🎮 Blade is everyone's pick — just nobody's making his stuff

Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls just set a genre record: 33,233 concurrent players on Steam — edging Street Fighter 6's 2023 beta (32,787) and nearly doubling Tekken 8's (15,035).

Of the whole roster, Magick and Blade dominated — with Blade the clear favourite as an Assist pick. Fitting, given the franchise's rough shape elsewhere: Kevin Feige recently called himself a "gigantic loser" for failing to get the Mahershala Ali film made in seven years, and the Arkane-developed game faces an uncertain future as Microsoft weighs selling or closing the studio.

For now, there's Marvel Tokon on August 6. Fans are voting with their character select screen.

Via IGN.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn83wYCJrPo

🚨 Pavel Durov added to Russia's terrorist and extremist registry

Telegram founder Pavel Durov has been added to the list of terrorists and extremists maintained by Rosfinmonitoring, Russia's financial intelligence unit.

Individuals on the registry are barred from interacting with media outlets, publishing information online, organising public events, and participating in elections. Financial activity is restricted to tax payments, wages, and compensation for damages.

💾 Final Fantasy 14 on Switch 2 is basically a roommate

Square Enix's MMO lands on Switch 2 on August 4 — bringing 117.2 GB of install size, nearly half the console's entire built-in storage. On PS5, smart compression keeps it under 60 GB. Switch 2 gets no such deal.

🔸 All five expansions included in that 117.2 GB
🔸 Sixth expansion Evercold arrives January — an SD card is now a necessity
🔸 First month is subscription-free while servers stabilize

Square Enix now holds every size record on Switch 2. Apparently competing against themselves. The date was confirmed by director Naoki Yoshida at Fan Festival 2026 in Berlin — in full Bastion armor, as IGN reports.

🛫 Two oceans, no stops, one very long day

The new Airbus A350-1000ULR just flew Melbourne to Toulouse in 24 hours and 25 minutes — across the Pacific and Atlantic, covering 12,460 nautical miles nonstop.

This is a rehearsal for Qantas's Project Sunrise: the airline's plan to run the world's first nonstop commercial flights between Sydney and London or New York. Twelve jets ordered, tickets from 2027.

An extra rear fuel tank holding 20,900 litres adds 1,000 nautical miles of range to make it possible. The outbound leg — Toulouse to Melbourne — took 19 hours 13 minutes and was considered the warm-up. It also passed.

Ars Technica

📌 Daily Recap · Jul 30

⚽ Zidane finally takes the France job officially
🔍 Durov now faces a terrorism charge in France
🔓 A missing tag exposed hundreds of Claude chats
🎮 Marvel fighter breaks Steam genre record at launch
🚨 Russia labels Durov a terrorist and extremist officially
💾 FF14 on Switch 2 eats half your storage
🛫 Airbus flew Melbourne to Toulouse nonstop in 24 hours

Someone in your orbit had a long day and missed all of this — send it their way

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😨/🤑 Fear & Greed: 25 — Extreme Fear

🔐 Apple let a fake through — and $1.8M in Bitcoin walked out

Sparrow Wallet is desktop-only. It has never had an iOS version — so any "Sparrow" in the App Store is, by definition, a fake.

Three people typed their seed phrases into one and lost a combined $1.8M. The detail that stings: one victim reported the app to Apple on July 25th. Nine days later, another person downloaded the same fake and lost $840,000. Apple never replied.

Sparrow's developer had been flagging copycat apps since January 2024 — and was threatened with account termination for trying to post a warning listing. A federal lawsuit followed, per TechCrunch.

A closed ecosystem sold as a safety guarantee — eighteen months to remove a fake the trademark holder kept reporting. Walled garden, they said.

Decrypt

💔 Kavinsky has died. He was 50.

He was found at his Paris home Tuesday evening. Police have opened an investigation; no foul play is suspected — per Reuters, he'd been complaining of headaches in the days before his death.

If the name doesn't land — "Nightcall" will. The opening track from Refn's *Drive*, 2011, made with Guy-Manuel of Daft Punk. One of the defining electronic tracks of that decade. In 2024 he performed it at the Paris Olympics closing ceremony alongside Phoenix and Angèle.

Real name Vincent Belorgey, born 1975. Synthwave as a genre owes a lot to him. That's just how it is.

Variety

🕹️ The last place anyone thought to look

In 1986, Nintendo released the Famicombox — a commercial 8-bit system for Japanese hotels, holding up to 16 cartridges, coin-operated, never meant for home use. Most units disappeared long ago.

Famicom archivist Orochi went undercover to a love hotel and found a batch of them, fully operational, installed in nearly every room. Almost all games work fine — the only casualties are Zapper shooters, since light guns and LCD TVs have never really got along. Orochi won't name the hotel, hoping to "protect" the consoles. Automaton Media broke the story.

Forty years later, the hardware is still clocking in. Just not at the kind of hotel Nintendo imagined.

Engadget

💸 The Consumer Federation of America puts last year's online scam losses at $148 billion — seven times what the FBI recorded, per CNET. The gap exists because only around 14% of victims ever file a report. Crypto accounts for more than half of losses, and Meta's platforms — Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp — are where most scams originate.

9to5Mac

🎮 Someone gave Baldur's Gate 3 an over-the-shoulder camera — and the internet chose sides

Modder Relysia dropped True Third-Person Camera on Nexus Mods this month: over-the-shoulder view, dynamic FOV, smooth transitions — Faerûn suddenly feels like The Witcher. A showcase video hit 3.9 million views in days, per IGN.

Critics say the camera isn't cosmetic — it's structural, and BG3's levels were never built for it. The other side: nobody's touching turn-based combat or click-to-move, just make it an opt-in toggle.

Larian signalled at a recent Divinity AMA that free camera won't be in the next game. Hard to hold that line when 3.9 million people just watched someone stroll through Baldur's Gate like it's Novigrad.

📌 Daily Recap · Jul 31

🔐 Fake App Store wallet drained $1.8M in Bitcoin
💔 Kavinsky, the man behind Nightcall, died at 50
🕹️ Rare 1986 Nintendo Famicombox found inside a love hotel
💸 Online scams cost $148B last year — most went unreported
🎮 A BG3 mod goes third-person and breaks the internet

Someone in your life just surfaced from a 12-hour workday — send them this so they're not completely lost tomorrow

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😨/🤑 Fear & Greed: 27 — Fear

🤖 The US robot ban covers Roombas too

The Trump administration's ban on importing "advanced robotic devices" dominated headlines for humanoid robots — but the FCC confirmed to The Verge it covers robot vacuums as well.

The rule targets any new software-controlled ground device over 4.4 lbs with environmental sensing and wireless connectivity. Existing robots are untouched; new models need a waiver tied to US manufacturing commitments.

The problem: the market is almost entirely Chinese. The top five robovac brands — Roborock, Ecovacs, Dreame, Xiaomi, Narwal — are all Chinese entities. The Roomba brand, post-iRobot bankruptcy, now belongs to Chinese manufacturer Picea. No company was asked a single question about security practices during the waiver process.

🎵 'Rubber Soul' is getting the deluxe box set treatment — with an unheard Lennon song

Beatles fans have been waiting for this since 2022, when *Revolver* got its big deluxe release. Now it's *Rubber Soul*'s turn: October 2nd, and the full Super Deluxe edition has 68 tracks, including 24 session outtakes and a previously unheard John Lennon composition called «Little Girl».

New stereo remix, original mono master, the US Capitol version, and an 88-page book — all in there. Dolby Atmos is coming separately. Smaller 2LP and 2CD editions exist for everyone else.

As a preview, "Michelle (Take 1)" is already out, according to Variety.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wL0mVPA7T0Q

🎬 The Odyssey hit the internet — briefly

Nolan's *The Odyssey* pulled in $87 million its second weekend, with IMAX 70mm tickets still scarce. Someone, apparently, couldn't wait.

On July 25, a post on X pointed to a high-quality bootleg — confirmed by Variety. It hit 2.1 million views in two and a half hours before a takedown and account suspension. By July 26, clones linger on the platform, though most lead to a Rickroll. Rick Astley, undefeated.

Elon Musk, separately, called the casting DEI manipulation and promised a "historically accurate" Grok Imagine version. The box office noticed neither.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mzw2ttJD2qQ

📌 Daily Recap · Aug 01

🤖 Robot vacuum ban? Yes, your Roomba is grounded
🎵 Rubber Soul deluxe drops with a secret Lennon track
🎬 Odyssey bootleg hit 2M views before vanishing fast

Someone in your life was definitely too busy to catch all this — pass it on

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😨/🤑 Fear & Greed: 27 — Fear

🚕 Zoox has received NHTSA approval to charge fares in its steering-wheel-free robotaxis — up to 5,000 vehicles over two years. Paid rides launch in Las Vegas next month, with Miami and Austin to follow.

Until now, the Amazon-owned company had only been offering free demonstration rides in San Francisco and Las Vegas, Reuters reports.

The Verge

🎬 Spider-Man: Brand New Day has beaten *Avengers: Endgame*'s all-time opening record before the weekend even starts — $74M in Thursday previews, pre-sales already past $200M. Weekend projection: $350M+, against Endgame's $357.1M domestic record, per Collider.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daXaTug8rL4