TwinIon

As to the updated title, I didn't register the use of either "jihad" (as per the books) or "crusade" (which I believe was used in the trailers). I recall a reference to a "holy war" and that's it. Personally, I'm fine with that. Both words have a lot of baggage that different viewers will bring with them, so a generic term is fine by me.

I really enjoyed Dune and will definitely be seeing it again on the nicest screen I can. This is very much Dune by way of Blade Runner 2049, which is very much what I was both expecting and hoping for. Both play in a aesthetic arena, sharing similar visual, auditory, production design, and pacing. 2049 stands out for me as one of my favorite films since its release, but I know not everyone shares that opinion. As an adaptation there's very little else I could have hoped for. They spent the lot on an amazing cast, and it pays off in every scene. I don't think there was a single character that felt out of place. Chalamet in particular is excellent as a brooding Paul. After a first viewing, there isn't anything that was cut or shortened that I take issue with. Some characters that I enjoy from the novel are given short shrift, but even for a Part 1, sacrifices must be made. The production design is a stand out accomplishment that, at times, threatens to overwhelm the rest of the film. It's appropriately spartan, but immense and dense and shoulders the eons of history that Dune is burdened with. I'll consider it further after another watch (or two), but overall I'm extremely happy with Dune Part 1. I wish it was the whole story, but that's not a surprise. The only other real criticism that I have is that I seldom felt the heat of Arrakis. They talk about it a lot, as it would be impossible not to, but so often we see characters treat the sunlight so casually. They're not racing to keep their masks on and we don't see the toll the temperature should be taking on people. The film is generally successful in showing more than telling, which is quite the accomplishment in an adaptation from a book that constantly wants to tell you everything, but when it came to the heat of Dune, I feel like it was a lot more telling and very little showing. I hope the second part can do better to make you understand the harshness of the environment and further highlight the necessity of water.

I really wish they'd done a bit more on the graphics, but I really would like to know if these will be moddable on the PC. If they are, I would expect the already impressive mods that exist for these games to get upgraded versions eventually, and that could draw me back. I really loved these games back in the day, but not yet convinced I'd actually play through these again.

Watching the trailer a second time, what strikes me is you have no sense of these characters at all. As a comparison, I watched the first Spider-man Homecoming trailer, and you very quickly have a sense of who this Spider-man is. The Nathan Drake in the trailer gets one bad quip (prom?) and other than that mentions his brother and treasure. We also don't have any sense of who this Sully is either. When it comes to adaptations, I'm far from a purist. I think you need to be willing to make significant changes to change your story to best fit the new story being told in the new medium. If they want to show you how this young Nathan becomes the quippy adventurer, fine, but I didn't get a sense of that at all. The only thing that seems to be carried over is the names and the QTE action sequences. This isn't all to say the movie will suck, but that trailer sure did.

Didn't see this topic when it first got posted, but I'd be willing to give it a go.

We've been seeing it for months in preview, but Android 12 is finally rolling out to Pixel devices, with others coming soon (presumably). It's coming with the biggest redesign Android has seen since Material Design launched in 2014. The new design language is called "Material You" and the idea Google is selling is that the phone will adapt to you. In practice, this means that when you change your wallpaper your widgets, menus, and (optionally) app icons will all adjust to the new colors of your background. Widgets will even change color based on where you put them on your screen and the background colors behind them. I updated my Pixel 4XL to Android 12, and so far I have to say I'm not impressed, and at least part of that is based on how I use my phone. I basically never change my wallpaper, either on the lock screen or home screen. I use a black and white image that isn't particularly exciting, for precisely that reason. I find a busy background image distracting. So my phone won't be constantly adapting to my changes, but it still should adapt to my bland color scheme, right? Well, it seems that while Google is happy to let buttons and widgets choose their own colors, they don't seem to trust you with that same power. The system will let you choose between color pallets pulled from your wallpaper, or from 4 "basic colors" (that I believe the phone also chooses for you) but you can't select your own. Here are the options it gives me: Not a compelling amount of customization. Aside from that, much of the UI has been overhauled, and there are some new privacy features that are worth looking into. But the look of the OS feels disjointed and not particularly exciting to me. It's a lot of large, colored, rounded buttons. Material Design felt like an exciting new look for phones, and it quickly took over on the web and in apps. Material You doesn't seem to have the same reach, and boils down to a more bubbly top layer of the device. Color me unimpressed.

When it comes to the choice between fewer programs being enacted but scaled back and with sunset dates, or fewer more robust more permanent programs, I prefer the latter. Pass the legislation with the expectation that the GOP will be in power when it's time is up. If the program, no matter how popular, goes away without them having to do anything, it'll probably go away. If they have to actually pass a bill to replace something, it's far more likely to be effective. I think the ACA is actually a reasonable example in favor of that approach. The entire GOP ran against that. Their messaging was extremely effective, and the bill as a whole had a poor approval rating. Still, when it came time to replace it, they had no ideas and were unwilling to pass something that killed off the many popular parts of the bill. If you get paid family leave or community college or any of the other broadly popular provisions passed and put the GOP in a position where they'd need to enact their own legislation to take it down, and I think it's going to stick around.

That all sounds really good. I really hope that I get to try out the LAN functionality at some point.

Not an inspiring trailer.

I understand the impulse, and I've got plenty of problems with the ACA, but something is still better than nothing, both in a political sense and in a real practical one. Even a severely scaled back bill would do some real good, and I'd rather the message in the next election cycle be "here's what we got so far, elect more democrats and we can do more."

Yes, and this year Biden's budget was more than the defense department asked for, and congress still passed more than $10B more than even that! All at a time when, for the first time in over a decade, we're not really at war overseas anymore. Somehow we're spending more on defense now than we were at any point during Trump, the number keeps going up, and it doesn't seem to get any debate or significant media attention. That extra ~$10B is around the yearly cost that the infrastructure bill spends on roads and bridges or that Build Back Better spends to make two years of community college free.

I suppose the one thing that does make sense to me about using NFTs in game is that it would open up trading of those items possibly without the need for the dev to maintain an API. The relative permanence of the blockchain does absolutely nothing to guarantee an in game item will remain available or usable, but it might make it easier for devs to allow players to build their own marketplaces. A decent API could accomplish the same thing, but I suppose you could kind of get that "for free" by using the blockchain. Of course, any game to use such a system would effectively be making real money purchases of digital items common, and would be doing so without the dev getting a cut. If you're going to build a game around the idea that in game items can be bought and sold for real money (like Artifact), it makes a lot more sense for the dev to just build the storefront and make some money.

I've never written any blockchain software, and nothing more than toy games, but I'm dubious as to how "free" maintaining in-game items as NFTs would be. Unless the game client itself is checking the blockchain to see what items I own, you probably have some internal database you're maintaining. You could be right though, that as an indie dev it might be cheaper or easier to some significant degree. I started looking for a better explanation of why you'd want a blockchain based game and have to say that I don't find the arguments very compelling. This is a terrible example since all the punitive action taken by Blizzard had to do with their eSports system. This article seems to point towards ever lasting digital goods as the best case for NFT games. They tell you to imagine what a world it would be if your Pokemon you collected on the gameboy had been stored in the blockchain for you to retrieve in later games. That's all well and good, but that requires a very specific scenario of someone building a game using a decentralized storage system, and then building a new game that used the same one. I think about the shift from Destiny to Destiny 2. They still had all the player data, but it wasn't worth it for Bungie to import all those old characters. They wanted to start from scratch. Where the data was stored was never an issue, had all that gear was in NFTs, it wouldn't have made a lick of difference. Besides, if they shut the servers down for good, it wouldn't matter where your gear was stored. Heck, a single patch could easily prevent any existing NFTs from working. Maybe there's a case to be made for an open source NFT game, but now you're getting into pretty hypothetical territory. Reading a bit about Age of Rust, I don't see much reason to ban it. If Valve and Epic want to review individual games to make sure they're not scams, I don't think NFTs are necessarily evil, but I can't blame them for assuming that it's easier to brush aside the whole issue.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that the delays this project faced end up being responsible for it being canceled.

The Pixel 6 event is finally live. Something I don't think leaked is the price. The Pixel 6 starts at $599 and the Pro at $899. So definitely not the high prices we've seen from other phone makers. Tech sites already have their hands-on impressions posted, at least for hardware. For some reason Google doesn't want people talking about the software experience or performance yet. I'm very curious to hear a full review of these phones. It's odd to me that they'd send phones out to tech sites, but not want them to post much about the actual user experience. That doesn't bode well for phones shipping this month (the 28th). Also, while not entirely confirmed, what we do know about the Tensor chip is not terribly exciting. It seems to be using mostly off the shelf cores, though in a different configuration. The Snapdragon 888 uses one high performance core, three midrange cores, and four low power cores. Tensor trades one of those midrange cores for an additional high end core, and it adds the expected custom TPU AI chip. Maybe that TPU core will make a big difference in the camera, and it's possible the extra performance core will make intense tasks feel faster, but it could hurt battery life. It's also odd that they introduced it downplaying benchmark performance. While I still think it's a big deal that Google is working on a custom chip, and it does mean Google will be able to support it longer than they otherwise would, I don't think this is Google in any way catching up to Apple. I do hope the camera lives up to their promises. Other makers have really caught up and surpassed Google's cameras, and it's good to see them finally update the hardware. The "magic eraser" feature does seem like something that will make for great commercials and a useful selling point.

Kind of a fun teaser, but I'm not sold they got it right.

I'm not aware of NFT games, but given that NFTs themselves are basically a scam, I can't blame Epic or Valve for not wanting scam based games on their platforms. That said, it is a pretty thin line between having in game currencies like ISK in EVE that have a direct correlations to real money and are only transferable in game to what I presume an NFT based game would have, which is an in game currency or object that has real monetary value that may be transferable outside of the game. Hell, Valve itself tried to make a card game where each digital card had an assignable value. The fact that it's being tracked on the blockchain doesn't seem like it should matter. However, it also doesn't seem like it should matter to the players either. If a digital Magic card is tradable and has some monetary value, it shouldn't matter if it's ownership is being tracked in an open blockchain or in some dev's private servers. Especially if that item only has value in a game that is wholly controlled by one company. What possible value could an NFT that tracks an in game item have if that game isn't supported anymore? So yeah, consider me unbothered by NFT's exclusion from game stores.

That's a very good question that we'll have to wait and see. They talked a lot about how they could get up to 64GB of memory available to the GPUs, but it's shared memory, and in my experience processes that require a lot of graphics memory typically also want a lot of system memory. However, I don't think that it's been a big deal for the existing M1 devices, but these new machines are obviously designed for a whole different set of use cases.

I won't argue for Magsafe over a thunderbolt port, but if I'm on the go and working for an extended period, there's an extremely solid chance that I will use a port for power, so it doesn't bother me having a dedicated one. I've had a couple Dell laptops that can charge via USB-C but also have a charging port, and I almost always use the charging port instead of USB-C. Of course, those laptops have fewer USB-C ports than these Macs, but they also had other ports. While at my desk, those laptops always charged via USB-C, because they were plugged into docking stations. Since these can do that as well, I'd be pretty happy with the port selection overall.

Obviously I didn't play with the configurations. After playing with it a bit the pricing is surprisingly good. I would still imagine you'd need a specific use case to justify that jump, but it's nice you can get a 14" with a Max and 32GB of memory for less than $3k.

I guess it depends on the GPU performance and what people actually need or will use it for. I didn't realize until just now that you can't get a M1 Max in a 14", and the M1 Max 16" starts at $3500. A Razer blade with a 3070 starts at $2300 and you can get one with a 3080 for ~$3000. However, a Razer with a 30 series RTX chip has an obvious purpose (games), but it the extra graphical horsepower in the MacBooks is more workflow oriented, so fewer people really need it. I don't think the prices are crazy high, but they're certainly not cheap. I feel like you'd need a very specific workflow requirement before shelling out for a Max powered laptop.

I don't have a particular reason for it, but I don't really feel that excited by this reboot. Maybe it's because we've seen a lot of batmen over the years. Maybe it's because this doesn't feel like an entirely fresh take. Maybe it's just the trailers. I'm happy with the people making it, but I'm just not getting excited. I had to as well.

Even if this didn't get picked up for a second season, it strikes me as odd they'd canceling while season 1 is still airing. I suppose the creators want to try and leverage that into viewership, but I would expect the exact opposite. For such a long gestating show to get canned before it's short first season even airs is odd. I've been watching and while I haven't loved it, it's been perfectly fine. I guess it just never found an audience.

Shazam was fun, but it was pretty lighthearted. Not really knowing anything about Black Adam, it feels odd for him to get his own movie and for it to be so dour by comparison. Maybe it'll be a good film, but it seems oddly positioned even in this increasingly fractured DCU.

I don't use Macs, so I care less about the actual computers than I do about their chip design, but I do recognize that where Apple goes, others follow. So it's nice to see that they added ports back to the Pros. Magsafe, SD card reader, HDMI, and even a headphone jack. The fact that they added a notch but didn't include Face ID is just weird to me. I know Apple has decided that the notch is some kind of design statement, but at least add something useful in there. Giving your pro computer a notch just for a slightly better webcam feels bad. At least the screen is taller than 16:9 so it shouldn't affect most video.