Month: March 2022

Enlarge / Exoprimal is a promising-looking new co-op battler from Capcom, and it's not just coming to PlayStation consoles. (credit: Capcom)

If you didn't catch Sony's latest State of Play video presentation, which concluded earlier today on YouTube, consider this a quick guide to the presentation's best reveals of previously unknown games—along with mostly good news for enthusiasts outside the PlayStation console family, thanks to many cross-platform launch assurances.

Exoprimal (PS5, PS4, XSX/S, XB1, PC) — “2023”

This brand-new series sees Capcom entering the class-based co-op shooter universe, and the results look like a cross between Overwatch and Earth Defense Force. In Exoprimal, Earth has been overrun by, er, dinosaur outbreaks—so much so that TV weather reports revolve around whether or not a mysterious floating orb might emerge and dump hundreds of ravenous dinosaurs onto cities on a given day. To drive this point home, the trailer begins with a ridiculous number of velociraptors falling from the sky and stomping through city streets. Other dinosaur species soon follow. (I'm going to call that a "high-pressure system.")

Earth's mightiest mech-suit warriors show up during dino outbreaks in four-player co-op teams, each emphasizing familiar co-op battling roles (tank, DPS, etc.) and having their own special abilities to contend with waves of dinosaurs. While I wish this was somehow connected to Capcom's classic Dino Crisis series, the trailer didn't leave any space to make such a connection. Still, should this game feel anywhere as good as Capcom's better-every-year Monster Hunter series, it could be a welcome over-the-top co-op option.

Enlarge / What covering the latest Android releases feels like. (credit: Aurich Lawson / Ars Technica)

Android is going to have a busy month, and this is probably the new normal going forward. So listen up. On Monday, Android 12L exited beta and launched as the new stable build of Android, with some version strings calling it "Android 12.1." Today, Google is launching another Android beta, the smoothly named "Android 12 QPR3 Beta 1." We're also expecting the second developer preview for Android 13 any day now. That's three current Android releases, all existing simultaneously and giving various glimpses into the future.

You know how Chrome has three release channels called "Stable," "Beta," and "Dev?" Android looks like it's doing that now.

Android usually does a major release around October every year. Behind the scenes, there are also pushes for "Quarterly Platform Releases (QPR)" that usually don't get much promotion, though Google has started to pump up these releases for Pixel users by calling them "Pixel Feature Drops." This year's Android 12L is a special midcycle release focused on tablets, but it's also a souped-up Android 12 Quarterly Platform Release 2. Given the new API level and tablet changes, we can understand why 12L would have a three-month beta. But now Google is immediately launching Quarterly Platform Release 3 Beta 1, even though there aren't any drastic 12L-style changes in it.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | MirageC)

President Joe Biden today issued an executive order that could lead to the US creating a digital currency.

"My Administration places the highest urgency on research and development efforts into the potential design and deployment options of a United States CBDC [Central Bank Digital Currency]," the executive order said. "These efforts should include assessments of possible benefits and risks for consumers, investors, and businesses; financial stability and systemic risk; payment systems; national security; the ability to exercise human rights; financial inclusion and equity; and the actions required to launch a United States CBDC if doing so is deemed to be in the national interest."

Biden's order said a US-issued digital currency could be used to "support efficient and low-cost transactions, particularly for cross‑border funds transfers and payments, and to foster greater access to the financial system, with fewer of the risks posed by private sector-administered digital assets" such as bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. But there are "potential risks and downsides to consider," and Biden ordered federal agencies to prepare a report within six months analyzing the implications. Over 100 countries are already "exploring or piloting" CBDCs, the White House said.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Some websites just can't take "no" for an answer. Instead of respecting visitors' choice to block third-party cookies—the identifiers that track browsing activity as a user moves from site to site—they find sneaky ways to bypass those settings. Now, makers of the Brave browser are taking action.

Earlier this week, Brave Nightly—the testing and development version of the browser—rolled out a feature that's designed to prevent what's known as bounce tracking. The new feature, known as unlinkable bouncing, will roll out for general release in Brave version 1.37 slated for March 29.

Overriding privacy

Bounce tracking is one of the key ways websites circumvent third-party cookie blocking. When a browser prevents a website such as site.example from loading a third-party tracking cookie from a domain such as tracker.example, site.example pulls a fast one. When site.example detects that the tracker.example cookie can't be set, it instead redirects the browser to the tracker.example site, sets a cookie from that domain, and then redirects back to the original page or a new destination.