How to purchase in-game items for PlayStation games

Found an in-game item you want to buy? Here’s how to do it.

No matter your feelings on the matter we are living in the age of in-game items. There is a veritable litany of items to expand or change the way you interact with games. From game breaking weapons to aesthetic changes like character skins, there may come a day when you want to purchase some items for a game on your PlayStation 4. Here is as simple overview of how you may go about doing that.

Directly from the PlayStation Store.

From the main page of your PlayStation, select PlayStation Store.

Once in the store move your cursor up to Search and select it.

Start spelling the game you want to buy items for with the letter bar on the right. Once your game pops up, select it.

On the game page, choose Add-Ons in the lower right.

You will then be presented with a list of add-ons and in-game items available for that game. Select the one you want.

Next, you will see an overview of that item. To purchase it, select Add to Cart.

If you are ready to pull the trigger on your purchase, you will then choose Proceed to Checkout.

You have one more chance to back out. If you’re still sure, select Proceed to Checkout one more time.

Once you finish your purchase, your items will show up automatically within your game.

From inside your game.

Every game is different so I can’t tell you exactly how it will work in every instance. However, most developers will give you an option somewhere near the main menu of the game to purchase items. After all, they want you to dump some more cash on all those sweet sweet in-game items. If the in-game advertising works and you find yourself falling down that rabbit hole, it’s pretty simple. You will select the item you want and it will automatically dump you out of the game and back into the PlayStation store where you will finish your purchase.

Buying in-game items is dangerously easy these days. Many developers love these little micro-purchases as it only serves to bolster the income of individual games. The ease with which these purchases can be made can make it a slippery slope. Make sure to buy only the things you really want.

What in-game items are you buying?

Why are we reviewing PlayStation 4 games on Android Central? Let us explain.

PlayStation 4

• PS4 vs. PS4 Slim vs. PS4 Pro: Which should you buy?
• PlayStation VR Review
• Playing PS4 games through your phone is awesome

Amazon

This is how Google Chrome’s new ad-blocker works

Last April, Google surprised a lot of us by announcing it was working on a built-in ad-blocker for Google Chrome. We got an update a few months later in December saying that the ad-blocker would be released at some point in February of 2018, and now on February 15, the feature is ready for prime time.

As we already knew, Chrome’s ad-blocker will filter and hide any advertisements it detects on websites that don’t follow the Better Ads Standard. This standard was created by the Coalition for Better Ads, and the goal of it is to give companies a clear guideline of what ads are appropriate and which ones are deemed intrusive.

There are currently 12 types of ads that don’t meet the Standard’s requirements, including the likes of pop-up ads, auto-play videos, full-screen ads that follow you as you scroll on your phone, and more.

Chrome’s ad-blocker will be available for both desktop and Android users, and folks on desktop will be alerted of blocked ads near the address bar similar to how you’re alerted of blocked pop-ups. For those on Android, you’ll see a notification at the bottom of your screen letting you know that advertisements have been blocked. You can dismiss this and keep browsing like normal, or you can expand the notification and choose to always allow ads from that specific site.

Commenting on the ad-blocker, Chrome’s Vice President, Rahul Roy-Chowdhury, said:

We’ve already seen more and more people express their discontent with annoying ads by installing ad blockers, but blocking all ads can hurt sites or advertisers who aren’t doing anything disruptive. By focusing on filtering out disruptive ad experiences, we can help keep the entire ecosystem of the web healthy, and give people a significantly better user experience than they have today.

Google says that 42% of all sites that didn’t meet the Better Ads Standards have updated their use of advertisements to meet these requirements as of February 12, and the goal with Chrome’s ad-blocker is to make that number go up even more. Websites are given 30 days to change their online ads after being notified of not meeting the Better Ads Standards, and if they fail to do anything after that time allotment, Chrome will start block ads.

Now that Chrome’s ad-blocker is here, are you inclined to start using the browser if you aren’t already?

Best Chrome extensions you didn’t know about but should be using

Record Life’s Best Moments in 360-degree Video, All Hands-free

The FITT360 is a 360-degree camera that you wear around your neck.

We live in an exciting time for people interested in the latest virtual reality advancements. There are many different ways to experience stunning experiences in virtual reality, whether with a VR headset hooked up to a PC, one of the newer standalone VR headsets coming out, or even by using your phone and a mobile VR headset. But on the other end of the pool, capturing 360-degree video is still a whole ordeal.

There are more and more compact 360 cameras coming to market but they still require a lot of active engagement — you either have to hold them up over your head or set them up on selfie stick or tripod to capture. And they work fine enough, except that you’ve got to stop whatever you’re doing to start capturing the 360 video.

That’s where Linkflow saw an opportunity to innovate with FITT360 — the first 360-degree camera that you wear around your neck.

So how does it work? Well instead of some of the kind of ridiculous rigs you may have seen that use multiple GoPro-style cameras in an array or a little handheld dome like the Samsung Gear 360, the FITT360 uses three HD cameras strategically placed to capture everything going on around you. It has IPX6 water resistance and a 90-minute battery life so even if the weather turns on you, you and your FITT360 will be alright.

Starting a recording is as easy as pressing a button and off you go. You can start recording on the device itself without messing around with a mobile app, but after you’ve completed your hike, bike ride, or stroll through a busy market you can use the FITT360 app to view and edit your captures as 360 videos or photos, or isolate the capture from one of the three cameras.

This isn’t the first tech you wear around your neck that we’ve seen this year — Bose came out with a wearable speaker this year — so the neck and shoulders just may be the next space where we start seeing more interesting tech accessories pop up.

The FITT360 will retail for $699, but there are deals to be had for Kickstarter backers right now! You can snag your very own FITT360 at a super early bird price of $396, which gets you the FITT360, a charging cable, and a carrying pouch. If you’re an early adopter who loves to show off your latest tech in your home, you might be more interested in the complete set perk which includes a stylish display cradle.

There are just a handful of days remaining on this Kickstarter project which as already well surpassed its funding goal. This is Linkflow’s first Kickstarter and they aim to start shipping units to backers by October 2018, and if you back them here you can score the stylish red model that’s exclusive to Kickstarter backers.

See the FITT360 on Kickstarter

The HUAWEI Mate 10 Series is a battery genius

This post is brought to you by HUAWEI.

These days, your phone is your companion. It’s your lifeline in an emergency, your savior in times of boredom, and your game console when you’re away from your TV. It’s your most important piece of tech. So it cannot, under any circumstances, run out of battery.

The HUAWEI Mate 10 Series has a huge 4,000mAh battery – that alone would keep it going all day – but it’s got a bigger, smarter trick up its sleeve: an NPU.

A what?

Let’s take a walk.

The morning

Each morning, you walk. It calms you and sets you up beautifully for the rest of the workday. And while you’re walking, your phone is working, too – it’s sending music over Bluetooth to your wireless headphones, and it’s updating apps in the background so that the next time you take it out, everything is refreshed and current. When your phone is one of the HUAWEI Mate 10 Series devices, that whole cycle uses less power than on another phone because a specialized AI accelerator, the NPU, or Neutral Network Processing Unit, understands and adapts to your favorite activities. It is fine-tuned to support a huge number of calculations required to enable advanced machine learning algorithms.

The HUAWEI Mate 10 and HUAWEI Mate 10 Pro are the only phones with a dedicated NPU, part of the Kirin 970 chipset that helps it process AI tasks and provide intelligence at the individual level. When you come back from your walk, all refreshed and ready for the day, the phone has only lost a small amount of battery, because it knows to prioritize power management and energy consumption for exactly what you’re going to be doing.

There’s another advantage to the NPU: it helps apps load faster by keeping them in memory, which also helps the battery. It’s a win-win.

Let’s grab a coffee.

The midday lull

It’s around 2 p.m. and your stomach is grumbling even though you just ate lunch. You’re bored and tapping through Instagram Stories to see what everyone else is doing – but they’re all doing the same thing you’re doing. So you open your favorite game – just a few minutes, no one will know – and end up wasting half an hour. That’s totally fine, though, because the NPU is there to give you peace of mind that your phone can keep up with whatever it is you want to do.

The beauty of Huawei’s power management strategy is that it approaches it from three ways: the Kirin 970 chip is powerful and energy-efficient on its own, so gaming doesn’t take the same toll on the battery as other high-end chips; its 4,000mAh battery is huge, giving you extra time to do the things you love (like playing that addictive game!); and using A.I., the NPU can thoroughly understand you and meet your demand for a personalized experience at any given time of day (you play the game a lot) and adjusts things accordingly.

This intelligent power management is something only the HUAWEI Mate 10 Series can do. If you’re playing a puzzle game that isn’t too graphics-intensive, it’ll keep the screen bright and the volume high. But if you’re waging war in a real-time 3D environment, the NPU knows to lower the screen brightness, keep the volume down, and try to stop as many background tasks as possible. Even after half an hour, your battery is still looking good!

A good night

You’re home from work and making a quick dinner before leaving to meet up with friends. You’re watching videos on how to make something delicious, and then keep the screen on bright while you try to follow the recipe. It hasn’t even occurred to you to plug in your phone, because even though the sun went down ages ago, you still have more than 50% of battery left.

Every time you do something that would send other phones screaming to their chargers, the HUAWEI Mate 10 Series takes a deep breath and gets to work. The A.I. on the device drives your phone to constantly understand what’s important to you, and keeps it going well into the next day.

When you leave to meet your friends, your HUWAEI Mate 10 Series phone in your pocket, something occurs to you: you can stay out as long as you want.

Have a good night.

See at Huawei

Project Fi expands international coverage to 170 markets

The app will also let you know if you’re covered for an upcoming trip.

Google’s Project Fi saw a big update this past January in the form of a new feature called “Bill Protection.” This essentially gave Project Fi an $80/month unlimited plan, and just about a month since that launch, the service is gaining a couple new tricks focused on international coverage.

First off, Project Fi is now available to use in 37 additional countries – meaning that subscribers now have full coverage in over 170 different markets. New additions include the likes of Belize, Morocco, Armenia, and Nigeria, and no matter which of the supported countries you travel to, you’ll still get unlimited calls and texts and pay $10 per GB of data while still being able to use Bill Protection.

The Project Fi app will also let you know if you’ll be covered for an upcoming trip. This data is pulled from your Gmail account if you receive any emails regarding an upcoming international flight, and while you can turn this off in your account settings, it’s a nice reminder so that you don’t receive any unwanted surprises once you land in a foreign country.

I’ve personally still held off on subscribing to Project Fi due other carriers having better deals for large family plans, but with updates like this, it’s becoming more and more enticing with each day that passes.

Project Fi just launched a highly competitive $80 unlimited plan called ‘Bill Protection’

Russia denies UK claim it was behind NotPetya cyberattack

The UK government says that Russia is to blame for the destructive NotPetya cyberattack that scrambled major infrastructure around the world in June 2017, costing firms millions. Foreign Office minister Lord Ahmad said that while the attack masqueraded as a criminal enterprise, its purpose was “principally to disrupt” Russia’s primary target, Ukraine, and that Russian military was “almost certainly” behind the attack.

In an unusually hard-line approach, UK government said that “the decision to publicly attribute this incident underlines the fact that the UK and its allies will not tolerate malicious cyber activity.” However, Russia denies involvement in the attack. Speaking to Reuters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the allegations were groundless and part of a “Russophobic” campaign conducted in some Western countries.

Via: phys.org

Source: gov.uk

Pandora Premium finally works in your web browser

It’s been almost a year since Pandora Premium — the company’s on-demand streaming service and competitor to Spotify and Apple Music — first arrived. Ever since launch, Premium has only been available on mobile phones, but today it’ll finally have a player in the web browser, as well. And while it’s been well over two years since Pandora purchased the dearly-departed Rdio, those who used the old service will find Pandora’s web service very familiar.

Pandora Premium on the web offers just about everything you’d expect from an on-demand streaming service. The default view shows everything that users have added to their collections over time, including albums, songs, playlists and — of course — the radio stations that Pandora has always offered. When updating playlists, Pandora carries over the “suggested songs” feature that makes adding songs a little easier. And if you know what tunes you want to add, there’s a search bar right in the playlist interface. It’s one of the easier ways to find tunes and add them straight to a playlist that I’ve tried thus far.

Unfortunately, Pandora still doesn’t have the ability to add things to a queue while you’re listening — once you start a playlist or album, it’ll just play straight through and finish, with no option to add more songs to hear later. The mobile app doesn’t let you add things to a queue, either, but it does have an autoplay feature that plays similar tracks once your album or playlist finishes.

Despite missing a few features, the Pandora Premium web app will certainly be useful for those who listen to music at their computers all day long; searching and organizing a music library is still a good bit easier on a bigger screen. Despite the fact that Pandora has long said that most of its users access its service via mobile, they were about the only streaming music option that didn’t have a desktop-based option. That’s now been fixed, and users can check it out right now.

Google’s Project Fi now covers 170 countries with international data

Project Fi’s same-as-at-home international data is now decidedly more useful — including before you’ve even left. The Google-run carrier has expanded its travel coverage from “over 135” countries to 170, including nations like Belize, Monaco, Nigeria and Tunisia. You’ll still pay $10 per 1GB up to 6GB (with another 9GB free), with unlimited texting and calls at 20 cents per minute. The additions may not make or break your vacation plans, but they could reduce doubts about whether or not it’s safe to document your vacation on Instagram.

And if you’re not sure… well, there’s help. The Project Fi app now looks at your upcoming international flights in Gmail and automatically sends a notification beforehand to show you the cost of data where you’re going. You can turn this off if you’d rather not be pestered, but it could be crucial if there’s any lingering doubts about coverage.

Source: Google

Twitter will broadcast local TV news to avoid misinformation

In an effort to curb the spread of misinformation, Twitter will begin broadcasting local TV news alongside the timeline when tragedy strikes. The microblogging service tested the feature yesterday, streaming news coverage of the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Miami. As Buzzfeed News reports, once you click on the live videos on the timeline, you’ll be taken to another timeline populated by tweets about whatever’s happening on the news.

If there’s a downside to this, it’s that the tweets are picked by an algorithm — hardly a foolproof way to prevent the spread of inaccurate information. To source the video, Twitter will forge partnerships with local news channels.

In a statement to Buzzfeed News, Twitter’s GM for video Kayvon Beykpour said the following:

“We’re continuing to work on new ways we can surface credible content and relevant information to help people stay informed. By pairing live video with the conversation on Twitter, there is no faster way to see what’s happening in the world.”

At its peak yesterday, the live coverage had some 50,000 viewers.

It’s a stark contrast to how Facebook is handling things. Co-founder Mark Zuckerberg continues to obfuscate the social network’s role as a news source, whereas Twitter is leaning hard into the doing the exact opposite.

Via: 9to5 Mac

Source: Buzzfeed News

EU: Facebook and Twitter must do more to protect users

New changes made by Facebook and Twitter to their terms of service still don’t conform to the EU’s demands to protect consumers, the European Commission said. Specifically, the social networks haven’t properly told users why content is removed and that they have the right to terminate their accounts. On top of that, the companies still aren’t saying how quickly they’ll deal with requests from authorities to pull down harmful content.

The commission noted that Google’s latest changes on Google+ are now in line with its demands. However, it is baffled that that Facebook and especially Twitter still haven’t fully complied, despite making some positive steps. “I am pleased that the enforcement of EU rules to protect consumers by national authorities is bearing fruit, as some companies are now making their platforms safer for consumers,” said Vera Jourová, European Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality. “However, it is unacceptable that this is still not complete and it is taking so much time.”

I am pleased that the enforcement of EU rules to protect consumers by national authorities is bearing fruit … however, it is unacceptable that this is still not complete and it is taking so much time.

On the plus side of the ledger, last month the EU commended social networks for removing hate speech in a more timely manner. It has also properly informed consumers that they can take Facebook, Twitter and other sites to court in the EU, not California. Those were crucial issues, but another pressing matter is the huge number of scams — and Facebook and Twitter are still abdicating their responsibilities there, the EU said.

Namely, Facebook must clarify how users can appeal content takedowns, a problem that has dogged it in the past. Twitter, meanwhile, must get rid of terms that say it has unlimited discretion to delete posts and remind people they can cancel accounts if they don’t like changes to the terms and conditions. Both companies must better inform consumer protection authorities as to how quickly they’ll take down illegal content. In 2016, all the major social networks agreed to remove hate speech within 24 hours, for instance.

Facebook told Reuters that “we have long had tools in place to inform people about content removals and intend to expand these tools later this year.” The EU Commission and national authorities will monitor the changes and if the companies don’t comply, they may face “enforcement measures,” including sanctions.

Source: European commission