Month: May 2020

Enlarge / Sony's vision of the "future of gaming" will come some day, but not as originally scheduled, thanks to this week's event delay. (credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Update, June 8: PlayStation 5's game-reveal event, after being teased and indefinitely canceled, is back on.

After leaking as a video ad in various territories on YouTube and Twitch, Sony has since confirmed the new game-reveal time slot of Thursday, June 11, at 4pm ET / 1pm PT. The announcement briefly acknowledges last week's delay, telling fans, "We needed to step aside so key voices could be heard during this historic and important time."

Sony Interactive Entertainment's statement then goes on to confirm a strange technical limitation for its reveal of next-gen games: that the feed will top out at 1080p resolution and 30 frames per second. This comes in spite of next-gen console manufacturers frequently announcing specs like 4K resolutions (which YouTube supports) and 120fps refresh rates (which YouTube does not).

Enlarge / President Trump signs an Orion capsule hatch that will be used for the Artemis II mission as Vice President Mike Pence, First Lady Melania Trump, and NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine (wearing a mask) look on. (credit: NASA)

After President Trump appointed a conservative Republican congressman from Oklahoma named Jim Bridenstine to become NASA's administrator, the legislator faced hard questions. During a Senate confirmation hearing in late 2017, Bridenstine was asked repeatedly whether he would honor NASA's tradition of remaining a bipartisan, apolitical agency.

"I want to make sure that NASA remains, as you said, apolitical, and I will do that to the best of my ability should I be confirmed," he said at the time.

Democratic senators were not convinced, and Bridenstine was ultimately confirmed on a party-line vote in 2018. However, in the two years since then, Bridenstine has remained true to his word. He has transcended politics and sought to reach out to both Republican and Democratic lawmakers during his tenure. He even appointed one of his harshest critics at the Senate confirmation hearing, Democratic Senator Bill Nelson, to NASA's Advisory Council after Nelson lost his re-election bid in 2018.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty)

Twitter is once again facing the ire of its most famous user, President Donald Trump, after putting a warning label on one of Trump's tweets signaling that it breaks the service rules against glorifying violence.

Speaking about the unrest in Minneapolis, Trump tweeted, "These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!"

Twitter does not generally delete Tweets posted by newsworthy figures. Instead, it puts a warning on the message indicating that it violates site rules but remains live due to potential public interest. Twitter's communication's team posted a notice that it was placing the public interest exemption label on Trump's tweet, explaining that, "based on the historical context of the last line, its connection to violence, and the risk it could inspire similar actions today, the message fell afoul of the site's explicit policy prohibiting the glorification of violence.