TwinIon

Visually, though I did really like some of the brand new gameplay stuff at the end of Black Mesa.

At least we have a date.

Pretty weird, but as long as they don't start regulating at a part specific level I'm good.

I'm guessing this is correct. I'd never seen something like this, but I suppose this is what happens in a super hot rental market.

The first one was terrible and this one seems to be continuing in that tradition. I wouldn't bet against it in the box office though.

My mistake. I didn't realize Texas UIL refers to the organization that governs Texas high school athletes.

I went through Black Mesa and HL2 before Alyx came out, and getting to HL2 after Black Mesa was a real step down. I'd love to see a real comprehensive update to it. Good on Valve for allowing this kind of thing.

As has been heavily rumored and leaked for a while now, Google is finally going all in on their Pixel phones and creating their own chips. Today we got our first official confirmation that this will be the case, and while tech reporters were allowed to handle the devices and see some demos, they couldn't take any of their own footage or test anything themselves. The devices generally seem comparable to other high end (~$1000) smartphones, which has not always been the case with the Pixel line. The camera system is notable, given that Google has finally ditched the old 12MP Sony sensor they've been using since the Pixel 2. No direct specs were given, but leaks suggest it's a new 50MP sensor that is also larger than the old one. There's also an ultra wide and a periscope telephoto lens. The big deal though is the new Tensor chip. Tensor is the name Google has used for their AI chips used in their data center products, so it's notable they're using it again here. Unfortunately, Google was again light on the details. They wouldn't share what parts were custom designed, who is building it, or any benchmarks. The only real info is that the Tensor SoC will include mobile versions of the "Tensor Processing Unit" that Google has been putting in their server farms. This shouldn't be a surprise, given that Apple, nVidia, and basically everyone else already puts dedicated AI hardware in their SoCs, and Googles TPUs have been well regarded for years. In the past we've seen different kinds of jumps when companies move to their own hardware. Samsung has been selling versions of it's phones for years with their own Exynos chips, but they've never really been clearly better than their Qualcomm counterparts. When Apple first moved to their own A series chips, they were more or less a continuation of what had come before, taking a bit before they became the market leading chips we see today. When they moved to the M series with their laptops, it was a huge leap we're unlikely to see here. If I were to guess I'd say we won't be seeing much performance differences between this first gen and existing Qualcomm phones, but over time it could become quite a competitive advantage for Google. Google is also promising that this time they're going to spend money and actually attempt to capture some market share. They've said that before, but there's some reason to believe they actually might do it this time. As someone who's been using Pixel phones for years now, I'd be happy if they can make these really standout products.

I certainly don't follow college football prospects, but it seems this kid is the top prospect this year and he's choosing to go to a school where he can make money over one where he can't. I find it kind of interesting that he's calling this out specifically, since he's choosing Ohio State over Texas, and even with my limited knowledge of CFB, I'm pretty sure Ohio has been consistently the better team. So he easily could have just said he's going to Ohio for generic football or college reasons, but he's making a statement in calling out the money situation. Good for him and those advising him. Bad post. As pointed out he's choosing to go to Ohio State rather than play high school in Texas another year, where he would not be allowed to make money. Still a post about how the new rules allowing him to profit from his name and likeness have changed the decision making of the top college prospect, so I'll leave it up.

Obviously not the same thing, but theoretically USB 4 is fast enough. The bandwidth is high enough, and it's basically just porting over PCIe lanes, but I'm not sure if it works with PCIe 4.0, as I'm pretty sure that existing Thunderbolt 3 only supports PCIe 3.2.

Kind of surprising that, for the moment it's cheaper to add 1TB to the Series X than the PS5. Given how high storage prices are, that might actually remain the case for a while. Personally, since my primary platform is PC, I don't need to keep too many games on my PS5, so I probably won't expand it anytime soon, if ever.

As I said in the Blue Origin thread, the Space X proposal was pretty much NASA's only choice given their constraints. They didn't get nearly as much money or time as they wanted, and Space X came in with the only flight proven vehicle and the most competitive price.

Not a shocker.

I don't have a WSJ sub, but putting that number in context with the rest of the world and it seems like the US isn't doing too bad, at least compared to our economic rivals. If the economy bounces back and we can get over the pandemic, that'll help a lot. We also can basically increase our population at will if we just open up the immigration gates (though that would require some serious political shifts). For my part, I'll happily identify as part of the "problem."

I know we got at least one similar lawsuit over all the movies sent to HBO Max, but I'm surprised we haven't seen more, or even some kind of class action. I won't blame Johansson herself, but it does seem like contracts should account for this kind of thing. I don't know if it's unions being slow to adjust, the incestuous relationship talent agencies have with studios, or studio lawyers just being better, but every time the business model changes it seems like everyone but the studios get screwed. Just in the last 20 years we've seen multiple huge shifts in how films and tv make money, and we've become increasingly aware of the lasting value that many of these properties have (see the sale of MGM). If you write a contract based around specifics of how a movie makes money, you're going to lose out sooner rather than later. I'm sure that someone lost a ton of money because the contract they signed in 06 gave them a cut of the DVD sales, only for the film to come out a couple years later to find the market had been cut in half. I suppose those aren't lasting lessons.

I haven't a vacation longer than a day since Sept 2019, but I'm going to Alaska in a couple weeks. So looking forward to it.

Given that his endorsement seems more or less irrelevant, do we have much data of the reverse? We've seen so many GOP politicians go to the ends of reality to avoid pissing off Trump. Do we have many examples of how those that didn't kiss the ring fared in elections? Or are there just too few examples?

Very impressive sales for Playstation. I haven't used mine a ton, even after it was so hard to get one, but I know there will be plenty of games that I can only play on it. Sony's first party strategy seems to be working quite well.

It's Impressive that it's running on a Series X, otherwise it seems like a lesser version of Epic's demos. I remain impressed by the UE5 demos. Can't wait to see what actual games look like.

To be clear, India Walton (the presumptive new Mayor) hasn't won yet. She won the Democratic mayoral primary running against someone who has been in office for 16 years, but is unlikely to face much competition. Also, while being a Bernie style democratic socialist certainly isn't popular, there is something else that might make some in buffalo nervous: I feel like this is key: So yeah, they probably won't be able to keep her out of office.

I'm no expert in Tunisian parliamentary procedures, but I think most parliaments have some way to be dissolved that doesn't involve the army forcing everyone including the media out.

Tampa Sheriff's Office is now sending "acceptance letters" to those enrolled in their pre-crime initiative. Last year the Tampa Bay Times found out that the Sheriff's Office creates a list of people they consider likely to break the law based on "criminal histories, social networks and other unspecified intelligence." The agency then sends deputies to their homes "at all hours of the day and night, writing tickets for violations like overgrown grass and making arrests for any reason they could find." As of last year, they'd arrested 1000 people on this program, ~10% of them being 18 or younger. Four targets and relatives of targets are now suing the office in federal court. Hopefully this incredibly dystopian program will get shut down.

My understanding is that NASA asked for a bunch of money and time to have multiple companies build landing systems. Congress gave them a fraction of that money and cut the timeline dramatically, so they went with SpaceX because they were the cheapest and they had the only proven human-flight capable tech. If Bezos wants to spend $2B to stay in the running, that's fine with me. NASA shouldn't just give Blue Origin (and their "national team" of defense contractors) the contract, but if he can prove a more capable craft in the right timeframe without spending any taxpayer money, go for it. Unlike everything else Blue Origin has done, this would at least be impressive.

Didn't watch the video, but this Forbes article says that the workers are part of the Parks department that are not specific to Disneyland, including ShopDisney merchandise, publishing and Disney Cruise Line and Walt Disney Imagineering. I have the feeling that if you're working for a merchandise store or in publishing, there might be other jobs in CA you could find. However, it wouldn't surprise me if some jobs are so theme park specific that there really aren't many other similar job opportunities out there. It seems like Disney could find a place for these people in CA if they wanted to. It's not like the area around Disneyland is the only property they own, or that they couldn't expand if they really needed the space. Hell, the recent Fox purchase must have made some decent square footage available. Still, I guess when you have unlimited land and effectively run your own country in Florida, there's no reason to invest more in CA, and when you're Disney, there are a lot of people that will uproot everything to work for you.

It looks like the CG cut-scene from an old game.