Old Archives

Twitch knew nobody would enable the feature, so they enabled it for everyone by default.

The popular streaming platform Twitch just rolled out a new feature today that allows Twitch's parent company, Amazon, to train generative AI models on users' channels. This setting is enabled by default for everybody on Twitch, but there is a way to toggle it off.

You can find this setting right near the bottom of the "Security and Privacy" tab within Twitch user sett...

Privacy wins out... for now.

In 2023, the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) announced that they were working on a tool that would use facial recognition to verify a person's age. The ESRB had partnered with a digital identity firm, Yoti, along with SuperAwesome to create this age verification technology. The ESRB already caught a lot of rightfully deserved shit for that announcement when it was made last year.

Thankfully, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)...

So yeah, maybe don't stream that game right now.

Crystal Dynamics issued a warning to streamers that are considering streaming Marvel's Avengers to the public. As of the recent 1.8.0 patch, the PlayStation 5 version of the game now shows the IP address of the person playing at the bottom of the screen.

After the patch went live, Crystal Dynamics took to Twitter to say that they were investigating an issue related to "a floating sting of text" appearing on players'...

Xbox, invade my privacy.

According to multiple sources speaking with Vice, Microsoft had hired contractors to listen to audio picked up and recorded by Xbox One consoles.

Reportedly, human listeners, the contractors in this case, were brought into the mix in an effort to improve how the Xbox One understood voice commands. However, these contractors say that their jobs also saw them listening to the audio of multiple personal conversations in cases where the assistant was...

Yesterday, the official Steam Blog announced some very important privacy policy changes for Steam and, more specifically, privacy changes for user profiles.
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Yesterday, the official Steam Blog announced some very important privacy policy changes for Steam and, more specifically, privacy changes for user...

If you're an Indie developer, you know all too well that having your private information available to the public can be incredibly dangerous. Just look at the mess that's been going on with #GamerGate these past few weeks. So it is rather baffling that Google is about to require that all Indie developers put a non P.O. Box address on their apps or games if they appear on the Google Play Store.

The only time where a developer doesn't have to put a public address is if their app is...

If you're an Indie developer, you know all too well that having your private information available to the public can be incredibly dangerous. Just look...

The other day, someone made the claim that Valve is reading all of your DNS cache entries and sending those entries to Valve. What a surprise it was (not really) when it turns out that wasn't true.

Hearing enough of this nonsense, Valve's own Gabe Newell decided to set the record straight on what VAC is and is not doing. Here is his Reddit post, reproduced in full.
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The other day, someone made the claim that Valve is reading all of your DNS cache entries and sending those entries to Valve. What a surprise...