ArduinoMania

Jack Texeira, the Air National Guard member who was arrested in April for sharing documents containing US intelligence matters, has been indicted on six counts of willful retention and transmission of classified national defense information. According to The New York Times, Texeira was indicted by a federal grand jury and now faces up to 60 years in prison. His 10-page indictment reportedly contained a distilled version of the national secrets Texeira allegedly took from the Cape Cod air base and shared with people on Discord. 

The Justice Department arrested Texeira in April in connection with its investigation on the "alleged unauthorized removal, retention, and transmission of classified national defense information." While previous reports said he shared national secrets using a pseudonym on Discord, he was identified through the Instagram account he linked to his Steam profile. The photos on that account showed the same granite kitchen countertop and floor tiles that were also visible in the leaks. 

According to the 10-page indictment documents, Texeira mishandled classified information that included details on the delivery of military equipment to Ukraine, as well as details on Russian and Ukrainian troop movements. He also reportedly leaked documents showing how the US spies on its foreign allies. Some of the documents he shared with the public had markings to show that they had the most highly restricted classification and could only be viewed inside a protected facility. 

Previous reports said Texeira didn't intend to become a whistleblower and only started sharing documents to impress his gaming friends. He started by copying sensitive information by hand, since he worked at a facility that prohibited cameras and phones, but was eventually able to post photos of original documents. Since he was arrested, prosecutors presented his history of making violent and racist threats to court. The Justice Department's national security division also argued for his indefinite detention, because he could still be in possession of information that would be "tremendous value to hostile nation-states." In addition, the Justice Department has revealed that Air Force officials failed to remove Texeira from his job and to take appropriate action after catching him copying sensitive details and actively looking for classified information months before he was arrested. 

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After years of development, Virgin Galactic is finally ready to take paying customers. The company has confirmed that its first commercial spaceflight, Galactic 01, will launch between June 27th and June 30th. This inaugural mission will carry three people from Italy's Air Force and National Research Council as they conduct microgravity research. Virgin had anticipated a late June start, but hadn't committed to that window until now.

The company already has follow-up flights scheduled. Galactic 02 is expected to launch in early August and will carry a private crew. Virgin will fly on a monthly basis afterward, although details of future missions aren't yet available. At least the first two flights will stream live through the company's website.

Virgin conducted its last pre-commercial flight test, its fifth spaceflight of any kind, in late May. The company faced numerous delays and incidents getting to that point, however. The company completed its first SpaceShipTwo test flights in 2013, but paused its efforts after the deadly 2014 crash of VSS Enterprise. Flight testing didn't resume until VSS Unity's glide test at the end of 2016. The firm finally reached space in 2018, but had to wait until 2021 to complete its first fully crewed spaceflight with founder Richard Branson aboard. It pushed back commercial service multiple times due to varying factors, most recently delays in upgrading the VMS Eve "mothership" that carries SpaceShipTwo vehicles to their launch altitude.

The debut is important for Virgin's business. Virgin has operated at a loss for years, losing more than $500 million just in 2022. Commercial service won't recoup those investments quickly even at $450,000 per ticket, but it will give the company a significant source of revenue.

This isn't the start of space tourism for Virgin. In that sense, it's still trailing Blue Origin. Galactic 01 will put Virgin ahead of SpaceX, though, as that company's Starship rocket has yet to reach space and isn't expected to launch its first lunar tourist flights until late 2024 at the earliest. While Virgin is less ambitious than Elon Musk's operation, it's also achieving its goals sooner.

British instrument manufacturer Unidentified Dancing Objects (UDO) has released pricing and availability information for its upcoming Super Gemini synthesizer after first teasing the device at Superbooth 2023. The Super Gemini is an absolute beast, with 20 voices, dual-layer polyphony, and a bi-timbral analog hybrid sound engine. This means you can play 20 notes at once, but the dual-layer polyphony lets you combine sounds, making ten “super” voices that deliver unique sound design combinations to the left and right stereo channels.

If you’re thinking this is a fantastic option for comprehensive sound design, well that’s the point. The stereo binaural signal path is equipped with effects processors, gate arrays and pedal connectors to allow for “glittering frequency” and “shattering harmonics”, with the company boasting that the instrument is great for creating both familiar and discordant soundscapes. There’s 256 performance and patch slots and a whopping 64 interchangeable waveforms to start your sound design journey. Sound design options include wave morphing, cross mod features, bi-directional sync and, of course, an all-analog signal path.

The sequencer stores 16 editable patterns and the exterior is equipped with dual control schemes that let you simultaneously sculpt sounds across both channels. The Super Gemini is sturdy with an exterior built from aluminum and steel, with UDO noting that the knobs and levers received the same attention to detail. The 61-note keybed is semi-weighted and boasts polyphonic aftertouch and the custom-engineered panel includes a ribbon controller for individual note articulation.

The Super Gemini follows the company’s well-received Super 6 synth, though improves upon it in nearly every way. The only downside here? This is a professional synth with high-grade components, so it’s gonna cost you. UDO’s Super Gemini costs $4,200 and preorders are available now at various music retailers, though it won’t ship until October.

Rockstar Games co-founder and former creative director Dan Houser has a new company. Absurd Ventures says it will build stories, characters and worlds across different mediums — including but not limited to video games. The 49-year-old left Rockstar Games in 2020.

“Storytelling. Philanthropy. Ultraviolence.” That’s the tagline for Absurd Ventures, which launches with the two-minute video below that shows more than it tells about the company’s creative, abstract and edgy vibe. However, a press release does provide a more tangible description, describing Absurd as “building narrative worlds, creating characters, and writing stories for a diverse variety of genres, without regard to medium, to be produced for live-action and animation; video games and other interactive content; books, graphic novels, and scripted podcasts.”

It would be a vast understatement to say Houser was a central figure during his 22 years at Rockstar, one of gaming’s all-time great success stories. He co-founded the legendary studio in 1998 with his brother Sam Houser, Jamie King, Terry Donovan and Gary Foreman. As Rockstar grew, he remained an integral part of the company’s creative works, including producing five Grand Theft Auto games and serving as a writer for every GTA installment to date (including Grand Theft Auto V) and both Red Dead Redemption titles. In addition, he did voice work in Grand Theft Auto III and its two standalone expansion games.

Cocoon is a game that makes perfect sense while you're playing it. That would be an unremarkable achievement if it wasn't also a game that forces you to use its levels to solve themselves. At Summer Game Fest 2023 I had around half an hour to play through the game’s opening, and it has stuck with me more than anything else I saw at the show.

Cocoon is the debut game from Geometric Interactive, a studio founded by former Playdead employees Jeppe Carlsen and Jakob Schmid. Carlsen was the lead gameplay designer of the award-winning puzzle platformers Limbo and Inside, and Schmid the audio programmer of Inside. The pair also collaborated on 140, a minimalistic indie platformer, and have been working on Cocoon with a small team in Denmark for over five years.

As in Limbo, Inside and 140, controls and interactivity in general are pared back to a minimum. On an Xbox controller, that means movement with an analog stick and interactions confined to a single button. The complexity comes from the environment, the narrative from exploration. It’s reminiscent of Tunic or Hyper Light Drifter in its lack of dialogue and tutorials.

Orbs are everything in Cocoon. They're assets that open doors, trigger switches, reveal hidden paths and solve puzzles, but they’re also levels themselves. Remember that scene in Men In Black where there’s an entire galaxy in a little marble on a cat's collar? Geometric Interactive has taken that idea and made it a core mechanic. Each orb is a distinct world with its own vibe, original puzzle mechanics and a boss fight. You can hop in and out of these worlds by placing an orb into sockets dotted around the game, and can even bring orbs into other orbs, which, given the abilities they unlock, will likely be critical to finding paths forward.

I say there’s a “boss fight” in every orb, but there is no conventional combat in Cocoon – there is just a single interaction button, after all. You defeat bosses by using something in the environment like a water spout or an exploding mine. These fights are also forgiving: I took a “hit” once, and it revealed a delightful mechanic: Instead of dealing damage or killing me, the boss booted me out of its world. I then had to traverse back to the fight to finish it off. Defeating the two bosses I found granted new powers of sorts, in classic Metroidvania style, which allowed progression to new areas and the discovery of more orbs.

There were other simple environmental puzzles to solve. One involved ascertaining the order in which to hit some switches, another had me pulling towers around to open a door. A slightly trickier one involved some doubling back to navigate a hidden path. Given this was the very start of the game, I’m sure the complexity will ramp up significantly. By the end of my playthrough, I was already jumping in and out of worlds in order to get orbs to where they needed to be. 

A colleague who was watching my demo said that they could tell I’ve "played a lot of these types of games” — thing is, I haven’t. Cocoon is a game where everything makes sense, but you can’t explain why. I'm sure, as in other puzzle adventures, I'll get stumped in some places, but exploring this world felt completely natural. After a while I stopped being surprised that everything I tried just worked. Solving puzzles became a flow state as I giddily wandered around carrying my precious orbs.

Cocoon is firmly at the top of my wishlist already, and it’s tough imagining anything overtaking it. It’s being published by Annapurna Interactive, and will come to Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation and Xbox consoles later this year.

Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest right here!

Twitch is giving livestreamers a considerably stronger incentive to grow their audiences. The service plans to roll out a Partner Plus program that will give more successful creators a 70 percent share of their net subscription revenue instead of the usual 50 percent, up to a $100,000 threshold in the calendar year. A partner will qualify by holding on to at least 350 recurring paid subscriptions (gifts and Prime don't count) for three months. If they meet that standard, they'll get that 70 percent cut for the next 12 months regardless of whether or not they stay above the 350-subscription mark. This can extend indefinitely.

Partner Plus launches October 1st, and will automatically include anyone who meets the requirements for the three prior months. The program will be available worldwide, and doesn't offer anything beyond what Premium Partners (major creators who've negotiated special deals) receive.

This effort comes months after Twitch announced plans for an identical cap for Premium Partners. Twitch president at the time (now CEO) Dan Clancy claimed in September this wouldn't affect 90 percent of relevant streamers, and that increased ad payouts would help make up the difference. However, that might still irk major streamers who depend on Twitch for a living — they're effectively taking a pay cut. There's a risk this may prompt other streamers to jump to YouTube and other platforms if they receive more lucrative terms.

Not that Twitch is necessarily concerned. Partner Plus increases the practical income for many more streamers than Premium, encouraging them to stick to the service — particularly if they're in the early stages of a livestreaming career. That theoretically increases the overall number of available channels, and keeps viewers from drifting to rivals.

Twitch has faced some difficulties in recent months, including a backlash over the Premium revenue split and the impact of parent company Amazon's mass layoffs. Partner Plus isn't guaranteed to solve matters, but it does suggest Twitch is willing to significantly alter its strategy in response to these problems.

Almost three years into the Xbox Series X/S lifecycle, Microsoft says it is no longer making games for the Xbox One. While the company will continue to support ongoing previous-generation titles like Minecraft and Halo Infinite, no Xbox Game Studios teams are working on new titles for the older console. "We've moved on to gen 9," Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty told Axios, referring to the Xbox Series X/S consoles. The company also makes its games for PC.

This move had to happen at some point to avoid newer and more complex games being hamstrung by the hardware limitations of the decade-old Xbox One. Still, it'll be possible for those clinging onto an Xbox One to play Series X/S titles such as Starfield and Forza Motorsport through Xbox Cloud Gaming. “That’s how we’re going to maintain support," Booty said.

The news comes in the wake of a strong showing for Xbox at its big annual showcase last weekend. It announced new titles such as Compulsion's South of Midnight and InXile’s Clockwork Revolution, while providing fresh looks at the likes of Fable, Avowed and Senua's Saga: Hellblade II.

The move away from Xbox One will free Microsoft's teams from the shackles of the previous generation. However, some third-party developers have raised concerns that the Xbox Series S, which is less powerful than the Series X, is holding them back too.

Booty conceded that making sure games run well on the Series S requires "more work." Still, he noted Microsoft's studios (particularly those working on their second games for this generation of consoles) are now able to better optimize their projects for the Series S.

It’s never fun when you buy a concert ticket for $30, only to find out it actually costs three times that after an endless series of amorphous fees. This has been at the heart of consumer revolt against companies like Ticketmaster for decades, and now things actually may be changing.

Ticketmaster and Live Nation are pledging to give US consumers the actual price of a ticket before they make a purchase, and not the fairyland price they use to lure in customers. President Biden is expected to officially announce the move during a meeting with live entertainment industry leaders later this afternoon, as originally reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Biden has made this a crucial element of his “kitchen table” economic agenda since announcing he’d be putting pressure on companies to eliminate hidden fees and surcharges during February's State of the Union address. Live Nation Entertainment, the company formed via a merger between Live Nation and Ticketmaster, has officially committed to making these transparency changes by September.

Though Live Nation/Ticketmaster has committed to the change, promising a “clear, total price”, Biden is heading up a roundtable discussion later today at the White House to encourage other companies like SeatGeek, Airbnb, DICE and many more to do the same. It’s expected that most companies attending the roundtable will make some kind of commitment toward consumer transparency. Airbnb has been especially unfriendly toward consumers in this respect, with all of those mysterious cleaning fees, but began addressing the issue of transparency late last year.

“Today’s voluntary actions demonstrate that companies both big and small recognize the importance of providing consumers with honest, up-front all-in pricing, rather than tricking them with surprise fees at the end of checkout. It is also just a first step towards addressing junk fees in the economy,” the White House said in a statement.

While these changes don’t eliminate junk fees (corporations gonna corporate) they do give consumers vital information that allows them to make informed purchase decisions, which is a start. Back in February, Biden proposed legislation called the Junk Fee Protection Act to actually reduce the presence of these hidden fees, including excessive charges when purchasing digital tickets to concerts and sporting events. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) introduced similar legislation in Congress, but it hasn't come up for a vote.

Ticketmaster recently came under fire after running into a host of issues when selling Taylor Swift tickets for her “Eras” tour, leading to customers experiencing website outages, a preponderance of bots and extreme wait times. The company eventually canceled the sale altogether, due to not having enough supply to fill demand. This lead to a Senate hearing addressing the company’s perceived monopolistic behaviors.

Mercedes-Benz is putting ChatGPT on the road. The automaker is using Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service to bring the viral natural-language model to its in-car voice assistant. It will initially be available in a three-month beta program for US customers in select vehicles, but Mercedes says it will consider a broader and more permanent rollout in the future.

ChatGPT integration could put the automaker’s “Hey Mercedes” voice assistant on steroids. Rather than merely answering simple and pre-programmed commands like “Turn up the heat” or “What’s the forecast,” it can carry natural conversations about virtually any topic, including contextual follow-up questions. (Children of the 1980s can finally live out their Knight Rider fantasies.) In addition, Mercedes says it’s “exploring” ChatGPT plugins to enable tasks like making restaurant reservations or booking movie tickets through natural language.

Although holding a lengthy chat on the road could lead to distracted driving, the fact that it’s voice-only should lessen the concern for recklessness. Perhaps it could even help by answering questions you’d otherwise be tempted to look up on your phone while behind the wheel.

Mercedes and Microsoft tout Azure’s “enterprise-grade security, privacy and reliability” for data protection. Still, the companies clarify that your conversations will be “stored in the Mercedes-Benz Intelligent Cloud, where it is anonymised and analysed.” In other words, assume people will listen to your recordings for training and data analysis, so be wary about uttering anything that’s private or could identify you personally.

The three-month beta begins on June 16th and will only cover select Mercedes models running the MBUX infotainment system. (You can view the list of eligible vehicles in the footnotes here.) To enter the program in a qualified model, tell the car’s built-in voice assistant, “Hey Mercedes, I want to join the beta program.”