firehose

now loading - Legend of the Valkyrie aka Valkyrie no Densetsu

(Namco - arcade - 1989)

Technically this isn’t part of the arcade game; it’s from Namco Museum vol. 5.

acidpolly

Julian Assange, the founder and publisher of WikiLeaks, filed criminal complaints in Germany and Sweden on Monday and Tuesday, alleging “unlawful interference in [WikiLeaks'] journalistic activities.” President Barack Obama is in Sweden this week on a state visit and had a press conference with his Swedish counterpart on Wednesday.

In a press release published on the WikiLeaks website on Monday, the organization wrote that it would be filing “four criminal complaints to be filed in different jurisdictions by WikiLeaks during the month of September.”

In a 186-page English-language affidavit (a more complete version with all of the appendices is available here), Assange claims that his “journalistic activities” were “monitored” by an American military intelligence officer while Assange was in Germany between December 26, 2009 and December 30, 2009. The silver-haired Australian also claims that there was a “likely unlawful seizure of property” in September 2010 consisting of “three encrypted laptops containing privileged journalistic and legal materials including evidence of a war crime.”

Why is this not real.

Prior to the reveal of the Galaxy Gear today, we'd reported that it wouldn't be a standalone phone. After today's announcement, I can conclusively say it's not a smartwatch, either.

A smartwatch is, quite literally, a smart wristwatch. It's a timepiece with a brain, capable of processing and displaying information above and beyond what you'd expect of an ordinary clock. But there are fundamental tenets of the term "wristwatch" that the Galaxy Gear violates.

A good wristwatch:

• Last for several days to several years between charges, windings, or battery replacements. And automatic movements — in which the user's natural wrist motions keep the watch functional — have existed both in mechanical and electrical forms for many years. The Galaxy Gear promises "more than a day" on a charge, something in the vicinity of 25 hours. When you take typical manufacturer optimism into account and a battery technology that naturally deteriorates over its lifespan, users could struggle to get from morning to night. That's just not acceptable for a watch.
• Always displays its information, legibly and without drama. This is why devices like Pebble and MetaWatch continue to use monochrome displays: full color takes lots of power, and you lose maximum daylight viewability in the process with a technology like Gear's AMOLED.
• Has a replaceable band. A wristwatch is the most expressive and individualized piece of technology most of us will ever wear, and as such, it needs an unusually flexible level of customizability. If I want a rubber or leather band, it should be no more difficult than removing a couple screws or a spring-loaded pin. The Gear, meanwhile, is locked into its band by virtue of the bizarre low-megapixel camera integrated into it.

• And perhaps most importantly, a good wristwatch looks and feels like a wristwatch. It's a part of you. It matches your style. It doesn't stand out (unless you want it to). It evokes emotion.

  I can't say that the Galaxy Gear does any of those things. In fact, I'm not entirely convinced the first smartwatch has even been made yet. I'll keep using the term — as will everyone — for lack of a better one, but I believe true smartwatches will grow out of a resurgent watch industry in cooperation with technology companies, not out of the tech sector alone. Put simply, they'll look like watches; they'll just do more than they used to.

  I'm not convinced the first smartwatch has even been made yet

  I'm not necessarily saying the Galaxy Gear is a bad product; I haven't used it, much less tried to live with it for days or weeks on end. But what this does mean is that the Galaxy Gear is a wearable computer, not a smartwatch. Like other portable computers, the Galaxy Gear is a high-power machine that attempts to clone the functionality of larger devices. It's infinitely extensible and exhaustively feature-packed at the expense of battery and, I believe, livability.

  Fortunately, Samsung's press release for the Gear sticks to the much safer, more generic "wearable device" moniker, only briefly mentioning that it also functions as a "standalone watch." That's a start. "Wearable device" is a term I'm comfortable with for this product.

  But ultimately, it still means that I'm left wondering what Samsung could do if it didn't feel compelled to put a camera in the strap and an 800MHz processor under the hood.

EA Sports UFC will feature playable female fighters, making it the first UFC game to do so, publisher Electronic Arts announced today.

The company also revealed the first two women on the game's roster: Ronda Rousey (above left), the current UFC Women's Bantamweight champion, and Miesha Tate (right). Rousey and Tate also hold the distinction of being the first female coaches on the upcoming season of The Ultimate Fighter, the reality television series in which fighters live in a house together and compete for a UFC contract.

"Since we added the Women's Bantamweight division earlier this year, the women have impressed everyone," said Dana White, president of the UFC, in a press release. "The female division has become a huge part of the UFC and fans will now be able to experience fighting with them in the game."

"In our commitment to delivering the most realistic fighting experience ever achieved, we wanted to represent the full spectrum of talent and diversity of all the fighters in the sport, including women who have become an undeniable force to be reckoned with," added Dean Richards, general manager of the EA Sports UFC franchise at EA.

There's no word yet on how many female fighters will appear on the EA Sports UFC roster. The game will be released next spring on Xbox One and PlayStation 4; check out our interview with its creative director for more details.