Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
The Empire is without an emperor. Last week, a Star Wars Battlefront II update apparently brought back the evil Emperor Palpatine’s game-breaking ability to shoot lightning through walls. An emergency fix completely removed him from the game, and it’s unclear when he’ll return. Star Wars Battlefront II allows players to fight as iconic heroes and…
This week, esports host Frankie Ward won “Presenter of the Year” at the UK Esports Awards, and she used her acceptance speech to make a pledge: “There is no room for homophobic or racist or misogynist language in the esports industry.” Her pledge follows on the heels of a week-long debate among esports stars and…
Mafia 3’s opening used to be much more intense, the game’s director has revealed. A “cold open” sequence that ended with the main character killing a cop was eventually cut from the game—and apparently deleted from the developer’s servers, so it never gets out. Speaking at the Brighton Develop Conference yesterday, as reported by Eurogamer,…
Screenshot: No Man’s Sky (Hello Games) Three days ago, a No Man’s Sky community leader saw one of her bases erased by a notorious streamer who roleplays as a tyrannical overlord. In response, the community put their foot down. SeriusGamerX, or SGX, is a streamer who mainly plays No Man’s Sky. His whole gimmick is…
Following a year in which YouTube has repeatedly promoted conspiracy-theory videos during breaking news events like the shootings in Parkland, Florida, and Las Vegas, the company announced on Monday a slew of new features it hopes will make news on the platform more reliable and less susceptible to manipulation. The company is also investing $25…
BRUSSELS — President Trump unleashed a blistering attack Wednesday on Germany and other NATO allies, wasting no time to take the offensive before a week of high-stakes diplomacy on both sides of the former Cold War divide. The series of meetings — beginning with NATO and capped by a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin…
The explosiveness of the migration issue in Italy is perhaps best seen in Macerata, a medieval town near the Adriatic Coast.CreditDmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times MACERATA, Italy — At the end of his shooting rampage as the police closed in, Luca Traini climbed the steps of a Fascist-era monument, wrapped himself in an…
WARSAW — Poland’s government carried out a sweeping purge of the Supreme Court on Tuesday night, eroding the judiciary’s independence, escalating a confrontation with the European Union over the rule of law and further dividing this nation. Tens of thousands took to the streets in protest. Poland was once a beacon for countries struggling to…
A slow-simmering scandal in Austria has brought into public view potentially disastrous divisions among Western intelligence agencies. As far-right politicians have joined coalition governments in Austria and Italy and taken ministerial positions in charge of security and law enforcement, concerns have grown among intelligence professionals that they will ignore or even encourage the threat of…
END CLASS=”STORYTITLE” END CLASS=”STORY-TOOLS” END ID=”STORY-META” CLASS=”STORY-META HAS-BYLINE” A former top attorney at ICE in Washington state has pleaded guilty to stealing the personal information of immigrants who were at risk of deportation and using the data to defraud banks. Here, protesters stand outside the ICE office in Seattle during a demonstration in May. …