Since 2007 the Assassin's Creed series has allowed players to hack, slash and sneak their way through a range of historical settings. And the latest instalment, Shadows, creeping on to PS5, Xbox and PC from Thursday, grants fans' long-held wish for an adventure set in feudal Japan. It mixes the stealth gameplay of the recent Assassin's Creed Mirage with the combat-focused approach of mega-hit Valhalla and throws ninjas into the mix. But it's being seen by many as a make-or-break title for French publisher Ubisoft, one of the biggest gaming companies in the world. After a lacklustre 2024, there's a lot of hope that the twice-delayed Shadows will replicate the sales of previous games in the Assassin's Creed series.

According to his profile, Max, a contestant on season six of the Netflix reality show The Circle, is 26 years old, brunette and into his Australian shepherd, Pippa. He is a veterinary intern from Pismo Beach, California, and a bit cheeky – "single, but my dog is taken". He enters into the Circle chat, the fake social media service contestants use to vie for 100,000, posting either as themselves, an embellished version of themselves or a fully fake identity, with ease. He seems so real," says Lauren, a fellow twentysomething hoping to build enough online alliances and secure enough positive peer reviews to win, upon seeing Max's profile. You just know the producers ate that up, because "Max" is the front for an AI chatbot, a new gimmick to up the ante in this middleweight reality show. The Circle has nowhere near the following of Love Island, but hasn't sunk to the bottom of the streaming service slush pile – and is the latest example of artificial intelligence's seemingly inexorable ...

Sony has unveiled an unusual mirrorless camera that essentially marries the FX6 cinema camera's tech with remote-controlled robotics. Called the FR7, it's the "world's first" pan-tilt-zoom full-frame interchangeable-lens camera with pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) robotic technology, according to the company. Priced at nearly $10,000 without a lens, it's designed for professional productions including reality shows, concerts, dramas, music videos and more. For instance, it could be mounted on dolly tracks, a crane or a tripod and remotely follow subjects around without getting in the way. It could also be fixed to a vehicle, with the pan-tilt-zoom capabilities giving the director more interesting angles and shots. The large sensor allows for a more cinematic image than typical robotic TV cameras, too.

In her 2018 book "Double Negative: The Black Image and Popular Culture," Racquel Gates explores the disruptive potential of stereotypical or so-called negative images of Black people onscreen: Flavor Flav on VH1's "Flavor of Love," for example, and the stars of "ratchet" reality shows such as "Basketball Wives." These images, Gates argues, intervene against narratives of racial uplift that are overly tethered to white and middle-class definitions of respectability. In her acknowledgments section, Gates, a professor of film and media studies at Columbia, invokes a scene from "Love & Hip Hop," in which an aspiring singer tells an entertainment manager, "I want to be on your roster." Gates writes, "While I was tempted to quote this bit of dialogue to my editor, Ken Wissoker, during our first meeting, I erred on the side of caution." Wissoker, who has been an editor at Duke University Press since 1991, has a formidable roster, and one could easily imagine a reality show about junior scholars fighting for a chance to work with him.

I have 34 years as an engineer here at Intel. Almost all but about the last, I don't know, four or five has been mainly on the manufacturing side; all of our silicon manufacturing. Which, in many ways makes you a maker because you're producing a million chips a day. When I look at a 3D printer, I look at it as not only what can I build with it, but I understand exactly how that machine works. I could take it apart and put it back together.