Retailers Report Healthy Sales Increases

The Detroit Lions head into the NFC Divisional Round contest with the Washington Commanders on Saturday as favorites.  Having earned the #1 seed in the NFC this season, the Lions should be confident following a formidable 15-2 regular season, while the Commanders have a lesser 12-5 record.  With an average of 33.2 points per game giving them the top rank in the NFL, with gamblers winning big, the Detroit Lions will be aiming for more of the same in the playoffs. The match will take place at the Ford Field in Detroit, the home of the Lions, on Saturday, January 18 at 8 pm Eastern Time, 5 pm Pacific Time, streamed live by FOX. See you Saturday @fordfield #OnePride #WeWantMore pic.twitter.com/zUOOVJtMqs — Detroit Lions (@Lions) January 13, 2025 What are the latest odds for the game?  FanDuel Sportsbook has set the opening line at Lions -8.5 points, following an initial marker of Lions -7.5 points, but this was quickly adjusted following the early stakes.

The largest banking group in Italy, Intesa Sanpaolo, has become the first in the country to make a direct investment in Bitcoin as it officially enters into the crypto space. The purchase made headlines as a leaked internal email from the Head of Digital Assets Trading & Investments shared the inaugural Bitcoin trade had taken place, with a purchase of 11BTC for  €1 million (roughly $1.025 million in USD). The purchase is believed to have been made on January 13 at around 11 am CET, when Bitcoin was trading at approximately $92,800. The email was originally reported by Italian crypto news outlet Criptovaluta.

The whole games as art argument is often one that can get lost in a hail of virtual bullets and microtransactions, but sometimes, well, games actually are art. The upcoming Benign Land, which you can wishlist now on Steam, started off life as a commissioned art installation in Belfast, Northern Island but is now making its way as an ethereal walking simulator, which in the words of its creator, Leandros Ntolas, “is a short, dreamlike experience where you embark on a metaphysical journey into Ireland’s subconscious past.

Hyper Light Breaker, the follow up to the well-received Hyper Light Drifter has entered Early Access on Steam with a bunch of content to explore ahead of the full 1.0 release. Since there are so many fans of Hyper Light Drifter — which is a multi platform title — those looking to get stuck in with Breaker are wondering if it shares the same fate of being playable on a variety of systems. Here, we’ll take a look at if Hyper Light Breaker has a console release so you know whether to get your hopes up or not. Hyper Light Breaker console release: Is it on PlayStation and Xbox? Even though the game is currently in Steam Early Access, other titles that enter the program also have the same builds available on console to test various bugs and stability issues. Unfortunately, Hyper Light Breaker isn’t one of those and is sadly a Steam-only game at this moment in time. It’s not even playable on Steam Deck either even though there is full controller support so it definitely needs more time in the development oven. Heart Machine — the developers of Hyper Light Breaker — stated via Discord that a console port of the game “depends on the success with Steam”. So, if it performs well in the Early Access, boasting a healthy player count, and generating enough revenue, there’s a chance you console owners will get a piece of the Hyper Light Breaker pie. Additionally, Heart Machine also suggested that there are “plans for console ports & cross-play” meaning if it does get brought over, the player base should remain somewhat strong thanks to cross-play integration. If all goes to plan with Early Access, we’ll be sure to update this article with any new information from Heart Machine and its plans for the console release so you know if or when to expect it. The post Is Hyper Light Breaker on console?

A new, independent foundation called ‘Free Our Feeds’ has launched a campaign aiming to raise $30 million to “liberate social media.” The group, which is overseen by nine custodians, wants to reach the sum within three years. The goal is to “create an entire ecosystem of interconnected apps and different companies that have people’s interests at heart.” The plan is to turn Bluesky’s underlying technology – the AT Protocol – “into something more powerful than a single app.” Free Our Feeds is seperate from the up-and-coming social media site Bluesky, but says that the team behind the company is supportive of the goals of the campaign. Campaign signatures To begin making a dent in the monetary goals, the group is first seeking to raise $4 million to create the foundation and “get critical infrastructure up and running so that we’re not dependent on billionaires.” A number of people are cited on the website as having signed the campaign including actor Mark Ruffalo, the founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales, a member of the UK House of Lords Rosie Boycott, and several more. What is the Free Our Feeds campaign? The campaign shares a group’s hope of building a social network ecosystem that will remain free from venture capital and billionaire capture. “With Zuckerberg going full Musk last week, we can no longer let billionaires control our digital public square,” the group has written online. The open letter cites how the group are “former Twitter users who cherished the platform and the communities we built there over the years,” but states they saw “the quality of our feeds decline as one person took over what we had believed to be a global public square, using it for his own political and business objectives.” The campaign effort will see the funds, if achieved, be spent on launching a public interest foundation that will work to support making Bluesky’s underlying tech “fully resistant to billionaire capture.” As well as this, the money will go towards building “independently hosted infrastructure (a second ‘relay’) so that Bluesky users, developers, and researchers always have full access to the stream of content and data no matter what the company decides to do in future.” The donations will also “fund developers so they can build a wealth of social applications on top of open protocols to make social media a healthier and happier place. Featured Image: Via Free Our Feeds campaign The post Free Our Feeds campaign launches to ‘liberate social media’ through new ecosystem appeared first on ReadWrite.

After a suggestion that Chinese officials were looking at a possibility where Elon Musk could acquire the US operations of TikTok, a rep for the app has denied the report. Bloomberg Newsr first reported on Monday that they are “evaluating a potential option that involves Elon Musk acquiring the US operations of TikTok if the company fails to fend off a controversial ban on the short-video app.” The report cited people familiar with the matter, but just a day later a rep for TikTok denied this in reply to a request for comment by Variety. “We can’t be expected to comment on pure fiction,” the source is quoted as saying. The entrepreneur already owns X, previously Twitter, after he acquired the company in 2022. The decisions around TikTok’s fate will conclude in the coming days as the ban is set to take effect on January 19 after the government brought in a new law due to national security concerns. Its fate is in the hands of the Supreme Court which could issue a ruling stopping it from taking effect.