Month: May 2016

This leaked retailer art matches with art briefly seen on Xbox Live. (credit: Reddit)

It appears the anticipated sequel to Battlefield 4 will not be Battlefield 5. Instead, EA has apparently thrown traditional counting out the window by preparing Battlefield 1, a new shooter that seems to be set in an alternate history version of World War I.

None of this is official yet; EA is set to actually reveal the next Battlefield title as part of a day-long livestream at 4pm Eastern time today. But the name has been leaked ahead of time by photos from a retail source. The promotional art in those photos matches art that showed up briefly on Xbox Live earlier today and on the livestream itself, depicting a figure with a WWI-era pistol and trench club. There have been previous rumors about the game's setting, too. Back in February, a game called Battlefield 5 was briefly listed as a "WW1 tactical shooter" by a Swiss retailer with an October 26 release date.

Remember that the first Battlefield game (the one people sometimes call "Battlefield One," and which came before Battlefield 2) was actually titled Battlefield 1942.  The name Battlefield 1 remains technically available, we suppose. The series has already jumped around to "1943" and "2143" over the years if you want to get really confusing with the numbering.

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai. (credit: FCC)

Charter Communications is close to winning approval of its acquisition of Time Warner Cable (TWC), but Federal Communications Commission member Ajit Pai is voting against the deal.

Pai, a Republican, isn't opposed to the cable merger itself, which will make Charter the nation's second largest broadband provider after Comcast. Instead, Pai objects to the conditions that FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has proposed imposing on the deal. Charter should be able to buy TWC without facing onerous requirements, Pai says.

"The FCC's merger review process is badly broken," a Pai spokesperson said, according to an article in The Hill. "Chairman Wheeler's order isn't about competition, competition, competition; it's about regulation, regulation, regulation. It's about imposing conditions that have nothing to do with the merits of this transaction. It's about the government micromanaging the Internet economy."

FAA administrator Michael Huerta told attendees at this week's drone conference that the FAA is forming an advisory committee led by Intel CEO Brian Krzanich to help prioritize drone rulemaking work. (credit: Sean Gallagher)

NEW ORLEANS—Former Cisco CEO John Chambers delivered a keynote on Tuesday at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) XPONENTIAL conference, slamming the Obama administration for moving too slowly on adjusting regulations governing commercial and private drones.

Chambers said that Obama doesn't "get" drones and that the US is potentially being left behind in a market that he claimed could drive trillions of dollars in economic impact. His remarks drew loud applause from the audience of attendees—many of whom represented companies eager to cash in on drones as either vendors or customers.

Federal Aviation Administration administrator Michael Huerta responded on Wednesday with a talk about the FAA's progress on drone regulations before the same audience that Huerta had previously called "a lion's den" in his last appearance at AUVSI's flagship conference four years ago. But, he joked, "We're getting to know each other so well that UAS conventions are getting to be like family reunions."