TwinIon

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.

How is this not the default?

I'm pretty sure that San Diego and LA are sanctuary cities, plus there are additional state laws in CA, so I would think that a good deal of them would normally be released into sanctuary cities. This just seems like this is a very mild, very petty threat.

Yeah, this really put the screws to Apple. Disney is offering a lot of content for $7/month. Given that Apple doesn't have a massive back catalog, I have to imagine that Apple TV+ is going to be bundled in with their other services somehow. Nothing else really makes sense given what we know so far. For Disney, It'll be interesting to see how quickly they put new movies out on the service. For Infinity War, it was three months before you could buy it digitally, another two weeks before you could buy the Blu Ray, and another four and a half months before it was on Netflix. Black Panther similarly took ~three months for the first home release, but it was a little less than seven months before it hit Netflix. I imagine they won't put things on Disney+ at that three month mark, put it's possible that they do it faster than the 6-8 months they waited before putting things on Netflix.

Awesome reporting. I bet someone was so proud of their idea to use Central Park as a conduit to make this legal. I think the EB-5 program was questionable enough without these kinds of shenanigans. Mostly this just shows me how valuable the FOIA is.

That opening scene looks awesome. I'm cool with Luke being a guiding force. I'm less enthused by what the title might mean or by the return of the emperor. I was kind of hoping there wouldn't be a villain "above" (for lack of a better word) Kylo. The voice over, the laugh, the title, and the shot of welding the helmet back together make it hard not to think that JJ is putting all his pieces back where he wanted them before Johnson came in and broke it. Still, the trailers for these movies have never been too straightforward. While JJ has never been great at endings, he did make an excellent Star Wars film last go around, and I think he had the most interesting setup for a film in the series history. I choose hope.

That makes sense given what we know of the films in development. Given that Game of Thrones is only just starting the final season, I doubt those guys are far along with their films. Rian Johnson is just finishing Knives Out, so I don't think he's too far along either. I think it also makes sense in terms of what we've seen of how pent up demand can drive the box office. Not that they'll wait 20 years, but even a few years off could pay off, especially if it means better movies.

I'll probably end up subscribing for the original stuff, assuming it's any good. I'm surprised they didn't have trailers for some of the new shows though.

Looks like the landing failed. Bummer.

He will not be missed.

Sounds like he's going to get to stay under house arrest, so even a coup isn't sufficient to get him in trouble for crimes against humanity.

Is this new info? I thought that was always the deal. I guess from the article it seems they weren't explicit about the human element, but I thought it was implied.

So is the US indictment the reason it's happening now? According to the Post Ecuador terminated his asylum in 2012. So is it just that they're now allowing the Brits to go in and get him?