After weeks of discovering new layers and playstyles, I have no idea how to summarise Rise of the White Sun, except perhaps "It's 1920s China! Good luck!" Playable factions include major political blocs, conventional military behemoths, petty warlords, peasant uprisings, foreign stooges, and multiple communist cells (particularly in the recent DLC). There's even a police chief, and my inevitable favourite, the angry mountain lady who cares for none of that, and only wants to raid everyone's cattle.

This is an absurdly rich and complex grand strategy wargame. But where that usually means an unmanageable deposit, White Sun's greatest design strength is fitting its possibilities into a framework where they feel comprehensible, and remain manageable at any scale.

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Amid a consumer boycott of their Xbox business, Microsoft are apparently ending the Israeli military's access to certain Azure cloud and generative AI technologies used to surveil Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. As reported by the Guardian, one of the publications who originally exposed the surveillance project, the company told Israeli officials last week that spy agency Unit 8200 had violated Microsoft's terms of service by storing records of civilian phone calls and other data on Azure servers.

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