Analysts see trouble for studios like BioWare, potential for Saudi meddling. This morning’s announcement that EA plans to sell itself to a consortium of private equity firms is one of the biggest business stories of the year. The $55 billion deal is the largest leveraged buyout in history and…
F-Droid sees Google’s plans as a threat to FOSS apps. Google plans to begin testing its recently announced verification scheme for Android developers in the coming weeks, but there’s still precious little information on how the process will work. F-Droid, the free and open source app repository, isn’t waiting…
This is a “step forward in the transition of European launch systems toward full reusability.” The European Space Agency signed a contract Monday with Avio, the Italian company behind the small Vega rocket, to begin designing a reusable upper stage capable of flying into orbit, returning to Earth, and…
Epic will “inquire into our partner’s creative intentions” before making a final decision. If you watch this for a full hour, leave a comment to receive absolutely no prize. Epic Games has disabled a Fortnite emote based on the HBO show Peacemaker after the latest episode cast the dancing…
Investors will receive $210 per share, well above the stock’s all-time high. Friday’s reports that Electronic Arts planned to go private were publicly confirmed Monday morning. Silver Lake, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), and Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners will join together to pay an estimated $55 billion for…
Ford and Chevy set near-identical lap times with very different cars; we drove both. There’s a racetrack with a funny name in Germany that, in the eyes of many international enthusiasts, is the de facto benchmark for automotive performance. But the Nürburgring, a 13-mile (20 km) track often called…
There’s an unparalleled purity to MOO2’s commitment to the fantasy. I love 4X games. I’ve tried other strategy game genres, but frankly, they don’t stick if they’re not first and foremost 4X games—at the heart of it, it must be about exploring, expanding, exploiting, and yes, exterminating. I suspect…
The storm literally snapped the bones in their wings. One hundred and fifty million years ago, the Solnhofen Limestones of Germany were covered in small islands and warm saltwater lagoons. Coral reefs flourished with crinoids, sponges, jellyfish, and crustaceans; Dragonflies buzzed above the water as small reptiles sunned themselves…
A vaccine developer and a climate scientist walk into a bar write a book. We’re about a quarter of the way through the 21st century. Summers across the global north are now defined by flash floods, droughts, heat waves, uncontainable wildfires, and intensifying named storms, exactly as predicted by…
Cambridge researchers use satellite-based bramble detection as a proxy for mapping hedgehog habitats. You can’t spot a hedgehog from space, but you might be able to find where they live by looking for brambles. That’s the premise behind ongoing research at the University of Cambridge, where scientists are using…
