Free games

• Microsoft

• • Inside

  • • 2016
    • The spiritual successor to Limbo, Inside is another deceptively simple platformer where you control a small boy in a big, very dangerous world

  • Big Crown: Showdown

  • • 2019
    • Four player action/fighting/party game with one-button combat that has you dodging obstacles and slamming into your friends on an auto-scrolling level

  • Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

  • • 2007 re-release of the 1997 title
    • Platform adventure action that introduced non-linear levels and RPG elements to the series, following four years after the events of Rondo of Blood, and featuring Dracula’s son Alucard exploring his father’s castle

  • Meet the Robinsons

  • • 2007
    • Video game tie-in to the Disney animated film, it has you helping Wilbur Robinson save the future by travelling to the past and putting things back in order.

• Epic Games

• • Overcooked

  • • 2016
    • A co-op party game where you and up to three friends work together in a kitchen to prepare meals, working around fires, shifting floors, and other obstacles

China is forcing tourists to install malware on their phones to enter the country

• Foreigners crossing some borders into the Xinjiang region are having their phones seized by border guards and being forced to install a piece of Android malware that gives a ton of data to the authorities
• • Analysis of the app shows it gathering all of the phone’s calendar entries, phone contacts, call logs, and text messages, then uploading them to a server
• The malware also scans the device for a specific set of files, including extremist Islamic content, academic books on Islam by leading researchers, PDFs related to the Dalai Lama and even music from a Japanese metal band Unholy Grave (who have a song called “Taiwan: Another China”)
• Apple users aren’t safe either- it also appears that there are machines for searching iPhones at the border, since iOS doesn’t give the same access to apps that Android can, but that hasn’t been confirmed
• This is yet another piece of oppression against populations in the region that are already subject to physical searches and CCTV facial recognition. Be careful out there

Samsung is being hit with a lawsuit from Australian consumer watchdogs

• The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is suing them for ads showing a swimmer using the device while sitting at the bottom of a pool or while in the ocean
• According to the lawsuit, the ACCC says they did not know or test the effects of pool or saltwater exposure
• • One thing to note here, if you’ve ever tried to use a wet touchscreen phone you’ll know that it’s inaccurate at best and impossible at worst with that conductivity all over the place
• Either way, Samsung’s Galaxy phones are marketed as being resistant to water 1.5 meters deep for 30 minutes, but the ACCC contends that does not cover all types of water so they might have a case

Researchers have shown a proof-of-concept attack that involves using a drone to project fake street signs on the side of a building

• In a video posted online they successfully tricked a Mobileye driver assist system into thinking the speed limit jumped from the actual 30km/h to 90
• Mobileye says they don’t believe this counts as spoofing because a human would not be tricked, but once we get into self-driving cars any time a computer accepts illegitimate input that’s going to be a problem
• • Even if the system relies on other sources like GPS to verify the speed limit, this is one more safeguard removed
• I could almost see this happening in the next Mission Impossible, where an AI driven vehicle is redirected by fake signs and a spoofed GPS signal projected from a drone tailing it

The Google exec in charge of the new Stadia game streaming service says he thinks data caps won’t be a problem, proving that humans can function normally with their head lodged firmly in the sand

• When pressed he said that he expects data caps would be raised because “ISPs are smart [and] they understand that they’re in the business of keeping customers happy and keeping customers with them for a long time,”
• With the service taking up to 16GB per hour, using up 1TB within 65 hours of gameplay, the rules might be a little different than he’s expecting even before looking at internet providers’ history of nickel and diming consumers into the ground

Good news for Shenmue III backers disappointed at the move from Steam to Epic- you can now get a refund

• During the 2015 Kickstarter campaign fans were told that it would be coming to Steam (and also that it would arrive December 2017, but that’s Kickstarter for you)
• Then during this year’s E3 the developer and publisher revealed that the PC version would be exclusive to Epic Games
• At first all the refund requests were being denied, leading to many angry comments on the campaign’s page, but now apparently they’ve reversed that decision thanks to Epic covering the refunds so that the development funding isn’t affected
• All in all it’s a classy move from Epic, but highlights the problems with these kind of storefronts locking consumers in. These are the new console wars

Tidbits

• After the revelations about Amazon employees storing and reviewing recordings of Alexa conversations we covered in 246 and 249, it’s come out that Amazon keeps recordings of Alexa commands “until the customer chooses to delete them”
• • You can delete them under the Alexa Privacy section of your Amazon account, but if they’re relying on users to tell them when to delete them then they should really tell us
• A random new quality of life feature called FaceTime Attention Correction is hitting this fall in iOS 13, which makes on the fly adjustments while using the video chat to make it look like you’re making eye contact
• Exciting news- After more than a couple false starts trying to hit the big screen, Gaiman’s Sandman graphic novel is officially being adapted into a streaming series on Netflix
• Everyone needs to go check out the ridiculously unusable website userinyerface.com
• • Made by a design firm, it puts you through a gauntlet that breaks every web form common practice in the worst ways

Alan recommends