A pivotal dispute in the FTC’s attempt to block Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard

Microsoft is pushing back against the Federal Trade Commission’s implication that it didn’t live up to its commitments to the European Commission in its $7.5 billion acquisition last year of Bethesda Game Studios parent ZeniMax Media.

• The outcome of the disagreement could prove pivotal to Microsoft’s efforts to overcome the FTC’s formal opposition to the company’s proposed $69 billion deal to buy Activision-Blizzard. Read more. 

A 19-year-old University of Washington graduate, who started at the school when he was 14, just won a prestigious Marshall Scholarship.

• Daniel Chen earned degrees in informatics and microbiology and is now a lab assistant at the Institute for Systems Biology and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. Read our Q&A.

Two senators want regulators to investigate ties between the banking industry and cryptocurrency firms.

• In their letter to regulators, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Tina Smith cited a bank in rural Washington state. Read more.

Tech Moves: Smartsheet’s chief people and culture officer, Megan Hansen, has left the company.

• Hansen served at the Seattle-area software giant for three-and-a-half years, starting as vice president of people. Read more. 

For the third straight year, Microsoft topped a list of the best-run companies in the U.S.

• The company ranked ahead of Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta, among tech giants, on the Management Top 250 list. Read more. 

Scientists are tangled in a Jurassic dispute over whether the tail of one creature could have created a supersonic crack.

• Former Microsoft exec Nathan Myhrvold calls a new model of Apatosaurus’ tail whip “a joke.” Read more.

GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop has been testing the new Kindle Scribe, Amazon’s first e-reader that you can write on. 

• There’s a lot to like about the device, but a few things give Todd pause. Read his review.