Earlier this week, Apple began requiring that students and teachers in the US verify their identity through authentication service UNiDAYS before they could take advantage of the company’s discounted education pricing. The move closed a long-standing loophole that had allowed almost anyone to save money on an Apple device as long as they weren’t caught in a random check.

However, mere days after implementing that requirement, Apple has just as quickly removed it. Per MacRumors, you can once again buy discounted Macs, iPads and other Apple products from the company’s US education website without the need to verify that you’re currently a student or a teacher. The outlet suggests the company may have made the change after some educators and school staff members complained they couldn’t verify their status through UNiDAYS properly, and therefore couldn’t obtain a discount on a product they wanted to buy.

It’s unclear if Apple plans to reimplement the requirement once it sorts out any potential issues with the system. For years, Apple has used UNiDAYS in many other countries, including the UK, to ensure only those who qualify for its education discounts can get them. We’ve reached out to the company for comment and more information.

After multiple delays, Dying Light 2 will finally arrive on February 4th. If you haven’t had a chance to purchase a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X/S yet, developer Techland is making the decision of whether to buy the game now or later easy. In an announcement spotted by Eurogamer, the studio shared this week it will provide free current-gen upgrades to those who buy Dying Light 2 on PlayStation 4 or Xbox One.

What that means is that you’ll have the chance to play the game with improved graphics at a later date. Like many recent PS5 and Xbox Series X/S releases, Dying Light 2 will ship with multiple rendering modes, thereby allowing you to configure the game to prioritize either graphical fidelity or better performance. 

If you want the best possible graphics, you can choose between separate “Quality” and “Resolution” modes. As you can probably tell from the name, the latter will attempt to render the game at 4K. Less obvious is the Quality mode, which adds raytracing to the experience. And if all you want is a smooth framerate, the included “Performance” mode will render Dying Light 2 at 60 frames per second or greater. You can see the different modes in action in the video above.

The news comes in the same week Techland announced the cloud version of Dying Light 2 for Switch will be delayed by up to half a year. The studio said it made the decision to push back the release to ensure it could provide the best possible experience to Nintendo fans.

Fans of Riot’s Arcane have a long wait ahead of them before season two of the animated series arrives. In the meantime, you can at least play a few matches of Fortnite with a new character from the show. Epic Games will add Jinx’s sister Vi to the battle royale’s in-game Item Shop today (January 22nd) at 7PM ET. You can buy her outfit alongside a handful of themed items, including a punching practice emote.

Unfortunately, Vi won’t come with her signature Hextech gauntlets. Instead, Epic will offer Jayce’s Warden Hammer, which the company maintains is Vi’s “weapon of choice while her gauntlets are being repaired.” If you purchase the skin through the Arcane Vi Bundle, you’ll also get the rad Piltover’s Finest loading screen.

What’s more, if you missed the chance to buy Jinx’s skin when it debuted back in November, you now have another opportunity to add it to your collection. Epic will relist the outfit, alongside the Jinx Arcane bundle, at the same time it adds the Vi outfit to the Item Shop.

Back in September, Robinhood announced plans to test a cryptocurrency wallet within its app. At the time, the company said it would open the beta to a small number of people before expanding availability ahead of a full-scale release. If you joined the waiting list Robinhood create, you can now test the wallet for yourself – provided you were one of the first 1,000 people to sign up for the beta.

In a blog post the company published today, Robinhood said it would invite 10,000 individuals to the beta by March, with more to follow later. In addition to storing cryptocurrencies, the company’s wallet allows you to move them off the app to other external wallets. During the testing period, the company will limit daily withdrawals to a total of $2,999. It will also limit users to 10 transactions per day, and, to take part in the beta, you’ll need to enable two-factor authentication. With today's rollout, the wallet supports Bitcoin, Ethereum and Dogecoin. 

As it works to polish the wallet, Robinhood says it will add “delightful” QR scanning experiences and an improved transaction history interface, among other features. When Robinhood first announced the wallet beta, it told The Verge it planned to make the feature available to everyone sometime in 2022.

Nintendo Switch owners will have to wait or look elsewhere if they want to play two of February’s more notable new releases. In separate announcements, Square Enix and Techland shared they’re delaying the Switch versions of Life is Strange: Remastered Collection and Dying Light 2 to beyond next month. Both games will arrive on time on other platforms as previously planned, with the former slated to come out on February 1st and the latter on February 4th.

On Twitter, Square Enix said the Switch version of Life is Strange: Remastered Collection won’t be ready until later in the year. Dying Light 2 faces a similarly lengthy delay, with Techland telling Eurogamer it expects to make the title available on Nintendo’s portable console through a cloud streaming client “within six months from the original date.” Obviously, neither announcement is great news if you were planning to play those games on Switch, but at the very least, you can play them elsewhere.

The wait is over. Following a first-look trailer back in June of last year, ViacomCBS has finally released a new clip from Star Trek: Picard. And there’s a lot to unpack here. Through the machinations of Q, Picard and the crew of the La Sirena find themselves in 2024. Setting season two of the series in the near future may seem like lazy writing, but if you’ve seen Deep Space Nine, you know that’s an important year in Star Trek’s in-universe history that the franchise has explored in the past.

In “Past Tense,” a two-episode arc from season three of DS9, a transporter anomaly (what else?) sends Commander Sisko, Dr. Bashir and Jadzia Dax to San Francisco circa the early 21st century. After the police leave him and Bashir in the city’s “Sanctuary District,” a ghetto that houses San Francisco’s poor and sick away from its more well-off citizens, Sisko realizes they’ve arrived on Earth days before the Bell Riots, a moment that’s pivotal to Star Trek’s worldbuilding. And it’s likely that moment Picard references at the start of the trailer. “There are some moments that haunt us all our lives,” he says. “Moments upon which history turns.”

The two episodes that make up “Past Tense” are widely considered some of the best the franchise has to offer, in large part because they directly address economic and racial injustice in American society. It’s hard to say if Picard will have something meaningful to add to that conversation, but it’s clear that’s part of the intent here. At the very least, fans can look forward to a cameo from Whoopi Goldberg’s Guinan.

In the US, season two of Star Trek: Picard will debut on Paramount+ on March 3rd. Amazon Prime Video will carry the series internationally, with the first episode available to stream beginning on March 4th.

A court in California has ordered Benjamin Robert Simon to pay $150,000 in damages to the creator of Roblox, reports Polygon. Roblox Corporation sued Simon in November, accusing the YouTuber of harassing its player base and repeatedly skirting its efforts to keep him off the platform. At the time, the company initially sought $1.65 million in damages from Simon.

Roblox Corporation’s allegations against Simon, who is better known as Ruben Sim on YouTube, were numerous. The company said it had originally banned him from Roblox for using homophobic and racist slurs, as well as sexually harassing other players and uploading photos of Adolf Hitler.

The court ordered Simon to stay off the platform. He has also agreed not to make or publish “false threats of terrorist activity relating to Roblox.” One of the most serious accusations the game’s developer leveled against Simon was that he posted “false and misleading terrorist threats” that led to a temporary shutdown of the 2021 Roblox Developers Conference in San Francisco. The company claims it cost $50,000 to investigate the threat and secure the venue.

Simon has also been ordered not to go near the company’s offices. In its original complaint, Roblox Corporation accused Simon of glamorizing a 2018 shooting incident at YouTube’s headquarters in San Bruno, California, and threatening a copycat act of violence at its own office in nearby San Mateo.

Simon told Polygon he plans to upload a video about the complaint on his YouTube channel sometime in the “next couple months.” The Roblox Corporation declined to comment on the outcome of the case.

Before Microsoft announced the Surface Duo in 2019, the company spent several years working on an operating system codenamed Andromeda. It was envisioned as a reboot of Windows Phone with an emphasis on inking. The company worked on the software until it eventually decided to instead include Android on the Surface Duo. Until now, we’ve only seen glimpses of Andromeda in things like patent filing. But Windows Central recently obtained an internal build of the operating system and installed it on a Lumia 950.

Outside of a rare look at an unfinished project, what’s interesting about seeing Andromeda after all these years is how many of the ideas Microsoft was working on then either made their way to the Surface Duo or apps the company has released since. On the lock screen, for instance, you can see an early version of the Surface Duo’s peek functionality. Meanwhile, a lot of the features you see on the “Journal” home screen eventually made their way to the company’s Whiteboard app, and that’s something you can download from the Microsoft Store.

At the same time, it’s an interesting look at what could have been. Even in the software’s unfinished state, there’s a lot we see in the video that’s genuinely different from anything Android and iOS offer, even to this day. The fact Andromeda allowed you to jot down notes directly on the lock screen, and that they would still be there the next time you unlocked the phone, is something that looks genuinely useful.

Of course, there are probably many good reasons Microsoft ultimately decided not to pursue Andromeda. Launching a device that does something different, let alone a completely new operating system, is no easy task in a mature marketplace. Unless a device does nearly everything right, it’s difficult to overcome the fact most people tend to stick with products they know and are comfortable with.

With more automakers including driver assistance systems in their cars, Consumer Reports is changing how it grades those vehicles. Starting this year, the outlet will add an additional two points to a car’s overall score if its included driver assistance system encourages safe driving. Moving forward, it will also deduct points from a vehicle’s total score if it finds the opposite is true, starting with two points in 2024 and then four points in 2026 and beyond.

“We believe it's time to recognize vehicles that have found a safer way to deploy this technology,” said Jake Fisher, senior director of the publication’s Auto Test Center. By its own estimation, Consumer Reports says an adequate driver monitoring system is one that will “reliably” detect when the driver has become inattentive and alert them to that fact. It adds the system should escalate those warnings and eventually stop the car if it finds they’re not responding.

Consumer Reports said it would also take into account an automaker’s privacy policy when evaluating a driver monitoring system, and may not award additional points in some instances. The outlet reasons strong privacy protections are essential to convince drivers to use the feature.

The outlet will put the new ranking guidelines into action when reveals its 2022 Autos Top Picks on February 17th, but it gave an early preview of what to expect on Thursday, noting only cars from Ford and GM earned additional points for their driver assistance features. The outlet said BMW, Ford, GM, Tesla and Subaru all claim their systems can detect and prevent driver inattention, but notes it found some “serious flaws” in those systems through its testing.

Beyond mentioning the automaker, Consumer Reports didn’t call out Tesla specifically, but the two have an adversarial history. In 2020, Consumer Reports ranked Autopilot a “distant second” to GM’s Super Cruise. At the time, it said GM’s system was better at notifying drivers when it was about to disengage, and the automaker’s use of an infrared camera to monitor the driver led to a safer system overall.

Nanoleaf is retiring the product that made it into a household name. Starting today, you can no longer purchase Rhythm Light Panels starter kits from the company’s website. In a video it uploaded to YouTube, Nanoleaf said it now considers the device as a legacy product. It notes it will continue to support Light Panels within its mobile app “forever,” or “a very, very, very long time.”

In practice, that means you can continue to use the panels in conjunction with Nanoleaf’s group feature, allowing you to sync them with its current and future lights. For the time being, it doesn’t sound like the company plans to update the panels to add support for new features like Thread. We’ve reached out to find out if that’s the case.

Should you need replacement parts for your panels, Nanoleaf will offer those until the end of 2023. If you want to expand your current setup, the company has discounted expansion packs by 30 percent and accessories by 50 percent while supplies last. As you might imagine, not everyone is happy about the news. 

“This is a mistake,” says one of the comments on the video the company released. “All Nanoleaf needed to do was release an updated controller that supports Thread to help the connection issues.” In both the video and on its website, Nanoleaf says part of the reason it’s retiring the Light Panels is that it feels it found a suitable successor in its new Shapes line.