TwinIon

Les Moonves could make $120M if the investigations determine he was not fired for cause. If cause is not determined, he'll also stay on as an advisor for a year, a gig complete with an office and security for two years.

Now that he's out, I'm sure that board rooms in general and Hollywood specifically have finally been cleaned up. Certainly there aren't any more powerful, predatory men leading this country's top companies.

I don't know if this deserves it's own thread, but it's pretty funny that back in 2014, while trying to protect the blackout rule, many of the letters sent in support of the blackout rule appear to have been fake.

I loved Rise, so this was an easy pre-order purchase before Amazon's discounts went away. The only real question is if I'll be done with Spider-man before it arrives. Even at the rate I'm chewing through Spidey, that seems unlikely. Still, I'll have a month before RDR2 to finish them both.

I spent all weekend playing and there's a very good chance this is my GOTY, and it pretty much boils down to how freaking fun this game is. I think God of War felt like an evolution of open world game design. The story flowed much more naturally, as did the progression. They dramatically limited the amount of stuff to do, but in service of making a game where nothing felt out of place. Loading screens were carefully hidden and the camera felt like a physical object in the world. Spider-Man didn't pay attention to any of those advances, instead falling into line with it's more direct predecessors. There are towers that unlock the map and a million side quests that add nothing to the lore of Spider-Man or NYC. A lot of these diversions are goofy, giving into the more slapstick and silly tendencies of the character. This is a game that borrows heavily and often from Batman and GTA and Ubisoft's lineup of open world games. None of that means it's a step backward though, because it's all so much fun to do stuff. The highlight is obviously the web slinging. Traveling around the map in Spider-Man is an unparalleled joy. The density of missions is wonderful because you're always going somewhere, and it's so fitting with the character that he gets sidetracked to do something random to help out. I loved the feeling of going to another story mission and forgetting where I was going because I got distracted by a pigeon or a crime in progress. The traversal system is an astounding achievement, and if the game nailed nothing but that, it would be a must buy. Thankfully, that's not all it got right. I love the combat. I'll admit that I'm generally not one to get deep into combat systems. I often end up doing some amount of button mashing in one of the Arkham or God of War games. I know there are combos, and I do some of them, but my combat style ends up being very repetitive and kind of boring. I found that not to be the case with Spider-Man. There aren't that many kinds of moves to master, and they all have such a unique purpose that I found that I was pretty much always doing exactly what I was trying to do. My skills in combat really evolved over my playtime, using more and more skills and gadgets, and generally finding myself well in control of the battlefield. I'm not sure if it's the move set, the mechanics, the relative simplicity, or what, but the end result is that I had more fun in combat in Spider-Man than any game since HZD, and it's easily my favorite brawler style combat ever. There are little things to nit pick here and there. The game transitions to specific times of day for specific missions. So you might be late to see Aunt May that evening and stop to help out a stranger for a mission that takes place in the middle of the day or in the dead of night, only to have it transition back to sunset when you're done. There are too many loading screens and some of the mini games are not only easy, but boring. Speaking of boring, there are a few sequences where you're powerless that really broke up the pacing of the game and felt unnecessary. I also found it slightly annoying that you had to be looking at a baddie to trigger certain abilities. So I could swing over to a perch right over a bad guy and try and web him up, but even knowing he's there I'd have to get the camera right before I could do so. Sometimes when right above a guy it was difficult to get it exactly right. Still, those are tiny issues in a game that is largely best in class. It's gorgeous and well written with great voice acting and superb animations. More than anything else though, it's just fun to be Spider-Man.

Not all games save in the same way. I imagine that Blizzard will not support it for Diablo because they already keep their saves on their own cloud.

I think this is a fun little game that could use some tweaking. A copy room function would really be appreciated, and it can be quite frustrating when a patient is complaining loudly about stuff that is right next to them (food, drink, toilet, etc.). Also, the number of GPs offices required is stupid. It's difficult if not impossible to really get the queues under control. As far as I can tell the only way to limit the number of patients you get is to have a lower level, but that level is a function of rooms and doctors, so if you build more GPs offices to account for the lines, you raise your level and end up with more patients. Even in a hospital where I tried my best to limit my level and train up every possible staff member it can still be frustrating. Still, even though it's a bit repetitive and even though there are bits of frustration that I think could be tweaked, it's a fun little game. I certainly won't complain that it's not a game I'll spend a hundred hours on. I'll get my $20 worth.

If you're up for something minimal, I enjoyed Minit, which only takes about 2 hours.

"abortion inducing drugs" Yeah, he's not interested in overturning Roe at all.

The Verge posted a follow up article that talks a little bit about how antitrust could be applied to some of these companies, and the results are not entirely exciting. In Google's case, it boils down to little more than "stop Google from buying more companies." Personally, I think that's a bit broad. I think it's good to see Google use it's power to innovate in areas outside their comfort zone. Google (and now Waymo) has been a leader in self driving tech, and much of that couldn't have happened without Google buying companies. I do think that limiting their ability to buy companies that have to do with advertising is probably a good idea, since that's where Google is a real threat. For Amazon the idea proposed is essentially to carve Amazon up into pieces, but not separate them as companies so much as force them to be more customer agnostic. So, for example, make it so their storefront doesn't overly favor Amazon's own products. This is a sticky issue, but if done right I actually think this could be a good avenue to proceed. Amazon is largely built in such a way as to be specifically anticompetitive while at the same time operating as the defacto online marketplace. For many sellers that means that you effectively can't avoid using their platforms, but you're necessarily at a disadvantage and are at risk of having your business partly or entirely subsumed by Amazon. Putting rules in place to prevent that kind of thing from happening would be difficult, but likely worthwhile.

All they have to do is come up with a plan where they get all the benefits from free trade open travel without agreeing to any of the rules that make it work. How hard can that be?

I have very little attachment to the character and I quite like Cavill as an actor, so I'm pleased with this news. I think it also speaks well that they're paying for someone established. Early rumors were they were spending some real money on this, and this seems well in line with those.

I rarely mind cutscenes when I'm interested in the story of the game. When the cutscenes aren't interesting, it's usually a problem with something else in the game. Still, I do kind of agree that they're generally not a good way to do something. Video games are fundamentally an interactive medium, and there's nothing that disrupts an interactive medium more than preventing interactivity.

Over at The Verge Tim Wu (best known for coining the phrase "net neutrality") makes the argument that antitrust law needs a new, more flexible standard and that we need to start applying it to our modern tech monopolies. The frustrating part of this to me is that Facebook is held up as the primary example. Not because it's a bad example, but because it's the only really easy one. Facebook swallowing WhatsApp and Instagram obviously had anticompetitive results, and splitting them up seems straightforward. An entrenched power used their status and wealth to prevent innovative newcomers from disrupting their industry. The disappearance of those competitors from the market can't help but have detrimental effects. The other tech juggernauts are far less straightforward to split up, and proving how they've harmed the tech landscape is much more difficult. When people talk about Amazon being a monopoly, they might be right, but how to split them up is far less clear. Sure, you could spin off AWS, and while that was a major advantage in the beginning, I don't think you could make a great case that AWS is why Amazon is successful today or the source of their anticompetitive tendencies. There's probably good ground to prevent them from buying companies like Zappos, but by and large Amazon's advantage, and the ways the suppress markets, are complex and varied. More than that, much of their internal structure is built around Amazon.com (the retail site) being their first and best customer. Split up the logistics from the sales and you might not solve the monopoly issues while also needlessly punishing and preventing some of their actual innovation. Google might even be more difficult since many of the things that they dominate in don't really bring in much money. Forcing them to split off Android or Chrome and I think it's unlikely those companies succeed without Google's financing and interconnectedness. More likely than not you're simply ceding those markets to other giants that also don't need the money from those efforts (like Microsoft and Apple). Even if you don't care what happens to those markets, you haven't really addressed the core places where Google's money making monopoly might actually be problematic. I'm not against the idea of breaking up a Facebook or a Google. I firmly believe in the power of competitive markets, and when the government can step in and take steps that are obviously helpful in that regard, I'm for it. This is a topic I'm seeing getting more and more traction, but very few actual proposals for how to make this work.

Wife and I binged through Sharp Objects this weekend, and it's excellent. Some really terrific work by the three leads.

Three episodes in and I'm enjoying it. After the last couple tries at Jack Ryan, I wasn't particularly optimistic about the chances of this being any good, but it's pretty solid.

In San Diego we have problematically low vacancy rates leading to dramatically overpriced rentals. Home prices are inflated as well, but not quite as badly as rental rates. New home sales might be down, but a vacancy rate of less than 2% doesn't exactly sound like a glut of availability. I feel like if we suffer any kind of "crash," it isn't likely to be a sector wide thing, but likely more of a reversal of high end housing prices. I feel like it's more probably a market correction than anything like the previous crash.

The new Canon mirrorless EOS R is an odd bit of kit, assuming the leaks are all correct. The lack of IBIS is particularly odd, and I'm curious why Canon decided to go that route. The listed AF points are 5,655, which probably means that they're doing something rather unique with their AF system. That's by far the most exciting thing so far. A new mount makes sense for them, but it is a shame for anyone who is in their APS-C mirrorless system that was hoping to upgrade. The lenses they're putting out sure sound good.A 50mm 1.2, 24-105 f/4, and that 28-70 f/2 in particular seem like a solid place Regardless, I'm slowly coming off the mirrorless hype train, for now. It probably doesn't make any sense for me to buy into any of these first gen products. If I was interested in the Sony system, I could probably justify that, but I'm not. I'm going to go full frame with Nikon, I just have to figure out if I will shell out for a do-it-all D850, or if I would rather get a D750 or D810 and another lens. I like to do wildlife and I'm getting more into birds, and I don't think the D750 or D810 would be any better than my D7100. So the 850 is the only one that would be an all-around upgrade, but obviously I don't need something quite so substantial, but it's so easy to want it.

Looks like they just put down all their property as being worth $200. I wonder what the game is here? Are they just hoping that their assessment goes through unchallenged and save a chunk of change? I feel like if they lowballed an $8B property as being worth $1B they'd have a better chance of getting away with it, assuming anyone actually looks at the figures.

For some reason I thought this came out today. I even have it on my calendar for the correct day but I guess I just assumed a Tuesday release and now I've made myself sad.

I'm not really one for Rom Coms, so I was never really the audience for Crazy Rich Asians, but being the first all Asian cast in a major studio film in 25 years it's been on my radar. The $26M opening weekend was enough to beat out The Meg's second weekend for first place, and a more than respectable opening for the genre. The second weekend though, was a bit of an anomaly. While The Meg dropped a typical ~40% (from $21M to $13M), Crazy Rich only dropped 6.4% (from $26M to $24M), a very rare performance. In it's third weekend, it's now projected to match that $24M. I don't expect Crazy Rich to keep topping the charts for too much longer. I suspect that the Nun and The Predator will be at the top in the coming weeks, but I do think it's possible that Crazy Rich keeps chugging for a long while. Word of mouth is excellent, and it's obviously found an underserved audience. Box Office Mojo's comparison to Brides Maids and The Help could well point the way towards Crazy Rich stretching out beyond $150M, which would put it above films like Ready Player One. That's quite a showing.

After reading a couple business and leadership type books, it kind of killed my enthusiasm for reading regularly, so I decided to get back into the habit by going back to some comfort food by re-reading Dune. One of my favorite current filmmakers (Denis Villeneuve) is going to try and adapt it, so I figured it would be a good time to revisit. The first maybe 10% of it I was thinking how quickly everything gets going. There's a lot going on, but it nicely straddles the line between too much exposition and having no freaking clue whats going on, though it's hard to judge when you already know the story. By the time I was halfway through, I didn't feel that way anymore. I couldn't believe where the story was after 50%, I feel like there's so much left. Supposedly the movie is going to be split into two parts, and if the first one only covers the first half the book, I'm dubious. Anyways, I'm enjoying it. It's a classic and I love it, and it's gotten me back in the habit of daily reading again.

That trailer is so much better than the other ones that it's hard to believe it's the same movie, though it does leave me a bit conflicted. What movie are we getting? The fun, crazy, action romp, or the violent, thriller, horror movie? I suppose the answer will be somewhere in between, but that makes it really hard to guess how this movie is going to turn out. Whatever it is, it's good to be able to see movies on a subscription.

So it turns out that Trump's video showing Google's failure to promote his state of the union speech was wrong. Google did promote his state of the union this year, though they didn't promote his first speech to congress in 2017, because it's not technically a state of the union. They didn't promote Obama's first address in 2009 either.