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Meta apps and services like Instagram, Facebook, Threads and Messenger are down as part of an apparent outage. Staff at Engadget and users across X and Bluesky have reported issues loading Meta’s websites and logging in. Even Meta’s company site is currently displaying the text “This page isn’t available right now.”

There were over 90,000 reports of issues for Facebook.com alone on Downdetector, and the site is also showing outage reports for Whatsapp, Threads, and Messenger too. The issue is clearly not concentrated on a single Meta app or service. The company’s own status page for enterprise customers shows multiple issue across APIs and ad tools, too.

Engadget has reached out to Meta for more information on the outage and will update this post once we learn more. The company noted that people have been experience issues on X and said a fix is in the works.

Meta last dealt with a major outage in March 2024 that prevented users from accessing its apps and services for two hours. The last outage was attributed to a “technical issue” by Meta communications director Andy Stone, which is the same explanation Meta has offered so far today, but it’s not clear when the issue will be resolved.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/instagram-threads-whatsapp-and-more-down-as-part-of-meta-outage-184608535.html?src=rss 

Sony’s PlayStation 2024 Wrap-Up has a slight problem: It isn’t working. The site for accessing your year-end PlayStation stats and achievements has been down for maintenance since it launched nearly 24 hours ago. Push Square reports that, although some folks could briefly access their summaries, it quickly began showing errors to many before eventually collapsing. It now displays the “We’ll be back soon” message in the above image. Oops!

The year-end replay is similar to Spotify Wrapped and other year-end summaries. Assuming Sony eventually gets it back up and running, it will show stats like your most played games, achievements, monthly gaming breakdowns, personal gaming style and more.

For the first time this year, Sony added historical data like the number of games played since creating your account and reflections on trophies you’ve earned. The 2024 edition includes a nod to PlayStation’s 30th anniversary, with a retro PlayStation aesthetic and graphics that pay tribute to the brand’s history.

The year-end rewind will be continually updated until the end of the year, so (once the kinks are ironed out), you’ll still have a chance to change it with some furious December marathon sessions.

When Wrap Up returns, you can find it here. However, there are several requirements to be eligible. You’ll need to be 18 or older with an active PlayStation Network account in your region and have played at least 10 hours on a PS4 or PS5 in the 2024 calendar year. Another point to consider is that you’ll have to opt in to share “Full Data” (or “Additional Data” in some regions, including the EU) from your PS5 console. So, if you’re (wisely) cautious about big corporations hoovering up your data, consider whether a few moments of profiled nostalgia justify that cost.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/playstations-2024-wrap-up-has-been-mostly-out-of-commission-for-24-hours-190522062.html?src=rss 

Earlier today, Google debuted Gemini 2.0. The company says its new machine learning model won’t just enhance its existing products and services. It will also power entirely new experiences. To that point, Google previewed Project Mariner, an AI agent that can navigate within a web browser. Mariner is an experimental Chrome extension that is currently available to select “trusted testers.”

As you can see from the video Google shared, the pitch for Mariner is a tool that can automate certain rote tasks. In the demo, Mariner assists Google’s Jaclyn Konzelmann with finding the contact information of four outdoor companies.

Clearly, there’s more work Google needs to do before the software is ready for public use. Notice that Konzelmann is very specific when prompting Mariner, instructing the agent to “memorize” and “remember” parts of her instructions. It also takes Mariner close to 12 minutes to complete the task given to it.

“As a research prototype, it’s able to understand and reason across information in your browser screen, including pixels and web elements like text, code, images and forms,” Google says of Mariner.

If Project Mariner sounds familiar, it’s because The Information reported in October that Google was working on something called Project Jarvis. The publication described it as a “computer-using agent” that Google designed to assist with tasks like booking flights. In November, an early version of Jarvis was briefly available on the Chrome Web Store. A Google spokesperson told Engadget Jarvis and Mariner are the same project.

The confirmation of Mariner’s existence comes after Anthropic introduced a similar but more expansive feature for its Claude AI, which the company says can “use a wide range of standard tools and software programs designed for people.” That tool is currently available in public beta.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/jarvis-googles-web-browsing-ai-is-now-officially-known-as-project-mariner-191603929.html?src=rss 

The Academy Awards ceremony is streaming live for the very first time in its 97-year history. The Oscars will stream on Hulu at the same time as it airs on traditional network TV via ABC. The ceremony starts on March 2 at 7PM ET, though there’s a live red carpet show that kicks off a half hour before that.

It’s very strange that it took this long but, whatever, I’ll take it. I don’t even have regular TV, so Hulu will be the only way I’ll be able to watch the telecast live, aside from picking up a shady stream somewhere. It’s likely the same for many of you reading this.

To that end, the Hulu stream could lead to a serious uptick in ratings, with some industry experts saying that the telecast will hit 30 million live viewers. The Oscars haven’t gotten that many eyeballs since 2017 when Moonlight famously snatched victory from the jaws of La La Land defeat. The 2024 ceremony drew 21.5 million viewers, but this was a huge uptick from the COVID years.

This year’s broadcast is being hosted by the king of hot wings himself, Conan O’Brien. The awards nominees won’t be announced until January 17 and there are plenty of flicks that could end up in the top spot. These include Wicked, The Brutalist, Anora and I Saw the TV Glow, among many others.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/the-oscars-will-stream-live-for-the-very-first-time-on-hulu-191638415.html?src=rss 

“If Shakespeare lived today, what would he write about?” Philipp Stollenmayer asked the audience during this week’s Day of the Devs 2024: Game Awards stream. According to Stollenmayer, Shakespeare would write about the invention of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich from the perspective of a rebellious strawberry and a disillusioned peanut. Also, it would be a musical. Oh, and it would take the form of an interactive scrapbook with kids as the main voice actors. Obviously.

PBJ — The Musical is the latest mobile game from Stollenmayer’s studio, Kamibox, and it offers an utterly unique approach to interactive play. PBJ is a side-scrolling narrative adventure built out of real-life paper collages, with images cut from vintage cookbooks and stitched together via stop-motion. The vibe is modern Monty Python mixed with Julia Child, plus a dash of theater nerdery for balance.

In PBJ, players can push, pull and drag everything to transform the story, which involves adorable, food-based interpretations of Shakespeare quotes and lots of singing. On the musical side of things, Britain’s Got Talent semi-finalist Lorraine Bowen writes and performs all the songs in PBJ, and everything seems to have her signature upbeat, oddball feel. There are also unlockable remixes in each of the 10 stages.

Mixing mediums is kind of Stollenmayer’s thing: He’s a papercraft artist who turned to game design, and many of his projects blend the two disciplines in some way. Under Kamibox, he’s made the mobile games Sometimes You Die, Bacon — The Game, Song of Bloom and two dozen other titles, and he’s picked up an Apple Design Award, nominations at the Independent Games Festival and other accolades since founding the studio in 2012.

PBJ is due out in early 2025, and it’s heading to iPhone and iPad.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pbj–the-musical-is-a-coming-of-age-game-with-shakespearean-sandwiches-175413688.html?src=rss 

The much-anticipated follow-up to Hyper Light Drifter has a new early access date. At Day of the Devs, Heart Machine announced that Hyper Light Breaker will enter Steam early access on January 14.

The project is a co-op action game where you can play alone or with up to two allies to face down enemies and bosses in the colorful biomes of the Overgrowth. In classic roguelike fashion, players can try different builds, weapons and abilities on each run, and it should be interesting to see how those skills combine when multiple people are in battle. There is also, and this is very important, a hoverboard.

Hyper Light Breaker was first announced back in 2022 as a spiritual successor to the team’s original indie hit. Since then, there have been a couple of delays slowing the game’s arrival in early access, but today’s announcement seems like the real deal. The studio hasn’t shared any additional details yet about a full release date or additional platform support, but we’re excited to see this latest installment of the neon universe Heart Machine has created.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/hyper-light-breaker-will-begin-steam-early-access-on-january-14-180858877.html?src=rss 

Since its announcement in March, it’s sounded like Sleight of Hand should be a fantastic stealth-action game in a magical noir setting — and now it looks that way, too. Its latest trailer, revealed in the Day of the Devs 2024: Game Awards Edition stream, showcases witchy card-slinging gameplay on the gritty streets of Steeple City for the first time.

In the stream, creator Joshua Boggs describes Sleight of Hand as, “If you took Metal Gear Solid and replaced the guns and tools with cards.” This is followed by a shot of the protagonist, Lady Luck, trying to sneak past a guard, only to trigger a brass-backed exclamation point as she’s spotted. The classic stealth references don’t end there, either: Lady Luck is voiced by Debi Mae West, who played Meryl Silverburgh in Metal Gear Solid. (The new trailer begins at 37:20 in the below video).

Lady Luck is a retired occult detective who takes on one last case in order to destroy her former coven, which has a stranglehold on Steeple City. The game combines third-person stealth action with card-based strategy, and in the new trailer, these mechanics appear to work in hardboiled harmony. Cards in Sleight of Hand allow Lady Luck to see through walls, deploy smoke bombs, blind enemies, teleport, sling hexes and crush all the bones in someone’s body, to name a few abilities.

Side note: On its face, Sleight of Hand‘s premise is eerily similar to Deconstructeam’s The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, a fabulous 2023 game starring an exiled witch who enacts revenge on her former coven by reading and building tarot decks. The games are entirely different otherwise — Sleight of Hand is third-person stealth action and Cosmic Wheel is an isometric narrative affair — and I don’t point this out because I think anything nefarious is going on. I just thought it was interesting. Clearly there was something in the zeitgeist that made card-wielding witchy women a hot concept at both studios, and it’s fascinating to see how the same conceit can be interpreted in such vastly different ways. 

Sleight of Hand looks like a stylish new entry in the stealth-action genre, and its witchy noir universe seems to support a variety of approaches in each encounter. It’s developed and published by New Zealand studio RiffRaff Games. RiffRaff was originally founded by Boggs in 2019 under the name MayDay, following the success of his spy-comic game, Framed. Tencent threw down an undisclosed amount to become a minority investor in the team in 2022, which is when it changed names to RiffRaff and hired up talent from around the globe.

Sleight of Hand doesn’t have a firm release date, but it’s on track to hit Steam, Xbox Series X/S and Game Pass in 2025.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/sleight-of-hand-gameplay-trailer-showcases-occult-card-strategy-in-a-noir-world-182341033.html?src=rss