Zoraptor

Epic has (temporarily at least, not like there won't be an appeal) won their lawsuit vs Apple. Which is kind of like Pol Pot punching Hitler in the balls, but you kind of have to support that on principle no matter who is doing the whacking.

Paradox owns the Tyranny IP.

Bunch of 2000 era Activision Star Trek games released. Includes Elite Force, which is the only thing about Voyager I genuinely liked.

Vince McMahon has been a case study in "no, it's the kids that are wrong!" for at least the last decade. The most telling factor is how much happier literally everyone seems when they're, uh, performing elsewhere in the sports entertainment universe shall we say. Despite being over managed you can hardly say that it's well run either and not just because they insist on a load of stupid branding catchphrases. Be interesting to see if WWE is really up for sale. At some point the balance between keeping a very vanilla product line to not offend potential buyers and losing market share will shift.

Funnily enough, the Russian fleet in the Russo Japanese War actually did far better than it had any right to do given the atrocious political leadership and their strategy may well have worked if not for the incompetence in the army- and it had some of the worst luck possible. Best admiral blown up by a mine, winning a battle- that no one expected them to come close in- until their admiral and everyone on the bridge got killed by a one in a million shot that crippled the flagship and jammed its rudder. Obsolete, badly maintained ships sure, but also handled with almost ludicrous bravery, especially at Tsushima where they must have known they had no chance of winning.

Too many external flops, too many dlcs, too many bad and unstable dlcs. I mean how could you approve and see Stalin vs Martians or Ship Simulator Extreme through to the end? Fake edit: whoops I accidentally wrote down the problems with Fred Wester instead. The problems with Ubba L were no doubt completely different, like her having a background in phone apps; as well as overseeing too much dlc, too much bad and unstable dlc, and too many external flops.

Yeah, that's a pretty good trailer. You'd be forgiven for thinking the series was Moiraine centric from it, but apart from Rosamund Pike being a selling point you also can't do 'thought exposition' in a TV series effectively, so you need to do a lot more showing of the world building. The ajah colours are too obvious, but meh. You could have them wearing shawls as identifiers instead (and to be constantly adjusting when not tugging braids/ sniffing/ smoothing skirts/ crossing arms) but if you're going to do that then might as well just dress them in the colours. Same as having Moiraine more dominant, you can't rely on character thoughts to remind people of ajahs and the like so you need more visual cues. Liked the myrdraal, in that case a certain amount of uncanny valley is a veritable asset, notable lack of detail on the brief/ action shots of the trollocs though (unless the Leshen looking thing was a trolloc, and that looked more like Herne the Hunter from the old Robin Hood TV series than I imagined a trolloc to look). The only real criticism I'd have is a stylistic one in that it looks perhaps a bit too derivative of LOTR. I know that that's a 'problem' with the source material with EotW being explicitly Tolikienesque, but Tar Valon ends up looking like Minas Tirith with a river and the environmental shots... that shot of them in the limestone croppings could have been straight out of FotR. Still, if you're going to be derivative of something being derivative of FotR is a pretty good pick.

It's meant to still be extremely hot running despite finally being 10nm? Intel7? SuperDuperFlipFlop? and the 'advantages' of big/little (I'd imagine marginal for desktops, might be interesting for laptops, but then laptops have had a native 10nm architecture for a while now). There isn't too much positive to say about Intel's desktop consumer chips except that they (have recently) priced them sensibly so they are good for price/ performance, I'd guess that the 12900k will be faster than the 5950x and get the money no object crowd on board- at least until the vcache 5950x refresh drops in a few months. Intel really needs to get the efficiency back up as it's costing them server sales and that's where the big cash is.

Dunno, I think the most that I get out of those SR trailers is that it's another game (or product in general) that would probably be significantly better received if it wasn't piggybacking a pre existing brand. You don't really get any sense that the game is as self aware as its predecessor either. GTA clones are inherently silly if you spend any time at all thinking about them and SR2-4 was pretty good at leaning into the stupidities of the genre. SR2 a bit less so but, well, septic tank missions... But, nobody liked SR3 just because the Deckers/ Morningstar/ Luchadores wore silly costumes and no one will like the gangs in the reboot just because they wear silly costumes, it's all the other stuff that made people enjoy SR3. And while those games were absolute replete with appalling stereotypes (and all the original games' Saints were appalling people by any objective measure) the appalling stereotypes were applied completely without fear or favour. Ironically, the new cast already seems to be made up of stereotypes, just without the self awareness. (I wouldn't want an out and out parody, SR4 went too far that direction as it is, but one of the big appeals of SR2-4 was that they were aware that the whole thing was inherently silly, in much the same way that a good Roger Moore Bond film knew the whole premise was kind of ridiculous but leant into that as an asset rather than a handicap) To be fair, that was clearly meant idiomatically- ie you'd invite them into your living room, by playing the game with them in it rather than literally have them over for a cup of tea and biscuits or whatever.

They have a new developer working on the game, and they also did a new (free) tourism update a few months ago. (I've only played Surviving Mars with the existing dlc, but it must have been the biggest drag of a game in the the mid -> late game without Green Planet, and it will still benefit a lot from some more fleshing out)

No greek letter designation and the WHO saying it isn't spreading significantly suggests that Murdoch could possibly be exaggerating somewhat. They do give greek letters to those that are simply variants of interest as opposed to proven problems (eg iota and lambda are currently variants of interest, theta and epsilon are no longer even that).

Nah, I mean, I certainly wouldn't advise taking ivermectin without having taken medical advise and anyone doing so should seriously re-evaluate their thoughts on the matter, but I did check beforehand and the advised dosage for humans is comparable to that for most other animals. eg I could go out to the shed and give myself a drench applicable for a 75kg sheep and it would be almost exactly the recommended dose for a 75kg human as a dewormer. It'd still be moronic to do so anyway, but all other things being equal taking an appropriate dose won't do you any harm and there are far more dangerous chemicals to self medicate with. The problem is of course that people are dumb in multiple ways, and buy horse dewormer and give themselves a horse sized dose despite not being the size of André the Giant, and that will do you some harm. Or they buy topical ivermectin and... eat it. That isn't a problem with ivermectin though, that's a problem with taking a horse sized dose and not knowing that there's a difference between external and internal application. Of course, if you;re the FDA or whoever you just say not to take animal products, and that's entirely justified. But there are certainly worse things people could be taking that would actually kill them.

To be fair, ivermectin isn't just a livestock dewormer, it's also a registered human therapeutic in widespread use. Much like HCQ it's at least unlikely to cause much in the ways of adverse effects, except for not working as a covid treatment, and is an infinitely better suggestion for treatment than, say, sodium hypochlorite. And to be even more fair, the stage at which you're likely to be self administering ivermectin is the stage at which you're unlikely to need to be on alternative medications that do work like dexamethasone (ie, on O2 or full on ventilator).

For the sake of referring to the primary source, and since the declassified summary of the US Intelligence investigation into the origins of covid-19/ SARS-CoV-2 is pretty short: Actually short enough that it barely requires a tldr ("we don't really know much, it's not a bioweapon though). (weirdly hard to find a direct link to the report summary, despite it being fairly important. I had to go through Science, none of the mainstream media seemed to want to link to it)

I've seen people say that they used a Ginsu, and therefore any civilian deaths had to be from secondary explosions and not the 'fault' of the US. I tend to doubt that though since they said they were after multiple suicide bombers which you'd usually use an explosive payload on. Even if it were the fault of the US technically there would likely have been more deaths if the suicide bombers had been allowed to deliver their bombs, and it's hard to see how they could have avoided any civilian casualties in a city such as Kabul. So long as the intelligence was good and they were suicide bombers it would be a 'genuine' example of collateral damage and minimising harm. That would prove it came from the lab, if it did, but the reverse is pretty much impossible to prove because anyone who wanted to believe otherwise would simply decide that the Chinese hadn't released everything or had released falsified information. It doesn't even matter if they find an intermediate host as they did with the civet for SARS1, all that will mean is that the Chinese must have known about that instead, and got the virus from that source and not bats. So even if it didn't leak there's no reason for them to release information when whatever they release will be used to 'prove' they actually did leak it. SKY UK is most definitely Rupert Murdoch, he owns a shed load of British media (including the Times and The Sun, plus SKY). The only Sky that isn't Murdoch is the one here in NZ, which he sold his share in about 20 years ago. Medium Confidence is an intelligence/ analytical term that doesn't really mean the same thing as it means to the lay person. That's why I mentioned the 'intelligence' about the $600 million dollar ventilation system and the sick workers. Technically, such information gives medium confidence, so long as you believe those reports are credible*. Of course, making a 1000 fold cost overestimate is not in itself the height of credibility, and it's hardly impossible let alone unlikely that people would get flu at the tail end of winter wherever they worked; but if you believe that is credible evidence despite that then you can assign it medium confidence. 7/8 groups didn't think it was credible, but one did. OTOH, until a zoonotic link is found anything leading to that conclusion has to be Low Confidence, because it's fundamentally incomplete information- there is no direct zoonotic link as there is for SARS1 (civet) and MERS (camel) and there being a coronavirus crossover event roughly once per year for the past 20 years is not in and of itself evidence that it happened a 21st time in the case of SARS2. *There's tons of examples of bad Confidence assignations in Intelligence- one prime example would be the mobile BW labs that Iraq supposedly had before Gulf War II. Completely fabricated and they didn't exist in reality, and all the actual intelligence resolved to a single source in Curveball, which should automatically have dropped the Confidence shown.

Not as plausible, WIV was definitely studying coronaviruses and that's where the outbreak was first detected. Otherwise though, Murdoch media unsurprisingly has a bit of a slant. One analysis group- out of eight- said it may have been a leak. Somehow I knew they'd abuse the use of 'low confidence' categorisation too, though I hope the dissenters' medium confidence isn't based on the laughable numeric 'error' that had the Wuhan Institute of Virology spending $600 million on a ventilation system*. Or on a few people who worked there supposedly getting covid like symptoms- or if you prefer flu like symptoms- in winter. *That was the small matter of twice the amount it cost to build, well, the entire building. Unsurprisingly the real figure was... $600k.

Meanwhile, in New Zealand: One Person Shows up at Anti-Lockdown Protest in Auckland Kind of wish they'd keep the old title about police breaking up a one man protest. (We did have a larger protest right at the beginning, maybe a few dozen people. Not the brightest bulbs deliberately and pointlessly getting themselves arrested when the courts are running on an essential basis and you tell the bail hearing you'll offend again, hoping to act like you're Nelson Mandela on Robben Island but forgetting that you won't have internet access sitting in a police cell...)

Almost all of ISIS-K's funding is funneled through Pakistan from wealthy Gulf donors because it's a neighbour, but its ultimate source is mostly rich Gulf individuals with a dollop of fake charities and the like. Pakistan as a country doesn't support them, the Taliban would have to go far further off the reservation than they have- probably pal up with India or similar, so not likely given Modi's bigotry- for Pakistan to back anyone else. They're still Pakistan's pet project. Also, Pakistan is not completely moronic, and backing ISIS in any way would be a very very obvious own goal waiting to happen. While no doubt there are plenty of sources saying that Iran supports the Taliban that is ludicrous, they have a cold détente based on both wanting the US out. They also have a limited budget, and far more friendly groups to fund (in Afghanistan and elsewhere) than the Taliban, and not just the Hazara. There are also 'sources' saying that Iran funds ISIS, and no doubt rain on your wedding day/ 1000 forks when all you need is a knife/ meeting then man of your dreams then meeting his wonderful wife are all despicable Iranian plots in the mind of someone at the CIA. I mean, funny how "Russia is putting bounties on US soldiers stuff" disappeared entirely after the election, having done its job of embarrassing Donald Trump and reinforcing the Russiagate conspiracy theory... Well OK, there was a barely reported hearing in which it was labelled as 'low confidence' (spook code for 'a load of old bollocks'). Both the Taliban and ISIS-K get/ got a decent amount of internal funding too, from intimidation and drugs. Be interesting to see if the Taliban goes back to a zero drugs policy now they're in power again or not.

Pretty recognisable render of Felicity Kendall, and greatly raises my hopes for a Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin The Goodies game eventually getting made (include Kitten Kong, specifically, pretty please).

Watched the trailer, not as bad as I expected to be honest. That 'banter' is 100% going to get very very old very very quickly though. Then again the only trailer I've unequivocally liked in the last past year or so was the Outer Worlds 2, for taking the mick out of all the other trailers I've watched that feel like they were extruded from plastic in some sort of generic CGI sweatshop where every smidge of imagination gets rewarded via cattle prod. OTOH, Epic Exclusive --> entertainment from all the toys being tossed from cots.

I didn't have much hope for a Saint's Row reboot when they're saying it'll be toned down- I mean, what's Saint's Row without the massively OTT, well, everything? A GTA clone, and not a particularly good one. There's a reason the SR nostalgia starts with the silly SR2, not the po faced 1. Modern [video game] writers only know how to write themselves? Slightly less facetious, and I'd stress that I haven't seen the video, but a lot of game writers seem to be obsessed with trying to write the next Firefly without having a scintilla of the writing talent of Joss Whedon or Tim Minear- so they end up writing people who are obnoxious knobs, instead of endearing obnoxious knobs, and the 'banter' feels incredibly forced. I could also very easily imagine writers having to do 30 minute powerpoint presentations on their proposed characters and plot to run past PR and upper management...

Dunno if the 2k thing makes much of a difference as it'd fundamentally be a pretty expensive license that requires lots of money to be made somehow- and the non 2k Marvel Avengers is a microtransaction engine with attached gameplay*. I'd expect Firaxis to at least make a better game out of it, but I can't see anything Marvel (excluding loss leaders, ie console launch titles) not being absolutely riddled with mtx. *and in a cautionary tale, it's also one of if not the biggest bomb of the last few years. Should have made another Deus Ex instead of that garbage, eh Squeenix?

Double post, but completely separate subtopic... Support for lock down/ elimination strategy remains strong here as 84% of New Zealanders support current lockdown (10% opposed). Mostly posted because there's an awful lot of foreign media coverage and social media suggesting we're getting lockdown fatigue when in reality we aren't because we haven't been in actual lockdown since May, have functionally zero unemployment and a housing bubble economy that is doing very well. Oh yeah, that's May 2020; apart from a few weeks of lockdown lite. Bit of an eyeroller when you see criticism coming from countries with deaths per million in the 1000s when ours is... 5.

For the lab/ man made theory specifically the above video is best since it sums up the earlier theories at the start then deals with the more recent stuff. (I'll admit to a bit of bias since pretty much every objection he's raised is one I've raised too and he has about as much respect for 'scientific' articles leaked to the Daily Fail as I have. I did find 4 positively charged amino acids actually in SARS- CoV2 though, even better, in a sequence it shares with SARS-CoV1)

Is that Daniel Bryan Bryan Danielson about to tell me that both pictures were staged? (100% better staging from the US, the Taliban look like a bunch of unenthusiastic cosplayers)