Month: November 2023
Brain Study Suggests Traumatic Memories Are Processed as Present Experience
Traumatic memories had their own neural mechanism, brain scans showed, which may help explain their vivid and intrusive nature. From a report: At the root of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is a memory that cannot be controlled. It may intrude on everyday activity, thrusting a person into the middle of a horrifying event, or surface as night terrors or flashbacks. Decades of treatment of military veterans and sexual assault survivors have left little doubt that traumatic memories function differently from other memories. A group of researchers at Yale University and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai set out to find empirical evidence of those differences.
The team conducted brain scans of 28 people with PTSD while they listened to recorded narrations of their own memories. Some of the recorded memories were neutral, some were simply “sad,” and some were traumatic. The brain scans found clear differences, the researchers reported in a paper published on Thursday in the journal Nature Neuroscience. The people listening to the sad memories, which often involved the death of a family member, showed consistently high engagement of the hippocampus, part of the brain that organizes and contextualizes memories. When the same people listened to their traumatic memories — of sexual assaults, fires, school shootings and terrorist attacks — the hippocampus was not involved.
[…] Indeed, the authors conclude in the paper, “traumatic memories are not experienced as memories as such,” but as “fragments of prior events, subjugating the present moment.” The traumatic memories appeared to engage a different area of the brain — the posterior cingulate cortex, or P.C.C., which is usually involved in internally directed thought, like introspection or daydreaming. The more severe the person’s PTSD symptoms were, the more activity appeared in the P.C.C. What is striking about this finding is that the P.C.C. is not known as a memory region, but one that is engaged with “processing of internal experience,” Dr. Schiller said.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Traumatic memories had their own neural mechanism, brain scans showed, which may help explain their vivid and intrusive nature. From a report: At the root of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is a memory that cannot be controlled. It may intrude on everyday activity, thrusting a person into the middle of a horrifying event, or surface as night terrors or flashbacks. Decades of treatment of military veterans and sexual assault survivors have left little doubt that traumatic memories function differently from other memories. A group of researchers at Yale University and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai set out to find empirical evidence of those differences.
The team conducted brain scans of 28 people with PTSD while they listened to recorded narrations of their own memories. Some of the recorded memories were neutral, some were simply “sad,” and some were traumatic. The brain scans found clear differences, the researchers reported in a paper published on Thursday in the journal Nature Neuroscience. The people listening to the sad memories, which often involved the death of a family member, showed consistently high engagement of the hippocampus, part of the brain that organizes and contextualizes memories. When the same people listened to their traumatic memories — of sexual assaults, fires, school shootings and terrorist attacks — the hippocampus was not involved.
[…] Indeed, the authors conclude in the paper, “traumatic memories are not experienced as memories as such,” but as “fragments of prior events, subjugating the present moment.” The traumatic memories appeared to engage a different area of the brain — the posterior cingulate cortex, or P.C.C., which is usually involved in internally directed thought, like introspection or daydreaming. The more severe the person’s PTSD symptoms were, the more activity appeared in the P.C.C. What is striking about this finding is that the P.C.C. is not known as a memory region, but one that is engaged with “processing of internal experience,” Dr. Schiller said.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The latest Baldur’s Gate 3 patch introduces a new epilogue and lets you wear slutty crab armor
Image: Larian Studios
Christmas miracles are rare, they are beautiful, and with Patch 5 of Baldur’s Gate 3 out now, they have come early. Patch 5 is a massive update that adds new difficulty modes, patches a notorious slowdown bug, lets you wear armor that gives the Wavemother’s Robe a run for its money, and gives the adventurers of Faerûn what they’ve been clamoring for: a big-ass party with all their friends.
I could jump right into the biggest changes coming with Patch 5, but with one specific quality-of-life update, the addition of new game modes or new epilogue scenes feels inconsequential in comparison.
“Patch 5 introduces a huge quality of life update in the form of improved inventory access,” read the community update for Baldur’s Gate 3. “Now while in camp, you will be able to manage the inventory of companions who are not in your active party without having to recruit them first – all from one single UI.”
The developers at Larian Studios have been pretty good at listening to player feedback and implementing asked-for changes. (Why else do you think Astarion keeps getting his kissing animations tweaked?) But it still feels amazing when something you yourself have asked for, begged for, screamed for, gets added. I can’t tell you how much time I spent cycling through each party member’s inventory, going through the tedious process of dismissing members and adding new ones, all while thinking, “Where the hell did I put that weapon?” That time-wasting frustration is no more. The energy I feel behind this simple implementation is enough to power my home for the next year.
There are lots of smaller updates like this one that improve performance and smooth out the rougher, crunchier bits of gameplay friction that made this otherwise amazing game a bit unwieldy to manage. Check out the full list of patch notes here.
Image: Larian Studios
Narratively, Patch 5 adds an epilogue whereby you and your party can meet up six months later to reflect on your journey. According to Larian, “Your epilogue is defined by you. This is the culmination of every choice and consequence that you’ve made since the very start of your adventure, a gigantic tree of permutations that leads to an opportunity to reflect on that journey before you say goodbye.”
I haven’t loaded my game yet to see, but the description feels very much like the Citadel DLC for Mass Effect 3 in which Commander Shepard was able to have so many beautiful moments with their best friends before the final fight. The characters you’ve met will leave you letters, some will show up in camp, and everybody will get fancy party clothes that I can’t wait to see.
Speaking of party clothes: “Orin’s outfit now drops as loot and is wearable by anyone. We also gave it a suitably disgusting description and name.”
I cannot wait to see the crab armor clip through all of Halsin’s muscles. Hats off to Larian. It truly does have its finger on the horny pulse of its fans.
If Tactician Mode wasn’t hard enough, Larian’s added two new difficulty modes that allow players to customize their Baldur’s Gate 3 experience and make it much harder. Custom Mode has options that can make Baldur’s Gate 3 play more like a traditional Dungeons & Dragons game. There are options to obscure the value needed to successfully pass ability checks and enemy health totals. It also offers the ability to turn off enemy critical hits and have short rests fully restore party health.
Honour Mode, however, seems to make the Tactician difficulty seem like a walk in the park. Not only will enemies hit harder, use more advanced spells, and special Legendary Actions but the mode also introduces permadeath with a special reward for those who can complete the game deathless.
“When you inevitably die in Honour Mode, you’ll be presented with statistics from your journey, including how long and how far you survived,” Larian wrote on its Steam Community page. “Should you so choose, you can continue your adventure, which will then disable Honour Mode. But players who do manage to complete the entire game with Honour Mode enabled without dying will be awarded the coveted Golden D20.”
I hope that, like the players who had their names carved into a statue of Lilith for beating Diablo IV on its hardcore difficulty, Larian will also reward BG3’s first Honour Mode winners with more than just some golden dice.
Before you dive into Patch 5, take a moment to clear out some hardware storage. Earlier today, Larian warned that the patch would be 30 gigabytes and require 130 gigabytes of space to install. (RIP, Steam Deck players.) Also, for those Xbox players still waiting, Patch 5 will ship on disk whenever the game launches on the platform, which, according to Larian, should be soon.
Image: Larian Studios
Christmas miracles are rare, they are beautiful, and with Patch 5 of Baldur’s Gate 3 out now, they have come early. Patch 5 is a massive update that adds new difficulty modes, patches a notorious slowdown bug, lets you wear armor that gives the Wavemother’s Robe a run for its money, and gives the adventurers of Faerûn what they’ve been clamoring for: a big-ass party with all their friends.
I could jump right into the biggest changes coming with Patch 5, but with one specific quality-of-life update, the addition of new game modes or new epilogue scenes feels inconsequential in comparison.
“Patch 5 introduces a huge quality of life update in the form of improved inventory access,” read the community update for Baldur’s Gate 3. “Now while in camp, you will be able to manage the inventory of companions who are not in your active party without having to recruit them first – all from one single UI.”
The developers at Larian Studios have been pretty good at listening to player feedback and implementing asked-for changes. (Why else do you think Astarion keeps getting his kissing animations tweaked?) But it still feels amazing when something you yourself have asked for, begged for, screamed for, gets added. I can’t tell you how much time I spent cycling through each party member’s inventory, going through the tedious process of dismissing members and adding new ones, all while thinking, “Where the hell did I put that weapon?” That time-wasting frustration is no more. The energy I feel behind this simple implementation is enough to power my home for the next year.
There are lots of smaller updates like this one that improve performance and smooth out the rougher, crunchier bits of gameplay friction that made this otherwise amazing game a bit unwieldy to manage. Check out the full list of patch notes here.
Image: Larian Studios
Narratively, Patch 5 adds an epilogue whereby you and your party can meet up six months later to reflect on your journey. According to Larian, “Your epilogue is defined by you. This is the culmination of every choice and consequence that you’ve made since the very start of your adventure, a gigantic tree of permutations that leads to an opportunity to reflect on that journey before you say goodbye.”
I haven’t loaded my game yet to see, but the description feels very much like the Citadel DLC for Mass Effect 3 in which Commander Shepard was able to have so many beautiful moments with their best friends before the final fight. The characters you’ve met will leave you letters, some will show up in camp, and everybody will get fancy party clothes that I can’t wait to see.
Speaking of party clothes: “Orin’s outfit now drops as loot and is wearable by anyone. We also gave it a suitably disgusting description and name.”
I cannot wait to see the crab armor clip through all of Halsin’s muscles. Hats off to Larian. It truly does have its finger on the horny pulse of its fans.
If Tactician Mode wasn’t hard enough, Larian’s added two new difficulty modes that allow players to customize their Baldur’s Gate 3 experience and make it much harder. Custom Mode has options that can make Baldur’s Gate 3 play more like a traditional Dungeons & Dragons game. There are options to obscure the value needed to successfully pass ability checks and enemy health totals. It also offers the ability to turn off enemy critical hits and have short rests fully restore party health.
Honour Mode, however, seems to make the Tactician difficulty seem like a walk in the park. Not only will enemies hit harder, use more advanced spells, and special Legendary Actions but the mode also introduces permadeath with a special reward for those who can complete the game deathless.
“When you inevitably die in Honour Mode, you’ll be presented with statistics from your journey, including how long and how far you survived,” Larian wrote on its Steam Community page. “Should you so choose, you can continue your adventure, which will then disable Honour Mode. But players who do manage to complete the entire game with Honour Mode enabled without dying will be awarded the coveted Golden D20.”
I hope that, like the players who had their names carved into a statue of Lilith for beating Diablo IV on its hardcore difficulty, Larian will also reward BG3’s first Honour Mode winners with more than just some golden dice.
Before you dive into Patch 5, take a moment to clear out some hardware storage. Earlier today, Larian warned that the patch would be 30 gigabytes and require 130 gigabytes of space to install. (RIP, Steam Deck players.) Also, for those Xbox players still waiting, Patch 5 will ship on disk whenever the game launches on the platform, which, according to Larian, should be soon.
Call of Duty games start landing on NVIDIA GeForce Now
One of the major concessions Microsoft made to regulators to get its blockbuster acquisition of Activision Blizzard over the line was agreeing to let users of third-party cloud services stream Xbox-owned games. Starting today, you can play three Call of Duty games via NVIDIA GeForce Now: Modern Warfare 3, Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone.
They’re the first Activision games to land on GeForce Now since Microsoft closed the $68.7 billion Activision deal in October. Activision Blizzard games were previously available on GeForce Now but only briefly, as the publisher pulled them days after the streaming service went live for all users in early 2020.
Microsoft first made its first-party games available on GeForce Now this year, beginning with Gears 5 in May. More recently, Microsoft started allowing GeForce Now users to stream PC Game Pass titles and Microsoft Store purchases.
Call of Duty titles are major additions, though, especially since that means Warzone fans can play the battle royale on their phone or tablet wherever they are without having to pay anything extra (free GeForce Now users are limited to one hour of gameplay per session). If you’ve bought MW2 or MW3 on Steam, you can play those through GeForce Now as well. NVIDIA notes that older CoD titles will be available through GeForce Now later.
Another key concession Microsoft made to appease UK regulators was to sell the cloud gaming rights for Activision Blizzard titles to Ubisoft. However, as evidenced here, Microsoft will still honor the agreements it made directly with various cloud gaming services.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/call-of-duty-games-start-landing-on-nvidia-geforce-now-195040692.html?src=rss
One of the major concessions Microsoft made to regulators to get its blockbuster acquisition of Activision Blizzard over the line was agreeing to let users of third-party cloud services stream Xbox-owned games. Starting today, you can play three Call of Duty games via NVIDIA GeForce Now: Modern Warfare 3, Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone.
They’re the first Activision games to land on GeForce Now since Microsoft closed the $68.7 billion Activision deal in October. Activision Blizzard games were previously available on GeForce Now but only briefly, as the publisher pulled them days after the streaming service went live for all users in early 2020.
Microsoft first made its first-party games available on GeForce Now this year, beginning with Gears 5 in May. More recently, Microsoft started allowing GeForce Now users to stream PC Game Pass titles and Microsoft Store purchases.
Call of Duty titles are major additions, though, especially since that means Warzone fans can play the battle royale on their phone or tablet wherever they are without having to pay anything extra (free GeForce Now users are limited to one hour of gameplay per session). If you’ve bought MW2 or MW3 on Steam, you can play those through GeForce Now as well. NVIDIA notes that older CoD titles will be available through GeForce Now later.
Another key concession Microsoft made to appease UK regulators was to sell the cloud gaming rights for Activision Blizzard titles to Ubisoft. However, as evidenced here, Microsoft will still honor the agreements it made directly with various cloud gaming services.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/call-of-duty-games-start-landing-on-nvidia-geforce-now-195040692.html?src=rss
You Have Just Hours Left to Grab McAfee Antivirus Subscriptions at a Discount – CNET
These Cyber Monday deals at McAfee can save you up to 30% on individual and family plans — but they end soon.
These Cyber Monday deals at McAfee can save you up to 30% on individual and family plans — but they end soon.
Free Versus Paid VPNs: What You Need to Know – CNET
Spoiler alert: You’ll (probably) get what you pay for.
Spoiler alert: You’ll (probably) get what you pay for.
Google wants you to bring the laughts with its new .meme domain
Wonderful news for wacky websites. Google has made the .meme domain available for registration.
Memes, the internet’s favourite way to spread culture and ideas, have a new home onlinethanks to the launch of Google’s new top-level .meme domain.
Google Registry recently announced that the new .meme domain will be publicly available from December 5 at a base annual price.
Early adopters can secure a .meme domain before then as part of Google’s Early Access Period (EAP), but this will require an “additional one-time fee” that will decrease on a daily basis until the domain is publicly launched.
Early adopters meme business
As part of the announcement, Google highlighted six early adopters of the .meme domain. Partners include meme trend website Know Your Meme, premier meme clearinghouse License.Meme and (perhaps unsurprisingly) a host of cat meme sites including Grumpy Cat, Nyan Cat, and CAT.MEME.
“Memes are the embodiment of internet culture, having captured the eyeballs, hearts and minds of millions of people,” Christina Yeh from Google’s Registry Team wrote in a blog post announcing the news.
“Whether you’re sharing a relatable scenario, capturing a feeling that’s difficult to express with just words, relishing in sheer randomness or even trying to start a social movement, we can’t wait to see how you’ll use .meme to express yourself.”
The announcement highlights the rise of internet culture as a commodity. It also follows wider industry trends for making website creation more accessible and customizable, marked by the growing popularity of drag-and-drop website builders and other recent domain launches including .ing, .dad and .esq.
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