300 actions a minute? Truly mastering StarCraft
Many gamers think that with a little more time to practice, with a touch more dedication, they could be competitive at their favorite games. The truth? Those who make money gaming competitively do very little else with their days, nights, and weekends. This video, from the documentary The Hax Life, shows just how intimidating the competition can become.
In StarCraft, your efficiency is described in "APM," or actions per minute. According to this video, you need to be over 300 APM to be competitive. That means in 60 seconds, you need to accomplish over 300 things. To get there you need to learn a level of situation awareness and split-second decision making most gamers will never be able to top.
The gap between how the professionals or wannabe professionals play games, especially in Korea, and how the rest of us enjoy them is much, much wider than many assume.
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EMC's Atmos shutdown shows why cloud lock-in is still scary
When we last looked at the perils of cloud lock-in, we noted that it's best to build applications on cloud services from large, established companies because they're much less likely to close up shop, get bought, shut down a service, or make a nasty change to their terms of service—any of these moves can nuke the investment you've made in a particular cloud platform, and leave you in a bind. Well, storage provider EMC is as big and established as they come, and the company has now shut down its Atmos Online cloud storage service not much more than a year after the service's launch. The Atmos Online shutdown is certainly not catastrophic for EMC's customers (more on this in a moment), but it's nonetheless a useful reminder that even if a provider isn't new, you're still taking on some risk if a cloud service itself is new and unproven.
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High CO2 concentrations can turn fish into daredevils
High carbon dioxide concentrations in the ocean may turn fish into reckless daredevils, according to a study published in PNAS this week. When scientists exposed two different species of fish larvae to elevated carbon dioxide levels, the fish began to ignore the smell of predators, multiplying their mortality rate up to nine times the current level. The oceans are predicted to have high enough concentrations to completely impair the fishes' predator detection as early as the end of this century. To test how fish reacted to elevated carbon dioxide levels, researchers reared sets of clownfish and damselfish larvae in three different carbon dioxide concentrations. The highest was 850 parts per million, a reasonable estimate for what the concentration is on track to reach by the year 2100.
At 700 parts per million, the fish were noticeably more reckless, venturing farther away from shelter and not responding to threats as actively as fish in control tanks. At this level, mortality was not noticeably higher.
However, at 850 parts per million, the fish were almost entirely ignorant of the scent of predators. These fish put themselves in a position to die much more often, and researchers found that as a result their mortality rate was between five and nine times higher than controls.
The scientists who conducted the study are unsure whether increased carbon dioxide levels simply obscure the scent of predators, or if breathing the higher concentrations damages the predator detection area of the fishes' brains. Either way, if the symptoms translate to or are worse in other species of fish, it will be very difficult for fish populations to recover from current levels even if we cut back on fishing.
If the 700-parts-per-million-or-less threshold persists long enough, the authors note natural selection should work its magic, weeding out the fish who can't smell predators around carbon dioxide. But if the affected species can't accomplish this transition before carbon dioxide concentrations make them completely stupid, they will be likely to become extinct.
PNAS, 2010. DOI: /10.1073/pnas.1004519107 (About DOIs).
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Feature: Ars reviews Android 2.2 on the Nexus One
Google is rolling out Android 2.2, codenamed Froyo, to Nexus One handsets. The new version of the operating system brings an extremely noticeable performance boost, a handful of impressive new features, some minor user interface enhancements, and useful new APIs for developers. The additions in Froyo fill some of the gaps in the platform and augment its competitiveness relative to rivals.Froyo was unveiled at at the Google I/O developer conference in May during a keynote presentation by Google VP of engineering Vic Gundotra. Stabilizing the platform for an official Nexus One release took Google a little bit longer than expected, but the software is now being made available to users through an over-the-air update. We took it for a test drive to see how it compares to the previous version.
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Overbite Project brings Gopher protocol to Android
The Overbite Project is an open-source effort to produce browser plugins and client applications that enable support for Gopher, an early network protocol that preceded HTML and the contemporary World Wide Web. The lead developer behind the project is retrocomputing enthusiast Cameron Kaiser, one of the few remaining champions of gopherspace. His latest undertaking is a mobile Gopher client for Google's Android operating system.The Overbite application for Android is still at an early stage of development, but an alpha release is available for users who want to help test the software. I installed it on my Nexus One smartphone to see the primordial protocol in action on Android. After installing the application, I was able to view Gopher content on the Internet.
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Fear of dreaming: Why the 360's Limbo is a very big deal
There is no "real" to dreams; reality shifts, shapes start as one thing and become something else, the familiar becomes strange and unsettling. Limbo, the upcoming Xbox Live Arcade release from Playdead Games, brings that world to gaming almost too well. We've played the game before, but after having a chance to dig into a preview build in our own home, with headphones, it's clear that this is a game that rewards a long, deep swim through the gameplay.Read the comments on this post
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Canada: Yes, same traffic-shaping rules apply to mobile data
If your cable or DSL provider can't block some low-bandwidth application like VoIP simply because it competes with one of their own offerings, why should mobile operators have the right to do so? In Canada, they no longer do. Last week, Canadian regulators decided that ISPs all have to play by the same traffic management rules, regardless of the technology they use to deliver the bits. This makes tremendous sense, as opposed to the technology-centric approach taken previous by Canada (and still used in the US).
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Unfinished, unpolished, unloved: Ars reviews Crackdown 2
Crackdown 2, on almost every level, is a superhero-sized disappointment.It shares too much in common with the first game, doesn't change the formula enough to make the sequel feel unique, and in some cases even takes away what made the original so compelling. You'll be running around the city, leveling up your driving, strength, agility, explosives, and firearms abilities by collecting orbs and using each skill. When the thrill of exploration wears off, you'll realize you are just doing the same things over and over and over. This is an engine and assets looking for story and characters.
The game now features only a single gang to fight, and it also pits you against the mutant Freaks who come out at night. Neither one of them make intelligent foes, and in fact the Freaks simply mill about after the sun goes down.
Want to max out your driving skills quickly? Grab a car at night and run down the Freaks by the hundreds. You can also grind your strength rating by mindlessly pulping them with your fist. The Cell gang members are also mere fist fodder, although their rocket attacks will often juggle you. In some cases, there's little to do but put down your controller and wait to die.
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