Last week, Netflix announced the acquisition of InterPositive, an AI company co-founded by Ben Affleck that helps filmmakers edit footage in post-production. This deal could be worth up to $600 million, according to Bloomberg, potentially ranking it among the streaming giant’s largest acquisitions ever. The most Netflix has ever paid for a single acquisition was … Read more
Humble has teamed up with Frictional Games for a new bundle of PC games that pushed the horror genre forward. The bundle includes the Penumbra Collectors Pack, all four Amnesia titles (The Dark Descent, A Machine for Pigs, The Bunker, and Rebirth), and Soma, which I consider to be its opus in terms of visual … Read more
Lovable crossed $400 million in annual recurring revenue in February, the Stockholm company confirmed to TechCrunch. But it declined to say whether it is still projecting to reach $1 billion ARR by year’s end, saying its focus is on “helping builders scale their impact with our platform.” Alongside Cursor, Mercor, and others, Lovable is part … Read more
Researchers say they have uncovered a takedown-resistant botnet of 14,000 routers and other network devices—primarily made by Asus—that have been conscripted into a proxy network that anonymously carries traffic used for cybercrime. The malware—dubbed KadNap—takes hold by exploiting vulnerabilities that have gone unpatched by their owners, Chris Formosa, a researcher at security firm Lumen’s Black … Read more
Since 2023, Valve says it has worked with the AGs to explain how its virtual items and mystery boxes work. It argues that players “don’t have to open mystery boxes to play Valve games” and that most don’t “because the items in the boxes are purely cosmetic.” Valve plans to fight James’ claims in court, … Read more
The key to working at a place like Ars Technica is solid news judgment. I’m talking about the kind of news judgment that knows whether a pet peeve is merely a pet peeve or whether it is, instead, a meaningful example of the Ways that Technology is Changing our World. The difference between the two … Read more
When Asus and Microsoft launched the ROG Xbox Ally X last summer, it came with a bespoke controller-driven full-screen interface running on top of Windows 11. The handheld was still running Windows under the hood, and you could bring up the typical Windows desktop any time, but it defaulted to the full-screen gaming UI. Then … Read more
In a sea of massive valuations for early-stage AI startups, today we have a bit of rare news: a jumbo round and valuation step up for an e-commerce company. Quince announced on Wednesday that it raised a $500 million Series E round at a $10.1 billion valuation. The round was led by previous investor Iconiq, … Read more
Chatbots could help “the next school shooter” The exceptions were Snapchat’s My AI and Anthropic’s Claude, which “refused to assist would-be attackers, in 54 percent and 68 percent of responses respectively… However, every chatbot tested gave a would-be attacker actionable information in at least some responses, showing improvements are possible for every chatbot,” the CCDH … Read more
Instead of moving forward with a jury trial against Live Nation-Ticketmaster as expected, the Justice Department announced a settlement Monday that omitted what used to be on the top of its wish list: a breakup. What the DOJ did get was a series of concessions that some industry stakeholders found unsatisfying and even baffling. There … Read more