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A presenter at BlackHat London has some bad news for you: the keyboard app built in to your Samsung phone may leave you open to attack. Paul Ducklin explains and offers some advice...

Bing, the perennial web search bridesmaid is finally going to encrypt your search data by default.

Almost every category of app considered vulnerable; passwords, addresses, photos, medical data all at risk

Not a single industry representative would agree on the most basic premise: that targets of facial recognition should opt in before companies identify them.

This daily Signal Boost is our attempt to give readers a morning head’s up on the news that will matter to Canadians interested in media, technology and telecom

Rageaholics, beware: the country's passed laws against swearing, be it online or in person, and that includes F-you emojis.

Vancouver-based company hopes the service will give people the chance to see the planet in a way that is only possible for those who've spent time in space

 

E3 2015’s final press conference is the catch-all PC Games event.

Blizzard will be in attendance. So will Valve software. And so will numerous other developers and publishers.

What will be shown? We can always hope that Valve’s long awaited Half-Life 3 will make an appearance at the show, but it’s likely that the focus will be on the free-to-play MOBAs DOTA 2, League of Legends and Heroes of the Storm.

“With more powerful and affordable hardware than ever before, thousands of games available through Steam, Origin and other platforms, and millions of viewers regularly watching esports online,” a release about the show says. “Now, for the first time, the PC platform will have its own event during E3, where the community will be able to celebrate this era with some of the biggest names in PC gaming and see the innovations that lie ahead.”

The event will be hosted by Sean ‘Day[9]’ Plott.

You will be able to see the show live at 8 p.m. ET 9 p.m. ET above. Follow along with our live chat below.

 

 

 

 

Unlike Facebook's "Photo Sync" feature, Moments is a separate photo app that doesn't upload anything until you tell it to. Paul Ducklin wonders how much safer you'll be from over-sharing your pics...

UK firm Intelligent Environments has developed an emoji alternative to numerical passcodes used in online banking.

Bethesda Softworks’ surprise announcement (and instant release) of Fallout Shelter during its E3 2015 press conference capably serves its intended purpose of promoting this fall’s hugely anticipated Fallout 4.

And it’s also kind of fun.

Available right now on iOS (and eventually on Android), it makes the player the manager of his or her own Vault, one of the franchise’s famed nuclear holocaust bunkers. After choosing its three-digit name you’ll set about filling it with inhabitants wandering in from the newly irradiated world.

Bethesda Softworks

As with many simulation games, play is essentially a big balancing act.

All rooms need power, so manning and upgrading the power station is a top priority. But in order to be happy and work at peak efficiency your little Vault dwellers need to drink (which also helps fight off radiation poisoning) and keep well fed, so its important to make sure some of your people are working in the water processing plant and at the diner.

And on top of all that, you’ll do well to ensure you place dwellers with specific skills – like strength, perception, intelligence, and charisma (this last is important for coupling and making babies) – in appropriate rooms where they can be properly exploited, reducing the waiting time necessary for the production of essential resources.

And so the game goes – until there’s a fire, or a radroach infestation, or a wasteland marauder invasion, which will force everyone in a given area to abandon their current tasks and work the emergency until they die or it gets fixed.

As your bunker’s population grows (time passes even when the app is closed) you can gradually expand, building more elevators and new types of rooms – a radio station to attract new dwellers from the wastes, a nuclear reactor for improved energy production – deep down into the earth.

Bethesda Softworks

Admittedly, it’s not the most original game around. Bethesda flat out said it was inspired by a free browser game called Progress Quest.

And it suffers from a variety of niggling issues that range from dwellers who don’t always do what they’re supposed to (my best armed people wouldn’t follow and keep attacking invaders as they roamed from room to room) to sucking on my phone’s battery like it was a bottle of Nuka Cola. Seriously. My iPhone 6 Plus went from fully charged to nearly completely drained over the course of about 90 minutes as I left the app open on my desk, occasionally interacting with it while I worked. It was almost stove hot by the end.

But it also has a wonderful charm, thanks in large part to its pretty presentation – the rooms are surprisingly deep, detailed, and bursting with activity – and plenty of recognizable Fallout elements, from the inclusion of bloatflies and mole rats encountered by your dwellers exploring outside the Vault to the retro-futuristic design of the living quarters and the dwellers themselves. It may not play like any Fallout game to come before, it definitely has Fallout in its DNA.

And there’s no question that it’s perfectly designed for a mobile play, letting you accomplish plenty – harvesting produced goods, naming babies, reassigning dwellers – even just in the 20 or 30 seconds it takes to ride the elevator downstairs for lunch.

Bethesda Softworks

In the end, though, the thing most likely to determine whether you stick with it is whether you cue to its free-to-play nature.

Bethesda explicitly said that it set out to develop a game they’d like to play, one that doesn’t push players to spend even though it’s free to download. But I wasn’t more than an hour or two into the simulation before I found myself enviously eying up the in-app purchases.

Here’s how they work.

As you play you’ll gradually earn bottle caps (Fallout’s standard currency) that can be spent on rooms and upgrades, find useful items like guns and outfits in the wasteland, and grow your population with babies and wasteland refugees. However, you can speed all of this up with reward-bearing cards found in lunchboxes. These random cards may bestow you with, say, a set of power armour, or a high level dweller who can quickly and easily repel invaders. They’re very useful.

Bethesda Softworks

 

Thing is, lunchboxes are only occasionally awarded for completing in-game tasks – like, say, making three dwellers pregnant, or successfully rushing the production of power or water 10 times. You’ll get a few lunchboxes early on containing valuable cards, but it isn’t long before the lunchbox rewards pretty much disappear, replaced with much less satisfying bottle cap bounties. The only surefire way to get a lunchbox once your population hits around 20 is to buy one for $1.19 (or in a slightly discounted bundle) in the game shop.

It’s easy to ignore the temptation at first, but after suffering a population-reducing radroach attack or two the lure becomes much stronger. Bethesda says you can complete the game without making any purchases, but I imagine a very long and frequently frustrating journey for anyone who tries.

As for me, I’ve purchased one lunchbox so far – a first for me in a game like this; I hate the idea of paying to win – and was satisfied with what I found inside: A level 40 dweller armed with a rifle and armour. Rare cards are, happily, guaranteed when you buy lunchboxes.

But whether I keep playing will depend largely on if I feel a perpetual urgent need to buy more lunchboxes.

Bethesda Softworks

Regardless of whether I stick with Fallout Shelter to the end, filling a bunker a couple of dozen stories deep with 100 bustling dwellers, I’ve definitely had some fun.

And there’s no denying it’s boosted my already strong sense of anticipation for Fallout 4. So as far as Bethesda is concerned it’s pretty much mission accomplished.

Twitter Inc.’s departing chief executive officer, Dick Costolo, says that while he’s confident in the current direction of the company, he also is willing to let the next CEO make the changes the person wants to make.

“Everyone on the board recognizes that the CEO needs to have the leeway to do what they need to do,” Costolo said at the Bloomberg Technology Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday. “We like the strategy that’s in place and we like the team that’s in place and until further notice will continue on that path.”

Related

• Jack Dorsey’s return to Twitter Inc: What the co-founder can learn from Steve Jobs, Howard Schultz and Michael Bregman
• Jack Dorsey gets his Steve Jobs moment in return as Twitter Inc CEO

Twitter has to recruit a leader who is willing to report to a board that has three former chief executives on it — Costolo and co-founders Jack Dorsey and Ev Williams. It’s an unusual setup, but something that Costolo says won’t get in the way of whoever gets the job.

“I don’t have any ego about, ‘You have to do this this way,’” he said. “If there’s one thing I’m aware of and self- aware about, it’s that there are so many ways to be successful.”

Costolo praised the leadership of two people on his team who may be internal candidates for the job – Adam Bain, president for global revenue, and Chief Financial Officer Anthony Noto. Costolo also said that Dorsey, the interim CEO who also leads Square Inc., has a “clarity” about Twitter’s product direction that will help the company stay on course.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQwlJzROy38&w=940&h=559]

Square-Enix follows Nintendo with its E3 2015 presentation, and has lots to show.

In addition to Western developed games such as Deus Ex, Hitman and Tomb Raider, Square-Enix also has a lot of Japanese games to highlight including Final Fantasy XV, Kingdom Hearts III and the just announced Final Fantasy VII remake.

After forgoing press briefings for several years, “Final Fantasy” and “Tomb Raider” publisher Square Enix is back organizing its own E3 event for Tuesday morning to detail such upcoming titles as “Just Cause 3″ and “Deus Ex: Mankind.”

“There’s so much written about E3, but this is a chance for fans to tune in live and see a 90-minute show from Square Enix where we talk about our future and our pipeline,” said Phil Rogers, Square Enix’s CEO for Europe and the Americas. “They can also watch it later. It’s the best chance for us to connect directly with our fans.”

You can watch the Square-Enix press conference above, which will start at 1 p.m. ET!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nintendo’s E3 2015 show is a bit different than those from Sony and Microsoft.

With the rise of streaming video, publishers now regularly bypass jaded journalists, analysts and other attendees in audiences to solicit eager online viewers with their upcoming wares.

In fact, for the past two years, Nintendo has entirely done away with a live event to instead stream game-related announcements in pre-recorded videos. That’s the plan this year, too.

The pre-recorded feed allows Nintendo to avoid having to compete to see who will “win” E3, the world’s most important video-game trade show.

On Sunday, Nintendo already showed that it could flip the script by promoting its new game Mario Maker in a three hour competition called the Nintendo World Championship.

That all said, it will be interesting to see what Nintendo highlights. They have already said that neither the new Zelda game nor the upcoming “NX” hardware will be shown, leaving the company with a relatively sparse lineup set for this fall.

Nintendo can, however, highlight the popularity of its surprise hit Amiibo toys which are selling out across North America.

The Nintendo Direct starts at noon eastern time. Join us live!

With a file from Associated Press

 

The popular password manager app LastPass just admitted to being hacked, and security experts are responding. 

The question at hand is: Does this mean that password managers are just as hackable as any other security program?

This is as especially important question because historically most security experts believed password managers — like LastPass — to be the safest way for people to maintain their online identities.

Related

• Microsoft just made a huge privacy move to make Bing more competitive with Google and Yahoo
• Anonymous is supporting a new privacy-focused social network that takes aim at Facebook's shady practices
• This is how the world's top security experts keep themselves safe online

Now experts aren’t so sure, and some are squaring off on forums like Twitter.

Here’s a rundown of some of the debates underway:

Digital culture expert Elizabeth Stark took issue with the practice of storing user passwords in a centralized place, such as LastPass’ servers (although it should be noted that this collection of data is encrypted, meaning it is highly unlikely it will be breached):

Reason # 23083493483 why centralized user data storage is broken. @onename @muneeb @ryaneshea

— elizabeth stark (@starkness) June 15, 2015

The ACLU’s principal technologist Christopher Soghoian responded in kind:

@starkness Wrong lesson. Right lesson: password reminders are a bad idea.

— Christopher Soghoian (@csoghoian) June 15, 2015

Here, Soghoian is saying that plain-text reminders that logically lead people to remembering their passwords ae more hackable and problematic than password managers as a whole.

CNNMoney’s Jose Pagliery disagrees:

@csoghoian @starkness @kragen No, I disagree. There's not a single lesson here. Password managers are not smart.

— Jose Pagliery (@Jose_Pagliery) June 15, 2015

But perhaps the most vexing issue at the core of this debate is: What is to be done? Does this mean that nothing is safe?

While no consensus was drawn, experts generally believe that not having a central repository of this data is best. Even better, some say, is storing this sort of encrypted password data locally.

Here are tweets from noted privacy experts Kenn White and Jillian York with a few recommendations:

Since folks have asked, I use 1Pass but not the cloud sync. Here are the 1P internal specs: https://t.co/t7fWkJUONE https://t.co/4bmvTjPRYt

— Kenn White (@kennwhite) June 15, 2015

maybe let your readers know of better alternatives like keepassx instead of shaming them https://t.co/zyHthQ7Rgh

— Jillian C. York (@jilliancyork) June 15, 2015

The general tenor is that this LastPass breach isn’t good, and even those who follow the most stringent practices don’t agree on the effect this could have.

But, in the end, there are a few things to learn from this saga.

SEE ALSO: A teenager who built a popular cyber bullying tool now wants to give it up — here’s why he had a change of heart

Mondays at E3, the video game industry’s most important annual trade show, tend to be a whirlwind of activity that can leave even the most seasoned watchers a bit dizzy from all the excitement, and this year was no different.

After Nintendo and Bethesda kicked off the Los Angeles show in fine style Sunday with glimpses of upcoming games including Super Mario Maker, Fallout 4, and Doom, Monday saw industry heavyweights Sony and Microsoft go head to head with mammoth events packed with dozens of games, with Electronic Arts and Ubisoft’s pressers squished in between.

MicrosoftHalo 5: Guardians, as seen in footage delivered at E3 2015.

Microsoft’s event was an avalanche of software that started with a closer look at what will certainly be the biggest Xbox One exclusive of 2015: Halo 5 Guardians. Thousands of attendees (and countless more watching livestreams from home and work) saw the sci-fi shooter’s 24-player multiplayer in action, got a better picture of how its drop-in co-op works, and watched actor Nathan Fillion reprise his role as Gunnery Sergeant Edward Buck from Halo 3: ODST – now promoted to Spartan class – in an extended demo.

The Halo presentation was swiftly followed by the announcement of Recore, a previously unknown sci-fi shooter with a distinct visual style from Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune and Armature, a company composed of developers who worked on the Metroid Prime games. Set to launch early next year, Recore extracted some of the loudest whoops of the morning.

The quickly moving event squeezed in perhaps a couple dozen other games.

Known entities included the Xbox One exclusive racer Forza Motorsport 6, multiplayer fantasy game Fable: Legends, hardcore RPG Dark Souls 3, and Rise of the Tomb Raider.

There were also reveals for a new first-person exploration from the Fullbright Company (of Gone Home fame) called Tacoma, a new pirate-themed multiplayer adventure from Rare dubbed Sea of Thieves, and the latest Gears of War game, called simply Gears 4 – though, in the first of several technical gaffes that happened at different events throughout the day, the streamed demo was so darkly lit that it was difficult for anyone outside the venue to properly see what was going on.

Screenshot from the new Gears of War. http://t.co/60VgMPpwtW

—
Daniel Kaszor (@dkaszor) June 15, 2015

Beyond games, Microsoft unveiled a pricey new “Elite” controller with a flat directional pad, swappable thumbsticks, and flat metal paddles on its underside that will sell for US$150 – likely more in Canada – and is clearly designed to appeal to the enthusiast market.

And, in a move that gently shook the Internet, Microsoft announced unexpected plans to make the Xbox One backwards-compatible with Xbox 360 games – though notably without explaining why this functionality wasn’t included when the system launched.

The American games giant also took a few moments to discuss its recently announced deal with virtual reality vendor Oculus to pair an Xbox One controller with every Rift headset.

It also shone the spotlight on its own internal HoloLens project via a lengthy demo in which the Microsoft-owned game Minecraft magically appeared on a square table, where the user was able to interact various elements of the environment while walking around it. Its futuristic, almost too-perfect demonstration prompted some – including Post Arcade’s own editor – to wonder just how real the demonstration was.

UbisoftMass Effect Andromeda, as seen in footage delivered at E3 2015.

A couple of hours later Electronic Arts took the spotlight, starting off its conference with a (teasingly brief) glimpse of the long-awaited next entry in the Canadian-made sci-fi RPG Mass Effect series, which revealed its name – Mass Effect Andromeda – and fourth-quarter 2016 release date, but not much more.

The California-based publisher’s ploddingly paced event – which went nearly 30 minutes longer than expected – meandered a bit after that.

It frequently switched between presentations for the latest entries in its bread and butter sports series – including NHL 16, Madden NFL 16, and Rory McIlroy PGA Tour 16 (the first sports game built using the company’s ballyhooed Frostbyte engine) – and entries in some of its major non-sports franchises, such as the long-in-the-making Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, which is set to be an origin story for protagonist Faith, and Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2, a sequel to 2013’s hit cartoon shooter that unexpectedly puts plants on the offensive against the zombies.

A major highlight for many in attendance – and many more watching remotely – was the appearance of aging soccer legend Pelé, who was briefly interviewed on stage during a presentation for FIFA 16. He discussed how he coined the now ubiquitous soccer descriptor “the beautiful game,” but didn’t say much about the video game he was there to help promote.

Another surprise was the announcement of Unravel, a beautiful looking side-scrolling platformer from Swedish indie developer Coldwood Studios starring a cute, unraveling textile hero named Yarney. Unofficially the most adorable game of the show thus far (and very unanticipated for EA, a studio better known for its testosterone-driven fare than any artsy games), it was given an impressive five or six minutes of prime stage time.

EA’s event wrapped with an in-depth look at this fall’s sure-to-be blockbuster Star Wars: Battlefront, including a lengthy snippet of in-game footage set during The Empire Strikes Back‘s iconic battle for Hoth, in which players were seen flying instantly recognizable Star Wars ships, piloting Imperial walkers, and running on foot – occasionally assisted by jetpacks that boosted soldiers 10 or 12 metres up off the ground.

UbisoftSouth Park: The Fractured but Whole, as seen in footage delivered at E3 2015.

With EA’s event running longer than usual, in-person attendees had only 30 minutes to hike to Ubisoft’s event down the block and across the street and find seats.

Capably hosted for the fourth year in a row by TV personality Aisha Tyler, Ubisoft’s show began with the announcement of a sequel to 2014’s beloved South Park: The Stick of Truth. Introduced on stage by series creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the superhero themed South Park: The Fractured but Whole will apparently not be developed by Obsidian, the studio responsible for the original.

Known for using E3 as a platform to reveal new projects, Ubisoft took the wraps of three additional previously unknown games, including For Honor – a new multiplayer medieval combat game from the publisher’s Montreal team – a new entry in the sci-fi themed Anno city building series called Anno 2205, and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands, an open world military shooter with impressive looking scope.

In fact, the Tom Clancy brand was heavily leveraged at Ubisoft’s show this year, with extended play demos for the already well known and highly tactical team-based shooter Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege (a beta is finally coming on September 24) and the massively multiplayer Tom Clancy’s The Division, which – in its third straight appearance at E3 – showed a team of humans making decisions together about whether to attack or work together with other groups of players they came across on the virus-ravaged streets of New York. Ubisoft finally provided a release date for the latter: March 8, 2016.

Of all the games shown at Ubisoft’s event it was Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate that had the most riding on it, especially given its predecessor’s controversial and maligned launch last fall. The non-live demo at Ubisoft’s presser showed much of what had already been announced in May, including a gorgeous 19th century London covered with the soot of industry, new protagonist Jacob Frye’s brawler style of fighting, and horse-drawn carriages that players can both ride and fight atop.

Once Ubisoft’s event ended weary gamers were given a couple of hours break before Sony’s presser began at 6:00 p.m. P.T., enough time to rest up for what proved to be the fastest paced event of the day.

Sony

Sony’s show started off with subtle force via in-game footage of the often discussed but rarely seen The Last Guardian, which was first announced six years ago at E3 2009. The lengthy demonstration made it appear very much like Team Ico’s original hit Ico (and less like its follow-up Shadow of the Colossus), with an exhilarating yet somehow poetic tone.

The surprises kept coming after that, beginning with a first look at a new Hitman game – titled simply Hitman – via a very impressive looking cinematic trailer that played as much like an ad for a movie as one for a game.

Then came a brand new piece of intellectual property from Guerrilla Games (makers of Killzone) called Horizon: Zero Dawn set in a distant, post-apocalyptic future and starring a fur-clad woman battling machine animals. No release date was provided.

Not long after, LittleBigPlanet originator Media Molecule took to the stage to finally show off its often whispered about but never before seen project, a game called Dreams that lets players create anything – 3D games, music, plays, art – from scratch using a motion-based controller interface.

But perhaps the biggest shocks of the night were a pair of Japanese games.

The first was a remake of Final Fantasy VII, a deeply iconic adventure for just about anyone who played games in the 1990s. A brief but striking cinematic trailer elicited some of the loudest cheers and applause of the night, if not the whole day. It will arrive first on PlayStation 4.

The Final Fantasy news was immediately followed by an announcement for a Kickstarter campaign for a second sequel in cult-hit action-adventure RPG franchise Shenmue. Series creator Yu Suzuki unapologetically used Sony’s E3 stage as a platform for Shenmue III‘s Kickstarter, and it seems to have had the desired effect. The campaign – which is asking for a modest $2 million – landed more than $500,000 in backer funds in the 45 minutes between its announcement and the end of the event. By the morning after it had raised a whopping $$2,185,491 (and still climbing). We’ll follow this fascinating story as it continues to unfold.

Several already known wares found their way onto Sony’s stage as well, including footage for Call of Duty: Black Ops III (Activision now clearly favours the swifter-selling PlayStation 4 over Xbox One), the about-to-hit-store-shelves Batman Arkham Knight, Destiny‘s upcoming third DLC called Destiny: The Taken King, the surprisingly PlayStation 4-exclusive Street Fighter V, and a quick look at several games currently in development for Sony’s virtual reality offering, Project Morpheus.

Perhaps the most engaging PlayStation 4 demonstration among those that were expected was a thrilling look at Hello Games’ epic space exploration game No Man’s Sky, Creator Sean Murray picked a random procedurally generated star system from a starscape of thousands, informing us that no one on his team had ever visited it before. He travelled to it, landed on a nearby planet, and began exploring its desolate surface. The sense that he – and the audience – was exploring a new world no one had ever seen before was palpable. Sadly, there’s still no release date for this one.

Sony’s presser ended with a long and inarguably spectacular look at Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. The demo unfortunately crashed and restarted, but once it got going there was no stopping it. Series hero Nathan Drake and his aging pal Sully careened through the narrow streets of a hilly seaside village in a jeep, trading playful barbs all the while. It looked to be pretty much exactly what series fans expect and want from an Uncharted game.

However, despite Sony’s heavy volleys, no clear and absolute winner emerged from Monday’s press conference fracas. Save perhaps the players, who, after Monday’s reveals, have plenty to look forward to not only this fall but in 2016 and beyond.

SCEAUncharted 4: Among Thieves, as seen in footage delivered at E3 2015.

Here's a candidate for the Facebook Hall of Stupid Posts fame: a robber who, though he took the time to wear a mask to cover his face, then posted a thinly veiled confession online.

How to teach 5-year-olds that people online aren't always who they say they are, that older kids don't have to suffer bullying in silence, and much more.

This daily Signal Boost is our attempt to give readers a morning head’s up on the news that will matter to Canadians interested in media, technology and telecom

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBM5nzJ5Bws&w=940&h=559]

 

Sony and PlayStation are continuing E3 2015 in the traditional 9 p.m. slot for the Japanese company.

Sony has many things it could show at this E3, including possibly the long-ago announced Last Guardian.

We will almost certainly see information about the key Sony title Uncharted 4, as well as a look at the new Destiny expansion.

Call of Duty, which was absent from the Microsoft press conference, may make a surprise appearance at Sony’s show.

Over the past 20 years, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, which takes over the Los Angeles Convention Center on Monday, has solidified itself as an attention-seeking extravaganza for the video game industry. Hundreds of game publishers and developers will hype forthcoming software and hardware through Thursday by employing everything from star-studded parties to scantily clad models.

In an attempt to cut through the noise, a few exhibitors aren’t merely erecting eye-catching booths within the cavernous Convention Center. They’re adding to the already overflowing schedule by holding their own press conferences.

With a file from Associated Press