More than half the world’s countries have no plans to protect 30% of land and sea for nature, despite committing to a global agreement to do so less than three years ago, new analysis shows. From a report: In late 2022, nearly every country signed a once-in-a-decade UN deal to halt the destruction of Earth’s ecosystems. It included a headline target to protect nearly a third of the planet for biodiversity by the end of the decade — a goal known as “30 by 30.” But as country leaders gather in Rome to conclude Cop16 negotiations to save nature, analysis of countries’ plans by Carbon Brief and the Guardian found that many countries are will fall short. More than half are either pledging to protect less than 30% of their territory or are not setting a numerical target.
As the world turns, so do the console generations. The Nintendo Switch is over seven years old, so it’s due for a refresh. Nintendo Switch 2 rumors have been swirling for years, but now we have some signs of life. The company officially revealed the sequel to its most successful home console ever in a brief trailer on January 16.
The Switch 2 looks functionally very similar to the original system, albeit with a larger display, magnetic Joy-Cons and a sleeker design. The company also reaffirmed that the upcoming console will be backwards compatible with Switch games.
While the reveal did confirm some rumors and have a few interesting details for those who were paying close attention, Nintendo is still largely keeping its cards close to its chest. We’ll have to wait until a special Nintendo Direct at 9AM ET on April 2 for all the juicy information. Annoyingly, that date is a Wednesday and not a Two-sday.
The Nintendo Switch 2 was announced on January 16
The rumor mill had heavilysuggested that Nintendo would pull back the curtain on the Switch 2 on January 16, and that turned out to be the case.
The company hasn’t changed the core form factor. It’s a portable console with detachable Joy-Cons. The Switch 2 can be placed in a dock for big-screen gaming. There are some significant differences from the original console, however.
The most obvious one is that the next-gen Joy-Cons will no longer slide into place mechanically. Instead, they’ll attach to the main unit magnetically. There is a small connector that’s likely used to charge the controllers and perhaps remove the need to link them via Bluetooth. It’s unclear at this point if Joy-Cons from the original system will be compatible with the Switch 2.
One other big (and very welcome) change is the addition of a second USB-C port on the top of the device. That should make it much easier to plug in accessories while the Switch 2 is docked. It’s great to see that Nintendo has kept the headphone jack as well. Let’s just hope that Bluetooth headphone support is live from the jump this time and Nintendo doesn’t leave everyone waiting four yearsfor that feature.
The kickstand is getting an upgrade as well. As with the Switch OLED, it spans the length of the console. But, according to the trailer, this one looks fully adjustable, so you can tweak the viewing angle to one that works for you.
However, there are still a great many unknowns regarding the upcoming console. We don’t really know the specs yet, or what type of display it uses. We also don’t know anything about battery life, the UI or launch games. We’ll likely learn a whole lot on April 2.
When will the Nintendo Switch 2 come out?
2025. That’s all we know for sure at this point.
It’s highly unlikely that Nintendo will release the console before the dedicated Direct on April 2, and not only because that’s at the start of Nintendo’s next financial year. However, accessory manufacturer Genki, which has been a major source of leaks in recent months, claims the console will be released in April. Other reports have put the release window sometime in June.
In any case, we should learn the release date during the April 2 Direct if we haven’t already by then.
When can I try the Nintendo Switch 2?
Nintendo is planning a worldwide roadshow to let gamers go hands-on with the console. These events start in New York and Paris on April 3-6, with others taking place throughout the following two months. That lends credence to some suggestions that Nintendo will release the Switch 2 in June.
Ticket registration for the Switch 2 Experience events in the US (in New York, Los Angeles and Paris) starts on January 17 at 3PM ET and will remain open until January 26. A Nintendo Account is required to sign up. Nintendo will randomly select the recipients of the free tickets.
The full list of Nintendo Switch 2 Experience events is as follows:
North America:
New York, April 4-6, 2025
Los Angeles, April 11-13, 2025
Dallas, April 25-27, 2025
Toronto, April 25-27, 2025
Europe:
Paris, April 4-6, 2025
London, April 11-13, 2025
Milan, April 25-27, 2025
Berlin, April 25-27, 2025
Madrid, May 9-11, 2025
Amsterdam, May 9-11, 2025
Oceania:
Melbourne, May 10-11, 2025
Asia:
Tokyo (Makuhari), April 26-27, 2025
Seoul, May 31-June 1, 2025
Hong Kong, To be announced
Taipei, To be announced
Will the Nintendo Switch 2 have some weirdness?
Everything we’ve seen and so far about this console has been fairly, well, traditional. It looks like the original Switch, but better. That’s awesome, but will there be any of that unpredictable Nintendo magic? Maybe! There are two puzzling additions that folks can’t make hide nor hair of.
Genki, the accessories manufacturer, just published a landing page for their Nintendo Switch 2 accessories. This landing page features a video that includes a very detailed look at a Switch 2 mockup. pic.twitter.com/Db7RSk4YlQ
Keen eyes will have noticed a new button on the bottom of the right Joy-Con. It it not yet clear what this does. Could it initiate voice chat during gameplay? Could it calibrate the controllers? Could it create a room-sized hologram of Bowser in your living room? We’ll have to wait and see.
Now onto the updated Joy-Cons. There appears to be a new sensor on the connecting side of each controller. It looks a whole lot like an optical sensor, which is what a computer mouse uses. This has led to speculation that players will be able to flip the Joy-Con over and use it like a mouse. Of note: the trailer shows the Joy-Cons moving along a flat surface, connector side down and looking suspiciously like a mouse.
But why would anyone even want this? I can think of three words. New Mario Paint.
Mouse control isn’t the only “too strange for any company but Nintendo” rumor floating around. A patent filed by the company suggests you can swap the Switch 2’s Joy-Cons, snapping them onto either side of the console. That would align with the magnetic Joy-Con attachment scheme.
But much like the weird mouse rumors, it doesn’t necessarily align with, well, any logical reason for why you’d want to do that. The patent suggests it could allow for more user choice in where the headphone jack is. But since it’s Nintendo, the company that brought us Labo cardboard peripherals and the Game Boy Advance e-reader attachment, we have to wonder if there are… quirkier designs at hand.
Is the Nintendo Switch 2 backwards compatible?
The company confirmed in November 2024 that the Nintendo Switch 2 will be backwards compatible. It will also feature access to Nintendo Online, so users will be able to play all of those old retro titles.
In the initial Nintendo Switch 2 press release, Nintendo reiterated that physical and digital Switch games will work on the new system. However, it noted that “certain Nintendo Switch games may not be supported on or fully compatible with Nintendo Switch 2.” More details about which games those are will be revealed later.
Will old games be enhanced in any way?
The original Switch has, to put it mildly, struggled to run some of the late-generation software that’s come down the pike. Could these games be enhanced to take advantage of the increased horsepower of the Switch 2? We have no idea. We also don’t know if any of these releases will receive graphical upgrades, perhaps taking advantage of upscaling tech.
What will the cartridges taste like?
You may remember that the original Switch cartridges taste absolutely awful. This was on purpose, to discourage folks from putting the games in their mouth. Will the successor follow suit and continue to dip cartridges in a foul-tasting bitter coating? Only time will tell.
What about specs?
The rumors regarding specs are all over the place, so it’s tough to pin down. We know one thing for sure: It’ll be more powerful than the ancient Switch hardware, which was already antiquated back in 2017. One analyst allegedly got a hold of a spec sheet from the Korean United Daily News that said the Switch 2 would boast an eight-core Cortex-A78AE processor, 8GB of RAM, and 64GB of internal eMMC storage. This tracks for me, as these specs are about as underpowered in 2024 as the original Switch was in 2017. However, some reports do indicate that the console will include 12GB of RAM.
Another source suggests that the eight-core CPU will be packaged inside an NVIDIA-produced Tegra239 SoC (system on a chip). Given the current Switch runs on an NVIDIA chip, that makes a lot of sense. The CPU will be more powerful, but it’s the Switch 2’s new GPU that will be a major differentiator. It’s all-but-confirmed that the Switch 2 will support DLSS, NVIDIA’s “deep learning supersampling” upscaling tech, which would allow the console to render games at a low resolution internally while outputting a high-resolution image. (Fun fact: We actually wrote about how perfect DLSS was for the Nintendo Switch 2 when the technology was announced alongside the RTX 20 series back in 2018.)
There are still questions about the Switch 2 and DLSS: Will the system support newer DLSS features like frame generation? Will existing games be automatically tidied up by NVIDIA’s algorithm? Regardless of the exact implementation, DLSS upscaling will be a huge leap over the rudimentary techniques available to Nintendo Switch developers.
As for the display, there are many conflicting rumors. Early reports from solid sources suggested the Switch 2 would have an 8-inch display LCD display. The Switch 2’s display certainly looks larger than that of the original Switch in a side-by-side comparison in the reveal trailer. Some folks have worried that the Switch follow-up may actually be too big, especially for kids.
Certain analysts have suggested this would be an OLED screen, while others have said it would be a Mini-LED display. A Mini-LED display is basically an LCD display that has a backlight made of (surprise!) mini-LEDs rather than edge lighting. This allows for local dimming, making the blacks more black. I’m hedging my bets here. I think it’ll be a standard LCD, to cut costs, with an OLED or Mini-LED model coming later down the line. However, Mini-LED screens are slightly cheaper than OLED displays, so that’s certainly a possibility at launch.
As for resolution, recent reporting suggests that the console will output 1080p in handheld and 4K when docked. That’s much better than the OG Switch.
More tenuous “leaks” have intimated that the Switch 2 could also support a faster microSD card standard known as microSD Express. This allows for significantly faster transfer rates than the common UHS-I cards supported by the Switch today. It’s technically been around for several years, but we’ve only recently started to see microSD cards that take advantage of the spec hit the market.
So, in theory, all of this could bring a sizable boost in load times and general storage performance for the Switch 2 (though it’s still not likely to be on par with the SSDs in the PS5 or Xbox Series X/S). But again, these rumors are far from concrete. It’s also worth noting that microSD Express cards cost significantly more than what we usually see today — the SanDisk card we tested, for instance, starts at $45 for just 128GB of storage.
How much will the Nintendo Switch 2 cost?
We don’t have too much information regarding price but we do have plenty of history to work with. The original Nintendo Switch launched at $300, which is pretty much the “magic number” when it comes to Nintendo console releases in recent years. The Wii U also came in at $300.
However, there are plenty of rumors circulating that Nintendo could be upping the asking price for the Switch 2. Numerous outlets have reported it’ll be $400, or potentially even more expensive. However, the same analysts who say the console will be $400 were also fairly certain it would be out by the end of 2024 and, well, that didn’t happen.
Dipping back into history, there is some precedence for a price uptick. The GameCube was $200 and the Wii was $250. The Wii U and Switch increased to $300 and, well, numbers like to go up. A $400 price tag would make it nearly as expensive as a PS5 and Xbox Series X. That would also put it at the same price as the 256GB LCD Steam Deck.
Again, we should get confirmation of the price during the April 2 Nintendo Direct.
Do we know about any launch games?
Not so much. The reveal trailer offered a peek at a new Mario Kart game. Nintendo released Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U over a decade ago and it’s been milking that cash cow ever since, having sold more than 64 million copies of the game across that console and the Switch. It’s definitely time for a new entry!
It’s certainly been a long time since we’ve gotten a proper 3D Mario adventure as well, so a new one could be a launch title. That would be one heck of a system seller. Other than that, your guess is as good as mine. Past as prologue, we can expect something from Ubisoft and an off-the-wall title like 1-2-Switch.
If there’s a gimmick or hook involved with the console, we’ll also get a game that takes advantage of that. A dual release of Metroid Prime 4, just like Breath of the Wild and Twilight Princess before that, is also a possibility.
It’s all but nailed on that we’ll learn much more about the Switch 2 launch lineup during the April 2 Nintendo Direct, which starts at 9AM ET. You’ll definitely want to set your Alarmo for that one.
That’s everything we know about the Nintendo Switch 2 today. We’ll update this article with rumors we trust and with information we gather directly from sources. Any changes made to the article after its initial publishing will be listed below.
Update, February 24, 2025, 12:30 PM ET: This story has been updated to include speculation about storage and information about the new microSD Express standard.
Update, January 24, 2025, 12:36 PM ET: This story has been updated to include speculation about price, potential game enhancements and the taste of cartridges.
Update, February 5, 2025, 9:30AM ET: This story has been updated to note the time when the April 2 Nintendo Direct starts.
Jeff Dunn contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/nintendo-switch-2-is-launching-soon-heres-everything-we-know-so-far-153308958.html?src=rss
Blendo Games’ latest installment of interactive weirdness, Skin Deep,is due to hit Steam on April 30, after nearly seven years of development. Skin Deep is a first-person sci-fi shooter, but it doesn’t look (or smell?) like any of the dramatic space operas or realistic, precision-based games that generally flood this genre.
Skin Deep takes place on a futuristic cargo starship managed by an insurance corporation and filled with its clients’ valuables, and you’re the cryogenically frozen security officer kept on board in case something goes awry. Space pirates ambush the ship, your body thaws, and a non-linear game of shooting, sneaking, sabotaging and smelling ensues, all presented in Blendo’s signature blocky 3D style.
Skin Deep features a mix of puzzles, madcap comedy and action scenes, and alongside the first-person gunplay, there’s a sneeze mechanic and a stink system that sometimes leaves little smelly clouds in your wake, alerting nearby pirates to your presence. It’s like Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, but with fewer medieval peasants and way more space cats. Did we mention there are a bunch of cats that you have to save on the ship? Because there are, and some of them are dressed in little cowboy outfits.
For the odor mechanics, players become stinky only when it makes sense narratively, like when they’re expelled from the ship’s trash shoot alongside all the fish bones and rotten things. Your smell clouds subside once you figure out how to wash up. Sneezing follows a similar in-game logic.
Blendo Games
“If you’re crawling through a dusty vent your little sneezy air level will increase, then you’ll do a big sneeze noise,” Chung told Engadget in 2021. “And there’s a bag of pepper that we have. If you shoot it, a big cloud of pepper flies out. You can pick up a pepper bag and throw it at someone and they’ll start sneezing.”
Skin Deep is the most action-focused game that Blendo has ever made. The independent studio, led by Brendon Chung, has a lineup of award-winning titles under its belt, including Quadrilateral Cowboy, Gravity Bone and Thirty Flights of Loving. These titles tend to highlight clever puzzles and polygonal oddities, and Skin Deep is the first Blendo project to feature first-person shooter mechanics.
That’s not to say FPS development is a new idea for Chung. He got his start in game development by customizing levels in Doom, Quake, Half-Life, Quake 2 and Doom 3 when he was a kid, and FPS games are often what he’s drawn to as a player. He’s still using a modified port of id Software’s Doom 3 engine, idTech4, to make Skin Deep.
“I’ve played like a bazillion FPS games because I just really enjoy them,” Chung said in 2021, “but I feel like there’s so much that can be explored and that I wish these games would explore.” You know, like well-dressed cats and stink systems.
Blendo Games
When we talked with Chung four years ago, the Skin Deep FAQ page read, “Is Skin Deep going to take 4+ years of development time like your previous game Quadrilateral Cowboy?” And the answer was, “I hope not.” Today, there’s an “(update: oops…)” added to that response. Development on Skin Deep started around July 2018, according to the FAQ.
Skin Deep is published by Annapurna Interactive and it’s heading to Steam on April 30. A new demo is live now on Steam, as part of the Steam Next Fest hullaballoo. Steam Next Fest runs from February 24 at 1PM ET to March 3 at 1PM ET, showcasing a ton of fresh game demos and developer insights on the storefront.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/blendo-games-oddball-sci-fi-shooter-skin-deep-hits-pc-on-april-30-173010803.html?src=rss
But there’s an interesting discussion to be had surrounding the 16e’s processor, the A18 chip. At first glance, it seems like the same A18 chip found in the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus, and you’d be forgiven for assuming the iPhone 16e offers the same performance as its more expensive sibling devices. The thing is, these aren’t the same chips: The A18 in the iPhone 16e is “binned.”
What is a “binned” chip?
“Binned” chips aren’t just a thing with Apple products. All computer chip makers can bin their chips. It has to do with the manufacturing process: Chips are extremely complicated products, and they don’t all come out exactly the same. Samples are tested for quality assurance purposes, and the chips that aren’t quite up to snuff are separated from the ones that perform to standard. The former are then “binned,” and won’t be used as high-end chips, since they aren’t able to hit the performance levels manufacturers are looking for.
That doesn’t mean binned chips aren’t used at all, however. On the contrary, binned chips are often employed as mid- or lower-tier options. Manufacturers will often disable different “cores” of these chips to keep their performance in check. They’re still perfectly capable chips, especially when they have this ceiling in place. Intel does this with its line of chips, which is why you have different performance variants, like i5, i7, and i9. Apple does this, too: For the iPad mini 7, the company used binned A17 Pro chips. Now, Apple is using binned A18s for the iPhone 16e.
How the iPhone 16e uses binned A18s
So, Apple makes a batch of A18 chips, originally intended to ship with the iPhone 16 series. During testing, some of these A18 chips aren’t totally up to snuff, so they’re set aside and not used for iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus devices.
However, Apple has a new iPhone they want to sell for less than its flagship line—one that strips out “premium” features to keep costs down, but also offers incentives for users to actually buy their new iPhone over other options. It has some binned A18 chips lying around: Why not use those instead?
In this way, the iPhone 16e uses the “same” chip as you’d find in the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus—but with the caveat that it doesn’t perform as well, and thus can’t be pushed as far. Apple even disables one of the GPU cores to keep performance in check: The 16e’s CPU has the same six cores as the 16 and 16 Plus’ (two performance and four efficiency) and the NPU has the same 16 cores across all devices, but where the GPU in the 16 and 16 Plus has five cores, the GPU in the 16e only has four cores. That’s because these chips are binned.
Even though the iPhone 16e isn’t dropping until Feb. 28, there are already some early indicators of how it performs. MySmartPrice spotted the device on Geekbench, a notable benchmarking website, where the 16e scored a 24188 in graphics testing, or about 12.5% lower than the iPhone 16’s 27668 score. These are raw numbers, and we can’t really deduce what real-world use would look like between these two phones until reviewers get their hands on them.
However, based on these stats, my guess is the differences will be minimal. The CPUs and NPUs are the same, and the 16e’s GPU still has four cores, which means performance for most tasks on the iPhone is going to be high. Where the difference might show is in graphically demanding apps, such as AAA games. Developers could push the iPhone 16 a bit further than the iPhone 16e, because it has that extra GPU core. That will likely extend the longevity of those premium devices, too: As software advances and becomes more demanding, the extra GPU core on the iPhone 16 could help keep it running smoother for longer.
That said, it’s just one extra core. In all likelihood, the difference won’t be that great. I think Apple’s choice here was more about saving the company money than offering users a noticeably worse experience.
A username and password just won’t cut it anymore. Users around the world logging into Gmail have often relied on Google SMS pings to securely access their accounts, but that’s changing. Google now hopes to move beyond SMS, which has become so frequently abused that it negates any supposed security benefit. Instead of using SMS, the company will reportedly switch to using QR codes.
Currently, Google sends SMS codes for two reasons: to confirm that a new login is legitimate and to block spammers from opening Gmail accounts in bulk. You type in your credentials, and a moment later, Google texts a six-digit code for you to enter as well. It’s not a terribly arduous process, and it can help protect your account, but SMS is not very secure.
SMS messages are delivered by mobile carriers without encryption, and they often go through intermediaries that can be compromised without your knowledge. Even if the line is secure, phone numbers have very little in the way of security.
Role-playing games are known to be lengthy adventures that can keep you busy for weeks, months, or years, some totalling well over 100 hours. As such, it’s not surprising you’d want to know just how long you’ll be spending in Obsidian Entertainment’s newest RPG, Avowed, and whether it’s worth your time and money. If…
It looks like at least a few people have got their hands on physical copies of Assassin’s Creed Shadows ahead of the game’s official March 20 launch. Reportedly, one player streamed themselves playing the next entry in Ubisoft’s long-running franchise online. (No spoilers are included below.)
We’ve got updates on Authority, Booster Gold, Swamp Thing, Teen Titans, Peacemaker, and so much more—right from DC Studios’ James Gunn and Peter Safran.
Numskull Games is partnering with developers Horsefly for Stratogun, a nostalgic flatscreen shoot ’em up launching with VR support later this year.
Inspired by the neon-soaked arcade shoot ’em ups of the 80s, Stratogun challenges players to fight through waves of wireframe enemies while competing for top spots on the game’s leaderboard. The longer you survive rounds of aerial assault, the more points you rack up, which translates directly into experience points that can be used to upgrade your gear and earn new perks to bolster your fighting offensive on future runs.
In an accompanying trailer, we can see a ship navigating hazardous globes full of bullet hell projectiles and racking up multipliers to the tune of a pounding synth-heavy soundtrack.
Stratogun is set to launch on Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC, with VR support available on Steam. On the Steam Page, Horsefly describes Stratogun as ‘an ultra-fast space shooter with tight controls’ and explains the fast-paced gameplay as ‘easy to pick up, but very difficult to master.’
You can test that later this year when Stratogun launches on PC and consoles. Alternatively, you can check it out ahead of its release via the official Steam Next Fest demo, which includes VR support and is available now.
We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.
Whether you’re shopping for your very first security camera or already have a system at home you’re looking to grow, you might find something worthwhile in Amazon’s sale section on Ring and Blink cameras. As Amanda Blum, our smart-home tech reviewer at Lifehacker, mentioned in her review, the Blink Outdoor 4 is a worthwhile entry-level wireless security camera—and right now, you can get bundles for up to 50% off, with the five-camera bundle for $199.99 (originally $399.99). This is the lowest price I have seen for this particular bundle, after checking price-tracking tools.
Wireless smart security camera, two-year battery, 1080p HD day and infrared night live view, two-way
Blink Outdoor 4
$99.99 at Amazon
$99.99 at Amazon
Wireless smart security camera, two-year battery, 1080p HD day and infrared night live view, two-way
Blink Outdoor 4 (2-Pack)
$119.99 at Amazon
$179.99 Save $60.00
$119.99 at Amazon
$179.99 Save $60.00
Wireless smart security camera, two-year battery, 1080p HD day and infrared night live view, two-way
Blink Outdoor 4 (3-Pack)
$155.99 at Amazon
$259.99 Save $104.00
$155.99 at Amazon
$259.99 Save $104.00
Wire-free smart security camera, two-year battery life, two-way audio, HD live view, enhanced motion
Blink Outdoor 4 (4-Pack)
$203.99 at Amazon
$339.99 Save $136.00
$203.99 at Amazon
$339.99 Save $136.00
Wire-free smart security camera, two-year battery life, two-way audio, HD live view, enhanced motion
Blink Outdoor 4 (5-Pack)
$199.99 at Amazon
$399.99 Save $200.00
$199.99 at Amazon
$399.99 Save $200.00
Wire-free smart security camera, two-year battery life, two-way audio, HD live view, enhanced motion
Blink Outdoor 4 (6-Pack)
$239.99 at Amazon
$479.99 Save $240.00
$239.99 at Amazon
$479.99 Save $240.00
Wire-free smart security camera, two-year battery life, two-way audio, HD live view, enhanced motion
Blink Outdoor 4 (8-Pack)
$314.99 at Amazon
$629.99 Save $315.00
$314.99 at Amazon
$629.99 Save $315.00
The Blink Outdoor 4 is a wireless camera, meaning you’ll be using 2 AA lithium batteries, which last for up to two years. The camera is also weather-resistant, has motion-activation alerts, a live-view mode (up to five minutes without a Blink subscription plan), shoots in 1080p, has two-way audio, and works great with the Alexa ecosystem. (Unfortunately, it is not compatible with Google or Apple Home Kit.) You’ll get a Sync Module 2 with your order, which gives you local storage for your videos with a USB stick for up to 10 cameras, meaning you don’t need to get the Blink subscription if you don’t want to. The camera offers a 143-degree diagonal view wherever you set it up, and an optional person-detection feature if you get the Blink subscription plan.
Keep in mind you will need a Blink subscription to use all of its features. The Blink subscription starts at $30 a year for the Blink Basic Plan. You can also get the Blink Plus Plan, which costs $100 a year and has more features, the most important of which is having an unlimited number of devices hooked up to your account.
For those intrigued by Jolla’s Linux-based Sailfish OS mobile phone operating system, Sailfish OS 5.0 is officially out today as the latest iteration of this software stack…
The 8BitDo M Edition Retro Mechanical Keyboard is now 40 percent off at Woot, down to $60, the lowest it’s ever been. It’s a newer version of the Retro 108 Mechanical Keyboard (without the numpad) that ships with a pair of programmable “Super Buttons” which resemble gigantic versions of the A and B buttons on an old game controller.
This 87-key keyboard has top-mounted hot-swappable PCBs, making it perfect for enthusiasts who like to tinker with their keyboards. It boasts three connection modes: wired, wireless 2.4Ghz and Bluetooth, and you can use the top left knob to swap between them.
For users who want to do some custom key mapping, 8BitDo offers its Ultimate Software V2. However, it’s only available on Windows. You can still use this keyboard on Mac, but the software won’t work.
The sale will only last five days, or until supplies run out.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/8bitdos-m-edition-retro-mechanical-keyboard-is-40-percent-off-right-now-164852149.html?src=rss
Cloud communications software firm Bird, one of the Netherlands’ most prominent tech startups, plans to move most of its operations out of Europe, its CEO said, citing restrictive regulations and difficulties hiring skilled technology workers. From a report: “We are mostly leaving Europe as it lacks the environment we need to innovate in an AI-first era of technology,” CEO Robert Vis told Reuters on Monday. “We foresee that regulations in Europe will block true innovation in a global economy moving extremely fast to AI,” he said in a text message response to Reuters queries. Bird’s operations in future will be mostly split between New York, Singapore and Dubai, he said.
Presidents’ Day was exactly a week ago today, but Best Buy’s Presidents’ Day sale event is still going on with some pretty nice discounts. It won’t run too much longer (it goes through February 26), though like Amazon, sales have become a year-round thing. That said, there are some discounts that may not be in play when the event concludes.
A giant rooster that sets a desert sea on fire every time it brushes its beautiful but deadly tail feathers. A toad-like octopus that sends mini-tidal waves roiling through a thick jungle forest as it flops around like a violent puppy. These and other majestic creatures I’ve killed dozens of times in Monster Hunter…
As egg prices skyrocket, you too may be considering if it would be cheaper going straight to the source and raising your own flock. As the steward of four sweet but dimwitted backyard chickens, I’ll caution that it’s more expensive than you think—but with prices spiking as high as $1 per egg in some areas, it may be worth considering.
Each day, I reliably pull three or four gorgeously colored eggs out of my backyard chicken coop. “They’re free!” I think to myself. But these eggs are only “free” if one ignores the costs of feeding, sheltering, protecting, and entertaining a flock of tiny, feathered dinosaurs.
Now, most people with backyard birds aren’t going the cheap route. You can definitely spend a lot raising fancy chickens that lay fancifully colored eggs, residing in Pinterest-worthy chicken coops and feasting on organic feed. By those standards, it’s definitely cheaper to buy your eggs. But is it possible to save money raising chickens by going the cheap route, and populating a merely serviceable coop with a few hardy egg layers?
Whether or not you can save money farming your own eggs turns out to be a question of scale—and no matter how high egg prices go, it’s likely going to be cheaper to buy them in the store.
Credit: Amanda Blum
Chickens aren’t expensive, but the accessories can be
Let’s start with the chickens themselves. You can purchase chickens as chicks just a few days old, and they are deceptively cheap. Your local farm store will likely have them in the spring and into the summer for $3 to $6 each, depending on the breed. These will be the pedestrian breeds of the birds—Rhode Island Reds, Brahmas, and White Leghorns—which is fine if your priority is a bird that will produce a lot of eggs and be weather-resilient. More exclusive breeds can go for as much as $25 per chick.
Older birds cost more
You don’t have to start with chicks. Some places will sell you poulets—chickens that are at least 15 weeks old. While the purchase price is higher (depending on breed, they can go for $30 to $60), these chickens can go straight into a backyard coop and will begin laying within a month or two.
Paying $30 for a chicken might seem expensive when you can get a chick for $a tenth of that, but there are some financial benefits to skipping the early stages of chicken rearing. You won’t have to buy a brooder, heater, chick waterer or feeder, (which will save you between $100 and $150, all told), and you won’t need to shelter the chicken inside. You can also skip out on buying chick food and chick grit. At 15 weeks, your chickens can eat layer (adult) feed, which isn’t cheaper, but at least none of it will go to waste when your chicks outgrow their chick feed.
But skipping the chick phase means you miss the opportunity to bond with your chickens. Raising my chicks inside and exposing my dog to them while they were small led to them being able to cohabitate once the chickens were grown. If I’d dropped poulets into the backyard, I doubt I’d have a relationship with them, and I’m pretty sure my dog would have viewed them as mobile chicken nuggets.
You can get lucky and find someone on Craigslist or in a neighborhood faming group who needs to rehome their chickens. Those chickens are often fully grown layers—and, even better, available for free.
Your coop will be your biggest expense
Adult chickens start laying eggs around six months old, but before that, you’ll face a lot of one-time expenses, biggest among them a chicken coop. You can build a very simple coop yourself, but that’s a risk. Your birds will face backyard aggressors (racoons, dogs, cats, vermin, and other wildlife) and your coop needs to keep them out, and a basic DIY coop might not be up to the task.
Your coop’s design will also impact how easy it is to tend to your flock. It needs to be tall enough to walk into so you can collect eggs and clean the coop out without having to stoop. How you design your laying boxes can determine how clean and easy it is to pull your eggs every day. The coop will need winter insulation, even if you have hardy chickens. So even if you build a coop, at minimum it’s still going to cost you a few hundred dollars in wood, construction fabric, wire, and other materials. Pre-built coops, meanwhile run from hundreds of dollars to thousands.
Your adult birds will need a waterer as well as a feeder. You’ll also likely want to buy them some toys like a swing or mirror, because even though they are dumb, they need mental stimulation too. You’ll even need to buy fake eggs so these bird brains know where to lay. All of that is going to cost you another $100 or so.
Monthly costs can add up
Remember, chickens don’t start laying eggs for about six months, so you’ll spend at least that long paying out to support freeloading chickens. But once you’ve dispensed with the startup costs, you’ve got recurring monthly costs to deal with too—though at least the chickens should be producing eggs by that point.
Each month, you’ll need to budget for food, grit, and oyster shells or another source of calcium. You’ll also need treats of some kind. On top of that, you’ll need material for the bedding in the coop, like pine shavings, hemp, or sand. A grown chicken eats about 1.5 lbs of food a week. They’ll grab grit as they need it, and chickens only need a quarter pound of it a month, but it adds up as your flock grows. Hens will eat as much calcium as they need, which means that if there isn’t enough calcium in your laying feed or treats, you’ll need a lot of crushed oyster shells.
Don’t forget the “soft costs” of chicken raising
One of the reasons egg prices have skyrocketed is that the cost of all the inputs (from feed to grit) have gone up. The other reason is bird flu, which is now raging in every state in America. Your backyard flock is no less at risk than commercial birds, and ensuring your birds’ safety is going to take work. Recommended biosecurity measures include keeping wild birds out of the shared yard, keeping one pair of shoes exclusively for when you’re walking into a space you share with your birds, and ensuring that you watch for signs of sickness in your flock. If you’ve got cats, you may want to think twice about a backyard flock— bird flu can be transmitted to cats, and is almost always fatal.
All of the extra work to keep your birds safe comes at a cost of your time, and unlike a commercial egg production house, you won’t be routinely testing your eggs for bird flu, so you’ll need to make sure you always cook them thoroughly.
Will your backyard flock save you money? (Probably not.)
So even if you keep things very lean, you’re looking at $500 to $800 of startup costs for your chickens. (For my own flock of four, I spent almost $2,200 for an insulated coop, some basic toys, and all their chick gear.) On a monthly basis, I spend $40 for food, another $65 on grubs, $15 on pine shavings, and $9 on oyster shells and grit. That’s $130 a month, which yields 90 to 120 eggs (chickens don’t always lay an egg every day, and are only active layers for a few years).
You don’t have to be a math whiz to see that at this scale scale, and considering the monthly expenses, you’ll never save money over buying from the store—even if you actually were buying 120 eggs a month at $1 each.
Do the “chicken math”
This is why “chicken math” exists. This term describes the tendency of chicken owners to add more birds, with the idea that the more chickens they have, the cheaper their eggs will become.
Once you’ve got the startup costs covered, going from four to 10 chickens isn’t that much more expensive, and taking care of 10 chickens isn’t fundamentally different from taking care for four. I realize that you likely don’t need the eggs of 10 chickens (unless you do need 300 eggs a month?) but your per-egg production costs will go down as you scale up, which is why most backyard flock owners end up selling some of their eggs back to the farm store or to neighbors.
Depending on your personal startup costs, your egg needs, and your willingness to set up shop as an egg salesperson, there is a break-even point here somewhere, but it’s unlikely you’ll reach it without significant effort.
Chickens are fun to raise even if they don’t save you money
But “free” eggs aren’t the only reason to start a backyard flock. Despite the mess my chickens cause in my yard, or the fact that they peck and scream at my bedroom window first thing in the morning, demanding grubs, I love the stupid birds. They have become my companions, and I enjoy the tasks of caring for them. They’ve even taken to watching TV with me while perched on the rosebush outside the living room window—all four fuzzy butts lined up on the branch. Every time I get annoyed with them, I remember they do pay rent, after a fashion: Four pastel colored eggs, every day.
