While exploring dungeons in Diablo IV, you might encounter The Butcher, a terrifying and hard-to-kill demon boss who’s been a staple of the series since the original game in 1997. But if you get lucky, you might be able to easily kill this legendary baddie if he gets stuck behind a locked door. I’d feel bad for the…
Source: Kotaku – Diablo IV Players Are Using A 27-Year-Old Strategy To Kill The Butcher
Maine moved a step closer to becoming the East Coast’s first floating offshore wind location after lawmakers approved a bill paving the way for deep-water development. From a report: The bill, approved Wednesday, includes pathways for utility companies to purchase wind power and for developers to build port infrastructure using local workers, a detail that prompted Governor Janet Mills’ veto last month. She is expected to sign the bill in the coming days. The state has a goal to install 3 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2040, bringing Maine closer to its goal of powering its grid with 100% renewable energy by that year. The bill would help Maine contribute to the Biden administration’s target of deploying 15 gigawatts of floating offshore wind by 2035.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Maine Lawmakers Approve Bill to Boost Offshore Wind Development
In the hot, dry months of summer and early autumn, your landscaping might not be the first thing that springs to mind in terms of wildfire preparedness. But choosing a fire-resistant design for your outdoor space will add one more layer of protection to your home—something to consider if you’re in a wildfire-prone area
Source: LifeHacker – Do These Things to Make Your Yard Fire-Resistant
Enlarge / A South Korean flag, left, and Samsung Electronics Co. flag fly outside the company’s headquarters in Seoul, South Korea. (credit: Jean Chung/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Things are still bad at Samsung. After the company’s Q1 2023 saw a crushing 95 percent year-over-year profit drop, Q2 2023 isn’t any better, with the company posting KRW 0.67 trillion ($524.9 million) in profits, another huge 95 percent drop from the KRW 14.1 trillion ($10.7 billion) it made in Q2 2022.
Samsung is mostly known for its electronics and appliances, but on the earnings sheet, Samsung is a memory company. Estimates of the company’s profit structure in more normal times (2022) puts memory (NAND and RAM) at 55 percent of profits, with mobile at 22 percent, and displays at 11. Samsung’s LSI division—that’s the foundry and Exynos chips—is at 6.9 percent, and other consumer electronics, for all the shelf space they take up, only make up 4 percent of profits.
While back-to-back 95 percent profit declines are definitely bad, Samsung expected this. The company is facing down a glut of unsold chips, leading to lower prices and lower profits. Memory companies stockpiled chips during the pandemic, and while some companies expected the boom times to end and cut production in November 2022, Samsung waited until April 2023, leading to its big pile of unsold inventory. Along with its earnings report, Samsung announced it is cutting memory production again to try to get its inventory under control. While Samsung’s other divisions meant the company turned a small profit in the first half of 2023, the memory division contributed an operating loss of $7 billion for the year so far.
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Source: Ars Technica – Samsung’s profits are down 95 percent for a second consecutive quarter
Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour is still making headlines, for better or for worse, but this past weekend, it wasn’t fans shaking with excitement, it was the Earth. A Washington University geologist recently revealed that Swift’s Seattle stop was such a rocking time, that the concerts showed up on a seismometer.
Source: Gizmodo – Taylor Swift’s Seattle Tour Stop Clocks in on Seismometers
In recent days and weeks, Call of Duty has seen an uptick in population since the online servers were fixed up, allowing players to return to their old haunts and have some fun. However, with this uptick in activity, cheaters and hackers are looking to ruin the fun and nostalgia for CoD players. As it turns out, they may be after even more
Source: Hot Hardware – Call Of Duty Players Caught In Crosshairs Of A Self-Replicating Malware Campaign
For the last month, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk danced around the idea that they might finally contribute something of value to the world in the form of a head-to-head Las Vegas cage match, and no, if you haven’t been paying attention, that isn’t a joke. As the weeks dragged by, Zuck, at least, seemed completely…
Source: Gizmodo – Zuck Says He’s ‘Not Sure’ if the Elon Cage Match Will Happen
Twenty years ago, if you had asked your author here if he thought a Ratchet & Clank game would ever be the new high bar for graphics technology in PC gaming, he would have given you a very strong “no.” Yet, here we are: Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart is one of the most demanding titles available, and it implements all the latest PC gaming goodies
Source: Hot Hardware – Ratchet And Clank PC Hotfix Arrives To Improve Ray Tracing And Fix Visual Bugs
Enlarge (credit: Apple/Andrew Cunningham)
Apple is taking several steps to help developers prepare their apps for Apple’s new Vision Pro platform next year, above and beyond the Vision Pro simulator that comes with the Xcode development environment. One of those steps is actual pre-release hardware in the form of the Apple Vision Pro developer kit (DK).
This is pre-release Vision Pro hardware that Apple will loan to selected developers for the express purpose of developing and testing apps. Apple has offered these kinds of kits to some developers before, most notably during the Apple Silicon transition when it loaned out Developer Transition Kits that put the guts of an iPad Pro into a Mac mini-sized enclosure.
But some developers have drawn attention to the terms and conditions (PDF) for the Vision Pro DK, which are notably restrictive and specific. The most specific terms are in section four, under “care and storage of the DK,” which say that the DK is only to be used in a lockable windowless room, that your friends and family aren’t allowed to see it, that it must remain within your direct line of sight at all times, that it must be in its case and locked up when not in use, and that you need to consult with Apple if you’ll be on a long trip or vacation and are leaving the DK behind. The full paragraph:
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Source: Ars Technica – Devs aren’t allowed to let Apple’s Vision Pro dev kits out of their sight
Sequoia Capital pared back the size of two major venture funds, including its cryptocurrency fund, as part of a dramatic downsizing the storied venture firm is undertaking amid a broad startup downturn. From a report: Sequoia cut the size of its cryptocurrency fund to $200 million from $585 million, according to people familiar with the matter. It also slashed the size of its so-called ecosystem fund, which invests in other venture funds, to $450 million from $900 million, the people said. Sequoia told fund investors in March it made the decision to reduce the funds to better reflect the changed market. The cryptocurrency fund, for example, will focus more on backing young startups after an industry crash wiped out opportunities to back larger companies.
By paring back the fund sizes, Sequoia is lowering the amount of committed capital required from investors, known as limited partners, who are already seeing lower returns from venture funds and are bracing for further markdowns. The changes show the difficult cuts venture firms are making during one of the roughest years in recent memory for the startup industry. They are trying to undo the breakneck expansion and liberal spending that characterized a historic startup boom, which no longer makes sense as deal-making slows and funds struggle to raise more cash.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Sequoia Capital Slashes Crypto Fund as It Downsizes Amid Startup Crunch
Aptly named mini PC specialist Minisforum announced its HN2673 computer back in June. However, the firm has just put this new Neptune Series compact PC up for pre-order, and there’s a nice discount to be had on the various configurations.
The Minisforum product pages reveal a CPU and GPU combo in the HN2673 that isn’t seen very often. Inside
Source: Hot Hardware – Minisforum Latest Mini PC Flexes A Discrete Arc A730 6GB GPU And A Preorder Discount
Upcoming fantasy role-playing game Baldur’s Gate 3 just released a character trailer for a villainous new big bad character who’s quite likely to take the internet by storm just like Resident Evil Village’s Lady Dimitrescu. Why? Because she’s played by the same voice actress and seems to have that certain chaotic…
Source: Kotaku – Unhinged Baldur’s Gate 3 Villain Is Voiced By Lady Dimitrescu Voice Actress
This week, the biggest event in tech took place in Seoul with Samsung’s Unpacked showcase. Among other announcements, the company officially unveiled its latest foldable smartphone, the Galaxy Z Fold 5. It’s not even available yet, but Amazon is offering a $200 gift card if you pre-order from its site. This week also saw a bunch of continued video game sales from sites like Xbox, Playstation and Epic Games. Other site-wide sales include 20 percent off at Otterbox and a sale on music equipment at Reverb. Plenty of single items are seeing discounts as well, like the always popular Apple AirPods Pro and the Kids Kindle (which isn’t just for kids). Dell is offering a $50 discount on the Xbox Series X, though we don’t expect that deal to stick around long. Here are the best tech deals from this week that you can still get today.
Apple AirPods Pro
The latest generation AirPods Pro are back to their all-time low price of $199. That’s the same as they went for during Amazon’s Prime Day. The buds have one of the best transparency modes of all the buds we’ve tried, and we think they’re the best pick for people who use iPhones. They pair quickly with other Apple devices and make great use of Siri for hands-free commands. A good battery life and a wireless charging case are just two more points in the buds’ favor.
Earlier this week, Samsung announced its latest flagship foldable smartphone, the Galaxy Z Fold 5 during its Unpacked event. The folks at Amazon are hoping you’ll pre-order the handset from them — and are offering a $200 Amazon gift card plus a storage upgrade if you do so. The base configuration of the Z Fold 5 retails for $1,800, which comes with 256GB of storage. Amazon’s deal gets you the 512GB model plus a physical gift card shipped separately from the phone.
Engadget’s Sam Rutherford spent some time with the new foldable recently. The most notable upgrade from last year’s model is Samsung’s new Flex Hinge, which eliminates most of the gap between the two screen halves when folded. A second-generation Snapdragon 8 chip and support for new gestures round out the new features.
Samsung also revealed two new wearables during Unpacked. If you pre-order the Galaxy Watch 6 from Amazon, the company will throw in a $50 Amazon gift card. The offer only applies to the Bluetooth models, not the LTE or Watch 6 Classic variants. To help you take advantage of Samsung’s new one-click mechanism, Amazon will also include a fabric band to swap out with the included strap.
The watch starts at $300 for the 40mm case size and bumps to $330 for the 44mm size. Engadget’s Cherlynn Low had a chance to check out the watch during a hands on event and you can check out her thoughts here. This latest generation has a sharper and brighter display and has an updated processor and larger battery that offers a claimed eight hours of use after just eight minutes of charging.
The Kindle Kids ereader is a top pick in our guide to educational toys for kids. Though, to be fair, this isn’t a toy. The internal tech is identical to a standard Kindle, with a 300 ppi screen, adjustable front light, 16GB of storage and weeks of battery life. But the kids version throws in a colorful case and includes a year of Amazon Kids+, a subscription that grants access to thousands of kid-appropriate books and hundreds of audiobooks. It usually goes for $120, which is $20 more than the standard Kindle, but the sale is knocking it down to just $80, making it a good buy for a kid or even a full-grown adult who enjoys saving money.
It’s been tough to find the new Xbox console in stock, let alone at a discount, but right now the Xbox Series X is $50 off at Dell. It comes in a bundle with a copy of the open-world racing game Forza Horizon 5 for a total of $450. The game usually retails for $45 on its own. Dell did this discount before, but didn’t offer a game. Even if you don’t care about racing, this may be a good time to buy, considering the Xbox Series X console (or its cheaper, digital-only Series S sibling) will be a required purchase for the upcoming Bethesda game Starfield, unless you plan to play on a PC. This deal has already gone out of stock once, so you may want to jump now if you’re interested.
We often recommend products from Otterbox in our guides and from now through July 29th, the site is running a site-wide, 20 percent off sale. One of their battery banks, the Fast Charge, is among our top picks in our portable battery guide. The 15,000mAh capacity model usually goes for $45, but is $36 after the discount. The bank packs enough charge to fill a late-model iPhone or a Galaxy S-series twice, with a little left over. It also recharges quickly and looks nice, something not all charging accessories manage to do.
We recommend Apple’s AirTag Bluetooth trackers to iPhone users in our guide to those devices. Right now a four-pack is down to $85 at Amazon, which is the lowest price we’ve tracked. Of all the finding networks out there, Apple’s FindMy is by far the most comprehensive as it uses every iPhone in an area (unless the owner has opted out) to ping nearby AirTags and help find them when they’re lost. They’ll also ring when you tap a button in the app so you can find your lost keys.
If you have a recent model of an iPad Air, Mini or Pro and have been considering adding a stylus to your setup, you may want to consider grabbing the second-gen Apple Pencil while its on sale for $89. The 23 percent discount is the steepest discount so far, matching the Prime Day sale price. But now you can get it from Walmart or target as well as from Amazon. The Pencil makes drawing and hand-writing on your tablet easier and it even magnetically attaches and charges to the side of compatible devices. Just note that the current generation standard iPad curiously only pairs with the first-gen Apple Pencil.
Video game companies and retailers often celebrate the summer months with some sort of sale on popular titles — maybe because gaming indoors beats heat-fusing to the pavement outside. Right now Xbox is hosting an Ultimate Game Sale with deals up to 80 percent off. Not all of the discounts are best-ever prices, and the steepest savings are typically reserved for older titles, but a decent selection of games we like are on sale right now, such as Halo: The Master Chief Collection ($10 off), Star Wars Jedi: Survivor ($17 off) and Elden Ring ($18 off).
Some of our recommended Xbox exclusives are going for less than $10, including Gears 5, Ori and the Will of the Wisps and Rare Replay. Of course, many sale items are also available with an Xbox Game Pass subscription, so if you already subscribe, check that availability first.
PlayStation Summer Sale
PlayStation’s Summer Sale is discounting exclusives like Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart ($40 off) and Horizon Forbidden West ($30 off). The PS5 remake of the original The Last of Us is on sale for $50, while the well-reviewed puzzler Humanity is $24. Non-PS exclusives are also on sale, like the time-bending FPS Deathloop ($15), the sci-fi RPG Cyberpunk 2077 ($25) and one of our favorite co-ops, It Takes Two ($16).
Epic Games Store Summer Sale
If you don’t play on a console, you can still save on some good PC titles with the sale at Epic Games. Red Dead Redemption 2 is down to $20, for one, while the remasters Mass Effect Legendary Edition and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 are available for $15 and $16, respectively. Elsewhere, the action-game-meets-delivery-sim Death Stranding: Director’s Cut is on sale for $20, and Dead Island 2, the zombie action-RPG that was released in April, is available for $45.
Outside of Epic’s sale, two more of our favorite games from 2022 are discounted. Nintendo has the fast-paced first-person shooter (but with cards for weapons) Neon White for 30 percent off and the rollerblading, ’70s drenched shooter, Rollerdrome is half price at Steam.
The music equipment marketplace Reverb is also having a summer sale right now, with discounts on instruments and music production gadgets site-wide. A few deals worth calling out include the Novation Summit synth for $460 off of $2,300 and Universal Audio’s Volt 276 studio pack for $130 off of $429. That brings the studio pack down to $299, which is the usual price of the interface on its own, which means you’re getting the included Volt condenser mic and Volt headphones for free.
The Volt 276 is one of our top picks in our audio interface guide and we gave it a 90 in our review. Engadget’s Terrance O’Brian appreciates its all-analog emulation of “one of the most iconic compressors of all time” and said most other interfaces at this price point can’t match the 276’s stylish and ergonomic design.
Samsung’s Pro Plus microSD card is what we recommend for most people, based on our tests. It offers nearly the best sequential write performance of the cards we tested and bested all cards for for random read/write speeds. Usually $19, the 128GB size is currently down to $12 at Amazon, which nearly matches its Prime Day low. If you’ve got a camera, tablet or gaming handheld that could use more space, this is a good time to grab some extra storage.
One of our top Bluetooth speakers, the Bose SoundLink Flex, is down to $129 at Adoramam, Target and directly from Bose right now. That matches the price it hit during Amazon’s recent sale. The Flex is compact, but manages to give bright, dynamic sound and offers a surprising amount of bass for its size. It plays for 12 hours on a charge and can even pair with other Bose speakers for stereo sound.
A few different Kasa smart plugs are currently on sale at Amazon, including the Kasa KP125M, which is our pick for a Matter-enabled plug in our guide to smart plugs. Usually $40 for a two-pack, the sale drops it to $30 after a discount and a clickable coupon. Matter connectivity means it’ll work with Alexa, Apple HomeKit, Samsung SmartThings and Google Home, so whichever voice assistant you prefer should be supported. In our tests it paired easily (though required a few extra steps for Apple’s system) and stayed reliably connected.
The Kasa EP25 plug is our top pick overall and also connects to all four major smart home eco systems. It’s currently $38 for a four-pack after a 24 percent discount.
The lowest price on a MacBook in Apple’s current lineup is on the 2020 MacBook Air with the M1 chip, which is down to just $750 at both Amazon and at Best Buy for the 256GB base model. That matches the lowest price we’ve seen, including what it went for during Amazon’s Prime Day. It’s the budget pick in our MacBook buyer’s guide, and the one we recommend to students or anyone who needs a reliable machine for casual computing. It earned a high score of 94 in our review in part thanks to the performance of the M1 chip, which is responsive, launching and running apps effortlessly while conserving the battery life.
If you want the newer M2 chip in your MacBook Air, you can grab the base model of that machine from B&H Photo for $999. That matches the lowest price we’ve tracked for the 256GB base model and $100 savings. We gave the ultraportable an impressive 96 in our review, calling it a “near-perfect Mac.” It has a Liquid Retina display, a quad speaker array and a battery that lasted over 16 hours in our video tests. For ports, you get two Thunderbolt ports, a headphone jack and a MagSafe charging port.
Samsung’s 32-inch M8 Smart Monitor is part computer monitor and part smart TV, meaning it can do everything a monitor can do when hooked up to a PC, but you may never need to do that. All on its own, it can stream Netflix, Disney+, Peacock and other services just by connecting to your WiFi. The included Microsoft 365 programs means you can compose and edit docs, browse the web and build some Excel sheets with no additional computer required. It can also act as your smart home display to control your smart devices and keep tabs on your connected cams and doorbells.
This is a refreshed version of the M8 that Samsung launched at CES in 2022 and right now it’s $100 off at Amazon, making it $600 instead of $700.
We think the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II offer the best noise cancellation you can buy and recommend them in our guide. The buds are back down to $249 at both Amazon and directly from Bose. That’s a price they’ve hit many times before, but matches their all time low. Just remember that they don’t offer wireless charging and don’t have multipoint connectivity, meaning you can only pair with one device at a time.
We named the Powerbeats Pro the most comfortable option in our guide to workout headphones. The controls are intuitive, iOS integration is great and the comfortable, behind-the-ear hooks are easy to get in place and stay put (though they can interfere with sunglasses). We gave them an Engadget score of 86 when they came out in 2019. They’re a little older at this point and the over-ear design doesn’t block out any noise but they’re currently $90 off the MSRP, which is around $40 less than what they’ve been going for lately and matches their Prime Day sale price on Amazon.
We’ve recommended Headspace a few times in our guides because it’s an intuitive app that can actually help you relax. If you take a minute out of your day and cue up a breathing exercise or guided meditation you may very well find that your shoulders release back down from up around your ears. Right now a year-long subscription is 30 percent off, making it $49 instead of $70. There’s far more content than any typical person will get through and new sessions are added continuously.
If your WiFi connectivity could use a boost, it may be time to invest in an mesh router system. The top pick from our guide, TP-Link’s Deco XE75, is currently down to $330 for the three-pack instead of its usual $400. That’s not quite an all time low, as it went for $10 less during last year’s Black Friday deals and the most recent Prime Day sale, but is still a tidy discount. The set will cover up to 7,200 square feet but if you don’t need that much coverage, the single unit and two-unit packs are also on sale, though aren’t as steeply discounted. We like the Deco XE75 because the WiFi 6E routers support all three wireless bands (including the 6GHz band) and offers a great mix of power, user-friendliness and affordability — particularly when it’s discounted. You can read our full review here.
Our top pick for a premium robot vacuum, the iRobot Roomba s9+, has returned to it’s record low of $600 at Amazon. That’s a 40 percent discount and matches the sale price from Prime Day. Engadget’s Valentina Palladino found it to be a powerful machine that was better than most at navigating around furniture and other objects and despite having excellent suction, it actually moves faster than its cheaper sibling, the j7. It also looks pretty premium, with its copper accents and sleek design. The self-emptying base means less involvement from you and the setup only takes a few minutes so it can quickly get to work making your floors cleaner.
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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-airpods-pro-drop-back-to-an-all-time-low-plus-the-rest-of-this-weeks-best-tech-deals-183317049.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – The AirPods Pro drop back to an all-time low, plus the rest of this week’s best tech deals
While there have been some efforts toward unionizing animation writers, there hasn’t been much movement. A few studios are unionized under the Animation Guild (TAG), and a few more are organized with WGA, but in a recent announcement at an animation-themed WGA-led picket in New York, Susan Kim, WGA East animation…
Source: Gizmodo – WGA Members Pledge to Fight for Unionizing Animation Writers
In the world of sports, young athletes get a lot of attention: High school and college teams are full of strong, fast people. Later in life, the stereotype goes, they’ll be has-beens who can’t stop talking about that game they won or how much they benched in the weight room. But in many sports, we actually get better…
Source: LifeHacker – Your Athletic Peak Is Longer Than You Think
Cilium, an open-source networking, security and observability project, has released version 1.14 with an array of connectivity, security and observability updates. The Cilium 1.14 update also introduces new mesh capabilities, high-speed networking and security enhancements.
Source: LXer – Cilium 1.14 expands Linux networking beyond Kubernetes, offers higher speeds
For those who are interested in the gory details of how the StackRot vulnerability works, Ruihan Li has
posted a detailed
writeup of the bug and how it can be exploited.
As StackRot is a Linux kernel vulnerability found in the memory
management subsystem, it affects almost all kernel configurations
and requires minimal capabilities to trigger. However, it should be
noted that maple nodes are freed using RCU callbacks, delaying the
actual memory deallocation until after the RCU grace
period. Consequently, exploiting this vulnerability is considered
challenging.To the best of my knowledge, there are currently no publicly
available exploits targeting use-after-free-by-RCU (UAFBR)
bugs. This marks the first instance where UAFBR bugs have been
proven to be exploitable, even without the presence of
CONFIG_PREEMPT or CONFIG_SLAB_MERGE_DEFAULT settings.
Source: LWN.net – Exploiting the StackRot vulnerability
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto)
Meta’s new Twitter competitor, Threads, is looking for ways to keep users interested after more than half of the people who signed up for the text-based platform stopped actively using the app, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly told employees in a company town hall yesterday. Threads launched on July 5 and signed up over 100 million users in less than five days, buoyed by user frustration with Elon Musk-owned Twitter.
“Obviously, if you have more than 100 million people sign up, ideally it would be awesome if all of them or even half of them stuck around. We’re not there yet,” Zuckerberg told employees yesterday, according to Reuters, which listened to audio of the event.
Third-party data suggests that Threads may have lost many more than half of its active users. Daily active users for Threads on Android dropped from 49 million on July 7 to 23.6 million on July 14, and then to 12.6 million on July 23, web analytics company SimilarWeb reported.
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Source: Ars Technica – Most of the 100 million people who signed up for Threads stopped using it
In 1581, Queen Elizabeth I of England bestowed a knighthood on notorious privateer Sir Francis Drake. The captain of the Golden Hind was hailed by the British crown for his exploits against Spanish colonies in the Caribbean and on what is now the U.S. Pacific coast (which did involve quite a lot of indiscriminate…
Source: Gizmodo – Salute the Black Flag: Sci-Hub Pirate Captain Receives EFF Award for Sticking It to the Man
