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‘Yakuza 7’ gameplay trailer reveals wacky features and job classes

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It’s clear that Yakuza 7 will play lip-service to RPG tropes. It features multiple job classes, each with its own unique battle style. In the “host” class, you’ll attack with flowers and champagne, while in the “dancer” class, you’ll take people out with breakdancing moves. Your look will change from class to class too — get ready to breakdance in a bucket hat. The trailer even includes the cheeky line, “Happy ending… just like in Dragon Quest!”

There are plenty of other surprises, like Mario Kart-style go-karts, writing tests and a don’t-fall-asleep-in-the-movie-theater game. Thanks to a trailer shared this summer, we already had a sense of the plot. The new protagonist, Ichiban Kasuga, serves a 18-year prison sentence only to be betrayed by his family. But an updated trailer, also released yesterday, includes a couple extra minutes and English subtitles. The game is still expected to arrive in 2020.

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Spotify’s latest acquisition helps artists and labels hire studio talent

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SoundBetter is a mix of LinkedIn and TaskRabbit for musicians. Producers, writers, mixers, mastering engineers, and session performers can form online networks with a free account. People who pay for a monthly subscription can access job boards and take a proactive approach, rather than hoping to be discovered in search listings. Musicians who are actively working on a project can search for colleagues or post open gigs to attract collaborators. This system helps a musician who doesn’t play drums, for example, find a vetted percussionist online who can help complete a song or album.

As part of the Spotify for Artists ecosystem, the SoundBetter acquisition is the latest step in CEO Daniel Ek’s mission to turn Spotify into a “two-sided marketplace.” Ek envisions a unified service where musicians can produce content and consumers can listen to music. This sounds a lot like vertical integration, but several services that are part of Spotify for Artists help musicians publish their work outside of the platform. The streaming service isn’t just helping musicians get their content out; Spotify purchased Anchor earlier in the year, which helps podcasters develop, publish and monetize their shows.

Spotify often faces criticism for paying artists too little (the artists’ labels keep the vast majority of the streaming royalties — when they pay out at all). By adding platforms like SoundBetter to their offerings, the platform is arguably pushing back on those assertions and helping artists (especially ones that aren’t go-to names in the industry) make money while creating content.

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Sidewalk Labs’ controversial data collection project is now a company

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Nick Bowden, Replica’s CEO and co-founder, tried to address privacy fears in a blog post announcing the spinout. He stressed that no single user’s location data would be identifiable under Replica. “Replica is not interested in the movement of individuals; we are interested in the collective movement of a particular place. For this reason, we only start with data that has been de-identified. This data is then used to train a travel behavior model — basically, a set of rules to represent the movement in a particular place,” he wrote.

But others argue that the sensitivity of mobile phone location data, when held against Big Tech’s poor track record in safeguarding user privacy, isn’t exactly an encouraging combination. Critics maintain that location data is easy to re-identify, even if it has already been de-identified. “We see a lot of companies erring on the side of collecting it and doing coarse de-identifications, even though, more than any other type of data, location data has been shown to be highly re-identifiable,” said Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic’s Tamir Israel to The Intercept. “It’s obvious what home people leave and return to every night and what office they stop at every day from 9 to 5 p.m.”

So far, Replica has worked with Kansas City, Chicago, Sacramento and Portland. Bowden said that it will be launching full-scale operations in those cities over the next few months. Meanwhile, Sidewalk Labs is working on a proposal for a smart city development in Toronto that has drawn criticism from city legislators for its vague wording, including its plans around mass data collection. As Google’s work with urban planners expands, it will very likely need to answer lingering questions about the type of data it is collecting from a city’s residents and what exactly it plans to do with it.

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Government reportedly tells Google it can’t ban political talk at work

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An NLRB director approved a settlement in the case, according to the report. It should be enacted after an appeals period. Under the settlement, Google will reportedly have to tell workers it has walked back rules preventing them from sharing details such as working conditions and wages with each other or reporters. Engadget has contacted Google and the NLRB for comment.

One of the complaints was from engineer Kevin Cernekee, who claims Google fired him for discussing his supposedly unpopular right-leaning political views on internal message boards. Google says it dismissed him for misuse of company equipment. He asked to be reinstated with back pay, but that won’t happen under the settlement.

Regulators however did tell Google to revoke Cernekee’s final warning letter. It reportedly said he violated a section of the code of conduct requiring employees to respect each other, following remarks he made on the message boards.

The second complainant was a current Google employee who remains anonymous. He claims the company punished him for posting critical comments about a Google executive on Facebook. Attorneys for both complainants have objected to the settlement and claimed they deserve a hearing, the WSJ reports.

In August, Google updated its internal community guidelines to remind its employees they are responsible for their words and said they would be held to account for what they say. It urged them to steer clear of topics that make their colleagues feel as though they don’t belong and to not discuss potentially disruptive “controversies.”

The NLRB directive comes at a time when regulators have Google firmly under the microscope. Last week, it reached a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission and the New York attorney general’s office related to reported violations of child privacy rules. On Monday, it emerged that 50 state attorneys general have opened a joint antitrust investigation into the company. The Department of Justice is conducting a similar probe.

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France says it will block Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency in Europe

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Speaking at an OECD conference in Paris on Thursday, French finance minister Bruno Le Maire said Libra would put the sovereignty of governments at risk. “All these concerns around Libra are serious,” he said, according to a translation by CNBC. “So I want to say this with a lot of clarity: In these conditions, we cannot authorize the development of Libra on European soil.”

Le Maire — an outspoken opponent of the cryptocurrency — did not expand on his comment, but it seems likely that he intends to block Libra in its current form should it launch anywhere in Europe, rather than in France alone. Facebook has repeatedly said that it will wait until it has regulatory approval from all quarters before rolling out Libra, but that could take a long time — and if opponents are citing the sovereignty of currency and national security concerns as reasons to block the project, Facebook will be facing some very significant challenges indeed.

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Pepsi’s loyalty program puts cash in your Venmo account

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The beverage behemoth tells Engadget this is a permanent program. You won’t be under pressure to have soft drinks and chips at every given opportunity, even if there will undoubtedly be an incentive to pick them when you’re satisfying a craving at the convenience store.

This is definitely an uncommon promo, and reflects how online payments have grabbed a foothold. It’s certainly easier than converting points or asking stores to pay customers. The question is whether or not people will embrace the program in large numbers. In some ways, this is an experiment to see just how much the snack-seeking crowd appreciates digital money.

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Time’s mixed reality app takes you inside the Amazon rainforest

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The experience also features voice-over by world-renowned conservationist Dr. Jane Goodall, who’ll talk about the forces driving deforestation, the stories of those fighting it and those who have the most to lose from it. (The last one probably includes all of humanity.) In addition, it features a spatial sound system to go with its immersive visuals.

The launch of Time’s AR experience goes hand-in-hand with the release of a special issue on the climate crisis. It includes a piece by Sandy that discusses how the largest and most biodiverse rainforest in the world has reached a tipping point wherein it could turn into a savanna. Wildfires, mostly blamed on clearing space for agriculture, are currently burning through the Amazon at a higher intensity and more frequency than in the past. There’s been a global outrage over the alarming of number forest fires these past months: Amazon, after all, is the world’s largest carbon dioxide sink and helps prevent the planet from overheating.

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Whoopi Goldberg will star in CBS All Access series ‘The Stand’

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Skarsgård portrayed another kind of villain — a rapist and an abusive husband — in Big Little Lies. He’s also the brother of Bill Skarsgård, who played Pennywise the Clown in the recent It movies. While CBS has yet to confirm Skarsgård’s casting, it has revealed the names of other actors joining the series, including It’s Owen Teague. He’s joining Goldberg, as well as previously announced cast members James Marsden and Amber Heard. Unfortunately, CBS didn’t announce a streaming date for the limited series along with the casting news, though previous reports said the show is expected to arrive sometime next year.

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‘Project Resistance’ video shows its 4-vs-1 co-op gameplay

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You’ll have to fend off monsters and get through obstacles if you play as one of the survivors, who each have a special skill. If you play as the Mastermind, you’ll be able to lock the doors the survivors have to go through, place creatures in their midst, shoot them with gun-equipped cameras or even attack them by controlling zombies directly.

You can now sign up for a chance to take part in a closed beta test if you want to give the game a try and see if it’s worth getting. The closed beta period begins on October 4th 3AM Eastern time and ends on October 7th 3AM. You’ll have to be a Resident Evil Ambassador program member for the PS4 or an Xbox Insider Program member. If you get chosen to participate, you’ll receive an email with instructions on September 30th, around 3AM Eastern.



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Color-changing smart skin gets an upgrade thanks to chameleons

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Chameleons can change their colors thanks to photonic crystals in their skin. As they tense or relax their muscles, the light reflects in a different pattern, resulting in a change of color. The problem with synthetic color-changing skin is in the hydrogel that the photonic crystals are packed into: After expanding and contracting, the large amount of crystals would cause the medium to seize up. Khalid Salaita and his colleagues have solved this problem by concluding that less is more.

The team watched time-lapse videos of chameleons’ phase-shifting skin and realized that the reptiles have fewer skin cells with photonic crystals than previously thought. By packing fewer photonic crystals in a thin layer of hydrogel, and then placing that slice on a larger layer of colorless hydrogel, the smart skin can expand and contract without issue. As the temperature changes or sunlight hits the surface, the material changes color.

ACS Nano, a peer-reviewed journal focused on nanotechnology where this study was published, notes that smart skin may have applications in camouflage, signaling and anti-counterfeiting. MIT’s color-changing ink, meanwhile, could let users change patterns and colors of their shoes, cars and more. Picking a color for an expensive gadget like a smartphone can be a stressful one; you’re going to have to live with that choice for years. But with smart skin, we may eventually be able to change the colors of our gadgets as frequently as we swap out our wallpaper backgrounds.

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