Zoraptor

WoT spoilers again

WoT spoilers Overall pretty good trailer though, a lot better than most modern ones and has plenty of hooks for those familiar and unfamiliar with the books.

Not really a spoiler; power efficiency is still awful. Better efficiency than FusionLake or LavaLake or whatever they called their last gen since it's higher IPC, but to put it in perspective, the practical draw assuming you haven't paired a K processor with a budget H board or similar is still greater than the 9570 which came with an AIO cooler out of the box- even without a manual overclock. Also, why on earth would anyone buy the top SKU? Nearly 50% markup for... 4 extra efficiency cores and 200Mhz, but, lower base clock. Surely that 180USD could be spent better on pretty much anything. Should be noted that those prices from Anandtech are bulk buy (1k unit) prices. They'll be a bit more expensive for consumers.

One of the weirdest things to me when I was doing the course admin for some university papers was how keen students were for multiple choice sections. I could kind of understand for the gen-ed 1st year paper since that had people who were fundamentally unfamiliar with the subject matter, but even the 3rd year people wanted them. I always found those multiple choices to be utterly obnoxious at that level because you didn't get the typical 3 wrong answer, one right answer system; you got one wrong answer, 2 partially right answers and the right answer.

Sorry, this meme is now deprecated.

Far easier to cut mechanics than fix them. Simple pew pew with light magic (or 'magic') appeals to more people. I wouldn't entirely blame EA for that at least. Bioware was well along that road even before Elevation Partners, let alone EA. (I still find the EA purchase hilarious though, due to John Riccitiello's relationship with both EP and EA. Not exactly disinterested)

Morrowind had a plot. You had to find Caius Cossades, the creepy skooma addict, and follow his creepy skooma addict instructions. Most people just spent all their time admiring the giant mushrooms though rather than getting naked for his entertainment. All I can remember about Oblivion's plot was that they got Jean Luc Picard and Sharpe to do the voices, and spent a grand total of 0.50c on the rest of them. And, of course, daedric glass elemental armoured bandits, mudcrabs- memorably horrible creatures, I avoided them whenever I could- and the radiant AI deciding 3 o'clock was time for people to rake their carpets after staring at a wall for the past hour or so. I did, for my sins, finish the game but literally the only thing I can remember was Sean Bean walking up temple steps or something. Fallout 3 you were looking for your father, a middle aged guy, maybe someone's seen him? Sounds suspiciously like Qui Gon Jinn phoning it in? In the most Bethesda move possible it originally had the single most stupid ending ever written, orders of magnitude worse than 'rocks fall, everyone dies' NWN2. Of course the PC has to commit sudoku by radiation rather than sending someone immune to radiation in, otherwise he wouldn't be the hero thick as two short planks, unable to walk and chew gum, a drooling imbecile etc etc. Or maybe that's just all the people who thought that ending was a Good Idea™.

Obsidian recorded an awful lot of dialogue for the 'Syriana' version of Alpha Protocol. All (?) the levels got retasked, but a lot of the dialogue was ultimately recorded but discarded. There was a fair amount in KOTOR2 as well for that matter, hence the presence of VO in the restoration project. Not that AP was a particularly well run project of course- and there was a pretty good excuse for K2 given the, uh, short dev cycle- but it isn't just inexperienced devs that do it

At least Odyssey already had the Discovery tour prior to Valhalla, unless I was hallucinating. I was pretty surprised how historically accurate the actual game was in most respects too, it was recognisably the Peloponnesian War and most of the events even happened in approximately the right order.

I think it was mentioned here, but not sure, and can't be bothered checking. I'm only really following the TV series by diffusion rather than deliberately so I kind of presume most of the stuff I hear comes from here. OTOH, pretty sure Mat not being in the last two episodes did come from elsewhere, so... (I am interested enough to at least do a re-read. I'd read up to book 6 multiple times, but can't remember reading the later ones more than once. Having read a few random chapters from those later books my recollection of the later series' timeline is not great, though I remember most of the actual events OK)

That news is a month old- apparently he's not in the last two episodes of S1 either though I'm not sure if that's confirmed or rumour. Guess at least there's a potential reasonable in universe explanation for Mat's appearance changing.

As a person of culture and taste I have never owned a console. I did rather enjoy co-op Baldurs Gate Dark Alliance and SSX Tricky on the PS2, but- fortunately- since that was a flat console I have been assured that my purity was maintained.

From what I remember from usenet back in the day you'd be far from alone. I think Moraine instead of Moiraine was more common, and Edmond's Field a bit less but they were probably the three biggest and most consistent misreadings. Hmm. More big WoT spoilers

Yeah, you'd have to think that most of book 4 would be in. Way too much world building. There's plenty that can be cut or repackaged in the later books, and much of the stuff that takes a lot of time to do there via writing should be able to be done a lot quicker televisually.

WoT Spoilers More major (and later book) spoilers

Galatians 4:16.jpg B5 has some amazingly good top episodes and the main arc is great- up to a point- but it's got a load of problems that become more and more evident once the mystery is gone. That's why I'm for once reasonably keen on there being a remake since a lot of the problems should be readily fixable.

The Black Hole was the first movie I can actually remember watching (on a flight from New Zealand to the UK, I must have been 5 or something and from what I remembered it was not really aimed at 5 year olds and seemed an odd pick for an in flight movie given they were shown on the old central projectors). I had no idea what it was called up until a few years ago though. No top ten from me, as I hate making movie top tens. Games, sure, why not. TV shows, yeah, ok. Movies... do I pick the ones that are technically best, that I liked the most or which were most memorable? Maybe the ones I'd take with me to watch if marooned for a year? Whatever I do and whichever order I pick I'm instantly unhappy with it for some reason.

For that academic level is well outside any pretension of expertise I might have. I've seen plenty of popular media up to think tank level articles claiming that China has peaked or is peaking over the past 20 years though. Mostly focusing on demographics, 'middle income trap'/ not enough internal market type stuff and claims that Chinese manufacturing was inevitably going to move to [place] as costs in China increased/ China was cooking the books, the growth wasn't real and it was all going to come crashing down. Of course, in that sort of analysis you don't really have to back anything up with proper data, and they're largely intended to be disposable, not be remembered specifically and say what the audience wants to hear because the author has to fill his weekly opinion piece with something. I'd agree that Xi is less risk averse than recent previous leaders of China. That's largely predicated on him not wanting to quit gracefully as he was supposed to and wanting to neuter the parts of the party that could remove him. Invading Taiwan is a whole order of magnitude more risky than anything else though. I can see an invasion happening if Taiwan decided to proclaim independence, and that is to a large extent what the posturing is meant to head off because if that happened he would almost certainly feel compelled to act.

Supposedly it's TPM version that is the problem, same as with Zen original. And for anyone who doesn't know- and pretty unsurprisingly- there's a workaround for using unsupported hardware with win11, direct from MS.

Personally, I don't think China will invade Taiwan. Not because of any military deterrent though. The ultimate problem that Taiwan has is that while the Chinese have air superiority they'll be able to degrade AA and anti ship capabilities pretty cheaply using Artsakh like tactics. Sure, you can fire off missiles, but you'll lose the launcher and won't be able to replace them. You may also have to shoot at very low value targets- the Armenians shot down literally dozens of ancient biplanes; in the end they had the choice of not using their AA, in which case it might as well not exist, or using it and having it blown up. Chinese leadership is risk averse, and the risks of invading Taiwan is one thing that could get Xi outright removed in the medium term and tarnish his legacy permanently. The legitimacy of the CCP is almost completely based on sustained economic improvement, and the results of a Taiwan invasion would see the Chinese economy implode. It wouldn't be great for near everyone else either, but a lot of societal domestic issues are ratcheted down by ~10% growth (even if nominal) within China and a whole generation+ has known nothing but such growth*. The counter balance to that is Xi wanting to leave a permanent legacy, and the big short term nationalist boost that a successful 'reunification' would garner. But in that Erdogan makes a good comparison- nationalist boosts to popularity wear out pretty quickly, and you need more and more of them more and more quickly to get the same effect. They aren't an answer to potential longer term economic woes. *It also has to be said, we've heard that China has peaked about as long as that too. That will be true at some point, inevitably, but it's been the geopol equivalent of working nuclear fusion for the past twenty years; always coming, never arriving. To be fair, plenty of people talk up US government debt as a similar ticking time bomb, and it hasn't gone off yet either.

Please people, it's Sam Neill. Not Sam Neil. All famous New Zealanders have two ls in their name if they have any at all- see also Edmund Hillary (and not Edmund Hilary), the world renowned apiarist Hillary Clinton was named after. Thank you all for reading this very important message.

They would be, but you'd have to balance the need for air superiority vs being able to sink the boats on the water. Every plane attacking the landing craft is one that isn't concentrating on AA or enemy planes, or on defending carriers from attack, and every plane lost in those attacks can't be replaced in the short term. Too many losses and the carriers can't even defend themselves properly, and the Chinese can replace landing craft (and resupply aircraft, AA etc) a lot quicker than anyone can replace carriers.

Can't see Lanfear being all that important in the appearance sense in the TV series- unless they end up doing Age of Legends flashbacks or similar*. Elaida seems a reasonable guess, given the casting of Elayne. *spoiler it, for safety sake

Meh, if Taiwan is invaded it's taken. Just plain and simple too close to China. No one should have any illusions about that. It isn't the difficulty in taking Taiwan that stops China, it's the consequences for doing so. The classic role of the carrier in any conflict involving close to parity powers (largely forgotten when they've been consistently used against 'weak' powers over the past 70 years) is to sink the other side's carriers- and provide local air superiority outside the range of your land bases. Difficult to sink the enemy carrier known as Fujian province, and the entirety of Taiwan would be under an AA umbrella situated there let alone the mainland airbases. Good luck getting air superiority there using carriers alone within a realistic timeframe to save Taiwan. OTOH, if you want to enforce a retaliatory blockade, or shoot up some small airbases illegally stuck out in the ocean or whatever...