Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 launches, Kia EV3 scoops EV award
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 has finally dropped for gamers to get stuck into. The Call of Duty (CoD) series is one of the best-selling in history with more than 425 million lifetime sales and has made billions of dollars. But this latest edition comes with a bit of a difference, with it being available straight away to subscribers of Microsoft’s Game Pass service – a first for a game of this size. It means those with the existing Netflix-style subscription do not need to pay anything extra to play. Game Pass, like Sony’s rival PlayStation Plus service, lets Xbox and PC players play hundreds of video games for a monthly fee.
Tesla shares closed up nearly 22% on Thursday – their biggest single-day gain in over a decade – as Elon Musk’s bold forecast of surging sales reassured investors he was still looking to grow its core business of selling electric cars. At close, nearly $150bn was added to the company’s market value. Musk forecast 20-30% in sales growth next year, promising to launch an affordable vehicle in the first half of 2025, and said efforts to slash production costs boosted margins in the third quarter. The Guardian
The mother of a 14-year-old boy who killed himself after becoming obsessed with artificial intelligence chatbots is suing the company behind the technology. Megan Garcia, the mother of Sewell Setzer III, said Character.AI targeted her son with “anthropomorphic, hypersexualized, and frighteningly realistic experiences” in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday in Florida. “A dangerous AI chatbot app marketed to children abused and preyed on my son, manipulating him into taking his own life,” said Ms Garcia. Sky News
Next September, the iPhone will look noticeably different, if a new report is right. The iPhone 17 Pro Max is predicted to have a smaller cut-out, called the Dynamic Island, on the screen. The new design is reported by analyst Jeff Pu, as reported by Joe Rossignol at MacRumors. The adoption of something called a metalens means that Apple can shrink the part of the front of the display that’s taken up with the front-facing camera and Face ID tech. Forbes
The Kia EV3 has been named overall Car of the Year for 2024 at the annual Electrifying.com Awards. The Electrifying.com Awards are judged by the publication’s expert team of road testers, with awards given to the most significant electric vehicles and innovations. The Kia EV3 follows in the footsteps of its larger sibling, the EV9, which was named Large Electric Family Car of the Year at last year’s Electrifying.com Awards. With first customer orders of the EV3 due to be delivered to UK customers later this year, Electrifying.com’s team of experienced reviewers believes the EV3 strikes the right chord with UK customers. Tech Digest
Elite hackers have gathered in Ireland this week for a hacking competition known as Pwn2Own. The lure is twofold: more than $1,000,000 in bounty rewards to be won, but more importantly, the kudos that come with being awarded the title of Master of Pwn. One of the highest-profile hacks to have been pulled off during the zero-day hacking spree happened on Oct. 23, as Ken Gannon of the NCC Group exploited five security vulnerabilities to compromise a Samsung Galaxy 24 smartphone by getting shell access and installing an arbitrary application. Forbes
Sony has released a new PlayStation 5 software update. Version 24.07-10.20.00 is now live on the platform and is a fairly small update that consists of quality-of-life improvements for system software performance and stability while also improving the message and usability on some select screens. The main takeaway, however, is how Activities are now presented. According to the patch notes, Activities now display as ‘In Progress’, ‘Not Started’, or ‘Completed’, “depending on whether you have ever started or completed the activity”. Tech Radar
