Facebook surprisingly did the right thing and banned him indefinitely. Still waiting on Twitter to do the same, their temp ban is laughable. I highly encourage people to spread the word on that and tweet @jack

With 88 million followers there and two weeks to go he can still do a lot of damage.

Elaine Chao just resigned.

Also here's a potentially NSFW list of people who should be shitting bricks right now. From the DC police - Persons of Interest direct link PDF file

If you recognize anyone from those pictures please call the tip line.

Quboid wrote on Jan 6, 2021, 22:58:

Verno wrote on Jan 6, 2021, 22:53:
Really upset about today. Nothing to add to the discussion except Mitt Romney's excellent speech. Cruz, Hawley and their ilk should pay a heavy price for their support of this dangerous farce.

Well said, and Romney did speak well, but I think that's the wrong link.

Sorry we went to sleep and I'm terrible at navigating CNNs overly busy website. Someone else already linked it apparently. The list of Republican senators and congressman who can hold their heads high after this nonsense is depressingly short but Mitt is near the top of the list. People mocked his religion and some of his policies when he ran for president but he's obviously a man of honor and integrity.

Also reading a Times article this morning I have to agree with the description of Ted Cruz being a "serpent covered in Vaseline".

I don't know how we leave this idiot in office one more day, I hope something is done.

Really upset about today. Nothing to add to the discussion except Mitt Romney's excellent speech. Cruz, Hawley and their ilk should pay a heavy price for their support of this dangerous farce.

Mr. Tact wrote on Dec 17, 2020, 12:27:
I said what she did "is nice" and that "She deserves credit for the donation". But yes, I did minimize it -- because based on her estimated $60b net worth giving away $4.2b is less than you giving away 15% of your earnings. It is helpful, it is good, but for her it is not a sacrifice. It didn't reduce any of her options, as I'm sure your 15% donation did. I'm glad she is being charitable, but don't give her more credit than she deserves.

Net worth is not the same as cash, when you are at that level the overwhelming majority of your wealth is tied up in real estate, business and long term investments.

Her $4.2b does a lot more good for the world than ours does and I'm OK with acknowledging that. It doesn't diminish anything we donate, quite the opposite all donations should be lauded. That's what I think she deserves. It's a significant donation for good causes and the proportions do not matter.

When you get $38b in a divorce settlement giving away $4.2b is nice -- but hardly a sacrifice. She deserves credit for the donation, but let's not saint her yet...

$4.2b does a lot of good for the world if it's in the hands of the right charities and comments like yours seem to minimize that in my opinion. There are many bootstrap billionaires and trust fund kids who do nothing at all. The idea that altruism has to be all or nothing is silly, likewise the idea that charity should be anonymous or its for selfish reasons and somehow less is antiquated. Our family has donated 15% of our income to charities every year for the past five years and while I wish I could do more, we do what we can to help those in need. I'm sure MacKenzie Scott is doing the same. People should be lauded for charity because its much easier to do nothing at all and too many do exactly that.

I'm hoping for a 3080 Ti with 16GB of memory release in Feb. Oh and hoping I can actually obtain one!

aka_STEVE wrote on Dec 16, 2020, 13:15:
I kid you not , I just spent $ 110 on GOG , the day before the sale.

< insert Homer Doh ! slap >

Yowza! Hey at least it went to a good cause though eh?

Mozilla is a really frustrating situation. They wanted Bay area real estate to "attract talent" even though most other open source not for profits have no problem attracting talent remotely from a mixture of countries. They opened other offices in major cities with similar rationale. They spent an obscene amount of money hiring middle management types who then dreamt up silly moonshot projects, many which were totally unrelated to the Foundations purpose. Most of those have not panned out and were huge money losers. They wasted billions over the years which could've been spent solidifying Firefox as a free and open alternative to Chrome but instead tried to diversify their revenue stream away from their search engine deals. A laudable goal but nowhere near realized, they are back where they started. Worse, they laid off technical jobs that were needed for browser improvement and still have a lot of the middle management cruft that was the problem in the first place. They have essentially punted the last 10 years and have nothing to show for it.

All I want out of the Mozilla Foundation are open source tools/API and a check on the internet ecosystem to insure corporations don't dominate every aspect of it. That's why I donate a not insignificant amount of money every year to them. I don't donate for fucking Pocket, that does nothing for the foundation and it does nothing for the internet. They seem to have totally forgotten their own purpose and goals so its becoming harder and harder every year to give them any money knowing it will be squandered. Firefox languishes, much of the API, toolchain and RFC work has suffered from lack of internal funding and the Foundation keeps up the same nonsense. At least they finally realized they need to end the CA lease, sheesh.

The book was really interesting (Good Morning, Midnight) but I don't think it will translate to the screen. So much of the internal dialogue isn't going to work well but I applaud Clooney for taking it on.

jdreyer wrote on Dec 11, 2020, 00:01:
Let's hope they do better than the last time.

Did Andromeda ever fix all of its issues?

Most of the tech issues got resolved but the fundamental problems in the writing, world design and gameplay never did. It's a B level game in most respects. I'm not going to say its awful but there are definitely better ways to spend your time, like replaying the other games. The only thing Andromeda had going for it was the combat but even that they messed up with arbitrary limitations to powers that make things boring.

NKD wrote on Dec 11, 2020, 06:49:
TLOU2 didn't deserve the win. Everyone stopped talking about it like a week after it came out. It had zero staying power.

I don't know, I feel like that happens with most single player games after the first few months. Personally I felt Ghost of Tsushima deserved the win but TLOU2 was a fantastic game that I would still put in the top 3.

Ghost of Tsushima didn't do anything particularly new outside of the wind mechanics but it executed almost everything well and was one of the most polished open world games I've played. I had a blast from start to finish and did the platinum without it ever becoming annoying or cumbersome. It's very videogame-y but in the best way IMO.

PHJF wrote on Dec 10, 2020, 12:13:
Got as a gift, getting a refund. I know my 970 isn't exactly cutting edge but for how bad the game looks there's no excuse for the frame rates I was getting with low-med settings at 1080p.

I looked it up because you mentioned it and was surprised to see a 970 is slightly below the recommended settings for medium at 1080p, crazy how time flies in the PC world. A friend of mine is having similar problems. Performance for me has been OK for the most part but only just OK, they obviously have a lot of optimization work to do. I recall The Witcher 2 and Witcher 3 being pretty much the same situation at launch.

The most important fact is that no one can buy a videocard right now anyway

I had to write a python script to get mine at launch and its just gotten worse since then. Some people have luck with the eVGA queue but last I heard its operating 2 months behind minimum.

Bill Borre wrote on Dec 3, 2020, 12:38:
It's also available on Stadia. I don't understand the hate generated here for this platform. I've got half a dozen games here and they've all been fine. The only glitch so far was the audio on Fallen Order got out of sync but I don't know if that's latency related. I picked up Rage 2 on sale and I've been enjoying it much more than the first one.

I don't know if hate is the right word but there are only a few upsides contrasted against the many downsides that JD mentioned. I would pretty much rather buy into any other platform at this point. Obviously do what's right for yourself but given Google's spotty track record, their general launch and the lack of any significant upside, I see no reason to bother.

Blue is very permissive with discussion on this website but the fact that we're in the middle of a pandemic that needs to be taken seriously is not up for debate.

I suggest everyone take a breather and move on.

Pretty happy with my PS5, its relatively cool and quiet even at full load.

Razumen wrote on Nov 25, 2020, 22:29:
It's literally only ONE MORE step than before, damn, people are really trying hard lately to be annoyed by things.

Yeah it's pretty silly. They added a Control Center to have many common actions available. You hit the PS Button, you get the Control Center. You navigate to the Power menu and you can choose to rest, restart or shutdown. If they put power off in the Control Center root instead, people would be upset it was not Rest or Restart. They don't want all three there clogging up the UI, a sub menu makes perfect sense. It is not at all cumbersome or difficult to accomplish, just a bizarre complaint.

There are other UI improvements that are necessary as the author mentions but focusing on that single one was ridiculous because it's such a non-issue.

Cutter wrote on Nov 23, 2020, 21:04:
The myopia from some of you is fucking mind-boggling

You previously suggested people should be allowed to decide for themselves to be out for a meal during a literal pandemic, seemingly in contravention of what health authorities and the government are allowing. If that isn't myopic I'm not sure what is. This virus needs to be controlled and sometimes that means life is inconvenient for all of us. Locked down is locked down. If that's what is implemented in your region then deal with it, your burger and beer can wait for better days. When your region opens up more then you can manage your personal risk and make a decision. Though frankly to me it isn't a decision I would struggle with.

It's been a tough ride for everyone and we've got another year until vaccination starts to be widely available. I suggest you take the long view and settle in.

Cutter wrote on Nov 23, 2020, 17:46:
Tell the people losing everything facing down homelessness and hunger they aren't necessary. And not necessary for you doesn't mean unnecessary for others. I believe in the protocols but I also believe people should have the right to choose if they want to risk going for a drink or dinner or what have you.

Necessary during a pandemic, not necessary in general. And if government forces you to shut down then government needs to be there to support you. If you believe in the protocols then you believe in health authorities recommending to limit indoor dining, gyms and other non-essential activities when healthcare withstanding thresholds have been exceeded. Again there are things we do as individuals and there are things we do as a society. Navigating a pandemic is a societal effort, it is nothing something overcome with "personal responsibility" alone and it's going to be majorly inconvenient to many people, some more than others. There was a time in my life where my job was non-essential during an economic depression and I rode it like everyone else. Pandemics are tough, get a helmet.