Ten years ago Markus "Notch" Persson founded the gaming studio Mojang and after a year Minecraft was released. After years and years of breaking records Microsoft bought the company, and the game with it, for $2.5 billion.
Everyone knows the game and it has become a social phenomenon in the nearly 10 years it's been around. More importantly it has continued to evolve and lure in new players.
Last year, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that Minecraft has never been in a better spot, and the main man of Microsoft might have been right.
Now Minecraft is celebrating a milestone no game has ever come even close to. The game has sold an unbelievable 200 million copies.
To give this achievement some perspective, the second-most sold game in history is GTA V with 120 million units and Minecraft has sold twice as many copies as the legandary Tetris at 100 million. And Minecraft is definitely not done selling, either.
Just recently, Mojang updated the graphics of Minecraft and now includes support for ray tracing.
To celebrated the milestone, Mojang has been renamed Mojang Studios, which encompasses all the studios. Also, the company received a brand new logo, that you can see above and is introduced in the video below.
The squabble between Huawei and the U.S. government has continued for years now, and there seems to be no end to it. the most recent changes to government rules renew existing restrictions and add some new ones.
Trump admin has added another three months to the Huawei ban, meanwhile also extending the exceptions to this rule. This means that there won't be Android on Huawei phones at least for another three months, and probably for the foreseeable future.
The exceptions that allow some specific cases, like some companies building networks in the U.S., to still do business with the Chinese company will remain in place. However, bipartisan pressure might make this the last extension.
Both aisles seem to believe that Huawei's connections with the Chinese government indeed endanger national security.
The most important part of the new rules are however, well, the new rules. These include a required license from all companies that are selling American-owned technology to Huawei.
Due to this the Taiwanese semiconductor powerhouse TSMC, who's been providing most of Huawei's smarpthone chips, has to acquire a license to continue manufacturing for Huawei. That hasn't happened, at least yet, and thus TSMC has had to halt production.
Apple is reopening more of its stores in the U.S. and Canada but it taking extra precautions to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.
The Cupertino giant had closed all of its Apple stores worldwide in April as the world responded to a wave of COVID-19 cases. Now that the pandemic seems to be slowing in many places, Apple is responding in line with local circumstances and orders in reopening its retail stores.
According to reports, 25 stores are reopening next in California, Washington, Florida, Colorado, Hawaii and Oklahoma. However, it is not business as usual. For starters, all staff at the stores will be wearing face masks and all customers are expected to wear masks or face coverings too. If customers do not have a mask, they will be provided with one.
Additionally, customers may have their temperature checked and be posted health questions will screen for those with symptoms -- like cough or fever -- or who have had recent exposure to someone infected with COVID‑19. Overall level of service will depend on the status of the virus locally, so in some places there may be only pick up service. Stores may close just as quickly as they opened if circumstances change too.
Multiple reports of compromised high-performance computer systems across Europe surfaced in the past week, and clues may indicate a single actor behind the breaches.
Supercomputer systems are energy-hungry high-performance number crunchers that are used for everything from weather pattern modelling to simulating protein folding. That same raw calculation power can be used for mining cryptocurrencies, and cases have happened in the past where employees have been busted running unauthorized mining operations on HPCs.
Reports out of Europe last week suggests that for the first time hackers have successfully breached multiple HPCs and clusters to run a mining application. Last Monday, the ARCHER supercomputer at the University of Edinburgh was was shut down while a security exploitation was investigated. The same day, in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, the bwHPC organization shut down five of its HPC clusters due to similar incidents.
Furthermore, later last week similar incidents was reported in Germany, in Barcelona, and also in Zurich. None of the organizations managing the systems gave detailed accounts of the breaches, but the Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) for the European Grid Infrastructure (EGI) provided malware samples and network compromise indicators from the multiple incidents.
It might sound like a very small change, but it is interesting decision nevertheless. YouTube has recently changed its video quality classification in a way that no longer categorizes 720p video as High Definition (HD) video.
From now on, only videos with 1080p resolution or higher are being listed as HD videos in YouTube listings. This is also visible when user changes the quality of the video playback - there, the small HD label appears only for 1080p and beyond.
YouTube itself hasn't commented on the change, but the trend is pretty clear. A decade ago, yes, 720p could be realistically categorized as "high definition", as most videos were still using 480p resolution (or worse) and 1080p was the de facto best video quality available for most people. But since then, 4K videos have become commonplace, as have TV sets and services that are capable to ourput such videos.
For comparison, the good olde 720p video has 921'600 pixels in each video frame. Meanwhile, the most common 4K videos, using UHD resolution, have 8 294 400 pixels per frame. Thus, 4K videos have almost ten times higher resolution than 720p videos.
Ubisoft has filed a lawsuit against Apple and Google over the availability of a game it alleges to have ripped off its intellectual property on their digital stores.
In the lawsuit filed in Los Angeles on Friday, the French publisher claims that the tech giants have refused to remove Area F2. Developed by Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd.'s Ejoy.com, Area F2 is the title is a near carbon copy of Rainbow Six: Siege, according to the Ubisoft complaint.
"R6S is among the most popular competitive multiplayer games in the world, and is among Ubisoft's most valuable intellectual properties," Ubisoft claims, reports Bloomberg.
"Virtually every aspect of AF2 is copied from R6S, from the operator selection screen to the final scoring screen, and everything in between."
The title has been available to download from the services for a month, and according to Ubisoft, it notified both Google and Apple of its infringing nature.
While the use of legitimate film and TV streaming services has risen during the COVID-19 pandemic, the demand for illegal streaming has also gone up sharply.
In some cases, it has also trebled, according to a report by the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT). FACT has observed a significant increase in links to illegal streams of films that are shared online during the past couple of months, compared to February.
It reports that the FACT scanning team removed more than double the volume of film links and illegal streams in April. FACT also notes that the closure of movie theaters has resulted in movies being made available for streaming when in normal times they would be exclusively in cinemas.
While that has been seen as a success - with Trolls World Tour generating more revenue during three weeks of digital release than its prequel did during five months in cinemas - FACT also warned that it comes with a hidden cost of piracy spreading illegal copies and streams of them around the world.
"Piracy is any rights holders' biggest competitor and with content consumption set to stay digital, it's never been more important to protect content. Whenever its release; we can protect it," the FACT report reads.
Social network giant Facebook is to acquire animated GIF-sharing platform Giphy, putting it under its Instagram service.
The company announced its decision to acquire Giphy in a company blog post on Friday, though it did not disclose the financial cost of the move. However, Axios estimated the cost at around $400 million.
Facebook will make Giphy a part of its Instagram photo-sharing platform, revealing that 50 percent of GIPHY's traffic comes from the Facebook family of apps, half of that from Instagram alone.
"GIPHY will continue to operate its library (including its global content collection), and we're looking forward to investing further in its technology and relationships with content and API partners," the Facebook announcement blog reads.
"People will still be able to upload GIFs; developers and API partners will continue to have the same access to GIPHY's APIs, and GIPHY's creative community will still be able to create great content."
Sony has released an app that will help shoppers determine if televisions will fit comfortably in their living rooms.
The new Envision TV AR app lets potential buyers select a TV model and see how it will fit in a given space. All the user has to do is select a TV and point the phone's camera to view the TV in any space. It can show TVs mounted or on a stand.
Additionally, the app displays technical details including HDMI and other ports.
"As we continue to stay home, this app offers a new way for our customers to confidently purchase a Sony TV in the comfort of their living rooms," said Mike Fasulo, president, and chief operating officer of Sony Electronics North America. "We hope this new technology takes the guesswork out of shopping online."
The Envision TV AR app can be downloaded for Android devices from the Play Store. It is also available from Apple's App Store for iOS devices.
Epic Games online store greeted users with errors on Thursday as online shoppers sought to get a copy of Grand Theft Auto V for free.
The Rockstar Games blockbuster, released in 2013, is available for free until May 21 and can be downloaded from the Epic Games Store provided you install the store's launcher on your computer. There is currently a Mega sale going on at the store with many big titles seeing price ups up to 50 percent.
As news of the GTA V freebie spread, traffic to the Epic Games Store blew up to the point that visitors started to see a '500' error presented in a variety of languages. There were also reports that Launcher logins were affecting Fortnite players throughout the day as a result of the extra traffic.
Popular titles including Red Dead Redemption 2 and Control are available with significant discounts until June 11, while the store is also giving everyone a $10 coupon to spend on games that cost $14 or more.
President Donald Trump has extended the ban of several Chinese telecom manufacturers, namely Huawei, to May 2021.
Ban essentially bars American compnies from using telecom equipment manufactured by Chinese companies such as Huawei and ZTE, citing national security risk as the reason.
However, The U.S. Commerce Department has granted several extensions that have allowed U.S. companies to continue business with Huawei. Current extension is set to expre on Friday, but it is highly likely that it will be extended once again.
The trade war between United States and China is most visible with Huawei's consumer products where company has abandoned the use of Google services. Basically all new Huawei phones are sold without Google Play, Youtube and other Google products. It also means that consumers buying new Huawei phones can't access the Google Play to download new apps, but they have to rely on much more limited selection of alternative app stores.
Rooting Huawei phones has proven to be tricky, so there are no easy options for those who want to buy Huawei phone, but also want to use familiar Google services.
Several sources claim that Google is planning to retire its popular Chromecast media streaming device line and replace it with Android TV -based device.
According to rumors, the upcoming device would carry Google Nest brand, to be in line with company's other "smart home" devices. Device itself would use Android TV, like many other popular media streaming solutions, such as Roku and Android Fire TV.
Chromecast itself isn't an independent media streaming solution, but rather a playback device where user can "cast" videos from his/her phone or computer that the Chromecast would then happily output to user's TV set. Android TV-based device, however, would be completely independent device, allowing user to use a traditional remote control to watch material from select providers, such as YouTube and Netflix.
Chromecast fans wouldn't be forgotten: the rumored device would also include Google Cast support, meaning that it would still function exactly like Chromecast does, if needed.
Epic Games announced yesterday that they've released their supremely popular battle royale game, Fortnite, on Google Play.
The game has been available on Android for a while now but the company has decided not to release it via Google's app store due to high share they would have to provide Google for each purchase.
Clearly Epic Games has now grown tired of not being on the most populous app store on the planet, and have caved in under the pressure of Google's ecosystem.
The company's statement makes it clear that this move is not made without the slightest scorn. In fact, the company still believes that the 30 percent cut Google gets is unreasonable, and that they make developers outside the app store feel like criminals by issuing them similar status as malware.
You'll still be able to acquire the game outside the app store like you did before the announcement if you don't want Google to get a cut.
It is fairly certain that figures on Android haven't been satisfactory to Epic Games and this move was forced upon them. Now it remains to be seen how it can compete with a long-time Google Play favorite PUBG Mobile on Android.
It is perhaps not surprising that in these dire times people are seeking for explanations from all kinds of sources and beliefs. However, perhaps the most ludicrous conspiracy theory to unearth since the flat earth is linking 5G cellular networks and COVID-19.
Not only are some spreading this hilariously insane idea on the web, some are so sure of its validity that they are taking down 5G equipment to prevent the spread of the virus. This seems to have started in the UK but it was only a matter of time before somewhere else people were to follow suit.
Yesterday, a police report from a small town of Pedersöre in Osthrobothnia, Finland has revealed a fire in a telecommunications building next to a cellular tower. The fire managed to advance enough to cut the tower from the rest of the network.
According to the police, the fire seems to have been lit on purpose and they investigate the case as arson.
It has to be noted that there's no 5G network in the area, and likely no 5G equipment located at the site. Whether the suspect knew this or not is uncertain, as there hasn't been arrests yet.
The research arm of security company Check Point Software Technologies has released a study which takes a look at the online phishing scams.
Check Point Research Q1 2020 report reveals which brands are criminals exploiting when trying to scam people. The specific term for the type of scam that uses brand recognition and lookalike websites to hook people in is brand phishing.
The scam might use the logos, company names, designs, and domain names to fool people into thinking that the thing is for real. After the false positive identification, the scammer tries to phish usually personal or credit card information.
According to the report, Apple was the number one brand abused in brand phishing schemes, perhaps somewhat unsurprisingly. The world's leading technology brand was identified in 10 percent of global brand phishing scams.
Following Apple, 9 percent was credited to Netflix scams and the third place went to Yahoo! with 6%.
While some of the more popular technology brands made the top, the next most popular type of brands associated with brand phishing were banking and media brands.
When it comes to platform of the scams, email only constituted 18 percent of the attacks with mobile taking the second place with 23%. However, most brand phishing scams use web (59%) as the main platform for their false information.
Ten years ago Markus "Notch" Persson founded the gaming studio Mojang and after a year Minecraft was released. After years and years of breaking records Microsoft bought the company, and the game with it, for $2.5 billion.
The squabble between Huawei and the U.S. government has continued for years now, and there seems to be no end to it. the most recent changes to government rules renew existing restrictions and add some new ones.
Apple is reopening more of its stores in the U.S. and Canada but it taking extra precautions to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.
