The FBI is concerned by the new iCloud end-to-end encryption feature https://appleinsider.com/articles/2...ncerned-about-apples-new-security-protections
The Pentagon has hired Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle to build a US$ 9 billion cloud computing network. https://apnews.com/article/technolo...t-of-defense-bfaeb3549b4d42328f35e579d7cb40b0
The right wing normally hates San Francisco and is against anything the city government is going to do but when the govt proposes killer robots the RW becomes silent.
The Federal Trade Commission is "seeking" to block the US$ 69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/new...oft-corps-acquisition-activision-blizzard-inc
Basically.. The only way the Pentagon could avoid getting sued into the ground was to offer all of the US based cloud companies part of the contract.
Here's the conservative policy guideline: Bad: government spending on education, healthcare, social security, roads, telecommunications, etc. Good: government spending on the police and the military. Bad: queer lovers who want to marry and have children. Good: people who shoot any suspicious looking person approaching. Bad: social media companies that ban extremists. Good: conservative politicians who publish extremist messages.
That's a big disappointment as I've always thought that one of my otherwise law abiding neighbors might have been pouring used motor oil down the sewer. I wuudda reported my "suspicions" to Robo Cop and have him taken out!
While I can certainly get behind trying to end the practice of exclusivity across the gaming industry, it's about 30 years too late for that. All of the gaming consoles have exclusive titles and it really is the basis of their business models. It's not like Microsoft making Starfield and Redfall exclusive to Xbox changed anything other than which console they were going to be exclusive to. That's just the nature of the gaming industry. I guess the question I have is does blocking this merger on the basis of exclusivity mean that the FTC is going to address the practice of exclusivity as a whole, or is this just a FU to Microsoft and Sony and Nintendo get to keep snapping up companies and making their games exclusive to their systems because they are non-US companies? Also, what about Sony's purchase of Bungie. Admittedly, Bungie is not at the scale of Activision Blizzard, but it is one of the most popular studios, and is a company that was putting games out on Xbox and Playstation. Is the FTC going to stop that purchase because, in all likelihood, Sony is going to make Bungie's games going forward Playstation exclusives.
One, I think this FTC is not as lax as previous versions of the commission. No way Disney gets away with the mergers they made over the past few years with this commission. Two, this acquisition following so closely behind the Zenimax deal, which was seven studios, raises more concern. If this deal goes through Microsoft would add an additional eleven studios giving them at least a dozen more than Sony. Most one-off studio acquisitions don't see much scrutiny, but the past two acquisition Microsoft has made is enough studios to double what they had. Third, the fact that the FTC talks about a threat to streaming services is the silent but major crux, imo. Right now any game published by Microsoft is free to those who subscribed to their sub service. You add some of the potential titles that would be added to the service if it goes through, Microsoft's size to weather potential financial loses of game sales, and it really does put Sony at a disadvantage. Microsoft has been incredibly vocal about making sure that Call of Duty would stay on Playstation consoles in future years, even offering Sony a 10 year contract and just this week promising to bring COD back to Nintendo. I think Sony has smartly hammered the point that PlayStation owners having to buy the game while xbox/pc game subscribers will get the game "free" makes the field imbalanced.
Couple of things: 1. It isn't just games from Microsoft's stable of studios that are on GamePass. It is Microsoft goal that ALL XBox games be included in the GamePass and pretty much every major game, even from non-Microsoft studies, are on GamePass at launch or shortly thereafter. 2. Sony has an easy response to GamePass.. Provide what the consumers want and offer their own version of GamePass. Microsoft is absolutely eating Sony's lunch in the current gen of console wars and that's primarily because Sony doesn't have an equivalent to GamePass.. Seriously. Sony can hammer it home all they want that Playstation users have to pay for the games, while XBox users don't have to, but the fix here isn't to stop this merger. The fix is for Playstation to get off their high horse and offer a Playstation equivalent to the GamePass.
Agreed. Mircosoft see's game subscription services as the future and why they want Activision, to bolster their service. They may not get everything day and date but the stronger the sub numbers the better chance to get major 3rd party titles on there at a later date. Heck, Microsoft has said they are willing to offer GamePass on both playstation and nintendo consoles. It seems they are already in a good relationship with Steam on PC. Edit to add: And just as I am to post this, it is revealed I can download the xbox app on samsung tv, no console needed. I don't know if Sony can afford the loses like Microsoft can. Should the courts take that into opinion? I don't know I'm not a lawyer.
Ehhhhh. Don't get me wrong. Owning Activision Blizzard makes it much easier to get their game on GamePass, but Microsoft also isn't really struggling to get games on GamePass. You're assuming that Microsoft is losing money on GamePass. They very well could be, but GamePass also generated $3 billion in revenue for Microsoft in 2021 out of a total of $16 billion they generated from Xbox Gaming. https://www.tweaktown.com/news/8884...uch-money-game-pass-actually-makes/index.html
Anyone else on Post.News? Noam Bardin 37 minutes ago Chief Poster Post update Hi Posters, We are at 400K waitlisted users, of them 154K have activated their accounts. Anyone signing up on the 29th of November or earlier should be invited by now.
Employer of the Year! Elon Musk has repeatedly pushed employees at Neuralink to work faster — even telling staff to imagine they have a bomb strapped to their head to drive them to work harder — according to a recent report from Reuters. Three sources told the publication they heard Musk make the comment on multiple occasions over the past few years. One former staffer said that Musk told workers he'd initiate a "market failure" at the company if employees couldn't speed up progress, Reuters reported. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/tech...ir-heads-to-make-them-work-faster/ar-AA14Y52J
Elon is definitely on the deep end with Covid conspiracy. pic.twitter.com/yhEOieaGER— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 11, 2022 I am so glad Twitter shut down after they fired all those essential IT workers. Imagine the craziness if it was still operational.
I am not sure he believes in the conspiracy theories. It’s in his economic interest to be against lockdown. If a lockdown forces closures of his factories but saves lives, he loses money so it’s tyrannical. If a pandemic without a lockdown happens and a certain percentage of his workforce dies, but factories remain operational, then it’s a sad story but shit happens.
It seems to be both - he is typical libertarian when it comes to work safety, but also a red pilled conspiracy theorist If you’re hearing from Elon Musk on COVID, remember that he has no idea what he’s talking about—this confident but badly wrong prediction is from April 2020—has been publicly embarrassed by it, and, once again, seeks ego boosts by appealing to trolls and conspiracy theorists. https://t.co/mFi5pgh4vw— Nicholas Grossman (@NGrossman81) December 11, 2022
Josh Marshall compares him to Trump. They’re both kinda racist, and galacticly narcissistic. But they’re not political thinkers at all. They both love being loved more than anything, so when MTG shows love for them, they show it right back.
Hmmm.. I'm starting to think that twitter was screwed long before Musk bought the company. This whistleblower report is.. Wow. The stuff uncovered in the Twitter whistleblower report is much crazier than anything in the "Twitter files" but it's much less politically/tribally salient so it got no attention. Going to do a thread on some of the craziest things, in no particular order.— Avid Halaby (@AvidHalaby) December 12, 2022 Couple of highlights: 1. No separate Dev or Test region, just production. This is really, really bad. I'm sure they had some sort of change management system, so you weren't doing dev work in production, per se. But even if they were just creating branches, doing the work, then pushing to production, that is really, really bad. 2. Up to 5,000 employees had access to production. For those not in IT, this is scary AF. If true, any of these 5,000 employees could push bad code and crash the system. Most companies have a very, very small number of employees that can push code into production 3. Twitter didn't monitor employee computers, so lots of spyware. They also weren't backing up employee computers, so if your PC crashes (because of the spyware and viruses), everything on the PC was just gone. 4. Twitter was having an absolute ton of security incidents that had to be reported to regulators etc. etc. The company and app seems to have been an absolute sh*t show before Musk came in and sent it even further down the sewer.