Hasta La Gadget!

With solid cameras and great performance, the Galaxy S22+ might just be the best choice for most people in 2022. Here’s our full breakdown.

Whistleblower Aid says it has filed complaints with the Securities and Exchange Commission that accuse Meta of misleading investors about efforts to mitigate climate change and COVID-19 misinformation across its platforms. The nonprofit, which represents Meta whistleblower Frances Haugen, claimed the company made “material misrepresentations and omissions in statements to investors” over how it was handling misinformation, according to The Washington Post, which viewed redacted copies of the documents.

“The documents shared with the SEC make it totally clear that Facebook was saying one thing in private and another in public regarding its approach to climate change and COVID-19 misinformation,” Whistleblower Aid senior counsel Andrew Bakaj told Engadget. “That’s not just irresponsible to the public, it’s actively misleading investors who have a legal right to truthful answers from the company.”

In one of the filings, which were based on disclosures by Haugen, Whistleblower Aid reportedly claimed that Meta didn’t have a clear policy on climate change misinformation until last year. The complaint alleges that such misinformation was abundant on Facebook, despite assertions from executives to investors that the company was committed to battling the “global crisis,” according to The Post.

In the other complaint, the nonprofit reportedly cited internal documents showing that COVID-19 misinformation and vaccine hesitancy proliferated on Facebook. That’s despite Meta executives making public comments about measures it was taking to stem the spread of COVID-19 misinformation.

Since 2020, Meta has offered factual information about COVID-19 and climate change in its information centers.

The company has long struggled to stem the flow of misinformation on Facebook and its other platforms. Documents supplied to news organizations by Haugen last year led credence to critics’ arguments that the company puts profits before user safety. In September, it was reported that the company gave misinformation researchers incomplete data.

“We’ve directed more than 2 billion people to authoritative public health information and continue to remove false claims about vaccines, conspiracy theories and misinformation,” Meta spokesperson Drew Pusateri told Engadget. “We’ve also created our Climate Science Center in over 150 countries to connect people to factual and up-to-date climate information, while also partnering with independent fact checkers to address false claims. There are no one-size-fits-all solutions to stopping the spread of misinformation, but we’re committed to building new tools and policies to combat it.”

The nearly extinct disease polio has made an unexpected and unwelcome reappearance in Africa. This week, health officials in the country of Malawi reported a case of wild polio in a young child—the first spotted in the continent in more than five years. World Health Organization officials are now monitoring the…

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Tobe Hooper’s 1974 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a horror masterpiece—a gruesome, chilling exploration of why you shouldn’t poke around other people’s property, especially in rural Texas. It’s a story other filmmakers haven’t been able to resist revisiting, with diminishing returns. The latest example of this hits…

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There are worse movies than Uncharted, especially when it comes to the seemingly cursed genre of video game adaptations. But as I struggled to stay awake through the finale — yet another weightless action sequence where our heroes quip, defy physics and never feel like they’re in any genuine danger — I couldn’t help but wonder why the film was so aggressively average.

Sony Pictures

The PlayStation franchise started out as a Tomb Raider clone starring a dude who wasn’t Indiana Jones. But, starting with Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, the games tapped into the language of action movies to put you in the center of innovative set pieces. They were cinematic in ways that few titles were in the early 2010s. But going in the opposite direction — bringing aspects of those games into a movie — doesn’t work nearly as well.

Director Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland, Venom), along with screenwriters Rafe Lee Judkins, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, have crafted an origin story for the treasure hunter Nathan Drake (Tom Holland). It hits the notes you’re expecting — his childhood as an orphan, his first team-up with his partner Victor “Sully” Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg), and a globe-trotting treasure hunt that defies logic — but it’s all just a Cliff’s Notes version of what we’ve seen in the games. And for a franchise that was already a watered-down version of Indiana Jones, a movie adaptation just highlights all of its inherent flaws. Watching Uncharted made me long for the basic pleasures of Nicholas Cage’s National Treasure – at least that Indy clone had personality.

Even the iconic action scenes don’t hit as hard. The film opens mid free-fall, as realizes he just fell out of a plane. Discerning viewers will instantly recognize the sequence from Uncharted 3. We watch as he hops across falling cargo (and wonder if that’s even possible while everything is falling), but the entire scene feels like Tom Holland is going on the world’s most extreme Disney World ride. Without the rumble of the Dualshock 3 controller in my hand, and my responsibility over Drake’s impending death, there just aren’t any stakes. It’s particularly unexciting compared to what we’ve seen in the recent Mission Impossible movies. Tom Cruise (and skydiving camera man Craig O’Brien) jumped out of an actual plane several times for our entertainment!

Still, it’s somewhat surprising that this adaptation exists at all. Sony has been trying to develop an Uncharted film since 2008, starting with a loftier iteration by arthouse auteur David O. Russell. That version was going to star Wahlberg as an older Nathan Drake, as we see him in the games, and focus on the idea of family. But the project ended up changing hands several times over the last decade. By the time it was actually gearing up for production in 2020, Wahlberg had aged out of the starring role and into the older sidekick spot. (Sorry,Super Cool Mack Daddy, it happens to all of us.)

After we’ve seen so many video game films completely miss the mark, like Resident Evil: Welcome to Racoon City and Assassin’s Creed, I’m starting to wonder if there’s some sort of secret to making a good adaptation. Different audiences want different things, after all. Game fans typically want to see the characters and sequences they love so much legitimized on film. Discerning movie geeks may be comparing adaptations to other, usually better, films. And studio executives just want existing intellectual property that they can churn out to an undiscerning public.

There are a handful of memorable video game films, but they mostly seem like flukes. The original Mortal Kombat was iconic because of its killer soundtrack and (at the time) cutting-edge special effects. Werewolves Within doesn’t have much to do with the VR title it’s based on, aside from its name. And Sonic the Hedgehog was a blast, but that was mostly due to its lead performances. 

 As an avid gamer and cinephile, I’ll never give up on hoping for successful adaptations. But it could just be that the two mediums are a bit incompatible. A film can never capture the interactive magic and freedom you get from a game. And when you’re playing something, heavy-handed cut scenes and direction can often take you out of the experience (unless you’re Hideo Kojima, in which case gamers will argue it’s all a work of genius).

With its cinematic roots, Uncharted had a better shot at a decent adaptation than most games. It’s just a shame that, for a series that’s about exploring new lands and discovering forgotten treasure, it offers nothing new.