IronRanger

They're not pulling it due to seizures, they're pulling it due to CDPR offer refunds, when the Sony policy is explicitly no-refunds if you have already played the game.

And Norway's Prime Minister says they acted too harshly: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/30/coronavirus-norw...

You can find news articles that spin anything positively or negatively.

Sweden has had a lower per-capita COVID deathtoll than European states with heavy lockdowns.

Lockdown South American nations have had about the same COVID toll as non-lockdown nations.

Same when you look at individual US states.

Doesn't seem to be much of a link between lockdowns and COVID - but a heavy link between lockdown and economic and social devastation.

The virus will follow its own seasonal trends, impacted by herd immunity, as every respiratory virus has.

The major underappreciated factor for this release is the impact of COVID lockdowns - particularly enforced WFH - on the final development of this title.

For me this is the single factor which has lead to so many of the problems inherent in the game. You cannot just pickup a multi-hundred person digital interactive art project (ie. a video game) and shift it online overnight.

Still, I think CDPR were right to release the game. Its good enough, content is complete, and they need to have the product on shelves before Christmas and before people lose interest in last-gen consoles.

Having the product out there will motivate its staff - still stuck at home in Lockdown Poland - to work on the very public bugs.

Its also interesting that Poland seems to have had basically the same COVID case and death profile as Ukraine, despite Ukraine having a significantly less strict lockdown (bars, restaurants, workplaces never shut this Autumn or Winter).

It would be more effective to just regulate the maximum % commission that these platforms are allowed to charge. Set it at 5% for developers located in the EU, and be done with regulation forever.

But - this method doesn't allow for over-regulation, over-government, and megafines. The benefits go to small and medium-sized European businesses, instead of the European bureaucrat class, so its a no-go.

At what point does this whole charade end?

Because all of the wealth inevitably accrues to the platform holders. 30% of gross revenue is fundamentally a poor deal.

And until we end the H1B visa and only allow Americans or American allies to run the IT systems of companies in America.

And who is going to come in and fix this water infrastructure, the British?

The fact is that environmental conditions worsen each decade in India and quality of life is lower than in the 70s when the population was 555million (currently 1.3b).

Meanwhile the upper castes flee the country en-masse to the USA, Canada, Australia, Europe.

The Indian population will rise to 1.6b by 2050. It will be substantially easier to fix water infrastructure if this number was hundreds of millions lower. Population management is a bigger part of the solution than pipes and dams.

Then why are they not massively ramping up ICU capacity? Surely the 'cost' of doing that is less than the 'cost' of shutting down huge sections of society?

Why don't we have the same lockdowns when influenza threatens to overwhelm hospitals each year?

Where is the focus on public health interventions such as mass Vitamin D, Vitamin C, Zinc supplemenation, as well as seriously dealing with obesity (banning or taxing added sugar) and air pollution (banning or taxing coal and oil)?

With the core factor being that there are more people than the water supplies can support. The solution here is a one-child or no-child policy, just as in China.

No, but with the 15% commission tier for <$1m companies, you can expect an Indie renaissance.

People should be able to go out on their own terms, instead of deteriorating in an aged care centre. It should be completely legal for those aged 80 and over, for example, to seek to end their life - if they decide they have lived all they want, and don't want to suffer the problems associated with old age. This also allows them to choose their time of death, and for their family to remember them in a state of relatively good health.

There was no spike in deaths in November in Sweden: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps

Weekly snapshots are too volatile. If everyone who was going to die in March dies in the first week of March, but none die in the remaining three weeks, this will show a death spike whilst the number of monthly deaths is unchanged. If someone at the end of their natural lifespan dies a few weeks earlier or later than usual, this is not a national concern.

2019 was a weak flu season.

We need to examine this data across broader time scales to avoid the hysteria we are currently experiencing.

The other factor little talked about in Europe is aged carers - usually from Eastern Europe and the FSU - rushing to return home to their families in the midst of border closures, lockdowns, and flight cancellations.

This lead many residents to die of neglect, or for COVID to sweep easily through many centres if the remaining staff worked whilst symptomatic and took shifts across multiple locations.

This is part of the reason why countries in EE and the FSU, as well as those with less strict lockdowns (ie. Sweden), had lower mortality rates than in places like the UK, Spain, Italy, France.

It might be worth reconsidering the whole aged care model, and advancing the idea of voluntary euthanasia for the elderly.

Meanwhile in Sweden - 2020 deaths are tracking to be lower than 2018, 2017, and 2012:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-...

The spike in deaths seen earlier this year is similar to the 2009 flu epidemic:

https://swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/sweden-monthly-...

Its unclear whether COVID presents a mortality burden any greater than regular influenza - and whether lockdowns or restrictions are at all warranted.

This is not realistic in any kind of inclement weather or at night.

I guess these central areas of Paris will become completely unsuitable to families, who will be forced out to suburban areas.

How do people receive deliveries at these locations, or transport children?

Because Tim Sweeney is just not as charismatic, unfortunately. Great guy though.

Failing the implantation of zygotes, we could just allow a free market for sperm. Why shouldn't women or couples be able to pay $10,000 for the DNA of men like Elon Musk?

We should begin to harvest the eggs and sperm (or zygotes) of the most intelligent and productive people on the planet, and then pay people to bring those children to term and raise them. It would eliminate poverty.

You forgot USD (30%)

The primary 'value' of mask mandating is to discourage shopping, going outside, and use of public transit - since masks are generally unpleasant and asocial.

Once these factors are removed its unlikely that mask wearing provides any value beyond security theatre.

There are no excess deaths apparent in October or November for Sweden: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps#z-scores-by-country

Yes they do:

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2018/01/24/Hospitals-overwhe...

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-flu-demand-2018...

https://www.dispatchhealth.com/blog/ers-are-overwhelmed-with...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/overwhelmed-by-flu-cases-some-e...

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/12/health/flu-surveillance-c...

In Italy and Spain, aged care centres were abandoned by Eastern European workers fleeing the country before border closure, leaving residents ill cared for.

In New York, symptomatic patients were ordered back into aged care homes to free up hospital space.

These conditions would not have occurred without hysteria and excessive fear.

COVID in Sweden is about as deadly as the 2009 flu wave: https://swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/sweden-monthly-...

Sweden is on track for an annual number of deaths in 2020 mostly the same as prior years: https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-...

What was the age profile of the trial? If you fill it with healthy people under 50 during Summer you would expect the same results with a placebo, given the profile of the virus.

No need for estimation, just go to the data (England and Wales):

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...

So compared to 2018 and 2019, there is no change in deaths for those aged 45 and younger.

However there is an increase in death apparent for those aged above that, such that overall deaths when comparing up to Week 46 are 9.5% higher in 2020 than 2019. However, 2019 was a very weak flu season, with no excess death periods in England:

https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps#z-scores-by-country

If you reduce 2020 deaths by the amount that didn't occur in 2019 due to the weak flu season but did occur in 2018, then 2020's deaths are only 6.8% higher than 2018. Consider also that in those two years the population of the UK aged 45 and above increased by 1.7%.

The question is - is COVID just shuffling fundamentally unhealthy people off their mortal coil a bit faster than would have occurred naturally? How many COVID deaths are really due to ongoing societal issues like Vitamin D deficiency, air pollution, poor diets and obesity? Or simply just old age?

Is shutting down and completely disrupting society for something which is about 5% worse than a regular flu season in terms of deaths really justified? Would we have noticed without the media attention?

These replacement taxes need to come from road use charging, to deal with congestion during commutes.

Shifting non-essential travel to an hour earlier or later in the day will have a hugely beneficial impact in unclogging many cities.

This might have been the case if the original Imperial College reports of several million deaths in the US and UK were accurate, highly concentrated among the aged which would have lead to large savings on healthcare and pension costs, as well as freeing up of large amounts of real estate for younger generations.

However in reality the deathtoll from COVID is scarcely distinguishable from regular influenza seasons. Only 0.06% of Sweden's population succumbed to COVID and their annual deaths are shaping up to be the same as prior years, for example. Similar situation in Germany.

This is presumably part of the reason the iPhone 6S is not going to receive iOS 14 next year - since it was sold with 16GB as the lowest capacity. The next model along, the iPhone 7, had 32GB as the lowest capacity.