Apple is Trying To Drag Valve Into its Ongoing Legal Battle with Epic Games, and Valve Wants Nothing To Do With It

A new court filing has revealed that, as part of the ongoing legal battle between Apple and Epic Games, Apple subpoenaed Valve Software in November 2020, demanding it provide huge amounts of commercial data about Steam sales and operations going over multiple years. From a report: Apple subpoenaed Valve under the basic argument that certain Steam information would be crucial to…

New Version of Microsoft Office Won’t Require You To Pay For a Subscription

In a company blog post Thursday, Microsoft released more details about the new, flat-price version of its Office productivity software coming later this year. The company emphasized that while its main focus remains in its subscription offering, Microsoft 365, it will release the one-time purchase Office 2021 for those who aren’t ready to move to the cloud. From a report: Office…

The Rich Got Richer: GameStop’s Trading Frenzy Benefited Wall Street’s Elite

While GameStop’s surge has been heralded as a victory for underdogs, “Growing evidence casts doubt on the idea that the episode mostly benefited small-time investors…” reports the Washington Post. (Alternate URLs here and here “And, in at least some cases, novice investors lost their shirts.” Giant mutual funds that own the largest stakes in GameStop saw the biggest gains in value….

Miami City Council Agrees to At Least Study Mayor’s Bitcoin Proposal

Miami’s mayor Francis Suarez is trying to attract tech talent to his city. (The New York Times recently noted he’s joined by “a few venture capital influencers trying to tweet the city’s startup world into existence.”) So he’s still pushing a proposal to use bitcoin in a few city operations as “part of a larger play if you will to position…

Government Agencies Begin Investigating Robinhood, Reddit Over GameStop Stock

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: GameStop’s stock price shot through the roof in late January thanks to traders on Reddit. Now at least two government agencies are reportedly investigating why it happened as well as what roles Reddit and trading app Robinhood played in the stock market craziness. The Department of Justice’s fraud section and the San Francisco…

CD Projekt Red Hackers Reportedly Sold the ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ Source Code

The hackers behind this week’s ransomware attack on Cyberpunk 2077 studio CD Projekt Red appear to have found a buyer for the stolen data. Engadget reports: They ran an auction on a hacking forum but, as The Verge notes, they shut it down after reportedly accepting an offer from elsewhere. The starting price for the auction was said to be $1…

Reddit User Claiming To Be Tesla Insider Appeared To Reveal Bitcoin Buy a Month Ago

A Reddit user claiming to be a Tesla insider appeared to announce the carmaker’s purchase of bitcoin a month ago, according to a January post on the platform that said the electric carmaker had bought $800 million worth of Bitcoin. Reuters reports: The post here received little attention when it appeared, with the date on it reading Jan. 2, but it…

The iPhone 12 Mini Was Apple’s 2020 Sales Flop

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Bad news for lovers of smaller phones: the iPhone 12 mini has sold poorly compared to other phones in the iPhone 12 lineup — poorly enough that analysts wonder whether Apple will remain committed to the smaller phone design moving forward. A data firm called Counterpoint Research found that the iPhone 12…

To the Moon? Dogecoin Leaps 46% in 24 Hours After Tweets From Elon Musk, Snoop Dogg

Friday the 71-year-old former lead singer of the band Kiss tweeted “I bought Dogecoin…six figures,” to his 922,000 followers, along with other supportive tweets. Saturday rap artist Snoop Dogg tweeted an image of “Snoop Doge” to his 19.2 million followers. Later Elon Musk tweeted a picture from the Lion King with Musk’s head appearing on a monkey holding up a monkey…

Hey, kids! Meet the new Hot Wheels Mars rover!

Mattel, maker of Hot Wheels, has just released a new Hot Wheels Mars Perseverance Rover to celebrate the landing of the NASA Perseverance rover on Mars on February 18. Source: https://earthsky.org/human-world/hot-wheels-mars-perseverance-rover-mattel…