That seemingly-great Android deal is on hold for now as Google works out some manufacturing issues.

The policy shift comes after an internal memo leaked casting doubt on the effectiveness of the agency’s strategy.

The European Commission is not backing down from efforts to rein in Big Tech. In a series of press releases today, the European Union’s executive arm has announced actions against both Apple and Google. Regulators have announced that Apple will be required to open up support for non-Apple accessories on the iPhone, but it may be too late for Google to make changes. The commission says the search giant has violated the Digital Markets Act, which could lead to a hefty fine.

Since returning to power, Donald Trump has railed against European regulations that target US tech firms. In spite of rising tensions and tough talk, the European Commission seems unfazed and is continuing to follow its more stringent laws, like the Digital Markets Act (DMA). This landmark piece of EU legislation aims to make the digital economy more fair. Upon coming into force last year, the act labeled certain large tech companies, including Apple and Google, as “gatekeepers” that are subject to additional scrutiny.

Europe’s more aggressive regulation of Big Tech is why iPhone users on the continent can install apps from third-party app markets while the rest of us are stuck with the Apple App Store. As for Google, the European Commission has paid special attention to search, Android, and Chrome, all of which dominate their respective markets.

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Spry Fox announced its next game, which is “a cooperative village life sim designed to foster friendship, kindness, and community” titled Spirit Crossing. It has an art style that makes me think of a pastel-hued Spirited Away, especially given the presence of moody spectres hanging out in the quaint town setting. The teaser trailer also shows players engaged in classic cozy game activities such as giving gifts, fishing, coasting on hang gliders and riding very floofy critters. In other words: I’ll be playing a lot of Spirit Crossing when it launches. There’s no definite timeline yet, but Netflix said at GDC that the game is part of its 2025 mobile release slate.

Spry Fox dabbled in several different genres, including several mobile puzzle games with a signature style such as Alphabear and Triple Town, before settling into a groove creating cozy games. Spirit Crossing will be the studio’s second project since joining the Netflix Games roster; Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit came out last summer. Players who want in on the ground floor of the devs’ latest game can sign up now for closed alpha testing.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/spry-foxs-next-netflix-games-title-is-spirit-crossing-200643116.html?src=rss

Project Sigil, which has been in the works for years, has purportedly seen active development ended after 30 employees were laid off.

When Amazon stopped letting us download copies of our Kindle books last month, I began looking for ways to preserve e-books and audiobooks that I’ve paid for. Buying from Amazon really limits those options thanks to DRM (Digital Rights Management), which is designed to prevent piracy, but ends up having far bigger consequences on digital goods like e-books.

Eliminating DRM effectively removes Amazon’s control over what you do with your e-books. If Amazon were to go DRM-free, you’d be able read Kindle e-books on any e-book reader or app that you like. Amazon wouldn’t be able to easily track your reading habits and you’d be free to keep an offline backup of all of your purchased content. 

That’s what makes the idea of bypassing DRM appealing to so many. Given the choice, I’d love to buy audiobooks on Audible and use apps such as Bound or Prologue to listen to them. I think these apps are superior audiobook players and are better at library management than Audible’s apps. It’d also be a chance for me to escape Amazon’s ability to track my listening habits. Sadly, those options don’t exist today. 

What Amazon’s terms of service allow you to do

Once you pay for an e-book on Amazon, it has been licensed, not sold to you, according to the company’s terms of service. This gives the company a lot of leeway in deciding what you do with a purchased e-book. The terms of service explicitly forbid bypassing the DRM and reading it on devices or apps that Kindle doesn’t officially support.

This isn’t just an Amazon problem. Janet Vertesi, a sociology professor at Princeton University, told me via email that buying a book through big tech doesn’t grant you ownership of your copy. “You are not in charge of how you access or read that [e-book]. It is like the difference between Spotify playlists and having a home music library. You pay money to own the [e-book], but because Amazon owns everything about the delivery pipeline and the Kindle necessary to read the purchase, you don’t get to exert any choice.”

Similarly, Audible classifies a sale as the purchase of a license, and goes on to say that you should download the audiobook immediately after purchasing, as the company cannot guarantee that content will be available to redownload in the future. To make matters worse, Amazon forbids you from bypassing DRM on the audiobook files.

“The more we buy into these closed garden ecosystems, the fewer choices we have…they can and do use this power to subdue alternatives, eliminate competition, and maintain monopoly, among other things,” Vertesi told me. She runs Opt Out Project, a blog dedicated to helping people find alternatives to products and services made by big tech firms.

The legalities involved in bypassing DRM

Bypassing DRM is illegal in the US, thanks to the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), but it may be legal in other regions. The DMCA, among other things, makes it difficult to create a legal backup of the digital media you own. I reached out to Cory Doctorow, an author and vocal DRM critic, to learn more about this subject. 

In an email, he explained the complexities involved in understanding where the boundary lies here. “It isn’t a copyright infringement to move a book from one device you own to another ([aka ‘format shifting’]). However, in 1998, the US Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which created a new kind of copyright—a copyright that protects DRM itself,” Doctorow wrote. “Under Section 1201 of the DMCA, it’s a felony (punishable by a [five]-year prison sentence and a [$500,000] fine) to give someone a “circumvention device” that defeats an “access control” for a copyrighted work. This law applies even if you don’t violate copyright.

“Say I tell you that you have my permission to move a book I wrote (and am thus the copyright holder for) from your Kindle to another device. If the Kindle book has DRM, you’re still not allowed to move it. The fact that I am the copyright holder has no impact on whether Amazon—a company that didn’t create or invest in my book—can prevent you from moving that book outside of its walled garden…In fact, if I supply you with a tool to remove DRM (like some versions of Calibre), then I commit a felony and Amazon can have me sent to prison for five years for giving you a tool to move my book from the Kindle app to a rival app like Kobo,” he wrote.

When you download a Kindle e-book, it’s available in the AZW format, and audiobooks from Audible use the proprietary AAX format. If you download these to your computer, that is format shifting, but it may be illegal if you had to circumvent DRM to do it. Doctorow added, “that means that even though copyright law says you can format shift your books, music, videos, games, [etc.], DMCA 1201 (a “paracopyright law”) makes this an imprisonable felony if you have to break DRM first.”

The tools that let you bypass DRM

The Calibre app allows you to read and manage DRM-free e-books you’ve purchased.
Credit: Pranay Parab

Calibre offers a way to take your e-books out of digital walled gardens. It lets you download purchased books off your Kindle, convert those to any format you like, and to read them on any app or device. For Audible, that tool is Libation, a free and open-source app that backs up your audiobook library. 

I contacted Robert McRackan, the developer of Libation, to understand how the app works, and why it was developed. McRackan wrote, “…what apps like Libation do is a service to the community that I believe in. It’s also in [direct] contradiction to Audible’s terms of service…” Free tools like these continue to work only because the developers are able to dedicate time to keeping them up-to-date, and because Amazon hasn’t decided to go after them. If that changes, it could be game over for these apps. 

I can’t offer guidance on downloading these apps and using them to remove DRM for your e-books. But they do exist, and, as of this article, they appear to work.

There’s a world beyond Amazon for digital books

If you’re truly interested in owning your digital media, you should consider looking beyond Amazon for digital book purchases. There are many alternatives to the Kindle store and to Audible, and some of them offer DRM-free e-books and audiobooks. When I asked Vertesi and Doctorow about DRM-free storefronts for books, they pointed me to Bookshop.org (which has DRM-free options for e-books), Tor Books (which is entirely DRM-free) and Libro.fm (for DRM-free audiobooks).

While Libro.fm is totally DRM-free and has a collection that’s good enough to rival that of Audible, the picture outside of Amazon isn’t always rosy. Doctorow wrote, “Even great [e-book] stores like Bookshop.org are pressured by the big publishers to put DRM on most of the books they sell.” Similarly, Audible is known to push authors into signing deals that offer better royalties if they keep their audiobooks exclusive to the service.

In case your favorite book is a part of such a deal, your only choice is either buy it through Audible, or try to purchase a DRM-free e-book and use text-to-speech tools to have an AI-generated voice read it to you. This is a hacky way to convert any book into an audiobook, and it doesn’t come anywhere close to the skills of a great narrator, but it’s a DRM-free option. If your favorite e-book is an Amazon exclusive, you can get it via your local library. Of course, you could always buy it physically: Paper is DRM-free, after all.  

However, without changing the DMCA, we can’t expect to see real, lasting change in this space. Doctorow said as much to me: “What we really need to do is get rid of DMCA 1201, that law that makes it a crime to format shift your media…it’s the same law that stops farmers from fixing their tractors, blocks independent mechanics from fixing your car, stops rivals from setting up alternative app stores for phones and games consoles…this law is a menace!”

Streaming service provider Plex announced Wednesday its first price increase in a decade for its premium Plex Pass subscription, raising monthly rates to $6.99 from $4.99, yearly subscriptions to $69.99 from $39.99, and lifetime access to $249.99 from $119.99, effective April 29. The company is also making remote playback of personal media a paid feature, introducing a Remote Watch Pass subscription at $1.99 monthly or $19.99 annually for users who don’t need full Plex Pass features, and removing its one-time mobile activation fee.

The price increase applies to new and existing subscriptions, with the exception of existing Lifetime Plex Pass holders, the company said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Elon Musk and President Trump are fighting a court order to turn over information about DOGE, the US Department of Government Efficiency.

US District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled last week that New Mexico and 13 other states suing Musk and the federal government can serve their written discovery requests on Musk, the US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Service, and US DOGE Temporary Organization. The states’ lawsuit alleges violations of the US Constitution’s appointments clause and conduct in excess of statutory authority.

“Plaintiffs’ requests, as amended by the court, are reasonable and narrowly tailored to their request for injunctive relief,” and “expedited discovery is reasonable and necessary to evaluate Plaintiffs’ request for injunctive relief,” Chutkan, a judge at US District Court for the District of Columbia, wrote in a memorandum opinion.

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Verizon has announced that it will now support sending text messages via satellite on phones from the Pixel 9 and Galaxy S25 lineup. Both Google and Samsung’s current phones support satellite connectivity, but neither has really leveraged the skill outside of the Satellite SOS feature that was added to Android 15.

Sending texts via satellite will be available when Pixel 9 and Galaxy S25 phones are “outside the reach of terrestrial cellular networks,” Verizon says, and should come with same limitations as other satellite tools, like the need to position yourself so that there’s no large structures or tree cover getting between your phone and the sky. It’s also worth noting: the necessary changes “enabling this service start today and will continue over the next two weeks,” so you might want to wait a bit longer before you start your next off-grid adventure.

Apple introduced Messages via Satellite alongside iOS 18, which doesn’t rely on carriers for support, but should offer a good illustration of how Verizon’s satellite messaging will work when it’s fully available on the Pixel 9 and Galaxy S25. 

The carrier is partnered with satellite provider AST SpaceMobile for its expanding list of satellite-connected services, and the companies have experimented with even more demanding communication options, like video calls. Competitors like T-Mobile already offer satellite messaging through a partnership with SpaceX’s Starlink.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/verizon-now-supports-texting-via-satellite-on-the-pixel-9-and-galaxy-s25-193348606.html?src=rss

Leftovers can be challenging. Occasionally, you’ll have a meal so good that you actually look forward to scarfing it down cold the next day, but that’s not always the case. I usually have bits and bobs of leftovers—things I didn’t care for in the first place, or stray ingredients I can’t seem to get rid of. My curse however, is that I hate (hate!) tossing edible food. So over the years, I’ve gotten better at reworking leftovers, and you can too. Here are my favorite ways to repurpose leftovers into incredible new meals. 

Recipes for using leftovers

I run into two types of leftovers: leftover meals and leftover single ingredients. Let’s start with leftover meals. This section is how I like to transform prior dinners or lunches—like sausage and peppers or chicken salad— to give them a new life.  

Leftovers as pizza toppings

Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

Do I have a borderline problem with eating personal pizzas? Who’s to say. But that continual experience has given me the confidence to say leftovers make for great pizza toppings. If pizzerias can put chopped chicken cutlets and penne on their pizza, so can you. Here’s how I like to pizza my leftovers. All you need is a ball of thawed pizza dough from the grocery store and a bit of cheese to act as your “glue.”

Egg roll ‘em

What do the stray container of leftover brisket, the green curry chicken from three days ago, and the sausage and peppers from Sunday have in common? They’d all be great with a crispy egg roll shell wrapped around them. Egg rolling your leftovers is extremely simple with a pack of premade wrappers that you can buy from the refrigerated aisle of your grocery store. Once you’ve secured your delicious leftovers in the center, deep fry or air fry them for a wonderful lunch or dinner.

Stack leftovers into a lasagna

It helps to think of leftover food as a component that needs a new vehicle to carry it, like pizza dough or an egg roll wrapper. Pasta noodles are a versatile main ingredient too. While you could toss your leftovers with spaghetti, turning it all into a stacked lasagna is more impressive, and personally I think it’s more appetizing. While I’m using Thanksgiving leftovers here, you certainly aren’t limited to that. Boil the pasta noodles and use them to sandwich each layer of leftovers, like thinly sliced meatloaf, creamed spinach, or vegan steamed dumplings. (It’s okay to layer carbs with carbs.)

Make a delightful brunch casserole

Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

Casseroles are always a wondrous mish-mash of ingredients. What makes them sliceable is the addition of some sort of flavorful binder, like eggs or cheese. I added a few eggs, a torn up English muffin, and shredded cheddar to the leftovers of my seven-layer dip recipe and baked it for about 20 minutes at 350°F to make this absolutely scrumptious casserole. You can casserole anything from leftover waffles to rice and beans with this method.

Risotto your leftovers

I showed you how to fake risotto with leftover rice, but you can also throw your leftovers into risotto. Risotto is another one of those helpful carbs that act as a vehicle for your once-fresh food. Though this recipe is geared toward Thanksgiving leftovers, the concept stands for any leftover protein and veg. Make your risotto as usual and just after you ladle in the last bit of stock, drop in your chopped leftovers to warm up in the pot. 

Build a satisfying sandwich

Sandwiches are like old episodes of your favorite show—it’s your back-up when you don’t know what to watch (or eat, in this case). A leftovers sandwich is the solution when you can’t figure out what to do with that massive casserole from your cousin’s brunch party. Since leftovers can be irregularly shaped (as opposed to sliced deli meats), I suggest grabbing large slices of bread and potentially leaving them untoasted. Then the soft texture can hug and hold onto the fillings better. Here are some ways you can tweak a sandwich to make it even more delightful.

Make the best oatmeal of your life

Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

For the longest time, I thought I hated oatmeal. It turns out, I was just not adding enough fun stuff to it. Oats are bland, which makes them a terrible main event, but a great supporting act for other bolder ingredients. Your leftover dishes from the week are already cooked and full of flavor. Simply make a batch of savory oatmeal and nestle your chicken parmesan, Thai gaeng keow-wan curry, or vegetable korma into the bowl with it. Here’s my recipe for spicy, savory oatmeal with herbs and kimchi.

Recipes for common leftover ingredients

This section is devoted to my most common leftover ingredients. These are things that maybe haven’t made it into a full meal yet—like raw celery or cooked leftover rice—but they’re living their last moments in my fridge. I’ll lean on these recipes to keep them from becoming trash. 

The many iterations of leftover rice

Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

There was a year or two that I would order Chinese food take-out frequently, and end up with tubs of extra rice stacked up in my freezer. A day of reckoning would come once a month when I would have to figure something out, or I’d have no freezer space. So I have more than one way to use up leftover rice. This crispy rice cake, this fake risotto, and this comforting rice salad are all good to have in mind.

The problem with celery

Celery is one of those ingredients that will haunt your crisper drawer for 100 years. I’m not even exaggerating, it actually grows more stalks while it’s in there. Its only charm is how crunchy it is, so I wouldn’t recommend egg rolling it or putting it on pizza. My solution for unused stalks is to make this salad which relies on thin, diagonal slices to maintain crunch but reduce “stringiness.” The vinaigrette adds much needed flavor, the Thai chili wakes up your palate, and the hard boiled eggs create a more satiating dish. 

Leftover pie crust

Whether it’s store-bought pie crust sitting in your freezer or you never got around to using the other half of that double-crust pie dough recipe, there’s no reason to let that flaky pastry go to waste. Use it to make a filling quiche and mix in any leftover vegetables you might have in the fridge. Avoiding eggs to save money? That’s fine, use this recipe to make a lazy pot pie with your leftover crust and a can of creamy chicken soup.

Extra hard boiled eggs

Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

Boiled eggs make a great on-the-run snack, so I’ll often cook up a bunch at the beginning of the week and keep them in the fridge. But some weeks will wrap up and I’ll have a few that I never got to. Unless I feel like crushing three or four cold eggs, so instead I’ll make a yam kai dao salad. Shallow frying the hard-cooked eggs give them an appealing crispy-chewy exterior and the lime and fish sauce dressing creates a flavor profile you’ll look forward to eating again with next week’s eggs. 

Cold plain pasta

I find it infuriating that the “proper” serving of dry pasta is two ounces. I would like to eat a pound of it but alas, I have been shamed by society, so I’ll begrudgingly put the supposed extra in a container for the next day. With this clever trick, I now look forward to leftover pasta. This works for both plain boiled pasta or pasta that has a light coating of sauce. Add butter to a frying pan and tip the cold carbs into the melted butter. Stir and loosen the pasta as it warms up and then let it fry so it gets crispy and brown on the bottom. Serve it immediately to enjoy the new crunchy-soft texture of your stir-fry-revived pasta. 

That half-can of coconut milk

Kind of like the cup of puréed pumpkin I didn’t need for a recipe, I’ll occasionally end up with an unused portion of coconut milk in my fridge. I don’t particularly like it in my coffee, but that flavorful, fatty gift from nature cannot be wasted. Although you can freeze it, I decided the best way to use it up would be to capitalize on its inherent richness and make it into a luxurious coconut pudding for one. This simple recipe uses a cherry compote to top it off but you could substitute another fruit, jam, or go without and let the silky coconut speak for itself.

Elon Musk told Fox News “they basically want to kill me” when discussing opposition to Tesla.

This is a video of former NASA engineer Mark Rober pitting a Tesla’s camera-based autopilot feature against a Lexus’s LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging, which uses lasers to measure distances and create 3D maps) to see which operates safer. The Lexus passes all six tests (stationary child in road, running child in road, fog, rain, bright light, and Wyle E. Coyote style picture of road), while Tesla fails the fog, rain, and fake road. To demonstrate the capabilities of LiDAR, Mark sneaks a system into Disneyland’s Space Mountain (which is ridden in the dark) and maps the entire ride to show what the coaster actually looks like. What does all this mean? No clue, but I don’t trust any autopilot technology and will continue to drive using only The Force. I also occasionally let Jesus take the wheel if I’m eating.

Thanks to my dad, who agrees even the Road Runner never fell for the fake road trick.