The Mercury Marauder, which served as the Ford Crown Victoria’s cousin from 2003 to 2004, packed a serious punch and an intimidating design. Check it out.
The United Kingdom’s antitrust regulator is concerned that Microsoft’s blockbuster purchase of Activision Blizzard could create a monopoly in the nascent cloud gaming space. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which began investigating the deal back in July, says that it’s not yet reassured by the promises Microsoft has made to get the deal done. It feels that, once Activision is a part of Microsoft, the Xbox maker could use its “control over popular games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft” to “harm rivals” by boxing them out of access to popular titles. Microsoft has already publicly committed not to hoard exclusives, (and said that Actiblizz’s library isn’t all that anyway) but sweet words haven’t appeased the officials.
In a statement, it said that it was giving Microsoft and Activision five days to submit proposals that would address its concerns. If those did not pass muster, however, then the office will open a lengthy “Phase 2” investigation involving an independent panel to scrutinize the deal in greater depth. That will likely delay any completion of the deal, which would then only be rubber-stamped if regulators were convinced that the deal would not cause a “substantial lessening of competition.” It’s likely that, whatever happens, Microsoft will need to commit to not using its growing clout to hurt other companies in the space by depriving them of key franchises.
Microsoft’s gaming chief Phil Spencer has already responded to the announcement, affirming the previous pledge not to pull Call of Duty from PlayStation, for instance. Spencer pointed to the cross-platform appeal of Minecraft, a title Microsoft purchased in 2014, as evidence of the company’s good faith. Activision CEO Bobby Kotick published an open letter to employees, saying that the company will “fully cooperate” with regulators, which are taking “appropriate” steps to ensure that there are no risks to competition.
Filming has wrapped on Scream 6. Get a look at Netflix’s latest Stephen King adaptation. Plus, a new clip from Cobra Kai, and the new Omen prequel finds itself a Game of Thrones star. To me, my spoilers!
Even an evil fictitious organization like Star Wars’ Empire can’t just throw out a new kind of trooper for every appearance. Sometimes, the Emperor’s finest just have to make do with a new coat of paint as they go out to persecute rebels and what have you—and that seems like it’ll be the case in Andor, if some of…
In David Mitchell’s 2004 book Cloud Atlas, (not the movie, mind you) sections of the story that take place in a dystopian future where characters refer to major industries as their biggest brand. Gas isn’t gas, its “Exon.” Similarly, films aren’t films, they’re “Disneys.” Though there’s no reference to online…
State media later reported Ravil Maganov jumped out of a hospital window and died by suicide. Lukoil, meanwhile, said the chairman died after “severe illness.”
If there was ever a fundamental divide between Twitter’s leadership and its users, it was about the existence, or lack, of an edit button. The company has for most of its life been against the ability for users to amend tweets after they were published. That changes, more or less, from today, since Twitter has announced that it will indeed be rolling out an edit button to its users. As The New York Times reports, it marks the most fundamental shift in how the platform works since 2017, when it doubled the character limit of a message from 140 to 280 characters.
In a statement, Twitter said that it was hoping that the presence of an edit button would make the act of tweeting a little less stressful. Unfortunately, the button isn’t yet ready to roll out to the platform’s several hundred million users just yet, and is currently still in testing by employees. Later this month, access will be granted to Twitter Blue users, who pay $5 per month to remove in-feed ads and undo a tweet that you might want to change before it’s seen by everyone. The company added that the test will be localized to a single country, and will expand worldwide slowly so that the company can make sure the feature is being used as intended.
One of the reasons that Twitter resisted an edit button for so long was the risk of bad actors abusing the system. For instance, you could amend a tweet that was widely retweeted or embedded in other sites, changing the meaning for something its boosters did not intend. That’s why there will be guardrails put in place — like the fact that edits can only be made 30 minutes after the initial publication. And edits will be labelled as such to ensure people know you’ve been tweaking your text — with the revision history also available for everyone to view. Still, it’s one way to at least spare some of your blushes when you send a Tweet that’s got on3 or twoo annoyeeng typizos.
Even as someone who writes about climate all the time, it’s still a shock to see satellite imagery of climate crises, to really get a grasp on how large human influence can be on our warming planet. Here’s how this summer of droughts, heatwaves, floods, and wildfires looked from space.
The man’s mother said he felt like a porcupine following the frightening attack.
Music publishers, songwriters and musicians have struck a deal with streaming services for US mechanical streaming rates for 2023-2027, the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) has announced. The NMPA, Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) and Digital Media Association (DiMA) agreed on a 15.35 percent rate, avoiding a potentially contentious battle.
That’s up only mildly from the 2018-2022 rate of 15.1 percent. It’s also less than expected, according to Variety, as the NMPA previously said it was pushing for 20 percent. However, the agreement will reportedly also modernize the way “bundle” rates offered to students and families are treated, and increase so-called Total Content Costs, to make up some of the difference.
“This agreement… ensures that all parties will benefit from the growth of the industry and will be motivated to work together to maximize that growth,” the press release states. “Instead of going to trial and continuing years of conflict, we instead of move forward in collaboration with the highest rates ever, guaranteed,” added NMPA’s CEO David Israelite.
Last time, a legal battle between the parties dragged on for three years. The 15.1 percent rate for the 2018-2022 period was decided in 2018, but Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube and Pandora appealed the ruling, arguing it would be untenable for their business model. Publishers and songwriters prevailed earlier this year, as the Copyright Royalty Board reaffirmed the 15.1 percent rate.
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