Valve beats out Apple, Google for profitability per employee

Anyone who has spent even the most slight amount of time with a controller in their hands or resting fingers comfortably on a keyboard and mouse will be aware of Valve and the sheer amount of excellence they have brought to the gaming industry for a number of years. Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Portal and Steam - just to name a few - are what anyone who calls themselves a gamer could easily tout as revolutionary to the masses that stumble along between casual games, and for good reason. They're all classics. 

So, it should come with little surprise that, according to Forbes, Gabe Newell is well on his way to being one of the wealthiest men in gaming. In an age when console gamers would have many believe that the PC was on it's way out the door, Newell and Valve's Steam stand as sentinels of the platform, offering a ridiculous amount of content to the 30 million users. With the lion's share of the downloadable market on the PC, it's no wonder that Steam has become the go-to for many and an incredible financial opportunity for Newell and Valve.

Continue reading on Examiner.com: Valve beats out Apple, Google for profitability per employee - National Video Game Industry | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/video-game-industry-in-national/valve-beats-out-apple-google-for-profitability-per-employee#ixzz1E8Nbgrtg

Why the iPhone is Weak Sauce in Security

 

So you lost your iPhone last night but you aren’t worried because you had put a password on it right? The Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology in Germany has developed an application that can take your iPhone and reveal all stored passwords in its keychain in about 6 minutes. The phone that was tested was an un-modified up to date iPhone.

The program does this by initiating a custom jailbreak protocol which allows it to get full access to your phone even though its password protected. What kind of information is stored in your keychain you may ask? Anything you have ever entered a password for on your iPhone including but not limited to: Wifi networks, anything in Safari, app passwords, anything that was stored in the keychain.

The entire article can be found here.

Google receives warning from MPAA

Over the last few months, Google has received more than 100 copyright infringement warnings from MPAA-affiliated movies studios: most are directed at users of Google's public Wi-Fi service but others are meant for Google employees. The MPAA is thus warning the search giant that it might get disconnected from the Internet.

"Copyright infringement also violates your ISP's terms of service and could lead to limitation or suspension of your Internet service. You should take immediate action to prevent your Internet account from being used for illegal activities," the movie companies write in various letters, according to TorrentFreak. Although the copyright holders use strong language, these notices are nothing simply warnings, and typically do not lead to legal action.

The full article can be found here.

Palm a thing of the Past?

It kind of goes without saying, so we'll say it anyway. The Palm brand is pretty much done. Exhibits A-Q: Today's Think Beyond event in San Francisco. Lots of HP all over the place, and nary a mention of Palm.

The full article can be found here.

HP Unveils TouchPad, iPad Killer?

 

Now that the kitty's out of the gemstone bag, we're slowly starting to connect the dots that obscure the details of Palm's soon to be announced "Topaz" and "Opal" tablets. First up is information from one of our original trusted sources who claims that the Opal will measure 180 x 144 x 13mm (making it a bit shorter and wider than the 190.1 x 120.5 x 12-mm Galaxy Tab) and feature a 1,024 x 768 pixel TFT LCD display. We're told that the bigger Topaz tablet will ship about three months before Opal and measures in at 241 x 190 x 13mm (making it nearly identical to the 242.8 x 189.7 x 13.4-mm iPad) with a pixel resolution that could be the same as the Opal (our source wasn't 100 percent on this). We're also hearing that the "premium audio" we saw on that leaked marketing slide will indeed be powered by HP's Beats audio processing, and that the tablets will be provided with "tens of gigabytes" of cloud storage -- so much that it dwarfs the local storage on the devices. Good, because you're going to need it from the looks of some additional information we just received.

More at Engadget.

Humanity vs. Machine

In the race to build computers that can think like humans, the proving ground is the Turing Test—an annual battle between the world’s most advanced artificial-intelligence programs and ordinary people. The objective? To find out whether a computer can act “more human” than a person. In his own quest to beat the machines, the author discovers that the march of technology isn’t just changing how we live, it’s raising new questions about what it means to be human.

BRIGHTON, ENGLAND, SEPTEMBER 2009. I wake up in a hotel room 5,000 miles from my home in Seattle. After breakfast, I step out into the salty air and walk the coastline of the country that invented my language, though I find I can’t understand a good portion of the signs I pass on my way—LET AGREED, one says, prominently, in large print, and it means nothing to me.

I pause, and stare dumbly at the sea for a moment, parsing and reparsing the sign. Normally these kinds of linguistic curiosities and cultural gaps intrigue me; today, though, they are mostly a cause for concern. In two hours, I will sit down at a computer and have a series of five-minute instant-message chats with several strangers. At the other end of these chats will be a psychologist, a linguist, a computer scientist, and the host of a popular British technology show. Together they form a judging panel, evaluating my ability to do one of the strangest things I’ve ever been asked to do.

I must convince them that I’m human.

The rest of Brian Christian's fantastic article can be found here.

Microsoft finally kills 'autorun'

After a decade of abuse, Autorun is finally being retired in older versions of Windows.

On Tuesday, Microsoft began pushing an update that changes the way Windows Server 2008 and earlier versions of the OS respond when USB thumb drives and other portable media are plugged in. Until now, those versions dutifully executed code embedded in autorun.inf files without first prompting the user. The default behavior provided a convenient way to propagate malware such as Conficker, which hijacked the feature to spread itself each time an infected drive was inserted.

The full article can be found here.

Game Theory & Going Ape

Game theory uses deceptively simple challenges to provide insights into human decision making and cooperation. Many of the challenges force players to choose between (for example) taking a small but guaranteed payoff or a big payoff that will be lost unless another individual cooperates. The games themselves are often simple enough that they can be adapted to work with other primates so that researchers can determine which human behaviors are shared with our closer relatives. But that adaptation can significantly change the appearance of the game, raising questions about whether the results are actually comparable. So, to avoid this problem, a group of researchers attempted to test humans and primates using a single game that was largely the same for all species tested.

The full article is over at Ars Technica.

Support Indie Games: CreaVures

Form Kickstarter:

Hello Kickstarters! Help us launch our game & support indie development by pre-ordering for our release this month! CreaVures is a platformer set in a magical forest. You play as five different "CreaVures," tiny mythical creatures that each have a unique natural ability, to be used alone or in tandem to solve platforming puzzles. Ultimately your CreaVures must travel deep into the dying forest to gather essence and restore the light.

CreaVures will be available for both PC & Mac users, & will be distributed through our gaming destination MuseGames.com (we can provide you a Steam copy if you prefer).

The limited edition rewards we're offering are exclusive to this Kickstarter project & will not be available after the funding period ends!

For even more information, backstory, and concept images, check out the creavures teaser page at http://musegames.com/games/creavures

Anyone interested can head over to Kickstart to check out the games page.

How cool is Near Field Communication?

Pretty fucking cool.

 

Near field communication (NFC) has recently popped up in the news. The technology is most closely associated with mobiles phones—Google has added support for NFC in Android, and Samsung has NFC hardware in its Nexus S handset, while Apple is rumored to be adding NFC support to future iPhones. NFC is an evolution of the simple RFID technology employed in "contactless" payment systems such as MasterCard PayPass and Visa payWave. It's also similar to (and compatible with) the FeliCa system used widely in Asia for mobile payments and ticketing systems.

Full article is at Ars Technica.

 

Don't be sad.

Drew this on the train this morning. It's since become my new wallpaper.

The Truest Kind of Love

Drawn and posted under my supercool pseudonym.

10 Easter Eggs You Wish Were Real

 

Everyone loves finding something in a game before anyone else, particularly if it’s a delicious secret and they’ve beaten everyone to the punch – that’s the cool thing about stumbling on an Easter Egg way before any other gamer has and why the internet is full of spoilers showing them all off. Just check Google or Youtube and you’ll be virtually bombarded with the exploits of people who found something before anyone else – on top of it, they won’t ever let you forget it. Ever. But, what if there were Easter Egg levels in games that we always wanted, but sadly didn’t exist. Personally, I think that would be cooler than fallen through ice in Fargo during the winter. So, without any further adieu, the ten secret levels you totally wished existed.

 

10. Unlocking Heat in Kane & Lynch

This one takes a bit of concentration, but if pulled off correctly, pays off extremely well. When playing the game, you simply have to leaving it running for 10 hours straight. 10 being Val Kilmer’s favorite number will unlock the entire uncut theatrical release of Heat, the 1995 Michael Mann film, which is a clever remake of L.A. Takedown that follows the exploits of a team of criminals attempting to make heads or tails out of an initially botched heist. Speaking of botched, if anyone remembers the original Kane & Lynch, few terms are more applicable to that bloody game that botched – if you’re being kind, that is. Either way, if your Xbox hasn’t overheated by the time the opening title sprawl starts rolling for Heat, then bravo to you. Now sit back, relax and actually watch something worthwhile instead of shuffling through that poor example of a video game.

Continue reading on Examiner.com: 10 Easter Eggs You Wish Were Real - Chicago Video Game | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/video-game-in-chicago/10-easter-eggs-you-wish-were-real#ixzz1DHs3Cg3b

MMOh? Welcome to Eve, Week Three

In space, no one can hear you shovel. That seemed to be the mantra this week as a virtual torrent of snow dumped it’s way across much of the United States in what just about anyone unaccustomed to the Hoth-like conditions would refer to as the “Snowpocalypse”. Well, while I was outside digging out cars with a yellow plastic shovel, Lukas Aleksander was hanging out in EVE studying himself into a coma.

Continue reading on Examiner.com: MMOh? Welcome to Eve, Week Three - National Video Game Industry | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/video-game-industry-in-national/mmoh-welcome-to-eve-week-three#ixzz1DHo1XVz4

Chefs, Jewels and Infestations: Blizzard Betas Mods

Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, despite being one of a three part sequel to the historically and critically acclaimed PC original, is an amazing game in and of itself as proven by the appreciation lauded upon the title amidst it's release last year. However, once you've played through the campaign and grown tired of having your butt kicked over and over in the multiplayer aspect of the game, it's time to sift through and check out what the modding community is doing to keep the game fresh and interesting. Sure enough, Blizzard has announced a few mods going into beta, all of which seem to be cooler than a wave of dropships full of Marines speeding towards an enemy base. 

Continue reading on Examiner.com: Chefs, Jewels and Infestations: Blizzard Betas Mods - National Video Game Industry | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/video-game-industry-in-national/chefs-jewels-and-infestations-blizzard-betas-mods#ixzz1DHmqaMfS

Must Read Sci-Fi #1: The Last Question

The Last Question by Isaac Asimov

The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the light. The question came about as a result of a five dollar bet over highballs, and it happened this way: Alexander Adell and Bertram Lupov were two of the faithful attendants of Multivac. As well as any human beings could, they knew what lay behind the cold, clicking, flashing face -- miles and miles of face -- of that giant computer. They had at least a vague notion of the general plan of relays and circuits that had long since grown past the point where any single human could possibly have a firm grasp of the whole. Multivac was self-adjusting and self-correcting. It had to be, for nothing human could adjust and correct it quickly enough or even adequately enough -- so Adell and Lupov attended the monstrous giant only lightly and superficially, yet as well as any men could. They fed it data, adjusted questions to its needs and translated the answers that were issued. Certainly they, and all others like them, were fully entitled to share In the glory that was Multivac's. For decades, Multivac had helped design the ships and plot the trajectories that enabled man to reach the Moon, Mars, and Venus, but past that, Earth's poor resources could not support the ships. Too much energy was needed for the long trips. Earth exploited its coal and uranium with increasing efficiency, but there was only so much of both. But slowly Multivac learned enough to answer deeper questions more fundamentally, and on May 14, 2061, what had been theory, became fact.