This 4-pack of AirTags costs about as much as two at regular price, thanks to the Prime Big Deal Day.
The post If You Have an iPhone, You Can Get Two Free AirTags on Amazon appeared first on Kotaku.
Zwift version 1.99 begins its phased rollout today. This is a minor update containing mostly bug fixes. Read on for details…
Zwifters can now unlock the JetBlack cycling kit by riding with any JetBlack trainer – just connect to the trainer in the Pairing screen and enjoy your ride!
(Note: most trainer manufacturers have an automatic kit unlock in Zwift. Read more here.)
Zwift provided notes on additional tweaks and bug fixes in this update:
Discuss this update in Zwift’s forum > (link coming soon)
If you spotted any other changes or bugs in the update, please comment below!
Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a law banning excessively loud advertisements on streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime that could become a de facto national standard. From a report: The new California law is aimed at addressing what the Federal Communications Commission has called a “troubling jump” in TV ad noise complaints, fueled by streamers airing commercials louder than the shows and movies they accompany.
It’s modeled off a federal law passed in 2010 that caps ad volumes on cable and broadcast TV, but doesn’t apply to streaming services. Given the Golden State’s massive sway in the entertainment industry, the new law may strong-arm streamers into shushing commercials nationwide. “We heard Californians loud and clear, and what’s clear is that they don’t want commercials at a volume any louder than the level at which they were previously enjoying a program,” Newsom said in a statement. “California is dialing down this inconvenience across streaming platforms.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
This power bank can recharge a laptop as well as smartphones and tablets.
The post This 25,000mAh 100W Laptop Power Bank Is Selling for Peanuts, Amazon Is Rushing to Clear Its Inventory appeared first on Kotaku.
Basim’s legs are no longer glued to the ground
The post The Saudi Arabia <i>Assassin’s Creed Mirage</i> Expansion Makes A Big Change appeared first on Kotaku.
Save 23% on JBL’s waterproof Bluetooth speaker at Amazon thanks to Prime Big Deals Days.
The post Forget Black Friday, JBL Flip 6 Is Going for Peanuts as Amazon Clears Stock for Prime Day appeared first on Kotaku.
Paul McKenney gave a remote presentation at
Kangrejos 2025 following up on the
talk he gave last year about the
lifetime-end-pointer-zapping problem: certain common patterns for multithreaded code are
technically undefined behavior, and changes to the C and C++ specifications
will be needed to correct that. Those changes could also impact code that uses
unsafe Rust, such as the kernel’s Rust bindings. Progress on the problem has been slow,
but McKenney believes that a solution is near at hand.
The surge in new AI data centers has sparked concern among environmentalists and public health experts alike.
Giant’s latest Reign Advanced E+ enduro eMTB is cut from the same cloth as so many other gravity-focused ebikes on the market.
While that’s no bad thing – after all, we expect long-travel eMTBs to handle gnarly terrain and certain elements will be shared across all bikes – some will argue it’s not exactly pushing the boundaries of our sport.
The slack, long and low geometry, plenty of travel and robust frame design could be transposed onto any critically acclaimed eMTB on the market.
Its aesthetics are typical of swathes of other bikes – for good reason – and the SyncDrive Pro 3 motor – which has 90Nm of torque and 800W of peak power – isn’t exactly winning the arms race of more, more, more.
So, why should consumers choose the Reign Advanced E+ over the Santa Cruz Bullit, the Orbea Wild, YT Decoy, Pivot Shuttle LT and others?
On the face of it, it feels as though innovation has stalled.
But look beyond the standard must-haves and the Giant packs in some incredibly well-considered details that stand out and show brands are still innovating, but not always in the most obvious places.
Hiding beneath the Giant’s rather generic surface is a bike that looks capable of being a resounding success.
I am being unfair in suggesting the Advanced E+ doesn’t appear to break the mould. Well, yes, I probably am.
Beyond the foundations you’d expect to find on any good bike, the new Reign Advanced E+ has quite a lot of really cool tech.
Torque is up to 90Nm, but according to Giant, this isn’t the latest motor’s peak output, it’s how much it can sustain.
Most other manufacturers’ claims relate to the motor’s peak figures rather than constant output, potentially nudging the Giant ahead.
Thanks to the battery and motor’s 48-volt architecture – up from 36 volts previously – it means amperages can be lowered, by 30 per cent according to Giant, for the same power demands.
This equates to less heat build-up and stress placed on the motor and battery; the in-built 560Wh battery is claimed to last up to 2,300 charge cycles, which is more than “any other [eMTB] on the market,” Giant says.
There’s an external 280Wh range extender, that’ll be shipped with all Reign Advance E+ bikes in the UK and Ireland, upping total capacity to 840Wh. This will have to be bought separately in other markets, however.
There’s a new integrated top tube display – one that all ebikes are now expected to have – dubbed RideControl Go Lux, which shows key ride data.
Boosting that onboard, integrated information screen with even more stats are Giant’s Tyre Pressure Management System (TPMS) valves.
Named the Aegis Tyre Checker, these battery-powered valves – that are compatible with both inner tubes and tubeless setups – connect automatically to the Go Lux display to keep tabs on your tyres’ pressures in real-time.
While Quark’s TyreWiz has offered this for a while via a smartphone, it’s the first time a TPMS has been integrated into an eMTB.
it’s a neat idea and looks to be well executed.
The next step would be doing the same for the front and rear dampers – whether that’s via Fox’s Live Valve protocol or RockShox’s Flight Attendant – to boost the integration of important and useful information.
A lot of ebikes now support remote deactivation or bricking via their smartphone app, and Giant’s new Reign is no exception.
Giant’s Aegis E-Lock disables motor support when activated, and sounds an integrated alarm if the bike is moved. Importantly, it also integrates with Apple’s Find My network.
Instead of having to buy a separate AirTag and attach it to the bike, the Reign’s onboard battery powers an AirTag-like Bluetooth transmitter that pings its location to compatible iPhones.
The bike then appears on Apple’s Find My network, so you can always track its whereabouts without having to worry about charging up or hiding a dedicated AirTag.
This isn’t unique to Giant, however.
Specialized, VanMoof and Velotric also offer Apple Find My network compatibility, and Bosch has its own system with a similar setup.
Still, it’s a neat feature that shouldn’t be overlooked.
Its chain device, bash guard and under-frame protection are also quite fancy.
With the low-slung belly most eMTBs have – the Giant being no exception – the chainring and motor are particularly prone to being walloped on the ground on drops and crests thanks to reduced breakover angles.
Giant has looked to mitigate this potentially motor-damaging occurrence from causing any harm.
Along with a large, slippery stronger-than-aluminium titanium under-frame plate that protects the motor’s casing, the bike’s chain device and chainring bash guard are loaded with tech.
This bash guard is suspended by elastomers where it bolts to the motor, which are designed to cushion the relatively vulnerable electronic components from excessive shocks during floor, rock or root strikes.
Improving the longevity of your eMTB’s most costly components is a good thing, and Giant’s solution to a common problem is commendable.
The Reign’s geometry figures hit the sweet spot across its four-size range.
Reach numbers start at 430mm and lift to 510mm, and chainstays are 450mm across the board.
Elsewhere, there’s a gravity-friendly 63.5-degree head tube angle and steep, comfortable 77-degree seat tube angle.
But Giant has gone further than most with adjustability.
Not only is there a three-position flip chip in the upper Maestro rocker link with low, mid and high settings, there’s also a reach-adjusting headset cup with three positions.
Thanks to a -5mm cup, a neutral cup and a +5mm cup, the bike’s figures are enormously customisable depending on your needs.
The new Reign Advanced E+ is – on the face of it – just a bit boring and really highlights significant convergence across the market.
It’s a full-powered, long-travel ebike with about the same torque, Watts, suspension kinematics and geometry as every other similar bike out there from a host of other brands.
And with a 22.7kg (medium) claimed weight, it’s also par for the course given the relatively small 560Wh onboard battery.
However, dig a little deeper and there are glimmers of technical brilliance; the integration, electronics, protection and geometry adjustment, along with a solid warranty, mean the Reign Advance E+ could edge ahead of the competition.
The most affordable model in the range – the Reign Advanced E+ 2 – costs £6,499. The next one up – the E+ 1 – is £7,499, and the most expensive E+ 0 costs £9,999, but each gets the same fundamental battery, motor, protection and frame tech only with a slightly different spec list.
In a sea of copycats, all costing roughly the same amount, the Giant Reign Advanced E+ looks like a compelling purchase.
SteelSeries’
What will it take for the beleaguered extraction shooter to turn over a new leaf?
The post Bungie’s <i>Marathon</i> Resurfaces To Test One Of Players’ Most-Requested Gameplay Features appeared first on Kotaku.
Systemd
v258 was released on September 17 after more than nine months
of development. LWN has already covered some of the
features and changes being readied for v258 before it was final. Now
that the release is out, it is time to look at more of what came in
v258, including a sandbox shell, new boot options, service-level disk
quotas, and enhancements to systemd-resolved.
The many memory management “MM” changes were recently merged into the Linux 6.18 kernel, consisting of a number of interesting patch series…
The New York Times: John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday in Sweden for showing that two properties of quantum mechanics, the physical laws that rule the subatomic realm, could be observed on a system large enough to see with the naked eye. They will share a prize of 11 million Swedish kroner, or around $1.17 million.
“There is no advanced technology today that does not rely on quantum mechanics,” Olle Eriksson, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physics, said during the announcement of the award. The laureates’ discoveries, he added, paved the way for technologies like the cellphone, cameras and fiber optic cables.
It also helped lay the groundwork for current attempts to build a quantum computer, a device that could compute and process information at speeds that would not be possible with classical computer. Martinis worked at Google from 2014 to 2020 to build a quantum computer and led the quantum supremacy experiment in 2019. Devoret is cited in Google’s recent breakthrough where its Willow quantum chip solved a problem in five minutes that the world’s most advanced supercomputer could never solve.
The three laureates conducted experiments with electrical circuits that demonstrated quantum mechanical tunneling and quantized energy levels in systems large enough to hold in the hand. Clarke is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Devoret joined his research group in the 1980s and is now at Yale University and UC Santa Barbara. Martinis also joined the group in the 1980s and is currently at UC Santa Barbara and co-founded Qolab, a startup developing utility-scale superconducting quantum computers.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Save up to 49% on the Crucial P310 internal SSD for PC gaming handhelds this Prime Big Deals Day.
The post This Crucial P310 SSD Now Costs Only Cents per GB, A Steal for Steam Deck or ROG Ally Storage Upgrade appeared first on Kotaku.
OpenAI has disclosed that a now-banned account originating in China was using ChatGPT to help design promotional materials and project plans for a social media listening tool. OpenAI says that this work was purportedly done for a government client. The tool was a “probe” that could crawl social media sites like X, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, TikTok and YouTube for specific political, ethnic or religious content as defined by the operator. The company said it cannot independently verify if the tool was used by a Chinese government entity. OpenAI disrupted similar efforts earlier this year.
The company also says it banned an account that was using ChatGPT to develop a proposal for a tool described as a “High-Risk Uyghur-Related Inflow Warning Model” that would aid in tracking the movements of “Uyghur-related” individuals. China has long been accused of alleged human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims in the country.
OpenAI began publishing threat reports in February 2024, raising awareness of state-affiliated actors using large language models to debug malicious code, develop phishing scams and more. The company’s latest blog post serves as a roundup of notable threats and banned accounts over the last quarter.
The company also caught Russian-, Korean- and Chinese-speaking developers using ChatGPT to refine malware, as well as entire networks in Cambodia, Myanmar and Nigeria using the chatbot to help create scams in an attempt to defraud people. According to OpenAI’s own estimates, ChatGPT is being used to detect scams three times as often as it is to create them. .
This summer, OpenAI disrupted operations in Iran, Russia and China that were using ChatGPT to create posts, comments and to drive engagement and division as part of online influence campaigns. The AI-generated content was used on various social media platforms in both the originating nations and internationally.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-has-disrupted-more-chinese-accounts-using-chatgpt-to-create-social-media-surveillance-tools-142538093.html?src=rss
The girls of Huntr/x are also in the battle royale lobbies
The post The Best Thing The <em>KPop Demon Hunters</em> X <em>Fortnite</em> Collab Gave Us Wasn’t In The Game appeared first on Kotaku.
It’s been nearly four years since Vampire Survivors debuted in early access and developer Poncle is still adding new features to the hit game. A fall update will introduce an online co-op mode to the PC and console versions. The studio brought couch co-op to the auto-shooting roguelike back in 2023, and soon you and your buddies will be able to lay waste to thousands of enemies together without needing to be in the same room.
Online co-op will use a system where you create a lobby and share a code with friends so they can join, or vice-versa. You can go monster hunting with up to three of your buds, or even let them take care of the dirty work while you roam the map in search of secrets.
Poncle says there are four more announcements to come over the next several weeks. The studio teased that, next week, it “might finally answer a burning question that has been asked thousands of times.” My money is on that being “will you ever add vampires?”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/vampire-survivors-will-soon-offer-online-co-op-141430146.html?src=rss