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Monthly Archives: October 2025
Google Is Building A Massive $15 Billion Gigawatt-Scale AI Data Center Hub In India
Google announced a landmark investment in India tallying $15 billion over the next five years—its largest in the region to date—to build its first artificial intelligence (AI) hub in the country. Located in the port city of Visakhapatnam (Vizag), Andhra Pradesh, this multi-faceted project is not only Google’s most significant investment in
Vex Mage Review: Familiar Old-School FPS Fun
Vex Mage is an old-school, fast-paced shooter where you should never stop running, and it’s out soon on Quest and Steam.
I’ve always enjoyed games where you never stop running as you blast as many enemies as you can. I played Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2 with friends growing up, so the movements of a typical run-and-gun battle are pretty familiar to me. Once you learn how to blast and dodge at enemies in a game, it’s possible to remember those details regardless of what shooter you pick up later on. Vex Mage manages to translate that feeling to its VR version through its design and mechanics.
The Facts
What is it?: An old-school twitch shooter with optional PC VR support where you survive for as long as you can.
Platforms: Quest and Steam (reviewed on PC VR via Quest 3)
Release Date: October 16, 2025 (Quest), October 21, 2025 (Steam)
Developer: Nervous Systems
Publisher: Fast Travel Games
Price: $9.99
Your quest in Vex Mage starts in a darkened gold room with gilded detailing on the walls. When you look at your hands, you’ll notice clawed mandibles with which you control powerful attacks to wield against your foes. Your hand design is much like the walls in the room; everything is detailed with winding embossed lines that speak of a strange world you’ve been pulled into.
The opening chamber’s center has three platforms with three different elemental powers to choose from. You can only pick one: a fire attack, a water-based attack, or a lightning attack. Each spell deploys differently and has a unique effect. The green watery attack, true to its element, splashes enemies with watery projections that cause damage. Fire attacks materialize as sharp crystals that spin out towards your foes. All three can be cast with one hand or charged with both hands for more damage. Once selected, a large portal awaits on the other end where you rush in to begin your run.
You’re soon flung down a long blue tunnel and spat out at an arena where a golden track encircles a portal structure in the center. Enemies galore flank this arena, chasing you upon arrival. You’ll need to dodge everything from arachnids to floating skulls that shoot fireballs. If you think stopping for anything is a good idea, don’t. Moving while shooting everything is the name of the game here.
Comfort
There are some comfort settings for Vex Mage, but not many for accessibility since it’s an intense shooter. You can choose camera turning methods from either snap turning, smooth turning to a limited degree, or continuous smooth turning with no interruption. You can change how quickly you turn as well.
There is no height calibration, though this doesn’t matter if you play sitting down or standing up. You can’t select a vignette or “tunnel vision” for moving, either. As VEX MAGE contains plenty of intense combat sequences, I wouldn’t recommend this for anyone who experiences discomfort with movement in VR.
0:00
/2:33
The enemies seriously don’t let up.
Vex Mage cleverly anticipates what players would do in a small run-and-gun arena situation such as this. My first instinct with a shooter is to run backwards while aiming at every enemy on my tail. Seconds later, my screen flashes red, and I glance over my shoulder. A large, monstrous head that resembled something of an octopus had teleported behind me and rammed the earth to cause an area attack. It disappears as soon as I shoot it. Whenever I run, I notice space octopi teleport to my location and vanish again after a few seconds of smashing the ground near me. I can’t run-and-gun in peace as I assumed, forcing me to rethink my strategy.
There’s also a time limit for each arena level. After a while, a blue portal will appear, and it’s your job to make your way to it within ten seconds before it overcharges and explodes. If the portal explodes before you’ve gotten to it, you automatically die and your run ends. Moving into the portal will mean taking the long blue tunnel again to a different level.
Each level contains various sleek-looking but altogether alien enemy entities and stunning sci-fi stage designs that make you consider how to move around and escape. In one arena, I’m running from spiders that look like they’re made of twisted roots and floating eldritch octopi. Next came angry arachnid queens sending their army after me as I hopped around on giant springy leaves. After that? Spindly noodle sky dragons, metallic and angry, as I try not to fall from the platform to my death. Everything is beautiful to look at with sharp edges, like the meanest new pieces in a contemporary art gallery. Such a shame it all wants to kill me.
There are various runes set around each arena to collect. Collecting enough of these strange symbolic runes earns you the ability to unlock a new elemental power. I might initially choose a water attack at the start, but many runs later saw me equipped with lightning and fire spells. Pressing the trigger made a small map of elemental runes appear, and moving my hand near these runes changed the element of that hand. I can move my hand to switch to different spell runes in a mini-menu if I want to change my attack style.
Holding my hands together to charge an attack with different runes yielded different types of new attacks. When each level features different elements in its designs, it’s important to pay attention to what attacks you’re using and when. Moving my hands to change these runes is a challenge, as I’m constantly running and engaging in battle with my arms outstretched.
PC Specs And Headset Used
My desktop computer uses an Intel Core i7 processor, an RTX 4060 graphics card, and 32GB RAM. I evaluated this game using a Quest 3 headset connected to my PC via Virtual Desktop. You can find VEX MAGE’s recommended settings for PC on Steam.
Before playing this on a VR headset, I checked out Vex Mage on PC as it’s available in desktop mode on Steam. It’s welcoming and familiar like so many older run-and-gun titles I’ve played in the past. Picking up Vex Mage feels like riding a bike; you never quite forget how to aim and dodge once you get used to the genre.
There isn’t much difference with Vex Mage between its flatscreen and immersive counterparts, so playing either way delivers a similar experience minus the benefits of spatial combat. I prefer VR for shooters now because I like looking around manually instead of moving my mouse to help me see what’s going on. It’s also always invaluable for me to turn my head one way and aim in a different direction. Sticking to flatscreen combat means you’re missing out.
0:00
/1:01
A look at the player’s hands and footage of merging elements for attacks
Vex Mage contains enjoyable solo and multiplayer modes, though it needs quick matchmaking for those who don’t have a code to join a specific room. When I join public lobbies for campaigns like this, I usually hop in with no voice and play for a while before hopping back out. Vex Mage’s menu would benefit from making it clear when you enable or disable an option. I can’t tell if I disabled voice or enabled it, so I turned my voice transmit volume to zero and called it a day.
There’s also a notable bug where menus that appear at the end of a run will be positioned farther and farther away from you. Repositioning yourself manually doesn’t fix this bug, and this gets highly annoying. There’s no real way to solve the problem right now myself, so I urge the developers to provide a fix for it.
Vex Mage – Final Verdict
Vex Mage packs a classic formula that’s only missing a few fixes to be a great experience, such as the menu issue and quick matchmaking. You could play this for a long time and feel satisfied with how hard you work to reach the top of Vex Mage’s leaderboards; what’s here is both enjoyable and interesting. Every level is challenging, giving me pause before I rush in, and I enjoy how Nervous Systems anticipated players’ moves to provide extra difficulty. It’s like I’m playing my old favorites again with a new twist.
UploadVR uses a 5-Star rating system for our game reviews – you can read a breakdown of each star rating in our review guidelines.
SpaceX is preparing the next-gen Starship after a successful flight test
SpaceX’s second-generation Starship vehicle has just made a graceful exit. The company achieved every major objective it set for the super-heavy lift vehicle’s 11th flight test, the second-gen Starship’s final flight, which launched from Starbase in Texas on October 13. It followed another successful test in August, which saw Starship deploy its payload for the first time ever. Before those two most recent flights, SpaceX suffered a series of failures: Starship exploded during its ascent stage in the company’s seventh and eighth tests, and it failed to deploy its payload during its ninth test. Another Starship vehicle blew up on the ground during a routine test while SpaceX was preparing for its 10th flight.
All of the vehicle’s 33 Raptor engines ignited upon launch, and the stage separation and first-stage ascent went smoothly. The Super Heavy booster splashed down into the ocean as planned, while Starship was able to deploy all its Starlink simulators before re-entering the atmosphere. During its reentry burn, SpaceX intentionally stressed the vehicle to determine the capabilities of its heatshield. And with just a few minutes left to the flight, the vehicle executed a banking maneuver to “mimic the trajectory that future missions returning to Starbase will fly.”
The company says it will now focus on developing the next generation of Starship and Super Heavy. It has multiple versions of the vehicle and the booster being prepared for tests at the moment, and it expects them to be used for the first Starship orbital flights and operational payload missions.
Watch Starship’s eleventh flight test → https://t.co/YmvmGZTV8o
https://t.co/zIRMX5mh9K— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 29, 2025
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/spacex-is-preparing-the-next-gen-starship-after-a-successful-flight-test-130027382.html?src=rss
JBL’s Tune Buds With Active Noise Cancellation Are Over 50% Off Right Now
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If you’ve been looking for a great pair of noise-canceling earbuds that don’t cost a fortune, the JBL Tune Buds are now down to $44.95, their lowest price yet, according to price trackers. That’s less than half of what they’re originally sold for, which makes them a strong contender in the under-$50 range.
These are true wireless earbuds that focus on delivering that signature JBL bass (deep and thumpy) but with enough flexibility to tweak the sound using the JBL app. Out of the box, they lean heavy on the low end, which works well for pop and EDM, but you can easily adjust the EQ if you prefer something more neutral.
Performance-wise, the Tune Buds pack in more than you’d expect for the price. They support Bluetooth 5.3, AAC, and SBC codecs, along with multipoint pairing, so you can jump between your phone and laptop without reconnecting. The active noise cancellation is solid for casual use—good enough to dull traffic noise or a chatty office, even if it can’t fully block the low rumble of a subway, notes this PCMag review. There’s also an IP54 rating, meaning these can handle sweat and light rain, making them suitable for workouts or daily commutes. Touch controls are customizable through the companion app, and there’s built-in Alexa support if you like using voice commands hands-free.
As for the battery life, JBL claims up to 10 hours per charge with ANC on and 12 hours without, plus an extra 30 to 36 hours from the charging case. That’s easily a few days of use (your mileage may vary) without needing to plug in. The 10mm drivers cover the standard 20Hz to 20kHz range, and the earbuds come with three silicone tip sizes to help with comfort and fit. They don’t offer premium-level sound or the silence of high-end ANC sets from Sony or Bose, but they strike a good balance between affordability, sound, and everyday convenience.
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Apple Renames ‘Apple TV+’ To ‘Apple TV’
Apple has rebranded its streaming service Apple TV+ to simply Apple TV, further blurring the already confusing line between the Apple TV device, the Apple TV app, and the Apple TV service. As John Gruber notes, users can now “watch Apple TV in Apple TV on Apple TV.” From Daring Fireball: In some ways, I get it. Like, if you’re telling someone how much you enjoy Slow Horses and they ask how to watch it, it’s more natural and conversational to just say “It’s on Apple TV.” That’s what most people say. That’s what I say — and as part of my job, I completely understand the difference between Apple TV the device, Apple TV the (free) app, and Apple TV+ the (paid) streaming service.
But right there in Apple’s own “About Apple TV” description, you see just how overused “Apple TV” now is. You can watch Apple TV in Apple TV on Apple TV — the paid service in the free app on the set-top box. But you can watch any streaming service you want on the box, in that service’s own app. But many of those services are also available in the Apple TV app. And the Apple TV streaming service is also available on just about all other popular set-top hardware platforms. So don’t need an Apple TV to watch Apple TV. It’s a bit like Abbott and Costello’s classic “Who’s on First” routine.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
[$] The FSF considers large language models
The Free Software Foundation’s Licensing and Compliance Lab
concerns itself with many aspects of software licensing, Krzysztof Siewicz
said at the beginning of his 2025 GNU Tools
Cauldron session. These include supporting projects that are facing
licensing challenges, collecting copyright assignments, and addressing GPL
violations. In this session, though, there was really only one topic that
the audience wanted to know about: the interaction between free-software
licensing and large language models (LLMs).
AirPods Max Still Hold Their Prime Day Price Tag as Apple Clears Out Remaining Stock
Amazon has the Apple AirPods Max over-the-ear Bluetooth ANC headphones for 22% off in orange and starlight.
The post AirPods Max Still Hold Their Prime Day Price Tag as Apple Clears Out Remaining Stock appeared first on Kotaku.
Therabody just introduced the TheraFace Mask Glo, which uses LEDs to reduce wrinkles
Therabody just revealed a bunch of new products, including the TheraFace Mask Glo. This MF Doom-looking full-face mask offers quite a different experience from the pre-existing TheraFace Pro. The Pro is essentially a face massager, but the Mask Glo is a giant mask that uses LED lights to “reduce fine lines and wrinkles, firm and tighten skin and even tone and texture.”
The company promises results in “as little as eight weeks” with daily 12-minute sessions. The mask has been cleared by the FDA and includes 504 medical-grade LEDs to deliver “an effective, full-face treatment.” It also doubles as a Halloween mask if you are so inclined. Tis the season. The TheraFace Mask Glo is available to order today and costs $380.
The Theragun Mini Plus is a portable version of its popular massage gun, but with one feature missing from the original Mini. This one has heat. It combines “percussive massage with consistent, rapid heat.” Therabody says this results in a “benefits 3x faster than percussive massage alone.”
Therabody
It features three massage speeds, three heat levels and app-guided routines to target specific muscle groups. The gun is TSA-approved, so bring it on a plane. The Theragun Mini Plus is available today and costs $280.
The company also released a new version of the Theragun Prime massage gun, which costs $330, and the Theragun Sense massage gun. That last one features an LCD screen and real-time pressure feedback to make sure people are using it right. It costs $300.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/therabody-just-introduced-the-theraface-mask-glo-which-uses-leds-to-reduce-wrinkles-123044315.html?src=rss
TiVo has discontinued its DVR boxes
TiVo has confirmed that it has stopped selling its DVR set-top boxes, marking the end of an era that changed how we watch television forever. As first reported earlier this month by Cord Cutters News, TiVo Corporation quietly pulled its once-groundbreaking digital video recorder from its website. Holding company Xperi later confirmed that the listing was removed on October 1.
“I can confirm that as of October 1, 2025, TiVo stopped selling physical DVR products, including hardware and accessories, both online and through agents,” a TiVo spokesperson confirmed to PCMag. “TiVo no longer manufactures hardware, and our remaining inventory is now depleted, though we will continue to offer support for the products going forward.”
The TiVo box revolutionized television upon its launch in 1999, allowing viewers to pause, rewind and record live television. There was a time when you would just miss the start of a show if you weren’t punctual, and you’d have to sync grabbing a snack with a commercial during the big game. You also had to actually watch the commercials, something that is unfortunately making a comeback with an increase in ad-supported streaming.
The DVR pioneer is now a software company. It has been producing TiVo OS almost exclusively in the European market since 2022, though the smart TV OS premiered in the US this year via Sharp. “The Sharp Smart TV Powered by TiVo” launched as a 55-inch QLED display with 4K resolution and HDR support. TiVo OS functions like many other television operating systems, aggregating streaming services and offering its own library of free and paid content.
TiVo will still offer customer support for its now-discontinued boxes, which bodes well for customers who have purchased a lifetime plan.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/tivo-has-discontinued-its-dvr-boxes-123037999.html?src=rss
Anduril Shows First Look at Capabilities of ’EagleEye’ Military XR Headset
Anduril, Palmer Luckey’s military tech company, unveiled EagleEye, its XR headset system built in collaboration with Meta.
The News
Anduril announced in May it was partnering with Meta to build XR systems for soldiers, which the companies said would aim to deliver “the world’s best AR and VR systems for the US military.”
Now, the company has unveiled the EagleEye hardware and given a first look at ostensibly a behind-the-lens view.
In a video released on X, Anduril shows off various systems, which stich in a variety of information into the soldier’s AR display, including a heads-up mini-map, the ability to switch between Low Light and Thermal displays, an overhead drone shot, and AI-driven tracking markers to keep friendlies clearly visible, even when obscured behind objects.
See before you’re seen.
EagleEye enhances the warfighter’s perception by overlaying digital information onto the real world, delivering vital real-time insights. pic.twitter.com/Yl0tmlhHzd
— Anduril Industries (@anduriltech) October 13, 2025
In the past, the company has maintained a fairly rigid “no CGI” policy in marketing images and videos. We’ve reached out to Anduril to confirm whether the video above was captured in-headset, and will update when we know more.
Anduril also unveiled some of the hardware used to drive those interactions, which appears to be a pair of AR glasses with optional shroud, which may be used in brighter conditions to compensate for the device’s light throughput.
Anduril says EagleEye provides “enhanced perception, lethal connectivity, and heightened survivability” by combining a number of information streams from its Lattice battlefield platform, such as RF signature detection, rearview cameras, non-emissive lasers, biometric and environmental sensors, and real-time battlefield alerts.
This comes as Anduril is reportedly set to compete for a U.S. Army contract against defense company Rivet, which seeks to revamp the previous Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) project originally awarded to Microsoft in 2018.
Microsoft attempted to produce a combat-ready AR headset based on HoloLens 2 capable of fulfilling the $22 billion, 10-year production deal, but was plagued with usability and comfort issues.
My Take
Provided the video is a behind-the-lens capture, it comes as no real surprise to me that EagleEye’s UI looks like it was plucked straight out of modern shooters. And I think that serves an important dual purpose.
Over the years, games have been able to imagine and evolve useful UI conventions and apply them broadly, making them not only more mature control schemes worthy of copying, but also ones that many of today’s soldiers already recognize.
You probably don’t need to teach most 20-something guys how to keep an eye on a mini-map while toggling through waypoints, different modes and data sources—it’s knowledge most (if not all) aspirational soldiers implicitly understand as a core skillset of games like COD or Battlefield.
And in the same breath, military contractors don’t need to reinvent the wheel. For example, the U.S. Department of War (ex-Department of Defense) has undoubtedly racked their brains on different control schemes for a variety of combat roles—drones, ship periscopes, ordinance robots, the list goes on—many of which actually rely on gamepads for input.
Food for thought: for all of its technical wonders, I don’t think this stops at soldiers wearing decked-out AR glasses. The same systems Silicon Valley defense startups are building today could one day be the basis of telepresence robots operated by soldiers sitting in air conditioned bases stateside, much like drone operators do currently.
That’s the anthropocentric view at least. A decidedly more frightening reality could involve, for the lack of a better word, autonomous robot soldiers, which isn’t far off from some of Anduril’s current projects, which includes autonomous fighter jets (Fury) and autonomous submarines (Dive-XL). I’ll leave the comparisons to Skynet for commenters below.
The post Anduril Shows First Look at Capabilities of ’EagleEye’ Military XR Headset appeared first on Road to VR.
Linux Mint LMDE 7 Officially Released – Based On Debian 13
Linux Mint Debian Edition 7 is officially out today as the latest version of this Linux Mint distribution based on upstream Debian rather than Ubuntu…
NVIDIA starts selling its $3,999 DGX Spark AI developer PC
NVIDIA’s DGX Spark AI computer revealed earlier this year goes on sale today for $3,999, the company announced. Though relatively tiny, it hosts the the company’s entire AI platform including GPUs and CPUs, along with NVIDIA’s AI software stack “into a system small enough for a lab or an office,” NVIDIA said.
The Spark isn’t something you’d buy to play Baldur’s Gate 3, though. It’s designed to give developers, researchers and data scientists enough computer power to run complex AI models. Early recipients of the PCs include Anaconda, Google, Hugging Face, Meta and Microsoft. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang even hand-delivered a unit to Elon Musk at SpaceX’s headquarter in Starbase, Texas.
The DGX has plenty of power on offer despite its diminutive 2.6 pound size. It boasts NVIDIA’s GB10 super system-on-chip that weds a 20-core ARM CPU with a Blackwell GPU powered by the same number of cores as an RTX 5070 GPU. It’s outfitted with 128GB of LPDDR5x RAM shared between the CPU and GPU and includes 4TB of NVMe storage, along with four USB-C ports, Wi-Fi 7 and an HDMI connector. NVDIA calls it “the world’s smallest AI supercomputer.”
The DGX Spark runs Nvidia’s DGX OS, a custom version of Ubuntu Linux that’s configured with AI software. With that, developers can access NVIDIA AI models, libraries and microservices in order to do chores like refining image generation or creating AI chatbots.
The DGX Spark is also an entry point for similar machines. Other vendors like Dell, HP, Lenovo and ASUS showed off similar AI-oriented mini PC’s at Computex this year using the same GB10 chip, with Acer’s Veriton GN100 being one example.
The DGX Spark mini PC is now on sale for $3,999 through NVIDIA and its partners. While not cheap, it’s a drop in the bucket for AI developers and all of the companies listed above, and considering the hardware inside, the price doesn’t seem unreasonable. NVIDIA is also working on the DGX Station that will feature GB300 Grace Blackwell Ultra Desktop Superchip, with 20 petaflops of performance and 784GB of unified system memory. A price has yet to be announced for that model
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/nvidia-starts-selling-its-3999-dgx-spark-ai-developer-pc-120034479.html?src=rss
Instagram makes ‘teen accounts’ more restrictive
Instagram is tightening the settings on its “teen accounts” to add new limits on what kids on the platform are able to see. Older teens will also no longer be able to opt out of the default stricter settings without parental approval.
Meta first introduced teen accounts for Instagram a year ago, when it began automatically moving teens into the more locked-down accounts that come with stricter privacy settings and parental controls. The company recently rolled out the accounts for teens on Facebook and Messenger too, and has used AI tools to detect teens that are lying about their age.
While teen accounts are meant to address long-running criticism about Meta’s handling of teen safety on its apps, the measures have been widely criticized as not going far enough to protect the company’s most vulnerable users. A recent report from safety advocates at Heat Initiative found that “young teen users today continue to be recommended or exposed to unsafe content and unwanted messages at alarmingly high rates while using Instagram Teen Accounts.” (Meta called the report “deeply subjective.”)
Now, Meta is locking down teen accounts even more. With the latest changes, teens will no longer be able to follow or see content from accounts that “regularly share age-inappropriate content” or that seem “age-inappropriate” based on their bio or username. Meta says it will also block these accounts from appearing in teens’ recommendations or in search results in the app.
Instagram will also block a “a wider range of mature search terms” for teens, including words like “alcohol,” “gore,” and intentional misspellings of these words, which is a common tactic to avoid Instagram’s filters. And, even if an account a teen already follows shares a post that goes against these rules, teens should be prevented from seeing it, even if it’s sent to their DMs.
Meta
While these changes may seem like Meta once again filling somewhat obvious gaps in its safety features, the company says the revamp is meant to make the content teens encounter on Instagram more like a PG-13 movie. “Just like you might see some suggestive content or hear some strong language in a PG-13 movie, teens may occasionally see something like that on Instagram – but we’re going to keep doing all we can to keep those instances as rare as possible,” the company explained in a blog post.
That’s a somewhat confusing analogy as there’s a fairly wide spectrum of what might appear in a PG-13 movie. Meta also says that some of its rules for teens are more restrictive than what teens might see in a PG-13 movie. For example, the app aims to prevent teens from seeing any kind of “sexually suggestive” content or images of “near nudity” even though that type of content might appear in movies rated for 13-year-olds.
For parents that want even tighter restrictions, Instagram is also adding a new “limited content” setting that filters “even more” content from teens’ view (Meta didn’t explain what exactly would be restricted). The setting also prevents teens from accessing any comments on the platform, either on their own posts or other users’. Finally, Meta is testing a new reporting feature for parents that use Instagram’s parental control settings to monitor their teens’ use of the app. With the feature, parents can flag specific posts they feel are inappropriate to trigger a review by Meta.
Meta says the latest changes will be rolling out “gradually” to teen accounts in the US, UK, Canada and Australia to start and that it will eventually “add additional age-appropriate content protections for teens on Facebook.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/instagram-makes-teen-accounts-more-restrictive-120000653.html?src=rss
5 Intermediate Zwift Racing Tips
Indoor bike racing has evolved into a cycling discipline of its own, and every platform has its own idiosyncrasies. The more you ride on Zwift, the more you’ll learn strategies and tricks that can give you an edge. Here are five intermediate-level tips for next-level eRacing on Zwift.
If you’re new to Zwift racing, be sure to read “How to race on Zwift (setup, strategy, and more)” first, which covers the basics.
#1: Attack Dirty
Watopia and Makuri Islands have several dirt sections, and even though it’s virtual, riding in the dirt is different than riding on tarmac! Dirt has a higher rolling resistance on Zwift, so your smart trainer’s resistance will increase a bit on dirt sections, and your speed will drop compared to riding on tarmac. Additionally, dirt sections are dusty, which limits visibility in larger groups.
Another way to look at it: these dirt sections essentially behave like small climbs, with the added benefit of reduced visibility. If you’re feeling good and want to attack, consider the dirt.
Attacks in the dirt are what dropped GCN’s Simon Richardson from the lead group in the famous “Si vs the Volcano” race in Zwift’s early days. The takeaway is: if you’re barely holding onto the pack and are approaching a dirt section, try to start near the front of the group and be ready to put in an extra dig to avoid getting dropped.
This also gives you better visibility, because unless you’re near the front, you won’t be able to see more than a few bike lengths ahead in a large pack. (Pro tip: for visibility, you can also change the camera angle – hit 9 on your keyboard for an overhead view without dust.)
#2: Don’t Over-Power It
Thanks to updates in pack dynamics, Zwift’s draft isn’t nearly as “sticky” as it used to be, but there is still a wattage range that will keep you in the draft. That is, if you are drafting behind someone who is pulling at 300 watts, you will stay in their draft if you do 250 watts… but you may also be able to stay in the draft at ~225 watts. So why put out the extra wattage?
Related: The Watt Wasting Window: Riding Second Wheel Efficiently on Zwift
Racing is all about conserving energy so you’ve got the watts when you need them most. So try to maintain the minimum wattage necessary to hold your desired position in the pack. This will require constantly adjusting your power output, but once you’ve spent some time doing it, it becomes second nature. (Riding with Robopacer groups is a great way to practice efficient pack positioning.)
#3: Know Your Draft Status
One key aspect of efficient pack riding is knowing whether or not you are currently drafting. Zwift uses the visual cue of having your avatar “sit up” on the hoods to indicate when you are in the draft on a road bike, with two key exceptions:
- Your avatar will also sit up at slow solo speeds (but in a race situation, this rarely applies).
- When riding the Tron bike or a TT bike, your rider will never sit up, even though it is drafting. This is simply because Zwift never created those rider positions for those bikes!
If you are moving at 33kph (20mph) or more and your avatar is sitting up, you are in the draft. If you’re hunched down in the drops, you are out of the draft and probably working harder than you want to be. Here are side views of the two positions (for road bike and MTB):
Drafting in Zwift actually introduces some randomness into group riding, as the game positions you right to left automatically unless you are actively steering. Sometimes this means you get moved out of the draft – when this happens and your rider crouches down, be prepared to work a little harder to keep pace with your group until Zwift takes you back into the draft.
Related: Drafting in Zwift: Power Savings, Tips, and Tricks
#4: Cruise with a Supertuck
Supertucking can be the most efficient way to make others work hard to stay with you on a descent. But you need to know how the supertuck works in order to use it to maximum advantage! Supertucking in Zwift requires four conditions to be met:
- You must be traveling at least ~36MPH (~58km/hr)
- The gradient’s decline must be at least -3%
- Your power output must be below 11 watts
- You must not be drafting (safety first!)
Because of these requirements, supertucking is most efficient if you’re in a group where others aren’t fighting for the supertuck slot. When others aren’t fighting to be the rider in the front who isn’t drafting (and thus is able to supertuck), you can stay in that slot with little or no effort apart from what’s required to move to the front of the group at the start of the descent.
If others are fighting for that slot, though, it may be easier to simply ride the wheels of the supertuckers, sitting in their draft with as little effort as possible. You will need to pedal, though!
A word of warning: the supertuck works great until you hit a flat section or slow down enough that the game sits you up. At that point, if you’re with a group that is hammering, you can get dropped very quickly. Pay close attention to the road and other riders, and start pedaling hard if you see flat road just ahead or riders begin to pass you quickly.
Related: All About the Supertuck On Zwift
#5: Tweak Trainer Difficulty
In races, do you typically overtake riders on short climbs, then need to put down extra power to stay with the pack on descents? This can happen if you’re a strong climber or if you’re racing against riders who have turned down their Trainer Difficulty. (For the details behind why this happens, read “Hanging with the Group Over Gradient Changes“.)
Related: Using the “Trainer Difficulty” Setting in Zwift
One way to reduce this yo-yo effect is to adjust your trainer difficulty settings under Menu>Settings>Hardware to something in the 10-30% range. Doing so will make your resistance change less in response to gradient changes, helping you keep power more consistent so you can ride more efficiently.
Reducing Trainer Difficulty also means you won’t have to shift as often, which some people prefer. Of course, the lower you set Trainer Difficulty, the less “realistic” your trainer resistance will actually be. So if you want your trainer to reproduce the actual in-game gradients, go ahead and slide this setting all the way up to 100% and get ready to shift.
Note: this tip only applies to smart trainer users – but that’s pretty much everyone these days.
Share Your Tips
Got any racing tips of your own? Share them below!
The Morning After: It’s the end for Windows 10
After more than a decade of service, Microsoft is declaring the end of Windows 10’s usable life. If your machine still uses it, rest assured it’ll continue to work, but you won’t see any more software and security updates. If your machine is compatible, you’ll be able to upgrade to Windows 11 for free, or this can provide the justification you need to buy a new machine.
But there’s also a way to keep your status quo without the additional stress, at least for the next year. It’s possible to sign up to Microsoft’s Extended Security updates program, giving you an extra year of software and security patches. It won’t cost you any money, but you will be expected to sign up to Microsoft’s cloud services.
If you’d like to keep Windows 10 running and safe, you can head over to our comprehensive guide on what to do. And, if you’re ready to upgrade, check out our guide on the best Windows laptops to choose your next purchase.
— Dan Cooper
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The news you might have missed
The FCC is trying to make it easier for internet providers to charge hidden fees
It’s comically evil, really.
The FCC has outlined a plan to once again allow ISPs to charge hidden fees, making it easier to rip off consumers. It follows a complaint from those poor carriers that believe it’s far too hard to be required to tell customers what it is they’re charging for. I bet that’s loads of fun for all of the FCC employees who went into public service in the hope of actually serving the public.
Apple TV+ is now just Apple TV
I’m in the minority, but I think that’s a good shout.
Devindra Hardawar for Engadget
Apple is dropping the + from the name of its TV subscription service. That’s a smart piece of branding, since everyone just calls it Apple TV anyway. But it does muddy the waters, given Apple’s set top box is also called Apple TV. But, as someone who reviews Apple TV shows and irritates editors by forgetting the plus sign, this will make my (and their) lives a lot easier.
The first products with Apple’s M5 chip could make their debut this week
The rumor mill suggests we’ll see them in a few days.
Apple
Apple is reportedly gearing up to announce a series of updated devices, each one packing its new A5 chip. Bloomberg claims the company will announce new MacBook Pros, Pad Pros and an updated Vision Pro online over a period of days. If so, it would be mirroring the release pattern from last year, when an updated product was launched online each day across a week. Rumors suggest we’ll only get the vanilla A5 versions this fall, with the higher-end versions of the silicon not arriving until the start of next year.
A long-lost Ratchet and Clank mobile game has been found
Clone Home was a successor to Going Mobile.
The Golden Bolt
Ratchet & Clank superfans have unearthed a fairly substantial gem after a years-long search: a finished but essentially unreleased mobile title from 2006. Clone Home was the sequel to Going Mobile developed for mobile phones running Java from those halcyon pre-iPhone days. It was axed shortly before launch, but a few copies did find their way into the ether, which enabled YouTuber The Golden Bolt to show it off to the world.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/the-morning-after-engadget-newsletter-111557774.html?src=rss
Seagate’s 14TB External Hard Drive Drops Below $0.02 per GB, Storage at Penny-Level Pricing
Never run out of storage ever again.
The post Seagate’s 14TB External Hard Drive Drops Below $0.02 per GB, Storage at Penny-Level Pricing appeared first on Kotaku.
New T Line Electric is Brompton’s lightest ebike yet at 14.1kg
Brompton has launched the new T Line Electric, its lightest electric bike yet, with a claimed 14.1kg weight including the removable battery pack and an 11.2kg weight for the bike alone. UK prices start at £5,799, while the updated Brompton Electric bike range is priced from £2,999.
The T Line Electric is powered by the Brompton e-Motiq rear-hub motor introduced on the Electric G Line when it was launched in 2024. The C Line Electric and P Line Electric bikes have also been updated to use the e-Motiq motor in place of their previous front-hub motor system.
“The new Brompton Electric range is our answer to the evolving way we live and move. We’ve kept everything people love about Brompton – the portability, the engineering, the joy of the ride – and added the intelligence and lightness to make it easier, smarter, and even more fun,” says Will Carleysmith, Brompton’s chief design and engineering officer.
At 14.1kg, the T Line Electric removes more than a kilogram in weight from Brompton’s ebike range, making it one of the lightest electric folding bikes.
Brompton launched its first ebike in 2017, based on the C Line’s all-steel frame. The C Line Electric has a claimed weight starting at 16.6kg for the four-speed model. It was joined in 2022 by the P Line Electric. This has a steel main frame, but with a titanium rear frame, and the four-speed bike has a claimed 15.6kg weight.
The T Line Electric is based on the pedal-only T Line, which has claimed weights starting from 7.45kg for the singlespeed bike and is made of titanium with a carbon fork and crankset, and a carbon seatpost with steel sheathing. Even the pedals are lighter than Brompton’s standard folding pedals.
New motor placement
The T Line Electric, like the C Line and P Line Electric 16-inch wheel bikes, is powered by the same e-Motiq motor as used in the G Line Electric 20-inch wheel folding bike.
The e-Motiq motor is toned down a little for the T, C and P Line bikes, with 250W output and 24Nm torque in place of the Electric G Line’s 30Nm torque. Brompton says that the output is calibrated to provide the same degree of rider support across the different electric bike lines.
All Brompton ebikes include a torque sensor to ensure the motor output matches that of the rider. They all share the same 345Wh removable battery, which sits in a clip-on backpack that’s attached to the handlebar.
Brompton claims a range of up to 90km for the e-Motiq motor in the T Line Electric. It says the motor system will learn and adapt to your riding style, developing an understanding of how you ride over the first 100km, then making changes every 6km to fine-tune its personalisation. It uses this data to make accurate predictions of the available range via the Brompton Electric app, which also supports over-the-air firmware updates.
The motor offers a Start Assist mode for speedy acceleration from stops and to give an extra boost for steeper hills. There’s also a Walk Assist mode to help you move the bike around more easily when you’re on foot, which will run the motor at speeds of up to 6km/h.
Electric system safety certified
There’s been a lot of negative publicity about the safety of electric bike batteries over the last few years. That’s down largely to low-quality batteries sold via online outlets, with fires often the result of users pairing them with mismatched chargers.
Brompton is at pains to stress the safety of its batteries, though, which are assembled in London and have been independently certified to meet international standards for electrical and fire safety. Its electric bikes carry a three-year electric system warranty.
Brompton says it is also one of the first ebike brands to be audited and listed on the Bicycle Association Register of Safety-Audited E-Bike Brands.
The Brompton T Line Electric is available for pre-orders via Brompton’s site and its Brompton Junction store from 21 October and will be on general sale from Brompton and its 1,500 Brompton Accredited retailers from 28 October. It’s priced at £5,799 / €6,799 / $TBA.
How to Install CUDA on Ubuntu Linux
The Nvidia CUDA toolkit is an extension of the GPU parallel computing platform and programming model. The Nvidia CUDA installation consists of inclusion of the official Nvidia CUDA repository followed by the installation of relevant meta package and configuring path the the executable CUDA binaries. In this tutorial, you will see how to install CUDA on Ubuntu Linux. This will get your video graphics running with the latest drivers and software available.
ShinyHunters Leak Alleged Data From Qantas, Vietnam Airlines and Other Major Firms
schwit1 shares a report from Hackread: On October 3, 2025, Hackread.com published an in-depth report in which hackers claimed to have stolen 989 million records from 39 major companies worldwide by exploiting a Salesforce vulnerability. The group demanded that Salesforce and the affected firms enter negotiations before October 10, 2025, warning that if their demands were ignored, they would release the entire dataset. The hackers, identifying themselves as “Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters,” a collective said to combine elements of Scattered Spider, Lapsus$, and ShinyHunters, have now published data allegedly belonging to 6 of the 39 targeted companies.
The companies named in the leak are as follows: Fujifilm, GAP, INC., Vietnam Airlines, Engie Resources, Quantas Airways Limited, and Albertsons Companies, Inc. In all 6 leaks, the record contains personal details of customers, business, including email addresses, full names, addresses, passport numbers, phone numbers. The hackers said on Telegram that they will not be releasing any additional information, stating, “A lot of people are asking what else will be leaked. Nothing else will be leaked. Everything that was leaked was leaked, we have nothing else to leak, and obviously, the things we have cannot be leaked for obvious reasons.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.