The UpStream (Page 64)

It is no secret that Battle Royale gameplay is taking over the gaming world right now. While the biggest players are PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) and Epic's Fortnite, everyone seems to be getting onboard. Look into your favorite app store and search "battle royale" to see a nearly endless choice of off-brand titles. Even Activision is getting involved, adding Blackout mode to Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, replacing the traditional single player campaign with the exact opposite of that.

During E3 2018, one game that was announced with almost no information was Halo Infinite. The title was announced with no gameplay and only an in-engine video to base opinions on. With the popularity of the Battle Royale genre, it was suspected that 343 Industries, the current developer behind the franchise, would follow Activision's lead and implement a similar mode into the game. For those excited about the possibility, we've got some bad news.

During a Halo social stream on Microsoft Mixer, a user asked straight up, "Will there be battle royale in Halo Infinite?" Jeff Easterling, a writer on the series, answered just as directly, saying,

I'll tell you right now, the only BR we're interested in is Battle Rifle, the original BR. So calm yourself.

It's possible that this is the only actual piece of information that we have about the new game, and it only comes in the form of what the game is not. Obviously, it is always a possibility that Microsoft or 343 Industries could change their minds and add a Battle Royale mode into the game before launch, but it seems unlikely at this point. It's nice to see that some studios won't jump onto a trend, no matter how many insane piles of cash it might be generating for studios like Epic.

Were you hoping for a Halo-inspired Battle Royale, or is it better for the game to stick to its roots? Let us know your thoughts.

Over the past few years, Google's experience in Europe has not been positive. At every turn, the individual countries and the European Commision itself have continuously done things to make their business model nearly impossible. In 2014, the EU wanted to break up the company, while Spain passed a law that caused them to shut down Google News in Spain. The EU also fought to enforce pre-GDPR rules.

The biggest challenge the company has faced has been surrounding Android, the company's mobile operating system. In 2014, Google implmeneted policies restricting when a device manufacturer could and could not include the Google Play Store on their devices. If a manufacturer wants to use the Store, they must also pre-install a dozen other Google apps onto their devices. For example, if you check out a Samsung flagship phone, you will see 2 assistants (Google Assistant and Bixby), two web browsers (Google Chrome and Samsung Internet), two messaging apps and more. This is because Samsung wants to include their own products, but also must include Google's.

In 2016, the EU began an investigation into whether this policy violated EU antitrust laws. This week, the results came in, and Google received a $5 billion fine for taking advantage of their position as the OS developer to force manufacturers to promote their other services. In particular, the Commision believes that Google Search has maintained its top spot largely because of Android rules.

As of right now, the company has 90 days to change its policies to come in line with EU laws. Of course, the question remains, "What will change for Android?" The Play Store policies have been responsible for the slow ending of the old Android fragmentation problem, where every manufacturer had a special variant of Android and you never knew if an app would work on any particular device. By ending this policy, it is possible that we will return to a highly fragmented environment where apps don't work and everything is in question. It's also possible that, so long as Google provides access to Google Play and Google Play Services, Android variants won't be the problem they were previously.

What we do know is that nothing will change any time soon. Google has vowed to appeal both the verdict and the fine, which means that changes won't be coming too quickly. When they do come, it will likely be in the form of not requiring the additional services to be bundled with handsets, but likely only in Europe. So, if you live outside of the EU, chances are you will not see any changes at all.

It was only a month ago that a federal judge rejected a governmental argument that AT&T's purchase of Time Warner would harm the industry. That rejection signaled the end of the fight for AT&T, who wrote their check and began the process of integrating the company into the AT&T business. The biggest immediate change was the name of the company; to prevent confusion with the former cable company, the company was renamed to WarnerMedia.

In addition to the name change, some staffing changes were made. For example, a new head was appointed, who oversees all of WarnerMedia. John Stankey, who has been an executive with AT&T for several years, was moved to the newest member of the company. According to audio obtained by NYT, some big changes are coming to WarnerMedia property HBO.

The biggest problem, according to Stankey, is that viewers are not spending enough hours per day with the network. In the recording, he says,

I want more hours of engagement. Why are more hours of engagement important? Because you get more data and information about a customer that then allows you to do things like monetize through alternate models of advertising as well as subscriptions, which I think is very important to play in tomorrow's world.

Longer engagement likely means more Netflix-style content. Netflix received more Emmy award nominations this year than HBO for the first time in 17 years because of its increased quality and quantity. This is the direction that Stankey would like HBO to follow. This will require one important thing to become a reality: government approval. Yes, the case was dismissed a month ago, which is how we got to this point, but it might not last.

The Department of Justice has filed an appeal, stating that they had met the burden of proof. AT&T's general counsel, David McAtee, is definitely confident in the company's ability to win the appeal, saying,

The court's decision could hardly have been more thorough, fact-based, and well-reasoned. While the losing party in litigation always has the right to appeal if it wishes, we are surprised that the D.O.J. has chosen to do so under these circumstances.

While the government likely doesn't have a chance of winning this case, the point is likely more to show that the Department of Justice is going to be strong against big mergers. This is in stark contrast to quick approval of the Disney-Fox merger, which was completed before the deal was even finalized. In fact, the quick approval was partially responsible for the deal closing in the first place, since Fox didn't feel that the Comcast offer would be approved.

Over the past year, one of the big topics on the internet has been about internet censorship. Some people believe that the internet should be a place for the free and open exchange of ideas. Others believe that it is the responsibility of platforms to censor the content that users publish, based on their own version of reality. A surprising percentage of people believe both of these things at once.

Facebook

Take, for example, Facebook: the platform was intimately involved in trying to prevent the FCC from removing the guidelines known colloquially as "net neutrality." These guidelines restricted companies like Comcast from blocking content on the internet based on the company's interests. For example, if Comcast felt a threat to their corporate culture or corporate interests from HuffPo, which is owned by Verizon, they could block that content.

On the other hand, the company has been very interested in doing the same thing on their own platform. The company has openly suspended pages from conservatives, even closing personal accounts of people who share content that Facebook themselves deems to be "fake news." Overall, however, the company has tried to remain a little farther from the front lines on the topic, often times removing individual posts, but not closing accounts entirely. Their users would prefer that they do more.

This week, the company was thrust into the spotlight over a popular Facebook page, which represents the online publication InfoWars. For those who are unfamiliar, InfoWars is an enigma: their frontman, Alex Jones, is often times a nutjob, while the rest of the site is filled with legitimate journalism. Most people don't remember anything about InfoWars other than gay frogs, however. Facebook has been reluctant to take action against the site, which is annoying users who disagree with the content on the site. Facebook responded, saying,

We see Pages on both the left and the right pumping out what they consider opinion or analysis - but others call fake news. We believe banning these Pages would be contrary to the basic principles of free speech.

It's good that Facebook has not gone completely 1984 on us, though it does seem to be headed in that direction.

Reddit

Reddit has taken an equally contradictory stance on censoring content on their site. CEO Steve Huffman created a scenario this week in which the only question we can ask is, "What does he actually believe?" Responding to the question, "Why do you admins not just ban hate speech?" Huffman, better known on the platform as spez, said,

spez: Our violent speech policy is effectively that.

whatll: I'd argue that hate speech should be banned with its own rule, separate from the violence policy. But thank you for replying.

spez: Hate speech is difficult to define. There's a reason why it's not really done. Additionally, we are not the thought police. It's not the role of a private company to decide what people can and cannot say.

whatll: But it *is* the role of a private company to decide what people can and cannot say *on {its} own platform*.

spez: I know what you're asking, but it's a nearly impossible precedent to uphold. It's impossible to enforce consistently.

The position that he has taken is that it is a slippery slope. Once you start the process of censoring content, the site becomes more and more responsible for censoring content on the site. That is a reasonable position - he doesn't want to police the ideas of people on the site. That brings us back to the open and free exchange of ideas concept, something that many people believe. However, his actions following the conversation were not quite consistent.

Following the conversation, whatll's account was suspended. So, I guess they don't want to be the thought police, assuming your thoughts agree with the policies of Reddit? While the company has confirmed that the conversation did take place, they only report that the suspension was "for harassment" and nothing more. It's possible that the user was harassing someone somewhere else, though it seems like if someone was going to get upset, it would be over the topic with spez.

It is unlikely that the topic of online censorship will be going anywhere, anytime soon. In fact, it is likely that more companies will be bullied into censoring content the way that YouTube has been. On YouTube, there are tags you cannot use if you want to be monetized. There are certain legal topics you cannot discuss if you want to be monetized. This is not nearly the end, more like the beginning.

Earlier in the year, it was reported that there was a flaw in the Nintendo Switch hardware which made bypassing the system protections fairly easy. These types of issues exist fairly often in modern hardware, as firmware developers reply on the ability to patch too heavily. The issue here is that the flaw was in the Tegra X1 chip provided by NVIDIA, meaning that software alone could not guarentee success in preventing owners from hacking the system.

According to Twitter user @SciresM, however, new batches of Switch units have been pre-patched for one of the known exploits. They are, however, also shipping with version 4.1.0 of the system firmware, which means that the systems are not entirely devoid of known vulnerabilities. In this case, Deja Vu, which is an exploit that was patched in firmware version 5.0. The discrepancy suggests that the chips were patched in the factory before the Fusée Gelée exploit was made public, but before Deja Vu was known.

This is bad news for people who are interested in making the Switch do things that it was never intended to do. Some of these things are innocuous, such as making it run Windows 10. Others, however, are not nearly as above board, such as running system emulators. While emulators are not themselves illegal, they do promote the use of unlicensed software which is illegal. While Nintendo does not particularly care about the first scenario, the second can cause problems.

In addition to running unlicensed software, a hacked Switch could potentially also make it possible for players to cheat in a game. For example, with a game like Splatoon 2, a popular multiplayer game on the platform, a hacked console could automate certain tasks making it easier to win a game. If you are the owner of that particular Switch, that might provide a little fun, it certainly ruins the experience for the other people in the match.

If you want to use the Switch for something that it is not intended for, you might want to get one now.

It is no secret that PC sales have been on the decline for a while. In fact, it has been nearly 6 years since the industry saw its last increase in sales. That changed this quarter, according to a Gartner report, which shows that the industry saw an uptake in sales. This upward trend was spurred by enterprise spending worldwide, replacing older computers with newer Windows 10 machines. According to Mikako Kitagawa of Gartner,

PC shipment growth in the second quarter of 2018 was driven by demand in the business market, which was offset by declining shipments in the consumer segment. Consumers are using their smartphones for even more daily tasks, such as checking social media, calendaring, banking and shopping, which is reducing the need for a consumer PC.

Overall, the global trend for replacing computers is because of the end of the support cycle for older versions of Windows. This is usually the cause for enterprises, who notoriously avoid modernization because of the overall cost. In a business with thousands of employees, that could mean millions of dollars worth of expense to modernize computers, so the expense is often avoided until the computers are no longer supported by the vendor (traditionally Windows, as Mac has no discernable presence in business due to its low price-to-value proposition).

With support for older versions of Windows coming to an end, this mass purchase was inevitable. After these enterprises finish updating their computer fleets, it is likely that sales will continue to trend down. The overall sales decrease is because of the change in how consumers use electronics. A decade ago, the only way to consume digital content was via a PC. Today, most people do their data consumption via less capable, but more convenient devices. For example, news and social media are mostly consumed via phones and tablets. Netflix and Hulu can be used mobile, but are also incredibly popular on Xbox, PlayStation, Roku and the like.

The drop in PC sales is not an indication of an industry in decline, however. This is because companies like Lenovo, who are best known for their laptops, also produce phones, tablets, and other more specialty devices. Samsung, which is best known for their phones, also produce incredibly specialized devices, including the Harmon Kardon Invoke smart speaker, which is an increasingly popular way to consume streaming music.Kitagawa