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WATCH: Red Dead Redemption 2 Gameplay Trailer 2

Written by James Delahunty @ 03 Oct 2018 7:49

WATCH: Red Dead Redemption 2 Gameplay Trailer 2 The latest trailer for Rockstar Games' Red Dead Redemption 2 teases a first-person mode, endless activities, and madness.

It outlining all sorts of nefarious activities Arthur and the Van der Linde Gang can get involved in, including robbing trains, encountering rival gangs and outlaws, evading cunning lawmen and lots more in a world that is deep, teeming with life and very menacing.

The trailer shows us more of the improved Dead Eye system that was so well received in the first Red Dead Redemption title eight years ago. Additionally, we get a nice tease of viewing the world in first-person mode for those who are fond of first-person shooters.

Red Dead Redemption 2 will land on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 console systems on October 26.

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AfterDawn: News

Amazon raises workers' wages following criticism

Written by James Delahunty @ 03 Oct 2018 7:32

Amazon raises workers' wages following criticism Amazon workers are to get a pay increase after criticism from multiple angles about workers' pay and conditions.

Amazon became the second company in history (after Apple) to reach a valuation topping $1 trillion this year. While the news was likely celebrated at Amazon, it was also met with concerns over the low pay rate for some Amazon employees and the conditions at some of its warehouses.

In a rare glimpse of agreement on America's left and right, both the Trump White House and Bernie Sanders welcomed the move by Amazon. Senator Sanders and President Trump had both publicly attacked Amazon for workers wages and for how much tax the firm pays.

From November, Amazon's lowest-paid workers in the United States will receive at least $15 per hour. In the UK, the minimum wage at Amazon will rise from £8 per hour to £9.50 per hour or £10.50 per hour in London. Around a quarter of a million workers will benefit from the increase in the United States.

Amazon has had widespread strikes by workers across Europe over conditions at factories too.

Source: BBC News




AfterDawn: News

Alex Jones sues PayPal for 'viewpoint discrimination'

Written by James Delahunty @ 03 Oct 2018 7:12

Alex Jones sues PayPal for 'viewpoint discrimination' InfoWars founder claims that PayPal is abusing its market position to discriminate against conservative and right-wing viewpoints.

InfoWars founder Alex Jones has filed a lawsuit against PayPal after the firm halted processing of payments to the media outlet in September. PayPal cited its services policies in making its decision, accusing InfoWars of promoting violence and hate.

InfoWars users and fans had paid for InfoWars branded goods using the PayPal service up until this point. According to Jones, PayPal's actions are a dangerous precedent and an example of viewpoint discrimination.

"It is at this point well known that large tech companies, located primarily in Silicon Valley, are discriminating against politically conservative entities and individuals, including banning them from social media platforms such as Twitter, based solely on their political and ideological viewpoints," the complaint states.

InfoWars and Jones' personal social media accounts were targeted in recent months in a coordinated takedown that affected podcasts, personal pages and apps.

Source: BBC News




AfterDawn: News

Facebook: Hacked logins not used on third-party sites

Written by James Delahunty @ 03 Oct 2018 7:04

Facebook: Hacked logins not used on third-party sites Facebook has some reassuring news for the up to 50 million users affected by a data breach disclosed last week by the social media giant.

Last week, Facebook disclosed that a data breach affected up to 50 million users of its social network. The news set off alarms all over and concerns about how the stolen data may have been used, or is being used. One possibility is that hackers had used the "Facebook Login" feature to access third-party websites for which users signed in with their Facebook credentials.

Thankfully, there is not yet any evidence that this is the case.

"We analyzed third-party access during the time of the attack we have identified. That investigation has found no evidence that the attackers accessed any apps using Facebook Login," Facebook security VP, Guy Rosen, told the Reuters News Agency.

Facebook set out the possible negative consequences of the data breach in full when it disclosed it last week. This is thought to be due to the European Union's GDPR regulation, which would have imposed heavy penalties on Facebook if it was found to have failed to give a full picture to affected users. However, a side effect of this well-meaning and reasoned regulation is that Facebook painted the worst possible scenario after the disclosure.

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AfterDawn: News

Elon Musk stepping down as Tesla chairman to settle lawsuit

Written by Matti Robinson @ 01 Oct 2018 10:38

Elon Musk stepping down as Tesla chairman to settle lawsuit As we reported last week, Tesla's own Elon Musk became the receiving end of a government lawsuit. Musk was going to be taken to court by The Security and Exchange Commission for fraudulent behavior.

Originally S.E.C. tried to settle the issue with Tesla and Musk, but no such agreement was found. Thus the government commission went forward with the lawsuit.

S.E.C. claimed Elon Musk's August tweet was recklessly false and mislead the shareholders into thinking there was agreements about privatizing the company with a specific share price.

Now Tesla has decided to settle the lawsuit but the price was a steep one. Tesla is going to have to pay $20 million in damages and Musk needs to resign as the chair for three years.

Musk will step down as the chairman of Tesla within 45 days and can only return to his duties in October 2021. He will still remain the CEO of Tesla.




AfterDawn: News

Spotify now integrates with Google Maps, both on Android and iPhone

Written by Petteri Pyyny @ 01 Oct 2018 7:38

Spotify now integrates with Google Maps, both on Android and iPhone Spotify announced a new feature today, integrating the popular streaming service app to Google Maps navigation on Android and on iPhone.

Spotify has previously worked with Waze, providing an integration to the Wze's navigation user interface, but obviously, integrating to the Google Maps is significantly bigger leap for the Swedish company.

With the integration, users will see barebone Spotify buttons available in the Google Maps' navigation screen. The minimzed UI will show the currently played song, has next/prev buttons and play/pause buttons shown, too. Also, the Spotify playback mutes when navigation instructions are spoken by the Google Maps and will resume after that.

Spotify integrates with Google Maps


According to Spotify's data, more and more people are replacing their car radio, CDs and USB sticks with Spotify when driving a car. Thus, it seems that the most important feature in current car audio systems is the Bluetooth connection, everything else can be outsourced to the phone.

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AfterDawn: News

Were you among the hacked? Here's the only way to know if Facebook breach affected you

Written by Matti Robinson @ 29 Sep 2018 12:54

Were you among the hacked? Here's the only way to know if Facebook breach affected you Yesterday Facebook released a statement about a security breach that had affected tens of millions of Facebook users. According to the social media giant the hackers got some user information from up 50 million users.

Facebook is investigating the hack with authorities, including the FBI, but currently it is not certain what type of information was leaked. At least the "View As" pages and basic information such as age and sex were leaked.

Some have argued that the access tokens that were used to gain access to View As pages would give access to other more sensitive information as well, but there's no official word on this yet.

Those 50 million affected have been logged out from their Facebook account which cut any illegitimate connections. This also means that you have to log back in to your account to access Facebook. Facebook also logged out another 40 million users as a precaution even though believes they were not targeted.

Currently seeing if you've been logged out is the only way to check whether the hack affected your account or if you were one of the 40 million users that were suspect of a "View As" lookup and thus precautionarily logged out.

It is advised that you don't enter any details on possible forms or sites that claim they can retrieve information on whether your account was hacked.

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AfterDawn: News

Massive Facebook data breach affects 90 million accounts

Written by Matti Robinson @ 28 Sep 2018 2:21

Massive Facebook data breach affects 90 million accounts Facebook has just revealed that it has detected a security issue that has affected tens of millions of accounts.

The statement posted on Facebook's official newsroom details that a total of 90 million accounts might have been affected by the security exploit.

50 million of the accounts are the prime suspects that Facebook has determined to have been affected but another 40 million accounts have been logged out as a precautionary step as they've been suspect to a "View As" lookup in that past 12 months.

The issue has allowed logins to users without their knowledge or consent. Facebook has now logged all those users out and they will need to perform a new log in next time requesting access to Facebook.

The breach has been fixed last night and faulty access should no longer exist.

According to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook does not currently have information on whether the breach might have leaked any sensitive information like private messages. However, the hackers have gained access to users' "View As" profile information.

Facebook has removed "View As" pages temporarily.

The page shows what the user's profile looks like to someone else and could includes information such as age, sex, and home town.

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AfterDawn: News

Elon Musk sued by the government over privatization tweet

Written by Matti Robinson @ 28 Sep 2018 11:56

Elon Musk sued by the government over privatization tweet Elon Musk, the visionary behind Tesla, SpaceX and most recently The Boring Company, has been sued by the U.S. government over tweets posted last month.

The Security and Exchange Commission is accusing Musk and his privatization tweet on August 7 of fraud by false statements that could hurt investors.

Musk's original tweet that now got him to hot water was "Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured." According to S.E.C. Musk had done no securing of the funding and was recklessly falsifying the state of privatization.

Later in the month Musk retweeted Tesla's tweet titled "Staying Public" linking to a statement by Musk himself explaining why he and the Board of Directors have decided to stay public.

The lawsuit is trying to bar Musk from serving as an executive or a director of publicly traded companies, obviously including Tesla. Tesla is the only one of Musk-lead companies currently public.

In response to S.E.C.'s lawsuit was Musk said: "This unjustified action by the SEC leaves me deeply saddened and disappointed."

He continued to explain that he has always tried to pursue truth and transparency. It remains to be seen how the courts find the accusations.

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AfterDawn: News

Zuckerberg unveils new Oculus Quest headset

Written by Matti Robinson @ 27 Sep 2018 12:59

Zuckerberg unveils new Oculus Quest headset Oculus VR, one of the foremost pioneers of virtual reality headsets, has announced a new product. Facebook-owned, since 2014, Oculus' new headset is called Quest.

At Connect 5 keynote Mark Zuckerberg took the stage to announce the new Oculus Quest. Oculus Quest is the social media giant's next-generation VR headset that offer wireless connectivity and familiar motion controllers.

The main improvement over the current generation is the ability to use the product in almost any situation thanks to the wireless nature of the headset. The location tracking is found in both the controllers as well as the headset with four wide angle cameras placed in each corner.

As there is no wires, Oculus Quest includes a battery and all the necessary computing units inside the headset. This also means that the processing power is nowhere near a PC powered VR headset.

Oculus expects over 50 games to be shipped with Oculus Quest but didn't name any games.

Oculus Quest will cost $399. They'll hit the market next spring, but Oculus doesn't have a firm release date for the headset yet.

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AfterDawn: News

Sony caves: Fortnite cross-platform support coming

Written by Matti Robinson @ 27 Sep 2018 11:28

Sony caves: Fortnite cross-platform support coming Sony was ferociously attacked over Fortnite cross-platform for months, but the company did not budge. They've been adamant that crossplay between PS4, Xbox One and Switch is not something they want to do.

Now, something has changed since Sony has officially confirmed that cross-platform support is in fact on the way.

Perhaps Sony didn't realize how important it was to unite platforms with titles as massive as Fortnite. Perhaps they were flooded with bad press and unhappy Xbox and Switch users' critique (read: rage).

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AfterDawn: News

Google promises: Forced Chrome login opt-out

Written by Matti Robinson @ 26 Sep 2018 1:51

Google promises: Forced Chrome login opt-out The new Google Chrome released early in September brought a few important changes, one of which was the updated user interface and look.

There also was a not-so-noticeable lesser feature change that Google has been getting lots of flack for.

See Google changed the Google account login so that when you log in to your Gmail or other Google products you'll automatically also log in to the browser. Previously browser log in was separated from whenever you used other Google services in the browser.

As you might imagine, people do not like when they are logged in to services without their knowledge or consent. And Google has done a 180 degree turn and agreed.

While Google originally argued, and still believes, that users do not always recognize that Chrome as a browser is different from their Gmail account, they've recognized the critique that this is not the best practice from security standpoint among others.

Google is still keeping the feature on by default but in the future version, upcoming Chrome 70, it'll allow users to disable automatic Chrome logins when logging in Google services with the browser.




AfterDawn: News

Qualcomm: Apple stole our chip secrets

Written by Matti Robinson @ 26 Sep 2018 11:25

Qualcomm: Apple stole our chip secrets One of the world's leading semiconductor manufacturers, Qualcomm, has aired out fairly serious accusations towards Apple. The first trillion dollars company has stolen some of chip manufacturer's secrets, Qualcomm says.

Qualcomm took it to the courts and is trying to prove that Apple, a chip designer themselves, helped Intel, a major competitor to Qualcomm, with their modems with code acquired from Qualcomm.

Obviously sharing details such as this is against the software licensing agreement between Qualcomm and Apple, Qualcomm claims.

Previously Apple has used both Qualcomm's and Intel's modems in their iPhones, lately preferring the former, but this year all three new phones from Cupertino has Intel's modem chips in them.

Apple's side of this debacle is that they've been trying to get rid of Qualcomm's modems exactly because of unfair licensing practices.

Qualcomm's contention is that Apple should pay a percentage share of the end product to them, instead of what Apple thinks, and perhaps the most others think, is fair, which is obviously the price of the product they bought.

While Qualcomm claims that Apple has constantly been sharing confidential information with Intel for them to catch up to Qualcomm, there is no concrete examples shown, at least to the public of yet.

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AfterDawn: News

Microsoft reveals: Mouse and keyboard coming to Xbox One

Written by Matti Robinson @ 26 Sep 2018 11:09

Microsoft reveals: Mouse and keyboard coming to Xbox One Current generation gaming consoles have one slight difference in I/O support. Sony's PlayStation 4 supports both USB and Bluetooth keyboard and mice while Microsoft's creation has support for none of those, until now.

Microsoft has confirmed that support for mouse and keyboard input is in the works. In fact the company is developing peripherals with Razer so you can expect perhaps some flashy gamer gear type Xbox keyboards and mice in the near future.

Currently the feature is still in testing and you'll get access to it only in the Xbox Insider program, but expansion to all consoles should come soon. However, games will not allow mouse and keyboard controls by default, that is dependent on developers to enable.

And to bring the support on par with the toughest competition, Microsoft has revealed that both wired and wireless, that is USB and Bluetooth, keyboards are supported.

Microsoft and Razer will have more news on November 10.

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AfterDawn: News

Mozilla releases a virtual reality browser, Firefox Reality

Written by Matti Robinson @ 20 Sep 2018 12:03

Mozilla releases a virtual reality browser, Firefox Reality Firefox might not be on the top of the world anymore, or hasn't been for years now, but they are trying all kinds of tricks to turn the ship. The latest is a virtual reality browser by the name of Firefox Reality.

Obviously, as the the name suggests, the browser is a Firefox version designed for the virtual reality, and to be used with VR headsets. Mozilla is planning on further developing Firefox Reality to be compatible with AR glasses as well, perhaps thus the name that doesn't exclude any type of extended reality.

Currently Firefox Reality is only available for specific VR platforms, including HTC Vive, Oculus and Daydream headsets. You can download it from the app stores of aforementioned platforms.

Future installments are planned to support at least Microsoft HoloLens as well as the new competitor to that, Magic Leap One.

Most of the web is obviously two-dimensional, so that will be displayed as a sheet of paper if you will, but Mozilla says the browser supports also immersive web content.

Firefox Reality supports both virtual keyboard input, which is never optimal, as well as voice commands. The version number is currently only at 1.0 so expect improvement in terms of bookmarks, 360 degree videos and others coming in the future.

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