Hasta La Gadget!

If your gaming plans for this weekend somehow don’t involve stomping around as Godzilla in Fortnite, I don’t know what to tell you. The legendary titan is dropping onto the island for a limited time starting on January 17, and you even might get the opportunity to take control of him.

According to developer Epic Games, there’s a small chance that a portal will pop up on the map during Battle Royale matches. The first player to locate and jump into it will emerge as the magnificent beast. Godzilla can use a roar ability to reveal nearby players, use a stomp attack to send ’em flying and tear through buildings with a heat ray.

Godzilla is also a de facto boss for other players. They can attack weak spots to deliver extra damage and chip off collectible fragments that provide a health boost and dash charges. Epic has also brought the rail gun back into the game to help players take down the colossal critter. It appears that the event will run until the current season ends on February 21.

It wouldn’t be Fortnite if there weren’t a bunch of cosmetics that tie into the event. Players who have the current battle pass can unlock a reactive Godzilla skin by completing quests. The outfit will start glowing after you secure your first kill in a match and grow brighter after each elimination — so it might actually punish you for playing too well if you become more visible to enemies.

There’s also a Kong and Mechagodzilla outfit bundle coming to the shop. The latter glows when you attack enemy players. The unveiling of that outfit in the event trailer is very funny, with Mechagodzilla stomping buildings until the camera zooms out to reveal a miniature city. I truly hope that’s part of a new emote.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/fortnite-will-let-you-play-as-godzilla-if-youre-lucky-170615837.html?src=rss

The UK has spent over a decade attempting to regulate who can access adult content online and has failed, again and again. But things might just change, as OfCom, the country’s government-approved communication services regulator, has finally published its age checks guidance. How exactly, they’ll enforce that guidance is unclear, but baby steps. 

The new obligations stem from the October 2023 Online Safety Act, which requires services to stop children from accessing pornographic content. Ofcom released an initial draft of expectations for services in late 2023, stating it would publish its final guidance in early 2025 — so, we’re right on time. 

“For too long, many online services which allow porn and other harmful material have ignored the fact that children are accessing their services,” said Melanie Dawes, Ofcom’s chief executive, in a release. “Either they don’t ask or, when they do, the checks are minimal and easy to avoid. That means companies have effectively been treating all users as if they’re adults, leaving children potentially exposed to porn and other types of harmful content. Today, this starts to change.”

First off, Ofcom is requiring all applicable services to determine if children are likely to access any part of their offerings by April 16. That same month, Ofcom will publish its Protection of Children Codes and guidance on conducting a children’s risk assessment. Any service likely to be used by children will need to conduct said assessment by July. They also need to have protective measures in place if children try to use their services, such as age checks. Any site that has pornography (whether created by the service, users or generative AI) must introduce strict age checks as soon as possible. 

As Ofcom puts it, “age-checking methods deployed by services must be technically accurate, robust, reliable and fair in order to be considered highly effective.” These techniques can include photo ID matching, facial age estimation, digital identity services, and mobile network operator age checks, to name a few. Users self-declaring their age and online payments in which a person doesn’t have to be 18 are not acceptable methods. Pornography shouldn’t be at all visible before or while these checks are occurring. However, the regulator stresses that services must balance protecting adult users’ privacy and access rights. 

Ofcom states it will contact many adult services about these requirements and “will not hesitate” to act against or investigate services that ignore their obligations. Again, these exact actions are unclear, so we’ll see how well these regulations will be enforced. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/uk-demands-adult-content-sites-introduce-effective-age-verification-methods-150057997.html?src=rss

The long wait is finally over. In a YouTube video with little fanfare, Nintendo officially introduced the long-awaited Switch 2. The first true next-gen follow-up to the original Switch includes backwards-compatibility for owners of existing Switch hardware and we’ll learn more about the console in a Nintendo Direct presentation on April 2, 2025. There’s still no firm release date, though.

Nintendo is also planning to host first-look experience events in cities around the globe starting in April, the first of which take place in New York City and Paris from April 4 to April 6. More cities around North American, Europe, Oceania and Asia will follow.

This trailer and accompanying press release are truly light on details. We see how the Switch 2 evolves from the original, with a larger screen and accompanying Joy-Con controllers that do appear to be attachable via magnets and a tiny port on the side of the controller. That’s it, though — no price, specs or any details on what games are coming to the Switch 2.

That said, we did see a few shots of a Mario Kart game running on the Switch 2 — so all the rumors surrounding a Mario Kart 9 launching alongside the Switch 2 got another shot in the arm today. 

The announcement of the Switch 2 has been a long time coming. Today’s news caps off months of speculation about when the company would unveil new hardware. The community interest in a Switch 2 was vocal enough that president Shuntaro Furukawa posted on X ahead of the June 2024 Nintendo Direct not to expect any new console news, although he did confirm that the Switch’s successor would be introduced by March 2025. 

Nintendo has given players some minor upgrades over the years since the Switch first arrived on the scene in 2017. The Switch Lite offered a more compact handheld ideal for gaming on the go, and the Switch OLED delivered a premium screen. But even within the limitations of a portable gaming device, the Switch has lagged far behind other consoles when it comes to power and performance. Of course, trying to compete with Sony and Microsoft’s consoles on pure power hasn’t been Nintendo’s concern for decades at this point. Once we get our hands on the Switch 2, we’ll know whether it delivers enough oomph to feel worth the wait.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/nintendo-switch-2-arrives-on-april-2-2025-131325195.html?src=rss

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket has successfully made it to space for its maiden flight, a few days after its planned January 13 launch was scrubbed. The vehicle passed the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space, shortly after 2AM Eastern time on January 16. New Glenn’s booster separated from the rest of the rocket to make its way back to Earth towards a landing platform in the ocean by 2:10 AM, while its second stage and payload went on to reach orbit. The company has just announced on its live feed that it failed to land New Glenn’s booster, but it was never the launch’s primary purpose. 

Dave Limp, the company’s CEO, previously stressed that the mission’s objective is to reach orbit. “Anything beyond that is a bonus,” he wrote in a tweet. He said that landing the booster was “ambitious” but that Blue Origin is still going for it and expects to “learn a lot” from the effort. Notably, it took SpaceX three years of landing tests before it was successfully able to land Falcon 9’s first stage on a drone ship in the ocean.

New Glenn is a heavy-lift launch vehicle with a booster that was designed to be reused for a minimum of 25 flights. Blue Origin describes it as its “giant, reusable rocket built for bigger things.” It has a massive payload capacity and can carry more than 13 metric tons to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) and 45 metric tons to low Earth orbit (LEO). For its maiden flight, the vehicle carried the company’s Blue Ring Pathfinder, which is part of its Blue Ring platform that will offer spacecraft services to clients like the Pentagon. The mission is meant to test Blue Ring’s core flight and ground systems, as well as its operational capabilities. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/blue-origins-new-glenn-rocket-launches-into-orbit-on-its-maiden-flight-073451555.html?src=rss

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket has successfully made it to space for its maiden flight, a few days after its planned January 13 launch was scrubbed. The vehicle passed the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space, shortly after 2AM Eastern time on January 16. New Glenn’s booster separated from the rest of the rocket to make its way back to Earth towards a landing platform in the ocean by 2:10 AM, while its second stage and payload went on to reach orbit. The company has just announced on its live feed that it failed to land New Glenn’s booster, but it was never the launch’s primary purpose. 

Dave Limp, the company’s CEO, previously stressed that the mission’s objective is to reach orbit. “Anything beyond that is a bonus,” he wrote in a tweet. He said that landing the booster was “ambitious” but that Blue Origin is still going for it and expects to “learn a lot” from the effort. Notably, it took SpaceX three years of landing tests before it was successfully able to land Falcon 9’s first stage on a drone ship in the ocean.

New Glenn is a heavy-lift launch vehicle with a booster that was designed to be reused for a minimum of 25 flights. Blue Origin describes it as its “giant, reusable rocket built for bigger things.” It has a massive payload capacity and can carry more than 13 metric tons to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) and 45 metric tons to low Earth orbit (LEO). For its maiden flight, the vehicle carried the company’s Blue Ring Pathfinder, which is part of its Blue Ring platform that will offer spacecraft services to clients like the Pentagon. The mission is meant to test Blue Ring’s core flight and ground systems, as well as its operational capabilities. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/blue-origins-new-glenn-rocket-launches-into-orbit-on-its-maiden-flight-073451555.html?src=rss