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It's not often that I sit down to play a video game with my significant other. Oh sure, we'll play through Until Dawn together, taking turns to steer characters to their deaths, or turn into a crack crime-fighting detective duo to solve the mysteries of Her Story. But there's only so long that you can sit and watch another person play a game before it gets, well...boring.

Worldwide, simultaneous online multiplayer might have made playing games a more exciting experience for the lonesome couch competitor, but for the guy or gal that wants to sit and play a game with someone in the same room, the options are a tad limited.

Which is why I'm so enamoured with Overcooked. It is the quintessential couch co-op experience, a game with a simple premise that's easy to pick up and play, and that brings out the absolute best and worst in those who play it. Oh sure, you'll start out as best friends, gently encouraging each other as you laugh off early mishaps. A dropped onion here, a mishandled plate there—who cares right? But then the washing piles up. No one is chopping lettuce. There's a batch of french fries in the deep fat fryer that a certain someone was supposed to be watching and now they've caught fire. Tempers fray, panic ensues, expletives are hurled.

(credit: Paramount)

Next Tuesday is the day Australians must fill in—correctly—their census forms, or face a fine. However many may be willing to take that risk as the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), rather extraordinarily, will be storing personal names and addresses in addition to the usual census results.

In the past, census forms have collected this information, and respondents were allowed to opt-in to having personally identifiable information retained. This time, the ABS wants to keep the information on record until 2020. This has provoked both privacy and security concerns. The bureau's former chief statistician Bill McLennan called it “the most significant invasion of privacy ever perpetrated on Australians by the ABS,” and even Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak weighed in saying the data retention plans were “unethical.”

Others claim the ABS cannot adequately protect that sensitive data. According to reports the ABS has had 14 data breaches since 2013.

Way back in 2010, a Chinese company unveiled a render of the Transit Elevated Bus: a tram-like, catamaran-style vehicle that rises up above a lane of traffic, straddling the cars beneath it. In May this year the company showed off a scale model of the bus; everyone started to get very excited. And on Tuesday, a full-size TEB prototype took its first ride in the northeastern Chinese city of Qinhuangdao, near Beijing.

The premise of the TEB is simple. It's a guided bus (i.e. it sticks to a predefined route) that is 4.8 metres high, 22 metres long, and 7.8 metres wide, with ground clearance of about 2.2 metres (7.2ft). Any vehicle that is short enough to pass under the TEB is free to do so, in theory significantly reducing congestion.

The TEB itself carries about 300 people and is powered by electricity at speeds of up to 60km/h (37mph). Larger, articulated models that can carry up to 1,200 passengers have been mooted. In China, where congestion is a major issue in large cities, the TEB is being pitched as a cheaper alternative to building subways (the initial 2010 report said that a 25-mile TEB track would cost a tenth of the equivalent subway).

(credit: Blue Coat)

Large UK companies are amongst the hardest hit by ransomware in western countries according to a new report that found that more than half had been affected by it—and that nine percent had been left "entirely unable to operate."

Ransomware is clearly a growth industry in Britain; 58 percent of IT directors in this country have paid ransoms in the past, and the UK experiences more attacks than the Canada, Germany, and the US, where bosses are 21 times less likely to give in to hackers' demands.

Ransomware is malicious software which locks users out of key files or their entire system using tough encryption until the owner pays up. It's a relatively simple scam, and according to Malwarebytes, who commissioned the report, gaining rapidly in popularity. The vast majority of attacks are coming through an endpoint, with 46 percent originating from an e-mail.