Counter-Strike has long been known for two things: tight tactical FPS gameplay and a thriving player marketplace effectively valued at literal billions of dollars. Now, thanks to a recent update from Valve, the latter is in a downward spiral, having lost 25% of its value — or $1.75 billion — overnight. Polygon: First, some context. Counter-Strike is a free-to-play multiplayer shooter. As with most other F2P games, it generates revenue from selling cosmetics. They arrive in lootbox-like Cases, which are opened by Keys purchased with real-world currency. They can also be obtained through trading with other players and purchasing from Steam Community Market. Beyond Steam, unofficial third-party marketplaces for CS cosmetics have also popped up as channels for buying and selling items.

Because items are obtained at random through opening Cases, rarer items fetch the highest value on the open marketplaces. Items of lower-rarity tiers can also be traded in at volume for an item of a higher tier via trade up contracts. Previously, Knives and Gloves could not be obtained through trade up contracts, exponentially increasing their value as highly sought-after items. Prior to the most recent update, some Knives, like a Doppler Ruby Butterfly Knife, could fetch around $20,000 on third-party storefronts like CSFloat.

Following Valve’s Oct. 22 update to Counter-Strike, the second-highest-tier, Covert (Red), can now be traded up and turned into Knives and Gloves. Essentially, this means that a previously extremely rare and highly sought-after cosmetic is going to be much more obtainable for those who increasingly want it, reducing the value of Knives and Gloves on the open marketplace. And this is where the market descends into a freefall. Now, that Butterfly Knife mentioned above? It’s going for around $12,000, as people are essentially dumping their stock, with 15 sold over the past 16 hours at the time of this writing.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The League Championship Series are history, and the final two teams have emerged: The 2025 Fall Classic will see the Los Angeles Dodgers face the Toronto Blue Jays. Game 1 of the 2025 MLB World Series begins tonight — Friday, Oct. 24 — at 8PM ET/5PM PT, with the Blue Jays getting the initial home field advantage at Rogers Centre, Toronto. Shohei Ohtani and the Dodgers are aiming to win their second consecutive championship, while Vlad Guerrero Jr. and the Blue Jays are eyeing their first ring since 1993. The World Series odds favor the Dodgers ahead of Game 1. Every 2025 MLB World Series game will air on Fox and Fox Deportes. 

Of course, Fox is a “free” over-the-air channel, so any affordable digital antenna will pull in the game if you live close enough to a local affiliate. But if that’s not an option, here’s a full rundown of how to watch the Dodgers vs. Blue Jays World Series, even without cable.

How to watch the L.A. Dodgers vs. Toronto Blue Jays, Game 1

You can stream Fox on any live TV streaming service that airs Fox local stations, including DirecTV, Fubo and Hulu + Live TV. MLB World Series games will also be available on Fox’s new streaming platform, Fox One.

More ways to watch the 2025 World Series

When is the Dodgers vs. Blue Jays game time?

Game 1 of the Dodgers vs. Blue Jays World Series begins on Friday, Oct. 24 at 8PM ET/5PM PT. The Blue Jays are hosting the first two games of the series at Rogers Centre, Toronto.

What channel is playing the Los Angeles Dodgers vs. Toronto Blue Jays?

Every game in the 2025 World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays, will air on Fox and Fox Deportes.

When is the 2025 World Series?

Game 1 of the World Series between the Dodgers and Blue Jays is scheduled for Friday, Oct. 24.

Los Angeles Dodgers vs. Toronto Blue Jays World Series schedule

All times Eastern

• Game 1: Friday, Oct. 24, 8PM ET

• Game 2: Saturday, Oct. 25, 8PM ET

• Game 3: Monday, Oct. 27, 8PM ET

• Game 4: Tuesday, Oct. 28, 8PM ET

• Game 5*: Wednesday, Oct. 29, 8PM ET

• Game 6*: Friday, Oct. 31, 8PM ET

• Game 7*: Saturday, Nov. 1, 8PM ET

*if necessary

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/dodgers-vs-blue-jays-game-1-how-to-watch-the-2025-mlb-world-series-without-cable-133403870.html?src=rss

Amazon has published a lengthy report about the outage that knocked numerous websites, services, apps and games offline on October 20. It all started with a bug in its automation software DynamoDB, where its AWS customers store their data, which then triggered more issues in its other systems that relied on the software. 

As Amazon explains, DynamoDB maintains hundreds of thousands of DNS records and is supposed to be able to fix any issue automatically. But on October 20, the DynamoDB DNS management system suffered from a bug that resulted in an empty DNS record for Amazon’s data centers in North Virginia. DynamoDB was supposed to repair the issue on its own, but it had failed to do so, prompting Amazon to fix the problem manually. While the issue was happening, all systems that needed to connect to DynamoDB couldn’t and experienced DNS failures, including the customers of its cloud computing services. It felt like half the internet wasn’t working when that happened. 

The websites and services affected by the outage include Amazon itself, Amazon Alexa devices, Bank of America, Snapchat, Canva, Reddit, Apple Music, Apple TV, Lyft, Duolingo, Fortnite, Disney+, Venmo, Doordash, Hulu, PlayStation and even Eight Sleep, whose beds connect to the internet to adjust their temperature and incline. Some of them were slow to respond, while others were completely inaccessible.

“We apologize for the impact this event caused our customers. While we have a strong track record of operating our services with the highest levels of availability, we know how critical our services are to our customers, their applications and end users, and their businesses. We know this event impacted many customers in significant ways. We will do everything we can to learn from this event and use it to improve our availability even further,” Amazon said in a statement.  

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/amazon-says-automation-bug-caused-massive-aws-outage-133028856.html?src=rss

The Fedora Council has approved a new policy allowing AI-assisted code contributions, provided contributors fully disclose and take responsibility for any AI-generated work. Phoronix reports: AI-assisted code contributions can be used but the contributor must take responsibility for that contribution, it must be transparent in disclosing the use of AI such as with the “Assisted-by” tag, and that AI can help in assisting human reviewers/evaluation but must not be the sole or final arbiter. This AI policy also doesn’t cover large-scale initiatives which will need to be handled individually with the Fedora Council. […] The Fedora Council does expect that this policy will need to be updated over time for staying current with AI technologies.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 FE has dropped to $331.50 at Walmart, which is a pretty sharp price considering the same model is listed at $429.99 on Amazon.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 FE, 128GB

$331.50
at Walmart

$499.99
Save $168.49

$331.50
at Walmart

$499.99
Save $168.49

It’s the newest entry in Samsung’s midrange tablet lineup, following last year’s S9 FE, and while not a massive upgrade, it’s still one of the few Android tablets that feel genuinely premium for the price. The 10.9-inch display and metal body give it a sturdy, high-end feel, and the IP68 rating means it can handle splashes—something even pricier iPads skip. Samsung includes its signature S Pen in the box, perfect for jotting notes, sketching, or navigating the screen—and its stylus software remains best in class. That alone makes this tablet worth considering if you like to jot things down or doodle on the go.

Under the hood, the Tab S10 FE runs on the Exynos 1580 chip, paired with 8GB RAM and 128GB of storage. It’s not a powerhouse, but it gets through everyday tasks like web browsing, note-taking, and streaming without fuss. The battery is the same 8,000mAh as last year, but thanks to efficiency gains, it lasts longer (over 13 hours in mixed-use tests). Charging is quick too, with 45W fast charging support, though you’ll need your own adapter since Samsung doesn’t include one in the box. The 10.9-inch LCD screen is bright and crisp with a 90Hz refresh rate, though it lacks the Dolby Vision and HDR10+ support found on some rivals like the OnePlus Pad 2. The stereo speakers sound clean, if a bit restrained, and the 16:10 aspect ratio makes movies look natural in landscape mode. That said, cameras (13MP rear and 12MP front) are serviceable for video calls but nothing more.

On the software side, Samsung’s One UI 7, running on top of Android 15, makes multitasking easy. You can open multiple apps, split the screen, or switch to DeX mode for a desktop-style layout with keyboard and mouse support. The software experience is mature, flexible, and backed by six years of updates, which is rare at this price. On the downside, the interface can feel cluttered with Samsung’s extra apps, and performance won’t impress gamers or power users. Still, the Galaxy Tab S10 FE delivers a solid mix of design, display, and software longevity.

In recent weeks, OpenAI has signed blockbuster deals with AMD and Broadcom to build vast numbers of AI chips. Much of the focus has been on the financial implications, since OpenAI will need hundreds of billions of dollars to make good on its promises. As important as it is to look at the quite implausible financials, we also need to look at the broader implications for the industry. Like, the chips themselves, what that spells for the AI industry as a whole, and the added pressure on TSMC, the only chip company that can actually build this stuff.

The Deals

OpenAI’s deal with AMD will see the chip giant build out 6 gigawatts’ (GW) worth of GPUs in the next few years. The first 1 GW deployment of AMD’s Instinct MI450 silicon will start in the back end of 2026, with more to come. AMD’s CFO Jean Hu believes that the partnership will deliver “tens of billions of dollars in revenue” in future, justifying the complicated way the deal is funded.

Meanwhile, Broadcom’s deal with OpenAI will see the pair collaborate on building 10 gigawatts’ worth of AI accelerators and ethernet systems that it has designed. The latter will be crucial to speed up connections between each individual system in OpenAI’s planned data centers. Like the deal with AMD, the first deployments of these systems will begin in the back half of 2026 and is set to run through 2029.

Phil Burr is head of product at Lumai, a British company looking to replace traditional GPUs with optical processors. He’s got 30 years experience in the chip world, including a stint as a senior director at ARM. Burr explained the nitty-gritty of OpenAI’s deals with both Broadcom and AMD, and what both mean for the wider world. 

Burr first poured water on OpenAI’s claim that it would be “designing” the gear produced by Broadcom. “Broadcom has a wide portfolio of IP blocks and pre-designed parts of a chip,” he said, “it will put those together according to the specification of the customer.” He went on to say that Broadcom will essentially put together a series of blocks it has already designed to suit the specification laid down by a customer, in this case OpenAI.

Similarly, the AI accelerators Broadcom will build are geared toward more efficient running of models OpenAI has already trained and built — a process called inference in AI circles. “It can tailor the workload and reduce power, or increase performance,” said Burr, but these benefits would only work in OpenAI’s favor, rather than for the wider AI industry.

I asked Burr why every company in the AI space talks about gigawatts worth of chips rather than in more simple numbers. He explained that, often, it’s because both parties don’t yet know how many chips would be required to meet those lofty goals. But you could make a reasonable guess if you knew the power draw of a specific chip divided by the overall goal, then cut that number in half, then remove an extra 10 percent. “For every watt of power you burn in the chip, you need about a watt of power to cool it as well.” 

In terms of what OpenAI gets from these deals, Burr believes that the startup will save money on chips, since there’s “less margin” from making your own versus buying gear from NVIDIA. Plus, being able to produce custom silicon to tailor the work to their needs should see significant speed and performance gains on rival systems. Of course, the next biggest benefit is that OpenAI now has “diversity in supply,” rather than being reliant on one provider for all its needs. “Nobody wants a single supplier,” said Burr. 

The Factory

Except, of course, OpenAI may be sourcing chips from a variety of its partners, but no matter what’s stamped on the silicon, it all comes from the same place. “I’d be very surprised if it wasn’t TSMC,” said Burr, “I’m pretty sure all of the AI chips out there use TSMC.” TSMC is short for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company which, over the last decade, has blown past its major rivals to become the biggest (and in many cases only) source of bleeding-edge chips for the whole technology industry. Unlike historic rivals, which designed and manufactured their own hardware, TSMC is a pure play foundry, only building chips designed by others. 

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd.

Gil Luria is Managing Director at head of technology research at investment firm DA Davidson. He said that TSMC isn’t just a bottleneck for the western technology industry, but in fact is the “greatest single point of failure for the entire global economy.” Luria credits the company with an impressive expansion “considering it has had to ramp the production of GPUs tenfold over the last three years.” But said that, “in a catastrophic scenario where TSMC is not able to produce in Taiwan, the disruption would be significant.” And that won’t just affect the AI world, but “mobile handset sales as well as global car sales.” 

TSMC supplanted Intel for a number of well-documented reasons, but the most relevant here is its embrace of Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUV). It’s a technology that Intel had initially backed, but struggled to fully adopt, allowing TSMC to pick it up and run straight to the top. EUV produces the headline-grabbing chips used by pretty much everyone in the consumer electronics world. Apple, Qualcomm, NVIDIA, AMD (including the SOCs inside the PS5 and Xbox) all use TSMC chips. Even Intel has been using TSMC foundries for some consumer CPUs as it races to bridge to gulf in manufacturing between the two companies.

“TSMC is the current leader in advanced 3 nanometer (nm) process technologies,” said University of Pennsylvania Professor Benjamin C. Lee. The company’s only meaningful competitors are Intel and Samsung, neither of which pose a threat to its dominance at present. “Intel has been working for a very long time to build a foundry business,” he explained, “but has yet to perfect its interface.” Samsung is in a similar situation, but Professor Lee explained it “has been unable to attract enough customers to generate a profitable manufacturing business.”  

Professor Lee said that TSMC, by comparison, has become so successful because of how good its chips are, and how easy it is for clients to build chips with its tools. “TSMC fabricates chips with high yield, which is to say more of its chips emerge from the fabrication process at expected performance and reliability.” Consequently, it should be no surprise that TSMC is a money making machine. In the second quarter of 2025 alone it reported a net profit of $12.8 billion USD. And in the following three months, TSMC posted net profits of $14.76 billion. 

“TSMC’s secret sauce is its mastery of yield,” explained ARPU Intelligence, an analyst group that prefers to use the group name over individual attribution. “This expertise is the result of decades of accumulated process refinement [and] a deep institutional knowledge that cannot be replicated.” This deep institutional knowledge and ability to deliver high quality product creates a “powerful technical lock-in, since companies like Apple and NVIDIA design their chips specifically for TSMC’s unique manufacturing process … It’s not as simple as sending the [chip] design to another factory,” it added.

The downside, at least for the wider technology industry, is that TSMC is now a bottleneck that the whole industry has come to rely upon. In the company’s most recent financials, it said more than three quarters of its business comes from North American customers. And in a call with investors, Chairman and CEO C.C. Wei talked about the efforts the company has made to narrow the gap between the enormous demand and its constrained supply. While he was reticent to be specific, he did say that the company’s capacity is “very tight,” and would likely remain that way for the foreseeable future. 

In fact, TSMC’s capacity is so tight that it’s already caused at least one major name a significant headache. Earlier this year, Reuters reported that NVIDIA canceled an order of its H20 AI chips after being informed the US would not permit them to be exported to China. Once the ban was lifted, however, NVIDIA was unable to find space in TSMC’s schedule, with the next available slot at least nine months later.

“TSMC has no room for error,” said ARPU Intelligence, “any minor disruption can halt production with no spare capacity to absorb the shock.” It cited the Hualien earthquake which struck Taiwan on April 3, 2024, and how it negatively impacted the number of wafers in production.

Naturally, TSMC is spending big to increase its production capacity for its customers, both in Taiwan and the US. Close to its home, construction on its A14 fab is expected to begin in the very near future, with the first chips due to be produced in 2028. That facility will harness TSMC’s A14 process node, producing 1.4 nm chips, which offer a speed boost over the 2nm silicon that’s expected to arrive in consumer devices next year.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd.

Meanwhile, work continues apace on building out TSMC’s sprawling facility in Arizona, which broke ground in April 2021. As Reuters reported at the time, the first facility started operating in early 2025, producing 4 nm chips. Last week, NVIDIA and TSMC showed off the first Blackwell wafer produced at the Arizona plant ahead of domestic volume production.

Plans for the operation have grown over time, expanding from three facilities up to six to be built over the next decade. And while the initial outline called for the US facilities to remain several process generations behind Taiwan, that is also changing. In his recent investors call, Chairman and CEO C.C. Wei pledged to invest more in the US facility to bring it only one generation behind the Taiwanese facility. 

No amount of investment from TSMC or catch-up from rivals like Samsung and Intel will solve the current bottleneck swiftly. It will take many years, if not decades, for the world to reduce its reliance on Taiwan for bleeding-edge manufacturing. TSMC’s island remains the industry’s weak point, and should something go wrong, the consequences could be dire indeed.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/openais-recent-chip-deals-heap-more-pressure-on-tsmc-130000194.html?src=rss

Bethesda has announced that it’s releasing a 10th anniversary version of Fallout 4 on November 10, similar to what it did for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Fallout 4: Anniversary Edition bundles the base game with Automatron, Far Harbor, Nuka-World and the Workshop expansions. The original open world game was released in 2015 and takes place in the year 2287, 210 years after the Great War. Like the other games in the franchise, it’s set in a post-apocalyptic world with the aesthetics of 1940s and 1950s USA.

This particular entry in the franchise revolves around the Sole Survivor of Vault 111 who was frozen in a cryogenic pod and woke up 210 years since the nuclear attack. The protagonist’s constant companion in the game is a dog named Dogmeat, but they have six other possible companions: their old robot butler Codsworth, Deacon the railroad agent, the mayor of the Goodneighbor settlement named John Hancock, an artificial synth or humanoid robot named Nick Valentine, Piper Wright the reporter, and Preston Garvey, who’s a member of the paramilitary force Minutemen.

In addition to the base game and the expansions, the anniversary release comes with 150 pieces of content from the Creation Club, an in-game marketplace where developers can sell weapons, skins and other DLCs. The free content includes different Dogmeat breeds, like a Husky and a Dalmatian. The anniversary edition even contains an in-game Creations menu that players can use to browse downloadable content. Fallout 4: Anniversary Edition will be available digitally on the Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC, PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/fallout-4-anniversary-edition-comes-out-on-november-10-123033135.html?src=rss

The European Commission has found that Meta and TikTok had violated rules under the Digital Services Act (DSA) and is now giving them the chance to comply if they don’t want to be fined up to 6 percent of their total worldwide annual turnover. According to the Commission, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok have “put in place burdensome procedures and tools” for researchers who want to request access to public data. This means they’re stuck with incomplete or unreliable information if they want to do research on topics like how minors are exposed to illegal or harmful content online. “Allowing researchers access to platforms’ data is an essential transparency obligation under the DSA,” the Commission wrote. 

In addition, the Commission is charging Meta over the lack of a user-friendly mechanism that would allow users to easily report posts with illegal content, such as child sexual abuse materials. The Commission explained that Facebook and Instagram use mechanisms that require several steps to be able to flag posts, and they use dark interface designs that make reporting confusing and dissuading. All those factors are in breach of DSA rules that require online platforms to give EU users easy-to-use mechanisms to be able to report illegal content. 

Under the DSA, users must also be able to challenge social networks’ decisions to remove their posts or suspend their accounts. The Commission found that neither Facebook nor Instagram allow users to explain their sides or provide evidence to substantiate their appeals, which limits the effectiveness of the appeal process. 

Meta and TikTok will be able to examine the Commission’s investigation files and to reply in writing about its findings. They’ll also have the opportunity to implement changes to comply with DSA rules, and it’s only if the Commission decides they’re non-compliant that they can be fined up to 6 percent of their global annual turnover. Meta disagreed that it had breached DSA rules, according to Financial Times. “In the European Union, we have introduced changes to our content reporting options, appeals process, and data access tools since the DSA came into force and are confident that these solutions match what is required under the law in the EU,” it said in a statement. Meanwhile, TikTok said it was reviewing the Commission’s findings but that “requirements to ease data safeguards place the DSA and GDPR in direct tension.” It’s asking regulators for guidance on “how these obligations should be reconciled.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/eu-charges-meta-and-tiktok-over-failures-to-tackle-illegal-content-121533180.html?src=rss

The era of AI video is upon us, and honestly it’s kind of terrifying. Between OpenAI’s Sora and official communications from the Trump White House, it’s clear that we’re not ready for an unending onslaught of AI video. In this episode, Devindra and producer Ben chat with the Washington Post’s technology reporter Drew Harwell and Jeremy Carrasco (AKA “ShowtoolsAI”), a former livestream and media producer turned AI video literacy creator. Also, we chat about our final thoughts on Apple’s M5 MacBook Pro and iPad Pro, with a few quick notes about the new Vision Pro.

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Topics

• Google and Open AI’s video generation models have upended our sense of reality online, what comes next? – 1:10

• Apple’s M5 chip is a significant boost in graphics power on the Macbook Pro – 34:11

• The iPad Pro M5 is a solid speed boost for whoever wants it – 39:36

• Preview of the Vision Pro M5 review – 44:00

• Working on – 50:23

• Pop culture Picks – 51:45 

Credits

Host: Devindra Hardawar
Guests: Drew Harwell and Jeremy “ShowtoolsAI” Carrasco
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O’Brien

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/engadget-podcast-how-to-survive-our-ai-video-hellscape-120432652.html?src=rss