Posted by: xSicKxBot - 12-12-2018, 05:19 AM - Forum: Windows
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What’s New in EDU: All the news wrapped up for the holidays
As much as we enjoy tearing open a cozy couple of socks or peeling back the paper on a snazzy blender (you shouldn’t have!), we’re of the firm belief that educators reign supreme when it comes to giving the perfect gift. For them, giving is an almost year-round thing, and the results are useful for the rest of your life. In our last episode of What’s New in EDU for 2018, we look back on a year’s worth of tools that supercharged learning and the amazing educators who brought it all to life for students around the world.
If that’s you: Thank you! Over the past year we’ve heard from thousands of teachers, districts, students – even parents – who are excited to step foot in today’s classroom and step up the possibilities available to their students in the future. With your feedback, we’ve been able to keep tailoring tools for educators want to boost and protect student voice, elevating it above the din of our demanding lives. We’ve seen that when students feel heard, feel seen, and feel acknowledged, their motivation to learn grows substantially.
Our passion for empowering all students went big this year, with our CEO Satya Nadella announcing our partnership with the Made by Dyslexia initiative. Together, we’ve rolled out new features to make learning more accessible for the 700 million students living with dyslexia.
We also saw another brilliant Hack the Classroom event, where changemakers in education and the passionate innovators in student-centered learning invented new ways to help students build future-ready skills and ignite their interest in STEM learning.
Computer science got a bit of a makeover in 2018 as well – as you’ll see in the video above, there’s a reason “the world doesn’t need any more computer scientists,” with educators expanding the subject to include all different kinds of creative projects, passions and people.
You might also remember catching #FlipgridFever this year. We were happy to announce that Flipgrid joined the Microsoft family, helping recast the role of video in the classroom, from a passive experience to a tool that empowers and amplifies every student’s voice. We also kicked off our You Can series of Tips (You Can catch up on all of them here).
And we can’t forget Minecraft: Education Edition’s year of cool coding updates: We announced the new Minecraft Hour of Codetutorial, Voyage Aquatic, where students use their creativity and problem solving skills to explore and build underwater worlds with code. We also expanded coding possibilities in Minecraft: Education Edition with the new Code Builder update. If you’re looking forward to having some time off during the holidays, you can download a free trial of Minecraft: Education Edition now and practice coding at home!
Finally, let’s squeeze in one more thank you to all you hard-working educators. You’re changing the world, inspiring us constantly and always pushing us to think of new ways to help you write those student success stories. From inclusivity to STEM, to the addition of new tools like Flipgrid into the Microsoft family, it was an amazing year.
We’re primed and ready for next year – and beyond!
A tactical adventure game combining the turn-based combat of XCOM with story, exploration, stealth, and strategy. Take control of a team of Mutants navigating a post-human Earth. Created by a team including former HITMAN leads and the designer of PAYDAY.
From the makers of the best-selling PC phenomenon, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds drops players into a competitive survival battle where you'll engage in a heart-racing fight to be the last player left alive. Loot supplies, find weapons and gear-up to take on the competition. Emerge the lone survivor in a thrilling game experience full of unexpected, adrenaline-pumping moments.
FEATURES:
* The Battleground Awaits: Parachute onto a massive remote island with nothing but your wits and the clothes on your back. Explore, loot and locate weapons or use vehicles to find supplies and gear-up for fast-paced combat.
* Claim Victory: Defeat every player on the map to earn your bragging rights as the last player left standing. Not just a Game. This is Battle Royale.
* Xbox One X Enhanced: PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is Xbox One X Enhanced, with High Dynamic Range technology to bring out the true visual depth of the battleground.
Get the Skills You Need to Monitor Systems and Services with Prometheus
Open source software isn’t just transforming technology infrastructure around the world, it is also creating profound opportunities for people with relevant skills. From Linux to OpenStack to Kubernetes, employers have called out significant skills gaps that make it hard for them to find people fluent with cutting-edge tools and platforms. The Linux Foundation not only offers self-paced training options for widely known tools and platforms, such as Linux and Git, but also offers options specifically targeting the rapidly growing cloud computing ecosystem. The latest offering in this area is Monitoring Systems and Services with Prometheus (LFS241).
Prometheus is an open source monitoring system and time series database that is especially well suited for monitoring dynamic cloud environments. It contains a powerful query language and data model in addition to integrated alerting and service discovery support. The new course is specifically designed for software engineers and systems administrators wanting to learn how to use Prometheus to gain better insights into their systems and services.
Why is monitoring so crucial for today’s cloud stacks and environments? Because the metrics these monitoring tools provide allow administrators to see and anticipate potential problems, keep performance tuned, and more. Monitoring tools like Prometheus can also generate automated alerts, helping administrators respond to issues in real time.
The Site Reliability Engineering book covering Google’s key site reliability tools notes: “The idea of treating time-series data as a data source for generating alerts is now accessible to everyone through open source tools like Prometheus.”
As is true for most monitoring tools, Prometheus provides detailed and rich dashboard views of system and platform performance. Prometheus is also 100 percent open source and community-driven. All components are available under the Apache 2 License on GitHub.
Announced in November, this training course includes 20 to 25 hours of course material covering many of the tool’s major features, best practices, and use cases. Students will be able to monitor their systems and services effectively with Prometheus upon completion on this course. This course covers the following topics:
Prometheus architecture
Setting up and using Prometheus
Monitoring core system components and services
Basic and advanced querying
Creating dashboards
Instrumenting services and writing third-party integrations
Alerting
Using Prometheus with Kubernetes
Advanced operational aspects
Hands-on training makes a big difference, and this course contains 55 labs that can be completed locally on a VM or in the cloud. What do you need in terms of prerequisites? Participants should have basic experience with Linux/Unix system administration and common shell commands, as well as some development experience in Go and/or Python and working with Kubernetes.
“Adoption of the Prometheus monitoring system is growing rapidly, leading to demand for more talent qualified to work with this technology, which is why we decided now is the time to develop this course,” said Clyde Seepersad, General Manager, Training & Certification, The Linux Foundation. “With content developed by Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), which hosts Prometheus, and Julius Volz, one of the founders of the project, there is no better option than LFS241 for learning the ins and outs of this solution.”
Reminder: Rocket League’s Second Rocket Pass Is Now Live
Following the McLaren DLC added to the game last week, Psyonix has now released its second Rocket League rocket pass, available for free. The premium upgrade in exchange for 10 keys is $9.99 (or the regional equivalent) and includes even more content than the first pass as well as the brand new Artemis Battle-Car. Take a look at the trailer above.
In its announcement post, Psyonix said it had listened to fan feedback and increased the items found in the premium track. Here’s more information about how the premium path unlocks work:
Items in the Premium Upgrade path are no longer tradeable for Tiers 1 thru 70, but ‘Pro Tier’ items (i.e. Tier 71 and above) and Free items CAN still be traded. We have also changed Pro Tier behavior so that they will ALWAYS drop as a ‘Painted’ item, while still carrying a 25% chance to drop as a ‘Certified’ item. Moreover, we’ve increased the base experience you earn from matches by 40% so that you can reach Pro Tiers faster and increased the weekly match maximum from 14 to 21.
The fine-tuning doesn’t end there, either:
We’re introducing a brand new Customization Item attribute to various Pro Tier items. The ‘Special Edition’ attribute reworks an item into an alternate version of itself that still supports Painted attribute colors. Several of the Pro Tier Wheels in Rocket Pass 2 — ‘Gripstride HX,’ ‘Rocket Forge II’ and ‘Sprocket’ — support the Special Edition attribute; any time you unlock one from a Pro Tier, you’ll have a 25% chance to receive the Special Edition version. You can see an awesome example of a Special Edition item in the screenshot below.
Will you be starting your engine on-field to check out the new rocket pass? Tell us below.
Phippy + Cloud Native Friends Make CNCF Their Home
In 2016, Deis (now part of Microsoft) platform architect Matt Butcher was looking for a way to explain Kubernetes to technical and non-technical people alike. Inspired by his daughter’s prolific stuffed animal collection, he came up with the idea of “The Children’s Illustrated Guide to Kubernetes.” Thus Phippy, the yellow giraffe and PHP application, along with her friends, were born.
Today, live from the keynote stage at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America, Matt and co-author Karen Chu announced Microsoft’s donation and presented the official sequel to the Children’s Illustrated Guide to Kubernetes in their live reading of “Phippy Goes to the Zoo: A Kubernetes Story” – the tale of Phippy and her niece as they take an educational trip to the Kubernetes Zoo.
Netflix's Mowgli Review: This Jungle Book Is Definitely Not For Kids
After several delays and a change in distribution company, Andy Serkis's Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle is now out on Netflix. And it's now clear why it didn't get a theatrical release: As stunning and well directed as this adaptation of The Jungle Book is, there is no way parents would have allowed their kids to see this. Andy Serkis was crazy to make a gritty and bloody adaptation, and it is insane that it was rated PG-13, but that’s exactly what makes this version entertaining. Prepare for a whole new generation to be traumatized by what looks like a children's movie.
From the opening scene, Mowgli wants us to know this will not be the sweet, funny, sing-along version of the tale you’re used to. We begin with the brutal murder of Mowgli's parents at the claws of the man-eating tiger Shere Khan (Benedict Cumberbatch, playing an even more evil version of Smaug the dragon). You thought Khan throwing that wolf over a cliff in Jon Favreau's version was unexpectedly dark? Well how about a tiger jumping at a frightened family and then mauling the mother to death? Worst yet, the murder occurs just barely off-screen to maintain a PG-13 rating, but then when the black panther Bagheera (Christian Bale) finds Mowgli, he's bathed in the blood of his dead mother. This culminates in a brutal battle that challenges Mowgli's moral compass, as the film skips the use of fire and goes straight to a ferocious showdown between a tiger and a knife-wielding child. Nothing says kid-friendly like a knife fight!
From there, any similarity with the previous adaptations is just a bare necessity, as we still get to follow Mowgli's struggle to fit in as a wolf, being bullied by his pack for being different and hanging out with the panther and the bear who talk. Oh, and the kidnapping monkeys are also here, but instead of a jazz number, they try to kill Bagheera and Baloo. Speaking of, this Baloo (voiced by Andy Serkis) has no intention of singing and relaxing by the river, as he is a horribly scarred and droopy-mouthed drill sergeant who mumbles every word like he's drunk. Bale's Bagheera also gets a new backstory that reflects Mowgli's journey, but like everything else in the movie, it's so grim that any children who witness it will likely never want to go to the zoo again.
Where Disney's live-action version emphasized Mowgli's humanity and how it made him special, Andy Serkis and first-time screenwriter Callie Kloves make it a point to show you that Mowgli (wonderfully played by Rohan Chand) doesn't belong with either man or wolf. For the first half-hour, he only walks on all fours, which makes him slower than all the other wolves in his class (Baloo is also a teacher for the cubs) and puts him at risk of expulsion from jungle school.
Kloves not only shows the dark side of the characters, but most specifically the serial killer in everyone. In a disturbing scene, we see Bagheera training Mowgli to hunt, telling him to show respect to his victim by staring straight into its eyes as the soul departs the body. Oh, and the man-eating tiger? He's not only obsessed with killing the man cub before he grows to be a fire-wielding man, but wants to straight up mutilate him. Shere Khan taunts Mowgli by repeatedly telling him how he wants to drink his blood--"The man cub's blood will run down my chin!"--and how he loved the taste of his mother's blood.
Andy Serkis proves he's not only adept at doing motion-capture, but he's also determined to push the limits of technology to tell a story. He moves the camera in impossible angles, down cliffs and through caves. One highlight of the film involves Mowgli hiding in a lake, before looking up at the surface to find a blood-soaked Khan, as the water he drinks turns crimson red. Unfortunately, Serkis pushes too far into showing the performances from his cast of A-list actors. Not only does the CGI often dive into "uncanny valley" territory of real-but-not-quite with the facial animation, but the landscapes look rough at times.
The weakest part of Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle is that it must follow the established plot points we already know by heart. While the tone and some of the characterizations are different enough to justify the retelling, it isn't until the 1-hour mark (Mowgli going to the human village) that the film finally shines and proves that it has something new to say. After Mowgli gets to the village, he befriends a British hunter played by Matthew Rhys, who was hired to hunt down Shere Khan. While the rest of the village teaches him about local traditions, dance and food, the hunter teaches him how to throw a knife. While we have seen previous adaptations dealing with Mowgli being a bridge between two world, this film truly shows us both worlds colliding, and how exactly Mowgli connects and saves both. If only the script had dived into this earlier instead of waiting until the last 40 minutes.
It is baffling that this version of Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle ever got made. It is insane that the film got a PG-13 rating. It is mind-blowing that this is actually getting released. But here we are. This film takes too long to get going, and has some uncanny CGI. But it's also a brutal retelling of a classic story that shows just how dangerous the world is, and how you have to be the same if you want to survive.
The Good
The Bad
Andy Serkis's directing
Takes a while to truly shine
Strong performances by Rohan Chand and the A-list cast
In this classic 2011 GDC game design challenge, Jenova Chen, Jason Rohrer and John Romero all pitch hypothetical games that create a combination of gameplay and religious concepts.
The challenge tasked developers with creating a game that is also in some way a religion — or a religion that is in some way a game. An interesting design prompt, to say the least.
In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its accompanying YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.
Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC or VRDC already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.
Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent company Informa
The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutras community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.
[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from video game industry ‘watcher’ Simon Carless (GDC, Gamasutra co-runner), rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend.
This week’s surprisingly video-heavy highlights include a great mini-doc about the history of the Punch-Out franchise, a review (& compendium of reviews) for the latest acclaimed Smash Bros. game, & a multitude of other neatness.
Thanks for tagging along for Issue #118 of Video Game Deep Cuts! A little busy overseas, so sorry, this is as erudite an intro as you’re getting this week! Salut!
What the Popularity of ‘Fortnite’ Has in Common With the 20th Century Pinball Craze(Clive Thompson / Smithsonian Magazine – ARTICLE)
“As with violence, these fears are probably overblown, as psychologists like Powell-Lunder note. The great majority of kids learn to self-regulate, and appreciate when parents help set limits, she says. Plus, Fortnite has many benefits, she notes: “It’s enormously social—it’s a really good connector,” attracting many girls and other kids who normally don’t play games.”
The 13 biggest announcements from The Game Awards 2018(Nick Statt & Andrew Webster / The Verge – ARTICLE)
“The Game Awards is ostensibly the equivalent of the Oscars for the video game industry, but the biggest names in interactive entertainment have never been known to turn down a good marketing opportunity. So The Game Awards have also evolved into a jam-packed news event, with new trailers, game announcements, and other surprises packed in between the night’s slate of prizes. [SIMON’S NOTE: a useful compendium here.]”
Move over AlphaGo: AlphaZero taught itself to play three different games(Jennifer Ouellette / Ars Technica – ARTICLE)
“Google’s DeepMind—the group that brought you the champion game-playing AIs AlphaGo and AlphaGoZero—is back with a new, improved, and more-generalized version. Dubbed AlphaZero, this program taught itself to play three different board games (chess, Go, and shogi, a Japanese form of chess) in just three days, with no human intervention.”
The Story of Punch-Out!!(Gaming Historian / YouTube – VIDEO)
“A documentary detailing the complete history of Nintendo’s Punch-Out!! video game series. In 1983, Nintendo had a problem: They had too many arcade monitors. Rather than toss them, they made a new game that could use 2 monitors. That game was Punch-Out!!, one of Nintendo’s most beloved franchises.”
The 30 Best Videogames of 2018 (The Paste Games Writers / Paste – ARTICLE)
“You can say a lot a things about 2018, but you can’t say that it didn’t have a large and diverse batch of really good videogames. The constant churn of this job makes it hard for me to remember what I played last week, much less years ago, but I can’t recall a recent year with such a wide-ranging assortment of games worth playing and crowing over.”
Smash Bros. Ultimate review: The best fighting game on any Nintendo system(Sam Machkovech / Ars Technica – ARTICLE)
“Super Smash Bros. Ultimate isn’t content being merely a “big” video game. Nintendo’s latest mascot-fighter sequel seems determined to wallop you over the head with its enormity, even after establishing itself as an oversized package. [SIMON’S NOTE: also see like a zillion other reviews, 99% of them very positive.]”
AdvX 2018 – Jon Ingold – Sparkling Dialogue: A Masterclass(Jon Ingold & Sally Beaumont / AdventureX / YouTube – VIDEO)
“Game conversations are all too often static and stagey: there’s none of the messy, fun and characterful back and forth that makes a conversation sparkle. Using Ink and assisted by Sally Beaumont, Jon Ingold (Heaven’s Vault, 80 Days) will create conversations that are dynamic, contextual and full of moments of connection. [SIMON’S NOTE: the other AdventureX 2018 videos are up too!]”
Valve’s New Game ‘Artifact’ Is a Perfect Machine for Making Money(Matthew Gault / Motherboard – ARTICLE)
“Valve is great at making video games, but it’s even better at making money and Artifact is a perfect machine designed to efficiently extract value from its players. It does so by selling players card packs. You don’t have to buy them, and I can imagine myself having a lot of fun with Artifact without buying any packs if I tried.”
Video games saved my life(Scott C Jones / The Globe & Mail – ARTICLE)
“I know video games will probably never stop being maligned, chased into metaphorical old windmills by metaphorical villagers bearing metaphorical torches. This pains me deeply. It pains me because video games saved my life. [SIMON’S NOTE: an incredibly personal story of trauma – in fact, multiple traumas – & games.]”
The Joy of Playing Dress-up in Team Fortress 2(Kyle Morrell / VRV Blog – ARTICLE)
“Valve was a pioneer in managing massive virtual economies and while a lot has been written and said about the immense, complex, and robust world of trading high-value Team Fortress 2 items, I don’t care about that. I just care about dressing up my mercenaries all cute.”
FLATLINE: How The Amiga Languished(Ahoy / YouTube – VIDEO)
“[SIMON’S NOTE: Not chiefly about video games, but includes some material on Cinemaware’s Defender Of The Crown & various other bits of Amiga goodness as well. And it’s from the genius creator of the recent Monkey Island & Polybius mini-docs.]
How Bad North makes humans out of little soldiers(Alex Wiltshire / RockPaperShotgun – ARTICLE)
““The units should feel like humans,” says Oskar Stålberg, co-creator of Bad North, a strategy game about little soldiers defending their islands against bad Vikings. “They’re quite stylised; they don’t have faces and barely have arms, but they should feel human in their behaviour and what they’re capable of doing. They should feel fragile and it should look like fighting is a courageous effort.””
Spacewar! Creators Didn’t Know They Were Making History(Gita Jackson / Kotaku – ARTICLE)
“Long after I’m dead, if the country remains unscathed, there will be a recording with me on it in the Smithsonian. On it, I will be heard asking the developers of Spacewar! if they had any idea what the video game industry was going to become when they made their game in 1962. [SIMON’S NOTE: see also: ‘‘Spacewar!’: Birth of the Game Industry’.]
The video games that are good for your children(Keza MacDonald / The Guardian – ARTICLE)
“Quirky and egalitarian, Toca Boca’s games are a world away from the usual half-hearted or exploitative kids’ apps. We meet the Scandinavian company taking child’s play seriously.”
Red Dead Redemption 2: A deep dive into Rockstar’s game design(Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat – ARTICLE)
“Among the gems from our conversation: Rockstar once cast Red Dead Redemption 2’s main design as a procedural world (one that the game’s software generates), with stories driven by the open world and emergent behavior. But the company trashed it because it just didn’t work.”
How Neopets was sold to Scientologists(People Make Games / YouTube – VIDEO)
“Hey, who remembers Neopets? If you used the site back in the early 2000s, you might be surprised to learn that it was once owned by a group of devout Scientologists. Join Chris as he investigates the link between virtual pets and Scientology.”
The A.V. Club’s favorite games of 2018(Various / A.V. Club – ARTICLE)
“There isn’t a clean-cut narrative to the games that stuck with us in 2018—which span massive superhero extravaganzas, elliptical horror experiments, and psychedelic VR rhythm games—which is, truly, proof of how rich and exciting games can be.”
Tim Sweeney Answers Questions About The New Epic Games Store(Matt Bertz / Game Informer – ARTICLE)
“The PC game distribution business could experience a giant shakeup in the coming months and years following the news that Fortnite creator Epic Games has built its own store. This new developer-friendly model offers a dramatically more favorable revenue split than rival marketplaces like Steam, but beyond that, we still have questions about how this Epic Games Store operates. Who better to answer our questions than Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney? [SIMON’S NOTE: also see a short Eurogamer Q&A.]
The Making of Divinity: Original Sin 2(Gameumentary / YouTube – VIDEO)
“Our second documentary on Larian Studios takes a deep dive into the development of Divinity: Original Sin 2.”
What ‘Darksiders 3’ Teaches Us About Gaming’s Weirdest Company, THQ Nordic(Patrick Klepek / Waypoint – ARTICLE)
“Is THQ Nordic the gaming equivalent of Ikea, selling surprisingly good stuff at a reasonable price, undercutting the notion spending more means getting better?.. Is THQ Nordic masquerading as Big Lots, a valuable “YO, we’ve got everything and it’s cheap as hell,” store, but one that works because it’s honest about what it’s selling? Or is THQ Nordic a flea market, full of cheap knockoffs and hand-me-downs in questionable condition?”
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[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at tinyletter.com/vgdeepcuts – we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to [email protected] MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra & an advisor to indie publisher No More Robots, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]
