There is nobody in the world that would be able to contain it. Nobody is even close to having the conventional power projection capabilities required for this. Even if “only” democracy ends in America and a dictatorship takes its place, the rest of the world is going to suffer horribly. In the short run alone, all sorts of autocratic regimes (Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, plus a couple others in South America and Africa) that were primarily or entirely limited by America’s global military presence keeping a lid on them would immediately cease the opportunity to turn entire regions of this planet into warzones. That alone is horrific.

A complete breakup of America on the other hand (which could happen if a dictatorship failed to establish itself) could be a potential doomsday event, I agree with you. The economic shocks caused by this alone would send the world into chaos and that’s not even taking the danger of nuclear war (civil and global) into account.

Even if we get an isolationist Trump administration controlled by the Kremlin, this would also be catastrophic, for numerous reasons, from weakening NATO to stalling and reverting desperately needed action on climate change. Hell, imagine another global pandemic, once again without anyone at the helm. Love or hate the US, it was clear that the lack of American leadership during COVID-19 was the primary factor responsible for the poor global response to it.

Are you using your Deck only as a portable system or also with a monitor or TV? I’ve done this a few times, but not very often, mostly because I rarely see the need (but I have a PC as well, so my situation isn’t the same).

The effort to break up [NOAA] is part of a strategy of hear no evil, see no evil: If you don’t report on climate change, then perhaps it doesn’t exist.

The same thing was done by Conservatives in the Spanish provinces that have just been ravaged by flooding. They dismantled government agencies responsible for monitoring the effects of climate change and provide aid to affected communities, which made it impossible to prepare and warn citizens, resulting in hundreds of deaths and enormous amount of destruction.

Not just fully grown women, unfortunately.

My worry is that after a few days of playing around with it, it becomes a $200 paperweight. It’s a bit (and by that I mean at least 2x) too expensive for what it is.

A majority appears to be:

62.7% of the Fortnite players are from the age group of 18 to 24.

https://www.demandsage.com/fortnite-statistics/

It’s not just a kids game, has been around for long enough (seven years) and has enough staying power that even many of those who started playing it as kids are now adults. Personally, I never cared about it, but that’s because I stopped playing multiplayer shooters a long time ago, not because I feel like I’m too old for this.

These are talented developers, but the things Paradox management have said and done (in general and in regards to this game) are hardly confidence-inspiring. They’ve already said that there won’t be a part three (at least not with their help), at least heavily implied that they have no confidence in this game’s success and stated that people should tamper their expectations.

I get where you are coming from, but as someone who has been interested in ray tracing since the early 2000s, ever since I saw the amazing ray tracing demo heaven seven rendered in real-time (although not at a particularly high frame rate) by my trusty 1.3 GHz Athlon T-Bird, there has been no denying that this is the future of 3D graphics, just as much as the more recent invention of upscaling technology. It enables not just the biggest generational leap in visuals seen in decades, but also makes it far easier for developers to light their games, removing many of the clunky and labor-intensive workflows that are required to make conventional rasterized graphics look good.

If the above paragraph didn’t bore you to death, try Quake II RTX. It’s fully path-traced, but because it’s essentially a shiny coat of paint on a game from the 1990s, hardware requirements are surprisingly modest (it even ran on my old GTX 1080, albeit it at a very low upscaled resolution). Despite the simple geometric detail and ancient animations, it looks absolutely stunning thanks to realistic lighting and new surfaces. Screenshots are not doing it justice - it almost feels real when you play it, particularly outside sections in direct sunlight.

It’s free on Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1089130/Quake_II_RTX/

If you don’t own Quake II on Steam, you get the three levels from the old shareware version, which are more than enough to get an idea of the true potential of this technology. If you do, you can play the entire game with ray tracing. Note that this is not the same as the recent extensive remaster of the game by Nightdive Studios, which uses a conventional renderer, but makes far more substantial modifications to assets and level design (and includes lots of bonus features). Both remasters are awesome in their own different ways.

Your card can also handle some newer games with ray tracing. Control is an obvious candidate. It’s old enough to have reasonable hardware requirements even with RT on, but it was also designed from the ground up as a showcase for this technology. Medium RT at 1080p should get you close to 60 fps in this game. The other game you might want to try is Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, which is both visually stunning and incredibly well-optimized. You should get a locked 60fps at 1080p in this game - and even 1440p is possible. It’s night and day compared to the regular version of the game.

Quick, we need to bring up a few more old and leaking nuclear reactors to handle the energy demand of this nonsense!

Is there a similar site for AI?

That app is a special kind of inhuman torture.

I know this might sound a little condescending, but why are you torturing yourself by not using an adblocker?

The tent is getting bigger.

Or not being able to play a board game, because it says “ages 9 - 99” on the box.

I’m not sure about this. Ever heard the phrase “the past is a foreign country”? Living through time would be like immersing yourself into a new country every couple of decades. You could even lessen the blow (and would probably have to in order to remain anonymous) by frequently moving around the world. People tend to give newcomers a certain amount of slack and with the enormous amount of knowledge and experience you would gain over time, you can easily and quickly immerse yourself in any new environment and adapt to whatever is “it” now.

I would only accept this kind of deal with the Devil if I had the power to turn people I care about into fellow immortals, which comes with its own pitfalls I’m well aware of (imagine holding a grudge for thousands of years), but still.

Probably, but it depends on the person. I stopped caring about some relationships that ended after a year, but I’m still thinking about others decades later.

Then again, you have billions of years to come up with a solution to this problem.

That’s an idealistic point of view and certainly an admirable one, but it might not be realistic. Perhaps Sony execs simply don’t want people to be reminded of this flop they signed off on.

I wonder if there is still going to be a Concord episode in the upcoming animated videogame-themed TV show “Secret Level”. A month ago, this was confirmed, but at that point, it wasn’t decided yet whether Firewalk Studios would be closed.