Update: Netflix has officially announced the hiring of Spencer Neumann, who becomes the company's new CFO, replacing David Wells. There's only a single mention in Netflix's press release of his role at Activision. It's unclear how soon he'll start in the new role or whether he'll attempt to prove he should not have been dismissed by Activision. The original story follows.
Activision Blizzard, the gaming giant behind franchises like Call of Duty, Overwatch, World of Warcraft, and Diablo, has lost one of its senior executives. The California-based publisher announced that chief financial officer Spencer Neumann was notified on December 31 that his contract with Activision Blizzard was terminated.
The company decided to terminate Neumann's contract "for cause unrelated to the Company's financial reporting or disclosure controls and procedures," Activision Blizzard said in US Securities & Exchange Commission filing. In a PR statement, it said that he was "terminated for cause for violating his legal obligations to the Company."
Neumann is now on paid leave, and he's been given the opportunity to "demonstrate why cause does not exist to terminate his employment or why termination of his employment is not otherwise justified."
Activision Blizzard chief corporate officer Dennis Durkin is taking over for Neumann as CFO in the interim. Should Neumann end up leaving Activision Blizzard, Durkin will officially step into the role of CFO, the company said. Durkin was CFO from 2012-2017.
A source told Reuters that Neumann is leaving Activision Blizzard to join video streaming giant Netflix. Netflix's former CFO, David Wells, announced last August that he was leaving the company after 14 years. The source told Reuters that Netflix wanted its next CFO to be based in Los Angeles, which Neumann is.
According to Reuters, Neumann is expected to start at Netflix in early 2019, so an official announcement might be coming soon.
Neumann had been Activision Blizzard's CFO since May 2017. Before joining the company, he rose through the ranks at Disney, eventually becoming the CFO of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts.
At the time of this writing, investors don't appear to be worried about the news, with Activision shares up 1.4%.
Physical Nindie Publisher Super Rare Games Launches Exclusive Members Club
Publishing company Super Rare Games, known for releasing indie favourites in physical form on Nintendo Switch, is launching a Super Rare Club Membership which hopes to “remove any potential stress associated with purchasing items” from the store.
As any collectors of physical Nindies will know, securing each and every one of the titles made available through sites like Super Rare Games and Limited Run Games can be incredibly difficult; often, thanks to each release’s limited number of units, you can still find yourself empty-handed even after putting the game in your online basket the second it goes on sale. This membership is hoping to change that, giving you early access to sales and providing you with “exclusive” information.
– Access to all products 48 hours before their general release dates – Priority shipping: we will send your games out before anyone else – Be part of a secret mailing list and receive inside information and exclusive game announcements – Added to a secret Discord server containing other members and also the Super Rare Team – Entered into monthly competitions to win special items and signed copies of games – 25% discount on any purchased merchandise (one use only) – Premium packaging on all orders
As you might expect, the membership comes at a price, with £30 of your hard-earned cash being required to join. For that £30, you’ll be covered from 1st February 2019 until 31st January 2020, gaining all of the benefits mentioned above. If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, you can purchase a membership right here.
Does this sound like a good idea to you, or do you think the benefits aren’t worth the extra money? Let us know in the comments.
We’ve also added an Honorable Mention for the Accessibility features released this year, which include the improved formula bar, adding filters from the context menu, and more!
We hope you enjoy the video and would love to hear about your favorite five!
This month we will have a Power BI Report Server update only, but starting February, Power BI Desktop will continue our monthly ship cadence. Looking forward to an even more impactful 2019!
Battle Princess Madelyn is a game that follows the journey of a young knight in training, Madelyn, and her ghostly pet dog, Fritzy. They set out on a journey to save her kingdom and her family from the clutches of an evil wizard.
You are a newly employed department officer within the Ministry of a totalitarian State. While you are poised to have an illustrious career and possibly become Prime Minister someday, the way up won't be easy. So, how high up the career ladder will you climb? The choice is still yours to make!
Halloween night. 1996. A group of teenagers awake to find themselves trapped in a dark, twisted reflection of their sleepy hometown of Forest Hills. As they make their way across the East Side High School campus, they realize they are being hunted by a supernatural force taking the forms of fearsome killers. Relentlessly pursued, the teens must band together to fight back, survive, and escape the terrifying anomaly they have come to know as The Nightmare.
Now that the various challenges and successes of 2018 are behind us, let’s look back at some of the year’s highlights and see what’s in store for 2019 here on Linux.com.
Wins for 2018
2018 saw amazing growth for open source generally and for The Linux Foundation specifically, with huge tech acquisitions and widespread industry adoption stemming from more than 20 years of steady open source development and innovation.
At The Linux Foundation, this growth was reflected in the formation of many new projects, such as:
This interest in learning and training was seen on Linux.com as well, where tutorials were consistently the most popular articles on the website. For 2019, our goal is to feed that interest with articles that educate and inform and that provide a firm foundation from which to explore the array of tools, projects, and opportunities within the open source ecosystem. You can look forward to previews of the best Linux distributions, in-depth command-line tutorials, information on LF training courses, ebooks, and webinars, highlights from industry-leading events, and much more.
A word for 2019
I recently read an essay by Melinda Gates in which she said that rather than making a list of resolutions, she picks a word for the year and uses to that word to inform her goals and shape her actions.
When pressed to choose a word for 2019, I choose strength. In doing so, I think about the various projects, teams, and individuals I work with and how we are more effective when we collaborate, learn from, and advocate for one another. I think about advances in terms of inclusion and acceptance and how diversity and civility can strengthen our community. I think about the opportunities we have to improve open source practices, expand them into new areas, and apply them to create solutions to new and existing problems.
Open source is a powerful catalyst; its strength lies in the bonds formed through open development and shared knowledge which combine to make a stronger and more resilient whole. Let’s carry that strength into 2019 and become stronger together.
Fortnite Challenge Guide: Letter N, O, M, S Locations (Season 7, Week 4)
Fortnite is now in Week 4 of Season 7, which means there's new challenges to do for those precious Battle Stars. Among the paid Battle Pass-exclusive challenges is a multi-stage one that begins by tasking players with search for the letter 'O' west of Pleasant Park. There's a further three parts to this challenge, with each one requiring players to find a letter. While the game provides the name of the location where these can be found, we've got more specific details that'll help you get to them quicker.
First up is the letter 'N', which under a frozen lake. One glance at the map and you'll know that can be found in the bottom left of the island, but if you aim yourself to land at the grid reference C7 you'll see there's a number of black floor panels in the middle. Equip your pickaxe, destroy those, and you'll fall into the area below where the letter can be found.
Next up is the 'O' in Pleasant Park, which is at the grid reference B4. You'll need to look for the house, head left of the gate, and you'll find it tucked away in the corner. Simply walk up to it, search it, and it's on tot he next one.
After that, it's the letter 'M' at Dusty Divot. This one is pretty easy to find as it's at the very center of the forest at grid reference G6. In the top left of that grid block you'll find a collection of what looks like metal containers and small white buildings, and there's a door in. Pop inside and you'll find the 'M' waiting in the corner of the room.
Finally, the letter 'S' is at Wailing Woods at grid reference I3. At the very center of the hedge maze is the wooden shack with the "Leave" sign on it. Smash the barrier directly below it and head inside, and you'll want to find the room in the north with old computers and the colorful lockers next to them. In there is a smaller room where you'll find the 'S' waiting for you. With that done, you'll have collected all the letters, which spell "NOMS" and you're done. You can also watch us complete the challenge in the video above.
Fortnite Letter N, O, M, S Locations
Letter N: North of Polar Peak (C7)
Letter O: House at Pleasant Park (B4)
Letter M: Center of Dusty Divot (G6)
Letter S: Center of Wailing Woods (I3)
The other tricky challenge for Season 7, Week 4 involves taking out enemies at Expedition Outposts. We've put together a guide for exactly where you can find these outposts, and the the best way to give yourself the edge for when you get there.
While you're completing these, it's also worth taking a look at our 14 Days of Fortnite event guide, which breaks down all the special challenges available until January 2. They're quite easy to complete and you'll get yourself some nice cosmetic unlocks for doing them.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 01-02-2019, 10:03 AM - Forum: Lounge
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Does Aquaman's Timeline Make Sense? Geoff Johns And The Writers Explain
With Christmas in the rearview, Aquaman is finally in theaters, and chances are you've seen it--which means you inevitably have a lot of questions. We kind of, sort of, mostly loved the movie, despite its problems, but we were also pretty confused about much of its worldbuilding and plot points. For example: What exactly is the timeline of Atlantean history? How long did King Atlan spend in his self-imposed exile after the fall of Atlantis? And how long ago did he record that message for the future king? How much time has passed since Atlanteans lived in what is now the Sahara desert, and how could a clue that's seemingly millions of years old point Arthur and Mera to a Greco-Roman era statue in Sicily?
Luckily, Warner Bros. gave us the opportunity to sit down with Aquaman's screenwriters, David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick and Will Beall, as well as DC's famed writer and Aquaman executive producer Geoff Johns. Of course, we asked them to clear this all up.
The main Aquaman timeline problem comes from the fact that Arthur and Mera surmise the Deserters Kingdom under the Sahara desert has been there since "before the Sahara was a desert," which a quick Google search tells us was around 7 million years ago. In addition, Atlanteans who broke off into the various Seven Kingdoms of Atlantis went down wildly divergent evolutionary paths, transforming over time into CGI fish people, CGI crab people, and CGI deep sea monsters, which doesn't happen overnight. Those facts suggest that the fall of Atlantis may have really occurred millions of years ago.
Yet at the same time, Atlan's voicemail message--the one that Arthur and Mera viewed in the chamber under the desert--pointed them to a statue in Sicily that's at most a few thousand years old. How do the writers explain that seemingly kraken-sized plot hole?
"Well, there's definitely a lot of different ways to skin this cat," Johns told us. "One is that Atlan actually lives longer than [other Atlanteans]. Atlanteans live longer than humans, and he's a king, with that trident, so clearly he lived a long, long time in isolation. I think that is probably the easiest explanation."
In other words, King Atlan--the same king who reigned during Atlantis's downfall--may have survived in exile at the Hidden Sea at the Earth's Core for millions of years. His trident's vaguely defined magical powers, which are never really explicitly defined in the movie, might have had something to do with it.
"[Atlan] is hanging onto the trident, and it's holding him together in some way," Beall added.
"Yeah, it's holding him together," Johns agreed. "I think he was there a long, long time."
Does that mean Arthur is effectively immortal as long as he wields it? Maybe we'll find out in future Aquaman movies (fingers crossed). But if the trident isn't responsible, the writers have another theory that could explain Atlan's long life: The energy blast that sank Atlantis may have had unknown effects on those who would have been nearest its epicenter.
"I think [Atlan] had some power beyond other Atlanteans, and he was at the ground zero of that explosion, so who knows how that energy affected him?" Johns posited.
One problem with that theory is it means Atlan survived in exile on the other side of that weird portal thingie for millions of years, then at some point swam back up through the Trench Kingdom, scouted around for potential clue locations, found that statue in Sicily, recorded that cryptic voicemail, and then swam back down through the portal and resumed his lonely vigil. Maybe he decided that the quest for his trident was a little too difficult, like video game developers who add more objective markers in a post-release patch. On the other hand, the Karathen--which, by the way, was voiced by Julie Andrews--seems to have had plenty of victims over the years, although it also states that it hasn't feasted in ages. So who knows?
There's yet another theory that has less to do with Atlan's age: The Deserters Kingdom in the Sahara may have actually survived into much more recent history. That's only possible if a hidden body of water once existed under the Sahara, which real life science suggests is actually possible. Johns floated this theory as well:
"Also, just because we believe that the Sahara was dry for millions of years doesn't mean there wasn't some water underneath it in this hidden kingdom at some point," Johns said.
Either way, it's pretty incredible that the best Aquaman's writers and executive producer can offer about the movie's timeline is theories. If anyone should be able to explain this stuff, it's them. Of course, they could have also taken the route chosen by Venom director Ruben Fleischer and simply fessed up to the plot hole. Instead, Johns and Aquaman's screenwriters decided on a middle path: They're not sure exactly how the movie's timeline works out, but according to them, it's not impossible.
Considering we're really just nitpicking here, we're going to say that's good enough for us and officially close this investigation. Aquaman is in theaters now.
