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The long, long wait for a video game truly based on Marvel's Avengers superhero team appears to be ending. After a social media tease from both Marvel Entertainment and Square Enix, the companies confirmed their new partnership on Thursday, announcing an Avengers video game as the beginning of a “multi-game” deal.

Square Enix’s two biggest Western game studios, Crystal Dynamics (Tomb Raider) and Eidos Montreal (Deus Ex), will work together on an as-yet-unnamed Avengers game—because a video game about a combined supergroup requires a combined supergroup of developers, apparently. The only hint we have of the game's form is a 55-second teaser that only shows three relatively static, Avengers-related images (like Captain America's shield). And with such slowed-down footage, it's hard to really tell whether the teaser contains "in-engine" footage.

Syfy

Warning: This piece contains minor spoilers for The Magicians S1 and early S2.

The Magicians will sneak up on you. At first it might seem like a cheesy CW show about angst and magic at an exclusive East Coast college. But suddenly, it gets seriously twisted and frightening. Seemingly adolescent rivalries bleed into murder and erupt into cross-dimensional authoritarian regimes. There's a nasty, dark sense of humor nipping at the edges of the story. Perhaps most importantly, the characters are multi-layered, and their magic has real-world consequences. The Magicians' second season premiered last night on Syfy, but you've got plenty of time to catch up with the most interesting fantasy series on TV right now.

A book of lies

Based on Lev Grossman's bestselling series of novels, The Magicians sometimes gets compared to Harry Potter. It's about young people learning magic in school, and it centers on an unlikely group of friends/frenemies. But that's pretty much where the comparison should end. The series is creepy and messed up in ways that Harry Potter never is, and it also deals a lot more with the non-magical world. Main character Quentin (Jason Ralph) has been in and out of mental hospitals for depression, and he's spent far too much time obsessing over a series of Narnia-like fantasy novels about a magical land called Fillory. When he finds out that magic is real and that he's been accepted to a magical Ivy League school called Brakebills, Quentin basically soils the bed with glee.

Enlarge / AT&T will own a bunch of new media properties if it is allowed to buy Time Warner. (credit: Aurich Lawson)

US Senate Democrats led by Al Franken (D-Minn.) yesterday challenged AT&T to prove that its proposed purchase of Time Warner will benefit the public interest. Franken's letter comes as AT&T attempts to avoid a Federal Communications Commission review of its $85.4 billion Time Warner purchase. In an FCC review, the company would have to file what's known as a "public interest statement." This detailed document—the one AT&T filed for its DirecTV purchase was 349 pages long—is meant to prove that a merger is good for the public instead of merely being good for the merging companies.

But AT&T and Time Warner only have to seek an FCC review if Time Warner transfers FCC licenses to AT&T, and the companies have been working up a plan in which Time Warner would transfer or sell those licenses to someone else.

Franken isn't happy about that. His letter, cosigned by 11 other Democrats and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), asked AT&T to provide a public interest statement even if the company skips an FCC review.

Enlarge / Hugo Barra and Mark Zuckerberg celebrate Barra's hiring in Facebook's (unnamed and unreleased) social VR app. (credit: Mark Zuckerberg)

Hugo Barra, a former vice president at Xiaomi and Google, is leaving Xiaomi to lead the VR efforts at Facebook. The move was announced by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on (where else?) Facebook last night. Zuckerberg said Barra would "lead all of [Facebook's] virtual reality efforts, including our Oculus team." In a later post, Barra said his title was "VP of Virtual Reality" and that he would "lead the Oculus team."

Barra became well known in the tech world when he worked at Google, where he was the VP of Android. At Google he was generally the company's main presenter for events, where he introduced several Nexus phones and versions of Android. Barra left Google for Xiaomi, where he was "VP of International." Again he was basically the face of the company outside of China and hosted most of the company's product launches. In a post on Facebook, Barra said he left Xiaomi due to a desire to move from China back to Silicon Valley, which he considers his home.

At Xiaomi, Barra launched Xiaomi Global under which the company expanded to India, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and 20 other markets. Xiaomi partnered with Google to launch the "Mi Box" Android TV device in the US, but the company has yet to bring its smartphones to the US. Xiaomi recently released the stunning Mi Mix in China, but tough times are ahead as Chinese rivals Huawei, Oppo, and Vivo are passing the company in sales. Xiaomi has also said it's skipping out on Mobile World Congress this year.

Enlarge

An iPhone ad featuring the Jamie xx song "I Know There's Gonna Be (Good Times)" is the subject of a lawsuit filed Tuesday in California Superior Court.

The plaintiff's convoluted connection to Apple is laid out by The Hollywood Reporter, which was first to report the case. "I Know There's Gonna Be (Good Times)" is the most popular track on Jamie xx's 2015 Grammy-nominated album In Colors. That album includes samples from a 1971 song by The Persuasions called "Good Times."

Persuasions lead singer Jerome Lawson is the plaintiff in the new suit against Apple—but this isn't a copyright case. Rather, Lawson has said that the use of his voice in the ad violates his right of publicity under California state law.