🏃 New Battle Royale for Epic and more - This Geek in Review for 21 Aug 2020
By goz
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New Battle Royale Mode - Apple/Google vs Fortnite
When Apple created their app store, they set a fee of 30% for developers. This meant that when a developer sold a game for $10.00, Apple received $3 and the developer received $7. Google followed suit with the fees for their Android Play store. This was all well and good at the beginning, but then developers started to wonder what they were getting for their 30%. Credit card fees are usually around 3% plus a per transaction fee of approximately. So, a developer could sell an app on their website for $10, and pay 60 cents to process the transaction.
Wait a minute Goz, there are also costs with running the app store, hosting the apps, and providing bandwidth for downloads. Yes, that is true, but does it really cost $2.40 for that? Hosting a 100 megabyte app costs pennies a month, for a large company like Apple this price is basically a rounding error.
Apple is making pretty good bank on the app store but Fortnite is a free app, so they don’t make any money from Fortnite downloads. What Apple does get is 30% of Fortnite’s V-Bucks when they are purchased on iOS. And V-Bucks have no incidental cost for Apple except for credit card process fees. Well, Epic is sick of it and went to war against Apple and Google. In a server side update to Fortnite, Epic added an option to bypass the Apple or Google store and buy directly from Epic for a 20% discount. It took less than a day for the Fortnite app to be removed from the Apple Store.
Epic knew this was going to happen. They had created a video mocking Apple’s famous 1984 ad along with filing a lawsuit. Where will it end up? I don’t know. I don’t game much on my iPhone, I have much better systems to play on. Plus, I like to have physical controls.
Along with Apple ruining our Fortnite fun, they have also said that cloud gaming services such as Microsoft’s Xcloud and Google’s Stadia are also banned.
The Holiday Special aired at Thanksgiving
Back in 1978, in what I assume was a money grab by 20th Century Fox and George Lucas, the abomination known as the Star Wars Holiday Special aired. At the time, variety shows were a huge deal, so apparently someone thought that the Star Wars universe needed it’s own variety show. The stars in the show were huge, but they couldn’t save the show. Disney+ will show a Lego Star Wars Holiday Special on Wookiee Life Day. I just don’t know, with Bea Arthur or Art Carney, will the show even be worth watching?
I’m assuming these are HD floppies
Dig out those floppy disks and read about what it takes to perform a system update on a Boeing 747. No word on how many disks it takes, but at least they are 3 1/2" floppies. At least they’re not Zip drives, where on a 747 they could give a whole new meaning to the “click of death”.
Good enough for you is good enough for me
A great movie from my youth was Goonies. Along with the fame came the Atari 8-bit computer game Goonies. It was awesome, several screens of puzzles that you had to work through. And now there is a Goonies game in development for the Intellivision. Unfortunately, that means you have to play with those horrible disk controllers.
Amazing encryption tricks
News comes this week that IBM completed successful field trials on Fully Homomorphic Encryption. Stop your snickering, what are you, 12? This technology allows a third party to perform functions on fully encrypted data, without decrypting the data. Now that blows my mind!
If I had a million dollars
In a couple of weeks there is an auction of Television and movie items. If you are looking at getting me anything for Christmas, the Airwolf miniature would be at the top of the list. Or anything from Back to the Future, Star Wars, or Star Trek. Things I’ll pass on include Stiffler’s suit from American Wedding.
There are 251 pages of geekiness in the flyer! And, you can bid over the phone, you don’t have to be in LA.
Now I can bid on some memorabilia!
Here’s a fascinating story behind cracking an encrypted zip file that held the key to $300,000 worth of Bitcoin. Spoiler alert, the Bitcoin was liberated, and for a cheaper price than the original $100,000 that the owner was quoted.
Fin
And that is it for this week! Be sure to check out gozgeek.com to find out how to keep up with the Goz.
Stay brilliant beasts!