While the internet seems very much alive and authentic with never-ending updates to social feeds and ballooning view counts on streaming sites, studies claim that “less than 60 percent of web traffic is human.” Researchers say a good chunk of the internet consists of “bots masquerading as people,” which isn’t a far-fetched idea, considering the increasing indictments against digital advertisers who commit fraud by using bots to forge everything from clicks to accounts. NY Mag’s Intelligencer column postulates that the metrics, people, businesses, content, politics, and we ourselves (judging by the prevalence of CAPTCHA) are “fake.”



These days, the Times found, you can buy 5,000 YouTube views — 30 seconds of a video counts as a view — for as low as $15; oftentimes, customers are led to believe that the views they purchase come from real people. More likely, they come from bots. On some platforms, video views and app downloads can be forged in lucrative industrial counterfeiting operations. If you want a picture of what the Inversion looks like, find a video of a “click farm”: hundreds of individual smartphones, arranged in rows on shelves or racks in professional-looking offices, each watching the same video or downloading the same app.

Discussion

Source: [H]ardOCP – How Much of the Internet Is Fake? Turns Out, a Lot of It, Actually.

Microtransactions appear to be getting way out of hand: Activision is now charging Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 players $1 for the privilege of a new reticle, such as the “Open Dot,” which is essentially a red-dot donut laser. While a dollar won’t break the bank, this is something that would traditionally be awarded to players through gameplay progression.



You see that lone single dot on the left-hand side of the image? Yep, that’s the item for sale. It’s funny that Activision is even selling this dot, and it’s even more amazing that (we presume) some people are buying it! It’s currently priced at 50 COD Points ($.50 cents) given there’s a limited 50 percent sale happening right now until the first day of 2019. Otherwise, it’s a flat 100 COD Points ($1) to acquire this dot.

Discussion

Source: [H]ardOCP – Activision Is Selling a Single Dot in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 for

In yet another round of next-generation console speculation, Hellpoint developer Marc-Andre Jutras has returned with the theory that the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Scarlett will sport 8 to 12GB of RAM. Jutras also suspects the consoles will feature dedicated VRAM instead of a unified memory pool (both the PS4 and Xbox One utilize a shared-RAM configuration) in order to achieve 4K graphics.



“One thing that is going to change will be, you will get a lot more focus on the VRAM, which is the big bottleneck right now if you want good 4K games, because 4K frame buffer takes a lot of space,” he said. “So if you end up with a 4K buffer, you need four times the VRAM. So I think you will see, you won’t see shared RAM space next gen like you do with the PS4. I don’t think you will see that because it’s a big bottleneck. You’ll see more VRAM to support 4K and 5K and whatever else comes around.”

Discussion

Source: [H]ardOCP – PS5, Next Xbox Will Likely Have 8 to 12GB of RAM, Says Hellpoint Dev

Following last month’s report of an iPhone X blowing up after being upgraded to iOS 12.1 comes a new allegation against the newer, larger XS Max model: Ohio resident Josh Hillard claims his three-week-old device caught fire and “exploded” in his pants after he noticed a strange smell and burning sensation on his leg. Hillard is now exploring legal options against the company, as the Apple Store he visited wouldn’t give him a replacement on the spot, nor compensate him for his ruined clothing.



“Left no other option, I had to exit the room since there was a female in the break room with me and remove my pants. I ran to the boardroom where I got my shoes and pants off as fast as possible. A VP of our company put the fire out with a fire extinguisher because he heard me yelling. Once the phone was extinguished, I was left with a hole in my pants, fire extinguisher on my pants/shoes, and some pain/irritation in my buttocks region where the pocket of my pants was located.”

Discussion

Source: [H]ardOCP – Ohio Man Says iPhone XS Max Caught Fire and Exploded in His Pocket

According to a browser efficiency comparison for Windows 10 version 1809 (which Microsoft posted on GitHub but never advertised), Edge remains the best browser for battery life: measuring the time it took identical Surface Book laptops to run fully through their batteries while streaming HTML5 video in fullscreen, Edge lasted 24% longer than Chrome and 94% longer than Firefox. Despite the browser’s adoption of Chromium, Thurrott believes Edge will retain this strength due to “underlying integration with the operating system.”



In June 2016, Microsoft reported that Edge provided a 47 percent battery life advantage over Google Chrome. By April 2017, that advantage had fallen to 35 percent. And by May 2018, the advantage had fallen to just 14 percent. So I began theorizing that Chrome battery life might surpass that of Edge by the time Windows 10 version 1809 shipped. But that didn’t happen. So one can only wonder why Microsoft didn’t shout these results to the world as they had previously. Perhaps it has to do with the switch to a new browser engine, which sort of undermines any promotion of the old technology.

Discussion

Source: [H]ardOCP – Microsoft Edge Is Still More Power Efficient than Chrome and Firefox