On this episode of War Stories, Ars Technica sits down with Rob Cunningham to revisit the groundbreaking 1999 3D real-time strategy game, Homeworld. When Rob and a group of friends founded Relic Entertainment, they set out to marry the gameplay of Command & Conquer with the feel of Battlestar Galactica – all in a full 3D environment. On top of the everpresent memory limitations of the day, the team needed to get creative in figuring out how to orient players when, in space, no direction is up.
GAMES SHOWN:
* Journey
* ABZÛ
* Adventure games – Riven / Broken Sword / Full Throttle / Professor Layton
* No Man’s Sky Beyond
* Walking simulators – Whats Remains of Edith Finch / The Unfinished Swan
* Visual novels Va-ha11-a
* Driving around in Forza Horizon (skipping missions and races) – Test Drive Unlimited, Forza Horizon 3 & 4
Half-Life: Alyx is a tremendous VR experience that captures and elevates what makes the series special. Valve’s Half-Life: Alyx is now available on PC and requires Steam VR.
Have you ever wondered why DOOM runs on everything from computers, game consoles, tablets, phones, watches and even microwave ovens? In this episode we take a closer look!
Reggie & I play the Switch version of Blazing Chrome, a classic style Run n Gun shooter similar to Contra. More info: https://joymasher.com/blazing-chrome/
My first listen of the 2019 hit record, “Mechanical Keyboard Sounds: Recordings of Bespoke and Customized Mechanical Keyboards” by Taeha Types and Trunk Records. Clicky keyboard recordings on vinyl? Oh yeah, we are living in the future.
The average office worker in the United States must keep track of between 20 to 40 different username and password combinations. With so many passwords to remember, many of us use the same ones over and over, or have a running list of passwords saved somewhere. Passwords are a very serious and expensive security risk. It’s why companies like Microsoft , Apple and Google are trying to reduce our dependence on them. But the question is, can these companies break our bad habits?
Update (January 21, 2020): A website mentioned in this video, WeLeakInfo, was shut down by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other law enforcement agencies on Friday, Jan. 17, 2020. The site claimed to have more than 12 billion usernames and passwords from more than 10,000 data breaches. Passwords are a very serious and expensive security risk. A report by Verizon looked at 2,013 confirmed data breaches and found that 29% of those breaches involved the use of stolen credentials.
Another study by the Ponemon Institute and IBM Security found that the average cost of a single data breach in the U.S. was more than $8 million. Even when passwords are not stolen, companies can lose a lot of money trying to reset them.
“Our research has shown that the average fully loaded cost of a help desk call to reset a password is anywhere between $40 or $50 per call,” says Merritt Maxim, vice president and research director at Forrester.
“Generally speaking, a typical employee contacts a help desk somewhere between 6 and 10 times a year on password related issues,” Maxim said. “So if you just do the simple multiplication of six to 10 times, times 50 dollars per call, times number of employees, in your organization, you’re talking significantly hundreds of thousands of dollars or even potentially millions of dollars a year.”
Kingpin: Reloaded, the remastered, enhanced version of the crime-themed first-person shooter developed and published by 3D Realms and Interplay, recruits new gang members on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC later this year.
In a stylized noir art deco gangland that never was, the Kingpin rules above all else with a bloody fist. When his lieutenant Nikki Blanco leaves a no-name Thug battered and broken, the upstart criminal rises from a puddle of blood, lead pipe in hand and revenge in mind.