Month: March 2017

Location sharing is back in Google Maps. Google announced the addition of "real-time location sharing" to the Android and iOS apps, coming soon to an app store near you.

The process seems pretty simple: Open the navigation drawer and press the new "Share Location" button. You'll be able to send a sharing permission to a Google contact or send a link over a messaging app, and you'll be able to pick how long you want to share your location for—permanently or for a set time. Anyone you share to will get a notification from Google Maps, and they'll be able to see your location on the smartphone and Web versions of Google Maps. There's also a "share trip" button you can activate while navigating somewhere, so rather than sending someone an ETA, they can just see you drive around on the map.

Enlarge / Out of my way... that unlockable content is MINE!

Over the past week or so, Ubisoft's For Honor has faced criticism for the sheer amount of unlockable content it offers players, which one Reddit user calculated would cost over $700 or 5,200 gameplay hours to access. Ubisoft Montreal Game Director Damien Kieken addressed those concerns in a lengthy livestreamed video conversation. The main thrust of his argument? "We never had an intention for you to unlock everything in the game."

To Kieken, the idea of unlocking absolutely everything available in For Honor "doesn't really make any sense. We applied RPG mechanics on top of the game... it's like in an RPG, let's say World of Warcraft, you would never try to unlock everything for all the characters of the whole game. It's the same thing in any MOBAs, you're not trying to unlock all the content for all the heroes in your game."

It's interesting that Kieken compares the $60 For Honor to two genres that are usually free to play these days (or occasionally offered on a monthly subscription plan). Unlockable content in a fighting game like For Honor is also very different from that in an MMO, where finding and completing quests for new items and abilities is the overarching point.

Enlarge (credit: NASA)

The evidence for liquid water on the surface of Mars in the distant past is strong, but a discovery a few years ago provided a glimmer of hope that the wet stuff might still be making occasional appearances on the Red Planet. Fresh, dark streaks show up on steep slopes during the “warm” season, almost as if something wet is trickling downhill. To some researchers, however, these “recurring slope lineae,” which are a few meters wide and a few hundred meters long, look more like downward slides of destabilized sediment.

The question is, what could destabilize the sediment? The presence of briny water? (Water has been detected as a component of some of the minerals present, at least.) Could the thawing of carbon dioxide ice play a role? There is debate about which of these explanations can work and where water could possibly be coming from.

A new study led by Frédéric Schmidt of the University of Paris-Sud throws out a possible alternative that doesn’t involve thawing anything. If you’re holding out for water, you might consider that bad news, but it is at least a satisfyingly weird process.

(credit: Rego Korosi)

The controversy surrounding Google and YouTube advertising and extremist content has spread across the pond. According to a Bloomberg report, some of YouTube's biggest advertising customers, including Verizon and AT&T, have halted spending on display and other non-search advertising on the platform. The news comes days after a stream of UK companies pulled their ads from YouTube and Google's display ad network in response to a report from The Times that cited instances of UK government advertising running over extremist content.

Bloomberg reports AT&T and Verizon Communications Inc. have stopped all non-search advertising spending with Google, while Johnson & Johnson stopped all its global advertising on YouTube. AT&T said in a statement that it is concerned that its advertising may have appeared over "YouTube content promoting terrorism and hate," and it will not resume advertising "until Google can ensure this won’t happen again." Verizon has launched an investigation, presumably to find out if any of its ads appeared over extremist content.

The original report from The Times cited specific instances in which UK taxpayer-funded advertising ran over hateful, offensive videos, including those by American white nationalist David Duke. That revelation sparked many companies in the UK to remove their ads from Google platforms, forcing Google to examine its ad policies and implement new tools to give advertisers more control over where their ads go. However, there have been no other reports detailing instances in which ads from the companies named above ran over offensive content on YouTube or Google's Display Network.