New Gadgets

Microsoft has announced that the first Windows Mixed Reality devices will be supported by a number of early VR games currently available, including support for Steam and SteamVR. Steam support is likely critical to the Mixed Reality concept, given that HTC’s Vive relies on it, and it’s still the largest VR market, despite recent gains by Oculus in that area.

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If I am interested in smartphones and iOS and Android, then should I choose electronics engineering, computer science, or IT? What if I want to get a job in developed countries?

Blizzard’s Overwatch has been a smash hit since it launched in 2016, but as with any multiplayer game, trolling and poor player conduct is a concern. Apparently it’s such a concern that Overwatch lead designer and Blizzard VP Jeff Kaplan took to YouTube to explain why new features for the game have been delayed: It’s because Blizzard is spending a non-trivial amount of resources dealing with online trolling.

Kaplan notes that Blizzard is working on improving its responsiveness, and notifying players when those they’ve reported have been banned or penalized. Right now, the community generally treats reports as worthless because it’s hard to tell when something has happened to toxic players that are wrecking the game for everyone.

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Nintendo’s Super NES Classic Edition has been contentious since the product was announced. While the concept of a small retro game console with excellent emulation was enthusiastically received by gamers, last year’s execution was decidedly lacking. Nintendo’s decision to kill production of the NES Classic left thousands of gamers with no opportunity to buy the device. The Super NES Classic Edition has launched, with multiple reviews online–we’ve rounded up several of them to compare. For simplicity’s sake, all references to the NES and SNES can be assumed to refer to the devices Nintendo launched in 2016 and 2017 unless specifically stated otherwise.



Like the NES, the SNES is a smaller version of the original console, with near-identical styling. Hopefully these chassis avoid one of the problems with the original Super Nintendo, which had a tendency to yellow over time as the plastic molding aged. PC Mag notes that the platform includes two controllers rather than the single controller the NES sported, though the cables are still rather short (this was one of the only complaints about the NES Classic). While the platform has fewer games than the NES, the 21 included titles are generally of higher quality.

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If there’s one thing I’ve learned about cable quality in my years in IT, it’s this: Some cables are definitely better than others, but premium cables are almost never worth the money unless you’re spending it on an extremely specific feature. There are some specific scenarios in which you might want a higher-end cable if you’re doing a very long run and need high transmission speeds. There are, for example, cases where Cat 6 provides a demonstrable performance improvement over Cat5e. But when companies claim to have HDMI cables that have special electron properties through the use of a phase-compensated samoflange, we recommend everyone tune out and do something productive, like fight with people on YouTube comment threads.

At least, that’s what we’ve always recommended before. But Marseille has an HDMI cable out, called the mCable Gaming Edition, that visibly improves game performance–and they pulled it off by embedding a microchip directly into the cord. According to Marseille, the chip inside its HDMI cable performs contextual antialiasing and adaptive resolution scaling, can handle high frame rates, and introduces less than 1ms of lag. That’s a pretty tall set of claims, though the company does provide a few game screenshots to illustrate its point.




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Oculus was started as a PC-focused virtual reality platform before Facebook acquired the company, but it has since ventured into mobile VR with the Samsung Gear VR partnership. Now, Oculus is preparing its first all-in-one VR headset known as the Oculus Go. It’s coming to a face near you next year for a mere $199.

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Cheating is a problem in virtually every online game. While it takes different forms depending on the title in question, I’ve seen farm bots in World of Warcraft and League of Legends and encountered everyone’s favorite: People who use cheats in FPS games to shoot through walls, fire perfect shots from across the map, and/or one-shot everyone in sight with a perfect headshot.

Many companies periodically smash these players with a banhammer, but it’s a constant fight between those who want to cheat and those who want to stop them. Now, Microsoft is getting into the fray with its own cheat-detection options, debuted as part of the Fall Creators Update.

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For the last four years, Microsoft has played second fiddle to Sony’s PlayStation 4. There are a number of reasons why, including poor initial communication, an abrupt reversal on system features, a $100 higher price point, and an initial focus on multimedia capabilities as opposed to gaming. The fact that the Xbox One was generally slower than the PS4 and ran at lower resolutions hasn’t helped either.

With the Xbox One X launching next week, Microsoft intends to reclaim the performance crown and hopefully improve its own market share.

Microsoft has good reason to fret about its own position in the console market this cycle. A year ago, just prior to the PS4 Pro’s launch, that console had sold 39.8M units compared with 20.7M for the Xbox One, a gap of 1.92x. Today, the PS4 has shipped 63.4M units, compared with 31.1M for the Xbox One. That’s a gap of 2.04x (all data from VGChartz). To be clear, 31.1 million consoles sold is still a huge install base, but the gap between the two platforms is accelerating. After slugging it out with Sony with the Xbox and Xbox 360, Microsoft isn’t willing to see its formidable market presence weaken any further. That’s why the company is willing to forego a profit on the Xbox One, in the hopes of weakening Sony’s dominance. It also hopes to kick total sales back above the Xbox 360. While the Xbox One historically enjoyed a moderate shipment advantage above its predecessor, that gap had shrunk dramatically by 2017:


The Xbox One has lost its sales lead over the Xbox 360.

The good news is, Microsoft is forecasting high demand for its current console. “”I won’t talk about the exact numbers but the demand is super high, we are very, very excited about Xbox One X right now,” Panos Panay, corporate vice president of devices at Microsoft, told CNBC in a TV interview Tuesday.

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After more than a year of argument, meetings, random unofficial server mergers, and yet more arguments from various members of the community, we’ve finally got an announcement on Blizzard’s Classic Server push for World of Warcraft: It’s coming.



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THE biennial Dubai Airshow opened yesterday with hometown long-haul carrier Emirates making a US$15.1 billion buy of American-made Boeing 787-10 Dreamliners, as the world’s biggest defense companies promoted their weapons amid heightened tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Other airlines also are taking part, but missing from the trade show this year is one of the region’s largest long-haul carriers, Qatar Airways, amid diplomatic fallout between Qatar and four Arab nations.

The Boeing announcement came after over an hour and a half of delays by Emirates amid rumors of a possible Airbus sale involving its A380 aircraft, a major workhorse for the airline. Journalists asked Emirates CEO and Chairman Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum about Boeing’s European competitor Airbus, specifically its A350.
“We were comparing the two apples,” he said, but found that the Boeing 787 is “the best option” for Emirates “given its maintenance and so on.”

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