IGN acquires pay-what-you-want game and book retailer Humble Bundle

Media conglomerate IGN has acquired Humble Bundle, the pay-what-you-want gaming, book and software collection retailer that raises money for charitable causes. In a blog post , Humble Bundle cofounder and CEO Jeffrey Rosen noted that his company will “keep our own office, culture, and amazing team with IGN helping us further our plans.” Aside from noting that the retailer will get additional resources and help out of the deal, no details were disclosed. Welcome to the family, @humble ! We can’t wait to help others with you ✌️ https://t.co/MlxUoFi2nk — IGN (@IGN) October 13, 2017 In the post, Humble Bundle noted that the platform has raised $106 million for various charities in the seven years since it launched its first bundle. While the platform could do a lot with funding from a media titan like IGN (owned by J2 Media), there’s obvious concern over potential conflicts of interest between a game-reviewing publication owning a game-selling retailer. (We’ve reached out to both IGN and Humble Bundle for comment and will include their responses when we hear back.) From Humble Bundle’s blog post, it seems IGN will leave it to operate more or less independently. “The idea is just to feed them with the resources they need to keep doing what they’re doing … We want to stick to the fundamentals in the short term. We don’t want to disrupt anything we’re doing right already, ” IGN executive VP Mitch Galbraith told Gamasutra . “Because of the shared vision and overlap of our customer bases, there’s going to be a lot of opportunities.” Via: Gamasutra Source: Humble Bundle (blog)

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IGN acquires pay-what-you-want game and book retailer Humble Bundle

Essential Phone review: Impressive for a new company but not competitive

We have a new contender in the smartphone space. “Essential” is a new OEM that came seemingly out of nowhere, announced by Andy Rubin a mere nine months ago . Rubin is the co-founder and former CEO of Android Inc., a little company that was snatched up by Google in 2005 and went on to build the world’s most popular operating system. Rubin left Google, and Essential is his new startup with ambitions in the smartphone and smart home markets. Amazon, Tencent, and Foxconn have already invested in Essential, and the latest round of funding values the company at  more than a billion dollars—and this was before it even shipped a product. With the launch of the “Essential Phone,” we finally have that first product: a high-end, $700 smartphone running the operating system Rubin helped create. The phone more or less leaves Android alone, and, with the backing of hardware manufacturer Foxconn, most of the innovation here is in the hardware. Read 79 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Essential Phone review: Impressive for a new company but not competitive

The International Space Station’s network bandwidth will be doubled by new upgrades

 The internet connection on the International Space Station and other platforms in orbit is getting a serious upgrade that will double its capacity, NASA announced today. But they aren’t sending up a new router or satellite; the improvements are mainly terrestrial. The ISS and dozens of satellites rely on the Space Network, a more or less unified architecture for sending large amounts of… Read More

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The International Space Station’s network bandwidth will be doubled by new upgrades