Electronic Arts (EA) has laid off around 300 employees across multiple departments, including about 100 at Respawn Entertainment. IGN reports: IGN understands that these wider cuts largely impacted EA’s Experiences team, which includes groups such as EA’s Fan Care team and various others working on customer support and marketing, though other EA departments saw reductions as well. As with other cuts at EA, those impacted will be given the opportunity to apply for other roles internally prior to being let go.

The roughly 100 jobs impacted at Respawn included individuals in development, publishing, and QA workers on Apex Legends, as well as smaller groups of individuals working on the Jedi team and two canceled incubation projects, one of which we reported on back in March, and the other of which was, per Bloomberg’s reporting, a new Titanfall game. “As part of our continued focus on our long-term strategic priorities, we’ve made select changes within our organization that more effectively aligns teams and allocates resources in service of driving future growth,” an EA spokesperson said in an official statement. “We are treating our people with care and respect throughout this process, working to minimize impacts by helping affected employees explore new opportunities within the company when possible and providing support during the transition.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There was once a time when LG was among the major smartphone manufacturers. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case for a while now: LG gave up on the phone business in April 2021, reducing the choices Android customers have—especially in the United States.

It was a shame, since LG made some cool phones back in the day. The V20, for example, included a thin secondary display along the top of the device, while the LG Wing sported a full-size second display that swiveled out—a design that is still unique in the smartphone market (if not particularly practical). The company produced a number of smartphones in its time—some good, some great, some forgettable—but over the last four years, we’ve been deprived any new LG smartphones.

That being said, the company didn’t leave its customers out to dry: LG guaranteed eligible smartphones three years of updates. That guarantee seems to have worked out, since we’re now four years past LG’s retirement from the smartphone market. Sadly, all good things must come to an end, as is the case with LG’s software support.

RIP LG updates

As reported by Android Authority, LG is planning to shut down the servers it uses to issue software updates. Once that happens, you won’t be able to open your LG smartphone’s settings app and install the latest update your device supports.

It’s not just the update servers, either. LG will also be closing down LG Bridge, software that helps you back your phone up to your PC, as well as install updates.

This all goes down on Monday, June 30—just about two months from the time of this article. If you have any LG devices that have outstanding updates, you should consider updating them as soon as possible.

Of course, LG phones from 2021 aren’t getting updates for Android 15, or the upcoming Android 16. LG was issuing updates for versions of Android 12 and Android 13, depending on the phone in question. Still, these updates are important, since they contain the latest security patches for your particular smartphone. If you’re still using these devices, make sure to install these updates to keep your phone protected—and be aware that no future security updates are coming to protect you from future vulnerabilities.

To that last point, it might be time to start thinking about a new phone if you haven’t done so already. While this last update should protect you for some time, the longer you use a smartphone with no future updates on the way, the greater the chances you’ll expose yourself to those future vulnerabilities. If you’re in need of an upgrade, take a look at PCMag’s list of the best Android smartphones for 2025—all of which will continue to receive the latest feature and security updates.

How to update your LG phone

To update your LG phone, open Settings > System > System updates > Update LG software, then tap Check now for update. If an update is available, tap Install.

Considering how much work goes into buying a home, it’s surprising how many people view it as a temporary situation. The concept of the “property ladder”—buying a small, affordable “starter” house just to build equity and trade up to a larger home, and then doing it again until you’re living in some kind of mansion—makes people think of their homes as investments in their future instead of a place to live their lives.

It’s true that buying a house can be a complex decision, and buyer’s remorse is a real situation that almost anyone can find themselves experiencing—and sometimes selling your home is the best decision you can make. But there are plenty of bad reasons to sell, especially if you’re comfortable and happy in the property, or you’ve put a lot of work and money into making it your own. If you’ve got the itch to call up Realtors and list your house, ask yourself if you’re doing it for one of these reasons—and then maybe don’t make that call.

You’re exhausted

You bought a house and learned the dark secret of owning a property: You have to maintain it. Home maintenance can be a lot—in fact, about 28% of people who report buyer’s remorse about their house cite the time and cost of home maintenance as the primary reason.

Anyone who’s owned a home knows that the problems seem endless. You fix the roof, and the water heater goes. You replace the water heater, and your air conditioner dies. Selling the house might feel like a weight lifting off your shoulders. It’s important to keep in mind, however, that any property you buy after selling this house will also require maintenance—maintenance you’ll either be doing yourself, or paying someone else to do through HOA or condo fees. Selling your current home won’t remove the need for maintenance and repairs. Even going from an older home to a newer one doesn’t guarantee you won’t have a lot of maintenance to do—in a survey conducted by insurance company Hippo, 60% of new construction homeowners spent more on maintenance than they expected.

If you’re happy with your current home except for the maintenance work, spacing out and planning the work can help make it more manageable. And paying for a home warranty service (or just hiring a handyman) can give you a break from the constant effort, at least.

Timing the market

When you buy a house, the expectation is that it will increase in value over time—while you’re simultaneously increasing your equity in it. Normally this is a long-term situation, but sometimes the real estate market in your area heats up rapidly, and you hatch a plan: You’ll sell at the high, rent for a year, then buy a house again when the market dips. That’s called “timing the market,” and it’s usually a bad reason to sell a house you otherwise love.

“I worked with a couple that had bought themselves a very beautiful house in a quiet neighborhood just outside the city,” says real estate expert and owner of Fast Home Buyer California YK Kuliev. “They had spent years waiting for it to get just right for them—custom kitchen, landscaped yard, the whole deal. They saw headline after headline about record-breaking sale prices, and thought to themselves: ‘Let’s cash out now while prices are at the top.’ They did it and made really good money, but they did not have a new home lined up. They figured they would rent for a year, wait for the market to cool down, then buy again. Jump to 18 months later, and they are priced out of the very neighborhoods they used to call home. They scoured for a much smaller house in a much less desirable location and none of those personal touches built up over years in their prior home. That attempt to time the market cost them their dream home.”

Not only does timing the market risk a home you’re comfortable in, the profits are often illusory because you wind up paying rent—and often more of it, and for a longer period, than anticipated. “They think they’re going to cash out at the perfect moment,” notes Jessica Robinson, co-owner of Family Nest North Central Florida. “But forget they still have to live somewhere after they sell.”

The one that got away

One of the most frustrating aspects of buying a house is the competition—the other buyers who swoop in with all-cash offers, or offers way over list price. Bidding wars can quickly put your dream home out of your financial reach. And sometimes you see a house you’d love to buy, but it isn’t on the market when you’re ready to dive in.

But if the dream home you were denied suddenly becomes available, selling your current home to jump at it can be a huge mistake for a variety of reasons:

• Sweat equity. If you’ve put time, effort, and money into renovating your current home, you might not get a return on those investments.

• Financial loss. If you haven’t lived in your current home for at least two years, prepared to get smacked with some gnarly capital gains taxes. Your mortgage lender might have a penalty for paying off the loan too soon. And you’ll be paying all the fees and closing costs, eroding any small gain you might have made in the home’s equity.

• Disappointment. Dream homes don’t always work out the way you expect. A house that looks superficially ideal might turn out to have hidden problems, or you might not use the amenities as often as you think you will—or at all.

If the only reason you want to sell your house is a form of FOMO, it’s probably going to be a mistake.

You’re bored

Buying and moving into a new house is an exciting experience. There’s the thrill of finding the right house, the joy of starting a new chapter in your life, and then the buzz of activity as you decorate, renovate, and get to know your neighborhood.

But eventually you settle in, finish the projects, and fall into a routine. For some people, that leads to a sense of boredom with the house—and a regrettable decision to sell just because the excitement has faded.

Robinson has seen this firsthand. “I’ll never forget a couple I worked with who sold their home because they were ‘just incredibly bored’ with their house,” she says. “It was a beautiful house, great neighborhood—but after a few years, they just felt restless.”

It was a predictably terrible idea. “They rushed to list without a solid plan and ended up in a smaller, more expensive home that needed a mountain of repairs,” she explains. “Within six months, they admitted they missed their old place and regretted the whole thing.”

Kuliev also recalls one client who simply wanted ‘a change of scenery.’ “She thought a move to a trendier area would be ‘fun,’” he recalls. “She listed her condo, sold it quickly, and bought a loft in a newer development. Six months later, her commute was longer, the community felt more impersonal, and those HOA fees were much heftier. She confessed that she missed the coziness and character of her old place. That boredom cost tens of thousands in closing costs, fees, and an emotional toll none had expected.”

OpenAI is rolling back a recent update to GPT-4o, the default model that powers ChatGPT, following complaints from users that it made the chat bot act like a weirdo. “The last couple of GPT-4o updates have made the personality too sycophant-y and annoying (even though there are some very good parts of it), and we are working on fixes asap, some today and some this week,” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in a X post spotted by TechCrunch. 

As of midday Tuesday, Altman said ChatGPT was running on an older, less sycophantic version of GPT-4o for all free users. The company hopes to get paid users back on an older release of the model by later today. “We’re working on additional fixes to model personality and will share more in the coming days,” Altman said, adding OpenAI would share more information about what went wrong “at some point.” 

OpenAI released the new GPT-4o late last week. By the weekend, people began noticing ChatGPT was being overly agreeable and verbose in its praise. As you can see from the X post below, often that praise was also inappropriate and strange. 

Improving the emotional intelligence of its models, in so far as an algorithm can posses the trait, has been a recent focus for OpenAI. For instance, with GPT-4.5, the company said the model was better at responding with warmth and understanding than its previous systems. In trying to bring that same capability to the more affordable GPT-4o, it seems OpenAI got something wrong. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-rolls-back-update-that-made-chatgpt-an-ass-kissing-weirdo-203056185.html?src=rss

Firefox has launched its long-awaited tab groups feature, responding to the most upvoted request in Mozilla Connect’s three-year history. The feature allows users to organize tabs by name or color through a drag-and-drop interface.

Mozilla is now developing an AI-powered “smart tab groups” feature that automatically suggests organization based on open tabs. Unlike competitors, the company said, Firefox processes this data locally, keeping tab information on the user’s device rather than sending it to cloud servers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More Android users will be able to use their phones to verify their identities instead of their drivers licenses or passports, as Google Wallet is expanding its digital ID features to more U.S. states and the UK.

In an April 29 blog post, Google announced that residents in Arkansas, Montana, Puerto Rico, and West Virginia will soon be able to add their government-issued IDs—drivers licenses and state identification cards—to Google Wallet. This feature has already rolled out for those who live in Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Maryland, and New Mexico. ID pass, Google Wallet’s digital passport feature, will also be expanded to UK residents.

What you can do with Google Wallet’s digital IDs

Digital IDs (in Google Wallet or state-specific apps) can already be used to get through TSA checkpoints at supported airports as long as they are REAL ID complaint. Google Wallet recently added an ID pass feature for U.S. passports, which are also accepted by TSA and can be used in lieu of a REAL ID. With the latest update, residents of Arizona, Georgia, Maryland, and New Mexico will be able to to use digital IDs stored in Google Wallet at the DMV.

Google is also expanding options for using your digital ID online, such as for recovering your Amazon account, accessing online health services through CVS and MyChart, and verifying profiles on digital platforms like Uber. Some apps already permit digital IDs for identity verification, and Google plans to integrate Zero Knowledge Proof (ZKP) age verification across devices and services that access digital IDs via Google Wallet.

For users in the UK, digital IDs in Google Wallet can be used to verify Railcard eligibility.

Google Wallet will soon be available in 50 additional countries for storing digital passes (like tickets), though Google has not yet indicated where.

How to add a digital ID to Google Wallet

To add your state-issued ID to Google Wallet, open the app on your Android device and tap the + icon > ID > Driver’s license or state ID. You can also add your passport to ID pass via the + icon > ID > ID pass. Hit Get Started and follow the in-app prompts to scan your passport and face for approval.

Finally, while a digital ID is convenient, it isn’t a full replacement for your physical ID card or passport. You may still need to present these when traveling or using certain services, so you should still carry them with you.

Firefox now lets you organize your tabs. Four years after its biggest rivals launched tab groups, Mozilla published a nearly 1,000-word blog post recounting the feature’s long road from user requests to launch. (Consider skipping it if you don’t like long-winded acceptance speeches.) “What happens when 4,500 people ask for the same feature?” the company asked rhetorically. “At Firefox, we build it.”

Of course, those users may have requested tab groups partly because Firefox was the only major browser without them. Chrome, Safari and Edge launched tab groups in 2021. Hell, Vivaldi has had them since 2016.

Tardiness aside, Firefox users will welcome the chance to tidy up the clutter. The feature lets you drag and drop tabs into groups and label them by name or color. Mozilla says tab groups are on-device and never uploaded to the cloud. “Tab groups aren’t just about decluttering,” Firefox product manager Stefan Smagula said. “It’s about reclaiming your flow and finding focus again.”

Up next for Firefox tabs: The tech industry’s favorite buzzword. Mozilla is testing smart tab groups, powered by AI, which suggest names and groups based on your open tabs.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/firefox-finally-adds-tab-groups-195130482.html?src=rss

This is a video from Screen Junkies of 1993’s banger of bangers ‘Tombstone’ getting the honest trailer treatment in honor of the late Val Kilmer. His portrayal of Doc Holliday is the movie is arguably one of the greatest pieces of acting ever acted, and if you watched it and didn’t go to bed wishing Doc was your huckleberry, you’re either lying to yourself or there’s something wrong with you.

A new study [PDF] reveals AI-generated code frequently references non-existent third-party libraries, creating opportunities for supply-chain attacks. Researchers analyzed 576,000 code samples from 16 popular large language models and found 19.7% of package dependencies — 440,445 in total — were “hallucinated.”

These non-existent dependencies exacerbate dependency confusion attacks, where malicious packages with identical names to legitimate ones can infiltrate software. Open source models hallucinated at nearly 22%, compared to 5% for commercial models. “Once the attacker publishes a package under the hallucinated name, containing some malicious code, they rely on the model suggesting that name to unsuspecting users,” said lead researcher Joseph Spracklen. Alarmingly, 43% of hallucinations repeated across multiple queries, making them predictable targets.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As Meta’s first-ever generative AI conference gets underway, the company is also previewing a significant update on its plans to bring AI features to WhatsApp chats. Buried in its LlamaCon updates, the company shared that it’s working on something called “Private Processing,” which will allow users to take advantage of generative AI capabilities within WhatsApp without eroding its privacy features.

According to Meta, Private Processing is an “optional capability” that will enable people to “leverage AI capabilities for things like summarizing unread messages or refining them, while keeping messages private.” WhatsApp, of course, is known for its strong privacy protections and end-to-end encryption. That would seem incompatible with cloud-based AI features like Meta AI. But Private Processing will essentially allow Meta to do both.

Meta has shared more details about how it will accomplish this over on its engineering blog but, as Wired points out, it’s a similar model as Apple’s Private Cloud Compute (which allows the iPhone maker to implement Apple AI without sending all your data to the cloud). Here’s how Meta describes its approach.

We’re excited to share an initial overview of Private Processing, a new technology we’ve built to support people’s needs and aspirations to leverage AI in a secure and privacy-preserving way. This confidential computing infrastructure, built on top of a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), will make it possible for people to direct AI to process their requests — like summarizing unread WhatsApp threads or getting writing suggestions — in our secure and private cloud environment. In other words, Private Processing will allow users to leverage powerful AI features, while preserving WhatsApp’s core privacy promise, ensuring no one except you and the people you’re talking to can access or share your personal messages, not even Meta or WhatsApp.

The company seems well-aware such a plan will likely be met with skepticism. WhatsApp is regularly targeted by bad actors as it is. To address inevitable concerns from the security community, the company says it will allow security researchers and others to audit Private Processing, and will make the technology part of its bug bounty program that rewards people who find security vulnerabilities in its services.

It’s not clear when generative AI features may actually be available in WhatsApp chats — the company describes its announcement today as merely a “first look” at the technology — but it does note that Private Processing and “similar infrastructure” could have use cases beyond its messaging app.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-has-a-plan-to-bring-ai-to-whatsapp-chats-without-breaking-privacy-193556026.html?src=rss

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While there was no question we’d be getting another Prime Day in 2025, now it’s official: In a press release, Amazon has confirmed the return of what is sure to be biggest online sales event of the year. Here is everything we know so far about this year’s sale.

What is Prime Day?

While Amazon holds several sales throughout the year (including its recent Big Spring Sale and last year’s October Prime Big Deal Days),the summer sale is typically Amazon’s biggest, most-hyped annual event. It’s typically a two-day affair, with deals in virtually every category you can think of. Prime Day is usually when you can expect to see some products drop to record low prices, though not all deals are as great as they seem (I always vet deals with price tracking tools to make sure they’re legit).

When is Prime Day 2025?

While Amazon has announced the event will happen in July, they haven’t specified the dates yet. Last year, the 48-hour sale ran from Tuesday, July 16 to Wednesday, July 17. If I were a betting man, I’d wager the sale will be on July 15 and July 16 this year, but that’s just speculation. I’ll update this post once we know anything official.

Do you need to be a Prime Member to shop during Prime Day?

You will need to be a Prime Member to shop all of Amazon’s Prime Day deals and get free shipping. Prime membership starts at $14.99 per month ($139 per year). It’s easy to figure out if yearly Prime membership is worth it for you, but remember you can always cancel your Prime membership once the sale is over—Amazon offers free 30-day trials, so you can shop both days of the event and still have time to cancel before you get charged. (Here’s how to sign up for a Prime account.)

What sales can you expect during Prime Day?

Since Prime Day happens in the summer, you can find deals on outdoorsy stuff, like gardening equipment, but the best discounts are usually on tech and Amazon devices. Amazon has already announced some categories that will be on sale, including electronics, kitchen, beauty, and apparel.

Prime Day is a good time to shop other retailers’ sales too

You can always expect major retailers to have their own competitive sales, the big ones being Best Buy, Target, and Walmart. I will be updating this post with details on those offerings as soon as they’ve been announced.

Some tips for shopping during Prime Day

If this will be your first Prime Day, you need to know some basic things about Amazon sales:

• You can share your Prime membership with family members even if they don’t live with you

• You can set price alerts for products you want and your Alexa devices can notify you when they go on sale

• There are usually some “Invite-Only” deals that you can sign up for; there are tools you can use to see if the deal you’re looking at is good or not.

But if you only take one bit of advice for shopping on Prime Day, let it be this: Don’t buy anything you weren’t going to buy anyway. A good way to make sure you do this is by making a list of the products you do want beforehand, and only shopping from that list during the sale.

There’s a new animated Star Wars show coming soon and it’s set to actually premiere in the game Fortnite. Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld will be available to watch in-game starting on May 2 at 10AM ET. This is two full days before the show streams on Disney+.

Viewing will take place in a new in-game location called Star Wars Watch Party Island. Epic Games says that this area was built using Unreal Editor for Fortnite and uses official assets to create a “breathtaking environment inspired by a galaxy far, far away.” Players will only have access to the first two episodes.

For the uninitiated, Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld is an anthology series consisting of animated shorts. It takes a look at the criminal underworld, centering on the bounty hunter Cad Bane and the force-sensitive assassin Asajj Ventress.

This is part of a larger collaboration between Fortnite and Star Wars. The game will receive new Star Wars content every week for use in Battle Royale. Players will be able to pilot X-wings and duke it out as Emperor Palpatine. A dark side version of Jar Jar Binks will also be a playable character.

This isn’t the first time our favorite space wizards appeared in Fortnite. The game once made Luke, Han and Leia playable characters and added the iconic lightsaber as a weapon.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/new-star-wars-series-will-premiere-in-fortnite-of-all-places-185859342.html?src=rss

Kosmos 482, a failed Soviet Venus probe, is expected to make an uncontrolled reentry in mid-May after orbiting Earth for 53 years. Gizmodo reports: The lander module from an old Soviet spacecraft is expected to reenter Earth’s atmosphere during the second week of May, according to Marco Langbroek, a satellite tracker based in Leiden, the Netherlands. “As this is a lander that was designed to survive passage through the Venus atmosphere, it is possible that it will survive reentry through the Earth atmosphere intact, and impact intact,” Langbroek wrote in a blog update. “The risks involved are not particularly high, but not zero.”

Kosmos 482 launched on March 31, 1972 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome spaceport in Kazakhstan. The mission was an attempt by the Soviet space program to reach Venus, but it failed to gain enough velocity to enter a transfer trajectory toward the scorching-hot planet. A malfunction resulted in an engine burn that wasn’t sufficient to reach Venus’ orbit and left the spacecraft in an elliptical Earth orbit, according to NASA. The spacecraft broke apart into four different pieces, with two of the smaller fragments reentering over Ashburton, New Zealand, two days after launch. Meanwhile, two remaining pieces, believed to be the payload and the detached upper-stage engine unit, entered a higher orbit measuring 130 by 6,089 miles (210 by 9,800 kilometers).

The failed mission consisted of a carrier bus and a lander probe, which together form a spherical pressure vessel weighing more than 1,000 pounds (495 kilograms). Considering its mass, “risks are similar to that of a meteorite impact,” Langbroek wrote. As of now, it’s hard to determine exactly when the spacecraft will reenter. Langbroek estimates that the reentry will take place on May 10, but a more precise date will get clearer as the reentry date nears.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.