Geek News

How do you get Fortnite -obsessed kids to play an old-school board game? By putting Fortnite in the board game, of course. Epic and Hasbro have revealed a Fortnite version of Monopoly that replaces the usual property trading with elements from the battle royale shooter. Island locations replace buildings (popular drop point Tilted Towers is the new Boardwalk), while health points replace money. Don't just call it a cosmetic change, though -- there are genuine changes to the game mechanics. Hasbro told IGN that Fortnite 's ever-present storm will manifest the game -- storm-struck locations will take two lives each. The dice will also be split into movement and action rolls, so you can shoot a rival or defend yourself before you move. The new take on Monopoly reaches stores on October 1st. It's a classic case of milking a trend for all it's w...

There are a lot of reasons why cloud-based backup is one of Nintendo Switch Online's most awaited features. It can make sure you don't lose your progress if your game suddenly gets corrupted, if your console gets stolen or if you decide to buy a new Switch. Sadly, it looks like it won't be available for some games on the platform. GameInformer has discovered that a number titles that need a subscription to the service for online play don't have access to the feature. Their entries on the Nintendo website explicitly state: "This game does not support Save Data Cloud backup." The publication found the note on the Pokémon Let's Go Eevee & Pikachu pages, as well as on the pages for Splatoon 2 , Dark Souls Remastered , Dead Cells , FIFA 19 and NBA 2K19 . In a statement sent to GameInformer, Nintendo confirmed that those titles really w...

If Apple was hoping to elicit sympathy for the potential impact of US tariffs on product prices... well, it's not going to get any from the highest levels of government. In one of his characteristic weekend Twitter sprees, President Trump acknowledged that product prices might go up, but insisted that there would be an "easy solution:" make the products in the US. "Start building new plants now," Trump said. Apple has claimed that the Apple Watch, HomePod, Mac mini and accessories would be more expensive in the US as a result of imposing new tariffs on China. The problem, as you might guess, is that it's not as simple as building new plants in the US. It's not just the cost of the workers, it's the flexibility of that worker pool and access to resources. If Apple needs to step up production due to demand, factory partners like ...

YouTube is no stranger to pulling videos based on their content , but now it also has to worry about when a video is available. The Google-owned service has removed ads from Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny following officials' claims that the videos would violate a campaign silence law by remaining available ahead of regional governor elections on September 9th. In a statement, YouTube's Russian branch said it responded to "all justified appeals from state bodies" and said advertisers had to honor local laws. Whether or not the law was an issue is another matter. Navalny aide Leonid Volkov maintained that YouTube pulled the videos based on an illegal complaint letter from the country's election commission, not a full-fledged order. The Russian government under Putin has regularly suppressed political dissent, and has frequently si...

Competition among mid-range mobile devices hasn't been particularly fierce in the US as of late. Outside of value-for-money phones like the Moto G6 , the focus has remained squarely on premium gear. Samsung might just spice things up a bit with its latest additions, however. It's launching the latest versions of two mid-tier gadgets, the Galaxy A6 and Galaxy Tab A, in the US. While neither will make you think twice about picking up a Note 9 , they aren't just the usual watered-down devices -- the A6 in particular (above) might raise an eyebro w. The so-so 1.6GHz Exynos 7884 chip, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of expandable storage and Android 8.0 Oreo won't blow you away (seriously, Samsung, new devices should be running at least 8.1 by now). However, you do get a tall 5.6-inch 1,480 x 720 display and a hefty 3,000mAh battery that could last all day with this...

Vizio smart TVs might display a strange notification in the near future -- one telling you if the company collected and sold your data. Back in 2015, a ProPublica exposé revealed that Vizio installed software on its smart TVs that allowed it to track and sell your viewing habits to advertisers without explicit consent. That unsurprisingly spawned class action lawsuits, and a judge ruled back in 2017 that the company has to pay $2.2 million to settle with the government. According to The Hollywood Reporter , Vizio was supposed to reveal the details of the settlement on September 12th, but court documents have revealed that it asked for an extension. Why? To make sure that the brand's smart TVs can display class action notices in a way that satisfies legal standards. The publication quoted a part of the court papers that said: "The Parties are develo...

President Donald Trump suggested this morning that Apple should move its manufacturing plants to America as a way to avoid tariffs in the ongoing trade dispute between the US and China, following reports that the company's products could become more expensive. The Trump administration began imposing a series of tariffs on goods from China this summer, but up until now, consumer electronics have been left off the list. That could soon change, as the latest proposed round of tariffs could include products from companies like Apple, Fitbit and Sonos. This week, Apple said that the tariffs would amount to a 25 percent tax on products like the Apple Pencil, AirPods, Apple Watch, HomePod, Mac Mini, and others (or individual components used in... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts https://ift.tt/2CBeCTf ...

Closure might be coming for victims of the massive JPMorgan Chase hack in 2014. The country of Georgia has extradited the alleged (and until now mysterious) hacker at the core of the crime, Andrei Tyurin, to the US. The Russian citizen pleaded not guilty in a New York court to charges that included conspiracy, hacking, identity theft and wire fraud. He reportedly worked with mastermind Gery Shalon to steal personal data from JPMorgan and other banks for use in a pump-and-dump stock scheme that may have made hundreds of millions of dollars. Tyurin had gone unnamed in the case until he appeared in court on September 7th, but he'd been elusive for years. It also wasn't certain that he would go to the US -- Russia also wanted him extradited, and many believed the mystery suspect would never reach American shores. Multiple other suspects have either been c...

One of 1998's biggest tech stories was the massive antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft. It's Monopoly Week on The Verge , so I wrote a bit about that lawsuit's place in the '90s legal landscape. I also reviewed Antitrust , the 2001 thriller about a fictionalized Microsoft that murders software developers to steal their code. But today's big news involves another incredibly important, potentially monopolistic tech company: Google, which was founded on September 4th, 1998. To celebrate, you can check out some "stickers" from one of Google's earliest iterations. Or you can read on for news about celebrity chat rooms, flame mail, and a North Korean satellite. Hello Google, goodbye Backrub Larry Page and Sergey Brin launched the Google search... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts https://ift.tt/2wUyaM4...

In my previous post I deployed a Data Collector to connect my on-premises vSphere environment with Cloud Assembly and also configured a Cloud Account. In this post I will walk you through how to setup a vSphere Cloud Zone including Flavor- and Image Mappings, Storage-... The post Setting up a vSphere Cloud Zone in Cloud Assembly appeared first on VMGuru . via Latest imported feed items on VMware Blogs https://ift.tt/2wWq31E If New feed item from https://blogs.vmware.com/feed , then send me an email at kr Unsubscribe from these notifications or sign in to manage your Email Applets. ...