Recording your video game sessions isn’t exactly a new idea. It’s the entire basis of Twitch and its countless game streamers, both professional and aspirational. But game streaming requires a collection of special tools and techniques if you want to stand out.
Or, at least, it used to. Now, with its latest beta update, Steam will basically do it all for you. Steam has long been able to take screenshots and stream game sessions around a local network, but this new feature is laser-focused on recording and sharing your experiences.
With Nvidia’s Shadowplay now on the outs, this new one by Steam is probably the tool that’s most likely to be installed on gamers’ PCs already (or it will be once it moves from beta to full release). This should make Steam the most prolific game recording software in the world, even before most users are aware of the capability.
I tried out the tool with a few sessions of Hades II and found it remarkable how well the tool runs without even thinking about it.
Set it up to work in the background—shaving a bit of performance off your GPU, but not anything I particularly noticed—and your game sessions will just appear in your recordings and screenshots folder. (You can always navigate to the non-DRM files in Windows Explorer, but Steam includes a video player within its own interface, too.)
From this view, you can clip and export sections of your session, grab a screenshot, or send it to other PCs or even your phone, all without leaving the player window.
Here’s a quick snippet I grabbed in just a few seconds with no editing. Note how the tool preserves my ultrawide monitor’s 21:9 aspect ratio, something a lot of similar software struggle to do.
By default, Steam saves sessions in 120-minute chunks and at 12Mbps video (which was about the level of a YouTube stream for me), and it asks just under 11GB of space to keep the buffer running.
Naturally, all of that is adjustable within the Game Recording menu, as are the shortcuts to add specific markers. You can even bind a shortcut to a controller button—those back-mounted “paddle” buttons showing up on more and more gamepads seem like a perfect fit here.
Valve says that game developers will be able to automatically add markers and snippet sections to these recording sessions at some point, though I’m not seeing them at the moment. Other features include an easy-to-share QR code link generator and temporary links for “Hey, look at this!” shares with your friends. Oh, and it works on the Steam Deck.
All of this reminds me of the social tools baked into the PlayStation and Xbox, but with more options available for modern tech-savvy users. Valve’s continual work to make Steam the de facto platform for PC gaming seems to be paying off.
You can try out the tool by enabling the Steam beta and then checking out the Game Recording tab in the Steam Settings menu.
The illegal streaming service Jetflicks once boasted on its website that visitors could watch just about any TV show or movie “Anytime. Anywhere.” Now the five people behind the bootleg streaming service are facing some serious jail time.
A jury found Kristopher Dallman, Douglas Courson, Felipe Garcia, Jared Jaurequi and Peter Huber guilty in a Las Vegas federal court on Friday for conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement. Dallmann was also found guilty on two counts of money laundering and three counts of misdemeanor criminal copyright infringement for leading the Jetflicks operation, according to court documents and a US Department of Justice press release.
Jetflicks used computer scripts and software to scour the internet for illegal copies of movies and television shows and posted hundreds of thousands of illegal copies as far back as 2007 from torrent and Usenet sites. The defendants created a catalog of bootleg shows and movies bigger than the combined collections of streaming services including Netflix, Hulu, Vudu and Amazon Prime, according to the Department of Justice.
Users could pay a subscription fee to access the site on pretty much any media streaming device with a web browser. Jetflicks claimed to “offer more than 183,200 television episodes and have more than 37,000 subscribers,” according to the initial indictment filed in the Eastern District of Virginia in 2019.
Dallmann, the leader of the group, and his co-conspirators “made millions of dollars streaming and distributing this catalog of stolen content,” according to the press release.
At one point, operators and employees of Jetflicks were making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from its subscription service. Dallman wrote in an online chat that his site made $750,000 in one year, according to the indictment.
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) took notice of Jetflicks in 2012 and sent cease and desist letters to the site’s operators. Four years later, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) started its undercover operation of the site by paying for a six-month subscription. Undercover agents recorded multiple instances of illegal uploads of shows like Shameless, Ray Donovan, The OA and SyFy’s 12 Monkeys alongside charges for accessing them. Then the agents traced those charges back to the defendants’ bank accounts, according to court records.
A sentencing hearing has yet to be scheduled. The Department of Justice says Dallman could face up to 48 years in prison and the four remaining defendants could each face five years in prison.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/VdqKDAy
A retracting door handle on a Tesla.Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images
Numerous Tesla owners say they have been trapped inside their EVs after they lost power.
Teslas come with manual door releases, but they can be hard to find without the owner’s manual.
Business Insider has compiled a guide on how to find them in a range of different Tesla models.
Numerous Tesla owners have said they’ve been stuck inside their EVs after the cars suddenly lost power.
Firefighters recently had to rescue a toddler from a locked Tesla after the car’s battery died.
Renee Sanchez told reporters at On Your Side, a segment in the local outlet Arizona’s Family, that her EV’s battery died after she put her 20-month-old granddaughter in the car and went to get in the front seat.
When the firefighters arrived on the scene, they used an ax to break the car’s window to rescue the child, the report said.
YouTuber Tom Exton claimed back in 2022 that his Tesla Model Y ordered him to pull over before it suddenly lost power and left him unable to exit.
Exton said he followed the instructions for the manual release to open the door, but that this "somehow broke the driver’s window."
Another Tesla driver, Rick Meggison, told Arizona-based TV station ABC 15 last summer that he got trapped inside his Model Y vehicle for around 20 minutes on a 100-degree day. He said he couldn’t open the doors or windows as the battery had died.
Meggison, who was 73 years old at the time, said he called his sister who was able to open the passenger door using the Tesla app — but that also cracked the car’s window, he said.
The manual door release can be tricky to find unless you’ve combed through your car’s owner’s manual.
To help Tesla owners avoid getting into the same situation, here is a short guide on how to locate and activate the manual door releases in the Model S, 3, X, and Y.
To manually open the front doors when a Model S loses power, you need to pull up the release tab that’s found in front of the window switches on the door panel, the Tesla owner’s manual says.
To open the rear doors, pull back the carpet below the back seats to expose the emergency door release cable, the manual says, adding that you then need to pull the cable "toward the center" of the car.
YouTuber @TeslaInventory, who posts videos about his experience with Teslas on his channel, said that the front doors of a Tesla Model S would still work even if the car lost power, but the rear doors would not.
He also says the manual release will override the car’s child lock.
The Model 3 owner’s manual states that "only the front doors are equipped with a manual door release."
To open the front doors in the event that the car loses power, you need to pull up the manual release that’s located just in front of the window switch panel on the door.
The front doors of the Model X can also be opened using a manual door release that you can find in front of the window buttons, the owner’s manual says.
If the power drops out, you can open the rear doors using a mechanical release found behind the speaker grille, which you need to remove from the vehicle’s door, the manual adds.
You then need to "pull the mechanical release cable down and towards the front of the vehicle" before lifting up the door to open it.
Model Y
The Tesla Model YTesla
You can also find the manual door release for the Model Y’s front seats in front of the window switch panel, the owner’s manual says.
The manual makes it clear that not all Model Y cars come with a manual release for the rear seats. For those that do, it is located in the rear doors’ pockets.
You need to remove the mat from the pocket and press a red tab to reveal the manual release cable, which you need to pull forward to open the door.
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment from BI.
Helios Horizon, an initiative to develop a stratospheric electric airplane, recently concluded its latest flight test campaign having surpassed the altitude record for multi-seat electric aircraft.
The U.S. government sued Adobe on Monday for allegedly “trapping” customers in its default, most lucrative subscription plan. In a complaint, the Department of Justice (DOJ) writes that Adobe locks customers into a year-long agreement that’s not effectively disclosed as such, and “ambushing” users with hefty hidden fees when they try to cancel.
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The DOJ specifically calls out the “Annual, Paid Monthly” or APM plan, which Adobe presents as the default option for several software products. The APM plan allows users to pay the lowest amount on the day they sign up. However, the complaint alleges Adobe hides an early termination fee (ETF) that can cost users hundreds of dollars depending on when they cancel.
“During enrollment, Adobe hides material terms of its APM plan in fine print and behind optional textboxes and hyperlinks, providing disclosures that are designed to go unnoticed and that most consumers never see,” reads the DOJ’s complaint. “Adobe then deters cancellations by employing an onerous and complicated cancellation process. As part of this convoluted process, Adobe ambushes subscribers with the previously obscured ETF when they attempt to cancel.”
To buy Creative Cloud, Adobe’s package of landmark software products, the APM (below it’s titled “Yearly, Billed monthly”) plan appears as $59.99/month. This allows customers to pay the lowest amount on sign-up day, compared to a “Monthly” plan of $89.99/month, or a “Yearly, Billed Upfront” plan of $659.88. The DOJ alleges that Adobe doesn’t do enough to disclose that this is a year-long contract with fees for early termination, and says the company puts up other roadblocks to canceling.
Adobe’s payment page to purchase Creative Cloud on Monday.Screenshot: Adobe
Customers who cancel their APM plans will be charged 50% of the “remaining contract obligation.” according to Adobe’s terms and conditions. So if you cancelled your Creative Cloud subscription after one month of service, you’d lose access to Creative Cloud that month and have to pay roughly $330 to cancel.
The complaint cites testimonies from consumers who were confused by Adobe’s plan when they signed up. They were allegedly unaware that this plan had to continue for a year, despite the name, and that a cancellation fee existed. The DOJ alleges that Adobe was aware of this confusion, receiving multiple complaints from the Better Business Bureau and customers over the years. However, Adobe has continued offering the plan without much further clarification.
“We are transparent with the terms and conditions of our subscription agreements and have a simple cancellation process,” said Dana Rao, Adobe’s general counsel and chief trust officer, in a press release sent to Gizmodo. “We will refute the FTC’s claims in court.”
The lawsuit targets not only Adobe but also two executives allegedly responsible for these lock-in practices: Senior Vice President of Digital Go To Market & Sales, Maninder Sawhney, and President of Digital Media Business, David Wadhwani. This is part of an increased effort by the U.S. government to crack down on hidden fees. Last month, the DOJ sued to break up Ticketmaster and Live Nation, one of the most public offenders in the war on hidden fees.
Following an iffy docking at the International Space Station last week, Boeing managed to deliver a pair of NASA astronauts to the orbital lab. The stressful Starliner saga continues as the crew capsule developed more leaks in its service module. NASA is currently evaluating its ability to return the duo back to Earth.
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In an update shared on Monday, NASA revealed that the Starliner teams are assessing the impact that five helium leaks would have on the remainder of the mission. “While Starliner is docked, all the manifolds are closed per normal mission operations preventing helium loss from the tanks,” the space agency wrote.
If you’ve been keeping track, there were three leaks on the Starliner spacecraft the last time we checked. Starliner teams had identified two new leaks on the spacecraft after it launched on June 5, in addition to a helium leak that was detected prior to liftoff. The team took some time to assess the issue before launching the capsule, but eventually Boeing and NASA decided to proceed with flying the crew on the leaky Starliner spacecraft without resolving the problem.
The spacecraft consists of a reusable crew capsule and an expendable service module. Helium is used in the spacecraft’s thruster systems to allow the thrusters to fire without being combustible or toxic. “We can handle this particular leak if that leak rate were to grow even up to 100 times,” Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said during a news conference before the Starliner launch.
Well, it’s getting there. Despite the leaks suggesting a larger issue with Starliner’s propulsion system, NASA remains confident in its commercial partner and is downplaying the spacecraft’s anomalies. “Engineers evaluated the helium supply based on current leak rates and determined that Starliner has plenty of margin to support the return trip from station,” NASA wrote in its update. “Only seven hours of free-flight time is needed to perform a normal end of mission, and Starliner currently has enough helium left in its tanks to support 70 hours of free flight activity following undocking.”
A “normal end of mission” is key here seeing as how Starliner had a hard time docking to the ISS. Starliner missed its first docking opportunity at 12:15 p.m. ET due to technical issues, prompting NASA to target another docking window an hour later. Five of the spacecraft thrusters failed during its approach, and four were subsequently recovered. The capsule finally docked with the ISS at 1:34 p.m. ET on June 6.
While it’s parked outside the ISS, engineers also are evaluating an RCS oxidizer isolation valve in the service module that’s not properly closed, according to NASA’s recent update. An RCS, or Reaction Control System, uses thrusters for attitude control and steering, while the oxidizer isolation valve regulates the flow of oxidizer, which is essential for burning fuel in the thrusters. Mission managers are continuing to work through the return plan, which includes assessments of flight rationale, fault tolerance, and potential operational mitigations for the remainder of the flight,” the space agency wrote.
Starliner is scheduled to undock from the orbital space station no earlier than June 18. The Crewed Flight Test is part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program and is meant to transport crew and cargo to and from the International Space Station (ISS) under a $4.3 billion contract with the space agency. NASA’s other commercial partner, SpaceX, has so far launched eight crews to the space station.
The spacecraft’s first crewed flight was meant to usher in regular trips to the ISS, but NASA may require Starliner to undergo some fixes before it approves the capsule for normal operations.
For more spaceflight in your life, follow us on X and bookmark Gizmodo’s dedicated Spaceflight page.
The four crew members of Inspiration4, the first ever all-civilian space mission, got genetically younger during their stay in space, a study has found. But the effects didn’t last long. Scientists are now trying to unravel how the space environment affects human DNA.
Inspiration4 crew members had a packed schedule during their three-day trip to space in September 2021. Instead of just floating around in weightlessness and enjoying the breathtaking views from their modified Crew Dragon Resilience space capsule, they lent their bodies to science.
Hayley Arceneaux, the mission’s the chief medical officer and trained physician assistant, was busy during their time orbit taking fingerpick blood samples and skin swabs of herself and her crewmates. A battery of tests followed their return to Earth and continued for several months after that.
Results of these experiments have been published in three scientific papers in the journals Nature and Nature Communications on Tuesday, June 11. The tests showed that the space environment has fast-acting and profound effects on the human body, which can be detected in markers in blood after only a few hours in orbit.
NASA, JAXA and the European Space Agency have previously conducted similar experiments with astronauts during long-duration stays on the International Space Station, but the Inspiration4 mission provided scientists with an opportunity to study the earliest stages of these space-induced processes in the human body.
"We are getting closer to the point where we can almost measure the dose of space on the body," Chris Mason, a professor of genomics, physiology and biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine and lead author of two of the papers, told Space.com in an interview. "They were in space only for a few days, but we could already see early signatures of spaceflight exposure on the body including protein changes and gene expression changes."
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For example, the researchers observed that markers indicating the aging of DNA decreased in space, making the crewmembers’ DNA appear younger and healthier. Those markers, known as telomeres, are caps that protect chromosomes that are known to shorten with age and due to environmental factors and stress.
For the Inspiration4 participants, however, the telomeres got longer during the space mission. Scientists previously observed telomere lengthening in NASA astronaut Scott Kelly when they studied the effects of his one-year stay in orbit in 2015 on his body. The findings were already surprising back then as the researchers expected the opposite to happen due to the high levels of stress the organism is subject to in space.
Scott Kelly, shown here in the cupola of the International Space Station, completed a year-long mission in March 2016. (Image credit: NASA)
To see those effects in the Inspiration4 crew members after only a few days in space was even more unexpected, scientists say.
"We did see telomere elongation in all four of the crew members," Susan Bailey, a professor of radiation cancer biology and oncology at Colorado State University who led the research, said in a press conference presenting the papers on Monday, June 10. "It’s really a remarkable finding in a number of ways and helps us solidify our findings."
The researchers think the telomere elongation is triggered as a protective response by exposure to the higher radiation environment of space. Similar effects have been measured in mountain climbers after they scaled the world’s highest peaks.
"We think it’s the DNA’s equivalent to hormesis," Mason said. "It’s the effect that we see when you stress the body, for example in the gym, your muscles get sore, but the body responds by building strength."
There is, however, a catch, said Bailey. After the astronauts’ return to Earth, the telomeres shrink almost immediately and get shorter than they were before the spaceflight. The researchers, Bailey said, don’t understand what triggers the shortening but hope they might be able to control the response in the future.
"It takes a number of months for the telomeres to recover," Bailey said. "It’s one of the things that doesn’t quite get back to where you were when you started. We think that there is a real opportunity to think about long-term health outcomes for astronauts once they return to Earth and how we can better monitor and improve that outcome."
The shortening of the protective telomeres leads to DNA damage and makes individuals susceptible to a range of diseases including cancer, heart disease or immune system deficiency. Research, however, suggests that healthy diets and restorative practices such as meditation can help those chromosomal caps to recover.
Just like in astronauts in long duration mission, the bodies of Inspiration4 crew members showed other signs of aging during the spaceflight including increased markers for bone and muscle loss and brain stress. Those, however, returned to pre-flight levels within six months. Inspiration4 crew members Hayley Arceneaux and Chris Sembroski, who participated in the briefing didn’t seem to regret the degradation their telomeres suffered due to their space trip.
"I was so happy to be able to contribute to science and I know that it was very important for all of our crew members," said Arceneaux.
Pioneering Inspiration4 mission crew member Hayley Arceneaux, a physician assistant at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and pediatric cancer survivor, circuited Earth for nearly three days in September 2021. (Image credit: Inspiration4/St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital)
Sembroski added: "It’s really humbling and honoring to be a part of this study. I don’t think any of our crew members really understood the full potential of what this mission was going to turn into, but it’s been incredible to see the impacts that have come from it."
The study also found that the female crew members Arceneaux and geologist Sian Proctor recovered faster from the spaceflight with most of their health markers back at pre-flight levels faster than those of their male counterparts Sembroski and mission commander and benefactor Jared Isaacman. The results confirm observations in female NASA astronauts and suggest that female bodies may be better suited to endure the stresses of spaceflight.
The Inspiration4 crew poses for a selfie in the Crew Dragon cupola. (Image credit: Inspiration4)
The data will be part of an open-access astronaut biological data repository, the Space Omics and Medical Atlas (SOMA), which has also been published as part of the Nature package. The atlas contains data from long-duration space missions conducted by NASA, JAXA and ESA, and it’s a first-of-a-kind resource allowing researchers to compare and study in detail the many biological, physiological and genetic changes that can occur in humans during spaceflight.
The researchers hope the database will enable them in the future to not only select people that are genetically best suited to endure the rigors of space travel, but also to devise strategies to improve the outcomes for those suited less.
"We want to use this data to predict how people will respond to space at a physiological and molecular level," said Mason. "Eventually, we would like to find ways to boost their response, target some of the changes with a drug and help them, so that we don’t exclude anybody from going to space."
Mason, in fact, published a book in 2021 called "The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds,"in which he makes a case for genetically engineering humans to make them better suited to explore and settle the solar system. He admits that the current state of knowledge is not sufficient to attempt any tempering with astronauts’ genomes.
"We need probably another 20 years of data before I would even think we could have a good guess as to what to do," said Mason. "But this is the beginning of mapping out what changes to target, what to build new drugs around and what someday we can potentially do."
The research could also help medical scientists on Earth looking to find cures for genetic ailments that ruin lives of millions of children worldwide and for which there is currently no remedy.
The three studies in the journal Nature about these spaceflight-induced genetic changes crew can be found here, here and here.
