On the notorious Reddit board, TIFU – short for Today I F***ed Up – one user has spilled the beans on the inspiration behind his newborn nephew’s cool name.

Little baby Zacian’s parents have no idea that his name is actually the name of a big dog with a sword in his mouth, it would seem, and user Bladehuraska is planning to give the new baby some Pokémon-related presents for Christmas to “reveal the truth”. Good luck with that, dude.

Bladehuraska was playing Pokémon Sword in the back of a van (you know it’s going to be a good story when it starts in the back of a van) and he’d just caught the legendary Zacian with a Quick Ball.

While they were discussing potentially unique names, I kept overhearing they wanted it to begin with the letter Z… I jokingly suggested, “Hey, Zacian is a cool name. It means sword in Japanese.” My mother and family loved it, so it’s now official.

Unfortunately for this man and his nephew, Zacian does not mean sword in Japanese. As the comments on the post point out, Zacian is just Za + cyan, just as Zamazenta, its legendary companion, is Za + magenta – you can even read director Shigeru Ohmori speaking about it in this interview with GameInformer. But the real question is, who names their baby seconds after it’s born with the first random word suggested to them?

Still, there are much stranger Pokémon to be named after, and Zacian is pretty cool as a name. Plus, it’s a legendary Pokémon, so that’s gonna give the kid some clout, right? Let us know what you think the worst Pokémon name would be to give a baby. Winner gets to name the next Nintendo Life sprog.

Tis the season to be jolly, and Moonton is making that all the easier by hosting a big Christmas event in Mobile Legends: Adventure, the idle RPG spin-off of MOBA Mobile Legends: Bang Bang. In case you haven’t heard of it, it challenges you to collect your favourite heroes from the MOBA itself, and to create a powerful battle party out of them.

You then send them out on various adventures, including a story campaign that adds greater depth to the world of Mobile Legends and its various characters. Along the way, you level up your heroes, equip them with new gear, and unlock new skills, which increases their power. That’s important, as the content quite quickly ramps up in challenge.

As you progress, the campaign soon gives way to the Tower of Babel, an endless series of increasingly difficult battles, and the Labyrinth, which plays a bit like Minesweeper but has you seeking goodies, rather than bombs. Well, there are bombs, but they’re a good thing in the Labyrinth.

Play for Free!

If this all sounds like an awful lot of fun to you, we recommend grabbing Mobile Legends: Adventure on mobile – particularly if you already play Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, as it’s a nice companion that really fleshes out the world.

And, to help you make the most of your time spent with the festive content in Mobile Legends: Adventure, we thought we’d put together a guide that covers everything you need to know about it. From when the event takes place to how to unlock all of the goodies, here’s what’s happening right now in Mobile Legends: Adventure.

Everything you need to know about Mobile Legends: Adventure’s festive event

When does the holiday event take place?

Mobile Legends: Adventure’s holiday event is live right now, and runs right throughout the holiday period, ending on December 31.

What’s happening?

Well, the holiday season is coming to Mobile Legends: Adventure. What more do you want? Oh, to know the details. Well, here are all of the happenings in bullet point form:

• Step aside, Santa – Snow Elves are bringing the gifts this year. You’ll have to catch them though, and exchange the elves themselves for rewards.
• Lunox will feature in a new Goddess Blessing event, during which you have a chance to summon her and add her to your team.
  A big, mean Yeti is challenging you to a duel. And by duel, we mean a 5v1 battle during which snowballs are flying all over the place. Watch out!

• Speaking of snowballs, there’s a Snowball Fight too. Collect snowballs and you can exchange them for those heroes you’ve always wanted.
• Make sure to stay warm, though! The Christmas Hygge event will help with that, as it’s all about giving the gift of mittens to your friends, earning limited-time rewards. Who said giving was a gift in itself?
• Lunox, Claude are decking themselves out in Christmas attire, while Freya and Saber will have new looks as well – you can grab all of these fresh threads from the Skin Shop.
• Daily login rewards for everyone, of course! And a lovely Santa hat on your avatar. It’s the little things.

So how do I get everything?

First of all, here is everything new that you can get during the holiday event:

• Holiday avatar border
• Exclusive medals
• Character skins
• Various prizes from the Snowball Fight event prize pool

The holiday avatar border is very straightforward. You have to complete event quests to earn Christmas Boxes, which you can send to your friends. There’s a leaderboard for number of gifts sent to friends, and you need to be high up to get the avatar border.

As for the medals, here’s a breakdown of each one and how to get them:

• Snowball Champion: deal 50 bars of damage to the yeti in Icy Brawl
• Winter Goddess: get Lunox from the Goddess’s Blessing event
• Bell of Peace: login on Christmas Day
• Gentle Heart: send at least 999 Christmas Boxes during the event
• Merry Christmas: get all of the other badges to unlock this special extra

Finally, in terms of the festive skins, four of them are available to purchase in the Skin Shop at 50% discount, while the rest you can earn from the prize pool in Snowball Fight. We don’t know an exact number, but there are at least 13 skins on offer to celebrate the holiday season.

And that’s it! Follow our tips and you’ll have a nice holiday season ahead of you in Mobile Legends: Adventure. If you haven’t downloaded it yet, we encourage you to do so on mobile. Merry Christmas!

As 2020 draws to a close, most of us are looking forward to putting this year in the rearview mirror. Since we depend even more on getting online for everything in our lives, we’re more than ready to be done with passwords. Passwords are a hassle to use, and they present security risks for users and organizations of all sizes, with an average of one in every 250 corporate accounts compromised each month. According to the Gartner Group, 20 to 50 percent of all help desk calls are for password resets. The World Economic Forum (WEF) estimates that cybercrime costs the global economy $2.9 million every minute, with roughly 80 percent of those attacks directed at passwords.

In November 2019 at Microsoft Ignite, we shared that more than 100 million people were already using Microsoft’s passwordless sign-in each month. In May of 2020, just in time for World Password Day, that number had already grown to more than 150 million people, and the use of biometrics to access work accounts is now almost double what it was then. We’ve drawn strength from our customers’ determination this year and are set to make passwordless access a reality for all our customers in 2021.

2020: A banner year for passwordless technology

February: We announced a preview of Azure Active Directory support for FIDO2 security keys in hybrid environments. The Fast Identity Online (FIDO) Alliance is a “cross-industry consortia providing standards, certifications, and market adoption programs to replace passwords with simpler, stronger authentication.” Following the latest FIDO spec, FIDO2, we enabled users with security keys to access their Hybrid Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) Windows 10 devices with seamless sign-in, providing secure access to on-premises and cloud resources using a strong hardware-backed public and private-key credential. This expansion of Microsoft’s passwordless capabilities followed 2019’s preview of FIDO2 support for Azure Active Directory joined devices and browser sign-ins.

June: I gave a keynote speech at Identiverse Virtual 2020 where I got to talk about how Microsoft’s FIDO2 implementation highlights the importance of industry standards in implementing Zero Trust security and is crucial to enabling secure ongoing remote work across industries. Nitika Gupta, Principal Program Manager of Identity Security in our team, showed how Zero Trust is more important than ever for securing data and resources and provided actionable steps that organizations can take to start their Zero Trust journey.

September: At Microsoft Ignite, the company revealed the new passwordless wizard available through the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. Delivering a streamlined user sign-in experience in Windows 10, Windows Hello for Business replaces passwords by combining strong MFA for an enrolled device with a PIN or user biometric (fingerprint or facial recognition). This approach gives you, our customers, the ability to deliver great user experiences for your employees, customers, and partners without compromising your security posture.

November: Authenticate 2020, “the first conference dedicated to who, what, why and how of user authentication,” featured my boss, Joy Chik, CVP of Identity at Microsoft, as the keynote speaker. Joy talked about how FIDO2 is a critical part of Microsoft’s passwordless vision, and the importance of the whole industry working toward great user experiences, interoperability, and having apps everywhere support passwordless authentication. November also saw Microsoft once again recognized by Gartner as a “Leader” in identity and access management (IAM).

MISA members lead the way

The Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA) is an ecosystem of security partners who have integrated their solutions with Microsoft to better defend against increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. Four MISA members—YubiKey, HID Global, Trustkey, and AuthenTrend—stood out this year for their efforts in driving passwordless technology adoption across industries.

Yubico created the passwordless YubiKey hardware to help businesses achieve the highest level of security at scale.

“We’re providing users with a convenient, simple, authentication solution for Azure Active Directory.”—Derek Hanson, VP of Solutions Architecture and Alliances, Yubico

HID Global engineered the HID Crescendo family of FIDO-enabled smart cards and USB keys to streamline access for IT and physical workspaces—enabling passwordless authentication anywhere.

“Organizations can now secure access to laptops and cloud apps with the same credentials employees use to open the door to their office.”—Julian Lovelock, VP of Global Business Segment Identity and Access Management Solutions, HID

TrustKey provides FIDO2 hardware and software solutions for enterprises who want to deploy passwordless authentication with Azure Active Directory because: “Users often find innovative ways to circumvent difficult policies,” comments Andrew Jun, VP of Product Development at TrustKey, “which inadvertently creates security holes.”

AuthenTrend applied fingerprint-authentication technology to the FIDO2 security key and aspires to replace all passwords with biometrics to help people take back ownership of their credentials.

Next steps for passwordless in 2021

Our team has been working hard this year to join these partners in making passwords a thing of the past. Along with new UX and APIs for managing FIDO2 security keys enabling customers to develop custom solutions and tools, we plan to release a converged registration portal in 2021, where all users can seamlessly manage passwordless credentials via the My Apps portal.

We’re excited about the metrics we tracked in 2020, which show a growing acceptance of passwordless among organizations and users:

• Passwordless usage in Azure Active Directory is up by more than 50 percent for Windows Hello for Business, passwordless phone sign-in with Microsoft Authenticator, and FIDO2 security keys.
• More than 150 million total passwordless users across Azure Active Directory and Microsoft consumer accounts.
• The number of consumers using Windows Hello to sign in to Windows 10 devices instead of a password grew to 84.7 percent from 69.4 percent in 2019.

We’re all hoping the coming year will bring a return to normal and that passwordless access will at least make our online lives a little easier.

Learn more about Microsoft’s passwordless story. To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us at @MSFTSecurity for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

Without doubt one of the biggest gaming success stories of 2020, especially in Nintendo’s case, has been the unrelenting world domination of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Right from its hugely successful launch up until this very day, the game has been breaking sales records and winning over the hearts of players with no signs of slowing down.

So how is Nintendo planning on keeping this momentum going? We’ve seen plenty of significant content updates over the past few months as new features get added and seasonal changes come and go, so will these updates continue?

In an interview with Polygon, Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser was asked about the game’s future. Two potential ideas were raised – a New Leaf-style approach where the same yearly schedule is repeated before a larger update arrives, or a Pocket Camp approach where the game constantly evolves. Here’s what he had to say in response:

“Yeah, I see two potential avenues here, one you already mentioned, which has been our update schedule that comes from the developers. And that can be around seasons, it can be around events, it can be around enhanced gameplay features. And that will continue as we go forward.

“I think the thing that is very unique and different about Animal Crossing: New Horizons, however, is also the [user-generated content], and people’s ability to really lean into user-generated content and make that available and to share that with their friends. And that doesn’t happen on any cadence. That’s an ongoing, constantly changing and evolving environment where people can visit each other’s islands and take advantage of that UGC, bring it to their islands and share it. So I think that’s another aspect that really is strengthening the engagement over time with Animal Crossing.”

Following on from this response, Bowser clarifies that Nintendo “definitely sees” the sort of updates the game has received throughout its first year continuing.

So, in case you had any fears of New Horizons slowing down, it looks like the usual seasonal updates and new additions will be finding their way into the game for a good while yet. As the game rapidly heads for the title of best-selling Switch game of all time, it’s great – and probably expected – to see the development team continuing its support, even if they are relying a little on players keeping the game alive through sharing their experiences.

Do you see yourself playing New Horizons for years to come? Would it take a more significant update like the one that New Leaf received to keep you interested? Share your thoughts with us below.

Thunderful Publishing and developer Studio Fizbin have announced that Say No! More will no longer be launching this year as planned.

The game, which sees players rediscovering how to say ‘no’ in a world which has forgotten how to stand up for itself, will now launch in 2021. A new ‘Say No! To 2020’ trailer has been released to coincide with the announcement, which you can check out for yourself above.

In a world where the word “no” has been all but forgotten, the population is focused on people-pleasing, the daily grind and making it through the week with an unwavering artificial smile. On your first day as an intern in the corporate world, work continues to pile up and to top it all off your superior decides to take your lunch box. Sat dejected at your desk, you happen upon a portable cassette player with a cassette inside simply titled “No!”.

Upon listening to this mystical discovery you meet the flamboyant self-help coach who goes by the name of… Coach. Coach grants you the lost power of saying “No!” and sends you on a spree of No!-saying, thus changing the world. What will you do with this incredible new power? Well, you won’t be making any more coffees, that’s for sure! Expect the unexpected in this bonkers story about the power of “No!” and its ability to bring people together.

If you’re liking the look of this one, make sure to keep an eye out for it appearing on the Switch eShop in the new year. Thunderful says that it’s now expected to launch in the spring.

Will you be adding Say No! More to your Switch wishlist? Say No! in the comments below.