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Far Cry 4 PC system requirements
PC players gearing up for the launch of Far Cry 4 in a few weeks will need an Intel Core i5-750 (2.6 GHz) or AMD Phenom II X4 955 (3.2 GHz) processor and 4 GB of memory. The game also required 30 GB of hard drive space and a video card at least as powerful as the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 or AMD Radeon HD5850 (1 GB of VRAM). For optimal performance, Ubisoft recommends either the Intel Core i5-2400S (2.5 GHz) processor or the AMD FX-8350 (4.0 GHz) or better, as well as 8 GB of memory. The game will perform better with at least a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 or AMD Radeon R9 290X or better video card (with 2 GB of VRAM). Far Cry 4 will also launch on Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360 and PS3 in addition to PC on November 18. [Image: Ubisoft]
War Memory: A Battle To Remember is somewhat forgettable
War Memory: A Battle To Remember ranks among the most literal titles for any game in history. This game, which is free to users of iOS 6.0 (or later) on the iPad, iPod touch, and iPhone, takes the classic exercise of flipping over panels that display various shapes on the hidden side, in order to test your memory, and literally takes it into an actual war zone, thus the very self-explanatory name. The game takes place on the sandy ground in the middle of a battle. A grid of 24 hexagons lie on the ground, each of which displaying war items, such as gas masks, rocket launchers, tanks, and so on. Each turn is two flipped tiles, whether you find a match or not. If you do happen to find a match, the battle intensifies, as tiny animations of fighter planes, soldiers, or whatever you happened to match are lowered onto their respective tiles. The best, and most effective, part of this game is the intensification of the battle elements. As you collect matches, bullets fly by and loud explosions become more frequent. Especially with headphones or earbuds, this element is the part of this game that makes it uniquely challenging and interesting. The violent noises and distractions make remembering where each tile is hidden very challenging. This effect is lost, unfortunately, when the game is silenced or played with only the device's internal speaker. Another effective part of this game is that each game is best 2 out of 3, with the board shifting left or right. It is as if the person who won the last board were advancing, like an army, towards the loser. Unfortunately, this is the last of the interesting characteristics in the game. War Memory: A Battle To Remember is a fine and familiar experience, and the war elements elements are somewhat fun, but the whole thing feels disjunct, with no real link between memory and war, except that it is a head to head competition, but even that feels like a reach. The most clever thing about the game is probably the name. If you're looking for a free memory game, there's no reason not to choose this one. Beyond that, this game is kind of a head scratch.
Opportunity rover is getting reformatted after ten years on Mars
NASA's ironman Mars rover Opportunity, like your five-year-old PC, is about to get reformatted. Problems have been causing the aging vehicle to reboot and scientists suspect that worn-out cells in the flash memory are to blame. Opportunity's been running for 10 years despite an expected mission life of three months, so even having such problems is a bonus -- and its now-defunct twin, Spirit, had a similar procedure in 2009. Scientists will back up the rover's memory, then send a format command to prevent the bad cells from being accessed. They'll use a slower-than-normal data rate to reinstall the software, since Mars is currently 212 million miles away and the signal will take 11.2 minutes just to reach it. NASA said that Martian winds have kept the rover's solar panels surprisingly clean since it hit the ground rolling in 2004 (see the video below). As the picture above from August 10th shows, it's still doing science and exploration like a boss.
Recommended Reading: sexist video games and origins of forensic science
Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology and more in print and on the web. Some weeks, you'll also find short reviews of books that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read. Is 'Assassin's Creed' Sexist? Is Link a Girl? And More Fun Questions From This Year's E3 by Emily Yoshida, Grantland Pocket!function(d,i){if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement("script");j.id=i;j.src="https://widgets.getpocket.com/v1/j/btn.js?v=1";var w=d.getElementById(i);d.body.appendChild(j);}}(document,"pocket-btn-js"); The sad truth is, if Samus (the heavily armored hero in Metroid) made her debut today, her big reveal would probably be just as shocking today as it was in 1986. While attitudes towards women -- even in the decidedly male-dominated world of gaming -- have matured, putting a female protagonist in a video game is still something of a rarity. (And, if you believe representatives of Ubisoft, something of a technical challenge... but that feels disingenuous.) Emily Yoshida shares what it's like to be a woman at E3, perhaps the most testosterone-drenched tech convention of the year.
Scientists can create and erase memories 'at will'
A person is the sum of their memories, so what happens when our personal histories can be deleted at will? That's the ethical dilemma facing researchers over at the University of California, San Diego, who have found that it's possible to delete and recover memories created in the minds of genetically engineered rats in the same way MIT scientists did with mice last year. In a slightly gruesome series of experiments, the rodents were given electric shocks while their neurons were bombarded by light pulses delivered by an optical fiber implanted into their brains. After a while, the shocks stopped, but whenever their brains were stimulated, the rats continued to feel fear, since they were drawing on memories.
3 simple ways to clear up "other" memory on your iOS device
The truth of the 16GB iPhone and iPad is that they really don't have 16GB of usable space, it's more like 12GB. With storage at a premium and a whole wonderful world of apps just waiting at your finger tips you've probably found yourself looking at your iPhone memory information and quietly cursed the name of Other. Yes "other" memory, the nonspecific space hog that greedily takes up memory on your phone without adding value to your life. Is there a simple way to reclaim those precious GB back from your phone without restoring it? Yes dear reader there is. Here's how. Step One: Delete your browser caches There's a good chance that you've never thought to clear your web browser cache on your iOS device. After months or years of heavy browsing there's a decent chunk of memory that's taken up in your Other section by all these forgotten webpages. Lets clean it out. For Safari users simply go to Settings -> Safari and then click the "Clear History" and "Clear Cookies and Data" buttons. If you use Chrome the process is a little more complicated. Open Chrome and then select the drop down menu, signified with the three horizontal lines. Then go down to the History button, and click Clear Browsing Data. Step Two: Delete your old text messages Whenever you send a text message with a picture that picture has to be stored somewhere. That somewhere is your Other memory. Sadly there is no easy way to mass delete text messages. We suggest plowing through and manually deleting conversations next time you sit down to a night of Netflix. It's easy to do as a secondary task, just make sure you don't accidentally delete an important conversation. Step Three: Delete old voice recordings with iFunbox iOS has a killer voice recorder, but if you hoard recordings they really start to eat up your memory. Normally you'd have to delete these voice memos one by one, but if you'd like to save yourself some time iFunbox is a great application for both Mac and Windows that will allow you to quickly delete all of them at once. Simply click on the Voice Memos tab, select the messages you'd like to get ride of, and delete them. I cleared up almost 2GB of space on my iOS device just by deleting old memos. If you sync with iTunes, however, you can upload these to your computer normally and delete them off your device with no need for a third-party application like iFunbox.
The game as it was, the game as it is
People do not remember the game as it was. They remember it as they think it was. Want proof? See Daxxari responding to a forum poster who is wildly mistaken about a mechanic that never existed during The Burning Crusade. Daxxari - PvP gear penalty in pve content Quote: Posted by Mát in BC a penalty was introduced for wearing pvp gear in pve content. the simple version is the more pvp gear you had the more your damage and healing scaled down while in instanced pve content. I am not aware of any such mechanic ever having been implemented. Perhaps you're thinking of the equivalent loss of effectiveness due to Resilience having been budgeted into the item level of that gear, and thus it was less effective than an equivalent piece of PvE gear? source Now one of three things is happening here. Either Mát is misremembering (it happens to all of us), he or she is lying, or he or she has made the mistake Daxxari mentions, mistaking the fact that Resilience back then was part of the item budget and thus, PvP gear was less powerful in PvE because it spent itemization points on a stat that reduced your chance to be crit (back then, that's what Resilience did). But no matter how you look at it, the idea of this penalty introduced for wearing PvP gear in PvE did not exist - which is why so many of us wore PvP gear to PvE in. Sure, it had resil on it, but it was easy to get and often better than what we would have gotten from five mans to prepare for raiding Karazhan. With a game as old as World of Warcraft (we're entering its tenth year) this is understandable. Not all that many people playing today have played since launch, not even since the days of BC or Wrath - heck, there are a great many people who started playing in Cataclysm and even quite a few who started during this expansion. People will tell you that the talent system that we had up until Cataclysm allowed for great customization. They may even believe it.
How to upgrade the memory of the Mac mini (Late 2012)
When I bought my Mac mini a few months ago, I picked it up at my local Apple Store rather than ordering it directly from the company. Because of this, it came with the default 4GB of RAM onboard rather than one of the larger amounts the computer supports. There are probably plenty of mini buyers in the same boat, so join me as I upgrade my mini from a pedestrian 4GB of memory all the way to the computer's max of 16GB. Start by turning it off (obviously), yanking all the cords (obviously) and flipping the computer over (hopefully obviously). Apple has made upgrading the newer minis much easier than it was with past models. Simply rotate the black portion of the case counter-clockwise so that it clicks open. Remove the black cover and try not to drool at how gorgeous the mini's guts are. You can see the memory modules in place on the right side of the interior. Gently bending the clips on either side of each module will release the memory and allow each unit to be removed. Don't get too aggressive here, the clips might seem "stuck," but don't wrench on them or you'll end up breaking them. Be firm, yet gentle, and they'll eventually bend. Slide the new memory modules in place and push them down gently. The clips will snap into place once you push the modules down. Ta-da! You're almost done. Re-attach the black cover, rotate it clockwise to lock it into place and set your mini up as you did before. Enjoy your speed boost!
Samsung's new chip could put 4GB of memory in your next smartphone
Think the 3GB of RAM in the Galaxy Note 3 was a lot? Samsung was only getting started. The company has just unveiled the first 8-gigabit (1GB) low-power DDR4 memory chip, which could lead to 4GB of RAM in a multi-layered, mobile-sized package. Moving to the higher-bandwidth (3.1Gbps) DDR standard should also provide a hefty 50 percent speed boost over existing DDR3-based chips, even though the new silicon uses 40 percent less power than its ancestors. Samsung is only promising mass production of the new RAM sometime in 2014, but it's already clear about the target audience. The technology will go into laptops, smartphones and tablets with Ultra HD displays, where additional memory will be crucial for powering all those extra pixels.
Recommended Reading: Stuxnet's more dangerous precursor, fake memories and more
Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology in print and on the web. Some weeks, you'll also find short reviews of books dealing with the subject of technology that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read. Stuxnet's Secret Twin (4,176 words) by Ralph Langner, Foreign Policy Pocket Stuxnet is a pretty nasty nasty customer, especially if you happen to be a centrifuge used in the enrichment of uranium. Amazingly, the story of the first publicly acknowledged cyber weapon keeps getting more and more interesting. Ralph Langner has spent the last several years poring over code and other details of Stuxnet's history and discovered there was an earlier version of the virus, that was even more destructive than the one unleashed on Iran's nuclear facilities. Instead of putting the centrifuge's motors in overdrive, it over pressurized them by closing valves designed to allow gas out. It sounds like a perfectly logical avenue of attack, until you realize that the potential for truly catastrophic failure would have quickly blown Stuxnet's cover.
OCZ declares bankruptcy, may sell its assets to Toshiba
OCZ dropped off the radar shortly into 2013 as it struggled to correct dodgy accounting and stem ongoing losses. Unfortunately, it couldn't turn things around quickly enough -- the one-time legend in memory technology has declared bankruptcy. That isn't necessarily the end of the story, though. Toshiba has offered to buy all of OCZ's assets as long as the ailing company maintains its value. The bankruptcy represents a sad (potential) end for a firm that was once synonymous with speedy RAM and SSDs, but there's a good chance that its work will live on in future products.
Crossbar's RRAM to boast terabytes of storage, faster write speeds than NAND
Hardware makers often sing the praises of their latest and greatest flash memory, but the folks at Crossbar are ready to show them up with resistive RAM (RRAM) that they've been quietly working on. Compared to NAND, RRAM comes in at half the size and boasts 20 times faster write speeds (140MB/s), reads data at 17MB per second, guzzles 20 times less power and has 10 times more endurance. Since RRAM is non-volatile memory, it can keep data even when it's powered off, á la NAND. As if that weren't enough, 3D stacking construction allows for several terabytes of storage, endowing one 200 x 200mm 200mm2 chip with one terabyte. Unlike many tech breakthroughs however -- we're looking at you, graphene -- this one is just about ready to find its way into finished products. Crossbar has manufactured RRAM within a standard chip factory, and claims that it can be churned out easily with existing production infrastructure. According to the firm, it's in the fine-tuning process and plans to introduce the tech into the world of embedded SoCs. Sure, the outfit is the exclusive holder of some RRAM patents, but it aims to license its know-how to system-on-a-chip creators. Update: Thanks to those readers who spotted our error on the silicon area -- it's now been fixed.
Samsung ships first 3D vertical NAND flash, defies memory scaling limits
The main challenge in producing higher-capacity flash storage is one of scale -- as density goes up, so does cell interference and the chances of a breakdown. Samsung may have overcome that barrier (if temporarily) by mass-producing the first 3D vertical NAND memory, or V-NAND. Instead of putting memory cells on a conventional 2D plane, the company reworked its long-serving Charge Trap Flash technology to create a 3D cell structure with more breathing room. The result is flash that improves both reliability and speed at higher densities; Samsung claims that the new technology is 2-10X more reliable than its ancestors, and twice as quick at writing data. The initial V-NAND chip offers a 128-gigabit (16GB) capacity that we've seen before, but its underlying technique should scale quickly when a chip can include as many as 24 stacked cell layers. Although Samsung hasn't named the first devices with V-NAND inside, we won't be surprised if our next phone or SSD is particularly spacious.
Scientists create false memories in mice, cause rodent-style Inception
A group of MIT researchers (we assume they're all Philip K. Dick fans) have successfully implanted false memories in the minds of mice, according to a study published in the journal Science. This "mouseception" experiment was designed to examine the phenomenon called false memory syndrome, in which the brain concocts recollections of events that have never happened. By manipulating the memory engram–bearing cells in the hippocampus, the research team convinced a few unsuspecting mice that they had experienced a shock to their feet when one had never actually occurred. One can only assume that after finessing this false memory implantation, the next logical step is going into the mice's dreams and stealing all their secrets. Christopher Nolan would be so proud. Or horrified. Jury's still out.
Samsung starts making 3GB low-power memory for smartphones
We hope you weren't just getting used to having 2GB of RAM in a smartphone, because Samsung is already moving on. The company is now mass-producing 3GB LPDDR3 packages whose 0.8mm (0.03in) thickness can accommodate most device sizes. The capacious, 20nm-class memory should also be quick when there's a pair of symmetric channels to keep data flowing. The first smartphones with 3GB of RAM should ship in the second half of the year; Samsung isn't revealing which phones will have the honor, but it's not hard to make some educated guesses.
Google celebrates the Manchester Baby and the birth of computer memory (video)
As part of its efforts to promote the unsung heroes of computing history, Google is celebrating the Manchester Baby's 65th birthday. Despite the cutesy nickname, the Manchester Small Scale Experimental Machine was the first computer to use electronic memory rather than punchcards for programming, heralding the software revolution. The secret was in the Williams-Kilburn cathode-ray tube, which could store a (then) staggering 128 bytes worth of data. Of course, that's not much by modern standards, but given that the 5-meter machine weighed in at over a ton, we still think it could take your fancy laptop in a bar-room brawl. If you're curious to learn more and hear the immortal quips of Professor F.C. Williams, head on past the break for the video.
SK Hynix teases 4GB LPDDR3 RAM for high-end mobiles due end of this year
Samsung is already pressing ahead with its own high-density 20nm LPDDR3 modules, but SK Hynix reckons it can go one better. Instead of the stingy, piffling, retro 2GB stack offered by Sammy (pah!), the Korean memory specialist says it's sampling 20nm 8Gb (1GB) chips that can be stacked to provide 4GB of RAM in high-end mobile devices. This memory will come with all the trimmings and trappings of high-density LPDDR3, including a data transmission speed of 2,133Mbps (vs. 1,600Mbps offered by existing LPDDR3 phones like the GS4), a thinner profile and less power consumption in standby mode compared to LPDDR2. That just leaves the question of "when?," to which SK Hynix confusingly answers that we'll see products "noticeably loaded" with more than 2GB of LPDDR3 during the second half of this year, although it doesn't intend to start mass production of this exact chip until the end of the year. Of course, there'll come a point in 2014 when even mid-range processors like ARM's Cortex-A12 will theoretically be able to address more than 4GB, so that amount of RAM may not even seem so outlandish.
Amazon slashes price of select SanDisk offerings for one day only
Happy June. While you're sitting in front of your AC, why not take a minute to click on over to Amazon to check out a pretty impressive deal on SanDisk cards and drives? For today only (or, you know, while supplies last), the mega-retailer is offering some deep discounts on a number of products from the memory maker, including a 32GB MicroSDHC, which has been knocked down to $21.49 from an original $70 asking price, and a $100 64GB thumb drive, which is now $33. After today, they'll all be an, ahem, memory.
MiiPC offers backers double the memory for $15, throws in a free mic
With a week left in an already successful Kickstarter campaign (approaching three times its initial $50,000 goal), the makers of the MiiPC are giving backers the chance to increase their system's memory. Add $15 before the close of the project and you'll be able to double things up, from 1GB to 2GB of RAM and 4GB to 8GB of storage -- the move comes in response to pledger feedback, according to the company. And speaking of listening, the makers of the parental-friendly Android PC are also tossing in a free built-in mic for those who pre-ordered, just for good measure.
Fusion-io bumps its ioFX super-SSD to 1.6TB, announces HP Workstation Z integration
We have a feeling graphics artists are going to be begging their studios for Fusion-io's latest ioFX super-SSD. After receiving critical acclaim for its 460GB version, the company has today introduced a massively-speced 1.6TB variant at NAB. Despite the space increase, the new unit is not bigger than its older sibling. In related news, HP has also signed on to integrate ioFX into its HP Z 420, 620 and 820 all-in-ones Workstations, and it'll also give current workstation owners the option to simply add the card to their existing machines. Fusion won't be releasing any details about pricing for the 1.6TB ioFX just yet -- that'll remain under wraps until its released this summer. For now, movie makers can net the 460GB one for $2K (about $500 less that its release price). Full press release after the break.
