The big news of the week came from Samsung and their new line of devices, including two folding phones in the Z series. I wrote about that separately, which you can find here. Here are a few of the other stories I’ve found interesting over the past couple days.
US Senate Bill Aims to Reduce Apple and Google’s App Store Dominance
The latest salvo in the fight against the perceived monopoly that Apple and Google have over their respective mobile platforms has come in the form of a bipartisan bill in the US Senate. It would force App Store operators to allow developers to use alternative payment methods as well as forbid those operators from punishing developers who may want to offer lower prices through their own payment methods.
But the biggest piece of the bill would forbid the companies from using non-public data to build competing products.
Apple and Google are, as one might expect, not happy.
More High Level Employees Fired from Activision Blizzard
Three high level employees, including the director of the upcoming Diablo 4, have been fired from Activision Blizzard. These are the most recent moves as the company deals with the fallout from the allegations in the lawsuit filed by the state of California. These likely won’t be the last.
Hacker Steals Over $600 Million Worth of Cryptocurrency, Wants to Give it Back
So, this one is strange. A hacker exploited a vulnerability in the Poly Network and was able to transfer over $600 Million USD in various cryptocurrencies to personal wallets. Now, the hacker is slowly returning the coins to Poly, with the network saying that roughly $342 million had been returned.
The unidentified hacker says he was doing it “for fun” though it seems that this person or persons realized they may have bit off a bit more than they could chew. It remains to be seen if the Poly network will attempt to find the identity of the bad actor, but even with the coins being returned, it is likely law enforcement will be looking into this.
Instagram Rolling Out Features to Limit DM’s From People Who Don’t Follow You
I can’t believe this feature didn’t exist before this week, but Instagram will now let users stop people who don’t follow them from sending them DM’s. This feature comes in response to terrible messages sent to some Black players for England’s soccer team after their Euro 2020 loss earlier this year.
Again, how this feature didn’t already exist is beyond me. But it’s here now.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/11/22620052/instagram-limit-dm-comment-abuse-england-soccer
Amiga 500 Mini Console is coming
I played a fair number of Amiga games when I was a kid, and this one really speaks to me. The THEA500 Mini (the company does not have the rights to the Amiga name) is a tiny facsimile of the Amiga 500 computer from the late 1980’s. It will cost too much money ($140 USD) when it launches in 2022 but…. I want it.
https://www.engadget.com/retro-games-thea500-mini-commodore-amiga-500-console-131501091.html
Twitter Changed Its Font. The World Almost Ended
I couldn’t let this update pass without acknowledging that Twitter changed its font, considering that’s all that Twitter was talking about yesterday.
https://www.cnet.com/news/twitters-new-font-chirp-is-apparently-giving-some-users-headaches/