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Take-Two is shutting down the studios behind Rollerdrome and Kerbal Space Program 2

This one’s a bummer. Mega-publisher Take-Two Interactive is shuttering Rollerdrome studio Roll7 and Kerbal Space Program 2 team Intercept Games, according to paperwork seen by Bloomberg.

Roll7 is based in London, and was founded in 2008 by lifelong friends Tom Hegarty and Simon Bennett. Roll7 is the studio behind OlliOlli, OlliOlli World and Rollerdrome, all fantastic games with wheel-based mechanics. OlliOlli was a Vita hit in 2014 and World landed in early 2022 — they’re both great, and the latter in particular is a flow-state-inducing skateboarding platformer with an adorable art style. Rollerdrome was one of our favorite games of 2022; it’s a luscious third-person rollerskating-and-gunplay game that looks like a slice of 1970s dystopian sci-fi. 

Roll7 has picked up multiple prestigious awards over the years, including recent wins at BAFTA and DICE. As the studio name implies, Roll7 developers know how to make incredibly smooth action games.

Take-Two purchased Roll7 in November 2021 and made it a subsidiary of Private Division, the company’s label for small- and mid-size publishing deals. According to Bloomberg, Take-Two plans to close Roll7 and will offer severance packages to staff.

Intercept Games is based …read more

Technology

Asus won’t say if the ROG Ally’s SD card reader will ever be truly fixed

A white handheld with black joysticks and buttons sitting on a wooden desk with shallow depth of focus, at an angle to accentuate its profile.
The Asus ROG Ally. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

What is Asus hiding?

Two weeks ago, I told you how Asus has officially extended its warranty on the ROG Ally gaming handheld’s SD card reader to two full years in the United States, presumably to give you more time to get it fixed. But Asus refuses to confirm to The Verge that it’s actually identified a fix for the issue. If you ship your Ally back to Asus, there’s no guarantee the problem won’t reappear.

Early on, some ROG Ally buyers discovered the SD card readers had a tendency to fail and possibly damage your SD cards in the process. One law firm, CSK&D, even threatened to pursue a class-action lawsuit on behalf of owners, though I haven’t yet found record of an actual suit being filed, and its class-action website has since been…

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Technology

Snapchat will finally let you edit your chats

Snapchat will finally join most of its messaging app peers and allow users to edit their chats. The feature, which will be rolling out “soon,” will initially be limited to Snapchat+ subscribers, the company said.

With the change, Snapchat users will have a five-minute window to rephrase their message, fix typos or otherwise edit their chats. Messages that have been edited will have a label indicating the text has been changed. The company didn’t say when the feature might be available to more of its users, but the company often brings sought after features to its subscription service first. Snap announced last week that Snapchat+, which costs $3.99 a month, had reached 9 million subscribers.

The app is also adding several non-exclusive features, including updated emoji reactions for chats, the ability to use the My AI assistant to set reminders and AI-generated outfits for Bitmoji. Snap also showed off a new AI lens that transforms users’ selfies into 1990’s-themed snapshots (just don’t look too closely at the wireless headphones appearing in many of the images.)

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/snapchat-will-finally-let-you-edit-your-chats-223643771.html?src=rss …read more

Technology

Snapchat will soon let you edit your messages after sending

three screenshots of snapchat features
Edit messages, AI Bitmoji fashion, and reminders round out the new Snapchat update. | Image: Snap

Snap is launching a slew of new features in Snapchat, including the ability to edit already sent messages allowing you to rectify a “your” vs. “you’re” typo or other embarrassing errors. Snapchat is also getting emoji reactions, map reactions, and a new AI-powered reminders function.

The edit message feature does have a short window: you need to act within five minutes of sending — and only if the recipient has not yet opened it. Snap says the feature will come “first” to Snapchat Plus subscribers — a decision that echoes the same feature paywall on Elon Musk’s Twitter Blue (now called X Premium) established more than a year ago.

GIF: Snap

Post-sent message editing is a booming feature to have on messaging apps, with…

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Technology

UnitedHealth CEO admits it paid $22 million ransom to BlackCat

A number of cursors point toward an unhappy face on a laptop
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Health insurance provider UnitedHealth paid a multimillion-dollar ransom to hackers who broke into one of its subsidiaries, disrupting healthcare providers across the country for months, CEO Andrew Witty confirmed on Wednesday.

In a hearing before the Senate Committee on Finance, Witty said the decision to pay the $22 million ransom was entirely his. “This was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make,” he said. UnitedHealth admitted last month that it had paid a ransom to the hackers who breached the Change Healthcare system — which is owned by UnitedHealth — but didn’t disclose the sum. In March, the company attributed the breach to BlackCat, the same entity responsible for the MGM casino hack in Las Vegas. That same month, W…

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Technology

A researcher is suing Meta for the right to ‘turn off’ Facebook’s news feed

Facebook’s News Feed algorithm has long been at the center of debates about some of Meta’s biggest problems. It’s also been a near constant source of complaints from users. But, if a newly filed lawsuit is successful, Facebook users may be able to use the social network with a vastly different feed. The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University is suing Meta on behalf of a researcher who wants to release a browser extension that would allow people to “effectively turn off” their algorithmic feeds.

The extension was created by Ethan Zuckerman, a researcher and professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He argues that Facebook users would be better off with more control over their feeds. “The tool, called Unfollow Everything 2.0, would allow users to unfollow their friends, groups, and pages, and, in doing so, to effectively turn off their newsfeed—the endless scroll of posts that users see when they log into Facebook,” the lawsuit explains. “Users who download the tool would be free to use the platform without the feed, or to curate the feed by refollowing only those friends and groups whose posts they really want to see.” …read more

Technology

Crunchyroll is about to get a little more expensive, just like all the other streamers

A manga-like illustration of a redheaded girl with a long ponytail wearing a short-sleeved, kimono-like dress.
Image: Crunchyroll

While Crunchyroll’s monthly prices haven’t jumped in five years, Sony is getting ready to change that for subscribers in a handful of countries.

Crunchyroll announced today that the prices for its Mega Fan and Ultimate Fan streaming subscription tiers are going up as a result of “the company’s investment in more anime, additional services like music and games, and additional subscriber benefits.” While the basic Crunchyroll Premium will continue to cost $7.99 / month, subscriptions for the Mega Fan tier are increasing from $9.99 to $11.99 / month, and the Ultimate Fan tier will rise from $14.99 to $15.99 / month.

Crunchyroll is also shortening its free-trial period from two weeks down to just one. Notably, the price…

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Technology

How to play Netflix’s cloud games without waiting for an invitation

Netflix’s website shows a trailer for Oxenfree, where people hold up a phone to scan a QR code to connect it to their TV.
Why wait? | Image: Netflix

Want to try the nine games that Netflix now streams from cloud servers directly to your laptop, desktop, or TV? Officially, you’re supposed to wait until the beta rolls out more broadly, but for now, there may be an easier way.

If you fire up a desktop web browser, log in to Netflix, and click these links, you should be able to start playing, even if you don’t see any of these games listed normally.

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Technology

Microsoft’s OpenAI partnership was born from Google envy

It turns out the lay of today’s AI landscape can be traced back to — what do you know — fear, jealousy and intense capitalist ambition. Emails revealed in the Department of Justice’s antitrust case against Google, first reported by Business Insider, show Microsoft executives expressing alarm and envy over Google’s AI lead. That spurred an urgency that led to the Windows maker’s initial billion-dollar investment in its now-indispensable partner, OpenAI.

In a heavily redacted 2019 email thread titled “Thoughts on OpenAI,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella forwards a lengthy message from CTO Kevin Scott to CFO Amy Hood. “Very good email that explains, why I want us to do this … and also why we will then ensure our infra folks execute,” Nadella wrote.

Scott wrote that he was “very, very worried” about Google’s rapidly growing AI capabilities. He says he initially dismissed the company’s “game-playing stunts,” likely referring to Google’s AlphaGo models. One of them beat Go world champion Ke Jie in 2017, a remarkable feat at the time. (Google’s later models surpassed that one, dropping the need for human training altogether.)

But Scott says brushing off Google’s game-playing …read more

Science

Physicists build new device that is foundation for quantum computing

Scientists have adapted a device called a microwave circulator for use in quantum computers, allowing them for the first time to precisely tune the exact degree of nonreciprocity between a qubit, the fundamental unit of quantum computing, and a microwave-resonant cavity. The ability to precisely tune the degree of nonreciprocity is an important tool to have in quantum information processing. In doing so, the team derived a general and widely applicable theory that simplifies and expands upon older understandings of nonreciprocity so that future work on similar topics can take advantage of the team’s model, even when using different components and platforms. …read more

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