Warp speed, Mr. Sulu. NASA has released a concept design for a faster-than-light spacecraft. [Washington Post]

Total Biscuit recaps the success of his recent ShoutCraft Invitational SC2 tournament and what other tournaments can do to mimic his success at hosting online tournaments. [Team Liquid]

Austin Wintory, the Grammy-nominated video game composer and the best in the world at what he does, is facing a $50,000 fine from a musician’s union for doing his job. [PC Gamer]

In the midst of the current controversy over the lack of playable female characters in Assassin’s Creed Unity, an anonymous game producer explains why Ubisoft likely isn’t including a female character in this game. [/r/AssassinsCreed]

E3 might be happening in Los Angeles but that doesn’t mean that the LA Times knows anything about gaming when they cover it. [Destructoid]

A new study says that we’re about four years away from eSports broadcasting being a $300 million per year industry and viewership topping 6 billion hours of video consumed annually. If you want to get in, it’s a good time because eSports is only going to get bigger from here. An etg. sponsored eSports team/competition anyone? [The Daily Dot]

The much ballyhooed eSports Global Network (ESGN) didn’t go too far before running into financial trouble. The first attempt at an eSports channel in the same style as the 24-hour mainstream sports networks hasn’t exactly been successful. What might this mean for eSports? [PC Games N]

There’s probably fibre internet in your city. You just can’t use it because Big Telecom will cut off your town from the outside of the world if someone tries selling you its use. [Vice]

Have you ever wanted a rough look at the data that travels across the internet in real-time? That would be what this site says they’ve got for you. [PennyStocks]

Looking for a review of the latest Ubisoft game? This link has you covered. [Games.on.net]

LeVar Burton is trying to bring Reading Rainbow back to the masses and right into the schools. Just like the good old days, he’s doing so with the aid of donations from generous people like you. But instead of going through PBS, he’s going through Kickstarter to relaunch the iconic and award-winning literacy and educational series. [Jezebel]

There are plenty of ways that you can make money thanks to video games. One way is through selling items through Steam. However, even that is a risky endeavor. [Polygon]

Speaking of ways to make money through games, The Economist explains how to make money from playing video games. [The Economist]

I shouldn’t have to be reporting on game journalists’ ethics but Siliconera has been accused of stealing someone’s translated news articles and using them verbatim without properly citing the work he’s done. I’d say that they should be better than that but clearly they’re not. [Dime a Dozen]

Now that he’s left Rev3, Adam Sessler has left the gaming press. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t still love gaming. [Kotaku]

The cost of developing games on the now current-gen consoles has been going up and we all knew that it would as developers pushed gaming forward. With the prices of games not going up, can or will developers try to keep costs from spiralling out of control? [Develop]

You would think that the next-gen remastered version of a game would an easy development task. However, Naughty Dog’s engine was custom-built for the unique architecture of the PlayStation 3. It’s a bit more work than expected to get it running perfectly on the PS4. At least they’re getting a warm-up for Uncharted 4. [Edge Magazine]

A while back, we mentioned that NASL closed up their doors. An investigation into the reasons for the eSports company closing turned up documents from an insolvency company stating NASL was over $1.6 million in debt when they closed. [eSports Heaven]

We’re used to hearing about how gaming is taking cues from the movies but movies are increasingly looking to video games for ideas. [The Guardian]

Ser Gregor Clegane, The Mountain that Rides, was a recruiting target of the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts. I’d hazard that he’d be pretty hard to tackle. [NFL.com]

A quick programming FYI. Monday’s a holiday here in Canada so I’m taking the day off on the blog as well. I’m hoping no major news breaks this weekend so I can take the weekend off. Knowing my luck…

“As a critic, once you find yourself questioning the validity of a new cultural medium, you are no longer relevant; you have consigned yourself to a time frame, and your frame is over.” [The Guardian]

It was Early Access before there was Early Access and now it shows the danger of Early Access before we’ve had the mainstream example of the dangers of Early Access. Towns was abandoned last week. Here’s a look at the fall of Towns. [Eurogamer]

The Ouya came and went with a lot of hype and nothing to back it up. However, it still has a purpose it you want it to be a local multiplayer for casual gamers box. [Wololo]

To prove that there’s no creativity left in Hollywood and that everyone has stopped caring about the art of movies, work is underway on a Blade Runner sequel. [Variety]

Dozens upon dozens of companies and groups have written an open letter to the FCC advocating for the continuation of Net Neutrality than the ISPs’ idea of “open internet.” [The Consumerist]

And the FCC’s current so-called “open internet” proposal is already stopping the flow of investment into some new internet startups that may require fast internet connections. [BGR]

It’s not quite a cover piece but there ain’t nothing like making Rolling Stone. Notch gets profiled by the iconic pop culture mag. [Rolling Stone]

I’ve played a lot of Threes lately and it really is lightyears better than 2048. It all comes down to the design. [Wired]

A recent British poll says that about one-in-five people would be willing to have sex with a robot. Two-in-five think that would be creepy so it’s still a minority of people but it’s nice that some people are a bit more sexually liberated than others. [CBS News]

A quick programming note before we begin. There won’t be posts on Monday or Tuesday of next week but normal service will resume on Wednesday. I’ll try to get the weekly Game of Thrones review together by then.

Students at MIT are trying to jump start the Bitcoin economy by giving incoming students $100 in Bitcoin in order to create an “ecosystem” for the cryptocurrency on campus. [Boston Magazine]

Before they bought YouTube multichannel network Maker Studios, Disney was trying to buy BuzzFeed. Maker was literally a fallback plan. [Fortune]

Have you ever wondered whether hacking was worth it? It all depends on how you do it and how much you’re willing to spend. [PC Gamer]

CCP Games has finally unveiled their promised EVE Online monument dedicated to the players of the game with the names of all the active EVE players and recently departed players. [Kotaku]

Tony Hawk is returning to video games… in an iOS endless runner. [Touch Arcade]

With Irrational Games closing down and moving on to smaller projects, why not take a look back at this behind the scenes look at the development of BioShock. [Eurogamer]

Some indie games have become such a big mainstream success that the rise of indie game millionaires is getting covered by mainstream publications. [The New Yorker]

You can spend as much on a new gaming PC as you can on a console and still get better performance. You just have to put together the right combination of parts and retailers. [GameSpot]

This week’s Steam Gauge project: Is there are correlation between game ratings and sales? Okay, they don’t go as statistically intense as I would have liked with correlations and regressions and the like but does give you a little insight. [Ars Technica]

You’ve fallen victim to the viral sensations that are / were Flappy Bird and 2048. Now, try both at the same time in Flappy48. [Flappy48]

I realized something yesterday (and already mentioned on the hastily moved up Thursday of Thrones post). Tomorrow is a holiday. While my other blog, The Lowdown Blog, runs everyday and I’m working at my day job tomorrow, it’s nice to be able to take some time off to relax a little bit on a holiday weekend. So enjoy yours. Watch some TV, play some games and we’ll see you back here next week.

It’s funny what a few dollars can buy you. Netflix has seen Comcast download speeds move up six spots on its rankings in the month since they paid them for a better connection. [Quartz]

Google has developed an algorithm to solve their own CAPTCHAs. While this could be trouble for the future of web security because bots will soon be able to do this, at least it means that I won’t have to fail at CAPTCHAs for much longer. I really hate/suck at CAPTCHAs. [Verge]

Ars Technica has done some serious statistical work on Steam games and their owners. For example, did you know that 36.9% of all Steam games owned have never been played? Did you know that I’m most of that problem? [Ars Technica]

Despite the release of Titanfall in March, VGChartz says that the PS4 grew its units sold gap over the Xbox One. Microsoft really needs to get some Halo games out the door. [VGChartz]

The Last of Us was an impressive game and it might be even more so considering that Ellie’s AI was scrapped and rebuilt just five months before release. [KotakUK]

Peter Dinklage did an AMA on Reddit. He’s popping in and out as of posting so maybe the former Hand of the King and current Master of Coin will answer a late question of yours. [/r/IAmA]

Well, here’s something that shouldn’t surprise you. The NSA is reported to have exploited the Heartbleed Bug. It seems very underhanded to keep a major security flaw a secret just to exploit it in the name of “national security.” [Bloomberg]

I was going to give AMD’s new 295X2 GPU its own post but it looks like there’s a lot of news coming out of PAX East so that’ll dominate the early week posts. So here’s PC Gamer’s review of AMD’s new top-end graphics card. [PC Gamer]

Science is doing amazing things now. It was revealed this week that scientists grew vaginas for women with Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser syndrome and it went quite well. [The Verge]

Have you ever wondered how far Mario has to traverse in the first SMB game? Someone has figured that out for you. [Mental Floss]