Minecraft has partnered with Netflix to create a new set of skins based on the Stranger Things series. The skin pack is available for download right now, and we’ve included the video trailer above.
The skin pack is surprisingly comprehensive, and includes characters and outfits from both the first and second seasons of Stranger Things. Perhaps the most unsettling is the demogorgon, which features both an open and a puckered set of toothy, viscous mandibles.
Minecraft players who love the upside down of Stranger Things have a new skin pack to acquire. It's available now in concert with the new season of the hit retro-horror show on Netflix. It looks like the whole cast is represented as a Minecraft character, including Hopper, Mike, Eleven, Dustin, Lucas and Will.
Stick around to the end of that trailer and you'll see the Minecraft skin for that scary monster from the alternate universe, too. The skin pack is ready for purchase now on all “Bedrock” versions of Minecraft (which means mobile, Windows 10, and Xbox One for now) for $3 or 490 coins in the Minecraft Marketplace.
Minecraft [$6.99] is so huge that it has captured almost every corner of pop culture—toys, games, novels—and today we got an announcement about a new endeavor from those behind the huge franchise: a YouTube miniseries. Specifically, we are getting a Mattel miniseries based on the company's Minecraft Mini-Figures. Challenge of the Spooky Isles, as the miniseries is titled, is all about a Hunger Games-like contest where ten crafters are teleported to a strange island and have to survive the crazy challenges while also settling their rivalries. As you can see from the trailer, the miniseries is definitely geared towards a younger audience, but I'll still watch it because I enjoy pretty much anything Minecraft. And I do like the way they managed to keep the blockiness and still make it cute.
The miniseries will consist of 8 episodes, with the first one launching this Thursday on the Mattel Action YouTube channel. Will it be fun to watch? It does seem to be focused a bit too much on the killing things part of Minecraft, which isn't personally my favorite part of the game, but if you like Minecraft, you'll probably enjoy the series, especially if you're a younger player. Next stop for Minecraft? Possibly TV.
The Wii U version of Minecraft was basically put out to pasture when it wasn't included in the “Better Together” cross-play update. In summation, any version of the game that retains the “Edition” moniker will be limited to its own platform, while everything else can play together. Notable exceptions include PS4, Vita, and of course, Wii U.
This led to a lot of people naturally upgrading on Switch (where Better Together works), but they had to leave their save files behind. Well, that changes this week, as Nintendo has implemented a cross-save transfer from Wii U to the newest Nintendo generation. Just load the game up on Wii U, select your save, select transfer, then import it on Switch.
I never really got into the Wii U version (I kept playing Xbox One and only dabbled in the new Mario sandbox), but if I did, this would be a nice concession. Provided that you're okay with eating the cost to upgrade of course.
Minecraft, with its blocky Scandinavian charm, is not a game you’d expect to have the potential to hijack you mobile with malware and turn it into a botnet.
The game Microsoft acquired for £1.5bn is fairly secure, but despite that, cyber security firm Symantec has found a clutch of Minecraft-based add-ons in the Google Play Store that are harbouring malicious code for Trojan malware called Sockbot.
The Trojan links infected devices to a proxy server to surreptitiously generate advertising revenue and enslave the device as part of a botnet.
Symantec noted that the malicious add-on apps, which allow users to change the appearance of their in-game characters for Minecraft: Pocket Edition, appeared to be originally designed for generating illegitimate ad revenue, but now have more scope to power cyber attacks.
“This highly flexible proxy topology could easily be extended to take advantage of a number of network-based vulnerabilities, and could potentially span security boundaries,” Symantec’s Shaun Aimoto said. “In addition to enabling arbitrary network attacks, the large footprint of this infection could also be leveraged to mount a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.”
Aimoto noted that to date, Symantec has found eight Minecraft-based apps infected with the Trjoan that have a combined install base ranging from 600,000 to 2.8 million Android devices, and appears to be targeting gadgets mostly in the US but also in Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and Brazil.
After discovering the malicious apps, Symantec informed Google which stripped them from the Play Store, so mobile Minecraft fans can rest easily for the time being.
However, the cyber threat looks to have been a fairly advanced one, having managed to sneak past Google’s vetting and security processes for the Play Store by posing as legitimate add-on apps. And once the malware was on a device, it used encryption to obscure its code and avoid basic-levels of detection.
With this in mind, Symantec advises the evergreen practise of keeping your mobile software up-to-date, avoiding apps from unknown sources, paying close attention to the permissions an app wants, and of course use mobile security services.
There are more than 6,000 languages on the planet but we're losing them at rate of one every two weeks. Globalization and mass communication made the world smaller and English, Mandarin, and Arabic have become lingua franca, pushing out smaller languages that connect minority communities. With a little help, some of those communities are fighting back.
Elfdalian is an ancient Scandinavian language spoken by around 3,000 people in the Älvdalen region in the middle of Sweden. It's a descendant of old Norse that developed in isolation throughout the Middle Ages. The Elfdalian people lived a semi-nomadic life traveling from a small town to country farms during the Summer. Here's what it sounds like.
The language is having a hard time in Sweden. Despite international recognition and support, Stockholm considers Elfdalian a dialect of Swedish and not its own official language. Despite its small native speaker base and status with the government, Elfdalian is experiencing a renaissance online. Thanks to the internet and the passionate Ulum Dalska—the Organization for the Preservation of Elfdalian—the language has managed not only to survive but thrive in recent years.
Chris Pennington and Emilia Stjernfelt hope to give it another boost with Minecraft. Pennington is passionate about languages and passionate about helping. “A people's history and culture is wrapped up in the language they speak,” Pennington told me over Discord chat. “So, one of the most important things you can do is pass that language along to your children.”
Pennington and Stjernfelt are using Minecraft to build a virtual world that'll make it easier for Elfdalian speakers to pass that language on to their kids. Stjernfelt is Swedish and Pennington is American. Neither are native Elfdalian speakers. The pair met and fell in love in a Swedish Minecraft server. Soon, the two had married and he'd moved across the ocean to be with her.
Image: Minecraft via Chris Pennington
Minecraft helped Pennington learn Swedish so he could better communicate with Stjernfelt and his other friends and now he thinks it could help people learn Elfdalian. “Most language learning methods it involves some rote memorization” he explained. If you've taken a foreign language class you know the drill—flash cards with pictures and labels, constant practice, and repetition. Minecraft, instead, offers virtual immersion, which is a much better way to learn.
The Elfdalian village of Älvdalen in Minecraft is complete with quests designed to help players learn about the culture as well as the language. “We plan to have one where the player goes to help out in one of the summer pasture farms, and another where they are tasked with picking up items from a grocery store,” Pennington said.
The project has excited the Elfdalian community. Ulum Dalska even flew the pair to town to put them through a Summer course on the language. The project is further proof that the language is unique and distinct from Swedish, something Elfdalian speakers have had a hard time making Stockholm understand.
;)
