Author: News Room
Not yet, it seems. “To be clear, there are no organizational changes underway for our studios,” Microsoft Gaming EVP Matt Booty wrote in his memo today. It’s a little buried under everything else Microsoft’s outgoing and incoming gaming CEOs are saying, so figure it’s worth dragging to the surface! Read the full article here
EA Sports FC 26 uses the AI-generated voice of commentator Guy Mowbray to help with pronouncing the names of some of the thousands of footballers now in the video game. In an interview with Mowbray by BBC Sport, the story covered the monotony in not only pronouncing the names of more than 20,000 players within the game, but also the need to do it multiple times to represent the acts on the field – from taking control of the ball, to blasting one in the top bins from 30 yards out. The story reveals that Mowbray gets a helping hand…
SerpApi, a company that offers tools to scrape content on the web, is fighting back against Google’s copyright lawsuit that accuses it of vacuuming up search results “at an astonishing scale.” In a motion to dismiss filed on Friday, SerpApi argues that Google doesn’t hold a copyright on its search results, alleging that the engine is built “on the backs of others who posted ‘the world’s information.’”In December, Google sued SerpApi, claiming the smaller scraper had violated the Copyright Act by using “deceptive means” to access and scrape its search results. Google also alleges that SerpApi found a way to…
Where’s the Trump phone? We’re going to keep talking about it every week. This week, we explain how the presidential phone company connects to an older company that’s really running the show.We’ve long known that Trump Mobile was linked to Liberty Mobile, a carrier that’s traded for years using freedom-themed branding to sell cheap mobile plans to a conservative crowd. Turns out, the two businesses are even closer to one another than it had initially appeared. And as we wait for the launch of the Trump phone — potentially as soon as next month, having been delayed from August —…
Amazon Web Services suffered a 13-hour outage to one system in December as a result of its AI coding assistant Kiro’s actions, according to the Financial Times. Numerous unnamed Amazon employees told the FT that AI agent Kiro was responsible for the December incident affecting an AWS service in parts of mainland China. People familiar with the matter said the tool chose to “delete and recreate the environment” it was working on, which caused the outage.While Kiro normally requires sign-off from two humans to push changes, the bot had the permissions of its operator, and a human error there allowed…
Juggling multiple chargers for your gadgets while you’re commuting, working from a cafe, or traveling can get heavy (and pricey!) fast, which is why today’s deal on the Anker Prime Power Bank (20K, 200W) is worth checking out. It can quickly charge three devices at once — including laptops — and it’s down to just $79.99 ($60 off) in black at Woot, which is a new low, through February 27th.Anker says the 20,000mAh power bank is powerful enough to get an iPhone 16 Pro to 30 percent in just 15 minutes or a 16-inch MacBook Pro to 50 percent in…
Substack has updated its partnership with betting platform Polymarket, “introducing native tools that make it easier to share, discuss, and debate prediction market data directly on Substack.” Additionally, Polymarket will effectively pay “a cohort of creators,” including Matt Yglesias, to use its data though the newsletter platform’s pilot sponsorships program.This is just the latest foray of prediction markets into media. Last week, Dow Jones agreed to incorporate Polymarket’s betting data into its “content,” including The Wall Street Journal. A month before that, CNN incorporated Kalshi’s betting odds. In December, CNBC agreed to infuse its programming with Kalshi data. Noted poker…
Whenever I write about Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses, I already know the comments I’m going to get. Cool hardware, but hard pass on anything Meta makes; will wait for someone else to come along. It’s hard to imagine that sentiment changing anytime soon after The New York Times reported that Meta mulled launching facial recognition software “during a dynamic political environment” precisely because privacy advocates would be distracted.Smart glasses evangelists often tell me this fear is somewhat overblown. After all, the phone in your pocket also has a camera. The government already uses facial recognition tech, and CCTV feeds are…
Dealing with PDF files is one of the banes of my life. From signing contracts and NDAs, to jumping through mortgage forms, the whole process is a mind-numbing slog. Download, find an app, sign, send to yourself, find the original email asking you to sign, then attach and send. It’s not much on paper, but life’s full of enough micro annoyances as it is. All this ranting to say that finally, there’s an easier way. Google has announced a smattering of new features for Chrome, one of which is the ability to sign PDF documents directly in the browser. You…
I’m an absolute nostalgia fiend, desperately trying to get my daily fix by browsing the likes of r/millenials, r/90s, and more. Hell, during lockdown, I bought the entire Walkers Looney Tunes Tazos collection, complete with the original folder. Regret Level: 0 One thing I crave more than anything, though, are the glory days of the Old Internet, before the overreaching, soul-destroying Dementors of capitalism and incessant targeted ads absolutely ruined everything. But I’ve just found a new website that takes me right back, if only for a fleeting moment. To celebrate turning 30, Opera has launched a site called Web…
When the trailer for Toy Story 5 arrived yesterday, it revealed something surprisingly uncomfortable. The villain isn’t a greedy toy shop owner, tyrannical teddy bear, or misunderstood new addition to the toy box. This time, they’re facing a tablet. And for the first time in the franchise’s history, the threat to playtime isn’t neglect. It’s total abandonment. As someone who reviews technology for a living, I spend most of my time celebrating innovation. I’m constantly testing faster phones, smarter smartwatches and more immersive TV screens. There’s no denying tech makes life easier. But watching that trailer, I didn’t feel defensive.…
Watching videos on your car’s main screen has always felt like an obvious next step for Apple CarPlay – but not while driving. Obviously. But when you’re parked up waiting for someone, killing time on a road trip, or charging an EV with time to spare? That big centre display could sure come in useful for keeping boredom at bay. And the feature could land sooner than you think. Code spotted in the iOS 26.4 beta by leakers and developers suggests that Apple is preparing to bring video playback to CarPlay. Apple previously confirmed on its developer site that “AirPlay…