More Evidence Of Rumoured Switch Mini Surfaces Via Accessory Maker Bigben
There have been rumours circulating for some time now about the existence of a Switch Pro and Switch Lite model.
The Wall Street Journal was the first to report on a possible hardware revision and this was eventually followed by the Japanese business publication Nikkei – revealing one of the new systems would be smaller and cheaper. Then, last month, Chinese gaming accessory maker HonSon listed a number of “Switch Mini” accessories.
Now, there has supposedly been a “Switch Mini accessory” photo leak (thanks, WinFuture). The images of a Switch Mini silicon sleeve come from the European accessory designer and game publisher, Bigben. According to the source, “Mini Switch 2” is written on the red label of the packaging (see above).
The image below is believed to be a render, illustrating what Nintendo’s revised hardware would look like in the silicon case.
What do you think about this? Are you expecting Nintendo to announce a Switch Mini in the near future? Tell us below.
In the past, kings and leaders used oracles and magicians to help them predict the future — or at least get some good advice due to their supposed power to perceive hidden information. Nowadays, we live in a society obsessed with quantifying everything. So we have data scientists to do this job.
Data scientists use statistical models, numerical techniques and advanced algorithms that didn’t come from statistical disciplines, along with the data that exist on databases, to find, to infer, to predict data that doesn’t exist yet. Sometimes this data is about the future. That is why we do a lot of predictive analytics and prescriptive analytics.
Here are some questions to which data scientists help find answers:
Who are the students with high propensity to abandon the class? For each one, what are the reasons for leaving?
Which house has a price above or below the fair price? What is the fair price for a certain house?
What are the hidden groups that my clients classify themselves?
Which future problems this premature child will develop?
How many calls will I get in my call center tomorrow 11:43 AM?
My bank should or should not lend money to this customer?
Note how the answer to all these question is not sitting in any database waiting to be queried. These are all data that still doesn’t exist and has to be calculated. That is part of the job we data scientists do.
Throughout this article you’ll learn how to prepare a Fedora system as a Data Scientist’s development environment and also a production system. Most of the basic software is RPM-packaged, but the most advanced parts can only be installed, nowadays, with Python’s pip tool.
Jupyter — the IDE
Most modern data scientists use Python. And an important part of their work is EDA (exploratory data analysis). EDA is a manual and interactive process that retrieves data, explores its features, searches for correlations, and uses plotted graphics to visualize and understand how data is shaped and prototypes predictive models.
Jupyter is a web application perfect for this task. Jupyter works with Notebooks, documents that mix rich text including beautifully rendered math formulas (thanks to mathjax), blocks of code and code output, including graphics.
Notebook files have extension .ipynb, which means Interactive Python Notebook.
Setting up and running Jupyter
First, install essential packages for Jupyter (using sudo):
$ sudo dnf install python3-notebook mathjax sscg
You might want to install additional and optional Python modules commonly used by data scientists:
The parts in red must be changed to match your folders. Parts in blue were already there after you created your password. Parts in green are the crypto-related files generated by sscg.
Create a folder for your notebook files, as configured in the notebook_dir setting above:
$ mkdir $HOME/Notebooks
Now you are all set. Just run Jupyter Notebook from anywhere on your system by typing:
$ jupyter notebook
Or add this line to your $HOME/.bashrc file to create a shortcut command called jn:
alias jn='jupyter notebook'
After running the command jn, access https://your-fedora-host.com:8888 from any browser on the network to see the Jupyter user interface. You’ll need to use the password you set up earlier. Start typing some Python code and markup text. This is how it looks:
Jupyter with a simple notebook
In addition to the IPython environment, you’ll also get a web-based Unix terminal provided by terminado. Some people might find this useful, while others find this insecure. You can disable this feature in the config file.
JupyterLab — the next generation of Jupyter
JupyterLab is the next generation of Jupyter, with a better interface and more control over your workspace. It’s currently not RPM-packaged for Fedora at the time of writing, but you can use pip to get it installed easily:
Then run your regular jupiter notebook command or jn alias. JupyterLab will be accessible from http://your-linux-host.com:8888/lab.
Tools used by data scientists
In this section you can get to know some of these tools, and how to install them. Unless noted otherwise, the module is already packaged for Fedora and was installed as prerequisites for previous components.
Numpy
Numpy is an advanced and C-optimized math library designed to work with large in-memory datasets. It provides advanced multidimensional matrix support and operations, including math functions as log(), exp(), trigonometry etc.
Pandas
In this author’s opinion, Python is THE platform for data science mostly because of Pandas. Built on top of numpy, Pandas makes easy the work of preparing and displaying data. You can think of it as a no-UI spreadsheet, but ready to work with much larger datasets. Pandas helps with data retrieval from a SQL database, CSV or other types of files, columns and rows manipulation, data filtering and, to some extent, data visualization with matplotlib.
Matplotlib
Matplotlib is a library to plot 2D and 3D data. It has great support for notations in graphics, labels and overlays
matplotlib pair of graphics showing a cost function searching its optimal value through a gradient descent algorithm
Seaborn
Built on top of matplotlib, Seaborn’s graphics are optimized for a more statistical comprehension of data. It automatically displays regression lines or Gauss curve approximations of plotted data.
StatsModels provides algorithms for statistical and econometrics data analysis such as linear and logistic regressions. Statsmodel is also home for the classical family of time series algorithms known as ARIMA.
Normalized number of passengers across time (blue) and ARIMA-predicted number of passengers (red)
Scikit-learn
The central piece of the machine-learning ecosystem, scikit provides predictor algorithms for regression (Elasticnet, Gradient Boosting, Random Forest etc) and classification and clustering (K-means, DBSCAN etc). It features a very well designed API. Scikit also has classes for advanced data manipulation, dataset split into train and test parts, dimensionality reduction and data pipeline preparation.
XGBoost
XGBoost is the most advanced regressor and classifier used nowadays. It’s not part of scikit-learn, but it adheres to scikit’s API. XGBoost is not packaged for Fedora and should be installed with pip. XGBoost can be accelerated with your nVidia GPU, but not through its pip package. You can get this if you compile it yourself against CUDA. Get it with:
$ pip3 install xgboost --user
Imbalanced Learn
imbalanced-learn provides ways for under-sampling and over-sampling data. It is useful in fraud detection scenarios where known fraud data is very small when compared to non-fraud data. In these cases data augmentation is needed for the known fraud data, to make it more relevant to train predictors. Install it with pip:
$ pip3 install imblearn --user
NLTK
The Natural Language toolkit, or NLTK, helps you work with human language data for the purpose of building chatbots (just to cite an example).
SHAP
Machine learning algorithms are very good on predicting, but aren’t good at explaining why they made a prediction. SHAP solves that, by analyzing trained models.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 07-02-2019, 11:28 AM - Forum: Windows
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How consumer goods companies are unlocking the power of data
Did you know that an incredible 90% of all data in existence today was created in just the last two years? We’re talking about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data per day.
I recently shared this mind-blowing fact along with awesome customer success stories and our strategic approach at the Consumer Goods Forum 2019. In case you haven’t been, it’s a veritable ‘who’s who’ in consumer goods attends this flagship event, including more than 1,000 C-level executives from over 70 countries.
It was incredible for me to see so many household-name brands thinking about how to unlock the power of their data, how to use AI and other technologies to create more innovative products, and how to get so much closer to their consumers. Another very consistent themes I heard was around how to leverage data for sustainability and our environment.
Of course, the world we live in now is increasingly digital and data is on overdrive. We’re seeing disruption and change everywhere, driven by the explosion of that data. It’s being generated at a break-neck pace, flooding out of the dozens of connected devices we use every day at work and at home, and it shows no signs of slowing down.
With all this data at our disposal, why does Nielsen data show that 80% of new product launches by fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies fail? It’s all about what they’re doing with their data, how they’re storing it, analyzing it, continuing to reevaluate it and creating digital feedback loops with it.
So how can consumer goods companies unlock their data to deliver more authentic brand experiences, be good for the planet or increase their speed to market? At the Consumer Goods Forum, I talked about the importance of data to the future of consumer goods companies and how our work with Starbucks and Carlsberg demonstrates a number of strategic consumer goods scenarios that show we are partnering with them to unlock the power of that data.
Starbucks
Microsoft is partnering with Starbucks on several initiatives, including one called bean-to-cup. It’s a real-time, data-fueled approach to transparency and traceability using Blockchain. It gives:
Customers details on where their coffee was sourced and roasted, as well as tasting notes
Farmers access to data, such as where their beans end up in consumers’ cups; and
Starbucks digital, “real-time traceability” to its supply chains all the way from bean/farm to cup
Carlsberg
Founded in 1847, Carlsberg is now using technology to create beer.
Faced with increasing global competition from large, established brands as well as smaller more niche microbreweries, the company wanted to get closer to its customers in innovative new ways. So Carlsberg launched its Beer Fingerprinting Project, which uses AI solutions, including machine learning algorithms, to measure the flavors and aromas created by yeast and other ingredients.
For instance, sensors can tell the difference between various pilsners and lagers, and researchers are now fine-tuning the system to help them produce better tasting beer. And they’re working to map a flavor fingerprint for each sample to reduce the time it takes to research taste combinations and processes by up to a third, which will help the company get more distinct beers to market faster.
We are all creating more data every single day, adding to a phenomenal – a growing – trove of information across the globe. For consumer goods companies, turning this data into useful and actionable insights that help them deliver personal experiences and develop new products we didn’t even know we needed is the key to the future.
Samsung on Monday invited press to attend an Unpacked media event in New York on Aug. 7, where the Korean tech giant is expected to unveil its next-generation Galaxy Note 10 phablet.
Clueing media in to what might be announced at Barclays Center in Brooklyn next month, the invitations feature a stylus pointing to what appears to be a small camera lens, reports CNET. The Samsung Galaxy logo sits across from the event’s date and a URL pointing to Samsung’s website, where Unpacked will be streamed.
As noted by CNETin June, Barclays Center is where Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Note 9 in 2018.
According to leaks and insider information, the upcoming Note 10 is said to retain the large phablet form factor that has made the device popular among power users. True to form, Samsung is expected to launch a model with a 6.3-inch screen, and could raise the stakes by introducing a “Pro” version that measures 6.75 inches on the diagonal.
Rumblings suggest a “hole-punch” display design for the front-facing camera — perhaps alluded to in the invite — while the rear-facing array could boast four high-resolution shooters. Long a platform reserved for Samsung’s latest-and-greatest technology, Note 10 might also integrate 5G connectivity, at least on certain models.
Samsung is looking for a win after the embarrassing Galaxy Fold snafu. The Fold, which was announced earlier this year as one of the first consumer devices to include a bendble OLED screen, ran into trouble before it landed in customer hands, with early reviewers noting the display was easily broken. The company subsequently delayed launch as it evaluated the situation, a hold that remains in effect today. On Monday, Samsung Electronics CEO D.J. Koh admitted the original launch timeline was too aggressive.
A Frugal Gamer’s Guide to Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius
By Jarrett Green01 Jul 2019
E3 2019 may be quickly retreating into the distant past, but that doesn’t mean it’s not still on our minds. Specifically for me, I can’t stop thinking about Square Enix’s conference. The Final Fantasy 7 Remake demo was good, of course. But for me, I can’t get over that Final Fantasy Brave Exvius (iOS | Android) had such a significant chunk of time dedicated to it (and its eventual spin off) on a main stage presentation at the biggest American games conference.
Sure, it was maybe five minutes, but five minutes is a lot for a gacha game. The move was a winner for Square. Exvius was a trending search shortly after the presentation. 39 million people worldwide have downloaded it, and there was still room to attract new players. That’s saying something.
If you’ve come to this guide, I can only assume that you are one of those new players. Welcome to the wild world of Brave Exvius, full of pretty sprites and number crunching. It can be incredibly overwhelming to step into it (as any gacha game, really) and try to get your bearings.
There is plenty to learn about BE, but I want to focus on what I consider to be the most important thing in the game: money. More specifically, how to avoid spending any of it on this game.
Earning Lapis
Lapis is the premier currency of Brave Exvius. With it, you can buy attempts at drawing the characters, slots in your various inventories, extra tries if you fail certain missions. Really, it’s the lifeblood of your progress in this game.
You’ll notice that it’s pretty expensive to buy outright. For one US dollar, you can get 120 lapis, which is about enough to buy 5 slots inventory for equipment and materials. For $4, you’ll get 500 lapis, which is enough for one character summon attempt. Lapis is a pretty expensive currency as far as gacha games go. You’ll pay out the nose for any significant amount of it. Good thing there are A LOT of ways to earn it for free.
The easiest way to do this is through world quests. Besides having tons of references to main line Final Fantasy games, FFBE has its own original narrative that’s currently in its second season. If you’re just starting, that means that there is tons of latent lapis just waiting for you to scoop up. All you have to do is hit each location and battle through the scenarios.
Make extra sure that you are completing the missions each stage has. These can require you to kill a specific enemy in a certain time frame or cast a certain type of spell. These rewards seem small, but they add up quickly!
Another task you should add to your routine is completing daily quests. Dailies are 5 (8 on weekends) macro objectives that reward you with Gil, energy, and, of course, lapis. When you complete all of the dailies, which could include tasks like doing a particular vortex quest a number of times for example, you are rewarded with 50 lapis. That’s 350 lapis a week. Not too shabby.
Another pretty simple way to gain some lapis is in the Arena. The Arena pits a team of your making against other people’s AI controlled teams. You battle up the rankings in order to win rewards at the end of each weekly arena period.
You don’t need to rank high to earn lapis, though. All you have to do is participate at least 5 times, and you will 40 lapis. You can do this once a day.
There’s a couple other ways to earn lapis that can sometimes be more difficult to do for new players. Firstly, there are plenty of Vortex quests that provide Lapis as a reward for some of the missions. These can be the limited time event quests or the more static special boss challenges that will also reward you with rare items. These can be tough for an unseasoned party, though.
You can gain lapis less reliably through Trophy Rewards which are meta objectives that can be achieved through just playing the game. These include casting a certain number of spells, or winning a certain amount of battles in the arena. This “certain amount” can sometimes be in the thousands, so take your time with it. You’ll be pretty well rewarded though – 500 lapis awaits you at the “gold” level trophy.
Spending Lapis
So you have this pile of beautiful blue money and need to know the best ways to spend it. We can help you there.
Step-Up Summons are widely considered the best overall bang for your buck when it comes to spending lapis on summoning characters. Step-ups are a gradually scaling banner that allows you to pull for specific high rank characters in waves. The first step up usually costs a lower amount of lapis, then it gets higher each step, with more opportunity for success as you go up. The bonuses you have to draw specific characters gives this a significant edge against just drawing on 10+1’s. This usually requires a pretty big lapis investment to go through all of the steps, though. So make sure there’s something you really want in them before committing.
A good way to get a lot of value out of your lapis, especially for new players, is drawing from the ½ off Featured Summon pool. There’s a bonus to the chances of pulling whatever the featured units are that week, and it costs only 250 lapis instead of 500. The only time spending lapis on a single pull is worth it is for this daily draw.
You shouldn’t spend lapis to retry a battle. It costs 100 to do so, and even though you will return at full life, and full limit burst gauges, you could simply retry the battle for free. Energy is easy to wait for, and you’ll procure energy replenishing items in your day to day grind.
Speaking of energy, if you don’t want to wait it out, you can actually spend lapis to refill your energy bar. How you should go about doing this depends on your rank (which determines your maximum energy). A bundle of items exists that grants you a set of energy replenishment items. One is just 100 flat energy that is used immediately. You also get a pair of NRG Restore 10 potions, which restore 10 energy each. If you have less than 120 total energy, this is the right package for you, because if you can’t actually use the NRG potions right now, you can store them until you can. Once you get over 120 total energy, you’re better off spending that 100 lapis to fully replenish your current energy straight up.
Buying other bundles with lapis can be a tricky proposition. Generally speaking, the ones even worth looking at are the bundles that feature Rare Summon Tickets. These provide one draw per ticket and are common rewards in Vortex quests. It’s difficult to place a hard value on a summon ticket, but seeing as a daily single draw from the ½ off Featured Summon Pool is 250 lapis, we can assume that each ticket is probably worth that too. Spending too much more than that on a ticket is practically being ripped off.
Follow these simple rules, internalize the habits, and you will be sitting on a hoard of Lapis in no time, without spending a single cent.
Anything else you want to know about Brave Exvius? Got any other tips you want to share with the community? Let us know in the comments!
Every month Epic Games make several assets on their asset store free for that month and July is no exception. You have to “buy” the content during the month of July, at which point it is yours forever. In addition each month they release a few assets that are free forever.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 07-02-2019, 03:46 AM - Forum: Windows
- No Replies
Improving the Office app experience in virtual environments
Microsoft 365 is designed to help organizations digitally transform workplace collaboration. Many customers that I work with use virtualization, and they’re always looking for ways to cut costs and improve the user experience. To help, we acquired FSLogix last November, and today I’m pleased to announce four new capabilities to further improve the user experience in virtualized environments:
FSLogix technology, which improves the performance of Office 365 ProPlus in multi-user virtual environments, is now available at no additional cost for Microsoft 365 customers.
Windows Server 2019 will add support for OneDrive Files On-Demand in the coming months.
Office 365 ProPlus, our flagship Office experience, will be supported on Windows Server 2019.
And we’ve added new capabilities to Outlook, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams in Office 365 ProPlus to improve the user experience in a virtualized environment.
Get the same reliable experience with Office apps in any environment with FSLogix
The FSLogix container technology is now fully integrated with Office apps in virtual environments. This technology improves the speed and reliability of virtualized Office apps to feel like the experience of using Office apps on a dedicated machine. The FSLogix containers work in virtualized environments, including those provided by Microsoft, Citrix, and VMWare. This technology is now included at no extra charge if you are licensed for any of the following Microsoft solutions:
Microsoft 365 E3/E5/A3/A5/Student Use Benefits/F1/Business
Easily access OneDrive Files On-Demand with Windows Server 2019
Using OneDrive Files On-Demand, people can access all their files in OneDrive while only downloading the ones they’re using to save hard drive space on their devices. In the coming months, Windows Server 2019 will support OneDrive Files On-Demand for virtualized Office apps users. This support will couple the fast access to files that users love, with reduced User Profile Disk storage requirements and cost savings that businesses need. Learn more about how to take advantage of this new capability with Windows Server 2019.
Run Office 365 ProPlus on Windows Server 2019
While Office 365 ProPlus provides the best experience when running on Windows 10, we know some of you rely on Windows Server to provide virtual desktop services for your users. For those still needing to migrate from Windows Server 2008/R2 before it reaches end of support in January 2020, or from Windows Server 2012/R2 before the October 2020 end of support for connectivity to Office 365 data, I’m happy to share that we’ll support Office 365 ProPlus running on Windows Server 2019. This enables you to take advantage of the Files On-Demand capabilities coming to Windows Server 2019 I mentioned above, and to leverage the latest Windows Server platform.
Get a better experience with Office apps in virtual environments
There are also significant enhancements to the virtualization experience for several apps in Office 365, including Outlook, OneDrive, and Teams.
Outlook Cached Mode improvements help people running Outlook on virtual desktops access email and calendars faster:
Sync Inbox before Calendar means people get faster access to email so they can start working right away.
Reduce the number of folders that are synced by default, and an Admin option to reduce the Calendar sync window; both of which help syncs complete faster.
OneDrive now features a per-machine installation option, allowing people to share a single installation of the OneDrive app while still maintaining their own individual folders and files as if they are on their own device.
Teams also has a per-machine installation for Chat and Collaboration. In the coming months, we’ll offer Calling and Meetings in Teams through Audio/Video Media optimization in collaboration with Citrix. We’re also planning additional Teams enhancements, including improved app deployment, support for Windows Virtual Desktop, performance enhancements, and optimized caching for non-persistent setups.
Windows Search per-user index allows each user profile to persist its own search index, so that search is fast and individualized.
If virtualization is an important part of your IT strategy, we think you’re going to love these new capabilities. If you’re interested in evaluating the Office 365 apps enhancements we announced today in your own virtual environment, please visit the Microsoft Download Center.
Configuring a Server-side Blazor app with Azure App Configuration
July 1st, 2019
With .NET Core 3.0 Preview 6, we added authentication & authorization support to server-side Blazor apps. It only takes a matter of seconds to wire up an app to Azure Active Directory with support for single or multiple organizations. Once the project is created, it contains all the configuration elements in its appsettings.json to function. This is great, but in a team environment – or in a distributed topology – configuration files lead to all sorts of problems. In this post, we’ll take a look at how we can extract those configuration values out of JSON files and into an Azure App Configuration instance, where they can be used by other teammates or apps.
Setting up Multi-org Authentication
In the .NET Core 3.0 Preview 6 blog post we explored how to use the Individual User Accounts option in the authentication dialog to set up a Blazor app with ASP.NET Identity, so we won’t go into too much detail. Essentially, you click the Change link during project creation.
In this example I’ll be using an Azure Active Directory application to allow anyone with a Microsoft account to log into the app, so I’ll select Work or School Accounts and then select Cloud – Multiple Organizations in the Change Authentication dialog.
Once the project is created, my AzureAD configuration node contains the 3 key pieces of information my app’s code will need to authenticate against Azure Active Directory; my tenant URL, the client ID for the AAD app Visual Studio created for me during the project’s creation, and the callback URI so users can get back to my app once they’ve authenticated.
Whilst this is conveniently placed here in my appsettings.json file, it’d be more convenient if I didn’t need any local configuration files. Having a centralized configuration-management solution would be easier to manage, as well as give me the ability to keep my config out of source control, should there come a point when things like connection strings need to be shared amongst developers.
Azure App Configuration
Azure App Configuration is a cloud-based solution for managing all of your configuration values. Once I have an Azure App Configuration instance set up in my subscription, adding the configuration settings is simple. By default, they’re hidden from view, but I can click Show Values or select an individual setting for editing or viewing.
Convenient .NET Core IConfiguration Integration
The Azure App Configuration team has shipped a NuGet package containing extensions to ASP.NET and .NET Core that enable developers the ability of using the service, but without needing to change all your code that already makes use of IConfiguration. To start with, install the Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.AzureAppConfigurationNuGet package.
You’ll need to copy the connection string from the Azure Portal to enable connectivity between your app and Azure App Configuration.
Once that value has been copied, you can use it with either dotnet user-secrets to configure your app, or using a debug-time environment variable. Though it seems like we’ve created yet one more configuration value to track, think about it this way: this is the only value you’ll have to set using an environment variable; all your other configuration can be set via Azure App Configuration in the portal.
Using the Azure App Configuration Provider for .NET Core
Once the NuGet package is installed, the code to instruct my .NET Core code to use Azure App Configuration whenever it reads any configuration values from IConfiguration is simple. In Program.cs I’ll call the ConfigureAppConfiguration middleware method, then use the AddAzureAppConfiguration extension method to get the connection string from my ASPNETCORE_AzureAppConfigConnectionString environment variable. If the environment variable isn’t set, the call will noop and the other configuration providers will do the work.
This is great, because I won’t even need to change existing – or in this case, template-generated code – I just tell my app to use Azure App Configuration and I’m off to the races. The full update to Program.cs is shown below.
// using Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.AzureAppConfiguration; public static IHostBuilder CreateHostBuilder(string[] args) => Host.CreateDefaultBuilder(args) .ConfigureAppConfiguration((hostingContext, config) => { config.AddAzureAppConfiguration(options => { var azureAppConfigConnectionString = hostingContext.Configuration["AzureAppConfigConnectionString"]; options.Connect(azureAppConfigConnectionString); }); }) .ConfigureWebHostDefaults(webBuilder => { webBuilder.UseStartup<Startup>(); });
When I run the app, it first reaches out to Azure App Configuration to get all the settings it needs to run and then works as if it were configured locally using appsettings.json. As long as my teammates or other services needing these values have the connection string to the Azure App Configuration instance holding the settings for the app, they’re good.
Now, I can remove the configuration values entirely from the appsettings.json file. If I want to control the logging behavior using Azure App Configuration, I could move these left-over settings out, too. Even though I’ll be using Azure App Configuration as, the other providers are still there.
Dynamic Re-loading
Log levels are a good example of how the Azure App Configuration service can enable dynamic reloading of configuration settings you might need to tweak frequently. By moving my logging configuration into Azure App Configuration, I can change the log level right in the portal. In Program.cs, I can use the Watch method to specify which configuration settings I’ll want to reload when they change.
The default load-time is 30 seconds, but now, should I need to turn up the volume on my logs to get a better view of what’s happening in my site, I don’t need to re-deploy or even stop my site. Simply changing the values in the portal will be enough – 30 seconds later the values will be re-loaded from Azure App Configuration and my logging will be more verbose.
Configuration Source Ordering
The JsonConfigurationSource configuration sources – those which load settings from appsettings.json and appsettings.{Environment}.json – are loaded during the call to CreateDefaultBuilder. So, by the time I call AddAzureAppConfiguration to load in the AzureAppConfigurationSource, the JSON file providers are already in the configuration sources list.
The importance of ordering is evident here; should I want to override the configuration values coming from Azure App Configuration with my local appsettings.json or appsettings.Development.json files, I’d need to re-order the providers in the call to ConfigureAppConfiguration. Otherwise, the JSON file values will be loaded first, then the last source (the one that will “win”) will be the Azure App Configuration source.
Try it Out
Any multi-node or microservice-based application topology benefits from centralized configuration, and teams benefit from it by not having to keep track of so many configuration settings, environment variables, and so on. Take a look over the Azure App Configuration documentation. You’ll see that there are a multitude of other features, like Feature Flags and dark deployment support. Then, create an instance and try wiring your existing ASP.NET Code up to read configuration values from the cloud.
Avengers: Endgame returned to theatres this weekend with a small amount of bonus footage, which had the potential to push its total box office gross beyond that of the No. 1 movie of all time, Avatar. But its performance this weekend, just ahead of the theatrical debut of Spider-Man: Far From Home, was not enough to push Marvel's biggest movie ever past Avatar--and it may never do so.
That's according to "box office insiders" who spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about the matter. The re-release pulled in $5.5 million in the US and Canada this weekend and a further $2.3 million from overseas markets. In total, Endgame has now made $2.76 billion worldwide. That's about $27 million short of Avatar's $2.78 billion record.
The box office insiders told THR that Endgame will not surpass Avatar in the immediate future, if ever. The suggestion there is that it's theoretically possible the movie will be re-released again down the road, though nothing is confirmed. After all, Avatar was re-released after it initially premiered, and that second run helped it make $33 million more.
Endgame returned to theatres not only in an attempt to catch up to Avatar's box office record, but also as a tie-in to Far From Home. That film, which opens this week, deals directly with the events of Endgame, as has been made apparent in trailers that have proven rather spoiler-y for those who have not yet seen Endgame.
The brief amount of new footage in Endgame's re-release actually featured an appearance by a key developer from Epic Games, the developer of Fortnite. Fortnite has previously featured crossover events tied to the release of both Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame.
Avatar recently became a Disney property when Disney acquired the majority of Fox's entertainment assets. In fact, Disney owns 7 of the top 10 highest grossing movies ever globally. The top 10 list is below.
Review: Mainlining – A Rare Example Of A Game That Doesn’t Belong On Switch
Mainlining places players in a world where the Government has introduced the BLU Pill Act and reactivated the secret service network known as MI7, giving them full and unadulterated access to the personal online information and lives of the population within their jurisdiction on the internet. You play as a member of MI7 charged with hunting down the members of a criminal gang using your investigatory prowess to sift through information, grab documents, hack IP addresses and track suspects until you have enough evidence to ensure you can take them down permanently.
Developer Rebelephant describes its game as being a mirror held up to real-world scenarios, specifically the attempted introduction of the Snooper’s Charter in 2016 by (then) Home Secretary Theresa May, which would have seen secret services enjoy the sort of total power deployed to MI7 here in Mainlining. The game, according to its devs, sets out with the ambition of questioning techno-ethics and whether it is acceptable for an organisation to wield this sort of power over personal information.
It’s an interesting, if not entirely original premise, and it takes place within a well-realised little pixel homage to the internet landscape of yesteryear. Indeed, its parody websites and pixel recreations of old PC user interfaces are by far the biggest draw here as, in actual practice, the game fails to live up to its promise, relying on pretty bog-standard caricatures of the types of people you’d expect to meet frequenting the blogs and chatrooms of the early web. It never actually says anything big or clever about real-world events and is further negatively impacted by the fact its hacking gameplay is shallow, repetitive and – on Switch, at least – completely hamstrung by a pretty terrible control interface.
Investigations in Mainlining tend to consist for the most part of you logging to your MI7 portal, searching a website which you’ll have been given information about then pinging it to grab its IP address; you’ll then hack the IP address (in no way as exciting or cool as it sounds) and make your way to the owner’s personal information dumps. From here you proceed to download as many files as you fancy and sift through them for information until you have what you need to make an arrest.
It’s a simplistic, repetitive cycle, which could be forgiven if it wasn’t for the fact it often descends into trial and error over what constitutes a vital piece of evidence. There’s also absolutely no form of penalty if you try to make an arrest and give the wrong information. In making an arrest you must fulfil a handful of specific parameters: find the suspect’s real name, where they reside and provision of one piece of evidence to support the case being made. Only one piece of evidence is allowed, and choosing the right piece to attach is oftentimes an exercise in blindly trying until you get it right, as there’s no discernible reason why one is of any more use than another; it doesn’t make any logical sense. On top of this, as we’ve said, you won’t suffer any punishment (beyond a newspaper excerpt flashing up onscreen to laugh at the bumbling MI7 agent), which further reinforces trying every piece of evidence you’ve got as a legitimate tactic – hardly something a professional online investigator would do or the kind of thing that helps a video game create a feeling of engagement or empowerment in its player.
There are occasional divergences from this samey setup; we enjoyed watching suspects get tailed around a city on a little pixel version of Google Maps for example, but for the most part, it’s all quite tedious stuff and it’s exacerbated to no end by the terrible controls on Switch. The most important tool at your disposal in Mainlining is your keyboard and it’s represented here by a virtual version on your Switch’s screen which can be interacted with via extremely fiddly pushes of shoulder buttons and thumbsticks, or using the touch screen (the latter being our preferred, but still very clunky, method of input).
The problem with this setup for Switch users is that having an onscreen keyboard means almost everything else is constantly being obscured, including any typos that you make, and you’ll make plenty due to your big human fingers banging on tiny onscreen keys. You’ll soon find yourself loathing the idea of having to key in information, which is a pretty big problem in a game all about keying in information. It also takes away entirely from the central novelty of the game, feeling like you’re tinkering around on a little pixel recreation of a PC interface. It’s something that suits being played on a PC, where Mainlining was originally released some two years ago, and not forced onto the Switch where the novelty is lost behind frustrating controls; in the end, it’s a rare example of a game that doesn’t really feel as though it should have been transported to Nintendo’s system.
There are other problems with Mainlining; little typos and errors in information here and there that’ll have you scratching your head thinking you’ve missed something until you realise it’s a mistake on the developer’s part, as well as things like a notepad that deletes all your precious detective work when you close it down and open it again – not ideal. All of this adds up to a game that, even if it were being played on a PC, just doesn’t really manage to achieve anything it sets out to.
Conclusion
Mainlining fails to really provide any interesting commentary on its chosen subject matter, revelling instead in caricatures we’ve all experienced a hundred times before; stuff you’ll have seen done better in any Grand Theft Auto game that has parody websites involved. Its gameplay too often degenerates into trial-and-error and lacks any sort of consequences for the player getting things wrong, which renders the whole investigative process pretty much pointless. On Switch these problems are married to a control system which is, in short, terrible, and will likely see you reaching for the off switch long before you’ve reached the end of your investigations.
