Microsoft has revealed that it intends to release the console gaming subscription service to PC as well. At this point we don't have a lot of details about the upcoming extension to PC games, but fortunately E3 is just around the corner.
Microsoft is promising more information at E3 which starts in less that two weeks. At this point we know that Xbox Game Pass will bring over 100 games from 75 different developers, which unsurprisingly includes few Microsoft-owned studios.
The third-party contributors includes giants like Bethesda and Sega but also lesser known studios like Deep Silver and Devolver Digital. Deep Silver is a German game publisher known for games like Metro Exodus and upcoming Shenmue III.
Devolver Digital on the other hand has recently worked with more mobile gaming, like Reigns: Game of Thrones and other Nintendo Switch titles.
In addition to over 100 free games, Xbox Game Pass subscribers get a 20 percent discount on other games in the Microsoft Store.
For further information about things like pricing and compatibility with Xbox Game Pass on console, we'll have to wait until E3.
One thing that isn't only related to the Game Pass, but in Microsoft Store in general. Microsoft has confirmed that the store will soon support native Win32 software. This means that game developers can submit the exact same file on Microsoft's store as they do on say Steam or other competitors.
After Supreme Court's ruling earlier this month, Apple's standing as an untouchable money making machine, thanks to App Store, has become under threat.
Supreme Court ruled that Apple's 30 percent commission in the App Store makes it a participant, and perhaps a monopoly at that, in the transaction, and therefore customers are able to sue them under antitrust legislation.
Apple obviously views their part completely differently, and has expressed this in a new website, titled Principle and Practices, dedicated to App Store policies.
According to Apple, they are not participating in the selling of apps to consumers. Instead they only work with app developers that are also the ones Apple gets their 30 percent cut from.
Furthermore, even when the case goes to court, their view is that the company is not restricting the sales, since the app developer can determine the price themselves, even when there is no alternative store on iOS.
This price can be zero dollars, which means Apple won't get a dime, and 84 percent of apps do just that. They also remind that they do let developers to compete against Apple's own default apps in the App Store.
Google has announced that they are bringing some of the more important features of Waze to Google Maps. The company has already brought them to some markets, including in the US, but now a worldwide launch will extend that to more than 40 countries.
Waze is a navigation and commute app that helps especially with traffic related issue submitted largely by the community, such as congestion, speed traps, and speed limits. It was acquired by Google in 2013.
The list of countries includes now many in North and South America, Europe, Asia, Middle East and even Africa.
According to TechCrunch, the update is coming to both Android and iOS, although only the former will be able to report mobile and stationary speed cameras.
Speed limits are shown in the bottom left side of the screen and speed cameras appear as orange bubbles on the route.
While users will get speed limits and speed cameras on their Google Maps UI now, there will still be plenty of Waze exclusive features that might keep you interested in the standalone app.
Finally, here's the full list of countries supported by the new Google Maps features:
Apple is going to reveal their newest version of iOS next week. The mobile operating system gets announced an update at the annual Worldwide Developer Conference, as usual.
The new iOS 13 will be unveiled first time officially on WWDC keynote on June 3 by Tim Cook et al. While there have been rumors of what updates the new version will bring along, Apple still keeps secrets fairly well.
One thing that has definitely been rumored is a iOS-wide dark mode. Now we've also got some evidence in form of pictures to prove it.
Leaked pictures that 9to5Mac managed to get their hands on show the darker than normal iOS, but according to these pictures there isn't a drastic change. On the left side picture, the bottom Dock seems to be a tad darker, but changing the wallpaper would do a lot to make it darker.
Dark mode gets better use inside apps, like in the Music app where OLED displays will save battery more efficiently thanks to the black backgrounds. The same darker smoked glass effect seen in the Dock is in use in other bottom and top bars too.
9to5Mac also notes that on the right side picture we can see the new annotation tools Apple has implemented in the updated screenshot feature.
Virtual Reality is an amazing experience everyone needs to try out. However, there are clear limitations to what can be achieved with the hardware we have available.
Either you'll need a separate computer or the quality will be reduced, and there's also problems with wires. HP belives that it's newest invention has both of these problems covered.
Say hello to the HP VR Backpack!
This is no joke. When Oculus comes up with new standalone headsets like the Oculus Quest, HP has decided to go the other route.
HP obviously doesn't want you to compromise when it comes to the fidelity of the experience, but you might have harder time moving with a full-blown PC on your back.
The backpack PC includes a 8th gen Core i7 processor, Nvidia's new GeForce RTX 2080 GPU as well as 16 GB of RAM and 256 GB SSD storage. There's also a large battery that means you won't need to be tethered to anything.
As it is just a regular PC inside the backpack, it supports all the traditional VR headsets that would be used with a PC. HP, however, would love if you would use their own Reverb headset.
Then we come to the price of this amazingly original innovation. To have your own VR backpack you'll have to shell out $3300. It's not exactly cheap, is it?
HTML is often colloquially understood as the grounds which the internet is built upon. The language of the net, Hyper Text Markup Language, and its standardized use has been maintained over the years by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), but no longer that is the case.
W3C has decided to abandon the maintenance of HTML and DOM standards and has handed the torch to a organization called WHATWG. WHATWG, or Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group, has been around since 2004 and been an integral part of HTML standard development.
The group includes representatives from most of the largest web browser developers, inluding Apple, Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft. Alongside these behemoths there are hundreds of other members.
Previously WHATWG has done some of the hard lifting in determining future specs of web standards before the standardization process was completed by W3C.
Up until early last year, W3C and WHATWG worked together fairly seamlessly, but problems arose around W3C's implementation of DOM standard v4.1 some of which influential WHATWG members objected to.
Now after a year of back and forth, W3C has decided to hand the reins to WHATWG when it comes to HTML and DOM standard implementation.
Many people prefer to go to sleep while listening to soothing music. To help with this, Spotify has finally added a sleep timer to its Android app. Such feature has been a standard option for most music players for ages now, but the biggest of them all, Spotify, hasn't bothered with the feature until now.
To activate the feature, use the three-dot menu in top corner in "Now Playing" mode. Now, a menu appears. There, you can spot the Sleep Timer option. User can choose between 5, 10, 15, 30, 45 and 60 minutes. Alternatively, you can choose to end playing after the currently playing track.
As you might imagine, here's nothing more to it. A simple, yet quite useful new feature to the most popular streaming music app there is. Screenshots below highlight where to find the feature:
An artist has sold an old laptop infected with six of the most financially-damaging pieces of malware in history at auction for more than $1.34 million.
'The Persistence of Chaos' is the name given to this art project. It consists physically of a Samsung NC10-14GB 10.2-Inch Blue Netbook, running Windows XP SP3, that just happens to be infected with some of the most damaging pieces of malicious software that has spread around the world over the years.
In total, there are six pieces of malware running havoc on this system. ILOVEYOU is a virus that was spread via e-mail and file sharing, which caused over $15 billion in damages as it infected more than half a million systems. MyDoom was a rapidly spreading worm, and is estimated to have caused over $38 billion in damages.
SoBig is a worm/trojan that circulated through e-mail, affecting hundreds of thousands of systems and causing around $37 billion in damages. WannaCry is a piece of ransomware that affected at least 200,000 systems in 120 countries a couple of years back, causing an estimated $4 billion in damages. This malware was responsible for disruption to the UK's National Health Service.
DarkTequilla was a piece of malware that stole banking credentials and other data, mainly targeting Latin America. Finally, BlackEnergy is a cyber-weapon that was used in an attack that caused a widespread blackout in Ukraine in 2015.
Poland has made a complaint to the European Union's top court against controversial new copyright reforms that were approved and adopted by the bloc in April.
There was considerable push-back over the past year against proposed European Union copyright reforms. Two articles in particular provoked the ire of silicon valley and digital rights campaigners alike. One article would result in a search and news service provider like Google potentially having to pay for tiny snippets and links to news websites, while another more controversial article could force the use of upload filters and automatic removal of content it deems infringing.
Opposition on grounds that the new rules would push out new start-ups that couldn't afford such filters, or could harm the Internet's meme and mix-and-match culture, has been vocalized many times before and so won't be repeated here. Instead, the focus of Poland's complaint is fears about censorship.
Censorship is forbidden in the national constitution of Poland itself, but the government fears that enforcement of new EU rules (which would have to be adoped by each member state in their own way) could lay the foundation for effective censorship.
SpaceX has launched the first 60 satellites that will be part of its broadband service, beaming Internet access from 2,000km above the Earth.
Elon Musk, chief executive officer at SpaceX, eyes the Starlink project as a potential source of revenue to help fund SpaceX' lofty goals in space transport and exploration. The Starlink network will provide high-speed broadcast access to customers starting in the United States for a fee, potentially providing high speed options for those stuck in rural areas.
The first array of satellites launched by SpaceX flew atop a Falcon 9 rocket. At 500lb a piece, the total payload is the heaviest carried by the private rocket firm to date. The first stage / booster that carried the rockets had flown two previous SpaceX missions and successfully landed for a third time to potentially fly again soon. That's good news considering that the ultimate goal of SpaceX' Starlink is to have 12,000 working broadband satellites in orbit.
Providing high-speed Internet access from satellites in low-Earth orbit is an idea not exclusive to SpaceX. Amazon is also eyeing its own 3,200-satellite array that would provide Internet access services, dubbed Project Kuiper, and will undoubtedly be helped by founder and CEO Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocket firm.
The journey of an Android-based crowd-funded open games console comes to an end on June 25.
In 2012, Ouya raised millions of dollars in a Kickstarter. The idea was appealing to many; an affordable games console that runs on open Android software and would be easy to develop video games and apps for. When it arrived, it was rough around the edges to say the least.
It some performance issues when trying to run games and owners complained about the usability of the controller, as well as a cheap-feeling finish.
In 2015, Ouya was bought by Razer which stopped sales of new Ouya consoles and incorporated the Ouya gaming content and platform into its Forge TV set-top-boxes instead. Ouya console owners could still enjoy support for the console however, but that's about to end.
Razer is discontinuing support for Forge TV and support for Ouya is going with it. After June 25, Ouya owners will only be able to play games they have already downloaded to the device. Razer will be deleting all user accounts permanently and halting all online services.
A federal grand jury in the United States returned an 18-count superseding indictment today charging Wikileaks founder Julian Assange with offenses related to one of the largest compromises of classified information in U.S. history.
Assange is currently serving a 50-week prison sentence in the United Kingdom for jumping bail, and is fighting an extradition request from the United States. The 47-year-old Australian made headlines worldwide from 2009 as Wikileaks published tens of thousands of classified documents and cables.
He had been staying at the Ecuadorian embassy in London for years before the Ecuadorian government revoked his asylum status in April, leading to his arrest by British authorities.
The United States sought Assange's extradition to face charges related to the acquisition of classified material. Assange is alleged to have actively encouraged and aided Chelsea Manning in obtaining tens of thousands of pieces of classified information which was later uploaded to Wikileaks.
In a press release outlining the charges, the Department of Justice (DOJ) alleges that Assange conspired with Manning to obtain classified information with reason to believe that the information was to be used to the injury of the United States or the advantage of a foreign nation. It then alleges that Wikileaks published classified documents that contained the unredacted names of human sources who provided information to United States forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to U.S. State Department diplomats around the world.
Apple has agreed to warn users of older iPhone models about the potential performance impact from software in updates installed on the devices.
Apple was criticized in 2017 when it admitted that software updates installed on the iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE models could impact overall device performance. The software was intended to manage demands on aging batteries in iPhones, impacting performance to deal with battery degradation.
Consumer protection authorities suggested that Apple should have made it clear that such throttling and management software was included in the updates. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) points out that consumers may have felt compelled to repair or replace devices due to the drop in performance after upgrading.
According to the CMA, Apple has committed to be clearler and more upfront about battery health and performance going forward, and said the company has already started being clearer to users on the issue.
The Cupertino-based firm was also fined by authorities in Italy last year over the same issue.
Google has made a couple of changes to its Search results pages that will deliver some additional information for the user.
When you search with Google, typically you get a ranked set of Search results in plain text (putting aside ads, image results etc.). While you can see part of the URL under the headline and snippet in the search result, Google wanted to make it clearer where the Search result is actually coming from.
For that purpose, Google has added the website logo and name to the top of each Search result card. In the case of ads, Google also now show a bold ad label and the URL.
Additionally, Google will also add actions to the Search result page, such as playing a podcast or purchasing a movie ticket. At the moment, the Search design changes are only rolling out for mobile devices so keep an eye out for them.
Under fire Chinese firm Huawei is dealt another major blow as chip designer ARM halts business activity with the firm.
The latest shock to hit Huawei comes after Intel and Qualcomm both ceased doing business with the company. Huawei licenses chip designs from ARM to fabricate processors and graphics technology for use in its smartphones.
"ARM is complying with all of the latest regulations set forth by the U.S. government," an ARM spokesman said, reports Reuters. "No further comment at this time."
According to internal memos, ARM's designs contain technology with a U.S. origin, and so it believes it is affected by the Trump administrations ban on doing business with the Chinese tech giant.
Huawei reacted to the latest setback by saying it is confident that the situation will be resolved.
"We value our close relationships with our partners, but recognize the pressure some of them are under, as a result of politically motivated decisions," a Huawei spokesman said.
"We are confident this regrettable situation can be resolved and our priority remains to continue to deliver world-class technology and products to our customers around the world."
Microsoft has revealed that it intends to release the console gaming subscription service to PC as well. At this point we don't have a lot of details about the upcoming extension to PC games, but fortunately E3 is just around the corner.
After Supreme Court's ruling earlier this month, Apple's standing as an untouchable money making machine, thanks to App Store, has become under threat.
Google has announced that they are bringing some of the more important features of Waze to Google Maps. The company has already brought them to some markets, including in the US, but now a worldwide launch will extend that to more than 40 countries.
