Supersonic first from Dawn Aerospace, Astro Bot leads Games Awards nominations
A civil plane has gone supersonic for the first time since Concorde, after a successful test flight in New Zealand. Dawn Aerospace’s rocket-powered plane will eventually be used to launch satellites into orbit and give daily access to space, according to the company. “This achievement signifies a major step toward operational hypersonic travel and daily space access, establishing rocket-powered aircraft as a new class of ultra-high-performance vehicles,” said the company in a statement. Although the successful flight was announced on Tuesday, the test took place on 12 November near Mt Cook in New Zealand’s South Island. Sky News
It’s the new badge of celebrity status that nobody wants. Jennifer Aniston, Oprah Winfrey and Kylie Jenner have all had their voices cloned by fraudsters. Online blaggers used artificial intelligence to fake the Tiggerish tones of Martin Lewis, the TV financial adviser. And this weekend David Attenborough described himself as “profoundly disturbed” to have discovered that his cloned voice had been used to deliver partisan US news bulletins. Now experts have warned that voice-cloning is outpacing the law. The Guardian
This year’s Game Awards shortlist has been announced, with Astro Bot and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth picking up the most nominations. Dubbed “the Oscars of gaming” by some and written off as an advertising marathon by others, it’s the most-watched ceremony celebrating the industry. Host Geoff Keighley also revealed that the 3D platformer and the role-playing game had received seven nominations each, including Game of the Year. Card game Balatro, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, Metaphor: Refantazio and Black Myth: Wukong are the other games up for the top prize. BBC
PlayStation maker Sony is currently in talks that would likely see it acquire a controlling stake in FromSoftware, the developer behind Elden Ring, Dark Souls and Bloodbourne, as part of a buyout of its owner, the Japanese publishing giant Kadokawa. That’s according to a Reuters report which claims a deal could be signed in weeks, via sources with knowledge of discussions between the two companies. Both Sony and Kadokawa declined to comment on that report. Launched in 2022, Elden Ring has now sold more than 25m copies worldwide. Eurogamer
Rumors of an Apple AirTag successor began to circulate shortly after the launch of the original. Considering that Apple‘s original tracker has been around for nearly four years now, having been unveiled in May 2020, we’ve been hearing about the AirTag 2 for a while, and now a new report is shedding more light on what we can expect. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that a new AirTag, codenamed B589, is in development and that “Apple is getting ready to bring it to market,” likely by the middle of 2025. Tech Radar
Google appears to be introducing a new feature to help users improve the privacy and security of their Gmail account. The feature, titled Shielded Email, was first discovered in Google’s Autofill settings but has not yet gone live, according to Android Authority. Similar to Apple’s Hide My Email, Shielded Email will give its 2 billion Gmail users the chance to create a unique one-off email address alias each time they need to sign up for a website or service. Emails sent via the unique address are forwarded to the user’s primary account. Metro
