Hasta La Gadget!

On Monday morning in Geneva, a week-long round of secret negotiations will resume on a treaty which ordinary citizens worldwide probably never heard of, but that will certainly affect many aspects of their everyday life.

I wrote several weeks ago on the Trade In Services Agreement (TISA), the most ambitious and perhaps dangerous push on liberalizing services that we have ever seen. Thanks to Wikileaks, who published the draft texts last Thursday, we now have an idea about the way in which this treaty will deliberately undermine any attempt at “financial re-regulation” in the light of the current local financial crisis.

Indeed, analysis shows that with this new treaty, governments that would sign on to TISA will be expected to lock in and extend their current levels of financial deregulation and liberalization. It’s now clear following the Wikileaks publication that finance companies which were responsible for the global financial crisis have seen almost all of their demands for further deregulation reflected in the proposals made by governments on their behalf. The publication also shows that the proposals being negotiated this week require more financial deregulation than the World Trade Organization rules and in some places even more than the most extreme existing free trade agreements.

Simply put, the proposals being considered this week are the finance industry’s dream come true.

Current WTO parties negotiating TISA are: Australia, Canada, Chile, Chinese Taipei (Taiwan), Colombia, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Liechtenstein, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, South Korea, Switzerland, Turkey, the United States, and the European Union, which includes its 28 member states.

So, what’s the problem? If accepted, these proposals would prevent the implementation of many of the recommendations to deal with the current global financial crisis and reduce the chances of future financial crises that have been advocated by Nobel Prize-winning economists, United Nations agencies and other finance experts.

Public Citizen, a think tank based Washington D.C., notes that if the leaked text is accepted:

… it would roll back the improvements made after the global financial crisis to safeguard consumers and financial stability and cement us into the extreme deregulatory model of the 1990s that led to the crisis in the first place and the billions in losses to consumers and governments. This is a text that big banks and financial speculators may love but that could do real damage to the rest of us.

The group says that the new text includes a provision that is called “standstill” that would block countries from changing financial regulation and would lock them into whatever policies they had on the books in the past.

Another aspect of the Treaty which is particularly worrying is on data sharing. The U.S. government is proposing to make it much easier for foreign governments to spy on the sensitive financial data of citizens of other TISA countries. Because of Edward Snowden, we now know that the National Security Agency sent an agent to a technology company’s headquarters where they installed U.S. government software on to the company server and downloaded data from there for several weeks. Governments that would sign on to the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) would have to allow finance companies to transfer the data of their country’s citizens to any other country for processing, without any privacy safeguards. So for example if Pakistan is the cheapest location to outsource this back-office processing to, the U.S. proposal, if accepted, would allow banks and insurance companies from any TISA country to transfer the data of American citizens to Pakistan for processing, with no privacy safeguards.

To conclude, it has become clear that the main protagonists of the proposed TISA have been the European Union and the U.S. government. They have succeeded to drag some 50 countries into negotiating away from the WTO’s Headquarters.

We expect U.S. Trade Representative Froman and EU Trade Commissioner de Gucht to lead responsively and end the opacity behind the services talks. We shouldn’t have to rely on Wikileaks to have access to what ought to be public information around talks to liberalize a huge portion of our economy.

Find out more about the treaty and its possible impacts here.

The best players at the World Cup can dominate a game. As the United States learned the hard way, the best players at the World Cup can also change a game in a matter of seconds.

With the U.S. just moments from a win that would have sealed a spot in the Round of 16, Cristiano Ronaldo rescued a draw for Portugal by setting up a game-tying goal in the last minute of stoppage time at Arena Amazonia in Manaus on Sunday. In the 95th minute of play, Ronaldo received the ball on the right wing after U.S. midfielder Michael Bradley was dispossessed in the middle of the field. After taking a touch to bring the ball under control, Ronaldo looked toward the goal and sent an inch-perfect cross toward the six-yard box. Portugal’s Valera, running in the from left wing, got his head to the ball and drove it past U.S. goalkeeper Tim Howard. The last-gasp equalizer salvaged a draw for Portugal and kept alive its chances of advancing to the Round of 16.

Here’s the Varela goal from Cristiano in the final seconds that saved Portugal’s World Cup hopes: http://t.co/fglWiyBDrl

— ESPN FC (@ESPNFC) June 23, 2014

Up until that counterattack, Ronaldo had been largely held in check by the United States and had failed to capitalize on his few chances. With one precise pass in the last possible moment, he made up for his earlier anonymity and stunned the United States. The draw ensured that all four teams in the “Group of Death” still has something to play for entering their final group-stage games.

“He made a great cross,” Howard told reporters after the 2-2 draw, via The Associated Press. “Football’s cruel sometimes.”

Last time we played a virtual reality game built by the folks from Chaotic Moon, we were giving a bunch of digital sharks the business with our Engadget fists of fury. Friday night at Engadget Live in Austin, we played a new game, called Death from…

There are different types of gamers out there. There are some who don’t care about how their game looks, as long as it is fun. Then you get gamers who only care about graphics and nothing else, and once in a while you come across gamers who actually care about the sound quality from their games.

Perhaps not given as much attention and focus as graphics and processing power, but having good quality audio helps and it looks like that could soon be a feature that Sony will be bringing to their PlayStation 4 and PS Vita consoles. This is apparently due to the a trademark that Sony has filed for “Hi-Res Audio”.

What makes this seemingly normal trademark filing interesting, and what could also point towards Hi-Res Audio arriving on console, is the fact that the trademark includes class 9, which is the class used to refer to games. According to the trademark blurb, it is for “computer game programs for home video game machines” and “hand-held games with liquid crystal displays.” If that doesn’t sound like the PS4 or PS Vita, we don’t know what does.

Sony has yet to make an official announcement, but based on Sony’s description of it, “Feel the power and presence of a live performance in your living room. Or experience what it’s like to sit in on a live studio recording.” If you’d like to learn more about about Sony’s Hi-Res Audio, the company actually as a website dedicated to it, so head on over for the details.

Sony Trademarks “Hi-Res Audio”, Hints At Console Support , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

The Auction House feature in Diablo 3 has been somewhat of a source of contention amongst gamers and even some of the Diablo 3 developers. Some gamers felt that it was fair and added a new dimension to the game, while others felt that it no longer made sense to farm for gear if other people could do it for you and you could just buy their findings.

Well whichever side of the fence you were on, Blizzard ultimately decided to shutdown the Auction House. The Auction House officially stopped all transactions back in March but Blizzard has since reminded gamers that they still have until the 24th of June to claim their items from the auction house. Basically if you still have gold, real-life money, or items that are still sitting in your Auction House stash, you will have until the 24th of June to claim it, otherwise they’ll be gone forever.

Once the 24th of June has passed, all that will remain of the Auction House will be pretty much be in the memories of gamers who may or may not have agreed with Blizzard’s decision. However with Reaper of Souls, Blizzard has introduced a new looting feature called Loot 2.0. Instead of mobs, bosses, or chests that drop legendary or set items that might be completely useless for your class, Loot 2.0 essentially tries to ensure that every drop is related to your character class.

So players who play Barbarians will see strength-based items drop, while Wizards and Witch Doctors might see more intel-based gear drop for them. This sort of removes the need for the Auction House since you can basically farm for gear that makes sense. So, who else will miss the Auction House come 24th of June?

Diablo 3′s Auction House Will Be Gone For Good This Tuesday , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.