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PC Gamer’s Wes Fenlon just changed my life (and improved my K/D ratio)

Jul18
by on July 18, 2018 at 11:44 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, gaming


It’s not often that a story in a gaming publication has such a profound impact on one’s life. Today, though, I found that story. I owe a sincere debt of gratitude to Wes Fenlon, and the publication that employs him, PC Gamer. For both, today, improved my K/D ratio dramatically, if only by curing my own stupidity — at least in this regard. For some — assuming there are others like Wes and I — we game in much the same way as we type. That is to say, fingers on the home row, with your pinky on the A key,…

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The Culling 2’s failure should warn devs away from battle royale rip-offs

Jul18
by on July 18, 2018 at 11:04 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, distract, gaming


About a week ago, video game developer Xaviant launched the sequel to one of the games that kicked off the battle royale craze, The Culling. Part 2 was supposed to up the ante with improvements on the original. To say it failed would be a huge understatement. In the week since its launch the developers have not only pulled it from online marketplaces, but are offering refunds to anyone who purchased it. As if that weren’t enough, they’ve actually decided to revert the first game in the series to its early access form and develop it as a free to play…

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Former soldiers use AI to wage war on convenience store lines

Jul18
by on July 18, 2018 at 9:30 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, artificial intelligence, Insights


Trigo Vision, an AI startup founded by former members of the Israeli army’s special forces and intelligence community, just came out of stealth mode with a target in its sights: Amazon’s Go store. When Amazon opened its cashier-less store in Seattle earlier this year, it was hailed as the future of brick-and-mortar shops. But, so far, there’s just the one. And even if the company follows through on plans to open half a dozen more, the locations will be little more than a novelty. There are more than 150,000 convenience stores and 40,000 grocery markets in the US alone. Amazon…

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A brief history of the world’s most controversial emoji

Jul18
by on July 18, 2018 at 8:33 pm
Posted In: Apps, Around the Web


In recent years, few emoji have caused as big of a stir as the gun — both for what it looks like and what it represents, or represented, at least. The pistol was released as part of Unicode 6.0, the first standard to support emoji. At the time, almost every service rendered the emoji as an actual gun — a revolver or, in Google’s case, a gold-plated blunderbuss. Microsoft was the only outlier, showing a funky alien ray gun instead, though it eventually changed this to a revolver. The emoji has always had a bit of a negative connotation, just like the…

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Gfycat makes it dead-simple to drop GIFs into your Gmail replies

Jul18
by on July 18, 2018 at 5:00 pm
Posted In: Apps, Around the Web


If you’re all about GIFs in your digital correspondence, you’ll be glad to know that Gfycat’s built a tool to bring them to your inbox, so your replies are 💥 The company’s taking advantage of Gmail’s add-ons platform, which lets you add plugins from third-party developers and access them from a toolbar on the right side of your inbox. Once installed from the G Suite Marketplace, Gfycat’s add-on is easy enough to use: when you’re reading an email conversation and want to reply with a GIF, click the Gfycat button on the sidebar on your right, and it’ll bring up…

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