Riot Games has confirmed that it’s working on a massive update for League of Legends after Bloomberg published a report saying that the company has plans to remake the game. Back in November, a Chinese esports insider also reported that a League of Legends 2 is in development and is coming as early as the second half of 2026. In a video announcement discussing Riot’s plans for League after 2026, executive producer Paul Belleza denied that the developer is working on League 2 like rumors have been suggesting, but he admitted that it is working on a big update that will arrive in 2027.

Andrei van Roon, Head of League Studio, then enumerated some of the things his team is already working on, including a brand new around-game client that’s fully integrated with the in-game experience, a full visual overhaul of the Summoner’s Rift, changes to Runes and an overall improvement to the player experience. The update is looking to be as big as the one from back in the mid-2010s when Riot reworked League’s graphics and is meant to bring in new players.

Belleza and van Roon said they’ll share more details between MSI in the summer and Worlds in the fall of 2026. While the timeline is pretty vaugue, the window of release for a major update like this is most likely the end of November until early January when competitive league is on break.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/a-total-league-of-legends-revamp-is-coming-in-2027-130000644.html?src=rss

An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: Direct navigation — the act of visiting a website by manually typing a domain name in a web browser — has never been riskier: A new study finds the vast majority of “parked” domains — mostly expired or dormant domain names, or common misspellings of popular websites — are now configured to redirect visitors to sites that foist scams and malware. When Internet users try to visit expired domain names or accidentally navigate to a lookalike “typosquatting” domain, they are typically brought to a placeholder page at a domain parking company that tries to monetize the wayward traffic by displaying links to a number of third-party websites that have paid to have their links shown.

A decade ago, ending up at one of these parked domains came with a relatively small chance of being redirected to a malicious destination: In 2014, researchers found (PDF) that parked domains redirected users to malicious sites less than five percent of the time — regardless of whether the visitor clicked on any links at the parked page. But in a series of experiments over the past few months, researchers at the security firm Infoblox say they discovered the situation is now reversed, and that malicious content is by far the norm now for parked websites. “In large scale experiments, we found that over 90% of the time, visitors to a parked domain would be directed to illegal content, scams, scareware and anti-virus software subscriptions, or malware, as the ‘click’ was sold from the parking company to advertisers, who often resold that traffic to yet another party,” Infoblox researchers wrote in a paper published today.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The best phone of 2025: The iPhone 17 Pro, Pixel 10 Pro? Perhaps the Galaxy Z Fold 7? All three rank as some of the best tech we reviewed in 2025.

Engadget

We have compiled all the best gear with our highest review scores in each category, after thousands of hours of testing. We’ve got the Switch 2, AirPods Pro 3 and DJI’s top drone for most of you. Anecdotally, Anker’s Laptop Power Bank, with two built-in charging cables, has been the sleeper hit of the Engadget team, with four editors making it their power bank of choice. I think it’s the retractable cable.

— Mat Smith

OpenAI just launched an app store inside ChatGPT

Some use locally stored data, and others let you organize Apple Music songs.

OpenAI has introduced an app directory right inside ChatGPT. The new apps section (on iOS, Android and web) divides into Feature, Lifestyle and Productivity categories, letting you connect to commonly used apps and even websites like Booking.com, Spotify and Dropbox.

With Dropbox, for instance, you can “gather insights, prepare briefs and summarize reports or internal documents,” using ChatGPT’s smarts, according to the description. OpenAI says developers can only monetize apps by linking out from the ChatGPT app to a native app or website, but the company is exploring internal monetization options as well.

Continue reading.

Trump Mobile’s T1 still doesn’t exist, but the company is now selling refurbished phones

Who wouldn’t want to overpay for an old phone?

The T1 smartphone from Trump Mobile remains non-existent vaporware, but you can still give the company your money. If you want, you can buy a refurbished phone from Trump Mobile. The business’s website lists Samsung S24 and S23 and the iPhone 15 and 14. Gizmodo noted Trump Mobile is selling other brands’ phones at the same price as or higher than other retailers.

Continue reading.

Sony is buying Snoopy, Charlie Brown and the rest of Peanuts

It will own 80 percent of the franchise.

Peanuts

It’s the wildcard news story no one saw coming. Sony, of Walkman and PlayStation fame, is buying an 80 percent stake of Peanuts for a cool $460 million. Sony already bought 39 percent of the franchise back in 2018 — something most of us were entirely unaware of.

Continue reading.

The other big stories (and deals) this morning

• Don’t panic! The 12 best last-minute Christmas gifts for 2025

• Avatar Fire and Ash review: Maybe it’s time to sunset Pandora

• Big Tech bent the knee for Trump in 2025

• OnePlus 15R review: A 165Hz display and big battery for $700

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/the-morning-after-engadget-newsletter-121536612.html?src=rss

SpaceX said it experienced an anomaly with one if its Starlink satellites that was likely caused by a small explosion. “The anomaly led to venting of the propulsion tank, a rapid decay in semi-major axis by about 4 km [2.5 miles] and the release of a small number of trackable low relatively velocity objects,” Starlink wrote in a post on X. Orbital tracking company LeoLabs assessed that the issue was caused by an “internal energetic source rather than a collision with space debris or another object.” 

SpaceX said it’s working with NASA and the US Space Force to track the remains of the object. “The satellite is largely intact, tumbling and will reenter the Earth’s atmosphere and fully demise within weeks,” the company said. It’s trajectory is well below the International Space Station (ISS) so it poses no risk to the lab or its crew. Starlink has yet to say how many pieces it’s tracking.

The incident happened just days after a Starlink satellite narrowly avoided a collision with a rival Chinese satellite from CAS Space last week. Starlink vice president Michael Nicholls said that the incident happened due to a lack of coordination between the two companies. “When satellite operators do not share emphemeris for their satellites, dangerously close approaches can occur in space,” he wrote on X. 

Starlink’s constellation consists of almost 9,300 active satellites making up around 65 percent of all orbiting spacecraft, not including defunct units. That number grew by more than 3,000 this year alone, launched aboard 121 separate SpaceX missions — around one every three days. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/a-starlink-satellite-just-exploded-and-left-trackable-debris-120002814.html?src=rss

Google’s AI Mode is synthesizing “Frankenstein” recipes from multiple creators, often stripping away context and accuracy and siphoning traffic and ad revenue away from food bloggers in the process. Many recipe writers warn this shift amounts to an “extinction event” for ad-supported food sites. The Guardian reports: Over the past few years, bloggers who have not secured their sites behind a paywall have seen their carefully developed and tested recipes show up, often without attribution and in a bastardized form, in ChatGPT replies. They have seen dumbed-down versions of their recipes in AI-assembled cookbooks available for digital downloads on Etsy or on AI-built websites that bear a superficial resemblance to an old-school human-written blog. Their photos and videos, meanwhile, are repurposed in Facebook posts and Pinterest pins that link back to this digital slop.

Recipe writers have no legal recourse because recipes generally are not copyrightable. Although copyright protects published or recorded work, they do not cover sets of instructions (although it can apply to the particular wording of those instructions). Without this essential IP, many food bloggers earn their living by offering their work for free while using ads to make money. But now they fear that casual users who rely on search engines or social media to find a recipe for dinner will conflate their work with AI slop and stop trusting online recipe sites altogether. “For websites that depend on the advertising model,” says Matt Rodbard, the founder and editor-in-chief of the website Taste, “I think this is an extinction event in many ways.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tony Isaac shares a report from CNN: President Donald Trump’s social media and crypto company is making a huge bet on a far different industry — nuclear fusion, a potentially lucrative albeit commercially unproven energy technology that could help power a suddenly electricity-starved economy. Trump Media and Technology Group Thursday announced a surprise merger with TAE Technologies, in an all-stock deal valued at more than $6 billion that would create one of the first publicly traded fusion companies. News of the deal shares of Trump Media (DJT) 35% higher in early trading Thursday.

After the deal closes, shareholders of Trump Media and TAE would own about 50% of the combined entity. The combined companies plan to begin construction as soon as next year of the world’s first fusion reaction that could produce electricity on utility scale, rather than just in laboratory settings. The combination with TMTG could give TAE political clout. But it could also make it more politically controversial, particularly if it looks to receive any kind of federal government support, such as grants, low-interest loans or permitting approvals.

It could also give TAE access to capital that it needs. Under terms of the deal, TMTG would provide $300 million in cash for TAE’s plans. But that is likely a fraction of the cash available from some of TAE’s current investors, such as Google parent company Alphabet, as well as its bevy of private equity investors. But that $300 million is only a fraction of the money that TAE needs, or expects to be able to access, once it has become a public company with this deal. Staying a private company, even with deep pocketed investors, is no longer sufficient TAE CEO Michl Binderbauer told CNN Thursday. “It’s a multi-billion dollar undertaking,” said Binderbauer. “The velocity you can get the capital is differentiating. If I raise $2 billion over five years I can’t built the plant sufficiently fast.” He said the company has raised about $1.3 billion over the course of its 25-year history.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Actors have voted to refuse digital scanning to prevent their likeness being used by artificial intelligence in a pushback against AI in the arts. Members of the performing arts union Equity were asked if they would refuse to be scanned while on set, a common practice in which actors’ likeness is captured for future use — with 99% voting in favor of the move. The vote was an indicative ballot designed to demonstrate the strength of feeling on the issue, with more than 7,000 members polled on a 75% turnout. However, actors would not be legally protected if they refused to be scanned.

The union said it would write to Pact, the trade body representing the majority of producers and production companies in the UK, to negotiate new minimum standards for pay, as well as terms and conditions for actors working in film and TV. Equity said it may hold a formal ballot depending on the outcome of the negotiations, which, if backed, would give actors legal protection if they were being pressed to accept digital scanning on set. The general secretary, Paul Fleming, said: “Artificial intelligence is a generation-defining challenge. And for the first time in a generation, Equity’s film and TV members have shown that they are willing to take industrial action. Ninety per cent of TV and film is made on these agreements. Over three-quarters of artists working on them are union members. This shows that the workforce is willing to significantly disrupt production unless they are respected, and [if] decades of erosion in terms and conditions begins to be reversed.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Four small satellites rode a Rocket Lab Electron launch vehicle into orbit from Virginia early Thursday, beginning a government-funded technology demonstration mission to test the performance of a new spacecraft design.

The satellites were nestled inside a cylindrical dispenser on top of the 59-foot-tall (18-meter) Electron rocket when it lifted off from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility at 12:03 am EST (05:03 UTC). A little more than an hour later, the rocket’s upper stage released the satellites one at a time at an altitude of about 340 miles (550 kilometers).

The launch was the starting gun for a “proof of concept” mission to test the viability of a new kind of satellite called DiskSats. These satellites were designed by the Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit federally funded research and development center. The project is jointly financed by NASA and the US Space Force, which paid for DiskSat’s development and launch, respectively.

Read full article

Comments