Pebble Time

A smarter choice of watch?

Pebble is one of the success stories of Kickstarter, the website where consumers pay in advance to help inventors develop new products. Having sold over a million smartwatches, starting years before Apple, the company now has more than enough money from Silicon Valley investors to make whatever it wants. Even so, it returned to Kickstarter to launch its third model, currently being shipped out to backers and available soon to everyone else.

Extensions you must stop using

Extensions may be slowing down your PC or even making it unsafe. Jonathan Parkyn reveals the browser tools that do more harm than good

Browser extensions are handy tools that add extra options to your browsing experience, such as blocking adverts or letting you watch films that would normally be blocked in the UK. They’re free, small and easily added to your browser with one click - but they may not always be the blessing they appear.

A recent spate of scares has revealed that extensions can secretly sap your PC’s resources or even make your computer unsafe. Indeed, Google yanked 200 extensions from its Chrome Web Store earlier this year after they were found to be stealing users’ data.

Here, we’ll unmask the browser extensions you should avoid, and suggest better, safer alternatives.

Gears Of War 4

Not to get too technical, but the Xbox wouldn't work without gears inside

It’s always frustrating when a studio reveals a huge new game, and then won’t go into any more details. It’s even more frustrating when the game in question is Gears Of War 4 and you’re already rabid with excitement - for something that isn’t even out until 2016 at the earliest... but then, that’s just how some of us are. We want to know more, we need to get all the information, but The Coalition (once Black Tusk Studios, formerly Microsoft Game Studios Vancouver) isn’t talking - and as such we’ve had to put our investigation skills to good use, along with a healthy dose of speculation. But this is Gears, so it’s worth it.

Get your PC ready for Windows 10. Part 3

In the final part of our series, Jonathan Parkyn shows you how to back up all your data before installing the new operating system

Back up your files

To back up your files you’ll need a backup program and somewhere to store your backups. For most people this means an external drive of at least 500GB in size.

Destiny: House Of Wolves

Ever since Destiny’s release, Bungie has assured its players that they are being listened to, that the studio’s 500-strong team is working around the clock to shape this ambitious, yet flawed, online shooter into the game its fans want and deserve. It has rarely felt like the truth, the studio’s portentous, in-universe communications dismissing long-standing grievances while it works to its own agenda. Finally, eight months and change on, Bungie is starting to deliver: House Of Wolves is the work of a studio serving its players, rather than catering to the whims of those within its walls.

Yooka-Laylee

The Kickstarted return of a long-lost style of 3D platforming is a Rare treat in every sense

Most crowdfunding campaigns launch amid an atmosphere of hope rather than expectation. As a spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie in development at a studio staffed almost exclusively by Rare alumni, Yooka-Laylee was as sure a bet as you’ll find on Kickstarter, and so it was little surprise when it quickly passed a modest £175,000 target. No one, however, predicted that it would do so in 40 minutes.

15 Years of Linux

Take a walk down memory lane as Jonni Bidwell examines how Linux has changed over the magazine’s lifespan.

AstroPi SenseHAT

Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the ‘USS Enter-Pi-ise’, its mission to educate and innovate. Captain Les Pounder takes the helm.

The Raspberry Pi has travelled across the sea, powered robots, taught entire classes and is now set to reach into space with the AstroPi project. This is a science project where schools from across the United Kingdom are being asked to devise experiments which, if chosen, will be run on the International Space Station (ISS) by ESA astronaut Tim Peake.