TwinIon

1 minute ago, Jason said:

6. If I do the thing I think is bad it'll be BIGLIER than any past president's!

If I'm going to do this thing that I think is a waste of money, I'm going to waste more money than you can imagine!

The Verge on where that 96% figure came from:

Quote

This claim seems to have originated on the right-wing site PJ Media before spreading to other outlets, including Fox News. It’s the analysis of a reporter who Googled the term “Trump” a number of times “using different computers.” She then tallied up the perceived bias of the outlets appearing in the first 100 results. (The political alignment of the outlets was assigned based on a chart by journalist Sharyl Attkisson, a former CNN reporter who appeared on Fox News last year claiming that the media is feeding the public an “artificial reality.”)

I know that Trump's talk about how "this is a very serious situation-will be addressed!" is the empty threat of a early morning Twitter troll, but let's for a brief moment consider what kind of action could actually be taken here. Do these conservatives really want the US government to go to a private company and force them to change results based on some kind of political fairness algorithm. Setting aside the impossibility of pleasing anyone with such an algorithm, it would be an unprecedented (I hope) and obviously unconstitutional example of governmental overreach.

I know it's all bluster, but even the most cursory thought to the potential policy behind his specious reasoning can't possibly pass muster. 

6 minutes ago, legend said:

I guess I really don't understand why people think any of the combat shown was generic. What are these shooters people see that are so much deeper in variety of combat? People rave about Doom (and I enjoyed it too), but I'm not seeing how that is somehow not generic whereas Cyberpunk is. I'd even say that Cyberpunk has a lot less generic combat than Doom.

  

 TBC, I realize you're not saying that yourself but I'm just kind of sounding off on the idea that this is a general impression people have.

I think that first person shooting is often difficult to parse in video. When people talk about a shooter like Destiny just feeling right, it's not something that I think is particularly well conveyed in video. It's the little things, the feel or the texture of the combat that differentiate excellent shooters from more generic ones.

If there was anything in the video (at least what I watched of it) that felt bland it was the default pistol. I think a fully automatic weapon like that can easily feel more boring than things like the shotgun that we saw later.

I don't really follow these stories very closely, so I suppose it's old news, but 52 rapes over 4 years by 31 different people? Talk about rape culture. 

Burn it down. Burn it all down. 

It looks a lot like Deus Ex, and I think that's a good thing. I imagine we'll see plenty of people that complain about the shooting being generic even though the game allows you to play in any number of ways

They're playing with an Oculus Rift but they didn't use Touch? Touch makes the game much more natural to play, not that it seemed to be a barrier.

Still, that was a fun watch.

I started this one recently and I've been enjoying it well enough. My biggest impression is that it's not quite yet living up to its potential. It's an easy enough show to watch without focusing on it too much, so I'll finish the 10 episodes.

I think the combat looked about like I might expect. Nothing particularly different or exciting, but nothing that looked bad. Overall the game looks very solid.

1 hour ago, Jose said:

 

There's an article on Yahoo about how the WH flag is back to full staff. This shit is maddening.

I don't care that Trump being a dick, breaking norms, or hating McCain isn't new information, I want people to be constantly reminded he's doing those things, even as it's increasingly the status quo.

So Nikon finally announced their new full frame mirrorless cameras and I'm considering if this is where I finally go full frame. Of the Nikon FX lineup, the D850 is the only "modern" camera there, and I can't justify the price. The Z6 would be $2700 with the adapter and lens, and I feel like it's more future proof than buying a (significantly cheaper) four year old D750 or 6 year old D600. I could still use most of my old lenses (I do have some DX glass), including my more expensive pieces.

It's a good deal more than I've spent on a camera before, but I've been wanting to make the jump to a nicer camera for a while, so I'm trying to figure out if I'm overspending out of gear lust or I'd be better off spending less for a less exciting gizmo.

12 hours ago, gamer.tv said:

I had a look through some twitter comments last night.  Some calls for Nolan to have a go.  I would personally love Edgar Wright to be given a go.  The fun, snappy approach would work for me.

As long as the Broccolis are so opinionated in the making of these films, I don't think we'll see anyone with too much style take the reins on a Bond film.

I'd love to see a Bond movie where Nolan had complete creative control.

Edgar Wright would be a great choice, though I'd like to see him get a new lead. Make Bond fun and campy again. More Marvel than DC. Again, that would probably only work if he had real control over the project, otherwise we'd end up in another Ant-Man situation.

So the Switch continues to succeed and GTA V is a freaking beast. 

I'm excited for anything from Jeremy Saulnier.

How many films do you end up seeing over the duration?

Last March Putin unveiled Russia's nuclear powered missiles, boasting of their unlimited range and ability to avoid countermeasures. Apparently they've been testing them in the Barents Sea to the north of Russia, but all four tests have quickly ended in failure. In contrast to their purported unlimited range, the longest flight achieved so far lasted all but two minutes.

US intelligence experts think that Moscow has recovered three of the missiles, but cannot locate the last one. 

The missiles did not have nuclear warheads, but obviously the nuclear material powering the reactor is still a concern.

43 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

Here's the thing. Everyone wishes that their side would win forever and would be above the law (for the greater good) and that the other side would not. But historically (in modern history), both sides have also realized that the other side wins sometimes, so there is a need to protect the rule of law so that when the other side is more popular you don't go to jail for no reason (or get killed, etc). I think the issue is that right now, people are just really ignorant of history and the reason why things are set up the way they are, and so don't care about this. They want to see the other side destroyed and don't think about the consequences of tearing down norms to do so, as they are oblivious as to how this could affect them in the future (because they are dumb). People have always been dumb, but somehow the leaders of each side knew that this sort of system was needed to protect them. But now, the new leaders don't care because they are willing to harness the anger and stupidity of people to win, regardless of the future consequences.

I would argue that this is one of those areas where it's clearly not both sides doing this. Under Obama the democrats had sufficient majorities to push through all sorts of procedural changes that would have made pushing their agenda far easier. They largely didn't. It took relatively minor, and largely self inflicted roadblocks for the GOP to start tearing down norms.

18 hours ago, legend said:

Yes, absolutely. We've been on a run of diminishing returns for graphics for some time now. The only way out is to break free of old standards. Nvidia's complete embracing of a combination of raster + ray trace + deep learning is a very promising direction to take.

 

No, it won't be perfect out of the gate, but you're still getting top of the line cards and as a community we ought to be encouraging this direction for our hobby.

I mostly agree with this sentiment, but purely as a consumer and early adopter of tech, I'd caution against buying into the first generation, which this effectively is. I want to see it succeed, and I want to see ray tracing become the norm, but I think there is enough industry incentive to make that happen. It's a differentiating feature unlike anything we've re seen in graphics tech in recent memory, making it an obvious profit incentive for nvidia. It should simplify lighting models for game creators, giving them an unusual incentive for adoption (at least compared to other high end features), especially once incorporated into the standard game engines out there.

The only issue facing it's eventual adoption is how far behind AMD is. If this is something AMD can compete at in relatively short order (a couple years at most), I can't think of a reason it won't become standard.

Puzzle mode is pretty fun. The first few sections are really easy, but the fourth level of each type can be pretty challenging.

The one for the Wii U will still work with the Switch, right?

Strange that they're releasing 3, which came out in 2011, rather than 4 which came out in 2013, unless they're going to release both.

Spider Man

RDR2

Smash

Fallout 76

Tomb Raider

I'm debating Odyssey. Between Spider Man and RDR I don't feel like I'll have enough time or the excitement for another open world game.

Infinity War is a film that is completely inextricable from the meta narrative in a way that I don't think any other movie ever has been. It's something that I really like about it. It's audacious in the many ways that it doesn't care if you understand everything about the MCU or not. You can pick up from context who the good guys are, and the bad guy's entire arc is pretty much contained in this one film, but largely this is a movie that expects a lot from the audience. That means some people won't understand the context of it, and many more will not understand certain points, but by and large this is a movie that exists entirely in the larger canvas of the MCU. Characters are introduced to each other in only the most brief and cursory ways, motivations, powers, relationships, running jokes, character arcs; all can only be gleaned from a context outside of this one film.

It's in that way that the ending serves as a cliffhanger. The language of the film is not. The language of the film purposefully functions as an end to this story. Thanos got all the stones, he snapped his fingers, the good guys lost, the end. Within the singular context of the film, that is the end of the story, and I like that about it. Still, it's a cliffhanger in the context that they expect the film to be viewed, that is, in the context as a culmination of the MCU. If you have the context to not question why Hulk and Thor start on a ruined spaceship, you have the context to understand there will be another chapter.

Annoyingly they're also making changes to Twitch. Twitch Prime won't include ad free viewing anymore as of October. You'll have to subscribe to Twitch Turbo for $9/month to get rid of ads.

That's a shame. I've used Amazon for the pre-order discount for almost every game since they started doing it. I'll get my order in for some of the big games I know I want ASAP.

It's annoying that they don't even list Spider-Man for the PS4 or RDR2 in a physical copy so you can't get the discount.

25 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

On your own point, I think the movie is clearly suggesting the identity of the person at the end is who you say. Can you expand a bit on how you view that as undermining the rest of the film?

Just now, Mr.Vic20 said:

All signs point to next gen HDMs all supporting it, from the major two anyway. 

Certainly seems that way, but I haven't seen many indications of when a next gen Vive or Rift will actually hit. Next March will mark three years since the Rift's launch, and I can't imagine a successor coming out by then.