The Humble Store is handing over a free copy of The Amnesia Collection with no strings attached. Those who are interested in grabbing The Amnesia Collection can do so for a limited time. At present the clock ends at one day, 20 hours so there is plenty of time. The Frictional Games collection includes Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, the latter of which was developed in partnership with The Chinese Room. https://youtu.be/EzvNKsbdZiU The Amnesia Collection is available through the Humble Store for PC, Mac and Linux. It would normally run you $34.99, or the regional equivalent.

Metro Exodus was featured prominently in our Most Anticipated Shooter Games of 2018 article and for good reason. 4A Games managed to create one of the strongest story focused FPS franchises and we can’t wait to play the game later this year when it comes out on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. In an interview published on Official PlayStation Magazine UK’s latest magazine (issue 145, February 2018), Deep Silver’s Executive Producer Jon Bloch revealed that author Dmitry Glukhovsky penned a script far more complex those of the previous two titles. "To put this into perspective, Metro Exodus’ script is larger than both Metro 2033’s and Last Light’s combined, including all DLC." Metro Exodus was revealed during Microsoft’s E3 2017 press conference with footage running on Xbox One X hardware; a while later, Bloch highlighted the developer’s efforts to optimize the game on Microsoft’s console, but in this new interview he reassured PlayStation 4 Pro owners that they will get the same care from 4A Games. "We are putting special attention into the PlayStation 4 Pro to ensure we are using every bit of power that it provides." The big allure of this third entry is that Artyom will finally be able to move past the titular Metro and the city of Moscow itself, thanks to a steam-based train. Bloch briefly mentioned what he’ll find out there. "We will encounter new societies, religions, ways of life, environments, monsters, and mutants. Some will seem familiar in some ways, and some will be completely new. As life continued after the apocalypse, it evolved in different ways outside Moscow. Some areas are irradiated in similar ways to Moscow, and some areas are clear of any toxins or destruction." From a gameplay standpoint, though, Metro Exodus is set to introduce much larger playable areas that are said to be between three and four kilometers in size. You’ll be able to explore more freely as you would in a sandbox-like game and that coupled with the dynamic day/night cycle and weather may make a significant gameplay difference, as explained by the Executive Producer. "Choosing when and how to approach different situations will have measurable effects on the player’s experience while completing tasks. Approaching a bandit camp at night might prove advantageous to a more stealthy player, but there may be more bandits around to have to deal with." There’s no release date yet, but you can absolutely bet that we’ll let you know once the official word (or even a credible leak/rumor) is available.

Developer Bluehole is planning to introduce multiple pre-match starting areas through PUBG PC patch 3 to improve performance. After yesterday’s new PUBG Xbox One update, the game’s development team is also deploying a new update for PC on the game’s test servers. Once changes on the test servers are evaluated to be stable, the update will rolled out to the live servers. According to the developer, the new update aims to “enhance the performance by adjusting some aspects of the game without impacting the gameplay in any conceivably negative way.” We’ve included the release notes for the update down below: PUBG PC Patch 3 Gameplay Introduced multiple pre-match starting areas on both maps in order to optimize the server and game client performance Removed weapons on starting island before the match start Language Applied new Russian, Japanese and Chinese (simplified/traditional) fonts Bug fixes Fixed the issue where players were able to slide-jump from prone “In the current patch we are spreading out the pre-match starting locations”, community coordinator Hawkinz writes. “Previously, all the players would spawn together at the same location awaiting the start of the match. Lots of interaction among multiple players in such a small area had a high impact on the servers. To solve this, we have introduced multiple areas where players gather before the match start. As a result, the performance, both server and client-side, has improved.” PUBG is available now for both PC and Xbox One.

Developer Bluehole and Microsoft are deploying PUBG Xbox One patch 6, which offers various fixes, gameplay improvements, and more. Yesterday we already reported that news on a new Xbox update was inbound, and today the PUBG Xbox One development team has released the full release notes for update #6. We’ve includes the patch notes for the update down below: PUBG Xbox One patch 6 Gameplay Auto-run function has been added (from a standstill, double clicking L3 will activate auto-run) Players can now drop equipped weapons with Y button when inventory screen is active Grenades can once again be cycled by tapping right on D pad Players can now cancel casting actions while the inventory screen is active Optimization Continued optimizations and crash fixes Option Game controller guide has been updated Bug fixes Buildings around the Military Base have had their collision adjusted Camera shake when riding as a passenger in vehicles has been reduced Inventory character models have returned to their normal stance Fixed a camera issue created by unintended Aim Down Sights and Free Look interactions “A” button will no longer refresh game results screen Team UI will now correctly show the proper direction teammates are facing over larger distances Player changes to markers on the in-game map will now be properly applied to their teammate’s in-game map Fixed an issue where switching to throwables under certain conditions left the player empty-handed Adjusted character positioning when exiting vehicles and parachutes PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds was released for Xbox One through the platform’s Game Preview Program last month, and as covered earlier, the game has already surpassed 3 million players. The game is also available on PC through Steam. PUBG already has more than 30 million players across both platforms.

Ubisoft has confirmed today some additional details on the PC version of Far Cry 5, alongside its system requirements. In a new post on the Official Ubisoft Blog, the European publisher confirmed that Far Cry 5 on PC will come with support for Multi GPU configuration as well as FOV adjustment and a benchmark feature which will help players configure the game to run best on each system. The game’s system requirements can be found below. MINIMUM CONFIGURATION: OS: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 (64-bit versions only) PROCESSOR: Intel Core i5-2400 @ 3.1 GHz or AMD FX-6300 @ 3.5 GHz or equivalent VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 or AMD R9 270 (2GB VRAM with Shader Model 5.0 or better) SYSTEM RAM: 8GB Resolution: 720p Video Preset: Low RECOMMENDED CONFIGURATION (60 FPS): OS: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 (64-bit versions only) PROCESSOR: Intel Core i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz or AMD Ryzen 5 1600 @ 3.2 GHz or equivalent VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 or AMD R9 290X (4GB VRAM with Shader Model 5.0 or better) SYSTEM RAM: 8GB Resolution: 1080p Video Preset: High 4K 30 FPS CONFIGURATION: OS: Windows 10 (64-bit version only) PROCESSOR: Intel Core i7-6700 @ 3.4 GHz or AMD Ryzen 5 1600X @ 3.6 GHz or equivalent VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 or AMD RX Vega 56 (8GB VRAM with Shader Model 5.0 or better) SYSTEM RAM: 16GB Resolution: 2160p Video Preset: High 4K 60 FPS CONFIGURATION: OS: Windows 10 (64-bit version only) PROCESSOR: Intel Core i7-6700K @ 4.0 GHz or AMD Ryzen 7 1700X @ 3.4 GHz or equivalent VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 SLI or AMD RX Vega 56 CFX (8GB VRAM with Shader Model 5.0 or better) SYSTEM RAM: 16GB Resolution: 2160p Video Preset: High/Ultra Far Cry 5 launches on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on March 27th.

A new rumor suggests Capcom’s much-anticipated Resident Evil 2 remake may be coming in 2018. The original Resident Evil was a groundbreaking title for the PlayStation and is credited with making the survival horror genre popular. The sales of the game quickly convinced Capcom to greenlight a sequel, and after a concept involving a rescue team traveling to the ruins of Spencer Mansion and being attacked by plant creatures was discarded, it was decided to set the game in Raccoon City. Fans of Resident Evil 2 are no doubt aware of the title’s troubled development, with the team working on a version that was around 60-70% complete before being scrapped because the producer felt it wasn’t working; this version has since been dubbed Resident Evil 1.5. It turned out to be the right call, with the sequel being released to huge sales and critical acclaim. It remains one of the most beloved titles in the franchise, and after years of fan pleading, Capcom announced they were remaking the game from the ground up in 2015. Resident Evil 2 celebrates its 20th anniversary on January 21st, and while fans were hoping there would be some kind of announcement regarding the Resident Evil 2 remake, Capcom has yet to reveal anything. However, a new rumor posted on 4chan (via GearNuke) suggests it will be released in late 2018, and some of the changes may upset purists of the original. For now, it’s important to take these rumors will a healthy dose of salt until Capcom reveals it. Apparently the Resident Evil 2 remake will be played via an over-the-shoulder perspective instead of the fixed camera angles of the original; Capcom is said to have experimented with both fixed angles and a first-person view, but these features were dropped. The focus will be on horror instead of action, while Raccoon City and its police station – where the majority of the game is set – have been vastly redesigned. The game will only have two campaigns instead of the original four, while the unlockable Hunk mission has been removed, but may find its way to DLC. The crocodile boss has been removed, while the Ada and Sherry missions have been expanded. Fans have been waiting a long time for the Resident Evil 2 remake, and while they may not be happy about all of the above changes – should they prove accurate – at least the game’s focus is still on horror. The series has already provided one fantastic remake with 2002’s Resident Evil on the GameCube. That title gave the game a complete graphical overhaul, added new enemies and weapons and generally tightened the experience. If the Resident Evil 2 remake reaches near that level of quality than the fanbase will be very happy.

PlayStation 4 and Xbox One gamers have had the chance to try the beta of Metal Gear Survive since earlier this week; the test is set to end later today. In an interview appeared on the latest Official PlayStation Magazine UK (issue 145, February 2018) Producer Yuji Korekado took the opportunity to apologize to fans regarding the poor communication surrounding Survive and its spin-off nature. "Fans and gamers in general seemed to take Metal Gear Survive to be a continuation of the Metal Gear series, so I regret that we caused that confusion." A few websites reported recently that the game features microtransactions. However, the Producer clarified that the worst fears of gamers (loot boxes and P2W microtransactions) won’t materialize here. "There will not be loot boxes, and there will not be Pay-to-Win types of microtransactions. There will be things like the accessories in Metal Gear Online, and Forward Operating Base in MGSV: The Phantom Pain." Indeed, The Phantom Pain and MGO already featured microtransactions of the relatively innocent kind. Finally, Korekado-san opened up on the single player campaign which apparently will eventually include a fairly large zone to explore and several side quests to undertake. "In the early part of the game, you have a small range that’s centered around the base camp, but as you make your way through the game the area you can explore gradually gets bigger and bigger. And as the area you can explore gets bigger, missions that advance the story appear, as do sub-quests." Metal Gear Survive will launch on PC (Steam), PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on February 20th in North America, February 21st in Japan and February 22nd in Europe. It will be priced at $39.99.

Two early prototypes are available. P.T. was the playable teaser for Silent Hills—the reboot of the Silent Hill series that was cancelled in 2015—and even though it was short it still ranks among the best horror games of all time (and certainly one of the scariest). It never made it to PC, but thanks to a couple of fan remakes you can now give it a whirl on your mouse and keyboard. The first remake is called Corridors, and is a recreation of the game in Unreal Engine 4. It's still very much a work in progress (expect bugs), and creator SmoggyChips plans to update it with more levels in the future. You can download it here, and you can see it being worked on in the video below, which also includes snatches of gameplay. https://youtu.be/SJ1TiNdHfFA The second remake comes from Redditor LinusPixel, who has extracted animation, map, and texture files from the original and tried to stitch them together in a new engine. Some of the files are difficult to work with, but you can play a very early prototype of it here. I can't wait to see how they both turn out, and I'll keep my eye out for updates on their progress.

Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana has been delayed again on PC, NIS America has revealed. Apparently the publisher underestimated the effort required for this PC port and will now have to involve another developer to try and deliver an acceptable performance level upon release. "To all of you who have been anxiously awaiting the PC release of Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana, we have a very regrettable announcement: we are once again pushing the release to an as-of-yet indeterminate date. We sincerely apologize for this delay, and we would like to explain in detail the reason why we are proceeding with the delay. This decision was not made lightly, and we understand that many of you will be upset about this news. For that, and most importantly, for the delay, we are very sorry. Please note, however, that this announcement does not affect the relocalization update patch planned for January 30th for the PlayStation®4 and PlayStation Vita versions of the game. Low framerate issues and memory leak problems were apparent from the earliest PC builds we received. To help combat these, we looked into the drawing processes, which lead to an overall improvement in performance. However, we are still encountering framerate drops in specific circumstances. The systems regulating these framerate issues are heavily reliant on the architecture of the original PlayStation 4 version and, as such, are not existent in PC architecture. The memory leak issues are somewhat less complicated and expected to be resolved this weekend. But in order to solve these issues, we have determined that we must modify the core level of data in the game. As the PC version of the game was originally envisioned as a port, we avoided touching the core programming as much as possible and focused on PC performance optimization. However, in light of the feedback of those who have participated in the second beta test, we have concluded that we cannot avoid modifying the core programming. Once the changes from the relocalization efforts have been implemented at the end of this month, we will be moving development to an entirely different developer who will primarily focus on frame rate improvements as well as other PC optimizations. Once that process begins, we will monitor the progress and determine the release schedule. We will also be sure to give regular updates to our progress. Again, we truly regret that we underestimated the severity of the issues that have surfaced (and how long it would take to resolve them), and for that, NIS America sincerely apologizes to all of you for this unexpected delay. We are fully aware of how much our fans have been anticipating this release and will do our very best to launch the game the way it is meant to be launched: without any issues, game-breaking bugs, or errors. If you have made a pre-purchase on Steam and would like a refund due to this delay, please use this link." This is all the more annoying because Ys VIII is actually a great a JRPG as outlined by Francesco in his review of the PlayStation 4 release. We’ll keep you up to date on the latest news regarding the PC launch, though.

Constant connection needed for "seamless" integration of single and multiplayer. Metal Gear Survive, Konami's Kojima-less game about staying alive in a zombie-infested desert, will offer players stat-boosting microtransactions and will require a constant internet connection to play, even in single-player, according to a report. "Metal Gear Survive's online connectivity requirements were built to support a seamless integration between single player and co-op. This will also enable us to provide ongoing content post-launch," Konami told Gamespot. Fair enough, but not everyone has access to a steady internet connection 100% of the time, and this could be a pain for those people, especially if they just want to play solo. The presence of microtransactions is less surprising, given that Metal Gear Solid 5 had them. According to Gamespot, you'll be able to be able to pay real money for in-game currency (called SV coins), and then use that currency to buy temporary stat boosts, or increase the rate at which you earn 'Battle Points', which in previous games have been used to unlock equipment. The game is due out next month. James played a hearty slice earlier this week, and wasn't too impressed. "A functional survival game," was how he described it, and it sounds like there's lots of annoying status bars to keep track of. Still, some of its ideas—like a map you have to fill manually by stamping on points of interest—sound interesting. Let's wait and see.

Rift went F2P in 2013. Rift Prime will undo that change—and on a separate server, to boot. The online game-subscription model has generally waned in recent years, overtaken by the popularity (and apparent profitability) of "free-to-play" (F2P) fare. One of the earliest MMORPGs to switch to a F2P model, the Trion-published Rift, announced a curious change coming to its payment model: a branch-off of one Rift server, and its entire gameplay and payment structure, to return to the flat subscription model later this year. As reported by Kotaku, the game's developers announced plans for this new version, dubbed Rift Prime, in a Friday blog post. The plan actually began life months earlier when Trion asked fans about the idea of a "challenge server" product—meaning, a version of the game that was harder and segregated interested players into their own, higher-difficulty pool of players. Fan response to the pitch went a different direction. The players' "strongest cues," the devs write, revolved around "how to make the business model more appealing." If you're wondering exactly what those cues were, consider Trion's Rift Prime description: a pay-per-month version of the game with "no lockboxes [aka loot boxes] and a significantly reduced store with more of the current store-based items obtained through gameplay (or removed entirely)." Additionally, all progress through the Prime version will be "sequential" and "progressively unlocked"—meaning, players will no longer pay for microtransactions (MTX) to, say, access certain content or increase XP-gain boosts. https://youtu.be/999JMXBfWBA Right now, Trion describes the Rift Prime version as a limited-time affair—meaning, players will progress through Rift's systems "at a faster pace than the original launch" and will come to a finite conclusion "in spectacular fashion." The company didn't offer further clarification about that pacing, nor about a more specific release window or price. Current Rift players replied with questions about the new product, such as whether any perks from their years of F2P Rive play would transfer, how an existing paid "Patron" system will change, or whether Rift's shrinking playerbase will benefit from current players leaving the F2P version for the paid one. To the latter question, a Trion representative hopped on the thread to offer the company's estimation: that the new, paid-subscription version will attract more lapsed Rift players than anything else. You are now free... to subscribe This may be the highest-ever profile example of an existing, populated F2P game receiving a paid-subscription version, instead of the other way around. The common online-game news of the past decade has included games going F2P while their creators crow about larger playerbases and easier "access." As more games made the F2P switch, including Rift in 2013, critics—including one of Ars's—hailed the transition. But in our case, that came with an expectation: that F2P games could work "without compromising their traditional gameplay." The microtransactions and random-item purchases that have since defined F2P games' economies have come under greater scrutiny and criticism over the past year, largely because retail-priced games have begun adopting them in earnest. With so many F2P games adopting identical item-driven economies, and shoving slot machine-like mechanics into players' faces, there's arguably an issue of burnout. Players have seen these hidden costs, with cosmetics and beyond, in so many games that they may once again yearn to pay up front—and thus avoid certain gameplay issues and manipulations.

And the roadmap for the transition to 10nm remains as murky as ever. As part of Intel's fourth quarter financials release, CEO Brian Krzanich promised that chips shipping this year would include true hardware fixes for the Spectre and Meltdown attacks. The promise to ship chips immune to the attack leaves many questions unanswered. It's not clear if the fixes will be revisions of current generation Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake, and Skylake parts, or if the modifications will be constrained to the Cannon Lake processors that are expected to ship this year. Nor is it clear what form the fix will take: better, higher-performance versions of the microcode and workarounds already being rolled out, or deeper modifications to the processor's speculative execution and branch prediction behavior. The company's delayed transition to a 10nm manufacturing process also remains murky. At CES, Intel claimed that it had shipped some unspecified chips built on 10nm last year. The first half of this year will see low volume production, ramping to high volume in the second half. But exactly what processors—in what configurations, when, and in what volumes—remains unknown. Both Cannon Lake, built on the 10nm process, and Ice Lake, built on the refined "10nm+" process, are planned, but the company has said little concrete about exact timelines. Krzanich also said that DIMMs using 3D XPoint memory won't have any revenue impact this year. 3D XPoint is a kind of solid state storage that in principle blends the characteristics of RAM and flash memory. Like RAM, it's addressable and writeable on a byte-at-a-time basis (in contrast to flash, which can only be written and erased in large blocks), but like flash, it's persistent, requiring no power to retain its value. Intel has a few 3D XPoint products on the market already, configured as either PCIe or M.2 storage, but the company has been promising to sell non-volatile DIMMs based on the same technology. Processors could use these as if they were RAM—just RAM that holds its value when the power is off. This is particularly appealing for applications such as databases. It would allow, for example, high-performance in-memory databases that are persistent across reboots without ever having to be written out to disk. Existing 3D XPoint products have limited longevity—like flash, they degrade after each write cycle—and while it appears that Intel has addressed this to a satisfactory extent for storage, system memory is much more demanding. It's not clear that all the technical problems have been solved. 3D XPoint DIMMs were expected some time this year, but with the revenue guidance, it looks now like they won't arrive until 2019 at the earliest. Overall, Intel had a strong quarter, with revenue up eight percent to $17.1 billion, and for the full year, up nine percent to $62.8 billion. At least for now, AMD's newly competitive products don't appear to have a great deal of impact; Intel's data center revenue was up 10 percent last quarter, with average selling prices rising eight percent. Desktop processors did decline—five percent volume, two percent selling price—but the company attributed this to the declining PC market in general rather than competition from AMD's Ryzen and Threadripper products or Intel's own shortages of Coffee Lake desktop chips. Going forward, the company says it isn't expecting any financial impact from Spectre or Meltdown, but the attacks do introduce new risks and so the outlook may change.

Thunderbird 52.6.0 is a security update for the popular desktop email client. The release is available via the email client's automatic update feature and also on the official project website. Thunderbird users can run a manual check for updates with a click on Help > About Thunderbird. If the menu bar is missing, tap on the Alt-key to display it. Thunderbird will pick up the new update and download and install it automatically. Thunderbird 52.6.0 Thunderbird 52.6.0 is a security and maintenance release. The team lists all fixed security vulnerabilities on this page. The bulk of issues cannot be exploited through emails because scripts are disabled by default when reading emails. They may be exploited however in browser or browser-like contexts. CVE-2018-5095: Integer overflow in Skia library during edge builder allocation CVE-2018-5096: Use-after-free while editing form elements CVE-2018-5097: Use-after-free when source document is manipulated during XSLT CVE-2018-5098: Use-after-free while manipulating form input elements CVE-2018-5099: Use-after-free with widget listener CVE-2018-5102: Use-after-free in HTML media elements CVE-2018-5103: Use-after-free during mouse event handling CVE-2018-5104: Use-after-free during font face manipulation CVE-2018-5117: URL spoofing with right-to-left text aligned left-to-right CVE-2018-5089: Memory safety bugs fixed in Firefox 58, Firefox ESR 52.6, and Thunderbird 52.6 Thunderbird 52.6.0 fixes three usability issues as well. Searching message bodies of messages in local folders, including filter and quick filter operations, not working reliably: Content not found in base64-encode message parts, non-ASCII text not found and false positives found. Defective messages (without at least one expected header) not shown in IMAP folders but shown on mobile devices Calendar: Unintended task deletion if numlock is enabled The search issue fix is probably the biggest improvement in the release. Thunderbird's built-in search did not work reliably in some cases. If you noticed in the past that mails were not returned by the search even though they should, this may have been the reason for that. Thunderbird did not display defective messages in IMAP folders under certain circumstances. This is fixed as well and should work as intended. Last but not least, a bug caused tasks to be deleted in the built-in calendar if Numlock was activated. Closing Words Thunderbird 52.6.0 is a security update and as such should be installed asap. I did not notice any issues yet after the upgrade but that is just with a couple of minutes of using the new version. If anything comes up I'll update the article.

Google product manager Jon Krafcik announced changes to the company's handling of reminder ads, an advertisement that follows users around, yesterday. Reminder ads are those ads that follow you around when and can appear to be nearly anywhere you go. If you ever placed an item of interest in a shopping cart but did not buy it outright then and there, or have shown interest in a product, you may have noticed that ads for the product or item frequently appear days and weeks afterward. Companies may provide Google with information on users and matching advertisement, and Google tries to match the information by displaying these ads to matching users. While reminder ads can be useful to the user as well, it happens that they are not. Maybe you found a better deal and bought the product on another site already. That may not keep the initial site and Google from showing you reminder ads though. Google introduced options to mute advertisement in 2012. A click on the arrow icon that is displayed as part of the ad gives you options to mute the ad (stop seeing it) or get more information about it. If you select "stop seeing this ad", you get to another screen where you select a reason for it, for example, because you have seen this ad multiple times or because it was inappropriate. Google started the roll out of two new "mute this ad" features yesterday. The first applies the muting to any device that you use the same Google account on. If you mute an ad on your desktop PC, it will be muted on the smartphone or a tablet as well provided that you sign in with the same account. The second is not really a feature but a promise that Google will expand this to other company services such as YouTube, Search or Gmail in the coming months. Google users may manage reminder ads in the Ads Settings of the Google Account on top of that. It features a new management interface to list all reminder ads and mute them for 90 days. Closing Words Google should consider adding a switch to the ads settings to let users turn reminder ads off completely. Some users don't want to be followed by ads, and the only options they have at this point are to sign out of a Google account or use content blocking. It is easy enough to avoid the majority of reminder ads by not signing in to a Google account when you use Google Chrome or other web browsers or products. Google claims that millions of users use the mute this ad option on a daily basis, and that the company received 5 billion pieces of feedback in 2017 alone.

Intel, which benefited from the post-Q4 public-disclosure of Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities in its latest results, is hoping to mitigate its fallout on Q1-2018. The company, along with several other CPU designers, such as AMD and ARM, are firefighting the two devastating security vulnerabilities through OS kernel patches and CPU micro-code updates; which come at a slight expense of performance. In a bid to unnerve investors, company CEO Brian Krzanich announced that Intel is working on "in-silicon" fixes to Meltdown and Spectre. An "in-silicon" fix would entail a major CPU micro-architecture design that's inherently immune to the two vulnerabilities and yet offers the benefits of modern branch-prediction and speculative execution. Krzanich says processors with in-silicon fixes to the two vulnerabilities will be released to market by the end of 2018.

Maingear, an award-winning PC system integrator of custom gaming desktops, is partnering with popular eSports brand Unikrn to bring UnikoinGold (UKG) crypto-mining capable PCs to life. The new family of PCs currently consists of two models: the Maingear ACM (Advanced Crypto Miner) and the Maingear ACM PRO. Although Maingear hasn't officially disclosed the technical specifications, the product page gives us a glimpse of the upcoming PCs. The systems are housed inside a spectacular cube-shaped chassis with unique MARC II artwork and gorgeous automotive paint finishes. The ACM model can support up to six graphics cards. Additionally, the ACM PRO model provides additional options for expansion and comes in a rack mountable chassis. Although the systems are designed to mine UnikoinGold, they can be employed to mine Ethereum as well. Both models will be available later this year. Apart from the new partnership with Unikrn, Maingear also announced that they now accept UnikoinGold as a payment option for their products. From this point forward, their products will come with an option to connect to Unikrn Connekt where gamers can earn UnikoinGold for playing ranked matches while also tracking their statistics and progress in their favorite games.

Yesterday, Siemens issued an update to a year-old product vulnerability warning for its SIMATIC S7-300 and S7-400 families of programmable logic controllers (PLCs)—industrial control systems used to remotely monitor and operate manufacturing equipment. The alert, originally issued in December of 2016, was updated on Wednesday to include another version of the S7-400 line. The Department of Homeland Security pushed out an alert through the Industrial Control Systems Computer Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT) today. The systems in both device families are vulnerable to remote attacks that could allow someone to obtain login credentials to the system or reset it into a "defect" mode, shutting down the controller—essentially executing a denial-of-service attack on whatever equipment it is attached to. You might not think that factory industrial controls would be directly accessible from the Internet. But a quick survey of devices open on the network port mentioned in the advisory (TCP port 102) using the Shodan search engine revealed over 1,000 Siemens devices directly accessible on the Internet (plus a certain number of honeypots set up to detect attacks). Many of the devices are vulnerable based on Siemens' alerts and do not have the firmware updates required to mitigate the threat. The only good news, as security researcher Kevin Beaumont said in an exchange with Ars on Twitter, is that "I've seen no evidence of anybody trying to wipe them, etc., yet." Ironically, the credential-stealing vulnerability may not even be an issue in some cases, because a substantial number of the devices surveyed in the Shodan search had no authentication configured at all. The only reason that these systems may not have been attacked yet is that no one has figured out how to make attacking them into a profitable enterprise—or they haven't read the (downloadable) Siemens manuals yet. As Beaumont said, "It's an open own goal." And this particular advisory doesn't stop with the PLCs. Some PLC manufacturers haven't even responded to inquiries from the DHS' National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) about recently-discovered vulnerabilities, such as one in the Nari PCS-9611 Feeder Relay, a control system used to manage some electrical grids. The vulnerability, reported by two Kaspersky Labs researchers, "could allow a remote attacker arbitrary read/write abilities on the system." While a cursory Shodan search did not reveal any Nari feeder relays specifically, a check of one of the International Electrotechnical Commission protocols used by the PCS-9611 and many other devices that control power distribution systems found over 14,000 systems connected directly to the Internet, largely by 3G cellular modems. The results for many of these screened by Ars were indicative of electrical ICS devices. Dam bad security While the DHS and various security vendors have been warning of the vulnerability of industrial control systems to "cyberwarfare" over the past decade, relatively few actual industrial control system attacks have bee documented, and those that have been reported have been largely overblown. A 2013 attempt (attributed to Iranians) to "hack" a dam in upstate New York failed, largely because the dam's flood control systems had been broken for some time. That attack was staged by gaining access to the dam's local network over a broadband cellular modem set up to allow remote access. Other, more recent attacks have been from insiders. They include a possibly drunk former employee of an industrial control-system vendor who used default login credentials to remotely shut down tower gateway base stations (TGBs) that collect data from smart water meters. Yet some of these attacks may go undocumented simply because the companies affected by them have had no cause to report them. At the Black Hat USA security conference in 2015, Marina Krotofil, a researcher at Hamburg University of Technology told attendees that utilities had been regularly blackmailed by ICS hackers on a large scale since at least 2006. And despite efforts to better secure electrical grid control infrastructure, researchers have continued to find that even the protective devices used on some systems are prone to abuse and attack. In a presentation at the RECON Brussels security conference last January, researchers Kirill Nesterov and Alexander Tlyapov discussed the general absence of security in the IEC protocols used in electrical grid substation systems, including relay protection terminals. Many of these systems have their own Web interfaces for remote management, often with hard-coded passwords that can be discovered by examining firmware downloadable from the manufacturers' web sites. Apparently, protecting this stuff is hard. Part of the issue is that many of these systems are outside of the usual domain of IT departments and run by separate organizations with a much different sort of security ethos. The rapid adoption of remote access for industrial systems has allowed workers to keep track of manufacturing, chemical and electrical systems from a distance, saving money and time. But in many cases, that remote access has been achieved with very little security planning, if any at all. After all, why would anyone need a virtual private network to protect the PLC controlling a dam or a piece of factory equipment?

Remember all that talk and noise regarding Microsoft's "automagical" telemetry data collection, and how that spurred the company to create a "telemetry-less" version of its Windows 10 operating system for the Chinese market? It seems Microsoft is keen to keep giving users more information on exactly what information is gathered and when - slowly but assuredly striving for greater transparency, and looking to garner increased trust from consumers and enterprises alike. The much awaited capability is being baked in to the next major Windows 10 release, and Microsoft is giving Windows Insiders an early preview of the Windows Diagnostic Data Viewer utility. Adding to this new utility are some changes to the Microsoft Privacy Dashboard that will enable users to see and manage more data associated with their Microsoft accounts. Available to everyone in the Microsoft Store, the Diagnostic Data Viewer is separate from the Microsoft Privacy Dashboard, and "allows you to see, search, and take action with your diagnostic data." It's not clear yet what sort of telemetry features users will be able to stop Microsoft from collecting, if any. However, at least now you'll be able to look at exactly which processes and services are collecting data form your system. The diagnostic data that will be viewable in the new utility follows. Common Data, like the Operating System's name, the Version, Device ID, Device Class, Diagnostic level selection and so on. Device Connectivity and Configuration such as device properties and capabilities, preferences and settings, peripherals, and device network information. Product and Service Performance data that show device health, performance and reliability data, movie consumption functionality on the device and device file queries. It's important to note that this functionality is not intended to capture user viewing or, listening habits. Product and Service Usage data includes details about the usage of the device, operating system, applications, and services. Software Setup and Inventory such as installed applications and install history, device update information. Microsoft Privacy Dashboard Updates to the Microsoft Privacy Dashboard include a new Activity History page, which aims to provide a clear and easy to navigate way to see the data that is saved with users' Microsoft accounts. The Microsoft Privacy Dashboard further allows users to manage their data and change what data is collected by adjusting the privacy settings on their devices or browser at any time. In the coming months, Microsoft will keep the slow roll-out of additional features that will allow users to: View and manage media consumption data, as well as product and service activity on the Activity History page Export for any of the data you see on the dashboard Delete specific items to allow for greater individual control

Mozilla started to integrate the read-it-later service Pocket in 2015 in the Firefox web browser. First as an option for users to save articles they encounter on the web for reading it at a later time and some sort of bookmarking alternative, and then later on to power recommendations from around the Web on Firefox's New Tab page in the US, Canada and Germany. Part of Firefox's userbase criticized Mozilla for integrating Pocket natively in the browser (as opposed to offering an add-on), others liked the integration and found it useful. Mozilla acquired the read-it-later service Pocket last year to gain full control over the service and use its vast archive of saved pages and articles as a basis for recommendations in the Firefox browser. The organization promised to improve transparency, and started to publish Pocket code. Firefox, Pocket and sponsored stories Mozilla revealed future features of Firefox's Pocket integration yesterday on the Future Releases blog. Mozilla's engineers plan to show personalized recommendations and sponsored stories on Firefox's New Tab page. Both features will land in Firefox Beta soon and only shown to a "small portion of U.S. users" to test the functionality and receive feedback on the implementation. "What’s next? We recently started testing personalized recommendations, and we will soon experiment with showing an occasional sponsored story within the Pocket Recommendations section in New Tab Page in Firefox Beta. This will be shown to a small portion of U.S. users as we start to test." The new features are experiments and it is not a given that they will find their way into the Firefox release channel. Firefox users can turn off sponsored content in the following way: Click on the cogwheel icon on Firefox's New Tab page. Uncheck "show sponsored stories" or "recommended by Pocket". Mozilla's motivation The current advertising model on the Web is broken according to Mozilla. "We believe the current model of web advertising is broken because it doesn’t respect user privacy, isn’t transparent, lacks control, all the while trending towards click-bait and low-quality content." Mozilla's right in my opinion when it states that, and the brokeness of the advertising system is what drives users towards installing content blockers. The organization uses Pocket's integration in Firefox to test a "responsible sponsored content model" that "supports high-quality content, respects user privacy, and that puts control back into the hands of users—and do so in a way that’s financially sustainable for the future health of the web". Mozilla's model differs from traditional advertising models in several ways: Privacy -- personalization without invading user privacy, collecting huge chunks of data or sharing it with third-parties. Quality -- valuable content not driven by clicks (clickbait). Control -- options to hide stories or turn the system off completely. Transparency -- sponsored stories are marked as such. Openness -- source code available. Closing Words I'm not the target audience for sponsored stories or Pocket's integration in general. Heck, I don't interact with the New Tab page at all, and use it only to load new websites by interacting with Firefox's address bar. This is not a Firefox-specific thing either, as I don't use the New Tab page in any browser. The usefulness of sponsored content depends largely on the selection algorithm. While some users may object to sponsored suggestions, many probably won't mind as long as the recommended content is a good match. Those who do mind can turn off sponsored stories easily or turn off Pocket completely.

ATP Electronics, a leading manufacturer of high-performance industrial memory and storage solutions, spearheads the implementation of industrial temperature (iTemp) support on its latest NVMe M.2 solid state drive modules. The new SSD modules support a wide operating temperature range of -40°C to 85°C to capably address the power and heat issues common in fanless embedded systems as well as extreme temperature variations in Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications, enabling them to perform reliably in harsh environments. When operating at high speeds in high-throughput scenarios, onboard thermal sensors can detect abnormal temperature elevation and automatically enable a mechanism that adjusts performance to cool the system. According to Peter Huang, ATP Head of Embedded Solid State Drive Business Unit, "ATP Dynamic Thermal Throttling intelligently regulates speed and power to reduce heat without aggressive declines in performance, unlike other thermal solutions that cause abrupt drops and thus compromise stability." Additionally, the low typical power consumption of 3.3V makes ATP's NVMe M.2 SSDs energy efficient, translating to longer drive usage and cost savings. ATP's iTemp NVMe M.2 2280 SSD modules take advantage of the PCIe Generation 3.0 x4 lane high-speed interface, delivering a bandwidth of up to 32 Gb/s (8 Gb/s per lane), which is four to six times the data transfer speed of previous-generation AHCI protocol on Serial ATA drives. Up to three times lower latency, sequential read-write speeds of up to 2,540/1,100 MB/s and random read IOPS (input/output per second) of 100,000, ensure fast and dependable performance to meet the data-intensive needs of industrial and mission-critical applications such as surveillance, medical imaging, and many network storage systems with fast caching requirements. Double-sided configuration achieves higher densities of up to 1 TB; Global Wear Leveling evens out the program/erase cycles across all blocks to prevent premature drive wear-out and increase drive longevity; and, TRIM support on Windows 7 and higher, as well as on the latest Linux Kernel, allows the drive to perform controller functions such as garbage collection in the background to improve overall endurance and performance.

Playboy has fired back a new volley in response to an assertion by Boing Boing and the EFF that linking to an archive of hundreds of centerfold playmates was fair use. Branding Boing Boing a "clickbait" site, Playboy told a federal court in California that the popular blog profits off the work of others and has no fair use defense. Late 2017, Boing Boing co-editor Xena Jardin posted an article in which he linked to an archive containing every Playboy centerfold image to date. “Kind of amazing to see how our standards of hotness, and the art of commercial erotic photography, have changed over time,” Jardin noted. While Boing Boing had nothing to do with the compilation, uploading, or storing of the Imgur-based archive, Playboy took exception to the popular blog linking to the album. Noting that Jardin had referred to the archive uploader as a “wonderful person”, the adult publication responded with a lawsuit (pdf), claiming that Boing Boing had commercially exploited its copyrighted images. Last week, with assistance from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Boing Boing parent company Happy Mutants filed a motion to dismiss in which it defended its right to comment on and link to copyrighted content without that constituting infringement. “This lawsuit is frankly mystifying. Playboy’s theory of liability seems to be that it is illegal to link to material posted by others on the web — an act performed daily by hundreds of millions of users of Facebook and Twitter, and by journalists like the ones in Playboy’s crosshairs here,” the company wrote. EFF Senior Staff Attorney Daniel Nazer weighed in too, arguing that since Boing Boing’s reporting and commenting is protected by copyright’s fair use doctrine, the “deeply flawed” lawsuit should be dismissed. Now, just a week later, Playboy has fired back. Opposing Happy Mutants’ request for the Court to dismiss the case, the company cites the now-famous Perfect 10 v. Amazon/Google case from 2007, which tried to prevent Google from facilitating access to infringing images. Playboy highlights the court’s finding that Google could have been held contributorily liable – if it had knowledge that Perfect 10 images were available using its search engine, could have taken simple measures to prevent further damage, but failed to do so. Turning to Boing Boing’s conduct, Playboy says that the company knew it was linking to infringing content, could have taken steps to prevent that, but failed to do so. It then launches an attack on the site itself, offering disparaging comments concerning its activities and business model. “This is an important case. At issue is whether clickbait sites like Happy Mutants’ Boing Boing weblog — a site designed to attract viewers and encourage them to click on links in order to generate advertising revenue — can knowingly find, promote, and profit from infringing content with impunity,” Playboy writes. “Clickbait sites like Boing Boing are not known for creating original content. Rather, their business model is based on ‘collecting’ interesting content created by others. As such, they effectively profit off the work of others without actually creating anything original themselves.” Playboy notes that while sites like Boing Boing are within their rights to leverage works created by others, courts in the US and overseas have ruled that knowingly linking to infringing content is unacceptable. Even given these conditions, Playboy argues, Happy Mutants and the EFF now want the Court to dismiss the case so that sites are free to “not only encourage, facilitate, and induce infringement, but to profit from those harmful activities.” Claiming that Boing Boing’s only reason for linking to the infringing album was to “monetize the web traffic that over fifty years of Playboy photographs would generate”, Playboy insists that the site and parent company Happy Mutants was properly charged with copyright infringement. Playboy also dismisses Boing Boing’s argument that a link to infringing content cannot result in liability due to the link having both infringing and substantial non-infringing uses. First citing the Betamax case, which found that maker Sony could not be held liable for infringement because its video recorders had substantial non-infringing uses, Playboy counters with the Grokster decision, which held that a distributor of a product could be liable for infringement, if there was an intent to encourage or support infringement. “In this case, Happy Mutants’ offending link — which does nothing more than support infringing content — is good for nothing but promoting infringement and there is no legitimate public interest in its unlicensed availability,” Playboy notes. In its motion to dismiss, Happy Mutants also argued that unless Playboy could identify users who “in fact downloaded — rather than simply viewing — the material in question,” the case should be dismissed. However, Playboy rejects the argument, claiming it is based on an erroneous interpretation of the law. Citing the Grokster decision once more, the adult publisher notes that the Supreme Court found that someone infringes contributorily when they intentionally induce or encourage direct infringement. “The argument that contributory infringement only lies where the defendant’s actions result in further infringement ignores the ‘or’ and collapses ‘inducing’ and ‘encouraging’ into one thing when they are two distinct things,” Playboy writes. As for Boing Boing’s four classic fair use arguments, the publisher describes these as “extremely weak” and proceeds to hit them one by one. In respect of the purpose and character of the use, Playboy discounts Boing Boing’s position that the aim of its post was to show “how our standards of hotness, and the art of commercial erotic photography, have changed over time.” The publisher argues that is the exact same purpose of Playboy magazine, while highliting its publication Playboy: The Compete Centerfolds, 1953-2016. Moving on to the second factor of fair use – the nature of the copyrighted work – Playboy notes that an entire album of artwork is involved, rather than just a single image. On the third factor, concerning the amount and substantiality of the original work used, Playboy argues that in order to publish an opinion on how “standards of hotness” had developed over time, there was no need to link to all of the pictures in the archive. “Had only representative images from each decade, or perhaps even each year, been taken, this would be a very different case — but Happy Mutants cannot dispute that it knew it was linking to an illegal library of ‘Every Playboy Playmate Centerfold Ever’ since that is what it titled its blog post,” Playboy notes. Finally, when considering the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work, Playbody says its archive of images continues to be monetized and Boing Boing’s use of infringing images jeopardizes that. “Given that people are generally not going to pay for what is freely available, it is disingenuous of Happy Mutants to claim that promoting the free availability of infringing archives of Playboy’s work for viewing and downloading is not going to have an adverse effect on the value or market of that work,” the publisher adds. While it appears the parties agree on very little, there is agreement on one key aspect of the case – its wider importance. On the one hand, Playboy insists that a finding in its favor will ensure that people can’t commercially exploit infringing content with impunity. On the other, Boing Boing believes that the health of the entire Internet is at stake. “The world can’t afford a judgment against us in this case — it would end the web as we know it, threatening everyone who publishes online, from us five weirdos in our basements to multimillion-dollar, globe-spanning publishing empires like Playboy,” the company concludes.

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Members of the Fleet, In our continuing mission to make Nebulance the best and most informative private TV centralized tracker, we are proud to introduce to you; People This feature is currently in the beta stage of development and we plan to enhance it further as we move forward. People is a good way for you to access further information about your favourite actor/actress. // So say we all