Mr. Tact wrote on Sep 18, 2021, 00:26:
I've been seeing the headlines about the French being mad over the US/UK/AUS submarine deal. And I was kind of wondering "why" they were mad, I mean sure -- breaking the deal is kind of shitty but it didn't seem bad enough to recall their ambassador... according to one article I read it means a $65 billion dollar loss for their defense industry. Please tell me they aren't that mad for a lousy $65 billion? What is that, like one week of the US government spending?

If you were European you wouldn't be surprised.... France is the reason Ariane 6 is not reusable because as majority operator of the Ariane Group it demanded it's factories to be at "maximum capacity at all times" and if you don't blow your boosters to pieces that wouldn't be a thing. So we ended up with a inferior rocket that is more expensive, La tribune had a totally mind-blowing scathing hit-piece on Ariane Group way back that also put into doubts the launch costs...

So yeah, nobody HERE is surprised at all. To be honest, nobody here even understood why Australia was paying that much to France. We always assumed it was corruption.

RedEye9 wrote on Sep 17, 2021, 09:02:

eRe4s3r wrote on Sep 16, 2021, 07:54:
Let's call a-social media from now on.

Wall Street Journal 4 part series http://archive.today/sHAXD

Preaching to the converted mate. I think Facebook is a literal threat to humanity.

2K is the biggest candidate here by far. One of the weakest big publishers there is.

Mr. Tact wrote on Sep 17, 2021, 13:04:

eRe4s3r wrote on Sep 17, 2021, 11:16:
Company made up of 2 people
German developer
East Germany in the 80s
Dystopian fantasy

So, the dev's life story?

A total mess, dystopian and nightmarish? For sure. Was at least my experience of it ;p

Bill Borre wrote on Sep 16, 2021, 11:05:
The trailer gave me sort of a student project vibe.

Company made up of 2 people
German developer
East Germany in the 80s
Dystopian fantasy

4 red flags imo

Rigs wrote on Sep 15, 2021, 16:09:

Mr. Tact wrote on Sep 15, 2021, 12:45:
Don't know anything about Xbox accounts -- were/are there other options for 2FA besides cell phones?

Typically you can use A: a password from a list that was made when you enabled 2FA (you did print it out or save it, didn't you?) or B: use an 'Authenticator' app (MS and Google have their own as does Battlenet). If all else fails, you can sometimes have it sent to your email account on file but that option is rarely available I've found. Most times it's just sending a key to your phone and then entering that in as confirmation. No phone puts a kink in things for sure. You can also buy a hardware authenticator that's on a lanyard and will give you a confirmation number but, of course, that doesn't help right this second, you kinda gotta anticipate it first...

=-Rigs-=

Google auth (on tablet with no internet) works just fine fyi - and is the best security for 2FA (I use it for Google/Paypal) - you will never get around the fact to need a 2nd not connected device (or thing) for your 2nd factor.

Let's call a-social media from now on.

Maybe it is time to implement a maximum age for presidency, just like there is a minimum age....

jdreyer wrote on Sep 14, 2021, 14:32:

eRe4s3r wrote on Sep 14, 2021, 14:30:

jdreyer wrote on Sep 14, 2021, 14:29:

eRe4s3r wrote on Sep 14, 2021, 14:28:
Completely off-topic

But I am fully immunized since today YAY

NICE. So you mean you got your last shot today? Or it's been two weeks since your last shot?

2 weeks since 2nd shot, green digital vaccination pass I can now travel everywhere again and go everywhere again.

Awesome. Is there still a mask requirement? Here we still have full masking requirements for anything indoors, even if fully vacc'd. Makes sense given how virulent delta is.

Depends on where you go. Some places yes, some places no. But most venues where you can go (eating, drinking, where masks don't really work) are now fully locked down to only vaccinated and cured. Man I barely made it actually... the rules are in-place starting tomorrow. Can not believe my luck.

Also sidenote: Since I didn't really tell till now, but the 2nd shot hit me way harder than the first. I was completely off-the-record for at least 2 days. Got the shakes, fever, headache, muscle ache everywhere and muscle pains somewhere and everything below that threshold. Didn't expect my immune response to be THIS hardcore the 2nd go around, but it made me realize why they do the 2nd shot. Anyhow; I am happy I convinced my parent to also get shots with me which was a huge thing for me because you know how old people are... everything went perfectly.

As I said way before, one of the best experiences I ever had, professional huge vaccination center barely anyone there, distance everywhere and friendly people everywhere. If we put our mind to it we clearly can do proper health-care things in Germany... I am proud ;)

jdreyer wrote on Sep 14, 2021, 14:29:

eRe4s3r wrote on Sep 14, 2021, 14:28:
Completely off-topic

But I am fully immunized since today YAY

NICE. So you mean you got your last shot today? Or it's been two weeks since your last shot?

2 weeks since 2nd shot, green digital vaccination pass I can now travel everywhere again and go everywhere again. And just in time too, lmao. My federal state just implemented rules that only vaccinated and healed/prev infected can go into most venues. Tests are no longer accepted (and you have to pay for them, and no quick-tests are accepted) . Pheeeew.

Completely off-topic

But I am fully immunized since today YAY

Jonjonz wrote on Sep 14, 2021, 06:44:

Burrito of Peace wrote on Sep 13, 2021, 15:51:
I'd love to see a Civil War era TW with the same gameloop as Empire with the whole of the contiguous US as the map. Pretty much anything devoid of fantasy or WW2. WW1 might be interesting, though.

Amen on the Civil War. I have played Ultimate General Civil War for years, in spite of it's wacky non-responsive clumsy controls. If TW did the CW with TW's smooth intuitive controls I would be in heaven.

In the current US political climate neither of these settings is ever gonna happen. The moment you'd have named generals you'd have the slavery issue stabbing you in the back at all times.

Here is an idea, gameplay and story bound to
Your position
What planes fly in your airspace (flightracker data)
Sun position, cloud coverage, noise levels
Whether you listen to music in BG or not etc.

Make it happen I love such meta-games that play on your system and not just within their engine constraints. My favorite one of these was an RPG maker game where you had to open new tabs of the same game and it'd create an effect if you overlapped them in a specific way (still no idea how that is even possible to code)

The fact the Neymar thing hasn't lead to that criminal being in prison is also amazing.... and says a lot more about Brazil than about Facebook. Apparently not just Facebook has VIP rules, but also Brazil law enforcement.

jdreyer wrote on Sep 14, 2021, 02:30:

Kxmode wrote on Sep 13, 2021, 21:36:
"your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should."

You kid by quoting JP, but I'm actually concerned about this: mammoths were highly intelligent and social animals, just like modern elephants. It's hard to imagine such an animal thriving with no matriarchs to teach it the Way of the Mammoth, and no group within to socialize. Sounds pretty miserable. To say nothing of the fact that the conditions in which mammoths lived not only no longer exists, but it's rapidly going the opposite direction.

Yeah, maybe they should breed a naked mammoth... oh wait.. that's elephants ~.~

When I saw that to play online matches you had to pay (this was F2P) I was laughing so hard I accidentally hit the uninstall button with my knee. I mean, what did they expect would happen?

Considering the scale of it, that is maybe a good thing.

The only problem is that every other browser declined even more - hate to even say it, but Edge is working fine for me whenever I really need a working browser. How sad is that.

RedEye9 wrote on Sep 11, 2021, 16:18:
You can only reset the admin password for a Local Account with the above hack, if you use a Microsoft Account to login you're S.O.L.
If I'm correct the above hack used to be doable without a Windows 10 Bootable USB, but that pothole got filled.

You should never be using the online MS account for Windows. EVER

At least, we have clear guidelines not to do that.

jdreyer wrote on Sep 11, 2021, 21:10:

Burrito of Peace wrote on Sep 11, 2021, 20:44:

jdreyer wrote on Sep 11, 2021, 14:03:
The problem isn't that we spend too much on defense. Currently we spend less than half of what we did as a % of GDP than we did during the Cold War. Rather, the problem is taxation.

I'd argue that it is both and corporations/wealthy people buying the government. We spend a grotesquely obscene amount on military spending, we fail to tax appropriately, and we fail to prevent corporate bribes donations. Run elections for all public offices on public funds, including advertising.

You bring up another problem with US defense acquisitions: for political reasons production of any particular system is spread across multiple states, requiring all those parts to be relocated to a central location for assembly. This dramatically increases the cost. Take the F-35: it creates jobs in 45 different states. This is done intentionally to insulate a particular program from cancellation. No senator or rep wants to vote against job creation. Given how few defense contractors there are today due to mergers, it's time to create some regulation to counteract these practices.

This is exactly how the ESA operates when it comes to space flight in Europe, and why our rocket technologies are 30 years behind. Europe could land rockets like SpaceX since the 90s, but opted, and i kid you not, to not do it because it would make some factories (notably the ones in France.. funny how that works) pointless to keep as you don't have to produce engines non-stop when you don't throw all your technology into the oceans. So now we have Arianne 6 which is a failed design from the start and politicians who somehow convinced themselves Arianne 6 can compete with Space X (Hint: It can't)

So regulations.. .. if the US regulated this internally we would have to regulate it across the whole of Europe too.