Xbox and PlayStation have had their rivalries for years — and they started playing in the sandbox together as infants. Even though these players have grown up — they’re still in competition for gamer’s time and money. Famous rivalries in video game history exist, such as Sonic vs. Mario, Crash vs. Cortex, Link vs. Ganon, and Switch owners vs. Joycon Drift.

The PS5 has succeeded better than the Xbox Series X by a wide margin, to the extent that there have been rumors that Microsoft may forego developing consoles completely in favor of the next generation.

But Phil Spencer, CEO of Xbox reassured all Xbox employees that the company will not stop producing consoles. Saying that Xbox has no plans to quit consoles — and then having a podcast format announcement on February 15th has a few fans a bit nervous? Might we see Xbox announce a new harde, or perhaps a Pro version of the Series X — or forget a remake or update — might there be something completely new? The Ad on X says to watch on “YouTube.com/Xbox or where you listen to your podcasts.” Also, “Hear from Phil Spencer, Sarah Bond, and Matt Booty as they share updates on the Xbox business.”

Many wonder why Xbox continues to make exclusives and not go multiplatform? For many fans, the hope this week is that Microsoft will reveal plans to go multi-platform with some of the biggest Xbox games — and Game Pass, of course.

This would be an interesting move because among of the Xbox Series X’s major selling points are games like Sea of Thieves, Starfield, and Hi-Fi Rush. It should come as a relief to fans of studios like Bethesda and Activision Blizzard who joined with Microsoft, as this would virtually guarantee that PlayStation titles like Fallout and Call of Duty will continue to have a presence.

We await Phil Spencer’s news on February 15 to find out the destiny of our beloved Xbox.

Featured Image Credit: Luca Nardone; Pexels

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Meta is introducing a new feature called “Today’s Topics” on its Threads app, aiming to highlight current discussions that are capturing the attention of its user base. Announced by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, this initiative is set to begin with a small-scale test in the United States. It represents Meta’s latest effort to foster meaningful engagement and keep its community informed about trending conversations.

According to TechCrunch, the “Today’s Topics” feature is powered by Meta’s AI systems, which identify popular discussions by analyzing user interactions and the volume of conversation around specific subjects. This algorithmic approach ensures the topics presented are both relevant and timely, mirroring the collective interests of Threads users.

To uphold the integrity and relevance of the topics featured, Meta has enlisted a team of content specialists. Their role is to ensure that all topics comply with the platform’s Community Guidelines and other integrity policies, while also removing duplicates and filtering out misleading or nonsensical topics. Users play a crucial role in maintaining content quality, as they are encouraged to flag any topic that might breach the platform’s guidelines.

Navigating political content on Threads

Despite Meta’s recent declaration to scale back on recommending political content across its platforms, “Today’s Topics” will not exclude discussions on political themes. Meta clarified that political subjects could indeed emerge as topics of interest, as long as they do not contravene the platform’s Community Guidelines or integrity policies. This stance highlights Meta’s commitment to offering a broad spectrum of timely and relevant discussions, without tailoring recommendations to individual users.

The launch of “Today’s Topics” could enhance Threads’ appeal as a dynamic platform for real-time conversations and debates, potentially positioning it as a stronger competitor to X (formerly Twitter). The degree of human curation versus algorithmic selection in managing these topics is yet to be fully disclosed, leaving room for speculation on how Meta will balance editorial oversight with automated processes.

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Since the start of this year, Microsoft, eBay and PayPal have axed thousands of jobs in a pivot to artificial intelligence as companies revise their resources.

As reported by the Financial Times, tech companies have cut around 34,000 jobs in a matter of weeks as the focus turns to generative AI.

In addition to the heavyweight names mentioned above, Snap has also shed a significant number of roles as part of an industry-wide cut of 138 firms that have let staff go. These figures are significant but not quite at the same level as one year previous when Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon culled their numbers.

Layoffs.fyi — indicated 263,000 roles were lost in the tech sector during 2023 as analysts have indicated the latest round of cuts is a sign of the pivot to AI, while some companies have considered productivity relating to their overall output.

Brent Hill, an analyst at the renowned financial institution Jefferies, opined companies have assessed their workforces with the conclusion that “we’ve got a bunch of dead wood, and if we had a leaner organization, we can do more.”

“The lay-offs are going to continue, and it may get worse. It’s become contagious,” added Hill.

Who is next?

Last month, Amazon-owned Twitch was hit with the blow of around 500 employees being axed due to financial pressures, a further indicator of the cost-cutting and adjusting across the industry. Even the ‘Big Five’ are impacted as part of an extensive list of employers who have cut their cloth over the last few weeks.

Enterprise software company SAP confirmed a “company-wide transformation” in January, including the loss of around 8,000 jobs as it turns further to AI while reskilling staff as much as possible.

Autumn Mitchell, a QA tester at Microsoft subsidiary ZeniMax, commented on the current uncertainty, “Anybody working in tech or games right now is worried about lay-offs to some degree, either for themselves or someone they know.”

“You see one company announce lay-offs and think, Here we go, who’s it going to be next week?” Mitchell said.

Image: PVMS/Pexels.

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The Arrowhead and Sony game Hellldivers surpasses other record-setting titles such as God of War and Spider-Man on Steam.

The two were eclipsed by the third-person cooperative shooter that now boasts the top spot and 155,000 concurrent users on the PC platform, according to SteamDB.

The bug-blasting game is described as a “squad-based shooter that sees the elite forces of the Helldivers battling to win an intergalactic struggle to rid the galaxy of the rising alien threats.”

Helldiver’s director and Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt has been responding to positive messages from the community about the game’s continued success.

He said on X (formerly Twitter):

You think sony will say any public statement on the units sold? Congrats on the success!!

— GamerUP (@GamerUPGaming) February 11, 2024

The future of the title

Arrowhead has said that the game will deploy free updates to users and new enemies to fight, with the always vocal CEO saying on Discord that “we are constantly going to add more stuff to the game! Enemies, objectives, biomes, etc., are always going to be free and expand the experience.”

Pilestedt commented on the pay-to-win elements of games, saying, “You have to earn the right to monetize’—I truly believe that. If people want to support this title, they have an option, but we are never forcing anyone to do so.”

The CEO said of the only pay-to-win element on X in a tongue-in-cheek jibe:

I'm partial but we really applied ourselves to not make it p2w even though items are functionally different. The only item that's p2w is the revolver – which will win you any "cool gun" competition. Only (minor) problem is that it's not that good. https://t.co/c8T8TruLVi

— Pilestedt (@Pilestedt) February 11, 2024

The game has been battling some bugs, with the studio keeping gamers posted about the downtime in a statement on X from the ever-active Pilestedt;

”Thank you for your patience,” He said. “With it, we deployed three “rapid-fixes” aimed at improving the situation with rewards often not being handed out properly, login issues, and server capacity. “

“For now, please once again accept our sincere apologies for the issues you’re facing, and rest assured, we’re doing our utmost to make it right..”

After a long night, the developers are hoping for some well-deserved shut-eye, with the game designer capping off his post by saying, “Right now, it is crucial that our team gets some sleep, and we will be back at this again in a few hours.”

Image: Sony blog

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Sometimes you just do not need a team of 400 coders and a billion-pound budget to make something that people enjoy playing. For hours. In the last few days, a web-based sandbox “game” called Infinite Craft has taken the internet by storm, as people desperately “craft” items trying to make discoveries and become the owner of the “First Discovery” badge on something, meaning you were the first player to get that combination.

If you haven’t played Infinite Craft, this will sound like absolute gibberish, but bear with us!

How to play Infinite Craft 

To get in on the action you need to head to the Infinite Craft website in your browser. This will take you to developer Neal Argawal’s site and you will be faced with an empty screen and a column on the right-hand side containing boxes named after four elements, Water, Wind, Fire, and Earth.

To craft new things you must first drag one of the elements into the center of the screen. Let’s Start with Earth. Now drag Water on top of it and it will change to Plant. Congrats, you have just made your first thing in Infinite Craft. You will notice that Plant has now been added to your items on the right.

Now drag Fire onto Plant and you get Smoke. And so on and forth. Add Wind to Smoke and you now have Cloud as well. Keep going. There are some crazy things in there, most of which make perfect sense if you think about it. 

For example, if you drop Earthquake onto Tunnel it gives you Cave. Drop Hot onto Cave and now you have a Sauna. It’s a wacky train of thought but you will soon get an idea of how it all works in the mind of Neal at least.

How to make monsters in Infinite Craft

Right, let’s make some monsters. Here’s how we get to the Loch Ness Monster

Make the Loch Ness Monster in Infinite Craft

• Clay+Clay = Brick
• Brick + Brick = Wall
• Flood + Flood = Ocean
• Ocean + Flood = Tsunami
• Clay + Brick = House
• Stone + House = Castle
• Castle + Castle = Palace
• Palace + Tsunami = Atlantis
• Swamp + Atlantis = Loch Ness
• Loch Ness + Ocean = Monster
• Loch Ness + Monster = Nessie

Want another?

Make Godzilla in Infinite Craft

Let’s try Godzilla. Here goes:

• Water + Water = Lake
• Lake + Water = Ocean
• Ocean + Earth = Island
• Island + Island = Continent
• Earth + Earth = Mountain
• Mountain + Continent = Asia
• Asia + Earth = China
• Mountain + Mountain = Mountain Range
• China + Mountain Range = Great Wall
• Water + Earth = Plant
• Plant + Plant = Tree
• Tree + Fire = Ash
• Ash + Fire = Phoenix
• Phoenix + Great Wall = Dragon
• China + Asia = Japan
• Japan + Dragon = Godzilla

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Losing the FIFA license does not seem to have damaged EA Sports’ standing as the publisher of the best, and realistically, only football game that people still play in large numbers. The change of title to the clumsier EA FC 24 is more or less the only downside between this year’s offering and FIFA 23 from last year.

EA did not want to pay FIFA’s asking price for the license and decided it was big enough and had enough fans of its game to go it alone without the world governing body, not that this is some plucky underdog story, the FIFA licensed football games are said to have generated over $20 billion in revenue in the last two decades, with a healthy chunk of that coming directly out of my bank account courtesy of my kid being a huge fan.

FIFA’s ever-popular Bond-villain leader Gianni Infantino said last year (in not his only odd quote in the last few years), “The new FIFA game – the FIFA 25, 26, 27 and so on – will always be the best egame for any girl or boy, we will have news on this very soon.”

Now I can’t remember ever hearing the term egame either before or indeed since that moment, but it seems as though if rumors are to be believed, that 2K may be responsible for the new said FIFA egame.

A post on X from tech leaker Zuby_tech simply states, “Rumour FIFA Chooses 2K To Make The Next FIFA!”

Rumour FIFA Chooses 2K To Make The Next FIFA!#FIFA #2K pic.twitter.com/g8CSsqfmvi

— @Zuby_Tech (@Zuby_Tech) February 12, 2024

It’s not really backed up by anything but 2K would be a good position to make the game having other top sports franchises in its portfolio already. Konami’s eFootball is not in a great position, but it is also difficult to see any real competition for EA FC, if only because, while not having the FIFA license, EA holds the licenses for most of the top Leagues, teams, and player likenesses in the world, and that counts volumes for players who want a minimum level of realism in their games. Nobody wants Theo Messy to score a goal when they could be playing with Leo Messi.

Not popular

The reaction to the rumor on Reddit has been far from positive, with these just a selection of reactions:

“The Greatest Money Milking Fight”

“You’ll have two publishers that will want to milk you dry. EA vs 2K is a competition from hell.”

“2K vs EA is like getting to choose between two muggers down a dark alley”

It’s worth pointing out that the reliability of the leaker is not great, so this may not turn out to be true, but having missed a FIFA football game in 2024, the world’s governing body for Football will not want to hang about much longer. As yet there is no comment from either FIFA or 2K to the legitimacy of the rumor.

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Elon Musk has been ordered to answer to a federal judge concerning his takeover of Twitter in an ongoing US Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into his $44 billion takeover of the social media platform.

In a follow-up to a preliminary ruling in December 2023, the SEC and the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX now have seven days to agree on a date for him to testify, otherwise, it will be decided for them.

As reported by Reuters, Musk previously refused to attend an interview in September as part of the overall probe of his acquisition of Twitter, which he later rebranded as X.

US Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler sided with the regulator on that occasion after Musk’s dismissive action was prompted by claims of harassment. He insisted the subpoena was requesting irrelevant information, as well as undergoing two interviews, but that argument was rejected.

Ongoing dispute

The SEC is challenging whether Musk adhered to the correct legal process when filing the necessary paperwork for his purchase of Twitter and if he made misleading statements during the transaction. It is seeking further answers from the 52-year-old, who also argued the subpoena fell outside the SEC’s authority as it was issued by a staff member appointed by the SEC’s Director of Enforcement.

Beeler ruled the subpoena is valid, throwing out Musk’s claims which brings us to the latest stage of this legal saga. The Magistrate’s next action could be to hear both representations, to set a new hearing date, if they do not agree.

Musk has also taken additional action, asking the US Supreme Court for a review, citing his constitutional right to free speech following the December decree.

Tensions between the X supremo and the SEC commenced back in 2018 when the body sued him after he tweeted “funding secured” relating to a potential move to take Tesla private. Musk agreed to a Tesla lawyer vetting his tweets regarding the company, to settle the case, but he was sued again, the following year, for an alleged breach of the agreement.

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The Three UK mobile network is reportedly down impacting thousands of users and the customer service department of the cell company.

Subscribers across the Super Bowl weekend reported outages and a patchy service from the fourth-largest mobile network in the UK.

It couldn’t have come at a worse time with the biggest sporting event of the year being streamed in households and on devices across the world.

Three has posted on its social channels about the outages, the company said on x:

Some customers may be experiencing issues with our network this morning. Our engineers are working hard to fix it.
This issue is also impacting customer service, so please check back here for the latest updates (1/2)

— Three UK (@ThreeUK) February 12, 2024

The cell provider also has a network service checker which has a post apologizing for the sudden halt in services and the inability to check the current status of the network.

The post stated that “some customers may be experiencing issues with our network this morning. Our engineering teams are working hard to fix it. This issue is impacting our customer service channels and network status checker, so please check our social feeds for the latest updates.”

Recurring problems

Earlier this weekend the provider placed a message on its social channels stating that an outage was being looked into by engineers.

Three would then go on to post on X yesterday that the issue had been resolved in the early part of the day:

Following an issue with our network for a number of customers, services have now recovered. If any customer is still having an issue, they should fully restart their device to reconnect to our network. We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused.

— Three UK (@ThreeUK) February 11, 2024

The problems persist, however, and sites like network outage reporter Down Detector have recorded over 12,850 outages across the past 24 hours.

The site mentions that 36% of users are having issues with mobile internet, 33% of users have no signal and 30% of users record a total blackout of the service.

Smarty, a UK mobile operator and user of the Three network had to apologise to customers on X this morning;

Some customers may be experiencing issues with our network this morning. Our engineering teams are working hard to fix it.

We are sorry for the issues with service over the past few days and sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused. – Jodie

— SMARTY (@SMARTYMobileUK) February 12, 2024

In early December we reported that the Three network has gone down, impacting over 20,000 users.

It remains to be seen if this issue is related to the merger with Vodaphone that was announced in the middle of last year.

The press release on the merger stated that “from day one, millions of customers of Vodafone UK and Three UK will enjoy a better network experience with greater coverage and reliability at no extra cost, including through certain flexible, contract-free offers with no annual price increases, and social tariffs.”

Image: Yan Krukau, Pexels.

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Believe it or not, there was a time when multiplayer games didn’t have microtransactions. You bought the game, played it, and if you liked it you picked up any expansions that came out further down the line and the world rested peacefully.

Then came the era where you could buy horse armor for your mount in Skyrim and turn your automatic assault rifle pure gold in Call of Duty and the cosmos shifted. Now, with our bank accounts permanently connected to constantly hacked developers servers and payment gateways, we can open up a Loot Box and hopefully get a player card with a rating of 84 instead of 83, at least for this season, before we lose them all when next years version of the game comes out.

Until now one game has bucked the trend, Escape from Tarkov has been Escape from Microtransactions but sadly, not for much longer. Somewhat more irritatingly, not all the purchases are purely cosmetic either like we get in Fortnite. PC GameN reports that beyond paying to unlock new clothing options early, you can also purchase the offline co-op mode. 

Okay fine, that’s newish to the game and it has been around for eight years so is a decent additional feature. The next change though allows you to pay for a quality-of-life addition by increasing your Stash size by up to 280 slots.

You will be able to earn these extra slots in the game without paying for them also, but this will obviously involve a grind or what’s the point in buying them, potentially making the game more enjoyable for those who wish to purchase.

These features were previously available in the Edge of Darkness edition of the game which has now been removed, and if you bought that you will not have to get them again. A post from Battlestate Games’ chief operating officer Nikita Buyanov says:

“So, the thing is that we want to add purchasable options for EFT players cause:

1. We removed the EoD version and some of the EoD features need to go back (offline co-op for example).
2. The game is running for eight years without any additional flow. You just buy and play it forever, and it’s a pretty unique situation for a game such as EFT.”

It also goes on to state that there will be no in-game currency gear packages and the like to buy, just what has been mentioned so far.

These changes will arrive in “the near future” and be available from your profile page on the Escape from Tarkov website as we wave goodbye to the end of an era.

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According to community leaks the rugged frontier of Fortnite’s LEGO Survival will be getting new content to battle and build in the coming weeks.

The Danish constructible toy creator dropped the collaboration with the games studio in December last year and there have been multiple skins and creations available to players who enjoy the standalone survival title.

We’ve previously reported on the now-released Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the upcoming One Piece collabs, and the leaks keep coming.

Lego Fortnite Leaked items

This LEGO take on the genre will be receiving a host of new items in the coming weeks for the hardy adventurers braving the brick-laden expanse.

They were announced by active community leaker FN Assist via X.

ALL upcoming #LEGOFortnite updates:

– Legendary Tools (Rift Sword, Titanium Pickaxe, Iron Axe, Titanium Shovel, Darkwood Crossbow, Titanium Shield)
– Hammers (Stone, Marble, Obsidian, Malachite, Rift)
– Dagger weapons (Common-Legendary)
– Wrist Trinkets (Give effects like… pic.twitter.com/bneO6t6gOa

— FNAssist (@FN_Assist) February 5, 2024

New enemies are part of the new update including animals such as horn beetles, skeletons, bears, and wolves. More complex characters or mini-bosses could come in the form of baddies named Swooper, Rift Brute, Rift Blaster, Forest Beamer, Ice Beamer, and Slammer.

New Legendary Tools will combat these dark denizens of the cubed world including the Rift Sword, Titanium Pickaxe, Iron Axe, Darkwood Crossbow, and Titanium Shield. More crafting features will be unlocked for gamers who love to take the raw materials of an environment and build their LEGO dream base. These include an anvil, rift processor, smelter, food Cart, and a Tier 5 Crafting Bench to name a few.

The leak goes on to show the other items coming to the game.

• Hammers (Stone, Marble, Obsidian, Malachite, Rift)
• Dagger weapons (Common-Legendary)
• Wrist Trinkets (Give effects like Charms)
• Steering Wheel
• Enchanted Guitar
• Ghost Chests & Keys (seems like you can only use them at night)
• Vending Villager NPCs (Original LEGO Characters – Racoon, Fox, Wolf)
• Quest Villager NPCs (Witch, Duke)
• Stud Gun
• Grab-itron
• Gong
• Riding (Animals/Objects)
• Ziplines
• Catapults
• Cannons
• Impulse Grenades
• Gravestones
• Working seats

What is LEGO Fortnite Survival?

The brick-based test of the great outdoors is a mode similar to titles like Minecraft where resources are harvested, buildings are progressively scaled and the odd monster turns up to ruin it all. Players collect, build, and delve into dungeons for precious resources to enhance their camps with more content coming to the game each time a new season or pack is launched. The game is free to play on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, PC on Epic Games Store and cloud-based gaming streaming services.

In related Epic Games news, Disney announced earlier this month that they would be investing $1.5 billion to create a new world with the studio.

This could unlock the potential to work with intellectual properties such as Star Wars and Marvel in a more substantial manner to the timed releases of content packs across the Fortnite-verse.

With the studio trusted with so many household and global staples, the rest of the year is set to be a good one for LEGO fans and those of Disney’s beloved characters.

Image: LEGO Newsroom.

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Rumors have been circulating for a few months now that the highly-anticipated DLC for Elden Ring, The Shadow of the Erdtree was about to drop, potentially by the end of this month, which coincidentally is the two-year anniversary of the original game’s release. 

Such is the popularity of Elden Ring, a two-year hiatus has not damaged the yearning from its fans to get back into the fiendishly difficult Soulslike, to the point where leakers and those who want to be the first to spread the word, have been poking around in the inner sanctums of the Steam backend for any trace that an update may be on the way.

Plenty of evidence had been uncovered, and new files, some even with DLC in the title appeared to have been uploaded, leading to rife speculation that From Software was about to do what From Software does, and just release new content without warning.

Several publications including PC Gamer have now poured water on the rumor because of a line in a financial report from Kadakow – FromSoftware’s parent company, which said, “We are currently working hard on the development of DLC for Elden Ring but we have not announced a release date at this time.”

Having said that, Shadow of the Erdtree is definitely on the way, the Steam updates cannot point to anything else at this stage. They would have nothing to do with the recent leak of a mobile Elden Ring being worked on by Tencent, and there previously hadn’t been any new files uploaded to Steam since the original game’s release. Something is going on, but as yet, it does not seem as though it is going to be any of our business any time soon.

An awful lot would need to happen now in the next two weeks until the anniversary for Shadow of the Erdtree to arrive. Perhaps it will just be an announcement. We will have to wait and see.

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In all the years of Fortnite and its collaborations, perhaps one of the biggest surprises is that we have never had any content from anime powerhouse One Piece appear in the game. The number one Manga of all time with an estimated sales revenue of over $516 million, the marriage of One Piece and Fortnite seems to be an eventual no-brainer.

And we might be about to see it finally realized if the latest Fortnite leak from the game’s leaking community, who also broke the scoop on the recent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles collab is correct.

Although details are thin, there is no smoke without fire and while a One Piece collab has been requested many times by fans of the series, bringing characters such as Monkey D. Luffy, Nami and Nico Robin wouldn’t seem to be as complicated or riddled with danger as we saw in with the arrival of the recent Family Guys skins, which caused problems for some players. Although we would love to see Tony Tony Chopper make an appearance on the Island too.

As for timelines, nothing is known at the moment, we are still in the middle of the Turtles Cowabunga event, so we are likely talking at least a month away, although we could get initial skins earlier.

Even though One Piece has been tremendously successful since its first Manga back in 1997, its following transition to Anime and a series starting in 1999 has propelled it to a new audience. Last year Netflix streamed Season one of a new live-action version series, bringing the content to more people than ever before.

There have also been several One Piece games including last year’s One Piece Odyssey across all major formats that was an enjoyable, largely-open world romp across the story’s main settings.

Featured Image: AI-Generated with Ideagram

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Ransomware hackers extorted $1bn across 2023, according to data insights company and blockchain platform.

The company published a report showing the extent of malicious hacking and developing trends affecting entities across the last year.

Chainanalysis provides data, software, services, and research to government agencies and companies across seventy countries.

”Our data powers investigation, compliance, and market intelligence software that has been used to solve some of the world’s most high-profile criminal cases and grow consumer access to cryptocurrency safely,” says the company site.

The report details a staggering increase of $433 million in ransom taken from victims compared to 2022, growing to the highest-ever rate of $1bn in 2023.

Report shows biggest ransomware attack of 2023

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released a Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) in June of last year highlighting the MOVEit vulnerability, carried out by the CL0P Ransomware Gang.

This would be one of the biggest reported ransomware attacks recorded and was the spike point of 2023’s issue with ‘Zero-Day’ exploits.

What is a Zero-Day?

The report details this as a ‘Zero-Day’ vulnerability that compromised multiple institutions simultaneously. The attack is given this name as it gives the developers zero days to respond to it as it exploits an existing crack in the defenses they were unaware of.

The MOVEit hack was like finding all the keys to multiple company lockboxes in one big digital bank vault.

The hack hit several established institutions and exploited a vulnerability in the file transfer system. The software owner would announce that the service had been compromised with sensitive data, including personal details, and in some cases, banking information was in the hands of hackers.

Sony, the BBC, and Flagstar Bank were a few of those affected. The Maine Attorney General documented that 837,390 users had their data violated, with the report stating, “Information Acquired — Name or other personal identifiers in combination with Social Security Number.”

The Japanese tech giant, Sony, would also send letters to those affected stating that the company wanted to “provide you with information about a cybersecurity event related to one of our IT vendors, Progress Software, that involved some of your personal information.”

“This event was limited to Progress Software’s MOVEit Transfer platform and did not impact any of our other systems.”

This would extort massive amounts of data and considerably damage Progress Software’s reputation.

U.S. Federal forces and companies across the globe will be hoping that the number of attacks and the amount extorted will fall across 2024.

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The chances of the cult classic Discworld game series being remastered is in the hands of the United Kingdom’s Monarchy, according to the game’s former studio designer and co-founder of Perfect Entertainment.

Gregg Barnett was integral to Perfect Entertainment and GT Interactive’s development of the three titles that took on the setting of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld and the characters that roamed the cobble-stoned streets of Ahnk-Morpork.

Discworld, Discworld 2, and Discworld Noir were part of the pantheon of established point-and-click adventure titles in the 1990s. The latter is known for its slow jazz soundtrack and legendary H.P Lovecraft-meets-Casablanca vibes. They sat alongside the likes of LucasArt’s Day of the Tentacle and Grim Fandango, as well as Broken Sword and Monkey Island, as the definitive narrative-driven video game tales of their time.

The Pratchett-verse titles have never seen a remaster like those other formative games that managed to grace consoles and platforms like Steam in recent years.

Vacant Goods

Barnett recently told Time Extension that a Discworld release is “on the cards. It may happen. And then it could advance to new versions of them.”

”May” is the Prefect Entertainment co-founder’s operative word, as there is a bit of mist for the missing part of the ownership rights. Fifty percent of the ownership rights have fallen into the lap of the UK Monarchy, so Barnett’s statement shows that a consultation with the Crown “may” be necessary for any remaster to happen and “may” take time.

Barnett continued on the topic of a remaster, saying, “There have been discussions, and something may be happening down the track — a rerelease or a remaster. But it’s obviously a complicated process when you’re dealing with the Crown.”

Barnett owns 50% of the rights to the three titles. Still, due to the expiry of the game’s licenses and the closure of Perfect Entertainment, the other half falls to agents of the British Crown when a company’s property becomes the flotsam and jetsam of the business world.

This department is known as the ‘Bona Vacantia’, which means vacant goods in Latin, the name given to ownerless property, which by law passes to the Crown.

According to the UK Government’s website “the Treasury Solicitor acts for the Crown to administer the estates of people who die intestate (without a Will) and without known kin (entitled blood relatives) and collect the assets of dissolved companies and other various ownerless goods in England and Wales.”

Pratchett Estate’s say

PC Gamer recently reached out to Terry Pratchett’s Estate and the daughter of the Discworld creator and much-loved British writing icon, Rhianna Pratchett.

Rhianna Pratchett is responsible for the intellectual property (IP) of the late great writer with the company Narrativa. She told PC Gamer, “we’d certainly love to see the old games re-released. It’s news to us if His Majesty owns 50% of the Discworld games. Who knows what might happen if that’s really the case? Maybe he’s a fan!”

Barnett’s dream may yet come true to work on the remaster for modern platforms and consoles, but for new titles, Rhianna Pratchett was clear about the IP rights and ideas that could be approved.

“We still own the IP rights… The reason why Gregg got the rights to do the games was that he came up with solid ideas that fitted the nature of Discworld. The simple reason that there’s never been a fully-fledged Discworld game since then is no one has come to us with the right ideas and the resources to actually make it happen.”

Fans of the Discworld setting and the wonderfully unique characters the legendary writer conjured will hope that the remasters go ahead and that new titles could take us back to the world of a mystical land perched on the back of four elephants riding on the shell of a giant space turtle.

Image: Pexels.

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Three students share the grand prize for using artificial intelligence (AI) to translate Pompeii scrolls found by an eighteenth-century Italian farmer.

The $700,000 Vesuvius Challenge grand prize was awarded by an international team of papyrologists (ancient paper specialists) to students Luke Farritor from the U.S., Youssef Nader from Egypt, and Julian Schilliger from Switzerland.

The students would successfully complete the task of being the first team to recover four passages, with a total of one-hundred-and-forty characters of the archaic writings.

The work the students carried out sent waves across the world and did not escape the attention of arguably the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, who posted on his social media platform that he would back more translations of antique texts;

Musk Foundation will support this

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 7, 2024

The scroll of Herculaneum

The scroll centered around the AI challenge was named after the place where it was discovered, the small Roman town of Herculaneum, which was destroyed in the catastrophe of the Vesuvius eruption.

The texts stayed trapped in carbon for 2,000 years under the mud, ash, and slag that amazingly completely covered the villa of Julius Caesar’s father-in-law.

Many attempts were made to open them, but most destroyed the fragile contents, with a monk taking the time to painstakingly unwrap some of them, revealing ancient Greek text.

Six hundred would remain undisturbed, according to the grand prize’s website, and would lead to the young students getting their chance to unlock this historic time-trapped text.

They would follow in the footsteps of Dr. Brent Seales and his research team from the University of Kentucky, who used X-ray tomography and computer vision to read the scrolls without cracking the contents open. Their work paved the path to the historic work conducted by the students.

Youssef Nadar would post on his personal site “I am eternally grateful to be a part of such an incredible community, and having the chance to contribute to something so amazing.”

He continued, “This work was built on the shoulders of giants, first and foremost Prof. Seales and his team (I pretty much had Stephen’s Thesis open at all times), many amazing papers by FAIR and DeepMind, and so many open contributions from the community.”

Nebraska’s own Luke Farritor would be the first human to lay eyes on the contents and the winner of the first text prize in 2023. You can view his initial submission via Google Drive.

The technology and historical world will be keeping a close eye on the work of the young students and where, in time, their translation journey will take them.

Image Credit: Photo by Brent Keane; Pexels.

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1X Technologies has confirmed a breakthrough in teaching skills to its human-like (android) robots.

The company announced that its robot named EVE can now take more actions thanks to special neural networks, which allow the bots to learn by watching videos of people doing activities. From this, EVE learns to copy the activities on its own, without needing complex programming.

The Norway-based humanoid robotics firm, backed by OpenAI, designs androids to “work alongside people, to meet the world’s labor demands” but it assures of their safety credentials by testing every android in real-world scenarios before they’re deployed.

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Xbox has announced the games available in the upcoming Free Play Days, which is on right now — until 11.59 pm PDT on Sunday, 11 February.

Xbox Free Play Days are recurring events where subscribers of Xbox GamePass Ultimate and Xbox GamePass Core gain access to full game releases for free for a limited time. If they then choose to purchase the games they played in the Free Play Days event, progress and achievements will carry over.

One of the best parts of Free Play Days is that the games in the event are often steeply discounted, so if you try out the game for free and enjoy it, you can score a huge saving by buying the game while the discount lasts.

What games are in Free Play Days this weekend?

There are two games currently available to play through Free Play Days:

• Two Point Campus by SEGA – currently discounted by 65%
• NBA 2K24 by 2K Games – currently discounted by 70%

Two Point Campus is a fun take on the management sim genre where players build a thriving school. As well as a sandbox mode where players can truly design the university of their dreams, there is a campaign with 12 levels to challenge yourself with. Several DLC packs are also discounted at the moment, including a Space Camp pack.

NBA 2K24 is a basketball game where players engage in games as a single player or the whole squad. It includes many famous athletes to engage with and a career mode where gamers follow a basketball player throughout their careers.

But wait, there’s more!

As well as Free Play Days, this weekend also has a free weekend for Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3. Players are invited to test limited versions of the game’s iconic multiplayer mode as well as the newly introduced Zombies mode. Multiple maps are available to try out.

The free weekend for Call of Duty and Free Play Days events for Two Point Campus and NBA 2K4 means Xbox GamePass subscribers will have a great weekend ahead at no cost and the chance to grab some excellent games for a bargain. Don’t wait, you only have until February 12 to enjoy!

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Disney has introduced “Disney’s Magic Words,” an AI tool aimed at revolutionizing advertising on its streaming platforms, Disney+ and Hulu, according to a recent Reuters report. This new technology employs AI and machine learning to analyze scenes within Disney’s extensive content library, enabling advertisers to match their ads with the mood and context of specific scenes.

By identifying and tagging scenes with metadata that includes information on content, brands, imagery, and mood, “Disney’s Magic Words” allows for a more precise form of contextual advertising. This approach moves beyond traditional demographic targeting, offering advertisers the opportunity to personalize their messaging based on the emotional and thematic resonance of the content viewers are watching.

Geoffrey Calabrese, Chief Investment Officer at Omnicom Media Group, one of the six global advertising firms participating in the early beta test of the product, praised the tool for its potential to connect advertisers with the emotions of consumers on a more granular level. Other beta partners include Dentsu, GroupM, Horizon Media, IPG Mediabrands, and Publicis Media.

The technology was showcased last month at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where Rita Ferro, Disney’s global head of ad sales, emphasized its ability to enhance the impact of advertisements by aligning them with viewer experiences.

The initiative comes as advertisers increasingly shift their focus from traditional TV to streaming services, in line with changing viewer habits. Despite a nearly 3% decline in advertising revenue to $3.35 billion in the fiscal first quarter of 2024, Disney remains optimistic about the future of streaming advertisements. CEO Bob Iger reported that the ad-supported version of Disney+ attracted over 1,000 advertisers in the first quarter, a significant increase since its launch.

Joe Earley, President of Disney’s direct-to-consumer business, highlighted the immediate success of Disney+ in utilizing advanced ad technology, a capability that has been refined over years, particularly with Hulu’s ad-supported service in 2008. According to Earley, Disney+ was able to leverage this technology effectively from the start.

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And this is why Baldur’s Gate 3 was last year’s Game of the Year. A consistent striving to give the people what they need. Yes, BG3 fans,  romantic smooching is on the cards for our pointy-eared friends as next week’s Patch 6 goes all Valentine’s Day and brings improvements to First Base in Faerûn.

A tweet (or post, or whatever it is now) from the official Baldur’s Gate 3 account says, “Love is in the air in Faerûn, and we’ve made improvements to locking lips with your romantic partner!

Releasing next week, Patch 6 includes improved smooches, new camp idle animations, new Legendary Actions in Honour Mode, and plenty of bug fixes”.

It comes along with a lovely kissing gif that will warm your hearts, probably right up until you get banned from Xbox Live for recording the action and uploading it you smutty adventurers you.

Love is in the air in Faerûn, and we've made improvements to locking lips with your romantic partner!

Releasing next week, Patch 6 includes improved smooches, new camp idle animations, new Legendary Actions in Honour Mode, and plenty of bug fixes pic.twitter.com/z0tgqaMaQF

— Baldur's Gate 3 (@baldursgate3) February 9, 2024

It also follows up with a further post saying, “It’s a hefty one, so we’ll be sharing the full patch notes on the official website – make sure to keep an eye out!” suggesting we will be seeing more improvements than just tongue animations.”

We don’t know at this stage what day the patch will be released on and at this stage, a lot of the bugs are minor ones as the game is so well polished now. We are keen to see the new animations and actions the patch will bring as Larian continues to strive to complete the perfect RPG. And if nothing else it might make the romantic speedruns a bit more steamy.

It’s unlikely Baldur’s Gate 3 will be the only game spreading a bit of extra love around the world as Cupid sets his sights on gamers everywhere.

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The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, is seeking a $7 trillion investment to overhaul the world’s semiconductor industry, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Semiconductor chips are a hugely limiting factor in the world of artificial intelligence (AI) development due to the extremely high computing power needed to train AI models. With this investment, Altman is looking to negate a factor that significantly limits OpenAI’s growth potential.

Despite huge investment and strategic focus from the US government, the semiconductor chip industry is complex. Due to its strategic value and the importance of chips to AI development, it is a highly regulated industry and the US has tight controls on the export of chips. Altman has met with Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to discuss his ambitious plan.

“OpenAI has had productive discussions about increasing global infrastructure and supply chains for chips, energy, and data centers—which are crucial for AI and other industries that rely on them,” said a spokesperson for OpenAI to the WSJ. “We will continue to keep the U.S. government informed given the importance to national priorities, and look forward to sharing more details at a later date.”

However, fundraising the $5 – 7 trillion dollars required will be no easy feat. As the WSJ reports, the size of the global semiconductor chip market was $527 billion last year and isn’t expected to reach $1 trillion until 2030. The investment sought dwarfs even the market for chip manufacturing equipment, which was approximately $100 billion last year.

Sam Altman is looking for an amount greater than most country’s GDP

Let’s just stop for a moment and put this figure in context because $7 trillion is an extravagantly large amount of money. The GDP of the United Kingdom is $3.1 trillion, less than half of what Alman is seeking. The combined value of Microsoft and Apple, the USA’s highest-valued businesses, is just over $6 trillion.

The tech entrepreneur has met with representatives from the government of the United Arab Emirates and businesspeople from Taiwan to try and advance his plans. Despite Middle Eastern interest, Altman wants to focus his chip plants in the US, in part due to the huge investment coming from the Biden administration into the chip industry.

OpenAI is partnered with Microsoft and has their full support. Altman has discussed his plans with Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, and Kevin Scott, its CTO, and is proceeding with their buy-in.

Nothing has yet been confirmed regarding this enormous plan, but Altman continues to meet with powerful people to push it forward.

Featured image credit: Midjourney

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