Written by Matt (Everynerd) - June 17, 2026
ORACLE STOCK HAS WORST WEEK SINCE 2001 DOT-COM BUST AS AI FINANCING CONCERNS ESCALATE
Nerd Terms
- Machine Learning Model Think of this as a sophisticated pattern-recognition system that learns from examples rather than following pre-programmed instructions, getting better the more data it sees.
- Capital Expenditure This is the big money companies spend on equipment, infrastructure, and technology instead of day-to-day operating costs.
- Market Capitalization The total value of a company's stock, calculated by multiplying the stock price by the number of shares outstanding, basically what the market thinks the company is worth.
APPLE IS LOBBYING THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION FOR CLEARANCE TO BUY MEMORY CHIPS FROM CHANGXIN MEMORY TECHNOLOGIES
Nerd Suggestion
Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology
If you want to understand the geopolitical side of tech without getting overwhelmed, start with "Chip War" by Chris Miller, an accessible narrative nonfiction book that explains why semiconductor manufacturing became the battlefield between superpowers.
Read the full articleCHINESE SUPERCOMPUTER POWERED BY HOMEGROWN CHIPS TOPS US MODELS IN GLOBAL RANKING
Nerd History
Supercomputing rankings have been a Cold War–style competition since the 1970s, tracking which country has the raw computational power for weather forecasting, nuclear simulations, and climate modeling. This shifted dramatically around 2010 when China started investing heavily in domestic chip design instead of relying on American technology. Today's news that a Chinese supercomputer using homegrown chips outperformed American models is the culmination of decades of strategic investment, and it matters because it shows the semiconductor decoupling between superpowers is actually working.
Read the full articleTHE GAME INFORMER SHOW PODCAST
Nerd Archetypes
- The Completionist Collector: The Completionist Collector would love this because they obsess over having every version of classic games remade in modern graphics.
- The Comedy Nerd: The Comedy Nerd would appreciate the humor Patrick Susmilch brings to gaming discussions alongside the gaming crew.
- The Nintendo Devotee: The Nintendo Devotee would be thrilled about Star Fox 64 remake news since they grew up with original Nintendo 64 titles.
QUANTIC DREAM INSISTS STAR WARS TEAM HAS 'ALL THE NECESSARY RESOURCES,' DESPITE STRIKING STAFF
Nerd Myths
The developers at Quantic Dream are striking to actively sabotage or delay Star Wars Eclipse because they are angry.
The striking developers have explicitly stated the exact opposite, making it clear that their walkout is actually a desperate attempt to save the game from cancellation. When the studio’s massive multiplayer project, Spellcasters Chronicles, completely collapsed and shut down just weeks after its launch, management moved to lay off one hundred and fifteen employees; the unionized developers went on strike to demand that these workers be reallocated to the understaffed Star Wars team instead of being let go, arguing the project cannot physically cross the finish line without them.
This strike is just a localized, minor corporate disagreement that won't have any lasting impact on the broader gaming industry.
This is actually a massive flashpoint for the global gaming landscape, representing the largest single redundancy dispute in the French video game sector in years. Backed by the STJV union, the national mobilization is putting an intense spotlight on how major studios use public tax credits and government subsidies while attempting mass layoffs, meaning the outcome of this standoff could completely change labor protections, corporate transparency, and how international publishers like NetEase operate across Europe moving forward.
Video game studios only schedule layoffs when they are completely out of money and have no other choice.
Modern gaming industry layoffs are frequently driven by top-down corporate restructuring and a reliance on worker passion to make up for bad project management. Striking developers noted that management often implements immediate mandatory overtime and relies on the staff's love for a franchise like Star Wars to force them into intense crunch cycles to finish a game, rather than paying to keep a properly staffed, sustainable workspace.
NBCUNIVERSAL MAY ENTER VIDEO GAME BUSINESS AFTER COMCAST SPLIT
Nerd Terms
- Tax-Free Spin-Off This is a corporate restructuring maneuver where a massive parent company breaks off a piece of itself to form a brand-new, completely independent public company without triggering a massive tax bill from the government. Instead of selling the division to an outsider, they just distribute shares of the new company directly to their existing stockholders, letting both branches run completely separate business strategies.
- Intellectual Property Monetization Often just abbreviated as IP, this is the business strategy of squeezing as much financial value as possible out of creative concepts, characters, and fictional worlds by translating them into other profitable mediums. For NBCUniversal, this means they want to stop just licensing out characters like Shrek, Jurassic Park, or Fast and Furious to outside game developers and instead build or buy their own gaming studios to profit directly from making massive interactive video games.
- M&A Target Standing for Mergers and Acquisitions, calling a newly independent company an M&A target means industry experts believe it has become the perfect size and shape for a tech or streaming giant like Netflix to swoop in and buy it up entirely. By untangling the media side of the business from the heavy, expensive physical cable and internet infrastructure side, the entertainment wing suddenly becomes way easier for another mega-corporation to swallow.
FRANK MILLER SIGNS AT LONDON'S FORBIDDEN PLANET AFTER 40 YEARS
Nerd History
Frank Miller revolutionized comics in the 1980s and 90s by bringing noir sensibilities and gritty storytelling to superhero narratives, particularly through his work on Daredevil and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. His influence reshaped how comics were perceived as a serious medium beyond children's entertainment, elevating the entire industry's artistic credibility and proving comics could tell complex adult stories. This signing remains significant because Miller's return to public appearances marks a reconnection with fans after decades of reduced visibility in the comic convention circuit.
Read the full articleEISNER AWARDS 2026 NOMINEES ANNOUNCED
Nerd Myths
Comic books are just for kids.
Modern comics span every genre and mature theme imaginable, from horror to literary fiction, with many award-winning titles featuring complex storytelling that rivals novels and prestige television.
You need to read everything in order to understand comics.
Most quality comics are designed as jumping-on points with new #1 issues frequently, and many celebrated runs can be enjoyed standalone without decades of backstory.
Collecting comics is a waste of money.
Comic collecting combines affordable entertainment, artistic appreciation, and community connection. Many comics cost just five to ten dollars and offer hours of engagement plus the joy of building a personal collection.
CGC RETURNS TO COMIC-CON
Nerd Terms
- Raw To Slab This describes the entire pipeline of taking a raw, uncertified comic book straight from a creator's table and turning it into a "slabbed" collectible by having professional graders evaluate its condition, certify its authenticity, and physically seal it inside a protective, archival-grade plastic capsule.
- Witnessed Signing This is a strict security protocol where an official, authorized CGC representative must physically stand next to you and watch a comic creator or celebrity sign your book in real time, guaranteeing to the collector community that the autograph is one hundred percent authentic and earning it the highly coveted yellow Signature Series label.
- Submission Variant This is an incredibly rare, limited-edition comic book cover that you cannot buy at a regular comic shop or standard booth; instead, it is given away as an exclusive reward to attendees who physically submit a collectible for grading at the show, acting as a major incentive for high-volume collectors.
10 MOST POWERFUL DISNEY LORCANA CARDS OF ALL TIME
Nerd Suggestion
If reading about the absolute strongest cards in Lorcana’s history has you wanting to jump into the inkwell without getting crushed by expert players, this box set is the absolute perfect onboarding ramp. Instead of throwing you into the deep end with complex mechanics like Shift, Locations, or Songs right away, Gateway packages the game into a structured, board-game-style tutorial for two players. These packs introduce advanced mechanics and cards into your decks bit by bit, allowing you to master the fundamental logic of questing and challenging at your own comfortable pace before you ever touch a competitive tournament scene.
Read the full articleTRAVELLER BREAKS THE UNIVERSE WITH NEW “SINGULARITY” MEGA-CAMPAIGN
Nerd History
Since its original launch in 1977, the legendary Traveller tabletop RPG has almost exclusively focused on grounded, blue-collar survival in deep space—paying off spaceship mortgages, managing cargo manifests, and surviving on the dangerous fringes of the Third Imperium. Mongoose Publishing’s massive new Singularity campaign completely shatters that half-century narrative tradition by dropping players directly into a mind-bending, transhumanist space opera epic. The story transitions players from humble luxury liner crew members into consciousness-uploading agents of a godlike alien intelligence, ultimately granting them the mechanical power to reshape the destiny of the entire galaxy. This shift matters immensely today because it proves that classic, hard sci-fi systems can successfully evolve to tackle complex modern concepts like post-humanism, digital immortality, and macro-scale reality warping without losing the mechanical depth that old-school roleplayers love.
Read the full articleCMON LAYS OFF ITS LEAD DESIGNER, CO-AUTHOR OF THE SONG OF ICE AND FIRE MINIATURE GAME
Nerd Terms
- Lead Designer In the tabletop world, this isn't just a management title; it's the creative architect of a game's entire mechanical ecosystem. They are responsible for writing the core rules, shaping how factions play, balancing competitive stats, and mapping out years of future expansions, meaning their abrupt removal leaves a massive creative vacuum for any ongoing projects.
- Asset Liquidation When a board game publisher hits severe financial trouble, they will often survive by selling off the intellectual property (IP) rights of their most famous game franchises to outside companies for quick cash. In CMON's case, to stem massive multi-million dollar losses, they have had to sell off the ownership rights to flagship, money-making series like Zombicide and Blood Rage.
- Crowd-Funding Return Pivot This is a corporate strategy where a company abandons traditional retail distribution models and retreats back to platforms like Kickstarter or Gamefound to fund their new releases. By forcing the community to pay for games months or years before they are manufactured, the publisher shifts the financial risk completely onto the consumers to avoid spending their own dwindling cash reserves.
APPLE'S HIT 90% RT SCI-FI MASTERPIECE RETURNS THIS WEEK
Nerd History
Apple TV+ has quietly built itself into a genuine powerhouse for science fiction over the past few years, building on a foundation laid by decades of ambitious sci-fi television shows that tried to blend spectacle with serious storytelling. What makes this significant today is that streaming services have finally cracked the code that traditional networks struggled with: giving sci-fi the budget, creative freedom, and episode count it needs to truly explore complex ideas. Shows like "Silo," "Foundation," and "For All Mankind" represent a golden age of prestige sci-fi where you get both critically acclaimed storytelling AND Hollywood production values, something that felt impossible just ten years ago when streaming was still seen as the minor leagues.
Read the full articleALL 5 SEASONS OF ICONIC 90S SCI-FI SERIES ARE STREAMING FOR FREE IN JULY
Nerd Terms
- Parallel dimensions Parallel dimensions are alternate versions of reality that exist alongside our own, where history might have gone differently or different physical laws might apply.
- Streaming Home A streaming home is basically just the platform or service where a TV show lives so you can watch it whenever you want, like how Netflix is the streaming home for Stranger Things.
- Term 3 Definition 3.
PROJECT HAIL MARY’ FINALLY COMES TO A STREAMER YOU ACTUALLY HAVE
Nerd Suggestion
If watching the film leaves your readers wanting to dive deeper into the mind-bending science, math, and high-stakes survival of the mission, picking up the mass market paperback of the book is the ultimate starter step. While the movie does a fantastic job translating the visual scale of the story, Andy Weir’s writing is famously breezy, hilarious, and deeply addictive. Reading the book gives fans direct access to Ryland Grace’s internal monologue as he solves terrifying, catastrophic engineering problems using the power of pure science.]
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