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Martin Shkreli, chief executive officer of Turing Pharmaceuticals LLC, exits federal court in New York, US, on Thursday, December 17, 2015. Shkreli was arrested on alleged securities fraud related to Retrophin Inc., a biotech firm he founded in 2011. (credit: Louis Lanzano/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Despite receiving fiery comments from Martin Shkreli, former CEO of the infamous Turing Pharmaceuticals and struggling KaloBios Pharmaceuticals, RZA has no hard feelings towards the beleaguered Wu-Tang Clan fan.

Reports last month revealed that Shkreli had purchased the sole copy of the Wu-Tang album, Once Upon A Time In Shaolin, for $2 million. But after Shkreli’s arrest on charges of securities fraud, RZA, the de facto leader of the Wu-Tang, appeared to distance the group from Shkreli.

The move quickly drew scorn from the former-CEO. In an exclusive interview with HipHopDX, Shkreli said: “If I hand you $2 million, fucking show me some respect. At least have the decency to say nothing or ‘no comment.’” He went on to imply during the interview that the comments could spark a violent feud.

Double Fine founder Tim Schafer celebrates a $3.3 million crowdfunding success for Psychonauts 2. (credit: Fig)

Nearly four years after gaming studio Double Fine Productions broke Kickstarter records with its first crowdfunding campaign, the company announced on Wednesday that its latest, nostalgia-fueled cash request had proven successful.

Production on a sequel to cult classic platforming game Psychonauts will now officially commence thanks to the game maker raising over $3.3 million from fans. That amount matches how much Double Fine raised in March 2012 to create the point-and-click adventure game Broken Age—though anybody familiar with that game's beleaguered, cash-strapped creation (which was chronicled at length by way of a Two Player Productions documentary) will be heartened to hear that the crowdfunded amount is only one part of the game's minimum budget.

As Double Fine founder Tim Schafer announced last month, following Psychonauts 2's reveal at The Game Awards 2015, the new game's development budget will be propped up by three major pillars: crowdfunding, "an external partner" (who has yet to be publicly identified, but is almost certainly not Marcus "notch" Persson), and Double Fine's own coffers. This follows other major gaming crowdfunding requests, particularly Yu Suzuki's Shenmue 3, acknowledging their own private investors and admitting that crowdfunding alone hasn't covered the game's production costs.

Enlarge (credit: Jjpwiki)

Tech-support scams, in which fraudsters pose as computer technicians who charge hefty fees to fix non-existent malware infections, have been a nuisance for years. A relatively new one targeting Dell computer owners is notable because the criminals behind it use private customer details to trick their marks into thinking the calls come from authorized Dell personnel.

"What made the calls interesting was that they had all the information about my computer; model number, serial number, and notably the last item I had called Dell technical support about (my optical drive)," Ars reader Joseph B. wrote in an e-mail. "That they knew about my optical drive call from several months prior made me think there was some sort of information breach versus just my computer being compromised."

He isn't the only Dell customer reporting such an experience. A blog post published Tuesday reported scammers knew of every problem the author had ever called Dell about. None of those problems were ever discussed in public forums, leading the author to share the suspicion that proprietary Dell data had somehow been breached.

SAN FRANCISCO—A federal judge on Wednesday said that a monkey that swiped a British nature photographer's camera during an Indonesian jungle shoot and snapped selfies cannot own the intellectual property rights to those handful of pictures.

US District Judge William Orrick was tasked with hearing a lawsuit brought by the People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). The Animal rights group was trying to represent the 6-year-old monkey, Naruto, in a case brought against the human photographer, David Slater, and his self-publishing platform, Blurb of San Francisco.

The monkey—via PETA's intervention—was seeking monetary damages for copyright infringement from Slater and the Blurb, the platform Slater used to publish the selfies. The US Copyright Office says Slater cannot own the rights to the handful of images snapped in the Tangkoko reserve on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi in 2011. Works "produced by nature, animals, or plants" cannot be granted copyright protection, the US Copyright Office said in 2014.

From Fisker's website: "Henrik Fisker’s initial design rendering for The Force 1, a high-performance automobile debuting on January 12 at 10:05am at the 2016 North American International Auto Show in Detroit." (credit: Henrik Fisker)

Auto designer Henrik Fisker filed a lawsuit against British automaker Aston Martin this week, accusing the company of civil extortion (PDF). Fisker says Aston Martin threatened to sue the designer if he showed off his new Force 1 luxury sports car at the Detroit Auto Show in mid-January.

Fisker is well-known in the auto design world. He served as the president of BMW’s DesignWorks before he was brought on at Aston Martin. According to Fisker’s complaint, Aston Martin sold only 400 vehicles per year in the mid-ninties, but by the time the two cars Fisker developed for Aston Martin were in production, global sales had grown to more than 7,000 cars sold worldwide.

Fisker later went on to do entrepreneurial work. Fisker Automotive, which was supposed to deliver a plug-in electric hybrid car, went bankrupt and was purchased by China’s Wanxiang Group Corp. in 2014. Today, Fisker is set to release a new car he designed, called the Force 1, which will go into production later this spring. The Wall Street Journal notes that it is still unclear which company will manufacture the 745 horsepower, $300,000 vehicle that Fisker has designed.

(credit: Mike Mozart/Flickr)

Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., the Denver-based chain staggering from a string of food-borne illness outbreaks at its restaurants, is under federal criminal investigation for a norovirus outbreak at one of its California locations.

The August outbreak occurred at a restaurant in Simi Valley and sickened 189 customers and 18 employees, according to a local health department worker who spoke with NPR. After the outbreak, local authorities reported finding meat held at improper temperatures and dirty conditions in the restaurant’s kitchen. A subpoena from a federal grand jury, disclosed Wednesday in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, requires Chipotle to produce a range of documents related to the outbreak.

The US Attorney's Office for the Central District of California and the Food and Drug Administration are jointly conducting the investigation. In the SEC filing, Chipotle said it intends to fully cooperate, though it’s unclear at this point what criminal violations or charges might be pursued.

(credit: Alexander Russy)

San Francisco’s largest taxi company is on the verge of filing for bankruptcy protection, according to a leaked letter from its president.

The San Francisco Examiner, which published the December 10, 2015 letter on Wednesday, reported that Yellow Cab Co-Op is the largest taxi firm in the city, with 530 medallion holding drivers. By comparison, there are thousands of Uber drivers on the roads of San Francisco nearly every day.

The taxi industry as a whole has been under massive pressure from startup newcomers such as Uber, Lyft, and the recently defunct Sidecar. Those companies are regulated under California’s “transportation networking company” (TNC) law, which is separate from traditional taxi law.