I don’t think Russia’s affording all that much nowadays… last I heard, they were experiencing liquidity issues trading with China?

The best way to look at it is to ask “if he cared less about his appearance, and dressed more slovenly - would it excuse his abhorrent views and stances?”.

If the answer is no, then it should be a non-factor.

A cynical part of me thinks that some of the more outlandish politicians dress that way (Trump’s hair dye and fake tan, JD Vance’s guyliner, Boris Johnson’s unkempt hair, etc.) are done in part as an attempt to de-rail reporting by having us fall into the easy trap of ridiculing their appearance rather than criticising their views and actions.

Going by that argument though, then EVERYTHING is an indirect act of God.

Bullet wound? Clearly it was God’s will, for ordering the universe in such a way that an individual was armed at that point in time to cause you harm.

Cancer? God willed the carcinoma onto your skin.

Maybe it’s just Argumentum ad absurdum, but insurance companies are basically arguing against their own existence.

I remember reading somewhere that it was likely something he picked up from his wife, as it is apparently not uncommon in India?

That could have been a lie, but honestly who cares how the guy chooses to dress or present? His views and words are toxic enough that we don’t need to resort to personal attacks on his appearance; calling him and his ilk ‘weird’ is more cutting to them than anything else.

It was called Kurushi here in our neck of the woods; and I’m glad I’m not the only person who still intensely remembers that game from a demo disc.

I ended up picking up a mint copy to add to my collection; well worth it IMO.

They’re neither feckless now cowardly, but something altogether much worse: owned by the uber-wealthy who stand to benefit most from re-electing Trump.

It’s a way to reframe the argument from a vote FOR a milquetoast candidate, to one AGAINST a would-be Dictator.

Know that none of the 3 possible options for voters will immediately stop Israel’s current terror campaign on Palestinians and the Lebanese.

Instead, all it does is set up the future environment and Government whom you can influence the actions of. Only ONE option provides an opportunity which could reign Israel back in, and it sure as shit isn’t a possible 2nd Trump administration.

America has what I like to call ‘Monkey’s Paw Democracy’; almost as if someone wished for a representative Government from a cursed object.

Now instead of voting for policies they like, voters are forced to vote against policies they dislike or risk being punished my having their rights slowly chipped away.

I specified one generation of hardware backwards compatibility; beyond that software emulation would be more than sufficient.

The PS5 is backwards compatible with all but ~6 PS4 titles. Sure that’s entirely because of the shared x86-64 architecture, but it makes the PS4 stand out like a sore thumb for its lack of direct generational backwards compatibility.

By the end of the PS3’s lifecycle the Cell processor has been die-shrunk multiple times, reducing power consumption, heat output and PCB space required. It could then share the rest of the PS4s existing IO chips and circuitry.

There was literally no reason for backwards compatibility to be removed beyond corporate greed. Blindly accepting it, and actually trying to justify that as a good thing is one of the key reasons this hobby has gone down the toilet.

Hard to improve on perfection, but they had to keep their UI designers employed I suppose?

It really wasn’t sustainable for the future maximising shareholder profits.

Maintaining PS3 backwards compatibility at launch was well within Sony’s operating profits. It was an international decision, which they proceeded to gaslight customers into believing want necessary or even wanted!

No doubt, the 360 had the PS3’s number earlier on - due in no small part to the lack of documentation for the Cell architecture making it much harder to program for, let alone optimise.

SCE America I think was credited with the mid-cycle turnaround thanks to a lot of Western-developed exclusives (Naughty Dog were a real MVP), which is why the PlayStation identity seems to have largely switched from Japanese to American from the launch of the PS4.

I’m a bit of a tech hoarder, and still own my original PSP, PS1, PS2 and PS3s… so luckily my first-born is at no risk just yet. 😅

It’s not about whether or not it’s possible via emulation on CFW, but rather the precedent that hardware-level backwards compatibility was a key feature.

It’s a damned shame that such official support was dropped moving forward, and IMO should have been taken as an early sign that gaming as a hobby was going to go downhill.

The launch PS3 was arguably Sony’s last great console (namely hardware backwards compatibility); I choose to die on this hill. 🫡

It’s a start; if that recovered money was funnelled directly back into the IRS, they could net as much as a 6x return:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/want-to-shrink-deficits-or-fund-bidens-spending-plans-give-the-irs-more-money/2021/03/25/2959bcd8-8d90-11eb-9423-04079921c915_story.html

A few years of IRS hyper-vigilance and investment would result in significant gains to the public purse, ensuring that the wealthiest pay their fair share.

Ill give you this; it was so bad that it looped all the way around and ended up good despite literally everything.

I definitely enjoyed the hell out of it as a kid, but let’s not pretend that it was anything approaching a faithful adaptation.

It really depends on where you draw the line e in the sand, I suppose?

If you’re not too heavily invested in the game series (so you’re willing to accept retcons/story divergence), and are able to switch your brain off for ~100 minutes you’ve got a decent enough chance that you probably won’t hate it.

More than anything, it just has a lot more in common with the ‘bad old days’ of video game adaptations (live action Mario Bros., anything Uwe Boll touched), than the newer crop of more faithful/reverent adaptations (Sonic, animated Mario etc.).

I have the same feeling after watching this, as I did the Mario movie and the Angry Birds before that…

I’m going to remain skeptical, but somewhat optimistic that this will be relatively watchable and hopefully not a complete dumpster fire like Borderlands…

More volunteers for the Ukrainian ‘Special Operation’!

I mean, generations are only ~15ish years apart - so it tracks…