Gorth

The other states used the police force to guard the "inmates" in the hotels (14 days of mandatory quarantine at the guests expense when traveling from either overseas or interstate). Australian citizen only from overseas at the time (Kiwis are welcome now, no quarantine required). Victoria just got this "brilliant" idea they could outsource the police work and it was a failure of epic proportions. As the cases exploded in Melbourne and later the various regions in Victoria (state borders were closed), all the strict measures, including curfews were put in place. All of which could have been avoided and people could have been a lot better off 5 months earlier. I live in Brisbane, Queensland (large chunk of land in the northeast of Australia, part tropical part sub-tropical). Queensland shut its borders to both NSW and VIC (and NT had already closed it's borders to all states and territories to protect its numerous indigenous communities). I lived in Victoria (Melbourne) for a while, but moved north in March, just 2 weeks before the borders closed

Actually, the sad thing is it was so unnecessary. Just look at the rest of Australia. The local government ****ed up and hired private companies for the hotel security job instead of using the police to enforce it. Those companies screwed up big time and should never have been used for something that should have been the police's job in first place. As for draconian... yeah, not used to seeing soldiers in the street enforcing curfews. Would've been better of those troops (and the police) had been doing the private contractors job in the first place?

I learnt two important lessons in Xenonauts yesterday, both related to trees. 1) Money doesn't grow on trees and 2) hand grenades are unsuited for forest warfare (after wiping out half my squad with hand grenades that hit trees and didn't go anywhere)

Trust (Turkish-)German scientists to not pick the easy options... Expensive treatments might still help reduce the spread while cheaper alternatives are developed for mass consumption. If people don't want the vaccine, add it to the tap water. Edit: It does look like it's effective for how short a development time it had. Still, trials are one thing, real world application another (as a developer, I can relate to that): ‘When you put [a vaccine] out in the real world, people may behave differently,’ said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/biontech-and-pfizers-covid-19-vaccine-is-surprisingly-effective-though-experts-question-what-effectiveness-will-look-like-in-the-real-world-2020-11-13

I'm sure you guys are completely ruining Putin's day with all these legal updates... what's a poor autocrat to do without his sock puppet running a rival country into the ground. Instead of being able to sic them on each other, he'll have to deal with both China and The US at the same time

Still practicing those old X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter skills. Looking through my game library, I decided to start from the opposite end. Good thing too. Having a blast playing Xenonauts. Finally getting to scratch that old X-Com itch (with game I actually seem to like as opposed to those horrible things from Firaxis Games)

The obnoxious kids you were not allowed to nuke so you could just get on with it. I think it was called Little Lamplight? At that point I stopped playing the game and uninstalled it. It has been sitting in my Steam account unused ever since. Point Lookout was quite nice though. If it wasn't for the mess with the Microsoft Live requirement, I would probably have reinstalled it just to play that part again.

I wonder if Putin plays chess? https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/11/12/is-the-nagorno-karabakh-war-really-over Uprisings in Armenia as people wants to overthrow the government (which had been trying to tie Armenia closer to the west), Azerbaijanis all happy with a Russian military presence (at least at the moment) and Turkeys role in the region reduced to irrelevancy (regardless of how much posturing Erdogan does). Not bad for six weeks.

A bit of news from my old country... for those who don't know, Mink (and fur production) is big business in Denmark. Turned out that Covid19 could infect mink and that created a new, mutated strain named Cluster 5, which is resistant to antibodies that works against Covid19. I.e. effectively a mutant strain that would ignore vaccines against Covid19. Looks like Danish scientists came up with a vaccine that is also effective against this new variant. "Early studies of the mutated virus strain, known as Cluster 5, showed the virus to have a reduced sensitivity towards antibodies, possibly compromising the efficacy of future vaccines, authorities said last week. But antibodies from rabbits treated with an early-stage vaccine candidate from Denmark’s State Serum Institute (SSI) successfully beat down the Cluster 5 variant, according to Anders Fomsgaard, a leading scientist at SSI, which deals with infectious diseases. “We couldn’t resist testing the rabbit antibodies we have against Cluster 5, and it works,” Fomsgaard told Danish broadcaster DR on Thursday." https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2020/11/12/vaccine-works-against-covid-mink-mutation-in-early-testing And in more local news (from my pov), The state of Victoria has now had 0 new cases the last 14 days. Looks like the draconian lock down measures did the job.

Since there is no such thing as lasting immunity against Covid19, any vaccine would only really be working for what? 3 weeks? Edit: The scientists behind the vaccine. I hope this thing works out, even if not the cheapest option. "The scientists who developed the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine are a Turkish-German power couple" https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/10/europe/biontech-pfizer-vaccine-team-couple-intl/index.html

Not sure about that. I do seem to remember something about the US government not wanting to subsidize it, although I don't remember the circumstances. Australia got dibs on 10m doses of the first production run too apparently: https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2020/11/coronavirus-covid-19-information-about-the-pfizer-biontech-vaccine-for-covid-19.pdf

Looks like Europeans are getting a better deal on the first batches of the potential new Covid vaccine by Pfizer (US) and BioNTech (Germany) "The European Union has struck a deal to initially pay less for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate than the United States, an EU official told Reuters News Agency as the bloc announced on Wednesday it had secured an agreement for up to 300 million doses. The experimental drug, developed in conjunction with Germany’s BioNTech, is the frontrunner in a global race to produce a vaccine, with interim data released on Monday showing it was more than 90 percent effective at protecting people from COVID-19 in a large-scale clinical trial." https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2020/11/11/coronavirus-europe-to-pay-less-than-us-for-pfizer-vaccine @BruceVCany idea what deals the UK (and SA) would have struck with the two companies?

Moved to general gaming section as there was no mentioned of what game... according to google translate it's Portuguese "My pc has all the necessary settings to run the game. I was playing without problems when I started to receive the message saying that the game is "broken". The system (Windons 10) tells me that the game is broken and asks to contact support. Can you check what's going on, if something's wrong? What do you say? I have to reinstall the game and lose all my saves ...?!"

New thread:

I really regret buying Borderlands 3, even at half price. Didn't get any of the DLC. The new season pass is for 3 DLC's that all got slammed by reviewers (just reskins for characters at like $15 each). Still having a lot of fun with Borderlands 2 though. Trying to get from OP2 to OP3 on my siren. Nice and challenging. Reinstalled X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter (from GOG). Dusted off my old Saitek X52 flight stick and had a lot of fun yesterday getting to learn the basics in a Z-95 again Edit: Jeebus the quoting and formatting in this board software is irritating. Old thread:

Apparently that incident pissed off Putin. They (Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia) have suddenly become the best friends ever and Armenia and Azerbaijan signed not only a new truce, but a peace deal with terms and conditions decided by (a fed up) Putin. "The peace deal, which was signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenia's prime minister, took effect on Tuesday from 01:00 local time (21:00 GMT Monday). Under the deal, Azerbaijan will hold on to areas of Nagorno-Karabakh that it has taken during the conflict. Armenia has also agreed to withdraw from several other adjacent areas over the next few weeks." https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54882564

Agreed. Removed the post. I'm sure CC saw what he needed to see by now anyway.

The same continent also produced things like republics, democracy and a few other things. It's not all bad. Edit: As for the rest of the world obsessing over American politics, you might as well face it, the US is a major trading (and military) partner for a large number of countries. What happens in Washington DC *does* matter as it can have severe (or positive) consequences to other countries. They may not have a vote, but you bet, they have a keen interest in it.

Watched a few highlights from yesterdays match between FC Liverpool and Manchester City in the English Premiere League. Game ended 1-1. The two goalscorers... Jesus and Mohammad Edit: Gabriel Jesus and Mohammad Salah that is.

Looks bad... we had our share of wild weather last week. Severe storms with hail. Much better now with pleasant weather 24/7. Taken by a friend of a friend, two suburbs away:

Paragons Bruce... paragons

Take the words of an expert in democracy, the election was rigged! Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko: "The bastion of democracy... Look at what's going on with this election. It is a shame, a mockery of the democracy"

Speaking of hyperbole... It was never about communism (or socialism), that's just scare tactics and a propaganda shtick from the 1950's McCarthy era. The US has two right wing parties. Both are corporate stooges, doing the bidding of their corporate masters and what their respective lobbyists tells them to do. No, I'm not American, so I can only see if from the outside, but seen from the outside, the only visible difference between the two parties is: One is a bunch of religious nutcases that wants to turn the US into a theocracy (Khamenei says hello fellow believers) and the other side a bunch of secular nutcases that wants to turn the US into atheist oligarchy (Nietzsche says hello fellow nihilists). Paranoia in society runs so deep now, that only few individuals can see what is outside the cave (if not already done, I would recommend reading Plato's Cave allegory in 'The Republic' (around 500bc), it's a bloody brilliant story). The US is not divided in left and right, but in the have and have nots. Eventually the inequality in society will tear the fabric of society apart. Rinse and repeat a 5000 year old cyclic tradition. It's will get worse and worse as time goes by. Will the collapse happen in my lifetime? Maybe even, who knows/

Better than being required to have odd citizens.

US Presidential elections are going to be really fun to watch when AOC is old enough to run