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Can adding a tiny, ARM-based 32-bit computer to your Linux box really be all you need to improve cryptographic security?

Entropy – the contents, basically, of /dev/random – isn’t something to which most Linux users give a second thought, but it keeps server administrators and cryptographers awake at night. A system starved of entropy or, worse, filled with poor-quality entropy, can suffer everything from performance issues to security holes – and it’s a problem that becomes much larger when you get into the topic of virtualisation.

Steam Link

The war for the living room, as pundits in thick-rimmed specs are so fond of calling it, is fought with a blitzkrieg of features; manufacturers and platform holders do battle over who can fit the most functionality into the smallest box possible. As we’ve already discovered, that’s a risky approach indeed, and it’s refreshing to unbox a device with a singular purpose. Steam Link streams games from a PC running Steam on a local network. And that’s it.

Guild Wars 2: Heart Of Thorns

What if questing in an MMOG was more than a checklist of chores to be ticked off as you lap each area? With Guild Wars 2, ArenaNet has always sought to challenge accepted MMOG design, and the game’s first major expansion, Heart Of Thorns, presents an alternative vision for how massively multiplayer environments should work. The result is exciting and fresh, even when it falters.

Mirror’s Edge

The anti-authoritarian adventure that opened a window to a new world of firstperson play

Mirror’s Edge arrived in 2008 as a searing white riposte to a jus t-ended generation of over-brown WWII shooters and firstperson trudging. It was different, and new – different partially because it was new, forming a partnership of opposites with fellow EA newcomer Dead Space. Both were fresh IP, released a month apart in a publisher’s schedule otherwise dominated by licences and sequels, and both were built upon contrasting foundations of meaningful design. Dead Space, made in California by Visceral Games, encapsulated a grounded American industrialism, a practical celebration of blue-collar capability that informed everything from its violence to its visuals. And Mirror’s Edge, built in Stockholm by DICE, was almost comically Scandinavian, a bright, minimalist vision of sleek architecture and graceful action – part parkour playground, part Ikea dystopia.

Paradox Development Studio

How a team of Swedish programmers redefined ‘niche’

Paradox’s position as standard bearer on the field of grand strategy is fitting, given it claims to have invented the genre. It’s near impossible to discuss games of invasion and diplomacy on a global scale without some reference to its dogged, 20-year effort to simulate and pervert the past, from the Middle Ages through to the end of WWII. Titles such as Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis and Hearts Of Iron have become a convenient shorthand for the complex histories that play out upon the signature map and oh-so-many menus of the in-house Clausewitz Engine. You can spot a Paradox game at a glance, in the same way that a surfeit of vantage points and a map to fill by activating them announces a Ubisoft open world.