Facebook has rolled out a new set of controls for Reels that give you some semblance of control on what kind of videos you want to see. When you tap the three-dot menu at the bottom of the video player, you'll now find two new options that say "Show more" and "Show less." Choosing the first will temporarily increase the ranking score of that video, so Facebook can show you more Reels similar to it. Meanwhile, choosing the other will temporarily decrease its ranking. In time, as you continue to vote using the new controls, Facebook will better understand your preferences. 

In addition to introducing the new personalization controls, the company has added Reels to the main navigation menu of Facebook Watch at the top of the page. That gives you quick access to the short-form videos, which the company hopes will lead you to discover new creators and content that align with your interests. Plus, you can now scroll seamlessly between Reels and longer videos on Facebook. Finally, the company has rolled out new tags for Reels to give you more context on why it's appearing on your timeline, such as if a friend had liked it. 

When the social media giant released its latest earnings report, company chief Mark Zuckerberg said that Reels have helped increase the time users spend on Facebook and Instagram. As the company continues to improve how it ranks Reels, which is meant to surface more relevant content, Facebook is likely hoping that users will end up spend more and more time on the apps.

Geoffrey Hinton, nicknamed the Godfather of AI, told The New York Times he resigned as Google VP and engineering fellow in April to freely warn of the risks associated with the technology. The researcher is concerned Google is giving up its previous restraint on public AI releases to compete with ChatGPT, Bing Chat and similar models. In the near term, Hinton says he’s worried that generative AI could lead to a wave of misinformation. You might "not be able to know what is true anymore," he says. He's also concerned it might not just eliminate "drudge work," but outright replace some jobs – which I think is a valid worry already turning into a reality.

– Mat Smith

The Morning After isn’t just a newsletter – it’s also a daily podcast. Get our daily audio briefings, Monday through Friday, by subscribing right here.

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Someone posted the entire ‘Super Mario Bros. Movie’ on Twitter

Another nine million views, but no box office takings.

Over nine million people watched The Super Mario Bros. Movie over the weekend — on Twitter. A Twitter user uploaded the entire movie to the platform – and kept it there for the weekend. A handful of copyrighted movies have repeatedly spent a few days on Twitter since Elon Musk took over, but Blue subscribers have also gained the ability to upload videos that are 60 minutes long, making it an easier task. Scrutinizing copyright for the team at Twitter is also a challenge when the company’s fired most of your safety and compliance staff…

Continue reading.

Apple releases its first rapid-fire security updates for iPhone, iPad and Mac

The rollout hasn't been completely smooth, however.

Engadget

Apple promised faster turnaround times for security patches with iOS 16 and macOS Ventura, and it's now delivering on that claim. The company has released its first Rapid Security Response updates for devices running iOS 16.4.1, iPadOS 16.4.1 and macOS 13.3.1. As usual, they're available through Software Update but are small downloads that don't require much time to install. Engadget and others have received an error warning that iOS can't verify the update as the device is "no longer connected to the internet,” so you may have to check for the patch at another time.

Continue reading.

SpaceX's Starship didn't immediately respond to a self-destruct command

It finally exploded after a 40-second delay.

SpaceX

SpaceX's founder, Elon Musk, shared more details about what went awry during the first fully integrated Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster launch in April. In a Twitter audio chat on Saturday, he revealed the self-destruct setting took 40 seconds to work. It should have been relatively instantaneous. The FAA has already announced it's investigating the events and will ground Starship until "determining that any system, process or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety." Even with all of that, Musk called the launch "successful" and "maybe slightly exceeding my expectations."

Continue reading.

Meta is once again holding a VR gaming event, and it won't be hard to tune in. The company has announced a 40-minute Quest Gaming Showcase streaming June 1st at 1PM Eastern through Facebook, Horizon Worlds, Twitch and YouTube. You can expect the usual batches of new games and gameplay footage, but this year's presentation will include a pre-show (starting at 12:45PM ET) featuring title updates and "debut" trailers. After the fact, there will be "deep-dive" talks with developers.

The tech firm is unsurprisingly quiet on specifics. However, we wouldn't count on new hardware. Meta previously noted that its next mainstream Quest headset will arrive later this year. If so, the virtual event may represent a swan song for the Quest 2 that highlights its last big games before its successor arrives.

The showcase comes at an important time for Meta. It recently completed its buyout of Within, the developer of the VR fitness game Supernatural. The industry heavyweight is still struggling to pivot to the metaverse, too. Its Reality Labs unit is still losing billions of dollars each quarter, and it recently cut the price of the Quest Pro by a third to $999 to spur adoption. The gaming event isn't likely to turn things around, but it may sustain interest in Meta's VR platform ahead of new headsets.

Over nine million people watched The Super Mario Bros. Movie over the weekend — on Twitter, The Verge reported. On Friday, a Twitter user uploaded the entire movie to the platform, and it remained there, openly violating copyright laws, until Sunday. The movie was removed and the user suspended from Twitter — again, shy of ten million people already seeing it. 

Sure, copyrighted movies have repeatedly spent a few days on Twitter since Elon Musk took over (firing most your safety and compliance staff will do that for you). But, previous posts, like The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift or Avatar, were shared in two minute increments across lengthy threads. The Super Mario Bros. Movie required only two posts, one with the first hour of the movie and another with the final 32 minutes. 

Why hasn’t this happened before now? Well, Twitter Blue subscribers can upload videos up to 60 minutes long. It's only available on Twitter’s website though, with app users limited to 10-minute videos.

Regardless of mainstream illegal streaming, The Super Mario Bros. Movie has crushed at the box office, making over $1 billion globally, and holding the number one spot four weekends in a row across the US and Canada. If it has come and gone in your area, don't worry, it will probably be back on Twitter soon. 

Over nine million people watched The Super Mario Bros. Movie over the weekend — on Twitter, The Verge reported. On Friday, a Twitter user uploaded the entire movie to the platform, and it remained there, openly violating copyright laws, until Sunday. The movie was removed and the user suspended from Twitter — again, shy of ten million people already seeing it. 

Sure, copyrighted movies have repeatedly spent a few days on Twitter since Elon Musk took over (firing most your safety and compliance staff will do that for you). But, previous posts, like The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift or Avatar, were shared in two minute increments across lengthy threads. The Super Mario Bros. Movie required only two posts, one with the first hour of the movie and another with the final 32 minutes. 

Why hasn’t this happened before now? Well, Twitter Blue subscribers can upload videos up to 60 minutes long. It's only available on Twitter’s website though, with app users limited to 10-minute videos.

Regardless of mainstream illegal streaming, The Super Mario Bros. Movie has crushed at the box office, making over $1 billion globally, and holding the number one spot four weekends in a row across the US and Canada. If it has come and gone in your area, don't worry, it will probably be back on Twitter soon. 

Twitter might provide publishers with a new way to earn from their content outside of the typical recurring subscription option. According to company chief Elon Musk, Twitter will allow media publishers to charge users for access to individual articles they post on the website as as soon as next month. Users will end up paying a higher per-article price than what the cost of access to every article would amount to if they had a subscription instead. But Musk said it's for those who want to read the occasional story from a specific outlet, so each article probably wouldn't cost as much as a monthly subscription. 

At this point in time, though, details about the upcoming feature remain vague. Musk only said that it will start rolling out next month — it's unclear what kinds of accounts and media outlets will be able to offer per-article charging. In addition, Twitter's owner didn't say how much the website would be taking as commission. When the company officially replaced Super Follows with Subscriptions, Musk announced that it won't be taking any money from creators for the next 12 months. After the year is up, Twitter will be taking a 10 percent cut on subscriptions. 

Engadget has reached out to the website for clarification, but it doesn't have a press team anymore. We'll have to wait for more information to know if Twitter will implement the same rule for per-article payments. Ultimately, the company will be taking a cut — Twitter, under Musk, has been introducing more and more paid features to boost revenue. It's pretty common knowledge at this point that its verification badge now comes as a perk for its $8-a-month Blue subscription. Twitter also shut down its free API to launch a new one that users would have to pay for. It would cost enterprise customers almost $50,000 a month to access the new API, so some organizations and companies such as NYC's transport authority had chosen to end Twitter integration or to leave the website instead. 

More media outlets are using AI to write articles, if not as aggressively as others. VentureBeat editorial director Michale Nuñez tellsBloomberg his publication is using Microsoft's Bing Chat to help edit and write stories. Reporters are encouraged to slip AI-written "sentences and fragments" into articles so long as they're accurate and independently verifiable.

The OpenAI-powered tech is akin to having "another person on the team," Nuñez says. It theoretically summarizes content in seconds instead of hours. VentureBeat doesn't disclose the use of AI content provided it's limited and authentic, but also doesn't intend to create whole articles using the technology.

Word surfaced in January that CNET had been using AI to produce entire financial explainer articles since November. Although characterized as a trial, over half of the articles required at least minor corrections. Some effectively plagiarized their sources. It also wasn't clear that algorithms had produced the pieces.

Generative AI like Bing Chat, ChatGPT and Google Bard has become increasingly popular as a creative tool, for search results and even for entertainment. However, there are ethical concerns that include plagiarism, basic accuracy and cheating. There are also questions of trust — should creators disclose uses of AI, even if it's minor and undetectable? While the broader news industry isn't expected to completely replace human writers, there are worries AI might be used to reduce the need for real people.

After decades of middling results, video game adaptations are finally the hottest thing in entertainment, especially after those Super Mario Bros. Movie box office numbers. Streamer Peacock is joining the video game adaptation wars with a live action comedy based on the PS1-era vehicular warfare simulator Twisted Metal and it just dropped the first trailer.

For the uninitiated (anyone under 30), Twisted Metal was a hugely popular franchise that is sort of a riff on the Battle Mode from the Mario Kart series, with a heavy emphasis on comical violence and absolute destruction. Think Rocket League with guns. The show seems to be scrapping the arena-based nature of the games with a journey across a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

The series stars the newly-appointed Captain America, Anthony Mackie and Brooklyn 99 standout Stephanie Beatriz. You can’t tell much from the apocalypse-soaked trailer, but the show’s description describes Mackie as a “motor-mouthed outsider offered a chance at a better life” and Beatriz as a “badass axe-wielding car thief.” It also wouldn’t be Twisted Metal without the iconic killer clown Sweet Tooth, described here as a “deranged clown who drives an all too familiar ice cream truck.”

The franchise arguably reached its pinnacle in 1996 with Twisted Metal 2, and there hasn’t been a new release in over a decade, so who exactly is this show for? Who knows! But it has evil clowns and explosive car chases, so who cares? The first season premieres July 27th and consists of ten episodes.

This is just another step in Sony’s plans to bring its big gaming franchises into other media, which has so far included the plodding Uncharted movie and the mega-popular The Last of Us series on HBO. Prepare for an onslaught of PlayStation adaptations in the near future, including Horizon Zero Dawn, Gran Turismo and God of War.

Vampire Survivors, the addictively casual indie game, is getting an animated television series. Known for its rich and cinematic backstory to the same degree as narrative-driven classics Space Invaders, BurgerTime and Dig Dug, Vampire Survivors is a pick-up-and-play casual game with simple 2D character sprites. Media company Story Kitchen will partner with the game’s creator, Luca Galante (founder of developer poncle), to make the series.

Galante said in a (hopefully) cheeky tone, “The most important thing in Vampire Survivors is the story, so it’s a dream come true to see what started as a little indie game I made on my weekends come to life as an animated TV show! It’s also great to be partnering up with such experienced and talented people to make the show. I do wonder if they’ve realized that there isn’t a single vampire in Vampire Survivors, though.” If the announcement sets the stage for the series, we may be in store for a show brimming with self-aware and tongue-in-cheek humor.

The game’s backstory is no more complex than the blurb, “The year 2021, Rural Italy, there lived an evil person named Bisconte Draculó, whose many evil magics created a bad world filled with famine and suffering. It’s now up to the members of the Belpaese family to end his reign of terror and return good food to the table.” Vampire Survivor’s gameplay revolves around controlling an auto-firing character’s movement and loadout as they blast away increasingly daunting hordes of enemies. It borrows elements from roguelike games and tower defense (with Castlevania-esque characters). Once you settle into the action, it can almost become a meditative experience. The title has consistently been one of the most-played Steam Deck games since its launch and is available on PC, Mac, Xbox, Android and iOS.

Story Kitchen is headed by Dmitri Johnson, who co-produced the Sonic the Hedgehog movie series. It also includes John Wick creator and writer Derek Kolstad, former Agency of the Performing Arts (APA) agent, and partner Mike Goldberg. Deadlinereports that the series creators are currently searching for a writer. Hopefully, the eventual scribe won’t find their ideas too constrained by the game’s sprawling and complex lore.

The USS Enterprise has gone through several iterations across TV shows and movies, and now Star Trek fans can explore them as much as they want to online. As Deadline reports, the latest update to the Roddenberry Archive adds 360-degree virtual recreations of the famous Starship Enterprise bridge as depicted in various Star Trek properties. It has the bridge from Star Trek: The Original Series, Picard, Discovery and Strange New Worlds, arranged according to timeline in the new web portal. Fans can click on the version of the Enterprise they want to see and then expand the virtual bridge, which they can drag around and explore to see its beeping panels and displays.

The Roddenberry Archive is a multi-decade collaboration between the estate of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and cloud graphics company OTOY. This is their largest set of digital archive works to date, and it was launched with accompanying videos, including a William Shatner interview with a holographic version of the 1979 USS Enterprise bridge as a background. John de Lancie, who has portrayed Q since 1987’s Star Trek: The Next Generation, also narrates the history of the Starship Enterprise bridge across decades of shows and movies. 

The Roddenberry Archive team is working to add more virtual set recreations fans can explore in the future aside from the ones already available. One of the projects they're working on is a 1:1 scale recreation of the entire Starship Enterprise from the 1979 film Star Trek: The Motion Picture.