Google Photos is making it easier to follow activity in your shared albums with a new Updates section. In the new section, you’ll be able to see notifications like updates to a shared album and updates to a conversation within Google Photos, according to a support post from Google.

The Updates section can be found by tapping a bell icon that replaces the Sharing button (the one that looks like two people). Updates are shown chronologically, and you’ll be able to look at activity from “today, yesterday, this week, this month, last month, and beyond.” “We want to streamline how you can view recent activity with an interface that makes albums, groups, and conversations more accessible.”

Google notes that if you want to access shared...

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Sega is planning to delist a lot of its classic games from digital storefronts as of December 6th at 11:59PM PT.

Steam will be affected the most, losing 62 titles including Crazy Taxi, Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine, Jet Set Radio, NiGHTS into Dreams, and Sonic 3D Blast. Sega is pulling 12 titles from the Xbox store. The Nintendo eShop and the PlayStation Store will “just” lose SEGA Genesis Classics — but that title includes more than 50 old Genesis games, so it still means a lot will be unavailable. You can see the full lists of what’s getting pulled on a Sega support page.

Any games that you have purchased will still be available to download and play after they’re delisted from the storefronts, so if you’ve had your eye on any of...

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Striking New York Times tech workers have created a “Guild Builds” page dedicated to strike-themed games you can play, including a spin on Wordle, a word search, and the custom Connections I reported on earlier today.

As part of its strike announcement on Monday, the New York Times Tech Guild requested that people don’t cross the digital picket line to play the NYT’s daily puzzle games. This collection of five other games offers an alternative if you want to support the striking workers but also do some brain teasers.

There are currently five games on the page:

• Strikle, the twist on Wordle
• Connections: Strike Edition, which is a puzzle made in a Connections creator
• Word Search
• Match Strike, a memory game
• Frogger 8th Avenue

They...

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Roblox is going to block kids from accessing certain types of experiences following reports alleging that the platform has enabled child abuse.

One new measure will stop kids under 13 from accessing experiences with “certain types of interactive features,” Roblox says in a post on its developer forum. Those include “social hangouts,” where the primary purpose is to communicate with others over text or voice chat, and “free-form 2D user creation” experiences, where players can do things like draw on a chalkboard or whiteboard. This change goes into effect beginning November 18th.

Another change stops kids under 13 from playing, searching for, or being able to discover unrated experiences. This change goes into effect after December 3rd....

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Striking New York Times tech workers have created a custom Connections puzzle so fans can get their daily fix without crossing the digital picket line.

The “Strike Edition” puzzle was made on a website that lets people create their own Connections. The workers, part of the New York Times Tech Guild, specifically asked NYT readers not to play NYT games when the strike began on Monday, so the custom puzzle offers a way to play while still respecting the Guild’s wishes.

“We have seen a groundswell of support from subscribers who have been proudly tweeting about purposely breaking their game streaks to support our strikers,” says Jen Sheehan, spokesperson for the NewsGuild of New York.

The Guild didn’t make the website themselves; the site...

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There’s no evidence Google is hiding a map of polling places from Trump voters, despite the suggestions of a video reposted by Elon Musk.

In the video, originally shared by X user DogeDesigner, a user searches Google for “where can I vote for Harris” and “where can I vote for Trump.” The Harris search shows Google’s 2024 US elections panel, which includes a map you can use to find where to vote. The Trump search does not.

But there’s a complicating factor here: Harris is also the name of a county in Texas. And the polling map pops up when people search terms like “where can I vote” and a location — try searches like “where can I vote for...

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Listening to Nintendo music isn’t easy. It’s not available on streaming platforms, so I usually end up scouring YouTube for songs from Animal Crossing and Metroid. Because of this, I was hoping that Nintendo Music, a new app that surprise-launched last week, would be my one-stop shop for listening to Nintendo soundtracks. But while it features some clever ideas, there are lots of frustrations and weird choices from Nintendo that mean it isn’t quite what I was hoping for.

Navigating the app, which is available on iOS and Android but only accessible to Switch Online subscribers, feels a lot like other music services like Apple Music or Spotify. You can browse tracks from individual games or hand-curated playlists themed around things like...

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Microsoft’s Q1 2025 earnings are in, and the results show that Microsoft’s software gaming revenues are way up even as Xbox hardware revenue is declining.

The company says that its Xbox content and services revenue grew 61 percent year over year from the previous quarter — a figure driven by “53 points of net impact from the Activision acquisition,” according to the company’s press release. But hardware revenues again declined, down 29 percent this quarter, which may be influenced by Microsoft’s continued strategy to make its games available more widely than just Xbox consoles.

During the quarter, Microsoft introduced its new Xbox Game Pass “Standard” tier and a price hike for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Q1 also saw the arrival of Call of...

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Now that Apple has finished announcing its slate of new M4-equipped Mac computers, we’ve finally been able to see them in person. The Verge’s Vjeran Pavic got some hands-on time with the new products and took some gorgeous photos that you can peruse below.

I’m blown away by how small the new Mac Mini is; the old Mac Mini, which was already small, seems giant in comparison. Vjeran tells me that, in person, the smaller Mac Mini is cute but that it’s “more like a mini Mac Studio than a mini Mac Mini.” He also says there’s no way to reach the power button, which is on the underside of the computer, without lifting it up.

As for the other computers, the new colors of the iMac really pop when they’re lined up together in these photos, if you...

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Cyberpunk 2077 is making the jump to Macs. According to Apple’s announcement video for the new M4-equipped MacBook Pros, CD Projekt Red’s sci-fi RPG will be available on Macs “early next year.”

“Taking full advantage of Apple silicon and advanced technologies of Metal, the world of the dark future is available to Mac gamers for the very first time,” CD Projekt Red says in an announcement. “Players can enjoy advanced features like path tracing, frame generation, and built-in Spatial Audio for even more immersive gameplay and stunning visuals.

The game will be available on the Mac App Store and Steam when it launches next year. The version launching on Mac is the Ultimate Edition, which includes the very good Phantom Liberty expansion,...

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Google is building a bunch of AI products, and it’s using AI quite a bit as part of building those products, too. “More than a quarter of all new code at Google is generated by AI, then reviewed and accepted by engineers,” CEO Sundar Pichai said on the company’s third quarter 2024 earnings call. It’s a big milestone that marks just how important AI is to the company.

AI is helping Google make money as well. Alphabet reported $88.3 billion in revenue for the quarter, with Google Services (which includes Search) revenue of $76.5 billion, up 13 percent year-over-year, and Google Cloud (which includes its AI infrastructure products for other companies) revenue of $11.4 billion, up 35 percent year-over-year.

Operating incomes were also...

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Disney is releasing an experience tied to Fortnite — but it’s not the big “persistent universe” featuring all things Disney that was teased earlier this year. This new experience launching today is instead all about ESPN, and it’s called ESPN Football Island.

In the experience, you’ll be able to participate in activities, challenges, mini-games, and a big Payload-style game called “Touchdown Rush” where you guard a football from your opponents as it moves toward an end zone. ESPN Football Island will also have persistent progression and its own unlockable cosmetics that will be exclusive to the experience.

ESPN Football Island was built using the Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN), a powerful set of development tools Epic launched last...

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Fortnite is bigger than a battle royale now, and to help make progressing through the various available battle passes a little bit more streamlined, Epic Games is going to allow XP from any experience apply to any of those passes.

Currently, XP you earn across various modes in Fortnite doesn’t help you progress through the special passes for Lego Fortnite and the music-themed Fortnite Festival. Instead, you progress by earning “studs” and “festival points,” respectively, by playing those modes.

Starting November 2nd, however, Epic will begin the migration to let you progress using XP. As Epic details in a blog post, the change will first apply the upcoming Music Pass (renamed from Festival Pass), meaning festival points will go away. On...

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Apple Intelligence has finally launched in US English, and if you’re in the EU, you’ll be able to use the new AI features on your iPhone and iPad starting in April, according to an Irish Apple newsroom post.

When the features roll out to iPhones and iPads in the EU, they’ll include “include many of the core features of Apple Intelligence, including Writing Tools, Genmoji, a redesigned Siri with richer language understanding, ChatGPT integration, and more,” Apple says in the post.

However, if EU users want to get a taste of Apple Intelligence sooner, they can try the initial features on their Mac that are now available with macOS Sequoia 15.1. That first batch of features includes AI-powered writing tools, improvements to Siri, and...

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Apple’s new USB-C-equipped Magic Mouse somehow still has the charging port on the bottom. While Apple could have used the launch as an opportunity to move the charging port from the underside of the device — where the port has remained for nearly a decade, despite other updates to the mouse and being mocked for the decision — the port is still there.

This new $99 Magic Mouse means that, for the foreseeable future, Apple still thinks that the best way to charge your Magic Mouse is by flipping it over to plug it in, making it so you can’t use it. Why?

There have been other solutions to the ridiculous Magic Mouse charging situation. For example, my colleague Wes Davis wrote about an ergonomic grip for the Magic Mouse 2 that can charge the...

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Apple is updating the iMac with an M4 chip. The new iMac, announced this morning, includes an M4 chip with an 8-core CPU and up to a 10-core GPU. The entry-level model costs $1,299 with two Thunderbolt USB-C 4 ports, while the higher-end models start at $1,499 and have four ports.

It’s also bundled with accessories that now use USB-C charging ports instead of Lightning. Like the prior model, the new iMac has a 24-inch, 4.5K display. However, Apple is offering a new “nano-texture glass option” for $200 extra, which is supposed to help reduce reflections and glare.

Additionally, the iMac’s base RAM has been doubled to 16GB over the prior model, with the ability to configure the higher-end option with up to 32GB. Apple’s new iMac also...

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I used to hate jigsaw puzzles. I thought they were frustrating, messy, and took way too long to solve. But my wife showed me how those parts of jigsaw puzzles can actually be fun: there’s something satisfying and meditative about working through those frustrations, sorting through the mess, and putting a picture together, one piece at a time, over the course of a few hours. (Or days.)

The makers of Wilmot Works It Out, a new puzzle game, understand this, and everything about the game is designed to make solving puzzles fun instead of annoying.

In the game, you play as Wilmot, an adorable white square with a face who has a puzzle-by-mail subscription. (He’s the same smiley square from Wilmot’s Warehouse, a 2019 puzzle game also made by...

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Governor Tim Walz is returning to Twitch and this time, he’ll actually be playing a game. Earlier this month, Kamala Harris’ campaign teamed up with a Twitch streamer to live-stream a Walz rally as part of a World of Warcraft stream. But on Sunday afternoon, Walz will be playing Madden NFL on Twitch with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY).

Like with live-streaming the Walz rally alongside WoW, the idea with this Madden livestream is to try to reach young men, a demographic that Trump polls relatively high with.

Ocasio-Cortez is already well-known for her huge Among Us stream ahead of the 2020 election and a stream in July 2023 where she played Pico Park and Gartic Phone. (She’s a fan of League of Legends, too.) But while Walz is a k...

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Apple got a mixed victory in a patent infringement lawsuit against medical device maker Masimo. On Friday, a federal jury determined that Masimo had infringed on some Apple patents, and as part of the verdict, Apple was awarded $250 — yes, just $250 — as a statutory remedy for Masimo’s infringement.

$250 is the statutory minimum damages for the alleged infringement and Apple had sought that figure, Bloomberg Law reports. “We’re not here for the money,” Apple attorney John Desmarais said to jurors in closing arguments, according to the publication.

Masimo’s W1 smartwatch, Freedom smartwatch, and health module infringed on one patent, while Masimo’s charger infringed on another, per the verdict form. The jury also found that Masimo’s...

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