Zoraptor

Superman vs Goku as an example instead of the Enterprise vs a Star Destroyer? The former is completely pointless and a very short debate, since obviously Superman would win. (I have to admit I do rather like the trope being named Cavemen vs Astronauts)

Meh, what's the point of even considering scenarios between one plane that literally doesn't exist and another that has never fired a shot in anger air superiority wise. If there was going to be a large scale air battle the US would likely use F22s anyway. They're simply better at that than the F35, which is hobbled by having to take the main role of the western air force into account- bombing brown people whose countries happen to exist on western resources. Besides, we all know how that sort of argument ends, with one side talking about how their amazing technology will destroy the other without them even seeing each other, the only variable is which technology they think will be the deciding factor. The interesting thing about the Su 75 is that it's specifically said to be designed to be used as a drone if wanted, and even that isn't all that interesting since a plane designed without having to take squishy meatsacks into account should (on paper at least) outperform one that does.

The Cornish are basically the same as the Welsh, who are basically the same as Bretons. The Cornish used to have their own Breton/ Welsh type language but IIRC it died out ~150 years ago (or 1777, according to wikipedia). Of course genetically there's very little difference between ethnic english/ welsh/ cornish and there isn't even that much variation with ethnic irish- the Cornish Identity (such as it is) comes from never being properly conquered by the germanic/ scandic invasions of the dark ages, much like the Welsh are just Britons who held out until Tall Ted, while those anglo losers are only anglos because they're losers. Probably the 'funniest' example of dumb ethnosuperiority are Turkish Turks though. I'm a bit surprised they haven't banned ancestry dna type tests there because there are a fair few suicides- literally- due to people finding out that their supposed descent from the stupendously manly killing machine steppe nomads is actually a lie and they're genetically kurdish/ greek/ armenian themselves; so they're descended from the conquered losers, not the conquerors as they were told.

Some of the stuff I've watched recently, mostly catching up on things I've missed but meant to see first time around. Black Sails: Not finished, but it is a good semi historical pirate romp. As might be expected the pirates are pretty sanitised overall, and as with most things there are some interesting plotting decisions where things seem to happen just to set up or prolong the plot instead of being logical. Black Summer: Fast zombie apocalypse from the makers of Z Nation but more serious, but I wasn't expecting much. Not at all bad overall as a park your brain action/ suspense watch, though again a lot of the set ups make very little sense (mostly, too many resources available for them to be fighting over. Why even bother threatening people and forcing them out of a 7/11 when you're going to take maybe 5% of the stuff there? Why chase a completely random car in your pickup instead of just looting some houses? etc etc). Kingdom: Korean fast zombies (with political machinations). Probably has the most visceral take of those I've watched, and it being set with matchlock level military tech is interesting too. The only real problem is fairly minor, watching it with subtitles it was really difficult to know any of the characters' actual names instead of just their roles- with the exception of the nurse, because inept bureaucrat guy kept on following her around saying her name all the time. Pretty strong recommendation overall. As a side effect I now have a 'Korean TV' section on Netflix The Fall: Very well acted and written. Knowing who the serial killer was from the start introduced some limitations, but then not knowing would have just introduced others. Probably a matter of binge watching rather than weekly episodic, but there were a fair few dropped threads too and not exactly light watching. I'm looking forward to seeing something a bit lighter so I was thinking of Happy Valley which sounds pretty upbeat- how could something with Curly's squeeze from Coro be anything other than a light hearted romp? Barbarians: This one I found a bit disappointing. It's technically fine and obviously limited by budget in terms of scale, but I kind of expected a bit more from the story of Arminius especially with it being a bit of a founding myth for modern Germany. Despite watching this and Dark I don't have a 'German TV' section on Netflix. Line of Duty (latest season): Clearly- and by a wide margin- the worst season, but simultaneously nowhere near as bad as some make out. I wonder if those surprised by the revelation of 'H' even bothered watching the previous season where the objective expectations for his role were spelt out and him being important was clearly scenario fulfillment from the AC12 team. It also seems very unlikely that they'd pay James Nesbitt just to use a photo of him. Series overall is very much worth watching for anyone who hasn't seen it, creator also did Bodyguard though that is a bit more set piece action.

Ah, the US equivalent of Fix It Again, Tony. Oddly enough there was a 'USS Subaru'.

Could be a lot worse, could be poor old Fiji which went from zero to most infected country per capita on the planet, in little more than a month. Frank Bananarama* didn't want to do a lockdown either with far better reason, but I bet he wishes he had now anyway. *Bainamarama, but when you stage coups you're lucky if the worst you get is being your name replaced by a mediocre 80s girl group. Despite NZ's roll out being about as slow as Australia's I've got my second dose tomorrow. Technically legit since I'm South Auckland and (technically) in health care so they ended up putting me through as a walk in when I brought my parents in last month but we're really supposed to wait for an email/ txt invite instead. We could roll out vaccines a lot quicker if needed, since we bought a bunch of J&J as well as Novovax (not ready) and AZ but the strategy is all Pfizer. Ironically, AZ and Pfizer seem to have pretty much identical efficacies against delta though. Got some sympathy for Australia's situation with vaccines, since there's a lot of domestic vaccine manufacturing capacity going begging due to Astra Zeneca hesitancy/ its clotting issue. A million odd doses a week for the past ~6 months would have had things very well along.

They were doing smallpox inoculations a lot longer ago than 226 years, that was just when Jenner started using cowpox instead of variolation.

They're probably paid decently. They're not Boeing, they have to pay decently for safety reasons rather than rely on regulatory capture.

I know they say that it can work, but I wouldn't think it would be particularly practical, at least at first. There are some rumours that Zen4 will have integrated graphics as standard, but if they don't it's hard to see AMD supporting integrated RDNA2 in drivers solely for a product that is 'meant' to be on Linux; and otherwise Zen APUs are always released months, sometimes many months, after the non integrated chips. That would mean hoping that desktop/ mobile or Vega integrated drivers work with integrated RDNA2, and I wouldn't bet much on stability there. And on the base model Windows is going to be taking up a lot of the 64GB storage relative to Linux.

Eh, much as I loathe Scummo I'd be extremely skeptical about any EU measures not being stealth protectionism designed to get around WTO rules. It's very easy for both sides to be right/ wrong (depending how you look at it) at the same time. Random example: I always have a good laugh about Euros who think buying local meat is more carbon efficient than imported meat from New Zealand, when in reality the imported meat has a considerably smaller carbon footprint- specifically because we have basically zero supplementary feeding here, whereas a lot of the EU has animals in barns eating 20kg/ month/ stock unit of extremely environmentally friendly and completely not grown on old rainforest areas imported Brazilian corn, and strangely enough those carbon miles add up a lot quicker than a single trip by 5kg of lamb. You can absolutely guarantee though that if they do carbon pricing it will be on the end trip the meat makes, not the ones all the feed is coming in on, and they won't tackle how hopelessly inefficient- and carbon obnoxious- the CAP makes their agriculture.

Screen is 16:10 1280x800 so it's slightly above 720p demand wise. In theory I guess that scales fine CU and frequency wise to something like the S model Xbox in terms of TFlOpS/ resolution. In practice... skeptical. The power draw/ supply advantage of a corded console should be significant over a portable for maintaining real world performance, and almost all MSony titles will presumably have FSR for its 'free' performance going forward.

Be interesting to see if it can be modded in to more titles apart from those with fixed shaders (eg GTAV). Also be interesting to see how many nVidia sponsored/ DLSS titles it turns up on. It does seem to be slated to be added to a couple at least.

It can't run that hot, 40Wh battery with (supposedly) 2 hours of battery life and a 7" screen doesn't leave much- any- room for high frequencies. And indeed it doesn't; abridged tech specs (full specs) Processor AMD APU CPU: Zen 2 4c/8t, 2.4-3.5GHz (up to 448 GFlops FP32) GPU: 8 RDNA 2 CUs, 1.0-1.6GHz (up to 1.6 TFlops FP32) APU power: 4-15W RAM 16 GB LPDDR5 RAM (5500 MT/s) Storage 64 GB eMMC (PCIe Gen 2 x1) 256 GB NVMe SSD (PCIe Gen 3 x4) 512 GB high-speed NVMe SSD (PCIe Gen 3 x4) All models include high-speed microSD card slot It ain't going to run the CPU and CUs at the top freqs for very long, even with them already being reduced relative to desktop and the consoles. So it's basically using a Zen2 laptop APU modified for DDR5 and will perform a lot worse than the non portable MSony equivalents (but better than the Switch with its antiquated Tegra). It using Linux is almost certainly why Valve was so keen to get DLSS on Linux [lol, use your noggin son, it's RDNA2 so won't have DLSS anyway] and you have to suspect they'll be pushing for FSR implementation too. Prices start at USD400, secure yours with a reservation fee today. Or not.

It's particularly egregious given Germany's history of supporting two attempted genocides against the Serbs in the past 100 (ish) years. Between a quarter and a fifth of Serbia's population died in WW1, by far the highest proportion for any country. And of course in WW2 Germany massively supported their puppet Croat government and the Ustasi militia whose overt aim was epitomised in the infamous 3x1/3 slogan (1/3 dead of Serbs dead, 1/3 expelled, 1/3 forcibly converted). If there's one country that should be keeping well away out of shame and embarrassment it's Germany. But for all the talk about feeling embarrassment about their history Germany's recent acts have been to systematically shaft their previous victims, with the notable exception of Israel.

I'd be pretty surprised if they got a working product out of it, getting something like that working in vitro is a whole different kettle of fish to getting it working in vivo. Jolly good for generating funding though.

Wasn't sure whether to put this in the Movies thread, or the funny things thread instead, but... So Hollywood wants to do a movie on the Christchurch Mosque attack. Someone leaked local media a draft script and it's about as hilariously awful as anyone's worst imaginings, albeit only excerpts have been publicly released so they've probably picked the worst examples. Basically, everyone involved has been turned into US tropes- including turning stridently pro assimilation Maori Winston Peters into a Mystical Native, having opposition politicians spout Hestonesque pro gun catchphrases (including those who voted for the gun control legislation) and having a tasteful and restrained long and graphic reconstruction of the shooting itself. Perhaps the funniest thing is that not only is it written by a New Zealander, it's the same guy responsible for the excellent Gattaca and Truman Show. And of course they've committed the worst crime against New Zealand imaginable, and cast Aussie Rose Byrne as our PM. Not like such things cannot be done well, there's an excellent movie about the Aramoana shootings which was our previous worst mass shooting called 'Out of the Blue' (w/ Karl Urban). But even that had a lot of opposition despite being (mostly) accurate and respectful.

Partly, but I suspect there's other stuff at play in the US much as there is here- mostly the reciprocal to people not wanting to work for crap wages any more, ie companies not wanting to pay more when there's a labour shortage because they think they'll have to keep paying more when things go back to 'normal' instead of going back to the old wage depressing practises. (Here we've had an endless litany of complaints from Hospitality and Agriculture about not being able to bring in indentured servants- slaves- from overseas any more due to the pandemic. A lot of the people coming in were looking for 3 year residency visas and would literally pay a finders' fee to be given a job here, they'd then be paid below minimum wage while living in a hovel and being charged exorbitant rent by their agent or emplyer, with no complaints because 3 years residency was the aim and rocking the boat would see them lose their job and their work visa rescinded. Oddly, New Zealand citizens don't seem keen on accepting the same sort of restrictions. Mathematically, the cost of doubling wages for, say, apple picking would add a monumental 3c per apple to the cost, or about 20c/kg- and we had orchardists complaining about literal tons of fruit going to waste because they couldn't get staff to work at $20/hour 12 hours a day all weather for 6 weeks straight then out on your ear no benefits, all out in the boonies. You can bet they'd get a lot more takers if they were paying $40/hour, they'd probably be swamped with applicants even with it being short term. Absolutely hilarious watching the people who'd been spouting laissez faire rhetoric about paying the market rate and 'living wages' etc being communism a couple of years ago suddenly wanting government intervention when the same laissez faire market rates means they have to pay people more)

If Leonardo had no children then he can't have had actual descendants since you need children for that; and he is one of the more credible historical people to be labeled as homosexual*. OTOH, Temujin was notoriously heterosexual and had rather a lot of descendant; but then something like 99% of ethnic English people can trace their lineage back to at least one royal/ noble house because you double (meh, up to) the number of antecedents with every generation. *my personal favourites are Fredrick the Great and Richard the Lionheart, mostly because the kind of people who typically idolise them hate the thought they might have been gay.

Only if they're miners and the mine is part owned by Cyril Ramaphosa.

England scored early, so Italy had to make most of the play. Bit of Mourinho style turtling going on, followed by a late stage Mourinho style failure to turtle effectively enough. Not a great day overall for England, lost the football and they still have to put up with Richard Branson.

The Jorginho one was really blatant though- you could just about literally see him thinking "better make it look like I'm injured too" on the replay when he realised how bad his tackle was, in the hope of only getting a yellow. Then again, given what happened against Denmark any complaints about simulation adjacent acts from the English would ring a little hollow.

Funny thing is that'd pretty likely be a red card, in rugby. (I really wish they'd card people for faking injury after doing a bad foul too. Yellow card for the foul, yellow card for the fake injury. Oh well, even while I'm technically English them losing is great for the memes and means I can make interminable jokes about losing by boundary countback to all my relatives who were all 'rules are rules' over a certain Cricket result)

Man oh man do some English fans make me want their team to continue losing so very very badly.

Bronies and strip teases versus 24 28 trillion debt and millions dead in utterly pointless wars from the responsible side with their sensible establishment backers. Not an overly difficult choice to make.

I'd be a bit suspicious of New Zealanders' ability to be objective about ourselves, and being defensive of our reputation. It's an interesting report, but it is very much New Zealanders' attitudes to perceived misinformation rather than being an objective summary of actual misinformation. The root problem when saying how much misinformation there is here or anywhere really is that you can't really define 'misinformation' very precisely or objectively. There's a lot of spin and information massaging that may or may not be misinformation as well as stuff that's outright and definitely false, and you'll always get people who stubbornly stick to believing things that are false or who cannot bring themselves to believe they fell for misinformation- and they will do surveys every bit as much as anyone else. If you surveyed people about misinformation about, say, Gulf War 2 the results would be massively different depending on when you did it, and where. Most Americans in, say, February 2003 would think that the misinformation was coming from those who didn't want a war and that Saddam had WMDs, could fire them at London in 45 minutes, and supported Al Qaeda- and the reverse would be true in, say, France. Do the survey now and American attitudes would be a lot closer to those of France- but you'll still get people who insist there was no misinformation, because everything that was false was just a massive series of completely honest mistakes rather than a deliberate and organised attempt to deceive.