Month: October 2026

Bluey’s Happy Snaps arrives on Xbox Game Pass this October: day-one on October 15

Bluey’s Happy Snaps, a new Bluey game from Gameloft Brisbane aimed squarely at families, is coming to Xbox Game Pass on day one on October 15, 2026. According to the announcement, it’ll be available on both console and PC.

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This time, the team isn’t circling back to 2023’s Bluey: The Video Game. Bluey’s Happy Snaps goes in a different direction, built around exploration, photography, and collecting memories in a Pokémon Snap-style setup. You roam open areas as Bluey, take pictures, find small moments and hidden secrets, and piece everything together in a scrapbook.

Bluey: The Video Game got praise for how well it matched the show’s look, tone, and sense of humor, but a lot of reviews also called out how short it was. So a bigger game with more reasons to come back feels like a pretty direct response to that, and Gameloft Brisbane also seems like a strong match for a property that’s so distinctly Australian.

If Game Pass in your house gets used by younger players, this looks like an easy one to pick up. The announcement says you can play solo or in offline co-op, with a second player joining as Bingo. You’re also getting familiar characters, recognizable locations, and easter eggs, with no microtransactions in the mix.

According to the announcement, Bluey’s Happy Snaps will hit Game Pass the same day it goes on sale through the relevant tiers, including Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass. It joins October additions Echo Weaver and Neon Abyss 2 on October 8 and Valor Mortis on October 13, alongside existing draws such as Battlefield 6.

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Modat warns 8,547 wind and solar systems are now exposed online in Europe

Modat has released a report with the Dutch National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-NL) that identifies 8,547 internet-facing systems left exposed at wind farms and solar parks across 35 countries in and around the European Union.

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The researchers say those systems shouldn’t be publicly reachable, and even that number is probably on the low side. They counted only the systems they could confidently tie to specific sites. Some of the exposed interfaces were more than simple status pages: login portals, turbine dashboards, live “Start,” “Stop” and “Reset” controls, and even a Siemens ET 200SP PLC web server. At about 181 sites, full control may have been possible.

Most of the exposure came from solar parks, with 7,942 systems across 34 countries. Spain accounted for 2,766, Greece 1,860, Italy 753 and Germany 672, which adds up to 76% of the total. Wind sites made up the other 605 exposures in 23 countries, led by Germany at 212 and Italy at 192. The affected sites ranged from 10 MW to more than 4,500 MW.

The bigger takeaway is straightforward: once a system is online, physical distance doesn’t mean much. Modat says it used machine-learning clustering to sort known and unknown device types quickly. The same remote-access problems and weak OT security keep showing up, some traffic is still unencrypted, and a December 2025 attack hit more than 30 Polish sites. EU regulatory pressure is climbing too, and Lithuania has already started restricting some remote control. If you work in energy or OT security, this report should be on your list. You can get it from Modat and NCSC-NL.

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Nazgul King Art Mask is now official: Pure Arts’ collector piece arrives in 2027

If you saw “Nazgul King” trending and thought a new Lord of the Rings movie or streaming series had just been announced, that’s not what this is. Pure Arts has revealed its Nazgul King Art Mask Exclusive Edition, a Lord of the Rings collectible display mask.

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This is a non-wearable display piece built around the Witch-king and the Ringwraiths, and more specifically, the spectral wraith-world look from the moment Frodo puts on the One Ring, not the standard cloaked battlefield version most people picture first. Pure Arts says it’s scheduled to ship in Q2 2027, priced at $1,299, limited to 250 pieces, and made with silicone skin, glass eyes, individually hand-punched hair, plus an Exclusive Edition mini Morgul Blade display stand.

If you’re deep into high-end Lord of the Rings collecting, this is the kind of release you’ll probably want on your radar. For most people, though, it’s pretty plainly luxury merch, not something you grab on a whim.

The 2027 release to really keep an eye on is The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, which is currently set for theaters on December 17, 2027. Production is underway, Andy Serkis is directing and returning as Gollum, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens are involved, Ian McKellen and Elijah Wood are expected to return, Jamie Dornan and Kate Winslet are reportedly joining the cast, The Rings of Power Season 3 is expected in late 2026 or early 2027, The War of the Rohirrim is already out, Shadow of the Past is reportedly paused, and a rumored 8,060-piece Helm’s Deep LEGO set may also arrive in June 2027.

If you want the Nazgul King Art Mask, you can get it through Pure Arts.

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Google Pixel 10 hacked three times at Pwn2Own Ireland 2026: $560,000 in rewards

Pwn2Own Ireland 2026 is over, and the hacking contest turned up 98 zero-days while paying out more than $1.2 million, according to its published results. The bugs showed up across smartphones, printers, smart speakers, smart-home hubs, coding tools, cloud databases, and even a connected wellness device.

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Google’s Pixel 10 drew the most attention. Contest results show three successful attacks against it, worth more than $560,000 combined.

Ikotas Labs took home $300,000 for a remote exploit chain. Tim Becker and Yves Bieri earned $150,000 for a separate chain, though that payout was cut because part of it relied on a known bug. Dimitrios Valsamaras and Ken Gannon collected $112,500 for a third chain that mixed a zero-day with a known flaw, which is how Pwn2Own reduces rewards when researchers don’t bring a fully original set of bugs.

The rest of the board was busy too. The published results list a Samsung Galaxy S26 hack for about $30,000, a Home Assistant Green compromise for roughly the same amount, a Sonos Era 300 hit for $50,000, Lexmark and Brother printer hacks at $20,000 each, a Garmin Index BPM breach at $20,000, and coding and cloud database targets in the $40,000 range.

If you use any of those products, pay attention. Vendors now get the exploit details privately under the usual 90-day patch window. One other detail from the published results stands out: nobody took a shot at the $300,000 Apple iPhone 17 or WhatsApp targets.

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Haunted Hotel is back on Netflix for Season 2

Haunted Hotel comes back to Netflix on October 9, 2026. Matt Roller created the animated horror-comedy, Dan Harmon is back as executive producer, and Season 2 looks sharper right away: eight tighter 30-minute episodes that lean even harder into the show’s mix of horror, comedy, and family drama.

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The setup is still the same, which is part of the appeal. You’re back with a single mother, her two kids, and the ghosts haunting the Undervale hotel, Nathan included, the family’s dead brother. Early reviews make it sound like this cult favorite could end up being one of Netflix’s strongest fall returns.

Katherine comes across as more self-assured now that she’s basically running the hotel. Nathan gets more emotional weight. Ben and his ghost girlfriend Annabelle actually move forward, and Esther has a darker magical edge this time around.

Some of the Season 1 mysteries finally get cleared up. The show still knows how to juggle supernatural chaos, gross-out gore, and the kind of wild joke that gives you something like a cursed soup sending both a child and a witch to the hospital.

If you liked Season 1, there’s a good chance this one lands even better. And if you’re looking for a horror sitcom that’s funny without losing its heart, this is still a rare one. The comedy stays loud, weird, and messy in the best way, but the sweeter and sadder moments hit harder too.

You can stream Season 2 on Netflix, with Eliza Coupe, Will Forte, Skyler Gisondo, Natalie Palamides, Jimmi Simpson, and Riki Lindhome all returning.

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Marvel’s Wolverine sold 756,000 boxed copies in a month: physical still matters

Marvel’s Wolverine had a huge first month. Sony says it sold 2.16 million copies, brought in $130 million, and 35% of those sales, about 756,000 units, came from boxed copies. That’s a pretty blunt reminder that physical PlayStation 5 game sales still matter, even as Sony and the rest of the industry keep pushing harder toward digital.

That also helps explain the reaction to Sony’s earlier comments about discs. The company said PlayStation games released after January 2028 would drop them, then later walked that back after backlash, saying it would scale down manufacturing instead and allow reorders. Wolverine shows why that matters: Sony says the game sold 1.9 million copies in three days, and 35% of buyers still chose a physical copy.

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The regional breakdown is telling. Sony’s numbers show Europe coming in stronger at 51% physical, with France at more than two-thirds physical and the UK going the other direction at about two-thirds digital. Other recent games point the same way, even if the split isn’t quite as sharp: Silent Hill: Townfall reached 45.4% physical, The Blood of the Dawnwalker hit 36%, and Onimusha: Way of the Sword landed between 30% and 31%.

If you care about ownership, this isn’t some side issue. Digital purchases are licenses tied to platform agreements. Sony has already removed hundreds of movies people bought through the PlayStation Store after licensing deals expired. Collectors have been saying for years that this is where things can go, and former PlayStation executive Shawn Layden has made the same point. The industry may be moving faster than some buyers want to.

Digital is ahead, and US market-tracking data shows physical spending is still below its 2008 peak. Even so, players spent $1.5 billion on physical games in 2025, and most of the reporting still focuses on North America and Europe, not Japan, South Korea, Latin America, Australia, or Africa. Marvel’s Wolverine is available now as a PlayStation 5 exclusive.

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Xbox names Maria Angelidou-Smith as Mojang CEO amid Minecraft franchise push

Xbox has named Maria Angelidou-Smith as Mojang’s new CEO. She replaces Kayleen Walters, a change Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announced as Microsoft reworks its games business. It comes as Microsoft pushes Minecraft harder as a franchise.

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Sharma announced the move during a broader games restructuring that has included 3,200 layoffs and a series of leadership changes. Angelidou-Smith’s background makes the choice easy to read. She spent 2014 to 2022 at Meta, working across monetization, Facebook Groups, and Facebook Dating, then moved to Reddit as chief product officer in November 2024. Communities, technology, creators, and monetization at scale: that lines up neatly with Microsoft’s current priorities.

Walters, meanwhile, is taking over the XP division, where she’ll lead film, TV, licensing, merchandise, and adaptations. That fits too, given her Lucasfilm background, her move to Mojang in February 2025, the growth to 250 licensees, and her producer credit on A Minecraft Movie.

If you follow Minecraft, this shift is worth watching. A Minecraft Movie has already brought in more than $550 million, and a sequel is planned for 2027. Minecraft World is set to open at Chessington in 2027. Moonlight Trail opened in Buenos Aires in May 2026. Xbox is also expanding its slate of game-based series after Fallout, with Diablo and Call of Duty projects reportedly in the works. The bigger question is what all of this means for players, creators, developers, and for Mojang’s identity in Stockholm.

You can play Minecraft on Xbox, PC, mobile, and consoles.

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Tesla FSD moves closer in Europe: Germany backs it, but the name must change

Germany has now thrown its support behind Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised), which is a Level 2 driver-assistance system, for use in Europe, but only if Tesla stops calling it “Full Self-Driving.” The bigger European Union vote still hasn’t happened.

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What that means in practice is pretty simple: Germany wants steering, braking, and acceleration assistance on the market soon, but it also thinks the current name says more than the software actually delivers. Tesla has reportedly floated “Tesla Assisted Driving” in Germany, and possibly in other markets too, because the person behind the wheel still has to stay alert and be ready to take over at any moment.

The main fight inside the European Union comes down to speed. Germany is fine with the system allowing up to 10% above posted limits. France and Sweden aren’t sold on that buffer, and they’ve also raised questions about driver attention in city traffic, with Sweden reportedly pushing for rejection unless the speeding function is stripped out.

If you keep an eye on driver-assistance tech, this one matters. Eight countries have already signed off, with the Netherlands going first. A wider European Union rollout is still expected in 2027, and the bloc-wide vote that had been penciled in for October has now slipped to at least December. So Germany’s backing helps, sure, but a qualified majority is still what decides it.

You still can’t get this anywhere in the European Union. The argument over the name is really part of a larger safety dispute, with the American Automobile Association (AAA) and SAE International both pushing for labels that say more clearly what these systems can and can’t do. At the same time, U.S. crash investigations tied to Autopilot and Full Self-Driving, along with court cases, keep the pressure on Tesla, even as supporters argue the technology reduces fatigue and makes driving easier.

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Extraction 3 is now filming: Chris Hemsworth shares training update

Netflix started rolling on Extraction 3 in July, and the third movie in the Chris Hemsworth action franchise is now filming in Thailand and Australia.

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Sam Hargrave is back directing. And with the production returning to Thailand, the series is circling back to the first Extraction after Extraction 2 swapped that setting for the colder backdrop of the Czech Republic and Austria.

Hemsworth’s latest Instagram posts give a pretty good sense of where things are headed. He’s in Thailand, working pads with trainer Jack Boonsanong, running through punching combinations and kicking drills. That lines up with what these movies have leaned on from the start: practical stunt work, punishing fight choreography, and those long-take action sequences that try to make every hit feel close and ugly.

Netflix still hasn’t said much about the story. Even so, Extraction 3 looks set to continue from where things left off, with Tyler and Nik ending up in prison and Idris Elba’s character setting a new mission in motion. Elba is back, Golshifteh Farahani is returning too, and the newcomers this time include Pierce Brosnan, Don Lee, Joe Taslim, Chi Lewis-Parry, and Siena Agudong.

If Extraction has always felt like Netflix’s rougher, grittier answer to John Wick, there’s plenty of reason to keep an eye on the third one. The first Extraction reached 99 million households in four weeks, according to Netflix. Extraction 2 also made Netflix’s top 10 originals. The brand is growing beyond the films too, with Tygo and Mercenary on the way, while the New South Wales shoot is expected to bring 127 million to the local economy and create 450 jobs.

You can stream Extraction and Extraction 2 on Netflix now. Extraction 3 still doesn’t have a release date.

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Arc Raiders gets Frozen Trail 2.0 now: open the map while downed

Embark Studios has rolled out Frozen Trail 2.0 for Arc Raiders, and it’s live now. The studio calls it the biggest patch the game has had since launch. It adds Pendola Pass, Flash Freeze events, a massive downed Emperor ARC you can explore, three new enemies called the Bully, Skulker, and Hydra, plus new gear: the Bantam revolver, Stiletto rifle, Grappling Hook, and Tether Launcher.

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There’s more on the progression side, too. Embark has added 16 new skills, exclusive choice nodes in the skill tree, and Amplified Weapons as a branching endgame upgrade path. The update also brings 22 new quests and a customizable Outpost built around research and crafting. A few smaller changes will matter just as much once you’re actually playing: you can now open the map while downed, your stash cap goes up to 328 even without Expedition bonuses, and there are new map and inventory animations along with proximity-chat mouth movement.

Some balance changes are in here as well. Embark says higher-tier loot from the Queen and Matriarch now drops from their actual leg pieces rather than leg armor, which should make quick armor-stripping a lot less effective. The Anvil hand cannon has also been pushed to blue rarity after performing too well against weapons that sat at, or above, its old tier.

If you play Arc Raiders often, this is the kind of update you’ll want to download right away. It also lands as Embark moves toward bigger patches with more time between them, while running a free-to-play weekend and an eight-day PvE matchmaking test. The studio says those shifts come directly from community feedback after launch.

You can download Frozen Trail 2.0 in Arc Raiders now.

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