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Super Mario Maker doesn't just let you tweak the visuals and mechanics of your custom levels — it also lets you augment how they sound. Using the SFX tool, you can attach sounds to any object you drop into the level, making Question Blocks honk when you empty them, or making Goombas laugh ghoulishly when you crush them. Of course, you can also make your own sound effects to drop into your level, which you can use to make your Super Mario Maker experience an absolutely unlistenable one.

In the video above, I demonstrate how these tools can be used for both good and evil, though I'm certainly trending toward the latter. Before you go searching for "Grunt Land," be forewarned: Your custom sound effects can't be shared, and are replaced with a generic parrot squawk when published. For that, you should consider yourself very, very lucky. Super Mario Maker launches for Wii U on Sept. 11.

Google Translate has arrived on Android Wear. Alongside a big update to watch faces today, Android Wear has been given support for Google Translate. The app is supposed to make it easy for two people who speak different languages to converse with one another. It may seem awkward to do that through a watch, but Google has designed the app in a way that works with the watch's form: the wearer turns their wrist back and forth so that the watch faces themself and then the person they're speaking with; as the watch changes direction, it'll switch translation over to that person's language. At the very least, Google's GIF makes it seem neat:

Translate's conversation feature only works with 44 out of the 90 languages that Translate can translate between. But it is able to tell automatically which of the 44 is being used, which makes it pretty convenient. The Watch app requires an internet connection, though it doesn't have to be hooked up to a phone. Altogether, today's updates should make Android Wear a lot more useful — it's pretty good timing, too, since it'll be getting some new Apple Watch competition starting next month.

Think of it as a map of the rapidly changing world of computer software.

On Wednesday, GitHub published a graph tracking the popularity of various programming languages on its eponymous Internet service, a tool that lets anyone store, edit, and collaborate on software code. In recent years, GitHub.com has become the primary means of housing open source software—code that’s freely available to the world at large; an increasing number of businesses are using the service for private code, as well. A look at how the languages that predominate on GitHub have changed over time is a look at how the software game is evolving.

In particular, the graph reveals just how much open source has grown in recent years. It shows that even technologies that grew up in the years before the recent open source boom are thriving in this new world order—that open source has spread well beyond the tools and the companies typically associated with the movement. Providing a quicker, cheaper, and more comprehensive way of building software, open source is now mainstream. And the mainstream is now open source.

"God bless America. God bless all, all the lost lives to police brutality," Monáe called out to the crowd of about a hundred onlookers, plus the nearly 5.2 million viewers who tune in to Today every morning. "We want white America to know that we stand tall today. We want black America to know that we stand tall today. We will not be silenced—"

And then a news anchor cut in, and the camera panned away.

"I thought that was punk rock," says Hanif Abdurraqib, a 32-year-old poet and, most recently, the essayist behind Pitchfork's "I think Janelle Monáe is wholly punk rock."

Anyone associated with the Afropunk festival, where Monáe has performed three times, would agree. This weekend, the black-centric fest will celebrate its eleventh year in Brooklyn's Fort Greene neighborhood, proving that it's not a blip, but a movement — one that's needed more than ever before. It was borne from the documentary Afro-Punk: A ‘Rock and Roll N****r' Experience. The 66-minute film, titled in a sort of loathful side eye to Patti Smith, who in 1978 put out a song of the same name, was shot between 2001 and 2003. For the first time, it brought to light a generation of young black people enamored with punk music and its aesthetics, but who had been rejected by the scene and fellow blacks for loving something that seemed so inherently white.

"I wanted to make a movie that I felt I needed to see when I was 14 and it was all starting," James Spooner, the now-39-year-old director of Afro-Punk, told Racked from his home in LA. "I just came at it with this punk rock attitude, like, fuck it. Other people make movies, why can't I make a movie?"

When the idea for Afro-Punk began forming in Spooner's mind, he was 23 and settled in Los Angeles after a childhood split between Flatbush and various small towns in Southern California. Spooner became fascinated with the punk rock scene as an eighth grader, listening to classic bands like the Sex Pistols, Black Flag, and The Misfits to drown out the racial epithets hurled at him on a daily basis (Spooner is mixed race). When his family moved back to New York City during his high school years, Spooner felt more at ease in the "racially diverse punk scene," though even that comfort proved short-lived.

"I stopped hanging out in the New York hardcore scene because it was just so tough-guy and violent," says Spooner. "And I was finding out more about the DIY punk scene that was a lot more political and what I thought was thoughtful."

Thoughtful, yes, but still very, very white. By the time he began filming Afro-Punk, interviewing black musicians like Tamar-kali and members of critically-acclaimed punk rock bands Fish Bone and TV on the Radio as well as black punk rock fans, Spooner had become deeply frustrated with the DIY scene and its adherents for presenting themselves as progressive, but never making room for a conversation around race and identity — a conversation he desperately wanted to have.

"I was just like, fuck punk rock," he says. "Fuck them for not helping me, for getting me all amped about all these politics. I was never really asked to think about race."

Still, rejecting the DIY scene proved easier than finding a community of like-minded black punks who were ready and willing to discuss the harsh realities of being black and loving "white music." How did Spooner tap into the black punk scene?

"That question is not a real question because that's suggesting that there was a black punk scene, you know? That didn't exist," he says, mentioning that a Google search of the term "black punk rock" in 2001 turned up an article about prison rape. "The whole reason that Afro-Punk mattered was because there was nothing."

"It was just like the mothership was calling me home," Shaunna Randolph says, taking a slow sip of her wine. "A George Clinton, Parliament/Funkadelic, awesome mothership." Decked out in a white tank over a pair of skinny patterned jeans, her hair a beautiful cloud of miniature ringlets, she recalls exactly how she felt at the very first Afropunk Festival in 2005.

"Fauxhawks, locs, piercings, studs, jean jackets with patches, and everything that I had seen the white kids do that I wanted to be a part of, but I just couldn't make that cross," Randolph, a freelance corporate marketer says, listing the styles she saw that weekend at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. "I finally saw black kids doing it and owning it and making it their own. It was just everything that I ever wanted to be, but couldn't figure out how to be." As a gifted, black youth growing up outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Randolph often felt lonely. Through Afropunk — now a full-blown movement in its own right — she says she's finally found something meaningful.

"Afropunk shows you that you're not alone, there's nothing wrong with you, and here's how other people do it and why don't you share with us?" she adds thoughtfully, mentioning a stint as an Afropunk intern. "It's an incredibly empowering community."

Randolph recalls approaching Spooner at the Brooklyn Museum shortly after his film's 2003 release. Moved by the fact that she recognized him, he gave her a copy of the documentary. By the time Randolph met the director, the film was making headlines in major newspapers following a well-received screening at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it was an official selection. Spooner returned to Brooklyn no longer a party promoter, but an artist and filmmaker in his own right. Meanwhile, screenings of Afro-Punk were regularly selling out around the country, earning the fledgling auteur enough money to turn Afro-Punk into a more full-time affair, while a growing legion of young black punks connected on the message boards of Afropunk.com.

"I seriously thought that I would show the film twice in New York and once in LA, and that would be it and the whole conversation would be over," says Spooner. "But with the help of some of the people in the film and some of the founding members of the website, we were able to grow it to where people were really active. There was no way to access these people before."

On the occasion of the film's hundredth screening, Spooner planned to go all out, hoping to book Stiffed, a Philly-based punk band fronted by Santi White (now more widely known as alt-pop scion Santigold). White agreed to participate, connecting Spooner with her manager, Matthew Morgan, a British-born exec based in Manhattan. According to Spooner, Morgan called him down to his office for a discussion about what Afro-Punk was — and what it could be.

"I went in and sat with him and his partner and they basically were like, ‘Look, we want to partner with you because we have someone like Santi who we can't sign,'" recounts Spooner. "'She's amazing, she's already written records for other people, but no one's interested in a black female punk singer.'"

(Through a rep, Morgan's only comment was, "We just qualified over 9,000 people for our earned ticket program this week.")

"They're like, ‘Yeah, we'll help you promote your film and build the scene up,'" Spooner continues. "‘I think that if we can prove that there's an audience that we can make this thing happen.'"

Believing that Morgan would relieve him of the less creative aspects of running Afropunk, Spooner gladly brought him on. Together, the duo began a series of Liberation Sessions. Held over three-day weekends, they featured an Afro-Punk screening and a black-alt band or DJ. Pictures from the sessions — sparkling images of black people gathering in celebration — began making their way onto the Afropunk.com message boards, where Spooner says AP-OGs, as they called themselves, became restless, hoping for a major event where they could finally meet one another in person.

"These kids from all over the country and parts of Europe are forming friendships, forming relationships, getting crushes, and they all want to meet each other," says Spooner, laughing. "I was like, 'Shit, I gotta get ahead of this. I don't want the meet-up to be in Wisconsin.'"

Following a screening at the Pan-African Film Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Morgan and Spooner reached out to administrators at the cultural space with a proposal. "He and I went to BAM and had a meeting with them and basically we walked out of there with the first Afropunk Festival," says Spooner. "It was going to be four days of films, which myself and one of the curators from BAM curated, and three days of bands."

The weekend went off without a hitch, drawing a small but exceedingly loyal contingent of alternative black people of all ages. Films screened inside BAM, while outside in the parking lot and at venues like the late CBGB and The Delancey, a handful of musicians performed — including, in those early years, a then-unknown Janelle Monáe — while black skaters and bikers flexed and flew for a group of onlookers under a cloudless sky.

The first festival bordered on idyllic. But Spooner says a very particular moment, a call for an informal picnic at the nearby Fort Greene Park to mark the end of the festival, proved to be the perfect end.

"So, we did it and there were probably like 40 people who came," he says. "It was just a bunch of kids hanging out, but it was so memorable. And I think that it's almost prophetic because I was there, Matthew wasn't."

"When I left the last Afropunk festival I went to, I remembered that I wasn't alone," writes Hanif Abdurraqib in his essay "I Wasn't Brought, I Was Born." "Afropunk alone isn't going to save us, or dismantle a racist world, but if punk rock was born, in part, out of the need for white escape, Afropunk signals something provided for black escape for what the actions of white escape breeds."

Abdurraqib has spent most of his life in Columbus, Ohio, a reluctant member of the city's punk rock scene. As he explains over the phone, Afropunk provided him with a chance to escape "a very specific and real type of violence that exists in a lot of punk scenes and a lot of DIY scenes."

"Because that is so often a rite of passage on a lot of punk scenes," he continues. "If you're never invited or you don't want to take part in that for very valid reasons, you kind of end up on the outskirts."

Just as Abdurraqib was finding his way back to the center, attending his very first Afropunk in 2009, James Spooner was already on the outskirts of his own festival. Living in LA and with little to no involvement in the creation of Afropunk 2008, the first iteration of the festival to have corporate sponsors, Spooner and Morgan's relationship began to unravel.

"The selfish part of me that made Afropunk was because I am an artist and I never respected myself as a party promoter," says Spooner. "I found myself right back in being a party promoter and I used to get into these big arguments with Matthew."

The arguments ranged from questions of corporatizing the festival — which, by 2008, was drawing thousands — to where they should draw the lines on "black," "punk," and "rock" when booking bands. Spooner claims Morgan wanted to bring in more prominent acts with black members who weren't necessarily frontmen or women while, at the same time, revamping the Afropunk website so there was less emphasis on the film. (Today, the Afropunk lineup remains overwhelming black, while the site's popular message board is less prominently featured.)

The final straw, for Spooner at least, seemed to be the performance of anti-gay track "Boom Bye Bye" by an Afropunk act at the 2008 gathering. Incensed, Spooner climbed onstage and interrupted the set and pointed out the festival's large LGBT+ contingent. Morgan was livid; Spooner was out.

"I wanted things to be small and authentic," explains Spooner. "And it was just like all these things were happening where we were just definitely going in different directions."

He's the first to admit that he left Afropunk on a sour note, adding that if we'd spoken in the last few years, he would have "spewed out a bunch of shit." Part of that, Spooner says, is because he still gets pulled into the ever-churning waters of Afropunk, be it through Facebook messages blaming him for the festival's current direction (admission is no longer free), or interview requests by journalists, or moving essays on the lasting power of Afropunk.

"I read an article last week in Pitchfork about this kid and after reading it, I realized that it's not all just bullshit, it does still matter," says Spooner, in reference to Hanif Abdurraqib's essay. "And whether they're there to see Lenny Kravitz or they're there to see one of the opening bands or they're there just to be around a bunch of black people who aren't laughing at them, that's why I did it. That's why I made the film."

Shaunna Randolph, who has only missed one Afropunk since it all began, believes that Afropunk and its faithful community are standing in Spooner's place, actively ensuring that the festival remains the sanctuary for alternative black kids it was meant to be.

"I can understand why James is torn about it, because the punk movement is all about DIY and community-based and anti-establishment," says Randolph, noting that, for only the second time in its history, Afropunk won't be free this year. "But I also would have to say that the members of Afropunk are smarter than that. The movement is the movement."

In its eleventh year, the movement has hit its stride, with the festival spreading its roots to Atlanta and Paris while continuing to enlist some of the biggest names in alt-black music, including Lenny Kravitz, Ms. Lauryn Hill, SZA, Grace Jones, and others across the musical spectrum. Some might say that Afropunk is moving away from its underground punk-rock ethos, but, as Abdurraqib points out, that all depends on your definition.

"I think anything that rebels against expectations, normal expectations, is punk rock," he says. "Living and finding joy as a person of color or a person from the creative community or a person in any marginalized group in America is an act of resistance, an act of radical resistance. There are few things more punk rock than that."

Convert RAW files (eg. .CR2) to JPEGs, PNGs and whatnot.

Twitter's stock price continues to slide, closing today at the $26 strike price at which it went public. It closed its first day of trading around $45, a mark it has not matched since May of this year. While the company has continued to grow its revenue at a healthy pace, it has struggled to turn a substantial profit and frightened investors with its lack of user growth. CEO Dick Costolo stepped down earlier this year, and has been replaced by co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey. But it's unclear if Dorsey will stay on as the permanent chief, adding to overall worries about the company's health.

During its most recent quarter Twitter reported revenue of $502 million and profit of 7 cents a share, roughly double what it did during the same period a year earlier. But that same day saw the departure of several key executives, an exodus that has left the company with a number of important positions to fill. On a call with investors, Dorsey said that Twitter's failure to connect with the huge audience of people who see tweets but don't create accounts for themselves was "unacceptable."

Chief financial officer Anthony Noto phrased it a bit differently, pointing out that while 95 percent of people in most developed markets were aware of Twitter, only 30 percent used it. The company has yet to find the killer feature or simpler interface that will allow it to transition into the "mass market," Noto concluded.

kyssthis16:

peruviandeepwave:

tealass22:

Every DIY tutorial ever.

Me when I made my own curtains

#FactsOnly

Follow up question: why is it only $7 pre-made then?

I wrote a story for Saveur.com about how honeydew and cantaloupe melons are all the rage in the land of mixological masterpiece theatre.

"But now two other melons—cantaloupe and honeydew, those stars of breakfast buffets everywhere—are taking off on bar menus too." - me

There are recipes included from Houston's The Pastry War and Edinburgh's Lucky Liquor Co.

Check it out.

Three San Francisco Bars Have Made the 2015 World's 50 Best Bars List

Hey, Who Put Science In My Drink?

Camper English Speaking at the National Archives in DC this August

Shadowrun: Hong Kong [official site] is the third-and-a-half time around the block for this cyberpunk-but-with-elves roleplaying series, and by now there’s a routine and a rhythm. You build a Shadowrunner, a secretive mercenary who can fight with technical or mystical powers (or a combination of the two), leading a team of fixed-spec allies with big personalities through real-time exploration and turn-based action. This time, the setting is one of the touchstones of 80s cyberpunk, and we’re dealing with Triads, social segregation and city-wide nightmares in addition to the usual gang war, troll mercenaries and magic-assisted corporate espionage.

The scope is larger – some of the environments are enormous – but broadly speaking it’s business as usual. Further Adventures In Shadowrun rather than Great Leap Forwards. Granted, this is what was promised in the successful Kickstarter (the series’ second), but there is now that nagging sense that this could perhaps be an expansion pack rather than whole new game.

The most obvious place the money’s been spent is on art: these massive locales and missions with bespoke, hugely ornate decor, most of which is purely backdrop. Take, for instance, the main hub, a sprawling, dockside underworld town which houses your base, quest-givers, a load of different shops, a bunch of oddballs to chat to and a smattering of micro-missions.

In theory, it’s great that there’s so much to look at, from Majong parlours to docked battleships, magic dens, caravans full of mad drones and illicit augmentation labs, all adorned with dirty neon or sinister leylines. The art is meticulous, luxurious (at least within the confines of this series’ slightly cardboard cut-out presentation). In practice, it’s a hell of a lot of schlepping around static scenery you saw hours ago, absorbed and then took for granted because all you need from it is to hit the same few spots again and again. It’s big for big’s sake, and not supported by quite enough to do.

The other big focus is story, deemed to be What The Fans Want, and that too feels Big For Big’s Sake. The central mystery, of why a foster-father you haven’t seen for years has summoned you to a nightmare-plagued Hong Kong, only to immediately go missing and for you to be framed for a crime you didn’t commit, certainly has some grab, probably more so than the conspiracies of the two preceding games. There are also some wonderfully detailed character descriptions and conversations which amp up the ever so slightly tongue-in-cheek hardboiled atmosphere, but by and large every conversation goes on just a little too long. There’s too much front-loading of exposition too, several hours of prescribed plotting – albeit with plenty of options about how your want your character to treat others – before it releases you to quest and shop and chat to your gang at relative leisure. I suspect devoted Shadowrunheads will lap this stuff up, but some of it really seemed like needless bulk to me, as though Hong Kong was trying to be a more substantially new Shadowrun game than it really is.

The embiggenation is not limited to presentation, fortunately. The game proper has a little more flex than the last one, a couple of more memorable squad members (one, a cannibalistic, Samurai ghoul who’d like to be a more valuable member of society, particularly feels like he walked right out of one of the better Bioware games) and some big, setpiece missions which often offer a choice of violence or avoidance. An open world it is not however, which I think is why that massive hub level feels a bit off. It’s as though SHK is trying to carry itself like a freeform game, but didn’t or couldn’t fill it with enough #content. I enjoy the setting and characterisation of this one more than the preceding Dragonfall, but the latter’s scale felt like more of a sweet spot. SHK might up the stakes, but getting around is a little fatiguing.

It also takes few prisoners in terms of explaining its many systems, classes and abilities. Token efforts are made to explain how to build a capable character or use advanced skills, but it’s pretty clear it presumes that most of its audience has played at least one of the other games. The last thing I’d do is request more tutorial before the game begins in earnest, but an optional, more extensive one would make a lot of sense if you don’t know your Conjuring from your Chi. Fortunately it’s not a terribly difficult game, being much more about the hours you put in rather than strategic skill, but expect some brow-furrowing if this is your first time. A new system to occasionally choose new powers for squad members, similar to the upgrade tree in XCOM, is at least far better explained, given it involves essentially brand-new, bespoke abilities.

I like Shadowrun: Hong Kong well enough, and it’s certainly the series’ glossiest, most generous instalment yet, but I do feel I’m repeating myself to some degree. Building up a character, accruing cash to spend on only marginally better weapons and armour, unravelling a conspiracy, occasionally diving into Tronish cyberworld sequences: I’ve done this twice before, and though I don’t resent doing it again I am ready for something different now.

On the other hand, I suspect the developers know exactly what fans want and exactly what they’re doing, and I’ll be surprised if Hong Kong isn’t considered the series’ new high watermark. While the fantasy elements sometimes felt air-lifted into the earlier games’ cyberpunk setting, this meshes the mystical and the science-fictional from the off, using Eastern mythology as a framing construct for its high concepts without tumbling into stereotype too often. Though a section in which you try to improve the feng shui of a slum was a bit much, admittedly.

Shadowrun: Hong Kong is a substantial and in some respects lavish cyberpunk romp, which, if looked at purely in its own right, is only really guilty of a bit of visual and narrative flab. It’s got fun characters, loads of skills and spells, eschews melodrama in favour of allowing you to choose how seriously you’re going to treat the world you’re thrown into, and pretty reliably offers multiple, if slightly perfunctory, quest solutions. If this is your first time with the series, you’re in for a merry old time, although I’d still point to the tauter Dragonfall: Director’s Cut as a slightly superior Shadowrun experience. If you’ve been round the neon block a few times already, then Hong Kong’s going to feel pretty familiar despite having a wider and more ostentatious stage than ever before. This might well be what you want, of course, but I’m not entirely sure all those Kickstarter funbucks have been spent quite as effectively as they could have been.

Shadowrun: Hong Kong is out now.

awwww-cute:

Kitty Warming Platform (Source: http://ift.tt/1TWyblb)

Firaxis today released a new 12-minute gameplay demo for XCOM 2 showing off the game's new strategy layer and the mobile HQ you'll be working from throughout the game.

The Avenger is designed to allow players to be more hands-on with guerrilla operations around the world.

XCOM 2 hits Linux, Mac and Windows PC this November.

Youths, I know you do so enjoy disrespecting your elders, lingering outside the bowls club drinking Four Loko and ‘ironically’ listening to Barry Manilow. You can now up your rebellion by playing some of the ancient RPGs that fogies swear are better than games you herberts enjoy, then use that experience as inspiration for cutting subtweets.

Fogies, weren’t things better back in the day? As the saying goes, you can’t spell “progress” without “regress” if you’ve lost your glasses and your memory’s going. Relax. From today, you can easily revisit The Golden Age of RPGs. GOG have dug up thirteen old Dungeons & Dragons RPGs in the Forgotten Realms setting, you see.

The virtuous virtual vendor of vintage video games today launched Forgotten Realms: The Archives, three bundles of ye olde RPGs.

Collection One gives Eye of the Beholder I, II and III for £6.49. Collection Two packs Pool of Radiance, Hillsfar, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Gateway to the Savage Frontier, Pools of Darkness, Secret of the Silver Blades, Treasures of the Savage Frontier, and D&D: Unlimited Adventures for £6.49. Behind Door Number Three is Dungeon Hack and Menzoberranzan for £3.89.

For folks into dungeons and/or dragons, I calculate that’s about a bajillion hours of mirth from revered studios like SSI and Westwood for £17.

Really getting into the D&D swing, for the weekend GOG are also heavily discounting other D&D games, including Baldur’s Gate and Planescape: Torment.

A number of frustrated Star Citizen backers are asking publisher Cloud Imperium Games for their money back. And although the company is making no guarantees or public announcements, Polygon has learned that refunds are being made.

Much of the consumer dissatisfaction stems from how little of the promised game has so far been released, and how often various modules have been delayed.

Star Citizen's first crowd-funding campaign took place on Kickstarter in the fall of 2012, followed by a roiling campaign via the company's own website. The space-combat simulation has so far raised more than $87 million. The scale of the project has grown with each stretch goal.

Back in 2012, Cloud Imperium said that a space dog-fighting demo would be available by the end of 2013, with a full beta of the game world's entire universe available by the end of 2014.

In the event, the dog-fighting game known as Arena Commander only appeared in late 2014, following on from a hangar mode earlier in the year. Other elements of the game, including a first-person shooting module, planetside landing, social hub, single-player campaign, multi-crew module and final Persistent Universe have yet to appear. Some players are angry.

In July, an internal survey posted by a community member on the Star Citizen message boards revealed as many as 25 percent of the game's backers expressing an interest in getting their money back.

Star Citizen's consumer agreement terms do not allow much official leeway for refunds. Players back the game at various financial levels, but all have been given access to the game's earliest modules.

In an interview with Polygon this week, Cloud Imperium founder Chris Roberts said that refunds are being given out. "We don't publicize it, but when people reach out to us and talk to us in a rational manner, in most cases we've refunded them," he said. "We don't want people to be part of the project if they're not happy."

"We don't want to keep people around. We don't want to fight with them."

He stressed that the company is under no legal obligation to offer refunds. "We don't have to do that. The terms of the agreement mean we don't. We're developing [the game], so we can't be in a position where we automatically have to refund people's money. That's how we pay salaries. If we can't spend the money we get we can't make the game. We don't want people to get the impression that it is automatic because it is completely discretionary on our part."

A spokesperson for Cloud Imperium said that a total of 1,269 refunds have so far been given out, with 93 refunds since the beginning of July. Roberts declined to say what percentage of refund applications are granted.

"If there are cases where people are really upset, or facing personal hardships, on a case by case basis we take a look and we refund," he said. "We don't want to keep people around. We don't want to fight with them."

Various promised release dates for Star Citizen modules have slipped. In January 2015, Roberts laid out a schedule in which the first-person shooter, known as Star Marine, would arrive by the spring, followed by the social and multicrew modules in the summer and the single player campaign (Squadron 42) in the fall.

My first Star Citizen kill

At Gamescom earlier this month, Roberts showed demos of the various modules along with a new timeline, with the social module coming in days ahead, Star Marine arriving in "a few weeks" followed by an updated Arena Commander (including multi-crew) scheduled before the end of the year. There is no firm date on Squadron 42, although that will likely be announced at a CitizenCon event in England which takes place on Oct. 10. The Persistent Universe is promised some time in 2016.

Roberts pointed out that this is an ambitious game and that many games suffer from delays. He said that his team of 200 people spread across four countries are working through significant technical challenges.

The lengthy Gamescom demo was watched by an enthusiastic crowd. Most Star Citizen community forums retain an air of optimism, excitement and support. But as time wears on, and if further delays are announced, more skepticism is likely to take hold.

Paul Shelley (aka Bzerker01) is a Twitch streamer who follows Star Citizen closely and is well known among the game's loyal fanbase. "The community is cautiously optimistic," he said. "They want to see progress. There are many who are waiting for more content before they continue to support it either financially or through word of mouth."

Ryan Allen, a web developer from California, backed Star Citizen in early 2013 and went on to spend a total of $930 on various in-game spaceships, over a period of about 18 months. He told Polygon that he applied for a full refund on July 13, 2015, and was granted the full amount on July 31.

"When I backed the game, I was excited that Chris was making a new Wing Commander-type game," he told Polygon. "It was like, 'take my money.'" In 2014 Allen played the hangar mode and Arena Commander  for "around 30 hours."

But Allen said that by early 2015 he had grown disillusioned with the game. "I totally believed in it, but after so much delay, I just wanted my money back."

In July, Allen contacted Cloud Imperium's customer support service via an email that outlined his grievances. "I felt they had been dishonest and that the game was going downhill," he said. After a series of emails, he was denied a refund. The customer service rep said his pledges were too old to be refunded. Official refunds are only available to people who buy the game and are dissatisfied within 14-days.

Allen was a vocal critic of the game on Star Citizen's forums and on its sub-Reddit. He says he's clashed with other backers in online arguments. He also contacted the Federal Trade Commission and the Better Business Bureau to make a complaint. A few days later he received a direct email from Cloud Imperium, promising to take care of his refund application. It was sorted out in a matter of days.

"It was like night and day," said Allen. "I don't know why they changed their minds and I'm not going to question it. After that email, they gave me the best customer service experience I've ever had in gaming. They really went 110 percent to get me my money back."

According to Roberts, unhappy backers like Allen are the exception. "In general, our refund numbers are very, very low compared to the rest of the industry," he said. "It's significantly lower than what you get with e-transactions on most games. The issue is, yes, there are some big, vocal people, but they're definitely a minority."

Polygon will publish a full feature on the current status and the future of Star Citizen in the days ahead.

Nearly two years after its US launch, Nintendo has lowered the price of its slate-like 2DS to $99.99, throwing in a downloadable copy of Mario Kart 7 with the system for good measure.

The 2DS was already the cheapest way to get access to the 3DS' impressive library of games (plus original DS titles) at its original price of $130. And while the 2DS has dropped below $100 briefly during retailer-specific sales, this is the first time the official price of entering the 3DS ecosystem has come in under that figure (just barely).

The lower price comes with significant drawbacks compared to the traditional 3DS line, though, including a lack of stereoscopic 3D and a non-folding design with slightly uncomfortable button positioning and a smaller screen than the "XL" line. The 2DS also doesn't play the few games that require the "new 3DS" chipset.

The studio behind a poorly reviewed Adam Sandler movie has targeted 11 Popcorn Time users in Oregon who used the BitTorrent-based app to download The Cobbler. The app, which debuted in about March 2014 as a sort of BitTorrent for dummies, created a Netflix-style interface for largely pirated materials.

According to the civil suit, which was filed earlier this week in federal court in Portland, 11 anonymous Comcast customers downloaded the movie at various times this year. They are believed to be in violation of a copyright held by Cobbler Nevada LLC, the corporate entity behind the film.

Voltage Pictures was one of the production companies behind the film, which has also sued over other pirated titles, including Dallas Buyers Club.

Hackers behind the breach of the Ashley Madison cheater's dating service have released a second, much bigger dump of sensitive materials that may include a massive amount of e-mail from its parent company's CEO Noel Biderman.

The BitTorrent download totals 19GB and includes 13 GB file titled noel.biderman.mail.7z, prompting speculation it contains e-mail from Biderman, who is CEO of Ashley Madison parent company Avid Life Media. Update: Researchers have now completed the download and found the noel.biderman.mail.7z file can't be unpacked because it is inexplicably corrupted. According to this analysis, the TL;DR of the leak is:

• The leak contains lots of source code
• 73 different git repositories are present
• Ashley Madison used gitlab internally
• The 13GB compressed file which could contain AM CEO’s emails seems corrupted. Is it a fake one?
• The leak contains plain text or poorly hashed (md5) db credentials

The new leak comes two days after Avid Life Media officials left open the possibility a previous 10GB download may not have been genuine. As it turned out, the leaked materials were real and showed the hackers had burrowed further into Ashley Madison than almost anyone had imagined.