General Gaming Article |
- Why Macs Can't Do Rift, According to Palmer Luckey
- Intel Said To Be Working on AR Headset Design
- AMD's Riguer Talks 16k Per Eye @ 144Hz in VR
- Amazon Backtracks on Fire OS 5 Encryption
- Rumor: Redstone 2 Delayed Due to New 2017 Devices
- New Nvidia WHQL Drivers Support Vulkan API
- Valve to Showcase VR Experiments to Steam Users in Portal's Aperture Lab
- John McAfee Fibbed About iPhone Hacking Technique to Get Attention
- Ransomware Hackers Target Apple Mac OS X Users for First Time
- Email Inventor Raymond Tomlinson Dead at 74
- Epic's CEO: Universal Windows Platform Must "Die"
- Newegg Daily Deals: Lenovo 14-Inch IdeaPad Laptop, Asus Z97-A/USB Motherboard, and More!
- Dell XPS 15 Review
| Why Macs Can't Do Rift, According to Palmer Luckey Posted: 07 Mar 2016 02:38 PM PST Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey recently spoke with Shacknews about the price of the upcoming Oculus Rift VR headset, his Tesla Model S car, and supporting Apple's Mac platform. The interview took place in San Francisco during the Windows 10 Showcase event in late February. Oculus VR was there demonstrating Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition running on the Oculus Rift, which is slated to go live this spring on Microsoft's Windows Store and the Oculus Store. During the six-minute interview, Luckey was asked about supporting the Oculus Rift on the Apple Mac platform. He said that it was actually up to Apple itself, and if they ever release a good computer, Oculus VR would be happy to provide support for it. However, he said that Apple currently doesn't prioritize high-end GPUs. "You can buy a $6,000 Mac Pro with the top-of-the-line AMD Fire Pro D700s, and it still doesn't match our recommended specs," he said. "I mean, if they prioritize high-end GPUs like they used to for a while back in the day, I think we would love to support the Mac. But right now, there's just not a single machine out there that supports it. So even if we can support on the software side, there's just no audience of people that can run the vast majority of software out there." The news shouldn't be surprising. Oculus VR chief architect Atman Binstock said in a blog last year that development for OS X and Linux had "paused" so that the company could focus on launching a "high-quality consumer-oriented VR experience" on the Windows platform. The company is definitely eager to get back into developing for OS X and Linux, but currently there's no timeline, he said. As previously reported, the Oculus Rift requires Windows 7 SP1 or newer. The headset also needs an Intel Core i5 4590 or better processor, 8GB RAM or more, and two USB 3.0 ports. On the GPU front, the Oculus Rift requires a Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 or better, or an AMD Radeon R9 290 or better. You'll also need an HDMI 1.3 video port. "On the raw rendering costs: a traditional 1080p game at 60Hz requires 124 million shaded pixels per second," Binstock explains in his blog. "In contrast, the Rift runs at 2160×1200 at 90Hz split over dual displays, consuming 233 million pixels per second. At the default eye-target scale, the Rift's rendering requirements go much higher: around 400 million shaded pixels per second. This means that by raw rendering costs alone, a VR game will require approximately 3x the GPU power of 1080p rendering." In addition to providing a status on Mac support, Luckey also commented about the reaction of consumers after the Oculus Rift price tag was released. He said that everyone's interpretation is valid, but at the end of the day, Oculus VR isn't making any money off the hardware. If fact, it costs a lot of money to make a really high-end VR headset like the Rift, and for $600, consumers are getting a lot of stuff. "For that $600, you're getting a lot more than if you're spending it on a phone or a TV," Luckey says. "You'll get multiple OLED displays, a high-precision tracking system, a lot of really fancy and robust and precise mechanicals, really high-end optics that rival the complexity of many DSLR lenses. You're getting a lot of stuff for that $600. When you buy a phone for $600, you're not getting nearly as much stuff for that $600." He points out that over time, costs are going to go down while the quality is going to rise. The recommended requirements will reportedly never change over the lifetime of the Rift. Thus, as hardware prices come down and the recommended specs become more of the mainstream norm, more and more consumers will be able to jump into the Rift experience. Except for Mac customers, of course, who presumably won't see Rift support anytime soon if Apple continues its current hardware course. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Intel Said To Be Working on AR Headset Design Posted: 07 Mar 2016 02:34 PM PST Unnamed sources informed the Wall Street Journal last week that Intel is working on an augmented reality solution based on its RealSense 3D camera technology. The company will likely offer a headset design to other manufacturers rather than market a first-party model itself, similar to what Microsoft is doing with its upcoming HoloLens headset, according to the sources. On Thursday, the paper said that vice president and general manager of Intel's perceptual computing group Achin Bhowmik declined to comment on the rumor, but did admit that Intel typically creates the experience (prototypes) first to help convince potential customers (the ecosystem) that they need Intel's components. Intel has been moving slowly into the AR and VR sectors with a number of acquisitions and investments. The most recent acquisition took place in June 2015 with the purchase of Recon Instruments. This company produces Recon Jet goggles for sports enthusiast that project information into the user's field-of-view such as maps and distances. It consists of a small screen that fits over the right eye. Reportedly falling behind in the smartphone and tablet markets, Intel is seeking new avenues of revenue in the growing fields of AR, wearables, drones, and more. Last year, the company revealed the Intel Curie module along with a multi-year research and development collaboration with the Oakley brand to create smart eyeware. Intel also teamed up with TAG Heuer to create a smartwatch powered by Google's Android Wear platform. Intel even provides components for Daqri's "smart" hard hat that includes AR technology. Most recently, Intel teamed up with IonVR to showcase a headset for mobile devices that uses the RealSense ZR300 camera. The device was on display at CES 2016 back in January, providing a "hand-virtualization enabled" VR experience. In addition to the camera, the device also combined Google's Project Tango 3D motion tracking and depth sensing system with IonVR's VR headset with MotionSync Technology. Thus, CES attendees could see real-world objects in a VR environment, preventing them from bumping into nearby physical objects (like a chair, table, etc). Powered by Intel processors, RealSense technology consists of an infrared camera, an infrared laser projector, and a 1080p HD camera. Combined, they can sense depth and track the user's motion. The company provides two solutions: the short-range F200 camera that works best in laptops, AIO desktops, and 2-in-1 solutions, and the long-range R200 camera that can be found on tablets and 2-in-1 devices. News of Intel's rumored AR headset arrives after Microsoft opened pre-orders for its HoloLens headset to developers on Monday. The package will cost developers a hefty $3,000 and include Microsoft's custom Holographic Processing Unit, see-through holographic lenses, and a 32-bit Intel architecture. Microsoft's announcement seemingly backed up previous reports that Intel was collaborating with the Redmond company on an AR project. Microsoft's Alex Kipman said earlier last week that HoloLens will be completely untethered and allow users to create and shape holograms with gestures. "HoloLens understands your gestures, gaze, and voice, enabling you to interact in the most natural way possible," he added. "With spatial sound, HoloLens allows you to hear holograms from anywhere in the room, even if they are behind you." Unfortunately, the Wall Street Journal's latest report on the Intel AR project doesn't reveal any kind of time frame. And although Microsoft just opened pre-orders for HoloLens to developers, a consumer version won't be available anytime soon. That said, Intel seemingly has plenty of time to perfect its AR technology. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| AMD's Riguer Talks 16k Per Eye @ 144Hz in VR Posted: 07 Mar 2016 02:26 PM PST AMD's Guennadi Riguer said in a recent interview that the company is pushing for 16K per eye at 144Hz and above for nearly latency-free virtual reality that's served up in a wireless, small form factor package. He also added that AMD has a "robust" roadmap that will tackle a wide range of issues and bring VR technology to that point. "LiquidVR is a set of technologies that has a very clear mission: to take maximum advantage of GPUs to enable rich and seamless content," Riguer said. "We believe that with LiquidVR, AMD has helped the industry to take a first big step in this wonderful new immersive world called virtual reality." Riguer also said that AMD sees VR as more than "just another cool technology," and that the company "firmly" stands behind the efforts to bring an immersive experience to Radeon customers through LiquidVR. To provide this experience, AMD took a look at what was and wasn't designed natively for VR and identified four main features that became LiquidVR's foundation. "We at AMD are very passionate about graphics, VR with its high graphics demands is particularly exciting," he said. "However, VR is more than just pretty graphics. As a platform, it has the capacity to revolutionize how we interface with computers and provide a whole range of new experiences we haven't even imagined." AMD announced LiquidVR in March 2015, an "innovative" set of technologies set out to provide the ultimate immersive VR experience on AMD hardware. The suite includes Asynchronous shaders for smooth head-tracking, Affinity Multi-GPU for scalable rendering, the latest data latch mechanism (also for smooth head-tracking), and Direct-To-Display technology for delivering a seamless plug-and-play virtual reality experience. According to AMD, the LiquidVR SDK features Hardware-Accelerated Time Warp. This is a technology that warps a frame after it's been rendered and before it's sent to the VR headset to reflect the user's viewpoint. This minimizes latency between the head movement and what appears on the screens. The Affinity Multi-GPU technology takes advantage of multiple GPUs, allowing each chip to render a frame and thus improve the overall framerate. In the interview, Riguer also talks about LiquidVR supporting DirectX11. Even though there's a lot of excitement surrounding DirectX12, a good portion of VR development is done via "mature" engines like Epic's massively popular Unreal Engine and Unity. These are built with DirectX11, and had developers waited for DirectX12 and Vulkan to mature, the VR industry would have stalled. "This is why in LiquidVR we focused on enabling better VR support with DirectX 11, to solve challenges immediately," he said. "The DirectX 12 API is much more powerful and flexible than DirectX 11 and in some ways there is less need for delivering exactly the same LiquidVR features. We're definitely looking at DirectX 12 integration and bringing further enhancements to it with LiquidVR." AMD says that the prerequisites for LiquidVR include an AMD Radeon GCN-based GPU (R9 390 or better is recommended) and Windows 7 or newer. The actual LiquidVR run-time is automatically installed by the current AMD drivers. Developers merely need the LiquidVR.h header file in their application, which is provided in the LiquidVR SDK. AMD offers a white paper on LiquidVR here (PDF). | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Amazon Backtracks on Fire OS 5 Encryption Posted: 07 Mar 2016 02:13 PM PST On Friday, Amazon backtracked on its stance regarding encryption and Fire OS 5, stating in an email to the press that the company will re-enable the option for full disk encryption in an update this spring. The option for encryption was actually removed with the release of Fire OS 5 back in September 2015, but didn't receive public attention until last week. Although Amazon is returning encryption to its operating system, the feature won't be turned on by default. Users must manually activate encryption in order to protect their data, such as passwords, email addresses, and credit card information from hackers if the tablet or phone is lost or stolen. Last week, EFF member David Scovetta brought attention to the lack of encryption by posting a screenshot on Twitter, which revealed that encryption was not supported on Fire OS 5. What made this discovery worrisome was that Fire OS 5 was finally made available to older tablets such as the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 and the Kindle Fire HD 6/7, which previously sported Fire OS 4.0. Amazon's Fire OS 5 was originally released on the latest Fire HD tablets launched in 2015. News of Amazon removing support in Fire OS 5 was surprising given that the company officially backed Apple in a legal brief (PDF) filed last Thursday. Amazon joined other companies who provided their official support including Microsoft, Dropbox, Facebook, Google, Mozilla, Pinterest, Snapchat, Yahoo, and a few others. According to Microsoft, "at stake are fundamental questions about privacy, safety, and the rule of law." News of Amazon's encryption support in Fire OS 5 was unquestionably pushed into the limelight last week thanks to the current feud between Apple and the FBI. The government is asking Apple to create a version of iOS that's void of specific security features. Apple is refusing to make this court-ordered "tool," which the government wants to use on the iPhone 5c used by deceased San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook. Last week, Amazon stated that "all Fire tablets' communication with Amazon's cloud meet our high standards for privacy and security, including appropriate use of encryption." That said, communication with devices using Fire OS 5 is encrypted, but the information stored on those devices is not. Thus, customers should wait on upgrading to Fire OS 5 until the patch is released, or keep their current, older version of the operating system. As previously reported, Amazon removed encryption because customers reportedly weren't using the feature. The company said that customers typically use Fire devices for entertainment, and not for productivity. Fire owners have reportedly been complaining about the lack of encryption since the operating system's release in September, but it took one simple tweet to give the problem mainstream attention. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Rumor: Redstone 2 Delayed Due to New 2017 Devices Posted: 07 Mar 2016 02:08 PM PST Last week brought reports that the second wave of Windows 10 "Redstone" wouldn't arrive until spring 2017. Originally, "Redstone 2" aka RS2, was slated to arrive by the end of calendar 2016, packing features that didn't make it into the first Redstone release slated to arrive this June. No reason was given for the delay. However, ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley now reports that Microsoft is intentionally holding back RS2's release so that it launches alongside a string of new Microsoft-branded Windows 10 devices slated to arrive in spring 2017. The news arrives by way of unnamed sources, adding that Microsoft will likely unleash two or three "major" feature releases to Windows 10 on an annual basis from here on out. As a reminder, Microsoft launched Windows 10 "Threshold 1" (TH1) back in July 2015, followed by the "Threshold 2" (TH2) update in November 2015. This latter release added features that didn't make it into the baked retail copy of Windows 10 along with performance enhancements and improvements to the company's core apps. Microsoft's next "big" update for Windows 10, aka "Redstone 1" (RS1), is slated to arrive this June. The company has already released builds of RS1 to Insiders for testing, but as of this writing, Microsoft has not indicated a public release time frame for this update. RS1 will reportedly focus on the Universal App Platform, and bringing Windows 10 devices closer together including phones, tablets, PCs, and the Xbox One console. As for RS2, little is known about the update, although there's talk that it will focus on first-party apps. However, the combined Redstone updates will reportedly provide a number of UI adjustments, including cosmetic changes to features provided by the Windows 10 TH2 update. For instance, the Settings app and the Start Menu could well see changes as well as the Action/Notification Center. The Control Panel will reportedly lose some elements to the more consumer-friendly Settings app. According to Foley's sources, Microsoft planned to follow the TH1/TH2 release schedule as seen in 2015, but now that has changed. They also claim that Microsoft is "prioritizing and tailoring" new Windows 10 features based on what the Devices Group needs/wants to showcase new hardware. Under the helm of Executive Vice President Terry Myerson, the Windows and Devices Groups are reportedly working "increasingly" closer together as of late. That said, if the RS2 release will focus on new features for new hardware released in 2017, the delay shouldn't be all that surprising. Still, as previously reported, Microsoft execs haven't said anything publicly about the release schedule for the Redstone updates, nor has the company made any official mentions about new hardware in 2016 or 2017. Foley believes that we'll see "non-Kaby-Lake-based" Windows 10 devices before the end of calendar 2016, but we'll see. Microsoft's BUILD 2016 conference takes place later this month (March 30 to April 1). The company may introduce RS1 features to the public during the show while launching a preview build of RS1 to developers. This release will allow developers to create browser extensions for Microsoft Edge and have them ready to download when consumers supposedly gobble up the RS1 update this June. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| New Nvidia WHQL Drivers Support Vulkan API Posted: 07 Mar 2016 02:03 PM PST Nvidia has updated its GeForce blog with news that the new GeForce Game Ready 364.47 WHQL drivers are now available to download. The big news here is that it's the first set of WHQL drivers from the company that support the new Vulkan graphics API. Nvidia originally began supporting Vulkan by releasing fully conformant drivers last month. According to Nvidia, Vulkan support is now built into the main Game Ready driver branch, allowing users to play Vulkan-based games with Game Ready optimizations. Vulkan officially launched on February 16, so don't expect to play a huge library of games that utilize the new graphics API just yet. "With a simpler, thinner driver, and efficient CPU multi-threading capabilities, Vulkan has less latency and overhead than OpenGL or Direct3D, and can help your system reach new levels of performance," Nvidia said last month. "In simpler terms, Vulkan can help developers avoid CPU bottlenecks that limit performance, and can improve performance elsewhere, too." In addition to Vulkan support, the new drivers are optimized for Tom Clancy's The Division, Need For Speed, Hitman, and Ashes of the Singularity. To play The Division at 2560x1440 resolution, Nvidia suggests that users upgrade to the GeForce GTX 980 Ti while the GeForce GTX 970 is ideal for playing at 1920x1080 resolution. Need For Speed at 1920x1080 resolution also plays best on a GeForce GTX 970 or better GPU. You should note that some users are experiencing installation issues with this new driver. Nvidia says here that it's isolated to multi-monitor configurations, and that those experiencing problems should disconnect one of the monitors and then reconnect it after the driver is installed. To completely uninstall the troublesome driver, simply go into Windows Safe Mode and restore the previous drivers. "Our driver team is actively investigating the issue and we will have more information shortly," Nvidia states. The release notes report that the new drivers add three SLI application profiles including Hitman, The Technomancer, and Zui Zhong Bing Qi (Ultimate Weapon). The drivers also now add or update several 3D Vision profiles for Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, Far Cry Primal, Need For Speed, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and a few others. 3D Compatibility Mode profiles include Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 and Just Cause 3. There are some limitations in this release. Nvidia reports that surround gaming is not supported on a 3-way SLI system with a GeForce GTX 200 series GPU. The company also reports that support for Hybrid Power is discontinued and not supported by the new drivers. GeForce 6-series and GeForce 7-series GPUs are also not supported (as of GeForce Release 310 drivers). To download Nvidia's new 364.47 WHQL drivers, head here or download them via GeForce Experience, the company's game-optimizing client that can be downloaded here. You can also check out the release notes for this driver set here (PDF). | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Valve to Showcase VR Experiments to Steam Users in Portal's Aperture Lab Posted: 07 Mar 2016 11:09 AM PST Testing ground for VR Valve is getting ready to unveil a new virtual reality testing ground that will be familiar to anyone who's played Portal or Portal 2. It's called "The Lab" and it's set in a pocket universe of Aperture Science, the scientific research corporation that appeared in both Portal titles. The Lab will launch this spring free of charge through Steam. Valve says it will offer multiple ways to enjoy room-scale VR, though stopped short of offering up any juicy details. Those will have to wait until next week at the Game Developers Conference (GDC). Valve isn't being bashful about using its IP to promote VR. Back in February, Valve released its free SteamVR Performance Tool, which features Valve's Aperture Robot Repair demo to determine if your hardware is capable of running HTC's Vive headset. Valve has a vested interest in Vive's success. It's one of two major VR headsets being released this year, Oculus Rift being the other. HTC began taking pre-orders for Vive last week, which costs $799 and comes with a few extras, including two wireless controllers and a pair of room motion sensors. Despite the high price tag, HTC said it sold 15,000 Vive headsets in the first 10 minutes of availability. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| John McAfee Fibbed About iPhone Hacking Technique to Get Attention Posted: 07 Mar 2016 10:45 AM PST Presidential hopeful told a lie Antivirus pioneer turned international fugitive and U.S. presidential hopeful John McAfee has been lying to the media, but he doesn't think you should be mad at him over it. You see, he lied about how he would crack the now infamous iPhone model that belonged to one of the San Bernardino shooters, but he did it in order to "get a shitload of public attention," McAfee told Daily Dot. "That video, on my YouTube account, it has 700,000 views. My point is to bring the Americal public the problem that the FBI is trying to [fool] the American public. How am I going to do that, by just going off and saying it? No one is going to listen to that crap. So I came up with something sensational," McAfee said. What McAfee's referring to is his public offer to crack the security of the iPhone 5c model in the FBI's possession using social engineering. He claimed it would be easy and that the reason the FBI isn't able to do it on its own is because it doesn't hire hackers with mohawks who demand weed, and some other nonsense. What he was basically saying is that capable hackers don't fit the suit and tie mold of the FBI. We conducted our own lengthy interview with McAfee, in which he said the U.S. is 20 years behind China and Russia in hacking and cyber security. "I promise you, if you went to China, or Russia, and knocked on the doors of the Kremlin or the equivalent in China, and said, 'I'm the world's greatest hacker, will you hire me,' they'll say absolutely! And you say 'Well wait a minute, I need to smoke weed,' they'll say 'Perfect, we'll put you in the basement and you can smoke as much as you want.' Why? Because they're smart! We're stupid," McAfee told Maximum PC. Regarding the iPhone that the FBI is possession of and how he would hack into it, McAfee told us he and his team would talk to the shooter's friends, contacts, and acquaintances to figure out the passcode. "Frequently we get a password from someone in a dinner conversation, and it's trivial. Social engineering is easy, and it's a first step. It also helps out the software engineers, and knowing which direction to go," McAfee said. It turns out he was blowing smoke up our backside. However, he told Daily Dot that though he was lying about the social engineering aspect, he was telling the truth about being able to hack the phone's security. "Now, what I did not lie about was my ability to crack the iPhone. I can do it. It's a piece of friggin' cake. You could probably do it," McAfee said. His method, which he thought he was telling Daily Dot in confidence despite no such promise being made, involves decapping the iPhone's processor in order to identify the device's unique identifier (UID), which he says would allow someone to brute force guess the phone's passcode. The problem, as ArsTechnica points out, is that it's a risky maneuver and one wrong turn could result in the data being wiped forever. McAfee seems aware of the risks and complexity, as he later added in a text message to Daily Dot (after angrily hanging up on the publication) that his initial "lie was an exaggeration of simplicity," not of his ability to hack the iPhone. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Ransomware Hackers Target Apple Mac OS X Users for First Time Posted: 07 Mar 2016 10:02 AM PST Holding files hostage So called "ransomware" is increasing in popularity among cyber crooks looking to make a fast buck, so it's not unusual to hear about a ransomware outbreak. However, there's never been a successful ransomware campaign against Apple users running Mac OS X, until now. Some Apple users were the target of the "KeRanger" malware, which Palo Alto Intelligence Director Ryan Olson told Reuters in a phone interview was the first functioning ransomware to attack Mac computers. "This is the first one in the wild that is definitely functional, encrypts your files, and seeks a ransom," Olson said. The cyber criminals responsible for the outbreak managed to infect a new version of Transmission, a popular BitTorrent program for Macs, with the ransomware. Transmission's developers responded by yanking the infected version (2.90) from its website over the weekend and releasing a newer version (2.92) that supposedly removes the ransomware from infected Mac systems. This particular ransomware is programmed to lay dormant for three days after infecting a computer. After three days, it connects to the attacker's server and starts encrypting files. Once the encryption is complete, the ransomware demands a payment of 1 bitcoin worth around $400 in U.S. currency. This isn't actually the first ransomware to target Mac users, it's just the first one to be effective. Prior to this, a malware application called FileCoder had attempted to do essentially the same thing, but it was incomplete, Palo Alto Research stated in a blog post. After being made aware of the issue, Apple took precautions to prevent further infections. Specfically, Apple has since revoked the abused certificate KeRanger was using to sidestep Apple's Gatekeeper protection. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Email Inventor Raymond Tomlinson Dead at 74 Posted: 07 Mar 2016 09:26 AM PST R.I.P Ray Tomlinson Ray Tomlinson, the man widely credited with inventing modern day email, passed away over the weekend from what some news outlets (like ZDNet) are reporting as a suspected heart attack (the cause hasn't been confirmed). He was 74 years old at the time of this death. We take email for granted today, but in the early days, it didn't exist like it does now. The first implementation of email only allowed for messages to be sent to others on the same computer. There didn't exist a way to send emails to specific people on other networks, not until Tomlinson came up with the idea of using the @ symbol in email addresses in 1971. It was at that time that email as you know it was born. Tomlinson was working in Boston as an engineer for research company Bolt, Beranek, and Newman when he sent what's regarded as the first email message. While it's a significant moment in history, Tomlinson had long forgotten the contents of that first email, which he sent between two computers in his office. "The keyboards were about 10 feet apart. I could wheel my chair from one of the other a type a message on one, and then go to the other, and then see what I had tried to send," Tomlinson stated in an NPR interview. In another interview, Tomlinson talked about the @ symbol and that he chose it to tell the difference between emails sent to local mailboxes and those that where sent out onto the network. It made sense because the @ symbol wasn't something that was commonly used back then, so there was little chance of confusion. "I used the @ sign to indicate that the user as 'at' some other host than being local," Tomlinson explained. Today there are over 4.35 billion email accounts belonging to 2.586 billion email users, according to Radicatti Group. And according to MarketingProfs, we collectively send over 122.5 billion emails every hour of every day. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Epic's CEO: Universal Windows Platform Must "Die" Posted: 07 Mar 2016 08:36 AM PST Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney launched an assault on Microsoft's Universal Windows Platform (UWP) initiative on Friday, saying that this platform must die if Microsoft doesn't tear down the walls of its new platform-within-a-platform for Windows 10. His call to arms arrives after Epic unleashed Gears of War: Ultimate Edition on Windows Store, which is currently ranked with a 3.4 score thanks to a number of performance issues reported by customers. Sweeney claims that Microsoft's new platform is a step toward locking down the PC consumer ecosystem; the company is also getting closer to monopolizing app distribution and commerce. Even more, Microsoft is moving against the entire PC industry, he said in an op-ed article, by launching new PC Windows features exclusively in this new platform. That said, the Redmond company is essentially telling developers that in order to take advantage of these features, they must submit control of development to the UWP ecosystem. Thus, customers won't have the freedom to install PC software with all the features intact. Sweeney is essentially indicating that with UWP, Microsoft has created an operating system that will provide advantages for its own store, and not provide those same advantages to competing app stores. "The specific problem here is that Microsoft's shiny new 'Universal Windows Platform' is locked down, and by default it's impossible to download UWP apps from the websites of publishers and developers, to install them, update them, and conduct commerce in them outside of the Windows Store," Sweeney said. The solution, of course, is to make UWP an open platform. That would allow customers to download and install a UWP application from any market, not just Windows Store. That would also allow companies to operate a store for Windows-based PC games and apps that use the UWP format, similar to the way Steam and Good Old Games serve up Win32 titles. Even more, customers, developers, and others could "engage in direct commerce with each other" while bypassing Microsoft's 30 percent cut. "The ultimate danger here is that Microsoft continually improves UWP while neglecting and even degrading win32, over time making it harder for developers and publishers to escape from Microsoft's new UWP commerce monopoly," Sweeney added. "Ultimately, the open win32 Windows experience could be relegated to Enterprise and Developer editions of Windows." Sweeney suggests that Microsoft not follow Google's lead with Google Play, which he says is technically open but practically closed. Android makes installing third-party apps outside Google's borders somewhat difficult, he said, by turning the option off and burying the setting deep within the platform. This allows Google Play to dominate over competing stores. Sweeney said that Microsoft's situation is an "embarrassment" regarding Windows Store. Windows 10 launched in July 2015, and since then, there are no top third-party games and "signature" apps like Photoshop, Grand Theft Auto V, and more. Sure, there are some PC ports of mobile games, but the "good PC stuff" isn't available, save for Microsoft's own first-party software. "In my view, if Microsoft does not commit to opening PC UWP up in the manner described here, then PC UWP can, should, must, and will die as a result of industry backlash," he added. "Gamers, developers, and publishers simply cannot trust the PC UWP 'platform' so long as Microsoft gives evasive, ambiguous, and sneaky answers to questions about UWP's future, as if it's a PR issue. This isn't a PR issue, it's an existential issue for Microsoft, a first-class determinant of Microsoft's future role in the world." Is Square Enix's Rise of the Tomb Raider, currently on sale in Windows Store, a sign of things to come? As reported by How-to-geek, the Windows 10 PC game, while packed with Xbox Live features, is void of many benefits PC gamers come to expect from their installed software, such as SLI and CrossFire support, modding, overlays, or mouse macros. VSync is always turned on, and the game runs in a borderless fullscreen mode. The problem of course, stems from the current trend of porting console games over to the PC. Those limitations exist on consoles because of performance ceilings, but shouldn't be applied to PC gamers. Time will tell how this will pan out. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Newegg Daily Deals: Lenovo 14-Inch IdeaPad Laptop, Asus Z97-A/USB Motherboard, and More! Posted: 07 Mar 2016 05:00 AM PST Top Deal: Smartphones and tablets are great, but for being productive on the road, laptops still win the day. It's boring enough having to type out TPS reports, but doing it on a virtual keyboard just adds insult to injury. On the flip side, so does spending a fortune on a notebook for basic computing chores. Luckily there's a middle ground—it's today's top deal for a Lenovo 14-Inch 1920x1080 IdeaPad Laptop with an Intel Core i5-6200U Processor for $500 with free shipping (normally $675). It wasn't that long ago when a high-end netbook would cost nearly as much. And now? Skylake is paired with 4GB of RAM, 1TB HDD, Intel HD Graphics 520, and Windows 10 Home. Other Deals: AOC U3477PQU Black 34-inch 5ms UltraWide WQHD LED Backlight LCD Monitor IPS Panel for $500 with $1 shipping (normally $600) WD Black 5TB Performance Desktop Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s 128MB Cache 3.5-inch for $190 with free shipping (normally $225 - use coupon code: [ESCEHET55]) Asus Z97-A/USB 3.1 LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 ATX Intel Motherboard for $125 with $3 shipping (normally $140 - use coupon code: [EMCEHET24]) XFX Radeon R9 4GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 CrossFireX Support Double Dissipation XXX OC Video Card for $190 with free shipping (normally $210; additional $20 Mail-in rebate) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 07 Mar 2016 12:00 AM PST AT A GLANCEHot (+) Beautiful screen; gaming-capable laptop; all-around good design. Overheating (-) Bad trackpad; mushy keyboard; awkward camera placement; poor battery life. Surprisingly, this is a gaming laptopWhen it comes to laptops, 15-inch notebooks are in that awkward space between super sexy 13-inch Ultrabooks and 17-inch big-screen behemoths. Dell is trying to grab the best assets from both form factors with its 2016 XPS 15, and by and large, it succeeds. Dell calls its new XPS 15 "the smallest 15-inch laptop on the planet," but what makes it arguably sexier is that the company was able to squeeze a discrete Nvidia GPU into its 4.5-pound build. And this isn't some bottom-of-the-barrel mobile graphics card, either. The XPS 15 comes equipped with a very capable GTX 960M, which, it turns out, makes this bad boy a competent gaming machine. At least at 1080p.  It might not look like a gaming notebook, but that's okay by us. Its aesthetics basically run along the lines of a slightly larger version of the XPS 13 Ultrabook we reviewed last year, meaning it's elegant and made of high-quality materials—specifically, CNC-machined aluminum, which does a good job of keeping the chassis fingerprint-free. Its palm rest also uses a carbon fiber composite, which has a nice soft touch to it. Dell also knocked it out of the park with its 15.6-inch display. Our unit came with a 4K 3840x2160 resolution IGZO IPS panel, and it provides amazing color accuracy and a 170 degree viewing angle. The display also supports 350 nits of brightness, which gives it an amazing pop. Dell really knows how to make screens, that's for sure. The bezel is also super thin, measuring roughly a fifth of an inch thick, which Dell has dubbed the "InfinityEdge." Below the monitor is a webcam, which is placed a little awkwardly to the left. We would have preferred the webcam to be above the panel in the middle, to avoid showing off any double chins, but it's not a huge problem (unlike our double chins). Luckily, we had no qualms with the speakers, which are loud and vibrant. We weren't quite as enamored with the trackpad, however. While we like that it supports multi-finger gesturing, it acted kind of wonky. Sometimes when we were trying to use two fingers to scroll a page, for instance, it would misread our actions and interpret them as a pinch and zoom in. Worse, however, was when it read our right clicks as left clicks, for whatever reason. The keyboard is less offensive, but isn't perfect either. Dell says it features a 1.3mm travel distance, but it feels a little mushy to us, especially the space bar. Thankfully, the great internal specs of our review unit do a great job making up for the system's shortcomings. As mentioned above, our XPS 15 came equipped with a GeForce 960M, which lays claim to 2GB of GDDR5 VRAM. The laptop also features a high-end CPU in Intel's Core i7-6700HQ Skylake CPU clocked at 2.6GHz, and has plenty of RAM—16GB DDR4 memory clocked at 2133MHz. Storage-wise, it packed a healthy offering in Samsung's 512GB PM951 NVMe SSD. When it came time to clean house, the Dell XPS 15 mopped the floor with our zero point, which just happens to be Dell's Haswell XPS 13. In single-threaded tests, we saw roughly 19–40 percent gains. If that wasn't amazing enough, in our multithreaded x264 benchmark, we saw a huge 175 percent delta. But it was in the graphics benchmarks where the XPS 15 really pushed the pedal to the metal, beating the XPS 13's paltry integrated graphics by 407–525 percent! To be honest, the XPS 15 is more like a gaming laptop in an ultra-portable's form factor, so it isn't really a fair comparison. In gaming, the XPS will basically be able to max out games or run them on very high settings with smooth framerates at 1080p. Playing TF2 maxed out at 1080p, we garnered an FPS average in the 170s, and in the Unreal Engine 3 game Dirty Bomb, we got an average FPS that hovered in the 70s with everything maxed out. It did dip into the 50s every now and then, however, which is indicative of some of the limitations of the GPU. Still, in this form factor, that's mighty impressive. At $2,230, all of this performance doesn't come cheap, but our build is the highest-end configuration and if you want to save a few bones here and there, you can do so by picking parts more conservatively on Dell's website. What we can say about our unit is that aside from the keyboard and trackpad, this is a fantastic notebook for both work and play. Price, $2,230, www.dell.com Benchmarks
Our zero-point Ultrabook is a Dell XPS 13 with an Intel Core i5-5200U clocked at 2.2GHz with 8GB DDR3 RAM, running Windows 10 64-bit. 3DMark 11 was run in Performance mode; Tomb Raider was run using low settings.
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