General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article

Newegg Daily Deals: Acer Aspire Core i5 Laptop, Crucial BX200 480GB SSD, and More!

Posted: 14 Dec 2015 11:12 AM PST

Acer Laptop

Top Deal:

It's no longer necessary to spend a grand or more on a decent notebook, not unless you're looking for relatively strong gaming performance. But for all around computing with considerable more muscle than a netbook? You'll find that for far less than a grand by checking out today's top deal -- it's for an 15.6-Inch Acer Aspire Laptop w/ Intel Core i5-5200U (2.20 GHz) for $480 with free shipping (normally $600). In addition to running Broadwell, it also sports 8GB of RAM, a 1TB HDD, and a GeForce GTX 940M GPU.

Other Deals:

Toshiba 1TB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 2.5-inch Internal Notebook Hard Drive Bare Drive for $40 with free shipping (normally $50)

Crucial BX200 2.5-inch 480GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) for $130 with free shipping (normally $140)

SeaSonic 650W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply for $110 with $6 shipping (normally $120; additional $10 Mail-in rebate)

Raijintek All-In-One Open Loop Liquid CPU Cooler for $95 with free shipping (normally $120)

Star Citizen Tops $100 Million in Crowdfunding, Alpha 2.0 Released

Posted: 14 Dec 2015 11:01 AM PST

Reaching for the stars

Star Citizen

It seemed inevitable that Star Citizen would hit and surpass $100 million from its backers, and now it officially has. The bigger question is, will it live up to the hype? That remains to be seen.

There's a lot of work that still remains on Star Citizen, the epic space sim from the mind of Chris Roberts, creator of a little piece of gaming history known as Wing Commander.

Star Citizen raised over $2.1 million in funds on Kickstarter, which was just the beginning. Developer Cloud Imperium Games then extended the crowdfunding effort on its website where backers have driven the total to nine figures. What's remarkable about the amount raised is that there hasn't been a whole lot to show for it up to this point.

A lot of the money has come from anxious gamers buying in-game spaceships, many of which haven't been created yet. One fan of the game even spent $30,000 on Star Citizen spaceships.

It's a leap of faith built on reputation and bits of game play experiences here and there, though the release of Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 shows fans a bigger glimpse of what they're anxiously waiting for.

"Today, we are proud to make the next major step in Star Citizen's evolution available to all players. This major update to Star Citizen is available now in your launcher. With Alpha 2.0, we introduce a wide swath of features, including large world maps, multi-crew ships, seamless first person combat, missions and much more. In short: this is the biggest update to Star Citizen yet!," Cloud Imperium Games said.

Prior to this release, it wasn't possible to travel between planets or engage in first-person combat on the ground. But they're both here now, as are many other elements, all of which is "only the beginning." You can check out the big list of updates here.

As for a release date? Maybe we'll find out when the game reaches $150 million in funding.

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YouTube to Stop Supporting Direct Uploads from Webcams

Posted: 14 Dec 2015 10:24 AM PST

Gone in a flash

Webcam

YouTube is giving users a heads up that the video sharing site will no longer accept direct uploads from webcams after January 16, 2016. It's a feature that's been around since Google acquired YouTube over a decade ago for $1.65 billion, but one that not many users actually utilize.

"Previously, if you had a webcam built in or connected to your computer, you could record a webcam video on YouTube and upload it directly to the site. This feature will be turned off because it is rarely used and is built on technology that is no longer supported," YouTube stated in a blog post.

The "rarely used" technology YouTube references is Adobe Flash. YouTube kicked Flash to the curb earlier this year when it began streaming HTML5 video by default.

While YouTube claims the direct upload feature from webcams is one that's hardly being used, it did recommend some alternatives to anyone affected by the change. Namely, Photo Booth for Mac OS X and Camera for Windows 8 or later.

"If you have another OS, you may need to look up how to record videos using your webcam by referencing your device manual or searching online," YouTube said.

For Android and iOS users, YouTube suggests uploading videos using the official YouTube app (no surprise there).

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Microsoft Apologizes to Angry OneDrive Users, Announces New Offer

Posted: 14 Dec 2015 09:59 AM PST

Extending an olive branch

OneDrive

Microsoft went into full Scrooge mode early last month when it announced changes to its OneDrive cloud storage service, changes that would see a reduction in storage across the board. After having reflected on its decision, the company is reversing course...kind of.

One of the changes Microsoft announced in November is that the amount of free OneDrive storage space would be cut from 15GB to 5GB, which would affect both new and current users. In addition, it planned to eliminate the 15GB camera roll bonus. So for some users, that meant going from 30GB all the way down to 5GB.

Not anymore. In an apologetic blog post, Microsoft stated that its "biggest fans who have been loyal advocates" of OneDrive can take advantage of a new offer that allows them to keep their existing 15GB of free space when the changes go into effect next year. Microsoft will also honor the 15GB camera roll bonus. However, it's an opt-in offer -- you have to go here and click the "Keep your free storage" button.

Microsoft also said it will continue to offer 1TB of storage to Office 365 Home, Personal, and University subscribers, and for anyone who received additional storage as part of its unlimited offer, they'll be able to keep it for at least 12 months. However, the unlimited offer itself is still off the table.

Why not reinstate it? Microsoft explained in November that a small number of users were using the unlimited storage allotment to back up multiple PCs and store entire movie collections. In some cases, Microsoft said users were exceeding 75TB, or 14,000 times the average.

"In November we made a business decision to reduce storage limits for OneDrive. Since then, we've heard clearly from our Windows and OneDrive fans about the frustration and disappointment we have caused," Microsoft said. "We realize the announcement came across as blaming customers for using our product. For this, we are truly sorry and would like to apologize to the community."

So in short, Microsoft isn't blaming users for taking advantage of its previous unlimited storage offer, but also won't bring it back. Don't like it? You can request a full refund, Microsoft says.

Finally, for users of OneDrive's free service tier who have over 5GB of content and are directly affected by the changes, Microsoft will offer a free year of Office 365 Personal, which includes 1TB of storage.

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Five Cool Raspberry Pi Projects

Posted: 14 Dec 2015 12:00 AM PST
Posted by Shri Krishna

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