Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD owners on Steam won’t lose access to the game on September 1st, Ubisoft clarified today after a notice on Valve’s storefront suggested the title would become unplayable later this year. “Current owners of those games will still be able to access, play or redownload them,” a spokesperson for the company told Eurogamer.

The confusion around Liberation HD’s playability stems from an announcement Ubisoft made earlier this month. In a move designed to free up resources for its newer and more popular titles, the company said it planned to drop support for online services in 15 games, including Liberation HD. As a result of the decision, online features and downloadable content would become unavailable in most of the affected titles. However, the only game Ubisoft said would be completely unplayable was Spade Junkies due to it being a multiplayer-only experience.

Many thought Ubisoft planned to take things a step further when a Twitter user named Nors3 shared a screenshot on Monday of Liberation HD’s Steam page. “Please note this title will not be accessible following September 1st, 2022,” said one of the notices on the game’s storefront listing. The warning prompted many to accuse Ubisoft of dropping to a new low.

Ubisoft told Eurogamer it’s working with Valve and other platform owners to provide more accurate information on the future of the 15 games affected by its decision. “It has always been our intention to do everything in our power to allow those legacy titles to remain available in the best possible conditions for players, and this is what we are working towards," the company said.

Electric truck maker Rivian is reportedly planning to lay off hundreds of workers. While the company hasn't made a firm decision on mass job cuts, according to Bloomberg, it may shed around five percent of the workforce. With a headcount of more than 14,000, that equates to around 700 employees. Layoffs may be announced in the coming weeks, the report suggests. Rivian declined to comment to Engadget.

The job cuts would primarily be for non-manufacturing positions in areas where Rivian has expanded too quickly. Teams with duplicate functions are said to be among those the company has targeted. The total number of employees at Rivian has more or less doubled over the last year as the automaker increased production.

The automotive industry has been hit hard by supply chain issues and the economic climate, and it seems Rivian is no exception. The company still expects to build 25,000 EVs this year despite production difficulties. Rivian eventually aims to manufacture 600,000 vehicles per year between its existing plant in Normal, Illinois and a second planned factory in Georgia that's expected to open in 2024.

The company has a backlog of tens of thousands of EV orders. It will have to juggle those with the 100,000 delivery vehicles it will build for Amazon by the end of the decade. As such, bolstering production while streamlining operations elsewhere seems a logical move.

The news follows a recent report noting that Rivian hired dozens of former Tesla employees in recent months, according to LinkedIn data. It was reported in late June that Tesla cut around 200 people from its Autopilot team after CEO Elon Musk announced plans to reduce the company's salaried workforce by 10 percent. Musk told employees earlier that month he had a “super bad feeling” about the state of the economy and for them to expect layoffs.

In 2020, the Wikipedia community was engulfed in scandal when it came out that a US teen had written 27,000 entries in a language they didn’t speak. The episode was a reminder that the online encyclopedia is not a perfect source of information. Sometimes people will attempt to edit Wikipedia entries out of malice, but frequently factual errors come from some well-intentioned individual making a mistake.

That's a problem the Wikimedia Foundation recently partnered with Facebook parent company Meta to address. The two set their sights on citations. The problem with Wikipedia footnotes is that there are almost too many for the platform's volunteer editors to verify. With the website growing by more than 17,000 articles every month, countless citations are incomplete, missing or just plain inaccurate.

Meta developed an AI model that can automatically scan citations at scale to verify their accuracy. It can also suggest alternative citations when it finds a poorly sourced passage. When Wikipedia's human editors evaluate citations, they rely on common sense and experience. When an AI does the same work, it uses a Natural Language Understanding (NLU) transformation model that attempts to understand the various relationships of words and phrases within a sentence. Meta’s Sphere database, consisting of more than 134 million web pages, acts as the system's knowledge index. As it goes about its job of checking the citations in an article, the model is designed to find a single source to verify every claim.

To illustrate the capabilities of the AI, Meta shared an example of an incomplete citation the model found on the Wikipedia page for the Blackfoot Confederacy. Under the Notable Blackfoot people section, the article mentions Joe Hipp, the first Native American to compete for the WBA World Heavyweight title. The linked website doesn’t mention Hipp or boxing. Searching the Sphere database, the model found a more suitable citation in a 2015 article from the Great Falls Tribune. Here’s the passage the model flagged:

In 1989 at the twilight of his career, [Marvin] Camel fought Joe Hipp of the Blackfeet Nation. Hipp, who became the first Native American to challenge for the world heavyweight championship, said the fight was one of the weirdest of his career.

What’s notable about the above passage is that it doesn’t explicitly mention boxing. Meta’s model found a suitable reference thanks to its natural language capabilities. The tool could one day help with Facebook's misinformation problems. “More generally, we hope that our work can be used to assist fact-checking efforts and increase the general trustworthiness of information online,“ the model’s creators said. In the meantime, Meta hopes to build a platform Wikipedia editors can use to verify and correct footnotes systematically.

Twitter is opening its conversation-leaving feature to everyone. Now, all Twitter users will be able to use the service’s “unmention” feature, the company announced.

Twitter describes “unmention” as the ability to leave an unwanted conversation on the platform. When used, it unlinks the user’s handle from the Twitter thread, so they will no longer be tagged in future tweets, and others won’t be able to reply to them from the same thread. Though it won’t prevent others from continuing to jump into the conversation, it will at least shield the person’s replies and notifications.

The feature has been in the works for more than a year. Twitter first teased the idea last summer, saying it was meant to prevent the kind of “unwanted attention” that can often lead to harassment. It started testing it in April, but it was limited to a small group of users on the web only. Now, with the update, anyone will be able to remove themselves from a thread regardless of whether they are using Twitter’s apps or website.

The update is the latest way Twitter has tried to give users more ways to control how people can interact with them, particularly at moments when they may be more susceptible to harassment. The service has also added reply-limiting features, and has been testing a “safety mode,” which can automatically block problematic accounts.

It's rare for Apple to reshape the way people work on Macs, but that's precisely what the company is trying to do with Stage Manager in macOS Ventura. At first glance, it's just a quick visual way to swap between your recently used applications. But after testing the first Ventura public beta over the past week, I think it may also solve window management issues that have plagued Macs since OS X debuted 21 years ago. Or, maybe, I've just always hated Apple's Dock.

On top of Stage Manager, Ventura also has plenty of upgrades that should make life a bit easier for Apple users. Mail gets the biggest overhaul, but there's also better collaboration with Safari's Tab Groups, as well as much-needed features in Messages. At the very least, it's a far more expansive update than last year's Monterey.

Apple

Stage Manager: Making sense of the Mac madness

In my nearly two decades of using Macs — as a college student, IT support worker and tech journalist — I've never found OS X's Dock to be very useful. Sure, when it was first released, it was a huge visual upgrade over the simplistic taskbars in Windows and Linux. (I remember marveling at the fact that a Dock icon could show a running video.) But on its own, the Dock is a confusing mishmash of shortcuts and running application indicators, something reviews at the time also criticized.

If you want to find a specific Safari window, for example, you have to press Control, click on the Dock icon and then select it from the dropdown. In comparison, the far uglier Windows XP let me zero in on specific apps (and their sub-windows) with a single click on the task bar. Perhaps aware of this usability quirk, Apple introduced Exposé in 2003 as an easy way to see everything you're running all at once. Since then, I've religiously assigned hot corners on every Mac I've used to trigger specific Exposé functions (one corner shows everything that's open, another shows me windows just for my current app, while another brings me right to the desktop). Who needs a confusing Dock when you can get a God's-eye view of your entire system?

Fast-forward almost twenty years, and we have Stage Manager, yet another on-screen tool for jumping between your apps. But while it may just seem like additional screen clutter, its main function is to help you focus by actually decluttering your screen. When you select a recent app from Stage Manager, it centers that app on your screen and makes other windows disappear. Hit the app shortcut again, and you'll cycle through open windows.

While it seems restrictive at first, like an attempt at bringing an iPad-esque workflow onto Macs, Stage Manager also lets you group apps together and, crucially, remembers exactly where you position your windows. While writing this preview, I kept Safari and Evernote grouped together, so I could write and research without worrying about pings from Slack or WhatsApp. You could do something similar with Apple's Spaces virtual desktops feature, but I always found that hard to manage. Stage Manager makes it as easy as hitting a single icon on your screen.

If you're a Mac pro-user already set in your ways, you can ignore Stage Manager entirely (it can be turned on and off from the Title Bar, and disabled in System Preferences). But as someone who's struggled with Apple's attempts at window management over the years, I'm finding it to be a refreshing way to make sense of macOS. You can also automatically hide Stage Manager until you need to use it, just like the Dock. (Personally, I've found it to be most useful when I hide the Dock and leave Stage Manager running on the side.)

Apple

Other updates: Mail, Messages and more

I haven't used a desktop email application in years — it's just easier to hop into multiple Gmail accounts in a browser — but those who do will appreciate Apple's Mail updates in Ventura. For one, the search function has been entirely reworked, so it should be easier to locate a specific message. It's also finally getting some much-needed features, like scheduled send, undo sending, rich-text link embedding and alerts about missing attachments and recipients. Those are the sorts of features that have kept me glued to Gmail's web interface for years, so it's nice to see them finally make their way to the desktop. (But really, I'd love to know what took Apple so long.)

Similarly, I think everyone would appreciate the changes coming to Messages. That includes the ability to edit texts, delete them entirely, and mark them as unread. I wasn't able to test these features much, since they require your friends and colleagues to be running Monterey as well, but we're not expecting any major surprises with how they work. Monterey also treats older versions of macOS similar to Android users — when I edited a message to an iMessage group, my friends received a separate text notifying them of the changes. For me, it just appeared as an edit within the existing message.

Apple

Here are a few other notable changes in Monterey to look out for:

• Continuity Camera: It lets you use your iPhone as a high-quality webcam. I haven't been able to get this feature working properly yet, but on paper it's a compelling way to beef up your video chats without investing in a more expensive webcam.

• Shared Tab Groups in Safari: An easy way to collaborate with friends when planning for a trip, or any other group activity.

• Passkeys in Safari: Instead of passwords, Passkey is a biometric way to authenticate with websites, and it's tied to your iCloud account. I wasn't able to test this yet, but theoretically it's far more secure than traditional passwords.

• Strong password editing in Safari: Finally, there's a way to tweak Safari's auto-generated passwords to meet requirements from certain sites.

• Collaboration through Messages: This will let you join up with friends to work together in Notes, Keynote and other Apple software, as well as some third-party apps.

• Apple's Freeform app for collaboration: This isn't available to test yet, but it looks like an intriguing Apple spin on a whiteboard app.

We're a couple of months out from Apple officially rolling out the next major versions of its various operating systems. However, you can try out iOS 16, iPadOS 16, watchOS 9 and macOS Ventura right now. Apple has released a public beta, a few weeks after it offered up the first developer betas. To access them, you'll need to sign up for the Apple Beta Software Program and follow the directions.

Bear in mind that there may be some bugs that Apple hasn't detected and resolved. Be sure to back up your data before installing any beta (though backing up regularly is always a good practice). You'll have the option to remove your device from the public beta program and revert it to an older version of its OS.

You can get to grips with some of the new features in iOS 16. Among those are a revamped lock screen with more layout and customization options, such as dynamic wallpapers. Notifications and Focus Mode have been revamped too, while you’ll be able to keep on top of things like sports scores and transit rides with Live Activities. Face ID will finally work in landscape orientation and you'll no longer need an Apple Watch to use the Fitness app.

Apple

Also new are the option to edit missives after you send them in Messages, a way to report spam text messages, a Pay Later function in Wallet and an email scheduling option in the Mail app. There’s much more on the way too, including updates for Apple Maps, CarPlay and Family Sharing. Looking further ahead, an "extreme" security option for high-profile users will be available this fall.

As for iPadOS 16, improved multitasking options will grant you more control over how to resize apps with, for instance, overlapping windows. Some of the features are limited to M1-powered iPads, however. Elsewhere, there's support for external displays, Google Drive-style document collaboration and (later this year) SharePlay features in Game Center.

Apple has made multitasking a key focus for macOS Ventura as well. The Stage Manager tool can group windows on the side of your screen and organize them by app. There will be an undo send option in the Mail app, along with the option to share tab groups in Safari and a new security function called passkeys, which will use Face ID and Touch ID for authentication. You'll also be able to use an iPhone as a webcam for your Mac.

In watchOS 9, Apple is giving the fitness features a significant upgrade. You'll have access to distance and time intervals for workouts. There will also be a way to view which heart rate zones you're in during workouts and sleep. In addition, Apple is promising improved sleep tracking as well as medication reminders.

When it comes to tvOS 16, the updates are light compared with some of the other devices. One key update is the addition of full support for the Matter smart home standard. As seems to be the case on iOS 16, tvOS will support Nintendo's Joy-Con and Switch Pro controllers.

Apple is ending support for some older devices with this year's OS updates. To use iOS 16, for instance, you'll need an iPhone 8 or later.

As it does every year around this time, Sony has introduced new entries in its wireless speaker lineup. The company debuted three new models today, all of which are designed to be used outside thanks to both portable sizing and the proper dust and moisture protections (IP67). The trio is also a part of Sony's X-Series, which features non-circular "X-Balanced" speakers for more sound pressure and less distortion.

First, the largest option in the group is the SRS-XG300. The combination of a tapered cylinder shape and a retractable handle give this speaker more of a boombox-like design in a much smaller package. To give you multiple sound options, the XG300 packs a Mega Bass feature that boosts the low-end response, ClearAudio+ for "the most balanced sound" and Live Sound Mode that simulates the effect of being at a venue. Plus, Sony's Music Center app gives you the ability to adjust the EQ how you see fit and the option of connecting multiple speakers for Party Connect or Stereo Pair modes 

Inside, two X-Balanced speakers, two tweeters and two passive radiators handle the audio while the company's trademark customizable light rings shine on either end. Sony says the XG300 will last up to 25 hours on a charge and you can get up to 70 minutes of use after plugging in for 10 minutes. The company has also included Echo Noise Cancelling for more natural sounding calls should you need the speaker for that purpose. This technology allows two people to talk at the same time without cutting each other off. The XG300 will be available July 12th in gray and black color options for $350. 

Sony

Next up is the SRS-XE300. Sony opted for a pentagon shape for this mid-size model, or as the company describes it, an ergonomic "grab and go" design. The XE300 is equipped with what Sony calls a line-shape diffuser that gives the speaker a wider listening area for those X-Balanced drivers by blasting sound more evenly. Sony's Party Connect and Stereo Pair features allows you to sync multiple speakers for more sound and the on-board controls include a microphone mute button for calls. Echo Noise cancelling is onboard, too. In addition to the dust and waterproof IP67 rating, this speaker is also shockproof, adding another later of protection against drops. This speaker gives you up to 24 hours of battery life on a charge and plugging in for 10 minutes will give you 70 minutes of listening time. The XG300 will be available July 12th in gray, black and blue color options for $200.

Lastly, the most compact option of the three is the SRS-XE200. It's smaller than the XE300, but features the same shape and overall design. The only aesthetic difference is the XE200 has an attached carrying strap. Like the XE300, this model packs in a line-shape diffuser for a larger listening area and it's also shockproof in addition to its IP67 protections. You can link up multiple speakers via the company's Party Connect and Stereo Pair setups. Sony says you can expect up to 16 hours of listening and, once again, a 10-minute charge offers 70 minutes of use. For calls, Echo Noise Cancelling is here too, as is a handy mute button among the other on-board controls. The XG300 will be available July 12th in gray, black, blue and orange color options for $130.

WhatsApp launched emoji reactions with six options just a few months ago, but it just boosted that number to the entire emoji lexicon. "We're rolling out the ability to use any emoji as a reaction on WhatsApp," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote, while declaring the 🏄‍♂️, 🍟, 👊 and 💯 as some of this favorites. 

Emoji reactions are a nice way to keep communications succinct or quickly indicate to a message sender that you found their joke funny (or not), for example. To use any emoji as a reaction, long press on a message and tap the + button to the right to get a full list. Then, select the one you want and it should appear in the usual way under a message. 

The update puts WhatsApp on par with Messenger in terms of emoji reactions, and works exactly the same way on mobile. Telegram recently unveiled expanded emoji and animated reactions as well, but you have to subscribe to its new $5/month premium service. The new WhatsApp feature is now live, but it may take a few days to arrive to your region. 

Sony released its LinkBuds S less than two months ago, but you can already pick up the true wireless earbuds for a solid discount on Amazon. Just ahead of Prime Day, they're down to $157. That's a drop of 22 percent from the regular price of $200. It's the lowest price we've seen to date for LinkBuds S and the discount applies to both the white and black variants.

The LinkBuds S have a more regular closed design rather than the open wear format of the standard LinkBuds that Sony unleashed earlier this year. The company claims the more recent model is smaller and lighter than other earbuds that have active noise cancellation (though it admits the ANC isn't as sturdy as on its WF-1000XM4 model).

The earbuds have a passthrough/transparency mode too, so you can hear "natural" ambient sound. With the Adaptive Sound Control feature, Sony says the LinkBuds S can learn your preferences over time and automatically tweak the sound settings based on your location or activity.

They have 5mm drivers that provide what Sony claims are "powerful bass and stunningly clear vocals." With the Integrated Processor V1, which is also found on Sony's WH-1000XM5 headphones, the company aims to bolster sound quality, mitigate distortion and boost ANC. There's support for high-resolution audio as well, powered by Sony's LDAC codec and DSEE Extreme upscaling.

In addition, LinkBuds S have Sony's Speak-to-Chat feature. The idea is that the earbuds will be able to automatically detect your voice. They will pause the audio and switch on the passthrough mode when you start talking. There's a feature called Auto Play as well. This allows LinkBuds S to play or resume audio based on your activity when you put them in or end a call. However, the functionality is somewhat limited for now — it currently works with Spotify and Endel.

Elsewhere, the earbuds have an IPX4 water resistance rating, so they should be able to withstand bad weather and workouts. There's built-in Alexa functionality too.

Sony says LinkBuds S have a battery life of six hours if ANC is switched on. You'll get another 14 hours of ANC listening time thanks to the charging case. Through a quick-charge function, you'll get up to an hour of extra use after five minutes of charging time.

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Amazon's free Prime Gaming downloads for Prime Day this year include some pretty well-known titles, though this round's heavy hitter is BioWare's Mass Effect Legendary Edition. The compilation bundles all the single-player base games of the original Mass Effect trilogy, remastered with improved graphics optimized for 4K Ultra HD and with adjusted gameplay. It also comes with over 40 downloadable content, such as promo weapons and armor. 

BioWare tweaked the elements that made us not want to replay the original games, including their clunky gunplay and the Mako all-terrain vehicle that's hard to navigate in certain terrains. As we noted in our review, the remastered games feature refined handling and aiming, as well as a less erratic cover mechanic. Levels and across-the-galaxy jumps also load more quickly than in the original games. 

In addition to Mass Effect Legendary Edition, the 30-plus free titles for Prime Day also include Grid Legends, the Grid franchise entry released in 2021. The racing game will give you access to more than 100 vehicles from the start and has over 250 events you can participate in. If you're a racing game fan, you can also get Need for Speed Heat, which was released in 2019 and was the first EA title to offer cross-play between gaming systems. Finally, if you're a shooting game fan, take note that the list also includes three Star Wars games, namely Jedi Knight — Jedi Academy,Jedi Knight II — Jedi Outcast and Republic Commando. You can download all the aforementioned games for free if you're a Prime subscriber.

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