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Hugh Pickens writes "Ken Gaebler discusses a new way of hiring called 'employment simulations,' which are gaining popularity among high-tech firms that are seeking data from prospective employees that you can't get from sit-down interviews. In a typical employment simulation, candidates participate in online 'video games' that leverage simulation software to determine how well candidates perform in actual job situations. 'There are no questions about your former work experience and office habits. There's simply a computer game. If you win, you get the job. If you lose, game over.' As one example, call centers are very amenable to simulations because the work environment (a series of computer programs and databases) is relatively easy to replicate and the tasks that make up job performance are easy to measure (data entry speed and accuracy, customer service, multitasking, etc). Other employment simulation programs have been written for healthcare, insurance, retail sales, financial services, hospitality and travel, manufacturing and automotive, and telecom and utilities. But skeptics say employment simulators and other computer-based hiring models have some drawbacks. 'Like any technology, the effectiveness of employment simulations is limited to the quality of the software and its accessibility to users,' says Gaebler."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Today's Deal: Save 75% off Dirt 2!

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r19278b
------

Critical Fixes:
+ Fixed a combat memory leak.
+ Fixed a crash that could occur when clicking the research cube on
the star map.
+ Fixed a crash that would occur in the research screen when the
slider was set all the way to government.
+ Torpedoes now apply damage to planets.
+ Fixed a bug that caused battleriders to crash the design tooltip.
+ Fixed a crash that could occur when requesting enclaves.

Other Fixes:
+ Fixed missing Bio-missile art for Morrigi.
+ Fixed a couple Human, Hiver and Morrigi DLC art issues.
+ Fixed the problem with some carriers not being able to rotate while
riders were docked.
+ Fixed an issue with riders taking too long to dock.
+ Fixed a couple issues that were leading to phantom fleets, related
to deployed gates and defense fleets.
+ Carriers can now carry other carriers.
+ Fixed an issue where loaded games could mix up player ID's.
+ Fixed known issues with Kingfisher.
+ Fixed issues where ships were not targeting stations correctly in combat.
+ Fixed an issue where destroying the mission section on the ship
would kill all crew onboard.
+ Fixed an issue with Game Setup options resetting when switching maps.
+ Fixed issues with combat AI splitting targets.
+ Fixed issues where bio-missiles were not launching.
+ Added missing bonus for Expert Systems.
+ Added missing bonus for Orbital Drydocks.
+ Added missing bonus for Heavy Platforms.
+ Corrected bonus for Materials Applications.
+ Fixed a bug that was causing designs to return incorrect attributes
once they had been committed.
+ Fixed a bug that was reporting the build times for ships with naval
stations incorrectly.
+ Removed duplicate "destination" text from fleet lists.
+ Made a change to address the concern that missiles would continue to
move after combat had ended.
+ Battle riders are now silent while docked.
+ Fixed known issues where tracking weapons would fail to hit ship
targets after their sections were destroyed.
+ Turrets no longer fire missiles after the crew are killed.
+ Fixed an issue where assault shuttles would not return to tender.
+ Fixed combat AI not launching battle riders.
+ Fixed the decimal place in reported post-combat damage.
+ Fixed issue where ships would not point off the horizontal combat
plane to aim.
+ Fixed an issue where the AI was making poor/mixed weapon decisions
when designing ships.
+ Fixed an issue where a colonization was available for targets with
known enemy colonies.
+ Fixed a handful of sounds that did not have attenuation set and were
therefore audible from everywhere in combat.
+ Fixed known issues where the Hiver gate traffic was not being
updated correctly.
+ Fixed known issues where Liir were no longer being slowed in
proximity to gravity wells.
+ Addressed handful of engine types that could be heard constantly
regardless of distance from camera.
+ Addressed variety of standard turrets that weren't able to target straight up.

Other Changes and Additions:
+ Psionics can now be researched, designed into ships and activated in the game.
+ It is now possible to repair riders in the repair dialog.
+ Added antialiasing to many parts of the game. 3D scenes now use FXAA
antialiasing by default, which can be disabled in the launcher if desired.
+ Reduced fleet icon click radius on the star map.
+ Biomissile and other super-class weapons are now reported in the
post-combat dialog.
+ Added plague effects.
+ Increased pitch range of turrets across the board to make them more
effective at PD off the combat plane.
+ Sensor range discs now have clearly defined boundaries in combat.

-------

Updates to King Arthur II - The Role-playing Wargame have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client (in on-line mode) is restarted.

Major changes include:

King Arthur II – The Role-playing Wargame v1.1.03

-Added infantry ability to follow and guard archers automatically
-Balanced Dal Riata battle
-Fixed missing model for Tier 4 “Pict warriors”
-Fixed flag loading error occurring when loading saved games
-Fixed missing pictures for some units
-Reaching the “Tomb of the Emperor” without acquiring Morgana is no longer possible
-Various scenario fixes
-Various quest fixes
-Other minor bug and balancing fixes

Updates to Left 4 Dead 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Blood Harvest Campaign:
- Item density revision.
- Several minor bugs fixed.

Blood Harvest 3:
- Fixed a potential exploit where survivors were able to jump to onto the cliff side prior to the train onslaught.
- Added tooltip to prompt players to fight to the safe room when the onslaught begins.

Blood Harvest 4:
- Changed the lights on first large train depot building to be non-solid, to prevent survivors from being able to jump into the upper windows.
- Moved a bookshelf in front of a window on the ground-floor of the last building in the level.
- Adjusted the slope of the concrete that makes up the bottom section of the last building in the map so that players slide off of it. It was previously used as part of an exploit to skip content.
- Doubled the height of the fence that leads around the last building in the map to prevent players from skipping the final building.
- Added tooltip to prompt players to fight to the safe room when the onslaught begins.
- Added new a new spawn location on the final bridge for infected.
- Removed a piece of railing along the final bridge to create an opening for infected attacks.

Blood Harvest 5:
- It should now be much harder to get stuck inside of the APC when it arrives.

Today's Deal: Save 66% off Section 8: Prejudice

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Snuggle Truck is Now Available on Steam and 10% off until Friday February 10th 10AM PST.

Welcome to Snuggle Truck, the award winning over-the-top physics-based indie driving game. Save your cargo of crazy animals by delivering them to the zoo unscathed in the least amount of time. Tilt your truck, catch the fuzzies, drive over armadillos, and rocket your way through hills, caverns, and deserts. Perform backflips and navigate loops, harsh terrain, and unexpected obstacles all while attempting not to crush the poor animals.

Magic: The Gathering – Tactics is Now Free to Play on Steam!

Magic: The Gathering - Tactics is a free to play, online tactical strategy game set in the rich, Magic: The Gathering Multiverse. Players build their collection of figures and spells from the five colors of Magic and create powerful spellbooks to summon and cast on the digital tabletop.

Titan Attacks!, from the studio that brought you Revenge of the Titans, is now available on Steam and is 20% off until February 10th at 10AM!

Battle swarms of alien fighters, bombers and giant boss motherships, over 5 unique worlds and 100 levels of frantic action. Earn bounty money and upgrade your ship with extra cannon, rockets and lasers. Destroy falling wrecks, dodge hurtling asteroids and capture escaping aliens - or blast them from the skies!

hypnosec writes "Several of Ubisoft's biggest titles won't be playable as of next week thanks to a server move by the publisher and the restrictive DRM that was used in their development. This isn't just multiplayer either. Because Ubisoft thought it would be a smart plan to use always on DRM for even the single player portion of games like Assassin's Creed, even the single player portion of that title won't be playable during the server move. Some of the other games affected by this move will be Tom Clancy's HAWX 2, Might & Magic: Heroes 6 and The Settlers 7. The Mac games that will be broken during this period are Assassin's Creed, Splinter Cell Conviction and The Settlers. This move was announced this week as part of a community letter, with Ubisoft describing how the data servers for many of the publisher's online services would be migrated from third party facilities to a new location starting on the 7th February. The publisher didn't reveal how long the transfer would take."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

- Decreased level load times
- Various optimizations
- If locking a missile on a target, and missile lock is then lost (out of view, changed target), user may release the missile fire button without firing a missile. This is only if they release the button before a new lock is acquired.
- Docking penalty re-added
- Added a visibility cone to the radar for easier readability for the time being.
- Fixes for the afterburner sound sometimes playing constantly after use.
- Virtual Mouse Joystick mode should now respect deadzone and sensitivity settings, though more work needs done still.
- MAG cannon projectile speed increase
- HADES Missile slight speed / health increase
- Reduced chances lower difficulty enemy fighters will shoot missiles out of the air.
- Increased speed of Gunships
- Increased potency and accuracy of Gunship turrets
- Mission 3 has gotten a complete revamp. No more transports to save and, in general, is much more action-orientated than before.
- Mission 5 Gunship exit points moved further out from their spawn point allowing players enough time to kill them (this was needed due to their speed increase)

We've endured a great many annoyances in the 16 years since Tom's Hardware first appeared online. What follows is a list of 16 of them. Although it's by no means all-inclusive, it represents one seasoned reviewer's worst experiences in technology.

Updates to Nation Red have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

- Chinese version of Nation Red now available
- Added a new radial comms. menu (default binding: 'z'). This makes it much quicker to ask for help, indicate powerups, etc
- Your Perk mode is now saved between games. For example if you always use Auto Perk mode, you will never need to set it again.
- All achievements are now enabled in on-line and local coop.
- Mission stats (unlocked mission and earned mission stars) will now also be saved on Steam's Stats servers. This will make them browsable plus makes it unlikely your mission progress can be lost.
- On-line games where the host has selected Auto Perk and Shared Xp will now give correct level up time to other players
- Weapon balancing: M107 reload time has been reduced by 35%. Damage from M240B, Uzi/Dual Uzi has been increased by 15%. AK47, Beretta 93R and M4A1 damage increased 10%.
- Dead zombies can now drop powerups outside the map area if at least one of the players has a Powerup Hook/Snare perk.
- Some boss tweaks: Minigun and AK47 boss' armor and spawn rate has been reduced. Brawler's armor has been slightly increased. Ak47 Boss firing rate has been slightly ramped up on later levels/waves. Melee Bosses have slightly increased armor.
- Console can be activated with ~ or ` keys
- Player will no longer jump when using the controller to select a perk in coop
- Powerup Hook and Snare further fine-tuned in on-line coop
- Players with Lone Wolf in coop will no longer be able to pull or snare Sentry Gun and Ghost perks
- Fine-tuned the cursor crosshair position on screen (was slightly offset)
- You can now cancel the in-game chat box with ESC
- The game will automatically pause and unpause in Single Player or Local coop if you bring up the Steam interface
- ESC button at the bottom of the screen is now clickable
- New 500K and 750K kills achievements have been added to sit between the existing 250K and 1M achievements.
- Double Experience powerup now also doubles Auto Experience points during the powerup
- Added better menu navigation with controller. Auto Perk mode and Player classes in Single Player can be edited using a controller.
- AK47 Machine Gun boss kill Xp has been increased
- On-line Warehouse Barricade mode: zombies will be able to break down the fence faster according to the number of players
- Fixed Player Class Icon not changing on some machines
- Added achievement tracking bars for a few achievements which could not be tracked
- Sound looping (clicking) bug in on-line coop has been fixed
- Setting the music volume to 0 (zero) will completely stop streaming music which may increase performance on some slower PCs
- Fixed AK47 Boss sometimes getting stuck on Bridge Barricade
- Several other smaller bugfixes.

Updates to Team Fortress 2, Day of Defeat: Source and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Source Engine Changes (TF2, DoD:S, HL2:DM)

• Adjusted error messages on servers when players drop due to Steam authentication failure to be more clear
  
• Additional important server messages now go to the server log instead of just the console
  

Team Fortress 2

• Added The Conquistador
  
• Added The Map Maker's Medallion
  
• Added new promotional items
  
• Added information about item origins to the WebAPI
  
• Added "DamagedPlayer" animation event for the HUD, fired when the local player damages other players
  
• Fixed The Head Warmer not displaying unusual particle effects correctly
  
• Fixed paint applying incorrectly on Max's Severed Head
  
• Fixed a server crash caused by Holiday Punch critical attacks on physics objects
  
• Updated the Itsy Bitsy Spyer so it can also be equipped by the Sniper
  
• Updated cp_foundry:
  • Clip brush collision smoothing by the forward spawn alternate exit
    
  • Fixed Nobuild exploits
    
  • Fixed the teleporter player trap on the roof of the forward spawn alternate exit
    
  • Fixed Nodraw and texturing errors
    
  • Fixed clipping of barrels on final cap points
    
  • Fixed fade distance on props
    
  • Fixed lighting bugs in spytech vistas
    
  • Removed props hidden in geometry
    
  • Removed ability for players to cap the final point by standing on the catwalk behind it

Client Changes
* Added teammate player names and class icons to commander view.
* Added player squad letter to name in both first-person and commander views.
* Added backstab indicator for armknives to aiming reticle.
* Added variable FOV slider to advanced video options (range 75 - 100, default 90).
* Added option to disable motion blur in advanced video options.
* Added alternate zoom method for commanders without scroll wheel (hold SHIFT + mouse up/down).
* Added ironsights toggle option in advanced keyboard settings (default on).
* Added crouch toggle option in advanced keyboard settings (default off).
* Decreased frequency of structure under attack sound
* Updated German and Russian localizations.

Fixes
* Fixed career overview showing incorrect unlock level for class gizmos.
* Fixed spawn selection on minimap
* Fixed achievements being earned in training mode.
* Fixed Golden Targets achievement counting commanders in bunker instead of commanders outside of bunker.
* Fixed Team Domination, Around the Track, and Headshot achievements being impossible to achieve.
* Fixed servers not showing in Steam server browser.
* Outdated servers no longer show on Steam server list nor in-game.
* Fixed firstperson, thirdperson, and thirdpersonshoulder commands not functioning.
* Fixed Consortium commanders not getting credit for Sonic Turret kills.
* Increased required build area for Transport Gates to stop players from getting easily stuck upon spawn.
* Fixed thermal vision in armory exploit.
* Fixed class change for health exploit.
* Fixed Steam UpToDate web api not recognizing ND.
* Ported in some engine stability fixes from Left 4 Dead 2.
* Fixed some prediction issues with the Stealth's arm knives.
* Fixed using secondary attack button on knives not cancelling sprint.
* Fixed plugin menus being hidden by loadout menu.
* Fixed plugin menus ignoring input in commander view.

Server Downloads
* Fixed custom maps not downloading.
* Fixed all custom downloads not working without sv_downloadurl set.
* Enabled sv_allowdownload, sv_allowupload, and net_maxfilesize cvars.

Other Server Changes
* Added Motd support (use motd.txt or file specified by motdfile cvar).
* Server hibernation no longer enabled by default.
* Server hibernation setting can now be altered.
* Enhanced and cleaned up server logging.
* Added requested event properties for modders.

Maps
Oilfield
* Added Oilfield Beta.

Oasis
* Redesigned Empire spawn area to make it less exposed
* Fixed able to hit assembler with m95 from Bath house roof

RAGE 1.2 Patch Release Notes
--------------------------------------------------------------------
This RAGE patch adds some new features and addresses various compatibility and performance issues.

New Functionality
------------------------
Texture Detail: Enabling Texture Detail will improve up-close texture quality by performing upsampling with adaptive sharpening. This does not update or increase the resolution of the base textures included with the game but improves the perceived resolution and crispness of textures. This is an intensive operation and is only recommended if you have a quad-core CPU or higher. Please disable this feature if you encounter poor performance, stability issues or are given a notification that the game has run out of memory after loading a map. The Texture Detail option can be found in the Settings -> Video Menu.

Transcode Benchmark: A new benchmark has been added that determines how quickly texture data can be translated from the compressed format on your hard drive to a format that can be used by your video card. The higher your score, the faster your PC is able to make higher detail texture data available. This is not a traditional benchmark that runs through a scene of the game and returns a min/max/average framerate based on hardware and video settings. Other than the GPU Transcode option, the score will not be affected by changing any video settings. The Transcode Benchmark option can be found in the Settings -> Video Menu.

Error Messaging: If you attempt to apply video settings on a system that is not capable of handling them, an error may come up stating that your system ran out of memory. You will be allowed to continue, however, it is recommended that you either reduce your video settings until this message no longer occurs or you will be asked to restart the game with lower video settings. If you ignore this error and continue playing without altering your settings you will likely encounter texture corruption and/or system instability.

Automatic Video Settings Fallbacks: When an advanced video setting fails to apply, the setting may be set back to a safe default. Anti-aliasing will fall back to NONE if the allocation of a multi-sampled FBO fails. Texture Cache will fall back to SMALL when the allocation of a large texture cache fails. Texture Detail will fall back to OFF when large page table allocations fail. On failure, these settings will automatically fall back to safe values without the need for user input.

Patch Changes / Fixes
-----------------------------
- Fixed crash from potentially having stale transcode jobs in flight when switching between texture cache sizes.
- Fixed crash from using SIMD optimized memcpy with a PBO pointer that is not 16-byte aligned.
- Fixed GPU transcode option always turning off when restarting the game.
- Fixed progression in Dead City where player could not advance through sliding door en route to the defibrillator upgrade.
- Fixed CPU feature detection.
- Fixed issues with launching MP by using double quotes around path name.
- Fixed lack of texture detail on parts of the screen at high resolutions due to limited feedback analysis buffer.
- Fixed thread stack space usage and freed up 700 MB of virtual address space.
- Re-enabled UBOs.
- Adjustments to default VDM values for balance.

dotarray writes "According to an Oklahoma politician, video games help cause many problems affecting the youth of today, but they can also help solve those same problems. Representative William Fourkiller, a Democrat, has proposed a 1% tax on every video game sold which has a Teen, Mature or Adults Only rating. He explains that half of the money would go towards helping to get kids playing outside, while the other half would be placed into a bullying prevention fund."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've been waiting on AMD's Financial Analyst Day for more information on how the company plans to approach new and current businesses moving forward. Ahead of the big event, AMD pre-briefed us on the news.

Winner of the 2011 Eurogamer Indie Arcade Award, Pineapple Smash Crew is Now Available on Steam and 10% off until Thursday February 9th 10AM PST.

Pineapple Smash Crew is a fast paced tactical blast-em-up that features tight squad formation shooting, aliens, robots, zombies and grenades- loads and loads of grenades! It's unique modern-retro flavour will take you back to the classics of old then smash you back into the present with a 'ka-boom!'