Bjorn

More dribbles of information out of NASA about the pursuit of faster-than-light travel! The images they released are probably more sexy clickbait then anything, but damn do they work as sexy clickbait. The more exciting thing is that they are actually looking for evidence that a warp bubble can exist in space at all, and have built a device they believe will let them observe one. Who knows when or if we'll see actual ships, but the observable proof of warp travel might not just happen in our lifetimes, it might happen soon!

Looks like there are some hands on impressions starting to float around today, but I haven't had the chance to check any of them out yet.

Is there an existing general science thread? I don't remember ever seeing one.

Jeff Interview Protocol Goldblum Interview Protocol If you don't understand the difference between a jif and a gif, you can't talk to Mr. Goldblum.

Yeah, I started moving passwords over to be long form phrases rather than randomized symbols or words with random numbers/symbols, as everything I understand about passwords points to a very long password of mostly letters being as good as a shorter passwords with numbers and symbols. But I still end up with random shit tacked onto the end to satisfy whatever requirement a service has. The places that really drive me batter are the ones that have rather short total character limits for passwords, cause really, your requirement is literally that I use something less secure than I prefer? I have one government website I use that has a 6 character limit for passwords.

I genuinely think that Ubi tries harder than other big pubs to think about diversity, but still manage to fuck it up on a regular basis. So I do give them credit for at least trying, and for doing things like hiring Aisha Tyler as their presenter for E3. Though I am a bit tired of this phrase at this point: It doesn't really matter how diverse your team is, if you fuck something up, you fuck something up. And having female models in MP modes ought to be a standard by now. It ought to be budgeted for. Period. I think it's completely fair to criticize any game with an MP mode that has only one gender for models. Plenty of games manage to do it, including previous AC games, so it feels really hollow. And then there's the historical aspect. The AC games don't claim to be historically accurate simulations, but the historical context does lend a kind of weight to them, and informs the story and lore of the games. And as this piece points out, one of the most storied real life assassins of the French Revolution was a woman. It's entirely possible that her, or someone like her, will show up as an NPC. If not, then that plus a lack of female PC avatars follows the trend of historical fictions that downplay or completely eliminate the roles of women in history.

Steve wins the great debate, might as well retire the thread.

I had to make a new account for my wife to get ME3 for her. Exact same situation you described. Thankfully she didn't own anything on Origin, just had an EA account from Dragon Age stuff that had been ported to Origin.

Off the top of my head, no, but the single most important thing you can do is rush satellites and target the most valuable continent bonuses, even if it costs you a country. On normal, it should be possible to get 3-4 is in the first month, on Classic 2-3. It's better to be a little underpowered early to get sats. Starting with the USA is the easiest start, as it gets the biggest single income. Starting in Asia is also good, as you secure its bonus which becomes crazy valuable mid-game, and with 4 countries can sometimes be harder to get. Africa should be the first continent you cover, but isn't worth starting there as its bonus isn't particularly valuable in the first month. Europe and SA can be the last ones you cover. There are some interesting strategies that actually cover them early, but they're really for later playthroughs when you want to try new stuff. After making sure your satellites are bought and you have capacity for them, focus on getting some early workshops up and for your first reward, take Engineers. Being short on engineers early on represents one of the worst resource barriers you encounter. Early on, reward value is essentially Engineers>Money>Scientists>Soldiers. Engineers and Workshops never stop being valuable, while money and scientists eventually stop being useful. Late game, your resource limitation is going to be rarer alien materials, not cash or research. Also remember to check the timing of when things will be finished. You don't need to launch satellites until right before the end of the month, so just make sure your new relay and sats will be done by the last day of the month. I've hosed playthroughs before because of botching this (usually not getting extra power built fast enough to get another relay up). Don't be afraid to sell almost everything you scrap from early missions to get satellites, power and workshops, just save the minimum you'll need for the next research project or two you'll want. You won't have anywhere near enough cash if you try and save that stuff. Anymore, I will also restart if I get a shitty base, with poor already excavated locations or terrible steam vents. If vent location is such that it seriously disrupts the 2 or 3 preferred base layouts I have or it's going to be the third month before I can get to one, it's not worth pursuing that game. Though that really only applies to Classic, Normal it doesn't matter as much. For combat, on Normal it's pretty easy to rush Plasma weapons early be getting the containment as early as possible, allowing you to skip lasers completely. On Classic, you have to go through lasers, research just takes too long and you'll start hitting hard enemies earlier and your ballistic weapons are not up to the task of taking on Mutons. Make sure you level up snipers, even though they are terrible to start with. They become gods eventually. I actually forced myself to stop using them on a couple of playthroughs just to try some different strategies for fun.

Dark Souls 2 killed any progress I might have been making on my backlog. And now there are expansions for it. There is no hope.

Metro: LL, State of Decay, maybe Starbound if it's on sale. I can't think of much else that's close to the top of my list of what I want to play. There are probably a few indies that will be sub-$3 that I'll grab.

I might change my mind when it starts, but the last two sales feel like they've kind bludgeoned my enthusiasm for them. Which is really my fault, not Steam's. I've just bought too much shit. And not even spent that much money, so I can't be upset about that. Just hard to get hyped about now. Which is probably a much healthier attitude to have, I'll just buy a couple of things I really want.

You have to download them separately on Origin, there are 5 of them, all free. They are Retaliation, Resurgence, Rebellion, Reckoning and Earth. All told, they probably doubled the number of original classes (some with radically new powers), close to doubled the number of weapons, added new maps, added re-imagined versions of the original maps with weather/hazard effects, added a new difficulty, new weapon mods and a "Gear" slot that lets you put on equipment with gives various effects.

Caps are so PrE3™ ¹, now it's all about iconic lazers. ¹

They kind of do this, in that they repeat urban legends that have zero credibility, they spread ridiculous (and sometimes racist) memes about "self-defense", the rare story of legitimate self-defense they amplify the magnitude of, etc. The NRA itself is almost more symptom than cause, there are plenty of people who think that way who aren't NRA members. Virtually all the responsible gun owners I know (myself, my father, my father-in-law, some friends), all canceled their NRA memberships years ago as the focus moved away from hunting, sport target shooting, education and personal responsibility. Unfortunately this move also gutted the moderate and liberal minded types in the organization, only unshackling the crazy ones from having anyone inside the organization try and reign them in.

It's not that I'm offended or anything, it's the structure of the body. It looks alien, like some horrific monster trying to casually pass itself off as a sexy human long enough to claim its next victim, but failing horribly.

Holy crap, is that the Bayonetta Samus skin? That's the stuff of nightmares.

This morning we had banana, peanut butter and chocolate smoothers. Because breakfast. Also, I only started saying presser because someone in chat said it bugged them (probably Twig). Sorry.

I think maybe you're taking the comparison too literally. I don't want to assume what Danielle's intention was, but I took it as less a literal complaint/comparison, and more of a "let's ridiculously compare two things to point out yet again for the millionth time that gaming conferences do a really shitty job at having diverse representation." You could probably pick any random game feature (types of hubcaps on cars, varieties of guns, types of attack animations) and write something similar. This year just happened to have a lot of severed heads. No E3 has ever been held that you couldn't write a story about problems with on-stage representation. At some point, people have to get sick and tired of just writing that straight and look for someway to make it more interesting.

Progress is made in baby steps. Offensive, poorly thought out, stumbling baby steps...but baby steps nonetheless. Backwards baby steps. The kind where kids kinda stumble backwards, then plop on their asses. You know, the weirdest thing to me was that in the MS anecdote cutaways, the only female was paired with a dude and she barely got to say anything. It's the easy way to insert some diversity into a presentation. Not the good way, but the easy way.

When I was a kid, Ted Turner was obsessed with colorizing old films. My first viewing of a lot of classics was the colorized version, because seeing them on Turner owned stations was the only way to watch them at all. Weirdly enough, a massive pushback and near legal standoff over colorizing Citizen Kane was one of the things that slowed down, and almost stopped for awhile, the colorization of classics. And this concludes today's episode of random shit I don't need to know, but do.

Visually, not a lot bothers me outside of torture. But the thing that will make my skin crawl is the audio that accompanies graphic violence, that drives home something unnerving much harder than all the gore in the world.

What the hell, seems like the last couple of weeks have been nuts with shootings. Logically I know that mass, public shootings are statistically very rare crimes, but we've got the misogynist dude, the LV couple, the Canadian guy, the Christian school guy, some dude this morning at another school and the nut who was going to take an entire courthouse hostage in Georgia with an arsenal and explosives.

Someone in chat yesterday said they thought the violence felt ratcheted up this year (I think it was tegan?). Apparently Chris Plant felt the same and put together a supercut of a bunch of the violence that was shown in the major pressers. If anything stands out to me, it's that the gory stuff is gorier and more realistic looking than ever (maybe not realistic...but less...animated? Something). It doesn't bother me, but clearly it stood out to some others. I'm just putting stuff here if it feels really topical to being about E3, but if it's more just about the game, I'm posting in the actual game thread.

You're welcome!