BANNED USER: boo outgroup
>Unban in 5d 09h 29m
No_one
Underemployed Slav. Likes playing Factorio.
User ID: 1042
Banned by: @Amadan
No_one
1d ago
'Accidentally'
If Loomer here is not making this up wholly, hiring Wong was a colossally wrong move. His wife was reliable enough to prosecute J6ers, he worked for a big law company favorited by Democrats.
Alex Wong, the Chinese Deputy National Security Advisor appointed by President Trump, who is at the center of the Signalgate scandal, is married to U.S. Attorney Candice Chiu Wong, a Chinese Woman who was one of the key attorneys involved in PROSECUTING J6ers.‼️
Alex Wong was appointed by President Trump on 11/22/24 to serve as the Assistant to the President and the Principal Deputy National Security Advisor under @MikeWaltz47 Mike Waltz, the newly appointed US National Security Advisor.
I have discovered that Alex’s wife, Candice Chiu Wong, worked under the Obama administration and the Biden administration as an Assistant United States Attorney in the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, where she led the Violence Reduction and Trafficking Offenses Section for more than two years.
She was involved in the prosecution of many J6ers during the Biden regime, under which she was nominated to become a Member of the United States Sentencing Commission. Additionally, Candice Chiu Wong served as a Law Clerk to Obama-appointed US Supreme Court Justice Sonia M. Sotomayor!
Making matters worse, Alex Wong worked for Covington & Burling @CovingtonLLP , which is one of the law firms that President recently stripped of its security clearance and terminated all of their government contracts via Executive Order on February 25th, 2025. Trump accused @CovingtonLLP of being involved in the weaponization of government.
Why do we have a CHINESE Deputy National Security advisor who is married to a CHINESE US ATTORNEY who worked under Obama and Biden, and who helped prosecute J6ers after the stolen 2020 election?
This is unacceptable. And given the Chinese connections, it really makes you wonder if @JeffreyGoldberg , the reporter from the @TheAtlantic was added to the Trump Signal chat on purpose as part of a foreign opp to embarrass the Trump administration on behalf of China.
Alex Wong should be removed from his position, and both he and his wife should be investigated by the FBI
No_one
1d ago
Well prompted frontier models write better than 99% of published writers. At least a few page long texts.
People are already abusing the shit out of this going by openrouter data.
diminishing rate of progress in frontier models
Is there? GPT 4 was kind of a toy. The reasoner models are already vastly smarter than an average white. If they assemble them into agents, average or even mildly above average white guy or gal has no hope of having a secure job. Sure, it might take $50k in compute infra cost to replace one worker initially, but even Polacks in their native habitat are paid $12k a year and cost employer another $10k in taxes.
:____________________________
boo outgroup
English: Czech
Pole = Polák
Poles = Poláci
..plural of Poles is ..derogatory in English ?
No_one
1d ago
Incredible.
I was very sure translation was fucking dead four years back when DeepL started doing English<->Czech passably well, not the mangled mess google translate was making.
No_one
3d ago
I was skeptical but hearing that nothing is going to happen to Waltz makes it very likely. Also, when Hegseth was quizzed about it he gave a real song & dance routine, obviously anticipating it, to reinforce the message.
No_one
3d ago
this is laughable, the WMD intelligence was laundered from Israel direct to the White House through a special office composed of ultra-Zionists.
It was a full office of neocons, and the intel wasn't from Israelis. It was various bullshit from dodgy Arab sources being interviewed by Americans, interpreted in a maximally positive way to make the case. In addition, Americans trusted that Chalabi idiot.
Netanyahu give the hard sell directly to the American Congress on the Iraq War "taking out Saddam" in 2002! This is
He was not the prime minister of Israel at the time. Israeli officials were against it in private, although the GOI did not give a statement against it.
No_one
3d ago
It was likely intentional. Remember that Trump is a showman.
Also Waltz wasn't disciplined nor is he likely to be.
No.
They're not utter retards, so I highly doubt they wanted US to invade Iran either because that would go very badly.
Iran is a much larger country than Iraq, it has rugged terrain, ties with Russia and China and a somewhat more technologically capable population that is fiercely nationalistic.
US might have been able to topple mullahs with a color revolution, might get lucky and Iranians do it themeselves but an inevitably brutal invasion would have resulted in people rallying to the flag and something that'd make the worst of Iraq look like a cakewalk.
No_one
4d ago
Surely the US doesn't need any more wars in the Middle East?
Israel was against the Iraq war FWIW. So there. They understood what was going to happen and it came to pass.
No_one
4d ago
If you do nothing with your planets, it's going to get impossibly high, but if you develop them which costs you only a little of time on decisions, you're going to easily have the profit factor.
It's not hard at all.
Also the weapons don't cost you anything - you simply unlock them by having
- enough trader reputation unlocked by giving them common items they likeň
- are in general rich enough
No_one
5d ago
These are well-read, sharp people who do not normally display any sort of cognitive derangement or hysteria.
People want that. They want their life to have some deeper meaning. Spending your life making line go up, not that satisfying. There's the infamous Orwell quote about nazism:
He wrote, "Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people 'I offer you a good time,' Hitler has said to them, 'I offer you struggle, danger, and death,' and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet."
Accepting the psyops that we are headed for a titanic struggle for freedom is perhaps an attempt to find meaning in a world that increasingly doesn't need people.
I went into WH40K Rogue Trader blind except with the experience of having played Underrail three times and have gotten 3/4 through it on the 'Dominating' difficulty. Underrail is actually not that hard .. if you're an RPG veteran and listen to the advice to optimize and not waffle. Apparently RockPaperShotgun doesn't have such people reviewing Underrail and panned the game for being 'too hard'. Kek.. It's really not.
Unless you're playing on Dominating where you're always one slightest misstep from getting killed and it's actually somewhat tedious.
Rogue Trader - The second hardest difficulty level (with saving) was pleasantly difficult, at first, but got not that difficult as game passed. It's probably pretty doable on the hardest if you don't mind save-scumming a bit.
Underrail has a .. complicated build system but that's nothing to Rogue Trader lol. But RT's is.. not really balanced. There's nothing much in the way of infinity turns like there was at the start I think..
No_one
5d ago
I really like the premise and I'm going to watch the game carefully if it ripens into something worthy of attention.
I keep being amazed and horrified at the amounts of heresy US indie game devs are capable of summoning up.
The game I mentioned has some truly choice lines for this..
...isn't it copied from the TTRPG ? I used no guides and ...enjoyed the finding out but I do admit to feeling a little overwhelmed with the variety.
There's a lot of stuff there, yeah. Too much? I don't think so.
Could be more balanced I think, could be harder/ longer fights.. I'd also enjoy a more realistic style with going prone etc but .. this is fine.
human Cultist to take more than a couple Bolter rounds to the chest and not be reduced to a puddle.
Depends on the armor. IF you're using a bad build and a low quality bolter, someone with high deflection can shrug off most of it. I saw the 'Annihilating Astartes Bolter' which increases your crit damage with every round or something equally insane. A burst was doing 8x 200-300 damage per hit and turning greater demons into bits very fast.
I had a different problem - the hardest fight was the mini boss at end of chapter 1 the first time through. After that the game kept getting easier bc with more levels, you can build more broken builds and I don't think I got wiped out at all until some difficult fights in chapter 3 and 5.
Especially psykers.
Honestly, I would loved to have more DLC if it meant that we had more potential companions and enemy diversity.
There's going to be 2 more DLC, not sure how much content each.
wider variety of recruitable characters,
You can make custom fighters, but come on, how is this 'low variety' ?
-
very judgemental tech priest who's a holy terror with a plasma rifle
-
diviner/telepath psyker
-
slaughter nun
-
impossibly arrogant sniper
-
absolutely contemptible sadistic serial killer
-
actually pretty nice & reasonable magic chekist
-
young noble lady who's a bit snotty and sheltered but still a joy to have around because she loves seeing the world even if it's crap after a lifetime of boring study
-'what if Han Solo but a disabled MENA baddie and actually rich/successful'
-the very reasonable and very hinged death cultist
-a psycho space marine who makes Doomguy look like David French.
Personally my biggest complain is that there's so many awesome characters but you can only ever used six per one battle.
I'd not mind more party characters, sure, but ...too few? Nah.
..there were some exploits like that early but it's not like that now. Seems to me, based on what I've read. People said something about infinite turns.
You can extend everyone's turn by 50% now using the officer class. But not more, because after being targetted, the beneficiary gets 'overxerted' for 1 round. Unless you use a heroic act right out, but that's only doable late game with a specific build. Then you can have 2.5 turns for one character. There's a few other abilities but I don't think any is equally powerful.
Certain psykers also can take slightly more turns by time related fuckery but it's like 3 turns when others have 2 and also a mid to late game thing.
The big problem I noticed was that it took forever to fight battles bc buff animations are turned on by default. Once I turned it off, it got a lot smoother.
then stack a million buffs on your guys and pulverize the enemy in one turn.
If it's like that you can just up the difficulty. It was getting like that for me on my first playthrough towards the end unless it was a boss fight.
But it's not unfair to say that the tactical gameplay is often
- be put into a completely unfair situation
- use your completely unfair builds to make it even and win
Underrail. It actively discourages exploration. It's an RPG whose entire plots takes place on roughly.. 1/4 of the game world. The rest is wholly optional. The vibes of exploring it are impeccable.
You will suffer if you try to explore. Especially if you see red mushrooms. The rewards were pain, tears and more pain and an ungodly amount of money spent on antidotes. because the reason places on the map are unexplored is a species of a cryptic, adaptive visual camo using .. insect that has a habit of sneaking up on people, traumatically injecting them with a paralyzing poison and eating them alive after it kicks in.
You have five seconds to slam an antidote or you're dead. Or be a psyker and set yourself on fire.. Oh, and there's a subspecies of crawler that, if you slam said antidote, almost kill you through forcing anaphylatic shock.
Or be a god-tier electronics guys and cobble together an energy shield out of very rare components that will bounce off their stingers (possible but very hard).
Or simply stay out of those places and keep to the 'civilized' bits of the game.
It's not entirely.. unreasonable to explore, there are a few locations with interesting gear - but generally, the rewards are very slim.
I've spent last two months playing the roughly 2 year old CRPG Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader.
TL;DR: "What if X-com was an RPG, had a personality, Doom levels of gore, brain-melting amount of builds and a few waifus that drop you if you flub one dialogue option?" (also husbandos, ranging from nice chekist to a sadistic serial killer elf)
I really, really enjoyed it. I'm not 100% sure of it, but it seems to me to be almost as enjoyable as classics like Jagged Alliance 2 or Baldur's Gate 2.
- if replying/discussing, please use spoiler tags when appropriate
- if you have questions, feel free to ask
- the review:
Short review, no spoilers here:
It's an A production game, so the budget was probably <20 million$. There is one DLC -it's a must have, seamlessly integrated, makes the game better, very high quality. There'll be more later I'm told. The story is pretty simple: you are a distant relative of a Rogue Trader, and because said relative learned that you're a fairly capable individual, recruited by the same to act as a middle manager for someone who is basically a dictator of a fairly large tributary empire. Something like 40 billion people over five planets. Yes, in the grim darkness of far future, it's tributary empires all the way down.
Fans of the setting say that lore wise, the game stays pretty true to the setting. I enjoyed it bigly. I'd say moreso than BG3, perhaps almost as much as I enjoyed BG2 or Jagged Alliance 2 when I first played those absolute classics. If you liked either, I think you'd like this one, so don't read the spoilers here!
Looks pretty nice - almost as nice from tactical view as BG3, but character models are much less detailed up close, there's no face animations etc and it's almost always drone's PoV. The explosions, magic effects and blood look just fine. The only thing that's missing is human/ xenos torches but the game has a 'T' rating which is really funny as it's, at times, very grisly and a heretical playthrough requires doing stuff that makes Auschwitz look like a tea party. Generally the really grisly stuff is only in dialogue / decisions so, off screen. Indeed, being in charge of a large starship, there are gigadeath decisions at times.
It's a combination of tactical combat, two layers of it - personal(95%) and ship (5%), the personal part being pretty much like BG3 or X-com, though more convoluted if not greatly more complex and of a fairly decent RPG with ..lots of text and pretty good writing. And also has a light 3x layer, where you manage planetary development. That part is almost completely optional.
It's no Disco Elysium but it's actually quite good. I'd say it's easily on par with BG2, perhaps better at times. It has a three variable alignment system, with the axes being dogmatic, iconoclast and heretic. Iconoclast here means being a bleeding heart do gooder, too good for the setting.
There are romances, and they're notably well more done than in BG3. E.g. there's a few horny characters who will make advances, but generally the romance options are believable. E.g. the noble lady will drop you like a bad transmission if you violate propriety, the attractive religious fanatic has no time for romance, the century old magical chekist is of course straight and an option but it'll take time. The incredibly arrogant (optional) eldar party member sees people as little more than animals and has a hilarious sequence of complaining about having had advances made toward them. etc.
Overall, the party members are well written, generally not annoying, sorta believable and in some cases incredibly voice acted. If the game has any weaknesses, it's mostly technical - the engine is not well optimized, there's sometimes 20 second loading times on a PC that can run C2077 in RTX at 4k / 40 fps. There are a few bugs still, there were a lot on release.
After playing through it, I discovered that with the exception of voice acting, it was written entirely by Russians. Coded too, ditto for graphics iirc. That explains the refreshing paucity of marvelesque dialogue and cringe, something that marred by enjoyment of Baldur's Gate 3.
Game subthread.
Review of Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader in the child comment here. (if putting it like this, let the mods remind me of not doing this)
No_one
13d ago
You can't count on players not abusing every abusable game mechanic, especially when you give them agency to fuck with other players; game designers are at least paid to do their jobs.
Hmm... the thing is, at least the game I was talking about, constructing your own 'levels' takes a serious amount of effort. So even though there are people who maximally abused mechanics, generally they didn't because they say picked the suboptimal spot to build their stuff, were too lazy, lacked the imagination, did not do enough research etc.
I considered it, but I'm not big on WH40K
Well, neither am I, but I'd say where BG3's writing quality ends, Rogue Trader starts. BG3 isn't bad, but the writing really, really struggles.
No_one
13d ago
What stops everyone from copying the maximally unfun design from the web?
a) It'a not so simple
b) people are stupid
c) time, effort, laziness
No_one
13d ago
If they're really good, then fighting their bases is maximally unfun, kind of like engaging in a butt-kicking contest with a porcupine. Generally avoided unless it's really needed to teach them a lesson.
But if they aren't so good - you actually have fun, and if you're fast enough you can even sometimes steal some useful stuff off them. At the very least, you'll probably collect some nice kit in the process. (in that game, all the in-game items have to be made, so if you're fighting someone and kill them where you can loot their body, you get some neat stuff. When they respawn next time, they have to get more weapons & armor.)
couple ponints
The intel agencies of 5-eyes are generally believed to be wholly rotten, that is, aligned with the the Blob - the people who fucked it all up and who fought Trump so furiously. Whatever they say needs to be taken with as much salt as whatever Trump says.
Signal is secure enough for serious criminal activity, I've seen no indication it was broken by LE and is not believed to be broken in any other way than through, possibly, OS level hacks on devices.
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