Google’s chief game designer leaves the company in hopes of designing games again

Looks like Google’s Chief Game Designer Noah Falstein still has some unfulfilled goals he wants to pursue. Falstein has announced his resignation from the tech giant after “the opportunity to actually build the big, consequential game” had “failed to materialize.” He was hired back in 2013 when Google was still the parent company for game developer Niantic, which just released the game Ingress a year before. He seemed to have fit right in, bringing in over 30 years of game development and design experience to the company.

But following the restricting in 2015 when Google became Alphabet, Niantic became an independent company. And Google hasn’t really focused on those “big, consequential games” Falstein wanted to make. He hasn’t announced any future plans yet but with his experience, we won’t be surprised if we see him soon.

Source: Android Central

Netflix rolls out a screensaver of its original content on TVs

If you watch through a Netflix app on your TV, you might see something new when you leave it on idle. The streaming service has started to show cover art of its original content after a certain period of time that you’ve left the app idle. According to TechCrunch, this has been rolled out globally and was tested on the service before this international rollout. It seems to be Netflix’s way to promote its own content. You can’t turn it off or configure when it’ll appear so you’ll have to get used to it for now. It’s been spotted by users using many different devices such as Android TV, Xbox One, Roku, PlayStation, different smart TVs, etc.

Jay Z pulls music catalog from Apple Music and Spotify

Joella Marano/Wikimedia

Seems like an odd move at this time but Jay Z has pulled out all his solo work from Spotify and Apple Music. Tidal, the streaming service that the hip-hop star owns, will be the only place you’ll get to stream all his music. According to Spotify, his catalog was pulled “at the request of the artist.” This isn’t the first time he’s taken away his songs. When Tidal launched, he took out is debut album, Reasonable Doubt, from all streaming services. His Blueprint series has been removed as well. The only other service that has most of his catalog (except for Reasonable Doubt and Blueprint) is Google Play Music.

Source: The Verge

Google to roll out fact check feature internationally, brings it to Search

In order to combat “fake news,” Google has been working with fact-checking groups to add links to their posts in Google News’ story clusters. This was initially rolled out to the US and UK markets. Now, the search giant is bringing this to a wider audience. It’s going to be available globally and aside from it showing up on Google News, it’ll show up on the Google Search results pages as well.

As seen in the screencap above, Google will show you links to the fact check sites along with additional information about the claim. It, of course, doesn’t always mean one group is right and the other isn’t. Because not everything is black and white. But it is a good thing to help form opinions about things by seeing all the possible sides. As Google explains in its post making the announcement: “Even though differing conclusions may be presented, we think it’s still helpful for people to understand the degree of consensus around a particular claim and have clear information on which sources agree. As we make fact checks more visible in Search results, we believe people will have an easier time reviewing and assessing these fact checks, and making their own informed opinions.”

Source: TechCrunch