Month: April 2017

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Over the past year, the once underground phenomenon of betting on e-sports hit the mainstream. Valve—developer of the first-person shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, one of the biggest games in e-sports—found itself on the receiving end of angry parents, civil lawsuits, and government intervention that accused it of facilitating unregulated third-party gambling websites.

It didn't help that prominent CS:GO players and popular YouTubers Syndicate and TmarTn (who boast tens of millions of subscribers between them) were found to be actively creating videos that promoted the skin gambling website CSGO Lotto—a site the pair jointly owned. The problem hasn't been limited to CS:GO either, with Craig Douglas (aka NepentheZ on YouTube) pleading guilty to running an unlicensed FIFA betting website that the court found was "used by children."

When games like League of Legends attract viewerships as high as 14.7 million people—and when the prize pools for competitions now hit tens of millions of dollars—the rise of e-sports gambling was inevitable The question is: how do you deal with it? While Valve succumbed to public pressure and began issuing cease and desist orders to CS:GO websites (most of which are still online today), the reality of the situation is that gambling sites, government-regulated or otherwise, will continue to run—there's simply too much money on the table.

Remember LG's last flagship phone? Most people probably don't, since the G5 was more or less a disaster. The G5 was a modular phone with modules that weren't really compelling; the "metal" body had a thick plastic coating on the outside; and the device had tons of build quality issues, like seams that didn't line up, an uneven display backlight, and sharp edges. Even LG has admitted the G5 was a disappointment—the company lost nearly $400 million in Q3 2016, which it blamed on "weak sales of [the] G5."

In response, the LG G6 is all new and much improved. The modular system has been scrapped in exchange for a solid phone with no removable parts. That means the battery isn't removable anymore, but you do get IP68 dust and water resistance in exchange. There are no build quality issues to be had here, and the front has a slick design with slim bezels. LG has done an outstanding job fixing the things people didn't like about the G5, but is a "personal best" from LG good enough in the cutthroat smartphone market?

Enlarge / North Korean images of a Pukguksong-2 missile launch in February. Another test of the improved solid-fueled missile was conducted this morning.

Wednesday morning, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea successfully launched what the US Pacific Command has identified as a KN-15 medium-range ballistic missile—a solid-fuel rocket based on enhancements to the submarine-launched “Pukguksong” missile (“North Star,” designated by the US as the KN-11) the DPRK tested in 2015 and  last summer. This is the second launch of a KN-15 (called the Pukguksong-2 by North Korea) and it raises concerns that the North Korean regime may be working on a solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

The test comes the day before China's President Xi Jinping begins his visit with President Donald Trump at Trump's Mar-A-Lago resort in Florida. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson acknowledged the launch in a remarkably brief statement. "North Korea launched yet another intermediate range ballistic missile," Tillerson said. "The United States has spoken enough about North Korea. We have no further comment"

There are signs that North Korea will be doing more to get the world's attention during the Xi visit. Activity at a nuclear weapons test site observed by satellite imagery indicates that another nuclear weapons test is imminent.

SpaceX

Six years ago SpaceX had launched its Falcon 9 rocket just twice and fished pieces out of the ocean after each mission. Nevertheless, the company's founder, Elon Musk, decided it was time for a big public reveal of his plans—a fully reusable launch system to significantly lower the cost of access to space.

"Now, we could fail," he said, during a September 2011 event at the National Press Club, transcribed at the time by CollectSPACE. "I'm not saying we are certain of success here, but we are going to try to do it. We have a design that on paper, doing the calculations, doing the simulations, it does work. Now we need to make sure those simulations and reality agree because generally, when they don't, reality wins."

Enlarge (credit: Daniel Spiess)

Thursday Night Football has a new Internet home this year. Amazon reached an agreement with the National Football League for the rights to stream 10 Thursday Night Football games during the 2017 season. According to reports, Amazon paid $50 million for the rights, which is about five times more than the $10 million Twitter paid for the same rights to last season's Thursday games.

Amazon's deal also differs from Twitter's because only Amazon Prime members can stream these games. Last year, games shown on Twitter could be viewed by any logged-on Twitter user. This appears to be the first of many deals Amazon could reach to stream live sports to Prime members, something the company has alluded to since the end of last year. The rumor was that Amazon wasn't sure if live sports would come at an additional charge to Prime members or if they would stand alone in their own, separately priced package. The upcoming season's Thursday Night Football games are wrapped into a regular Prime membership, which costs $99 annually.

According to ESPN, Twitter couldn't compete with other high bidders for this season's games. Amazon eventually won over both Twitter and Facebook, both of which have been pouring money into live video efforts (particularly sports content) over the past year or so. Facebook recently signed a deal with Major League Soccer and Univision to livestream at least 22 regular season matches in 2017 and produce "Matchday Live" shows with complementary comments and analysis.