With New York Comic Con underway this weekend, Paramount shared a new trailer for the final season of Star Trek: Picard. After the previous teasers mostly played up the nostalgia of the principal cast of The Next Generation returning to the franchise, the new trailer finally offers a look at season three’s story. And judging from the clip, Picard will end with a bang.

The trailer opens with Starfleet facing an entirely new threat in the form of an alien vessel called the Shrike. What follows is a fun series of scenes that sees Admiral Jean-Luc Picard recruit his old friends, some of them a little less than willing, to face a villain played by Pulp Fiction’s Amanda Plummer. There’s something satisfying about seeing how characters like Worf have changed in unexpected ways in their later years. Even more unexpected are the two cameos at the end of the trailer. Daniel Davis is back as holographic Professor Moriarty, while Brent Spiner will play Data’s evil Android twin, Lore.

Alongside a new trailer for Star Trek: Picard, Paramount also shared fresh teasers for season five of Discovery and the midseason return of Prodigy. The latter will debut on October 27th, while the former is expected to arrive sometime next year. The final season of Picard will begin streaming on February 16th, 2023.

Kojima Productions is making a game with Elle Fanning (The Great). The studio announced the collaboration as part of an elaborate teaser campaign that began back at the Tokyo Game Show in September. At the time, it shared an image featuring a face obscured in shadow with the tagline “Who Am I?” On Friday, fans got an answer to that question when PAX Aus attendees found a QR code with a link to the Kojima Productions website. The webpage hosts an updated version of the image that features a portrait of Fanning.

Kojima subsequently shared a tweet implying there would be more teasers and an eventual reveal to follow. As for what they point to, Polygon suggests Friday’s teaser is most likely tied to a Death Stranding sequel. In May, actor Norman Reedus shared in an interview he had “just started” work on a second game in the series. Although Kojima Productions has yet to formally announce the title, a producer with the studio shared Kojima’s tweet using the hashtag #DeathStranding. That tweet has since been deleted.

However, it’s worth noting Kojima is working on at least one “completely new game” with Microsoft. The “Where Am I?” image the auteur shared may also point to “Overdose,” a horror game Kojima is reportedly making with Death Stranding and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood actress Margaret Qualley. Either way, Kojima is likely to share more information about his next project at The Game Awards on December 9th since he has a long history with host Geoff Keighley.

It's finally clear just what the long-expected Super Mario Bros. movie will look like. Nintendo and Illumination have shared a teaser trailer (below) offering a peek at the computer animated blockbuster. The clip shows Bowser (played by Jack Black) terrorizing a penguin kingdom in his quest for an invincibility star. Not surprisingly, we know who will come to their rescue — Mario (Chris Pratt) makes an abrupt entrance to the Mushroom Kingdom, while his brother Luigi (Charlie Day) makes a cameo.

The movie also stars The Queen's Gambit's Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach, Keegan-Michael Key as Toad and Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong, among other big names. Super Mario Bros. is expected to premiere April 7th, 2023.

If the teaser is anything to go by, the creators aren't taking any chances. This appears to be a straightforward CG movie meant to appeal to a wide audience — you won't have flashbacks to the odd 1993 live action film. With that said, the top-tier actors and lavish visuals might help it stand out if the iconic gaming franchise isn't enough by itself.

At this point, we’re all pretty used to seeing Instagram copy TikTok. Now, in a new twist, TikTok is copying Instagram with a new feature called “Photo Mode.” The update allows TikTok users to share multiple still photos in a post, along with captions of up to 2,200 characters.

The new photo posts, which can also feature music, will appear in users’ For You page alongside videos. In a blog post, TikTok says it hopes Photo Mode, combined the recently-extended character count, will allow creators to “express themselves and more deeply connect with others.”

But Photo Mode is also making the For You Page more like Instagram in ways that may not be as creative. According to Mashable, the feature is already being used by creators to share recycled text memes and other content that’s often popular on... Instagram.

But TikTok now copying Instagram’s original premise is especially noteworthy given that Instagram has reportedly been struggling with engagement with its TikTok clone, Reels. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that TikTok is still vastly outpacing Instagram Reels in daily watch time.

It’s also the latest bout of every social media platform shamelessly copying each other until they all look kind of the same. In the last six weeks alone: Instagram,TikTok and Snapchat have come up with their own take on French upstart BeReal (Instagram’s hasn’t formally launched yet). Twitter introduced a TikTok-style feed for full-screen videos. While YouTube Shorts, itself a TikTok clone, added TikTok-style voice overs.

A lot more people will soon be able to do what was once unthinkable: edit tweets. Twitter has begun to roll out its new tweet-editing feature to Twitter Blue subscribers in the United States. The expansion follows a launch in Canada, New Zealand and Australia earlier this week.

The feature gives users a 30-minute window to make changes to their tweets. A version history is also available, so others — regardless of whether they subscribe to Twitter Blue — can see a record of all the changes that have been made.

For now, the feature is part of Twitter’s $4.99/month subscription service, which also provides access to NFT profile photos and other specialized features. The company hasn’t confirmed if the edit button will ever be available outside of Twitter Blue, though the feature is categorized as part of “Twitter Blue Labs,” and Twitter has previously said some “Labs” features will eventually be available more widely.

Twitter first announced that it was working on the long-requested edit button back in April, following a poll from Elon Musk, who had recently become the company’s largest shareholder. The company said its work on an edit button predated Musk’s involvement with Twitter, which newly released text messages from Musk seemed to confirm. Interestingly, Musk’s messages also revealed that he was not a fan (to put it mildly) of Twitter Blue, at least in its original form. No word yet on if he has the edit button. 

Fast Company's website finally came back online eight days after the publication took it down due to a cyberattack. The business publication was initially hacked on September 25th, but it wasn't until the second security breach on September 27th that it had to take drastic measures to contain the situation. If you'll recall, Apple News users who are subscribed to Fast Company received a couple of obscene push notifications with racial slurs in late September. The bad actors had also defaced the website with obscene and racist messages and posted details on how they were able to infiltrate the publication. 

They said that Fast Company used an easy-to-crack password for its WordPress CMS and had re-used it for its other accounts. From there, they were able to grab the company's Apple News API keys, as well as authentication tokens that gave them access to employee names, email addresses and IPs. In a forum the hackers linked to on the defaced website, a user called "Thrax" posted a database dump with 6,737 employee records that include mails, password hashes for some of them and unpublished drafts, among other details.

No customer or advertiser information was exposed as a result of the hack, though, Fast Company editor-in-chief Brendan Vaughan wrote in a new post announcing that the publication is back. The main Fast Company website, its corporate site Mansueto.com and its sister site Inc.com remained offline for eight days while an investigation was being conducted. During that period, the publication posted content on other platforms, such as LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Medium. Vaughan didn't go into details with the result of the probe, other than saying that no customer or advertiser data was compromised and that the publication has "taken steps to safeguard against further attacks."

The Internet Archive is aiming to build up a new library of old content. It's expanding beyond Flash games and animations, movies, books and (of course) snapshots of websites with the Digital Library of Amateur Radio and Communications (DLARC). This particular archive, which will be led by tech historian Kay Savetz, will include amateur radio broadcasts and digital material from the early days of the internet.

Savetz told Gizmodo that his remit includes just about any kind of digital communications from the 1970s until the early 1990s. While the preservation project focuses on amateur radio recordings, it may also feature early podcasts, digital newsletters, photos, videos and, yes, websites. There are plans to digitize print materials as well. “I want the obscure stuff, the locally-produced ham radio newsletters or the smaller magazines, that sort of thing,” Savetz said.

The DLARC team, which has funding from the Amateur Radio Digital Communications Foundation, is looking for help to build out the collection. It's seeking "partners and contributors with troves of ham radio, amateur radio, and early digital communications-related books, magazines, documents, catalogs, manuals, videos, software, personal archives and other historical records collections, no matter how big or small." It added that every collection in the library will be accessible to everyone. The project will also offer a discovery portal designed for education and research use cases.

With profits shrinking of late, Facebook has been shutting down unpopular apps and focusing on its core services. To that end, it's updating the primary Facebook Feed to let users see fewer or more posts from friends, groups and pages. That will in turn let it incorporate user feedback into Feed rankings, "making our artificial intelligence systems smarter and more responsive," it said in a blog post. 

As it stands now, the Facebook app only lets you hide posts from people you follow or those it suggests. Now, for friends or recommended posts, a new setting will allow you to "show more" or "show less" of that content. Doing so will not only change your feed content, but improve its AI system used for Feed rankings.

It'll "periodically" show the setting on posts in Feed, and you'll soon be able to access a similar setting on every post by tapping on the three-dot menu at the top right. It's also testing the feature in its short video Reels feature.

Facebook

In addition, Facebook is testing a global menu to customize the number of posts you see from Friends and family; Groups; and Pages and public figures. As shown in the image above, you'll be able to select "Normal," "Show more" or "Show less" of that content. That will appear along with the current Favorites, Snooze, Unfollow and Reconnect in the Feed Preferences.

With the changes, Facebook appears to be addressing one of the main user complaints: too many posts that they don't want to see. Considering the number of ads in Feed (with more coming to Instagram and Reels as well), parent Meta no doubt wants to make sure users are happy with other content. 

Meta's quarterly revenue dipped for the first time ever in the April-June quarter. It's looking to make those numbers go back up and keep smiles on investors' faces. One of the strategies it's employing to do that is by attempting to squeeze more money out of Instagram. As such, it will shove ads into more areas of the app, namely the Explore feed and the grid on people's profiles.

Brands can now place ads in the Explore feed, but profile feed ads are still in the testing phase. The company will also offer some creators the chance to earn a cut of revenue from ads that are displayed in their profile feeds.

Meta announced a slew of other updates for its advertising products. Some of those will impact Instagram. For one thing, the company will try out augmented reality ads in both the feed and Stories. Meta suggests that brands might use these to let people test virtual furniture in their home or get a closer look at a car.

Meta

In addition, the company is experimenting with new formats for ads in Facebook and Instagram Reels. These include a "post-loop" format — skippable ads lasting between four and 10 seconds that play after a reel. After the ad finishes, the reel will play again. The company is also testing image carousel ads, which you may start to see at the bottom of Facebook Reels starting today. In addition, brands will have access to a free library of music to use in Reels ads.

As for how many ads you'll actually see, that may be different for each person. You may or may not see more of them, but they'll at least pop up in places where they weren't present before. "The number of ads across the platform varies based on how people use Instagram," an Instagram spokesperson told Engadget. "We closely monitor people’s sentiment — both for ads and overall commerciality."

It doesn't seem that Meta is considering the sentiment that some people don't want to see ads at all. The company swiftly took action against an unofficial, ad-free Instagram client that popped up last week.

Motive and EA have finally shared a gameplay trailer for their long-expectedDead Space remake. To an extent, the clip shows what you'd expect. It's a familiar retelling of Isaac Clarke's horror-filled mission to the mining ship USG Ishimura, but with much-improved visuals and sounds that make better use of modern hardware. You're still severing the limbs of Necromorphs and floating through zero-gravity segments, just with eerie volumetric lighting and more realistic, context-sensitive sounds.

It's not quite a rehash, thankfully. Isaac is no longer silent like he was in the 2008 original, and there's a better feel for a story that involves the battle for sanity and discovering the fate of Isaac's girlfriend Nicole. To some extent, the remake is an opportunity to refine Dead Space rather than simply profiting from a well-known name.

The revived Dead Space will be released January 27th, 2023 for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. While it isn't a brand new game like fans might want, this preview suggests Motive is at least delivering what you'd expect from a remake: a modernization of graphics and gameplay that's still true to the experience that drew people in the first time around.