The video game industry has had a turbulent few years. The pandemic made people play more and caused a small boom, which then subsided, resulting in wave after wave of massive layoffs. Microsoft, one of the major console manufacturers, is shifting its strategy for Xbox as the company shifts its focus to AI. And now, Electronic Arts, once a load-bearing publisher for the industry with brands like The Sims and Madden, is going private via a leveraged buyout in a deal involving Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and Jared Kushner.
Video games are more popular than ever, but many of the biggest companies in the business seem like they are struggling to adapt and convert that popularity into stability and sustainability. To try and understand what the hell is going on, this week we have a conversation between Emanuel and Jason Schreier, who reports about video games for Bloomberg and one of the best journalists on this beat.
Jason helps us unpack why Microsoft is now aiming for higher-than-average profit margins at Xbox and why the company is seemingly bowing out of the console business despite a massive acquisition spree. We also talk about what the EA deal tells us about other game publishers, and what all these problems tell us about changing player habits and the future of big budget video games.
Become a paid subscriber for early access to these interview episodes and to power our journalism. If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently invited staff to demos of an app that lets officers instantly scan a license plate, adding it to a database of billions of records that shows where else that vehicle has been spotted around the country, according to internal agency material viewed by 404 Media. That data can then be combined with other information such as driver license data, credit header data, marriage records, vehicle ownership, and voter registrations, the material shows.
The capability is powered by both Motorola Solutions and Thomson Reuters, the massive data broker and media conglomerate, which besides running the Reuters news service, also sells masses of personal data to private industry and government agencies. The material notes that the capabilities allow for predicting where a car may travel in the future, and also can collect face scans for facial recognition.
Do you work at ICE or CBP? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.
The tool “includes a feature that enables your phone to function as a license plate recognition camera. This capability allows ERO [Enforcement and Removal Operations] officers to quickly identify and process license plate information,” a message sent to all ERO staff, and viewed by 404 Media, reads. The mobile app also integrates with a desktop application called Vehicle Manager, which is “designed to assist ERO personnel in searching, analyzing, and managing license plate data to support a wide range of operations across ERO.”
The material sent to ERO personnel shows both Motorola and Thomson Reuters are involved in the capability. Thomson Reuters has previously faced criticismfor selling data to ICE during the first Trump administration, when the government was forcibly separating families at the border.
Motorola, through two acquired companies called Vigilant Solutions and Digital Recognition Network (DRN), has license plate reading cameras spread all across the U.S. Vigilant cameras are either installed at a fixed location or placed in a police officer’s roaming patrol vehicle, which constantly scan vehicles they drive past. DRN’s tech is much the same, but its scans are crowdsourced by hundreds of repo men who have the cameras installed in their vehicles. Motorola says it has “billions” of detections.
A screenshot of Mobile Companion's marketing material available online.
That data then feeds into Motorola’s product that customers can run their own searches against, allowing them to see where a vehicle previously was “and determine where it may be located in the future,” according to Motorola marketing material available online. “Convoy Analysis” is a tool that “helps identify vehicles traveling together,” according to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report which looked at various license plate reader tools available on the market.
The Mobile Companion app lets users contribute to that dataset while on the move, according to other marketing material available online. Users can get push notifications when the Motorola surveillance network detects a hot listed vehicle (meaning a specific license plate or vehicle law enforcement is looking for), and can look at license plate results in a specific location across time, to see what other vehicles had been there. The mobile app is also capable of capturing faces and uploading them to the Vigilant FaceSearch gallery, which is the company’s facial recognition tool.
The material sent to ICE says users can further enhance their investigations by combining Motorola’s license plate reader network with Thomson Reuters’ data. “Thomson Reuters CLEAR combines comprehensive public and proprietary data with nationwide license plate data from Motorola Solutions’ secure shared data network to help take vehicle-involved investigations to a more precise level,” the material says.
CLEAR is Thomson Reuters’ primary analysis product, which combines data from across public records and the web. That can include details on phone numbers, addresses, associates, and social media activity, according to a video on Thomson Reuters’ website. A document on Thomson Reuters’ website says CLEAR also contains driver license data, credit header data from Experian (which is the personal information, such as addresses, at the top of a credit report), marriage records, vehicle registrations, voter registrations, and much more.
A screenshot from Thomson Reuters' website.
In an email, a Thomson Reuters spokesperson said “Mobile Companion has no relation to CLEAR,” despite the material explaining in detail how users can enrich Motorola’s license plate data with CLEAR’s. The spokesperson added “There is no data in Mobile Companion that requires a search warrant to access.” Motorola did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
On its website, Thomson Reuters markets CLEAR as a tool that has saved an abducted baby, identified a wanted man, and caught a sexual predator. The marketing makes no mention of its tech being specifically used by ICE’s deportation arm.
Thomson Reuters continues to sign multimillion dollar contracts with ICE. In May, for example, ICE paid the company nearly $5 million for access to “license plate reader data to enhance investigations for potential arrest, seizure, and forfeiture,” according to public procurement records.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not respond to a request for comment.
Hello everyone, sorry to go so long without posting something. I caught covid in August and it’s taken me months to start feeling relatively back to normal. I am still struggling with fatigue and some neurological problems, so thank you for your patience!
It is rare that the McMansion ever approaches the mythical, though it is, of coursed, steeped in its own mythology – of bootstrapism, castle doctrine and, importantly, a total commitment to individualism. No one bereft of a sense of personal mythos would build some of the houses I’ve posted about on this site throughout the years.
However, rarely do those houses sincerely believe their own myths, express them so utterly. Often, there’s a bit of cheek involved in all those Corinthian columns, even among the knockoff Rolex set. Whenever one does swallow the (blue) kool aid, well, it’s very important to me. And so, from the forgotten underwater past of the greater Houston suburbs, I bring you: Chud Atlantis
(it is always more fun to quote the front bit of that Shelley poem, because the second bit has been misappropriated by Reddit.)
Atlantic in size (8 bedrooms, 9 baths, 10,000+ square feet), and in price ($2.8 million), Chud Atlantis is proof that, for better or for worse, we used to build things in this country. (Just kidding, this house was built, astonishingly enough, in 2023.) Its existence is baffling to me not only because it is anachronistic (it belongs in the Bad 70s) but because it is Texan. This house is, in the fullest sense of the word, a transplant. Orlando is that way.
(Shall we enter, then, the eye-watery depths?)
It’s important that you understand that the most significant thing about this house is that it is blue. In an age of gray supremacy, it is nice to know that tacky can still come in more unconventional shades. No one prior to this has ever looked at a piece of dyed marble and thought: I need to make this my entire personality. Not even in the 80s!
Like many McMansion owners, these do not know how to decorate. One can only presume that the furniture involved is so heavy that staging also wasn’t an option. This makes the house a historical document because from this point onward such rooms will henceforth be yassified with AI.
this kitchen begs for a concept food. it begs for ‘gold leaf hamburger.’
I’m not entirely convinced that the Rococo period was ugly, but its imitators commit crimes unerringly and without fail. Furniture like this sits in a room like a big glob of meat. Instead of saying 'i’m rich’ what it actually communicates is: 'i’m heavy.’
I don’t know how you can make so much money and yet have everything you do look like the bootleg Chanel rugs they sell outside of the subway. Like, can’t you buy the real thing, dawg?
This may also be the first house whose broad aesthetic is executed by way of direct to consumer printing. The FedExification of art. Or something like that. After all, the internet loves a neologism more than it loves its elaboration.
“What should we put here to fill out this room” all-time bad answer.
Anyway, without further ado, the back:
The suburban mind yearns for the miniature golf course. The suburban mind yearns for water while it all dries up.
Not into recurring payments? Try the tip jar! McMansion Hell stocks, much like mortgage-backed securities only ever go up! For non-architecture stuff I also have a substack where I write about things like the ring cycle and going to the eye doctor.
Welcome back to the Abstract! These are the studies this week that reached back through time, flooded the zone, counted the stars, scored science goals, and topped it all off with a ten-course meal.
First, scientists make a major breakthrough thanks to a very cute mammoth mummy. Then: the climate case for busy beavers; how to reconnect with 3,000 estranged siblings; this is your brain on football; and last, what Queen Elizabeth II had for lunch on February 20, 1957.
Scientists have sequenced RNA—a key ingredient of life as we know it—from the remains of a mammoth that lived 39,000 years ago during the Pleistocene “Ice Age” period, making it by far the oldest RNA on record.
The previous record holder for oldest RNA was sourced from a puppy that lived in Siberia 14,300 years ago. The new study has now pushed that timeline back by an extraordinary 25,000 years, opening a new window into ancient genetics and revealing a surprise about a famous mammoth mummy called Yuka.
“Ancient DNA has revolutionized the study of extinct and extant organisms that lived up to 2 million years ago, enabling the reconstruction of genomes from multiple extinct species, as well as the ecosystems where they once thrived,” said researchers led by Emilio Mármol Sánchez of the Globe Institute in Copenhagen, who completed the study while at Stockholm University.
“However, current DNA sequencing techniques alone cannot directly provide insights into tissue identity, gene expression dynamics, or transcriptional regulation, as these are encoded in the RNA fraction.”
“Here, we report transcriptional profiles from 10 late Pleistocene woolly mammoths,” the team continued. “One of these, dated to be ∼39,000 years old, yielded sufficient detail to recover…the oldest ancient RNA sequences recorded to date.”
DNA, the double-stranded “blueprint” molecule that stores genetic information, is far sturdier than RNA, which is why it can be traced back for millions of years instead of thousands. Single-stranded RNA, a “messenger” molecule that carries out the orders of DNA, is more fragile and rare in the paleontological record.
In addition to proving that RNA can survive much longer than previously known, the team discovered that Yuka—the mammoth that died 39,000 years ago—has been misgendered for years (yes, I realize gender is a social construct that does not apply to extremely dead mammoths, but mis-sexed just doesn’t have the same ring).
Yuka was originally deemed female according to a 2021 study that observed the “presence of skin folds in the genital area compatible with labia vulvae structures in modern elephants and the absence of male-specific muscle structures.” Mármol Sánchez and his colleagues have now overturned this anatomical judgement by probing the genetic remnants of Yuka’s Y chromosome.
In fact, as I write this on Thursday, November 13—a day before the embargo on this study lifts on Friday—Yuka is still listed as female on Wikipedia.
Every era has a champion; in our warming world, eager beavers may rise to claim this lofty title.
These enterprising rodents are textbook “ecosystem engineers” that reshape environments with sturdy dams that create biodiverse havens that are resistant to climate change. To better assess the role of beavers in the climate crisis, researchers reviewed the reported behavioral beaver-related restoration (BRR) projects across North America.
“Climate change is projected to impact streamflow patterns in western North America, reducing aquatic habitat quantity and quality and harming native species, but BRR has the potential to ameliorate some of these impacts,” said researchers led by Jesse A. S. Burgher of Washington State University.
The team reports “substantial evidence that BRR increases climate resiliency…by reducing summer water temperatures, increasing water storage, and enhancing floodplain connectivity” while also creating “fire-resistant habitat patches.”
So go forth and get busy, beavers! May we survive this crisis in part through the skin of your teeth.
Visible from both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the Pleiades is the most widely recognized and culturally significant star cluster in the night sky. While this asterism is defined by a handful of especially radiant stars, known as the Seven Sisters, scientists have now tracked down thousands of other stellar siblings born from the same clutch scattered across some 2,000 light years.
“We find that the Pleiades constitutes the bound core of a much larger, coeval structure” and “we refer to this structure as the Greater Pleiades Complex,” said researchers led by Andrew W. Boyle of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “On the basis of uniform ages, coherent space velocities, detailed elemental abundances, and traceback histories, we conclude that most stars in this complex originated from the same giant molecular cloud.”
The work “further cements the Pleiades as a cornerstone of stellar astrophysics” and adds new allure to a cluster that first exploded into the skies during the Cretaceous age. (For more on the Pleiades, check out this piece I wrote earlier this year about the deep roots of its lore).
Scientists have peered into a place I would never dare to visit—the minds of football fans during high-stakes plays. To tap into the neural side of fanaticism, researchers enlisted 60 healthy male fans from the ages of 20 to 45 to witness dozens of goal sequences from matches involving their favorite teams, rival teams, and “neutral” teams while their brains were scanned by an fMRI machine.
The participants were rated according to a “Football Supporters Fanaticism Scale (FSFS)” with criteria like “violent thought and/or action tendencies” and “institutional belonging and/or identification.” The scale divided the group up into 38 casual spectators, 19 committed fans, and four deranged fanatics (adjectives are mine for flourish).
Rendering of the negative effect of significant defeat. Image: Radiological Society of North America (RSNA)
“Our key findings revealed that scoring against rivals activated the reward system…while conceding to rivals triggered the mentalization network and inhibited the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC)”—a region responsible for cognitive control and decision-making—said researchers led by Francisco Zamorano of the Universidad San Sebastián in Chile. “Higher Football Supporters Fanaticism Scale scores correlated with reduced dACC activation during defeats, suggesting impaired emotional regulation in highly engaged fans.”
In other words, it is now scientifically confirmed that football fanatics are Messi bitches who love drama.
We’ll close, as all things should, with a century of fine Portuguese dining. In yet another edition of “yes, this can be a job,” researchers collected 457 menus served at various diplomatic meals in Portugal from 1910 to 2023 to probe “how Portuguese gastronomic culture has been leveraged as a culinary diplomacy and geopolitical rapprochement strategy.”
As a lover of both food and geopolitical bureaucracy, this study really hit the spot. Highlights include a 1957 “regional lunch” for Queen Elizabeth II that aimed to channel “Portugality” through dishes like lobster and fruit tarts from the cities of Peniche and Alcobaça. The study is also filled with amazing asides like “the inclusion of imperial ice cream in the European Free Trade Association official luncheon (ID45, 1960) seems to transmit a sense of geopolitical greatness and vast governing capacity.” Ice cream just tastes so much better when it’s a symbol of international power.
Menu of the “Luncheon in honour of her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and his Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh” held in Alcobaça (Portugal) on February 20th, 1957. Image: Cabral et al., 2025.
The team also unearthed a possible faux pas: Indian president Ramaswamy Venkataraman, a vegetarian who was raised Hindu, was served roast beef in 1990. In a footnote, Cabral and his colleagues concluded that “further investigation is deemed necessary to understand the context of ‘roast beef’ service to the Indian President in 1990.” Talk about juicy gossip!
Every month or so, Anthropic puts out a press release about how we should all be very frightened!! of AI. This month’s scare story is a Chinese hacker scare! [Anthropic; report, PDF]
Anthropic says that someone who “we assess with high confidence was a Chinese state-sponsored group” has been using the agentic abilities of chatbots and automating their hacking runs. And they used Anthropic’s Claude Code to do it!
We believe this is the first documented case of a large-scale cyberattack executed without substantial human intervention.
“Without substantial human intervention” there means, by Anthropic’s estimates, “10 to 20 percent of total effort.”
Can you guess what Anthropic’s advice is? I bet you can!
We advise security teams to experiment with applying AI for defense in areas like Security Operations Center automation, threat detection, vulnerability assessment, and incident response.
As if security teams don’t already use all the machine learning AI they can.
There’s a few things in this report you might question straight away.
If it’s a Chinese state actor … why are they using Claude Code? Why not Chinese chatbots like DeepSeek or Qwen? Those chatbots code just about as well as Claude. Anthropic do not address this really obvious question.
Attackers automate their attacks already. They don’t type every command in live. That’s where we get the phrase “script kiddie” from — someone running someone else’s hacking script.
Chatbots are already used in attacks. The Nx hack was a pretty clever hack that used a chatbot — where the attacker got the victim to run their code, and it called any local coding bots on the victim’s PC to steal the victim’s cryptocurrency. The main security revelation from Nx was “wow, vibe coders really are idiots.”
Anthropic’s most implausible claim is that an AI agent did it. Agents just do not work reliably. You are not going to get a chatbot to reliably automate a long attack chain.
Dan Tentler of Phobos tells Ars Technica: [Ars Technica]
I continue to refuse to believe that attackers are somehow able to get these models to jump through hoops that nobody else can. Why do the models give these attackers what they want 90% of the time but the rest of us have to deal with ass-kissing, stonewalling, and acid trips?
There’s no IoCs [indicators of compromise] at all in the report, or the usual threat indicators. The threats it describes are all already widely detected.
They’re showing vibe usage of open source attack frameworks — which should be fine for existing detections and controls. The threat actors aren’t inventing something new here.
Whatever Anthropic detected, they spent two months writing up this report — and didn’t ask actual security guys at any point.
Plus, China! Gotta get those defense dollars!
This report is marketing for Anthropic and Claude Code, and you shouldn’t take it seriously.
Sawyer
Lee is an illustrated middle grade novel starring an unadventurous kid
who'd rather dig a deep dent in the couch than make a mark on the world,
as many in his illustrious family of astronauts, scientists, spies,
champion athletes... blah blah blah... have. He has decided that after
generations of effort, it’s time to spend one lifetime relaxing.
The
problem is that Sawyer keeps getting caught up in the exhausting
expectations of his wicked aunt Celia, his complex relationship with his
ambitious other friend, Angela, and the shenanigans of every else
in town hoping to win the yearly Gourd Thump festival celebrating
nature’s dullest vegetable.
In this tale of mystery, treachery,
conspiracy, plant husbandry, and an imaginary love triangle, Sawyer
knows it will take a regrettable amount of energy to escape these
entanglements and find a way back to his happy place on Gary’s couch,
with a cozy throw blanket, a steaming mug of chamomile tea, and an empty
schedule.
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