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There’s a new cozy game in the works based on life in the Shire from The Lord of the Rings. Wētā Workshop and Private Division are working on the game, titled Tales of the Shire, which will be available in 2024.

I’m imagining a game that’s Hobbit life mixed with Stardew Valley, and I can’t wait to learn more.

It’s possible, as Verge alum Cameron Faulkner recently found out for Polygon. It’s also apparently his only DVD player?

Just read his post, it’s so good.

According to an Apple support document, you just need to wipe the edges with a lint-free cloth to get things looking good again (via MacRumors):

For iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, the oil from your skin might temporarily alter the color of the outside band. Wiping your iPhone with a soft, slightly damp, lint-free cloth will restore the original look.

Google says it’s more likely than you think! The company is still fighting with the DOJ over whether to admit a potentially “embarrassing” document into evidence — the one that led to public records of the trial getting pulled off the internet. Mehta says he’ll rule on admitting the document tomorrow.

And that’s right, it sounds like we also still don’t know if the Justice Department will be allowed to resume posting exhibits online. But we got some testimony from DuckDuckGo’s CEO on the company’s travails competing with Google.

Bloomberg reports that annual increases for Apple’s retail employees, including AppleCare technical support, will be about 4 percent this year, down from eight to 10 percent last year. Bloomberg cites labor shortages, inflation, and unionization efforts as factors in last year’s higher increases. Guess things are back to normal?

PG&E — not the most popular utility — can now just press a button to dispatch a self-flying Skydio X2 for inspections. It’s setting up automatic drone docks at 12 substations by end of year, and California will let the drones fly along power lines up to two miles away.

While the utility’s BVLOS waiver doesn’t seem to waive the need to have someone watching the drone from the ground, PG&E says it doesn’t need them.

Amazon’s smart displays now work with its new Fire TV Channels. These FAST offerings bring shows, live news, music videos, and sports from over 420 different providers to the Echo Show lineup.

I just tried it on the smallest Echo, the Show 5, and it started playing ABC News before I hopped over to America's Test Kitchen. Now, time for dinner.

After first rolling out Studio Bot to Android developers in the US in May, Google has announced that it’s launching the tool in over 170 different countries and territories. Google notes that it’s still “designed to be used in English,” however.

In addition to generating code, Studio Bot can also fix errors and answer questions about Android. It’s currently available in the canary release channel of Android Studio.

Android expert Mishaal Rahman found a setting in Android 14 that could let you use your device as a webcam — as long as you do a little tinkering first. Rahman posted a picture of what this might look like... and I can’t tell if it’s cool or kind of useless.

Controversial stablecoin Tether is making loans to its customers. Bloomberg columnist Matt Levine walks through why that’s kind of weird:

If you are in charge of Tether and someone shows up at your office to pitch you on a clever investment that will get you a higher return with only a little risk, you should put your fingers in your ears and scream “NO” and kick them out of your office. You can make billions of dollars of pure profit taking no risk!

Anyway, the implications are even weirder: Tether might be propping up crypto prices.

That’s a quote from Apple’s Eddy Cue in a new interview with GQ about the company’s ventures into sports streaming. Given the recent uptick in interest in the league thanks to Lionel Messi, I think he’s a bigger fan now.

The interview has a lot of interesting tidbits, and I suggest reading it in full. I just wish Cue had given GQ pictures of this:

At home, [Cue has] nine televisions arrayed in a grid, plus a digital ticker relaying scores—the sort of sports-viewing system you’d dream up if you were a wildly successful, sports-mad tech executive.

The first games on offer are the three classic GTA games included with Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition. You can read more about it on Rockstar’s website.

The subscription, launched last year, costs $5.99 per month.

There’s another Twitter spat going on, this time between market-makers DWF Labs, GSR and Wintermute. Worth keeping an eye on, because at least once when there was this kind of Twitter trash-talking — between FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried and Binance’s Changpeng “CZ” Zhao — FTX melted down.

And they call themselves... the future of finance!

Microsoft set its new Copilot ad to Amy McKnight’s “Rise Up Let’s Go.” Such energy... I might just keep it on repeat today!

The company confirmed to TechCrunch that it laid off about 30 people in its talent acquisition organization.

And also Pocket Casts!

This is such a hack and a workaround but I’m thrilled it exists.

EA Sports FC 24, the first entry in EA’s new non-FIFA soccer franchise, launches next week. But so does a mobile version — and you can get a first glimpse at it in the reveal trailer below. The mobile game is out on September 26th, while the full PC and console release hits on the 29th.

The biggest feature might be the ability to work on a document together with somebody over FaceTime — but that’s probably not enough to get more people to use these apps. MacRumors has more details about the updates.

It’s the desktop peripheral control app PC gamers love to hate. Now Razer says a new streamlined version of Synapse, rewritten for multithreaded CPUs and coming Q4, is 30 percent faster. Razer’s breaking out a standalone Chroma RGB app too.

“Every single person, ourselves included, complained that when you plug in a new piece of hardware, you have to update the drivers in Synapse,“ says spokesperson Will Powers. “Not anymore.” Check the gallery below for a peek.

“Vibrant and energetic graffiti on the wall” created the PC wallpaper you see below, the company claims, whose colors you can one-click propagate across Chroma RGB devices.

It’s called Axon Create, and it uses Leonardo.ai. I asked and they wouldn’t let me try it ahead of announcement, but you can apparently try it today.

Snap wanted to get 4 million people subscribed to its $3.99/month service by the end of 2022. Turns out, it probably happened about 6 months later. The last milestone Snap disclosed was hitting 3 million subscribers in April.

I’ve got the update on my iPhone 12 Mini. Here’s the full patch notes; they’re short.

This update provides bug fixes and important security updates for iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro models.

For information on the security content of Apple software updates, please visit this website: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT201222

We’re not seeing the update on our iPhone 15 review devices just yet, but we’re planning to install it on those as soon as we can. Hopefully the patch fixes the seemingly-broken battery charging setting that’s supposed to halt charging past 80 percent.

Have we reached the peak of the daily puzzle craze? Honestly, I hope not. Here’s one I just discovered: Cinema Grids. Three actors, three movie criteria, and once chance to get them right — perfect for the groupchat with your IMDB knowitalls.

That’s Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan, introducing the company’s new flagship Huntsman V3 Pro gaming keyboards. They’ve got a second-gen optical switch that can still reset instantly after you press — now with adjustable actuation as little as 0.1mm (down from 1.2mm), and lighter at 40g (down from 45g). See them in the gallery below.

You won’t have to listen for long to hear who it is.

Big Vape: The Rise and Fall of Juul comes out on October 11th.