There are days where it feels like nothing will ever change and the best thing you can do is just learn to tolerate mediocrity. Today is not one of those days. announced that the US Copyright Office granted an exemption request from the non-profit public interest group and the DIY repair site iFixit to allow McDonald’s franchise owners to hire a third-party to repair their McFlurry and soft service ice cream machines.
Franchise owners legally couldn’t hire any outside business to work on the machine because of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). McDonald’s soft serve ice cream machines have a digital lock and makes it illegal for anyone to bypass the lock on a copyrighted work even if no copyright infringement occurs. Only the original manufacturer of the machine can repair a copyrighted device with a digital lock. The recent exemption overrules the digital lock law.
If you’ve ever pulled up to a McDonald’s drive-thru window and couldn’t get an ice cream treat like a McFlurry, it probably wasn’t an anomaly. Franchises had to wait on the McDonald’s corporation to send an approved repair person to fix the machines. The problem caught the attention of the in 2021 under to draft new regulations to allow consumers to legally repair their own devices and hire third-parties to fix them. The FTC contacted McDonald’s franchise owners to learn more about the ice cream machines and the difficulties in repairing them.
did a teardown of a McDonald’s ice cream dispenser last year and found it had “lots of easily replaceable parts” but they couldn’t be fixed without earning the wrath of federal copyright laws. The teardown prompted the companyto work with Public Knowledge to obtain a copyright exemption to repair them. The repair website also compiled a video explaining the machine’s innerworkings in more detail.
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What’s got me pondering is the Camera Control ‘button.’ In some ways, it’s a cool new feature that uses haptics well. In other ways, it’s superfluous and not fully featured.
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I’ve been trying out the iPhone 16 Pro Max for a couple of weeks now, and when it comes to capturing a photo, l try and use Camera Control as much as possible. As I’m 37 and a millennial, I still like snapping photos on my phone in landscape orientation, so having a physical button where my finger naturally sits is good for capturing a shot without messing up the framing by tapping on the screen or trying to hit the Action button – I have this mapped to trigger the ‘torch’ anyway, which is surprisingly helpful.
I also like flicking through zoom ranges with a swipe on the Camera Control without the need to tap on small icons. The exposure control is kind of cool, though swapping between the features Camera Control can control doesn’t quite feel intuitive to me yet, and often, my taps cause me to lose the precise design of a scene.
So yeah, Camera Control is interesting. But…
Did anyone really ask for it? It feels like a feature for the sake of Apple’s mobile execs to have something new to talk about at the September Apple event. It’s just about a ‘nice to have’ feature, but it’s hardly a phone photography game changer.
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Not my tempo
However, maybe I’ll warm to it over time. Yet, the biggest issue is the lack of AI tools at launch for Camera Control. Apple actively touts the AI features for Camera Control that can be used to smartly identify things the cameras are pointed at and serve up all manner of information. That hasn’t happened yet, with a rollout arriving post-launch when Apple Intelligence fully arrives; there’s a beta option, but I’m not willing to try that on my main phone.
I’ve yet to understand that. Sure, other phone makers have touted AI features that will come after their phones are released and may be limited to certain regions, to begin with, but at least they launch with some of the promised AI suites. The iPhone 16 range launched without any Apple Intelligence features.
This is not what I expected from Apple, a company that famously doesn’t adopt new tech until it’s refined and ready for polished prime time. So, for it to launch smartphones without next-generation smarts is baffling to me. But it’s also the primary reason why I feel torn about Camera Control; if it had Google Lens-like abilities at launch, baked into a hardware format, I can see myself being a lot more positive about Camera Control.
Of course, Apple’s use of such a camera button will undoubtedly cause other phone makers to follow suit. I only hope they don’t skimp on features when their phones launch.
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As for Camera Control in the here and now, I’ll keep an open mind and keep using it; I’ll just cross my fingers that it’ll become seriously handy once it gets its prescribed dose of AI smarts.
A team of 10 students from Amity International School at Pushp Vihar in New Delhi has won the International Space Settlement Design Competition held at National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
The competition was held at the Kennedy Space Centre of the US space agency in Florida from July 26-29.
The Balderol space settlement designed by the winning team aims to establish a large-scale, sustainable community on the moon, providing a residential and working environment for 12,000 full-time residents, the Amity school said in a release.
Designed to support data centres and associated industries, the settlement will also accommodate up to 1,500 transient visitors and 4,500 annual rotational workers, including engineers and technicians, it said.
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The team comprises Samaya Chauhan, Akshita Bhandari, Dhruv Bhandari, Aaditya Raj Verma, Namya Jain, Yash Wadhwa, Avneet Kaur Virdi, Taarush Goswami, Daksh Dhull and Arsh Arora.
They participated in the international event after winning national and Asian rounds.
Arsh Arora, a class 12 student, was also awarded the ‘Dick Edwards Leadership Award’ for his leadership skills in the company of over 60 students from different parts of the world.
“We, at Amity, are committed to the holistic development of the students and nurture their skills and talent so that they are ready for all championships, at national as well as international level,” said Dr Amita Chauhan, Chairperson, Amity International Schools.
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Dr Ameeta Mohan, Principal, Amity International School Pushp Vihar, stated, “Our students are prepared to showcase their talent at various platforms and proper guidance and training is provided to every student, and enable them to develop their skill sets.”
The New York Times has introduced the next title coming to its Games catalog following Wordle’s continued success — and it’s all about math. Digits has players adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing numbers. You can play its beta for free online right now. In Digits, players are presented with a target number that they need to match. Players are given six numbers and have the ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide them to get as close to the target as they can. Not every number needs to be used, though, so this game should put your math skills to the test as you combine numbers and try to make the right equations to get as close to the target number as possible.
Players will get a five-star rating if they match the target number exactly, a three-star rating if they get within 10 of the target, and a one-star rating if they can get within 25 of the target number. Currently, players are also able to access five different puzzles with increasingly larger numbers as well. I solved today’s puzzle and found it to be an enjoyable number-based game that should appeal to inquisitive minds that like puzzle games such as Threes or other The New York Times titles like Wordle and Spelling Bee. In an article unveiling Digits and detailing The New York Time Games team’s process to game development, The Times says the team will use this free beta to fix bugs and assess if it’s worth moving into a more active development phase “where the game is coded and the designs are finalized.” So play Digits while you can, as The New York Times may move on from the project if it doesn’t get the response it is hoping for. Digits’ beta is available to play for free now on The New York Times Games’ website
YouTube is expanding hyperlinked comments. The Google-owned video-sharing platform is now increasingly adding hyperlinks to words in comments.
What are hyperlinked comments on YouTube?
As the name implies, hyperlinked comments involve certain words that have web links. Tapping on these words leads users to websites, which may be e-commerce platforms.
Last year, in a YouTube Creator Insider announcement, the company mentioned it would start running a limited experiment. Users would be able to initiate a search on certain topics straight from the comments section.
However, what YouTube actually meant was it would append a hyperlink to words if, “related information or topics are available”. These hyperlinked words would appear blue and have a miniature magnifying glass next to them.
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Clicking on these hyperlinked words would take the YouTube user to a results page. The video they were watching would continue to play in a mini-player in the app.
YouTube is now expanding this ‘feature’ to mobile users
According to 9to5Google, there are several hyperlinked comments under YouTube videos for mobile users. Some users are seeing multiple words or phrases within a YouTube comment have become hyperlinked.
What is concerning is that there appear to be no specific or defined criteria for a word to get hyperlinked. In other words, the implementation of the feature seems random and excessive.
Back when YouTube announced this feature, it stated that hyperlinked comments were a way to “reduce friction” when attempting to learn about a subject or content. However, commenters cannot add or edit a link. The hyperlinked comments reportedly resemble some spammy blogs for suspicious products and services.
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YouTube had originally assured that if they desired, creators could remove links from their video comments. However, the YouTube Studio platform, which offers all the controls for a video, does not show any toggle to disable hyperlinked comments. It is possible that YouTube could add the option in the future. Perhaps YouTube might offer to remove hyperlinked comments for paying subscribers.
I’m looking forward to GamesBeat Next 2024 on Monday October 28 and Tuesday October 29 in San Francisco.
We’ve got a lot of speakers who can deliver high-level insights into the state of the game business, which has had seemingly contradictory strong financial results, unpredictable game successes and 32,000 layoffs in the past three years.
In spite of the industry uncertainty, we’ve got more than 600 people signed up and are expecting it to be sold out. Among those folks are 150 CEOs and other top leaders of the industry. We have 97 speakers, and 65% of them come from diverse backgrounds. And 41% are women. We have 42 onstage sessions and roundtables.
We expect hundreds of women to come for the event, which includes our ninth Women in Gaming Breakfast. Thank you for supporting us, as we know everyone is feeling pressure and mental stress these days. That’s why we stay together.
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You can see our updated final agenda here. Our event is virtually sold out.
Our event theme is all about getting back to growth, not just with growth in revenues and players, but with growth in jobs for game developers as well. We’ll talk about the shifting sands we see, from changes in game engine technology for developers to the rise of creators in game marketing.
I’m glad to have returning speakers who can give us a new milestone in gaming’s progress toward big goals like the metaverse and interoperability. Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, is coming back in a prerecorded virtual conversation that catches us up on our 2021 talk in the midst of the pandemic. We will cover the progress on the path to the open metaverse and the evolution of Unreal and Fortnite.
Speaking of the metaverse, another returnee speaker is Neal Stephenson, the creator of the word “metaverse” and author of Snow Crash, the sci-fi novel from 30 years ago. He will talk in a fireside chat on “The science fiction future that we want.”
Riz Virk, leader of the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University is a simulation theory expert. He will be joining me on stage to quiz Stephenson about his views on the metaverse today and his thoughts for the future, especially as technology makes so much of sci-fi more real. Stephenson has a historical sci-fi book, Polostan, out now and he is a cofounder of the startups Whenere, focused on AI and storytelling, and Lamina1, on blockchain solutions for creators.
We also have Shawn Layden, former chairman of Sony Interactive Studios, and Christina Macedo, CEO of Play, talk about how focusing on making good games is crucial — and what they’re doing to support them with Web3 technology. And while our event is about technology, their talk is the only one among the sessions focused on blockchain, which is very different from what we’ve had before.
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Our first day also includes a walk down memory lane with Peter Moore, a longtime gaming executive who launched the Dreamcast for Sega in the U.S. 25 years ago. Moore, who recently averted a brush with death thanks to his Apple Watch, will talk about lessons for today from his past that includes leadership roles at Microsoft Xbox, Electronic Arts and Unity.
And Matthew Bromberg, the newly minted CEO of Unity, will speak in a virtual live session at the close of day one, where we’ll talk about making decisions in the wake of Unity’s Runtime Fee controversy, where the company introduced a new price increase and then walked it back.
The kickoff session will happen at 1:20 p.m. (registration opens at noon) on Monday with Entertainment Software Association CEO Stanley Pierre-Louis and Laura Naviaux Sturr, general manager of operations at Amazon Games. They will talk about new vectors for growth and extending intellectual property to new generations of audiences.
We’ll have multiple sessions talking about AI, but our dedicated AI and games panel will focus on ethical use of AI in game development and user-generated content. It will feature Pany Haritatos, CEO of Series Entertainment; Kent Keirsey, CEO of Invoke AI; Andy Mauro, CEO of Storycraft; and moderator Hilary Mason, CEO of Hidden Door.
Day 2 happenings
Our Women in Gaming Breakfast begins at 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, the second day of the event, and it features a fireside chat between GamesBeat writer Rachel Kaser and Dametra Johnson-Marletti Dametra corporate vice president of digital gaming within the Microsoft consumer sales organization. She has helped grow revenue in her division from $800 million to more than $7 billion.
They will talk about inspiring the next generation of leaders and luminaries in games and how culture and representation can play a role in attracting and nurturing the next generation of gamers and creatives wishing to work in the industry.
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Johnson-Marletti plans to give some insight on building a career in gaming, and how major companies can foster and retain the talent that will become the next-generation leaders in the games industry. She’ll also cover diversity and inclusion, representation, and how both new workers and games companies can set the new wave of talent up for long-term success.
We’ll kick off into session with leaders of Xsolla, Electronic Arts and SciPlay talking about the best practices for mastering mobile monetization. Then we’ll drill deeper, breaking into three concurrent stages for talks related to the topics of culture, technology, growth and industry.
At lunch, we’ll gather for a panel on diversity in gaming, sponsored by Xsolla, where Xsolla vice president of marketing Bridget Stacy will lead a session on prioritizing inclusion during tough times with inspiring entrepreneurs including Sheloman Byrd, CEO of Open Ocean Games; Jessica Murrey, CEO of Wicked Saints Studios; and Jenny Xu, CEO of Talofa Games.
I’m sad I can’t mention everything, but we will hit important topics like alternative open source game engines like Godot, mental health and games where games can be considered medical treatments, millennial and GenZ gamers, pioneering VR concepts with leaders like Kerestell Smith of Gorilla Tag and pet game creator Bernard Yee, the future of game publishing, operating in an ethical way in an ambiguous time, gaming M&A and funding, analyzing games, game creators and discovery, direct-to-consumer stores, and creating transmedia IP at places like Netflix, Exploding Kittens and Sharon Tal Yguado’s Astrid Entertainment.
Toward the end, we’ll gather to hear Amy Hennig, co-president of new media at Skydance Interactive talk with other Skydance execs about welcoming people into your team. She’s got a big team making Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra and is a veteran co-creator of the Uncharted series and more.
We also have a number of interesting roundtables. During one, Shelby Moledina, who has created a dark comedy short film about raising money for games when you’re a woman. I highly recommend the roundtables for those who want a more intimate experience at the event.
Game Changers session
To close the conference, Lightspeed and GamesBeat will announce the 2025 Game Changers—an annual list to celebrate and accelerate extraordinary startups in gaming and interactive technology. Lightspeed’s Moritz Baier-Lentz and l will start the session with insights from judges and past winners including Lisha Li, founder and CEO of Rosebud AI (past winner); Kylan Gibbs, CEO of Inworld AI; and Mihir Vaidya, chief sttrategy officer at Electronic Arts.
Then we will unveil the winners from each of the five key categories present live on stage: 3D technology & infrastructure, generative AI, game studios and UGC, interactive media platforms, and extended reality (AR and VR). Last year, Lightspeed showed the names of the winners on the Nasdaq Tower in Times Square.
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Our next events
And please remember we have a new event coming on gaming and its intersections with Hollywood, on December 12 in LA, the same day as The Game Awards. It’s called GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games. It features Brian Ward, CEO of Savvy Games Group; game adaptation film maker Ari Arad, industry seer Matthew Ball of Epyllion; Eunice Lee, Scopely COO; Dmitri Johnson of Story Kitchen and the man who has conspired to bring Sonic the Hedgehog and Lara Croft to film and TV; and Erika Ewing, a cross-media leader at Lionsgate.
And be sure to look out for our extended partnership with Xsolla on the GamesBeat Global Tour where we hold dinners in cities around the globe. This past year, we held dinners in Los Angeles, Austin, Sao Paulo, Tokyo, and Seattle.
We’ve also got GamesBeat Summit 2025 returning to Los Angeles on May 19-20, 2025.
Lastly, remember to come out of the virtual world long enough to see what’s happening in the real world. Remember to vote in this year’s presidential election. You can even do this at the headquarters of Jam City in LA, which is an actual polling place.
We’re proud to have returning sponsors including Xsolla, Fastspring, Modulate, the Entertainment Software Association and Lightspeed as well as new sponsors such as Open World, Fastly, Ludeo, Lightspeed, RapidFire and Play. If you’d like to request sponsorship information, you can fill out this form.
Our community partners include Women-Led Games, IGDA Foundation and Black in Gaming Foundation.
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