Microsoft promises to achieve parity between Xbox and PC games

Why it matters to you

Microsoft may not have the greatest track record on PC over the past decade, but it’s looking to improve that moving forward with some major changes to console ports.

With Microsoft’s recent push to see many games playable just about anywhere, you might imagine there would be one platform somewhere that was better than the others. That’s not something Microsoft itself wants to see, though, and the firm has announced at this year’s E3 gaming show that it will endeavor to make all of its games play equally well on the Xbox and the PC.

Although for decades there have been mountains of mud slung by gamers of various camps about why their chosen system or platform is the best, gaming today is much more universal. While there are exclusives, they are far less common and more often games are multi-platform and can be streamed to and from various devices. That’s a push Microsoft has been part of in recent years and as it expands its Xbox into a service as much as a hardware choice, it promises to make sure there is parity across its platforms.

Crucially, that means that Microsoft wants to ditch the age-old system of porting. Indeed two upcoming games, Sea of Thieves and Forza Motorsport 7, will not be ported in the traditional sense. Instead, as TechSpot points out, the two versions of the game are being developed in parallel. The plan is to offer the game on both platforms with comparable features and performance.

This will mean a lowering of the minimum requirements to run the games, which should make them more inclusive for gamers playing on weaker hardware on PC. While that could give those on higher-end systems pause, Microsoft has clarified that it wants to build a base game parity across systems, while still providing options for those with more powerful PCs and graphics hardware to really push the games to the limit.

Scalability on the Xbox platform could have some benefit on the console itself, too, since Microsoft will be spreading its latest generation across three hardware configurations when it launches the Xbox One X this fall. It will want to make sure games play just as well on the original Xbox One, the One S and the One X, despite their hardware differences.

Get this Wallet-sized Battery Pack for just $20!

There are few things worse than checking your phone and seeing that low battery warning when you’re far away from a charger. It can lead to some real anxiety. Battery packs will help, but most are so bulky that it can be tough to take them along with you.

Get this pocket-sized battery pack for $20! Learn more

But that’s where this LithiumCard Wallet Battery pack can help! It offers 1,200mAh of power in a sleek package that’s about the size of a wallet and includes a built-in Micro USB or Lightning Connector to keep your devices charged.

Best of all, you can get yours for only $20 — that’s 66% off the regular price! It’s available in your choice of black or silver to match your style.

This thing is compact, roughly the size of a stack of five credit cards. At 1/5 of an inch thick, you can toss this in your bag or jacket pocket and always have that backup power available to you when you need it.

Star your high-paying career as a computer security specialist! Learn more

Enjoy the premium design of this durable aluminum battery pack, which can be yours for only $20. Stash it in your wallet or use the NanoStik pad to attach it directly to your phone. The choice — and power — can be yours, so act now!

Rev up your engines with these automotive wallpapers

Car wallpapers for the win.

What’s your dream car? Mine is a Chevy SSR. It may be impractical — they may call it a “fake truck” — but I don’t care: the SSR will always have a special place in my heart. It was just beautiful, and unique, and whenever I see one on the highway, I can’t help the words from coming out: “Hi, pretty…” There are cars that desire, delight, and awe. And even if those cars can’t grace our garages (yet), they can grace our home screens.

My daily driver is a minivan, and as a minivan driver, I can’t help but fantasize about the best minivan ever: the VW Minibus! Volkswagen keeps teasing and taunting us into thinking they’re going to finally bring back one of the most iconic automobiles… But the concept cars never go beyond the trade shows, and the artist renders get more and more beautiful, but they never jump off the page into a dealer showroom. Well, until they do, I’m gonna keep dreaming of a Minibus to replace my aging Odyssey and I’m gonna dream… and put the majesty of yesteryear on my home screen.

VW camper van by adamduckworth

Walk into a room and say Tesla, and at least half of them are gonna think of a sweet-ass electric car that’s learning how to drive itself and is intensely fun to navigate when you give the autopilot a break. The Model 3 is still at least a little while away, but let’s face it, it’s gonna be worth it. And if a Tesla and Launch Mode sparks excitement in your soul, you should probably head to Tesla Central, where Derek Kessler is serving up Tesla love and presiding over an electric car-lover’s forum.

If you open your phone and you see that iconic Tesla ‘T’ symbol on your home screen, here’s to hoping you get that spark every time.

Tesla Model S Insignia by Derek Kessler

Tesla isn’t the only name in electric cars anymore. The all-electric Chevy Bolt EV has been a long-time coming, and according to our own MrMobile, it’s the first EV that’s really made for the average driver rather than the money-to-burn early adopters that Tesla has delivered vehicles to so far. There’s still a lot of work to be done before most of us can switch from a gas pump to a charge port, but it’s a step I’m thrilled to see more major car manufacturers testing. Not all cars can be as pretty as a Tesla, but so long as we see more of these ports under the old gas doors, I think things will turn out alright.

Chevy Bolt EV

Speaking of cars that drive themselves, Waymo holds a glimpse of a future that divides rooms with the strong emotions it evokes. Waymo wants to take the wheel away from easily-distracted, over-worked, sleep-deprived, error-prone humans. As someone who works two jobs and makes a 90-mile drive to and from my parents’ house every other weekend or so, I’ve been ready for self-driving cars forever, as I fought getting my license until I was 18, and the only reason I ever learned to enjoy it was listening to music and singing while I drove. Is there a rush you get from going 85 down a mostly-empty freeway? You bet. But I’ll gladly give up the feel of speeding to get there without me drifting lanes and without having to brake and roll through five-mile backups on I-35.

The Future?

Okay, I know motorcycles aren’t quite cars, but they inspire freedom, fresh air, and are just as good as their four-wheeled brethren. This illustration from Babs Tarr, of Motor Crush and Batgirl fame shows off two of her loves: motorcycles and Sailor Moon. From the custom bikes to the punk-rocker take on the Sailor Scouts, this is a wallpaper that’s begging for a race (and maybe a custom comic).

But unless you get power from the Moon, you better wear a helmet out there!!

Bosozoku Sailor Scouts

This $379 Chromebook can convert into a tablet and lets you access Android apps alongside ChromeOS

The Thrifter team is back again with a great deal on Samsung’s Chromebook Plus that you won’t want to miss!

The Samsung Chromebook Plus is one of the newest Chromebooks around, having just been introduced in January this year, and is currently $378.74 on Amazon. It shipped at a starting price of $449. While it has seen a few drops here and there since then, this is the lowest it has ever dropped. Pretty much everywhere else, including Newegg and Best Buy, has it for $419 or higher right now.

The Chromebook Plus is lightweight, comes with a stylus, and has a touchscreen. It can convert from a laptop into a tablet. It comes with Bluetooth, a 720p integrated webcam, and two USB-C ports. It has a nice, bright, screen with 2400 x 1600 pixel resolution, which is part of the reason it cost a bit more out the gate than your average Chromebook.

It’s also unique in that it’s part of Google’s attempt to combine ChromeOS and Android, letting you use the features of the Chrome operating system while also accessing Android apps. If you already use an Android smartphone, this Chromebook should complement it pretty well. The Chromebook Plus uses a 2 GHz OP1 Dual-ARM processor, which is designed for use with Android apps, to make that a faster process. However, since ChromeOS is designed to work with a different kind of processor you might see some slowness in other aspects (like when browsing the Internet).

It’s not perfect. It is a Chromebook, after all, which means it’s designed for light work not heavy play. It only has 4GB RAM and a 32GB SSD, which can be expanded with a microSD port. The battery life is only six hours and the keyboard doesn’t have a backlight. It’s designed to be able to do a few things at a time and do them well. If that’s what you need, then go for it.

Not sure if this is the Chromebook for you? Be sure to check out some of our thoughts here.

See at Amazon

For more great deals be sure to check out our friends at Thrifter now!

How to avert (even more) disaster at Uber

Uber is a classic example of that old adage about money not being enough to buy you class, especially in 2017. The startup, valued at around $70 billion, has been helped and hindered by the leadership of its controversial CEO, Travis Kalanick. After a tidal wave of revelations about the company’s ethical lapses, Kalanick is taking a leave of absence. Upon his return, his role will be diminished, with freshly appointed executives, including a new COO, taking on some of his responsibilities.

The company’s internal issues were initially highlighted by former engineer Susan Fowler in a tell-all blog post. In response, Uber officials asked former US attorney general Eric Holder to conduct an independent investigation. His report was voted on earlier this week, with the company’s board agreeing to adopt all of the recommendations. One of those is to reformulate Uber’s key cultural values, a manifesto that currently encourages or justifies “poor behavior.”

But we here at Engadget feel that Uber’s going to have to do more than just follow Holder’s recommendations to cure the sickness inside its soul. Which is why we’ve prepared a few hints and tips on how the company can heal itself from the inside out.

Do: Fix the corporate culture

The board has already agreed with the recommendations in Eric Holder’s report, and Uber is now hiring Frances Frei from Harvard Business School. An expert in gender equality, Frei is tasked with fixing a startup that has a big problem with seediness. After all, Travis Kalanick once wrote a company memo informally outlining to employees who they can and can’t have sex with inside the organization. That’s something best left to an HR department who won’t end their memos with the line “Yes, that means that Travis will be celibate on this trip. #CEOLife #FML.”

Don’t: Assume every government official is corrupt

Uber has a knack for getting into pointless fights with governments all across the world when it doesn’t really need to. Some of those battles, including Uber’s war of attrition against the Las Vegas taxi lobby and politicians who acted in its favor, were probably justified. But the constant skirmishes and tantrums with regulators, who seem to have legitimate concerns, are tiresome.

For instance, NYC mayor Bill de Blasio wanted a temporary slowdown on Uber licenses being offered, for up to a year. He wanted to do this so that the city could examine, in detail, ridesharing services’ impacts on traffic, safety and pollution. Uber’s response was to add a scaremongering “de Blasio mode” that suggested the service would die out if the mayor got his way.

Then there’s the apparent refusal to listen to district attorneys in both San Francisco and LA who believe Uber has a safety issue. Not only did they find that 25 drivers should have failed Uber’s background checks, but they believe the company has a problem with intoxicated drivers. One woman was left paralyzed from the chest down because her Uber driver ran a red light and crashed. It was later found out that the driver not only didn’t have insurance but had also previously been arrested for drug and gambling offenses. She’s now suing the company, an issue that might have been avoided if the company had listened to earlier concerns.

Do: Take safety more seriously

The crash mentioned above isn’t an isolated incident, either, and every time it happens, it gets plenty of press attention. The taxi lobby runs an admittedly biased website called Who’s Driving You that catalogs every incident in which Uber (and other ridesharing services) drivers risk passenger safety. In addition, instances of sexual assault and violence by drivers with histories of such acts are cataloged. Uber’s background checks have been found to be defective, and that needs to change.

Don’t: Keep burning cash

Uber’s business model is simple: Raise billions of dollars from investors, then use that cash to subsidize rides. By constantly undercutting the entrenched taxi firms, Uber will help put its immediate rivals out of business. Once it’s king of the hill, Uber can raise prices back to a sustainable level and then phase out human drivers with self-driving vehicles.

But let’s be honest: Uber’s already won the hearts and minds of plenty of millennial customers. How many stories do you see where property developers are handing out Uber credit in lieu of building parking spaces? Kids, too, are apparently ditching driving lessons and car ownership, since they can get where they need to with the service.

Surely, that blend of convenience and near-global ubiquity is enough to push the company to think about becoming profitable. After all, it lost $708 million in the first quarter of 2017 alone, and nearly $2.8 billion across 2016. Adding a buck or three to every ride will help stanch the bleeding and make the company look a little better when it comes time to launch on the stock market.

Don’t: Treat your employees with contempt

It’s a hard life being an Uber driver, and there are numerous reports about how shabbily the company treats them. The hours are long, the income is steadily dropping and Uber spends plenty of time and money preventing them from being classified as employees or unionizing. When Fawzi Kamel, an Uber driver, told Travis Kalanick of his problems, the CEO described him as someone who didn’t “take responsibility for their own shit.”

It would be easier to stomach if Uber hadn’t just had to settle a lawsuit concerning how it overstated how much prospective drivers could earn. Rather than handing out millions of dollars in legal fees and settlements, how about just do the decent thing anyway? These folks work for you, no matter how hard you pretend that they don’t, and the sooner you fix this, the better.

Do: Use the ‘Are We the Baddies?’ test

If you’re running a company that has demonstrated some spectacular lapses in ethical judgment, here’s a handy test. If you’re about to do something that feels like it might be problematic, stand in front of a mirror and state your intentions, out loud. If it sounds like the sort of thing a villain from an ’80s movie would do, then perhaps do something else.

You know, like if you’re planning to obtain the medical records of a woman who was raped by one of your drivers. Especially if those records were obtained through questionable means and you’re looking for reasons to discredit her or disregard her experiences. Or maybe if you’re thinking about building a tool that actively hinders a police investigation into your business practices. Or when you’re threatening a journalist with smears by using a secret customer tracking platform that violates their privacy.

Don’t: Let Kalanick get his own way

Uber’s board has voted to curb Kalanick’s power in a diminished CEO role that he’ll return to after his leave of absence. But he’ll still be the same person, driven to win at all costs and cross lines as he does it. The new management team will need to be strong enough to tell him, loudly and repeatedly, where the lines are and what he shouldn’t be doing. In addition, rules should be tweaked to ensure that Kalanick, despite his extraordinary power as a founding shareholder, cannot avoid accountability. Sure, he’s still answerable to the board, but without proper checks and balances, we could be here, doing this all over again, in a few years’ time.

Blue Apron: Five reasons you should cook with your family every day

Eating with your family and your kids is more important than you perhaps think. Taking them for granted is a trap we can all fall into and while we can’t necessarily eat with our kids or parents every day, trying to do it perhaps more often than we already do is something we can all strive for, whatever your age. Here are five reasons to try:

1. Cooking with the kids is fun

Life happens in the kitchen, they say. And so it should – making dinner with the family is brilliant. It’s about the best place in the house for an active family activity, apart from a game of Twister in the living room, of course. And the results from the kitchen are less likely to twinge your back muscles and more likely to be tasty and satisfying.

Sure, the kids enjoy eating your cooking, but getting them involved in helping to make it is a great way for them to value it even more. Whereas taking them to the store to help you pick ingredients may be less interesting.

This is where Blue Apron comes in, because it will deliver the exact ingredients you need for the dish you’re making, with no waste – everything is precisely measured for you. That also means there’s no anxiety that you, or Junior, has put too much or too little of anything into the mix. And if there are items like chilli or garlic in the meal, you can be grateful for that.

2. With the best ingredients and recipes, the results are great

There are more benefits to not schlepping round the supermarket with the kids in tow. Of course, there’s the time saved because Blue Apron delivers right to your door. But additionally, Blue Apron prides itself on very high-quality ingredients. These are sourced direct from the producers, so they don’t have to withstand the time and multiple journeys via wholesalers to regional warehouses on their way to the grocery stores.

With Blue Apron, everything comes direct from the producers to Blue Apron and then straight to your door, eliminating the extra costs that those middlemen include. This means they can provide the best quality ingredients at stronger value than the grocery store would offer.

That means BN Ranch grass-fed, pasture-raised beef, for instance. All the meat is chosen to be free of added hormones or sub-therapeutic antibiotics. The seafood is sustainable (as recommended by Seafood Watch) and Blue Apron requires its suppliers to certify that their products and their ingredients are all free from GMOs. The company is looking to build on this by developing non-GMO alternatives for animal feed, too.

3. Recipe cards mean the whole family can understand

What’s more, all the ingredients – literally everything apart from salt, pepper and olive oil – are carefully delivered with detailed recipe cards full of clear step-by-step instructions so preparing dinner is easy and enjoyable.

Everything is delivered in refrigerated containers with ice packs and insulated liners to make sure it arrives fresh and stays fresh even if you’re out. And the Blue Apron Freshness Guarantee means you can be confident it’s been picked to stay fresh – though a good tip is to cook the fish and seafood in the first meal for maximum freshness. 

4. The more variety in the cooking, the more they’ll learn

Your kids are never going to get bored by cooking the same stuff over and over: Blue Apron has a policy that it never repeats the same recipes in a year. You – or your littl’uns – can give feedback through the Rate My Recipes tool and only the best-loved recipes will be repeated after a year.

Anyway, the recipes you receive are kid-friendly and designed to be served family-style, which makes things more fun when you’re eating as well as cooking. 

5. The meals – and great cookery experiences – keep coming

Each recipe serves four and you can pick from a two-recipe a week plan or four recipes. Note that if you’re not a family household, you can instead pick a two-person plan with three recipes a week delivered.

Finally, the recipes are tremendous. Don’t check the Blue Apron website if you’re hungry unless you’re prepared to see tempting things on offer. Like seared steak and fingerling potatoes or Cajun-spiced chicken or spinach and ricotta cannelloni. It all looks mouth-watering.

Each serving costs from $8.74 to $9.99 and delivery is free, and what’s more, Blue Apron are offering $30 off on your first order. 

It takes a smart city to make cars truly autonomous

Artificial intelligence is driving the autonomous car. Coupled with robust computers, automobiles of the future will be more powerful than any other device we own. But they’ll only be as powerful as their surrounding allows. If your vehicle doesn’t know about a traffic jam along its route, like its human counterparts, it’ll get stuck in gridlock. That’s where connectivity comes in. When self-driving cars hit the road, they’ll not only be computing juggernauts but also sharing data with everything all the time.

One of the places where a connected infrastructure is already being built is Nevada. More accurately, Las Vegas. The city known for gambling has to deal with 42 million tourists and the traffic they bring with them every year. Controlling all of that is the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada. The agency oversees all the city and surrounding area’s transit infrastructure and has been proactive in its embrace of vehicle communication, including working with Audi on its traffic-light countdown system that displays the time before a light turns green on the dash of the car.

Helping to navigate Nevada’s foray into vehicle-to-infrastructure communications is the Nevada Center for Advanced Mobility, which facilitates partnerships between the state and private and academic entities. Innovation Director Dan Langford told Engadget that the goal is to create a safer, smoother transportation and pedestrian experience for residents, visitors and businesses working within the state.

But the state is doing more than just looking at ways to make traffic flow smoothly and helping folks get to their destination; it’s actively implementing solutions. Agencies that traditionally deal with slow-moving transportation projects and bureaucracy are acting quickly as new sensors, applications and data become available. “The level of risk and innovation that some of the agencies are open to has increased,” Langford said.

An example of that is the recent partnership between the state and Nexar, which builds systems for automobiles to communicate with one another. Co-founder and CTO Bruno Fernandez-Ruiz likened it to air traffic control but for the ground to increase not only the capacity of the roads but also their safety.

It’s helping Nevada track vehicles and what they see while the state focuses on the infrastructure. Approximately 18 months ago the Center for Advanced Mobility pivoted from working on autonomous vehicles to focusing on the actual infrastructure that self-driving cars will need to get around while automakers figure out the in-car solution. The fragmentation in the automotive world will continue until there’s a government mandate from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or the industry sits down and figures out a standard. The state can’t control that aspect of the transportation. What it can do is make sure the roads are ready. Nexar and Nevada realize that if the state is to stay ahead of the curve, it needs to start working on how roads will interact with these cars now instead of waiting.

But Nevada isn’t the only state looking at the future of infrastructure. On a 35-mile stretch of US 33 in Ohio, the state in partnership with Honda, the Transportation Research Center at East Liberty and the Ohio State University Center for Automotive Research will build a “smart road” by laying down highway sensors, expanding fiber optic networks and outfitting government and research vehicles with data-collecting hardware. When it’s complete the information collected can be instantaneously shared with researchers. That data will be used to understand how traffic flows in all sorts of conditions and can help in the testing of autonomous vehicles outfitted with vehicle-to-infrastructure technology.

The state won’t stop with US 33: It plans to make other smart roads. The information gathered from this pilot program will likely be watched closely by other states as more and more of our cars become rolling data centers eager to consume and share data.

Meanwhile automakers like BMW, Mercedes, Audi, and GM have been outfitting their vehicles with V2V (vehicle-to-vehicle) and V2I (vehicle-to-infrastructure) technology. It’s early days, but the benefits are already showing up in the high-end models like the upcoming Mercedes S-Class with its ability to change speeds based on road conditions.

The transportation infrastructure of tomorrow is only available in a few places, with only high-end vehicles able to access and share data. But the work is happening both at the car and street level. Even if you don’t own a car, the work will benefit public transportation and the shipping of goods.

Like self-driving cars, it’ll be years (possibly decades) before cars and roads are sharing data on a nationwide level. But those robot cars need this network if they’re going to fundamentally transform how we get around.

Facebook’s Safety Check now includes status updates and fundraisers

Facebook’s Safety Check is a useful feature, but its implementation has experienced some bumps along the way. Now, the company hope to smooth out some of those rough edges with new features it announced today.

The most practical feature is the ability to add more personal context to Safety Check. Previously, users could only declare themselves safe in Facebook. Now they can add further comments to that status, explaining their current situation and what is happening around them. Additionally, Facebook is partnering with NC4, a global crisis reporting agency, to provide more context on the crises themselves. It’s a quick way for someone logging into Facebook to inform themselves on what’s going on before declaring they are safe.

Facebook is also incorporating their fundraising features into Safety Check. Now, within the Safety Check platform on Facebook, people can easily create or donate to a fundraiser supporting that specific cause. It should be noted, though, that Facebook takes a 5 percent cut of any funds donated through the social network.

Finally, Facebook is expanding its Community Help feature to the desktop platform; previously, this feature was only available on iOS and Android. It allows people within a crisis zone to give help if they can or find help if they need it. Safety Check is a useful feature, given our always-connected lifestyles, and it’s nice to see that Facebook is noticing how people are using the feature and adapting it as a result.

Source: Facebook

‘The Darwin Project’ is a ‘Hunger Games’–style battle arena

The Darwin Project came out of nowhere and snapped up the spotlight at Microsoft’s E3 press conference. It’s the first game from the 12-person development house Scavengers Studio, and it combines the best aspects of games like Don’t Starve and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds in a Hunger Games–style battle arena. Imagine Katniss Everdeen running around Pochinki Hill, chopping down trees like Wilson the Gentleman Scientist.

The Darwin Project pits players against each other in a contained battlefield, starting on opposite ends of the map, with a bow and an ax — no other weapons, ammo, shelter, heat or other essential survival resources. The game operates in extremes; the debut map is a frozen tundra with rolling hills of snow, frozen lakes and abandoned shacks littered around dense woods.

In this lethal winter wonderland, the first thing players need is wood to start a fire, lest they freeze to death before the real — and most dangerous — game even begins. Players gather resources by chopping down trees, unlocking crates, and looting tents and abandoned shacks. Then the crafting begins. Create traps, arrows and other gadgets; light a fire so you don’t die, but be careful, because the enemy can see its flame. Plot your attack and start tracking your prey.

Finding objects that another player has recently messed with reveals clues about their whereabouts, and a beacon of light signaling the location of a special upgrade serves as tasty, neutral bait. As the game progresses, the map shrinks, forcing players into battle.

The Scavengers crew has been working on The Darwin Project for only about nine months, but the first map already feels polished, and the mechanics make sense. Online multiplayer arena games are all the rage, and it looks like The Darwin Project will be a welcome addition to the genre when it hits Xbox One and PC in early 2018.

Follow all the latest news from E3 2017 here!

Humble Bundle sweetens its subscription with games that don’t expire

Humble Bundle’s monthly subscription is fine if you enjoy getting a surprise mix of big-name and indie games. But what if you’d like access to a more reliable catalog, too? You’re set as of this week. The $12 per month service now includes access to the Humble Trove, an always-accessible collection of copy protection-free games. The library includes the full selection of Humble Originals as well as a range of recognizable indies like Trine and Kimmy.

The Trove probably won’t sway you all by itself — many of these games are the sort you frequently find in sales. They still add value to the subscription, though, and the absence of copy protection means that your games should work long after you stop playing. Think of this as a bonus for signing up — you’ll have plenty to play even if your membership is short-lived.

Follow all the latest news from E3 2017 here!

Via: Gamasutra

Source: Humble Trove