Streaming service Twitch, well-known for making millionaires out of various gaming personalities, has launched a new feature that would allow streamers to restrict access only to subscribers who pay a monthly fee towards that specific streamer. However, the policy has created much controversy surrounding everything from community divides to ToS violations. The subscriber-only streams are only available to those streamers officially recognized by Twitch as affiliates or partners, and furthermore only to those partners in good standing. For those who make a living on of Twitch subscriptions and donations, the…
Jeremy Hunt, the UK foreign secretary and one of two contenders to be the next Tory leader and Prime Minister, announced in a BBC interview that he would pursue a no-deal Brexit even if it meant telling businesses to prepare for collapse. According to Hunt, “At the beginning of October, if there is no prospect of a deal that can get through parliament, then I will leave at the end of October because that is our democratic promise to the British people.” Questioned whether he would be willing to tell…
On Friday, a statement from the European Union announced that a new system to bypass US sanctions on trade with Iran had been launched. INSTEX, the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges, is now operational for all member states of the EU. The system functions as a clearing house for trade between EU businesses and Iran, allowing trade to be conducted without direct flow of euros to Iran or rials to the EU. Initially, INSTEX will only process trade in non-sanctioned goods such as food and medical supplies. However, future…
Dartmouth researchers have managed to register on fMRI brain scans the degree to which different people understand a subject, based on brain activity when viewing images. A study of twenty-eight students, split between engineering students and those with no engineering knowledge, was able to differentiate areas of the brain that activate when viewing a structure and considering the forces applied to it. Both types of student registered the image in the visual cortex, but engineering students recognition of different types of structure and the forces involved created activity in regions…
A research paper published in May claims that Magic: The Gathering, a well-known tabletop trading card game, is the most complex game in the world, and possibly the most complex game that can exist. Invented in 1993, Magic, which was originally designed by mathematician Richard Garfield, involves two players with decks of 60 cards assembled to their liking from a larger set. The total number of cards available has reached incredible numbers in the two decades since the game’s creation, with over twenty thousand cards each bearing their own unique rules.…
In 2016, a Florida state court jury ruled in favour of Terry Bollea, also known as wrestler Hulk Hogan, in a suit brought against publisher Gawker Media and several of their employees, in relation to Gawker’s publication of a sex tape taken of Bollea in 2006. The tape, recorded without Bollea’s knowledge by Bubba Clem, depicted Bollea having sex with Clem’s wife Heather. It was published to the Gawker blog website by editor AJ Daulerio in 2012, under the headline “Even for a Minute, Watching Hulk Hogan Have Sex…
Bitcoin exchange QuadrigaCX made headlines in February when the founder’s mysterious death overseas left all funds completely inaccessible. Now, investigations by the agency overseeing the exchange’s bankruptcy have revealed that the funds only Gerald Cotten could access may have been mismanaged while he was alive. Nearly 200 million dollars were effectively lost after Cotten’s death, as only he held the password needed to access the encrypted laptop on which he ran his entire business. Investigations launched after the exchange went silent revealed that supposed storage accounts had been emptied before…
The ruling party in Turkey was dealt a major setback on Sunday as the re-run of Istanbul’s mayoral election showed the same result they had previously contested. The AKP, party of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had contested and annulled the surprise victory by opposition party CHP’s candidate Ekrem Imamoglu in March. Imamoglu’s victory in March, over former prime minister Binali Yildirim of the AKP, had a narrow margin of 13000 votes, and the electoral authority held that the election was invalid due to issues in the staffing at ballot…
A petition to cancel the television miniseries Good Omens accumulated more than twenty thousand signatures, but has been met with mockery after the discovery that it was directed at the wrong production company. Good Omens, which is based on a novel by Neil Gaiman and the late Terry Pratchett, is a production of Amazon Studios which involves an angel and a demon working together to prevent Armageddon. A petition by the Christian group Return to Order, decrying the show as blasphemous and demanding its cancellation, was erroneously directed at Netflix.…
An interesting test of the current Supreme Court’s views on religious freedoms occured when the court declared on Thursday that a “peace cross” monument located on public land and dating back to World War I does not constitute a government establishment of religion, as prohibited by the First Amendment. The 7-2 ruling stated that the cross can have both secular and religious meanings, and that the government cannot presume to know the intentions of the monument’s builders. However, the decision was highly fractious when it came to reasonings, with seven…