Tag:

Find

Where To Find Spine Cores In Hollow Knight: Silksong For Flexile Spine Wish
Game Updates

Where To Find Spine Cores In Hollow Knight: Silksong For Flexile Spine Wish

by admin



Hollow Knight: Silksong isn’t a linear adventure by any stretch of the imagination. It expects you to explore thoroughly as you chart your path through its perilous maps. Doing so will sometimes lead you to some unique NPCs who ask you to complete quests known as Wishes, such as the Seamstress you’ll encounter in the Far Fields. This character will assign you the Flexile Spine Wish, tasking you with finding 25 Spine Cores. Luckily, you won’t have to make too long a journey to collect these items.

Where to find Spine Cores in Hollow Knight: Silksong

To collect Spine Cores, you must find enemies known as Hokers, which look like floating white balls with a green beard and spikes. If you leave the Seamstress’s home and head to the right, you can move through some rooms filled with plenty of these enemies, so you won’t have to travel far to get what you need.

These enemies are called Hokers.

However, instead of focusing on killing these enemies, your goal is to harvest their spikes. Each time you hit them, they’ll fire off spikes that will stick to nearby surfaces. You can then strike these spikes to make them drop an orb containing a Spine Core. Do this 25 times, and you’ll have everything you need.

Each Hoker can take three hits before they die. The trick to getting the most bang for your buck is to hit them one time and wait for them to regenerate spikes again. If you hit them before they regenerate spikes, you’ll ultimately end up with fewer Spine Cores from that Hoker.

Make sure you hit the spikes stuck on surfaces, then pick up the Spine Cores.

Additionally, beware that the spikes Hokers fire out will disappear after a few moments, so make quick work of them to ensure you aren’t missing out on the Spine Cores within.

Once you’ve collected all 25 Spine Cores, return to the Seamstress to earn your reward, which is the Drifter’s Coat. This upgrade lets you glide after a jump, and it’ll allow you to ride the air currents you’ve probably seen around the area. Now, you can explore even further than ever before.

There are plenty more Wishes to finish throughout your journey. For instance, if you haven’t finished the Berry Picking Wish, check out where to find 3 Mossberries in Hollow Knight: Silksong.



Source link

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
DAAPrivacyRightIcon
Gaming Gear

Researchers find alarming overlaps among 18 popular VPNs

by admin


A new peer-reviewed study alleges that 18 of the 100 most-downloaded virtual private network (VPN) apps on the Google Play Store are secretly connected in three large families, despite claiming to be independent providers. The paper doesn’t indict any of our picks for the best VPN, but the services it investigates are popular, with 700 million collective downloads on Android alone.

The study, published in the journal of the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS), doesn’t just find that the VPNs in question failed to disclose behind-the-scenes relationships, but also that their shared infrastructures contain serious security flaws. Well-known services like Turbo VPN, VPN Proxy Master and X-VPN were found to be vulnerable to attacks capable of exposing a user’s browsing activity and injecting corrupted data.

Titled “Hidden Links: Analyzing Secret Families of VPN apps,” the paper was inspired by an investigation by VPN Pro, which found that several VPN companies each were selling multiple apps without identifying the connections between them. This spurred the “Hidden Links” researchers to ask whether the relationships between secretly co-owned VPNs could be documented systematically.

Starting from the list of the most-downloaded VPNs on Android, the researchers compiled data from each VPN’s business paperwork, web presence and codebase and sifted through it for connections. Primarily through identifying suspicious similarities in the code, they were able to sort 18 VPN apps into three groups.

Family A consists of Turbo VPN, Turbo VPN Lite, VPN Monster, VPN Proxy Master, VPN Proxy Master Lite, Snap VPN, Robot VPN and SuperNet VPN. These were found to be shared between three providers — Innovative Connecting, Lemon Clove and Autumn Breeze. All three have all been linked to Qihoo 360, a firm based in mainland China and identified as a “Chinese military company” by the US Department of Defense.

Family B consists of Global VPN, XY VPN, Super Z VPN, Touch VPN, VPN ProMaster, 3X VPN, VPN Inf and Melon VPN. These eight services, which are shared between five providers, all use the same IP addresses from the same hosting company.

Family C consists of X-VPN and Fast Potato VPN. Although these two apps each come from a different provider, the researchers found that both used very similar code and included the same custom VPN protocol.

If you’re a VPN user, this study should concern you for two reasons. The first problem is that companies entrusted with your private activities and personal data are not being honest about where they’re based, who owns them or who they might be sharing your sensitive information with. Even if their apps were all perfect, this would be a severe breach of trust.

But their apps are far from perfect, which is the second problem. All 18 VPNs across all three families use the Shadowsocks protocol with a hard-coded password, which makes them susceptible to takeover from both the server side (which can be used for malware attacks) and the client side (which can be used to eavesdrop on web activity).

Ultimately, a VPN provider being dishonest about its background and a VPN client running on slapdash infrastructure are symptoms of the same problem: these are apps designed to do something other than keep you safe online. Since all 18 were listed as unrelated products, it’s also clear that app stores are not an effective line of defense. The “Hidden Links” paper makes it all the more imperative to never download a free VPN without vetting it first, and to only use free VPNs that are supported by paid subscriptions, like Proton VPN.



Source link

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
The main character from Cronos The New Dawn looking out across a desolate encampment
Product Reviews

Cronos: The New Dawn review: a merging of survival horror greats that struggles to find its own identity

by admin



Why you can trust TechRadar


We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

A few hours into Cronos: The New Dawn, I saw it. A corpse slumped against the wall, a message scrawled in blood above him: “Don’t let them merge”. If it wasn’t already clear that the latest survival horror game from Bloober Team was drawing from some of the genre’s greats, that warning, a nod to “cut off their limbs” seen in equally foreboding lines of jagged crimson in Dead Space, hammered the point home as subtly as a boot stomp to the skull.

Review info

Platform reviewed: PS5
Available on: PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PC, Nintendo Switch 2, Mac
Release date: September 5, 2025

A feeling of déjà vu was a running theme in my time playing through Cronos. Here’s the main character, gun hoisted high in Leon S. Kennedy’s iconic pose from Resident Evil 4. Here are my limited crafting resources straight out of The Last of Us, ones I must choose to make either ammo or health items. Here are my gravity boots, pinched from Isaac Clarke’s locker on the USG Ishimura.

  • Cronos: The New Dawn at Loaded (Formerly CDKeys) for $51.29

It’s perfectly fine to be influenced by other works, especially when they are as iconic and genre-defining as the ones I’ve listed above. But when it just feels like you’re retreading the same path with less confidence and not bringing enough new ideas, what’s really the point of it all?

(Image credit: Bloober Team)

Now, that opening may read like I came away massively disappointed by Cronos: The New Dawn. In some aspects, I certainly did. It is painfully derivative in many areas, to the point where it made me question if anything has changed in sci-fi survival horror games in the last 20 years.

But, unsurprisingly, given its influences, it’s also a game that plays well. Combat is tense, shooting is solid, resource management is challenging, exploration is unsettling, and the environments drip with atmosphere. And there are kernels of ideas that, if only they were more fully realised or executed better, could have elevated the game beyond a decent – if standard – survival horror.

Let’s start with the premise: you play as the Traveler, an undefined being encased in a cross between a spacesuit and a diving suit. The game starts as you’re activated by a mysterious organisation known as The Collective and told to travel through time to extract important survivors after an apocalyptic infection dubbed the ‘Change’ turns most people on Earth into grotesque and amalgamated monstrosities.

The nexus point of the disaster is Poland in the 1980s, which at least makes for a unique setting that’s far from the spaceships and abandoned mining planets we usually find ourselves stomping around. There’s an inventiveness to the world design, too, which not only sees the infestation overrun dilapidated buildings, roads, and subways with a gloopy and pulsating biomass, but also fractures entire structures to create floating, twisted, and mind-bending new forms.

Add to that violent sandstorms and heavy snowfall, and safe to say, it’s not a pleasant stroll. I had to seriously pluck up some courage to carefully inch forward in many locations, especially towards the latter half of the game, when everything is so consumed by the effects of the infection and dotted with poisonous pustules that you feel suffocated by it – even if this trap is overplayed a dozen too many times.

Skin-crawling

(Image credit: Bloober Team)

Visually, it is disgusting (in all the right ways), but huge credit has to go to the audio. It masterfully ramps up that oppressive and stomach-churning atmosphere with all sorts of sloshing and wheezing and bubbling that gives a terrifying sense of life to the coagulated mass that surrounds you. One of the best gaming headsets is recommended.

If Cronos was all just trudging through fleshy corridors, then Bloober Team would have smashed it. Unfortunately, other parts of the game don’t excel in the same way and are merely fine or disappointing in comparison.

Combat is one. The gimmick here is that dead enemies remain on the ground and can be assimilated by other creatures to become larger and stronger foes – hence the bloody message of “don’t let them merge”. Fortunately, you come equipped with a torch. Nope, it’s not a bright light, but a burst of flames that can incinerate corpses and stop this merging from taking place.

Best bit

(Image credit: Future)

Cronos: The New Dawn finds its identity more as the game progresses and the section in the Unity Hospital is when the game hits its stride. It’s one of the scariest and creepiest places to explore, as you descend further into the bowels of the building, where the infection has taken even greater hold and you uncover some horrifying secrets about the impact of the Change.

That leads to the main flow of combat. Take down targets with your weapons, then prevent any survivors from merging by setting the bodies ablaze. It’s a setup that can create some tense encounters – ones where you’re busy dealing with one target, only to hear the awful sounds of two bodies smushing together in the distance (shoutout to the audio design again), and knowing there’ll be an even greater threat if you don’t introduce them to the cleansing flames immediately.

The problem is that I could count on one hand the number of times I felt seriously threatened by the risk of enemies merging. Too many encounters had too few enemies, were in too small spaces, or were littered with too many (respawning) explosive barrels, that I could comfortably handle the situation. It was only towards the end of the game when I felt overwhelmed in some encounters, needing to more strategically pick my targets, hurriedly craft ammo on the fly, and regularly reposition to burn dead enemies so they couldn’t merge.

Burn, baby, burn

(Image credit: Bloober Team)

It isn’t a disaster, just a shame that Cronos doesn’t really make the most of its main idea. Instead, the overwhelming feeling I had was that I was just playing Dead Space again, swapping between the limited ammo in my pistol, shotgun, and rifle to blast away everything. Outside of rare encounters, the mechanics of merging and burning feel like massively underused and unimpactful parts of the game.

It’s a common feeling. Take your main objective of ‘rescuing’ the specific survivors. I use quotation marks there because the actual process of saving them is kept ominously vague, and is instead best described as extracting and absorbing their soul to gain the knowledge needed to save humanity.

It’s here when I thought Cronos might step up from its clear inspirations with some fresh ideas. Not only is there a morbid mirroring at play (wait, are we the baddies?), but those other lives bouncing around inside your head lead to all sorts of different visions and hallucinations, depending on the characters you choose to save.

In its cleverest moments, who’s knocking about in your noggin can influence the environment or completely change how you perceive things in the world to create some genuinely spooky moments. Once again, though, outside of less than a handful of instances, this idea isn’t explored any further when it’s rife for some really interesting, exciting, and unique possibilities.

It frustrates and disappoints me more than anything. I really want to be clear that Cronos: The New Dawn isn’t a bad game: it plays fine, looks good enough, and runs well. Although I’d stick to performance mode on consoles if you can to get a smooth 60fps, as the quality mode feels far too jittery.

I just can’t help but feel that with the way it relies so heavily on what worked in classic survival horror games from yesteryear, I may have travelled back two decades myself to play it.

Should I play Cronos: The New Dawn?

(Image credit: Bloober Team)

Play it if…

Don’t play it if…

Accessibility

Cronos offers a range of standard accessibility options, including three color blind modes for green, red, and blue color blindness, as well as the option to add clear interaction indicators and subtitles in multiple languages that can be fully customised in terms of size and color.

The game has one Normal difficulty setting, with a Hard mode unlocked after you finish the game once. To customise the difficulty, though, you can adjust settings to get a more generous aim assist and alter whether you hold or tap for quick time events.

A center dot can be added to help alleviate motion sickness, while the game also provides options to reduce or turn off camera shake and sway.

How I reviewed Cronos: The New Dawn

I played Cronos: The New Dawn for around 16 hours on a PlayStation 5 Pro on a Samsung S90C OLED TV using a DualSense Wireless Controller. I mainly played in Performance mode, but I also tried Quality mode for a brief time and found the graphical improvements minimal compared to the benefits of a smoother frame rate.

I swapped between playing audio through a Samsung HW-Q930C soundbar and a SteelSeries Arctic Nova 7, and I definitely suggest headphones for the best experience.

I completed the main game and spent a lot of time exploring the environment to uncover as much of the story and as many hidden extras as I could find.

Today’s best Cronos: The New Dawn deals

Cronos: The New Dawn: Price Comparison



Source link

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Where To Find Fortnite Helicopters - All Choppa Locations In Chapter 6 Season 4
Game Updates

Where To Find Fortnite Helicopters – All Choppa Locations In Chapter 6 Season 4

by admin



It’s been an extremely eventful start to Fortnite Chapter 6 Season 4, with Epic already pulling this season’s medallions from circulation for being too overpowered and ridiculous after two weeks of backlash. Fortunately, Fortnite is always introducing new ways of being absurd and over-the-top, and this week’s update is proof of that, as it added two very silly new vehicles: the Roly-Poly bug, and Hammerhead Choppas.

The Roly-Polys are extremely easy to find since they’re just lying on the ground all over the place. If you see bugs running around, then there are some Roly-Polys, too. There are enough of those for everybody, more or less. But that’s not the case with Hammerhead Choppas, of which only a handful spawn each match.

It makes a lot of sense for there to be more Roly-Polys than Hammerhead Choppas. The Choppas, which are new, much cooler-looking versions of Fortnite’s old helicopters, have enough room for a full squad of players and a hired NPC. Roly-Polys, by contrast, can only fit a single player each–they’re essentially new, bouncier versions of Ballers. So, while there are dozens of Roly-Polys that spawn around the island each match, there are only a few Hammerhead Choppas.

Where to find the Hammerhead Choppas in Fortnite Chapter 6 Season 4

There are five guaranteed Hammerhead Choppas at four main spawn locations–one of the spots actually has two of them. The Hammerhead Choppas spawn at each of the three OXR outposts, which is where the “push back the bugs” events happen, and there are two that spawn at OXR HQ to the north of the center of the island. All five of these Choppas appear to have a 100% spawn chance.

That said, there are also a few other spots where Hammerhead Choppas have some unknown chance of spawning. You can see the spawn locations in the handy map we’ve provided below. Black stars indicate a spot where a Hammerhead Choppa may spawn, red stars indicate a guaranteed Hammerhead Choppa spawn, and red with a black outline indicates two guaranteed Choppas.

There are five guaranteed spawns (red) and three other potential spawn locations (black) for Hammerhead Choppas.

The guaranteed Hammerhead Choppas won’t just be on the ground, of course. The reason they spawn in these locations is that OXR has all the helipads. So when you’re in one of those places trying to nab your fun new method of air transportation, look for it on platforms like this.

For those locations where there’s only a chance of a Choppa spawn, however, they’ll be parked on the grass.

How to use the loudspeaker on Hammerhead Choppas

Fortnite is celebrating the arrival of Hammerhead Choppas to Battle Royale by adding two weekly quests, neither of which is particularly complicated. The first is to damage players from 50 meters or more away while in a Choppa, and while the Choppa itself has no weapons, you presumably would–all you have to do is switch to a passenger seat and fire away. You don’t have to kill anybody. You just need to hit a few shots. And shots on the bugs counts, for the record.

All five guaranteed Hammerhead Choppas spawn on platforms like this.

But while anybody who plays Fortnite has shot some enemies before, the other Choppa quest involves a non-standard mechanic that is completely unique to Choppas: the ability to blast music over a loudspeaker while you fly around. There’s a quest to do just that within 100 meters of an enemy player. It’s not a difficult task, but since it’s only something Choppas can do, and Choppas aren’t in the game very much, most folks probably don’t know about it.

Fortunately, this quest is as easy at they come, because you can turn on the loudspeaker by pressing the emote button–that’s down on the d-pad on a controller, or B on a keyboard. If you didn’t immediately complete the quest when you fired it up, just fly around until you find somebody. Considering that a 100-meter radius is pretty large, it’ll probably happen by accident.



Source link

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Researchers Find Strange Link Between Marathon Running and Cancer
Product Reviews

Researchers Find Strange Link Between Marathon Running and Cancer

by admin


Some of the most physically fit people in the world may have a unique health risk. New research uncovers a possible link between marathon running and colorectal cancer.

Oncologists at the Inova Schar Cancer Institute in Virginia conducted the study, which examined the colons of relatively young people who had run several long-distance races. They found these runners had a much higher rate of having potentially dangerous adenomas (a type of polyp) than would be expected for their age. Though the findings are preliminary and require more confirmation, they may point to a real connection between colorectal cancer and extreme physical activity.

“It tells us there’s a signal here,” David Lieberman, a gastroenterologist and professor emeritus at Oregon Health and Science University not affiliated with the study, told the New York Times Tuesday. “We wouldn’t have expected these rates of high-risk adenomas, which are cancer precursor lesions, in an age group like this.”

A mysterious trend

Lead researcher Timothy Cannon was inspired to perform the study after he treated three young patients with colorectal cancer, all of whom had run ultramarathons (defined as any race longer than 26.2 miles). Not only were his patients fit, but they were also much younger than the typical case, the oldest being 40.

In 2022, Cannon and his colleagues began recruiting endurance athletes for their prospective study. The volunteers had all run at least two ultramarathons or five regular marathons; they also had no family history of colorectal cancer or other apparent risk factors. All told, 100 athletes between the ages of 35 and 50 took part and were given colonoscopies.

The researchers went looking for advanced adenomas in the colons of their volunteers, relatively large or otherwise unusual polyps. Though these growths are themselves benign, they have a higher risk of turning cancerous than other polyps. Then they compared the rate of finding these polyps in their athletes to historical trends.

About 1.2% of people in their 40s at average risk for colorectal cancer would be expected to have advanced adenomas, according to the researchers. By sharp contrast, 15% of the runners they studied had them, while nearly half had polyps in general.

“Consideration of refined screening strategies for this population is warranted,” the researchers wrote in their study.

Much left to understand

The team presented its results earlier this year at the annual conference of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. That means this study hasn’t yet undergone the formal peer-review process. The authors are also quick to note their work isn’t definitive proof that endurance running can cause colorectal cancer.

Assuming this link is causative, there remains the burning question of why. As even weekend 5k joggers will know, running can occasionally trigger bouts of gastrointestinal distress (the namesake runner’s diarrhea). These injuries are sometimes caused by temporarily restricted blood flow to the intestines that damages nearby cells. It’s possible, the researchers speculate, that extreme runners who regularly experience this blood flow loss can develop the sort of chronic inflammation that makes cancer more likely to emerge.

At this point, though, that’s only one hypothesis for what may be happening here. The researchers say future studies should try to confirm their findings as well as untangle the causes and risk factors that could explain this potential higher risk.

All that said, this research shouldn’t scare anyone away from running or any other form of cardio. The many health benefits of regular physical activity—which importantly include a lower risk of at least eight different types of cancer—still far outweigh the risks for the average person.



Source link

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Close