As someone who has played more indie games than I dare to count, I know a good soundtrack when I hear one. But, equally, because I've heard so many, and when you have such a crowded field full of amazing entries, it's nearly impossible to achieve the consensus of "best."

CD Projekt RED announced Cyberpunk 2077 Update 2.2 today, which will include a host of new features available today. The update was developed with Virtous Games, a studio known for collaborating with other dev teams and working on post-launch game updates.

Tom Homan Uses Salty Language to Tell Chicagoans Their City Will Be 'Ground Zero' for Mass Deportations

Can't Let Go: New York's Crusading Anti-Trump AG Letitia James Refuses to Drop Civil Fraud Case

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge Instagram is allowing creators to test their reel ideas on new audiences before sharing them with followers. Trial reels will be shown to non-followers first, providing engagement data including views, likes, comments, and shares approximately 24 hours after publishing to help creators determine whether it’s worth sharing with people following their account. The feature aims to help users try out new ideas and expand their audiences without negatively impacting their established following on the platform, which may be useful for creators who feel chained to a particular style of content. Instagram will provide insights that monitor how trials are performing compared to previous trials that the user has shared. Creators can then choose to share the trial reel with their followers if it’s performing well or set Instagram to automatically share it based on the views it receives within the first 72 hours. “We often hear from creators that they feel nervous about posting too much to their audience or trying out new content that’s outside of their niche on Instagram, for fear of it not resonating with their followers,” Instagram said in its announcement. “Now, if you want to try out a new genre, storytelling format or topic, you can easily get a gut check on how your content might perform.” Trial reels are rolling out starting today and will be globally available to “all eligible creators in the coming weeks,” according to Instagram. The feature is enabled via a “Trial” toggle before publishing a regular reel, and will appear alongside a user's drafts once live. Only the creator can see that the reel is a trial, and it won’t appear on their main grid or reels tab, or in the feeds or reels tabs of their followers.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Chatbot service Character.AI is facing another lawsuit for allegedly hurting teens’ mental health, this time after a teenager said it led him to self-harm. The suit, filed in Texas on behalf of the 17-year-old and his family, targets Character.AI and its cofounders’ former workplace, Google, with claims including negligence and defective product design. It alleges that Character.AI allowed underage users to be “ targeted with sexually explicit, violent, and otherwise harmful material, abused, groomed, and even encouraged to commit acts of violence on themselves and others.” The suit appears to be the second Character.AI suit brought by the Social Media Victims Law Center and the Tech Justice Law Project, which have previously filed suits against numerous social media platforms. It uses many of the same arguments as an October wrongful death lawsuit against Character.AI for allegedly provoking a teen’s death by suicide. While both cases involve individual minors, they focus on making a more sweeping case: that Character.AI knowingly designed the site to encourage compulsive engagement, failed to include guardrails that could flag suicidal or otherwise at-risk users, and trained... Read the full story at The Verge.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The US Commerce Department announced it has awarded memory chip maker Micron Technology with “up to $6.165 billion in direct funding” derived from the CHIPS Act. The new funding will go towards multiple semiconductor manufacturing projects in the US, including an Idaho plant and a Syracuse, New York “mega-fab” facility, both announced in 2022. Between them, the Commerce Department says they’ll create about 20,000 jobs. The grant, which was announced in April, approaches the size of other multibillion-dollar CHIPS Act subsidies given to Intel, TSMC, and Samsung. Micron “is committing to spend approximately $50 billion before the end of the decade,” according to the release. The Commerce Department says it also “signed a non-binding Preliminary Memorandum of Terms” to give Micron $275 million in proposed funding for the expansion of its Manassas, Virginia facility. The funding goes to Micron with just over a month left before Donald Trump, who has criticized the CHIPS Act, will be inaugurated on January 20th.

iOS 19 is Apple's upcoming operating system for iPhone models. It's expected to be announced during the WWDC 2025 keynote ahead of a public release in September 2025. Apple is expected to expand its Apple Intelligence features, as it still needs to catch up with Google, OpenAI, and other big AI rivals. Here's everything you need to know about the upcoming iOS 19 operating system update. When will Apple announce iOS 19? Image source: Apple Inc. If Apple follows the trend, the company should announce iOS 19 during the WWDC 2025 keynote. The Worldwide Developers Conference usually takes place in the first week of June. While it was previously held at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in California, Apple has changed how it promotes WWDC to a pre-recorded keynote since the pandemic started. Still, the company invites the media and developers to watch it from the Apple Park campus in Cupertino. Apple will likely announce its plans during WWDC 2025 in April. As of now, Apple has already begun work on iOS 19, which is codenamed Luck. Rumored iOS 19 features So far, the main rumored features are related to the expansion of Apple Intelligence. Here's what we know: Apple Intelligence will grow, but it might take a lot longer Image source: Apple Inc. Apple still has a few Apple Intelligence features to introduce during the iOS 18 cycle. However, more advanced features will come in 2025 or 2026 with iOS 19. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, the first version of Apple Intelligence only offers "domestic" changes. However, a ChatGPT-like model is coming at a later date: These upcoming upgrades will make Siri easier to use on a day-to-day basis, but it’s not the brain transplant that the service really needs. Siri is still based on an outdated infrastructure — AI models that have been overtaken by the technology used by ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. Siri hasn’t yet been rebuilt for the generative AI age, even if Apple is trying to create the impression that it has. It’s not just the LLM Siri chatbot that will be released in 2026. Gurman says that a “larger-than usual number of features scheduled for iOS 19 (beyond the new Siri) are already postponed until spring 2026 (when iOS 19.4 debuts).” Siri GPT According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple’s new version of Siri will employ more advanced large language models (LLMs) to allow users to have long back-and-forth conversations with the virtual assistant. Sources also claim that “LLM Siri,” as Apple employees have dubbed it, will be capable of handling more sophisticated requests even faster. Apple is currently testing the upgraded Siri on iPhones, iPads, and Macs as a standalone app, but the goal is to eventually replace Siri with the new version. Apple plans to introduce LLM Siri next year as part of iOS 19 and macOS 16 (codenamed Luck and Cheer). As was the case with Apple Intelligence this fall, the new Siri reportedly won’t launch alongside the new hardware in 2025. Rather, Apple will announce it next year and start rolling out the upgraded Siri as early as spring 2026. “The revamped Siri will rely on new Apple AI models to interact more like a human and handle tasks in a way that’s closer to ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini,” Gurman explains in his report. “It also will make expanded use of App Intents, which allow for more precise control of third-party apps. And the software will be able to tap into features from Apple Intelligence, such as the ability to write and summarize text.” Next year iPhone 17 Pro models could feature 12GB of RAM for more advanced Apple Intelligence features New emoji New emoji coming to iOS 18. Image source: Unicode/José Adorno for BGR Apple always adds new emojis during every iOS cycle. Even though they don't come with the first major update, the company unveils them during the life cycle of the newest operating system. Official iOS 19 download iOS 19 hasn't been officially announced. Therefore, you cannot test it or download its official version. Supported devices iPhone 16 features two cameras on the back. Image source: José Adorno for BGR With iOS 18, Apple maintained the same supported devices as iOS 17. However, more models may lose support as the company focuses on devices with 5G connectivity and Apple Intelligence support. These are all iPhone models that run iOS 18: iPhone XR, XS, and XS Max iPhone 11 iPhone 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max iPhone SE (2nd gen) iPhone 12 mini and iPhone 12 iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max iPhone 13 mini and iPhone 13 iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max iPhone SE (3rd gen) iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max Wrap up BGR will keep updating the iOS 19 guide as we learn more about rumored features, its release date, and more. Below is a guide highlighting all the possible new features coming to iPhone 17. Don't Miss: iPhone 17: Release date, rumors, features, A19, price, and Slim model The post iOS 19: Rumors, features, release date, supported devices, more appeared first on BGR. 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Luigi Nicholas Mangione, 26, was arrested Monday in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday mocked Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Truth Social, calling him the "governor" of the "Great State of Canada."