Resident Evil Village is coming on May 7th, but if you have been keeping up with the news surrounding the game, you may have heard about Lady Dimitrescu, a very tall woman who has become very popular on the internet. There have been a few cosplayers who’ve attempted to re-create the iconic villain, but the most recent cosplay from Yekaterina Lisina is arguably the best yet.
Lisina, a former Olympian-turned-model, recently shared some content on Instagram of her cosplaying Lady Dimitrescu, even going so far as to re-create a parody of one of the trailers for the game. But don’t take my word for it, just check out the video she shared on her Instagram page:
Lisina stands at 6 feet, 9 inches tall — which, fun fact, is the inverse height of the actual character, according to the game’s art director. This isn’t the only content we’ve seen from Lisina cosplaying as the character: she also posted a TikTok a few days ago of her in the outfit. Outside of cosplaying as the latest Resident Evil antagonist, Lisina also cosplayed as Princess Peach from the Super Mario series.
And now, I shall patiently wait to see if someone on the Resident Evil Village development team notices Lisina’s cosplay because I really want to know what their reaction is.
Lenbrook International – the owner of Bluesound, NAD, PSB Speakers and high-resolution multi-room streaming platform BluOS – has announced a new hi-fi internet radio station exclusively for BluOS products.
The new service, launched in association with MQA, will see Radio Paradise, a listener-supported internet radio station, providing MQA-encoded audio on all four of its mix channels, utilizing high-resolution 24-bit masters where available. The collaboration marks the first time an internet radio station will carry MQA content. MQA technology notably powers hi-res Tidal Masters on Tidal, while hi-res MQA hard files are also available to download.
All BluOS devices will receive an update in April 2021 to enable Radio Paradise MQA as a native music streaming option. It will also be included as standard on all future BluOS-based devices from hi-fi brands like Bluesound, NAD Electronics, DALI Loudspeakers, Monitor Audio, Roksan, Peachtree and PSB Speakers.
Radio Paradise first began streaming its main internet channel in 2000 and offers eclectic DJ-mixed music focusing on high-quality audio. Three additional mixes – mellow, world and rock – have recently been added to its service, too.
Speaking about the collaboration, Bill Goldsmith, founder of Radio Paradise, said: ”As music lovers and audiophiles ourselves, it was a revelation to hear the performance difference in music when encoded into MQA, even when only 16 bit/44 kHz masters are available.
“The team at BluOS has been 100% committed to delivering high-res audio direct to the listening room and has long supported our work at Radio Paradise. Our shared values for best-in-class audio make this collaboration a totally natural evolution.”
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A little-known behavior in Chrome OS could reveal a user’s movements through Wi-Fi logs. Leveraging Chrome OS’s Guest mode feature, the attack would require physical access to the device, but it can be executed without knowing the user’s password or having login access.
The bug was flagged to The Verge by the Committee on Liberatory Information Technology, a tech collective that includes several former Googlers.
“We are looking into this issue,” said a Google spokesperson. “In the meantime, device owners can turn off guest mode and disable the creation of new users.” Instructions for turning off Guest browsing are available here.
The bug stems from the way Chromebooks treat their Wi-Fi logs, which show when and how a computer connects to the broader internet. The logs can be confusing for nontechnical users, but they can be deciphered to reveal which Wi-Fi networks were in range of the computer. Combined with other available data, that could reveal the owner’s movements over the period of time covered by the logs — potentially as long as seven days.
Because Chrome OS keeps those logs in unprotected memory, they can be accessed without a password. Simply opening a Chromebook in Guest mode and navigating to a standardized address will bring up the logs in local storage. That will show all logs for the computer, even ones generated outside of Guest mode.
Electronic Frontier Foundation researcher Andrés Arrieta confirmed the attack and said it was of particular concern for targeted and marginalized communities. While the bug wouldn’t be useful to conventional cybercriminals, it’s a potentially devastating privacy issue for those worried about surveillance from family members or co-workers.
“It’s worrisome because anyone with quick physical access to the device could potentially get in as guest and quickly take some logs, and out details of location,” said Arrieta. “Security teams should try to better understand the potential repercussions of those bugs for all their users and include that in their assessment and prioritization of bugs.”
Google is forging ahead with its third-party cookie replacement technology
Repent, o ye ad trackers, for the cookiepocalypse is nigh!
If Google sticks to its roadmap, by this time next year Chrome will no longer allow websites to use third-party cookies, which are cookies that come from outside their own domains. The change theoretically makes it vastly more difficult for advertisers to track your activities on the web and then serve you targeted ads. Safari and Firefox have already blocked those cookies, but when it comes to market share, Chrome is currently the leader and so its switchover is the big one.
Blocking third-party cookies means that only websites you explicitly visit will be able to save those little cookie files on your computer, and they should theoretically only do what cookies were originally intended to do: keep track of smaller things like whether you’re logged in or which shopping cart is yours. Blocking third-party cookies also means ad networks can’t figure out who you are and serve you targeted ads, which is a big problem for the ad industry.
Google, which is the biggest player in online ads, has claimed that it does not intend to replace third-party cookies with “alternative identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web.” This seems like a win for privacy all around, but if something about the story of Google as the privacy and anti-ad crusader strikes you as a little… off, you are far from alone.
Because of course Google doesn’t want to kneecap the online ad industry — the one it dominates and from which it makes all its money. Instead, Google wants to replace the third-party tracking cookie with a complicated set of (bird-themed) technologies that are meant to let ad companies target specific demographics like age and location, while at the same time allowing the people who are targeted to remain anonymous.
Google is trying to avert the cookiepocalypse for the ad tech industry, no repentance necessary.
And so today, the company is forging ahead with an “origin trial” for one of these new technologies, the Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC). In an origin trial, websites are able to begin testing without asking browser users to turn on specific flags. The feature itself will be slowly turned on inside Chrome via the usual process of introducing it into developer builds, then beta, then finally in the shipping version most people use.
But what the hell is FLoC, and does it really protect your privacy?
FLoC: a Federated Learning of Cohorts
FloC is a proposed browser standard that, in Google’s words, will enable “interest-based advertising on the web” without letting advertisers know your identity. Instead, you’ll be associated with a “cohort,” a group of users sufficiently large enough to make you at least semi-anonymous to the companies targeting you.
That’s the simple explanation. The technical one gets very complicated very quickly. Here’s a quick version. Chrome browsers will use algorithms (the “Federated Learning” part) to create a very large number of “cohorts,” groups of people that share certain qualities and interests. Each person’s individual browsing history is kept private and never shared with anybody, but the browser itself will look at the history and then assign a user to one of those cohorts.
When you visit a website, Chrome will tell that site that the visitor is part of cohort 198273 (or whatever) and then it’s up to the website to know that cohort 198273 (or whatever) is interested in pickup trucks and shoes with vegan leather. Since Chrome will never assign a user to a small cohort (Google has proposed that it will wait until there are “thousands” in a group), your identity as an animal-loving coal roller is theoretically protected.
Chrome itself isn’t assigning any content labels to these FloCs; Google is leaving that to the ad tech industry to figure out. So you won’t be able to open up a privacy page inside Chrome and see what it thinks you’re interested in (though there’s theoretically nothing stopping a third-party website from telling you).
Since FLoC is structured in this way, it could mean that the powerful players in ad tech could become even more entrenched, because they have the technology to parse what FLoCs mean and what ads to target against them. Or it could mean smaller players could find a way in. We don’t know all the possible repercussions of FLoC, which is why it has both ad industry executives and privacy advocates so unsettled.
You can read the whole proposal and even check out the code for how it works at the GitHub repository for FLoC inside the Web Incubator Community Group. As with most things on the web, it’s being developed out in the open and is part of a process of proposals, critiques, counter-proposals, attempts to get other browser vendors to join, arguments, harangues, screeds, and good-faith efforts to make the web a better place. It’s a party, y’all.
The new front in the browser wars: privacy
No other browser vendor has signaled its intention to support FLoC. The rest are simply blocking third-party cookies and letting the chips fall where they may. And those chips are messy.
Whatever motivations you want to imbue on the Chrome team, it is already apparent that simply blocking third-party cookies will lead to very problematic new solutions from the ad tech industry. So Google is creating both FLoC and a suite of other technologies to replace the third-party cookie, in order to hopefully forestall even worse replacements.
One of the very bad things Google is trying to forestall is fingerprinting. That’s the generalized term for ways that websites can identify you through little data signals that leak out of your browser when you visit a site. Sites can look at your IP address, the OS you’re browsing from, the size of your window, whether your browser supports Bluetooth controllers, and much more.
Battling fingerprinting is a huge arms race for browser engineers and new, nefarious methods pop up seemingly weekly. Here’s a new method of fingerprinting I just came across: playing a very tiny bit of audio and then analyzing how your particular browser and device handle it, and then using that data to individually identify you in milliseconds. (The website that proposed it sells fingerprint services to legitimate companies so they can ostensibly use it to better identify potential fraudsters on their sites.)
Apple has very publicly and vociferously advocated for cutting off all methods of individualized tracking, including fingerprinting, and has committed itself to that arms race indefinitely. The Chrome team’s concern is that essentially such a hard line creates an incentive for legitimate ad tech companies to start engaging in fingerprinting, which will then be all but impossible to stop or regulate.
Here’s how Google puts it in its blog post:
When other browsers started blocking third-party cookies by default, we were excited about the direction, but worried about the immediate impact. Excited because we absolutely need a more private web, and we know third-party cookies aren’t the long-term answer. Worried because today many publishers rely on cookie-based advertising to support their content efforts, and we had seen that cookie blocking was already spawning privacy-invasive workarounds (such as fingerprinting) that were even worse for user privacy. Overall, we felt that blocking third-party cookies outright without viable alternatives for the ecosystem was irresponsible, and even harmful, to the free and open web we all enjoy.
It’s hard to separate each company’s financial incentives from their very real philosophical differences. Google prints money with its de facto monopoly on monetizing the open web through ads and is therefore incentivized to keep it going. At the same time, Chrome’s developers are true believers in the power and importance of the open web. Meanwhile, Apple wouldn’t be sad if Google made less money amid a massive online ad tracking reckoning. At the same time, Apple’s developers are true believers in the importance of personal privacy and the urgent need to go all-out in protecting that privacy against constant online assaults.
In any case, the problem with fingerprinting is that once you’re identified, it’s much harder to anonymize yourself. A cookie can be deleted, but the way your particular computer processes a milliseconds-long snippet of audio is much harder to change (though Brave has an innovative solution called Farbling).
The basic argument from the Chrome team is that erecting a so-called “privacy wall” will entice legitimate ad tech companies into succumbing to the temptation of fingerprinting. Google is hoping that ad tech companies will adopt FLoC as an alternative.
If nothing else, there’s one big thing to take away from all this: FLoC is a hell of a lot better than the current status of third-party cookies that directly identify you anywhere you go on the web. But “better than the worst” is a low bar, and it’s hard to know yet whether FLoC just clears it or vaults way over it.
Is FLoC really private?
Instead of a trying to build a metaphorical privacy wall that blocks all forms of ad targeting, Google plans on building a Privacy Sandbox inside Chrome. Within that sandbox, websites can still legitimately request to know certain details about your browser as they need. A game streaming site could ask to know if your browser supports a game controller, for example. But ask too much and you’ll exceed the browser’s “privacy budget” and get cut off. Websites can have just a little identifying information, as a treat.
FLoC will be part of that privacy sandbox and further should protect your identity by only associating you with a cohort if that cohort is sufficiently large. Chrome will also change what FLoC cohort your browser is associated with on a regular basis, say once a week or so.
But whether FLoC is actually anonymous is very much up for debate. Bennett Cyphers at Electronic Frontier Foundation recently put up a handy post detailing some of the biggest concerns with FLoC.
One of the key aspects of FLoC is that Google isn’t making some giant list of interests and demographics and then assigning you to them. Instead, it’s proposing to use Federated Learning to create a ton of these cohorts algorithmically. Chrome won’t really know what any of them are actually about; it’ll be up to ad tech vendors to understand that over time.
But as Cyphers points out, that algorithm will inevitably create cohorts that could be incredibly dangerous — say, a group of people who have visited sites about getting out of domestic abuse situations. The Chrome team says it recognizes this concern and so will be analyzing the algorithmically created cohorts to see if any are related to what it deems to be sensitive topics — and then Chrome won’t serve those cohort IDs. But FLoC isn’t centralized, so it’s important to know that if another browser vendor adopts FLoC, it will be incumbent on that browser to create similar block lists.
Websites will be able to opt out of participating in FLoC, meaning that visits to their sites won’t contribute to an individual FLoC user’s profile. Similarly, the Chrome team intends to put opt-out toggles somewhere in Chrome’s settings for users who don’t want to provide FLoC IDs to the websites they visit.
Could FLoC become just another data point for fingerprinters? It seems likely, and defending against that seems to be another job for Chrome’s privacy budget and privacy sandbox algorithms.
One more thing: FLoC is a very convenient way for the websites you visit to know enough about you to target relevant ads, which means that FLoC is a very convenient way for websites to know things about you. It’s certainly no worse than the current cookie situation, but it’s far from the “You Shall Not Pass!” philosophy other browser vendors (like Apple and Brave) apply to allowing access to potentially identifiable information.
What’s next?
This first FLoC “origin trial” is designed to help websites learn how FLoC works; some of the testing for Chrome users will come later. Here is how Google describes the way it’s going to work:
The initial testing of FLoC is taking place with a small percentage of users in Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Philippines and the U.S. We’ll expand to other regions as the Privacy Sandbox expands globally. In April, we’ll introduce a control in Chrome Settings that you can use to opt out of inclusion in FLoC and other Privacy Sandbox proposals. In the meantime, if you’ve chosen to block third-party cookies, you won’t be included in these origin trials.
If you look at that list of countries, you might notice that something stands out: none of them are in the EU, where GDPR regulations are in effect. Recently, Robin Berjon of TheNew York Times wondered whether that meant that FLoC would run afoul of those privacy regulations. According to the product manager for the Chrome privacy sandbox, Marshall Vale, it’s more a matter of limiting the size of the early tests and that his team is “100% committed to the Privacy Sandbox in Europe.”
Under normal circumstances, a newly proposed web technology wends its way through mailing lists and W3C conference room debates. It gets supported by the browser vendor that championed it and then, if its lucky, other browsers. Thus, the web manages to not become browser-specific in the ways it was back in the bad old days of Internet Explorer 6.
But when Google originally announced its intention to block third-party cookies last year, I pointed out that the rhetoric between browser vendors was getting sharp. It’s only gotten sharper as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Brave, and others have gone further down their respective paths.
It seems unlikely that FLoC will lead to a standard because everybody agrees on a good way to allow targeted advertising. If FLoC does become a standard, it’ll probably be because Chrome will eventually turn it on and it will become the norm just through sheer market share — both Chrome’s within the browser market and Google’s within the ad tech market.
That possible future might avert the cookiepocalypse, but it could also become a different kind of nightmare for the web: one where websites once again try to push you to use the browser they can best monetize via whatever ad tech platform they’re using.
(Pocket-lint) – The Google Nest Hub (second gen) updates Google’s first smart display, which originally launched as the Google Home Hub.
Sporting a 7-inch display, it rivals Amazon’s Echo Show models, looking to bring a visual experience to Google Assistant, and slot the Mountain View company into the centre of your home.
This time around, however, Google has eyes on your bedroom.
Design and build
120.4 x 177.4 x 69.5mm, 558g
Four colours
Floating display design
Glance and you’ll miss it. The design of the second-gen Nest Hub is essentially the same as the old, but there are some minor differences on the spec sheet – not that you’ll really spot that from across the room.
The new Nest Hub remains a cute smart display and we’ve always liked this design. It fits in with the mesh covered designs we’ve seen from other Google devices over the past few years, using safe fabric colours to help it blend into your home décor.
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It’s a 7-inch display, so not huge – but glance at the offering from Amazon and you’ll find it sandwiched by the likes of the Echo Show 5 and the Echo Show 8, although we do think it looks a little more sophisticated.
There’s some bezel to the display – now incorporating a range of expanded sensors and mics – while there’s a volume rocker on the rear right and a physical mute switch on the centre rear, within easy reach.
It’s still a great looking device and while some might think that a 7-inch display is too big to have on your bedside table, that’s exactly where Google wants you to put it.
Setup and introducing sleep sensing
Google Home app
Sleep tracking calibration
Setting up the Nest Hub is easy. You’ll need to have the Google Home app on your smartphone, as this serves to control the device and gets setup underway. Once plugged in, it’s a few simple steps to get the Nest Hub up and running – the important part being connecting to your Wi-Fi and logging in with your Google account.
If you’ve used any Google devices before, this will now be familiar – and like Amazon’s Echo devices, signing in gets Google Assistant ready and so you’re quickly connected with everything that you have setup without Assistant already.
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That’s great, because it means that all your connected smart home devices will now work from your Nest Hub, if you have Voice Match in Google Assistant active then it will know who you are and tailor results to you, so you’re good to go.
That would be just about it for a regular Google device, but sleep sensing brings with it some additional requirement: calibration.
Sleep sensing on the Nest Hub uses a range of sensors, including temperature, light, sound and the Soli radar chip we previously saw in the Pixel 4 phones. Together, these sensors will be able to give you a complete picture of how you slept and the conditions you were sleeping it.
But first and foremost you need to make sure that the Soli radar will be able to see you. It sends out low power short-range electromagnetic waves allowing it to detect motion. It’s important to understand that it’s not using cameras for this, so it’s not visually spying on your while you’re asleep.
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This means that positioning is important and there’s a calibration process you’ll have to run through to get the Nest Hub in the right position so it will work. It doesn’t take long and all you have to do is basically lie in bed with the device on your bedside table and it will do its stuff. If it’s in the wrong position, it will ask you to adjust it.
There’s a few things you need to know here: firstly, it needs to be focused towards your upper body and secondly, it actually needs to be about level with you. If it’s too low, it won’t be able to detect anything because it’s looking at the side of the bed, so it’s no good putting it on the floor or on a bookcase a metre higher than you.
For most, it should be simple and within a few minutes it was all setup – but you have to remember you can’t then move it too much and you can’t put things in front of it, like a glass of water, because you’ll block the view.
Sleep tracking and bedside performance
Sensors to detect sleep
Personalised sleep summary
Syncing to Google Fit
Using all the sensors, the Nest Hub gathers data and, using an algorithm, can understand what’s going on.
From this data it can tell when you get into bed, when you go to sleep, when you’re disturbed during the night and when you get up. It also knows when you’re awake but lounging in bed refusing to get up.
This is the first converged device to offer sleep tracking that doesn’t require any physical touch. We’ve seen and used sleep tracking from the likes of Apple, Fitbit and Garmin where you need to wear a watch. We’ve used systems like ResMed SleepScore and Withings Sleep Analyzer – but the Nest Hub is likely to be more popular.
The problem with wearing something is that it can disturb you as you move around – and you’re sweating into it all day and all night. The problem with some of the other detection devices is that they only do one thing – whereas Nest Hub is your familiar Google-based smart display and your sleep tracking buddy.
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We’ve been sleeping with the Nest Hub over the last week and found the sleep tracking to be pretty accurate. But first of all, there’s no need to be concerned about having a 7-inch LCD display next to the bed – it dims really well so it’s not glowing at the side of the bed and keeping you awake.
Detection on getting into bed appears to happen at any point that you get into bed. Come back from a run and flop onto the bed while you check your Strava stats and you’ll see the on-screen notification telling you that it has detected you.
But the Nest Hub is smart enough to figure out what’s happening when. Because there’s processing to be done there are moments when you’ll be told that it’s processing – for example when you wake up. That’s mostly because it’s waiting to see when you leave bed so that it can report on how long it took you to get up and so on.
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Data is available to tap though on the display in the morning or you can ask Google Assistant. The results also sync to Google Fit so you can examine them on your phone, but again, these will vary and might change slightly depending on when you look at Google Fit and how that corresponds with any processing that the Nest Hub is doing.
The results are interesting and certainly accurate, but there’s no breakdown of heavy or light sleep like you’ll get from Fitbit. It also won’t think you’re asleep on the sofa when you’re watching a movie like Garmin sometimes does, but there are limits.
For example, on a disturbed night, you might try to sleep, then do some reading, toss and turn a bit and as a last resort, attempt to get to sleep by putting yourself into a meditative state. Anyone reading who suffers from insomnia will know what it’s like to clear your mind, calm your breathing and just lie still, hoping that you’ll get to sleep – and it’s here that Google thinks you are asleep, when you’re not.
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Otherwise, on normal sleeping days, we’ve found the reports to be accurate, detecting those middle of the night toilet breaks, and knowing when you’ve woken up earlier than you wanted to. It also detects snoring and coughing, which can be a bit thing that disturbs sleep.
Google’s analysis then attempts to give you feedback to improve your habits. For us, our average sleep time has been a little short and the Nest Hub tells us that we’re sometimes going to bed too early and staying in bed awake when we should be getting up in the morning. It’s trying to establish a better routine.
It all makes sense too: those days where we’re told sleep is “fairly restful” we’re awaking feeling refreshed; on the days when it’s been “restless”, we can feel that too. The thing is, we don’t need telling that. Whether this information is useful will be a personal decision.
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What Google doesn’t seem to be doing is putting this into context with anything else. There’s no relationship between sleeping and activity like you get from Garmin’s Body Battery. It’s also unclear what you might have to pay for this data in the future.
That’s right – it’s a free preview through to the end of 2021, but then Google says: “After the preview ends, paid subscription may be required.” Currently we don’t know what that cost might be. We also don’t know how this data might integrate with Fitbit, but Google has said it’s looking at how that might work.
Of course, if everything above fills you with horror, it’s an opt-in service. You don’t have to have sleep tracking at all.
Display, interface and sound quality
7-inch 1024 x 600 pixels
3 mics, 1.7-inch speaker driver
Google Assistant
There’s a 7-inch display on the front of the Nest Hub, with a 1024 x 600 pixel resolution. That’s not hugely high in terms of resolution, but we’ve nothing to complain about when it comes to quality.
There’s a visually engaging interface presented by Google and we think it’s better than Amazon’s equivalent on the Echo Show models: it just looks and feels a little more useful. Much of that comes down to the fact that Google has more information to pull in to serve you content you like, like relevant news.
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You can swipe through the screens to access various sections – wellness, home control, media, communication, including the discover section. The media option will already be connected to your Spotify account (if you’ve linked the two) while YouTube is front and centre.
Google can also take advantage of Chromecast support, allowing you to cast content to the Nest Hub too – so it can be a little more dynamic than Amazon’s device.
Google Assistant remains as smart as ever and has progressive developed over the past few years. We’ve one criticism and that’s the hiss that accompanies spoken replies. That was detectable on the Nest Audio too – something that Google really should fix to increase the overall offering – it’s not something that Alexa does.
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Of the two, we’d say that Google is a little smarter, often being able to give smarter replies, but there are some services better optimised for Echo devices – like requesting the BBC news: it’s just better when Alexa serves that up.
When it comes to speaker quality, the Nest Hub has a single 1.7-inch driver. It has boosted bass over the previous version for a richer overall sound and we think it’s great as a bedside unit, perhaps a little weak if you’re planning to use it as a main speaker in a room – you’d want the Nest Hub Max for that instead.
Comparing that to Alexa briefly and the Echo Show 8 – slightly larger than this model – does have a bigger sound too. The smallest Echo Show 5 also has a 1.7-inch driver, giving you an idea of how these devices compare.
Smart home and expanded functions
Thread, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi
Chromecast built in
There’s no camera by design on the Nest Hub and Google had to opportunity to put one on this refreshed version and decided not to. For some people that will be a major downside, for others, a significant advantage.
There are a range of other connectivity technologies however and we’ve covered most already – Wi-Fi for the connection to the internet, Chromecast via the same route, Bluetooth to use your Nest Hub as a speaker or to connect it to a Bluetooth speaker.
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Then there’s Thread. Thread is a relatively new wireless smart home protocol which works on a mesh network. The Nest Hub can be part of a Thread system, just as the Apple HomePod Mini can be – very much working in the same was a Zigbee on the Echo models.
As this is a technology that’s just starting to establish itself, we haven’t tested it. We did test the Nest Hub with the wider set of smart home devices we’ve already linked to Google Assistant via the Home app and found no problems – and in the future, if you are buying Thread-equipped devices, the idea will be that you can control those directly from the Nest Hub without the need to a dedicated hub for whatever those devices are.
All in, the Nest Hub is still a super-connected device, able to play its part as the centre of your smart home, just as the name suggests.
Verdict
This new version of the Nest Hub only makes a couple of changes from the previous version: indeed, if you’re not interested in the sleep tracking, then you might be better off trying to find the older model at a discounted price, because you’re not missing out.
The sleep tracking adds a new dimension. As people are increasingly turning to technologies to track wellbeing, and sleep being a growing area. While the technology works, uncertainty about future subscription costs might give pause for though – or you might want to try it and cross that bridge in 2022.
Fundamentally, the Nest Hub 2021 is a good device. It’s connected, good quality, a refreshingly simple interface and offers the best voice assistant in the business. If you want your home to be smarter, this is a great place to start.
Alternatives to consider
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Lenovo Smart Clock
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The Lenovo is a compact bedside device that gives you all the advantages of Google Assistant in a small package.
Read the full Lenovo Smart Clock review
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Amazon Echo Show 8
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The Echo Show 8 is larger, but features a camera as well as the full skills of Alexa.
The big boat is no longer stuck. After days of rapt attention from the internet, a non-metaphorical rising tide has indeed lifted all the boats — and particularly, the Evergreen Marine Corporation’s Ever Given cargo ship — reopening the Suez Canal to regular shipping traffic and ensuring that the precious lifeblood of capitalism can continue to flow freely.
Naturally, Google is celebrating this simultaneously momentous and absurd moment in human history the only way it knows how: an Easter egg in Google searches for the phrases “Suez Canal” and “Ever Given” that show a tiny parade of cute lil’ emoji boats marching across your screen, just like the (much bigger) boats that can now (less cutely, one presumes) float their way through the aforementioned canal.
There’s probably a larger metaphor to be made about the flow of information on the internet that Google search facilities and the similarly unrepressed flotilla of real-world cargo now making its way through the canal, if you really wanted to. Or you can just enjoy the fun emoji.
Netflix set out goals today to limit the damage the company does to the climate. By the end of 2022, it wants to reach “net zero” greenhouse gas emissions. That means it plans to reduce some of its emissions and find ways to offset or capture the rest.
By 2030, Netflix says it plans to cut emissions from its operations and electricity use by 45 percent. That goal roughly lines up with research from leading climate scientists, who have found that greenhouse gas emissions need to fall by about 45 percent globally this decade. But Netflix will eventually need to ramp up efforts to prevent pollution generated by producing and streaming its movies and TV shows.
To meet its deadline next year, the company is primarily relying on offsetting its emissions, a strategy with a checkered history when it comes to how well it actually slows down climate change. Netflix plans to invest in programs dedicated to preserving and restoring ecosystems that naturally store planet-heating carbon dioxide. Efforts to cancel out companies’ carbon footprints by planting trees and preserving forests have failed to substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the past. Netflix, however, says that it has developed a thorough process to vet these kinds of projects, which might include visiting the sites in person or monitoring their progress via satellite. But many environmental advocates have pressured companies to do more to stop polluting in the first place, rather than relying on trees to clean up the mess.
Netflix disclosed its annual carbon footprint for the first time today in an environmental social governance report. That revealed that the company generated roughly 1.1 million metric tons of CO2 last year, equivalent to the yearly emissions from about 240,000 passenger cars. That total still doesn’t account for emissions that come from the internet infrastructure needed to stream its shows, or from the devices people use to watch its content.
Netflix did pollute a little less in 2020 than it did in 2019, but probably not by design. Production for a lot of Netflix content was delayed last year because of the pandemic, which the company said was the main reason for the 14 percent drop in emissions last year.
The year before the pandemic, Netflix’s energy use actually skyrocketed. It used 84 percent more electricity in 2019 compared to the year before. (Its subscriber base grew 20 percent over the same time period.) Netflix attributed much of that rise to the company self-producing more of its own films and TV shows.
The physical production of Netflix’s branded content was responsible for half of its entire carbon footprint in 2020. Corporate operations and purchased goods made up another 45 percent of emissions, while data centers made up 5 percent.
To cut down its planet-heating pollution moving forward, Netflix says it will replace fossil fuels with renewable energy as much as possible. When it comes to filming around the globe, the company said it plans to hire more local crews to avoid pollution from travel. It also wants to make its operations more efficient so that it can cut down on how much energy it uses in the first place. It has the most control over that at its own studios, but the company says it will also try to influence vendors and data center providers with whom it works. One small change the company has already made is the switch from incandescent to vastly more efficient LED lighting in many of its studios. Not only do LED lights use up less energy, but they also reduce cooling costs because they’re not as hot as traditional bulbs.
“The talent loves it because it doesn’t melt their makeup in the same way that incandescent bulbs did, so it’s a win-win-win,” says Emma Stewart, who was hired last year to become Netflix’s first sustainability officer.
Even incremental changes could eventually add up to big wins for the planet. “The film industry needs a leader when it comes to climate action. Changing the world begins with one company stepping up and inspiring others to join them. I’m thrilled at how Netflix is taking on this leadership role,” Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, said in a statement on Netflix’s new sustainability goals.
Pokémon Go developer Niantic has unveiled Codename: Urban Legends, which it describes as “a multiplayer demo experience that offers a glimpse into the future of AR and 5G networks.” The game revolves around casting magic spells to kill monsters and rescue allies. It’s similar to Niantic’s previously released games, but the trailer includes a unique feature: multiple players interacting with the same augmented reality creatures from their own phones. Niantic says it’s just a demo at the moment and not for general consumer use.
It’s an exciting shift from Niantic’s previously released games like Pokémon Go, and the company says this is largely thanks to 5G. Although its games have had multiplayer elements, for the most part each player exists in their own augmented reality worlds. For example, while the same pokémon appear on the map for every player in Pokémon Go, each player can only view and interact with their own creatures in AR. In other words, you can’t throw a pokéball to catch someone else’s augmented reality pokémon. (PokémonGo has a limited shared AR experience mode where you can see other players’ pokémon but not interact with them).
Codename: Urban Legends isbuilt on the same platform that underpins the augmented reality games Ingress, Pokémon Go, and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. Niantic hopes that AR gaming will be 5G’s “killer app,” benefiting from its higher speeds, lower latency, and ability to keep lots of people’s phones connected to the internet in a crowd.
Niantic says that carriers from its Planet-Scale AR Alliance — an organization formed of over half a dozen carriers around the world aimed at developing augmented reality 5G experiences — have been network testing the game. These include Germany’s Deutsche Telekom, Globe Telecom in the Philippines, and Verizon in the US. Niantic formed the alliance last year to promote and develop augmented reality experiences for 5G.
Although it’s a cool demo, Codename: Urban Legends’reliance on 5G risks replicating some of the geographical issues that affected Pokémon Go. 5G coverage is currently concentrated in cities, meaning players living in more rural areas risk losing out (Codename: Urban Legends works on both Sub-6GHz and mmWave variants of 5G). It was a similar situation when city-dwelling Pokémon Go players benefited from having more pokéstops and gyms compared to players out in the countryside.
Today’s announcement doesn’t say when the demo might turn into a real game or on which phones it runs. However, Niantic tells us the game will be exclusive to its carrier partners’ customers once it releases.
Codename: Urban Legends is an interesting tech demo, and it has the potential to expand on Pokémon Go’s augmented reality features in some interesting ways. We just want to know when players will be able to dive in.
Nike has sued internet collective MSCHF for selling “unauthorized Satan Shoes” in collaboration with rapper Lil Nas X. The shoe company says MSCHF infringed on its trademarks by selling limited-edition custom Nikes that were allegedly modified with a drop of human blood. Since the Satan Shoes (as they are officially called) were announced last week, Nike claims they’ve harmed its reputation, “including among consumers who believe that Nike is endorsing satanism.” It’s asking for the shoes to be destroyed and for MSCHF to pay financial damages.
MSCHF is known for stunt products like its 2019 “Jesus Shoes,” a $1,425 pair of white Nike Air Max 97s with custom stitching and 60ccs of water from the River Jordan. Nike didn’t object to the Jesus Shoes. But it’s apparently less happy with their theological inverse: a 666-pair drop of $1,018 red and black Air Max 97s, containing 60ccs of ink and one drop of human blood, embellished with a pentagram.
Nike’s suit makes a few general arguments against modifying shoes, including that “making changes to the midsole may pose safety risks for consumers.” (These shoes stand accused of putting people’s souls and their soles at risk.) But it mostly argues that a satanic shoe containing literal blood is bad for Nike’s brand.
MSCHF x Lil Nas X “Satan Shoes”
Nike Air Max ’97 Contains 60cc ink and 1 drop of human blood ️666 Pairs, individually numbered $1,018 ️March 29th, 2021 pic.twitter.com/XUMA9TKGSX
— SAINT (@saint) March 26, 2021
To make its case, Nike cites social media comments from people who don’t realize MSCHF was just unofficially reselling the shoes. “Won’t buy Nike again. You are banned!” says one. “This is sickening!!! How is Nike not involved when there’s a Nike symbol on the shoe!!!” says another. “MSCHF is deceiving consumers into believing that Nike manufactures or approves of the Satan Shoes,” Nike’s complaint claims. “Consumers’ belief that the Satan Shoes are genuine Nike products is causing consumers to never want to purchase any Nike products in the future.”
As University of New Hampshire law professor Alexandra Roberts noted on Twitter, MSCHF can defend itself on multiple grounds. It can cite the First Sale Doctrine, which protects reselling goods that are protected by intellectual property laws — like people selling designer clothes on Poshmark, for instance. It can also claim the shoes are protected as a parody or argue that buyers are unlikely to confuse these modified Satan Shoes with off-the-shelf Nikes, random internet commenters notwithstanding.
Very, very few people will ever own a $1,000 blood-and-pentagram sneaker. If the case goes to trial, though, there’s more than a limited-edition satanic shoe line at stake. “The case has potentially broad implications because we’re seeing a rise in this kind of customization of branded goods as well as upcycling,” Roberts told The Verge via email.
Nike
It’s fine to directly resell products, Roberts says, and it’s legal to advertise goods while mentioning somebody else’s trademark. You can also do things like dismember Barbie dolls and sell pictures of them as art. “But what about the businesses making jewelry out of authentic Chanel buttons, or cutting fringes into genuine Vuitton bags?” Earlier this year, in fact, Chanel sued a company for “misappropriating” its brand for recycled button earrings.
Basically, MSCHF bought shoes that it could legally resell using Nike’s branding, but it heavily modified them into what’s arguably a new product whose quality Nike can’t control, then sold them as a commercial good rather than a traditional art piece. Depending on how a court weighs all those factors, it could create a precedent for future cases. “I think other high fashion brands will be keeping a close eye on this case,” Roberts says.
The Satan Shoes dropped alongside a provocative Lil Nas X music video that’s drawn the ire of conservative commentators. So it makes sense that Nike might distance itself. But as The Fashion Law notes, MSCHF has anticipated and even invited lawsuits in the past, saying a suit would “help increase the value of the product.” By taking it to court, Nike is almost certainly boosting the profile of MSCHF’s latest drop, as well as potentially causing new problems.
“I’m not shocked Nike chose to sue, but I think they might also want to proceed with caution to avoid being perceived as squelching speech or siding with the Christian right over a popular Black artist,” says Roberts. “I expect Nike might be hoping for a quick, low-key settlement in which MSCHF agrees not to ship out the shoes.”
MSCHF didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Lil Nas X, who posted a prank “apology” video for the shoes yesterday, is not named as a defendant in the suit.
Activision is finally doing something about the tremendous file sizes of recent Call of Duty games. The company is announcing that both Modern Warfare and the free-to-play Warzone will be much easier on hard drives after the next update. The space savings vary depending on what platform the game is installed (and which content packs you have installed), but they’ll be at least 30GB if you have both full games installed — meaning you’ll actually have enough room to install another AAA game if you like.
The update is set to be released on March 30th, but while it may be easier on your hard drive, downloading it won’t be easy on your internet connection. Activision says the one-time Season Two Reloaded update will be larger than usual (up to 57GB for those who just play Warzone). The good news is that future updates shouldn’t be as big, but you will want to mind your data caps.
According to the blog post, the space savings come from file optimizations and “streamlining content packs.” It’s also worth noting that individual content packs can be removed, getting rid of game modes you don’t play. For example, you can uninstall single player and Special Ops if you only fire up Call of Duty to play with friends. The blog post mentions that some users will have to reinstall content packs to get the optimized versions, but Activision wasn’t immediately available to comment on the circumstances that would cause that.
The specific space savings for each platform are listed below, but to add some context, let’s imagine you’ve got Warzone and Modern Warfare installed on your PlayStation 4. After the update, you’ll have freed up enough space to install The Witness (4.2GB) and Ratchet & Clank (26.3GB) — which are now both free on the PlayStation Store.
Game Boy mining Bitcoin (Image credit: stacksmashing/YouTube)
Nothing is safe from cryptocurrency mining — not even 32-year old tech. YouTuber stacksmashing (via TweakTown) has successfully repurposed his old Game Boy to mine Bitcoin. The mod won’t turn you into a millionaire overnight, but it does prove that you can teach an old dog new tricks.
First of all, the modder used a standard USB flash card to load the his compiled ROMs onto the Game Boy. If you’re interested in the software aspect of the project, the YouTuber explains it pretty thoroughly in his video.
An internet connection is one of the most basic requirements for mining cryptocurrencies. Since the Game Boy lacks wireless connectivity, the handheld gaming console is unable to communicate with the Bitcoin network without the help of a middle man. That’s where the $4 Raspberry Pi Pico comes in to the rescue.
The YouTuber modified a Nintendo Game Link Cable to serve as the highway for communication. The problem is that the voltage requirements for the Raspberry Pi Pico and the Nintendo Game Link Cable are completely different. The Raspberry Pi Pico operates at 3.3V, while the Nintendo Game Link Cable utilizes 5V logic levels. As a result, the modder implemented a simple four-channel, bi-directional logic shifter to do the voltage translation.
The bi-directional functionality isn’t necessary, but it’s what the stacksmashing had at hand. The final setup finds the Game Boy connected to the Raspberry Pi Pico through the logic shifter with the Pico attached to a PC, which is where the Internet connection comes from.
The Game Boy is equipped with an 8-bit Sharp LR35902 processor clocked at 4.18 MHz. The chip puts up a performance of approximately 0.8 hashes per second. For comparison, modern ASIC miners typically offer up to 100 terahashes per second. Therefore, the Game Boy is only 125 trillion times slower.
The calculations reveal that it would only take a couple quadrillion years to eventually mine a single Bitcoin. On the bright side, ASIC miners are power-hungry monsters, while the Game Boy runs on four triple-A batteries.
The massive cargo ship Ever Given has been stuck for nearly a week in the Suez Canal, captivating the internet and frustrating the teams responsible for dislodging it and the governments hardest hit by the shutdown of the maritime trade route.
The ship (and its trademark “Evergreen” lettering painted on the side) has become so iconic, in fact, that its become a destination within Microsoft Flight Simulator, at least for one virtual pilot who appears to have created a mod that places the grounded vessel within the virtual Earth of the game,via GeekWire.
Twitter user Mat Velloso shared a video from TikTok, originally captured and uploaded by user “donut_enforcement,” showing off the the flyby of the cargo ship to a convincing-sounding pilot narration as the boat sits stuck between the banks of the canal. The scene looks shockingly realistic, which is a testament to the quality of the mod and also just the demanding visuals of Microsoft Flight Simulator.
Of course, there’s nothing stopping developer Asobo from updating the game with newer satellite imagery to include the ship for all players — there’s plenty of such photographs having been taken over the last six days. But considering the game sources its imagery from Bing Maps and doesn’t always refresh in a timely manner, that means your game won’t have the Ever Given in it unless you’re able to mod it like in the video above.
There is currently no concrete timeline for freeing the ship from its unfortunately angled predicament, so it’s certainly possible.
Comic-Con won’t be hosting its regular in-person annual gathering this summer, as the organization behind the cosplay and fan gathering cancel the event for the second year in a row due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But there is now an in-person event on the books for the fall to compliment the limited online versions the organization is hosting in the coming months.
Comic-Con International, the non-profit in charge of running the event and its companion conventions, announced on Saturday that it plans to hold a three-day, in-person event in November. It will take place in San Diego, where Comic-Con typically holds its biggest annual summer event at the city’s convention center. Yet it’s not known right now what the size or scope of the event will be. NBC News reports the dates will be November 26th to November 28th.
“As the timing and scope of our larger event factored greatly into our decision to postpone, we believe that launching a smaller in-person event at a later time may be a safe alternative. For this reason, we are happy to announce that San Diego Comic Convention is planning to present a three-day in-person convention in San Diego in November,” reads the press release. “At this time, we are still working on specific details as to attendance capacity, badge cost, and related information, and those details will be forthcoming.”
Comic-Con is among the US’s largest conventions, drawing more than 130,000 people to San Diego and generating hundreds of millions in revenue for the city on top of the tens of millions of dollars it generates for the organization itself. The organization says that if you purchased a ticket to Comic-Con 2020, your rolled over 2021 ticket is valid for the next in-person event in 2022. However, the organization is “working on an option for those wishing to transfer their badge or exhibitor deposits/payments as full or partial payment towards our 2021 November event,” reads the press release.
Although it has maintained its roots as a cosplay and fan gathering, Comic-Con in recent years has provided a vital marketing function to Hollywood film and TV studios, comic publishers, production companies, and other arms of the entertainment industry. Celebrities often use the show to promote new and ongoing projects and studios use the visibility of the con and the exclusivity of being live in the audience to reveal new trailers and other teases that only later get uploaded to the internet.
Amazon is intensifying its bizarre online public relations strategy of picking increasingly petty and unhinged fights with sitting US Congress members, with the company’s Amazon News account on Friday shifting from Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).
“You make the tax laws @SenWarren; we just follow them. If you don’t like the laws you’ve created, by all means, change them. Here are the facts: Amazon has paid billions of dollars in corporate taxes over the past few years alone,” the account tweeted Thursday in response to a critique from Warren that Amazon exploits “loopholes and tax havens to pay close to nothing in taxes.” There’s a growing mountain of evidence pointing out how Amazon pays very little in taxes compared to its annual sales and profits.
1/3 You make the tax laws @SenWarren; we just follow them. If you don’t like the laws you’ve created, by all means, change them. Here are the facts: Amazon has paid billions of dollars in corporate taxes over the past few years alone.
— Amazon News (@amazonnews) March 26, 2021
Then, earlier today, the Amazon News account struck back at Warren yet again after she responded outlining her intentions to regulate the company, taking an even more trollish turn and accusing the senator of trying to “break up an American company so that they can’t criticize her anymore.”
Somehow, one of the most powerful and valuable companies on Earth has decided its bold new PR strategy should involve playing immature semantics with a US senator.
This is extraordinary and revealing. One of the most powerful politicians in the United States just said she’s going to break up an American company so that they can’t criticize her anymore. https://t.co/Nt0wcZo17g
— Amazon News (@amazonnews) March 26, 2021
This latest dust-up caps a surreal week for Amazon’s PR team, which continues to wage these battles anonymously and without attaching an executive’s name to any of its childish internet taunts and misdirection.
The same account falsely asserted earlier this week that it is untrue Amazon warehouse and delivery workers find themselves forced to pee into water bottles. The Amazon News account lied about this — despite the wealth of evidence to the contrary — in a late Wednesday tweet in response to Pocan calling out the company for hypocrisy.
The whole debate started when Amazon’s Dave Clark, its senior vice president of worldwide operations and so far the only executive to publicly spar on Twitter under their own name, criticized Sanders. The context, of course, and why Amazon’s PR division may be kicking up so much dust is that Sanders had publicly announced his plans to travel to Alabama today to speak in support of the state’s historic Amazon warehouse unionization campaign.
1/2 You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us. The truth is that we have over a million incredible employees around the world who are proud of what they do, and have great wages and health care from day one.
— Amazon News (@amazonnews) March 25, 2021
Clark attacked Sanders on Tuesday of this week and then again yesterday after Sanders mentioned his trip to Birmingham, and Clark has since gone quiet except to retweet the Amazon News account’s latest Warren dig.
All we want to know is why the Sen is one of the most powerful pols in VT for 30+ yrs and their min wage is STILL only $11.75.AMZN’s min wage is $15 + great health care from Day 1.The Sen should save his finger wagging lecture until after he actually delivers in his own backyard. https://t.co/dRo2Tv1xDQ
— Dave Clark (@davehclark) March 25, 2021
Amazon’s defensive tweets, specifically the one about pee bottles, ignited a torrent of backlash, photographic evidence, and yet more investigative reporting from The Intercept, Vice, and others proving that countless Amazon workers have, in fact, resorted to urinating into bottles and even defecating into bags because of the time and efficiency pressures imposed upon them.
All of this leads us to believe that Amazon either thinks it is so powerful and untouchable that it can openly taunt the few Congress members who’ve expressed desires to regulate Big Tech, or the company has simply handed the Twitter reins to an internet culture warrior who thinks they’re battling in the trenches of a Breitbart comment section. Maybe both.
Josef Fares has strong opinions. The director of Hazelight Studio — whose latest co-op game, It Takes Two, is out today — rocketed into the spotlight at The Game Awards in 2017 with an off-the-cuff, impassioned speech about the joys of interactive video games that culminated in his meme-worthy “Fuck the Oscars!” line.
Years later, Fares (who, ironically enough, started off as a filmmaker) is still standing firm on his pro-game stance. “Look, my background is a filmmaker. The whole thing with ‘fuck the Oscars’ was actually kind of special,” he tells The Verge. “One, you have to remember when I was there on the set, everybody was talking, ‘Oh this like the Oscars, it’s like the Oscars.’ And I was like ‘Fuck the Oscars!’ because I was actually saying ‘Fuck the Oscars — because we should celebrate gaming now.’ It’s not that I have anything personal about the Oscars.”
It Takes Two is Fares’ third game, following Brothers:A Tale of Two Sons and A Way Out. Hazelight’s latest game takes a similar tack to A Way Out, in particular: it’s an exclusively co-op game that you can’t experience at all unless you’re willing to play with a friend or partner (either next to you on a couch or over the internet). According to Fares, the studio never even considered adding any sort of AI companion.
“They are designed from the beginning like that, so you have to communicate with someone,” he says. “It’s not possible to play with a random [person]. It’s not a matchmaking game where you are just randomly connected. If you want to play with someone you don’t know at all, you must have the ability to talk because if you’re not talking, you can’t progress.”
Communication is a fitting foundation for It Takes Two, which sees a husband and wife on the verge of divorce who are then magically transformed into a pair of Pixar-esque dolls and forced by a magical talking book to work out their differences.
A Way Out offered a thematically compelling narrative pulled out of a crime novel that was let down by dull gameplay that didn’t actually do much to take advantage of the cooperative nature of the game. It Takes Two flips the script: it offers a bizarre, almost nonsensical story lifted up by clever cooperative mechanics. Each of the two characters tends to split up their abilities between levels. For example, an early level gives players a pair of guns — one character can fire sap, while the other ignites it.
The more diverse gameplay isn’t an accident. “We’ve become better at finding cold co-op mechanics that can be combined,” says Fares. “So you really feel the need of co-oping. Also, I talked a lot about marrying the story and the gameplay… we tried to connect the abilities to the character as well. With May, for instance — it’s her toolbox, so she has the hammer.”
The result, though, is that It Takes Two is a much more complex game than A Way Out. To start, it’s a platformer. And while it won’t demand the kind of pixel-perfect skills as something like Celeste or Spelunky, it’s a harder game to get into than the relatively simple A Way Out. Add in the (admittedly more interesting) new mechanics that change from level to level, and the game runs the risk of overwhelming newer or less experienced players.
Still, the resulting game is a unique one, despite the uneven storytelling. As Fares rightly comments, there’s almost no one else out there making these kinds of games. “Of course there are co-op games out there that have your campaign and your add-on co-op campaign and so on, but none are actually designing, writing everything from the beginning as we do at Hazelight.”
“I think that opens up… both creatively, but also the dynamics between the characters that you’re playing, that you’re using different abilities, how you can cooperate, and also what’s going on on the couch,” says Fares. “I think there’s so much stuff to explore there.” He views the experience as similar to watching a movie or a TV show: it’s something you do together. “So why not enjoy a story together in a game?”
And it’s that level of interaction that helps games stand out to Fares from film. “The whole idea is understanding that making the interactive experience [for a game is] totally different than a passive experience as a movie,” he says. “So I sometimes hear when they talk about ‘We should bring on more movie people [to make games].’ Sure, we can be inspired on how they tell stories and so on, but we need to find our own way to tell stories in an interactive way.”
And while Fares won’t give too many details on what Hazelight’s next project will look like or if it’ll be another co-op experience, he definitely thinks there’s more room for other developers to join in — and not just with optional cooperative experiences, like with survival games or shooters like Borderlands or Halo.
“We should have our single-player narratives; I love those. But I think there’s a market here, and I think people really appreciate this type of game, you know. To play something with someone that you love or a friend or a father or a mother or whatever — just experience something together and not just a shooter game, you know what I mean?”
It Takes Two is available now for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X / S.
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