Hasta La Gadget!

Residents of a town just north of Dallas, Texas were awoken in the middle of a cold night this week to what sounded like a volley of gunshots outside their home. When they finally made their way outdoors, the residents learned those shocking sounds didn’t actually originate from firearms but were rather the result of…

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News Corp says it was the target of a cyberattack that impacted The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Dow Jones, its UK news operations and other publications and business units. The company says hackers accessed the emails and documents of some employees, including journalists. A cybersecurity consultant News Corp brought in believes that China was connected to the intrusion, and that the aim of the attack may have been to gather intelligence for the country’s benefit.

The attack was discovered on January 20th and News Corp disclosed it in a securities filing on Friday. It also informed law enforcement. According to The Journal, the company told staff the threat appears to have been contained and that it’s offering support to affected employees. It doesn’t appear that systems containing financial and customer data (including details on subscribers) were affected.

It’s not the first time The Journal has been the target of a cyberattack. The publication said Chinese hackers aiming to keep tabs on coverage of the country accessed its network in 2013 to snoop on reporters.

This week, FBI director Christopher Wray said China is behind a “massive, sophisticated hacking program that is bigger than those of every other major nation combined.” Wray noted the agency has more than 2,000 investigations in progress connected to thefts of US tech or information that were allegedly orchestrated by the Chinese government. On average, the FBI opens two such probes every day.

Travis McMichael reversed his plan to plead guilty in the federal case days after a U.S. District Court judge rejected terms of a plea deal.

A major milestone has been achieved in the deployment of the James Webb Space Telescope, with an onboard instrument detecting its first photons from a distant star. This means engineers can now begin the three-month process of aligning the space telescope’s 18 mirrors.

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In its press release for its fourth quarter 2021 financial results, Activision Blizzard has revealed that it has plans to release Warcraft for mobile sometime this year. Company CEO Bobby Kotick told investors a year ago that the developer made “multiple, mobile, free-to-play Warcraft experiences” that were already in advanced development back then. Blizzard has yet to reveal more detailed information about the games and a more concrete timeline, so it’s unclear if its release plans include all those experiences or just few. 

The only part of the company’s earnings results that mentions the franchise on mobile reads:

“Blizzard is planning substantial new content for the Warcraft franchise in 2022, including new experiences in World of Warcraft and Hearthstone, and getting all-new mobile Warcraft content into players’ hands for the first time.”

There have been rumors about a Warcraft mobile game since at least 2017. In 2018, reports came out that Blizzard was working on a mobile entry for the franchise that will be similar to Pokémon Go, which presumably means that it’s an augmented reality title. According to a Kotaku report, it was being developed by an “incubation” team that was formed when co-founder Allen Adham returned to the company 2016. The team was also behind mobile game Diablo Immortal that’s coming out this year, as well.