TwinIon

Warren is calling for impeachment. Not sure where the other candidates stand.

The Verge published their review. Dieter is much more positive about the device than I expected. Without the hardware failures and the "not ready for primetime" software, he seems to like the form factor more than I would have expected. Once folding phones reach an Apple (or recent Galaxy S) level of polish, these are going to be amazing devices.

We've been enjoying it so far. The pilot is very much a B version of the movie, but I think as it strays farther from the film it becomes easier to appreciate the show on its own merits. So if you loved the movie and feel let down at first, I'd suggest you stick with it. There have only been four episodes so far, and I think they keep getting better.

These guys estimated $33.50, but then you also have licencing fees, which I'd guess are only a couple bucks, so ~$40 seems right on the money.

The overall impression that I get is that there are absolutely grounds for impeachment here, but I doubt we'll see that happen. He'd never get convicted, so most Democrats will probably not see it as worthwhile. They don't want a Clinton situation, even if Trump's obstruction is more like Nixon's than Clinton's.

At the very least she should be able to recapture everything not in the North pretty easily. She just watched Dany take her entire(?) army and her dragons away from the rest of the seven kingdoms. If everyone up North wins, she'll be in a good position to prevent Dany from conquering Westeros. If Dany loses, and the dead march South, she'll probably either leave or go down with the ship, because if she can't rule, what's the point?

The stupidest and most petty battle in tech is finally winding down. Google will be adding YouTube to Fire TV products and Amazon will allow Prime Video apps to stream to Chromecast devices. Notably, YouTube is not yet returning to the Echo Show, but supposedly that's still being discussed. Also, while Amazon has resumed sales of Chromecasts, they're not yet selling Google Home devices. This always seemed so silly. YouTube is the second biggest video streaming service out there, so of course Amazon would want it on their platform and Google would want it everywhere. With Prime Video, it would only make sense that allowing Cast would help users watch the content Amazon is spending billions on. Obviously users benefit from more content on more devices. Despite this rare win-win-win scenario, Amazon and Google have been engaged in a petty squabble that couldn't have been good for anyone. I've plenty of gizmos hooked up to my TVs, so none of this nonsense ever really prevented me from viewing something, but I'm still glad it's over.

I don't think #HarmToOngoingMatter is trending yet, but it will be.

Yeah, I don't really care what kind of warning comes with the device, I don't want a screen where you can just peel off the top layer, certainly not on a $2000 device. Apparently Corning (maker of gorilla glass) is close to being able to make foldable glass screens real. It looks like it requires a radius larger than what the Galaxy Fold provides, but it might work on something like the Mate X. Regardless of the solution, I think I'll be sticking with my non-folding phone for the time being.

This doesn't bode well for Trump's chances at the Nobel Peace Prize.

Apparently that was not on the review units sent out. A couple of the issues are absolutely about reviewers removing something they shouldn't have, but a few of them are other failures. I'd argue that a well made screen shouldn't have a layer you could easily peel off. I certainly haven't run into one since capacitive screens became the norm. Even still, the failure rate among these review units seems absurdly high. I'm personally still very excited about folding screens (I think the Mate X looks amazing), but this isn't a great debut from the world's largest phone maker. I personally prefer Samsung's high end hardware to Apple's, but it's things like this that diminish their standing. Apple has had their own set of hardware issues lately, but nothing quite as bad as this appears to be.

They did mechanical testing, but given the very high cost of the devices and the speed they're being rushed out (likely from fear of competitors getting there first), I imagine they probably didn't do a lot of field testing.

A bunch of tech journalists have been given early copies of the new Samsung Galaxy Fold just as pre-orders open to the public. Early impressions were surprisingly positive, suggesting that perhaps the concept phone was closer to a real product than many had thought. After only a day or two of use though, it seems some of those journalists are having issues. And then there's MKBHD, who just accidentally broke it: Maybe folding screens are still just a bit too futuristic for the present.

I'm not sure I see the difference between a company avoiding association with specific content and a company "deciding what people can handle." If Sony doesn't want to be associated with specific content, the obvious manifestation of that preference is to limit their distribution or promotion of that content on their platform.

The rating system ends at 18 because that's the age in the US that you can't access any kind of content. The ESRB ratings contain categories that cover every few years, and it certainly seems like there's a valid distinction between Teen, Mature, and Adult Only games. It exists entirely to inform parents as to the content of the product they're buying for their kids, not to decide for them. Parents are perfectly allowed to purchase AO games for their kids of any age, and I'd guess that the M rating hasn't prevented many 16 year olds from getting games. Do you not think parents should control the media their children consume at all? It certainly seems like you argue that parents should "do their homework" on every single piece of media their children consume, but that seems like a near impossible ask. Having a shortcut for "I know this is not straight up porn" seems like a useful convention to me. I think there's a very reasonable discussion to be had about how different games get categorized, and how we treat violence versus sex and nudity in general, but I also think the ESRB does a reasonable job and provides a valuable service. I don't think I could say the same for the MPAA, that gives a movie like Eighth Grade an R for a bit of cursing.

The more I think about this, the more I think that they only did this to avoid the kind of blowback they got with the introduction of the Xbox One. There they tried to introduce a new ownership model in addition to a new console and they suffered for it. Here they're just normalizing a familiar model from phone apps / PC games in the console world. When they announce their streaming service or future discless consoles, it won't be much of a shock. I also think they're purposely not lowering the price too much because they don't want the disc drive to seem that important. If you leave off a feature and it cuts the price in half, the natural assumption is that feature is worth that difference. By making the disc drive a minor price decrease, they're indicating that they don't think it's really worth much to consumers, and they might be right. I know I'm an outlier in having bought a One X largely for the 4K Blu Ray player, but as we've seen BD and DVD sales cut in half over 5 years, it's similarly plausible that many consumers just don't care. So while we all might scoff at such a small price reduction for such a potentially valuable feature, it's possible that MS is actually being rather savvy here. Setting reasonable expectations and not trying to force through a change that seems inevitable.

Something else that I don't think people might appreciate is just how much time can be a consideration, even for films like Star Wars. Remember how many writers TFA went through? It was completely re-written a few times, often by very talented people. I'm pretty sure that Michael Arndt wanted another 18 months to finish his script when JJ and Kasdan took over. Watch 'The Director and the Jedi' that came with TLJ and you see how much time pressure Rian Johnson was under as well, and he was writing before TFA finished filming. You know what can happen when you try and write multiple sequel scripts from the beginning? The writing process for the new Avatar movies. That's obviously not a statement about quality, and I very much can appreciate when someone has a master plan and the continual pay-offs reaped from that singular vision, but at the same time I don't think that it's the only way to make a good series. Obviously I can't speak to IX, but so far I've very much enjoyed TFA and TLJ, and I think the distinctive vision we got from those two directors made each film better.

But long before that, in the foreseeable future, it will continue to be both.

I'm glad that everyone that bought one will be rewarded by continuing to get games that work with the headset, but I'm personally holding out on PSVR until they update the hardware. The controllers in particular are just not great. I think there's a good chance the next revision has inside out tracking and more natural controllers that were actually built for VR. Still, I'm mostly just glad that Sony continues to put effort behind the medium and seems to be continually putting out worthwhile games. I'd be all over Falcon Age if I had one.

I guess it's a bit of a deal because it comes with three games. If you're buying an Xbox and really want Forza, Minecraft, and Sea of Thieves, you're getting a small discount with this bundle. Still, ultimately someone will search Amazon for an Xbox, they'll see this bundle, and then they'll see an Anthem bundle and a Battlefield Bundle and an NBA 2k19 bundle and a Minecraft bundle and most of those will be cheaper. If you're going to remove the disc drive, they really should lower the price a good bit more. Especially if it's not going to be really small.

It’s amazing that so much survived. At certain points last night I certainly didn’t think there would be much left.

I think it was aimed at kids, interesting that he felt that way. I feel like the biggest oddity of the switching between a young boy and adult man was that in his Shazam form Billy seemed younger than he was when he was just Billy. Zach Levi (who was having a ton of fun) often felt like he was playing an 8 year old filled with endless wonder, while Billy was kinda world weary for his age (which makes sense given who he was)

Yeah, I immediately started thinking it would be something similar to Intel's Optane. Looking at tests like this one and an optane cache (of sufficient size) with a spinning disk can well outperform an SSD. Putting a large HDD and some sort of solid state cache makes a lot of sense for a console.

Well, it looks like the towers have been saved. At least there's that.

As far as place setting episodes go, this wasn't bad. I was listening to the 50 things that made the modern economy podcast about RADAR, and the most interesting tidbit to me was Churchill's brief role. The Brits were quite far ahead of everyone else in RADAR development, but they were having a hard time building it (being bombed and all). They were trying to be secretive and trade the tech to the Americans but weren't having much luck. Churchill took office and pretty quickly just gave it up. The Americans quickly realized how great it was, established RADLAB at MIT, and were able to improve it and build it for the Brits. It's a bit that stuck with me because it seemed like the obvious thing to do. Don't play coy with this tech you desperately need for self preservation. Screw the power dynamics, if giving it up entirely could be the difference between life and death, there's no choice to be made, but somehow that choice wasn't being made pre-Churchill. I bring it up because I feel like that's the entire story of Game of Thrones, and it really got hit on this episode. I understand that who is king or queen of whatever is literally the point of the show, but Sansa's concerns just seemed so petty when the last thing we saw was an endless army of the undead lead by an undead dragon burning through the world's only line of defense in an apparent effort to end all life. If Jon tries to pull the whole birthright card on and take the throne, I'm going to be a bit annoyed. Other than the whole expedition North of the wall thing, he's been something of a voice of reason, one of the few people actually fixated on the right problem. If he tries to start playing the Game of Thrones now, he'll deserve to die again. My expectation is that he'll bring it up to Dany just because he wants to be honest with her, and she'll take it as an attack on her crown, and something bad will happen due to that tiff.