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Sabtu, 22 Juni 2019

The Morning After: The problem with the PlayStation Classic - Engadget

Hey, good morning! You look fabulous.

Welcome to your weekend! We'll recap a few highlight stories from the last week, plus some new items like our thoughts on Google getting out of the tablet business and a hands-on test of Tesla's latest in-car games. Oh, and if you prefer to read this recap in the afternoon, it's alright -- we understand.

Users who found value in the system were collectors or had low expectations going in. Why is the PlayStation Classic so unpopular?

Readers tell us why they liked it even less than we did.

'Beach Buggy Racing 2' is playable with the car's steering wheel and pedal.Control a fake Tesla while charging your real Tesla

Tesla's vehicles have an array of goofy Easter Eggs. From fart noises to Atari video games, the company isn't afraid to fly its freak flag. So it was no real surprise when the world found out that Tesla would be adding more games and that an SDK would be available for developers to port their titles to the cars.

Give the people what they want.Google getting out of the tablet game was inevitable (and smart)

When Google announced it was working on bringing Android apps and the Play Store to Chromebooks in 2016, it was pretty clear that Android tablets as we knew them were dead. And while Android apps on Chromebooks are still far from perfect (they're still somewhat buggy and often not optimized for keyboard and mouse), a Chrome OS device with Android apps is far more useful than any Android tablet ever was. That's why Nathan Ingraham calls the news that Google will no longer build its own tablets "logical."

Find the answers when it launches July 5th.'Sea of Solitude' looks like a brilliant, emotional horror show

Faith is the soul of EA's Sea of Solitude. Who can you trust, when you can't believe the reality your brain is presenting? When your mind has spiraled into paranoid, depressed delusion and nothing makes sense? Who, and what, can you trust, when you're at your most vulnerable? According to Jessica Conditt, Sea of Solitude asks these questions in a poignant, beautiful game filled with spatial puzzles and giant beast battles.

Like an El Cami-Nikolai.YouTuber known for 'shitty robots' turns Tesla Model 3 into a pickup truck

YouTuber and inventor Simone Giertz needed a truck to carry materials for her creations but didn't want a gas-guzzling pickup. So the 28-year-old robotics enthusiast decided to buy herself a brand spanking new Tesla Model 3, carve out the back seat and the trunk, and perform a bunch of other mods to the $35,000 vehicle that will make some of the Musk faithful wince. Fortunately, she documented the entire messy process in a 31-minute YouTube video. Look on with horror or admiration. And if you're not into hacking apart your beloved ride, you can always play a game on the dash screen.

Most viewers ever for a Netflix flick on its first weekend.Adam Sandler's 'Murder Mystery' breaks Netflix viewing records

Apparently what people want is more Adam Sandler, and Netflix gave it to them.

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https://www.engadget.com/2019/06/22/the-morning-after/

2019-06-22 14:20:43Z
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One of the creepiest series in YouTube history is now a decade old and can’t seem to die - The Verge

Ten years ago this week, a video appeared on the Something Awful forum describing a trove of unlabeled tapes that had been recorded as part of a student film project. The director had supposedly instructed for the tapes to be burned. But years after the project was suddenly ended, the video’s narrator reveals that he kept them intact and decided to parse through the footage.

“Should I find anything in any of them I will upload it to keep as a permanent record,” the narrator wrote. Within a few uploads, the audience was subjected to a slew of clues as to what drove the director to cancel the project. The tapes were filled with shots of eerie symbols and a tall, creeping figure without a face and dressed in a suit.

These videos were some of the first entries into Marble Hornets, an early fictional YouTube horror series that garnered a cult following and boasts a vibrant fandom across platforms even today. The series ran for five years, finishing on June 20th, the same date it began. Uploads were sporadic, some only a few seconds long. Others stretched out to the 15-minute length that’s popular with creators today. The series is a beloved relic of old YouTube and early internet culture.

“In internet years, 10 years is ancient. Like, might as well be Ancient Greece almost,” Tim Sutton, one of the series’s writers and actors, told The Verge. “We’re only a couple years removed from the land of flash videos and ‘You’re the Man Now, Dog’. We’re vintage internet.”

The series follows a character named Jay Merrick, played by Troy Wagner, as he attempts to understand what happened during the creation of a student film being shot by his friend, Alex Kralie. As he watches the tapes, Jay learns that Alex was being tormented by a figure known as “The Operator,” a version of the mythical creature Slenderman that was popularized in the Something Awful forums. Forum members would Photoshop the creature into photos and share their creations with each other. This community-generated content inspired Marble Hornets’ creators to craft an entire video series dedicated to the fandom.

YouTube was an entirely different world then; monetizing content was more difficult, and the site was oftentimes a secondary platform for popular Newgrounds creators to publish their animations. It wasn’t the corporate beast that it is today, filled with full-time creators, sponcon, and the late-night television clips that plague the Trending tab.

It was this YouTube that I grew up with. I spent countless hours sitting in front of my family’s boxy Dell desktop in our “office,” which was really just a room with my grandpa’s old rocking chair, framed quilts, and a faux-wood desk that could fit a computer. But it was at that computer where I would celebrate reaching the level necessary on World of Warcraft to purchase a crummy mount for the first time with my guildies over Ventrilo. It’s where my friends and I would circle up to watch Weebl’s Stuff and Salad Fingers, and it was also where I would binge Marble Hornets, unsure if it was a work of fiction or a real lost-footage investigation playing out in real time on YouTube.

In high school, I would find myself sitting in this dark office, chatting with friends over ooVoo and watching the series together. By then, it had trickled out of the Something Awful forums and onto other platforms like Reddit and Tumblr, which is likely where my friends and I were able to find it. Marble Hornets was detached from the original forum source and left me, a naive and easily persuadable 15-year-old girl, terrified that Slenderman might be real. I was so naive and persuadable, in fact, that one night while chatting, my older friends were able to convince me to toss salt over my shoulders and spin around a few times to ensure the lanky, faceless freak wouldn’t kill me in my sleep.

It was the mystery and ambiguity of Marble Hornets that drew me in at a time when the internet and YouTube weren’t overrun by brands and 4K, forty-minute vlogs. Myspace and Facebook had been around for some time, but my platforms of choice, Tumblr and Reddit, were less popular and baby websites in comparison. The space felt personal, and algorithms had yet to determine all of the content I consumed. Marble Hornets traveled to me, and likely many others, by word of mouth and niche online communities where people would discuss the series like they were investigating it alongside Jay.

“The rise of social media made it easier to share,” Sutton said. “There were still a couple of forums, which I guess are sort of old-fashioned now at this point. Having those tools to share those things hadn’t been around all that long.”

Marble Hornets felt like the Evil Dead cult, horror classic of the internet to me. But instead of picking up a VHS tape at a dinky video store, I discovered it through threads and posts from other die-hard fans.

Wagner told The Verge he was grateful for the fans who have been around all ten years, but also said new, younger kids are still finding it today. “There’s new people coming into it always it seems,” Wagner said. “Something like TV might have a problem with this because shows go off TV when they end. Whereas this is always on YouTube.”

The series transcends generations; many Gen Z kids are friending and following the Marble Hornets creators today. “The fan base has been getting gradually younger,” Sutton said. “I get a lot of messages from kids that are like 14 and under. I got a comment on one of my Instagram posts the other day that said they were 11, and I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’”

When I asked Sutton why he thought kids continue to follow and even cosplay as his character on contemporary apps like TikTok to this day, he offered an explanation that spoke to my past experience. On the internet, Marble Hornets appears to be a universal, hidden treasure.

“It feels kind of like you’re investigating something. You still feel like you’re in on the mystery a little bit,” Sutton said. “Especially because it never got like a huge, huge, huge following.”

He continued, “It feels like people are stumbling on something kind of secret. Especially if you’re younger, because it’s scary. It is sort of PG-13, but I would still imagine if you’re like 12 or 13, it would be something you’d hide from your parents. I think that’s part of the draw.”

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https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/22/18701350/youtube-creepypasta-marble-hornets-slenderman

2019-06-22 14:00:00Z
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Microsoft bans Slack and discourages AWS and Google Docs use internally - The Verge

Microsoft has banned the use of the free version of Slack for its 100,000+ employees. GeekWire reports that Microsoft has a list of prohibited apps and services, and even Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Docs are “discouraged for use” inside the company. The Slack ban isn’t primarily driven by Microsoft’s competing Teams product, though. Microsoft is reportedly concerned about the security aspects of Slack Free and Slack Plus. An internal entry describes the situation:

“Slack Free, Slack Standard and Slack Plus versions do not provide required controls to properly protect Microsoft Intellectual Property (IP). Existing users of these solutions should migrate chat history and files related to Microsoft business to Microsoft Teams, which offers the same features and integrated Office 365 apps, calling and meeting functionality. Learn more about the additional features that Teams can provide your workgroup. Slack Enterprise Grid version complies with Microsoft security requirements; however, we encourage use of Microsoft Teams rather than a competitive software.”

That means employees can use Slack Enterprise Grid, but given the costs involved it’s far more likely that most groups in Microsoft will be using the preferred Microsoft Teams option. AWS and Google Docs usage will reportedly “require a business justification” for employee use, and even Microsoft-owned GitHub is discouraged for “Highly Confidential types of information, specs or code.”

Microsoft has also banned Grammarly inside the company, which is a writing and grammar-checking app that can monitor every keystroke. “The Grammarly Office add-in and browser extensions should not be used on the Microsoft network because they are able to access Information Rights Management (IRM) protected content within emails and documents,” according to the leaked list.

Microsoft’s prohibited list makes a lot of sense for security-related matters, but employees still need to use these competing services to further their own products and understand the broader market. That would be a key part of any business justifications to get access to services like AWS or Google Docs.

Microsoft has been competing with Slack aggressively, but the messaging service recently launched apps and integrations for Slack and Office 365 to bridge the gap. Microsoft also launched its free version of Teams to rival Slack earlier this year, just weeks after the company unveiled creative new conference call features for its Slack competitor.

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https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/22/18713270/microsoft-slack-ban-aws-google-docs-prohibited-list-details

2019-06-22 13:06:01Z
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A Firefox update fixes yet another zero-day vulnerability - Engadget

Microsoft’s new Windows Terminal now available to download for Windows 10 - The Verge

Microsoft first unveiled its new command line app for Windows, dubbed Windows Terminal, at Build earlier this year. It’s a new central location where you can access the traditional cmd line, PowerShell, and the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). While developers have been able to compile and use the Windows Terminal from the code available on GitHub, Microsoft is now releasing an easy installer through the Windows Store today.

The Windows Terminal app includes multiple tab support, alongside themes and customization for developers who want to tweak the Terminal app. You’ll need to tweak a JSON file if you want to get to all of the customization options right now, as this early preview doesn’t have full functionality. Microsoft has some instructions on how to configure your settings and key binds in the JSON file, and you can even change the background image.

Windows Terminal will also support full GPU-based text rendering and even emoji. Microsoft showed off the emoji support with a flashy sizzle video at Build, and the text rendering is DirectX-based so it will display regular text characters, glyphs, and symbols that are available on your PC.

Microsoft did promise a Windows Terminal preview in mid-June, and we’re just past the midway point of the month and it has arrived. “This is the first of several preview releases to the Microsoft Store,” says Kayla Cinnamon, Windows Terminal program manager. “The Terminal team is working towards creating a consistent schedule that offers regular previews and more frequent builds for those who want to get access to the latest features as they arrive. Windows Terminal 1.0 will arrive in the Microsoft Store this winter!”

Microsoft is also working on bringing the full Linux kernel to Windows 10 to improve performance of the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). If you want to try out the new Windows Terminal, you can download it immediately from the Windows Store.

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https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/22/18701365/microsoft-windows-terminal-10-download-store-features

2019-06-22 09:09:24Z
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Harry Potter: Wizards Unite: 6 Things to Do First - IGN

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5c0ZhP6MjmM

2019-06-22 04:57:03Z
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Jumat, 21 Juni 2019

Apple Reportedly in Talks With Samsung About OLED Displays for Future iPads and MacBooks - Mac Rumors

Samsung is the exclusive supplier of OLED displays for the iPhone X and newer, as part of a supply agreement with Apple. Due to fewer iPhone sales than anticipated in recent quarters, however, Apple has reportedly ordered fewer OLED displays from Samsung than both companies initially expected.

Due to the shortfall, Korea's ETNews reports that Apple now owes Samsung a penalty in the amount of hundreds of millions of dollars. Instead of paying cash, however, the report claims Apple has offered multiple options, including committing to OLED display orders for future products like "tablets and notebooks."

This aligns with a recent report from Korean site The Elec that claimed Samsung is in talks with Apple about supplying OLED displays for an all-new 16-inch MacBook Pro and future iPad Pro models.

MacRumors mockup of 16-inch MacBook Pro
We first heard about a potential 16-inch to 16.5-inch MacBook Pro from well-known analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who said the notebook will launch at some point in 2019 with an "all-new design," but he did not comment on which display technology the notebook will use or share any other details.

Kuo has also previously claimed that two new iPad Pro models will enter mass production between the fourth quarter of 2019 and the first quarter of 2020, but again, he did not say which display technology the tablets will use.

Beyond that, Kuo expects Apple to launch several new products with Mini-LED backlights over the next two years, including a 10-inch to 12-inch iPad in late 2020 or early 2021 and a 15-inch to 17-inch MacBook in the first half of 2021, so it's unclear exactly how far away we are from the first OLED-based iPads and Macs.

Apple's transition to OLED started with the Apple Watch, followed by the iPhone X, so the iPad Pro and MacBook Pro would continue that natural progression of the technology from smaller to larger displays.

OLED displays could have several benefits for future iPad Pro and MacBook Pro models, including lower power consumption, increased brightness, sharper colors, and faster response times compared to LCDs. OLED panels are often thinner, too, which could lead to slimmer and lighter product designs.

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https://www.macrumors.com/2019/06/21/apple-samsung-oled-ipads-macbooks/

2019-06-21 14:08:00Z
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Sabtu, 22 Juni 2019

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Jumat, 21 Juni 2019