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Enlarge / Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks during the Google I/O Developers Conference on May 7, 2019. (credit: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

One of the most interesting demos at this week's Google I/O keynote featured a new version of Google's voice assistant that's due out later this year. A Google employee asked the Google Assistant to bring up her photos and then show her photos with animals. She tapped one and said, "Send it to Justin." The photo was dropped into the messaging app.

From there, things got more impressive.

"Hey Google, send an email to Jessica," she said. "Hi Jessica, I just got back from Yellowstone and completely fell in love with it." The phone transcribed her words, putting "Hi Jessica" on its own line.

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  It's back! Again! [credit: Square Enix ]

Sony's latest promotional video for future PlayStation games (dubbed "State of Play") concluded with a surprise peek at a long-awaited game: Final Fantasy VII Remake. In bad news, the Thursday trailer was clearly limited by publisher Square Enix's intent to save a bigger reveal for "June," possibly timed for the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo.

But in good news, the project, announced nearly four years ago, finally looks like an honest-to-goodness video game. At last, we can begin guessing what its final version might possibly look and play like.

The most apparent thing from the trailer, embedded below, is an active battle system that looks largely similar to that found in Final Fantasy XV and the wider Kingdom Hearts series. (We got a tease of this in a late-2015 trailer.) A low-angled camera sits behind whichever character is being controlled, and each fighter gets two immediate action buttons, along with a shortcut to a larger menu. (That menu wasn't toggled in today's one-minute video.)

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  What's to come of November's Sonic the Hedgehog film? We thought we knew based on a very odd-looking trailer, but Thursday's news may have changed everything. [credit: Paramount / Sega ]

On Thursday, 48 hours after the world finally saw what this November's Sonic The Hedgehog live-action movie would look like, its director took to Twitter with a surprise announcement: that's, uh, not what the live-action movie will look like.

"Thank you for the support," film director Jeff Fowler posted to Twitter on Thursday afternoon. "And the criticism. The message is loud and clear... you aren't happy with the design, and you want changes. It's going to happen."

After acknowledging the support of film studio Paramount and game company Sega, Fowler included a pretty telling hashtag: "#gottafixfast." It's not just a riff on the series' iconic "gotta go fast" slogan" but rather a stark admission that Fowler's vague suggestion for a "changed design" is running headlong into a six-month timeframe. The film is still scheduled for a November 8, 2019, release and will be Fowler's feature-length directorial debut.

Enlarge / The blue car represents Psyonix leaping over Steam's... orange car? Look, it's a loose metaphor. Work with me here, people.

In a surprise move today, Epic Games announced it has "signed a definitive agreement" to acquire San Diego-based Psyonix and its 132 employees, who make the hit car-based soccer game Rocket League.

As part of the deal, the PC version of Rocket League will be moving to the Epic Game Store "in late 2019," Epic announced. "In the meantime, it will continue to be available for purchase on Steam; thereafter it will continue to be supported on Steam for all existing purchasers." Psyonix says it will continue to sell and support Rocket League on other platforms, including the PS4, Xbox One, and Switch, going forward.

"In the short term, nothing will change at all!" Psyonix writes in a blog post accompanying the announcement. "We’re still committed to providing Rocket League with frequent updates that have new features, new content, and new ways to play the game for as long as you’ll have us."

Enlarge / PORTUGAL - 2019/03/04: 5G logo is seen on an android mobile phone with Huawei logo on the background. (credit: Omar Marques/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Vodafone, the largest mobile network operator in Europe, found backdoors in Huawei equipment between 2009 and 2011, reports Bloomberg. With these backdoors, Huawei could have gained unauthorized access to Vodafone's "fixed-line network in Italy." But Vodafone disagrees, saying that while it did discover some security vulnerabilities in Huawei equipment, these were fixed by Huawei and in any case were not remotely accessible, and hence they could not be used by Huawei.

Bloomberg's claims are based on Vodafone's internal security documentation and "people involved in the situation." Several different "backdoors" are described: unsecured telnet access to home routers, along with "backdoors" in optical service nodes (which connect last-mile distribution networks to optical backbone networks) and "broadband network gateways" (BNG) (which sit between broadband users and the backbone network, providing access control, authentication, and similar services).

In response to Bloomberg, Vodafone said that the router vulnerabilities were found and fixed in 2011 and the BNG flaws were found and fixed in 2012. While it has documentation about some optical service node vulnerabilities, Vodafone continued, it has no information about when they were fixed. Further, the network operator said that it has no evidence of issues outside Italy.

Enlarge / The crew of the USS Orville stands ready for new adventures in season 2 of The Orville. (credit: Fox Broadcasting)

Fox's sci-fi series The Orville closed out a terrific second season with an ambitious finale that showcased all the elements that make this such an intellectually and emotionally satisfying show.

(Some spoilers below.)

Season 1 of The Orville admittedly had a rocky start, at least in terms of critical reception, garnering just a 19 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes when it debuted. Viewers begged to differ: they gave the freshman series a 91 percent favorable rating, won over by its skillful mix of humor and drama. That's a tough balance to pull off, but The Orville succeeds admirably. Season 2 won even more fans. This is a smart series that combines humor and witty dialogue with cutting-edge science, ethical musings, the occasional literary reference, and genuine heart. (For more on the science behind the series, see our interview with writer/producer Andre Bormanis.)

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  A beluga whale discovered off Norway's coast, wearing a harness that had an adapter for a GoPro camera, according to authorities. [credit: Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries ]

Evidence suggests that the Russian Navy has been looking for new ways to leverage what amounts to the original underwater "drone"—militarized cetaceans. Norwegian fishermen discovered a friendly beluga whale in the Barents Sea off the northeast coast of Norway on April 25. Belugas are native to the Barents, so the whale's presence wasn't the surprise—the surprise was that it was fitted with a camera harness with Russian markings.

The beluga kept approaching fishing boats and rubbing against them in an apparent effort to remove the harness. After failed attempts to remove the harness themselves, fishermen sent photos to a marine biologist with Norway's Directorate of Fisheries, and they reported that the whale was in distress. A Fisheries boat was in the area and responded, as reported by a Directorate of Fisheries spokesperson on Facebook:

The Directorate of Fisheries' oversight boat Rind was in the area and was asked to assist to release the whale for the tight straps. The crew of the Marine Service are trained to free whales from ropes and fishing gear. After a little lure with cod fillets, and with the fisherman Joar Hesten getting into the water wearing a survival suit, the inspectors Jørgen Ree Wiig and Yngve Larsen from the Marine Service and the Horse managed to release the whale…

The whale has probably escaped from Russia where it may have been trained to perform different missions such as underwater photography.

The harness was reportedly marked with the label "Equipment St. Petersburg" and had an attachment point for a GoPro camera. Audun Rikardsen, a professor at the Norwegian Arctic University in Tromsø (UiT), told Norway's VG that neither Norwegian nor Russian academic researchers put harnesses on whales. "I have been in contact with some Russian researchers," Rikardsen said. "They can confirm that it is nothing they are doing. They tell me that most likely is the Russian Navy in Murmansk."