Author: Trendici

Besides a wealth of Fortnite skins based on Disney IP, it hasn’t really been clear what the entertainment company has gotten in return for its $1.5 billion investment in Epic from 2024. That could change this November, Bloomberg reports, when Epic releases a Disney-themed extraction shooter. The game is one of three Disney projects the publisher is currently working on, and is reportedly expected to be Epic’s comeback after the company laid off 1,000 employees in March due to a “downturn in Fortnite engagement.”The game is reportedly similar to Arc Raiders, a multiplayer shooter where players fight for resources before…

A 20-year-old man was arrested by the San Francisco Police Department after allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s house, The New York Times reports.In a statement shared on X, SFPD wrote that it responded to a request for a fire investigation in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco around 7:12 AM ET / 4:12AM PT. “At the scene, officers learned that an unknown male subject threw an incendiary destructive device at a home, causing a fire at an exterior gate.” After the man fled on foot, police found and arrested him around an hour later…

What are you up to this weekend? Anton and I have been visiting our family in England, and are coming home tomorrow. (Can’t wait to squeeze Toby and my mom, who have been together in Brooklyn!) Hope you have a good one, and here are a few links from around the web… The perfect spring sweater. Have you played the game Imposter? The boys and I have gotten really into it. Things all New Yorkers should know. “If you want to make your own pizza at home, your local slice joint will probably sell you some dough if you ask.”…

Image: Samsung Samsung Electronics is planning a major push into semiconductor packaging in Vietnam, with reports pointing to a potential $4 billion investment in a new facility in the country’s north. According to Bloomberg, the project would be rolled out in phases, beginning with an initial $2 billion investment in Thai Nguyen province. While the company has not officially confirmed the figures, Vietnam’s Ministry of Finance said it is actively working on a semiconductor-related agreement with Samsung. “The ministry is coordinating with other ministries and agencies to finalise and submit to the Prime Minister the Memorandum of Understanding between the…

As child social media bans spread across Europe and beyond, Estonia isn’t having it. On Friday, the country’s education minister said the bans won’t “actually solve problems,” while warning that the kids will find a way regardless.Although companies like Meta would love for you to believe it’s a fairy tale, social media addiction is associated with tangible negative repercussions for children. Studies show that its harms range from depression and anxiety to sleep deprivation and obesity. (The latter is from all the targeted junk food advertising.) On the other hand, teens can find community and support from social media.A growing…

Whoop, the makers of a screen-free fitness tracker of the same name, could soon have some competition. Fitbit teased its take on a Whoop-style band with the help of Steph Curry at the end of March, and based on a trademark filing spotted by Gadgets & Wearables, Garmin appears to be working on its own band that tracks similar health metrics.This new Garmin wearable, called “CIRQA” in the trademark filing submitted in February, is designed to measure “the body’s physical parameters and other physiological data, bio-signals, and bodily behavior.” That could broadly describe the smartwatches and fitness trackers Garmin already…

Doki Doki Literature Club, the dating sim-themed horror game, has been removed from the Google Play store. According to publisher Serenity Forge, the reasoning provided was that the game violated the storefront’s terms of service with its “depiction of sensitive themes.”Doki Doki Literature Club was first released on Steam in 2017, and is notorious for its deceptively disturbing story. While it initially appears to be a traditional dating sim, following a high school boy as he joins an after school writing club and falls in love with the other members, dramatic plot twists give the game a dark turn. It…

Image: ChatGPT A critical Android software development kit (SDK) flaw has turned a utility tool into a malware bridge, gaining access to some of the platform’s most secure apps. The EngageLab SDK is used in many Android apps as a push notification tool. Once integrated, it inherits the same level of permission and trust as its host app. Microsoft’s research reveals that the vulnerability stems from the way the SDK processes app-to-app messages, allowing malicious external apps to send harmful messages that are misread as legitimate internal commands. Although already patched, Microsoft security researchers say that upon discovery, several apps…

Image: Generated via ChatGPT From multimodal AI launches and trillion-dollar infrastructure bets to critical zero-days and a fresh wave of tech layoffs, this week’s headlines expose the uneasy dance between breakneck innovation and mounting instability across the industry. Top news AI tools and platforms take center stage Google introduced a new Notebooks feature for Gemini, merging chats, documents, and web content into a unified workspace synced with NotebookLM. The update allows users to organize projects, assign per-notebook instructions, and access advanced features under the AI Ultra plan. Meta unveiled Muse Spark, a multimodal AI system developed by Meta Superintelligence Labs.…

Image: Alibaba Group What can you do if you’re a multinational technology company that’s facing increasing restrictions on access to next-gen semiconductor technology? If you’re Alibaba, the answer is simple: you stick it to those who are trying to keep you down by creating your own chips to power new, state-of-the-art data centers while reinvigorating the domestic workforce at the same time. Breaking ground on the newest data center Having recently teamed up with China Telecom, Alibaba officially flipped the switch on its latest data center in early April. The move comes only a month after a large-scale cluster of…