Overwatch's New Hero, Ashe, Is Now Live

Blizzard has rolled out a new update for its popular shooter, Overwatch. Patch 1.30 is now available on all platforms--PS4, Xbox One, and PC--and makes a handful of changes to several of the game's maps and characters, along with introducing its newest hero, Ashe.

Unveiled during BlizzCon 2018 earlier this month, Ashe is the the leader of the Deadlock gang and the 29th character to join the Overwatch roster. She arrived on the Public Test Region shortly after her reveal at BlizzCon, but this marks the first time she's available on all platforms. However, at the moment you'll only be able to use her in unranked play; she won't be available in Competitive Play until two weeks after her release.

Ashe is an offensive hero and one of Overwatch's more versatile characters. Her main weapon, The Viper, is a lever-action rifle capable of firing in semi-automatic bursts with a high spread. She can also aim down its sights for precision shots. On top of that, Ashe comes equipped with a Coach Gun, which allows her to deal a lot of damage at a close range and can even send Ashe flying backward if fired at the ground.

Another unique ability at Ashe's disposal is Dynamite. She can throw the explosive onto the battlefield; it will then explode after a short amount of time or immediately if shot. Finally, her Ultimate is BOB, her robotic butler/bodyguard introduced alongside her in the Reunion animated short. When summoned, BOB will charge forward and fire at foes with his arm cannons.

In addition to Ashe, Patch 1.30 makes some general changes to all heroes, as well as a few specific to Mercy, Reaper, Symmetra, and Roadhog. The power of Mercy's ultimate has been increased, while Reaper has been tweaked to make him a more suitable for close-range combat. Roadhog received the biggest set of changes; you can see them all in the patch notes below.

Overwatch November 13 Update Patch Notes

Hero Updates

Mercy

Developer Comments: Mercy's ultimate was charging a bit too slowly after her base healing was reduced in a previous update. These changes should restore some of her ultimate's strength and let it build up more quickly.

Reaper

Developer Comments: Reaper's specialty is fighting at a very close range. The more consistent spread pattern and increase in healing from his passive ability will make him more capable of standing toe-to-toe with his enemies.

Symmetra

Developer Comments: It's still difficult to use Symmetra's Photon Projector beam effectively, even after its range was increased. By speeding up the primary fire charge rate, it takes less time to ramp up to its full damage potential and will be a stronger option when she's presented with targets to charge up on.

Roadhog

Developer Comments: Roadhog is receiving several large changes to make his abilities more consistent. His Chain Hook had issues with breaking when enemy targets jumped or fell behind environment collision. It will now slow them down in the air more when the hook lands, and wait less time before it starts reeling them in. Since Chain Hook's cooldown now begins immediately upon use, so it no longer varies based on Roadhog’s distance to the hook target. We've also moved some of the projectiles closer to the center of the spread pattern on his Scrap Gun, which gives him a more consistent damage output for its primary and alternate fire. Previously, there was a long-standing bug that caused close-range targets to fly much further than expected. After this bug was fixed, we still wanted to keep some of the knockback burst it provided, so we've increased the overall velocity cap to maintain some of that functionality.

Map Updates

• Reduced the setup timer for Assault, Escort, and Assault/Escort maps from 1 minute to 45 seconds
• Assemble Your Team timer increased from 10 to 25 seconds in the second round on Assault, Assault/Escort, and Escort maps

Bug Fixes

A.I.

• Fixed a bug that caused Mei bots to attempt landing headshots on Wrecking Ball while he was immune to them in Roll mode
• Fixed a bug that caused bots to get stuck near Point A on Eichenwalde

Heroes

• Brigitte
  • Fixed a bug that prevented Brigitte’s Whip Shot from going on cooldown if it was interrupted before the chain retracted
• Doomfist
  • Fixed a bug that prevented victims of Doomfist’s Rocket Punch from ragdolling if they were eliminated by it
  • Fixed a bug that prevented Doomfist’s Rising Uppercut from damaging enemies
  • Fixed a bug that prevented Doomist’s Seismic Slam from dealing damage if he hit by a knockback ability the moment he landed
• Junkrat
  • Fixed a bug that caused Junkrat to return to his idle animation if he was stunned while using RIP-Tire
• Lúcio
  • Fixed a bug that caused some allied heroes to say their “under attack” voice lines when receiving a friendly Sound Barrier
• Orisa
  • Fixed bug that prevented Orisa’s Fortify from canceling Doomfist’s Rising Uppercut air control effects
• Reinhardt
  • Fixed a bug that allowed Reinhardt’s Earthshatter to hit Brigitte when she blocked it with her Barrier Shield if she was strafing during high latency periods
• Roadhog
  • Fixed a bug that prevented Chain Hook from going on cooldown if it was interrupted before the chain retracted
  • Fixed a bug that prevented Chain Hook from destroying breakable objects when pulling the target backward
  • Fixed a bug that caused Roadhog’s Whole Hog visual effects to cover a wider area than the spread of projectiles
• Symmetra
  • Fixed a bug that prevented Symmetra to charge up her primary weapon on enemy ice walls
• Torbjörn
  • Fixed a bug that prevented Santaclad Torbjörn’s ultimate voice lines from playing when activating Molten Core
  • Fixed a visual issue that prevented Molten Core’s magma globules from appearing in the correct place with his Barbarossa or Blackbeard skins equipped
  • Fixed an animation issue that caused Torbjörn’s claw arm to suddenly appear when Overload and Molten Core were used in quick succession
• Tracer
  • Fixed an issue that caused Tracer to accelerate slightly slower and decelerate slightly faster than other heroes
• Wrecking Ball
  • Fixed a bug that prevented Wrecking Ball voice lines from playing when previewed after opening a Loot Box
• Zarya
  • Fixed a bug that allowed heroes to charge through a Graviton Surge without getting trapped

Hero Gallery

• Fixed an issue that caused some heroes legs to twitch when viewed in the Hero Gallery
• Fixed a bug that prevented players from rotating heroes in the Hero Gallery while the UI was hidden

Social

• Fixed a bug that allowed players to hear the voice lines of heroes controlled by players they muted

Maps

• Fixed a bug that prevented the payload from healing attackers if they were damaged while pushing it on Assault/Escort and Escort maps
• Fixed a lighting issue that caused a skyscraper in Hollywood’s skyline to appear pitch black

These teachers are taking their students around the world with Skype

Inspiring students to look beyond themselves

Disale is not alone. Shiva Kumar, who teaches in the sweltering farmlands of southern India, is Asia’s first Skype Master Teacher, a designation for volunteers who use Skype often in their lessons and are willing to train other teachers in how to use it to connect their classrooms.

Through Skype sessions, his students have traveled millions of miles around the world, virtually. Living in a flat, hot region, Kumar’s students were amazed when they experienced a Skype call with an Arctic research team. “It was eye-opening for them to discover that such a cold region exists in the world,” he says.

After more than a thousand interactions with classrooms or experts in dozens of countries since 2015, he’s still amazed by the surprising lessons learned.

Take the time his class of 8- to 10-year-olds had a Skype call with kids in a Kenyan refugee camp. “We found out that six kids were sharing one textbook there, and my students were shocked to learn of the difficulties they have and yet see the empathy flowing among them despite it all,” Kumar recalls. “My students realized there are a lot of poor people in the world, and it inspired them to start sharing more amongst themselves. Even small things like lunch, or a pencil or eraser, or sports equipment — they began sharing everything.”

“We’ve had sessions with 78 different countries,” says Kumar. “But in spite of all that diversity, the sense of commonality is what comes through to the kids. When they laugh and share things, that’s what they identify: oneness within diversity.”

For this year’s Skype-a-Thon the students in Kumar’s 10 STEM classes will bring their sleeping bags to school so they can do eight-hour shifts of 30-minute Skype sessions. The two-day marathon of virtual travel has become a staple for Kumar’s classes ever since they did the first one four years ago, when the students’ connections with classrooms around the world spanned more than a million miles. The kids decorate their school with lights and showcase their Indian culture through traditional dances and musical instruments, as well as modern STEM projects.

Disale will also be participating in the Skype-a-Thon, where he will be connecting 30 classrooms across 17 countries. Last year, almost half-a-million students from more than 90 countries participated, traveling 14.5 million miles. The goal is to meet or exceed those figures this year. For every 400 miles virtually traveled in the Skype-a-Thon, Microsoft will donate the resources for a student to attend school in one of the nine WE Villages in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, with a goal of helping 35,000 kids.

Beyond Finding Stuff with the Linux find Command

Continuing the quest to become a command-line power user, in this installment, we will be taking on the find command.

Jack Wallen already covered the basics of find in an article published recently here on Linux.com. If you are completely unfamiliar with find, please read that article first to come to grips with the essentials.

Done? Good. Now, you need to know that find can be used to do much more than just for search for something, in fact you can use it to search for two or three things. For example:

 find path/to/some/directory/ -type f -iname '*.svg' -o -iname '*.pdf' 

This will cough up all the files with the extensions svg (or SVG) and pdf (or PDF) in the path/to/directory directory. You can add more things to search for using the -o over and over.

You can also search in more than one directory simultaneously just be adding them to the route bit of the command. Say you want to see what is eating up all the space on your hard drive:

 find $HOME /var /etc -size +500M 

This will return all the files bigger than 500 Megabytes (-size +500M) in your home directory, /var and /etc.

Additionally, find also lets you do stuff with the files it… er… finds. For example, you can use the -delete action to remove everything that comes up in a search. Now, be careful with this one. If you run

 # WARNING: DO NOT TRY THIS AT $HOME find . -iname "*" -delete 

find will erase everything in the current directory (. is shorthand for “the current directory“) and everything in the subdirectories under it, and then the subdirectories themselves, and then there will be nothing but emptiness and an unbearable feeling that something has gone terribly wrong.

Please do not put it to the test.

Instead, let’s look at some more constructive examples…

Moving Stuff Around

Let’s say you have bunch of pictures of Tux the penguin in several formats and spread out over dozens of directories, all under your Documents/ folder. You want to bring them all together into one directory (Tux/) to create a gallery you can revel in:

 find $HOME/Documents/ \( -iname "*tux*png" -o -iname "*tux*jpg" -o -iname "*tux*svg" \)   -exec cp -v '{}' $HOME/Tux/ \; 

Let’s break this down:

Once you have the basics of modifying files using find under your belt, you will discover all sorts of situations where it comes in handy. For example…

A Terrible Mish-Mash

Client X has sent you a zip file with important documents and images for the new website you are working on for them. You copy the zip into your ClientX folder (which already contains dozens of files and directories) and uncompress it with unzip newwebmedia.zip and, gosh darn it, the person who made the zip file didn’t compress the directory itself, but the contents in the directory. Now all the images, text files and subdirectories from the zip are all mixed up with the original contents of you folder, that contains more images, text files, and subdirectories.

You could try and remember what the original files were and then move or delete the ones that came from the zip archive. But with dozens of entries of all kinds, you are bound to get mixed up at some point and forget to move a file, or, worse, delete one of your original files.

Looking at the files’ dates (ls -la *) won’t help either: the Zip program keeps the dates the files were originally created, not when they were zipped or unzipped. This means a “new” file from the zip could very well have a date prior to some of the files that were already in the folder when you did the unzipping.

You probably can guess what comes next: find to the rescue! Move into the directory (cd path/to/ClientX), make a new directory where you want the new stuff to go (mkdir NewStuff), and then try this:

 find . -cnewer newwebmedia.zip -exec mv '{}' NewStuff \; 

Breaking that down:

• The period (.) tells find to do its thing in the current directory.
• -cnewer tells find to look for files that have been changed at the same time or after a certain file you give as reference. In this case the reference file is newwebmedia.zip. If you copied the file over at 12:00 and then unpacked it at 12:01, all the files that you unpacked will be tagged as changed at 12:01, that is, after newwebmedia.zip and will match that criteria! And, as long as you didn’t change anything else, they will be the only files meeting that criteria.
• The -exec part of the instruction simply tells find to move the files and directories to the NewStuff/ directory, thus cleaning up the mess.

If you are unsure of anything find may do, you can swap -exec for -ok. The -ok option forces find to check with you before it runs the command you have given it. Accept an action by typing y or reject it with n.

Next Time

We’ll be looking at environmental variables and a way to search even more deeply into files with the grep command.

NBA 2K19 Black Friday 2018 PS4 And Xbox One Deals

Black Friday 2018 is going to be the ideal opportunity to grab yourself some video games that you can play with family and friends throughout the holiday season. Sports games are always a great way to pass some time, settle existing feuds, or start new ones, and if you're a fan of basketball, NBA 2K19 is probably something you'll want to consider grabbing.

It seems that most retailers have reached the same discount price for NBA 2K19, with the game available for $30 at Best Buy, Target, and Walmart across both their PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions. You can find links to them below.

In GameSpot's NBA 2K19 review, Michael Higham said the "core NBA 2K mechanics are challenging and rewarding" and that it offers a variety of game modes to enjoy. "If you want to immerse yourself in the sport and culture, NBA 2K19 has you covered with a breadth of content," he continued. "But even that has its limitations after several years of iterations. Although those willing to grind for everything will eventually get rewarded, the system of VC still comes off as exploitative. But there's a lot of fun to be had in NBA 2K19 despite its flaws, especially if you have a strong love for the sport.

"NBA 2K19 dishes out what you'd expect from the franchise: accessible yet deep core mechanics that often work just right and occasionally falter. Beyond that, there’s a full roster of ways to enjoy the sport thanks to a robust package of game modes."

NBA 2K19

• $30 - Best Buy (PS4, Xbox One)
• $30 - Target (PS4, Xbox One)
• $30 - Walmart (PS4, Xbox One)

If you'd like to see more of the deals that Best Buy, Target, and Walmart have on offer, check out our full Black Friday 2018 roundup. Along with video game hardware and software, you'll also find some of the noteworthy discounts on TV sets and other entertainment equipment that we've seen in the lead up to Black Friday.

Stan Lee, the man responsible for much of the Marvel Universe, has died ... Stan's daughter tells TMZ.

We're told an ambulance rushed to Lee's Hollywood Hills home early Monday morning and he was rushed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. We're told that's where he died.

Lee had suffered several illnesses over the last year or so -- he had a bout of pneumonia and vision issues.

Stan started Marvel with Jack Kirby in 1961 with The Fantastic Four. He went on to create Spider-Man, Black Panther, The Incredible Hulk, X-Men, Iron Man and The Avengers.

Stan made cameo appearances in many of the Marvel movies.

Lee had a rocky relationship with Marvel once the company went full-tilt Hollywood. He sued the company in 2002 for royalties he said he was owed for the first "Spider-Man" movie. Three years later he settled the case for $10 million.



"Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse" is the latest installment of the film's franchise and will be released next month.

Lee is survived by his daughter, J.C. His wife of 69 years, Joan, died in 2017.

J.C. tells TMZ, "My father loved all of his fans. He was the greatest, most decent man."

Lee was 95.

RIP

11-11: Memories Retold



11th November 1916, a young photographer leaves Canada to join the Western Front in Europe. The same day, a German technician is told that his son is missing in action on the front? They will discover the reality of war, crossing paths, on the front, and the rear, trying to preserve their humanity for their loved ones in the face of disastrous events? If they can come back. At 11am the 11th Day of the 11th Month of year 1918, they will face the biggest decision of their lives? This is the moving story of the end of World War One. [Bandai Namco]

Publisher: Bandai Namco Games

Release Date: Nov 08, 2018

Red Dead Redemption 2 Guides, Tips, And Cheat Codes

Red Dead Redemption 2 is finally here. Rockstar's new open-world western game is now available on both PS4 and Xbox One, and it presents players with a massive, deep open world to explore. The main story alone will take you in the neighborhood of 50 hours to complete, and that's before engaging in much of its side content--and all of this is to be followed by Red Dead Online in November, the game's online multiplayer component.

To help you make the most of the experience, we've put together numerous guides and tips, tackling both specific aspects of the game and a broader array of things you should be aware of before starting. Rockstar has opted not to hold your hand with many features in the game, leaving it to you to either discover them or find them hidden away in menus. We'll also be taking a look at some of these examples to ensure you're aware of everything the game has to offer.

We've got plenty of other guides and tips on the way, and we'll continue to update the list below with all of them. While you wait to actually get your hands on the game, be sure to check out our RDR 2 review.

Cheats

One potentially big aspect of the new game is cheat codes. Like GTA V before it, RDR 2 allows you to use cheats and even has an entire menu available for the feature. However, at this early stage, we don't actually know what all of them are; at least some are cleverly hidden in newspapers in-game. We'll be doing our best to hunt these down and will report back as they are uncovered--you can see those we've been able to confirm in our list of all the Red Dead 2 cheats. In the meantime, we've also got a rundown on the best RDR2 cheats that are worth a try.

Do You Need To Play Red Dead Redemption First?

Red Dead Redemption 2 is the third game in the Red Dead series, though it's only closely connected to its direct predecessor. However, RDR 2 is a prequel, taking place years before the events of the first RDR. If you've played the previous game, you'll recognize the names and faces of many of its characters, including RDR protagonist John Marston. We dive into whether you should play RDR first in our feature, but whatever choice you make, you should give our Red Dead Redemption story recap a look to refresh your memory--or fill in the holes for the first time.

Tips To Know Before Starting

As with any game, it can be useful to start with certain knowledge in hand. That's certainly true of RDR 2, which is a dense game full of various systems that interact with each other. With that in mind, we've put together a list of key tips you should know before booting up the game for the first time. We've kept spoilers to a minimum, but you'll want to be aware, for instance, that side missions can expire if you don't get to them quickly enough.

How To Make Money Fast

As an outlaw, you're after money, but not necessarily out of sheer greed. Whether your motivation is the betterment of your gang and its members or because you simply want a new gun and horse, you're going to want to get your hands on as much money as possible. With that in mind, we've put together a guide on how to make money quickly.

Outfits And Climates

Among the ways Red Dead 2 tries to immerse you in its world is with its climates. You'll have to account for temperatures if you want to maximize your performance, wearing appropriate clothing depending on where in the world you are. We've rounded up all of the outfits we've come across so far to give you an idea of what you can find.

Things The Game Doesn't Tell You

As you play and share stories with friends, you may come to realize there are any number of things the game doesn't tell you. There are various interesting details and tidbits you could miss because Rockstar isn't throwing them in your face, so we've done our best to round up a number of these so you don't miss out on some opportunities during the course of your adventures.

How Do Morality And Honor Work?

Among the many systems you'll find in Red Dead 2 is honor. Arthur Morgan may be a criminal no matter what choices you make, but there are degrees to which he is a bad guy. That comes into play with morality and honor, as your actions will either boost or lower your honor. Pressing down on the D-pad allows you to see this at any time, and something as simple as greeting a passerby will allow you to build it up. Aside from how people react to you, it's worth being aware of the implications of your honor--Good Guy Arthur will get discounts at stores, which is one way to save some cash.

Some Side Missions Can Expire

If you're a completionist, the thought of optional missions disappearing is downright awful. But whatever your approach to playing games like Red Dead 2, you should absolutely engage with some of the optional content involving your gang. These sequences feature some of the best character moment in the game, but if you advance far enough in the story, some of these missions will go away whether or not you've done them. You can find out more about how this works in our PSA on side missions expiring.

How Do I Fast Travel?

Fast travel does exist in RDR2, although it's not something you'll do by selecting a point on your map and warping there. The means for quickly moving around involve using actual modes of transportation, such as stagecoaches. Provided you have the patience, you're much better off running or taking your horse, because you'll encounter some of the game's most interesting content that way. But if speed is of the essence, consult our explanation of how fast travel works.

All The Guns

As noted above, money is at a premium, so you don't necessarily want to buy every weapon you lay your eyes on. You may want to plan ahead, so we've rounded up all of the guns we've discovered so far in order to give you a sense of what awaits.

Health, Stamina, Dead Eye, And Horse Cores And Bars Explained

One of the many new wrinkles in Red Dead 2 is the Core system, which dictates a variety of aspects of your character. It can be a bit complex to wrap your head around, with Cores influencing bars but bars being used before Cores, among other thing. Do yourself a favor and get a good grasp on this key system by checking out our guide to how Cores work.

Fishing Tips

Early in the game, you'll gain the ability to fish, which can be a fun mini-game to kill some time with. You can get by without much strategy, but if you're interested in getting the biggest, legendary fish that existing in Red Dead's world, you should consult our fishing guide for tips and legendary fish locations.

How To Find The Legendary Animals And Pelts

During Chapter 2, you'll encounter your first Legendary Animal--an enormous Grizzly Bear. From here, you'll be able to track and hunt the game's rarest animals, some of which will require added firepower. If you want to know the location of every single elusive animal in Red Dead 2's world, go check out our Legendary animal sand pets guide for guidance on how to find them, and what to do with that legendary bear pelt.

Perks Guide: Trinkets, Talismans, And The Crafting Components You Need

Perks offer improvements to Arthur's overall abilities that are unlocked by obtaining Talismans and Trinkets, which are primarily crafted at Fences. You'll need parts from Legendary Animals to craft them. Others are rewarded to you by completing specific missions under special conditions. Check out our Perks guide offering a detailed run down all of the Talismans we've found so far, what they do, and what you need to unlock them.

The Best Horses And Where To Find Them

There is no singular "best horse" in the game. There are only strong breeds that fair much better than the standard breeds you encounter early on. Speaking on the different types: the Arabian, Turkoman, and Missouri Fox Trotter breeds stand out as the most well-rounded and top-tier. Here's our best horses guide offering details on each.

Hidden Weapons You May Have Missed

There are a number of weapons to find in the massive world of Red Dead 2. However, some of these can't be bought from weapon shops, and they can be easily missed if you aren't paying attention. With this in mind, we pulled together a list of weapons that can take some extra effort to find, but are among the game's most interesting tools for combat. In addition to personalized six-shooters from legendary Gunslingers, there are also melee weapons that can be traced back to ancient cultures lost to time. Go check out our guide on how to find these hidden weapons.

Where To Sell Stolen Items: Every Fence Location In Red Dead Redemption 2

Fences--merchants, not boundary markers--in Red Dead Redemption 2 are the only businesses that will buy goods you've found while looting strangers and rifling through private property, and by gum, they sure are hard to find. Considering the size of RDR2's map, and that there are only four fences in all the land, odds are you may be wondering where they're hiding. We've got a handy reference guide to help locate the black-market traders that peddle in illicit goods.

How To Start All The Challenges

As you play Red Dead 2, you'll start to see notifications informing you that you've completed a challenge. Now this all sounds fine and dandy, but you're likely asking yourself: "What does completing challenges do? Heck, why should I even bother completing them?" That's a fair question, and we're here to answer it. Here's our challenge guide containing details our each, as well as specifics on what you earn.

Educators: Prep for computer science week in Nov. 20 TweetMeet

C&C Rivals is A Great Mobile RTS with a Monkey on its Back

Strategy guide publisher Prima Games is shutting down