Tag Archives: Operating systems

Indie Puzzler Baba Is You Gets Tax-Filing Spin-Off, Out Now

It’s been a minute since we’ve heard from Hempuli aka Arvi Teikari, the developer behind the adorably excellent push-puzzler Baba Is You. Well, Teikari is back with another game in the Baba-verse. This time, though, instead of pushing objects and altering the rules of reality, you are pushing tax papers in a short exercise of comedic relief. That’s right, the white little critter is doing their taxes in the aptly titled Baba Files Taxes.

Read More: Baba Is You Is A Brilliant Puzzle Game

This new game, available for free on itch.io (Windows only), tasks you with helping the smol cat-dog thing get their taxes completed. There’s just one problem, though: the deadline to file is tonight! You’d better rush to get Baba’s paperwork done while there’s still time. What does this look like in practice? Basically, you’re forging Baba’s signature on a bunch of legal documents, which I’m pretty sure is a criminal offense, but hey! The government doesn’t know what’s going on, and you better not tell them! Besides, Baba’s just a lil guy, and as the game informs you early on, reading and writing are not among Baba’s strong suits.

Icely Puzzles

Once you’ve filled out the papers filled with legalese as well as multiple-choice questions like “What are clouds made of?” and “What is emptiness?”, you’ll submit the papers to a purple blob person who asks a simple question: “What are taxes?” A waste of time, buddy. A total waste of time. You’ll also get graded for how well your signature matches Baba’s, which is hilariously ironic considering the creature doesn’t have actual hands. But I digress. In all, Baba Files Taxes will take you roughly 10-ish minutes to finish.

Though they’re not the same kind of game, Baba Files Taxes reminds me of Snoozy Kazoo’s Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion. Maybe it’s because both games have “tax” in their titles, which makes my hairs stand up as we steadily approach the tax-filing season. The annual act is such a nuisance on its own, often becoming something of an IRL puzzle. Maybe Baba can help me file my taxes now that I’ve helped them, but to be honest, I’m not holding my breath. If you’re looking for something short and charming to check out, though, Baba Files Taxes is a quick hit before the floodgates open.

 

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Vampire Survivors Dev Talks Clones And Predatory Monetization

Image: poncle

When Steam best seller Vampire Survivors made the surprise jump to mobile last month, it wasn’t just as compulsively playable as its PC and console counterparts, it was also free. And unobtrusively so. In a sea of aggressively monetized and sometimes downright exploitative smartphone games, it stood out all the more. Developer Poncle now explains that the crappy app marketplace is the reason Vampire Survivors’ free port exists in the first place.

Vampire Survivors was itself inspired by a 2021 Android game called Magical Survival, but its explosion in popularity on Steam early last year led to its own clones on the App and Google Play stores as players searched for a game that didn’t yet exist on the platforms. “Months passed by and a large number of actual clones—not ‘games like Vampire Survivors,’ but actual 1:1 copies with stolen code, assets, data, progression—started to appear everywhere,” Poncle recently wrote in an end of 2022 update on the game’s Steam page (via PC Gamer). “This forced our hand to release the mobile game ASAP, and put a lot of stress on the dev team that wasn’t even supposed to worry about mobile in the first place.”

The developer said they tried to look for a business partner to work with them on a mobile version of the game, but nobody they spoke to was on board with “non-predatory” monetization. The biggest App and Google Play store games are all free, but most still collect their pound of flesh one way or another. Many gate progression unless you wait a certain period of time or pay, while others monetize gameplay benefits aimed at milking repeat customers lovingly referred to as “whales.” A few operate like thinly veiled slot machines. Vampire Survivors doesn’t use any of that. Instead it relies on completely optional ads.

Read More: 5 Beginner Vampire Survivors Tips To Easily Slay The Gothic Roguelite

The hit bullet hell roguelike has you fighting ever growing hordes of monsters while you collect upgrades. Every game ends at 30 minutes no matter what, but the better the playthrough, the more gold players earn to unlock permanent upgrades and features you get. The free mobile version of Vampire Survivors capitalizes on this in two ways. On a particularly long run, you can “cheat” and get a second life if you watch an ad. And once you die, you can watch a second ad if you want to retain more of your gold. The completely optional tradeoff makes the excellent mobile version even better.

“If you’re like me [and] wanted VS on mobile, you’d have been happy to just pay a couple of bucks for it and call it a day; but the mobile market doesn’t work like that and by making VS a paid app I’d have cut out completely a lot of new players from even trying the game,” Poncle wrote. “This is why we ended up with a free-for-real approach, where monetization is minimal and is designed to never interrupt your game, always be optional and in your control trough a couple of ‘watch ads’ buttons, and doesn’t have any of that real money sinks that mobile cashgrabs are usually designed around.”

The developer says the experiment so far has been a success, with high user reviews and lots of new players coming in through word of mouth. The only thing now is to figure out how to introduce the Legacy of Moonspell DLC which costs $2 on PC.

“The problems we’re facing are the same mentioned above: how do we make it fair, but also accessible to players who are only into free games,” Poncle wrote. “We’ll figure something out and publish the DLC asap!”

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PS2 Emulator Development Ceases Following Death Threats

Image: PlayStation / Kotaku / Victor Prilepa (Getty Images)

The sole developer behind AetherSX2, a PlayStation 2 emulator for Android devices, announced that they are discontinuing development of the app due to the “neverending” online impersonation, complaints, demands, and death threats they’ve endured.

“AetherSX2 was always meant to be a fun hobby for me, not profit driven. It doesn’t make sense to continue working on a hobby which isn’t fun anymore,” the developer said in a brief post on the AetherSX2 website announcing the suspension of development. “Thanks to everyone who wasn’t a d*ck for the last year.”

Prior to AetherSX2, the only viable emulation option for people who wanted to play PS2 games on their Android devices was DamonPS2. However, folks in emulator circles appreciated having AetherSX2 as an alternative because DamonPS2, a for-profit closed-source app, was accused of stealing source code by the team behind free open-source PS2 emulator PCXS2 in a now-deleted post that you can view through the Wayback Machine.

Leading up to the developer’s decision to discontinue working on AetherSX2, folks on the r/EmulatiotnonAndroid subreddit voiced concern over the pressure that the AetherSX2 developer dealt with while being inundated with demands from users. In a screenshotted Discord post, the AetherSX2 developer, who goes by the handle Tahlreth, explained why they disabled their Discord channel. According to the screenshotted post, “some moron” requested that they get the emulator to work on ioS.

“Congrats guys, you prodded and pushed another developer too much and they’re seriously considering just stopping for good,” Tahlreth wrote in the screenshotted Discord post.

Kotaku reached out to Tahlreth for comment.

According to the developer’s post on the AetherSX2 website, folks can still download and use current builds of AetherSX2 “for the foreseeable future.” As a footnote, the developer warned people to practice “good security hygiene” and not install any Android package files from random corners of the internet.

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Now You Can Use Android and Nest Devices to Pair With Matter

The Nest Audio can now function as a border router for Matter devices.
Photo: Gizmodo / Andrew Liszewski

Matter, the smart home standard that promises to unify us all, continues its slow and steady release across platforms. Google is the next to announce compatibility for its Nest devices and Android phones.

Now you can use existing gadgets like the Nest Mini speaker, the Nest Hub Max smart display, and the Nest Wifi Pro mesh router as a base of sorts for connecting Matter smart devices. These are no longer called “hubs” but “border routers,” since they serve as indicators of the perimeter of your smart home.

Android is also getting its long-promised pairing abilities. You’ll be able to use Fast Pair to get a connected gadget on the network using the Google Home app, which is in its own little makeover stage right now.

The Matter standard was officially launched in October. Though there are only a few Matter-compatible devices on the market right now—things like sensors, smart locks, and smart bulbs—we expect a torrent of compatible devices to be revealed early next year.

Google states that it’s “enabling more Nest devices with Matter” in the new year so they can act as border routers in a Matter-connected home. The company is also working on adding iOS support through the Google Home app for those opting to stay within the Google app ecosystem (Apple lets you connect to Matter devices through iOS’s Home app). And it’s partnered with Samsung, its biggest ally in smartphones, to build a “smoother” Multi-Admin experience for 2023—something that will make it easy to flip between Samsung’s SmartThings and the Google Home app.

The smart home has been pretty stagnant for the last year, partly because companies and consumers have been waiting for this new standard to pan out. We’re still not quite there, even with the big brands already supporting Matter. But we’re expecting to see all the new devices that sync up next month at CES 2023.

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Elon Musk Will Make a New Phone If Apple and Google Ban Twitter

Now Elon may or may not want to fix phones.
Photo: Suzanne Cordeiro / AFP

Twitter’s new ruler Elon Musk makes so many pronouncements on the platform, it’s hard to keep track. This week alone, Musk polled Twitter users over whether he should provide “general amnesty” to suspended accounts and got into a public fight over whether the disgraced founder of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, owns a part of Twitter. On Friday, Musk was at it again, telling people that he may make an alternative phone to face off against Apple and Google.

The tech billionaire’s comments were made, naturally, in response to a tweet directed at him by conservative podcaster and former OANN host Liz Wheeler. On Friday afternoon, Wheeler tweeted that Musk should make his own phone if Apple and Google decide to kick Twitter off their app stores. Twitter’s future in Apple and Google’s app stores has been a hot topic lately, given Musk’s commitment to “free speech”—as long as it doesn’t offend him—and lax content moderation.

“If Apple & Google boot Twitter from their app stores, @elonmusk should produce his own smartphone. Half the country would happily ditch the biased, snooping iPhone & Android,” Wheeler said on Friday. “The man builds rockets to Mars, a silly little smartphone should be easy, right?”

Three hours later, Musk told Wheeler that he would build his own phone if Twitter got banned from Apple and Google’s app stores, the official gateways to iPhone and Android devices across the globe. In what might have been an homage to Musk, who loves polling people on Twitter, Wheeler had started a poll of her own asking people if they would use a “tELONphone.” 

At of the time of publication, “Yes” was the leading response, with 56.2% of the 52,707 votes cast.

“I certainly hope it does not come to that, but, yes, if there is no other choice, I will make an alternative phone,” Musk tweeted.

Both Apple and Google have policies that ban apps in its stores from containing hate or discriminatory speech, bullying, harassment, and sexually explicit content. In the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Apple and Google kicked Parler off their app stores for its role in helping rioters plan the event, although it was allowed back after making changes. Kanye West, who legally changed his name to Ye, is reportedly in talks to buy Parler.

While Musk has declared his intention to build his own phone should Apple and Google cross him, it’s important to remember that this man says a lot of things that don’t end up happening. Remember the Tesla Semi, which is three years past deadline? Or the Cybertruck, which turned out not to be bulletproof in a live demonstration? Heck, the only reason he owns Twitter is because he couldn’t figure out a way to get out of the deal.

Apple and Google didn’t reply to Gizmodo’s requests for comment by the time of publication.



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Elon Musk Says Twitter Shadowbans Are the New Law of the Land

Elon Musk is now Twitter’s judge, jury, and executioner—with complete leeway to enact his version of “free speech” on the flailing platform.
Image: Gizmodo

Things are really going off the rails at Twitter, as Elon Musk pushes forward in a hostile takeover that seems liable to ensure he’s eventually the only one left at the social media platform. In the latest set of deeply confusing declarations from the multi-CEO and “Chief Twit,” Musk reinstated Twitter accounts for the right-wing “parody” outlet the Babylon Bee, Jordan Peterson, and Kathy Griffin.

Musk announced the reinstatements after a cryptic post simply saying “Freedom Fridays.” He also paired the news with a confusing explanation of how content moderation on Twitter will supposedly operate moving forward. “New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach,” he wrote. “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter.”

Note: the below Tweet misspells Kathy Griffin’s name.

Musk didn’t un-ban Donald Trump, writing a “decision has not yet been made” about whether or not to allow the former poster-in-chief back on the site. He also said he would not allow conspiracy theorist Alex Jones back on the platform, in another tweet exchange. Though, like all of Musk’s promises—who knows how long it will last.

The sudden Twitter ban reversals beg the question: What happened to Musk’s previously announced plan to tackle reinstatements? Less than a month ago, the world’s richest man tweeted that, under his leadership, Twitter would form and rely on a “content moderation council.” “No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes,” he wrote in an Oct. 28 post.

Yet seemingly, Freedom Friday went ahead with no such council in place. And it’s abundantly possible that there simply aren’t enough staff left at Twitter to compose one. Initial layoffs slashed about 50% of the company, and more engineers and execs have fled since.

Among other questions that Gizmodo had related to Friday’s announcement:

  • What is a “negative tweet?”
  • Who decides that?
  • Who (or what algorithm) will be monitoring for these “negative tweets” to “deboost” them—and how?
  • Will there be an official shadowban council?

Gizmodo also isn’t sure, exactly, how single tweets can be “demonetized.” Twitter does not make money directly off of individual tweets, but rather paid posts by advertisers (and, uh, Twitter Blue subscribers). Unless Musk is talking about disallowing offensive ads (which presumably already aren’t allowed), this is seemingly just word salad, devoid of any actual functional policy shift.

Unfortunately, though Gizmodo has reached out with all of the above questions to Twitter’s press account, we do not expect to receive a response. Since Musk’s purchase of the company was finalized, Twitter has not been responding to our press inquiries. Press contacts from other companies run by Musk, like SpaceX and Tesla, are also notoriously difficult for media to reach.



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Apple Sued Over iPhone Privacy Settings After Gizmodo Story

Photo: LOIC VENANCE / Contributor (Getty Images)

Apple is facing a class action lawsuit for allegedly harvesting iPhone user data even when the company’s own privacy settings promise not to. The suit, filed Thursday in California federal court, comes days after Gizmodo exclusively reported on research into how multiple iPhone apps send Apple analytics data, regardless of whether the iPhone Analytics privacy setting is turned on or off.

The problem was spotted by two independent researchers at the software company Mysk, who found that the Apple App Store sends the company exhaustive information about nearly everything a user does in the app, despite a privacy setting, iPhone Analytics, which claims to “disable the sharing of Device Analytics altogether” when switched off. Gizmodo asked the researchers to run additional tests on other iPhone apps, including Apple Music, Apple TV, Books, and Stocks. The researchers found that the problem persists across most of Apple’s suite of built-in iPhone apps.

The lawsuit accuses Apple of violating the California Invasion of Privacy Act. “Privacy is one of the main issues that Apple uses to set its products apart from competitors,” the plaintiff, Elliot Libman, said in the suit, which can be read on Bloomberg Law. “But Apple’s privacy guarantees are completely illusory.” The company has plastered billboards across the country with the slogan “Privacy. That’s iPhone.”

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

As seen in a video posted to the Mysk YouTube Channel, the App Store appears to harvest information about your activity in real time, including what you tap on, which apps you search for, what ads you see, how you found a given app and how long you looked at the app’s page.

Apple’s privacy settings make explicit promises about shut off that kind of tracking. But in the tests, turning the iPhone Analytics setting off had no evident effect on the data collection, nor did any of the iPhone’s other built-in settings meant to protect your privacy from Apple’s data collection.

Mysk’s tests on the App Store found that Apple receives that data along with details that can identify you and your device, including ID numbers, what kind of phone you’re using, your screen resolution, your keyboard languages and how you’re connected to the internet—the kind of information commonly used for device fingerprinting.

The App Store on your iPhone is watching your every move

When the researchers looked at other iPhone apps at Gizmodo’s request, they found that many behaved similarly. While the Health and Wallet apps didn’t collect analytics data, Apple Music, Apple TV, Books, the iTunes Store, and Stocks all did. The Stocks app shared data including your list of watched stocks, the names of stocks you viewed or searched for and time stamps for when you did it, as well as a record of any news articles you saw in the app.

“The level of detail is shocking for a company like Apple,” Tommy Mysk previously told Gizmodo.

This data can be sensitive, especially when you consider that merely searching for apps related to topics such as religion, LGBTQ issues, health and addiction can reveal details about a person’s life.

“Through its pervasive and unlawful data tracking and collection business, Apple knows even the most intimate and potentially embarrassing aspects of the user’s app usage—regardless of whether the user accepts Apple’s illusory offer to keep such activities private,” the lawsuit said.

Apple is under increased scrutiny for its privacy practices as the company expands into digital advertising. Apple recently introduced new ads in the App Store, reportedly plans to ads to Apple TV, and seems focused on poaching small business advertisers from Meta, Facebook’s parent company. While Apple’s company literature loudly declares that “Privacy is a human right,” it remains to be seen how much the iPhone manufacturer is willing to compromise that right as it develops new data-driven business ventures.

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Your iPhone Has a Hidden Music Quiz

Photo: Tada Images (Shutterstock)

Who remembers the games that shipped with classic iPods? You could have a pixel war in Parachute, smash blocks in Brick, play cards in Solitaire, and test your knowledge of your own iPod’s library with Music Quiz. Of course, Apple has since discontinued the iPod, but they seem to have trouble letting go of the past. Music Quiz lives on as a hidden iPhone game.

The hidden music quiz hasn’t been around forever, but isn’t all that new either. Apple first added it to the iPhone not as a game but as a shortcut, back in 2020 with iOS 14. The game was part of a small series of “Starter Shortcuts”—the idea, I assume, was to offer users a quick look at what was possible with shortcuts (even though the app launch two years prior with iOS 12). Either way, it doesn’t seem to have been a wholly effective marketing campaign—I had no idea this music quiz existed. It’s just the kind of hidden feature that’s a pleasant surprise to discover.

How to play Apple’s hidden Music Quiz on your iPhone

If you haven’t deleted any shortcuts from your iPhone before, Music Quiz should be on your device right now. To find it, you can swipe down on the home screen or lock screen to pull up a spotlight search, type “Music Quiz,” then tap the purple music icon that appears. You can also find it in the Shortcuts app in the “Starter Shortcuts” folder, or by searching for Music Quiz if you deleted it in the past.

To play the game, you’ll need to add songs to your Music library. Any songs will work, whether you bought them from iTunes, imported them from your library, or downloaded them from Apple Music. Music Quiz will randomly pull songs from your library for a five-round game. The game will play one song per round, and you’ll need to guess which it is from the song titles that Music Quiz offers you.

Screenshot: Jake Peterson

For any Shortcuts tinkerers out there, take a look at how intricate this simple game is. You can see the entire build of the shortcut by tapping the (•••) icon on the Music Quiz tile. Apple certainly took some time to build the game. Too bad not many people seem to know about it.

 

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MW2 Has A Great Weapon XP Farm, If You Can Pull It Off

Call of Duty is a grind, and Modern Warfare 2 is no exception. The latest entry in the hit war crime simulator series is full of passes to rank up and boondoggles to unlock. Want to play with a fully customized M4? It’s gonna take a while. Fortunately, players have discovered an incredibly lucrative weapon XP farm to speed things up. The only problem is it’s far from the easiest maneuver to pull off.

The trick requires hopping on top of an enemy armored vehicle and tossing a suppression mine inside. Succeed and you’ll be rapidly rewarded with over 40,000 XP. Fail and you’ll have stunted your kill death ratio and wasted an entire match for nothing. Here’s the XP farm exploit, discovered yesterday on Reddit, in action via MW2CODHub:

Basically, the suppressor is constantly re-triggered by any inhabitants driving the tank, giving additional XP each time. There are obvious problems though. First of all, you need to find an enemy tank. Second, you need to successfully place the mine, which has a long cooldown in-between uses. Finally, you need to do it all without getting killed by any number of enemies just waiting to pick you off.

The tanks spawn in Invasion mode, and since those matches litter AI-controlled allies and opponents across giant maps, it’s a bit easier to find openings amid the chaos. Still, you have to get a lucky with when and where the tanks spawn. The one bit of good news is that Invasion is already one of the most efficient modes for farming XP in the game. Even if you don’t have luck with the tanks, you can try to find spawn points and pick off big groups of AI enemies for a decent amount of XP.

And if you do see a tank during your travels, you now know what to do. The tank XP farm might not be the most practical, but it definitely seems like one of the best feeling ways to level up. At least until Activision potentially patches it out.

 



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30 Million People Were Using Steam Today, A New All-Time Record

Image: SteamDB

Valve’s Steam platform launched all the way back in 2003, and for much of that time saw slow and steady growth as it grew from a place you could buy Half-Life games to the PC’s default gaming marketplace. What has happened over the last two years, though, has been incredible.

In 2015, Steam set a record for concurrent users—the number of people logged into the service—at 10 million people. That was 12 years after the service launched.

In 2017, we reported that Steam had set a new record, this time at 14 million. Not bad growth for just two years.

In March 2020, that record had blown out to 20 million. March 2020 is an important point in this timeline; for most countries this is when the pandemic really kicked off, lockdowns began, and a lot more people started spending a lot more time online (and realising that you could play a lot of very good video games on Steam, often for very low prices).

That “A” is when the WHO declared the Covid-19 pandemic
Image: SteamDB

We got to 28 million users earlier this year—more than the entire populations of countries like Australia and Taiwan—and now, in late October, we’ve hit the nice round number of 30 million, with the peak number of users logged on earlier today standing at 30,032,005.

Note that this isn’t the number of people playing at any one time, just the number of people logged into the platform, a feat that’s often achieved simply by turning your PC on. If you want to know the number of users actually in a game at that time, SteamDB figures put the peak at around 8.5 million, which is still an enormous figure, and a big jump (proportionally) even from earlier in 2022, when the highest number of active players stood at “between seven and eight million”.

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