Warner Bros. Games' MultiVersus is a fun take on platform fighters like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Brawlhalla. It's soon going into open beta with a roster packed with characters from across a wide range of WB franchises. Developer Player First Games is about to add one more to the mix: Space Jam: A New Legacy star LeBron James.

The NBA icon will join the lineup when the open beta starts on July 26th. Unsurprisingly, his offense centers around the use of a basketball. He can throw a ball at opponents or dribble one around his feet to damage enemies. James is also able to block projectiles by building a fence. Surprisingly (or not, depending on how much you appreciated his thespian skills in Space Jam), James isn't voicing himself in the game. Actor John Bentley will play him.

WB also announced that a couple of other fan-favorite characters will join the lineup soon, as Rick and Morty are on the way. Many of Rick's abilities are based around his portal gun. He'll be available when season one starts on August 9th. Morty, who will arrive later in the season, can whip himself at opponents and use grenades. 

The trio will be added to an ever-expanding and fairly peculiar roster. Big names like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Harley Quinn and Bugs Bunny are all in the mix, as are Arya Stark from Game of Thrones and Shaggy and Velma from Scooby Doo. Tom and Jerry play as a single character, rather than trying to throttle one another.

The Iron Giant, the most recent addition, is portrayed as a gentle-hearted being in the film of the same name who only fights when it's completely necessary. In MultiVersus, he's beating up opponents like the rest of the cast, which the developers justified by saying the game takes place in an alternate universe.

If that's not odd enough, leaks have suggested Ted Lasso, Gizmo from Gremlins (you know, the cute one) and the Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz are coming to the roster as well. For what it's worth, those leaks are from the same person who revealed the game's existence in the first place and who said LeBron, Rick and Morty were MultiVersus-bound too.

If you have a spare $300,000 burning a hole in your pocket but don't mind waiting a couple of years for a luxury electric vehicle, Cadillac's Celestiq might be of interest. The automaker pulled back the curtain to properly reveal the EV for the first time.

Given the expected price, it's not surprising that Cadillac sees it as an "ultra-luxury" flagship model. While it's keeping quiet on most of the specs for now, the brand has revealed some intriguing details for the hand-built sedan. The Celestiq will feature hand-crafted materials, all-wheel drive, four-wheel steering and GM’s next-gen driver assist system, Ultra Cruise. It will also be powered by GM’s Ultium powertrain tech.

Cadillac/GM

The interior is said to offer a customizable experience for drivers and passengers. For one thing, the roof has "four-quadrant, suspended-particle-device smart glass." The idea is that each person in the vehicle will be able to set their own roof transparency level.

There are several screens inside the cabin, including a 55-inch, end-to-end LED dashboard display. Cadillac says it boasts a feature called "electronic digital blinds." It says this will allow the passenger in the front seat to watch videos without distracting the driver. There are also screens on the back of each of the front headrests and a touchscreen console between the seats in each row.

Cadillac/GM

While the model Cadillac revealed is a show car, the production version will be very similar. According to Motor Authority, the Celestiq is expected to go on sale in 2024 as a 2025 model. Maybe it's best to put that $300,000 into a savings account for now.

Meta has committed to keeping its Oversight Board running by providing ongoing financial support. The company has pledged to fund the board's operations with a contribution of an additional $150 million. Meta previously earmarked $130 million for the board's trust when it was set up in 2019.

The Oversight Board says the money, which is irrevocable under the terms of the trust, can only be used to fund, manage and oversee its operations. “By making this ongoing financial commitment, Meta has issued a vote of confidence in the work of the board and its efforts to apply Facebook and Instagram content standards in a manner that protects freedom of expression and pertinent human rights standards,” Oversight Board Trust chairperson Stephen Neal said.

The Oversight Board reviews certain content moderation decisions made by Facebook and Instagram and provides recommendations to Meta. Through the lens of human rights standards, it also assesses Meta's policies and how it enforces them. The board says it has received more than a million appeals from users against moderation decisions. To date, it has issued 25 binding decisions on cases and made 118 policy suggestions, while asking many questions of Meta's practices.

The board started making decisions on cases in January 2021 and it wasn't long before a major case dropped into its lap: Meta's decision to suspend Donald Trump indefinitely from its platforms after the events of January 6th, 2021. The board ultimately determined that Meta was "justified" in blocking Trump, but argued that its reasoning for an indefinite ban meant that suspending Trump for an indeterminate period of time was not within the company's remit. As such, Meta limited the suspension to two years.

The Oversight Board has had an impact on other Meta moderation decisions and policies to the point where the company said it could not keep up with all the recommendations. Among other things, Meta has added an exception for satire to its community standards, clarified its rules on hate speech and beefed up its anti-doxxing policies. Meanwhile, the board has been critical of Meta on other fronts, such as its lack of transparency over VIP moderation rules.

Zoom is bolstering its privacy and security protections by expanding end-to-end encryption (E2EE) to more of its services. First up is Zoom Phone, its cloud phone system. Users of that service will be able to switch on E2EE during one-on-one calls. When it's on, E2EE will ensure calls are secure with cryptographic keys that only the calling and receiving devices can access. You'll be able to verify the E2EE status by sharing a security code with the other person.

At the moment, it's only possible to enable E2EE on Zoom Phone for calls between users on the same company Zoom account. They'll need to be on the Zoom Phone desktop or mobile app and switch off automatic call recording. Account owners or admins will need to enable E2EE via a web portal before their users can activate it on calls.

In addition, E2EE will soon be available in breakout rooms — smaller discussions that break off from group meetings. Each breakout room can have its own encryption key. Again, account owners or admins will need to enable E2EE for their users.

Zoom started rolling out E2EE for meetings in October 2020, a few months after the company took off amid the COVID-19 pandemic and a trend of uninvited guests "zoombombing" calls emerged. Zoom initially planned to limit E2EE to paid accounts, but it relented after a backlash and offered it to everyone.

Seventeen Republican attorneys general have urged Google not to limit the appearance of anti-abortion centers in search results. They made the demand a month after Democratic lawmakers asked the company to refrain from directing people who are looking up information on pregnancy terminations to such centers. The Republican AGs suggested that if Google obliges the request from the other side of the aisle, they may investigate the company and undertake legal action. "If you fail to resist this political pressure, we will act swiftly to protect American consumers from this dangerous axis of corporate and government power," they wrote in a letter to Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai.

Many of the so-called crisis pregnancy centers in question have religious affiliations, as the Associated Press notes. Some centers have been accused of providing misleading information about abortion and contraception. Following a leak of a draft opinion suggesting that the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade, a ruling that ensured the right to abortion nationwide (a move that the court took in late June), Democrats in the House and Senate introduced a bill that seeks to "crack down on false advertising that crisis pregnancy centers employ to dissuade patients from getting the reproductive care they need, including abortion care."

"Directing women towards fake clinics that traffic in misinformation and don't provide comprehensive health services is dangerous to women's health and undermines the integrity of Google's search results," the Democratic lawmakers wrote in their June 17th letter. They cited statistics indicating that a tenth of Google searches for terms like "abortion clinics near me" and "abortion pill" included results for anti-abortion centers.

The Republican AGs took issue with the Democrats' missive. They noted that crisis pregnancy centers often provide services like free ultrasounds, pregnancy tests, sexually transmitted disease testing and parenting classes. "These pregnancy centers serve women, no matter who they are or what they believe," they wrote. "These attacks threaten not only those affiliated with the centers, but also the mothers in desperate need of the assistance the centers provide."

The AGs noted Planned Parenthood has acknowledged that crisis pregnancy centers "have religious missions" and “are faith-based organizations that oppose abortion." They claimed ceding to the Democrats' request would "[reek] of religious discrimination."

They went on to state that if Google complies with "this inappropriate demand to bias your search results against crisis pregnancy centers," their offices would investigate the company for possible violations of antitrust and religious discrimination laws. The AGs would also "consider whether additional legislation — such as nondiscrimination rules under common carriage statutes — is necessary to protect consumers and markets." They gave Google 14 days to respond.

Engadget has contacted Google for comment. Google previously said it will delete abortion clinic visits from users' location histories. Meanwhile, YouTube today started removing videos with unsafe instructions on how to self-administer an abortion.

YouTube says it will remove content that offers instructions on unsafe abortion methods, as well as false claims about abortion safety. Such content violates the platform's medical misinformation policies. YouTube says it will start taking down those videos today and ramp up its efforts in the coming weeks.

Additionally, YouTube is adding an information panel under abortion-related videos and above associated search results. The panel includes context and information from local and global health authorities, the service said.

"Like all of our policies on health/medical topics, we rely on published guidance from health authorities," a tweet from the YouTube Insider Twitter account reads. "We prioritize connecting people to content from authoritative sources on health topics, and we continuously review our policies & products as real world events unfold."

YouTube is taking the step after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a ruling that ensured the right to abortion in the country. Several states immediately moved to ban abortions after the court's decision in late June. 

The platform banned COVID-19 misinformation following the onset of the pandemic. By August 2021, it had taken down more than a million videos with dangerous COVID-19 misinformation. The following month, the platform banned content with vaccine misinformation.

Twitch is rolling out a new safety option for streamers. They'll be able to share the list of users they have banned with other creators. The tool could help to keep serial harassers at bay, Twitch suggests, particularly those who target creators who are members of marginalized communities. The Shared Ban Info function builds on the Suspicious User Controls system Twitch debuted in December. 

To share a list of banned users with another streamer, a creator will need to send them a request from the Shared Ban Info section of the moderation settings. When you request ban information from another streamer and they accept, you'll share the same information from your channel with them. At the outset, creators can have up to 30 of these connections.

You can set a default action for how to treat flagged users that another channel has banned. Those users can be monitored, meaning they can post in your chat but all of their messages will be flagged for you and your moderators to look at. There's an option to restrict flagged users by default — their chat messages will only be visible to a streamer and their mods.

Otherwise, streamers can ban these flagged users or mark them as trusted, so they can post chat messages without any limitations. In any case, the first time a flagged user posts in your chat, their message will have a red border and you can see which channel has banned them.

A Twitch spokesperson said the platform was "excited about this tool as it’s a first step in empowering not just individual streamers to make personalized moderation decisions, but communities as a whole." They added that, "while Shared Ban Info is just the latest customizable tool in the arsenal we offer creators, it adds a new level of scalability by expanding the impact of individuals’ moderation decisions, and ultimately helping community members help each other — something they already do organically in a myriad of ways in Twitch’s uniquely engaged environment, every single day."

Similar efforts to stamp out bad actors have emerged on other platforms. Twitter, for instance, used to allow users to share a list of the accounts they have blocked, but the feature is no longer available. Third-party services that support Twitter block lists are available, however,

Twitch announced the Shared Ban Info feature at TwitchCon Amsterdam this past weekend. The company also said it will grant creators more control over who can raid them. A raid involves a creator automatically sending all of their viewers to another channel when they end their stream. However, the feature has been used to harass marginalized creators.

Some of Skullcandy's earbuds will be able to support two voice assistants at the same time. Last year, the brand debuted its own assistant, Skull-IQ, on Grind Series and Push Active earbuds. Skull-IQ is primarily about controlling audio, including managing your media player, adjusting device settings and answering or dismissing calls. It can launch Spotify via voice command as well. For just about anything else, though, you'll need another assistant. That's where Alexa comes into play.

The dual voice assistant feature was announced during an Alexa developer event. It's not clear when it will be available on Skullcandy's earbuds. Other voice-powered platforms offer multi-assistant experiences with Alexa too, such as Sonos Voice Control and Pioneer's NP1.

Amazon is expanding Alexa in other ways. It just announced developer tools that will enable app and device makers to create Alexa routines and suggest them to users. Amazon sees the move as a step toward realizing its vision of an ambient, more autonomous smart home.

Amazon has struck a deal to buy primary healthcare company One Medical for $3.9 billion. The provider offers in-person care at locations across the US, but perhaps of more interest to Amazon, it has digital and virtual care services. The companies said One Medical makes it easier for people to "schedule appointments, renew prescriptions, access up-to-date health records and advance health outcomes."

One Medical aims to "make quality care more affordable, accessible and enjoyable." It has 767,000 members, as CNBC notes, with 188 medical offices across 25 markets. The acquisition is subject to approval from One Medical shareholders and other closing conditions. One Medical CEO Amir Dan Rubin will remain at the helm after the deal is complete.

Amazon believes that "healthcare is high on the list of experiences that need reinvention," according to Neil Lindsay, senior vice president of Amazon Health Services. “We love inventing to make what should be easy easier and we want to be one of the companies that helps dramatically improve the healthcare experience over the next several years," Lindsay said in a statement. "Together with One Medical’s human-centered and technology-powered approach to healthcare, we believe we can and will help more people get better care, when and how they need it."

Over the last few years, Amazon has made a notable push into the healthcare market. It launched an app-based health service for its employees in 2019, which it later opened up to more companies. It also has a pharmacy service that delivers prescription drugs to Prime users within two days. The company opened Amazon Pharmacy two years after it bought online pharmacy PillPack. Last year, it announced a version of Alexa for healthcare providers.

Don't expect to buy a creeper skin as an NFT (non-fungible token) and plug it into your Minecraft server in the near future. Mojang has taken a firm stance against the massively popular game's involvement with NFTs and blockchain tech. "[To] ensure that Minecraft players have a safe and inclusive experience, blockchain technologies are not permitted to be integrated inside our Minecraft client and server applications, nor may they be utilized to create NFTs associated with any in-game content, including worlds, skins, persona items or other mods," the developer said in a statement. It will soon update the game's guidelines accordingly.

Minecraft has a marketplace where people can sell their creations for others to use. Mojang notes that some companies recently started offering NFTs that are connected to the game. There are some NFTs associated with Minecraft skin packs and world files that people can buy. The studio said it might have been possible for players to earn Minecraft NFTs for activities completed inside the game or elsewhere. Mojang is not on board with any of that.

“Each of these uses of NFTs and other blockchain technologies creates digital ownership based on scarcity and exclusion, which does not align with Minecraft values of creative inclusion and playing together,” it said. "NFTs are not inclusive of all our community and create a scenario of the haves and the have-nots.”

While Minecraft server owners are allowed to charge for access, Mojang rules state that everyone should have access to the same functionality and content. "NFTs, however, can create models of scarcity and exclusion that conflict with our guidelines and the spirit of Minecraft," the studio said.

Mojang also expressed concern about the speculative nature of NFTs and noted that some have been sold at "artificially or fraudulently inflated prices." Given that Minecraft has millions of young players, it probably wouldn't be a great look for the game to support NFTs. “The speculative pricing and investment mentality around NFTs takes the focus away from playing the game and encourages profiteering, which we think is inconsistent with the long-term joy and success of our players,” Mojang said.

The studio and its parent company Microsoft have good reason to be wary of NFTs and blockchain tech. For one thing, there has been an overwhelming backlash from the broader gaming community against those technologies. For another, cryptocurrency prices have plummeted and the NFT market has dried up. Even the erstwhile leader in the blockchain gaming space, Axie Infinity, was the target of a major hack (with victims losing out as a result) and its daily player numbers have plummeted by over two thirds in the last few months.

Some other major players in the gaming industry have already shied away from NFTs and the blockchain. Last October, Steam banned games that enable cryptocurrency and NFT trading. Sony recently announced a PlayStation rewards program that includes digital collectibles. However, it emphasized that these could not be traded and the program does not involve NFTs or the blockchain.

However, Mojang isn't completely rejecting the blockchain. The studio said it will monitor the evolution of the technology to "determine whether it will allow for more secure experiences or other practical and inclusive applications in gaming."