Tag Archives: author_name|Danny Gallagher

Until Dawn remake studio lays off staffers before the game’s even out

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The studio behind the upcoming PlayStation 5 and PC remaster of the PlayStation 4 survivor horror game Until Dawn has let go some of its staffers just a month before its release on October 4. Eurogamer reported the unfortunate news on Sunday, and Ballistic Moon confirmed the layoffs in a statement posted on its LinkedIn page on Labor Day, of all days.

“It is with deep regret and a heavy heart that we must make the tough decision to significantly scale down our team to secure the future of our studio,” the statement reads. “This comes after our development of Until Dawn for PS5 and PC.” Ballistic Moon did not state how many staffers were being cut, or what percentage of the team were let go.

Two former staffers broke the news on their social media accounts over the weekend. Former junior game designer Cassy Cornish and former technical designer Harry Williams posted news about their respective job losses on LinkedIn.

“Like many others in this wonderful but turbulent industry, I am sadly being made redundant from my role as a Junior Game Designer at Ballistic Moon,” Cornish wrote. “The team have been wonderful and I’m so excited for our game to release in October!”

Ballistic Moon is just one of the latest in a long line of game studio and tech company layoffs. Take-Two Interactive, the Behaviour (Dead By Daylight), Bungie (Destiny 2 and Marathon’s) and Humble Games have all seen staff cuts recently.

Eurogamer also reported on Monday that Rocksteady, the studio behind the iconic Batman Arkham games, reduced the size of its QA department from 33 to 15 employees over the past month following the disappointing release of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League; One of the laid-off employees was on a scheduled paternity leave.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/until-dawn-remake-studio-lays-off-staffers-before-the-games-even-out-172910650.html?src=rss

Brazil bans X for refusing to comply with Supreme Court order

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Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes has ordered the nation’s internet service providers to block the social media platform X. The New York Times reports that the order stems from owner Elon Musk’s refusal to appoint a legal representative for his case and comply with Moraes’ order to shut down X accounts he deemed as harmful to the democratic process. The order has been published online by Brazilian news site Poder 360.

The justice issued a deadline to telecom companies and tech giants to remove the X from its app stores and platforms. Apple and Google have five days to take down the social media app from its app stores. Brazil’s telecommunication’s agency Anatel has confirmed it has received the order, and ISPs in the country have just 24 hours to comply with the order.

Justice Moraes’ order doesn’t just block the country’s access to X. It also makes it a crime to use the app through a virtual private network (VPN). Anyone caught accessing X with a VPN could face a daily fine of 50,000 Brazilian Real (around $8,900).

Justice Moraes also froze the Brazillian bank accounts of SpaceX’s Starlink internet service provider on Thursday to further pressure Musk to comply with the court’s order. SpaceX, like X, is a private company majority owned by Musk, and X has $3 million in unpaid fines related to its case in the country. The day before, Justice Moraes issued a threat to ban the X platform entirely across Brazil if the social media company did not appoint a legal representative in the country. The deadline passed without any change to the court’s docket so the judge followed through on his promise.

Starlink expressed its disapproval with the order, vowing to fight the ruling. It even threatened to make its services free to customers to subvert the justice’s order.

The legal fight between Justice Moraes and Musk has been fuming for months. The Supreme Court Judge is also Brazil’s electoral authority and has been monitoring and issuing orders to candidates to steer clear of spreading false information through internet and social media channels.

Brazil’s 2022 presidential election between infamous incumbent Jair Bolsonaro and challenger and former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was reportedly filled with attempts to present voters with false information. Justice Moraes was, until recently, president of the nation's Superior Electoral Court, which gave him the power to order takedowns of content that violated previous court orders. The judge issued a similar block of the messaging app Telegram for failing to freeze offending accounts, which was lifted after compliance.

Musk characterized Moraes’ directives to take down or freeze similar misinformation accounts from X as “censorship orders.” Earlier this month, Musk expressed his continued refusal to comply with the court by closing X’s Brazilian office in order “to protect the safety of our staff.” X’s Global Governments Affairs team also promised to publish all of “Judge de Moraes’ illegal demands and all related court filings.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/brazil-bans-x-for-refusing-to-comply-with-supreme-court-order-230247980.html?src=rss

Judge denies Media Matters’ motion to dismiss X’s not-libel lawsuit

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A Texas judge denied Media Matters for America’s request for a dismissal on Thursday allowing X’s lawsuit over alleged anti-semitic and racist content. The Verge reported that Northern District of Texas Judge Reed O’Connor dismissed the request for a dismissal paving the way for X’s lawsuit against Media Matters to continue.

Media Matters submitted its dismissal request in early March on the grounds that X’s case lacked “personal jurisdiction,” an “improper venue” and the “failure to state a claim.” O’Connor dismissed all of those claims, according to court records.

The lawsuit filed last year in federal court seeks damages from the media watchdog group over “maliciously manufactured” images reporting that X’s platform placed Neo-Nazi and white-nationlist content next to advertisers’ images causing advertisers to flee the site. The images Media Matters used weren’t manufactured but X’s claim is that its dogged pursuit of ads’ placement with racist content by using certain accounts to bypass ad filters caused irreparable harm to the social media giant.

X owner Elon Musk’s other companies are located in Texas but aren’t directly connected to the Media Matters lawsuit. X closed its San Francisco offices earlier this month and owner Elon Musk announced in July that X’s headquarters will move to Austin. Tesla moved its headquarters from California to the Lone Star State in 2021 and SpaceX from Delaware earlier this year when a judge threw out a $56 billion pay package from the state.

However, in dismissing the personal jurisdiction argument, O’Connor noted that two of X’s “blue-chip” advertisers like AT&T and Oracle included in Media Matters’ coverage are based in Texas. He cited the landmark 2002 Internet defamation case Revell v. Lidov quoting the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals’ assertion that “if you are going to pick a fight in Texas, it is reasonable to expect that it be settled there.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/judge-denies-media-matters-motion-to-dismiss-xs-not-libel-lawsuit-204732720.html?src=rss

Comcast Xfinity customers can get a year of Perplexity Pro AI for free

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If you have an account with Comcast Xfinity, then you also have a year-long subscription to the Perplexity Pro AI answer engine. Perplexity announced the special deal on Threads. Perplexity Pro differs from the company's free option by allowing unlimited quick answers from a choice of AI models, including GPT-4o, Claude-3 and Sonar Large. Engadget hasn’t reviewed the service, but if you’re already paying for Xfinity, free seems like a good price for you to make up your own mind on its value.

All you have to do to get your free year of Perplexity is to log into your Xfinity Rewards account and obtain a promo code. You’ll punch in your code on Perplexity’s website and you can start using the AI to explore life’s most puzzling mysteries like “Who was that guy who played that squirrely dude in Office Space?” (For the record, that was Stephen Root and his character was Milton).

A Perplexity Pro subscription normally costs $20 but if you take advantage of Comcast Xfinity’s perk, you’ll get a whole year for nothing. You still might want to take Perplexity’s answers with a big grain of salt. The media company Condé Nast has accused the company of plagiarism, and the online retail giant Amazon, which hosts some of Perplexity's infrastructure, has investigated whether the AI company's actions are within its terms of service. So this isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement for Perplexity Pro but again, it’s free so you could do worse. A lot worse.

Update, August 30, 4PM ET: A previous version of this article used imprecise wording that suggested Amazon, rather than just Condé Nast, had accused Perplexity of plagiarism. The article has been updated to correctly indicate that Amazon separately investigated claims made by Wired, one of Condé Nast's publications, and has made no allegations of wrongdoing. We regret the error.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/comcast-xfinity-customers-can-get-a-year-of-perplexity-pro-ai-for-free-183727093.html?src=rss

An Arrival electric van prototype goes up for sale on eBay

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You can own a piece of electric vehicle history from one of the saddest stories in the industry to date. The British electric van maker Arrival was once valued in the billions and had a sweet deal to turn UPS’ fleet of iconic brown vans into electric vehicles. Within a couple of years, Arrival’s warehouse became an empty shell and its sleek electric vehicles and remaining parts were sold off to whoever could afford the highest bid. Now, one of the first Arrival prototypes sold at auction after the company’s downfall has found its way to eBay.

The seller says they worked for Arrival before the company went under earlier this year. They write in the description that the Arrival pre-production van is “the only known running and fully operational Arrival Gamma Van available,” and was purchased in June from Arrival’s liquidation auction for an undisclosed sum.

The Arrival Gamma van appears to be in good working order. It has sliding electric doors and a touchscreen interface on the dashboard. The shelving is still intact and the owner suggests it could be used as a “campervan.” The highest bid as of Friday is £5,600 or approximately $7,368.

Arrival aimed to do for delivery vehicles what the Tesla Model S did for automobiles. The company was founded in 2015 and built 25 vans in 2021 for testing. Arrival committed to building a fleet of 10,000 vehicles for UPS to deliver packages across the US and Europe. The company’s coffers dwindled to $205 million by the end of January of 2023. Its focus was shortened to just the US delivery market and plans were scrapped to expand its electric vehicle fleet to buses and cars for rideshare services. The company continued making cutbacks until Arrival finally closed up shop the following year.

Arrival’s attempt to make delivery vehicles more energy efficient was a noble idea and it wasn’t the only company to do so. Amazon tapped electric van maker Rivian to build 100,000 vehicles for its delivery fleet by 2030. Ford has also designed and released a fully electric E-Transit van for consumers and businesses like Walmart.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/an-arrival-electric-van-prototype-goes-up-for-sale-on-ebay-171045360.html?src=rss

The world’s largest TV and movie piracy streaming ring is dead

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The highly illegal but very popular media streaming site Fmovies and an affiliated network of pirated movie and TV show websites have been shut down. The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), a global coalition of movie studios and entertainment companies including Disney, NBCUniversal and MGM, announced the dismantling of the illegal streaming site, several of its other websites including bflixz, flixtorz, movies7, myflixer and aniwave and its video hosting provider vidsrc.to, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The Fmovies operation was based in Vietnam. Hanoi police arrested two unidentified men in connection with the pirated media empire who are awaiting charges.

Fmovies launched in 2016 and racked up 374 million monthly visits more than 6.7 billion visits from January 2023-June 2024. Data from SimilarWeb ranked Fmovies as the 280th most visited website in any category and the 11th most popular TV, movies and streaming website. ACE called the Fmovies syndicate “the largest piracy ring in the world,” according to a statement released earlier today.

The website even has its own subreddit where users could request and share links to TV shows and movies. As authorities closed in on the Fmovies operators, Reddit users started posting notices that the syndicate’s streaming sites weren’t working or starting to shut down. When news of Fmovies’ demise started to surface, users started asking for suggestions of alternate pirating sites.

ACE Chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin called the shutdown and arrests “a stunning victory for casts, crews, directors, studios and the creative community across the globe.”

The walls seem to be closing around some of the web’s bigger media pirates. ACE claimed an earlier victory on August 15 following the shutdown of the aniwave illegal anime streaming website. Another pirate website, fboxz.to, shut down a few days later and posted a goodbye note on its homepage telling its visitors to “Please pay for the movies/shows, that’s what we should do to show our respect to people behind the movies/shows,” according to TorrentFreak.

The past month hasn’t been kinder to online pirates either. Earlier this month, the US extradited Kim Dotcom, the founder of Megaupload who was the poster child for online piracy in the 2010s, from New Zealand to face charges for operating his video downloading empire.

Authorities arrested Dotcom in 2012 in his New Zealand home on counts including racketeering, copyright infringement, money laundering and copyright distribution. His indictment claims that Megaupload caused $500 million in damages and made $175 million in advertising and subscription revenue from its illegal media library.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/the-worlds-largest-tv-and-movies-piracy-streaming-ring-is-dead-230141145.html?src=rss

Apple Sports is ready for some football with new game tracking updates

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If you’re the kind of pro or college football fan who wishes they could time travel so they can watch every game as they happen, Apple Sports may be able to help. The iPhone sports app can’t break the laws of quantum physics but it can help you keep track of all the games during football season.

Apple Sports’ newest update adds more comprehensive alerts and features for National Football League (NFL) and National Collegiate Athletic Association Football (NCAAF) games. The app will not only provide up-to-the-minute scores and stats on games but it will also deliver play-by-play updates for scoring drives with its new “dynamic drive tracker” that can show the ball’s location on the field. The Apple Sports app will also provide real-time betting odds during every game.

The app will eventually add a drop-down screen that will show the main scorecards from game to game, a feed of updates for your teams and a search function that makes it easier to find and switch between games even if you don’t follow them. It'll also cannibalize the “Live Activities” alert feature from Apple TV. Both those features will drop when the iOS 18 beta launches in the fall.

The Apple Sports app launched in February for free and is available now on the App Store. As of Thursday, the app can track games for 15 different leagues’ seasons including the NFL, NCAAF, Major League Soccer (MLS), Major League Baseball (MLB) and the National Basketball Association (NBA). Apple says more leagues will be added to the app in future updates.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/apple-sports-is-ready-for-some-football-with-new-game-tracking-updates-181536944.html?src=rss

Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland crawls out of its playpen on September 10

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There are a ton of Rugrats games from early CD-ROM games to the Nintendo 64 but there’s never really been one that truly stood out on its own. The MIX Games, Wallride and Limited Run Games may have given us the definitive Rugrats game with Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland set for release on September 10 on Steam and both current and previous-gen consoles.

The new throwback Rugrats game was announced last year almost to the date. Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland looks like it was inspired by those classic NES platformers that fueled your childhood fun and frustration (funstration?). The game comes in two modes: HD mode featuring graphics that look just like the Nicktoon and a special 8-bit mode that looks like it came out on a throwback console.

You’ll be able to play as Tommy, Chuckie, Phil and Lil as you traverse the Pickles house. The babies are pretending that their homestead has transformed into their own video game, which may just be the most adorably meta thing ever.

Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland can be played in solo or two-player co-op mode. Limited Run Games is also releasing the game on orange and classic gray NES cartridges but you missed your chance to buy one because they’ve already sold out.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/rugrats-adventures-in-gameland-crawls-out-of-its-playpen-on-september-10-212021343.html?src=rss

Microsoft and Activision Blizzard accused of ‘bad faith bargaining’ by Raven Software union workers

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Raven Software’s union — the first of its kind in the gaming industry — has hit another snag negotiating its collective bargaining agreement with Microsoft and Activision Blizzard, games journalist Stephen Totilo reported in his Game File newsletter. The union has filed an unfair labor practice complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), alleging chiefly that their employer refuses to bargain, or is not bargaining in good faith. The Raven workers succeeded in their union drive, joining the Communications Workers of America (CWA), over two years ago.

The full complaints have not been made available to the public as of Wednesday. We also reached out to Microsoft and Activision Blizzard for a comment on the complaint but did not receive a response as of presstime.

CWA president Claude Cummings Jr. released a statement following the unfair labor practice charges. He urged Microsoft to follow through on its agreement to respect the rights of the Raven Software workers’ union efforts.

“After Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, our members were optimistic that they would progress quickly to a first contract at Raven Software,” Cummings wrote. “Unfortunately, that has not happened. We encourage Microsoft to address the concerns raised in the unfair labor practice charge and make reaching a fair agreement a priority.”

An NLRB investigation revealed Activision Blizzard withheld raises from Raven’s workers following a separate unfair labor practice charge. The complaint filed by the CWA on behalf of workers in 2022 also accused the game publisher of retaliating against workers attempting to form a union by laying off staff members and moving QA workers to separate teams.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/microsoft-and-activision-blizzard-accused-of-bad-faith-bargaining-by-raven-software-union-workers-183040645.html?src=rss

Self-storage rooftops will become a nationwide 100MW+ solar farm

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Electrek reports that a solar energy company is renting 8.5 million square feet of roof space from the National Storage Affiliates Trust’s (NSA) buildings for its newest solar panel project.

The commercial and community solar developer Solar Landscape’s new rooftop solar panel grid on the NSA’s 1,052 self-storage facilities and properties across 42 states and Puerto Rico are expected to produce at least 100 megawatts of solar capacity. The NSA, headquartered in Greenwood Village, Colorado, is one of the nation’s largest self-storage operators with brands like iStorage, Move It, Northwest and SecurCare.

These solar energy panels won’t just generate power for the NSA’s facilities. The panels will also provide clean power to nearby businesses and homes for a discounted price.

One of the challenges of implementing solar energy is finding enough space for the solar panels. These panels can take up a lot of space, like the Noor Abu Dhabi solar plant that set a world record in 2019 with 3.2 million solar panels taking up over 3 square miles of space.

Solar Landscape and the NSA may have found an interesting solution to solar panel projects’ space problem. If this partnership is successful, it could inspire similar deals for other communities looking to benefit from solar power technology.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/self-storage-rooftops-will-become-a-nationwide-100mw-solar-farm-223004138.html?src=rss