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'Pac-Man' on Amazon's Alexa isn't at all like 'Pac-Man'
Pac-Man might never have left the public eye, but with Wreck-it Ralph, Pixels and Ready Player One, the iconic elder statesman of gaming is now in front of people that may have never touched an arcade joystick. To that extent, Pac-Man's latest 'game' makes sense — it's arriving on Amazon's Alexa as a skill today.
ESPN+ offers a first look at Disney’s big plans for streaming
Disney has been relatively open about its plans to carve out a name for itself in the video-streaming wars, as it readies to compete with the likes of Netflix and Hulu. Although the company isn't launching its flagship service until the end of 2019, we now have an idea of what it might look like. This is where ESPN+, the long-awaited standalone streaming service from Disney-owned ESPN, comes in. The new $5-per-month offering, which launches today featuring both live and on-demand content, is the first service to arrive from the Walt Disney Co.'s direct-to-consumer division.
What to expect from Mark Zuckerberg’s congressional hearings
The next stop on Mark Zuckerberg's apology tour is the United States Congress. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the Facebook co-founder and CEO will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, and the House Energy and Commerce Committee. This comes after weeks of uncertainty over whether Zuckerberg would agree to meet with lawmakers following the Cambridge Analytica (CA) scandal, which may have exposed the private information of up to 87 million users.
Zuckerberg: Nobody has been fired over Cambridge Analytica
Facebook has been ramping up its damage control as outrage continues over the Cambridge Analytica mess. But it seems nobody at the social media company has been let go as a consequence. On a media conference call, Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that no employee was fired in the wake of the scandal because, in his words, it's his fault: "At the end of the day this is my responsibility," he said.
Mark Zuckerberg: We didn’t do enough to keep users safe
In light of the news that Facebook has rewritten its data policy, and that Cambridge Analytica may have had up to 87 million users' data, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg hosted a call with the media to discuss the company's efforts to better protect people's information. Zuckerberg began by sending his condolences to everyone at YouTube after Tuesday's shooting at its headquarters in San Bruno, California, where multiple people were injured by a lone attacker. He then went on talk about the state of Facebook and said that the social network didn't do enough to prevent abuse of its platform, from the spread of fake news to not properly protecting user data.
10 years later, 'SpyParty' hits Steam Early Access on April 12th
Chris Hecker, the creator of SpyParty, is smiling and gesturing wildly over the open lid of a laptop showcasing the game's six new upgraded maps. After 10 years of development, SpyParty is finally going to land on Steam Early Access on April 12th, and Hecker is barely containing a cacophony of emotions -- not all of them bad. "That's fucking crazy and I'm terrified, like literally, abject terrified, and my anxiety level is through the fucking roof," he says. "But I'm excited too, and we'll see. There's a whole bunch of things I'm concerned about with that and excited about that. Like the fact that I have the best online competitive gaming community ever."
Ashley Madison attempts to regain the public’s trust
Ashley Madison, the website for "married dating", wants the public to know that it's changed its ways. It's been a little under three years since the dating service for extra-marital affairs was hacked by a group calling itself the Impact Team, exposing the personal data and billing information of over 30 million customers -- including users who spent $19 on a "paid delete" option for their accounts.
What educators think about Apple’s new iPad
Yesterday's Apple event showed that the company wants to make a serious push back into the education sector. This isn't anything new, though, according to CEO Tim Cook; it's just the company going back to its roots. The centerpiece here is a "new" iPad, a 9.7-inch tablet with Apple Pencil support that aims to woo teachers everywhere. There's also a redesigned iWork suite that lets students doodle and create digital books within Pages; the Schoolwork app, for tracking, well, schoolwork; and a kid-friendly tool for coding AR. Apple is hoping that will be enough to win over schools.
How Facebook plans to colonize gaming
Facebook is in the middle of a public relations nightmare, caused by reports that research firm Cambridge Analytica used its site to harvest data from 50 million user profiles. But, that's not stopping the company from talking up the potential of its platform, in this case as it pertains to gaming. As part of Facebook's GDC 2018 announcements, it revealed last week that any developer can now make Instant Games, thanks to new tools that let them create HTML5-based web titles for Messenger or the News Feed. Additionally, Facebook has made it easy for devs to build livestreaming features directly into their PC games, without any capture hardware or software required, in a clear attempt to challenge the likes of Twitch and Youtube.
VR escort film pulled from SXSW amid allegations of misconduct
Two days ago, director Michael Jacobs described his first VR short, GFE (an acronym of "girlfriend experience"), to Engadget on camera. The film is a "documentary fantasy," Jacobs said, with a focus on "demystifying escort work and bringing a sense of empowerment to escorts." According to the star of GFE, it does the exact opposite.
Facebook knows it must do more to fight bad actors
Not everything at SXSW 2018 was about films or gadgets. A few blocks away from the Austin Convention Center, where the event is being held, the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) hosted a number of panels for its Innovation Policy Day. In a session dubbed "Fighting Terror with Tech," Facebook's Lead Policy Manager of Counterterrorism, Brian Fishman, spoke at great length about what the company is doing to keep bad actors away from its platform. That doesn't only include terrorists who may be using the site to communicate, or to try to radicalize others, but also trolls, bots and the spreading of hate speech and fake news.
'Hearables' could diagnose disease, if we let them
Poppy Crum is the Chief Scientist at Dolby labs, and no stranger to the conference circuit. Her talk at this year's SXSW -- "A Hearable Future: Sound & Sensory Interface" -- promised to dive into the hidden possibilities that sound and the human ear have to offer technology. Unfortunately, and perhaps ironically, Crum's talk was plagued by audio problems throughout (through no fault of her own).
YouTube CEO talks misinformation, creators and comments at SXSW
YouTube's presence at SXSW 2018 extended beyond its Story HQ, a space where it turned ads into videos that feel more like art. The company's CEO, Susan Wojcicki, was part of a panel at the event titled "Navigating the Video Revolution in the Digital Age." There, she talked about a wide range of topics, including experiments for YouTube's comments section and how much money creators are making. But the biggest news Wojcicki dropped on stage was about a new feature she called "information cues," which will help fight hoaxes by linking viewers to articles on Wikipedia that debunks those.
YouTube makes art out of ads at SXSW
Unless it's during the Super Bowl, chances are not many people actively look forward to watching ads. But the main reason people do enjoy those is that brands design them to have a cultural effect, rather than just feel like a simple product-pitch video. At SXSW, YouTube is showing a form of that with "The Greatest Stories Retold," an installation inside its Story HQ space that had 13 creative agencies turn classic fairy tales like Snow White into interactive, short-form stories. What YouTube hopes to accomplish with this is to show the power of its six- and 15-second ads, as well as longer-form ones.
Tennis legend Andre Agassi is building tech to help with dyslexia
Andre Agassi, the legendary American tennis player, made an appearance at SXSW 2018 to announce a partnership with Square Panda, a startup that makes educational apps for kids. Through his Early Childhood Neuroscience Foundation, Agassi and Square Panda are creating Readvolution, an initiative that aims to develop the "first-ever" free dyslexia-assessment game. To make this happen, the plan is to get help from scientists in a number of universities in the US, such as the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) and the Weill Institute of for Neurosciences.
Twitter and Fox Sports have high hopes for their World Cup live show
With the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia just around the corner, right holders to the event are starting to share more details about their coverage plans. And, to no surprise to anyone, social media will play a major role in that. Fox Sports, FIFA's English-language broadcast partner in the US, is going all out on Twitter this year with a partnership that includes a daily, 30-minute live show from Russia and bringing near-live highlights to the platform. Twitter, which has around 330 million active users, has been ramping up its sports efforts in recent years, and it plans to use the upcoming World Cup to showcase the power (and potential) of its platform. Just yesterday, the company announced a three-year deal with Major League Soccer to stream 24 games per season.
Netflix isn't chasing the competition into sports or live TV
Fresh off of its Oscars win for Icarus, a documentary about Russia's doping epidemic in sports, Netflix held a press event at its Hollywood headquarters. There, inside a 280,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art studio that it just opened last year, CEO Reed Hastings talked about the state of Netflix and the industry as a whole. The setting seemed fitting, considering the company is planning an $8 billion investment in original content for 2018 alone. That programming strategy is what makes Hastings confident that Netflix's future is bright, especially as it faces increased competition from the likes of Amazon, Hulu and, soon, Disney. The latter of which is also a partner, since it owns all of the Marvel franchises that Netflix has built a mini-verse around.
Giugiaro's supercar concept EV gives back to the power grid
The Giugiaro Sybilla is a bonkers concept EV with a fighter jet-like sliding canopy, gull-wing doors and screens everywhere, including the doors. But the vehicle from GFG Style, penned by auto design legend Giorgetto Giugiaro, is actually meant as a showcase for sustainable grid technology, believe it or not. It was built for Chinese windmill manufacturer Envision Group to illustrate how electric cars can connect intelligently to homes, businesses and charging stations so they don't overwhelm future electrical grid systems.
Netflix is taking a wait-and-see approach to virtual reality
Netflix was one of the first video-streaming services to adopt VR in 2015, when it introduced a 360-degree app that let users step into a virtual room to watch movies or TV shows on a Gear VR. Then, a year later, it launched a version of that application for Google's Daydream headset, but the company has been relatively quiet in the VR space ever since. The reason for that, simply put, is that Netflix doesn't see the technology as a priority -- at least not right now. Speaking at a media event inside the company's Hollywood headquarters, Chief Production Officer Greg Peters said that Netflix is only focused on seeing how VR systems evolve at the moment.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai: ‘We need smart networks, not dumb pipes’
After cancelling his CES 2018 appearance in January, reportedly due to death threats, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai today attended a panel at MWC 2018 in Barcelona. During the event, titled "The Future of the Industry: Transatlantic Digital Policy and Regulation," Pai discussed his plans for 5G connectivity and, of course, his decision to repeal net neutrality in the US. He said that, despite public perception on the moves he's made since taking over the FCC as part of President Trump's administration, the internet will remain open and free and that "no one gets a pass." The "no one" he mentions is likely a reference to the idea that certain companies, particularly network carriers like Verizon, will get special treatment after net neutrality ends on April 23rd.
