Technology

WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg calls it “a rare and unusual situation” resulting from WP Engine’s legal moves.

By Wes Davis, a weekend editor who covers the latest in tech and entertainment. He has written news, reviews, and more as a tech journalist since 2020.

WordPress.org has taken over a popular WP Engine plugin in order “to remove commercial upsells and fix a security problem,” WordPress cofounder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg announced today. This “minimal” update, which he labels a fork of the Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin, is now called “Secure Custom Fields.”

Ecovacs blamed a “credential stuffing event” for Deebot X2 Omni robot vacuums that were commandeered to spew hateful words.

By Wes Davis, a weekend editor who covers the latest in tech and entertainment. He has written news, reviews, and more as a tech journalist since 2020.

Someone gained access to Ecovacs Deebot X2 Omni robotic vacuums across several US cities earlier this year and used them to chase pets and yell racist slurs at their owners, reported ABC News in Australia this week.

Threads users are lambasting Meta after it posted AI-generated images of the Aurora Borealis yesterday.

By Wes Davis, a weekend editor who covers the latest in tech and entertainment. He has written news, reviews, and more as a tech journalist since 2020.

Meta has a suggestion for folks like me who forgot to go outside and look at the Northern Lights on Thursday night: just use AI to fake it! But Threads users who replied to Meta’s idea, posted along with three AI-generated images of the Aurora Borealis Meta last night, seem to disagree.

Atlus’ game tackles tough subjects with refreshing nuance, catapulting it beyond simply being ‘Persona with swords.’

By Ash Parrish, a reporter who covers the business, culture, and communities of video games, with a focus on marginalized gamers and writing about the intersection of video games and sex.

I no longer expect video games that tackle the subjects of racism and discrimination through fantasy — as Metaphor: ReFantazio does — to surprise me. Those stories never go beyond well-trodden depictions of “racism is bad,” and I tune them out like so much white noise. But Metaphor: ReFantazio has done the work, and its willingness to go beyond surface-level treatments of tired fantasy tropes to dig at the heart of the real issues with racism and discrimination is exactly what makes it a phenomenal game. Metaphor is a clever evolution of the Persona series, but it wouldn’t be as interesting or outstanding as it is without its refreshingly progressive message.

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By Andrew Webster, an entertainment editor covering streaming, virtual worlds, and every single Pokémon video game. Andrew joined The Verge in 2012, writing over 4,000 stories.

It’s been a pretty good year for horror fans. When it comes to movies, the summer was packed with the likes of Cuckoo, MaXXXine, and Alien: Romulus, while gaming has seen releases such as a Silent Hill 2 remake and the retro Crow Country. So, if you’re looking for something new to play or watch in the lead-up to Halloween, we’ve gathered all of our spookiest coverage here in one place to make things a little easier. (And if you missed it, we did the same thing last year.) So, grab some snacks, turn down the lights, and get ready for a few scares.

If Ryzen 9000 disappointed you, X3D may not help much.

By Sean Hollister, a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.

Somebody goofed — and now AMD’s unannounced Ryzen 9000X3D desktop processors have been partially revealed. But like Intel’s new Arrow Lake desktop CPUs, it doesn’t look like they’ll be a huge performance improvement on their predecessors. If so, that’s a shame given how poorly received AMD’s Ryzen 9000 was, to begin with.

The layoffs will affect about 17,000 people.

By Jay Peters, a news editor who writes about technology, video games, and virtual worlds. He’s submitted several accepted emoji proposals to the Unicode Consortium.

Boeing will be laying off “roughly” 10 percent of its workforce, president and CEO Kelly Ortberg announced in an email to staff on Friday. That number equates to 17,000 jobs, Reuters reports.

The layoffs will take place “over the coming months” and will include “executives, managers and employees,” Ortberg says. Leadership teams plan to share more information about how the layoffs will affect specific organizations in the company next week.

Pixel Watch 1 and 2 owners will have to wait to update to Wear OS 5 to avoid the possibility of turning their watch into an expensive friendship bracelet.

By Umar Shakir, a news writer fond of the electric vehicle lifestyle and things that plug in via USB-C. He spent over 15 years in IT support before joining The Verge.

Google is working on a fix for a buggy Wear OS 5 update. The company says it paused the OTA update rollout on September 26th after people, including my colleague Richard Lawler, reported their Pixel Watch 1 and 2 devices were stuck on a blank screen due to the update.

Moflin will develop its own simulated personality and emotions as you interact with it and can learn to recognize its owner.

By Andrew Liszewski, a senior reporter who’s been covering and reviewing the latest gadgets and tech since 2011, but has loved all things electronic since he was a kid.

Casio has opened preorders for its robotic pet called Moflin that looks like a cross between a hamster and Star Trek’s Tribbles. Unlike Sony’s robot dog Aibo that can follow you around, Moflin is designed to be held and cuddled, and over time, Casio says it will learn who you are and attempt to develop a simulated bond expressed through unique sounds and movements.

The Wayback Machine’s site has been breached, but its founder says the data is still there.

By Emma Roth, a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO.

The Internet Archive will come back within “days” following a cyberattack that brought down the organization’s vast digital library and the Wayback Machine, according to an update from founder Brewster Kahle. It’s been struggling due to a data breach and DDoS attack earlier this week that revealed the email addresses, screen names, password change timestamps, and other information associated with more than 31 million unique email addresses.