In the midst of a sexual harassment lawsuit that has engulfed the company in turmoil, Blizzard will give Diablo II fans the chance to play the game’s upcoming remaster during two separate early access weekends. The first of those will begin on August 13th at 1PM ET. It will be open to those who pre-ordered Diablo II: Resurrected or the Diablo Prime Evil Collection, which includes both the remaster and Diablo 3, on PC, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5 and PS4.

Blizzard Entertainment

If you fall into that camp, you’ll have until August 17th at 1PM ET to play through Act I and II of the story as the Amazon, Barbarian, Druid, Paladin or Sorceress. What’s more, this time around, Blizzard will allow you to play with up to seven other players, with support for cross-progression enabled. Just note that during the early access weekend, that feature will only work on platforms where you’ve pre-ordered the game.

One week later, starting on August 20th at 1PM ET, Blizzard will open the beta to anyone who wants to take part. At that point, you’ll have until the 23rd to see the work the studio has done to update its beloved action RPG. Unfortunately, neither beta will be available to check out on the Nintendo Switch. And if you want to see how the Assassin and Necromancer play in the remaster, you will also have to wait until the game’s September 23rd release date.

Well, we knew the next Sonic the Hedgehog movie would include Knuckles, but we must admit never in our wildest dreams did we think Idris Elba would voice the red echidna. Yet here we are with the famed actor announcing on Tuesday that he’s been cast to the role.

All of this is another surprising development in one of the most unusual Hollywood success stories in recent memory. After a nightmare-inducing first trailer, we were almost sure the first Sonic the Hedgehog would be a complete trainwreck. And yet, it turned out decent and was one of the last box office hits before the pandemic shut down theaters globally. None of that is to say the series will catch lightning in the bottle twice. After all, Elba has burned through some of his goodwill, attaching his name to projects like Cats. However, at the very least, we’re curious to see how this one turns out.

The Green Knight, one of the best movies of the year, is currently only available to watch in theaters. However, there's some good news if you can't make it out to your local cinema. Distributor A24 plans to stream the film for one night only on August 18th, and you can purchase the $20 ticket to see The Green Knight starting today through the company's Screening Room website.

Once you buy a ticket, you'll have three ways to stream the movie. You can watch it on a web browser, via A24's Apple TV app or through the Roku app. Starting at 9PM, you'll have four hours to finish the film. We will also note that A24 only plans to stream The Green Knight on the 18th in the US.

The topic of simultaneous theatrical and online releases has been a complicated subject in Hollywood recently, with Disney's Black Window generating $60 million in streaming revenue for the company while at the same time leading to a legal spat with star Scarlett Johansson. With no foreseeable conclusion to the pandemic, we're likely to see more companies like A24 try out different distribution strategies.

Pokémon Go developer Niantic Labs has acquired Scaniverse, the company announced on Tuesday. According to creator Keith Ito, the iOS 3D scanning app will remain available on the App Store, with all the features previously part of its $17 annual subscription now included for free. What’s more, Niantic will continue to support the software with future feature updates.

Much like its other recent acquisition, it sounds like Niantic hopes Scaniverse will help in its goal to build a 3D map of the world. As part of the deal, Ito will join the company's augmented reality engineering team. “Together, we plan on taking 3D scanning to new heights by combining Niantic’s dynamic mapping with Scaniverse’s LiDAR reconstruction,” he said.

Meanwhile, the company notes, “Scaniverse will make multi-OS scanning easier and more accessible to the Niantic Explorer community who contribute to this effort every day.” It says that will allow it to create more immersive AR experiences in Pokémon Go, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite and its upcoming games.

Facebook has banned a marketing firm for its involvement in a disinformation campaign that used influencers and fake accounts to undermine COVID-19 vaccines. The company removed 65 Facebook accounts and 243 Instagram accounts associated with a campaign, which also recruited unwitting influencers to boost its message.

According to Facebook, the network “originated in Russia,” but was linked to Fazze, a subsidiary of a UK-registered marketing firm that operates from Russia. The accounts primarily targeted India and Latin America, though the United States was also targeted “to a much lesser extent.” The campaign came in “two distinct waves,” according to Facebook.

“First, in November and December 2020, the network posted memes and comments claiming that the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine would turn people into chimpanzees,” the company wrote in a report. “Five months later, in May 2021, it questioned the safety of the Pfizer vaccine by posting an allegedly hacked and leaked AstraZeneca document.” Facebook didn’t speculate on who hired Fazze or what their motive was, but Ben Nimmo, the company’s Global Threat Intelligence Lead for Influence Operations, noted that the activity “coincided roughly with times when regulators and some of the target countries were discussing emergency authorization for each vaccine.”

Ultimately, the campaign was “sloppy” with “quite low” engagement, according to Nimmo. The exception was the paid posts from legitimate influencers who got caught up in the campaign, as those posts “attracted some limited attention.” However, it was influencers who exposed the campaign, after a handful publicly disclosed that Fazze had offered to pay them to “claim that Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine is deadly,” according to The New York Times.

While Facebook regularly publishes details around inauthentic behavior and foreign interference on its platform, this is one of the first that centered around COVID-19 vaccines. The topic has become a thorny issue for Facebook, as officials have blamed social media for not doing enough to prevent vaccine disinformation from spreading.

In a call with reporters, Facebook’s Head of Security Policy, Nathaniel Gleicher. said that the effort, though unsuccessful, highlights how disinformation campaigns are evolving. “Influence operations increasingly span many platforms and target influential voices because running successful campaigns with large numbers of fake accounts on a single network has become harder and harder,” he said.

Motional, a joint autonomous vehicle venture between Aptiv and Hyundai, is expanding its operations in California. The company plans to start public road mapping and testing of its robotaxi in Los Angeles this month. Motional is currently testing the AV in Boston, Pittsburgh, Las Vegas (including driverless tests) and Singapore.

The company and partner Lyft plan to start a robotaxi service in several US markets in 2023. Extensive road mapping and testing are essential precursors for that to happen. Motional's initial LA tests will take place in and around Santa Monica with a safety driver at the wheel, TechCrunch notes.

Los Angeles notoriously has some of the worst traffic in the US, so Motional's robotaxi will likely be put through its paces there. Waymo started mapping the streets of Los Angeles in 2019, but its AV testing has largely been contained to the Phoenix area.

Motional is also boosting its LA research and development facility and opening an operations center there. The company opened its Santa Monica offices in 2016 and key members of Motional's machine learning and hardware teams are based at that location. Meanwhile, Motional has opened its first office in the San Francisco Bay Area, where its compute design team is based.

Nintendo is gearing up for its next indie-centric stream. The company has announced an Indie World Showcase for August 11th, starting at noon ET.

The stream will run for around 20 minutes and focus on second- and third-party indie games. While it's unlikely Nintendo will surprise everyone with any details about the The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sequel or the next Super Smash Bros. Ultimate fighter, it'll probably be worth tuning in. 

During a previous showcase in April, Nintendo announced the arrival of indie classic Fez on Switch, showed off the House of the Dead remake and confirmed a sequel to Oxenfree is on the way. You can watch the latest edition of Nintendo's Indie World Showcase below.

The New York City Police Department has spent over $159 million on surveillance systems and maintenance since 2007 without public oversight, according to newly released documents. The Legal Aid Society (LAS) and the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP) obtained the documents from the NYPD, which include contracts with vendors. They show that the NYPD has spent millions on facial recognition, predictive policing tech and other surveillance systems.

The NYPD made the purchases through a Special Expenses Fund. It didn't need to gain the approval of the NYC Council or other city officials before signing the contracts, as Wired reports. 

STOP and other privacy groups lobbied for the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST) Act, which passed last year and requires the NYPD to disclose details about its public surveillance infrastructure. The Special Expenses Fund was shut down after the legislation passed. LAS and STOP threatened legal action if the NYPD didn't detail its surveillance practices. 

Among the documents are contracts for Palantir, American Science and Engineering (which provides x-ray vans that can detect weapons in vehicles 1,500 feet away) and Idemia Solutions, which provides biometric services such as facial recognition.

The NYPD also signed a contract with KeyW Corporation for Stingray cell tower simulators. Stingrays, also known as international mobile subscriber identity catchers, spoof cell towers to lure mobile phones into connecting to them. The devices can then collect data sent by a phone, such as its location. The NYPD previously admitted it used Stingrays on more than a thousand occasions between 2008 and 2015.

“For years, the NYPD has hidden its surveillance slush fund from the public, not to protect us, but to protect its bottom line,” STOP executive director Albert Fox Cahn said in a statement. “These technologies are expensive, invasive, and just don’t work. But the NYPD isn’t just wasting millions on unproven technologies, it’s putting Black and Brown communities at risk. High tech errors are often just the first step to false arrest, wrongful imprisonment, and being torn away from your family because of a faulty algorithm.”

“No police department or federal agency has gone to the level of depth and transparency on law enforcement tools used in the field that the NYPD did in its POST Act disclosures," an NYPD spokesperson told Wired in a statement.

Twitch has announced that it will offer slightly more detail to users when it hands down suspensions for violating its content rules. As The Verge notes, the Amazon-owned platform can still be frustratingly vague when justifying why a users account has been suspended. The new update will see users informed of the name of the offending stream, the date that it aired, and the rule that it broke, but nothing more.

Opaque moderation has been a problem for Twitch before, and as we reported last year, the site still has a problem with context. In 2020, the platform suspended a professional Valorant player when their young child appeared on the stream while the player was answering the door. There are common-sense reasons to ban minors from streaming, but this was clearly an accident rather than intentional.

A similar incident took place when Twitch, without warning, suddenly demonetized a number of high-profile accounts during the Hot Tub Meta. At the time, it said that it should have “alerted affected streamers to this change before it happened — it was a mistake not to do so.” As we wrote in 2020 the site needs to make much more of an effort to explain why it’s doing what it’s doing or else see the relationship with its community deteriorate even further.

Wondering what to do with your Bitcoin stash now that you can't buy a Tesla? It might be time to catch a big-screen flick. According to CNN, AMC has announced that it plans to accept Bitcoin as payment for tickets and snacks at all US theaters by the end of 2021. Company chief Adam Aron didn't say how you'd make those payments, but he did hint that AMC was also researching other ways it could join the "burgeoning cryptocurrency universe."

American theaters should also support Apple Pay and Google Pay for online purchases by the end of the year, Aron said.

The executive explained the decision as a result of his stint on the board of Centricus Acquisition Corp, a contractor for the blockchain company Arquit. And yes, the Reddit meme stock frenzy played a role —Aron is aware that many of AMC's recently added shareholders are "quite enthusiastic" about cryptocurrencies. He's hoping the tech enthusiasts who pumped up his company's stock value will be frequent customers, to put it another way.

Whether or not this is a sustainable idea is another matter. Gizmodonotes that crypto transaction fees can be steep, and you might pay a premium for that already expensive soda. The volatility of cryptocurrency remains a problem, too. The Bitcoin you spend on tickets one day could be worth enough to rent a whole theater just a few months later. AMC would have to figure out how to ride that uncertainty without damaging its bottom line.