Why choose the Godot Game Engine over Unity or Unreal Engine
.
This is a very common question, so this guide and video is setting out to answer why *I* might choose to use Godot over those other engines. Keep in mind, this isn’t me saying Godot is better or worse than those engines. Additionally, I have a video on Unreal vs Unity in the works, so if you want to decide which of those engines to use, stay tuned for that.
Without further ado, let’s jump in.
Free
Obviously, the lack of a price tag is one of the most obvious features of Godot. Yes, you can start for free with both Unity and Unreal Engine, but both ultimately have a price tag. With Unity, you pay a per seat license fee if you make over 100K a year. With Unreal Engine you pay a fixed 5% royalty after the first $3000 dollars earned. If you’re not making money nor plan to, this obviously doesn’t matter… but the more successful your game is, the better a deal free is!
Open Source
On the topic of free, we also have free as in freedom. Godot is free in both regards, to price tag and license, being licensed under the MIT license. Unity trails in this regard having only select subsets of the code available. Unreal Engine has the source code available and you can completely build the engine from scratch, as well as being able to fix problems yourself by walking through a debug build and applying fixes.
UE4 however is under a more restrictive proprietary license, while Godot is under the incredibly flexible and permissive code license.
Another aspect in Godot’s favor… it’s also by far the smallest code base and very modular in design from a code perspective. This makes it among the easiest engines to contribute code to. The learning curve to understand the source code is a fraction of that to get started contributing to Unreal, while contributing to Unity is frankly impossible without a very expensive negotiated source license.
Language Flexibility
Over the years Unity have *REMOVED* language support. Once there was UnityScript and Boo, a python like language, in addition to C#. Now it’s pretty much just C# and their in development visual scripting language.
Unreal on the other hand has C++ support, with the C++ thanks to Live++ usable very much like a scripting language (although final build times are by far the worst of all 3 engines!), as well as the (IMHO) single best visual programming language available, Blueprints.
For Godot the options are much more robust. First off there is the Python-lite scripting language, GDScript. You can also use C++, although the workflow for gameplay programming may be suboptimal. Additionally, C# support is being added as a first-class language and there is a visual programming language available here as well, although I can’t really think of a reason to use it as it stands now.
Where Godot really shines though is its modularity. GDScript itself is implemented as a module, meaning making other custom scripting languages is a borderline trivial task, as is extending or customizing GDScript. Additionally, there is GDNative/NativeScript it makes it fairly simple to link to external code, without having to jump into the guts of Godot (nor having to compile Godot) or to write performance critical code in C or C++. Finally, you have the ability to create C++ “modules” that have access to all of the C++ classes available in Godot without having to make changes to the underlying codebase.
Ease of Use
This one is obviously subjective, but if you are looking to create a game, especially as a beginner, the learning curve and ease of use with GDScript make this the easiest of the 3 engines to pick up, at least in my opinion. Unreal Engine is frankly fairly appalling for 2D titles, having basically abandoned Paper2D (their 2D API) on the vine. Over the last couple years Unity have really been focusing heavier on dedicated 2D support, but you still must dig through a lot of cruft and overhead to get to the meat of your game.
With Godot you pretty much everything you need for 2D out of the box and the ability to work directly with pixel (or % based) coordinates.
It’s Tiny
Unreal and Unity are multi GB installs and both have a hub or launcher app. Godot… a 50ish MB zip file (plus templates for a couple hundred more MB needed when deploying). Download, unzip and start game development!
You Like it Better?
You may, or you may not like the coding model of Godot. Chances are if you like the Node based approach to game development, you will love Godot. All three game engines (and almost all modern game engines) take a composition-based approach to scene modeling. Godot takes it one step further, making everything nodes, trees of nodes, even scenes are simply nodes. The approach is different enough that users may either love or hate the approach. If you love the approach Godot takes, you will be productive in it. If you don’t like it, you’re probably better served using Unity or Unreal.
Why Not Pick Godot Then?
I am not even going to pretend that Godot is the perfect game engine and ideal in every situation… there are certainly areas where Unity and Unreal have a small to huge advantage. This could be its own entire video, but a quick list include:
Performance concerns, especially on large 3D scenes (hopefully resolved with proper culling and the upcoming Vulkan renderer). In 3D, both engines out perform Godot quite often
Platforms… Unity and Unreal support every single platform you can imagine, Godot supports most of the common consumer categories and takes longer to get support for devices like AR/VR. Hardware manufacturers work with Unity and Epic from the design stages, while Godot pretty much must wait for hardware to come to market and then for someone to implement it. Another huge difference, and one of the few downsides to open source software, it isn’t compatible with the closed proprietary licenses of console hardware. While Godot has been ported to run on console hardware, it isn’t supported out of the box and probably never will be.
Ecosystem. Godot has a vibrant community but can’t hold a candle to the ecosystem around Unreal and especially Unity. There are simply more users, more books, larger asset stores, etc.
The resume factor… this is a part of ecosystem continued. It’s easier to get a job with Unity experience or Unreal experience on the resume than Godot. While many people wouldn’t (and really for a full-time hire, shouldn’t) care what engine you use, when people are hunting for employees, they often look for Unity or UE experience specifically. The other side of this coin is the number of people with Unity or UE experience is larger if you are the one doing the hiring.
As with many open source projects, it’s still heavily dependent on one or two key developers. If the leads left the project, it would be a massive blow to the future of Godot. Meanwhile there are hundred or thousands of people being paid to develop Unity or Unreal and the departure of any individual member isn’t likely to have a tangible impact.
X-ray shows how the iPhone 11 Smart Battery Case camera button works
By Malcolm Owen Tuesday, November 26, 2019, 12:09 pm PT (03:09 pm ET)
Apple’s Smart Battery Case for the iPhone 11 has a slightly refined design to add the dedicated camera button, x-ray images of the case reveals, with the accessory including an extra circuit board to add extra hardware controls to the smartphone.
[via iFixit and Creative Electron]
Apple launched a new set of Smart Battery Cases for the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone 11 Pro Max on November 20, with the accessory updated with a larger camera cutout and a new camera button while maintaining the well-known battery hump design. Chiefly, the case is to protect the iPhone while also offering up to 50% more battery life, but this generation introduces the camera button for the first time.
A series of x-rays hosted by iFixit and performed by Creative Electron shows there are a few internal changes to the Smart Battery Case to accommodate the new button, both to position it and to connect it to the iPhone.
A small circuit board is embedded inside the case between the two battery cells and the Lightning port. The board is used as the conduit for connections of other components, including the induction charging coil and the batteries via wires, while a thin flexible circuit runs to the button.
The addition of a button is an interesting choice for Apple, as previously users had the ability to use the volume buttons to trigger the shutter instead of tapping the display. However, the orientation of the camera in relation to the volume button, which would be on the bottom edge if the iPhone is held in a typical landscape fashion, makes it harder to press, and can occasionally cause unwary users to press the power button by mistake.
Aside from being ideally located for taking a photo with the right index finger firing the shutter, the new button is also slightly recessed, minimizing the chance of it being pressed while in a pocket or bag.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 11-27-2019, 12:39 AM - Forum: Windows
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A year of bringing AI to the edge
This post is co-authored by Anny Dow, Product Marketing Manager, Azure Cognitive Services.
In an age where low-latency and data security can be the lifeblood of an organization, containers make it possible for enterprises to meet these needs when harnessing artificial intelligence (AI).
Since introducing Azure Cognitive Services in containers this time last year, businesses across industries have unlocked new productivity gains and insights. The combination of both the most comprehensive set of domain-specific AI services in the market and containers enables enterprises to apply AI to more scenarios with Azure than with any other major cloud provider. Organizations ranging from healthcare to financial services have transformed their processes and customer experiences as a result.
These are some of the highlights from the past year:
Employing anomaly detection for predictive maintenance
Airbus Defense and Space, one of the world’s largest aerospace and defense companies, has tested Azure Cognitive Services in containers for developing a proof of concept in predictive maintenance. The company runs Anomaly Detector for immediately spotting unusual behavior in voltage levels to mitigate unexpected downtime. By employing advanced anomaly detection in containers without further burdening the data scientist team, Airbus can scale this critical capability across the business globally.
“Innovation has always been a driving force at Airbus. Using Anomaly Detector, an Azure Cognitive Service, we can solve some aircraft predictive maintenance use cases more easily.” —Peter Weckesser, Digital Transformation Officer, Airbus
Automating data extraction for highly-regulated businesses
As enterprises grow, they begin to acquire thousands of hours of repetitive but critically important work every week. High-value domain specialists spend too much of their time on this. Today, innovative organizations use robotic process automation (RPA) to help manage, scale, and accelerate processes, and in doing so free people to create more value.
Automation Anywhere, a leader in robotic process automation, partners with these companies eager to streamline operations by applying AI. IQ Bot, their unique RPA software, automates data extraction from documents of various types. By deploying Cognitive Services in containers, Automation Anywhere can now handle documents on-premises and at the edge for highly regulated industries:
“Azure Cognitive Services in containers gives us the headroom to scale, both on-premises and in the cloud, especially for verticals such as insurance, finance, and health care where there are millions of documents to process.” —Prince Kohli, Chief Technology Officer for Products and Engineering, Automation Anywhere
For more about Automation Anywhere’s partnership with Microsoft to democratize AI for organizations, check out this blog post.
Delighting customers and employees with an intelligent virtual agent
Lowell, one of the largest credit management services in Europe, wants credit to work better for everybody. So, it works hard to make every consumer interaction as painless as possible with the AI. Partnering with Crayon, a global leader in cloud services and solutions, Lowell set out to solve the outdated processes that kept the company’s highly trained credit counselors too busy with routine inquiries and created friction in the customer experience. Lowell turned to Cognitive Services to create an AI-enabled virtual agent that now handles 40 percent of all inquiries—making it easier for service agents to deliver greater value to consumers and better outcomes for Lowell clients.
With GDPR requirements, chatbots weren’t an option for many businesses before containers became available. Now companies like Lowell can ensure the data handling meets stringent compliance standards while running Cognitive Services in containers. As Carl Udvang, Product Manager at Lowell explains:
“By taking advantage of container support in Cognitive Services, we built a bot that safeguards consumer information, analyzes it, and compares it to case studies about defaulted payments to find the solutions that work for each individual.”
One-to-one customer care at scale in data-sensitive environments has become easier to achieve.
Empowering disaster relief organizations on the ground
A few years ago, there was a major Ebola outbreak in Liberia. A team from USAID was sent to help mitigate the crisis. Their first task on the ground was to find and categorize the information such as the state of healthcare facilities, wifi networks, and population density centers. They tracked this information manually and had to extract insights based on a complex corpus of data to determine the best course of action.
With the rugged versions of Azure Stack Edge, teams responding to such crises can carry a device running Cognitive Services in their backpack. They can upload unstructured data like maps, images, pictures of documents and then extract content, translate, draw relationships among entities, and apply a search layer. With these cloud AI capabilities available offline, at their fingertips, response teams can find the information they need in a matter of moments. In Satya’s Ignite 2019 keynote, Dean Paron, Partner Director of Azure Storage and Edge, walks us through how Cognitive Services in Azure Stack Edge can be applied in such disaster relief scenarios (starting at 27:07):
Transforming customer support with call center analytics
Call centers are a critical customer touchpoint for many businesses, and being able to derive insights from customer calls is key to improving customer support. With Cognitive Services, businesses can transcribe calls with Speech to Text, analyze sentiment in real-time with Text Analytics, and develop a virtual agent to respond to questions with Text to Speech. However, in highly regulated industries, businesses are typically prohibited from running AI services in the cloud due to policies against uploading, processing, and storing any data in public cloud environments. This is especially true for financial institutions.
A leading bank in Europe addressed regulatory requirements and brought the latest transcription technology to their own on-premises environment by deploying Cognitive Services in containers. Through transcribing calls, customer service agents could not only get real-time feedback on customer sentiment and call effectiveness, but also batch process data to identify broad themes and unlock deeper insights on millions of hours of audio. Using containers also gave them flexibility to integrate with their own custom workflows and scale throughput at low latency.
What’s next?
These stories touch on just a handful of the organizations leading innovation by bringing AI to where data lives. As running AI anywhere becomes more mainstream, the opportunities for empowering people and organizations will only be limited by the imagination.
Power Stone-Style Brawler LastFight Is Out Now On Switch, We Think
Remember LastFight? We’ll forgive you if you don’t, but we covered it a while back when it was just a ‘maybe’ for a Nintendo release (it launched elsewhere in 2016).
Fast forward to the present day, and the game has – according to the publisher – just surprise-launched on the console; it wasn’t even mentioned as part of the North American or Europe download updates last week.
Based on the French comic series Lastman, Last Fight is a Power Stone-style arena brawler where the aim is to eliminate your rivals using either your fists or nearby objects.
The game apparently hit European retail stores on November 20th, and was released on the eShop two days later. However, we’ve checked both the NA and EU eShops and it’s nowhere to be seen – and, judging by the replies to the initial launch tweet, it would appear that other people are having the same problems. We’ve reached out to the publisher to find out what’s happening and will update this story if we hear back.
Have you managed to pick up a physical copy of the game? Is LastFight available in your region’s eShop? Let us know with a comment below.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 11-27-2019, 12:39 AM - Forum: Lounge
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Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare's First Free Content Season Dated And Detailed
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is preparing to launch its first round of post-launch content, and Infinity Ward promises it's "our most ambitious season of content ever." It will begin on December 3, and the studio has laid out a roadmap of what we can expect when it goes live.
The studio gave the date and teaser in a pair of tweets and a more detailed blog post. The content roadmap shows lots of new maps, along with modes, guns, and Spec Ops missions. The maps include Crash, Vacant, and Shipment in multiplayer, Cargo, Atrium, and unspecified additional maps in 2v2 Gunfight, and Port in Ground War mode.
Meanwhile, multiplayer will add three more modes: Reinforce, Gunfight OSP, and Infected. Spec Ops will get Bomb Squad, Grounded, Pitch Black, Just Reward, and more, and new guns include the Ram-7 and Holger-26. It will come to PC, Xbox One, and PS4 simultaneously, as there's no more PS4 timed exclusivity.
A new gun or two may be welcome, seeing as Infinity Ward has had to make multiple attempts at balancing one particular shotgun. This season kickoff will be the official state of Modern Warfare's battle pass, which it's utilizing for post-launch content without splintering the player base with map packs. That means all the maps and modes above will be available for everyone. You'll be able to earn anything with an impact on gameplay, such as weapons or attachments, while you can pay extra for cosmetic items.
If you don't yet have Modern Warfare but want to get in on it before the season drops, there are some good discounts available with Black Friday sales.
Crash (Multiplayer Map): The iconic Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare map has returned with all the flanking routes and action-packed rooftop encounters you remember.
Vacant (Multiplayer Map): An abandoned office, previously visited in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, leads to intense interior combat across the complex.
Shipment (Multiplayer and Gunfight Map): The classic Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare map where fast and frenetic action reigns supreme.
Port (Ground War Map): Battle across massive shipping crates, cranes, buildings and streets in this unique Ground War map experience.
Cargo (Gunfight Map): An open-roof storage vessel for shipping containers, on docks of London.
Atrium (Gunfight Map): The centerpiece of a Verdansk palace, still intact despite the conflict raging nearby.
Additional Maps: Look for additional multiplayer maps as Season 1 progresses.
Reinforce (Multiplayer Mode): A hybrid of Dom and S&D, a single-life mode with both teams competing for control of three flags.
On Site Procurement (O.S.P.) (Gunfight Mode): A tactically rich 2v2 mode with a twist: Begin with just your fists, and gather equipment as the match progresses.
Infected (Multiplayer Mode): It’s hunt or be hunted in this survival party game mode!
Additional Modes: Look for more modes as Season 1 continues.
Bomb Squad (Special Ops Experience): Forces still loyal to Barkov have planted explosives around the city of Al-Raab. You’re here to defuse the situation.
Grounded (Special Ops Experience): Enemies have seized Barkov’s former airbase. Engage and eliminate them.
Pitch Black (Special Ops Experience): Infiltrate Barkov’s former estate and recover all required intel before an exfill in a Tactical Rover.
Just Reward (Special Ops Experience): Your squad targets the head of an enemy financial operation, hacking his data centers, and gaining intel.
Additional Content: Look for more Special Ops content as Season 1 continues.
Modern Warfare Battle Pass
Ram-7 New Weapon: Introducing a new fully automatic bullpup Assault Rifle with integrated picatinny rails at 3, 6, and 9 o’clock.
Holger-26 New Weapon: LMG spec of the Holger model rifle, with integrated sight rail and drum magazine for additional ammunition-carrying capacity.
Unity have announced their Black Friday Sale for 2019… which is actually on Monday. On Monday December 2nd 400 assets are going to be on sale for 50% off. On each day leading up to Cyber Monday they have an individual asset on sale for 70% Off. The limited time deals are:
Keep in mind you only have the single day to pick up each asset for 70% off, although I would assume most assets will also be available as part of the 50% off sale on Monday. You can learn more about the sale and the assets involved in the video below. The above links contain an affiliate code giving GFS a small commission, so thanks a ton if you use them!
It’s that time of year again – the time of crazy deals, stupendous sales, and apparently something to do with Thanksgiving. As a Brit I don’t really understand that last part, but luckily the ‘cheap’ part of Black Friday has invaded the UK like a hostile virus, so we get to benefit from another sales event.
It makes Christmas shopping easier, that’s for sure.
Black Friday 2019 App Deals
We’re going to update this list as we go, but here are some of our favourite app sales currently running for Black Friday:
Remember, since Apple stopped their affiliate scheme (Google’s never had one) we don’t get any money for recommending these to you.
Black Friday 2019 Hardware
It’s not something we really look at here on PT, but Hardware’s just as important to mobile gamers as consoles and PC parts are to our brethren in the rest of the gaming industry – we often have to pay a lot more! As an experiment this year, I’m going to list any hardware deals (probably tablets) I spot that seem good, or at least note-worthy.
I’ll probably end up sending you to Amazon a lot, since we’re affiliated and get some money if you buy.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 11-26-2019, 02:35 PM - Forum: Windows
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Rethinking cyber learning? Consider gamification
As promised, I’m back with a follow-up to my recent post, Rethinking how we learn security, on how we need modernize the learning experience for cybersecurity professionals by gamifying training to make learning fun. Some of you may have attended the recent Microsoft Ignite events in Orlando and Paris. I missed the conferences (ironically, due to attending a cybersecurity certification boot camp) but heard great things about the Microsoft/Circadence joint Into the Breach capture the flag exercise.
If you missed Ignite, we’re planning several additional Microsoft Ignite The Tour events around the world, where you’ll be able to try your hand at this capture the flag experience. Look for me at the Washington, DC event in early February.
In the meantime, due to the great feedback I received from my previous blog—which I do really appreciate, especially if you have ideas for how we should tackle the shortage of cyber professionals—I’ll be digging deeper into the mechanics of learning to understand what it really takes to learn cyber in today’s evolving landscape.
Today, I want to address the important questions of how a new employee could actually ramp up their learning, and how employers can prepare employees for success and track the efficacy of the learning curriculum. Once again, I’m pleased to share this post with Keenan Skelly, chief evangelist at Boulder, Colorado-based Circadence.
Here are some of some of her recommendations from our Q&A:
Q: Keenan, in our last blog, you discussed Circadence’s “Project Ares” cyber learning platform. How do new cyber practitioners get started on Project Ares?
A: The way that Project Ares is set up allows for a user to acquire a variety of different skill levels when launched. It’s important to understand what kind of work roles you’re looking to learn about as a user as well as what kinds of tools you’re looking to understand better before you get started on Project Ares. For example, if I were to take some of my Girls Who Code or Cyber Patriot students and put them into the platform, I would probably have them start in the Battle School. This is where they’re going to learn about basic cybersecurity fundamentals such as ports and protocols, regular expressions, and the cyber kill chain. Then they can transition into Battle Rooms, where they’ll start to learn about very specific tools, tactics, and procedures or TTPs, for a variety of different work roles. If you’re a much more skilled cyber ninja, however, you can probably go ahead and get right into Missions, but we do recommend that everyone who comes into Project Ares does some work in the Battle Rooms first, specifically if they are trying to learn a tool or a skill for their work role.
Project Ares also has a couple of different routes that an expert or an enterprising cybersecurity professional can come into that’s really focused more on their role. For example, we have an assessments area based entirely on the work role. This aligns to the NIST framework and the NICE cybersecurity work roles. For example, if you’re a network defender, you can come into that assessment pathway and have steps laid out before you to identify your skill level in that role as you see below:
Assessment pathway.
Q: What areas within Project Ares do you recommend for enterprise cyber professionals to train against role-based job functions and prepare for cyber certifications?
A: You might start with something simple like understanding very basic things about your work role through a questionnaire in the Battle School arena as seen in the illustrations below. You may then move into a couple of Battle Rooms that tease out very detailed skills in tools that you would be using for that role. And then eventually you’ll get to go into a mission by yourself, and potentially a mission with your entire team to really certify that you are capable in that work role. All this practice helps prepare professionals to take official cyber certifications and exams.
Battle School questionnaire.
Battle School mission.
Q: Describe some of the gamification elements in Project Ares and share how it enhances cyber learning.
A: One of the best things about Project Ares is gamification. Everyone loves to play games, whether it’s on your phone playing Angry Birds, or on your computer or gaming console. So we really tried to put a lot of gaming elements inside Project Ares. Since everything is scored within Project Ares, everything you do from learning about ports and protocols, to battle rooms and missions, gives you experience points. Experience points add up to skill badges. All these things make learning more fun for the user. For example, if you’re a defender, you might have skill badges in infrastructure, network design, network defense, etc. And the way Project Ares is set up, once you have a certain combination of those skill badges you can earn a work role achievement certificate within Project Ares.
This kind of thing is taken very much from Call of Duty and other types of games where you can really build up your skills by doing a very specific skill-based activity and earn points towards badges. One of the other things that is great about Project Ares is it’s quite immersive. For example, Missions allows a user to come into a specific cyber situation or cyber response situation (e.g., water treatment plant cyberattack) and have multimedia effects that demonstrate what is going—very much reflective of that cool guy video look. Being able to talk through challenges in the exercises with our in-game advisor, Athena, adds another element to the learning experience as shown in the illustration below.
Athena was inspired by the trends of personal assistants like Cortana and other such AI-bots, which have been integrated into games. So things like chat bots, narrative storylines, and skill badges are super important for really immersing the individual in the process. It’s so much more fun, and easier to learn things in this way, as opposed to sitting through a static presentation or watching someone on a video and trying to learn the skill passively.
Athena—the in-game advisor.
Q: What kinds of insights and reporting capability can Project Ares deliver to cyber team supervisors and C-Suite leaders to help them assessing cyber readiness?
A: Project Ares offers a couple great features that are good for managers, all the way up to the C-Suite, who are trying to understand how their cybersecurity team is doing. The first one is called Project Ares Trainer View. This is where a supervisor or manager can jump into the Project Ares environment, with the students or with the enterprise team members, and observe in a couple of different ways.
The instructor or the manager can jump into the environment as Athena, so the user doesn’t know that they are there. They can then provide additional insight or help that is needed to a student. A supervisor or leader can also jump in as the opponent, which gives them the ability to see someone who is just breezing by everything and maybe make it a little more challenging. Or they can just observe and leave comments for the individuals. This piece is really helpful when we’re talking about managers who are looking to understand their team’s skill level in much more detail.
The other piece of this is a product we have coming out soon called Dendrite—an analytics tool that looks at everything that happens at Project Ares. We record all the key strokes and chats a user had with Athena or any with other team members while in a mission or battle room. Cyber team leads can then see what’s going on. Users can see what they’re doing well, and not doing well. This feedback can be provided up to the manager level, the senior manager level, and even to the C-Suite level to demonstrate exactly where that individual is in their particular skill path. It helps the cyber team leads understand what tools are being used appropriately and which tools are not being used appropriately.
For example, if you’re a financial institution and you paid quite a bit of money for Tanium, but upon viewing tool use in Dendrite, you find that no one is using it. It might prompt you to rethink your strategy on how to use tools in your organization or look at how you train your folks to use those tools. These types of insights are absolutely critical if you want to understand the best way to grow the individual in cybersecurity and make sure they’re really on top of their game.
The Dendrite assessment and analysis solution.
Q: How can non-technical employees improve their cyber readiness?
A: At Circadence, we don’t just provide learning capabilities for advanced cyber warriors. For mid-range people just coming into the technical side of cybersecurity, we have an entire learning path that starts with a product called inCyt. Now, inCyt is a very fun browser-based game of strategy where players have some hackable devices they must protect—like operating systems and phones. Meanwhile, your opponent has the same objective: protect their devices from attacks. Players continually hack each other by gathering intel on their opponent and then launching different cyberattacks. While they’re doing this, players get a fundamental understanding of the cyber kill chain. They learn things like what reconnaissance means to a hacker, what weaponizing means to a hacker, what deploying that weapon means to a hacker, so they can start to recognize that behavior in their everyday interactions online.
Some people ask why this is important and I always say, “I used to be a bomb technician, and there is no possible way I could defuse an IED or nuclear weapon without understanding how those things are put together.” It’s the same kind of concept.
It’s impossible to assume that someone is going to learn cyber awareness by answering some questions or watching a five-minute phishing tutorial after they have already clicked a link in a suspicious email. Those are very reactive ways of learning cyber. inCyt is very proactive. And we want to teach you in-depth understanding of what to look for, not just for phishing but for all the attacks we’re susceptible to. inCyt is also being used by some of our customers as a preliminary gate track for those who are interested in cybersecurity. So if you demonstrate a very high aptitude within inCyt, we would send you over to our CyberBridge portal where you can start learning some of the basics of cybersecurity to see if it might be the right field for you. Within our CyberBridge access management portal, you can then go into Project Ares Academy, which is just a lighter version of Project Ares.
Professional and Enterprise licenses in Project Ares pave more intricate learning pathways for people to advance in learning, from novice to expert cyber defender. You’ll be able to track all metrics of where you started, how far you came, what kind of skill path you’re on, and what kind of skill path you want to be on. Very crucial items for your own work role pathway.
How to close the cybersecurity talent gap
Keenan’s perspective and the solution offered by Project Ares really helps to understand how to train security professionals and give them the hands-on experience they require and want. We’re in interesting times, right? With innovations in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), we’re increasingly able to pivot from reactive cyber defense to get more predictive. Still, right now we’re facing a cybersecurity talent gap of up to 4 million people, depending on which analyst group you follow. The only way that we’re going to get folks interested in cybersecurity is to make it exactly what we have been talking about: a career-long opportunity to learn.
Make it something that they can attain, they can grow in, and see themselves going from a novice to a leader in an organization. This is tough right now because there are relatively few cybersecurity operators compared to demand, and the operators on the front lines are subject to burnout. With uncertain and undefined career paths beyond tactical SecOps, what is there to look forward to?
We need to get better as a community in cybersecurity, not only protect the cybersecurity defenders that we have already, but also help to bring in new cybersecurity defenders and offenders who are really going to push the boundaries of where we’re at today. This is where we have an excellent and transformational opportunity to introduce more immersive and gamified learning to improve the learning experience and put our people in a position to succeed.
Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters and follow us at @MSFTSecurity for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.
Welcoming our new Fedora Community Action and Impact Coordinator
Good news, everybody! I’m pleased to announce that we have completed our search for a new Fedora Community Action and Impact Coordinator, and she’ll be joining the Open Source Program Office (OSPO) team to work with Fedora as of today. Please give a warm welcome to Marie Nordin.
If you’ve been involved in Fedora, you may have already been working with Marie. She’s a member of the Fedora Design and Badges teams. Her latest contribution to the Design Team is the wallpaper for F31, a collaboration with Máirín Duffy. Marie has made considerable contributions to the Badges project. She has designed over 150 badge designs, created documentation and a style guide, and mentored new design contributors for years. Most recently she has been spear-heading a bunch of work related to bringing badges up to date on both the development and UI/UX of the web app.
Marie is new to Red Hat, joining us after 5 years of involvement with the Fedora community. She was first introduced to Fedora through an Outreachy internship in 2013 working on Fedora Badges. Marie’s most current full time position was in the distribution industry as a purchasing agent, bid coordinator, and manager. She also has a strong background in design outside of her efforts for Fedora, working as a freelance graphic designer for the past 8 years.
I believe that Marie’s varied background in business and administration, her experience with design, and her long term involvement with and passion for Fedora makes her an excellent fit for this position. I’m excited to work with her as both a colleague on her team at Red Hat and as a Fedora contributor.
Feel free to reach out with congratulations, but give her a bit to get fully engaged with Fedora duties.
Just Shapes & Beats Digs Up Exclusive Shovel Knight Remixes For Free DLC
The chaotic rhythm-based gameplay of Just Shapes & Beats is about to get a whole lot “Shovelier” with the launch of some new and exclusive Shovel Knight tracks headed our way on 4th December.
Developer Berzerk Studio has teamed up with Yacht Club Games to release Just Shapes & Beats’ second free batch of DLC, known as ‘Mixtapes’, and features four exclusive remixes of beloved tracks from the games. Plague Knight, Specter Knight, King Knight and, of course, Shovel Knight will all get in on the musical bullet-hell action.
Here’s the lowdown (you can get a sneaky listen in the new trailer above):
– Danimal Cannon – Strike the Earth! (remix) – Rainbowdragoneyes – Flowers of Antimony (remix) – Kubbi – In the Halls of the Usurper (remix) – Shirobon – La Danse Macabre (remix) <— BRAND NEW BOSS
These new tracks can be played in the game’s Challenge mode and can be unlocked using Beat Points or with each character’s respective amiibo figure. As it happens, full amiibo support is also on the way, with any other figure of your choosing granting you 100 Beat Points per day (up to five times) when you scan it.
You don’t need to ask us twice when it comes to more Shovel Knight music. Just Shapes & Beats is available from the eShop for £15.09.
