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Pink is the new blue in the trailer for Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.

Here’s the official trailer for Legendary’s next Monsterverse movie. I don’t know what’s going on in it other than that Godzilla’s atomic fire is pink and King Kong has a Thanos glove for some reason.

Also, there’s a baby Kong, which I assume means King Kong dies at the end like in the Linda Hamilton film King Kong Lives.

The New Empire hits theaters worldwide on April 10th next year.


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Microsoft is working on a better way to configure Windows.

XDA Developers spotted a Github issue posted by Microsoft developer Jordi Adoumie, who wrote that the company is exploring a new Windows advanced settings pane for Dev Home users. The new options that fill it would come from the darkest reaches of Windows: the registry.

Currently, there are many settings/registry keys that developers desire to tweak that are either not accesible via the Windows Settings app and/or are difficult to discover throughout the OS.

The feature is just a concept right now, and Microsoft wants input on its creation. Here’s hoping something like it comes to regular users.


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I knew I had good taste when I was 10 years old.

YouTuber Charles Cornell recently broke down the unassailable soundtrack of Streets of Rage 2, and his glee mirrors the feelings I’ve had about that song collection for the last cough years.

While you’re watching, check out The Verge’s interview with Yuzo Koshiro, the game’s composer.


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This is why we can’t have nice [full seasons of Auction Kings].

Kotaku wrote yesterday that PlayStation owners will lose “previously purchased Discovery content” on December 31st after a change in Sony’s licensing agreements.

There’s almost nothing to mourn in Sony’s list of disappearing shows (apart from 20 seasons of Mythbusters, that is), but it’s an annoying reminder of the woefully ethereal nature of online digital entertainment.


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Star Trek: Discovery gets dark in its final season.

I mean that literally, at least judging from the lighting-challenged clip from Discovery’s fifth and final season, which Paramount Plus shared today at Brazil’s CCXP 2023.

In what looks like almost the dead of night, Captain Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Book (David Ajala) try not to get killed by giant cloaking aliens with lava faces.


Today on The Vergecast: Cybertruck details, billionaire drama, and digital gods.

Somehow, even after the Cybertruck launched, we still don’t know how many wipers it has. But we do know a lot more about it, including how to open the door! We also kinda sorta got some closure on the OpenAI drama, but as always the CEOs are still out here saying some wild stuff on stage and on the internet. Thank goodness we have a podcast where we get to loudly ask the digital gods: why?


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“And no war so bloody as a war between dragons.”

Warner Bros Discovery dropped the season 2 trailer for House of the Dragon at CCXP in Brazil today. The season’s eight episodes will start streaming on Max in summer 2024.

The Hollywood Reporter writes that House of the Dragon is bringing in some new actors, as well:

The production also announced additional actors joining the show: Clinton Liberty as Addam of Hull, Jamie Kenna as Ser Alfred Broome, Kieran Bew as Hugh, Tom Bennett as Ulf, Tom Taylor as Lord Cregan Stark and Vincent Regan as Ser Rickard Thorne.


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Does the US really plan to phase out coal power plants?

During a United Nations climate conference, the US joined the Powering Past Coal Alliance. It includes more than 50 other countries that have committed to switch from “unabated coal power generation” to clean energy. But let’s keep it real. The word “unabated” changes everything. It means that power plants can continue to burn coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, as long as they install unproven technologies designed to capture carbon dioxide emissions but not other air pollutants. Such technologies are expected to make electricity more expensive, and have already wasted hundreds of millions of federal funding in failed carbon capture projects. The US recently carved out a similar loop hole for carbon capture in its federal pollution standards for power plants.


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The Biden administration promises big cuts to methane gas emissions.

The New York Times reported that at the United Nations climate summit, Vice President Kamala Harris said a new final rule put in place by the Environmental Protection Agency will heavily curb energy companies’ methane emissions.

The EPA said in a press release that this rule will mean “a nearly 80 percent reduction” of methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

As the Times notes, 50 oil and gas companies pledged similar reductions, though environmental groups are skeptical. In an open letter, 320 organizations signed an open letter criticizing the “voluntary efforts” as a “distraction from the task at hand.”


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The Verge
The Biden administration launched a new international strategy for nuclear fusion.

The US Fusion Energy International Partnership Strategy “will support the timely development, demonstration, and deployment of commercial fusion energy,” the White House announced during a United Nations climate conference going down in Dubai. For decades, scientists have chased breakthroughs in nuclear fusion, seen as the “Holy Grail” of nearly limitless clean energy. Most experts don’t think commercial nuclear fusion power plants can come online in time to meet global climate goals, even under optimistic scenarios. Nevertheless, the Biden administration and Microsoft are supporting startups trying to make fusion a reality.


The Verge’s 2023 holiday gift guide

A selection of great tech and non-tech gifts aimed at the tinkerer, the creative, and the kid in all of us.

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Get a load of The Boys.

Amazon Prime just dropped the season 4 teaser trailer for The Boys at CCXP in Brazil. There’s plenty of the show’s familiar satire of the US’ political and societal landscape in it, and Homelander looks like as much of a nightmare as ever.

The season comes next year.


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That vault probably works just fine.

Amazon Prime video is counting down to something to do with the new Fallout show that’s coming next year. A “live report from Galaxy News” on YouTube has a camera pointed at a Valut-Tec vault that almost certainly doesn’t have any dead people and giant roaches in it.

We’ve got a little over 30 minutes until whatever is going to happen happens.


Car games sure do look good these days.

Here’s a fun guessing game for your Saturday morning. Chris Rosales of The Drive took a Lexus LC 500 for a spin over several days to find the locations used in Gran Turismo 7’s Scapes photo mode and recreate the shots himself.

I embedded one of the images here, but be sure to head over to the article to see the rest.


Two pictures of a yellow Lexus LC 500 — the top is the real thing, while the bottom is in-game. Both taken in Los Angeles, CA.
The watermark gives it away.
Image: The Drive
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Peely has been kidnapped in the first Fortnite Chapter 5 trailer.

Ahead of The Big Bang event happening at 2PM ET, Epic has released a quick look at the game’s impending Chapter 5. It includes a new island, a train to ride, some revamped movement mechanics, and the ability to heal and move at the same time. Talk about innovation. Oh, and as the leaks suggested, both Peter Griffin and Solid Snake are there. Players now have just a few hours left to enjoy the nostalgia of Fortnite OG.


Godzilla Minus One is a brilliant reckoning for the king of monster allegories

Toho’s latest Godzilla film from writer / director Takashi Yamazaki takes the kaiju king back to its roots to tell a sobering story about reckoning with the present.

A monster week for entertainment releases.

Leading the way is the biggest monster of all, as Godzilla Minus One hits theaters. Also in theaters: John Woo’s Christmas-themed revenge movie Silent Night.

Elsewhere, season 2 of Netflix’s survival horror series Sweet Home is now streaming, the latest Indiana Jones is on Disney Plus, Baldur’s Gate 3 just got a huge update, and Fortnite OG is about to end with The Big Bang event.


A still photo from the film Godzilla Minus One.

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Godzilla Minus One.
Image: Toho
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It’s apparently just “Google Messages” now.

Did you know the product was previously called “Messages by Google?” I didn’t until I read this 9to5Google article about the recent name change.

Just don’t get Google Messages and Google Chat confused.


Epic v. Google: everything we’re learning live in Fortnite court

In a redux of a case against Apple and iOS, Epic aims to dismantle barriers that could spell higher fees for app makers — and, Google argues, keep Android safe and competitive.

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23andMe says it’s notifying users about a data breach, but we don’t have all the details yet.

In a Friday SEC filing providing an update on its investigation of a recent security incident (that it will not call a breach, based on justifications that remain unclear), 23andMe says a bad actor was able to access 0.1 percent of the company’s accounts through credential stuffing. According to TechCrunch’s estimates, that 0.1 percent figure translates to around 14,000 accounts.

However, those accounts were used to access a “significant number of files containing profile information about other users’ ancestry” that users share when opting in to its DNA Relatives feature. How many is “significant”? 23andMe didn’t say.


FORM 8-K/A

[www.sec.gov]

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Why Spotify Wrapped 2023 might think Burlington, VT, is your Sound Town.

Or maybe it’s Berkely, CA, or Cambridge, MA, or some other college town. Enough people were confused about Spotify’s latest Wrapped to spur articles in the New York Times and Washington Post, and Spotify is extending 2023’s audio recap season by explaining how they were assigned:

Sound Towns selected for eligible users are made up of two factors: a user’s most-streamed artists of the year, and the way in which those artists are streamed in other cities. It’s objective and driven by a user’s listening history.

If what that has to do with your music listening habits isn’t immediately clear, it also posted the top ten lists for each city. Noah Kahan, Sza, and Lizzy McAlpine took the top three spots in Burlington.


Interview: Sam Altman on being fired and rehired by OpenAI

“I totally get why people want an answer right now. But I also think it’s totally unreasonable to expect it.”

Google is rolling out a bulk select feature in the Gmail mobile app.

I can’t believe it didn’t have one already. Google says the feature is available on Android and rolling out now on iOS.


A screenshot showing the Gmail app’s new “select all” button.
If you tap an email sender’s image, Gmail will show the new “select all” checkbox at the top of the screen.
Image: Google
Seems like Threads won’t be getting chronological search results.

Instagram boss Adam Mosseri says letting users see search results chronologically “would create a substantial safety loophole.” I’ve replied to ask exactly what he means by that. Perhaps it’s so that Meta can always algorithmically sort search results and root out the bad stuff? I do hope Mosseri reconsiders this position, as chronological search results on X (formerly Twitter) can be pretty useful.

On Thursday, Meta expanded Threads’ keyword search feature to more languages.


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Bluesky is rolling out some new safety tools.

According to a thread from Bluesky’s safety account, it’s introducing “more advanced automated tooling” to flag content to its moderation team before users see it and letting users once again report their own posts for mislabeled content. And sometime “soon,” users will be able to set controls for who can reply to a post.

You still can’t view Bluesky posts unless you have an account (that feature is “realistically” arriving “mid month,” a Bluesky developer said Friday), so if you can’t see the posts yourself, TechCrunch has a good summary of what’s changing.


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The Verge
“Your honor, Epic rests.”

Epic v. Google won’t be over for a bit yet, as we’ll come back December 11th for closing arguments and jury instructions before the verdict. But the evidence is all in. Both Epic and Google have rested their cases. See you the week after next!


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Microsoft Copilot is now generally available.

Copilot, the AI chatbot formerly known as Bing Chat, is out of preview. That means Copilot is now available in 105 languages and 169 countries “on all modern browsers for mobile and web,” according to Caitlin Roulston, the director of communications at Microsoft.

Even though the preview label is going away today, Roulston says Microsoft will continue to “launch new features in preview while we iterate, listen to feedback, and improve the experience for our users.”