Monthly Archives: May 2017

With the release of the two new Dark Star skins, Riot has also given us a new rotating game mode! Its a Thresh-only game mode, so you know youre in for a treat.

Your goal is to pull and flay your friends TO THEIR DEATHS. The map is small with a huge Dark Star in the center and you want to shove your enemies in there to kill them.

The game is 3v3 and played in a best of three rounds - whatever team gets 100 points first wins that round. You accumulate points by pulling little Scuttles into the Dark Star for one point or enemy Threshes for five points.

Threshs skills have also been changed quite a bit to accommodate the game mode. His Q, Death Sentence, now has a range that nearly lets him pull from across the map - and if his Q goes through the Dark Star center, itll ignite the hook and deal more damage. Dark Passage, W, works a little bit different as well. His lantern will now automatically save teammates - they dont need to click the lantern! His E, Flay, flings enemies farther based on missing health and the passive charges faster and hurts more. R, The Box, doesnt exist on this map. 🙁

Enemies are not killed by auto attacks or abilities - you have to fling them into the Dark Star. Enemies can still be damaged and this influences Threshs Flay! Flinging an enemy into the Dark Star results in an instant-kill.

This is one of the weirdest game modes that Riot has ever released. Even if you are very comfortable with Thresh, this new iteration will not feel that familiar to you.

Here are some quick tips to get you started:

One of the keys here is to throw your hook through the core in an attempt to hit your enemies on the other side. The area is small and the cooldown is short, so if you throw your hook there is a good chance that you will hit someone on the other side. Death Sentence is a truly apt name here, as most hooks through the core will pull the enemy to their DOOM.

Where your thresh mechanics will really come into play is with Flay. Flay is one of the weirder abilities in the game, forcing you to be very specific with how you cast it. You need to keep a constant eye on where Thresh is at the time, and the direction that he is facing. Holding space to center your camera can help with this. If you want to flay someone towards you, position your mouse behind Threshs back and click. If you want to flay someone away, position the mouse in front.

Flay is your most useful ability in Dark Star. This will be your main tool for flinging your enemy into the core as well as Scuttle Crabs. It can be easy to mis-position yourself in hopes of making a flashy play into the core, so uh, be mindful of where you stand. It is best here to stay simple. Stay away from the core when possible and flay people towards it. Flaying Scuttle Crabs is good for points, but most of the time, it should probably be considered a waste of a cooldown.

Finally, use Dark Passage to save your allies when you can. If you position it between where a friend is flying and the core, they will be saved automatically. This will not only save you points, it will make you look bad ass as well.

And as MadLife has taught us, looking cool on Thresh is the only thing that matters anyway.

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How to be the best Thresh in the new Dark Star: Singularity game mode - The Rift Herald

Piloting your drone aircraft through an intricate, Star Wars-like obstacle course or ramming an enemy to the ground in a dogfightsounds slightly like science fiction, doesnt it? Its not. In fact, both sports already exist.

They are part of the rapidly expanding ecosystem of drone sports, which looks set to follow the growth trajectory of the hugely popular world of live video gaming known as eSports.

Something that owes a lot to the speed of technological development and a punk-meets-maker-movement attitude. Its a melding that has already led to experiments with paintball gun dogfightsand in one case, a flying flamethrower.

You have probably already heard about drone racing, which illustrates how quickly drone sports have taken off.

Drone Racing League (DRL) is a good example. DRL organizes drone races across the globe and films them using a mix of camera drones, stationary cameras and first-person-view (FPV) video. Since its launch in 20152016, its races have been viewed on YouTube, Twitch and Facebook over 43 million times. DRL events have also been on TV, and the organization expects the coming season to be viewable on TV screens in up to 75 countries.

Part of the fascination is seeing drones whiz around at 80 miles an hour, Nicholas Horbaczewski, CEO and founder of Drone Racing League, says.

Spectators at live events also have the opportunity to see exactly what the pilots are seeing.

Each drone is equipped with a camera that streams images in real time to first person view (FPV) goggles worn by the pilots. The pilot literally feels like he or she is sitting on the nose of the drone, as it flies around courses in venues like outdoor stadiums, factory buildings or tents.

Drone racing essentially means that a pilot can shift their consciousness into the aircraft, flying through tiny gaps without any fear of physical danger, Chris Ballard, director of communication at Freedom Class drones, explains.

Anyone wearing FPV goggles can share the pilots experience, something that has often been compared to Star Wars or a computer game.

DRL is just one of the drone racing organizers around today.

Freedom Class is an Australian group that is taking drone racing in a slightly different direction.

If Websters dictionary needs a definition for big-ass racing drone, they could use a picture of the 1.2 meter Freedom Class V1.0, capable of speeds up to 160 kilometers an hour. The size solves one of the challenges of live drone racesthe fact that following the action and finding out who is actually in the lead can be difficult when the competing craft are roughly the size of a shoebox.

Then theres DR1 Racing, whose races air on TV channels like Eurosport and Discovery Channel, and MultiGP, which is likely the biggest drone racing organizer based on number of registered pilots (16,195) and chapters (1,041) around the world.

Finding analyses of the market potential of theseand many otherorganizers, not to mention drone sports generally, is difficult. However, if the broad market for drones is anything to go by, the outlook is promising. A 2016 report from PricewaterhouseCoopers forecast that the world drone market will be worth nearly $127 billion by 2020.

The price of drones and other technology is also falling rapidly. A racing drone, FPV goggles and controller would likely cost you $500 to $800 today. However, entry-level equipment packages are available for around $200$300. Some industry insiders expect that to fall to around $100 within a couple of years. Many organizers actively encourage entry-level drones as a starting point because part of the learning process of drone racing invariably involves crashingat speed.

The final indicator comes from drone sports closest cousin, eSports. Both are children of the 21st century, taking advantage of falling prices of technology. Both also excel at using new media channels like YouTube, Twitch, Twitter and Facebook to reach and engage with their audiences.

Newzoo, an eSports analysis company, has projected the growth of both global audience and revenue in eSports, and given the similarities to drone sports, it may provide a useful benchmark for growth potential.

Source: Newzoo

Drone racing is far from the only kind of drone sport. One other example traces its roots to the area around San Francisco.

In the beginning, back around 20112012, it was a bunch of geeky maker-friends who met up on Friday nights in someones garage to fly drones and smash them in battles, Marque Cornblatt explains.

The concept grew, and some drone pilots quickly started adding things like net-launchers, bottle rockets and paintball guns to the drones. One ambitious maker even attached a mini-flamethrower. From five to six people meeting up in a garage, the events quickly grew to 150200 people.

Cornblatt and his compatriots decided to form the Aerial Sports League (ASL), which today hosts a range of different drone sports events, including one that is perhaps best likened to a UFC of drone combat with added pit crews. Drone pilots attempt to destroy or force opponents drones to the ground. If a drone is downed, its crew has a limited time to get it back in the air. The loser is the drone thats literally unable to fly anymore.

ASL has strong ties with the maker movement. Its installation and competitions have proven to be the single most popular exhibition at several recent Maker Faires across the US, with over 250,000 spectators in 2016.

The potential for further inventions and iterations of drone sports is part of what gets Marque Cornblatt most excited about where drone sports are today.

Adding laser tag and paintball markers to drones would make actual dogfights a possibility. Our drone battles could expand into multiplayer king-of-the-hill kind of events, he says.

The same goes for the technologies used to make and fly drones. Cornblatt explains he is currently working on a system that lets you fly the drone using things like eye movement and head-tracking.

Much of the innovation is ground-up, coming from the grass roots of the fledgling sport, where manyif not allpilots and drone league organizers have learned how to repair and upgrade drones out of sheer necessity.

The technologies are evolving at an incredible rate, with new products and features seemingly coming out on a monthly basis. This is being driven by the DIY aspect of the drone community, Dave Heavyside, creative director at Freedom Class Drones, says.

One example is the Tiny Whoop phenomenon. Team Big Whoop pilot Jesse Perkins decided to modify a standard Blade Inductrix microdrone by adding a micro-FPV camera and upgrading the motors and battery from different suppliers. The recipe proved so successful that people started ordering the upgrades from Jesses website. Today, the term Tiny Whoop is more or less synonymous with micro / indoor FPV drones.

This link to the maker/hacker movement will stand drone sports in good stead, as they still face technical challenges, including how to improve the quality of FPV-view and broadcast it beyond the physical location. Once that happens, you should be able to follow a drone race with FPV goggles at home in your living room. AR/VR technology is another area that drone sports have yet to fully integrate and exploit.

Drone sports could soon be getting help with these issues from the next generation of STEM-interested innovators, who are learning through drones.

We get emails from high school teachers about how drones are helping them reach the students and from high school students saying thanks for getting them interested in science. Once kids / students get to work figuring out how drones work and how you can improve them, they dont even realize that theyre learning things like mechanical engineering, electronics and aerodynamics, Nicholas Horbaczewski says.

Banner Image Credit: DRL

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Why the Fast-Paced World of Drone Sports Is Getting So Popular - Singularity Hub

Our current education system is not fit for purpose. Student mental health is at an all-time low, and student debt is at an all-time high. Dominated by uninspiring curricula and an over-emphasis on short-term knowledge and outdated skills, the entire industry is ripe for disruption.

Better education contributes to better citizens and, ultimately, a better society. As Nelson Mandela said, Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world. We need to equip young minds with the skills to create a more exciting future, both for themselves and for the species at large. Above all, we need to make learning more inspiring, relevant and fulfilling.

Several technology-driven trends are disrupting education systems around the world. Together, these trends are offering innovative solutions for a flawed system and contributing to more impactful learning experiences.

The internet has exponentially increased our access to information. We are seeing the rise of massive open online courses, also known as MOOCs. Last year, there were 58 million students enrolled in MOOCs with 700 universities across thousands of courses. Many of these courses, including those offered by prestigious universities, are available for free or even with official institutional accreditation.

Though not yet perfect, these courses are becoming more interactive and project-based. They break the physical limitations of the traditional classroom and allow an educator to reach millions of students from around the world at a minimal cost. Individuals from developing countries can now access and enroll in courses offered by the most prestigious universities in the world.

Even in traditional classrooms, this access to online information has transformed the learning experience. Todays innovative teaching methods involve blended learning, which includes a mix of classroom learning and online learning. For instance, students will watch online instructional videos at home while classroom time is focused on problem-solving and collaborative activities. This also gives students control over the time, pace, and place of their learning.

Peter Diamandis notes that over the next few years, three to five billion people will gain access to the internet for the very first time. Coupled with a rising number of internet-enabled mobile phones, this trend will further propel digital learning. Even more, it will enable global collaboration between learners.

According to a New Horizons report on education, we are seeing an increasing focus on global online collaboration, where digital tools are used to support interactions around curricular objectives and promote intercultural understanding.

As the rising billions arrive on the web, they bring with them their voices and ideas. As they participate in online learning networks, they contribute to the global empathy of our species. For instance, startup Belouga is connecting classrooms across the planet through video conferencing and online chatting. By offering a direct pathway for students to connect globally, social learning networks like this will teach them culture, teamwork and empathy. Educators too will be able to develop collaborations and share resources with one another.

According to a 2016 report by the World Economic Forum, 65 percent of children just now beginning school will find themselves working jobs as adults that don't exist today. And according to McKinsey, technology could automate 45 percent of the tasks people are currently paid to do. Jobs requiring higher-order skills, such as creativity, emotional intelligence and analytical thinking are more difficult to automate and are most likely to stick around longer.Educational systems have simply not kept pace with the changing nature of the workforce and need for 21st-century skills. So how do we prepare our students for the future?

Educational systems have simply not kept pace with the changing nature of the workforce and need for 21st-century skills. So how do we prepare our students for the future? According to teachers at Connections Academy, educators need to focus on three core 21st-century skills: complex problem solving, critical thinking and collaboration.

Even more, the evolving workforce and continuous emergence of novel industries meanswe need to inspire students to become lifelong learners. Learning can no longer be something you only do when you are enrolled in a school for a specific period of time. Instead, it should be an ongoing process of self-development and exploration of new ideas and skills.

Show, not tell has always been a fundamental principle in effective teaching. Virtual and augmented reality are revolutionizing the learning experience. They allow students to take journeys into ancient history, travel across the universe and visit museums in different countries, all without leaving the classroom.

For instance, the Google Expeditions Pioneer Program will allow teachers to take their students on a journey anywhere in the world. Whether its exploring coral reefs or the surface of Mars in an afternoon, teachers can take students on immersive, virtual field trips.

One the biggest feats of such technologies is that they make the learning experience more engaging, awe-inspiring and transformative. These immersive experiences have the potential to contribute to faster learning, better retention, and improved decision-making.

Big data offers the opportunity to both evaluate educational programs and provide more valuable learning experiences for students. It can aid researchers in identifying what teaching methods work best both for the masses and for individual students.

Data can be used to improve student results, assess each students strengths and weaknesses and create mass-customized programs. Algorithms can analyze student data and consequently make flexible programs that adapt to the learner based on real-time feedback.

One day, they may even aid or replace educators. One Georgia Tech professor used a virtual teaching assistant to chat with students, and some students didnt even notice the difference.

At the moment, most online courses are still mass-made, but in the future they can be mass-customized. After all, every student is unique in personality, learning style and life path. The education they receive should reflect their individual needs.

In a world of accelerating change, disrupt or be disrupted is the way to stay relevant. We are seeing a surge of education and technology companies that are offering innovative solutions at minimal costs. The traditional educational bodies will have no choice but to adapt and integrate these technologies or fall behind as emerging organizations offer better services.

Ultimately, our education system is a direct reflection of our values as a civilization. What and how we teach future generations will have a powerful impact on the kind of world we live in.

As American educational reformer John Dewey said, If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow."

Image Credit: Shutterstock

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These 5 Big Tech Trends Are Changing the Way We Learn - Singularity Hub