Billionaire on social media: 'quarantined' on $590 million superyacht

Anthony Garreffa | Business, Financial & Legal | Mar 31, 2020 5:51 PM CDT

If you had to be on lockdown during a quarantine, I couldn't think of a better place than a $590 million superyacht -- but would you really boast about it on social media? Probably not.

Billionaire on social media: 'quarantined' on $590 million superyacht

Except, that's what billionaire David Geffen did. The DreamWorks co-founder posted a picture on his personal Instagram, saying he was on "quarantine" on his $590,000,000 superyacht with the caption: "Sunset last night... isolated in the Grenadines avoiding the virus. I'm hoping everybody is staying safe".

It wasn't long before social media tore Geffen a new one, saying that his post on Instagram talking about being quarantined on a $590 million superyacht was "tone deaf" considering the hardships people are going through right now. Even The View co-host Meghan McCain chimed in, saying: "David Geffen is worth 8 billion dollars! For God's sake help this country get ventilators, our health workers masks and the medical supplies they need! Or no, just stay on your f---ing yacht instagramming. This is just shameful and grotesque".

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UN enacts 'battle plan' to fight upcoming worldwide food shortages

Anthony Garreffa | Business, Financial & Legal | Mar 31, 2020 4:59 PM CDT

If you thought the fight for toilet paper was bad, just imagine if there was a global food shortage. This is something the United Nations (UN) has been thinking about, forcing them to issue a "battle plan" to make sure the worldwide food supply chains aren't destroyed.

UN enacts 'battle plan' to fight upcoming worldwide food shortages

The United Nations' Food and Agriculture division said last week that it had "already seen signs" of this in the global food supply chain, caused by all the lockdowns worldwide that are impacting supply chains. Chief Economist Maximo Torero Cullen explained: "Disruptions, particularly in the area of logistics, could materialise in the coming months".

The International Agri-Food Network, which also acts as the UN Committee on World Food Security explains: "While the immediate problem has been access to food and the need for shelf stable foods, disruptions at borders and in supply chains may cause an echo in the food system with potentially disastrous effects".

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Bethesda cancels QuakeCon 2020 over coronavirus outbreak

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Mar 31, 2020 3:36 PM CDT

For the first time in 25 years, QuakeCon 2020 has officially been cancelled.

Bethesda cancels QuakeCon 2020 over coronavirus outbreak

Today Bethesda announced QuakeCon 2020 has been cancelled due to significant coronavirus disruption. Although the event would've been several months away in August, the recent COVID-19 pandemic has completely interrupted the critical planning phases for the event. Even if the coronavirus was under control by August 2020, Bethesda says it wouldn't be able to properly prepare a quality show with the industry's current state of disarray.

"In recent weeks we have spent a lot of time discussing how we might still move forward with QuakeCon this year, particularly given it's the 25th year of the event.

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Modern Warfare 2 remastered is a PS4 timed exclusive

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Mar 31, 2020 2:23 PM CDT

Activision teams up with Sony to launch Modern Warfare 2 remastered first on PlayStation 4, but this doesn't actually matter much for Activision.

Modern Warfare 2 remastered is a PS4 timed exclusive

To no one's surprise, Activision today officially announced Modern Warfare 2 remastered. There's a catch, though: The game is only available on PS4 today, and is coming to other platforms on April 30. This really isn't that big of a deal for the publisher. In fact, MW2R is a low-risk release.

The remaster is campaign-only (no co-op, no spec-ops, just campaign) so it won't interfere with the billion-dollar monetizable multiplayer market that Activision thrives on. That also means the game's gated-off accessibility doesn't matter as much as it would if MW2R had multiplayer. In short, this timed exclusivity won't hurt Activision in the long run because MW2R is just an extra piece of game sale downloads and doesn't affect what it cares about most: Live service microtransactions.

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Doom Eternal conquers Half-Life Alyx as 2020's best-selling Steam game

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Mar 31, 2020 1:37 PM CDT

Doom Eternal has sold an estimated 700,000 copies on Steam in its first week alone, making it the best-selling Steam game of 2020 so far.

Doom Eternal conquers Half-Life Alyx as 2020's best-selling Steam game

According to the latest data estimates from PlayTracker, Doom Eternal sales on PC are absolutely destroying console sales. The firm reports the rip-and-tear sequel has amassed over 700,000 in its first week on Steam compared to the 250,000 - 400,000 sold on PS4 and Xbox One. That's a pretty huge variance range and we're guessing the lower side of that is Xbox One due to the system's smaller 40 million install base. Also remember this doesn't include Bethesda.net sales and may be digital-only.

The sales-tracker says Doom Eternal has beaten Half-Life: Alyx's sales, which also isn't surprising considering the new Half-Life requires a hefty PC-powered VR headset to play.

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Playing Doom Eternal in third-person is hilariously fun (and tough)

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Mar 31, 2020 9:19 AM CDT

With the help of console commands, we got Doom Eternal running in third-person for some no-holds-barred (and supremely glitchy) demon-slaying mayhem.

Playing Doom Eternal in third-person is hilariously fun (and tough)

Doom Eternal is probably the best FPS game I've played in the last decade, but how would it play as a third-person shooter? Pretty damn good. The combat is fluid and you get a great view of the carnage and explosive bloody death you're unleashing. In many ways it's even harder than first-person, especially if you're playing withe HUD off like some insane masochist (yes, we played it this way and it's tough as nails).

With Sunbeam's cheat table, we were able to get Doom Eternal running in third-person. The result is game-breaking fun, even if some weapons simply don't play nicely with third-person. I'm looking at you, assault rifle. Hell most of the precision weapons are extra tough because you simply can't aim down any scopes and the Doom Slayer's massive lats get in the way of the reticle. I can see why id didn't add the mode in and cut access to console commands, but I still really feel like it should be some sort of optional mode.

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21 million Chinese phone users vanished NOT attributed to coronavirus

It was just over 24 hours ago that we wrote the story that 21 million phones in China vanishing over coronavirus, but it seems the Associated Press noticed my story and 'fact checked' it.

21 million Chinese phone users vanished NOT attributed to coronavirus

The Associated Press has the "claim" of questioning the "Drop in cellphone users in China is proof that the coronavirus has killed 21 million in the country, far more than the official count". AP has their own "assessment" on this, where Arijeta Lajka writes: "False. The decline in cellphone users is not linked to the number of people who died after being infected with coronavirus. Major cellphone carriers in China attributed the drop to people with multiple phone numbers canceling some service during the outbreak".

AP talked with a representative of China Mobile, who said that the situation is indeed related to the COVID-19 outbreak, it was "not related to deaths, but changes in lifestyle". A China Mobile spokesperson said: "It was mainly due to reduced business and social activities resulting from the COVID-19 outbreak. Many customers in China have multiple SIM cards and it is common that they use their non-primary SIM cards to do these activities".

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New Old School RuneScape client breaths HD life into a classic game

Jak Connor | Gaming | Mar 31, 2020 1:32 AM CDT

Old School RuneScape has never been the prettiest game out there, but players who don't care about graphics don't really mind. But what if Old School RuneScape could look graphically impressive? At least in comparison to current RuneScape graphics?

New Old School RuneScape client breaths HD life into a classic game

A post has recently blown up on the Old School RuneScape subreddit, the post is by Tottty and shows a next-gen RuneScape client that takes the graphics level of RuneScape to a completely new level. The post received major support from the games community, and Jordan (Tottty) decided to give a little history behind the client's existence. Jordan explains that the client was merely a side project for him when he was 17 and learning to program as a hobby outside of school and other activities.

Jagex, the developers of RuneScape, then invited him to Jagex HQ to discuss implementing Jordan's client into the live game. Unfortunately, that never happened, so Jordan sold the client off to a third-party developer, which funnily enough they didn't end up finishing either. The third-party developer then gave the rights for the client back to Jordan, which then resulted in Jordan deciding to create a new one. Jordan states that "So here I am in 2020, giving it another shot. After seeing the shift in perception of 3rd party clients in both the community and Jagex's posts, I figured now would be a good time to realistically be allowed to release this."

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Steam hits new all-time record for concurrent players on its platform

Jak Connor | Gaming | Mar 31, 2020 12:32 AM CDT

With everyone being urged to stay indoors due to the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic that is running rampant across the globe, many people have turned to gaming to keep them entertained while they are waiting out the virus.

Steam hits new all-time record for concurrent players on its platform

One of those platforms is the staple PC gaming platform, Valve's Steam. If you are a new PC gamer, one of the first programs you should download is Steam. Steam is renowned as one of, if not the best client to run games off of, as its selection is massive and sales are almost unbeatable. Since everyone is being urged to stay indoors and minimize the amount of human-to-human interaction that is being done, Steam has seen a massive increase in concurrent players.

Steam has now broken its all-time record for the number of players on its platform three times in a row. Steam's first record for this year was set back on February 2nd, with 18.8 million concurrent users. That record was beaten on March 15th when it was spotted that Steam had over 20 million concurrent users, more precisely - 20,313,476 concurrent users. That record was beaten just a week later when more than 22 million players were on Steam at the same time. Now, the previous record has been broken, as 23,572,311 users have been recorded to be on the platform.

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GIVEAWAY: Seagate IronWolf 16TB HDD and IronWolf 110 480GB SSD

Cameron Wilmot | Contests & Giveaways | Mar 31, 2020 12:01 AM CDT

Global entry! We have teamed up with Seagate to give away one IronWolf 16TB hard drive and one IronWolf 110 480GB SSD. There will be two lucky winners, each taking home one of the listed prizes.

GIVEAWAY: Seagate IronWolf 16TB HDD and IronWolf 110 480GB SSD

YOUR NAS DESERVES A PACK LEADER - IronWolf is Way Ahead of the Pack

Seagate understands your unique data storage challenges, and crafted the IronWolf and IronWolf Pro 16 TB network attached storage (NAS) hard drives to help you achieve your goals. We continue to push capacity boundaries way ahead of our competition.

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