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Australia’s government has decided to double the fines it can levy companies that don’t take appropriate steps to enforce the country’s ban on children under 16 accessing social media – and said Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube are under investigation for possible non-compliance. The decision to increase fines came after publication of a study that found around 80 percent of kids in Australia continue to use social media despite the ban, mostly because age verification tech hasn’t blocked their accounts. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Sunday announced the increased fines, saying that while social media companies have deactivated or restricted access to five million accounts since the ban came into force last December. The PM thinks that’s a decent start but feels Australia’s cyber-regulator, eSafety, “needs more tools in their belt to take on these billion-dollar social media companies and hold them to account.” Those tools include the ability to demand information about a platform’s attempts to enforce the ban, including third-party information from age assurance or app-store providers. “Social media companies have a social responsibility, and they must uphold their legal responsibility in Australia to keep under 16s off social media,” Albanese said. The new fines can reach AU$99 million ($68.25 million) for systemic failures – back of the sofa money for the social media giants. Qualcomm builds throttled-for-China datacenter chips Qualcomm last week launched a new range of datacenter chips, and CEO Cristiano Amon later told Japanese outlet Nikkei the company has already created versions of them compliant with US export rules. “There are very clear guidelines about how you can ship products to China, and we have versions of all of our products that comply with those guidelines, " he said. "We are engaged in conversations and are positively optimistic about the reaction we're getting." Rumors suggest Chinese social media giant ByteDance might be one source of those positive reactions. Chinese chip champ delivers another modest machine Chinese chip designer Loongson has delivered another server CPU that won’t scare AMD or Intel. The 16-core Loongson 3C3000 hums along at 1.5 to 1.8GHz while consuming 40 watts. It uses Loongson’s proprietary instruction set architecture that draws on MIPS and RISC technology. Chinese media report that each core packs 64KB of private L1 instruction cache and 64KB of private L1 data cache, and that the chip shares 16MB of L2 cache among all cores. The memory controller is 2×72-bit DDR4-2400, supporting ECC verification. The company says it’s a low-cost CPU suited to everyday workloads such as file servers, database servers or web servers. Intel and AMD continue to make 16-core server CPUs, but with faster clock speeds and superior specs compared to the latest Loongson offering. The one thing those American CPUs lack is Beijing’s blessing: China’s government encourages local organizations to buy Chinese hardware whenever possible. Japan extends Air Force’s mission into space Japan’s government last week ordered a name change and re-org for its Air Self-Defense Force, which as of next year will be renamed the "Aerospace Self-Defense Force." Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said the changes are needed because reliance on space-based services like GPS navigation mean Japan needs to defend its orbital interests. The re-org means Japan’s government will upgrade its Space Operations Squadron into a full Space Operations Command, staffed by 880 personnel. Japan is one of just ten nations – plus the European Union – that has the capability to launch payloads into orbit. Iran’s internet ends in tiers Internet Governance Researcher Imad Payande has published updated research on the state of Iran’s internet, which he says now offers tiers of access to different users. “In the first one to two weeks of the conflict, relatively unrestricted connectivity appeared limited to specific groups – primarily journalists and individuals with institutional affiliations. For the broader population, access to the global Internet was largely unavailable,” he wrote. In the second week of the war he saw “configurations” go on sale – “custom connection profiles enabling access to the open Internet.” Payande said those connections “relied on alternative protocols and tools rather than standard VPNs, suggesting a different underlying infrastructure and possibly a limited number of controlled gateways.” “Alongside these informal markets, more institutionalized models of access emerged. Telecom operators introduced restricted SIM cards under frameworks often described as ‘Pro Internet.’ These were made available to selected users – such as companies and researchers – through screening processes. However, access remained limited to a narrow set of services, prioritizing stability over openness.” He thinks Iran’s government now regulates internet access at the infrastructure level, with access allowed for some and not for others. And those who can get online pay for the privilege. Another week, another WiseTech mess Already beset by allegations of CEO sleaze, odd share trades, and human trafficking, Australian SaaSy logistics outfit WiseTech now has major software flaws to address. Infosec outfit Searchlight Cyber last week published research after finding hard-coded master keys in the company’s products that made it possible for an attacker to log in without a password and impersonate real customers and partners – and then enjoy access to data such as financial documents and contact details for users’ staff. Searchlight Cyber says its researchers informed WiseTech of the vulnerabilities prior to publication, and that the Australian company made a round of fixes but is “still working on further mitigations.” ®

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Spot this large constellation with differing classical backstories as moon sits squarely in ‘teapot’ of Sagittarius

This week we will look for another large but faint constellation: Ophiuchus, the serpent bearer. One of the original 48 constellations listed by Ptolemy in the 2nd century, it sits in the sky on the opposite side to Orion, the hunter. The chart shows the view looking south from London at 11pm BST on 29 June 2026.

Although the view will remain essentially unchanged all week, on this particular evening a nearly full moon sits squarely in the teapot asterism of Sagittarius, the archer.

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SNK told us how they managed to pull off one of Kenshiro's most iconic moves without sacrificing their Teen ESRB rating.

Kenshiro is the latest guest character from an anime to make a splash in a mainline fighting game, punching his way into Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves this June.

We got the chance to sit down with producer Shinya Tamaki and director Hayato Konya ahead of his release at Evo 2026, who explained the difficulties they faced in translating Hoktuo No Ken’s comparatively gory fighting style into Fatal Fury’s decidedly less grisly hand-to-hand combat.

Part of this problem necessitated finding a balance between Kenshiro’s status as a Bruce Lee-inspired martial artist and the use of his special technique, the Hokuto Shinken, which sees him press opponents’ pressure points, causing them to explode seconds later. It’s arguably the most iconic thing about the show, and despite how bloody it is, it’s something the team wanted to make sure they included in the game.

To fix this, they covered the character model of Ken’s opponents in a dark shadow against a deep red backdrop, where they then explode — but no blood is directly shown, and everything is implied. That doesn’t stop it from being any less satisfying, though.

“As you know, Kenshiro’s main fighting style uses channeling points on his opponents, and typically after he uses them, they explode in three seconds,” Tamaki told us. “It's a very striking feature of the show. But he's also a fighter, and for a fighting game, specifically, we wanted him to showcase both features. We wanted him to be a fighter and be able to use the channeling points as an actual gimmick. But of course, we couldn’t have our characters exploding on screen, so we had to balance accordingly and make sure that it's not too gory, but also have these parts that fans are expecting and want to see properly come to life in the gameplay.”

"Of course, we couldn't have our characters exploding on screen, so we had to balance accordingly."

Kenshiro Was a Perfect Fit for Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves

Kenshiro isn’t the wildest addition to City of the Wolves by far, following the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and Salvatore Ganacci. Tamaki admitted that Kenshiro was an obvious choice for a DLC pick, given his popularity both in Japan and abroad. But apart from being a seriously cool guest character, slotting in a face from such a beloved anime was also a big marketing play from the folks at SNK to help appeal to a broader audience outside of the fighting game community.

“The First of the North Star series and the brand are quite popular in Japan,” he began. “Just looking at that, and the fact that Kenshiro himself was also previously a fighting game character in another fighting game and how the overall aesthetic kind of fits with Fatal Fury, where it's the Wolves fighting for their own cause… it fits. So we just thought, ‘Alright, this is a great fit for our character. Everything aligns correctly, so we should go forward with developing the character, as well.’”

“Fighting games are a niche genre, for sure,” Tamaki continued. “I think one of the biggest hurdles that we need to address is getting people that are not typically interested in the whole fighting game thing to actually turn around and say, ‘Hey, what's that? I want to try that out, I want to play that.’ We want to get new faces, new people to touch these games, and I think this is one of the most popular ways to do it.”

“Our main focus when choosing a new character to join the game is to give the current fans something fun to play with, but also something to get other people that previously would not be interested in the fighting game to give it a look and say, ‘Oh, actually this looks interesting, we want to try this.’ It might be bold, but really, this is our main priority, and we try to achieve that every time we release a new character.”

The Kenshiro Hype Doesn't Mean a New Fist of the North Star Game is Coming from SNK

This is the latest fighting game Kenshiro has starred in following Arc System Works ’ 2005 Fist of the North Star . It’s been over 20 years since then, and the game still boasts a dedicated playerbase of fans who occasionally go viral on social media by sharing absurd clips of the wildly unbalanced but equally fun fighter. Of course, we had to ask the good folks at SNK if they had any interest in creating a new fighting game centered around the iconic eighties anime — and while Tamaki admitted that it's something the team would love to do, it’s not a project the company is looking to pursue.

“Of course, some of the developers at SNK would love the chance to make a First of the North Star fighting game,” he laughed. “Absolutely. But this version of Kenshiro is actually not based on the old anime TV series. This is [based on] the new reboot series. So we were able to have a good synergy with that. We have a new show coming out, and we’ll be in a good place to help support both [the game and the show]. The focus for this game is for the new character and his story, and we hope the fans enjoy that.”

"The Art of Fighting's Story Isn't Finished Yet"

Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is the most recent old-school SNK title to get a new game, following Samurai Shodown in 2019. That just leaves the Art of Fighting series without a new iteration, but fans should take heart – Tamaki cautiously confirmed that a new AoF project is, indeed, in the works, but remained cagey as to what exactly that project entails.

“Previously, SNK announced that we are working on something, though we can't go into the specifics of what the plan is,” he said. “But that news is out there, and yeah, we are happy to say that there is something that we are working on. The Art of Fighting’s story isn’t finished yet. Please stay tuned for more information.”

At Evo 2026, SNK revealed The Path of the Warrior: Art of Fighting 3 R, an updated version of The Art of Fighting 3, which is set to release on Steam with rollback netcode, re-balanced gameplay, and two new characters on an as-yet unreleased date.

Virginia (she/her) is IGN’s News Editor. With ten years of experience reporting on games and entertainment, she’s got a storied background in the fighting game community, influencer news, and viral online trends. Find her on Twitter at @TheeMissGlaze .