Hasta La Gadget!

Trump-allied operatives have baselessly accused the National Butterfly Center of being involved with child trafficking.

It took a few months, but Netflix is now offering its first high-profile mobile game. The streaming service has broadly released Riot Games’ League of Legends spinoff Hextech Mayhem for Android and iOS. This isn’t a MOBA like League, as you might have gathered — instead, it’s a “rhythm runner” that has you playing LoL champion Ziggs as you light bomb fuses, disarm enemies and dodge obstacles in sync with the beat.

Netflix has also released Dungeon Dwarves, its first “idle” game. Hyper Hippo’s title (available on Android as we write this) lets you explore monster-laden dens even when you’re not playing, and upgrade abilities when you are.

Riot’s decision to launch Hextech through Netflix isn’t surprising. The two unveiled the game just as Arcane began streaming — even if it’s not really connected to the animated series, it serves as a plug for both companies. Riot also hasn’t been shy about gaming crossovers, having dropped League of Legends characters into games like Fortnite. It’s just a question of whether or not a game like Hextech will be popular enough to grow Netflix’s fledgling game business and encourage other big-name projects.

Of all the people working on a film, the sound team is maybe the most invisible. If they do their job right, everything you hear is perfectly acceptable and natural. You rarely think about the work that goes into layering in dialogue, footsteps, movement, or creating sounds for things that don’t exist. It all just…

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You no longer have to be a GM employee to try Cruise’s self-driving taxi service. TechCrunchnotes Cruise has opened fully driverless ride-hailing to the public in San Francisco. The company is initially accepting sign-ups for only”small number” of riders, but those early trips will be free. More slots will open as more cars become available, Cruise said.

Be prepared for an unusual pickup. A spokesperson told TechCrunch this first service operates between 11PM and 5AM, and you’ll have to be content with rides in certain parts of the Chinatown, Haight-Ashbury, Pacific Heights and Richmond District neighborhoods. The nighttime runs will help Cruise have the most impact, the spokesperson said, and should expand over time.

The free rides aren’t entirely voluntary. While Cruise has most of the licenses needed to offer driverless service, it doesn’t yet have the California Public Utilities Commission permit needed to charge for those rides.

The launch comes at a good time for Cruise. While it abruptly lost CEO Dan Ammann in December, the SoftBank Vision Fund is investing another $1.35 billion in the company now that it’s running truly driverless cars. Cruise can better afford those free rides and otherwise take the time to build out autonomous driving technology that includes the Origin shuttle van. The firm wasn’t necessarily facing a crisis given GM’s healthy financials, but this clearly reduces some of the pressure to make money.

Apple TV+’s loose adaptation of the classic Foundation sci-fi novels has just gotten a little looser. Ten new actors have been added to the cast to play 10 new characters on the show—and six of them appear to be very new, having not appeared in any of Isaac Asimov’s seven Foundation novels.

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