Meta, Google balk as Canada spells out new online news law

Sony Pictures Virtual Reality and developer nDreams have announced that Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord will release for PlayStation VR 2 and Meta Quest 2 and 3 headsets just in time for Halloween on 26th October. Marking the announcement, here’s a brand new gameplay trailer from last night’s State of Play.

Google has agreed to pay the state of California $93 million to settle a lawsuit from the state alleging that the company has violated California’s consumer protection laws.

Sony Pictures Virtual Reality and developer nDreams have announced that Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord will release for PlayStation VR 2 and Meta Quest 2 and 3 headsets just in time for Halloween on 26th October. Marking the announcement, here’s a brand new gameplay trailer from last night’s State of Play.

New Game Plus in Starfield is a trip. It follows some of the rules you probably know about the mode, but goes out of its way to add new and interesting twists on a tested formula. Activating it is as you’d expect: finish the main storyline, choose to start a new game, then do it all again if you desire. What’s different in Starfield is the more freeform nature of the game, as well as the reward structure of an NG+ playthrough. We’ll be discussing the finer points in this guide.

Ten weeks into its existence, Meta Platforms Inc.'s Threads is trying desperately to avoid a fight about what content it allows on its site. After Meta finally added the ability to search for keywords, users looking for posts on several significant topics — such as “Covid” — were surprised to turn up no results. Posts with that word existed, of course, but Meta is making them much harder to find (instead pointing users to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website). To prevent the risk of users finding something potentially dangerous or incorrect on Threads, its competitor to the platform formerly known as Twitter, Meta has decided it is better for them to see nothing at all.

Democratic lawmakers are pressing the top tech firms to open up about the conditions of their “ghost work” — unseen laborers like those labeling data and rating responses who have become pivotal to the artificial intelligence boom.

Meta has started rolling out its Meta Quest v57 update for its Quest virtual reality headsets. The update brings a range of new features and upgrades for Quest users such as unsending image messages, horizon feed, and more. But one of the most important feature upgrades to come from the update is an improvement to the avatar creator, as the company adds better customization options for users to fine-tune their appearance. Users will now be able to do a bunch of customization previously not possible such as adding highlights to hair, using a slider to pick a specific base hair color, and even choosing the color of your eyebrows. This was a feature many had asked for in the past and Meta has finally delivered.

By Jay Peters, a news editor who writes about technology, video games, and virtual worlds. He’s submitted several accepted emoji proposals to the Unicode Consortium.

In July, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, publicly released its AI model Llama 2. Built on 65 billion parameters, Meta described its platform as a “smaller foundational model” that was suitable for AI research and testing new approaches as it consumed less computing power. But now, a new report suggests that CEO Mark Zuckerberg is entering the big AI race and intends to compete with the likes of OpenAI. Meta is apparently working on a new AI model that is far superior to Llama 2 and will rival GPT-4, the latest large language model by OpenAI.

Meta Platforms Inc. and three entertainment industry groups are the latest to face a lawsuit alleging that a workplace diversity program intentionally discriminates against White men and women.

It seems Meta is turning further and further away from its news ambitions. Between threatening to block news altogether in parts of the US (or all of it), Canada, and more, the company has had a rocky history with hosting news in general. Now, the company plans to remove the News tab in some of the largest European Markets.

By Tom Warren, a senior editor covering Microsoft, PC gaming, console, and tech. He founded WinRumors, a site dedicated to Microsoft news, before joining The Verge in 2012.