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Who are you siding with in the Spotify-Apple antitrust war?

Mar15
by on March 15, 2019 at 1:04 pm
Posted In: Around the Web


Earlier this week, Spotify filed an antitrust complaint with the European Commission against Apple, claiming that the company – which runs the App Store for iOS software – treats rivals to its own services unfairly, with a range of restrictions and demands. Naturally, with more than 200 million users worldwide, Spotify was able to get Apple’s attention. The iPhone maker has since responded with a scathing statement that made Spotify look stupid, and a touch deceitful. At the same time, Spotify makes some good points, and it’s awfully hard to pick a side (though you absolutely don’t have to). Here’s…

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How ideological bias in video game design changes our view of society

Mar15
by on March 15, 2019 at 12:37 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Design & Dev, gaming, syndication


Civilization VI, a game I like, has a new expansion pack out. It’s a strategy game series I’ve been playing since 1994 or so, and every Civ is a kind of simulation of how the world works. That’s what this piece is about: simulating systems. Specifically, what gets simulated, and what doesn’t. Every kind of game, regardless of genre, is a simulation of something. Bullets fly through the air and interact with bodies in specifically designed ways; Mario jumps and flips in accordance with simulacra of gravity and plasticity. In a game like Civilization, the player uses macro and micro simulations of different real-world systems…

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WhatsApp is testing reverse image search to battle fake news

Mar15
by on March 15, 2019 at 12:03 pm
Posted In: Apps, Around the Web, Insider


WhatsApp‘s had a difficult battle against fake news last year. Now, it’s testing a new weapon in this fight – a reverse image search button. According to a report by WABetaInfo, a beta version of WhatsApp’s Android app has a new feature to search an image directly from the chat. The report notes that the chat app will use Google APIs to compare the selected image with similar pictures, and will show the result in a browser. As shown in the screenshots below, the app will upload the image to Google’s image search – as WhatsApp can’t read the encrypted…

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Google distributed malicious Chrome app designed to steal your cryptocurrency

Mar15
by on March 15, 2019 at 11:45 am
Posted In: Around the Web, blockchain, cryptocurrency, Hard Fork


Be wary if you come across ads that promote an airdrop, distributing tokens for popular cryptocurrency exchange desk Huobi: the offer might be fake, and you might be getting swooped into an elaborate ploy designed to steal your coins. Security researcher Harry Denley, who maintains popular anti-phishing database EtherscamDB, has unearthed a phishing campaign that tricks victims into downloading a malicious Chrome extension, programmed to get a hold of your wallet‘s private keys. What makes the attack vector particularly sneaky is that the Chrome extension – called NoCoin – was disguised as an app to block surreptitious cryptocurrency mining (also known as…

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