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See the Face Palm and 'Harambe' emojis on iOS for the first time
Apple's developer preview of iOS 10.2 offers the first look at a handful of fresh emojis, including Shrug, Avocado, Face Palm, Duck, Fox, Fingers Crossed and Gorilla (AKA Harambe), as spotted by Emojipedia. The preview is available today for registered developers and it also includes the lineup for Emoji 4.0, the overhaul that adds male and female versions of most jobs to the official Unicode rulebook, plus expands skin tone options across the board. The update means male dancers wearing bunny ears and female police officers, for example.
The Swapper pushed to August 5 on PlayStation platforms
Sci-fi puzzler The Swapper will now reach PlayStation platforms August 5 in North America and August 6 in Europe, Curve Digital announced this week. The developer handling the PlayStation versions now has "extra time to polish the Vita and PS3 versions of the game, which have required extra optimization," it noted in a press release. Originally developed by Facepalm Games, The Swapper was initially expected to arrive on PS4, PS3 and Vita in May, then was delayed to late June. The game focuses on a gadget that allows players to create clones of themselves, swapping between each one in the exotic environment built from clay. Facepalm's original PC game arrived on Steam in May 2013, earning the developer a spot on our December list of 20 studios players should get to know. [Image: Curve Digital]
Are you kidding me? House painter giving away "iPhone 6"
As an Apple blogger, I'm used to seeing stupid concept drawings and videos for alleged future Apple products. Every day, the TUAW inbox is stuffed with new ideas on what the next iPhone or iPad or iWatch could look like, and there are even other websites we won't name who seem to make a living posting these concepts. But it's just plain weird to get an iPhone 6 concept drawing delivered to your door. Today I heard someone putting a door hanger on our front door and was astonished to see that some painting contractor was stooping so low for business that it is actually giving away an Apple device that doesn't exist. The name of the company has been pixelated to prevent it from actually getting some free publicity out of this stunt. At least Apple can take solace in the fact that the painters aren't giving away the Samsung Galaxy S6!
iPhone 5s fingerprint sensor gets completely misunderstood
This article from the Toronto Star, giving 10 reasons the iPhone 5s Touch ID fingerprint reader is a "bad idea," has been making the rounds over the past couple of days. It's been almost universally derided -- and rightly so, because it reads like it was written by someone who's never even held an iPhone before. [Want to help your friends and family grok the iOS 7 story? Send them a link to our Don't Panic Guide to iOS 7. --Ed.] While the level of out-there wacky on this story may be atypically high, the core issue is all too common; this is the sort of brain-dead article that always comes out any time an Apple product includes technology that's new, or not yet popular (as noted, fingerprint ID is neither new in general nor new on a smartphone). Someone in the media who knows nothing about tech consults a so-called "expert" who's never been in the same room with the device under discussion, much less held it in his hand, and we're "treated" to a conveniently-formatted Top Ten (reasons x) list of why (Apple technology y) will lead to the end of life as we know it. All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again. That's what makes my job so much fun. Here's the Toronto Star's list, methodically ripped to shreds. 1. There is a video out there showing a cat being able to unlock the phone. How long before hackers crack the security function? If you deliberately go out of your way to set up Touch ID to allow your cat's paw to unlock your phone, then yes, this will work. You can also set up Touch ID to work with various human body parts and appendages which are also not fingers. Use your imagination... just don't use mine. The point is, you have to deliberately set up Touch ID to recognize your cat's paw print or your big toe, or whatever you're into. If you set up Touch ID to look for your thumb print but then put your cat's foot on the Home button, guess what happens? Your phone doesn't unlock. [To answer the second part of the question, "how long before hackers figure out a way to simulate a fingerprint," the answer may be: not all that long. --Ed.] 2. If Apple gets it wrong, it will set back the biometrics industry years. This article's "expert" consultant doesn't define what "getting it wrong" actually means. My question is, why so pessimistic? What if it turns out that Apple is the first entity to get biometrics right, and it moves the industry forward by several years? 3. This is a solution to a problem we don't have. A collection of similar arguments (no indication at press time whether this article's "expert" ever uttered any of these gems, though I wouldn't be the least bit surprised): My CD player is good enough! Why should I pay $500 for an MP3 player? My Blackberry is good enough! Why should I pay $500 for a phone without a keyboard? My netbook is good enough! Why should I pay $500 for a big iPod touch? 4. Apple is using fear to sell this product. Oh it is, is it? Here's Apple's marketing copy on Touch ID, available on its website: You check your iPhone dozens and dozens of times a day, probably more. Entering a passcode each time just slows you down. But you do it because making sure no one else has access to your iPhone is important. With iPhone 5s, getting into your phone is faster, easier, and even a little futuristic. Introducing Touch ID - a new fingerprint identity sensor. Put your finger on the Home button, and just like that your iPhone unlocks. It's a convenient and highly secure way to access your phone. Your fingerprint can also approve purchases from iTunes Store, the App Store, and the iBooks Store, so you don't have to enter your password. And Touch ID is capable of 360-degree readability. Which means no matter what its orientation - portrait, landscape, or anything in between - your iPhone reads your fingerprint and knows who you are. And because Touch ID lets you enroll multiple fingerprints, it knows the people you trust, too. BOOGA BOOGA! 5. Moisture on your fingers, or something like pizza crust, can slow or confuse the device. Guess what? Wet, pizza-encrusted fingers don't work really well on a touchscreen surface, either. Maybe you should wipe off your grungy paws before grabbing for the $500 portable computer in your pocket. Just because the iPhone's screen is oleophobic doesn't give you an excuse to coat your hands in Crisco every time you want to play Angry Birds. 6. Somewhere in your device will be your file so that it can take that information and reuse it. First of all, there's a dedicated "enclave" in the iPhone 5s processor that's used solely for the purpose of storing encrypted data related to Touch ID. Its only connection to the rest of the iPhone's hardware is a function to say, "Touch ID check OK/Fail." The notion that someone could grab this data via a Bluetooth connection is ludicrous Hollywood "hacking" BS. Second, the iPhone doesn't actually store fingerprint data in the first place. The iPhone 5s maps your fingerprint and converts that into a string of data (a one-way hash), then holds onto that chunk of data. The next time you put your paws on the phone, the same hashing process produces another data chunk; the two chunks -- not the two fingerprint images -- are matched up to allow access. In fact, assuming the hashing process works the same way as it does for existing iPhone passcodes, the fingerprint data is encoded in a way that's specific to that individual phone (salted). Copying it anywhere else would be useless. [Have we been hearing about hacker gangs remotely stealing iPhone passcodes via magical processes to use them elsewhere? No, we have not -- and if we had, it would almost certainly be via social engineering or visual spying as the phone is unlocked, both of which are impossible with Touch ID. –Ed.] Anyone who somehow managed to access the iPhone's Touch ID circuitry and extract the hashed data would just find a string of alphanumeric gibberish, not a 3D-printable set of whorls and ridges ready to be turned into a latex Mission:Impossible-style fake finger. My TUAW colleague Dr. Richard Gaywood, who knows a thing or two about this stuff, says turning that data back into a readable fingerprint "would be like taking a cake, eating half of it, smashing the rest up with a fork, then giving it to someone and asking them, 'How much did the whole cake weigh, and what message was written on the icing that was on top of it?' " Besides, why go to all that trouble? If someone has your iPhone, and they want your fingerprints, they can just use a little-known technique called "dusting for fingerprints" and physically pull your prints off the outside of the device. I understand various law enforcement agencies have been utilizing this technique for around a century and a half now. The common concern I've heard repeated often (sign of the times) is, "What if the NSA gets ahold of my phone? They'll get my fingerprints! And then they'll... they'll use them. They'll use my fingerprints to do their shady NSA stuff! YEEARGH!" I'm not concerned with the NSA getting fingerprints off my phone. That's because my fingerprints are on file with the FBI and have been for nearly 20 years. Thanks, US military! And you're welcome, NSA! I figured I'd make life easy for you (except the part where I moved to New Zealand, I suppose). 7. Anytime you get complex software, it can lead to problems. I honestly don't know what to say in response to this. I'm just basking in the glow of... whatever this is. I feel like this should be printed out in Helvetica Neue Light, white text on a black background, on the biggest poster anyone can find, and it should be hung in the atrium of Microsoft's world headquarters building. 8. This is targeted only for one market: People not concerned about security won't care. So what? They don't have to use it then. News flash: not everyone cares about smartphones, either. The people who don't care about them are still rocking out with "feature phones" that only make phone calls and send texts. That doesn't affect the rest of us, who are playing video games and reading books and shooting high-definition video on our cellphones. ["People not concerned about security" should be a pretty small group. Many, if not most, iPhone users don't put a passcode on their phones at all. This is, frankly, dumb and dangerous -- your pocket computer holds a lot of personal information about you and your family, and it should be protected just like your Mac or PC. Moreover, you can't use Apple's new Activation Lock security feature without a passcode. Touch ID means that those folks who weren't using a passcode due to the lag and inconvenience now will have fewer excuses. –Ed.] 9. Expected technical difficulties with a new product. "I don't think it's going to be welcomed because it's not going to be technically as effective as they thought. The technology is not yet good enough." My Twitter timeline -- and every review of the device I've read so far -- strongly disagrees with this sentiment. Every bit of feedback I've seen suggests that Touch ID, like so many other things associated with Apple, "just works." The above statement reads like it was written by someone who had yet to handle the device and is simply scoffing at the functionality in the interest of being deliberately contrarian. 10. People will use it initially, but the novelty will wear off. "People are going to start to use it in the beginning and then stop using it because of the time delay." Again, reports from people who have actually used Touch ID suggest there is no time delay associated with using it. It's certainly faster than entering a passcode multiple times per day, which is why the feature was introduced in the first place. No one is saying you have to use Touch ID. It's optional. Siri has been out for two years, but even though I use it all the time, I don't know anyone else in the real world who uses it on a day-to-day basis. But it's there if you want to use it -- just like Touch ID. That's the whole point... one of many the linked article's writer and interviewed "expert" seems to have missed.
The Swapper switches it up on May 30
The Swapper – the Indie Fund-ed, clay model-animated, puzzle platformer put together by a few Finnish university students – has been set to hit Steam on May 30. The game has a lone space explorer wandering an alien cave, with a "weapon" that allows him to create clones of himself to solve puzzles and move around. Facepalm has released a brand new trailer showing that gameplay and the title's excellent graphics, which were created by animating photos of actual clay. The initial release will be for PC, with Mac and Linux coming later, and "maybe something else" after that.
The Swapper takes a spin on Steam this spring
The Swapper, an indie marvel more than two years in the making, is coming to Steam for PC this spring, and later to Mac and Linux. If the gameplay demonstrated in The Swapper's Steam launch trailer looks funky to you, that's because it is – developer Facepalm created the entire game using photos of real-life clay models. The above video offers the first glimpse at gameplay since May 2011.The Swapper is backed by Indie Fund, the company behind high-profile indies Dear Esther and Q.U.B.E., and it already has a wall full of accolades, including a featured spot in PAX Prime's PAX10 last year and IndieCade's Special Recognition award.Facepalm previously mentioned PC, Mac and "maybe something else" as potential platforms, and co-founder Olli Harjola tells Joystiq he's looking at other, mysterious consoles: "Let's say I'm currently open to putting the game on new platforms where we don't need to make compromises regarding the experience. There's nothing concrete yet."The Swapper will be a part of Indie Megabooth at PAX East (which starts on Friday, March 22), along with an appearance at GDC the following week.%Gallery-183342%
Trion hopes you'll pre-order some Defiance DLC along with your Defiance pre-order
Trion has yet to release its sci-fi shooter TV tie-in called Defiance, but the firm is already trotting out pricing plans for season pass DLC content. A company press release mentions five DLC packs "rolling out after launch" which are now available for pre-purchase in a $39.99 bundle. Trion says that this represents a 20% savings over the suggested retail price of $9.99 per pack, which begs the question of whom exactly suggests the retail prices that generous game companies subsequently discount. In any event, Defiance is slated to launch on April 2nd. You can of course pre-order it, and if you're feeling especially impatient, you can now pre-order its DLC too. The packs will provide a new playable alien species, additional weapons, vehicles and missions, a lock box, and more. [Source: Trion press release]
City of Heroes thinks you deserve a facepalm emote
If you've been enjoying City of Heroes' recent F2P conversion, then you're probably aware of the one great truth of the superhero genre: Customization is everything. You can never have too many costume pieces, auras, capes, and emotes. Perhaps that's why Paragon Studios is giving away 10,000 /facepalm emote codes as part of its ongoing series of Facebook contests. The contest is open to large parts of North American and Europe for the duration of October, and all you have to do is subject yourself to the wilds of Facebook and click a "like" button or two to get your exclusive emote. What are you waiting for? The plebes of Atlas Park await your well-placed /facepalm.
Some Assembly Required: How to screw up your sandbox
Between bouts of Global Agenda, Age of Conan, and a stack of single-player games, I've been taking my own advice lately and looking for a new sandbox. The end of Star Wars Galaxies is forcing my hand, and I figured I'd better start now if I don't want to be stuck with nothing to play on December 16th. While there is a veritable ton of different sandboxes to choose from, I must admit to being a bit frustrated with nearly all of them. If it's not one thing, it's another, and most are such glaring deficiencies that I can't help but wonder what was going through the minds of the development teams during the construction process. Join me after the cut for a few things you should consider if you're making an MMORPG sandbox.
Breakfast Topic: Care to share any recent embarrassing moments?
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the AOL guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages. It was my first run through regular Grim Batol. I was in a guild group made up of the movers and shakers, including the guild leader. I was still a fairly new member of the guild and had never actually run anything with the leader in tow, so I was feeling on my guard. This was the first time in GB for several of us, so things were getting spelled out as we went. The bombing run went adequately, and so did General Umbriss. I'd managed to dodge the worst of it so far, and my DPS was holding up all right, so I was beginning to puff out my chest and not feel like a total failure. We crept around the corner and the tank began pulling the trash leading up to Forgemaster Throngus. I peeked my head around the corner to see what was going on ... and my water elemental promptly pulled Throngus and everything else in the entryway. We all fought valiantly but suffered the inevitable wipe. Fortunately, everyone was in good spirits about it and laughed. It's become a bit of a guild joke, and I now get told when I should stay put, but I was completely mortified and wanted to slink out the back door with my draenei tail between my legs. What moment has made you want to log off in shame and never return?
T-Mobile UK cuts 'fair use' allowance to 500MB, sends you home to watch online video
In one of the most insensitive announcements in recent PR history, T-Mobile UK is telling its customers who want to download or stream online video to their mobile devices to "save that stuff for [their] home broadband." The carrier, one half of the UK's biggest operator Everything Everywhere, had up until now offered one of the better monthly allowance deals with a 3GB data consumption limit on Android phones. It still is, in fact, since its new changes aren't coming into effect until February 1st, but come that fateful Tuesday, T-Mo's understanding of "fair use" will shrink down to 500MB each month -- after which point you'll still get to browse the web and email for free, but any video content will presumably be subject to an extra charge. It's not clear how "that stuff" will be handled by T-Mobile once you cross the frugal new threshold, nor is it clear whether customers who signed up for big bodacious 3GB of data will be set free once this new lockdown on mobile video is in effect. Godspeed to you all. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in] Update: T-Mobile has responded with a clarifying statement we've added after the break. There will be no surcharges for use over 500MB per month, but once you cross that line, any downloading activity will be "restricted." By which the company seems to mean "restricted to whatever WiFi connection you can scrounge up," because its 3G airwaves will be off-limits.
Breakfast Topic: How do you get past bad nights?
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages. No matter what aspect of WoW you prefer, we all have bad nights. Your guild has an off night, wiping endlessly on farm content. You get in a drama-filled PUG and get saved to a raid that doesn't really accomplish much. Your arena team loses most of its matches. You keep getting into BGs with half the other members AFK. We rage, QQ, maybe have an alcoholic beverage, and eventually log off frustrated and unfulfilled. However, with as many subscribers as WoW has, it is clear most of us manage to put that behind us and try again. I'm not much of a PvPer anymore; mostly, I raid now. Lately, our guild has been struggling a bit. Lots of players are taking time off until Cataclysm. Some of the replacements just aren't as good as the people they are replacing, or they are having trouble adjusting to the way our guild does fights. A couple of weeks ago, we had the worst raid night I have had since Wrath launched, wiping for about two hours on heroic Lady Deathwhisper -- a fight we usually one-shot -- and as the raid wound down, we actually set the encounter to normal just to get past it so we could clear at least through Saurfang before we called it a night. There was finger-pointing, complaining, grumbling, and general poor morale as the night wore on, and I am ashamed to admit I joined in on some of it. As the night ended and I logged off, I was just glad it was over. So as I logged on for the next raid, I was already dreading what would become of the continuation of the previous night's antics. However, as a guild, we decided to have fun the rest of the week, bust out some achievements for those who'd missed them, and not worry about slamming our heads against heroics -- just clear the raid and make it a short week. It brought morale back up and turned things into a rewarding and relaxing raid week, and we got back on track. So how do you and your guild or friends recover from bad nights?
Hyperspace Beacon: We hope this never makes it into SWTOR, but knowing our luck, it probably will, again
Tweet var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/Hyperspace_Beacon_We_hope_this_never_makes_it_into_SWTOR'; Like a kowakian monkey-lizard in heat, Larry Everett is back again with another edition of your guide to EA-BioWare's yet-to-be-released game Star Wars: The Old Republic. Welcome to the Hyperspace Beacon. Every once in awhile, the Star Wars universe produces the strangest plot devices or game items. Some of these concoctions should never see the light of day, but unfortunately, they do. I like to highlight these malformed ideas in a segment of the Hyperspace Beacon called "We hope this never makes it into SWTOR, but, knowing our luck, it probably will" or WHTNMIISWTORBKOLIPW, for short. This week's column revolves around the prequels. Although there are many, many, many things wrong with the prequels, I would like to take a look at some of the highlights. To help those who may not know what is being discussed, I will give you a brief explanation of what each item is, then explain what is wrong with it, and follow that with a humorous explanation of how BioWare will ruin SWTOR by implementing it in our beloved game. Let's see what creative blunders we have in store this week.
Microsoft details Vejle, the new Xbox 360's system-on-chip architecture
There aren't many unresolved mysteries with Microsoft's new console by this point -- apart from perhaps why it wasn't named the Stealthbox, like we were suggesting -- but one thing that hasn't been covered in excruciating detail yet is the new 360's splicing of the CPU and GPU into the same chip. Microsoft has remedied that today, informing us that the 45nm system-on-chip (codenamed Vejle; sorry, Valhalla fans) inside the refreshed Xbox makes do with a relatively minimal 372 million transistors, requiring only 40 percent of the power and less than 50 percent of the die space of its 2005 ancestor. A somewhat bemusing addition, noted by Ars, is the FSB Replacement sector you see in the image above. It's designed to induce lag in the system so that the Vejle chip doesn't run faster than the old stuff, something Microsoft couldn't allow to happen. Facepalm away, good people, facepalm away.
Xbox Live used by crime suspect to tamper with witness
A 23-year-old Connecticut man out on bail for drug and gun charges was arrested after sending threatening messages to a witness across Xbox Live. According to the New Haven Register, Anthony Hayward allegedly sent an Xbox Live message, stating "Rats die slow" and including the witness's home address, in December. The previous summer, Hayward had been arrested after a stolen gun was found under the passenger seat of the car he was driving. The witness stated that Hayward placed it there. Hayward surrendered himself to police Tuesday and was charged with "witness tampering, intimidating a witness and two counts of second-degree harassment." The judge set bail for this latest offense at $50,000. We set ourselves to facepalm. [Via Kotaku]
Reuters: Video games are for adults, too
Probably the best way to read the Reuters article entitled "New arsenal of shooter games target older players" is to imagine it being reported live by your local news station. You know, the same way local news stations tend to report the latest technological innovations -- Twitter, for example -- months or even years after their invention. The article is filled with inaccurate (and downright false) information, no doubt intended to thrill and mystify anyone that just upgraded to a 56k modem (congrats, by the way). One statement likely to jump out at anyone even remotely familiar with games: "The popularity of shooter games has been proven by Activision Blizzard's 'Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2' which has raked in over $1 billion (617 million pounds) worldwide and counting." Sure, Modern Warfare 2 is a blockbuster success, but it's hardly the first multi-million selling shooter in the last decade. Another tidbit claims that MAG's 256-player multiplayer is "the largest multiplayer experience for a video game." We're assuming this statement excludes, oh, every MMO ever made. The best assertion in the piece, however, is that today's games are "not all for children," which is offered as though it's some kind of revelation. Honestly, there are no words for that one, so we'll just leave it to Captain Picard. [Via Aeropause]
LED traffic lights don't melt snow, do cause accidents
A number of cold weather American states are reporting their dismay at finding out that LED traffic lights are so energy efficient that they do not produce enough excess heat to dissipate any snow that covers them. It turns out, perhaps in an homage to bad engineering everywhere, that the inefficiency of incandescent light bulbs was previously relied upon to keep traffic signals unimpeded. The new LEDs do not achieve the same effect, which has resulted in a few accidents and even a death being blamed on obstructed traffic lights. Feel free to apply palm to face now. It's not all gloomy, though, as the majority of people are said to treat a dysfunctional traffic light as a stop sign (how clever of them), and a tech fix is being worked on as we speak.
Why you shouldn't get your video game news from The Wall Street Journal
When you want the very latest on old guys, money and old guys' money, you turn to The Wall Street Journal. When you want news about video games, you could probably do better, as evidenced by this quote from a Dow Jones Newswire piece the publication ran today about that THQ takeover speculation:"Take-Two has a number of strong franchises and a number of wholly owned Internet Protocols. Wholly owned IPs not only carry higher profitability, but also are more valuable to media companies because they could be adapted into movies, TV serials and online destinations."We'd make a joke here, but there's literally nothing we could say that would be funnier than that quote.[Thanks Leigh!]
Smartbook AG (the company) follows in Psion's footsteps, issues cease and desist letter to website using the term 'smartbook'
Looks like smartbooks really are the new netbooks, after all. Aptly exemplifying déjà vu, German company Smartbook AG has issued a cease-and-desist to Netbooknews.de, claiming it owns the trademark and copyright on the term "smartbook" and that its use on the news site is damaging to the company's reputation and credibility. The letter demands that within two weeks all instances of the word be stricken from both the German and English-language versions, despite the latter being hosted in the US, outside of German jurisdiction. Of course, the logical thing would be to go after a company like Qualcomm who's been using the designation all along, and not the outlets who report on it, but why let a little common sense get in the way of some good ol' fashioned internet drama, eh Smartbook? By our count, it was almost exactly six months between Psion sending out its first cease-and-desist on "netbook" to media outlets and its eventual acquiescence and settlement with Intel, so consider the clock here officially ticking. [Via jkOnTheRun]
April Fools 2009 Roundup
April Fools.I like it and I don't.It can sometimes be hard to distinguish between real news and fake news, especially with some of the elaborate schemes people do in order to make the fake stuff seem as real as possible. And there's a lot of it too. Google and Blizzard win the day, as usual. C.A.D.I.E anyone? The page is a throwback to the 1990s Geocities pages many of us made back then. My Geocities site had to do with Star Trek and lots of other nerdy stuff, although someone on staff had a Digimon site (I'm not telling who...).After the break you can check out our list of all the April Fools jokes that went on yesterday that pertained to WoW. And for posterity's sake we've taken as many snapshots of the pages as we could and put them in a nice gallery so 10 years from now we can all look back and go "Aww... isn't that... /facepalm."%Gallery-49097%
