Month: July 2018

Hollow Knight beats Metroid, Dark Souls at their own brutal game

Harsh restrictions, subtle lessons make this platformer an excellent teacher.

Enlarge / Giddy up, little insectoid friend. We have fightin' (and learnin') to do. (credit: Team Cherry)

The video game Hollow Knight may look like it has familiar trappings: Ssde-scrolling combat; deadly, hand-animated insects; a massive, explore-and-return world. Another Metroidvania, right?

I made a similar assumption before diving into the 2017 game, which has since spread its insect wings after a PC Early Access debut and flittered all the way to the Nintendo Switch. But I quickly found myself bewildered, humbled, and, quite frankly, eager to learn more. This insect-obsessed game is a full hive of meaningful, show-don’t-tell encounters.

Maybe it’s a scuttling sound. Maybe it’s a rare friendly face that doesn’t attack you on sight. More often than not, though, it’s some horrible, shrieking thing waiting to ambush you in the dark—its mind rotted by the throbbing infection that felled a supposedly once great kingdom.

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Fahrdienste: Uber und Lyft sollen in New York reguliert werden

Die Stadt New York hat offenbar immer mehr Probleme mit Fahrdiensten wie Uber und Lyft – und reagiert: Neue Lizenzen soll es nur noch für bestimmte Angebote geben, außerdem ist ein Mindestlohn für die Fahrer geplant. (Uber, Verkehr)

Die Stadt New York hat offenbar immer mehr Probleme mit Fahrdiensten wie Uber und Lyft - und reagiert: Neue Lizenzen soll es nur noch für bestimmte Angebote geben, außerdem ist ein Mindestlohn für die Fahrer geplant. (Uber, Verkehr)

Star Wars: Prinzessin Leia spielt in Episode 9 mit

Die 2016 verstorbene Carrie Fisher tritt in Star Wars 9 wieder als Leia auf. Nach Angaben von Disney wird sie dafür nicht digital neu erschaffen, vielmehr sind noch ausreichend nicht veröffentlichte Aufnahmen vorhanden. Auch die anderen Mitglieder der …

Die 2016 verstorbene Carrie Fisher tritt in Star Wars 9 wieder als Leia auf. Nach Angaben von Disney wird sie dafür nicht digital neu erschaffen, vielmehr sind noch ausreichend nicht veröffentlichte Aufnahmen vorhanden. Auch die anderen Mitglieder der Besatzung sind bekannt - inklusive Skywalker. (Star Wars, Disney)

Großbritannien: Kampagne wirbt für einen Monat ohne soziale Medien

Auf Wiedersehen, Facebook und Twitter! Internetnutzer in Großbritannien sollen einen Monat lang den Verzicht auf soziale Netzwerke ausprobieren. Unter anderem der staatliche Gesundheitsdienst wirbt für die Kampagne. (Soziales Netz, Facebook)

Auf Wiedersehen, Facebook und Twitter! Internetnutzer in Großbritannien sollen einen Monat lang den Verzicht auf soziale Netzwerke ausprobieren. Unter anderem der staatliche Gesundheitsdienst wirbt für die Kampagne. (Soziales Netz, Facebook)

World of Warcraft: Blizzard und das mysteriöse Monsterproblem

Viele der Kämpfe in World of Warcraft dauern nach dem letzten großen Update zu lange – und selbst Blizzard weiß noch nicht, was der Grund ist. Möglicherweise beheben die Entwickler das Problem vorübergehend mit einer simplen Notlösung. (WoW, MMORPG) …

Viele der Kämpfe in World of Warcraft dauern nach dem letzten großen Update zu lange - und selbst Blizzard weiß noch nicht, was der Grund ist. Möglicherweise beheben die Entwickler das Problem vorübergehend mit einer simplen Notlösung. (WoW, MMORPG)

Court: UEFA Can Expand Its Pirate Stream Blocking Efforts

In the UK, UEFA has obtained an extension and expansion of the High Court injunction which requires ISPs to block servers streaming live European football matches without permission. The order is directed at several major ISPs and following the success of the initial order, it now covers more pirate servers and additional football competitions.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Now that the World Cup is over, football teams in Europe are slowly starting to get ready for the new season.

This is also true for UEFA, the international body that governs football throughout Europe. These preparations take place on the pitch, but also in the online arena and the courts.

In the UK, UEFA successfully applied for an extension and expansion of the pirate stream blocking order the High Court handed down late last year. Under this order, ISPs are required to block pirate streams of several of the most popular games.

The order for the upcoming season was issued by High Court Justice Arnold. It received no opposition from the ISPs and some, likely those who have skin in the game, supported the renewal.

The evidence provided by UEFA convinced the High Court that the initial blocking order was a success, without it resulting in any meaningful collateral damage.

“The evidence filed by UEFA in support of this application demonstrates that the First Order was very effective in achieving the blocking of access to the Target Servers during UEFA matches,” Justice Arnold writes.

“Moreover, no evidence has been found of overblocking despite checks having been undertaken. There was one incident on which a stream was erroneously blocked, but it was not a case of overblocking because it was in fact an infringing stream although not covered by the terms of the First Order.”

As with the Premier League blocking renewal, which was issued last week, there are also some small changes. The number of targeted streaming servers has expanded, for example, and there’s a shorter delay in notifying the affected hosting provider to prevent the targets from circumventing the measures.

In addition, UEFA was also granted permission to expand its blocking efforts to protect additional UEFA competitions.

The affected streaming servers and competitions are not mentioned by name in the order. It’s likely, however, that several major competitions such as the Champions League and the Europa League are covered.

The blocking extension and expansion covers all the major UK ISPS including BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media and will remain in place for the months to come. If it remains successful, UEFA is likely to request another update after that.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Court: UEFA Can Expand Its Pirate Stream Blocking Efforts

In the UK, UEFA has obtained an extension and expansion of the High Court injunction which requires ISPs to block servers streaming live European football matches without permission. The order is directed at several major ISPs and following the success of the initial order, it now covers more pirate servers and additional football competitions.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Now that the World Cup is over, football teams in Europe are slowly starting to get ready for the new season.

This is also true for UEFA, the international body that governs football throughout Europe. These preparations take place on the pitch, but also in the online arena and the courts.

In the UK, UEFA successfully applied for an extension and expansion of the pirate stream blocking order the High Court handed down late last year. Under this order, ISPs are required to block pirate streams of several of the most popular games.

The order for the upcoming season was issued by High Court Justice Arnold. It received no opposition from the ISPs and some, likely those who have skin in the game, supported the renewal.

The evidence provided by UEFA convinced the High Court that the initial blocking order was a success, without it resulting in any meaningful collateral damage.

“The evidence filed by UEFA in support of this application demonstrates that the First Order was very effective in achieving the blocking of access to the Target Servers during UEFA matches,” Justice Arnold writes.

“Moreover, no evidence has been found of overblocking despite checks having been undertaken. There was one incident on which a stream was erroneously blocked, but it was not a case of overblocking because it was in fact an infringing stream although not covered by the terms of the First Order.”

As with the Premier League blocking renewal, which was issued last week, there are also some small changes. The number of targeted streaming servers has expanded, for example, and there’s a shorter delay in notifying the affected hosting provider to prevent the targets from circumventing the measures.

In addition, UEFA was also granted permission to expand its blocking efforts to protect additional UEFA competitions.

The affected streaming servers and competitions are not mentioned by name in the order. It’s likely, however, that several major competitions such as the Champions League and the Europa League are covered.

The blocking extension and expansion covers all the major UK ISPS including BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media and will remain in place for the months to come. If it remains successful, UEFA is likely to request another update after that.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Intel says not to expect mainstream 10nm chips until 2H19

Intel is going to be building 14nm chips for a long time yet.

Lenovo IdeaPad 330, the sole system with Intel's sole 10nm processor. (credit: Lenovo)

Intel has set a concrete deadline for when it'll finally have processors built on a 10nm process in the mainstream market: holiday season 2019.

While the company's 14nm manufacturing process is working well, with multiple revisions to improve performance or reduce power consumption, Intel has struggled to develop an effective 10nm process. Originally mass production was planned for as far back as 2015. In April, the company revised that to some time in 2019. The latest announcement is the most specific yet: PC systems with 10nm processors will be in the holiday season, with Xeon parts for servers following soon after. This puts mainstream, mass production still a year away.

The company does have a single 10nm processor on the market right now: a solitary low-end i3 processor. That processor is being produced in limited numbers, and peculiarly for an i3 it does not include an integrated GPU. The implication is that Intel had to disable the GPU in order to be able to build the chips at all. The processor, named the i3-8121U, is shipping in a single Lenovo system.

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Re-testing the MacBook Pro: Apple’s firmware update led to a big improvement

The new MacBook Pro now behaves as expected, but there are still limitations.

Enlarge / The 2018 MacBook Pro from the front.

Prospective buyers of the 2018 MacBook Pro were faced with a dilemma shortly after the device launched. Reports emerged that the machine experienced heavy throttling and wildly inconsistent performance under heavy, sustained load—especially when both the CPU and GPU were being taxed simultaneously.

Early speculation suggested that this was because of the inability of the MacBook Pro's thermal management system to support the demanding Intel Core i9 CPU. But Apple quickly announced that it had discovered a bug in the MacBook Pro's firmware that affected the heat management system. A firmware update was released earlier this week. Here is Apple's public statement on the issue:

Following extensive performance testing under numerous workloads, we've identified that there is a missing digital key in the firmware that impacts the thermal management system and could drive clock speeds down under heavy thermal loads on the new MacBook Pro. A bug fix is included in today's macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 Supplemental Update and is recommended. We apologize to any customer who has experienced less than optimal performance on their new systems. Customers can expect the new 15-inch MacBook Pro to be up to 70% faster, and the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar to be up to 2X faster, as shown in the performance results on our website.

We dedicated some time this week to re-running all the benchmarks we did for our review in order to see how performance was impacted by the firmware update. We also wanted to see side-by-side comparisons of clock speeds before and after the update.

Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Re-testing the MacBook Pro: Apple’s firmware update led to a big improvement

The new MacBook Pro now behaves as expected, but there are still limitations.

Enlarge / The 2018 MacBook Pro from the front.

Prospective buyers of the 2018 MacBook Pro were faced with a dilemma shortly after the device launched. Reports emerged that the machine experienced heavy throttling and wildly inconsistent performance under heavy, sustained load—especially when both the CPU and GPU were being taxed simultaneously.

Early speculation suggested that this was because of the inability of the MacBook Pro's thermal management system to support the demanding Intel Core i9 CPU. But Apple quickly announced that it had discovered a bug in the MacBook Pro's firmware that affected the heat management system. A firmware update was released earlier this week. Here is Apple's public statement on the issue:

Following extensive performance testing under numerous workloads, we've identified that there is a missing digital key in the firmware that impacts the thermal management system and could drive clock speeds down under heavy thermal loads on the new MacBook Pro. A bug fix is included in today's macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 Supplemental Update and is recommended. We apologize to any customer who has experienced less than optimal performance on their new systems. Customers can expect the new 15-inch MacBook Pro to be up to 70% faster, and the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar to be up to 2X faster, as shown in the performance results on our website.

We dedicated some time this week to re-running all the benchmarks we did for our review in order to see how performance was impacted by the firmware update. We also wanted to see side-by-side comparisons of clock speeds before and after the update.

Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments