Month: September 2016

Enlarge / There are a few hidden areas in The Plaguelands, but not many.

You’d think a game wouldn’t still be able to disappoint me so much, two years after its initial release. After so long, I’ve either given up on a game or still find it immensely satisfying. But after a week with Destiny: Rise of Iron, the fourth expansion to Bungie’s endlessly injured shooter, I’m mostly befuddled. That’s not just because the expansion is lighter on content than I could have imagined, but because it seems light on care.

Nearly everything in Rise of Iron smacks of recycled content. The gear, the strikes, the enemies, and even the writing all feel like things we've seen before, many times over. It’s as though whatever Bungie employees not working on Destiny 2 were forced to cobble together one last dollop of content for the original game so 2016 wouldn't pass without something they could sell. Almost nothing is actually new, and what is new rarely feels that way.

The Plaguelands

That recycled feeling is ever-present in The Plaguelands, the new in-game region for Rise of Iron. This marks the second time Bungie has bolted a new zone onto the main game’s original four. While The Taken King's Dreadnought was substantially different from anything else in Destiny—all bones, breathing walls, and slimy indoor cathedrals—The Plaguelands are just an extension of an existing locale. They look nearly identical to what Destiny fans already know as The Cosmodrome—all snow, rusted-out icebreakers, and jagged metal strewn across post-apocalyptic Russia.

Enlarge (credit: Peter Opaskar)

Cursing is cool. It just is. Ask anyone.

In his new book What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves, Benjamin Bergen—a linguist in the Cognitive Science Department at UC San Diego—tries to explain exactly why cussing is so amazing. His self-described “book-length love letter to profanity” defines what makes a swearword and why using one feels so great. Although What the F has its share of silliness, it’s full of cute tidbits you can drop at cocktail parties, like how all Samoan babies’ first words are “eat s#!t” and how Japanese completely lacks curse words. Japanese people with Tourette’s syndrome blurt out insults and childlike words for genitalia that are generally considered impolite and inappropriate, but not profane.

Across unrelated languages—Bergen mentions Cantonese, Russian, Finnish, American and British Sign Languages, Hebrew, Arabic, Italian, German, and Quebecois French in addition to English—curses largely fall into four categories. There are words that deal with prayer, the divine, and the supernatural (the word “profane,” after all, is the counterpoint to the word “sacred”). There are also words that deal with sex, various sex acts, the people who perform them, and the body parts involved. Other words cover the act of excreting, as well as the excretions themselves.

(credit: NRDC)

TV manufacturers Samsung, LG, and Vizio build their TVs to pass federal energy-use tests while allowing the TVs to consume much more energy when they operate outside of the narrow test parameters, a report from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) claims.

This week, the environmental group published the results of a study it did with third-party efficiency consulting firm Ecos Research (PDF). The study found that many of the TVs they tested used more than double the amount of energy listed on the yellow EnergyGuide label every time the TV was used under conditions not tested by the Department of Energy’s (DOE) energy-use test.

EnergyGuide labels also help determine whether a TV qualifies for an EnergyStar label, which indicates whether the TV is among the more energy-efficient in its group.

Luckey (right) speaks at an event promoting VR games (and not Donald Trump). (credit: Sam Machkovech)

Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey is apologizing for "the impact my actions are having on the [VR] community," even as he seeks to minimize his support for a pro-Trump political group and push back against reports that he was behind some of the group's controversial online posts.

In a public Facebook post late last night, Luckey confirmed earlier reports that he donated $10,000 to Nimble America, the self-described "shitposting," meme-making group behind controversial The_Donald subreddit (though he says he has "no plans" to donate more). Luckey said he thought the group had "fresh ideas on how to communicate with young voters through the use of several billboards." That includes one such billboard in the Pittsburgh area that called Hillary Clinton "too big to jail," according to reports.

In the wake of controversy surrounding that revelation, Luckey said he was "deeply sorry that my actions are negatively impacting the perception of Oculus and its partners," and that "my actions were my own and do not represent Oculus." Luckey also says that previous reports on that donation do not accurately reflect his political views. He described himself as a libertarian and Gary Johnson supporter who is "committed to the principles of fair play and equal treatment."

Enlarge

An overseas hacker from the group Kosovo Hacker's Security was handed a 20-year term Friday. This is the nation's first prosecution of a hacker trying to carry out an act of terrorism.

Kosovo citizen Ardit Ferizi, a 20-year-old with the online handle Th3Dir3ctorY, was arrested in Malaysia in 2015. In a Virginia federal court earlier this year, he pleaded guilty to stealing data on US military personnel by hacking undisclosed US corporate computers and then providing that data to the Islamic State (ISIS) terror group.

"This case represents the first time we have seen the very real and dangerous national security cyber threat that results from the combination of terrorism and hacking," said US Assistant Attorney General John Carlin. "This was a wake-up call not only to those of us in law enforcement but also to those in private industry."

Enlarge (credit: A Maze)

"I'm not a game designer. I’m a programmer," says Cukia Kimani, one half of the South African dev team on Semblance, a game that demonstrates what might happen if Super Meat Boy were let loose in a world made of Play-Doh.

In Semblance you move from side to side. Your avatar is a squishy pound of flesh with tears flowing down its face. You can flatten the protagonist from either side—making it thinner or smaller—and you can hammer it against the walls of its environment, creating jump spaces and holes.

You collect orbs, smash your way through barriers, and sneak under spike awnings that send you back to the start screen if you touch them. Semblance feels like a game you should be paying for, but it's not finished. It's on display at "A Maze. / Johannesburg," a South African festival for indie developers and digital artists.