Bungie, creators of the popular Halo series of video games that are synonymous with the Xbox, as well as the cross-platform Destiny game, has been acquired by Sony for a relatively modest (compared to the latest video game business deals) US$3.6b. They're pledging to remain cross-platform, but lets see how long that lasts. I give it 3 years, tops. In smaller game related acquisitions, the New York Times has taken ownership of Wordle for an "undisclosed price in the low-seven figures" off Josh Wardle. Not a bad little exit for something made for shits and giggles. Hope he goes on to do something cool with his fuck you money.
Oh how the mighty have fallen - BlackBerry has flogged off its patent portfolio to a patent troll for US$600m. All those foundational patents for things like "muting a message thread and displaying notifications as a numeric icon badge" now belong to Catapult IP Innovations. This company has "a huge amount of debt, no products, and no cash flow", so it's safe to assume an imminent barrage of spurious legal claims regarding BlackBerry's patents. Apparently Blackberry still has a business selling its QNX real-time operating system, used mainly in car infotainment systems and other embedded systems.
The Australian Electoral Commission has released data on who's donated what to a political party in 2020/2021. Top of the list for tech companies is Macquarie Telecom. They gave $87,650 to the ALP, $82,448 to the LNP and a cheeky $2,000 to the Liberal Democratic Party (lol). Amazon was second, handing over $40,700 to the LNP and $30,250 to the ALP. Optus third with $41,500 to the LNP and $28,500 to the ALP. The tech industry is historically allergic to political donations, but if you want to grab the ear of governments, it's unfortunately how you do it in Australia. There's a reason mining companies for example, donate millions and it isn't out of the goodness of their hearts.
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