Apple has announced its new Advanced Commerce API, designed to provide app developers the ability to manage large catalogs of in-app purchases or subscriptions.Apple has introduced a new Advanced Commerce API for in-app purchases.The announcement was published on Apple's developer page, along with the eligibility requirements. The Advanced Commerce API aims to help app developers with exceptionally large content catalogs and creator experiences, as well as those who have subscriptions with optional add-ons within their apps.The iPhone maker's new API will enable a new way of managing in-app purchases, meaning that developers will no longer need to rely on App Store Connect. Developers will be able to use either, or both, to manage their in-app purchases, assuming they receive access to Apple's Advanced Commerce API. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

With developer Compulsion Games having taken the stage at the recent Developer_Direct to announce the release date for South of Midnight, the studio has also made the game available for digital pre-order.While players can pre-order the standard edition of the game and get access to it when it comes out on April 8, there is also a Premium Edition that comes with a host of goodies, as well as 5 days of early access to the game before its release date. Grabbing South of Midnights Premium Edition will allow players to start playing on April 3.Along with the game itself, the South of Midnight Premium Edition also comes with a digital art book, a digital comic book, a digital copy of the games original soundtrack, a music video, and a documentary about the title. The Premium Edition of South of Midnight is priced at $49.99, while the standard edition is priced at $39.99.The soundtrack of the game, composed by Olivier Deriviere, will include music by Southern artists. The music itself will range from soulful blues to honky-tonk music. The soundtrack has been composed to evoke the cultural history of the games primary setting.The comic book, titled The Boo-Hag, features writing and art by Rob Guillory. The full-colour comic will revolve around protagonist Hazels encounter with a mythical creature from the Deep South mythos.The documentary, titled Weaving Hazels Journey, Directors Cut, revolves around the development of the game. The documentary also goes into detail about how the games world was created, and the kinds of inspirations that the titles artists, designers and writers were able to draw from.Compulsion Games recently released a gameplay trailer for South of Midnight, which alongside letting us see Hazels combat and exploration capabilities, also gave us a look at some of the titles earlier story. The game will feature a host of different zones, each of which will be filled with unique enemies, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.The studio had revealed back in November that South of Midnight would be quite an adventure, and will take players anywhere between 20 and 25 hours to finish it. The studio hasnt revealed, however, if this playtime estimate is for players that would just be focusing on the story, or if it also includes side-quests and other content.South of Midnight was first unveiled back in June 2023. The game revolves around 19-year-old protagonist Hazel, who finds herself becoming chosen by the magical world around her to become a Weaver. The story will involve Hazel taking on different enemies, all based off of folklore and myths of the Deep South area where the game is set.For more details about South of Midnight, check out a trailer that was released back in June 2024 that gave us a solid look at the titles various combat and exploration mechanics, all of which will have Hazel use her Weaver abilities to the fullest.South of Midnight is coming to PC and Xbox Series X/S on April 8.

Ninja Gaiden 4 was perhaps the standout announcement from the Xbox Developer_Direct, and its out later this year with its teams currently in the polishing phase. While the gameplay fit the high-speed standard that defined the series, theres plenty of new features to look forward to.Along with sticking to the dark atmosphere that defined the series, Tokyo presents some stressfull scenarios. With the miasma rain causing significant destruction, you run into collapsing buildings while grinding on rails as newcomer Yakumo. Exploration yields hidden items, challenges, and more, so its worth going off the beaten path.Fiends and other enemies return alongside 1v1 battles with enemies that can block your attacks. Searching for the right moment to attack is important, but Yakumos skills truly shine when fighting crowds. While he has the Raven Style, the Bloodraven Form is perhaps the most intriguing element.Utilized to fight off multiple enemies, PlatinumGames director Yuji Nakao described it as a technique that manipulates the blood of oneself and enemies, transforming it into a massive weapon capable of slicing through multiple foes at once.Yakumo fights using Bloodraven Form, and when certain conditions are met, he can unleash a move called Bloodbath Kill, which instantly bisects enemies in one strike. These large-scale, high-damage attacks allow for turning the tide instantly against multiple enemies.Of course, classic moves like the Flying Swallow and Izuna Drop return, which both Yakumo and Ryu Hayabusa can utilize. However, there are also fresh moves appearing for the first time in the series. Fans can also expect new and returning characters.Ninja Gaiden 4 launches in Fall 2025 for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. It will also be available for Game Pass.

January 24: Alasitas (La Paz, Bolivia); Day of the Unification of the Romanian Principalities (1859)Sutter's Mill1458 The Estates unanimously proclaimed 14-year-old Matthias Corvinus King of Hungary after being persuaded to do so by his uncle Michael Szilgyi.1848 James W. Marshall discovered gold at Sutter's Mill (reconstruction pictured) in Coloma, California, leading to the California gold rush.1968 Vietnam War: The 1st Australian Task Force launched Operation Coburg against the North Vietnamese army and the Viet Cong.1977 Spanish transition to democracy: Neo-fascists attacked an office in Madrid, killing five people and injuring four others.1987 About 20,000 protestors marched in a civil rights demonstration in Forsyth County, Georgia, United States.Signe Rink (b.1836)Maria Tallchief (b.1925)Madge Bellamy (d.1990)Helena Kmie (d.2017)More anniversaries: January 23January 24January 25ArchiveBy emailList of days of the yearAbout

Sakana found that self-adaptive models can modify their weights during inference to adjust behavior to new and unseen tasks.Read More

Netflix plans to offer couch co-op and party games that it will stream over the cloud to TVs, co-CEO Greg Peters said as part of the companys Q4 2024 earnings announcements this week. The company has offered cloud gaming as a beta to a subset of subscribers since 2023, so this news from Peters indicates that the company is going to continue to invest in it.Peters didnt say exactly when the co-op and party games might be available. But he did say that we think of this as a successor to family board game night or an evolution of what the game show on TV used to be.Netflix will also continue to focus on more narrative games based on Netflix IP Peters says those games are consistent fan favorites and weve got a lot in the library to work with there.RelatedThe companys gaming division has seen some major changes as of late: former executive Leanne Loombe announced she was moving to Annapurna Interactive, and last year, the group got a new boss after the old boss moved to a new role focused on generative AI in games. Netflix also announced that it would be removing nearly all of its interactive titles and that it would be closing its AAA studio before it ever released a game.

Google is bringing smart home controls in Gemini to everyone. The Google Home extension in the Gemini app is adding a few new features, in addition to letting you adjust your smart lighting, thermostat, speakers, and other compatible devices as long as theyre connected to your Google account.Google first previewed the extension last November. With it, you can use natural language to control your smart home when interacting with Gemini, such as saying The sun is too bright in the living room to close your smart blinds. But now, Gemini can also carry out multiple requests, like Turn the armchair light on too, but dim the kitchen lamp. Youll be able to use the Google Home extension to ask Gemini about the status of your devices too, such as whether youve left your porch light on.Additionally, Google will let you control non-sensitive smart home devices, like your lights, from your phones lock screen. Other updates include the ability to adjust the volume, pause, and resume media on smart speakers, displays, and TVs within the Gemini app, as well as an updated thermostat control design that matches the one inside Google Home. Gemini will also automatically open the Google Home app for security-related actions for cameras and locks (it previously only linked you).The launch of the Google Home extension follows a big update to Gemini, which lets it perform more complex tasks across multiple apps. You can try out the integration for yourself by signing into Gemini with the same account you use for Home and turning on the Google Home extension. It launches today but is rolling out over the coming weeks.

Our favorite Game Pass deal is back for the first time in 2025. Woot! (which is owned by Amazon) is offering three months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for only $33.99. There's a 10% off coupon "SAVETEN" that drops the price to $30.59 with free digital delivery. The normal monthly cost is $19.99. This coupon only runs for 24 hours and will expire end of day.Note that you can purchase multiple Game Pass codes and apply them to your account up to a maximum of 36 months, however SAVETEN is one-time use and will only work on one of your Game Pass codes. The coupon field is at the final step of checkout right under the "Place Order" button.3 Months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for $30.593 Months of Xbox Game Pass UltimateMultiple digital codes can be stacked (code can only be applied once)Xbox Game Pass Ultimate gives you access to a library of hundreds of Xbox games, including day one releases. If you don't own a console and don't want to pay for one, there's even a legitimate way to play Game Pass games without an Xbox. Although you do lose access to the library once your membership is over, all your past achievements and progress will be saved. New release games are not cheap, and being able to play them at launch without paying retail price for them will save you a lot of money. This perk alone will easily recoup the cost of the membership.Other perks include access to Xbox Game Pass for PC, exclusive membership discounts, Xbox Cloud Gaming, a bonus EA Play subscription, extra in-game content and rewards, and more.Check out more of the best Xbox deals of 2025.Why Should You Trust IGN's Deals Team?IGN's deals team has a combined 30+ years of experience finding the best discounts in gaming, tech, and just about every other category. We don't try to trick our readers into buying things they don't need at prices that aren't worth buying something at. Our ultimate goal is to surface the best possible deals from brands we trust and our editorial team has personal experience with. You can check out our deals standards here for more information on our process, or keep up with the latest deals we find on IGN's Deals account on Twitter.Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.

Robert Eggers will follow up his gothic horror movie Nosferatu with a sequel to the beloved classic, Labyrinth.Variety reports that Eggers will write and direct the sequel to Jim Hensons 1986 dark fantasy movie starring David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly. Eggers will be writing the film with his collaborator on The Northman, Sjn. A sequel was previously in the works with Sinister director Scott Derrickson attached. But with no updates since 2023, it appears that TriStar and Jim Henson Pictures decided to move forward with a new sequel from Eggers.PlayOriginally released in 1986, Labyrinth starred Bowie as the Goblin King Jareth who kidnaps Connellys baby brother. She ventures into the dark fantasy world to rescue her brother with the help of a gang of Henson puppets.The Labyrinth sequel isnt the only thing Eggers is working on. It was revealed that the director will also be directing a werewolf movie titled Werwulf with plans for a Christmas 2026 release. The only known details is that the movie is set in 13th century England, with dialogue written in the Old English of the time. Presumably someone will turn into a wolf monster at some point.Nosferatu was released last Christmas and is a remake of the 1922 silent movie by F.W. Murnau. Set in 19th century Germany, Nosferatu follows a young real estate agent sent to Transylvania to sell its mysterious count a castle in Germany, only for dark, vampiric nightmares to begin manifesting around him and his wife Ellen.Nosferatu earned four Oscar nominations today including Cinematography, Production Design, Costume Design, and Makeup and Hairstyling. You can read our Nosferatu review here.Matt Kim is IGN's Senior Features Editor.

Welcome to 9to5Neural. AI moves fast. We help you keep up. In our inaugural edition, were exploring the start of the next frontier for OpenAI, Anthropics thoughtful solution to a common AI critique, and presidential AI executive order ping-pong. Lets start making sense of the latest in AI news.ChatGPT gets to work with OperatorOpenAI recently released the 18K gold Apple Watch Edition of ChatGPT. ChatGPT Pro is a $200/month subscription that makes Tim Cook wish Apple had that kind of recurring revenue per customer.Starting today, ChatGPT Pro also gives AI enthusiasts a major new reason to subscribe beyond higher request limits.Meet Operator. OpenAI calls it a research preview of an agent that can use its own browser to perform tasks for you. From meme creation to ordering groceries and filling out forms, OpenAI dubs Operator one of its first agents that will execute tasks you give it. Today were releasingOperator, an agent that can go to the web to perform tasks for you. Using its own browser, it can look at a webpage and interact with it by typing, clicking, and scrolling.It is currently a research preview, meaning it has limitations and will evolve based on user feedback.Operator wont always be behind a $200/month paywall. OpenAI plans to open access to this AI tool for Plus, Team, and Enterprise paid users in the future. For now, Operator is available to all ChatGPT Pro customers in the U.S. at operator.chatgpt.com. OpenAI says Operator is powered by its new Computer-Using Agent (CUA) technology. Powering Operator is Computer-Using Agent (CUA), a model that combines GPT-4os vision capabilities with advanced reasoning through reinforcement learning. CUA is trained to interact with graphical user interfaces (GUIs)the buttons, menus, and text fields people see on a screenjust as humans do. This gives it the flexibility to perform digital tasks without using OS- or web-specific APIs.[]While CUA is still early and has limitations, it sets new state-of-the-art benchmark results, achieving a 38.1% success rate on OSWorld for full computer use tasks, and 58.1% on WebArena and 87% on WebVoyager for web-based tasks. These results highlight CUAs ability to navigate and operate across diverse environments using a single general action space.I guess this is as good of a time as any to announce that I am stepping down from 9to5Neural to spend more time with my family.All future editions of 9to5Neural will be brought to you by Operator. I have full faith in the Computer-Using Agent to translate AI news for humanity going forward. Wait, no, I spoke too soon. Apparently theres an issue with our ChatGPT Pro subscription. Im back in the saddle!But seriously, Operator is clearly a big deal. Well look back at January 2025 as a milestone in AI advancement. Computer-User Agent technology may also satisfy AI skeptics who keep asking when ChatGPT-5 is coming. The other big OpenAI story this week? Stargate. Or as Sam Altman said on X, big. beautiful. buildings. Whats Stargate? Basically a big computer brain in Texas. OpenAI detailed the initiative this week:The Stargate Project is a new company which intends to invest $500 billion over the next four years building new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the United States. We will begin deploying $100 billion immediately. This infrastructure will secure American leadership in AI, create hundreds of thousands of American jobs, and generate massive economic benefit for the entire world. This project will not only support the re-industrialization of the United States but also provide a strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies.The initial equity funders in Stargate are SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, and MGX. SoftBank and OpenAI are the lead partners for Stargate, with SoftBank having financial responsibility and OpenAI having operational responsibility. Masayoshi Son will be the chairman.Arm, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Oracle, and OpenAI are the key initial technology partners. The buildout is currently underway, starting in Texas, and we are evaluating potential sites across the country for more campuses as we finalize definitive agreements.As part of Stargate, Oracle, NVIDIA, and OpenAI will closely collaborate to build and operate this computing system.Behind every ambitious AI firm is an ambitious billionaire, of course, and the billionaires are fighting on X over Stargate finances.Elon Musk, whose xAI firm has no involvement in Stargate, responded to the announcement on X, saying they dont actually have the money. Musk added that he has it on good authority that SoftBank has well under $10B secured.Altman, on the other hand, is confident the parties involved have funding secured.Meanwhile, the OpenAI boss says he fell into the non-playable character trap regarding Trump (now that Trump has made his character playable, referring to Stargate).Frankly, Im much more bullish on the prospects of ChatGPT Operator than I am on the relationship complexities of the billionaires. Claude brings receipts with CitationsMeanwhile, Anthropic, which has always had a more measured approach to AI safety, is launching a promising new tool for its Claude chatbot called Citations. Today, were launching Citations, a new API feature that lets Claude ground its answers in source documents. Claude can now provide detailed references to the exact sentences and passages it uses to generate responses, leading to more verifiable, trustworthy outputs. []Previously, developers relied on complex prompts that instruct Claude to include source information, often resulting in inconsistent performance and significant time investment in prompt engineering and testing. With Citations, users can now add source documents to the context window, and when querying the model, Claude automatically cites claims in its output that are inferred from those sources.Our internal evaluations show that Claudes built-in citation capabilities outperform most custom implementations, increasing recall accuracy by up to 15%.Anthropic points to relevant use cases including customer support queriers and document summarization tasks. Best take? Kyle B. Russel on X, no citations needed:Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Claude 3.5 Haiku are ready for Citations starting today, and Anthropic has documentation ready for your exploration.New AI EO trumps last AI EOFollowing that brief break from presidential politics, lets return to the American policy on AI.President Trump continued his marathon executive order signing race on Thursday, revoking the Biden administrations executive order on AI policy with the Trump administrations executive order on AI policy. In case youve forgotten, Bidens EO on AI focused on artificial intelligence safety, infrastructure standards, mitigating job disruption, and watermarking AI content for transparency. In sum, Bidens executive order:Emphasized the safe, secure, and trustworthy development of artificial intelligence (AI).Mandated standards for critical infrastructure, cybersecurity enhancements, and oversight of federally funded projects.Addressed societal challenges, including mitigating job disruptions, advancing equity, and protecting civil rights.Required AI-generated content to include watermarks for transparency and to distinguish it from human-created material.Per the AP report, Trumps AI executive order revokes past government policies that act as barriers to American AI innovation, adding that the U.S. must develop AI systems that are free from ideological bias or engineered social agendas, per the executive order.Aside from the broad policy directive, President Trumps AI EO authorizes the development of an AI action plan within 180 days, per the AP, which will be headed by Special Advisor for AI and Crypto David Sacks, the ex-PayPal executive appointed by Trump.Going forward, tech companies will no longer need to disclose with the government the development of AI models that cross a certain power threshold.Deep competition from DeepSeek R1Meanwhile, AI competition isnt just happening among American firms. This week, Chinese AI firm DeepSeek released its R1 model family into the wild.Whats unique about R1 is that the model can run locally with performance comparable to OpenAIs ChatGPT 4o model. Local models tend to trail models that operate off-machine, making this developmental model and DeepSeek worth watching.The catch? R1 naturally has a state-approved view of world history when it comes to topics like the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest and massacre or Taiwans independence. You know, just in case the stakes for who wins the AI race werent clear already.More on the latest in AI developments in the next edition of 9to5Neural only on 9to5Mac!Top iPhone accessoriesAdd 9to5Mac to your Google News feed. FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.Youre reading 9to5Mac experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. 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