Amazon's video game boss just explained where its $970 million Twitch purchase fits into its most profitable business Amazon raised a lot of eyebrows when it bought the massively popular Twitch game-streaming service for $970 million in August 2014. Why it would spend so much cash for Twitch was a real head-scratcher --- live game broadcasts on the internet aren't exactly what you would call core to Amazon's retail business. Things got murkier in late 2016 when Amazon announced that it was getting into the game business directly with three new PC titles... Business Insider
In the land of 'dying' MMOs: Dark Age of Camelot My approach to exploring MMOs has so far been infused with a fair bit of slightly wanky critical distance: I've been fascinated far more by the passion of the communities, and hearing about what they love in these games, rather than getting massively immersed in the worlds myself. But I have to admit that taking part in a nocturnal siege in Dark Age of Camelot, where trebuchets, catapults and a thousand spells barraged the heavily-fortified keep of an infamously stubborn and defensive Midgardian general, was utterly riveting. Kotaku.co.uk
Windows File History - An inexpensive insurance policy Windows has always had some type of backup, but those backups haven't always been easy or reliable, so Carbonite, Mozy, and other backup services have proliferated. With the release of Windows 10, however, Microsoft has finally given us a truly useful backup. In Windows 10, Microsoft added new backup options, but kept several older ones as well. Unfortunately, Microsoft hasn't put all the backup options in one place, making it a little difficult for determine exactly what you need and where to go to find it. Hardware Secrets
Where are the autonomous lawnmowers? It's impossible to know when society began to manicure its front lawns. Truth be told --- cutting the grass was, and still is a necessity. But keeping the weeds at bay, trimming, edging and so forth is not. Having a nice lawn has become a status symbol of modern suburbia all across the globe. When the aliens arrive, one of the first things they will surely notice is how nice our front lawns are. This feature of our civilization could have only been made possible with the advent of specialized grass-cutting machines. Hackaday
Nvidia FCAT VR - preview of a new performance tool Even though virtual reality hasn't taken off with the momentum that many in the industry had expected on the heels of the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift launches last year, it remains one of the fastest growing aspects of PC hardware. More importantly for many, VR is also one of the key inflection points for performance moving forward; it requires more hardware, scalability, and innovation than any other sub-category including 4K gaming. PC Perspective
More on Bluetooth ingenico overlay skimmers This blog has featured several stories about "overlay" card and PIN skimmers made to be placed atop Ingenico-brand card readers at store self-checkout lanes. I'm revisiting the topic again because a security technician at a U.S.-based retailer recently shared a few photos of several of these devices pulled from compromised card terminals, and the images and his story offer a fair bit more detail than in previous articles. Krebs on Security
Netflix's new AI tweaks each scene individually to make video look good even on slow internet Annoying pauses in your streaming movies are going to become less common, thanks to a new trick Netflix is rolling out. It's using artificial intelligence techniques to analyze each shot in a video and compress it without affecting the image quality, thus reducing the amount of data it uses. The new encoding method is aimed at the growing contingent of viewers in emerging economies who watch video on phones and tablets. Quartz
Covert channels and poor decisions: The tale of DNSMessenger The Domain Name System (DNS) is one of the most commonly used Internet application protocols on corporate networks. It is responsible for providing name resolution so that network resources can be accessed by name, rather than requiring users to memorize IP addresses. While many organizations implement strict egress filtering as it pertains to web traffic, firewall rules, etc. many have less stringent controls in place to protect against DNS based threats. Talos
Donkey Kong's failing liver: What the death of the CRT display technology means for classic arcade machines The arcade is dead. You already knew that, but that industry's coffin is about to get another nail. The cathode-ray-tube technology that powered the monitors for nearly every classic arcade game in the twentieth century is defunct. Sony, Samsung, and others have left it behind for skinnier and more lucrative LCDs and plasmas, and the CRTs that are left are about to sell out. VentureBeat
Apple's devices lose luster in American classrooms Apple is losing its grip on American classrooms, which technology companies have long used to hook students on their brands for life. Over the last three years, Apple's iPads and Mac notebooks --- which accounted for about half of the mobile devices shipped to schools in the United States in 2013 --- have steadily lost ground to Chromebooks... The NY Times (also @ NYT: How a money-losing snap could be worth so much)
The plane so good it's still in production after 60 years It can seat four people, in a squeeze, and weighs a little under 800kg without fuel or its passengers. It has a maximum speed of 140mph (226km/h), though you could push this up to 185mph at a pinch - but the manufacturer would rather you didn't. And on a tank full of fuel, you could travel 800 miles (1,290km) - the equivalent of going from Berlin to Belfast, or New York to Madison, Wisconsin. BBC
What's the fastest Linux web browser? Firefox is easily the most popular Linux web browser. In the recent LinuxQuestions survey, Firefox took first place with 51.7 percent of the vote. Chrome came in second with a mere 15.67 percent. The other browsers all had, at most, scores in single percentages. But is Firefox really the fastest browser? I put them them to the test, and here's what I found. ZDNet
802.eleventy what? A deep dive into why Wi-Fi kind of sucks When wireless networking based around the 802.11b standard first hit consumer markets in the late nineties, it looked pretty good on paper. Promising "11 Mbps" compared to original wired Ethernet's 10 Mbps, a reasonable person might have thought 802.11b was actually faster than 10Mbps wired Ethernet connections. Ars Technica
The DVD format at 20: Where it's been and where will it go? It was 20 years ago this month that consumer electronics companies Sony and Toshiba launched a new home video format called Digital Video Disc, or DVD. The format promised a four-fold increase in resolution over VHS and the permanence of music CDs, in that the video would not degrade as you played it. Computerworld
Daimler to recall one million Mercedes globally after 51 fires Daimler AG (DAIGn.DE) said it will recall one million newer-model Mercedes-Benz vehicles worldwide due to the risk of fire, after 51 fires were reported. The German company said no injuries or deaths were reported relating to the vehicles that it will begin recalling in the U.S. market in July when parts become available. Reuters
PSA: OneDrive storage limits get cut down today - here's what you need to know Back in October, 2014, Microsoft promised an end to cloud storage limits, saying that anyone with a paid Office 365 subscription would get unlimited OneDrive storage. After upgrading a number of users to 10TB or unlimited storage, the company announced that it would be breaking that promise... Neowin