Hasta La Gadget!

The Russian government blocked access to Google News in Russia late on Wednesday, citing “unreliable information” about the war in Ukraine, according to state media outlet Interfax.

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You may want to update your copy of Elden Ring on PC to make sure that you don’t end up losing hours of gameplay to the endless death loop exploit. Bandai Namco has rolled out a patch for the game, which fixes a bug in multiplayer that “allowed players to teleport others to incorrect map coordinates.” A few days ago, reports surfaced about bad actors exploiting a bug that gives them a way to crash your game and teleport your character off the map. Upon reloading, you’ll just find yourself falling to your death and seeing the reviving/loading screen again and again. 

Here’s the infinite death loop in action:

As The Verge notes, some players were able to save their game by quickly teleporting elsewhere, but others reported losing as much as 100 hours of gameplay to the death loop. In addition to fixing this particular bug, the update also patches other issues, including ones that will prevent you from advancing certain quests. 

Elden Ring has been out for less than a month, but it has become huge very, very quickly. It sold 12 million units worldwide merely 18 days after its release, smashing the records of other Souls-type titles — Dark Souls 3, the best-selling game in the franchise, only reached 10 million units sold four years after it became available. When Bandai Namco and Elden Ring developer FromSoftware announced the milestone, they also said that the IP could be expanded “beyond the realm of games.” 

Washington DC Attorney General Karl Racine has filed a lawsuit against Grubhub over alleged hidden fees and other “deceptive trade practices.” His office has accused Grubhub of violating the jurisdiction’s Consumer Protection Procedures Act in eight separate ways.

“We’re suing Grubhub for misleading District residents and taking advantage of local restaurants to boost its own profits,” Racine wrote on Twitter. “Grubhub charges hidden fees and uses bait-and-switch tactics, all while pretending to help local businesses during the pandemic. This needs to stop.”

Racine’s office also claims the app charged users higher prices than they’d pay in restaurants and that it misrepresented an offer of “unlimited free delivery” with a Grubhub+ subscription, since customers still need to pay a service fee.

The suit alleges that Grubhub offered deliveries from more than 1,000 eateries in the area without restaurants’ permission. It accused the company of listing phone numbers for restaurants that were actually routed to Grubhub workers and creating websites for restaurants without their consent or clearly disclosing that it operated the sites. Grubhub has ended those practices, as TechCrunch notes.

“In one of Grubhub’s most shameless moves, at the beginning of the pandemic, it ran a discount called ‘Supper for Support,’ ginning up business by claiming to help struggling restaurants, and then stuck restaurants with the bill,” Racine said. “This program cut into struggling restaurants’ profit margins while padding Grubhub’s bottom line.”

The promotion allowed restaurants to offer a $10 discount on orders over $30, but they had to cover the cost. Grubhub later offered them a $250 credit, as the suit notes.

“We are disappointed [the AG’s office has] moved forward with this lawsuit because our practices have always complied with DC law, and in any event, many of the practices at issue have been discontinued,” Grubhub said in a statement. “We will aggressively defend our business in court and look forward to continuing to serve DC restaurants and diners.”

Grubhub says it has worked with Racine and his office over the last year to address concerns. In the wake of the lawsuit, the service is adding disclaimers about service fees for Grubhub+ subscribers and the fact prices may be lower at restaurants than in its app. Grubhub will also make it clearer that users can place orders for free through its app and website as long as they pick up food themselves. These changes will apply to everyone, not only users in DC.

The DC lawsuit is the latest in a number of legal battles over delivery apps’ business practices. Chicago has also sued Grubhub (and DoorDash) over alleged deceptive delivery fees and charging higher prices for menu items than restaurants themselves do. In September, those two services and Uber Eats filed suit against New York City for placing limits on the fees they can charge restaurants.

Almost a year after Netflix introduced its shuffle play button, HBO Max has also launched its own. Unlike Netflix’s version that randomly plays shows and movies from the service’s whole catalog based on your viewing history, though, HBO Max’s has a pretty limited scope. When you tap on the shuffle button, the service will pull random episodes from one of the 45 shows included in the feature. Also, it’s only available on the service’s desktop interface at the moment. 

It’s unclear if HBO Max plans to expand the number of shows included in the list it can randomly play. The WarnerMedia-owned service also didn’t say whether the feature will eventually be available on its apps, though it’s hard to believe that it’ll stay a desktop exclusive. When Netflix first introduced its “play something” button, the company initially made it available on TV devices only. Six months later, though, Netflix released it for Android devices and told us testing for iOS devices would begin in the following months. 

Here are the 45 shows included in HBO Max’s list, per Deadline:

• A World of Calm

• Adventure Time

• Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown

• Apple & Onion

• Chappelle Show

• Courage the Cowardly Dog

• Craig of the Creek

• Curb Your Enthusiasm

• Ed, Ed and Eddy

• ER

• Flight of the Conchords

• Fresh Prince

• Friends

• Full House

• Great Pottery Throwdown

• Hot Ones

• How It Really Happened

• Impractical Jokers

• Key and Peele

• Looney Tunes

• Martin

• Mike & Molly

• Regular Show

• Reno 911!

• Rick & Morty

• Robot Chicken

• Scooby-Do, Where Are You!

• Selena + Chef

• Sesame Street

• South Park

• Teen Titans Go!

• The Amazing World of Gumball

• The Big Bang Theory

• The Boondocks

• The Mentalist

• The Middle

• The Nanny

• The Office

• The Shot: Uninterrupted

• Tom and Jerry

• Total Dramarama

• Two and a Half Men

• We Bare Bears

• Whose Line is it Anyway

• Young Sheldon

A chronological feed is once again available on Instagram. More than five years after the company first switched to an algorithmically-ranked feed, the app is bringing back the ability for users to see feed posts ordered by recency. The app is rolling out the change now to all users globally, after first confirming that new versions of the feed were in the works last December.

Importantly, the new chronological option is not on by default, and there’s no way for users to ditch the algorithm entirely. Instead, people can now move between three different versions of their feeds: the algorithmic “home” feed, which remains the default; a “following” feed, which orders accounts you follow in reverse chronological order; and “favorites,” which is a feed of up to 50 favorited accounts. You can move between the three feeds by tapping on the new dropdown menu in the top left corner of the app. 

Even though the chronological feed isn’t on by default, the fact that it’s coming back at all is a major reversal for Instagram, which has for years defended its decision to switch to an algorithmic feed despite years of complaints and conspiracy theories about “shadowbans.”

As recently as last June, Instagram published a lengthy blog post detailing how its ranking algorithm works. In the blog post, Instagram’s top executive, Adam Mosseri, wrote that at the time Instagram moved away from a chronological feed in 2016, “people were missing 70% of all their posts in Feed, including almost half of posts from their close connections.”

But “the algorithm” has become a sticky subject for Instagram, which is facing scrutiny for the impact it has on teens’ mental health. In particular, the way that the app ranks and suggests content to young people has gotten outsized attention from lawmakers, some of whom have proposed legislation to regulate algorithms.

Instagram has also gotten more aggressive in inserting “suggested posts” and Reels into users’ feeds in recent months, as Facebook’s popularity starts to dip. By rolling out new versions of its feed now, Instagram can both head off complaints about its new recommendations-filled approach, and claim that it’s offering users a “choice” about whether or not they use its ranking algorithm.