Facebook makes finding your Messenger friends way easier

Facebook announced on Thursday that it is implementing three new features for its popular Messenger app. They’re designed to make finding and connecting with other users easier. Specifically the company is rolling out “Messenger Usernames,” “Messenger Links” and “Messenger Codes.”

Messenger Codes work in essentially the same manner as Snapchat codes; you simply scan the code that someone sends you to instantly connect with them. Usernames and links perform the same base function — giving other people a quick means of finding you on Messenger. Usernames can easily be added to business cards and other physical media, as the Facebook blog announcement suggests, while links are meant to be integrated into email signatures. The new features are being made available to businesses as well as individual users, which should dovetail nicely with the company’s rumored efforts to enable purchases directly through the app.

Source: Facebook Blog

FDA approves ‘world’s smallest’ pacemaker for heart patients

As consumer technology has trended smaller and thinner, medical devices have done the same. And now, the first transcatheter pacemaker has been approved for use with heart patients in the US. Medtronic gained FDA approval for its Micra TPS pacemaker, the first device to employ the miniaturized pacing tech to be approved by the US government. The company is calling the device the “world’s smallest pacemaker,” measuring just a tenth of the size of traditional technology. It’s about the size of large vitamin.

The Micra TPS attaches to the heart with small tines, delivering impulses with an electrode at one end. The device doesn’t require a “pocket” under a patient’s skin like traditional devices and it’s completely concealed from view. What’s more, this tiny pacemaker adjusts the impulse based on a patient’s activity level automatically. It’s also approved for use during full-body MRI scans, so patients will still have access to detailed medical imaging processes should the need arise.

During clinical trials, Medtronic says the Micra TPS was successfully implanted in over 99 percent of patients with no reported instances of it moving out of place. 96 percent patients didn’t experience any complications either, 51 percent lower than the numbers for more traditional pacemakers. The company also notes that over 98 percent of patients exhibited “low and stable” pacing after six months, a rate at which the Micra TPS could last for more than 12 years.

Source: Medtronic

Iceland resists Pirate Party push for early elections

Following the pseudo-resignation of its Prime Minister, whom the leaked Panama Papers tied to an offshore holding company, Iceland’s ruling coalition remains in turmoil. Despite appointing a new PM on Thursday, the government is facing calls for early elections. And, to make matters worse, the opposition Pirate Party is surging at the polls with more than half of Icelanders reportedly willing to vote for them over the current coalition.

BREAKING: Almost half of #Iceland would now vote for Pirate Party. https://t.co/CGgQudqExh #panamapapers @birgittaj pic.twitter.com/vewjGhPCjG

— Iceland Monitor (@IcelandMonitor) April 6, 2016

Icelandic citizens have held massive protest rallies everyday since the Panama Papers were published. They’re demanding the resignations of both the current government’s finance and interior ministers, both of whom were named in the Papers.

This political shitshow has, however, proven a boon for the country’s fledgling Pirate Party. The group grew out of the Pirate Bay movement and has since become a major player in Icelandic politics. “This is all interconnected,” Pirate Bay rep Ásta Helgadóttir told The Intercept. “Internet freedom is about how to practice fundamental human rights in the 21st century, and democracy is one of those rights.”

In a related post on the Pirate Party’s official website, Helgadóttir and two other party reps further expounded on their position:

The confidence of the Icelandic people we believe rests in us, not only because we are a party that has not been a part of government, but also we think it is because people sense that we stand for enacting changes that have to do with reforming the systems, rather than changing minor things that might easily be changed back. Our policies therefore stand in stark contrast to what appears to be the pattern of modern politics; minor changes but always the same dysfunctional system. We do not define ourselves as left or right but rather as a party that focuses on the systems. In other words, we consider ourselves hackers – so to speak – of our current outdated systems of government.

Though the current government is resisting calls for early elections, the Pirate Party and its opposition coalition introduced a motion of no confidence which will be debated on as early as Friday.

Source: The Intercept

Everything hinges on ‘Final Fantasy XV’

Final Fantasy XV has to be perfect. After a decade of development hell, a name change from Versus XIII to XV, a complete mechanical overhaul and a director swap, die-hard series fans aren’t just hungry for the game; they’re reeling.

Many players who were excited about Final Fantasy Versus XIII as teenagers remain interested in Final Fantasy XV as adults. After all, the Final Fantasy series debuted in 1987 and played a pivotal role in plenty of fans’ young lives. But as the years have dragged on, a ripple of discontent has nudged against this fierce loyalty. In the decade of delays, some longtime players have simply declared the franchise dead.

Director Hajime Tabata is aware that some people consider Final Fantasy to be “over the hill.” That’s one reason he’s so focused on attracting new players with FFXV when it finally hits PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on Sept. 30th. Tabata even once considered getting rid of the numeral part of the title entirely, fearing it might scare off fresh faces.

“For XV, I sort of changed my mindset to make our aim of getting new players, and growing this global brand and appealing to sort of the mass-market new users,” Tabata says.

Tabata doesn’t want to alienate old fans, but he knows that new people need to dive into FFXV for the franchise to continue growing. It’s a tricky balance. He’s taking cues on how to market FFXV from Western developers, specifically The Witcher studio CD Projekt Red and Fallout house Bethesda. He’s looked at the size of the audiences they target, how they create their advertising campaigns and how they handle localization.

The Square Enix team working on FFXV, called Business Division 2, is 300 people strong, and some of them are international, meaning they have direct experience in Western markets. Tabata sees this as a positive.

“With XV I think we’ve really strived to get the point across to especially our traditional, older fans that we are modernizing,” Tabata says. “We are taking modern approaches so that they can hold interest in this title.”

Last week, Tabata and Business Division 2 confronted their skeptical fans head on.

Square Enix held a massive event at Los Angeles’ Shrine Auditorium, where it promised to reveal a ton of new information about the game. Six thousand fans showed up and went wild as Kinda Funny co-founders Greg Miller and Tim Gettys unveiled an animated prequel named Brotherhood, a 3D tie-in movie called Kingsglaive and a real-life FFXV-styled Audi R8.

A-list actors Lena Headey (Game of Thrones), Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad) and Sean Bean (The Lord of the Rings) each have roles in Kingsglaive; Headey and Paul showed up in person to talk about the movie while Bean provided his insight in a recorded segment. FFXV’s theme song is a cover of “Stand By Me” by Florence and the Machine, and Square Enix showed off a mini-documentary about its recording, starring lead singer Florence Welch.

The event was an apology and an invitation for long-suffering fans to get excited about FFXV again, all wrapped up in an unprecedented AAA spectacle.

The show’s main conceit was a big red button that, once pressed, would finally reveal the game’s release date. However, the date had leaked online just hours earlier. That didn’t stop the crowd from cheering like mad when “Sept. 30, 2016” finally flashed onstage amid a hail of confetti and music. “Apology accepted,” the crowd roared.

Part of this intense fan reaction comes down to the series’ roots: It’s been around for nearly 30 years on dozens of classic, mobile and modern platforms. Many fans have played the games since childhood, growing up within their dense sci-fi and fantasy worlds. For these players, Final Fantasy is more than a video game series. It’s a part of who they are.

That’s especially true for 30-year-old Akira Beebee. I found her standing in line right before doors opened for the big event and asked her to explain her lifelong commitment to the franchise.

“I had an illness where I couldn’t go outside because I was allergic to the sun; I have phototoxicity,” Beebee said. “So, my dad bought me a Nintendo. One of the first games we got was Zelda and the other was Final Fantasy. It really helped me escape my room. Then VI and VII came out and those really helped me to figure out a lot about what it is to be human, and that was really important to me, especially around that age. I was like nine or ten.”

A handful of other people in line shared similar stories with me; most of them had been playing Final Fantasy games for more than 10 years. They saw the games as an escape, a way to connect with family and friends or a safe lens through which they could dissect their own maturation.

“Being introduced to it by my older siblings, it was something I grew up with and I admired.” –Ernesto Serrano

“I met a lot of great friends that way, My brothers, my sisters, my cousins, even my mom is a huge fan of XII and Rasler. It’s a big thing for me and for everybody that I know.” –Shemella Humphryes

“That was very important to me during that same level of where I was developing as a person in middle school and high school. … You don’t have to be a stereotype to be a hero.” –Gregory Hanson

“The character development is really fantastic, I think. It stands up, it has that charm like when I was a kid watching cartoons and stuff. I grew up playing it.” –Travis Dickinson

One fan in line, Melody Asghari, started playing Final Fantasy when she was four. She enjoyed the imagination of the series and the way it toyed with real-life ideas of technology and society.

“But I’m not fond of this one,” she said.

Asghari wasn’t convinced that FFXV was on track to be a good Final Fantasy game — but she showed up to the event anyway. She was giving the game, and the series, another chance to win her back.

Asghari represents Tabata’s hardest market to reach, those fans who think FFXV could be a nail in the franchise’s coffin. This may be why he’s focusing on attracting new players rather than winning over jaded ones. Part of this strategy relies on the supplemental materials like Brotherhood and Kingsglaive, which are generously peppered with big-name celebrities.

“Our real, main goal is to optimize FFXV,” Tabata says. “It’s not to maximize profit margins and revenue flow from our core fans. It’s an honest approach of we want to give our fans various entry ways to enjoy this, and have more people enjoy and experience this game and brand.”

FFXV represents a clear shift for the franchise, led by a director with his eyes on the future. It’s not just the game that’s new; the people making it have a different perspective, too, thanks to Tabata.

“In past games, our staff typically thought that a numbered FF game is a very special game and brand,” he said. “And that because they were working on it, they were special themselves. And we got rid of that idea completely with XV. We don’t think that way at all.”

‘The Walking Dead’ studio will publish ‘7 Days to Die’ on consoles

Telltale Games is best known for its emotional point-and-click adventure games The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us and Game of Thrones, but the studio’s publishing division is just getting started. Telltale Publishing will bring The Fun Pimps’ first-person zombie survival game 7 Days to Die to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in June for $30. This is the second game from Telltale Publishing, following its work on the retail edition of the Jackbox Party Pack.

After a successful Kickstarter campaign, 7 Days to Die debuted on Steam in December 2013 and has since attracted more than 1.5 million PC players, according to The Fun Pimps. The console version of the game includes a new multiplayer mode that supports split-screen play, plus additional online multiplayer modes. Pre-ordering the console version of 7 Days to Die nets customers five character skins from Telltale’s The Walking Dead series, including Michonne and Lee.

‘Quantum Break’ is a legitimate reason to buy an Xbox One

Almost three years after the Xbox One’s debut, it’s getting its biggest and arguably first real exclusive. Quantum Break won’t be available on other consoles, it isn’t a sequel, nor is it multiplayer-only. It’s the latest game from Remedy Entertainment, the studio behind the Max Payne and Alan Wake franchises. And it couldn’t come at a better time for Microsoft, either: In a matter of weeks PlayStation 4 owners will have Ratchet and Clank and Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, and Wii U owners get Star Fox Zero. If Xbox One didn’t have an exclusive of its own right now, it’d be the odd console out.

Good thing, then, that it’s Remedy’s best game yet and the Xbox One finally has a AAA showcase for what it’s capable of.

Let’s take a step back, though. Until now, Xbox One exclusives generally haven’t been worth writing home about. The few new, but boring, titles like Ryse: Son of Rome and sequels including Forza Motorsport 5 and Dead Rising 3, didn’t do much to move the needle. Especially not after Microsoft’s numerous PR missteps leading up to the Xbox One’s release.

‘Quantum Break’ is developer Remedy’s best game yet.

A majority of the Xbox One’s “originals” have been bigger, prettier versions of games you’ve played before. Whether they’re sequels like Forza Horizon 2 and Halo 5: Guardians or HD-revamps like Gears of War: Ultimate Edition or Rare Replay Collection, there isn’t much that’s entirely new on the system. Games you can’t play on any other console have been few and far between. Titanfall had a surprisingly decent version of its multiplayer-only mech battles on Xbox 360, for example.

Sunset Overdrive is a wildly colorful and inventive shooter — and a true exclusive — blending punk rock, parkour and a cartoony art style that didn’t fare well among fans at all. Even though it hails from well-regarded developer Insomniac Games, three months after its 2014 release it still hadn’t cracked the NPD’s top ten selling games.

Which brings us to back to Quantum Break, Xbox One’s stand-out exclusive. At its core, it’s a cover-based, third-person shooter that’s exclusively single-player. The game centers around time travel, which isn’t just a plot device; it bleeds into combat and platforming puzzles, as well. Because protagonist Jack Joyce (played by a digital version of X-Men’s Shawn Ashmore, above) came in contact with a time machine before everything went pear-shaped, he’s witness to glitches in the space-time continuum and can manipulate time as he sees fit.

Sometimes the glitches are small. There’s no way to get inside a swimming pool facility early on in the game, but alongside the building near its dumpster there’s a strange teal cloud. Walking near it causes the camera distort and pulls everything out of focus. Paint and metal particles dance off the shed covering the dumpster, hovering above the surface briefly before settling back in place. It looks really cool.

This is where I had to rewind time so someone from the past could pull the dumpster out of its shed and erect a scaffold to finish a graffiti mural — all depicted using time-lapse photography. But the rewind is finite and I had to make it to the pool’s roof before the temporary glimpse at the past ran out and everything returned to its original place.

The swimming pool time-lapse, in action.

The more severe glitches, dubbed “stutters,” are even more impressive. They show massive-scale destruction in still frame, except you’re able to freely walk around in them. Later in the game, a shipping barge crashes into a bridge filled with traffic. Time stops at the moment of impact, just as chaos takes over.

The whole set piece feels like trying to navigate a painting by M.C. Escher. That is, if the noted surrealist painted with destroyed vehicles, frozen bullet tracers and swarms of floating traffic cones. Given the scene’s complexity in terms of how much carnage surrounds you, the absolutely surreal architecture and visual effects at play here, it would’ve likely caused the Xbox 360’s 11-year-old hardware to melt.

Remedy’s eye for the dramatic doesn’t stop there, though. This is the studio that popularized slow-motion Matrix-style gunfights in video games with 2001’s noir-inspired Max Payne, after all. Time manipulation plays a key role in combat as well and keeps it from feeling rote. There are only a handful of time-manipulation powers, but they’re all incredibly well-designed.

Hitting a distant enemy with a time-slow bubble like the one pictured below, for example, serves double-duty: Anything caught inside it freezes in place, but the coolest wrinkle here is that any bullets fired into it will explode once the time-slow bursts, dropping any enemies caught in its blast radius. Time and again, when I caught an explosive container in that lethal bubble, the resulting fireworks show always made me smile like an idiot. There’s a really neat variation on Max Payne’s shoot-dodge move, too, where you can quickly dash past an enemy and pump a few rounds into them in slow-mo before they can counterattack.

The game’s time machine isn’t like Doc Brown’s DeLorean from Back to the Future that can jump to any point in the past or fast-forward 30 years. Instead, Quantum Break’s is rooted in the Novikov Self-Consistency Principle. Long story short, you can’t use it to go back and kill Hitler because it would fundamentally alter the course of history and the resulting future that led to the time machine’s creation. Time operates on a closed cycle, and major changes to history would create paradoxes. And sometimes, in your efforts to prevent something from happening, you’ll inadvertently cause it to happen — multiple paths, same outcome.

This isn’t just a convenient tool used to simplify game mechanics, though. It’s an integral part of Quantum Break’s story about trying to fix your mistakes, only to wind up right back where you started. Choices made at key points change how certain elements of the plot play out, but the game’s final moments largely remain the same.

Quantum Break could exist on other platforms, but no one could have made it except Remedy, a studio that hasn’t published a game on a non-Microsoft console in more than 12 years. The game’s episodic narrative structure comes from Alan Wake, but it has much better pacing. Then there’s the cinematic presentation and manipulation of time that leave Max Payne’s iconic slow-motion combat in the dust.

‘Quantum Break’ could exist on other platforms, but no one could have made it except Remedy.

The surprisingly well-done live-action TV episodes that fill out the branching narrative are something brand new, not just for Remedy, but video games as whole. Combined, this forms an experience unlike anything I’ve played before. Quantum Break is the culmination of everything the studio has been working toward for more than a decade and the developers aren’t afraid to flaunt it.

Console exclusives exist to showcase the strengths of each individual platform, and up to this point the Xbox One really hasn’t had one. But Quantum Break changes that. After more than two years, the system finally has its first killer app.

Facebook is being used to sell weapons in the Middle East

Facebook’s social network reaches billions of people around the world, but its tools aren’t always used with the best intentions. The New York Times reports that Facebook Groups are being used to sell weapons in the Middle East. The sales violate Facebook’s policy for selling goods on the site of course, but that’s not stopping folks in Libya, Syria, Iraq and other countries from posting weapons commonly used by terrorists and militants for sale.

The good news is Facebook is cracking down on the groups, shutting down six of the seven pages NYT alerted the company to within a day. The one that remains is a group that only posted photos and discussed weapons, but didn’t allow sales on the page. Armament Research Services published a report this month on online weapons sales in Libya, documenting several cases where the sale of missiles, heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, rockets were negotiated through Facebook Groups. While the use of social media to discuss sales is relatively new to Libya, it’s also being used in other countries that have been ravaged by conflict — places like Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

Facebook’s regular addition of features like the ability to send money through Messenger provides a way for sellers to easily collect payments. The company updated its policies earlier this year to specifically forbid the sale of firearms or other weapons or using the site to broker such deals. “Since we were offering features like that, we thought we wanted to make clear that this is not a site that wants to facilitate the private sales of firearms,” Monika Bickert, Facebook’s head of global policy, told The New York Times.

Weapons provided to allies in Iraq and items similar to those distributed to Syrian rebels by the US have surfaced on the pages for sale, including machine guns and anti-tank missile systems. The groups are also being used by militia to find other military supplies like bullet-proof plates, infrared cameras and uniforms. However, using Facebook to sell any of those items that aren’t considered weapons isn’t against the social network’s policies.

Source: New York Times

Outlook for iOS and Android syncs calendar info from other apps

Ever since it acquired Sunrise, the popular social calendar app, Microsoft’s been bringing more of its features to the Outlook mobile apps. To that end, Outlook for iOS and Android can now sync with Evernote, Facebook and Wunderlist, which will let users get information from those third-party services directly on their inbox. This includes events, notes and tasks, making it easier for you to stay on top of scheduled meetings, reminders and other things that help with productivity. Microsoft says integration with these apps is just the start, hinting at support for others in the future.

Source: Microsoft

Apple Seeds First iOS 9.3.2 Beta to Public Beta Testers

Apple today released the first beta of an upcoming iOS 9.3.2 update for public beta testers, just a day after seeding the first iOS 9.3.2 beta to developers. iOS 9.3.2 comes just over two weeks after the public release of iOS 9.3 and a week after the release of iOS 9.3.1, a followup bug fix update.

Beta testers who have signed up for Apple’s beta testing program will receive the iOS 9.3 update over-the-air after installing the proper certificate on their iOS device.

Those who want to be a part of Apple’s beta testing program can sign up to participate through the beta testing website, which gives users access to both iOS and OS X betas.

iOS 9.3.2, as a minor 9.x.x update, focuses primarily on performance improvements and under-the-hood bug fixes to address issues that have been discovered since the release of iOS 9.3. We don’t know all of the fixes that will be included, but one issue with lagginess when activating Quick Actions in landscape mode on an iPhone 6s has been fixed.

No other outward-facing changes or immediately apparent bug fixes were discovered in the first beta of iOS 9.3.2.

Related Roundup: iOS 9
Discuss this article in our forums

Apple Releases First OS X 10.11.5 El Capitan Beta to Public Beta Testers

Apple today seeded the first beta of an upcoming OS X 10.11.5 beta to public beta testers, just a day after releasing the first OS X 10.11.5 beta to developers and two weeks after releasing OS X 10.11.4, the fourth update to the OS X 10.11 operating system.

The new beta is available through the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store for those who are enrolled in Apple’s beta testing program. Those wishing to join the program can sign up on Apple’s beta testing website.

Most of the updates to OS X 10.11 have been minor in scale, and OS X 10.11.5 is no exception. The update appears to focus on under-the-hood bug fixes, security enhancements, and performance improvements with no obvious outward-facing changes.

Related Roundup: OS X El Capitan
Tag: OS X 10.11.5
Discuss this article in our forums