TwinIon

I was completely unaware of this movement, but it sure seems like governments of India have put rather disproportionate efforts into eliminating it.

The onion again captures my feelings on an issue: Nation Could Have Sworn Russell Brand Was Already Convicted Sex Offender WWW.THEONION.COM NEW YORK—Stressing that the memory seemed so fresh and vivid in their minds, the confused nation announced Monday that they could have sworn British entertainer Russell Brand was already a convicted sex offender. “Interesting...so Russell Brand definitely wasn’t already found guilty of sexual assault back in,…

The game that I'm most looking forward to, but I'm not sure when I'll get around to it is Balur's Gate. I'm definitely hyped for Phantom Liberty, which will lead into Mirage and then Spider-Man and Mario and then Mario RPG.

Good. Bohemian Rhapsody was terrible and Oppenheimer was great. My local IMAX is back to showing Oppenheimer. Quite the impressive run from that film.

My wife and I spent 3 weeks in Japan over the summer and had a really great time. I threw up some of my photos if anyone's interested. (I've only just put the site together so the domains are a little messy at the moment, but it should work) We spent a week in Tokyo, before heading south, stopping by Kamakura and Mt. Fuji before spending another week in Kyoto. We only spent a day in Osaka, so I don't have a ton of insight there. We circled back to Tokyo by going up to Kanazawa and taking the Alpine-Takayama-Matsumoto Pass before flying all the way up to the northern part of Hokkaido to see some wildlife for the last week. It was a wonderful trip and a beautiful country. I have some random thoughts that may or may not apply. If you want to see the royal palace, I heard it's not much, but it's not open every day, so check beforehand if you want to go inside. We went up a few of the view points and I think the Shibuya Sky was probably the best, and that's an area with a lot to check out around it. Golden Gai is a unique spot, but it's become a real tourist trap. The bartenders we talked to said it wasn't long ago that their business was 10% tourists and 90% locals, and now it's flipped. It's still worth checking out if you want to experience it. I definitely enjoyed the day trip to Kamakura from Tokyo. Nice temples, big Buddah, and I liked seeing all the black kites, even if the locals see them as a nuisance. We made pretty good use of the rail pass, though even with our constant use I think it was close to not being worth it. It also was a mild pain to use at times since the visitor rail pass doesn't scan like normal tickets, so we often had to show it to someone to get through. If you have a bunch of luggage and are taking a Shinkansen (bullet train) it's very worthwhile to book a seat in the reserved section, even though you don't have to (no extra charge). Getting around via trains was easy with Google Maps, but it wasn't cheap by any means. I think we spent a similar amount getting around Japan by rail as we did renting a car and paying for gas in Europe (Italy, Switzerland, Germany). We were told that "Fuji-san is a shy mountain," so unless you hang out in the area for a few days there's a good chance you won't get a clear view. We only scheduled one day and got lucky, but I'm sure it also depends on time of year. If you're in Osaka and only making day trips to Kyoto, there are a lot of options for temples and things to see. One that I'll call out is the "moss temple" because it requires a reservation. You have to send them a post card to get one, which we had our hotel in the area do for us. They only let in a small group of visitors at a time and then you have to do some silent calligraphy and then you're allowed to walk around the grounds. It's a very zen experience if that's what you're looking for. I also enjoyed walking up the mountain to see the monkeys but was left unimpressed by the bamboo forest. I also didn't care as much for the shrine with all the arches, and you have to be there really early (or late) to get a good photo without a ton of people, which I didn't feel motivated for. We easily could have spent more time in Kanazawa, which felt like a slightly more relaxed Kyoto, but it's a long way from Osaka for a day trip. We stayed at a few ryokan and onsen hotels and they vary wildly, so do plenty research when booking. Our first hotel in Tokyo was an ultra-modern ryokan that was amazing. The Hoshinoya brand hotels were really great if you're splurging on hotels. Very cool blend of classic and contemporary Japan. We booked one hotel in Hokkaido that didn't have a shower in the room, because everyone just uses the onsen (hot spring). We didn't realize that until we were there, so that was a bit of a surprise. On the bright side, we got to see the biggest owl in the world, which made me quite happy. My wife is gluten intolerant, which was quite a hassle in Japan. I'll spare details unless someone is interested, but if you're traveling with anyone that has a similar dietary restriction, you need to do a lot of planning on where to eat. We made a reservation to eat at the Grand Hyatt in Tokyo to have that "Lost in Translation" experience, and it was good, but really pricey. It also felt very much like New York, in the decor, service, and the food (this is quite purposeful, but still worth mentioning). We watched the movie right after and it's amazing how little has changed. The interior looks exactly like it did in the movie. If it's raining, don't bother with buying a good umbrella. Our hotels usually provided one, but when they didn't or we were traveling, we'd just buy a clear one for 300 yen or so at any random shop. They're all the same, people mix them up all the time, and they're everywhere. I'll look up our notes and find some specific Tokyo food recommendations, though I think it's hard to go wrong. Hope all the travelers have a great trip!

Everything about this looks great. The traversal is already to notch, and the addition of the wings looks to bring it up to another level. Just such a packed time for good games.

A mild bummer, but not a surprise that your FF7 Remake save doesn't really carry over to the new game. You get some extra stuff, but that's it.

I think I was just a bit older than the prime audience, so it was really my friends younger siblings that were really into it, which was enough reason to avoid the books while they were coming out. I never ended up reading any of the books, but I saw the movies. I think the films are really excellent in production design and music and with most of the casting, and those aspects really covered up some of their sins that might have otherwise weighed heavier. Alfonso Cuarón really showed how much more the right director could do, even in the middle of an established franchise, and it's a shame that we didn't get more exciting directors for the rest of them. I feel like the films never quite had the level of success that I it seems like they should have, just given how much it seemed like they dominated media attention at the time. I'm pretty sure only the last one crossed $1B world wide and was the top grossing movie of its year. If they do end up making an HBO series, I'd probably at least start watching it.

I didn't realize we'd already come to that time of year.

Now that I think about it, it seems a little odd to me that they went with USB 3 (3.1 Gen 2?) and didn't just throw in the same USB controller they have on the iPad and Macbook Air that includes Thunderbolt 3 and USB 4. Not that I suspect nearly anyone would utilize the 40Gb/s you get from USB 4 / Thunderbolt 3, but it brings in even more compatibility questions. They have a USB controller built to work with Apple silicon that is more capable, and instead of using that they stripped some features out. Still, I suppose Apple is nothing if not supply chain masters, so I'm sure the profit margin is better this way.

I wasn't sure when this came out, so seeing all the great review had me hyped, but it's still more than a month away.

I encourage everyone to carefully look at the stats of the more rare gear they find. I found that loot rarity and loot quality seemed pretty random, not always associated directly with the difficulty of the mission or the level of the bad guys around it. I often found terrible rare gear and much better plain gear during the same outing, and since there isn't a DPS number for weapons or a single number for suits, it's not always so simple to judge something as an upgrade.

https://x.com/tkexpress11/status/1702054746411221386?s=20 Here it is in image form:

You're not wrong that this isn't really an adaptation, but the difference between Foundation and other sci-fi/fantasy series is that it was never going to be a straightforward adaptation. There's a reason that it took nearly 70 years before a major adaptation was finally made and that when it finally was that it didn't resemble the books. It's been a long time since I read them, but I remember thinking that they were not inherently cinematic at all. Now, I think the level of complexity that viewers are willing to accept has certainly changed, especially when you have a big budget TV show vs a movie, but Foundation was always a hard sell. At the same time, I don't think that this series has reached the level of acclaim or profit to make it feel definitive. They haven't hit a gold mine such that they'll hold onto the property forever, and by the time the rights lapse I doubt the general sentiment will be "you can't remake Foundation" in the same way that people feel about LOTR. I think the ultimate issue preventing a second adaptation is the same one that prevented the first: the nature of the story.

Definitely do the main quest up to a certain point, but I think the faction quest lines hold some of the best stories. I personally bounced between focusing on a quest line and then getting side tracked because I decide I need to accomplish something before moving forward. I finish a mission and find a new gun I like, but I want to put a better scope on it, but to do that I need to get more of X element, and I may as well tie that into my outposts, but that element is in a dangerous system, so I should upgrade my ship, but I need to complete some challenge before I can fly a better ship, so I need to get into some space battles in an easier area, so I just start randomly exploring a system hoping to find some pirates, and then I find something that starts a side quest story, so now I'm doing that and wait, what was I doing again? Oh well, may as well pick a random thing in my mission log to do, but first... That's basically how spent 100 hours over the last week.

Here's an interesting thread from someone who says they were working on updating Unity's pricing model last year. He lays out a good case for why Unity needed to update it's pricing model, though he's not a fan of how it was rolled out. I don't think there is ever a good way to take a "free" product and start charging for it, but it makes sense to me that Unity is now sufficiently valuable to justify fees beyond the seat licensing. It does seem crazy to me that Google/Apple can take 30% of revenue and the game engine costing I feel like a revenue royalty would probably have been the thing to do. They should be able to undercut Epic by quite a bit and still dramatically raise their ARPU, and it doesn't run into all the weird edge cases that devs have brought up. It's a very easy and predictable cost that is already industry standard. Give devs a year heads up, and emphasize that it's only new games built on upcoming version X and newer that need to pay after they hit that $1 million mark. I think they looked at their numbers and saw how many of their customers have widely distributed games that don't make a ton of revenue and tried to come up with something clever, and then rolled it out terribly.

I'd heard the same. The only writing I can find on it is in their press release for the Pros that mentions the USB-3 controller.

But he's so young! He should obviously be serving for another dozen years. If he's leaving government with all his faculties he clearly doesn't care about America.

For sure. I'd wouldn't recommend most people a get a Pro for better USB support, but if you have a use case then it's great. Also, it seems the speed difference is because of a USB3 controller in the new chip, so it's likely that next year's non-pro phones will get it.

Well, first I'd try to eliminate some variables. Can you record a voice memo and hear playback? If so, then at least the mic works and you can rule out a hardware issue. Then I might try a call over another app, like signal/whats-app/etc. Those aren't going to transfer voice in the same way as a normal cellular call, so it's worth a try. If that works then I'd probably start trying some software solutions like using a different dailer app or just a phone reset.

I never really expected a straightforward adaptation of the book, and while I agree with some of the issues brought up, I think the show is really finding it's stride. It's doing crazy sci-fi on a big scale and real quality and I've really enjoyed this season. I'm hoping that they get another season, even if it wouldn't surprise me if it got canceled. Apple has enough other big budget sci-fi now that Foundation feels more expendable now.

Other than charging, I use the USB-C port on my iPad Pro for two big reasons: for memory cards and video out. Yes, cameras can do wireless transfers, but its so much faster to plug in a card if I want to review drone footage or look through 50MB RAW files from my Nikon. It's also nice that RAW support works in lightroom, so if I'm at a family event and someone wants a specific photo, I can pull in the RAW, do some quick adjustments, and send them an export. I can also do this on my Pixel if I don't have my iPad. For video, it's usually while traveling. I connect a hub with HDMI to watch video on hotel TVs. Using a hub also allows me to power the device while the video is playing. I could just use my laptop, but I usually have things downloaded on my iPad, and often it's easier to use the streaming apps even if I have internet.

I meant to say on the HUD. It shows me how many throwables I have left, but not how many med-packs or whatever healing I might have hot-keyed.

I think it boils down to the line that @Spawn_of_Apathy pulled out: Starfield plays like a good remaster of a game that came out more than a decade ago. So much of it feels anachronistic for a brand new AAAA release, but you don't remake terrible games, and Starfield is overall quite good. Also, while it is huge, large parts of that scope feel unfinished. Some of those parts are things you can ignore, like outpost building, and some aren't like inventory management.

I've spent way too much time and have now done most of what there is to do in Starfield, and I apologize for how much follows, but this game has consumed me I and I have thoughts. I need to start with confidently saying that it's an excellent game. It's flawed, probably more than most great games, but there are a ton wonderful experiences to be had that few games can even come close to. There are fun stories littered throughout the game, both scripted and emergent. It has so much to offer in such a variety of ways and has such an incredible scope. For all that it does accomplish however, it is deeply flawed in some new and old ways, but it's mostly the old that stand out. While Starfield is set in the future, it is not the future. If anything, it's a blast from the past. Starfield plays like a good remaster of a game that came out more than a decade ago. The tech isn't up to par, but that's because the old engine couldn't do ray tracing or anything too fancy. The constant loading screens are reminder of a time before game engines allowed for more fluid open worlds. The remaster really made environments pop and brought textures up to modern standards, but other things like animations didn't get as much attention and feel their age. It's a good thing the art style is great and the detail in some of the environment objects is quite impressive. The faces are mostly pretty good; not up to the quality we expect from modern AAA games, but not distractingly bad (until you're in bad light or a bad angle). The gameplay loop is comfortable and familiar, rarely pushing into new ground, but it's a classic for a reason. If I were to choose one specific point of comparison, it would be Cyberpunk. Both are long gestating enormous open world RPGs set in the future with branching stories and skill trees, but Cyberpunk, for all it's early troubles, feels like a completely modern game, the kind of thing AAAA devs should aspire to. It's beautiful and it's a tech demo, but it's more than just that. In Starfield things are scripted, but in Cyberpunk things are choreographed. The kinds of presentational polish that was reserved for smaller scoped games has made it's way to these really big games like Cyberpunk and Horizon, and Starfield is so consistently janky by comparison. The game is big though. One main quest, plus four faction quest lines, plus a huge array of side quests, both generated and scripted. There are so many game systems that you can sink your time into, and much to my surprise the procedurally generated stuff was really worthwhile. I spent a ton of time visiting random planets, scanning them, and checking out the random sites for some exploration or combat. Sometimes I'd stumble into scripted events, and sometimes I'd just pass some time looking for loot or a good ship to commandeer. It's really easy to spend time in Starfield, and I've spent more than my fair share. That said, not every part of Starfield has been made up to the same standard. I feel like elements of Starfield fall into one of three camps: either they've achieved a level of functionality and depth that the developers actually intended (regardless of what I might want), they have been refined down to nothing, or they are simply unfinished; and I'm not sure I can always tell which is which. I think most things to do with ships are probably about where the devs were aiming. Ship building, combat, decoration, power management, all seem finished and at the level of complexity and capability that feels purposeful. I really enjoy ship building, and even if I wish I could rotate things and want more pieces, I still think it's a highlight of the game. I cared far more about making a nice ship than I did finding the best gun or fiddling with my house or character. There is a lot I would like to change in the ship building, but what's there is really good (when it's not bugging out). Fuel management seems like something that was probably refined down to nothing, as if all that is left are remnants of a more complex system excised after playtesting. You either have enough fuel or you don't, and when you don't that only ever means one extra stop. Outpost management just feels unfinished. They were getting close, and they hit some key marks to bother including it at all, but the more time you spend with it the less rewarding it is. They built this whole system where you can mine resources and store them and send they to other planets to automatically build stuff in complex manufacturing combinations, the tools you get are terribly insufficient for what it's trying to get you to do. There also doesn't end up being much of a point to it, since most of what you need the materials for is the outpost infrastructure. I built this whole operation where I had mapped and planned out my supply routes and in the end I didn't see the point. It brought me almost no value at all, despite a ton of effort and character points. Inventory management likewise something I hope is just unfinished. If this is where they ended up with after a million rounds of polish, it's a disaster. Inventory on your person, on your companions, on your ship, on your outpost, it's all so messy and there are so few tools to manage it. Why is there no "mark as junk" button? Why have useful things mixed in categories with decorative items? Why can't I see how many med packs I have left in the UI? It also doesn't even show you all the relevant information. Great, this gun does X damage at rate Y, do some quick math so you can figure out if it's better than gun that does A damage at rate B. Same thing with ship parts. So not only is the inventory a mess, but you don't get enough information from it so you're forced to spend more time in it! It's also poorly balanced. I can't believe how much time I still have to worry about it in the end game. The baseline should be that you can carry at least two full suits, a full compliment of weapons, and a healthy load of resources, but that was rarely the case for me even as I prioritized capacity. Basically every inventory stat should be doubled at a baseline and every few levels every incrementally better suit should be another +20. I do wonder if they balanced it that way because they knew how hard it is to manage your stuff, so they just made it so you can hardly carry anything, rather than just giving you better tools to manage your gear. I could write a couple thousand more words on inventory management in Starfield, but I'll go into one specific issue I feel is emblematic of why it falls under the "unfinished" category: the "track" option in crafting. When you don't have everything you need to craft something, you can press a button to track what resources you need to go find. It does this by putting an icon next to all of the resources needed for that mod or research project or outpost building. That way when you see a little icon next to that adhesive on a shelf, you bother to pick it up. Unfortunately, you also get one next to your giant haul of aluminium, even though you have 100x the required amount thanks to your outpost, even if you have it on you when you start tracking. Also, it doesn't tell you how much you need of any given thing, so if you find some expensive resource you have no clue how many you need I guess you just buy them all and hope when you try crafting again it was enough. And hopefully you remember why you were looking for every single resource you track, because it doesn't track what you were collecting it for. So if you tracked a new sight for a gun you no longer use, now those items (including the really common ones!) will just be highlighted forever. Horizion FW had this exact same feature, but it just gave you a quest that specified what you were tracking and how much more you needed of each thing, including how many you had, and it's great. They even gave it a separate quest category so you could easily find them. The system in Starfield is just missing that crucial step of actually being useful. So many things having to do with inventory are like this, and I just have to assume that they didn't finish it in time. I'm not sure where the computer systems land on the scale. They're so incredibly basic it's unclear if that's what they were aiming for. Did they finish a simplistic vision, refine complexity out of the interactions, or did they not have time to implement something more. They're basically single purpose buttons or single pieces of paper, and having them locked with the same (admittedly good) lock as physical objects just seems odd. Comptuers play a surprisingly small role in Starfield, and while they're hardly a problem they still feel lacking. The health and status effects belong with fuel as a system that seems to have the pieces for something more complex, but was probably whittled away until it was basically pointless. You can get all sorts of conditions, and I assume the numbers on your armor helps prevent them as well as damage, but I can't say they really mattered. I was constantly frostbitten, had lacerations, burns, a cough, lung damage, and/or radiation poisoning, and it basically never mattered. I'd use a med pack when I got low health, would occasionally take a nap, and very rarely I'd actually use an aid or see a doctor to settle my conditions. (Since I can't I use the infirmary on my ship) Maybe this matters more on higher difficulties, but on normal you can basically ignore all of it. There also wasn't any way I found to gauge how much more shielding you needed to be ok. This was a huge mechanic in No Man's Sky, and all the numbers are in Starfield, but I never found something that would say "you need X amount of protection to not get frostbite on this planet," so there was never anything to chase even if you did have to worry about it more. Stealth and corporate espionage I again have questions as to what category they belong to. It seems like a lot of the friend or foe detection for stealth missions is hard coded to that mission. So instead of engaging with a consistent system, you're working with rules specific to each scenario. You can "stealth" around a hyper secure military installation by putting on a random guy's uniform, but walk into a factory wearing one of their uniforms and you're instantly being attacked by everyone in sight, because the mission didn't tell you to. In some stealth missions, no stealth is actually required. You can walk into a business on a mission of corporate sabotage or investigation and there are cameras and turrets and guards, but there is no resistance at all. No need to sneak, no need to turn off cameras or knock out guards, or sneak through vents, no one really stops you. The "vents" in this game are also a complete joke. It's hilarious to me that they exist basically only in spaces you might need to stealth during a mission and that they're full size doors. It's so lazy it feels out of place. The trappings of stealth gameplay are all there, but it feels unfinished in significant ways. It ends up making some of the stealth focused missions by far the worst experiences in the game. When Googling some of them a constant suggestion to just shoot everyone and deal with the consequences because the stealth was so bad or broken in that scenario. Local maps: obviously unfinished. I don't really mind not having local maps of generated landing zones, but for cities it just feels like an oversight, though it could just be a way of limiting exposing just how small the cities are. Star maps though, I think are pretty good overall. I just really wish there was a super simple database. If I scan a planet I should be able to type in a resource or location name or planet name and find it. I did the work of scanning all those systems, I shouldn't have to Google search to remember which one had unobtainium. I also feel like land vehicles are something that should have existed, but they didn't have time. I don't think you should have one right away, because I do agree there is value in feeling how big the planets are when you land and look around. After a few dozen hours though, the novelty had worn off, and I just wanted to get where I was going. Make driving a high level skill, story gate your vehicle access, whatever, but the spaces are too big to have nothing more than a jetpack. Story elements themselves are all over the place, with some huge stories feeling like they were scrubbed of any possible friction and others feeling really great. There's an undercover faction quest line with pirates that I felt was constantly straining credulity on all sides. That was the exception more than the rule; most of them were fun and interesting, going to unexpected places and introducing some cool wrinkles in the setting. With the main quest, I do have a specific complaint that is more gameplay related than story, and it makes the whole experience feel clearly unfinished. There is a type of building that you have to find repeatedly in the main quest, and the way it was handled boggles my mind. How there wasn't any kind of puzzle or dungeon or or platforming section or spectacle or anything is mind blowing. Just a door, some lights, and some horns. It's also odd that while the existence of these places was supposedly revelatory, their zones still seem procedurally generated. The result of being that sometimes these incredible, unmistakable structures were literally a stones throw from established outposts. These locations should probably have been the most carefully crafted in the game, and instead they felt completely trivial. There should have been Zelda style dungeons. They also clearly see how important these are, because one of the best quest sequence in the game surrounds one of them, they just all didn't get such treatment. The conversation and persuasion system is often silly, but I think it's probably the desired level of complexity. Sometimes I can pass persuasion checks just saying the easiest things, like "I don't see why this is a problem" over and over and never actually make any kind of argument, but once their boxes are checked they just agree to my demands. It also very rarely seems to take into account my actions outside the specific quest. If I've finished a primary quest line and I'm an officer in this jurisdiction, it seems like that could be useful and maybe worth bringing up. I've seen far fewer of those dialog options than I have options for random things I have skill points in that don't actually seem to affect much. The writing is all over the place, but mostly it's pretty good. Finally, I imagine that we can file all the numerous bugs as "unfinished." I think bugs kind of accumulate as you go along. At this point in my save I cannot make changes to my ship on any orbital platform and then re-board that ship. I end up clipping through geometry, and even if I board directly to the cockpit, I can't unlock because I'm not really in the seat. Sometimes it wouldn't matter where I was and editing a ship would clip through the ground, or just vanish. Most of the time I can edit it and then fast travel away, but even that doesn't always work. I've had all sorts of inventory issues with my ship, especially when changing ships or editing them. I've had companions and passengers stay on the ship after they've been transferred or dropped off, even changing ships with me. I've had one companion's kid stay on my ship most of the game, even though the parent hasn't been on board for a dozen hours. I've had several quest lines bug out and prevent progress, forcing me to reload a save. I think it often has to do with random events interfering with scripted ones, but it's hard to be sure. I've had a number of places go completely hostile for no reason, making some quests really annoying or impossible. I've had semi-persistent meteors following my ship around. I've had a number of crashes, even on just exiting, and recently even on saving! Point being, reports of this being a bug free experience have been greatly exaggerated. My number one tip to everyone is to save early and often. Don't just rely on auto-save or quick-saves either. Make manual saves often, especially before doing anything to a ship. This is more than anyone will bother to read, but I still want to end on a positive. Despite all these issues I honestly think Starfield is a great game. It's huge and there is a ton of fun to be had in choosing how to take on your adventure. It has consumed my time and my mind like few games in recent memory. It's not a tech demo or proof of concept for forthcoming open world games, but it's a wonderful trip back to the future Bethesda style. It's janky and not every endeavor is equally worthwhile, but when everything is clicking, there's little else like it, and none to match its scope.