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The latest WhatsApp beta update for iOS gives users the ability to add and switch between multiple accounts on a single device, according to WABetaInfo. It comes over a year after the feature became available for Android. With version 25.2.10.70 for iOS, users are given a choice when adding a second account to the app, WABetaInfo reports: they can set it up as a standalone primary account or scan a QR code to link the new account as a companion." The update is available now for beta testers through Apple's TestFlight program.

These are the new releases that we picked up this week. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/what-to-read-this-weekend-an-immersive-new-work-of-africanfuturism-210001195.html?src=rss

A new Resident Evil reboot from Barbarian writer and director Zach Cregger is in the works, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The publication reports that Cregger is on board to write and direct the movie, which will be produced by Constantin Film and PlayStation Productions, with Shay Hatten (John Wick: Chapter 4 ) as co-writer. I'm probably not the only one questioning whether we really need another Resident Evil movie after half a dozen titles in the Milla Jovovich-led series and 2021's Welcome to Raccoon City, but as someone who loved Barbarian, I can't say I'm not intrigued.Per The Hollywood Reporter, Cregger's take is described by sources as a revamp that will take the title to its horror roots and be more faithful to the initial games." There aren't any details about the upcoming movie beyond that, but Warner Bros., Netflix and two other studios are reportedly in a bidding war for it.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/the-filmmaker-behind-barbarian-is-leading-a-new-resident-evil-reboot-173415349.html?src=rss

Marvel Snap was one of the unexpected casualties of the TikTok shutdown that briefly went into effect last weekend, and as a way of making things right with users, its developers at Second Dinner are now offering huge rewards packages to everyone directly and indirectly affected. As detailed in an article on X, US users will get the most substantial compensation, but even players outside the country will get a Global Gratitude Package" for dealing with the disruptions. Second Dinner was able to bring Marvel Snap back online earlier this week, and it expects the app to be restored in the Google Play Store and App Store in the coming days.In addition to the bonuses, Second Dinner said it's working to bring more services in-house and partner with a new publisher" to prevent this type of scenario from arising again. Marvel Snap's current publisher, Nuverse, has ties to TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, which is what got it swept up in the ban. This is the beginning of a new era in MARVEL SNAP," Second Dinner said in the post. The bonus packages will be issued to users sometime next week."The US Downtime Package" for users who have reached Collection Level 500 or over includes 2 Spotlight Keys; 5000 Season Pass XP; 4150 Credits; 6200 Collector's Tokens; 1000 Gold; 5 Gold Conquest Ticket; 3 Infinite Conquest Ticket; 4000 Conquest Medals; 1 Mystery Variant; 6 Premium Mystery Variants; 1 Cosmic Red Border (Super Rare); 3 Cosmic Gold Border (Super Rare); and 155 x5 Random Boosters. For those under Collection Level 500, it'll be 6 Mystery Series 3 Cards; 5000 Season Pass XP; 7150 Credits; 1000 Gold; 1 Mystery Variant; 6 Premium Mystery Variant; 1 Cosmic Red Border (Super Rare); 3 Cosmic Gold Border (Super Rare); and 155 x5 Random BoostersUsers outside of the US and over Collection Level 500 will get 2 Spotlight Keys; 3000 Collector's Tokens; 1500 Credits; 1 Mystery Variant; 1 Premium Mystery Variant; 1 Cosmic Gold Border (Super Rare); 1 Cosmic Red Border (Super Rare); and 155 x3 Random Boosters. Those under Collection Level 500 will get 6 Mystery Series 3 Cards; 3000 Credits; 1 Mystery Variant; 1 Premium Mystery Variant; 1 Cosmic Gold Border (Super Rare); 1 Cosmic Red Border (Super Rare) and 155 x3 Random Boosters.Importantly, Second Dinner also notes, A players' usage of a VPN will not affect their eligibility. This includes players from outside the US VPN-ing into the US to try and receive the US Downtime Package.'"This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/marvel-snap-users-are-getting-a-welcome-back-rewards-package-to-make-up-for-the-tiktok-ban-outage-160134470.html?src=rss

Apple posted iOS 18 adoption rates on Friday, which are only slightly different from the numbers for iOS 17 a year ago. The company says iOS 18 has been installed on 68 percent of all iPhones (as of January 21) and 76 percent of models from the last four years.A year ago, 66 percent of all iPhones ran iOS 17, so there's a two-percent uptick for iOS 18 this year. The other stat was identical to today's data: 76 percent of iPhones from the previous four years were running iOS 17 in January 2024.iPad owners aren't moving any needles dramatically, either. Apple says 53 percent of all iPads are running iPadOS 18 (the same as iPadOS 17 a year ago). And 63 percent of the tablets from the last four years run iPadOS 18. That's a notch above the 61 percent of devices from the previous four years running iPadOS 17 early last year.Does the minor boost come from Apple Intelligence wooing a few extra curious adopters? Unfortunately, the company is mum about how many people have opted into its suite of generative AI features.Regardless, we can speculate that Apple wants Apple Intelligence adoption to grow: In the latest iOS 18.3 beta, Apple is enabling its AI features by default during onboarding. (You can still opt out after that, but you have to dig into settings to do so.) In previous versions, it was an opt-in feature you had to explicitly agree to during setup. That software could arrive as early as next week.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/apple-says-68-percent-of-all-iphones-are-running-ios-18-195956904.html?src=rss

The extremely popular strategy game Endless Legend is finally getting a sequel, ten whole years after the original game began blowing up sales charts. Developer Amplitude Studios, who made the first one, just dropped a trailer for Endless Legend 2 and it looks pretty darned cool.This game and its sequel fall under the 4X" sub-genre of strategy games, meaning the crux of the gameplay involves building an empire of some kind. The Civilization titles are a great example of 4X strategy. 4X actually stands for eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate. I guess 4E" just didn't have the same vibe.In any event, Endless Legend 2 is set in a new location, the oceanic world of Saiadha. The trailer hints at the mysterious nature of this world and showcases the refined gameplay mechanics. It also looks like players could stumble upon an imprisoned god during campaigns. Good times.Players can adopt the role of various factions in the game, many of which are shown off in the trailer. There's a human-like race, an insectoid race and a centaur-like race, among others.Here's more good news for fans of the original. While Amplitude hasn't announced a release date yet, it did say that it will enter early access in early 2025." Using my advanced math skills I have deduced that it's early 2025 right now. The early access build will let players take control of four of the aforementioned factions, with two more coming with the full release.If that nebulous release date has got you down, there's a way to try the game out even earlier. The company has reopened applications for its insider program. Not everyone will be selected for the initial testing phase, but it's worth a shot.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/endless-legend-2-is-real-and-theres-a-mysterious-trailer-to-prove-it-191206441.html?src=rss

Subaru left open a gaping security flaw that, although patched, lays bare modern vehicles' myriad privacy issues. Security researchers Sam Curry and Shubham Shah reported their findings (via Wired) about an easily hacked employee web portal. After gaining access, they were able to remotely control a test vehicle and view a year's worth of location data. They warn that Subaru is far from alone in having lax security around vehicle data.After the security analysts notified Subaru, the company quickly patched the exploit. Fortunately, the researchers say less-than-ethical hackers hadn't breached it before then. But they say authorized Subaru employees can still access owners' location history with only a single piece of the following information: the owner's last name, zip code, email address, phone number or license plate.The hacked admin portal was part of Subaru's Starlink suite of connectivity features. (No relation to the SpaceX satellite internet service of the same name.) Curry and Shah got in by finding a Subaru Starlink employee's email address on LinkedIn and resetting the worker's password after bypassing two required security questions - because it took place in the end user's web browser, not Subaru's servers. They also bypassed two-factor authentication by doing the simplest thing that we could think of: removing the client-side overlay from the UI."Although the researchers' tests traced the test vehicle's location back one year, they can't rule out the possibility that authorized Subaru employees can snoop back even farther. That's because the test car (a 2023 Subaru Impreza Curry bought for his mother on the condition that he could hack it) had only been in use for about that long. The location data wasn't generalized to some broad swath of land, either: It was accurate to less than 17 feet and updated each time the engine started.After searching and finding my own vehicle in the dashboard, I confirmed that the Starlink admin dashboard should have access to pretty much any Subaru in the United States, Canada, and Japan," Curry wrote. We wanted to confirm that there was nothing we were missing, so we reached out to a friend and asked if we could hack her car to demonstrate that there was no pre-requisite or feature which would've actually prevented a full vehicle takeover. She sent us her license plate, we pulled up her vehicle in the admin panel, then finally we added ourselves to her car."In addition to tracking their location, the admin portal allowed the researchers to remotely start, stop, lock and unlock any Starlink-connected Subaru vehicle. They said Curry's mother never received notifications that they had added themselves as authorized users, nor did she receive alerts when they unlocked her car.They could also query and retrieve personal information for any customer, including their emergency contacts, authorized users, home address, the last four digits of their credit card and vehicle PIN. In addition, they were able to access the owner's support call history and the vehicle's previous owners, odometer reading and sales history.In a statement to Engadget, Subaru Communications Director Dominick Infante wrote, Subaru of America, Inc. was notified by independent security researchers of a vulnerability in its Starlink service that had the potential to allow third-party access to Starlink accounts. Subaru patched the vulnerability that same day, and no Subaru vehicles or customer data was ever accessed without authorization. The independent researchers were able to access two accounts belonging to a family member and a friend who provided them with authorization to do so."Subaru also stressed that its cars can't be driven remotely and that the company doesn't sell location data. It also said only certain employees can access driver location data based on job relevancy.The security researchers say the tracking and security failures - stemming from the ability of a single employee to access a ton of personal information" - are hardly unique to Subaru. Wired notes that Curry and Shah's previous work exposed similar flaws affecting vehicles from Acura, Genesis, Honda, Hyundai, Infiniti, Kia, Toyota and others.The pair believes there's reason for serious concern about the industry's location tracking and poor security measures. The auto industry is unique in that an 18-year-old employee from Texas can query the billing information of a vehicle in California, and it won't really set off any alarm bells," Curry wrote. It's part of their normal day-to-day job. The employees all have access to a ton of personal information, and the whole thing relies on trust. It seems really hard to really secure these systems when such broad access is built into the system by default."The researchers' full report is worth a read.Update, January 24, 2025, 1:07PM ET: This story has been updated to add a statement from Subaru.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/subarus-poor-security-left-troves-of-vehicle-data-easily-accessible-182514123.html?src=rss

In its year-and-a-half of existence, one of the things that's set Threads apart from Meta's other apps is that the service has been entirely free of the advertising that fills up just about every corner of Facebook and Instagram. That's now about to change. Meta is beginning its first small test" of ads on Threads, Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced, as the company looks to finally start making money off the service.The ads will appear as image posts in between content in users' feeds and will show up only for a small percentage of people" in the US and Japan. According to Mosseri, Meta plans to begin with a handful of brands" in the two countries. We know there will be plenty of feedback about how we should approach ads, and we are making sure they feel like Threads posts you'd find relevant and interesting," he wrote. We'll closely monitoring this test before scaling it more broadly, with the goal of getting ads on Threads to a place where they are as interesting as organic content."It seems that Meta is using its existing advertising infrastructure to bring ads to the app. In a blog post, the company explains that brands can extend their existing Meta ad campaigns to Threads-without the need for bespoke creative or additional resourcing-by simply checking a box in Ads Manager." The company will also test its inventory filter" on Threads, which allows advertisers to control the sensitivity level of the organic content their ads appear next to." That will likely be an important feature for marketers as Meta loosens its content moderation guidelines and once again allows more political content to appear in users' recommendations.Though the initial test is small, using its existing ad tools would enable Meta to scale Threads ads to many more advertisers, and its 300 million users, very quickly in the future. Mark Zuckerberg has previously indicated that he preferred a slow approach to building Threads' ad business. All these new products, we ship them, and then there's a multi-year time horizon between scaling them and then scaling them into not just consumer experiences but very large businesses," the CEO said last year.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-begins-a-small-test-of-ads-on-threads-174523673.html?src=rss

As the world turns, so do the console generations. The Nintendo Switch is over seven years old, so it's due for a refresh. Nintendo Switch 2 rumors have been swirling for years, but now we have some signs of life. The company officially revealed the sequel to its most successful home console ever in a brief trailer on January 16.The Switch 2 looks functionally very similar to the original system, albeit with a larger display, magnetic Joy-Cons and a sleeker design. The company also reaffirmed that the upcoming console will be backwards compatible with Switch games.While the reveal did confirm some rumors and have a few interesting details for those who were paying close attention, Nintendo is still largely keeping its cards close to its chest. We'll have to wait until a special Nintendo Direct on April 2 for all the juicy information. Annoyingly, that date is a Wednesday and not a Two-sday.The Nintendo Switch 2 was announced on January 16The rumor mill had heavily suggested that Nintendo would pull back the curtain on the Switch 2 on January 16, and that turned out to be the case.The company hasn't changed the core form factor. It's a portable console with detachable Joy-Cons. The Switch 2 can be placed in a dock for big-screen gaming. There are some significant differences from the original console, however.The most obvious one is that the next-gen Joy-Cons will no longer slide into place mechanically. Instead, they'll attach to the main unit magnetically. There is a small connector that's likely used to charge the controllers and perhaps remove the need to link them via Bluetooth. It's unclear at this point if Joy-Cons from the original system will be compatible with the Switch 2.One other big (and very welcome) change is the addition of a second USB-C port on the top of the device. That should make it much easier to plug in accessories while the Switch 2 is docked. It's great to see that Nintendo has kept the headphone jack as well. Let's just hope that Bluetooth headphone support is live from the jump this time and Nintendo doesn't leave everyone waiting four yearsfor that feature.The kickstand is getting an upgrade as well. As with the Switch OLED, it spans the length of the console. But, according to the trailer, this one looks fully adjustable, so you can tweak the viewing angle to one that works for you.However, there are still a great many unknowns regarding the upcoming console. We don't really know the specs yet, or what type of display it uses. We also don't know anything about battery life, the UI or launch games. We'll likely learn a whole lot on April 2.When will the Nintendo Switch 2 come out?2025. That's all we know for sure at this point.It's highly unlikely that Nintendo will release the console before the dedicated Direct on April 2, and not only because that's at the start of Nintendo's next financial year. However, accessory manufacturer Genki, which has been a major source of leaks in recent months, claims the console will be released in April. Other reports have put the release window sometime in June.In any case, we should learn the release date during the April 2 Direct if we haven't already by then.When can I try the Nintendo Switch 2?Nintendo is planning a worldwide roadshow to let gamers go hands-on with the console. These events start in New York and Paris on April 3-6, with others taking place throughout the following two months. That lends credence to some suggestions that Nintendo will release the Switch 2 in June.Ticket registration for the Switch 2 Experience events in the US (in New York, Los Angeles and Paris) starts on January 17 at 3PM ET and will remain open until January 26. A Nintendo Account is required to sign up. Nintendo will randomly select the recipients of the free tickets.The full list of Nintendo Switch 2 Experience events is as follows:North America:

It's Friday, which means it's once again time for us to venture into the discount mines and dig out a few tech deals worth your attention. This week's roundup includes the lowest price in a year for Crucial's X9 Pro, which we consider the best portable SSD for those who want a travel-friendly way to back up their data. Apple's 11-inch iPad Air and Google's Pixel 8a phone are each $100 off, while the Meta Quest 3S and OLED TVs from LG and Sony are cheaper than usual too. We're also seeing a few price drops on video games and gaming accessories we recommend. Here are the best tech deals from this week that you can still buy today.The Meta Quest 3S.Devindra Hardawar for Engadget

Super Bowl LIX is just a couple of weeks away, which means it's a decent time to be in the market for a new TV. If you're looking to make a living room upgrade, we've picked through Amazon, Best Buy and other retailers to find a few Super Bowl 2025 TV deals that are actually worth your time.To be candid, most of the discounts below are the result of TVs naturally falling in price around this time of year rather than any Super Bowl-specific sales. Most sets tend to arrive in the spring, drop a little over the summer, get a larger price cut for the holiday season, then gradually become cheaper until they're discontinued the following year. This pattern is starting to take shape again now, and with the likes of Samsung and LG unveiling their latest TVs for 2025 during CES last month, last year's models will probably fall even further in the months ahead.Still, if you want to upgrade today, a handful of well-reviewed TVs from LG, Sony, Samsung and Hisense are back down to the prices we saw around Black Friday - and in some cases, even cheaper. While we at Engadget do not formally review TVs, we've scoured reviews from other sites we trust to find the good stuff and picked through price histories to ensure the discounts below are actual deals.

If you've been waiting for a good deal on an iPad with one of Apple's M-series chips, now seems like a good time to take the plunge. The M2-powered 11-inch iPad Air has dropped back down to $500. That's $100 off the regular price and just a hair above the record low of $498. Every colorway has dropped to either $549 or $559, but you'll get the full discount when you activate the clippable coupon. This deal is for the base model with 128GB of storage (double the base storage from the previous gen) and no cellular connectivity, though there is Wi-Fi 6E support. You'll get 8GB of RAM as well. We gave the M2 iPad Air, which debuted less than a year ago, a score of 91 in our review. It's our pick for the best iPad for most people. It hits the sweet spot between performance, features and price - even more so considering this deal. It offers better future proofing compared with the entry-level iPad, as many features and apps only run on M-series chips and newer A-series ones. For basic tasks like web browsing and streaming video, performance shouldn't be an issue at all. The M2 iPad Air supports Apple Intelligence features, as well as demanding games like Death Stranding and the Resident Evil 4 remake. You should get about 10 hours of battery life on a single charge. There's no Face ID here, but a Touch ID fingerprint scanner is built into the power button. One other major positive is that Apple has shunted the front-facing camera to th longer side of the tablet, making FaceTime calls in landscape mode an easier proposition. The M2 iPad Air is compatible with the Apple Pencil Pro, but not the second-gen Pencil. One of our main complaints about the M2 iPad Air is that it has an LCD display with a 60Hz refresh rate. It's not as smooth or vibrant as the 120Hz OLED you'll find on the most recent iPad Pro. Still, it's a bright, sharp screen. However you slice it, the M2 iPad Air is a pretty great tablet. Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/the-11-inch-ipad-air-m2-is-back-on-sale-for-500-153619990.html?src=rss

The Switch 2 is a big boy. That was my main takeaway from Nintendo's long-awaited reveal of its next portable. How could you have watched that trailer and left with any other impression? It's not like Nintendo showed much else. Sure, there was the slide about backward compatibility, but the difference in size between the two systems stood out even there. It got me thinking: How big is too big? And did Nintendo prioritize the wrong design choices?If you had been following along with all the pre-release leaks, you knew this was coming. I certainly did, but I had still hoped that the rumors of an 8-inch display were wrong. I'm a relative newcomer to the Switch. My girlfriend and I split the cost of an OLED model during Black Friday 2024. Since then, it's become one of my favorite ways to play games, in big part because of its portability.Nintendo/EngadgetThe Switch OLED is not as powerful as my gaming PC, but I can curl up to play games on the couch with it. It's also small enough to fit in my 15L backpack, making it great for travel. I also love the OLED screen. It makes every game look better, to the point where I can forgive some for performing poorly on the system.On paper, the Switch 2 should retain at least some of the OLED model's portability, but I wonder how easy it will be to transport. Consider that if the Switch 2 ships with an 8-inch display, it will feature a bigger screen than the Steam Deck OLED. The Steam Deck is, like the Switch, a handheld, but I would argue it's not portable in any true sense of the word.I once tried to pack the Steam Deck for a trip, but I gave up after I found it impossible to fit it in my duffle alongside everything else I needed to bring with me. I haven't tried to travel with the Steam Deck since. It's too early to tell if the Switch 2 will suffer from the same problem and it looks relatively thin, but depending on how much it weighs, I suspect a lot of people will use it almost exclusively in their homes.That's not inherently a bad thing, but the genius of the Switch is how it promotes co-op play. I'm almost certainly in the minority here, but tablet mode is one of my favorite ways to play the Switch. On a recent flight my girlfriend and I took to Europe, the Switch was a godsend on a plane with no in-flight entertainment.I know the Switch 2 will feature a tablet mode just like its predecessor, but I wonder how many people will take advantage of that capability with a larger, heavier device? I can see it going two ways. Either the bigger screen makes that feature more attractive, or more people leave their Switch 2 at home because it's cumbersome to carry around.The other big unknown here is battery life. If the Switch 2 features an 8nm chip paired with 1080p LCD as has been rumored, it's very likely its battery won't last nearly as long as the Switch OLED's. Before Nintendo released the Mariko" revision of the original model and later the Switch OLED, battery life wasn't the console's strong suit, and I suspect it won't be the Switch 2's either.There are still so many unknowns about the Switch 2, but the thing that struck me about the console's recent reveal was that I wasn't fully convinced it would be a clear upgrade over the Switch OLED. Obviously, the Switch 2 will offer far greater performance and what looks like a much more solid set of Joy-Cons, but I'm not too excited about a system that could be bigger, and feature a worse screen and battery life. If those predictions turn out to be true, I'm probably sticking with my Switch OLED until Nintendo announces a Switch 2 Lite or Switch 2 OLED.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/what-if-the-nintendo-switch-2-is-too-big-150002921.html?src=rss

Netflix's co-chief executive officer Gregory Peters said that the company has made some "good early progress" since it launched games during a call for the streaming service's Q4 2024 earnings. He also mentioned the company's plans for the future of gaming on the service, including rolling out party and couch co-op games that you can stream online. As The Verge notes, Netflix started testing its game streaming technology last year, but it was very limited, and it wasn't clear how it fared. Turns out the company intends to continue investing into the technology and expanding its reach."We think of this as a successor to family board game night or an evolution of what the game show on TV used to be," Peters added when he talked about rolling out party and couch co-op games. He also said that the company will continue adding mainstream titles like GTA, which got tens of millions of downloads, to its offerings. Netflix will continue releasing games based on its shows, as well, because they tend to become fan favorites. Squid Game: Unleashed apparently reached the top spot in app stores' lists for action games in 107 countries. It's on pace to become Netflix's most downloaded game yet.Peters said that Netflix is already seeing "positive impacts in acquisition and retention from [its] game-playing members." He admitted that the positive effects brought about by gaming on the platform are still "relatively small," but Netflix's budget for games is also smaller than its budget for shows and movies. As a result, the company will continue "scaling that investment" as it sees its benefits to acquiring new and retaining old subscribers.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/netflixs-push-into-gaming-will-add-party-and-couch-co-op-150050223.html?src=rss

Sony is ending production of recordable Blu-ray, MiniDisc and MD Data disc media, along with MiniDV cassettes, the company announced. Last year, Sony said that it would gradually end production of recordable optical media and production at its Tagajo City plant due to poor sales. Now, production will definitively halt next month and "there will be no successor models," according to the Japanese web page.In the announcement, Sony referred to "Blu-ray Disc media," by which it means recordable media only, not Blu-ray discs used to distribute movies (Engadget asked Sony to confirm that it's only halting recordable optical disc production). Sony currently offers 11 products in the recordable category, ranging from 25GB to 128GB, in both R (write once) and RE (write multiple times).While Sony is ceasing production of recordable Blu-ray discs, they're still available from Verbatim and possibly others. However, MiniDiscs may be hard to come by as Sony was one of the few remaining manufacturers - so you may want to stock up while they're still for sale.MiniDisc, mostly used for audio recording, has seen a bit of a resurgence among audiophiles due in part to the tactile experience compared to streaming. It was widely used by professionals as it supports live recording and still has a presence in studios because a lot of content has been archived to that format. (Fun fact: the character Neo in The Matrix stores his ill-begotten wares, whatever they are, on MiniDiscs.)Once popular for movie collection and file archiving, recordable Blu-ray and other optical media were effectively killed by streaming services, cheap memory, and cloud storage. All of the formats Sony killed have been around for decades, with BD-RE arriving 2002, MiniDisc in 1992, MD Data in 1993 and MiniDV cassettes, primarily used for video production, first appearing in 1995.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/home-theater/sony-is-halting-production-of-recordable-blu-ray-minidiscs-and-minidv-cassettes-140030225.html?src=rss

This year, Samsung unified the design language of its S-series flagships, making the S25, S25+ and the S25 Ultra look and feel the same (barring the camera). The curving sides of the S24 Ultra are finally gone, replaced with the solid, squared-off lines seen on the cheaper Galaxy S handsets. Flatter sides make the device easier to grip, slide into your pocket, or prop up when you're trying to photograph them for a tech website.I'll be honest, they look like iPhones. And older Galaxy S phones. And, well, even older iPhones. Smartphones have hopped from flat to curves for as long as smartphones have existed.SamsungWith Samsung, we've gripped onto rounded sides from the debut of Galaxy S (2010) through to 2015. Then, the Galaxy S6 (2015) had more flattened sides before the series returned to curves for the S8 (2017). It stayed that way until the more recent S24, with recent years gradually hammering out those curves. The S25 series, now, has flat sides for every model.Are flatter sides actually easier to grip? I don't know. I'm a hypocrite. I've found multiple reviews and impressions pieces where I love flat sides. I've found the same number of stories where I loved curved devices. Why should you ever believe me again? I'm sure there are tech journalists who have stuck with one form factor being better, but I couldn't find them.EngadgetEach time it happens and the company explains its change, the designers say this lack of curves/ introduction of curves is better than whatever it was last year. In an interview with Vanity Fair in 2024, Jony Ive said that Apple chose rounded edges for the iPhone 6 series because they made larger phones feel less clunky. That was when the iPhone 6 Plus had a heady 5.5-inch screen, which seems... quaint in 2025.My theory is that our hands get used to whatever phone form factor we've used for the last couple of years. That means when the design gets shaken up (or you swap to a different manufacturer), one has to pay more attention to holding it. But that effect fades.If the two most significant, most influential phone makers have settled on flat sides, then there are reasons for it. Until there's an even bigger reason to return, once again, to curves.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/curvy-sides-flat-edges-the-galaxy-s25-and-the-arbitrary-shape-of-smartphones-130047461.html?src=rss

Welcome to a new newsletter, with a bit of a new direction. While our mid-week edition tackles news specifics, this end-of-the-week missive combines the biggest news with more context, more things to read and watch, recommendations, easter eggs, inside baseball and stuff that interests our readers, alongside the breaking news, reviews and features you expect from Engadget.We'd love your feedback on what you'd like to see covered in these meatier editions - hit me up at tma(at)engadget.com.Luckily for me, we kick things off with Samsung's big Unpacked event, launching three new phones and teasing two - yes, two! - more coming soon.Everything Samsung announced, including prices and launch dates (February 8 - I'll save you a click), we collated here, but it was largely a fallow year for Galaxy S hardware, barring a substantially more powerful chip.While the Galaxy S25 Ultra et al. might not thrill, Samsung managed to breadcrumb several devices with no launch date. First, at its San Jose event, the company revealed its mixed reality headset in person, finally - even if it was just a functionless headset for photos and gawping at.Then there was the Galaxy S25 Edge - a device I didn't think existed. (And something that wasn't shown at my satellite event in London - we got a not-great projection mapping brand activation across London's Thames river. Boo.)Like Samsung did a year ago with its Galaxy Ring teaser, we got a fleeting glimpse of the rumored slim Galaxy phone, actually called the Galaxy S25 Edge. It's slim, has two cameras and... that's about all we know. Bloomberg reports it will cost less than the S25 Ultra when it arrives later this year.Samsung/YouTUbeAnd then there's the mysterious teaser for some possible bifold device - see the screengrab above. This would be a foldable concertina, like devices we've seen from Huawei. Samsung teased the display tech back at CES 2022 and subsequent trade events. Is it now ready?Will the company's foldables become the new home for Samsung hardware innovation? Is the Galaxy Fold series now truly the new Galaxy Note?- Mat SmithThe biggest stories you might have missed

It feels like CES again with a slew of tech news this week! In this episode, Devindra dives into his final thoughts on NVIDIA's $2,000 GeForce RTX 5090, a super-powered video card with a healthy dose of AI. Senior Reporter Sam Rutherford also joins to explain everything Samsung launched at its Galaxy S25 Unpacked event. And of course, we'll chat about some of the technology industry and policy changes from the new Trump administration. Stay tuned to the end of this episode for our chat with YouTube GM Jack Greenberg about some new features headed to YouTube Premium.Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, Engadget News!Subscribe!

Tesla has officially launched the redesigned Model Y in North America and Europe, a couple of weeks after the vehicle was announced for the Asia Pacific region. The new version isn't replacing the original Model Y, though - at least not yet - and Tesla is selling both of them on its website. At the moment, you can only get the long-range all wheel drive launch series variant for the new Model Y in the US with prices starting at $46,490. The launch series is a limited edition release with exclusive badging on the rear liftgate, puddle light, doorsill plate and other parts of the car.While the new Model Y retains the older version's proportions, it has rounder edges, with its smaller headlights and taillights bookending a redesigned lightbar. Inside, it has ambient lighting wrapping around most of the car, ventilated seats and a 15.4-inch touchscreen in the front. The second row seats have power recline and can fold flat. Passengers sitting in the back row will also have access to a Bluetooth-enabled 8-inch rearscreen display with a touch panel.The new long-range all wheel drive Model Y has an estimated range of 325 miles, has a top speed of 125 mph and can go from zero to 60 mph in 4.1 seconds. To compare, the old Model Y long-range AWD can reach 311 miles on one charge, has a top speed of 135 mph and can go from zero to 60 mph in 4.8 seconds. Deliveries for the new Model Y begin in March. If you'd still rather get the old version, its prices start at $31,490, though take note that it's getting a $4,000 price hike in Canada.TeslaThis article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/teslas-new-model-y-arrives-in-the-us-055746103.html?src=rss

Threads is adding a new feature that lets users get a little more creative in remixing posts from other people. The app now has a markup" tool that allows users to scribble on top of posts they want to reshare, Adam Mosseri shared in a post.Markup abilities appear in the menu for quoting and reposting. But instead of simply quoting a post, it launches an editing tool where you can add highlights, arrows or doodles on top of a screenshot of the post. Mosseri said the feature is intended so you can add your creative take" on posts, but the tools are fairly limited for now. You can only add yellow highlights or red arrows and doodles, though Mosseri said there would be more to come soon" from Meta.A Threads spokesperson confirms that the feature will function similarly to quote posts in that the original user is notified if someone chooses to mark up their post. You can also use the who can reply and quote" setting to disable markups on your own posts.The app is also making two other features it's already previewed official: post scheduling and analytics. The features will likely be particularly useful for brands, creators and others who manage a professional presence on the site, which has so far lacked many of the more advanced business-focused tools Meta's other platforms have. Both could also come in handy should Meta begin to introduce ads to Threads, a move that's reportedly in the works for the beginning of 2025.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/threads-now-lets-you-scribble-on-top-of-other-users-posts-231129612.html?src=rss

If you subscribe to Amazon Prime or Prime Video and are looking to expand your streaming horizons, Amazon has a deal for you. Prime subscribers can get a bundled subscription to the ad-free version of Max and Starz for just $21 per month, $7 off the bundle's normal $28 per month price. Max has a solid back catalog of classic Hollywood films programmed by Turner Classic Movies, original films and TV shows from HBO, and cartoons from Cartoon Network, on top of a chaotic collection of reality TV programming from HGTV, Food Network, and more. If you were thinking of checking out The White Lotus when the show returns in February or the second season of The Last of Us in April, this bundle is a pretty good reason to hop on the Max bandwagon. Starz has a less must-see original programming when compared to Max or Prime Video - outside of the ever-popular Outlander - but it's a great streaming service if you're looking to watch movies that recently left theaters. You're able to get this bundle deal even if you don't currently have a Prime subscription. You can sign-up for a 30-day free trial of Amazon Prime to enjoy the bundle at $21 per month, and just add on an extra $15 a month once your trial is up. Prime Video itself has an interesting library worth combing through, too. Including a recent adaptation of Fallout if shows based on video games are what floats your boat. Because this deal is through Prime Video, you'll have to access Max and Starz as Prime Video Channels rather than through their individual streaming apps, but it's a small annoyance for an otherwise solid deal. Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/amazon-prime-members-can-get-ad-free-max-and-starz-for-21-per-month-223245603.html?src=rss

OpenAI has begun previewing a new tool called Operator that can navigate within a web browser. According to a blog post published Thursday, the software is powered by what the company calls a Computer-Using Agent. CUA is trained to interact with graphical user interfaces (GUIs) - the buttons, menus, and text fields people see on a screen - just as humans do," says OpenAI of the model. This gives it the flexibility to perform digital tasks without using OS- or web-specific APIs.The current release of Operator builds on OpenAI's GPT-4o model. It combines the vision capabilities of that algorithm with advanced reasoning" trained through reinforcement learning. Operator has the ability to break tasks into multi-step plans and adaptively self-correct when challenges arise." According to OpenAI, that capability represents the next stage in AI development.InstacartAs with past research previews, OpenAI warns that Operator is still early and has limitations," and that it won't perform reliably in all scenarios just yet." For instance, depending on the complexity of the task and interface involved, the agent greatly benefits from the user taking a few extra moments to write a more detailed prompt. Per The Verge, Operator will give the user control if it ever gets stuck on a task. It will also hand control over whenever a website asks for sensitive information, including login credentials. The company says it designed the tool to refuse harmful requests and block disallowed content."OpenAI is making Operator first available to users of its $200 per month ChatGPT Pro subscription. It is also partnering with companies like Instacart to offer the agent on their platforms, though there again you'll need a ChatGPT Pro subscription to test the integration.Operator joins a growing list of AI agents that can either navigate a web browser or an entire operating system. Anthropic was the first to offer the capability with the release of its Claude 3.5 Sonnet model in October, followed more recently by Google with its Gemini 2.0 model and Project Mariner.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openais-operator-can-surf-the-web-for-you-210029243.html?src=rss

Epic Games had previously announced plans to bring third-party games to its mobile app, which is available worldwide on Android devices and on iOS in the European Union. The company will also offer a rotating selection of titles for free on mobile. Bloons TD 6 and Dungeon of the Endless: Apogee will be the first two free titles. In a post on X, Epic said it was still fixing some bugs before launching the new games on its platform.But the company made waves today with a move that could encourage popular games to join its free games program. Epic plans to cover the cost of the Core Technology Fee on iOS for participants' first year. Apple charges a CTF of 50 euro cents for any install of an iOS app once it surpasses 1 million annual downloads and uses a third-party store. Apps with global revenue of less than 10 million have a three-year grace period.A blog post from Epic and shared with The Verge says that covering the fees "is not financially viable for every third party app store or for Epic long term, but we'll do it while the European Commission investigates Apple's non-compliance with the law." The law in question is the Digital Markets Act, a digital competition law in Europe which has already targeted Apple.Fees levied by Apple and Google for use of their platforms has been a source of great debate in the tech and gaming spheres. Epic Games has been in conflict with Apple several times over the years, alleging the tech giant has engaged in anti-competitive behavior.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/epic-games-to-cover-some-ios-fees-in-ongoing-war-with-apple-204525888.html?src=rss

A week after DirecTV launched its first sports-only streaming package, Comcast unveiled a similar offering that adds news to the mix. The Xfinity Sports & News TV package combines over 50 broadcast, cable news and sports channels with Peacock, DVR storage and more.Although Xfinity Sports & News is being widely marketed and reported as costing $70 monthly, there's some extensive fine print attached. (With Comcast?? Can't be.)First, that price only applies to Xfinity Internet or Xfinity TV customers (new or existing). You'll pay at least $90 monthly if you want to stick with home internet from elsewhere. On top of that, your monthly price goes up by $10 without automatic billing through a bank account. Autopay with a credit or debit card adds an extra $8.So, it can be as little as $70 or as much as $100 per month. Plus tax. This is only a good deal compared to YouTube TV (which recently raised prices again) or Hulu + Live TV if you're already an Xfinity Internet customer who's cool with automatic payments.Even then, whether it's a bargain will depend on whether it has all the content you want. Its national cable news lineup includes CNN, CNBC, MSNBC and Fox News. It has ESPN, FS1, ACC Network, Big Ten Network, GOLF Channel and SEC Network for live sports channels. Also on tap are local broadcast channels, including ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, Telemundo and Univision affiliates. Plus, you get Peacock (which includes live sports in addition to its on-demand fare) and other extras like 300 hours of cloud DVR storage.If you want the best viewing experience, you'll need an Xfinity X1 TV box, only available for Xfinity cable customers. But since that would be somewhat redundant, you can still watch through the Xfinity Stream app on streaming boxes like Apple TV, Roku, Fire TV and mobile devices.You can read more (and perhaps make yourself dizzy from fine print) at Xfinity's Sports & News landing page.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/comcasts-sports-and-news-streaming-bundle-starts-at-70-monthly-203017976.html?src=rss

CNN is laying off more employees and making plans to launch another streaming service, according to a memo from CEO Mark Thompson obtained by The Hollywood Reporter. Around 200 employees jobs are being cut, affecting six percent of CNN's current staff.The changes are being made in response to "profound and irreversible shifts in the way audiences in America and around the world consume news," according to Thompson. Launching a new streaming service after the abject failure of CNN+ - the former streaming home of Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy - is apparently tied to that same thinking.According to Thompson:

The Qi2 wireless charging spec was originally announced back in early 2023. However, Android phone makers haven't exactly been rushing to add Qi2 support to their latest devices since then. That's made finding a compatible handset rather difficult, which is a bummer for anyone who has seen the wealth of accessories and power banks that iPhone owners have had access to for several generations.On top of faster charging speeds (up to 15 watts or higher in later revisions), Qi2 dictates the inclusion of embedded magnets designed to make aligning and attaching peripherals a cinch.But what makes the slow rollout a bit more frustrating is that Apple is a member of the Wireless Power Consortium (the governing body in charge of Qi2) and its MagSafe tech was used to help define the spec and ensure that compliant add-ons work seamlessly with Qi2, so it's not like there's a lack of compatible peripherals.Regardless, to help you figure out which Android phones officially come with Qi2, we've compiled a list of supported devices. (Note: Due to the complexities of the Chinese market, this list is primarily focused on gadgets available in North America and the EU.)Android phones with Qi2:The HMD Skyline.That's it, seriously. At least for now.But what about the Galaxy S25? Unfortunately, despite Samsung saying that it will release multiple Android devices supporting Qi2" this year, its latest batch of flagship phones are merely "Qi2 ready." But what does that mean? Like previous models, the Galaxy S25 family can charge wirelessly at up to 15 watts. However, because the phones don't have magnets inside, Qi2 accessories slide off when you try to attach them. This can be addressed by purchasing a compatible case with a built-in magnetic mounting system, but at least out of the box, the Galaxy S25 line requires additional assistance in order to work with the growing market of Qi2 peripherals.OnePlus also claims the OnePlus 13 supports Qi2. However, in our testing, the magnets inside the phone are so weak that it didn't latch on securely to any of the Qi2 accessories we tested.Google has also seemingly pledged to throwing its hat to the ring. That said, things are a bit less concrete with the company saying that it will play a leading role in the development of the upcoming Qi v2.2 standard, which includes Google's contribution of its own high-power wireless charging technology to WPC."Finally, when asked if it had plans to release Qi2-compatible phones, Motorola would only say that it is "committed to bringing the latest technology across our devices."That said, with Mobile World Congress 2025 starting on March 3, we're expecting to see updates from even more major manufacturers.As new phones with Qi2 hit the market, we will try to keep this list as up-to-date as possible. Or at least until the spec becomes a much more mainstream standard.Update, January 23 2025, 3:04 PM ET: This story has been updated with new info on the Samsung Galaxy S25 family, the OnePlus 13 and a statement from Motorola regarding future Qi2-certified phones.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/here-are-all-the-android-phones-that-support-qi2-150052702.html?src=rss

Pocketpair, the company behind the mega-hit game Palworld, just announced a publishing venture. This new division will provide devs with all the support they need without overstepping." It also promises funding opportunities, development assistance and publishing support."The company is currently looking for indie developers and small studios to partner with, but it already has one project on its plate. The newly-formed publishing arm has promised to provide development and financial support" to Surgent Studios, the company behind the well-regarded Metroidvania Tales of Kenzera: Zau.Surgent announced mass layoffs and an indefinite hiatus back in October as it searched for new funding partners. It looks like that search was fruitful. The company now says it's working on a "short and weird" horror title.Indie publishing is having a moment right now. Innersloth, the company behind Among Us, recently started a publishing arm to help fund indie games. YouTube star Dunkey also started a publishing company, called Bigmode, which assisted with the release of last year's enigmatic and fun Animal Well.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/palworld-developer-pocketpair-has-opened-up-a-publishing-division-194713511.html?src=rss

Google is releasing its previously announced Identity Check feature today, adding extra protection to "critical account and device settings" when you're not in a trusted location.With Identity Check enabled, you'll need to provide "explicit biometric authentication" to access certain account and phone settings, like changing your pin or disabling theft protection. You'll have to toggle the feature on in settings and add trusted locations where you don't want biometric authentication to be enabled before you use it. Google says the protections extend to your Google account or Samsung account as well, making it harder for someone to change your password just because they have your phone.Identity Check is rolling out to Google's Pixel devices running Android 15 now, and coming to Samsung Galaxy devices capable of running One UI 7 "in the coming weeks," which could line up with the February 7 launch of the Galaxy S25. Other Android phone makers should get the feature later this year.Along with the release of Identity Check, Google says that its Theft Detection Lock feature, which uses AI to detect when your phone has been forcibly taken from you and lock your screen, has now fully rolled out to devices running Android 10 and up. Both settings are absolutely worth enabling if you have a phone that supports them.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/androids-identity-check-feature-is-rolling-out-to-pixel-and-samsung-galaxy-devices-193048987.html?src=rss

Roli just introduced the simply-named Piano at NAMM, a 49-key smart keyboard that's primarily intended for learners, but has some neat bells and whistles for experienced musicians. It features light-up keys across all octaves, to help newbies get a handle on chords. These keys will also glow to show scales, arpeggios and more. It's basically a larger version of the company's beloved Piano M teaching keyboard. For veterans, the Roli Piano offers per-key pitch bend and polyphonic aftertouch, which should make for expressive playing. It also tracks fingers in four different ways while playing. This will allow the keyboard to successfully control MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE) instruments. The additional controllable parameters helps narrow the gap between digital and acoustic instruments. This is also a modern tech device, so Roli stuffed in some AI tools. The Piano AI Assistant uses generative AI to streamline the learning process. The company says it can help players get started with drills, teach music history and even go over theory. This tech will be improved upon as the year goes on, via software updates. Speaking of software, buyers also get Roli Studio, which is a collection of instruments and presets. The Roli Piano also offers some neat integration with the company's recently-released Airwave keyboard teaching tool. This theremin-like device tracks a player's fingers and sends teaching data to a tablet. The Airwave is also an instrument in its own right, as users can raise their hands like a conductor to create and play sounds. The ways we learn and play music are improving exponentially thanks to innovations like the Airwave, and now the Roli Piano and Piano AI Assistant," Roland Lamb, Founder and CEO of Roli, told Engadget. "Players now have access to the most intelligent and intuitive music system out there." Roli Piano connects via USB-C or wirelessly with Bluetooth. It works with all major DAWs and a whole lot of virtual instruments. Pre-orders are available right now, with shipments going out in May. Early adopters get a serious discount here, as the price right now is $400. However, it goes up to $600 upon official release. There's also a bundle with the Airwave that costs $650 for early birds, but $950 in May. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/music/roli-finally-introduces-a-larger-teaching-piano-keyboard-complete-with-ai-191551398.html?src=rss

Xbox hosted its Developer Direct showcase today, detailing progress on three games we knew about and one totally new title, Ninja Gaiden 4. If you couldn't tune in, here's what you missed:Ninja Gaiden 4Ninja Gaiden 4 is being co-developed by Team Ninja and PlatinumGames, best known for the Bayonetta series. The trailer introduces a new protagonist, Yakumo, and Team Ninja is pitching the game as a "true successor" to Ninja Gaiden 3 after the misstep of the Ninja Gaiden Z spinoff. It certainly seems like the exact middle ground between classic Ninja Gaiden and PlatinumGames action. It's coming to PC, PS5 and Xbox this fall, and will be on Xbox Game Pass on day one.Read more: Ninja Gaiden 4 is coming out this fallSouth of MidnightFollowing Ninja Gaiden was South of Midnight, the next game from Compulsion Games, which previous made We Happy Few. South of Midnight has been in the works for a long time, and the studio has been good at communicating progress, especially in recent months. All of which is to say, there wasn't a lot of new info here, aside from a release date: April 8, 2025. (Just to keep the streak going - yes, this will be available on Game Pass on day one.)Read more: The striking South of Midnight comes to Xbox and PC on April 8Clair Obscur: Expedition 33Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been on our radar for some time, and it's still looking great. It's the debut title from Sandfall Interactive, a French studio. Drawing inspiration from France in its late 19th-century golden age, Clair Obscur is a fantasy adventure that seems to pull heavily from the world of JRPGs - even the music at the start of Sandfall's segment sounded like the Velvet Room from the Persona series. Again, the big news was a release date - April 24. It'll be arriving on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox consoles, and will be playable on Game Pass on day one.Doom: The Dark AgesWhile we knew it was coming, id Software's Doom: The Dark Ages deep dive certainly stole the show for Engadget. It's billed as the biggest Doom game ever, but it's also more focused than any other installment in the franchise - other than the original Doom, perhaps. The Dark Ages is a tanky romp through a medieval, cosmic Hell, starring an incredibly beefy Slayer and featuring three basic inputs: shield saw, melee and gun. Doom: The Dark Ages is due out on May 15 for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, including Game Pass.Read more: Doom: The Dark Ages hits PC, PS5 and Xbox on May 15And that was that - a pretty great start to 2025 for Xbox, though the eagle-eyed among you may have realized that all bar South of Midnight are coming to Sony's PlayStation as well as Microsoft's consoles and PC. You can relive the full showcase below:Or... if you don't have time for that, Microsoft for some reason put together a 72-second recap:This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/everything-announced-at-the-xbox-developer-direct-showcase-190406197.html?src=rss

South of Midnight, Compulsion Games' upcoming Southern Gothic/dark fantasy adventure, got some time in the spotlight during Xbox's Developer Direct event on Thursday. The studio revealed that the game is coming to Xbox Series X/S, Xbox Cloud Gaming and PC on April 8.As ever, Game Pass Ultimate, Console and PC subscribers will get access on day one. Those who snap up the premium edition can jump in five days early.This deep dive into South of Midnight focused on the world, combat and story, which sees a hurricane tear through the part of the Deep South where main character Hazel and her mother live. The two get into an argument that ends in disaster, as their home is swept away with Hazel's mom still inside. As she sets out to find her mother, Hazel finds that the hurricane has brought some fantasy creatures, both friendly and otherwise, to her corner of the world.Our hero learns that she is a weaver, someone who possesses magical abilities. A gold star for anyone who guessed that these can be used for traversal and in combat. Timing is said to be a critical component of battles, so you'd best be sure that your reactions are on point. Speaking of time, Compulsion Games says that South of Midnight should take most players between 10 and 12 hours to finish.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/the-striking-south-of-midnight-comes-to-xbox-and-pc-on-april-8-185157726.html?src=rss

Doom: The Dark Ages is set to come out on May 15 for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. It's a single-player sandbox experience with an emphasis on exploration, bloodshed and upgrading skill trees, introducing massive mech battles and a ridable cyber dragon that spits fire on command.Doom: The Dark Ages is the largest Doom game id Software has ever made, but to be perfectly clear and possibly assuage some fears, it's not open-world. In fact, the directive for developers was to edit down everything - controls, levels, menus, upgrade paths - in order to emulate the reactive rush that made the original Doom games so addictive. According to executive producer Marty Stratton and game director Hugo Martin, Doom: The Dark Ages is a refined and thoughtful return to the series' classic loop, set in the medieval wastelands of Hell and starring a super tanky Doom Slayer.In The Dark Ages, the Slayer has three basic inputs: shield saw, melee and gun. The shield saw is a critical tool, allowing players to parry and block incoming attacks, and also acting as a boomerang-style projectile that can embed itself into enemies to rip through their demonic flesh. Parrying is a massive factor in the new game, and it's also one of many aspects that players can customize in the difficulty settings. You'll be able to change the size of the parry window, adjust the actual game speed and fine-tune a dozen other factors to make each run feel just right.The Slayer has a choice of three melee weapons and he carries just one at a time. There's an iron flame, an electrified gauntlet and a spiked mace, and each one can be upgraded as you make your way through Hell. The final main input is the trigger, which controls all of the gruesome guns. There's a wondrous array of weapon-based brutality on display in The Dark Ages, including the Skullcrusher, a gun that eats the bones of murdered enemies and uses the shards as ammo.Certain levels will support skyscraper-sized Atlan battles and allow the Slayer to ride on the back of a cybernetic dragon, spraying flames on the gathered demons. These abilities won't be available at will, and are instead contained to specific regions of the map. There are also swimming levels - which, speaking as someone with a phobia of deep water, is possibly the scariest thing in the new game.id SoftwareThe Slayer in Doom: The Dark Ages is beefy. He's thick, heavy and armor-plated, and as he hunts demons through the medieval wastelands of Hell, he's going to feel different than the Slayers in 2016's Doom and its 2020 follow-up, Doom: Eternal. In terms of development mottos, Doom was run and gun," Eternal was jump and shoot," and The Dark Ages is, stand and fight." Strafing and twitchy teleportation-like abilities are still on the menu, but the emphasis this time around is on holding your ground and strategizing while shooting.What people didn't like in 2016 was that it was too repetitive," Martin said in a media Q&A before Thursday's Xbox Developer Direct, where id showed off new bits of the game. And in Eternal, some people said it was too hard. I actually think it's too complex. I think that the complexity of the control scheme led to unnecessary difficulties. You really want to be fighting the demons, the bad guys, not your controls."Martin and Stratton emphasized the importance of streamlining the core loop in The Dark Ages, while also building the largest, most adventure-feeling Doom game that id has ever made. There are skill trees, currency and more secrets to find than ever before, but there's not a lot of filler - everything has a purpose and there are no unnecessary frills in the actual mechanics of combat, resource-collecting and upgrade paths.id SoftwareThere is a lot of exploration in this game, and it's for power," Stratton said. That's one of the things that is really important. You're finding resources and other things that allow you to improve yourself, upgrade your guns, upgrade your shield, your melee. So it isn't just the secrets, just the toys, that kind of thing. It really is an exploration for power."Martin added, I want to feel strong. It's got to be a good amount of speed and exploration and power, but I'm okay with you changing what that power fantasy is, especially if the change you make brings it back closer to classic Doom. I'm super down for that."The points of inspiration for Doom: The Dark Ages include Batman: Year One, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight, and the film 300, specifically that iconic tracking shot of Leonidas slamming and stabbing his way through hordes of Persian warriors at the Hot Gates. Miller's The Dark Knight was a particularly poignant source for Martin.He drew an older, more powerful, thicker Batman," he said. And I just love that comic so much. And I always thought it would be so interesting to just, instead of a Ferrari, you'd be more of a monster truck. And that's what we're working on, we've been talking about that for years and years."Doom: The Dark Ages is due out on May 15 for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, including Game Pass.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/doom-the-dark-ages-hits-pc-ps5-and-xbox-on-may-15-190015221.html?src=rss

The Samsung Galaxy Ring is on sale for $280 via Amazon. This represents a discount of $120, though the promotion doesn't show up until checkout. Just pop the ring in your Amazon basket and start the checkout process to peep the discount. We were fairly positive about Samsung's first smart ring in our official review, calling it a surprisingly informative health-tracking device for those with compatible Samsung phones." We came away impressed by the comfort-forward design, which doesn't impede sleeping, writing that we barely feel it" when trying to snooze. This is a boon for light sleepers. The health-tracking metrics are on point, especially when you consider that there's a new software update that uses compatible SmartThings devices to create a sleep environment report" that takes factors like temperature, humidity, air quality and light intensity into account. Samsung's app lets users adjust any connected devices to improve local conditions. The major downside with the Galaxy Ring is the price, which has been somewhat alleviated by this sale. At least now it's slightly lower than the rival Oura Ring. This is a great wearable for those already tied into the Samsung ecosystem, but not the best fit for everyone else. Some of the features require a Samsung phone. Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/the-samsung-galaxy-ring-is-on-sale-for-120-off-174530918.html?src=rss

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced this year's Oscar nominees and Netflix's Emilia Perez leads the pack with 13. The musical crime drama has broken the record for the most nods for non-English language film, overtaking Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Roma (Netflix's first-ever best picture nominee), which each had 10.Emilia Perez scored nominations in the categories of best picture, international feature, supporting actress, cinematography, directing, editing, makeup and hairstyling, original score, original song (with two in that category), sound, adapted screenplay and best actress. That last one has extra significance as Karla Sofia Gascon is the first openly trans performer to earn an acting nomination. Although Elliot Page received a nomination for Juno in 2008, that was long before the actor transitioned. (Curiously, I Saw The TV Glow, which has been praised for its abstruse portrayal of trans experiences, is nowhere to be found among this year's nominees.)Netflix had the most nominations of any distributor for the second year in a row. An animated feature film nod for Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, documentary short The Only Girl in the Orchestra and original song nominee Diane Warren (for The Journey" from The Six Triple Eight) took Netflix's tally to 16. Perhaps Warren will finally win an Oscar this year at her 16th time of asking.Mubi, another streaming company, has six nominations this year, including five for the body horror film The Substance. Meanwhile, Disney+ scored one for Elton John and Brandi Carlile's song Never Too Late" from the documentary Elton John: Never Too Late.This year's best picture nominees are Anora, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Dune: Part 2, Emilia Perez, I'm Still Here, Nickel Boys, The Substance and Wicked. You can find out the winners of this year's Academy Awards when the ceremony takes place on March 2, with the wonderful Conan O'Brien taking on hosting duties.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/netflixs-emilia-perez-breaks-new-ground-with-its-oscar-nominations-173223767.html?src=rss

Things aren't exactly going swimmingly at Ubisoft right now. The publisher had a rough 2024, with Star Wars Outlaws failing to meet sales expectations and word of XDefiant's demise coming around six months after the tactical shooter debuted. Skull and Bones finally arrived too, but it was a bit of a damp squib.Amid rumors of the company being sold or spinning out some of its assets into a joint venture with Tencent, Ubisoft really needs a win. It's not going to have a better chance to do that anytime soon than with Assassin's Creed Shadows. After a couple of delays, the latest entry in the company's flagship series is set to arrive on March 20.After a few hours with AC Shadows, there are positive signs. The game at least looks and plays well enough for what Ubisoft needs it to be, with the company skirting the line between playing things extremely safe and trying something different.After the successes of AC Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla (as well as the enjoyably smaller-scale Mirage), Shadows marks new territory for Assassin's Creed to a certain degree. It's the first game in the series that directly feeds into the Animus Hub project (formerly known as Infinity).Before you swan dive into Assassin's Creed Shadows, you'll enter the Animus Hub. From here, you'll be able to access various Assassin's Creed games (Shadows and the previous four mainline entries) from the memory section. They're placed on an easy to navigate timeline.The anomaly section of the hub includes missions for Shadows, which will offer exclusive rewards like weapons and gear. You can tweak your characters' loadout from the exchange section and explore the stories of modern AC games through the vault.The Animus Hub will expand in the years to come as Ubisoft releases more games. This is an ambitious project that aims to tie the series together. It had been reported that the company would try to turn the series into a live-service project with the Animus Hub, and we're seeing glimpses of that with those missions. There's not a ton to it as things stand, but Ubisoft clearly has grand ambitions here.UbisoftShadows brings the action to a long-awaited frontier for Assassin's Creed: 16th century Japan. The other big twist this time around is that you can swap between two characters. Various points in the story will see you choose to play as either Yasuke or Naoe and, at least in the open-world, you'll be able to switch between them on the fly. Swapping can come in handy when one character is wanted by enemies, since the other can remain anonymous.Yasuke is the tank of the two, with the ability to ram though certain doors while sprinting. He can take advantage of ranged weapons such as guns and bows, so some players might want to use him to pick off a few enemies from afar at the start of a mission. He can knock baddies around using his kanab war club as well.Naoe plays more like a traditional Assassin's Creed hero. She is far more agile and her parkour skills are on point. The shinobi can quickly clamber up the sides of buildings and she has a grappling hook to help her reach higher parts of structures and swing across gaps. In direct combat, Naoe can spin kick an enemy in the teeth, or flip behind them to slit their throat.Perhaps most importantly (at least from what I've seen of the game), Naoe is the only one of the duo to have the classic hidden blade. Yasuke can still sneak up on an opponent to eliminate them with a single button press, but his "brutal assassination" sees him ram his sword through an enemy and lift them skywards. Not exactly subtle.UbisoftSwitching between Naoe and Yasuke is almost as seamless as it is to swap between, say, Peter and Miles in Marvel's Spider-Man 2. The latter requires a couple of quick in-game actions, and the action swiftly moves to the other Spider-Man. In Assassin's Creed Shadows, swapping characters means going into the menu, holding a button and waiting just a couple of seconds for the other hero to replace them.There's no immediate character swapping in the prologue, however, which is one of the two sections I played. Unsurprisingly, this acts as an intro to the story and how to actually play the game.In a first for Assassin's Creed, one of the playable characters actually existed in real-life. It won't take players long to learn how Yasuke, a Black African man, came to be a samurai. After a brief lore drop, we skip ahead six months to a battle sequence. It's an effective way to start getting to grips with what Yasuke can do, including special attacks like a dashing sword slash.Once his brief action sequence comes to an end, we rewind to earlier in the night and Naoe's introduction. After an important box (the contents of which remain a mystery) is stolen, she heads out to retrieve it from a compound. This short mission highlights some of the stealth features.One of the cooler additions to this game is the ability to take out light sources at night to create ad-hoc hiding spots in the shadows. Naoe can snuff out candles and destroy lamps from afar using a kunai or shuriken. That may not be needed depending on the terrain (and difficulty level) and how quickly you can hotfoot it over rooftops when you're spotted.The second section I played was an investigation mission. I had to get to the bottom of a mystery by completing some tasks and gathering information. All of this led to the inevitable but enjoyable boss fight and a satisfying resolution to the quest.The structure of Assassin's Creed Shadows will lend itself to multiple playthroughs for those who really dig it. I spent most of my preview as Naoe, but I'm interested to see how different things are playing as Yasuke. There are dialogue options throughout the game but there's a canon mode that will eliminate these choices and present you with the canonical story. Players might also be inclined to switch the dialogue languages to Japanese and Portuguese for deeper immersion after beating the game in their native tongue.Some of the gameplay changes Ubisoft implemented this time really shake things up. The eagle vision ability now enables Naoe to locate and tag enemies through walls. Her smoke bombs and distraction-causing bells come in useful when there are too many enemies for her to battle head on. Both characters can lie prone as well, which offers up more opportunities for hiding and sneaking.I quickly tried a couple of the side activities, such as the peaceful act of sneaking up on animals in certain situations to sketch them. In terms of slowing things down for a smidge of tranquility, this feels a little akin to the haiku composition sequences in Ghost of Tsushima (of note, that game's sequel, Ghost of Ytei is slated for a 2025 release and could provide competition for Assassin's Creed Shadows.)UbisoftIt wasn't totally clear based on what I've seen, but it does feel as though Ubisoft has cut down on much of the cruft that typically populates Assassin's Creed maps, which would help this game feel less overwhelming. Climbing up to a viewpoint and synchronizing only reveals important locations, rather than everything worth seeing in the area. The company pulled back on the map bloat a bit in Mirage, so it may have taken some positive lessons from that approach.Add all of this up and I came away from the session feeling just on the right side of satisfied. The game seems absolutely fine. It's just about what you'd expect from an Assassin's Creed game these days, but with enough tweaks, new wrinkles and quality-of-life updates to make it compelling enough. It feels like a decent entry point into the series while still holding enough interest for long-term fans. For what it's worth, I'm ready to play more, as someone who finished Assassin's Creed Mirage but dropped off of Valhalla after about 10 hours.I'm looking forward to playing more of Assassin's Creed Shadows and seeing, for instance, how the weather system switches things up. Lakes freeze over in winter, removing the ability to swim or hide underwater. Icicles can be used as a distraction as well. I didn't get around to trying out the spy recruitment system, which can seemingly come in useful during investigations.Assassin's Creed Shadows inherently has a leg up on many other Ubisoft games given the popularity of the series. It already seemed poised to do well, but it appears to be in a good enough shape to become a success. If so, this could help Ubisoft finally redirect its ship away from the rocks.Assassin's Creed Shadows will hit PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Windows, Mac (and eventually iPad), Ubisoft+ and Amazon Luna on March 20.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/assassins-creed-shadows-preview-a-few-steps-in-the-right-direction-170028415.html?src=rss

I love air fryers. They offer microwave-like convenience, but stuff actually tastes good. If you want to see what all of the fuss is about, a standout Cosori air fryer is on sale via Amazon for $90. This is a fairly substantial discount of 25 percent, as the original price is $120. This particular model made our list of the best air fryers, and for very good reason. It's a great device that gets the job done. It's a six-quart model that offers plenty of cooking space, which we found ideal for side dishes like sweet potato fries and onion rings. However, it's no slouch with mains like chicken wings, tofu and more. The rounded basket is particularly roomy. The touchscreen is easy to use and there are plenty of preset cooking modes, including a handy preheating option for starting things off. Most people will rely on the standard air fry mode, I know I do, but it's nice to have the option for broiling, baking and roasting. We also appreciated the basket release button, which is a nice safety feature. This is pretty much the ideal air fryer, so it's tough to find complaints. There isn't a see-through window, for those who like taking a look at tater tots crisping up. This particular unit is also on the wider side, which could make placement difficult in tiny kitchens. Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/one-of-our-favorite-air-fryers-is-25-percent-off-right-now-161542670.html?src=rss

Following a two-year wait, NVIDIA's highly-anticipated GeForce 50 series of GPUs are nearly here. Engadget has published its review of the $2,000 RTX 5090, but if you're reading this article, chances are you already know if you want to splurge on a 50 series card. The question then is how to buy one of them? Depending on when you read this story, the good news is that we're at most a week away from major retailers, including Best Buy and Newegg, stocking the new cards on January 30.As for the bad news? If the 50 series launch is anything like the 40 series one before it, expect high demand and limited initial availability. If you're set on buying an RTX 5090, 5080, 5070 Ti or 5070 at release, be sure to use the notification feature Best Buy and other retailers offer to have the best chance of securing one of the cards before they all sell out.GeForce RTX 5090 for $2,000: The RTX 5090 is the most expensive consumer GPU NVIDIA has ever released. It's also one of the most powerful and power-hungry, with the 5090 featuring 21,760 CUDA cores, 32GB of GDDR7 VRAM and a potential total power draw of 575W.Of course, as with all of NVIDIA's new GPUs, raw specs are only half the story. In conjunction with DLSS 4, the entire 50 series is capable of multi-frame generation. With the tech, RTX 50 GPUs can generate up to three additional frames for every frame they render using traditional techniques. DLSS 4 is the reason the 5090 can produce an average of 246 frames per second with full ray tracing in games like Cyberpunk 2077.If you prefer to buy from Newegg or B&H, both retailers will stock models from third-party OEMs, including ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI and Zotac.GeForce RTX 5080 for $999: Despite costing half as much as the RTX 5090, the 5080 is no slouch. It features an impressive 10,752 CUDA cores and 16GB of GDDR7 VRAM, with a memory bandwidth of 960GB/sec. Like the 5090, you get the benefit of DLSS 4 multi-frame generation. Moreover, total power draw is more modest at 360W, meaning you probably won't need a 1,000W PSU to power the 5080.Again, both Newegg and B&H will stock third-party options. For a Founders Edition model, your best bets are NVIDIA and Best Buy.GeForce RTX 5070 Ti for $749. If I had to guess, the 5070 Ti is probably the model with the most interest from people who want to buy a 50 series card. That's because it features 16GB of GDDR7 VRAM compared to the 5070's 12GB. An extra 4GB of VRAM might not seem like much, but it will likely translate to the 5070 Ti being a much better purchase over the long run. Modern AAA games use a lot of VRAM, so much so that 8GB GPUs like the RTX 3070 are starting to show their age.Unfortunately, the 5070 Ti is the one model NVIDIA won't offer a Founders Edition version of, so finding one to buy may be tricky. Your best bet here is likely to be B&H. The retailer is showing a few 5070 Ti models on its website.GeForce RTX 5070 for $549: At launch, the RTX 5070 will be NVIDIA's most affordable 50 series GPU. It's also the GPU NVIDIA claims is as fast as the RTX 4090. Of course, that's with DLSS 4 enabled. If you're interested in the 5070, I strongly advise waiting for reviews to come out before you commit to buying one. As mentioned, with only 12GB of VRAM, the 5070 could quickly become a bottleneck to your system.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/how-to-buy-a-nvidia-rtx-50-series-gpu-160902797.html?src=rss

Get enough Star Trek fans in a room and the conversation inevitably turns toward which of the series' cinematic outings is the worst. The consensus view is The Final Frontier, Insurrection and Nemesis are duking it out for the unwanted trophy. Each film has a small legion of fans who will defend each entry's campy excesses, boldness and tone. (I'm partial to watching The Final Frontier every five years or so, mostly to luxuriate in Jerry Goldsmith's score.) Thankfully, any and all such discussions will cease once and for all on January 24, 2024, when Star Trek: Section 31 debuts on Paramount+.It is the single worst thing to carry the Star Trek name in living memory.Spoilers follow for Star Trek: Section 31.Star Trek: Section 31 is a made for TV streaming movie focusing on Philipa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) after her departure from Star Trek: Discovery. It was originally greenlit in 2019 as a series but, for a wide variety of reasons, it languished in development hell until 2022. In the interim, showrunners Bo Yeon Kim and Erika Lippoldt, along with credited screenwriter Craig Sweeny, sweated the idea. Director Olatunde Osunsanmi told SFX Magazine (via TrekMovie) that Sweeny would eventually write (and re-write) the project seven different times, first as a TV series, then as a movie. Trek head honcho Alex Kurtzman was eager to get production underway to take advantage of Yeoh's 2022 Academy Award win for Everything Everywhere All At Once.The result is a film that, even if you're unaware of the pre-production backstory, sure feels like a series hastily cut down to feature length. It's not incoherent, but suffers from the same issue that blighted Discovery, where you're watching a dramatized synopsis rather than a script. There are thematic and plot beats that rhyme with each other, but the meat joining them all together isn't there. It's just stuff that happens.It doesn't help that the plot (credited to Kim and Lippoldt) is very much of the and then this happens" variety that they warn you about in Film School 202. So many major moments in the film are totally unearned, asking you to care about characters you've only just met and don't much like. There's a risible scene at the end where two people who haven't really given you the impression they're into each other have to hold hands and stare into their impending doom. The pair in question have shared their backstories with each other, but there's no suggestion that they are anything more than just people working together on a job, let alone friends.Michael Gibson/Paramount+Weak material is less of an issue if you have a cast who can elevate what they've been given but, and it pains me to say this, that's not Michelle Yeoh. Yeoh is a phenomenal performer who has given a litany of underrated performances over her long and distinguished career. But she made her name playing characters with deep interiority, not scenery-chewing high-camp villains. Even in her redemptive phase, it's impossible to believe Yeoh is the sort of monster Star Trek needs Georgiou to be. Rather than shrinking the scene, and the stakes, to suit her talents, the film makes the canvas wider and expects Yeoh to fill space she's never needed.The rest of the gang is similarly underserved by the material and the sheer volume of clutter the film has little time to get past. Making the Section 31 team six people deep before they meet Georgiou means every character beyond her is a thumbnail sketch at best. There's the broody one, the funny" one, the uptight one, the robot one, the hot one and the one with the bad Oirish accent.If Section 31 was a series, you'd forgive the pithy introductions, knowing you'd get to fill in these characters over the coming weeks, maybe even grow attached to them. In the space of a movie, it doesn't work since the shocking twists - like an early character death to raise the stakes or a sudden heel-turn in a moment of crisis, don't work. Worse still, the dialog is so often indecipherable crosstalk that feels more like woeful improv than useful characterization. That, or it's just characters reminding the audience of basic story points over and over again, like the fact Georgiou used to be a baddie.Olatunde Osunsanmi's direction has always made an effort to draw attention to itself, with flashy pans, tilts, moves and Dutch angles. Jarringly, all of his flair leaves him when he needs to just shoot people in a room talking - those scenes invariably default to the TV standard medium. Worse still is his action direction, that loses any sense of the space we're seeing or the story being told. There's a final punchfight that requires the audiences to be aware of who has the macguffin at various points. But it's all so incoherent that you'll struggle to place what's going on and where, so why bother engaging with it?And that's before we get to the fact that Osunanmi chose to shoot all of Michelle Yeoh's - Michelle Yeoh's - fight scenes in close-up. When Yeoh is moving, you want to capture the full extent of her talents and allow her and her fellow performers a chance to show off, too. And yet it's in these moments that the camera pulls in tight - with what looks like a digital crop with a dose of digital motion blur thrown in. All of which serves to obscure Yeoh's talents and sap any energy out of the action.Jan Thijs/Paramount+Before watching Section 31, I re-watched the relevant stories from Deep Space Nine and tried to interrogate their ethics. That series asked, several times over, how far someone would, could or should go to defend their ideals and their worldview. The Federation was often described as some form of paradise, but does paradise need its own extrajudicial murder squad? It wasn't a wicked cool plotline, but a thought experiment to interrogate what Starfleet and its personnel stands for when its very existence is in jeopardy. If there's one thing that Section 31 isn't, it's cool, and if you think it is, then your values are at least halfway in conflict with Star Trek's founding ethos.Unfortunately for us, Trek honcho Alex Kurtzman does think Starfleet having its own space murder squad is wicked cool given their repeated appearances under his watch. Kurtzman has never hidden his love of War on Terror-era narratives, which remain as unwelcome here as they were in Star Trek: Into Darkness. Sadly, Section 31 is Star Trek in its face-punching, forced-interrogation, cheek-stabbing, eye-gouging thoughtless grimdark register. Fundamentally, it's not a fun thing to sit down and watch, beyond its numerous deficiencies as a piece of cinema.The biggest tell that Section 31 wasn't going to be a winner was when Rob Kasinsky, who plays Section 31's Zeph, started getting his excuses in early. He said (via ScreenRant) he was worried the film would be received poorly given all the fans want is just 1,000 more episodes of TNG." I'll admit, there is a chunk of fandom who do just want to be fed a conveyor belt of memberberries. These are the people who thought season three of Picard was good and are clamoring for Star Trek: Legacy. I, and a lot of other people, just want something that's halfway thoughtful, entertaining and well-made, and this is none of those things.I keep checking my notes for anything positive and the best I can manage is that the costumes, co-created with Balenciaga, are quite nice. They're a bit too Star Wars, but I like the focus on texture and tailoring in a way that's better than Trek's current athleisure trend. Oh, and the CGI is competent and doesn't slip below the standards set down by Strange New Worlds. There you go, two things that are good about Section 31.Fundamentally, I don't know who this is for. It's too braindead for the people who want Star Trek in any sort of thoughtful register. It's not shot through with the fan-service onanism that would pander to please the Star Trek: Legacy crowd. It's not quite shamelessly brutal enough for the gang who want Star Trek to turn into 24. And it's not high camp enough for the folks who'd like to coo over Michelle Yeoh in a variety of gorgeous costumes. Remember how Warner Bros. junked several movies for the tax break? I wish Paramount's accountants had been as ruthless here.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/star-trek-section-31-review-an-embarrassment-from-start-to-end-150051501.html?src=rss

A $2,000 video card for consumers shouldn't exist. The GeForce RTX 5090, like the $1,599 RTX 4090 before it, is more a flex by NVIDIA than anything truly meaningful for most gamers. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said as much when he revealed the GPU at CES 2025, assuming that it'll be for hardcore players who have $10,000 rigs. Personally, I don't know anyone who actually fits that bill, not unless you count parasocial relationships with streamers. (My own setup doesn't even cross $5,000.)But we all know why NVIDIA is hyping up the unattainable RTX 5090: It lets the company show off benchmarks that AMD can't touch, once again cementing itself as the supreme leader of the high-end video card market. It's not just about gaming, either. The RTX 5090 is also being positioned as an AI workhorse since it's powered by NVIDIA's new Blackwell architecture, which leans on the company's Tensor Cores for artificial intelligence work more than ever. Realistically, though, the $549 RTX 5070 is the GPU more gamers will actually be able to buy.I'll admit, I went into this review with a mixture of excitement and disgust. It's astonishing that NVIDIA was able to stuff 91 billion transistors and 21,760 CUDA cores in the RTX 5090, and I couldn't wait to see how it performed. Still, I find it genuinely sad that NVIDIA keeps pushing the bar higher for GPU prices, in the process making the gaming world even more unequal. A $2,000 graphics card, in this economy?!But after hours of benchmarking and playtime, I realized the RTX 5090 wasn't much of a threat to gaming accessibility. Wealthy PC gamers have always overspent for graphics performance - I've seen people (unwisely) pay thousands more than consumer GPUs just to get extra VRAM from NVIDIA's Quadro cards. But the rise of PC handhelds like the Steam Deck, which are a direct offshoot of the Nintendo Switch's success, is a clear sign that convenience matters more than raw power to mainstream players today. I don't think many Switch 2 buyers are saving up for an RTX 5090.For the few who can afford it, though, NVIDIA's new flagship sure is a treat.Hardware: Leaning more on AIIn many ways, the RTX 5000 GPU family is the convergence of NVIDIA's decades-long GPU expertise and its newfound role powering the AI hype train. Sure, they'll run games faster than before, but what makes them unique is their ability to tap into "neural rendering" AI for even better performance. It's at the heart of DLSS 4, the company's latest AI upscaling technology, which can now generate up to three frames for every one that's actually rendered by the RTX 5090.That's how NVIDIA can claim this GPU is twice as fast as the RTX 4090, or that the RTX 5070 matches the speed of the 4090. Does it really matter if these frames are "fake" if you can't tell, and they lead to smoother gameplay?Before I dive further into the AI side of things, though, let's take a closer look at the RTX 5090. Once again, it features 21,760 CUDA cores, up from 16,384 cores on the 4090, as well as 32GB of GDDR7 VRAM instead of the 4090's 24GB of GDDR6X. (I thought I was future-proofing my desktop when I equipped it with 32GB of RAM years ago, but now that video cards have caught up I'm almost convinced to go up to 64GB.) The 5090 also sports 5th-gen Tensor cores with 3,352 of AI TOPs performance, while the 4090 had 1,321 AI TOPS with last-gen Tensor hardware.RTX 5090RTX 5080RTX 5070 TiRTX 5070RTX 4090ArchitectureBlackwellBlackwellBlackwellBlackwellLovelaceCUDA cores21,76010,7528,9606,14416,384AI TOPS3,3521,8011,4069881,321Tensor cores5th Gen5th Gen5th Gen5th Gen4th GenRT cores4th Gen4th Gen4th Gen4th Gen3rd GenVRAM32 GB GDDR716 GB GDDR716 GB GDDR712 GB GDDR724 GB GDDR6XMemory bandwidth1,792 GB/sec960 GB/sec896 GB/sec672 GB/sec1,008 GB/secTGP575W360W300W250W450WI tested the RTX 5090 Founder's Edition GPU (provided by NVIDIA), which is dramatically slimmer than its 4090 counterpart. The 5090 has a sleek two-slot case that can actually fit in small form factor systems. The three-slot 4090, meanwhile, was so massive it felt like it was going to tear my PCIe slot out of my motherboard. NVIDIA also added another cooling fan this time around, instead of just relying on a vapor chamber and a single fan. The 5090's main PCB sits in the center of the card, and it's connected to other PCB modules at the PCIe slot and rear ports (three DisplayPort 2.1b and an HDMI 2.1b connection).Devindra Hardawar for EngadgetDLSS 4: The real star of the showWhile multi-frame generation is the defining feature for the RTX 50 cards, there are several other DLSS 4 features that should help games look dramatically better. Best of all, those capabilities are also trickling down to earlier RTX GPUs. RTX 40 cards will be more efficient with their single-frame generation, while RTX 30 and 20 cards will also see an upgrade from AI transformer models used for ray reconstruction (leading to more stable ray tracing), Super Resolution (higher quality textures) and Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing (DLAA).These transformer models should also fix some rendering artifacts present in earlier versions of DLSS. At NVIDIA's Editor's Day earlier this month, the company showed off how the updated version of Ray Reconstruction made a chainlink fence in Alan Wake 2 appear completely sharp and clear. An earlier version of the feature made the same fence look muddy, almost as if it was out of focus. In Horizon Forbidden West, the new version of Super Resolution revealed more detail from the texture of Aloy's bag.DLSS 4 will be supported in 75 games and apps at launch, including Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and Cyberpunk 2077, according to NVIDIA. For titles that haven't yet been updated with new DLSS menu options, you'll also be able to force support for the latest features in the NVIDIA app.Devindra Hardawar for EngadgetIn use: An absolute powerhouse, with fake frames and withoutI could almost hear my motherboard breathe a sigh of relief when I unplugged the RTX 4090 and swapped in the slimmer 5090. Installation was a cinch, though I still needed to plug in four PSU connectors to satisfy its demand for 575 watts of power and a 1,000W PSU. If you're lucky enough to have a new PSU with a 600W PCIe Gen 5 cable, that will also work (and also avoid tons of cable clutter).I tested the RTX 5090 on my home rig powered by an AMD Ryzen 9 7900X and 32GB of RAM, alongside a 1,000W Corsair PSU. I also used Alienware's 32-inch 4K QD-OLED 4K 240Hz monitor to get the most out of the 5090, and honestly, you wouldn't want to run this GPU on anything less.Once I started benchmarking, it didn't take long for the RTX 5090 to impress me. In the 3DMark Steel Nomad test, which is a demanding DX12 demo, it scored 14,239 points, well above the 9,250 points I saw on the RTX 4090. Similarly, the 5090 hit 15,416 points in the 3DMark Speedway benchmark, compared to the 4090's 10,600 points. These are notable generation-over-generation gains without the use of frame generation or any DLSS sorcery - it's just the raw power you see with more CUDA and RT cores.None3DMark TimeSpy ExtremePort Royal (Ray Tracing)Cyberpunk (4K RT Overdrive DLSS)BlenderNVIDIA RTX 509019,52536,003/166fos246fps (4X frame gen)14,903NVIDIA RTX 409016,46425,405/117fps135fps12,335NVIDIA RTX 4080 Super13,16818,435/85fps80fps8,867NVIDIA RTX 4070 Ti Super11,36615,586/72fps75fps7,342Once I started gaming and let DLSS 4 do its magic, my jaw just about hit the floor. But I suppose that's just a natural response to seeing a PC hit 250fps on average in Cyberpunk 2077 while playing in 4K with maxed-out ray tracing overdrive settings and 4x frame generation. In comparison, the 4090 hit 135fps with the same settings and single frame generation.Now I know most of those frames aren't technically real, but it's also the first time I've seen any game fill out the Alienware monitor's 4K 240hz refresh rate. And most importantly, Cyberpunk simply looked amazing as I rode my motorcycle down rain-slicked city streets and soaked in the reflections and realistic lighting from robust ray tracing.Like Cypher in The Matrix (far from the best role model, I know), after suffering through years of low 4K framerates, I couldn't help but feel like ignorance is bliss" when it comes to frame generation. I didn't see any artifacts or stuttering. There wasn't anything that took away from my experience of playing Cyberpunk. And the game genuinely looked better than I'd ever seen it before.And if you're the sort of person who could never live with fake frames," the RTX 5090 is also the only card I've seen that can get close to 60fps in Cyberpunk natively in 4K with maxed out graphics and no DLSS. I hit 54fps on average in my testing, whereas the 4090 chugged along at 42fps in native 4K. You could also compromise a bit and turn on 2x or 3x frame generation to get a solid fps boost, if the idea of 4x frame generation just makes you feel dirty.And if you can't tell, I quickly got over any fake frame trepidation. When I used the NVIDIA app to turn on 4x frame generation in Dragon Quest: The Veilguard, I once again saw an average framerate of around 240fps in 4K with maxed out graphics. I've already spent over 25 hours in the game, but running through a few missions at that framerate still felt revelatory. Combat sequences were clearer and easier to follow, possibly thanks to better Ray Reconstruction and Super Resolution, and I could also make out even more detail in my character's ornate costumes. On the 4090, I typically saw around 120fps with standard frame generation.The 5090's DLSS 4 performance makes me eager to see how the cheaper RTX 5070 and 5070 Ti cards perform. If a $550 card can actually get close to what I saw on the $1,599 4090, even if it's relying on massive amounts of frame generation, that's still a major accomplishment. It would also be great news for anyone who invested in a 4K 120Hz screen, which is tough to fill with other mid-range GPUs.Outside of gaming, the RTX 5090 also managed to convert a minute-long 4K clip into 1080p using the NVENC H.264 encoder in just 23 seconds. That's the fastest conversion I've seen yet. In comparison, the RTX 4090 took 28 seconds. Add up those seconds on a much larger project, and the 5090 could potentially save you hours of repeated rendering time. Naturally, it also saw the fastest Blender benchmark score we've ever seen, reaching 14,903 points. The RTX 4090, the previous leader in our benchmarks, hit 12,335 points.3DmarkThroughout benchmarks and lengthy gaming sessions, the RTX 5090 typically reached around 70 degrees Celsius with audible, but not annoying, fan noise. The card also quickly cooled down to idle temperatures between 34C and 39C when it wasn't under load. Aiming to push the limits of NVIDIA's cooling setup, I also ran several stress test sessions in 3DMark, which involves looping a benchmark 20 times. It never crashed, and achieved over 97 percent accuracy in most of the tests. There was just one Steel Nomad session where it scored 95.9 percent and failed 3DMark's 97 percent threshold. That could easily be due to early driver issues, but it's still worth noting.The only time I really got the RTX 5090 cooking was during an exploration of the Speedway benchmark, where I could move the camera around the ray traced scene and look at different objects and characters. The card hit 79C almost immediately and stayed there until I quit the demo. During that session, as well as typical gaming, the 5090 drew between 500W and 550W of power.Devindra Hardawar for EngadgetLooking ahead: AI NPCs and neural shadersOn top of DLSS, NVIDIA is also planning to tap into its RTX cards to power AI NPCs in games like PUBG and ZooPunk. Based on what I saw at NVIDIA's Editor's Day, though, I'm more worried than excited. The company's Ace technology can let NPCs generate text, voices and even have conversational voice chats, but every example I saw was robotic and disturbing. The AI Ally in PUBG makes a lot of sense on paper - who wouldn't want a computer companion that could help you fight and find ammo? But in the demo I saw, it wasn't much of a conversationalist, it couldn't find weapons when asked and it also took way too long to hop into a vehicle during a dangerous firefight.As I wrote last week, I'm personally tired of being sold on AI fantasies, when we know the key to great writing and performances is to give human talent the time and resources to refine their craft. And on a certain level, I think I'll always feel like the director Hayao Miyazaki, who described an early example of an AI CG creature as, "an affront to life itself."NVIDIA's Neural Shaders are an attempt to bring AI right into texture shaders, something the company says wasn't possible on previous GPUs. These can be implemented in a variety of ways: RTX Neural Materials, for example, can use AI to render complex materials like silk and porcelain, which often have nuanced and reflective textures. RTX Neural Texture Compression, on the other hand, can store complex textures while saving up to 7 times the VRAM used from typical block compression. For ray tracing, there's RTX Neural Radiance Cache, which is trained on live gameplay to help simulate path-traced indirect lighting.Much like NVIDIA's early ray tracing demos, it's unclear how long it'll take for us to see these features in actual games. But from the glimpses so far, NVIDIA is clearly thinking of new ways to deploy its AI Tensor Cores. RTX Neural Faces, for example, uses a variety of methods to make faces seem more realistic, and less like plastic 3D models. There's also RTX Mega Geometry, which can help developers make up to 100x more ray traced triangles," according to NVIDIA. Demos show it being used to construct a large building as well as an enormous dragon.Devindra Hardawar for EngadgetWrap-up: The new unattainable GPU kingThe $2,000 GeForce RTX 5090 is not meant for mere mortals, that much is clear. But it points to an interesting new direction for NVIDIA, one where AI features can seemingly lead to exponential performance gains. While I hate that it's pushing GPU prices to new heights, there's no denying that NVIDIA has crafted an absolute beast. But, like most people, I'm more excited to see how the $549 RTX 5070 fares. Sure, it's also going to lean into frame generation, but at least you won't have to spend $2,000 to make the most of your 4K monitor.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/nvidia-geforce-rtx-5090-review-pure-ai-excess-for-2000-140053371.html?src=rss

Google and Apple are having a bad day. The tech giants are facing a new investigation into their mobile ecosystems from the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and growing pressure to adopt a new app store initiative in India.Let's start with the probe, which comes one day after the CMA named a former Amazon executive as its interim chair. The CMA is investigating whether Apple and Google's mobile ecosystems should have Strategic Market Status (SMS) and thus can be subjected to greater regulation and pro-competition directives. However, they're not fully clear what aspects exactly are being investigated. This new designation stems from the UK's Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers (DMCC) Act, which went into effect on January 1. Google is also the subject of the first SMS investigation, launched earlier this month and focusing on possible antitrust practices around the company's search services.The CMA's SMS investigations can last up to nine months, with both cases currently accepting comments on the investigation and possible interventions. The regulator is accepting submissions around the joint Google and Apple probe through February 12.Now to Apple and Google's other headache. In India, the technology ministry is pushing Apple and Google to offer the state-backed GOV.in app store in their marketplaces, Bloomberg reports. The Indian government also wants the suite of apps to be pre-installed on all mobile devices, available for third-party downloads and not labelled with warnings such as "untrusted source." It is billing the push as a means for further distributing public-welfare services. These apps are currently available on Apple and Google's app stores, but as separate entities.The initial request reportedly came in a meeting last month but, as it stands, Google and Apple are unlikely to say yes. The Indian government is reportedly discussing using mandates or taking legal steps to force compliance. In 2021, Apple began offering a similar option for Russian users due to regulations.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/uk-investigating-google-and-apples-mobile-ecosystems-135204025.html?src=rss

Google is paying HTC $250 million in cash for a deal that will give the bigger company's plans for Android XR a boost. Under the terms of their agreement, some members of the HTC Vive engineering team will be joining Google, which describes them as an "incredibly strong technical team with a proven track record in the VR space." HTC released the consumer version of its first Vive VR headset, designed in partnership with Valve, back in 2016. Last year, it launched the Vive Focus Vision more than a year after it released its first standalone headset for consumers, the Vive XR Elite.In addition to absorbing certain Vive team members, Google will also get a non-exclusive license to use HTC'S extended reality technologies. HTC can still use its own IPs, and it vows to continue developing and supporting its XR headsets. The companies will also "explore future collaboration opportunities." Google says the deal will help "its acceleration across the headset and glasses ecosystem." The company laid out its vision for a unified Android XR ecosystem in December, which will span a range of virtual and mixed reality headsets and glasses. We're bound to see the first Android XR devices this year, including one codenamed Project Moohan from a Google-Samsung collaboration.Google's and HTC's agreement is still subject to customary closing conditions and will be finalized sometime this first quarter.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/google-buys-part-of-htcs-vive-vr-team-for-250-million-130046567.html?src=rss

Xbox is hosting its Developer Direct showcase today, and you'll be able to watch along live on YouTube, Twitch or our handy embed below.The stream starts as 1PM ET / 10AM PT and is supposed to feature updates from the developers of South of Midnight, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33and Doom: The Dark Ages. Xbox is also promising to "visit a surprise location to see another studio's brand new game." Windows Central reports the mysterious unannounced game is "a new entry in a legendary Japanese IP which has decades of history," which certainly sounds intriguing. At the very least, the rest of the games featured are slated to launch in 2025.Xbox spent most of 2024 adjusting its strategy around releasing games, delaying some titles to this year, and bringing some formerly exclusive games to the PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch. The company seems like it's favoring timed exclusives over hoarding everything for Xbox and PC, so the job of this Developer Direct is a little bit different this time. Besides letting developers sell their games, the real test of the show is if it can get you excited about games that are coming to Xbox first, rather than only coming to Xbox at all.You can watch the Xbox Developer Direct showcase on YouTube, Twitch, or right here in the embed above when it starts at 1PM ET / 10AM PT.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/how-to-watch-the-latest-xbox-developer-direct-showcase-110013502.html?src=rss

Canon announced that it has created a new 410-megapixel, 35mm full-frame CMOS sensor, "the largest number of pixels ever achieved" in a sensor of its size.Because of the level of detail the new sensor can capture, Canon expects it to be used by"surveillance, medicine and industry," where there's demand for "extreme resolution." With 410 megapixels, Canon's sensor has a resolution of 24K, 198 times greater than HD, and 12 times greater than 8K. That makes it simple to crop and then enlarge a photo captured by the sensor without losing detail.Typically, sky-high megapixel counts are limited to cameras with medium-format sensors. But the beauty of Canon cramming this many pixels into 35mm is that it should be able to be used "in combination with lenses for full-frame sensors."Canon had to make more than a few design changes to make this happen. The new sensor has a redesigned circuitry pattern and a "back-illuminated stacked formation" where "the pixel segment and signal processing segment are interlayered." That translates to a readout speed of 3,280 megapixels per second, and video at eight frames per second. A monochrome version of the sensor can bin four pixels together at once to shoot even brighter images and capture "100-megapixel video at 24 frames per second," Canon says.It doesn't sound like this kind of sensor is going to make it into a consumer camera anytime soon, but the fact this level of miniaturization is possible means one day it could, for the photography sickos who want it.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cameras/canon-has-developed-a-410-megapixel-full-frame-sensor-001851969.html?src=rss

Extremely OK Games has cancelled its upcoming game Earthblade. The followup to the team's beloved indie sensation Celeste was announced in 2022 and expected to release last year. Maddy Thorson announced the news on the studio's website today."Noel and I...began to reflect on how the game has felt for us to work on day-to-day, and realized that it has been a struggle for a long time," she wrote. "Sure, working on one project for so long is bound to become a slog, but this feels like a deeper problem. Celeste's success applied pressure on us to deliver something bigger and better with Earthblade, and that pressure is a large part of why working on it has become so exhausting."The studio, led by Thorson and Noel Berry, parted ways with EXOK co-founder Pedro Medeiros in November. However, Thorson was clear in her message that the rift between team members was not the reason for cancelling Earthblade. In fact, all of the public conversation between the former colleagues thus far has remained amicable. Thorson offered firm support for Medeiros and his new game project Neverway in her post: "If you were excited about Earthblade and angry about its cancelling, Pedro and the Neverway team aren't the enemy and anyone who treats them as such isn't welcome in any EXOK community."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/extremely-ok-games-has-cancelled-its-follow-up-to-celeste-000352550.html?src=rss

Ten video games have received nominations for the 36th Annual GLAAD Media Awards. This program celebrates media works that feature "fair, accurate and inclusive representations of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) community and the issues that affect their lives." There are nominees for television, film, music, theater, journalism and comics as well as video games.One of the 2024 nominees for outstanding video game is the re-release of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door for the Nintendo Switch. The original Japanese version of the GameCube title included a minor character named Vivian who was transgender. The game contained dialogue about her challenges being misgendered and her journey to understanding her own identity. However, the 2002 international translations of the game, including the English version released in the US, erased that side to the character, removing language around Vivian's gender and pronouns. Last year's Switch re-release restored the character's original lines and story arc for English-speaking players to finally experience.The video game nominees also include Dragon Age: The Veilguard. BioWare has a long history of portraying queer characters and romance options in their games, and it's great to see them continuing that practice with the latest title. Horror film outfit Blumhouse's first foray into games, the fascinating indie project Fear the Spotlight, also received a nod. Here is the complete list of game nominees:

Sega has introduced a new system for player accounts. A Sega Account will connect all of a player's games and services from both Sega and Atlus. It will also be a place for the two studios to share news, events, updates and promotions about their titles. The accounts are free and anyone can register.To sweeten the pot, Sega will also offer bonuses and goodies to account members. The first reward people can unlock is a Kazuma Kiryu Special Outfit DLC for Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, which is due out next month. The ensemble can be redeemed by anyone who sets up a Sega Account before March 7.With so many studios turning to games as a service, it's becoming standard practice to require players to create accounts or online profiles. Sega is a little slow to hop on this train, and there are some industry standard features in that are still in development for Sega Accounts, such as a page for records related to games played. There's no language on the website now about if or when an account might be required.In announcing this platform, Sega said there will be "various new services and features coming soon." We already know that Sega is working on a brand new Virtua Fighter game, but we've also said good-bye to other old-school classics from the company. Seems like Sega is in a phase of transition, so it should be interesting to see what else they've got in store for this year.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/sega-unveils-a-player-account-system-221029962.html?src=rss

Dozens of subreddits have opted to block links to X in their communities over the last 24 hours in a movement that appears to be gaining momentum across Reddit. Hundreds more appear to be actively discussing or considering a similar move with their members.Engadget counted more than two dozen subreddits, which collectively have millions of members, that have already restricted their communities' ability to post content from X in some way in recent days. These include large subreddits, like r/formula1, which has nearly 5 million members, and smaller communities like r/ultraman, which has 30,000.The movement seems to have been popularized, at least in part, by r/newjersey, whose mods announced a ban on X links Tuesday. Fuck this guy. X links are now banned from r/newjersey," they shared in a post that now has more than 65,000 upvotes. Accompanying the post was a photo of Elon Musk extending his arm, Musk made two apparent Nazi salutes during a speech at Donald Trump's inauguration which have been widely celebrated by fascists online.A number of other subreddits quickly followed suit, with many sharing a link to the r/newjersey post. X links have been barred from r/military (489,000 members), r/comics (2.7 million), r/casualnintendo (184,000), r/spiderman (1 million), r/pcgaming (3.8 million), r/rupaulsdragrace (1 million), r/KingdomHearts(345,000), r/therapists (142,000), and many others. We weren't trying to start a trend, and we never expected to go viral," the mods of r/newjersey said in a statement to Engadget. Not everyone will agree with our choice, but Reddit has always been a place where each community gets to decide these things individually. If our announcement has inspired discussions about the role social media is playing in our current times, we think that's a good thing."Many mods, in announcing their ban on X links have also cited the fact X has made it increasingly difficult for users to view posts if they aren't logged in. There's no doubt that over the past years Twitter has become a low-quality source: the login requirements, the flood of bots, the prioritization of content from paying users and promotion of sensationalist content," r/formula1's mods wrote in a post. But unlike with news sites in our source-rating system, for Twitter there wasn't really an alternative."The subreddit is instead encouraging members to share content from Bluesky, which doesn't require a login to view posts. The mods said they will allow screenshots of relevant posts by teams, drivers & F1" when the same content isn't available elsewhere.Moderators for r/antiwork, which has 2.9 million members, noted that their rules prohibit links and screenshots to X and all other social media sites, including Facebook, Instagram and even LinkedIn. We'd prefer for the message of antiwork to come organically from you, here, in OC form, but if it comes from a picture or post of something else, that catches hold, we want that, too," they wrote. Just not Twitter."Many other subreddits are considering similar measures. Mods of r/dnd (4 million members), r/baseball (2.8 million), r/AlanWake (80,000) and r/Xmen (270,000) are currently running polls among their members. Moderators in r/hockey (2.7 million), r/georgia (237,000) and r/popheads (2.8 million) have also shared that they are discussing a potential ban.Not all moderators have been receptive when such a ban has been raised. A mod in r/chess said that such a ban would pose a bit of a logistical problem" for the community. The unfortunate reality is that Twitter is the source of a big portion of content on the subreddit," they wrote. A ban would thus require some rule changes. We're open to suggestions, but can't promise anything at the moment." Likewise, a moderator of r/fauxmoi, a subreddit dedicated to gossip, noted that we do prefer to still have the link so we can ensure that people are not submitting fake or doctored screenshots."While this is far from the first time that Redditors have joined together in a form of protest, it's notable that so many are calling to remove a popular source for Reddit posts.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/dozens-of-subreddits-are-banning-x-links-from-their-communities-215441510.html?src=rss