For Honor's Breach Could Be The Game's Next Flagship Mode
For Honor gets regular seasonal updates, but none of them have been as big as the one coming in October. Season 8 is called Marching Fire, and not only will it include a new faction, but it will also introduce Breach mode, an ambitious new way to play the game.
Just calling Breach a new mode is underselling it. "Breach mode," game director Damien Kieken said, "is by far the biggest update we've ever done on For Honor, in scale, in the amount of things you can do, and in playtime. We think it's a good candidate to become the new flagship mode in For Honor."
Based on a pre-alpha build of the mode, it's easy to see why. Breach mode isn't just another way for vikings, knights, samurai, and the new Wu Lin faction to fight each other. It adds a sizable new map and a whole new concept to the game, one that's much more team-based and strategic than anything that's come before.
Breach mode has two teams of four players face off at the gates of a castle. One team defends the castle, while the other team tries to break down the gates and kill the king, who's waiting in a courtyard. Each team has its own goals to accomplish during the match and an army of nameless minions helping their cause. Most matches last between 20 and 30 minutes and are quite unlike anything you can currently do in For Honor.
The main component of the attackers' offense is a giant battering ram they're trying to protect as it advances toward the castle. Each match consists of three parts. The first part ends when the attackers break down the castle's outer gate. Then the attackers must guard their battering ram as it approaches an inner gate. Once that gate falls, the attackers can swarm into the king's courtyard and hack away at him. He's an armor-clad warrior controlled by AI, with attacks that are slow but deadly. If the attackers kill the king, they win.
The attackers begin with 25 tickets, or lives. Each time a hero falls on the battlefield and no one saves them in time, they must pay one ticket to respawn. Breaching a door gains the attackers five additional tickets, but once all the lives are gone, it's game over, and the defenders win.
Breach mode is asymmetrical, so each side has different rules and goals during the match. The defenders don't have to worry about tickets--they can't lose until their king is dead. In the meantime, they can try to stop the attackers by fighting them directly in classic For Honor style, or by using the castle's built-in defenses. On the ramparts is a ballista you can use to one-shot kill attackers. Giant cauldrons can be tipped to rain fire on enemies below. Defenders are also well advised to hold the control points on the ramparts; if you lose them, the attacking army advances further and gains easier access to the defense weapons.
The overall experience is strategic and intense. Each team has a number of ways to put pressure on their enemies. Keiken said the gameplay in Breach Mode "is not based only on reaction to what other players are doing" as it is in For Honor's other modes. "It's based on strategy. It's based on team composition."
Creative director Roman Campos Oriola agrees with that sentiment. "With [game modes] Dominion and Tribute, even though team play is important, they're more tactical game modes. You make second-to-second decisions," he said. Whereas with Breach, "the game mode is longer and has many more ingredients and gameplay loops than in Dominion. The minions, known as pikemen, are much more dangerous in Breach and they can actually kill you. But also, if you're in danger, you can retreat into your pikemen and they'll protect you."
From what I played, it was clear that a well-composed team, with each hero doing their part in the battle, will be able to steamroll an unprepared team. Communication is also important, because each player has so many options for what to do at any given time. If you're not talking, your strategy is likely to fall apart.
I've always found For Honor interesting, but it never really grabbed my attention in the past. Based on what I played of Breach mode, that's going to change once the Season 8 update launches in October. Laying siege to a castle--and using the medieval tools of warfare to defend it--was incredibly fun, and I can't wait to do it again.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 06-19-2018, 06:02 PM - Forum: Windows
- No Replies
Now you can access Evernote right within Microsoft Teams
Over the years, Evernote has made teamwork easier by building integrations with a host of powerful apps, including Microsoft Outlook, Salesforce, Google Drive, Slack, and many others. Today we’re pleased to add another big name to that list.
Introducing Evernote for Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is the communication hub for productive companies, where teams can chat, share messages, and move projects forward. As part of the Office 365 suite, it enables colleagues to share emails, documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, and manage the flow of information.
Our latest integration brings Evernote into the context of your conversations in Teams so you can easily reference specific notes within a conversation, and access notes without having to leave the Teams experience.
With Evernote for Microsoft Teams, you can seamlessly share, pin, edit, and search your Evernote content—right from the Microsoft Teams app. This helps you work without interruption and keeps everyone on the same page.
We sat down with Mansoor Malik, Principal Product Manager for Microsoft Teams, and Leo Gong, Senior Product Manager at Evernote, to get their thoughts on this new integration. We asked them why the partnership between Evernote and Microsoft is so exciting, and what it means for customers and the future of teamwork.
Q: What does integrating with Evernote bring to the Microsoft Teams product, and how will users benefit?
Mansoor Malik (Microsoft): Microsoft Teams democratizes information. It makes it available, brings transparency to it, and ensures everyone has access to it.
With this integration, users can now access their Evernote content and share it with the whole team—in one place, and in the same channel. You don’t have to remember a URL or switch back and forth between Teams and Evernote. It’s all right there.
Leo Gong (Evernote): For a lot of our customers, Evernote is their second brain. It’s where they collect all their information and the ideas they’re working on. Combining these two places allows them to easily tap into that knowledge hub and share it with everyone.
Let’s say you’re trying to plan logistics around a product launch in Microsoft Teams. Being able to access Evernote allows you to keep a record of what people are agreeing upon, and what the current plan is—in parallel to the conversation.
Q: What is the problem that this solves for users?
MM: You may have to-dos that you want to add in Evernote, and you may want to start talking about them. You can either share a snippet of it in Teams and start a conversation that way, or you can pin it as a tab and have the conversation around that tab.
What’s cool is that the conversation you have, in context with the note that’s pinned, happens right there. It can also be persistent so it stays within the chat. So anyone from the team can either jump into that conversation in real time or, if they come in later, reply to it in the same thread, with the same context.
LG: Many people use Evernote as a repository for their business’s information. This integration helps them very easily share that information whenever they’re asked.
Also, the same questions often get asked again and again. The Pinned tab allows you to pin a note in the channel with answers to all those frequently asked questions, so it’s easily accessible for others.
Finally, there can often be 10 to 20 different messages that you need to consider when you’re making a decision. It gets unmanageable very quickly. So it’s good to have a tab, one place to keep a list of “What’s the decision we just made, and what are the next steps?”
Q. What do you think people struggle with the most when it comes to sharing information within a team setting?
MM: Before, if you wanted to share something, you’d have to open up your email and attach a Word document or a file, and send it to somebody—even your colleague who’s sitting in the next office. Then you’d have to wait for their reply, then revise it, and so on. This integration means that those conversations, those decisions, can be documented, edited, and captured in real time, so you don’t have to wait for the back and forth.
LG: I think it’s the friction around sharing information. Even beyond this initial launch, we’re interested in making that easier. How can we automate the sharing of information? That’s something we think about.
Q: In your experience, how have workflows evolved over time? Do you find that people are asking for integrations with their favorite tools often?
MM: Employees today are on twice as many teams as they were five years ago. The amount of time that employees spend engaging in collaborative work—in meetings, on phone calls, or answering emails—has increased about 50 percent. It takes up to 80 percent more of employees’ time. Notwithstanding that, productivity experiences are getting fragmented over time, leading to reduced productivity, change fatigue, and reduced employee sentiment and morale. This integration tries to reunify the experience to address these issues.
LG: Workplaces are evolving to include more specialized tools, so more than ever we see a lot of different teams, and a lot of individuals, wanting and expecting choice at work.
Even with note editing, which is a relatively simple use case, there are so many tools out there and each of them has different strengths. Integrations allow customers to use the tools that will make them effective, because they’re able to bring their own tools into their collaborative work.
Evernote integrates with all types of documents and helps people share notes very easily, so that they can choose the tools they need to make them effective. With Microsoft Teams, you don’t have to use a specific database or a specific task management tool. Teams becomes the glue that helps you and your team work together—even if they’re on different systems.
Q: When integrating with another product, is there a typical checklist you go through? What makes this partnership a good fit?
MM: We look at how we can add value to our mutual customers. Specifically, we look at common teamwork productivity scenarios and ways to make it easier for people to get their job done, to make their experience more valuable, and enhance it so that they feel like it’s easy.
Evernote is a great fit for Teams because people are already working together in teams. Having Evernote integrated there just makes sense, to help them get their job done faster.
The other thing we look at is shared vision with our partners around the digital and cultural transformation that’s happening in the modern workplace. We certainly have to snap to that.
LG: It’s the same for us. The top bar that we need to clear is: Is there a natural fit in the users’ workflows? Does this measurably make their lives better? And second, what do we have to offer Microsoft? How does this make Evernote users more successful as well? And lastly, it’s a feasibility consideration, which is: Can we build it and how quickly?
Q: From a strategic product perspective, how do you keep up with the needs of an increasingly demanding customer?
MM: We’re always listening to our customer feedback, whether it’s on Twitter, UserVoice, or within our end product feedback tool. We also look at the way people are working and features they’re asking for, whether it’s apps for mobile, or even desktop.
We’re also trying to envision what the future of work will look like on a longer-term horizon. As the workforce changes, as Millennials get on board, they definitely have new demands. We look into that, we prioritize it, and we put it in the backlog. Whatever is most asked for gets done first, and we go down the stack from there.
LG: One, it’s having an ear to the ground. We spend a lot of time talking to our customers, and often we’ll see opportunities for improvement.
Two, is doing pretty extensive testing with features that we want to launch, and making sure that we’re doing it in a way that’s actually helpful to our users. You don’t want to necessarily implement exactly what the customer is requesting because often it’s a symptom of a greater or undiscovered need. So we think about what they’re really trying to say, and what they’re really struggling with.
Q: I imagine that can be hard at times, like doing a bit of detective work.
LG: Exactly.
MM: Yep, totally agree.
Q: There has been a shift from having competitors to the idea of “playing well with others.” What is your view on adopting this approach from the technology standpoint?
MM: We’re building a product for collaboration, so we have to be collaborative. By working and playing with others, we help our customers and users get the most value. And in this particular case, it really helps increase their productivity, and users love it. So if we can increase productivity, if we can keep the user engaged, even if it’s working with a competitor or a partner, so be it. That’s why we are open and willing to let people use the tools they want to use. Because we believe that tools and technology facilitate productivity and enable customers to get more done faster.
LG: Playing well with others has always been a core value for Evernote. We help you capture your thoughts and information—wherever it comes from.
As to how we adopt it from a technology standpoint, it means building our product in a modular way so we’re not just supporting a single document type. We’re architecting the app in a way where it can accept any document type as a module, so you can plug-and-play additional ones in the future.
It’s a win-win because building a product in a way that supports integrations speeds up your own development. Your developers will thank you because when they’re trying to extend functionality into the product in the future, they will also benefit.
Q: Advancements in technology have made it possible for people to work anywhere, from any device. How can we keep up with the demands of such a highly connected workforce?
MM: Every team is different. Every individual is different, and they have their unique preferences and needs. As a platform, Microsoft Teams enables people to bring anything they want in terms of the apps and services they use the most. By doing so they can customize Microsoft Teams to fit their needs better for their increased productivity.
By allowing these types of integrations, by working well with other partners and competitors, we’re meeting the demands of a highly connected workforce. At the same time, we’re making sure, as Evernote is, that we’re cross-platform, cross-device, multi-screen. We want to make sure that wherever you are, however you’re connected, you can get your work done.
LG: In a way, the causation is a little fuzzy because having integrations enables you to work from anywhere and from any device. At the same time, integrations help you live better in a world like that.
I think where Microsoft Teams is really helpful is that it provides a hub for you to manage a lot of complexity. Because if everybody’s using 20 different apps, it becomes very difficult to manage. But if there’s some way for you to start centralizing your communications, with all of your sharing in one place, it helps people manage the overload of information.
Q: What do you see changing in the next five years with regard to the way people are working? And how are you looking to solve that with new product features and/or updates?
MM: Everybody is looking to get stuff done faster. What we are thinking, with these integrations, is how we can use machine learning or AI to help them do that.
For example, imagine you’re making a note that you need to send marketing materials for review and approval. It’d be cool if, as you’re typing or talking about it, an AI bot senses that this is actually a task that needs to be created and assigned to somebody, and then followed up on. Those are ways that we can improve productivity by doing things for people on their behalf.
Call recording, transcription, and translation is also something that we are looking into. All this stuff can get done automatically.
LG: I see there being two related trends. One is that there’s a rapid acceleration of the amount of information that people are consuming. Number two is that technology has gotten to a point where it’s actually possible to help users manage that overflow of information, so we’re at a really interesting time.
The first thing that will really help people is better aggregation and integrations. I see Evernote being the place that helps you manage your information by integrating with the tools you use to create information, and collecting all of that in one central hub.
The second piece of technology is, as Mansoor mentioned, AI and machine learning. The interesting thing that we’ll be able to do in the next five years is apply machine learning to help users make sense of information that they’re getting. Because it’s really important to be able to sift through it all and figure out what’s important.
The analogy I love to give is: If I walk into your kitchen, it might be really tidy, but I don’t know where anything is kept. Machine learning allows us to surface your items in your kitchen, in a context that makes sense with regard to how I organize and how I think.
Get started
To find out for yourself how much more your team can achieve, simply head over to the Microsoft App Store and install Evernote for Microsoft Teams today. For more information, check out this Quick Start Guide.
Many years ago, there was a bit of a trend for computer game companies to include a novella with their latest big release. Whether the main reason for this was to enrich player immersion or to help justify the ridiculously large boxes popular at the time is a moot point. Space Leagues may not include an actual novella, but it does have a very wordy background story. If you opt for the long version, then you may want to settle back with tea and biscuits. There is a shorter version, or you can just stick with my even more abridged account – Evil is decimating the universe, which leads to surviving galaxies setting up space leagues to ensure the development of superior combat strategies.
Space Leagues is a fantasy sports management game, in which the sport involves bashing the bejesus out of the opposing team. The first team to eliminate all of the opposition players by draining their health bars to zero is declared the winner. If both teams still have active players when time runs out, then the match is declared a draw. There are four leagues, each with ten teams, who, during the course of a season, will play each other twice. The team that finishes top in each of the lower leagues is promoted, whilst the bottom-placed team is relegated.
Each team is made up of a group of oddball characters, from giant tics to steam-powered golems and pretty much everything in-between. There are over 120 unique characters in the game, which are rated in terms of strength, speed, charisma, intellect and toughness. Before each match, you select five players and allocate their roles. Smashers charge recklessly into battle using their brute force to dish out powerful melee attacks. Strikers attack with speed and cunning, freely roaming the battlefield to identify vulnerable targets. Charmers are the equivalent of magic sponge wielding physios, using healing spells to rejuvenate battered teammates. Blasters use their superior intellect to avoid direct combat whilst peppering the arena with fireballs. Finally, thumpers use their massive constitution to absorb damage, protecting weaker members of their team from attack.
Matches are initially very confusing affairs, being closer to a barroom brawl than a sporting event. The unanimated player graphics are very basic with the action being viewed from above. This means that in spite of player names and the use of coloured auras to identify opposing players, the action tends to merge into a confusing mass scrum. Eventually, you will be able to recognise your established players and have a little more idea whether or not you are winning. After a few games, you may even be able to pick up a few tactical hints. You may realise, for instance, that your blaster is getting thwacked early on because you don’t have a good enough thumper to protect her.
After the match, the otherresults in your league will be displayed. You will then be presented with a drama to resolve. It seems that your team is always bitching about something or someone, and your assistant doesn’t help, tossing in his own snarky comments to further fan the flames of unrest. In one situation, a player was complaining about a minor injury, or “boo-boo” as he insisted on calling it. Do I give him a dressing-down for being a wimp? Keep calm and tell them to toughen up? Sympathise and buy them a lollipop? If I’m too harsh his morale might dip, but although a lollipop may cheer him up, there is a big risk that the rest of the team are either going to lose respect for their sucker of a manager or begin queuing to discuss their ailments and favourite sweeties. These situations are full of humour and how you interact with their demands will impact on the individual’s morale and that of the team as a whole. Well this is the theory – no matter how mean I tried to be there did not seem to be a discernible impact upon team performance. Unfortunately, much like Murder She Wrote reruns, you will soon see the same dramas playing out again and again. Even the funniest ones begin to grate when you have to sit through them for the tenth time.
You also have a financial budget, which will provide you with the funds to buy new players and offer established ones new contracts. Your scout does his best to uncover promising stars of the future, although, he is never actually gushing in his praise. You will usually have a choice of three new recruits and only a rough idea of their overall ability. Getting a new player to join isn’t always that simple. You make them an offer and then follow their thought process as they mull over the offer. Some ambitious types will weigh up the chances of actually winning a trophy, others could just be thinking that they are badly in need of a comfort break. This all sounds quite involved until you realise that it is made redundant by a glaring oversight. A squad of just five players never suffer injuries and these players will improve as soon as they start winning games. Have more players in your squad and injuries will occur, causing experience points to be spread among a larger pool of players. So, stick with five established players and apart from renewing contracts, there is nothing else to worry about.
Space Leagues sets the scene well, being full of humour and quirky characters. Together with the Danny Elfman style soundtrack there is definitely a Nightmare Before Christmas influence. The interactions between the players and management are definitely the game’s highlight, but even these become stale after a short time. The biggest problem is that the strategic elements do not have enough depth to maintain interest. The lack of a squad overview screen means that team selection requires way too much flicking back and forth. You cannot scout the opposition, so you end up going into games blind, meaning that nine times out of ten the best strategy is to ditch any ideas of finesse and just stick to a team made up of smashers and strikers. Grind out a couple of seasons in the lower division to improve your players and your team will begin to rise through the leagues with relative ease. Sadly, by this you point, you will probably be ready to move on to something more rewarding.
Posted by: xSicKx - 06-19-2018, 05:08 PM - Forum: PC Discussion
- No Replies
Hi everyone,
Today we want to tell you about something new we’ve prepared just in time for Sanhok’s release: a new way to unlock new content in PUBG. We’ll reveal all the details very soon, but first we want to share some context and information about how we think about premium content.
Since the beginning, we’ve thought a lot about ways to allow you to unlock content in meaningful ways. To start, we tried to establish a cosmetic market based on scarcity by introducing crate and key system. This model allows all players to get reward items regardless of whether they made a purchase or not, resell unwanted crates/items back to the marketplace and acquire items or add funds to your Steam Wallet without ever using cash payment methods.
The goal was to provide a fun system outside of the main game experience through item trading. We also designed the system to be useful for you whether you’re willing or unwilling to make a purchase. We especially liked that the crate and key system can feel extremely satisfying whenever you unlock rare items. However, to make certain items really rare and valuable, we’ve had to regulate the supply of items, making high tier items very rare. As a result, many of you can’t get the items you want instantly, and even though you’ve invested more money into the system, it can be pretty difficult to get the items you want.
This type of market model still has its own values. However, our team’s goal is to not stop here, but to keep experimenting with new systems and new content. To this end, around the release of the PC 1.0 version last year, we had a lot on our mind.
At one point, we actually considered the option of releasing new content in paid DLC format, including new maps. However, we came to understand that this method has some critical drawbacks. Mainly, it divides the entire player base into separate groups depending on whether they’ve purchased map DLC. It would also keep a huge portion of players from enjoying the biggest additions to the game. As such, at The Game Awards 2017, we promised that all battle royale maps will be provided to all of our players for free, not as DLC.
Then, while designing and developing Sanhok, we began to explore how to offer premium content in new ways, without limiting it to DLC. We wanted to create a whole new gameplay and reward experience. Ultimately, we decided to go with a new system: the “Event Pass.” It’ll be made available on June 22, the same day Sanhok hits live servers.
The Event Pass is designed to reflect the opinions of players who wanted a trackable progression-related system, and at the same time allows you to unlock new content in PUBG in a way that is different from the crate and key system.
Just like the crate and key system, you’ll be able to get rewards in the Event Pass system regardless of whether you made a purchase. If you haven’t paid for the pass, you can temporarily unlock many of the items (and earn one special item permanently). However, you can also permanently unlock a ton of exclusive reward items by paying to unlock the pass and completing certain missions to “level up” your pass. If you’re hesitant about buying the Pass, but want to play the missions, you’re free to do that. And your mission progress is always tracked, so you can buy the Event Pass late in the event and still get all the rewards you’ve earned.
This first Event Pass is all about celebrating the launch of Sanhok, so it includes an item set that fits the map Sanhok thematically. The Event Pass will last for about four weeks, and it includes dozens of missions, including daily missions, weekly missions, and Sanhok-specific missions. By completing missions and leveling up, you’ll unlock rewards. These rewards won’t be tradable or marketable, so only those of you who really earn them will get to show them off in-game.
One more thing: simply by playing and completing missions while they’re available, you’ll be able to unlock one free chance to change your in-game PUBG name.
We’ll share more about missions and level-up rewards before Sanhok hits the live servers.
Please give us your feedback on the Event Season and Pass so we can keep improving PUBG. Our top priorities will continue to be optimizing performance, fixing bugs, and eradicating cheat programs.While our Platform, Engineering, and Anti-Cheat teams are focusing on these areas, we’ll keep meeting players’ needs for new experiences, rewards, and surprising new features.
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) is an online multiplayer battle royale game developed and published by PUBG Corporation, a subsidiary of South Korean video game company Bluehole. The game is based on previous mods that were created by Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene for other games using the film Battle Royale for inspiration, and expanded into a standalone game under Greene's creative direction. In the game, up to one hundred players parachute onto an island and scavenge for weapons and equipment to kill others while avoiding getting killed themselves. The available safe area of the game's map decreases in size over time, directing surviving players into tighter areas to force encounters. The last player or team standing wins the round.
Does that mean the system is useless? Not by a long shot. Because, you see, systemd offers yet another type of units, paths, that can help you out. Path units allow you to trigger a service when an event happens in the filesystem, say, when a file gets deleted or a directory accessed. And, overwriting an image is exactly the kind of event we are talking about here.
Anatomy of a Path Unit
A systemd path unit takes the extension .path, and it monitors a file or directory. A .path unit calls another unit (usually a .service unit with the same name) when something happens to the monitored file or directory. For example, if you have a picchanged.path unit to monitor the snapshot from your webcam, you will also have a picchanged.service that will execute a script when the snapshot is overwritten.
Path units contain a new section, [Path], with few more directives. First, you have the what-to-watch-for directives:
PathExists= monitors whether the file or directory exists. If it does, the associated unit gets triggered. PathExistsGlob= works in a similar fashion, but lets you use globbing, like when you use ls *.jpg to search for all the JPEG images in a directory. This lets you check, for example, whether a file with a certain extension exists.
PathChanged= watches a file or directory and activates the configured unit whenever it changes. It is not activated on every write to the watched file but only when a monitored file open for for writing is changed and then closed. The associated unit is executed when the file is closed.
PathModified=, on the other hand, does activate the unit when anything is changed in the file you are monitoring, even before you close the file.
DirectoryNotEmpty= does what it says on the box, that is, it activates the associated unit if the monitored directory contains files or subdirectories.
Then, we have Unit= that tells the .path which .service unit to activate, in case you want to give it a different name to that of your .path unit; MakeDirectory= can be true or false (or 0 or 1, or yes or no) and creates the directory you want to monitor before monitoring starts. Obviously, using MakeDirectory= in combination with PathExists= does not make sense. However, MakeDirectory= can be used in combination with DirectoryMode=, which you use to set the the mode (permissions) of the new directory. If you don’t use DirectoryMode=, the default permissions for the new directory are 0755.
Building picchanged.path
All these directives are very useful, but you will be just looking for changes made to one single file, so your .path unit is very simple:
To summarize: the Udev rule pulls in your new picchanged.path unit, which, in turn pulls in the webcam.service as a requirement for everything to work perfectly.
The “thing” that picchanged.path monitors is the monitor.jpg file in the monitor/ directory in your home directory. As you saw last time, webcam.service called a script, checkimage.sh, took a picture at the beginning of its execution and stored it in monitor/temp.jpg. checkimage.sh then took another pic, temp.jpg, and compared it with monitor.jpg. If it found significant differences (like when somebody walks into frame) the script overwrote monitor.jpg with the temp.jpg. That is when picchanged.path fires.
As you haven’t included a Unit= directive in your .path, the unit systemd expects a matching picchanged.service unit which it will trigger when /home/[user name]/monitor/monitor.jpg gets modified:
For the time being, let’s make picmonitor.sh save a time-stamped copy of monitor.jpg every time changes get detected:
#!/bin/bash
# This is the pcmonitor.sh script cp /home/[user name]/monitor/monitor.jpg /home/[user name]/monitor/"`date`.jpg"
Udev Changes
You have to change the custom Udev rule you wrote in the previous installment so everything works. Edit /etc/udev/rules.d/01-webcam.rules so instead of looking like this:
The new rule, instead of calling webcam.service, now calls picchanged.path when your webcam gets detected. (Note that you will have to change the idVendor and IdProduct to those of your own webcam — you saw how to find these out previously).
For the record, I also changed checkimage.sh from using PNG to JPEG images. I did this because I found some dependency problems with PNG images when working with mplayer on some versions of Debian. checkimage.sh now looks like this:
This is a multi-unit service that, when all its bits and pieces are in place, you don’t have to worry much about: you plug in the designated webcam (or boot the machine with the webcam already connected), picchanged.path gets started thanks to the Udev rule and takes over, bringing up the webcam.service and starting to check on the snaps. There is nothing else you need to do.
Conclusion
Having the process split into two doesn’t only help explain how path units work, but it’s also very useful for debugging. One service does not “touch” the other in any way, which means that you could, for example, improve the “motion detection” part, and it would be very easy to roll back if things didn’t work as expected.
Admittedly, the example is a bit goofy, as there are definitely better ways of monitoring movement using a webcam. But remember: the main aim of these articles is to help you learn how systemd units work within a context.
Next time, we’ll finish up with systemd units by looking at some of the other types of units available and show how to improve your home-monitoring system further by setting up service that sends images to another machine.
Learn more about Linux through the free “Introduction to Linux” course from The Linux Foundation and edX.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 06-19-2018, 11:30 AM - Forum: Lounge
- No Replies
WWE Money In The Bank 2018: Full Match Results And Winners
If climbing up ladders in order to grab a briefcase containing a contract for a title shot gets you excited, then on Sunday, June 17, you're in luck because there will be two matches at the Money in the Bank PPV that are just that! Superstars from both the Raw and Smackdown rosters will be competing in two of these ladder matches, one for the men and one for the women. Over the course of the evening, 10 matches will take place during the course of the PPV, including one during the Kickoff Show.
Money in the Bank comes to the WWE Network today at 7 PM ET / 4 PM PT, with the Kickoff Show starting one hour prior. The event takes place at the Allstate Arena in Rosemont, IL. If you aren't signed up for the WWE Network but still want to watch MITB, you can sign up for one month for free here and cancel without any commitment to the streaming service.
There will be two MITB matches for the men and the women. Both matches will consist of eight superstars vying for the contract instead of the traditional six. The Miz is heavily favored to win according to Vegas betting odds on the men's side and Natalya is for the women. Raw newcomer Ember Moon told GameSpot during an interview that she may be afraid of heights, but she is excited for the opportunity: "I'm ready to rise to that challenge, and it's not going to deter me from getting that Money in the Bank contract." Additionally, numerous titles are on the line, including the WWE Championship, which AJ Styles will defend, once again, against Shinsuke Nakamura in a Last Man Standing match, and we cover the history of this rivalry, which involves plenty of low blows, in the video above.
Ronda Rousey beat Nia Jax via disqualification at 11:05. Then Alexa Bliss cashed in her Money in the Bank briefcase and pinned Nia Jax at 0:35 to win the Raw Women's Championship.
Samoa Joe, Kevin Owens, Bobby Roode, Braun Strowman, The Miz, Rusev, Finn Balor, and one member of The New Day (Money in the Bank match)
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 06-19-2018, 05:11 AM - Forum: Lounge
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PUBG Creator Isn't Concerned With Other Games Doing Battle Royale
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is a household name at this point since it helped propel the battle royale-style game into unprecedented popularity. Fortnite took the genre to new heights, and now new entries in long-running franchises are adopting the style; namely Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 and Battlefield V. We had the chance to speak with Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene, and one of the many topics of discussion was the emergence of big names doing battle royale, and if that affects PUBG's development in any way.
During the interview, Greene said, "Oh, no. We have our own internal roadmap. And of course there's going to be competitors. This year is a battle royale of battle royales. Everyone has their own royale, which is great, I love seeing the genre grow. It's going to be interesting to see if it's going to develop as a full genre."
Greene continued, "We look internally, we have our own goals. We don't really look at what other people are doing. We kind of have blinders on. We've had these, sort of, stretch goals for quite some time. While, yes, competition is great to keep people on their toes, we don't necessarily look at what others are doing."
At Microsoft's E3 2018 press conference, PUBG made its big announcement that a snow map is on the way to both PC and Xbox One versions of the game. It's set to launch sometime in Winter 2018, and it will be the fourth map in PUBG's rotation. No details were given as to how the snow map will be designed. The third and much smaller map, named Sahnok, will go live for PC players on June 22 and for Xbox One users sometime in the Summer this year.
There's an on-going story among battle royale games, too. Development studio PUBG Corp. filed a lawsuit against Epic Games, developers of Fortnite, for copyright infringement in Korea. Epic is also the company behind the Unreal Engine, for which both PUBG and Fortnite are built on. You can read more details in our story here.
Today is the first official day of Call for Code, an annual global initiative from creator David Clark Cause, with IBM proudly serving as Founding Partner. Call for Code aims to unleash the collective power of the global open source developer community against the growing threat of natural disasters.
Even as we prepare to accept submissions from technology teams around the world, the response from the technology community has been overwhelming and today I am thrilled to announce two new partners joining the cause.
New Enterprises Associates (NEA) has confirmed its participation as a Partner Affiliate and the official Founding Venture Capital Partner to the cause. With over $20 billion in committed capital and a track record of partnering with entrepreneurs and innovations that have truly changed the world, NEA will extend the Call for Code into the startup and venture capital ecosystem and the Global Prize Winners will have the opportunity to pitch their solution to NEA for evaluation and feedback.
The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) has also confirmed it will join the Call for Code as a Gold Sponsor. CNCF will bring invaluable experience and advice for technology teams looking to deploy their solutions across a variety of topologies and real-world constraints.
With NEA and CNCF on board the commitment to the cause is widening, and this is only the beginning. Since making the announcement, technology companies, consumer companies, universities, NGOs and celebrities have all expressed interest in answering or supporting the call. Events have taken place in 50 cities around the world, and many more are planned in coming months, providing training and bringing teams together.
Announced on May 24 by IBM Chairman, President and CEO Ginni Rometty, IBM is investing $30 million over five years as well as technology and resources to help kick start Call for Code to address some of the toughest social issues we face today. The goal is to develop technology solutions that significantly improve disaster preparedness, provide relief from devastation caused by fires, floods, hurricanes, tsunamis and earthquakes, and benefit Call for Code’s charitable partners — the United Nations Human Rights Office and the American Red Cross.
The need was never more apparent. Even as we made the announcement in Paris, Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano was erupting, reportedly destroying more than 450 homes. In recent weeks, Guatemala’s ‘Volcano of Fire’ reportedly left 110 dead and around 200 missing. In a worrying preview to the 2018 Atlantic hurricane Season, two category 4 hurricanes – Aletta and Bud – formed in a matter of days last week.
2017 was in fact one of the worst on record for catastrophic natural disasters, impacted millions of lives and billions of dollars of damage – from heat waves in Australia and sustained extreme heat in Europe to famine from drought in Somalia and massive floods and landslides in South East Asia.
We can’t stop a hurricane or a lava flow from wreaking havoc, but we can work together to predict their path; get much needed supplies into an area before disaster strikes, and help emergency support teams allocate their precariously stretched resources.
Last week, The Weather Company, an IBM business, announced it would make weather APIs available to Call for Code participants for access to data on weather conditions and forecasts. IBM Code Patterns get developer teams up and running in minutes, with access to cloud, data, AI and blockchain technologies.
Of course, the real magic happens when coders code. The open source developer community has helped build so much of the technology that is transforming our world. IBM has been supporting that community for over two decades and together we have helped reinvent the social experience. Our hope is that this community can help transform the experience of so many people impacted by natural disasters in coming years.
To help rally that community the Linux Foundation, a long-term partner for IBM, is lending its support and Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, will join a panel of eminent technologists to evaluate submissions.
Less surprising, at least to me, was the enthusiasm IBMers showed in responding to the call. We saw internal celebrations around the world in support of the launch last month and we anticipate a healthy contribution to the cause from the 35,000 developers within IBM, plus of course IBM’s own Corporate Service Corps will help deploy the winning ideas on the ground.
Ultimately, the real measure of success will be the impact Call for Code has on some of the most at-risk communities around the globe, and the lives that are saved and improved. With Call for Code now open, the time to make a difference is now.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 06-18-2018, 11:33 PM - Forum: Windows
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Microsoft expands commitment to military spouse community
Microsoft will launch a pilot program to provide spouses with technology skills training beginning in September.
Today in San Francisco, Microsoft Military Affairs will join our partners from LinkedIn to each share new commitments to the military spouse community.
Military spouses are an integral supporting force for members of our military, but face staggering 18 percent unemployment and 53 percent underemployment due to moves every two to three years, according to a 2016 study from Blue Star Families on the social cost of unemployment and underemployment of military spouses.
As part of our commitment to the military spouse community, Microsoft will launch a pilot program to provide spouses with technology skills training beginning in September.
Microsoft has successfully opened a technology career pipeline for transitioning service members and veterans via the Microsoft Software & Systems Academy (MSSA) program, which has expanded coast-to-coast and has a graduation rate of over 90 percent. We are excited to explore how to expand and tailor these opportunities to military spouses, which represent a diverse talent pool that is adaptable, resilient and highly educated and ready to take on new and exciting opportunities to further their professional and personal goals.
The U.S. government estimates information technology occupations are projected to grow 12 percent from 2014 to 2024, faster than the average for all occupations. Because there are 500,000 open technology jobs annually, we know that career programs are needed to help close the technology skills gap.
“Microsoft is excited to work with technology leaders and other organizations committed to supporting military spouses, and to find avenues that lead to meaningful career opportunities for active duty military spouses,” said U.S. Marine Corps Major General (Ret.) Chris Cortez, Vice President of Microsoft Military Affairs.
LinkedIn also announced today that it is expanding its military and veterans program to include military spouses through a new partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense’s Spouse Education and Career Opportunities program. Beginning this July, LinkedIn will provide one year of LinkedIn Premium to every military spouse during each of their moves to new installations to facilitate their career transitions, and once again upon conclusion of military service. This will include free access to LinkedIn’s online library of more than 12,000 LinkedIn Learning courses, including its newly-launched learning path designed to help military spouses succeed in flexible, freelance or remote-work opportunities.
The Microsoft Military Affairs team is working closely with military spouses and nonprofit organizations to understand firsthand the unique challenges this community faces as we build out and learn from our pilot program.
We are thrilled to begin our pilot program in the fall and to continue our support of military spouses and their community by providing the skills they need to enter technology careers.
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