Sternhammer

Judging by their ships, they have gravity generators which are small enough and have a small enough ratio of energy consumption to energy generation to be used in something like the Millenium Falcon.

Indeed and it’s quite clear that the Falcon has two gravity planes perpendicular to each other: 1. the plane that supports everyone on the main deck (cockpit, crew lounge, etc.) and 2. the gun battery gravity plane at 90 degrees. This is easiest to see in A New Hope during the TIE Fighter battle in the escape from the Death Star. Han and Luke are sitting back-to-back, separated by a short corridor that sits perpendicular to the main deck. I don’t think most people notice this because it’s not obvious.

Indeed. Apple always gets criticised for the 30% ‘Apple Tax’ but the console manufacturers get a free pass for the same thing. Bizarre.

I think the Easter Billy thing may have been a fund raiser for the Save the Bilby Fund, though I’m not sure. Did some work with them in Charleville some time back, as part of a student field trip looking at design concepts for what eventually became the Bilby Experience. Great people.

From what I can remember they’ve had good success in rebuilding the bilby population.

It wanted to end its suffering. Blue jaunt.

Yes, they’re good books. Ripping yarns. Their charm lies in seeing the underdog earthlings (humans and cetaceans) fight against the odds. There’s a strong vein of what you might call earthling exceptionalism running through the series.

I managed to get through the first book but it was embedded cultural mores like that that made it tough going for me. That’s probably a shortcoming in me more than any fault of the book—science fiction should take you to places that challenge you—but it wasn’t worth it for me personally.

I re-read the trilogy and progressed through them at a good pace but got bogged down on the later books (which I haven’t read before). I think the writing shows its age and are a little longwinded at times.

Groundbreaking story in concept and scope, that hasn’t changed for me.

I was replying to Tekila’s comment about ‘real life’ cows which I think are best thought of as ‘sentient’ but I appreciate your point.

Sentient: able to perceive or feel things.

Sapient: 1. wise or wanting to appear wise 2. relating to the human species, of the species Homo sapiens.

I think players are desensitised to unnatural dialogue. For example, to my Western ear lots of Asian games seem to have weird dialogue, no doubt due to poor translation. (Kojima is known to insist his dialogue be translated strictly and literally from the Japanese which explains, partially, why his games feel pretty strange. Plus Kojima is bonkers.)

I hope this isn’t Microsoft becoming more Apple-like. That said, if this leads to a restriction on the use of cheat-capable controller accessories such as the Chronos Zen then it could be a significant positive for FPS console gamers.

It reminds me of Apple locking faster charging and data transfer on USB-C to their own proprietary USB cables.

Are you sure of that? It was certainly rumoured before the release of the iPhone 15 Pro that Apple would require MFi cables for high speed data transfer but I don’t think that turned out to be true. As far as I can tell any high speed USB-C cable will allow full speed transfer from an IPhone 15 Pro. It might need to be a Thunderbolt 3 cable, especially for recording to external SSD, not sure, I’m no expert, but I don’t think it needs to be an MFi cable.

I haven’t seen anyone else recommend Prospect (2918).

I think your daughter might really enjoy it because the lead role is a young female, played by Sophie Thatcher, and it has a terrific far-future, hard SF vibe and great production values for an indie feature. Also the ubiquitous Pedro Pascal is very good in it as well. Killer sound track too.

I think Brink was game that killed my naive trust in the hype machine. So much anticipation, so much desperation to enjoy it, so much disappointment. From there on I only believed the hyperbole from proven developers but eventually Destiny killed even that. Now I’m a bitter shell of a gamer who lives by the creed, “never pre-order!”

Not any Tolkiens neither.

I use it constantly in city and rural areas and find it works pretty well for me.