Saber rattling from the outside, paid-off politicians on the inside. In the short term, pushes policies towards groveling before Russian aggression, in the long term, establishes precedence and shifts the general accepted attitude to dealing with their pressure.
That was my impression as well. Everyone you meet seems to be some frontier redneck, either mining, farming or hunting outlaws. It could be a serviceable backdrop if you were just passing through, chasing the action, but somehow, most of the quests and plot feel like a chore in slow motion.
For a moment I thought a Trump supporter had grown balls. Indoctrinated nutjob balls, but balls.
But after reading that Manifesto, it looks more like it’s a classical conspiracy nutter who must, at any cost, trace all world events and pop culture back to a secret group that is orchestrating everything:
Secret group controls both major US political parties
Cryptocurrency intentionally built/pushed by this group to crash the global finance system
Secret group is mocking everyone by broadcasting their plans through i.e. old Simpsons episodes
1970s dystopian movie classics were actually setting us up to accept these dystopias
Secret group knows about coming resource depletion and climate collapse, will destroy society, then rule the survivors.
TLDR; a wild mix of real issues, attributed to America-centric conspiracy puzzle pieces, many taken from Russian propaganda, combined with far-fetched associations that would make any numerologist proud.
“We had several leaks sent to Wikileaks, including the Russian hack. It would have exposed Russian activities and shown WikiLeaks was not controlled by Russian security services,” the source who provided the messages wrote to FP. “Many Wikileaks staff and volunteers or their families suffered at the hands of Russian corruption and cruelty, we were sure Wikileaks would release it. Assange gave excuse after excuse.”
Neither of our quotes really adds anything to the discussion.
A nebulous policy to reject “anything WL can’t verify” or “has been published elsewhere” or “is likely to be considered insignificant” or is “diversionary (to WL’s election interference)” is a carte blanche for Assange to turn down anything that he doesn’t like.
I won’t even ask for concrete evidence that the FBI has framed Assange, because in the big picture, it doesn’t change who he is or what he does. To me, it’s been sufficiently proven that he takes sides (that’s an ‘F’ for integrity, report the story, don’t be part of the story), that he collaborated in anti-democratic GOP activities and that his promotes views that align with the gunk spread by “Russia Today” or “Sputnik.” Whether that’s because he a Russian asset or because he’s had a false awakening into the conspirational world view Russian information warfare uses to twist people, who knows. I’ll withhold judgment on that one, but I also won’t expect him to do anything good for the world.
Months of careful work by the Obama administration for that deal, and bit by bit, Iran had started to become more moderate, too. It allowed international observers and IAEA inspectors to check things out from up close in addition to spy satellites and intelligence agencies.
And then Mr. Orange guy comes along and tears it up for the sole reason that he wanted to look “tough.”
Except that unilaterally ripping apart your contract and demanding that the other side gives you more concessions, well, apparently it works out exactly like one might expect it to. Truly “the Art of the Deal”, real “master negotiator” stuff.
I’m genuinely curious, is that how it works? If you refinance, the new loan loses the “student loan” earmark and you’re no longer eligible? Or did you consolidate two/multiple loans and the student loan was one of them?
It sounds a bit unfair in the former case because in my mind it’s still the student loan debt, just with (hopefully) better conditions.
But I agree, it’s good that at least some headway has been made. I miss the “investment into the future” perspective we had from before the news became so gloomy :)
I’d compare him to a cop who selectively polices crime gang A but ignores crime gang B. And whose phone number is found with members of crime gang B, together with evidence that they could call the cop at any time (and did so) to appear inside crime gang A’s territory. Yes, technically, the cop has apprehended more criminals than either of us ever will and we could give him a medal for his work (and crime gang B is certainly motivated to help that along to get this cop more entrenched and promoted).
I’ve read news where FBI insiders where quoted calling their organization “Trumpland” and that the Mueller probe and other corruption investigations only happened because a handful of department heads didn’t bow to pressure coming from both inside and outside.
I hope it’s is not quite as bleak as that makes it sound.
It did change on thing for me: it made me drop support for Oculus in my game dev project.
I still own an Oculus DevKit 2. But after wildly succeeding with his Kickstarter, the founder has done nothing but jerk moves. First he silently dropped Linux support, then he funded a pro-Trump troll army on Reddit and finally he sold his entire VR company to Facebook/Meta, which then did its own jerk move by rendering everyone’s hardware useless if they didn’t sign up to Facebook/Meta. My Oculus account was forcefully obliterated just a week ago.
What a complete nosedive that was.
They had the nicer tech (Oculus uses infrared LEDs around the headset that are filmed by special cameras to track your orientation, i.e. it’s steady state – HTC Vive / Valve Index have light-sensing diodes on the headset itself and their lighthouses swipe light curtains horizontally and vertically through the room, with an annoying whining noise and all the wear & tear from constantly rotating parts), for a while, Meta even had John Carmack polishing the system.
I still hope VR will not completely die. Half Life: Alyx was fun, some archery, zombie shooting and climbing games were highly enjoyable and I could well imagine getting into sculpting / 3D modelling that way if only the tools were better.
But if, as the HTC exec in the article says, Meta has defined the “market perception of what this technology should cost” (and they’re producing at a loss, too), then Meta has walled off most of the VR market to Facebook boomers (sorry, Meta boomers) and is hogging the more robust tracking tech for itself, too.
Linux Unix since 1979: upon booting, the kernel shall run a single “init” process with unlimited permissions. Said process should be as small and simple as humanly possible and its only duty will be to spawn other, more restricted processes.
Linux since 2010: let’s write an enormous, complex system(d) that does everything from launching processes to maintaining user login sessions to DNS caching to device mounting to running daemons and monitoring daemons. All we need to do is write flawless code with no security issues.
Linux since 2015: We should patch unrelated packages so they send notifications to our humongous system manager whether they’re still running properly. It’s totally fine to make a bridge from a process that accepts data from outside before even logging in and our absolutely secure system manager.
Excuse the cheap systemd trolling, yes, it is actually splitting into several, less-privileged processes, but I do consider the entire design unsound. Not least because it creates a single, large provider of connection points that becomes ever more difficult to replace or create alternatives to (similarly to web standard if only a single browser implementation existed).
I remember all the reports from fired White House staffers (which had extreme turnover in the first year) that he didn’t read any of the secret service briefings, that coaching him to read anything at all was futile as he’d zone out after just a few paragraphs and that he got most of his opinions from watching Fox News.
Also aligns perfectly with Michael Wolff’s book (hollywoodreporter.com/…/michael-wolff-my-insane-y…) - he’s a journalist who spent most of the first year of the Trump presidency inside the White House because Trump absentmindedly agreed to his request and nobody came up to question his presence at meetings and in the halls due to the complete chaos inside the White House at the time.
There was a (possibly unethical) experiment where scientists tried to induce stress symptoms (lack of appetite, depression, panic, etc.) in rats.
They found that sudden scares or bringing the rats face-to-face with predators had little long term effect. But placing them on a floor with a constant, slightly uncomfortable electric current (low-level stress over a longer period) did cause them to develop all the symptoms.
So perhaps we’re just not naturally equipped to deal with permanent time pressure, upcoming appointments and deadlines in the way modern society gives them to us.
Uh… I swear I wanted to contribute just 2 or 3 games, but as I wrote, I kept remembering one gem after another… oh well… :)
Outer Wilds - So hard to describe, it’s an exploration game, but what you’re exploring is a star system going supernova, in a wooden spaceship no less. And a strange way of (not) time travel is also involved, which could be the root of the whole game loop.
Axiom Verge - A platformer that is such a labor of love that it hits just the perfect mix of approachability, exploration, story development and that “huh?” factor where right until the end you’re not sure what your abilities actually mean - i.e. if you could glitch through walls in the real world, would that imply the real world is a simulation?
Stardew Valley - A somehow utterly satisfying farming simulator in the style of the first Harvest Moon games. Such a nice getaway game - it begins with your avatar quitting their office job and moving to a farm inherited from their grandfather. No taxes, no boss, no stress, just rise with the sun, plant, water, harvest and fix. Change your rhythm with the weather and the seasons, investigate charming little mysteries of a beautiful place.
Broforce - Another platformer, this one a bit more brutal. Far over the top 80s action heroes bring freedom to the world, but whether you play as Robocop, Schwarzenegger, McGyver, Snake Plissken, Ripley or another 50 heroes is almost random and each hero has completely different weapons and skills. Destructible environment and even a large Xenomorph outbreak (how the heck did they get the license or grant?).
Protolife - This one uses such a madly simple recipe for complex gameplay. Seen top-down, you’re a robotic loader than can put down dots. That’s all. But certain arrangements of dots are guns, long range guns, flame throwers, area denial, missile silos, barriers and so on. You’re attacked by insect-like creatures, but instead of building tanks, you have to attack via well-placed guns slowly pushing the swarming enemies back.
Alien Shooter 2 Reloaded - Simple top-down shooter where you’re the lone soldier seeking to contain an alien outbreak. Goes for the time-honed recipe of character stat upgrades (speed, health, accuracy) and purchasing weapons and weapon upgrades. The interesting part is the insane hordes you’re up against and that all the corpses stay. It’s not unusual for entire corridors to turn into flesh hallways of blood and carapaces.
Moons of Madness - I hope this is actually indie, the graphics are near AAA level. It’s 50% walking simulator, 50% cosmic horror, set on Mars. You’re an astronaut doing maintenance on an outpost, but rather than go for the “freaky alien attack” recipe, reality itself seems to be somehow bending. Cthulhu, is that you?
Lumencraft - Top-down game. You begin as a miner in an underground base. Something really bad happened to humanity and now you’re digging underground for metal and for “lumen.” To feed the reactor that keeps humanity alive, you have to meet harvesting goals and dig tunnels, but various enemies attack in waves, so you have to spend part of your resources on fortifications and turrets and avoid opening up too many avenues into your bases.
Carrion - 2D platformer-ish. In a secret place, scientists are holding a horrific, tentacled bioweapon locked away, but it escapes. Twist: you are the tentacled bioweapon, slithering through pipes, circumventing security systems and trying to escape from the lab.
Nuclear Blaze - 2D platformer. You’re a fireman sent to contain a fire the broke out in some kind of installation in a forest. But one building has a shaft that leads deep underground where a high-end containment facility is suffering a failure. Takes place in the “SCP” universe and your only tool is a fire hose. Extremely fun trying to extinguish fires in a way where they won’t spread again.
Mothergunship - This is a first-person shooter where you’re bording and destroying (from the inside out) an army of AI space ships. But instead of a traditional gun, you have gun parts you can stick together. How about a triple rocket launcher with two shotguns in the middle? Or a shield generating laser with a sawblade attache to it, and maybe two shotguns just to be sure? It doesn’t grow old with new weapon parts being introduced right until the very end.
Space Run - 2D base building. You’re a mercenary cargo pilot fending off space pirates. But you don’t do it by controlling a turret, instead, your spaceship is a building surface and you have to build the right kind of engines, turrets, shields and power generators (in mid-flight no less) to be able to shoot down incoming rocks and pirate ships. Extremely well balanced and fun.
Creeper World - 3D real-time strategy. But your enemy is not actually present on the map, you’re just fighting a simulation of liquid, a gooey slime that pours out of several spots. You have to keep shooting, bombarding and containing the splashing, pouring slime until you can neutralize the slime outlets. The story is cool, too. The slime is actually some extinct species “gift” to the universe which dissolves everything into data, transmitted to some eternal storage space at the center of the universe.