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PayPal gains bigger in-store presence with $2.2B acquisition
The $1200 Red Hydrogen One phone is coming to Verizon and AT&T this summer, but why?
Two Years Later, 'No Man's Sky' Is Finally Getting True Multiplayer In Its 'NEXT' Update

PayPal gains bigger in-store presence with $2.2B acquisition

Posted: 17 May 2018 05:01 PM PDT

Published: 01:00 BST, 18 May 2018 | Updated: 01:15 BST, 18 May 2018

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - PayPal is buying financial services startup iZettle for $2.2 billion to expand its digital payment service into thousands of brick-and-mortar stores in Europe and Latin America.

The deal announced Thursday marks the largest acquisition in PayPal's 20-year history and intensifies its competition with Square, a payment processor started by Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey.

Both PayPal and Square are vying to help mostly small- and medium-sized retailers process sales that aren't paid with cash.

After the deal closes, PayPal will gain a presence in stores located in 11 new markets: Brazil, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Sweden.

PayPal, based in San Jose, California, says Stockholm-based iZettle is on pace to process about $6 billion in payments this year.

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The $1200 Red Hydrogen One phone is coming to Verizon and AT&T this summer, but why?

Posted: 18 May 2018 07:11 AM PDT

Carriers can make or break a phone release. As we’ve seen with Huawei’s debacle earlier this year, selling a new handset in the U.S. pretty much requires retail support of at least one major carrier, namely Verizon or AT&T, and generally both. And getting it isn’t always an easy task.

Take a look at the phones that aren’t being sold at AT&T stores (other than the Huawei Mate 10 Pro and P20):

Google Pixel 2
Essential Phone
LG G7
HTC U11
OnePlus 6

Aside from the Pixel 2, you won’t find any of them at a Verizon store either. And a couple of of them can’t even be used on Verizon’s CDMA network. Yet, both of the biggest carriers in the U.S. sent out press releases triumphantly announcing that they would be carrying the Red Hydrogen One phone when it launches later this summer. That begs the question: Why?

Revolutionary on paper

In case you don’t know, the Red Hydrogen One phone is a wild concept from Red, the maker of crazy high-end 8K cameras that cost tens of thousands of dollars. Last summer, it announced that it would be making its first phone, a 5.7-inch Android phone that focused on content consumption rather than creation.

Among the features being promised are:

A holographic display: Red says you’ll be able to switch between 2D, 3D, and 4-View content without the use of glasses.
Spatial sound: Built into the Hydrogen One is a “proprietary H3O algorithm that converts stereo sound into expansive multi-dimension audio.” Red says “the difference this makes would be enough to justify the entire system.”
Modular add-ons: The Hydrogen One is also “the foundation of a future multi-dimensional media system,” meaning you’ll be able to add modules to expand the capability of the phone, not unlike Moto’s higher-end phones. Red says attachments will include “higher-quality motion and still images as well as Hydrogen format holographic images.”
Compatibility: The Hydrogen phone will “integrate into the professional Red camera program, working together with Scarlet, Epic, and Weapon as a user interface and monitor.”
Streaming service: Alongside the phone, Red will also launch a One channel to help people discover 4-View holographic content, as well as movies, documentaries, games, shopping, and other apps.

Cool right? Now here’s the preorder price: $1,195 for the aluminum model and $1,595 for the titanium one, which doesn’t include tax or shipping. Unless Red plan on pissing off whoever plunked down four figures to preorder a sight-unseen handset from a boutique phone maker with no track record, Verizon and AT&T will be charging at least that for the models they’re selling.

Now, lots of people may be handing AT&T and Verizon a thousand-plus dollars for a new iPhone X, but incase you haven’t noticed, Apple has a pretty good track record with selling phones. With the iPhone X, you’ll get the latest tech in a package guaranteed to receive OS and security updates for years. None of that is assured with Hydrogen One. And most people have no idea who Red is.

red hydrogen one compare — In his exclusive hands-on, Marques Brownlee showed just how big the Red Hydrogen One is.

We don’t even know what specs are in the thing. In a Red forum post back in January, founder Jim Jannard espoused the wonders of the Red phone and teases its Snapdragon 835 processor, 4,500mAh battery, and industrial design. While the giant battery is intriguing, it seems unlikely that it’ll last any longer than a 3,300mAh phone, given the demands of the screen. The Snapdragon 835 processor is already outdated. We don’t even know what version of Android it will be running.

Which brings us to the design. The Red Hydrogen Phone has a carbon fiber aesthetic on the back with a giant camera bump and “scalloped” sides that add grip. In his exclusive hands-on, Marques Brownlee compared it to the 5.5-inch iPhone 8 Plus and the 6-inch OnePlus 5T—neither of which are small phones—and it dwarfed both of them.

So, why is AT&T and Verizon falling over themselves for the right to carry the Red Hydrogen One? By Red’s own admission, it takes a while for carriers to certify the phones they sell, and Jannard even went so far as to blame that process for the phone’s delay. The answer, I think, lies in the respective press releases. AT&T called the phone “revolutionary.” Verizon VP Brian Higgins said the phone has “cutting-edge technology that simply can’t be described.”

So phone geeks and tech lovers will need to see it. Once the Red phone launches, I suspect you’ll see giant banners and demos at the carrier stores designed to get people to come inside and see the “mobile game changer” for themselves. In a sea of rectangular slabs with notches and OLED screens, the Red Hydrogen One is something unique, and it will generate a healthy amount of buzz and foot traffic at at time when carrier stores are facing pressure from the unlocked revolution. So AT&T and Verizon are hoping the Red phone will give people a reason to visit their stores.

But something tells me they’ll be walking out of the store with something a whole lot cheaper.

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Two Years Later, 'No Man's Sky' Is Finally Getting True Multiplayer In Its 'NEXT' Update

Posted: 18 May 2018 07:16 AM PDT

Hello Games

No Man's Sky

Of the many broken promises in the aftermath of the launch of No Man’s Sky, one that players would never stop bringing up was Sean Murray’s pre-launch statement that the game would let you run into other people out in the galaxy. When it was released, the ability to play with your friends or run into other players was nowhere to be found, but now, that’s about to change, almost two years later.

July 24^th brings both No Man’s Sky to Xbox One, and also its big NEXT update, which Hello Games promises is the largest one for the game to date. Chief among the new additions is going to be some form of true multiplayer at last. Here’s how it’s described:

“You’ll be able to explore the universe with your friends, or bump into random travelers. You can help friends to stay alive, or prey on others to survive. Your group can build anything from tiny shelters to complex colonies spanning planets, and everything is shared online for others to visit. Fight as a pirate or a wingman in epic space battles with friends and enemies. Race exocraft across weird alien terrains, creating race tracks or maybe just scenic trails to share online.”

There are going to be two main reactions to this news, I’m guessing:

A group that hasn’t touched No Man’s Sky since launch or has never played the game at all, which will guffaw and call this too little far too late
A group (a much, much smaller group) that has stuck with the game that will be thrilled to see this addition.

No Man’s Sky has attracted a niche community who just really love the game. They’ve kept with it through all the recent updates, and have started doing things like trying to map out entire galaxies, and butt heads with rival groups trying to do the same. An update like this where these groups can finally play together is going to be wonderous for them.

Paul Tassi/Hello Games

No Man's Sky

I am curious to see how this all came together from a technical perspective, as that was the reason multiplayer never existed in the first place. The ability to save all structures and be able to run into other players across a seemingly infinite procedurally generated universe seems like no easy task, which is probably why it took two extra years to do it. Not to excuse Murray saying outright that seeing other players would be possible before launch, however, as that never should have been brought up if it wasn’t going to happen.

I am still impressed that two years later, Hello Games is still plugging away at making No Man’s Sky the game it was supposed to be at launch. Part of me is sad because it seems likely that so few players will even notice, and I remain perplexed about how they’re able to do all this without charging anything for these massive patches and updates, and no other sources of revenue. I guess the idea is to make the game good enough to spur new sales, like what we’re about to see with the Xbox One release which should be the “true” version of the game everyone wishes had shown up two years ago.

I will admit that even I, ardent No Man’s Sky defender, has not kept up with all the patches. I liked the first major update where you could buy freighters and grow crops, but I’ve missed the ones since, and I’m not sure if I’ll come back for NEXT with so much else to play. But I do marvel at the effort, I’ll say that. Hopefully we see some video of the update in action soon. Now that you can see other players, will suit upgrades have a cosmetic component? I wonder…

Follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Pre-order my new sci-fi novel Herokiller, and read my first series, The Earthborn Trilogy, which is also on audiobook.

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