TwinIon

I tried to find a link and couldn't, but I recall reading an article a few years back about how Subway was incredibly aggressive about opening new stores, but didn't really care much about their survival. They have a sales structure where people get paid for how many stores they open and almost nothing else. One of the results of that was Subway got more FTC(?) complaints than every other food franchise combined. When I was trying to find that article I found a bunch of different ones all reiterating the same thing that the OPs articles did, but they were from almost every year since 2010. Over time the articles went from "Subway is terrible to its franchisees, but it's still growing so fast!" to "Subway is terrible to its franchisees, and now they're shrinking."

SPACE FORCE!

I'm conflicted about how big I expect this movie to be. I think it looks pretty decent, and obviously pokemon is a pretty big deal. Still, there just aren't many live action PG movies to compare this to. Most of the highest grossing PG films are animated, and there isn't a clear touchstone from those that are left. Looking at the all time list, we have: Beauty and the Beast Star Wars ET Jungle Book (2016) Alice in Wonderland Harry Potter Home Alone The Grinch On the one hand it seems like it should be able to out-gross The Grinch (which I did not realize made so much), but it also doesn't seem like it's going to be bigger than the Harry Potter movies. So I don't know. Somewhere between $200M and $400M?

I'm sure it's good, but I don't know if I'm prepared.

One thing even the summary of the report points out is the potential rise of game streaming services. I wonder what category those fit under?

Last week fishermen in Norway observed a Beluga whale actively seeking out their boats. They noticed that the whale had a harness on and notified authorities. The harness was removed and examined and found to contain an inscription reading "Equipment of St. Petersburg" as well as what appeared to be a GoPro mount. It's expected that the whale is part of a Russian program to use various sea mammals to guard entrances to naval bases, assist deepwater divers, or kill strangers in their territory. The Guardian notes that Dolphins and seals have far better memories and seem to be better suited to the work, and that the Beluga whales "did not have the same “high professionalism.”" Over the last week, it seems that the whale has decided to stay in Norway. It has only moved 25 miles and seems to be enjoying its proximity to humans, an unusual behavior for the species. The Norwegians, who do not have the same experience the US Navy has with training sea mammals for military purposes, are unsure what to do with their new defector. One option is to transport the animal to a sanctuary in Iceland in an effort to increase the whale's survival chances.

That's very impressive. I could see my high school self spending tons of hours building something hopelessly unplayable. I'm less convinced that it's going to be something that I want to put lots of hours into playing, but I'd be happy to see this catch on and become something big.

I continue to find the Epic hate puzzling and silly. I also don't see how this is a particularly valuable acquisition. I feel like Rocket League is an evergreen niche title. It doesn't really need a sequel as much as it just needs to keep adding little things to keep the existing audience. After so many years I doubt it's growing much. I assume a sequel is inevitable, or Psyonix just has another game coming, otherwise it doesn't seem like Epic is buying much here.

The text wasn't the only demo, nor the only 8K TV I've seen in person, I just thought it was demonstrative of what lengths you have to go to in order to see a meaningful difference. CES show floors are not a great way to evaluate a TV, but I feel pretty comfortable in saying that the leap from 4K->8K is far less noticeable than the jump from from 1080p to 4K. It's absolutely possible to see a difference, but I don't think it's anything people need to get excited about.

That does seem odd. I didn't really love his arc in Agents of Shield, but I think he's a fine actor for the part. The Disney+ Marvel shows seem so much more interesting.

Depending on the distance from the screen, yes. I was at CES a couple years back when some of the first 8K displays were being shown off on the floor. One demo had two very large (I'm guessing 75"-85") screens next to each other. One was 4K and one was 8K, and both had very small text filling most of the screen. The key part of the demo was a very large magnifying glass covering part of each screen, showing that on the 8K one the (magnified) text was super sharp, while the text on the 4K screen was a bit muddled and hard to read, even magnified. Of course, if you took more than a step or two backwards you couldn't tell the difference at all. I think that at standard TV sizes 4K is of questionable value. In my opinion, 8K is pointless.

That sounds like exactly the kind of insanity that is very likely enshrined in law, I don't really know. Either way, it seems like maybe that shouldn't be the case.

That wouldn't surprise me. I also think that it just feels like an impossible task. I don't think he wants to gloss over things like travel times in the same way the show does. At this point, you kinda have to just handwave away how long it takes to travel anywhere in Westeros. Characters appear when they need to, and that's fine. I can't imagine trying to juggle all these storylines, make the basic logistics make any sense at all, and tell a good story. I'd guess he told D&D some pretty basic outlines, but he didn't really know how he'd actually do it. So they're just kinda fudging things in order to mostly keep true to what he had told them.

It's almost hard to understand how this can happen. As the article points out, most of the $2B spent on this drug was from Medicare. How was it that there's not some kind of price control built into Medicare? It seems like a simple rule that says Medicare won't accept a price increase beyond inflation + x% would fix this kind of thing. As long as X is less than 900% it would have caught this. Bribing doctors is almost a completely separate issue. Yeah, it's bad, and yeah, basically everything about how drugs are marketed (to doctors and patients) should be overhauled, but it seems like the core problem here is that raising the price of a drug by 1000% year over year doesn't raise a red flag anywhere. Punish everyone involved here, but also maybe we should make it harder to just jack up the price of medicine for no particular reason.

I read through a bunch of reactions over at r/asoiaf and people are pissed. I think there are plenty of legit gripes to be had, I have a few myself, but people were really unhappy about how this episode went down. I think a lot of it is that some of these storylines tied up in ways that didn't match the expectations they've been building up in their heads for more than a decade.

I get the feeling that Valve built this because it's what they wanted, and not what would actually sell well. I'm bummed about that as well. I haven't personally tried an HMD with those features, but it certainly seems like the kind of thing that would justify a $1000 price tag and be a generational leap. Unfortunately it would probably make the headset by itself cost $1000.

They've only agreed to "try and craft a $2 trillion plan." Great. So they've agreed that they want to figure something out, but they have no clue how to pay for it, which couldn't possibly be a roadblock. If I recall correctly Trump's last plan was mostly made of up tax exemptions and refunds and it was a non-starter for both parties. If this means the Democrats will spend time coming up with a good plan, fine. I don't want to see them take a good plan and blow it up in an attempt to please Trump.

With pre-orders open and a shipping date of May 21st, Oculus Quest reviews are coming in. Road To VR Tom's Hardware Polygon The Verge Engadget Tested The reviews are all on relative agreement on some of the main points. The tracking works very well, the optics are pretty good, and wireless VR is great. It seems that some people had better luck than others with how well it remembered rooms, with some people needing to go through a short setup process before playing again. The audio is fine and the graphics, while nothing to get excited about, are perfectly fine for many games. Battery life is just over 2 hours, which seems fine to me. I'm happy that they included chromecast streaming. I can mirror my PC screen to my living room TV, and having people watch a Beatsaber round or Superhot level really makes it a much more social experience. There are some mixed reactions to the comfort, with some reviewers reporting that it's a bit too front heavy. It seems to me that the biggest differences between reviews are the overall sense of optimism for this platform specifically. At $400 it's a reasonable entry point into VR, but it's not exactly rivaling a traditional gaming platform for value. The graphics are fine, but there's uncertainty as to if they're enough for exciting new games to come to the Quest. It's a rather polished little headset that works really well, but we don't know if the content will be there. As a Rift owner, I'm of two minds with the Quest. I think this is the obvious future of VR form factors. I love the idea of playing anywhere in my home and being able to take it places. Tracking was my biggest fear, and it seems they figured that out, so now there's just a question of processing power and content. If there were more Superhot or Beatsaber quality games, I'd put in my pre-order today. As it stands, it's unclear what other worthwhile games will be coming, and some of the most promising aren't coming to Quest. Still, if I were to recommend VR to most people, it would probably be a Quest.

Valve has finally shown off their new VR HMD, Index. Road to VR has a hands on and all the specs. Where Oculus has decided to reduce friction and price, releasing the new Rift S at $400 with inside out tracking, Valve is pushing in the other direction. The Index is focused on improving the quality of the experience. They're upping the LCD screens to a Vive Pro matching 1440x1600 per eye resolution and with a maximum "experimental" refresh rate of 144Hz. They've also put a lot of effort into the optics, with a two element system that Valve says gives an improved field of view and a larger sweet spot. Where Oculus removed all internal adjustment mechanisms, Valve made it much more complicated, but hopefully it's a worthwhile tradeoff in terms of clarity. The audio solution looks like headphones, but they don't actually touch your ears, instead putting powerful little speakers that over just past your years. R2VR seems to think it's by far the best sounding audio solution in a VR headset so far. The Index uses the long gestating "Knuckles" controllers and their established outside in tracking solution. The headset itself is $500, but the whole kit will cost $1000. Pre-orders start tomorrow. It's interesting to see Valve pushing so far in the other direction, favoring quality of experience over convenience, but I'm not sure it's going to work out for them. R2VR's initial impressions aren't gushing, and I think it's a hard sell to a niche audience. Oculus said they didn't put out a full Rift 2 this year because they felt the tech hadn't sufficiently advanced to feel like a real generational upgrade. The Index might be the proof of that. While it's almost certainly going to be the best VR hardware available, I think it's going to have a rough go of it. The Facebook F8 keynote is happening right now, and it's likely that the Rift S and the much more exciting Oculus Quest go on sale today.

I was holding off on this one until they fixed some of the bigger issues it has, but it seems that if that ever happens, there might not be a player base left. I can't believe Anthem has fewer players than Fallout 76. What a disaster. I wonder if this will be enough for Bioware, or any studios, to take another look at Blizzards' old "we'll release it when it's done" mentality.

On Friday I was looking for tickets to see it again this week and I was surprised how full showings were still. I think we'll see it over perform at least through this coming weekend.

That is an amazing cultural artifact from the 90s. Strange they've kept it on the shelf for so long.

It puts a big screen in a smaller form factor. I think the appeal is quite obvious. There seem to be some pretty significant drawbacks to early implementations, but I feel like folding devices are very much the obvious future.

I don't recall how specific they got, but I thought that everyone North of Winterfell had basically completely evacuated. In episode 1 the Umber kid was just getting more help to get everyone down from Last Hearth. Bear Island is a bit North of even that. Of course, it's an island, and it wasn't directly in the path from Eastwatch to Winterfell, so maybe they didn't evacuate completely. My point being that there just might not be many left from Bear island at all, and it's very unlikely to be anyone in the line of succession. I would guess that makes it just like any other swath of land in the North.