Thermaltake Water 2.0 Performer and Water 2.0 Pro Review
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Ouya Gaming Console Blazes Past $2 Million in its First Day on Kickstarter
People have shown a lot of love for the Android-powered Ouya game console, but would you have predicted the Kickstarter project generating a whopping $2 million in just one day? That impressive figure now stands as the most successful Kickstarter project ever created, and with 28 more days to go that number is sure to rise even higher. The promise of Ouya's abilities of open-source gaming hit all the right notes for gamers - an extremely moddable $99 game box coupled with a sleek gamepad. Let's hope the actual game library matches the system's lofty ambitions. Now that the team have their funding secured they have reached out to backers for feedback on its long-term plans - so if you're a backer (or a potential one) what do you want in your Ouya console? Better hardware specs? Surely they can manage to squeeze in more powerful graphics in that little box. Console-quality games? The marketing puts emphasis on free-to-play titles, but if the diminutive machine gets a sizeable player base triple AAA games should be on the list, too.
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Algorithm to Find Predators on Facebook Created
Social media systems, like Facebook, are constantly growing in popularity as they allow one person to connect with many people across the planet. However the ability to connect with so many people can be risky, especially for young people, as predators and other malicious users can be accidentally and unknowingly friended. Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev have created a new Facebook app to identify these potential threats and notify the user of the risk.
The Social Privacy Protector (SPP) app analyzes a Facebook user's friend list and measures its connectedness with its friends. The reasoning to this method is that a malicious profile will have friended a great many people, but has not been friended by as many. If I have friend one thousand people, but only ten have friended me, then SPP would flag me as suspicious to you, but would not automatically unfriend me. The app also checks other Facebook apps that may threaten a user's privacy.
Obviously the purpose of SPP is to protect children from whatever they may find on Facebook by giving them and their parents the ability to quickly discover suspicious users. Currently the software is available as a Facebook app and as a Firefox add-on, for any and all Facebook users to use.
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Star Wars: The Old Republic Launches Free Trial - Reach Level 15 with No Time Limit
If you have yet to try out BioWare's entry into the world of MMORPGs, now is the perfect time. Star Wars: The Old Republic Free Trial lets you see just what the MMO is all about without worrying about paying or the time. The SWTOR Free Trial lets you create a character in any of the eight classes and experience the game up to level 15. You will be able to check out the Origin World, Capital World, the Fleet, all the Warzones, and the first Flashpoint at your own pace, as this Free Trial will not expire. If you happen to like what you see, you can purchase a subscription to SWTOR to continue all the way up to the level cap and get the full MMO experience. The SWTOR Free Trial is open to those who tried the game out on a Weekend Pass or Friends of SWTOR Trial as well, so you can hop back in at your leisure. This unlimited Free Trial is a great way to get more people interested in SWTOR, and may even be a precursor to going entirely free-to-play.
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Kickstarter for Defense Grid 2 Launches
There are a plethora of tower defense games, but Defense Grid: The Awakening is arguably the best of them all. Developed by indie studio Hidden Path Entertainment (yes, the studio co-developing Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with Valve), Defense Grid tasks players with defending power cores by strategically placing a variety of towers. While the 20-level campaign is certainly entertaining, the real meat of the game is with its various challenges, ranging from only being able to use level one towers to power cores that poison enemies. And, of course, there are leaderboards for each map and each mode.
That brings us to the reason for this post – Hidden Path has launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the development of a proper sequel, Defense Grid 2. The Kickstarter is actually broken up into four tiers, which makes it a bit confusing at first. The Kickstarter goal (the mark at which the project is considered funded and backers' money is officially taken), is at a mere $250,000, but reaching that goal does not unlock Defense Grid 2. Instead, it unlocks Defense Grid: Containment, an 8-level expansion for the original game that will provide a link between the stories of the first game and its eventual sequel. At $500,000, Hidden Path will complete a new game engine to be used for the sequel, and to test it, the company will remaster the original game on the new engine, as well as include a brand new co-op multiplayer mode. Up until this point, everything is for PC only – unless the $750,000 tier is reached. At that point, not only will everything be released for Mac and Linux as well, but Hidden Path will also release a level editor. Lastly comes the $1,000,000 threshold, which will bring the full sequel, Defense Grid 2, to all three platforms. Defense Grid 2 will be a completely new 20-mission campaign with "new aliens, new tower types, new level types, new game modes and many new ways to play."
In the comments, Hidden Path said the following:
Sorry, we're not trying to be misleading. The goal is to make DG2. We could then set the minimum funding goal to $1m, but we figured that would actually concern more people that way. So, we came up with a way that if we don't reach that goal, we're still going to deliver good new content to you. That was the thinking.Obviously Hidden Path wouldn't be held accountable for that last promise if the campaign doesn't reach $1m, but I'd be willing to bet the company would keep its word. If you haven't played the original Defense Grid, the Kickstarter campaign is actually an excellent place to start. The minimum $15 pledge not only grants you all the content from unlocked tiers, but it also grants you a Steam code for a free copy of the original game. Double it (that's $30 for the mathematically inept) and you'll get all the previously released expansions as well. Hopefully this enjoys the success we've seen from the likes of Double Fine, Wasteland 2, and Grim Dawn.
And, by the way, we plan on making DG2 someday even if we don't reach the full funding goal here. If we do reach it here, well then that's known, and we're making it and it will happen next year. Nice clean end of story. If we just get 1/2 way through, say, and reach $500k, we're going to deliver DG:Containment to you, and we're going to deliver the remastered game on the new engine to you as we promise here - we'll work straight on them and deliver them as soon as possible. And then after that, we'll keep at it, but at a slower pace on our own dime. It may take extra time, it may take us making other games for other people first, but we'll still eventually get to DG2, and when we do, we're not going to forget you. You helped get us there and we'd get you a copy then, but that's a different kind of promise, and we understand that.
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Square Enix Executive Believes Current Generation has Been Around 'Way Too Long'
Almost everyone is waiting on Sony and Microsoft to deliver on the next-generation of video game consoles. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 have been around for quite a while (2006 for the PS3 and 2005 for the 360), yet neither company has committed to anything solid about the next-gen. Sony has often said the PS3 will be around for ten years and Microsoft has tended to echo that sentiment, which would put a new console from either one releasing in 2015 at the earliest. Technology advances by leaps and bounds in a year, sometimes even less, yet the PS3 and 360 are getting by on technology that was cutting edge nearly a decade ago. Sure, virtually all games nowadays look far better than in 2004, yet some companies are not happy with just how long this current console generation has lasted. We have already seen Epic show off Unreal Engine 4 and Square Enix debut the Luminous engine, and it is one executive from the latter that is sounding off on this current generation.
Square Enix's worldwide technology director Julien Merceron believes the current console generation has been around for "way too long" and is a major problem. Some developers look forward to the next-generation, and when that does not come, Merceron believes those developers switched to other platforms, like iOS. If those developers found success on iOS or even Android, odds are that is what all future games from the studios will be designed for. The emergence of alternative gaming platforms can be attributed directly to Sony and Microsoft's insistence on a long life cycle for the current generation. That is both a blessing and a curse, but at least there are new ways to get your game on aside from the consoles.
Merceron has plenty more to say about the current and next-generation game consoles, graphics technology, and the mobile gaming market. You can read the full interview at the source and leave any comments on the matter below.
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New Logic Circuits Could Increase Efficiency by 1,000,000
As electronics grow smaller to keep up with Moore's law, more challenges arise including heat dissipation. Putting transistors closer and closer together makes it harder for them to dissipate the heat they produce without warming everything around them. Researchers at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science have found a way around this though by designing a completely new logic circuit family.
Current logic circuits are produced using Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) technology, but the new circuits instead use magnetoresistive bipolar spin-transistors. This technology can perform the same operations as CMOS circuits, but needs fewer components and less power. Overall the new design could result in computers about 1,000,000 times more efficient within a decade.
These new logic circuits are actually spintronic in nature, as they utilize the innate magnetic properties of an electron, instead of just their charge, as in regular electronics. Spintronics offer many other benefits over modern electronics than just power efficiency though, so hopefully we will see them brought to market sooner rather than later.
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Wasteland 2 Will Include Original Wasteland at Launch
InXile Entertainment is hard at work on Wasteland 2 thanks to the $3 million in crowd funding it received, and today comes a little bit of new information. No, it is not anything relating to Wasteland 2 directly, but something that will be included when the game launches. When Wasteland 2 arrives next year, it will include the original Wasteland as a free bonus. Wasteland released in 1987 and is considered the godfather of post-apocalyptic video games. Many elements that appeared in later titles, like the Fallout series, were first seen in Wasteland. Brian Fargo said the main request from fans during the Wasteland 2 Kickstarter was to play the original game, and thanks to EA, we can now experience the classic. Some people may be experiencing it for the first time while others will get to rexperience it, but either way, we will all be getting the original Wasteland with our Wasteland 2 purchase.
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Time Crystal Designed
Scientific theories and laws do not always have happy endings, as our current understanding of the Universe predicts its eventual heat-death. According to the laws of thermodynamics, the entropy of the Universe can never decrease, and in simplest terms, entropy is waste-energy. This implies that eventually if the energy of the Universe is limited, then eventually it will all be lost as unusable entropy. At this point, nothing happens because no action can occur without decreasing the entropy of the Universe. Despite this though, it may be possible to have a computer survive this and continue operating, though the Universe has stopped.
First proposed by a theoretical physicist at MIT, researchers at University of California, Berkeley, University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and Tsinghua University in Beijing have devised a time crystal which can continue its internal motion past the Universe's demise. Remember, thermodynamics only says entropy cannot decrease, but that still allows actions that do not change the entropy of the Universe. By holding ions in an ultra-cold trap and applying a weak magnetic field, the ions can be made to revolve in a ring. Thanks to quantum mechanics, even at the lowest possible temperatures, the ions will keep moving, even without the electric and magnetic fields present to hold and propel them. This allows the ions to continuously repeat their movement in the ring, without changing the entropy of the Universe. By combining multiple rings, and assigning values to certain states, an entire computer could be built that would outlive the Universe.
The researchers designed this time crystal to be something that could feasibly be built in a lab, so we may see one constructed in the future. Unfortunately, we cannot expect it to continue on past the heat-death of the Universe. Though the time crystal could continue on, the laboratory that keeps the crystal near absolute zero, will have died, causing the crystal to warm up, and stop functioning.
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CBS Films to Make a Deus Ex Movie
Deus Ex is the latest game that will be made into a feature film, with CBS Films acquiring the rights to the franchise. The movie will follow the story arc of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which was an excellent game. The movie will be produced by Roy Lee and Adrian Askarieh, but it is too early to announce any major casting decisions. Co-president of CBS Films Terry Press plans to work with Eidos Montreal and Square Enix throughout the making of the movie, stating "no one knows 'Human Revolution' like the team that created it, and we look forward to working with them from day one to make a film adaptation worthy of the 'Deus Ex' name."
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Major League Gaming Details Summer Arena
Major League Gaming has revealed the details for the upcoming Summer Arena event that will be held at its New York studio from July 20-22. This arena will be the first to offer free access to the main stream through a sponsorship agreement with Full Sail University. High definition streams will also be available for the main stream, premium stream, and Dr. Pepper stream and will allow viewers to bypass the advertisements in addition to seeing all the action in 1080p. The five casters that will provide the commentary are Artosis, djWheat, Day9, Apollo, and Mr Bitter. Among the 32 invited players are the top eight finishers from the Spring Championship and 24 players from invite only online qualifiers in the North America, Europe, and Korea regions.
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Go Behind the Scenes in Tomb Raider The Final Hours
As you probably all know by now, Crystal Dynamics is rebooting the Tomb Raider franchise with its new Tomb Raider video game, scheduled to release next year. Partnering with video game journalist Geoff Keighley, Crystal Dynamics has produced a new installment in the Final Hours documented series, hosted by actor Zachary Levi (Chuck). The series will give viewers an inside look at Tomb Raider's development and the twists and turns along the way. The first episode was released today, titled "An Icon Reborn", and features an exclusive interview with the voice and character of Lara Croft, Camilla Luddington.
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Computer See, Computer Win
About one year ago, researchers at MIT demonstrated an AI program that could read the manual for a game to learn how to play but who has time to read a game's manual? Now a separated research team has created a program that can learn to play a game by watching humans play it first (PDF of paper).
Image-processing tools allow the software to identify changes to a game board and that information it then uses to determine the legal moves of the game as well as what a the winning condition is. Once it has determined how to play and win the game, it examines every possible move, to determine which will most likely lead to a victory, even when up against an experienced human player.
Sadly this software is still fairly simple as it cannot recognize victories that are linked to movement, such as a King being unable to move in checkmate. Simpler games like Tic-Tac-Toe and Connect 4 however can be successfully analyzed by the machine, and no doubt the researchers will strive to enable to program to learn Chess.
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Rockstar Vancouver Closing - Rockstar Toronto Expanding
It is not very often a studio closes in order to shift focus to another one, but that is exactly what Rockstar has planned. Rockstar announced it will be closing the Rockstar Vancouver studio and opening up a new location for the Rockstar Toronto team. The new studio will be located in Oakville, Ontario, part of the Greater Toronto Area, and the expansion is being supported by the Ontario government. The only downside to all of this is Rockstar Vancouver will be closing over the next six months, with the 35 employees being offered a chance to work in the Toronto location or another Rockstar studio. Rockstar wants its Canadian team to be under one roof to strengthen game development, and that means it will all be located in Toronto. More than 50 new positions will be added to Rockstar Toronto over the months, so it certainly looks like Rockstar is committed to the area.
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