Firefox 98, the latest release of Mozilla's web browser, introduces a handful of small but handy features. Most notable among them is the addition of an HTTPS-only mode to Firefox Focus on Android. When enabled, the feature protects your online safety and privacy by ensuring you automatically connect to the HTTPS version of a website, even when you manually type HTTP in the address bar or tap on a legacy link.

The update also includes new customization features. Over on the iOS version of Firefox, you can now decide whether you want the search bar to sit at the top or bottom of the screen. For the first time, Mozilla is also introducing mobile wallpapers. Available on both Android and iOS, the first collection celebrates Pixar’s latest movie, Turning Red. Notably, it was created by Melissa Chang, an Asian-American UX designer with Mozilla’s Studios team.

You can download Firefox 98 starting today.

Amazon Studios and Sony’s PlayStation Productions unit are in talks to produce a live-action TV series adaptation of God of War, according to Deadline. The outlet reports that Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, best known for their work on The Expanse and Children of Men, are involved in the project. Beyond those details, Deadline didn’t have much other information to share about the adaption and both Sony and Amazon declined to comment on the outlet’s reporting.

God of War is one of Sony’s longest-running franchises, spanning seven mainline games across four consoles. The most recent entry in the series was 2018’s God of War, which acted as a soft reboot of the franchise by introducing players to Atreus, the son of protagonist Kratos, and the pantheon of Norse gods. The sequel to God of War is currently in development at Santa Monica Studio and is expected to come out sometime this year.

If the report is accurate, it would be the fourth gaming property to get the film and or television treatment from Sony’s recently established PlayStation Productions unit. The division currently has three projects officially underway. Most notably, it’s working with HBO to produce a TV series based on Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us that will star Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey and Nick Offerman. It’s also working on a Ghost of Tsushima movie and a Twisted Metal series that will stream on Peacock.

Over the weekend, Riot Games announced it would respond to calls from its community to provide aid during the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. Until March 12th, the studio will donate all proceeds from the sale of Valorant, Legends of Runterra, Teamfight Tactics and Wild Rift battle passes, as well as its new Bee skins in League of Legends, to support humanitarian relief efforts in Ukraine. Additionally, Riot said it would donate $1 million out of pocket to Doctors Without Borders, the Polish Red Cross and the International Medical Corps.      

"All proceeds from both Riot’s donation and the player fundraiser will directly support humanitarian relief in Ukraine and other affected areas," the company said. The studio joins a growing list of gaming companies that are donating toward humanitarian efforts in Ukraine. On the same day Activision Blizzard said it was halting sales of its games in Russia, the publisher announced it would also match employee donations to relief organizations helping out in the region at a rate of two to one. 

When the United Arab Emirates launched the Arab world’s first-ever mission to Mars in the summer of 2020, its desire was that its Hope probe would help provide scientists with a better understanding of the Red Planet’s weather systems. And it’s now done exactly that. According to The National, the probe recently spent two weeks tracking a massive dust storm across the surface of Mars.

Hope began following the weather event on December 29th. The probe entered the orbit of Mars equipped with a high-resolution camera and an infrared spectrometer. It used those tools to track the geographic distribution of dust, water vapor and carbon dioxide ice clouds displaced by the raging storm. Its orbital position allowed Hope to observe any variance in those elements in timescales measured in minutes and days, a feat previous missions to Mars didn’t have the ability to do. 

What it saw was how quickly a storm can spread across the red planet. In the span of a single week, the storm it was tracking grew to stretch across more than 1,550 miles of Martian surface. In the process, it completely obscured geographic landmarks like the Hellas impact crater and sent dust haze as far as 2,485 miles away from the origin point of the storm. In addition to providing a play-by-play of a Martian storm, scientists hope the data Hope collected will allow them to gain a better understanding of how those storms can help water escape the planet's atmosphere.

Square Enix has delayed Forspoken. The upcoming action role-playing game from Final Fantasy XV studio Luminous Productions was previously scheduled to release on May 24th. It will instead come out on October 11th, the studio announced on Monday. 

"Our vision for this exciting new IP is to deliver a game world and hero that gamers across the globe will want to experience for years to come, so getting it right is extremely important to us," Luminous Productions said. "To that end, during the next few months we will focus all of our efforts on polishing the game and can't wait for you to experience Frey's journey this fall."

We last saw Forspoken at a hands-off briefing Square Enix held at the end of last year. Forspoken stars Frey, a New York City native who's transported to the fantastical land of Athia. Voiced by actor Ella Balinsk, Frey must save the world from corruption while trying to find a way home. Square will release Forspoken on PlayStation 5 and PC.

SpaceX is sending more Starlink terminals to Ukraine, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky. "Talked to Elon Musk. I'm grateful to him for supporting Ukraine with words and deeds," Zelensky tweeted on Saturday afternoon. “Next week we will receive another batch of Starlink systems for destroyed cities.”

SpaceX sent an initial shipment of its satellite dishes on February 26th following a Twitter plea from Ukraine’s vice prime minister, Mykhailo Fedorov. The delivery arrived on February 28th. Days later, Elon Musk warned Ukrainians to be careful when using the service on account of the fact that it’s the only non-Russian internet provider left in some of the more war-torn areas of the country. The warning came after John Scott-Railton, a researcher with the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, pointed out Russia has decades of experience triangulating and targeting satellite uplink transmissions with airstrikes.

Russia’s invasion has tested Ukraine's internet infrastructure. Intense combat in cities like Kyiv and Mariupol has caused disruptions to GigaTrans, the country's backbone internet provider. Over the past few days, internet monitoring organization NetBlocks observed multiple drops in connectivity. Among the most recent and potentially worrisome is the one affecting the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which left the International Atomic Energy Agency saying it could no longer get “reliable information” from the facility.

Netflix is taking additional action in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. On Sunday, the company said it was suspending its service in Russia. “Given the circumstances on the ground, we have decided to suspend our service in Russia,” a spokesperson for the company told CNBC. 

Developing...

Activision Blizzard and Epic Games have joined a growing list of publishers suspending sales of their games in Russia due to the country’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. In an employee letter it shared publicly on Friday, Activision president and chief operating officer Daniel Alegre said the company would pause selling its games to Russian consumers. It will also temporarily stop offering in-game microtransactions to those same customers.

One day after Activision’s announcement, Epic Games said it too was halting transactions within the country. “Epic is stopping commerce with Russia in our games in response to its invasion of Ukraine,” the company said. “We’re not blocking access for the same reason other communication tools remain online: the free world should keep all lines of dialogue open.” 

It’s unclear if Epic’s decision includes both its own titles and any in-game microtransactions it offers in Fortnite. What’s more, notably neither Activision nor Epic mentioned Belarus in their respective announcements.

In halting sales to Russia, Activision and Epic join companies like Microsoft, Electronic Arts and CD Projekt Red. Russia isn’t a small market either. According to a 2021 estimate from Statista, the country, with approximately $2.7 billion in industry revenue that year, was the eighth largest market for video games.

TikTok will temporarily restrict users in Russia from livestreaming and uploading new videos to its platform, the company announced on Sunday. It said it was doing so in response to the country's recently enacted “fake news” law, which threatens up to 15 years in jail for individuals accused of spreading misinformation. "We have no choice but to suspend livestreaming and new content to our video service in Russia while we review the safety implications of this law," TikTok said. 

The company went on to note in-app messaging would not be affected by the decision. "We will continue to evaluate the evolving circumstances in Russia to determine when we might fully resume our services with safety as our top priority," TikTok added.

Developing...

If you’re not excited about Apple’s upcoming Peek Performance keynote, you’re not the only one. According to most reports, the company will announce new iPhone SE and iPad Air models at the event. It’s not the most exciting stuff. But according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple could have a surprise up its sleeve that would make Tuesday considerably more interesting. In his latest Power On newsletter, Gurman writes he “wouldn’t rule out” Apple previewing a next-generation display at the event.

He reports the company completed development on a new monitor “months ago,” and had originally planned to release it “soon after” the launch of last year’s MacBook Pro. Given there have been reports suggesting Apple will announce a new high-end Mac mini at the event, a matching display doesn’t sound out of the realm of possibility. To that point, Apple has reportedly been working on two new monitors for the past few years. A report from 9to5Mac published earlier in the week shed light on a possible 7K successor to the Pro Display XDR that will feature an A13 processor to offload some processing tasks. The monitor Gurman references would appear to be a more affordable model that would succeed the company’s long discontinued Thunderbolt Display.