Zoraptor

The whole thing's a joke. Humanity is utterly incapable of making the decisions necessary to fix such a problem, we're only capable of platitudes similar to the orchestra playing on the Titanic. Every politician in existence loves targets set 30 years in the future*, because they know that the abject failure to meet them won't be blamed on them. Pretty much any and all actual solutions require a lot less humans, yet every single country still wants to use an infinite expansion model because that's what the economic system requires. And as everyone knows there are only one types of people who believe in infinite expansion with finite resources- economists, politicians and idiots. OTOH pictures of Joe Biden having a random snooze in public always bring a smile to the face. *my favourite example of which was New Zealand becoming [introduced] predator free by 2050. With no extra money to actually be spent doing it, all the rats/ stoats/ hedgehogs/ cats etc would magically disappear due to the mere setting of the target.

Hmm, metaverse. Why do I feel the near uncontrollable urge to @ Hiro Protagonist for their views...

Ah yes. His first line could be "How do you do, fellow lightfriends?"

I saw Fain as MacKenzie Crook. Though Brad Dourif would be fine too.

Facebook renames itself: all problems now solved. Let's be frank, they could have renamed themselves Blackwater/ Malaria/ Pol Pot and it still would have been a theoretical improvement over Facebook's current PR.

More WoT spoilers

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.