Bethesda isn’t shutting down ambitious fan-made “Skyblivion” remaster project

“Bethesda has always been supportive of community projects like ours…”

Bethesda fans are understandably excited about the opportunity to revisit the world of Cyrodiil with yesterday's heavily telegraphed release of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered. But that excitement may have been tinged with at least a little bit of trepidation for the team behind Skyblivion, a volunteer-run project that has spent years trying to "port and rebuild" 2007's Oblivion into the updated engine from 2016's remastered Skyrim: Special Edition.

Fortunately for the Skyblivion team, Bethesda has apparently decided there's room enough in this world for both official and unofficial remakes of Oblivion. The team took to social media Tuesday to thank Bethesda for "their continued support" and for "the generous gift of Oblivion Remastered game keys for our entire modding team."

"To clear up any confusion Bethesda made it clear that they have no intention of shutting down our project," the team added in a social media reply.

Read full article

Comments

Roku launches new Streaming Sticks for $30 and up

It’s harder to find a TV these days that doesn’t have out-of-the-box support for streaming media from services like Netflix, Hulu, Max, YouTube, and Amazon Prime Video than it is to find one that does. But there’s still a market for m…

It’s harder to find a TV these days that doesn’t have out-of-the-box support for streaming media from services like Netflix, Hulu, Max, YouTube, and Amazon Prime Video than it is to find one that does. But there’s still a market for media streaming boxes and dongles – likely because they can bring new features or software […]

The post Roku launches new Streaming Sticks for $30 and up appeared first on Liliputing.

Republican space officials criticize “mindless” NASA science cuts

“Heliophysics is the most unknown—and underrated—part of NASA’s science program.”

In the nearly two weeks since Ars reported on the Trump administration's proposed budget cuts for NASA's science programs, scientists and Democratic lawmakers have both expressed deep concerns about the future of the space agency.

However, in a pattern consistent across a host of issues in which GOP lawmakers do not want to be seen to be publicly criticizing the Trump administration, the response to these sweeping cuts from Republican officials has been much more muted.

But this week, three prominent Republican space policy officials broke their silence. In an op-ed published Tuesday on Real Clear Science, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former House Chair Robert Walker, and the head of the landing team for NASA for the Trump-Vance transition team, Charles Miller, said they were "deeply disturbed" by the proposed cuts. All three men have played an important role in setting Republican space policy over the last decade.

Read full article

Comments

4chan may be dead, but its toxic legacy lives on

It is likely that there will never be a site like 4chan again.

My earliest memory of 4chan was sitting up late at night, typing its URL into my browser, and scrolling through a thread of LOLcat memes, which were brand-new at the time.

Back then a photoshop of a cat saying "I can has cheezburger" or an image of an owl saying “ORLY?” was, without question, the funniest thing my 14-year-old brain had ever laid eyes on. So much so, I woke my dad up by laughing too hard and had to tell him that I was scrolling through pictures of cats at 2 in the morning. Later, I would become intimately familiar with the site’s much more nefarious tendencies.

It's strange to look back at 4chan, apparently wiped off the Internet entirely last week by hackers from a rival message board, and think about how many different websites it was over its more than two decades online. What began as a hub for Internet culture and an anonymous way station for the Internet's anarchic true believers devolved over the years into a fan club for mass shooters, the central node of Gamergate, and the beating heart of far-right fascism around the world—a virus that infected every facet of our lives, from the slang we use to the politicians we vote for. But the site itself had been frozen in amber since the George W. Bush administration.

Read full article

Comments

Bicycle bling: All the accessories you’ll need for your new e-bike

To accompany our cargo bike shopper’s guide, here’s the other you’ll want.

If you've read our cargo e-bike shopper's guide, you may be well on your way to owning a new ride. Now comes the fun part.

Part of the joy of diving into a new hobby is researching and acquiring the necessary (and less-than-necessary) stuff. And cycling (or, for the casual or transportation-first rider, “riding bikes”) is no different—there are hundreds of ways to stock up on talismanic, Internet-cool parts and accessories that you may or may not need.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing! And you can even get creative—PC case LEDs serve the same function as a very specific Japanese reflective triangle that hangs from your saddle. But let’s start with the strictly necessary.

Read full article

Comments