Way back in January 1999, the Washington Post got wind of what it declared to be the infamous “Furby Alert”. Now official documents proving the story was indeed real have been released. Yes, the NSA really was worried the fuzzy toy that parroted back whatever it heard, which was all the rage back in the late 90s, was powered by an “Artificial Intelligence” chip and represented a security risk. And yes, an official alert was issued.
As reported by 404 media, the official documents were released in response to a somewhat speculative Freedom of Information request by an X user going by the @dakotathecat handle. Apparently, on a bored whim dakotathecat decided to have a punt at requesting the first official confirmation since that late 90s Washington post piece.
The result, reportedly, was a manilla envelope containing 60 pages of documents including employee discussions about the security threat posed by Furbies, an internal memo attempting to manage media coverage followin…
Star Wars Outlaws will finally let us turn off that annoying yellow paint on every climbing surface-
Of all the cyclical videogame debates that crop up on social media, few get me as riled up as whether or not developers should be painting objects yellow. Making interactable objects more noticeable by painting them a distinct color isn’t a new thing for games, but the specific trend of choosing bright yellow streaks to signpost anything and everything—doorways, breakable boxes, levers, ledges, rocks—has awakened a backlash from some who believe this level of handholding works against games by stealing opportunities for players to discover things on their own.
While developers are often quick to counter this feedback by reminding players that yellow paint is the result of testers getting lost in early playtests, Ubisoft Massive has come up with an interesting workaround for its upcoming Star Wars Outlaws that just might make both camps happy: an “Explorer Mode” that turns off the “guiding color on core navigational elements” in th…