Source: Hacker News
Source: Ars Technica
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 will send ripples through the world of high finance, both within and outside the gaming sector.
But even players who have no interest in the business side of the game industry should be paying attention to the news. Analysts who spoke to Ars Technica said that the privately owned version of Electronic Arts will likely be very different from the old public company, in ways that could directly affect the kinds of games the mega-publisher produces.
One of the biggest differences between a publicly owned EA and a privately owned version is that the latter will be saddled with roughly $20 billion of fresh debt provided by JP MorganChase, which is being used to help finance the leveraged buyout. Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter estimates the firm will be on the hook for roughly $1 billion a year in service payments on that debt after the deal closes.
Source: Ars Technica
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 for the full rollout to take a position. In a blog post, F-Droid staff say that Google's plan to force devs outside Google Play to register with the company threatens to kill alternative app stores like F-Droid.
F-Droid has been around for about 15 years and is the largest source of free and open source software (FOSS) for Android. Because the apps in F-Droid are not installed via the Play Store, you have to sideload each APK manually, and Google is targeting that process in the name of security.
Several weeks ago, Google announced plans to force all Android app developers to register their apps and identity with Google. Apps that have not been validated by the Big G will not be installable on any certified Android devices in the future. Since virtually every Android device outside of China runs Google services, that means Google is in control of the software we get to install on Android.
Source: The Register
Comment Probably the single most common argument against switching to Linux is the absolute non-negotiable requirement of many organizations to have Microsoft Exchange. Here's a fascinating glimpse of the view from the other side.…
Source: Published articles
Source: OSNews
Apple’s first desktop operating system was Tahoe. Like any first version, it had a lot of issues. Users and critics flooded the web with negative reviews. While mostly stable under the hood, the outer shell — the visual user interface — was jarringly bad. Without much experience in desktop UX, Apple’s first OS looked like a Fisher-Price toy: heavily rounded corners, mismatched colors, inconsistent details and very low information density. Obviously, the tool was designed mostly for kids or perhaps light users or elderly people.
Credit where credit is due: Apple had listened to their users and the next version – macOS Sequoia — shipped with lots of fixes. Border radius was heavily reduced, transparent glass-like panels replaced by less transparent ones, buttons made more serious and less toyish. Most system icons made more serious, too, with focus on more detail. Overall, it seemed like the 2nd version was a giant leap from infancy to teenage years.
↫ Rakhim Davletkali
A top quality operating systems shitpost.
Source: Ars Technica
In a major collaboration that would have been hard to imagine just a few years ago, Nvidia announced today that it was buying a total of $5 billion in Intel stock, giving Intel's competitor ownership of roughly 4 percent of the company. In addition to the investment, the two companies said that they would be co-developing "multiple generations of custom data center and PC products."
"The companies will focus on seamlessly connecting NVIDIA and Intel architectures using NVIDIA NVLink," reads Nvidia's press release, "integrating the strengths of NVIDIA’s AI and accelerated computing with Intel’s leading CPU technologies and x86 ecosystem to deliver cutting-edge solutions for customers."
Rather than combining the two companies' technologies, the data center chips will apparently be custom x86 chips that Intel builds to Nvidia's specifications. Nvidia will "integrate [the CPUs] into its AI infrastructure platforms and offer [them] to the market."
Source: The Register
Google confirmed that miscreants created a fraudulent account in its Law Enforcement Request System (LERS) portal, which police and other government agencies use to ask for data about Google users.…
Source: Hacker News
