Open Thread

Open Thread #249

Aaron "Sleazy" Elias

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59 thoughts on “Open Thread #249”

  1. Alex Jones is supposed to pay a bazillion gorillions to the Sandy Hook crisis actors:
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/sandy-hook-families-seek-275-trillion-damages-alex-jones
    The sheer nonsense of this is beyond belief. Infamously corrupt and evil companies like Pfizer were fined a few measly billions but I suppose that whatever a criminal multi-billion enterprise like Pfizer does is absolutely nothing compared to the powers of Alex Jones:
    https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2772953?guestaccesskey=bf354508-0f93-48b2-aea8-f948c9d4dad7

    Reply

    1. I think GF’s daughter is wanting to sue Kanye West for speaking about how fentanyl resulted in his death instead of the being kneeled on crap. On the flip side, there was that maga kid that successfully sued CNN a fee years back. Still, it seems pretty retarded to be able to extort a single individual for hundreds of millions, just for saying something mean and just because he happens to have a large sum of money. I wonder if Rittenhouse will be able to capitalize on his slanderers.

    2. I was under the impression that Rittenhouse settled with some mainstream media companies. He presumably made a few millions this way. I think the media deliberately trying to destroy a kid’s life should come with a much harder backlash, and there have also been precedents in the past. For instance, Gawker was driven into financial ruin as a consequence of messing with Hulk Hogan. Those people will never stop if they do not suffer financial and legal consequences of their actions.

    3. He may have honestly, I’m not aware of it. If so, then I imagine they settled real fucking quick to avoid any bad publicity. Which is a shame, because I’d love to see them get dragged through the waters. It seems as if they somewhat learned their lesson after MAGA hat kid. They probably thought they could help in the demise of Rittenhouse, he’d be locked away and then they’d face no repercussions, just like with Chauvin. It’s a wonder Rittenhouse didn’t go to jail.

    1. This guy has always been an obvious puppet. I would not be surprised if his handlers simply view his supposed presidency as some kind of ritualistic abuse of an elderly goy. There are probably a few deeply concerning parts in the Talmud.

  3. Youtube is shilling for Netflix’s film adaptation of the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, so naturally I am highly suspicious. I’ve never heard of the novel before now and don’t know what its contents are, but based off the two minute trailer I watched I’m guessing the point of the movie is to demoralize whitey while also getting some nice gruesome shots of them dying in some of the most brutal ways. There were quite a few snippets in the trailer of Germans screaming and crying with the most depressing facial expressions you could imagine. Contrast that with Saving Private Ryan where the American soldiers are portrayed as being badass and dying heroically and with dignity.

    Reply

  4. @Pickernanny: Fallout 3 is currently available for free on the Epic game store:
    https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/fallout-3-game-of-the-year-edition
    I would recommend checking this store every week, and there are also times where they release free games daily, oftentimes ending with a few high-profile games. That way I got the entire Tomb Raider reboot trilogy for free (and still have to play it). Well, I played the first game on PS3 about a decade ago and really enjoyed it. The other two have not been that well received by gamers.

    There is also GOG, which focuses more on older games. They also give away games for free, but more irregularly. GOG is run by CDPR. In pricinple, this coud be a cash cow but somehow they are losing money.

    Reply

    1. Thanks for looking out, man! I’ll make an account for Epic Games and GOG ASAP. From what I’ve heard, Fallout 3 is the best reviewed in the series (76 was a turd). If they’re going to give away games, then I might as well take ‘em. How is GOG losing money, I wonder? It’s no wonder CDPR decided to do a whole new trilogy of The Witcher. I have briefly sampled all of the new Tomb Raider games, and I believe the first installment is the most revered. They became slightly less good with each new release it seemed.

    2. Losing money is easy. You only need to hire 500 superfluous non-coders with purple hair. Twitter also manages to lose money with their bloated 7,500 people workforce, which is probably about 40 times more than they needed if they ran their company properly.

    3. I made an account and grabbed the free game. I noticed they had Days Gone on sale 60% off, but I’m sort of hesitant to get any more open world games for now. I think Nier: Automata is enough for now. I was also looking at this Ghostwire: Tokyo game that’s on sale. Looks pretty crazy.

    1. I almost feel tempted to reach out to him, requesting a ghost-written article for my blog, just to see what kind of garbage he will come up with.

  7. Look at Elon Musk’s recent tweet “who decides the current thing? Real question. I don’t know.”

    I really wonder what his angle is with this question. Plenty of people naming them in the comments. I get the sense that Musk likes to play dumb a lot.

    Reply

    1. Musk is a massive cuck!!!

      That being said, I m gad he is going to fire most of Twitter!!!

      Almost as gratifying as seeing Gawker destroyed by the glorious Hulk Hogin!!!

    2. In my opinion, Musk just likes to troll. He can’t just write that the State Department strong-arms the US vassal states into flying the faggot flag, for instance, or that the tribe runs the State Department. Kanye, on the other hand, could do that because he has gone all out already. Musk seems to want to hold on to Tesla and his other companies, though.

    3. In that case I’d say he’s playing with fire by entertaining these little naming games. His hands are already full enough without getting the tribe mafia involved in his affairs. Unrelated, though I suspect maybe it’s possible some Republicans offered him something in exchange for taking over Twatter and making it a free platform again, but I don’t think he realized how much of a project it was actually going to be and now he can’t really back out.

    1. Not gonna bullshit ya, haven’t given much of it a try but I can definitely appreciate the performance and beauty within this piece. I like it! You must be a pretty decent singer then, eh?

    2. Back when people still bought CDs, I acquired a few with Medieval chants, as well as several with Medieval compositions, ranging from dances to church music. Choirs are very meditative, but the biggest surprise for my ears was how varied some of the Medieval instrumental pieces were. Some were highly energetic, so much so that you could imagine them being used by a punk band.

    4. Aaron,
      “…the biggest surprise for my ears was how varied some of the Medieval instrumental pieces were.”
      Are you familiar with the German composer Carl Orff ~ O Fortuna ~ Carmina Burana? I remember hearing O Fortuna in the 90s. I still love the music till this day.

    5. Yes, I know it. When I went to school in Germany, it was part of music appreciation class. Nowadays, though, kids probably get to listen to gangsta rap.

    6. @Herkerderker

      Are you making money off of your talent? Do you record etc.? Don’y dox yourself.

    7. @Picker, I’ve let myself down with recording tbh. There are some recordings of me out there, and I’m sitting on a few. Haven’t monetised any of it.

      I have made some okay money playing gigs.

    8. I think I get what you mean. Would be cool to swap tunes somehow, man. I’d love to hear your stuff.

  9. The new Resident Evil 4 trailer looks amazing:

    This remake seemingly captures the spirit of the original game quite well as the latter is an incredible power fantasy, with weapons that feel as if they have a lot of impact. I would like to see Leon let loose on larger groups of enemies, which is probably the best part of the original. Here is a run-through:

    I watched part of this recently and was surprised by how visceral it still looks. Of course, the controls feel a lot less fluid today, but even this was a revelation back then compared to the predecessor with its tank controls.

    EDIT: Note that Capcom put a black woman into the RE4 Remake. They seem to enjoy doing this. Devil May Cry V also had one, and both have in common that they do not fit in very much.

    Reply

    1. Black chick? You mean Hunnigan? Mulatto at best. Imagine if they replaced her with a full on diabetic black chick. “Shieet, muhthafuckin Leon, you gots to get the heeeeeeell outta there! Run, nyucka!! Them white pipo done went crazy! Ahhhhhw, hell naw.”

      It does seem like they’ve done this remake justice based off the trailers. This isn’t really a game they can afford to mess up, imo, as it’s arguably the most beloved in the franchise. Wait until you play REmake 2. They used the same model and voice actor for Leon, but the way they’ve handled his transformations from a green rookie to a special operative seems quite natural.

  10. When I was growing up I was taught to do two spaces after a period, but someone recently called me out on it. Have I been doing it wrong this whole time? I’ve got to admit, one space after makes sense.

    Reply

    1. You probably had boomer teachers who did not keep up with the times, i.e. changes to standard style guides such as the Chicago Manual of Style. Putting two spaces after a period used to be the norm several decades ago but this habit has all but died out. I had a few boomer colleagues over the years who were also very fond of their two spaces after a period. Technically, this is not a question of right or wrong, though, and perhaps there are still style guides that prescribe two spaces after a period.

  11. She was definitely a Boomer, Aaron. I’m guessing that was more of a typewriter style. As far as shear speed goes it makes a lot more sense to just space once, otherwise the flow gets unnecessarily interrupted. I doubt I can break this habit now, though.

    Reply

    1. Never say never! A few years ago I made an attempt to learn an alternative keyboard layout, I think it was Workman. The first few hours were quite painful, figuratively speaking, but eventually I got pretty fluent on it. In the end, I did not pursue this further because you cannot expect that every PC or laptop I get handed as part of my work has this layout preinstalled, and some companies lock down their hardware pretty thoroughly, so it may be very difficult if not impossible to install an alternative keyboard layout.

    2. Workman layout, you say? Do you bu chance collect keyboards? I’ve honestly never considered a different layout, but it sounds pretty neat!

    3. I can touch-type so the actual printed layout is not much of an issue. That being said, I do have more than one keyboard at home, a Ducky One (mechanical), an Apple Magic Keyboard, and a Logitech one that looks a bit like an Apple knock-off. I like all of them. The Ducky is the most satisfying one to type on but it is also the loudest, and by quite a margin. Overall, The Apple Magic keyboard is probably the most pleasant one to use as it has very low key travel.

    4. Ah, there’s this guy I follow on youtube that uses a really nifty 80’s style retro keyboard I always thought looked cool. In this video about best keyboards 2022 edition he mentions the very Apple Magic board right off the bat. I myself don’t own any great keyboards atm.

    5. This guy had a video up on why Ye was right, dropping a lot of anti-semitic dogwhistles. Unfortunately, it took only about a day or so for this video to get taken down. There is a bit of a cult around keyboards. Quite frankly, this is all heavily overblown. I would only invest into an expensive, high-quality keyboard if you make money with it because aspects like reduced key travel become noticeable if you spend a few hours a day typing.

    8. Ye = Kanye = Kanye West. He went on a big anti-semitic crusade, and now the Jews are cancelling him left and right.

    9. Ohhh yea, of course. I’ll never forget the time Kanye went ‘death con 3’ on those yids asses.

    1. Got REmake 3 up and running. Check it out, pushing the GPU about 2/3 capacity with CPU 1/3 on medium settings with 1280x720p resolution, hitting a locked 60 FPS. In docked mode on this 720p tv and looks pretty nice. Capcom apparently makes well optimized ports:

      https://files.catbox.moe/p3ne55.jpeg

    2. This is pretty impressive. It is remarkable how much more powerful than the Switch the Steam Deck is. Unlike playing watered-down ports, you get to play the real deal. Also, 720p on this screen is surely extremely sharp. It’s the same effect on Switch, too, after all.

    3. This is a pretty nice looking machine! Putting those two devices next to each other also shows how similar their design is.

    4. I’m fooling around with it this morning and seeing how it responds to different parameters. There’s a lot I need to get a handle on with PC gaming in general I’m finding. The image quality does indeed look pretty sharp on this tv from my perspective. I’ve only really noticed some weird lighting/reflective effects from time to time. Some graphics effects I just plain dislike, like surface reflections. I don’t like the way it looks and rather save the processing power for something else, like image quality. Since shadows seem to use up a lot of resources, I just keep them on the lowest setting and maybe do away with moving objects casting shadows, and it doesn’t seem to affect the overall presentation much. I’m kind of getting the sense that people who want to run everything at max settings are kind of getting cucked, because certain parameters being set to highest aren’t even all that pleasant. The surface reflections, like I mentioned, are distracting and tricked my brain a couple times into thinking it was enemy movement.

      Also, I read online that for newer games it’s okay to have your graphics processor running near max, but most of the time I’m seeing it bounce around between 75-90 or so.

    5. Some people enjoy that they can tinker with graphics settings, but the novelty normally wears off quickly. There is also the post-processing rabbit hole (AA, MSAA, SMAA, SSAA etc.). People who obsess about this topic seems to spend more time staring at configuration screens than the actual game. Diminishing returns are a real problem, in particular with shadows. In motion, I would argue that it is very difficult to distinguish one algorithm over another.

      Have you come across Digital Foundry on YouTube? They do detailed technical analysis and are super-autistic about it. I have to admit that I wonder if they are just trolling. Their favorite approach is to blow up a small part of the screen that you normally would not even pay attention to, and point out visual deficiencies. I remember a clip in which they talk about the shimmering of an edge of a brick in some ground texture in an FPS, and I bet if you asked 100 actual gamers, they would have no idea what those people even talk about.

    6. Yes, I’ve watched at least a dozen or so of DF’s videos. Mostly the older English guy, I think. Though their content can be pretty entertaining, I don’t typically take this behind the scenes stuff too seriously. It’s not too awfully hard to figure out how to squeeze more performance out of a game or how to optimize for your hardware, I’m finding. I will say that DF helped me decide to purchase a port or two on Switch, namely the Doom games. They had some nitpicks for sure, but if I remember correctly they were praising Panic Button’s work on those ports.

      REmake 3 is turning out to be an action packed game. There’s been a handful of instances quite quickly where Jill should have been crushed by this behemoth of a menace. So far I’d say this game is worth every bit of $10. I think it’s supposed to be rather short, which I don’t really mind because I can see myself playing this again one day.

    7. For $10 RE3 surely is a great buy. I just don’t think it is worth $60. Did you also get some mods to improve the appearance of the female protagonist?

    9. In the original, she was a club slut and dressed accordingly. Somehow, she dresses like a born-again Christian in the remake. Any coincidences with real life actions of certain women are surely completely coincidental.

  13. This interesting little 3 minute clip I just came across compares two games—Batman Arkham Knight (2015) and Gotham Knights (2022). The latter appears to be a polished turd stuck running at a locked 30 FPS on next gen hardware, honestly offering very little overall improvement in visual fidelity from what I can tell. As a compromise for slightly prettier graphics you get reduced gameplay quality, lame animations and poor environment interaction. Is this possibly the result of diversity hiring?

    https://youtu.be/-7o9VHxXTwg

    Reply

    1. Diversity hiring is surely partly to blame. Another issue is that the big game studios are run by suits, and their goal seems to be to spend the least amount possible to reach certain sales targets, i.e. only the worst bugs get fixed, and sometimes not even that. There is also the very cynical view that most gamers do not even see the end of their creations, thus some games get blander and blander as you progress.

    2. Speaking of diversity hiring, all my youtube game subs are firing off about The Witcher 1 remake. Apparently, CDPR is working on a new trilogy at the same time and outsourcing projects. I hope they had to do some laying off recently, and if Unreal Engine 5 helps fix a lot of the issues they had with 2077 then maybe they can redeem themselves. I really fell in love with the Witcher universe recently. It would be a shame if they diversify the franchise or make it a buggy mess. I won’t hold my breath.

    3. I think CDPR has taken on too many projects. CyberPunk 2077 was years late and a big mess on release date, even though it was their only project. Yet, now they want to make amends and work on five or six games all at once, some themselves and the other via outsourcing. I believe it when I see it.

    4. For sure. With the recent success of The Witcher tv series as well as Wild Hunt’s universal acceptance, it seems to me that they’re trying to milk every dime out of this franchise. Apparently, the next gen version of TW3 is supposed to be out before the end of this year now too.

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