Month: August 2017

(credit: Rockstar Games)

When will Grand Theft Auto Online stop operating? The series' developers at Rockstar and its corporate parents at Take Two have hinted at an eventual cancellation, but we've finally gotten official word that the wildly popular online game's updates were going to be canceled... until plans changed.

In a note tucked into a very successful-sounding report for its first 2018 fiscal quarter, Take Two confirmed that the company will "extend the life" of both Grand Theft Auto V and its GTA Online mode—which implies that its lifespan had been finite. Neither Wednesday's quarterly report nor any other official Rockstar or Take Two announcements, including the past year of Take Two financial disclosures, spelled out a timeline for the GTA Online product, which continues to receive content updates for both its free and paid content.

Take Two's Q1 2018 financial report saw year-over-year net revenue grow by a whopping 31 percent, to the tune of $418.2 million. That jump largely came in the form of "digitally delivered net revenue," which grew 56 percent. Do the math, and you'll see a year-over-year net revenue jump of $106.8 million and a digitally delivered net revenue jump of $96.1 million. (This comes, by the way, in a quarter where Take Two's subsidiaries did not release a single new game SKU.) Take Two did not clarify exactly how those purchases are split between retail-game purchases via online retailers, and add-on or DLC purchases within a game's internal storefront, but it did indicate that GTA Online purchases led the charge for the publisher's revenue jump.

Enlarge (credit: Microsoft)

In the Fall Creators Update, Microsoft is going to change the default color scheme used by Windows' console windows.

After years of neglect, Microsoft has been working to update and overhaul the Windows command-line interface. With the development of the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and continued investment in PowerShell, the shortcomings of the Windows command-line windows themselves have become more apparent. Previous Windows 10 updates updated the console to offer 24-bit color and support for ANSI escape codes, and nowadays it offers sensible behavior when resizing and maximizing the window.

The color scheme change is a small quality-of-life improvement that addresses one of the more annoying aspects of the console: its default color scheme is rather hard to read. The bright blue color, in particular, is near-illegible on high contrast screens. The new colors are easier to read and more consistent with the colors used in other terminal apps.

Enlarge / The Tesla Model 3. (credit: Tesla)

On Wednesday afternoon, Tesla released its Q2 2017 financial results: a loss of $401 million from total revenues of $2.7 billion over the three months up until June 30th. That's more or less the same performance as the company reported for Q1 2017, but it does show a 49 percent jump in revenue and 53 percent jump in vehicle deliveries compared to the same period in 2016. Depending upon whether Generally Accepted Accounting Practices (GAAP) were used, the net loss to shareholders was $2.04 per share (GAAP), or $1.33 per share (non-GAAP). It ended the period with $3 billion in cash.

During the quarter, Tesla produced 25,708 Model S and Model X electric vehicles and delivered 22,026 of them to customers. Sales of zero-emissions tax credits brought in another $100 million, and the company's energy generation and storage activities saw a big increase, bringing in $287 million (compared to $214 million for Q1 2017 and just $3.9 million for Q2 2016). The company's operating expenses actually decreased compared to Q1 2017, despite spending almost $48 million more on research and development.

In its earnings statement, Tesla revealed that it has been averaging 1,800 Model 3 reservations a day since the handover of the first production cars on July 28th. First deliveries to non-Tesla employees will begin in Q4 this year. Tesla says that production of the Model 3 will be limited by the slowest part of its supply chain and manufacturing process, but the company is confident it can build "just over 1,500 vehicles in Q3." Output of the new EV is predicted to rise to 5,000 per week by the end of 2017. CEO Elon Musk told an earnings call that "what we have ahead of us is an incredibly difficult production ramp. But I'm very confident we can reach a rate of 10,000 vehicles per week by the end of next year."

German Marshal Fund for the US/Alliance for Securing Democracy

The Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan project backed by the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF), has launched a Web tool to keep tabs on Russia's ongoing efforts to influence public opinion in the United States and abroad. Called Hamilton 68—named for the 68^th edition of the Federalist Papers, in which Alexander Hamilton discussed how to prevent foreign meddling and influence in America's electoral process—the Web dashboard tracks 600 Twitter accounts "linked to Russian influence activities online." That's according to a blog post by the Alliance's senior fellow and director Laura Rosenberger and non-resident fellow J.M. Berger.

Russia's use of Twitter and other social media in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election (as well as in France, Germany, and Poland) as part of "influence operations" has been well documented. In a New York Times Magazine article in 2015, Adrian Chen exposed a "troll factory" operating on behalf of the interests of the Russian government. The "Internet Research Agency" conducted trial runs well before the election, spreading a hoax about a fictitious accident at a Louisiana chemical plant. And influence operations have continued since the election in the US, promoting stories from both official Russian government media sources and sites like InfoWars.