Konami today dropped a ton of news about the future of its iconic horror franchise. Aside from confirming that remake of Silent Hill 2, the studio revealed three new games. Townfall comes from Annapurna Interactive and No Code, a Glasgow studio known for strong narrative titles like Observation and Stories Untold. The short teaser for Townfall looks to be the most traditional Silent Hill game of the trio.

Ascension, due out in 2023, is the least game-like installment, but it will feature the influence of J.J. Abrams. It's an interactive streaming series with the tagline: Face Your Trauma Together. Ascension comes from Abrams' studio, Bad Robot, and Genvid, a company that produces interactive live shows.

Konami

And then there's Silent Hill f, coming from Ryūkishi07, a creator known for crafting acclaimed visual novels with psychological horror and supernatural mysteries at their core. The teaser for f is incredibly gruesome, featuring a young woman as she's consumed from the inside-out by the tentacles of a flesh-eating plant. A YouTube description for the teaser says the game is “set in 1960s Japan featuring a beautiful, yet horrifying world.” There's no word yet on a release date.

Oh, and of course, there’s a new Silent Hill movie, too. Happy Halloween, everyone.

– 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.

The biggest stories you might have missed

• Tesla's chaotic third quarter saw profits climb but revenue falter

• Amazon Prime Video will stream NFL Black Friday games starting in 2023

• The bizarre saga of Meta, The Wire and their fight over Indian content moderation

• What it's like to drive a Lucid Air after its first major update

Microsoft wants to build an Xbox-branded mobile game store

The Activision Blizzard merger would play a key role.

A company filing with the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has revealed plans to build a "next generation" Xbox store that's available on mobile devices, not just consoles and PCs. The shop would unsurprisingly lean heavily on content from the proposed Activision Blizzard merger. Call of Duty Mobile and King's more casual mobile games (think Candy Crush) represent more than half of Activision's revenue.

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The best portable Bluetooth speakers for 2022

There are good options in each price range.

Engadget

We’ve tested out some of the most popular Bluetooth speakers in different price ranges, focusing a bit more on audio quality and dynamic range, while considering factors like utility and price. Ultimately, there isn't one best Bluetooth speaker out there, but we've found plenty of good options for a range of uses and price points.

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James Webb telescope captures Pillars of Creation in unprecedented detail

Featuring lots of young stars.

NASA

Researchers have captured their most detailed image yet of the Pillars of Creation, a star-forming nursery in the Eagle Nebula roughly 6,500 light-years away. The near-infrared picture shows even more detail than Hubble's 2014 snapshot, with an abundance of stars (particularly newborns) – there isn't even a galaxy in sight. The new stars are the bright red points of light and are estimated to be 'just' a few hundred thousand years old.

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Meta's AI translator can interpret unwritten languages

It currently translates between English and Hokkien.

Nearly half of the world’s roughly 7,000 known languages lack a written component. These unwritten languages pose a unique problem for machine learning translation systems, but one that Meta is trying to tackle with its Universal Speech Translator (UST) program. As part of this project, Meta researchers looked at Hokkien, an unwritten language spoken throughout Asia’s diaspora and one of Taiwan’s official languages.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained: “We leveraged Mandarin as an intermediate language to build pseudo-labels, where we first translated English (or Hokkien) speech to Mandarin text, and we then translated to Hokkien (or English) and added it to training data.” Currently, the system allows for someone who speaks Hokkien to converse with someone who speaks English, stiltedly.

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Google's iOS 16 lock screen widgets are now available

Gmail, Maps and other apps are now in closer reach.

Google’s new iOS 16 widgets give you at-a-glance info and shortcuts for some of the company's core apps. Gmail shows your new message counts, and Maps provides links to your favorite trips (like your commute home). The widgets run the gamut of Google apps, though with diminishing usefulness: Google News shows the latest headlines, while Drive takes you to suggested and starred cloud files. YouTube and YouTube Music also have home screen widgets, so you can jump to your video subscriptions or search for a song on YouTube Music.

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Blackmagic Design is bringing it's popular DaVinci Resolve video editing app to the iPad, promising support for RAW, cloud collaboration and more, the company announced on Twitter. It won't be a full version of the PC/Mac app, as it will initially feature just the Cut and Color pages. Otherwise, though, "it will be similar to the desktop version," Blackmagic said.

The iPad app will support file formats including H.264, H.265, Apple ProRes and Blackmagic RAW, with clips available from the "iPad Pro internal storage and Photos library, externally connected iCloud or USB-C media disks," the company wrote on Facebook. 

In addition, you'll be able to open desktop projects on the iPad version, including shared collaborative projects via Blackmagic Cloud. "This means DaVinci Resolve for iPad is the same professional tool, and the same codebase as used on major Hollywood feature films," Blackmagic pointed out. 

There are some changes to the UI because of the screen size, as the menu bar will be removed, for instance. In addition, there's no plan to bring the Edit page to the iPad version, as it's essentially designed for a keyboard and mouse. "This makes it very difficult to move to the iPad without changing it in a way that would cause problems for professional editors who rely on the edit page for their work," the company said. Because of that, the Cut page will gain new features, including "enhanced audio support, key framing , split edits and more." 

The Fusion effects and Fairlight audio tools aren't available yet either, "because their software code has not yet been redesigned for the iPad." However, the company plans to work on those pages and include them in a future release. 

DaVinci Resolve is a popular app with professional editors, in part because of its powerful color correction tools — making Engadget's list of the best editing apps. In addition, there's a powerful free version of the app and the paid version costs just $300, with all future updates free. That has proven tempting for editors who don't want to pay a monthly fee to use Adobe's Premiere, After Effects and Audition tools. 

Google has launched News Showcase in France, and it has teamed up with over 65 publishers representing over 130 publications for the program's expansion in the country. Now, users in France will see panels populated by articles from participating publications when they navigate to the News tab on Android, iOS or the web and in Discover on the mobile platforms. The tech giant says its partners include not just national outlets, but also regional and local ones, including 20 minutes, La Dépêche, L’Equipe, L'Express, Le Figaro, La Provence, Le Monde, Les Echos, Groupe EBRA and Le Parisien. 

In addition to showing a curated selection of headlines from partner outlets, Google is also making "a limited amount" of their paywalled content available to readers for free. The company is paying them for those paywalled articles as part of their licensing agreement. And since the deal would put the publications' content in front of more people, it could gain them more potential subscribers.

While Google's program partners praised News Showcase for helping them disseminate good and truthful information, the company didn't always have a great relationship with the media in France. In 2020, French regulators forced the tech giant to pay publishers for showing snippers their articles in search results after the company implemented the EU's new "Copyright Directive" law. Authorities said back then that the company "caused a serious and immediate harm to the press sector." Google initially removed news previews as a response, but it backtracked and started working with publishers instead. Earlier this year, the tech giant inked deals with over 300 publications across Europe to publish snippets of their stories in search.

Konami's Silent Hill 2 remake for PC and PlayStation 5 isn't the only reimagining of the classic 2001 game on the horizon: The company just announced that the story is also being adapted into a new major motion picture. Return to Silent Hill will apparently serve as a direct sequel to the original 2006 adaptation, and will be helmed by the very same director, Christophe Gans.

The project seems to still be in the development phase. There's no teaser trailer, just a handful storyboard images and pieces of conceptual artwork. Gans spent most of the announcement talking about the plot of the game itself. "We decided to go back to the best of these stories," he said during Konami's Silent Hill Transmission live stream. "The film tells the story of a young guy coming back to Silent Hill, where he has known a great love — and what he's going to find is a pure nightmare." 

Victor Hadida, who also worked on the 2006 film, is also returning to produce, and says that while the project is planning to give the franchise a modern twist, staying true to the spirit of the original game is a key focus. Gans seems to agree, calling the original Silent Hill games "great artistic achievements."

Hearing Christophe Gans talk about the project is genuinely interesting, as the director ponders the unique challenge of translating the immersive narrative that only a video game can deliver into a shorter 90-to-100-minute experience. We won't see how well he manages it for quite some time, however. Return to Silent Hill does not yet have a release date. 

Silent Hill fans, hold onto your butts. Konami today dropped a ton of news about the future of its iconic horror franchise, and aside from confirming a long-rumored remake of Silent Hill 2, the studio revealed three new games in the same universe: Silent Hill Townfall, Ascension and f. They all sound like incredibly different experiences.

Townfall comes from Annapurna Interactive and No Code, a Glasgow studio known for strong narrative skills and horror world-building in titles like Observation and Stories Untold. The short teaser for Townfall features an old-school pocket television clipping through tense conversations and disturbing scenes, and it looks to be the most traditional Silent Hill game of the trio.

Ascension is the least game-like installment here, but it comes with a big name attached: JJ Abrams. It's an interactive streaming series where "the entire community shapes the canon of Silent Hill," and its tagline is "Face Your Trauma Together." Ascension comes from Abrams' studio, Bad Robot, and Genvid, a company that produces interactive live shows. It's described as "a new form of entertainment that blends community, live storytelling and interactivity." Ascension is due out in 2023.

And then there's Silent Hill f, a game that sounds like an exciting departure for the series. It's coming from Ryūkishi07, a creator known for crafting acclaimed visual novels with psychological horror and supernatural mysteries at their core. The teaser for f is gorgeous and gruesome, featuring a young woman as she's consumed from the inside-out by the tentacles of a flesh-eating plant. A YouTube description for the teaser says the game is "set in 1960s Japan featuring a beautiful, yet horrifying world." The video only gets bloodier as it goes, so dip out early if it's making you squirm — or lean in and get a good look, you lovely freak. There's no word yet on a release date or platforms for f.

And that isn't where Konami's renewed interest in Silent Hill ends — alongside Bloober Team's remake of Silent Hill 2, a new movie called Return to Silent Hill is in the works from Christophe Gans, the director of the 2006 film adaptation.

Tesla faced increasing transportation costs paired with "raw material cost inflation," continued component shortages and a strengthening dollar in Q3, all of which which ate into its quarterly revenue ($21.45 billion vs $21.96 billion expected). Yet the EV automaker still managed to set production records at each of its factories. According to the company's quarterly production report published at the start of the month, Tesla built 365,923 vehicles in Q3 and delivered just 343,830. 

Revenue from automotive sales reached $18.69 billion this past quarter, a 55 percent increase year-over-year. Values in Tesla stock have dropped more than 17 percent since that report's publication, CNBC reports, and have fallen more than 5 percent since the close of market Wednesday when Tesla's earnings were released. Despite these most recent losses, Tesla did see its profits double over the past year to $3.29 billion and "it looks like we'll have an epic end of year," CEO Elon Musk said during the investor call.

Tesla had previously targeted a 50 percent annual vehicle sales growth over the next few years. In 2021, Tesla delivered some 936,000 vehicles and has delivered delivered 908,573 vehicle to date in 2022. So in order to meet the 50 percent growth goal, the company will need to sell roughly 1.4 million vehicles in total, this year, as Autoblog notes, with 490,000 of those coming in Q4. Tesla also recommitted to beginning deliveries of its Semi starting in December.  

Developing...

Amazon doesn't want to limit itself to streaming football games on Thursday nights. The internet giant has struck a deal with the NFL for Prime Video to livestream a yearly match on Black Friday, the day after American Thanksgiving. The first game airs November 24th, 2023 at about 3PM Eastern, with the teams to be announced once the league shares its schedule for that season.

Deadlinenotes the Black Friday deal is separate from Thursday Night Football. While it's not certain how much Amazon paid, the existing weekly arrangement has Amazon spending roughly $1 billion per year through 2033.

Amazon and the NFL aren't shy about the reasoning. On top of creating a yearly tradition, this will give you a reason to visit Amazon (and subscribe to Prime) right as the holiday shopping frenzy kicks off. You may come for the football, but stay to buy toys or an Echo speaker.

Whatever Amazon paid for the deal, it's likely to have a large audience. Thursday Night Football's debut on Prime Video is currently averaging 10.8 million viewers, according to Nielsen ratings. That's up 25 percent in the 18-49 age group versus the first five games from 2021. A Black Friday stream might not accelerate growth, but it could keep viewers hooked.

As the rumors suggested, a remake of Silent Hill 2 is in the works from Bloober Team. Bloober is the studio behind Layers of Fear and The Medium, and it's a complete remake, not a remaster of Konami's 2001 horror game. You'll remember it as the one that introduced Pyramid Head.

The surprise for this one comes in the platforms — the remake will be exclusive to PS5 and PC, and the PlayStation Store page for the game is live now. There's no word on a release date so far.

Konami

It's been 10 years since Konami released the last installments in the Silent Hill series, Downpour and Book of Memories (RIP the Vita). PT, a teaser for a Silent Hills game that never materialized, came out in 2014 and was an instant cult hit, reigniting interest in Konami's horror universe. Rumors have been flying about the series this year, including hopes for a PT-style game and the Silent Hill 2 remake from Bloober Team.

Konami revealed the Silent Hill 2 remake during a live stream today.

When a journalist at The Wire, an independent Indian publication, published a story on October 6th about a meme page’s claim that their Instagram post had been wrongfully removed, it hardly seemed like the kind of story that would draw much attention. The Instagram account, @cringearchivist, was a private account with fewer than 1,000 followers. The fact that their post, a satirical image depicting an Indian government official, was removed for breaking the app’s rules around sexual activity — despite showing nothing of the sort — was odd, but not the kind of thing that might draw international attention.

But in an increasingly bizarre turn of events, the nonprofit newsroom began publishing stories with more explosive claims about what it alleged led up to the removal of @cringearchivist’s post. And, in an even more unusual move, Meta not only refuted the claims but said the publication’s reporting was based on “fabricated” evidence and likely the result of some kind of elaborate hoax.

What happened?

After the initial story on the Instagram takedown, The Wire then started looking more closely at what happened. After not getting a response from Meta, reporters started asking around with sources inside the company. According to what one reporter for The WiretoldNewsLaundry, sources within Meta told them the post had been removed not by Instagram’s moderators but at the behest of Amit Malviya, an official in India’s ruling BJP party who oversees its IT cell.

The Wire then published a followup to its original story on October 10th, with the headline “Exclusive: If BJP’s Amit Malviya Reports Your Post, Instagram Will Take it Down – No Questions Asked.” The story alleged that Malviya had the power to remove Instagram posts thanks to Meta’s controversial cross-check program, which has been credited with shielding high-profile celebrities and politicians from the company’s rules.

It was an explosive allegation. While cross-check has received plenty of scrutiny, no previous reporting had indicated that those privileges might extend to the ability for those outside the company to influence content takedowns.

Meta immediately refuted the story, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said that cross-check had “nothing to do with” the ability to report posts and that the original Instagram post was removed due to Instagram's automated tools. He also said that “the underlying documentation appears to be fabricated.”

Rather than backing down, though, The Wire published a new story the next day, this one featuring an email – supposedly sent by Stone — in which the comms official blasted staff for allowing the documents to “leak.” But the supposed email only raised more questions about The Wire’s reporting. Most glaringly, the grammar and syntax in the messages was… strange. It used phrases like “for the last one month” and “post which I will tweet about it.” Journalists who cover Meta and frequently interact with Stone pointed out that not only did it not sound like him, it didn’t sound as if it was written by a native English speaker.

Stone also denied sending the email, and again said The Wire seemed to be relying on faked documents. Meta also published its own rebuttal on October 12th. The screenshots, according to the company, were fabricated. The @cringearchivist posts in question were removed by the company’s automated systems, not a human, much less an Indian government official. “We hope that The Wire is the victim of this hoax, not the perpetrator,” the company wrote.

Once again, The Wire responded that it wasn’t backing down. On October 15th, it published yet another story, titled “Meta Said Damaging Internal Email is ‘Fake’, URL 'Not in Use', Here's Evidence They're Wrong.” The lengthy post included several technical explanations about how the alleged emails from Stone were analyzed and verified. It also cited emails from independent security researchers who allegedly backed up their analysis. And, crucially, it included a screen recording from Meta’s Workplace software that allegedly showed proof of the takedown requests.

But, again, The Wire’s supposed evidence only raised new questions about its sources. On October 16th, Meta weighed in again. This time, the company said that an internal investigation revealed the alleged Workplace video was created from a Workplace account created with a free trial of the software on October 13th.

“At this time, we can confirm that the video shared by The Wire that purports to show an internal Instagram system (and which the Wire claims is evidence that their false allegations are true) in fact depicts an externally-created Meta Workplace account that was deliberately set up with Instagram’s name and brand insignia in order to deceive people,” the company wrote. “It is not an internal account. Based on the timing of this account’s creation on October 13, it appears to have been set up specifically in order to manufacture evidence to support the Wire’s inaccurate reporting.”

And, once again, The Wire said it was standing by its reporting. In a statement on October 17th, the publication essentially said it would no longer engage with Meta on the topic. The publication accused the company of attempting to “goad” them into revealing its sources. “We are not prepared to play this game any further,” it said.

Meanwhile, the alleged proof provided by The Wire continued to fall apart. And one of the security researchers who The Wire said had backed up their verification said he had never sent the messages it cited in its reporting.

On October 18th, the publication reversed course, saying it would review its reporting, and would pull the stories from public view while it investigated. “This will include a review of all documents, source material and sources used for our stories on Meta,” The Wire wrote in a statement. “Based on our sources’ consent, we are also exploring the option of sharing original files with trusted and reputed domain experts as part of this process.”

Now what?

At this point, there are still more questions than answers about how and why The Wire’s reporting went so wrong. It’s clear there are serious issues with the “evidence'' it relied on, though it’s not clear whether it intentionally lied or if it was misled as part of some broader scheme. The publication has said numerous times it relied on two separate sources, which suggests the whole thing is more complex than one bad source.

More information is likely to come out in the coming days and weeks as The Wire and others now look more closely at how the story got so out of control. But there’s a reason why the stakes in this particular incident feel so high. India ranks 150 out of 180 in terms of press freedom, according to Reporters Without Borders. And The Wire, a nonprofit publication, is one of a shrinking number of independent newsrooms in the country.

It’s also worth pointing out that some elements of this saga point to real and serious issues about Meta’s policies and how they impact its billions of users. For one, the entire situation began with something many people have experienced: a content moderation decision gone awry due to a mistake in the company’s automated systems. Amid all the back and forth, Instagram ended up reinstating the original Story post from @cringearchivist that had kicked off The Wire’s investigation.

There’s also the fact that Meta has been less than forthcoming about its cross-check rules for celebrities, politicians and other VIPs. Many details we now know about the program only came to light thanks to a company whistleblower and other investigative reporting into the company. The company’s own Oversight Board, which has been working on an advisory opinion for nearly a year about the program, even accused the company of misleading it about the program.

And while there continues to be no evidence that cross-check would enable a company outsider to initiate content takedowns, journalists and activists have long raised questions about whether Meta gives too much leeway to India’s BJP in other policy decisions.

Put all that together and it becomes clear why a publication like The Wire might be so invested in a story like this in the first place. “Our recent coverage of Meta began with an incident that reflected the lack of transparency at the social media giant and its various platforms,” The Wire wrote in its most recent statement. Unfortunately, its own reporting has so far only made things more opaque.

Google's iOS 16 lock screen widgets are officially available. As outlined in September, the widgets give you at-a-glance info and shortcuts for some of the company's core apps. Gmail can show your new message counts, while Maps can either provide a link to favorite trips (like the commute home) or searches for destinations like restaurants. Widgets for Chrome and the Google app, meanwhile, can help you start web searches, issue voice commands or launch features like Lens translation and Chrome's Dino game.

Other widgets are more specialized, but still helpful. Google News can show the latest headlines. Drive provides quicker access to suggested and starred cloud files. It's also much easier to listen to YouTube Music, as you can quickly start a playlist when you're heading out for a walk.

YouTube and YouTube Music also have home screen widgets. You can quickly browse your YouTube video subscriptions, or search for a YouTube Music tune. 

The widgets should automatically surface when you're customizing your lock screen. As usual, they make the most sense for the always-on display of the iPhone 14 Pro or Pro Max. Regardless of the device you use, they could make Google's apps more compelling. In some cases, they'll even provide an edge over those Android phones that only show a limited amount of info before you unlock the device.