Talos
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Facebook groups for buying and selling credit cards still abound
We might think that stolen credit cards and personal information only get traded on the dark web, but the information is moving in plain sight on Facebook. According to intelligence firm Cisco Talos, there are dozens of groups on the social network that rather explicitly buy and sell credit card numbers and other stolen information. The security firm tracked 74 groups in total that have approximately 385,000 members.
The US is getting Hollywood's help building a real 'Iron Man' battle suit
The US hasn't had much success building mechanized battle suits that move quickly and stop bullets, but Hollywood has been dreaming up these concepts for years. Don't they already know a thing or two about designing high-tech armor? Apparently, the US military thinks so -- it's enlisting the help of Legacy Effects, which has built suits for Iron Man and RoboCop, to shape its TALOS (Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit) project. The company is both designing and 3D printing prototype pieces that will give a feel for what the armor is like in the real world.
Six things you will and will not find in The Elder Scrolls Online
The Elder Scrolls series launched in 1994 with Arena. The game was sold on floppy disks, for goodness' sake. It's been around for a long time. With that extended life comes convoluted and complicated lore. Even after I'd heard the time period for The Elder Scrolls Online, I had to research to find out whether certain pieces of lore would actually appear in the game. Of course, I'm not going to be able to tell you everything in this one article, but before ESO launches, I can hit some of the highlights.
Tamriel Infinium: Where does ESO fit in Elder Scrolls history?
Where does the Elder Scrolls Online fit in the Elder Scrolls universe? I could tell you that it starts 2E 583, but in the grand scheme of things that really doesn't mean anything unless you're a huge Elder Scrolls lore nut. If I told you that it was 324 years before the start of the classic Elder Scrolls era, that might mean more to you. If I told you that it was 723 years before Arena or 757 years before Oblivion or 958 years before Skyrim, it might mean a bit more to you. But those dates are really distant and don't have any real relevance to your character. No one alive during ESO lives to see Skyrim's timeframe except the immortals. MMOs with existing intellectual properties, like Lord of the Rings Online or Star Wars: The Old Republic, struggle with keeping the game engaging for those who are interested in the lore and keeping it from interfering with the established timeline. LotRO interweaves the MMO plot with the classic story of Frodo and the fellowship traveling to Mordor to destroy the One Ring. SWTOR takes a similar approach to ESO by setting the MMO far in a past that contains very little established lore. However, unlike these other MMOs, Elder Scrolls Online actually plays a significant role in the history of Tamriel. To understand this significance, we have to talk about Tiber Septim and the eight Divines.
EVE Evolved: Fitting the Gallente Talos
Among the hundreds of changes brought by EVE Online's recent Crucible expansion, the new tier 3 battlecruisers certainly rank as player favourites. Rather than giving each race a bigger, tougher battlecruiser, CCP gave the new ships the ability to fit battleship-class weapons but heavily limited their defensive capabilities. All four tier 3 battlecruisers are turret-based, letting them output massive damage with close-range guns or hit for solid damage at battleship sniping distances. As with all new ships, it can be difficult to figure out how to fit the new tier 3 battlecruisers to make full use of their unique combination of high damage output and high mobility. Last week I looked at three viable setups for the Caldari Naga, which proved to be an absolute monster with 1,000-1500 DPS when using close-range blaster setups and a terrifying 650 DPS when sniping at 100km-130km. This week I take a similar look at the Gallente Talos, a ship designed specifically for close-range combat. I explore a traditional armour-tanked blaster fitting with dual webs, a shield-based variant that packs a huge 1,500 DPS punch, and two long-range blaster fits that give the Naga a run for its money. In this week's EVE Evolved, I explore four solid PvP fittings for the Talos, with both shield and armour setups.
EVE Evolved: Everything there is to know about Crucible
This summer's lackluster Incarna expansion and the ensuing microtransaction drama took a massive toll on EVE Online's player community and development staff. Players were quitting in droves, and CCP eventually had to lay off 20% of its staff worldwide. Two years of half-implemented expansions, broken features, and "first steps" that were never iterated on left players begging for a content-heavy expansion like Apocrypha or those released in EVE's early years. EVE is known for being practically a new game every six months, but since the blockbuster Apocrypha expansion, daily life in New Eden hasn't changed much at all. To pull things back from the brink, CCP refocused development on EVE Online and gave developers a free pass to work on hundreds of small features and improvements. The company began flooding us with details on new ships, graphical updates, new gameplay mechanics, and desperately needed balance tweaks, and we loved every bit of it. Although it's mostly small features and gameplay tweaks, the Crucible expansion feels like a genuine rebirth for EVE Online. The types of changes made show that CCP knows exactly what players want from EVE and that the company is now willing to deliver it. With CCP's renewed focus on internet spaceships, the Crucible expansion feels like the start of a new era in the sandbox. In this week's EVE Evolved, I pull together everything there is to know about the Crucible expansion that went live this week, from its turbulent origins to the awesome features and PvP updates it contains.
EVE Evolved: Gallente and hybrid balance
It's been another week filled with announcements and positive news for EVE Online, with CCP showing off EVE's new nebulae and revealing the Amarr and Caldari tier 3 battlecruisers. For Gallente pilots, no news was celebrated more than the rebalancing of hybrid weapons and ships that specialise in their use. Short-range blasters can technically deliver the highest damage output of any turret, but their extremely short optimal range means they deal a smaller fraction of their maximum damage in most fights than other ships. Blaster ships have to spend valuable travel time closing into weapons range, and once up close, targets are hard to track. Although railguns were designed by the Caldari, they're hybrid weapons just like blasters, and so they are the long-range weapon of choice for Gallente sniping and mission-running ships. They have good range and tracking speed but have always suffered from slightly worse damage output and alpha strike than beam lasers and artillery cannons of the same size. Countless suggestions for fixes to blasters and railguns have appeared on the forum over the years, but until now they've remained unchanged. As a Gallente pilot and avid Thorax and Dominix fan, I'm very excited by the hybrid balance changes coming this winter. In this week's EVE Evolved, I take a break from the new player experience experiment to take a look at the impact of the upcoming hybrid balance patch and why the announced changes are needed.
EVE dev video shows work on engine trails, custom ship skins and more
If you're a fan of EVE Online, I apologise in advance for the funny looks you get when you jump out of your seat yelling "HELL YES!" while watching the latest In Development video. In this second part of CCP Games' new video devblog series, CCP Guard takes a live hand grenade into EVE Online's art department to show us just what's going on behind the scenes. We've already seen the impressive nebula effects and new Raven model due for release in the winter expansion, and today CCP showed off some massive shadow improvements, but those upcoming additions pale in comparison to what's planned for after the winter period. The latest In Development video shows that CCP is currently working on engine trails, custom ship skins, a new cyno effect, a new warp tunnel, and graphical upgrades for every single ship in the game. It's a tall order, one that's unlikely to be fulfilled in the winter expansion despite developers' recent laser focus on delivering new features. The video gives a sneak peek at the models for the Amarr and Caldari tier 3 battlecruisers, which were selected from fan-submitted entries to last year's design contest in a similar manner to the already revealed Minmatar Tornado and Gallente Talos. Read on to find out why custom ship skins are more work to implement than most of us realise and to watch the new video in HD.
EVE dev blog unveils new Gallente battlecruiser
Another day, another piece of good news for EVE Online. Are we sensing a trend here? At any rate, the latest CCP dev blog reveals the Gallente Talos, the newest New Eden internet spaceship that will find its way into the hands of capsuleers everywhere when EVE's winter expansion finally hits. If the Talos looks strangely familiar, that's probably because you saw it during EVE's Create a Starship contest last spring. Like its recently revealed Minmatar counterpart, the Talos is a battlecruiser, and CCP describes it as an "in your face glass cannon." Warp to the official EVE website for some more pics and the full dev blog.
High school senior builds walking robot, the VSR-2: Talos FG (video)
These days, you don't have to be a whiz kid to build robots in your basement: off-the-shelf microcontrollers, Arduino boards and Lego Mindstorms can take care of the hard work. Adam Halverson, however, is the real deal -- he built his first robot at the age of twelve, and after six years of failed attempts, he's crafted a full-size humanoid that can walk. Filed with pistons, servos and an assimilated laptop, the VSR-2:Talos FG cost the South Dakota high school senior $10,000 to build with fellow student Anthony Winterton; he claims he could reconstruct it for half now that he's done. The hulking metal machine won him an all-expenses-paid trip to the 2010 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in San Jose, where he's competing for up to $75,000 in prize money. We'll be watching to see if he recoups his investment -- awards will be announced this afternoon. See how the Talos FG's gears mesh in our gallery, or watch the bot take its first steps after the break. Update: The awards are in, and though Talos FG's grippers didn't manage to pull down that $75,000 grand prize, they did manage to net Halverson $5,500 in cash and savings bonds from Intel, the Cade Museum Foundation and the U.S. Army. %Gallery-93014%
