Month: October 2023

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

One year after Elon Musk's $44 billion purchase of Twitter, which he completed on October 27, 2022, after months of legal drama, the social media firm that Musk renamed "X" is on shaky financial ground.

Musk has expressed ambitions to transform X into an "everything app" that includes a digital payments platform and audio and video calling. He told employees that, despite massive cuts eliminating most of Twitter's pre-Musk workforce, he sees "a clear but difficult path" to a future valuation of more than $250 billion.

X doesn't provide detailed financial statements or user numbers because Musk took the company private when he bought Twitter. But data leaked to news media and third-party research depicts a platform in decline, which might not be exactly what Musk meant when he called the firm "an inverse startup."

Enlarge / A push for more IronSource customers may have been a major motivation behind Unity's controversial install-fee proposals (credit: Unity)

It's been over a month now since Unity partially backtracked on its controversial proposed "pay per install" fee structure, a trust-destroying saga that seems to have contributed to the retirement of Unity CEO John Riccitiello. Now, a new report highlights some of the internal divisions over the "rushed-out" policy introduction and provides new insight into what may have been motivating the company to even attempt such a plan.

Business-focused site MobileGamer.biz cites multiple "sources from inside Unity and across the mobile games business" in reporting that Unity received some significant pushback from senior-level managers before rolling out its initial fee-restructuring plans. "Half of the people in that meeting said that this model is too complicated, it’s not going to be well-received, and we should talk to people before we do this," one anonymous source told the site. "It felt very rushed. We had this meeting and were told it was happening, but we were not told a date. And then before we knew it, it was out there."

After the negative reaction to that initial plan, Unity reportedly considered a modification that would take up to 4 percent of revenue from the largest Unity publishers—slightly under the 5 percent charged by the Unreal Engine. The final policy knocked that cap down to 2.5 percent only after the extent of the backlash became clear.

Enlarge / Hurricane Otis on Tuesday, as it was strengthening before making landfall in Mexico. (credit: NOAA)

The word "unprecedented" gets tossed around a lot these days, but what happened with Hurricane Otis and its impact on Acapulco on Tuesday were truly without precedent. And it was with only slight precedent anywhere in terms of how quickly it intensified.

Otis was the textbook definition of rapid intensification, going from a 50 mph tropical storm on Monday evening to a 165 mph category 5 hurricane last night. Through about mid-morning on Tuesday, everything was going basically as you'd expect for a modest hurricane with Otis. It may have been tracking toward a category 2 type landfall, or even a category 3 type landfall in the worst case, if you assumed the general rules of rapid intensification in this region. But Otis did not follow the rules.

Much like an onion, there are layers to this story that are important. First, take it from one of the more seasoned NOAA hurricane hunters—this was not what they expected when they flew their mission on Tuesday. Meteorologist Jeremy DeHart wrote on the site formerly known as Twitter, "I have arrived to a storm & been surprised by the intensity, but nothing like this. Expected a marginal hurricane, found a Cat 3! Reminiscent of the stories I've heard about flying into Patricia ('05), in the same part of the world."

Enlarge / OVC's Shelby Mustang recreations are accurate enough to be granted official papers to compete in historic racing. (credit: Michael Teo Van Runkle)

To Shelby Mustang fans, the Original Venice Crew (OVC) is the stuff of legends. This was the actual team that designed and built the original GT350s, Cobras, Daytona Coupes, and GT40s that introduced Carroll Shelby's name to the masses. Today, OVC builds modern Mustang recreations so accurate that one was approved for last year's Le Mans Classic, which celebrated 100 years of the world's most famous endurance race.

But OVC also offers updated versions of those classics, bringing to life ideas that bounced around the shop back in the day but that Shelby never built in series production. Want a 1965 GT350 with independent rear suspension? OVC can do that, after dialing in a design that Ford originally believed would be too expensive as a replacement for the first-gen Mustang's solid rear axle.

These projects don't quite fit under the "restomod" umbrella, instead falling more along the lines of the ideas that OVC founder and boss Jim Marietta remembers from his days back at 1042 Princeton Drive. Think fender flares cut by hand rather than being machined or updated fiberglass front fascias to provide additional airflow.