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19 Oct 2024

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OpenAI releases ChatGPT app for Windows
New Alt+Space shortcut puts OpenAI's assistant a key press away at all times.

Babydog on the trail and a hiss-terical ad: an offbeat US campaign week

'Unique sensation': young climber scales French skyscrapers

Stellantis workers march in Italy over production slump

Incredible $40 Million Supercar Collection Showcases Rare International Automobiles

'My nephews died in tanker blast trying to stop petrol scoopers'

The man lined up to be Kenya's next deputy president

Team NZ rebounds to match point at the America’s Cup
In wind that skipper Peter Burling says was “a bit like a south-wester off Takapuna”, Team NZ halted the winning momentum of INEOS Britannia.

Call of Duty anti-cheat bug let hackers ban people with a DM
Online shooters can get contentious, so it’s no surprise that they’re filled with cheaters and regular players whose behaviors get them banned. But some hackers were able to exploit Call of Duty‘s automated anti-cheating system to get innocent players banned, simply by sending them one line of text in a direct message. That’s right, a single message from a stranger would get your account permanently disabled. The Verge reports that hackers who sold cheats for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III and Call of Duty: Warzone bragged of their exploit on Twitter. The Ricochet anti-cheat system apparently scanned player files for text including the phrase “trigger bot,” so sending someone a message with those words would trigger the system to ban the receiver’s account. The hackers claimed that this technique was used to ban “several thousand” players, including some popular streamers who got sent the messages and were banned while playing live. For you good little video gamers, a “triggerbot” is a cheating tool that automatically clicks your mouse (or fire button) when it detects that an enemy is in your crosshairs. It’s a more subtle variation of an “aimbot” that requires the player to move and look around the environment, but can still offer a massive competitive advantage. Using one is, of course, grounds for being banned from pretty much any online multiplayer game. Activision’s own Call of Duty Updates Twitter account announced that the Ricochet exploit had been fixed yesterday and that the “small number of legitimate player accounts” that were banned have been restored. In Activision’s defense, millions of people play the Call of Duty games, so thousands of bans would still be a relatively small number. Policing these online systems is essentially impossible without a large degree of automation, and it’s inevitable that cheaters will always find some way to exploit them on a pretty regular basis.

YouTube is testing a cheaper ‘Premium Lite’ plan… that still has ads
I watch a lot of YouTube. I don’t watch any ads. And I refuse to pay $14 per month for YouTube Premium on principle. Maybe Google can tempt me onto the straight-and-narrow with a cheaper “Premium Lite” option? YouTube is now testing that very thing, a stripped-down subscription option that omits certain features like video downloads and background listening. Oh, but it still has advertising in YouTube Music, in search results, and on Shorts. Yeah, I’m still gonna pass. This update Premium Lite plan is being tested in Australia, Germany, and Thailand, according to Android Authority. Google previously offered Premium Lite in a few markets in Europe, which was similar in its limitations on extra mobile features but actually was ad-free. That particular offering was axed a year ago. The newer, ad-infested version of YouTube Premium Lite costs $8.99 Australian dollars, a savings of $8 per month versus the full version of Premium. If you subscribe on iOS, you’ll be charged a more hefty $11.99, presumably to give Apple its cut on the App Store. There’s no word yet on when, or if, this new Premium Lite option will expand to more countries. Advertising has become almost inescapable on YouTube since Google started offering the expensive Premium option to get rid of it, an escalation that I’m sure is entirely coincidental. While Premium Lite could certainly continue to evolve during this “testing” period, and it might even be cheaper by the end, it still smacks of Google wanting to have its cake and eat it too. Ad blockers are a lot cheaper… though Google is trying its darnedest to make those less effective as well.