This week Austrailian anti-encryption bill passes, Waymo is commencing service, Lots of data breaches, The Game Awards awards lots of games, the YouTube Rewind was released, lots of Google/Alphabet news, Huawei CFO gets arrested in Vancouver, OSIRIS-Rex and, more in the Other News section.
OSIRIS-Rex
On Monday, NASA got OSIRIS-Rex into orbit of asteroid Bennu. It is there to study and collect samples from the asteroid and information about it. The mission also wants to get an idea of how the solar system formed.
Huawei CFO
On Tuesday, Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou for extradition to the United States with charges of violating the US’s sanctions on Iran. I don’t understand this but I guess that doesn’t matter.
Update: In court documents, it has been argued that she is not a flight risk and that she should surrender all her travel documents.
Austrailian ָָָָָAnti-Encryption Bill
On Friday, The Verge reported that Austrailia’s Assistance and Access Bill 2018 passed. The issue with this bill is that the law requires companies to put back-doors in all encryption by law. Austraila has also said that they will share the encryption breaking tools. If companies don’t comply with orders under this law they could be fined up to $10 million AUD.
Data Breaches
Bethesda
On Wednesday, a number of Fallout 76 player reported getting access to other player’s customer support tickets of other players. Data lost included personal information such as addresses and contact information. In an official statement, Bethesda said that the breach was only up for a 45 minute period and that only tickets in submitted within that period were visible.
Quora
On Tuesday, many outlets reported that Quora suffered a data breach. Quora says that they became aware of the breach on Nov 30. The breach affected 100 million users. \
The information hacked included questions and answers which may be seen publicly, but also personal information, such as:
Name.
Email.
Internet protocol address.
User ID.
Encrypted password.
User account settings.
CBC
YouTube Rewind
The rewind features lots of gaming people (including Ninja). It actually does an interesting the in that it has no theme (I guess the theme is everyone thinking that they control it). For the first time, there is a message about breaking the stigma of mental health, international representation, drag and, more. It also features trends such as Dake’s song Kiki,
The Game Awards
The Game Awards happened on Thursday night. At the awards, they gave so many awards to so many great games (including Game Of The Year) and premiered so many more new games including Far Cry: New Dawn and a new game from the team that brought you the original Fallout: Outer World. The big award of the night Game Of The Year went to God Of War.
Google/Alphabet News
Google Pivots In Messaging
On Wednesday, in a post in their blog Google talked about how they are simplyfying they’re messaging stratogy. In the post they annouced that they are going to stop supporting Allo next March (Duo isn’t shutting down).
Waymo
On Wednesday, Alphabet’s Waymo announced Waymo One their public driverless taxi service. They started the service called Waymo One, it’s an expansion of the early riders program but the customers aren’t under NDA anymore.
Other News
In other news, Lyft is filing for their IPO, Russian search enginge, Google is testing a “streaming TV guide”, MYC voters vote no to Amazon HQ2, Microsoft Edge is moving to Chromium and coming to Mac, Pandora’s Podcast directory goes live and, Comcast joins Movies Amywhere.
Also I’m still working on finishing Pokémon Let’s Go, I’ll post my review right when I finish the game. I also just got Smash Ultimate a review of that is also coming. First I’m working on a full artic;e on The Game Arards.