'good' MS OS. NT4 -> 2k -> XP (SP3?)-> 7 -> 10. I even picked the 'right' versions, so not the troublesome 64 bit XP Pro version, 7 Ultimate and 10 Pro meant no broken updates which were the bane of poor consumer grade plebs. Helped a lot being able to scum corporate codes off various employers and educational institutions though. Never used 95/ ME/ Vista/ 8 at all. Only used 98SE on one laptop)