Microsoft has open sourced the code for the 27-year-old program 3D Movie Maker — and it's all thanks to someone who asked on Twitter. Foone, whose Twitter profile says they're a "hardware and software necromancer," asked the tech giant for the source code to the program so they could expand and extend it. Microsoft doesn't own the BRender engine it runs on, which potentially posed a problem, but the one who does own it told Foone that he would be happy to open source it if he can find a copy. Thankfully, someone kept a copy of the engine, and Microsoft was able to release the program's code in its entirety.
Hey friends - we've open sourced the code to 1995's Microsoft 3D Movie Maker https://t.co/h4mYSKRrjK Thanks to @jeffwilcox and the Microsoft OSS office as well our friends in legal and those who continue to put up with me being a nudzh. Thanks to @foone for the idea! Enjoy. https://t.co/6wBAkjkeIP
3D Movie Maker, which was released in 1995, gives users an easy way to create films by placing cartoony characters and props into pre-rendered environments. According to PCGamer, Foone plans to update the program so it can run on modern PCs, as well as add features to make it easier to share the resulting videos. "I'm expecting I'll get the basic modernized version in the next month to a few months, depending on how many issues I run into," they told PCGamer.
The original source code for the project is now on GitHub made available under the MIT license as open source. As RockPaperShotgun notes, the program's BRender engine was also used for games such as Carmageddon 1 & 2, so the code's release could potentially lead to fan-updated versions that can run more smoothly on modern computers.
Imagine everything you'd want in a gaming monitor — a bright and beautiful screen, a fast refresh rate for silky smooth graphics, HDR to really make things shine — and there's a good chance you'll find it in Alienware's 34 Curved QD-OLED monitor. It's one of the first screens to ship with Samsung's Quantum Dot OLED panels, and it's stacked with other features that'll make your Halo Infinite matches all the more satisfying. While it may seem a bit extravagant at $1,299, compared to Apple's $1,599 Studio Display it's practically a steal. (Or maybe I'm just telling myself that to justify buying this thing.)
I'll admit this up front: I'm a sucker for ultrawide (21:9) monitors. Having a ton of horizontal space makes it easy to juggle multiple apps at once, and it's far cleaner than setting up multiple displays. So when Alienware revealed that it was finally debuting an OLED ultrawide, I was sold. While OLED has solidified its place in premium TVs, it's taken a while to reach computer monitors (we only started getting OLED laptops regularly a few years ago). What makes this monitor even more intriguing is that it has all of the benefits you'd expect from OLED — deep black levels, excellent contrast and no backlight bleeding thanks to pixels that light up individually — but the addition of quantum dots means you'll continue to see vibrant colors as the screen gets brighter.
Sure, this new tech means there's another annoying display acronym to remember, but at least QD-OLED will offer some other notable upgrades. According to Samsung, it'll be able to reach up to 1,000 nits of peak brightness (like this Alienware monitor), whereas the cream of the current OLED crop reaches around 400 nits. More brightness isn't everything, especially since OLED's perfect black levels can produce some eye-blistering contrast, yet it's still a meaningful step forward as LCDs are becoming even more luminous with Mini-LED backlighting.
The Alienware QD-OLED monitor, like many 34-inch ultrawide models, features a 3,440 by 1,440 resolution. Think of it as an extra-long quad-HD screen: It's not as sharp as 4K, but it's still a huge leap ahead of 1080p. And since it doesn't have as many pixels as a 4K screen, you'll be able to play many games at its native resolution without taking out a loan for an RTX 3080 Ti. There's also support for G-SYNC Ultimate, NVIDIA's adaptive refresh rate technology which helps to reduce stuttering, as well as HDR 400 True Black. Alienware says it reaches 99.3 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut and it's also color calibrated at the factory, both important features if you're doing any production work.
Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
But enough specs, does this monitor actually look good in action? Yes, oh yes. My eyes watered while playing Halo Infinite's desert-based "Behemoth" map, it was almost as if I was watching the sun reflecting off pristine sand in person. (That was also a sign I needed to lower the brightness a bit.) I kept noticing new details about my Spartan's armor, thanks to the monitor's color accuracy and pitch-perfect contrast. It also took me a while to get used to playing Overwatch again, as my brain struggled to keep up with the QD-OLED's fast 175Hz refresh rate. The game reacted almost instantly, thanks to the QD-OLED monitor's 0.1ms response time.
Compared to Dell's 34-inch ultrawide gaming monitor, which I tested for several months last year, the Alienware QD-OLED looked dramatically better no matter what I was looking at. Colors popped off the screen, even when I was just scrolling through the web or watching movie trailers, and the deep curve always kept me in the center of the action. You'll have to live with vertical black bars if you want to watch typical 16x9 videos fullscreen, but personally, I'd rather have more room to play something in the corner or side of the screen. Let your TV handle movie night — ultrawide monitors are all about multitasking.
A bigger issue is the lack of support for ultrawide resolutions in some games. Elden Ring, for example, can only be played in standard widescreen resolution. (You could risk a third-party patch, but that could get you banned if you play online.) I still enjoyed the dozens of hours I spent with the game on this QD-OLED monitor, but the black bars on the sides of the screen effectively turned it into a 27-inch display. You could run the game in a window and multitask on the side, but Elden Ring is the sort of experience I'd rather devote my full attention to. At the very least, the state of ultrawide gaming is far better now than it was a few years ago. It's hard to find major titles that ignore 21:9 screens entirely, especially when it comes to shooters.
While the Alienware QD-OLED's design isn't as handsome as Apple's metallic Studio Display, it features the same sci-fi aesthetic Alienware has been pushing since 2019. The case is made of plastic, but at least it feels sturdy and smooth to the touch. There's none of the cheap flexing you'd find on budget monitors. There's a tasteful oval of LED lighting on the back of the monitor, alongside a glowing Alienware logo, but it's thankfully free of the garish bling you'd find on other gaming displays. A small fan blows hot air out of the top of the monitor, which gives it a slight hum that was easily drowned out by the sounds of my gaming rig. The Alienware monitor also offers both tilt and height adjustment, something you'd have to pay $400 more to get with the Studio Display.
Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
When it comes to connectivity, the Alienware 34 QD-OLED includes one DisplayPort 1.4 connection (up to 175Hz), 2 HDMI 2.0 ports (up to 100Hz), and four USB 3.2 Gen 1 connections spread across the bottom and back of the display. There's also a headphone port on the bottom bottom of the monitor, and an audio line-out connection on the rear. It would have been nice to see HDMI 2.1 ports, or at the very least HDMI 2.0 connections with 120Hz support for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Clearly, Alienware is focusing on PC gamers, but some competitors offer HDMI 2.1 to make life easier for console players.
At $1,299, you'll be paying a steep price for Alienware's QD-OLED monitor, but it’s on par with other premium ultrawide monitors. LG's 34-inch UltraGear is currently selling for $1,243, but that's an LCD screen with a slower refresh rate. Or you could just go for LG's 42-inch C2 OLED TV for $1,399, which is one of the best screens you can buy right now. (but it's probably a bit too tall for desk work). If you're looking for a similarly-sized display on a budget, Dell's (admittedly far less impressive) 34-inch ultrawide gaming monitor is down to $500.
Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
Here's the thing: Even though Alienware's QD-OLED is a major investment, it's arguably a wise one that could last you for years. For the price of a premium display last year (and less than Apple's Studio Display!), you get next-generation OLED technology, an objectively gorgeous screen and all of the gaming upgrades you could ask for. It’s the rare gadget that makes me grin like an absolute idiot while I’m using it, surely that’s worth paying for.
If you've been looking to grab a new Apple TV, you now have another chance to do so at a discount. The 32GB version of the Apple TV 4K device released in 2021 is now available for $150 at Amazon, or $29 less than its retail price of $179. That's the lowest price we've seen for the streaming box on the website — it was only briefly available for that much last holiday season.
We gave the 2021 Apple TV 4K a score of 90 in our review and praised it for coming with an excellent Siri remote, which we think is a great selling point for the device. It's larger than its predecessor, making it harder to lose, and we found its revamped directional pad easier to use for making fine-tuned selections. You can even use the pad as dial to scrub backwards and forwards in a video. We also found that the remote does an excellent job at interpreting our voice commands.
We praised the Apple TV for its quicker performance and capability to load apps faster than before, as well. Its A12 Bionic processor gives it the capability to support Dolby Vision content, HDR videos at 60FPS and Dolby Atmos for an immersive, room-filling audio. And, if you have an iPhone or an iPad, the streaming box is probably the option that makes the most sense for you. It will allow you to beam content to your TV via AirPlay and screen mirroring, and you'll be able to use your iOS device to type in text on your TV. The Apple TV also comes in a version with 64GB of storage, though that one's not on sale at the moment.
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Georgia Wells, Yoree Koh and Salvador Rodriguez; The Wall Street Journal
"The employees, many of them veterans of other major tech companies, say TikTok emphasizes relentless productivity and secrecy to a degree uncommon in the industry," the report explains.
San Francisco federal district court Judge James Donato has tossed the lawsuit Donald Trump filed against Twitter last year in a bid to get his account back. The social network permanently suspended the former president's account after his supporters stormed the Capitol in January 2021. In the company's announcement, Twitter cited two of his tweets in particular that it believes were "highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate the criminal acts that took place at the US Capitol" on January 6th last year.
Trump filed a lawsuit in October, seeking a preliminary injunction on the ban and arguing that it violates his First Amendment rights. Donato disagreed and noted in his ruling that Twitter is a private company. "The First Amendment applies only to governmental abridgements of speech," he explained, "and not to alleged abridgements by private companies." The judge also rejected the notion that the social network had acted as a government entity after being pressured by Trump's opponents and had thereby violated the First Amendment when it banned the former President.
In his lawsuit, Trump asked the judge to rule the federal Communications Decency Act, which states that online service providers such as Twitter can't be held liable for content posted by users, as unconstitutional. The judge shot down that claim, as well, and ruled that the former President didn't have legal standing to challenge Section 230 of CDA. Trump is a known critic of Section 230 and proposed to limit the protections social media platforms enjoy under it during his term.
The former President was an avid Twitter user before his suspension and formed his own social network called Truth Social after he was banned. Just recently, he told CNBC that he won't be going back to Twitter even if Elon Musk reverses his suspension and will stay on Truth Social instead. According to a recent report by the Daily Beast, Truth Social has 513,000 daily active users compared to Twitter's 217 million.
Elon Musk's $44 billion buyout of Twitter is facing its first legal challenge. A Florida pension fund is suing Musk and Twitter, arguing that the deal can't legally close until 2025 due to the billionaire's stake in the platform. The proposed class-action lawsuit — filed today by the Orlando Police Pension Fund in the Delaware Chancery court— also declares that Twitter’s board of directors breached its fiduciary duties by allowing the deal to go through. In addition to Musk and Twitter, the lawsuit also named former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, current Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and the company’s board as defendants.
In a message to Engadget, Tulane Law School’s Professor Ann M. Lipton says the lawsuit raises "some very novel issues" under Delaware corporate law. Under a law known as Section 203, shareholders who own more than 15 percent of the company can’t enter a merger without two-thirds of the remaining shares granting approval. Without this approval, the merger can’t be finalized for another three years.
The fund’s lawyers state that Musk initially owned roughly 10 percent of Twitter’s shares, which would seemingly not make Section 203 applicable. But, the fund argues, Musk formed a pact with Morgan Stanley (which owns 8.8 percent of shares) and former CEO Jack Dorsey (who has 2.4 percent) to advance the deal. The combined stake of these parties allegedly makes Musk and his allies in the takeover deal an "interested shareholder" under Section 203 — which, if the court agrees with the underlying reasoning presented in the case, means the merger must either be delayed or get approval shareholders representing at least two-thirds of the company's ownership.
“Section 203 is not often litigated, and so the issue of whether Musk's relationship with these parties actually counts for statutory purposes is an unsettled question and it will be interesting to watch how it unfolds,” wrote Lipton.
More details of Musk’s highly complex $44 billion buyout of Twitter have been made public since the social media platform accepted the billionaire’s offer last month. The New York Times reported that Musk promised investors returns of nearly five to ten times their investments if the deal went through. Parts of the deal are being scrutinized, including its reliance on foreign investors and whether Musk bought shares in the company specifically to influence its leadership. But antitrust experts say the merger is unlikely to be blocked by the FTC. The agency will decide in the next month whether to quickly approve the merger or launch a lengthier investigation.
Mining Capital Coin CEO and founder Luiz Capuci Jr. was — in an indictment unsealed yesterday — accused by the DOJ of allegedly running a $62 million global investment fraud scheme. He's the latest of severalcrypto company heads who have recently been similarly charged.
Through his company, Capuci convinced investors to purchase “Mining Packages," a global network of cryptocurrency mines that promised a certain return on investment every week. But instead of using investors’ funds to mine cryptocurrency as he promised, the DOJ alleges that Capuci diverted the funds to his own cryptocurrency wallets. Another MCC product known as “Trading Bots” operated under the same false pretenses. Capuci claimed that the bots operated in “very high frequency, being able to do thousands of trades per second” and promised investors daily returns.
“As he did with the Mining Packages, however, Capuci allegedly operated an investment fraud scheme with the Trading Bots and was not, as he promised, using MCC Trading Bots to generate income for investors, but instead was diverting the funds to himself and co-conspirators,” wrote the DOJ in its indictment.
MCC seemed to have all the workings of a pyramid scheme. Capuci recruited affiliates and promoters to lure investors. In return, he promised the promoters a number of lavish gifts, including Apple watches, iPads and luxury vehicles.
Currently the FBI’s Miami Field Office is investigating the case. The DOJ has charged Capuci, who is from Port St. Lucie, Florida, with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud and conspiracy to commit international money laundering. If found guilty, he faces a maximum sentence of 45 years.
In a review of the cryptocurrency mining platform, crypto blogger Peter Obi noted that the combination of MCC’s $50 monthly fee for membership and its steep 3% withdrawal fee meant that investors were unlikely to make a profit unless they referred other investors. He pointed out that such a referral process was “particularly worrying” because it was consistent with other past crypto scams.
Indeed, a number of crypto leaders have been accused by authorities of running Ponzi schemes in recent years. Earlier this year the DOJ indicted Bitconnect founder Satishkumar Kurjibhai Kumbhani for allegedly running a $2 billion Ponzi scheme — believed to be the largest virtual currency pyramid scheme in history.
Capuci never registered his company with the SEC. The agency today issued a fraud alert for the company. According to the SEC press release, Capuci and his associates successfully convinced 65,535 investors to purchase mining packages worldwide and promised daily returns of one percent, paid weekly for over a year. In total, the group netted $8.1 million from the sale of the mining packages and $3.2 million from initiation fees.
Cryptocurrency mixers are sometimes used to help online criminals launder their stolen money by hiding its true origins, and the US Treasury is now ready to clamp down on them when hostile governments are involved. The department has issued its first sanctions against a Bitcoin mixer, Blender.io, for allegedly and "indiscriminately" helping North Korea launder over $20.5 million in crypto from the $620 million Axie Infinity heist and other crimes.
The measures block all Blender property in the US (or controlled by US residents), as well as US-linked transactions and any entities where blocked people have majority control. On a basic level, blocks create an audit trail and prevent sanctioned entities' funds from changing hands.
The sanctions come after officials pinned the Axie Infinity theft on Lazarus Group, an outfit frequently linked to the North Korean government's cybercrime and cyberwarfare efforts. North Korea has been repeatedly accused of hacking banks and cryptocurrency holders to evade international sanctions and finance its weapons programs.
The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control also used the opportunity to identify four digital wallets Lazarus reportedly used to launder the rest of the Axie Infinity crypto. The perpetrators relied on one "getaway" wallet for the crime itself.
The agency stressed that most cryptocurrency activity was legal, and that it was only targeting mixers that aid criminals. However, there's a not-so-subtle warning here: the US is willing to sanction crypto service providers if they tolerate state-backed hackers, not just the nations directing those hacks.
The streaming device, which can be plugged into a TV or monitor, will have either a stick or a puck design, according to GamesBeat. In other words, it'll look like an Amazon Fire Stick or a Chromecast. It's believed that you'll not only be able to stream games from Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with the device, but also use it to watch movies and TV shows.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is said to be working with Samsung on an Xbox app for that company's TVs. Some of Samsung's 2022 models support game streaming services like Google Stadia and NVIDIA GeForce Now. It wouldn't be surprising at all to see an Xbox Cloud Gaming app on those TVs too.
Both the TV app and streaming device are expected to arrive within the next 12 months. They form part of Microsoft's Xbox Everywhere strategy. The name is self-explanatory — the company wants to reach gamers wherever they are, even if they don't have an Xbox console or a capable gaming PC.
What makes this different from other streaming games from Xbox is that it's free. You don't need an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription to stream Fortnite — just a Microsoft account. Microsoft says it's interested in offering more free-to-play titles via the cloud, so perhaps the likes of Apex Legends, Call of Duty Warzoneand the multiplayer side of Halo Infinitewill be available at some point.
We might not have to wait much longer to hear about the next steps for the Xbox Everywhere initiative. A big Xbox and Bethesda showcase will take place on June 12th, and there could be more than game announcements and trailers in store.
Amazon fired a number of senior managers from its JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island on Thursday, only a month after workers voted to unionize. The New York Times reported that the company axed more than half a dozen senior-level workers on Thursday, many of who were involved in union organizing. A number of anonymous employees told the NYT that they believed the firings were retaliatory. JFK8 is the first and currently the only unionized Amazon warehouse in the US.
In a statement to Engadget, Amazon said the workers were fired as a result of “management changes.” “Part of our culture at Amazon is to continually improve, and we believe it’s important to take time to review whether or not we’re doing the best we could be for our team. Over the last several weeks, we’ve spent time evaluating aspects of the operations and leadership at JFK8 and, as a result, have made some management changes.”
Other Amazon workers have recently gotten the pink slip, allegedly due to their union involvement. Just a couple of weeks ago, four recently terminated Amazon employees filed charges with the NLRB, alleging that they were being punished for supporting a union. Last month the NLRB ordered Amazon to reinstate Gerald Bryson, a worker at the JFK8 facility who was fired due to what Amazon alleged was his violation of a company language policy. But the NLRB’s judge was not convinced by this argument, and accused Amazon of performing a “skewed investigation” of Bryson and retaliating against him for his union work.
Just yesterday, Amazon Labor Union president Chris Smalls testified before the Senate Budget Committee and met with President Joe Biden. The Biden administration has expressed reserved support for unionization efforts by Amazon, Starbucks and other workers.
In his testimony before the Senate, Smalls argued that the federal government should avoid awarding Amazon contracts due to its labor practices. “We cannot allow Amazon or any other employer to receive taxpayer money if they engage in illegal union-busting behavior and deny workers’ rights,” said Smalls.
