There are a lot of popular games I haven’t personally connected with, including The Sims, Minecraft, pretty much anything that looks like anime. Roblox is among them—oh yeah, Among Us too—and I’ve seen some of the more problematic issues with it. But last week, Roblox recorded 45 million people playing its various modes at once. Holy freakin’ crap. According to Roblox CEO David Baszucki, the game-slash-service surpassed 45 million players on August 23rd. As PC Gamer notes, that’s more simultaneously active in-game players than Steam—the de facto standard platform for PC gaming—by about 5 million. And I don’t just mean for a single Steam game. I’m talking about Steam’s record for active players across every game, everywhere on the planet at any given time. For further comparison, Fortnite‘s record is 14.3 million concurrent players while Minecraft averages almost 32 million daily players with a concurrent peak of 4.2 million. Granted, this isn’t a perfect apples-to-apples comparison. Roblox isn’t so much a singular game as it is an entire platform, where users can develop their own games with relatively friendly tools and publish them for other Roblox users to try out. Roblox is also cross-platform, available on PC, Android, iOS, PlayStation, and Xbox, making a direct comparison to Steam even fuzzier. The most popular game mode in Roblox at the moment appears to be “Steal a Brainrot,” which hit 20 million concurrent players the same day in a recent event. Did I mention that Roblox is overwhelmingly played by children? It’s estimated that about half of US kids between the ages of 6 to 16 play Roblox, and only 1 in 10 users is over the age of 25. Roblox isn’t without issues. At any given moment, a large portion of players are “bots” and “idlers” who are trying to game the monetization system, which isn’t great itself. Roblox also incentivizes “creators” (again, mostly children) by rewarding them with real money for publishing popular game modes. But some of the game modes in Roblox have actual teams of developers with budgets that can reach towards the million USD mark, and Roblox Corporation paid out over $300 million cumulatively in the second quarter of 2025 alone. The Roblox platform is almost 20 years old, getting a huge boost during the COVID pandemic, and now earns over $2 billion in total revenue every year for the company. While many parents appreciate Roblox as a way to get their kids interested in game development and other programming, the company has been accused of exploiting child labor for profit. Several lawsuits have made that allegation formal. Roblox’s monetization is problematic at best, requiring you to earn 30,000 “Robux” worth of in-game currency before you can transfer it out of the platform (a figure most players never reach). Even when it’s transferred out, that currency is working for Roblox, not its game mode developers—you only earn a third of the value back into a bank account compared to Robux bought with “real” currency. It’s the sort of heavy-handed split that makes the usual 30 percent platform cut for Steam, iOS, or game consoles look positively generous. Roblox’s overwhelmingly underage player base is also a target for online predators, and its low barrier to entry and allegedly lax moderation tools aren’t helping. The state of Louisiana is suing Roblox Corporation for failure to protect its underage users, after a controversy wherein a YouTube “vigilante” who tracked child predators on Roblox and reported them to police was banned from the platform. Read...

I don’t know about you, but I get pretty anxious when I need to recharge my phone quick, whether it’s moments before I leave the house or when it’s about to die and I’m about to board a flight. A speedy charger block is so handy in those situations, and now’s a smart time to grab one because this fast Baseus wall plug is down to $29.98 on Amazon (was $49.99) with a limited-time 40% discount. This Baseus charger block hits 100W of charging, which means it’s fast enough to fully charge a phone in about 45 minutes or a laptop like the MacBook Pro M4 in under 2 hours. Yup, this power adapter works just as well with phones as it does laptops—or any other device that charges via USB cable (as long as you have USB cables rated for 100W). What’s great about this charger block is that it has three ports: two USB-C and one USB-A. All three ports can be used at once, allowing you to fast-charge up to three devices simultaneously. Note, however, that only the USB-C ports are capable of hitting 100W, and only when used solo. The USB-A maxes out at 22.5W when solo. Otherwise, when multiple ports are used, the charging power is split between them. One other thing I like about this power adapter is that it has foldable prongs, so it’s perfect for travel. Stash it away in any bag and don’t worry about it getting damaged or causing damage to anything else. The Baseus 100W 3-port USB-C power adapter is only $29.98 with this awesome 40% discount, so grab it fast while you still can! Save 40% on this super-fast Baseus 3-port USB-C charger blockBuy now at Amazon Read...

WaveMaker launches TestDrive app, enabling MVNOs to offer branded, try-before-you-buy eSIM trials swiftly and without coding via a white-label solution. Read...

In case of emergency, you will now be able to designate certain trusted people who can gain access to your Proton account. According to yesterday’s announcement post, Proton’s new Emergency Access feature supports up to five trusted contacts… with some caveats. Proton For one, you can only designate people who have Proton accounts of their own, as they’ll need to use their Proton account to access yours. With access granted, a trusted contact can then log into your Proton account whenever you’re unavailable or incapacitated, whether due to travel, illness, or (in the worst case) death. Emergency Access will send you a notification whenever a trusted contact tries to access your account, and if you don’t explicitly respond with a denial, access will be granted. You can choose whether contacts can gain access immediately or whether they need to wait a certain number of days, weeks, or months before access is granted. Proton The other big catch is that Emergency Access is only available to paying Proton customers. Any paid plan qualifies for this feature, so if you want it, go ahead and upgrade your Proton Pass, Mail, VPN, or Drive plans. Alternatively, check out Proton Unlimited for full premium features across all Proton apps and services for just $9.99/month. Read...

Recently, my Windows 11 PC began to choke when shutting down. A small error window would appear, holding up the process. The cause? A program called LogTransport2.exe. If you have the same problem and are also wondering what’s going on—it’s Adobe’s fault. Adobe bundles this file with its Creative Cloud applications for the purpose of transmitting data about you back to the company. If the executable is still communicating with Adobe servers when you shut down your PC, it’ll stall the process to finish its task. So, to nip this issue in the bud, you have to tell Adobe to stop spying on you. The fix Open a web browser. Head to adobe.com, then log into your account. Click on your avatar icon at the upper right. Choose Manage account. At the top of the screen, choose Account and Security, then Data and privacy settings. Uncheck the boxes for sharing. PCWorld If you don’t see any boxes for sharing at first, you may need to switch your profile. Click your avatar icon in the upper right. In the menu that appears, look under the Account section for a Switch profile option. When I first logged in, I was signed into the profile associated with the organization I have my subscription through—and so only saw a message that said, “You have been automatically opted out from content analysis for product improvement when using Creative Cloud and Document Cloud apps. This setting does not apply when you separately choose to participate in product improvement programs.” Switching to my personal profile revealed the settings I needed. PCWorld Why this change solves the issue Stopping the telemetry data quiets LogTransport2.exe’s activity. When it stays idle, your PC can shut down without interruption. Adobe could do much, much more to help with the problem, though. Data sharing should be opt in, rather than opt out. Given the cost of a Creative Cloud subscription, I think few people expect their desktop app usage to be spied on. When paying for a service, I don’t expect to still be the product. Nor my content stored on their servers either. At the very least, the Creative Cloud app should give periodic reminders that the setting is turned on. And allowing changes to data sharing within the Creative Cloud app, rather than only through the Adobe website. My colleague Mike Crider switched off Photoshop (after years of loyalty) to a far more affordable and less invasive web app (Photopea). He seems to have the right of it. These days, privacy is security. Anyone monitoring us without our knowledge is a risk. Read...

The pair play a wealthy couple once blissfully in love and now find themselves in a marriage breakdown. Read...

Throughout the month of August, Microsoft has rolled out a number of new features in the popular collaboration tool Teams. Microsoft Among other things, it’s now possible to find messages with attached files via a simple search, which should be useful for users who don’t want to waste precious time scrolling back through long threads. Microsoft Microsoft has also made it possible to customize your own keyboard shortcuts for various actions, which should come in handy whether you just want to replicate the shortcuts from other apps (like Slack or Zoom) or you prefer to come up with your own. Microsoft Another fun addition is that it’s now possible to react to a particular message multiple times with different emojis, something that’s long been possible in apps like Slack. For example, if you want to show that you understand an instruction but also want to acknowledge the humor in it, you can react with both a “thumbs up” and a “laughing face.” Some other useful features worth noting: you can now save messages to a “Saved” quick view, you can now edit your display name in a Teams meeting, and several other premium-only features for business-oriented use cases (such as personal meeting templates and immersive 3D environments for large-scale virtual gatherings). For a full rundown of all the new changes that came about in August, check out the official Microsoft Teams blog post. Read...

Newpark, which was acquired by SHARE in a surprise move a number of years ago, has been sold again. Read...

When you’re on the go, keeping your tech charged can be a challenge, so it’s always best if you have a power bank on hand. This super-fast high-capacity Anker power bank is a solid choice, and right now it’s 30% off on Amazon—get it for just $94.49 (was $134.99)! This versatile Anker power bank comes with not just one but two built-in USB-C cables, and one of them doubles as a carrying strap while the other is fully retractable. It also has an additional USB-C and USB-A, allowing you to charge up to four devices at once. The 25,000mAh capacity is massive too, enough to charge your phone about five times over (or a laptop one full time). Since it can hit 100W single-port fast-charging, your gadgets will be juiced back to 100% in no time. When charging multiple devices, only one USB-C keeps the 100W speed while the others get limited to 30W max. Small, fast, convenient, and versatile—it doesn’t get better than this. You’ll never need another power bank, so get this one for $94.49 while you can! This limited-time deal on Amazon won’t last forever. Save 30% on this super-fast 25K Anker power bank with built-in cablesBuy now at Amazon Read...

MariaDB has acquired SkySQL, enhancing its cloud database services with AI-powered, serverless features to better support flexible and hybrid data management. Read...