Month: April 2022

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images)

If Twitter’s board initially thought Elon Musk’s offer to buy the social media company for $43 billion was just a stunt, it has now found itself on the defensive on multiple fronts.

After the world’s richest man revealed on Thursday how he plans to fund his takeover bid, Twitter’s directors are under pressure to come to the negotiating table with him or find alternatives, such as a “white knight” bidder to come to their rescue, as the company nears a make-or-break moment.

For some, Musk’s bid has stoked hopes that Twitter will be taken private in order to address its perceived failure to innovate and find new revenue streams, even if many do not see Musk as the man for the job. It has also shined a spotlight on Twitter’s checkered history of sluggish innovation, technical shortcomings and leadership infighting.

Enlarge / Survival horror game Descent is one of the first Vampire: The Masquerade fangames to be officially licensed under the Unbound program. (credit: Descent / Itch.io)

Vampire: The Masquerade video game publishing house Paradox Interactive has announced a program that allows fans to create, publish, and profit from video games set in the pen-and-paper RPG's dark, urban-gothic universe.

Paradox said the Unbound program was inspired by the success of the recent Vampire Jam, in which nearly 90 developers had a month to create games based on Vampire: The Masquerade'sWorld of Darkness mythos. "While we could only award one grand prize to Heartless Lullaby, we knew we had to create a platform that empowered our community to work on the projects they love while giving them the support they need to be successful,” World of Darkness Community Developer Martyna Zych said in a statement.

Developers that take part in the Unbound program will receive "a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, nonsublicensable, royalty-bearing right, and license" to the World of Darkness IP "to develop, localize, publish, sell, distribute, promote, and advertise" their game, according to an extensive license agreement.

Enlarge / Liver lesions in patient with chronic active hepatitis C. (credit: Getty | BSIP)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a health alert Thursday notifying clinicians of a US-based cluster of unexplained cases of liver inflammation in young children, which appear to be part of a puzzling international outbreak that now spans at least 10 countries and two US states.

According to the CDC, Alabama has seen nine cases of unexplained liver inflammation—aka hepatitis—in children between the ages of one and six since October of last year. Two of the cases resulted in liver transplants, though no deaths have been reported. Health officials took notice of the unexplained illnesses after a cluster of five cases presented at one children's hospital in the state last November, with three of those cases involving acute liver failure. The state has since identified four other cases through February, 2022.

According to reporting by Stat News, North Carolina is also investigating two cases in school-aged children, neither of which required transplants.