John Routledge - Technoshia

31 Jan

Cities: Skylines II toxicity and more layoffs | This week’s gaming news

John RoutledgeLatest News

It's an awkward time to be a PC player. The platform has more games covering more genres than ever, and even standard PC hardware can deliver pristine, photorealistic graphics. At the same time, some of the biggest titles in recent memory have been absolute messes on PC at launch, like Cyberpunk 2077, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Redfall, the Dead Space…

31 Jan

Yamaha’s new audio mixer for gamers has a simpler interface and cheaper price

John RoutledgeLatest News

Yamaha has a new audio mixer for gamers and streamers. Nearly three years after the launch of the company’s first gaming-specific soundboard, the company’s new ZG02 adds a dedicated USB-C port for gaming consoles, a more streamlined profile and a lower price ($200 compared to the ZG01’s $300).Yamaha wants to establish its ZG line as more straightforward and accessible than…

31 Jan

The Morning After: This is Doom running on E. coli bacteria

John RoutledgeLatest News

MIT biotech researcher Lauren “Ren” Ramlan has run the iconic computer game Doom using gut bacteria. It’s not doing the running of the game, per se, but it is running (barely) on a display inside a cell wall made entirely of E. coli bacteria.The researcher dosed the bacteria with fluorescent proteins to ensure they lit up like digital pixels, reaching…

31 Jan

Universal Music threatens to pull songs from TikTok over payment terms

John RoutledgeLatest News

Universal Music Group (UMG) is threatening to pull all of its music from TikTok today following a breakdown in negotiations over royalties, the company wrote in an open letter. That would mean TikTok creators would lose access to songs from stars including Taylor Swift, Billy Eilish, The Weeknd, Drake and others. With UMG's deal with TikTok set to expire, the sides…

31 Jan

Microsoft’s gaming revenue was up 49 percent in Q2, mostly thanks to the Activision deal

John RoutledgeLatest News

Microsoft posted another blowout earnings report for Q2 of the 2024 fiscal year, with revenues of $62 billion (up 18 percent from last year) and profits of $21.9 billion (a 33 percent increase). But really, the most interesting thing about this quarter is that we finally get to see how the $68.7 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition affects the $3 trillion…

31 Jan

Samsung’s annual profits continued to decline in 2023

John RoutledgeLatest News

Samsung has failed to recover from the sharp decline in profit it experienced in 2022. In its latest earnings report, the Korean company has reported KRW 258.94 trillion ($194 billion) in annual revenue and KRW 6.57 trillion ($4.9 billion) in operating profit for the fiscal year of 2023. Those are markedly smaller numbers than the previous fiscal year's, especially the…

31 Jan

Elon Musk’s $56 billion Tesla pay package has been tossed out by the court

John RoutledgeLatest News

In 2018, Tesla awarded Elon Musk a $56 billion pay package that helped propel him to the top of world's richest lists. Now, a judge in Delaware has rendered the deal between the company and the CEO to be invalid and called the compensation an "unfathomable sum" that's unfair to shareholders. As initially seen and reported by Chancery Daily on…

30 Jan

How to watch the CEOs of Meta, TikTok, Discord, Snap and X testify about child safety

John RoutledgeLatest News

The CEOs of five social media companies are headed to Washington to testify in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about child safety. The hearing will feature Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, TikTok CEO Shou Chew, Discord CEO Jason Citron and X CEO Linda Yaccarino.The group will face off with lawmakers over their record on child exploitation and…

30 Jan

Microsoft’s gaming revenue is up 49 percent in Q2, mostly thanks to the Activision deal

John RoutledgeLatest News

Microsoft posted another blowout earnings report for Q2 of the 2024 fiscal year, with revenues of $62 billion (up 18 percent from last year) and profits of $21.9 billion (a 33 increase). But really, the most interesting thing about this quarter is that we finally get to see how the $68.7 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition affects the $3 trillion company.…

30 Jan

PayPal is laying off 2,500 employees

John RoutledgeLatest News

PayPal is laying off nine percent of its workforce, the company’s CEO Alex Chriss told staff in a letter on Tuesday that PayPal made public hours later. The decision will impact about 2,500 employees, who will find out their fate between today and the end of the week, Bloomberg reported earlier. PayPal's layoffs come almost exactly a year after the…