The Week in Geek: Emoji users have more sex, while the Apple Card will mandate you buy new trousers

Today, most of Team Trusted are recovering from Gamescom, where they were working around the clock to bring you the newsiest gaming news from the gaming mega-event in Cologne. 

With the sun shining, at least in London, and the last bank holiday of the year nearly here, let’s have a slightly more relaxed than usual look at the biggest news from the world of tech. It’s time for the week in geek – written from a coffee shop that has a lot of big windows. 

Red card

Our Aatif has dug up aftercare instructions for Apple’s forthcoming Apple Card and it is, I have to be honest, quite silly. 

Apple Card, effectively Apple’s attempt to make credit card debt into a lifestyle product, is made from titanium. The fancy-pants card can’t make contact with leather, denim, hard surfaces or items like spare change or your keys without becoming indelibly marked. Oh, you’ll need to keep it clear of other credit cards too: Apple has said putting two cards in the same place might lead to your Apple Card becoming scratched. 

Which raises two important questions: 

• What do Apple’s designers carry around in their pockets? 
• Why the hell did Apple choose to make a credit card out of titanium when it’s seemingly so allergic to so many day-to-day objects? 

The first question is the most puzzling. My wallet, currently nestled in my pocket and holding several different cards and a couple of forms of ID, is made of leather. So was my last wallet, and the one before that and the one before that – all the way back to the time I briefly carried a Machine Head wallet that was taped to the front of a copy of Metal Hammer magazine as a teenager. That was plastic, but it looked kinda terrible, and so every wallet I’ve used since has been leather. 

That’s a no-no now, but I also can’t keep it loose in a pair of jeans in case the denim damages the card. Even if I change trousers when I know I’m taking the Apple Card out for a spin – which is a ridiculous requirement I can’t believe I have to type – if it touches my keys or a pocketful of change, it’ll still be messed up. 

I can only imagine the requirements are solely in place so that Apple can try to make us in their image, outlawing denim, pocket change and leather wallets in favour of some Apple-approved trousers and no wallet. 

The second question is easy to answer. Why make a card out of titanium? Fashion, darling. 

Every tech company has been spying on you, sorry (Part 2951)

Ughhhhhhh

No rest for the wicked

Sony has listened to the wise guru Beyonce, and put a ring on it when it comes to Marvel’s Spider-Man developers Insomniac games, acquiring the company to make great games for them.

It’s a power move, undoubtedly, but it should ensure that Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 will be coming, and arriving as a PlayStation 5 specific title to boot. Of course, Insomniac has been practically a first party developer for Sony’s consoles for a while. Take a look at their published titles, and you can see it’s rare that they’ve developed for anything outside of a PlayStation since the studio was founded. 

But it’s a pretty big shift, with Insomniac now becoming Sony’s 14th internal studio. As a move, it shores up Sony’s position as king of the single-player action adventure exclusive, which is a great position for the company to be in ahead of the launch of the PlayStation 5. 

Obviously there’s no word on what will happen with a Marvel’s Spider-Man sequel now that Sony and Marvel seem to have agreed to disagree when it comes to the next Spider-Man film, which has led to the company picking up their Spider-Man shaped ball and going home.

No emojis please, we’re British

God bless the Manchester Evening News for dropping the bombshell that emoji users are having more sex than the rest of us. 

So, what do those who emoji have over the other undersexed plebs? According to the science bods at the Kinsey Institute, who ran a study on 5000 American singles, using emojis indicates that you’re better at communicating desire, which means they land more dates and have more sex. 

Good for them. 

Over half of the participants surveyed (53%) said emojis give text messages more personality and nearly a quarter (23.5%) said the icons make it easier for them to express their feelings.

“Our findings suggest that emoji use with potential partners is associated with maintaining connection beyond the first date, and more romantic and sexual interactions over the previous year,” claims the report, proving once and for all that if you’re having trouble getting past the first date, you should probably sling in a couple of emojis to show you really care. 

The study didn’t discover which emojis are the most successful at showing you’re emotional available, but the hot advice from Trusted Towers is to leave the Eggplant emoji alone and maybe just stick to a few smileys, or that nice emoji of a dolphin.