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Australia’s Prime Minister wants to ban social media for children
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wants to impose a nationwide age limit on social media.
Dyson hopes you'll throw down $650 for its lamp that mimics candlelight
Dyson's newest light, the Lightcycle Morph, is its most flexible lamp yet. At first glance, it looks similar to the Dyson Lightcycle, introduced last year, and it has many of the same key features -- like the ability to automatically adjust based on your local daylight. It also has three axes which allow it to rotate into different positions and the ability to emulate candlelight, but you'll have to shell out a minimum of $650 for this updated version.
YouTube is making its terms of service easier to read
If you visit YouTube today, you'll see a pop-up window alerting you that the platform's Terms of Service will be updated on December 10th. The new terms do not change the way YouTube treats your info, and YouTube isn't changing how it uses creators' content, but it is clarifying a few of its policies.
Tencent adds age-based playtime limits to ‘League of Legends’ in China
In the face of pressure from the Chinese government, Tencent and Riot Games have added age-based time limits to League of Legends in China, Polygon reports. Minors now get booted from the game after two hours of play, and the companies use China's national ID numbers -- which are used to make accounts -- to verify ages. Supposedly, the new rules are an attempt to curb gaming addiction.
Dutch court rejects man’s attempt to change legal age for Tinder
Last month, Emile Ratelband, a motivational speaker from the Netherlands, asked a Dutch court for a legal age change. His argument was that while he was technically 69 years old, he felt 20 years younger, and that age difference was hurting him both in his work life and on Tinder. But the court has now issued its ruling, and Ratelband will have to remain 69 in the eyes of the law.
Dutch man hopes legal age change will get him more Tinder matches
People have surely resorted to some interesting tactics in order to score a date on Tinder, but Emile Ratelband, a motivational speaker from the Netherlands, is taking a peculiar route. Ratelband claims that though he is 69 years old, he feels 20 years younger, and his actual age is making it difficult for him to find matches on the dating app. So now he has filed a lawsuit to get his age legally changed. "When I'm 69, I am limited," Ratelband said. "If I'm 49, then I can buy a new house, drive a different car. I can take up more work. When I'm on Tinder and it says I'm 69, I don't get an answer. When I'm 49, with the face I have, I will be in a luxurious position."
Twitter is having a hard time enforcing its age policy
Once Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect in May, Twitter began enforcing its age policy more aggressively, and unfortunately for some users, that meant having their accounts locked even if they were currently of age. GDPR doesn't allow those under the age of 13 to sign user agreements, but a problem arises when current users who are now older than 13 signed up for an account when they were younger than 13. A source at Twitter told The Guardian in May that since the company can't selectively remove a user's content that was posted when they were underage, it was instead suspending those users altogether. But while the company was reportedly working on a more long-term solution, weeks later, the problem persists.
Intel faces age discrimination allegations following layoffs
Intel's push for greater diversity hasn't helped it avoid trouble. The Wall Street Journal has learned that the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is investigating claims that Intel's large-scale layoffs discriminated against older employees. In a May 2016 round that cut 2,300 workers, for instance, the median age of those let go was 49 -- seven years older than those who remained. The EEOC hasn't decided whether or not it will file a class-action lawsuit against Intel, but the affected people will be free to pursue civil lawsuits if the regulator doesn't find enough evidence to pursue its own case.
US appeals court says Tinder Plus pricing is discriminatory
They say all's fair in love and war, but those that have used Tinder will probably disagree. And that includes Allan Candelore, a man suing the dating app over the pricing of its premium service, Tinder Plus. Candelore and his lawyers argue that charging $9.99 a month to users under 30, and $19.99 a month to those over 30, is age discrimination, and violates two California laws: the Unruh Civil Rights Act and the Unfair Competition Law.
The panic and pleasure of online dating as a woman in her 40s
Dating in my twenties and thirties made me feel like Odysseus, trying to choose between dashing myself on the ego-bruising rocks of casual romps or a slow death from unrequited lust for garbage humans. There was the ex who brutally dumped me but wouldn't stop emailing me for months, whose presence at dorky work gatherings made me dizzy; the sociopathic film critic whose shoulder I virtually cried on; the go-nowhere first dates; and the great, wide swaths of time spent single, usually pining after some unavailable director or writer who'd relish my attention and nothing else. And lots of therapy.
IMDb tells California it will continue to publish actors' ages
With age discrimination rife in Hollywood, California wanted to do something about it. That meant introducing a new law that didn't actually target the root cause of the problem -- i.e. penalizing the people who engage in the practice -- but instead stopped websites from publishing an individual's age. IMBb, the movie listing website owned by Amazon, was told in September that it would need to remove ages and birthdates of performers by January 1st, 2017. It's been a week since the deadline passed and IMDb hasn't done a thing.
PlayStation VR has a lower age limit than Oculus Rift
With the VR revolution almost upon us, would-be early adopters are sizing up which headset is right for them. Do they back the Oculus Rift headset, the motion-tracking Vive, the smartphone-centric Gear VR or the gaming-focused PlayStation VR? What about their suitability for children: is that even a consideration? We know that Samsung and Oculus have set an age rating of 13 for their head-mounted displays, with Oculus noting that younger children are in "a critical period in visual development," and now Sony has come forward to say that its VR headset "is not for use by children under age 12."
Microsoft's age detection shows up in your Bing image searches
Microsoft's face-based age detection is still a little wonky (I'm thankfully younger than what you see above), but the company is clearly enamored with it -- you'll now find it in Bing image searches. All you have to do is look for a person and, in most cases, roll over the picture to find a #HowOldRobot that will guess how many birthdays the subject has seen. The feature is available in at least North America, so give it a shot... if for no other reason than to giggle at its occasionally harsh appraisals of your looks. Update: Microsoft says the tool is rolling out in Bing over the next week or so.
To gauge your fellow gamers' ages, watch for jumping
When trying to figure out just who we're playing with in virtual spaces like World of Warcraft, we often watch how they talk for clues. Common knowledge suggests that gamers who are more mature -- and therefore older -- will be more grammatically correct, typing in complete sentences with proper punctuation rather than leaning on acronyms and slang. However, a recent study on gaming chat by a Colorado State University researcher suggests our common knowledge might just be wrong -- because while phrasing can certainly give us hints at a typist's age, Millennials are better at grammar than we think. In a study of players in Second Life and World of Warcraft, research concludes that the more definite indicator of age is how players move. Younger players jump about twice as often as older players, as well as moving more in general (15% more) and moving backwards more often (30% more). So before calling out your fellow players for immature kids, you might keep an eye on how often they jump -- if they don't, they may just be straight-up immature.
The Daily Grind: Are MMO gamers aging out of the genre?
In a recent report, Resident Evil developer Capcom claimed that its playerbase's average age is inching upward and its core users are in their late 30s and 40s, making for the "increasing possibility that some percentage of the existing users will outgrow games altogether." The Resident Evil games aren't MMOs, of course, but journalists and commenters have been suggesting the same pattern for the MMORPG genre for years as a way to explain everything from the rise of "accessible" MMOs to the reduction of grindy time-consuming gameplay to themes seemingly catering to those darn kids on our lawn. Perhaps armchair demographers are wrong and the future holds the promise of retirement homes filled with gaming rigs and World of Warcraft IV. What do you think -- are classic MMO gamers slowly aging out of the genre? Is MMO gaming something we "outgrow," or is it something we're ultimately pushed away from? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Mog Log: There's nothing to say about Final Fantasy XI
At a glance, Final Fantasy XI is doing all right for itself. It's been running for over a decade and has had to deal with only occasional server merges. It launched another new expansion this year. It certainly doesn't have the population that it used to have, but the people who are playing seem happy enough with the game, and that's what matters. And yet for all that I ostensibly write about both of Square-Enix's online games, these days it's pretty much all Final Fantasy XIV. Some readers have asked me why this is. Have I fallen out of love with Final Fantasy XI? Yes. And no. It's complicated. And I think discussing why I'm not writing more about XIV's more classic sibling also bears some discussion in the context of the game as a whole. So let's talk about why there's so little to say about Vana'diel these days, even while Vana'diel continues to be an active environment.
The Daily Grind: Should characters age?
There are a lot of immersion-ruining elements of MMOs (probably too many to count, depending on how cynical you've become), but every once in a while I'm bothered by the fact that characters just don't age. Not only do we play in game worlds that are apparently after the child apocalypse, but everyone you meet is visually between the ages of 17 and 22. Maybe 23, if the player used the "age lines" that developers toss into the character creator on a whim. It makes me wonder if, to give us a true sense of living in these worlds, our characters should age. It was a big selling point of the first Fable game, although having never played it, I don't know how well it turned out. But I remember reading a preview of the first game and actually digging the idea that my character would mature and grow old, with all of the benefits and drawbacks that entails. Should characters age in MMOs? If so, how could it best be done so that it wouldn't ruin everyone's day? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Asheron's Call 2 producer weighs in on the revived game
It's always a sad day when a game you worked on shuts down. You shed your tears and move on, most likely wishing you could have the game back but knowing it's gone for good. But Asheron's Call 2 has come back against all odds, and while it's not yet clear what the future will hold for the dead-and-revived game, former producer Eric Heimburg quickly jumped in to see how well the game holds up in a more modern sense. Heimburg's main complaints are that the game's interface hasn't held up very well (requiring players to click through several screens just to compare item stats) and the huge world can lead to some travel issues. He also shares some insights regarding some of the strange elements of the beta, including the absence of a friend list feature. It's an interesting look not just behind the scenes of a game no one expected to return, but at the differences between a game long remembered and the game that actually existed. [Thanks to Dengar for the tip!]
Sony suspends PlayStation Store for PS3 in Korea, blames new law about selling to minors
Sony has been caught unawares by a legal change in South Korea, which prevents under-18s from being asked for their names or ages for the purpose of account authentication. No sooner had the company announced a half-price sale at its PS Store and then it was forced to pull the whole thing down in order re-work the interface and make it compliant. It's expecting to reopen it sometime "this year," but in the meantime the Store is strangely still accessible to PSP and Vita users of any age, while multiplayer and other PSN functions will continue to run on PS3. There must be a lawyer somewhere for whom this all makes complete sense, and hopefully they work for Facebook.
Can playing WoW improve your brain power?
Can playing World of Warcraft maintain or improve your brain power? When it comes to specifics like improving cognitive function, there really haven't been many significant, sizeable research studies that can put hard numbers on the line. WoW player and early onset Alzheimer's disease sufferer Bill Craig would certainly attest to the power of gaming in maintaining brain function -- he's living proof that WoW can be a vital part of a brain-healthy regimen to stretch and maintain cognitive function. (If you haven't already read Bill's story, you owe it yourself to follow that link. It'll make your day.) So when news of a fresh research project looking at WoW's effects on cognitive abilities in older players started making the rounds in the national media, Bill was one of the first to ping us with an excited email. "Tell us something we didn't already know, right, Lisa?" he crowed. "Guess I might be called a 'pioneer' of sorts, huh?" Indeed, Bill, you're totally my hero -- and look out, because it looks like the scientific world is starting to catch on and catch up to our secrets. This week, WoW Insider interviews Dr. Jason Allaire at North Carolina State University, who co-authored the recent study showing that playing WoW can boost certain cognitive functions in older adults. Himself a former WoW player and long-time MMO player, Dr. Allaire shares a gaming-filtered view of how his research and WoW interrelate to show that indeed, World of Warcraft can be good for your brain.