A few days after release, we started noticing some pretty strange statistics on the Android version. At the last minute we had included an analytics package into the game that told us how many unique users there were playing around the world. After two days we had sold a total of 8 copies on Google Play, but we were getting significantly more players. The numbers surprised us so much that we actually contacted the analytics company to confirm that we were interpreting them correctly. Once we had done that I posted on the Lucky Frame twitter feed, asking people to guess how many pirated copies were being played. Nobody got anywhere near:
Ok! I think I’ll call time on this. Official Android sales numbers for Gentlemen! after three days: 8 copies sold. 2,462 copies pirated.
— Lucky Frame (@lucky_frame) July 19, 2013
If you’re interested, after three weeks those numbers are now 144 copies sold, 50,030 copies pirated. So, as you can tell the piracy rate has not really slowed down at all – if anything it has gotten even stronger!
Yann Seznec says it’s not a big deal because they used Unity to build the game, so it was trivial to make an Android build. Imagine how differently Yann would feel if they did any serious engineering on it.
The National Security Agency’s snooping practices may be costing American companies a lot of money. German publication Zeit Online has obtained leaked documents that purportedly show that IT experts within the German government believe that Windows 8 contains back doors that the NSA could use to remotely control any computers that have it installed.
Due to a friend’s tip, he discovered one of his photos as winning entry on Samsung Camera’s photo contest „Live the moment“ on Facebook. Horizontally flipped, slightly cropped and digitally altered with an instagram filter, a user submitted the photo as his own to the contest via his instagram profile – and won. Samsung Camera made a congratulatory shout out on Facebook, including the picture.
This is pretty fascinating. The call was taped on April 30, 1973, the same evening H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman had resigned. Reagan was calling Nixon to offer his condolences.
Jim and Dan talk about Jim’s so-called “Apple-centric” stance, the upcoming iTunes Festival in London, the gold iPhone 5S, hacking Facebook, the Samsung watch, and Katy Perry. Also, Dan’s eviscerates the new Jobs movie.
Sponsored by Shutterstock (use code DANSENTME8 for 30% off), Hover (use code DANSENTME for 10% off), and Squarespace (use code DANSENTME8 for 10% off).
AT&T Inc. has been sued by Al Jazeera for refusing to carry the Qatar-based broadcaster’s new U.S. cable-news channel as part of its pay-television service.
BusyCal’s unique and powerful features include customizable calendar views, scrolling Month and Week views, an integrated Info Panel for quickly viewing and editing events, integrated To Dos that display in the calendar and carry-forward until completed, custom font sizes and styles, graphics, live weather feeds and moon phases, and a menu bar app for quick access to the current day’s events and weather.
BusyCal supports iCloud, Exchange, Google Calendar, and other CalDAV servers, enabling you to sync and share your calendars through the cloud with other Macs running BusyCal or the built-in Calendar app on OS X, as well as iPhones and iPads running the built-in Calendar app on iOS.
Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano blogs about his near death by drowning, in his helmet, on a recent space walk.
…as I turn ‘upside-down’, two things happen: the Sun sets, and my ability to see – already compromised by the water – completely vanishes, making my eyes useless; but worse than that, the water covers my nose – a really awful sensation that I make worse by my vain attempts to move the water by shaking my head. By now, the upper part of the helmet is full of water and I can’t even be sure that the next time I breathe I will fill my lungs with air and not liquid.
A man who hacked into Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page to expose a software bug is getting donations from hackers around the world after the company declined to pay him under a program that normally rewards people who report flaws.
Wonder why Facebook is not paying him under their bug bounty program.
With Lady Gaga opening the festival on September 1, and Katy Perry closing out the festivities 30 days later, Apple has secured two of Pop’s highest-ranking female stars. Both women recently released singles that are being well-received by fans, according to the latest Billboard charts.
iTunes Festival will also feature Elton John, Kings of Leon, Justin Timberlake and John Legend, among many others throughout the month-long concert series.
Held in London, England every September, the iTunes Festival features 30 days of free concerts. Tickets for the concerts are free on a lottery system for UK residents, but Apple also provides the shows free on iPhone, iPad and Apple TV for anyone to watch.
…the beam entered the back of Bugorski’s head and came out around his nose. Shortly after this happened, Bugorski’s left half of his face swelled up beyond recognition. He was taken to the hospital and studied as this was something that had never been seen before and so they closely monitored him thereafter, fully expecting him to die within a few days at most.
Computer scientists say they found a way to sneak malicious programs into Apple’s exclusive app store without being detected by the mandatory review process that’s supposed to automatically flag such apps.
The researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology used the technique to create what appeared to be a harmless app that Apple reviewers accepted into the iOS app store. They were later able to update the app to carry out a variety of malicious actions without triggering any security alarms. The app, which the researchers titled “Jekyll,” worked by taking the binary code that had already been digitally signed by Apple and rearranging it in a way that gave it new and malicious behaviors.
My two cents: As a developer, I am not alarmed by this, as much as surprised no one figured out a way to do this earlier. This is why Apple’s App Store model works. There’s a choke-point for this type of mechanism. It’ll be interesting to see Apple’s response.
The Good Eggs “farm-to-fridge” business model turns the supermarket model on its head. Instead of having one or several physical locations stocked with a standard, unchanging inventory, the Good Eggs storefront is online, and calls on local farms to deliver only what customers have ordered that day. Good Eggs essentially stocks and empties a grocery store every day, and because its inventory is based entirely on what each customer is ordering, it’s a different grocery store every day, too. The company has created an efficient new food system that’s elegant in its simplicity.
Due to their perishable cargo, grocery stores are notoriously difficult to migrate to an online model. The first attempt, Webvan, founded in the late 1990s, was considered one of the largest dot-com flops in history. Much has changed since then, including a stronger push for locally sourced goods. Interesting article. Will be interesting to see if Good Eggs and the like can overcome the inherent problems with shipping perishable goods in a cost-effective manner.
In its first major hardware upgrade in three years, TiVo introduced its fifth-generation hardware DVR series on Tuesday. On sale now with the odd nickname of “Roamio,” the new boxes promise a faster user interface and built-in streaming to iOS devices. At first glance, this new generation of TiVo looks like a big step up for cable TV subscribers who want to ditch their generic cable DVR.
The Canadian military has been secretly test-driving a $620,000 stealth snowmobile in its quest to quietly whisk troops on clandestine operations in the Arctic.
Clearly the stealth sled dog experiment didn’t work out.
After the massive success of the Mastering EZmix pack and by popular demand, here is a second collection of settings completely devoted to mastering. Just like the first volume, Mastering II EZmix Pack was designed by Mats “Limpan” Lindfors, senior engineer at the leading mastering studio in Scandinavia, Cutting Room.
Toontrack really does a nice job with these EZmix packs.
