After playing a few hours of Back 4 Blood, the new co-op survival shooter from Left 4 Dead studio Turtle Rock, I was left with two questions: How is this legal? And, when can I play again? Turns out, right now.

The Back 4 Blood open beta runs from August 5th to 9th, and again from August 12th to 16th, on PC, Xbox and PlayStation consoles. I got a sneak peek at what the beta has to offer on PC, with an emphasis on PvE content, since there were some technical issues with PvP modes during my playtime. Those have been resolved and I’m told PvP is ready to rock for the open beta.

Not that you should expect it to be perfect. Turtle Rock Studios is using the open beta to fine-tune Back 4 Blood ahead of its release on October 12th, and developers are serious about gathering as much feedback as possible. There’s plenty to track: The game uses a Left 4 Dead-style AI director that adjusts the difficulty level in real-time as you plow through hordes of Ridden in your own special way. There’s also a card system that allows players to build decks of class-specific perks, plus corruption cards that apply randomized effects to every level, changing up the gameplay each time. And it’s a true cross-platform game, running across console generations and PC. All of this is on top of a new PvP mode and the core PvE gameplay, which has to feel like butter if it’s going to satisfy Turtle Rock’s Left 4 Dead fans.

I’m one of those fans, and I have to say, I’m enjoying the hell out of Back 4 Blood. Left 4 Dead is a pivotal game of my past, and Back 4 Blood taps into those good feelings in a delicious way.

Turtle Rock Studios

I’m most interested in PvE, since that’s the core of my nostalgia in this case, and I ended up playing about two hours of the main co-op mode with some new friends. The open beta features two PvE maps for co-op runs and two maps for the Swarm PvP mode, where teams of four take turns fighting each other as the Cleaners (the main characters) and the Ridden (the infected former humans). A new character, Mom, joins the roster of playable Cleaners for the first time, too.

One thing that stands out in Back 4 Blood is its sense of replayability. While the levels feel familiar, they’re filled with secrets and they naturally encourage dynamic play, offering various ways to approach any single encounter. The card system adds a lovely layer of customization to the game, while the corruption cards make each new round just a little different, just a little more exciting. There’s a variety of weapons and items to gather as well, and a healthy allotment of ammo drops throughout the maps, especially if you go exploring. 

Shooting the Ridden is immensely satisfying with any gun, while getting snatched up or knocked down by a Special Ridden is shocking basically every time. Meanwhile, the dialogue among the Cleaners is cute, with references to “the new normal,” lizard people in the government and the lamestream media, to name a few joke opportunities. The protagonists of Back 4 Blood aren’t shocked and running for their lives; they’re on a mission to eradicate the Ridden and create safe zones for human life to resume. It’s a refreshing perspective twist.

I ran into a few issues during my time with Back 4 Blood’s open beta content, but nothing that felt insurmountable at this stage of development. Essentially, I trust Turtle Rock to take the feedback from the open beta and apply it to the game in the smartest, most gory way possible for its launch in October.

I actually chatted with Turtle Rock executive producer Matt O’Driscoll about the beta and what developers hope to get out of it.

"These next two weeks are so vital to us," he said. "We're gonna get so much data for how people play this. Is easy too easy? Is it too hard? Is nightmare mode impossible? Like, all these kind of little things. Or, how do people build decks? Someone's gonna build a deck that I'm sure is gonna kind of break something in the game."

You heard him, Cleaners — get to breaking.

Back 4 Blood is definitely a lot like Left 4 Dead, but updated for modern systems and sensibilities. The question for most players in the open beta will be whether it’s too much like Left 4 Dead — but personally, I say bring it on, Turtle Rock. After all, it’s not like Valve is gonna give us Left 4 Dead 3. Or any 3, for that matter.

When California’s fair employment agency sued Activision Blizzard, one of the largest video game studios in the world, on July 20th, it wasn't surprising to hear the allegations of systemic gender discrimination and sexual harassment at the company. It wasn't a shock to read about male executives groping their female colleagues, or loudly joking about rape in the office, or completely ignoring women for promotions. What was surprising was that California wanted to investigate Activision Blizzard at all, considering these issues have seemingly been present since its founding in 1979.

Activision Blizzard is a multibillion-dollar publisher with 9,500 employees and a roster of legendary franchises, including Call of Duty, Overwatch, Diablo and World of Warcraft. On July 20th, California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard, alleging executives had fostered an environment of misogyny and frat-boy rule for years, violating equal pay laws and labor codes along the way. This is about more than dirty jokes in the break room — the lawsuit highlights clear disparities in hiring, compensation and professional growth between men and women at Activision Blizzard, and it paints a picture of pervasive sexism and outright abuse in the workplace.

Here’s a rundown of some of the allegations:

• Just 20 percent of all Activision Blizzard employees are women.

• Top leadership roles are filled solely by white men.

• Across the company, women are paid less, promoted slower and fired faster than men.

• HR and executives fail to take complaints of harassment seriously.

• Women of color in particular are micromanaged and overlooked for promotions.

• A pervasive frat-boy culture encourages behavior like “cube crawls,” where male employees grope and sexually harass female co-workers at their desks.

It’s been a few weeks since the lawsuit was filed, and employees, executives and players have all had a chance to respond. Meanwhile, additional reports of longstanding harassment and sexism at Activision Blizzard have continued to roll out, including photos and stories of the “Cosby Suite,” which was specifically named in the filing. According to the lawsuit, this was a hotel room where male employees would gather to harass women at company events, named after the rapist Bill Cosby. 

Days after the filing, Kotaku published photos of the supposed Cosby Suite, showing male Activision Blizzard developers posing on a bed with a framed photo of Bill Cosby at BlizzCon 2013. Screenshots of conversations among the developers discussed gathering “hot chixx for the Coz” and other insulting, immature things (especially when you remember these are middle-aged men, not middle-schoolers).

One of the only executives actually named in the suit was Blizzard head J. Allen Brack, and it alleges he routinely ignored systemic harassment and failed to punish abusers. Brack called the allegations “extremely troubling,” but this line was thrown back in his face on Twitter when independent developer Nels Anderson compared it to a video out of BlizzCon 2010, featuring Brack on the far left. 

In the video, a young woman asks the panel of World of Warcraft developers, all six of whom are white men, whether they'll ever create a female character that doesn't look like she just stepped out of a Victoria's Secret catalog. The panelists laugh and one responds, "Which catalog would you like them to step out of?" They proceed to essentially dismiss her question. At the end of the exchange, Brack piles on and makes a joke about one of the new characters coming from a sexy cow catalog.

On August 3rd, just two weeks after California filed its lawsuit, Brack stepped down from his role as the president of Blizzard. In his place will be GM Mike Ybarra and executive development VP Jen Oneal. Oneal will be the first woman in a president role since Activision’s founding in 1979; the lawsuit notes that there has never been a non-white president or CEO of Activision Blizzard.

Activision Blizzard’s initial response to the lawsuit was tragic, with one leader calling the allegations meritless and distorted. Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, who regularly gets into fights with shareholders over the ridiculous fortune he’s amassed, published his own response to the lawsuit, where he essentially promised to listen better. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t alleviate many employees’ concerns. A petition in support of the lawsuit ended up gathering more than 2,000 employee signatures, and workers organized a walk-out just eight days after the filing, calling for systemic change at the studio.

Shareholders weren't bolstered by Kotick's response, either. Investors filed an additional class-action lawsuit against Activision Blizzard on August 3rd, alleging the company failed to raise potential regulatory issues stemming from its discriminatory culture. Blizzard's head of HR, Jesse Meschuk, also left the company in the weeks following the initial lawsuit.

Meanwhile, other major game developers have rallied behind the suit, and former Activision Blizzard leaders have shared their support for employees, apologizing for their parts in sustaining a toxic company culture.

None of this is new. As evidenced by the photos, videos, stats and personal stories flowing out of Activision Blizzard, the company has operated on a bro-first basis for decades, and honestly, it’s been sustained by an industry that largely functions the same way.

In 2019, a wave of accusations against prominent male developers crashed over the industry, and AAA studios like Ubisoft and Riot Games made headlines for fostering toxic workplace environments. California is currently suing Riot over allegations of sexual harassment and gender discrimination in hiring and pay practices.

But even that’s not new. Women, non-binary people and marginalized folks in the video game industry have been speaking up about systemic harassment and discrimination for literal decades. Sexism is apparent in the hiring and pay habits of many major studios, and it’s also clear in the games themselves, which feature an overabundance of straight, white, male protagonists.

What is surprising, this time around, is that the lawsuit against Activision Blizzard kind of came out of nowhere. It took a blockbuster media report to make California sue Riot in 2020, but the lawsuit against Activision Blizzard appeared on its own, after years of quiet investigation by the Department of Fair Employment and Housing. If sexism is systemic in the video game industry, it feels like the system is finally fighting back.

Walter Isaacson, the author behind the 2011 Steve Jobs biography published shortly after his death, is currently writing Elon Musk's life story. Fox Business reported back in June that the famous writer was in talks with Musk about the possibility of writing a book on him. The author was reportedly yet to make a decision back then, but now Musk has confirmed on Twitter than Isaacson is writing his biography covering his work on Tesla, SpaceX and his "general goings on."

As CNET notes, there's already an official published biography on the entrepreneur entitled Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future. It was written by Ashlee Vance and was published in 2015. Since then, though, Tesla has launched the Model 3, which became the world's best-selling electric car. It was also only later in 2015 that SpaceX first achieved the successful landing and recovery of a rocket's first stage. In 2017, the private space company made history when it successfully relaunched its reusable Falcon 9 rocket for the first time. Four years later, SpaceX launched four astronauts to the ISS on a Dragon capsule used in a previous mission on top of a reused Falcon 9 booster.

Isaacson's Jobs biography was adapted by Aaron Sorkin into a film starring Michael Fassbender and directed by Danny Boyle. He also wrote biographies on Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein and American biochemist Jennifer Doudna, who's known for her work in CRISPR gene editing. While he didn't respond to Musk's announcement, he has been retweeting SpaceX-related content since June.

Disney's Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser promises fans the "most immersive" experience ever when it launches in 2022 — one that won't be cheap. The entertainment giant has revealed details and prices for the Star Wars adventure, including the fact that it will cost two guests in a standard cabin at least $4,809 for a 2-night voyage. Suites will obviously cost more, though visitors will pay less per person the more people there are in their group.

Disney describes the experience as "part live immersive theater, part themed environment, part culinary extravaganza, part real-life role-playing game." According to the Galactic Starcruiser's official page, guests' journey begins at the Walt Disney World Resort terminal where they'll board a launch pad and rendezvous with the Halcyon. 

Once inside, guests will encounter "story moments," wherein they'll play a real-life choose-your-own-adventure type of game, wherein they can decide how their story will unfold. They can, for instance, choose to follow the First Order or join the Resistance, choose to join a smuggling ring or to aid a stowaway. They can interact with familiar characters who'll serve as NPCs and take lightsaber lessons to take on foes. Participants can also go on missions if they want to delve deeper into their story. According to ComicBook, each trip on the Starcruiser will be one-of-a-kind, so those who can afford more to go on more than once could enjoy unique experiences.

HBO Max has grown its Podcast Program by leaps and bounds over the past two years expanding from 4 shows in 2019 to 25 today, many serving as tie-ins and companion pieces to HBO's various series. But that will soon change as the company announced on Wednesday that it plans to expand its online audio offerings to include original, scripted programming and "look-back" shows as well.

“Our viewers tell us that, more than any other streaming platform, they want to discuss and dissect HBO Max programming with friends and family to extend the emotional experience after finishing an episode,” Joshua Walker, Chief Strategy Officer at HBO Max, said in a statement. He cites Max Podcast fans' collective investment in the existing programming as a driving force for the company's decision.

The new slate of scripted shows will include the highly anticipated Batman: The Audio Adventures starring Jeffrey Wright and premiering this fall, a look-back at Band of Brothers on September 9th (the show's 20th anniversary), and We Stay Looking — a sequel Issa Rae's Insecure companion show and HBO's first scripted podcast. HBO is also expanding its partnership with Audacity to include titles like Lovecraft Country Radio and The Chernobyl Podcast on the streaming platform's library.

Lucille Ball sadly passed away long before podcasts became a reality, but that isn't stopping her from joining the modern phenomenon. The LA Timesreports that SiriusXM is turning Ball's Let's Talk to Lucy radio show into a 'pop-up' satellite radio station for three weeks. Once that stint is over, all 240 episodes of the 1960s-era show will be available as podcasts through both SiriusXM's app, Stitcher and other common platforms.

Notably, this isn't just mining nostalgia. This is the first time Let's Talk to Lucy has been heard since airing on the radio 50-plus years ago — there are conversations with legends like Bob Hope and Carol Burnett that haven't surfaced for decades.

SiriusXM is clearly hoping to boost its satellite and podcast offerings. At the same time, this also illustrates the usefulness of podcasting as a historical tool. In theory, the podcasts will both preserve Ball's interviews and make them accessible to a wider audience that might not listen to radio in the first place.

Before the US election last year, a team of researchers from New York University's engineering school launched a project to gather more data on political ads. In particular, the team wanted to know how political advertisers choose the demographic their ads target and don't target. Shortly after the project called the NYU Ad Observatory went live, however, Facebook notified the researchers that their efforts violate its terms of service related to bulk data collection. Now, the social network has announced that it has "disabled the accounts, apps, Pages and platform access associated with NYU's Ad Observatory Project and its operators..."

The researchers created a browser extension to collect data on the political ads the website shows the thousands of people who volunteered to be part of the initiative. Facebook says, however, that the plug-in was made to avoid its detection system and calls what it can do "unauthorized scraping." The extension "scrape[d] data such as usernames, ads, links to user profiles and 'Why am I seeing this ad?' information," Facebook wrote in its announcement. It also said that the extension collected data about Facebook users who didn't install it and didn't consent to take part in the project.

The company wrote that it made "repeated attempts to bring [the team's] research into compliance with [its] Terms." That apparently included inviting the researchers to access its US 2020 Elections ad targeting data through FORT’s Researcher Platform. Facebook said the data set on the platform could offer more comprehensive information than what the extension can collect, but the researchers declined its invitation. 

As The Wall Street Journal mentioned in its report last year, Facebook has an archive of advertisements on its platform, which includes data on who paid for an ad, when it ran and the location of the people who saw it. However, it doesn't contain targeting information, such as how it's determined who sees the ad. On its website, Ad Observer researchers wrote: "We think it's important to democracy to be able to check who is trying to influence the public and how." 

Facebook is adamant that it disabled the project's access to its platform because it knowingly violated the website's terms against scraping. It blocked the team's access to its platform, it said, in order to "stop unauthorized scraping and protect people's privacy in line with [its] privacy program." After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it agreed to an updated policy with the FTC, which pushed the social network to limit third-party access to its data. We asked the Ad Observer team for a statement and will update this post if we hear back. 

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many film festivals have shifted to online-only or hybrid formats. Later this month, another movie will premiere as a paid online event. This time around, you'll be able to watch it on Facebook.

Users in any country where Facebook's paid online events are available (which now number more than 100) can watch the premiere of The Outsider, a behind-the-scenes documentary about the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York City. A virtual ticket costs $4, and the film will debut on August 19th at 8PM ET. It'll be available for 12 hours.

As Axios reports, a Facebook Live panel discussion will follow the premiere of The Outsider. The doc will hit select theaters and other streaming platforms in September.

Facebook will run some promos for the event, which is being run by distributor Abramorama, but it won't take a cut of ticket sales. The company is waiving commissions on creators' revenue through 2022.

The film has already caused controversy. Officials at the museum asked the filmmakers to cut 18 "defamatory" scenes from The Outsider, but directors Pamela Yoder and Steven Rosenbaum said they wouldn't back down. Michael Shulan, the museum's former creative director and a central figure in the film, reportedly claims in the movie that the museum represents the “Disneyfication” of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Film distribution is a tough nut to crack for indie studios and filmmakers, especially when they try to release movies in a number of markets. Much like others have had success in hosting online classes or livestreaming gameplay on Facebook, they could harness the platform's enormous reach to find an audience.

It remains to be seen whether other filmmakers and distributors premiere their movies on Facebook. Still, with the company having its fingers in an ever-increasing number of pies, it's not hard to imagine Facebook being interested in hosting similar events in the future.

Facebook is reportedly looking into analyzing the content of encrypted data without having to decrypt it. The company is recruiting artificial intelligence researchers to study the matter, according to The Information. Their research could pave the way for Facebook to target ads based on encrypted WhatsApp messages. Facebook could also use the findings to encrypt user data without affecting its ad targeting approaches.

This area of research is called "homomorphic encryption," which relies heavily on mathematics. Microsoft, Amazon and Google are also working on the approach. The aim of homomorphic encryption is to allow companies to read and analyze data while keeping it encrypted to protect information from cybersecurity dangers and to maintain privacy.

Facebook told The Information it's "too early for us to consider homomorphic encryption for WhatsApp at this time." Facebook could benefit from the tech in a number of ways. Protecting data without impacting the effectiveness of ad targeting could allow Facebook to both meet its business goals and satisfy regulators who have expressed concern about how the company handles user information. Facebook could be years away from harnessing homomorphic encryption, however.

In 2019, Facebook revealed plans to roll out end-to-end encryption across all of its messaging services: Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. Later that year, the US, UK and Australia sent a joint letter to Facebook, urging it not to push forward with the project "without ensuring there will be no reduction in the safety of Facebook users and others, and without providing law enforcement court-authorized access to the content of communications to protect the public, particularly child users." However you slice it, encryption is a thorny issue for Facebook, whether or not it's able to analyze the data.

Streaming services are embracing cheaper subscription plans in a bid to turn free users into paying customers. Following news of a YouTube Premium Lite offering yesterday, Spotify is the latest streamer to confirm a cheaper tier. The world's biggest music streaming service is testing a $0.99 monthly plan that retains the ads but gives you infinite skips per hour and lets you select specific songs on an album or playlist for playback. Spotify, which confirmed the test to The Verge, is hoping it can convince you to put up with ads in return for more control over the listening experience. In other words, it wants to have its cake and eat it, too.

Currently, free users can only skip six tracks per hour and have to listen to shuffled songs on albums and playlists. That's a bummer if you're sick of hearing Justin Bieber or just want to put that one new Billie Eillish track on repeat. Despite those incentives, getting people to pay for an ad-supported service, even if it is just $0.99 per month, is still a big ask. Especially when they're accustomed to getting it for free. Then again, video streamers like Hulu and HBO Max have either successfully done it or are trying to do it.

The risk is that it could eat into Spotify's existing premium user base, which make up 165 million of its 365 million subscribers. Turning those remaining 200 million users into paying members is clearly the goal here. It could be that the low $0.99 price helps to ease that transition. We'll know if the gamble has paid off if Spotify expands the plan to more users. In the past, the company has done just that with new plans, including its $12.99/month Duo tier aimed at discouraging password sharing and its upcoming Lossless "HiFi" offering.