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Batman: Arkham Knight, the final game in Rocksteady’s Arkham trilogy, was released this week to massive critical acclaim. Our sister site IGN gave it a 9.2 out of 10, and it currently has a Metacritic score of 90 out of 100 — big praise. And while the console versions of the game are performing surprisingly well, the PC release seems to be something out of one of Scarecrow’s waking nightmares.
      

As you can see in the video above, Arkham Knight looks absolutely stunning on the PS4. However, it’s not perfect. During open world gameplay and some cinematic moments, screen tearing is occasionally an issue. Most notably, it shows up during the introduction of the Batmobile. It doesn’t really impact gameplay, though, so it’s a relatively minor complaint.
The folks over at Digital Foundry have done some preliminary analysis on the PS4 version, and it seems that the game typically stays pegged at the 30fps cap. Sadly, moving at full speed through the city causes quick dips in frame rate. Batman looks absolutely gorgeous at a full 1080p resolution, but considering that the frame rate cap is already something of a compromise for fidelity, it would be nice if the engine could at least stay locked at 30fps,.That said, this game looks stunning on the PS4, and the performance issues are relatively insignificant. Considering just how much of the city they’re rendering at once, this might just be the single most impressive game on the current-gen consoles. The Witcher 3 is a big, beautiful game as well, but it doesn’t offer the same sense of speed and grandiosity. If you’re in search of a visual showpiece, Arkham Knight is just that.

Over on the PC, however, the situation is much worse. Not only have widespread reports of performance issues popped up, but it’s actually lacking some graphical effects seen on the console versions. Yikes.
By default, the game is capped to 30fps on PC, but editing a simple .ini file removes the cap. Sadly, the game is incredibly poorly optimized, so even relatively beefy setups can’t keep up. Even running on hardware that is more powerful than the PS4 and Xbox One, the game runs poorly.


In fact, the PC version has caused such a backlash that Warner Bros. has decided to suspend sales for the time being. Hell, some distribution outlets are even offering up Batman-specific refunds. What a trainwreck.
While it’s true that the PC version of Arkham Knight was put in the hands of Iron Galaxy, it’s not at all fair to blame them for the issues. Warner Bros. was well aware of the state of the PC version, and they refused to delay it. The blame should be heaped on Warner Bros., not Iron Galaxy. (Iron Galaxy was also responsible for the Arkham Origins port — a buggy mess that performed far worse on AMD cards than on NV hardware. - Ed).


It seems that most (if not all) reviewers were sent PS4 copies, so that’s clearly the version that Warner Bros. is most comfortable with. So far, the Xbox One version seems to be running fine, but firm details regarding overall performance are still hard to come by. It’s safe to say that it’s in much better shape than the PC version, though.

A new report is claiming that Intel will delay its 10nm Cannonlake introduction and substitute in new chips derived from Skylake instead. This new family, dubbed Kaby Lake, would essentially be refresh of Skylake. Details are scarce in the single-page document but historical trends would suggest a handful of modest clock bumps and improved TDPs. There’s also mention of a new H-processor with up to 256MB of cache onboard, and more desktop chips with 64MB of L4 cache and a Skylake-derived GPU.
If true, this could mark the first miss for Intel’s vaunted Tick-Tock business model since the company introduced it back in 2007. Tick-Tock was developed and introduced after Intel’s 90nm Prescott debacle in 2004. Back then, Intel attempted to simultaneously debut a new architecture and a cutting-edge CPU node. While it had pulled off this combination in the past, the increased complexity and manufacturing challenges of 90nm stacked on top of the problematic Prescott architecture. The end result was a chip that ran at much lower clock speeds than previously anticipated, had dramatically reduced IPC compared to its predecessor, and kicked out a tremendous amount of heat.
By 2007, Intel had an a different plan in place. Going forward, die shrinks would be “ticks” and focus on the transition to a new process node, while new architectures would be “tocks” and would debut as the follow-up product on a now-mature process. For the past seven years, Intel has held that cadence steady, though one could argue that Broadwell’s delay turned the “tick” into an abnormally long beat. What would change if the company misses a cycle?

Marketing and manufacturing

There’s two distinct facets to this situation — how it plays out in Intel’s marketing, and how it plays as far as competitive advantage against the other foundries. From a marketing perspective, Intel would likely insist that nothing had changed. If Kaby Lake is just a modest refresh of Skylake with some tweaked clocks (analogous to Devil’s Canyon for Haswell, or AMD’s Richland/Trinity refresh), then Intel hasn’t actually missed anything — it’s still introducing new process nodes in one set of products and a new architecture in the other.
Pushing Cannonlake out, on the other hand, would likely hit Intel’s manufacturing position hard. For the last few years, Intel has relentlessly beat the drum that its 14nm node would deliver a scaling and performance advantage over its foundry competitors that 10nm would further extend. Even as the company trimmed R&D, it insisted that it could keep to previous product cadences, with aggressive delivery of new mobile and laptop hardware.
At the moment, however, this is one piece of paper, and one I’m not convinced is genuine. It wouldn’t necessarily be surprising if it was true, since node scaling has become incredibly difficult and we already saw Broadwell slip by nearly a year — but this is a far cry from confirmation. One could also argue that even if true, the Cannonlake delay would do nothing besides codify what already happened with Broadwell — Intel might be planning to extend the time it takes to shrink each node without fundamentally changing the tick-tock cycle. We don’t know how TSMC and Samsung will progress in pushing to the 10nm node, but an Intel pause could give AMD time to catch its breath and hopefully shrink the gap between it and Intel from two full process nodes to one.

At E3 this week there were few announcements larger than Sony’s press conference. One of the key underpinnings was the announcement of a crowdsourced campaign to fund the creation of Shenmue 3, the lost conclusion to a planned trilogy of titles that debuted on the Dreamcast. Now, it’s been confirmed that Sony is actually bankrolling the project, and the entire affair is likely to leave an extremely sour taste in backers’ mouths.
Let’s start with the obvious. The original Shenmue was widely reported to have cost $70 million, though the game’s creator, Yu Suzuki, has claimed that the figure was inflated and that the real cost was $47 million. Either way, that’s far more than the $4 million stretch goal that the Kickstarter set (currently at $3.3 million as of this writing). Developing open-world, expansive gameplay has only gotten more expensive in the 16 years since Shenmue debuted, not less, and stretches credulity to think that a team of developers could deliver a sprawling adventure across multiple locations (or an incredibly detailed portrayal of a single location) in less than a tenth the original game’s budget.

It’s now clear that the entire affair was simply a PR stunt, a way to raise money and demonstrate public interest in a game. And that’s a real problem. Whether or not the campaign is legal or technically fulfills Kickstarter rules, it’s another example of how “crowdfunding” doesn’t actually buy you anything at all. Not a stake in the title. Not a say in whether or not the company sells itself to an enormously profitable social media company. And now, it doesn’t even buy you an assurance that someone else isn’t bankrolling the project.
I understand Sony’s reasoning, of course — the company didn’t want to commit itself to a game with the legacy of Shenmue and a history of some fairly large development costs without knowing it might make a decent return on its investment. The problem with what’s happened here is that people didn’t pledge funds to “demonstrate interest,” and they didn’t give money knowing that the project was actually completely underwritten by a multinational conglomerate with billions of dollars in annual revenue. Shenmue’s Kickstarter page discloses none of the relevant information and does not inform gamers that they are participating in a marketing experience to gauge interest in the title.
Right now, three people have pledged $10,000 or more to this project. 19 have pledged $1,000. And while it’s absolutely true that pledging a campaign on Kickstarter doesn’t guarantee you anything, including an acceptable final product, hiding Sony’s critical involvement and funding goes beyond caveat emptor. It’s one thing to pledge funds in the belief that it’s the only way to see a long-desired project come to fruition and another to pledge them to a company that’s planning to take your money, pocket it, and claim the entire campaign was an attempt to assess interest. Kickstarter should kill the project cold — but if they don’t, Sony should cancel it of their own volition, thank people for demonstrating support for the franchise, and go make the damned game.

We’re getting close: Microsoft has been issuing new Windows 10 Insider Preview builds on a regular basis, ahead of the official release July 29th. Want to try it out? There are 64-bit and 32-bit versions available for US and UK English, Chinese, and Brazilian Portuguese, among other languages. Follow these instructions to download and install the Windows 10 Insider Preview. 

Be prepared 

As always with beta and preview software, you shouldn’t install it unless you’re fully prepared. This means you should back up any important files, and ideally you should have a separate hard drive or partition to install the Insider Preview on. You cannot revert from Windows 10 Insider Preview to Windows 7 or Windows 8; if you have second thoughts, you will have to reinstall from scratch.

Download the Windows 10 Insider Preview

To begin, head on over to preview.windows.com and join the Windows Insider Program. This only takes a few clicks if you already have a Microsoft account.

You then need to download the appropriate installation file (an ISO) for your system. This is probably the 64-bit (x64) version — though if you have an older system, or you want to test out the 32-bit version, grab the 32-bit download instead. The download will probably take quite a while: the 64-bit ISO comes in at just under 4GB. Note down your license key (though you will be able to visit the page later, too). Microsoft has greatly simplified the process; you can grab it from the company’s dedicated Windows 10 Insider Preview download page.

With the ISO fully downloaded, you then need to transfer it to either a USB thumb drive (preferred) or burn it to a DVD. If you have Windows 8 or 8.1, burning a DVD is fairly easy — you can do it directly in Explorer. For burning an ISO image to a USB thumb drive, the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool is probably still your best bet, and we’ve also had good luck with Rufus.

If you want to install a fresh version of Windows 10 Insider Preview, reboot your computer, boot from the USB stick/DVD drive, and follow the on-screen prompts  (use “Advanced” mode when prompted). If you want to upgrade an existing version of Windows 7 or 8/8.1, just run setup.exe from the USB/DVD drive from Explorer.

Caveats and other options

You can upgrade your existing Windows 7 or Windows 8/8.1 installation to the Windows 10 Insider Preview. I would advise you to do a clean installation of the Insider Preview, however, on a separate partition or hard drive, in case something messes up. Eventually, each Insider Preview license expires, but not before another Preview build is released. Other potential caveats/pitfalls can be found on the Windows 10 Insider Preview FAQ.

Another option, and a quite good one, is installing Windows 10 Insider Preview in a virtual machine.  Sebastian Anthony wrote the original version of this article. It has since been updated with new information.

Brain waves and their potential for use as human biometric identification, which we first covered in 2013, have risen to the surface once again, as hacks, Internet hoaxes and scams, and phishing attacks have become all too common on the Web. Humanity knows the password isn’t secure enough to remain the universal standard forever. Examining so-called ‘passthoughts’ can already serve as a way to distinguish humans, but a new study from Spain points to word meanings as a specific type of identifier. A team lead by Blair Armstrong, head of the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain, and Language, recorded the brainwaves of 45 individuals as they read through a list of 75 acronyms such as “DVD” and “FBI.” The team scored a 94% accuracy rating in using the brain waves of the patients to distinguish their identities.
Word meanings are often more “set in stone” in the brain than isolated memories, such as when a person trips and falls on a hard surface, or sprains an ankle sliding into first base in a college baseball game. Some memories haunt us with emotions we can’t shake. Other memories, once deemed horrific, serve as stepping stones to greater awareness of ourselves as time passes. While these memories (called episodic) can change over time as our interpretations of such events change, the meanings of words don’t change as often. We may find ourselves in a new career as compared with where we were five years ago. But the meaning Americans attach to the word “dollar,” or Europeans attach to the word “euro,” doesn’t change – even if currency exchange rates do.
                                                               
Meanwhile, no two fingerprints are alike — but fingerprints, like passwords, can be manipulated with some know-how and mastery. Hackers have shown in recent days how fingerprint scanners, such as the ones on the Apple iPhone 6 and Samsung Galaxy S5, can become targets for hackers. Fingerprints are more secure than passwords, and especially passcodes (which often have just four numerals). But fingerprints are still subject to possible extrapolation from the surface of mobile devices. Passthoughts can’t be visibly touched, but reside within an individual.
To make the case against fingerprint security, Armstrong recounts a 2005 Malaysian carjacking where a victim’s fingers were cut off to gain access to his car starter that was fingerprint-guarded. With Apple’s and Google’s decisions to encrypt newer iOS (iPhone 6 and 6 Plus) and Android devices (Android M, with its native fingerprint security), consumers could find themselves in legal situations where they’re prompted to register their fingerprint to unlock a device for law enforcement access. Such evidence uncovered during a fingerprint unlock event could be used in American courts to indict or convict a suspect. Passthoughts could not be subjected to legal statutes as easily.
Passthoughts could become the measuring standard for biometric identification in the days and months ahead, but the concept needs some work before becoming a form of mainstream security. Could brain waves indict an individual in the future? We sure hope not, since the acronym “IRS” would betray the thoughts of every American taxpayer alone come April 15th.

As Windows 10’s release date rolls steadily onward, Microsoft has been clarifying some of the concerns and issues that users have been asking. We now know that the free upgrade offer that arrives with the operating system will allow for clean OS installs, that it won’t be locked to a previous version of Windows 7 or 8.1, and that users won’t have to keep an image of an old OS handy in case they ever want to reinstall. There are still questions about other aspects of the license, but this major point has been resolved. We also know that the OS is going to pioneer a Windows-as-a-service model, offer some interesting Xbox Live cross-play opportunities, and, of course, features like DirectX 12.
The one thing we don’t know — and by “we”, I mean both tech journalists, users, and Microsoft itself — is whether or not the mass of people still using Windows XP, 7, and 8/8.1 will actually upgrade. According to the OS data available at NetMarketShare, Windows 7’s total market share has actually increased over the past 12 months, up 6% while Windows XP marketshare fell a bit over 10%. Windows 8.1 and Windows 8 together barely account for 16% of the market. By any measure, that’s a terrible result for a version of the Windows operating system that turns three this year.



Interestingly enough, Steam’s data cuts sharply in the other direction. While Windows 7 64-bit remains the most popular OS overall, at 46.76%, Windows 8.1 64-bit is firmly in second place, at 30.15%. This suggests that there’s a core of gamers who have updated more recently, with fairly good uptake of Windows 8/8.1 — double the average share in the overall market.
So, the big question for the day is, will you upgrade or not — and if you’re on the fence, what are you waiting to find out before you decide?
Personally, I’m hoping that Windows 10 is an OS I can upgrade to. I skipped Windows 8/8.1, not because I thought the Desktop side of the equation was bad, but because I thought Metro was such an abysmal trainwreck. Paying for Windows 8 felt like telling Microsoft “I’m ok with the condition of the operating system you shipped.” I fundamentally wasn’t. Windows 8.1 improved the OS in a number of ways, but the Windows Store is still abysmally curated, the “Metro” applications still struggle to replicate basic functionality that their Desktop counterparts have had for years, and the app-pinning and switching behaviors were difficult to utilize if you’ve been trained to alt-tab between windows for the past 25 years. Without a way to save groups of Windows and switch between sets of pinned applications, a quick Alt-Tab could easily force the end-user to laboriously re-pin applications.
The Start Screen may have drawn heavy fire from end-users who hated the look and feel of the OS, but that wasn’t what killed it for me. The inability to change file organizations or layouts in Metro apps, the trumpeting of resizable Windows as a major feature addition (shades of Windows 2.0 in that announcement) — all of these elements combined left me unwilling to pay Microsoft for an operating system I knew I’d have to custom-revert back into an older mode of operation just to put up with it. I’d have taken Windows 8 if I’d bought a new system that came with it, but paying retail for a copy? No thank you.
So far, Windows 10 looks like it fixes most of what I disliked about Windows 10, includes the performance features that I liked about Windows 8 from the beginning, adds new capabilities like DX12, and extends the OS in a more sane manner. After the trainwreck of Windows 8 I’ll admit to being cautious, but I’m hoping this is an upgrade I can say yes to.
What about you? What will it take to get you onboard the Windows 10 Upgrade Train?