Titan Fenrir Siberia Edition Review
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More Assassin's Creed III Information Released
Ubisoft looks to get people in a good mood for the rest of the week, as it has released more information and screenshots of Assassin's Creed III. The images show off the setting of AC3, with many of the frontier but a few of the British Regulars and urban environments. In addition to the cities of Boston and New York, the New Frontier will be treated as a "third" city complete with quests and activities, including hunting similar to Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption. The frontier also adds some new terrain for Connor, the protagonist, to traverse, but luckily he is able to climb and swing through trees with ease. Ubisoft is also adding in dynamic seasons to AC3, including weather effects like fog and snow. Rain is currently being explored, but the development team does not want it to alter the gameplay too radically. Slick surfaces would turn the agile main character into a bumbling mess, so the options for adding rain are still being explored.
Connor was born as a Mohawk Indian, but his village was destroyed when he was very young. Connor becomes frustrated with his tribe's passive attitude and joins the Assassins, but the threats he will face aside from the Revolution are currently unknown. Connor's personality and demeanor set him apart from Ezio and Altair, as Connor is a quiet and earnest man who seeks to help those around him. It will be interesting to see how Ubisoft works that into the story, but hopefully it can all be pulled off. Assassin's Creed III is set to launch on the PC, PS3, and 360 on October 30th.
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Thermal Cloaks To Keep You Cool
There has been a fair amount of news in the past decade about invisibility cloaks which bend waves around objects. These waves could be light waves, sound waves, or even seismic and ocean waves, but they are all waves. Can more than just waves be directed around objects, to hide them? As being reported by the Optical Society of America in their Optics Express journal, researchers have found a way to make a thermal cloak.
Heat does not propagate like a wave; instead it diffuses and the math involved is very different. Still, the researchers applied the math that says invisibility cloaks can work and found it should be possible to make a thermal cloak. The researchers tested a two-dimensional approach to this and successfully kept an area from heating up, even though the heat diffused to around it.
The researchers are now working on creating prototype thermal cloaks for microelectronics. Imagine being able to cloak parts of your computer so they cannot heat up while everything around it does. The prototypes could be finished within a few months.
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Starbreeze Announces Free-to-Play Cold Mercury
Starbreeze Studios is taking a different approach with its next game, as it has announced the free-to-play Cold Mercury. You may remember Starbreeze being in the news recently for the rebooted Syndicate, however that game did not go over very well. The studio also laid off 25 employees shortly before Syndicate launched, which took a relativley small workforce to an smaller one. Still, Starbreeze is pushing forward with Cold Mercury, and although details are fairly scarce, the studio's CEO says the F2P game does not mean the future focus will be on freemium games. Cold Mercury will be an attempt to help broaden Starbreeze's portfolio, and CEO Mikael Nermerk says more AAA titles will appear down the road. Starbreeze is also currently searching for a distributor for P13, the new game with Swedish movie director Josef Fares. Release date and platform details for Cold Mercury and P13 are not known at this time, but hopefully all will be revealed shortly.
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Macroscopic Wave-Particle Duality Demonstrated
A lot happened in the 20th century, in terms of science. The Universe expanded past our galaxy, time was bent by speed and mass, and wave-particle duality was revealed. For literally hundreds of years scientists debated over what light was. Sometimes the dominate theory was light existed as a particle, with such evidence as it traveling through a vacuum. Other times the world was certain light was a wave, with how it can be spilt into a spectrum and fill any volume. It was not until the idea of wave-particle duality, when something could exist as both a wave and particle, was the truth finally found. An experiment, elegant in its simplicity, confirmed the duality and is still used today. The double slit experiments showed how light would act as a particle in one instance, but as a wave in others. When the slits were close in size to the wavelength of light, the light would diffract as it passed though, something only waves would do. When the slits were bigger than the wavelength though, light would travel straight through, with no diffraction at all, just as a particle would.
Quantum mechanics explains why this happens and in fact also tells us anything can be shot at two slits and produce a diffraction pattern. Now researchers at the University of Vienna have shot dye molecules, which can be 0.1 mm in size, at a double slit setup, and created a diffraction pattern. This is only possible if the molecule act as a wave in superposition during its flight, and interferes with itself. As particles these molecules are so large they are visible under an optical microscope, so the interference pattern produced is actually visible to the naked eye.
The information this study has produced will prove useful in future studies on atomically thin membranes, as well as quantum wave interference experiments. Until those studies start being released though, enjoy the video from this one: Single molecules in a quantum interference movie.
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GAME Enters Administration, 227 Stores Close
You may have been hearing some news about beleaguered video game retailer GAME, and the news is not great. GAME is the United Kingdom's leading game retailer, or should I say, was the leading game retailer in the UK. GAME has officially entered administration, which basically means the retailer is looking for new owners. CEO Ian Sheperd announced his resignation, effective immediately, with the administrators now in charge of Game Group. As for the retail GAME locations, 227 stores have closed with 2,104 employees out of their jobs. The remaining stores are no suspending hardware and software returns/exchanges, refunds are no longer accepted, and gift cards and rewards cards will no longer work. The administrators, PriceWaterhouseCooper, are looking for a buy for Game Group in order to bring the company back to what it once was.
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Computers Know When You Are Lying
'Oh! What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive,' was first written by Walter Scott in 1808 and describes quite well the complexity of lies. After all, if you do not commit to a lie and plan out how much may be affected by the lie, you could easily find yourself trapped between the truth and the lie, with no way out. Finding out when someone is lying can still be difficult though, because they may not become trapped easily. There are certain markers though that can indicate a lie though, such as an increased heart rate, perspiration, and eye movement. Researchers at the University of Buffalo are looking specifically at eye movement to enable computers to identify liars, and have exciting success thus far.
Though you may think when you stare at something your eye is not moving, it actually is, and there has even been research to show this is linked to how the eye focuses on something. Eye tracking studies have been done many times in the past, but not explicitly for lie detection. Careful examination of a previous study on lie detection showed there was a change in eye movement when someone tells a lie, so the researchers taught a computer to watch for it. The computer was then given 40 videos, from the previous study, and monitored eye movement during mundane conversation, for the control, and during the critical point, when the questions became serious. Even with obstructions like glasses, the computer was correct 82.5% of the time. Experienced interrogators have an average accuracy of 65%.
More work has to be done though, as experienced liars can still fool the computer, and 40 videos is a small sample of the population. Still, this is a promising result that encourages more investigation in the future.
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Depth - The Multiplayer Sharks Versus Divers Game
If you feel like most first-person games have become stagnant, you are not alone. Plenty of games feature guns and similar weapons to go after the AI in single player or real people online. That formula has been used time and time again, but this article is not about those types of games. Sure, one of the teams do have guns, but these are not designed to kill. You see, Depth is a competitive multiplayer game where one team plays as Scuba divers while the other team plays as sharks. Yes, you read that right: sharks. The divers are exploring locations off the coast of Mexico to find sunken treasure, and it is up to them to retrieve as much loot as possible before the sharks win. Sharks are able to track their prey through movements in the water and even the prey's heartbeat, plus you get to see everything from inside the mouth of the shark in Depth. The divers do have a few tools at their disposal, like a spear gun and tag gun, but they rely more on stealth than outright combat. The sharks are nature's perfect killing machine, so they do what they do best.
Depth runs on Unreal Engine 3 and is being developed by some of the original members behind Killing Floor. It is currently slated only for the PC, but a release date has not been announced so far. There is a MODDB page for it as well.
NSFW
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Imperfect Quantum Copies Give Original Information
If you have read a book, watched a film, or listened to a CD you have experienced a copy of some original master. These copies are most often perfect representations of the original, but sometimes they are not. In quantum mechanics it is actually impossible to make a perfect copy of a particle. If a perfect copy were made, it would be possible for information to travel faster than the speed light, which violates the theories of Relativity.
Researchers at the University of Calgary have found a way to retrieve information of the original particle from an imperfect copy. While this should not lead to violating other theories or laws, it may lead to improved measurement techniques, and possible be useful in quantum computers. The work has only been theoretical thus far, but the researchers have suggested a way to experimentally test their findings.
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The 8-Bit Mad Men Video Game is Free-to-Play on YouTube
Nostalgic old-school gamers and avid Mad Men fans might find something enjoyable in this 8-bit interactive YouTube video game about AMC's notorious baby boomer ad executives, titled Mad Men: The Game. Developed by The Fine Bros, the game plays out in a style similar to the Choose Your Own Adventure books, with around 40 videos filled with pixelated graphics and the Mad Men opening theme, which sounds oddly hypnotic when heard in 8-bit MIDI output.
Players can guide the smooth-talking Don Draper through various conversations amongst the familiar Mad Men characters, with the game starting shortly where Season 4 left off. A total of three different endings are available to choose from, but careful if you haven't yet watched the first episode of Season 5, as the game might have a few story spoilers in store. Start playing as the cool ad exec by watching the video below.
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