Activision is taking on Call of Duty cheaters in some inventive ways. For one thing, it's literally taking away their guns. When the Ricochet anti-cheat system detects someone who's breaking the rules, they may lose their weapons (as well as their dignity). The cheaters can't even defend themselves with their fists.

"We don’t expect many clips of this to find their way online, but we have seen it in action and the reactions from cheaters are always priceless," the Ricochet team wrote. A blog post features a short clip of an undoubtedly upstanding member of the community encountering a now-harmless cheater.

Activision

The Disarm measure is one of several actions Ricochet takes against cheaters. "When a bad actor is detected, we hit them with something from our mitigation toolbox (or all of them at once if we’re feeling spicy) and analyze the data from the machine determined to be cheating," the team behind it wrote. "Beyond [our] mission to combat unfair play, we have a second somewhat secret mission to annoy as many cheaters as we can."

Other mitigation measures include Damage Shield, which reduces the damage those who play fairly take from cheaters. "If you’re being shot and see your health slowly trickle down, you know it’s likely a cheater on the other end of the battle," the blog post reads. The ne'er-do-well may realize that their opponent has Damage Shield enabled. Not only will they waste their ammo, they may figure out they've been caught in the act. Another mitigation technique is Cloaking. When a cheater fires at a legitimate player, the latter may become invisible to the rule-breaker.

Activision said the anti-cheat system has led to a "significant" drop in cheaters in some respects, though there have been "some unfortunate increases." That's part of the perennial cat-and-mouse battle it's in with cheaters, who are always looking for new exploits. Since late April, though, Activision has banned more than 180,000 players across both Call of Duty: Vanguard and CoD: Warzone. The Ricochet system will also be used in a new interpretation of Modern Warfare II, which will arrive later this year.

Infamous grifter Anna Sorokin, who spent four years in prison for fraud, says she is "trying to move away from this, like, 'scammer' persona" that has "been pushed upon me by the prosecution and by the following media and by the Netflix show [Inventing Anna]." What better way to do that than by selling a collection of NFTs?

The socialite told NBC News that she has minted 10 NFTs (non-fungible tokens). Holders will somehow have "exclusive access" to Sorokin, who is in a correctional facility under the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The NFT holders will seemingly have the chance to meet Sorokin, who has appealed her pending deportation. Holders will also receive a bundle of "personal items" from Sorokin, who, again, is in detention.

Sorokin is attempting to control her narrative after she was the focus of Inventing Anna, which was released earlier this year. The NFT collection is called "Reinventing Anna."

"It's kind of one of the first steps I'm taking to start to tell my own story," Sorokin said. She claimed that "blockchain will be very helpful for the artist" to "reclaim the ownership and [profit] from future sales." It's not as if the NFT market has completely bottomed out.

Sorokin went by the name Anna Delvey and claimed to be a German heiress with a $60 million inheritance. She claimed she was raising capital to open a social club in Manhattan, but that wasn't the case. She scammed friends and businesses out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Good thing that NFTs aren't part of a massive Ponzi scheme or anything like that.

Microsoft is adding a useful feature to the Xbox PC app that should help save you some time if it turns out your setup won't be able to run a particular game. The company started testing the game performance indicator in December and it's rolling out the tool now. 

"The app compares the game’s performance on PCs with similar specs to yours to show a prediction of how well we expect the game to run," Tila Nguyen, senior product manager lead for Xbox Experiences, wrote on the Xbox blog. "If your PC isn’t up to the task of running a graphically demanding game, you’ll be able to view the game’s system requirements to get more details on what you need to run the game."

You may not see a performance check for every game, since Microsoft might not have enough information from other players' PCs to be able to make a recommendation. This is particularly the case for new titles with a smaller install base.

Microsoft

This is a handy tool that should save you some wasted effort, even if you might be disappointed to find out a game you were excited for won't work on your system. It could be especially welcome for those with a data cap. The feature should help them avoid wasting precious data by prompting them to refrain from downloading a game they can't actually play.

It may also save players from resorting to third-party system requirement checkers, such as Can You Run It. Everything they need to know should be right there in the Xbox app.

In addition, the blog post notes that Microsoft recently improved navigation in the app. Navigation is now all in the sidebar and you can view game install progress via a queue on the bottom left of the window. You'll get a notification when a game finishes installing too. Search is said to be better as well. It now includes EA Play and Ubisoft Connect titles in the results.

Microsoft has been sounding the death knell for Internet Explorer for months, but many businesses in Japan seemingly did not take heed. Almost half were said to still be using the browser, for which Microsoft ended support yesterday, as of March. According to Nikkei, many of those companies have dragged their heels on switching to other browsers, which some have warned may cause chaos for months.

IT provider Keyman's Net conducted a survey of Japanese companies earlier this year and found that many were forced to use Internet Explorer because of systems their clients used to handle orders. Some were also using the browser to handle things like employee attendance and expenses. Over a fifth of the respondents didn't have a plan for how to move their businesses onto alternative browsers, such as Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome.

The issue extends beyond companies to government agencies, which the report notes have been especially slow to address the shift. For instance, notices related to Japan Pension Service online applications must be viewed in the IE Mode on Edge, according to the report. That mode will be supported through at least 2029, so websites that are incompatible with modern browsers should still be accessible for several more years. Here's hoping Microsoft officially ending support for IE after almost 27 years will prompt organizations to get their act together and make their services work on Edge, Chrome, Firefox and other browsers too.

Netflix has settled a lawsuit from comedian and actor Mo'Nique that accused the company of racial and gender bias. Both parties this week moved to dismiss the suit, which was filed in 2019. “The matter has been amicably resolved," a representative for Mo'Nique told The Hollywood Reporter.

The two sides started talks over a comedy special in 2017, but Mo'Nique claimed the company low-balled her with an opening offer of $500,000 for a one-hour show to which Netflix would own the rights. The Oscar-winning performer called for a boycott of Netflix and said the offer was discriminatory, given the eight-figure deals some other comics (such as Chris Rock and Amy Schumer) reportedly received for their Netflix specials.

Netflix walked away from the discussions after Mo'Nique's assertions. "Once Mo’Nique engaged in protected conduct by protesting the discriminatory offer, Netflix shut down any further negotiations and refused to negotiate in good-faith consistent with its standard practices," the suit stated. Netflix argued there were no legal grounds to support the claim that a company declining to negotiate in good faith equates to discrimination or retaliation.

However, the judge presiding over the case determined in 2020 that Mo'Nique may have had a point. “Mo’Nique plausibly alleges that, after she spoke out and called her initial offer discriminatory, Netflix retaliated against her by shutting down its standard practice of negotiating in good faith that typically results in increased monetary compensation beyond the ‘opening offer’ and denying her increased compensation as a result,” Judge Andre Birotte Jr. wrote in a ruling that rejected an attempt by Netflix to dismiss the case.

Engadget has contacted Netflix for comment.

Sony has confirmed a Gran Turismo movie is in the works and it's slated to arrive sooner than many folks may have expected. Its Columbia Pictures imprint will release the film on August 11th, 2023. District 9's Neill Blomkamp, who is far from a stranger to the world of video games, is directing. American Sniper scribe Jason Hall wrote the screenplay.

The movie is based on a true story, as Deadline reports. It will tell the tale of a Gran Turismo player who gets a shot at becoming a professional racecar driver. For several years, players had a path to real-life motorsport through the GT Academy.

This is the latest example of Sony adapting its gaming franchises for the big and small screen. That's become a bigger priority for the company over the last few years under its PlayStation Productions banner.

Shows based on The Last of Us and Twisted Metal have been in the works for a while, and Sony recently revealed Horizon and God of War adaptations are coming to Netflix and Amazon Prime Video respectively. The company at long last released the Uncharted movie earlier this year, while a Ghost of Tsushima movie is in the pipeline. Sony also mentioned that a Gran Turismo TV show is in development, but it's unclear whether that's still going ahead after the movie announcement.

Elon Musk has filed an appeal against a judge's decision not to let him out of an agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which requires him to have lawyers review some of his tweets. A district court judge ruled that the Tesla and SpaceX CEO's consent decree with the SEC should stand. Now, Musk is hoping the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan will overturn that decision, as Reuters reports.

Musk's pact with the SEC stems from an infamous 2018 incident in which he tweeted that he had "funding secured" to make Tesla a private company, though that allegedly wasn't the case. The SEC laid securities fraud charges against Musk, who has not deleted the tweet in question nearly four years later.

He quickly settled the case by agreeing to step down as Tesla chairman (but remain as CEO), while he and the company each paid civil fines of $20 million. On top of that, Musk agreed to let a lawyer vet tweets that might include material information about Tesla. He later claimed he was "forced" into the settlement, but attempts to get out of the tweet-screening arrangement have proven unsuccessful.

"Musk cannot now seek to retract the agreement he knowingly and willingly entered by simply bemoaning that he felt like he had to agree to it at the time but now — once the specter of the litigation is a distant memory and his company has become, in his estimation, all but invincible — wishes that he had not," US District Judge Lewis Liman wrote in April.

Musk is in the process of buying Twitter for $44 billion, despite threatening to back out. The deal is expected to close this year, pending approval by regulators and Twitter shareholders. As things stand, Musk is on the precipice of buying a social media platform on which he cannot speak entirely freely. That's despite Musk telling the SEC itself that his purchase of Twitter would be a boon for free speech.

Meanwhile, Musk is being sued by Tesla investors over the same incident. The shareholders have accused Musk of making false and misleading statements that caused stock prices to rise, leading to billions of dollars in damages. Musk maintains he did have funding in place, though a judge ruled in May that "there was nothing concrete" about his claims. Musk has also been sued by an investor for allegedly not sticking to the terms of the SEC deal.

YouTube is rolling out an easier way for creators to issue a correction for information in their video that's perhaps not entirely accurate. The corrections feature will enable creators "to call attention to corrections and clarifications in the descriptions of their already-published videos," a YouTube product manager explained on the Creator Insider channel.

YouTube

Creators can add an info card that reads "View Corrections" to the video. Users can click or tap on it to access the correction in the description. However, the card will only appear once and for the first timestamped correction. That might not entirely solve the issue if a creator has multiple corrections to make, but at least they'll be able to draw attention to their first clarification and inform readers there's information in the description that's worth reading.

It's perhaps a better alternative to editing a video and reuploading it, which would cause the creator to lose the existing view count, likes and comments. Creators have also been able to pin a comment with a correction, but there's no guarantee that viewers would read it.

YouTube built the feature following feedback from creators. Eligible creators will have access to it by the end of June. It won't be available to those who have active strikes on their channel or if the video in question might be inappropriate for some viewers. Still, it's a useful tool that will help creators provide accurate information if they realize after uploading a video that something's not quite right or someone else brings an error to their attention.

PayPal is expanding its buy now, pay later options with a longer-term payment plan. The company has enabled users to cover the cost of a purchase over a few interest-free payments and it also offers credit cards. Pay Monthly, which is issued by WebBank, is another option for folks in the US.

It's valid for purchases between $199 and $10,000. The cost will be split across monthly payments of between six and 24 months. If you select the Pay Monthly option at checkout, you'll then need to complete an application. Should that be approved, you'll be able to select from three payment options with different time frames. APR is calculated on a risk basis and will be between zero and 29.99 percent. The first payment is due a month after purchase.

You can set up automatic payments from your debit card or bank account. Alternatively, users can manage payments through PayPal's app and website. As with the company's other buy now, pay later options, there are no late fees. PayPal says millions of retailers will support Pay Monthly — including Samsonite, Fossil and Advance Auto — and that purchases will be eligible for PayPal Purchase Protection.

With its latest option, PayPal is getting out ahead of Apple Pay Later, which will be rolled out as part of iOS 16 later this year. That's aligned more with PayPal's Pay in 4 option, in that users will make four equal payments over six weeks, with no interest or late fees. However, purchases are said to be capped at $1,000.

Such moves by the likes of PayPal, Apple and Square are indicative of a broader trend of major tech companies moving deeper into lending, a finance sector that was primarily the domain of banks. However, there are risks to using now, pay later services, especially if consumers fall behind on payments.

Ford has announced a recall for 48,924 Mustang Mach-E EVs and asked dealers to pause deliveries of the vehicle. The company said there's a possibility of the high-voltage battery connectors overheating, which could prevent the vehicle from starting or cause it to lose propulsion power while on the road.

According to Automotive News, Ford claims it should be able to fix the issue with an over-the-air software update, which will be rolled out next month. Alternatively, owners can take their Mach-E to a Ford or Lincoln dealer and have the update installed there. Affected vehicles were built between May 27th, 2020, and May 24th, 2022 at Ford's factory in Cuautitlán, Mexico.

There's no open National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigation into the problem, Ford says, which means this is a voluntary recall. Still, it's not a great look for the company.