Enlarge

Valve announced this week that its prestigious Dota 2 tournament The International will require all attendees to be fully masked and vaccinated for entry.

As noted on the Dota 2 site, anyone attending the October competition at the National Arena in Bucharest, Romania, must be at least 10 days out from their final vaccination, and attendees will need to present proof of inoculation (which must be in either English or Romanian) along with a photo ID to gain access to the event grounds and tournament arena. All attendees must also wear a mask and proof-of-vaccination wristband along with their registration badges. Additional safety protocols will be put into place throughout the tournament.

Now in its tenth year, The International gathers together the best Dota 2 teams from around the globe to compete for a multi-million dollar prize pool.  But over the past year, Valve has not had an easy time with COVID-related restrictions for its annual tournament. The company's initial plans to hold The International 10 in Stockholm were scrapped earlier this summer after the Swedish Sports Federation decided not to include esports in its officially recognized body—a move that meant anyone traveling for the tournament would be denied an entry visa.

Enlarge / Sir Clive Sinclair holding the world's smallest television screen when it was created by Sinclair Radionics in 1977. (credit: Getty Images)

Sir Clive Sinclair, the namesake of a British electronics manufacturer who helped pioneer Europe's microcomputing boom, is dead at the age of 81.

His company, Sinclair Radionics, is arguably best known around the world for 1982's ZX Spectrum, an early example of a computer capable of multi-color, real-time graphics. The device dominated the UK and other European territories in the early 1980s. This computer was a major processing step up from black-and-white Sinclair computers like ZX80 and ZX81, and it debuted in a configuration priced as low as £125. American readers probably best know this platform thanks to popular and ambitious ZX Spectrum games from the little developer Ultimate: Play The Game. That company eventually rebranded itself as Rareware and turned into a '90s powerhouse on Nintendo consoles.

Yet before his name became interminably linked to gaming history, Sinclair's rise to running his own electronics manufacturing company largely resembles the stories of American electronics pioneers who began as garage hobbyists. A BBC documentary, Clive Sinclair: The Pace Setters, chronicles the inventor's rise, which began with him selling one-at-a-time radio kits via mail order in the 1960s.

Enlarge / A 1729 Stradivari known as the "Solomon, Ex-Lambert" on display at Christie's in New York in March 2007. (credit: Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images)

Along with Andrea Amati and Andrea Guarneri, Antonio Stradivari dominated the so-called Golden Age of Violins (roughly 1660 to 1750), and the instruments they crafted remain the gold standard today in terms of acoustic quality. World-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma has long favored a Stradivarius instrument, as does violinist Joshua Bell. But scientists have been arguing for years about precisely why these instruments have such superior sound. A recent paper published in the journal Angewandte Chemie confirms a theory dating back to 2006: the secret lies in the chemicals used to soak the wood, most notably borax, zinc, copper, alum, and lime water.

I've written extensively about this topic in the past. The (perceived) unique sound can't just be due to the instrument's geometry, although Stradivari's geometrical approach did give us the violin's signature shape. One hypothesis is that Stradivari may have used Alpine spruce that grew during a period of uncommonly cold weather, which caused the annual growth rings to be closer together, making the wood abnormally dense. Another prevailing theory has to do with the varnish: namely, that Stradivari used an ingenious cocktail of honey, egg whites, and gum arabic from sub-Saharan trees—or perhaps salts or other chemicals.

Then again, the difference may be all in our heads. A player's instrument preference is highly subjective, and there's some evidence of so-called "psychoacoustics" at play: that is, we've become so awed by the name Stradivarius that it influences how we evaluate or respond to the sound of one of Stradivari's instruments.

Enlarge / Today's very brief hint of the gaming future comes wrapped in a Nintendo bow. (credit: Aurich Lawson)

SEATTLE—It's not every day I hear about unannounced Nintendo products over guac.

Thanks to a chance encounter last month, I've been sitting on one of the weirder scoops in my 25-year writing career—one that will simultaneously set many gamer tongues wagging and bore other gamers to death. It's about Nintendo, and I should start by making abundantly clear that I didn't get the information double-checked or verified by anyone who has particular access or insight into the gaming company's plans (neither did I ask my uncle who—promise, swear—works as Mario's personal driver).

But I have been turning over this minuscule scrap of information in my mind ever since. What I heard is both simultaneously a resounding "duh" for a company like Nintendo and yet also possibly illuminating about the industry giant's near-future plans. So I invite you to sit with me, grab a chip, and pick at this bowl of game-industry-news guacamole.

Enlarge / This looks fun. (credit: EA)

Battlefield 2042 has been delayed from its initial October 22 release date, though it will still launch this year, EA announced today. The multiplayer-only shooter will now hit stores on November 19, the publisher said in a statement.

Citing the complications of developing games in a work-from-home environment during a global pandemic—by now a familiar challenge for the countless game makers that have had to delay other high-profile 2021 games—DICE assured fans that the team is working on finishing touches rather than dealing with any kind of development trouble. The developer also reiterated that there would be updates later this month regarding 2042's open beta. In other words, this is pandemic business as usual.

After Battlefield 2042's reveal during EA's June E3 news blitz, the publisher announced that the game will feature three modes, none of which are battle royale-related. "All-Out Warfare," the traditional BF deathmatch mode, is finally upgrading to 128 players on next-gen consoles and PC. "Battlefield Portal" is a mashup mode that lets players customize matches with elements of Battlefield 1942, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and Battlefield 3 inside 2042 maps. "Hazard Zone" is an alleged squad-based mode that EA has thus far been mum on. Today's announcement didn't specify whether all three modes would launch with the game.

• 

  Lost Judgment's action detective, Takayuki Yagami.

At a glance, Lost Judgment may seem intimidating to anyone who hasn't graduated from Sega's school of hard Yakuza knocks. To start, it’s a spinoff of Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s long-running crime series, which is saddled with a truckload of backstory. On top of that, it’s a direct follow-up to 2019’s Judgment, the first game from that spinoff. Finally, the overwhelming, unadulterated immersion into modern Japan that Yakuza games are known for doesn’t really feel like anything else in video games.

With these eccentricities in mind, anyone not already intimately familiar with the broader Yakuza universe may feel too lost to know where to begin here, if they want to bother trying at all. Yet after spending roughly 15 hours over the past week playing through the first four chapters of this game, I can say Lost Judgment is absolutely worth your time, with a barrier to entry much lower than you’d expect. Stacked up against any recent high-production action games, it's unlike anything else you'll play this year.

Enlarge / Back in 2017, the first season of the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why sparked controversy about suicide contagion. Four years later, a new UCLA study offers guidance for Hollywood on how to best handle such topics going forward. (credit: Netflix)

When 13 Reasons Why debuted on Netflix on March 31, 2017, it was initially met with mostly rave reviews from critics and viewers alike. Viewers appreciated the show's frank and sensitive handling of such complex topics as suicide, bullying, rape, and depression. Within weeks, however, mental health professionals began voicing strong objections to the YA-targeted show's treatment of suicide in particular—these professionals believed the depiction could trigger suicidal thoughts or actions in vulnerable teens.

It's well known that high-profile suicides can sometimes influence copycats, but the issue is less clear when it comes to fictional stories. Throughout the last four years, multiple, often contradictory studies on that very topic have since appeared. Some of the studies show negative impacts, while others show beneficial effects in young people who watched 13 Reasons Why.

The series aired its fourth and final season last year, but 13 Reasons Why continues to inspire research on the potential impact (positive or negative) of fictional stories on teen mental health. A new study available today from researchers affiliated with UCLA's Center for Scholars and Storytellers focuses specifically on the show's third season, and it shows that series like 13 Reasons Why can have a positive impact on teen mental health as long as the issues are depicted accurately and with empathy.

Enlarge / Bluetooth on Switch, presented as an overly literal image translation of the concept. (credit: Sam Machkovech)

In an out-of-nowhere Tuesday evening update, Nintendo reversed course on one of the portable Switch console's biggest limitations: Bluetooth audio support. This functionality is now live on the system's 13.0 firmware, available for download across all Switch regions.

Up until this update, Switch consoles had a portable-audio capability that was the exact opposite of smartphones like the iPhone, in that the Switch only worked with wired headphones via the console's built-in 3.5mm headphone jack. In handheld mode, that limitation might be more bearable because the system is in your hands, so a corded headset makes a little more sense.

When Nintendo Switch is docked to a TV, on the other hand, headset options become more limited. Without Bluetooth audio support, Switch users would either need to run a 3.5mm extension cord to their entertainment center or use a pair of wireless headphones that came with a Switch-compatible USB dongle, which would have to plug into one of the Switch dock's open ports. This runs counter to modern Xbox and PlayStation consoles, which offer more options for both 3.5mm jacks in their gamepads and built-in wireless functions in the consoles themselves.

Enlarge / A major new update to the PS5 firmware lets players upgrade the console's internal storage via an M.2 SSD.

Players will be able to add specific M.2 SSDs to the PS5 with a new system update rolling out tomorrow, two months after a beta that featured the option was made available to users who signed up.

As detailed in a post on the PlayStation Blog, the update gives users the option to increase the PS5's overall storage capacity by installing a PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD (ranging from 250GB to 4TB) that fits certain technical and dimensional requirements. Once the M.2 drive is installed, the new storage space can be used to copy, download, update, and play PS4 and PS5 games as well as media applications. The result will essentially add a second, fully functional internal drive to the console.

This is a big step up over the "cold-storage" solution that was added to the system in April, which allowed last-gen games to run straight from a standard platter-based external hard drive or SSD via USB—and notably kept players from doing the same for PS5 games. As a result, the feature did little more than let players free up space for PS5 games by storing PS4 games on an external drive... or just letting PS5 downloads collect dust in storage, which Sony said still allowed for faster transfers back to internal storage than redownloading from scratch. For PS5 players, this did little to alleviate problems with the console's internal 667GB of available space.

Enlarge / The Vinland Map purports to be a 15th-century map with a pre-Columbian depiction of the North American Coast. A new analysis has confirmed that the map is, in fact, a modern-day forgery. (credit: Yale University)

Scholars have questioned the authenticity of a purported 15th-century map housed in Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library since it was first unveiled to the public in 1965. About the size of a placemat, the Vinland Map is an intriguing document because, in addition to Africa, Asia, and Europe, the map depicts a section of the North American coastline identified as "Vinlandia Insula" just southwest of Greenland. This suggested that Norsemen may have been the first Europeans to discover the Americas, well before the first voyage of Christopher Columbus. But evidence that the map is a hoax has been steadily accumulating, particularly over the last few years. And the latest scientific analysis has definitively put an end to the controversy once and for all: the inks used to draw the map are of modern origin.

"The Vinland Map is a fake," said Raymond Clemens, curator of early books and manuscripts at the Beinecke. "There is no reasonable doubt here. This new analysis should put the matter to rest."

The map first came to light in 1957, when a London book dealer named Irving Davis initially offered the Vinland Map—then bound together with a medieval text, Hystoria Tartarorum—to the British Museum, acting on behalf of another European dealer named Enzo Ferrajoli de Ry. (It was later discovered that Ferrajoli had been convicted of possessing stolen manuscripts in the 1950s.) But the museum's Keeper of Manuscripts thought the handwriting style showed elements that weren't common until the 19th century and passed on the offer, suspecting a forgery.

• 

  Flipping past a technicolor dinosaur in a shiny, blue sports car: that's the Cruis'n Blast lifestyle at work. [credit: Raw Thrills / Nintendo ]

Cruis'n Blast's placement on my list of favorite video games of 2021 should not be taken as a universal recommendation. As a painstakingly authentic refresh of the dated Cruis'n arcade-racing series, it's a simple game, and in many ways, it lags behind other arcade racers that have come and gone in the past few years.

Still, if you're looking for sheer, unadulterated, all-ages racing fun, especially on the underpowered Nintendo Switch, you should set your GPS coordinates to the bonkers racetracks and Burnout-leaning smashy-smash of Cruis'n Blast as soon as possible.

Cruis’n through history: A primer

Cruis'n emerged in the '90s as one of the only major Western racing series in arcades, years after Sega and Namco unleashed their own dazzling 3D racers. This Midway series didn't really compete with the likes of Daytona USA or Ridge Racer, as it was marked by wimpy tech and simple mechanics. Instead, 1994's Cruis'n USA kept things loud and silly in a shameless, drive-straight-ahead manner. The result was, depending on where you lived, a pizza parlor mainstay—and one that rode Nintendo's coattails, since it was emblazoned with "Nintendo Ultra 64" logos before that console launched with a different name.

Enlarge / Almost every LittleBigPlanet release just lost its online hub. (credit: Sony)

After a year marked by targeted hacks and unexplained downtime, the online service for four of Sony's LittleBigPlanet games—and arguably the heart of their "play.create.share" mantra—is no more. Announced in a tweet on its official Twitter account, online services across LittleBigPlanet Vita and the LittleBigPlanet trilogy for PS3 have been discontinued with no prior warning, citing issues of continued safety for its online fanbase.

For the uninitiated, the original 2008 LittleBigPlanet introduced a massively online concept of level creation and sharing. Series creators Media Molecule included incredibly robust creation tools that let fans transform the side-scrolling game into any number of incredible concepts, and that foundation grew as the series expanded from the PS3 generation to Vita and PS4.

But challenges to that creation toolbox started to spring up in November 2020 when several fans posted on Twitter that LBP.me—the series' social site that lets players browse or queue up every available user-made level across almost every release—stopped working. Meanwhile, social features in the game's older entries began experiencing related issues.

Enlarge / The Radeon RX 5700 XT. (credit: AMD)

GPU driver releases normally aren't very newsworthy; they usually fix bugs, boost performance in some games, and add support for new GPUs. But owners of last-generation AMD Radeon RX 5000-series graphics cards should take note of today's Adrenalin 21.9.1 release. This update adds support for AMD's "Smart Access Memory" (SAM) feature for older GPUs. AMD says the feature can improve game performance by up to 15 percent in some games.

SAM support was previously restricted to the Radeon RX 6800 series (and Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3000 series, which support a mostly identical feature that Nvidia calls Resizable BAR). In addition to the right GPU and the right drivers, you'll also need to be running a supported processor on a supported chipset: either a 10th- or 11th-generation Intel Core CPU in a 400- or 500-series motherboard or a Ryzen 3000 or 5000-series CPU in a 400- or 500-series motherboard.

Whether you're talking about SAM or Resizable BAR, the different names all refer to the same PCI Express functionality. Normally, your computer's processor can only directly access 256MB of your GPU's video memory at a time, and the memory requires larger assets to be broken up into smaller chunks for transfer. Resizable BAR removes that limit and noticeably improves performance in some games. A TechSpot test of 36 games using an RX 6800 GPU and Ryzen 5950X processor observed an improvement of up to 20 percent depending on the game and the settings. For most games, though, performance improved by a much smaller amount or didn't improve at all. A few games even showed performance decreases with SAM enabled, though never by enough to make any games unplayable.

• 

  Jeremy Renner reprises his role as Clint Barton in Hawkeye. [credit: YouTube/Marvel Studios ]

I'll admit that I wasn't exactly excited about Marvel's upcoming Hawkeye spinoff series on Disney+. It seemed like an odd choice, given the character's relatively minor role in the various Avengers films. But the studio released the official trailer this morning, and I might just change my mind. Hawkeye looks like a fun, comedy-action holiday romp and will debut on the streaming platform just in time for the Thanksgiving/Christmas season.

Per the official premise:

Former Avenger Clint Barton has a seemingly simple mission: get back to his family for Christmas. Possible? Maybe with the help of Kate Bishop, a 22-year-old archer with dreams of becoming a super hero. The two are forced to work together when a presence from Barton’s past threatens to derail far more than the festive spirit.

Obviously, Jeremy Renner is back as Clint Barton/Hawkeye, as are the actors who played his three children, Cooper (Ben Sakamoto), Lila (Ava Russo), and Nathaniel (Cade Woodward). And thanks to that Black Widow end-credits scene where Yelena (Florence Pugh) meets Valentina (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) at Natasha's grave, we know that she's been manipulated into blaming Clint for her foster sister's death and may well be seeking revenge. Pugh's inclusion in the cast list pretty much confirms that.

• 

  Supercharged powers and stylish designs may make you optimistic about Deathloop, but upon further review, this journey is rougher than you might expect. [credit: Bethesda ]

If you're looking for a simple back-of-box quote about how Bethesda's newest video game works, you won't get one. The list of inspirations in Deathloop, out this week on PS5 and PC, is long: the time-loop conceit of Zelda: Majora's Mask; the multiroute sneak-and-sleuth genius of Dishonored; the aesthetics and trippiness of We Happy Few; and Metroid Prime's mix of backtracking and clue-hunting.

What a mouthful! Deathloop is certainly more ambitious than yet another generic shooter, which I appreciate. The studio behind it (Arkane Lyon, creators of Dishonored) can't be faulted for not playing it safe. But ambition alone isn't enough.

You may very well enjoy Deathloop's big swings—and at their best, they combine into something special. But there's no denying the sloppiness players have to wade through to find the good stuff. Even though its core is compelling, Deathloop simply doesn't feel finished. Instead, it seems unpolished, like it was rushed out the door. And its die-and-retry gimmick doesn't make up for a confusing lack of world building or an egregiously small gameplay universe.

Enlarge (credit: MikkelWilliam | Getty Images)

Since early August, Twitch has been wrestling with an epidemic of harassment, known as “hate raids,” against marginalized streamers. These attacks spam streamers’ chats with hateful and bigoted language, amplified dozens of times a minute by bots. On Thursday, after a month trying and failing to combat the tactic, Twitch resorted to the legal system, suing two alleged hate raiders [PDF] for “targeting black and LGBTQIA+ streamers with racist, homophobic, sexist and other harassing content” in violation of its terms of service.

“We hope this Complaint will shed light on the identity of the individuals behind these attacks and the tools that they exploit, dissuade them from taking similar behaviors to other services, and help put an end to these vile attacks against members of our community,” a Twitch spokesperson said in a comment to WIRED.

Enlarge / Ripley defending Newt.

Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games! Check out our complete board gaming coverage at cardboard.arstechnica.com.

Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps is a peculiar release. Aliens, James Cameron’s follow-up to the sci-fi classic Alien is frankly one of the best action films ever made, so the excitement around this new cardboard adaptation is not surprising. The problem? We’ve seen it all before.

Aliens first received a tabletop implementation with a strong 1989 design published by Leading Edge. The spirit of the film was further embodied in Games Workshop’s classic Space Hulk, a game that was Aliens in all but name. Space Hulk influenced hundreds of tabletop dungeon crawlers since, each paying homage to their predecessors and re-wrapping that core tense experience with minute deviations.

It's been 55 years since the television debut of Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS), and the franchise continues to expand its reach in film and television, bringing delight to new generations of fans. Paramount+ marked the occasion with Star Trek Day 2021, a live-streamed event staged (and taped for posterity) at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.

Co-hosted by Wil Wheaton (aka Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation) and actress Mica Burton (daughter of LeVar Burton), the event featured a live orchestra and back-to-back panels with cast members and creatives from the new generation of Star Trek TV shows: Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and Star Trek Prodigy. These events were interspersed with "legacy moments" featuring such iconic past cast members as George Takei (Hikaru Sulu, TOS), Cirroc Lofton (Jake Sisco, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), Anthony Montgomery (Ensign Travis Mayweather, Star Trek: Enterprise), and Garrett Wang (Ensign Harry Kim, Star Trek: Voyager).

The event also marked the launch of a month-long "Boldly Go" campaign in honor of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. Fans worldwide are invited to submit photos and videos about their hopes for the next 100 years. The Roddenberry Foundation will work with its campaign partners to combine the submissions into a piece of artwork that will eventually be auctioned off, with the proceeds going to support various nonprofits. The artwork will also be etched onto a network of satellites slated to be launched in 2022—"a first-of-its-kind space-based art installation."

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Microsoft)

Xbox Series X or S owners in need of more storage space for current-gen software may be in luck if they have a spare SSD, according to one modder's experiences.

Writing in a step-by-step post on the Chinese video-sharing site Bilibili, a user has discovered that it's potentially possible to use any high-speed SSD in the Xbox Series X and S by using an adapter to convert the drive's storage interface—instead of mandating that users who want to expand installable space for newer "Velocity Architecture" games purchase proprietary Series X/S memory cards. (Past-gen software on Series X/S can be installed to older, slower storage options connected via USB ports.)

The modder learned via a teardown video that the Xbox Series S uses two PCIe 4.0 ports to house its NVMe SSD and external expansion, and, crucially, that the console's external expansion card uses the CFExpress protocol, which also uses an NVMe interface. (Asian video-sharing sites like Bilibili generally work like YouTube, except users can often post blog-style entries as well as videos, hence the tutorial.)

Enlarge / Old PS5 heatsink on the left, new "11-series" PS5 heatsink on the right. (credit: Austin Evans)

Last month, Sony began shipping a lightly revised version of its PlayStation 5 console with a smaller, lighter heatsink and a handful of other tweaks. An earlier teardown and analysis of the revised PS5 made headlines because it suggested that the new PS5 ran warmer than the old one, based on the temperature of the air being exhausted from the console. This does make some intuitive sense if you assume that a smaller heatsink will automatically be worse at dissipating heat. But more detailed and precise testing from the YouTubers at Hardware Busters International backs up our skepticism of that claim, showing that the PS5's exhaust air is warmer because the new cooling system is doing a better job of removing heat from the console, as cooling systems are meant to do.

The Hardware Busters testing measured the temperature of the APU, memory, voltage regulator modules (VRMs), and exhaust air while Devil May Cry 5 was running on both PS5 models. The exhaust air is indeed a few degrees warmer in the new PS5 than the old one, but on average, the new PS5's APU ran about 11°C cooler, dropping from about 51ºC to 40ºC.

The memory and VRM temperatures in the new PS5 rise a bit—the memory temperature goes up by around 7ºC and the VRM temperature goes up by around 1.3ºC—but neither increase should have a huge impact on the console's reliability or longevity. The much larger drop in APU temperature is worth the tradeoff.