Six-year Google Books Spat Ends

Bambu Lab, a major maker of 3D printers for home users and commercial "farms," is pushing an update to its devices that it claims will improve security while still offering third-party tools "authorized" access. Some in the user community—and 3D printing advocates broadly—are pushing back, suggesting the firm has other, more controlling motives. As is perhaps appropriate for 3D printing, this matter has many layers, some long-standing arguments about freedom and rights baked in, and a good deal of heat. Bambu Lab's image marketing Bambu Handy, its cloud service that allows you to "Control your printer anytime anywhere, also we support SD card and local network to print the projects." Credit: Bambu Lab Printing more, tweaking less Bambu Lab, launched in 2022, has stood out in the burgeoning consumer 3D printing market because of its printers' capacity for printing at high speeds without excessive tinkering or maintenance.

Today Netflix, the biggest streaming service based on subscriber count, announced that it will increase subscription prices by up to $2.50 per month. In a letter to investors [PDF], Netflix announced price changes starting today in the US, Canada, Argentina, and Portugal. People who subscribe to Netflix's cheapest ad-free plan (Standard) will see the biggest increase in monthly costs.

After 14 years, EA will retire its controversial Origin game distribution app for Windows, the company announced. Origin will stop working on April 17, 2025. Folks still using it will be directed to install the newer EA app, which launched in 2022. The launch of Origin in 2011 was a flashpoint of controversy among gamers, as EA—already not a beloved company by this point—began pulling titles like Crysis 2 from the popular Steam platform to drive players to its own launcher. Frankly, it all made sense from EA's point of view.

Apple has sent out release candidate builds of the upcoming iOS 18.3, iPadOS 18.3, and macOS 15.3 updates to developers today. But they come with one tweak that hasn't been reported on, per MacRumors: They enable all of the AI-powered Apple Intelligence features by default during setup. When Apple Intelligence was initially released in iOS 18.1, the features were off by default, unless users chose to opt-in and enable them. Those who still wish to opt out of Apple Intelligence features will now have to do it after their devices are set up by navigating to the Apple Intelligence & Siri section in the Settings app. Apple Intelligence will only be enabled by default for hardware that supports it.

Console players will be able to opt out of playing against PC opponents in ranked matches in an upcoming season 2 update.