Year: 2024

Roku has finally turned on two-factor authentication — after it learned that more than 500,000 accounts were hit by a credential-stuffing attack.

Walmart has $100 off the gorgeous Samsung 27-inch G65B curved gaming monitor which is perfect for immersive gaming.

The Dell XPS 14 and XPS 16 share almost identical designs, only in different sizes. The 14-inch is easier to carry around and the 16-inch is faster.

GTA 6 finally got its first trailer in December 2023. Here’s what we know about the next Grand Theft Auto right now based on leaks and rumors from experts.

Enjoy a stylish and practical keyless door lock for less with the Revolo Keyless Entry Door Lock currently $40 off.

Get your shaded porch all set up for summer with the awesome Sunbrite 43-inch Outdoor TV which is currently $600 off at Crutchfield.

With plenty of MacBook models to choose from, which should you buy? Our guide examines performance, battery life, design, and more to help you find the answer.

Late last year, over 100 employees of Avalanche Studios, the makers of Just Cause, announced an intent to unionize. The workers have officially ironed out a collective bargaining agreement with the Swedish labor unions Unionen and Engineers of Sweden. The agreement goes into effect during the second quarter of 2025.

While specifics of the agreement remain unknown, Avalanche said that it “will help standardize frameworks around essential areas such as salaries, benefits, employee influence, and career support.” The company says it’s working closely with both unions to ensure a smooth implementation of these frameworks.

Avalanche was founded in Sweden, but has since become a global entity. With this in mind, the move to unionize only impacts workers located in Sweden, which amounts to around 100 people. The company employs more than 500 workers globally.

Despite that caveat, this is still another high-profile move toward improving the rights of workers in the gaming industry. Avalanche joins several other companies that recently organized under collective labor contracts. Sega of America workers overwhelmingly voted to unionize last year, a move that impacted 200 employees. Over 300 ZeniMax Studios quality assurance workers voted to unionize last year, and parent company Microsoft didn’t stand in the way. Activision, another Microsoft company, boasts a union with over 600 members, which is the largest one in the entire industry.

This is all good news for workers, but there’s also a dark cloud floating around the industry. There have been a boatload of layoffs throughout the past several months. As a matter of fact, over 6,000 people lost their jobs in January alone. Impacted workers hail from many of the companies mentioned above, like Sega of America, Activision Blizzard and ZeniMax.

As for Avalanche, it’s continuing work on the forthcoming Xbox exclusive Contraband. The game’s been in the pipeline since 2021 and it looks to be an open-world co-op adventure set in the 1970s.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/avalanche-studios-devs-have-reached-a-contract-agreement-in-bid-to-unionize-183645291.html?src=rss

Google, the search giant that brought in more than $73 billion in profit last year, is protesting a California bill that would require it and other platforms to pay media outlets. The company announced that it was beginning a “short-term test” that will block links to local California news sources for a “small percentage” of users in the state.

The move is in response to the California Journalism Preservation Act, a bill that would require Google, Meta and other platforms to pay California publishers fees in exchange for links. The proposed law, which passed the state Assembly last year, amounts to a “link tax,” according to Google VP of News Partnerships Jaffer Zaidi.

“If passed, CJPA may result in significant changes to the services we can offer Californians and the traffic we can provide to California publishers,” Zaidi writes. But though the bill has yet to become law, Google is opting to give publishers and users in California a taste of what those changes could look like.

The company says it will temporarily test blocking links to California news sources that would be covered under the law in order “to measure the impact of the legislation on our product experience.” Zaidi didn’t say how large the test would be or how long it would last. Google is also halting new spending on California newsrooms, including “new partnerships through Google News Showcase, our product and licensing program for news organizations, and planned expansions of the Google News Initiative.”

Google isn’t the first company to use hardball tactics in the face of new laws that aim to force tech companies to pay for journalism. Meta pulled news from Facebook and Instagram in Canada after a similar law passed and has threatened to do the same in California. (Meta did eventually cut deals to pay publishers in Australia after a 2021 law went into effect, but said last month it would end those partnerships.)

Google has a mixed track record on the issue, It pulled its News service out of Spain for seven years in protest of local copyright laws that would have required licensing fees. But the company signed deals worth about $150 million to pay Australian publishers. It also eventually backed off threats to pull news from search results in Canada, and forked over about $74 million. That may sound like a lot, but those amounts are still just a tiny fraction of the $10 – $12 billion that researchers estimate Google should be paying publishers.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-a-197-trillion-company-is-protesting-californias-plan-to-pay-journalists-175706632.html?src=rss

Spectra Logic’s Spectra Cube library is compatible with LTO-6, LTO-7, LTO-8, and LTO-9 tapes and can store up to 30PB of data.