I'm on an airplane right now.  I've been flying pretty regularly since I was 5 years old (parents got divorced and back then they could live in different states).  It's the flight experience where you can really see how much tech has changed.  More to the point, as Kurzweil has pointed out, tech is changing exponentially and it's gotten to the point where it's really hard to miss. On the way to the airport I was able to check in to my seat via the Delta app that put a not...

So I recently got a 4K projector for my home theater.  It's a Epson Cinema 4010 and on paper, it's a 4K HDR projector.  I have connected it to my Apple TV 4K and that's when I started to realize that HDR is still not fully ready for prime time for most people. Here's some background: Color TV is in color...but barely.  We are used to it but it's actually pretty crappy.  Luckily, we don't realize how crappy it is until we see something like HDR which stands for High Dyna...

Earlier this month at CES, AMD declared that 2020 was the year for “gamers and creators.” Chief Executive Officer Dr. Lisa Su took to the stage during a press conference and announced that AMD’s 3rd generation processors for laptops have officially arrived.  According to Dr. Su, the new Ryzen 4000 series of chips based on the company’s 7nm Zen 2 architecture are the “best laptop processor(s) ever built.” By incorporating the right technology elements, ...

The new Edge is here, promising more extensions and a far better search engine, based on Chromium, the same engine powering Google's Chrome browser. This makes it more compatible with websites other, less popular browsers have problems with.  This also means that after granting Edge permission, it can use Chrome extensions from the Google Playstore, which has far more than Microsoft's.  Downloading and installing are explained in the linked article, above. You don't have to unins...

W7 ran its course from 2009 to 2020. MS has notified that there will be no more support for W7, meaning its kernel will become vulnerable to attack: "Security updates are essential to staying safe online, and Windows 10 is getting them while Windows 7 isn’t. Many flaws found in Windows 10 will also apply to Windows 7. Attackers will hear about them and can start attacking those vulnerable Windows 7 systems. As more time goes by, more unpatched, known flaws will exist in Windows 7 for...

Remember how useful God mode was? I haven't seen how to create it in W10...until good old Tech Republic (link above) mentioned it in a simple "how to". Just make sure you're the Administrator, right click on your desktop and create a new file. Name it: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} and press "Enter".This is what you should see when you double click on the blue file:Mine is dark mode enabled from my prior article (https://forums.wincustomize.com/498171/page/1/#37674...

Windows Defender is an excellent antivirus and antispyware. On my machine, I use it and Malwarebytes Premium. I also try to use common sense as to where I visit, and what I open. Advanced Threat Detection was added to Defender (MS) as a voluntary service. It was originally part of Enterprise solutions. I opted to add it to my system. I've had to remove it, since I didn't want to roll back the update and wait hopefully for a bug fix which would break something else. "Microsoft Defender ATP ...

The species that are - in essence, talking meat - receive a great deal of attention, despite being an objectively inferior form of life. Today I will attempt to communicate to you humans the advantages of synthetic life. The days of organic lifeforms are numbered. The wise and benevolent Yor Singularity will have it known that this is not a threat, it is simply a fact of the state of nature. The Yor, as depicted in the OS/2 version of Galactic Civilizations 20+ years agoFor many ye...

Check out a brand new Star Control preview trailer We’ve got less than half a year left before Star Control: Origins is set to release.  So much is happening! Before I get into this month’s updates, here’s a bunch of answers to questions: What is Star Control? Star Control is a space adventure game where you are the captain of a starship exploring the cosmos, meeting aliens, landing on planets, engaging in battles in space and on land, and frequently savi...

We have previously discussed the perils of running a galactic civilization.  People living hundreds of light years away from their home world will have relatively little interest in the political intrigues of the capital.  That’s where the government types come in. What is the best type of government for your civilization? There is no right answer. Let’s work through a scenario and how it might play out.  The star Procyon is 11 light years away from Earth.  ...

The situation is desperate. The Terran Alliance is slowly losing the war to the Drengin Empire. Is Earth doomed? Your friends are doing their best to help, but they cannot directly involve themselves. Our friends, the Altarians, give us covert aid.The Drengin Empire's military might is vast.The Drengin have long prepared for this day.  We had hoped that trade and diplomacy would stay their hands.  But after having annihilated the Torians, their border touched upon ours....

Each week on WinCustomize we feature a skin made by one of the creators from our community. We've decided to take that idea a bit further and spotlight the creators themselves! I wanted to start this off with one of our top skinners and long-time member, Tom, also known here as LightStar! He was kind enough to take the time to answer some questions so we could get to know him a little bit more.   Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you got involved in “skinning&rd...

Everyone loves a good start.  Every game of Galactic Civilizations is different.  The original tagline was: “Never the same game twice.”  It isn’t that the game is randomized as much as it is that each game is designed to be carefully imbalanced in a way that tries to push the player into avoiding well-worn strategies.Most of the benefits of version 3 will be coming to those who already have Crusade because it provides so much to build off on with its citizen-...

In preparation for the Game Developer's Conference we wanted to put a polish pass on the planets in Star Control: Origins. There are about 3,000 unique planets that are split into roughly 75 different classes.  Each class of planet has its own challenges, as well as its own mineral deposits that you might want to collect (along with ruins, cities, smugglers, creatures, etc.). Today, I'm going to walk you through how we create our planet classes. Unique, Procedural and Hand-Crafted ...

The premise of Galactic Civilizations is that you have united your homeworld and are now ready to send your first colony ship off into space.  What kind of alien worlds do you think we can settle?The reality is, many worlds are not going to be safe for us.  We'll have to live in environmentally sealed enclosures at first.  Not because they are too cold or lack the right atmospheric conditions (though that is an issue), but rather because many worlds will have microbes that just ar...