-
Genki’s new customizable controller has a big screen and adjustable buttons
Genki has launched the Manta, its first fully in-house designed game controller, via a Kickstarter campaign that emphasises deep customisation over conventional design. The pad places its thumbsticks and buttons above a large 2.9-inch LCD screen, giving it a chunkier profile than rival controllers, and lets players adjust settings, remap buttons and create macros directly…
-
SimCity SNES Soundtrack Makes A Surprise Return In This Week’s Nintendo Music Update
Nintendo has added the SimCity SNES soundtrack to its Nintendo Music app for Switch Online members, a welcome surprise given that the 1991 Super Nintendo city-building game itself remains unavailable on the service’s SNES library. The update revives interest in the classic Will Wright title, which Nintendo published and helped Maxis develop, and reintroduces its…
-
Surrogate says baby ‘ripped away’ 60 seconds after birth as custody fight erupts after abortion refusal
A surrogate mother in Texas, McKenna West, is locked in a custody dispute after refusing the intended parents’ request that she abort the baby following a prenatal diagnosis of hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS), a serious congenital heart condition. West says the newborn was taken from her roughly 60 seconds after birth, and the case…
-
Migrant rape claim, courts weigh Anthony verdict and Lil Durk trial, Musk’s satellite waste plan
A series of legal developments drew attention on 21 August. In the UK, an Upper Tribunal ruling allowed Hendrix Ekwen, an Italian national convicted of rape in 2020, to remain despite a deportation order; the tribunal’s assessment turned on the legal test of whether he represented a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat. In Texas,…
-
Trouble In Paradise: John Ross Bowie & Brian Posehn On Who Ruined Utopia In ‘Stuart Fails’ E5
In the fifth episode of HBO Max’s “Big Bang Theory” spinoff “Stuart Fails To Save the Universe,” stars John Ross Bowie and Brian Posehn discuss how their characters, Barry Kripke and Bert, inadvertently destroy a peaceful tribal utopia the show’s four inter-dimensional travellers stumble upon. The episode sees Kripke introduce concepts of ownership and free…
-
Udio and GRAI Adopt UMG and Liquidax-Backed AI Music Patents
Music IP Holdings (MIH), a company formed by Universal Music Group and Liquidax Capital, has announced that AI music start-ups Udio and GRAI are the first to license patents from its portfolio for use in their AI products. The move matters because it establishes a framework through which UMG and its partners can be compensated…
-
Barbra Streisand welcomes Rosie O’Donnell back to television
Barbra Streisand sent Rosie O’Donnell a warm personal message welcoming her back to television as O’Donnell guest-hosted Jimmy Kimmel Live! for the week, a gesture O’Donnell shared publicly and described as deeply touching given her long-standing admiration for the singer. The exchange added a sentimental note to O’Donnell’s return to the small screen, underscoring the…
-
Trade unions vow to fight against single-sex spaces
Eight trade unions, including Unison, Unite and the National Union of Students, have voiced strong opposition to new Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) guidance on single-sex spaces and pledged to resist its implementation. The code of practice, which came into force earlier this month, requires toilets, changing rooms, hospital wards and refuges to be…
-
Russian snoops add OAuth abuse to targeted phishing campaigns
Google’s Threat Intelligence Group says it is tracking three suspected Russian state-linked hacking groups running highly targeted phishing and OAuth-abuse campaigns against people in government, academia, aerospace, defence and think tanks across Europe and the US. The operations have been ongoing since at least last year, with some activity as recent as this month, and…
-
AI data startup Micro1 reaches $500M gross run rate amid AI training boom
Micro1, a four-year-old AI data-labelling startup, has seen its gross annual run rate surge from $100 million to $500 million over the past eight months, reflecting soaring demand from AI labs and corporations for high-quality training data. The company, which contracts domain experts such as doctors, lawyers and scientists, retains roughly 60-70% of that revenue,…