This week, a new peripheral for your PS4 controller and the breathtaking Dreams. But first, scary stuff from the Canadian government and a deal with the devil in the pharmaceutical world.

Government of Canada departments and agencies mishandling citizen data

A response to a request for information from the federal government that was tabled by a Conservative MP last month has revealed that tens of thousands of Canadians were impacted by various security breaches at government departments.

As reported by the CBC, a wide range of agencies were affected, including the CRA, which reported the most breaches, Health Canada, and even the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

Breaches included everything from hacks, to lost or stolen equipment, to misaddressed emails.

Major ethics breach revealed as deal between software company and opioid manufacturer brought to light

A software application that was reportedly paid for by Purdue Pharma, which manufactures Oxycontin, was responsible for pushing opioids on people whose doctors were using the app to store patient records.

Founded in 2005, Practice Fusion built a business on providing free electronic health records and generating revenue from advertisements.

The company, which has a deferred prosecution agreement, admitted to prompting doctors to prescribe opioids.

U.S. attorneys allege that Practice Fusion had similar deals with 14 pharmaceutical companies.

Playstation releases new peripheral to make controllers more customizable

A new, $40 peripheral adds unprecedented customization options to the Playstation DualShock 4 wireless controller.

The Back Button Attachment snaps easily onto your controller and gives you an additional two buttons that can be configured to almost any actions.

You can remap those buttons without having to go into a settings screen, too, and you can save up to three profiles on the attachment so it’s easier to move between your favourite games.

What’s most important, though, is that clipping the Back Button onto your controller doesn’t change the comfort or control of the DualShock 4. Extra control, all the comfort.

Dreams come true in new game experience from Media Molecule and Playstation

Dreams is utterly unique and absolutely impossible to characterize. While it’s being marketed as a game that you can play – and it certainly is that – the new PS4 title is much more.

It’s more than just a game because Media Molecule, which is responsible for the Little Big Planet games, has effectively packaged up the software that it used to create Dreams, and given it to us.

The idea is that using Dreams you can create whatever you can imagine. Typical games or videos or other, alternative media experiences. All are possible here. And after you’ve created something, you can share it with the world.

Because it’s been in a beta release for over a year, there are lots of experiences that have already been created and made available in the Dreams libraries. So if you just want to play different game experiences, you can.

But if you want to be a dreamer, a creator, it’s never been easier.

And that’s really where there’s magic in Dreams.

Creating and releasing a game engine is one thing. Being able to teach and train average people from around the world, from different cultures and with different languages and sensibilities, is the hard part.

That’s exactly where Media Molecule has succeeded. With step-by-step tutorials that are fun to play, Dreams has you learning the tool set that you can use to create without you even realizing that’s what’s going on.

Whether you choose to become a creator or not is entirely up to you. There will be lots of people who are content to play the things made by others. And that’s okay.

If you want to experiment and explore. If you want to turn your dreams into something you can play, you can do that to.

It doesn’t matter if Dreams is a game or not. It exists to be what we want it to be.