Twitter really isn’t giving up on this whole “also becoming an audio app” thing. The platform announced today it is testing a newly re-designed Spaces tab that will also offer a selection of popular podcasts. The podcasts — which include well-known titles from Vox Media, NPR and more — will be categorized under themes like news, music and sports and featured alongside similar Spaces. Twitter is currently testing the feature with a limited group of global English-speaking users on the iOS and Andriod apps, with a wider release and more features on the way.

Earlier this year, under-the-hood sleuth Jane Manchun Wong discovered that Twitter was working on a “Podcasts” tab. Instead, it appears Twitter wants to lump all of it audio content under Spaces as an all-in-one destination for podcasts and live audio. Furthermore, the Spaces tab features separate categories for current Spaces, upcoming Spaces and a “Stations” tab that will group podcasts and Spaces under similar themes — which it will auto-play once selected.

If this doesn’t seem like the most instinctual or user-friendly design for those looking for a specific podcast or episode, you’re right. Instead, Twitter seems to have tailored the feature to work as a sort of a curated radio experience in the style of Pandora. Users can rate each audio selection with a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down," allowing Twitter to further tailor a station to fit your specific interests. This isn’t restricted to content you view under Spaces. As the company noted in its blog post, if you regularly interact with Vox Media content on Twitter, you’ll likely see their podcasts show up in your Spaces tab.

Sony revealed a few months back that a Netflix show based on Horizon Zero Dawnwas in development and now we have a few more details. Steve Blackman, the creator and showrunner of The Umbrella Academy, has re-upped his deal with Netflix and is working on the adaptation.

Blackman said the game's protagonist, Aloy, will be a main character in the show. This is also the first confirmation from Netflix that the series will be based on Horizon Zero Dawn, instead of a show that's set in the same universe. Rumors previously indicated it would be set in 2047, before the fall of humanity and nearly a thousand years before Aloy was born. Still, the show may still depict some of the events that led to animal-like robot organisms reigning over Earth.  

"Horizon Zero Dawn is an exceptionally well-crafted game with wonderful characters not often seen in the rank-and-file of the gaming world. Guerrilla Games has created an incredibly lush and vivid world of man and machine who find themselves on a collision course to oblivion," Blackman told Netflix's Tudum site. "Their salvation comes in the form of a young female warrior named Aloy, who has no idea she's the key to saving the world. My writing partner on this, Michelle Lovretta, and I are thrilled to be able to expand this remarkable IP into a series for all types of viewers."

The latest update on the Horizon Zero Dawn project came as Netflix renewed The Umbrella Academy for its fourth and final season. The other show Blackman is currently developing is an intriguing-sounding thriller called Orbital, which is set on the International Space Station.

"From a character- and world-building perspective, there's a clear throughline: I gravitate to characters who are grounded and relatable but exist on the fringe," Blackman said about his projects. "Outliers who struggle to find their place in a world of conformity and structure. All my stories strive to subvert expectation and find a new way of looking into the worlds we think we know." Aloy fits that description perfectly.

Netflix is working on the Horizon Zero Dawn series with PlayStation Productions, which has a ton of other shows and movies based on Sony's games in the pipeline. Among them are HBO's The Last of Us, a Gran Turismo film, a God of War series for Amazon Prime Video and the Peacock show Twisted Metal. Recent reports suggested that movies based on Days Gone and Gravity Rush are in development too.

Supermassive Games, which you might know for developing Until Dawn, has released the trailer for the fourth entry of The Dark Pictures Anthology at Gamescom 2022. The anthology, which the developer first announced in 2018, is comprised of interactive standalone titles that tackle various horror tropes and subgenres. This entry is entitled The Devil in Me, and it's all about serial killers. It centers around a group of documentary filmmakers who gets invited to visit a replica of the Murder Castle, the hotel in Chicago where H. H. Holmes tortured and killed his victims. And because it's a survival horror game, of course things aren't what they seem, and the characters find themselves being watched and controlled.

The game serves as the anthology's Season One finals and will have to solving tool-based puzzles to survive and escape "killing rooms" where failure means death — and yes, all playable characters can die during your playthrough. If you don't want to play alone, you can share your story online with a friend or play offline with up to four other people using the pass-the-pad mode. 

The Devil in Me will be available starting on November 18th, 2022, and unlike Until Dawn, it won't be a PlayStation-exclusive. In addition to the PS5 and the PS4, it will also be playable on the Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, as well as on PCs. You can watch the game's full trailer below:

A bipartisan group of US senators and members of Congress have released a new version of a bill that aims to make it easier for news organizations to bring the likes of Google and Meta to the negotiating table. The lawmakers said in a statement that the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act would remove "legal obstacles to news organizations' ability to negotiate collectively and secure fair terms from gatekeeper platforms that regularly access news content without paying for its value." The legislation would, for instance, offer eligible digital publishers "limited safe harbor from federal and state antitrust laws."

Senate Judiciary Committee members Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and John Kennedy (R-LA) and House Judiciary Committee members David Cicilline (D-RI) and Ken Buck (D-CO) are all backing the bill. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), the chairs of the committees, have pledged their support too.

A previous version of the legislation was introduced last year, but it failed to gain enough traction. The latest attempt would allow publishers with fewer than 1,500 full-time employees and non-network news broadcasters to collectively negotiate with certain platforms over access to their news content. The proposed legislation states that publishers would be able to demand arbitration if they reach a stalemate in talks.

The rules would apply to very few companies, specifically ones with more than 50 million US users that have at least a billion monthly active users worldwide or are "owned or controlled by a person that has either net annual sales or market capitalization greater than $550 billion." While Google and Facebook meet those benchmarks, Twitter does not.

Google and Meta have siphoned away billions of dollars of ad revenue from news organizations. Both companies have voluntarily offered payments to publishers in some regions. However, Meta said last month it would no longer pay US publishers for news content after its revenue dropped for the first time.

Other countries have considered ways to make Google and Meta pay publishers for featuring their news. Early last year, the Parliament of Australia passed a law that forces Google and Meta to pay publishers for using their news. Canada's ruling Liberal Party has tabled similar legislation.

Facebook looked different for at least a couple of thousands of users when they logged in earlier today. Instead of seeing posts from their friends and from the groups they're in, they saw their feeds spammed with random people's posts on celebrities' pages instead. As UK news organization Sky News reports, users posted about their dilemma on other social networks like Twitter, showing the state of their News Feeds with screenshots. 

Apparently, everyone following a certain celebrity page — say, The Rock's — were getting everything other people were posting on it in their timelines. Since users tend to follow multiple celebrities, their feeds got clogged with posts from strangers on the website. Some reportedly even used the opportunity to promote their businesses or look for jobs. 

While there are no official stats on what percentage of users was affected, over 2,600 people have reported the issue to DownDetector over the past few hours. Over 80 percent of the reports came from people using the desktop version of the social network, with the rest reporting issues with the app.

Sky News also says outages had been reported not just in the UK, but also in the US, Spain, Canada, Mexico, Italy, France, Poland and Australia. Facebook told the news organization that it's aware of the issue, but it didn't elaborate on what went wrong. In a newer statement provided to Metro UK, a Meta spokesperson said that the problem was caused by a "configuration change" earlier today. They added: "We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience."

Meta accounts have arrived. As of today, Facebook parent company Meta has begun rolling out the new login system for Quest owners. “The update will roll out globally on a gradual basis, so if you don’t have the option to create a Meta account and Meta Horizon profile right away, you’ll get the update soon,” the company said. If your headset is currently tied to an Oculus account, you’ll need to register for a Meta account to continue using your device after January 1st, 2023. The company announced the new system last month in a reversal of its controversial decision to require a Facebook login to use Oculus headsets.

While you don’t need a Facebook or Instagram account anymore, you can still use those services to create a Meta account. Conversely, if you’ve already linked your device to Facebook, you can remove your profile from your new Meta account and use an email instead. Once you have one, you’ll need to create a Meta Horizon profile, complete with a unique username, for use in the company's vision of the metaverse.

Google is partnering with National Public Radio to bring the broadcaster’s podcasts to YouTube. On Thursday, the two announced that more than 20 NPR shows, including Up First and Throughline, are now available on the platform. NPR is no stranger to YouTube. Its Tiny Desks concert series has been a hit on the platform for a few years now, with a recent Ludovico Einaudi performance amassing nearly 900,000 views and counting.

The addition of NPR podcasts comes just as YouTube recently added an Explore page dedicated to the format. While it’s only available to some people, the section highlights popular channels, episodes and playlists as well as categories and recommended shows. It may not explicitly market itself as a podcast platform, but both the page and its new partnership with NPR show YouTube getting serious about the medium.

Dead Island 2 is coming. The long-awaited zombie-slaying role-playing game is set to hit PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Google Stadia and PC via the Epic Games Store on February 3rd, 2023. Deep Silver showed off the blood-soaked sequel with a cinematic trailer and a gameplay video during Gamescom's Opening Night Live showcase.

Dead Island 2 will feature six playable characters with unique voice acting and traits, and it all takes place in Los Angeles. The game is designed as a love letter to cult-classic horror films and old Hollywood vibes: It has a pulpy narrative to follow, classic RPG elements and a co-op mode for up to three players. All six of the main characters are customizable, and a brand new skill system allows players to adjust their specs on the fly. There are dozens of individual zombie types to slay, too.

Dead Island 2 is the full follow-up to the 2011 hit Dead Island, though there have been smaller installments in the series. The game was announced in 2014 and it's essentially been in development hell ever since, lost among a handful of studio sales and team swaps. It's now in progress at Deep Silver's Dambuster Studios, which worked on Homefront: The Revolution.

Fans of The Expanse will have to wait about another year to play Deck Nine's interpretation of the popular sci-fi series. The studio, best known for its work on Life is Strange: True Colors, and Telltale Games shared a new behind-the-scenes gameplay trailer during Gamescom 2022 and revealed that the title would come out sometime in the summer of 2023. While not revelatory, the clip does show off something we hadn't seen before. The Expanse: A Telltale Series will feature sequences where you'll need to navigate zero-gravity environments. 

Set before the TV series, which concluded at the start of this year, the game stars Camina Drummer. After her introduction in the show's second season, Drummer, played by actress Cara Gee in both the TV series and upcoming game, went on to become a fan-favorite character over subsequent seasons. The Expanse is one of two new projects Telltale Games is working on after coming back from financial insolvency. In 2023, the studio also plans to release The Wolf Among Us 2. 

After a 20-year drought, Dune fans suddenly have more than one game to look forward to playing. After announcing Dune: Spice Wars in 2021, Norwegian publisher Funcom revealed at this year's Gamescom that it's creating a new MMO set in Frank Herbert's seminal sci-fi universe. The trailer the company shared during the event didn't showcase gameplay. 

Instead, we see a character, possibly the game's version of Paul Atreides, watch a sandworm devour a spice harvester while reciting Dune's famous "fear is the mind-killer" mantra, with the eventual title card promising an open-world survival experience. The game's Steam page provides a few more details about the project. Players will have the chance to explore the desert planet while in search of spice. You'll need to protect your harvester from opportunistic raiders and the occasional sandworm. Funcom did not announce a release date for Dune: Awakening, but the game's website invites fans to sign up for a forthcoming beta.