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Sony's State of Play livestream today was short on major news, but there was one surprising nugget: Returnal is getting a beefy update on March 22nd. Returnal: Ascension adds co-op capabilities and a new survival mode to the game, and it'll be completely free. 

Returnal is a PlayStation 5 exclusive developed by Housemarque. It's a roguelike shooter where players are trapped in a time loop on a hostile alien planet, and it gets a lot of things right, including massive enemies and a punishing reward system. As a PS5 exclusive, Returnal makes good use of the DualSense controller's haptics and Sony's 3D audio tech.

Ascension will be Returnal's 3.0 update. The game's 2.0 update in October 2021 added photo mode and a suspension option that allowed players to save their progress mid-run, but only under certain conditions. It is a roguelike, after all.

Even before its acquisition by The New York Times at the start of the year, Wordle had inspired countless imitators. In the weeks since then, the offshoots have only multiplied. Want to compete with 98 other players for bragging rights? There’s a Wordle clone for that. How about one that asks you to solve 16 puzzles at the same time? Look no further than Sedecordle.

But if words aren’t your thing, your options have been comparatively limited until now. Enter Heardle, a Wordlelike that puts your knowledge of popular music to the test. Like with Wordle, you have six tries to answer correctly. The twist is that you’ll only hear about one second of the song you need to identify on your first couple of guesses. The game will eventually give you an extra two, three, four and five seconds on subsequent attempts to help you secure the win.

I wish I could tell you just how fun Heardle is, but it seems to have gained so much popularity in a short time that its website is having a hard time keeping up with all the traffic.

Just when you thought video games were getting too serious comes Capcom with Exoprimal, an entirely new IP that will see you and your friends facing off endless waves of dinosaurs that fall from the sky. 

In an absolutely bananas trailer the publisher showed off during Sony's State of Play presentation on Wednesday, we saw a game that looks like a mix of Anthem, Dino Crisis,Dynasty Warriors and Vanquish. Each player has their own exosuit that comes with a variety of different abilities. In other words, we can't wait to play it. Capcom said it plans to release Exoprimal in 2023 on PlayStation 4 and PS5.

California can now set its own emission standards under the Clean Air Act, the EPA announced today. The decision puts an end to a feud that began when automakers pushed the Trump administration to revisit fuel efficiency rules, which eventually led the former president to revoke California's waiver to declare its own standards in 2019. California is known for pushing stricter emissions requirements than the federal government, standards which have also been adopted by 16 other states and Washington, D.C. 

“Today we proudly reaffirm California’s longstanding authority to lead in addressing pollution from cars and trucks,” EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan said in a statement. “Our partnership with states to confront the climate crisis has never been more important. With today’s action, we reinstate an approach that for years has helped advance clean technologies and cut air pollution for people not just in California, but for the U.S. as a whole.”

The EPA also confirmed that other states can once again adopt California's standards. As the LA Times reports, the EPA decision means that California can continue with its plan to ban sales of gasoline vehicles by 2035. In January, Governor Gavin Newsom announced a $10 billion plan to accelerate EV adoption, with a focus on making EVs more accessible for low-income consumers, building out more charging infrastructure and electrifying the state's fleet of vehicles.

A judge has ruled that voting machine manufacturer Smartmatic can proceed with a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News and Rudy Giuliani. The company has accused them and others of making false claims that it rigged votes in favor of Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

Fox News parent Fox Corp, anchor Maria Bartiromo, former anchor Lou Dobbs, The Five host Jeanine Pirro and ex-Donald Trump lawyer Sidney Powell all tried to have Smartmatic's claims against them dismissed. Justice David Cohen of New York State Supreme Court dismissed the claims against Pirro and Powell, though rejected the bids from Fox Corp, Bartiromo and Dobbs.

Smartmatic claimed Fox News made up a story about helping Biden to steal the presidency from Trump to boost ratings. A lawyer for the company said Fox News caused "catastrophic damage" to Smartmatic's business and reputation, according to Reuters.

Cohen ruled that Fox News "turned a blind eye to a litany of outrageous claims about [Smartmatic], unprecedented in the history of American elections, so inherently improbable that it evinced a reckless disregard for the truth." He also said Giuliani accused Smartmatic of rigging elections in Venezuela and claimed it engaged in "old tricks" in the presidential election, which provided grounds for Smartmatic to proceed with some of its claims against the former Trump lawyer.

Fox News called Smartmatic's claims "baseless." It plans to appeal Cohen's decision and countersue Smartmatic for fees and costs.

In December, a judge dismissed an attempt by Fox News to toss out a lawsuit by another voting machine maker. Dominion Voting Systems has accused Fox News of defamation in its $1.6 billion suit.

Sony is joining Microsoft in stopping Russian sales following the country's invasion of Ukraine. CNBCreports Sony has halted all PlayStation hardware and software sales in Russia, and has cut access to the digital PlayStation Store. The company called for "peace in Ukraine" and said it would donate $2 million to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees as well as Save the Children.

The decision comes a week after Ukraine Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov called on Microsoft and Sony to block Russian players, and a few days after Microsoft stopped all sales in the country. Nintendo put its Russian eShop in "maintenance mode," but that may have been due to a payment service freezing processing for purchases made using rubles.

Numerous Western game developers have stopped selling their work in Russia, including Ubisoft, Take-Two, CD Projekt Red, EA, Activision Blizzard and Epic. However, Sony's move might be the most damaging yet. Russian gamers will have a much harder time expanding their game libraries, and they can forget about buying the already-elusive PlayStation 5. Sony may feel the sting when it dominates Russian console sales (according to IDC data), but there might not be much practical choice when there's so much industry pressure to take a stand on the Ukraine war.

Italy’s data privacy watchdog said it will fine the controversial facial recognition firm Clearview AI for breaching EU law. An investigation by Garante, Italy’s data protection authority, found that the company’s database of 10 billion images of faces includes those of Italians and residents in Italy. The New York City-based firm is being fined €20 million, and will also have to delete any facial biometrics it holds of Italian nationals.

This isn’t the first time that the beleaguered facial recognition tech company is facing legal consequences. The UK data protection authority last November fined the company £17 million after finding its practices—which include collecting selfies of people without their consent from security camera footage or mugshots—violate the nation’s data protection laws. The company has also been banned in Sweden, France and Australia.

The accumulated fines will be a considerable blow for the now five-year old company, completely wiping away the $30 million it raised in its last funding round. But Clearview AI appears to be just getting started. The company is on track to patent its biometric database, which scans faces across public internet data and has been used by law enforcement agencies around the world, including police departments in the United States and a number of federal agencies. A number of Democrats have urged federal agencies to drop their contracts with Clearview AI, claiming that the tool is a severe threat to the privacy of everyday citizens. In a letter to the Department of Homeland Security, Sens. Ed Markey and Jeff Merkley and Reps. Pramila Jayapal and Ayanna Pressley urged regulators to discontinue their use of the tool.

“Clearview AI reportedly scrapes billions of photos from social media sites without permission from or notice to the pictured individuals. In conjunction with the company’s facial recognition capabilities, this trove of personal information is capable of fundamentally dismantling Americans’ expectation that they can move, assemble, or simply appear in public without being identified,” wrote the authors of the letter.

Despite losing troves of facial recognition data from entire countries, Clearview AI has a plan to rapidly expand this year. The company told investors that it is on track to have 100 billion photos of faces in its database within a year, reportedThe Washington Post. In its pitch deck, the company said it hopes to secure an additional $50 million from investors to build even more facial recognition tools and ramp up its lobbying efforts.

Today is a good day for sci-fi and space fantasy lovers. Paramount+ has shared a teaser trailer for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, its offshoot of Discovery. The video provides a brief but telling glimpse of Captain Christopher Pike's tenure aboard the USS Enterprise, including his return to service and (what else?) the worlds his crew will see. There's a clear attempt to recreate the wonder you might have felt watching early Star Trek as you encountered new aliens and planets for the first time.

There isn't much to see of the cast beyond Pike (Anson Mount), but you'll see Ethan Peck return as Spock while Rebecca Romijn once again serves as Number One. Celia Rose Gooding plays Uhura, Jess Bush will assume the role of Nurse Chapel and Babs Olusanmokun is Doctor M'Benga.

Strange New Worlds premieres in May. As indicated, the show's appeal may come as much from its format as its focus on the Enterprise. Unlike Discovery and Picard, SNW is expected to rely more on the single-episode storylines that defined the original series and much of the pre-streaming Star Trek franchise. Whether or not it reproduces those glory days is another matter, but Paramount+ at least appears to know its target audience.

Twitter has begun testing two new features the company promises will improve the alt text experience on its platform. The company said it would spend about a month trialing the features, which add easy-to-access descriptions to images, before rolling them out globally at the start of April. As Twitter notes, adding a description or “alt text” to an image allows people with low vision or a cognitive disability to “fully contribute” to the platform. They’re also useful if you don’t have the fastest internet connection.

If you have access to the test, you can add alt text to an image by tapping the “Add description” button that appears after you upload a picture. As a rule of thumb, you want to be concise but descriptive when writing alt tags. You’ll then see an “alt” badge appear at the bottom left corner of the image you can tap to read the description. Twitted noted it's also working on a feature that will remind people to add descriptions to images, and said it would have more to share about that functionality "soon."

Comprehensive support for alt tags shows just how much Twitter has come along on the accessibility front. In 2020, the company famously introduced a voice note feature that didn’t come with accessibility tools like closed captioning. The company eventually apologized for its actions and went on to establish two dedicated accessibility teams. “We know these features have been a long time coming,” the company said Wednesday, alluding to that history. “We’re grateful for your patience.”

Did you wonder why Apple's Mac Studio weighs a full two pounds more (7.9lbs versus 5.9lbs) when you choose the M1 Ultra model instead of the baseline M1 Max version? There's a simple explanation for it — and no, it's not that the extra silicon weighs more. Apple explained to The Verge that the M1 Ultra variant uses a larger and heavier copper cooling system where the M1 Max can make do with an aluminum heatsink. The 370W power supply and other components weigh virtually the same.

The cooling is crucial to the Mac Studio's small form factor. Much of the internal space is devoted to the thermal module and the vents it needs to expel heat — the choice of metal could make a big difference in the ability to transfer that heat away from sensitive electronics. Copper isn't necessarily better than aluminum (the design also plays a large role), but it's frequently used in more aggressive PC cooling setups and could help Apple spin fans less often.

You probably won't worry about this much unless you're routinely carting your Mac Studio around. However, the weight difference also helps explain why you won't see a MacBook Pro with an M1 Ultra any time soon. As the Ultra is effectively two M1 Max chips linked together, it generates considerably more heat in addition to its greater power demands. Even if battery life was unaffected, Apple would likely need a bulkier (and possibly noisier) cooling module to keep the laptop's temperatures in check.