U.S. Justice Department Files Lawsuit to Block Merger Between AT&T and Time Warner
The United States Justice Department today filed a lawsuit to stop a planned merger between AT&T and Time Warner, reports Bloomberg. The DOJ believes such a merger would result in higher bills and fewer options for consumers.
“This merger would greatly harm American consumers. It would mean higher monthly television bills and fewer of the new, emerging innovative options that consumers are beginning to enjoy,” said Makan Delrahim, the head of the department’s antitrust division.
According to Bloomberg, this is the first time in several decades that the DOJ has sued to block a vertical deal, aka a merger between two companies that do not directly compete with one another. The lawsuit comes following a request from antitrust head Delrahim that the two companies sell either the Turner broadcasting unit or DirecTV, which AT&T refused to do.
Given that the DOJ does not usually step in to block vertical deals, it is unclear how this legal battle will play out in court. Other similar deals, such as Comcast’s purchase of NBC Universal, have gone through after certain conditions have been put in place.
AT&T and Time Warner have been in talks over a merger since late 2016, with AT&T planning to shell out $85.4 billion for Time Warner.
AT&T says the DOJ’s lawsuit is a “radical and inexplicable departure from decades of antitrust precedent,” and that it is confident the court will reject the claims and allow the merger to proceed.
Apple at one time was rumored to be interested in a Time Warner purchase and was said to have monitored the deal between AT&T/Time Warner closely, but Apple ultimately had no interest in Time Warner or outbidding AT&T.
Tags: AT&T, Time Warner, DOJ
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North American ‘League of Legends’ championship finalizes 10-team roster
Earlier this year, League of Legends studio Riot Games introduced new rules for the game’s American pro league. At long last, the North American League Championship Series (NA LCS) will have a permanent roster of ten teams, starting with the 2018 season — and Riot has just announced who made the cut.
Without further ado, the teams are: 100 Thieves, Cloud9, Clutch Gaming, Counter Logic Gaming, Echo Fox, FlyQuest, Golden Guardians, OpTic Gaming, Team Liquid, and Team SoloMid. While most of those return from this summer’s 2017 NA LCS, but pointedly missing is that season’s second-place finisher, Immortals. Riot considered each prospective team’s strategy, brand and business plans, staffing expertise and ‘legacy experience from traditional sports’ when deciding which would get a slot in the league, the studio said in a statement.
Regardless, a consistent team roster should positively impact the LCS. Players and coaches will enjoy a lot more stability and investors will be able to fund teams without worrying that poor performance will knock them out of the league. Plus, the other rules accompanying the LCS team list — like raising minimum player salary from $25,000 to $75,000 and mandating league revenue sharing with its athletes — are expected to stabilize player careers. That could bring the North American league’s performance and prestige up to its European and South Korean counterparts.
As Steve Arhancet, co-CEO of Team Liquid told Engadget back in July:
I think it’s a positive step for the NA LCS. I’m hoping it will lead to real prosperity for League of Legends and the wider gaming community. I know some fans may be nervous about the idea of franchising in the LCS, but a secure structure should help team owners, investors, broadcasters and marketers to invest more confidently and it will mean more job security for players.
Amazon Echo is the latest device to benefit (RED)
Want to get a smart speaker while contributing to an important cause? Amazon has you covered: it just unveiled a Product (RED) version of its second-generation Echo. As you might expect, buying the crimson-hued device will contribute 10 percent (in this case, $10) of its purchase price to fighting AIDS through the Global Fund. It happens to be considerably more eye-catching, too, which might help if you’d rather have your speaker stand out than blend into the decor.
You can pre-order the (RED) Echo right now in the US, with a formal release slated for December 6th. This isn’t as far-ranging as Apple’s (RED) efforts, which have included iPhones and currently range from low-cost cases and watch bands to pricey items like headphones. However, the potential is huge — Amazon is pitching this with one of its latest and most popular products.
Source: Amazon
How to carve a turkey (without maiming it)
How to Carve a Turkey (Without Maiming It) | The Manual
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How to Carve a Turkey (Without Maiming It)
It happened. You’re handed the knife and asked to carve the Thanksgiving turkey. You can feel the hungry eyes of the guests and the panicked look of the cook who spent hours ensuring poultry perfection as you look down at the beautifully plated bird — where the hell do you even start? Don’t worry! We have you covered. We asked chef Timothy Hollingsworth to explain how to carve a turkey. With his instructions, this bird will be your masterpiece.
Hollingsworth’s restaurant, Otium, is located in the Broad Museum in downtown Los Angeles. While the Broad is famous for its futuristic design and modern art collection, Otium is a welcoming, comforting space where you’ll want to wile away the hours. The menu shows American food at its best: a creative, thoughtful, delicious blend of tastes from the vast fabric of cultures that has made up U.S. since the very first Thanksgiving. You’ll find things like foie gras and funnel cake. Falafel, grilled cheese, mole sauce, and beef tartare all seamlessly share a menu.
He also knows a thing or two about the pressure of being watched. At Otium, you’re able to look directly into the kitchen — the lucky can sit a counter running the length of it. It’s an incredibly fun experience to watch Hollingsworth and his team at work.
So, Hollingsworth, the turkey’s ready — now what?
Step No. 1: Prep your tools. You’ll need a meat fork, a small paring knife, a pair of kitchen scissors, and a 10-inch carving knife — you can use the old school version or an electric carving knife.
Step No. 2: Let it rest. After the turkey comes out of the oven, wait about 20-30 minutes for it to cool down. This will keep your turkey moist and prevent finger burns.
Step No. 3: Start by removing the wishbone, which is at the front of your bird. I always take it off first because it’s just hard to carve around. Take your small paring knife, and slice down both sides of the bone. Then, use your fingers to wiggle it out a bit, and cut it free with your kitchen scissors.
Step No. 4: Remove the legs. Using your knife, make a cut between the breast and each leg. Then, make a cut at the joint where the leg attaches to the thigh. Start to bend the legs towards the front of the turkey so they pop out of the joint. You can also use your kitchen shears to help this process along. I prefer to keep the turkey legs whole when plating my turkey. Not only does it look cool, someone from my family inevitably wants to eat a whole turkey leg. Go with it.
Step No. 5: Take off those thighs. I flip the turkey over, and find the joint. Cut alongside the joint to completely remove each thigh. You can stick the knife under the bone to make sure you’re maximizing this slice. Once the thighs are removed, start to scrape the thigh meat off from the bone. It should come off in one piece. Slice this up, and add to your serving plate.
Step No. 6: Flip the turkey back over and start on the breast. First, make an incision along the breast bone on the top of the bird. Then, make a horizontal slice just above the wings, from the neck to the back cavity. This will ensure you have clean and tidy slices of breast meat. You should now be able to cleanly remove your two breasts, which you can slice in half-inch inch strips and serve.
For more Thanksgiving goodness, check out our lists of tasty cocktails and two-ingredient side dishes. If you’re feeling adventurous this year, we’ve also got tips on how to barbecue and deep-fry your bird.
An original version of this article by Amanda Gabriele ran on November 6, 2013. The article was updated by Elizabeth Dahl on November 17, 2017.
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Hate the iPhone X’s notch? These two apps can get rid of it
As we showed you in our in-depth review, Apple’s iPhone X is a welcome change from what many believed to be a dated iPhone design. The first obvious design change is that beautiful bezel-less 5.8-inch OLED display. Apple’s decision to remove the fingerprint reader allows the screen to take up the entire front of the device. It gives you the feeling that you’re just holding a screen.
Without a fingerprint scanner, Apple had to include a way for people to unlock their phone, and the iPhone X does this by way of facial recognition or FaceID. The FaceID sensors are on either side of the speaker near the top of the iPhone. Because Apple wants to give folks an immersive experience, iOS fills the entire display and wraps around all these cameras and sensors.
If you don’t like the iPhone X’s notch, we have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that you can’t completely get rid of it. It is going to be present when you interact with iOS, and as a matter of fact, most apps have even begun to embrace the notch.
The good news? There are a couple of apps in the App Store that claim to get rid of the notch. To be clear, these apps create a wallpaper that has a thin black bar at the top that covers the left and right edges of the notch. So they’re not getting rid of the notch but just masking it on the home/lock screens.
Are you interested to hear what we think about the iPhone X’s controversial notch? Read our take as we answer: How annoying is the notch while using the iPhone X?
Notch Remover
Notch Remover will let you modify a wallpaper and adjust it, but it isn’t free. The app will cost you $1 to download.
Download now for:
Android iOS
Notcho
This app does the same thing as Notch Remover, but it is free to download and use. When you create the wallpaper, it will put a watermark that you can remove with a one-time in-app purchase of $2.
Download now for:
Android iOS
Editors’ Recommendations
- The 100 best iPhone apps (October 2017)
- The 20 best news apps that are fast and fluid on your iPhone or Android
- The 100 best iPad apps for your Apple tablet (October)
- Music junkie? Here are the 25 best music apps for consuming and creating tunes
- Turn your phone into a jack-of-all-trades with 100 of the best Android apps
Crush the Rebel Alliance for good with our ‘Battlefront II’ performance guide
Star Wars Battlefront II isn’t without its issues. Facing severe backlash from the community, publisher EA has backpedaled on its egregious microtransaction pricing, but it’s still a sore spot for many players. You can follow the discussion here and here. Right now, we’re going to talk about one thing everyone can agree is great – the visuals.
Battlefront II is truly spectacle to behold. Environments are lavishly detailed, characters are rendered with photorealistic accuracy, and everything looks like it just stepped off a Star Wars backlot. Those visuals can tax even a fully armed and operational gaming rig, however. Our Battlefront II performance guide will help you maximize your PC’s performance.
Testing Conditions
The bulk of our benchmarking took place during a firefight on the forest moon of Endor, with dozens of rebels firing at us, an AT-ST scout walker chasing us around the map, and groundcover as far as the eye could see. It offered a decent cross section of the elements that push your PC to its limit.
To get an idea of how different PCs would perform running Battlefront II we wanted to make sure we removed any speedbumps that might slow things down — what we’re really testing here is GPU performance, since that’s the most important part of any gaming PC. Your processor and RAM play a role, but your GPU is going to be the factor that really determines your framerate from moment-to-moment.
With that in mind, we set up our baseline testing PC with an AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1920X 12-core processor, 32GB of RAM, and a lightning-quick SSD. We ran through our benchmark using four Nvidia graphics cards, and four AMD Radeon graphics cards. On the Nvidia side of things, we tested using a GTX 1080 Ti, a GTX 1070 Ti, a GTX 1060, and a GTX 1050. Over on the red team, AMD, we tested the RX Vega 64, the RX 580, the RX 570, and the RX 550.
For anyone unfamiliar each of these cards, we’ve broken down our results into a couple different brackets, pitting similarly priced cards against each other. For each of these brackets we ran through our benchmarks on each graphics settings preset — Low, Medium, High, and Ultra — at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K resolutions.
Preset Performance at 1080p
Starting at 1080p, a couple trends emerge that we’re going to see throughout the guide. First, a big surprise — expensive cards are quicker than less expensive cards! More importantly, it’s clear that Battlefront II is a very well optimized game. It runs well on each of these graphics cards if you stick to 1,920 x 1,080 resolution, aka 1080p.
At the lower end of the price and performance spectrum you have the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 and AMD Radeon RX 550. They’re not as big and powerful as their higher-end siblings, but they offer decent performance in the mid-range of graphics settings in most games.
We were able to get playable framerates out of both the GTX 1050 and RX 550 graphics cards after tuning the settings a bit. For the RX 550 you’ll want to stick around Medium or Low settings at 1080p, while the GTX 1050 can push a bit higher. You’ll see a good balance of visual fidelity and performance at high or medium settings.
You can push to Ultra at 1080p with the GTX 1050, but you’re going to see some frame loss during space battles and serious action sequences. During our benchmark, we saw a consistent 40 FPS, which is definitely playable, but you don’t lose much in the way of visual fidelity by stepping down to High settings.
Naturally, once you step up to the mid-range with the GTX 1060 and RX 570, performance improves by a huge margin. Both cards were more than capable of running at Ultra on 1080p. Moving on to the higher-end cards like the RX Vega 64, GTX 1070 Ti, and GTX 1080 Ti, well, let’s just say if you have one of those cards, just max out your settings at 1080p. You’ll be fine. Things are a little trickier at 1440p and 4K though.
Step up to 1440p
At 1440p, performance sees a sharp drop-off for the lower-end and mid-range cards. It’s still playable, but gameplay isn’t nearly as smooth as it was at 1080p.
For the lower-end cards, the GTX 1050 and RX 550, performance at Ultra isn’t what you might call playable. The RX 550 hit 14 FPS on average, while the GTX 1050 hit 27 FPS. The GTX 1050 can still run the game well enough to play it, as long as you step down to the Low preset. The RX 550, on the other hand, struggles even on Low. For that card, you should stick to 1080p. Your game will look nicer, and run much better.
At the mid-range, the GTX 1060 and RX 570 both kept up at Ultra settings, falling just short of an ideal 60 FPS. The RX 570 hit 48 FPS, and the GTX 1060 hit 50 FPS. Stepping down to High settings on both cards saw performance climb up by a fair margin. The GTX 1060 had no trouble maintaining an average of 60 FPS at High settings, while the RX 570 kept above 60 once we stepped down to Medium settings.
The high-end cards slowed down a bit at 1440p, yet they never stumbled. The GTX 1080 Ti, naturally, kept a breezy 112 FPS at Ultra, while the GTX 1070 Ti managed an admirable 82 FPS at the same graphics settings.
The RX 580 had a bit of trouble at Ultra, but managed to maintain an average 61 FPS, while the RX Vega 64 slipped just ahead of the GTX 1070 Ti by a few frames.
These high-end graphics cards all proved they were more than capable of maintaining a playable and super-smooth framerate at 1440p. Now, it’s time for the ultimate test. Can they keep up at 4K?
Pushing it to 4K
Gaming at 4K is still a very expensive endeavor, and you’re going to see mixed results, even with a super-fast gaming PC. It’s tough to drive all those pixels, to fill them with otherworldly vistas and tack-sharp graphics. Despite Battlefront II’s excellent optimization and performance on mid-range and low-end cards, in our results, it’s pretty clear that 4K is still a high-end GPU’s game.
It’s almost not worth mentioning the low-end cards here, as neither the RX 550 nor the GTX 1050 offered a reasonable framerate at 4K. Even at the lowest possible graphics settings, the RX 550 managed 10 FPS, and the GTX 1050 barely broke 13 FPS. These cards should stick to 1080p, and maybe 1440p if you don’t mind playing on Medium or Low.
Moving on to the mid-range, the GTX 1060 and RX 570 managed playable if not smooth framerates at Low settings, but stepping up to Medium or High is out of the question. The RX 570 hit 43 FPS on Low at 4K, while performance dropped off significantly to barely playable margins at Medium, High, and Ultra. The GTX 1060 followed suit, hitting 46 FPS at low, and 32 at Medium. At High and Ultra settings, it fell below 30 FPS, which is pretty much the lowest you can go before a game becomes unplayable.
Even high-end cards had some trouble at 4K, but each managed to maintain a playable framerate at High settings. The GTX 1080 Ti, our strongest performer, maintained a reasonable 62 FPS at Ultra, 69 FPS at High, 77 FPS at Medium, and 103 FPS at Low. This is the only card in the group that really offers enough power to reliably play Battlefront II at 4K on Ultra settings.
The RX Vega 64 comes close, hitting 47 FPS on Ultra, 54 on High, 61 on Medium, and 85 on Low. While the game is playable at Ultra, stepping down to High gave us a substantial increase in performance. The difference was easy to notice while pulling a barrel-roll in an X-Wing.
The RX 580 only managed 29 FPS at Ultra, 36 at High, 40 at Medium, and 55 at Low. That means you should probably keep this one at Medium or High, as stepping up to Ultra makes the game feel very choppy.
Nvidia’s GTX 1080 Ti is the clear winner here. If you have one of these purring away inside your machine, crank up all the settings, load it up in 4K, you’ll be fine. If you have a high refresh rate monitor though, you’ll probably want to stick to 1080p or 1440p to make the most of that 120hz or 144hz refresh rate.
Fine-tuning
If you’re ready to ditch the presets and start digging into the advanced graphics settings, you’ll be able to squeeze some extra frames out of your hardware. One thing you’ll notice about Battlefront II is that it looks great even at Low settings, which makes it an ideal candidate for custom-tailoring your graphics settings to get better performance.
Battlefront II features the same array of options you’ll see in most other games, and like most other games, there are a few settings here that have more of an effect on gameplay than others.
To get the most out of your PC you’re going to want to focus on Texture Quality, Lighting, Shadows, Mesh Quality, Terrain Quality, Terrain Groundcover, Anti-Aliasing and Ambient Occlusion. That’s a long list, so let’s break it down.
Textures, textures everywhere
Starting with Texture Quality, the first thing you’ll notice when you turn that down to Medium is that your game will look pretty much the same as it did on Ultra.
Looking at these screenshots, you can notice some subtle differences in the environment, the texture of the blaster and your gloves in first-person, but overall you don’t see any major differences until you step down to Low. We saw an 8 percent increase in average FPS by moving Texture Quality to Low, and about half that at Medium. It’s not a huge increase, but it’s enough that you’ll notice it once we tweak the other settings.
You’ll notice we’re skipping Texture Filtering. That’s because we didn’t notice a significant increase in FPS even when we stepped that one all the way down to Low. It has a subtle effect on visuals, smoothing out edges here and there, so keeping it at Ultra or High won’t hurt your very much at all, and it will improve the feel of the game.
Moving on to Lighting and Shadows, it’s here you’re going to start feeling some substantial gains — if not necessarily seeing much loss in the way of graphical fidelity.
Light, shadows, and secret shadows
Lighting quality is hard to capture with screenshots, but walking around in the game, you’ll notice that highlights will become less detailed at lower settings, and reflective surfaces will be a bit less shiny. Overall, it doesn’t have a huge impact on the visual quality of the game, so turning it down to Medium will give you a good boost to performance — about 4 percent — without much loss to the visual quality of the game.
Shadows, another setting we end up turning down pretty frequently, are similarly hard to nail down in Battlefront II. In most other games turning shadows down means losing detail and making shadows blobby and indistinct. In Battlefront II, what you end up losing is smooth-edged details.
Here, you can see that shadows become sharper, less smooth and natural at lower settings. As with the other settings here, Medium is a good middle ground, barely distinct from Ultra, and you’ll gain a small — two to three percent — boost to FPS. There are two other settings here, which don’t actually end up being used even when you turn your graphics preset to Ultra, which is bizarre.
The two “secret” shadow settings are PCSS and HTFS, which stand for Percentage-Closer Soft Shadows, and Hybrid Frustrum Traced Shadows. Basically, what that means is they use very powerful technology to make shadows look liquid and alive. These settings have an enormous impact on your performance, as turning on PCSS shadows saw our framerate drop by 30 percent. HTFS shadows dropped it by 50 percent. The shadows looked great, but not that great. Stay away from these unless you’re running two GTX 1080 Ti cards in SLI, because otherwise they’re going to kill your performance.
Effects and Post Processing
We’re leaving Effects at Ultra because it doesn’t have a huge impact on your performance outside of space battles and the occasional big explosion. We didn’t see a significant FPS gain when we moved it down to Low, so unless you’re having some trouble in space battles, we’d suggest leaving it at Ultra or High.
Post Process Quality is another one we’re leaving alone, partially because it doesn’t have a substantial effect on performance, and also because it’s really hard to nail down exactly what it changes at each setting. Even when we moved it down to Low, we had trouble spotting exactly what was different. From what we could tell, it’s another “look and feel” setting that really only comes into play when you’re moving through the world. It adds just a bit of cinema smoothness to the visuals, without harming FPS in any significant way.
Trees, shrubs, and Meshes
You may want to tweak Mesh Quality, though. This one is a bit confusing, and it was tough to spot at first. Clearly something changed when we moved it down to Low, but it’s not what you might think. Character models stay the same, and terrain looks the same as it ever did. What Mesh Quality really changes is the level of physical detail in the environment.
Looking up at the trees on the forest moon of Endor, you can clearly see the canopy becomes thicker and more robust at Ultra detail settings, and much sparser at Low settings. Because it has such a big impact on environment detail, this one can have an outsize effect on your performance. Moving it down to Low, we saw a seven percent increase in overall FPS, and at Medium, we saw a four percent increase. So, it’s worth turning down – if you don’t mind losing some of that background detail.
While Mesh Quality has the biggest effect on things above you, Terrain Quality has a huge effect on things below you. The ground. We mean the ground.
Here, you can see very clearly what Terrain Quality changes. At higher settings, the terrain geometry becomes much more complex than it is at lower settings. That also means this is a setting you can turn down and remain confident that you probably won’t notice any changes — since they’re mostly underfoot.
Stepping down to Medium, we saw a small three to four percent increase in overall FPS, so it’s definitely worth doing as long as you don’t mind losing a little terrain detail.
Speaking of terrain, how about all the things that cover it up? That’s where Terrain Groundcover comes in. This is another one that’s pretty easy to spot.
Here, you can see that the number and quality of the shrubbery increases dramatically as you step up the quality settings. And as the number of shrubs goes up, your FPS goes down. Turning this one down to Low doesn’t hurt your overall experience by much, but it does give you a solid five percent boost to FPS, so rip out those shrubs.
These last two settings are the two that most often kill your framerate in other games but they’re also the settings that make your games look so good. Of course, we’re talking about Ambient Occlusion and Anti-Aliasing.
Our old friends Ambient Occlusion and Anti-Aliasing
Occlusion gives lighting in Battlefront II that ethereal cinematic quality, while Anti-Aliasing smooths out jagged textures. And we’re going to turn them way the F down. Ambient Occlusion in particular is a big resource hog, and it should be. Occlusion governs the look, feel and overall quality of the light in game. When it’s done well, ambient occlusion simulates the way that light looks and behaves in the real world — and that requires a lot of GPU horsepower.
Anti-Aliasing isn’t quite as resource intensive, but it is a drain on your performance — for good reason. All the visual elements in a game can look too sharp from the wrong angles, creating a jagged, pixelated appearance. To make edges look more realistic, Anti-Aliasing goes through the visible in-game textures and smooths them out, literally taking the edges off.
Turning this down does have a visual impact on your game, but it’s usually tolerable. By keeping Post Process and Texture Filtering at Ultra, you recover some of what you end up losing by turning down AO and AA. Turning these two settings all the way down nets you way too big a performance boost to ignore. Turning AA to TAA Low, gives us a six percent boost, while turning Ambient Occlusion to Off gives us a whopping 30 percent boost to FPS.
If you have a mid-range or lower-end card, you might want to tweak your settings a bit to get the most out of your hardware. By using our recommended settings for each of the quality options, you’re going to see a big improvement in performance without seeing a significant hit to your visuals.
To use our custom settings, just set your Graphics Quality to Custom and set each individual setting to the value in the screenshot below. If you’re still having performance issues with our settings, step the items that are on Ultra down to High.
Unfortunately, our settings won’t net you an FPS gain equal to the sum of our individual gains, but we did see a total gain of about 40 percent using our recommended settings. So, if you’re running a GTX 1050 or RX 550, dig into those settings and start tweaking. You might find your hardware is quicker without all those shadows.
Overall, Battlefront II is a gorgeous game that runs well on a variety of systems. If you have high-end hardware like a GTX 1080 Ti, or an RX Vega 64, you’ll be able to run it without any problems at any graphics setting — and at any resolution.
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Firefox reverts to Google search engine, ending deal with Yahoo
Last week, Mozilla unleashed Firefox Quantum, a new version of its popular web browser that makes all manner of improvements to the experience. One particularly interesting tweak is the fact that its stock search engine is now Google, rather than Yahoo.
In November 2014, Mozilla inked a deal with Yahoo that would see the company’s search services integrated into the Firefox browser. The deal was set to be in place for five years, but the developer decided to cut it short in order to deliver a better product to its users.
“We exercised our contractual right to terminate our agreement with Yahoo! based on a number of factors including doing what’s best for our brand, our effort to provide quality web search, and the broader content experience for our users,” said Mozilla’s chief business and legal officer, Denelle Dixon, according to a report from 9to5Google. “We believe there are opportunities to work with Oath and Verizon outside of search.”
There’s big money to be made in offering a search engine the chance to serve as the default option for a particular piece of software or hardware. For instance, Google has recently expanded its relationship with Apple to include Siri and Spotlight search results – and the search giant was already paying as much as $3 billion per year to ensure that it was the default for iOS, according to a report from CNBC.
It would seem that Mozilla would stand to lose out on a significant amount of money by backing out of its arrangement with Yahoo. However, there’s a clause in the contract that provides that Mozilla is entitled to annual payments of up to $375 million through 2019 if it didn’t want to work with any company that purchased Yahoo – even if another search deal was put in place – as per reporting from Recode.
Search engines are the primary discovery tool for many internet users, and that makes them hugely important when it comes to online advertising. Having a large audience makes it easier to sell ad space at a premium, which should explain why companies are ready to shell out millions upon millions to work with the likes of Mozilla and Apple.
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Headsets are just the beginning. How to make a VR rig for all your senses
Think you know what it’s like to be a VR gamer because you own an Oculus Rift?
Pah, you aren’t even close. If you want to go full Lawnmower Man and dive body — and soul — into the pantheon of the cyber gods, you need to kit yourself out with much more than just a headset and a pair of motion controllers.
Today’s modern VR world is rife with all manner of accessories and augmentations that transform you from a digital lamb happily ambling about the virtual world, to a cyberspace assassin who sees no difference between a living room and a far-flung virtual battlefield.
Augment your optics
The first step to becoming a laser-sighted gaming soldier of fortune is to make sure that you’re seeing better than everyone else. While modern science might be able to laser away your astigmatism, in the virtual world you need the most advanced lenses and displays money can buy. While the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive might have given the world a taste of what consumer VR can look like, it’s not even close to what you need for true gaming dominance.
If you want to have the keenest of eyes on the virtual battlefield, you’ll need to acquire yourself a StarVR headset. With a resolution of 5,120 × 1,440 spread across both eyes and a 210-degree field of view, it’s arguably the best VR viewport that money can buy. It’s not on sale right now, but if you’re half the gamer you claim to be, you’ll find a way to get one.
For those of you without the connections to get a seat at the big boy table, consider a Pimax 8K headset. Available now on Kickstarter, the headset features a total resolution 7,680 × 2,160 across both eyes, and is one of the best ways to get your head in the game. Literally.
Take the hits
Most VR systems offer basic haptic feedback in their controllers, but a little vibration under your fingertips doesn’t make you feel like you’re part of the action. For that you need something a bit more…involved.
The Kor-FX fits the bill nicely. It lets you feel the hits in game, using the experience’s own audio to deliver punches, kicks, explosions, and bullets right into your body. What’s the point in putting your digital life on the line if you can’t feel the shotgun blast you’re heroically taking to the chest?
If that’s too tame for you, then there’s always the Hardlight suit. From all those hours gaming you’ve no doubt got a rockin’ bod, so it’s important to make sure you can admire it in the in-game mirrors, too. The Hardlight suit makes that possible, and guarantees you’ll feel every inch of the action as you take the fight to those t-shirts wearing serfs.
When you’re looking to unwind at the end of a hard gaming session, make sure to slip into your full feedback body suit for some private time with your virtual partner.
Feel the wind on your face
Feeling bullets and punches is all well and good if you’re planning to get your ass kicked – that’s not you, is it? More fitting for a gamer of the highest caliber is a way to feel the near misses that will be flying all around you as you dodge every shot opponents send your way. That’s not something a vest can handle, of course. For that you need something like the ZephVR.
Available on Kickstarter, this little contraption whacks a couple of high-powered fans a few inches from your face to simulate the whoosh of air as you swing through levels, or the whistling of shots as they skim past you on your latest dominant killstreak.
It can keep you cool in the moment, too, which is hardly a bad thing. It takes a lot to keep a high-performance gaming machine in peak condition, and remaining cool is part of that. As advanced as your DNA is, your innate ability to regulate your body can only go so far.
I love the smell of noob sweat in the morning
As a gamer who’s well ahead of the curve, you’re aware of how important it is to remain on the cutting edge, because if you’re not looking into the abyss as you win another chicken dinner, you’re not a real gamer. The latest innovation to hit the virtual space brings one of the most important sensory organs into the equation — smell.
Although technologies like ProjectNourished would have you believe the tech is only good for smelling steak while eating cardboard, as if you’re living a boring spin-off of The Matrix, we know where this technology is most important — smelling the fear on your opponents, and making sure they smell you too.
While you’ll be smelling the virtual gunpowder as you pump another slug into your alien adversaries with a Feelreal mask, those VR peasants falling at your feet in rapture and death will get a taste of the custom cologne you’re wearing for the occasion. You’ll need to make sure you contact your olfactory representative to guarantee everyone has stock of your chosen musk, but making sure that’s the last thing your enemy’s smell before they drop dead is as important as your next choice of gun skin.
Turn your hands into lethal weapons
Although you probably weren’t around to master the Power Glove in its heyday, we’ve been preparing for the virtual reality revolution for decades. Now that it’s finally here though, you can’t expect the mainstream developers to cater to the specific needs of the world’s most immersed gamers. For that, you need to turn to third parties.
If you want to timidly dip your fingertips into the world of high-end tracking and feedback, the ManusVR glove might be for you. These washable gloves bring full finger and arm tracking to a handful of games. The real excitement, though, begins when the VRGluvs start shipping. Not only do they make you look like Batman when you wear them, but they give you full force feedback when you grab things in game.
When you aren’t fighting hand to hand and need to pick up your gun-saw, you really need the Delta Six. While this VR assault rifle might lack that sweet gold camo skin you just unlocked, it does give you full point and shoot action, so you can transform it into whatever you want depending on the game.
Boots on the ground
All the above accessories will get you most of the way into your favorite VR game, but it’s useless if you’re just standing still, pressing buttons or touchpads to move around. For those of you who haven’t made their millions at the pinnacle of professional gaming and don’t have cash for a custom-tailored VR space, you’ll need a way to interpret your leg movements into the game itself.
You could opt for something like the Virtuix Omni, or the Infinadeck, but let’s be frank here — those systems limit your movement. They either surround you with a safety barrier like you’re some kind of child, or put you on a cord that prevents you falling over. Like a child.
If you’re happy to admit that, fair enough. For those who want to take a stride in the right direction and open up their gaming possibilities, you need a pair of VR shoes, like the Vortrex . With a pair of those you’ll be able to run, jump and crouch all within your limited roomscale space, making sure that you’re the top of the VR foodchain.
Of course, the accessories themselves will only take you so far — but when you’re seeing, feeling and perhaps even smelling, the virtual world around you, you’ll have every opportunity to be a wolf in a field of lambs. Don’t let your guard down.
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Qualcomm might sell to Broadcom if share prices are raised to $80
An increase of $10-per-share from Broadcom could result in a deal with Qualcomm actually going through.
At the beginning of this month, a report came to light that Broadcom was interested in buying Qualcomm for $105 billion. Qualcomm’s Board of Directors rejected this deal a little over a week later, but since then, it now looks like the offer could come back into consideration – if the price is right.
According to a new report from Bloomberg, Qualcomm’s investors will sell to Broadcom if the offer of $70-per-share is increased to at least $80.
When Qualcomm rejected Broadcom’s offer on November 13, Executive Chairman and Chairman of the Board, Paul Jacobs, said that Broadcom’s initial offer “significantly undervalues Qualcomm relative to the Company’s leadership position in mobile technology and our future growth prospects.” In other words, if Broadcom offers more money, we might have a deal after all.
Broadcom’s current CEO is Hock Tan, and throughout his professional life, he’s proven to be a pretty tough negotiator. The last three company’s than Tan helped to complete deals on include LSI Corp, Broadcom Corp., and Brocade Communication Systems Inc. With all of these deals, the most Tan’s ever gone over for his initial offer is 6.8-percent.
Hock Tan’s never gone over 6.8-percent his initial offer when making similar deals in the past.
For example, when working out a deal with LSI, the company’s CEO Abhi Talwalker asked for a 10-cents-per-share increase on what had been offered. In response to this, Tan wouldn’t budge. Considering that Qualcomm is asking for $10 more per share, and its chances aren’t looking too bright.
We’ve already made it clear a couple of times why we’re against a deal between Qualcomm and Broadcom, so to know that one is still a possibility isn’t the best way to start the week. We’ll be following this story closely for any future updates, so stay tuned.
Braodcom buying Qualcomm could grind innovation to a screeching halt
PayPal can help you save and invest money with the Acorns app
PayPal is funding several new digital services lately. You can send cash to your friends via the money service using Facebook Messenger, Skype and even PayPal’s own money cards. The company also makes it easy to pool money for gifts and tip Twitch streamers. Now you can fund your Acorn investment account with PayPal, too, making it easier to take care of your financial future.
Acorns is an app-based service that empowers you to invest your spare change in stocks, similarly to other apps, like Qapital. Once you connect your bank (or PayPal) account to Acorns, you can monitor it within PayPal, either online or in the PayPal app itself. You’ll also be able to check the value of your Acorns account, monitor your contributions and see your investment transfers all without having to launch the Acorns app. You can make recurring or one-time investments using PayPal funds, or you can have Acorns “round up” any purchases you make with PayPal and invest that spare change.
Via: VentureBeat
Source: PayPal
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