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Microsoft Edge has a cute game to play when you’re offline

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Microsoft is determined to one-up Google where possible with its Chromium-based Edge browser, and that includes one of the most important areas: the cute mini-game you can play when you’re offline. After a few months of previews, Microsoft has updated Edge with a new Surf game (available at any time by plugging edge://surf into the address bar) that harkens back to the old SkiFree game from Windows’ past. This is decidedly more sophisticated than jumping a dinosaur over cactus plants in Chrome — you can take it surprisingly seriously for a game that’s supposed to tide you over for a few minutes.

At its heart, it’s an endless runner where you surf around obstacles and stay one step ahead of a kraken. There are also objective-based time trial and zig zag (really, slalom) modes, though. You can also use a variety of input that includes your mouse, keyboard, touch or even a gamepad with haptic feedback. High visibility and low-speed modes help with the difficulty, and there are promises of “a few secrets.”

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Blizzard has canceled this year’s BlizzCon

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You can add BlizzCon to the list of major events that won’t be happening this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although BlizzCon typically happens in November, Blizzard has already made the call to cancel this year’s edition.

The publisher said in early April that it was exploring its options and trying to determine whether BlizzCon would be feasible. “Ultimately, after considering our options, we’ve come to the very difficult decision to not have BlizzCon this year,” the event’s executive producer Saralyn Smith wrote in a blog post. Blizzard is looking into holding an online replacement of some kind, but that likely won’t happen until early 2021.

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Facebook’s own research warned its algorithms exploit ‘divisiveness’

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The following year Facebook launched “Common Ground,” a wide-ranging effort to make the social network less polarizing and “increase empathy” among users. 

Yet the company ultimately decided not to act on many of the group’s recommendations, fearing it could fuel claims the company was biased against conservative viewpoints. Other proposed changes were watered down, according to the report.

Facebook’s policy chief, Joel Kaplan, was reportedly particularly concerned with whether changes to News Feed rankings could further anger conservatives who already believed the company was biased against them. The WSJ also reports that Zuckerberg’s interest in this work was only “fleeting,” noting that more recently he has become a more vocal proponent of free speech and has pushed back on the idea that social media makes people more divided. 

In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson said the company had “learned a lot since 2016,” and noted Facebook has funneled $2 million into outside research on polarization. “We’ve learned a lot since 2016 and are not the same company today,” the spokesperson said. “We’ve built a robust integrity team, strengthened our policies and practices to limit harmful content, and used research to understand our platform’s impact on society so we continue to improve.”

Facebook has long grappled with questions over how it should police speech and what type of content it should be amplifying. The company recently introduced the first members of its content oversight board, a group of outside experts that will help Facebook deal with its most controversial content decisions. The company has been criticized internally for controversial policies that allow politicians to spread unchecked misinformation. 

But Zuckerberg has made it clear he doesn’t care much about “being liked,” especially when it comes to issues of free speech. The CEO said at the beginning of the year he intended to spend the next decade “communicating our principles” even when they are unpopular.

Update 5/26 8:13pm ET: Updated to add Facebook’s statement.



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Qatar’s contact tracing app put over one million people’s info at risk

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Qatar’s app, called EHTERAZ, uses GPS and Bluetooth to track COVID-19 cases, and last week, authorities made it mandatory. According to Amnesty, people who don’t use the app could face up to three years in prison and a fine of QR 200,000 (about $55,000).

“This incident should act as a warning to governments around the world rushing out contact tracing apps that are too often poorly designed and lack privacy safeguards. If technology is to play an effective role in tackling the virus, people need to have confidence that contact tracing apps will protect their privacy and other human rights,” said Claudio Guarnieri, head of Amnesty International’s Security Lab.

For contact tracing apps like EHTERAZ to work, they need widespread adoption — Amnesty says mandating the apps is not the right approach. Security blunders like this one could discourage people from using the apps and undermine efforts to slow the spread of the virus.

Qatar’s misstep may encourage more countries to adopt the Apple-Google model. The “decentralized” API stores sensitive info in users’ phones, rather than a centralized server. It uses Bluetooth to exchange keys and it doesn’t gather location data. While the Apple-Google API can’t identify users, the apps that use the API may be able to. So security and privacy policies should be examined on an app-by-app basis. Hopefully incidents like this will remain rare.

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The next ‘Dead By Daylight’ killer is Pyramid Head from Silent Hill

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If you prefer to play as a survivor, you can adopt the guise of Silent Hill 3 protagonist Cheryl Mason (though she was known as Heather in that game). She’ll have DBD’s first legendary skin — you’ll be able to turn Cheryl into student nurse Lisa Garland. You can try to escape Pyramid Head in Midwich Elementary School, a key location in the original Silent Hill, and maybe even look around for some Easter eggs (if you dare).

The paid Silent Hill DLC will be available on PC and consoles in June, but you can play as Pyramid Head right now on the PC public test server. This isn’t DBD’s first crossover with another horror game, as Bill from Left 4 Dead arrived in 2017.

It also emerged during the stream that cross-platform play is coming to Dead by Daylight later this year — in addition to PC and consoles, the game hit mobile last month. The Behavior team is working on a graphics overhaul as well. The Silent Hill crossover might be the most exciting addition for many though, especially given that it might be the only way you’ll get a new taste of that franchise any time soon.

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YouTube blames bug for censoring comments on China’s ruling party

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One of the phrases YouTube is censoring is “五毛 (wumao),” which roughly translates to “50-cent party,” a derogatory term aimed at online censors who the Chinese government pays to direct conversations away from criticism of the ruling party. According to The Verge, what YouTube isn’t doing is deleting the English translations of those phrases nor their Romanized equivalents.  

YouTube may have added 五毛 and the other banned Chinese phrase, “共匪 (communist bandit)” to its automated content filter system, which scans comments for spam and offensive text. The system deletes comments that include the phrases within 15 seconds, even if someone uses them in a positive context. In recent months, the company has been relying more heavily on those tools due to the coronavirus pandemic.   

Whatever way the error made its way into YouTube, Google has been slow to address it. A YouTube support page spotted by The Verge suggests the platform has been censoring specific Chinese phrases as far back as October 2019. More recently, human rights activist Jennifer Zeng documented the behavior in May. On Monday, Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey tweeted about the situation as well. 

The episode is likely to reignite criticism of the things Google — and more broadly big tech in general — has done to accommodate China’s ruling party. Last year, several companies, including Apple and Blizzard, came under scrutiny for bowing to pressure from the Chinese government when it came to the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.



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Apple fixed the bug that prevented some iOS apps from opening

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Are you wondering why your iPhone suddenly received dozens of app updates this weekend, even though some of them were days or even weeks old? You now have an answer. Apple has confirmed to TechCrunch that it fixed a bug in Family Sharing that prevented some iOS and iPadOS apps from opening. The company hasn’t elaborated on what led to the problem, but the evidence suggests it may have been an app signing issue.

As 9to5Mac learned, the bug usually led to people getting an error indicating that an app was “no longer being shared with you.” Deleting and reinstalling affected apps would solve the problem. Apple is effectively fixing the glitch by delivering properly signed versions without making users re-download apps themselves. It’s an unusual problem, to put it mildly, but it’s also good to know that a fix was available without having to wait for an OS update.

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Watch footage of Arkane’s unreleased Half-Life spin-off

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For all of its many faults, 2020 has at least one thing going for it: We’ve seen more of Valve’s Half-Life franchise in the last two months than in the 13 years before combined. It started in late March when the studio released Half-Life: Alyx, the first new entry in the series since 2007, and continues this month with a behind-the-scenes look at Ravenholm. Half-Life diehards will know Ravenholm as the unreleased Half-Life spin-off developer Arkane Studios was working on before releasing Dishonored. Thanks to a new documentary from Noclip that details the studio’s history, we finally get to see the game in action.

We learn that the story of Ravenholm started with System Shock and Thief: The Dark Project designer Warren Spector. Partway through the mid-aughts, Spector’s Junction Point studio, which went on to work on Epic Mickey, was working on a prototype for a new Half-Life 2 episode. Notably, the prototype included a weapon called the “magnet gun,” which Spector said allowed for “really freeform” gameplay. At some point, Valve gave the reins of the project over to Arkane. It’s there that the game started to take shape. 

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ARM’s latest phone chip designs will be better-equipped for 5G and foldables

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Smartphones require faster hardware every year, but upcoming models equipped with 5G and multiple displays will likely call for an even bigger jump in processing power than normal. ARM’s new Cortex-A78 CPU could serve as a starting point for companies like Qualcomm to design custom chips and deliver on that need. Compared to the current Cortex-A77, the forthcoming processor will provide a 20 percent increase in what ARM calls “sustained performance.” Despite the faster speed, the CPU will operate at a 1-watt power rate, so battery life should stay strong.

ARM will also create graphics processors for the next generation of smartphones. The high-end Mali-G78 is a 24-core GPU. The company says that it will be 25 percent more powerful than the existing Mali-G77. ARM’s next neural processing unit will also get a 25 percent improvement in performance, though these are more often found in IoT and edge devices than smartphones.

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Spotify drops the 10,000-song cap on libraries

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At long last, Spotify is dropping the 10,000-song limit on My Library, so you’ll be able to save as many tracks and albums as you like for easier access to them. You won’t need to remove any tunes to make space for new ones anymore.

It’s a welcome quality-of-life update, which has been a common request from many users for years. For instance, it’ll be a boon for folks who save a ton of tracks from playlists and those who pre-save upcoming albums from their favorite artists. The change is rolling out now, so don’t worry too much if you still see the “all filled up” notification when you try to add something else. The update will reach your account soon.

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