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Who remember their first game of pokemon? Whether it was on the grainy black and white screen of the classic Gameboy, or in colourful 3D on the N64, pokemon is close to a lot of gamer’s hearts. I mean, who wouldn’t want to live in a world inhabited by strange and wonderful creatures, that can be tamed and used to battle your friends? Well now you can!
A new phone app allows you to search out pokemon in your local areas, and with the use of a pokeball watch, capture and battle them with people around you.
Geo-caching is not a new phenomenon. It’s a simple premise where you are given map co-ordinates and go treasure-hunting. This sort of real-world application is always open to abuse; some people may remove the treasure, or you might not live in a place where a treasure hunt has been initiated.
Pokemon Go eliminates all these problems by making everything digital. Your pokemon are available in cyberspace, located over physical co-ordinates. Although details are scarce on release dates and game mechanics, I for one have never been more excited to wander round my town and collect ‘em all.
Not too long ago, computer hardware manufacturer Asus had a slogan: “Inspiring Innovation, Persistent Perfection”. It was an excellent summary of the company’s core traits: As well as trying to make computers which utilised existing technology well, Asus also regularly tried to push the envelope and look for the next new thing.
It seems this spirit still remains with the company, as during this year’s IFA – which seemed to put a heavy focus on gaming – the company managed to unveil a gaming laptop that goes beyond anything shown off by its competitors.
Dubbed the Asus GX700, the newly-revealed gaming laptop is the first ever to use water cooling. Water cooling is something that has become common in gaming desktops, used often by the hardcore gamers both as an efficient enhancement to standard cooling solutions and to prove their salt as hardcore gamers; and as companies have started developing self-contained water-cooling kits that take a lot of the pain (and spills) out of the installation and the components in computers continue to get smaller, the practice has become a lot easier to achieve. Even so, to see the technology make it into a laptop for the first time is the kind of insanity we at Sanitarium.FM adore.
Asus are keen to state this is not the only first the laptop will bring: supposedly, it is also the world’s first 17-inch laptop to incorporate a 17-inch display. The actual water-cooling rig will take the form of a dock; with the premise of this laptop being that the device can be used in its own right as a mighty pixel-pushing machine in its own right, but once it’s docked, everything can be turned up that extra bit further. Going by this, we can assume the laptop will also enable overclocking while docked; and there’s also a suggestion there’ll be an Nvidia GeForce graphics card inside it.
Sadly, the rest of the Asus GX700’s specs remains very much a mystery at this point in time, with the company keeping quiet on the details for now. Also unrevealed at this point is the planned price point and launch details. We hope to report such information when it becomes available; but for now, lets just admire the almost ludicrous imagination of Asus’ product designers.
Nintendo has filed a patent for a console that apparently has no optical drive. A Neogaf user by the name of Rosti spotted the patent. It shows a schematic of a console that “is not provided with an optical disk drive”, according to the filing’s abstract. The patent further shows games stored on a hard drive and mentions “high speed communications such as ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) or optical communication as a way to deliver game data. This could allow Nintendo to go for an all digital future and deliver games via a server distribution process.
Also of note is the fact that the filing does show a card reader included in the console for reading and writing from devices “such as an SD memory card”. Nintendo has been relatively quiet about it’s new NX console due to concerns that competitors would try and capitalize on it’s ideas. If the filing is for the upcoming NX, it could mark a significant departure from traditional game delivery methods for the Big N.
What do you think? Those comments aren’t going to write themselves!
Wow, Spotify. How and why does a service mainly geared around music streaming become one of the most intrusive around? With the latest Spotify update, there’s a new privacy policy going into effect – and the TL;DR version is that if you’re at all concerned about data privacy, now may well be the time to jump ship, because this new policy definitely isn’t.
Here are just some examples of the type of snooping Spotify wants to get up to with the latest policy:
Use Spotify on your mobile? Hope you’re okay with sharing your Contacts, Photos and Media…
With your permission, we may collect information stored on your mobile device, such as contacts, photos, or media files. Local law may require that you seek the consent of your contacts to provide their personal information to Spotify, which may use that information for the purposes specified in this Privacy Policy.
Tracking Your Location
Depending on the type of device that you use to interact with the Service and your settings, we may also collect information about your location based on, for example, your phone’s GPS location or other forms of locating mobile devices (e.g., Bluetooth). We may also collect sensor data (e.g., data about the speed of your movements, such as whether you are running, walking, or in transit).
Third party services – well, at least you can disconnect Facebook…
You may integrate your Spotify account with Third Party Applications. If you do, we may receive similar information related to your interactions with the Service on the Third Party Application, as well as information about your publicly available activity on the Third Party Application. This includes, for example, your “Like”s and posts on Facebook.
(To be fair, this is really only saying that Spotify will do what anyone on Facebook can do anyway – look at the things you’ve posted publicly; as well as anything related to Spotify itself. If you’ve integrated your Spotify with Facebook, you pretty much already accepted this was going to happen anyway; but if you find it creepy, you might want to disconnect Facebook from Spotify via your Preferences)
Storing (and Sharing!) Your Credit Card Information
If you sign up for a Trial (as defined in the Terms and Conditions of Use), purchase any of our Paid Subscriptions (as defined in the Terms and Conditions of Use), or make other purchases through the Service, your credit or debit card information (such as card type and expiration date) and other financial data that we need to process your payment may be collected and stored by us and/or the payment processors with which we work. We may also collect some limited information, such as your postal code, mobile number, and details of your transaction history, all of which are necessary to provide the Service.
Spotify claim that they collect personal data from users primarily to improve the overall experience for people using the service; but it’s clear that not all of the data being gathered is to benefit the service itself. Indeed, if you look more closely at the paragraphs explaining how they intend to use the data, the real purpose becomes clear – advertising:
We may use the information we collect, including your personal information….to provide, personalise, and improve your experience with the Service and products, services, and advertising (including for third party products and services) made available on or outside the Service (including on other sites that you visit), for example by providing customised, personalised, or localised content, recommendations, features, and advertising on or outside of the Service
So, if you love music but also love privacy, maybe it’s time to ditch Spotify and look for a new streaming service instead. Or maybe consider a medium curated not just by bots (friendly as they are), but also by real-life DJs who care and which broadcasts a schedule of live shows that let you influence exactly what you want to hear? If that sounds good, you’re already in the right place 😉
A recent change to the EULA of the new Windows 10 OS has revealed that it is able to potentially detect pirated software on your computer.
The section of the EULA in question is section 7B which describes how Windows will investigate software to check out its version, and then download configuration changes or perhaps suggest that its time for an upgrade (and then restart itself…). However it seems that this could also include changes to the configuration that might stop identified software from working at all if the OS thinks they might be illegal.
“We may automatically check your version of the software and download software updates or configuration changes, including those that prevent you from accessing the Services, playing counterfeit games, or using unauthorised hardware peripheral devices.”
“Unauthorised hardware peripheral devices” is a bit less clear on what exactly it means, but it could very well be pointing towards modified controllers or imitation products that might not be as safe as the real device might be.
I just hope that the scan doesn’t catch any false positives, otherwise Microsoft might have some unhappy customers…
