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One Activision Blizzard studio won't form a union, at least not in the near future. The Communication Workers of America (CWA) says it's withdrawing its petition for a union vote at Blizzard support studio Proletariat, which is currently working on World of Warcraft: Dragonflight. As Kotakunotes, a CWA spokesperson claims Proletariat chief Seth Sivak saw employees' unionization move as a "personal attack" and held meetings that allegedly "demoralized and disempowered" the team enough to prevent a fair election.

The pro-union group, the Proletariat Workers Alliance, said in December that it had majority support. Activision Blizzard declined to willingly recognize the union, though, forcing an election through the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). It's not clear how much support the vote has now, but Proletariat engineer Dustin Yost says in a statement that the union-busting meetings "took their toll."

We've asked Activision Blizzard and the CWA for comment. There are no immediate indications the CWA plans to resubmit the petition or file a complaint with the NLRB over the alleged anti-union tactics. Yost says he still feels a union is the "best way" to get industry representation.

Staff at Activision Blizzard's Albany studio and Raven Software successfully unionized last year despite accusations of anti-union tactics from the publisher. However, those campaigns were limited to quality assurance testers. Proletariat Workers Alliance hoped to unite the entire studio except for management, which was considerably more complex. According to an Axiossource, some teammates felt the unionization push was too quick and didn't give them the time to understand the consequences.

This doesn't rule out a union at Proletariat or other Activision Blizzard teams. With that said, it comes as workers across the tech space seek to unionize, including at gaming giants like Microsoft's ZeniMax. Developers and testers don't feel they're getting fair working conditions, and they're increasingly willing to speak out on the subject.

NASA is going back to an old idea as it tries to get humans to Mars. It is teaming up with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to test a nuclear thermal rocket engine in space with the aim of using the technology for crewed missions to the red planet. The agencies hope to "demonstrate advanced nuclear thermal propulsion technology as soon as 2027," NASA administrator Bill Nelson said. "With the help of this new technology, astronauts could journey to and from deep space faster than ever — a major capability to prepare for crewed missions to Mars."

Under the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) program, NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate will take the lead on technical development of the engine, which will be integrated with an experimental spacecraft from DARPA. NASA says that nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) could allow spacecraft to travel faster, which could reduce the volume of supplies needed to carry out a long mission. An NTD engine could also free up space for more science equipment and extra power for instrumentation and communication.

As far back as the 1940s, scientists started speculating about the possibility of using nuclear energy to power spaceflight. The US conducted ground experiments on that front starting in the '50s. Budget cutbacks and changing priorities (such as a focus on the Space Shuttle program) led to NASA abandoning the project at the end of 1972 before it carried out any test flights.

There are, of course, risks involved with NTP engines, such as the possible dispersal of radioactive material in the environment should a failure occur in the atmosphere or orbit. Nevertheless, NASA says the faster transit times that NTP engines can enable could lower the risk to astronauts — they could reduce travel times to Mars by up to a quarter. Nuclear thermal rockets could be at least three times more efficient than conventional chemical propulsion methods.

NASA is also looking into nuclear energy to power related space exploration efforts. In 2018, it carried out tests of a portable nuclear reactor as part of efforts to develop a system capable of powering a habitat on Mars. Last year, NASA and the Department of Energy selected three contractors to design a fission surface power system that it can test on the Moon. DARPA and the Defense Department have worked on other NTP engine projects over the last few years.

Meanwhile, the US has just approved a small modular nuclear design for the first time. As Gizmodo reports, the design allows for a nuclear facility that's around a third the size of a standard reactor. Each module is capable of producing around 50 megawatts of power. The design, from a company called NuScale, could lower the cost and complexity of building nuclear power plants.

In November, millions of Taylor Swift fans logged on to Ticketmaster hoping to scoop up tickets to arguably the most-anticipated tour of 2023. When the time came, the site crashed, rendering verified users unable to purchase admission to the singer's first slate of shows in five years. In the immediate aftermath, Ticketmaster parent company Live Nation explained that while 1.5 million people had signed up as legit customers, over 14 million hit the site when tickets went on sale — many of which were bots. 

Live Nation president and CFO Joe Berchtold told the Senate Judiciary Comittee on Tuesday that the company "learned valuable lessons" from the Swift debacle. "In hindsight there are several things we could have done better – including staggering the sales over a longer period of time and doing a better job setting fan expectations for getting tickets," he said. 

Berchtold told Senators that Ticketmaster experienced three times more bot traffic that day than it ever had before, and that a cyberattack on the company's verified fan password servers exacerbated the problem. He explained that despite investing over $1 billion in ticketing systems since the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger, mostly to combat fraud and scalping, the company has a massive bot problem that it can't get a handle on. 

"We also need to recognize how industrial scalpers breaking the law using bots and cyberattacks to try to unfairly gain tickets contributes to an awful consumer experience," Berchtold said. What he called "industrialized scalping" led to the Taylor Swift fiasco, he explained, but the executive wants Congress to act to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future. 

Berchtold called for Congress to expand the scope of the BOTS Act to "increase enforcement." Signed into law in 2016, the legislation makes it illegal to bypass a website's security or tech features as a means of purchasing tickets. It also makes it illegal to resell tickets obtained via those methods. Specifically, Berchtold called for banning the use of fraudulent URLs and stopping the resale of tickets before their general on-sale date. 

Tom Williams via Getty Images

The law leaves enforcement with the FTC and states, a topic Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn discussed with Berchtold in some of the most pointed questioning of the session. "You told me yesterday you block about 90 percent of the bot attacks that you get, and that's a failing grade," she said. "There ought to be people you can get some good advice from because our critical infrastructure in this country gets bot attacks every single day. They have figured it out, but you guys haven't?"

Blackburn admitted that the FTC has only taken action on the law once, and that the lack of widespread action was "unacceptable." She pledged to do something about the lack of enforcement through the dealings of the Senate Commerce Committee, where she is also a member. 

"The FTC has the authority, but you have a responsibility to consumers," she continued. "I agree they are not exercising it, but how many times have you called the FTC and said 'we need your help?'"

Berchtold explained that Live Nation had only contacted the FTC once about suspected bot activity — in late 2019 and early 2020. He said that was the only time they had necessary information to work with the commission in order to get a prosecution. "These are not bots that are trying to break into our system, they are trying to impersonate people... putting true fans at a disadvantage," Berchtold told Blackburn when asked why Live Nation has such a hard time recognizing bots.

In regards to the BOTS Act, Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal told Berchtold there are already legal options available to the company to go after scalpers using bots to procure tickets.

"You have unlimited power to go to court," Blumenthal said. "Your approach seems to be that everyone else is responsible here — not us." 

A new exploit in the PC version of Grand Theft Auto Online is causing players to lose game progress and in-game currency, with some accounts becoming corrupted or banned. The exploit, a “remote code execution,” was distributed through the developer of the North Online GTA cheat mod.

The exploit can reportedly impact anyone, not just players in the same multiplayer lobby as the attacker, according toBleepingComputer. That means anyone currently online and playing the game on PC is at least theoretically vulnerable to attack. (Console players are unaffected.) Engadget reached out to Rockstar for comment, and we will update this article if we hear back.

The company tweeted this acknowledgment of the fiasco on Monday.

North's developer removed the abusive elements on January 21st and apologized (their changelog read “bad judgement on my part for adding this public.”) Although GTA Online doesn’t block harmless community-created mods, those distributing cheats or other hacks tilting the game’s competitive balance may face real-world consequences. Rockstar and parent company Take-Two Interactive have previously taken legal action against cheat makers, including the creator of an infinite-money hack who was ordered to pay $150,000 plus attorney fees in 2019.

A workaround for corrupted accounts, which some players have claimed works, is to delete the “Rockstar Games” folder from the Windows Documents folder before reloading the game. However, we recommend avoiding the PC version until Rockstar cleans things up.

Alongside eight states, the US Department of Justice is suing Google to break up the company’s advertising business. In a complaint filed Tuesday with a federal court in Virginia, the agency accused Google of illegally monopolizing the digital advertising market. “Google’s anticompetitive behavior has raised barriers to entry to artificially high levels, forced key competitors to abandon the market for ad tech tools, dissuaded potential competitors from joining the market, and left Google’s few remaining competitors marginalized and unfairly disadvantaged,” the Justice Department alleges.

"Today’s lawsuit from the DOJ attempts to pick winners and losers in the highly competitive advertising technology sector,” a Google spokesperson told Engadget. “It largely duplicates an unfounded lawsuit by the Texas Attorney General, much of which was recently dismissed by a federal court. DOJ is doubling down on a flawed argument that would slow innovation, raise advertising fees, and make it harder for thousands of small businesses and publishers to grow."

As Bloomberg notes, the lawsuit represents the Biden administration’s first significant attempt to challenge the power of one of the nation’s largest tech firms. The agency previously sued Google in 2020. At the time, the Justice Department, under Attorney General William Barr, said the company had a monopoly over search and search-related advertising. It also took issue with the terms around Android, which the Justice Department said unfairly advantage Google by forcing manufacturers to preload their devices with the company’s applications and search engine.

Google faces intense government scrutiny over its hold on the digital advertising market. In 2020, Texas filed a multi-state lawsuit accusing the company of using its "monopolistic power to control" ad pricing. One year later, the European Commission opened a probe into the company’s advertising business, a move that seems to have forced Google to reconsider how it handles ads on YouTube. Last year, the Senate also introduced legislation designed to prevent companies like Google from participating in more than one part of the digital advertising ecosystem.

“Having inserted itself into all aspects of the digital advertising marketplace, Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful means to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies,” the Justice Department says in its most recent complaint. It accuses Google of using acquisitions to take out both “actual or potential” competitors, in addition to abusing its marketplace dominance to prevent publishers and advertisers from using competing products effectively. “Whenever Google’s customers and competitors responded with innovation that threatened Google’s stranglehold over any one of these ad tech tools, Google’s anticompetitive response has been swift and effective,” the Justice Department alleges.

One estimate suggests Google controls as much as 26.5 percent of the US digital ads market. The company’s ad unit is expected to generate about $73.8 billion in US ad revenue over the next year, with much of that money coming from search advertisements.

Apple's latest 12.9-inch iPad Pro has dropped to its lowest price to date across several configurations. The 512GB version of the tablet, which is powered by an M2 chipset, is $100 off at $1,299. If you'd like to double that storage to 1TB, you'll save $200 off the regular price, as that version has dropped to $1,599. Similarly, a 12.9-inch iPad Pro M2 with 2TB of storage is $200 off at $1,999. These prices are for the WiFi models, but you can also snag the 1TB and 2TB cellular variants for $200 off the regular price. Amazon isn't offering a discount on the 512GB WiFi and cellular version at the minute, unfortunately.

The M2 lineup offers significant CPU and GPU performance boosts over the M1 iPad Pro, based on our testing. The latest generation of Apple chipsets power some neat features on the most recent iPad Pro models, including an Apple Pencil tool called Hover. This allows you to see how apps and other aspects of the user interface will react before you touch the stylus against the tablet. For instance, you may be able to see how colors will blend with each other in watercolor apps before applying the brushstroke. The tablet can also now record video in Apple’s ProRes codec in 4K resolution at 30 frames per second.

All told, we gave the latest iPad Pro a score of 87 in our review. The chip upgrade is a big selling point, especially if you already have an iPad Pro that's a few years old and showing its age. Add in a best-in-class screen and design, as well as great battery life, and the M2-powered 12.9-inch iPad Pro may just be worth your while.

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The next version of Android could bar you from installing ancient apps in some circumstances. 9to5Google has spotted a code change indicating that Android 14 will block users from sideloading apps (that is, installing them outside of the Play Store) that don't target a minimum version of the operating system. It will stop the installation of particularly old software at first, but Google expects to "progressively" raise the bar to require at least Android 6.0 Marshmallow.

The move is meant to boost security and privacy. Malware writers can't just target old versions of Android to escape security measures in newer releases, Google says. Google already requires that apps in the Play Store target at least Android 12. This update denies attempts to install vintage apps through the web or third-party stores.

This won't completely thwart you if there's a classic app you're determined to run. It's up to device manufacturers to enable the cutoff, and there will still be a way to install apps through a command shell. The new policy is meant to stop people from unwittingly installing malware. If you sideload an old app on an Android 14 phone with this measure switched on, you likely know exactly what you're doing.

Still, it's notable that Google is limiting sideloading at all. For some, it's a reason to buy an Android phone instead of an iPhone — you're free to install apps that aren't available in the official store. However, it's not surprising that Google is clamping down. Android malware writers frequently (though not always) rely on sideloading precisely because there are fewer restrictions than in the Play Store. A block on old apps won't put an end to malware, but it could tighten the platform's overall security.

SpaceX’s next-generation Starship super heavy-lift rocket is one step closer to the day when it may finally fly. On Monday, SpaceX fueled a fully stacked Starship for the first time. The “wet dress rehearsal” saw the company load the vehicle’s Super Heavy and Starship stages with more than 10 million pounds of liquid oxygen and methane fuel. Additionally, SpaceX ran through some of the countdown procedures it will need to complete on launch day. “Today’s test will help verify a full launch countdown sequence, as well as the performance of Starship and the orbital pad for flight-light operations,” SpaceX posted on Twitter.

As Space.com notes, Monday’s test means SpaceX is on track to complete an orbital flight of Starship sometime in the coming months. The company filed the necessary paperwork for that test in May 2021, following its first successful landing of a Starship prototype. Since then, the Starship program has encountered a handful of setbacks. For instance, a lengthy review saw the Federal Aviation Administration order SpaceX to take more than 75 actions to mitigate the impact of Starship launches on the environment surrounding the company’s Boca Chica site in Texas. More recently, a booster test fire ended with a fiery explosion. Following this week’s wet dress rehearsal, SpaceX must complete a few more on-the-ground tests before Starship can fly. One of the more critical trials will require the company to simultaneously fire all of the Super Heavy booster’s 33 Raptor engines.

Google doesn't plan to let political campaigns dodge Gmail's spam detection for much longer. The Washington Post has learned that Google plans to end the email filter bypass pilot program by the end of this month. In a dismissal motion filed at a federal court in the Eastern District of California, the company rejects the Republican National Committee (RNC) allegations of political bias that led to the test. Gmail's filtering methods "apply equally" to every sender whether or not there's a political connection, the company says.

The pilot was a response to RNC accusations in October that Google was censoring right-wing fundraising emails by marking them as spam. The committee pointed to a study that supposedly backed the claims, but Google maintained that messaging frequency, user responses and other non-political elements dictated filtering behavior. Even so, Google acknowledged the pressure and got permission from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to run the test. The experiment was already set to end in January, but it wasn't clear if Google would extend the program until now.

Over 100 Democrat and Republican committees joined the program after it was approved in August. However, the RNC wasn't one of them. Google points this out in its new filing, asserting that the Republicans want to accuse the firm of unfair treatment instead of participating in the solution.

In a statement to Engadget, Google spokesperson José Castañeda says a recent FEC decision "confirmed" it doesn't filter email for "political purposes." The representative also maintains that the RNC complaint is "without merit."

On top of the company's own objections, numerous advocacy groups and other critics urged the FEC to reject the looser approach to political emails. They were concerned this change would let political candidates from any party spam users with few repercussions. With this latest filing, the debate is moot — politicians will have to take a careful approach if they expect campaign messages to go directly to your inbox.

If you’ve ever wished you could just show someone what you’re talking about rather than trying to describe it, Apple’s screen sharing function for FaceTime can help. The capability is part of SharePlay, a protocol that lets Apple users do more than just talk to each other on video calls. SharePlay and screen sharing only work between Apple mobile devices running iOS 15 and Macs running MacOS Monterey. While the iOS 15 and Monterey releases did add the ability to FaceTime with Android users via a browser, screen sharing still isn’t available outside of Apple-to-Apple connections.

How to share your screen using an iPhone or iPad

Amy Skorheim / Engadget

1. After you’ve initiated a FaceTime call, tap on the screen to bring up the control bar and tap the sharing icon, which looks like a rectangle with a person in front of it.

2. Tap Share My Screen. A three second countdown will begin, then a black window with your initials will appear on the other person’s screen. This is where your shared content will appear once you’ve selected an app. (If you are using an iPhone, your camera turns off while sharing your screen. If you are on an iPad, your camera remains on.)

3. Swipe up to reveal your home screen.

4. Choose the app or document you want to share. If you want to share a webpage, open your browser. At this point, your screen will appear for the other person.

5. By default, your content will be a smaller inset window on other callers’ screens, that they can tap to enlarge.

6. You’ll see the other person in an inset window, which you can move around, or even slide off-screen to get it out of your way. Keep in mind that if you tap their window, screen sharing will pause.

As you navigate through apps, photos or webpages, people on your call will see exactly what appears on your screen.

How to stop sharing your screen on iPhone

1. Tap on the active call icon in the upper left then tap the screen sharing icon again. That will immediately end screen sharing.

2. In our tests, we encountered an occasional problem on iPhones with the camera not coming back on after sharing ends. If that happens, tap on the FaceTime app from your home screen, then tap the camera icon. That should bring your camera back online.

How to take over screen sharing from someone else

If someone else on the call is sharing their screen and it’s your turn to take over, you can switch by following these instructions:

1. On an iPhone, tap to bring up the FaceTime controls. On an iPad, tap to show your menu bar and tap the green FaceTime icon.

2. Tap the SharePlay icon, which looks like a person icon with two arcs behind it.

3. Tap Share My Screen.

4. A pop-up window will ask if you want to replace the current screen. Tap Replace Existing.

5. Other callers will see a black screen with your initials until you swipe up and select an app from your home page.

Amy Skorheim / Engadget

How to share your screen using a Mac

If you want to show people content from your MacBook or desktop Mac, the process is largely the same, but you can decide whether to share your entire screen or just one window. Note that, like on an iPad, your camera does not turn off when you screen share on a Mac.

1. Initiate a FaceTime call. Hover over the FaceTime window to bring up the controls.

2. Click the screen share icon.

3. Decide whether you want to share a single window or your entire screen.

4. If you select Window, hover over your open windows and click on the one you want to share.

5. If you want to share your whole screen, click anywhere on the screen. If you have two monitors, decide which screen you want to share. Everything there will appear for other people exactly as you see it.

Amy Skorheim / Engadget

How to stop sharing your screen on Mac

1. Return to the FaceTime window and click on the Screen Share icon again.

2. A window will open from your menu bar at the top of the screen asking whether you want to switch to window share, screen share or end screen sharing. Click Cancel and then click Stop Sharing Screen.