OhSnap, a company behind many cases and MagSafe accessories, just unveiled MCON at CES 2025. It’s a new slim accessory that slaps on the back of your iPhone, then folds out to unveil a fully featured game controller, making it incredibly easy to play games on the go.
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The long-awaited Assassin’s Creed Shadows has been delayed yet again, according to a press release. It was supposed to come out on February 14 but Ubisoft has moved the release date to March 20. This is actually the second time it was delayed. It was originally supposed to come out in time for the 2024 holiday season.
The stated reason is the same as the last delay. The developers say they’re using the extra time to continue polishing the game, which has previously been described as "the biggest entry in the franchise.” Ubisoft says it has been continually checking player feedback from the community and making changes accordingly.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows now releases March 20, 2025. pic.twitter.com/wTPzY0oiHy
— Assassin's Creed (@assassinscreed) January 9, 2025
However, Variety suggests that another factor could be at play here. Ubisoft is officially preparing itself to be sold, which has been rumored for a while now, and likely wants Assassin’s Creed Shadows to be a bona-fide hit to entice would-be buyers. Star Wars Outlaws was a (relative) dud, which didn’t add many “transformational strategic and capitalistic options to extract the best value for stakeholders.” That language is from today’s press release.
While wrapped up in corporate mumbo-jumbo, this is likely good news for gamers. Modern AAA developers, aside from Nintendo and a few others, like to release bug-infested nightmares and charge folks $70 for the privilege. This could ensure that the Japan-set Assassin’s Creed Shadows ends up being one of the better entries in the franchise at launch, and not a few years down the line.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/assassins-creed-shadows-delayed-again-until-march-20-194014830.html?src=rss
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© Ubisoft
A federal judge this week rejected Google's motion to throw out a class-action lawsuit alleging that it invaded the privacy of users who opted out of functionality that records a users' web and app activities. A jury trial is scheduled for August 2025 in US District Court in San Francisco.
The lawsuit concerns Google's Web & App Activity (WAA) settings, with the lead plaintiff representing two subclasses of people with Android and non-Android phones who opted out of tracking. "The WAA button is a Google account setting that purports to give users privacy control of Google's data logging of the user's web app and activity, such as a user's searches and activity from other Google services, information associated with the user's activity, and information about the user's location and device," wrote US District Judge Richard Seeborg, the chief judge in the Northern District Of California.
Google says that Web & App Activity "saves your activity on Google sites and apps, including associated info like location, to give you faster searches, better recommendations, and more personalized experiences in Maps, Search, and other Google services." Google also has a supplemental Web App and Activity setting that the judge's ruling refers to as "(s)WAA."
© Getty Images | Josh Edelson
Most crossword puzzle fans have experienced that moment where, after a period of struggle on a particularly difficult puzzle, everything suddenly starts to come together, and they are able to fill in a bunch of squares correctly. Alexander Hartmann, a statistical physicist at the University of Oldenburg in Germany, had an intriguing insight when this happened while he was trying to solve a puzzle one day. According to his paper published in the journal Physical Review E, the crossword puzzle-solving process resembles a type of phase transition known as percolation—one that seems to be unique compared to standard percolation models.
Traditional mathematical models of percolation date back to the 1940s. Directed percolation is when the flow occurs in a specific direction, akin to how water moves through freshly ground coffee beans, flowing down in the direction of gravity. (In physical systems, percolation is one of the primary mechanisms behind the Brazil nut effect, along with convection.) Such models can also be applicable to a wide range of large networked systems: power grids, financial markets, and social networks, for example.
Individual nodes in a random network start linking together, one by one, via short-range connections, until the number of connections reaches a critical threshold (tipping point). At that point, there is a phase shift in which the largest cluster of nodes grows rapidly, giving rise to more long-range connections, resulting in uber-connectivity. The likelihood of two clusters merging is proportional to their size, and once a large cluster forms, it dominates the networked system, absorbing smaller clusters.
© Rhododendrites/CC BY-SA 4.0
Scale AI just got hit by another lawsuit alleging widespread wage violations and misclassification of its workers.
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The PC handheld space continues to grow, and the biggest of all is Acer’s new Nitro Blaze 11. As soon as I saw it announced at CES, I knew I had to try and get it in my hands, at least for the sheer curiosity of “Will this thing even fit in my hands?” The answer is yes — though kind of just barely.
I brought a Steam Deck OLED with me for a quick size and feel comparison. One of the first things I noticed is that it’s much more precarious to pick up the Blaze 11 the way I’m used to grabbing the Steam Deck: by gripping it on the top and bottom edges. My fingers just barely stretch far enough for this position. Once in hand, the 2.3-pound Blaze 11 actually feels lighter than you’d expect, making it not too unwieldy if you do most of your “portable” gaming at home on the couch like I do. (Playing it in bed may be a hazard to your face.)
While the Blaze 11 isn’t as heavy as I feared, the Steam Deck OLED’s 1.41 pounds feel like a featherweight in comparison. The Deck also feels a little more solidly built. Acer’s handheld isn’t flimsy, but it did seem cheaper.
But credit where credit’s due: playing games on such a big screen in your hands is a treat, and the kickstand felt solid for propping it up in tablet mode with detached controllers, which the Steam Deck can’t do. Acer also gets points for using Hall effect sticks and triggers.
We’ll have to wait and see how this jumbo $1,099 handheld fares when it launches in Q2 2025, as the competition heats up with the impending arrival of the Lenovo Legion Go S and the constantly leaking Nintendo Switch 2. In the meantime, here are a bunch of pictures of the Blaze 11 and the Steam Deck OLED.
Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
Xbox gamers have a growing list of options among the best Xbox controllers, but even expensive ones like the Xbox Elite Series 2 can develop stick drift and other issues.
If you’re tired of shelling out for unreliable controllers, 8Bitdo’s latest wired Xbox models with Hall effect analog sticks and triggers can offer affordable relief, as you can get them for 33 percent off right now. That includes the 8BitDo Ultimate controller, which has dropped to a record low $29.99 ($15 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and 8BitDo. The DualShock-like 8BitDo Pro 2 is also on sale at Amazon and 8BitDo starting at $29.99 (about $15 off), which is only $2 more than the lowest price to date.
8BitDo’s wired Xbox controllers have been on the market for a few years now, so even if you already have one, you may have missed the refreshed Hall effect models. The older ones have ALPS-based sticks, which are commonly used in the standard controllers that ship with major consoles. They use mechanically moving parts and sensors to read the sticks’ positioning, which can eventually degrade and cause misreads to the point that your in-game characters can move even when you’re not touching the controller.
Hall effect sticks, instead, use magnetism and the sensors don’t have moving parts, and while they aren’t completely immune to eventually getting stick drift, they should last much longer. That doesn’t mean you can’t still break a controller from excessive sweaty rounds of Marvel Rivals. The triggers on both controllers benefit from similar technology and also include dedicated vibration motors.
The 8BitDo Ultimate and 8BitDo Pro 2 offer other perks that are nice to have at this price point, too, like dual rear buttons, software-based remapping (the 8BitDo Ultimate supports on-the-fly switching between three profiles using a dedicated button), and configurable sensitivity and vibration settings. In addition to Xbox One, Series X, and Series S, you can also use the controllers on Windows PCs, Android, and iOS devices by plugging them in using the detachable USB-C cable.
There’s a video going viral this week of the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles with a wildfire raging behind it, letters glowing in the blaze. It’s a powerful scene, up there with the burning McDonald’s sign in imagery that’s come out of this week’s devastating fires spreading across LA.
Unfortunately goes hard pic.twitter.com/Hzglibzs4t
— Joseph 🕊️ (@CaudilloXIV) January 9, 2025
I've seen several people sharing this same video with shades of shock and heartbreak. But it’s AI-generated. When it was posted, according to a Community Note on one of the posts, a look at the Hollywood sign livestreams showed the sign was fine; as of writing, the feeds are down, but Hollywoodsign.org, a website that runs a live webcam pointed at the sign, told fact-checking site Snopes "Griffith Park is temporarily closed as a safety precaution, but the Sign itself is not affected and is secure — and the cameras will slowly but surely come back up."
Another viral image of the Hollywood sign burning is also AI:
🚨 All reports that the Hollywood sign is on fire are false. This is a AI generated image. 🚨
— Media Insider (@_MediaInsider) January 9, 2025
#Hollywood #California #LosAngeles #HollywoodHills #RunyonCanyon #PalisadesWildfire #Palisades #PacificPalisades #Curson #lafires #wildfires #BreakingNews #WorldNews #HollywoodSign pic.twitter.com/HOzVe2bCHm
Then there’s X poster Kevin Dalton’s image, which he later admitted was made with X’s Grok generative AI tool “for now,” showing what I can only assume he imagines as “antifa” in all black descending on a burned-out neighborhood to loot it. “The remains of Pacific Palisades will get picked clean tonight,” he wrote. (Dalton’s been making AI paint him little fantasy pictures of Trump firing California governor Gavin Newsom, so this is a big week for him.)
People are also obsessively generating Grok images of Newsom fiddling in front of fires or saving goldfish (???).
Grok nailed it. Gavin Nerosome playing the fiddle while California burns. pic.twitter.com/BlfaLEcFjW
— Liekitisn’t (@liekitisnot) January 8, 2025
Grok showing Gavin Newsome saving a goldfish during the fires pic.twitter.com/mX3qb61M5q
— KillaKirby (@KillaKirby1) January 9, 2025
The very real footage and images coming out of Southern California this week are so surreal they’re hard to believe, with entire miles of iconic coastline, whole neighborhoods, and massive swaths of the Pacific Palisades and LA’s east side turned to ash (and still burning as of writing).
Interestingly, a lot of this week’s news cycle has turned to blaming AI and its energy usage as contributing to climate change. But others are not wasting an opportunity for boosterism. In a stunning show of credulity, British-owned digital newspaper The Express ran a story with the headline “Five dead in LA fires as residents think AI tech could have prevented disaster” based on a quote from one evacuating 24 year old they found who took the opportunity in front of a reporter to breathlessly shill for AI, as an AI industry worker himself. “[Los Angeles’] fire and police departments don’t invest in technology [sic] hopefully more people build AI robotics solutions for monitoring or help. Instead a lot of people in ai are building military solutions. Aka putting a gun on top of a robot dog,” Chevy Chase Canyon resident William Lee told The Express. “Robotics operated fire response systems. It costs $6-18k for AI humanoid robots. LAFD salary is approx $100k/yr… 3,500 firefighters. We can slowly integrate robotics to put less lives at risk, but also for assistance."
That guy was so close to saying something prescient it’s painful: Robot dogs are a stupid waste of taxpayer money, and not a hypothetical one, as LA approved $278,000 for a surveillance robot dog toy for the LAPD in 2023. But the Los Angeles Fire Department’s budget was cut by nearly $17.6 million this fiscal year, while giving even more money to the police department’s already massive budget: the LAPD received a $2.14 billion budget for the 2025-26 fiscal year, representing an 8.1% increase.
“Humanoid robots” as an absurd proposition aside, I don’t want to write off all forms of new technology as useless in natural disasters. Machine learning and machine vision technology seem to show promise in helping detect, track, or prevent wildfires: Last week, University of California San Diego’s ALERTCalifornia camera network alerted fire officials of an anomaly spotted on video, and firefighters were reportedly able to contain the blaze to less than a quarter acre. But companies taking investment to “solve” wildfires are also profiting off of a crisis that’s only getting worse, with no promise that their solutions will improve the situation.
OCFA RESPONDS TO VEGETATION FIRE DETECTED EXCLUSIVELY BY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE – A FIRST IN AGENCY HISTORY
— OCFA PIO (@OCFireAuthority) January 3, 2025
Irvine, CA – In December 2024, the OCFA successfully utilized artificial intelligence (AI) to detect and >>> pic.twitter.com/mgo4HGFcGv
Overwhelmingly, AI is being crammed down the public’s throats as a tool for generating some of the dumbest bullshit imaginable. That includes misinformation like we’ve seen with these fires, but also bottomless ugliness, laughably terrible bots, sexual abuse and violence. And it’s sold to us as both our inevitable savior and the next world-ending existential crisis by people with billions earned on the theft of human creativity, and billions more yet to gain.
AI might help solve tough problems related to climate change and things like wildfires, water scarcity, and energy consumption. But in the meantime, data centers are projected to guzzle 6.6 billion cubic meters of water by 2027, in service of churning out sloppy, morbid fantasies about tragedies within tragedies.
Apple’s best-selling Mac, the MacBook Air, is getting upgraded soon—possibly as the first Apple product launch of 2025. Here are four new features coming to the M4 MacBook Air when it arrives.
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Benjamin and Chance talk about the current ongoing controversies with Apple Intelligence notification summaries and the reaction to the settlement of the Siri privacy lawsuit, and how Apple is managing the negative PR. LG announces a new 6K display, but does it actually exist? And Benjamin is thrilled to hear that Apple News+ Puzzles may finally be coming to the UK.
And in Happy Hour Plus, we appreciate the seamless integration of iPhone, AirPods and Watch in the current cold winter months. Subscribe at 9to5mac.com/join.
When X CEO Linda Yaccarino took the stage as a keynote speaker at CES 2025, she revealed that "90 percent of the advertisers" who boycotted X over brand safety concerns since Elon Musk's 2022 Twitter acquisition "are back on X."
Yaccarino did not go into any further detail to back up the data point, and X did not immediately respond to Ars' request to comment.
But Yaccarino's statistic seemed to bolster claims that X had made since Donald Trump's re-election that advertisers were flocking back to the platform, with some outlets reporting that brands hoped to win Musk's favor in light of his perceived influence over Trump by increasing spending on X.
© NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto
Following FuboTV’s recent move to settle its antitrust lawsuit with Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery over the impending launch of their Venu Sports streaming service, DirectTV and EchoStar are urging the courts to consider how other TV distributors could still be shut out of the sports streaming space.
On Monday, Fubo announced that, as part of its plan to merge with Hulu + Live TV, it would also drop its lawsuit against Disney, Fox, and WBD alleging that their collaboration on Venu Sports violated US antitrust laws. The settlement outlines how Hulu + Live TV and Fubo can create a new multichannel video programming distributor that Disney would own 70 percent of. But the lawsuit’s dismissal also lifted the injunction to halt Venu’s launch which US District Judge Margaret M. Garnett passed down last August.
Because Venu Sports now has a much more realistic chance of coming to market, DirectTV and EchoStar are voicing concerns about how Fubo’s proposed Hulu deal may exacerbate, rather than properly address, the core issue of sports streaming anticompetitiveness. In a letter to Garnett, DirectTV argued that while Venu’s venture partners have paid Fubo “to ensure cooperation from an aggrieved competitor,” they have also restored “an anticompetitive runway for the JV Defendants to control the future of the live pay TV market.”
DirectTV is just one of several non-parties that expressed “grave concerns” about the impact Venu would have on competition for sports programming, given that Venu would “offer content in a manner that [the Defendants] do not allow DirectTV or other distributors to offer to consumers,” DirectTV’s lawyers said.
In its own letter to Garnett, EchoStar’s legal team insisted that the original injunction blocked Disney, Fox, and WBD’s “scheme to monopolize the pay-TV market and, once accomplished, charge inflated prices to millions of Americans.”
“The parties’ settlement appears designed to eliminate court jurisdiction over this multifarious harm by effectuating the preliminary injunction’s expiration, rather than addressing the underlying competition issues,” EchoStar said. “Now, with the injunction undone by voluntary dismissal, DISH, Sling, and other distributors will suffer antitrust injury.”
