Batman: Arkham Shadow (2024) just got its ‘Game of the Year’ update that brings a host of new features, including three new maps, an ‘Extreme’ difficulty setting, and a new permadeath mode.
Camouflaj released the game’s 1.4 update to celebrate its recent Game of the Year win at the annual D.I.C.E. Awards last month, where it took home the Immersive Reality GOTY category.
Released in October 2024 shortly after the launch of Quest 3S, Batman: Arkham Shadow now has three new maps inspired by classic Arkham games, including Arkham Origins, Arkham City, and Arkham Asylum.
Quiet Reflection (inspired by “Quiet Waters” from Arkham Origins)
Architect of Fear (inspired by “Natural Selection” from Arkham City)
Stalking TYGER (inspired by “Silent Knight” from Arkham Asylum)
You’ll also find a new Extreme difficulty setting, which you can select both in the campaign and existing Challenge Maps.
There are also some new modes too, including an ‘I Am the Knight’ permadeath mode—a variant on New Game+ that puts you on Extreme difficulty, restarting your campaign every time you get a game over. Beat it, and you’ll unlock a gold-accented Batsuit variant called ‘The Prestige’.
‘Crane’s Nightmare’, an infinite combat mode, is also here, inspired by the classic ‘Scarecrow Nightmare’ extra content from Arkham Asylum.
The 1.4 update also brings six new ‘Echo’ collectibles, looping haptics while gliding, and alternating leg animations when mantling. The studio says 1.4 also comes with over 500 bugfixes; you can check out the changelog here.
“TrapC, a fork of the C language, is being developed as a potential solution for memory safety issues that have hindered the C and C++ languages,” reports InfoWorld.
But also being developed is a compiler named trapc “intended to be implemented as a cybersecurity compiler for C and C++ code, said developer Robin Rowe…”
Due by the end of this year, trapc will be a free, open source compiler similar to Clang… Rowe said. TrapC has pointers that are memory-safe, addressing the memory safety issue with the two languages. With TrapC, developers write in C or C++ and compile in TrapC, for memory safety…
Rowe presented TrapC at an ISO C meeting this week. Developers can download a TrapC whitepaper and offer Rowe feedback. According to the whitepaper, TrapC’s memory management is automatic and cannot leak memory. Pointers are lifetime-managed, not garbage-collected. Also, TrapC reuses a few code safety features from C++, notably member functions, constructors, destructors, and the new keyword.
“TrapC Memory Safe Pointers will not buffer overrun and will not segfault,” Rowe told the ISO C Committee standards body meeting, according to the Register. “When C code is compiled using a TrapC compiler, all pointers become Memory Safe Pointers and are checked.”
In short, TrapC “is a programming language forked from C, with changes to make it LangSec and Memory Safe,” according to that white paper. “To accomplish that, TrapC seeks to eliminate all Undefined Behavior in the C programming language…”
“The startup TRASEC and the non-profit Fountain Abode have a TrapC compiler in development, called trapc,” the whitepaper adds, and their mission is “to enable recompiling legacy C code into executables that are safe by design and secure by default, without needing much code refactoring… The TRASEC trapc cybersecurity compiler with AI code reasoning is expected to release as free open source software sometime in 2025.”
In November the Register offered some background on the origins of TrapC…
A great phone doesn’t need to cost a fortune. In 2025, features once exclusive to high-end devices – big batteries, multi-camera arrays, high refresh rate displays and more – have trickled down to more affordable models. Sure, you’ll still need to buy a flagship smartphone to get the best camera or fastest processor, but you don’t need to compromise nearly as much anymore if you’re looking for a great handset at a reasonable price. If you have less than $600 to spend, let us help you figure out what features to prioritize when trying to find the best midrange smartphone.
The best midrange phones for 2025
What is a midrange phone, anyway?
While the term frequently appears in articles and videos, there isn’t an agreed-upon definition for “midrange” beyond a phone that isn’t a flagship or an entry-level option. Most of our recommendations cost between $400 and $600 — any less and you should expect significant compromises. If you have more to spend, you might as well consider flagships like the Apple iPhone 16 and the Samsung Galaxy S25.
What to consider before buying a midrange smartphone
Buying a new device can be intimidating, but a few questions can help guide you through the process. First: what platform do you want to use? If the answer is iOS, that narrows your options down to exactly one phone. (Thankfully, it’s great.) And if you’re an Android fan, there’s no shortage of compelling options. Both platforms have their strengths, so you shouldn’t rule either out.
Of course, also consider how much you’re comfortable spending. Even increasing your budget by $100 more can get you a dramatically better product. Moreover, manufacturers tend to support their more expensive devices for longer. It’s worth buying something toward the top limit of what you can afford.
Having an idea of your priorities will help inform your budget. Do you want a long battery life or fast charging? Do you value speedy performance above all else? Or would you like the best possible cameras? While they continue to improve every year, even the best midrange smartphones still demand some compromises, and knowing what’s important to you will make choosing one easier.
What won’t you get from a midrange smartphone?
Every year, the line between midrange and flagship phones blurs as more upmarket features and specs trickle down to more affordable models. When Engadget first published this guide in 2020, it was tricky to find a $500 phone with waterproofing and 5G. In 2025, the biggest thing you might miss out on is wireless charging – and even then, that’s becoming less true.
One thing your new phone probably won’t come with is a power adapter; many companies have stopped including chargers with all of their smartphones. Performance has improved in recent years, but can still be hit or miss as most midrange phones use slower processors that can struggle with multitasking. Thankfully, their cameras have improved dramatically, and you can typically expect at least a dual-lens system on most midrange smartphones below $600.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/best-midrange-smartphone-183006463.html?src=rss
If you’re considering switching to Linux but are worried about losing your favorite apps, do not worry. Linux offers options to continue using your essential software or find excellent alternatives. Let’s explore how you can transition to Linux without leaving behind the software you rely on.
In general the most hardworking UEFI advocates seem to be people who don’t do stuff like install alternative operating systems on their computers. They certainly don’t write computer code that would have something to do with the motherboard’s firmware or interface with the peripheral devices.
It’s a feature-length film “rendered on a free and open-source software platform called Blender,” reports Reuters. And it just won the Oscar for best animated feature film, beating movies from major studios like Disney/Pixar and Dreamworks.
In January Blender.org called Flow “the manifestation of Blender’s mission, where a small, independent team with a limited budget is able to create a story that moves audiences worldwide, and achieve recognition with over 60 awards, including a Golden Globe for Best Animation and two Oscar nominations.” The entire project cost just $3.7 million, reports NPR — though writer/director Gints Zilbalodis tells Blender.org that it took about five and a half years.
“I think a certain level of naivety is necessary when starting a project,” Zilbalodis tells Blender. “If I had known how difficult it would be, I might never have started. But because I didn’t fully grasp the challenges ahead, I just dove in and figured things out along the way…”
Zilbalodis: [A]fter making a few shorts, I realized that I’m not good at drawing, and I switched to 3D because I could model things, and move the camera… After finishing my first feature Away, I decided to switch to Blender [from Maya] in 2019, mainly because of EEVEE… It took a while to learn some of the stuff, but it was actually pretty straightforward. Many of the animators in Flow took less than a week to switch to Blender…
I’ve never worked in a big studio, so I don’t really know exactly how they operate. But I think that if you’re working on a smaller indie-scale project, you shouldn’t try to copy what big studios do. Instead, you should develop a workflow that best suits you and your smaller team.
You can get a glimpse of their animation style in Flow’s official trailer.
NPR says that ultimately Flow’s images “possess a kinetic elegance. They have the alluring immersiveness of a video game…”
Ultramarine Linux is a Fedora-based distribution designed to be user-friendly for Linux newcomers while still offering advanced features for experienced users.
Podio is a cloud-based collaboration platform that helps businesses organize work, manage projects, and streamline workflows. Podio is proprietary software and is not available for Linux. We recommend the best free and open source alternatives.
“The February numbers show a staggering 0.61% drop to Linux use…” reports Phoronix. But they attribute this to an sampling error:
According to the survey, it shows 50% of Steam users using the Simplified Chinese language pack [a 20% increase from the month before]. In prior months where there has been drops to Linux use, it’s been correlated to wild swings in the Chinese use on Steam. This looks to be another such month.
Of the Linux specific data, SteamOS continues to prove most popular for that Valve distribution powering the Steam Deck [at 34.67%, with Arch Linux coming in second at 9.7%].
AMD CPUs power around 70% of the Linux gaming systems thanks to the Steam Deck APU and AMD Ryzen being quite popular with Linux enthusiasts.
ASUS has just provided pricing details for the ASUS NUC 15 Pro+, a compact computing system powered by Intel Core Ultra Processors (Series 2), offering up to 99 TOPS of AI acceleration and an 18% increase in performance compared to the previous generation.
Lenovo demonstrated “a laptop with a foldable screen and one that can get extra battery life from solar power,” reports CNBC, emphasizing that “These laptops are just concepts, meaning they are not commercially available.”
But “Lenovo, the world’s biggest PC maker, has a history of showing off imaginative concepts with some becoming reality, so it’s worth keeping an eye on what the Chinese technology giant is up to…”
The latest concepts were unveiled at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona… When fully unfolded, the screen is an 18-inch display [on the Lenovo ThinkBook ‘flip’ concept]… The screen can then be folded in half horizontally to create two screens — one on the front and one on the back. The entire display can be folded down flat so the laptop turns into a tablet-like device.
Lenovo also showed off a Yoga Solar PC concept, reports Gizmodo, calling it “relatively thin and light” despite a solar panel in its lid with “a supposed 24% solar conversion rate”:
Lenovo claims they achieved this by maneuvering the gridlines you usually find on a solar panel behind the solar cells, offering more real estate for energy absorption… Lenovo’s software showed the power accumulation at around 7 V when facing away from the sunlight and 12 V when facing toward it. It could get more when getting direct sunlight. Despite the presence of the solar panel, the laptop still weighs a little more than 2.6 pounds, which isn’t out of the realm of what to expect from most modern laptops.
We should note that the panel isn’t generating the required power to run the PC continuously. Lenovo claimed that 20 minutes of direct sunlight will transform into about one hour of video playback battery life. Depending on the CPU and battery, that could be 1/20 of the laptop’s battery life.
CNBC had slightly different statistics for the laptop’s battery life. “Lenovo said that the solar panels can absorb even ambient light in a person’s surroundings to give a user an extra hour of laptop use at the end of an eight-hour work day…”
If you want to fully control your GPU on Linux you may want to check out the latest update to Linux GPU Configuration Tool (LACT), which brings in various new features. Version 0.7.1 was released on February 27th.
Despite a January announcement that America would explore the idea of a national digital asset stockpile, the exact cryptocurrecies weren’t specified. Today on social media the president posted that it would include bitcoin, ether, XRP, Solana’s SOL token and Cardano’s ADA, reports CNBC — prompting a Sunday rally in cryptocurrencies trading.
XRP surged 33% after the announcement while the token tied to Solana jumped 22%. Cardano’s coin soared more than 60%. Bitcoin rose 10% to $94,425.29, after dipping to a three-month low under $80,000 on Friday. Ether, which has suffered some of the biggest losses in crypto year-to-date, gained 12%… This is the first time Trump has specified his support for a crypto “reserve” versus a “stockpile.” While the former assumes actively buying crypto in regular installments, a stockpile would simply not sell any of the crypto currently held by the U.S. government.
“The total cryptocurrency market has risen about 10%,” reports Reuters, “or more than $300 billion, in the hours since Trump’s announcement, according to CoinGecko, a cryptocurrency data and analysis company.”
“A U.S. Crypto Reserve will elevate this critical industry…” the president posted, promising to “make sure the U.S. is the Crypto Capital of the World,” reports The Hill:
His announcement comes just after the White House announced it would be welcoming cryptocurrency industry professionals on March 7 in a first-of-its-kind summit… It’s unclear what exactly Trump’s crypto reserve would look like, and while he previously dismissed crypto as a scam, he’s embraced the industry throughout his most recent campaign.
Lenovo is showing business laptops lovers some attention by announcing several new ThinkPads at Mobile World Congress 2025, including a new form factor for the T-series line, and updated internals across the business laptop lineup.
The ThinkPad T14s 2-in-1 is by far the most interesting of the bunch, with a new convertible body that’s similar to Lenovo’s Yoga laptops, and supports the magnetic Yoga Pen stylus. The laptop comes with up to a 14-inch, 400-nit WUXGA touch display, and inside, you can get up to a Intel Core Ultra 7 H or U 200 series chip, 64GB of LPDDR5x RAM and 1TB of storage. If you’re looking for an option without a 360-degree hinge, the ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 and ThinkPad T14 Gen 6 will also now come with either Intel Core Ultra or AMD Ryzen AI Pro chips, up to 32GB of RAM and up to 2TB of storage.
Lenovo
Lenovo describes the new ThinkPad X13 Gen 6 as “one of the lightest ThinkPad designs ever,” at only 2.05 lbs, but that light weight doesn’t mean the laptop misses out on the latest internals. The X13 Gen 6 comes with either a Intel Core Ultra or AMD Ryzen AI Pro chip, up to 64GB of LPDDR5x RAM and your choice of a 41Wh or 54.7Wh battery. The new ThinkPad can also support Wi-Fi 7 and an optional 5G connection, if you want to take it on the go.
Chip updates round out the remaining ThinkPads, with the ThinkPad E14 Gen 7 and E16 Gen 3 gaining support for up to an Intel Core Ultra 7 U or H 200 series chip and up to 64GB of DDR5 RAM, while the ThinkPad T16 Gen 4 is caps out at 32GB of RAM.
Lenovo is making the majority of its new ThinkPads available this summer, with the ThinkPad T14s 2-in-1, ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 and ThinkPad X13 Gen 6 arriving in June 2025 for $1,719, $1,674 and $1,139, respectively. The ThinkPad T14 Gen 6 and ThinkPad T16 Gen 4 are launching a little earlier in May for $1,359 and $1,623. And rounding things out, the ThinkPad E14 Gen 7 and E16 Gen 3 are coming in “Q2 2025” for $849 and $859.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/lenovo-is-updating-its-thinkpad-lineup-with-new-chips-and-form-factors-at-mwc-2025-230055977.html?src=rss
Lenovo hasn’t even released its futuristic laptop with a rollable screen. But that hasn’t stopped the company from taking that notebook’s core components and remixing it into a whole new thing at MWC 2025.
Officially called the ThinkBook codename Flip AI PC Proof of concept (yes, that is its official name and it’s a real mouthful), the laptop uses the same flexible OLED featured in its rollable sibling, except this time instead of disappearing inside its chassis, the display folds outwards. This allows what is normally a 13-inch panel to double in size to 18.1 inches at a moment’s notice. Notably, because the Flip’s screen bends instead of sliding in and out of the bottom half of the system, Lenovo can utilize the panel’s full area unlike the ThinkBook Rollable, which can only extend up to 16.7 inches.
In its vertical mode, this provides a ton of extra space for documents or multitasking. However, the screen can also be folded back into tablet mode or something akin to a 2-in-1’s tent mode for times when you might want to share your display with someone on the other side of the table.
Sam Rutherford for Engadget
Somewhat impressively, a fancy monitor isn’t the only trick the Flip has. Down below, Lenovo created what it calls a Smart ForcePad, which features a three-layer illuminated dashboard that adds customizable controls and icons to its surface. It’s a neat trick that expands what a basic touchpad can do, though it’s not exactly a huge leap from what we’ve seen on rival machines from Acer and others. Finally, on the inside, the Flip should have solid performance thanks to the inclusion of an Intel Core Ultra 7 processor, 32GB of RAM and PCIe SSD storage.
As a fan of anything with a flexible screen, it’s fascinating to see how quickly Lenovo was able to take the components used in the ThinkBook Plus Gen6 Rollable and turn them into something else. That said, as this was a very early prototype (a Lenovo representative said it was only one of two in the world at the time), there are some obvious issues that need to be ironed out before this thing ever gets close to an official release.
The first is that for a system with a screen this tall, its hinge wasn’t fully up to the task of keeping everything stable, as even a light tap would cause the whole panel to sway back and forth in a disconcerting way. The model I used also lacked that kickstand that appears in some of Lenovo’s promotional images, which would have further increased its sturdiness.
However, the biggest potential problem with the Flip may be difficult to address because it’s inherent to its core design. When the laptop is collapsed down into a clamshell for traveling, the way its screen folds exposes the flexible display to items that might scratch it. And while it’s possible to get around this by using a form-fitting laptop sleeve, that seems a bit too dangerous, even for someone like me who’s been using foldable phones for half a decade. Upon further consideration, I wouldn’t be surprised if this design challenge is a big reason Lenovo decided to bring the ThinkBook Rollable to market instead of the Flip.
Currently, Lenovo has no plans to bring the Flip to full production, but even so, it’s nice seeing what a company can come up with when it’s not scared to show off unfinished devices.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/lenovos-codename-flip-is-another-wild-take-on-a-flexible-screen-laptop-230051495.html?src=rss
Lenovo has announced new laptops with generative AI features for this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC), including the Yoga Pro 9i Aura edition. Lenovo’s Aura edition branding is the result of a partnership with Intel to create a set of “distinct software, hardware and AI features” that make “computing a more personalized, productive, and protected experience.” The Yoga Pro 9i Aura edition is powered by the Intel Core Ultra processor and ships with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 GPU, which is the company’s most affordable model in the RTX 50 series.
It has a 16-inch 3.2K PureSight Pro display with a double layer of OLED pixels that increases its overall brightness to 1600nits peak, as well as boosts its power efficiency. The display also supports 100 percent sRGB, P3 and Adobe RGB color gamut that provide true-to-life color accuracy. Like the previous versions of the Yoga Pro 9i, the Aura edition comes with the Lenovo Creator Zone, an on-device AI suite that can make third-party video, photo and music applications for creators easier to use. Lenovo’s Yoga Pro 9i Aura Edition will be available starting in the second quarter of 2025, with prices starting at $1,799.
The company has also introduced the 15-inch IdeaPad Slim 3x, a Copilot+ PC that runs on Snapdragon X chip, Qualcomm’s new platform designed to put Copilot+ PCs within reach for more people. IdeaPad Slim 3x can also process AI tasks on device and comes with a dedicated key for Microsoft’s Copilot assistant. One more interesting feature is the device’s open SSD slot that can fit an extra SSD for those who want to expand the laptop’s storage capacity. The model will be available starting this month for at least $649.
Lenovo
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/lenovos-new-ai-laptops-for-mwc-include-the-yoga-pro-9i-aura-edition-and-the-ideapad-slim-3x-230024761.html?src=rss
You might be surprised to learn that the first laptop with built-in solar panels is nearly 15 years old. But to me, the bigger shock is that with all the recent advancements in photovoltaic cells, manufacturers haven’t revisited this idea more often. But at MWC 2025, Lenovo is changing that with its Yoga Solar PC Concept.
Weighing 2.6 pounds and measuring less than 0.6 inches thick, the Yoga Solar PC Concept is essentially the same size as a standard 14-inch clamshell. And because its underlying design isn’t all that different from Lenovo’s standard Yoga family, it doesn’t skimp on specs either. It features an OLED display, up to 32GB of RAM, a decent-sized 50.2 WHr battery and even a 2MP IR webcam for use with Windows Hello.
However, all those components aren’t nearly as important as the solar cells embedded in its lid. Lenovo says the panels use Back Contact Cell technology so that its mounting brackets and gridlines can be placed on the rear of the cells. This allows the panels to offer up to 24 percent solar energy conversion, which is pretty good as that matches the efficiency you get from many high-end home solar systems. Furthermore, the PC also supports Dynamic Solar Tracking to automatically adjust the cells’ settings to maximize the amount of energy they can gather.
Lenovo says this means the Yoga Solar PC can generate enough juice to play an hour of videos after only 20 minutes in the sun. But what might be more impressive is that even when the laptop is indoors, it can still harvest power from as little as 0.3 watts of light to help top off its battery. Finally, to help you understand how much power it’s gathering, Lenovo created a bespoke app to track how much light the panels absorb.
Unfortunately, Lenovo doesn’t have any plans to turn this concept into a full commercial device. But after playing around with it, I was pleasantly surprised to see how solid and sturdy its chassis felt. Unlike a lot of prototype devices, the Yoga Solar PC Concept doesn’t feel like that much of a stretch technologically compared to other notebooks on sale today. Its PV cells sit safely behind a sheet of glass (or possibly plastic, Lenovo wouldn’t confirm which one) while also adding a bit of distinctive visual flair.
However, the biggest hurdle (and possibly a big reason why we haven’t seen more laptops like this) is that for people who want to use solar panels to charge their devices, it’s probably easier and more versatile to rely on a standalone solar array instead of something built-in to the gadget itself. Regardless, Lenovo’s Yoga Solar PC is a surprisingly polished concept that I’d love to see get more attention in the future.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/the-lenovo-solar-pc-concept-feels-like-a-device-whose-time-has-come-230022723.html?src=rss
