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Get ready, Nintendo fans: it’s almost time for the company’s first Direct of 2023. The showcase will mostly focus on games coming to Switch in the first half of this year and it will run for around 49 minutes. The Nintendo Direct starts at 5PM ET and you can watch it below.

It’s not totally clear which games Nintendo plans to show off, but there are a few safe bets. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, one of the biggest games of the year, will arrive on May 12th — it would be a surprise if there isn’t at least a mention of it here. Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon is likely to make an appearance, since that's out in March. Super Nintendo World will open at Universal Studios Hollywood next week and The Super Mario Bros. Movie is fast approaching, so they'll likely pop up as well.

Everything else is largely a mystery, and that's part of the fun of a Nintendo Direct. Rumor has it that Nintendo will release the delayedAdvance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp imminently and many folks are hoping for news on Metroid Prime 4 and Hollow Knight: Silksong. Luckily, we won't have to wait much longer to find out more about what Nintendo has in store for the next few months.

You now have a very practical reason to subscribe to Twitter Blue beyond long video uploads and the coveted blue checkmark. As of today, Blue members in the US can post tweets up to 4,000 characters long. You can't currently schedule these posts or save them as drafts, but this could be helpful if you'd rather not write a lengthy multi-tweet thread just to share your thoughts.

Free Twitter users can still reply to and quote these tweets. And yes, Twitter is aware that scrolling through a sea of these lengthy posts could be frustrating. Any tweet longer than 280 characters now hides any extra content beyond a "show more" prompt. Blue normally costs $8 per month, or $84 per year.

This probably won't prompt you to switch from social networks like Facebook or Mastodon, where long posts have been available for a while. However, it could be helpful if you'd like to share the same post across multiple social platforms without having to split it up or write a condensed version.

There's certainly pressure on Twitter to make Blue more appealing. Twitter reportedly only had 180,000 Blue subscribers in the US as of mid-January, and roughly 290,000 worldwide. While the revamped subscription hasn't been available for very long, it needs to be highly attractive to enthusiasts if Elon Musk wants to achieve a goal of generating half of Twitter's revenue from subscriptions.

Netflix's fight against password sharing is expanding in earnest. The company is rolling out paid account sharing in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal and Spain after trialing the effort in Latin America. If you live in one of these countries, you'll need to set a primary location to have unfettered access at home. If you have any friends or family who want to share your account, you'll have to subscribe to either the Standard or Premium tier and pay a fee ($8 in Canada and New Zealand, €4 in Portugal and €6 in Spain) for up to two extra users outside of your home.

You can still watch on your phone or sign into the service on a device elsewhere, like a smart TV at a hotel. Netflix also lets you convert a profile into a new account. The company promises to tweak paid sharing based on feedback, and to continue the deployment over the "coming months."

The streaming pioneer isn't shy about its rationale. As it has argued in the past, Netflix claims account sharing is hurting its bottom line. The 100 million-plus households sharing accounts are "impacting [Netflix's] ability" to invest in new content, according to product director Chengyi Long. In theory, paid sharing improves the company's revenue without forcing affected users to pay full price for a completely separate account.

It's not clear how new regions will take to the policy. Many rival services don't have account sharing restrictions, and some sharers may be averse to paying anything to use someone else's access. While we wouldn't expect users to switch services in droves, there may be some who simply forego Netflix altogether to avoid paying a fee.

A former Twitter employee has shed new light on the company’s dealings with the White House while former President Donald Trump was in office. Anika Navaroli, a former senior member of Twitter’s US Safety Policy, testified at a House Oversight Committee hearing that her team had received a request to remove a tweet making fun of the former president.

She revealed the previously unreported interaction during hearing with former Twitter executives’ over their handling of a 2020 New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop. Republicans on the committee have equated Twitter's initial decision to block links to the story with “censorship,” and criticized the company for its interactions with government officials.

But Navaroli revealed that Twitter had also received at least one request, in 2019, from the Trump White House regarding a tweet they wanted removed. The tweet came from Chrissy Teigen, who had called the president a “pussy ass bitch,” in response to comments he had made about her and her husband. According to Navaroli, someone from the White House “reached out to ask that this tweet be removed” and that her team had to evaluate whether the tweet violated the company’s “insults policy.” She said they ultimately determined the tweet did not, and it remained up.

Earlier in the hearing, Navaroli also revealed that Twitter had on at least one occasion changed its policies in order to avoid taking action against a tweet from Trump. She said that the company had removed internal “moderation guidance” that used “go back to where you came from” as an example of language that would break its rules after Trump had used the phrase in reference to New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and other lawmakers. She said a more senior executive, former trust and safety head Del Harvey, “overrode” her assessment that the tweet broke Twitter's rules.

The hearing wasn’t the first time members of Congress have heard from Navaroli. She previously spoke with the committee investigating the January 6th attack about her efforts to warn Twitter officials about threats leading up to the attack. "Twitter leadership bent and broke their own rules in order to protect some of the most dangerous speech on the platform," she said in her opening statement.

If you like Squid Game but not enough to brave the real-life version, you'll soon have a VR option. Netflix has partnered with Sandbox VR to produce a game based on the Korean TV series, and from "late 2023," you'll be able to enter this gruesome dystopia at any of the Sandbox VR arcades around the world. The game developer has over 30 locations globally — 26 of which are in North America — at the time of writing, which is a much needed rebound after lying dormant throughout the worst part of the pandemic.

According to Sandbox VR, its upcoming experience will have players "transported to iconic Squid Game locations, where they become contestants in a variety of pulse-pounding challenges inspired by the Netflix series." You'll "compete against each other to be the last one standing" — presumably without anyone actually dying. As with all Sandbox VR games, players will be able to immediately rewatch, share and even download a personalized mixed-reality highlight reel.

The San Francisco-based VR company didn't share further details on its Netflix collaboration, but judging by my recent experience with its latest zombie-shooter, Deadwood Valley (pictured above), the upcoming Squid Game title shouldn't disappoint. All Sandbox VR games allow up to six players to roam around freely in each room, while wearing wrist and ankle trackers for full-body motion capture, as well as a bHaptic TactSuit to feel gunshots or zombie scratches. Players also hold a prop weapon that matches the size of its virtual counterpart, thus making these VR games more immersive than they already are.

I'm anticipating the likes of Red Light, Green Light, hopscotch and Squid making their way into the Squid Game VR experience, but I'm less keen on the idea of licking a prop to solve the dalgona candy puzzles.

Google Translate is getting an AI-powered upgrade in the coming weeks to help you find more accurate translations, particularly for words with multiple definitions. The app will offer additional contextual translation options with descriptions and examples.

Let's say you're looking for a translation of the word "row," which has multiple meanings in English. It could refer to an argument, a line of seats on a plane or using an oar to propel a boat. Google Translate should soon offer translations for all of those variants, along with examples of how they're used.

Google

Google says the app will provide "the context you need to accurately translate and use the right turns of phrase, local idioms or appropriate words depending on your intent." All going well, this should help you communicate more clearly in different languages. The upgraded contextual translations will be available for languages such as English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish starting this month, with more surely to follow.

Meanwhile, the company recently rolled out a Translate redesign on Android. It's coming to the iOS app soon. The revamped app introduces more gestures that should make it easier to use, including swifter access to language selection and the option to swipe to bring up recent translations. Google says translations are now more readable, while an extra 33 languages are available for on-device translation, including Basque, Hawaiian, Hmong, Kurdish, Sundanese, Yiddish and Zulu.

The original AirPods Pro and AirPods Pro 2 are popular among iPhone users for their convenience and compelling mix of features. However, your options are limited if something happens to the charging case, and your earbuds aren’t under warranty. Apple will replace the case for a fee. If you own a first-generation pair of AirPods Pro, you’re probably better off buying the new model to get a fresh set of batteries. In any event, there’s no easy way to repair a set of AirPods Pro and limit your electronic waste. Replacement parts are either hard to find, expensive or non-existent, and Apple didn’t design any of its earbuds with repairability in mind.

Robotics engineer Ken Pillonel, who became internet famous in 2021 for creating a working USB-C iPhone, is trying to fix that. With his latest DIY project, Pillonel has effectively created an end-to-end solution for those who want to swap the battery in their AirPods Pro case rather than replace it altogether.

Pillonel designed a replacement USB-C PCB he says is possible to install in an undamaged case without milling. If you’ve been following Pillonel for a while, you likely know that he also designed a USB-C PCB for the first- and second-generation AirPods and uploaded the design to GitHub. This time, he’s selling the AirPods Pro part to make the repair as easy as possible for anyone who wants to attempt it. You can get a single PCB from his online store for about $38.

If you damage your AirPods Pro case trying to access the internal battery, Pillonel has thought of that too. He’s uploaded a schematic to GitHub that you can use to 3D print a replacement. The USB-C PCB and case are fully compatible with one another. The only part you need to source independently is a replacement battery. You can find those online for about $20. “The goal of this project is to maximize the number of successful repairs to minimize the quantity of electronic waste,” Pillonel said in a statement. Obviously, most people won’t have the patience or confidence to service their AirPods Pro charging case, but a project like this is invaluable for those who do.

Months after a successful vote, Apple Store employees in Glasgow have become the company's first retail workers to form a union in the UK. Apple and the trade union GMB Scotland have signed a collective bargaining agreement that theoretically gives staff at the Buchanan Street store more clout when pushing for improved working conditions.

The Glasgow employees voted to unionize in November. They sought better pay, increased wage transparency and improved shift scheduling. Union negotiators characterized talks with Apple as positive, but it took several months before workers cast ballots.

GMB organizer John Slaven calls the union vote "historic." In a statement to The Herald, Apple says it's one of the "highest paying" retail brands in Scotland, and offers "industry-leading benefits" to employees. Apple raised starting wages for store workers last year in response to mounting labor action, but it also faces formal complaints over alleged union busting tactics.

These aren't the first Apple retail employees to create unions. In addition to teams in Europe, some stores in the US voted to unionize last year. The Glasgow move adds to the momentum, however, and may help other UK store workers pursuing their own unionization efforts.

Turkey may be blocking access to Twitter, two days after a pair of catastrophic earthquakes struck the area. Thousands of people are still trapped in buildings in Turkey and Syria, where the death toll is approaching 12,000.

According to Bloomberg, people in Turkey started having trouble accessing Twitter on Wednesday afternoon. Some have resorted to VPNs to use the service. Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of Turkey's main opposition party, has accused the government of blocking Twitter.

It's not clear why the Turkish government might want to prevent access to Twitter amid such devastation. The social media service is still a valuable disaster response tool and users have also been sharing images of the destruction caused by the earthquakes. Twitter does not have a communications team that can be reached for comment.

This would not be the first time that Turkey has stopped residents from accessing social media services. It has also done so during cross-border military operations and terror attacks. In 2014, Turkey temporarily banned Twitter. Users were sharing voice recordings and documents that purportedly showed corruption within then-prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's sphere of influence. Erdoğan became Turkey's president later that year and he remains in power. His government has faced criticism for its response to this week's disaster.

It wouldn't be February without a peek at Google's next mobile OS. Sure enough, the company has released the first Android 14 developer preview (DP1) to help app creators target the new platform. This time around, the initial priorities are accessibility, battery life and security. You can scale fonts to a much larger size (200 percent versus the earlier 130 percent), and smarter scaling makes text more readable. It's easier to set preferred languages for apps, and developers can be more accommodating to people who speak gendered languages like French.

Android 14 DP1 also includes some under-the-hood improvements that can make the most of your battery and screen. There are tighter controls on alarms, foreground tasks and internal broadcasts, all of which can reduce power consumption. It should also be easier to build apps for foldable phones and tablets, so you may see software that makes better use of your hardware's visual real estate.

And yes, Android 14 can block users from sideloading very old apps. Google will require that apps target at least Android 6.0 (Marshmallow), as some malware is written for older versions to avoid a permissions system introduced in 2015. This won't prevent you from running apps that are already installed when you upgrade the OS, and you can use command line instructions to force installations. However, you may have to look for alternatives if there's an ancient app you'd hate to give up.

This first preview is available through the desktop Android emulator as well as the Pixel 4a, Pixel 5 and newer Google phones. The first Android 14 beta should arrive in April, and Google expects "platform stability" (read: release candidates) in June. As always, the developer previews don't represent the sum total of what the new platform will bring. We'd expect Google to reveal more conspicuous changes at its I/O conference in the spring.