Month: June 2018

Enlarge / A dive into a Metro Exodus sewer leads to this creature, which 4A Games calls a "humanimal." This image was provided by the publisher, however, and looks touched up compared to the two hours of gameplay we tested before E3. (credit: 4A Games)

SANTA MONICA, Calif.—The Ukrainian game developers at 4A Games don't hesitate to list Half-Life 2 as a defining inspiration for Metro, their long-running first-person shooter series. A 4A representative at a pre-E3 event in May cited Valve's linear storytelling and knack for cinematic presentation as defining tentpoles for the games Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light, which the studio now calls "two halves of the same game."

So what, then, has driven inspiration and development on next year's sequel Metro Exodus? 4A isn't specific. Instead, it vaguely refers to modern gaming as "the era of the best single-player games in years." That's its competition, the studio says.

But after two hours playing through the massive, harrowing, open-world terror of Metro Exodus, it's hard to escape the feeling that 4A had a specific goal in making a new, epic game with the word "Metro" on the title: not to beat an existing game, but to make the open-world version of Half-Life that Valve never got around to slapping the number "3" onto.

Enlarge / High-angle photograph of a woman scientist holding an electrophoresis plate for DNA separation over the UVP imaging System. (credit: Getty | CDC)

Sexual harassment is widespread within the scientific community, and policies and institutional safeguards to address the problem are more effective at reducing liability than protecting members and changing harmful work cultures, according to a long-awaited report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

The report, released Tuesday, June 12, is two years in the making. In an opening statement broadcast at the report’s public release today in Washington, DC, Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences, called it a “landmark” study arriving at the “right moment” amid the international Me Too movement against sexual harassment and assault. Yet the academies own policies regarding harassers within its ranks may highlight the challenges ahead for effecting change.

The extensive report outlines the grim scope of sexual harassment in the academic sciences, engineering, and medical fields, as well as numerous recommendations for prevention. Reviews of scientific analyses and surveys revealed that more than 50 percent of women faculty and staff and 20-50 percent of women students in the three fields had encountered or experienced sexual harassment. These rates are higher than in other sectors, including industry and government jobs. Academic positions were second only to the military, which had a sexual harassment rate of 69 percent.

Enlarge / High-angle photograph of a woman scientist holding an electrophoresis plate for DNA separation over the UVP imaging System. (credit: Getty | CDC)

Sexual harassment is widespread within the scientific community, and policies and institutional safeguards to address the problem are more effective at reducing liability than protecting members and changing harmful work cultures, according to a long-awaited report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

The report, released Tuesday, June 12, is two years in the making. In an opening statement broadcast at the report’s public release today in Washington, DC, Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences, called it a “landmark” study arriving at the “right moment” amid the international Me Too movement against sexual harassment and assault. Yet the academies own policies regarding harassers within its ranks may highlight the challenges ahead for effecting change.

The extensive report outlines the grim scope of sexual harassment in the academic sciences, engineering, and medical fields, as well as numerous recommendations for prevention. Reviews of scientific analyses and surveys revealed that more than 50 percent of women faculty and staff and 20-50 percent of women students in the three fields had encountered or experienced sexual harassment. These rates are higher than in other sectors, including industry and government jobs. Academic positions were second only to the military, which had a sexual harassment rate of 69 percent.

Enlarge / Look out, it's Insomniac Games' really, really impressive take on Spider-Man. (credit: Insomniac Games / Marvel)

LOS ANGELES—A typical E3 video game demo offers one of two things: a snappy "vertical slice" of immediately accessible action, or an all-too-brief tease of a much larger and more complicated sales pitch.

Our first hands-on with Sony's exclusive Spider-Man, launching on PlayStation 4 this September, offered the rare, seductive combination of both.

As a result, I doubled back for a second demo replay (something I rarely have time to do at crazy events like E3). This confirmed my suspicions: Insomniac Games had unlocked a ton of Spider-Man content for its E3 gameplay-premiere demo, and that the game's learning curve—which seems staggering at first—is absolutely surmountable. And a freaking blast, to boot.

Enlarge / Look out, it's Insomniac Games' really, really impressive take on Spider-Man. (credit: Insomniac Games / Marvel)

LOS ANGELES—A typical E3 video game demo offers one of two things: a snappy "vertical slice" of immediately accessible action, or an all-too-brief tease of a much larger and more complicated sales pitch.

Our first hands-on with Sony's exclusive Spider-Man, launching on PlayStation 4 this September, offered the rare, seductive combination of both.

As a result, I doubled back for a second demo replay (something I rarely have time to do at crazy events like E3). This confirmed my suspicions: Insomniac Games had unlocked a ton of Spider-Man content for its E3 gameplay-premiere demo, and that the game's learning curve—which seems staggering at first—is absolutely surmountable. And a freaking blast, to boot.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

AT&T has won a court ruling allowing it to complete its purchase of Time Warner Inc.

The ruling (PDF) by US District Judge Richard Leon went entirely in AT&T's favor. The Department of Justice had sued AT&T to block the merger. The judge's ruling, pending a possible appeal, would let AT&T complete the purchase without spinning off any subsidiaries.

The government can appeal the ruling, but Leon reportedly said that he would reject any government motion for a stay that would further delay the deal. The case was held in US District Court for the District of Columbia.

Enlarge (credit: Google)

If ever there were a case for rejecting requested device permissions, it’s made by an Android app with more than 10 million downloads from Google Play. The official app for the Spanish soccer league La Liga was recently updated to seek access to users’ microphone and GPS settings. When granted, the app processes audio snippets in an attempt to identify public venues that broadcast soccer games without a license.

According to a statement issued by La Liga officials, the functionality was added last Friday and is enabled only after users click “yes” to an Android dialog asking if the app can access the mic and geolocation of the device. The statement says the audio is used solely to identify establishments that broadcast games without a license and that the app takes special precautions to prevent it from spying on end users.

According to the statement, which was translated by Google: