Gaming in Israel. Reviews, Walkthroughs, News

Apple and Google have temporarily shut down live traffic data in Google Maps, Waze, and Apple Maps in Israel and the Gaza Stripfollowing a request from the Israeli military, Bloomberg reports.

With just a touch of bravado, the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (or Europol) has announced «a major blow» to the Ragnar Locker ransomware group. To you and me, that name is mostly familiar because of the organisation's 2020 attack on Capcom, which saw it demand $11 million and affect around 400,000 people's data. 

European police have «taken down» the gang of ransomware attackers responsible for 2020's high-profile Capcom hack, which saw confidential employee information and details on a swathe of upcoming games splashed across the internet.

The ransomware group responsible for a Capcom data breach in 2020 has been “taken down” in an international police operation, with its key member arrested.

Elon Musk has a bone to pick with another nonprofit: Wikipedia. Over the weekend, the Twitter/X owner took several swipes at the encyclopedia site and its operator, the Wikimedia Foundation, accusing it of alleged bias and routinely asking users for donations. 

Roche Holding AG's lung cancer drug scored a big win against a standard therapy in a study this week. Now, the Swiss drugmaker is turning to artificial intelligence to find patients who can benefit. 

Meta and Google have pulled out of the Web Summit, one of the tech sector's biggest annual events, after the organizer criticized Israel's actions following the Hamas attacks, the companies said on Friday.

War Thunder’s big Kings of Battle update is on the way, and Gaijin Entertainment has begun revealing some of what’s to come, with a new teaser and details.

Sony and Devolver Digital have each made respective donations towards humanitarian aid charities amid the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict.

Add Innersloth to the list of developers that are aiding in relief for Palestinians currently trapped in Gaza. 

Police across Europe may have dealt a major blow to the cybercriminal gang behind the ransomware strain Ragnar Locker. 

The most popular posts on Twitter/X that are pushing misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war are largely coming from verified accounts, according to a new study.

PlayStation parent company Sony has donated $2 million towards humanitarian aid for those affected by the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Sony is donating $2m (£1.65m) to support humanitarian aid in Israel and Gaza, as hostilities in the region continue, and casualties mount.

Cult of the Lamb and Wizard with a Gun publisher Devolver Digital took to X (formerly Twitter) last night to share that it had made a donation to United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) providing aid to Palestinian refugees. The publisher shared the UNRWA link and encouraged others to do the same, if they are able. The donation amount was not listed.

Due to the Israel-Hamas war, there is a lot of misinformation and hate speech circulating on social media and that is poisoning digital space, forcing tech majors to step in and stop this from acquiring bigger proportions. To safeguard people and discard harmful content, Meta has introduced a new update to Facebook in which users in the affected region may change their comment settings and utilize the profile locking tool to protect their Facebook account. Know more about the changes here.

With Twitter's blue checkmark no longer conveying as much authority as it used to, the service's Community Notes feature is perhaps the next best way to know if what you're reading in a tweet is legit. But where are these crowd-sourced posters getting their data?

Indie job board Work With Indies has pledged to donate 100 percent of revenue made during October to organizations providing humanitarian assistance to families in Palestine.

The US Department of Commerce has announced new export restrictions on a range of Nvidia GPUs, with the focus primarily on preventing shipments to China. Predictably, the list of chips acquiring export-contraband status include Nvidia AI-optimized hardware. But a gaming GPU has made the list for the first time, too. Yup, no more GeForce RTX 4090 cards for China.

In the future, new users to Twitter/X may have to fork over $1 per year to tweet. 

Israel is following Ukraine in tapping SpaceX’s Starlink to supply wartime communications.

The wave of artificial intelligence (AI) has taken the world by storm. Over the last few months, we've seen significant developments in the field, ranging from AI chatbots, and image generators to essential tools for various sectors. AI-integrated apps offer more functionality with smart features, enabling users to get their work done more efficiently while keeping the quality high. Consequently, people are preferring AI-based apps over non-AI apps. A recent report has revealed that even Mac users are welcoming AI-powered apps with open arms, and the majority of them believe them to be superior to other apps.

Since the emergence of OpenAI's ChatGPT in November 2022, artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots have become extremely popular around the world. This technology puts the whole world's information just a prompt away to tailor as you please. Now, you can even get on Google Search, enter your query and find the answer you've been looking for. Simply ask the AI chatbot and it will present you the answer in a flash. However, the content that AI chatbots present are not always factual and true. In a recent case, two very popular AI chatbots, Google Bard and Microsoft Bing Chat have been accused of providing inaccurate reports on the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Some artificial intelligence programs are marking images from the war in Israel and Palestine as fake, despite them being real photographs depicting real horrors taking place.

Actor Tara Strong will be recast from the independent animated show Boxtown. This comes as her recent Twitter activity sparks controversy, particularly her liking of a tweet that equated all Muslims to Hamas and ISIS, and also read, "Islam is a real, clear and present danger."

It’s a sad time for the world. Just when there was a chance of a thawing in the Middle East, the awful attacks in Israel and retaliation in Gaza have frozen hopes of peace and progress. It has set us all back 50 years. I look at the news and want to cry. I want to look away, but I also want to look so I can fully understand the scope of the heartbreak that is happening.

Arma developer Bohemia Interactive has issued a statement criticising the use of in-game images by people online claiming it to be real war footage from Israel and Palestine.

Arma 3 developer Bohemia Interactive has commented on the use of footage taken from its military shooter being used online to spread misinformation about Israel and Palestine.

Bohemia Interactive has said it’s aware that Arma 3 is once again being used to spread fake news about real-life conflicts.

Czech game developer Bohemia Interactive has once again had to address the fact that footage of Arma 3 is being used as fake news about the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Social media users are attempting to pass off videos of Bohemia Interactive's military shooter Arma 3 as real-life footage of the on-going Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which erupted into open war this week. Several of these mocked-up videos have circulated on Tik-Tok and Xitter, one of them purporting to show a member of the Hamas group shooting down Israeli helicopters. Bohemia Interactive have now released a statement calling on their community to publish and share Arma 3 footage responsibly, while offering advice on how to spot a fake.

With large-scale hostilities breaking out between Israel and Hamas in the Middle East, Arma 3 developer Bohemia Interactive has issued a statement asking its players and content creators to «use their footage responsibly» in order to avoid contributing to a flood of false information being spread on social media. The studio also shared a detailed guide to help people distinguish videos made in the game from real-world combat footage.

Venture capital funding in the U.S. fell to its lowest level in six years in terms of venture deal value and the lowest level in deal count in three years during the third quarter.

Since Elon Musk hollowed out Twitter's staffing, pushed services behind a paywall and renamed it X, many users have been thrashing around for an alternative social media platform.

Twitter/X is facing growing criticism for hosting misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war. But don’t expect Elon Musk to do much about it. 

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has detailed his plans regarding employee safety, cybersecurity initiatives, and curbing misinformation amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the militia group Hamas in an internal email addressed to employees. Pichai also addressed the two Google offices in Israel, one in Tel Aviv and another in Hanifa, where two thousand employees work, emphasizing that the company is taking every possible step to ensure the safety of every Googler and to continue any support needed.

Unity CEO John Riccitiello is departing Unity. The company has announced that the longtime game industry executive is stepping down as president and CEO of the 3D engine developer. According to Unity, James M. Whitehurst will assume the role of interim CEO and president of the company.

Nvidia is calling off a company event due to the war between Israel and Hamas. 

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang is expected to visit Taiwan, where he will reportedly attend Foxconn's yearly "Technology Day" event & expand collaboration with the company.

has been a return to the franchise's roots, with a smaller, more stealth-focused title set in a stunning recreation of Baghdad in the year 861. The title tells the origin of Basim Ibn Ishaq, a character who was introduced in the franchise's last title,, by which time he was already a Master Assassin on his travels to Norway​​​​​.

LinkedIn data has revealed a dramatic two-year surge in AI-related job postings; Sony research has revealed an overlooked aspect of skin colour in AI bias testing; Vyzer has secured $6.3 million seed funding for AI-driven wealth management platform; Google Pixel 8 series touts abundance of innovative generative AI features- this and more in our daily roundup. Let us take a look.

The UK's Advertising Standards Authority has upheld two claims against Hutch Games for violating loot box disclosure rules.

X-owner Elon Musk said that he had gutted the platform's team dedicated to preserving election integrity as key votes in many countries are approaching.

Over the last 12 months, X (formerly Twitter) has undergone a multitude of changes. Elon Musk's acquisition of the microblogging platform has spurred controversy from day 1, with people calling measures such as the removal of verification, and temporarily limiting tweet views draconian. After managing the company as the CEO for a while, Musk appointed Linda Yaccarino as his successor. This change hasn't really moved people's opinions about the Musk-owned company, as its rival Threads soared in popularity as soon as it was launched by Meta. 

Thursday’s newly disclosed vulnerabilities in iOS were used to install spyware on an iPhone belonging to an Egyptian politician running for president, according to security researchers. 

Bluesky is a decentralized social app that was launched this year as an alternative to X (formerly Twitter). The app was co-founded by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Notably, since Musk's takeover of Twitter, whenever he says something shocking, it sparks an exodus of users from his platform to rivals like Bluesky. This has happened again. The app on September 19, 2023, saw a massive spike in new user signup after Musk made a shocking comment about making X a paid-only app for everyone. It immediately saw Bluesky log a fantastic new record of the most signups in a day on the portal. While it is not clear what caused the increase in users in a single day, but the comment might have had an impact on users' minds. Know how many new users joined X competitor Bluesky.

Elon Musk has suggested charging all users of his social media platform X, which would be the biggest shake-up since he took over the site then known as Twitter last October, but experts say he might struggle to get users on board.

As reported by the BBC yesterday, Elon Musk is planning to potentially add a paywall to Twitter, as per a conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu which was live streamed on the site.

Today seems to be a bad day for all Twitter or X users because the latest word is that Elon Musk is going to start charging everyone to use the platform. This means that even if you are not a Blue subscriber, you will still have to pay for the platform to be able to use it. Which does defeat the purpose of it in the first place, but at this point, we cannot say for sure.

Elon Musk is signaling he’s thinking about requiring users to pay to post on Twitter.

Twitter has launched a new account-verification system that asks users to submit both a government ID and a live selfie to confirm their identity. 

Playtika has acquired Innplay Labs, the mobile studio behind games such as Tiles of Fortune and Animals & Coins.

We're thrilled to announce the return of GamesBeat Next, hosted in San Francisco this October, where we will explore the theme of «Playing the Edge.» Apply to speak here and learn more about sponsorship opportunities here. At the event, we will also announce 25 top game startups as the 2024 Game Changers. Apply or nominate today!

Is the Russian government using spyware from Israel’s NSO Group? According to researchers, spyware from the notorious Israeli company has been found on an iPhone belonging to an exiled Russian journalist.

It looks like a spyware attack that’s been targeting Apple iPhones can also compromise Google’s Chrome browser. 

Apple has released an emergency patch to protect older iPhones and Macs from last week’s newly discovered spyware attack, which has been traced to NSO Group, a notorious surveillance dealer. 

An iPhone belonging to a staffer at a Washington-based civil society organization was hacked remotely with spyware created by Israel's NSO Group.

Apple released a significant security update for iPhones and iPads Thursday to patch newly discovered security vulnerabilities in the devices' system software.

Electronic Arts has announced that EA Sports UFC 5 will launch on October 27 for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. 

The AI revolution has taken hold in different ways around the world, with some surprising differences in how each country is experimenting with it.

Take a moment to imagine where you might have a better quality of life. Did France spring to mind? It does have universal healthcare, affordable childcare, a high level of civic and social engagement, good work-life balance, and of course it’s home to beautiful countryside and arguably the most desirable city on earth, so that would be a natural place to think of.

EA has officially announced its latest UFC game this week with UFC 5. The game will have three different cover athletes with Israel Adesanya, Alexander Volkanovski and Valentina Schevchenko will be on the various covers. UFC 5 will be available only on current generation consoles, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, on October 27. The latest release in the franchise will be the first to use the Frostbite Engine, so a slew of changes will be coming to the game. This includes the all-new Real Impact System and a high-speed 60 frames-per-second rendering and gameplay simulation. Legendary fighters including Fedor Emelianenko. Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, and more are available as a pre-order bonus for the Deluxe Edition.

UPDATE: Citizen Lab says the vulnerabilities were used in attacks from the notorious Israeli spyware provider NSO Group.

Visual upgrades and new fighting features await.

After long-standing rumors, EA Sports UFC 5 was finally confirmed last July. Electronic Arts has since announced the first trailer reveal for September 7th at 8 AM PST. It also revealed this year’s cover athletes, with Alexander Volkanovski and Valentina Shevchenko sharing space on the Standard Edition.

When the world is talking about how hazardous AI can be for humankind, it has proved to the contrary again and emerged as a boon. In a remarkable medical breakthrough at the Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya, Israel, this AI-based technology recently played a pivotal role in saving a patient's life.

We're thrilled to announce the return of GamesBeat Next, hosted in San Francisco this October, where we will explore the theme of «Playing the Edge.» Apply to speak here and learn more about sponsorship opportunities here. At the event, we will also announce 25 top game startups as the 2024 Game Changers. Apply or nominate today!

AI Roundup: Zomato launched its own AI chatbot today that will assist users in placing orders, while Google DeepMind co-founder emphasized that the US should only allow those buyers access to Nvidia's AI chips who agree to use this technology ethically. In a separate development, the Israeli Defense Ministry unveiled a surveillance plane equipped with AI-powered sensors.

The last day of August came with some major updates on generative artificial intelligence as big tech firms made significant advancements. Google expanded its AI-powered Search Generative Experience, also known as SGE, to India and made it available through Google's Search Labs. In other news, Baidu, China's Search giant, launched its AI chatbot Ernie to the public. Right after launch, it became the most downloaded free app on Apple's App Store in China. This and more in today's AI roundup. Let us take a look.

Twitter, also known as X, is opening the door to collecting people’s biometric data as part of a new user verification system, according to the company’s new privacy policy. 

Israeli researchers uncovered a link between collecting music and listening enjoyment, offering insights into how streaming applications impact the way people perceive and experience music.

In 2019, India attempted to land a spacecraft on the Moon – and ended up painting a kilometres-long streak of debris on its barren surface. Now the Indian Space Research Organisation has returned in triumph, with the Chandrayaan-3 lander successfully touching down near the south pole of Earth's rocky neighbour.

UK government officials have held discussions with tech giants Nvidia Corp., Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Intel Corp. about procuring equipment for national artificial intelligence research, according to the Telegraph.

Twitter is working on a new way to verify a user's identity, and the process involves submitting a selfie alongside government-issued ID.

Russia's plan to launch its lunar lander on Friday is the latest in an international push to return to the Moon that includes the world's top powers but also new players.

Russia is set to return to the moon after nearly 50 years by sending an uncrewed lander toward the lunar south pole, joining a race with NASA and other space agencies.

Metro 2033 author and creator Dmitry Glukhovsky has been sentenced to eight years in prison after Russia ruled that he had spread misinformation on its armed forces via social media.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has made a surprising announcement, revealing that his much-anticipated cage fight with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be livestreamed on social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter). Musk took to Twitter to share the news, stating that all proceeds from the event will go to charity for veterans.

Missed the GamesBeat Summit excitement? Don't worry! Tune in now to catch all of the live and virtual sessions here.

The parent company to ExpressVPN, Private Internet Access, and CyberGhost VPN, appears to have laid off about 30% of its staff amid a corporate reorganization.