Welcome to 2025. Say goodbye to last year with biggest losers in tech. Picking our favorite villains for 2024 wasn't easy since it wasn't the best time for technology. Between the depressing spiral of social media, the will-they-or-won't-they dance of TikTok being banned in the US, and the endless edited and fake content, it's just so noisy. Is this the internet slop? Is it exhaustion? Is it AI talking to AI about AI? In between all of this is the obsolescence of the connectors of the past, Intel's serious efforts to turn around its fortunes and, ugh, those AI assistants.
And since it's a new year, we'll be making some changes to the Engadget newsletter over the next few weeks. We'll still cover the biggest tech stories and events, but we'll also add more context, more writers and editors, and even some features from Engadget's past. Is there something you'd like to see in your inbox? Contact us.
— Mat Smith
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Tintin dances to Rhapsody in Blue.
A new year has arrived, and a new generation of creative works has entered the public domain. Today, much of the material copyrighted in 1929, as well as sound recordings from 1924, are fair game for free adaptation, reuse, copying and distribution. Some prominent directors debuted their first projects with sound, such as Alfred Hitchcock. Blackmail and Cecil B. DeMille Dynamite. 1929 was also the year that Walt Disney made the iconic short film The Skeleton Dance, animated by Ub Iwerks, and when Mickey Mouse starred in his first talkie.
Two games from ten years ago and a critical failure.
Sony has just revealed the first set of PlayStation Plus games in 2025, available to all subscribers. This month includes Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Update And The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe. Suicide Squad It's a surprising addition: it suffered numerous delays, received mostly negative reviews, and reportedly cost Warner Bros. approximately 200 million dollars. The developers announced that the current season of content will be the last, although they do not plan to close the game yet. So play while… you can?