Free games

• Epic games

  • Bad North: Jotunn Edition

    • 2018
    • A real-time roguelite strategy game where you must defend the kingdom from the Viking invaders who killed the king, and guide the procedurally generated island’s people to evacuate

Motorola’s bringing their Razr back, and as an Apple user I’m kinda envious

• The resurrected Razr is what I’ve been dreaming of for over a decade- a modern smart flip-phone
• At its core it’s an Android phone with a 6.2″ screen that folds down like the flip-phones of old, and the media they’ve released so far is gorgeous
• Apparently they’ve got a special hinge that allows the display to expand into a round curve instead of folding into a crease, allowing the full display to stay completely smooth while it’s open
• On the downside it looks like there have been some compromises to get us there- the processor is a bit slower than what you’ll find on most flagship phones nowadays, but you get a lot of RAM and 128GB of storage.
  • It also only runs Android 9 at the moment, instead of the current version 10
• The front of the phone also has a smaller 2.7″ OLED for notifications, music controls, selfies, and such
• The device is expected to launch sometime this January for $1500 USD, which is pretty steep for a smartphone though damn economical for the folding devices we’ve seen thusfar
• It’s also launching in the States as a Verizon exclusive, with no unlocked version available at release, so the potential user-base is cut down a fair bit
• Still, it’s another step forward with tech that I’d love to see Apple’s take on
• If it catches your fancy, preorders open on December 26th

A weird bug hit households this week with the release of Pokemon Sword and Shield causing Roku devices to crash

• The streaming content set-top boxes and, in some cases, TV’s themselves would hit a hard shutdown if the new Pokemon games were played while connected to the same network
• Apparently the problem was caused by the games continuously sending out wireless signals looking for other Switches playing the games, which Roku attempts to interpret. When it couldn’t process the info the software would then crash
  • From the sounds of it the problem is that Pokemon is communicating on the same port that Roku uses to share update information with other local devices
• If you’re seeing this issue Roku released a patch yesterday that should fix the issue, so you should go to Settings, System, and Update to pull the latest version
  • Though please don’t be tempted to continue your Pokemon adventure while the device is updating, or at least put the Switch in airplane mode first

Apple has replaced the controversial 15” MacBook Pro, with its problematic butterfly keyboard and tricky to get used to Touch Bar, with a fancy 16” version that fixes pretty much everything

• The recent versions of the MacBook Pro have had a lot of vocal people complain about the low-travel keyboard that seems to get jammed up or break fairly easily (it’s so bad that there’s a free repair program at Apple Stores) and the Touch Bar, which replaced the F and Escape keys with a touchscreen
• Enter the new 16” Macbook Pro: it replaces the 15” pretty much dollar for dollar with a larger Retina display, while also bringing back the more familiar keyboard switches from the Magic Keyboard and a physical escape key to the left of the Touch Bar, and adding in some impressively improved speakers with an extra hour of battery life
• It can be maxed out with a ridiculous processor, 64GB of RAM, an 8TB SSD, and an 8GB AMD Radeon Pro 5500M graphics card

Stanford Medicine has published further results from the Apple Heart Study that kicked off in 2017, confirming that the Apple Watch accurately notify users of atrial fibrillation (an irregular heartbeat) 84% of the time

• It also showed that it detected some problems in early stages of development that didn’t happen frequently enough for medical ECG patches to detect, specifically in younger participants
• Two of the coolest parts of this is that a) since the study started before Apple Watches came equipped with ECG technology this just relied on the basic heart rate monitor, and b) it was all done completely remotely through an iPhone app

In accordance with new App Store guidlines, Apple has removed 181 vape-related apps and is outright banning them from its platform

• This change seems to have been brought on by CDC reports that vaping as resulted in at least 2,172 cases of respiratory illness/injury, though many of these cases may have been related to the inclusion of vitamin E acetate in the oils used in some third-party or black market cartridges
• One manufacturer, PAX, who relies heavily on their app to add features and change settings on their devices, is now calling on Apple to rethink its decision, saying that the ban prevents consumers from having access to important info and the ability to better control their cannabis experience
  • Apparently though the temperature can be set using the device alone, the app includes information on branded vape pods including strain information and access to state-regulated test results

Disney+ is taking fire for not providing the first 20 seasons of Simpsons in their original 4:3 “fullscreen” format until 2020

• All the episodes currently on the service are only shown in their “remastered” state, with colours tweaked and the top and bottom of the screen chopped off
• In some cases this might not make a big difference, but many of the 429 affected episodes including visual gags that are just gone, like when Homer takes a tour of the Duff factory and it shows Duff, Duff Lite, and Duff Dry all coming out of the same pipe
• On the plus side, they’re finally fixing it- weeks after the launch of Disney+, they finally released a statement saying that the episodes will be made available in their original format sometime in early 2020

And lastly some great news for people looking at the Xbox Accessibility Controller- Logitech is now selling their Adaptive Gaming Kit with special buttons to take advantage of the flexibility of the controller

• Retailing for $100 USD, It includes 12 individual buttons
  • 3 2.6” and 3 1.4” buttons with mechanical switches, four “light touch” buttons that require low force to operate, and two variable triggers similar to modern controllers
    • The kit also includes full-colour sticker labels for the buttons in all the sizes, so that you can get a full controller experience with the different customized options
    • The triggers are a big win, since pressure-sensitive controls are apparently rare when it comes to this kind of accessibility
  • It also includes two velcro-style boards you can mount them all on in different configurations, whatever is most comfortable to you

Tidbits

• Just in case you thought capitalism wasn’t completely broken, Amazon is apparently paying $0 in taxes in the US for 2018 after reporting more than $11.2B in profits
• Heliogen, a clean energy company backed by Bill Gates, has apparently found a way to use AI and a field of mirrors to reflect so much sunlight that they generate heats over 1000 degrees C
  • This means that, for the first time, solar energy can be used for high-energy industrial applications like manufacturing cement, steel, and glass
• Continuing the constant update train, Apple’s released iOS and iPadOS 13.2.3 this week, including fixes for Mail, Files, and Notes search, viewing attachments in Messages, and downloading new emails and content from Exchange accounts
• Good news for Origin launcher users, your account wasn’t (probably) hacked this week
  • Many people online received an email saying they’ve redeemed an Origin Access membership code, even if they haven’t, but apparently that was just EA’s way of gifting a month of Origin Access Basic to users opted in to its two-factor authentication
• Half-Life is back! (kind of)
  • Valve went to Twitter this week to announce Half-Life: Alyx, their flagship VR game, that’ll be unveiled later this week.
  • So far it looks like this is a prequel set between Half-Lifes 1 and 2, further confirming Valve can’t count to three
  • We’ll have all the details in our next episode once they’ve been released

Alan recommends Evolution – Learning Creatures

• More of a simulation than game, conceptually it kind of strikes me like Kerbal Space Program
• Use joints, bones, and muscles to build any kind of 2D creature you can imagine
• Machine learning and neural network fuel adaptation to different scenarios
• You can even look at the source code and see how the actions are being determine

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