Those waiting to play 'Assassin’s Creed: Mirage' will be pleased to hear it's arriving 7 days earlier than planned.

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The US Federal Trade Commission has sued to stop Microsoft buying Call of Duty developer Activision Blizzard. It is just the latest problem for the deal, which has already been blocked by UK regulators. If completed, it will become one of the largest takeovers ever – but has faced scrutiny from regulators around the world, who argue that it might cause problems for the gaming market. The FTC's Monday filing in a federal court in San Francisco seeks a restraining order and injunction to stop Microsoft's $69 billion purchase of the California gaming company behind hit franchises such as Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. Microsoft, maker of the Xbox game system, has been struggling to win worldwide approval for the deal with just over a month before the deadline to close it, according to the contract it signed with Activision. “We welcome the opportunity to present our case in federal court," said a statement Monday from Brad Smith, Microsoft's vice chair and president. "We believe accelerating the legal process in the U.S will ultimately bring more choice and competition to the market.” The FTC already took Microsoft to court to block the merger, but that was before the U.S. agency's in-house judge in a trial set to start on Aug. 2. That administrative process doesn't preclude the parties from closing the deal. The contract between Microsoft and Activision required the deal to close by July 18, but the FTC's latest action seeks to stop that from happening. “Microsoft and Activision Blizzard have represented in the past that they cannot close their deal due to antitrust reviews of the transaction in other jurisdictions," the FTC said in a statement Monday. "But Microsoft and Activision have not provided assurances that they will maintain that position. In light of that, and public reporting that Microsoft and Activision Blizzard are considering closing their deal imminently, we have filed a request for a temporary restraining order to prevent them from closing while review continues.” Microsoft's other main obstacle is in the United Kingdom, where antitrust regulators have also taken action to block the acquisition. The all-cash deal announced in January 2022 has been scrutinized by regulators around the world over fears that it would give Microsoft and its Xbox console control of Activision's hit franchises and give it an unfair boost in the emerging business of cloud-based game subscriptions. It could be the priciest tech industry merger in history. Fierce opposition has been driven by rival Sony, which makes the PlayStation gaming system. Microsoft sought to counter the resistance by striking a deal with Nintendo to license Activision titles like Call of Duty for 10 years and offering the same to Sony if the deal went ahead. European regulators representing the 27-nation bloc approved the deal last month on condition that Microsoft make some promises meant to boost competition in the cloud-based gaming market. A number of other countries, including China, Japan, Brazil and South Korea, have also approved it. But the blockbuster deal has remained in jeopardy because of the surprise April decision by the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority and the ongoing case in the U.S. Microsoft in late May filed an appeal of the British regulator's decision and has also voiced strong public opposition directed at top government officials. U.S.-based consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, an opponent of the deal, welcomed the FTC's move Monday. “Although the agency has already used its authority to block the merger through administrative proceedings, Microsoft is pushing to culminate the purchase of Activision before the agency can finish its process," said a statement from Public Citizen's competition policy advocate Matt Kent. ""By filing in federal court to enjoin the transaction, the FTC is showing that it won’t back down in the face of Microsoft’s escalatory tactics.” Additional reporting by Associated Press

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 19, 2023--

Apple is working on its own ‘Apple GPT’, according to a new report. The system is an artificial intelligence chatbot like those offered by other companies, Bloomberg reported. It uses Apple’s own large language model framework and is built on tools from Google, the report said. The company is still unclear what purpose the system will serve, Bloomberg reported. But it is gearing up for a major announcement next year, it said. Multiple teams are currently working on the project, the report claimed, with some of those tasked with working on privacy concerns around the technology. Apple has focused on privacy as one of its fundamental principles, especially in recent years. If released, ‘Apple GPT’ would mark Apple’s first major step into artificial intelligence as its own product. Apple has been much more slower than competitors in offering own AI tools, and has been publicly cautious about embracing the technology. In an earnings call earlier this year, for instance, chief executive Tim Cook said that Apple was planning to “weave” artificial intelligence into its products, but that it would have to be “deliberate and thoughtful”. He said there is a “number of issues that need to be sorted”. Many had expected that Apple could address the growth of and hype around artificial intelligence during its Worldwide Developers Conference event last month, where it also released its Vision Pro virtual reality headset. But the topic went notably unmentioned, and Apple did not use the phrase at all, instead referring to those products using the technology as being powered by machine learning. Apple already offers a host of products powered by technologies that are often referred to as artificial intelligence. Siri uses such capabilities to power its voice recognition and responses, for instance – though Apple does not tend to publicly refer to it as such. Previous reports have suggested that Apple’s progress on artificial intelligence has been hindered by its characteristic private approach, which set it against a research community that is focused on publishing papers and sharing research. In recent years, however, it has made a number of high profile hires in the field and allowed them to publicly publish some of that work. Read More Beats launches updated version of Studio Pro over-ear headphones Rare ‘Holy Grail’ iPhone sells for almost $200,000 Apple’s next iPhone may include new battery technology, report suggests

OSLO, Norway--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 21, 2023--

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The structure of the Earth beneath our feet has been fascinating to members of the scientific community recently, and it turns out it’s far more complex than people initially thought. First, we learned of the news that there’s a massive ocean beneath the Earth’s crust which contains more water than all of the seas on the surface. Now, another study has been published which has taken an in-depth look at the geology beneath the southern hemisphere. The new research, published in Science Advances, has found evidence that an entire ocean floor actually runs the length around the core. Sign up to our new free Indy100 weekly newsletter This is a relatively thin layer that sits on the core-mantle boundary around 1,800 miles beneath the surface of the Earth. It's an ancient formation that could provide more insight into the structure of the planet beneath our feet. Geologist Samantha Hansen and her colleagues from the University of Alabama led the research. They observed the structure by using 15 monitoring stations under the ice of Antarctica, mapping the waves from earthquakes. Doing this allowed them to analyse the structure of the Earth below the surface, including the ultra-low velocity zones where waves moved much slower. "Seismic investigations, such as ours, provide the highest resolution imaging of the interior structure of our planet, and we are finding that this structure is vastly more complicated than once thought," Hansen said. "Analyzing [thousands] of seismic recordings from Antarctica, our high-definition imaging method found thin anomalous zones of material at the CMB everywhere we probed," geophysicist Edward Garnero from Arizona State University also said. "The material's thickness varies from a few kilometers to [tens] of kilometers. This suggests we are seeing mountains on the core, in some places up to five times taller than Mt. Everest." "Our research provides important connections between shallow and deep Earth structure and the overall processes driving our planet," Hansen added. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.