failure

For four years, PC players of Call of Duty had to purchase and play the game through Blizzard‘s Battle.net digital distribution platform. However, this arrangement ended in 2022 as it was a “resounding failure,” according to a recently published court document from Microsoft. This emerged through the ongoing legal tussle between Microsoft and the Federal Trade Commission on the subject of its proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The data apparently disclosed that the number of monthly active users of Activision…

After the Radar for Icy Moon Exploration (RIME) antenna on ESA’s Juice mission encountered deployment issues post-launch, combined efforts from engineers at ESA, Airbus, and SpaceTech successfully rectified the problem. Suspecting ice formation as the issue, they heated the spacecraft by sun exposure, but when this didn’t work, they continued with the planned antenna deployment, which eventually dislodged the stuck pin and successfully deployed the antenna. (Juice flyby of Ganymede, artist’s impression.) Credit: ESAWhen…

The past 24 hours have been good to Marvel and DC lovers as we had a flurry of thrilling casting announcements for James Gunn’s Superman: Legacy over at Marvel’s Distinguished Competition while Disney Plus released the latest episode of Secret Invasion – meaning the show is now in the final stretch. If only the little-viewed, critically rejected series was actually managing to deliver on the enormous amount of cash the studio invested in it in the first place… Secret Invasion has a bigger budget than 69% of MCU movies…

Researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine identified a new gene mutation causing heart failure in children, called infantile dilated cardiomyopathy, and successfully reversed its effects using a drug on heart muscle cells derived from the patient’s stem cells. The findings hint towards the development of treatments to manage this condition, currently treated through a heart transplant, by focusing on the discovered genetic mutations that lead to heart failure.In an effort to determine the cause behind…

Hernan Diaz, 50, was born in Buenos Aires and lives in Brooklyn. A finalist in 2018 for the Pulitzer prize in fiction with his debut In the Distance, which the New Yorker called “an offbeat western”, he is the joint winner of this year’s award – together with Barbara Kingsolver – for his second novel, Trust, out now in paperback. A slippery story of a Depression-era tycoon and his late wife as told four different ways, it made the longlist for last year’s Booker prize, whose judges called it “sly, sophisticated,…

As he tends to do, Robert Rodriguez wore a mountainous amount of hats on 2005’s family-friendly fantasy The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, but he decided not to put on one of the most important. The maverick filmmaker makes no less than 14 appearances in the credits in a variety of guises as director, co-writer, producer, composer, cinematographer, editor, re-recording mixer, visual effects supervisor, and many more, but the sole story credit belongs to his son Racer Max. Following in the family business is one…

The climate crisis has changed weather patterns, and this could increase crop failure in multiple agricultural regions around the world, a new study says. In a report published in Nature Communications this week, researchers in the U.S. and Germany outline how food-producingregions of the world will see significantly lower crop yields in the near future.Stay in Your Seats, It's Gonna Be a Bumpy Flight | Extreme EarthThe researchers analyzed climate models and observational data from 1960 and 2014 and then looked at…

Not to name any Gemini Man in particular, but sometimes a project comes along after escaping decades in development hell that leaves you wondering if perhaps it may have been better off staying there for good, a sentiment that also applies to Nikolaj Arcel’s The Dark Tower. The live-action adaptation of Stephen King’s magnum opus had spent 20 years trying and failing to be willed into existence by a number of producers and filmmakers, only for the one audiences ended up getting being irredeemably awful. Hacked to pieces…

Duke-NUS Medical School has developed a promising stem cell therapy for heart failure, where pluripotent stem cells grown in the lab can repair damaged tissue and improve heart function when transplanted into a damaged heart. This innovative procedure could be transformative for patients with heart failure, reducing the risk of complications like arrhythmias or tumors while promoting the regeneration of healthy heart tissue.These stem cells have been shown to repair diseased cells, providing a promising remedy for…

The Idol, the Weeknd and Sam Levinson’s embattled, controversial, woefully received erotic thriller, wrapped up after five weeks last night – not with a bang, nor a whimper, but a profound: huh? What was this show about, if anything? Nothing happened: the plot points covered in this show could make about two tight hours’ worth of television – or one probably-quite-watchable film – and instead were stretched to five, each episode padded out with extended musical numbers, montages of a sun-drenched Los Angeles, and some…