Apple’s got a big week ahead
Apple, preferring not to be left out of the conversation so dominated by Samsung at the beginning of the year, plans to reveal the iPhone SE 4 soon, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports. We’ll have to wait for Apple to confirm an official release date – though Gurman says it will still be released this February. If Gurman is correct, Apple could be targeting a reveal as soon as this week.
Unlike the Big Fruit Company’s flagship devices that ship globally like clockwork, the entry-level SE range takes things at a slower pace. The third-gen SE was first released in 2022, for which fans have eagerly awaited a sequel for years. It’s also going to avoid the usual fanfare, with a simple announcement planned for Apple’s website and maybe a video if we’re lucky.
The fourth-gen SE will introduce many of the changes Apple has brought to its flagship devices, including a USB-C charging port, an in-house chipset, Face ID, and possibly even a Dynamic Island that was first introduced on the iPhone 14 Pro. The change to USB-C is arguably the most important of the lot – allowing the device to be sold in Europe, whose EU regulations disallowed the selling of the SE 3 due to its lightning port.
A quiet weekend with God of War
It was a tough weekend for gamers, particularly those in the PlayStation domain. On Friday evening, Sony’s PlayStation Network (PSN) suffered a major outage that saw millions of players lose access to the servers, unable to play their online games, and with more Vitamin D than they knew what to do with. The outage lasted nearly 24 hours before Sony finally copped to the issue and announced that service had been restored.
The ‘dark hours’ saw players unable to access trophy lists, visit or purchase from the PSN store, and without a secure line to their online games. Many had to make do with their single-player libraries, though players whose consoles weren’t set as their ‘Primary’ console before the outage were left with a PlayStation-shaped paperweight and ravenous fingers asking the question: “When can we get back onto Fortnite?”
“Network services have fully recovered from an operational issue. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank the community for their patience,” PlayStation said in a post on X at 07h07 on Sunday morning. “All PlayStation Plus members will automatically receive an additional 5 days of service.”
It’s that last bit that’ll interest most folks. Despite the outage lasting less than 24 hours, PlayStation said that it would credit every active PS Plus member’s account with five extra days of the subscription service. Many recalled the 24-day-long outage in 2011, hoping for similar compensation that included a choice of games and a month of PS Plus for free. No such luck this time, we’re afraid.
Magic gathers its forces for a big-screen adaption
Hasbro Entertainment has long since suckled at the teet of the Transformers franchise, and it wants to keep those cheques rolling in. As such, Hasbro and Legendary Entertainment have come together to finally bring Magic: The Gathering (MTG) to theatres and home cinemas, according to Deadline.
These are still early days, so news of casting and directing is likely still years out, though a general plan has been established – with a film arriving first before a TV series lands to expand the universe. If you’re behind, MTG is a real-life card-trading deck-builder game that sees customers buy ‘packs’ for the shot of nabbing decent cards, ala Pokémon. It’s a sensation that’s garnered 50 million fans since it first launched way back in 1993.
There’s no shortage of content to adapt from the MTG universe, the storyline of which has spanned several decades, and shows no sign of slowing down. Whether it’ll actually grace the big screen… remains to be seen. Longtime MTG fans will know that many studios have tried and failed to adapt the franchise. Netflix has its own deal in place to produce an MTG series, which has finally gone into production after a years-long stall.
‘Actually, let’s be evil’ – Google, probably
We’re all very aware of Google’s famous and all-encompassing “Don’t be evil” pledge – which made it into the company’s code of conduct, before the phrase was unceremoniously scrubbed, apparently taking Google’s values with it. As if that wasn’t ominous enough, Google’s latest changes to the very principles upon which it builds AI are enough to strike true terror. Can you guess where we’re going with this?
Google’s responsibilities once involved promises that the search giant would not develop AI for “weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people,” and “technologies that gather or use information for surveillance violating internationally accepted norms.” Yeah, those sentiments are now gone, suggesting that something has changed, likely for the worse.
That doesn’t mean Google is currently involved in the development of weapons, nor that its AI tech is furthering the field. But the alterations to its principles are an indication (perhaps even an advertisement) that it’s more than willing for that to change in the future, likely if the price is right. Short of a full-blown protest and subsequent ebbing of its products, there isn’t anything we can do about it.
Happy Monday, folks!
