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First generation HoloLens from above, showing the visor and the headband. (credit: Esy Casey)

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says that company's $480 million contract to supply HoloLens technology to the military is a "principled decision" and that the company will not "withhold technology" from democratic governments.

The deal, signed last year, could see Microsoft supplying as many as 100,000 HoloLens headsets to the military as part of its "Integrated Visual Augmentation System" (IVAS) project. The intent is to integrate the HoloLens hardware with thermal-imaging, weapons-targeting, and health-monitoring systems to, among other things, provide "increased lethality" of the soldiers using it. A number of Microsoft employees have signed an open letter saying that the company should cancel the contract, arguing that it crosses a line into weapons development. Some 250 staff are said to have signed the letter.

Speaking to CNN Business, Nadella defended the decision to enter the contract, saying, "We made a principled decision that we're not going to withhold technology from institutions that we have elected in democracies to protect the freedoms we enjoy," adding, "We were very transparent about that decision and we'll continue to have that dialogue [with employees]."

Enlarge (credit: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

A federal appeals court has upheld AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner, dealing a blow to Trump administration lawyers who had tried to stop the deal.

The Trump administration sued to stop the deal back in 2017, arguing that having AT&T as a corporate parent would give Time Warner too much leverage in negotiations with other cable and satellite network providers. A trial judge, Richard Leon, rejected that argument last June, allowing the deal to officially close a few days later. Now his ruling has been upheld by the DC Circuit Appeals Court.

Media conglomerates like Time Warner engage in periodic negotiations with distributors like Comcast and AT&T. In these negotiations, each party threatens to end their relationship if they don't get favorable financial terms. But each party also has an incentive not to take too hard a line because failing to reach an agreement could mean a content blackout that's expensive for both sides.

Enlarge / A rig stands over a well pad at the Southern California Gas Co. Aliso Canyon underground natural gas storage facility in the Porter Ranch neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, on Thursday, January 12, 2017. (credit: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

On Monday, a Los Angeles Superior Court Judge approved a $119.5 million settlement between Southern California Gas (SoCalGas) and the California Air Resources Board (CARB). SoCalGas was responsible for the Aliso Canyon Natural Gas Storage Facility when one of the 115 storage wells at the site started leaking methane dramatically.

Stanching the leak took nearly five months, and in that time 109,000 metric tons of methane was spewed into the atmosphere.

Methane is an extremely potent greenhouse gas, capable of trapping more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, although methane is shorter-lived. In addition to the headaches and nosebleeds suffered by the people living in the nearby Porter Ranch neighborhood, researchers later concluded that the leak had doubled the methane emissions rate of the whole Los Angeles Basin.

When I was working at Babbage's in the mid-'90s, I recall there being three specific PC games that sat in the "coming soon" column seemingly forever—like, for years—and generated ridiculous amounts of pre-orders and buzz: Mechwarrior 2, the original Diablo, and the original Command & Conquer. As fate would have it, I worked the launches of all three of those games, and although they all were special, Command & Conquer was to me the most surprising to play.

I wasn't really big into the nascent real-time strategy genre at the time—perhaps unsurprising, since the "genre" prior to C&C's release consisted basically of Dune 2 and Warcraft, but C&C blew me away. I was never any good at it, but I was fascinated by it—the strategy game genre was undergoing somewhat of a renaissance in the early-to-mid-'90s, and adding real-time decision-making into the mix was a wild twist on what had become an established formula.

The original C&C was successful, but the sequels established a bona fide gaming dynasty. For this episode of War Stories, we've arranged a nicely technical chat with Westwood co-founder Louis Castle (who also worked on the studio's noir Blade Runner adventure) to dish on the challenges and issues the studio faced with developing Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, the direct sequel to C&C and one of the most well-regarded games in the entire series.