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Google updates Search with approved COVID-19 vaccine information
Google is launching a new Search feature that will display a list of authorized vaccines in your location, as well as information panels on each type of vaccine.
Twitter suspends 1,600 accounts linked to state disinformation networks
It blocked accounts allegedly run by Iran, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and Thailand.
Twitter removes 170,000 state-backed accounts based in China
In its latest sweep, Twitter has removed 32,242 state-linked accounts with ties to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Russia and Turkey.
Yahoo agrees to pay $50 million to data breach victims
Yahoo will have to cough up $50 million in damages as part of a settlement following massive data breaches that took place in 2013 and 2014. The first breach affected three billion accounts, while the second affected 500 million accounts -- neither were disclosed until 2016. Hacked information included passwords that were encrypted but could be cracked.
Strava will focus on privacy awareness to address security issues
The CEO of fitness tracking app Strava has responded to security concerns raised this week regarding the publicly-available details of secret military bases. In a blog post, James Quarles addressed the sensitive nature of information readily available on the app's heatmap feature and said the team is "taking the matter seriously". Strava is "committed to working with military and government officials" to address the issue, he said, adding that the team is reviewing features that were originally designed for "athlete motivation and inspiration" to make sure they can't be used nefariously.
Apple at odds with Indian regulators over anti-spam app
In a classic case of an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, Apple's refusal to approve the Indian government's anti-spam iPhone app is causing uproar on both sides. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has been pushing unsuccessfully to get its "Do Not Disturb" software included in the App Store, and Apple refuses to budge on the matter, claiming it violates the company's privacy policy.
Australians researchers have built a better qubit
Qubits, the unit of information used by quantum computers, make use of a phenomenon known as "superposition" wherein they can exist in two separate quantum states simultaneously. Theoretically, they'd enable computers to perform a variety of tasks far faster than conventional desktops by performing simultaneous computations in parallel. The problem is that qubits tend to be very unstable which prevents the information the contain from being read. However, a team of researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia may have finally tamed the elusive qubit. They've coerced one into remaining stable for ten times as long as normal qubits.
Stephen Hawking believes he knows how information escapes black holes
Stephen Hawking announced during a lecture at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden on Tuesday that he has potentially solved the Information Paradox. The paradox a conflict between the quantum mechanics and general relativity models that has vexed physicists for more than four decades. The Information Paradox arises from black holes -- specifically what happens to information about the physical state of objects that fall into one. The quantum mechanical model posits that the information remains intact while general relativity argues that it is indeed obliterated under the black holes immense gravitation. But Hawking has developed a third opinion: the information never actually makes it into the black hole. "I propose that the information is stored not in the interior of the black hole as one might expect, but on its boundary, the event horizon," he said.
Toshiba's humanoid retail robot is ready to greet you
If you happen to be shopping in Japan sometime soon, don't be surprised if the first offer of help comes from a machine. Toshiba has just installed Aiko Chihira, a humanoid greeter robot, at Tokyo's Mitsukoshi department store. The kimono-clad automaton will guide you around the shop while it blinks and smiles -- at once helpful and, as you can see above, a little creepy. It can't respond to questions yet (don't yell at it over a faulty product), but it's capable of handling both spoken and signed languages. No, Aiko isn't as interactive or relentlessly adorable as SoftBank's Pepper, but it'll be a big time-saver if it prevents you from getting lost in the aisles. [Image credit: AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi]
A forgotten Belgian genius dreamed up the internet over 100 years ago
Though we're pretty sure that time travelers don't exist, people were working on hypertext -- used by web browsers to retrieve connected information -- long before computers. It even predates the ideas of a certain Vannevar Bush, the man generally acknowledged as having laid the groundwork for hypertext by microfiche in a seminal 1945 article. Nope, according to the Atlantic, some people were pondering ways of storing and retrieving information prior even to the 20th century. A Belgian genius called Paul Otlet posited an idea in 1895 about "universal libraries" to give anyone access to a vast number of books. By 1934 he had refined it to "electronic telescopes" that would connect people instantly to books, films, audio recordings and photos.
WildStar's interface: Then and now
You can argue that in a game that allows for free modification of the user interface, it's less important that you get the whole thing right out of the gate. But with a game as action-oriented as WildStar, a comfortable default interface is going to play a big role in how the game feels to new players. The game's latest development blog shows off the game's old UI from earlier beta tests as well as the newest iteration, with the latter incorporating a great deal of tester feedback to make the whole thing better. The revised UI takes up less crucial space in the center of the screen, also known as "the space where players are watching for telegraphs." Core actions are more central and easily accessible, while additional bars are positioned along the sides. The new UI also does a better job of displaying the health and resources of the player at a glance. If you've played the game but aren't terribly fond of its default interface, you may want to glance at the development diary and see if the redone setup is more to your liking.
EVE Online assembles a new guide for new pilots
Getting started in EVE Online can be a daunting task. Most of what people know about the game comes from secondhand sources -- there's a lot of money being thrown around, there's an atmosphere that makes a prison shower seem welcoming, there are plenty of people who will blow up your ship because it's there and they can. But what do you do? How do you start? Hopefully, your questions can be answered via the new FAQ for new pilots. The FAQ clocks in at around 38 pages and covers everything from death and respawning via clones to what you can actually do in the game for content. For veteran EVE players the information will probably seem like old hat, but for novices or those who are just curious it can provide plenty of insight. So if you want to learn more about the game, go ahead and take a gander at the full new player guide.
Star Trek Online posts a four-year infographic
Space -- it's not really much of a frontier any longer. These are the voyages of a large number of different ships in Star Trek Online. Their continuing missions: To complete reputation projects. To seek out new ships and new duty officers. To boldly go where a lot of people have gone over the past four years -- specifically, 3.2 million captains -- but it's still worth exploring just the same! With the official four-year mark for the game just around the corner, Cryptic Studios has put out a new infographic detailing stuff like exactly how many captains are currently exploring the final not-so-much-a-frontier. It also contains a handy timeline of the game's major content releases over the past four years and all of the former Trek actors now providing voices to iconic characters in the game. If you want a quick look at the game's history for yourself, check out the infographic on the official site.
Storyboard: Being who you aren't
There is, as I have discussed, a group of roleplayers for whom the game is the thing. If the game doesn't allow you to be a moisture farmer, then why would you want to pretend to be a moisture farmer? Similarly, if you're not actually a master of the marketplace or sitting on huge assets in the game, why would you want to pretend that you are? I am not one of those people. I'm playing a financial wizard partly because I am not a financial wizard. And it's not that I don't love games where that's a viable option, but that's a different discussion. However, this does raise the question of how you can pretend to portray something you aren't intimately familiar with. If I'm playing a doctor, I'm going to run into the simple problem that I'm not a doctor in real life (full-time writers rarely receive extensive medical training). All of roleplaying is some degree of pretending to be something you're not, but how do you do so when it's something that's a bit harder to fake?
The first month of RuneScape 3 by the numbers
It's been a bit more than a month since RuneScape updated to RuneScape 3 -- an overhaul of the graphics and mechanics that still retains the core of the same game. But how well has it done in that month? The team at Jagex has crunched some numbers and they look pretty favorable. Over the past 30 days, 100,000 players have reactivated old accounts, and 300,000 players have started completely new accounts to play the game. About 600,000 hours of play have been logged per day on all new, existing, and reactivated accounts, which is pretty staggering. Since the game's launch event players have killed 60 million enemy soldiers and collected 1 billion Divine Tears (remnants of a now-dead god whose death kicked off the current state of the game). While one month is too early to call success or failure, it's a sign that even the older games on the market can still have quite a lot of life in them. Jagex also posted a video about the new Nightmare Zone, which is content now available for Old-School RuneScape but won't be coming to RuneScape 3 proper. We've embedded that behind the break. [Source: Jagex press release]
Google Now's voice query support gets ported to Google Search: ask, and you shall receive
Google Now's a solid product, but it's reach is also fairly limited... compared to Google Search, anyway. Now, the company's voice element in Search -- which was updated in a major way back at I/O in May -- is gaining some of that Now flair. In the coming days, Google will be rolling out a smarter Search to all US, English-speaking users on desktop, tablet and smartphone, regardless of platform. You'll need only to tap the microphone icon instead of typing in a search query, and then ask humanistic questions about your upcoming flight(s), reservations, purchases, plans and photos. Naturally, you'll need your flight confirmations sent to Gmail and your photos stored in Google+, but if you're already neck-deep in Google's ecosystem, the newfangled functionality ought to serve you well. For a few suggestions on questions to try, check out the company's official blog post. (Hint: don't ask what your Facebook friends are doing tomorrow.)
The Nexus Telegraph: Getting the message across in WildStar (before it kills you)
There are no two ways about it: A a lot of WildStar's combat involves getting out of the way of something. Combat telegraphs have been reinforced as a major element of gameplay, and we've seen countless videos explaining how the telegraph system works in varying degrees of depth. And much like pretty much every other element of the game, this is a major issue for some people. I can understand why this provokes a knee-jerk reaction. I mean, now you can see exactly what's going to happen next and where you need to not stand, right? How is that still a challenge? The answer is that there's still a lot of challenge involved, and allowing people to know what's going on around them ahead of time not only preserves the challenge but actually heightens it. And to talk about that, we're going to need to step back and talk about lots of other games and the different sorts of challenge you can face in games.
The Nexus Telegraph: Respecting the NDA on WildStar's beta
Carbine Studios is holding all of the cards for WildStar and those of us not in the beta just have to wait. Which is beyond frustrating. We have to sit back and let things slowly come out of the official PR machine, and no matter how fast we get new revelations, they're never fast enough. The temptation to look for someone willing to peel back the veil is immense because it beats pressing against the glass and waiting to find out more. But the NDA is there for a reason. Speaking as someone who isn't in the beta but is still talking about the game on a weekly basis, I will be the first to point out that waiting for official information is often like waiting for a solar eclipse before doing even the most basic tasks. It's frustrating, slow, and irritating. The problem is that the alternative -- wherein we just jump on every new piece of leaked information -- isn't good, and it comes out worse in the end.
Priceline says mobile flight bookers like taking it easy
Priceline.com is one of the most well-known flight- and hotel-booking sites out there, and the company recently shared some information with TUAW about how its mobile device-based users tend to set up travel. The company identified three trends for the people booking flights from mobile devices like iPhones and iPads, presumably through the company's iOS app. First, those who booked air travel on mobile devices tended to be younger than the average purchaser of a flight ticket on a desktop. The average age for a mobile booker was around 32, about six years younger than desktop users. That still seems old to me, but it makes sense that the people booking flights tend to be older, as they're most likely to have the money for traveling this way. Mobile air bookers also tend to book things closer in advance, says Priceline, and about half of those booking flights by mobile device only booked one-way tickets, which the company says means those users like to make plans on the move rather than far ahead of time. Finally, mobile bookers had one big advantage: They tended to pay less for their tickets, with an average price of $283 as compared to desktop users' $315. I'm not sure that means mobile bookers have a nose for deals necessarily; maybe it just means that people tend to book pricier flights on the desktop in general. No matter what the reason, it's definitely interesting that there are such clear differences between Priceline's mobile users and those on the desktop.
Daily iPhone App: Tripcase hits version 3.0
I'm always on the lookout for a new travel app -- I've used TripIt a little bit and I don't mind it, but it hasn't really grabbed me a must-use way just yet. So when TripCase sent word that they'd just hit version 3.0 with a new design and some new features, I decided to give the app a quick look. What I found, as you can see above, was a really quality, straightforward travel tracking app with a lot of common features done well rather than anything really brand new. Like other travel trackers, you can just email TripCase with your travel plans and the app will automatically build an itinerary for you, and then update you as often as you need it on what's happening where. In addition to travel information, you can also add in items and tasks of your own, grab weather at your departure or destination city, and share plans out with friends or colleagues. The biggest difference between TripCase and other travel services like it is probably that TripCase is completely, 100% free -- other services often require a subscription fee or extra charges, but TripCase, as far as I can tell, earns its money through referrals and targeted messaging, so you as the customer have to pay nothing at all. That's pretty nice, and it means that if you've been looking for another travel tracking solution, you can try TripCase out for free. These services are so often just a matter of personal taste and whatever workflow you're used to, and I don't personally see anything in TripCase (other than the price) that stands out as extremely unique. But that's not to say it's not a well-designed, powerful travel app, so if you need one of those, give it a look.
