TwinIon

We're just over 24 hours until we find out for sure. For all of Blizzard's recent problems, I'm personally interested in Diablo IV. I just hope they find some way to spice up the formula a bit. I loved D2 back in the day, but I don't want to play the same game with modern graphics.

I played a good bit of Halo in the early days, but haven't really touched the multiplayer in the last few iterations. Battlefield is really the only one that's been consistently my jam. The large maps, slightly slower pace, and ability to be constructive in multiple ways (healing, capturing control points, etc.) makes it a better fit for my play style and limited talents.

How so? News organizations can still advertise. I think he's doing it out of pure self interest, as a way to avoid potential regulation. That doesn't mean that the outcome is necessarily bad.

I'm not sure what you mean. Lie about it being political? They'll use some machine learning to figure out if something is political or not, and if you get caught you probably get kicked off. It certainly stops the major advertisers. As far as distribution is concerned, your regular accounts will still get the same reach they always would, you just can't pay to boost it. This isn't kicking political content off the platform, just advertisements.

Google's DeepMind AI team has put out a new paper in Nature detailing AlphaStar, their Starcraft II AI. While they've been playing against high level players for almost a year, those previous experiences were considered unfair because AlphaStar was given superhuman speed and vision. The new builds are far more limited. AlphaStar now sees the world through a camera and is only allowed 22 actions every 5 seconds of play. It can also play as any of the three races. Also, training is now fully automated and starts only with agents trained by supervised learning, rather than from previously trained agents from past experiments. The final version relied on 44 days of training and placed within the top 0.15% of the European player base. While that makes it a "Grandmaster" it also means it can't consistently beat the best players in the world. It's particularly vulnerable to strategies it hasn't seen before. You can see replays of it's games here. I think it still has a way to go, but I see this as a far more interesting and generally applicable kind of problem than Chess or Go. In particular not having perfect information and having such a huge number of possible moves (1026 actions to choose from at any moment!) means it's facing a lot of unpredictability. It certainly seems like it's only a matter of time before it's the best in the world. Maybe a show match at the next Blizzcon.

I finished the game last night and had the same bug, I'm assuming. After looking it up I was able to go in through the back, but it's a pretty terrible bug. For that final mission I didn't really have to shoot anything up to that point thanks to the holo disguise thing. So it was pretty fast for me to run back. If I'd taken the hard way there I'd have been pretty pissed.

I agree. It seems like almost any other strategy would have made more sense. They could have made a different brand altogether and offered a bundle a-la Disney. They have Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+, and you can buy them all or as a bundle. If you took all the non-HBO stuff from HBO Max and put it in a WB streaming service, it would be clearly a new thing in addition to this other thing. Then you can bundle them or whatever. They also could have just put everything into HBO and just charged more for it. Get it the same way you already do, pay for it the same way, just more money for more content. Instead they made a new thing that also encompasses the old thing that partially uses the old things name, but doesn't replace the old thing. Its phone company / ISP logic at it's finest.

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.