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Microsoft has announced that it will acquire LinkedIn for $26.2 billion (£18.5 billion) in an all-cash deal. The transaction is expected to close within this calendar year.

The deal will see LinkedIn retain its brand, culture, and independence. Jeff Weiner will remain as CEO of LinkedIn, but report into Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Reid Hoffman, co-founder and controlling shareholder of LinkedIn, and Weiner both support the acquisition.

At $26.2 billion, this is one of the tech industry's largest acquisitions—though it pales in comparison to last year's Dell/EMC merger, which at $67 billion/£43.6 billion was by far the largest tech deal of all time.

As the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) gets set for its 21st annual show this week, game publishers are faced with the dilemma of how to integrate their bombastic, explosive, often gun-soaked entertainment marketing blitz with the sense of national tragedy emanating from the historic mass shooting at a gay night club in Orlando, Florida.

Speaking to Ars, the head of the organization running E3 says that participating companies are tweaking their convention plans somewhat out of respect for and sensitivity to those affected by Sunday morning's tragic events.

That groundswell of online support for Chinese Communist Party and government officials? Not so much actually grassroots. (credit: Robert Thivierge)

Data scientists at Harvard University have found that the government of the People's Republic of China generates an estimated 448 million fake social media posts per year. The posts are an effort to shape online conversations by citizens and to distract them from sensitive topics "and change the subject"—largely through "cheerleadering" posts promoting the Chinese Communist Party and the government.

The research, conducted by Harvard professor Gary King and former Harvard graduate students Jennifer Pan and Margaret Roberts and supported by Harvard's Institute for Quantitative Science, made use of a goldmine of propaganda content. This included a leaked archive of e-mails sent to the Zhanggong District Internet Propaganda Office from 2013 to 2014 that showed government workers' documentation of completion of fake post work, including screen shots. The research also analyzed social media posts on Chinese websites from 2010 to 2015.

Previously, posts like these were believed to be the work of what observers have called he "50-cent Party"—named for what some believed the posters are paid by the state for their propaganda work. As it turns out, the posts analyzed by King and his co-researchers were likely mostly written for free as an extra duty of government employees.