This year’s Academy Awards nominations have been revealed, and Apple TV+ execs will surely be pleased. The service’s films received six Oscar nods overall, up from two last year. Most significantly, Apple has broken through in the Best Picture category. CODA is the first Apple Original movie to receive a nomination for the top prize.

It’s the first film with a principally deaf cast to be nominated for Best Picture. It’s been 35 years since a deaf performer was nominated, and Troy Kotsur is now the first male actor to ever receive a nod, as he’s up for Best Supporting Actor.

Writer and director Sian Heder is nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay — CODA is a remake of a French film called La Famille Bélier. Apple paid a Sundance record of $25 million to acquire the rights to the film, which won the Grand Jury Prize for Drama and the Audience Award at last year’s festival.

The other Apple movie that received nominations this year was Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth. It earned nods for Best Actor for Denzel Washington, Best Cinematography and Best Production Design.

Elsewhere, Netflix continued the run of awards success it has had over the last few years with a whopping 35 nominations across the board. Star-studded climate change satire Don’t Look Up and Western The Power of the Dog are both nominated for Best Picture. The latter leads the pack overall with 12 nominations. Jane Campion, who received writing and directing nods, is the first woman to land two Best Director nominations. Other nominated Netflix films include The Lost Daughter, The Hand of God, Tick, Tick… Boom and the fantastic The Mitchells vs. The Machines.

Elsewhere, Dune has 10 nominations and Best Picture frontrunner Belfast received seven. Amazon’s Being the Ricardos landed three acting nods, while No Time To Die, which marks Daniel Craig's final outing as James Bond, was nominated for Original Song, Sound and Visual Effects. Meanwhile, Japanese drama Drive My Car broke through in the Best Picture and directing races for four nominations in total.

The 94th Academy Awards ceremony will take place on March 27th.

Hulu has dropped the first trailer for The Dropout, a miniseries about the failed blood-testing startup Theranos. Amanda Seyfried stars as its embattled former CEO, Elizabeth Holmes. The two-and-a-half-minute preview shows Holmes dropping out of Stanford to found Theranos. It includes snippets of the company's high points (it raised more than $700 million in investments) and hints at its very public demise, as well as Holmes developing her infamously deep voice.

The trailer is full of familiar faces, including Naveen Andrews (Lost) as Sunny Balwani, the former president and chief operating officer of Theranos and Holmes' ex-boyfriend. Stephen Fry, William H. Macy, Laurie Metcalf and Sam Waterston also appear.

Theranos claimed to offer rapid blood tests that required only a finger prick. However, multiple reports claimed the tests weren't effective. The SEC charged Holmes and Theranos with fraud in March 2018 and the company collapsed later that year.

The Dropout will premiere two months after Holmes was convicted of defrauding investors. She faces up to 20 years in prison and will be sentenced in September. With Holmes' trial fresh in the memory, some folks might be curious to learn more about the story behind her and Theranos. The trailer, which is edited in the style of a thriller, might draw some more attention to the show too.

The first three episodes of The Dropout will hit Hulu on March 3rd. Other installments will arrive on a weekly basis. Meanwhile, Adam McKay and Jennifer Lawrence are working on a movie about Holmes and Theranos for Apple.

The Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition is possibly the best e-reader on the market right now, and if you've been considering picking one up, now seems like a good time. Amazon is putting the device on sale for the first time for $145, which is $45 less than the regular price of $190. Since Amazon hasn't offered a discount on the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition until now, it's an all-time-low price for the e-reader.

Amazon announced the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition in September. It's the first Kindle with wireless charging support, though if there isn't a Qi-compatible pad close by, you can charge it with a USB-C cable. Either way, don't expect to charge it often, as Amazon claims the battery can run for up to 10 weeks before you need to juice it up.

The e-reader has a 300 ppi glare-free display that Amazon claims is 10 percent brighter at max setting than previous Paperwhite models. There's a sensor that can automatically adjust the screen brightness depending on ambient light levels and warm light options that may make nighttime reading more comfortable.

The Signature Edition comes with 32GB of storage, which will be useful if you prefer to listen to audiobooks over Bluetooth. The Signature Edition is also waterproof with an IPX8 rating. Amazon says it can withstand immersion in two meters for fresh water for up to an hour and for up to three minutes in 25 cm of seawater, so users can read in the bath without worrying too much about dropping their device.

In our review, we gave the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition a score of 97, lauding it for many of the above features, as well as a larger screen with smaller bezels. Our only real bugbear was the price, which, at least temporarily, Amazon has taken some of the sting out of.

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The Magic Eraser feature on Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro is a handy tool that does a solid job of removing unwanted objects or people from photos. However, users are experiencing a bug that crashes the Google Photos app when they use it.

Folks have flagged the issue on Reddit and Twitter. As Android Police notes, some have tried clearing the Google Photos cache and restarting their handset, but that doesn't seem to resolve things.

Users have experienced other issues with Magic Eraser and Google Photos. An app update in November accidentally removed the feature, but Google swiftly remedied that. Engadget has asked Google when users can expect a fix for the latest problem.

Magic Eraser was touted as one of the most compelling new features in the Pixel 6 lineup and it certainly didn't hurt device sales. Google parent Alphabet said in its earnings report this week that it set an all-time quarterly sales record for Pixel in the last three months of 2021 even in the face of ongoing supply chain issues.

Meta is rolling out a feature called Personal Boundary in its Horizon Worlds and Horizon Venues virtual reality spaces to combat harassment. Each avatar will have a bubble with a radius of two virtual feet, so they won't be able to come within around four feet of each other.

Meta

If someone tries to move into your personal space, their forward motion will halt when they get too close. However, Meta told The Verge that avatars will still be able to move past each other, so users won't get trapped in a corner or doorway.

The Personal Boundary feature, which users won't be able to disable, builds on previous measures Meta added to tackle harassment, such as making an avatar's hands vanish when they enter someone else's personal space. Shortly before Meta opened Horizon Worlds to everyone aged 18 or older in the US and Canada in December, a beta tester said her avatar was groped by a stranger.

Eventually, you may be able to change the radius of your Personal Boundary. Users can still high-five and fist bump other avatars, but they need to extend their arms to do so.

Rockstar Games has revealed when Grand Theft Auto V fans will be able to get their hands on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions, while teasing what's next for the blockbuster franchise. The current-gen editions will arrive on March 15th. Rockstar previously delayed the release from November to some time in March.

When GTA V and GTA Online hit their third console generation (putting aside the fact previous versions work on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S through backward compatibility), players will have new features to check out. Rockstar is adding several graphics modes, including a frame rate of up to 60 fps, up to 4K resolution, ray-tracing, HDR and upgrades to textures and draw distances. You can also expect faster load times and 3D audio, among other features. The developers are also taking advantage of the DualShock controller's capabilities to offer PS5 plasters "advanced haptic feedback."

Players will be able to skip the GTA V prologue and dive straight into GTA Online if they wish. There's a new tutorial for the multiplayer experience too. Newcomers can access a Career Builder, which allows them to start operating a business as a biker, executive, gunrunner or nightclub owner from the jump. They'll receive a "sizable" bag of in-game currency to kickstart their virtual life of crime as well. Veteran players will have the option to restart their character and hop into the Career Builder at any time.

Those playing the PS4 or Xbox One versions will be able to transfer their progress for both GTA V and GTA Online, as well as their characters from the latter. This is a one-time migration though, so don't expect to be able to bounce back and forth between console generations.

A standalone version of GTA Online is also coming to current-gen consoles on March 15th. PS5 players will have three months of free access. However, Rockstar hasn't revealed pricing for the new versions of GTA V or GTA Online. The upgrade path from the PS4 and Xbox One versions is also unclear.

Meanwhile, in the year's most shocking video game news thus far, Rockstar confirmed that GTA 6 (or whatever the next entry in the series will actually be called) is coming. It says that active development on the game is well underway, and it will share more details when it's ready.

News Corp says it was the target of a cyberattack that impacted The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Dow Jones, its UK news operations and other publications and business units. The company says hackers accessed the emails and documents of some employees, including journalists. A cybersecurity consultant News Corp brought in believes that China was connected to the intrusion, and that the aim of the attack may have been to gather intelligence for the country's benefit.

The attack was discovered on January 20th and News Corp disclosed it in a securities filing on Friday. It also informed law enforcement. According to The Journal, the company told staff the threat appears to have been contained and that it's offering support to affected employees. It doesn't appear that systems containing financial and customer data (including details on subscribers) were affected.

It's not the first time The Journal has been the target of a cyberattack. The publication said Chinese hackers aiming to keep tabs on coverage of the country accessed its network in 2013 to snoop on reporters.

This week, FBI director Christopher Wray said China is behind a “massive, sophisticated hacking program that is bigger than those of every other major nation combined.” Wray noted the agency has more than 2,000 investigations in progress connected to thefts of US tech or information that were allegedly orchestrated by the Chinese government. On average, the FBI opens two such probes every day.

A bill targeting Apple and Google's app store restrictions has taken a step forward. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 20-2 to advance the Open App Markets Act, with only Sens. John Cornyn and Thom Tillis opposing. The vote showed once again that there's bipartisan support for the bill.

Should the legislation become law as it stands, it would prevent app marketplace owners with more than 50 million users in the US from locking third-party developers into their payment systems. The App Store and Google Play Store, which require third-party apps to use their respective payment systems, pass that threshold.

They wouldn't be able to block or punish developers from offering apps at other prices on different platforms, and they'd have to let developers contact their users with "legitimate business offers, such as pricing terms and product or service offerings." Another provision would force Apple and Google to let users install third-party app stores or sideload apps. This would have a bigger impact on Apple, since Android already allows sideloading.

Apple and Google have opposed the bill, claiming that it would put user security and privacy at risk. They said the same things about the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, a more sweeping tech reform bill that the committee passed last month. Both bills will go to the Senate floor for debate and a vote.

The stakes are high for both companies. The App Store and Google Play Store each take a 15 percent cut of in-app purchases up to the first $1 million developers make in annual revenue. After that, the fees rise to 30 percent. 

Google parent company Alphabet reports Play Store revenue under "Google other revenues," which also includes hardware and non-ad income from YouTube. That business segment brought in $8.2 billion last quarter, a year-over-year increase of 22 percent. App Store revenue falls under the Apple's services segment, which raked in $19.5 billion in Q4.

Apple was last year ordered to allow developers to direct users to other payment methods as a result of its legal battle with Epic Games. An appeals court judge granted a last-minute delay before the change was supposed to take effect.

Just like it did last year, Netflix will release at least one movie a week in 2022. There are currently more than 70 films on the docket for this year, and the company offered a peek at some of them in a teaser.

The three-minute sizzle reel is packed with footage from upcoming films, including a first glimpse at Knives Out 2, the sequel to Rian Johnson's terrific 2019 comedy-mystery movie. There are looks at Enola Holmes 2, Jason Momoa as a half-man/half-beast in fantasy flick Slumberland and a stop-motion take on Pinocchio from Guillermo del Toro. You can also get your first peek at The Gray Man, a big-budget thriller from Avengers: Endgame directors Joe and Anthony Russo.

Expect to see projects from filmmakers including Judd Apatow, Noah Baumbach, Niki Caro, Sally El Hosaini, Louis Leterrier, Richard Linklater and Tyler Perry, as well as Dev Patel's directorial debut. Among the other films in Netflix's pipeline are sci-fi movies starring Halle Berry (The Mothership) and Adam Sandler (Spaceman) and a new version of Matilda. There is, as always, a broad range of offerings on this year's slate, including action, comedy, drama, horror and family movies. So, there should be something for everyone as Netflix seeks to make sure subscribers are getting their money's worth from its increasingly expensive plans.

As reports suggested last month, GameStop is getting into NFTs (non-fungible tokens). The company has partnered with Immutable X to build a marketplace for NFTs, which they expect to open up later this year. 

People will be able to buy and sell NFTs linked to digital assets for use in various games. The items will include things like virtual real estate, character skins and weapons, according to The Verge.

Immutable X is based on the Ethereum blockchain, which requires significant energy consumption and high gas fees (a cryptocurrency payment that's required to carry out an Ethereum transaction). The platform claims to diminish those drawbacks by combining many NFT sales into a single Ethereum transaction and buying carbon offsets. As such, Immutable X, whose partners include some blockchain games and TikTok, promises zero gas fees and carbon-neutral NFTs.

GameStop and Immutable X are hoping to entice game developers to use the marketplace with the help of a $100 million fund. Whether developers and studios will bite en masse remains to be seen.

For its annual State of the Game Industry Survey, the Game Developers Conference polled more than 2,700 devs. It found 70 percent of them and their studios were not interested in NFTs, while 72 percent had no interest in packing cryptocurrencies into their games. Around 28 percent said they were at least somewhat interested in NFTs.

Over the last few months, some studios, publishers and industry figures have announced NFT projects, only to abandon their plans after a significant backlash. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 developer GSC Game World, publisher Team17 and prominent game voice and motion-capture actor Troy Baker all backed out of their NFT schemes.

Ubisoft brought NFTs to one of its games for the first time in December, but it seems sales have been slow. Last week, an Ubisoft executive argued that, for gamers, being able to sell virtual items to others is "really beneficial. But they don't get it for now."

Time will tell whether GameStop’s latest endeavor, which follows its emergence as a popular meme stock last year, proves successful. The signs aren't looking promising for the marketplace, though. It's worth bearing in mind that the Steam marketplace has allowed players to buy and sell in-game items for many years without the shadow of NFTs looming over it.

NFTs are designed as public records of ownership of digital assets. The notion is that NFT holders own the asset (which include things like music, digital artworks and in-game items), though in reality the NFT is a verified URL that points to the file. The owner of the URL's destination can alter or delete the file in question. This week, artists claimed that HitPiece, which has since gone offline, was minting and selling NFTs of their music without permission.