Sternhammer

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

Yes, additive colour theory is based on red, green and blue (RGB). These are the colours you see if you look at your TV screen very closely.

Subtractive colour theory uses cyan, magenta and yellow. In printing black, abbreviated ‘K’, is added for contrast—CMYK. These are the inks used to print the dots you see if you look closely at a magazine photo.

I think people are confused by this because they’re taught a bastardised version of subtractive colour theory, using red, blue and yellow, at a very early age.

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!”

I don’t see any darker-skinned actors playing good guys

Are you forgetting Salvor Hardin, played by Leah Harvey?

Not any Tolkiens neither.

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

To be fair, Kojima games are primarily vehicles for cut-scene delivery. Gameplay is a bonus.

Sorry, formatting error. Should be clear now.

I’m with you. I’m enjoying the Foundation series and, in a way, the departures from the book keep me guessing. But it’s not Asimov. When it stared I wondered how they were going to handle the constantly changing key characters but it seemed they just couldn’t so we have clones, uploads and hypersleep to keep people around for the long span of the stories. That’s disappointing but I’m still enjoying the ride.

Confession: I re-read the first three Foundation books last year but got bogged down in the fourth. The ideas are wonderful and changed science fiction with their scope but the writing is rather dated and, frankly, they are quite long-winded at times. Apologies for the sacrilege.

Have you read any Iain M Banks’ The Culture novels? Incredible writing. Most of his books have interesting twists in them, some of which will fuck you up. They are the type of books that you wish you could read again for the first time. The author died in 2013 so there are no more coming.

• Consider Phlebas
• The Player of Games
• Use of Weapons
• The State of the Art
• Excession
• Inversions
• Look to Windward
• Matter
• Surface Detail
• The Hydrogen Sonata

Other SF books by Banks:

• Against a Dark Background
• Feersum Endjinn
• The Algebraist