The Giant Beastcast: Episode 135

Alex criticizes They are Billions for not having steampunk units - first image on the steam store page is a giant mech. Vinny didn't get far enough in the QL to see late game units. It looks great but I'll wait for the campaign to be finished.

Early investors make the most money because they got in when the price was lower, this is true of any investment. It doesn't make Bitcoin a pyramid scheme at all.

This always happens and isn't really evidence of anything to be honest.

A bunch of cryptocurrencies go on an insane price rally, then the price crashes, things cool for a little while, and then they rocket back up.

Ethereum went from $450 to over $830 within 3 weeks, a correction was definitely coming. As of today it already climbed back to $730 after the bloodbath that saw huge drops across all cryptocurrencies.

None of this shows cryptocurrency as a bubble as the money keeps flooding back into the market, sometimes almost immediately. The amount of growth since the Bitcoin fork back in July is insane.

No holiday roleplaying this year? :(

I really hate regular Cheetos, but Hot Cheetos are the Bomb yo

It's not evidence in itself that Bitcoin is a bubble, but if you are budgeting capital costs over the course of a year (which was my example), the fact that 30% swings can and do happen, and fairly often, makes that a risky proposition - there's no guarantee of recovery.

However, the fact that a stock can jump by 300% on little more than a name change (it's a pivot into a wholly unconnected business area with no solid plans) is a pretty strong suggestion that the market is currently somewhat irrational.

I agree wholeheartedly about Alex's feeling on the Fractured But Whole. It's probably my second most disappointing game of the year behind Mass Effect. The super hero motif did very little for me and there were barely any memorable fights or moments as Stick of Truth (nothing near getting to Canada or the fight after you're shrunk). Plus, the ending was just fucking stupid.

The combat system was cool, but the game is so easy on normal that I rarely had to strategize until towards the end when the game suddenly realized that fact and throws an asshole of a fight at you.

I would imagine that when cryptocurrency becomes a bigger market (still worth less than Microsoft for all of them) the percent changes will be much smaller overall. There is certainly no rationale behind a lot of it, like how dead projects such as Ethereum Classic still being one of the biggest cryptocurrencies.

@r3dt1d3: apple has a hell 9f a cult-like thing going on. Especially in the US, Americans always mention how convenient imessage is. While not using WhatsApp like the entire rest of the world.

I'm not the best example because i tend to make a ton of mistakes while writing here (actually I would often attribute those to external factors :D), but english is kinda one of the easiest languages to learn (and my mother-tongue is a romance language). The rules are quite easy to understand; structure is also simple to grasp and inform the listener/reader immediatly of the intent, there are very few irregular verbs (and only in three declinations), no accented or weird letters...i'm not saying it's a walk in the park to become extremely proficient in it, but, compared to the majority of other languages, to get at least the basics down it's really not that difficult (at least for a westerner who already uses the latin alphabet, I cannot speak for others coming from different points of view)

Man, people still use iPhones? Did I time travel back to 2007?

iPhones are still seen as a sign of the rich and elite, at least in America. I'm a Lyft driver, had someone ask to use my aux cable to listen to music, but when they saw it was for my Galaxy they said, "Oh sorry, we don't have poor people's phones."

It's not as prevalent as it use to be but still there.

I don't think that has been true for quite some time, the iPhone C (or whatever it was) undid a lot of that imo.

Apple have definitely dropped the ball, they used to have such a design advantage over Android phones but now they often look outdated in comparison. The iPhone X is super ugly with that stupid black bar at the top.

I have a 6.4" phone which gets a lot more attention than whatever the latest iPhone is. I know, I'm a crazy person. Love this big ass screen though!

Oof. Abby's opinions on Android...yikes...

I had an Android phone, then an iPhone 6 and now back to Android with the Galaxy S8. Both are phones and both do what they do nicely. Abby's comments about Android are kinda ignorant...

Starship Troopers for best sci-fi. Paul Verhoeven rocks!

Abby's arguments for Apple seemed kinda weak (paraphrasing):

A: "I can send a message from any of my (Apple) devices"

V: "Here's that but not tied to Apple"

A: "I don't respond to them / I don't see them until it's too late"

E: So Vinny's AR end-game is basically Watch Dogs? And arguably, AR is strictly better than VR if done right - if you want to use it as VR, just black out the entire display.

I took a 7 day vacation to St. Martin and Anguilla solo a couple years ago right after I passed the bar exam. I wasn't dating anyone at the time, and I was crazy stressed out and hadn't been on a legit vacation in nearly a decade so I just said "screw it." I would say that it takes a certain personality type to pull it off, but you can absolutely have an awesome time if you put in the effort.

Here are some tips:

• Make sure you put yourself out there and talk to other people, at least on occasion. This doesn't come naturally to me so I didn't do it every day (and you don't have to either), but this is the best way to avoid getting lonely.
• Go to hotel or touristy bars and talk to people there. Bartenders and waiters/(resses) are the absolute best. They will see that you are alone and make an extra effort to chat you up, and tell you good places to go or eat. And even if you're surrounded by couples, you'd be surprised how friendly people can be if you just introduce yourself and make conversation (especially if you are in a tourist destination).
• Plan ahead, at least in the sense that you have a list of things to do if you ever get bored. You don't want to end up spending your vacation watching TV or playing video games. You can do that shit at home.
• Check to see if there are any tour groups that you can hook onto. There are solo travelers in those groups pretty often, and it would give you people to hang out with

Could Abby please roll her eyes, groan and sarcastically say "wow..." some more please?

No seriously if you ever read this Abby you have grown on me and I appreciate your perspective as a non-PC gamer but I'm not sure what keeps you from having a more positive attitude instead of sounding the most dismissive possible.

The fact that Abby forgot about the first 5 minutes of Wolfenstein makes me highly doubt there will be a Wolfenstein Moment of the Year category in the GOTYcast.

Merry Christmas everybody =(

I can't get a read of how Abby feels about her cat at all. She can't stop tweeting about them and how much she misses them when she's away from them but verbally she finds every opportunity possible to express what a burden they are and almost to the point of how she kinda wishes they were dead so she's no longer shackled by them.

People are very ignorant of Android in general. They had one bad experience on a budget handset 5 years ago and think that's Android, or they're just unable to comprehend that good non-Apple smartphones exist.

@vinny: If you want something that appears to make no sense[1], you should try learning Japanese. Not only are there about 2000 kanji in common use, there are at least two ways to read the majority of them.

For instance, 一 is the character for "one"; you will almost certainly learn to read it as "ichi". 人 is the character for person; you'll probably read it as "nin" or "jin".

Taken together, 一人 means "one person" (or "alone", depending on the context). So far so sensible. How do you read that combination though? "Hitori"...

This is further not helped by the fact that 一人 can also be a given name, at which point it is read as "Kazuto" OR "Kazuhito".

Learning to _speak_ Japanese isn't all that bad, but I've found trying to learn to read (which already feels a little odd in some ways) to be an absolute nightmare.

[1] There _is_ a logic to it, but not one that makes it easier to learn IMO.

@stordoff: I feel like most of the arguments in favour of Apple products depend on: a) being particularly spendy and going all in on the entire ecosystem, apple computer, apple tv, apple tablet, apple phone. b) most of your friends use apple, meaning you can get more use out of things like imessage or facetime.

@doombot13: Wow.... those people are 100% grade-A a**holes. I know its a lost fare and bad review, but I'd pull over and dump them out wherever we were (hopefully on a bridge) and wish them luck finding an aux cable in their new situation. There is no excuse for being an a** about that. Entitlement like that deserves a gut-punch from reality.

I own an Iphone and am continually embarrassed i need a poorly designed dongle to do what every other phone does already. The need for a dongle is my problem, and it *is* a problem, not anybody else's.

The thing about the Apple news is that it's not surprising AT ALL. I saw the headlines and I don't understand why everyone acted like this was a big revelation. Planned obsolescence has been the norm in phones for years in various ways. It's a norm for the industry.

This article is from 2011: https://www.cultofmac.com/77814/is-apple-guilty-of-planned-obsolescence/

@dstopia: Amen. The Last Jedi is totally a competently made movie that has nice production values and all that. I just found myself kind of bored with it past a certain point. I say that as someone who grew up loving the Special Editions in theater, reading a bunch of the EU stuff and liking the prequels (at least on seeing them at release). It's not the worst thing ever and didn't kill my childhood or anything but its also not this revolutionary, expectation defying movie like I keep reading some people trying to tout it as.

Which is kind of the disappointing thing with this new trilogy- its still big evil Empire led by a Dark Side guy versus the underdog Rebellion led by Light Side Jedi. They can add in all the new characters they want, but that basic dynamic is the most tired and boring thing with the new trilogy- I was always hoping for something more like the Thrawn trilogy in terms of setup, which would have felt more novel to see in the movies.

Bodes well for GOTY "discussions".

@doombot13:

Wow...That's fucked up. Especially when Galaxy phones are not cheap budget phones neither.

Logic doesn't apply to languages, you just get used to them.

The different ways of reading kanji don't bother me now, if you keep on top of learning vocabulary you get used to it. It helps a lot to see them every day all around you as well. I don't like interacting that much with a lot of my fellow foreigners here because most of them don't even try to learn Japanese and they just wanna live in an English bubble.

It certainly something you get used to, and definitely becomes a non-issue over time, but I found the jump from the Latin alphabet or kana to be enormous. Going from less a hundred characters that you know _roughly_ how to read even if you don't know what it means (e.g. most Western languages, Japanese if you were to remove kanji) to a few thousand where you might not even have a clue (or might have learnt a different reading first - 中 still trips me up because I learnt it in names before actually trying to learn Japanese properly, so always want to read it as "Naka" first, regardless of context) is a fairly substantial difference, or at least it was for me.

@lanechanger: that’s because even people or creatures you dearly love can be a pain in the ass some of the time.

Just ask (your) parents. The general reply you’re likely to get will be along the lines of “I love them with all of my heart but dear god are they annoying as fuck some of the time”. Parents can be vicious about their own offspring even though they love them. (Just remember that you are not allowed to join in. They are “allowed” to do that. You might get a vicious talking to instead)

Beware of people who claim that everything involving pets or their kids is rainbows and sunshine. They are deluding themselves and probably have a twisted and unrealistic view of parenthood.

This is why I didn't learn kanji singularly and instead just learned vocabulary, over time you pick up those additional readings (and names) naturally instead of slaving away learning 4 readings per kanji etc etc.

@bugsy51: This comment is secxist and misogynist. This type of shit shouldn't be tolerated here. Mods, scrape this shit off the forum like the dogturd that it is.

I'm the guy that bought Windows Phones, so yeah...I'll go away now...

Me too. They were beautiful, I think. Just like Zune, which disappeared too...

Is it just me, or was Abby killing it this episode? I'm thinking the bootcamp environment of GOTY gave her a ton of podcasting reps, great job!

@armaan8014 said:

Mine was probably the best phone I've ever owned. Cheap, speakers were loud and I never had problems hearing people during calls, battery life was bonkers, it felt real solid, and the UI was slick that felt great to re-arrange. Only downside? No official Google apps and I am tethered to Google's music and map systems. The Windows phone just didn't have good answers to that that I trusted.

Alex nailed it at 47:00 what I'd been thinking all along the crypto currency discussion "all money is made up regardless" That's what answers the question about not understanding how bitcoins become money.