If you’re anything like me, gaming hasn’t quite felt right without the impactful sights and sounds of the PlayStation 2’s start-up menu. If that is the case for you — for starters, you’re probably also turning 30 this year, and we’ll get through it together — but also, Sony has great news: The classic themes for the PlayStation 5 are coming back, this time for good.

Sony confirmed this news in an official blog post on Wednesday, laying out the new features coming to PS5 in the next system update. In addition to some nifty new audio options, you’ll once again be able to deck out your console’s UI with themes based on its classic predecessors: the PS1, PS2, PS3 and PS4. These were first introduced as a limited-time offering for the PlayStation brand’s 30th anniversary last year, but they went over so well with longtime fans that they’re back for good.

«Due to the overwhelmingly positive response from our community, we’re happy to bring back the look and feel of the four console designs for players to customize the home screen on PS5!» the post explained.

The update that includes these classic UI themes will go live on Thursday, April 24.

«It’s a great move for Sony to give players the option to reskin their UI to remind them of their treasured days booting up their first PlayStation games,» CNET Senior Reporter David Lumb said. «Seems silly to have kept the themes around for a limited time only to return them now, but I’ll take what I can get. That PS1 boot-up sound deserves to live outside my head.»

The initial offerings last year also included a more general 30th anniversary UI theme that will not be returning in this update, though I doubt most people even remembered that one.

Based on Sony’s announcement, it’s unclear whether these new themes will alter the PS5’s appearance during its start-up sequence or if the changes are limited to the sights and sounds of the main menu. Sony did not respond to CNET’s request for comment before publication.

Other things coming in the PS5 update

The triumphant return of these nostalgic themes is clearly what most will want to focus on, but the update coming on Thursday will also give the PS5 some cool new ways to tweak the system’s audio. According to the blog post, these new features will be dubbed «audio focus» and can be reached by going to [Settings] > [Sound] > [Volume] > [Audio Focus]. If you’ve ever tweaked settings on a soundbar or used the Apple TV streaming box’s dialogue enhancement feature, these options should feel familiar to you, and it’s pretty great to see the PS5 expanding its options for folks like me who sometimes struggle to make out dialogue in movies, shows and games.

The audio focus options are as follows, as laid out by Sony:

• Boost Low Pitch:  Amplify low-frequency sounds like roaring engines and rumbling noises.
• Boost Voices: Amplify voice chats, character voices and other middle-frequency sounds.
• Boost High Pitch: Amplify high-frequency sounds like footsteps and metallic noises.
• Boost Quiet Sounds: Amplify low-volume sounds in a wide range of frequencies.

The most famous telescope in history has reached a major milestone — it’s 35 years old. The Hubble Space Telescope launched on a grand scientific adventure to study the cosmos on April 24, 1990. NASA and the European Space Agency are pulling out all the stops for the telescope’s 35th anniversary with the reveal of four stunning new space images.

The celebratory views include Mars, two nebulas and a galaxy. The variety of targets shows off Hubble’s versatility and ability to see not only into deep space, but also into our own solar system.

NASA dropped a host of superlatives with words like «transformative,» «evocative,» «engaging» and «accessible» in its anniversary release statement. It’s all true. Hubble’s discoveries have been covered in over 22,000 papers, but its influence reaches far beyond science journals. It has shaped the public’s view of our universe through groundbreaking images like the Pillars of Creation and the Hubble Deep Field. 

Check out the anniversary images.

Mars, the frosty marble

Earth may be humanity’s favorite planet, but Mars is a close second. Hubble turned its gaze on the red planet at the end of 2024. The crisp views highlight the planet’s northern polar cap at the beginning of the Martian spring. Gauzy clouds make Mars look like a frosty marble.

Planetary nebula NGC 2899, a space butterfly

A white dwarf star lingers at the center of planetary nebula NGC 2899. This is one of the cosmic objects you can let your imagination run wild with. It resembles a misshapen butterfly or a moth in flight. ESA suggested the pinched middle looks like a half-eaten doughnut. 

Gas and dust give the nebula its unique look. All this beauty traces to the tumultuous death of its central star. 

Rosette Nebula and gas clouds

Hubble’s look at the Rosette Nebula focuses on a small part of a much larger formation. 

The nebula is a place of active star formation. «Dark clouds of hydrogen gas laced with dust are silhouetted across the image,» ESA said. «The clouds are being eroded and shaped by the seething radiation from the cluster of larger stars in the center of the nebula.»

Barred spiral galaxy NGC 5335

NGC 5335 is a barred spiral galaxy like our Milky Way. Hubble’s image shows the distinctive bar across the middle of NGC 5335. «The bar channels gas inwards toward the galactic center, fueling star formation,» said ESA. «Such bars are dynamic in galaxies and may come and go over two-billion-year intervals.» 

Hubble hangs on

Hubble orbits Earth. Space is a tough place to live. The telescope’s designers planned to get 15 years of use out of it, but Hubble handily outlasted that goal. 

Hubble’s longevity hasn’t been easy. The telescope has weathered an array of technical problems over the years. NASA dispatched five space shuttle servicing missions to Hubble, with the last in 2009. 

There are no more space shuttles in operation, so the Hubble team handles all fixes from afar. That has meant some big changes to Hubble’s operations, particularly with the gyroscopes that help point it in the right direction. The Hubble team has had to get creative, but they’ve kept the aging observatory up and running and delivering fresh science and imagery.

Every Hubble anniversary feels like a triumph for the elderly space telescope. It may have a few more anniversaries left in it. NASA hopes it will continue operations into the 2030s. Long live Hubble.

The EU’s crackdown on Big Tech began in earnest on Wednesday, as the European Commission issued the first fines under the Digital Markets Act, a piece of regulation designed to keep major players in the technology world from abusing their dominant position in the industry.

Apple’s fine, the bigger of the two, totals 500 million euros ($570 million), and follows an investigation into whether the company has been preventing customers from viewing and accessing offers that could save them money — cheaper streaming subscriptions, for instance — if they paid outside of its App Store ecosystem. The European Commission found that Apple prevents app developers from informing people about cheaper ways to pay, and has ordered the company to change this practice.

Meta, meanwhile, has received a fine of 200 million euros ($228 million), due to the fact it provides people in Europe with a binary choice to either use Meta’s platforms — including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — for free and accept the company will combine your data across services, or pay a premium to ensure an ad-free experience in which your data is kept separate.

Since the European Commission initially told Meta this model did not comply with the DMA, the company introduced new practices that provide people with more choice over how their data is used. But the company has still received a fine for its previous model.

Silicon Valley and the EU have long had a fractious relationship. Almost 10 years ago, Apple CEO Tim Cook dismissed a massive EU tax bill as «political crap.» But with geopolitical tensions between Europe and the US at a high right now, the fines are more divisive than ever. It’s often tricky to see how the high-level regulatory decisions affect the tech industry, but you only need to look at Apple dropping the lighting port on the iPhone in favor of USB-C charging to understand the power of the EU to sway the behavior of tech companies.

The aim of the Digital Markets Act is twofold. It gives up-and-coming tech companies an opportunity to prove themselves in an industry dominated by the world’s wealthiest companies. It’s also designed to ensure tech users across Europe (and sometimes further afield) have access to the best services and deals, plus the ability to decide for themselves how to spend their money and how their data is used. The European Commission does have the power to fine companies up to 10% of their annual global revenue under this regulation, but these fines fall below this threshold in an effort to be proportionate with the specific violations of the law.

«Enabling free business and consumer choice is at the core of the rules laid down in the Digital Markets Act,» Henna Virkkunen, executive vice president for technological sovereignty at the European Commission, said in a statement Tuesday. «This includes ensuring that citizens have full control over when and how their data is used online, and businesses can freely communicate with their own customers. The decisions adopted today find that both Apple and Meta have taken away this free choice from their users and are required to change their behaviour.»

But to the Silicon Valley tech giants, the EU’s approach can often seem unnecessarily punitive, in some cases forcing them to make changes that they argue are actually worse for users. In a statement issued on Wednesday, a spokesperson for Apple accused the European Commission of moving the goalposts, and said the company planned to appeal the decision.

«Today’s announcements are yet another example of the European Commission unfairly targeting Apple in a series of decisions that are bad for the privacy and security of our users, bad for products, and force us to give away our technology for free,» the company’s spokesperson said. «We have spent hundreds of thousands of engineering hours and made dozens of changes to comply with this law, none of which our users have asked for.»

Meanwhile, Meta’s chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan said the European Commission was «attempting to handicap successful American businesses while allowing Chinese and European companies to operate under different standards.» He added, «This isn’t just about a fine. The Commission forcing us to change our business model effectively imposes a multi-billion-dollar tariff on Meta while requiring us to offer an inferior service. And by unfairly restricting personalized advertising the European Commission is also hurting European businesses and economies.»

It’s likely that Meta, feeling aggrieved over being penalized even after making multiple changes to its business model, will also appeal the fine. The company remains adamant there’s nothing in the Digital Markets Act to justify the changes the European Commission is asking it to make.