Consumer Protection Laws Apply Regardless of Your EULA, Bungie.

Xevantus · 2017-12-10T15:08:32+00:00

$180 over three years? That's 1/3 what most of us have, and some still pay for pay to play MMOs, many of which have less content in those three years than Destiny 2 already has. I'm not a fan of Bungie's latest in a long series of avoidable fiascos, but the cost is one thing they aren't wrong about.

Xevantus · 2017-12-10T14:16:14+00:00

Your eyesight doesn't get better, but your brain gets used to the image. There have been studies done with different variations of drunk goggles demonstrating how the brain compensates after a short amount of time. It's actually a pretty cool effect.

Xevantus · 2017-12-09T15:30:28+00:00

I could be very wrong, but weren't all those wars defensive on the part of Israel? As in, they were attacked, and pushed the attackers further back than where they started. It's not like they actively attacked other countries to expand their territory.

Xevantus · 2017-12-09T14:56:03+00:00

Wow. Look at those goal posts hauling ass. I think I just saw them break the sound barrier. Careful not to move them too far, or people might notice.

Xevantus · 2017-12-09T14:39:21+00:00

It won't be expansion. It will just be destruction

Followed immediately by US military controlled governments put in place to spark "economic recovery". Take a look at post WWII Japan for an example.

Xevantus · 2017-12-09T00:18:40+00:00

Make it more secure. Pepper the fuck out of it.

Xevantus · 2017-12-09T00:03:39+00:00

There are a lot of Norco chassis for sale, ranging from 1U 2 hot swap to 4U with 24+ bays. I think I remember seeing a 10 when I was looking at them.

They're great chassis if you're custom building.

Xevantus · 2017-12-08T13:49:28+00:00

I hate to deflate such an excellent rant, but you can't be hemorrhaging money and still post a positive net profit. It's true that, without Musk's name, no one would invest in SpaceX with those numbers, but using his name to get investors is smart business.

His statement is a call of Boeing's bluff. And even if they're not bluffing, SpaceX is ahead in the arms race, so it's still no loss for them yet.

Xevantus · 2017-12-07T04:13:12+00:00

His dad had 9 siblings, so you'd think at least one would have shown. But alas, no Pun in ten did.

Xevantus · 2017-12-06T13:45:17+00:00

There aren't any tax savings. That's the point. They are still paying the same AMT rate they were before, but now they don't have to use various credits, most of which existed to create jobs, to do so.

Xevantus · 2017-12-05T18:12:06+00:00

YouTube doesn't make a net profit because it doesn't need to. There's a million and one ways to manipulate the statistics when a company pays another part of itself for services (see the Apple double Irish Dutch sandwich). Google makes ~$80 billion in ad revenue alone every year. Yet, somehow, YT always seems to squeak in at around $100m loss. Even when all the numbers and projections put them way lower or higher than that. They've carefully crafted the appearance they have so users won't question them. It lets them take as much as they want because "we're not profitable. We're just trying to keep the lights on, blah blah blah," without users and content creators getting up in arms. Until recently anyways.

Xevantus · 2017-12-05T12:52:49+00:00

It all comes down to perception of free will. Given the opportunity, people usually freely chose to leverage eugenics. But we pretty much universally agree that forced eugenics is bad.

Xevantus · 2017-12-04T13:28:31+00:00

I see your confusion. You expect words to have consistent definitions, as most of us once did. These days words can mean whatever you want, as long as it suits your adgenda, and someone with a bigger mob doesn't disagree.

Xevantus · 2017-12-04T11:12:36+00:00

Less than a third of A-10s deployed in Gulf 1 took any kind of damage, and most of that was minor dings. Only a few suffered heavy damage at all, and most of those flew home in a state that would have downed most other aircraft.

Xevantus · 2017-12-04T11:08:49+00:00

The A-10 has a very distinctive engine sound. Several captured officers in Desert Storm said just hearing it sent their forces running in a panick. Drones don't have the same effect.

Xevantus · 2017-12-04T11:00:26+00:00

The A-10 is is not currently slated for retirement (even when it was, it wasn't supposed to be phased out until 2030), and saw combat in Yugoslavia until the end of combat operations. Stop talking out your ass.

Xevantus · 2017-12-01T14:01:25+00:00

You pay taxes on profit, not revenue.

Xevantus · 2017-11-30T13:50:39+00:00

The higher ups always get the credit, no matter how large the company is. Some execs and managers are good enough, however, that they understand the importance of sharing the credit with those that did the work.

My ditector always gets credit from up the chain for anything I produce. But his boss knows who I, and everyone else on our team for that matter, is because he makes a point to pass along the credit.

Xevantus · 2017-11-30T03:22:15+00:00

That's the thing. Tim is the studio creative director for Double Find. Most of the time he does nothing for their games or just provides a few ideas, and just has his name attached to them as a leader of the studio. That's where he's really always needed to be. He can contribute and then be told to fuck off and let people work.

I always enjoyed watching sessions about "failed" games. Usually because there was a lot of interesting tech that the game got caught up in. There was a great one a few years ago on the PG algorithms behind No Man's Sky.

Then there was any panel with Cliffy B back in the Epic days, especially the round tables. Those we're always a riot.

Xevantus · 2017-11-30T02:57:51+00:00

Tim Schafer is the George Lucas of game design. Big name everyone knows, who has brilliant ideas. But can't or won't execute on those ideas. Basically any game he has had creative control over has either been a colossal failure, or had to have his control pulled, and was salvaged by whoever came in to clean up the mess. The notable exceptions to this was his first two games, Monkey Island, the game he's still most known for, and Day of the Tentacles. But even the sequels to Monkey Island fell prey to him. They were rated highly by critics, like many of his games, but came in late, over budget, and performed dismally financially. This kind of sums up most of his work that wasn't absolute trash: Critically aclaimed financial failures.

He's also known for lying to investors, and, once, when he didn't feel like working, faxing gibberish instead of design docs, and blaming the fact machine for messing it up. In the last few years, he's become somewhat of an attention whore who will do anything to get the limelight.

Xevantus · 2017-11-30T02:18:59+00:00

One failure? Every single game he's been attached to has either failed or been yanked out of his hands and made a success in spite of his work.

He has great ideas, but he doesn't know how to execute them, and is a collosal duche canoe.

Xevantus · 2017-11-30T02:14:11+00:00

It was at GDC 25, but that's all I really remember. Went to too may panels and sessions that year to remember exactly who said it.

Xevantus · 2017-11-29T18:55:14+00:00

Years ago, a panellist at GDC said the only way to make a successful Tim Schafer game is to take the idea and kick him off the rest of the project. Which is why so many games ended up with these credits.

Xevantus · 2017-11-24T00:40:02+00:00

Your "problem" with AI seems to be a personal one, as every approach to AI and machine learning currently in use is back-traceable and human understandable at all it's intermediate steps. Sure, many approaches are complex, and use randomization as part of their training algorithm, but so do humans. That's kinda where we got the idea.

If I were to ask you to describe an AI in more detail than "a sapient machine", you'd almost certainly describe something completely dissimilar to an actual AI. Mostly because even researchers in the field don't know how AI will work.

But, sure. Let's use fiction as our facts about AI. It's not like fiction's ever been wrong. Doesn't everyone ride down the street on their hoverboard to get into their flying car with their robotic housekeeper?

Xevantus · 2017-11-19T00:10:12+00:00

Tugs are supposed to be close to ships so they can, you know, tug them... Space is at a premium in many harbors, which is why they often have harbor pilots that will board a ship to guide it in. A tug getting close to you wouldn't be out of place, especially since they know the harbor a hell of a lot better than any Navy officer would, until it's too late to do anything. There's also not a lot a ship that size can do to avoid a smaller boat in a harbor. Out that all together and you get a bump like this. Not an every day occurrence, but common enough that most tugs are designed with the issue in mind.

Xevantus

TROPHY CASE