In the southeast of South Australia lie the Naracoorte Caves. The national park is an UNESCO World Heritage Site known for its stalactites, stalagmites and prehistoric fossils. Recently, a group of students from the University of Adelaide built a robot to complete a 3D scan of the site. The project, called CaveX, saw the group create 15 iterations of the model you see above before they settled on a final design. They went with a robot that walks on a set of six legs out of a fear that one with treads or wheels would damage the surface of the caves. The design also allowed it to traverse uneven terrain with a variety of different gaits.

Matthew King

As for the 3D scans, the hope is that they’ll lead to new discoveries at the site. "We're looking at the cave surface to find new cave entrances which will hopefully lead to new fossil deposits," Craig Williams, one of the PhD students who worked on the project, told ABC Australia. "That will help us enhance the range of knowledge on the fossils that are here." The team that worked on the project hopes a new generation of engineering students will continue to work on the robot. One day, they'd like to see it take advantage of technologies like computer vision AI to make it better at its job.

Activision Blizzard is once again delaying Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV. Following months of upheaval at its Blizzard Entertainment subsidiary stemming from a sexual harassment lawsuit the State of California filed in July, the publisher announced during its recent third-quarter 2021 earnings call that it's pushing those games back to give the teams working on them more time. 

"While we are still planning to deliver a substantial amount of content from Blizzard next year, we are now planning for a later launch for Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV than originally envisaged," the company said. 

It did not share a revised release date for either title. "These decisions will push will push the financial uplift that we had expected to see next year," Activision said. "But we are confident that is the right course of action for our people, our players, and the long-term successes of our franchises." 

Blizzard unveiled Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV at Blizzcon 2019. At the time, the studio made it clear that both games were in early development, but the expectation was that it would release them sometime in 2021. Activision dashed those hopes at the start of the year when it said neither title would come out in 2021.

Most climate change misinformation comes from only a handful of sources. That’s according to a new report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). The organization found that ten publishers are responsible for 69 percent of all interactions with climate change denial content on Facebook. Included in the group, which the CCDH titled “The Toxic Ten,” are Brietbart, Russia Today and Media Research Center, which has ties to the fossil fuel industry.

The findings broadly mirror that of another report the CCDH published earlier in the year, which found that as much as 73 percent of vaccine misinformation on Facebook can be linked to only 12 individuals dubbed the “disinformation dozen.” That study has been widely cited by US lawmakers who have called on social media platforms to do more to address the “urgent threat” misinformation represents to public health.

As it did with the earlier disinformation dozen report, Meta, Facebook’s parent company, disputed the methodology the CCDH used to compile its latest study. “The 700,000 interactions this report says were on climate denial represent 0.3 percent of the over 200 million interactions on English public climate change content from Pages and public groups over the same time period,” a spokesperson for the company said. It also pointed to the recently announced expansion of features like the Climate Change Information Center as evidence of its commitment to tackling misinformation on the topic.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the CCDH, said the organization looked at approximately 7,000 articles published between October 2020 and October 2021. He called the sample “robust” and said there was enough data “to derive representative finds of trends.”

Additionally, the report examined the financial incentives involved in publishing climate change denial content. The CCDH estimates eight of the companies included in the Toxic Ten made $5.3 million in Google ad revenue over the last six months, with $1.7 million going to the search giant. "We recently announced a new policy that explicitly prohibits publishers and YouTube Creators from monetizing content that promotes climate change denial. This policy will go into effect on November 8 and our enforcement will be as targeted as removing ads from individual pages with violating content," a spokesperson for Google told Engadget.

“When you put it all together, you’ve got these two industries, Big Oil and Big Tech, and they are the two industries that pose the greatest threat to the survival of our species,” Ahmed told The Post.

The timing of The Toxic Ten report comes as delegates from around the world meet at the UN’s COP26 climate summit in Scotland in what’s been described as “the world’s last best chance” to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Without dramatic reductions, the planet is currently on track for a “catastrophic” 2.7 degree Celsius rise in global temperatures. With every additional degree of warming beyond the 1.5-degree target put forward by the Paris Agreement, there’s a greater risk of the planet passing specific tipping points that could lead to even more dramatic changes to the climate.

Niantic is ending support for Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. The studio announced today it will shutter the AR game on January 31st, 2022. Ahead of the sunset, it plans to delist the title from the App Store, Google Play and Galaxy Store on December 6th. That same day, it will also remove all in-app purchases from the experience.

Niantic first launched Wizards Unite back in 2019. And in many ways, it never replicated the runaway success of Pokémon Go. “Not all games are meant to last forever,” the company said of the decision to stop working on the title. “Our goal with Harry Potter: Wizards Unite was to bring the magic of the wizarding world to life for millions of players as they stepped outside and explored their neighborhoods. We accomplished that together, delivering a two-year narrative story arc that will soon complete.”

For Niantic, this is the second game it has decided to shut down in less than two months. In September, it announced it was discontinuing development on Catan: World Explorers before the game was even widely available outside of a few select markets. Then, as now, Niantic says it will take what it learned from the experience and apply it to future projects.

Presumably that includes Pikmin Bloom, which recently launched in Singapore and Australia, as well as the upcoming Transformers: Heavy Metal. In total, the studio says it’s working on nine games and apps, some of which will soft-launch next year.

Ready to buy yet another version of Skyrim? After coming to nearly every system imaginable, Bethesda’s seminal 2011 RPG is about to get the tabletop treatment. Modiphius Entertainment, the company behind Fallout: Wasteland Warfare, is working on The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim - The Adventure Game. Set to come out sometime next summer, the game will allow you to revisit Tamriel’s frozen north as an agent of the Imperial Blades. You can play either by yourself or with up to three other friends.

The narrative-driven game will ship with two campaigns made up of three chapters. Modiphius says each one should take about 90 to 120 minutes to complete. Provided you don’t get distracted by side quests and exploration (not an easy feat in any Elder Scrolls game), you can expect your initial playthrough to take about 12 hours. Worry not, you can “save” your progress at any point, and pick up where you left off. The decisions you make during a playthrough will shape how the story unfolds. And with a deck of about 600 cards driving the narrative, no two sessions should play out exactly the same.

If you want to read more about the game, Polygon has a detailed preview. You can pre-order The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim - The Adventure Game through Gamefound. The first 2,011 people to back the project’s base tier can get the game by itself for £68 (approximately $92). For everyone else, it will start at £82 ($111).

At Engadget, we’ve long been fans of Samsung’s T7 portable SSDs for their fast performance and compact design. They tend to be more expensive than some competing options, but if you’re patient, you can usually find them on sale. To that point, Amazon has discounted the black 1TB Touch model from $190 to $150, matching the previous all-time low price for the SSD. You can also get the silver colorway for less than MSRP, but it’s only discounted by $20. Additionally, the 2TB variant is $70 off, making it $300 currently. If you want to save an extra $10, the non-Touch model, which doesn’t include a built-in fingerprint sensor, is $140 at the moment.

Whether you go for the standard or Touch model, the T7 has a lot going for it. Both variants feature an aluminum outer casing that will protect the solid-state drive from drops. They also include ePCM technology and a Dynamic Thermal Guard feature to assist with heat management. When it comes to performance, the T7 can read files at up to 1,050 MB/s and write them at up to 1,000 MB/s. And while it only features a single USB-C port, the T7 comes with both USB-C and USB-A cables inside the box, allowing you to use it with almost any modern device, including some video game consoles. For those reasons, we think the T7 is a solid option for storing your photos and other important files.

Get the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers by visiting our deals homepage and following @EngadgetDeals on Twitter.

As promised earlier in the year, Tesla is expanding access to its Supercharger charger network. Starting today, the company is opening 10 locations in the Netherlands to non-Tesla EVs as part of a pilot program. Provided you live in the country and you’ve installed the Tesla app on your phone (version 4.2.3 or later), you can use them to charge your car. The stations are located in Sassenheim, Apeldoorn Oost, Meerkerk, Hengelo, Tilburg, Duiven, Breukelen, Naarden, Eemnes and Zwolle.

The one thing to note about the pilot is it's only open to EV drivers who live in the Netherlands. However, if you drive a Tesla vehicle and you’re visiting the country, you can charge your car as normal at the stations. Additionally, how the program expands beyond this initial pilot will depend on congestion at the stations. “Future sites will only be opened to Non-Tesla vehicles if there is available capacity,” the company said.

On Monday, the company also put a non-Tesla port home charger on sale. Both the pilot and charger are a sign Tesla is looking outside of its ecosystem for revenue. That said, it may take a while before we see the automaker open its charging stations in the US to EVs from other companies since those use a proprietary connector.

Sega is partnering with Microsoft to use the company’s Azure cloud platform to produce “large-scale, global games” as part of its recently announced Super Game project. The publisher first teased the initiative this past May during an investor event. At the time, the company said it would become available sometime during its fiscal 2026 year. In this latest announcement, Sega said the project is integral to its mid to long-term strategy and will see it creating games with a global online component.

“This proposed alliance represents SEGA looking ahead, and by working with Microsoft to anticipate such trends as they accelerate further in future, the goal is to optimise development processes and continue to bring high-quality experiences to players using Azure cloud technologies,” the company said. At this point, we wouldn’t read too much into the fact that Sega and Microsoft are partnering on the project. Plenty of companies, including ones like Sony, depend on Microsoft for their cloud infrastructure, in part because they want to avoid building an online backend from scratch. 

“We look forward to working together as they explore new ways to create unique gaming experiences for the future using Microsoft cloud technologies,” Microsoft’s Sarah Bond said of the alliance. “Together we will reimagine how games get built, hosted, and operated, with a goal of adding more value to players and Sega alike.”

Following last week’s rollout of link stickers, Instagram is introducing a new sticker called “Add Yours.” The company describes it as a way to create public threads in Stories. It also notes it’s the first time it’s added a way for people to publicly participate in the format. Effectively, the sticker acts as both a prompt for other people to upload their own Stories and a way for them to discover new people to follow. That’s because when you tap on the sticker the interface will display everyone who has contributed to the thread and you can view their Stories from there.

The tool could help Instagram boost engagement at a time when it’s reportedly losing users, especially younger ones, to competing platforms like TikTok. It’s not a coincidence the screenshot the company shared shows teens using the feature to its fullest. Since 2018, Instagram has spent millions advertising to teens in an effort to attract them to the platform.  

Amazon has hit another milestone on the way to its goal of putting 3,236 low Earth orbit to blanket most of the planet with internet access. On Monday, the company filed a license application with the Federal Communications Commission to launch two prototype satellites, KuiperSat-1 and KuiperSat-2. They will feature many of the technologies the company plans to include in the final production variant of its constellation satellite, giving it the chance to test how those systems fare outside of a lab environment. At the same time, the tests will allow it to validate its launch procedures and mission management when it comes time to start putting its full network in orbit.

"We’ve invented lots of new technology to meet our cost and performance targets for Project Kuiper. All of the systems are testing well in simulated and lab settings, and we’ll soon be ready to see how they perform in space," said Rajeev Badyal, vice president of technology for Project Kuiper. "There is no substitute for on-orbit testing, and we expect to learn a lot given the complexity and risk of operating in such a challenging environment."

According to Amazon, it will launch KuiperSat-1 and KuiperSat-2 toward the end of 2022. Once the test is complete, the company plans to deorbit the satellites so they don’t add to the junk pile that’s circling the planet. Additionally, one of the satellites will feature a sunshade so Amazon can see if it helps make it less reflective and thereby less visible to telescopes on the ground. 

With today’s announcement, Amazon shared it’s working with ABL Space Systems to put KuiperSat-1 and KuiperSat-2 in space. The company’s new RS1 rocket will ferry the satellites to orbit. One of the main design features of Amazon’s Kuiper craft is that they’re compatible with multiple launch systems, including the Atlas V rocket from United Launch Alliance.

Once it completes the test, Amazon will need to move quickly to put the entire system into space. When the FCC approved its initial plan, the company said it would put half the satellites in orbit by 2026 and the entire constellation by July 30th, 2029.