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The discovery of remains belonging to a tiny species of ancient human has been hailed as one of the most sensational finds of its type in decades… For the full story click here.

I love the gaming dynamic that drives technology, especially in the realm of artificial intelligence. Even with all the cool new games out there, AI in the RPG genre has never been all that great. The behavior of NPCs (Non-Player Characters) has typically been woefully flat, even in ground-breaking games like Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.

Lets face it: the typical NPC exists either as a holder of loot or to provide a quest plot point. “You must seek Baldric the Wise and get the Amulet of Leetness.” They’re essentially scripted furniture.

Although an unlikely source, The Sims games have advanced the way we view NPCs, because any character you aren’t controlling becomes an NPC until you take control again. Thus, the Sims franchise has bestowed wants and needs on all characters to make their interactions interesting and unscripted (and hopefully fun).

This wants-and-needs approach to NPC behavior has reportedly been integrated into the forthcoming Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. (Bethsaida Softworks calls it their “The Living World” system.)

I’m really intrigued by the potential for a whole new level of gameplay. From a Gamespy article, here’s the heart of the matter:
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Scientist are a step closer to a technology that may surpass fuel cells. Diesel powered turbo-generators built on a microchip. For the full article click here.

Pretty funny story about a Toshiba-gone-haywire:

Mystery signal traced to TV

Seems the faulty set started emitting the international distress signal…. which was picked up by satellite and relayed to the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center. The owner of the TV was clueless about the signal, so they asked him nicely to turn it off.

The kicker: If he turns on the TV again, they’ll fine him $10,000 a day.

Time to buy a new TV, yo.

… for November 16, 2004. And don’t forget your crowbar.

Google Desktop just plain rocks! Good grief! After seeing a bit about it on Brad’s blog on Thursday I decided to give it an install and go to lunch. I got back from lunch and lemme tell you ….. it IMMEDIATELY changed my work life. From emails to source files to web history, I was instantly able to get to so many things I thought were lost in the void, AT GOOGLE SPEED!

Now, a few downsides I noticed were the fact that it doesn’t yet support Mozilla Firefox, and it only indexes AIM chats right now, but it’s beta … it’ll get there soon enough. I would like to be able to point it at the .log files that Trillian creates, but I don’t see an option for it.

Anyhoo, I’m seriously drinkin’ the Kool-Aid on this one. You should give it a try.

As soon as CounterStrike: Source came out of Beta, I started having significant latency problems, as I’m sure many other people have. So I’ve been doing a little research, and I thought I’d pass along some tips on tuning CS:S.

Source Server:

• To get the most out of a server you are running, check out Valve’s tips on server settings and how they effect performance.

Source Client:

• For starters, see what Valve has to say about dealing with latency problems. This covers the basics.
• Next check out your FPS (frames-per-second) to see how well your machine is rendering the graphics. Here is a forum that tells you how. You might need a better video card (and a second job to pay for it).
• You can use Steam’s built-in Net_Graph utility to get a visual look at all the things that might be going wrong with your game performance. Here is a FAQ on Net_Graph to get you started.
• Since “ping is king”, you’ll want to make sure your OS is tuned for your bandwidth. For the simplest way to do this, download TCPOptimizer. It helps you auto-tune Windows to your high bandwidth setup.
• For a more hands-on approach, you can use CableNut to really fine-tune your settings. This looks painfully manual, so many people recommend you use j79zlr’s CableNut settings generator and save yourself some hassle.
• Finally, if you need to configure your firewall to get the right ports opened up, here is info on which ports you need.

Good luck with the tinkering.

- W

I’m filing this under geek because it’s, like, tecnocentric and stuff.

Anyway, I’ve wondered over the past few years when the hybrid car was going to finally get off the sidelines and become a mainstream product. The Insight, Prius and others have been baby steps along the way, but there’s nothing like tying into a major brand to legitimize a new offering.

Honda has finally done it: They’re going to make a hybrid Accord. So one of the best-selling, most-stolen, value-retaining vehicles on the market is going to offer 37 mpg. This isn’t exactly stunning gas mileage, (the Honda Insight already gets 66mpg on the highway), but I’ll bet the average yuppie will start taking hybrids more seriously.

- W

For those wanting to get a better feel for how the damage calculations are done in Counter Strike, the following site has a damage calculator. Enjoy.

Well, it looks like things are FINALLY starting to come together with the Half-Life 2 offers. According to Valve’s Steam Powered website, at 11am PST the “final” version of Counter-Strike: Source will be made available for those who either purchase it through steam, or those suckas who have the ATI/Half-Life 2 bundle. ATI bundle holders get the Bronze package, by the way.

Check it out here:
Half-Life 2 Steam Offers Ready Thursday

Personally, I think being able to play the original Half-Life over again would be awesome. And I really dug what they did with Day of Defeat. I’d love to play it with the new engine. And according to that news page, we’ll be able to “upgrade” from our Bronze package by simply paying the difference. Consequently I think I may pay the extra $10 to get to play the original HL and DOD on the new engine.