Pokémon Go. Or Don’t.
I uninstalled Pokémon Go this week. I share the opinion of Eevee himself that the game is inherently broken.
Don’t get me wrong. The game works at what it does really, really well. It’s a testament to the power of the franchise and the gamification system that even without servers always up, users are willing to wait and reload through game crashes.
That goodwill has itself started to crash down, with the frustration of issues with the app, how it’s getting used in the real world, and the broken distance counter, which if pushing some players over the edge..
It’s one thing for a useful feature to not work and get removed while it’s being worked on. It’s another thing for player workarounds to be called cheating when players are trying to be more involved with their gameplay.
When the game gets updated I may give it another shot. Until then, I’ll have more fun spending time with my friends who are playing and walking around, and in general being that old man who is aging out of the popular internet.
International Olympic Committee bans GIFs
Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing
The International Olympic Committee, which somehow gets away with corruption much better than FIFA, is ridiculously protective of its brand. To the point that they’ve expressly forbidden the creation of GIFs or other internet content around Olympic broadcasts.
Considering how much people still care about these games despite the mismanagement of an entire operation that was ostensibly created to celebrate competition and global unity, the IOC will get its way. If you’re a journalist and want to share a Vine of one of the events, you’ve been put on notice.
Meet Moxie Marlinspike, the Anarchist Bringing Encryption to All of Us
Andy Greenberg, Wired
I’ve never known much about the creator of Signal, but this Wired feature paints him as the consummate counter-culture hacker. The Signal protocol has been integrated into WhatsApp, and is getting added to other major chat platforms this year. Some of his views border on extremism, but he’s got the chops to back them up.
One of the world’s largest bitcoin exchanges lost $65 million in a hack
Josh Horwitz, Quartz
Bitcoin can’t seem to catch a break. All of the major exchanges have been attacked and most have suffered hacks or lost Bitcoin to thieves. Bitfinex, the third largest exchange in the world, suffered a loss of 119,756 coins, totalling about $65 million dollars.
Considering how many humps in the road that Bitcoin has had on the way to growing up into an adult currency, these issues are a testament to how resilient it is. The value fluctuates, but considering they’re even more made up than other currencies, the $590.83 USD value of each Bitcoin at time of writing is pretty impressive.
Apple joins the bug bounty party with $200,000 top prize
Iain Thomson, The Register
Yesterday at Black Hat, a security and hacker con in Las Vegas, Apple announced a bug bounty program aimed at iOS. Specifically, they want to have select researchers attempt to run arbitrary code on boot on iOS, infiltrate iCloud, or use sandbox data in a real world environment on an iOS device, all combined for a $200,000 pot.
This is very clearly a reaction to the claims that the FBI had outside help in hacking the iPhone 5C of the San Bernadino shooter, after Apple refused to write exploits themselves. Apple will probably never get to know for sure how the FBI did it, or if they even did, but this is a step in the right direction for the company to further secure the data of their customers.
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