With HBO’s critically acclaimed A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms gearing up for its season finale on Sunday, it’s time to check in on that other Game of Thrones spinoff: the far darker House of the Dragon, which now has a suitably ominous teaser for its upcoming third season.

(Spoilers for the first two seasons below.)

The series is set nearly 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones, when dragons were still a fixture of Westeros, and chronicles the beginning of the end of House Targaryen’s reign. The primary source material is Fire and Blood, a fictional history of the Targaryen kings written by George R.R. Martin. As book readers know, those events culminated in a civil war and the extinction of the dragons—at least until Daenerys Targaryen came along.

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For my money, the 2004 Game Boy Advance re-releases of Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen are still the best versions of the original Pokémon games. They fixed most of the bugs and balance issues present in the originals—partly by also including the rosters from Gold/Silver and Ruby/Sapphire—but they’re more faithful to the original gameplay, battling and catching mechanics, and graphics than the 2018 Let’s Go, Pikachu/Eevee! adaptations for the Switch.

Someone at Nintendo apparently agrees, as the company announced today that it’s re-releasing those games for the original Switch (and, by extension, the Switch 2, though no Switch 2-specific features were announced). The games will be available after a planned Pokémon Presents stream at 9 am Eastern/6 am Pacific on February 27.

Subscribers to the Switch Online + Expansion Pack are in for a disappointment, though. Instead of releasing FireRed and LeafGreen as part of the Switch Online Game Boy Advance collection, Nintendo will release both titles as standalone purchases that will run you $20 apiece. This means that players without a subscription will be able to buy and play the games. But given how few GBA games are available for the Switch Online service and how infrequently new ones are released, it does rankle to see otherwise unmodified ports of a prominent game bypass subscribers entirely.

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schwit1 writes: An IT blunder has revealed an apparent smuggling ring that has moved at least $90bn of Russian oil and is playing a central role in funding the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine. Financial Times has identified 48 seemingly independent companies working from different physical addresses that appear to be operating together to disguise the origin of Russian oil, particularly from Kremlin-controlled Rosneft. The network was discovered because they all share a single private email server. The report adds: The FT was able to identify 442 web domains whose public registrations show they all use a single private server for their email, “mx.phoenixtrading.ltd,” showing that they share back-office functions. The FT was then able to identify companies by comparing the names in the domain to those of entities that appear in Russian and Indian customs records as involved in carrying Russian oil.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From coordinating pickups for road trips to helping organize yard sales, WhatsApp groups are at the center of all kinds of events in people’s daily lives. As someone who’s a member of far too many WhatsApp groups, I’ve always been very annoyed by the app’s inability to show group chat history to new group chat members. In the lead up to my most recent meditation retreat, the admins ended up sending the same document seven (!) times, just because new members kept joining the group and they had no way to access attachments that were previously sent to the group chat. Thankfully, WhatsApp is finally changing that.

WhatsApp is finally adding a feature called Group Message History, which means that group admins and members can now choose to share recent messages with new members. Now, when adding new members to a WhatsApp group, you’ll be able to let them access up to 100 recent messages already sent to the rest of the group chat, which should good enough to stop people from spamming the group with the same messages as new people are added.

Speaking personally, this will be a great quality of life upgrade. In order to help new group chat members feel less lost, I’ve previously done everything from forwarding all relevant messages to them via DMs to sending screenshots of all our previous messages. All of this is incredibly tedious, and thankfully, I won’t have to do it for much longer.

Credit: WhatsApp

I also like the idea of limiting new group members to 100 recent messages or less. Quite often, my WhatsApp groups start off with a small number of people who know each other extremely well, and then the group expands to add acquaintances. The dynamics of the group chat change significantly when newer members are added, and not everyone feels comfortable with the idea of an unknown person seeing messages that were sent with a more intimate group in mind. Limiting chat history is a great move that allows people to maintain some privacy, as opposed to sharing the group’s entire chat history with every new member.

Still, if 100 messages seems like too much of an invasion of privacy to you, WhatsApp also says that admins will have the option to disable this feature for regular members. This way, only the admin will be able to share chat history with new members.

The company says that everyone in the group chat will be notified when a new member is granted access to chat history, so you won’t be blindsided if your new group member starts referring to in-jokes from a few days ago.

WhatsApp says it is gradually rolling out this feature across the world, so you can expect it to be available on your device in the coming weeks.

The Supreme Court ruled Friday that Donald Trump was not authorized to implement emergency tariffs to ostensibly block illegal drug flows and offset trade deficits.

It’s not immediately clear what the ruling may mean for businesses that paid various “reciprocal” tariffs that Trump changed frequently, raising and lowering rates at will during tense negotiations with the United States’ biggest trade partners.

Divided 6-3, Supreme Court justices remanded the cases to lower courts, concluding that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not give Trump power to impose tariffs.

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The U.S. Supreme Court struck down on Friday President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs that he pursued under a law meant for use in national emergencies, rejecting one of his most contentious assertions of his authority in a ruling with major implications for the global economy. From a report: The justices, in a 6-3 ruling authored by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, upheld a lower court’s decision that the Republican president’s use of this 1977 law exceeded his authority.

The court ruled that the Trump administration’s interpretation that the law at issue – the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA – grants Trump the power he claims to impose tariffs would intrude on the powers of Congress and violate a legal principle called the “major questions” doctrine. The doctrine, embraced by the conservative justices, requires actions by the government’s executive branch of “vast economic and political significance” to be clearly authorized by Congress. The court used the doctrine to stymie some of Democratic former President Joe Biden’s key executive actions.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It has already been a depressingly busy year for layoffs at Ubisoft, and the French publisher’s Toronto studio is the latest workforce to be hit. Around 40 jobs have been cut at the studio, which is one of Ubisoft’s largest and has previously worked on games including Watch Dogs: Legion and Far Cry 6.

“This decision was not taken lightly and does not in any way reflect the talent, dedication, or contributions of the individuals affected,” Ubisoft said in a statement to Mobile Syrup, which first reported the new layoffs. “Our priority now is to support them through this transition with comprehensive severance packages and robust career placement assistance.”

Ubisoft Toronto is currently working on the long-awaited Splinter Cell remake, which was first announced in 2021. The publisher says the game remains in development, and the Canadian studio will continue to assist with development on other games.

The Toronto layoffs come after similar staff cuts at its Swedish studios, while up to 200 people could reportedly be let go at its Paris headquarters. The affected roles are casualties of a wider organizational restructuring at the troubled company, which recently canceled another high-profile remake in The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Last week, 1,200 Ubisoft employees went on strike in reaction to the recent layoffs and sweeping cost-cutting measures.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/ubisoft-lays-off-40-staff-working-on-splinter-cell-remake-says-game-remains-in-development-151139753.html?src=rss

Google acquired the excellent photo editor Snapseed back in 2012—not long after Apple had crowned it one of its apps of the year—and despite having plenty to offer and being completely free to use, it remains one of Google’s lesser-known apps. That might be about to change. Snapseed’s latest update for iOS, version 3.15.0, comes with a full camera app inside—and there’s a case to be made that it’s better than Apple’s default Camera app. It certainly offers more in the way of manual shooting controls, with the added benefit of an entire integrated suite of editing features.

Using Snapseed’s built-in camera on iPhone

Once you’ve installed or updated Snapseed to the latest version, you’ll see the new camera icon up in the top right corner. While you can start your session by opening up an existing image as always, you can also opt to capture a new one by tapping here:

Look out for the new camera button in Snapseed.
Credit: Lifehacker

If you want an easier way to launch the camera, you can add it to the Lock Screen: Press and hold on your iPhone’s display when it’s locked, tap “Customize,” then pick a shortcut spot and choose “Camera” under “Snapseed.” There’s also a Control Center shortcut you can make use of, if you prefer.

Once you’ve swiped through the introductory spiel and given Snapseed access to your iPhone’s camera, you’ll need to pick one of the classic camera film presets to get started, though you can adjust the look of your shots afterwards. There are 11 different film simulations available—emulating film from Kodak, Fuji, Agfa, Polaroid, and Technicolor—and each one gives you slightly different variations in terms of color, contrast, texture, and tone. You can tap the film selector at the bottom of the camera interface (designed to look like a rewind button) to change at any time.

You’ve got some classic film styles to choose from.
Credit: Lifehacker

Your saved looks and edits are also included in the film selector, and can be used as preset filters for the images you’re capturing. In the main image editor, after you’ve applied whatever adjustments you want to a photo, you can tap Looks > Add look to save it and access it through the camera.

Up in the top left corner of the camera interface, you’ll find a Pro toggle switch, which gives you some controls the default iPhone camera does not. You get three new settings on screen, for ISO, shutter speed, and focus, and you can change any of them by selecting a setting and using the dial underneath. You’ve also got controls for flash (left) and zoom (right). Besides the big shutter button, you have a camera swap button (lower right), a button for going back to your photo library (lower left), and a camera capture screen theme button (upper right). Tap on this to pick a different color scheme for the screen.

Pro controls can be called up in a couple of taps.
Credit: Lifehacker

You’re not stuck with the look of any of the photos you shoot through Snapseed: All of the changes applied by your film preset, from exposure to curves, can be changed later on. Select your picture from the main library screen, then use the Faves and Tools tabs to make changes.

Most filters and effects are applied by adjusting a slider underneath your image. The layers button (two squares) at the top gives you access to the current editing stack, and there’s also an undo button to the left. When you’re happy with what you’ve made, you’re able to save over your existing image or make a copy.

It’s an interesting new addition to the selection of superb third-party camera apps available for the iPhone, and yet another alternative to the Apple default. Meanwhile, Android users are within their rights to feel left out by all this: Snapseed for Android hasn’t been updated since May 2024, and lacks both the camera feature and the most recent editing interface revamp that are now available on iPhones.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon’s cloud unit has suffered at least two outages due to errors involving its own AI tools [non-paywalled source], leading some employees to raise doubts about the US tech giant’s push to roll out these coding assistants.

Amazon Web Services experienced a 13-hour interruption to one system used by its customers in mid-December after engineers allowed its Kiro AI coding tool to make certain changes, according to four people familiar with the matter.

The people said the agentic tool, which can take autonomous actions on behalf of users, determined that the best course of action was to “delete and recreate the environment.” Amazon posted an internal postmortem about the “outage” of the AWS system, which lets customers explore the costs of its services. Multiple Amazon employees told the FT that this was the second occasion in recent months in which one of the group’s AI tools had been at the centre of a service disruption.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last night, Tesla made some hefty cuts to Cybertruck pricing in an effort to stimulate some sales. The bombastic tri-motor “Cyberbeast” is $15,000 cheaper at $99,990, albeit by dropping some previously free features like supercharging and FSD. And there’s now a new $59,990 entry-level model, a dual-motor configuration with a range of 325 miles (523 km) and the same 4.1-second 0–60 mph (0-97 km/h) time as the $79,990 premium all-wheel drive version.

That actually makes the new entry-level model a good deal, at least in terms of Cybertrucks. Last year, the company introduced and then eliminated a single-motor rear-wheel drive variant, which found few takers when priced at $69,990; an extra motor for $10,000 less is quite a savings, and actually slightly cheaper than the price originally advertised for the RWD truck.

As you might expect, Tesla has made some changes to get down to the new price. The range and 0–60 mph time might be the same as the more expensive dual-motor Cybertruck, but towing capacity is reduced from 11,000 lbs (4,990 kg) to 7,000 lbs (3,175kg), and cargo capacity drops from 2,500 lbs (1,134 kg) to 2,006 lbs (910 kg).

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Meta just announced a seismic change to its 3D social platform Horizon Worlds. The company is removing Meta Quest users to focus on mobile users. So Horizon Worlds, originally a VR-only platform, now a mix of both VR users and mobile users, will become a mobile-only platform in the near future. In a blog post aimed at developers, Samantha Ryan, VP of Content at Meta’s Reality Labs, said the company is “separating our Quest VR platform from our Worlds platform in order to create more space for both products to grow.”

“We’re doubling down on the VR developer ecosystem while shifting the focus of Worlds to be almost exclusively mobile. By breaking things down into two distinct platforms, we’ll be better able to clearly focus on each,” Ryan wrote.

Announced in 2019 as a “social VR world” called Facebook Horizon, the platform was renamed Horizon Worlds two years later and was an integral part of Meta’s vision of a future “Metaverse,” but Worlds never really caught on with users. Despite the money Facebook/Meta clearly devoted to the platform, its monthly user count was only around 200,000 in 2022.

Meta says it’s still committed to virtual reality

According to Ryan, 86% of time people spend in their VR headsets is spent with third-party apps, so it’s not surprising that Meta would pull back from first-party VR. Last month, the company shuttered its three AAA VR game development companies, stopped updating its first-party subscription-based fitness app Supernatural, and laid off around 10% of its Reality Labs division. Ryan says Meta will continue supporting third-party VR developers and releasing hardware, promising the company has “robust roadmap of future VR headsets” tailored to “different audience segments” on tap, but offered no specific details as yet.

Meta’s focus on mobile

While the change marks a definitive end to Horizon Worlds as a VR-first destination, the company plans to leverage the massive user base of Meta’s Instagram and Facebook to make Worlds competitive with social platforms like Roblox. The company reports 4x growth in Horizon mobile users in 2025.”We’re in a strong position to deliver synchronous social games at scale,” Ryan wrote.

A sad end for VR users of Worlds

There are around five billion smart phone users worldwide, all potential customers to Worlds, compared to an estimated 20-30 million Quest users, so the math definitely makes sense in terms of growing a platform and stock price, but it’s sad for the (relatively few) people who have found a home on Horizon Worlds. They’ll be able to use mobile platform, but it isn’t the same: the sense of scale and engagement can’t be replicated on a small, 2D screen. I recently spent a lot of time looking for life in the VR version of Worlds, and it’s a unique place, an undiscovered country where strange little communities have taken up residence in a massive, deserted shopping mall. If you can, strap on a headset and poke around a little before the plug is pulled.

Amazon’s cloud unit has suffered at least two outages due to errors involving its own AI tools, leading some employees to raise doubts about the US tech giant’s push to roll out these coding assistants.

Amazon Web Services experienced a 13-hour interruption to one system used by its customers in mid-December after engineers allowed its Kiro AI coding tool to make certain changes, according to four people familiar with the matter.

The people said the agentic tool, which can take autonomous actions on behalf of users, determined that the best course of action was to “delete and recreate the environment.”

Read full article

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The Arlo Pro 5S 2K four-camera kit with solar panel is down to $229.99 at Woot, compared to $299.99 for the same bundle on Amazon. That price includes a full outdoor setup with four weather-resistant outdoor home security cameras, four rechargeable batteries, mounting hardware, and a solar panel with an eight-foot magnetic cable. For a full-home setup, the math works out to under $60 per camera with solar support included.

Arlo Pro 5S 2K Four-Camera Kit

$229.99
at Woot

$299.99
Save $70.00

$229.99
at Woot

$299.99
Save $70.00

The Pro 5S records in 2K resolution, which is 2,560 by 1,440 pixels. In plain terms, it captures sharper footage than standard 1080p cameras. The camera has a wide 160-degree field of view, so it can cover a driveway or backyard without constant repositioning, and you can zoom in up to 12x digitally to read a license plate or see a face more clearly. At night, it uses both infrared LEDs for black-and-white footage and a motion-activated spotlight for color night vision. The color clips look good for a battery camera, though daytime footage still looks better, notes this PCMag review. You also get two-way audio, an 80-decibel siren, and fast motion alerts sent through the Arlo app.

The camera connects over dual-band wifi and works with Alexa, Google Assistant, SmartThings, and IFTTT. It does not support Apple HomeKit. Local storage requires a separate Arlo Smart Hub. Otherwise, you will need an Arlo Secure subscription starting at $9.99 per month for one camera (or $19.99 per month for unlimited cameras) to access cloud recordings and advanced detection for people, pets, vehicles, and packages. Without a subscription or hub, you are limited to live viewing and basic alerts. Battery life can stretch up to eight months in Low Power mode (or more with the included solar panel), but that setting captures snapshots instead of full video clips.

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The 65-inch Samsung S95D TV is selling refurbished for $1,449.99 at Woot, compared to $2,247.95 on Amazon. The lowest tracked price for a new unit has been $1,997.99, so this undercuts that by a wide margin. As for its refurbished status, all it means is that it may show minor cosmetic wear, but it has been tested and cleared to work like new.

65-inch Samsung S95D TV

$1,449.99
at Woot

$2,247.95
Save $797.96

$1,449.99
at Woot

$2,247.95
Save $797.96

This is a 4K OLED panel with a 120Hz refresh rate and HDR10 and HDR10+ support. OLED means each pixel lights up on its own, so blacks look truly black and bright highlights pop without washing out the rest of the screen. PCMag gave it an “excellent” rating, noting its standout color and contrast. Samsung also pushes brightness higher than many OLEDs, which helps in rooms that aren’t completely dark. For gaming, it is hard to fault. All four HDMI ports support 4K at 120Hz, and it can handle up to 144Hz variable refresh rate from a compatible PC. Input lag in Game Mode is measured at under one millisecond, so controls feel immediate. That said, there is no official AMD FreeSync or Nvidia G-Sync support.

The TV runs Samsung’s Tizen smart platform, with major streaming apps like Netflix, Disney+, YouTube, and Apple TV built in. You can stream from an iPhone or iPad using AirPlay, and it supports cloud gaming services like Xbox Game Pass and Nvidia GeForce Now if you connect a controller over Bluetooth. On the downside, Tizen can feel cluttered. Basic picture controls sit deeper in the menus than they need to, and switching inputs requires a few extra clicks. It works fine once you get used to it, but it isn’t the most intuitive system out there. There is also no Dolby Vision support, and the TV lacks an ATSC 3.0 tuner for next-gen over-the-air broadcasts. Also, its wireless connectivity is limited to Wi-Fi 5 instead of the newer Wi-Fi 6 or 6E standards.