Hogwarts Legacy won't be making its way to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One until May 5th, so you'll have two more months of waiting to do if you have an older console. That is, if Warner Bros. Games and Avalanche Software don't push back its release date yet again. They had postponed the game's launch several times over the past few years, and they were supposed to release it for all consoles on February 10th. Less than a couple of months before that, though, they revealed that Hogwarts Legacy will only be available for the PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC in February, while the PS4 and Xbox One are getting it on April 4th. 

Hogwarts Legacy is an action role-playing game with an open world you can explore and a character builder you can use to choose your own name, gender, voice and appearance. It takes place within the Harry Potter universe you're familiar with, but way before The Boy Who Lived was born.

In the developers' announcement, they said they're "working hard to deliver the best possible experience on all platforms" but that they "need more time to do this." They didn't expound on what they meant by that, and it basically echoes what they said when they announced that the game won't be released for older consoles in February. The developers didn't mention anything about the Switch, though, so that version is still likely scheduled for release on July 25th. 

JAXA's second attempt at launching the H3 rocket has ended up becoming a major setback for Japan's space ambitions. While the rocket was able to leave the launch pad, the country's space authorities were forced to activate its flight termination system a few minutes later after its second stage engine failed to ignite. In an announcement, JAXA said the self-destruct command was transmitted to the rocket at 10:52 AM Japan time (8:52PM ET) "because there was no possibility of achieving the mission." The agency is still investigating the incident to figure out what went wrong.

The H3 was built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries after the program was first approved in 2013, and it cost the country over 200 billion yen ($1.5 billion). JAXA was hoping to launch the rocket in 2020 — and it did complete a functional test for the H3 that year — but had to delay its inaugural flight due to engineering problems. Its first actual launch attempt on February 17th this year was aborted before the vehicle was able to lift off due to an electrical interference issue in the first stage. 

According to Nikkei Asia, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida sees the H3 as "crucial to the nation's business and national security ambitions." It was created to put a lot more Japanese surveillance satellites in orbit and to become the key component of a business that will offer launch services to clients. JAXA and Mitsubishi were apparently able to halve its original launch costs to $50 million, which they believed is lower than the launch costs of SpaceX's Falcon 9. In the future, it's also expected to ferry cargo to support the NASA Artemis program's Lunar Gateway project.  

The destroyed H3 rocket was carrying ALOS-3, a satellite with disaster management tools that can be quickly deployed to observe affected areas. Reuters says it was also equipped with an experimental infrared sensor that was created with the ability to detect North Korean ballistic missile launches

Last year, NASA's DART spacecraft successfully completed its mission: To collide with an asteroid called Dimorphos to see if it was possible to change the trajectory of any potentially planet-killing space rock. Scientists from the DART team have been analyzing the data collected from the mission since then, and they've now published five papers in Nature explaining the details of DART's results. They've also decided that, yes, the method can be used to defend Earth if ever an asteroid big enough to kill us all heads our way. 

Apparently, one of DART's solar panels hit Dimosphos first before its body fully collided with the rock at 6km per second (3.7 miles per second). The spacecraft smashed into the asteroid around 25 meters (85 feet) from its center, which was a huge factor in the mission's success, since it maximized the force of the impact. According to the studies, the collision had managed to eject 1 million kilograms or 1,100 tons of rock from Dimorphos. That spray of rubble flew outwards away from the asteroid, generating four times the momentum of DART's impact and changing Dimorphos' trajectory even further.

While NASA has only tested the mission on one space rock, scientists have concluded that for asteroids as big as Dimorphos (around 560 feet across), we don't even need to send an advance reconnaissance mission. As long as we get at least few years of warning time, though a few decades would be preferable, then we will be able to intercept future asteroid threads. Franck Marchis at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, told Nature: "[W]e can quickly design a mission to deflect an asteroid if there is a threat, and we know that this has a very high chance of being effective."

We're bound to get an even better look at the mission's effect on the asteroid after European Space Agency's Hera spacecraft arrives at Dimorphos in 2026. The mission will study the binary asteroid system Didymos and Dimorphos to further validate DART's kinetic impact method or future use. 

Amazon is closing down two cashierless Go stores in New York City, two in Seattle and four in San Francisco on April 1st, according to GeekWire. The e-retail giant made the announcement on the same day it admitted that it's pausing construction on its second headquarters in Arlington, Virginia as it reassesses its office needs in the face of more and more people preferring to work remotely. As Bloomberg notes, these are but Amazon's latest cost-cutting moves amidst slowing sales growth. In January, the company expanded its planned job cuts from 10,000 to 18,000 roles, with the layoffs since then mostly impacting personnel from its retail and recruiting divisions. 

Company spokesperson Jessica Martin told the publications in a statement: "Like any physical retailer, we periodically assess our portfolio of stores and make optimization decisions along the way. We remain committed to the Amazon Go format, operate more than 20 Amazon Go stores across the US and will continue to learn which locations and features resonate most with customers."

The internet retail titan's Go stores were designed to be high-tech shops equipped with cameras and sensors that can detect when products are taken and returned to shelves. Customers can grab any item they want, which will be added to their virtual cart for online payment, and then walk out of the store without having to pass by a cashier. 

While Amazon still has over 20 Go stores in the country, it has long struggled to conquer the physical retail space and has been changing up strategies every so often. It used to have 87 retail pop-up kiosks across the US, but the company shut them down before the pandemic hit. And in 2022, Amazon closed down all 68 of its physical bookstores, pop-up locations and 4-star shops in the US and UK. Just this February, though, CEO Andy Jassy said the company plans to go big on its brick-and-mortar grocery store business. He told the Financial Times: "We're hopeful that in 2023, we have a format that we want to go big on, on the physical side."

If you're looking to buy a small tablet you can carry with you everywhere, the 64GB Apple iPad Mini is back to its all-time low price of $400 at Amazon. That's $99, or 20 percent, less than what you'd pay if you buy directly from Apple and $69 lower than its list price at Amazon over the past few days. The pink, purple and space gray variants are all discounted at the moment, so you have quite a few options to choose from. And if you need more storage, you can also get the 256GB iPad Mini for $550. While that's not quite the lowest price we've seen for the model on the website, that's still $99 less than its retail price. 

In our review, we said the tablet was really more of an iPad Air Mini, because Apple gave it an "all-screen" Liquid Retina design, a TouchID-capable top button, a USB-C port for charging and support for the second-generation Apple Pencil. It was a significant redesign for the tablet, which stayed mostly the same its previous iterations. The fact that it has USB-C for charging and that it works with the second-gen Apple Pencil also means you can use your accessories with it if you have already another iPad that supports them. 

In addition, we praised the iPad Mini for having a 12-megapixel ultra wide front camera with Center Stage. That allows the camera to automatically zoom and pan to follow you around during video calls, so the person on the other end can still see you while you're moving. Overall, we found the device's performance to be solid and even called it the best small tablet available when it was released in 2021. It's been a while since then, but the device remains a great option even if it's not as powerful as the iPad Air and the iPad Pro.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

There's only one more season left before Star Trek: Discovery bids farewell. The Paramount+ series is ending after season 5, which according to its official summary, "will find Captain Burnham (Martin-Green) and the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery uncovering a mystery that will send them on an epic adventure across the galaxy to find an ancient power whose very existence has been deliberately hidden for centuries." According to Variety, Paramount+ is also streaming the fifth season in 2024 as opposed to this year as previously expected. 

Star Trek: Discovery marked the first time the franchise has had a Black female lead and has prominently featured LGBTQIA+ characters. It also largely took on a more serialized format, wherein each episode is its own installment in a season's main storyline, unlike other entries in the franchise. That became a point of criticism about the series, however, until the showrunners changed course and embraced storytelling with an overarching plot in season four. 

As The Hollywood Reporter notes, the series currently holds the distinction for being the longest-running drama on Paramount+ so far. Its debut back in 2017 led to record sign-up numbers for the streaming service then known as CBS All Access, and its success paved the way for other Trek shows, including Lower Decks and Prodigy.

Tanya Giles, chief programming officer at Paramount Streaming, said in a statement: "Star Trek: Discovery is a perennial favorite on the service, near and dear to the hearts of legions of ‘Star Trek’ fans as well as all of us here at Paramount+. The series and its incredible cast and creatives ushered in a new era for Star Trek when it debuted over six years ago, embracing the future of streaming with serialized storytelling, bringing to life deep and complex characters that honor Gene Roddenberry’s legacy of representing diversity and inclusion, and pushing the envelope with award-winning world-building. This final season will see our beloved crew take on a new adventure and we can't wait to celebrate the series’ impact on the franchise leading up to its final season early next year."

At the moment, Trek fans can watch Star Trek: Picard, which is streaming on Paramount+. Its third season will also be its last, but there are rumors going around that the service is developing spinoffs centering on characters from the show.

Jamie Siminoff, who founded Ring and created the video doorbell that started it all, is stepping down as the company's CEO. In a blog post, Siminoff explained that invention is his true passion and that he's focusing on creating new products for the company as its Chief Inventor instead. 

Apparently, the rest of the Ring team has known about his transition plans and his search for a new chief since June last year. From March 22nd, the company will be led by former Discord COO Elizabeth Hamren. The new CEO will also head up the Blink, Amazon Key and Amazon Sidewalk divisions. 

Siminoff shared how Ring's first video doorbell was created in his garage and how it grew into a company that offers products across several categories, like cameras, alarms and even security drones. In 2018, Amazon acquired the company in a bid to take Nest head on, allowing Ring to scale up its production and reach customers it wasn't able to before. 

Over the past few years, though, Siminoff also had to deal with the fallout over Ring's close relationship with law enforcement. The company came under fire from lawmakers and privacy advocates after it was revealed that it had formed partnerships with over 600 police forces across the US. To be specific, it allowed authorities to keep homeowners' videos indefinitely and to share them with anyone they want. Ring ultimately changed the way it handled video requests from law enforcement agencies in 2021, when it required them to make public requests within 12 hours of an incident if they want a copy of users' surveillance videos. 

A lot of users were obsessed with keeping up Snapstreaks after they launched, even maintaining streaks in the hundreds with several friends. They don't seem to be as popular anymore, perhaps in part because life usually gets in the way of sending Snaps to people every single day. Now, Snap has launched an experimental feature that could make it easier to maintain streaks by restoring them if they break. Say, something got in the way of sending Snap to a friend for a day, users can simply tap Restore to pretend that day never happened. 

The catch is that, users will only get one free Snap Restore. As TechCrunch notes, if they want to prevent more Snapstreaks from going to waste, they'd have to buy more Restores from the app for $1 each in the US. In its announcement, the company also said that it's introducing a new way for Snapchat+ subscribers to freeze their Streaks for long periods "soon." While it didn't expound on how the feature will work, Snap said it will allow users to put "things on pause when they know they’re going off the grid."

These feature announcements come shortly after Snap added an OpenAI chatbot similar to ChatGPT to its app. The chatbot shows up as a regular user profile, probably to make it look more like a virtual friend, though Snap admits it could "be tricked into saying just about anything" and has even apologized for its "many deficiencies" in advance. At the moment, the chatbot is exclusively available to Snapchat+ users paying $4 a month for the service, but the company has plans to make it more widely available. 

Dozens of Google Japan employees have organized under the Tokyo Managers' Union. It's the first labor union at Google Japan, according to Meiji University Assistant Professor Ken Yamazaki, who also posted a copy of the group's statements from a press conference. Apparently, the employees chose to organize out of fear that they could be abruptly laid off, especially since some of them are in Japan on work visas. 

Their concerns stemmed from the tech giant's announcement back in January that it's cutting 12,000 jobs — that's six percent of the company's overall workforce — around the world. They said their counterparts in the US were terminated with just an email sent in the middle of the night, and that the Japanese office's employees were left anxiously awaiting for the ax to fall over the past few weeks. The workers said they joined a labor union in response to that announcement and to news about the fate of the company's employees in other countries. 

For a dismissal to be legal in Japan, a company has to prove that it has reasonable grounds to terminate an employee. However, some companies terminate employees without good reason by claiming to have problems with the worker. The group is hoping that joining a union would protect them from sudden termination. In the US, one of the divisions most affected by the job cuts was the company's Area 120 in-house incubator, which works on experimental apps and products. The division used to develop 20 projects simultaneously, but that's now down to three after most people in the team lost their jobs.

When Google announced it was going to let 12,000 workers go, Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said he was "deeply sorry" and that he takes "full responsibility for the decisions that led [the company] here." He admitted that the tech giant went on a hiring spree over the last few years, but that Google "hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today." According to the company's latest earnings report, its revenue for the fourth quarter of 2022 grew one percent from the year before, but its quarterly net income was down 34 percent year-over-year. 

The DownDetector pages for Twitter are exploding in activity — again — and users are sharing that the social network seems to be broken for them. Over the past couple of hours, thousands of users reported having issues accessing the website and its apps. Many trying to access Twitter.com have reported seeing a "Welcome to Twitter" message, while both Android and iOS timelines remained stuck in the past. 

Twitter's Support account has yet to issue a statement, but some parts of the website are working just fine. Users can still tweet if they want to, or read and respond to their notifications. If they need to see the latest tweets ASAP, they can switch over to Tweetdeck to see them. The outage comes shortly after the company reportedly laid off more employees. 

According to various sources, Twitter released around 200 people on Saturday night, a week after the company's Slack was taken offline. Twitter Blue head Esther Crawford is believed to be one of the affected personnel. It's unclear at the moment if the layoffs have anything to do with the outage, but since Twitter has no PR team, we'll have to wait for the company to issue a statement.