SNK has confirmed that its Samurai Shodown reboot will be coming to Nintendo Switch in Q4 2019, slightly after the release of the PS4 and Xbox One versions.

Powered by Epic’s Unreal Engine 4, the title is set in-between the events of the original Samurai Shodown and its fifth mainline entry. 16 fighters will make the cut, with 13 of those being returning characters and three being brand new. More fighters are expected to be added via DLC.

The game will be at PAX East 2019, which runs at the end of this month. SNK will be hosting a panel at the event entitled ‘Samurai Shodown: Resurrecting a Legend’, which will feature producer Yasuyuki Oda, director Nobuyuki Kuroki, and original Samurai Shodown director Yasushi Adachi.

Here’s some PR:

About

After more than a decade, Samurai Shodown is back! SNK is rebooting one of its most successful series, carrying on the legacy of past titles with a new game that retains the same thrilling battles of past titles in a graphically advanced package. Samurai Shodown’s gameplay is driven by the tense atmosphere of being one strike away from death, and the exhilaration of defeating an opponent with overwhelming power and attacks. Taking place between the events of the original game and Samurai Shodown V, the new game carries on the legacy of the one true weapon-based fighter.

Key Features

+ Exhilarating Weapons-Based Combat – Samurai Shodown carries on the legacy of the tense battles the series is known for, where players are always one strike away from death, and one powerful attack away from victory.
+ Evolving the Presentation – Using the power of Unreal Engine 4, SNK is able to modernize the unique atmosphere and setting of past titles in a gorgeously artistic package that achieves a detail and graphical quality like never before.
+ Unique Cast of Returning and New Warriors – Samurai Shodown welcomes back iconic characters from past iterations, including the swordsman Haohmaru, his rivals Ukyo and Genjuro, the shrine maiden Nakoruru, and fan-favorite Galford. The starting roster will include a total of 16 characters—13 veterans and three newcomers to the franchise.
+ All New Gameplay – Carrying on some of the key fighting mechanics that made the series popular, such as the Rage Gauge, Rage Explosion, Sword Clash and more, Samurai Shodown will also include several new techniques, including a powerful, one-time use attack from each character called the Super Special Move.
+ Revolutionary New AI System – Titled Dojo Mode, SNK has developed a proprietary AI system that learns from player patterns and creates a specific Ghost clone from that data. With this system, players can fight against their own Ghost or take on the Ghosts of top players in mock battles

There’s been a lot of talk about unionization in the game industry, so today at GDC some union workers took the stage in front of an audience of game makers to share what they’d learned about effectively organizing labor.

During the hour-long session panel members Emma Kinema (Game Workers Unite International), Kevin Gregory Agwaze (Game Workers Unite UK), Linda Dao (SAG-AFTRA), Justin Molito (Writers Guild of America, East) and Liz Shuler of AFL-CIO (which published an open letter encouraging game devs to organize) fielded some notable labor questions from game devs.

It was a fast-paced discussion that spanned a lot of topics, so if you have time (and access) you might want to rewatch it when the recording eventually goes up on the GDC Vault.

While the latter half was dedicated to audience questions, Kinema first introduced everyone on the panel, which together spanned experience organizing voice actors, writers, game developers, electricians, and more.

Right up front, Agwaze acknowledged that while he and his collaborators helped organize the United Kingdom’s first game dev union, they had to do it by focusing on the national level, rather than taking a more traditional company-by-company approach.

“As opposed to unionizing shop by shop, by forming a national union, you have a lot of members,” acknowledged Agwaze, but “it’s a space that traditional unions aren’t super sure how to approach yet. It’s been a space that’s been traditionally not unionized, and it’s a challenge to figure out how to do it.”

“The most important lesson there is to make sure that we listen, as organizers,” added Molito, who talked a bit about his experience helping organize writers at digital media companies like Vice and Gawker. “When we’re trained as organizers we’re told we have two ears and one mouth, and thus we should be doing twice as much listening. So as an organization we listened very closely to what the people in the digital media sector were saying. They were talking about overwork, underpay, and other common issues.”

Molito says his experience helping writers to unionize taught him the importance of using modern digital tools to organize, at a workplace level and (more importantly) across the whole movement.

“One lesson that was extremely important…is having a movement approach”, added Molito. “So we’re not talking about organizing one shop, or one place, that happens to be the bad place to work. We’re talking about organizing the entire industry, so standards are set across the board, no matter what company you’re working for on any given day…we’re no longer working in an economy where people work at one place for 30-40 years. People jump from place to place all the time.”

The game industry often works the same way, and Agwaze advises anyone trying to organize labor in this business to make as much noise as possible, as often as possible, in as many different channels as possible. It’s a key piece of Game Workers U.K.’s strategy, not only because it’s good marketing but because at this early stage in organizing, there’s just a lot of questions to be asked and answered.

“We have a newsletter that’s biweekly, we have a Discord where people can speak to us, we are going to have a weekly meeting just with our membership, where everyone can join and ask questions,” added Agwaze. “We also have regional meetings once a month…so people can meet up in real life, and get to know each other. We just constantly communicate what we’re doing.”

Since most game industry workers aren’t familiar with what unions are or how they work, Agwaze says his nascent union has had to work hard to keep spreading the word about what they’re doing. The fast pace of work in the game industry hasn’t helped.

“Everyone is working really hard, they’re crunching, so…sometimes we also have to work hard to show them what we’re doing,” he said.

SAG-AFTRA’s also cautioned game makers not to overlook the value and necessity of making time for one-on-one conversations when you’re trying to organize a group of workers. People need to feel enthusiastic about being part of something bigger, and direct face-to-face conversations are a great way to do that.

“You want to make sure that people are educated…that people are involved, and excited to be involved,” added Dao. “So one-on-ones are super important.”

Shuler jumped in to say that, on the bright side, she’s seen a recent surge in labor organization, citing the recent Marriott workers strike as a good example of how workers can successfully fight for better pay and more protection on the job.

“We’re seeing a movement moment,” she added. “I think people are discovering that they don’t have to sit back and take it. They can fight back.”

“I don’t think it’s much to ask, in an industry that’s three times the size of Hollywood, to get a meaningful return on the risk you’re taking and the opportunity you’re creating,” Shuler continued. “The law protects workers who want to come together, no matter what your workplace looks like or what kind of work you do.”

“It really is about this power dynamic,” she continued. “What we’re seeing, not just in this industry but everywhere, is this concentration where the profits go to a handful of people, and the working people get the short end of the stick.”

Shuler believes a lot of people in the game industry (and the world at large) have an outdated understanding of what labor unions do, and how members can benefit. They can offer viable portable health benefits, for example, which might be valuable in a game industry which regularly sees independent workers and workers between jobs asking for money on platforms like GoFundMe to help cover medical expenses.

“People think portable benefits is a new concept,” added Shuler. “It’s not. Unions have been giving workers benefits for decades.”

“What’s happening is the massive disparity of wealth inequality in this country,” added Molito. “There are a few people that are taking everybody’s money and making people work like 60-70 hours a week, and giving them just enough to survive to continue producing wealth.”

“The solution to that is mass organizing into militant, strong labor unions.”

“There’s obviously enormous fear about collective action, because the organizations you’re fighting against have all the power,” Molito continued. “But you find, when you talk to people who are in the same situation that you are, that there’s going to be a lot of solidarity.”

So if you want to get involved, Molito recommends you get out there and find other workers in a similar situation, both within your organization and without.

“Really just develop that solidarity by talking to each other about what you’re experiencing,” he advised.

“You’re used to working in an open-source environment and solving problems collectively,” added Shuler. “You can apply those same skills and techniques to organizing.”

“It’s all about talking to the people you work with,” said Dao. “Find out their problems, and make connections…we’re all facing these problems, and we want to fight for better conditions.”

The latter half of the panel was turned over to the audience to ask questions, so we’ve gone ahead and excerpted some of the better ones below”

“The independent development scene looks a little bit to me like the independent film scene in our union,” said Molito. “The thing that worked for our union in that space is the community-building: so we’ll have an independent film caucus where people working in isolated situations can get together to talk about their craft, their funders, their problems, and look for solutions collectively.”

“And then also the union has a contract that can be negotiated whereby you would be, if you’re the indie game developers and you’re working as a self-owned entity, then you can become a signatory to the union contract and become eligible for health insurance.”

“That’s been a debate because traditionally we’ve seen people organized around craft,” added Shuler. “But for folks who are independent, who aren’t employees, under the National Labor Relations Act, you’re not eligible, I guess, to form a traditional union as an independent contractor. So that’s where we’re seeing these new models take hold, like Uber drivers or the taxi drivers…people who have traditionally been on their own, and who have banded together to negotiate.”

She adds that as the “gig economy” model takes hold and employers are steadily making moves to try and take less responsibility for their workers, “because they don’t want to be employers anymore,” modern labor should be thinking about how to organize on a larger scale than the companies they work for.

“Of course we’re going to fight that, but we also need to figure out a path forward for workers who want to come together in a different way,” Shuler continued. “As someone who works independently, you still want to have access to affordable healthcare. You still want to maybe buy a home someday…so I think we’re looking at a model of how we can open up the labor movement’s scale, to leverage that for worker who aren’t necessarily employees.”

“One example from SAG-AFTRA is that choreographers are not considered part of our union,” added Dao. “We do cover dancers, but then the choreographers created their own space…a choreographers’ alliance…where they still talk to one another and are actually able to create minimums for each other. So I think there are ways, using this alliance model, to make inroads into organizing and to show solidarity with your colleagues.”

“We know that choreographers have a super specialized skill set, and a lot of them will be in solidarity with the dancers,” added Dao. “And then the choreographers will go to other shows, and if they’re on tour with an artist, and they’ll float these ideas and help organize in that way. So there is that solidarity and that education going on.”

Agwaze said that it’s tricky to draw the line at who counts as a “game worker” and who doesn’t. In theory, “game workers” is a very broad and inclusive group — but it makes practical sense to focus on workers employed directly by the game industry while Game Workers U.K. is still trying to expand its foothold.

“Anybody who is involved in the process of making games is, at some level, in the union,” he said. “Whether it’s user-generated content, or modders, or esports players. But the game industry is a big place where it’s hard to get the solidarity you need form all the workers. So until we can get the foothold we need in this industry, we don’t want ot stretch ourselves too hard, and not cover all our bases.”

“The organizing we’ve been doing since 2015 has all been outside the National Labor Relations Board, which enforces the National Labor Relations Act,” Molito answered.

“In many ways it’s a law set up to prevent people from organizing, so we’ve been organizing outside of it…so people who, under that law, would be seen as managers, they can still join our union…we’ve found it useful to sometimes have people in the union who have more power, and may be able to get more from the company.”

Kinema jumped in to share her own advice, noting that “I think it’s really crucial that when you’re organizing with those types of folks, one I’d say bring them on after you’ve organized many of the base-level workers. And secondly, when you’re organizing, make sure the actual structure of the organization…is taking into account the natural power dynamics that some of these leads, directors, and supervisors tend to have in the company. So they’re not overriding anyone’s voice.”

In closing out the talk, Shuler wound up encouraging game makers to feel strong and righteous about trying to organize, but not to necessarily go to the negotiating table with a confrontational attitude up front.

“The scenario we see most often is very confrontational,” she explained. “But there are scenarios where employers and managers will work with you to form a union. And they are rare, but we should approach this effort with the rationale that hey, we want to do better. We want to have a seat at the table, we want to be a shareholder, and have a voice….we can’t always assume that management is our enemy. In some cases, middle management benefits when there’s a union in the company.”

Starting at 2:00 p.m. PST today, members of the Xbox One Preview Alpha Skip Ahead Ring will begin receiving the latest 1910 Xbox One system update (19H1_RELEASE_XBOX_DEV_19H2HOLD_1910\18356.7001.190312-1920). This build has the same features and fixes as 1904 however we need valuable core recovery coverage and feedback as we skip ahead.

DETAILS:

• OS version released: 19H1_RELEASE_XBOX_DEV_19H2HOLD_1910\18356.7001.190312-1920
• Available: 2:00PM PST 3/15/19
• Mandatory Date/Time: 3:00 AM PST 3/16/19

Fixes:

Audio

• We have fixed the issues of No Audio heard or stuttering audio from the system and games/apps.
• We have resolved the issue in which users with Dolby Atmos setups may have no sound or low sound (with snap, crackle and pop!) when coming out of Instant On.

Disney Adventures

• We have fixed the issue that was crashing this title on launch.

EA Access App

• We have resolved the following two issues with the EA Access app and the 1904 recovery:

1. Users are now able to purchase an EA Access subscription from inside the EA Access app.
2. Users are able to get a game trial from inside the EA Access App.

Plex App

• Users will no longer encounter an issue when playing/streaming 4K content with the Plex App.

System

• We have fixed the issue that some users encountered a console restart when using Youtube or similar media apps.
• Gamepass Twist UI and localization fixes.
• Various narrator and localization fixes.

Known Issues:

Audio

• We are aware of issues of No Audio heard from Non-Spatial Audio games when using Dolby Atmos for Home Theater with the LG SJ9 soundbar.

Game Pass Mobile App

• Issue/Impact – After pushing a remote installation of a game from the Game Pass mobile app, customers will not see progress of the installation on in the mobile app and may not receive install notifications.  The game will still successfully install if there is sufficient available space on the console.
• Affected audience – must be in 1904 preview, must be a GP subscriber, must be using the GP mobile app, must be pushing game installations from the app.
• Workarounds – None.  A fix is coming in the next version of the mobile app in March.  Customers interested in getting early access to the fix can download the Game Pass Beta app.

Home

• We are aware that the clock/time is missing from home and the dashboard.

Messaging

• We are aware that users in Alpha with the new messaging framework are not seeing all messages from before mid-January and we are working on a mitigation’s and fixes.  Workaround : You are able to access all your messages on the PC Xbox App or on www.xbox.com

 My Games and Apps

• We are aware that the game such as “One Leaves” causes guide to crash on game exit.  We are tracking a fix to the system.

Profile Color

• Sometimes users may encounter the incorrect Profile color when powering on the console.

System

• We are tracking that Home is failing to load/crashing with latest update.

Virtual Keyboard

• On Screen Keyboard in Hebrew  – We are aware that the onscreen keyboard in Hebrew the period or semi-colon no longer works. Workaround: A physical usb keyboard works.
• On Screen Keyboard covers group chat window  – We are aware that the onscreen keyboard in group chat covers that text entry window. Workaround: Touch typing is a skill.

When it comes to backing up a Fedora Silverblue system, some of the traditional tools may not function as expected. BorgBackup (Borg) is an alternative available that can provide backup capability for your Silverblue based systems. This how-to explains the steps for using BorgBackup 1.1.8 as a layered package to back up Fedora Silverblue 29 system.

On a normal Fedora Workstation system, dnf is used to install a package. However, on Fedora Silverblue, rpm-ostree install is used to install new software. This is termed layering on the Silverblue system, since the core ostree is an immutable image and the rpm package is layered onto the core system during the install process resulting in a new local image with the layered package.

“BorgBackup (short: Borg) is a deduplicating backup program. Optionally, it supports compression and authenticated encryption.”

From the Borg website

Additionally, the main way to interact with Borg is via the command line. Reading the Quick Start guide it becomes apparent that Borg is well suited to scripting. In fact, it is pretty much necessary to use some form of shell script when performing repeated thorough backup’s of a system. A basic script is provided in the Borg Quick Start guide , as a point to get started.

Installing Borg

In a terminal, type the following command to install BorgBackup as a layered package:

This installs BorgBackup to the Fedora Silverblue system. To use it, reboot into the new ostree with:

Now Borg is installed, and ready to use.

Some notes about Silverblue and it’s file system, layered packages and flatpaks

The file system

Silverblue is an immutable operating system based on ostree, with support for layering rpm’s through the use of rpm-ostree. At the user level, this means the path that appears as /home in a flatpak, will actually be /var/home to the system. For programs like Borg, and other backup tools this is important to remember since they often require the actual path, so in this example that would be /var/home instead of just /home.

Before starting a backup it’s a good idea to understand where potential data could be stored, and then if that data should be backed up. Silverblue’s file system layout is very specific with respect to what is writable and what is not. On Silverblue /etc and /var are the only places that are not immutable, therefore writable. On a single user system, typically the user home directory would be a likely choice for data backup. Normally excluding Downloads, but including Documents and more. Also, /etc is a logical choice for some configuration options you don’t want to go through again. Take notes of what to exclude from your home directory and from /etc. Some files and subdirectories of /etc you need root or sudo privileges to access.

Flatpaks

Flatpak applications store data in your home directory under $HOME/.var/app/flatpakapp, regardless of whether they were installed as user or system. If installed at a user level, there is also data found in $HOME/.local/share/flatpak/app/, or if installed at a system level it will be found in /var/lib/flatpak/app For the purposes of this article, it was enough to list the flatpak’s installed and redirect the output to a file for backing up. Reasoning that if there is a need to reinstall them (flatpaks) the list file could be used to do it from. For a more robust approach, examining the flatpak file system layouts can be done here.

Layering and rpm-ostree

There is no easy way for a user to retrieve the layered package information aside from the

command. Which shows the current and previous ostree commit’s layered packages, and if any commits are pinned they would be listed too. Below is the output on my system, note the LayeredPackages label at the end of each commit listing.

The command

is useful to retrieve a history of commits for the system. Type it in your terminal to see the output.

Preparing the backup repo

In order to use Borg to back up a system, you need to first initialize a Borg repo. Before initializing, the decision must be made to use encryption (or not) and if so, what mode.

With Borg the data can be protected using 256-bit AES encryption. The integrity and authenticity of the data, which is encrypted on the clientside, is verified using HMAC-SHA256. The encryption modes are listed below.

Encryption modes

The encryption mode decided on was keyfile-blake2, which requires a passphrase to be entered as well as the keyfile being needed.

Borg can use the following compression types which you can specify at backup creation time.

• lz4 (super fast, low compression)
• zstd (wide range from high speed and low compression to high compression and lower speed)
• zlib (medium speed and compression)
• lzma (low speed, high compression)

For compression lzma was chosen at setting 6, the highest sensible compression level. The initial backup took 4 minutes 59.98 seconds to complete, while subsequent ones have taken less than 20 seconds as a rule.

Borg init

To be able to perform backups with Borg, first, create a directory for your Borg repo:

and then change to it.

Next, initialize the Borg repo with the borg init command:

Borg will prompt for your passphrase, which is case sensitive, and at creation must be entered twice. A suitable passphrase of alpha-numeric characters and symbols, and of a reasonable length should be created. It can be changed later on if needed without affecting the keyfile, or your encrypted data. The keyfile can be exported and should be for backup purposes, along with the passphrase, and stored somewhere secure.

Creating a backup

Next, create a test backup of the Documents directory, remember on Silverblue the actual path to the user Documents directory is /var/home/username/Documents. In practice on Silverblue, it is suitable to use ~/ or $HOME to indicate your home directory. The distinction between the actual path and environment variables being the real path does not change whereas the environment variable can be changed. From within the Borg repo, type the following command

and that will create a backup of the Documents directory named borgtest. To break down the command a bit; create requires a repo location, in this case . since we are in the top level of the repo. That makes the path .::borgtest for the backup name. Finally /var/home/username/Documents is the location of the data we are backing up.

The following command

returns a listing of your backups, after a few days it look similar to this:

To delete the test backup, type the following in the terminal

at this time Borg will prompt for the encryption passphrase in order to delete the backup.

Pulling it together into a shell script

As mentioned Borg is an eminently script friendly tool. The Borg documentation links provided are great places to find out more about BorgBackup, and there is more. The example script provided by Borg was modified to suit this article. Below is a version with the basic parts that others could use as a starting point if desired. It tries to capture the three information pieces of the system and apps mentioned earlier. The output of flatpak list, rpm-ostree status, and ostree log as human readable files given the same names each time so overwritten each time. The repo setup had to be changed since the original example is for a remote server login with ssh, and this was intended to be used locally. The other changes mostly involved correcting directory paths, tailoring the excluded content to suit this systems home directory, and choosing the compression.

 
#!/bin/sh



# This gets the ostree commit data, this file is overwritten each time

sudo ostree log fedora-workstation:fedora/29/x86_64/silverblue > ostree.log



rpm-ostree status > rpm-ostree-status.lst



# Flatpaks get listed too

flatpak list > flatpak.lst



# Setting this, so the repo does not need to be given on the commandline:

export BORG_REPO=/var/home/usernamehere/borg_testdir



# Setting this, so you won't be asked for your repository passphrase:(Caution advised!)

export BORG_PASSPHRASE='usercomplexpassphrasehere'



# some helpers and error handling:

info() { printf "\n%s %s\n\n" "$( date )" "$*" >&2; }

trap 'echo $( date ) Backup interrupted >&2; exit 2' INT TERM



info "Starting backup"



# Backup the most important directories into an archive named after

# the machine this script is currently running on:

borg create                         \

    --verbose                       \

    --filter AME                    \

    --list                          \

    --stats                         \

    --show-rc                       \

    --compression auto,lzma,6       \

    --exclude-caches                \

    --exclude '/var/home/*/borg_testdir'\

    --exclude '/var/home/*/Downloads/'\

    --exclude '/var/home/*/.var/'   \

    --exclude '/var/home/*/Desktop/'\

    --exclude '/var/home/*/bin/'    \

                                    \

    ::'{hostname}-{now}'            \

    /etc                            \

    /var/home/ssnow                 \



    backup_exit=$?



    info "Pruning repository"



    # Use the `prune` subcommand to maintain 7 daily, 4 weekly and 6 monthly

    # archives of THIS machine. The '{hostname}-' prefix is very important to

    # limit prune's operation to this machine's archives and not apply to

    # other machines' archives also:



    borg prune                          \

        --list                          \

        --prefix '{hostname}-'          \

        --show-rc                       \

        --keep-daily    7               \

        --keep-weekly   4               \

        --keep-monthly  6               \



    prune_exit=$?



    # use highest exit code as global exit code

    global_exit=$(( backup_exit > prune_exit ? backup_exit : prune_exit ))



    if [ ${global_exit} -eq 0 ]; then

        info "Backup and Prune finished successfully"

    elif [ ${global_exit} -eq 1 ]; then

        info "Backup and/or Prune finished with warnings"

    else

        info "Backup and/or Prune finished with errors"

    fi



    exit ${global_exit}
 

This listing is missing some more excludes that were specific to the test system setup and backup intentions, and is very basic with room for customization and improvement. For this test to write an article it wasn’t a problem having the passphrase inside of a shell script file. Under normal use it is better to enter the passphrase each time when performing the backup.

By Roger Fingas
Monday, March 25, 2019, 02:03 pm PT (05:03 pm ET)

Buried in Monday’s iOS 12.2 release are images and an animation of Beats’ previously-rumored, unreleased AirPods equivalent, referred to as “Powerbeats Pro.”

The product superficially resembles the Powerbeats3, including its signature earhooks. The Pro is completely wireless, however, unlike the Powerbeats 3, which has a cord connecting both earpieces.

Black and white versions should be available, and the headphones will ship with a clamshell charging case, different from the gum-dispenser style used by AirPods.

References to the Powerbeats Pro were discovered by Chance Miller and 9to5Mac.

Inclusion in iOS 12.2 could mean a release is around the corner. Last week, a report suggested that a fully wireless Powerbeats model would ship in April. It may include the H1 chip from Apple’s second-generation AirPods, enabling power-efficient operation and new features like “Hey Siri” support.

While AirPods are more compact, Powerbeats are better equipped for fitness and sports thanks to their earhooks, which prevent buds from falling out, and a sweatproof design. AirPods aren’t officially water-resistant, which risks electrical shorts or even low-level electrocution.

Click Here!

All everyone has asked for is fishing. I am going to be watching the data on April 30th and if you aren’t all sitting there reeling them in for hours we are taking it straight out again ? https://t.co/kV3A5O1Os2

— Joe "Three Sheets" Neate (@JoeNeate1) March 23, 2019