Month: October 2016

Enlarge / Some of the CS:GO skins that can essentially be used as gambling chips on third-party sites.

This summer, as third-party gambling sites trafficking in Counter-Strike: GO skins began attracting public attention, Valve found itself the subject of two civil lawsuits accusing the company of aiding and abetting illegal gambling schemes. Now, Valve has been put on notice about a possible criminal complaint from the Washington State Gambling Commission (WSGC) for "facilitating" gambling activities through Steam.

In a letter sent to Valve earlier this month, the WSGC argued that third-party sites that let players gamble with their in-game skins are "facilitated within Valve Corporation’s Steam Platform" and that the sites "have Steam accounts and use the Steam platform to conduct their gambling transactions." The commission said it "expects Valve to take whatever actions are necessary to stop third-party websites from using 'skins' for gambling through its Steam Platform system" and said Valve risked "additional civil or criminal action" if it did not comply.

Earlier this week, in a response obtained by TechRaptor, Valve pushed back strongly against the Commission's accusations, arguing that merely providing a system for trading skins through Steam doesn't break any specific law. As it has in the past, Valve pointed out that it does not directly profit from this kind of skin trading, does not promote such third-party sites, and does not let users "cash out" their skins for real money.

Enlarge / A view inside the ExoMars control room as mission managers await a signal from Schiaparelli. (credit: ESA)

11:45am UK (6:45am ET), October 20: According to the ESA, it appears that the Schiaparelli lander jettisoned its parachute earlier than expected, and that the retrorockets that were meant to fire for about 30 seconds to slow the craft's descent only fired for three or four seconds. After the thrusters cut off, Schiaparelli continued to beam back telemetry data for 19 seconds. The likely scenario is that the probe crash landed at high speed, but investigations are ongoing.

13:20pm ET Update: As of the latest update from the ESA, there's no indication of any post-landing communication. Operators are planning on analyzing the signals they have to determine whether the lander was on the expected trajectory during descent, and expect to have more news tomorrow morning. The outlook is not terribly promising.

12:50pm ET Update: Some good news from Mars, as the in-space component of the ExoMars mission, the Trace Gas Orbiter, successfully reached orbit after a two-hour burn of its engine. This spacecraft will look for methane and other trace gases in the Martian atmosphere.

Enlarge / Sonder Design's e-ink keyboard, currently available for pre-order. (credit: Sonder Design)

New Macs are right around the corner, but the rumor mill is already looking ahead. According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Apple is said to be working on a customizable e-ink keyboard for future MacBooks. E-ink keycaps could easily be used to switch between multiple languages or give users easier access to macros and special characters like emoji. Apple reportedly plans to ship the keyboards in its computers beginning in 2018.

Apple is said to be working with Sonder Design on the concept—the Australian company's $200 Sonder Keyboard is currently available for preorder, and it can be viewed as a proof-of-concept for these future Mac keyboards. Sonder's styling is already reminiscent of Apple's standard chiclet keyboards, so it's not hard to imagine a future revision that actually ships with Apple's products. Apple is currently said to be in acquisition talks with Sonder.

Making standard hardware keyboards mimic the customizability and flexibility of iOS' software keyboard appears to be a major goal for Apple; new MacBook Pros, said to be coming at an event next week, will reportedly use a customizable OLED display bar in place of function keys. This approach might work for one row of keys, but an entire OLED keyboard would put a lot of pressure on a laptop's battery. E-ink is a more power-efficient way to accomplish the same goal.