Digital Life Asia
PSG Talon (PSG) bounced back from a poor Week 5 in the League of Legends Pacific Championship Series (PCS) 2020 Summer Split with four wins in the Super Week. These include important wins over league leader, Taipei J Team (JT), and ahq eSports club (AHQ).
AHQ, PSG and Machi Esports (MCX) are now tied for 2nd place with 12W4L.
Other than PSG, the top four teams all suffered a loss and one particular defeat that stood out was MCX’s match against Alpha Esports (ALF).
The Philippine Pro Gaming League (PPGL) will crown its first ever Call of Duty: Mobile (CODM) and MARVEL Super War (MSW) champions in the grand finals on July 31 and Aug. 1.
Sixteen teams from Rules of Survival Mobile (ROS Mobile), and four teams each from CODM and MSW will battle for a Php910,000 cash prize.
The PPGL is the country’s biggest multi-game esports league, organized by Mineski Esports and Globe, and presented by Tostas. It will stream the grand finals on July 31 and August 1 on its Facebook page.
Heads up, comic book fans! The incredible double-sized conclusion to Comic Odyssey‘s #SuitsForHeroes initiative is upon us.
Following a donation drive at the Suits For Heroes website, fans are now invited to bid on high-quality prints of the campaign’s distinctive art pieces in a blind online auction. Filipino comic book artists and the country’s top comic book shops joined forces for the #SuitsForHeroes PPE fundraiser. They launched this to help purchase personal protective equipment for real-life superheroes: the Filipino health workers fighting COVID-19.
From August 1-7, those interested may visit the site and place their bids, with the highest bid for each winning the print. Each print will be rendered on 12×18″ board paper, and autographed by the artist who created it.
As I’ve previously mentioned in this column, education is very dear to my heart. That’s why I was happy to learn that Philippine startup Edusuite aims to help improve the educational system here with its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered school management system for
K-12 to college. This allows schools to focus less on administration and more on education.
Now, I’m a techno-optimist and a big believer in AI. I love Edusuite’s vision of having AI co-manage the school together with human administrators. Otherwise, as Edusuite Co-founder and President Niel Dagondon pointed out at the press briefing on July 29, you are using software but still just manually administering the school. But how challenging is it to get school officials to adopt this mindset and allow AI to co-manage?
“I have to admit that it’s not going to be a fast process. Sometimes we launch Edusuite with a school and it takes them sometimes as much as two years to enable all the features that Edusuite has. And what we did is to make it in a way that we can turn off the AI-specific features one by one. So if a school does not trust the system to do the AI at the start, they’ll be able to do the planning their way. For example, if they don’t want the student advising module to automatically advise the student, they can just turn it off and have someone on the backend manually approve each time a student would take a certain number of subjects. So it’s not going to be automatic, that as soon as they implement Edusuite, all the AI features are turned on,” Dagondon said.
As a young girl, Lyka Mea saw her older sister playing The Sims. Little did the future Lenovo Legion ambassador know that this moment would change her life.
“My older sister was the one who introduced me to gaming. I saw her playing The Sims back in the day and I just had to try it out for myself. We eventually started playing Ragnarok Online, and to this day, it continues to be one of my guilty pleasure games,” Mea told Digital Life Asia.
According to her, gaming completely changed her life. She even noticed that her “wants” started to lessen.
“Everything became simpler for me. It felt like as long as I had gaming, I could be content with my life. I know it sounds so deep, but it is what it is. On the plus side, gaming has opened new career paths for me as well, especially in the realm of esports. I love being in this industry and I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she said.
On the back of the company’s US$150M funding round, Globalization Partners has launched its new Asia Pacific revenue team, appointing Charles Ferguson as General Manager for the region.
Globalization Partners offers an innovative platform that simplifies global business expansion. With significant business momentum across North America and EMEA over the last 12 months, Asia Pacific is the next key piece of the US-based company’s global growth trajectory.
“Asia Pacific is one of the most dynamic markets in the world and I am looking forward to working with the team to build out our presence and drive opportunities in the region,” Ferguson said in a press statement.
George R.R. Martin’s A Clash of Kings #5
Writers: George R.R. Martin, Landry Walker
Artist: Mel Rubi
Cover: Mike Miller
FC | 32 pages | Fantasy/Adventure | $3.99 | Mature
George R.R. Martin’s A Clash of Kings #5 is a great reminder that Tyrion and Varys were once intelligent and compelling characters.
It might be hard to remember this, given how they were reduced to pale shadows of themselves when the “Game of Thrones” TV series ran out of book material.
So it’s a real pleasure to read this series from Dynamite Entertainment that depicts the Imp and the Spider in all their deliciously wicked and cunning glory.
Spoilers ahead.
Marvel’s Jessica Jones: Playing with Fire
Season 1 Episode 12: “Other Times, Other Places”
By Lauren Beukes, Vita Ayala, Sam Beckbessinger, Zoe Quinn, and Elsa Sjunneson
Narrated by Fryda Wolff
As we near the end of this serial novel, the Serial Box exclusive Marvel’s Jessica Jones: Playing with Fire just keeps getting better.
One of the things I love most about comic books are superhero team-ups. Well, Sam isn’t exactly a superhero, but it’s always a wonderful episode whenever they interact with Jessica Jones. And the way the young flare and the cynical PI work together so well makes this a great team-up in my book.
Speaking of team-ups, last episode’s co-writers Zoe Quinn and Sam Beckbessinger once again collaborate to deliver a great installment.
Spoilers ahead.
Have you ever thought of investing in retail treasury bonds? Now the Bonds.PH mobile app makes it easy for every Filipino, even the unbanked, to do so for as low as US$100.
The Philippine Bureau of the Treasury (BTr) is the first in Asia to launch an app for the distribution of retail treasury bonds enabled by Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT).
“The launch of Bonds.PH paves the way for all Filipinos, particularly the unbanked, to easily and affordably invest in the BTr’s newest retail treasury bond, RTB-24 or the Progreso Bonds. The mobile app presents a compelling opportunity for all to invest and help the Republic raise funds for economic recovery and COVID-19 response,” Philippine National Treasurer Rosalia V. De Leon said in a press statement.
The launch was made possible in partnership with Union Bank of the Philippines (UnionBank) and Philippine Digital Asset Exchange (PDAX).
“This is the first retail treasury bond issuance to leverage on blockchain technology in Asia, and likely the world. The Philippines is ready to lead the way into the future and tech up the nation with innovative, inclusive opportunities, powered by emerging technologies, for the benefit of all Filipinos,” said UnionBank President and CEO Edwin R. Bautista.
Compromised employee accounts are the most expensive root cause of data breaches. In fact, data breaches caused by compromised employee accounts cost US$1M more than the average data breach. This is based on the findings of the 2020 Cost of a Data Breach Report that IBM Security announced today.
Sponsored by IBM Security and conducted by the Ponemon Institute, the 2020 Cost of a Data Breach Report is based on in-depth interviews with more than 3,200 security professionals in organizations that suffered a data breach over the past year. This global study on the financial impact of data breaches revealed that these incidents cost companies US$3.86M per breach on average. Meanwhile, the average cost in ASEAN is US$2.71M.
As companies are increasingly accessing sensitive data via new remote work and cloud-based business operations, the report sheds light on the financial losses that organizations can suffer if this data is compromised. A separate IBM study found that over half of employees new to working from home due to the pandemic have not been provided with new guidelines on how to handle customers’ personally identifiable information, despite the changing risk models associated with this shift.