Month: July 2022

It's time for San Diego Comic-Con, and among the many TV shows expected to feature prominently is HBO Max's House of the Dragon, a spinoff prequel to HBO's hugely popular Game of Thrones. We had our share of disappointments with that series' later seasons (especially the series finale) like everyone else, but this new House of the Dragon trailer seems to capture the original tone and spirit that we loved so much about its predecessor.

As I've written previously, House of the Dragon is set 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones and chronicles the beginning of the end of House Targaryen's reign. Those events culminated in a civil war and the extinction of the dragons—at least until Daenerys Targaryen came along two centuries later. Miguel Sapochnik—who filmed some of the most eye-popping, complicated battles on Game of Thrones—serves as co-showrunner with series co-creators Martin and Ryan J. Condal. Sapochnik directed the pilot and several other episodes.

Fire and Blood, a fictional history of the Targaryen kings written by George R.R. Martin, begins with Aegon I's conquest of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, thanks to the family's advanced weaponry in the form of dragons. This is followed by a period of relative peace before the inevitable succession crisis. The final two sections of Fire and Blood deal with the fallout of that crisis and serve as the primary source material for House of the Dragon.

Enlarge / Crypto projects built on top of Minecraft, like NFT Worlds, have been left scrambling by Mojang's decision. (credit: NFT Worlds)

Minecraft will continue to be about blocks and not about the blockchain. That's according to a new official blog post from Microsoft subsidiary Mojang stressing that "integrations of NFTs with Minecraft are generally not something we will support or allow."

While players have long been able to charge for access to private Minecraft servers they control, the company's usage guidelines stress that "all players should have access to the same functionality" in those servers. That's in conflict with the main point of NFTs, which Mojang characterizes as "digital ownership based on scarcity and exclusion, which does not align with Minecraft values of creative inclusion and playing together."

Aside from those kinds of philosophical problems, Mojang also expresses concerns about "instances where NFTs were sold at artificially or fraudulently inflated prices" and situations where NFT assets "may require an asset manager who might disappear without notice." These kinds of issues mean that "some third-party NFTs may not be reliable and may end up costing players who buy them," Mojang warns.

Enlarge / WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 20: U.S. President Joe Biden departs the Oval Office and walks to Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House July 20, 2022 in Washington, DC. Biden is traveling to Somerset, Massachusetts to discuss his next steps in addressing climate change. He is scheduled to deliver remarks at the site of the now-closed Brayton Point power plant, which is being turned into the state's first offshore wind manufacturing facility. (credit: Getty | Drew Angerer)

President Joe Biden tested positive for COVID-19 Thursday morning, the White House announced.

The 79-year-old is fully vaccinated and twice boosted and is experiencing very mild symptoms, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement. He has already begun a course of the antiviral Paxlovid and has started an isolation period in the White House, consistent with guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

According to a letter released from the president's physician, Kevin O'Connor, Biden tested positive via an antigen test this morning, a result that has already been confirmed by a PCR test. Prior to this morning, he was most recently tested on Tuesday and had tested negative. Now, Biden is experiencing mild symptoms of a runny nose, fatigue, and an occasional dry cough, which began yesterday, the letter said.