Free games

• Epic Games

  • Observer

    • 2017
    • First-person psychological horror game following a detective that can hack people’s minds as a form of interrogation

  • Alan Wake’s American Nightmare

    • 2012
    • A follow-up / spinoff from the original Alan Wake game, it’s third person psychological action thriller framed in Twilight Zone-esque storytelling that has you attempting to chase down the “herald of darkness”, Mr Scratch

Another credit card hack was in the news today, affecting more than 26 million cards, but with a bit of a twist

• This time the hack was against an online bazaar selling already stolen data, passing the data on to banks and financial institutions so they can invalidate and replace the cards
• Based on numbers gathered by security companies and law enforcement, this could be as much as a third of the black market supply of stolen cards, and according to the associated price list represent about $414M in lost sales for the hacked market

In an attempt to please everyone, Blizzard has softened their punishment of the pro Hearthstone player Blitzchung that voiced support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests while also doubling down on how they think it was inappropriate

• Following the backlash we reported on last week they’ve announced that they’ll reinstate his winnings and lessen his ban by six months, but they still want to show there are consequences for “disrupting or derailing the broadcast”
  • Apparently they’re doing all this under a rule saying that players shouldn’t do things that “offend a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damage Blizzard’s image”
• Apparently Blizzard also posted on social media, in Chinese only, that it would “resolutely safeguard China’s national dignity”, and their official statement in China had them expressing their “intense, righteous indignation and condemnation” of the incident, which isn’t a great look for them
• And, of course, all these announcements were made late on a Friday which is usually seen as an attempt to minimize visibility and miss the news cycle as much as possible
  • That hasn’t stopped many from amping up their boycott of Blizzard products, and with Overwatch now hitting the Switch as well as their annual convention Blizzcon coming first thing next month the timing is right to send them a message
  • They were even supposed to host an event at the Nintendo store in New York this week, with some of the voice actors showing up for a meet and greet to promote the release, but according to the store’s Twitter account Blizzard cancelled it two days prior

US presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren is capitalizing on Facebook’s new ad policies we talked about in ep 274, and I kind of love it

• In case you missed it, Facebook recently removed the requirement that ads on their platform not present false or misleading info. Now ads are only pulled if proven false by a third party fact checker, but politicians are immune to even that piece due to the belief that any statement from a political figure is important to the public interest
  • This is similar justification to why Twitter says they haven’t banned Trump from their site for repeatedly breaking multiple rules, though it got flimsy when they started using him in their ads
• So Warren has released Facebook ads saying that Zuckerberg and Facebook has endorsed Trump. If you read past the first two lines it quickly acknowledges that isn’t true, but goes on to call Facebook out for giving people like Trump free reign to lie on the platform while raking in the cash
• Unfortunately at this point Facebook is so entrenched, and so many people use it for their primary interactions online, that allowing people to publish lies and falsehoods like that does real damage to everyone. For someone so concerned about fake news, Trump sure has brought out the worst of it

Apple’s released yet more updates this week, now for both iOS and macOS

• iOS 13.1.3 fixes some important things like an issue that could stop your phone from ringing when called. You know, that minor thing that no one really uses phones for anyway
  • It also fixes some issues with daylight savings time and the Health app, restoring from iCloud backups, Apple Watch connections, and Game Centre performance
• The macOS Catalina updates are even more important, though mainly for people that haven’t installed it yet
  • They’ve fixed issues for Macs with low disk space, an issue that prevented users from accepting iCloud terms and conditions, and another problem that stopped setup from completing at all in some cases

A major flaw in Samsung’s Galaxy S10 and Note10 has been discovered that means pretty much any fingerprint can unlock it with the help of a cheap screen protector

• The phone’s inscreen fingerprint sensor uses ultrasound to detect your fingerprint ridges, making each fingerprint unique
• Unfortunately some screen protectors (namely every single one that wasn’t developed specially for these devices with specific adhesives or cutouts) don’t play nice with that technology since they may leave a tiny air gap that interferes with scanning, meaning that no matter who puts their finger on the sensor it lets them in
  • To be clear, this isn’t about you teaching it your fingerprint while the protector is on and then it opens for anyone. A Galaxy S10 that is fingerprint locked properly can be unlocked by anyone if they have a $3 piece of plastic to put on the screen
    • So it looks like if there isn’t a clear reading it just unlocks anyway, which is probably the opposite that you want to happen
• Samsung says they’re aware of the malfunctioning fingerprint recognition and will soon issue a software patch, though I’m not sure what the patch will do. Maybe disable the sensor when a screen protector is applied? Either way, it looks like another case of Samsung releasing tech before its time

Overwatch Halloween

Junkestein’s Revenge is back!

This week, Oct 15th to 21st, which you may have missed a bit, but can still catch up, is all Junkrat.

• 3 Wins is an Inferno Junkrat Player Icon
• 6 Wins is an Inferno Junkrat Spray
• and 9 gets you the Inferno Junkrat skin!

Week 2, Oct 22nd to 28th is Baptiste.

• 3 Wins is an Vampire Baptiste Player Icon
• 6 Wins is an Vampire Baptiste Spray
• and 9 gets you the Vampire Baptiste skin!

Week 3, Oct 29nd to Nov 4th is Sombra.

• 3 Wins is an Demon Hunter Sombra Player Icon
• 6 Wins is an Demon Hunter Sombra Spray
• and 9 gets you the Demon Hunter Sombra skin!
  • Which is nice, since it was a reward for buying a BlizzCon ticket last year.

And we have some awesome skins this year.

And this is the list of them from good skin, to best, in my opinion.

• Inferno Junkrat (Epic)
  • He looks like he has magma inside him. Cool idea, but you cannot hide at all in game
• Gorgon Lucio (Epic)
  • Green armour with black necrotic skin, glowing green eyes and Snakes for dreads.
• Vampire Baptiste (Epic)
  • Mostly a recolour. He has a Blade-esque haircut, with glowing trim
• Will-O’-Wisp Tracer (Legendary)
  • Pumpkin with teeth with an open maw and eerie teal glow. I like her striped pants and excess of leg belts.
• Scorpion Widowmaker (Legendary)
  • She has a ninja like mask, and armour is segmented and coloured like a desert scorpion.
  • Also, her venom Mines have a scorpion tail
• Warlock Ashe (Legendary)
  • She had bad ass horns, and her outfit is styled in the same aesthetic as Witch Mercy
  • Bob is a stone Golem, with glowing under-detail
• Pharaoh Anna (Legendary)
  • She is a mummy with ancient egyptian armour and cloth wrappings
  • Her coat has a glowing green interior and on the outside some hieroglyphs
• Demon Orisa (Legendary)
  • I am a fan of skulls, and she has a really agressive skull head with two sets of horns
  • Her armour is bone, with raw muscle connecting and as the under detail
  • Her chest is an exposed rib-cage with a flame inside it
  • She has 4 goat legs with the shaggy goat pelt
  • And the center of the energy core on her weapon is a living goat eye

Overwatch on the Switch- if you’ve been looking at buying it, think again

• Not only are there massive performance issues, with many instances of character models not loading in for unreasonable amounts of time and just being denoted by glowing balls of light and being stuck at 30FPS (half the frame rate of all the other platforms), but they decided to pull one of the dumbest moves a game release can- the physical box you buy in stores doesn’t have a cartridge in it. Just a download code.

Overwatch is too much to Switch

• Core teamwork component is tough to come by
• The Switch has trouble with its wireless connection
  • Except for the few with the LAN adapter in Docked mode
• Accuracy is lacking
  • JoyCon drift is a rampant issue
  • As well as a 30 frames per second, reports are there is input lag
• The lower quality graphics makes the TV experience fuzzy
  • Handheld looks good though
• Also bad timing to be released!
  • For political climate
  • and 3 Years after the hype

Tidbits

• The Last of Us Part II now has a release date, and is officially coming February 21st
• Ready for a nostalgia-blast? The Internet Archive has been updated with more than 2500 DOS games featuring classics like The Secret of Monkey Island and The Incredible Machine 2
• Fallout 76 is due to become a more true-to-form Fallout title in early 2020, with the introduction of the Wastelanders free update
  • The update will bring proper NPCs and dialogue trees into the game, rather than the current mix of audio tapes and linear conversations with robots
  • They’re also bringing private servers and some changes to the Atomic Shop to balance out the pay-to-win strategy that’s currently in place
• Google’s announced the latest generation of their Pixel Buds wireless headphones, and it looks like they’ve learned a lot of good lessons from Apple’s AirPods
  • The battery life is about the same, and they have a similar charging case (though I kind of like its design more than Apple’s), but they sit tightly in your ear like most earbuds nowadays (though they have a vent on the bottom to let in external noise)
  • They’ve also got voice-activated Google Assistant integration and some fanciness called “adaptive sound”, which apparently adjusts the volume of what you’re playing depending on surrounding noise
  • I really like what I’ve seen of them, and hopefully the next-gen AirPods keep up

Alan recommends Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency on Netflix

• Inspired by the books by Douglas Adams, the series does a great job of building a world from how the books felt rather than being locked in to what they did
• Interconnectedness of all things
• Cancelled after two seasons
• It’s odd and ambitious, but carried forward with some great acting and fun, absurdist plot

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