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Enlarge / The original placeholder box art released by Konami (left) and the newly released box art (right) with a final rating and no "Kojima" branding.

Thursday night's The Game Awards ceremony included two awards given to Konami for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, and one of those was accepted by voice actor Kiefer Sutherland on series creator Hideo Kojima's behalf. Viewers might have assumed Kojima didn't attend the show because of international travel to Los Angeles, or because of sour grapes over things like having his name removed from the game's box, but host Geoff Keighley went to unusual lengths to explain exactly why Kojima wasn't in the house—and to shame Konami in the process.

"Mr. Kojima had every intention of being here with us tonight, but unfortunately he was informed by a lawyer representing Konami, just recently, that he would not be allowed to travel to tonight's awards ceremony to accept any awards," Keighley told the award ceremony's crowd. They responded with boos as Keighley continued: "He's still under an employment contract, and it's disappointing. It's inconceivable to me that an artist like Hideo would not be allowed to come here and celebrate with his peers, his fellow teammates, for such an incredible game as MGS 5. That's the situation we're in."

At that point, Keighley said that Kojima was watching the awards from his home in Tokyo and, as a result, the ceremony had "put together a surprise" for the game maker—a performance of a song from MGS V's soundtrack by its original singer, Stephanie Jooston. "We wanted you to know, Hideo, that we're thinking of you. We miss you, and we hope to see you at the Game Awards 2016," Keighley added.

Psychonauts 2! Yes! (credit: Double Fine)

Thursday evening's broadcast of The Game Awards included celebrities, trophies (real ones—not virtual ones on PlayStation), and music performances, but like in previous years, its most interesting content came in the form of world-premiere trailers for games expected to launch the following year. Perhaps the biggest brand-new announcement came from Double Fine, whose founder Tim Schafer took the stage to announce a crowdfunding campaign for Psychonauts 2.

The reveal teaser showed an admiral speaking vaguely about assaulting an island, then was warned that it was protected by "a comatose young girl who believes she’s herding a flock of sheep," at which point the admiral asked for the Psychonauts to do the job. After the trailer was shown, Schafer took the stage and told the crowd that it would immediately launch a crowdfunding campaign at fig.co, and that campaign is asking fans for $3.3 million to get a sequel off the ground for an adventure series that has enjoyed much more critical acclaim than it ever did commercial success.

"I wanna say, 'fuck yeah, we can do this!'" Schafer said in a follow-up crowdfunding request video, which confirmed that the $3.3 million ask will only make up a third of the game's total budget; the other parts will be paid for by outside investors and by Double Fine itself. (Schafer has yet to confirm if Markus "Notch" Persson will be one of those investors.) Fans of the company's last making-of documentary series will be happy to know that filming crew 2 Player Productions are on board to chronicle Psychonauts 2's creation, as well.

Windows Server 2016, not likely to arrive until the second half of next year, is going to shake up the way Microsoft licenses its server operating system, moving away from per socket licensing to per core. The change was first spotted by Wes Miller who is, for his sins, an expert on Microsoft licensing policies.

Windows Server 2012 introduced a great rationalization in the way Microsoft licensed its server operating system. The two main editions, Standard and Datacenter, had identical features, and differed only in terms of the number of virtual operating system instances they supported. Standard supported two VMs (in addition to the host OS); Datacenter was unlimited. Beyond that, they were identical. The licenses for both editions were sold in two socket units; one license was needed for each pair of sockets a system contained.

Windows Server 2016 makes that simple system less simple. First, it reinstates the functional differences between Standard and Datacenter editions. Datacenter will include additional storage replication capabilities, a new network stack with richer virtualization options, and shielded virtual machines that protect the content of a virtual machine from the administrator of the host operating system. These features won't be found in the Standard edition.

The married couple police say carried out Wednesday's shooting rampage that left 14 people dead in San Bernardino, California, took pains to erase their digital footprints in the hours leading up to the deadly attack, according to a published report.

The husband-and-wife team, identified as Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, stormed a conference room inside the Inland Regional Center as a holiday party took place Wednesday and sprayed the area with bullets, authorities said. The couple, who wore military-style gear and were armed with high-powered rifles, pipe bombs, and 1,500 rounds of ammunition, were killed by police following a high-speed chase following a multi-hour manhunt. According to a report published Thursday by The Washington Times, they took actions to hide their electronic trail. The report stated:

Officials involved in the investigation say the couple appeared to have gone to great lengths to conceal their plans—a cell phone recovered from Ms. Malik’s body was newly purchased and had had been used only recently. Two other cell phones that were recovered had been smashed with a hammer and were expected to be sent to the FBI’s forensic lab in Washington for examination.

Authorities also noted that a hard drive and motherboard are missing from a computer found at the Redlands, California home the couple rented.

Not all of their digital footprints were wiped clean, according to other reports. This Daily Caller post said Farook's online dating profile claimed he enjoyed reading religious books and engaging in shooting practice. The New York Times, meanwhile, said that an online baby registry in Malik's name showed the couple was expecting daughter to be born in May and listed diapers, baby wash, a car seat, and safety swabs.

Martin Shkreli being photographed for his role as CIO of MSMB Capital Management. (credit: Getty Images)

In a Healthcare summit hosted by Forbes on Thursday, Martin Shkreli, the founder and CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, admitted he made a mistake by raising the price of a decades-old drug by more than 5,000 percent. But it’s not the mistake you might expect.

In response to an audience member who asked him if he would have done anything differently in regard to raising the price of the drug, Daraprim, Shkreli replied, “I probably would have raised the price higher.”

That price hike, which brought a pill of Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 earlier this year, has drawn fiery scorn from the public, media, and lawmakers. Daraprim is a 62-year old drug used to treat toxoplasmosis, a disease caused by a parasitic infection. Toxoplasmosis often strikes people with compromised immune systems, such as AIDS patients.

(credit: Aaron Escobar/Wikimedia Commons)

Passing on the gym to snuggle on the couch and binge watch whole seasons of your favorite show this weekend may not bode well for your brain.

In a 25-year study that tracked more than 3,000 young adults into midlife, researchers found that those with the highest television watching and lowest physical activity scored worse on certain cognitive tests than their fit, less TV-addicted counterparts. In particular, couch potatoes had slightly lower brain processing speeds and worse executive function, but they scored just as well as other participants on verbal memory tests. The findings, reported in JAMA Psychiatry, may suggest that such bad TV and exercise habits early in life could set people up for faster cognitive decline in later life, the authors said.

However, the researchers can only speculate on cognitive decline for now, because they only tested cognitive skills at the end of the 25 years—not at the beginning. Therefore, it’s possible that participants with slightly lower cognitive function scores at the end of the study had those same low scores at the start and just enjoy spending lots of time lounging in front of glowing screens. Researchers can't tell from the data as is.

Greeting Arsians! Courtesy of our partners at TechBargains, the Dealmaster is back! If you missed out on Cyber Monday, it's apparently "Cyber Week" and the deals just keep on coming. The top item this week is a 5K Dell monitor for $1499.99, which is $700 off the MSRP.

Featured deals

• World's First! Dell UltraSharp U2715k 27" 5K 5120x2880 IPS Monitor for $1499.99 (use code ?TNT8QZ3MHG664 - list price $2199).
• Dell P2416d 2560x1440 24" IPS LED Monitor for $249.99 (use code 2NT0GV0HP0BL5G - list price $369).
• AmazonBasics 6-Foot Apple Certified Lightning Cable for $7.99 (list price $14.99).
• Black Friday Price - Nintendo Wii U Deluxe w/ Mario Kart 8 for $249.99 (list price $299.99).
• Cyber Monday Price - Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain for $34.99 (list price $59.99).
• LG 43" 1080p LED HDTV (43LF5400) + $100 Dell Gift Card for $349.99 (list price $499.99).
• Gift Idea - $50 Value at Brookstone for $25 (list price $50)
• Cyber Monday Deal - DropBox Pro Single User Annual Subscription + $25 Dell eGift Card for $79.99 (list price $99.99).

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