If you managed to get past the login queues(opens in new tab) for Final Fantasy 14: Endwalker and made your way through the main story, you might have stumbled upon some grapes. These grapes aren’t your typical grapes; truthfully, they’re more like crystal obelisks with the image of the spherical fruit plastered on each face. These grapes are low poly and proud.\
It wasn’t long after the new expansion’s launch that the grapes burst onto social media, with one user calling them, quite frankly, audacious(opens in new tab).
The hard-edged grapes are now famous, making their way into many memes on Reddit and Twitter. The low poly grapes can be anything: from the mother crystal in Final Fantasy 14’s grand story to the orbs worth pondering.
Spotify has released its eagerly anticipated Wrapped experience revealing the most listened to artists and albums for (most of) 2021. This year, it’s adding even more social media-friendly features that help you share your favorite music with a customized movie, aura, or playing cards. Naturally, you can share Spotify’s auto-created images on your timeline and, for the first time, directly to TikTok. It’s sure to spark discussions with friends and provide valuable marketing for Spotify that competitors like Apple and YouTube can’t seem to match.
Epic Games is introducing a new way to experience Fortnite that is focused on peaceful interaction with other players. It’s called Fortnite Party Worlds, and each location counts as a non-threatening social space “for players to hang out, play fun mini-games, and make new friends.”
Epic explains that Party Worlds are different to Hubs because they are simply places to socialize and relax without links being available to other islands. Meanwhile, Hubs are used as a discovery tool for islands and content.
Microsoft-owned GitHub experienced a more than two-hour long outage today, affecting thousands or potentially millions of developers that rely on its many services. GitHub started experiencing issues at around 3:45PM ET, with Git operations, API requests, GitHub actions, packages, pages, and pull requests all affected.
GitHub is now home to more than 73 million developers that rely on the service for version control via Git and hosting for software development. GitHub is a large code repository that has become very popular with developers and companies hosting entire projects and code on the service. Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and many other big tech companies use GitHub.
Mattel introduced its interactive Hello Barbie doll in 2015 but withdrew it after privacy concerns were raised about the recordings it made of the children who spoke to it.(Mark Lennihan / Associated Press)
Interactive toys and gadgets often collect a boatload of data about their users and their surroundings. Device manufacturers may convert the information into dollars by selling it to advertisers or data brokers. And even manufacturers that pledge never to share what they collect can’t guarantee that hackers won’t grab the data anyway.
Jen Caltrider, lead author of the Mozilla Foundation’s Privacy Not Included guide, said the privacy issues raised by smart devices range from the annoyance of targeted ads shadowing you around the web to the physical threat of someone stalking you with the help of a poorly designed Bluetooth tagger. There’s also the chance that weak data security by the manufacturer could allow criminals to steal your personal information or hack into the stream of information sent to and from the device.
Internet-connected devices that can see and hear come with the risk that they could snoop on their owners. That threat was one of the reasons Mattel discontinued its interactive “Hello Barbie” doll not long after it was released in 2015, in the wake of an outcry from security researchers and consumer advocates.
In what may be one of the better pieces of performance art this year, Australian Geoffrey Huntley has created a website that promises to let you torrent an entire blockchain’s worth of NFTs. It’s called, appropriately, The NFT Bay, and it’s an almost exact replica of the famous pirating site (with an added cheeky DMCA takedown link). As a site, it seems to do what it says on the tin, but as a statement it could spark an interesting discussion around what it means if you claim ownership over something on the internet.
Coding is both an in-demand and very valuable skill for Canadians, and frankly, people all over the world right now. This piece from SimpliLearn delves into it, noting that, “Employers may increase salaries up to 10 per cent for professionals who possess certain in-demand skills and abilities. The below skills are recognized as the most valuable in 2021 Canada. Coding skills stand out as leaders of this particular pack. So, if you have a strong technical background coupled with a passion for coding and the relevant certifications to back you up, you’re in a strong position in the technology job market.”
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