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Pro Evolution Soccer is at a crossroads. PES 2016 was a stark improvement over anything the series had delivered since its PlayStation 2 heyday, with critics widely declaring that it outperformed FIFA 16—at least in raw action, if not shiny extras. Konami's challenge with PES 2017 is to continue the upward trend, and give FIFA diehards a truly compelling reason to switch.

Smartly, the advances and tweaks seen in PES 2017 do not revolve around what the competition is doing. PES 2016 took the series away from the showy theatrics and power fantasies of FIFA 16, edging it ever closer to realism. PES 2017 continues that approach. This is a game that knows exactly what digital football should look and feel like. As in real life, you might witness the occasional 30-yard bullet here and there, but the long-term rewards revolve around how diligent you are in understanding and practising the core strategies that underpin the world's most successful and respected teams.

Mechanics as simple as how players pass and caress the ball have been perceptibly altered. Even the shortest of passes feels important thanks to the authority with which players execute them. Almost completely gone is the pinball sensation that has plagued football games of the past, replaced by clever physics that make the ball its own individual entity. It no longer feels as though the ball has some form of magnetic attraction to a player's body—get a pass wrong, through poor timing or power, and you pay for it.

Remember when the word Atari used to mean something? When it meant a wasted youth spent flipping quarters in front of a haggard Pac Man arcade cabinet while mouthing "don't you want me baby?" to the girls gathered by the change stand? Or jostling joysticks in front of a ropy CRT TV and a battered copy of Space Invaders while your parents, disgruntled with your failing schoolwork, mutter something about square eyes before retreating to the kitchen for a well deserved glass of pinot?

Actually, come to think about it, I'm neither American enough nor old enough to actually remember any of that. But dammit, I remember enough to know that Atari, the once great voice of video games, shouldn't be making IoT devices and smart home products with French wireless networking company Sigfox. It's just not cricket.

According to Sigfox, the company will licence the Atari branding and slap it in on a range of connected home, pet, lifestyle, and safety products, all of which will connect directly to Sigfox's wireless network, rather than to the Internet directly. Sigfox's network, which currently only works in Europe with a US launch planned, is typically used for relaying small chunks of information infrequently, such as data from an electricity meter. This, the company says, means that its IoT devices will have much better battery life and won't require any complex pairing or setup.

At the local cafe, hackers can get a cup of coffee and rogue access to the network. Who needs a VPN; what could go wrong? (credit: Ken Hawkins)

For the security minded, one of the scariest revelations from the now three-year-old Snowden leaks had nothing to do with accommodating ISPs (shocking) or overreaching and often vague anti-terrorism practices and policy (an even bigger shock, right?). Instead, when news trickled out about matters like the National Security Agency’s Vulcan data repository or its Diffie-Hellman strategy, online privacy advocates found themselves quaking. Suddenly, seemingly everyone had to re-evaluate one of the most often used tools for maintaining a shred of anonymity online—the VPN.

VPNs, or virtual private networks, are typically used to obfuscate users’ IP addresses and to add a layer of security to Web browsing. They work by routing traffic through a secure, encrypted connection to the VPN’s server. The reasons for using VPNs vary. Some people use VPNs to change their IP address so they can access location-specific media content in a different geographic location or download things on torrent that are less likely to be traced back to them. Others hope to minimize online tracking from advertisers, prevent the negative effects of rogue access to Wi-Fi networks, or even just obfuscate their IP address to specific sites they visit.

Not all VPNs are alike, however. In fact, poorly configured VPNs can make users more vulnerable in various ways. Some ban torrenting altogether. Others log information, either for maintenance reasons, to track abuse, or in accordance with their local data retention laws.