Warren.Smith
Shared posts
12 Apr 00:55
April 11, 2014
Warren.SmithThis is exactly what runs through my head when people talk about organic food
30 Mar 00:08
Oculus Should Refund Kickstarter Money
by Jimmy Thang
Warren.SmithI agree with this. I didn't donate to it, but if I had I would be pretty upset to crowdfund something like this then have them sell out, especially to a company like facebook.
Column: Oculus should do the right thing
Facebook purchasing Oculus was an unprecedented acquisition. No Kickstarter company has ever been bought out by a large corporation prior to their crowdfunded project being released--at least not on the immense scale of $2 billion.
The surprising acquisition has spurred a lot of animosity from virtual-reality enthusiasts, most notably from the original Kickstarter backers.
Several Scumbag Oculus memes have gone viral.
Is the hate unwarranted? Perhaps some of it, but many of the Kickstarter backers have a right to feel betrayed.
Take a moment and imagine that you’ve always dreamt of going sailing, but never had the means to obtain a boat. One day you meet and befriend a passionate and intelligent boat builder, Ted, who shares the same dreams of sailing as you do. Ted says that once he builds his boat, you’ll be able to go sailing on it, whenever you please. Sounds perfect, doesn’t it? But because Ted needs funds to build the boat, he asks you for a donation. Because you fervently believe in his vision, capabilities, and promise, you comply. After several months, Ted takes you out on some test runs. You find the ship to be shaping up nicely and can already imagine yourself sailing the seven seas with it. Then, all of a sudden, some rich executives walk by and throw a boatload of cash at Ted to acquire it.
The original Oculus Rift Kickstarter video
Ted, by textbook definition, just sold out. And in doing so, crossed the boundaries between the trust and vision that you guys shared together. Still, Ted assures you that once he’s done building the boat, you’ll still be able to take it out on joyrides whenever you want, but deep down inside, you know the execs hold the keys to the ship, and you can’t help but fear that they may wreck it.
This is analogous to how Oculus says no changes will be made to their original vision, though it’s difficult to imagine a future where Facebook won’t try and integrate their services into it, pester you with annoying ads, or steer VR away from its original open-source/mod-friendly gaming intention.
If that’s not an infuriating situation, I don’t know what is. Is what Oculus did illegal? No, but Oculus did break a gentleman’s agreement. They violated an unwritten rule. It’s like a friend who asks to borrow five bucks, wins the lottery, and doesn't pay you back.
Now, to be clear, as a VR enthusiast, I am not entirely against the Facebook acquisition myself. I do think that a lot of good can come from the situation. Up until this point, Oculus has had to rely on off-the-shelf parts, but with the backing of Facebook, Oculus should have the capital to actively design, develop, and manufacture the parts they need.
As it stands right now, however, the original Kickstarter funds are no longer needed, and Oculus has benefited greatly from the initial investment. In the process, a great deal of trust has been violated from the community that put Oculus on the map. Now does Oculus have to do anything to rectify this? No. But if they want to win back some goodwill, they should. What could the company do to make amends? For one thing, they could give every Kickstarter backer an Oculus Rift, no matter how much they originally donated. But I believe that the most obvious method to solving a problem is often the best way to solve a problem: Oculus should give the original backers their money back.
Talynebear likes this
28 Mar 00:59
Counter Monkey – Let’s Split Up
by The Spoony One
Warren.SmithI love that he even mentions "Doppleganger protocol" in this one
We can destroy the campaign faster that way.
Talynebear likes this
28 Mar 00:55
IRS: Bitcoin is property, like a stock or bond, and not a currency
by Cyrus Farivar
Just in time for tax day (April 15 in the United States), the Internal Revenue Service has issued six pages of guidelines (PDF) detailing how it considers the legality of Bitcoin and other “virtual currencies.”
Specifically, the document, which was published on Tuesday, designates that Bitcoin will be treated for tax purposes as a property and not as a currency.
That would make it roughly analogous to a stock, bond, or piece of real estate whose value fluctuates over time and would be subject to a capital gains tax when that property (Bitcoin, or another similar altcoin) were to be sold at a profit or loss.
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24 Mar 17:01
This Sunday, Morpheus Gives Neil deGrasse Tyson the Red Pill
by Jeff
Warren.SmithMorpheus!
“You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”
―Morpheus to Neo. Image still from “The Matrix.” Credit: Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
What does it take to get Neil deGrasse Tyson to go all fan-boy geek?
Not much.
Just ship him off to Santa Fe to shoot COSMOS and then tell him Laurence Fishburne is in town filming a new indie sci-fi flick, The Signal.
You see, Neil is a total Matrix fan boy. Like, a “memorize every moment of the movie and script” fanboy. A fanboy who does a passable impression of Morpheus. Even more surprisingly, he points out a flaw in The Matrix (the only one, he says)… and then gives the movie a pass. (Yes, you read that right.)
That’s what makes A Conversation with Laurence Fishburne such a fun ride. We get to know a lot about Laurence Fishburne, and we learn a little bit more about Neil in the process.
And guess what?
Laurence Fishburne is a sci-fi geek, too. He explains how he was naturally curious about the world as a kid, and used math and science to investigate the way things work. He loved going to planetariums, both in Brooklyn where he grew up, and the Hayden Planetarium in NYC. He watched Space 1999 and Star Trek as a kid, as well as the original COSMOS. The two of them geek out over how great Watchmen was, and Laurence tells us which of the roles he really wanted to play. They also trade stories about Superman: Neil famously helped Superman locate his home planet in the comics, and Laurence plays Perry White in the new Superman: Man of Steel reboot. He even talks about being married to Gina Torres, the actress who plays Zoe on Firefly and has serious geek-cred all on her own.
Of course they dive into The Matrix. But they spend a good amount of time talking about chess, and Laurence’s role in Searching for Bobby Fischer. And they get into forensic science when they discuss Laurence’s role in CSI.
It’s a great episode, and much of the reason is that Neil deGrasse Tyson and Laurence Fishburne seem to have such a great time hanging out sharing stories with each other. Laurence taunts Neil, who has never been given the key to a city, with his story of receiving the key to the city of Cambridge, and Neil tells the story of how he ended up getting New York Nicks legend Walt “Clyde” Frazier’s used sneakers as a kid.
A Conversation with Laurence Fishburne will be on our website and on iTunes, SoundCloud and Stitcher Sunday night, March 23, at 7:00 PM ET.
That’s it for now. Keep Looking Up!
–Jeffrey Simon
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23 Mar 19:25
Bear Simulator is “like a mini Skyrim but you’re a bear”
by WIRED UK
bearsimulator.com
Bear Simulator is a Kickstarter project designed to tackle the horrible lack in the gaming industry when it comes to letting you play games as a bear.
The game's TL;DR summary offers: "It's like a mini Skyrim but you're a bear."
Delving a little deeper, it looks to be a first-person environmental exploration affair, which should let you roam different environments, find and eat food, and fight with things which might get in your way.
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21 Mar 13:45
Gearbox Software reveals Homeworld Collection versions, coming 'early Autumn'
by Jenna Pitcher
Homeworld HD, the HD re-releases of Homeworld and Homeworld 2, will be released as the Homeworld Collection, Gearbox Software announced, who is now polling preferences on collector's edition versions.
"Previously, we'd been referring to this effort as Homeworld HD but as work progressed it became clear that title didn't properly communicate the scope of the work," Chris Faylor, interactive marketing manager at Gearbox Software, wrote on the official website. "This is more than a simple re-release or up-res — given the input we've received from fans, mod makers and series veterans, the result is full-fledged remastering of nearly all aspects alongside the archival Classic versions."
While the two remastered versions feature a...
Talynebear likes this
21 Mar 13:43
Next-gen “Archival Disc” will squeeze 1TB of data onto optical discs
by Andrew Cunningham
There are plans to scale the format's capacity from 300GB in 2015 to 1TB at some point in the future.
Move over, Blu-ray: Sony and Panasonic have just announced a new optical disc specification with even higher storage capacities. The new "Archival Disc" format promises to store between six and 20 times the data of a standard 50GB dual-layer Blu-ray disc. Unlike Blu-ray, this new format is intended primarily for professional, archival use. The companies first announced that they would be working on this then-nameless standard together in July of 2013.
"Optical discs have excellent properties to protect themselves against the environment, such as dust-resistance and water-resistance, and can also withstand changes in temperature and humidity when stored," reads the release. "They also allow inter-generational compatibility between different formats, ensuring that data can continue to be read even as formats evolve. This makes them robust media for long-term storage of content."
First-wave Archival Discs are slated to launch in summer of 2015 and will be able to hold up to 300GB of data. By comparison, the largest commonly available Blu-Ray discs use the 100GB and 128GB BDXL format. Archival Discs will apparently be double-sided, so this works out to 150GB of data per side. Future versions of the technology will improve storage density, increasing to 500GB (or 250GB per side) and 1TB (500GB per side) as the standard matures.
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13 Mar 15:44
Amazon raising Prime subscription cost to $99 per year in US
by Samit Sarkar
Warren.SmithStill more then worth it
Amazon is raising the price of Amazon Prime to $99 per year in the U.S., the company announced today.
This is the first price increase for Amazon Prime since the service's debut in 2005; from then until now, Amazon has charged $79 per year, with a half-price discount available for students. The new subscription price will go into effect April 17, and the price of Amazon Student is also rising, by $10 to $49 per year. Existing subscribers whose memberships will expire before then can renew in order to lock in one final year at the $79 level. In an email to current subscribers, Amazon cited rising shipping costs — particularly for fuel and transportation — as well as the growing wealth of benefits included in a Prime membership, as...
12 Mar 18:21
WildStar Release Date and NDA Lift!
by Team WildStar
WHY HAVEN'T YOU CLICKED READ MORE YET?!
05 Mar 20:25
6-billion-year-old quasar spinning nearly as fast as physically possible
by Matthew Francis
The four bright magenta points are images of a single quasar, magnified and multiplied by the gravity of the galaxy (colored orange) at image center.
NASA/CXC/Univ of Michigan/R.C.Reis et al; Optical: NASA/STScI
Supermassive black holes are powerful engines, pumping matter and energy into their environments. Despite their size and influence, they are also relatively small, making detailed observations a major challenge. For that reason, most of the data we have on them involves tracking the matter swirling around the black hole rather than the properties of the black hole itself.
Astronomers have now used gravitational magnification to measure the rotation rate of a supermassive black hole in a very distant galaxy. From four separate images of the same black hole, R.C. Reis, M.T. Reynolds, J.M. Miller, and D.J. Walton found it was spinning nearly as fast as possible. That likely means it was spun up by a small number of mergers with other black holes rather than a gradual increase from eating smaller amounts of mass.
This marks the first measurement of black hole rotation outside the local Universe, and it was only possible because the light from this black hole was magnified by a galaxy lying serendipitously between it and the Milky Way. However, the fortuitous alignment means it will be difficult to replicate the method for most other black holes.
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04 Mar 22:43
How to Share Steam Games
by Chris Zele
Warren.SmithShould set up my Steam account so you can use it. I actually don't use it that often anymore and have a crap ton of games on it.
Lend your Steam Library to up to 10 of your friends for free
It’s finally here! Valve's long-awaited Steam family sharing feature has finally hit the masses. You can now share your games with up to 10 friends or family members. Sharing Steam games isn't as easy as just clicking a share button, unfortunately. Your friend will initially need to log into Steam on your PC to enable the sharing process. To help guide you through this process, we've compiled a step-by-step guide on how to enable the Steam sharing function.
Note: A shared Steam Library may only be accessed by one user at a time. What this means is that two users cannot use the same Library to play two different games at the same time.
Step 1: Launch Steam on your computer and have a friend log in to their account. After they try logging in, they will be prompted to enter a Steam verification code (sent to them via email). Once you enter the verification code, your PC will be granted access to their Steam account.
Step 2: Click on the Steam tab and click Exit to log out your friend.
Step 3: Re-launch Steam and log in to your account and click on the Steam tab and then click on Settings.
Step 4: Click on the Family tab and the accounts you can authorize (your friend's, for instance) will be listed below in the Authorized Accounts column. Go ahead and authorize their account.
Step 5: When your friend launches Steam on their computer, your games will show up at the bottom of their library. Note: Only the games you don't already own between you and your friend will be displayed here.
If you’re playing a game that belongs to a friend, that title will have its own independent cloud save and achievements for each account. We like this feature as you won't have to worry about your friends overwriting your personal saved data, but we dislike the fact that you can't just lend out individual games to friends, and you have to lend your entire library instead. The good news is that if your friend is playing a game that you want to play, you can simply boot them out. We also don't like the authentication method, which is very clunky and a little confusing as it took us a while to figure out. In addition, it requires the presence of your friend to phyiscally log on to your computer initially. If your friend has a lot of trust in you, however, they can provide you with their Steam login/password to avoid the initial step, but we only advise this if both parties can be trusted.
Valve has made a very smart pro-gamer move to attract more people to PC gaming since new PC gamers will be able to borrow a friend’s massive Steam Library for free. It will be interesting to see how PC game sales will be affected by this.
What do you think of Valve's new Steam sharing feature? Let us know in the comments below!
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20 Feb 23:30
Science confirms: Online trolls are horrible people (also, sadists!)
by Nate Anderson
Alec Baldwin reminds us of the troll's mantra.
New Line Cinema / Aurich Lawson
If you have siblings, you no doubt harbor a hint of the sadist; who hasn't delighted in getting the occasional rise out of a younger brother by petting his cat after he ordered you not to do so? (To take one, ahem, utterly fictional example that is not in any way drawn from my childhood.) But your run-of-the-mill backseat pokers, hair pullers, and forbidden cat petters don't generally grow up to spend large portions of their time harassing total strangers on the Internet in search of "lulz." They don't, in other words, turn into Internet trolls.
That's because the true troll has a lot more of the sadist hidden deep inside than you do, gentle reader—at least according to a new study, "Trolls just want to have fun," which appeared in the academic journal Personal and Individual Differences. The Canadian researchers behind the study conclude that "online trolls are prototypical everyday sadists... For those with sadistic personalities, [their] ideal self may be a villain of chaos and mayhem—the online Trickster we fear, envy, and love to hate: the cyber-troll."
Rise of the Tetrad
Though it sounds awesome in an "evil magician" sort of way, the Dark Tetrad is actually a set of four "noxious" personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism. Professors Eric Buckels, Paul Trapnell, and Delroy Paulhus hypothesized that online trolls would rank highly in Dark Tetrad traits, and they set out to test the idea with surveys administered both to Canadian students and to random users of Amazon's Mechanical Turk program (the latter group receiving fifty cents per person for their trouble).
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Ben likes this
20 Feb 19:02
FTL: Advanced Edition's Clone Bay, hacking system detailed
by Megan Farokhmanesh
Warren.SmithDunno if you played this or not. Pretty fun game.
Subset Games' free expansion for FTL: Faster Light, FTL: Advanced Edition, will feature new systems and subsystems such as the Clone Bay, hacking and mind control, the developer announced via the game's official website.
FTL: Advanced Edition, announced alongside the iPad port of full game, will include only eight systems installed on one ship at a time. According to a post from Justin Ma, this requires players to prioritize which systems will "work the best for your current strategy."
One of the game's new systems, the Clone Bay, acts an alternative to the MedBay by allowing players to replace a dead crew member without losing some skills.
"The goal of the Clone Bay was to really disrupt the core way you play the game," Ma wrote....
19 Feb 16:53
GULPO IS HERE! And, he's here in a limited quantity.
(Seriously, these were a little difficult to get made, so if you don't get one of this batch it might be tricky to get more for a while.)
February 19, 2014
GULPO IS HERE! And, he's here in a limited quantity.
(Seriously, these were a little difficult to get made, so if you don't get one of this batch it might be tricky to get more for a while.)
RaptoR, Eyal Cohen and 10 others like this
17 Feb 01:08
Listen to this Final Fantasy 7 track recreated with floppy drives
by Megan Farokhmanesh
YouTube user MrSolidSnake745's take on Final Fantasy 7 battle track "Those Who Fight Further" uses 16 floppy drives to recreate each note with startling accuracy.
According to the video's description, MrSolidSnake745 was asked by the Nexon Computer Museum to build a musical exhibit. A FAQ provides further information on how the setup works.
"The concept behind this is basically getting the stepper motor to operate a certain frequency (getting the motor to step a certain amount of times in a second) which generates a pitch," the FAQ reads. "Then we arrange those pitches together and we get a song. You need two signals (When it comes to floppy drives) to do this: a direction signal and a step signal. Direction controls which...
13 Feb 14:41
Giant leap for nuclear fusion as scientists get more energy out than fuel put in
by Akshat Rathi
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratroy
Researchers in the US have overcome a key barrier to making nuclear fusion reactors a reality. In results published in Nature, scientists have shown that they can now produce more energy than the fuel put into an experiment. The use of fusion as a source of energy remains a long way off, but the latest development is an important step toward that goal.
Nuclear fusion is the process that powers the Sun and billions of other stars in the universe. If mastered, it could provide an unlimited source of clean energy because the raw materials are plentiful and the operation produces no carbon emissions.
During the fusion process, smaller atoms fuse into larger ones releasing huge amounts of energy. To achieve this on Earth, scientists have to create conditions similar to those at the center of the Sun. This involves creating very high pressures and temperatures.
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12 Feb 02:46
Bitcoin exchanges buckle under strain of phantom transactions
by Dan Goodin
Warren.SmithUh oh
Mt. Gox, Bitstamp, and other Bitcoin exchanges have temporarily suspended withdrawal transactions after coming under a form of a denial-of-service attack that abuses weaknesses in the way they keep track of fund balances, a security expert said.
The attacks don't have any permanent effect on the central accounting mechanism for the digital currency, but they are likely the driving force behind a sharp decline in the bitcoin-to-dollar exchange rate over the past 48 hours. Since the attacks began on Monday, the price of one bitcoin on Mt. Gox has fallen from just below $700 to well below $540 at one point. It has see-sawed ever since and was at about $580 as this report was being prepared. Other exchanges showed similar fluctuations.
Andreas M. Antonopoulos, chief security officer of digital wallet developer Blockchain, said the attacks work by flooding exchanges with a large number of malformed transactions that are similar, but not identical, to legitimate transactions that were already made. Exchanges that trust one or more of the fake records instead of the entries in the official Bitcoin blockchain quickly fall out of sync with the rest of the network and must recalculate their fund balances once the mistakes become apparent. Malformed transactions aren't necessarily new, but over the past 48 hours their numbers have mushroomed, causing logjams that have prevented some exchanges from being able to process withdrawal requests.
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06 Feb 18:09
Amazon purchases Killer Instinct maker Double Helix Games
by Kyle Orland
Online retailer, tablet-maker, and media streamer Amazon has extended its reach further with the purchase of Double Helix Games, best known of late for developing the reboot of Killer Instinct for the Xbox One launch. TechCrunch was the first to report the acquisition, and Amazon soon confirmed it, saying in a statement that the move was “part of our ongoing commitment to build innovative games for customers.”
The Irvine, California-based Double Helix was formed in 2007 from members of The Collective and Shiny Entertainment, and since then it has primarily worked on contract games based on other companies’ IP, including Silent Hill: Homecoming, MX vs. ATV Reflex, and the game version of the Battleship movie. The developer is currently working on a reboot of the 16-bit platforming classic Strider for PC and consoles. All 75 Double Helix employees will remain in Irvine, according to the TechCrunch report.
Amazon’s latest acquisition renews the rumors, first reported last summer, that the company is planning to release an Android-based game console to build off of its robust Android App Store. The latest unsourced rumors on that score suggest that console will be powered by a Qualcomm processor and released some time this year for under $300. Amazon has also reportedly been courting Android game developers to add controller support to their games for months now.
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05 Feb 19:06
Microfluidics panel could add physical buttons to a touch screen
by Casey Johnston
Tactus Technology has created a microfluidics panel that could be overlaid on touchscreens to produce “buttons,” per a report from CNET. The panel would allow smartphones to create a bunch of nubs over the keyboard keys on touch screens to help guide typists’ fingers.
Some smartphone users are still lamenting the loss of tactile keys like those on a Blackberry, but QWERTY keyboards are hard to justify in terms of real estate when a touch screen can use that space better. A keyboard add-on is a possibility, but one pretender to the Blackberry throne, the Typo, has gotten a mixed reception.
Tactus’ system would put a 0.75 to 1 millimeter-thick microfluidics panel over a device’s LCD instead of glass or plastic. A sub-layer of the panel would be punctured with 200-nanometer holes, through which fluid would be pressed to raise the flexible surface of the screen when the operating system called up some buttons.
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05 Feb 18:01
Newegg’s answer to Amazon Prime: $50 per year for expedited shipping
by Cyrus Farivar
Warren.SmithNot sure if I buy enough stuff from newegg to warrant signing up for this, but still cool
If you’re the type of person who makes electronics purchases on a whim but then agonizes over which shipping to choose, you may be happy to hear about Newegg Premier.
Taking a page out of Amazon’s playbook, the venerable electronics retailer launched its “Newegg Premier” program on Tuesday. For $50 per year, subscribers will get “free expedited shipping” of three days or less, early-access to sales, free and no-fee returns, and a “dedicated customer service telephone number” (all similar benefits to Amazon Prime). But unlike its competitor, Newegg Premier won’t give you access to Alpha House (sorry, John Goodman) or any of the company's other online media.
"We always seek ways to improve the customer experience, and implementing a benefit program is the latest example of how we're making it easier and more rewarding to shop at Newegg.com," said Soren Mills, chief marketing officer of Newegg North America, in a statement. "Free expedited shipping is in itself a great benefit, but beyond that we're including many other perks to enhance the shopping experience."
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05 Feb 17:56
Release: The Banner Saga
Warren.SmithYay! I've been waiting for this one to come out on GoG
This is what an actual saga looks like.
The Banner Saga, a unique Viking-themed role-playing game with solid tactical combat mechanics, beautiful 2D graphics that look nothing like any other modern title, and a captivating heart-touching story, is now available 10% off DRM-Free on GOG.com, for Windows and Mac OS X. That's only $22.49 for the first week.
The Banner Saga invites you to live through an epic role-playing Viking saga where your strategic choices directly affect your personal journey. Make allies as you travel with your caravan across this stunning yet harsh landscape. Carefully choose those who will help fight a new threat that jeopardizes an entire civilization. Every decision you make in travel, conversation and combat has a meaningful effect on the outcome as your story unfolds. Not everyone will survive, but they will be remembered. The game offers you with a variety of over 25 playable characters from 2 different races, human and varl, the horned giants, and your choices in combat will have consequences for all whomever you choose to lead into battle. With the beautifully hand drawn combat sequences and animations, accompanied by an evocative score from Grammy-nominated composer Austin Wintory, the game will immerse you into a fantasy realm inspired by Norse mythology. Make sure to pick this one up, as there are very few modern games as original and engrossing as this one.
Embark on one of the most awe-inspiring journeys that modern gaming has to offer, and take a plunge into the beautiful snowy landscape of The Banner Saga, for only $22.49 on GOG.com. The 10% off release discount offer lasts until Tuesday, February 12, at 10:59AM GMT.
05 Feb 17:55
Coming Next Week...
by The Caretaker
Warren.SmithI wonder what this is....
Who's ready for an Adventure?
05 Feb 17:49
Talking past each other: Bill Nye vs. creationist Ken Ham on evolution
by Eric Bangeman
Warren.SmithI watched this live last night. As with most debates, it did feel a lot like they just kinda ignored eachother and brought up only tangentially related points.
I'm a big fan of Bill Nye, dude is great. It's kind of an impossible task to try and debate people like Ken Ham. I'm sure the audience at large feels like it's a big knock against science when a question comes up and the Scientist can only say "we don't know" whereas the religious types always have an answer "well god did it", "it's in the bible", etc.
Bill Nye and Ken Ham square off at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky.
Eric Bangeman / Ars Technica
PETERSBURG, KENTUCKY—A brightly lit auditorium was packed with young adults wearing bow-ties, young-Earth creationists, and a gaggle of media there to maybe see sparks fly. The sparks could have been generated by Ken Ham, president/CEO of Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum, and Bill Nye the Science Guy, but instead, they mostly talked past each other for two-and-a-half hours on a snowy Kentucky night. The topic was one near and dear to both debate participants: the nature of acceptable scientific discourse. More specifically, they attempted to answer the question “is creation a viable model of origins in today’s modern scientific era?”
Ham and Nye both led off with short, five-minute statements followed by 30-minute presentations punctuated by PowerPoint slides, video clips, and graphics intended to buttress their cases. Unsurprisingly, Ham’s starting point was Genesis, and he kept coming back to the assertion that God’s word as revealed in the first two chapters of Genesis is the definitive authority. All scientific inquiry should therefore begin with and proceed from there.
To make the case that science and creationism were compatible, he showed short video clips of scientists from around the world who believed in a literal six days of creation. "People are going to see what we really believe tonight," Ham promised. "I believe science has been hijacked by secularists" who seem to indoctrinate folks in the "religion of naturalism."
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04 Feb 01:05
Dogecoin to allow annual inflation of 5 billion coins each year, forever
by Cyrus Farivar
BitBurgers is one of the few businesses that accepts Dogecoin.
For the last two months, developers and users of Dogecoin, the shiba-themed altcoin (alternative Bitcoin), have been trying to hash out whether it should be an inflationary or deflationary currency. On Saturday, Jackson Palmer, the creator of Dogecoin, wrote on Github that the developer team would keep the code as it is—allowing for some limited inflation.
Most altcoins, as they’ve been designed so far, are deflationary. This means there’s a hard cap on the number of coins that will ever be in existence. Bitcoin, for example, is designed to not have any more bitcoins come into existence after 2040. Other variants (Litecoin) have similar setups. However, one of the downsides of deflation is that it essentially encourages hoarding, as the perceived real value of the currency increases over time. Accordingly, academic researchers showed last year that 64 percent of all bitcoins (PDF) have never been spent.
As Palmer wrote:
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03 Feb 21:42
Valve's Steam Music beta will arrive soon for SteamOS users. The service is a new addition to the platform just announced last week, enabling players to listen to local music files from within the Steam client while playing games. To enter the closed ...
Steam Music limited beta coming to SteamOS soon
by Mike Suszek
Warren.SmithThis is kinda neat
Valve's Steam Music beta will arrive soon for SteamOS users. The service is a new addition to the platform just announced last week, enabling players to listen to local music files from within the Steam client while playing games. To enter the closed ...
01 Feb 04:47
Who wants competition? Big cable tries outlawing municipal broadband in Kansas
by Jon Brodkin
Warren.SmithFull retard
Update: Check out our followup story to see how the cable lobby is changing the bill.
Legislation introduced in the Kansas state legislature by a lobby for cable companies would make it almost impossible for cities and towns to offer broadband services to residents and would perhaps even outlaw public-private partnerships like the one that brought Google Fiber to Kansas City.The Senate bill doesn't list any lawmaker as its sponsor, and there's a reason—a Senate employee told us it was submitted by John Federico on behalf of the Kansas Cable Telecommunications Association, of which he is president.
That's a lobby group with members such as Comcast, Cox, Eagle Communications, and Time Warner Cable. The bill was introduced this week, referred to the Committee on Commerce, and scheduled for discussion for Tuesday of next week.
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28 Jan 22:19
Developing an MMO is not an easy process. We know that intellectually, but most of us have not actually built a game ourselves, so we don't know exactly how or why it's not difficult. Design producer Stephan Frost recently penned an article taking a look at the process of design in WildStar, highlighting both common elements to MMO production and some of the ways that Carbine Studios does things a little bit differently.
Frost explains that the key to producing an MMO is understanding that it's really more like producing several different games layered on top of one another. He goes on to explain how all content is designed according to a master roadmap, allowing space for individual designers to put their distinct touches on things while still working within an overall vision. If this sort of thing interests you, by all means, take a look at the full article for a deeper look at how these games come to life.
WildStar's Stephan Frost on creating content and keeping within deadlines
by Eliot Lefebvre
Filed under: Sci-Fi, MMO Industry, News Items, WildStar, Subscription, Buy-to-Play
Frost explains that the key to producing an MMO is understanding that it's really more like producing several different games layered on top of one another. He goes on to explain how all content is designed according to a master roadmap, allowing space for individual designers to put their distinct touches on things while still working within an overall vision. If this sort of thing interests you, by all means, take a look at the full article for a deeper look at how these games come to life.
WildStar's Stephan Frost on creating content and keeping within deadlines originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 28 Jan 2014 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
27 Jan 22:30
Square Enix Collective reveals first group of projects today
by Alexa Ray Corriea
Warren.SmithThis is kinda neat
The Square Enix Collective announced the first group of titles players can vote on today, a trio hailing from smaller indie developers that have the next 28 days to convince gamers Square Enix should support them.
Through Square Enix's Collective initiative, announced last October, indie developers can pitch their games directly to gamers through the company's website. Over the course of a month, users can vote on which game they would like to see made. The winner will be set up for a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo and will have Square Enix guide their title through production and distribution.
The three games up for voting are Crackdown 2 developer Ruffian Games' Game of Glens, a land and resource management simulator set in the...
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