TwinIon

I'm sure this would be an unpopular solution, but it feels like the right answer to me. Clears up all confusion and Sony gets paid.

Can someone remind me what happened with the sister and the son? I did watch the whole series, but I don't remember how things were left.

Yeah, I can't imagine that they could do much, especially if you're not under arrest.

The article also mentions that the LAPD have been instructed to ask everyone for their social security numbers and to insist that it is required by federal law (it's not). This seems to be a way to get around sanctuary city laws that prevent law enforcement from asking about immigration status. To the surprise of no one, it seems that all this social media surveillance is being used almost exclusively for Black Lives Matter and other left leaning activist groups. No keywords (in a document a few years old) indicated they were looking at any right wing organizations or hashtags.

So now I can buy the PS4 disc for $60 and still play the PS5 version? This is such a mess.

Nikon D850, D500, and occasionally a Sony RX100 for landscapes when I only had my long lenses on.

Went on my first vacation in ~18 months and took a Nat Geo cruise around Alaska's inside passage. I think my final total was a bit over 5500 photos, which I thought was a bit low. I don't really do anything with them but I wanted to share a few. Brown Bear Fishing Dawes Glacier Calving Zodiacs in the Inian Islands Sea Lion Eating Salmon Horned Puffin

"You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes" You get a different teaser depending on which one you click, so may as well try em both. Fun hit of nostalgia that they're using WhatIsTheMatrix.com

Looking over the reviews a bit and I remain hyped. I'm hoping that the inevitable box office disappointment is blamed on delta and same day HBO Max release. Warner still has plans to do at least one spin-off series, so there's some evidence they might move forward with the sequel even after it bombs. Here's hoping.

There might be some kind of electronic kill switch for the intelligent anti-rocket system or something, but for the Humvees and the aircraft I feel like there's probably a low tech solution like putting some thermite on the engine blocks or other vital systems.

I agree it's generic, but it doesn't look bad. I can live with bland if it's otherwise well done.

That story that @Ghost_MH linked really is great. This kind of nonsense is why right to repair is such an unambiguous good and the benefits could easily affect consumers that have no interest in tinkering with their stuff.

This is why I've been in favor of eliminating the filibuster. I want government to govern. I'm quite aware that at some point the GOP would have control and pass a bunch of stuff that I would rather they not, but I expect that a lot of the stuff they run on (abortion being an excellent example) would almost certainly be widely unpopular. Last time they had control, despite running on a message of repealing Obamacare and replacing it with something better, they never even proposed a plan. Right now there's a well founded expectation that nothing will get done, regardless of who gets elected. I can't say for sure if I'd be happy with the overall results or not, but I'd like to see us get to a place where we expect the government to actually do things.

I just hope that the price is mostly for the content and less for the cosmetics. Even as someone that never buys cosmetics in any game, I'm always shocked by how much cosmetics are in D2. I assume it's because people are willing to pay the prices. Of course, because it has any content, I'll end up buying it.

I'm excited for it because I'm sure it'll be worth watching, I'm just not super confident that it'll be good. Since the last Matrix film, Lana's work has been all over the place. Writing V for Vendetta (good), writing / directing Speed Racer (Nuts in a good way!), Cloud Atlas (overly ambitious but still great), Jupiter Ascending (some cool sequences but a huge mess), to Sense8 (bizarre and messy). None of those films are boring. Also, this is the basically the first big thing that Lana is doing without Lilly, so who knows what effect that will have.

So I've only played one intro game so far on the default (easy) setting and there's a lot to like and a few things that will need to change for sure, and the issues mostly have to do with war. I do like the mini game of battles that take place. It feels more strategic than Civ and playing it well does really help (though the AI is dumb as a rock in battles). Unfortunately that mini-game also prohibits a third party from entering any given battle. For regular battles that's not much of a problem. It is a big problem when it comes to sieges. Sieges can take up a huge area and basically make it impassible and the participants invulnerable. I discovered this when I saw a siege between two neighbors while I was at war with both. Unfortunately this siege ended up blocking my path to the entire continent. So I had a great war machine that couldn't do anything thanks to a skirmish between two lesser civs. Perhaps the biggest problem though, comes from how wars end. The basic mechanics (such that I understand them) are that actions during war build up "war points" as well as affecting your civs' will to fight. When your opponents' will to fight goes to zero, you win and the war is over. That means that if you're on an unstoppable run and they get to zero, you have to stop and accept their surrender. Moreover, when you accept that surrender (as you are forced to do), you negotiate with your war points. So if you captured a bunch of cities and don't have the war points to negotiate for all of them, too bad you'll have to give some back and make peace. As far as I can tell, you also can't win a war before their will to fight goes to zero or you conquer them all. So if you want to get into a Falkland Islands style fight over some small piece of land and then want to call it off, too bad. Either surrender or you'll be at war forever. I'm pretty sure this will get changed, but right now it really sucks. It sucks if you want to fight over something small, and it sucks if you want to really conquer an enemy. The other problem with wars ending is what to do with the cities you've now acquired. The technology required to merge cities comes well into the game, so if you conquer an early city, you might be in a tough spot to support it. Even when you do get that technology, the algorithm for merging cities seems completely broken. It was asking for wholly unreasonable sums to merge a tiny city into a giant city that nearly surrounded it. If you're far ahead of your conquered foe or you just took a small outlier city, it might only have half the infrastructure upgrades you get for free when founding a new city. So often times you're better off ransacking a city and building a new city or outpost yourself. That also gives you more war points and fewer things to negotiate over, so it's become my standard practice to burn nearly every city and outpost to the ground, which doesn't seem like it should be the best way to deal with everything. --- All that said, I do like the game. I think the whole city and outpost system is good. There are a lot of little systems that work well and are engaging. I think it looks good, plays and runs well. It's probably a bit too much like Civilization to make it feel wholly new and different, but it's still a well made entry in the genre. I'm not a Civ fanatic, but I'll put a few hours into each entry. I think Humankind needs a bit of tweaking, but I think it could get there pretty quickly. The issue with three player battles is the only thing that I suspect will be around for a long time.

If you're really low, you can do pretty much anything. I don't think there's any particular reason to grind something really hard just to get your light up. If you really want to, I think grinding Gambit works well because you kill lots of ads, get plenty of loot after matches. Right now gambit is pretty quick, and with the new rep system winning matters a lot less. Still, if you haven't played in a while and you pick up the current season, you probably have exotic quests or other random things to complete, and if you just keep working on those things, you'll be increasing your light level pretty consistently. There isn't a whole lot you need a high light level for right now, so I wouldn't sweat it too much.

Lots of exciting stuff coming. Weapon crafting could make grinding for desired rolls more bearable. Lots of new dungeons / raids. Raid rotations. New weapon types, new enemies The promise of a Halo / Titanfall 2 / Doom style campaign is exciting, though I'd be very surprised if we get quite that much content.

I enjoyed the episode well enough, but for the most part it was telling such a similar story to what we've already seen, it felt almost like a re-casting than anything else. Pretty much all the major beats were repeats. I was also mixed on the animation. I think most of the action works well, and they did plenty of it. I still don't like how they render faces. It's difficult to articulate other than it just feeling "off" in some way.

I personally wouldn't really mind if crypto left, but seems like an unlikely scenario. I'm not expert enough to know if better language could have been written, but I think the language is as necessarily vague as most laws are. Crypto is still extremely young, and no one knows what the infrastructure will evolve into over time. The language is basically saying "if you run a service that helps people transfer money, you have these requirements," and that seems like a perfectly sensible line to draw. Even as it applies to traditional financial assets, there's a whole chain of technologies and services that make transfers possible. If I build a Venmo clone, I imagine I have to follow some IRS guidelines (I think these exact same ones). My service almost certainly relies on any number of other services to function properly on any number of technical levels. I probably use AWS or something like it, I have a service for SSL certs, my app probably relies on Google and Apple as software platforms, there's probably some database in the back end that stores all the records, and I probably have to plug into some proprietary financial system to interact with banks and credit card companies and who knows what else. The law wasn't written to include and exclude each technical level of functionality with such precision, because it would be insane to even try, and even more insane for such a nascent technology as crypto. I think this is much ado about nothing. Nothing indicates to me that any of the apocalyptic outcomes are even mildly likely. The culture of crypto is just very much wrapped around a sense of absolute libertarianism to the point that any regulation seems like the end of the world. It's not. Courts aren't all completely stupid, and if there's money in it, there will be sufficient action taken to keep things going.

I'm no expert, but I don't think the bill specifically includes them. The exact language says a broker is: I would imagine that this will be clarified by the courts, but to me a validator doesn't seem like it would fall under the category of a "service effectuating transfers." It's certainly arguable that validators are included in that definition, and I can see why people would be upset at the possibility, but I personally wouldn't expect it to happen.

So, as usual, press summaries don't link to the bill text, and when there's only two sentences about a subject it's hard to know what the bill actually says. So here's the bill text for anyone curious (let me know if this isn't the right bill, but I'm pretty sure it is). The electric vehicle section (Sec 1211, page 401 of the PDF) is pretty short, and mostly says that the department of transportation needs to come up with a plan. It does specify that any chargers need to work with multiple makes of cars, that they need to be network capable, and that payment should be easy. It also says that they'll allow commercial activity as it relates to charging stations on interstate rest stops, which makes a lot of sense. Later, in Sec 20101 (~page 1895) the bill specifies that the DOT should help amend building codes for including electric vehicle chargers, and that a task force has one year to come up with a plan for how to spend the money. I realize that kind of thing is standard in bills like this, and while I'm bummed that they only got half the money the administration wanted to begin with, it's still a good place to start. I'm happy to see a Dig Once for Broadband provision. (sec 1603) I'm pretty sure this has been a thing in CA and elsewhere for a while, but it's just one of those common sense things that should be everywhere. I tried to find the text of the crypto provisions and I'm not sure what the deal is. It should be in Section 80603, but the text from Congress.gov doesn't include it. I found this google drive copy of the initial Senate Text that is ~800 pages longer than what is on Congress.gov. News stories seem to indicate that the crypto provision didn't get cut, so not sure why it's missing. I'm guessing that congress.gov just didn't host the full text or I'm pulling the wrong version. Either way, the crypto provision itself (Sec 80603, page 2436 on the google drive pdf) doesn't say much that I can puzzle out other than what has been reported. What I (a non-lawyer, non-tax accountant) really get out of it is that it's basically just including "digital assets" in existing IRS code. To me that says that this isn't some kind of crazy new provision that is putting an undue burden on crypto, it's just treating it the same way that we already treat other assets. Bottom line: If you want crypto to be money, you should expect it to treated by governments like money.

I recall an older episode of Reply All that covered hackers going after rare handles that was really well done. They actually talk to someone involved in stealing and selling rare handles. They briefly mention that some people that do this resort to more drastic measures, but it does a good job of covering what's going on with this and how easy it is to get into. Get onto the right forum, buy a few simple tools and know a few basic social engineering techniques, and it's pretty easy to steal most people's accounts. That said, stories like the on in the OP highlight both how sad it is that someone would endanger and even end up killing a person for a twitter handle, and how sad it is that a random call to police in this country can so easily result in a death.

I also haven't played Origami King, but puzzle based combat sounds interesting. Experience and/or gear acquisition really do help with the feeling of progression in games. Yes, you're progressing through the story, but part of the role you're playing is that you get stronger through the experiences you have. This serves two purposes, as a reward to the player for their time and effort, and serve to open new game play opportunities (new gear / abilities, new ways to fight, etc.) I don't think it's impossible to design a JRPG without these things, and would be surprised if there aren't a few out there, but I think player progression is really important. I want to feel like I'm becoming more powerful. Especially in traditional menu based battles, you don't get much "better" at the game in the same way you might for more action oriented games. I like earning that new weapon or putting my skill points to get that new spell. I do think a lot of JRPGs especially do a poor job of level scaling and rely on too many battles to pad the length out. Even FF7R (which has a great battle system as is a game I really enjoyed) spends far too much time throwing pointless battles at you seemingly out of habit. I'm right on board with you when you say that a lot of these games could be streamlined and lose the grind, but I don't think they can take away experience or gear upgrades completely without losing a key element that makes the games engaging.

That article says that Biden pledged to declassify these documents, but there's no link and a quick google search didn't find anything. I suppose it's slightly beside the point, but I do think there's some difference between Biden not doing something that other Presidents of both parties refused to do and Biden not doing something he said he would do. I'm sure the calculus is pretty simple. If there's no evidence of Saudi connections, it'd be an easy decision to release the info and exonerate an ally. If there's any connection at all, you gain almost nothing by revealing it, but you really piss off a ally that we continue to deem as a necessary evil. Personally, I'd love it if we could stop treating the Saudis as being so crucial. There's a lot beside 9/11 that we should be hammering them on.