ASFANDYAR Magazine

Image: Nintendo

Donkey Kong Country Returns HD, the just-launched port of the 2010 Wii game, doesn’t include individual members of the original Retro Studios development team in the credits, as reported by GameSpot. Since the discovery, however, Nintendo has commented on the omission, giving a statement to Eurogamer.

“We believe in giving proper credit for anyone involved in making or contributing to a game’s creation, and value the contributions that all staff make during the development process,” the statement reads, which is sourced only to Nintendo and not to a specific individual. The game’s credits reveal that the port was done by Forever Entertainment.

Crediting is an industry-wide issue, and this isn’t the first time Nintendo has come under scrutiny for its crediting decisions. Some developers who worked on the original Metroid Prime — another Retro Studios game — were unhappy that Metroid Prime Remastered’s credits didn’t include the full original credits. And external translators have expressed frustrations with being left out of credits for some major Nintendo games, Game Developer reported last year.

As of late, Nintendo has also been somewhat cagey about things like voice actors and the specific studios developing its games.

The falling debris field from the SpaceX Starship explosion lit up the night sky over the Caribbean, | Screenshot: YouTube

Falling debris from the SpaceX Starship explosion yesterday created what looked like a meteor shower, or a colorful fireworks show based on videos shared by people in the area, but it also delayed flights.

Eight and a half minutes after launch yesterday, the upper stage of the SpaceX Starship “experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly,” following the separation from its booster and the start of its ascent to space.

The footage of the explosion’s aftermath was shared to social media and Reddit. Some of it was recorded inside planes flying nearby, and many flights were diverted around the debris field, or delayed until all the fragments touched down.

The Federal Aviation Administration said it had “briefly slowed and diverted planes around the area where space debris was falling,” according to Reuters.

The 7th test flight of Starship was at least a partial success, marking the second time SpaceX successfully caught the Super Heavy booster with its launch tower. It was also the first time one of the booster’s Raptor engines was reused from a previous flight.

The launch was a testbed for a redesigned propulsion system, an improved flight computer, and the craft’s heat shield. It’s unclear if any of these were factors in the failure, but SpaceX says that, according to “initial data,” the explosion was potentially the result of a fire that developed in the ship’s rear section.

The company says that “Starship flew within its designated launch corridor” and “any surviving pieces of debris would have fallen into the designated hazard area.” The falling debris put on a show in the evening sky over the Caribbean and was captured by several tourists who seemed both amazed and slightly anxious about what they were witnessing.

A screenshot shared by the flight tracking website FlightRadar24 to its X account yesterday showed several aircraft in holding patterns or being diverted following the incident, while another showed flight departures from Miami and For Lauderdale airports being delayed by 45 minutes.

The last time SpaceX lost the Starship was during its third test flight last March. Although it was the first flight where the Starship completed its full-duration ascent burn, SpaceX lost contact with the spacecraft shortly before it was expected to splash down in the Indian Ocean.

Image: Netflix

Castlevania: Nocturne season 2 gets philosophical about what it means to be a monster who loves.

Read the full story at The Verge.

Photo by Gary Hershorn/Getty Images

A new rule requiring all vehicles to have automatic emergency braking is “flawed” and should be repealed, a new lawsuit filed by the auto industry’s main lobbying group says.

The suit was filed in US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit by the Alliance of Automotive Innovation, which represents most of the major automakers, including Ford, General Motors, Stellantis, Hyundai, Volkswagen, and Toyota. The group is asking the court to overturn the new rule, which was finalized last year, requiring all vehicles to have automatic emergency braking (AEB) by 2029.

Under the rule, all vehicles will be required to be able to “stop and avoid contact” with other vehicles at speeds of up to 62mph. In addition, AEB systems must apply the brakes automatically “up to 90 mph when a collision with a lead vehicle is imminent, and up to 45 mph when a pedestrian is detected.” Vehicles must also be able to detect pedestrians in both daylight and darkness. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says the new rule will help prevent hundreds of deaths and tens of thousands of injuries every year.

But after the rule was finalized, the alliance petitioned NHTSA to “reconsider” it, arguing that current technology was insufficient to meet the high standards outlined by the regulation. The group also claimed that its suggestions were rejected during the rulemaking process, and urged NHTSA to reconsider several key provisions in order to make it more achievable by the target date.

But NHTSA denied the group’s petition, stating that the requirements were “practicable” and that the overall aim is to “force” the industry to adopt new technology in order to meet the goals of saving lives and preventing injuries.

“NHTSA acknowledged that the final rule is technology-forcing,” the agency said in its response, “but emphasized that the standard is practicable and no single current vehicle must meet every requirement for an FMVSS to be considered practicable under the Safety Act.”

The auto alliance says that it has spent “more than a billion dollars” developing AEB over the years, but doesn’t want this lawsuit to be interpreted as an opposition to its own technology.

“This litigation by Alliance for Automotive Innovation should not be interpreted as opposition to AEB, a lack of confidence in the technology, or an objection to AEB’s widest possible deployment across the U.S. vehicle fleet,” the group says in a press release. “Rather, this litigation is about ensuring a rule that maximizes driver and pedestrian safety and is technologically feasible.”

But safety advocates aren’t buying it.

“The AEB Rule is the most impactful regulation for roadway safety issued in years,” said Cathy Chase, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, in a statement. “Considering that automaking is America’s largest manufacturing sector, employs 10 million Americans, generates five percent of the U.S. GDP and drives $1 trillion into the economy annually, it is remarkable that it would be unable to meet the requirements in the AEB Rule by September 2029.”

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Michael Bennet (D-CO) are putting pressure on big tech firms to explain their motives for donating to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration fund. In letters to Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Uber, the lawmakers express concerns about the companies making contributions to “avoid scrutiny, limit regulation, and buy favor.”

Over the past several weeks, Google, Microsoft, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Meta, Amazon, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman all donated $1 million apiece to Trump’s inauguration, while Uber and its CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, each contributed $1 million. Many of these tech execs have already met with Trump, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is even hosting an inauguration party for the incoming president, according to The New York Times.

These sizable donations surpass the amount most of these companies contributed to President Joe Biden’s inauguration fund in 2021. A filing with the Federal Election Commission shows Uber donated $1 million to the event, followed by Microsoft with a $500,000 contribution, Google at $337,500, and Amazon at $276,509. Apple donated just $43,200 to Biden’s inauguration, while Meta and OpenAI didn’t contribute at all.

In the letters, Sens. Warren and Bennet draw attention to the regulatory scrutiny the Biden administration has directed toward big tech firms. “You have a clear and direct interest in obtaining favors from the incoming administration: your company and many other Big Tech donors are already the subject of ongoing federal investigations and regulatory actions,” the lawmakers write. “These donations raise questions about corruption and the influence of corporate money on the Trump administration, and Congress and the public deserve answers.”

Biden echoed these concerns in a farewell message this week, saying he was particularly worried about the “potential rise of a tech industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country.”

Sens. Warren and Bennet have posed several questions to Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Uber, asking for their “rationale” behind the contributions as well as “when and under what circumstances” the companies decided to make a donation. They’re giving the companies until January 30th to respond.

Update, January 17th: Added post from Altman.

MOSS LANDING, CALIFORNIA – JANUARY 17: A fire erupted at Moss Landing Power Plant on Thursday.  | Photo: Getty Images

A fire broke out at the Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility in Central California Thursday. The battery power plant is the largest in the world according to the company, Vistra, that owns it.

The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office issued evacuation orders for nearby residents and closed parts of Highway 1 in response. County Health officials have asked other residents to shelter indoors with windows and doors closed and to switch off ventilation systems.

“There’s no way to sugarcoat it. This is a disaster, is what it is,” Monterey County Supervisor Glen Church told KSBW-TV.

The company will investigate the cause of the fire once it’s out, Vistra spokesperson Jenny Lyon told The Mercury News. Vistra did not immediately respond to an email from The Verge. It completed an expansion of the facility in 2023, adding more than 110,000 battery modules needed to store renewable energy. Energy storage facilities like this one are essential for power grids to be able to keep enough excess solar and wind energy so it’s available when the sun goes down and winds wane.

This isn’t the first battery fire in the area. A nearby Pacific Gas & Electric battery plant stocked with Tesla batteries caught fire back in 2022. The year prior, Vistra had to temporarily shut down its battery plant at Moss Landing after a malfunctioning smoke detector and heat-suppression system sprayed water on its batteries, Canary Media reported.

The current blaze is unrelated to fires burning further south that have devastated Los Angeles County.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

In his first statement since the Supreme Court upheld a law that could ban TikTok from the US on Sunday, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew offered no insight into what would happen to the app in just a few days. Instead, he took the opportunity to appeal to President-elect Donald Trump.

“I want to thank President Trump for his commitment to work with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available in the United States,” Chew says in a video on the platform. “We are grateful and pleased to have the support of a President who truly understands our platform — one who has used TikTok to express his own thoughts and perspectives, connecting with the world and generating more than 60 billion views of his content in the process.”

In discussing Trump’s TikTok views, Chew is speaking his language. After all, the incoming president is famous for keeping close tabs on his TV ratings, and recently declared he had a “warm spot” for TikTok after seeing how the platform played a role in his campaign. It’s TikTok’s most public attempt to butter Trump up before he takes over the Oval Office on Monday (one day after the ban takes effect), but Chew has already visited him at Mar-a-Lago and plans to attend his inauguration, along with several other tech CEOs.

Trump has previously declared his intention to save TikTok, but has not said how he’d do so. After Friday’s Supreme Court ruling, he asked the public to “respect it” and said, “My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future, but I must have time to review the situation.” Earlier on Friday he said he’d spoken with China’s President Xi Jinping about TikTok among other things, calling it a “very good” call.

Chew’s statement seems to indicate that TikTok believes appealing to Trump is now its most promising path to remaining viable in the US. Even so, Trump’s options are somewhat limited. The most effective path, if he could achieve it, would be to somehow broker a deal to get ByteDance (with China’s allowance) to sell TikTok and comply with the law’s divestiture requirements. Otherwise, he could instruct his Justice Department not to enforce the ban, possibly through an executive order — but that might not be enough to reassure companies like Apple, Google, and Oracle that they won’t risk serious penalties continuing to provide service for TikTok.

In the meantime, we still don’t know how TikTok itself will handle the impending ban, which takes effect the day before Trump is sworn in. The company has reportedly planned to go dark in the US in that case. “Rest assured, we will do everything in our power to ensure our platform thrives as your online home for limitless creativity and discovery, as well as a source of inspiration and joy for years to come,” Chew says. “More to come.”

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

Now that TikTok has finally reached the end of its legal options in the US to avoid a ban, somehow its future seems less clear than ever.

The Supreme Court couldn’t have been more direct: the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, as applied to TikTok, withstands First Amendment scrutiny and can take effect on January 19th. The court agreed that the government had a compelling national security interest in passing the law and that its rationale was content neutral. The solution proposed — forcing Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest TikTok or see it ousted from the US — was ruled appropriately tailored to meet those ends.

Yet the government’s response hardly feels like a victory lap. In fact, despite being still under ByteDance’s control, it’s not clear that anyone in the US government will even act like TikTok is banned on the 19th.

“TikTok should remain available to Americans, but simply under American ownership or other ownership that addresses the national security concerns identified by Congress in developing this law,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement after the Supreme Court ruling today. “Given…

Read the full story at The Verge.