Month: December 2022

Enlarge / Artist's conception of the FTC standing over a pile of Epic Games fines.

Epic Games will pay over half a billion dollars to settle two FTC complaints regarding the company's use of children's private information and its use of "dark patterns" to encourage accidental in-game purchases. The penalties—which the FTC says are some of the largest imposed in the organization's history—also come with imposed changes to the way Epic handles purchases and player interactions in its online games.

Copping to COPPA, bringing light to “dark patterns”

The FTC's first complaint alleged that Fortnite "failed to comply with the COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) Rule’s parental notice, consent, review, and deletion requirements." The alleged violations included turning voice and text chat features on by default for young players, as well as publicly broadcasting their account names in the game.

Epic has recently changed those policies, implementing default settings for players under 18 that limit chat, hide usernames, and allow joining of parties by "invite only." Epic also pointed to this month's rollout of "cabined accounts," which limits full access to online features for young children's accounts until they are verified by an adult.

Enlarge / Three hours after the coolant leak was initially detected Wednesday night, it remained ongoing. (credit: NASA TV)

After working through the weekend to better characterize damage to its Soyuz spacecraft attached to the International Space Station, Russian specialists have decided to take no immediate action.

In a lengthy statement published Monday morning by Roscosmos (a VPN is required to access the site from Western nations), the Russian space corporation said it believed that a tiny piece of debris ruptured an external cooling loop that radiates heat from inside the Soyuz into space.

Working with NASA on Sunday to operate the long Canadarm2 manipulator arm, Russian specialists were able to get a clear look at the damaged area on the aft end of the Soyuz spacecraft. The area of the hole is about 0.8 mm across, which, although small, allowed all of the coolant in the external loop to be dumped into space last Wednesday. Importantly, the visual inspection discovered no other notable damage to the Soyuz vehicle from the debris strike.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

Elon Musk polled Twitter users yesterday on whether he should remain as the company's CEO and claimed he would abide by the results. The poll concluded with 17.5 million votes, with a large majority urging Musk to step down.

"Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll," Musk wrote. The "Yes" option was selected by 57.5 percent of poll respondents.

Musk hasn't confirmed whether he will actually step down. "The question is not finding a CEO, the question is finding a CEO who can keep Twitter alive," Musk wrote last night after posting the poll. "No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor," he also wrote in response to a tweet speculating that he "already has the new CEO picked out."