UrLogicFails

I've been watching a lot of Star Trek lately and wanted to make a fun space themed wallpaper (and icon pack) for myself.

For this project, I painted each of the planets and debris on separate layers in Procreate and designed the ship/window wallpaper in Illustrator. While lining up each layer was a pain, having them move independently was crucial to give the wallpaper a sense of depth.

Surprisingly, getting the clock widget and weather widget to look right was much harder than anticipated. I couldn't find any open source customizable clock widgets; and Breezy Weather was not as customizable as I had hoped. In the end I think the results turned out great, though.

Archive link: http://archive.today/c0FEu

Some key highlights:

Dave & Buster’s [...] recently announced plans to let patrons place real-money bets on the company’s main attraction: its arcade games.

The suburban gaming den’s new betting operation is part of a partnership with Lucra Sports, a technology company that describes its product as “gamification services.” In practical terms, Lucra licenses its software to other businesses, allowing them to integrate certain kinds of betting into their existing apps and websites. Lucra deals in the kinds of bookie-free “peer to peer” bets—say, on the results of a night of bowling or a game of pickup basketball—that might have previously been sealed with a handshake.

The chain is expected to roll out all of this in the coming months, and it will be available only to adults

Beyond that, neither Dave & Buster’s nor Lucra Sports—which both declined to comment—is saying what kinds of betting will be allowed and at what scale.

Gambling on games of skill has a much easier time cruising past legal roadblocks.

Because of these legal distinctions, Lucra Sports—which has financial backing from a host of sports executives and professional athletes, including former Milwaukee Bucks owner Marc Lasry and former NFL player Emmanuel Sanders—says its services are legal on some level in 45 US states.

Even in their relatively milquetoast skill-game form, these kinds of betting services normalize something that feels a lot like traditional gambling as most Americans now experience it

Kids too young to grasp how football works or what betting on it might mean will soon be able to encounter a version of it at the arcade, potentially priming them to open their own betting accounts once they hit legal age.

That Dave & Buster’s would decide to dive in right now is best read as an indicator of just how nervous traditional entertainment industries have become about gambling and its capacity to devour their customer base and its disposable income. In its 2022 annual report, Dave & Buster’s identified the spread of legalized gambling as an existential threat, even as the company was continuing to grow and its stock price was soaring.

this move feels motivated more by the fear of being left behind while others profit than by a genuine belief in the value of the product itself.

The vision that’s dancing in executives’ heads, I have no doubt, is something akin to the opportunity to be a little Las Vegas in every American suburb. They should probably be more wary of the likelier—and grimmer—alternative: becoming something closer to most of the other casinos in America, where no parent would ever dream of throwing their kid’s birthday party.

Archive.org link

Some key excerpts:

Court filings unsealed last week allege Meta created an internal effort to spy on Snapchat in a secret initiative called “Project Ghostbusters.” Meta did so through Onavo, a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service the company offered between 2016 and 2019 that, ultimately, wasn’t private at all.

It’s Meta’s in-house wiretapping tool to spy on data analytics from Snapchat starting in 2016, later used on YouTube and Amazon. This involved creating “kits” that can be installed on iOS and Android devices, to intercept traffic for certain apps, according to the filings. This was described as a “man-in-the-middle” approach to get data on Facebook’s rivals, but users of Onavo were the “men in the middle.”

Facebook ultimately shut down Onavo in 2019 after Apple booted the VPN from its app store.

Prosecutors also allege that Facebook violated the United States Wiretap Act, which prohibits the intentional procurement of another person’s electronic communications. Onavo could also be considered straight spyware, but also seems to fall under the definition of wiretapping, according to prosecutors.

The court filings show chats and emails that depict Zuckerberg as being directly involved in these communications.

Prosecutors allege Project Ghostbusters harmed competition in the ad industry, adding weight to their central argument that Meta is a monopoly in social media.

Archive link: https://archive.ph/sVDYB

Some key excerpts:

Senator Bernie Sanders this week unveiled legislation to reduce the standard workweek in the United States from 40 hours to 32, without a reduction in pay

The law, if passed, would pare down the workweek over a four-year period, lowering the threshold at which workers would be eligible to receive overtime pay.

Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, said at the hearing such a reduction would hurt employers, ship jobs overseas and cause dramatic spikes in consumer prices.

Mr. Sanders is far from the first to propose the idea, which has been floated by Richard Nixon, pitched by autoworkers and experimented with by companies ranging from Shake Shack to Kickstarter and Unilever’s New Zealand unit.

Representative Mark Takano, Democrat of California, introduced the 32-Hour Workweek Act in the House in 2021, and has reintroduced it as a companion bill to the one sponsored by Mr. Sanders in the Senate.

In proposing the legislation, Mr. Sanders cited a trial conducted by 61 companies in Britain in 2022, in which most of the companies that went down to a four-day workweek saw that revenues and productivity remained steady, while attrition dropped significantly. The study was conducted by a nonprofit, 4 Day Week Global, with researchers at Cambridge University, Boston College and a think tank, Autonomy.

Archive link: https://archive.ph/168Vn

There are now several games known to be getting delisted by WBD. I will link to the article with the list at the end

Some key highlights:

Warner Bros. Discovery, as part of its ongoing effort to stretch the definition of "entertainment company," recently told a solo indie developer it would be "retiring" his 2016 dreamlike puzzle adventure game Small Radios Big Televisions from the Steam and PlayStation stores. The developer, in response, has made it free to download for PC

Deery clarified that the game will be pulled in the next 60 days. Deery noted that Adult Swim Games "hasn't really been a thing for many years now" and that most of the people he worked with had moved on. "When you're working with purely digital products nothing is going to stay around for very long," Deery told Game Developer.

The reason given by Warner Bros. Discovery, as seen in the notice that Game Developer also reviewed, was "internal business changes." "Thank you for your contribution to our game library and understanding during this transition," the notice concludes. "We are available should you have any questions."

Warner Bros. Discovery executives said late last month during a financial call that its gaming business was due for a "tough" year-over-year comparison. That is largely due to Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League

At a higher level, the merged Warner Bros. Discovery entity has shown no hesitation when it comes to folding known names and removing content. The firm killed the fully produced Batgirl and a Scooby-Doo film prior to release as a reported tax strategy.

It's hard to imagine how much it would cost to maintain storefront support for this sub-$20 game from 2016, but it was apparently too much for Warner Bros. Discovery.

The list of Adult Swim games can be found here: https://delistedgames.com/as-more-developers-confirm-it-looks-likely-that-all-adult-swim-games-titles-will-be-removed-by-may/ (Archive link: https://archive.ph/fjt3Q)

Archive link: https://archive.ph/WOlNl

The Swedish gaming company Embracer Group AB is canceling a video game in the beloved Deus Ex series after two years of development and will lay off a number of employees as part of an ongoing initiative to cut costs, according to people familiar with the moves.

Eidos, the Montreal, Canada-based studio behind the game, will instead focus on an original franchise. The canceled Deus Ex project, which had not yet been announced, was slated to enter production later this year, said the people, speaking anonymously because they are not authorized to talk to the press.

The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Following a period of massive expansion during the pandemic, Embracer Group has lately been making widespread layoffs, game cancellations and studio closures.

The sci-fi Deus Ex series has been critically acclaimed and sold more than 14 million units worldwide. It was acquired by Embracer in 2022.

Archive link

Nintendo Co. will launch a new game console this year with an 8-inch LCD screen, according to Omdia analyst Hiroshi Hayase.

The new device from the Kyoto-based games maker will be responsible for a doubling in shipments of so-called amusement displays in 2024, Hayase said in Tokyo on Friday. His research focuses on small and medium displays and he bases annual forecasts on checks with companies in the supply chain

Image transcription: A blue stylized shirt with the logo of The Wash from SpongeBob, a sticker of a squashed Plankton, a sticker resembling Squidward's "I really wish I weren't here right now" pin, a sticker resembling Mr. Krabs' mom's underwear, a keychain of Mr. Krabs, SpongeBob, and Patrick playing D&D, a BFF ring (which I didn't make), and a Chum Bucket bucket to hold everything.

Archive link: https://archive.ph/ajgMB

Xbox has taken a definitive stance by instituting a new policy that will block the use of unauthorized accessories with its consoles, effective as of November 17.

This decision has already begun to reverberate amongst the gaming community, and many have already had a warning about it on their consoles in the form of error message 0x82d60002.

It's a big shift that's going to impact all those accessories that don't have the Xbox seal of approval. Made more apparent by Xbox redirecting the user to its own official storefront.

Our sources indicate that Microsoft is lifting restrictions on the ability for third-party hardware manufacturers to build wireless accessories for Xbox Series X|S devices.

Now, we're hearing that Microsoft does have an approval process for official third-party wireless controllers, and this new restriction may be a result of new security measures to put restrictions on inputs that could circumvent play or inject unfair advantages.

The downside, of course, is that Xbox's new policy is affecting many "fair" accessories, particularly in the case of fighting game joysticks and other similar accessories.

The problem seems to revolve around brands that haven't acquired this licensing but still market their products as compatible with Xbox. It appears that Microsoft is actively blocking these items.

The stickers were drawn in Procreate and touched up with text rendered in Illustrator.

I tried printing them on glossy vinyl sticker paper, but it seems that using a laser printer makes the printed sections more matte anyways.

I have more testing planned down the road.

The first of the tools Denuvo is offering to Switch developers is Nintendo Switch Emulator Protection, a “revolutionary technology to protect games launching on Nintendo Switch from piracy”.

According to Denuvo, the new tech can be applied to Switch games to block the ability to play them on PC emulators.

“Even if a game is protected against piracy on its PC version, the version released on Nintendo Switch can be emulated from day one and played on PC, therefore bypassing the strong protections offered on the PC version,” the company says. “This can happen with any of the numerous games available on Nintendo Switch.