Microsoft has a new gaming CEO who wants to bring Xbox back from the brink.
The LHC will enter a four-year “intensive work period” to “transform the LHC into the [High-Luminosity] LHC,” according to The European Organization for Nuclear Research (aka CERN).
The upgraded accelerator will “increase by a factor of ten the number of particle collisions (called ‘luminosity’), vastly increasing the volume of physics data available for researchers.”
The very good Ball x Pit is coming to iOS and Android on March 12th.
Among other things, Marathon will have dedicated servers, a “Fog of War” that “limits the regions of a map that individual player clients have knowledge of,” and a rebuilt game security stack, Bungie says in a new blog post.
Cheaters will also be permabanned with “no second chances,” which is different from Arc Raiders’ three-strike policy.
[Bungie]
Skyworth will make the Panasonic-branded TVs, leading marketing in the US and Europe while Panasonic focuses on development. It’s the second storied Japanese TV company to partner with a Chinese manufacturer in as many months, further highlighting the decline of Japanese TV dominance over the past decade.
Two fun cameras try to combine the charm of disposable cameras with the convenience of digital. One succeeds.
The Information reports on OpenAI’s rocky $500 billion partnership with Oracle and SoftBank, which “has not staffed up and is not developing any of OpenAI’s data centers.”
OpenAI reportedly explored building its own data centers as the three companies disagreed over their roles, but the high costs have led the AI giant to strike individual deals with SoftBank and Oracle instead.
The parent company of Jeep and Dodge just took a $26.5 billion hit on its EV investment. But its problems run much deeper than that.
The Italian automaker cancelled the Lanzador, which was supposed to be its first crack at a pure battery-electric supercar, to focus instead on plug-in hybrids. Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winklemann told the Sunday Times that the “acceptance curve” for EVs among the company’s target demographic was “close to zero”. Yipes!
[The Sunday Times]
A new Evangelion anime series directed by Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX’s Kazuya Tsurumaki and written by NieR creator Yoko Taro is in the works. So far, no other details about the project have been announced.
[Crunchyroll News]
MIDI was introduced in 1983, and hit version 2.0 back in 2020, an update cadence we think more of the industry should aspire to.
porkbun:
The MIDI folk kept the same version number for 43 years. HDMI could never.
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The in-development feature reported by @nima_owji shows a toggle that allows users to disclose synthetically made or manipulated content. The move may be in response to India ordering social platforms to embrace provenance systems like C2PA, a standard that X abandoned after Elon Musk stepped in.
The Chinese smartphone company says it will reveal a humanoid robot at MWC this week, which I’m told will focus on domestic tasks. It’s a big change for the company, even with the Robot Phone also on the way, but makes more sense when you know it has an IPO in its future.
Specifically, head gestures like nodding or shaking to accept and decline calls, SammyGuru reports. The upcoming Galaxy Buds 4 and Buds 4 Pro will also reportedly let you operate your phone camera remotely by squeezing the earbud stems, and activate Find My Phone using the earbud charging case.
YouTuber Sahil Karoul claims to have bought a Galaxy S26 Ultra early at a market in Dubai, and is slowly revealing all: camera samples, benchmarks, and confirmation that the S Pen doesn’t include Bluetooth. Most interesting is this look at the new Privacy display in action ahead of the official reveal this Wednesday.
Artemis 2, slated to launch four astronauts around the Moon in just a few weeks, has been delayed due to a helium supply issue in the SLS rocket’s upper stage. The mission, originally scheduled for 2023, has now been delayed to April, at the earliest.
The team is constructing the Human Flatus Atlas, bringing modern wearable monitors to bear on digestive health, measuring the frequency and intensity of farts. The team even had to create an artificial butt that could pass gas on command while developing the prototype. According to the Wall Street Journal:
In the current study, the Human Flatus Atlas app asks participants to take a picture of everything they eat and drink. Researchers could analyze that data, seeking correlations between diet and the sensor’s main metric: the total volume of gas passed in a day.
Bloomberg and Deadline are both reporting that the DOJ has officially begun looking into whether the combination of Netflix and Warner would create a monopoly and hurt competition. Netflix, Warner Bros., and the DOJ have not publicly confirmed the investigation, but Deadline obtained a copy of the Civil Investigative Demand, which reads:
“This civil investigative demand is issued pursuant to the Antitrust Civil Process Act …in the course of an antitrust investigation to determine whether there is, has been, or may be a violation of the antitrust laws by conduct, activities, or proposed action of the following nature: the proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. by Netflix Inc, that may substantially lessen competition, or tend to create a monopoly in violation of Section 7 of the Clayton Act, or Section 2 of the Sherman Act.”
Uematsu has created music for countless Square Enix games, including classics like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI, and Final Fantasy VII. Now he’s going to be the subject of a biography by James Mielkem, Nobuo Uematsu: On the Record.
Over the last few years, Microsoft has been bringing its big exclusive franchises to rival platforms like PlayStation and Switch. Satya Nadella even said he wanted to “get rid of” console exclusives — that might not be a great move. But the new Xbox boss seems open to the idea that the console’s identity hinges on exclusives.
Windows MIDI Services is ready for primetime and brings support for MIDI 2.0 and improvements to MIDI 1.0 to Microsoft machines. This includes support for higher resolution expression, loopback, and bidirectional communication with MIDI 2.0 hardware. Now with the major OS providers onboard, maybe adoption of MIDI 2.0 will pick up steam.
[Windows Experience Blog]
After being handed a rare defeat by the Supreme Court, President Trump announced that he would replace his tariffs and trade deals with a global 10 percent tariff on imports. Less than 24 hours later, he’s already raising that to 15 percent. As we said, the fight is far from over.
