someone else

BetaBeacon
April 1, 2026
Decentraland's native MANA token trades at roughly [openai_gpt model="gpt-3.5-turbo-0125" prompt="Summarize the content and extract only the fact described in the text bellow. The summary shall NOT include a title, introduction and conclusion. Text: Decentraland Expands Reach with Epic Games Store and Mobile Launch The metaverse was supposed to be its own destination. You would put on a headset, enter a virtual world, and never need to think about the platform that brought you there. That was the pitch, anyway. Decentraland, one of the earliest and most persistent experiments in decentralised virtual worlds, appears to have reached a different conclusion. On Monday, the project launched on the Epic Games Store and released an Android app on Google Play, with an iOS version to follow. The message is clear: if people will not come to the metaverse, the metaverse will go to where people already are. The Epic Games Store listing is the more strategically significant of the two moves. Epic’s platform reached 317 million registered PC users in 2025 and set a record of 78 million monthly active users in December of that year, according to the company’s annual review. Third-party game spending on the store rose 57 per cent year on year to more than 0 million. For Decentraland, which has long struggled with the perception, and at times the reality, that its virtual world is sparsely populated, placing itself alongside Fortnite and other mainstream titles on a storefront with that kind of traffic represents an attempt to solve a distribution problem that no amount of blockchain architecture could fix on its own. Yemel Jardi, executive director of Decentraland, framed the launch in distribution terms rather than technological ones. Epic Games, he said, has become a primary discovery channel for desktop experiences, and being there strengthens how people find and access Decentraland. He described it as part of a broader strategy to meet people where they already are, with plans to expand to additional stores over time. The mobile launch follows a similar logic. Decentraland’s Android app is now live on Google Play, with the iOS version expected shortly. The project cites figures from Mordor Intelligence showing that mobile devices command 71.55 per cent of the social gaming market, and DataReportal statistics indicating that the average internet user spends three hours and 46 minutes per day on their phone. The Consumer Technology Association puts cross-platform play engagement at 61 per cent of gamers. Gino Cingolani, executive director of DCL Regenesis Labs, said the mobile experience is about reducing the barrier to access, allowing people to drop in from a phone rather than planning a desktop session. The timing is pointed. Meta, which staked its corporate identity on the metaverse in 2021 and spent roughly billion on Reality Labs before reversing course, announced in March that it would shut down Horizon Worlds on VR headsets (a decision it partially walked back after user backlash, though the platform’s future remains uncertain). Meta cut 1,500 Reality Labs employees in January 2026, closed three internal game studios, and slashed its metaverse budget by 30 per cent. The company that did more than any other to popularise the word “metaverse” has effectively abandoned the concept in favour of AI infrastructure and wearables. Decentraland’s pitch is that this retreat creates an opening. Where Meta built a proprietary virtual world controlled by a single corporation, Decentraland operates as a community-governed platform supported by a non-profit foundation. Users own their virtual land parcels and avatars as tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. The governance structure is decentralised, with decisions made through transparent community votes. There is no single company that can shut it down, which is precisely the vulnerability that Horizon Worlds users discovered when Meta decided the economics no longer worked. The question is whether Decentraland’s own economics work. The project’s native MANA token trades at roughly [cyberseo_openai model="gpt-3.5-turbo-0125" prompt="Rewrite a news story for a business publication, in a calm style with creativity and flair based on text below, making sure it reads like human-written text in a natural way. The article shall NOT include a title, introduction and conclusion. The article shall NOT start from a title. Response language English. Generate HTML-formatted content using tag for a sub-heading. You can use only , , , , and HTML tags if necessary. Text: The metaverse was supposed to be its own destination. You would put on a headset, enter a virtual world, and never need to think about the platform that brought you there. That was the pitch, anyway. Decentraland, one of the earliest and most persistent experiments in decentralised virtual worlds, appears to have reached a different conclusion. On Monday, the project launched on the Epic Games Store and released an Android app on Google Play, with an iOS version to follow. The message is clear: if people will not come to the metaverse, the metaverse will go to where people already are. The Epic Games Store listing is the more strategically significant of the two moves. Epic’s platform reached 317 million registered PC users in 2025 and set a record of 78 million monthly active users in December of that year, according to the company’s annual review. Third-party game spending on the store rose 57 per cent year on year to more than $400 million. For Decentraland, which has long struggled with the perception, and at times the reality, that its virtual world is sparsely populated, placing itself alongside Fortnite and other mainstream titles on a storefront with that kind of traffic represents an attempt to solve a distribution problem that no amount of blockchain architecture could fix on its own. Yemel Jardi, executive director of Decentraland, framed the launch in distribution terms rather than technological ones. Epic Games, he said, has become a primary discovery channel for desktop experiences, and being there strengthens how people find and access Decentraland. He described it as part of a broader strategy to meet people where they already are, with plans to expand to additional stores over time. The mobile launch follows a similar logic. Decentraland’s Android app is now live on Google Play, with the iOS version expected shortly. The project cites figures from Mordor Intelligence showing that mobile devices command 71.55 per cent of the social gaming market, and DataReportal statistics indicating that the average internet user spends three hours and 46 minutes per day on their phone. The Consumer Technology Association puts cross-platform play engagement at 61 per cent of gamers. Gino Cingolani, executive director of DCL Regenesis Labs, said the mobile experience is about reducing the barrier to access, allowing people to drop in from a phone rather than planning a desktop session. The timing is pointed. Meta, which staked its corporate identity on the metaverse in 2021 and spent roughly $70 billion on Reality Labs before reversing course, announced in March that it would shut down Horizon Worlds on VR headsets (a decision it partially walked back after user backlash, though the platform’s future remains uncertain). Meta cut 1,500 Reality Labs employees in January 2026, closed three internal game studios, and slashed its metaverse budget by 30 per cent. The company that did more than any other to popularise the word “metaverse” has effectively abandoned the concept in favour of AI infrastructure and wearables.The 💜 of EU techThe latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now! Decentraland’s pitch is that this retreat creates an opening. Where Meta built a proprietary virtual world controlled by a single corporation, Decentraland operates as a community-governed platform supported by a non-profit foundation. Users own their virtual land parcels and avatars as tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. The governance structure is decentralised, with decisions made through transparent community votes. There is no single company that can shut it down, which is precisely the vulnerability that Horizon Worlds users discovered when Meta decided the economics no longer worked. The question is whether Decentraland’s own economics work. The project’s native MANA token trades at roughly $0.08, down dramatically from its peak above $5 during the 2021 crypto bull run. Measuring active users has been a persistently contentious exercise. A widely cited 2022 report from DappRadar suggested the platform had as few as 38 daily active wallet users, though Decentraland disputed the methodology, arguing that it captured only on-chain transactions rather than total visitors. The project’s own figures for late 2025 claim roughly 847,000 monthly unique visitors to its web client, with daily unique visitors up 23 per cent since mid-2025 following the release of a lighter, faster desktop client. In January 2026 alone, the platform says it hosted 312 community events with average attendance of 127 unique visitors each. Those numbers are modest by the standards of mainstream gaming but significant for a platform that has survived the metaverse winter largely intact. Secondary market sales of Decentraland LAND parcels reached $4.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2025, up 31 per cent quarter on quarter. The project, founded in 2015 by Argentine developers Ari Meilich and Esteban Ordano, raised $26 million in its 2017 initial coin offering and launched publicly in February 2020. It has outlasted or outpaced most of its contemporaries. The Epic Games Store launch comes with a promotional incentive: anyone who downloads Decentraland through Epic receives an exclusive wearable item called the Epic Arrival Shield. It is a small gesture, but it reflects an understanding that building a user base in a crowded digital landscape requires meeting the expectations of platforms where people are already spending money. Epic’s store ecosystem, which gave away 662 million free game copies in 2025 alone, has trained its audience to expect value upfront. Decentraland will mark the dual launch with an in-world party on 2 April at 7pm UTC, featuring performances by Dúo Dø and DirkNeuenfels, who will also stream on Twitch. The cross-platform nature of the event, accessible from desktop, mobile, and stream, encapsulates the project’s current strategy. The virtual world itself is the product, but the storefronts, app stores, and streaming platforms are the doors. Whether those doors lead to a meaningful audience remains the open question. The metaverse narrative has been bruised by Meta’s retreat, an industry-wide reallocation of capital toward AI infrastructure, and the broader crypto market’s decline from its 2021 highs. But Decentraland’s bet is that the underlying idea, a persistent, user-owned virtual space where people gather for events, socialise, and build, does not require a trillion-dollar corporate sponsor to survive. It just requires a good enough reason to show up, and a storefront that makes showing up easy. As of this week, it has 317 million potential new front doors." temperature="0.3" top_p="1.0" best_of="1" presence_penalty="0.1" ].08, down dramatically from its peak above during the 2021 crypto bull run. Measuring active users has been a persistently contentious exercise. A widely cited 2022 report from DappRadar suggested the platform had as few as 38 daily active wallet users, though Decentraland disputed the methodology, arguing that it captured only on-chain transactions rather than total visitors. The project’s own figures for late 2025 claim roughly 847,000 monthly unique visitors to its web client, with daily unique visitors up 23 per cent since mid-2025 following the release of a lighter, faster desktop client. In January 2026 alone, the platform says it hosted 312 community events with average attendance of 127 unique visitors each. Those numbers are modest by the standards of mainstream gaming but significant for a platform that has survived the metaverse winter largely intact. Secondary market sales of Decentraland LAND parcels reached .2 million in the fourth quarter of 2025, up 31 per cent quarter on quarter. The project, founded in 2015 by Argentine developers Ari Meilich and Esteban Ordano, raised million in its 2017 initial coin offering and launched publicly in February 2020. It has outlasted or outpaced most of its contemporaries. The Epic Games Store launch comes with a promotional incentive: anyone who downloads Decentraland through Epic receives an exclusive wearable item called the Epic Arrival Shield. It is a small gesture, but it reflects an understanding that building a user base in a crowded digital landscape requires meeting the expectations of platforms where people are already spending money. Epic’s store ecosystem, which gave away 662 million free game copies in 2025 alone, has trained its audience to expect value upfront. Decentraland will mark the dual launch with an in-world party on 2 April at 7pm UTC, featuring performances by Dúo Dø and DirkNeuenfels, who will also stream on Twitch. The cross-platform nature of the event, accessible from desktop, mobile, and stream, encapsulates the project’s current strategy. The virtual world itself is the product, but the storefronts, app stores, and streaming platforms are the doors. Whether those doors lead to a meaningful audience remains the open question. The metaverse narrative has been bruised by Meta’s retreat, an industry-wide reallocation of capital toward AI infrastructure, and the broader crypto market’s decline from its 2021 highs. But Decentraland’s bet is that the underlying idea, a persistent, user-owned virtual space where people gather for events, socialise, and build, does not require a trillion-dollar corporate sponsor to survive. It just requires a good enough reason to show up, and a storefront that makes showing up easy. As of this week, it has 317 million potential new front doors." max_tokens="3500" temperature="0.3" top_p="1.0" best_of="1" presence_penalty="0.1" frequency_penalty="frequency_penalty"].08, down from its peak above during the 2021 crypto bull run. The platform has around 847,000 monthly unique visitors to its web client, with daily unique visitors increasing by 23% since mid-2025. Secondary market sales of Decentraland LAND parcels reached .2 million in the fourth quarter of 2025, up 31% quarter on quarter.
AppWizard
March 25, 2026
Many individuals experience their personal space being invaded when friends or family members explore their smartphones. To safeguard against this, the Privacy Display feature on the Galaxy S26 Ultra can be used, along with a lesser-known Android feature that enhances privacy. When sharing a phone, the app pinning feature can lock a specific application in place, preventing unauthorized navigation and maintaining control over what is displayed on the screen. This tool helps ensure privacy while allowing for shared experiences.
Tech Optimizer
March 18, 2026
AWS has ended standard support for PostgreSQL 13 on its RDS platform, urging customers to upgrade to PostgreSQL 14 or later. PostgreSQL 14 introduces a new password authentication scheme (SCRAM-SHA-256) that disrupts the functionality of AWS Glue, which cannot accommodate this authentication method. Users upgrading to PostgreSQL 14 may encounter an error stating, "Authentication type 10 is not supported," affecting their data pipeline operations. The incompatibility has been known since PostgreSQL 14's release in 2021, and the deprecation timeline for PG13 was communicated in advance. AWS Glue's connection-testing infrastructure relies on an internal driver that predates the newer authentication support, leading to failures when validating setups. Customers face three options: downgrade to a less secure password encryption, use a custom JDBC driver that disables connection testing, or rewrite ETL workflows as Python shell jobs. Extended Support for customers who remained on PG13 is automatically enabled unless opted out during cluster creation, costing [openai_gpt model="gpt-4o-mini" prompt="Summarize the content and extract only the fact described in the text bellow. The summary shall NOT include a title, introduction and conclusion. Text: AWS PostgreSQL 13 Support Ends, Unveiling Compatibility Challenges Earlier this month, AWS concluded standard support for PostgreSQL 13 on its RDS platform, urging customers to upgrade to PostgreSQL 14 or later to maintain a supported database environment. This transition aligns with PostgreSQL 13's community end-of-life, which occurred late last year. PostgreSQL 14, introduced in 2021, enhances security by adopting a new password authentication scheme known as SCRAM-SHA-256. However, this upgrade inadvertently disrupts the functionality of AWS Glue, the managed ETL (extract-transform-load) service, which is unable to accommodate the new authentication method. Consequently, users who heed AWS's security recommendations may find themselves facing an error message stating, "Authentication type 10 is not supported," effectively halting their data pipeline operations. This situation is particularly concerning as both RDS and Glue are typically utilized within production environments, where reliability is paramount. The deprecation of PostgreSQL 13 did not create this issue; rather, it eliminated the option to bypass a long-standing problem that has persisted for five years. Customers now face a dilemma: either accept an increased maintenance burden or incur costs associated with Extended Support. The crux of the matter lies in the connection-testing infrastructure of AWS Glue, which relies on an internal driver that predates the newer authentication support. When users click the "Test Connection" button to validate their setup, it fails to function as intended. A community expert on AWS's support forum acknowledged three years ago that an upgrade to the driver was pending, assuring users that crawlers would operate correctly. However, reports have surfaced indicating that crawlers also encounter issues, further complicating the situation. This incompatibility has been acknowledged since PostgreSQL 14's release, and the deprecation timeline for PG13 was communicated in advance. Both the RDS and Glue teams are likely aware of industry developments, yet it appears that neither team monitored the implications of their respective updates on one another. The underlying reason for this disconnect is rooted in AWS's organizational structure, which comprises tens of thousands of engineers divided into numerous semi-autonomous service teams. Each team operates independently, with the RDS team focusing on lifecycle deprecations and the Glue team managing driver dependencies. Unfortunately, this division of responsibilities has resulted in a lack of ownership over the gap between the two services, leaving customers to confront the consequences in their production environments. This scenario is not indicative of malice or a deliberate revenue enhancement strategy; instead, it reflects the challenges posed by organizational complexity. Integration testing across service boundaries is inherently difficult, particularly when those boundaries span multiple billion-dollar businesses under the same corporate umbrella. The unfortunate outcome is that customers are left to grapple with the fallout of these misalignments. For those facing a broken pipeline in the early hours of the morning, the rationale behind the incompatibility becomes irrelevant. The pressing need is for a solution, and AWS has presented three options, none of which are particularly appealing: Downgrade the password encryption on your database to the older, less secure standard, which contradicts AWS's own security guidance. Utilize a custom JDBC driver, which disables connection testing and may not support all desired features. Reconstruct ETL workflows as Python shell jobs, effectively abandoning the benefits of a managed service. For customers who opted to remain on PG13 to avoid this specific issue, Extended Support is now automatically enabled unless explicitly opted out during cluster creation—a detail that can easily be overlooked. This support incurs a fee of [cyberseo_openai model="gpt-4o-mini" prompt="Rewrite a news story for a technical publication, in a calm style with creativity and flair based on text below, making sure it reads like human-written text in a natural way. The article shall NOT include a title, introduction and conclusion. The article shall NOT start from a title. Response language English. Generate HTML-formatted content using tag for a sub-heading. You can use only , , , , and HTML tags if necessary. Text: Earlier this month, AWS ended standard support for PostgreSQL 13 on RDS. Customers who want to stay on a supported database — as AWS is actively encouraging them to do — need to upgrade to PostgreSQL 14 or later. This makes sense, as PostgreSQL (pronounced POST-gruh-SQUEAL if, like me, you want to annoy the living hell out of everyone within earshot) 13 reached its community end of life late last year. PostgreSQL 14, which shipped in 2021, defaults to a more secure password authentication scheme (SCRAM-SHA-256, for any nerds that have read this far without diving for their keyboards to correct my previous parenthetical). It also just so happens to break AWS Glue, their managed ETL (extract-transform-load) service, which cannot handle that authentication scheme. If you upgrade your RDS database to follow AWS's own security guidance, AWS's own data pipeline tooling responds with "Authentication type 10 is not supported" and stops working. Given that both of these services tend to hang out in the environment that most companies call "production," this is not terrific! The deprecation didn't create this problem. It just removed the ability to avoid a problem that has existed for five years, unless you take on an additional maintenance burden or pay the Extended Support tax. Here's the technical shape of the Catch-22, stripped to what matters: when you move to a newer PostgreSQL on RDS, Glue's connection-testing infrastructure uses an internal driver that predates the newer authentication support. The "Test Connection" button — the thing you'd click to verify that your setup works before trusting it with production data — simply doesn't. A community expert on AWS's support forum acknowledged three years ago that "the tester is pending a driver upgrade," and assured users that crawlers use their own drivers and should work fine. Users in the same thread reported back that the crawlers also fail. Running Glue against RDS PostgreSQL is a bread-and-butter data engineering pattern, not an edge case — this is a well-paved path that AWS has let fall into disrepair. The incompatibility has been known since PostgreSQL 14 shipped in 2021. The deprecation timeline for PG13 was announced in advance. Both teams—RDS and Glue—presumably track industry developments. Neither, apparently, bothered to track each other. The charitable read on how this happens is also the correct one: AWS has tens of thousands of engineers organized into hundreds of semi-autonomous service teams. The RDS team ships deprecations on the RDS lifecycle, the Glue team maintains driver dependencies on the Glue roadmap, and nobody explicitly owns the gap between them. The customer discovers the incompatibility in production, usually at an inconvenient hour. This is not a conspiracy, as AWS lacks the internal cohesion needed to pull one of those off. This is also not a carefully-constructed revenue-enhancement mechanism, because the Extended Support revenue is almost certainly a rounding error on AWS's balance sheet compared to the customer ill-will it generates. Instead, this is simply organizational complexity doing what organizational complexity does. It's the same reason your company's internal tools don't talk to each other; AWS is just doing it at a scale where the blast radius is someone else's production database. Integration testing across service boundaries is genuinely hard when those boundaries span multiple billion-dollar businesses that happen to share a parent company. Nobody woke up and decided to break Glue. It came that way from the factory. I want to be clear that I genuinely believe this, because the alternative I'm about to describe isn't about intent. The problem with the charitable read is that it doesn't matter If you're staring at a broken pipeline in your environment at 2 am, the reason is academic. You need a fix. AWS has provided three of them, and they all suck. You can downgrade password encryption on your database to the older, less secure standard: the one you just upgraded away from, per AWS's own recommendations. You can bring your own JDBC driver, which disables connection testing and may not support all the features you want. Or you can rewrite your ETL workflows as Python shell jobs. Every exit means giving up the entire value proposition of a managed service — presumably why you're in this mess to begin with — or walking back the security improvement you were just told to make. For customers who stayed on PG13 to avoid this specific problem, Extended Support is now running automatically unless you opted out at cluster creation time—a detail that's easy to miss. That's $0.10 per vCPU-hour for the first two years, doubling in year three. A 16-vCPU Multi-AZ instance works out to nearly $30,000 per year in Extended Support fees alone. It's not a shakedown. But it is a number that appears on a bill, from a company that also controls the timeline for fixing the problem, and all of the customer response options are bad. AWS doesn't need to be running a shakedown. They just need to be large enough that the result is indistinguishable from one. This pattern isn't unique to AWS, and it isn't going away. Every major cloud provider – indeed, every major technology provider – is a portfolio of semi-autonomous teams whose roadmaps occasionally collide in their customers' environments. It will happen again, with different services and different authentication protocols and different billing line items. The question isn't whether the org chart will produce another gap like this. It will. The question is what happens after the gap appears: does the response look like accountability — acknowledging the incompatibility before the deprecation deadline, not after — or does it look like a shrug and three paid alternatives? Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by one very large org chart. Just don't forget to check the invoice. ®" temperature="0.3" top_p="1.0" best_of="1" presence_penalty="0.1" ].10 per vCPU-hour for the first two years, doubling in the third year. For instance, a 16-vCPU Multi-AZ instance could result in nearly ,000 annually in Extended Support fees alone. While this may not be a deliberate exploitation of customers, it does present a significant financial burden, especially given that AWS controls the timeline for resolving the underlying problem. This pattern of organizational dissonance is not unique to AWS; it is a common occurrence among major cloud providers and technology companies alike. Each operates as a collection of semi-autonomous teams, leading to potential conflicts that can manifest in customer environments. The future will likely see similar gaps arise, characterized by different services, authentication protocols, and billing implications. The critical question remains: how will these organizations respond once such gaps are identified? Will they demonstrate accountability by acknowledging incompatibilities before deprecation deadlines, or will they offer a shrug accompanied by three costly alternatives? In navigating this complex landscape, it is essential to remember that the challenges posed by large organizational structures can often lead to unintended consequences. As customers, vigilance regarding invoices and service compatibility is paramount." max_tokens="3500" temperature="0.3" top_p="1.0" best_of="1" presence_penalty="0.1" frequency_penalty="frequency_penalty"].10 per vCPU-hour for the first two years and doubling in the third year. This situation reflects the challenges posed by AWS's organizational complexity, where independent teams may not effectively coordinate updates, leading to customer difficulties.
AppWizard
February 17, 2026
In 2025, the game "Clair Obscur: Expedition 33" has gained popularity for its narrative and visual style. The gaming industry has seen increased production costs and ambitions, leading to expansive open worlds and cinematic storylines in triple-A games. However, some high-profile titles like "Dragon Age: The Veilguard," "Star Wars Outlaws," and "Starfield" have struggled to deliver fun. Indie games such as "Hades 2" and "Expedition 33" excel in providing enjoyable experiences. Game designer Peter Molyneux emphasized the importance of joy in gaming, particularly in his upcoming project "Masters of Albion," which aims to evoke a sense of escapism and creativity. Molyneux seeks to create an engaging experience filled with humor and joy, focusing on player feedback during the game's early access phase.
AppWizard
February 15, 2026
A user claimed to have breached Max but later clarified that no large-scale breach or critical vulnerabilities were found. False claims about data breaches can cause significant reputational damage, as demonstrated by a Russian hacking group that falsely claimed to have accessed Epic Games' data, which was later admitted to be a ruse. Similarly, EuroCar reported that fake breach reports may have been generated by ChatGPT, misleading customers. Russian users are distrustful of the Max app, perceived as buggy and insecure. The Russian Federal Security Service blocked its integration with government services due to encryption concerns. Although the government pressures citizens to adopt Max, many may install it without using it regularly. There is skepticism among Russian citizens regarding the app's security, making them susceptible to damaging rumors. Future claims about Max Messenger data breaches are anticipated. Recommendations for organizations to protect against misinformation include maintaining a good reputation, being transparent if a breach occurs, and investing in digital forensics to counter false claims.
AppWizard
January 9, 2026
Google is enhancing notification management for locked applications in Android 17. Notifications from apps secured by the built-in app lock feature will be visible on the lock screen or as a bubble, but the content will remain concealed until the app is unlocked. This includes apps like WhatsApp, where a new message notification will appear without revealing the message details. The native App Lock API is in development, aiming to provide a system-level solution for locking individual applications, potentially eliminating the need for third-party apps. The feature may require biometric authentication for access and is expected to standardize privacy controls across the platform, particularly benefiting apps that handle sensitive information. Android 17 may debut with this native app-locking system for Pixel smartphones and other devices using the stock version of the OS.
Search