Google Play Store Deal Frustrates Critics, Will Leave Intact Heavily-Criticized Commissions

Ironwood Studios’ Pacific Drive is a road trip game about taking a drive through a disintegrating, irradiated reality; it’s as if American Truck Simulator was set in a lonely, survivalist version of Fallout. Transported — either accidentally or on purpose, it’s not clear — into the Olympic Exclusion Zone somewhere among the wooded slopes of the Pacific Northwest, the nameless player character must pilot a dilapidated station wagon deeper into this territory, where gravity and matter obey their own rules.

Civil liberties advocates are mounting a new challenge to the use by police of Google search data for help solving criminal cases, as the practice draws greater scrutiny nationwide. After a Pennsylvania woman was raped in 2016, police submitted a search warrant to Alphabet's Google for information about users who had typed the victim's name or address into the search engine in the week leading up to the attack, according to court papers. Google responded with the IP address of a user who had searched for the victim's address twice shortly before the incident, court papers show. That breakthrough prompted police to begin monitoring a corrections officer, who was ultimately arrested and convicted.

The PS Store's January Sale got started part way through December, and it was already enormous, but how about thousands more deals? That's what Sony's now offering, having just extended the sale with just over 2,000 more PS5 and PS4 games. Discounted until 17th January, the range of titles included is massive, as you can see via psprices.

Nosferatu isn't anything like his last bloodsucker movie, Shadow of the Vampire, says Willem Dafoe – despite them both centering on the titular creature of the night.

 A new crop of artificial intelligence startups has shaken up Silicon Valley — and the wider business world — throughout this year, but there's one thing that hasn't changed: Big Tech still wields power. In the wake of Microsoft Corp.'s $10 billion investment in OpenAI in January, other tech giants raced to partner with leading AI startups through funding and cloud computing deals. Salesforce Inc. led a round in Hugging Face at a $4.5 billion valuation. Alphabet Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. invested billions in OpenAI rival Anthropic. And Nvidia Corp. seemed to back almost every AI startup of note. 

Google has agreed to settle a consumer privacy lawsuit seeking at least $5 billion in damages over allegations it tracked the data of users who thought they were browsing the internet privately. The object of the lawsuit was the "incognito" mode on Google's Chrome browser that the plaintiffs said gave users a false sense that what they were surfing online was not being tracked by the Silicon Valley tech firm. But internal Google emails brought forward in the lawsuit demonstrated that users using incognito mode were being followed by the search and advertising behemoth for measuring web traffic and selling ads.

Sony has announced the lineup of games for PlayStation Plus in January 2024, bringing some new highlights to the steadily updated service. PS Plus is first and foremost a subscription to online PlayStation features, making it possible to access multiplayer servers for plenty of games across Sony systems. The PS Plus game catalog is also a major draw, however, making it easy for subscribers to consistently access new experiences that are offered as a general perk as long as a subscription is active.

Today, we’re happy to reveal the inaugural PlayStation Plus Monthly Games lineup of 2024. January’s titles of A Plague Tale: Requiem, Evil West and Nobody Saves the World will be available to PlayStation Plus members on Tuesday, January 2 until Monday, February 5. Let’s take a closer look at each game. 

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Sony has launched PlayStation Store’s Holiday Sale.

Google has agreed to pay $700 million in an antitrust settlement with US state attorney generals.

As the year comes to a close, Google has rolled out several new features to Google Maps in India. This move aims to enhance the overall user experience of the app as well as set the base for the next year and beyond. One of the standout features of this expansive update is the Lens integration which leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to make searching things easier. It is the latest in line with a slew of AI features rolled out onto the platform lately. Rumours have also hinted that the tech giant might be planning to roll out an AI chatbot in Maps, but more about that later. Check out all the new AI-powered features rolled out in Google Maps such as Lens in Maps, Live View walking navigation, and more.