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While PS5 Pro 30th Anniversary Edition preorders sparked a flurry of eBay listings with huge mark-ups in the West, in Japan Sony has an actual plan to beat the scapers.

As spotted by Automaton, the Japanese PlayStation homepage confirms that anyone who wants to preorder the PS5 Pro 30th anniversary edition in Japan has to meet the following conditions: have a PSN account registered in Japan, and have at least 30 hours of PS4 or PS5 runtime on the account between February 2014 and September 19, 2024.

An apparent bug was causing game art backgrounds to be replaced by promotional messages and news posts on the PlayStation 5 dashboard for some people on Monday. The images they saw featured promotions for long-expired discounts and ads for new games. 

People lamented the change in forums and on social media, saying the game art that previously showed up when they highlighted a game was gone. Instead, the image that would ordinarily show up as a news post in a separate section of the PS5 UI was splashed across the screen behind games like Miles Morales, Hi-Fi Rush, and Final Fantasy VII Remake.

In a since-deleted post, Daniel Hiatt, product lead for Game Hub and Activity Suggestions with PlayStation, wrote Monday afternoon that the change was a “(new) bug with an existing feature.” Then, by 6PM ET, those game pages are back to normal, as we confirmed on our own PS5s.

Zayna Iman's memory of her 40 hours in police custody comes back in flashes. What she does remember has haunted her for nearly three years.

The 39-year-old believes she was drugged and raped in her cell before being left naked and distressed on the floor, cowering under a blanket and so disorientated she urinated on herself.

Her quest for answers over what happened at Pendleton police station is subject of an IOPC investigation that has so far raised only more questions.

This is despite Zayna being handed dozens of pages of documents and police CCTV containing hour upon hour of distressing film - but, crucially, two are still missing.

Greater Manchester Police had initially told her that all cell footage had been reviewed, and there was no evidence to support her rape allegations.

Then the force told her several hours had been 'corrupted' and were not recoverable.

The IOPC began investigating and soon discovered the film 'was never downloaded', that GMP gave her false information and denied she had been strip-searched. It is now examining why.

It will soon be illegal for public and private universities in California to consider an applicant’s relationship to alumni or donors when deciding whether to admit them.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday signed a ban on the practice known as legacy admissions, a change that will affect prestigious institutions including Stanford University and the University of Southern California.

California’s law, which will take effect Sept. 1, 2025, is the nation’s fifth legacy admissions ban, but only the second that will apply to private colleges.

When Marjorie Taylor Greene called out Laura Loomer racist remarks about curry and call centers directed against Kamala Harris, Loomer accused Greene of saying the n-word. Former Black Voices for Trump director and Trump co-conspirator Harrison Floyd came to Loomer’s defense and said Greene’s n-word slur was directed at him after issuing a potential primary challenge.

MAGA Republicans are active on social media, giving guidance about Hurricane Helene and attempting to project leadership to their followers. However, 82 of them voted to shut down the government on Wednesday.

An artist who infamously duped an art contest with an AI image is suing the U.S. Copyright Office over its refusal to register the image’s copyright. 

In the lawsuit, Jason M. Allen asks a Colorado federal court to reverse the Copyright Office’s decision on his artwork Theatre D’opera Spatialbecause it was an expression of his creativity.

Reuters says the Copyright Office refused to comment on the case while Allen in a statement complains that the office’s decision “put me in a terrible position, with no recourse against others who are blatantly and repeatedly stealing my work.”

In a new Sony Corporate Report, Sony has revealed that PlayStation will use AI and machine learning to speed up its game development.

On page 16 of the report, Sony had that “bolstering technologies that can help creators engage in maximizing the value of their IP in efficient, high-quality ways, including sensing and capturing as well as real-time 3D processing, AI, and machine learning,” and that these technologies will help to deliver its IP “rapidly and at low cost to a broader range of fans.”

The report reveals that PlayStation used machine learning in the production of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 by applying voice-recognition software in certain languages. This process allowed the company to automatically synchronize subtitles with each character’s lines to “significantly shortening the subtitling process.”

Astro Bot is stuffed with little robot guys cosplaying as gaming icons from across PlayStation history, but the game's lead has now opened up about the one essential character that's missing.

Sure, Astro Bot's 300 collectible bots don't cover every single notable game from the platform's three-decade run. Twisted Metal and SOCOM aren't included, for example, despite being PlayStation staples for a time. But the big boys are all here. Whether that's Sony's own God of War, Ape Escape, and Shadow of the Colossus - or famous faces from other companies, like Tomb Raider and Crash Bandicoot.

Since the joyous platformer jumped onto store shelves, however, more than a few players have complained that Cloud Strife is missing, in spite of how monumentally important Final Fantasy 7 was on the PS1. In fact, publisher Square Enix has no presence in the game, with Dragon Quest, Kingdom Hearts, and Nier all omitted, which is particularly strange since the game's free predecessor Astro's Playroom at least makes reference to Cloud's big buster sword.

In an interview with Game File, Team Asobi studio head Nicolas Doucet hinted that the development team had eyed up a Cloud cameo that never got approval from Square Enix. "It's difficult to comment on that," Doucet said. "We really respect the choice of each publisher."

A former spokesperson for Kyle Rittenhouse says he became disillusioned with his ex-client after learning that he had sent text messages pledging to “fucking murder” shoplifters outside a pharmacy before later shooting two people to death during racial justice protests in Wisconsin in 2020.

Dave Hancock made that remark about Rittenhouse – for whom he also worked as a security guard – on a Law & Crime documentary that premiered on Friday. The show explored the unsuccessful criminal prosecution of Rittenhouse, who killed Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

As Hancock told it on The Trials of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 90-minute film’s main subject had “a history of things he was doing prior to [the double slaying], specifically patrolling the street for months with guns and borrowing people’s security uniforms, doing whatever he could to try to get into some kind of a fight”.

Hancock nonetheless said he initially believed Rittenhouse’s claims of self-defense when he first relayed his story about fatally shooting Rosenbaum and Huber. Yet that changed when he later became aware of text messages that surfaced as part of a civil lawsuit filed by the family of one of the men slain in Kenosha demanding wrongful death damages from Rittenhouse.

The Federal Trade Commission is taking action against multiple companies that have relied on artificial intelligence as a way to supercharge deceptive or unfair conduct that harms consumers, as part of its new law enforcement sweep called Operation AI Comply.

The cases being announced today include actions against a company promoting an AI tool that enabled its customers to create fake reviews, a company claiming to sell “AI Lawyer” services, and multiple companies claiming that they could use AI to help consumers make money through online storefronts.

“Using AI tools to trick, mislead, or defraud people is illegal,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. “The FTC’s enforcement actions make clear that there is no AI exemption from the laws on the books. By cracking down on unfair or deceptive practices in these markets, FTC is ensuring that honest businesses and innovators can get a fair shot and consumers are being protected.”

The host company of the 68th annual Miss Korea competition issued an official apology Thursday, concerning a question for the finalists about videos using deepfake technology.

During this year’s event in Seoul on Tuesday, 15 finalists had to answer various pre-prepared questions. One of the questions was, “If the image of myself in a deepfake video looks more attractive (than myself), how could I reduce the gap (between the image) and my actual self?”

“It was wrong for us as the host to use the word deepfake, when the illegal videos using deepfake technology are inflicting severe damage (in the society) … We should have taken more care with the questions, considering that deepfake is currently being misused to create illegal sexual videos,” said the Global E&B, subsidiary of the Hankook Ilbo daily, offering an apology for all candidates of the event and anyone who felt discomfort from the question.