Lechonk, the hog Pokémon from Paldea, can be found in the wild in Pokémon Go. Yes, Lechonk can be shiny in Pokémon Go!
Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Niantic
Lechonk, like all the other Paldean Pokémon, is fairly fresh to Pokémon Go, but it’s not surprising that you can already collect a pink-colored friend, as Lechonk is super common in Paldea. (We typically see shinies of these early-game common Pokémon alongside launches of new regions in Pokémon Go.)
What is the shiny rate for Lechonk in Pokémon Go?
As per old research by the now-defunct website The Silph Road (via Wayback Machine), the shiny rate for Pokémon on a regular day is approximately one in 500. Lechonk is not a confirmed Pokémon that gets a “permaboost” (meaning that it’s a rare spawn and thus gets a boosted shiny rate).
What can I do to attract more shiny Pokémon?
Not much, unfortunately. It appears to be random chance. Shiny Pokémon catch rates are set by developer Niantic, and they are typically only boosted during special events like Community Days or Safari Zones, or in Legendary Raids. There are no consumable items that boost shiny Pokémon rates.
Where can I find a list of available shiny Pokémon?
This past weekend, TikTok creators ByteDance revealed that they were winding down Nuverse and retreat from the mainstream gaming space. According to a report from Reuters, ByteDance is restructuring their gaming business, and employees will be told to stop working on unreleased games, while the company looks to divest from titles that have already been launched.
As the publisher of Marvel Snap, Nuverse’s dissolution may come as a source of concern for fans, many of whom have likely already spent a significant amount of money on the digital card battler. However, Second Dinner has since taken to Discord to reassure fans that this will not affect the game in any way, shape, or form.
“Some of our players have expressed their concerns regarding reported structural changes at Nuverse. We wish to thank you for your concern and assure you that regardless of any changes at Nuverse, SNAP will continue to operate and flourish in the future!”
It remains to be seen how Marvel Snap will be handled going forward and who will take over publishing rights, but for now, the message from Second Dinner is reassuring at the very least, and it looks like fans can continue to play without too much concern.
The team had also recently announced their patch schedule for the next two months as things wind down for the end of the year.
Marvel Snap is now available on PC and mobile devices.
About the author
Zhiqing Wan
Zhiqing is the Reviews Editor for Twinfinite, and a History graduate from Singapore. She’s been in the games media industry for nine years, trawling through showfloors, conferences, and spending a ridiculous amount of time making in-depth spreadsheets for min-max-y RPGs. When she’s not singing the praises of Amazon’s Kindle as the greatest technological invention of the past two decades, you can probably find her in a FromSoft rabbit hole.
Pokémon Go is having a Mareep Community Day Classic event on Saturday, Nov. 25 from 2-5 p.m. in your local time.
As expected with a Community Day event, Mareep will spawn in huge numbers with a high chance for it to appear shiny. There are also several other bonuses and perks, which we’ve list out below.
How do I catch a shiny Mareep?
As per old research by the now-defunct website The Silph Road (via Wayback Machine), Shiny rates on Community Days are about 1 in 24, which means that if you keep playing throughout the three-hour window, you should find quite a few shiny Pokémon.
Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Niantic
If you’re short on time or Poké Balls, you can pop an Incense, then quickly tap each Mareep to check for shiny ones, running from any that aren’t shiny. Notably, any Mareep you’ve already tapped will face where your player is standing, so that should help identify which ones you may have already checked.
What Community Day move does Mareep’s evolution learn?
Image: Niantic / The Pokémon Company
If you evolve Flaaffy into Ampharos from 2 p.m. until 7 p.m. in your local time, it will learn the charged move Dragon Pulse.
If you miss out on evolving it during this period, you will likely be able to evolve it during a Community Day weekend event in December to get Dragon Pulse. If you don’t want to wait, you can use an Elite TM to get the move.
How good is Mareep’s evolution Ampharos in the meta?
Image: Niantic / The Pokémon Company
Ampharos is actually decent now, especially because of its Mega Evolution. It’s still behind some Shadow Pokémon like Raikou, and Legendaries like Zekrom, but it’s still worth grabbing if you have the Mega Energy. Give your Mega Ampharos Volt Switch and Zap Cannon to pack the most punch.
Without the Mega form, for most players, Ampharos sees little use in PvE (raids and gyms) content when so many other better electric Pokémon are available. For newer players, however, this Community Day is a good opportunity to get one or two decent electric attackers to round out a PvE team, especially if you’re willing to put in the time to get enough Candy and XL Candy to level them up fully.
In PvE (Battle League), meanwhile, Ampharos has some application in the current Ultra League meta, in part due to its ability to use fighting-type charged move Brutal Swing, which can throw a curveball against players not expecting it against their line-ups. This reddit reply started by CatchAmongUs goes into more detail for those looking for an alternative Battle League pick.
How do I make the most of Mareep Community Day?
Image: Niantic / The Pokémon Company
The following bonuses will be active during Mareep Community Day:
1⁄4 hatch distance for eggs placed into Incubators during the event
Incense lasts three hours
Lure Modules lasts three hours
Mareep special photobombs when taking snapshots
That said, you should definitely place your eggs into Incubators and pop an Incense and try to nab some powerful Mareep.
Other ways to get more out of the event include:
Paying $1 (or the regional equivalent) for a themed Special Research story, featuring additional spawns and Candy, as well as a short storyline to complete that adds extra structure to your afternoon.
If you can Mega EvolveAmpharos or Manectric, or Primal Reversion Kyogre, you’ll score additional Mareep Candy per catch.
Shares of iRobot, the maker of Roomba vacuums, closed up about 39% Friday after a report said the European Union is set to approve Amazon’s $1.7 billion acquisition of the company.
Reuters said Thursday morning the deal is set to “win unconditional EU antitrust approval,” citing three sources familiar with the matter. The European Commission is expected to rule on the deal by Feb. 14.
Representatives from the European Commission didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
The deal is still under review by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority said in June the deal would not result in “a substantial lessening of competition” in the U.K.
Amazon announced its intention to acquire iRobot in August 2022 for $61 a share in an all-cash deal.
The acquisition marks Amazon’s fourth-largest deal, behind its $13.7 billion purchase of grocery chain Whole Foods in 2017, its $8.45 billion purchase of film studio MGM in 2021 and its $3.9 billion acquisition of boutique primary-care provider One Medical, announced last July.
Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks during Meta Connect event at Meta headquarters in Menlo Park, California on September 27, 2023.
Josh Edelson | AFP | Getty Images
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg may not have been directly involved with the drama surrounding Sam Altman’s tumultuous departure from, then return to, OpenAI, but the social networking executive and his company could benefit from the drama.
There’s been much debate over the “winners” of the OpenAI executive saga, with some experts believing Microsoft and its CEO Satya Nadella proved victorious while the OpenAI board members who kicked off the debacle by firing Altman last Friday were the losers.
Microsoft, OpenAI’s largest financial backer, has been positioning the high-profile startup as a cornerstone cloud computing partner, promoting Altman and his team throughout the year at numerous events. It created a public association between itself and the high-flying maker of ChatGPT. But that backfired somewhat when critics questioned how the boardroom shenanigans could have escaped Nadella and his company’s watch.
Meanwhile, Meta and Zuckerberg had the luxury of watching the corporate circus from the sidelines. It could help Meta boost its open-source Llama AI initiatives, as some companies look to diversify away from relying on a single company’s large language model. And it may even help with recruiting.
Meta continues to invest heavily in the kinds of generative AI and related large language models that helped spawn OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Its AI research team is considered, with Alphabet’s DeepMind, one of the most esteemed groups in the tech industry.
Technologists looking to work in the private sector may find comfort in stability at Meta and its AI research lab following the seemingly near collapse of one of the industry’s leading AI startups.
As one user on Meta’s Twitter-like Threads service posted on Wednesday: “Everyone is saying MSFT is the big winner of [the] OpenAI fiasco. But I can easily see META being the big winner in the end.”
“If you’re an AI researcher and you’re going to work at big tech, it might as well be the company with the largest open source and public research presence,” the user said in the Threads post.
Yann LeCun, Meta’s AI chief, responded to the post with a curt “Yup.”
Then there are the potential business opportunities.
The OpenAI fiasco raised concerns among the startup’s customers and other corporate leaders about whether they should only rely on one kind of LLM as part of their AI business strategies. Multiple technologists told CNBC that the OpenAI ordeal jumpstarted a push from businesses to lessen their reliance on OpenAI’s GPT family of LLMs to incorporate others from startups like Anthropic and Cohere.
Meta could benefit if companies continue to seek multiple AI vendors, much like firms now rely on multiple cloud providers. The company has heavily touted its Llama-branded family of generative AI software, which is available for free via an open-source model. Llama is attractive because developers can access and customize the LLM to their specific needs without being tethered to a particular vendor.
The more developers access and improve Llama, the more Meta can potentially lower its overall operating and technology research costs, among other benefits.
Finally, despite Llama’s licensing concerns and other potential issues, more companies and developers may choose to build apps with Meta’s AI software without fear that the social networking giant could collapse in a matter of days.
When there was a companywide protest at OpenAI after its CEO Sam Altman was ousted, software startup CEO Arjun Bansal began fielding increased calls from customers asking for help to lessen their use of OpenAI’s GPT large language models.
At his startup Log10, Bansal oversees the production of tools that third-party developers can use to build LLM-powered applications. Since the OpenAI drama unfolded, Bansal told CNBC the startup’s instability was a reason customers cited.
“People have been reaching out on how they would go through that process of being able to fine-tune different models or try out different providers with minimal disruption to how their code is set up,” Bansal told CNBC. “It is a very unprecedented situation, that a company of this size with this very unusual governance structure has gone through so much change in just over a weekend.”
A spokesperson for OpenAI declined to comment but said the startup’s services are working again following three hours of issues.
OpenAI’s board of directors fired Altman Friday after determining he was “not consistently candid in his communications” with them, according to a statement.
After a long weekend of negotiations that appeared to result in reinstating Altman at the company, ex-Twitch CEO Emmett Shear announced he had been appointed interim head, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the software maker would hire Altman, along with fellow OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and their colleagues.
However, more than 90% of OpenAI employees signed a letter to the company’s board demanding that they resign, or staffers might choose to leave. Now, Shear is reportedly considering leaving if the board doesn’t provide evidence of their reasoning for firing Altman in the first place.
Bansal is one of several startup entrepreneurs who told CNBC they or their customers are considering relying less on OpenAI’s GPT family of LLMs in the days since the board pushed out Altman.
“There’s definitely people taking it quite seriously,” Bansal said.
One founder of an AI startup, who asked not to be named in order to discuss internal matters, said he uses multiple application program interfaces from OpenAI and has considered switching to offerings from Anthropic, the AI startup founded by former OpenAI executives with backing from Amazon and Google.
The startup founder said he considered alternatives over the weekend after Altman was ousted, and their concerns grew stronger once OpenAI announced it had selected Shear as Altman’s successor.
Shear is a Silicon Valley veteran, having founded livestreaming platform Justin.tv in 2007 that eventually evolved into Twitch, a popular streaming site for gamers. Amazon acquired Twitch for almost $1 billion in 2014. The source, who previously worked alongside Shear, said Shear is “very smart” and admires his integrity.
But he’s not sure if Shear is the right person to lead a company like OpenAI that’s at the forefront of the world’s AI boom.
Martin Kon, president and chief operating officer of Cohere, which also provides LLMs for use in applications, said in a Tuesday statement that he’s seen an increase in inquiries since OpenAI’s drama unfolded.
“Enterprises value certainty, as the significant increase of inbound inquiries we’ve seen this week demonstrates we are still early in enterprise AI adoption, and companies are taking a hard look at how much they value cloud flexibility and independence from big tech,” Kon said.
But some startups are struggling to incorporate multiple LLMs into their applications.
One founder CNBC spoke with said Anthropic has a waiting list, so that even if people are clamoring to use its services, they might not be able to do so right away.
While there are a variety of LLMs available to use, including open-source options such as Meta’s Llama 2 AI software, the consensus is that the GPT-4 model is the most capable of performing complicated tasks at an affordable price. OpenAI lowered its fees earlier this month.
Although the tech industry has credited OpenAI for popularizing the use of AI software that analyzes written text and produces human-like copy, the company now finds itself in a defensive position.
OpenAI employees are trying to assure customers that they are committed to them.
“We are still fully committed to our incredible community of developers and users,” Srinivas Narayanan, whose profile lists him as an OpenAI vice president, wrote on X Tuesday.
“The API team is here. The ChatGPT team is here,” wrote Steven Heidel, a member of OpenAI’s technical staff, in a post Tuesday. “We are all still fully committed to our developers and users.”
Nadella attempted to quell concerns during an interview with CNBC’s Jon Fortt Monday evening.
“Quite frankly, Microsoft has all the capability to just do that on our own but we chose to explicitly partner with OpenAI and we want to continue to do so,” the CEO said.
Some of OpenAI’s customers, however, see more upside in sticking with OpenAI.
Michael Buckley, CEO of a company called Be My Eyes, which makes a mobile app that uses image recognition to help describe objects to the visually impaired, told CNBC that one of its products has been using the GPT-4V model with support for analyzing images since February. He’s decided to stick with OpenAI despite an influx of calls asking him to do otherwise.
“I’ve been bombarded by sales calls from rival LLM companies seeking some opportunistic business wins,” Buckley said. “That’s fair game and business is a contact sport so I get it. And we were already evaluating backup providers as a hedge before the drama.”
Buckley added that he believes OpenAI’s models are “excellent” and that he’s appreciated the company’s loyalty to him since its early days.
Alexander Kvamme, co-founder and CEO of startup Pathlight, said that while his company draws on multiple LLMs in its customer support and sales software product, OpenAI’s GPT models can outperform on more complex tasks — such as analyzing thousands of sales calls, so that companies can ask questions about customer churn and related trends that the AI software can presumably answer.
Kvamme said his team hasn’t experienced any major GPT-related issues yet and members of OpenAI’s customer support team have been answering technical questions despite the corporate drama.
“To Sam’s credit and Satya’s credit, they are finding ways to keep the lights on and kind of keep things working through all this turmoil given the kind of OpenAI and Microsoft relationship,” Kvamme said, referring to OpenAI’s use of Microsoft’s Azure infrastructure. “At the end of the day so far, our customers and developers have not been impacted.”
Other technologists told CNBC that while they haven’t experienced significant problems with GPT-enabled services in the past few days, they are concerned it’s only a matter of time before they do.
“I do know quite a few companies that are basically trashing their current product roadmap and saying, like, you know, we need new infrastructure,” Kvamme said.
On Wednesday, Brockman wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter) that a voice-activated version of OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT app is now available for everyone to use for free.
“Give it a try — totally changes the ChatGPT experience,” Brockman said.
— CNBC’s Jordan Novet and Annie Palmer contributed to this report.
Dunsparce, the Land Snake Pokémon from Johto, can be found in the wild in Pokémon Go. Yes, Dunsparce can be shiny in Pokémon Go!
Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Niantic
As of this writing, Dudunsprace (Dunsparce’s funny evolution from Paldea) is not in the game. Regional Pokémon, whether they’re an evolution exclusive to a region or an actual regional form, normally don’t take long to get added to Pokémon Go.
What is the shiny rate for Dunsparce in Pokémon Go?
As per old research by the now-defunct website The Silph Road (via Wayback Machine), the shiny rate for Pokémon on a regular day is approximately one in 500. Dunsparce is not a confirmed Pokémon that gets a “permaboost” (meaning that it’s a rare spawn and thus gets a boosted shiny rate).
What can I do to attract more shiny Pokémon?
Not much, unfortunately. It appears to be random chance. Shiny Pokémon catch rates are set by developer Niantic, and they are typically only boosted during special events like Community Days or Safari Zones, or in Legendary Raids. There are no consumable items that boost shiny Pokémon rates.
Where can I find a list of available shiny Pokémon?
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, attends the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in San Francisco, California, U.S. November 16, 2023.
Carlos Barria | Reuters
A wide swath of Silicon Valley has hitched its hopes and fortunes over the past few years to the kind of generative artificial intelligence technologies that OpenAI helped popularize.
Many industry experts point to the debut of ChatGPT late last year as an iPhone-like moment, ushering a potential shift in the way people interact with computers via written prompts that can produce creative, seemingly human-like text.
Just as Apple had the late Steve Jobs acting as the company’s esteemed figurehead, articulating the appeal of the iPhone and personal computers to the masses, so too did OpenAI have its own charismatic leader in Sam Altman.
With Altman out as CEO — at least for now — after his sudden firing on Friday, the Apple comparisons are flowing freely. Jobs was fired as CEO of Apple in 1985, a move that lives in Silicon Valley lore, since it was after his return in 1997 that Apple found the path that eventually made it the most valuable company in the U.S.
Altman, who previously ran startup accelerator Y Combinator, has spent the past year cozying up to world leaders and making routine appearances at tech events, turning the 38-year-old executive into an industry celebrity, in the mold of Jobs, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Along with Altman, OpenAI’s board removed Greg Brockman from his role as chairman. Later Friday, Brockman said he was quitting the company.
“What happened at OpenAI today is a Board coup that we have not seen the likes of since 1985 when the then-Apple board pushed out Steve Jobs,” longtime startup investor Ron Conway said Friday evening in an X post. “It is shocking; it is irresponsible; and it does not do right by Sam & Greg or all the builders in OpenAI.”
Efforts are already underway by OpenAI investors to get Altman back, according to people familiar with the matter. Microsoft, Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital and Thrive Capital are among a number of OpenAI’s top backers that are trying to reinstate Altman, said the people, who asked not to be named because discussions are confidential. The Verge reported on Saturday that Altman is “ambivalent” about the possibility of returning.
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky referred to Altman in an X post as “one of the best founders of his generation” who “has made an immense contribution to our industry.”
Matt Schlicht, the CEO of the startup Octane AI, told CNBC that Altman and Brockman, who was formerly the chief technology office of Stripe, “made a technology available that we’d only ever dreamed about” and called it “the most exciting and powerful development of our lifetime.”
Octane is one of many new startups using the so-called large language models that OpenAI packages under its GPT family of software tools. Schlicht said the technology has so far “enabled us to put human-level intelligence inside of our code, and because of that we have helped entrepreneurs generate over half a billion in revenue.”
“I’ve known both Sam and Greg for over a decade, they are incredible and inspiring leaders,” Schlicht said. “After hearing about their untimely departure I was immediately filled with sadness. Innovation in the world was suddenly halted.”
Ryan Jannsen, CEO of Zenlytic, shared Schlicht’s sentiment.
“The AI community is reeling,” Jannsen said, adding that technologists are confused about the circumstances related to Altman’s firing and what it means for OpenAI going forward.
“Sam and OpenAI were the catalyst that showed the world what AI tech is capable of,” Jannsen said. “A huge amount of the excitement and activity in AI today is very directly thanks to their pioneering work.”
Whether or not Altman returns, the turmoil at OpenAI could give rivals an advantage in what’s quickly become a highly competitive market for advanced LLMs. From heavily funded startups like Anthropic and Cohere to cloud computing giants Google and Amazon, companies will likely be “looking for the next best alternative,” given the perceived instability at OpenAI, said industry analyst Patrick Moorhead.
“They’re not the only game in town,” Moorhead said.
Josh Wolfe, a partner at venture firm Lux Capital, said OpenAI is taking a huge reputational hit at a time when companies are deciding what models they’re going to use as building blocks.
“There was a perception of steady, predictable, reliable reputable progress and engagement and communication with industry,” Wolfe said. “The surprise capriciousness of the move signals total unpredictability, which is terrible for companies making plans to work with or trust OpenAI.”
A big part of the challenge in understanding OpenAI is its unusual company structure. The board of OpenAI oversees the nonprofit, of which the corporate entity is a part, and “acts as the overall governing body for all OpenAI activities,” according to the blog post announcing Altman’s ouster.
The post said that a “deliberative review process by the board” concluded that Altman “was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities.”
Silicon Valley’s high-profile startup CEO firings typically involve wrongdoing, rather than just philosophical differences about where the company is headed.
Several investors told CNBC that OpenAI’s hybrid model presented a red flag from the beginning, in part because incentives can too easily be misaligned. Now, they said, the company risks severe brain drain if top talent chooses to follow Altman to his next project or a competitor in the industry.
Altman, meanwhile, has the advantage of having made such a name for himself that he’d have no problem raising money for a new project from investors who view him as the next great tech luminary.
“Sam Altman is a hero of mine,” former Google CEO and investor Eric Schmidt said in an X post. “He built a company from nothing to $90 Billion in value, and changed our collective world forever. I can’t wait to see what he does next. I, and billions of people, will benefit from his future work- it’s going to be simply incredible.”
Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, arrives for the Inaugural AI Insight Forum in Russell Building on Capitol Hill, on Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2023.
Tom Williams | Cq-roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images
Airbnb’s Chesky wrote that he’d spoken with Altman and Brockman and that they have his “full support.”
“I’m saddened by what’s transpired,” Chesky wrote. “They, and the rest of the OpenAI team, deserve better. He added in a separate post that Altman is “one of the best founders of his generation.”
As for Microsoft, whose CEO Satya Nadella was reportedly caught off guard by the shakeup, several venture capitalists were surprised that the company could be so unaware of what was brewing given the billions they’ve invested in the company.
“I imagine Microsoft might ask for a board seat next time they decide to plow $15 billion into a startup,” said Zachary Lipton, a Carnegie Mellon University professor of machine learning and operations research.
Industry analyst Moorhead said Microsoft could “figure out how to buy this company and how to put Sam in charge.”
“That’s the first play, it’s potentially finding ways to remove the current board of directors, reinstall new board of directors and then bring Sam and company back in — making sure the band stays together,” Moorhead said.
Regardless of the current chaos, Carnegie Mellon’s Lipton said he expects investors to remain bullish on AI.
“This story has elements of corporate and ideological discord, but not even a whiff of diminished promise,” Lipton said.
Apple CEO Tim Cook looks on following a conversation on mental health, during a spousal program on the last day of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders’ Week at Apple Park in San Francisco, California, on November 17, 2023.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images
Apple and Disney have paused online advertising campaigns on X (formerly Twitter), after owner Elon Musk said he agreed with a social media post accusing “Jewish communities” of pushing “hatred against whites,” according to a sources familiar with both companies’ moves.
A Lions Gate Entertainment spokesperson also told CNBC that it would be suspending advertising on X.
Apple’s move was first reported by Axios and Disney’s by the New York Times.
The iPhone maker was singled out in a report published this week by the Media Matters for America nonprofit as one of a handful of big companies, including IBM, Bravo, Oracle and Infinity whose online X ads were displayed next “to content that touts Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party.”
An IBM spokesperson said Thursday that the tech giant would halt its online ad campaigns on X, explaining that the tech giant “has zero tolerance for hate speech and discrimination and we have immediately suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this entirely unacceptable situation.”
A spokesperson for Comcast, which owns Bravo and Xfinity and is also the parent of CNBC, said yesterday that it’s investigating the situation. Apple and Oracle did not respond to requests for comment.
A coalition of 163 Jewish leaders, activists and academics representing both major political parties also issued a statement this week in response to Musk’s recent behavior, calling on businesses like Disney, Apple and Amazon “to stop funding X through their ad spend.”
The X Out Hate group originally urged those companies to suspend their online advertising campaigns on X in September, when Musk insinuated that he would file a defamation lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League, alleging that the ADL was “trying to kill this platform by falsely accusing it & me of being anti-Semitic.”
At the time, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, who also criticized Musk’s recent controversial X posts this week, dismissed the Tesla chief’s rhetoric as simply a “threat of a frivolous lawsuit.”
“It has been two months since we originally put out our call for large advertisers like Apple, Google, Amazon, and Disney to stop funneling money onto X as antisemitism explodes on the platform,” the Jewish leaders said in their latest statement. “Nothing has changed. Except for the danger Jews are in.”
Also on Friday, the White House publicly criticized Musk over the billionaire’s tweets. White House spokesman Andrew Bates said it was “unacceptable to repeat the hideous lie behind the most fatal act of Antisemitism in American history at any time.”
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is known for its frequent launches, which now dominate the space industry. But thesatellites that the rockets send to space are just as important for the company as the launches. Starlink is SpaceX’s answer to providing global, high-speed internet coverage using a network of thousands of satellites buzzing around the planet in a region known as low Earth orbit (LEO), about 342 miles above the Earth’s surface.
SpaceX launched its first batch of Starlink satellites in 2019. Adoption of the service has ballooned since then. The company has said Starlink has more than 2 million active customers and is available on all seven continents and in over 60 countries.
“This growth is uncharacteristic in the sense of its magnitude. Whereas prior satellite service providers have ramped up to anywhere at most between 500,000 to a little bit over a million subscribers. And this has taken, you know, a ten-year period, Starlink’s race to 2 million subscribers has taken only the better part of two years,” says Brent Prokosh, a Senior Affiliate Consultant at Euroconsult.
A Falcon 9 rockets launches a Starlink mission on January 20, 2021.
SpaceX
Experts estimate that the global market for consumer satellite services, including TV, radio, and broadband internet, was worth over $92 billion in 2022. And Starlink could be in a good position to capture a big piece of the market. Although initially conceived for the consumer segment, Starlink’s offerings have expanded to serve enterprise customers including in the maritime and aviation industries.
“Starlink’s importance to SpaceX overall as a company is imperative. Euroconsult estimates that, optimistically, by the end of 2023, this business of Starlink could represent upwards of 40% of SpaceX’s overall business. This total would be somewhere in excess of $3 billion generated from Starlink,” Prokosh says.
Starlink has been praised for its ability to connect remote parts of the world that would otherwise not have access to reliable internet. The service has also become indispensable in areas hit by natural disasters, and, more recently, during times of conflict, particularly in the Russia-Ukraine war.
“The big benefit of Starlink and how it’s being used in Ukraine today is communications. It’s providing a pathway for the military, for civilians to stay connected to the outside world. It allows a pathway for the military to communicate with each other and to provide command and control direction to their forces,” says Kari Bingen who is the Director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Ukrainian forces set up Starlink satellite receivers to provide connection for civilians at Independence Square after the withdrawal of the Russian army from Kherson to the eastern bank of Dnieper River, Ukraine, on November 13, 2022.
Metin Atkas | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
But Starlink’s growing influence is garnering condemnation from critics who say Musk is meddling in geopolitics. Meanwhile, the scientific community has its own concerns.
“The astronomical community got concerned about the first launch of the Starlink satellite a few years ago because the projection of the full constellation of several tens of thousands of satellites in low Earth orbit was immediately seen as an interference to both the optical observation and to radio observation,” says Piero Benvenuti, who is the Interim General Secretary, International Astronomical Union.
To find out more about Starlink’s rapid expansion and if it can continue, watch the video.
A couple of significant things happened in the world of online gaming over the first weekend of November. At its BlizzCon convention in California, Blizzard devoted quite a lot of time to World of Warcraft Classic — the nostalgic, retro version of its 19-year-old massively multiplayer game — and revealed surprisingly ambitious plans for Classic’s future. At the same time, Fortnite’s servers were melting under the load of its biggest day ever, which was all down to the launch of Fortnite OG, a special season bringing back the game’s original map and 2018 gameplay.
All of a sudden, in the proudly impermanent world of online gaming — where change is always good, and if it’s not, never mind, because here comes more change — winding back the clock is big business. It’s a kind of paradox: Because online games are always evolving, a sense of scarcity and intense nostalgia forms around the way they used to be. If you can find a way to bring that feeling back, especially for an audience that’s getting jaded, then you’re on to something.
Blizzard initially seemed reluctant to get on board with a growing movement in WoW’s community that wanted to go back to the way things were in 2004-2005. It squashed unofficial “vanilla” servers and prevaricated over creating an official alternative for years. In a way, it’s understandable: If you have spent many years of effort on (in your eyes) modernizing and improving your game, why would you want to indulge this rose-tinted exercise? Isn’t World of Warcraft just better now?
Of course, that’s a value judgment — but what’s undeniable is that WoW is now extremely different from how it used to be. And that’s exactly what makes Classic a viable and interesting, if slightly old-fashioned, alternative. After Classic arrived in 2019, included in a standard WoW subscription, it became a roaring success, partly because of the strong contrast between it and the two unloved expansions (Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands) it launched between.
But what’s really fascinating about Classic is where Blizzard is taking it next — because Classic is an online game, and no online game can stand still, even a throwback. It began as a relatively faithful version of the original MMO with smart tweaks: It moved through content patches at an accelerated rate, while locking to a single iteration of game design and balance. Then it bifurcated, with some servers moving forward through classic expansions, while others stayed in the “vanilla” era. This year, it acquired a third track, something completely new that WoW had never had before: a permadeath Hardcore mode, which turned out to be a game-reviving innovation that was quite brilliant in its simplicity.
From its showing at BlizzCon, Blizzard is doubling down on morphing WoW Classic into its own game. The expansion servers are moving on to Cataclysm, which is probably the point at which “classic” becomes a misnomer: Whatever your feelings about this divisive expansion, its sweeping rewrite of the “old world” questing experience is the point at which original WoW died, and is still represented in the game today. Blizzard is going even further than it has before in tweaking and fixing this expansion for Classic, accelerating leveling, adding quality-of-life features, and throwing in new dungeon difficulties and loot.
World of Wacraft Classic’s Season of Discovery seeds the well-explored world of Azeroth with secrets.Image: Blizzard Entertainment
But that isn’t even the headline. Blizzard — drawing inspiration from sister series Diablo, as it did for the Hardcore mode — is also introducing a fourth track to the WoW Classic servers that seasonally remixes the original “vanilla” game. Season of Discovery, which launches on Nov. 30, seeds entirely new content across the original world of Azeroth in the form of Discoveries, which producer Josh Greenfield said at BlizzCon were a way to disrupt the “solved nature” of original WoW and restore a “feeling of adventure and exploration.” It also offers a Rune Engraving system that endows classes with entirely new abilities, even allowing them to switch archetypes (you’ll be able to create a tank Warlock or a healer Mage, to name a couple).
The game is furthermore being broken up into level-banded phases — the initial level cap will be only 25 — and interpolated with all-new endgames, one for each phase. The first of these reworks the classic leveling dungeon Blackfathom Deeps as a 10-player raid, but Blizzard is also teasing adding unfinished or cut content, and even all-new dungeons, to Season of Discovery. It’s not just a new way to think about classic WoW — it’s a new approach to structuring MMOs, borrowing liberally from across the online gaming landscape. It’s pretty exciting.
That Blizzard is going to all this effort shows that WoW Classic is working both for the business and for the WoW community. It also demonstrates that for an online gaming nostalgia mode to succeed in the long term, it needs to evolve away from being an emulation or restoration of a bygone experience, and become a (sort of) fresh game in its own right. (Or, in Classic’s case, four games.)
Tilted Towers has returned in Fortnite OG.Image: Epic Games
Currently, Epic has no plans to keep Fortnite OG going past its current monthlong season, which sprints through six seasons of the game’s Chapter 1 in a matter of weeks instead of months. The branding clearly allows for OG to return and revisit later chapters, but given the enormous surge in interest, Epic would be foolish not to be considering ways to keep some of these new or returning players in the fold permanently.
It’s true that WoW and Fortnite are very different games with, crucially, different business models. Splitting the game’s audience might be more of a worry for Epic than it is for Blizzard, which is presumably happy as long as all those players stay within the one subscription-paying bucket. But WoW has proven that a big online game — especially one with a history — can support a family of sub-communities enjoying different flavors of the same game. Indeed, that might be the healthiest way forward for a game of that sort, certainly one approaching its 20th anniversary.
More importantly, perhaps, what WoW Classic and Fortnite OGdemonstrate is that the history of online games doesn’t have to be consigned to the scrapheap of memory. There’s a genuine hunger from players to turn back the clock, which, when met by an inventive studio that understands what was special about what it created but is willing to take some risks with it, can create something vibrant and sustainable in the long term — a kind of multiverse of paths not taken for your favorite old multiplayer games. What’s next, Vault of Glass in modern Destiny 2? Sign me up.
Co-founder and CEO of Snap Inc. Evan Spiegel holds up a Pixy drone while speaking during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups, at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France June 17, 2022.
Benoit Tessier | Reuters
Snap has conducted a round of layoffs as part of a reorganization intended to streamline the social-messaging company.
Nearly 20 employees who held product management titles were laid off, Snap said in a statement on Wednesday. The layoffs were not centered on any specific product and were part of the company’s plans to increase decision-making speed and reduce overhead, the company said.
Technology news publication The Information reported on the layoffs earlier on Wednesday.
The layoffs come after Snap recently reported third-quarter earnings in which its overall sales grew 5% year-over-year to $1.19 billion, beating analyst expectations.
But Snap, like its larger rivalMeta, also warned investors that it has observed some recent pauses in advertising due to the current crisis in the Middle East. As a result, Snap said it would not provide official guidance “due to the unpredictable nature of war.”
Meta widened its guidance range due to the Israel-Hamas war, with the company’s chief financial officer Susan Li telling analysts that it “observed softer ads in the beginning of the fourth quarter, correlating with the start of the conflict.”
Last summer, Snap said it would lay off 20% of its workforce that was, at the time, comprised of over 6,000 employees.
Snap said it currently has roughly 5,000 employees.
Barely a month after his release, Mobius M. Mobius got heavily nerfed, and was completely pushed out of the Marvel Snap meta game. At launch, Mobius was a 2/3 Ongoing card that would prevent your costs from getting increased, and your opponent’s costs from getting reduced. This was a great answer to polarizing cards Wave (which also subsequently got nerfed), but also ended up pushing out archetypes that were already languishing, such as Negative.
The most recent patch nerfed Mobius into a card that would only affect costs for the next turn, which made him basically useless and unplayable. Since then, this has sparked quite a bit of backlash both on Reddit and on Discord, where players expressed their disapproval of Second Dinner’s move to nerf a card that they had actively decided to spend Tokens or Caches on, barely a month after it was released.
To make things worse, Second Dinner had also openly admitted in the patch notes that they released Mobius knowing he would be slightly overtuned, and with the intention of reigning him back later on down the line.
Following this backlash, the developers have since released a statement on Discord, stating that Mobius will get his old card ability back, but be set at 3-cost instead of the original 2. This change will happen with this week’s OTA update, on Nov. 9.
Image Source: Marvel Snap Discord
Marvel Snap is now available on PC and mobile devices.
About the author
Zhiqing Wan
Zhiqing is the Reviews Editor for Twinfinite, and a History graduate from Singapore. She’s been in the games media industry for nine years, trawling through showfloors, conferences, and spending a ridiculous amount of time making in-depth spreadsheets for min-max-y RPGs. When she’s not singing the praises of Amazon’s Kindle as the greatest technological invention of the past two decades, you can probably find her in a FromSoft rabbit hole.
Pokémon Go is having a Wooper Community Day event on Nov. 5 from 2-5 p.m. in your local time.
As expected with a Community Day event, both Johtoan Wooper and Paldean Wooper will spawn in huge numbers with a high chance for it to appear shiny. There are also several other bonuses and perks, which we’ve list out below.
How do I catch a shiny Wooper?
As per old research by the now-defunct website The Silph Road (via Wayback Machine), Shiny rates on Community Days are about 1 in 24, which means that if you keep playing throughout the three-hour window, you should find quite a few shiny Pokémon.
Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Niantic
If you’re short on time or Poké Balls, you can pop an Incense, then quickly tap each Wooper to check for shiny ones, running from any that aren’t shiny. Notably, any Wooper you’ve already tapped will face where your player is standing, so that should help identify which ones you may have already checked.
What Community Day move does Wooper’s evolution learn?
If you evolve Wooper into Quagsire from 2 p.m. until 10 p.m. in your local time, it will learn the charged move Aqua Tail. Evolving Paldean Wooper into Clodsire gives it the charged move Megahorn.
If you miss out on evolving it during this period, you will likely be able to evolve it during a Community Day weekend event in December to get Aqua Tail and Megahorn. If you don’t want to wait, you can use an Elite TM to get the move.
How do Quagsire and Clodsire do in the meta?
Neither Quagsire nor Clodsire have spaces in the PvE raid meta, but they are pretty decent in the Great League, if you’re into PvP.
For Great League, give Quagsire Mud Shot, Mud Bomb, and Stone Edge. Give Clodsire Poison Sting, Earthquake, and Sludge Bomb. These muddy boys will do you proud.
How do I make the most of Wooper Community Day?
The following bonuses will be active during Wooper Community Day:
1⁄4 hatch distance for eggs placed into Incubators during the event
Doubled candy for catching Pokémon
Doubled chance for trainers over level 31 to get XL candy from catching Pokémon
Incense lasts three hours
Lure Modules lasts three hours
Wooper can do special photobombs when taking snapshots
One additional special trade
Stardust cost halved for trading
That said, you should definitely put your eggs in Incubators and pop an Incense and try to nab some powerful Wooper.
If you can Mega EvolveSwampert, you’ll score additional Wooper Candy per catch for both types of Wooper. Unfortunately this is the only ground-type Mega Evolution in the game so far, so this is the only Mega Evolution that’ll cover both bases. You can use a water-type Mega Evolution (Slowbro, Blastoise, or Gyarados) for the regular Johto Wooper or a poison-type Mega Evolution (Gengar, Beedrill, or Venusaur) for Paldean Wooper. Note that both Wooper share candy anyway, so you shouldn’t have to fret too much about which Mega to pick.
In addition to all this, Niantic is still running special four-star raids from 5-10 p.m., where if you clear the Wooper raid, they will spawn in a 300-meter radius around the gym for 30 minutes. These raids cannot be done remotely. If the usual 2-5 p.m. spawn increase doesn’t get you the Wooper you wanted, you can try raiding for another chance.
Mark Zuckerberg posing with UFC president Dana White during a UFC Fight Night event.
Jeff Bottari | Ufc | Getty Images
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg just had surgery as a result of an injury to his ACL that occurred during mixed-martial arts training.
The Facebook co-founder revealed his injury on Friday via an Instagram post in which he said that he “tore my ACL sparring and just got out of surgery to replace it.”
“I was training for a competitive MMA fight early next year, but now that’s delayed a bit,” Zuckerberg said. “Still looking forward to doing it after I recover.”
“Thanks to everyone for the love and support,” he added.
Zuckerberg included several photos of himself at an undisclosed hospital that shows the executive prior to his surgery and then after the procedure with his wife Priscilla Chan comforting him during his recovery.
The Meta CEO has taken an interest in MMA and competitive fighting in recent years and has been training in a variety of martial arts, including Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
In May, he revealed in a Facebook post that competed in his first jiu-jitsu tournament in which he won a gold and silver medal.
Zuckerberg’s recent injury to his ACL comes after a brief verbal exchange between the Meta executive and Tesla chief Elon Musk who were floating a possible cage match.
The fight never took place, however, with Zuckerberg saying during the summer via a post on Threads that “we can all agree Elon isn’t serious and it’s time to move on.”
Zuckerberg said that while Ultimate Fighting Championship President Dana White offered to make the match between the two executives “a legit competition for charity,” Musk never confirmed a date.
“If Elon ever gets serious about a real date and official event, he knows how to reach me,” Zuckerberg said at the time. “Otherwise, time to move on. I’m going to focus on competing with people who take the sport seriously.”
Pokémon Go is hosting its yearly Día de Muertos event, bringing out Pokémon wearing special cempasúchil crowns on Nov. 1 and 2.
Throughout the event, candy obtained from catching Pokémon will be doubled and both Incense and lures will last for 90 minutes instead of 30 minutes. Cubone wearing a cempasúchil crown will also be available for the first time. (And yes, both costumed Cubone and Duskull can be shiny.)
You can see all the perks of the Pokémon Go Día de Muertos 2023 event below.
Pokémon Go Día de Muertos 2023 event Field Research and rewards
Spinning PokéStops during the event period may net you one of the following Field Research Tasks:
Make a great throw (Sunkern encounter)
Make a nice curveball throw (Drifloon encounter)
Make 3 great curveball throws in a row (Cubone [Cempasúchil Crown] encounter)
Win a gym battle (Alolan Marowak encounter)
Pokémon Go Día de Muertos 2023 event boosted spawns
The following Pokémon will spawn more frequently during the event:
Cubone (Cempasúchil Crown)
Sunkern
Sableye
Roselia
Duskull (Cempasúchil Crown)
Drifloon
Yamask
Litwick
Phantump
Image: Niantic
Pokémon Go Día de Muertos 2023 event boosted Incense spawns
Using Incense will net you the Pokémon below more frequently:
Yamask, the Spirit Pokémon from Unova, can be found in the wild in Pokémon Go. Yes, Yamask can be shiny in Pokémon Go!
Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Niantic
Both versions of Yamask can be shiny. Whether you have a Galarian Yamask or the original Unovan Yamask, you can use the same candy to evolve and power up both.
What is the shiny rate for Yamask in Pokémon Go?
As per old research by the now-defunct website The Silph Road (via Wayback Machine), the shiny rate for Pokémon on a regular day is approximately one in 500. Yamask is not a confirmed Pokémon that gets a “permaboost” (meaning that it’s a rare spawn and thus gets a boosted shiny rate).
What can I do to attract more shiny Pokémon?
Not much, unfortunately. It appears to be random chance. Shiny Pokémon catch rates are set by developer Niantic, and they are typically only boosted during special events like Community Days or Safari Zones, or in Legendary Raids. There are no consumable items that boost shiny Pokémon rates.
Where can I find a list of available shiny Pokémon?
A banner for the online image board Pinterest Inc. hangs from the New York Stock Exchange on the morning Pinterest made its initial public offering, April 18, 2019.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images
Pinterest reported third-quarter earnings on Monday that beat on the top and bottom lines. The stock jumped more than 11% in extended trading.
Here’s how the company did:
Revenue: $763.2 million vs. $743.5 million expected, according to LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv.
Earnings: 28 cents per share, adjusted, vs. 20 cents expected, according to LSEG.
The number of global monthly active users in the quarter rose 8% from a year earlier to 482 million. Analysts were expecting Pinterest to report 473 million global monthly active users. Average revenue per user was $1.61, which was higher than analysts’ projections of $1.59.
“As we lean into Pinterest’s unique differentiators as a visual search, discovery, and shopping platform, we’re finding our best product market fit in years,” Pinterest CEO Bill Ready said in a statement. “Our users are engaging deeply and we’re delivering better results for advertisers through improved measurement and innovation across the full funnel.”
For the fourth quarter, Pinterest said it expects revenue growth of 11% to 13%. The midpoint is higher than analyst estimates, which call for growth of 11.3%, according to LSEG.
Last week, Meta reported better-than-expected third-quarter financial results, but its stock price dropped over 3% after finance chief Susan Li told analysts that the company “observed softer ads in the beginning of the fourth quarter” due to the Israel-Hamas war.
Because of the volatility surrounding the Middle East crisis, Meta widened its fourth-quarter revenue guidance range. Snap also noted some detrimental effects from the Israel-Hamas war in its earnings report last week, and said it wouldn’t provide official fourth-quarter guidance “due to the unpredictable nature of war.”
Snap said it “observed pauses in spending from a large number of primarily brand-oriented advertising campaigns immediately following the onset of the war in the Middle East.”
Pinterest reported a net income for the third quarter of $6.73 million, or a penny a share, compared with a loss of $65.2 million, or 10 cents a share, a year earlier.
The company’s expenses in the quarter rose nearly 2% to $768.2 million from the $753.9 million a year earlier. The company said that its fourth quarter 2023 non-GAAP operating expenses, which don’t include the costs of revenue, will decline in the range of 9% to 13% year over year.
Company executives will host a conference call with analysts on Monday at 4:30 p.m. ET.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai (L) and Apple CEO Tim Cook (R) listen as U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a roundtable with American and Indian business leaders in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on June 23, 2023.
Anna Moneymaker | Getty Images
Google paid $26.3 billion to be the default search engine on mobile phones and web browsers in 2021, according to a slide made public Friday in a federal antitrust trial against the company.
The number is a more granular look into how much Google pays partners, including Apple, to be the default search engine on their products. The U.S. Department of Justice and a coalition of state attorneys general have argued in the case that Google has illegally maintained its monopoly power in general search by leveraging its dominance to lock rivals out of key distribution channels, such as Apple’s Safari web browser.
The $26.3 billion figure does not represent the payments to any one company, but Apple likely represents the largest recipient. Bernstein previously estimated Google could pay Apple as much as $19 billion this year for the out-of-the-box default placement on Apple devices.
“Google pays billions of dollars each year to distributors—including popular-device manufacturers such as Apple, LG, Motorola, and Samsung; major U.S. wireless carriers such as AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon; and browser developers such as Mozilla, Opera, and UCWeb—to secure default status for its general search engine and, in many cases, to specifically prohibit Google’s counterparties from dealing with Google’s competitors,” the DOJ complaint reads.
Google has argued that users can still opt to change their default search engine with a few clicks.
According to the slide shown in court Friday — titled “Google Search+ Margins,” which primarily refers to Google’s search business — that division’s 2021 revenue was more than $146 billion, while the portion of traffic acquisition costs was more than $26 billion.
The slide included numbers dating back to 2014, when Google booked revenue of roughly $47 billion for the division and paid about $7.1 billion for the default status. That means revenue for Search+ roughly tripled between 2014 and 2021, while this portion of TAC costs nearly quadrupled.
While Google regularly reports overall TAC, that number also includes the amount Google pays to network partners for ads shown on their properties, according to its 10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The other portion of the overall TAC figure Google reports in earnings consists of the payments it makes to “distribution partners who make available our search access points and services,” according to the 10-K. Google says its “distribution partners include browser providers, mobile carriers, original equipment manufacturers and software developers.” This is the portion of TAC that appeared to be represented by the slide, which referred only to Search+ revenue.
A Google spokesperson declined to comment. An Apple spokesperson did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
That doesn’t mean everything costs more in Canada, says David Soberman, a professor of marketing and Canadian national chair of strategic marketing at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. Canadians may pay more than Americans for the same basket of goods, he says, but we pay less than people in some other countries, like Switzerland.
Why do we pay what we do? That’s a difficult question to answer. The reasons are complex and vary depending on the type of good or service. Let’s look at some of the main contributors to Canada’s cost of living, why they are as expensive as they are, and steps you can take to reduce those costs.
Why are groceries so expensive in Canada?
There are a few reasons groceries cost so much in Canada, says Soberman. It’s expensive for companies to ship food products across a country as large as ours, and those costs are reflected in what you pay in stores, he says. But a highly concentrated grocery industry is also a big contributing factor.
Canada’s grocery market is dominated by just a few companies. Domestically, there are three big players: Loblaws, Metro and Sobeys. (Some chains, such as Save-On-Foods in Western Canada, compete on a regional basis.) The next largest retailers for grocery sales are Walmart and Costco. Together, these five companies account for more than three-quarters of all food sales in Canada, according to Canada’s Competition Bureau. In 2023, 49% of Canadians report buying groceries from Loblaws or one of its sister stores.
Critics argue such concentration allows the dominant companies to participate in anti-competitive practices that ultimately harm consumers through higher prices. In grocery, this takes the form of fixing bread prices, preventing competitors from selling certain products, or collectively deciding when to freeze grocery prices—and when to unfreeze them. It’s a problem experts say applies to other industries, such as telecommunications and air travel.
When Canada’s Competition Act was introduced, in 1986, there were at least eight large grocery chains in Canada, each owned by a different company. Since then, more than a dozen major mergers and acquisitions have reduced the level of competition. Today, three big supermarket companies own several smaller chains, including discount brands that could be mistaken for rivals: Loblaws has No Frills, Sobeys has FreshCo and Metro has Food Basics, for example.
How does Canada allow for three big grocers to reign? “The law in Canada typically will not allow the Bureau to intervene in these deals, as they are generally seen as unlikely to have a significant impact on prices and other dimensions of competition,” states a Competition Bureau report. “In the case of a major city or suburb, with five or six different grocery stores nearby, it can be hard to prove that removing one option will cause prices to go up significantly.”
Another underlying issue is that, for many decades, the prevailing view was that “as a small, but large country, we need to accept lower levels of competition to achieve a scale that is necessary to serve the various markets,” says Keldon Bester, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project (CAMP). Over time, that belief has led to fewer and fewer options for consumers, he says.
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25107887/pokemon_go_mareep_community_day_dragon_pulse.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25107888/pokemon_go_mareep_community_day_evolutions.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25108984/mareep_community_day_pokemon_go_infographic.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25071296/Tilted_Towers.jpg)
