Concord game director Ryan Ellis has stepped down following the decision to take the game offline, according to Kotaku. Developers at Concord developer Firewalk Studios are also uncertain of the future of the studio.

Ellis, whose resume also includes more than seven years at Bungie, informed staff of the change role last week, Kotaku reports. (His LinkedIn still lists his title as “Game Director.”) Ellis also authored the PlayStation Blog post announcing Concord’s shutdown.

That post said the Firewalk team would be exploring options for what to do next with Concord, but Kotaku reports that some developers have “been asked to explore pitches for something completely different.” Some Firewalk developers are apparently refreshing their...

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Apple has just released public betas of iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1, and they include upcoming Apple Intelligence features like text rewriting tools, the glowy new Siri design, a “Clean Up” tool to remove objects from your photos, and more.

To be able to access the betas, you’ll need to register on Apple’s beta software program site. Once you’ve done that, you should be able to see the beta update available in settings for you to download and install. Note that a only few iPhones can access the Apple Intelligence features: last year’s iPhone 15 Pro phones as well as the nearly-here iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro. iPads and Macs with M1 chips or newer can try Apple Intelligence as well.

Previously, these Apple Intelligence...

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Substack is now letting creators stream live videos as another way to connect with their audiences.

Substack has increasingly been expanding from its roots as a newsletter platform, including by adding Twitter-like Notes posts and the ability to publish video podcasts and even letting people follow other users without subscribing to them. As of last month, you don’t even need to set up a publication to share content. With live video, creators will be able to interact with their fans in real time without having to rely on another platform like Twitch.

When you go live, your subscribers will be notified immediately, and you can make your streams available to everyone, to all subscribers, or only to paid subscribers, according to a blog...

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Amazon’s warehouse workers and delivery drivers, the people critical to the company’s ability to get you things fast via Amazon Prime, will soon get Prime subscriptions as part of their employment. The new perk was revealed along with other benefit updates, including an average pay raise, announced by the company on Wednesday.

The free Prime subscription will be part of the benefits package for “front-line” workers starting “early next year,” according to a blog post. They’ll have free Prime for “as long as they are a part of the Amazon team.” Amazon Prime typically costs $14.99 per month or $139 per year.

As for pay, Amazon says that the frontline workers will be getting “at least” $1.50 more per hour beginning next month, which the...

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iOS 18 has a new feature that lets you wirelessly restore an iPhone 16 using another iPhone or an iPad, 9to5Mac reports.

9to5Mac says it was able to simulate the new recovery method. “Essentially, when the iPhone 16 enters Recovery Mode for some reason, users can simply place it next to another iPhone or iPad to start the firmware recovery,” according to 9to5Mac. “The other device will download a new iOS firmware and transfer it to the bricked device.”

Apparently, any device on iOS 18 can do the restoration, but only the iPhone 16 lineup of phones can actually be restored using this method. You can already use an iPhone to wirelessly restore an Apple Watch or an Apple TV, so it’s nice to see a similar feature come to the iPhone, too.

i...

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EA’s sports games are huge franchises, and soon, the company is launching a mobile app to add even more of EA Sports into your life. As part of an investor presentation today, the company officially announced the EA Sports app, which will soft launch for iOS and Android in Spain this fall.

In a press release, EA says the app will be a “socially-driven app” with features like a discovery feed to keep up to date on news and highlights from their favorite teams, interactive challenges you can play during and after live games, and community “arenas.” With the soft launch in Spain, the app will have “a combination of sports content, live sports data, social messaging, interactivity, challenges and more centered on Global Football in...

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Green bubbles, rejoice: your iPhone-using friends are finally going to have a much better time texting you. As part of iOS 18, which was released for everyone on Monday, Apple added support for RCS, the Rich Communication Services protocol for messaging. This means that chats between iPhone and Android users will finally have a bunch of sorely needed features that should have been in place a long time ago.

A big reason I’ve stayed on iOS (and haven’t even considered switching to Android) is because iMessage conversations work especially well for my family group chats, and I don’t want to nerf those chats. This new RCS support is a great step toward making iPhone-to-Android texts work a lot better (though there are still enough drawbacks...

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OpenAI is turning its Safety and Security Committee into an independent “Board oversight committee” that has the authority to delay model launches over safety concerns, according to an OpenAI blog post. The committee made the recommendation to make the independent board after a recent 90-day review of OpenAI’s “safety and security-related processes and safeguards.”

The committee, which is chaired by Zico Kolter and includes Adam D’Angelo, Paul Nakasone, and Nicole Seligman, will “be briefed by company leadership on safety evaluations for major model releases, and will, along with the full board, exercise oversight over model launches, including having the authority to delay a release until safety concerns are addressed,” OpenAI says....

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Amazon employees will be required to return to the office five days per week starting on January 2nd, 2025.

“We’ve decided that we’re going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID,” CEO Andy Jassy says in a memo sent to staff on Monday. Employees have been required to work from the office three days per week since May 2023, and Jassy says that “if anything, the last 15 months we’ve been back in the office at least three days a week has strengthened our conviction about the benefits.”

Jassy says that staffers won’t have to be in the office to deal with things like a sick kid or emergencies. “But, before the pandemic, it was not a given that folks could work remotely two days a week, and that will also...

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Wordle now has a native app for Meta Quest so that you can easily play the game in virtual reality. The free app is available for Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3, and Meta Quest Pro.

Based on screenshots in a Meta blog post and an NYT video, the game looks like, well, Wordle in VR: you’ll have six attempts to guess a five-letter word. But if you have wanted to play the game in an app on your Quest, that’s now something you can do.

“We’re always looking for unique and creative opportunities to reach audiences with our games,” NYT Games general manager Jonathan Knight says in an interview for Meta’s blog post. “This collaboration reflects our embrace of innovative technologies and exploration of...

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Apple officially released macOS Sequoia on Monday, bringing features like the ability to wirelessly mirror your iPhone on your Mac, window tiling tools, and more. There are Apple Intelligence features on the way, too, but they aren’t available yet.

iPhone mirroring is arguably the coolest new feature in macOS Sequoia, and in his testing, my colleague David Pierce said it might change how you use your phone. When you open the phone mirroring app, your iPhone pops up, and you can navigate around it using your mouse and type things with your keyboard. Your iPhone’s notifications can also show up on your Mac. And later this year, you’ll be able to drag and drop things between your iPhone and your Mac.

I’m excited to mess around with the...

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Shogun Showdown sometimes breaks my brain. The new deckbuilding roguelike is all about tactics, and a key part of the game is that you can always see what the enemies plan to do next. Every once in a while, that gets me in a quandary where I know I’ll lose. But when things click into place and I clear everyone out in one fell swoop, I feel like a strategic genius.

In the game, which just left early access, you’re constantly trying to position your character across a small level to either attack your foes or dodge their moves. As you play, you can upgrade your “tiles” (think: cards) to improve their damage, add perks like freezing ice, or lower their cooldown so that you can use them more frequently. You’re also able to stack up to...

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Apple’s new “Visual Intelligence” feature was one of the most impressive things shown at Monday’s iPhone 16 event. The tool lets users scan the world around them through the iPhone’s camera to identify a dog breed, copy event details off a poster, or look up just about anything around them.

It’s a handy-looking feature that fits right in with the iPhone’s new camera button. But it may also be setting the stage for bigger products down the road: it’s the exact kind of thing Apple will need for future tech like AR glasses.

It’s not hard to imagine how Visual Intelligence could help you out on a device that sees everything you see. Take the idea of learning more about a restaurant, like Apple showed for Visual Intelligence on an iPhone:...

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Netflix is looking to bolster its live offerings with some chicken wings. Bloomberg and Variety report that Netflix is in talks with BuzzFeed about streaming live versions of the popular YouTube show “Hot Ones,” which features famous people eating spicy wings while being interviewed by host Sean Evans. Netflix and BuzzFeed want to make a deal this month, according to Bloomberg.

Netflix and BuzzFeed declined to comment.

If Netflix lands the “Hot Ones” deal, it would be a potentially major addition to the company’s growing slate of live shows, including WWE’s Monday Night Raw (which will air on the service starting next year), a three-year deal to show NFL games on Christmas Day, and a live Joe Rogan special that debuted last month....

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Annapurna Interactive, the game company famous for publishing indie hits like Stray, Outer Wilds, Gorogoa, Neon White, What Remains of Edith Finch, and many more, may not be the same company anymore.

Bloomberg reports that the entire staff of Annapurna Interactive, the gaming division of Megan Ellison’s Annapurna, has resigned after failing to convince Ellison to let them spin off its games division into a new company. IGN is corroborating the report.

“All 25 members of the Annapurna Interactive team collectively resigned,’’ former president Nathan Gary and staffers told Bloomberg. “This was one of the hardest decisions we have ever had to make and we did not take this action lightly.”

An Annapurna spokesperson told Bloomberg that...

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