Google Could Face Class-Action Lawsuit Over Free G Suite Legacy Account Shutdown
That means years of purchases tied to Google Play — potentially hundreds to thousands of dollars of assets like movie and music purchases for a given customer, across thousands of affected customers — could be tied to broken accounts because of the transition. Google explicitly confirmed to us that was the case, though customers could elect to keep using their broken suspended account alongside a working one. In essence, everyone that migrated to one of these accounts while they were still offered (from 2006 at least until 2012, so far as I can tell) will have to pay extra money to keep their existing purchases tied to a fully working account, and we think that’s pretty ridiculous.
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Cryptocurrencies Tumble As Global Investors Reduce Risk
Alternative cryptocurrencies (altcoins) led the way lower on Friday given their higher risk profile relative to bitcoin. Ether, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, was down about 13% over the past 24 hours, compared with a 14% drop in AVAX and a 16% drop in FTM over the same period. Despite the losses, some analysts still foresee a short-term bounce. “We expect BTC to find a bid around the $35K mark, close to 50% from the top. In the short term, we can bounce to challenge the $45K-$50K zone, but the overall outlook remains bearish as liquidity remains tight,” Pankaj Balani, CEO of Delta Exchange, a crypto derivatives trading platform, wrote in an email to CoinDesk.
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Hands-On Microsoft’s Canceled Andromeda OS
Andromeda OS was also gesture based. The on-screen Start and Cortana buttons would disappear when opening an app to provide a full-screen experience, so to access those areas, you’d swipe in from the left for Start, and from the right for Cortana, which is also where your notifications were stored. Yes, Cortana and your Notifications were one of the same on Andromeda OS, with Cortana becoming your “manager” of notifications missed or stored for dealing with later. A swipe down from the top would reveal the Control Center, which is feature that’s now shipping on Windows 11, but started life here on Andromeda OS. Feature-wise, it’s exactly the same, with the ability to control things like Wi-Fi, brightness, volume, and music playback. It also features Fluent Design acrylic blur effects, as do many other parts of the UI, even in this unfinished state.
[…] There was also an experimental “Radial UX Menu” mode, where instead of gestures swiping in things like Start and Cortana, swiping would present you with a UI full of circular buttons for things like Start, switching apps, and more. This may have been an alternative to on-screen navigation, as not everyone was familiar with full gesture navigation at the time just yet. Or, it could have been an alternative method of navigation for when you were using a pen. Who knows. One thing we’re not able to show you is the Continuum mode that Microsoft was also working on for Andromeda OS, as unfortunately it appears to be broken in the build we have. That said, we do know what it was going to be like. Essentially, Microsoft was building out Continuum to be a true desktop experience, with windowed app experiences, the ability to store icons on the desktop, and more. If you’d prefer to see Andromeda OS in action instead of read about it, you can watch Windows Central’s video here.
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Fed Releases Long-Awaited Study On a Digital Dollar
“A CBDC could fundamentally change the structure of the U.S. financial system, altering the roles and responsibilities of the private sector and the central bank,” the report says. One primary difference between the Fed’s dollar and other digital transactions is that current digital money is a liability of commercial banks, whereas the CBDC would be a Fed liability. Among other things, that would mean the Fed wouldn’t pay interest on money stored with it, though because it is riskless some depositors may prefer to keep their money with the central bank.
The paper lists a checklist of 22 different items for which it is soliciting public feedback. There will be a 120-day comment period. Fed officials say the report is the first step in an extensive process but there is no timetable on when it will be wrapped up. The paper released Thursday notes that the Fed’s “initial analysis suggests that a potential U.S. CBDC, if one were created, would best serve the needs of the United States by being privacy-protected, intermediated, widely transferable, and identity-verified.” However, the report also states that it “is not intended to advance a specific policy outcome and takes no position on the ultimate desirability of” the digital dollar. The report notes that the speed of the project is not a top priority. Instead, the authors of the report are focused on getting it right. “The introduction of a CBDC would represent a highly significant innovation in American money,” the report says. “Accordingly, broad consultation with the general public and key stakeholders is essential. This paper is the first step in such a conversation.”
The Fed also said that it will not proceed without a clear mandate from Congress, preferably in the form of “a specific authorizing law.”
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Major Breakthrough As Quantum Computing In Silicon Hits 99% Accuracy
[Professor Andrea Morello of UNSW, who led the work] et al achieved 1-qubit operation fidelities up to 99.95 percent, and 2-qubit fidelity of 99.37 percent with a three-qubit system comprising an electron and two phosphorous atoms, introduced in silicon via ion implantation. A Delft team in the Netherlands led by Lieven Vandersypen achieved 99.87 percent 1-qubit and 99.65 percent 2-qubit fidelities using electron spins in quantum dots formed in a stack of silicon and silicon-germanium alloy (Si/SiGe). A RIKEN team in Japan led by Seigo Tarucha similarly achieved 99.84 percent 1-qubit and 99.51 percent 2-qubit fidelities in a two-electron system using Si/SiGe quantum dots.
The UNSW and Delft teams certified the performance of their quantum processors using a sophisticated method called gate set tomography, developed at Sandia National Laboratories in the U.S. and made openly available to the research community. Morello had previously demonstrated that he could preserve quantum information in silicon for 35 seconds, due to the extreme isolation of nuclear spins from their environment. But the trade-off was that isolating the qubits made it seemingly impossible for them to interact with each other, as necessary to perform actual computations. Today’s paper describes how his team overcame this problem by using an electron encompassing two nuclei of phosphorus atoms. The three papers from the UNSW team, Delft team and RIKEN group in Tokyo can be found at their respective links.
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FAA Estimates 78% of US Planes Can Now Land At Airports With 5G C-Band
Given the high stakes, the FAA has said that only planes with altimeters that it has tested and cleared will be allowed to land in sub-optimal conditions at airports where the new 5G tech has rolled out. […] On January 16th, the agency announced that it had cleared two altimeters, which it bumped up to five on Wednesday. It said the cleared altimeters were installed in “some” versions of planes like the Boeing 737, 747, and 777. The FAA changed that language on Thursday, saying that the 13 cleared altimeters should cover “all” Boeing 717, 737, 747, 757, 767, 777, 787, MD-10/-11, and Airbus A300, A310, A319, A320, A330, A340, A350, and A380 models. It also notes that “some” Embraer 170 and 190 regional jets are covered.
The FAA is still predicting that some altimeters won’t pass the test and will be “too susceptible to 5G interference.” Planes equipped with those models won’t be allowed to land at airports with the new 5G tech in low-visibility conditions — which could prevent airlines from scheduling any flights using those planes to airports of concern, given the unpredictability of weather and the disruption such a diversion would cause.
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Activision CEO Bobby Kotick Will Reportedly Leave the Company After Microsoft Acquisition Closes
Kotick reportedly knew for years about a variety of claims of sexual harassment and rape at his company. An investigation by the Wall Street Journal detailed several specific examples of harassment and rape at Activision. Kotick was not only aware of those claims but, in a least one instance, reportedly intervened to keep a male staffer who was accused of sexual harassment despite the company’s human resources department recommending he be fired.
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Angry Gamers Have Scared Some Game Companies Away From NFTs
Then they were confronted by gamers like 18-year-old Christian Lantz, who for years has played GSC Game World’s first-person shooter game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
Mr. Lantz was incensed. He joined thousands of fans on Twitter and Reddit who raged against NFTs in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.’s sequel. The game maker, they said, was simply looking to squeeze more money out of its players. The backlash was so intense that GSC quickly reversed itself and abandoned its NFT plan.
“The studio was abusing its popularity,” Mr. Lantz, who lives in Ontario, said. “It’s so obviously being done for profit instead of just creating a beautiful game….”
[C]lashes over crypto have increasingly erupted between users and major game studios like Ubisoft, Square Enix and Zynga. In many of the encounters, the gamers have prevailed — at least for now…. Players said they see the moves as a blatant cash grab. “I just hate that they keep finding ways to nickel-and-dime us in whatever way they can,” said Matt Kee, 22, a gamer who took to Twitter in anger this month after Square Enix, which produces one of his favorite games, Kingdom Hearts, said it was pushing into NFTs. “I don’t see anywhere mentioning how that benefits the gamer, how that improves gameplay. It’s always about, ‘How can I make money off this?'”
Much of their resentment is rooted in the encroachment of micro transactions in video games. Over the years, game makers have found more ways to profit from users by making them pay to upgrade characters or enhance their level of play inside the games. Even if people had already paid $60 or more for a game upfront, they were asked to fork over more money for digital items like clothing or weapons for characters…. Merritt K, a game streamer and editor at Fanbyte, a games industry site, said gamers’ antagonism toward the companies has built up over the last decade partly because of the growing number of micro transactions. So when game makers introduced NFTs as an additional element to buy and sell, she said, players were “primed to call this stuff out. We’ve been here before.”
That has led to bursts of gamer outrage, which have rattled the game companies. In December, Sega Sammy, the maker of the Sonic the Hedgehog game, expressed reservations about its NFT and crypto plans after “negative reactions” from users. Ubisoft, which makes titles like Assassin’s Creed, said that it had misjudged how unhappy its customers would be after announcing an NFT program last month. A YouTube video about the move was disliked by more than 90 percent of viewers. “Maybe we under-evaluated how strong the backlash could have been,” said Nicolas Pouard, a Ubisoft vice president who heads the French company’s new blockchain initiative.
Game companies said their NFT plans were not motivated by profit. Instead, they said, NFTs give fans something fun to collect and a new way for them to make money by selling the assets. “It really is all about community,” said Matt Wolf, an executive at the mobile game maker Zynga, who is leading a foray into blockchain games. “We believe in giving people the opportunity to play to earn.”
The article also rounds up examples of game companies it says have “come out against crypto.”
“Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft’s Xbox, told Axios in November that some games centered on earning money through NFTs appeared ‘exploitative’ and he would avoid putting them in the Xbox store.” “Valve, which owns the online game store Steam, also updated its rules last fall to prohibit blockchain games that allow cryptocurrencies or NFTs to be exchanged….” “Tim Sweeney, the chief executive of Epic Games, the maker of the game Fortnite, said his company would steer clear of NFTs in its own games because the industry is riddled with ‘an intractable mix of scams.’ (Epic will still allow developers to sell blockchain games in its online store.)” The blowback has affected more than just game studios. Discord, the messaging platform popular with gamers, backtracked in November after users threatened to cancel their paid subscriptions over a crypto initiative.”
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Microsoft To Buy Activision Blizzard in $69 Billion Video Game Mega-Deal
The deal comes as Activision Blizzard grapples with its own #MeToo reckoning, spurring dueling investigations from the state of California and federal agencies. The company was accused of rampant sexual harassment and discrimination involving alcohol-fueled parties, male employees allegedly joking about rape, a female employee who died of suicide after colleagues shared a nude photo and a so-called “Cosby Suite” because the executive who worked there had earned a reputation for unwanted sexual advances.
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