BioWare now has fewer than 100 employees after laying off “around two dozen” staffers and shifting others to different projects at EA, Bloomberg reports. The changes follow BioWare’s own “Studio Update” published this week where GM Gary McKay said the studio had “worked diligently over the past few months to match many of our colleagues with other teams at EA that had open roles.” According to Bloomberg, “dozens” of staffers that had been “loaned out” to other teams at EA after the release of Dragon Age: The Veilguard apparently learned this week that those shifts would be permanent.McKay said that as a “core team” at the studio is developing the next Mass Effect game – which got a teaser trailer more than four years ago – and that the changes will help BioWare “become a more agile, focused studio.”McKay’s post didn’t mention layoffs. Bloomberg reports that BioWare had “more than 200 people two years ago.”Last week, EA said that The Veilguard significantly missed expectations. EA Sports FC hasn’t done as well as expected during EA’s 2025 fiscal year, either.EA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. IGN also reported this week on layoffs at BioWare.

Every so often, Microsoft will remove a pretty useful feature from one of its apps. Sometimes, they evaporate for seemingly no reason, and sometimes, the feature just wasn't seeing enough use to justify continuing its support. Today, we're seeing an example of the latter case: Microsoft has announced that it's sunsetting the Microsoft Defender VPN feature at the end of February. It's a move that's bound to prompt a lot of questions, including "When on Earth did Microsoft Defender get a VPN feature?"

YouTube is expanding the availability of its dedicated community space feature to more creators on the site, giving them more opportunities to connect with their fans without needing to lean on another platform like Discord. Only available for access via mobile devices, Communities first launched during the Made for YouTube event last fall, letting the creators write posts with images and text while also enabling fans to start discussions. “We’ve been testing Communities with a small group of creators and have heard positive feedback, which is why we’re excited to keep expanding access, says today’s post from YouTube. Creators can monitor and moderate via a Community Hub in the YouTube Studio app that combines the activity from their channel, and can also offer suggestions for replies to fans.YouTube is also renaming its previously existing Community tab to Posts to try to keep things clear between the two things:The tab will work just as it does today, just with a new name. Creators can still share updates and announcements via posts and viewers can engage by commenting on those posts like they always have!Creators will still need an invitation to access Communities, which will come in an email and as a banner on their channel pages on the YouTube app. Once received, creators will be invited to “Go to Community” to learn more and then allow them to enable the features.

On January 9th, 56-year-old Peter Akemann flew his DJI Mini 3 Pro drone far beyond the legal limit of his ability to see — and into a Super Scooper water dumping plane fighting the Los Angeles Palisades wildfires, grounding it for repairs after punching a hole in its left wing. Now that authorities have traced the drone back to him, he agreed Friday to plead guilty — possibly escaping a year in jail in exchange for 150 hours of community service in support of wildfire relief and the roughly $65,000 it cost to repair the plane.According to the plea agreement (PDF via Courthouse News), his drone flew quite a distance and punched quite a hole:While the Firefighting Aircraft was conducting its firefighting missions, defendant drove to the area near the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, California, and parked his vehicle on the top floor of a parking structure. Defendant launched the Drone and flew it toward the Pacific Palisades to observe damage caused by the Palisades Fire. At the time, the Federal Aviation Administration had issued Temporary Flight Restrictions that prohibited drone operations near the Southern California wildfires, including the Palisades Fire. Defendant flew the Drone at least 2500 meters away from its launch point and lost visual sight of the Drone while flying it. Thereafter, the Drone collided with the Firefighting Aircraft, causing an approximately 3-inch-by-6-inch hole in the left wing of Firefighting Aircraft. The Hollywood Reporter writes that Akemann isn’t just any old drone pilot, but rather the former president and chief technologist of video game developer Skydance Interactive and the co-founder of Treyarch, a studio known for its Call of Duty and Spider-Man games. THR writes that he “recently left his role” at Skydance, which would be news in and of itself. Both the Akemann pleading guilty and the game developer are Peter T. Akemann. A LinkedIn page for Akemann no longer exists, and an X social media page for a Peter T. Akemann has been scrubbed. It is possible that the US District Court will not accept Akemann’s plea agreement, which his lawyers are making jointly with the US Attorney’s Office, in which case he faces a year of jail time, a year of supervised release, and either up to a $100,000 fine or “twice the gross loss resulting from the offense,” whichever is greater.Akemann’s attorneys told ABC News he’s now “deeply sorry for the mistake he made by flying a drone near the boundary of the Palisades fire area on January 9, 2025, and for the resulting accident” and “accepts responsibility for his grave error in judgment.” They also added that there are “mitigating factors that will come to light during the court proceedings, including Mr. Akemann’s reliance on the DJI Drone’s geo fencing safeguard feature and the failure of that feature.” DJI recently eliminated its most restrictive forms of geofencing, potentially letting drone pilots fly over active wildfires and government buildings like the White House when it might have previously stopped them automatically. That said, DJI recently explained to us that even the earlier versions of its software would not have stopped someone from flying over a temporary no-fly-zone, like a wildfire, unless that person let their drone download the updated temporary flight restriction lists first.

Chrome is the most widely used browser, but it’s far from being the best. For one, it’s practically the textbook example of Google’s obsession with collecting private data, tracking nearly everything we do online. While Google has made some recent changes, an advertising company at its core will always find ways to gather customer data.

Docking stations can be a great way to expand the ports on your existing devices. But if you need a solution that you can take with you while you're on the go, then going with a USB hub is going to be an absolute must.

Nvidia hasn't been shy to talk gaming at 4K with its RTX 40 and RTX 50 series. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 was the most powerful GPU you could buy and the RTX 5090 has since taken that mantle. These graphics cards are great for enjoying all the latest games at 4K with ultra settings configured, though some titles would prove to be too much of a challenge for high frame rates. That's where Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) comes into play. There are various levels to this technology, but it works wonders for high-fidelity gaming and we could see 8K arrive sooner than we think.

Have you ever gotten into a debate with an OpenAI bot? If so, did you find it particularly convincing or appealing to human nature? If you did, there's a good reason behind it. OpenAI has revealed that, to train some of the most powerful AI models in the world, it simply points it toward a subreddit built solely for argument and debate and lets the training algorithm do the rest.

Whenever a new generation of CPUs or GPUs drops, PC users are susceptible to a wave of FOMO clouding their rational thinking. From the announcement livestreams and preview benchmarks to third-party reviews and stock issues, everyone gets swept up in the hype. On the one hand, this is what we look forward to every year or two, but on the other hand, a fancy new product doesn't magically make your existing PC trash.

The Sandman. Tom Sturridge as Dream in episode 101 of The Sandman. | Image: Liam Daniel/Netflix © 2022<br>Though Netflix is planning to bring back a number of its ongoing series in the coming months, the streamer has decided to cancel its adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman.Netflix announced today that The Sandman will conclude with its upcoming second season. In a statement about the show coming to an end, Sandman showrunner Allan Heinberg said that the series “has always been focused exclusively on Dream’s story, and back in 2022, when we looked at the remaining Dream material from the comics, we knew we only had enough story for one more season.”As Variety notes, Netflix took its time before renewing The Sandman after its first season and did not announce a specific number of episodes it ordered. Netflix also made a point of referring to the renewal as “a continuation of The Sandman world,” which at the time included the Dead Boy Detectives adaptation that was canceled last August after a single season. That all makes Heinberg’s statement sound plausible, but the timing of Netflix’s move to cancel The Sandman links it to the multiple allegations of sexual assault that Gaiman is currently facing. In response to the allegations, Gaiman wrote in a blog post earlier this month, “I’m far from a perfect person, but I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever.”Amazon made a similar decision last year when it first halted production on the third season of its Good Omens (a Guiman novel co-written with Terry Pratchett) adaptation following earlier reporting about Gaiman’s actions, and ultimately decided to rework it into one 90-minute-long finale episode. Disney also decided to axe its plans to adapt Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book. More recently, Dark Horse Comics announced that it was dropping its series based on Gaiman’s Anansi Boys. Amazon’s adaptation of Anansi Boys has been in development for ages and was intended to debut later this year, but it wouldn’t be surprising if those plans changed as well.

After Nvidia released its highly-hyped GeForce RTX 5090 cards, stockists began selling out really quickly. While we hope that at least some of those cards got into the hands of people who will put them to good use, there are some that ended up in the clutches of scalpers. Now, the price of an RTX 5090 has shot up to $9,000 on the second-hand market, and some people are fighting back against the scalpers with fake product listings.

All your AI Paint tools under one roof.Windows Insiders will soon see a Copilot icon in one more place: Paint. Insiders in the Canary and Dev channels will see the new button thanks to an update rolling out now, putting AI tools in one location. Clicking the Copilot button in the task bar will reveal a dropdown menu with generative features like Cocreator, Image Creator, and Generative Erase. Microsoft has been on a mission to put a Copilot icon everywhere it can — from your keyboard to the taskbar — and Paint is just the latest place for it to pop up.Microsoft has been adding AI image generation tools to Paint throughout the past year and change, bringing in the DALL-E-based Cocreator in late 2023 and generative fill options last fall. They’re all going in one place now, so if you’re looking to create some AI-generated clip art, you’ll just look for the Copilot logo. Honestly, a Copilot shortcut probably makes more sense in Paint than it does in Bing, anyway.With today’s update, Windows 11 Insiders are also getting an update to the AI search opened up in preview earlier this month. Now, the “improved search” will allow you to find photos in the cloud with natural language; previously, AI search was limited to local files. When you perform a search, you’ll see the cloud files show up alongside the local images. This update is rolling out to Windows 11 Insiders in the Dev and Beta channels.