Wednesday, December 18, 2019

Warcraft III: Reforged will release on January 28, not in 2019

This week, game developer and publisher Blizzard Entertainment emailed customers who had pre-ordered its upcoming 4K remaster of strategy classic Warcraft III announcing that the game will become playable at 3am PST on January 28, 2020.

The game was previously slated for launch before the end of 2019, but players had begun to suspect some kind of delay when Blizzard didn't provide a firm release date for the game at its otherwise packed BlizzCon conference in early November. The company explained the short delay in a blog post, writing:

Though we've been working hard to get Reforged in your hands before the end of the year, as we started approaching the finish line, we felt we'd need a little extra development time for finishing touches. As always, our goal is to honor the high standards you hold us to.

As recent controversies over crunch in game development have made clear, making triple-A video games is complex and fraught with unexpected roadblocks and ever-shifting scope. Delays like this are common. Some excited players may be frustrated that they have to wait a little longer, but others will be happy to see a focus on quality or saner worker conditions for developers, whichever (if either) the case may be here.

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https://arstechnica.com

Apple, Google, and Amazon team up to create “CHIP,” a new smart home standard

Stylized cartoon illustrates connected devices.

Enlarge (credit: Zigbee)

Apple, Google, Amazon, and the Zigbee Alliance have all teamed up to make a new smart home standard. The new working group went live today under the name of "Project Connected Home over IP" with announcement blog posts from Google, Apple, Zigbee, and a new website, connectedhomeip.com. The name doesn't sound too catchy until you realize "Connected Home over IP" abbreviates to "CHIP" which, across all these blog posts, is quietly used only a single time in the official FAQ.

According to the new website, "The goal of the Connected Home over IP project is to simplify development for manufacturers and increase compatibility for consumers." But thanks to XKCD, we all know that one new standard to "unite them all" often just results in making one additional standard available, but assuming the companies involved actually support their own standard, this could—maybe—make things easier for consumers.

Currently, Apple's smart home ecosystem is HomeKit, and it works over IP (usually Wi-Fi) and Bluetooth LE. Amazon has the "Works with Alexa" program, and while Echos can handle IP connections, the smart home focused models also have Zigbee (an IEEE 802.15.4-based low-power, low-data-rate mesh network) built into them. Google being Google means it has several overlapping and competing smart home ecosystems at various stages of adoption. The company is working on shutting down the "Works with Nest" ecosystem in favor of the "Works with Google Assistant" ecosystem, which is IP-based. Google's Nest division has also cooked up the "Thread" network protocol, which, just like Zigbee, is an IEEE 802.15.4-based low-power, low-data-rate mesh network. While Thread can be radio compatible with Zigbee's ~900MHz or 2.45Ghz signal, Thread adds the ability to be wrapped in an IP packet and travel over Wi-Fi or the Internet. Nest also has the "Weave" communication standard, which defines how to send a message like "turn on the light" over the Thread or Wi-Fi network.

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https://arstechnica.com

Tuesday, December 17, 2019

Facebook to pilot new fact-checking program with community reviewers

Facebook will work with data services provider Appen to source community reviewers. https://ift.tt/2ts4qYR https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Realme X2 vs Xiaomi Redmi K20 vs Oppo Reno 2: The best mid-range smartphone

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Translation Key on WeChat Takes Jabs at Other Country's Flags

Tencent said on Tuesday that it will fix a "translation bug" on its chat app WeChat that sends out distinct non-sequiturs when country flags are inputted via text message. https://ift.tt/2rZBmrf

Samsung Galaxy A01 With Dual Rear Cameras, 3,000mAh Battery Announced

Samsung Galaxy A01 key features include 5.7-inch HD+ Infinity-V display, up to 8GB RAM, has a dedicated microSD card slot for storage expansion, and a 3,000mAh battery. https://ift.tt/2rZzFdn

This Startup Wants to Eliminate Physical Buttons From Smartphones

UltraSense Systems on Tuesday released a sensor that aims to eliminate mechanical buttons on the sides of smartphones. https://ift.tt/35wCocN

Google Fires Fifth Activist Employee in Three Weeks

Google fired a security engineer on Friday after she used an internal alert system to remind colleagues that they had the right to take collective action. https://ift.tt/2Z3vbP1

TRAI Postpones Abolition of Telecom Interconnection Fees by a Year

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Tuesday deferred by a year a plan to abolish interconnection usage fees that operators pay each other for calls made from one network to another. https://ift.tt/38PaVFy

Travis Kalanick is exiting his Uber holdings very quickly

Travis Kalanick's remaining stake in the ride-hailing company now constitutes about a fifth of his $3 billion fortune https://ift.tt/2szbbrB https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Govt launches broadband plan to connect 6 lakh villages

The national broadband mission aims to offer broadband for all by 2022 including remotely-located hospitals, schools and post offices, said Minister of state for communications Sanjay Dhotre https://ift.tt/34vmCO7 https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Amazon to source directly from farmers

Amazon Retail India is running a pilot project with farmers in Pune to create a cold chain hub where it could source fresh produce directly from the farmers as part its farm-to-fork initiatives and to sell the stock further through its Amazon Fresh and Amazon Pantry, both online platforms. https://ift.tt/35xsh7P https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

10 'biggest features' that changed your smartphone in 2019

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The Epilepsy Foundation files criminal complaint against 30+ unidentified Twitter users for coordinated attack of seizure-inducing videos to its feed last month (CNN)

CNN:
The Epilepsy Foundation files criminal complaint against 30+ unidentified Twitter users for coordinated attack of seizure-inducing videos to its feed last month  —  (CNN)Attackers sent videos of flashing and strobing lights to people on Twitter last month as part of a cyberattack which deliberately targeted people with epilepsy.



Ola targets 1 million bike partners by next year

Ola, which has around 300,000 bike-partners on its platform, is gearing up to expand opportunities for micro-mobility services https://ift.tt/2M4Fi0X https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

A scammer details how voice phishing groups are abusing Apple's support line to generate "account confirmation" message prompts from Apple to their customers (Brian Krebs/Krebs on Security)

Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security : A scammer details how voice phishing groups are abusing Apple's support line to generate “account c...