Britain’s National Centre for Gaming Disorders has treated 67 people over the age of 40 since opening in 2019. The oldest patient was a 72-year-old woman with a smartphone gaming obsession. Britons over 65 spent more than three hours a day online on smartphones, computers and tablets last year, according to Ofcom. They spent more than five and a half hours watching broadcast television. Over-65s are more likely than under-25s to own tablets, smart televisions, e-readers, and desktop and laptop computers, a seven-country survey by GWI found. Nearly a fifth of 55- to 64-year-olds own a games console.

Ipsit Vahia, who heads the Technology and Ageing Laboratory at McLean Hospital, part of Harvard Medical School, said some older adults are increasingly living their lives through their phones the way teenagers or adolescents sometimes do. A 2022 study in South Korea estimated that 15% of those aged 60-69 were at risk of phone addiction. A meta-analysis published in April of studies on more than 400,000 older adults found that over-50s who regularly used digital devices had lower rates of cognitive decline than those who did not.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We’ve seen a whole bunch of Vampire Survivors clones arrive over the last few years in the wake of the roguelite’s success. Poncle has released crossover DLC based on the likes of Castlevania and Balatro for its game as well. Now, the studio behind Vampire Survivors and Warhammer parent Games Workshop have given the green light for an officially licensed game that smushes the two together.

Warhammer Survivors has a formula that is very similar to Vampire Survivors. Developer Auroch Digital even used Poncle’s engine to make it. Warhammer Survivors is a run-based game in which the aim is to take down hordes of enemies using an array of weapons and powerups that you can combine and evolve into more powerful tools. You’ll unlock more characters and items as you play and there are lots of secrets to discover.

The characters, weapons, powerups, bad guys and level settings are all derived from Warhammer. You’ll be able to play as characters from both the 40K and Age of Sigmar universes, such as Malum Caedo, who appeared in Auroch’s first-person shooter Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun. Weapons and items such as the Boltgun, Astartes Chainsword, Whirlwind Axes and Citadel Nuln Oil paint will be at your disposal too.

There are some neat little touches in the trailer. The gems that you collect to gain experience and level up are pill-shaped in Vampire Survivors. But here, they’re shaped like skulls.

Auroch has worked on Warhammer projects (including typing game Boltgun — Words of Vengeance) for over a decade. It plans to reveal a whole lot more about its latest endeavor in the coming months. Warhammer Survivors is set to land on Steam sometime in 2026.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/vampire-survivors-and-warhammer-join-forces-in-a-new-roguelite-game-161352281.html?src=rss

An anonymous reader shares a report: Before the potential of the internet was appreciated around the world, nations that understood its importance managed to scoop outsized allocations of IPv4 addresses, actions that today mean many users in the rest of the world are more likely to find their connections throttled or blocked.

So says Cloudflare, which last week published research that recalls how once the world started to run out of IPv4 addresses, engineers devised network address translation (NAT) so that multiple devices can share a single IPv4 address. NAT can handle tens of thousands of devices, but carriers typically operate many more. Internetworking wonks therefore developed Carrier-Grade NAT (CGNAT), which can handle over 100 devices per IPv4 address and scale to serve millions of users.

That’s useful for carriers everywhere, but especially valuable for carriers in those countries that missed out on big allocations of IPv4 because their small pool of available number resources means they must employ CGNAT to handle more users and devices. Cloudflare’s research suggests carriers in Africa and Asia use CGNAT more than those on other continents.

Cloudflare worried that could be bad for individual netizens. “CGNATs also create significant operational fallout stemming from the fact that hundreds or even thousands of clients can appear to originate from a single IP address,” wrote Cloudflare researchers Vasilis Giotsas and Marwan Fayed. “This means an IP-based security system may inadvertently block or throttle large groups of users as a result of a single user behind the CGNAT engaging in malicious activity. Blocking the shared IP therefore penalizes many innocent users along with the abuser.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you’ve joined a private Facebook group—counting on your membership and posts to be visible only to those approved to join—and receive a notification that said group is about to go public, you don’t need to panic. While Meta is now allowing admins of previously private Facebook groups to change the status to public, it is also assuring users that past activity will remain private.

Private Facebook groups can be made public

According to Meta’s post announcing the update, the option to transition from private to public allows small groups to grow into larger communities that are more easily found, with content visible to anyone (even people who aren’t on Facebook). Any admin can set their group privacy settings to public, which will trigger a three-day review period in which all admins have the opportunity to decline the conversion. If no one cancels the request, the group will go public.

Groups can revert back to private at any time, at which point new members will again require admin approval. (These members will be able to see all content from before the conversion.)

Your private posts are still protected

When a private group goes public, all existing posts, comments, and reactions will remain visible only to members, admins, and moderators who were already in the group but be hidden to new members and the general public. Member lists will also be hidden to everyone except admins and moderators. Any content added after the conversion will be visible to anyone.

If a group you’re in is converted from private to public, you’ll get a notification about the change. You’ll also see a notification the first time you post or comment in the newly public group reminding you that your activity is now visible. When you go to post, look for the globe icon, which indicates that your content is public.

AWS today announced Fastnet, a subsea fiber-optic cable that will link Maryland’s Eastern Shore to County Cork, Ireland. The project marks Amazon’s first wholly-owned subsea cable system after previously participating in similar ventures through consortiums.

The cable will carry data at speeds exceeding 320 terabits per second. Amazon did not disclose construction costs but expects the system to begin operations in 2028. The company is burying the cable roughly one and a half meters deep across the ocean floor. Installers will bore a horizontal tunnel from shore to shore. Amazon has added protective steel wiring to guard against ship anchors and deliberate sabotage.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While there are lots of great Black Friday sales on cheaper devices, it’s the big ticket items that really make a world of difference. Take Apple’s 2024 Mac mini M4, which has dropped to $499 from $599 as part of early Black Friday deals. The 17 percent discount brings Apple’s mini desktop computer with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD to only $30 more than its all-time low. 

We gave the Mac mini M4 a 90 in our review, in part, because it packs an incredible amount of power into such a small design. It also has front facing USB-C and headphone ports, a first for the Mac mini lineup. Plus, it starts with 16GB of RAM, an upgrade from its predecessors. 

However, if you want more memory or storage, the other Mac Mini M4 models are also on sale. You can get 16GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD for $690, down from $799. Then there’s the option for 24GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD at $890, down from $999. Plus, if you want to bundle in three years of AppleCare+, each model ends up being about $100 cheaper than normal.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/apples-mac-mini-m4-is-100-off-ahead-of-black-friday-150749148.html?src=rss