How to enjoy March Madness live in VR

Watch the brackets fill out as though you were really there.

The NCAA March Madness Live VR app for your Gear VR is now offering courtside seats to six of the NCAA games happening from now until the Championship Game, making it possible for you to sit down and enjoy the game live. As long as you have your Samsung phone and a Gear VR, you’re able to jump in and enjoy!

Here’s everything you need to know in order to be fully prepared for each of these amazing games.

Read more at VR Heads!

OnePlus arrives in Denmark via exclusive partnership with 3

Get your OnePlus 3T from 3!

Calling all Danes! The OnePlus 3T is now available in your country, exclusively available through 3. Both the 64GB and 128 GB models are available in Gunmetal. You can buy in-store or online with pricing starting at 99 kr./month for 30 months when you sign up for one of three service plans, or can be bought outright for as low as 4270 kr.

In its advertising, 3 is calling the OnePlus 3T “probably the best smartphone in the world right now”, which isn’t too far off from our thoughts — the OnePlus 3T is the best Android phone you can get if you’re on a budget.

Including Denmark, this means OnePlus 3T is now officially offered in over 31 countries around the world.

OnePlus 3T and OnePlus 3

• OnePlus 3T review: Rekindling a love story
• OnePlus 3T vs. OnePlus 3: What’s the difference?
• OnePlus 3T specs
• Latest OnePlus 3 news
• Discuss OnePlus 3T and 3 in the forums

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Mass Effect: Andromeda Tips and Tricks

It’s so easy to wind up dead in this game…

Mass Effect: Andromeda can be downright brutal sometimes. Everything on these planets are trying to kill you! Most of the enemies hit just as hard as you do, and that doesn’t really get better as you gain more armor and better weapons. The terrain is rough, and sometimes your squad AI can be kind of… bad.

If you’re having trouble making all of the planets viable while trying to balance ridiculous Milky Way politics and figuring out what the Remnant have done, this guide should help!

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Go looking for subquests

This one should be obvious, especially if you’ve played the other Mass Effect games, but don’t try to burn through the main story. Everything will be so much easier if you frontload your game with sidequests, so you’re at least a level or two ahead of the average player when you step into the next puzzle.

Always stop and check for sidequests, from the moment you first dock with the Nexus. There are several available well before you reach ESO, and the experience from those side jobs are way more than you get for completing the initial tutorial. It’s a nice edge to have when going down into the first Vault, and you can keep that lead as you travel from planer to planet.

Use your Nomad driving modes

As soon as you touch down on a planet you’re in a sandbox, and these mostly open worlds are best traveled inside your six-wheeled space car that totally isn’t a less awesome Mako. The Nomad can cross dangerous areas quickly, which is a big deal as you try to make planets viable throughout the game, and the key to really enjoying this experience is remembering to constantly switch between drive modes.

Your Nomad has a fast driving mode and an all-terrain mode, and you can quickly switch between them with a tap on L1. This ends up being really important, because the all-terrain mode can climb up almost anything that isn’t perfectly vertical and the speed mode will get you through an area twice as fast as long as it’s mostly flat. Switching between these modes at speed makes it much easier to climb around areas instead of taking the long way around with the roads you see in the game.

Switch Profiles as often as possible

You may have been too busy trying to not get shot to notice, but Alec Ryder actually gives you a pretty good demonstration of the best way to use Profiles in the fight for Habitat 7. As simple as it may seem to pick a Profile that best suits your play style and level it up until it’s the most awesome thing ever, things get a lot easier for you later in the game if you’re regularly switching between Profiles based on your immediate needs.

Make sure you’re jumping between Profiles on a regular basis. If you’re out in the open and being ambushed by Kett, the Infiltrator profile will keep you from being pinned down and overwhelmed. If you’re staring down a massive Fiend with nowhere to run, the Siphoning Strike in the Vanguard Profile will keep its attacks from destroying you in one hit. Even if you aren’t loading up on weapon proficiency in your skill tree, the Soldier Profile keeps your aim steady when you need it most.

The most important thing is to practice switching quickly, so you’re able to jump in and out of tough situations with ease later on.

Go to hazardous areas first

The open world aspect to Mass Effect: Andromeda is curbed by making some areas more hazardous when you approach them. In the Habitat 7 mission, for example, lightning strikes got worse when you drifted “off mission” in places. Sometimes it’s a biohazard warning, sometimes it’s a big hovering troop carrier, but the end result is the same for most people. You turn and run, not looking back until you’ve earned some Viability points to make the area less terrible.

Instead of avoiding those areas, grab your Nomad and barrel in quickly. Do a quick pass, and look for things to mine. These areas frequently offer the harder to get minerals, which makes the better weapons and armor easier to get much earlier in the game. You have to be very careful not to get yourself stranded or killed in the process, but it’s so very worth it when you find those materials you’ve been hunting for.

Don’t bother balancing your team

When you level up, your team members gain some experience points to spend as well. Team skill trees aren’t nearly as complex as your own, which means you can choose between balancing your team members so they’re all around more effective or focusing on one specific ability and jacking it all the way up as early as possible. I recommend that second one, especially early on in the game.

Your AI-based squad mates are blunt instruments, use them as such. If you’re planning to let them run out and attack without a lot of instruction from you, focus on doing the most damage with their special abilities. If you plan offer a guiding hand to your team, or you plan to have them always by your side to keep you alive, don’t bother spending points on special abilities initially. As you play the game it will you’ll have enough skill points to focus on that kind of thing, but initially it’s far more worth it to specialize and let each team member be very good at one thing.

How are you surviving?

Have you found that “one weird trick” for dealing the most damage or making the best decisions in Mass Effect: Andromeda? Share them with us in the comments, and we’ll add the best ones to this guide!

PlayStation 4

• PS4 vs. PS4 Slim vs. PS4 Pro: Which should you buy?
• PlayStation VR Review
• Playing PS4 games through your phone is awesome

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Google News & Weather now gives you way more headlines, because content

The app’s new motto is “just keep scrolling.”

If you’re already Googling your news every morning, maybe it’s time to consider downloading Google’s News & Weather app instead. The app received a feature bump from its maker. You can now peruse through 200 news stories at a time with More Headlines by simply scrolling on and on.

The More Headlines section loads as you scroll, offering a seemingly endless stream of articles. The News & Weather app will prioritize displaying AMP articles since more websites have adopted the format. Google also mentioned that the displayed content in the app will “stay algorithmic,” meaning that everything from which articles are shown to the sources chosen will depend on an algorithm churning in the background. The more you use it, the better it gets at finding you news.

The Google News & Weather app is available for both Android and iOS. Quickly, now — this may be your only chance to get an iPhone-loving friend on the Google bandwagon.

The app update will roll out over the next few days.

Play as a ladybug or a traffic cone in ‘Everything’

Think of anything that exists. For example, a bear, an atom, a galaxy, a three-leaf clover, and so on. That’s what you can control in the game Everything, which was just released for the Playstation 4 today.

The game has goals and tasks for the player to complete like any other, but the main appeal is in its sandbox elements. Simply put, Everything gives you total control over every possible element. As creator and developer David OReilly wrote in a blog post, “You can change every single object in the universe to horses.” Generally speaking, you have control over any object that you can see in the game.

Instead of creating animations for every conceivable thing, objects move by rolling, sliding, or floating around. Cutting those corners can be forgiven, considering this $15 game was made by a three-person team. That can also be chalked up as a stylistic choice, and besides, that’s not the point of the game. Everything is about being. The parameters of existence can be altered at will, but like the real world, life will happen regardless of the player’s input. Every object has its own AI, and OReilly said that “Everything can play itself automatically for weeks at a time.”

It makes sense that a game as existential as this was inspired heavily by philosopher Alan Watts. The game is even narrated by recordings of the late British speaker. As artfully demonstrated in a 10-minute gameplay trailer, these voiceovers help put the game’s scale in perspective. They’re effective because, as OReilly wrote, Watts “had an extraordinary talent for describing the indescribable.”

No Man’s Sky showed that super ambitious games with lofty goals can fall short of expectations. That said, the idea of Everything is too intriguing to ignore. Everything is currently only available on PS4, but Mac and PC users will be able to download it on Steam beginning April 21st. The game is bizarre and fascinating, and we hope delivers on its big promises.

Source: PlayStation Blog

Baseball fans rejoice: MLB Network is on PlayStation Vue

Baseball fans have more reason to pick up a PlayStation Vue membership now as Sony’s subscription service has just added the MLB Network to its roster. The addition comes right in time for the April 2 start of the Major League Baseball season along with exclusive coverage of the World Baseball Classic semifinal and championship games tonight and tomorrow.

Sony launched its Vue internet-based live television service that rolled out across the US last March. You can watch it on any PlayStation console as well as set top boxes and media sticks from Roku, Amazon, Google and Apple. You can also watch anything from the service on Android and iOS mobile devices, via Google’s Chromecast and on PC and Mac with a web browser.

If you’re a baseball fan and want a live-TV service, Vue might be the one for you — neither Sling nor DirecTV’s service has the MLB Network right now, though you can use the standalone service on computers and mobile devices. MLB Network is included with PlayStation Vue’s basic service tier, which starts at $34.99 ($44.99 in larger markets like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and four others) and already includes several sports channels from Fox and ESPN.

This isn’t the first sports-centric update to the service, either, with the company recently adding picture-in-picture mode for March Madness. Sony also plans to add real-time sports scores and a way to turn off spoiler alerts for certain games in the future.

Sony gives Android O a sound quality boost

If you pick up some future Android O phone and notice that your wireless headphones sound much better afterward, you’ll have Sony to thank for it. Google has revealed that Sony is contributing a whole slew of upgrades and fixes to the upcoming mobile operating system, most notably support for its LDAC wireless audio encoding format. The technology sends three times more data through Bluetooth than typical formats, letting you listen to high-resolution audio without the usual downgrade. In other words, you won’t necessarily have to cling to wired headphones just to get pristine-sounding music.

There is one inescapable gotcha, though. While phone makers won’t have to pay a thing to include LDAC (it’ll be part of the open source Android O release), LDAC on headphones is currently limited to Sony models like the MDR-1000X. Anyone else will probably have to pay a licensing fee, and there won’t be too much incentive to pay that fee outside of high-end headphones where you’re more likely to notice the difference. Even so, it’s good to see wireless audio quality addressed on such a broad level without having to wait for a future wireless audio standard.

Source: The Verge

‘Overwatch’s’ four-legged tank hero is here (for casual players)

Overwatch’s new badass robot centaur Orisa makes her official debut today, but players hoping to climb those Season 4 ranks with her are going to have to wait. Blizzard is disabling her from Competitive mode for one week, according to the game’s official forums and Twitter account, so people can get to know her a little better first.

Like Reinhardt, Orisa’s an “anchor tank,” someone who can absorb large amounts of damage, protect teammates and rally the team behind her. Her ultimate, Supercharger, provides a 50 percent damage boost to teammates in range. Although she’s not available in Competitive mode just yet, players can test out her skills in Quick Play, Arcade mode (including custom games with the competitive ruleset) and Play vs. AI.

Blizzard is treating Orisa’s launch differently than previously-released heroes like Ana and Sombra. Those characters, released during Season 1 and Season 3, respectively, both initially struggled to find a place on competitive teams. Ana has since become a popular support choice thanks to her Nano Boost ultimate and her healing abilities. Sombra, meanwhile, has seen a bit of pro level play, but still has to fight for a spot. Delaying Orisa’s debut could give players time to develop strategies without affecting their rankings.

We’ve contacted Blizzard to find out more about their decision to temporarily disable Orisa in Competitive Play, and we’ll update this story if we hear back.

Our own Jessica Conditt took Orisa for a spin earlier today. You can check her out in this video.

Via: Polygon

Source: Blizzard

Reddit hopes new social features will keep the trolls in line

Reddit knows its old-school message board style can be a little intimidating for new users, and it’s individual user pages have never really expanded beyond a list of submitted comments and some badges — which can make it intimidating for casual redditors to keep up with real people on the service. After all, how many times has some celebrity dropped in for an AMA, only to never been seen again on the site? That will change starting today, when Reddit starts testing a new format that makes profile pages their own destination and brings the site more in line with social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

According to a post on r/modnews yesterday, “a very small number of redditors” will now be able to post directly to their own profile, rather than the old system where users could only post to communities. The new profile pages will also be redesigned to “better showcase the redditor’s avatar, a short description and their posts.” Fans will also be able to follow those testers’ profiles as if they were a subreddit, so the beta tester’s updates will show up in that follower’s front page when they sign in to Reddit. (In the past, users with big a fanbase had to resort to creating their own subreddits that others could follow.) Followers will be able to comment on profile posts, but they can’t start a new post on someone else’s profile.

The whole experience looks strikingly like a Twitter profile page — complete with banner photo at the top — and users like u/LeagueOfLegends, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, and u/Shitty_Watercolour are all part of the Beta test and hosting AMAs today if you want to get a sense of the look and feel. Reddit says the profile pages are still a work in progress but anyone can nominate themselves or a buddy’s profile for inclusion in the beta test. Reddit’s own FAQs on the beta program note that users with a history of abuse may not get the new features at all, in order to prevent it from becoming “a vehicle for harassment or hate.” That said, “if all goes well,” writes moderator u/hidehidehidden, the features are expected to roll out to everyone “over the course of the next few months.”

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Modnews subreddit

Facebook and Nokia speed up undersea fiber through math

Undersea fiber optic lines are crucial to making the internet hum, but upgrading their capacity is no mean feat when you may have to replace thousands of miles of cables. Facebook and Nokia don’t think that’s necessary, though. They’ve successfully tested a technique that can boost the capacity of a fiber line by up to 2.5 times its stated capacity. Their approach revolves around Nokia’s probabilistic constellation shaping, which relies on ‘shaped’ modulation formats (i.e. a lot of clever math) to push the capacity to near the physical peak of a given connection. In tests on a 3,400-mile line between New York and Ireland, the two companies managed to wring out 200Gbps on commercial-grade wavelengths, and an even speedier 250Gbps on an experimental link.

The technology has even more headroom. Based on the efficiency of the line, Facebook and Nokia believe they can ramp it up to 32Tbps per fiber in the long run.

It’s likely going to be a while before you see these kinds of upgrades arrive in earnest, although the test runs show that it can hold up in real conditions. Whenever it does, though, the practical implications are far-reaching. The upgrade could help these fiber line operators keep up with ever-increasing internet demands without having to rip up or add to their existing lines. It could also make undersea fiber more practical by lowering the cost of bandwidth — you could see lines that weren’t viable before.

Source: Nokia