Month: June 2018

Nathan Mattise

LOS ANGELES—Ubisoft held a press conference at E3 today to show off its upcoming slate of games. As is usually the case with Ubisoft, the conference was heartfelt, zany, and high on showmanship. The company announced very few new games, but it went deeper on a few that players have been anticipating from big franchises.

Here's what they covered.

LOS ANGELES—Ubisoft didn't do a great job hiding Assassin's Creed Odyssey ahead of this year's E3, thanks to a leaked promotional keychain of all things. But the game's developers at Ubisoft Quebec redeemed the company by hiding the bigger news: that this annual Assassin's Creed update actually feels ambitious.

Monday's Ubisoft press conference saw the company telling players to "live your Odyssey" starting October 5 on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Windows PC. Before that announcement, Ubisoft was gracious enough to give us nearly an hour of hands-on time with a pre-release build. That much time wasn't enough to confirm all of the developer's lofty claims, but it was enough to see serious Witcher-like aspirations for the series' first true "open world RPG."

Son (or daughter) of Nikolas

Ubisoft Quebec

Enlarge (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Tesla has begun rolling out a new version of its software, version 2018.21.9, that is stricter about requiring drivers to keep their hands on the wheel.

Previous versions of the software allowed drivers to take their hands off the wheel for one to two minutes before reminding them to put them back on the wheel—a measure designed to make sure drivers were paying attention to the road. The new update dramatically shortens this interval, with videos showing warnings popping up after around 30 seconds.

Tesla has tightened up the rules at least once before—in late 2016. That was a few months after Tesla customer Josh Brown died in a crash in Florida earlier that year. Brown had had his hands off the wheel for several minutes before the crash. Since late 2016, Tesla vehicles have been programmed to come to a gradual stop if a customer ignores too many warnings.

Enlarge / Washington State Capitol building in Olympia, Washington. (credit: Getty Images | Richard Cummins)

The State of Washington today became the first US state to impose a net neutrality law that replaces the nationwide regulations repealed by the Federal Communications Commission.

Washington's legislature and governor approved the new law three months ago and arranged for it to take effect as soon as the FCC finalized its repeal. The FCC repeal was finalized today, so Washington's state law has gone into effect.

The Washington state law prohibits home and mobile Internet providers from blocking or throttling lawful Internet traffic and from charging online services for prioritization. The rules will be enforced by the state attorney general under Washington's Consumer Protection Act.

Enlarge / Hi there, Chloe. (credit: Quantic Dream)

For all the problems we had with Detroit: Become Human's storytelling (and they were myriad), the game does offer one surprisingly affecting choice at the end of the first playthrough. Apparently, that choice was a little too affecting for many players, leading developer Quantic Dream to "follow the popular vote" and introduce a patch to change the story in a way that blunts the emotional impact significantly.

(WARNING: The rest of this post necessarily involves major spoilers for some side stories in Detroit: Become Human. The moments discussed don't impact the main, player-driven story involving Connor, Kara, and Markus, though. You have been warned).

Throughout the first playthrough of Detroit, a fully animated and voiced android named Chloe serves as your guide to the game's menu systems. During that playthrough, she reacts to your in-game decisions and events whenever you return to the main menu, occasionally questioning your take on some of the game's blunt philosophical issues. Her emotional reactions in these "out-of-game" sections add an interesting perspective to the often unsubtle plotting on hand in Detroit itself.

Ron Amadeo

LOS ANGELES—Square-Enix kept its E3 2018 presentation short and sweet, with a focus on trailers for games in the company's popular franchises, like Kingdom Hearts and Tomb Raider. Here's what the company showed and announced.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Square-Enix opened with Tomb Raider. The third game in a reboot that began with 2013's Tomb Raider is slated for release on September 14. The game is titled Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and we got some hands-on time with it already earlier this year. In it, Lara must grapple with the consequences of accidentally inciting the Mayan apocalypse while battling a paramilitary organization.

Enlarge (credit: Xaume Olleros/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Federal authorities announced Monday that they had "disrupted" what they call "Business Email Compromise" schemes, which involve a malicious actor sending a phishing email and somehow convincing employees with access to a company’s financial credentials to transfer money fraudulently. The FBI added that $2.4 million dollars was seized, while $14 million in "fraudulent wire transfers" was recovered.

Seventy-four people were arrested worldwide, including 42 in the United States, 29 in Nigeria, and three others in Canada, Mauritius, and Poland.

"Fraudsters can rob people of their life's savings in a matter of minutes," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. "These are malicious and morally repugnant crimes. The Department of Justice has taken aggressive action against fraudsters in recent months, conducting the largest sweep of fraud against American seniors in history back in February."

Enlarge (credit: Thomas Trutschel / Getty Images News)

The value of bitcoin and many other digital currencies fell to their lowest levels this year after South Korean exchange Coinrail said a hack over the weekend stole virtual coin estimated to be worth more than $37 million.

In a post published Monday morning, Coinrail said hackers obtained about 30 percent of its coin and token reserves. The stolen coins included those designated as NPXS, ATX, NPER, and DENT. A wallet address reportedly belonging to the attackers showed the value of the pilfered coins was as much as $37 million. Coinrail’s statement said officials took the exchange offline and moved the remainder of its assets to cold storage as officials review the security system and work with law enforcement to investigate what happened. The statement made no mention of if or how the exchange might reimburse customers for the losses.

The price of bitcoin was trading down about 6 percent on Monday morning, according to Coinbase. As Ars reported Sunday, bitcoin had already lost more than half its value since last year’s all-time high. The price of Ethereum and many other digital currencies also fell on Monday after experiencing declines over the past month or two.