Workers at Sega of America have voted to unionize. In a union representation election with the National Labor Relations Board, the workers voted 91-26 in favor of their unit, which is called the Allied Employees Guild Improving Sega (AEGIS-CWA). Nineteen ballots were challenged, while three were void. As a result, the group has now officially organized with the Communication Workers of America. 

The unit comprises more than 200 workers in various departments across the company, including the brand marketing, games as a service, localization, marketing services, product development, sales and quality assurance teams. While it's hardlythe first games union in North America, the workers say it's "the largest multi-department union of organized workers in the entire gaming industry." However, ZeniMax Workers United/CWA includes around 300 quality assurance workers at ZeniMax Studios.

AEGIS-CWA plans to push for improved base pay and benefits, more staff to "eliminate overwork patterns" and more balanced workloads. The workers are also seeking remote work options, clearly defined responsibilities for each role and more.

Sega declined to voluntarily recognize the union. Management decided to "instead engage with known union-busters in an attempt to spread misinformation, fear and division," Winry Ramsey, a QA tester and AEGIS-CWA member previously said. Sega will now have to agree on a union contract with AEGIS-CWA.

"We are overjoyed to celebrate our union election win as members of AEGIS-CWA. From the start of this campaign, it has been clear that we all care deeply about our work at Sega," Sega translator and AEGIS-CWA member Ángel Gómez said in a statement. "Now, through our union, we’ll be able to protect the parts of our jobs we love, and strengthen the benefits, pay, and job stability available to all workers. Together we can build an even better Sega. We hope our victory today is an inspiration to other workers across the gaming industry. Together, we can raise standards for all workers across the industry.”

Marvel and Electronic Arts have revealed the second game they're making together as part of a deal between the two sides. A new Seattle-based Electronic Arts studio called Cliffhanger Games is developing a single-player Black Panther title.

It will be an action-adventure game with a third-person perspective, suggesting it’ll share some similarities with the likes of Insomniac's Spider-Man titles. According to Marvel, Cliffhanger aims to “build an expansive and reactive world that empowers players to experience what it is like to take on the mantle of Wakanda’s protector, the Black Panther.”

Cliffhanger says it and Marvel Games will collaborate "to ensure that we craft every aspect of Wakanda, its technology, its heroes and our own original story with the attention to detail and authenticity that the world of Black Panther deserves." However, Marvel and EA are staying tight-lipped on further details for now.

Kevin Stephens, who previously held a similar role at Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor developer Monolith Productions, is heading up Cliffhanger. The team includes former Halo Infinite, God of War and Call of Duty developers.

“We’re dedicated to delivering fans a definitive and authentic Black Panther experience, giving them more agency and control over their narrative than they have ever experienced in a story-driven video game,” Stephens said. “Wakanda is a rich superhero sandbox, and our mission is to develop an epic world for players who love Black Panther and want to explore the world of Wakanda as much as we do.”

It has been rumored for some time that EA had a Black Panther game in the pipeline. Last September, it emerged that EA Motive (the studio behind the recent Dead Space remake) is developing an Iron Man game. That too will be a single-player, third-person, action-adventure title, but we haven’t learned more details since. There’s no confirmed release window for either project.

Meta's Twitter competitor is off to a flying start. Within just four days of the app going live on Wednesday evening, Threads already has more than 100 million users according Quiver Quantitative's Threads Tracker. It helps that Thread is a sibling app to Instagram and it's easy for the image-sharing platform's billion-plus users to sign up — unless they live in the European Union, where it's not yet available.

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's CEO, has provided several updates on Threads' user numbers. The app had 10 million users in the first seven hours and more than 30 million by Thursday morning. Around 24 hours later, that figure had more than doubled. 

It’s very, very early days for Threads, as the app is missing basic features that many users see as essential. It has minimal accessibility options at the minute, with no way to append alt text to an image for those who use screen readers. Search is limited to usernames, there’s no hashtag support and you can't post to Threads from the web.

Perhaps most gallingly of all, Threads doesn’t yet have a chronological feed of posts. The algorithmic feed is full of brands, influencers and celebrities, making it difficult for users to keep up with what friends and family are posting. A chronological feed is on the way, but Twitter may still be many people's app of choice for up-to-the-minute news.

"Politics and hard news are inevitably going to show up on Threads — they have on Instagram as well to some extent — but we're not going to do anything to encourage those verticals," Instagram head Adam Mosseri wrote, noting that the aim of Threads isn't to replace Twitter.

"Politics and hard news are important, I don't want to imply otherwise," Mosseri added. "But my take is, from a platform's perspective, any incremental engagement or revenue they might drive is not at all worth the scrutiny, negativity (let's be honest), or integrity risks that come along with them. There are more than enough amazing communities — sports, music, fashion, beauty, entertainment, etc — to make a vibrant platform without needing to get into politics or hard news."

Quiver Quantitative's Threads Tracker uses data taken from Instagram users' profiles, according to the person who built the tool, co-founder Christopher Kardatzke. "By viewing the profiles of people who joined the platform, I can see where they were in line and get a general idea of how many users have signed up," he said. He added that the estimates appear to line up with Zuckerberg's Threads posts about user milestones.

Meta's Threads has blown up this week, with more than 70 million registered accounts being registered within around 40 hours of the app going live. One of those users is a particular thorn in the side of Elon Musk as they're posting what the Twitter owner once referred to as "basically assassination coordinates" for him.

In reality, the person behind Elonjet, Jack Sweeney, is using publicly available flight data to share the whereabouts of Musk's private jet in near-real-time. Sweeney used to post that information on Twitter, which bothered Musk long before he bought the company. Musk offered Sweeney $5,000 to delete the account, but the offer was rejected (a counteroffer of $50,000 or an internship at one of Musk's companies never panned out).

In December, a couple months after Musk bought Twitter, the Elonjet account was permanently suspended. Twitter updated its private information rules around the same time to limit users to sharing "publicly available location information after a reasonable time has elapsed, so that the individual is no longer at risk for physical harm."

Sweeney created a new Twitter account that shows the location of Musk's jet on a 24-hour delay, which was A-OK under the tweaked policy. Elonjet accounts on other platforms display more up-to-date information, including Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, Mastodon and Bluesky.A subreddit is tracking the plane too.

Elonjet never truly went away for long, but there's something quite fitting about it showing up on Threads. The new app is a blatant competitor to Twitter. So much so, Twitter has threatened Meta with legal action after accusing it of using former employees and trade secrets to build the Threads. Meanwhile, those planning to use Threads to closely keep tabs on Musk's jet will have to keep an eye on Elonjet's profile — Threads bafflingly doesn't yet have a chronological feed of posts.

That said, Elonjet didn't quite escape the wrath of seemingly zealous Threads moderators. According to Engadget alum Saqib Shah, Meta removed the account from the app "in error" but later restored it.

Jony Ive has been busy since leaving Apple, with his design agency working on things like a typeface, a charity clown nose and “the future of Airbnb.” LoveFrom’s latest project takes Ive back to his hardware days — it’s a new model of a modular turntable that’s been around for half a century.

LoveFrom helped refine Linn’s Sondek LP12 for a 50th anniversary edition. Ive told Fast Company it was a “very gentle and modest project” for LoveFrom that stems from his team’s admiration for Linn. Perhaps as a result of that, LoveFrom carried out the work pro bono. "There are many things that I’ve always wanted to be able to do purely for the love of doing them,” Ive noted.

The design firm approached Linn about working together, in part because Ive is a long-time fan of the brand. The two teams examined every aspect of the LP12 but couldn't change the turntable very much owing to concerns over impact to the sound quality. Still, LoveFrom "saw a number of areas where there could be small improvements and gentle evolutions of the current design," Ive said.

The exterior of the special-edition Sondek LP12-50 looks largely the same as the standard LP12, though the tweaks include rounded off corners for some components rather than squared-off edges. There's a circular aluminum power button instead of a plastic rocker, while a new hinge seemingly enables the dust cover to easily remain open at any angle.

If you're interested in owning the first post-Apple hardware that Ive worked on, you'll have to dig deep into your pockets. The Sondek LP12-50 costs $60,000 and Linn is only making 250 of them.

At least for this project, Ive has moved on from digital audio hardware to an analog product. He played an instrumental role in the likes of the iPod, the iPhone and AirPods during his tenure at Apple as he helped the company reach extraordinary heights. We may see arguably more ambitious works from the LoveFrom camp in the next few years, as the firm is collaborating with Ferrari and its holding company Exor on several creative projects.

Twitter isn't exactly happy about Meta's Threads app, a new text-based Instagram sibling. As Semafor reports, Twitter has threatened legal action against Meta, accusing it of poaching former employees and unlawfully misappropriating trade secrets and intellectual property.

“Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights, and demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information,” Alex Spiro, Elon Musk's personal lawyer, wrote in a letter to Meta. “Twitter reserves all rights, including, but not limited to, the right to seek both civil remedies and injunctive relief without further notice to prevent any further retention, disclosure, or use of its intellectual property by Meta.”

Spiro, who is acting on behalf of Twitter parent X Corp, claims that Meta has hired dozens of ex-Twitter employees over the last year. He claimed the company "deliberately assigned" them to work on Threads "with the specific intent that they use Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property in order to accelerate development of Meta's competing app." He argued this violates state and federal laws as well as those employees' obligations to their former employer. In addition, Spiro said Meta is prohibited from scraping Twitter data relating to who people follow. 

Engadget has contacted Meta for comment. The company told Semafor that Spiro's claims were baseless and that no members of the Threads engineering team were ex-Twitter employees.

For the time being, Threads users need to sign up for the app with their Instagram profile. It's an easy process that helped Meta quickly sign up tens of millions of users. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that 30 million people had joined Threads by Thursday morning, just over 12 hours after the app went live.

Fairphone is at long last bringing its sustainability-focused smartphones to the US. The company has teamed up with Murena to start offering a version of the Fairphone 4 in the country. The Murena Fairphone 4 is available to order now. It starts at $599 for 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, according to the Murena store. A variant with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage will run you $679. Storage is expandable via microSD.

Those prices might seem fairly steep for a two-year old device with a mid-range Qualcomm chip from 2020, but the Murena Fairphone 4 is about much more than the pure specs. For one thing, it's a privacy-centric device with a version of Android that's detangled from Google. Murena's /e/ operating system eschews Google's stock apps. For instance, rather than Google Maps, you'll get an open-source alternative by default. The device has its own directory that gives each app a privacy rating. As such, you'll have some information about how each app tracks your data before you install one.

You can still install Google-built apps. Murena purports to snag apps from the Play Store without directing your information to Google. You can install a standard version of Android if you like, but Murena warns that this will void your warranty. (For what it's worth, Fairphone 4 buyers in Europe can opt to have either stock Android or /e/ out of the box). Murena plans to provide software updates and security patches for at least five years, while Fairphone offers a five-year hardware warranty.

Fairphone's ethos centers around repairability and as such the smartphone is designed to be long-lasting. The Fairphone 4 has a 10 out of 10 repairability score from iFixit. It has a modular design and it's said to be the first such phone with an IP rating of IP54. That means the phone should be protected from dust and rain. None of the components are glued together and you can use a regular screwdriver to swap them out.

The Murena Fairphone 4 has a 3905mAh battery as well as 5G and dual-SIM support. On the camera front, you'll get a dual 48MP rear camera and 25MP selfie camera. The device's body, camera array, loudspeaker, USB-C port and 6.3-inch display are all individual parts and you'll be able to buy replacements from Murena. Meanwhile, the Murena Fairphone 4 doesn't come with a USB cable, power adapter or headphones in the box. Murena sells those separately as it encourages buyers to use cables and adapters they might already have stuffed in a drawer somewhere.

Although the device is unlocked, T-Mobile and mobile virtual network operators that use the T-Mobile network are the only recommended carriers for it in the US. Fairphone is framing the device's US debut as a pilot as the company is primarily focused on the European market. "This collaboration with e/OS/ is a great opportunity for us to pilot selling devices in the US market with a long-standing partner and learn more about the American market," Fairphone CEO Eva Gouwens told Engadget in a statement.

Several days after Twitter stopped showing tweets to logged-out users, that basic functionality seems to be returning. Several Engadget editors are once again able to see individual tweets without being logged into their accounts. Profiles still seem to be busted for those who aren’t signed in, however. For instance, I’m able to see a user’s bio, but their feed of tweets isn’t showing up. Meanwhile, tweet previews are working in iMessage again for some folks.

Making tweets inaccessible to logged-out users was a “temporary emergency measure,” according to Twitter owner Elon Musk. “We were getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users,” he wrote.

The company gave a similar explanation as to why it temporarily put limits on the number of tweets each user is able to read per day. On Tuesday, it said it made that move, which busted various Twitter apps, to “detect and eliminate bots and other bad actors that are harming the platform,” such as those who are scraping data to train artificial intelligence models. Twitter added that the rate limits were affecting a small percentage of users at that point.

Twitter no longer has a communications department that can be reached for comment. Still, public tweets are once again becoming available for anyone to view just as Meta starts rolling out its Twitter competitor, which is called Threads. That service is expected to go live in several markets on Thursday, but not in the European Union.

Twitter has been even more of a mess than usual over the last few days, in part because it limited the number of tweets users could read each day. The decision came as a surprise to many, but the company said it was unable to give folks a heads up.

"We temporarily limited usage so we could detect and eliminate bots and other bad actors that are harming the platform," a Twitter Business blog post reads. "Any advance notice on these actions would have allowed bad actors to alter their behavior to evade detection."

While some have been skeptical of Twitter's reasoning for the move, the company says it limited the rate limit to stop bad actors from scraping public data to feed into artificial intelligence models and to prevent them from "manipulating people and conversation on the platform in various ways." It says that the rate limits currently impact a small percentage of users and it will provide an update when these efforts are complete.

It seemed strange that Twitter posted this update on its business blog until the company mentioned that rate limiting has had a "minimal" effect on advertising. Many pointed out that limiting the number of tweets users could read per day would make it harder for advertisers to reach users and for Twitter to make money.

Rate limiting broke Twitter's website and apps for the most part, including TweetDeck, an app that many power users rely on. To help remedy that, the company released "a new, improved version of TweetDeck." The company is moving all users over to the latest version, but there was another twist in store: Twitter is making the app exclusive to verified accounts, effectively putting a paywall on TweetDeck for the vast majority of users.

While there’s a week to go until Amazon officially kicks off Prime Day, the company is getting things started early with deals on many of its own products. Ring video doorbells, cameras and security systems are among the products on sale. A bundle of a Ring Video Doorbell and Echo Show 5 (which you can use to monitor what the doorbell sees) typically costs $190. However, for Prime members, Amazon has dropped the price by 66 percent to $65. That's the lowest price we've seen for this bundle to date.

You'll get the second-gen Ring Video Doorbell, which Amazon released in 2020. While Amazon has released two newer versions in the interim, it's still a capable device. It offers up to 1080p HD video, while the original was limited to 720p. It can run on battery power alone, or you can hardwire it or connect it to a Ring solar charger.

A privacy zone option enables you to block out certain areas of the field of view from recordings. There are adjustable motion zones (you'll receive a notification when someone triggers the built-in motion sensor or presses the doorbell), an audio privacy setting and, Amazon claims, improved night vision over the first model.

The Echo Show 5, meanwhile, is the new third-gen model that Amazon released in May. Although the design is almost the same as the previous version, the latest Echo Show 5 is 20 percent faster and offers "double the bass" through an upgraded speaker system, Amazon says. The device typically retails for $90 alone.

In case you don't need or want an Echo Show 5 (you can still see a video feed from the doorbell on a phone, tablet or PC), you can pick up the second-gen Ring Video Doorbell by itself for $55 if you're a Prime member. This again is a record low price. The device usually sells for $100.

There are lots of deals elsewhere in the Ring sale. Prime members can get 50 percent off the second-gen Ring Indoor Cam that Amazon released several weeks ago. It's on sale for $30. Those looking for more peace of mind may be interested in a Ring Alarm kit. Several options are on sale, including the latest version of the five-piece kit. That has dropped from $200 to $120. 

Your Prime Day Shopping Guide: See all of our Prime Day coverage. Shop the best Prime Day deals on Yahoo Life. Follow Engadget for the best Amazon Prime Day tech deals. Learn about Prime Day trends on In the Know. Hear from Autoblog’s car experts on must-shop auto-related Prime Day deals and find Prime Day sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.