TwinIon

When it's just voice overs, I pretty much never have any problem with it. When it's a full capture situation, I think the biggest problem is that I can't think of many games where the "performance" actually mattered. I wish that wasn't the case, but as it stands it just seems like the acting quality isn't the problem with the story being portrayed in most games. The famous actor problem is an issue in film as well. Tom Hanks is super recognizable, but when he gives a good performance I'm still able to engage with him as his character. In a game famous actors are rarely given sufficient chance to break through that. I never played Death Stranding, but I wouldn't be surprised if it works out well for that game, just because I know you're given a lot of time with those characters.

@Ghost_MH Any particular reason you went with the Razr over the Galaxy Flip? Especially since you already have a Samsung phone it seems like a natural choice. Also, what do you think about the outside screen? That's the one thing the Razr seems to have over the Flip that seems potentially useful, but also like the kind of thing that you'd need live with to judge.

Looks good.

I think this could be a fun era to explore. It's well removed from the Skywalker saga and necessarily forces Star Wars to be something other than the scrappy Rebels beating back the huge monolithic force. Good creators will find a way to tell good stories, bad ones will do the opposite. That's always been true for Star Wars.

Not to mention the purchase of Fox.

I think you can show the product, and it can be obvious what product it is, but you can run into trouble if you show company names or brand logos. I honestly don't know how much of a case you'd have, but I'm pretty sure that Apple doesn't pay for product placement so much as they just make their products available to use for free on movies. At least I believe that used to be the case. So you could probably show an iPhone with an Apple logo in a way that Apple might not want, but you would stop getting free stuff to use and maybe you'd invite some kind of lawsuit, even if it's mostly baseless.

I think this is a stupid argument. When Bernie praises some detestable act or policy, that should be notable. If he were to say that in broad strokes he would model his presidency after Castro's, that would be pretty bad. Merely saying that "bad man did good thing" hardly seems controversial. Politically, I understand why opponents want to push this narrative. You want to tie Sanders to communists and what not as much as possible. As an actual concern about Sander's as President, I don't think there's much to dig into on this one.

I do wonder who else will push harder against Sanders as he furthers his lead, not that I'm convinced it will matter. I think Bernie would have to self destruct in order for this debate to affect his status as the front runner.

I really hadn't thought about the Olympics. It could end up being like the plot of Rainbow Six, but by accident. I wouldn't be surprised if they still do it on time and in Tokyo, but limit the crowds.

It is slightly difficult to imagine this court finding discrimination against LGBTQ people is not protected by the first amendment. I think the question is how rigorous a test for "undue hardship" they create. I can see the court trying to blur the line a bit and make local laws like Philadelphia's unconstitutional, but still saying that in individual cases such discrimination can meet that burden. It would be an unequival loss for the LGBTQ community, but they get to play at the idea they're not legalizing discrimination, they just don't like laws that prevent it.

I might go so far as to say that Friends is the most important property on HBO Max. I don't think I've ever seen an entire episode, but it's a huge draw for a lot of people. Netflix wasn't spending $80M a year just for nostalgia's sake.

I'm surprised. Not that he is guilty, but that he was found guilty.

I mostly agree with you, but particularly for Xbox the power differential will be less simply because the One X exists. The One X is so much more of a mid gen improvement than we've seen before, and I expect that once the Series X becomes the default platform, some of those improvements will filter down to it as well, keeping that line blurry. Specific early games will still be substantially better, and we'll get to a point where that becomes the norm, but I think for a while this generation will be the least impressive jump so far.

There's no chance anyone in that audience has seen the movie.

That's incredibly cool. It's amazing that you can have what is essentially a VFX heavy shot captured completely in camera.

Rewatching Gladiator for the first time in a long while on Blu ray, and man, the disc does not hold up well. When things are still, the resolution isn’t too bad, but when there is any motion, for some reason this film, more than most, the lack of resolution is noticeable. On the other hand, the audio on the blu ray is still perfectly acceptable. This is definitely one of those movies I owned as soon as it was available, so I’ve no idea if more recent transfers are any better., but this old school one isn’t good. As far as the film is concerned. I look back fondly on the performances of both Phoenix and Crowe. As a best picture winner, it has an obvious place in history, and I feel like it’s one of those films that deserves that honor more than many, and less less than perhaps many more. It’s far from my favorite Ridley Scott film, but it holds up pretty well. I’d buy the 4K version if it was something I rewatched more often.

587k isn't that much money. This little 2 bedroom home is ~$300k. So what, you buy a little building, and turn the second bedroom into an office space for US diplomats to do what? In terms of Trump's weird obsessions, at least this one is pretty cheap and harmless.

I agree. I feel like ray tracing in the PS5/Series X is not dissimilar to where 4K is with current consoles. Yeah, we get "4K" but there are always caveauts and gaps and it doesn't make a huge difference most of the time. There's not quite enough power for everyone to easily flip the switch and just get the most out of it. We'll see individual devs and games really hit the sweet spot and make something look amazing, but most of the time we'll be in this weird middle ground where we get elements of ray tracing, but not the full effect. I also don't think that the SSD will be a game changer, it'll be a quality of life improvement. Games will be built for cross platform compatibility and or multi-generation compatibility, either of which means dealing with spinning disks. Same thing with the CPU improvements. We'll get some cool effects here and there, but it's not as if we're suddenly going to get some crazy simulation stuff going on. Enemy AI isn't going to take an enormous leap, physics will still get short shrift. I think the nature of these things is that we get smaller performance increases over time, and not always in the direction people expect.

For the first time this cycle, I actually watched most of the debate, and I'm glad I did. Warren came off as the easy winner to me, but she was already my pick so I'm biased. She landed her blows where it counted, but also didn't go for less important questions about Bernie Bros or Klobuchar forgetting a name. I know she's not far from Bernie in her proposals, and her poor performances meant that no one was going after her, but I think she walked away from that debate having come off as a plausible middle ground candidate. I don't think Sanders or Biden really gained or lost any ground. For being the front runner, Sanders didn't really take that many shots, but I don't feel like he did much to grow his coalition. I think Buttigieg's comments about him being absolutist actually hit home, and I don't think he did much to dissuade that notion. Speaking of Buttigieg, I think he did pretty well. I don't like him much at all, but I think he played to his strengths, positioned himself as the consensus candidate, and his attacks on Sanders and Bloomberg as being dangerously controversial feel like the right angle of attack for him. Much more than before, I see why people might gravitate to him, even if I still don't like him much. I'm glad that Klobuchar is still in the race, but I feel like she didn't come off that well last night. She took more fire than I'd expect for someone with the lowest level of overall support up there. She didn't do a bad job, but I don't think she did much to distinguish herself. Bloomberg was a dumpster fire for the first half of the debate. It was obvious that everyone up there would have a bone to pick with him, and with his recent surge it made sense for everyone to go after him, but he seemed wholly unprepared for that. He also didn't seem to have much of a platform to fall back on other than "I can win." In the second half, when the conversation turned to socialism and some of Bernie's more extreme plans, I think he came off better. He's obviously more comfortable being dismissive of worker ownership or the word "socialism" than he is at actually proposing something positive. I really dislike him and hope this debate sinks his chances, but I do actually think he's good practice for the general election. It's basically like we have a Republican in the Democratic debate. Even if I think that worker ownership is a good idea, and Pete's middle ground of "well, companies should have the choice as to if they give up 20% of their ownership or not" is naive and silly, I don't think it plays well on a debate stage. Maybe calling all this "communism" feels old fashioned and stupid to the Democrats watching, but I wouldn't be surprised if it rings true to a broader audience. So yeah, I'd love for this to effectively kill his chances at a win, but for him to stay in long enough that the eventual nominee (whoever it ends up being), gets in some good practice running against an egoistic NYC billionaire.

It does seem like the kind of stupid thing Trump would consider, but it's pretty hard to take any of this as truth.

A whole bunch of things in Asia have been canceled or moved, but other than Mobile World Congress (phone trade show in Barcelona with an attendance of ~100k) I haven't heard of much else in Europe or the Americas being canceled because of the virus. According to the CDC, MA does have confirmed cases, but there have only been 15 confirmed cases in the US in total. Sure seems like an overabundance of caution.

I'm glad this has been overturned, I can see SCOTUS going either way. I still find it kind of extraordinary that Amendment 4 was passed in the first place, and it sure does seem like preventing people from voting before they pay up violates the principle of the amendment.

I've got an One X and a recently upgraded PC, so I'm probably skipping the Series X. I'd like to see Sony swing for the fences on specs, so I'd be fine with a $500 console if it warrants the price.

Always nice to see people that stick these kinds of cases through actually get some compensation.