Kalakshar US

A US bankruptcy court has blocked the sale of Infowars to parody news site The Onion, ruling that the auction didn’t yield the best potential bids. At the same time, judge Christopher Lopez rejected claims by Infowars‘ owner, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, that any “collusion” was involved in the case.

The Onion reportedly outbid competitor First American United Companies, affiliated with a Jones business, for the rights to the site. Though its cash offer was lower, The Onion valued it at $7 million because Sandy Hook families would allow some of the proceeds to be distributed to other creditors. 

However, the appeals judge said that the court-appointed bankruptcy trustee made a “good-faith error” by requesting final offers instead of allowing back-and-forth bidding between The Onion and First American. “This should have been opened back up, and it should have been opened back up for everybody,” Lopez said. “It’s clear the trustee left the potential for a lot of money on the table.”

Now, the trustee must work to resolve some of the disputes between creditors before making another attempt to sell Infowars. The trustee, Christopher Murray, said that First American only complained about the process after losing the bid. 

Alex Jones was found liable in 2022 for nearly $1.5 billion in damages for spreading conspiracy theories about the 2012 shooting that killed 20 children and six adult staffers. One of the assets put up for sale was Jones’ Infowars site, and The Onion said it received the blessing of the families of the victims to acquire the site. It reportedly planned to transform the site into one with “noticeably less hateful disinformation,” and a gun safety nonprofit reportedly planned to advertise on the rebooted site. Last week, X said that The Onion wouldn’t be given Alex Jones’ Infowars X accounts, opening up a new can of worms about who owns social media handles. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/judge-rejects-the-onions-bid-for-infowars-133046520.html?src=rss 

Wanna go outside and kick the ball around? The soccer story game Despelote is coming to the Nintendo Switch in early 2025. The game was previously announced for PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.

Despelote is a story-driven game about people and the emotional spirit and camaraderie of football. You play as a plucky 8-year-old kid named Julián from Quito, Ecuador who goes out with his friends for a fun-filled afternoon of neighborhood football after a long day of school. The game tells the story of Ecuador’s economic struggles in the late 1990s and the sense of community and unity that grew leading up to the 2002 World Cup. Developers Julián Cordero and Sebastián Valbuena based the game’s setting, dialogue and experiences on their own childhood memories and photos growing up in Ecuador.

Despelote was an official selection of the 2023 Tribeca Festival. It’s also one of the games featured by Wholesome Games’ Wholesome Snack Showcase ahead of The Game Awards.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/despelote-is-dribbling-its-way-to-the-nintendo-switch-231254398.html?src=rss 

A new report from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found that President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) secretly obtained the phone call and text message records of 43 congressional staffers, two members of Congress in 2017 and 2018 and members of the news media. DOJ prosecutors obtained call and text logs from telecommunications companies and third-party providers including Apple through subpoenas, search warrants and court orders.

It’s already known that President Trump’s DOJ tried to obtain communication records from Apple as part of an investigation into press leaks about stories that Trump associates made contact with Russian officials. The New York Times reported in 2021 that one of the subpoenas filed in 2018 demanded to see the accounts of 109 identifiers including Democratic Representatives Adam B. Schiff and Eric Swalwell of California, congressional aides and family members including one who was a minor. Now it appears that the scope of those subpoenas was much larger.

The IG’s report says prosecutors attached gag orders to the subpoenas to prevent Apple and other companies from notifying their customers about the information orders. Most of the non-disclosure agreements were extended at least once, some of which stretched up to four years. The communication logs only showed the names of the parties involved in the calls and text messages.

Even though the OIG’s report found no political motivation for prosecutors’ requests, he noted the subpoenas and other legal means of obtaining communication logs “risks chilling Congress’s ability to conduct oversight of the executive branch.” The report also says the DOH failed to convene the News Media Review Committee, a Justice Department advisory committee formed as part of an overhaul of its news media policies in 2014, to review its information requests calling its actions “troubling,” according to the report.

Apple also took steps to limit the scope of legal requests following news of the subpoenas filed on Reps. Schiff and Swalwell. The tech company placed a limit of 25 identifiers per legal request on customers’ communication information in 2021.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/trumps-doj-obtained-more-private-communications-from-third-parties-including-apple-215738340.html?src=rss 

GM is giving up on its Cruise robotaxi subsidiary. The company announced today that it will fold Cruise into its own in-house technical team. Under the new strategy, this single unit will focus for now on developing advanced driver assistance programs, and in the future on fully autonomous personal vehicles.

GM acquired Cruise in 2016. However, the robotaxi brand faced intense scrutiny last year after a pedestrian in San Francisco was struck and dragged by one of its driverless cars. The ensuing investigations saw Cruise stop all operations for driverless vehicles and for its manned robotaxi service, and several of the company’s leaders resigned or were let go in the aftermath. In recent months, Cruise had resumed some limited activity, but the hit to public trust and safety after the pedestrian incident seem to have created an insurmountable hurdle for GM.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/gm-ends-support-for-cruise-robotaxis-222300134.html?src=rss 

Monument Valley 3 is out today. As teased in the fall, the latest installment in the spatial puzzle series is available on Android and iOS today exclusively as part of Netflix Games, meaning you can play it for free with no advertisements or microtransactions as long as you have a subscription to the streaming service.

As with the previous two games, Monument Valley 3 is a lush, meditative experience about perspective. The levels have always taken their cues from mind-bending artists like M.C. Escher, where pathways don’t follow the laws of physics. There is a new layer with the addition of a sailboat for freely moving between the sections, but the puzzles are still the core of the game. So are the vibes. It’s got great ambient music and the art is as gorgeous as ever.

Monument Valley 3 will also be getting new content updates every season. In an interview, Ustwo Games lead designer Emily Brown called them “Monument Valley snacks,” bite-sized additions to the standalone game. It’s a very light nod toward being a live service game, although in practice this doesn’t seem too different from the studio’s past approach of releasing DLC for the Monument Valley titles.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/monument-valley-3-is-out-today-for-your-puzzling-pleasure-210407166.html?src=rss 

The crowd-sourced review site Yelp unveiled a new feature that uses AI and customer reviews to rate common facets of nightlife and food-related business. The new Review Insights feature is available now on the iOS version of the Yelp app, according to the company’s official blog.

Review Insights aggregates customer reviews and feeds them into a large language model (LLM), which will assign specific aspects — like the vibe or service time — a rating out of 100. Supposedly it will be able to infer customer sentiment about these parts of a business “even when a review doesn’t explicitly mention one of the topics.” Yelp will also be adding an AI-powered homepage in the coming weeks.

Yelp has been implementing new AI features over the past year. The business review site added an auto-generated summary feature in January and an AI-powered Yelp Assistant in April.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/yelp-adds-ai-powered-scores-to-business-pages-195131103.html?src=rss