Author: Shivendra Singh

Ubisoft shooter XDefiant is shutting down and sending refunds to players

Promotional art for XDefiant.
Image: Ubisoft

Despite only officially launching the game in spring of this year, Ubisoft has already announced that it’s ending development and sunsetting its free-to-play team-based shooter XDefiant. Like Hyper Scape before it, XDefiant had high expectations, with Ubisoft touting more than 1 million players in its closed beta last year. Now, it will disappear quickly, as it’s no longer accepting new players as of today and is scheduled to shut off the servers entirely next June.

Despite a delayed launch, Ubisoft said that XDefiant had reached more than 10 million players in its first two weeks and “outperformed expectations thanks to acquisition and strong average revenue per session day.” However, it couldn’t maintain that momentum, and by this fall, rumors of trouble surfaced, with Insider Gaming reporting that concurrent player numbers across all platforms had fallen below 20,000.

Ubisoft states, “The game will remain available to all players who joined XDefiant before …read more

Walmart bought Vizio

An image showing a Vizio TV in a living room
Image: Vizio

After announcing plans to acquire Vizio in February, Walmart officially owns the company after the $2.3 billion transaction closed on Tuesday. The retail giant says the acquisition will help bolster its advertising business, as Platform Plus — the TV-maker’s advertising and data division — “accounts for all the company’s [Vizio’s] gross profit.”

All that data will be a boon for Walmart’s growing advertising business, which has already started leveraging shopper information to target ads on Disney Plus and Hulu. The move will likely open up more opportunities for Walmart to sell more ads on Vizio TVs in stores, something it talked about expanding earlier this year, and maybe even stick ads on the Vizio TVs in people’s living rooms.

The deal has raised concerns among privacy advocates, as Vizio has gotten in trouble over advertising and data tracking in the past. In 2017, it paid a $2.2 million fine to settle a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit that accused it of tracking viewers without their consent.

An acquisition by Walmart could help Vizio compete with other budget-friendly TV brands that rely on advertising as a significant source of revenue. Roku, which started selling its own TVs …read more

MSI’s new Claw gaming handhelds have Lunar Lake processors and nondescript ‘AI’ powers

MSI has two new versions of the MSI Claw after the original landed with a thud earlier this year. The company’s $900 MSI Claw 8 AI+ and $800 Claw 7 AI+ have Lunar Lake Intel processing, better battery life and quality-of-life improvements like redesigned sticks, bumpers and triggers.

The previous model launched “a touch late and a bit too pricey,” according to Engadget’s Sam Rutherford in our review. He said its performance was underwhelming compared to cheaper rivals, its software was too clunky, and it was plagued by an overabundance of optimization updates (presumably because MSI scrambled to fix its long list of problems). We haven’t handled the new models, but their switch to Intel’s latest Core Ultra 7 processor should lead to better performance and lower power consumption — two of the biggest marks against the A1M.

The Claw 8 AI+ has an 8-inch (1,920 x 1,200) display, and the Claw 7 AI+ has a 7-inch (1,920 x 1,080) one. Both devices support a 120Hz refresh rate. However, they’re LCD panels; you still won’t find an OLED option here, like in <a class="colorbox" data-i13n="cpos:7;pos:1" …read more

Meta wants to use nuclear power for its data centers

Meta wants to use nuclear power for its data centers

Meta has confirmed its plans to use nuclear power to fuel US data centers. The company announced that it’s accepting proposals from nuclear energy developers to work on the project, with the goal of adding between one and four gigawatts of nuclear energy capacity “starting in the early 2030s.”

The company’s request for proposals states that Meta is seeking partners that have experience with “either Small Modular Reactors (SMR) or larger nuclear reactors.” Axios reports that the company is “geographically agnostic” about the location of potential nuclear sites. The company previously had plans to build a nuclear-powered data center, The Financial Times reported earlier this year, but the plans were scuttled after the discovery of a rare species of bees near the site.

“As new innovations bring impactful technological advancements across sectors and support economic growth, we believe that nuclear energy can help provide firm, baseload power to support the growth needs of the electric grids that power both our data centers (the physical infrastructure on which Meta’s platforms operate) as well as the communities around them,” the company wrote in a statement.

Meta isn’t the only …read more

Former Celsius CEO pleads guilty to two fraud charges

Former Celsius CEO pleads guilty to two fraud charges

Former cryptocurrency leader Alex Mashinsky has pleaded guilty to two fraud charges. The founder and CEO of Celsius Network was indicted on seven criminal counts in 2023, including charges of fraud, conspiracy and market manipulation. He entered a not guilty plea at the time, but in a hearing today, Mashinsky pled guilty to two of those original counts. The first is commodities fraud and the second is a fraudulent scheme to manipulate the price of his company’s in-house crypto token CEL. Reuters reported that as part of a plea deal, Mashinsky has agreed not to appeal any sentence of 30 years or less.

Mashinsky’s case is one of several fraud cases being pursued against leaders of cryptocurrency operations. The most well-publicized charges are those brought against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who was found guilty on seven counts of fraud in 2023.

National agencies began a push into fraud charges for cryptocurrency schemes in 2022, when several notable companies filed for bankruptcy as token prices plummeted in response to rising interest rates and high inflation. That year, the Federal Trade Commission said that victims of crypto schemes had lost more than $1 billion …read more

Walmart completes its $2.3 billion purchase of Vizio

Walmart completes its $2.3 billion purchase of Vizio

Vizio is now a member of the Walmart corporate empire. The retail company announced the completion of its $2.3 billion acquisition of the TV manufacturer on Tuesday.

Walmart didn’t just buy a TV brand. It now owns a new advertising platform. Vizio’s SmartCast OS collects huge amounts of data from its 19 million active accounts, and the company makes the majority of its money from the platform. Walmart’s new partnership with Vizio and its other smart TV brand Onn is sure to stir up the lucrative competition for advertising revenue, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Walmart officially announced its plans to buy Vizio in February following early reports about its deal. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/home-theater/walmart-completes-its-23-billion-purchase-of-vizio-222449239.html?src=rss …read more

Two data brokers banned from selling ‘sensitive’ location data by the FTC

Illustration of location placket dropped on a map.
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is banning data brokers Gravy Analytics and Mobilewalla from collecting, using, and selling “sensitive” location data of Americans, the agency announced on Tuesday. The FTC targeted Gravy Analytics, its subsidiary Venntel, and Mobilewalla for allegedly violating the FTC Act by collecting and selling information that could be used to track people to healthcare facilities, military bases, religious sites, labor union gatherings, and other sensitive locations.

The FTC says (PDF) Mobilewalla “relied primarily on consumer information that Mobilewalla collected from real-time bidding exchanges” by bidding to show people personalized ads on their mobile devices and then retaining tracking info identifying them.

It also bought info from other sources and used additional data to build out the profiles attached to each advertising ID. Combining that data, according to the complaint, allowed Mobilewalla to create audience segments targeting pregnant women, as well as provide analysis of people who attended protests over the death of George Floyd.

Meanwhile, Venntel’s scheme is explained (PDF) as …read more

Record efficiency: Tandem solar cells made from perovskite and organic material

Record efficiency: Tandem solar cells made from perovskite and organic material

Trying to improve the efficiency of solar cells to become independent from fossil energy sources is a major goal of solar cell research. Physicists now combine perovskite with organic absorbers to form a record-level tandem solar cell. …read more

Alaska’s changing environment

Alaska’s changing environment

The University of Alaska Fairbanks released a new report this week highlighting environmental changes and extremes that impact Alaskans and their livelihoods. ‘Alaska’s Changing Environment’ provides people with timely, reliable and understandable information on topics ranging from temperature and precipitation changes to salmon and polar bears. …read more

Countdown to an ice-free Arctic: New research warns of accelerated timelines

Countdown to an ice-free Arctic: New research warns of accelerated timelines

Scientists demonstrate how a series of extreme weather events could lead to the Arctic’s first ice-free day within just a few years. …read more