E3 2014: Giveaway; Betas, Recap

E3 2014 is in the bag, there were far too many moments to touch on in a single post so I will feature a few highlights as well as link full pressers from the event. Here are links to individual press conferences Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Ubisoft, EA. I have picked games that I personally enjoyed from the show and I will post their trailers as well as gameplay. If you missed out on the E3 2014: Humble Bundle E3 Digital Ticket, worry not as we will be giving one away either through here or our Twitter @ConsensualTechs. Also PS4 and PC gamers can still sign up for the Battlefield Hardline closed beta. The multiplayer beta for Halo 5: Guardians will begin on December 27th and will be available by purchasing The Master Chief Collection, available November 11 for the Xbox One. The Destiny beta will begin on July 14th for PlayStation 4 and will be available with a pre-order, the alpha is currently ongoing for those that signed up through the game's website. You can currently sign up for The Crew beta for which beings July 23rd.

Destiny- Developed by Bungie, creators of Halo: Combat Evolved. Action RPG; single and cooperative missions; scheduled for release on September 9th for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

Evolve- developed by Turtle Rock Studios, creators of Left 4 Dead; first-person shooter; four-player vs one-player cooperative; scheduled for release on October 21st for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.

Assassin's Creed: Unity- developed by Ubisoft Montreal; action-adventure, stealth; single and four-player cooperative; scheduled for release on October 28th for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.

No Man's Sky- developed by Hello Games; not yet scheduled for release for PlayStation 4.

Super Smash Bros.- developed by Sora Ltd. and Bandai Namco Games; fighting game; scheduled for release on October 3, 2014 for the Nintendo 3DS and Q4 2014 for The Wii U.

Batman: Arkham Knight- developed by Rocksteady Studios; action adventure; scheduled for release 2015 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.

Kingdom Hearts 3- developed by Square Enix; action RPG; scheduled for release for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

E-Learning: Video Game Style

Neil Degrasse Tyson recently told Time magazine “I try to learn something new every day or else the day is wasted”.  I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment which is why I started this blog in the first place, technology is only going to become a larger part of our lives and it's best to equip yourself with at least a working knowledge of technology basics. Here we will look at multiple outlets that give you a variety of topics that you can learn from which also incorporate a video game style achievement and point system. All of these sites offer free e-learning and allow you to sign in using existing accounts so you don't have to sign up for them.  

•  Microsoft Virtual Academy offers "Free Microsoft Training Delivered by Experts." You can search courses by topics or by products and add them to customize your learning plan. MVA has leaderboards that track your progress and award you points for completing modules as well as bonus points for completing a course, you can see how you stack up against others on the site and in your country. In addition to the courses offered MVA also offers live events, the next of which will be from June 17th-19th on Windows 8.1 Update for Enterprise Jump Start.
• Khan Academy features much more than technology training, including multiple levels of math, science and economics. You can learn more about computer science and computer programming, and as a follow up to yesterday's post regarding Getting Started With Animation, Khan Academy currently offers a course on Introduction to Java Script: Drawing & Animation. The site even states "We're full of game mechanics. As soon as you log in, you'll start earning badges and points for learning. The more you challenge yourself, the more bragging rights you'll get."
• Duolingo is a language learning website that is also supported by an easy to use mobile application. An English speaker currently has five different languages that they can choose from including Spanish, French and Portuguese with another seven language courses currently in development including Turkish, Dutch(Netherlands) and Irish. Bilingual speakers can also offer their services in contributing towards making new language courses available. 
  
   

Getting Started With Animation

There are so many different ways that you could get started with animation, what I am going to try to do here is give you multiple options to choose from. The intention behind this post isn't for you to start making cartoons, it's for you to be able to make an animation which could eventually lead to you creating cartoons in the future.

• Wideo is an online animated video creation tool that allows you to create, edit, and share videos online for free. You can select their or upload your own images, backgrounds, and music that you want to use in order to create your own online video. Wideo was originally billed as a way to make animated commercials for your company.  

• Flash is the most widely used animation software and there are several tutorials available so you can quickly learn and begin animating. It costs $19.99 a month for Flash Professional CC or $49.99 a month for the complete Creative Cloud.

• Photoshop is an extremely useful tool for creating far more than just animations, but that's what we will focus on here. It costs $9.99 a month for Flash Professional CC or $49.99 a month for the complete Creative Cloud.

I have given two actual options to begin animating with, as well as provided where you can download them. Neither Flash nor Photoshop require the most state of the art computer to run so you most likely can begin today. If you aren't sure about paying for either product than you can get a one month free trial to see for yourself. Wideo is included as an option because there are plenty of people that just want to play around with animation and all you have to do is visit their site to do so. I plan on beginning animation as a regular occurrence on this site as an additional post and one day hope to be able to create my own cartoons for here.

Going Further With Torrenting

Yesterday I touched on How To Get Started With Torrenting, today I will further explain common terms you may encounter as well as where to get started with private trackers. I cannot post web addresses here as it is firmly against the rules of several private trackers but what I can do is post a reference to r/trackers here, where they keep a somewhat updated list. As I stated in yesterday's post, an issue you may run into on a private tracker is that the content you are looking for is not available, that's where specialty sites come in handy. If you cannot find what you are looking for on your private tracker of choice, let's say sports, then you can be sure that there is a private tracker that specializes in just sports, if you only care about football, you can find one that only features that.

On a public tracker you could download the file and be on your way, a frowned upon practice dubbed hit and run, but on a private tracker you are required to seed that torrent after you have downloaded it to help others leech from it. You may have to seed for a designated period of time, at least 48 hours or just simply seed back the ratio you have downloaded, example being if you download a 1GB file then you should upload at least the same 1 GB. That brings us to ratio requirements which vary by trackers but typically want you to have uploaded more than half of the data that you have downloaded, keep in mind that if you are trying to get onto a more elite private tracker then a 1.0 ratio is not that impressive. Some private trackers will have torrents designated as free leech where you can download the torrent and not have it count against your download total, effectively a ratio booster. So, I guess your big question is how do you get onto a private tracker?

• Some private trackers allow you to go to their site and sign up, this could be one of your best options for getting started and can also be a stepping stone for getting into the better private trackers available if they require proof of your ratio.
• Private trackers may hold open enrollment, a temporary designated period where you can sign up for that tracker without an invite.
• Invite only trackers are exactly that, you will need to be invited to join and unless you personally know the person inviting you, you may have to provide proof that you can understand how a private tracker works. Some of the more elite private trackers may only issue invites to their donors, people that donate money to the continued operation of the site. There are several levels of elite trackers, some of which you may have to take a quiz to be accepted to.

I feel at this point you understand the legality of torrenting; the difference in private and public trackers; how to set up your computer to start torrenting; where to look for private trackers and understanding common terms you may encounter in torrenting. Also, TorrentFreak is a great source to keep up with the latest news in the torrenting world.

E3 2014: Humble Bundle E3 Digital Ticket

Hurry now and pick up Humble Bundle E3 Digital Ticket, where you can name your price, at least $1, for more than $100 worth of digital content including:

• EVE Online Starter Pack and Rifter Krusual Skin 
• PAYDAY 2 Orc and Crossbreed masks 
• SMITE Almighty Zeus bundle including the Almighty Zeus skin and Zeus 
• Company of Heroes 2 DLC
• Total War: ROME II Nomadic Tribes Culture Pack 
• Warframe Booster Pack,
• Landmark 1-week closed beta key
• Magicka: Wizard Wars  E3 Robe
• MX vs ATV Reflex full version.
• Anomaly 2 full version plus soundtrack 
• Sid Meier's Civilization III: Complete full version
• Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection full version
• Twitch Turbo 1-month subscription

How To Get Started With Torrenting.

I should preface this by letting you know that the act of torrenting itself is not illegal, it is specifically the content which is downloaded that could make you torrenting something illegal. People that have downloaded copyrighted material through torrenting have been arrested and owners/operators of sites that support torrents containing copyrighted material have also been arrested. However, more often than not downloading copyrighted material could lead to a stern letter from the Recording Industry Association of America(RIAA) or Motion Picture Association of America(MPAA) or potential lawsuits from the aforementioned Associations.

Think of BitTorrent as a way of transmitting files across the internet; a torrent as an indivdual file; torrenting as the act of downloading files. Files that are transmitted can vary in size from a single .jpg which is a couple of kB's in size to entire video libraries which can be hundreds of GB's in size. With the speeds that BitTorrent is capable of, a full movie will take a few minutes to download given there are enough people sharing the file. Sharing the file is not only uploading a file to be downloaded but also supporting that file after you upload it so others can download that same file, you in this case would be a seeder while the person trying to download that file would be a leecher. If you upload a file to a tracker site and do not in turn seed that file then nobody will be able to download it but if you upload it and seed then others can download from it and become seeders as well, after they have finished the download. This video gives not only a basic overview of BitTorrent, it also double as one of the worst commercial advertisements ever made.

With a basic understanding of what BitTorrent does and also the concept of needing seeders to allow downloads for leechers, let's discuss how to get started with torrents. There are mimimal hardware capabilities required for torrenting with possibly only a hard drive large enough for your downloaded files, an inexpensive external hard drive will work just fine for this. What you will need to make torrenting possible is a torrent client, of which µTorrent is currently the most popular outside of China. After you have a torrent client that enables the file sharing, you need to know where to look to get files that you can torrent. The Pirate Bay is one of the most widely known magnet link sites which we will label a public tracker meaning anyone can access it. The process after finding a torrent you like is as follows: click the download link to have that file load in your client; click the button to accept that torrent being added to your client; opening the file after the torrent has finished downloading; an optional step may be needing to unzip the file so you can access it. Public trackers will give you a huge selection of content to choose from with an equally as large number of peers seeding and leeching, the downside to public trackers is that there can be a public record of what your IP address has downloaded. A more secure way of torrenting would be from private trackers which usually require signing up, and in more elite private trackers, the need to be invited.

Acceptance into private trackers could also require proof that you are not only familiar with torrenting, but you are also a person that seeds more than you leech, or ratio requirements. Private trackers give a little more piece of mind but they can have wait times associated with downloads, not have enough seeders for downloads or just not have a particular download you are looking for. I feel that is more than enough to give an overview of what exactly torrenting is, next time I will get into the more advanced terms and options associated with torrenting.

What You May Have Missed This Past Week and What's Upcoming.

Xbox finally extended its Games With Gold program to the Xbox One and released their big update which no longer requires a gold membership for its most popular apps. The biggest news of the tech world this past week involved Apple and their WWDC, because it garnered such widespread interest a few important, or at least noteworthy, items may have been missed in the process. 

• Miami-Dade police impound three Lyft cars in two days.
• Tesla wins back the right to sell directly to consumers in New Jersey.
• Apple CEO Tim Cook tweets a photo of an Apple assembly line running Windows.
• Facebook approved, and is now running, a Dogecoin tipping app.
• A computer has passed the Turing Test for the first time in history. Debunked
• Netflix lets users know it's Verizon that is impairing streaming quality, Verizon files a cease and desist letter.
• A patent troll is ordered to pay up for the first time.
• Telecom companies are to blame for you not being able to get Google Fiber.
• John Oliver asks internet trolls to tell the FCC they are against net neutrality, FCC's website gets bogged down.

This week I will touch on what exactly torrenting is including how to get started, if such a thing might interest you. I also plan on writing about getting started with animation and how I started the process of beginning a website. I would like to extend a Thank You to all of my readers in an amazing thirteen different countries in just two weeks.