With the Kremlin restricting access to online platforms like Twitter and Instagram in recent days, people in Russia are quickly losing access to information about the war in Ukraine that doesn’t come from the government. Enter Squad303, a website created by a group of Polish programmers to help people from around the world establish a dialogue with their Russian counterparts.

Spotted by The Wall Street Journal, the website randomly generates a number or email address for you to contact. It pulls from a database that contains 20 million cellphone numbers and approximately 140 million email addresses. Since the Squad303 went online on March 6th, its creators told The Journal that individuals from around the world have sent nearly 7 million text messages and 2 million emails in Russian, along with countless images and videos from the conflict.

“Our aim was to break through Putin’s digital wall of censorship and make sure that Russian people are not totally cut off from the world and the reality of what Russia is doing in Ukraine,” a spokesperson for told the outlet.

The website is named after the Royal Air Force’s famous 303 Fighter Squadron. It was one 16 units made up of Polish airmen that flew for the RAF during World War II. The 303 played a pivotal role in the Battle of Britain, shooting down the largest number of Luftwaffe aircraft during the months-long campaign. In another historical allusion, the creators of Squad303 compared their project to Radio Free Europe, which began as a US-funded effort to broadcast news, information and analysis to Soviet satellite states during the Cold War.

Using the website, The Journal was able to talk to a 25-year-old law student from Moscow. They told the outlet they opposed the war but said they didn’t plan to protest against it for fear of retribution from the government. “Am I supposed to risk my education, my future?” the student said. “I know Putin is killing people in Ukraine, but it is not my fault, I am not killing anyone, and I am not supporting any wars.”

Even engaging in conversations like the one above is risky for Russians. Videos have recently emerged allegedly showing Russian police stopping commuters to screen the messages on their phones for signs of dissent.

Virtual reality is coming to Audi vehicles. On Saturday, the automaker announced it would support Holoride’s in-car VR technology starting this summer. In June, select Audi models with the company’s MIB 3 infotainment system, including the A4, A6, A8, Q5 and e-tron GT, will ship with the necessary software to sync with Holoride-compatible headsets, with the company planning to support the feature first in Germany, the UK and US before making it available in other markets.

At the center of the experience is something Holoride calls “Elastic Content.” When passengers play an interactive video or game, the experience adapts to the car's movements. So say you’re playing something involving a spacecraft. When the vehicle accelerates, so will the spaceship. In that way, not only is the experience more immersive, but it’s also less likely to lead to motion sickness, according to Holoride.

Holoride spun out of Audi, but the startup’s system is brand-agostic, which means other automakers have the option to support the tech in their vehicle. The software for making Holoride content is open-source as well.

For decades, Star Trek has defined the future of consumer technology. We have smartphones and voice assistants because in-universe devices like the Tricorder inspired engineers at Apple, Google and other companies to recreate those technologies in the real world. And things have now come full circle, showing just how much technology has come since The Original Series debuted in 1966.

9to5Google / ViacomCBS

If you’ve been watching the new season of Star Trek: Picard, you may have noticed one of the characters uses a curious prop in episode two. In a clip spotted by 9to5Google, you can see Alison Pill’s Dr. Jurati tap away on what looks like a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 or Fold 3. The tablet is sheathed in a case to hide its distinctly 21st-century origins, but if you look closely, you can see the telltale display crease that develops on all of Samsung’s foldables.

Seeing a modern smartphone appear in Star Trek: Picard is amusing on its own, but what makes this cameo even more anachronistic is that by the technological standards of Star Trek’s 25th century, Dr. Jurati has access to technologies like holographic displays. With part of season two set in 2024, we could see more current-day gadgets make their way into the show.   

Since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, more than 2.5 million people have fled the country, making it Europe’s worst refugee crisis since World War II. In trying to find shelter in neighboring countries like Romania, some Ukrainian refugees have turned to an unexpected place for help: Tinder.

The New York Times recounts the tale of one such individual, Anastasia Tischchenko. She and her friend Natalia Masechko posted their plight to the dating app when they fled their home of Ivano-Frankivsk, a city of approximately 230,000 located in western Ukraine, south of Lviv.

“I’m thinking there are a lot of honest people in the world, and some of them are on Tinder,” Tischchenko told The Times. She was right. Several people swiped right on her profile to offer help, including one man who put Tischchenko and Masechko in touch with a friend of a friend of a friend who found a monastery the two could sleep in while in Siret, a Romanian city on the southern border of Ukraine. “It was very inspiring,” she said. After their stay in Siret, Tischchenko traveled to Poland, while her friend Masechko stayed in Romania to help the next wave of refugees.

Like the war itself, the refugee crisis has hit a critical inflection point in recent days. On Friday, officials in Poland’s two largest cities, Warsaw and Krakow, said they were struggling to accommodate all the people arriving in the wake of the conflict. Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski warned the “situation is getting more and more difficult every day.” The UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees has warned that as many as 4 million people could flee Ukraine due to the war.

Another company is temporarily cutting the Russian market off from its services following the country’s invasion of Ukraine. On Friday, Sony’s Entertainment unit blocked Russian users from accessing its Crunchyroll anime streaming service and said it would halt the home entertainment release of films like Spider-Man: No Way Home within Russia, according to Variety. The company had previously said it would not release its upcoming slate of theatrical films in the country.   

“We stand with many businesses around the world who have now paused their business operations in Russia, and in support of the humanitarian efforts currently underway in Ukraine and the surrounding region,” Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Tony Vinciquerra said in an email obtained by the outlet. Vinciquerra went on to tell employees the company was also halting future TV distribution deals.

The timing of the Crunchyroll suspension is particularly noteworthy. Following Sony’s $1.175 billion deal to buy the platform in 2020, the company began adding titles from its Funimation catalog at the start of March. In a notice spotted by ComicBook, Crunchyroll told Premium subscribers in Russia it wouldn’t charge them for service while the platform is unavailable in the country. It’s also worth noting Sony’s PlayStation division had already halted hardware and software sales before Friday’s decision.

Apple has shared the first trailer for They Call Me Magic, its upcoming four-part documentary on former LA Lakers superstar Earvin “Magic” Johnson. Set to debut on April 22nd, the TV+ exclusive looks to take more than a few cues from Netflix’s The Last Dance.

In fact, with interviews of Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, former President Barack Obama and Johnson himself, many of the same people who took part in that documentary spoke to director Rick Famuyiwa as well. Judging by the trailer, however, fans should expect a series that is more hopeful, and that spends just as much time celebrating Johnson’s activism and family life as it does his all-star career.

Days after discontinuing the 27-inch iMac, Apple has also stopped selling one of LG’s UltraFine displays. If you visit the company’s website, it no longer lists the 27-inch 5K model that retailed for $1,299 before its removal. LG has seemingly stopped selling the monitor as well, with its website indicating that it’s “out of stock.”

Unsurprisingly, the 27-inch model’s removal from the Apple Store comes in the same week Apple announced its new Studio Display. Starting at $1,599, the monitor features a 5K retina panel with P3 wide color gamut coverage and 600 nits of brightness. It also comes with a built-in A13 Bionic chip to augment the capabilities of its 12-megapixel web camera and six-speaker sound system. Those are features that made the UltraFine 5K redundant. For the time being, it would appear Apple will continue to offer the 23.7-inch UltraFine 4K display through its website for $699. 

South American hacking group Lapsus$ is claiming responsibility for another high-profile hack. On Thursday, Ubisoft said it underwent a “cyber security incident” last week that saw some of its games, systems and services temporarily disrupted. At the time, the company didn’t identify who may have been responsible for the incident, but just one day later, Lapsus$ began to seemingly take credit.

The Verge

After The Verge published a story on the incident, a Telegram channel allegedly run by the group posted a link to the article and a smirking face emoji, suggesting it was claiming responsibility for what had happened. It also said that it had not targeted user data in the breach.

“Our IT teams are working with leading external experts to investigate the issue,” Ubisoft said Thursday. “We can confirm that all our games and services are functioning normally and that at this time there is no evidence any player personal information was accessed or exposed as a by-product of this incident.”

Friday’s claim comes less than a week after the same group took credit for obtaining about 190GB of data from Samsung. Previously, Lapsus$ said it was responsible for the NVIDIA hack that saw the source code for the company’s DLSS technology leak online.

In 1997, Square Enix released one of the finest games of the original PlayStation era in Final Fantasy Tactics. Outside of a handful of remasters and spinoffs, however, the company has been reluctant to return to the genre in a meaningful way. And while we may never get a proper sequel to Tactics, the good news is Square Enix is working on a new tactical RPG. 

During Sony's most recent State of Play on Wednesday, the publisher announced The DioField Chronicle. And if what you loved about Final FantasyTactics was its sprawling story and iconic art by Akihiko Yoshida, you're in luck because DioField looks to have both on offer. You'll lead the forces of the Kingdom of Alletain, a neutral island nation that gets dragged into a conflict with the sinister Trovelt-Schoevian Empire. Instead of a turn-based battle system, engagements play out in real-time and it appears you can control more than one character at a time.    

Square plans to release The DioField Chronicle later this year on PlayStation 4 and PS5.

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.