zptc's recent activity

  1. Comment on "Valve are gathering the avengers": we believe Gabe Newell is assembling the ultimate dream team for the one game everyone's been waiting for in ~games

    zptc
    Link
    This article is terrible. No indication of who the people hired are and a substantial portion of its content is random tweets. Does their "dream team" really consist of three people?

    This article is terrible. No indication of who the people hired are and a substantial portion of its content is random tweets. Does their "dream team" really consist of three people?

    40 votes
  2. Comment on Squadron 42 | CitizenCon 2954 live gameplay reveal in ~games

    zptc
    Link Parent
    There's also the "helmet with interior illumination (because we paid for Cavill's face and we're going to get our money's worth)" trope.

    There's also the "helmet with interior illumination (because we paid for Cavill's face and we're going to get our money's worth)" trope.

    3 votes
  3. Comment on Save Point: A game deal roundup for the week of October 20 in ~games

  4. Comment on The Office (Australia) | Official trailer in ~tv

    zptc
    Link
    I was unaware that this will be the 15th regional version of the show.

    I was unaware that this will be the 15th regional version of the show.

    7 votes
  5. Comment on The Office (Australia) | Official trailer in ~tv

    zptc
    Link
    Curious to know what Aussies think about this. The reception for this trailer has been unenthusiastic at best from what I've seen.

    Curious to know what Aussies think about this. The reception for this trailer has been unenthusiastic at best from what I've seen.

    3 votes
  6. Comment on Hezbollah is hit by a wave of exploding pagers that killed at least nine people and injured thousands in ~news

    zptc
    Link
    https://www.wired.com/story/pager-explosion-hezbollah/

    https://www.wired.com/story/pager-explosion-hezbollah/

    “Those explosions aren’t just batteries,” says Jake Williams, vice president of research and development at Hunter Strategy who formerly worked for the US National Security Agency. “Based on the reporting, these pagers were likely interdicted by Israeli authorities and modified with explosives. This highlights the risks of supply chain security, especially in places where technology is harder to ship to.”

    “It's unlikely that hacking was involved, as it's likely that explosive material had to be inside the pagers to cause such an effect,” says Lukasz Olejnik, an independent consultant and visiting senior research fellow at King’s College London’s Department of War Studies. “Reports mention the delivery of new pagers recently, so perhaps the delivery was compromised.”

    13 votes
  7. Comment on Magnus Carlsen beats Hans Niemann, in first match since infamous cheating scandal, at the 2024 Speed Chess Championship in Paris in ~games.tabletop

    zptc
    Link
    https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/15/sport/hans-niemann-magnus-carlsen-chess-probe-cheating-spt-intl/index.html Excerpts: After a probe by an investigatory panel of the Fair Play Commission (FPL)...

    https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/15/sport/hans-niemann-magnus-carlsen-chess-probe-cheating-spt-intl/index.html

    Probe says Hans Niemann didn’t cheat against Magnus Carlsen in over-the-board match, but did cheat in up to 55 online games

    Excerpts:

    After a probe by an investigatory panel of the Fair Play Commission (FPL) into the cheating allegations, FIDE’s statement on Wednesday said that “Carlsen’s suspicions of cheating were based on reasonable grounds despite the ultimate conclusion that GM Niemann had not made himself guilty of over-the-board cheating.”

    “The reasonableness of GM Carlsen’s belief rested upon GM Niemann’s own confession of online cheating, and a report released by Chess.com,” the FIDE statement said.

    According to the FIDE report, Regan also found “discrepancies” in Niemann’s statement that he had only cheated between the ages of 12 and 16.

    However, the games of 2017 and the games against Bok in August of 2020 occurred after he turned 17 in June. Another important discrepancy is that the cheating took place in rated online games,” said the FIDE report

    The report also said there was no “statistical evidence to support GM Niemann cheating in over the-board games” in an analysis of 13 tournaments over the past three years.

    “Additionally, it was determined that GM Niemann´s overall results in the Sinquefield Cup showed no statistical basis for cheating,” the report said.

    FIDE’s Ethics and Disciplinary Commission (EDC) said in the report that it concluded the case was “an in-between situation,” one “where a complaint can be well-founded without the suspected person not found guilty of cheating.

    “(Carlsen’s) statement regarding Niemann being a cheater was made after Niemann´s confession. In the Chamber's opinion, this mitigates his comment from being reckless, or manifestly unfounded as Niemann himself admitted to cheating.”

    13 votes
  8. Comment on Inside Boeing’s factory lapses that led to the Alaska Air blowout in ~transport

    zptc
    Link
    The near-catastrophic midair blowout of a door-sized fuselage panel on an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 in January was caused by two distinct manufacturing errors by different crews on successive days...

    The near-catastrophic midair blowout of a door-sized fuselage panel on an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 in January was caused by two distinct manufacturing errors by different crews on successive days last fall in Boeing’s assembly plant in Renton.

    The first manufacturing lapse occurred within a four-hour window early Sept. 18. On the evening of the next day, in the space of about an hour, the second error was made by a different crew of mechanics, untrained to work on that fuselage panel, known as a door plug, according to federal investigative and internal Boeing records.

    Boeing’s quality control system failed to catch the faulty work performed within those two windows.

    The following detailed account of what happened as the MAX jet moved through the Renton factory — and of the characters now at the center of the investigation — is compiled from the transcripts of federal investigators’ interviews of a dozen Boeing workers, synchronized with an internal Boeing document obtained by The Seattle Times that tracked day-by-day the rework that led to the door plug lapses.

    6 votes
  9. Comment on NASA decides to bring Starliner spacecraft back to Earth without crew | Crew to return on SpaceX Dragon Feb 2025 in ~space

    zptc
    Link Parent
    https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/05/the-surprise-is-not-that-boeing-lost-commercial-crew-but-that-it-finished-at-all/?comments=1&comments-page=1

    Boeing's space division had never won a large fixed-price contract. Its leaders were used to operating in a cost-plus environment, in which Boeing could bill the government for all of its expenses and earn a fee. Cost overruns and delays were not the company's problem—they were NASA's. Now Boeing had to deliver a flyable spacecraft for a firm, fixed price.

    Boeing struggled to adjust to this environment. Regarding complicated space projects, Boeing was used to spending other people's money. Now, every penny spent on Starliner meant one less penny in profit (or, ultimately, greater losses). This meant that Boeing allocated fewer resources to Starliner than it needed to thrive.

    https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/05/the-surprise-is-not-that-boeing-lost-commercial-crew-but-that-it-finished-at-all/?comments=1&comments-page=1

    15 votes
  10. Comment on How far away are we from the location of the Big Bang? in ~space

    zptc
    Link Parent
    The concept is difficult to explain because it is completely unlike anything we experience in day-to-day life. This tends to be case for all extremes of physics, like traveling at a significant...

    The concept is difficult to explain because it is completely unlike anything we experience in day-to-day life. This tends to be case for all extremes of physics, like traveling at a significant percentage of the speed of light or dealing with the behavior of subatomic particles. Things like the fact that light can't go any faster even if you're moving toward the light source or pretty much everything we learn from the double slit experiment are pretty counterintuitive imo.

    1 vote
  11. Comment on Are there any actual science shows still out there? in ~science

    zptc
    Link
    NASA+ is a free streaming service from NASA.

    NASA+ is a free streaming service from NASA.

    1 vote
  12. Comment on What are the Olympics shooting competitors wearing on their faces? in ~sports

  13. Comment on Intel has no plans to recall those crashing 13th and 14th Gen CPUs, hasn't halted sales, and the damage to affected chips may be permanent in ~tech

    zptc
    Link
    Intel’s crashing 13th and 14th Gen CPUs get two additional years of warranty coverage

    Intel’s crashing 13th and 14th Gen CPUs get two additional years of warranty coverage

    Intel is committed to making sure all customers who have or are currently experiencing instability symptoms on their 13th and/or 14th Gen desktop processors are supported in the exchange process. We stand behind our products, and in the coming days we will be sharing more details on two-year extended warranty support for our boxed Intel Core 13th and 14th Gen desktop processors.

    7 votes
  14. Comment on Intel has no plans to recall those crashing 13th and 14th Gen CPUs, hasn't halted sales, and the damage to affected chips may be permanent in ~tech

    zptc
    Link

    If you're an Intel chip owner affected by CPU crashing issues, you'll likely have been pleased by the official news from Intel last week that it was going to be delivering a microcode patch to address the root cause of exposure to elevated voltages.

    However, The Verge asked Intel if it was planning a recall of chips already affected, and the answer seems pretty definitive. Not only will it not be recalling the affected CPUs, but it has not halted sales and has yet to comment on whether it might extend its warranty.

    Not only that but if recent reports are to be believed, the damage to affected CPUs may be permanent. According to Tom's Hardware, while the microcode patch is expected to prevent crashing on processors yet to be affected by the issue, it will not fix chips that are already damaged.

    9 votes
  15. Comment on <deleted topic> in ~tv