Tag: vanity-fair

Fallout 4 won’t be coming to Xbox 360 or PS3

Last week’s big announcement of the long-anticipated Fallout 4 included confirmation of Xbox One, PS4, and PC versions of the game. But there was no official word on any versions for the tens of millions of gamers who still use an Xbox 360 or PS3. Now, Bethesda has confirmed that those gamers will need to upgrade their hardware if they want to revisit the wasteland. “[ Fallout 4 ] is not coming to 360 and PS3,” community manager Matt Grandstaff said in a NeoGAF thread about the game. “The stuff we’re doing will never work there.” That’s good news from a technical standpoint—the development team won’t have to hold back the game’s design to make it run on aging hardware—but bad news for those who have yet to buy a new console. Fallout 4 is part of a small wave of major franchises ignoring older consoles in upcoming releases. Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 will be on “Xbox One, PS4 and PC. That’s it,” Treyarch studio head Mark Lamia told Eurogamer . Street Fighter V will be coming to PlayStation 4 and PC but not the aging PS3. And then there are first-party titles like Halo 5 , Forza Motorosport 6 , Uncharted 4 , and Ratchet & Clank that will be eschewing older consoles this time around. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Fallout 4 won’t be coming to Xbox 360 or PS3

Apple unveils the next version of OS X, “El Capitan”

SAN FRANCISCO—As usual, another opening-day WWDC keynote has brought with it another new version of OS X. The new version, El Capitan, introduces a handful of new features to the platform but is otherwise focused on refinement, both in the overall stability of the OS and in its visual identity (El Capitan switches the system font from Helvetica Neue to the Apple Watch’s San Francisco typeface , which changes the look of the OS in subtle but significant ways). Spotlight becomes “more expressive,” according to Apple VP Craig Federighi. There are also improvements to window management and the built-in apps. On stage, Federighi showed off an improvement to the UI where a shake of the mouse causes the cursor to temporarily grow huge—for finding the cursor when first sitting down. The updated version of Safari shipping with El Capitan introduces the concept of pinned sites, which will load instantly on starting up Safari and which will remain in persistent tabs in the Safari UI. The browser also now allows users to see which tabs are playing music (similar to Chrome), and to mute noisy tabs with a single gesture. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Apple unveils the next version of OS X, “El Capitan”

County sheriff warrantlessly used stingray 500+ times, claims to have no records

The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department (SCSD), the largest law enforcement agency in California’s capital region, has operated a stingray at least 500 times without a warrant in the last decade. But if you asked SCSD directly, even recently they wouldn’t give you a definite figure. As part of an ongoing investigation into stingray use nationwide, Ars filed a public records request with the SCSD  this year. And at the end of April, the SCSD responded. The department claimed that “no responsive documents exist,” essentially saying that there are no  records  detailing how many times its stingray has been used. That seemed a bit odd because in 2013,  local Sacramento television station News 10  obtained a Homeland Security grant application written by the SCSD. The proposal aimed to upgrade  the department’s stingray capabilities, and as part of its justification, the SCSD claimed to know how successful its device has been: Read 23 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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County sheriff warrantlessly used stingray 500+ times, claims to have no records

Florida science teacher suspended for signal-jamming students’ cell phones

A Florida high school teacher was suspended without pay for five days Tuesday for deploying a signal jammer in his science class to block students from using their mobile phones. Science teacher Dean Liptak. Superintendent Kurt Browning said in a Pasco County School Board reprimand letter  (PDF) to instructor Dean Liptak that he exercised “poor judgement” and “posed a serious risk to critical safety communications as well as the possibility of preventing others from making 9-1-1 calls.” Liptak was accused of jamming mobile devices from his Fivay High School classroom between March 31 and April 2. Verizon discovered the blockage on the cell tower located on campus. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Florida science teacher suspended for signal-jamming students’ cell phones

Bethesda counting down to an apparent Fallout announcement

We’re usually a bit reluctant to write about news that amounts to an announcement that an actual news announcement is coming soon. But when the announcement in question regards the much-loved  Fallout series, we’ll make a rare exception. So here we are, announcing that Bethesda has set up a countdown clock at fallout.bethesda.com letting us all watch the seconds tick by until… well, we’re not sure exactly. The only hints that we’re even expecting a Fallout announcement at all are that URL and the background “Indian head” test pattern familiar to anyone who has seen a recent Fallout loading screen. We’ll all find out what it means together when the countdown runs out at 10am EDT Wednesday morning, I guess. Bethesda recently announced that it would be hosting its first-ever pre-E3 press conference on June 14 , so it makes some sense that it would have big news to share for one of its biggest franchises. An teaser announcement of a new Fallout tomorrow could help soften the ground for a fuller reveal at that press conference. That would be similar to the extremely short Doom 4 teaser that came out last month, ahead of a promised longer trailer at the press conference. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Bethesda counting down to an apparent Fallout announcement

Nvidia announces G-Sync for laptops, reveals low-level tech details

The big news from Nvidia might be the release of the GTX 980 Ti , but the company has also announced some updates for G-Sync. The variable refresh rate technology, which synchronizes the refresh rate of a compatible monitor to the frame rate of a game, is finally making the jump from desktop to laptop. Upcoming laptops from Gigabyte, MSI, Asus, and Clevo are all set to support the technology, and will feature 75Hz panels from 1080p all the way up to UHD (4K). Desktop users aren’t being forgotten either: There are some new monitors—including a lust-worthy 34-inch 21:9 75Hz IPS Acer X34 panel—featuring an updated G-Sync module that finally contains more than just a single DisplayPort input. Interestingly, G-Sync for laptops makes use of the embedded DisplayPort (eDP) standard, a standardised interface for hooking up display panels directly to internal graphics cards. On the desktop, G-Sync can only be used with compatible monitors that contain Nvidia’s G-Sync module. Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Nvidia announces G-Sync for laptops, reveals low-level tech details

Comcast 2Gbps fiber to launch “in a bunch of markets this month”

Comcast’s plan to launch a 2Gbps fiber-to-the-home service by the end of May didn’t come to fruition, but the company says the rollout is being delayed only briefly and will go live in numerous cities this month. Comcast originally said that its “Gigabit Pro” service would be available during May in the Atlanta metro area, Nashville, Greater Chicago, and four cities in Florida (Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, and Jacksonville). Rollouts in June were to follow in Chattanooga, Tennessee; Northwest Indiana; and several parts of California (Chico, Fresno, Marysville/Yuba City, Merced, Modesto, Monterey, Sacramento, Salinas, San Francisco Bay Area, Santa Barbara County, Stockton and Visalia metro areas.) Customers in Atlanta and West Palm Beach who wanted to order Gigabit Pro complained about the lack of availability on the company’s support forums . A Comcast employee originally said the service “will be available in your area [Atlanta] come early May” but amended that to May 28 and finally told customers, “The launch of this has been temporarily delayed. No tentative date has been announced yet.” Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Comcast 2Gbps fiber to launch “in a bunch of markets this month”

Verizon FiOS reps know what TV channels you watch

If you call Verizon FiOS and try to cancel or downgrade your TV package, you might find that the FiOS rep knows almost as much about your TV viewing habits as you do. Verizon’s Rep Guidance software tells Verizon representatives what channels you watch to help them make a more effective sales pitch. The system, which also shows them how much Internet data you use and which pieces of TV equipment you use most, was detailed by a Verizon executive in a public presentation hosted by Data Driven NYC. A Quartz reporter  wrote about the presentation yesterday . Verizon “is now closely tracking exactly what you watch, what devices you use, and how much data you consume,” Quartz wrote. “It knows whether your household spars over DVR conflicts and how many hours your kids spend binge-watching shows on HBO. What’s more, the company is listening in on phone calls to customer service in real-time, with supervisors poised to jump at the moment they sense a fight brewing or hear trigger words from an unhappy customer, such as ‘switching to Time Warner Cable.'” Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Verizon FiOS reps know what TV channels you watch

Android M embraces USB Type-C, MIDI devices

USB Type-C is still a rarity today, but as the year goes on, the new port is going to begin showing up in more and more devices. In anticipation of this, Google has introduced a handful of features in the Android M release to support some of Type-C’s new features. Google hasn’t released a ton of information about the new features, but the most significant ones relate to the USB Power Delivery spec . A menu that pops up when you plug one USB Type-C device to another asks you what kind of connection you’re trying to make. The standard MTP and PTP file and photo transfer protocols, available in current versions of Android, are on this list, but the menu will also ask you if you’d like to charge the device or use it as a power supply for another device. The USB selection pop-up in Android M. Google This effectively makes Android M devices with USB Type-C ports into external batteries. Your tablet can charge your phone. Your phone could charge a camera battery or Bluetooth headset. Not every device combination makes sense (using a large laptop or tablet battery to charge a small phone battery seems useful; using a small phone battery to charge anything else seems ill-advised) but for compatible devices, it will be a handy feature. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Android M embraces USB Type-C, MIDI devices

AT&T wants to choose which online video services count against data caps

AT&T doesn’t want any rules preventing it from choosing which online video services count against its customers’ data caps. AT&T’s “Sponsored Data” program already charges businesses , often in the ad industry, for the right to deliver services without counting against customers’ mobile data caps. AT&T could potentially charge online video streaming services for exemptions from the caps imposed on AT&T home broadband subscribers as well or exempt its own online services from caps. Though AT&T doesn’t appear to have done this yet, the company this week asked the FCC to make sure it’s allowed to do so. AT&T’s request came after a group of companies and consumer advocacy organizations asked the Federal Communications Commission to prevent AT&T from granting data cap exemptions.  Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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AT&T wants to choose which online video services count against data caps