New graphic settings, better lighting, npc villages, hunger bar, exp, sprinting, critical hits, and ENDERMEN.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Windows 8 offers native ISO mounting support
Windows 8 offers native ISO mounting support:
Microsoft has a new post up on its Building Windows 8 blog. This time, the company is detailing the operating system's native support for ISO files. Double-clicking on an ISO will automatically mount it using a virtual optical drive. To kill the virtual drive, simply eject the virtual disc.
In addition to mounting ISO files, Windows 8 will perform a similar trick with the Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) files used by virtual machines. The approach here is almost identical: double-click ...
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Friday, August 26, 2011
Razer intros ultra-slim gaming notebook
Razer intros ultra-slim gaming notebook:
Peripheral maker Razer has long catered to gamers, and its latest creation stays true to those roots while entering an entirely new market: notebooks. The company has unveiled the Blade, a gaming laptop that features a Sandy Bridge CPU, discrete GeForce graphics, and a slender aluminum chassis just 0.88" thick. The Blade looks pretty badass, too.
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Wednesday, August 24, 2011
EA's Origin Service Is Basically Spyware, According to Origin's EULA
EA's Origin Service Is Basically Spyware, According to Origin's EULA:
Because today's trifecta of corporate malfeasance and/or generally shitty behavior wouldn't be complete without mentioning something awful EA is doing, let's talk about Origin again. Specifically, how it apparently includes spyware.
You guys? We REALLY need to start reading these EULAs ahead of time.
Once again reminding us all that we really ought to be reading these terms of service that we so often blindly agree to, intrepid users of Origin have discovered within EA's End User License Agreement for the service that, by installing the software on the system and using it, you are giving EA full license to track a number of different things on your computer, including, but not limited to personal information, computer information, application usage, software, software usage, and peripheral hardware usage. The reason for all of this is for the usual "marketing purposes" and "to improve our products and services" nonsense, but the EULA also states that EA will happily sell your information to any third parties it sees fit.
It's fair to point out that Valve's Steam service also does some of the things listed here when you use it. However, the trick is that Steam allows users to opt out of any and all such practices. Origin has no such opt-out feature, and in fact states that you cannot use the service at all unless you agree to their terms.
That does present quite the quandary for the information protective gamers out there who might want to play a game like, say, Battlefield 3 on their PC. Battlefield 3, alongside other EA PC titles, will require an install of Origin to operate, even if you buy a physical copy of the game.
In the end, this is actually a fairly fixable problem for EA. The publisher would simply need to patch in an opt-out option for any and all info scraping that Origin might be involved in. If it doesn't? Here's a deeply enraged Reddit thread that you might want to partake of.
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GameStop Discarding Deus Ex: Human Revolution OnLive Coupons
GameStop Discarding Deus Ex: Human Revolution OnLive Coupons: There's an image of an email on Ars Technica allegedly from a Field Operations Manager with GameStop that instructs employees to "remove and discard" the coupon for a free OnLive version of Deus Ex:...
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Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Guild Wars 2 trailer loaded with in-game footage
Guild Wars 2 trailer loaded with in-game footage: "
Although I've never really been into MMOs, I've always liked the fact that Guild Wars didn't require a monthly subscription. Shell out for the game once, and you can play it as much as you'd like. Guild Wars 2 will take the same approach, and a new trailer showcases some of what we can expect from the game.
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Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Gearbox teases Borderlands 2
Gearbox teases Borderlands 2: "
Yeah, it isn't much, but the Borderlands fan in me is vibrating with anticipation after watching this quick teaser trailer for Borderlands 2.
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The Engine Was Just Sitting There!
From Brokentoys.org -
Bioware Mythic announces Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes, which was originally titled Warhammer Online: Battlegrounds And That’s It Because You Gits Have The Attention Span Of A Tsetse Fly And We Added A Third Side Because DAOC Battlegrounds Were Pretty Fun That Way And This Title Is Really Long We Should Change It.
So if you played Warhammer Online and thought “you know, I really liked the battlegrounds, but not enough to pay a monthly sub, but maybe enough to pay extra for a +4 Sword Of Swordening”, this is your thing.
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Wednesday, August 10, 2011
New M-Disc Technology Promises Permanent Data Retention
New M-Disc Technology Promises Permanent Data Retention: "
They're called M-Discs and they're being brought to market a start-up company called Millenniata, Computerworld reports. M-Discs ditch the traditional reflective layer found in standard physical media discs and instead etch the information directly into the body of the multi-layered disc itself, which is made of an undisclosed stone-like substance. Millenniata says that any device that can read a DVD can read an M-Disc – the only special equipment necessary in the whole process is an M-Disc burner.
That's cool in and of itself, but Millenniata also claims that M-Discs are darned near impervious to damage. They told Computerworld you can toss an M-Disc in liquid nitrogen, then dump boiling water all over it, and nary a byte of data will be damaged. A DoD study found no data loss after subjecting the M-Disc to grueling conditions -- a claim no other disc can make.
Although LG's supplying the initial round of M-Disc burners, Millenniata's CEO says that any DVD hardware manufacturer can make the jump to M-Disc by installing a firmware upgrade on their machines. The M-Disc's staying power comes at the cost of burn speed, however; you can only write to them at a 4x rate. At that speed, it's almost a good thing that M-Discs will only be able to match standard DVD capacities of 4.7GB when they hit the shelves in October for $3 a pop. Millenniata puts their money where their mouth is by offering a lifetime warranty for the discs.
Image credit: troveas.com
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Tuesday, August 09, 2011
Trackmania 2 gameplay, editor footage leaked
Trackmania 2 gameplay, editor footage leaked: "
PC gamers might not be able to get a taste of iconic driving games like Forza Motorsports and Gran Turismo, but we do have the Trackmania series. The latest iteration, Trackmania 2 Canyon is due out next month. We've already seen a trailer for the game, and now there's a couple of minutes of gameplay footage up on YouTube. Check it out:
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Monday, August 08, 2011
German geniuses hit 800Mbps with light bulb WLAN
German geniuses hit 800Mbps with light bulb WLAN: "
Last year, Chinese scientists showed off some new old-school tech, transmitting data with blue LEDs that flicker faster than the human eye can perceive. This throwback to the good ol' days of IR receivers was able to hit speeds of 2Mbps, but leave it to the fine folks at the Heinrich Hertz Institute to push the light bulb networking tech to the extremes. Earlier this year researchers hit 500Mbps with white LEDs; now, using a combination of white, green, blue, and red, the team ramped that up to 800Mbps, officially putting Ethernet on notice. The line-of-sight networking won't actually replace your standard Cat 5 line or WiFi router, but it could find a home in places like hospitals where radio-based wireless technology can cause problems for sensitive equipment. With any luck, we'll soon be bathing our homes in HD-streaming illumination.
German geniuses hit 800Mbps with light bulb WLAN originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Aug 2011 16:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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World of Warplanes Website
World of Warplanes Website: "Wargaming.net has launched a new World of Warplanes Website as an online home to this upcoming MMO action game set during the 'Golden Age of military aviation.' At this point the site offers some..."
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Wednesday, August 03, 2011
Borderlands 2 Announced
Borderlands 2 Announced: "Gearbox Software tweets a confirmation of yesterday's indications that Borderlands 2 is in development. The official Borderlands 2 Website is online, offering a bit on plans for the role-playing..."
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Tuesday, August 02, 2011
Z-Drive R4 SSD combines blazing speed, PCIe 2.0 interface
Z-Drive R4 SSD combines blazing speed, PCIe 2.0 interface: "
PCI Express may be the future for solid-state drives, and the interface has already taken root in OCZ's Z-Drive SSDs. The company has just announced a new one: the Z-Drive R4. Available in full- and half-height models, the Z4 has a PCI Express 2.0 x8 interface with 4GB/s of peak bandwidth to and from the system. You're gonna need the bandwidth, too, because the fastest Z4 is said to be capable of pushing data at nearly 3GB/s.
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Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Computer Reads Manual, Plays Civ
Computer Reads Manual, Plays Civ: "
MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab report that they have boosted the effectiveness of a game-playing AI by enabling it to read the manual: “When the researchers augmented a machine-learning system so that it could use a player’s manual to guide the development of a game-playing strategy, its rate of victory jumped from 46 percent to 79 percent.”
What’s most amazing about this is that despite the trial and error nature of this kind of machine learning, the ability to correlate text instructions with events in the game do seem to have a significant impact on the system’s capacity to learn how to play, as the article explains: “The researchers also tested a more-sophisticated machine-learning algorithm that eschewed textual input but used additional techniques to improve its performance. Even that algorithm won only 62 percent of its games.” So, you know, RTFM is sound advice, even if you are a machine.
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Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Gratuitous Tank Battles Announced
Gratuitous Tank Battles Announced: "Independent developer Positech Games announces Gratuitous Tank Battles, an upcoming alternate-reality RTS/Tower Defense hybrid to follow Gratuitous Space Battles. The concept behind this is that the..."
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'Only' 999 more days left for XP security updates
'Only' 999 more days left for XP security updates: "Yesterday marked an interesting milestone for Windows XP. In 1,000 days (or 999 as of today), Microsoft will stop providing security updates for the OS. XP's extended support period ends on April 8, 2014, and Redmond is using the countdown milestone as an excuse to trumpet the..."
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Cryptex flash drive uses combination lock sleeve, brings a whole new meaning to hardware encryption
Cryptex flash drive uses combination lock sleeve, brings a whole new meaning to hardware encryption: "
256-bit AES not doing it for ya? Now you can replace that dedicated-processor encryption with actual mechanical hardware, thanks to the Cryptex flash drive and its five-wheel combination lock sleeve. Modeled in AutoCAD and constructed using various glistening metals, the Cryptex's five-digit combination will keep prying eyes far from you sensitive files -- and, well, it just looks insanely awesome. Like many shiny objects that seem too good to be true, it's barely more than a concept at this point, so you'll have to settle for the digital version for now.
Cryptex flash drive uses combination lock sleeve, brings a whole new meaning to hardware encryption originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Jul 2011 01:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The fanless spinning heatsink: more efficient and immune to dust
The fanless spinning heatsink: more efficient and immune to dust: "
There’s a fundamental flaw with fan-and-heatsink cooling systems: no matter how hard the fan blows, a boundary layer of motionless, highly-insulating air remains on the heatsink. You can increase the size of the heatsink and you can blow more air, but ultimately the boundary layer prevents the system from being efficient; it’s simply a physical limitation of fan-and-heatsink cooling systems in specific, and every kind of air-cooled heat exchanger in general, including air conditioning and refrigeration units.
But what if you did away with the fan? What if the heatsink itself rotated? Well, believe it or not, rotating the heat exchanger obliterates the boundary layer, removes the need for a fan, and it’s so efficient that it can operate at low and very quiet speeds. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Air Bearing Heat Exchanger [PDF]. Developed by Jeff Koplow, a researcher at the US government’s Sandia National Laboratories, the new heatsink (which has also been dubbed the “Sandia Cooler”) basically resembles a big, metal fan. The cooler consists of a static metal baseplate, which is connected to the CPU, GPU, or other hot object, and a finned, rotating heat exchanger that are cushioned by a thin (0.001-inch) layer of air. As the metal blades spin, centrifugal force kicks up the air and throws it up and outwards, much like an impeller, creating a cooling effect.
So when can you get your hands on one? Koplow is now working on a design that can be mass-produced — and hopefully he’ll soon be able to bring this awesome piece of technology to market.
Read more at New Scientist or read the research paper
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