TwinIon

It will include all HBO and Cinemax content, plus a catalog of Warner Media shows and movies as well as HBO Max specific content. HBO Max is free for: -AT&T Wireless subscribers who already subscribe to HBO through AT&T services (AT&T TV or U-Verse). For one year. -Free upgrade for HBO Now subscribers, if you bill directly through HBO. If you bought it through Amazon or Apple, no dice. -Also, subscribers of premium AT&T mobile and broadband services will be eligible for HBO Max bundles at no extra charge. (whatever that means) If you get HBO through a cable provider, you're invited to stay tuned, as AT&T is hoping to strike deals with cable providers, but I wouldn't hold my breath on that. The initial posters only say "HBO" and not "HBO Max", but it was unveiled at the HBO Max event, so who knows.

ESPN Wow, that's a stunning reversal. I certainly didn't expect the NCAA to cave so immediately. The NCAA is now set to implement the new rules two years before CA was going to force the issue.

The article mentions that:

None of the GoT related stuff is moving forward. On the one hand, it's surprising because AT&T is surely desperate for HBO/MAX to have a genuine hit. On the other hand, AT&T is also trying to cut costs and GoT wasn't cheap. If all the old HBO execs were still there I might be more inclined to believe this was a creative decision and that the show just wasn't shaping up well enough. Under AT&T's corporate governance, it's hard to believe that these kinds of decisions are being made for the right reasons.

So what's the likely end game here? Am I being naive when I doubt that they entirely overturn Roe V Wade and decide that states can make abortion illegal? My guess is that they instead come up with some ridiculous framework under which states can impose incredibly burdensome abortion laws, allowing many states to do everything but banning it. Something like "while we recognize the courts' previous decision in allowing a woman to terminate her pregnancy, the government has no compelling interest in ensuring access to such a service, therefore any reasonable restrictions put in place for the safety of the mother or the fetus shall be allowed."

That seems like a pretty significant bug that could possibly have a lot of uncertain consequences.

I hadn't heard of any attempts to allow 16 and 17 year olds or EU nationals to vote. After a quick search, it seems like 18 is when the UK considers you an adult with the exceptions of consent and driving. Everything else (leaving education, working, joining the armed forces, alcohol, etc.) requires parental consent. So it would seem a bit out of step to give them the vote. I'm not entirely opposed to the idea, but making it happen very suddenly doesn't seem like a good move. As for EU nationals, that's a more interesting thought. Certainly if they're long time residents it makes sense that they should be able to vote. Looking into it quickly, it seems that EU countries vary pretty wildly on how they allow foreigners to vote regardless of EU citizenship. Again, this seems like the kind of thing that should probably be considered and not thrown in as an amendment to a snap election, but it makes sense to me.

Yes, but they don't release those numbers. With big budget films there's a very public aspect of your success or failure. With Netflix stuff not only is that success or failure private, but the internal metrics are different than pure viewership.

All of Tarantino's films are self indulgent, it's basically why he's making the movies, because he wants to see this thing exist. I'd say it's his defining characteristic as a filmmaker, but I don't see it as a fault or a failure of the film.

I guess I need to play Disco Elysium. That article does bring up something that I'd kinda forgotten about, which is how little your decisions in Outer Worlds actually matter. I think that was one of the reasons that getting to the end surprised me the most. Yeah, I thought it was a longer game, but I also really expected my decisions to come back. I figured that how I resolved certain situations or my standing with different factions would matter, but it really never did. I guess I got some discounts a few times, but that was the extent of my impact.

I think the actual issue is that this is a developer that was very happy to take a well established game type and technology, quirks, failures and all, and to make another one of those games with their own spin. They put no effort into making something new from a gameplay or usability standpoint. It's obviously possible to do more within the constraints of the current systems, but they didn't want to push the envelope in any particular way.

Making a Star Wars Trilogy is what, a minimum of 7 or 8 years? All that time you're under heavy scrutiny of the whole Disney machine with everyone expecting each film to make a least a billion, working in a format that you've never worked on before? Or you can go to Netflix and make whatever you want, without any oversight, and without anyone ever knowing how many people actually watched it, in a medium that you're already very comfortable making? I understand why people's initial reactions were "how in the world do you choose Netflix over Star Wars," but if you give most people the choice between heavy scrutiny and creative freedom, I think a lot of people would chose the latter.

Yeah, I couldn't remember the exact date, so I looked it up and it's pretty straightforward in their terms and conditions. You'll get 3 months starting from Nov 1 to redeem the offer.

There can only be one active quest at a time. If I have a bunch of missions in a given zone, there's no way to see mission markers for them at the same time. So it's quite easy to be right next to a mission waypoint and not realize it. It's a minor thing, but it's also a quality of life issue that I feel like has been handled better by any number of other games. I understand that the load times are going to be longer on a spinning disk, but even worse than the load times are that they exist at all. I can wander around a large outdoor area with a bunch of stuff happening, but for some reason a relatively small lab with only a couple rooms requires a loading transition? Besides, having better performance on the PC doesn't excuse poor performance on an 1X.

Early reviews for Apple TV+ shows are coming in and by and large it seems they're fine, but lacking any must-see shows. Engadget has a nice overview of the shows, and suggests that if there's one to watch, it's Ronald D. Moore's alt-history show For All Mankind. Overall reviews for The Morning Show, Dickinson, and See are all a bit more mixed. With only the few shows available and nothing urgently great, I imagine Apple could have some initial trouble getting subscribers. Still, worth remembering that everyone that's bought a new Apple device after September 10 gets a free year. Since my iPad was bought in April, think I'm going to hold out on paying the $5/month.

I don't know about a formal vote, but I imagine it was always the plan for the House to do some investigations behind closed doors, and then do public hearings. The Republicans will claim that everything is invalid no matter what. This vote is a success if it keeps the inquiry moving.

I had a lot of fun with Dolemite. I was unaware of Rudy Ray Moore, and regardless of veracity of the performance, Eddie Murphy puts on quite the show. He's given a huge latitude to show off his considerable talent, and is backed up by an extremely impressive supporting cast. In particular I really enjoyed Wesley Snipes' bizzaro turn as D'Urville Martin. I again have no clue how true to life his performance is, but he's hilarious every time he's on screen. It's easy to imagine this movie spending a good deal more time wallowing in Rudy's failures or building up the drama, but instead it chooses to celebrate his successes, and I think the it's all the better for it. It's a feel good movie, and whether Murphy is hustling as Rudy or performing as Dolemite, it's terrific entertainment.

I thought the second episode was good. Not quite as good as the pilot, but a solid episode that answered a few small questions while also introducing a whole bunch of big ones. I assumed that Jeremy Irons' servants were synthetic in some way. We definitely don't know their true nature quite yet, but it's something. I found the talk surrounding Dr. Manhattan's abilities to be interesting. I don't recall in the book if that specific point is brought up or not, but it kinda surprises me that the limits of his abilities would be so well known, or at least that people would think they understand his limits so confidently. I always thought of his power as kinda ambiguous. Certainly he has limits (the whole plot of the book is impossible if it was without limits), but especially when it came to his appearance I kinda figured that he never bothered looking more human because he just never cared to. Whatever the case, it certainly seems like between that talk of Manhattan and his central presence in Veidt's play that Manhattan will play some notable role in someone's plans. The other bit of evidence for his involvement is the repeated imagery of the castle. We see a very similar castle design with Manhattan on Mars, Veidt's home, and in what Topher is building.

But Google is building and buying devs specifically for Stadia, so it is possible that a small number of games do get developed. I think part of the problem is that it's not clear what new gameplay experiences can really be made by going cloud first or cloud only. How many actual gameplay related issues are prevented by compute power? There's also the question of scaling. Maybe it's profitable enough for Google to let you play games in the cloud as is (maybe it isn't we have no way of knowing), but increase the compute power you need per player enough and it certainly won't be.

This is such an incredibly bad idea in so many ways, I can't believe anyone would make such a suggestion public. So you're going to light up a camera at someone every time they look at porn? And you're going provide some sort of API that is open enough that any shadey porn site has access to age verification on your entire populace? And you're going to trust that porn sites will actually implement it? That's not even considering the technical issues. What about devices that don't have cameras (like most desktops)? Then you have an issue of the devices that do have cameras being largely of poor quality and certainly not working well in poor lighting conditions. You think a cheap laptop webcam or android phone selfie cam is capable of decent facial recognition even in good conditions? Even if this was in service of a worthwhile cause it would be a terrible and completely unworkable idea. As an effort just to stop people from seeing naked people, it's certifiable.

Assuming it works well, that is the kind of idea that I think they need in order to convince people that this is a good idea. Thing is, I doubt that Microsoft is behind at all (and in all likelihood, is ahead) in pushing game elements into the cloud. They've been trying to do this for a while now, and haven't found lots of good ideas in how to actually make better games with it. If Google finds something really special that only cloud based gaming, good for them, but somehow I doubt the fundamental idea will be unique to their platform for long.

I think he understands that it's the case. He knows he's one of the most storied filmmakers alive and even with the incredible cast he couldn't convince any major studio to make this movie. I think he's acutely aware of how movies in general and his movies in particular are going to be seen and what their market value is like. He just doesn't like it. For myself, if this was playing in an AMC and I could use my A-list subscription to see it, I'd see it in a theater. I don't think it is though, so I'll be watching on Netflix.

So, assuming Boris actually signs the extension (which I think he's required to do), now we probably move on to a general election in December. The polling I've seen has been pretty bad, but that BBC article says that a lot of young people are registering. Either way, it doesn't seem the UK comes out of this with a clear direction.

Having touch controls is a necessary feature for me. I have no doubt that Apple will sell a ton of these.

I've been sick and didn't have much to do this weekend, so I've spent a lot of time in the game and have surprisingly found myself pretty much at the end of it. Overall I'd say it's a good version of a game that shouldn't still be getting made. If you want Fallout but with a new skin, this will scratch that itch. Otherwise, I think it's fair to wonder why this particular game type has evolved so little since Morrowind in 2002. Most of my criticisms can probably be leveled against any Bethesda style RPG, so make of that what you will, but I still feel like there's a good case to be made against them. The core of the problem is that there is so much about these games that feels incredibly stale from both a technology and gameplay standpoint. When Morrowind released, there was a sense of wonder in such a huge area, all in 3D, all packed with items and enemies and NPCs that you could engage and interact with. It was so easy to overlook the obvious limitations and issues with their particular approach because it was novel and exciting. Here we are 17 years later and so many of those limitations have been overcome by other games, but somehow they're still tolerated in this particular strain. One of those things that initially created such a sense of wonder was the idea that nearly every item was something to interact with. Every cabinet could be opened, every "prop" piece of fruit could be devoured. Kill a man and steal his silverware! Then the reality of the situation sets in. If everything can be interacted with, and if you spread necessities out all over the place, the possibilities made real by making everything interactable simply become chores. Kill the baddies, loot them slowly, repeat. Empty out the hideout, and crawl through every nook and cranny, carefully pointing at each individual piece of money and each tiny container of precious ammunition. In Outer Worlds, so few are the times when those possibilities add up to anything worthwhile. I'd wager entire hours of my gameplay time were devoted just to aiming at each highlightable object, picking up that which was desperately needed along with worthless junk that added nothing to my gameplay experience. It certainly didn't help that the whole process was slightly buggy, often not bringing up the dialog box when a body was highlighted, needing to look away and then look back before I could loot. Then there are the technological limitations that felt so arbitrary. So many loading screens between areas, many of which weren't particularly large. In an age of endless wilderness in RDR2, having to load a tiny laboratory interior feels backwards. Even the large outdoor spaces felt small and isolated, and the cities and towns felt tiny and empty. Companion AI and pathfinding are straight out of the early days of 3D. The questing system is serviceable, but also incredibly limited. Only being able to handle a single quest at a time, it made dealing with multiple quests in the same area a chore of manual discovery rather than simply placing markers on a map. A map which, on my Xbox One X, was incredibly slow to load. There were times that I think it might have been faster to run to my destination than to open the map screen, wait for the map, and load my destination in fast travel. The inventory screen is serviceable, but again, feels out of an older time we should have long passed. Does anyone enjoy dealing with weight limits and juggling weapon and armor durability? Does anyone want to figure out which random bit of food is ideal to load into my healing vape for any given encounter? Again, this is a good game for the most part. The combat is interesting enough (though not great), the setting is fun (if not entirely original), the rpg elements are above average, providing a variety of possible playstyles. The graphics are mostly pretty good, if not outstanding. The score sets the tone well and the cast is entertaining enough. I didn't keep playing for hours on end because this is a bad game and I wanted to punish myself, I enjoyed it because it's well done. It's just a pretty good game that has been grafted to such outdated bones.