Month: November 2022

Enlarge / Just a few of the Activision franchises that will become Microsoft properties if and when the acquisition is finalized. (credit: Microsoft / Activision)

The Federal Trade Commission will "likely" move to file an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft and Activision Blizzard to block the companies' planned $69 billion merger deal. That's according to a new Politico report citing "three [unnamed] people with knowledge of the matter."

While Politico writes that a lawsuit is still "not guaranteed," it adds that FTC staffers "are skeptical of the companies' arguments" that the deal will not be anticompetitive. The sources also confirmed that "much of the heavy lifting is complete" in the commission's investigation, and that a suit could be filed as early as next month.

Sony, the main opponent of Microsoft's proposed purchase, has argued publicly that an existing contractual three-year guarantee to keep Activision's best-selling Call of Duty franchise on PlayStation is "inadequate on many levels." In response, Microsoft Head of Xbox Phil Spencer has publicly promised to continue shipping Call of Duty games on PlayStation "as long as there's a PlayStation out there to ship to." It's not clear if the companies have memorialized that offer as a legal agreement, though; The New York Times reported this week that Microsoft had offered a "10-year deal to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation."

Enlarge / Lighter and less powerful, the 911 T benefits from some desirable options that aren't available on other 911s. (credit: Tim Stevens)

Getting bigger and heavier as you age is something that many of us can relate to. Even the sportiest of cars is not immune to this unfortunate expansion. The Porsche 911 weighed just 2,400 lbs (1,089 kg) when new in the early 1960s and was only 165 inches (4,191 mm) long. Since then, it has grown by over a foot (300 mm) and has packed on over 800 pounds (363 kg).

Mind you, the 911 is still a stellar car, sublime really, but that expanded girth has changed the Carrera from a proper sports car to something that sits on the sporty side of a comfortable touring machine. Now, though, with the return of the Carrera T, the 911 is going back to its roots—again. After spending a lovely evening carving canyons in California, I'm happy to say that the result is remarkable.

As 911s go, this one is aimed squarely at driving enthusiasts. (credit: Tim Stevens)

The T in Carrera T actually stands for "touring," but that's a bit of a misnomer. Here it's a designation for a lighter-weight, edgier, more engaging flavor of Carrera. The first Carrera T premiered way back in 1968, a simpler 911 that most famously conquered the Monte Carlo Rally at the hands of Vic Elford.

Enlarge / An iteration of what happens when your site gets shut down by a DDoS attack.

The European Parliament website was knocked offline for several hours on Wednesday by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that started shortly after the governing body voted to declare the Russian government a state sponsor of terrorism.

European Parliament President Roberta Metsola confirmed the attack on Wednesday afternoon European time, while the site was still down. “A pro-Kremlin group has claimed responsibility,” she wrote on Twitter. “Our IT experts are pushing back against it & protecting our systems. This, after we proclaimed Russia as a State-sponsor of terrorism.”

While this post was being reported and written, the website became available again and appeared to work normally.

Enlarge / No, those donut tracks aren't mine, officer. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

The Perseverance rover landed in Mars' Jezero Crater largely because of extensive evidence that the crater once hosted a lake, meaning the presence of liquid water that might once have hosted Martian life. And the landing was a success, placing the rover at the edge of a structure that appeared to be a river delta where the nearby highlands drained into the crater.

But a summary of the first year of data from the rover, published in three different papers being released today, suggests that Perseverance has yet to stumble across any evidence of a watery paradise. Instead, all indications are that water exposure in the areas it explored was limited, and the waters were likely to be near freezing. While this doesn't rule out that it will find lake deposits later, the environment might not have been as welcoming for life as "a lake in a crater" might have suggested.

Putting it all together

Perseverance can be considered a platform for a large suite of instruments that provide a picture of what the rover is looking at. Even its "eyes," a pair of cameras on its mast, can create stereo images with 3D information, and offer information on what wavelengths are present in the images. It also has instruments that can be held up to rocks to determine their content and structure; sample-handling hardware can perform a chemical analysis of materials taken from rocks.