The Federal privacy commissioner of Canada has plans to take Facebook to court
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Their investigations have apparently found that the website broke a number of privacy laws and failed to take responsibility for protecting Canadians’ personal info
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Reports estimate that the Cambridge Analytica scandal from back in 2016 resulted in 87M users worldwide having their information disclosed, including more than 600,000 Canadians
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They’re accusing Facebook of breaking a number of laws by
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Failing to obtain valid and meaningful consent of installing users.
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Failing to obtain meaningful consent from friends of installing users.
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Having inadequate safeguards to protect user information.
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Failing to be accountable for the user information under its control.
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Facebook has publicly acknowledged a “major breach of trust” but disputes the report, saying that there’s no evidence that Canadians’ data was shared with Cambridge Analytica and that they’ve improved their platform to protect people’s personal info
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Fact is though, at the end of the day, Facebook has a pattern of stealing data, minimizing the impact when reporting, and then slowly “discovering” that everything’s actually worse than they thought
Sony’s releasing a documentary on the creation of the new God of War called Raising Kratos
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Three years in the making, the film will be released on YouTube and cover the years of work on the 2018 rebirth into Norse mythology
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It’ll cover not only the development, but a lot of the decision making that went in to Kratos’ new direction
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Also, as part of God of War’s anniversary, Sony’s offering a free dynamic theme and avatar pack
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The theme has Kratos and Atreus sitting in their canoe, and the avatar set shows a bunch of different characters in a runic-inspired linear design
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Overwatch is introducing a new Workshop mode soon, which will apparently allow players to make custom game modes and heroes
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Described as a power user mode, the new tools will be a much more robust set than those currently allowed in custom game types now, paralleling some of the tools the developers and programmers currently use
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It will also include some debugging features, and they’ll be creating a support forum to connect with the developers
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Some of the examples given were a Molten Floor mode where the ground deals damage, enhancements to the existing fan-made Hide and Seek mode, and Mirror Deathmatch, which swaps the entire pool of players to the same character on a one-minute rotation
Tidbits
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It turns out the Alexa monitoring that Amazon is doing is even worse than we first thought in episode 246
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Apparently employees have access to not just your name, account number, and device serial, but also your full GPS coordinates via location data
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Samsung is officially delaying the release of the Galaxy Fold after review units hit a whole batch of issues related to the display and hinge that we talked about in the last episode
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iFixit, in their teardown of the device, noted that there are sizable gaps in the device’s bezel where the two halve meet that could easily allow debris inside behind the flexible screen
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You have to wonder how many people internally knew about these issues but were silenced by the marketing teams, which is doubly damning after the Note 7 battery fire fiasco
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Sprint’s lawsuit against AT&T for the misleading “5GE” branding on 4G networks has apparently been “amicably settled”, which I’m guessing means Sprint got a payoff and they don’t actually care of accuracy of what their customers think. They got the PR boost for trying, cash in hand for backing off, and are calling it a day
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Smash Ultimate’s new Stage Builder mode includes portals, allowing characters to blip between areas on the map, and people have made some crazy DBZ-style fight videos by having everything arranged to facilitate some ridiculous combos
Alan recommends Seven Blades in Black by Sam Sykes
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Much in the same way his Bring Down Heaven trilogy I recommended last year in episode 218 is a love letter to D&D, this one is for Final Fantasy
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It’s a fantasy world with a mage-ruled empire vs technologic rebellion, a really interesting system of magic and costs, powerfully written and relatable characters, and also giant birds that people ride instead of horses
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All that and the cover is gorgeous enough that I bought a physical copy
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Tons of fun, and came out just this month
Literally Misleading
GAME – Animal rights activist takes the fight to the war mongering industrial tycoon.
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