Category: Technology

World of Warcraft (WoW) artists, designers, engineers, producers, quality assurance (QA) testers and other game developers have unionized. The staff of more than 500 workers voted to unionize the Blizzard Entertainment studio with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) creating the World of Warcraft Gamemakers Guild, according to an X post from the union’s official account.

The Blizzard studio is the latest major game studio to form a union during uncertain times of layoffs and studio closures across the gaming industry. Bethesda Game Studios, the studio behind the Fallout and Elder Scrolls franchises, formed its union with the help of CWA last weekend that includes 241 workers.

“What we’ve accomplished at World of Warcraft is just the beginning,” said Eric Lanham, a test analyst and Wow Gamemakers Guild member, in a statement released by the CWA. “My colleagues and I are embarking on a quest to secure better pay, benefits, and job security through a strong union contract. We know that when workers have a protected voice, it’s a win-win for employee standards, the studio, and World of Warcraft fans looking for the best gaming experience.”

The World of Warcraft Gamemakers Guild is the largest wall-to-wall union currently under Microsoft’s umbrella. Activision unionized around 600 QA workers with the CWA in March. ZeniMax Studios also voted to unionize around 300 staffers back in January.

Microsoft also made an agreement with Activision Blizzard two years ago to respect the right of its workers to form a union. The agreement was part of Microsoft’s deal to takeover Activision Blizzard.

The CWA cites the start of the WoW Gamemakers Guild formation to a protest conducted by Activision Blizzard workers in 2021. The crew staged a walkout at its Irvine, California headquarters over a lawsuit filed by the state’s Civil Rights Department (CRD) alleging the company was a “breeding ground for harassment and discrimination against women.” The CRD later withdrew all allegations of systemic sexual harassment, and Activision Blizzard reached a settlement of $54.8 million relating to pay and promotion disparities. The WoW studio also agreed to remove “references that are not appropriate for [its] world” from the game.

“What seemed impossible six years ago is now a reality, and this is just the beginning,” said CWA’s Senior Director of Organizing Tom Smith in a written statement. “Together, workers are redefining their industry.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/world-of-warcraft-workers-unlock-form-a-union-achievement-220148151.html?src=rss 

The US Senate unanimously passed a bill on Tuesday designed to hold accountable those who make or share deepfake porn. The Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits Act (DEFIANCE Act) would allow victims to sue those who create, share or possess AI-generated sexual images or videos using their likeness. The issue took root in the public consciousness after the infamous Taylor Swift deepfake that circulated among online lowlifes early this year.

The bill would let victims sue for up to $150,000 in damages. That number grows to $250,000 if it’s related to attempted sexual assault, stalking or harassment.

It now moves to the House, where a companion bill awaits. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) sponsors the sister bill. If it passes there (which sounds likely, given the unanimous nature of the Senate’s vote), it will move to President Biden’s desk for final passage.

“There’s a shock to seeing images of yourself that someone could think are real,” Ocasio-Cortez told Rolling Stone earlier this year. “And once you’ve seen it, you’ve seen it. It parallels the same exact intention of physical rape and sexual assault, [which] is about power, domination, and humiliation. Deepfakes are absolutely a way of digitizing violent humiliation against other people.”

The bill, sponsored by Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), lets the victims of intimate digital forgeries (deepfakes) sue for damages. It would give victims a 10-year statute of limitations, beginning either from the discovery of the content or when they turn 18 in the (even more disturbing) case of minors.

“As we know, AI plays a bigger role in our lives than ever before, and while it has many benefits, it’s also easier than ever to create sexually explicit deep fakes without a person’s consent,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said on the Senate floor late Tuesday. “It is a horrible attack on someone’s privacy and dignity to have these fake images of them circulating online without recourse.”

Schumer cited Swift and Megan Thee Stallion in his floor speech as two celebrity examples who have fallen victim to the types of content the bill targets. However, The Verge notes online sexual deepfakes have affected those with much less clout (and money for lawyers) than A-list pop stars, like high school girls, some of whom have found out about contrived sexual images of them being passed around among their peers.

Fortunately, the bill stipulates that victims would have privacy protections during court proceedings and that they could recover legal costs. “It’s a grotesque practice and victims of these deep fakes deserve justice,” Schumer said.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-us-senate-unanimously-passes-a-bill-to-empower-victims-of-intimate-deepfakes-201343557.html?src=rss 

The Nintendo Wii was a bona-fide cultural juggernaut, with over 100 million consoles sold during its lifespan. It was never the biggest console in the world, with a size approximating a paperback book. Modders, however, have managed to shrink the Wii’s footprint way down. They made a functional console that’s no bigger than a keychain, as reported by Time Extension. As a matter of fact, it actually doubles as a keychain.

The appropriately-named Nintendo Kawaii is a teensy-weensy Wii that lacks some of the bells and whistles of the original, but it works and can run games from that generation. It’s also quite fetching, with a CNC’d aluminum metal unibody. There are magnetic pogo pin connectors for power, AV support and controllers. There’s also a custom dock that offers support for four Gamecube controllers, which is a must for certain fighting games that rhyme with Shmooper Smash Bros.

The makers of this minuscule wonder say the project began as a challenge to make “the smallest functional Wii ever made.” It looks like they got the job done. As for excess heat, the whole thing is passively cooled and doesn’t include an internal fan.

It’s way too small to actually accept Wii discs, so this is a digital-only affair. Also, there’s the specter of Wiimotes. It doesn’t look like this offers Bluetooth connectivity of any kind, so you won’t be able to use traditional Wiimotes. You can, however, plug in any USB-C controller and the aforementioned Gamecube gamepads. Being as how it doesn’t work with Wii remotes, there’s no sensor bar or anything like that. This is for playing the console’s many controller-based games, with no waggle allowed. Wii Sports and Skyward Sword fans will have to look elsewhere. The OS looks to be open-source, so it may be able to emulate other stuff. We’ll update this post when we find out more. 

The makers of this machine put an initial run of 30 units up for sale at $55. It sold out almost immediately, but that was just to test the waters. It’s highly possible orders will open back up again in the near future.

This isn’t the first time modders have hit the Wii with a shrink ray. Earlier this year, a hardware modder made a Wii that was the size of a deck of cards. That now seems gargantuan compared to the Kawaii.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/modders-made-a-tiny-nintendo-wii-that-doubles-as-a-keychain-185347707.html?src=rss 

Apple Maps is expanding beyond its app. Just like with Google Maps, the service is now available on the web, albeit in beta form at the jump.

There are some limitations for now. Availability will vary by region and Maps is only available in English on the web at the outset. As things stand, you can access Apple Maps from Safari and Chrome on Mac and iPad. Windows PC users can access the service via Chrome and Edge. Apple says it will expand the web experience to other languages, devices and browsers over time, but for now at least, iPhone users will need to keep using the Maps app.

The web version of Apple Maps includes directions; guides; opening hours, reviews and other helpful information for businesses; and actions such as ordering food. Apple will add other features, including Look Around (i.e. the company’s version of street View), in the coming months. 

After many years of restricting Maps to an app, Apple might be trying to take on Google at its own game. Google Maps has, for instance, long allowed developers to embed a section of a map on websites. Apple says devs will be able to link to its maps on the web to offer their users driving directions, information about places and more.

Expanding beyond the app is a smart idea and it could help Apple Maps reach more eyeballs. The company also started offering a web version of Apple Music several years ago.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-maps-is-now-available-on-the-web-in-beta-193648138.html?src=rss 

Meta has taken down tens of thousands of Instagram accounts from Nigeria as part of a massive crackdown on sextortion scams. The accounts primarily targeted adult men in the United States, but some also targeted minors, Meta said in an update.

The takedowns are part of a larger effort by Meta to combat sextortion scams on its platform in recent months. Earlier this year, the company added a safety feature in Instagram messages to automatically detect nudity and warn users about potential blackmail scams. The company also provides in-app resources and safety tips about such scams.

According to Meta, the recent takedowns included 2,500 accounts that were linked to a group of about 20 people who worked together to carry out sextortion scams. The company also took down thousands of accounts and groups on Facebook that provided tips and other advice, including scripts and fake images, for would-be sextortionists. Those accounts were linked to the Yahoo Boys, a group of “loosely organized cybercriminals operating largely out of Nigeria that specialize in different types of scams,” Meta said.

Meta has come under particular scrutiny for not doing enough to protect teens from sextortion on its apps. During a Senate hearing earlier this year, Senator Lindsey Graham pressed Mark Zuckerberg on whether the parents of a child who died by suicide after falling victim to such a scam should be able to sue the company.

Though the company said that the “majority” of the scammers it uncovered in its latest takedowns targeted adults, it confirmed that some of the accounts had targeted minors as well and that those accounts had also been reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/meta-takes-down-63000-instagram-accounts-linked-to-extortion-scams-175118067.html?src=rss 

Last week’s CrowdStrike outage plunged a noticeable portion of the world into a sea of blue death screens. The cybersecurity company tried to apologize with an Uber Eats gift card but its roll out also ended in failure, according to a report from TechCrunch.

CrowdStrike apparently tried to send its millions of clients a $10 Uber Eats gift card on Tuesday. The gift card was an attempt to apologize for the global shutdown that locked up computer systems for banks, hospitals, airlines and more and “the additional work that the July 19 incident has caused,” according to TechCrunch’s source who received the message.

When some clients tried to use the gift card on Uber Eats, they only saw a screen telling them that the offer had been rescinded by the issuing party. CrowdStrike has yet to comment on this matter so it’s not known how many clients received the voucher offer.

CrowdStrike blamed the global system outage on a bug in an update that contained “problematic data.” The bug forced machines running on Windows into a boot loop that caused mass delays at airports, delayed scheduled surgeries and other operations at hospitals and disruptions at banks and even the London Stock Exchange.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/crowdstrike-offers-a-10-uber-eats-card-to-say-sorry-before-pulling-the-offer-172605510.html?src=rss 

When Reddit said last month that it would block unauthorized data scraping from its site, everyone’s (rightful) first reaction was “AI, AI, AI.” However, now that the change has taken effect, chatbot makers aren’t the only ones being locked out. The widely used forum also appears to be blocking all search engines other than Google, which reportedly inked a deal earlier this year with Reddit worth $60 million annually.

404 Media reported on Wednesday (and Engadget confirmed in our queries) that searching for Reddit results from the past week on rival engine Bing (using “site:reddit.com”) returns empty results. The publication reported that DuckDuckGo produced seven links without any descriptions, only providing the note, “We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us.” The engine now appears to have removed even those, as our test only produced an empty page, reading, “no results found.”

When Reddit said last month that it would update its Robots Exclusion Protocol (robots.txt) to block automated data scraping, it’s now apparent that it wasn’t only meant to thwart AI companies like Perplexity and its controversial “answer engine.” Currently, Google appears to be the only search engine allowed to crawl Reddit and produce results from “the front page of the internet.”

Ironically, part of the forum website’s robots.txt file reads, “Reddit believes in an open internet, but not the misuse of public content.” The file for Reddit now essentially says, “Do not scrape.” Apparently, it now considers search engines that don’t buy into exclusive deals to be misusing its content.

The ubiquitous robots.txt is the web standard that communicates which parts of a site can be crawled. Although many crawlers are known to ignore its instructions, Google’s standard procedure is to respect it. So, on the technical side, the companies in cahoots on the lucrative deal appear to have deployed some manual override.

Of course, the saga is a trickle-down effect of AI chatbots scraping the live web for results. With courts slow to determine how much of the open web is fair use to train chatbots on, companies like Reddit, whose bottom lines now depend on safeguarding their data from those who don’t pay, are building walls at the expense of the open web. (Although, given the integral role Microsoft has played in this AI era, cozying up with OpenAI early on, it seems ironic that Bing finds itself on the losing end of at least one aspect of the fallout.)

Colin Hayhurst, CEO of lesser-known “no-tracking” search engine Mojeek, told 404 Media that Reddit is “killing everything for search but Google.” In addition, the executive said his attempts to contact Reddit were ignored. “It’s never happened to us before,” he said. “Because this happens to us, we get blocked, usually because of ignorance or stupidity or whatever, and when we contact the site you certainly can get that resolved, but we’ve never had no reply from anybody before.”

Engadget asked Google and Reddit for comment and confirmation, but we hadn’t heard back by publication. 404 Media reported running into a similar wall of silence from the companies.

Reddit has made no secret of its desire to block AI companies from scraping its treasure trove of data in this burgeoning age of AI. Last year, CEO Steve Huffman risked alienating large portions of its user base by blocking third-party API requests, leading to the demise of beloved apps like Christian Selig’s Apollo. Despite widespread protests among moderators and forum-goers, the company only temporarily lost negligible numbers of users.

The gamble appeared to pay off, and Reddit recovered. It went public in March.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/search-engines-that-dont-pay-up-cant-index-reddit-content-172949170.html?src=rss 

MultiVersus, the platform fighter that pulls from Warner Bros. properties, could be getting a whole bunch of new stages and characters, according to a report by Kotaku. This includes content from the film Barbie and the Mad Max universe, in addition to more Adventure Land stuff and a potential tie-in with the forthcoming Beetlejuice sequel. WB owns a whole bunch of stuff, so this could get interesting.

The reporting is sourced from a fairly reputable dataminer on X, who published receipts in the form of screengrabs and the like. These images include an early version of a potential Barbie Land stage, complete with palm trees and, of course, a bright pink color palette. 

There’s also a picture that allegedly depicts a stage based on Quidditch, the broom-based sport from Harry Potter that makes absolutely zero sense. Other leaked stages include the wastelands from Mad Max, a background inspired by Powerpuff Girls and one pulled from the cartoon Samurai Jack.

Speaking of those last two, both the Powerpuff Girls and Samurai Jack will be showing up as playable characters. Samurai Jack makes for an interesting addition, being as how fighting is basically his whole thing. The dataminer has also indicated that Beetlejuice will soon be a playable character, likely coinciding with the September 6 release date of the sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. This has been confirmed by the developer, as has Samurai Jack. Adventure Time’s resident vampire bassist Marceline could also be joining the roster.

It’s worth noting that this information isn’t set in stone. Many of the stages suggested by the X user look to be extremely early in development and the same goes for some of the playable characters. It’s entirely possible, and likely, that WB and Ready Player Games are always tinkering with new stages and characters and not all of them make it to the final game. To that end, it was reported back in 2022 that Ted Lasso would be a playable character and, well, that hasn’t happened.

Warner Bros. did just buy the game’s developer, so it’s definitely serious about keeping the ball rolling on this whole branded platform fighter thing. WB has a ridiculously deep bench of IPs, including DC Comics, Harry Potter, HBO shows, Dune, Mad Max, Barbie, Looney Tunes and so many more. MultiVersus will never knock Super Smash Bros. from the throne, but it’s definitely proven itself to have a longer shelf life than, say, Sony’s PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/multiversus-leak-suggests-barbie-and-mad-max-tie-ins-are-on-the-way-162251960.html?src=rss