TwinIon

I've been putting in some time on my Steamdeck and I've found a lot to like, and some that isn't really to my taste. It's no graphical showpiece, but it runs pretty consistently at 90 on my deck, which is great. I've really enjoyed a lot of the exploration and the movement stuff gets pretty crazy at times. It can be pretty difficult, but thankfully there are a lot of options to customize the difficulty. Personally, I think everything "souls like" about this game makes it worse, but I seem to be in the minority with that one. I feel like the generally high difficulty of both combat and platforming makes death more common and more punishing than I think is fun and diminished my desire to explore. That said, it can be satisfying to complete a particularly complex section. Some of the puzzles, even the minor platforming ones, are pretty clever. I wish there were more of them. I got stuck on a snake boss that is really punishing, but only after looking online did I figure out that you can upgrade gear, and that I'd long past unlocked that ability. I'll try again tonight and see if some upgrades make a difference.

I'm kind of surprised that they didn't do more upgrades in the visuals. Not that the game really needs it, and for $10 it's not as if they needed to in order to justify the value proposition, I just usually expect Naughty Dog to go above and beyond. I imagine that they're probably not very far along tech wise with their next engine upgrade, especially given that they've had a bunch of resources being juggled around with the cancellation of the multiplayer game. My first instinct is that it would make more sense to release this in another year when Season 2 of the show is about to hit, but maybe that still wouldn't have been enough time for more tech to trickle down. I also wonder if they just looked at how much effort it would have been to upgrade the assets and just figured it wouldn't be a big enough upgrade to justify the work. Whatever the case, I'll probably catch up on this next year before the season 2, and I'll happily pay the $10.

I agree that they had to go into China. It's too big a market to ignore, and likely the most mature EV market in the world. Their problem is they went into the Chinese market and sold the exact same cars that they sell in the rest of the world. BYD sells something like 10 different models (not trims, models) that undercut the 3 and Y. In general it seems like Tesla has a real problem with developing and iterating on vehicles. In the US and Europe, where big brands have been so slow to put out competitive EVs that hasn't been a huge problem, but in China it seems like a big liability. On another topic, this is a pretty bad look for Elon: Elon Musk tries to explain his ask for more control over Tesla, but TSLA not buying it | Electrek ELECTREK.CO Elon Musk tried to explain his strange ask for more control over Tesla, which seemingly came with a threat to... I don't know what the legal implications are for running a private company that competes with the public company you're CEO of, but threatening to not develop products at Tesla unless you give him more control seems like a pretty questionable spot. It also seems like a lazy excuse. He's probably going to build all the AI stuff over at xAI no matter what. He has full control over there, and if there are synergistic opportunities, he's leveraged them cross companies many times. Trying to dupe/blackmail TSLA shareholders into giving an increasingly unhinged Musk double his voting power doesn't seem like a great play.

All it took was nearly a full year of ignoring congress.

So is she just going to stay in the race just in case Trump gets convicted or somehow gets disqualified?

I'm kinda shocked that they have had such a hard time figuring out a long term host for this show. They have plenty of qualified candidates, I wonder why they couldn't pick one? I'm happy to see Stewart back, especially since Apple killed his show.

I forgot about Penelope Cruz, who absolutely killed it in Ferrari.

If the runtime is similar, I don't see why too much needs to be cut out. I'm sure there will be cuts, but just from that trailer I saw plenty that I might have expected to get cut. Tales of Ba Sing Se would work fine in live action. If anything, it's exactly the kind of thing that could be easily expanded if they need some more run time. Some of the stories from that episode, or at least elements of them, could also be put elsewhere in the show. I don't know if we'll get an episode formatted like that, but I'd be shocked if they skip out on some of those stories. This might be a bit pedantic, but I disagree with the notion of it being "filler." Maybe there are different definitions, but character development isn't the same as wasting time, which is what I think of as filler. Just because they don't actively engage on the "main quest" doesn't make it filler, and there's definitively character development going on in that episode.

Here's a fun one. A Texas school district superintendent has taken out a full page newspaper ad defending the suspension of a black student over his hair, despite the CROWN act becoming law in Texas. Honestly, how could this battle possibly be worth the effort to this guy? Calling long hair unamerican? Dude, chill out. In another story, Oklahoma is applying the Texas abortion bounty model to an an extreme new anti-pornography bill. The bill would make simply viewing porn a felony and defines "unlawful pornography" in a way so broad that viewing basically anything unlawful. There's no chance it stands up to constitutional scrutiny, but it's a window into what some in the GOP would like to pass.

That's a surprise, but I guess that means they won't be cutting anything.

I hope they make an example out of whoever is behind this, but man it just makes me wish that the FCC would get their act together and fix the robocalling nightmare. STIR/SHAKEN was supposed to help them crack down and at least stop number spoofing. My personal impression is that it hasn't made much of a dent.

Maybe this is expected coming from someone who sells consoles largely based on single player games, but I'll raise my hand and say that's mostly me. I get way less value out of Gamepass than I might because I'm usually focused on one game at a time, with maybe a bit on the side.

I think it has the looks, but I'm still uneasy about this adaptation. The thing that actually gives me hope is One Piece. I'm not aware of the productions having anything in common beyond Netflix, but it did show that a goofy animated show can make a successful transition. However, One Piece had the benefit of being a pretty messy story that they were able to edit down and improve pretty significantly (IMO). Avatar is already paced pretty well, so I can imagine it feeling a bit more rushed. Guess we'll find out soon enough.

I really need to watch Anatomy of a Fall. I'm rooting for Oppenheimer. Nolan deserves to have a Best Pic and a Best Director statue and Oppenheimer is as deserving as any chance to give those to him. I'd also be happy to see Yorgos win for Poor Things. A surprise to see Past Lives show up in this category. Not that it's undeserving, but still a surprise. I'm very surprised that Margot didn't get a nomination for Actress given who else in the film did. I felt like either the Academy decides that Barbie doesn't deserve acting nominations or Margot is at the top of the list. The movie doesn't work without her. I'm even more surprised that Greta Gerwig didn't get a directing nom. Easy choice over Zone of Interest for my money. Lead Actor is a really stacked category without a wrong choice. I didn't realize at all that Bradley Cooper doesn't have an Oscar. I would have guessed off the top of my head that he had at least two. Slate has a great piece on Paul Giamatti being the best Actor to never have been nominated for best Actor, which functions as both a reminder that he should have one and that the Holdovers is as deserving a performance as he's given. I absolutely loved American Fiction and Jeffery Wright in it. Colman Domingo delivers exactly the kind of biopic recreation that the Academy often loves to reward (though he's competing with Cooper for that turf). I do kind of feel like of them, this might be Cillian Murphy's only real chance to win and Oppenheimer's other successes may well lift him here. Certainly not a bad pick in the lot. A bit surprised not to see Leo in the mix given how much the Academy liked Flower Moon, but again, the category is just stacked this year. Supporting actor is an interesting mix of actors and roles, from the colorful and wacky worlds of Barbie and Poor things, to the dour Killers of the Flower Moon and colorless RDJ in Oppie. Again, not really a bad pick in the mix. Actress should have been a three way between Lily Gladstone, Emma Stone, and Margot Robbie, but for my money now it's down to two (again, haven't seen Fall). I'm expecting Da'Vine Joy Randolph to easily walk away with supporting Actress. Kinda bummed Turtles didn't get a Animated Film nod, though I'm not sure if I'm rooting for Spider-Verse or Boy and the Heron. I enjoyed Spider-Verse more, but you could never give Miyazaki enough awards to credit him for his career. I was surprised to see Godzilla Minus One up for visual effects. I think if you grade on a cost curve, it'd be an easy winner over second place Creator, but if you're not I don't think it's quite seamless all the way through. Still, all the credit in the world to that team for making that movie. Interestingly Netflix comes out of this as the distributor with the most nominations, though I think it's going to be another year where they walk away with little to show for it.

Probably unnecessary to break out the tin foil for a show that has had production problems since it started.

Finally was able to catch up with this series and this season didn't disappoint. Really enjoyable all the way through with plenty of classic Fargo shenanigans. I didn't love Jennifer Jason Leigh's performance, though I think much of the fault lies with the writing for her character. Juno Temple impressed as Dot and Sam Spruell is so much fun as Ole. There were times that Wayne was maybe a bit too slow, but in a scene with an immortal killer probably not a tipping point. One tiny question for those who watched the finale: what was the deal with the constant fades to black? It was a stylistic choice that I didn't get and was actually kind of annoying for the first act of the episode.

I don't see how this is that different from Sony putting their games on PC. I really doubt Sea of Thieves' ability to sell Xbox consoles at this point. Especially for a live service game, cross platform makes sense to expand the potential player base. I can also imagine the business case for this if it's a demographic issue. I don't know if the demographics are that different for Xbox vs Playstation beyond just regionality, but they're certainly different for the Switch. In that way it's not much different from the way that TV networks might develop shows to air on other networks because they might fit in better with that audience. I also think that it makes good sense for MS to have more multi-platform games that are part of game pass. They've been running Minecraft that way for a long time, and it's only going to be more common for them as they absorb Activision Blizzard. Maybe they're hoping that players might find themselves playing a couple game-pass games on their Playstations and that an Xbox + Gamepass might actually make sense for them. It's also a good play for anti-trust reasons. The more they can show regulators a willingness to put their games on competing platforms, the more likely a regulator might accept MS buying another developer/publisher.

Looks like there is finally a real date for the Vision pro: pre-orders begin January 19th and they will start shipping February 2nd.

Went and saw Ferrari and American Fiction this weekend. Ferrari was really good, if a bit melodramatic at times. Didn't think the accents worked super well, but I enjoyed the film quite a bit overall. American Fiction quickly became one of my favorites of the year. Funny, insightful, dramatic, and more than a little bit meta, it was a complete joy to watch.

It's that time of year when Hollywood gets to look around and marvel at their own greatness. Oppenheimer has been doing well in early awards, but the drama around Christopher Nolan's NYFCC acceptance speech took on a life of it's own. In the speech Nolan is reflecting on the inescapable nature of modern film criticism when he recalls taking a Peloton class during which the instructor ruthlessly bashed one of his movies. Shortly after the speech people online were able to find the video and identify the instructor. The instructor has since apologized and had that apology acknowledged by Nolan. Last night was the Golden Globes, the first telecast since the HFPA was disbanded. The awards are now chosen by a group of 300 journalists from 76 countries, and the rights to the Globes are owned by Dick Clark Productions and Eldridge Industries. It's kind of hard to know what to think of the reborn Globes, but starting out a new era by introducing an award for "Cinematic and Box Office Achievement" is pretty silly if you ask me. Here's the full winners list The opening monologue by host Jo Koy didn't go particularly well, and he quickly threw his writers under the bus when he didn't get laughs. I didn't watch much of the broadcast so I can't comment on how it went, but Deadline (which shares an owner with the new Globes) seems to think it was a return to being “Hollywood’s party of the year," while Vanity Fair seems to think it was a complete disaster. Regardless, I personally have very few bones to pick with their choices. Succession and Oppenheimer were the nights' big winners, and I was happy to see Emma Stone and Poor Things pick up a couple awards. Also nice to see Lily Gladstone and The Boy and The Heron win an award. The only Award that really raises any question from me is Ricky Gervais winning for the second new category of Best Performance in Stand-Up Comedy on Television. I can't argue too much since I haven't seen the new special, but I also haven't heard a single positive word about it. Anyways, for anyone that does follow Awards season at all, it's certainly looking good for Nolan and company.

I'm sure we'll have no shortage of court cases this year litigating this exact issue, but I don't expect the artists on this list to win most of them. US copyright law is pretty obsessed with the idea of a copy. I expect all the AI companies to get lose some battles over the original copies that they trained data on, but not have to pay royalties going forward for generated content. Downloading a torrent of thousands of books is a pretty clear cut copyright violation. Building a legal library of data to train on will probably become more expensive and time consuming, but I just don't see a world where the end state is that artist X gets paid whenever their training data is utilized to generate something.

I'm glad that MSI is throwing in an Intel CPU and GPU. Either the new gen is good enough to compete, or it just exposes how far behind Intel remains in low power situations and hopefully pushes them to do better. It's a good sign in general that Intel cares enough about the segment to put any effort into it at all.

I finished this up, along with all the puzzles. I didn't hunt down all the stars, but don't really care to. I played through most of it on the Steam Deck after it was verified, and it ran very well. There were a few sequences that the deck struggled, but not really during gameplay. I also played some on my PC with everything turned up, and it can be quite a beautiful game. Looks aside, it's also a very satisfying puzzle game with a lot of pretty well told story. After blazing through the first game, I was really impressed by the scale of the sequel. This game makes the leap between Portal 1 and 2 look like a tiny step. The game world is much bigger, there are many more puzzles, more mechanics, and so much more storytelling (along with a ton of philosophy to dive into if you're interested). This was one of the more surprising games I played last year, and in the end one of my favorites. Maybe not better than Zelda or Spider-man, but not far off either. An easy recommendation for anyone interested at all in the genre. I'd very much recommend playing through the first one, for anyone like myself that missed out on it. I put in a solid 15 hours into the first and 35 into the second game. Not bad for a total of something like $30. Does anyone have any recommendations for similar games? I saw a bunch of praise for Viewfinder, but got through it in a few hours and didn't feel like they did enough with it.

Very excited to see more of this series, but November remains a long way off. I'll definitely enjoy revisiting season 1 before this arrives.

Of the TVs I'm actually likely to buy, it doesn't seem like this year is much of an upgrade. I've got one 65" TV that is a cheap Roku that I've been looking to upgrade to a bigger OLED, and with this lackluster upgrade cycle from LG, maybe this is the year to hunt for a good deal on the 2023 models.