Apparently, Valve keeps getting builds that were never run through Steam at all, which is how games end up with broken launch options or missing depots.

Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston's office has criticized a Toronto professor for making "slanted comments" about a proposed artificial intelligence data centre in Cape Breton.

Sibo Chen, an associate professor of communication at Toronto Metropolitan University who researches the discourse around AI data centres, said in an interview with CBC News last week that public concern over the proposed facility in Point Tupper, N.S., is valid.

Two days later, a communications adviser in the premier's office sent him an email that called his remarks "irresponsible" and "uninformed."

"Nova Scotians deserve facts, not speculation presented in a way that creates unnecessary anxiety," William Burns wrote in the email.

The email was copied to Chen's department chair at Toronto Metropolitan University, formerly Ryerson University, a step Chen interpreted as an attempt to exert institutional pressure. A reporter at CBC Nova Scotia who interviewed Chen was also copied.

Resident Evil, Street Fighter, and Monster Hunter publishers Capcom have revealed that a data breach has seen a third-party gain access to information associated with more than 11 million Capcom ID accounts. "Suspicious activity" around the service, required to play online in the likes of Street Fighter 6, was initially noticed on October 19th according to Capcom, who have spent the past couple of days taking measures to contain and combat the problem.

Resident Evil, Street Fighter, and Monster Hunter publishers Capcom have revealed that a data breach has seen a third-party gain access to information associated with more than 11 million Capcom ID accounts. "Suspicious activity" around the service, required to play online in the likes of Street Fighter 6, was initially noticed on October 19th according to Capcom, who have spent the past couple of days taking measures to contain and combat the problem.

Fortnite, the gaping maw devouring pop culture as we know it so it can feed it into an AI-driven pipeline that cannot resist another skin to sell to its millions of players, is finally bringing Nikki, the titular obsessor, to its battle royale so she can snipe Sabrina Carpenter and a robot who looks like Sonic the Hedgehog and then dance on their corpses. Almost like she’s a puppet with no control over her body.

A massive data centre to provide computing power for the artificial intelligence giant Anthropic is under pre-construction just outside Port Hawkesbury in Cape Breton.

EverWind Fuels will build and own the facility, while Anthropic will lease the first phase for a term of at least 20 years. Anthropic said in a news release the data centre "will power Claude models and serve growing demand from Canadian and global customers."

Bill C-22, the lawful access bill, was a focal point of debate in the Senate last week. While companies continue to warn they may exit Canada if the bill passes in its current form, the debate’s biggest revelation was that it may take years for the government to pass the regulations needed to fully implement the law. The delay is notable for several reasons, including the government’s insistence in the spring that passing the bill was urgent (to the point that it shut down committee clause-by-clause review) and the regulatory uncertainty that it creates. Indeed, the Senate is effectively being asked to approve a surveillance and data retention framework without knowing who will be covered, what they will be required to build, what data about Canadians will be retained, or what any of it will cost. If this sounds familiar, it is because it has seemingly become the government’s go-to approach on many of its digital bills, from privacy to social media regulation, where key decisions are left to regulations and regulatory processes that take years to complete.

Just a little follow-up on Caster and TNA:

Max Caster has already drawn backstage heat in TNA, just one day after his Bound For Glory debut.

@FightfulSelect has learned that TNA executives were reportedly unhappy with an unscripted, unapproved line referencing Riyadh.

We’re told his future with the company is now uncertain, with upcoming taping plans potentially affected

Some Samsung smart fridges stopped working on Tuesday due to a firmware update.

Korean outlets were the first to report the problems, which affect Samsung’s Bespoke AI line of fridges. Star News Korea, per a Google-provided translation, said that most of the affected devices were four-door fridges from 2024 or later.

Two days after being placed on a paid leave of absence, Matt Mullenweg says he has been reinstated as CEO of Automattic, according to a Slack message seen by TechCrunch. WordPress Executive Director Mary Hubbard confirmed Mullenweg’s return to the CEO role in a Friday post on X, which the official WordPress account shared and Mullenweg reposted.

1Password faced immediate backlash from customers this week over a $300,000 pledge in support of a Linux distro created by David Heinemeier Hansson, who has regularly published overtly racist blog posts that include comments calling for deportation of ethnic minorities in Europe. The popular password manager is now a “distinguished corporate patron” of Omacom, the nonprofit foundation that oversees a popular Linux distribution known as Omarchy.

Archive: https://archive.is/osNh3

As described in today's Morning File:

‘Factually Innocent’: How police in Wisconsin and Halifax, a determined prosecutor in Nova Scotia, and a credulous provincial judge worked in concert to wrongly convict Brandon Klayme of vile sexual crimes against a child

This is a followup on the case of the Nova Scotia man who was convicted based on a misread username. There was a lot more wrong with the case.

The article came out from behind the Halifax Examiner's paywall today.

People ask this kind of thing in r/halifax, so I guess I'll give it a shot here.

A couple weeks ago I had one of the mold remediation places deal with moldy caulking around my tub, and they only replaced the moldy bits, and didn't do a very good job of that. I've been working my way up to trying to patch the worst bits, but the more I look at it the worse it gets. Does anyone have a suggestion for who could properly replace all of the caulking around the acrylic tub, walls, and ceiling? It's a lot of caulking.

Before the restock, the original OEM Steam Deck LCD battery kit cost $84.99, while the battery alone cost $79.99. After the restock, the OEM battery kit with iFixit's tools included costs $134.99, and the battery alone costs $129.99.

The article is behind the Halifax Examiner's paywall for now, but they have a section about it in today's free Morning File (it's not in the headline there).

But before debate even started on Morse’s motion [to send the letter], Coun. Trish Purdy asked for a point of order, saying issues around guaranteed basic income aren’t under municipal jurisdiction.

Mayor Andy Fillmore supported Purdy’s point of order, saying any decisions about a guaranteed basic income are up to the federal government with assistance from the provinces.

Fillmore pointed to section 70 of Administrative Order (AO) One that says “a motion in respect of a matter which is not within the jurisdiction of the Council shall not be in order.”

Municipal solicitor John Traves said while Fillmore is correct about the point of order, if two-thirds of councillors want to disregard the rule, they could do so.

Objecting because of the rules. OK, sure. But:

Purdy doubled-down, saying she wants council to always focus only on issues under municipal jurisdiction.

“What are we now? The giver of all magic money to all people?” Purdy said.

Still, she said while she doesn’t support a basic income, she thinks it will become a reality because of artificial intelligence (AI) in the labour force.

“I’m going to resist it until the very end,” Purdy said. “I have so many red flags about this.”

Purdy said if her children needed money, she’d tell them to go get another job.

“You get three jobs, you get five jobs. You don’t sleep; you make money, you save it, and you figure it out,” Purdy said. “That’s where I come from with these things.”

Fillmore said he does support universal basic income (UBI), adding he has attended and spoken at the BIG-NS conference in the past when he served as the MP for Halifax.

According to his LinkedIn page, [Nova Scotia Independent Energy System Operator CEO Johnny] Johnston started and built his career in the methane industry. For over 21 years, he worked for National Grid plc, a British company that also owns utilities in the northeastern U.S.

By 2016, Johnston worked at National Grid’s SVP Gas Business Enablement, where he “Led the envisioning, development and delivery of an industry leading multi-$100M transformation, to deliver a step change in how National Grid serves its 7 million customers, how its 5,500 front line employees manage their work, and its engineers manage more than $10B in gas assets.”

After leaving National Grid, from August 2023 to August 2024 Johnston was a board member of the American Gas Association, which says that it “represents more than 200 energy companies that provide natural gas [methane] service to 189 million Americans.”

Memory-maker Micron has found a way to keep prices for its products sky-high for another five years, by signing 16 “strategic customer agreements” (SCAs) that include a floor price the company says comes with “a very robust gross margin for Micron, well above our peak quarterly margins in any past cycle.”

Micron CEO, president and chairman Sanjay Mehrotra explained the SCAs in prepared remarks delivered during the company’s Q3 earnings call. He explained that Micron has signed 16 SCAs, most of them covering 2026 to 2030, and that they involve a commitment to buy a certain quantity of product and pay for it in a pricing band that has a floor and a ceiling price. The floor price covers the historically high gross margins mentioned above, and the ceiling price means those who commit to an SCA are insulated if memory prices go even higher.