Pokemon Go’s new ‘Appraisal’ feature: What it is and how to use it – CNET
Your team leader will tell you all about your Pokemon’s fighting qualities.
Alina Bradford/CNET
Pokemon Go has finally gotten another update and those elusive team leaders finally have a job after a couple months of rumors and hopeful wishing from players.
Team leaders now teach players about a Pokémon’s attack and defense capabilities. Niantic calls this new ability a “Pokémon appraisal.” Luckily, you don’t need to find a gym to speak with your team leader.
Go to your Pokemon screen and tap on the one you would like to know more about. Tap the round button in the lower right-hand of the screen to open the menu. Instead of trading the Pokemon in for candy, tap the Appraise option.
Your team leader, Candela, Blanche or Spark will pop up on the screen and will ask if you want to know more about the Pokemon.
Tap the screen. After reading the text, tap the screen again to continue the conversation. Your team leader will tell you the Pokemon’s strengths and weaknesses through various screens.
The team leaders will also tell you if your Pokemon is large, or on the puny side. Some believe that heavier Pokemon hit harder while smaller Pokemon dodge better, though this hasn’t been confirmed by Niantic. There are some achievements for capturing small Pokemon, so knowing the size can be helpful.
Revel F36 review – CNET
The Good The Revel F36 is a 21st century audiophile tower with oodles of detail and resolution, and a broad, yet clearly focused soundstage.
The Bad It’s a big and imposing design. The speaker’s revealing nature exposes poor recordings.
The Bottom Line The Revel Concerta2 F36 floorstander is a beautifully-made speaker which makes great sounding recordings shine.
For going on 20 years Revel has been one of the most respected American speaker companies, finding favor with audiophiles and recording industry pros. The company’s selection currently includes a number of high-end towers, such as the Salon2 and Studio2, starting at $16,000 per pair.
The F36 tower is much more affordable at $2,000, £1,995, AU$3,395 per pair, and it sounds great for the price. It’s an ideal choice for audiophiles craving more resolution and dynamic range scale than you’ll get from smaller and less expensive models.
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The Revel Concerta2 F36 is a hi-fi speaker which offers a 2.5-way design and revealing sound quality.
Sarah Tew/CNET
The F36s we reviewed here — decked out in impeccable, high-gloss white — are big boys. They would probably seem a little smaller in black gloss, the other available finish.
2016 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon Unlimited review – Roadshow
The Good The 2016 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon Unlimited is an excellent off-road vehicle. It has all the mechanical goodies to make your dreams of dirt adventure come true.
The Bad You’ll have to suffer when driving on the pavement. Sure, the road noise and floaty drive may be part of the Wrangler’s charm…but only for the first few hundred miles. The infotainment system is merely average, offering outdated Garmin maps and no backup camera.
The Bottom Line The Wrangler Rubicon lets drivers take on whatever endeavor they choose, but they may pay for it in on-road comfort and media connectivity.
I stopped the 2016 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon at the bottom of the rock pile. Ahead of me were boulders the size of laundry baskets stacked pell-mell on top of each other. I got out to scout, mentally taking a picture of where I would place each wheel as I climbed the hill. Satisfied, I buckled in, put the Jeep into 4L, locked my front and rear differentials and started rock crawling.
The Jeep has quite a history in the United States. Some even say we would all be speaking German if it weren’t for the trusty little four-wheeler. While I’m not one to judge geopolitical events, I will say that the Jeep is as American as Mom and apple pie, eliciting feelings of freedom and independence as no other vehicle can.
Nick Miotke/Roadshow
The Wrangler is the SUV you want in the event of a zombie apocalypse. Even the base Sport is capable in its own right. But you, dear Roadshow readers, are not base kind of folk. You are Unlimited Rubicon folk, the top dawg of 4x4s. With four doors, hence the Unlimited nomenclature, and all the off-road bells and whistles, the Unlimited Rubicon Wrangler is made for getting you into nature, and out of trouble.
Nick Miotke/Roadshow
Powered by a 3.6-liter V6 engine, the Wrangler makes 285 horsepower and 260 pound-feet of torque. A six-speed manual transmission is standard but my tester came with the five-speed automatic. Word on the street is that a diesel, already available in Europe, is in the works for 2017 as well as an eight-speed automatic transmission, but that’s straight out of the rumor mill.
Still, this gas-powered dirt genius gets all the off-road goodies a wheeler could want. Dana 44 heavy-duty front and rear locking axles, disconnecting front sway bar, 10 inches of ground clearance; all are essential to getting to the top of the rock pile, but the keys are the 4:1 low gearing and the 4.10 axle ratio. Sure, the axle ratio will cost you about $700, but it puts more torque to each wheel. When paired with the super-low gearing it’s possible to crawl over weighty obstacles with low speed and greater control.
Unfortunately, all the axle ratios in the world won’t help you if you pick the wrong line. I was halfway up the rock pile before I realized I’d put myself in a precarious situation. The BF Goodrich KO2 tires were trying their damnedest, but I’d gotten a rear wheel up in the air and the rocks were too slick for the remaining three tires to get a purchase. I looked out the door (because of course I had taken the doors off) and realized I was off my intended mark. Had I placed my front driver tire just 2 inches to the left, I would have been OK. As it was, I had no choice but to build a bridge under my open tire with my Maxtrax recovery boards and reverse out of it.
A few bangs and crashes to the skid plates later and I was at the bottom of the rock pile, the Jeep no worse for the wear. My ego, however, was crushed.
Still, there were plenty of obstacles to conquer at The Mounds Off Road Vehicle Park about an hour and a half outside of Detroit, all of which the Jeep, and more importantly the driver, did without a problem. Steep and sandy hills were easy. An approach angle of 42.2 degrees meant I could hit precipitous inclines with speed and not worry about hitting the steel front bumper. Coming over sharp crests is easy with a 21.2-degree breakover angle, and add 4 more degrees to that spec with the standard, two-door Wrangler Rubicon. Coming down a steep face can be done the old-school way, in 4L or with the hill-descent control feature. Don’t worry about the rear steel bumper scraping, as the Rubicon has a departure angle of 32.5 degrees.
Look at the Xbox 360’s cancelled ‘Goldeneye 007’ HD remaster
It’s one of those bits of gaming trivia that punches a specific generation of players square in the gut: There was once an Xbox Live port of Goldeneye 007 in the works, but it was cancelled. It’s true — Activation was porting the Nintendo 64 classic to the Xbox 360 back in 2008, but the project was canned when Microsoft and Nintendo couldn’t reach a licensing agreement. The good news? Today we finally get a look at what the game would have been — known leaker Rare Thief has posted 30 minutes of gameplay footage.
For fans of the original game, the video is a bittersweet revelation. Here, we see everything fans wanted from the XBLA remake: the complete, classic single player campaign, new high resolution textures, a much improved framerate of 60 fps and the complete multiplayer experienced tailored to online play over Xbox Live. Better still are the new features players missed out on, including new multiplayer levels, an option that equals all character heights (Take that, Oddjob) and an option to instantly switch between classic and HD graphic modes.
It’s nice to see what almost was, if a bit sad to know we’ll never be able to play it. That’s something we’ll all have to come to terms with — but hey, at least we still have Goldeneye: Source.
Source: Rare Thief, YouTube
Have a virtual visit to the Bauhaus with Harvard’s collection
Bauhaus, for the uninitiated, was a German art school that unfortunately closed its doors back in 1933. It was home to thousands of paintings, sculptures, photos and other various artifacts created by artists studying everything from architecture to graphic design.
While the school itself is no longer in operation, you can still peruse artwork you would have found there with Harvard’s massive collection of over 32,000 pieces of art available online for you to browse through at your convenience.
The artwork collection is a worthy tribute to the art school, which will be celebrating its 100th anniversary coming in 2019. Harvard Art Museum’s comprehensive look at the school features drawings and photographs as well as an essay about the school’s impact on the design world. You can also access a map of where you can see physical versions of some of the Bauhaus works in real life in Boston from the very same platform.
Check out the collection and get your daily quota of culture in for the day.
Via: Wired
Pokémon Go Gains New ‘Appraisal’ Feature for Highlighting Attack and Defense Capabilities
Popular augmented reality game Pokémon Go was today updated to version 1.5.0, adding new features to make gym battling more straightforward. New to the game is a “Pokémon Appraisal” feature, which will see in-game Team Leaders offering tips on each Pokémon’s attack and defense abilities to help trainers determine which Pokémon to use in gym battles.
While longtime Pokémon players are often already aware of which Pokémon are ideal to use against other Pokémon in a battle, the appraisal tool offers valuable information on abilities and weaknesses for those who are newer to the Pokémon universe.
According a blog post on the update, it also includes unspecified “minor bot fixes” and a promise that Niantic is working hard on “new and exciting features” that will be added to Pokémon Go in the future.
– Implemented Pokémon Appraisal: Trainers will now be able to learn about a Pokémon’s attack and defense capabilities from their Team Leader (Candela, Blanche, or Spark) to determine which of their Pokémon have the most potential for battle.
– Fixed a bug that kept defeated Pokémon at 1HP; these Pokémon will now return as fainted Pokémon. We’re working on rebalancing the training battle, stay tuned.fixes
Earlier today, a report suggested interest in Pokémon Go is steadily declining, so Niantic will need to implement new features to keep players interested. Daily active users, downloads, and the amount of time users are spending on Pokémon Go each day are said to be “well off their peaks and on a downward trend.”
Pokémon Go can be downloaded from the iOS App Store for free. [Direct Link]
Tag: Pokémon GO
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Fossil evidence of supernovae found on the sea floor
Astrophysicist Shawn Bishop of the Technical University in Munich looked for evidence of supernovae in an unlikely place: on the sea floor. Now, according to a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Bishop confirmed that there is a fossil record of a supernova event buried in the sediment at the bottom of the ocean.
Specifically, Bishop was searching for the isotope iron–60, which is produced during a supernova and blasted out into space. Bishop’s hypothesis was that iron–60 particles from a supernova would oxidize as they passed through the Earth’s atmosphere, becoming rust that settled on the ocean floor where it was consumed by “magneto tactic” bacteria to create the magnetite chains they use to detect magnetic fields. By examining sediment core samples using accelerator mass spectrometry, Bishop found atoms of iron–60 preserved in the microfossil remains of these ancient bacteria. Once he compared the iron-60 concentrations in several different core samples, Bishop believes he found a terrestrial record of a supernova that occurred 2.2 million years ago in the Scorpio Centauri cluster — which actually corresponds nicely to iron-60 deposits found on the moon.
A second study led by Anton Wallner of The Australian National University published similar findings in the journal Nature earlier this year, identifying evidence of a particularly rough period when the Earth was being blasted by a series of nearby explosions. What’s more: the evidence also suggests that one of the supernova events found in the fossil record may have set off the ice ages of the Pleistocene era, some 2.5 million years ago.
Via: Gizmodo
Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Technical University of Munich
Visa-powered payment ring is now available to everyone
That Visa-based payment ring is no longer limited to athletes who made it to the Olympics in Rio. Anyone can now pre-order an NFC Ring that lets you tap to pay at many store terminals without pulling out your phone or twisting your wrist. Plunk down about $53 (£40) and you can get one in your size around its expected December ship date. As with the Apple Watch, you don’t need your phone around once you’ve set it up — it uses anonymizing tokens to make payments all by itself. It’s not flawless (we found that you have to hold it at an angle for best results), but it’s far subtler than many existing payment methods.
Source: NFC Ring, Infineon
PSN’s first Humble Bundle gives you Capcom games at a discount
Humble Bundle is best-known for its PC game offers, but it’s branching out in a big way. It’s partnering with Capcom and Sony to launch PSN’s first-ever Humble Bundle, the appropriately titled Humble Capcom PlayStation Bundle. Pay at least $1 and you’ll both get a handful of Capcom titles as well as donate some of your purchase toward the American Red Cross, Rettsyndrome.org and Save the Children. You can choose how much goes to charity versus the developer, so there’s an incentive to splurge in the name of a good cause.
As always, what you get depends on how much you’re willing to spend. Everyone who chips in will get Strider, Final Fight: Double Impact, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3 and a 45 percent discount for Street Fighter V. They’re nothing to write home about (Strider is the only PS4 title at this tier if you’re not buying SFV), but it’s still a good value. Naturally, things get more interesting the more you’re willing to pay. Pay above the average and you’ll snag the HD remasters of Okami and Resident Evil alongside four other games. Spend at least $15, meanwhile, and you’ll score Devil May Cry HD, Resident Evil 0 Remastered and a half-off coupon for Mega Man Legacy Collection.
If you like what you see, you’ll have until September 5th at 2PM Eastern to take advantage of the Humble Bundle. It’s not a killer deal, but it could be a good way to catch up on games that you missed the first time around. And look at it this way: if this offer proves to be a hit, you might just see other developers offering PSN bundles of their own.
Source: Humble Bundle, PlayStation Blog
Amazon is rebooting Scorsese’s ‘The Departed’ into a TV series
Streaming services continue to gobble up popular titles to adapt and reimagine for their content-craving audiences. But unlike Netflix’s recent decision to adapt the timeless children’s novel Anne of Green Gables, Amazon Studios has shown that it’s willing to go in a bit harder of a direction. After announcing last week they’d be making a series exploring Playboy creator Hugh Hefner’s life, Deadline reported today that the company will be re-imagining Martin Scorsese’s 2006 mobster drama The Departed as a TV series.
While Scorsese’s picture deals with undercover intrigue between the FBI and local Irish mob in Boston, itself adapted from the Hong Kong-based film Internal Affairs, the Amazon show will be set in Chicago, Illinois amid warring drug gangs. According to Deadline, its plot will revolve around a young cop going undercover inside a Latino gang, which plants their own man inside the police department.
The series will be written and executive produced by Jason Richman, creator of network police drama Detroit 1-8-7. While no cast or other creative roles have been announced, the production houses Vertigo Entertainment, Initial Entertainment Group and Plan B Entertainment, which all helped create Scorsese’s film, are returning to produce the show.
Source: Deadline
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