Geek News

Here's a game industry move you probably weren't expecting: Sonic the Hedgehog co-designer Yuji Naka has joined Square Enix. He'll continue to pursue game development, but he isn't exactly dropping many hints as to what's next. Naka wants to make an "enjoyable game," which sounds like a good goal to shoot for. It's not clear what will happen to his game studio, Prope, with the change in career path. Whatever he does, Naka will bring a lot to the table. He started at Sega in 1983 and quickly developed a reputation for his programming skills, which proved instrumental to games like Sonic -- the game's signature loops and curves were the result of his work. He eventually became a producer who managed titles like Nights into Dreams and Phantasy Star Online . Naka left to form Prope in 2006 simply because he wanted to create his own games that weren't Sonic -related. Prope's titles weren't as high-profile, of course, but they covered...

Phil Harrison followed up almost two decades as an executive for both Sony and Microsoft as an investor in computer and video game companies. But he's moving back to the tech world with a new role as Vice President and GM of Google, Harrison announced on Twitter. Excited to be able to share that today I've started a new role as Vice President and GM of Google - and relocating (back) to California. — Phil Harrison (@MrPhilHarrison) January 22, 2018 Most of his career has been involved with production or oversight of gaming platforms. Starting in 1992, Harrison spent 15 years working for Sony, some of it heavily involved with the PlayStation family in regional and global executive positions. His assurance that the PS3's holistic platform would make the PC obsolete didn't pan out, but he stayed in gaming after leaving Sony, heading Atari for a year before stepping down and joining Microsoft in 2012 to become lead for Xbox in Europe. It's unclear what area H...

It didn't take long for someone to topple 2017's microSD storage record . The UK's Integral Memory has unveiled what it says it the first shipping 512GB microSD card. So long as your device can handle microSDXC (most Android phones and tablets, as well as PCs like the Surface Pro ), you too can have half a terabyte in the space of a fingernail. The card's 80MB/s peak transfer speed isn't the fastest you'll find, but it should be enough for apps and recording gobs of 4K video. The card arrives in February, although it's not clear how much it will cost or how readily available it will be outside of the UK. Don't expect it to be cheap, though -- the 400GB card still carries a premium (around $250 on Amazon), and it's virtually certain that 512GB will cost more. This is more about bragging rights, both for Integral Memory and for well-heeled techies who want the kind of capacity normally reserved for laptops. Source: BusinessWire via Engadget RSS ...

Ever hop on a WiFi hotspot to save mobile data or boost speed, only to find out that it's so slow that you might as well have stayed on cellular access? If you're using Android 8.1 Oreo, that shouldn't be a problem going forward. After several weeks of teasing , Google is rolling out a feature that gauges the speed of WiFi networks before you connect. It's not giving you exact bandwidth readings -- instead, it's lumping the overall performance into categories that give you an idea of what to expect. You may want to avoid a "slow" (under 1Mbps) or "OK" (1-5Mbps) network unless you have no choice, but "fast" (5-20Mbps) and "very fast" (20Mbps and above) should do the job if you're catching up on YouTube. The ratings are a bit conservative, and might not help much if you're hoping to stream 4K or download a multi-gigabyte app. However, it should help you make more informed decisions. You might skip that overloaded air...

Netflix has been streaming comedy specials for a while now. Seinfeld got his first show on the streaming platform last September and released a couple more events starring Patton Oswalt and Dave Chappelle before the New Year. Now, according to Deadline , Netflix is set to debut a series of 15-minute stand-up specials starring new comedic talents this year. Deadline reports that the specials will tape in February at Atlanta's Terminal West. Each comic will get 15 minutes to strut their stuff. The list of up-and-comers includes Aisling Bea, Michelle Buteau, Tim Dillon, JR De Guzman, Sabrina Jalees, Janelle James, Sam Jay, Josh Johnson, Ian Karmel, Jak Knight, Matteo Lane, Max Silvestri, Taylor Tomlinson, Phil Wang, Emma Willmann and Kate Willett. Source: Deadline via Engadget RSS Feed "http://ift.tt/2F5pxRn"

Google announced today that it's expanding its AI research efforts, setting up a new research team in France that will work with the country's AI research community on issues ranging from health to the environment. Google says the team's work will be published and any code it produces will be open source. Along with creating a dedicated AI team at Google France, the company is also expanding its workforce by 50 percent and opening four hubs that will provide free digital literacy training to the residents of France. But Google isn't the only company growing its AI presence. While Facebook already has an AI lab in the country, it announced today that it would put €10 million towards accelerating AI innovation in France. That money will be used for scholarships, funding servers and open datasets that public institutions can use and adding 30 additional fellowship positions to Facebook AI Research Paris' PhD program. The French team will also double from 30 to 60...

Facebook announced today that Eric Romo, the former CEO and co-founder of AltSpaceVR, is joining its social VR team as Product Director. He'll be helping with Facebook's nascent but thriving social VR efforts, building upon the company's Facebook Spaces launch last year. "Eric is a pioneer in the social VR space who shares our vision of building virtual reality with people at the center," said Rachel Rubin Franklin, Facebook's head of social VR, in a post . "He's spent years building virtual communities to bring people together around common interests and compelling content." "With lots to tackle in 2018, I'm thrilled to have Eric on board," she continued. Years before Facebook Spaces, AltSpaceVR was one of the pioneers in the social VR space. Described as Second Life in VR, AltSpaceVR held many media events in recent years, such as partnering with NBC to air the presidential debates in VR and hosting virtual comedy shows fro...

You won't have to wait much longer to see how Netflix handles a soccer (aka football) documentary. The service is premiering the first three episodes of its Juventus FC docuseries , First Team: Juventus , on February 16th. The show will cover the high-ranking Italian team's drama both on and off the pitch, whether it's the individual players or the coaches shouting at the sidelines. The second portion of the series should premiere later in 2018. For Netflix, this is a grand experiment. It seldom ventures into sports, and it's ambitious to cover one of the best-known sports teams on the planet. Having said this, don't be shocked if there are more shows like this if First Team is even mildly successful. It could help Netflix court sports fans who'd otherwise turn to documentaries on conventional TV, and there's pressure to compete against Amazon's fledgling sports lineup . Source: Netflix via Engadget RSS Feed "http://ift.tt/2n1maEp"

While Netflix is facing more competition than ever, its growth isn't slowing. The company just announced its four quarter earnings results, and revealed that worldwide it added 8.3 million customers, "the highest quarter in our history and up 18 percent vs. last year's record 7.05 million ." While the Will Smith-starring movie Bright wasn't a hit with critics, the company seems happy, saying that it's one of the most viewed titles ever and drove a "notable" lift in customer acquisition. As a result, Netflix is planning to invest more in original films, as well as international content to follow its first German original series, Dark . Developing... Source: Netflix Investor Relations Q4 2017 results (PDF) via Engadget RSS Feed "http://ift.tt/2Dsty1Q"

Around half of the world's population is at risk of contracting malaria and it causes around half a million deaths each year. However, the parasites that cause malaria are becoming more resistant to the drugs we currently use to combat them, meaning the global malaria risk stands to increase if we don't develop new drugs quickly enough. Well new research published recently in Scientific Reports finds that a common chemical used in everything from soap and toothpaste to clothing and furniture might be an effective treatment, and it was done with the help of AI. Many popular antimalarial drugs target a specific enzyme found in malaria-causing parasites, an enzyme important for the parasites' growth. So researchers used AI-powered Robot Scientist Eve to screen a slew of FDA-approved compounds to see how well they were able to inhibit that enzyme and it found that triclosan was able to inhibit the enzyme from two different species of malaria-causing parasites, including ...

Facebook has plans to tweak its News Feed to include more posts from friends and family and less from news publishers in an attempt to fix some of the platform's problems . Now news magnate Rupert Murdoch thinks that the social network should adopt a pay-TV model and start paying "trusted" publishers for content. "The publishers are obviously enhancing the value and integrity of Facebook through their news and content but are not being adequately rewarded for those services," Murdoch said in a statement. "Carriage payments would have a minor impact on Facebook's profits but a major impact on the prospects for publishers and journalists." Murdoch feels that subscription models and Facebook's current tweaks are inadequate to solve the problem on a commercial, social and journalistic level. "We will closely follow the latest shift in Facebook's strategy," Murdoch said, "and I have no doubt that Mark Zuckerberg is a since...

Most of the states fighting the FCC's net neutrality repeal are counting on lawsuits or legislative measures that could take years to process, but Montana Governor Steve Bullock isn't willing to wait. He just signed an executive order requiring that all internet providers with a Montana government contract from July 1st onward honor the principles of net neutrality for any customer in the state. Given that most major providers (including AT&T, Charter and Verizon) have government contracts, this forces telecoms to treat all traffic fairly regardless of what the FCC wants. Bullock also suggested that other states backing net neutrality could do the same. "This is a simple step," he said in a statement, adding that "we can't wait for folks in Washington DC to come to their senses and reinstate these [neutrality] rules." Whether or not the order sticks is another matter. The FCC crafted its repeal specifically to prevent states from reinstating c...

A new report from Ernst & Young details just how big of a problem security is when it comes to cryptocurrencies. Researchers collected data on 372 initial coin offerings (ICOs) that took place between 2015 and 2017 and found that over 10 percent of ICO proceeds are stolen by hackers , a percentage that amounts to the theft of up to $1.5 million per month. And in addition to monetary theft, hackers are also gaining access to personal information like addresses, phone numbers, bank details and credit card numbers. Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin have become incredibly popular of late and everyone from Ghostface Killah to KFC is jumping on the bandwagon. But digital currencies have largely functioned without regulation and without safety nets for most of their existence. And that combined with a lack of proper safeguards has opened up cryptocurrencies and exchanges to hackers and widespread theft. Ernst & Young says phishing is the most popular tool used by hackers. "H...

The Lunar Xprize is about to come to an anticlimactic end after more than a decade . Google has confirmed to CNBC that it doesn't plan to extend the $20 million competition past its March 31st deadline -- itself an extension well beyond the original 2014 end date. Given that all the finalists either don't have the funds to continue or don't expect to launch that quickly (the fastest, SpaceIL, might not launch before the end of 2018), the competition is effectively over with no winners. Not that Google minds, however. If anything, the company believes that the journey was more important than the destination. "We are so thrilled with the progress made by these teams over the last ten years," it said in a statement. And to a degree, it's right. The teams have make significant strides in designing practical lunar rovers without the resources of a massive government agency. Private space exploration is theoretically one step closer, even if the technology fro...

As a musician, knowing how your songs are performing on streaming platforms is important. Spotify brought real-time stats and demographic information to a dedicated app for artists this past October, while Pandora and YouTube have had similar dashboards for a while now. Finally, Cupertino is catching up with the beta launch of Apple Music for Artists , a dashboard that lets users drill down into various statistics on song performance from now to as far back as 2015, when the Apple Music service launched. According to Billboard , the service is rolling out to a few thousand artists at first, with a planned full launch to all who have tracks on Apple Music and iTunes. Billboard says the dashboard will show users the current number of plays, spins, song purchases and album purchases, while a special insights panel will provide information on key milestones, like cumulative plays and purchases for individual tracks. Artists can dig even deeper, too, with a global map to see how the...

Waymo started offering free autonomous rides in Phoenix last April as a way to promote its self-driving cars. The Alphabet-owned company has been trying to ramp up its own ride-sharing service to compete with Uber and Lyft, with a driverless taxi service with which the company hopes to cover a region larger than London. Now, Waymo is expanding beyond Arizona, with a test program set to launch in Atlanta, Georgia . Hello ATL! Metro Atlanta is the next stop for Waymo's test program. Now that we have the world's first fully self-driving vehicles on public roads in AZ, we're looking to take our tech to more cities. pic.twitter.com/YFLvxkVMMd — Waymo (@Waymo) January 22, 2018 According to The Verge , Waymo started mapping Atlanta's downtown areas last week for an up-to-date, accurate map of the area, an important dataset for self-driving cars. The test program has seen the Waymo fleet cover 4 million miles , with a million of those driven in the last six months of...

Microsoft has a tumultuous relationship with smartwatches. Its bulky wrist-mounted wearable, the Band and Band 2 , saw limited success at retail but couldn't compete with sales of the Fitbit or the Apple Watch . As of October 2016, it seems the Band brand has been shut down for good . However, hands-on photos shared by Twitter user @Hikari_Calyx show Microsoft was prototyping another fitness tracker that incorporated Xbox-style tiles in a more traditional smartwatch package. The Xbox Watch - Pin Diagram Yes we successfully booted up an Xbox Watch. Video is processing now. pic.twitter.com/qwBtOOf5fs — Hikari Calyx (@Hikari_Calyx) January 22, 2018 According to the photos, the Xbox Watch was sports-focused, offering tabs for workouts, heart-rate monitoring and GPS tracking. It had a black, square screen with rounded edges, and would ostensibly connect to a variety of wristbands, much like the Apple Watch does. This is something Microsoft would have been working on around 20...

Intel has another Spectre patch in the works, after users reported that its last fix led to random rebooting issues. Consequently, the company is now recommending that its customers stop deploying that original patch, and instead start testing out the new and improved version. Navin Shenoy, executive vice president and general manager of Intel's Data Center group, said in a blog post today that the company has "identified the root cause" for system instability in its Broadwell and Haswell chips, and it started rolling out the new patch to partners over the weekend. For now, all consumers can do is wait for a final version of that fix. "We recommend that OEMs, cloud service providers, system manufacturers, software vendors and end users stop deployment of current versions, as they may introduce higher than expected reboots and other unpredictable system behavior," Shenoy wrote. Last week, Intel said it was working on a fix for the buggy patches, but it wa...

Two-factor authentication only works if it's strictly enforced in software, and it sounds like Uber might have fallen short of that goal for a while. In a chat with ZDNet , security researcher Karan Saini has revealed a flaw in Uber's two-factor verification that reportedly rendered it useless. Saini has been keeping the exact details of the exploit under wraps to prevent abuse, but it revolved around a vulnerability in how Uber authenticates users when they sign in. The net effect was clear: an intruder might have only needed your username and password to sign in, giving them the chance to swipe personal info or misuse services. Saini characterized Uber's response as dismissive, although Uber is telling a different story. The ridesharing company initially told him that the issue wasn't "particularly severe" and was expected, marking it as "informative" -- that is, notable but not pressing. When we reached out to Uber, however, it said that it ...

Kim Dotcom, the founder of file-sharing site MegaUpload, is suing the New Zealand government for $6.8 billion dollars. According to the legal documents provided by the BBC , the claim covers the destruction of his business, loss of reputation, lost business opportunities, legal costs and lost opportunities on the home he was renting. Dotcom has certainly lost quite a bit, as according to the BBC , MegaUpload would be worth around $10 billion if it were still operating today. Dotcom owned 68 percent of the shares of the company, which was shut down in 2012 in a raid at the request of the FBI. He claims that his arrest, and the subsequent shutdown of his company, was unlawful. "Under the NZ copyright act, online copyright infringement is not a crime," said Mr Dotcom said to the BBC . Dotcom may soon be extradited to the US, where he stands to face copyright and money laundering charges. The hearing for that case is set for February 20th. Source: BBC (1) , BBC (2) via En...