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TwinIon

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Everything posted by TwinIon

  1. Yeah, I'm not really sure what to make of it. Reminds me of HAM/VER in Saudi 01, although there was contact in that instance. On the one hand, these guys are going really fast, if you do something really unexpected then you really increase the chances of a crash and penalties should exist for driver safety. On the other hand, if you're a wily ol fox and you come up with some novel line or strategy, I'm inclined to call that fair racing. Especially given the nature of these aero dependent cars, dirty air, and DRS. We've seen other drivers let up a bit in order to be behind at DRS detection points, and they get praised to high heaven for their strategy, and rightfully so. What Alonso did was much more dramatic than that, but it's in the same vein. I'm not enough of a racer to know if Alonso's strategy would have worked if he braked more gently, or if it would have worked at all, but I would like to see an F1 where that kind of race craft is allowed and even encouraged, as long as it's safe.
  2. I have a Ryzen 7 3800X and game at 4K. I went from a 2080 to a 4080 and it was very worthwhile. I can generally get at least 4k60 with all the bells and whistles. For 4K gaming it was a huge leap.
  3. Pretty sure I saw the same thing, and the whole thing about the Jones act and running these massive ships on minuscule margins rang true to me. Far as I can tell, a vessel this size would be considered post-panamax or neo-panamax, which basically just means it's as big as possible for the upgraded panama canal locks. This USDA site (odd source, but seems legit) says that in 2019 there were 585 of them, or 5% of global bulk vessels. 38% of bulk vessels in 2019 were Panamax or larger. So this ship was in the upper middle of the pack when it comes to sheer size. To me it sounds very plausible that the crew was a victim of circumstance.
  4. That's just the nature of anti-trust. The rules are different once you control enough of the market. It's the most natural thing in the world to build your products in a way that makes people want to use more of your products. Apple has done this very successfully; arguably more successfully than anyone else ever has. It only becomes a problem when the government decides that it's become a problem. That does kind of rub me the wrong way, but it does actually make some sense in context.
  5. I think the super app thing is useful for the DOJ for a few reasons. The biggest thing is that it's very clear Apple doesn't like them and Apple takes a bunch of very obvious and some very technical steps to prevent them. They don't allow third party payment systems, they don't allow mini-apps, they prevent PWAs from accessing a bunch of APIs. Another big reason is that China provides a counterfactual example of what the smartphone market could look like if Super-Apps were popular in the US. The DOJ also have convenient emails from Apple talking about how Apple don't like super-apps because they reduce stickiness. So you have a thing that we know Apple doesn't want, where it's easy to show the policy and technical barriers that Apple puts up to prevent their adoption, with a thing we can show does work overseas. I think that makes it a good case to take to court. Also, even if you don't care about super-apps, if the DOJ wins on these counts, there are a bunch of things that could conceivably help plenty of non-super-apps. If you open up payment options or PWA API access or just in general lessen the control Apple is able to exercise over the content of apps, all of that could benefit plenty of different apps.
  6. Maybe I need to re-watch the beginning of season 1 and I just didn't pick up what they were giving us, but I feel like they did a terrible job of setting the stage. Episode 1 we had Spartans, including Master Chief, saving (or at least attempting to save) insurrectionists from Covenant. It was really not clear if humanity was still in some civil war, what exactly was happening with the war with the Covenant, to what extent MC was already some legendary hero, or why. I think some of that is their failing, and maybe some of it is that it conflicts with the games. I'm fine with dropping the audience off in media res, but I feel like that works best when things are simple and it's easy to get your bearings. You don't watch the opening of Star Wars and wonder who the good guys are. It felt to me like they wanted to make Halo more complex in different ways than the game did, when I think it would have worked better without all the mess. So I completely agree with you that the "UNSC does bad stuff" threads were so weirdly the core of this show, arguably until the very end of season 2.
  7. The old titles thing doesn't surprise me. Look at the top of Steam's charts or Twitch and you'll see games like League of Legends, Counter Strike, DOTA, GTA, etc. all leading the charts. Yeah, press and conversation is often focused on new games, but it's no shock that the games people spend the most time on are older. I'd love more context for that top graph though. I couldn't find much searching on Google. If those charts are right, then the top one only represents the 25% of "new game play time," but I can't think of 25 new pay-to-play live service games would make up that number. Given the time period, it would count games released after January 2021. Overwatch 2, Halo Infinite, Dreamlight Valley, and Diablo 4 are the only mildly successful games I can think of that would count. Are they counting Hogwards Legacy and Call of Duty as live service? What about sports titles? Are they counting games that got paid updates like Destiny in that time? Are they counting mobile games? That graph would mean that new AAA non-live-service games make up only 4% of annual playtime. That would be a surprise, however, if you count every game that has any kind of update or paid content as live service, then the delineation is basically meaningless.
  8. I spent way too much time in WoW and I look back fondly at the best parts of it. The beginning of that game was such a special time, but long before I quit it had fallen into a pattern that wasn't great for me or the game. I do wonder what those graphs look like if they went all the way back to the beginning.
  9. How is this a situation where he gets to retire own his own timeline and stay until the end of the year? Boeing should be shoving him out the first blown out plug socket and finding someone new to fix this broken company.
  10. Season finished up and it’s not uniformly terrible, but I just have a hard time connecting with it. I think there’s a lot to like. The finale ended with some pretty decent action. There are some very cool shots in space, some nifty horrorish sequences, and I appreciated the lack of cuts from the final fight. I think a lot of the issues I have with the show are remnants from a first season that failed to really connect me to all these characters. So even when individual scenes are well done, they’re just not hitting me with the weight they’re trying for. That said, I’m kind of excited about Season 3, if we actually get one.
  11. It's been a while since I read the books, but episode 1 seemed like a pretty decent start. Reviews are pretty good, and I enjoyed the series, so I'll be seeing this one through. I did find it kind of funny that it wasn't at the top of my Netflix screen. At a reported $160M total, Netflix is spending Game of Thrones money at this show. A generous reading is that the Netflix algorithm expects that I'll watch it or seek it out, so they need to promote other content to me that I might find interesting while I scroll over to this series. The more likely answer is that Netflix still just sucks at promotion, even inside it's own app.
  12. Has anyone here beaten this? I'm curious if it's worthwhile to spend any time grinding materia or levels before the end?
  13. After reading about the changes that Williams underwent over the summer, like moving away from tracking everything in Excel, it doesn't shock me that they didn't have a third chassis available. Watching the crash, I'm surprised it necessitated one, and it sucks for Logan that he doesn't get to race, but putting Albon in the car is probably still the right decision.
  14. This game really cannot resist introducing a new gimmick. At every step of the game they just feel compelled to add something extra and ephemeral, and it is so infrequently worthwhile. Sometimes it's a mini game or a new mode of transportation or a new ability for the chocobo, or maybe it's a character ability that only works for this sub-chapter of the game. The chocobo ability in the canyon is interesting, but you can hardly steer it, it's hard to look down without going down (which makes it so fun to try and line things up), and all it really does is turn the map into a maze. Sure the thing you want is over there, but you have to figure out where the jump point begins. I actually really like the Chocobo power in ch 11 (with the water). It doesn't really make sense, but for the first time in the entire game it was actually kind of fun getting around. I'm in chapter 11 and controlling Cait Sith is such a pain. Sure, he can run (roll), but if he bumps into something you stop, and while controlling the moogle you move incredibly slowly for no apparent reason. Also, you get to throw boxes at stuff with strangely convoluted controls. Maybe hitting a switch makes sense, but then you're throwing boxes to break boxes while Barrett is standing next to you with his gun arm in a game where you've already controlled Barrett and used his gun to break stuff from a distance, it's stretching the necessity of the gimmick too far. I try to imagine this game if they had built it as an actual open world adventure where all these things you learn and do in the party were additive instead of one off gimmicks. See a box way up high? Great, pull out Barrett and blow it up. Going back to an earlier area in the game? Wonderful, now your chocobo has new abilities that make getting around a breeze! Even if they didn't open up the design space to accommodate all that and they still wanted this eclectic mix of gameplay moments, they still could have cut half of them, polished the other half, and have a nice toy box of surprises instead of a junk drawer of functional but un-fun segments throughout an otherwise excellent game.
  15. Sounds like a poorly managed mess. Credit to the designer, I didn't think it was thrown together, but I didn't come away impressed by the final mission either.
  16. I don't know what to expect from this stock other than a wild ride.
  17. A confounding number that seems to go against the conventional wisdom both old and new. If you thought that streaming was doomed and that old school media would remain valuable and profitable, you'd want to include CBS and the cable channels. If you thought streaming was the future, obviously you'd want the streaming units. I don't understand where they see the value in owning Paramount Pictures if you don't think there's money in either broadcast or streaming. Given the inflated valuation and that they don't want to make money showing Paramount's content to consumers themselves, either they think they can be much more profitable making content and licensing it all out to whatever platforms want to pay for it, or they think they can carve up Paramount IP for parts. It makes me think someone read these recent reports about Disney's ROI on Marvel and Star Wars and decided that they could do that for Transformers, Star Trek, Top Gun, Mission Impossible, and whatever other random IP Paramount still owns. The idea that they're offering what seems to be a crazy premium makes me think they have a plan that is probably unpalatable to Paramount, but with a sufficiently big number Paramount has to seriously consider the sale.
  18. I would argue that Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is primarily a character piece, rather than something pointless or without a plot, but I also think it's one of those films that is very much about the vibe. Tarrantino wants to revel in Hollywood 1969; he wants to show how the business, culture, and the very nature of fame and Hollywood were changing and highlight how different it was from what we have now. It's a bit of nostalgic escapism and a bit of wish fulfillment, and if nothing about that appeals to you, it's easy enough to see why you might bounce off it. Personally, even as someone without Trantino's reverence for that moment in time, I found it a satisfying watch just by nature of how well each scene plays out. There isn't a driving force of plot to focus your attention, but watching Dalton's bewilderment at his young co-star or his self satisfaction at making her proud gives you so much insight into this man and the changing nature of his business. Booth's routine at home contrasting with Dalton's is such a wonderful bit of "show don't tell" character development while also planting seeds that will pay off later. The pressure cooker of Spahn Ranch is such a delightful slow build and a clever backdoor into the actual history the film plays with. The surprise callback of the flame-thrower is both comedic and the final relief in not seeing the terrible true history the film seemed to be building towards. It is a meandering movie that eases on by without a north star of necessity, but it's still a wonderfully constructed love letter by a man who desperately wants to celebrate movies and everything that goes into making them, and someone who knows how to make characters in film interesting and layered.
  19. It's at 45% on RT so far, which makes it the worst rated Ghostbusters movie. I watched Afterlife, which was fine. It's very much The Force Awakens, but Ghostbusters. It's kind of weird how it venerates everything Ghostbusters. It's not enough to have nostalgia, it has to be in awe of it's own nostalgia, which felt kind of weird for a comedy. Still, it was fun enough to not be a complete disaster. I might go see Frozen Empire just because there isn't much else out, but we'll see.
  20. Nothing wrong with that trailer, but as with any of these long running franchises that won't die I remain skeptical.
  21. Hey, it's not Skywalker Saga, that makes interested. Star Wars has had plenty of hits and misses, if it sucks, it sucks, but I'm happy to see something at least slightly different.
  22. Don Lemon has posted the Elon interview that got his X show canceled before it even started. The Verge has a quick rundown, which is probably enough for me.
  23. A tiny CPU clock bump, a good GPU upgrade, and frame gen feels very plausible for a passable but not exciting PS5 Pro. Its also a shame that the disc drive will be optional. If that is the shape of it, I'll need to see what the upgrades actually look like before shelling out.
  24. I'm such an idiot. I completely didn't recognize that x2 mult was different from +2 mult. I my mind mult was already multiplicative, it didn't register that some cards actually multiply your multiple. I got my first legendary joker that required twenty something discards before it would give x5 and thought, wow, that's a high requirement for a measly 5 mult. Still, I didn't find anything better for a while and when it unlocked I realized how it worked and now I feel like a moron, but those crazy high scores now feel much more doable.
  25. I kind of wish you could see some of the score before you play the hand. Obviously RNG elements shouldn't be taken into account, but having a base number would be nice. I have a simple excel sheet that I've started putting numbers into because I wasn't really sure what the play was. Like when I have the joker that duplicates another joker, not sure if I should duplicate the effect that gives me more chips or more mult. I understand why it isn't there, but I do feel silly whipping out excel to optimize this silly card game. I don't know about you all, but my "endless" runs have all ended pretty abruptly not long after they start. I've had a few runs where I knew I could sail through and "win" after Ante 3 or 4, so I'd slow play every round trying to maximize everything. I just did the challenge where you start with jokers for "every card is a face card" and "every face card has a 1 in 2 chance of paying out 1 dollar", which translated to infinite money. By the time I won nearly every card in my ~65 card deck were enhanced hearts, with about 30 of them being foil (+50 chips) +4 mult aces (a bunch with red stickers), with another 10 foil kings and ~15 +30 chip cards. My jokers gave me continually rising mults for every flush and tarrot played and +30 chips for every face card (which was all of them thanks to the challenge). I was actually struggling to play worse hands in order to trigger more effects every round, because I could easily win every round with my opening draw every time. I bought everything in the shop every round, buffing my hand types and looking for any joker with higher potential than what I had. All of that and I still maxed out at something over 100k per hand, which was guaranteed every hand. So when I got to the $1M boss blind, there was no chance. My other runs where I sailed through to the "win" screen similarly ended in that crazy 300k/500k/1M section. I know people have gotten some crazy scores, so I'm guessing that I just haven't unlocked some jokers that really allow for more exponential progression, because my linearly scaling methods just don't seem to cut it. Those 1M hand and 100M hand achievements seem way out of reach with what I've seen in the game so far. TL:DR - I'm enjoying trying to optimize this game. There is a beautiful mix of simplicity and depth that makes Balatro's success so well deserved.
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