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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.
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 😉
One of the main problems with any type of wireless communication is that in order to maintain speed and allow the signal to be transmitted effectively, data often has to be compressed to fit the bandwidth. For wireless audio, this is a problem, as compressing sound signals can reduce the overall quality of the sound you hear, meaning that wireless headphones rarely give you CD Quality sound.
Samsung, however, believe they can make it work. The company’s newly introduced Level On Wireless Pro headphones include a new technology, dubbed “Ultra High Quality Audio” that improves the quality of sound whether you’re plugged in or streaming wirelessly. In typical conditions, the headphones are supposedly capable of CD Quality sound, particularly when listening to a lossless audio format (such as FLAC) or streaming service (such as Tidal). However, when paired with a device that supports Ultra High Quality Audio, such as Samsung’s own Galaxy Note 5 or Galaxy S6 Edge+ smartphones, and the right source material, Samsung claim the sound experience can reach higher-than-CD fidelity. That’s pretty impressive from a wireless headset, though the caveats (Engadget helpfully claims that “you’ll need to shop at a service like Pono’s to get the right source material”) mean that getting this higher quality audio may not always be clear-cut.
Being an improved version of the existing Level On Wireless headphones, the Pro comes with the same additional benefits of its less audiophile cousin – “extra comfortable” cushions designed to completely enclose the ear, active noise cancelling and touch-sensitive controls – though the claimed 11 hour battery life will slightly reduce if one uses Bluetooth and noise reduction at the same time. Given the existing model tends to retail for around the £140 mark, it can be expected that the Level On Wireless Pro will retail for slightly more; but Samsung are yet to reveal price or shipping dates for the new product as of the time of going to press. Watch this space!
Game publishing giant Valve has apologised for a flaw in its Steam digital distribution platform that saw numerous accounts hijacked last week, blaming a software bug for the issue.
Valve’s Steam platform is one of the most popular distribution services around, largely thanks to its required use for the company’s own games and heavily-discounted sale prices several times a year. With millions of users, though, it’s a prime target for ne’er-do-wells – and a bug in the platform allowed many accounts to be hijacked by said wrong’uns over the last week, thanks to what Valve is claiming was a software bug.
‘On July 25th we learned of a Steam bug that could have impacted the password reset process on your Steam account during the period July 21-July 25. The bug has now been fixed,’ the company explained in an email sent to users whose passwords had been changed – legitimately or otherwise – during the period. ‘To protect users, we are resetting passwords on accounts that changed passwords during that period using the account recovery wizard. You will receive an email with your new password. Once that email is received, it is recommended that you login to your account via the Steam client and set a new password.’
The company has stated that the original password was never revealed to the attackers, and neither was any internal system compromised: the flaw was limited to an issue with the account recovery wizard, which allowed attackers to reset the password for any account without access to the account’s original email address. Those who use Steam Guard, the company’s two-factor authentication system, were protected even if the password was changed, Valve has added.
Those who have received the email are advised to reset their passwords in order to regain access to their accounts, and to check for any unauthorised activity while the account was in another’s control.
