Light Start: Saving an iPhone, Minecraft banhammer, pirates are coming, and Riot listens

Taking the IP rating to new levels

You’ve probably heard about an IP rating by now. When you buy a flagship smartphone, you’ll notice it’ll mention an IP68 rating. That’s usually followed by an asterisk with some small print at the bottom saying the device is rated for 30 minutes submerged at 1.5m in room temperature water in a controlled lab environment. With that in mind, imagine the surprise of one lad when the iPhone he lost ten months previously was handed back to him in working condition.

According to a BBC report, Owain Davies went canoeing in Gloucestershire, England in August last year. When he tried to stand in his canoe, the iPhone in his back pocket went for a dip with him. But it sank better than he did. In most cases that’ll ruin your day and then, once you’ve gone through the stages of grief, you’ll say your goodbyes and replace it. Davies was lucky then that one Miguel Pacheco saw his iPhone, fished it out of the water and went through considerable effort to dry it out and return it. That was after ten months in the drink. So maybe don’t give up the next time your device goes for a swim.

Source: BBC

Microsoft will ban you from online Minecraft if you're naughty

Microsoft’s next update of Minecraft will add player chat reporting to make removing the scum from private servers easier. About a week ago, the company rolled out a pre-release version of the 1.19.1 update. The update, which goes live for players tomorrow, 28 June, will include the ability to report players that abuse the chat system. Those reported could, after moderator review, face bans to online play and to multiplayer servers. While this does include private servers, Microsoft says its team of highly trained moderators will only consider the worst offenders that directly violate Minecraft End-User Licence Agreement and Terms of Service for the banhammer.

The new help page, that aims to shed a bit more light on the topic, explains that most of these moderator bans will be temporary with the permanent bans being reserved for the “the most severe violations of our Community Standards.” The page also stipulates that the reports must be made by a human player and will be reviewed by a human moderator. While this should help against false positives, we feel sorry for those that have to sift through the chat-log equivalent of an outhouse bucket. Chat-log tends to take on a whole new meaning.

Source: Ars Technica

Swashbuckler Skull and Bones could be around the corner

Originally revealed at E3 in 2017, Skull and Bones was to be Ubisoft’s new IP that capitalised on the success that Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag found in 2013. Delays and setbacks have plagued the game since then. With Ubi’s lack of communication around the title, many gave up hope of it ever being released. Well, the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) has just given the title a rating, “Mature”. Which could mean that we might actually get a new pirate game before too long. According to the short description on the ESRB website, “players [will] take on missions”, “engage in dramatic sea battles”, and “command their crew to shoot cannons at rivals”.

This rating, together with the ratings received in Brazil and Australia, could mean we’ll see the game sooner than later. The rumours out of Ubisoft’s office only serve as fuel for the hype train. Those say the company will re-release the game next week with a potential release date and gameplay footage. According to GamesRadar, the Brazil ratings board said the game will be released across PC, PS5, Xbox Series S and X consoles and on Google Stadia. Our timbers are ready for shivering.

Riot Games needs to learn some boundaries

Riot Games, developer of League of Legends and Valorant, already have one of the most invasive anti-cheat programs out there. It involves a kernel-level driver (one with complete control of your system) and needs to be running in order to play. That has proven tough to beat for cheaters but doesn’t really help against toxic players that abuse voice or text chat. Well, from 13 July, Riot Games will start monitoring players’ voice comms as well. Riot’s update will, should you accept it, allow the company to “record and potentially evaluate voice data when using Riot-owned voice comms channels”. In the name of fighting hate speech and harassment, of course.

But that’s only coming later this year. First, Riot wants to use your voice data to train its voice models upon which the system will be based. It’ll only be looking at english-speaking Valorant players in North America for this. We don’t have any local Valorant servers here so if you choose to connect to US servers (we don’t know why you would) you could be listened to.

Source: The Verge