Tinder’s new feature is a new nightmare to me. Tinder Matchmaker allows users’ family and friends to recommend potential matches. Wannabe matchmakers do not need a Tinder profile to view or suggest possible pairings, so anyone you know could help you find the one. Or at least... another one.

The Tinder user will need to launch a “Tinder Matchmaker session” either from a profile card or within the app’s settings. You can share a unique link with up to 15 individuals in a 24-hour period. Once a matchmaker gets a link, they can log into Tinder or continue as a guest to swipe away. Don’t worry: They can't send messages or actually swipe right on the profiles.

Both Hinge and Bumble have already tried matchmaking, although the former’s attempts didn’t last – the dedicated Hinge matchmaking app is no longer available.

– Mat Smith

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Watch Netflix's Squid Game: The Challenge trailer

The reality show will stream next month.

Netflix

Netflix has dropped a trailer for the upcoming reality series Squid Game: The Challenge. It all kicks off with 456 contestants competing for the $4.56 million prize in events and games repackaged (minus the blood-spraying violence) from the hit scripted series. A fictional critique of modern capitalism’s exploitation of the financially desperate made into a reality TV spectacle that exploits the financially desperate? Yes. But watch the trailer.

Continue reading.

Amazon’s Fallout series finally has a release date

It begins streaming on April 12, 2024.

Amazon Prime Video / Instagram

Amazon announced Monday that its Fallout TV series will premiere on April 12, 2024 on Prime Video. The short teaser video was even styled like a Pip-Boy interface from the storied game franchise. The live-action series, from Westworld creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, will have an original (canonical) story set in the Fallout gaming universe. It will take place in 2077, beginning in Vault 33 in Los Angeles. As fans of the game know, it’s set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland following the events of “The Great War” on October 23, 2077, making yesterday the perfect day to announce the show.

Continue reading.

Department of Justice expands its Tesla probe

It’s looking to include EV driving range figures.

The Department of Justice has expanded its investigation into Tesla. In an SEC filing, the company said the agency issued subpoenas for information related to "personal benefits, related parties, vehicle range and personnel decisions." According to Reuters and Consumer Reports, Tesla vehicles didn't hit the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) range estimates in road tests. Its vehicles have already been penalized in other countries for failing to disclose that its EVs have shorter ranges in low temperatures, and the company reportedly formed a special team that sought to quash complaints about the distance its cars can travel on a single charge.

Continue reading. 

Meta is starting to ramp up its growth-hacking tactics for Threads in a bid to boost engagement on the Twitter competitor. The social network is promoting its newest app by cross-posting Threads posts to users’ Facebook feeds, the company confirmed Monday.

It’s a familiar move for Meta, which regularly uses the Facebook feed to promote new features, including those from its other apps. The company has inserted Instagram Reels into recommendations in Facebook’s feed for years, and also allows businesses on WhatsApp to buy ads that appear in Facebook feeds. But unlike those efforts, it seems that Threads promotions on Facebook are not optional.

“We’ve launched an update to make it easier for people to see the latest content from Threads directly on Facebook and Instagram,” the company wrote in response to a Threads user who asked how to keep their posts off of Facebook. “But we’re listening to feedback like yours as we continue to build on this.”

Meta began testing the promotion of Threads posts on Instagram in August, but the move to put posts on Facebook without providing an opt-out feature, seems to be more controversial. Some users are pointing out that they use Threads much differently than Facebook and may not want their Threads posts to be put in front of their Facebook friends. 

We’ve reached out to Meta for more information about how it recommends Threads posts and if it intends to allow users to opt out of that kind of sharing. But the company has previously hinted that it would one day use its much larger apps to try and boost Threads. When Threads reached 100 million sign-ups shortly after it launched, Mark Zuckerberg remarked that the growth had happened with “mostly organic demand” and that the company hadn’t “even turned on many promotions yet.” (Interestingly, that post has since been deleted.)

Threads’ initial explosive growth proved to be short lived, however, with engagement dropping considerably in the weeks that followed. Anecdotally, the service feels much more lively in recent weeks, and downloads have started to once again tick up, according to a recent report from Insider.

But a report from analytics firm SimilarWeb, which tracks web traffic, suggests the company still has a lot of ground to make up. “In the US, where Threads attracted the most attention, September Threads usage on Android was down 40% from where it was in July,” senior insights manager David Carr wrote in the report. Given those trends, and that Meta has been steadily adding new features like post editing and keyword search, it’s maybe not all that surprising the company would now be trying to juice Threads’ growth, even if its tactics for doing so are unpopular.

Netflix has dropped a trailer for the upcoming reality series Squid Game: The Challenge. The forthcoming show starts with 456 contestants competing for a $4.56 million prize in events repackaged (minus the brutal violence) from the scripted series. What better way to follow a fictional critique of modern capitalism’s exploitation of the financially desperate for profit and entertainment than to embrace a reality TV spectacle that exploits the financially desperate for profit and entertainment?

Among other games ripped from the South Korean show, the competition’s trailer showcases the original series’ creepy “red light, green light” doll as players in green tracksuits nervously scoot across the floor, ready to stop at a moment’s notice. (In this version, the “gunshots” fired at infringing players involve pre-placed blood packets exploding on their chests.) In standard reality TV fashion, there are hints of shameless backstabbing and plenty of lusting over the prize money. Masked guards create an ambiance of intimidation as Sammy Davis Jr.’s “I’ve Gotta Be Me” plays in the background, echoing the source material’s theme of unlikely riches as the sole path to fulfillment in a late-capitalist hellscape.

When the competition was filmed earlier this year, each player subjected themselves to this exhibition for a 0.22% chance at a couple of million dollars after taxes.

Netflix

The reality series made headlines earlier this year when several contestants reportedly required medical attention, proving that irony has flatlined, and Netflix is selling tickets to view its corpse. “It was like a war zone,” one player told The Sun. “People left in tears.” The report described frigid conditions: one exhausted player was hauled away on a stretcher while others crawled to the finish line.

“Even if hypothermia kicked in then people were willing to stay for as long as possible because a lot of money was on the line,” one competitor said. “Too many were determined not to move so they stood there for far too long. There were people arriving thinking they were going to be millionaires but they left in tears.”

As a contestant says in the trailer, “This is a savage game.” Squid Game: The Challenge begins streaming on Netflix on November 22.

Xbox is presenting a showcase on Wednesday to highlight the various third-party titles coming to Microsoft’s gaming consoles, Windows computers and Game Pass. The festivities kick off on Wednesday, October 25 at 1PM EST. You can watch via the official YouTube channel or on Twitch.

The stream promises a “fresh mix of indie games and familiar favorites” from third-party companies like Remedy, Studio Wildcard, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio and more, with 20 minutes of trailers and gameplay footage on the docket. Consider this Xbox’s version of those Nintendo Indie World showcase events.

So what should you expect during the stream? Microsoft hasn’t released a list of games that’ll take center stage, but did drop some teases. The company says it’ll reveal the “latest information” about Yakuza-adjacent RPG Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth and Dungeons of Hinterberg. It also promised a launch trailer for the long-awaited Alan Wake II, which releases at the end of this week, and the first gameplay footage of Ark: Survival Ascended. There should also be some surprises, so can we have a little Hollow Knight: Silksong trailer… as a treat?

The stream will be available in 30 languages, including American Sign Language (ASL) and British Sign Language (BSL.) Additionally, Xbox says that YouTube streams will be in 4K at 60fps, which should be a good way to suss out real-world graphical performance.

Amazon Prime Video announced Monday that the Fallout television series will premiere on April 12, 2024. The news came from a short teaser video the streaming service posted on its social channels, including Instagram, styled like a Pip-Boy interface. The series, initially announced in 2020, will adopt a “serious and harsh” tone while adding “ironic humor” and “B-movie nuclear fantasies.” 

The live-action series, from Westworld creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, will have an original (canonical) story set in the Fallout gaming universe. It will take place in 2077, beginning in Vault 33 in Los Angeles. As fans of the game know, it’s set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland following the events of “The Great War” on October 23, 2077. That date has become known as “Fallout Day” among the game’s fans — an ideal day for Amazon to reveal the series’ premiere date.

Fallout will star Ella Purnell (Yellowjackets), Walton Goggins (Justified), Aaron Moten (Emancipation), Xelia Mendes-Jones (The Wheel of Time), Moisés Arias (The King of Staten Island) and Kyle MacLachlan (Twin Peaks). Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner are the series’ executive producers, writers and showrunners. Additional executive producers include Athena Wickham of Kilter Films, along with Bethesda’s Todd Howard and James Altman.

Instagram is testing a sticker creation feature that will let users make custom stickers from their own photos — and other users’, in some cases — and pop them into Reels or Stories. While Meta has been going all in on prompt-based, AI-generated stickers lately, this tool is something much simpler. It’ll just select the subject of a photo and remove the background, creating a free-floating sticker that can be placed over other content.

Adam Mosseri/ Instagram

Adam Mosseri gave a brief demonstration of how it’ll work in a video shared to his broadcast channel. He also said that, in addition to creating stickers from photos saved on your phone, users will be able to make them from “eligible images you see on Instagram.” Mosseri didn’t share any further details on that, but it suggests users will be able to opt in to making their pictures stickerable.

It’s still just a test and hasn’t rolled out to all users, so we’ll see what that actually looks like in time. The platform last week started testing a new polling feature, too, which will show up in the comments section under feed posts.

The Problem With Jon Stewart isn't coming back for a third season at Apple TV+, according to The New York Times. It was already supposed to begin filming for another eight episodes within the next couple of weeks, but Apple and Stewart reportedly decided to part ways before it can start. While neither party has issued a statement yet, the publications said the parties didn't see eye to eye when it came to hot button topics. The host apparently told production staff that Apple executives had raised concerns about certain subject matters he's potentially covering in the show, particularly China and artificial intelligence. 

Based on The Hollywood Reporter's confirmation of the news, Apple talked to Stewart about the need to be "aligned" when it comes to show topics and even threatened to cancel the series. Wanting full creative control of The Problem, Stewart chose to walk away instead. 

The Problem debuted on Apple TV+ in 2021, with episodes coming out every other week, six years after Stewart left The Daily Show. Its second season started streaming in 2022 and had four more episodes — for a total of 12 — than the first. It also streamed every week with a break of a few months after its sixth episode. The newer season covered controversial topics, as well, including gender identity and the indictment of former president Donald Trump. Although those episodes went out for streaming, The Hollywood Reporter's sources said there had already been tension between the parties before the third season production kicked off due to the previous themes Stewart had covered on the show. As The Times said, Apple may have been worried about being dragged into political controversies that the series could bring and had agreed to end their partnership. 

YouTube creators may be able to upload music that sounds like it was actually sang by famous musicians one day. According to Billboard and Bloomberg, the video hosting platform is developing an artificial intelligence tool that can mimic the voice of recording artists. It was also hoping to introduce the feature during its Made On YouTube event in September, where it debuted other AI-powered creator tools including a generative green screen. Obviously, its plan didn't push through, and it was apparently because negotiating with recording companies is taking time. The technology is new, after all, and there are a lot of questions that need to be answered first. 

Billboard says one of the key issues they're still hashing out is how monetization would work. Will artists be paid for the music YouTube feeds its AI model, or for the output made using the AI tool? Further, how would songwriters be compensated for any of their music used to train YouTube's AI? Recording companies still reportedly have questions about how the AI model is trained, as well, and about how artists will have the power to opt in or out. If and when the tool does come out, YouTube intends to beta test it first by giving a select group of creators access to the voices of artists who opt in. 

While negotiations are taking time, recording companies are receptive to YouTube's idea, according to the sources. That's because they're looking at the use of AI in music as an inevitability, and they're concerned about getting left behind if they resist licensing deals like what YouTube is offering. As Bloomberg notes, though, YouTube is walking a tricky path and may have to brace itself for legal issues in its quest to explore the use of generative AI in music. OpenAI, for instance, had been sued by a group of authors, including John Grisham and George R.R. Martin, for the alleged use of their novels to train its large language model. 

Back in February, Meta launched a Telegram-like feature for Instagram called "broadcast channels," which introduced a one-way messaging feature to the app. It gave creators a way to update their followers without having to post on their main page. Now, the company is expanding broadcast channels' availability and is also bringing it to Facebook and Messenger. Creators and public figures with Facebook pages will now be able to send messages, including photos, videos and voice notes, to their community. 

It's still a one-way messaging tool, which means only Page administrators can send messages in the channel, but participants can react to them and vote in polls. Admins can launch a channel directly from their page, and Facebook will send their followers a one-time notification to join after they send their first message. Based on the screenshots shared by Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg, broadcast channels will show up in users' Messenger chats under a tab aptly labeled "Channels." Participants will get notifications every time the page owner sends an update, but they can mute the channel anytime. Presumably, those who chose not to participate the first time can still access the channel from the page's profile like people can on Instagram. 

Meta says any page admin where the feature is now accessible can start a channel if they want. The feature still isn't available everywhere, though, and those who can't find the option to open a broadcast channel yet can join the waitlist for now. 

We still have months to wait before Dune: Part Two hits theaters, so what better time to reminisce about David Lynch's intriguing adaptation of Frank Herbert's masterpiece? Reviled at the time, Lynch's Dune has now firmly established itself as a cult sci-fi epic, a film with boundless creative energy hampered by studio interference.

In this bonus episode, Devindra chats with film journalist Max Evry, author of A Masterpiece in Disarray: David Lynch's Dune. We explore why he devoted two years of his life towards researching an unloved film, as well as how it's a refreshing departure from the superhero films dominating theaters today.

Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, Engadget News!

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Credits
Host: Devindra Hardawar
Guest: Max Evry
Music: Dale North