Wrexham AFC is a non-league club in the fifth tier of the English soccer pyramid (the much-more-famous Premier League is at the top), which means it’s an unlikely candidate to feature in a FIFA game. Fortunately for Wrexham, it’s not just any club, but a (technically Welsh) team co-owned by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney — which is why it’ll now feature in FIFA 22. 

Wrexham, based on Wales but playing in England's National football league, will appear in Kick Off mode in the "Rest of World" category. That section includes a grab-bag of clubs which are notable for other reasons but aren't members of a major FIFA-signed league. EA inked a multi-year deal with the club that includes "commitments to the Wrexham community and its fans," the company said 

The news leaked out a bit early when Wrexham appeared in a list of all teams in FIFA 22, as Eurogamer reported. Other National clubs might be peeved by the decision, but Wrexham does bring a certain notoriety with Reynolds as owner. "'Rest of World' is an important geographic area known for its random assortment of cultures, climates and football clubs. If you're planning on visiting 'Rest of World,' please consider visiting Wrexham," he said in a typically sassy video. 

Samsung is making its Android-based Galaxy Watch 4 more fashion forward via a new collaboration with designer Sami Miró, the company announced. The Sami Miró Vintage collection features six watchbands and three watch faces, all with a theme of sustainability and wellness, the company announced. 

Samsung

Two colors called "Stratus Sky" and "Midnight Black" are made from an "innovative apple peel skin material sourced from waste recovered from the fruit industry," Samsung noted. They go with most outfits, offer the premium look of leather but are "completely vegan and cruelty free." The other bands are made of an eco-friendly, non-toxic TPU material that are non-plasticized and can be recycled. Those come in "Aurora Night," "Cloud Navy," "Earth Sunrise" and "Dawn Atlas" colors. 

The color palette of the bands runs from violet to aqua blue to a mauve pink, along with the black and grey leather-look models. Those colors are all found in the watch faces as well, dubbed SMV Atlas I, SMV Serenity and SMV Atlas II. 

"The collection draws inspiration from the beauty and colors of Mother Earth to serve as a reminder to prioritize mindfulness, health, wellness, and sustainability each day," Samsung wrote. That matches up with the Galaxy Watch 4's focus on health, with features that can measure oxygen, stress, water intake and sleep patterns. It also offers fitness features like guided workouts, group challenges and more. The limited-edition collection is now available on Samsung.com starting at $40. 

Steam has released an update that makes it easier to manage downloads and storage, move games from one drive to another and more. The tweaks have been available for months in beta, but are finally coming to all users in the stable release channel, the gaming service announced. 

The downloads page has been cleaned up and now shows installation progress on top of download status. That fix will help you figure out when you can play a game after it has downloaded. You can also reorder the priority of downloads by dragging and dropping them when installing multiple titles. Finally, the rather undescriptive "View News" button has been renamed to Patch Notes so you can see what's changed in an update while it's downloading.

The storage manager has also been refreshed so you can more easily see how much space you have left in case you want to move a game to a less full or faster drive, for instance. It'll also let you remove empty library folders and mount library folders on read-only drives. 

It also added minor tweaks and fixes to the Library, Friends List, Remote Play Together, Steam Cloud, Steam VR and other features. The new version should install itself automatically (barring any COVID-related delays), but you can check on the status via the menu bar. A full list of updates is available here. 

Twitter is testing a new label that lets automated bot self-identify as such in their labels, the company has announced. The feature is designed to help help people tell human and automated accounts apart, while giving "good bots a way to increase their legitimacy and build trust and transparency with their audience," the company wrote.

The new feature appears to be an extension of Twitter's edict last year that high-quality bot accounts must self-identify as such. At the time, it said that developers must "clearly indicate" if an account is a bot, and also identify the person running the account. 

Examples of legitimate bot accounts cited by Twitter "include bots that help you find vaccine appointments and disaster early warning systems," the company wrote in a FAQ on its help site. "When accounts send automated Tweets to share relevant information about content on another account, automated labels help you identify good bots from spammy ones and are all about transparency."

The label will roll out to 500-plus developer accounts to start with, and be available to all developers "by the end of the his year." It said that adopting the label isn't required right now, but implied that not using it would essentially be a breach of its updated developer policy that requires the use of labels. 

After teasing it yesterday, Lego and Nintendo have unveiled the Lego Super Mario 64 block set, complete with microscale levels including Peach's Castle along with several microfigures, Lego announced. The companies describe it as a "unique way for fans to rediscover the magic of Super Mario 64."

Along with Peach's Castle, the 2,064-piece set includes Bob-omb Battlefield, Cool, Cool Mountain and Lethal Lava Trouble, all appearing when you unfold the large, brick-built question mark block. You also get microfigures including Mario and Princess Peach, or you can add full-sized Mario or Lego Luigi features for interactive play, complete with "unique music and sounds from the video game," according to the companies. Players can also seek out "hidden Power Stars that reveal secret reactions from the figures," as hinted in the build instructions.

The new set joins other Nintendo/Lego collaboration products, including Lego Super Mario and a Lego Luigi kit. "It’s difficult to imagine the Super Mario Universe without the classic game’s iconic levels full of discovery and secrets," said Lego's Pablo González. It will come exclusively to Lego stores and Lego.com around the world on October 1, 2021, at a retail price of $170.00.

Other than some developer tests, Twitter has only ever offered you one way to react to tweets: the classic heart "Like" emoji and prior to 2015, the "Favorite" star button. Now, the social media network might be finally expanding that range as it's testing a new feature called "Reactions" with additional emoji over the coming days. 

In Turkey only for a limited time, the company is testing four new emojis on top of the heart icon: 😂, 🤔, 👏 and 😢, aka "tears of joy," "thinking face," "clapping hands" and "crying face." Back in 2015, Twitter tested a wider variety including the the "100," "heart eyes" and other emoji. However, this time it wanted to "find emoji that are universally recognizable and represent what people want to express about Tweets," the company said.

Twitter

Twitter narrowed it down to those additional four after conducting surveys and researching what the most common words and emoji are in Tweets. It found that the most popular one is the laughing emoji, and that people want to express reactions centered around "funny," "support/cheer," "agreement" and "awesome." It also identified "entertained" and "curious" as the top emotions people feel when reading tweets.

Its surveys also revealed that "frustration" and "anger" were common emotions experienced by users. While some people wanted to express disagreement with Tweets, the company decided not to incorporate that. Rather, it's trying to see if the new, more positive emoji will drive "healthy public conversations." It's also likely related to the high levels of polarization and toxicity on the site, something that Twitter has been keen to reduce over the past several years.

More specifically, Twitter said that reactions will help people better show how they feel in conversations "while also giving those Tweeting a better understanding of how their Tweets are received." The new reactions will be available in Turkey only for a limited time on Twitter for iOS, Android and the web over the coming days. However, it added that "based on this test, we may expand the availability of the Reactions experiment to other regions."

Xbox is rolling out a controller firmware update to Insiders, with the biggest new feature being the introduction of Bluetooth Low Energy for supported devices. That will make it easier to pair with and switch from Xbox One consoles to different systems including Windows 10, iOS 15 and Android devices, the company announced. Microsoft has also introduced DLI (Dynamic Latency Input) to reduce console input latency on older controllers. 

Most of Microsoft's existing Xbox One controllers, including the latest low-latency Xbox Series X model, use Bluetooth for PCs or smartphones, and the Xbox Wireless protocol for Xbox consoles. Up to now, switching between them has been clunky, but with the new firmware, controllers will remember your phone or PC and let you quickly switch over to them from a console. To do that, you'll simply need to double tap the "pair" button. 

Another key update is DLI, designed to cut the input latency on controllers paired with the latest Xbox Series X/S consoles. The new firmware means that older controller will react as quickly as the latest models that ship with consoles, making gaming more responsive. "We believe it’s important to maintain backward compatibility with Xbox accessories people already have in their collection and to ensure we deliver the best gaming experience no matter how you choose to play," the Xbox team wrote in a blog post. 

Microsoft is testing this feature with Alpha Skip-Ahead and Alpha Xbox Insiders today, but it should come to all users in the coming months. 

Facebook and Ray-Ban's previously teased smart glasses will officially launch later today, but pictures of them have leaked out ahead of the announcement. Posted by the prolific Evan "Evleaks" Blass, the images show three separate models, called Ray-Ban Stories, complete with the company's classic frames and a pair of cameras on each side and a button on the top right, possibly used to operate the cameras. 

The leaks show three of Ray-Ban's classic frame styles including Wayfarer and Round (above), along with Meteor (below). They're plastered with Ray-Ban's logo, but there's no sign of any Facebook branding except on the box. Other items shown are a case, protection bag, charging cable, reference guide and warranty. 

The look isn't a huge surprise, as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in July that "the glasses have their iconic form factor, and they let you do some pretty neat things." As it stands now, they appear to be merely camera equipped glasses, much like models from Snap — and in the meantime, Snap has moved on to augmented reality (AR) versions. However, Zuckerberg said the Ray-Ban models are part of a "journey towards full augmented reality glasses in the future." 

There's still no word on the full capabilities of the glasses, however, so there will still be some element of surprise at the upcoming launch taking place later today. 

If you're a fan of classic Star Trek games, GOG has some new offerings that may grab your attention. The site now offers no less than six new titles in its store: Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force (2000), Star Trek: Elite Force II (2003), Star Trek: Bridge Commander (2002), Star Trek: Starfleet command III (2002), Star Trek: Hidden Evil (1999) and Star Trek: Away Team (2001). On top of that, GOG will soon add another two games, Star Trek: Armada and Star Trek: Armada II.

The additions help mark the 55th anniversary of the original show, along with the 100th birthday of the late Gene Roddenberry, GOG wrote. As it noted, the first text-based Star Trek computer games first appeared in 1971, "with many official and even more unofficial releases appearing in arcades, on Apple I and II computers, various models of Atari, the Commodore 64 and all the way to DOS and Windows PCs" — a testament to the staying power of the franchise. 

So how do these games rank in the Star Trek pantheon? Games like Star Trek: 25th Anniversary and Star Trek: Online are perhaps better known, to be sure. But as GOG writes, "an absolute golden era of Star Trek games began at the end of the ’90s and the beginning of the 2000s with new games landing every few months."

Particularly, Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force and Star Trek: Bridge Commander are considered to be some of the best Star Trek titles out there, as Screen Rant notes. Many of those titles have become unavailable and are unplayable on modern machines, as well. "This changes now with [these games] releasing for the first time in digital distribution," GOG said. All the games are now available in the US (and elsewhere) for $10. 

After launching it in Go stores and then bringing it to larger Fresh supermarkets, Amazon's cashierless "Just Walk Out" tech will soon arrive in two Whole Foods locations. The service, which lets you pick up goods from shelves and (yep) just walk out, is coming to new stores in Washington DC and Sherman Oaks, California next year, the company announced. 

"By collaborating with Amazon to introduce Just Walk Out shopping at these two Whole Foods Market stores, our customers will be able to... save time by skipping the checkout line," said Whole Foods co-founder John Mackey. 

As we've detailed previously, Just Walk Out uses computer vision, sensors and AI to let you walk into a store, sign in with an app, fill up your bags and leave without the need to join a checkout line. On top of using the tech in its own Go and Fresh stores, Amazon signed a deal last year to license its technology to third-party retailers. 

The technology will work the same at Whole Foods, which is owned by Amazon. Shoppers can opt to use the tech when they enter the store by scanning an app, inserting a debit card linked to their Amazon account, or by placing their palm over the Amazon One palm-scanning system. 

Unions have proclaimed that Amazon's cashierless tech will cost workers jobs, but Amazon said the new Whole Foods locations will "employ a comparable number of team members as existing Whole Foods stores of similar sizes." Rather, employees will be able to "spend even more time interacting with customers and delivering a great shopping experience," Amazon said in a press release.