text:
seeing is believing —
Stadia's E3 Doom Eternal demo made me a cloud gaming believer
A half-hour of play showed me no apparent resolution, frame rate, or latency issues.
Kyle Orland - Jun 13, 2019 11:53 am UTC
164 with 106 posters participating, including story author
These images were taken from an earlier, local Doom Eternal demo, but give you an idea of the kind of fast-paced action that looks and plays just fine on Stadia.
The Doomslayer lands.
Most of this gallery is taken from real first-person gameplay, which is why the screen is smothered in a HUD. Milliseconds after this "glory kill" moment, your hero punches this demon's head so hard that it explodes.
Another glory kill. It was hard to capture clear images of these violent, health-refilling attacks; they're all pretty quick in action.
The trick with the super shotgun is to make sure to shoot before you get all the way to your target. The momentum will still drive your blast directly into the foe, and the recoil of your shot will conveniently bounce you away from its limp body toward your next target.
There's also the DOOM 2016 standby of running a chainsaw through an enemy to turn its body into useful ammunition. (Don't ask us how that science works.)
Decisions, decisions: do I go in for the glory kill, since the enemy on the left is staggered and glowing?
Nah, let's focus explosive ballista fire on the bigger, scarier-looking one.
Pretty terrifying sight, right? Hold on, lemme crank this one up a smidge...
...there. You can practically smell its cow-carcass breath from here.
Dash forward to close distance on your foe.
Then set it on fire, because, why not.
We should kill this one.
LOS ANGELES—Since Google's Project Stream beta test in October and the company's March announcement of the full Stadia platform, one question has loomed large over the service: will it actually work well enough for fast-paced, reflex-intensive games? After playing a demo of Doom Eternal for about half an hour Wednesday, I'm ready to say that the answer to that question seems to be yes—at least in Google's controlled testing conditions.
Google invited me out to its downtown LA YouTube Gaming creator's space—away from the Internet-congested E3 show floor—to try out the latest build of Stadia. My demo was running locally on a Pixelbook with the Chrome browser, connected to a TV via HDMI, and remotely to data centers more than 300 miles away in San Francisco. The Pixelbook had a wired Internet connection that I was told was running at "about 25 Mbps" (Google wouldn't let me run a speed test to confirm the connection quality). I controlled the demo with a Stadia controller connected to the Pixelbook via USB, but keyboard and trackpad controls also worked.
Over thirty minutes of Doom Eternal play, I'd have been hard pressed to point out any differences between the Stadia version and one running on a local PC. The 60fps animation didn't noticeably stutter for the entire demo, and the apparent resolution didn't dip below 1080p either (though a Google representative said Stadia will sometimes lower that resolution briefly to maintain a smooth frame rate if and when bandwidth dips). There were no signs of video compression artifacts or the color gradients you might see in a low-res YouTube video.
Encroaching data caps
In response to concerns that Stadia streaming might quickly eat up some users' Internet data caps, a Google representative told Ars that gameplay streams won't always require the "recommended" Mbps rates Google quotes for that level of video quality. A 4K, 60fps stream, for instance, would not use 35Mbps of data at all times, he said.
The representative also noted that Google is constantly working to lower bandwidth minimums, which were at 15Mbps for the Project Stream beta but will sit at 10 Mbps when Stadia launches in November. Google also says it will introduce tools for Stadia users to monitor their streaming bandwidth usage and to lower their maximum rate as they approach their ISP's data caps.
While I couldn't swear the control latency was identical to a game running locally, I will say that aiming, shooting, jumping, and dodging the game's various demons felt identical to playing the 2016 version of Doom. Perhaps a pro-level player might feel the difference in the precisely timed muscle memory needed for precision maneuvers, but Stadia certainly felt up to the game's twitch-heavy design from my point of view. On this score, Doom Eternal served as a much better example than earlier Stadia tests of Assassin's Creed Odyssey, a game that has extremely loose, latency-heavy controls even under local play conditions.
I wasn't able to run any sort of slow-mo video tests on Stadia to estimate total control latency, as I had earlier in the week with Microsoft's Project Xcloud demo. Real-world play conditions, with Wi-Fi routers and local network congestion, also might not be as performant as Google's idealized demo setup. And I'd need a double-blind comparison with a locally run version of the game to determine whether the Stadia version was truly indistinguishable from a local version.
All that said, this extended demo convinced me that Stadia at least has the potential to deliver the solid, responsive, as-good-as-local gaming experience that Google promises, even for an extremely reflex-heavy game. I could easily see myself playing through the entirety of Doom Eternal on this version of Stadia without complaint and without the need for a high-end console or gaming rig, either.
tvgm2 Seniorius Lurkius et Subscriptor
While I understand the overwhelming skepticism (I'm sure we've all used remote desktop solutions) of my fellow readers, it's still very exciting to hear that it works that well, even in ideal conditions. In theory, Internet speeds, hop latency, and data center coverage will get better over time, even with the current US political climate and ISP shenanigans.
You don't have to switch your entire gaming lifestyle to this platform, it's just one more gaming option that potentially makes it easier for more people to play games.
1 post | registered 11/21/2010
Kyle Orland Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area.
Email kyle.orland@arstechnica.com // Twitter @KyleOrl
Danathar Ars Tribunus Militum et Subscriptor
reply Thu Jun 13, 2019 8:02 am
Kyle Orland wrote:
Danathar wrote:
J.King wrote:
Get ready for all the posts pointing out that your experience at home over regular Internet can't possibly be as good as The demo at the site where you played it
Self-fulfilling prophecy? The article already addresses this.
Probably, but I read the article a second time. It didn't mention home internet, just that it was a facility away from the demo facility last time.
What I'd like to know is what was the internet at the site he was using? I'm betting the LA Gaming creator's space was using google fiber or something similar and the network topology was pretty good and has pretty low latency to stadia.
What I want to see is how it plays on a bog standard comast/cox cable modem in the middle of the country.
"Real-world play conditions, with Wi-Fi routers and local network congestion, also might not be as performant as Google's idealized demo setup."
So you are saying that where it was shown is "real world" compared to a gamer in the middle of the country with a cable modem? I don't think I agree with that.
Kyle Orland Gaming Editor
Corruption wrote:
So, as someone who has tried both, how does Stadia and xCloud compare? It seems like you've had a comparable positive experience with both.
Yeah, both Halo on Xcloud and Doom on Stadia seemed perfectly playable and not noticeably different from a local test. Obviously these are idealized demo conditions, but they both showed the tech working as advertised.
This seems like an almost willful misreading. I'm saying that the conditions I tested are NOT real world, and that real world conditions might be worse.
Katana314 Ars Tribunus Militum
This does seem to at least confirm that the previous test on the expo floor where people had a bad experience was more related to network congestion or bad expo network than Stadia itself being bad. That said, it only confirms one thing about xCloud and Stadia - "It works under optimal conditions".
My home ISP might also be optimal, given it's not Comcast. When using Geforce Now, I was reasonably capable of playing mouse-based shooters, although I don't often have the reflexes or game sense to win those even in standard conditions. That said, while it was convenient to have that option when I was travelling away from my desktop, it was not the optimal experience.
Ok, then I got REALLY confused at how you wrote it. I'll go back and re-read it.
Geebs Ars Tribunus Militum
Hadrien01 wrote:
Vash63 wrote:
Important to note that they had you playing with a game controller. Controllers are much less sensitive to latency than a Mouse in general due to how they aren't linearly (1:1) connected to your movements.
I don't understand why that would be the case, could you explain or link to an article? Seems interesting
Controller implementations for in-game cameras usually have a ramp built in - i.e. moving the controller in a direction starts the camera accelerating in that direction until it reaches a maximum speed preset. Mouse setups usually don't incorporate the acceleration component and just move the camera directly.
The mouse paradigm allows for much faster initiation of camera movements, and usually a greater angular velocity, which is therefore more sensitive to lag. This feels even worse because the user tries to compensate for the perceived mismatch and ends up in a cycle of repeated over-correction.
Dibbit Wise, Aged Ars Veteran et Subscriptor
peterford wrote:
The Ars community normally prides itself on its fact based approach.
There are a large number of people here and on other related threads who are barely one step above putting their fingers in their ears and screaming "La la laaaa! Can't hear you!" in response to Ars' experiences.
A lot of us have experience with thin clients / fat servers. After all that's how most computer setups were not that terribly long ago.
Add to that the fact that quite a lot of us have worked with remote desktopping of one sort of another and the promise of "trust us, this is just like if you had it running locally" we've seen the predecessor of these technologies over promise and under deliver.
And the fact that physics itself is working against google. (no matter how great the software, it can't outrun the transmission speeds) and it's a pretty difficult task to get good latency.
As a bonus, you get the vague dystopian feeling of truly having everything in the cloud and "owning nothing" but having to rent even the computer time to run a limited use license of someone elses software and you get pretty skeptical folks. It only takes something small like google saying "No, you can't independently confirm the network speeds" for people to be negative.
2 posts | registered Nov 21, 2010
torp Ars Scholae Palatinae et Subscriptor
Fred Duck wrote:
I'm rather surprised because where I am, youtube and Netflix exhibit apparent resolution and frame rate issues, either at my home or a friend's. How you can add interactivity to the mix and get better results speaks volumes of their connection.
And I'd need a double-blind comparison with a locally run version of the game to determine whether the Stadia version was truly indistinguishable from a local version.
Until you see your internet overage fees, of course. :}
Deathmonkey wrote:
Does Google have a stated policy for what happens to purchased games if (when) they shutter the service?
I'm sure they'll be quick to point out that you didn't purchase the game, you merely rented a stream of it, for nearly full price. They will, however, offer to have the local streetview driver point and laugh at you, if you wish.
Yep, that's the main problem. If you only play a game because it's in fashion this week, go ahead and stream. If you like to replay your older games once in a while, you'd better stick to discs or store torrents of the games you've purchased digitally.
HeadRusch1 Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
HeadRusch1 wrote:
A half hour of playing something being promoted by Google who controls Ars advertising hit-rates, along with whoever cuts your paycheck, convinced you that being a top-tier journalist is a job you want to keep?
Film at 11.
Such a lazy and nonsensical criticism.
No disrespect to the author intended, truly, but in this particular case you don't drop "half hour" and "no speed-test" and "idealized scenario"....and then title your drop: "I'm Convinced!" without taking a few hits from the "slightly more skeptical" among the masses.
Besides, that's what the down-voting a comment into silence is for. Have at it, Sir or Madam.
quietnine Ars Praetorian
My impression from the Stadia announcement was that the infrastructure working was kind of irrelevant.
If you have to pay $60/game + sub, it's worse than Xbox Game Pass.
If the dream audience for stadia gaming is people without great hardware, but it doesn't work well on low end laptops, that's not great. With xCloud this is less likely an issue because the buyer is often streaming to a dedicated gaming console.
If the dream audience for stadia gaming is people "on the move", but it destroys mobile and wired data caps and is too demanding for hotel internet, that's also not great.
If the dream audience for stadia gaming is people "with great uncapped internet who just want freedom to play in any room of the house", then presumably xCloud's ability to turn your XBox into a streaming server provides better performance for those gamers while also extending home streaming to rural folks who may have great wifi but bad broadband.
ryanja Ars Centurion et Subscriptor
Katana314 wrote:
If something only works under controlled, optimal conditions and not otherwise, then I would say that it is indeed bad. If my car tires only worked on perfectly flat pavement that is between 50F-75F while driving in a straight line but rarely under any other road or weather conditions, then yeah, they are bad tires.
Look, I'm not trying to be a negative Nelly over here about streaming. Things will get better, for sure. If bandwidth utilization requirements for UHD can be driven down to single digits, if there will be thousands of Stadia servers distributed for optimal latency (that sounds like a lot, but Netflix has close to 5,000!), and ISPs don't mess around with the traffic (or "optimize" it, as they say), then I'm sure it will be the service of the future and the way everyone will be gaming.
Until then, let's be realistic and take off the rose colored glasses, shall we? Google's shady history supporting projects aside, there are a lot of variables that need tending to before we declare this to be a success and proclaim ourselves "believers".
Abulia Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
Unless they partner with ISPs to have Stadia data not count against your cap, this is useless to me (and many others). It's not even halfway though the month and I'm at 584GB towards my 1TB cap. I'd absolutely murder my cap and have to spend an extra $50/mo to use this service.
Is Google going to subsidize that cost?
AegisKleais Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
Has there been any more in-depth revelations in the service?
Does it support keyboard/mouse?
Must I re-purchased owned games through Stadia's supported selection or is there a way I can connect my digital distribution systems to validate purchases. And if so, does that provide me with all games or only Stadia-supported ones?
Are there storage restrictions? Be they for games or locally synced game-related data?
I really want to get off being bound to a Windows system for gaming, and at $10/month, I'm sold. But if I'm bound to just a wireless controller and having to re-purchase select games, then I'd rather use my bandwidth elsewhere.
AxMi-24 Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
tvgm2 wrote:
Only way it could have been less objective test would have been playing Civilisation type game with a controller.
Problem is that this kind of thing is just pushing more the whole rent seeking approach where you own nothing and have to pay each month for tons of "services". I see why they like it but I fail to see how it benefits the actual users.
Even if you assume lower HW costs you still pay 10€ per month for the "service" where you own nothing, it can shut down at any point in time, and in the end you end up paying more than just buying the hardware to begin with.
OOPMan Ars Scholae Palatinae
For me, it's not about whether cloud gaming works or it not (Because the technical side seems to be a done deal).
It's more that cloud gaming is basically another avenue of attack that publishers can (and probably will) try to use to push online-only, live-service games-that-you-don't-own-and-can-never-play-again-when-they-decide-it's-not-making-enough-money-and-pull-the-plug.
I fully expect EA and Ubisoft to jump all over this shit and have no doubt they will one day advertise games that are Stadia/xCloud only. And from there perspective I can understand some of the reasons. Why pay staff to handle after-sales support and QA across multiple platforms when you can fire most of them and keep smaller teams who only have to focus on one QA and support for one platform. I can see why greedy publishers are probably quivering in their boots about this.
Maybe I'm just being super paranoid. Maybe it will all work out. Or maybe it will end up like the online music/video spaces: A plethora of warring content providers all look to milk you for the rest of eternity and none likely to have a good answer to the question of: what happens when the plug gets pulled for good...
mikewhy Seniorius Lurkius
Dibbit wrote:
I've used a bunch of remote protocols. VNC, RDP, and NoMachine.
Using Steam Link is a night and day improvement over them to stream my desktop compared to the alternatives. Try it out sometime. And this is from a home connection with a measly 10mbps up.
35 posts | registered Jul 5, 2010
cervier Ars Scholae Palatinae et Subscriptor
GunKatas wrote:
I was part of the Beta for Assassins Creed Odyssey, keyboard and mouse.
On Comcast over WiFi (didn't feel like running a cable that far) on a 7 year old CPU (Ryzen 3000 needs to come out already), it was pretty stable. I noticed resolution dropped if I crested a hill and it had to generate a lot of pixels quickly. It went from HD to 240p, it was quite noticeable, but this was for less than two seconds before going back to HD.
As for input lag, on a general basis I did not notice any. Only time it was noticeable was during peak usage times (Friday and Saturday nights). The input lag was bad, like 2-5 seconds between input and action, so I just watched youtube instead.
As for Data usage, I found that for about 1 hour of gameplay, about 10 Gb of data was used. On the first month, I went through about half a terabyte of data, which is about double what I usually go through. YMMV.
Other than that, I would recommend it for single player games. Multiplayer games, not sure.
2-5 seconds of input lag, holy hell, you're not even talking in ms... wow, also as a matter of fact, Friday and Saturday is exactly when I like to play game, because the rest of the week I'm at work...
I thank you very much for sharing your real-life condition experience of the service.
Akemi Ars Praefectus
Enzo90910 wrote:
latency MIGHT not be terrible.
From every single ISP I'm testing on, http://www.google.com always pings at 3ms. I know we are talking about much higher bandwidth per user, but the total bandwidth used from http://www.google.com to the rest of the internet is likely quite high, and no network issue seem to prevent Google to offer pretty state of the art latency.
Which would those be? My 150Mb Comcast connection is averaging 24ms to google.com right now. I've seen it as high as 45ms during peak usage times.
RickRoyLeonPrisZhoraRachael wrote:
(Google wouldn't let me run a speed test to confirm the connection quality).
that. right. there. I bet they had some QoS on their end to make sure there was no packet loss, etc.
(edited because there is not theirs)
The POTENTIAL is obviously there. But I'm still inclined to think the inherent differences between a special set up and the regular users, with others streaming videos (or even trying to play different games), peak usage times, ISP asshattery and differing cable bandwidths that the experience will not be that good "in the wild".
It's sort of like visiting Scotland on the nicest day in a century, when most of the time it's kinda gloomy, moist, cool and miserable. Drawing any definitive conclusions about the experience based on a one-time, highly unusual circumstance isn't warranted (Not saying anyone's drawing definitive conclusions, either).
I'd have been rather shocked if the experience in a demo situation wasn't as near to perfect as it could be. I'd be even more shocked if it worked as advertised for a majority of casual gaming players. LAN optimization ALONE isn't really a thing for most folks, and I'd hazard to guess that such will probably be needed to get a gaming experience that mimics a local installation.
So while this is encouraging, it's not really unexpected under the circumstances, and certainly isn't proof of anything other than that under ideal circumstances, it seems to work as advertised. And one would expect that to be the case.
Skitals Smack-Fu Master, in training
quietnine wrote:
There is no sub. You pay $60 and you can stream it (1080p stereo) for free on any device. You only need a sub for 4k/hdr/5.1 and the library of "free" games. Cancel your sub and you can still play all the games your purchased (at 1080p). You aren't "renting" it any more than on Steam/Uplay/any other DRM platform. As far as buying a DRMed game license goes, you are trading offline play for the ability to stream your games to any device w/o a gaming rig or console. If you are happy with 1080p, buying a game and getting unlimited cloud processing to compute/render your game is a pretty unbelievable value. The subscription model will get more appealing as the library of included games grows.
jonomacd Ars Centurion
Regardless of what connection they have it will eventually hit a public internet backbone of some kind. This implies it is at least possible to get a connection like this at home. Not sure if anyone has that sort of connection or the cost of it but it is at least possible.
Geebs wrote:
Well... it can't, can it? The word "believer" in the article title is really begging to be quibbled, for a service being demonstrated in completely unrepresentative conditions.
Edit: I mean, for all Kyle was able to confirm, the Stadia server was situated in the next room. This is like somebody playing a game against the Mechanical Turk back in 1770 and declaring that the experience has made them a believer in computer chess.
I thought he confirmed that it was in a datacenter 300km away?
Enzo90910 Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
Akemi wrote:
From every single ISP I'm testing on, http://www.google.com always pings at 3ms.
Which would those be?
I'm talking about 3 different French ISP providers, all three pinged from my home or my workplace in Paris (of course no data caps) (https://i.imgur.com/9lI3Ym0.png). I know I'm in pretty good conditions, but I just wanted to point out that these pretty good conditions still apply to hundreds of millions people around the globe.
Aurich Creative Director et Subscriptor
OOPMan wrote:
I feel like people are overly focused on the idea that it worked and felt fine. I mean, sure it did. It's difficult to actually feel an extra frame or two of lag, even if it was likely there. That's honestly not a lot.
Many modern titles, running on engines like Unreal 4, have a minimum of 4 frames of input delay baked in already. People just don't notice or care for the most part.
For me the concern isn't "will this thing actually work at all?" because of course it will. It's more will it work for your location, with your internet, all the time? Will you get lag spikes? Suck up your data cap? Rent you the content you're ostensibly buying, and one day they close up shop and you no longer have access?
The problems aren't restricted to the technical. If you expected it to "not work" you were being naive really. Of course it did and felt fine, the physics is all there for it work in plenty of circumstances at an acceptable level. But that's missing the forest for the trees imo.
lost wrote:
Was that multiplayer test/demo ?
From what I understood streaming platforms have more pronounced problems with multiplayer game , so until Google allow reporters to verify 25Mbs and to play in multiplayer matches, I will reserve my judgment.
It's actually the opposite. Streaming platforms should have better performance with multiplayer games. Since the game state is held in the cloud instead of our local machine they have a much better connection to other players in the cloud.
We should get significantly better multiplayer with stadia to stadia players.
TVPaulD Smack-Fu Master, in training
I don't really understand why "this is possible" is still part of the discussion. It was possible almost a decade ago with OnLive. I played through Borderlands in its entirety through OnLive. The questions are not about if it works or not, they're about how well it handles instability (largely unaddressed so far) and the use case. The use case Google is proposing is fairly fantastical - as Phil Spencer was alluding to last night on Giant Bomb @ Nite, streaming makes a lot more sense as an optional convenience add-on than as a replacement for local hardware.
CommanderJameson wrote:
Being realistic, the problem with Stadia is not whether it works well over this or that network connection.
The problem is that it's a non-core Google product (i.e. it's not search, mail, apps, maps, or YouTube) and therefore it's highly likely to disappear at three months' notice at some point in the near- to mid-future.
My view is that if you spend any actual money on it, you're a friggin' idiot.
You missed Google photos in that list. But I suppose that is a new product so it undermines your argument. Google kills things that are not popular. If stadia is popular, it will live. If it isn't it will die. It will likely live for at least a few years regardless. That is about as long as I care to play a game anyway.
2-bits Seniorius Lurkius et Subscriptor
This is no different than all the other demonstrations, which were also performed in ideal conditions. Why does this suddenly make you a believer?
AxMi-24 wrote:
They're offering a single-purchase license for individual games without a subscription next year.
Google's service history outside of its core products is troubling, but I'd have to imagine that if you buy a game and their service goes belly-up, they'll provide you with a license for the publisher's platform (they did this with Assassin's Creed after the beta).
Much like the early days of Steam where Gabe promised to give out the master unlock key should Steam die, I would want a guarantee from Google that if the service is discontinued, purchases will be respected on other platforms.
I have no evidence but I don't believe it can work so it can't work. This evidence that says it does work in some conditions does not supplant the no evidence I previously had of it not working. I will continue to call bullshit and say it won't work.
Am I commenting right?
Zoolook Ars Scholae Palatinae et Subscriptor
I think practically those things will stifle adoption. I live in NYC, my remote desktop connection is good enough for work, but it lags and is occasionally annoying when zipping around a spreadsheet or trying to get precise alignment on a PPT. OK so that's desktop->dekstop rather than to server, but even using a VM on a server can be occasionally laggy. Bandwidth has increased, but latency is what counts here and that's where most people will hit problems. I've tried nVidia's offerings and it's just a pixelated mess for me (I have 300mb connection and generally decent latencies for online games).
This is even before you start to look at rural areas and countries with emerging infrastructure or vast distances between cities. You can live in a remote village in Turkey and play Doom on your PC or Playstation as well as someone in Irvine, CA. But you can't use this and perhaps never will be able to.
Maybe Google won't care about New Yorkers and our congested infrastructure, or small villages in Turkey, or people with only one ISP that will charge insane fees for data, or people in rural communities relying on 2bm DSL connections. Who's left? Well there's always the Valley, and advanced Asian nations like South Korea with far better infrastructure I guess.
IntellectualThug Ars Scholae Palatinae et Subscriptor
For the next year and a half. Then Google will cancel it and flush all the cash you sunk into the platform straight down the drain.
Not to mention, there is a 0% chance this will work as advertised on anything that isn't last-mile fiber. Copper lines carry way too little bandwidth and way too much latency.
archie4oz Ars Praefectus
A decent playback experience isn't a surprise considering where Kyle was. I mean as a former DTLA resident and current Bay Area resident (not to mention having worked in an office with a NOC literally a 5min walk from the LA YouTube space), for "real-world" conditions, it's about optimum as you can get. 16ms sustainable round trips between LA and SF are pretty much the norm considering you're sitting next to some of the most established, fattest, and fastest array of pipes between two cities that exists on the planet. The 300 miles is largely meaningless. Even 25mbps is meaningless since you can reliably do a 1080p frame on 5mbps as long as you can guarantee timely packet delivery.
I mean I've used PSNow off an on over the years and had nary a hiccup, with smooth playback, but I know for sure that not everybody gets that sort of experience...
GreenEclipse1 Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
That's because you played in a city with great infrastructure. Anyone playing in a small town or rural area will be skipping this.
Last edited by GreenEclipse1 on Thu Jun 13, 2019 9:37 am
medarby Seniorius Lurkius
I was a home Beta tester for Odyssey and it worked great, and I live in a small city with crappy internet. That said, I'm old, so reflex games aren't my bag anyway. When I do play them, i'm always the support guy and never the sniper.
What I'm excited for is playing games and not having to play the hardware upgrade rat-race every few years for myself and family. Saving myself the money, time, and stress with building and maintaining gaming rigs for us was always a necessary evil that I put up with for the love of gaming. Now, I can play games on a $350 17" Chromebook instead of a $1000+ gaming rig? Sign me-up right now.
With that, I am concerned about the long-term viability of Google products, but this should kick Sony and Microsoft into offering something similar. Hopefully, the days of having to build or buy an expensive gaming rig to play games are over. Plus, as a developer, having to not worry about hardware issues for your PC gamers has to be a plus.
Sadly, for those that liked the hardware side of gaming, I foresee the days of PC gaming going the way of $.99 music downloads. The economics will be just to great for developers and most consumers to not justify a thriving PC gaming market as it currently exists.
Last edited by medarby on Thu Jun 13, 2019 9:33 am
jonomacd wrote:
It's LA to Mountain View, CA. Might as well be a Mechanical Turk in the next room for how much low-latency bandwidth there is between those two cities. The demo isn't impressive at all to anyone with even the remotest understanding of network topology.
Hell, I'd bet in the parts of Dallas or Philadelphia that have last-mile fiber you could make Stadia work. Where I want to see them prove it is on Comcast or Spectrum copper broadband somewhere like McKinney, TX or Schaumburg, IL. When they can do that, I'll give a shit.
xex360 Ars Praetorian
According to Tom's the game feels good but not on a PC level rather it's closer to a console which makes more sense, in a perfect situation one could expect a little worse experience than a console.
But one thing I struggle to believe is the quality, there is a huge difference between raw and compressed videos.
Statistical Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius et Subscriptor
It is all about bandwidth. Netflix and youtube are really agressive with crushing the bitrates that is going to lead to artifacts. Even Netflix 4K is only 15 Mbps. Honestly I wish Netflix offered a premium tier. I would gladly pay a couple bucks more a month for 25 Mbps video and decent sound (and no 1990 era dolby digital is not decent).
Google is such a massive entity that it has peering not transit agreements with most major network service providers. That combined with large number of datacenters means there is a pretty fat low latency pipe to most users at least most users in the developed world.
So if anyone has the infrastructure to pull this off it would be Google. The flipside is this is Google so I would put money on it being shitcanned within 3 years regardless of technical merit.
This is the big one, yeah. Baseless skepticism sucks, but there's your basis for it.


如果您購買台達的 KTR 67 mm汽缸, 您不用車引擎KS可直上.
10-year-old scooter and low power?
I think you need to change its heart for your motorbike to regain it.
Taida can offer you oversize cylinders and many good quality parts for it.
Up the energy of your motorcycle.
Let's clean carbon deposits, then up Taida parts.
Taida's GY6 58.5mm cylinder don't cut the engine block.
Taida's APEX150 61cylinder don't cut the engine block.
Taida's Dink150 62mm water cooled cylinder don't cut the engine block.
Taida's G5125 61mm cylinder don't cut the engine block.
Taida's G5150 63.5mm cylinder don't cut the engine block.
Taida's JR56 mm cylinder don't cut the engine block.
Taida's KTR 67mm cylinder don't cut the engine block.
Taida's VJR110 59mm cylinder don't cut the engine block.


When buying a table tennis table you need to know which table top you will require for your game. It is important you know the best from the rest with our helpful tips.
What is a good table tennis table? You can tell by the thickness of the table top.
22mm or 25mm tables are the best. They offer a superb ball bounce, faster rallies and will last longer. 25mm table tops are the competition standard.
19mm table tops are an affordable choice for people looking to have fun playing ping pong with family and friends. This will give a good ball bounce, allowing amateurs to enjoy a steady rally.
Any table tennis tops thinner than 19mm are much cheaper but are noticeably different to the more expensive tables. Balls do not bounce as high, and the top won't last as long.
Kettler's own Alu-Tec Tops for Outdoor Table Tennis tables are 100% waterproof and UV resistant. The wood top ensures the ball bounce is at its best while an aluminium underside gives the table added durability. The aluminium is rustproof with a honeycomb structure.
Indoor table tennis table tops are different to outdoor table tops. They don't require a waterproof lining or the metal underside. Our indoor table tops use specially treated wood covered with a pigment coat giving it its colour.
We always recommend keeping an indoor table tennis table in a heated, dry room. They are not designed to go outside, in a garage or outhouse.
Improve your table tennis skills by using playback or solo play. Many table tennis tables allow you to fold up one half which will then return the ball to you once hit against it. It's good for improving agility and practising different return strokes.
Solo play is also better for people who live with others who aren't as enthusiastic about table tennis as you are. Simply fold the table up and serve.
The thicker the table tennis top, the more expensive it is. The 22mm table tops will cost around £600-£700.
An outdoor table tennis table will cost more due to the extra materials needed to keep it waterproof.
The standard competition size for a table tennis table is 152.5x274cm. When buying an indoor table tennis table, always measure the size of the room and allow for 2 metres each way for you to move during each shot.


The project was generously funded by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the framework of the law 84/2001.
Increasing the efficiency of the Serbian legislation against organized crime and corruption trough judicial reform and harmonization of the national legislation to the European and International standards.The project aimed at strengthening instruments to combat organized crime and corruption in Serbia in the framework of international action in support of the rule of law. The project was designed in order to be complementary to other cooperation programmes implemented in the Balkans, at risk of resulting inefficient due to organized crime and corruption.
The Law Faculty of the University of Florence developed the scientific component of the project, and the Italian Anti-mafia bureau, with its decades of experience in countering organized crime, carried out an important exchange of expertise with the Serbian counterpart.
Phase 2: with the support of Italian legal experts, drafted a legal reform proposal and guidelines to fight against organized crime.
Training courses targeted judges and prosecutors ad aimed at strengthening their capacities in the fight against organized crime and corruption. The training courses focused on the relevant international legislation as well as on the best practices positively experienced in other countries, with particular reference to the Italian experience.
15 participants attended the training course in Rome (2-6 July 2007).
30 participants attended the training courses in Belgrade (1st group, 27-31 August 2007; 2nd group, 3-7 September 2007).
The training focused on the analysis of the UN and European legal frameworks, as well as the Italian legislation against organized crime as a model for a comparative approach to the Serbian legal system on the following issues: organized crime; corruption; money laundering; drug trafficking; global challenges and global responses to organized crime.
Please also refer to the Bibliography on Organized Crime and Corruption.
The results of the project can be found in the publication "Countering organised crime in Serbia – from actual legislation to a broader reform", The pubblication was presented during the final conference that took place in Belgrade on 12 February 2008.


One of my classes this semester requires me to complete a few think pieces. I have decided to share them with a broader audience. Take them up as you will, but this first one I really enjoyed cultivating. I'd love for others to share their thoughts and start a broader conversation.
As a preservice teacher, I took for granted the changing tides rippling across the field I was being apprenticed to. In a form of innocent ignorance, I soaked in my English courses in the early years of college giving no thought to greater pedagogical implications these classes may have moving into my major courses. Even as I entered methods classes that sought to marry pedagogy with teaching English as a specific and specialized subject, I took my professors lectures and projects at face value and worked my way through the program–hoop after proverbial hoop. When I finally entered the field devoid of the university's support systems with my own classroom, I believed in my abilities and always trusted that the university had prepared me for that moment. This is a belief I maintained; I never found myself questioning my training or assimilation into the field of English education. I was also blind to a standardization movement that had begun just before I became a teacher and had slowly crept its way into the national spotlight. After years in the classroom, two more degrees, and the pursuit of a doctorate, now is the time that I can read Brass (2014), Luke (2004), and Pasternak, Caughlan, Hallman, Renzi, and Rush (2014) reflexively and take up a position that is no longer ignorant but is also far more complex than I could have imagined in 2007 when I first graduated.
I have stated before–and I will again now–that I am not anti-Common Core. On the contrary, I see a value in having a shared narrative and vocabulary to discuss English language arts classroom practices. The issue has always been the designers and puppetmasters of the Common Core. Brass (2014) nicely frames the issue stating, "Much of [the stimulus] federal money has worked directly and indirectly to subsidize entrepreneurs, testing companies, and the educational technology sector to displace the curricular and pedagogical leadership of elected public representatives…at the public's expense" (p. 25). While not an immediate issue of my classroom practice, the money exchanging hands between private entities and government bodies have direct and indirect implications for my students and colleagues. Directly, I am faced with the politicization of my profession–forced to take sides or chose stances for or against political figureheads and companies invested in reaping financial rewards from the political turmoil embedded in current education policy. The dilemma of political schisms in my profession is indeed cancerous. I spend more time than I care to admit being concerned with the choices Georgia's next governor will make in conjunction with my profession and which companies will be awarded the next round of monies dedicated to test, curriculum, and "support" resources generation. All I know for sure is that they will not be asking me to participate in those choices in any meaningful way: "states have written and rewritten English content standards (often with very little input from English teachers and teacher educators), distributed curriculum frameworks and established regimes of test taking" (Pasternak et al., 2014, p. 4). The result is a distraction that pulls me away from my primary concerns of aiding my students in becoming literate, free-thinking, empathetic, and democratic citizens. Indirectly, I see the forces these political and money decisions place on my colleagues of English education and our students. English teacher and student alike are filled with perplexing anxiety over high-stakes testing, college admissions, and future economic stability. I have matured to understand that some of the complexity of my occupation is based at least in part to political contexts that I have little control over, nor do I feel empowered to rally against outside of my classroom. Teaching English is more complex than ever, not only due to globalization and technology, but because of political stratification and stigmas rampant in the Common Core era.
I love this. Running the risk of being too informal as I reflect on Luke's words, they ring terribly and wonderfully true to me. The complexity he shares above is the complexity I readily embrace, and a complexity that I think makes teaching currently so interesting and purposeful. We do not teach in an age of whitewashed, shared experiences where each pupil is of the same complexion, background, and creed, nor in a time when the canon of white privileged authors of yore can inexplicably cut across cultural identities and satisfy a diverse student body's need for their voices to be reflected in a standardized curriculum. Rather, we are, as Luke pointed out many years ago, "troubled by diversity" and by a collision of identities that force all English teachers to consider the implications of their own practice. Teaching English language arts today is more exciting and terrifying than ever. While the threat of standardization exists by way of the Common Core, an English teacher is still left with the choice of how to take up those standards in his or her classroom. Certainly, many English teachers, both young and old in their careers, will feel cornered, stuck, maybe even disenfranchised by standardization, but I posit that perception and identity as an English teacher is most important in combating such feelings of hopelessness. Rather than fretting over finding a common, sustaining method for teaching all children (an impossible task I assure you), Luke offers, "teachers [need] to develop flexible repertories of field-, discourse-, and text-specific pedagogies, suited to particular textual artifacts, technologies, social and linguistic/interactional outcomes, and adaptable for students of different cultural and linguistic backgrounds" (p. 90). A practice such as the one Luke describes is the one worth fretting over, worth losing sleep over. A concentration on flexibility in the English classroom–a type of elasticity on the part of teacher and student–may be the best combatant against the fears of the politicisation of curriculum. For instance, allow the Common Core to provide a common language across a diverse field, but allow the approach and the methods taken up in the English classroom to remain diverse. History has tended to prove that while Angelo-Europeans' attempts to assimilate other peoples and cultures into its own show signs of early success (imperialism, colonization, enslavement), those assimilations (oppressions?) ultimately fail every single time (apartheid, women's suffrage, civil rights, gay rights, Indian independence, etc.). How could we as English teachers ever expect a single-narrative approach to instructing reading and writing to be successful for us or our students? Common Core or no Common Core, the English language arts teacher must embrace diversity both in students and in pedagogical practice.
A stagnation of innovative teaching is being reinforced through Common Core. While I stand by my statement earlier that I do not have an inherent problem with Common Core standards, I do recognize the wider consequence these standards are having on many of my colleagues. Many with whom I work along side fear the consequence of not maintaining the status quo. I have a guttural reaction to such a mindset that easily dismisses these fears and I openly scoff at the notion of my alternative teaching techniques being admonished and repressed by administrators or higher-ups. I need to acknowledge, however, that my mindset is unique in many regards. Instead of rudely scoffing, I need to continue to build confidence in my colleagues that they can try different approaches to teaching and experiencing reading and writing. The end of the quote above also reminds me that I need to find ways to get digestible research in the hands of my English language arts colleagues as well. A teacher leadership approach I had not considered really before this year has started to unfold; I see a need for beleaguered teachers to have renewed support for trying dynamic approaches to teaching English, which are often times messy and don't readily translate into quantifiable results. Research assures us our current techniques are outdated and many times culturally irrelevant and insensitive, yet many of us continue to teach the same way we were taught–it's a consistent model that is easy to embrace because it appears to work for the mass majority. The issue is that mass majority is shifting and along with it the identity of the English language arts classroom. My students rarely look like me, but it is my duty to them to try and look like them–to embrace and recognize their backgrounds as genuine sources of literacy practices. Literacy practices that can and should be co-opted into the emergent English classroom. Because while the need to apprentice students to writing that is valid for an assessment exists, the need to pursue literacy as acts of creativity and a way to broker understanding across peoples and places remains greater.
How do we shift the identity of the English language arts teacher from that of apprenticing literary and writing mini-scholars to an identity of apprenticing culturally attuned and multiliteracy robust designers of language?
How do we promote innovative pedagogical practices supported by research in the English language arts classroom in era of Common Core politics and one-size-fits-all resource delivery?
What ideological (paradigmatic/pragmatic) shifts need to take place in preservice methods classes and ongoing professional development in order to facilitate a research-focused English language arts teacher corpus that can confidently confront the Common Core while continually innovating its practices?
Luke, A. (2004). At last: The trouble with English. Research in the teaching of English, 39(1), pp. 85-95.
Pasternak, D. L., Caughlan, S., Hallman, H., Renzi, L, & Rush, L. (2014). Teaching English language arts methods in the United States: A review of the research. Review of Education, ?(?), pp. ?-?.


text:
Saudi Arabia accused of kidnapping Buthaina Al Rimi in twisted "film making" plot
The war in Yemen has taken a fresh twist after extraordinary claims emerged that Saudi government agents infiltrated a humanitarian charity to kidnap the most high profile face of the Yemen conflict, Buthaina Al Rimi. Mohammad Ali Houthi, President of the high commissioner the revolutionary Houthis, has exclusively confirmed to The London Economic that Al […]
by Raymond Woolford
in News, World News
The war in Yemen has taken a fresh twist after extraordinary claims emerged that Saudi government agents infiltrated a humanitarian charity to kidnap the most high profile face of the Yemen conflict, Buthaina Al Rimi.
Mohammad Ali Houthi, President of the high commissioner the revolutionary Houthis, has exclusively confirmed to The London Economic that Al Rimi has been kidnapped from care after she became the face of an international appeal to end the war in Yeman.
On Monday Sama Ahmed from the charity Sky Humanity Foundation called a press conference in which she stated a man called Fouad Thabet Al Mansouri contacted them in order to make a film about the massacre of Buthaina's family in which 16 family members were killed and 16 injured including Buthaina herself, whose battered face went viral and caused a global outcry with Holland and Canada leading calls for an immediate investigation into war crimes in Yemen by the Saudi Coalition.
Two competing resolutions – one by Saudi Arabia and other Arab states and another by Canada and the Netherlands – have been proposed on how to best document the human rights violations in Yemen. The resolutions are shaping up as the main diplomatic showdown on the Human Rights Council session that ends this Friday, and could have been the reason for the kidnapping of Buthaina .
Sama Ahmede stated that after winning the trust of her charity under the guise of a film maker working for the Peacemaker Foundation an introduction was made to Buthaina family and filming stated with her uncle and his wife and children at the city of Demt.
Hundreds of thousands join Lord Dubs' plea to protect child refugees as House of Lords debate Withdrawal Bill
Number of prisoners developing drug problem doubles in five years – report
What challenges will the new Director-General face at the BBC?
Harry brands the media 'a powerful force' in emotional speech
Fouad stated he wanted to visit his family whilst he was in the area and shortly afterwards the family were caught in an ambush with 16 Saudi vehicles and spirited away to Riyadh where propaganda images of Buthaina were taken and distributed with her sitting with an unknown man looking well under the Saudi Arabia flag.
In a further twist to this story Buthaina's uncle posted on Facebook an appeal for help confirming that he had NOT sold Buthaina to the Saudi but was Kidnapped and wants to get home to Yemen
The extraordinary kidnap took place on the very day a protest was taking place outside the Saudi Arabian Embassy in London in opposition to the sale of UK arms to Saudi Arabia and to highlight the kidnapping of student Hisham Al Omeisy and an increasing number of civil rights activist.
The Saudi secret service has been alleged to be involved with the kidnapping of four Saudi prince in Europe who have been outspoken and critical of the Saudi leadership.
For more on this Story follow the hashtag #SaudiKidnapButhaina
The Saudi Government have been asked for a response but have yet to reply
New-born baby to be separated from mother because Home Office ignored her E-mails
Free Hisham Al-Omeisy, the Voice of Yemen
Tags: headline
Raymond Woolford
Ray is a high- profile community activist, author, playwright, speaker, multi award-winning social entrepreneur and broadcaster with a substantial social media following.Ray writes regularly for The Wolfian Press Review, and The London Economic news feed that also distributes Rays work to news media networks globally. He is also a regular commentator on BBC, LBC radio, Russia Today and Talk Radio Europe.His first book, Deptford, is a radical history of Deptford in South East London and has been an unexpected good seller in Russia.Food Bank Britain, about Ray establishing the UK's largest Independent food bank has been a global success, changing the way food banks operate for the better, whilst even winning plaudits from Obama's Whitehouse. It has also led to Ray contributing to regular popular news and current affairs radio show on Talk Radio Europe.Liberty is a play and book that tells, for the first time, the true story of just one chapter in the life of Kath Duncan, as a trailer for Ray's biography of her, The Last Queen of Scotland. It tells of the establishment of the Civil Rights movement in 1930s Britain and has won extensive acclaim and is set to be staged globally as part of LGBT history month in 2019 ;a hugely high-profile event. None of Ray's works has received anything other than rave reviews.The Last Queen Of Scotland is Ray's latest work, having been four years in research, and recounting the biography of the most important Scot and UK Civil Rights activist of the past 100 years, Kath Duncan. This book is already generating huge media interest.Queer is Ray's latest book, in the early stage of writing, telling the true story of his own survival through 70s and 80s Britain as a young gay man at a time it was illegal, with Roller-disco, drag, queer activism, clones and Thatcher's Britain, all against the back drop of Aids that decimated the gay community.Ray Barron Woolford is on Social media as Ray Woolford
Trending fromTLE
Jeremy Corbyn is the most smeared politician in history
The British Government has ruined my life
Lift The Ban petition reveals staggering cost to UK economy of asylum seekers being banned from working
Latest from TLE
Johnson suffers embarrassing Lords defeat
Set For Life Results Monday 20th January 2020

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Shivalaya (शिवालय) is a place and older name of Kushma Municipality in Parbat District in the Dhawalagiri Zone of central Nepal. At the time of the 1991 Nepal census, it had a population of 5234 people living in 1076 individual households.

Shivalaya VDC consist the headquarters of Parbat district; Kushma which is even known as Kusumpuri. It is easy to access to two giant rivers Kaligandaki which is famous for river rafting and Madi Khola which has potentiality of hydro electricity. It has even  very famous cave which is virgin to the many tourists of the world "Gupteshwor cave; that is really amazing to the visitors and it has longest distance ever to other caves of Nepal. It takes about two complete hours to visit and come out. Recently the longest and at the height point a suspensional bridge is made which has attracted many tourists.

References

External links
UN map of the municipalities of Parbat District

Populated places in Parbat District

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text: docs: http://packages.python.org/amitu-dutils/ (coming soon)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Located across the globe, our language centers for youth, adults and professionals combine the best of traditional, in-school teaching with innovative language-learning technology. We offer intensive language instruction abroad in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Chinese. Courses run from 2 to 52 weeks for students traveling independently or in escorted groups of all levels and abilities. Start planning your abroad-experience now!


text:
Police arrest mastermind of human trafficking racket
The 40-year-old was involved in smuggling Nepalis into Libya, promising them lucrative jobs in European countries
Nayak Paudel
Published at : June 15, 2019
Updated at : June 15, 2019 20:33
Police on Friday arrested a man on the charge of trafficking Nepalis to Libya.
During interrogation, police found that Lokman Rai, 40, was the mastermind of a human trafficking racket that would promise lucrative jobs to unsuspecting Nepalis in European countries. Rai's arrest followed complaints from 15 Nepalis who were rescued from Libya with support from the Nepali peacekeeping troops in the north African country and the International Organisation for Migration.
According to police, the trafficking racket had promised the 15 Nepalis jobs in Italy.
According to the anti-human trafficking bureau of Nepal Police, Rai has been involved in human trafficking for a long time and that he was arrested in the past as well.
"Rai picked his targets from labour offices. He would convince them that they would get jobs in European countries," Deputy Superintendent of Police Raj Kumar Silwal of the bureau, told the Post. "He would even fix some other people to persuade the unsuspecting job seekers to accept his offer, saying that they too had landed lucrative jobs in European countries. Ultimately, the 'targets' would land in Libya."
On Friday, Rai was arrested from the vicinity of Kathmandu Labour Office under the Department of Foreign Employment. Police then picked up his aide, who has been identified as Rahul Thapa.
"We have identified some other people involved in the racket. We have launched a manhunt," said Silwal. "Rai's interrogation is under way to identify other individuals operating trafficking rings. There are still many Nepalis in Libya who were trafficked by different groups."
In February, the Central Investigation Bureau had arrested Santosh Parajuli and Jit Kaji Gurung for trafficking Nepalis to Libya. They were caught following complaints to the Department of Foreign Employment from family members of five Nepalis held captive in Libya.
According to police, the youths were allowed to use their phones so that they could contact their families back home and demand money for their release. The captors had demanded $1,000 per person.
The anti-trafficking bureau also arrested Yogesh Sapkota, 26, from Satdobato on Thursday. Sapkota was caught following a complaint from a family that was cheated and robbed in New Delhi in February.
According to the bureau, Sapkota had assured Rajan (name changed) that he would help him fly to Canada. A group run by Sapkota then had taken Rajan to New Delhi.
After Rajan reached New Delhi, Sapkota asked him to arrange for $22,000. Rajan then asked his family for the money. Rajan's father and his maternal uncle had then reached the Indian capital with the amount.
However, when the duo had landed in Delhi, Sapkota called them to a hotel room while Rajan was taken to the Indira Gandhi International Airport, saying that he was set to fly to Canada.
But those who took Rajan to the airport disappeared. Rajan then returned to the hotel only to find his father and the maternal uncle unconscious.
"Sapkota had already fled with the money. During preliminary investigation, we found that the group also had the intention of removing the duo's organs for trade," Silwal told the Post.
According to the bureau, the perpetrators are being investigated under the Human Trafficking and Transportation (Control) Act, 2064.
The United States, in its '2018 Trafficking in Persons Report', places Nepal in Tier 2. According to the report, the countries belonging to Tier 2 have governments that do not fully meet the minimum standards of Trafficking Victims Protection Act. The law provides tools to combat trafficking in persons both worldwide and domestically.
According to experts, cases of human trafficking are rampant in Nepal because the victims either are cheated by traffickers or are ready to be trafficked on the pretext of lucrative jobs.
"Many people do not cross-verify before they accept brokers' offer and get easily duped. Later, they are taken to some countries illegally and are left in the lurch," Ganesh Gurung, a labour and migration expert, told the Post.
"Even when there have been so many human trafficking cases in the country where people are found confronting various problems, many people still choose to go to European countries illegally in the hope of good jobs," said Gurung.
Nayak Paudel is a crime reporter for The Kathmandu Post. Since joining the Post in 2018, he has also written on health issues.
Dealy in final verdict from top court makes it difficult for tax office to recover Sumargi's unpaid taxes
After widespread criticism, Kathmandu Metropolitan City revises smart parking fees in New Road
Teachers and officials of prison schools call for better study environment in jails
Kantipur Television marks 16th anniversary
Riverside squatters in Thapathali spend sleepless nights
Most Read from Valley
Why are floods in Kathmandu getting severe each year?
"God is angry because this is not done": Bungamati residents yearn for the rebuilding of iconic temple
UNESCO withdraws from reconstruction of two temples in Basantpur area
Tribhuvan University officials embroiled in yet another power abuse scandal
With few options for education and employment, deaf community remains limited to service jobs and skilled work
What does Huawei ban mean for Nepali users?
After generations as barbers and pedicurists, this Newar community is beginning to move on
From a humble start to a global breakthrough, Sompal Kami's career gathers momentum
Everything you need to know about the Clean Feed Policy
E-PAPER | July 17, 2019
Read ePaper Online


Martin Wickramasinghe (singhalesisch Mārṭin Vikramasiṃha; * 29. Mai 1890 in Koggala, Sri Lanka; † 23. Juli 1976 in Bandarawela, Sri Lanka) war ein singhalesischer Schriftsteller und Literaturkritiker. Er gilt als der Begründer der modernen singhalesischen Prosa.
Martin Wickramasinghe was born on the 29th of May in the year 1890 in the Southern village of Koggala, bounded on one side by the reef – fringed sea, and on the other by the large .... 1976, -, Publishes a collection of essays Manawa Vidyawa ha Sinhala Sanskruthiya (Sinhalese Culture : Anthropological Perceptions).
Extraterrestrial life, also called alien life (or, if it is a sentient or relatively complex essay of martin wickramasinghe individual, an "extraterrestrial" book movie comparison essay or "alien"), is life that does not. As one who is neither widely nor deeply read in Sinhala.


Clean Water Services has applied for coverage under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System General 1200-C Permit for construction stormwater discharges for the Jackson Bottom Phase 2 Project. DEQ proposes to assign the applicant permit coverage based on the application documents.
The deadline to submit written comments for this proposed project is September 1, 2017.


The selection of resources and opportunities to build capacity in schools for a sustainable approach to digital citizenship and digital wellbeing is based on the belief that e-safety is more than just the use of security software, filters and passwords or the issue of cyberbullying, but encompasses the actual ethics of being online and respect for others. Ideally, digital citizens think critically, behave safely and participate responsibly.
It provides opportunities for educators to develop deeper understandings and insights into the digital lives of their students, the opportunities to embed digital citizenship concepts explicitly into learning and teaching programs, the value of connecting with families in a true partnership and to meet legal obligations in relation to policies, practices and protocols.
Educators: Primary-Elementary, Middle School, Senior Secondary-High School.
*This workshop can be customized to be a full or half day; Elementary/Primary, Middle or Secondary/High School.


text:
In Trump's America, racism on gay dating apps is getting worse
Netflix's 'Secret Obsession' isn't just terrible—it's boring as hell
Eddie Strait— July 18
The new Netflix original doesn't even try.
Netflix's 'Secret Obsession' isn't just terrible—it's boring as hell 2 Years Ago
Instagram expands experiment of hiding likes to 6 more countries 2 Years Ago
Nico Lang—
Photo via amenic181/Shutterstock (Licensed)
Slurs, threats, and rejection are driving many people of color to retreat further into romantic defeat and isolation.
Ross Hammond hadn't received a message in weeks.
A 30-year-old gay man who lives in New York, he keeps a folder filled with various dating apps on his phone—including Grindr, Scruff, and Tinder. Since moving to Hell's Kitchen two months ago, he says he can "count on one hand" the number of messages he's gotten from men in the popular Manhattan gayborhood.
Hammond, a bearded aspiring musician with an endearing nervous energy, decides to engage in a little experiment over coffee in a Harlem café: He changes his profile picture to a male friend's photo. The friend is cute and clean-cut, but most importantly, he's white. Hammond gets 50 messages in less than a half hour.
Hammond isn't surprised. He's pretty used to this. His current profile, in which users are asked to describe themselves, attests to the frustration he experiences as a gay man of color navigating the world of online dating. "It doesn't matter what I write in my profile," Hammond says. "You're not going to read it because you're automatically going to make assumptions about me based on my race."
Recently, someone sent Hammond a message that has stuck with him. "You fucking chinks are the reason why there's so much racism in the gay community," it read.
Hammond's experience is a sadly common one in online dating spaces. Christian Rudder, the founder of OkCupid, told NPR back in 2014 that there's a "bias" across platforms against black and Asian users. "Every kind of way you can measure their success on a site—how people rate them, how often they reply to their messages, how many messages they get—that's all reduced," he claimed at the time. A year after Rudder's comments, researchers in Australia polled 2,000 gay and bisexual men, finding that 70 percent felt that excluding a sexual partner based on their ethnicity wasn't racist. These respondents believed that having disclaimers on your profile like "No Blacks, No Asians" was just stating a preference.
Photo via Douchebags of Grindr
The topic of sexual racism has become a contentious one in the gay community in recent years, as many queer and bisexual men rely on their phones in the way they once did their local bar. And if these spaces are operating as the new gay club, that leaves certain types of people in these online communities out in the cold, waiting for their chance to finally be let in.
As gay men of color explain, it's can be difficult to find your place in a community where you're too often shut out by people who believe that exclusion is harmless—and even natural.
The perils of the profile pic
To hear Cesar Bojorquez and Evan Adams' stories side by side, it's startling that they have so much in common. Although users frequently use hookup apps to meet guys searching for some after-work delight, both of them first logged on looking for friends.
Newly out of the closet, Bojorquez and Adams knew that signing up for apps like Jack'd and Growlr was how you meet people, especially when you aren't old enough to go to the bar. When they didn't receive any replies from other users, neither of them felt that this was unusual. Adams, who is black, thought it was "normal" to be signed in for weeks at a time and not get a message.
"It took a toll on my self-esteem," Adams says. "I wondered, 'Why not me?'"
"I thought that was the culture," Bojorquez adds. "But when I talked to my white friends about it, it was if they lived in a completely different world. Their profiles are flooded with hundreds of different messages and filled with conversations with all different kinds of people. My friends of color, though, had the same experience as me: You rarely get a message and rarely does someone respond to yours."
Bojorquez, who says that he gets "very few" messages on dating platforms, claims that it "took a little while" to understand why people weren't responding to him. A 28-year-old makeup artist, Bojorquez is not only Latino but effeminate. A self-described "casual punk," he performs drag in Salt Lake City, the heart of Mormon country. His profile photo on Facebook is a picture of him in a red wig that's like The Little Mermaid's Ariel meets seapunk—complete with a metal bridge piercing right between his eyes. He knows that his brand of fabulousness isn't what a lot of guys are looking for, but Bojorquez had to learn that lesson the hard way.
At first, Bojorquez didn't have a photo of himself on his profile. He found he got more responses when he left his photo blank. One day Bojorquez was chatting up a cute guy who also liked Star Trek, and they talked about what they'd been watching on Netflix. They were really hitting it off—that is, until the man asked for a face pic. Bojorquez sent over a picture of himself hanging out with friends at a party—a white infinity scarf pulled over his neck to protect from the winter cold and hair up in a topknot. His conversation partner was no longer interested.
"The fact that I was Latino just changed his mind completely," says Bojorquez. He adds that he's even been called a "wetback" and an "illegal immigrant" by guys online.
"Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing this right," claims Adams, a 24-year-old art director who lives in Los Angeles. "I see my friends who are always with new people or going on dates. It makes me feel left out and isolated knowing that it's not as easy for me to navigate the gay scene. I've struggled with not feeling attractive enough because there are such strict beauty standards in the gay community around what's considered attractive. You have to fit into that box."
The biases we'll reveal in private
For gay men who were the first generation to grow up with a home computer, applications like Grindr and Scruff are an outgrowth of an earlier technology: the chatroom. Services like AOL, as well queer-specific platforms like Gay.com and XY, were like stepping into a cocktail party that was already happening. By joining in the conversation the room was having, users could identify guys they might like to get to know a little better and pair off.
However, today's gay digital spaces eliminate the communal in favor of a more personal form of conversation. Platforms like Grindr and Scruff are commonly known as geosocial networking apps. By scrolling through a grid of available men in your area, guys who use the app can select profiles that interest them and message them directly. In order to match users with others who share their interests—sexual or otherwise—these applications pinpoint your location to show you other users who are nearby.
Grindr, which launched in 2009, was the first peer-to-peer app for gay men to achieve mainstream popularity. Scruff, Growlr, and Jack'd were founded the year after. Grindr users are a catch-all of different types, while Scruff and Growlr tend to a demographic of guys with beards, what one might reductively call "bears," "cubs," and "otters." Jack'd users are primarily people of color, a phenomenon that was originally an accident. These users have flocked to Jack'd from other apps where they feel less included.
Sexual racism is not inherent or exclusive to online spaces, but what makes the kind of discrimination that men experience on peer-to-peer apps unique is that unlike chat rooms, users have a reasonable expectation that what they share is private. That means that users are more likely to express exclusionary preferences around race than they would in public. Although statements like "No Chocolate, No Rice" and "Whites Only" are prevalent in online dating spaces, it's less common to experience that kind of overt racism when you're picking up a guy at a gay bar. Aaron Reese, a 29-year-old New Yorker, can't log on a dating app without people telling him that they're "not into black guys," but he's only had that said to him in real life once.
Dr. Jason Orne, an assistant professor of sociology at Drexel University, believes there's a reason for the gap between what gay men of color experience online and the treatment they encounter in physical space. It's called "social desirability bias."
"If I know that people are observing me or that my answers are being read, I'm going to try to act in a way that makes me look like a better person," claims Dr. Orne, who is also the author of the 2016 book Boystown: Sex and Community in Chicago. "If I were to walk out on the street in front of other people and yell these kinds of things, that would not be socially acceptable. But when I'm alone and not in the presence of other people, the social control created by observation would break down."
Brandon Robinson, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, adds that "disinhibition effect" plays a factor. Because there's a physical barrier between users and the people they interact with—represented by the screen of your iPhone or Android device—it invites a lack of empathy for those with whom one is engaging.
"If I don't know who you are and I don't have to physically see your reaction to what I'm saying, I don't feel as bad as I would in offline spaces," he says.
The Trump effect
Jesus Smith, a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas A&M, claims that in his research, he's found a "dramatic decrease" in the number of profiles listing statements like "No Blacks, No Asians" in recent years. Although they are still common, there are fewer of them.
Smith, who came to this conclusion following a random selection of 630 profiles on Adam4Adam, says that the reason for this isn't that gay and bisexual men have become more enlightened. It's that websites like Sexual Racism Sux and Douchebags of Grindr have been calling out discriminatory behavior on hookup apps, which penetrates the veil of privacy.
"If you perceive that a lot of people are watching you online or are viewing your profile, you might adjust how you express your preferences," Smith says.
Although Smith has found that many users have switched to a "coded" language in recent years that expresses racialized preferences through subtext (e.g., "I'm into rugby-type guys" or "My dream man looks like a Kennedy"), these incidents are no less prevalent. Kyle Turner, a 23-year-old film critic in Brooklyn, says men frequently assume that he's submissive or a bottom just because he's Chinese. One time a guy repeatedly told Turner how much he loved anime and K-Pop, and other men that message him pointedly ask where he's from.
"I'll say I'm from Connecticut," Turner says. "That's the answer you're going to get."
Although Turner claims that the majority of the negative experiences he has amount to microaggressions—or seemingly harmless statements that belie reductive assumptions based on race—Eliel Cruz argues that the comments he receives have only gotten worse in recent years. Cruz, a 26-year-old writer and activist, first logged onto hookup apps when he was a student at a Seventh-day Adventist college in Michigan. He says people rarely talked to him, and when he would reach out to say hello, hoping to make a new friend, users would say things like, "I'm just not interested in Mexicans." Cruz is Puerto Rican.
But since Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the president in October 2015, Cruz says that he's been frequently referred to as a "beaner" and a "spic," especially when he's traveling in the South for work. The worst comment, though, that he's ever gotten was when another user told Cruz that he "wanted to fuck me before Donald Trump deported me."
"When I first came out, I thought that the gay community would be welcoming and open to a new queer baby like me," Cruz says, "but I've since realized that it wouldn't be as accepting of me as I hoped."
The struggle for inclusivity
As researchers explain, these apps don't create racism. They merely provide a conduit to express the biases users might normally keep to themselves. But how do apps address the discriminatory attitudes expressed on their apps?
Each platform takes a slightly different approach.
Jack Harrison-Quintana, the director of Grindr for Equality, encourages users to report racist or abusive comments directed at them through the "Report" function on the app, which is located at the "upper right-hand corner on the offending profile." Alon Rivel, director of Global Marketing for Online Buddies, the parent company that oversees Jack'd, says that the platform employs a 24-hour customer service team to monitor complaints. Any of the app's users can call in and talk to a member of the Jack'd support staff at any time.
But Harrison-Quintana claims that "education is more powerful and effective than censorship." That's why Grindr, which takes a relatively hands-off approach to moderation, hopes to build a culture of inclusion through geo-targeting its users. Grindr for Equality, an initiative launched in 2012 to promote "justice and safety" around the globe, works with groups like the National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC) to inform queer men of color about issues that affect them—including getting tested for STIs. Although African-Americans make up around 12 percent of the population, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that this population comprises 45 percent of new HIV diagnoses. This information is essential.
But Sean Howell, the executive director of Hornet, says that his app has chosen to "somewhat limit freedom of speech" in order to build mutual respect. Howell launched the platform, which is most popular in Asia, in 2012 to give gay men around the globe a place "where you feel like you're part of a community."
"Nothing negative, especially around race, is allowed," Howell says. "We're not Reddit."
If gay and bisexual men of color often feel excluded in digital spaces, Hornet's unique approach to making marginalized communities feel welcome was to build affinity groups on the app. These groups allow people of color—whether black, Asian, or Latino—to build a positive community around race that they might lack elsewhere in their lives. For users in India, the app has 17 different trans-specific categories, and the developers have even considered adding groups like "social justice activists," "communists," and "radical fairy queers."
Rivel claims that Jack'd has sought to reach out to communities of color through its marketing campaigns, which represent a diversity of ethnicities and types of bodies. He says it was important for the company not to just feature the "standard skinny, pretty white boy" but a variety of identities. According to Rivel, the company's ads feature "people with a lot of tattoos," "Asian guys," "alternative folks," and "people who look different."
"There are a lot of faces to who Jack'd is," Rivel says. "It's not just one standard of beauty."
Apps can do better
If Hornet, Grindr, and Jack'd have taken steps toward creating digital spaces where users can feel safe and comfortable, Robinson feels that there's more that gay dating apps can do to combat sexual racism on their platforms. He points to the fact that most services allow users to select what they're looking for in terms of race and exclude anyone who doesn't fit that definition. When users search for guys in their area, they have the ability to automatically eliminate anyone outside of their preferred bubble of ethnicity.
"Gay men use these filtering systems to cleanse certain bodies from their spaces," Robinson claims. "Putting this filtering system in there normalizes people's racial desires—but then it also furthers those desires. If I put on Adam4Adam that I only want to see white people, but then every time I log on Adam4Adam all I see is white people, that's just going to further my desire for white people. When it's so normal on these sites, people don't feel bad doing it."
By eliminating these filtering systems, Robinson believes that people can learn to expand what they're looking for and begin to find other types of people attractive. Although users who say that their racially exclusive desires are just a "preference" may believe that those desires are innate and hardwired into them, they're not. These so-called preferences, as Robinson explains, are actually determined and informed by the culture to which one is exposed, whether that's a gay community that centers white masculinity or a media that privileges certain kinds of beauty. Science has actually shown our tastes are "malleable and fluid."
"If you're not filtering out bodies of color, you might eventually find some people you find attractive," says Robinson, who refers to this concept as the "contact hypothesis." "If you are around people of color, you might be more willing to be friends with them or date them."
Combating cultural notions about who is viewed as desirable is crucial because those myths are extremely damaging for all of those who are left out of a very narrow definition of beauty. Cruz says that for a long time, he would straighten the curls out of his hair and wouldn't refer to himself as "Latino" on dating profiles in order to pass as white. Bojorquez says that he has learned to be "cautious" when interacting with other gay men because he's afraid of being ignored "because of [his] skin color." Hammond adds that he has "given up" on being viewed as sexy by other men.
"I'm not acknowledged as a human," Hammond says. "If no one is going to like me because of institutional and structural racism, I'm going to have to figure out some other way for people to value me."
All of us log onto the internet hoping to be "liked" or seen. But if nobody's looking, it just makes you feel more invisible.
Editor's note: This article has been updated for clarity.
Nico Lang is an essayist, movie critic, and reporter who specializes in the intersection of politics and LGBTQ issues. His work has been featured in Rolling Stone, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, Jezebel, Esquire, and BuzzFeed, among other notable publications.
Dating Apps Grindr Lgbt Lgbtq LGBTQ Rights Race Racism


text:
Megacollybia è un genere di funghi basidiomiceti della famiglia Tricholomataceae.

Specie di Megacollybia
La specie tipo è Megacollybia platyphylla (Pers.) Kotl. & Pouzar (1972). Altra specie è la Megacollybia rodmani (Quél.).

Bibliografia
Megacollybia Kotl. & Pouzar, Česká Mykol. 26: 220 (1972).

Altri progetti

Tricholomataceae


Trails for All, formed with help from a state grant, is developing a master plan for maintaining, promoting and enhancing opportunities for alternative transportation and recreation in Custer County. To that end, the group will host a public forum from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 30, at All Aboard Westcliffe on Rosita Street in Westcliffe.
Participants will be invited to sketch out their ideas on a half-dozen large maps spread around the room. There will be a map for trails serving foot traffic, another for bicycling (both off-highway and highway-shoulder routes), one for horse transportation, one for ATV and snowmobile routes, and one for horse-and-buggy routes.
Members of the Trails for All steering committee – who represent others interested in hiking, biking, horse and horse-drawn transportation, and off-highway vehicle use – will share their compiled priorities, hear and see ideas from participants in the workshop. Following the workshop, they will compile the public input, revise the draft trails plan accordingly and begin seeking funds to realize the plan's goals.
Trails for All has its roots in an assistance grant obtained in 2016 from the Colorado State Office of Economic Development and International Trade. In reviewing the state of trails in Custer County, the group turned to a 2004 Trails Master Plan drafted by a committee of local volunteers. The 2004 plan led to a grant to build the Park-to-Park soft-surface trail that runs along the southern edge of Silver Cliff and Westcliffe. But it includes other goals for trails creation and maintenance.
Trails for All has used that 2004 plan as a starting point for its new draft plan. The goals of the plans are similar, but Trails for All hopes that by establishing its organization and partnering with others, we can realize a more robust set of offerings to better serve both visitors and residents of Custer County. Elsewhere in Colorado, such trails organizations have been key to developing economies based on access to safe, enjoyable, healthy off-highway transportation.