Valorant Mobile pre-registration is open in China

Nearly four years after it was originally announced, Riot Games has finally shared a look at Valorant Mobile. The mobile version of the competitive shooter was developed by LightSpeed Studios and will launch in China first before coming to other countries and regions.

Valorant Mobile looks like it relies on a lot of onscreen buttons, but based on a brief gameplay video, the game otherwise seems pretty similar to its PC counterpart in terms of speed and intensity. LightSpeed Studios successfully adapted PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds into PUBG Mobile, and Riot Games clearly believes the developer has managed to do the same with the originally mouse-based Valorant.

Coming to mobile has been in the works for Valorant for years, and makes a ton of sense given the current popularity of mobile first-person shooters like PUBG Mobile and Call of Duty: Warzone. This isn’t the first time the game’s precise gunplay has had to be adapted to a slightly more cumbersome control scheme, either. Valorant successfully made the jump to controllers when it launched on Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 in 2024. Mobile controls aren’t that much bigger of a hurdle in comparison.

Players in China can pre-register now to be ready for the next playtest, ahead of a more formal launch at some point in the future.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/valorant-mobile-pre-registration-is-open-in-china-180132021.html?src=rss

Instagram Is Using AI to Automatically Enroll Minors Into ‘Teen Accounts’

Meta is getting serious about the teens who use its services. Last year, the company rolled out “Teen Accounts” for Instagram, which add a number of restrictions, limitations, and features for users under the age of 18. Earlier this month, Meta rolled out Teen Accounts to Facebook and Messenger as well, and expanded some of those restrictions on Instagram specifically.

If your teen had a standard Instagram account when Meta started rolling this out, their account was automatically changed into a Teen Account. Of course, that only worked if they had their real age attached to the account: If a teen said their birthday made them 18 or older, no Teen Account for them.

Meta’s AI is snitching on Instagram teens

In response to this loophole, Meta is tasking its AI with rooting out teens purporting to be adults on Instagram. The company announced the experiment on Monday, revealing that tests will begin in the United States that same day. Meta is brief on the details here, but they do say that if the AI finds a standard account it suspects to be a teen, it will automatically switch them to a Teen Account—even if that account has an adult birthday.

This also isn’t Meta AI’s first rodeo. The company has used an AI model trained to identify whether a user is underage since 2022. The AI model looks for behaviors associated with teen users, as, according to Meta, people in the same age group react similarly to specific types of content. (Think about all those memes you don’t understand.)

One interesting “tell” comes with birthday posts: The AI looks at how users interact with an account on their birthday, and can make a determination from there. If the AI is seeing a lot of “happy 17th birthday” posts and DMs, that’s going to be quite obvious, but even if the messages track with how users under 18 tend to wish each other a happy birthday, the AI will get suspicious fast.

What happens if the AI gets it wrong?

There are probably many parents out there that have no issue with Instagram automatically changing their kids’ profiles to Teen Accounts. But this tech is driven by AI, and AI doesn’t always get it right: As such, there’s a good chance that the AI accidentally flags adult accounts as teens by mistake, locking users 18 and older into restrictions meant for minors.

That means your account will automatically take on some pretty drastic restrictions: You’ll go private if you aren’t already, and adult users won’t be able to see your posts or DM you without following first. You won’t see “violent” content, or posts promoting cosmetic procedures. (Perhaps no loss there.) Instagram will also warn you whenever you use the app for 60 minutes in one day, advising you to stop. And while you don’t need to, your account will enter “sleep mode” between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., muting alerts and sending auto-replies to DMs. (To be fair, perhaps many of us adults would benefit from these restrictions.)

If Instagram thinks you’re 16 or 17, you’ll be able to manually disable some of these limitations, but that’s not really the point. If you’re an adult, you shouldn’t expect Instagram to change the parameters of your account because its AI bot got it wrong. Meta knows it, too. As the company says it its blog post: “We’re taking steps to ensure our technology is accurate and that we are correctly placing teens we identify into protective, age-appropriate settings, but in case we make a mistake, we’re giving people the option to change their settings.”

The company hasn’t said exactly what those mitigation steps are yet, so I’ll update this piece once we know for sure. My guess, however, is there will be an option in settings to verify your age and transfer your account back to an adult account.

Car With LED Grill Sings Along To Songs

These are a couple videos from Instagram user justinthelightguy of his Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat that’s been modded with a grill of LEDs that can be programmed to sing along to songs. Finally, we’re one step closer to making the movie Cars a reality! Next stop, conversational AI and windshield eyeballs.

Google Faces Off With US Government in Attempt To Break Up Company in Search Monopoly Case

Google is confronting an existential threat as the U.S. government tries to break up the company as punishment for turning its revolutionary search engine into an illegal monopoly. From a report: The drama began to unfold Monday in a Washington courtroom as three weeks of hearings kicked off to determine how the company should be penalized for operating a monopoly in search. In its opening arguments, federal antitrust enforcers also urged the court to impose forward-looking remedies to prevent Google from using artificial intelligence to further its dominance. “This is a moment in time, we’re at an inflection point, will we abandon the search market and surrender them to control of the monopolists or will we let competition prevail and give choice to future generations,” said Justice Department attorney David Dahlquist.

The proceedings, known in legal parlance as a “remedy hearing,” are set to feature a parade of witnesses that includes Google CEO Sundar Pichai. The U.S. Department of Justice is asking a federal judge to order a radical shake-up that would ban Google from striking the multibillion dollar deals with Apple and other tech companies that shield its search engine from competition, share its repository of valuable user data with rivals and force a sale of its popular Chrome browser. Google’s attorney, John Schmidtlein, said in his opening statement that the court should take a much lighter touch. He said the government’s heavy-handed proposed remedies wouldn’t boost competition but instead unfairly reward lesser rivals with inferior technology. “Google won its place in the market fair and square,” Schmidtlein said.


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Bluesky is getting blue checkmarks and an official verification system

Bluesky is adopting an official verification system after all. In an update, the company said it plans to grant blue checkmarks to “authentic and notable” accounts. It will also allow some “trusted organizations” to verify users as well.

The change is a notable shift for the upstart platform, which previously resisted the idea of centralized verification. Up to now, the company has relied on a domain-based verification system, which allows users to change their handles to match domains that they are associated with. But that approach was often criticized for being overly complicated and offering insufficient protection from impersonation. 

These critiques have only amplified as Bluesky has grown in popularity and attracted more prominent users. For example, when former President Barack Obama joined Bluesky in recent weeks, his handle did not use a custom domain, which understandably led many users to question whether the account was authentic. Instead, individual Bluesky employees ended up publicly vouching that the account was legitimate

Under Bluesky’s new system, the company will proactively verify certain accounts and add a prominent blue checkmark to their profile. It’s not clear what criteria Bluesky will use for these badges or how it plans to verify users’ identities. Additionally, there will be a slightly different blue badge — one with “scalloped edges” — that certain “trusted organizations” can grant through a new “trusted verifiers” feature. 

Trusted verification.
Bluesky

The New York Times is one such organization, and the newspaper will now be able to hand out blue checks to its journalists. Bluesky didn’t say what other organizations will be able to participate in the program, but added that it will review verification from third-parties in order to “ensure authenticity.”

Notably, Bluesky said that people and organizations are still “highly encourage(d)” to verify themselves via a custom domain. And it sounds like the new blue ticks may be in short supply, at least to start. “During this initial phase, Bluesky is not accepting direct applications for verification,” the company wrote in its announcement. “As this feature stabilizes, we’ll launch a request form for notable and authentic accounts interested in becoming verified or becoming trusted verifiers.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/bluesky-is-getting-blue-checkmarks-and-an-official-verification-system-173204662.html?src=rss

Nintendo is going after the person behind last year’s massive Pokémon leak

Nintendo is going after the leaker behind last year’s massive Pokémon data breach, according to a report by Polygon. The company has asked a California court to force Discord to give up the identity of the person behind the leak, who goes by the name “GameFreakOUT” on the platform.

Nintendo wants Discord to release the name, address, phone number and email address of the leaker. It said in a subpoena that the person uploaded “confidential materials not released to the public” to a Discord server called FreakLeak. After that, the leaked materials reached every nook-and-cranny of the Internet.

These materials included source codes, early character designs, references to an upcoming MMO and transcripts of design meetings. There was even information about an unreleased Detective Pikachu sequel and other planned Pokémon movies. The data breach included so much data that it’s become known as the “Teraleak” on the internet, referring to the sheer breadth and scope of the leaked materials.

Babe wake up, a new Pokémon beta video from the Teraleak just dropped!

▶️ A Deep Dive Into Pokemon Sword & Shield’s Scrapped Content

[ Full video link in the first reply ] pic.twitter.com/G8pEzWDCHQ

— Centro LEAKS (@CentroLeaks) April 17, 2025

As of this writing, Discord hasn’t publicly addressed the request. We’ve reached out to the company and will update this post when we hear back. If the platform complies with Nintendo’s request, it’s likely that “GameFreakOUT” will face a lawsuit.

In the past, Nintendo has taken people to court over Pokémon leaks. This happened when photos of a Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield strategy guide were distributed online before the games were released. The defendants in that case were required to pay $150,000 each in damages and attorneys’ fees.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/nintendo-is-going-after-the-person-behind-last-years-massive-pokemon-leak-171336637.html?src=rss

How to watch Bethesda reveal the Oblivion remake

Barring a completely shocking turn of events, it seems that Microsoft and Bethesda are about to formally unveil the long-rumored remake of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. The publisher will hold a livestream on Tuesday, April 21 at 11AM ET. You can watch it on YouTube or right here by clicking the play button on the above video when the time is right.

Bethesda hasn’t explicitly said what the stream is about. The YouTube video is currently titled “All will be revealed…” But the teaser image is a dead giveaway, considering the “IV” logo and the face shield that it depicts. The logo doesn’t match the Diablo IV font either.

So, yes, this is almost certainly the Oblivion remake that’s said to have been in the works for years. Screenshots from the game were recently spotted on developer Virtuos’ website. Reports suggest that Bethesda will release the remake on PC, Xbox Series X/S (including on Game Pass) and PS5 this week, so Elder Scrolls fans might want to start making space on their system storage now. I wonder if they’ll do a Skyrim remake next.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/how-to-watch-bethesda-reveal-the-oblivion-remake-165806233.html?src=rss

Verizon Consumer CEO Says Net Neutrality ‘Went Literally Nowhere’

Verizon Consumer CEO Sowmyanarayan Sampath has declared that net neutrality regulations “went literally nowhere.” Sampath claimed he couldn’t identify what problem net neutrality was attempting to solve, despite Verizon’s history of aggressive lobbying against such rules. “I don’t know what net neutrality does,” Sampath told The Verge. “I still don’t know what problem we are trying to solve with net neutrality.”

When pressed about potential anti-competitive behaviors like zero-rating services, Sampath deflected by focusing exclusively on traffic management concerns, arguing that networks require prioritization capabilities during congestion. “For traffic management purposes, we need to have some controls in the network,” he stated. The interview comes as Verizon faces a different regulatory challenge from FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, who is holding up Verizon’s Frontier acquisition over the company’s diversity initiatives.


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What Fruits and Vegetables Are in Season in April (and How to Prepare Them)

Fresh produce is probably one of the greatest gifts we can enjoy from nature. Call me a tree-hugger, but plants are seriously incredible. I don’t have a proper garden at the moment—it’s a north-facing potted plant set-up on my balcony—but if you’ve ever grown vegetables or even flowers from seeds, you know what I mean. Plants make gigantic blooms and fruit out of dirt and sunshine. That’s magic, and we reap the benefits. In this monthly article, I’ll take a look at the fruits and veggies coming into season and some recipes you can use them in.

As for this month: It’s been spring for a while but it finally feels like it. And after a long winter, greens and a few fruits are coming back into our markets.

Why you should buy seasonal produce

Any chef and serious home cook will be interested in cooking seasonally (using in-season produce for your particular locale). Using seasonal produce often comes with a cheaper price tag; it will likely be more abundant in your region; and the produce exhibits the best possible flavor profile since it doesn’t have to travel great distances to arrive at your market. 

When you’re buying in season, you’ll possibly see a greater variety of certain items, like tender greens and fruits that don’t travel out of state well. I often see green chard on the shelves—but when rainbow chard shows up I suddenly feel like making Swiss capuns again. 

What’s in season right now

The produce shelves in late February to early April are always less robust on this side of the hemisphere. But as soon as the frost ends, new fruits and veggies start to show up. For those who are growing their own food, keep up with our Home and Garden section for tips.

The produce to check out right now:

  • Asparagus

  • Beet greens

  • Parsnips

  • Lettuce

  • Radishes and their greens

  • Rhubarb

  • Spinach 

  • Turnips

  • Chard

  • Arugula

  • Escarole

  • Snap peas

  • Snow peas

Produce to look forward to:

  • Apricots

  • Strawberries

Keep in mind that your particular region may be warmer or cooler—so don’t despair if it’s not quite rhubarb season for a few more weeks in your area, and if you’ve had strawberries for a week already, hooray for you!

What to cook with your spring bounty

You might have noticed that the greens and root vegetables are the stars of spring. It’s a great time to pack this nutritious foliage into your savory meals before we get obsessed with fruit in a couple of months. 

One of my favorite things to do with leafy greens like spinach, chard, beet and radish greens, and escarole—not to mention mustard greens and kale—is to chop them up and wilt them down in a lightly oiled frying pan with some salt and garlic. Then I can use them in any number of ways, like filling omelets, stirring them into soups and stews, as a pizza topping, and mixing them into rice dishes. 

I adore blanched asparagus with eggs (hard boiled, scrambled, omelets—all eggs), but if you’re using it as a side dish, try asparagus treated in this simple and savory way. Roast your turnips and parsnips easily in the air fryer. Bulk up your warm salads with arugula, snap peas, and leaf lettuce, and toss snow peas into savory stir fries. 

Rhubarb is a special stalk. It has a tart flavor and brilliant rosy color when cooked, and I do recommend cooking them or treating them in the following ways. They’re far too sour when used raw. The leaves are toxic so cut those off and compost them if they are still on your stalk. Use your rhubarb in pies, pickle them, make this rhubarb cake, or try rhubarb-infused vodka.   

Fresh apricots and strawberries will be on their way shortly, so keep your eyes peeled at the local farmers markets. You’ll know summer is around the corner when you see those seafoam green containers with loads of wee strawberries filled to the top. 

Annoyed ChatGPT users complain about bot’s relentlessly positive tone

Ask ChatGPT anything lately—how to poach an egg, whether you should hug a cactus—and you may be greeted with a burst of purple praise: “Good question! You’re very astute to ask that.” To some extent, ChatGPT has been a sycophant for years, but since late March, a growing cohort of Redditors, X users, and Ars readers say that GPT-4o’s relentless pep has crossed the line from friendly to unbearable.

“ChatGPT is suddenly the biggest suckup I’ve ever met,” wrote software engineer Craig Weiss in a widely shared tweet on Friday. “It literally will validate everything I say.”

“EXACTLY WHAT I’VE BEEN SAYING,” replied a Reddit user who references Weiss’ tweet, sparking yet another thread about ChatGPT being a sycophant. Recently, other Reddit users have described feeling “buttered up” and unable to take the “phony act” anymore, while some complain that ChatGPT “wants to pretend all questions are exciting and it’s freaking annoying.”

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HBO’s The Last of Us reaches “The Moment” game fans have been dreading

New episodes of season 2 of The Last of Us are premiering on HBO every Sunday night, and Ars’ Kyle Orland (who’s played the games) and Andrew Cunningham (who hasn’t) will be talking about them here every Monday morning. While these recaps don’t delve into every single plot point of the episode, there are obviously heavy spoilers contained within, so go watch the episode first if you want to go in fresh.

Kyle: I’d like to personally welcome Andrew and everyone else who didn’t play The Last of Us Part 2 to the summer of 2020, when the gaming world was rocked by the most shocking video game character permadeath this side of Final Fantasy VII.

Before we get into how they changed Joel’s pivotal death scene for the TV show, and why I think it doesn’t work quite as well here, I’d love to hear more about what was going through your head both as it was happening and after.

Andrew: This should, if nothing else, reinforce my bona fides as someone who has not the faintest idea what is coming.

My main reaction is “Boy, Kyle just let me say a whole bunch of things last week even though clearly he knew this was what was going to happen!” I thought we were watching the opening to a second season of a TV show in the first episode, the establishment of a new status quo that we would then explore over the course of the next few episodes. But we were, instead, playing the tutorial level of a second video game, right before everything blows up.

I was pretty astonished by what the show did to Joel. Not just because I didn’t see it coming! But because it leaves the show without one of the two nuanced and well-developed characters we spent all of last season building up. I don’t, uh, love it, as a storytelling decision.


Probably the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Credit:
HBO

Kyle: I will say it was hard not even alluding to what was coming last week, but it was also kind of fun just letting you have your last “Sweet Summer Child” moments in the sun. I also felt that Joel’s sudden absence hurt the remainder of the game, though based on the storytelling beats we’ve seen and/or missed so far, I wouldn’t be shocked if we have some flashbacks…

Back in 2020, I actually had the shocking moment spoiled by some pretty major leaks that I ended up covering as a journalist weeks before I was able to review the game myself.

Aside from that, though, the show kind of dampens the impact of “The Moment” by making Abby’s motivations crystal clear for 1.5 episodes leading up to it. In the game, you actually play as a mostly blank-slate Abby for a few brief scenes before being rescued by Joel. After that, the shocking turnaround plays out as a quick gut punch during a cutscene that has a lot less Abby-monologuing than the show did.

The game doesn’t fill in the details about the “why” of it all for the audience until much later, which makes the whole thing that much more impactful. But maybe the showrunners figured that since the game already exists, it would be hard to keep the audience off balance like that for weeks when they could just look up what was going on…

Andrew: The monologuing was off-putting, honestly, and gets to the heart of what I’m concerned about. I’ll refrain from speculating a ton about a game whose plot it would take me about 30 seconds to look up and read, but I’m not particularly excited to watch Ellie chase down this generically angst-ridden fresh-faced former Firefly? Does the show now need to be carried by a bunch of the Jackson Hole characters we just met? None of these possibilities are as interesting to me as watching Joel and an adult Ellie deal with their issues.


Ellie will probably be just fine after all this, right?
Credit:
HBO

Kyle: Yeah, I don’t think it’s spoiling much to say that Joel and Ellie’s relationship carried the first game, and now it’s obvious that Ellie’s hunt for revenge is going to attempt to carry the second. It’s a rough shift that I don’t think did the second game any favors, personally.

The game goes to a lot of trouble to literally put you in Abby’s shoes and eventually tries to try to make her own revenge saga feel a little more earned. Here, I feel like the show is being a bit more blunt about selling you her backstory at the front end and attempting to “justify” her brutal turn toward Joel somewhat in advance.

I wondered if you found yourself sympathizing at all with her character at this point.

Andrew: Obviously what Joel did to the Fireflies is awful, maybe unforgiveable. Beyond the lie to Ellie, there’s a strong possibility that he deprived humanity of a cure for the disease causing the very-much-ongoing apocalypse.

But, like, no! I don’t sympathize with Abby! Not only is she driven solely by this bland Inigo Montoya thing, but she sadistically tortures someone who just saved her stupid life, brutalizing Joel so much that it drives her also-supposedly-revenge-driven Firefly friends to tears. If I’m supposed to sympathize with her, the show did pretty much everything possible to make sure I don’t.

On paper, what Joel did is probably way worse, but we’ve also been primed by a whole season of TV (and by the charm of Pedro Pascal) to try and understand why he did what he did. None of this is really happening with Abby.

Kyle: Yeah, “supposed to sympathize with her” is a bit too strong, perhaps, especially at this point in the narrative. But I do think the show is trying to make her actions at least feel partially justified or understandable? It will be interesting to see how the show handles turning her into a more fleshed out character, because at this point, her revenge quest feels a bit mustache-twirling to me.

Backing up a bit, this episode also featured a huge set-piece zombie horde battle that ruins the brief calm we enjoyed in Jackson Hole. The scene played out so much like a video game mission that I had to go back and make sure I hadn’t forgotten about some major Jackson Hole firefight in the game. But no, this is a pure creation of the show.

I think the whole thing worked pretty well both as a reminder of the precarity of the vestiges of human civilization and an excuse for some flashy special effects. I also thought for a second that they were actually going to kill off Tommy so the show had its own totally unexpected death, even for people who had played the game. That couple of minutes with the flamethrower was actually tense for me!


Mmmmm… roasted mushrooms…
Credit:
HBO

Andrew: Maybe Abby will become more fleshed-out, and maybe she won’t. But she’s started by making the exact same mistake as Joel: leaving witnesses.

I did enjoy the zombie battle a lot. The liquid churn of the snow as a million guys burst out from under it: creepy! Good on the show and HBO for figuring out a way to do a snowy zombie horde fight without making it feel too reminiscent of Game of Thrones.

I will, again, refrain from speculating overmuch about where the Jackson Hole storyline goes since I’m not even sure at this point how much time will be spent on the aftermath and rebuilding (if there is rebuilding rather than further societal collapse). I did find myself wondering during the flamethrower scene whether roasted mushroom guy smelled appetizing or whether people in this world can even bring themselves to enjoy mushrooms on a pizza or in an omelette.

Kyle: I bet eating a normal mushroom in The Last of Us universe is akin to eating a hallucinogenic mushroom in the real world. A little bit of a dangerous taboo for iconoclastic rulebreakers to show they’re open-minded.

Andrew: We’ve established that I have no idea what is going to happen next, but we do have dangling threads here to deal with next week. How do the residents of Jackson Hole deal with the fungus in their pipes? How many people try to talk Ellie out of her revenge tour before she goes off and does it anyway? How are the Smart Zombies we met last week going to come back and cause problems? How many more Abby flashbacks will I need to sit through?

But above all, I’m really curious to know what the show is going to do to keep game-players like yourself on your toes.

Kyle: Last season we got the surprising “Nick Offerman’s life of love among the zombies” story as the third episode, and I wouldn’t mind a similar out of nowhere left turn to wash out Joel’s death this time around. I’m not saying that has to take the form of what would be a stunning, unexpected, and completely illogical return of Offerman’s Bill character. But if that is what the show decides to do, I would not complain.

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F1 in Saudi Arabia: Blind corners and walls at over 200 mph

The Formula 1 race in Saudi Arabia last night was the fifth race in six weeks. The latest venue is a temporary street circuit of a breed with Las Vegas. It’s a nighttime race set against a backdrop of bright-colored lights and sponsor-clad concrete walls lining the track. Except in Jeddah, many of the corners are blind, and most are very fast. As at Suzuka, qualifying was very important here, with just a few milliseconds making the difference.

Although it’s far from the only autocratic petrostate on the F1 calendar, some people remain uncomfortable with F1 racing in Saudi Arabia, given that country’s record of human rights abuses. I’ve not been, nor do I have any plans to attend a race there, but I had my eyes opened to a broader perspective by a couple of very thoughtful pieces written by motorsport journalist and sometime Ars contributor Hazel Southwell, who has attended several races in the kingdom, including as an independent journalist. Feel free to blast the sport in the comments, but do give Hazel’s pieces a read.

JEDDAH, SAUDI ARABIA - APRIL 20: Fireworks light the sky at the end of the race during the F1 Grand Prix of Saudi Arabia at Jeddah Corniche Circuit on April 20, 2025 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Fireworks, drones, lasers, floodlights, LEDs… you’d think this was compensating for something.
Credit:
Clive Mason/Getty Images

Red Bull really doesn’t want next year’s engine rules

Despite a meeting last week that was meant to put the matter to bed, the ongoing saga of changes to next year’s powertrain rules just won’t go away. From 2026 until 2030, the new powertrains will use a V6 that provides 55 percent of the car’s power and an electric hybrid motor that provides the other 45 percent. So that means an F1 car will only be able to make its full 1,000 hp (750 kW) if there’s charge in the battery. If the pack is depleted or derates, the car will have just 536 hp (400 kW) from its V6 engine.

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Neuroscientists are racing to turn brain waves into speech

Neuroscientists are striving to give a voice to people unable to speak in a fast-advancing quest to harness brainwaves to restore or enhance physical abilities.

Researchers at universities across California and companies, such as New York-based Precision Neuroscience, are among those making headway toward generating naturalistic speech through a combination of brain implants and artificial intelligence.

Investment and attention have long been focused on implants that enable severely disabled people to operate computer keyboards, control robotic arms, or regain some use of their own paralyzed limbs. But some labs are making strides by concentrating on technology that converts thought patterns into speech.

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Chameleon Changes Through All The Colors Of The Rainbow In 3 Minutes

This is a clip from The Animal Box Office of a wild chameleon in Madagascar changing its vibrant color through all the hues of the rainbow over the course of three minutes. It goes from orange to pink to green to yellow to blue to grey and finally back to orange. Those are all the colors of the rainbow, right? “It’s ROYGBIV.” No, I’m pretty sure it’s OPGYBG.

The Roblox economy is going global, as users can now set regional pricing

Roblox has adapted its payment system to allow for regional pricing. This means that the software will automatically adjust the cost of an in-game item to match the local economy of the buyer. The company says this will make it easier for active community members to “better adapt to local market conditions and maximize earnings.”

Prior to this move, users in a country like Vietnam would pay the exact same price as folks here in the US. This effectively priced out users who live in countries with weaker economic conditions. Regional pricing should make international users more active in the Roblox marketplace.

The regional pricing tool in action.
Roblox

Creators have to opt-in for the service. The software will not only automatically determine optimal local prices for items, but will update costs periodically as the global economy shifts. Companies like Nintendo already do this, as anyone who has opened up an eShop account in a different region can attest to.

For the uninitiated, Roblox creators earn something called Robux by selling in-game items that grant perks and abilities. Regional pricing doesn’t yet cover avatar items, but will later in the year.

This follows the platform’s recently-launched price optimization feature, which helps creators set the best price for anything they are selling. Roblox says the feature has increased earnings by around four percent for eligible creators, typically because the price was lowered but more units were sold.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/the-roblox-economy-is-going-global-as-users-can-now-set-regional-pricing-160047440.html?src=rss

Invasion of the ‘Journal Snatchers’: the Firms That Buy Science Publications and Turn Them Rogue

Major scholarly databases have removed dozens of academic journals after researchers discovered they had been purchased by questionable companies and transformed into predatory publications. A January 2025 study identified 36 legitimate journals acquired by recently formed firms with no publishing experience, who then dramatically increased publication fees and output while lowering quality standards.

According to information scientist Alberto Martin-Martin from the University of Granada, publishers are being offered up to hundreds of thousands of euros per journal title. Once acquired, journals typically introduce or raise article-processing charges while churning out papers often outside the publication’s original scope. Scopus has delisted all 36 identified journals, and Web of Science removed 11 of 17 affected titles from its index. “As there has been significant change (different ownership), there is no guarantee that review quality is at the same level as the original journals,” an Elsevier spokesperson told Nature.


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WD Launches HDD Recycling Process That Reclaims Rare Earth Elements, Cuts Out China

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom’s Hardware: While most people enjoy PCs that are powered by SSDs, mechanical hard drives are still king in the datacenter. When these drives reach the end of their useful lives, they are usually shredded, and the key materials they’re made of — including several rare earth elements (REE) — end up as e-waste. At the same time, countries are mining these same materials and emitting a lot of greenhouse gases in the process. And China, a major source of REE, recently announced export restrictions on seven of them, potentially limiting the U.S. tech industry’s access to materials such as dysprosium, which is necessary for magnetic storage, motors, and generators.

[On Thursday], Western Digital announced that it has created a large-scale hard disk drive recycling program in concert with Microsoft and recycling-industry partners CMR (Critical Materials Recycling) and PedalPoint Recycling. The new process reclaims Rare Earth Oxides (REO) containing dysprosium, neodymium, and praseodymium from hard drives, along with aluminum, steel, gold, palladium, and copper. The REO reclamation takes place completely within the U.S. and those materials go back into the U.S. market.

Dubbed the Advanced Recycling and Rare Earth Material Capture Program, WD’s initiative has already saved 47,000 pounds worth of hard drives, SSDs, and caddies from landfills or less-effective recycling programs. WD was able to achieve a more than 90% reclaim rate for REE and an 80% rate for all of the shredded material. The drives came from Microsoft’s U.S. data centers where they were first shredded and then sent to PedalPoint for sorting and processing. Magnets and steel were then sent to CMR, which uses its acid-free dissolution recycling (ADR) technology to extract the rare earth elements.


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Amazon Has Paused Some Data Center Lease Commitments, Wells Fargo Says

Amazon has delayed some commitments around new data center leases, Wells Fargo analysts said Monday, the latest sign that economic concerns may be affecting tech companies’ spending plans. From a report: A week ago, a Microsoft executive said the software company was slowing down or temporarily holding off on advancing early build-outs. Amazon Web Services and Microsoft are the leading providers of cloud infrastructure, and both have ramped up their capital expenditures in recent quarters to meet the demands of the generative artificial intelligence boom.

“Over the weekend, we heard from several industry sources that AWS has paused a portion of its leasing discussions on the colocation side (particularly international ones),” Wells Fargo analysts wrote in a note. They added that “the positioning is similar to what we’ve heard recently from MSFT,” in that both companies are reeling in some new projects but not canceling signed deals.


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Fyre Festival is becoming a music streaming service that might not be a scam this time

The Fyre Festival saga is getting an unexpected new chapter. Shawn Rech, who co-founded the TruBlu streaming network for crime and investigative content, is planning to leverage the Fyre Festival name for a new music streaming platform. He’s acquired select intellectual property trademarks for the famously failed music event whose co-founder Billy McFarland went to jail for fraud. However, Rech will not play a role in Fyre Festival’s hypothetical live events. According to him, he’s just trying to capitalize on the name’s familiarity for his own project.

“It has nothing to do with music,” Rech told Deadline in a surprisingly candid statement. “I needed a big name that people would remember, even if it’s attached to infamy, so that’s why I bought these [trademarks] to start the streaming network.”

Deadline reports that the Fyre Music Streaming will have a subscription video-on-demand platform and free ad-supported television channels. Rech claims it will launch at Thanksgiving. “We’re building something authentic and lasting,” he said.

It takes an impressive amount of hubris to use the name of a comically ridiculous music festival fraud and expect people to give you money for it. But considering Rech did manage to get TruBlu off the ground, maybe his music platform will actually exist. If the fact that the second Fyre Festival has already been indefinitely postponed is any sign of what’s to come, though, it will be a hilarious exercise in schadenfreude.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/music/fyre-festival-is-becoming-a-music-streaming-service-that-might-not-be-a-scam-this-time-221058381.html?src=rss