TwinIon

Apple's October Event is happening now. They announced some new Airpods, but the interesting part is almost certainly going to be the new Macbook Pros. Historically, the Pros have had discrete GPUs, but today we get to see what Apple is going to do to compete with nVidia and AMD. From the first look, it seems Apple is continuing with the integrated CPU/GPU design. There are two new chips: the M1 Pro and the M1 Max. The Pro is a 10 core CPU with 70% better CPU performance and twice the GPU performance of the M1, while supporting up to 32GB of unified memory. The M1 Max supports 64GB of memory, uses the same CPU as the Pro, but doubles the GPU to 32 cores. They're promising performance equal or better than even high end discrete GPU laptops. One of my questions going in to this was how big the chip would be if they just throw in a bunch of GPU cores. It seems that wasn't a problem, because that's exactly what they did.

I would be very surprised if it wasn't backwards compatible. I have a poor track record when it comes to guessing what Nintendo will do with hardware, but releasing an update/successor to (what is on track to be) their most successful hardware product ever, only five or six years into its' life cycle without BC would be crazy to me. Then again, this is Nintendo. If they're moving the switch to a very different architecture and they needed to put some extra hardware in there for BC to work, I can kind of imagine them choosing margins over BC. Then they can re-release all the OG switch games for Switch 2!

If JMS is happy, then seems like it could be worthwhile.

At least, that's my take after reading Bloomberg's recent piece Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions? For those unaware, Tether is a cryptocurrency that is pegged to the dollar and seems to be primarily used as an intermediary to buy or bet on other cryptos. It's become something of a standard for that purpose and has ballooned over the last year to an astonishing $69 Billion in valuation. Now, as a stablecoin, that theoretically means that they should have one dollar for every tether sold, but Bloomberg isn't able to find much evidence that's the case. You'd think that would be a big issue, given how widely used it is. At it's current size, Tether is the size of one of the larger banks in the country, and a run on tether could have broad implications far beyond crypto. Beyond not really being able to verify tether's cash holdings, the other big takeaway from the Bloomberg piece is that people didn't seem to care. The crypto bros they talk to seem to agree that there likely is something shady going on, but they keep making money, so no point in being worked up about it. The article is worth a read, if only for the descriptions of the folks who run tether.

The announcement page from R* is half announcement and half "what we'll be doing in GTA Online to celebrate!" No screens, but even with a move to UE4, a Switch, Android, and iOS version doesn't bode well for my hopes that these will be much more than mild HD upscales but with modern controls.

The other Casino Royale or the other other Casino Royale?

Yeah, I think inconsistent is the best descriptor for this series. I know this is putting way too much thought into a series that is not meant to be taken seriously, but I found it odd that Infinity Ultron was able to so completely wreck the multiverse. We saw infinity stones become paperweights in Loki, so I'm not sure why Ultron suddenly became a threat in a way that no one that assembled the stones in their individual universes would be. Also, if you're the watcher, sure seems like you could pretty quickly collect a set of stones from any given universe, but whatever.

If blockchains are ever implemented as a way to replace traditional database technologies, it's going to be in very specific, very limited scenarios. Even a private blockchain is going to be incredibly slow compared to a database, regardless of how that database is setup. If you need your data to be immutable, don't need to access it frequently or quickly, and probably want that data being stored to be transparent, maybe you'd pick a blockchain.

Having watched the finale I think the show has been fine, but never great. I think it was kind of clever how they tried to tie the episodes together, but it didn't entirely land for me.

Don't they usually turn down the graphics during open betas? It's not like the Battlefield games were lacking for map size or player counts, I wouldn't think doubling the players should prevent graphical improvement.

Someone created a site if you're curious as to how much individual streamers have made from Twitch.

I guess you can't buy games through the existing twitch app, though I have a bunch of random free games I've never played.

Sounds like a good time for anyone that likes the well trodden Far Cry gameplay loop. I won't be rushing out for it, but maybe I'll pick it up later on sale.

I'm not even sure if sustainability is even the right thing to focus on. As @Kal-El814 brings up, the existing model for AAA games didn't seem sustainable, but here we are still paying similar prices to what we did 25 years ago. I remember when the prediction was that AAA budgets were such that everything would need to become an MMO with a monthly fee just to justify costs. I think the micro transaction model as we see it today has proven itself profitable enough that it will survive, but it'll continue to evolve and co-exist with other models.

I've always liked this old splitline algorithm, or some variant, but I'd like to see data on how something like that might actually shift districts. I've also always liked the metrics used by Sam Wang at the Princeton Election Consortium. I'm sure there's a reasonable algorithmic way to solve this, if that was ever actually anyone's goal.

If these games are using UE4, does that mean they might actually be relatively significant remasters, and not just HD upscales?

It's always easy to dunk on the Democrats for being bad at politics, and the fact that default is even possible when they control the House, Senate, and the Presidency only makes it more obvious why we should. However, it is worth pointing out that if the GOP stood for anything other than "owning the libs," this wouldn't be an issue either. When your only real conviction is that you have to disagree with the other party, even when the other party just wants to keep everyone afloat, you have to be willing to let everyone sink. It's not like this is the only possible outcome for half of a two party system. They could (and used to) have their own beliefs that supersede hating on the other guys, but they've transformed their party in such that the only way for themselves to win is for the Democrats to lose, even if they have to suffer as well.

Well, it certainly looks like Game of Thrones.

I think a lot of the problem with Apple doing something that more resembles traditional gaming systems is that it glosses over that Apple is the iPhone company first and foremost. Yeah, they could throw any recent A-whatever chip in an Apple TV and it would be plenty powerful enough to be a console. They could just sell a bundle with a controller and it would probably do just fine. What that wouldn't do is sell more iPhones or otherwise leverage the iPhone ecosystem. The Apple TV exists almost purely as a way to extend the iPhone into the living room. Any meaningful push by Apple into gaming needs to put the iPhone front and center or they won't care enough to see it through. It's basically a question of scale. The iPhone is at such a scale that anything else is peanuts by comparison.

Hence why they're putting so much effort into keeping their cut of app store payments.

When it comes to the next Nintendo console, I feel like the only thing I'd bet on is that it will be a portable console first. To me that means it won't be a streaming console only. There is so much headroom between the current power of the switch and what we see in current iPhones. Yeah, the chip in the iPhone currently costs more than the entire Switch, I just mean that there's a much larger gap between the state of the art in mobile tech and the Switch hardware than there is between the PS5/Xbox One and the state of the art in a set top box. That gives Nintendo so much space to make a new Switch like device that has a very noticeable jump in performance. The benefits for Microsoft to go cloud first are many. They're a premier provider of cloud services. Their operating system runs the majority of the worlds consumer PCs. Having the Xbox brand as an app on every set-top-box, TV, and mobile device gives Microsoft another portal to sell their services more broadly. Cloud first also arguably has the potential to be the highest possible quality experience. It's not now, but it's not difficult to imagine a near future where the Xcloud blades are more powerful than most GPUs. Few, if any of those synergies exist with Nintendo. They don't compete by offering the highest graphical quality. They wouldn't be in a position to profit on the cloud computing side of things. They don't have a larger brand that makes a Nintendo app on a Roku or iPad extra valuable. They'd almost certainly rather be selling more devices at a profit, and then getting their chunk of game sales. They've gotten themselves into their own corner of the market. Going to a cloud streaming solution would put them back in much more direct competition with Microsoft and Sony. I think the most likely thing to see for the foreseeable future is the Switch having a very DS-ish life cycle. They iterated on the DS for six years and then the 3DS for another six.

I really loved these games when they came out. If this remaster is more than a minimal HD update, I'd seriously consider it but a tiny coat of paint probably isn't enough to get me to replay them.

That NASA report gets a bit spicy: (emphasis mine) It sound extreme, but I think it's fair. If this lawsuit continues, it's easy to imagine Artemis never taking off. Hell, the SLS has been struggling along for a decade now, the origins of the Artemis program date back further. It's only recently that it seems to be getting some momentum. Blue Origin could easily drag this down for years.

I’ve put a few hours into it so far, and I’m enjoying it. I looked up some tips and videos and I realize now that, while I played a ton of D2 in middle school, I never played it well. I didn’t lookup rune words or fast leveling strategies or anything else in the meta game. I just put in a ton of time playing the game pretty blind. Playing it now is an entirely different experience both from when I played it back in the day, and as compared to basically everything else I’ve been playing since. I went through the D3 campaign, but didn’t really spend much time with it, and haven’t played PoE or anything else in a similar vein. I quickly got the hang of movement, but so far I’m no good at all switching skills with hot keys and chugging pots and what not. I’ve been giving the controller a try and been liking it quite a lot. It’s great to have instant access to a bunch of skills, but some things like inventory/belt management, and picking up specific items are much harder. Not sure which input will end up being my default, but right now I’m leaning towards the controller right now. The server issues are silly, but to be expected. I was a bit surprised to see the same lobby system in use. I didn’t really follow development, but that’s a system we don’t really see anymore, so I kind of expected something new. At least you can click to join a friend easily enough. D2R is a novelty, but it’s one that might get a bunch of my IRL friends all playing together for the first time in years. If it succeeds in that, I’ll happily dedicate hours to it. If not, I’ll put in a few good rounds and probably be done with it.

So foolish me, I tried playing a blizzard game on launch day. It started without a hitch, but then a friend wanted to join me and couldn't. He let me know people were having all sorts of problems with characters being deleted, being unable to join games, and unable to create new games. I was able to play smoothly by myself until just now, when they apparently shut all the servers down. While there's an alert on the Battle.net app, there was no in-game warning. When I got kicked from my game I was level 13. When I open the game now it shows me as level 4. The servers are down for 30 min, so I'll probably try again in a few hours.