https://www.bungie.net/en/Forums/Post/263362964?sort=0&page=0

Groups are getting shut down this month. From Duards himself;

Within the past six months, out of the 5.1-million Groups that have been created, only 65 were active with at least one post in them. Breaking that down further, only 16 were active in the past month, 10 of those had over 10 posts in them, and only 3 broke over 100 posts.

This decision did not come lightly, and we’ve been postponing it for several years. But with our website’s future hosting multiple IPs, we must upgrade and begin the process of shutting down older features that no longer see usage.

So if for some godforsaken reason you like hoarding and backing up conversations, now might be a good time...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-54761824

Sir Sean Connery has died at the age of 90, his family has said.
Sir Sean died peacefully in his sleep, while in the Bahamas, having been "unwell for some time", his son said.

Jason Connery said his father "had many of his family who could be in the Bahamas around him" when he died overnight in Nassau.

He said: "We are all working at understanding this huge event as it only happened so recently, even though my dad has been unwell for some time.

"A sad day for all who knew and loved my dad and a sad loss for all people around the world who enjoyed the wonderful gift he had as an actor."

So we have an Arts thread and the occasional game screenshots thread, so what about a "life screenshot" thread? Show off your photographic and film masterpieces here, talk about the equipment you use or techniques you do physically or digitally to achieve your pictures, and boast if you won some competition or got your photos or videos featured somewhere.

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[Video] How to develop your own B&W Film (Basic)
[Document] How to develop Colour Film (Advanced)
[Wiki] Analog Camera Reviews by people who actually use them
[Website] DPReview - News, Reviews, and Tips on Digital Photography

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Highlight your best photos, or just dump albums of them and I'll link them here, video channels also. I'll sort 'em better when they start piling up.

[Imgur album] Mine - 35mm Black and White, and Colour.
[In-Thread] Vien's Photos
[In-Thread] Dio Nolos'/Solonoid's Photos
[In-Thread] MarKhan's Photos
[In-Thread] Mike's Photos
[In-Thread] Jonos' Photos

[Last Updated - 28 March, 2018]

Unless you've been absent since April, this has been going around newsfeeds and the internet at large that the Cassini spaceprobe (as part of the Cassini-Huygens probes) is soon to end it's mission in a blaze of glory by hitting Saturn's upper atmosphere at ~110,000km/h (or ~120,000km relative to Saturn's centre). It was launched in 1997 and completed it's original mission objectives by 2008, and has since been on two extended missions since that lasted until about now. Cassini's Grand Finale mission began in April 26th this year, when its orbit around Saturn took it between the gas giant and the rings, making it smaller and more elliptical. That is, until it takes its 22nd and final orbit, its periapsis will take it into the atmosphere, causing it to tumble and burn up.

A brief overview of the Cassini-Huygens mission:

(Source: Science Overview)

Before Cassini, we had only brief glimpses of the discoveries awaiting us at Saturn. Pioneer 11 and Voyagers 1 and 2 conducted flybys decades ago, taking pictures, measurements and observations as they zoomed past. These missions shed new light on Saturn’s complicated ring system, discovered new moons and made the first measurements of Saturn’s magnetosphere. But these quick encounters didn’t allow time for more extensive scientific research.

Cassini changed all that. It began the first in-depth, up-close study of Saturn and its system of rings and moons in 2004. It became the first spacecraft to orbit Saturn, beginning a mission that yielded troves of new insights over more than a decade. The Saturnian system proved to be rich ground for exploration and discoveries, and Cassini's science findings changed the course of future planetary exploration.

"We're looking at a string of remarkable discoveries -- about Saturn's magnificent rings, its amazing moons, its dynamic magnetosphere and Titan's surface and atmosphere," said Linda Spilker, Cassini's project scientist. "Some of the mission highlights so far include discovering that Titan has Earth-like processes and that the small moon Enceladus has a hot-spot at its southern pole, plus jets on the surface that spew out ice crystals, and liquid water beneath its surface."

 
Studying Saturn’s Many Moons
Some of the most surprising scientific findings have come from encounters with Saturn’s fascinating, dynamic moons. Cassini's observations of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, have given scientists a glimpse of what Earth might have been like before life evolved. They now believe Titan possesses many parallels to Earth, including lakes, rivers, channels, dunes, rain, clouds, mountains and possibly volcanoes.

The data from the Cassini spacecraft and the European Space Agency's Huygens probe, which plunged through Titan's dense, smoggy atmosphere to land on its surface in 2005, have generated hundreds of scientific articles and been the subject of special issues of the world’s most important scientific journals.

Enceladus, too, proved to be a rich source of discovery. The spray of icy particles from the surface jets forms a towering plume three times taller than the width of Enceladus itself. Cassini confirmed that the plume feeds particles into Saturn's most expansive ring, the E ring. The spacecraft has come as close as 15 miles (25 kilometers) from the moon's icy surface during its investigation, revealing the presence of a global subsurface ocean that might have conditions suitable for life.


Extending the Mission
The Cassini mission has seen two mission extensions, allowing for more flybys, investigations and measurements, over a longer span of time. When its initial four-year tour of the Saturn system was complete in 2008, the Cassini-Huygens saga had brought a new dimension of understanding to the complex and diverse Saturn system.

The two-year Cassini Equinox Mission brought continued excitement. During that first extended mission, the spacecraft made 60 additional orbits of Saturn, 26 flybys of Titan, seven of Enceladus, and one each of Dione, Rhea and Helene. The Equinox mission allowed for observations of Saturn's rings as the sun lit them edge-on, revealing a host of never-before-seen insights into the rings' structure.

Since 2010, the spacecraft has conducted a second, seven-year-long, extended mission called the Cassini Solstice Mission. This final mission will conclude with a phase known as The Grand Finale -- 22 deep dives between Saturn's cloud tops and innermost ring before it plunges into the giant planet's atmosphere.

As of now, it's <700,000 km/<400,000 mi from Saturn, travelling at ~28,700 kmph/~17,800 mph relative to Saturn, and will cross the rings of Saturn for the final time in 14 hours and 20 minutes.

Since the original video release in April I've been using stills of the video above for my desktop, and was awaiting some form of NASA livestream to "watch" it - sure there'd be nothing more than a diagram of it's trajectory until it blipped off the proverbial radar and stopped transmitting data, but it was something at least. However, plans got in the way and now it's unlikely I'll be keeping up to date until a few weeks later. So I thought hey, why not make a thread on the thing.

There's not really a point of discussion here, so I'll leave you with this from the FAQ;

FAQ
Was it always planned that Cassini would end its mission by plunging into Saturn, or did this decision come about recently?

The preferred end-of-mission plan for Cassini has always been to safely dispose of the spacecraft in the upper atmosphere of Saturn. The exact “when” and “how” of the mission’s conclusion has evolved over the years as the scientifically productive mission has been granted three extensions by NASA. The current “Grand Finale” scenario – to send the spacecraft on a series of orbits between the planet and its rings -- has been part of the mission plan since 2010 and was developed in detail over the past four years.

Could microbes really have survived onboard Cassini for this long in space? Is this truly a concern that influenced the decision to deorbit into Saturn?

Based upon exposure experiments on the Space Station, it is known that some microbes and microbial spores from Earth are able to survive many years in the space environment– even with no air or water, and minimal protection from radiation.  Therefore, NASA has chosen to dispose of the spacecraft in Saturn’s atmosphere in order to avoid the possibility that viable microbes from Cassini could potentially contaminate Saturn’s moons at some time in the future.

Why is it safe to dispose of a spacecraft by burning it up in Saturn’s atmosphere? Are we polluting Saturn? What about the possibility of life there?

Disposing of Cassini in Saturn’s atmosphere is safe. The spacecraft will enter Saturn’s atmosphere at high speed and will burn up like a meteor. Any spacecraft material that survives atmospheric entry, potentially including its radioisotope fuel, will sink deep into the planet where it will melt and become completely diluted as it mixes with the hot, high-pressure atmosphere of the giant planet. Saturn’s atmosphere does not have conditions that would be favorable to life as we know it, according to evaluations by the Committee on Space Research of the International Council for Science.

With the "Grand Finale" being planned to prevent the risk of microbial contamination from Earth to potential moons orbiting Saturn, do you think we should have more regulations on space-waste like this? Even missions like the rovers on Mars with what knowledge we have today have that risk we may have to consider in future, whereas missions like Rosetta on the 67P Comet don't matter if you slam a probe into it.

So in my attempts at procrastination I came across this little clip about Heroin in Huntingdon, and how they're combating it.

[Warning, footage of a guy OD'ing at one point, though thankfully he recovers]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-39343289/the-heroin-ravaged-city-fighting-back

Now the lawsuits began sometime in January this year, so this isn't "new" news, however it's interesting how they're tackling it. Similar stories were heard coming out of other towns in West Virginia afterwards. As quoted by the Mayor of Huntingdon;

Rather than going to the taxpayers of the community and saying 'We need to raise your taxes to fight this epidemic', we need to go to those who are complicit in causing the epidemic.

The citizens in our city, our region and our state are living a nightmare that was avoidable.Profits have been pocketed while our community has been left with the fallout and stigma of the opioid epidemic.

A majority of heroin/opiate abusers started out just taking prescribed pain relief medications for injuries, which then went to taking larger doses, bribing for forged prescriptions, and some eventually moved on to straight-up heroin. Rather than only targeting the dealers and junkies, the city (and others) have decided to take on the companies that are shipping the drugs that are being abused and oil up the slopes in the first place. Judging by what facts the Mayor shoots out, I'm inclined to agree with him:
- Huntingdon is a county of <50,000 people
-The County (Huntingdon, Pennsylvania) is just around ~96,000
- In an (undisclosed) 5-year timeframe, 40 million doses of opiates were legally distributed (and assumedly, prescribed) in the County.


Then in the article linked above, there's some other distressing facts were released from the neighbouring state;

Current West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey filed a lawsuit against San Francisco-based McKesson Corp. a year ago, saying at the time that an investigation by his office found that McKesson delivered about 99.5 million doses of hydrocodone and oxycodone to West Virginia between 2007 and 2012.

...

A medical practitioner in Barboursville admitted in federal court that he wrote a fraudulent prescription to illegally obtain more than 100 oxycodone pills from an employee.

Where those went exactly, you can only guess. But then it raises several difficult questions, most of which will have to be decided in the courts.

Is "Big Pharma" primarily at fault for distributing these pain relief medications and turning over massive profits without raising questions as to why such large orders are being requested, or is it the shady practitioners, GP's, pharmacists and what-have-you who are truly at fault for forging prescriptions for large doses for their "patients", or is the population under such addictions the main cause for such over-indulgence and abuse of the drugs available in the system in the first place?

I hope the news reports on the outcome of this, I want to see what happens and if the problem is ever truly resolved. Personally I think the corrupt practitioners and distribution companies are at fault for this. Not to reduce the responsibility of the people abusing the drugs themselves, but the system for acquiring such drugs so readily is what has started the problem in the first place which has since snowballed into something out of proportion and made those dose distributions so high.

Came up on my feed today through some things:


So a little context:
-Jo Cox, Labour MP in the UK, gets murdered in a politically motivated attack on the eve of the Brexit vote by Thomas Mair.
-(Apparently) These pictures show (some of) his collection of books at home, every single one on the bookshelf relating to the history of Nazi Germany and specific aspects (The SS, SA, the role of Goering, etc, etc).
-One other interesting feature on his bookshelf is a bust of the Reichsadler on the top, obviously related to Nazi Germany.

So here's my question - Does owning certain controversial literature and memorabilia (for a non-violent use) show a person's political beliefs, and if so, could it be further used to estimate how far they believe in the cause (i.e. to go as far as killing someone in the name of it)?

This isn't about whether he's guilty or not in the crime (that much is obvious), but rather does possession of this material equate to foreshadowing this sequence of events? In other words, because Thomas Mair owned these books, mounted that Reichsadler on his bookshelf, does that show his future intent to go out and murder someone for those reasons and that the murder was predictable?

I'll put my thoughts on the matter below in a few hours, so have fun talking about it below. I can't exactly enforce a serious discussion on it, but it would be appreciated.

Also:
InB4TwitterIsATerriblePlatformForDebates

(This should redirect you to the right region's store)

This applies to Current-Gens, so it's also on the Xbox1 (marketplace?). Oh, and on PC.

So, if you've missed any during the weeks leading up to the BF1 Beta when they were free every week, here's your final chance now to claim them all at once. Premium edition, and the game itself still cost money.

So I've set up my Anarchy titlebar and avatar , but for some reason my standard avatar overrides it (And yes, the Anarchy Killswitch is unchecked, so it should be on):

Flood (Standard Avatar/Titlebar combo)


Anarchy (Standard Avatar, Anarchy Titlebar)


When it should have this as the avatar:

This keeps cropping up recently amongst friends, so I thought I'd share. For context, I live in a Welsh village in the middle of nowhere, where old Engish retirees basically go to die, so this is a sorta  big deal.
Vietnamese "Gardener" jailed after cannabis farm valued at £230K found in St. Dogs.

So yeah, any weird or crazy shit pop in the news recently from wherever you live? The weirder, the better.

(At least, there's no mention for Wales. Scotland is devolved enough to be unaffected by this vote)
The Independent

This also applies to English students studying in the next acedemic year rather than just new students, and English Students in Wales (and I assume Scotland), despite the fact that Welsh MP's couldn't vote on the matter because of some "English votes for English things" legislation: Cardiff SU's stance on the matter.

So Brits, specifically English, how much debt personally have you got/will have for going to University? Record to beat is £52,000 from my roommate studying History here.

Appreciated also would be how US students handle the costs of their tuition at home, as IIRC you don't have a student finance system to soften the blow.

Courtesy of Booger. It also has a mobile-friendly site!

Good news, everyone! Plug.DJ has returned, complete with your old accounts, playlists and music! Even the old room ran by TBlocks is still here.*

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I'm also compiling user's rooms, both in hopes of saving thread spam (Desty...) and showing what rooms are populated apart from the "Official" ones. You are at the whim of the room's Admins who may or may not want you there for whatever reason and will likely be populated with people outside Sep7, if you're a tad xenophobic about that sorta thing.

Extra rooms
Desty's room - https://plug.dj/aoki

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And finally on a related note, this should still work for plug.DJ to migrate playlists to Dubtrack;

"I lost my playlists and all my music on PlugDJ! I can't be arsed to find them all again and put them on Dubtrack! ;_;". Well, someone was nice enough to make a step-by-step guide to do all that whilst saving you time! Follow the instructions here, and away you go! Should take 5-10 minutes.

Recently browsing this site, there's this crappy betting thing that keeps downloading onto my phone:



Everytime I've deleted it, it comes back later and only from Sep7. I've always had it "ask before downloading" on, scanned for viruses (came back clean), installed adblocker, and it keeps happening. If it's not here that's causing it then I haven't a clue how it got on my phone.

FYI: Northern Ireland's Peace lines

Now I can't say I know a lot about the troubles that happened in Northern Ireland, I only know the general stuff, but why are these "peace walls" possibility the best example of irony ever?

Yesterday I went along Shankill road(Protestants) and Falls road (Catholics) to look at the murals, but when we  (4 foreign housemates and I) went to the peacewall in between to look at the murals there and we were getting odd stares, and one driver was annoyed enough to shout obscenities as he passed by.

That place had a general uneasiness about it, which was weird considering the other murals even have a tourist route through them all and are advertised around pretty openly. Sure, the troubles are in the back of everyone's mind there 20 years ago, but I thought it would have neen more progressive since then. Kiyo/Magos, other northerners and anyone with a tad more experience there than I would be nice to explain why, or just generally talk about it.

Also, not sure if Serious so I've plonked it here, but I would appreciate a more serious discussion here than regular Flood.

The results are supposed to be out around now, so I'll update OP when the proper results come in, but so far it appears a large percentage of votes are favored...in favor... of legalising same-sex marriage, according to The BBC.

EDIT: With a 62% majority, same sex marriage in Ireland has passed!! (1.2 million for, 730,000 against) It should be updated on the BBC link above, but I'll get around to it once I'm on my laptop.

Important bits below:

More than 3.2m people were asked whether they wanted to amend the country's constitution to allow gay and lesbian couples to marry.The referendum was being held 22 years after homosexual acts were decriminalised in Ireland.

Government ministers have said they believe it will pass, while prominent "no" campaigners have conceded defeat.
If the change is approved, the Republic of Ireland would become the first country to legalise same-sex marriage through a popular vote.

What a 'Yes' vote would mean

The Republic of Ireland has a written constitution which can only be changed by referendum. If the proposal is passed, a marriage between two people of the same sex would have the same status under the Irish constitution as a marriage between a man and a woman. They would be recognised as a family and be entitled to the constitutional protection for families.Civil partnerships for same-sex couples have been legal in Ireland since 2010, giving couples legal protection which could be changed by the government.However, if the vote is passed, married gay people would have a constitutional standing that could only be removed by another popular vote.

The referendum vote did spawn a good few laughs on the internet though, given by Dubliner Martin Duffy:

And what did the Westboro Bastard Church think on the likely result?

The only thing that is a bit disheartening is that the Churches will still have a choice on whether or not to wed same-sex couples, which Ireland being a largely Catholic country isn't just going to accept that. Yeah yeah whatever "Freedom of businesses/instutions to do what they want" and all that, but with 84% describing themselves as Catholic, there's bound to be a few gay Irish Catholics still with a problem of getting a "proper marriage", which sucks.

What is more interesting is how fast this has gone. Only 2 years before I was born was acts of homosexuality legally allowed, and only 5 years ago were civil partnerships instated. Compared to many countries, we've certainly picked up the pace and adapted to changing social/sexual acceptance of the world.

It's Wednesday or Tuesday, I think. Get the hell in here because....because.
https://plug.dj/TheOtherSep7OneThatIsInFactChillMusicLounge