A diligent surveyor of the night skies, NEOWISE is sadly approaching its fiery demise as the Sun’s erratic outbursts are causing the infrared telescope to gradually fall out of its orbit before it eventually burns up in Earth’s atmosphere.
Source: Gizmodo – NASA’s Asteroid-Hunting Telescope Is Being Dragged Down by the Sun
A ransomware group that claimed to have successfully hacked Insomniac Games has now leaked the vast majority of its stolen files. From a report: Last week ransomware group Rhysida threatened to expose sensitive data about the company, its employees and its upcoming games, if it wasn’t paid for the data. It then published data online which appeared to corroborate its claim that it had successfully hacked the Sony-owned studio, including an annotated screenshot from Insomniac’s upcoming Wolverine game.
The group then threatened to publish the stolen data within seven days, but first offered it for auction with a starting price of 50 Bitcoins (approximately $2 million). Now, according to Cyber Daily, Rhysida has followed through with its threat and posted more than 1.3 million files totalling 1.67 terabytes to its darknet leak site. Around 98% of the hacked data has been leaked, with Rhysida stating that “not sold data was uploaded,” implying that the remaining 2% may have been sold to someone.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Insomniac Hacker Releases More Than 1.3 Million Stolen Files, Including Unannounced Games Info
Kung Fu Panda director Mike Mitchell hopes there’s more movies in the series’ future. Get a new look at a brooding Lestat in Interview With the Vampire season two. Plus, get a look at Hulu’s fantasy anime/live-action hybrid Dragons of Wonderhatch. Spoilers, away!
Source: Gizmodo – Updates From Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire and More
There’s something of a theme running through Teenage Engineering’s recent products. That theme is you need more money. The Field range represents the Swedish company’s most exclusive music making gear. So when its website teased a new product with a colorful countdown, the wallets of Teenies everywhere braced for impact. Once that timer hit all zeros, the big reveal turned out to be the EP-133 sampler. Or, to give it its full name, the EP-133 K.O. II 64MB Sampler Composer. The real surprise though, was that it both looked cool and, at $299, was reasonably priced.
The countdown was really just the start. Barely 24 hours after the K.O. II was revealed units started landing in buyers’ hands. Within days, YouTube was awash with first look videos and tutorials. Before our review unit even showed up, several users were complaining that theirs had defective faders. Enough folks were having this problem that it quickly became known as “fadergate.” One brave creator even took their unit apart and, possibly, discovered the cause — the internal pins were bent and not making a connection. I asked Teenage Engineering about the issue and will update this story once I hear back.
Some buyer’s theorized that the issue might be caused by the fact that the K.O. II ships without the caps on its rotaries and fader. They come loose in the box to enable the packaging to be flatter, but the cap for the fader is unusually tight fitting. This led to speculation that the enthusiasm required to push this cap down might be putting too much pressure on components inside, opening up the cruel possibility of users breaking their own devices before they even got to play with them. I used extra caution, along with some needle-nosed tweezers to support the fader as I applied its cap and so far… so good?
The K.O. II name tells us that Teenage Engineering considers this something of a sequel to the original PO-33 K.O. Clearly the K.O. II isn’t a Pocket Operator, but its retro desk calculator aesthetic does take subtle design cues from that series. At 12-inches diagonally, it’s in iPad territory size-wise. The K.O. II also runs on AAA batteries (or USB power) which is another nod to the PO series. It’s hard to say how long it’ll run on those batteries and it’ll vary from brand to brand, but I’ve been using some cheap rechargeables for over a week and they seem to be going strong.
Personally, I was never particularly enamored with the Pocket Operators and much prefer the form factor of the K.O. II. It’s still very portable, but feels a bit more “serious.” It’s also just very nice to look at, which is something Teenage Engineering is quite good at. The model number, EP-133, indicates that we might see others in the line, so fingers crossed for giant calculator versions of other instruments, too.
Fader fully checked and batteries in place, the K.O. II springs to life with a flourish of icons across its display. Those icons are actually fixed and not made up of pixels. Teenage Engineering calls it a “Super segment hybrid display” which basically fuses the digital watch part with a bunch of colorful, cute custom icons to let you know when certain modes or features are activated. It reminds me of the old Game & Watch handhelds where you can see where all the icons are and they are simply switched on or off as needed. Some of the icons are pretty abstract but there is a guide on the website to let you know that, for example, the red umbrella means undo.
Something I like to do with music gear is to see how easy it is to use without reading the manual. This works for all gadgets of course, but with music gear there are common tasks like sequencing, timing adjustment, automation and so on. How you achieve these on a drum machine might be very different to a keys-based synth. Teenage Engineering in particular likes to do things its own way but I was pleasantly surprised with the K.O. II. Within minutes I had managed to figure out basic navigation and how things are organized (sample groups, accessing shift functions, what the fader does and when and so on).
During this blind test I also got to know the K.O. II’s buttons and faders. It was obvious from the launch materials that we weren’t getting rubber MPC-esque pads here but I would describe the ones on the K.O. as keys rather than buttons. Fortunately they are satisfying to click and they’re pressure sensitive so you can give your drum hits different velocities or play notes at different strengths, just be sure to focus on the lower part of the key as that seems to be where the sensor is.
You probably should read the manual though. If for no other reason than it’s likely the prettiest one you’ll use in a while. There’s also a very cute tool for managing your samples which works via desktop browser. For the brave, you can also use this on your phone if you have Android (Chrome, Brave and Opera should all work). On iOS the same browsers can’t access Web MIDI and therefore will not work. (There’s the iOS Web MIDI Browser which crashes when I tried it with an iPhone but it does connect so your mileage may vary.) The K.O. II won’t show up on your PC as either a drive or an audio interface, so the main uses for the USB port are power and sending/receiving MIDI.
The workflow for grabbing sounds is pretty straightforward. If you want to sample from either a PC or phone or other sound-making device then as long as you can connect it to a 3.5mm cable you’re golden. For everything else, you’ll be using the built-in mic, which is surprisingly good. I recorded a few short vocal phrases and other found sounds and they come out well, assuming you’re in a quiet environment.
Don’t worry though, if you don’t have a bunch of samples yet, the K.O. II comes with a bunch pre-installed, and they’re pretty great. There’s a good mix of drums, bass pads and lead sounds — certainly enough to get you going straight away. You’ll definitely want to add your own though to make your projects unique. The presets use about half of the 64MB of memory, but you can back them up, delete them and free the slots up for your own. Max sample length is 20 seconds (same as on the OP-1 Field).
If 64MB doesn’t sound like a lot, know that it translates to about 11 minutes of samples at the 46kHz/16bit in which the K.O. II records. You can halve that time if you sample in stereo. Even if you go all out, over five minutes of samples should be plenty enough for most songs (we hope). If there’s going to be a bottleneck, it’ll more likely be due to the 12-voice limit. This means the K.O. II can make 12 sounds at once, so if you have six stereo samples playing at one time, you’ll hit that limit. My compositions aren’t interesting enough to hit that threshold, but if you’re a maximalist, then it’s worth keeping in mind.
A common technique to help avoid hitting the voice limit on other devices is resampling — basically merging separate sounds down into one new sample. This is also the technique for baking in any effects and modulation, which, given that the K.O. II can only manage one master effect at any one time makes the lack of resampling all the more obvious. Understandably, it’s possibly the biggest complaint among users I’ve seen so far (after fadergate of course).
There are ways around this, but it would involve recording out into another device and then sampling that back into the K.O. II and no one should have a sampler for their sampler, not in this economy. Teenage Engineering does have a decent track record of adding functionality via firmware updates — the company just added a new effect to the OP-1 Field as I wrote this — so fingers crossed.
While we’re on the topic of features the K.O. II doesn’t have, there doesn’t appear to be any kind of song mode. There are four sample “groups” that you can think of as tracks (drums, bass, lead and so on). Each of these groups can hold up to 99 patterns and patterns can be up to 99 bars in length. The active patterns across the four groups can be saved as a “scene” and scenes can be triggered consecutively. But, importantly, there’s no way for that to happen automatically right now. This means if you wanted to tease a whole recorded song out of the K.O. II you’ll have to either get clever with MIDI or trigger scenes and patterns manually in real time.
This performative nature might be a burden for songs, but I found it to be a feature in other areas. On top of the master effects you also have 12 “punch in” effects that can be applied — or punched in — by holding down the FX key and then any of the 12 black pads. Each is marked with its effect name (Level, Pitch and so on). These punch-in effects express themselves differently based on the amount of pressure you apply, making it a very expressive experience. The effects on these keys also correspond to modulation tools when used with the fader. So FX+7 adds the “Level” punch-in effect (rhythmic gating) while Fader+7 will assign gain/level to the fader until you choose another modulator such as Attack or Low Pass Filter.
I swear, half of the things you learn about how to use the K.O. II happen by accident. Yes, it’s in the manual, but I discovered you can solo groups by pressing the FX button and the corresponding group. You can also press multiple buttons to “solo” multiple groups or sounds at the same time. With a group or group solo’d you can then apply punch-in effects to create a lot of variations in real time. With so many touches like this, I am starting to assume that Teenage Engineering envisioned the K.O. II as a playful performative device rather than a linear song-making machine.
I’ve talked before about the sort of “magic” factor that Teenage Engineering sometimes hides into its products. Just small, cute and often a bit hidden features that aren’t necessary but are tons of fun. A common one is the inclusion of FM radio on the OP1/Field and OB 4 etc. Or the video making tool in the app for the OP-Z. There was a brief moment of excitement when I spotted “loop mode from OB-4” on the K.O. II’s product page. The hope being the two devices would interact somehow, but it appears that’s just a way of describing the looping feature that’s been borrowed from the OB-4.
As I write these closing thoughts, the second official firmware update (v1.1.1) has just been released. There’s nothing spicy in here like motion control or sampling the radio, but it’s confirmation of what I mentioned earlier about Teenage Engineering adding features after a product hits the shelves — such as the OP-1 Field’s vocoder synth that landed over six months after release or the fairly substantial 1.2.38 update for the OP-Z which came almost three years into its life.
The K.O. II represents an opportunity for Teenage Engineering to do the unthinkable and create a series of more capable instruments that don’t cost Field-series levels of money. As a sampler, it’s great for beginners or those who love a more performative style. It’s not nearly as detailed and in-depth as something like Roland’s SP 404 or Native Instruments’ Maschine, but it was never going to be a rival to, well, anything really. Fadergate aside, this is a promising product from a company that has tested the loyalty of its fans more than usual in recent years.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/teenage-engineerings-ko-ii-sampler-review-150038528.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Teenage Engineering’s K.O. II sampler proves the company can do cost-friendly cool
Apple on Monday said it would pause sales of its Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 in the U.S. due to an ongoing patent dispute. The patents in question cover the blood oxygen feature in the watches, and belong to medical technology company Masimo. Apple itself said it would halt sales of its latest oxygen sensor-equipped smart watches online starting December 21, and in retail starting December 25.
The dispute’s roots lie in Masimo’s claims that Apple’s blood oxygen sensor infringes on 15 of its patents. The ITC ruling, announced in October, upheld a judge’s decision from January and triggered a 60-day Presidential Review Period, which will be expiring on December 25. Despite the possibility of a veto from President Biden, Apple decided to halt sales of its latest smart watches as a proactive measure.
Sales of the affected Apple Watch models will cease on Apple’s website after 3 PM ET on December 21 and in Apple’s retail stores after December 24. Notably, this ban is exclusive to Apple’s direct sales channels; third-party retailers like Amazon and Best Buy can continue selling the devices until December 25. This limited scope of the ban provides a brief window for consumers to purchase these models from alternative sources in time for Christmas.
Behind the scenes, Apple is actively contesting the ruling and exploring various legal and technical options to ensure the continued availability of its watches. The company argues that the ban could adversely affect both consumers and the broader economy, given the significant revenue generated by Apple’s wearables business, especially during the Q1 2023 holiday quarter. Meanwhile, Masimo maintains its stance, viewing the ITC’s ban as a strong message about adhering to patent laws.
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board evaluated 17 Masimo patents, invalidating 15, a decision that Masimo is now contesting. During Masimo’s trade secret misappropriation trial in May, a judge dismissed half of its 10 claims due to insufficient evidence. Of the remaining claims, a majority of jurors sided with Apple, but with one dissenting, they could not reach a unanimous verdict, leading to a mistrial. A date for a new trial has yet to be set.
Currently, there is no defined duration for the unavailability of Apple Watch Ultra 2 and Series 9. While a veto from the Biden administration remains possible, Apple plans to appeal the ITC’s decision with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit after the Presidential Review Period, starting December 26. This appeal will not postpone the sales and import ban on these models since the disputed Masimo patents are valid until August 2028, but if the court sides with Apple, the company could return its products to the U.S. market. Apple has alternative options, such as negotiating a settlement or a licensing deal with Masimo. Additionally, the company could redesign its smartwatches to bypass the two Masimo patents, possibly by updating Apple Watch’s firmware.
It should be noted that the ITC’s decision is specific to models featuring the blood oxygen monitoring technology. As a result, the Apple Watch SE, which lacks this feature, remains unaffected and will continue to be available.
The ban’s impact is expected to affect Apple’s earnings, yet it does not affect Apple Watches already sold or their functionality. Existing models with the blood oxygen sensor, introduced with the Apple Watch Series 6 in 2020, will continue to operate as usual. Furthermore, the ITC’s order permits service, repair, or warranty work on units sold before December 25.
Source: AnandTech – Apple to Halt Sales of Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 in the U.S. Due to Patent Dispute
An international group of law enforcement agencies have seized the dark web leak site of the notorious ransomware gang known as ALPHV, or BlackCat. From a report: “The Federal Bureau of Investigation seized this site as part of a coordinated law enforcement action taken against ALPHV Blackcat Ransomware,” a message on the gang’s dark web leak site now reads, seen by TechCrunch. According to the splash, the takedown operation also involved law enforcement agencies from the United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany, Spain and Australia.
In a later announcement confirming the disruption, the U.S. Department of Justice said that the international takedown effort, led by the FBI, enabled U.S. authorities to gain visibility into the ransomware group’s computer to seize “several websites” that ALPHV operated. The FBI also released a decryption tool that has already enabled more than 500 ALPHV ransomware victims to restore their systems. (The government’s search warrant puts the number at 400 victims.) The FBI said it worked with dozens of victims in the United States, saving them from paying ransom demands totaling approximately $68 million.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Authorities Claim Seizure of Notorious ALPHV Ransomware Gang’s Dark Web Leak Site
Enlarge (credit: J Marshall/NASA/ESA/T. Pesquet/Alamy)
As Hurricane Larry curved north in the Atlantic in 2021, sparing the eastern seaboard of the United States, a special instrument was waiting for it on the coast of Newfoundland. Because hurricanes feed on warm ocean water, scientists wondered whether such a storm could pick up microplastics from the sea surface and deposit them when it made landfall. Larry was literally a perfect storm: Because it hadn’t touched land before reaching the island, anything it dropped would have been scavenged from the water or air, as opposed to, say, a highly populated city, where you’d expect to find lots of microplastics.
As Larry passed over Newfoundland, the instrument gobbled up what fell from the sky. That included rain, of course, but also gobs of microplastics, defined as bits smaller than 5 millimeters, or about the width of a pencil eraser. At its peak, Larry was depositing over 100,000 microplastics per square meter of land per day, the researchers found in a recent paper published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment. Add hurricanes, then, to the growing list of ways that tiny plastic particles are not only infiltrating every corner of the environment, but readily moving between land, sea, and air.
As humanity churns out exponentially more plastic in general, so does the environment get contaminated with exponentially more microplastics. The predominant thinking used to be that microplastics would flush into the ocean and stay there: Washing synthetic clothing like polyester, for instance, releases millions of microfibers per load of laundry, which then flow out to sea in wastewater. But recent research has found that the seas are in fact burping the particles into the atmosphere to blow back onto land, both when waves break and when bubbles rise to the surface, flinging microplastics into sea breezes.
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Source: Ars Technica – Hurricane Larry dumped 100,000 microplastics per sq. meter on Newfoundland each day
Developers at Insomniac Games working on the upcoming Wolverine video game just had over a terabyte of internal data leaked on the dark web, according to Cyber Daily. A ransomware gang, Rhysida, leaked 1.3 million files on Tuesday that expose key details about PlayStation’s new Marvel video game and passport scans of…
Source: Gizmodo – Insomniac Hack Exposes Wolverine Video Game and Employee Passports
This was a year of upheaval in video games. The industry has shapeshifted over the past 12 months, and it’s not all due to Microsoft’s lengthy acquisition of Activision, Blizzard and King. While Xbox executives were defending the legality of a $69 billion deal that would create the third-largest video game studio in the world, smaller companies were firing staff and shutting down entire teams, even amid fervent collective-bargaining efforts. It’s been a wild ride.
In 2023, the main factors molding the video game landscape were consolidation, layoffs and unionization, with each of these phenomena feeding into each other. This past year, the video game industry shrank, even as it grew financially.
When its purchase of Activision-Blizzard-King was legally approved on October 12, 2023, Microsoft became the world’s third-largest video game studio by revenue. As the owner of the Xbox ecosystem, Microsoft was already a massive player in video games, but purchasing a tentpole AAA studio solidified its position in the top three. Activision and Blizzard are the owners of Call of Duty, Diablo, Overwatch, World of Warcraft and Starcraft, but the real meat of this deal comes from King, the mobile division. King operates Candy Crush Saga, a game with 238 million monthly active users, which is more than twice as many as Activision Blizzard’s combined player bases. Candy Crush Saga has generated more than $20 billion in lifetime revenue, and King routinely outperforms Activision and Blizzard in terms of quarterly returns. Mobile gaming remains a huge business, especially in the Chinese market, which represents the largest and most lucrative audience in video games.
Though the $69 billion Activision deal was the biggest in Microsoft’s history — beating its purchase of LinkedIn for $26 billion in 2016 — it wasn’t the company’s first video game acquisition. Microsoft owns nearly 40 developers and it bought a chunk of those in the past five years. The Xbox umbrella covers 343 industries, Arkane Studios, Bethesda, Compulsion Games, Double Fine Productions, id Software, Infinity Ward, Mojang Studios, Ninja Theory, Playground Games, Tango Gameworks and Turn 10, among dozens more.
With these studios at its back, Microsoft is leaning hard into cloud gaming while attempting to build a device-agnostic ecosystem powered by the Xbox brand. These moves are designed to unlock the mobile market even more, putting Xbox games on all devices, everywhere, all the time.
Still, Sony is bigger than Microsoft by revenue. Though Microsoft is often the face of the game-studio acquisition spree, Sony is the owner of 21 development teams, including Bungie, Guerrilla Games, Haven Studios, Housemarque, Insomniac Games, Media Molecule, Naughty Dog and Sucker Punch Productions. Sony has been subtly expanding its roster — more subtly than Microsoft, at least — over the past three years, and it’s also made heavy investments in studios like Epic Games and FromSoftware.
With this lineup, Sony is betting heavily on ongoing games, and it has 12 live-service titles in production right now, on top of Bungie’s Destiny franchise. These include Haven’s Fairgame$ and a multiplayer Horizon title from Guerilla.
“By expanding to PC and mobile, and… also to live services, we have the opportunity to move from a situation of being present in a very narrow segment of the overall gaming software market, to being present pretty much everywhere,” Sony Interactive Entertainment president and CEO Jim Ryan said in 2022.
For the companies at the top, total domination is the goal.
Even still, Tencent is bigger than both Sony and Microsoft. Tencent is not a console manufacturer, so it isn’t a household name among most players, but it’s one of the largest companies in the world, and it wields a ridiculous amount of financial power in video games. Tencent owns a portion of Bloober Team, Bohemia Interactive, Don’t Nod, Epic, Paradox Interactive, PlatinumGames, Remedy Entertainment, Roblox and Ubisoft, among others. It has a majority stake in Supercell, Grinding Gear Games, Klei Entertainment, Tequila Works, Techland, Yager Development and others. It fully owns Riot Games, Funcom, Sharkmob, Turtle Rock Studios, and, of course, others. It also runs multiple internal development companies, including the Level Infinite and Tencent Games publishing labels.
Sure, Sony has a stake in Epic, but Tencent’s is bigger. This investment alone means any time you buy a game built on Epic’s Unreal Engine, Tencent (and Sony) is getting a cut. Tencent is the biggest investor in games, with thousands of tendrils across the industry — if you played something this year, Tencent was probably involved.
On a smaller scale, companies like Netflix and Devolver Digital have also dipped their toes in the acquisition pond recently. Devolver started buying studios in 2020, and it now owns Croteam, Dodge Roll, Doinksoft, Firefly Studios, Nerial and System Era Softworks. Annapurna Interactive bought South African studio 24 Bit Games in November. Netflix launched its Games division in 2021, and it’s already purchased four studios, including Oxenfree developer Night School and Alphabear company Spry Fox.
Night School co-founder Sean Krankel told Engadget in June that the move to Netflix was a boon for the studio, providing financial security, a dedicated working space and plenty of marketing support for its projects.
“A small subset of teams are good to go for the next 10 years, but others have these peaks and valleys, and we were somewhere in between,” Krankel said. “We weren’t in danger of anything going sideways. But we were at a spot where we’re like, it would be cool to tether to somebody who has a similar vision, and somebody that we could work with that would like, de-risk us.”
This is the short-term benefit of being bought by a larger company, but there are downsides to relinquishing independence. Having a corporate overseer can result in rigid production timelines, hindering a studio’s ability to pivot, and despite all of the promises otherwise, developers may be forced to adhere to a specific tone, vibe or game-development structure. Owned studios are held accountable by people outside of the actual development of a game, and the bigger the company, the further away its bosses are from the creative process.
The most extreme negative outcomes for an acquired indie studio are, of course, layoffs and closures. We saw a lot of these in 2023.
The post-acquisition power dynamic is playing out in public and in real-time. It’s estimated that more than 9,000 people in video games were laid off this year and the firings affected teams of all sizes. This is a crisis amount of cuts. In 2022, just 1,000 video game jobs were lost, according to layoffstracker.com.
The Embracer Group provides the clearest example of rampant, surprise layoffs in 2023. Embracer has spent the past few years acquiring prominent midsize studios, including Gearbox Software (Borderlands), Crystal Dynamics (Tomb Raider), Eidos-Montreal (Deus Ex) and Square Enix Montreal (Deus Ex Go). In the past decade, Embracer grew its portfolio to cover more than 100 game studios, including Volition (Saints Row), Coffee Stain (Goat Simulator), Free Radical Design (TimeSplitters) and Zen Studios (Pinball FX). The holding company also secured the rights to The Lord of the Rings in 2022, promising to turn it into “one of the biggest gaming franchises in the world.”
In June 2023, Embracer announced a six-year, $2 billion funding deal had fallen through, and it was going to restructure — meaning, layoffs and studio closures. Since this announcement, Embracer has shut down Volition, Free Radical Design and Campfire Cabal, it divested Goose Byte and it’s fired developers at Saber Interactive. More than 900 people lost their jobs during these moves. Meanwhile, Embracer’s share price rose by 11 points in November.
This wasn’t the only layoff round of the year. Unity lowered its headcount three times in 2023, affecting about 900 jobs. In its quarterly financial results in November, Unity reported a yearly revenue increase of 69 percent and it told investors, “We continued to manage costs well.”
Sony cut 100 jobs at Bungie, a company it bought for $3.6 billion in 2022. According to developers that are still there, Sony executives are attempting to use this upheaval to wrest more control of the studio from Bungie founders and leaders.
Epic Games fired roughly 830 people this year, or 16 percent of its staff. This included significant job cuts at Mediatonic, the studio behind Fall Guys that Epic purchased in 2021.
“For a while now, we’ve been spending way more money than we earn,” CEO Tim Sweeney wrote about the layoffs. He continued, “I had long been optimistic that we could power through this transition without layoffs, but in retrospect I see that this was unrealistic.”
Electronic Arts was one of the first video game companies to institute significant layoffs this year, with a reduction of 6 percent of its workforce, or about 800 employees, in March. EA later cut jobs at Dirt and F1 studio Codemasters, which it purchased in 2021 for $1.2 billion. EA culled an estimated 1,130 jobs in 2023.
CD Projekt RED and Sega each laid off about 100 people in the past 12 months, while Ubisoft fired an estimated 255 employees. Microsoft cut 10,000 jobs across its businesses early in the year, and that included about 100 people at Halo studio 343 industries.
These are just some of the biggest names in layoffs in 2023. Looking back on the carnage, it feels like a warning — as consolidation efforts increase, more game studios will be controlled by just a handful of companies, and they’ll be vulnerable to moves like mass layoffs and closures. We’re laying the foundation for the future of video games right now and consolidation only makes the industry smaller and more generic, as accountants, investors and shareholders push for low-risk concepts, rather than innovation and change.
What will rampant consolidation mean for all of these acquired studios in five years’ time? What will it mean when these teams aren’t shiny, new investments any longer, and the people at the top are ready to get lean again? Remember that many of the shuttered studios listed above were purchased within the past three years.
Being acquired is a cost-benefit analysis for smaller studios, where the benefits are immediate and the costs are potential. It’s easy to say that won’t happen to us. But it can happen, and it does, and as consolidation increases, bulk layoffs are only going to occur more often.
Unionization is one approach that can help protect the livelihoods of people in the video game industry, and there was progress on this front in 2023. Developers at multiple studios now have union support, from small indies to AAA powerhouses.
Microsoft is currently the home of the industry’s largest union, with representation for more than 300 quality assurance workers at ZeniMax Media. ZeniMax is the parent company of Bethesda, id Software and Arkane, and Microsoft purchased the whole caboodle for $7.5 billion in 2021. Microsoft formally recognized the ZeniMax union this January and the parties started negotiating in April. In December, Microsoft announced it would hire 77 contract workers as full-time employees under the ZeniMax Workers United-CWA union. The deal guaranteed a pay raise, paid holidays and sick leave, and a copy of Starfield, the game they helped ship.
“We are now stronger at the bargaining table and are working to secure a fair contract for all workers — direct employees and contractors,” ZeniMax union member Chris Lusco said. “We are all a part of ZeniMax Studio’s success and we all deserve our fair share. We hope to set a new precedent for workers across Microsoft and the entire gaming industry so that all workers, regardless of their employment status, are able to improve their working conditions through collective bargaining.”
Meanwhile, executives at Microsoft’s newest acquisition, Activision Blizzard, spent the past few years stalling internal unionization efforts. However, QA employees at Raven Software, a subsidiary of Activision, successfully voted to unionize in May 2022. Microsoft has vowed to respect organization attempts now that Activision-Blizzard-King is under its control.
Other companies with unions established in the past two years include Avalanche Studios, Anemone Hug, CD Projekt RED, Experis Game Solutions, Keywords Studios, Sega of America, Tender Claws and Workinman Interactive.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/video-games-in-2023-acquisitions-layoffs-unions-143037174.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Video games in 2023: Acquisitions, layoffs, unions
India consumes more groundwater. That’s testing India’s ability to feed itself and much of the world. From a report: The South Asian nation is already the world’s largest guzzler of groundwater. Cheap power has encouraged routine overreliance on finite riches. India overwhelmingly grows some of the thirstiest crops: rice, wheat and sugar cane. Over the last half century, farm productivity has leapt forward, but so, too, has water usage — up 500% over that period, according to the World Bank. Erratic monsoons and brutal heat waves are only making the problem more acute. Farmers are digging deeper wells because existing ones are no longer refilling. Some regions may run out of groundwater entirely — Punjab, a major wheat producer, could go dry within the next 15 or so years, according to a former state official. States in southern India are battling over water rights in areas where rampant urban development has drained thousands of lakes.
The government is not blind to the crisis. But with a national election on the horizon next year, there’s little to gain in pushing actively for change among farmers, one of the most important voting blocs in the country. Any long-term solution will involve tinkering with farm subsidies or the minimum price set for water-intensive crops. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party is all too aware that farmers from India’s grain-growing northern regions dominated months of protests against proposed agrarian reforms from late 2020. Modi was forced to withdraw the proposals. For now, it’s clear the water math does not add up.
Modi has promised piped water to all Indian households by 2024. Yet nearly half of India’s 1.4 billion residents already face high-to-extreme water stress, and the world’s most populous nation is expected to add more than 200 million more people by 2050. Agriculture, meanwhile, accounts for 90% of water use, helping to explain why Indian officials say the clearest strategy for preserving supplies is modernizing the industry. The government has tried to convince farmers to adopt different irrigation technologies, return to traditional rain harvesting and plant less thirsty crops like millets, pulses and oilseeds. Nothing has yet made a substantial difference, in a country where subsidies supporting wheat and rice persist, and farming is dominated by smallholders.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – India’s Flooded Farmlands Mask a Water Crisis Deep Underground
Xfinity says a data breach likely led to attackers obtaining customers’ usernames and hashed passwords. Other personal information may have been exposed, such as names, contact information, the last four digits of social security numbers, dates of birth and secret questions and answers. The company added that its analysis of the attack is ongoing and it has informed law enforcement about the incident.
In a filing with Maine’s attorney general’s office, Xfinity owner Comcast disclosed that the intrusion has impacted 35.8 million people. As TechCrunch points out, Comcast had 32.3 million broadband customers as of the end of September, indicating that the vast majority of Xfinity customers have been affected by the breach.
On October 10, Citrix disclosed a vulnerability in software that Xfinity and many other businesses use. It provided guidance on how to mitigate the vulnerability on October 23 and Xfinity said it swiftly patched the problem. However, while carrying out a routine cybersecurity check two days later, Xfinity spotted suspicious activity in its systems. It later determined that bad actors accessed its internal network between October 16 and 19.
Xfinity says it’s informing customers of the incident via its website, email and by other means. It’s urging them to change their passwords, to make sure they don’t use the same passwords on different accounts and to enable two-factor or multi-factor authentication. Xfinity also suggested that folks who use the same login credentials on other accounts change their passwords on those.
This isn’t the first security incident Xfinity has had to deal with. Back in 2018, it emerged there was a bug in a Comcast website used to activate Xfinity routers. The issue led to some customers’ home addresses being exposed, along with the name and password for their Wi-Fi networks.
Update 12/19 8:00AM ET: Updated to note the number of people who were impacted by the breach.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/xfinity-suffered-a-data-breach-but-doesnt-know-quite-how-bad-it-was-100711214.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Xfinity breach may have affected as many as 35.8 million customers
Enlarge / James Webb Space Telescope captures a wide view of Uranus. (credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI)
Good morning. It’s December 19, and as we get closer to the year-end holidays your humble space correspondent is starting to get a little stir-crazy. Hence the reason for today’s abdominal, I mean abominable, headline.
This amazingly cool image of Uranus comes from the Near-Infrared Camera on the James Webb Space Telescope. This wide-field image shows Uranus with an assortment of background galaxies and 14 of its 27 moons, including Oberon and Titania. We can also see the north polar cap gleaming a bright white, as well as the planet’s rather faint (in visible light) inner and outer rings.
I’ve also included the close-up image of Uranus, which is really quite stunning with all of its various rings.
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Source: Ars Technica – Daily Telescope: James Webb zooms in on Uranus
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: Former Amazon security engineer Shakeeb Ahmed pleaded guilty this week to hacking and stealing over $12.3 million from two cryptocurrency exchanges in July 2022. The two affected companies are Nirvana Finance, a decentralized crypto exchange, and an unnamed exchange on the Solana blockchain platform that Ahmed hacked using his blockchain audit and smart contract reverse engineering skills. He first targeted the undisclosed crypto exchange by manipulating a smart contract to introduce false pricing data, generating roughly $9 million worth of inflated fees. Ahmed later withdrew the funds and offered to return all but $1.5 million on the condition that the exchange refrained from involving law enforcement.
Although not explicitly named by the Justice Department, the details of the attack match those of a July 2022 breach impacting the Crema Finance decentralized finance (DeFi) platform. Shortly after this first hack, Ahmed exploited a Nirvana Finance DeFi protocol smart contract loophole to take a flash loan of ANA cryptocurrency tokens at a low price and sell it back at a higher rate, yielding him approximately $3.6 million. Despite being offered a $300,000 bounty to return the stolen crypto assets, Ahmed kept everything he stole (representing all the funds owned by Nirvana Finance) after demanding $1.4 million and not reaching an agreement, forcing the exchange to shut down.
Seeking to conceal his actions and obscure the digital trail of the stolen funds, Ahmed used several cryptocurrency mixers (including Samourai Whirlpool), the Solana and Ethereum blockchains, and foreign exchanges to convert the millions he stole into Monero, a cryptocurrency known for its enhanced privacy and anonymity. Wary of being apprehended, Ahmed actively sought ways to elude detection and extradition. His online searches revealed his interest in strategies to flee the United States, thwart asset seizures, and secure citizenship in different nations, clearly showcasing Ahmed’s intention to sidestep legal repercussions for his actions. […] Ahmed entered a guilty plea for a single computer fraud charge, an offense with a maximum imprisonment term of five years. Additionally, he committed to compensating his victims with a sum totaling $5,071,074.23.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Ex-Amazon Engineer Pleads Guilty To Hacking Crypto Exchanges
Some holiday misery for Apple: It will soon pause sales of its latest Apple Watches in the US due to an International Trade Commission (ITC) ban. The company will suspend sales online this week and at Apple retail locations after December 24. Ho ho ho.
It’s all down to a patent dispute over the wearables’ blood oxygen sensor. Cast your minds back: Medical tech company Masimo sued Apple in 2021 for alleged violations of light-based blood-oxygen monitoring patents. In October, the ITC upheld a judge’s ruling from earlier this year that the Apple Watch did violate Masimo’s patents. The ITC’s order blocks all Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 imports to the US after December 25.
The case went to the White House for a 60-day Presidential Review Period. Although President Biden has one more week to decide whether to veto the ITC ruling, Apple has pre-emptively complied with the commission’s decision.
President Biden reportedly owns an Apple Watch – but also a load of other watches too.
— Mat Smith
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An electric car completed the world’s first-ever drive from the North to the South Pole
Adobe terminates its $20 billion Figma acquisition amid regulatory scrutiny
Beats headphones and earbuds are up to 49 percent off right now
2023 in review: The year the economics of tech caught up with reality
Here’s everything you should do to up your digital security before next year
We test and review tons of gadgets every year, and (for some reason) we also buy a lot of things for ourselves. This year, those purchases included coffee-making upgrades, fancy keyboards and even pricey digital pianos. But there are plenty of other things we’ve bought and loved this year that have yet to make it on the site. Here, our staff looks back at the things that were worth the money.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has a treat to celebrate the upcoming second anniversary of its launch: an image of the icy planet Uranus. The picture, resembling a glowing blue marble rippling in a black ocean, was funneled through the telescope’s infrared filters to capture wavelengths we wouldn’t see with the naked eye.
Yeah, it looks like the CBS logo.
More socks for Apple’s legal department this Christmas. A bipartisan group of US senators and representatives have urged the Department of Justice to investigate whether Apple violated antitrust laws by attempting to block Beeper Mini’s access to iMessage. Senators have asked an assistant attorney general to look into Apple’s “potentially anticompetitive conduct.”
Hopefully, senators will have learned lessons from the other times they’ve tried to grill technology companies without the technical expertise for their questions to make sense.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-apple-pauses-apple-watch-series-9-and-ultra-2-sales-121539726.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – The Morning After: Apple pauses Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales
An increasingly common face in the power supply market, the bulk of XPG’s work thus far has been on high-end, high-margin power supplies, such as their 80Plus Platinum-rated Cybercore II. But as the company has become better established in the PSU market on the back of multiple successful products, the company is looking to expand their footprint by venturing into the mid-range segment.
Spearheading that effort is the new XPG Core Reactor II series. Looking to maintain their competitive edge with, what’s frankly, a cheaper power supply design, XPG needs to walk a very tight rope, where where the equilibrium between performance, quality, and cost is crucial. In this category, PSUs must support a range of computing setups while maintaining a focus on value for money. The Core Reactor II series represents XPG’s dedication to this segment, illustrating their capability to cater to a broad spectrum of users who seek a blend of reliable performance and economic viability.
As an 80Plus Gold certified unit and without too many bells and whistles, the Core Reactor II stands out for its practical design, tailored to deliver consistent performance without the premium cost. In examining the details of the XPG Core Reactor II series, we will evaluate how well these PSUs align with XPG’s commitment to affordable quality and whether they meet the diverse needs of mid-range computing environments.
Source: AnandTech – The XPG Core Reactor II 1200W PSU Review: XPG Goes for the Gold
Meta’s Oversight Board has published its decision for its first-ever expedited review, which only took 12 days instead of weeks, focusing on content surrounding the Israel-Hamas war. The Board overturned the company’s original decision to remove two pieces of content from both sides of the conflict. Since it supported Meta’s subsequent move to restore the posts on Facebook and Instagram, no further action is expected from the company. However, the Board’s review cast a spotlight on how Meta’s reliance on automated tools could prevent people from sharing important information. In this particular case, the Board noted that “it increased the likelihood of removing valuable posts informing the world about human suffering on both sides of the conflict in the Middle East.”
For its first expedited review, the Oversight Board chose to investigate two particular appeals that represent what the users in the affected region have been submitting since the October 7th attacks. One of them is a video posted on Facebook of a woman begging her captors not to kill her when she was taken hostage during the initial terrorist attacks on Israel. The other video posted on Instagram shows the aftermath of a strike on the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza during Israel’s ground offensive. It showed dead and injured Palestinians, children included.
The Board’s review found that the two videos were mistakenly removed after Meta adjusted its automated tools to be more aggressive in policing content following the October 7 attacks. For instance, the Al-Shifa Hospital video takedown and the rejection of a user appeal to get it reinstated were both made without human intervention. Both videos were later restored with warning screens stating that such content is allowed for the purpose of news reporting and raising awareness. The Board commented that Meta “should have moved more quickly to adapt its policy given the fast-moving circumstances, and the high costs to freedom and access to information for removing this kind of content…” It also raised concerns that the company’s rapidly changing approach to moderation could give it an appearance of arbitrariness and could put its policies in question.
That said, the Board found that Meta demoted the content it reinstated with warnning screens. It excluded them from being recommended to other Facebook and Instagram users even after the company determined that they were intended to raise awareness. To note, a number of users had reported being shadowbanned in October after posting content about the conditions in Gaza.
The Board also called attention to how Meta only allowed hostage-taking content from the October 7th attacks to be posted by users from its cross-check lists between October 20 and November 16. These lists are typically made up of high-profile users exempted from the company’s automated moderation system. The Board said Meta’s decision highlights its concerns about the program, specifically its “unequal treatment of users [and] lack of transparent criteria for inclusion.” It said that the company needs “to ensure greater representation of users whose content is likely to be important from a human-rights perspective on Meta’s cross-check lists.”
“We welcome the Oversight Board’s decision today on this case. Both expression and safety are important to us and the people who use our services. The board overturned Meta’s original decision to take this content down but approved of the subsequent decision to restore the content with a warning screen. Meta previously reinstated this content so no further action will be taken on it,” the company told Engadget in a statement. “As explained in our Help Center, some categories of content are not eligible for recommendations and the board disagrees with Meta barring the content in this case from recommendation surfaces. There will be no further updates to this case, as the board did not make any recommendations as part of their decision.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/oversight-board-says-metas-automated-tools-took-down-israel-hamas-war-content-that-didnt-break-its-rules-110034154.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Meta’s automated tools removed Israel-Hamas war content that didn’t break its rules
On top of fighting (and losing to) Epic Games over Play Store antitrust concerns, Google has been fighting a similar lawsuit filed by 36 states and the District of Columbia in 2021. A settlement for that suit was announced in September, but a judge still had to confirm the terms. Now, Google has announced that it will pay a $700 million fine and make what amounts to fairly minor changes to the Play Store.
Of that sum, Google will distribute $630 million to consumers who may have overpaid for apps or in-app purchases on Google Play (after taxes, lawyers’ fees, etc.). That covers around 102 million people, according to The Washington Post. It will also pay $70 million into a “fund that will be used by the states,” according to Google’s blog.
The other major change is that Google must allow developers to steer consumers toward sideloading to avoid Google’s Play Store fees on subscriptions and the like. It’ll do that via updated “language that informs users about these potential risks of downloading apps directly from the web for the first time.” However, these actions will be time limited to seven years for the sideloading and five years for the updated language, according to settlement’s wording spotted by The Verge.
Google will also include language stating that “OEMs can continue to provide users with options out of the box to use Play or another app store.” Starting with Android 14, third-party stores will be allowed to handle future app updates, including automatic installs. It’s also expanding user choice billing that will allow Android apps and games to offer their own payment system in the US. “Developers are also able to show different pricing options within the app when a user makes a digital purchase,” Google states.
The company will only be required to make these changes for five or six years maximum (seven years for alternate means to download apps). In other words, it could feasibly cut off access to sideloading or third-party app stores after that point, or make it harder for the average consumer to find the option.
Another big thing missing is exterior payment links. “Google is not required to allow developers to include links that take a User outside an app distributed through Google Play to make a purchase,” the settlement agreement reads.
The settlement sum represents a miniscule portion of Google’s turnover and the other terms are relatively minor changes over what it already does. It also doesn’t include Epic Games, which won its own lawsuit against Google earlier this month (Google has vowed to appeal). A court still needs to formally approve the states’ settlement.
Google also argued at its Epic trial that consumers were able to get games by sideloading and other means, but that failed to sway the jury. When the settlement with the states was announced in September, Epic CEO Tim Sweeny said that if it “left the Google tax in place” his company would fight on. “Consumers only benefit if antitrust enforcement not only opens up markets, but also restores price competition,” he said at the time.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/googles-multi-state-lawsuit-settlement-will-cost-it-700-million-103512109.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Google’s multi-state lawsuit settlement will cost it 0 million
On December 12, Rhysida, a ransomware group, announced it had taken 1.67 terabytes of data — over 1.3 million files — from Sony’s Insomniac Games and requested $2 million. Now, the one-week deadline for Insomniac Games to pay Rhysida has passed, and the group has made good on its threat to release the stolen information, Cyber Daily reports.
The data includes internal HR documents, screenshots of employees’ Slack conversations, and more, but the main focus is the yet-to-be-released Wolverine video game. The released files contain details about level design, characters and actual screenshots from the game. There’s also a signed publishing agreement between Sony and Marvel that lays out three upcoming X-Men games, the first being Wolverine, with the other two still unnamed. However, it details that Sony — which plans to spend $120 million per game — must release Wolverine by September 1, 2025, with the others due by the end of 2029 and 2033, respectively.
Rhysida claims that it took the group only 20 to 25 minutes to get the domain administrator and that money was their sole motivation. “We knew that developers making games like this would be an easy target,” a Rhysida spokesperson told Cyber Daily. “Sony has launched an investigation, but it would be better in the backyard.”
Notably, Rhysida’s initial ransom notice allowed anyone to bid on the data, not just Insomniac Games, and it appears some of it was bought. The ransomware group stated that any unsold data was released — but only 98 percent of stolen information is publicly available. Rhysida stipulated that any data purchased must not be resold, but who knows if the new owners will follow that rule.
Rhysida only targeted Insomniac Games within Sony, but in May, a separate attack gained access to 6,800 current and former employees’ personal data. The attack, which ransomware group CLOP took credit for, became public knowledge in October.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/insomniac-games-hackers-leak-13-million-files-after-demanding-2-million-ransom-102134429.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Insomniac Games hackers leak 1.3 million files after demanding million ransom
In a notice on Monday, Xfinity notified customers of a “data security incident” that resulted in the theft of customer information, including usernames, passwords, contact information, and more. The Verge reports: Xfinity traces the breach to a security vulnerability disclosed by cloud computing company Citrix, which began alerting customers of a flaw in software Xfinity and other companies use on October 10th. While Xfinity says it patched the security hole, it later uncovered suspicious activity on its internal systems “that was concluded to be a result of this vulnerability.”
The hack resulted in the theft of customer usernames and hashed passwords, according to Xfinity’s notice. Meanwhile, “some customers” may have had their names, contact information, last four digits of their social security numbers, dates of birth, and / or secret questions and answers exposed. Xfinity has notified federal law enforcement about the incident and says “data analysis is continuing.”
We still don’t know how many users were affected by the breach. Xfinity will automatically ask customers to change their passwords the next time they log in to their accounts, and it’s also encouraging users to turn on two-factor authentication. You can find the full notice, including contact information for the company’s incident response team, on Xfinity’s website (PDF).
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Xfinity Discloses Data Breach But Doesn’t Say How Many Users Affected
NASA has successfully beamed an ultra-high definition streaming video from a record-setting 19 million miles away. The Deep Space Optical Communications experiment, as it is called, is part of a NASA technology demonstration aimed at streaming HD video from deep space to enable future human missions beyond Earth orbit. From a NASA press release: The [15-second test] video signal took 101 seconds to reach Earth, sent at the system’s maximum bit rate of 267 megabits per second (Mbps). Capable of sending and receiving near-infrared signals, the instrument beamed an encoded near-infrared laser to the Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, where it was downloaded. Each frame from the looping video was then sent “live” to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, where the video was played in real time.
The laser communications demo, which launched with NASA’s Psyche mission on Oct. 13, is designed to transmit data from deep space at rates 10 to 100 times greater than the state-of-the-art radio frequency systems used by deep space missions today. As Psyche travels to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, the technology demonstration will send high-data-rate signals as far out as the Red Planet’s greatest distance from Earth. In doing so, it paves the way for higher-data-rate communications capable of sending complex scientific information, high-definition imagery, and video in support of humanity’s next giant leap: sending humans to Mars.
Uploaded before launch, the short ultra-high definition video features an orange tabby cat named Taters, the pet of a JPL employee, chasing a laser pointer, with overlayed graphics. The graphics illustrate several features from the tech demo, such as Psyche’s orbital path, Palomar’s telescope dome, and technical information about the laser and its data bit rate. Tater’s heart rate, color, and breed are also on display. There’s also a historical link: Beginning in 1928, a small statue of the popular cartoon character Felix the Cat was featured in television test broadcast transmissions. Today, cat videos and memes are some of the most popular content online. “Despite transmitting from millions of miles away, it was able to send the video faster than most broadband internet connections,” said Ryan Rogalin, the project’s receiver electronics lead at JPL. “In fact, after receiving the video at Palomar, it was sent to JPL over the internet, and that connection was slower than the signal coming from deep space. JPL’s DesignLab did an amazing job helping us showcase this technology — everyone loves Taters.”
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Source: Slashdot – NASA’s Tech Demo Streams First Video From Deep Space Via Laser
