A screenshot from Light of Motiram. Sony is suing Tencent to attempt to stop the release of Light of Motiram, which Sony describes as a “slavish clone” of its Horizon series of games, as reported by Reuters. Light of Motiram was announced last year with a trailer featuring an aesthetic that’s quite similar to the Horizon franchise — including huge robot animals and even a title font that resembles the Horizon games.In its complaint, Sony alleges that “unlawful copying of the protected audiovisual elements of the Horizon games, as well as its deliberate adoption of a confusingly similar character mark, constitutes both copyright and trademark infringement that should be enjoined immediately.” According to the lawsuit, Tencent started developing Light of Motiram in 2023. At the Game Developers Conference in March 2024, Tencent allegedly pitched Sony on a proposal that would have its Aurora Studios subsidiary “develop a Horizon sequel game under the requested license,” which Sony rejected. “Apparently, Tencent was undeterred by SIE’s refusal to license its Horizon intellectual property,” Sony says.According to the game’s Steam page, Light of Motiram’s developer and publisher is Polaris Quest. In the lawsuit, Sony alleges that “Upon information and belief, Tencent Shanghai does business under the names ‘Aurora Studios’ and/or ‘Polaris Quest.’”Sony says that it “had discussions with Tencent” to informally try to “resolve its concern that Light of Motiram violated its intellectual property rights.” However, Sony alleges that Tencent “again sought to license the Horizon intellectual property,” to which it “communicated clearly and unequivocally that it would not license the Horizon assets to Tencent, objected to Light of Motiram, and insisted that it be withdrawn.”Tencent didn’t reply to a request for comment.This isn’t the only high-profile lawsuit over allegedly similar video games. Last year, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Palworld-developer Pocketpair. Pocketpair said in May that it had to remove features from the game due to the lawsuit.

I'm not sure about you, but I don't really use the Windows 11 search feature. Not because I don't know it's there, but because I can count the number of times it actually found the file I wanted on one hand. I usually go for third-party options, but to Microsoft's credit, it is doing its best to make the feature useful.

Unauthorized merch promoting Donald Trump - from hats and mugs to signs and T-shirts - is everywhere online. Go to a Trump rally or other MAGA political event and you're bound to find people hawking their DIY Trump wares.The Trump Organization apparently isn't too pleased.A lawsuit filed last week claims online sellers on platforms like eBay, Amazon, and Walmart are hawking goods that infringe on the Trump Organization's trademarks. "Defendants design the online marketplace accounts to appear to be selling genuine TRUMP Products while selling inferior imitations of such products," the suit, filed in US District Court in Florida, reads. …Read the full story at The Verge.

Another user has reported their Pixel 6A catching fire — but this time, it appears to have occurred after applying Google’s recent battery performance update that was intended to prevent overheating issues, as spotted by Android Authority. In a post on Reddit, a Pixel 6A user says they awoke to a “horrible smell and a loud noise,” which is when they discovered their device on fire while charging atop the nightstand next to them.The Redditor says the device was plugged into a 45W charger for the Steam Deck when it caught fire, melting the phone’s screen and case. “The phone was sitting less than 40 cms away from my head on my nightstand,” u/footymanageraddict says in the post. “Sheets caught on fire. My ac (a floor unit) had damages on its surface from the fire. My throat hurt the whole day from the fumes i inhaled.”Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.After several reports of Pixel 6A fires emerged earlier this year, Google released a mandatory software update designed to reduce battery capacity and charging performance after 400 charge cycles. Google also began offering a free battery replacement for eligible devices. This Reddit user says they applied the mandatory update, but they didn’t replace their battery because they had no walk-in replacement options available in their country and could only mail in their device.As noted by Android Authority, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission warned customers last week that Pixel 6A devices may have an “overheating battery” that “could pose a risk of fire and/or burns to a user,” adding that “incidents have occurred resulting in serious burn injuries.”

This time next year, the corporate entity known as Warner Bros. Discovery will be no more, and the two companies it’s splitting into have some very inspired names.Today, Warner Bros. Discovery announced that “Warner Bros.” and “Discovery Global” are the names of the two new businesses that will exist after it completes its restructuring plan sometime in mid-2026. Warner Bros. will oversee Warner Bros. Television, Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group, DC Studios, HBO, HBO Max, and Warner Bros. Gaming Studios. And Discovery Global will be responsible for CNN, TNT’s sports offerings in the US, Discovery, Discovery Plus, and Bleacher Report. WBD president and CEO David Zaslav will continue to lead the executive team at Warner Bros., while WBD’s current chief financial officer, Gunnar Wiedenfels, will act as president and CEO for Discovery Global.In a statement about his new-ish role, Zaslav said that the corporate uncoupling will help put Warner Bros. into “a strong position to launch and continue to meaningfully grow a company worthy of our storied past.”Wiedenfels echoed Zaslav’s sentiment and insisted that Discovery Global’s leadership team will “ensure strong operational execution to drive strategic investments and deliver compelling content to global audiences.”WBD says that the new names are meant to honor “the legacy of more than a century of industry-defining storytelling.” But, everything about the company’s restructuring reads very transparently as a move to deal with its massive debt problem.Technically speaking, Discovery Global’s debt would no longer be attached directly to Warner Bros., which could help boost the company’s flagging stock price. It’s not exactly clear how Discovery Global plans to get itself back in the black, but the company is now looking for a new chief communications and public affairs officer who will probably be tasked with putting a positive spin on this whole situation.

A laptop from 2017 wasn't most people’s idea of a device upgrade, yet it was exactly what Jessica Nicholson had been looking for. Content with her find, she added it to her online cart and clicked “check out.” The digital receipt recited her purchase: a Lenovo ThinkPad X270 for NZ$170 (~US$102), around a tenth of the cost of her iPad Pro.

Over the last decade, I've upgraded from a budget to a high-end GPU, a 6-core to an 8-core processor, and 16GB RAM to 32GB RAM. The most impactful upgrades, however, didn't come from any of them. These seemingly routine upgrades were natural progressions in my PC journey, but they ended up delivering a performance jump that I hadn't quite anticipated. Looking back, some of these upgrades rank among the cheapest things I've ever bought for my PC.

One AI trend you might've noticed lately in browsers is that they're getting more and more AI features. For instance, not too long ago, Opera announced an absolutely futuristic browser called Opera Neon, which can perform tasks for you. Similarly, Perplexity's AI Chromium-based browser, Comet, has been making headlines lately and is built around the same concept as Opera Neon.

An app designed to help women spot the "red flags" of men they date has incidentally put its users at risk. 404 Media reported that Tea was hacked by 4chan users last week, resulting in the selfies and driver's licenses of its mostly women users being posted to 4chan. An independent researcher for 404 Media has since discovered that messages between users discussing infidelity, abortion, and personal phone numbers are also vulnerable to hackers.Tea was founded by software developer Sean Cook, who said he was inspired to create an anonymous whisper network after witnessing his own mother's "terrifying" dating experiences with men. It was al …Read the full story at The Verge.

The Galaxy Z Fold 7 ships with One UI 8. Samsung’s One UI 8 update seems to prevent users from unlocking their device’s bootloader to load custom ROMs, as spotted earlier by SammyGuru. Over the weekend, users on the XDA Developers forum noticed that Samsung appears to have disabled the option on devices in regions outside the US, where the option had already been locked for years.By unlocking the bootloader, users can install custom software and make other modifications to their phone. Users discovered the new restriction after digging into the code of the Settings app on One UI 8, which ships with the newly released Galaxy Z Flip 7 and Z Fold 7.As pointed out by SammyGuru and Android Authority, the code contains the line “androidboot.other.locked=1.” When this line is set to “1,” it means the bootloader is locked, like it is here in the US. Before One UI 8, this line had previously been set to “0” to enable bootloader unlocking in regions outside the US. Users spotted the restriction within One UI 8 beta builds for the Galaxy S25 as well.Samsung didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Backing up data is incredibly important. We dedicated an entire week to raising awareness about the importance of data backups, but there's a way to take your backup strategy to the next level. If you're like me and have automated backups configured per device or simply run manual tasks when using them, there's a handy way to use Wake-on-LAN (WOL) and a NAS to automatically boot devices, back them up, and shut them down without human input.

Life has been stressful lately, meaning that I've had even more trouble than usual keeping on top of tasks and household chores. While I already use TickTick for reminders for my work, as well as Asana for my deadlines, my chores have been slipping by the wayside as I deal with notification fatigue and worsening forgetfulness.