Technology

PlayStation bug showed what gamers really think of ads | Kaser Focus

Published

2 hours ago

October 5, 2024

PlayStation bug showed what gamers really think of ads | Kaser Focus

GamesBeat Next is almost here! GB Next is the premier event for product leaders and leadership in the gaming industry. Coming up October 28th and 29th, join fellow leaders and amazing speakers like Matthew Bromberg (CEO Unity), Amy Hennig (Co-President of New Media Skydance Games), Laura Naviaux Sturr (GM Operations Amazon Games), Amir Satvat (Business Development Director Tencent), and so many others. See the full speaker list and register here.

Earlier this week, many gamers were shocked to turn on their PlayStation 5 consoles, only to be confronted with a dramatic change to their dashboards: Usually, each game’s icon on the dashboard has a piece of art from that game as a background. Instead, they saw full-screen promotional news posts and advertisements for the game (or sometimes sales in which that game featured) as backgrounds instead. The ads were often outdated or irrelevant to the user — especially given they usually owned the games in question.

PlayStation quickly rolled out a fix and assured users this was a bug introduced in a major update, not a change in its advertising strategy. However, mistake or no, it also offers a glimpse into how players would respond if PlayStation actually rolled out a change such as this. Needless to say, they weren’t happy. The biggest complaint on sites like X and Reddit was that there was no apparent way to disable this despite the PS5 having a setting to turn off ads. Some users went so far as to say these full-page promotional images put them off of using their PS5s entirely.

The second biggest was that the ads and news shown in the new display weren’t relevant and often months out-of-date. Users pointed out that this would prove especially bothersome when playing older games, as these promotional posts might include spoilers or just be comically old. But for the most part, users who noticed this change were clear: They didn’t want intrusive ads on their dashboards. Despite this being a bug, it could prove to be valuable as a case study if PlayStation ever did consider rolling out fullscreen dash ads.

In personal news, I’ll likely still be catching up on September’s games before the October releases — such as Silent Hill 2 Remake, Metaphor: ReFantazio and Dragon Age: The Veilguard — start to show up. That being said, since it is the spooky season officially, I might try my hand at Zoochosis, an atmospheric indie horror title that cropped up online.

Join us for GamesBeat Next!

What to play this week

What’s new:

Until Dawn Remastered
Throne and Liberty
NHL 25
Starfield: Shattered Space
Master Detective Archives: Rain Code Plus
Metal: Hellsinger VR
Zoochosis
Mobile Suit Gundam: Silver Phantom
Sword Art Online: Fractured Daydream
Kill Knight
SpongeBob Squarepants: The Patrick Star Game

New on subscription services:

MLB The Show 24 (Xbox Game Pass)
Open Roads (Xbox Game Pass)
Sifu (Xbox Game Pass)
WWE 2K24 (PlayStation Plus Essential)
Dead Space (PlayStation Plus Essential)
Doki Doki Literature Club Plus! (PlayStation Plus Essential)
Alien Isolation (Amazon Luna Prime)
Mortal Shell (Amazon Luna Prime)
Dusk (Amazon Luna Prime)
Perish (Amazon Luna Prime)
Tormented Souls (Amazon Luna Prime)
Amid Evil (Amazon Luna Prime)
Valfaris (Amazon Luna Prime)
Doomblade (Amazon Luna Prime)
Monster Harvest (Amazon Luna Prime)
Bear and Breakfast (GeForce Now)
Monster Jam Showdown (GeForce Now)
TerraTech Worlds (GeForce Now)
NBA 2K25 Arcade Edition (Apple Arcade)

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Servers computers

0814 Rack of blade computer servers with storage or database within a datacenter ppt Slides

Published

15 mins ago

October 5, 2024

NewsAdmin

0814 Rack of blade computer servers with storage or database within a datacenter ppt Slides

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Technology

Ben Horowitz says he’ll donate to Kamala Harris after all

Published

18 mins ago

October 5, 2024

NewsAdmin

Ben Horowitz says he’ll donate to Kamala Harris after all

“As I mentioned before, Felicia and I have known Vice President Harris for over 10 years and she has been a great friend to both of us during that time,” Horowitz wrote in an email to his venture capital firm obtained by Axios. “As a result of our friendship, Felicia and I will be making a significant donation to entities who support the Harris Walz campaign.”

“Like, how do you walk that back?”

I… listen. Two things. First, one of the most striking things about the podcast Horowitz made with his a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen was how focused both men were on who’d take their meetings. Their political commitments, in many respects, boiled down to who would spend face time with them. Near the end of the podcast, Horowitz told what was (I think?) supposed to be a heartwarming story about hanging out with Trump’s grandkids — and how his reaction to hearing about the assassination attempt on Trump was, “Oh my god, Grandpa just got shot.”

So, you know, the whole thing where Harris has been “a great friend” to both Horowitz and his wife checks out as a political position for him. In some respects, I get it. I, too, want to see my friends succeed!

But second, that crucial Trump endorsement was made before Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race in favor of Harris, and before the enormous outpouring of support for the new Democratic candidate. That meant a16z had already sacrificed any leverage it might have with a Harris administration — and a candidate who made Trump look like less of a sure winner. In the case of a Harris win, these boys were looking at an entire four years without important meetings, and we already know they view that as a dreadful tragedy for the entire nation.

In order to regain any possibility of leverage in a potentially Democrat-led government, someone was going to have to eat humble pie, and it sure as shit wasn’t going to be Andreessen. Horowitz, whose support for Trump was termed a “Maga U-turn” by The San Francisco Standard, has a history of donating to progressive causes; Harris, then a senator, was even a guest at a Horowitz backyard barbecue in 2018.

“I’m just wondering what they’re gonna do when Kamala wins,” one founder told The San Francisco Standard of the a16z Trump endorsement. “Like, how do you walk that back?”

Well, I guess we know now. Horowitz’s email says that he’s had several conversations with Harris and her team — crucial to note here that he got to the candidate herself, given that access is apparently one of Horowitz’s main political concerns. And so while Horowitz still thinks President Joe Biden is no-good and very bad, he is “encouraged by my belief” in Harris to do good for tech, despite the fact that she has not yet staked out any policy positions.

Harris has sort of made overtures on what Horowitz termed “probably the most emotional topic” in the election: crypto. One of her campaign aides has said, “She’s going to support policies that ensure that emerging technologies and that sort of industry can continue to grow,” in response to a question about crypto.

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Technology

NYT Connections today — hints and answers for Saturday, October 5 (game #482)

Published

40 mins ago

October 5, 2024

NewsAdmin

NYT Connections homescreen on a phone, on a purple background

Good morning! Let’s play Connections, the NYT’s clever word game that challenges you to group answers in various categories. It can be tough, so read on if you need clues.

What should you do once you’ve finished? Why, play some more word games of course. I’ve also got daily Wordle hints and answers, Strands hints and answers and Quordle hints and answers articles if you need help for those too.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Connections today is below, so don’t read on if you don’t want to know the answers.

Your Connections expert

Marc McLaren

NYT Connections today (game #482) – today’s words

NYT Connections hints for game 482 on a purple background

(Image credit: New York Times)

Today’s NYT Connections words are…

JACUZZI
BIKINI
HANGER
X-RAY
Q-TIP
TOOTHBRUSH
G-STRING
CHAPSTICK
T-BONE
XEROX
HIPSTER
SKIRT
DRILL
FILET
SINK
THONG

NYT Connections today (game #482) – hint #1 – group hints

What are some clues for today’s NYT Connections groups?

Yellow: Beef bits
Green: Hidden clothing
Blue: Open wide!
Purple: Remember the capital letter…

Need more clues?

We’re firmly in spoiler territory now, but read on if you want to know what the four theme answers are for today’s NYT Connections puzzles…

NYT Connections today (game #482) – hint #2 – group answers

What are the answers for today’s NYT Connections groups?

YELLOW: STEAK CUTS
GREEN: KINDS OF UNDERWEAR
BLUE: INVOLVED IN A DENTIST VISIT
PURPLE: BRANDS THAT HAVE BECOME GENERIC TERMS

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE THEM.

NYT Connections today (game #482) – the answers

NYT Connections answers for game 482 on a purple background

(Image credit: New York Times)

The answers to today’s Connections, game #482, are…

YELLOW: STEAK CUTS FILET, HANGER, SKIRT, T-BONE
GREEN: KINDS OF UNDERWEAR BIKINI, G-STRING, HIPSTER, THONG
BLUE: INVOLVED IN A DENTIST VISIT DRILL, SINK, TOOTHBRUSH, X-RAY
PURPLE: BRANDS THAT HAVE BECOME GENERIC TERMS CHAPSTICK, JACUZZI, Q-TIP, XEROX

My rating: Hard
My score: 3 mistakes

Phew! I cut this one close, losing all three guesses before I’d solved a single connection, but managing to complete the game with no further mistakes. And it is undeniably a hard one. Even yellow – supposedly the easiest group – featured four answers of which I only knew two. The connection was STEAK CUTS, and I got FILET and T-BONE, but hadn’t really heard of HANGER and was only vaguely aware of SKIRT. Ditto KINDS OF UNDERWEAR – BIKINI, G-STRING and THONG were OK, but I do not really know what a HIPSTER is.

Fortunately I managed to get blue and purple first, after a lot of thought, and scraped home with no room for further error.

How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.

Yesterday’s NYT Connections answers (Friday, 4 October, game #481)

YELLOW: CONCAVITY DENT, DIMPLE, DING, DIVOT
GREEN: SMALL AMOUNT DAB, DASH, DOLLOP, DROP
BLUE: DISNEY CHARACTERS DAISY, DALE, DOC, DORY
PURPLE: ___ DATE DELIVERY, DINNER, DREAM, DUE

What is NYT Connections?

NYT Connections is one of several increasingly popular word games made by the New York Times. It challenges you to find groups of four items that share something in common, and each group has a different difficulty level: green is easy, yellow a little harder, blue often quite tough and purple usually very difficult.

On the plus side, you don’t technically need to solve the final one, as you’ll be able to answer that one by a process of elimination. What’s more, you can make up to four mistakes, which gives you a little bit of breathing room.

It’s a little more involved than something like Wordle, however, and there are plenty of opportunities for the game to trip you up with tricks. For instance, watch out for homophones and other word games that could disguise the answers.

It’s playable for free via the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.

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Servers computers

HOW MUCH DOES A USED SERVER RACK COST

Published

51 mins ago

October 5, 2024

NewsAdmin

You might have been looking for a used server rack to purchase, but you may not know how much does a used server rack cost. The price for used server racks will depend largely on the size of your business and what you need them for. In this blog post, we’ll give you the rundown of what you need to know about purchasing a used server rack for you or your company so that you get exactly what you want without any surprises.

Learn more about how to securely and successfully sell your new and used surplus tape media by clicking the links below.

o How can I safely sell my used data tapes?
https://webuyusedtape.net/sell-tape-media/

o Should we be concerned with data leaks from LTO tapes?
https://webuyusedtape.net/2020/12/17/setup-an-airgap-using-lto-tape/

o How can we securely destroy the data on our data tapes?
https://webuyusedtape.net/services/data-destruction/

o What is a data destruction certificate?
https://webuyusedtape.net/2021/07/06/what-is-certificate-of-data-destruction/

o Are your processes compliant for tape media data destruction?
https://webuyusedtape.net/services/compliance/

o How are data tapes tracked during the data eradication process?
https://webuyusedtape.net/2021/04/20/volser-barcode-labeling-overview/

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Technology

The best free movies on YouTube right now (October 2024)

Published

1 hour ago

October 5, 2024

NewsAdmin

The best free movies on YouTube right now (October 2024)

With cord-cutting at an all-time high, streaming services have become more important. Netflix, Max, Amazon, Prime Video, and Hulu offer countless hours of movies to watch with the push of a button. However, these services continue to raise prices, which doesn’t bode well for bank accounts.

YouTube, however, offers a wide selection of free movies. The movies are ad-supported, but that’s a fair trade-off compared to other streamers that cost north of $10 a month. If this is your first time using YouTube to watch movies, we have curated a special guide with recommendations for various genres. Check out our selections below.

Looking for more stuff you can watch for free? Check out our guides to the best free shows on YouTube and the best sites for watching free movies online. If you’re willing to pay, read these guides on the best new movies to stream and the best movies on Netflix.