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Today, the Internet Archive has submitted its appeal [PDF] in Hachette v. Internet Archive. As we stated when the decision was handed down in March, we believe the lower court made errors in facts and law, so we are fighting on in the face of great challenges. We know this won’t be easy, but it’s a necessary fight if we want library collections to survive in the digital age.

A coalition of local officials from across the country are calling on Congress to oppose proposed legislation that will allow an increase in the length and weight of large trucks traveling on commercial highways.

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“Longer and heavier trucks would cause significantly more damage to our transportation infrastructure, costing us billions of dollars that local government budgets simply cannot afford, compromising the very routes that American motorists use every day.”

The new terms, which are effective from September 29, ban any kind of scraping or crawling without “prior written consent.”

NOTE: crawling or scraping the Services in any form, for any purpose without our prior written consent is expressly prohibited.

The previous version of the terms allowed crawling in accordance with robots.txt.

“NOTE: crawling the Services is permissible if done in accordance with the provisions of the robots.txt file, however, scraping the Services without our prior consent is expressly prohibited,” it read.

In the last few months, Twitter has also altered its robots.txt file — a file that gives instructions to robot crawlers about what parts of the site they are permitted to visit — to remove instructions for all crawler bots apart from Google.

In 2015, Twitter confirmed that it had a firehose deal in place with Google to surface tweets in search results. It is not clear if the nature or terms of that deal have changed under the new management.

We’re going to go slow on this one, because there’s a lot of background and details and nuance to get into in Friday’s 5th Circuit appeals court ruling in the Missouri v. Biden case that initially resulted in a batshit crazy 4th of July ruling regarding the US government “jawboning” social media companies. The reporting on the 5th Circuit ruling has been kinda atrocious, perhaps because the end result of the ruling is this:

The district court’s judgment is AFFIRMED with respect to the White House, the Surgeon General, the CDC, and the FBI, and REVERSED as to all other officials. The preliminary injunction is VACATED except for prohibition number six, which is MODIFIED as set forth herein. The Appellants’ motion for a stay pending appeal is DENIED as moot. The Appellants’ request to extend the administrative stay for ten days following the date hereof pending an application to the Supreme Court of the United States is GRANTED, and the matter is STAYED.

Affirmed, reversed, vacated, modified, denied, granted, and stayed. All in one. There’s… a lot going on in there, and a lot of reporters aren’t familiar enough with the details, the history, or the law to figure out what’s going on. Thus, they report just on the bottom line, which is that the court is still limiting the White House. But it’s at a much, much, much lower level than the district court did, and this time it’s way more consistent with the 1st Amendment.

The real summary is this: the appeals court ditched nine out of the ten “prohibitions” that the district court put on the government, and massively narrowed the only remaining one, bringing it down to a reasonable level (telling the U.S. government that it cannot coerce social media companies, which, uh, yes, that’s exactly correct).

For this month’s IGN First, I visited Remedy’s studio in Finland to play Alan Wake 2. Across more than an hour of play I experienced the entirety of Local Girl, the third chapter of Saga’s story. Within it, I saw plenty of things that will make long-term Alan Wake devotees happy. Manuscripts still litter the world, as do blue thermos flasks. There are generators to power up, and your shadow-burning flashlight is still a fundamental part of combat. A pair of ageing rock stars make a very welcome return. But the shift from nightmare horror to grisly detective thriller on Saga’s side of the story is the first sign of the bold, sweeping changes that Remedy has made in its long-awaited sequel.

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If the opening walk through Watery presents an air of Silent Hill, then this later approach positions Alan Wake 2 close to Resident Evil, which has long used its police stations and villages in a similar manner. That relationship is further emphasised by the abundance of puzzles. As I get closer to Coffee World I stumble across a number of containers, each locked by a brain teaser with a difficulty level that scales in correlation with the rewards inside. I find a basic supply chest that’s protected by a simple memory mini-game, but later discover a lockbox containing a powerful crossbow. Cracking it requires a close study of the surrounding environment, as the bolts embedded in the nearby targets are clues to the padlock’s combination. I appreciate this more involved and ambiguous approach over Resident Evil’s tradition of using an unusual item as a key, although that design does still make an appearance later in the chapter.

Some of Steam’s oldest user accounts are turning 20-years old this week, and Valve is celebrating the anniversary by handing out special digital badges featuring the original Steam colour scheme to the gaming veterans.

Steam first opened its figurative doors all the way back in September 2003, and has since grown into the largest digital PC gaming storefront in the world, which is actively used by tens of millions of players each day.

“In case anyone's curious about the odd colours, that's the colour scheme for the original Steam UI when it first launched,” commented Redditor Penndrachen, referring to the badge's army green colour scheme, which prompted a mixed reaction from players who remembered the platform's earliest days. “I joined in the first six months,” lamented Affectionate-Memory4. “I feel ancient rn.”

Patch 1.1.4 is fairly small compared to the many post-Season 1 patches the game had received. The big deal here is a major buff to Urn of Aggression, one of the key Season Blessings - available as part of the battle pass. Anyone who plays Diablo 4 can take advantage of Season Blessings, as you do not need to own the battle pass.

Advertising for these CPUs will kick off on the 16th of October followed by sales and reviews on the 17th of October, according to VideoCardz. The remaining Raptor Lake refresh CPUs are said to launch sometime in early 2024, most likely with a CES announcement followed by availability sometime in the first quarter. However, it appears that Intel will officially announce the Raptor Lake refresh processors during Intel Innovation 2023, which kicks off next week, on the 19th of September. Early performance leaks suggest that those with a recent CPU won't be overly tempted by these new chips from Intel and most consumers are better off waiting for Intel's move to a new socket next year, if they're looking at getting a new Intel based system.

Greetings Ghostrunners, the entire Ghostrunner team (at One More Level) is proud to share that Ghostrunner has sold over 2.5 million units since it launched on October 27, 2020! Thank you for being a part of the Ghostrunner community and helping to spread the word about Ghostrunner and Ghostrunner 2.

A look at Starfield's file I/O and how it impacts storage and overall game performance.

Starfield has traversal stutter that occurs when the game loads new assets or new areas of the map. Unlike other games, these stutters are not only CPU related. These stutters mostly occur in big cities like New Atlantis.

Some stutters occur in disk IO bound scenarios, even on a Gen5 SSD. Below you can see the SSD hitting 100% usage, followed by a drop in the GPU usage and a stutter.

Bethesda's space behemoth Starfield has now reached another new milestone in Steam concurrent players. Over the weekend, following the game's full release, it hit a peak of 330,723 concurrent players.

That's bigger than Skyrim's 287,411 concurrent player record, though still a way behind Fallout 4, which has a concurrent Steam player count of 472,962

Gearbox is reportedly the latest studio to be affected by Embracer Group's restructuring efforts.

In June, Embracer announced a "comprehensive restructuring programme" to help recover from its large spending spree over recent years and a 40 percent drop in share price following a report of a failed "major strategic partnership" with Savvy Games Group, which is backed by the Saudi Arabian government.

As part of the restructuring, Saints Row developer Volition Games was shut down "effective immediately" at the end of last month. A new report from Reuters claims that Borderlands developer Gearbox will be one of the next studios Embracer sheds.

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UPDATE 5.40pm: Bloomberg's Jason Schreier reports that Gearbox has today emailed employees confirming Embracer Group is, at the very least, considering parting ways with the Borderlands studio - although a specific course of action is yet to be decided on.

"The base case is that Gearbox remains a part of Embracer," Gearbox chief communications officer Dan Hewitt told staff in an email seen by Bloomberg. "However, there are many options under consideration, including Gearbox's transfer, taking Gearbox independent, and others. Ultimately, we'll move ahead with whichever path is best for both Gearbox and Embracer."

"Nothing has been decided yet," Hewitt added, "but there will be a lot of speculation in the coming weeks."