But isn't ICANN's power pretty much limited to regulating top-level domains? It's not like Gemany can say "We don't like sexyhitler.ca; ICANN, ban that domain!". That's still something the individual registries control and those are beholden to the countries they operate in. Germany could ask for all of .ca to be banned but that's unlikely to actually happen - especially since UN/ICANN will not give arbitrary veto power to every member country so they couldn't get away with it anyway.

Note that this exact scenario has happened under US, control, though. During the Iraq War the entire .iq TLD was disabled, which many other countries saw as the USA shutting down the web presence of an opposing country. The "but, censorship" argument feels hollow because the worst-case scanario has already happened under US control.

True. I'm waiting for AMD to finally release Zen-based CPUs (and for people to get some experience with them) so I can finally retire my trusty old Phenom II X4. Replacing that CPU wil require a new mainboard, cooler and RAM and I will have to re-examine my PSU as well. And probably swap the case for one with frontal USB-C ports. That's a substantial chunk of my computer right there; all that remains are the GPU, the sound card (yes, I still use one of those), all storage devices and possibly the PSU.

At this point it's safe to say that I'll buy a new computer and transplant some parts rather than upgrade my old computer.

Thanks, I'll check it out later.

Especially since data caps work differently from contract to contract. Some ISPs will bill you extra if you go over. Some will cut you off. Some will provide you with infinite service at very low speeds once you go over your cap. Some will do a mix like selling you on additional data pack before reducing your speed.

Data caps are difficult and I don't think all of them can be seen as equal. And they definitely can't be expressed well in terms of cookies.

Well, I didn't read TFA and wasn't aware it covered the story of how car dealerships got where they are today. TFS didn't seem to suggest that it did.

I hadn't tried but that was because I was at work and was browsing Slashdot while waiting for Visual Studio to finish installing. I saw someone mention something interesting and asked for further information so I could read up on it later. No time for research right then but that doesn't mean I'd pass up an interesting read if someone could offer me one.

I'm always interested in stories like that. Please provide links or keywords I could google.

Does Windows apply compatibility settings automatically every time the program is launched or does it create a shrtcut that applies the settings? I seem to remember that at least older versions of Windows created a shortcut, which is completely useless for Steam games where the .exe is in a known location and is called directly by Steam.

Still, UHD is awesome for gaming if your GPU can hack it. I just dropped 650 bucks on a 27" UHD monitor with FreeSync and the quality increase is worth the money. Just being able to run the game at a resolution where you have built-in AA because some of the jaggies are too small to make out with the human eye is very nice. (Of course it helps that the old one has much worse dynamic contrast and no FreeSync. Still, the resolution makes a difference.)

Unfortunately, Windows doesn't support UHD very well. You can use display scaling but it completely hoses windowed fullscreen mode in games because Windows cheerfully applies its scaling to those as well, telling them that your desktop resolution is something like 1706x960. Also, some programs simply won't scale. In some cases the programs scale but certain dialogs won't. Or the text scales but the button icons won't. It's a mess. You'd think that Windows would just report a different resolution to those programs and then upscale with a shader but apparently that didn't work out very well because Redmond obviously took a different approach.

I think they were going for a deliberately alien dance to show just how different the future is.

I think Japan's point is that they built a bunch of factories and local headquarters in the UK specifically to deal with the European market. That was the big selling point. With the UK no longer being part of the European market Japan is understandably unhappy. So they give the UK two options:

1. The UK makes sure that Japan doesn't lose much by staying there. That means trade with the EU must work as if the UK were still a member. That means a huge free trade agreement needs to be secured ASAP.
2. A lot of Japanese companies will abandon their UK factories and headquarters and build new ones on the continent because staying in the UK is no longer financially sound. The UK loses a whole bunch of jobs and tax income and the Japanese companies lose a whole bunch of sunk money. Nobody wants this scenario.

Of course scenario 1 is hindered by the fact that the EU isn't keen on making trade agreements with a leaving member before the member has even left. So they're pushing for the UK to just invoke Article 50 already so things can get started.


tl;dr: Yes, the door is open - for Japanese companies to leave the UK. If you want to avoid that you'll have to convince them that trade with the EU won't be impacted by Brexit.

TBH, when I played I chucked away balls by the dozen. Way more pokestops than 'mons to catch where I live.

Note that Ingress players haven't been able to add portals for the last year because Niantic couldn't keep up and hasn't been able to come up with an automated system. Since PG relies in Ingress location data that leaves that game outdated as well, referencing locations that no longer exist and missing new POIs.

If that is "all their effort" then Niantic obviously does not have the resources to pull off something on the scale of PG successfully. They can barely keep the much smaller Ingress going!

Only in the same sense that Heavy Rain boils down to "you watch a cutscene, then you do a quicktime event and watch more cutscenes followed by more QTEs". Technically it's true on a certain level but it misrepresents the game and its appeal.

Your typical Pokemon game is focused on growth; you have to carefully build a team that can take on your opponents and you can't do that by constantly tossing out your 'mons. Training a 'mon up requires some time investment, thus you actually need to plan ahead instead of just going with whatever. Also, the various attacks actually make a difference and make the fights more complex than just "keep attacking until someone faints".

PG, on the other hand, has none of those elements. It barely even has fights and those fights don't really amount to anything. The meat of the game is literally to catch 'mons which become utterly useless shortly after when your level allows you to catch superior 'mons. There is nothing to achieve, no growth of any kind, no strategy or tactics. It's Pokemon without everything that made it interesting.

(And this comes from someone who was never a particularly big Pokemon fan and only played one of the first generation games. Even I can tell just how much PG is missing compared to the main series.)

Depends on where you are. Back when I played I threw away pokeballs by the dozen because for every 'mon I ran into I passed by at least two pokestops. And that's true for every city with a five- or six-digit population I've been to (where I bothered playing). In rural areas this changes dramatically, though.