Respawn Entertainment's new battle royale game has hit more than 25 million downloads in just a week after its announcement and release.
Apex Legends was released for Microsoft Windows, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 on February 4. It hit 2.5 million players within 24 hours of release and broke through 10 million within three days. Now, a week after its release, it has clocked up more than 25 million unique players, and more than 2 million peak concurrent players.
It is set in the same universe as Titanfall and set 30 years after the events of Titanfall 2. It is free-to-play and supported through microtransactions if players wish to unlock legends, purchase specific cosmetics or buy Apex Packs, which are the title's loot boxes.
Been waiting all day to tell you this madness... @PlayApex hit 25 million players this morning. Read more about it at the link below. Remember we have Season One starting in March and more surprises coming. https://t.co/gwj1sZSQnY
A U.S. court has ordered a man to pay a substantial sum of damages and attorneys fees for distributing a cheating tool for GTA Online.
The Florida man had developed and sold 'Elusive' which could bestow infinite money on the cheater and interfere with the gameplay of other users. Take-Two Interactive, which is the GTA publisher, filed a case against the man last year which accused him of copyright infringement.
The Elusive tool reportedly sold for between $10 and $30 online. Take-Two sought financial information from the cheat maker to determine how much was gained financially and was willing to work out a settlement. However, when the individual failed to respond, Take-Two filed for a default judgment and asked a New York federal court for the maximum damages for copyright infringement, which is $150,000. It also asked for $69,686 in attorney's fees.
"Take-Two has been irreparably harmed by Mr. Perez's infringing conduct and will continue to be harmed unless enjoined," US District Court Judge Kevin Castel writes in his order.
"Mr. Perez's Elusive program creates new features and elements in Grand Theft Auto which can be used to harm legitimate players, causing Take-Two to lose control over its carefully balanced plan for how its video game is designed to be played."
Airbnb is facing a lawsuit in Paris that could cost the company around $14 million due to advertisements.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo revealed the details of the lawsuit to the Journal du Dimanche newspaper. At issue is the publishing of "illegal" rental adverts for property in the French capital. Last year, a law came into effect that would make firms punishable by fines up to €12,500 for illegal rental postings.
Regulations in France state that homeowners can rent out their property on short-term rental platforms for no more than 120 days in a year. To enforce the limit, advertisements are required to include a registration number so that properties can't be rented out for longer periods.
"The goal is to send a shot across the bows to get it over with unauthorized rentals that spoil some Parisian neighborhoods," Mayor Hidalgo said, reports Reuters.
Airbnb's stance is that the French rules are inefficient, disproportionate and in contravention of European rules. Nevertheless, it has implemented measures to help Parisian users comply with the law.
One of the more popular image hosting services over the years, Flickr, has decided to move towards more restrictive policy.
Perhaps they realized there's no fighting against Google and its unlimited storage on Google Photos. Flickr's new free tier only allows 1000 photos, and they are going to enforce it retroactively.
This means that people with more than 1000 photos on their free accounts will lose portion of their photos if they don't take action. The last date to backup your Flickr library was February 5, but now they've had to push it back.
After an uproar by users, Flickr has informed that a new deadline has been set. Since some people argued that they weren't able to save their photos before Tuesday, Flickr moved the date to March 12.
The new policy was implemented after Verizon sold Flickr to SmugMug. Previously Flickr offered one terabyte of storage for free.
Microsoft has announced their next Build conference. This years Build will be held in Seattle between May 6 and 8, ZDNET reports.
Coincidentally it happens to clash with another developer conference, namely Google I/O. Google I/O is held in Mountain View, CA from May 7 to 9.
While it's possible to pay attention to both keynotes, they are a day apart after all, it's going to be hard for developers, or even press, to attend both conferences.
Both will surely attract their own crowd to their respective hometowns, but would seem like Google has the advantage having set the date before Microsoft.
Build 2019 will surely bring information about upcoming Windows 10 versions as well lots of developer specific updates. There's no word on whether Microsoft is readying any hardware launches for May.
In fact not much is known about the agenda altogether.
Build is not traditionally the place Microsoft launches consumer products, but things like a new HoloLens could be unveiled.
We'll be keeping a close eye on both Build 2019 as well as Google I/O, of course.
Apple is about to release a new version of its mobile operating system iOS. It's going to add some hotly anticipated features, including a new version of Safari, but there might be some problems with the improvements to the browser.
The Verge reports that Safari's new Motion and Orientation Access setting is going to be off by default. This should improve privacy and security, but also might be consequential to online VR and AR apps.
The setting, previously on by default, allows websites to get information from device's accelerometer and other sensors to determine position and motion.
Many of the VR and AR web apps use this information to function. Many of the developers of such software have expressed their concern, Digiday reports.
At this point it's unclear whether the user has to enable the setting by hand from the settings for it to function at all, but it is likelier that the website can ask the user to enable it in a popup just like location information.
After the backlash from developers, and adverse effects to likes of Sony's First Man website and the Samsung Within ad campaign, perhaps Apple is making it easy to enable.
Spotify has released their fourth quarter results today, and furthermore announced two acquisitions in the podcast space.
The world's largest streaming music service has been looking for new ways to acquire listeners and paying customers at that, and podcasts are perhaps the most important avenue.
In October Spotify introduced new tools for podcasters, and just last week we reported on rumors that Spotify was going to acquire podcast producer Gimlet Media.
Now the company has confirmed the acquisition as well as the upcoming acquisition of another podcast company, Anchor.
While Gimlet will produce podcasts, like Reply All and StartUp, for Spotify (and others), Anchor will provide tools for podcasters. Anchor's expertise is in podcast creation, publishing, and monetization services.
Spotify did not reveal the details of either of the deals, but they did say the acquisitions should be finalized before the end of the quarter.
The company also revealed new financial and subscriber figures as a part of the quarterly results. Spotify managed to grow the Premium subscriber base another 11% to 97 million. Total monthly listeners including ad-supported users totaled 207 million.
Year and a half ago WhatsApp, the world's most popular messaging platform, added a feature called Unsend to its apps. Now Facebook has taken the feature and copied it to the world's second largest messaging platform, Messenger.
Unsend of course means that the app will remove the message that you've sent. However, there are limitations of course.
Unsending a message works only for 10 minutes after you've composed and sent the message. If you delete the message before the 10 minutes expire, it will be removed from both you and the recipient.
Just like on WhatsApp, the recipient won't see the message but there will be a placeholder saying a message was deleted.
Facebook has revealed previously that it is trying to integrate much of WhatsApp's and Messenger's background functions. They deny that the services are meant to be entirely integrated, though.
To Unsend a message you long press the message and select "Remove for Everyone". The feature has been made available to both Android and iOS users.
The pioneer of modern VR hardware, Oculus, is readying a launch of a new headset, rumors suggest. According to UploadVR it will be likely called the Rift S.
The company lead by id Software co-founder John Carmack and Facebook's VR boss Hugo Barra is fairly close to releasing the next-generation Rift-headset, if rumors hold true.
There's some new information in addition to the fairly unimaginative name. According to the source, Rift S will integrate new environment sensing cameras. This would mean that there's no longer necessity for an external camera, and in that respect Rift S could function like Oculus Go and Oculus Quest.
It likely won't be a standalone device, however, like the aforementioned duo. Rift S, like its predecessor, is meant for PC gaming where the PC rig does all the hard work.
It won't be wireless either which will limit the movement possibilities as you are tethered to the computer. On the counterbalance you'll have much more impressive graphics, likely in both resolutions and all-important refresh rate.
There's still no official word from Oculus about new products, but they have promised an exciting year to The Verge.
One of the worst bugs in living memory was found just last week in Apple's video chat platform, FaceTime.
The bug allowed a severe privacy breach with a simple trick available to anyone, and allowed people to eavesdrop on your iOS device or even Mac computer without them knowing.
Fortunately Apple acted quickly and removed the feature temporarily and has promised a fix in the coming days with a software update.
Now Apple has also decided to reward the person that found the bug in the first place. It happens to be a 14 year old teen Grant Thompson, who might be getting a check soon.
Thompson's mother tried to inform Apple about the bug in different ways but it was only after media started reporting on the serious problem that Apple took notice.
Afterwards Apple boss flew personally to thank Thompsons and ask for advice how to make the reporting process better. He also revealed that they would probably be receiving a reward for their efforts.
Reporting a software bug to Apple has previously resulted in rewards between $25,000 and $200,000. It's not yet known how much Grant Thompson is going to receive, but if severity of the issue has anything to do with it, then give the boy $200k.
Most tech companies are looking for ways to extend the customers' reality in one way or another. Whether it is virtual, augmented, or mixed reality, companies like Google, Samsung, Microsoft, and Apple are developing their own apps and devices.
In 2016, Apple made a key recruitment in the world of augmented reality as they acquired Avi Bar-Zeev from Microsoft. The Microsoft HoloLens co-inventor, and co-founder of tech behind Google Earth, and a former Amazon exec, joined Apple where AR had taken more of a focus.
Now less than three years later Bar-Zeev has decided to part ways with Apple, Variety reports.
Ever since Apple's ARKit was launched in 2017, and even before that, we've been waiting for a AR device to pair iPhone with. Rumors were that many of the company acquisitions, as well as recruitement of Avi Bar-Zeev, would ultimately result in a AR hardware launch.
So far Apple has only introduced more advanced AR apps and tools for the iPhone and iPad, and the exit of Bar-Zeev doesn't exactly confirm the existence of separate AR hardware, quite the opposite.
However, it could be that Apple is already close to releasing the AR glasses and Bar-Zeev is seeking new challenges. But if I were a betting man, I wouldn't necessarily put my money on that.
The world's leading messaging app, WhatsApp, has released an update to its iPhone version. The Facebook-owned messaging platform supports now Face ID, as well as Touch ID.
What this means is that you can protect your messages, and the entire app for that matter, with a facial recognition or fingerprint. You can require the app to ask for either Face ID or Touch ID before opening.
This is the first time WhatsApp has implemented a biometric protection to its app. WhatsApp has been known, even before Facebook's acquisition, as a privacy conscious platform, especially for having end-to-end encryption early on.
However, some have expressed concerns because Facebook wants to combine the infrastructure of Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger.
Fortunately, there's no evidence of worsening privacy for now, and because of the update WhatsApp now protects your messages even better.
Google's parent company Alphabet has been growing fast recently, even when many other technology conglomerates are having trouble keeping the pace up.
Perhaps one reason is that Google doesn't rely too much on China, from where many of companies' problems arise.
Alphabet's recent reports reveal that the revenue increased late last year a massive 22 percent year-over-year to $39.3 billion. Most, in fact over $32 billion, came from online advertisement, which has been Google's moneymaker for nearly two decades.
The rest came largely from selling cloud services and hardware.
Google is still pretty much the sole contributor to Alphabet's increasing revenue. New projects, like Waymo, Fiber, and Verilyn, that they call "Other Bets" were $1.3 billion in the negative.
While Google is making more and more money with ads, they also have to pay more for traffic. Traffic acquisition costs rose 15% to $7.4 billion.
This was the 11th time in a row Alphabet posts a more than 20 percent revenue increase in a quarter. Last time Alphabet didn't manage 20% revenue increase was Q1 2016, when it was just under 18%.
Even though figures seem good, stock dipped slightly in the after hours trading. This didn't do a dent on the upward trend in 2019, though.
When car electronics started getting more and more complex back in early 2000s, people used to joke about car requiring a Windows update while driving. Now, this has become pretty much a reality in China.
Car manufactured by Nio, a Chinese car manufacturer dubbed as "China's Tesla", has confirmed that one of their cars had come to a halt in middle of a busy street in downtown Beijing. Car had stopped in Changan Avenue, which is one of the most prestigious streets in Beijing, and started a software update cycle.
The software update lasted for more than an hour and during the process, the car refused to start - and had locked its passengers inside the car. According to Nio, several police officers had tries to open the car windows in order to free the passengers, but they had failed. After the software update was finished, car had resumed its normal operation.
Nio says that the driver "accidentally made a series of operations that activated the system update" during a traffic jam on Changan Avenue. After the incident the company said: "We apologised for affecting the traffic and we will optimise the upgrade confirmation logic."
A provider of consumer DNA tests, Family Tree DNA, has agreed to help the FBI by providing law enforcement with genetic information that could help solve violent crimes.
Family Tree DNA is the first of the large at-home genetic testing kit makers that have started working with the FBI, BuzzFeed News reports. Previously FBI has used public DNA databases in their work, but now some information from a private DNA database will be made available to the federal investigators.
However, not all of Family Tree DNA records are automatically shared with the FBI, or that FBI has access to the database at all. In fact, they don't even have a contract with the Bureau.
Instead, Family Tree DNA has agreed to work with FBI and test their samples in their labs and save them in their databases.
This does still raise concerns of privacy and the reach of law enforcement when consumer DNA tests are wildly popular, and other companies could join in at any time.
Family Tree DNA, a Houston based comapny, considers itself a pioneer in the consumer genetic testing space. They were the first to offer at-home DNA tests to consumers.
Respawn Entertainment's new battle royale game has hit more than 25 million downloads in just a week after its announcement and release.
A U.S. court has ordered a man to pay a substantial sum of damages and attorneys fees for distributing a cheating tool for GTA Online.
Airbnb is facing a lawsuit in Paris that could cost the company around $14 million due to advertisements.
