It’s officially ice cream season, and if you’ve been wanting to try your hand at making the dessert yourself, Walmart has a deal you might be interested in. The Ninja Creami ice cream maker is $50 off right now, bringing the price down to $149 — the best price we’ve seen for it all year. The Creami is designed for ease of use and gives you control over the texture of the finished product, so you can make ice cream, sorbet, milkshakes and other kinds of frozen treats.

The deal applies to the Ninja Creami model with 5 one-touch progams: Ice Cream, Sorbet, Milkshake, Lite Ice Cream and Mix-in (which lets you toss in embellishments like chocolate chips or nuts). It also comes with two 16oz pints to make and store your ice cream in. The Creami is one of our favorite kitchen gadgets and earned a review score of 90, requiring minimal work on your part to make ice cream with the ingredients of your choice. All you need to do is prep the mixture that will be your base, toss it in the freezer overnight, then pop it in the Creami for processing.

The Ninja Creami won’t take up too much counter space, and most of the parts can go in the dishwasher for an easy cleanup after using it. It operates a bit like a food processor, but uses what the company refers to as a Creamerizer Paddle that has two different types of blades to get a uniform texture. There’s one for shaving the frozen base and another for smoothing it all out. It also has dual drive motors that allow for both a spinning motion and downward pressure to make for a good churn.

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iOS 18 may inject a little more fun into the iPhone experience. In the Power On newsletter this week, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that AI-generated emoji will be among the new features Apple shows off at WWDC next month. As if the current emoji library weren’t overwhelming enough, Gurman writes that the company “is developing software that can create custom emojis on the fly, based on what users are texting.” I, for one, cannot wait to see the cursed creations that are sure to come out of that one.

Apple is also reportedly making it so iPhone users will have more customization options for their apps and home screen, like the ability to change the color of app icons and arrange things more freely, rather than being locked into the grid layout. The latter especially would be a pretty big change for Apple, but surely a welcome one for any users who have been itching to get more creative with their home screen designs. Of course, these are still rumors, so don’t take any of it as set in stone.

There’s been a ton of talk about Apple’s AI plans in the leadup to its annual developers conference, which kicks off on June 10, but rather than debut anything too flashy at this stage, Gurman suggests Apple will stick to practical applications for the technology. Apple is expected to announce a partnership with OpenAI and, according to Gurman, may give an AI boost to things like Safari searches, Siri, photo retouching and voice memo transcriptions. The company may also introduce smart recaps for notifications, web pages and more.

Ah, Flappy Bird. It’s been a long time since I last gave any thought to the game-turned-cultural-phenomenon that briefly had us all in a chokehold a decade ago. At least, that was the case until this morning, when I stumbled upon a Reddit post announcing a Flappy Bird tribute for the Playdate and, without a moment’s hesitation, sideloaded it onto my device. Now here I am, absolutely hooked on this maddening little game once again. And, using the crank to control that silly little bird, it's even harder this time around. FlappyBird by Chibisuke is free and available to download for Playdate on itch.io. You’re welcome... or, I’m sorry.

FlappyBird is just like the OG game, but in grayscale. You can play using the up button on the D-pad, the ‘A’ button or the crank to guide the bird between the pipes, but I’ve been going with the latter for the extra challenge it adds. It also just feels like a perfect use of the crank, and I like making the most of the Playdate’s funky design whenever I can. There are other games inspired by Flappy Bird that you can get for the Playdate, like Cranky Bird and Flappybalt, but Chibisuke’s FlappyBird is a direct clone of Dong Nguyen’s infamous side-scroller. 

It’s definitely one way to get your heart rate up on a Sunday afternoon. Just, please do not ask me about my high score, I… don’t want to talk about it.

Elon Musk told investors this month that his startup xAI is planning to build a supercomputer by the fall of 2025 that would power a future, smarter iteration of its Grok chatbot, The Information reports. This supercomputer, which Musk reportedly referred to as a “gigafactory of compute,” would rely on tens of thousands of NVIDIA H100 GPUs and cost billions of dollars to build. Musk has previously said the third version of Grok will require at least 100,000 of the chips — a fivefold increase over the 20,000 GPUs said to be in use for training Grok 2.0.

According to The Information, Musk also told investors in the presentation that the planned GPU cluster would be at least four times the size of anything used today by xAI competitors. Grok is currently in version 1.5, which was released in April, and is now touted to process visual information like photographs and diagrams as well as text. X earlier this month started rolling out AI-generated news summaries powered by Grok for premium users.

Resident Evil 6 has sold surprisingly well on the Nintendo Switch since it was ported to the console in 2019, despite it being almost universally panned by fans of the series. As spotted by Nintendo Life, RE6 just got added to Capcom’s Platinum Titles list, meaning it’s crossed the threshold of one million units sold. It sits at number 117 on the list, with a million downloads for the Switch (but not any other platforms).

RE6 stands out as a convoluted action game next to the titles that came before it, marking a dramatic shift away from survival horror. It has a lot going on, but not so much of the things people actually love about Resident Evil games. It’s gained some defenders over the years, though, I’ll give it that. Capcom brought Resident Evil 6 to the Switch in October 2019 and bundled it with RE4 and RE5 in the Resident Evil Triple Pack that was released around the same time, which surely helped its sales. 

ICQ, which used to be a very popular messaging app for a short period in the 90s and the early aughts, only has a month left before it joins the other apps and software of old in the great big farm in the sky. It will stop working on June 26, according to it website, which also encourages users to move to VK Messenger for casual chats and to VK WorkSpace for professional conversations. ICQ came into the picture at a time when most people were using IRC to chat. IRC, however, was mostly meant for group conversations — ICQ made it easy to communicate one-on-one. 

Users who signed up for an account got assigned a number that grew longer as time went on, because it was issued sequentially. The shortest numbers had five digits, which means users who got them were there at the very beginning. ICQ peaked in the early 2000s when it reached 100 million registered accounts. And while it didn't take a long time for AIM, Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger to eclipse its popularity, ICQ's iconic "uh-oh!" notification sound remains memorable for a lot of internet users during that era. 

ICQ, derived from the phrase "I seek you," was developed by Israeli company Mirabilis. It was then purchased by AOL and then by the Russian company Mail.Ru Group that's now known as VK, which has its own social networking and messaging services.

The families of the shooting victims at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas have sued Call of Duty publisher Activision and Meta. They alleged that the companies "knowingly exposed the shooter to the weapon [he used], conditioned him to see it as the solution to his problems, and trained him to use it." The plaintiffs also accused the companies of "chewing up alienated teenage boys and spitting out mass shooters." 

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs explained that the Uvalde shooter played Call of Duty, which featured an assault-style rifle made by gunmaker Daniel Defense. They also mentioned that he frequently visited Instagram, which advertised the gunmaker's products. The lawsuit claimed, as well, that Instagram gives gunmakers "an unsupervised channel to speak directly to minors, in their homes, at school, even in the middle of the night." It argued that the shooter was "a poor and isolated teenager" from small town Texas who only learned about AR-15s and set his sights on it, because he was exposed to the weapon from playing Call of Duty and visiting Instagram. In addition, it accused Meta of being more lenient towards firearms sellers than other users who break its rules. Meta prohibits the buying the selling of weapons and ammunition, but users can violate the policy 10 times before they're banned from its platforms. 

"The truth is that the gun industry and Daniel Defense didn’t act alone. They couldn’t have reached this kid but for Instagram," the plaintiffs' lawyer, Attorney Josh Koskoff, said at a news conference. "They couldn’t expose him to the dopamine loop of virtually killing a person. That's what Call of Duty does." Koskoff's law firm was the same one who reached a $73 million settlement with rifle manufacturer Remington for the families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims. 

An Activision spokesperson told The Washington Post and Bloomberg Law that the "Uvalde shooting was horrendous and heartbreaking in every way," and that the company expresses its deepest sympathies to the families, but "millions of people around the world enjoy video games without turning to horrific acts."

If you’ve been craving some help with cleaning, this Memorial Day Roomba sale may be up your alley. Wellbots has the iRobot Roomba Combo J9+, Engadget’s favorite vacuum-mop combo, for $425 off. The machine not only cleans floors and carpets; its redesigned dock can automatically empty debris and refill it with mopping liquid. Use the exclusive code ENG425 to get iRobot’s top-of-the-line combo cleaner for $974.

Although that’s still a hefty price for a cleaning robot, you’re getting a premium product in return. The Roomba Combo J9+ has an upgraded motor and a four-stage cleaning system that takes multiple passes across your floors and carpets. This latest model, which arrived only last fall, has dual rubber brushes for optimal suction and pressurized scrubbing.

The robot has an updated Clean Base that automatically refills its water tank while looking more like a nice home appliance than a gadget’s charging dock. It automates as much of the setup process as possible, leaving you only to attach its mop pad and add water and cleaning solution. As for upkeep, you merely swap out its mop pads when needed and clean the Roomba’s bristles and bin.

Wellbots also offers the standard Roomba J9+ — the mop-less variant — for $325 off with the code ENG325. This model has all the vacuuming features from the more expensive Combo version. That includes stronger suction, multi-surface rubber brushes and a three-stage cleaning system. Usually $899, the coupon brings its price down to $574.

If you’re looking for a vacuum-mop combination robot for cheaper, the previous-generation Roomba Combo J7+ is $225 off with the code ENG225 (usually $999). This model skips out on some of the high-end features in the J9+ but still offers obstacle avoidance and a four-stage cleaning system. It can return to its base when it’s full and empty itself for up to 60 days before you have to empty its bin.

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A SpaceX testing stand at the company's McGregor, Texas facilities went up in flames during a test of its Raptor 2 engines on the afternoon of May 23. According to NASASpaceflight, the engine had an anomaly that caused vapors to seep out and lead to a secondary explosion. The news organization's livestream showed the engine shutting down before the fire started and eventually swallowed the stand in flames and smoke. 

SpaceX uses the Raptor engines for its Starship system's Super Heavy booster and upper-stage spacecraft. They use liquid methane and liquid oxygen as fuel, and they were designed to be powerful enough to be able to send Starship to the moon and Mars. As Gizmodo suggests, its gases mixing due to a leak or a similar anomaly could've caused the explosion, though SpaceX has yet to officially address what happened during testing. 

The company is currently preparing for Starship's fourth test flight, which is scheduled to take place on June 5, pending regulatory approval and barring poor weather or other factors that could delay the launch. This explosion likely wouldn't affect the flight's launch window. SpaceX's main goals for the fourth test flight are to make sure that the Super Heavy booster gets a soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico and to achieve a controlled entry of the Starship spacecraft. The company said it made several hardware and software upgrades to incorporate what it learned from its third flight test. Starship's upper stage reached space during that flight, but it burned up in the atmosphere upon reentry, while its Super Heavy booster broke apart in the final phases of its descent instead of softly splashing down into the ocean.

The following contains spoilers for “73 Yards.”

Russell T. Davies admits his writing eschews narrative formalism in favor of things that just feel right. Two decades ago, his critics pointed to his use of deus ex machina endings as a stick to beat his reputation with. But we’re in a different era now, where vibes matter just as much as logic — both inside the show’s new more fantastic skew, and in the real world. “73 Yards” is the vibiest episode of new Doctor Who so far, but I even found it easy to sit back and enjoy what it was doing.

Doctor Who is a complicated show to make, and some series have started production on Day 1 a week or more behind schedule. To combat this, the show started making “-lite” episodes that didn’t need the leads to be as involved. There are “Doctor-lite” episodes like “Love and Monsters” and “Blink,” and even “companion-lite” episodes like “Midnight.” This production process enables the star, or stars, to be off shooting Episode A while a guest cast takes the spotlight for the bulk of Episode B.

Production of the new series began while star Ncuti Gatwa was still finishing the last of his work on Netflix’s Sex Education. So while he appears in the opening and closing moments of "73 Yards", he’s otherwise absent as the Doctor has been erased from history. It gives us the chance to see what a modern companion would do if left stranded in uncertain territory without her alien ally. The episode takes hard turns from folk and rural horror to kitchen-sink drama before becoming a light homage to Taxi Driver. Suffice to say, this is another episode you wouldn’t watch with small kids.

Bad Wolf / BBC Studios

The TARDIS lands on a cliff edge in Wales, with the Doctor pointing out it’s another liminal space where magic is allowed to creep in. He even mentions the war between the “land and the sea,” name-checking a rumored spin-off fans discovered after scouring production documents. The Doctor talks about how great a country Wales is, except for Roger ap Gwillam, a Welsh politician who, two decades hence, will lead the UK to the brink of nuclear armageddon. He then steps into a fairy ring, disturbing its web, and disappears while Ruby reads the paper notes tied to it. The notes mention a Mad Jack, a scary figure that sounds like a villain from folklore.

Suddenly, Ruby is alone on the cliff but can now see the blurry figure of an old woman waving her arms at her in the distance. Ruby tries to approach her but the figure remains the same distance away (the titular 73 yards) no matter where she goes. Believing the Doctor has ghosted her, she tries to solve the quandary of this figure on her own. Ruby approaches a hiker (Susan Twist) and tries to work out where she’s seen her before (every episode thus far), but can’t quite put her finger on it. She asks the hiker if she’d be willing to speak to the old woman who is following her, but when the hitchhiker gets there, whatever she says is so horrifying that she sprints away from the scene in terror.

Ruby heads to a pub in the nearby town where the locals mock her — mistaking her hesitancy for condescension. She asks one of the patrons to go speak to the woman and, when he does, the same thing happens. Ruby gets home and asks her mum to try, this time holding a phone so Ruby can hear what she’s saying. But the phone call is disrupted and her mum is similarly horrified by what she hears — locking Ruby out of her home soon after. Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and UNIT are next to offer aid, right up until they encounter the woman, when they all abandon her.

Bad Wolf / BBC Studios

All the time, the old woman remains 73 yards away from wherever Ruby is, unnoticed by everyone else unless Ruby directs their attention to her. She can’t photograph the woman's face — it's blurry — and can’t get close enough to hear her ominous warning. In fact, even to the end of the episode, there’s a lot of unknowns that are never resolved.

Ruby’s strangely resilient, and once she’s gotten beyond the abandonment, she looks to build a new life for herself. She treats her stalker as a friend, wishing her well as we cycle through a montage of the next chapter of Ruby’s life. She gets a job, moves into her own flat and goes through a series of breakups as she gently ages past 30, and then 40. Then, on the TV, she sees Roger ap Gwillam on the TV, who even mentions Mad Jack, and remembers both the Doctor’s warning and the messages in the fairy ring. It takes Ruby no time at all to be sure that her purpose in life is to save the world, and to avert Gwillam’s nuclear catastrophe.

She signs up to Gwillam’s fascist political party as a volunteer and eventually reaches a position where she’s close to the top. Gwillam’s rise is quick and it’s not long before he’s promising to secede from NATO and put his itchy trigger finger on the UK’s nuclear arsenal, ready to wage war on the rest of the world. Gwillam’s inauguration will take place at Cardiff City Stadium, while Ruby follows the politician along, lurking in the crowd.

Bad Wolf / BBC Studios

Ruby then starts to approach Gwillam, walking across the off-limits pitch at the stadium, and you expect her to pull out a weapon. But instead, she whips out her phone and starts measuring the distance between her and Roger until she reaches 73 yards. When she does, she gestures to the villain to notice the woman, and when he notices her, he hears the horrifying thing she says. The shock is enough to send Gwillam racing out of the stadium, resigning from the role of Prime Minister and preventing nuclear armageddon.

But while Ruby hoped that would be the end of it, the figure remains with her for the rest of her life. It’s only on her deathbed she realizes she can project herself back in time to act as a warning for the Doctor to not step in the fairy ring. She does so, preventing the accident in the first place and paradoxically nullifying the entire time stream in the process. History carries on its merry way and all is well… for now. But given the risks of paradoxes in Doctor Who, and the general sense that history is unraveling, it might not augur too well for what’s going to happen in the future.

Bad Wolf / BBC Studios

“73 Yards” is an exercise in putting your character in a hostile world and seeing what they’ll do to deal with it. It’s an episode that, when written down, doesn’t feel like a lot happens, because so much of its runtime is an exploration of Ruby as a character. Doctor Who thrives when the companion role is occupied by someone who wants to grab a fistful of narrative for themselves. And Ruby Sunday seems almost too perfect in her ability to draw out the logic from what she’s experienced and work within it.

Much as you can draw narrative and thematic parallels between the new series and Davies’ original tenure, this episode pulls from “Turn Left.” Both tell the story of what happens to a companion when the Doctor is withdrawn from the narrative and what they do to fix that wrong. And it’s no surprise both suggest that the UK, without the intervention of the Doctor, is only a few days away from tipping over into fascism.

Ruby’s humanity shines, even to the point where she’s trying to treat her tormentor with care. She refuses to fly, or travel by boat, lest she endanger the life of the apparition that’s following her, despite how much damage it causes to her life. And when she sees Roger ap Gwillam on the TV, she’s certain that her destiny is to prevent the nuclear armageddon the Doctor warned her about. This is another useful thread — the idea that Ruby has an instinctive grasp of the genre she exists in — much as she did in “Space Babies.”

As for the ending, it’s probably best we talk about those “vibes,” or the sort of slightly skewed associations in the show’s logic. Ruby, at the end of her life, realizes that she’s able to travel, or project herself somehow, through time to avert the Doctor’s fall. There’s nothing in the episode that points to it, no hint that the ghostly figure is Ruby, or if this is tied to the snow or anything else. But perhaps, the trick to an episode like this is simply to let yourself relax and enjoy seeing the character evolve, rather than anything more.

Susan Twist Corner

Obviously, Susan Twist plays the hiker that Ruby first encounters after the Doctor disappears and, for the first time, Ruby notices the familiarity. In the materials that Disney sends along that Susan Twist’s character is named the “mystery woman.”

And on the subject of twists, you’ll recall at the end of “Church on Ruby Road” that, in the post-credits, Mrs Flood (Anita Dobson) breaks the fourth wall. The annoying neighbor character, who lives next to Ruby’s mum’s flat, turns to the camera and asks if we’ve “Never seen a TARDIS before?” (Given her surprise at seeing it earlier in the episode, it’s clear her history may have been changed during the course of the show.) When Ruby heads back to her mum’s house, Anita Dobson’s Mrs Flood is back sitting on her step with her deckchair out. Interestingly, when she notices the ghostly figure — and Ruby and her Mum’s attempts to deal with it, she declares that it’s “nothing to do with me” and goes inside. Which, again, feels like a hint that Mrs Flood and the mystery woman are separate