It’s not easy to maintain your privacy when using technology today. That’s largely the fault of companies who prioritize data collection over the integrity of their users. But even though I’m quite used to the lack of respect most companies pay towards my privacy and security, I have to admit, I’m a bit taken aback by T-Mobile’s latest decision.

T-Life, T-Mobile’s tech support app, has a rather unconventional and unnerving feature. For some users, it appears T-Life can record your screen whenever you have the app open. This setting is quite hidden, and worse, enabled by default. Who signed off on this?

How T-Life’s screen recording works

Thankfully, the privacy and security implications aren’t quite as bad as the headlines make it seem. T-Mobile says the feature is strictly for T-Life tech support—not for spying. As a T-Mobile spokesperson told CNET, “To help us give customers who use T-Life a smoother experience, we are rolling out a new tool in the app that will help us quickly troubleshoot reported or detected issues. This tool records activities within the app only and does not see or access any personal information.”

Still, this explanation doesn’t excuse quietly enabling in-app screen recording for customers without their knowledge. I have no issue with a company like T-Mobile offering tools that aid tech support when all parties are willing and able, but as CNET points out, the app already has such a feature called “Screen Share” under Help & support. Seems redundant to have a separate “screen recording” setting that serves a similar purpose—especially when it appears the company wasn’t planning on telling people about it before the news broke.

When you do take a look at the setting in the T-Life app, you’ll see the following description: “We use a tool to record how customers use the app to analyze and improve your experience. Only T-Mobile will review and analyze your info. If you turn this toggle on or magenta, we will record your screen while you use the app. If you turn this toggle off or gray, we will not record your screen.” Yikes.

How to disable T-Life’s screen recording

To disable the feature, open T-Life, then head to Settings > Preferences. Here, you’ll see Screen recording tool, where you can disable the setting. (You’ll know it’s off if it turns gray.)

If you don’t see the setting, you might not be affected. T-Life hasn’t rolled out this feature to all users yet, so it is possible the app isn’t screen recording for you at this time. Reports say T-Mobile has rolled this out to iPhone and Android users alike, so don’t assume you’re safe because you use one platform or the other.

The world faces an 80% probability of breaking another annual temperature record within the next five years, according to a forecast released Wednesday by the World Meteorological Organization and the UK Meteorological Office.

The projections, derived from more than 200 computer simulations run by 10 global scientific centers, indicate an 86% chance that one of the next five years will surpass the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming threshold established by the Paris climate accord, with a 70% chance that the entire five-year period will average above that milestone.

For the first time, the agencies identified a slight possibility that global annual temperatures could reach the more alarming 2 degrees Celsius benchmark before the decade’s end.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A federal judge has given Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employees access to US Treasury payment systems as long as they meet training and vetting requirements but denied the Trump administration’s motion to completely dissolve a preliminary injunction.

US District Judge Jeannette Vargas of the Southern District of New York is overseeing a case filed against President Trump by 19 states led by New York. In February, Vargas issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting the Treasury Department from granting DOGE access to systems containing personally identifiable information or confidential financial information.

In April, Vargas allowed DOGE employee Ryan Wunderly to access the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Fiscal Services (BFS) system, after government declarations said “that Wunderly has undergone the same vetting and security clearance process that applies to any other Treasury Department employee provided with access to BFS payment systems.” In an order yesterday, Vargas ruled that four more employees can access the system.

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Once Cyberpunk 2077 worked out its oh-so-many kinks, it was a damn good game. And more is on the way. CD Projekt Red said on Wednesday that its sequel has moved into pre-production.

It wasn’t a secret that a sequel was in the works. In 2022, CDPR shared a roadmap describing “Project Orion.” It would “further develop the potential embodied by [the Cyberpunk 2077] universe.” That’s as clear as you can get without using the word “sequel.”

Now, CDPR is shedding the codename as development forges ahead. “Several weeks ago, the CD Projekt Red team responsible for the next big game set in the Cyberpunk universe completed the project’s conceptual phase,” the publisher wrote. “As a result, Cyberpunk 2 — previously known under the codename Project Orion — has progressed to pre-production.”

CD Projekt Red

Of course, entering pre-production is still a long way from something you can play. Following the fiasco last time, expect CDPR to play it safe and take more time with the final stages.

On a related note, CDPR said Phantom Liberty has sold 10 million copies. The massive expansion launched on PC and consoles in late 2023. It’s part of Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition, which includes the base game and all the DLC. That version arrived on PC and consoles in 2023. It will be heading to Switch 2 and macOS soon.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/the-cyberpunk-2077-sequel-finally-makes-it-to-preproduction-174141991.html?src=rss

A fairly comprehensive look at the early personal computer culture reveals that from 1975 through early 1977, personal computers remained “almost exclusively the province of hobbyists who loved to play with computers and found them inherently fascinating,” according to newly surfaced historical research. When BYTE magazine launched in 1975, its cover called computers “the world’s greatest toy,” reflecting the recreational rather than practical focus of early adopters.

A BYTE magazine survey from late 1976 showed these pioneers were remarkably homogeneous: 72% held at least a bachelor’s degree, had a median annual income of $20,000 ($123,000 in 2025 dollars), and were overwhelmingly male at 99%. Rather than developing practical software applications, early users gravitated toward games, particularly Star Trek simulations that appeared frequently in magazine advertisements and user group demonstrations.

The hobbyist community organized around local clubs like the famous Homebrew Computer Club, retail stores, and specialized magazines that helped establish what one researcher calls “a mythology of the microcomputer.” This narrative positioned hobbyists as democratizing heroes who “ripped the computer and the knowledge of how to use it from the hands of the priests, sharing freedom and power with the masses,” challenging what they termed the “computer priesthood” of institutional gatekeepers. This self-contained hobbyist culture would soon be “subsumed by a larger phenomenon” as businessmen began targeting mass markets in 1977.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The current incarnation of Google Photos was not Google’s first image management platform, but it’s been a big success. Ten years on, Google Photos remains one of Google’s most popular products, and it’s getting a couple of new features to celebrate its 10th year in operation. You’ll be able to share albums a bit more easily, and editing tools are getting a boost with, you guessed it, AI.

Google Photos made a splash in 2015 when it broke free of the spiraling Google+ social network, offering people supposedly unlimited free storage for compressed images. Of course, that was too good to last. In 2021, Google began limiting photo uploads to 15GB for free users, sharing the default account level storage with other services like Gmail and Drive. Today, Google encourages everyone to pay for a Google One subscription to get more space, which is a bit of a bummer. Regardless, people still use Google Photos extensively.

According to the company, Photos has more than 1.5 billion monthly users, and it stores more than 9 trillion photos and videos. When using the Photos app on a phone, you are prompted to automatically upload your camera roll, which makes it easy to keep all your memories backed up (and edge ever closer to the free storage limit). Photos has also long offered almost magical search capabilities, allowing you to search for the content of images to find them. That may seem less impressive now, but it was revolutionary a decade ago. Google says users perform over 370 million searches in Photos each month.

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While updating, upgrading, and reimagining your home can transform it into your dream home, the logistics involved can be daunting, even if you have a general contractor managing the project for you. One of the biggest challenges is setting your budget—unless you have an unlimited budget (lucky you!), determining what a home renovation will involve based on what you can afford is a key aspect of your plan.

It’s also one of the most confusing. When budgeting reality bumps up against your dream home fantasy, figuring out what to remove from the project can be difficult because of the emotional aspects involved—everything can seem equally necessary when you’re imagining your future life in the home. In order to pare things down in a coherent and rational way, take a page from business school experts and use the time-tested MoSCoW Method.

What is the MoSCoW method?

The MoSCoW method was innovated by software developer Dai Clegg in the 1990s as a way to prioritize components of a project in order to stay on schedule and within budget. Although it was initially envisioned as a software development tool (and more widely as a tool for managing business projects in general), it’s malleable enough that it can be ideal for varied circumstances—including getting control of a home renovation project.

The method involves breaking all the aspects of your project into four buckets, represented by the letters M, S, C, and W (the Os are just there to make the name more readable). The categories are:

• Must-haves. These are aspects of the project that are non-negotiable and mandatory.

• Should-haves. These are parts of the project that aren’t absolutely necessary, but are relatively important.

• Could-haves. These are smaller details that can easily be removed from the project or added in later if budget allows.

• Won’t haves. These are aspects of the project that aren’t under consideration at all.

The simplicity of the MoSCoW method is its main strength—it’s easy to whip your home reno budget into shape in a short time by plopping everything into the relevant bucket.

Using MoSCoW to plan a home renovation project

When you’re planning out your home renovation, start dropping each aspect into a bucket as you go:

• Things that absolutely have to be done are Must Haves. For example, if part of your renovation is replacing a leaking roof, that’s a Must Have—you have no choice, so that cost is baked into your budget from the get-go.

• Major components of the project that aren’t absolutely necessary fall into the Should Have bucket. If your old hardwood floors are worn but serviceable, replacing them is a big part of what you want to get out of the renovation—but you could leave them in place, or try to refinish them instead of replacing them. These would be the last parts of your project that you remove or downgrade.

• Grace notes and luxuries go into the Could Have bucket and held there pending how the budget plays out. For example, maybe you’d like your new flooring to have radiant heating. That’s nice, but not an absolute necessity. If money opens up later in the planning, you can toss it in.

• Finally, there’s the Won’t Have bucket. This might seem like an unnecessary step, since anything not already sorted into a bucket could be considered a Won’t Have. But the exercise of specifically labeling it as a Won’t Have is useful because it brings clarity to your priorities. If you find more budget later, you’ve already prioritized the Could Haves as more deserving of rescue. Won’t Haves aren’t necessarily things you’ll never do—they’re just things you’re not doing now. For example, maybe your HVAC system is a little old and you’re thinking it will need to be replaced in the next few years—but not at this moment, because you’re spending your money on all these other projects. So you put that into the Won’t Have bucket because you know you’ll be returning to it in the future.

Once you’ve done an initial categorization of your home renovation, you can start crunching numbers to see if changes are necessary or desired. Maybe you decide, on reflection, that a Should Have is really a Must Have, or vice versa. And if your budget can’t deliver on every priority, you can shift some things into the Could Have bucket and hold them in reserve for the future.

Any successful home renovation is as much about planning and prioritization as it is about budget and schedule management, and the MoSCoW Method can help ensure your project is on track before anyone touches a power tool.

How much Death Stranding are you willing to fire into your eyes? The game’s sequel arrives in just a few weeks, A Quiet Place: Day One director Michael Sarnoski is leading up a live-action film adaptation, and now Hideo Kojima has confirmed that an anime is in production.

Kojima teased the adaptation while discussing the more concrete live-action project in an interview with Vogue Japan. As picked up by VGC, the Metal Gear creator was talking about his cross-media ambitions for the Death Stranding, and comparing the planned film to other successful video game adaptations from recent years.

“When it comes to adapting games into visual media, there are works like The Last of Us, which stays true to the original storyline, and films like The Super Mario Bros Movie which are more of a service to fans of the game,” Kojima said, according to VGC’s translation.

“While these works have their own merits, as a film enthusiast, I want to pursue the expressive potential of cinema. I aim to create a Death Stranding that can only be realised through film, one that could win awards at festivals like the Cannes Film Festival or the Venice Film Festival. In fact, we are also currently working on an anime adaptation.”

Kojima didn’t offer any more information, so we don’t know how far along the anime project is, who is making it, when we can actually expect it to come out, or whether it will tie in with the upcoming live-action movie.

In the meantime, Norman Reedus’ Sam Porter Bridges will return in Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, which is coming to PS5 on June 22. Kojima Productions dropped its second trailer for the game in March, which clocked in at 10 minutes and gave us a closer look at what we’ll be getting up to in the sequel. (Spoiler alert: lots more walking.)

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/a-death-stranding-anime-is-in-the-works-165927348.html?src=rss