YouTube Music for Android is finally releasing a long-awaited tool that lets people hum a song to search for it, in addition to singing the tune or playing the melody on an instrument, according to reporting by 9to5Google. The software has been in the testing phase since March.

All you have to do is tap the magnifying glass in the top-right corner and look for the waveform icon next to the microphone icon. Tap the waveform icon and start humming or singing. A fullscreen results page should quickly bring up the cover art, song name, artist, album, release year and other important data about the song. The software builds upon the Pixel’s Now Playing feature, which uses AI to “match the sound to the original recording.”

The tool comes in a server-side update with version 7.02 of YouTube Music for Android. There doesn’t look to be any availability information for the iOS release, though it’s most likely headed our way in the near future.

This type of feature isn’t exactly new, even if it’s new to YouTube Music. Google Search rolled out a similar tool back in 2020 and the regular YouTube app began offering something like this last year. Online music streaming platform Deezer also has a “hum to search” tool, released back in 2022.

Russia has reportedly found new, more effective ways to knock out Ukraine’s Starlink service. The New York Times said on Friday that the increased interference has disrupted communications at critical moments and is posing “a major threat to Ukraine,” putting the country further on its heels more than two years into the war. How Russia is jamming Elon Musk’s satellite internet terminals is unclear.

The New York Times said Russia’s ability to jam communications has thrown off Ukraine’s ability to communicate, gather intelligence and conduct drone strikes. Ukrainian soldiers told the paper that jammed Starlink service stunts their ability to communicate quickly, leaving them scrambling to send text messages (often extremely slowly) to share intel about incoming or ongoing Russian maneuvers or attacks.

The jamming was reportedly repeated across Ukraine’s northern front line, often coinciding with Russian advances. The new outages are the first time Russia has jammed Starlink reception that widely and frequently. If it continues, it could “mark a tactical shift in the conflict,” highlighting Ukraine’s dependence on SpaceX’s internet technology. Without competing choices of similar quality, Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s democratic nation is left without many options that could work at the scale Ukraine needs.

Russia has tried to disrupt Ukraine’s comms since the war began, but Starlink service has reportedly held up well in the face of them. Something has changed. Ukraine’s digital minister, Mykhailo Federov, told The New York Times this week that Russia’s recent jamming appeared to use “new and more advanced technology.”

Federov told The NYT that Vladimir Putin’s army is now “testing different mechanisms to disrupt the quality of Starlink connections because it’s so important for us.” The digital minister didn’t specify the exact weapons Russia has been using, but a Russian official in charge of the country’s electronic warfare told state media last month that its military put Starlink on a “list of targets” and that it had developed ways to disrupt the service.

Armed Forces of Ukraine

The disruptions highlight the power that one mercurial billionaire can have over the pivotal Eastern European war. Ukrainian officials have reportedly “appealed directly to Mr. Musk to turn on Starlink access during military operations” ahead of crucial drone strikes, and he hasn’t always obliged.

The Wall Street Journal reported in February that concern has grown that Musk could harbor at least some degree of Russian sympathies. He has posted comments on X that could be viewed as taking a pro-Russian stance, and disinformation experts worry that the way he runs the social platform could be friendly to Russian interference in the pivotal 2024 elections, including those in the US.

Musk spoke out earlier this year against the US sending more aid to Ukraine. Putin’s army also reportedly began using its own Starlink service, although Musk says he wasn’t aware of the terminals being sold to the Slavic nation. Ukrainian officials raised concerns earlier this year that Russia was buying Starlink tech from third-party vendors.

However, the Pentagon said earlier this month that the US has been “heavily involved in working with the government of Ukraine and SpaceX to counter Russian illicit use of Starlink terminals,” and a departing space official described SpaceX as “a very reliable partner” in those operations.

The UK has passed a bill that's the country's version of the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA). Legislators fast-tracked the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers (DMCC) Bill before parliament dissolves on May 30 ahead of a general election in July.

The overarching aim of the DMCC, which is set to become law once it receives Royal Assent, is to “regulate and increase competition in digital markets.” It will come into force later this year.

The bill is broadly similar to the DMA, which led to the EU designating several large tech companies' services and products as "gatekeepers" and imposing stricter rules on them. The DMCC grants the Digital Markets Unit (DMU), a division of the Competition and Markets Authority, the authority to label companies with “substantial and entrenched market power” and “a position of strategic significance” as having Strategic Market Status (SMS).

Among other things, SMS companies will have to adhere to codes of conduct as determined by the DMU. Those will be based on the foundations of fair trading, openness and trust and transparency. The DMU has a broad canvas for defining the conduct requirements for each business. If a company breaches its code of conduct, it faces a fine of up to 10 percent of its global revenue.

There have been suggestions that the likes of Meta and Google may be forced to pay UK news publishers for using their work in the likes of Google News (and perhaps even for AI products). Others have suggested that Apple may be required to allow sideloading and third-party app stores on iOS, as in the EU. Companies may also be prohibited from prioritizing their own products and services in search results. However, the specific requirements for each SMS haven't been detailed yet. 

The DMCC also has implications for things like subscriptions, junk fees, fake reviews, ticket resales, mergers, antitrust and consumer protection. For the first time, the CMA will have the power to impose a hefty fine if it determines a company has violated a consumer law — and it won't have to go through courts to do so. 

Apple once designed a Tetris clone that has been found on a prototype version of the third-generation iPod, indicating the company was experimenting with releasing the game on the music player. It’s called Stacker and, obviously, is controlled via the iPod’s scroll wheel. The software was spotted by X user AppleDemoYT, who is known for finding rare prototype devices.

The prototype iPod is a "DVT" device, meaning it was a mid-stage device that was still in "Design Validation Testing." It has a model number of A1023, which is not a known model number of any iPod version.

The device runs a prototype version of iPodOS 2.0, which is where Stacker comes from. The pieces are moved from left to right using the scroll wheel and they fall when the middle button is pressed. The goal is to clear lines and score points. You know the deal. It’s Tetris.

It’s not the only game found on the prototype iPod. There’s something called Block0, which is likely an early version of Brick. The device also features a game called Klondike, which is likely an early version of Solitaire. The music player did eventually get some games, including the aforementioned Solitaire and Brick. AppleDemoYT asked former Apple VP Tony Fadell why Stacker was never released and he said it was because games didn’t show up until a “later software release.”

Later versions of the iPod got an official version of Tetris, in addition to games like Bejeweled, Mini Golf, Mahjong, Zuma, Cubis 2, and Pac-Man. All of these releases predate the App Store. The iPod Classic was discontinued in 2014 and the iPod Touch was sent to a farm upstate in 2022, ending the era of the standalone music player.

The dog who inspired the famous meme coin Dogecoin has died, according to a post on Instagram by its owner. Kabosu, an adorable Shiba Inu, was likely around 18 years old, though owner Atsuko Sato doesn’t know the exact birthdate of the rescue pup.

“She quietly passed away as if asleep while I caressed her,” she wrote in a blog post published by The Guardian. “I think Kabo-chan was the happiest dog in the world. And I was the happiest owner.”

The Japanese dog not only inspired Dogecoin, but the iconic 2010 photo became the source of a vast collection of internet memes. Some have even called Kabosu the “Mona Lisa of the internet.” Sato snapped the photo two years after rescuing the dog from a puppy farm, in which she would have likely been put down. The image shows Kabosu with her paws on the sofa while giving the camera, well, a sort of grin. 

The photo became an NFT digital artwork that sold for $4 million, back when NFTs were a thing that people paid money for. As for the memecoin, it started as a joke by two software engineers but has now risen to be the eighth-most valuable cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of $23 billion. The price has ticked up today, likely by news of Kabosu’s passing.

Dogecoin was most famously backed by Elon Musk, even becoming available as currency to buy certain Tesla products. Other famous backers include Snoop Dogg, Gene Simmons and Mark Cuban, to name just a few.

Dogecoin has also inspired a bunch of other memecoins, from the spin-off Shiba Inu coin to cryptocurrency coins based on cats, Elon Musk and, sigh, even Donald Trump. These coins are known to be highly volatile, so invest at your own risk. Dogecoin, however, has remained mostly stable for a while now.

Musk has long-been the primary cheerleader behind Dogecoin, even changing the Twitter icon to the image of the Shiba Inu, before he pivoted to X. He also single-handily wiped out most of the coin’s value during his disastrous SNL performance and has been accused of using it to defraud investors and create a pyramid scheme.

A statue of Kabosu was erected in Sakura, Japan in November of last year. Reporting indicates that it cost $100,000 to build. “In the last few years I’ve been able to connect the online version of Kabosu, all these unexpected things seen from a distance, with our real lives,” Sato wrote. She has used the virality of her beloved Shiba inu to donate large sums to charities, including more than $1 million to Save the Children. Godspeed, you adorable pup.

It's taken Nintendo two decades, but the company is finally ready to open a second store in the US. The new location in San Francisco’s Union Square is set to open its doors in 2025. Details about Nintendo San Francisco are thin for now, but the company said it will allow "visitors from near and far to experience the world of Nintendo, its products and characters." More information will be revealed in the leadup to the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Nintendo opened its New York store at Rockefeller Center 19 years ago this month, though there was previously a Pokémon Center at the same location. Along with merchandise and kiosks where visitors can play some Switch games, the New York store has a mini museum featuring older consoles and a boatload of Amiibo. 

The company didn't open any permanent stores in Japan until 2019, and it now has three in its home country. Nintendo also has a private outlet for employees at its American headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

Lucid Motors has cut 400 jobs, according to a regulatory filing. This amounts to around six percent of the workforce. Incidentally, the company also cut a whopping 1,300 jobs last year. This all comes just ahead of the launch of its first electric SUV later this year, a crucial release for the auto manufacturer.

You can likely guess as to the reasoning given for the layoffs. The 400 people got pink slips due to the ever-useful and nebulous term known as “restructuring.” To that end, the company says it expects this restructuring to be completed by the end of the third quarter, though it didn’t say anything about rehiring anyone.

“As always we must remain vigilant about costs. We are optimizing our resources in a way we believe will best position the company for future success and growth opportunities as we focus on achieving our ambitious goals,” CEO Peter Rawlinson said in a company email published by TechCrunch.

Those ambitious goals include the aforementioned EV SUV, named the Lucid Gravity. The company’s calling it the “world’s best SUV” and it’ll feature two electric motors, all-wheel drive and an expected maximum range of 440 miles per charge. Those are some really good specs.

However, the vehicle’s also expected to start at $80,000. EV growth has stalled in North America, so if the EV doesn’t catch on, it’ll likely be time for more restructuring. If that fails, Lucid can always sell more cars to the Saudi government.

Speaking of stalled EV growth, most of the major US manufacturers have laid off staff in the past year. Tesla’s woes are common knowledge but Rivian has also been dramatically cutting its workforce. The same is true of California-based Fisker.

Epic Games has an uncanny habit of making sure Fortnite is in tune with the cultural zeitgeist and that's very much the case once again. After a strong season focused on Greek gods and monsters, the latest major revamp of the battle royale is taking a vehicle-heavy, post-apocalyptic turn in Chapter 5 Season 3.

The new season, which is dubbed "Wrecked," seems very much inspired by Mad Max, given the desert vibe and modded vehicles. It includes an official Fallout crossover too. Not only that, a wastelander take X-Men’s Magneto will be unlockable via battle pass quests at some point in July.

This is all very timely given the success of Prime Video's adaptation of Fallout, Furiosa: A Mad Mad Saga hitting theaters and X-Men ‘97 capturing the hearts and minds of '90s kids all over again. The Wrecked season will run until August 16.

The sandstorm that had been looming in the horizon over the last couple of weeks has swept over the island, bringing destruction and a new biome in the south called the Wasteland. (I'm glad my favorite drop site last season, Mount Olympus, has survived for now.) You'll have three new locations to explore in the Redline Rig refinery, the Nitrodrome car arena and Brutal Beachhead, where you'll find a boss named Megalo Don.

Redline Rig churns out Nitro Splash and Nitro Barrels, which you can find all over the island and use to power up your car and yourself. When you're Nitro-fied, you can bash through builds without needing to use your pickax. If you're lucky enough to find Nitro Fists, you can use those as a powerful melee weapon too.

Vehicles can be modded with things like machine gun turrets and spiked bumpers. There's the option to hijack one of two War Buses that are patrolling the island as well. These have cannons and an EMP pulse that can damage enemy shields and disable nearby vehicles.

As for the Fallout collab, that franchise's iconic Nuka-Cola is now in Fortnite. You can slurp some to replenish health and restore shields over time. In addition, you'll be able to unlock a T-60 Power Armor skin through the battle pass. 

Is it blasphemous to call a survival horror game “cozy”? Maybe so, but while thinking back on my playthrough of Crow Country, the word popped into my mind more than a few times.

From the jump, there's no question about Crow Country’s PlayStation 1 influences, which its creators at SFB Games have been upfront about: it is very intentionally the creepy-cute child of Resident Evil, Silent Hill and Final Fantasy VII. The game, which was released on Steam, PlayStation 5 and Xbox X/S on May 9, just about checks all the boxes for survival horror, but it takes a gentler approach to the genre, making it feel more like a test of mental endurance against some all-consuming bleakness than a constant fight for your life. (A Hard Mode, however, is apparently on the way).

You play as Mara Forest, who must painstakingly make her way through an abandoned amusement park in the year 1990 to find its elusive and evidently corrupt owner, Edward Crow. Resources, like ammo and health kits, must be scavenged. Skinless monstrosities may emerge from the shadows at any turn to grab at you and puzzles of varying complexity promise to stall your progress. There is an ensemble of characters who — including the protagonist — each seem to have questionable motives.

It’s a familiar formula paired with a familiar style of character design paired with a familiar unsettling atmosphere, yet Crow Country manages not to feel like it’s being propped up by nods to its predecessors. With more of an emphasis on mood and mystery than violence (and some humor sprinkled throughout), it’s just unique enough to stand on its own as a distinct work. The entire experience has this air of reflectiveness to it, and I think the developers describe it perfectly in their own synopsis of what Crow Country offers: “a beautiful, uncanny blend of tension and tranquility.”

The nostalgia did indeed hit me like a truck as I took my cautious first steps around the eponymous Crow Country theme park as Mara. Naturally, she walks at a snail’s pace and comes to a full stop whenever firing a weapon. Her running speed is fine, though, and you have 360-degree control of the camera angle, so it doesn’t weigh you down entirely with PS1-era limitations (a blessing).

I was prepared to be frustrated for the duration of the game by the stop-to-shoot bit, but I got over it once I realized the monsters are also slow as hell. Well, most of them. You can run right by them in almost every situation if you want to. That made killing a choice rather than a necessity, and immediately dialed down the sense of urgency I’d gone into my first enemy encounter with. This is not at all a bad thing. With the stakes lowered, I treated those fleshy monstrosities like target practice and picked them off mostly for the fun of it. That, along with the gradual realization that there weren’t going to be jumpscares every 5 seconds, sucked me into a much cozier experience than I was expecting.

Without anxiety fueling my every decision, I was able to take my time to pick through all the nooks and crannies of the amusement park, making sure to stop and read every notebook or piece of paper and examine every object on the ground or hanging on the walls. I could focus completely on the puzzles before me, some of which were really challenging. I even had to bust out a pen and paper at one point. It also wasn’t very difficult to stay stocked up on necessities like ammunition, health kits and poison antidotes, which could be found randomly all over the park and at vending machines, where they’d sometimes regenerate so I could return for more later.

The soundtrack by Ockeroid (which just got its own separate digital release) is eerily soothing, and helped to create an atmosphere that fully engrossed me. Crow Country’s save mechanism leans fully into the game’s contemplative ambiance, too: you can find respite at different sources of fire, which Mara will stare into before reciting a wistful thought about hope and dread in the face of uncertainty. I played Crow Country on a Steam Deck, snuggled up with my cats on a gray, stormy day, and I can’t think of a better way to take it all in.

SFB Games

In typical survival horror form, the environment gets increasingly hostile as you advance in the game; creatures start showing up in heavier numbers, a faster one joins the mix, it starts raining, it gets darker, someone shoots at you from the shadows. But any real heaviness in Crow County is balanced by just the right amount of playfulness. The characters are often so unserious, going back and forth with irreverent dialogue. And you cannot ignore the goofy crow-themed objects that are all over the place — you rely on some of them for resources and insight.

Initially, Crow Country hints that there’s more to Mara than we’re being told but makes no explanation as to who she is or why she’s really in this abandoned theme park. Nor does it explain early on why that park is filled with writhing abominations and conspicuously prevalent references to the number 2106. Those mysteries served to hook me, and keep me progressing deeper as things unfolded. The ending tied everything together in a way that felt really satisfying.

It’s short but not too short, taking in the ballpark of 5 to 10 hours to complete depending how thorough (or slow to figure out puzzles) you are, and has a lot of replay value. This game is full of secrets that aren’t vital to the plot but can make your life a little easier — there is even a map showing you where they are, if you can find it — and these add another layer of challenge to the overall scavenger hunt. The upcoming Hard Mode could also make revisiting it even more interesting. The game currently gives you the option to play in Survival Horror mode (the version I played), or Exploration Mode, in which “you will not be attacked.”

I missed a couple secrets on my first playthrough, so my main goals for the next run are to find the rest of those and hit 100 percent of the achievements. I’m also curious to find out how different choices in my interactions with other characters could affect how the story plays out. In the end, I found myself moved by Crow Country for reasons that had almost nothing to do with nostalgia.

Challengers, the tennis movie starring Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O'Connor, is not the first movie you'd think of for visual effects. But the film uses them to a surprising extent: One shot in particular, a 24-second volley between two of the protagonists from the perspective of the ball, used extensive digital and practical effects, as VFX supervisor Brian Drewes explained on X. 

The live plates were shot with an Arri Alexa LF on a 30-foot technocrane during a period of five hours with stunt doubles, according to Drewes. 23 individual shots were stitched together to create the final sequence. 

"Highly detailed LiDAR and photogrammetry scans of the tennis court environment were captured to help create the final models. 100+ actors and background extras were also photoscanned to populate the stands of our CG environment," according to Drewes.

After that, CG was used to smooth camera motion and correct time of day changes. The stunt doubles' faces were then replaced "with a combination of full CG heads and additional photography," Drewes added. 

So why do all that? The sequence appears designed to convey the speed, chaos and passion in the sport, matching the movie's overall themes. It's also just a cool and exciting way to convey what would otherwise be a routine tennis match.