The era of AI video is upon us, and honestly it’s kind of terrifying. Between OpenAI’s Sora and official communications from the Trump White House, it’s clear that we’re not ready for an unending onslaught of AI video. In this episode, Devindra and producer Ben chat with the Washington Post’s technology reporter Drew Harwell and Jeremy Carrasco (AKA “ShowtoolsAI”), a former livestream and media producer turned AI video literacy creator. Also, we chat about our final thoughts on Apple’s M5 MacBook Pro and iPad Pro, with a few quick notes about the new Vision Pro.

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Topics

• Google and Open AI’s video generation models have upended our sense of reality online, what comes next? – 1:10

• Apple’s M5 chip is a significant boost in graphics power on the Macbook Pro – 34:11

• The iPad Pro M5 is a solid speed boost for whoever wants it – 39:36

• Preview of the Vision Pro M5 review – 44:00

• Working on – 50:23

• Pop culture Picks – 51:45 

Credits

Host: Devindra Hardawar
Guests: Drew Harwell and Jeremy “ShowtoolsAI” Carrasco
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O’Brien

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/engadget-podcast-how-to-survive-our-ai-video-hellscape-120432652.html?src=rss

A federal court ruled that Facebook parent Meta can’t use attorney-client privilege to block internal documents and research related to teen harm, Bloomberg Law reported. The decision is a setback to Meta in its lawsuits against multiple states that accused the company of making its platforms addictive despite knowing they were harmful to teenagers. 

Judge Yvonne Williams of the Washington, DC Superior Court found that Meta’s lawyers advised employees to “remove,” “block,” “button up” or “limit” portions of internal studies on the harm of social media to teens’ mental health, in order to limit the company’s legal liability. The court said that this advice appeared to be an attempt to cover up or alter information, meaning it falls under the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege. Meta now has seven days to turn over four documents created between November 2022 and July 2023. 

Meta disagreed with the ruling, a spokesperson told Bloomberg in a statement. “These were routine, appropriate lawyer-client discussions and contrary to the District’s misleading claim, no research findings were deleted or destroyed.”

The ruling is related to lawsuits filed in a California court involving dozens of US state attorneys general. Also involved are hundreds of private civil lawsuits filed by parents, teens and school boards against Meta and other platforms around social media addiction and harms. The first trials are scheduled to start in 2026. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-lawyers-tried-to-block-internal-research-showing-teen-harm-judge-rules-120015673.html?src=rss

This week, Samsung showed off Galaxy XR, its Vision Pro-troubling headset, and you can bet we’ve done a deep dive. Sam Rutherford got one of these strapped to his head and has plenty of feelings about the new hardware.

The headset is lighter, more comfortable and easier to live with than Apple’s Vision Pro, even if it lacks many of its headline features. The software ecosystem is already pretty broad, thanks to Google making a real effort with Android XR, but dedicated apps are still a bit rare.

Samsung’s entry into the market might provide some much-needed impetus for this type of augmented reality headset. That it’s half the price of Apple’s Vision Pro may also loosen some wallets eager to get into this world.

But it’s hard not to see this as Samsung running down the same cul-de-sac Apple is now lurking at the end of. It has allowed other companies, like Meta, to waltz in and grab an early lead in the much more useful smart glasses market.

— Dan Cooper

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The news you might have missed

• The first e-bike from Rivian spinoff Also has a virtual drivetrain
  I’m more interested in its Bakfiets-esque quad bike for driving kids around.

• Amazon’s smart glasses with AI will help its drivers deliver packages faster
  It’s just like RoboCop, only with more peeing in bottles.

• ChatGPT in WhatsApp will stop working in January
  Meta is kicking its AI rival off its platform.

Apple MacBook Pro M5 14-inch review: A huge graphics upgrade for creators and gamers

The GPU is the star here.

Devindra Hardawar for Engadget

Apple’s online-only announcement of the new vanilla M5 MacBooks might have been a sign the new models were no big deal. But Devindra Hardawar found these were, in fact, quite a big deal, and the M5’s faster GPU has the chops to go toe-to-toe with a gaming PC.

Continue Reading.

Toyota’s new all-hybrid RAV4 has software you might actually want to use

It wants to offer a better alternative to your smartphone.

Tim Stevens for Engadget

Toyota isn’t happy folks just default to CarPlay or Android Auto for their in-car infotainment. That’s why it’s chosen to radically redesign its OS for the 2026 RAV4 to include voice and touch control. Tim Stevens has ridden the new whip and has plenty of opinions on whether it’s worth your time or, you know… you’ll just default to CarPlay or Android Auto.

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iPad Pro M5 review: Speed boost

We reviewed the iPad Pro M5 and had some feelings.

Nathan Ingraham for Engadget

As much as I may want an iPad Pro, it wouldn’t play a role in my life that would get anywhere near to justifying its extortionate price. Consequently, I shall just live vicariously through Nathan Ingraham, who reviewed the M5 edition and found it to be a work of art. But, you know, it has a price so eye-watering that nobody who’s on the fence about owning one should bother. Then, Nate pivoted to writing about how the iPad Pro has, at least, carved out its own identity.

Continue Reading.

New report leaks Amazon’s proposed mass-automation plans

It plans to replace more than half a million employees.

Amazon may be planning to use automation to eliminate more than half a million jobs in the next few years. The New York Times claims to have seen internal documents outlining the plans and the PR operation that’ll get underway ahead of time to quell public anger.

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Binance founder Changpeng Zhao lands a Trump pardon

Nothing to see here, move along.

Maybe there’s nothing interesting about the fact Changpeng Zhao was just pardoned by President Trump despite pleading guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act. I mean, yes, Zhao has ties to World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency venture linked to the Trump family. But that’s not uncommon, is it? Surely everyone would use the privilege of high office to exonerate people with whom they potentially have fruitful relationships. Right?

Continue Reading.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/the-morning-after-engadget-newsletter-111555814.html?src=rss

Welcome to Edition 8.16 of the Rocket Report! The 10th anniversary of SpaceX’s first Falcon 9 rocket landing is coming up at the end of this year. We’re still waiting for a second company to bring back an orbital-class booster from space for a propulsive landing. Two companies, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and China’s LandSpace, could join SpaceX’s exclusive club as soon as next month. (Bezos might claim he’s already part of the club, but there’s a distinction to be made.) Each company is in the final stages of launch preparations—Blue Origin for its second New Glenn rocket, and LandSpace for the debut flight of its Zhuque-3 rocket. Blue Origin and LandSpace will both attempt to land their first stage boosters downrange from their launch sites. They’re not exactly in a race with one another, but it will be fascinating to see how New Glenn and Zhuque-3 perform during the uphill and downhill phases of flight, and whether one or both of the new rockets stick the landing.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

The race for space-based interceptors. The Trump administration’s announcement of the Golden Dome missile defense shield has set off a race among US companies to develop and test space weapons, some of them on their own dime, Ars reports. One of these companies is a 3-year-old startup named Apex, which announced plans to test a space-based interceptor as soon as next year. Apex’s concept will utilize one of the company’s low-cost satellite platforms outfitted with an “Orbital Magazine” containing multiple interceptors, which will be supplied by an undisclosed third-party partner. The demonstration in low-Earth orbit could launch as soon as June 2026 and will test-fire two interceptors from Apex’s Project Shadow spacecraft. The prototype interceptors could pave the way for operational space-based interceptors to shoot down ballistic missiles. (submitted by biokleen)

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Airbus, Leonardo, and Thales are merging their space divisions into a new France-based company that aims to create a “leading European player in space.” The joint venture, expected to launch operations by 2027 pending regulatory approval, will pool R&D resources to accelerate satellite development and strengthen Europe’s technological sovereignty in space. Engadget reports: The companies Airbus, Leonardo and Thales have finalized this deal. The new unnamed entity will be based in France and will employ around 25,000 people. Airbus will own 35 percent, while the other two companies will each own 32.5 percent. Executives are hoping this company will better serve Europe’s need for “sovereignty” in space and help it create a rival to SpaceX’s Starlink communications network. Increasing a presence in space is also seen as a good thing for security and defense.

This isn’t just bluster. Thales and Airbus have long been rivals in the satellite market, but it looks like they are friends now. Leonardo is known for space systems and services. Combining all three could actually give SpaceX a run for its money, but we will have to wait and see. There are no planned site closures, as the companies say that each home country will keep its existing capabilities. This will be a standalone company, so think of it as an extremely well-financed startup. The first task for the upstart? Reporting indicates it’ll be to find more efficient ways to develop and manufacture satellites.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An Icelandic programmer successfully ran Doom on the European Space Agency’s OPS-SAT satellite, proving that the iconic 1993 shooter can now run not just everywhere on Earth — but in orbit. ZDNet reports: Olafur Waage, a senior software developer from Iceland who now works in Norway, explained at Ubuntu Summit 25.10 how he, a self-described “professional keyboard typist” and maker of funny videos, ended up making what is perhaps the game’s most outlandish port yet: Doom running on a real satellite in orbit, the European Space Agency (ESA) OPS-SAT satellite. OPS-SAT, a “flying laboratory” for testing novel onboard computing techniques, was equipped with an experimental computer approximately 10 times more powerful than the norm for spacecraft. Waag explained, “OPS-SAT was the first of its kind, devoted to demonstrating drastically improved mission control capabilities when satellites can fly more powerful onboard computers. The point was to break the curse of being too risk-averse with multi-million-dollar spacecraft.” (The satellite was decommissioned in 2024.) […]

Running Doom in orbit was partly a challenge of portability and partly a challenge of the limitations of space hardware and mission control. The on-board ARM dual-core Cortex-A9 processor, while hot stuff for space computing hardware (which tends to be low-powered and radiation-hardened), was slow even by Earth-bound standards. Waage chose Chocolate Doom 2.3, a popular open-source version of Doom, for its compatibility with the Ubuntu 18.04 Long Term Support (LTS) distro, which was already running on OPS-SAT. Besides, Waage noted, “We picked Chocolate Doom 2.3 because of the libraries available for 18.04 — that was the last one that would actually build.

Updating software in orbit is extremely difficult, so relatively little code would have to be uploaded. As Waage said, “Doom is relatively straightforward C with a few external dependencies.” In other words, it’s easy to port. […] The only sign that Doom was running in space at first was a lone log entry. So, the team used the satellite’s camera to snap real-time images of the Earth, then swapped Doom’s Mars skybox for actual satellite photos. “The idea was to take a screenshot from the satellite and use that as the sky, all rendered in software using the game’s restricted 256-color palette,” explained Waage. Even this posed unexpected difficulties: “Trying to draw all of these beautiful colors with those colors,” said Waage, “it’s probably not going to work right off. But we tried gradient tests, NASA demo photos. It took quite a bit of tweaking.” Eventually, instead of a fantasy Mars as the sky background, they got a good-looking, real Earth in the game’s sky. The game itself ran flawlessly. After all, Waage said, “It ran beautifully. It’s on Ubuntu.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As we’ve seen with Toyota’s Prius Prime, putting a solar panel on a car’s roof is a nifty idea but can only gain you a few free miles a day due to the limited size. With a new prototype of its hyper-popular Sakura “kei” EV, Nissan has the answer: a bigger solar panel roof called the AO-Solar Extender. When fully stretched out on a sunny day, it can add about 1,864 miles of driving distance a year and power multiple accessories.

The panel works whether you’re driving or parked. When extended (in “solar pompadour” mode as my colleague put it), it generates 500 watts on sunny days. At the same time, it helps block sunlight from the windshield, “reducing cabin temperature and lowering the need for air conditioning power consumption,” Nissan noted.  

NISSAN DESIGN

When retracted in driving mode, it still pumps out 300 watts in the sun (80 watts in the rain), quite a bit more than the 185 watts max generated by the Prius Prime’s solar roof. And if you’re worried about aerodynamics, Nissan said the roof is designed to minimize drag and integrate well with the Sakura’s design. 

It’s not just a fun exercise, as Nissan said it’s planning to launch the AO-Solar Extender commercially, with details to follow at a later date. It could be a useful accessory on the Sakura, which has been Japan’s most popular EV since 2022 thanks to its “sufficient” range, cute kei looks and spacious interior. The automaker will show it off at the Japan Mobility Show starting on October 30, 2025. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/nissan-made-a-nifty-solar-panel-system-for-its-sakura-ev-061235566.html?src=rss

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Dinosaurs would not have become extinct had it not been for a catastrophic asteroid strike, researchers have said, challenging the idea the animals were already in decline. About 66 million years ago, during the late Cretaceous period, a huge space rock crashed into Earth, triggering a mass extinction that wiped out all dinosaurs except birds. However, some experts have argued the dinosaurs were already in decline. Now researchers say the dating of a rock formation in New Mexico throws doubt on that idea, suggesting dinosaurs were thriving until the fateful impact.

Dr Andrew Flynn, the first author of the research at New Mexico State University, said: “I think based on our new study that shows that, at least in North America, they weren’t going towards extinction.” Writing in the journal Science, Flynn and colleagues report how they dated a unit of rock called the Naashoibito Member in the San Juan basin using two methods. Flynn said the perception that overall dinosaur diversity was falling before the asteroid hit could be a result of there being fewer exposed rocks, and hence fossils, dating to the end of the Cretaceous period than earlier in the epoch. “It looks like, as far as we can tell, there’s no reason they should have gone extinct except for [the] asteroid impact,” he said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

alternative_right shares a report from Axios: The latest must-have accessory is a “stop-scrolling bag” — a tote packed with analog activities like watercolors and crossword puzzles. We spend hours glued to our screens. “Analog bags,” as they’re also called, are one way millennials and Gen Zers are reclaiming that time. “I basically just put everything I could grab for instead of my phone into a bag,” including knitting, a scrapbook and a Polaroid camera, says Sierra Campbell, the content creator behind the trend.

The 31-year-old keeps one bag at home in Northern California, carrying it from room to room, and another in her car. The trend has quickly spread on social media, part of a bigger shift to unplug. Roughly 1,600 TikTok posts were tagged #AnalogLife during the first nine months of 2025 — up over 330% from the same period last year, according to TikTok data shared with Axios. “It speaks to an incredible desperation and desire for experiences that return our attention to us, that fight brain-rotting, that are tactile … that involve creating over scrolling,” says Beth McGroarty, vice president of research at the Global Wellness Institute.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI has acquired Software Applications Incorporated, the 12-person startup behind Sky — an AI interface for Mac computers that can understand on-screen context and perform tasks across apps. The deal follows OpenAI’s recent acquisitions of Statsig and Jony Ive’s io. CNBC reports: The startup’s product called Sky allows users of Mac computers to prompt it with natural language to get help with writing, coding, planning and managing their days, OpenAI said in a blog post. Sky can take actions through apps and understands what’s on a user’s screen.

“Sky’s deep integration with the Mac accelerates our vision of bringing AI directly into the tools people use every day,” Nick Turley, the head of ChatGPT at OpenAI, said in a statement. Software Applications was founded in 2023, and the company unveiled Sky in May. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman contributed to the startup’s $6.5 million seed funding round, according to its website.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google and Anthropic have finalized a cloud partnership worth tens of billions of dollars, granting Anthropic access to up to one million of Google’s Tensor Processing Units and more than a gigawatt of compute power by 2026. CNBC reports: Industry estimates peg the cost of a 1-gigawatt data center at around $50 billion, with roughly $35 billion of that typically allocated to chips. While competitors tout even loftier projections — OpenAI’s 33-gigawatt “Stargate” chief among them — Anthropic’s move is a quiet power play rooted in execution, not spectacle. Founded by former OpenAI researchers, the company has deliberately adopted a slower, steadier ethos, one that is efficient, diversified, and laser-focused on the enterprise market.

A key to Anthropic’s infrastructure strategy is its multi-cloud architecture. The company’s Claude family of language models runs across Google’s TPUs, Amazon’s custom Trainium chips, and Nvidia’s GPUs, with each platform assigned to specialized workloads like training, inference, and research. Google said the TPUs offer Anthropic “strong price-performance and efficiency.” […] Anthropic’s ability to spread workloads across vendors lets it fine-tune for price, performance, and power constraints. According to a person familiar with the company’s infrastructure strategy, every dollar of compute stretches further under this model than those locked into single-vendor architectures.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This is a 1000x magnification of tardigrades (aka waterbears) hatching. The mother tardigrade produces the eggs then sheds her skin with the eggs inside, which are protected until hatching. They’re also trapped and have to find their way out of the skin or die. The whole hatching process takes about 15 minutes, which is 10 minutes longer than it took me to be born because I’m the perfect child and always have been. No need asking my mom for corroboration.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Donald Trump is eyeing taking equity stakes in quantum computing firms in exchange for federal funding, The Wall Street Journal reported. At least five companies are weighing whether allowing the government to become a shareholder would be worth it to snag funding that the Trump administration has “earmarked for promising technology companies,” sources familiar with the potential deals told the WSJ.

IonQ, Rigetti Computing, and D-Wave Quantum are currently in talks with the government over potential funding agreements, with minimum awards of $10 million each, some sources said. Quantum Computing Inc. and Atom Computing are reportedly “considering similar arrangements,” as are other companies in the sector, which is viewed as critical for scientific advancements and next-generation technologies. No deals have been completed yet, sources said, and terms could change as quantum-computing firms weigh the potential risks of government influence over their operations. […]

The administration will lean on Deputy Commerce Secretary Paul Dabbar to extend Trump’s industry meddling into the quantum computing world, the WSJ reported. A former Energy Department official, Dabbar co-founded Bohr Quantum Technology, which specializes in quantum networking systems that the DOE expects will help “create new opportunities for scientific discovery.” While the firm he previously headed won’t be eligible for funding, Dabbar will be leading industry discussions, the WSJ reported, likely hyping Trump’s deals as a necessary boon to ensure US firms dominate in quantum computing. A Commerce Department official denied the claims, saying: “The Commerce Department is not currently negotiating equity stakes with quantum computing companies.”

In August, the Trump administration took a 10% stake in Intel to help fund factories that Intel is currently building in Ohio.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

These are a couple videos highlighting the journey of father/son team Mike and Luke Bell as they attempt to reclaim the world record for fastest quadrocopter drone after their record was snatched from them last year. There’s a lot of interesting discussion about the engineering and testing of the drone, but, besides the occasional drone fire, the best footage is the actual test flights. At full throttle (which would drain the battery in just 23 seconds) the drone reaches an impressive 363MPH. Damn, what I wouldn’t give to experience flying that fast. “Commercial planes fly at like 600MPH.” What! *ahem* I meant I totally knew that, I was talking about with a jetpack.

Videos below, test footage towards the end, 14:25 in the first video.

Microsoft is retiring Office Online Server on December 31, 2026, ending support and updates for organizations running browser-based Office apps on-premises. The Register reports: After this, there won’t be any more security fixes, updates, or technical support from Microsoft. “This change is part of our ongoing commitment to modernizing productivity experiences and focusing on cloud-first solutions,” the company said. Office Online Server provides browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote for customers who want to keep things on-prem without having to roll out the full desktop applications. Microsoft’s solution is to move to Microsoft 365, its decidedly off-premises version of its applications. The company said it is “focusing its browser-based Office app investments on Office for the Web to deliver secure, collaborative, and feature-rich experiences through Microsoft 365.”

Other than migrating to another platform when the vendor pulls the plug, affected customers have few options. The announcement will also hit several customers running SharePoint Server SE or Exchange Server SE. While those products remain supported, Office Online Server integration will go away. The company suggested Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise and Office LTSC 2024 as alternatives for viewing and editing documents hosted on those servers.

Skype for Business customers will also lose some key features related to PowerPoint. Presenter notes and high-fidelity PowerPoint rendering will go away. In-meeting annotations, which allow meeting participants to write directly to slides without altering the original file, will no longer be available, and embedded video playback will run at lower fidelity. Features like whiteboards, polls, and app sharing shouldn’t be affected. Microsoft’s solution is a move to Teams, which the company says “offers modern meeting experiences.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Electronic Arts has announced a new partnership with Stability AI, the creator of AI image generation tool Stable Diffusion. The company will “co-develop transformative AI models, tools, and workflows” for the game developer, with the hopes of speeding up development while maintaining quality.

“I use the term smarter paintbrushes,” Steve Kestell, Head of Technical Art for EA SPORTS said in the announcement. “We are giving our creatives the tools to express what they want.” To start, the “smarter paintbrushes” EA and Stability AI are building are concentrated on generating textures and in-game assets. EA hopes to create “Physically Based Rendering materials” with new tools “that generate 2D textures that maintain exact color and light accuracy across any environment.” 

The company also describes using AI to “pre-visualize entire 3D environments from a series of intentional prompts, allowing artists to creatively direct the generation of game content.” Stability AI is most famous for its powerful Stable Diffusion image generator, but the company maintains multiple tools for generating 3D models, too, so the partnership is by no means out of place.

It helps that AI is on the tip of most video game executives’ tongues. Strauss Zelnick, the head of Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two, recently shared that generative AI “will not reduce employment, it will increase employment,” because “technology always increases productivity, which in turn increases GDP, which in turn increases employment.” Krafton, the publisher of PUBG: Battlegrounds, made its commitment to AI even more clear, announcing plans on Thursday to become an AI-first company. Companies with a direct stake in the success of the AI industry, like Microsoft, have also created gaming-focused tools and developed models for prototyping.

The motivations for EA might be even simpler, though. The company is in the midst of being taken private, and will soon be saddled with billions in debt. Theoretically cutting costs with AI might be one way the company hopes to survive the transition.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/ea-partners-with-the-company-behind-stable-diffusion-to-make-games-with-ai-222253069.html?src=rss

OpenAI has acquired Software Applications Incorporated (SAI), perhaps best known for the core team that produced what became Shortcuts on Apple platforms. More recently, the team has been working on Sky, a context-aware AI interface layer on top of macOS. The financial terms of the acquisition have not been publicly disclosed.

“AI progress isn’t only about advancing intelligence—it’s about unlocking it through interfaces that understand context, adapt to your intent, and work seamlessly,” an OpenAI rep wrote in the company’s blog post about the acquisition. The post goes on to specify that OpenAI plans to “bring Sky’s deep macOS integration and product craft into ChatGPT, and all members of the team will join OpenAI.”

That includes SAI co-founders Ari Weinstein (CEO), Conrad Kramer (CTO), and Kim Beverett (Product Lead)—all of whom worked together for several years at Apple after Apple acquired Weinstein and Kramer’s previous company, which produced an automation tool called Workflows, to integrate Shortcuts across Apple’s software platforms.

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A UK tribunal ruled that Apple abused its dominant position by charging app developers unfair commissions through its App Store, potentially costing the company hundreds of millions in damages. It marks the first major tech “class action” victory under the UK’s collective lawsuit regime. Reuters reports: The Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) ruled against Apple after a trial of the lawsuit, which was brought on behalf of millions of iPhone and iPad users in the United Kingdom. The CAT ruled that Apple had abused its dominant position from October 2015 until the end of 2020 by shutting out competition in the app distribution market and by “charging excessive and unfair prices” as commission to developers.

Apple — which has faced mounting pressure from regulators in the U.S. and Europe over the fees it charges developers — said it would appeal against the ruling, which it said “takes a flawed view of the thriving and competitive app economy.” The case had been valued at around $2 billion by those who brought it. A hearing next month will decide how damages are calculated and Apple’s application for permission to appeal. “This ruling overlooks how the App Store helps developers succeed and gives consumers a safe, trusted place to discover apps and securely make payments,” an Apple spokesperson said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a lawsuit filed on Wednesday, Reddit accused an AI search engine, Perplexity, of conspiring with several companies to illegally scrape Reddit content from Google search results, allegedly dodging anti-scraping methods that require substantial investments from both Google and Reddit.

Reddit alleged that Perplexity feeds off Reddit and Google, claiming to be “the world’s first answer engine” but really doing “nothing groundbreaking.”

“Its answer engine simply uses a different company’s” large language model “to parse through a massive number of Google search results to see if it can answer a user’s question based on those results,” the lawsuit said. “But Perplexity can only run its ‘answer engine’ by wrongfully accessing and scraping Reddit content appearing in Google’s own search results from Google’s own search engine.”

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Confession time: I’ve had the Sleep Awake Steam page open in a tab for about a month (hey, we all organize our thoughts in unique and beautiful ways), just so I don’t forget about it. The past year has been stacked with fabulous original games across a wide range of genres, including horror, and this is one I didn’t want to miss. Now, I can close the tab and put a firm release date on the calendar, as Sleep Awake is officially due to hit PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on December 2. Happy holidays, indeed.

Sleep Awake is a first-person, narrative-heavy, psychedelic horror game set in the last known city on an Earth that’s been ravaged by The HUSH, a mysterious force that disappears anyone who falls asleep. Katja must stay alert and survive the city as its citizens experiment on themselves in increasingly extreme ways, attempting to achieve permanent wakefulness and outmaneuver The HUSH. Needless to say, things get weird.

Sleep Awake comes from Eyes Out, the studio founded by Spec Ops: The Line director Cory Davis and Nine Inch Nails guitarist Robin Finck, and it’s published by Blumhouse Games. Finck is responsible for the trippy audio stylings of Sleep Awake, of course. This is the studio’s debut title and something they’ve been working on for four years. Back in 2021, Davis and Finck told Engadget they were focused on building an ultra-immersive, audio-driven horror experience with a nightmarish bent.

“The type of horror that we’re building has a lot to do with the horrors of the universe and the horrors that you kind of go to sleep with at night, the ones that are just around the corner and outside of our purview, but exist,” Davis said. “And the technology for building those types of soundscapes, the localized audio and reverb and the realism behind that, coming from VR before, I had a lot of opportunity to work with that stuff.”

Finck added the following: “I’m really excited about the nuance and the subtlety of coming from silence, like a really impactful silence, and beginning to emerge from that silence towards an impactful embellishment of some sort, however great or greater. And that play between the diegetic soundscape of the world within the tangible, physical space inside the game, and where it blurs with the score, the music of the game, can be really challenging and inspiring.”

Blumhouse Games published its first horror project, Fear the Spotlight, in October 2024 and on top of Sleep Awake, it has a steady stream of additional terrors in store. The co-op gothic-horror game Eyes of Hellfire landed in August from developer Gambrinous, and titles including Grave Seasons and Crisol: Theater of Idols are due to drop soon.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/blumhouse-games-sleep-awake-creeps-onto-steam-and-consoles-december-2-214055543.html?src=rss