I don't know if any of you has had the missfortune to find one image in this new format, I haven't, but if you have and hated it, this could come in handy:

You can just rename jfifs to jpegs
https://www.pcgamer.com/you-can-just-rename-jfifs-to-jpegs/

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of the internet of the 2020s assaulting me with new, unwanted file formats. Who asked for webps to infiltrate our Google Image search results? I have no use for that trash! Until a somewhat recent update I couldn't even open them in Photoshop, a program that exists solely to open and modify images. I want to throw my monitor out the window every time I go to download an image and find out it's a webp, and I have a similar reaction whenever I come across a jfif. But here's a quick tip you may not know: you can just rename a jfif and get on with your life.

Here's all you need to know about jfif images: They're jpegs.

Well, basically. You can read the long, technical explanation of how the JPEG File Interchange Format works, but the short version is that JPEG is an image compression standard, and JFIF is a file format that uses that standard. Even that is probably more than you need to know about jfifs if your only experience with them is trying to save an image off the internet and going "ugh, what the hell is this thing?"

(...)

The solution to this problem is so blissfully easy, it really does seem too good to be true: You can just rename the file. No image conversion necessary. Do not open a jfif in MS Paint or Photoshop and bother resaving it. Just click on the file name, press backspace four times, type jpg (or jpeg), and hit Enter. You now have a perfectly usable image.

The Friday news!

SALES /PLAYER COUNT & DEALS

There's a new Humble Bundle: the Railway Empire Complete Collection, with up to 11 items to get during the next 12 days: https://www.humblebundle.com/games/railway-empire-complete-collection.

Fanatical has two new deals:

• The new Star Deal is the Arkane Anniversary Collection, featuring both Dishonored games with its DLCs and Prey, 82% off during 48 hours: https://www.fanatical.com/en/bundle/arkane-anniversary-collection
• And Devolver Digital puts its games on sale with up to 80% discounts during 9 days: https://www.fanatical.com/en/publishers/devolver-digital

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

-Empty-

MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

New Red Dead Redemption 2 mods enhance dual wielding, rebalance economy, add dynamic seasons
https://www.dsogaming.com/mods/new-red-dead-redemption-2-mods-enhance-dual-wielding-rebalance-economy-add-dynamic-seasons/
Some new interesting mods surfaced this week for Red Dead Redemption 2. As such, we’ve decided to collect them and share them in one article. The following mods enhance the game’s weapon dual wielding mechanics, rebalance economy, and add dynamic seasons.

Mass Effect 2 Legendary Edition Unofficial Patch 0.9.1 released & detailed
https://www.dsogaming.com/patches/mass-effect-2-legendary-edition-unofficial-patch-0-9-1-released-detailed/
Team Pyjak has released a brand new unofficial patch for Mass Effect 2 Remaster that’s included in the Legendary Edition Trilogy. This unofficial patch brings numerous fixes, tweaks and additions, and below you can also find its complete changelog.
Going into more details, Mass Effect 2 Legendary Edition Unofficial Patch 0.9.1 fixes a number of typos. Moreover, it now properly renders flashbang Grenade VFX at 1080p. Additionally, it standardizes resolution and framerate of screens and holograms throughout the game.

Stray mod replaces the cat's meow with 'Jason!'
https://www.pcgamer.com/stray-mod-replaces-the-cats-meow-with-jason/
(...) Cat-em-up Stray is currently making headlines for all the right reasons, and part of its functionality is that you can make the titular animal meow by pressing a button. So now there's a mod, which is of course called JASON, and take a wild guess at what it does (thanks, IGN).
>> There's a video and it's hilarious.

GAMING NEWS

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora will now release in 2023/2024
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/avatar-frontiers-of-pandora-will-now-release-in-2023-2024/
Ubisoft has just announced that Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora will not come out in 2022. Instead, the French company aims to release this game in 2023/2024. Unfortunately, though, Ubisoft did not provide a more specific release window.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection is coming to PC on August 30th
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-the-cowabunga-collection-is-coming-to-pc-on-august-30th/
Konami has announced a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles which will feature 13 TMNT titles and their Japanese versions. This collection, called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection, is coming to PC on August 30th, and below you can find its debut trailer.

New trailers for Gotham Knights and Marvel’s Midnight: Suns
https://www.dsogaming.com/videotrailer-news/new-trailers-for-gotham-knights-and-marvels-midnight-suns/
Warner Bros and 2K Games have released new trailers for Gotham Knights and Marvel’s Midnight Suns, respectively. The trailer for Gotham Knights focuses on Batgirl, whereas the trailer for Marvel’s Midnight Suns introduces Spider-Man.

Friday news, part two:

Indie Metal Gear replaces Solid Snake with a gritty gecko
https://www.pcgamer.com/indie-metal-gear-replaces-solid-snake-with-a-gritty-gecko/
The 22-year-old Metal Gear Solid 1 port we have on PC is patchy at best. It can be a little glitchy, is prone to the odd crash, and whenever I try to play it there's a 50/50 chance it will forget my input settings. But what if there was an alternative? What if someone put together an exactingly faithful homage? What if it condensed MGS1's cutscene-heavy sprawl to a tight half hour?
What if you were a literal gecko instead of a figurative snake?
These are the questions Covert Critters dares to ask. Made in 12 days by two developers—sodaraptor and NormalHumanSixx—for Portland's Summer Slow Jams event, Covert Critters is a nostalgic salute to the first 3D Metal Gear that just so happens to replace the Genome Soldiers and Solid Snake with a flock of birds and a lizard.

Ubisoft cancels Ghost Recon battle royale and Splinter Cell VR
https://www.pcgamer.com/ubisoft-cancels-ghost-recon-battle-royale-and-splinter-cell-vr/
Ubisoft revealed today that it has halted development of Ghost Recon Frontline and Splinter Cell VR, as well as two other projects that had not yet been announced.
The decision to end development of the games was made as Ubisoft focuses on achieving "sizable cost optimization" in the upcoming fiscal year, chief financial officer Frederick Duguet said during today's financial call. As part of that process, Duguet said Ubisoft will put "even more focus on our biggest development opportunities, as evidenced by our decision to stop development of the Splinter Cell VR game, Ghost Recon Frontlines, and two other unannounced titles."

Even GTA Online can't escape high gas prices and record-breaking heat
https://www.pcgamer.com/even-gta-online-cant-escape-high-gas-prices-and-record-breaking-heat/
Escapism in video games is getting tougher and tougher to come by, and that now includes violent crime sandbox GTA Online. In The Criminal Enterprises update, coming July 26, "Gas prices have spiked to their highest levels in decades, retail supply chains are in turmoil, and to top it off a ferocious heatwave is gripping the state."

FIFA 23 will not have Russian teams, EA confirms
https://www.pcgamer.com/fifa-23-will-not-have-russian-teams-ea-confirms/
EA unveiled its last-ever FIFA game earlier today, FIFA 23, which will feature women's club teams for the first time ever, and the Qatar World Cup and Women's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand in post-launch updates. What it won't feature, however, are Russian teams, as Electronic Arts has confirmed that the Russian national team and Russian club teams will not be included.

Robert Alan Koeneke, creator of the influential roguelike Moria, has died
https://www.pcgamer.com/robert-alan-koeneke-creator-of-the-influential-roguelike-moria-has-died/
Robert Alan Koeneke, who created the landmark 1980s roguelike The Dungeons of Moria, commonly referred to as simply Moria, has died. Koeneke's death at age 64 was announced in an obituary at dignitymemorial.com.
>> D.E.P.

Looks like Blizzard accidentally leaked the release date for Wrath of the Lich King Classic
https://www.pcgamer.com/looks-like-blizzard-accidentally-leaked-the-release-date-for-wrath-of-the-lich-king-classic/
As spotted by WoW Head, Blizzard seems to have let slip the Wrath of the Lich King Classic release date a wee bit earlier than intended. According to an image uploaded to the WoW Classic website, and then quickly removed from it, "The Lich King Returns September 26, 2022".

Take one guess as to why people are mad about the new free-to-play Marvel CCG
https://www.pcgamer.com/take-one-guess-as-to-why-people-are-mad-about-the-new-free-to-play-marvel-ccg/
If you want a reminder of how weird the games industry has got, consider the case of Marvel Snap. The mobile-first digital card game (which will also be available on PC), is still deep in a closed beta, without a firm release date. But free-to-play monetization is what it is, and the community is currently mired in an absolute uproar over a particularly brazen transaction scheme. In that sense, I guess you could say Marvel Snap is way ahead of schedule.

Resident Evil Village DLC trailer offers glimpse of playable Lady D
https://www.pcgamer.com/resident-evil-village-dlc-trailer-offers-glimpse-of-playable-lady-d/
Capcom announced a massive update for Resident Evil Village last month in the form of The Winters' Expansion, which includes a new story, a third-person mode, and what they're calling The Mercenaries Additional Orders, which adds three new playable characters in their own Mercenaries side missions. The latter component got a new trailer today, and with it, details on how playing as Lady Dimitrescu, Karl Heisenberg, and Chris Redfield will actually work.

Epic boss says NFT games won't be banned on the Epic Games Store
https://www.pcgamer.com/epic-boss-says-nft-games-wont-be-banned-on-the-epic-games-store/
Yesterday Mojang drew a line in the sand, saying that NFT integration is "generally not something we will support or allow." (...)
A Twitter user commented on the Minecraft decision, tagging in Epic CEO Tim Sweeney and saying: "hey Epic Games, it’d be really nice to see the same opinion from the Epic Games Store. Please get rid of every last one of those games on the store "
(...)
Sweeney responded to the call to ban NFTs on the Epic Game Store by re-stating some of the principles he believes should underly such a store.
"Developers should be free to decide how to build their games, and you are free to decide whether to play them," Sweeney wrote in response. "I believe stores and operating system makers shouldn’t interfere by forcing their views onto others. We definitely won’t."
>> This is the sign for Chazore to, at least in this case, deservedly rant about Epic.

And these are the weekend deals at GOG and Steam:

+GOG

• The first of the two Deal of the Day is The Medium, 35% off during 70 hours: https://www.gog.com/en/game/the_medium
• The other DotD is Mortal Shell, 55% off until Monday: https://www.gog.com/en/game/mortal_shell
• And the Weekend Sale features up to 80% discounts during the next 3 days: https://www.gog.com/promo/20220722_weekend_sale

+Steam

• The first Weekend Deal is Left 4 Dead 2, free to try and also 80% off until Monday: https://store.steampowered.com/app/550/Left_4_Dead_2/
• Hardspace: Shipbreaker gets a 25% discount until July 28: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1161580/Hardspace_Shipbreaker/
• Hell Let Loose will be free to try during the weekend and 33% off until the 28th: https://store.steampowered.com/app/686810/Hell_Let_Loose/
• Insurgency: Sandstorm is also free to try during the weekend, and has a 50% discount until Thursday 28: https://store.steampowered.com/app/581320/Insurgency_Sandstorm/
• Rubber Bandits is, yet again, free to try during the next 3 days, and also 60% off until July 28: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1206610/Rubber_Bandits/
• Summer in Mara gets a 60% discount until the 28th of July: https://store.steampowered.com/app/962580/Summer_in_Mara/
• And No Man's Sky is going to be 50% off until the 1st of August: https://store.steampowered.com/app/275850/No_Mans_Sky/

Enough of news! Go find somewhere cool to hide from this heat (or a warm place for those that live down there) and remember, try to have a happy and gaming weekend.

Intel's Open-Source Vulkan Driver For Ray-Tracing Gets "Like A 100x Improvement"

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-Vulkan-RT-100x-Improve

It will be interested to see what Battlemage will be like after they have gotten a lot of the driver issues worked out. With the recent but slow rise of Crypto prices, I get the feeling we are gonna need that third player. Lets just hope they can execute better next time.

AMD preparing AI-based Noise Suppression technology, an alternative to NVIDIA RTX Voice

https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-preparing-ai-based-noise-suppression-technology-an-alternative-to-nvidia-rtx-voice

Great news for Radeon users. Really goes to show how forward thinking Turing was.

AMD Navi 3X RDNA3 GPU family highlighted in new fan-made renders

https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-navi-3x-rdna3-gpu-family-highlighted-in-new-fan-made-renders

Intel Meteor Lake’s “Redwood Cove” and “Crestmont” architectures confirmed

https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-meteor-lakes-redwood-cove-and-crestmont-architectures-confirmed

STAR WARS Jedi: Survivor Steam page is up

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1774580/STAR_WARS_Jedi_Survivor/

Chinese gamers are using a Steam wallpaper app to get porn past the censors

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/07/21/1056315/chinese-gamers-steam-wallpaper-porn/

Mans mission to horny always finds a way

Intel 13th Gen Core “Raptor Lake-S” to launch in mid-October, following late September announcement

https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-13th-gen-core-raptor-lake-s-to-launch-in-mid-october-following-late-september-announcement

From that article:

So what's going on here? The Intel ANV change is to ensure the scratch memory for Vulkan ray-tracing use gets allocated to local memory, a.k.a. the local device memory for the DG2/Alchemist discrete graphics cards.

To now the device allocation for this RT scratch memory didn't have any allocation flags set and so presumably was getting allocated back to general system memory. Now with the "ANV_BO_ALLOC_LOCAL_MEM" flag set, it will ensure that scratch memory buffers are residing on memory local to the Intel GPU.

Yeah, no wonder the performance has improved dramatically after that, even thought it's hard to judge an improvement when we haven't seen it tested in RT games.

It also makes you wonder what other dumb mistakes could be there in the driers waiting to be fixed.

Drivers are complex pieces of software these days... It takes a Shit-ton (Australian standard unit of measurement) to build a competent driver stack.
AMD and nVidia drivers for example have more lines of code than some older Windows kernels which are also monolithic.
AMD and nVidia have also been doing this for decades, so they have a solid foundation and experienced driver teams to draw from.. But even they can sometimes miss things... I.E. Frame pacing with the Radeon 7000 series.

It will take time for them to build drivers optimized for gaming, Intel has never done it before...
They have always optimized their drivers for a very specific and small selection of games that might top out at a couple dozen, professional use cases (I.E. Video encoding) and that is it... They just move onto the next thing.

Honestly though, until their GPU's are releasing on a reliable cadence and have been thoroughly tested... To ensure long term support (As they have a history of giving up) I would avoid at all costs.

So last night... I was playing some h games from my 16TB WD hard drive that I got a few months ago... And... The hard drive decided to commit seppuku... Or least the File System did anyway? The error I got was "The Master File Table contains a corrupted file record. etc" And regardless of what I did, other than plugging it in and entering my Bitlocker password, the drive was not accessible.

Now the thing is, I don't keep the important stuff in one hard drive, I keep them in multiple places so it's not so much the important stuff that I have to worry about but losing 5-6TBs worth of videos, music and such would be a huge pain since it's been a while since I backed up those to a separate hard drive. But when I searched the errors, it says to try chkdsk and when I tried various fixes, none of them worked.

So new plan then... Instead of trying to fix the file system corruption, how about we try and recover the data instead? After researching, I basically landed on two tools: GetDataBack Pro and UFS explorer. And after starting the scans, yes, it is able to find them but as they scan sector by sector, it would take an estimated 38 hours to scan through everything and recover the files. For me, that's not a big deal but the key is these are free to start sort of a programs. They will let you use them to scan and find the files but to recover, you gotta pay. But that's not really a big deal and it's only around $80 for a lifetime license however...

I found another program from the makers of CCleaner and it's free. It's called Recuva and apparently it's very fast. So I stopped the scan from the other program and ran this. In about 10 minutes, it seems to have found all my files...

Now there doesn't seem to be a file structure since... Well the file system nuked itself I guess but hey, it's better than nothing. However I don't exactly have 5-6TBs free so I can't exactly recover everything. But the good thing about Recuva is that you can limit its scan to try and find certain file types instead. So I went ahead and limited to videos only and etc and boom...

Luckily newegg ebay is having a sale on a 14TB WD external hard drive so I went ahead and bought that. Once it arrives, I will recover the rest!

Crisis Averted!

Ngl, but over the past few years, nvidia drivers have felt like a bit off a hit n' miss. There have been times where a driver for a slew of new games doesn't certify as "game ready" (I still have Wolfenstein TNC fresh in my mind and the two fuck-up hotfixes that followed just for that game at the time of it's release), and then there are drivers that fuck up older games (multiple drivers that dicked around with Supreme Commander series), and then there's people noticing previous gen cards getting stumped by driver releases over time (like the 1000 series, and other 1080ti owners are feeling like they are being gimped slowly over time to make the new cards forcefully appealing). 

I remember years ago that it was AMD that was made fun of for bad drivers or gimped cards via drivers, but Nvidia feels like king of the hill for that title over the past 4-5 years now. When are they going to not fuck up 2-3 drivers in a row?. If their code is as big as you say it is, that sounds like a hurdle of a problem that they should really be slimming down.