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First Person Shooters (Games)

Will Your TV Handle Xbox Series X Games That Tun at 120 FPS? (venturebeat.com) 75

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Jeff Grubb, writing for VentureBeat: One of the tidbits revealed during the first Xbox 20/20 event today is that Dirt 5 supports 120 frames per second on Xbox Series X. Publisher Codemasters' racing game is coming in October, but it supports Smart Delivery. So if you get it for Xbox One, you'll get the Xbox Series X version at no additional cost. And what does the Xbox Series X-optimized version of Dirt 5 get you? In an interview with the Xbox team, Codemasters confirmed that Dirt 5 supports the next-gen console's high-framerate feature. This means you can drive around the rally racer at 4K and 120 frames per second. High framerate is one of a number of key features for the next-gen consoles. And that makes sense. Racing games already have nearly photorealistic visuals. More graphical effects are not going to make much of a difference to the presentation of a Dirt 5. So this enables Codemasters to put that extra horsepower toward running the game faster.

OK, so the Xbox Series X can run Dirt 5 at up to 120fps, but that's not going to matter if you don't have the right display. High-refreshrate content is common on the PC, but consoles have primarily topped out at 60fps. Because of this it hasn't matter that most TVs top out at 60Hz. But it is a problem for the next-gen consoles. To actually see Dirt 5 running at 120fps, you'll need a TV that runs at 120Hz or faster. That means the TV updates its frames 120 times every second. The good news here is that a lot of TVs already have this feature. The bad news is that even if you have an HFR panel, support is a lot more complicated than that. The issue comes down to the audio/video interface running between your TV and the Xbox Series X.
Businesses

Rich Americans Activate Pandemic Escape Plans (bloomberg.com) 257

Posted by msmash from the tussle-continues dept.
As coronavirus infections tore across the U.S. in early March, a Silicon Valley executive called the survival shelter manufacturer Rising S Co. He wanted to know how to open the secret door to his multimillion-dollar bunker 11 feet underground in New Zealand. From a report: The tech chief had never used the bunker and couldn't remember how to unlock it, said Gary Lynch, general manager of Texas-based Rising S Co. "He wanted to verify the combination for the door and was asking questions about the power and the hot water heater and whether he needed to take extra water or air filters," Lynch said. The businessman runs a company in the Bay Area but lives in New York, which was fast becoming the world's coronavirus epicenter. "He went out to New Zealand to escape everything that's happening," Lynch said, declining to identify the bunker owner because he keeps his client lists private. "And as far as I know, he's still there."

For years, New Zealand has featured prominently in the doomsday survival plans of wealthy Americans worried that, say, a killer germ might paralyze the world. Isolated at the edge of the earth, more than 1,000 miles off the southern coast of Australia, New Zealand is home to about 4.9 million people, about a fifth as many as the New York metro area. The clean, green, island nation is known for its natural beauty, laid-back politicians and premier health facilities. In recent weeks, the country has been lauded for its response to the pandemic. It enforced a four-week lockdown early, and today has more recoveries than cases. Only 12 people have died from the disease. The U.S. death toll stands at more than 39,000, meaning that country's death rate per capita is about 50 times higher.

The underground global shelter network Vivos already has installed a 300-person bunker in the South Island, north of Christchurch, said Robert Vicino, the founder of the California-based company. He's fielded two calls in the past week from prospective clients eager to build additional shelters on the island. In the U.S., two dozen families have moved into a 5,000-person Vivos shelter in South Dakota, he said, where they're occupying a bunker on a former military base that's about three-quarters the size of Manhattan. Vivos has also built an 80-person bunker in Indiana, and is developing a 1000-person shelter in Germany. Rising S Co. has planted about 10 private bunkers in New Zealand over the past several years. The average cost is $3 million for a shelter weighing about 150 tons, but it can easily go as high as $8 million with additional features like luxury bathrooms, game rooms, shooting ranges, gyms, theaters and surgical beds.

Comment Retroactive Feature Abortion (Score 3, Insightful) 66

by raydobbs (#59918520) Attached to: Samsung's Older Smart TVs Are Losing Remote Control App Support

Samsung really needs to not partake in this practice - it makes people think they didn't make a good choice when they purchased a Samsung whatever. I know I already have that feeling about buying HP printers ever since they started removing features to sell newer network-attached printing devices.

Comment Economies need to move to survive (Score 2) 447

by raydobbs (#59865406) Attached to: Economic Shutdown Is Estimated To Save 600,000 American Lives

One cannot really keep an economy shut down for long, certainly not 18 months like the White House was throwing out there. You wouldn't have an economy (or country) to return to - literally there would be no production left, no economic worth left - no one but a very sliver of society would have the purchasing power to buy anything (and even fewer still would have survived up to this point). Sure, you might wait out COVID19, but the starvation, rampant crime, disorder and sociopolitical chaos would likely consume the nation - killing tens of thousands of people. Without jobs, people have no purchasing power, without purchasing power, they can't acquire necessities without stealing it from others, those who won't or can't out-muscle the haves will die. Handing money to the businesses doesn't really solve the problem - they will just store it and wait. Without consumers, most companies won't survive - they'll die out. All that production going idle will mean supplies will dry up. It would make Detroit look like a summer vacation on Fantasy Island comparatively. Think Somalia or the world of Mad Max - except without all the hope.

Comment Perhaps its karma? (Score 3, Interesting) 62

by raydobbs (#59639204) Attached to: Frontier, an ISP In 29 States, Plans To File For Bankruptcy

When I was using them a long time ago in a galaxy far far away - they were the WORST on rolling out services. They just wouldn't (not couldn't, just chose not to) compete with Charter Communications on internet connectivity. Where you could get decent connectivity through Charter (if you didn't mind their tech support being utterly worthless), Frontier was still offering ISDN at hundreds of dollars a month for a metered connection, and their phone service was run like they were Ma Bell in the 1950s. Perhaps this is karma catching up with them?
The Internet

'Why I Voted To Sell .ORG' (circleid.com) 70

Posted by msmash from the perspective dept.
Richard Barnes, Member of the Internet Society Board of Trustees, writes: I joined the board's unanimous decision to, sell the Public Interest Registry (PIR), the registry for the .org top-level domain, to Ethos Capital. Since this transaction has gotten some attention, I'd like to speak a little about why, in my estimation, this deal is a good one for the Internet. It basically comes down to two things: 1. The Internet Society does great work protecting the Internet and bringing it to the people who need it most -- work that is way more impactful than leasing domain names. This transaction secures that work's future and independence. 2. Ethos is a worthy successor to the Internet Society as the steward of .org.

There's no doubt that .org has a big impact on the online brand and identity of nonprofits. But the impact of the Internet Society is much broader than that. For those who might be unfamiliar with the Internet Society, our mission is as follows: 1. The Internet Society supports and promotes the development of the Internet as a global technical infrastructure, a resource to enrich people's lives, and a force for good in society. 2. Our work aligns with our goals for the Internet to be open, globally-connected, secure, and trustworthy. We seek collaboration with all who share these goals. [...] This transaction will put that bigger mission on a solid footing -- so that the Internet Society can provide much more substantive help to nonprofits than merely leasing domain names, and with more continuity over time. While it's true that running .org provided a relatively steady income stream, it effectively staked most of our revenue on a single business, and required a certain amount of our resources to be spent managing that business, distracting from the broader mission. Especially as PIR has grown over time, this situation has become increasingly untenable. Establishing a more diverse portfolio of investments will allow us to have more predictable revenue over time, and to take a longer-range perspective when it comes to achieving our mission.
Businesses

2,000 WeWork Employees To Lose Their Jobs As Former CEO Adam Neumann Prepares To Walk Away With at Least $1 Billion (bloomberg.com) 261

Posted by msmash from the startup-world dept.
WeWork's value has tumbled, about 2,000 employees are being cut and many investors are nursing losses after the firm's bailout. But founder Adam Neumann is still a billionaire. From a report: SoftBank's proposed rescue package of WeWork involves Neumann selling about $1 billion of stock and getting a $185 million consulting fee from the Japanese firm even as the deal values the struggling office-sharing company at $8 billion, according to people familiar with the transaction. That's down from an estimated $47 billion at the start of the year. Neumann will leave the company's board though he still can assign two seats. On these terms, Neumann's net worth would be at least $1 billion, according to calculations by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. While that's a fraction of what it was on paper in January -- the last time SoftBank made an investment in WeWork -- it's a remarkable return from a business that has never made a profit and seen its initial public offering spurned by skeptical investors. Box CEO Aaron Levie quipped, "I've read almost every book on startups, and somehow have just completely missed the chapters that covered this part of the strategy."

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