Silent Hill 2 is now available on Xbox

If you’re an Xbox-only player who’s been waiting patiently for the arrival of Bloober Team’s superb Silent Hill 2 remake on Microsoft consoles, now’s your time. While the ideal release window would have been last month to coincide with spooky season (PS Plus subscribers got lucky here), there’s never a bad time to play Silent Hill 2.

A full remake of the seminal 2001 survival horror game, Silent Hill 2 has you play as widower James Sunderland, who’s summoned to the eponymous rural town after receiving a letter from his deceased wife, where all manner of psychological horrors await him. Slightly controversially, the 2024 game ditched the fixed camera angles of the original in favor of a more modern over-the-shoulder perspective. Fortunately, this transition sacrifices none of the game’s signature oppressive atmosphere, with the foggy streets of Silent Hill being as creepy as ever to tentatively explore.

To celebrate the release of Silent Hill 2 on Xbox Series X|S, Konami has slashed the price of the Xbox and PC versions by 50 percent. You can also grab this year’s brand new entry, Silent Hill f, for 30 percent off for Black Friday.

It’s been a pretty good week for long-awaited Xbox ports. Engadget 2023 game of the year award winner Dave the Diver finally arrived on all Xbox consoles (including Xbox One), while the excellent horror-themed roguelite Clover Pit also surprise dropped this week. That one’s on Game Pass too.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/silent-hill-2-is-now-available-on-xbox-164052884.html?src=rss

Apple teamed up with another artist to make this iPhone grip and stand

Apple has teamed up with an artist named Bailey Hikawa to make an iPhone grip and stand thingamajig. The appropriately-named Hikawa Phone Grip & Stand is a MagSafe compatible device that snaps onto an iPhone. The grip can be “removed with ease” and also doubles as a stand.

To that end, it supports two different viewing angles, both vertical and horizontal. Apple says the ergonomic form factor was “designed with accessibility in mind from the ground up” and that Hikawa was given “direct input from individuals with disabilities affecting muscle strength, dexterity and hand control.”

A grip.
Bailey Hikawa/Apple

It’s also intended to be a work of art, as it was “inspired by modern sculpture.” This is what likely ticks the price up. The grip is available in two colorways, both of which cost $70. Generic grips cost around $10 on Amazon or big-box retailers, but Hikawa has been making noteworthy phone cases for years. She also makes eye-catching toilet seats.

The “iPhone sleeve” goes for only $239 USD

Same thing, different prices. � pic.twitter.com/dzB52z1bgH

— Arshav� (@Shiivarr) November 12, 2025

That leads us to the knitted elephant in the room. Apple introduced a bizarre knitted sleeve last week intended to hold iPhones. This, uh, phone sock starts at a whopping $150 and goes all the way up to $230. The idea of spending $150 on a little knitted bag for a smartphone has, quite obviously, irked some consumers and sparked internet outrage.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/apple-teamed-up-with-another-artist-to-make-this-iphone-grip-and-stand-163508039.html?src=rss

Microsoft Rolls Out Xbox Full Screen Experience To All Windows 11 Handhelds

Microsoft Rolls Out Xbox Full Screen Experience To All Windows 11 Handhelds
During the recent Xbox Partner Preview, Microsoft announced several upcoming Xbox and PC games, but also highlighted that the Xbox Full Screen Experience (FSE) would be rolling out to all PC gaming handhelds and eventually expanding to other Windows 11 PCs through the Windows Insider Program.

If you’ve been paying attention, though, you

Lifehacker Tech Deals Live Blog: The Best Sales on Smart Phones, Laptops, and More

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.

Although Black Friday hasn’t technically started yet, many retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, Target, and Walmart already have early deals with some impressive discounts. We’ve used price trackers to determine the best tech deals around so far. Visit this page for regularly updated sales information.

[$] Unpacking for Python comprehensions

Unpacking Python iterables of various sorts, such as dictionaries or lists,
is useful in a number of contexts, including for function arguments, but
there has long been a call for extending that capability to comprehensions. PEP 798 (“Unpacking in
Comprehensions”) was first proposed in June 2025 to fill that gap. In early
November, the steering council accepted
the PEP, which means that the feature will be coming to Python 3.15 in
October 2026. It may be something of a niche feature, but it is an
inconsistency
that has been apparent for a while—to the point that some Python programmers
assume that it is already present in the language.

Meta Enters Power Trading To Support Its AI Energy Needs

Meta is venturing into the complex world of electricity trading, betting it can accelerate the construction of new US power plants that are vital to its AI ambitions. From a report: The foray into power trading comes after Meta heard from investors and plant developers that too few power buyers were willing to make the early, long-term commitments required to spur investment, according to Urvi Parekh, the company’s head of global energy. Trading electricity will give the company the flexibility to enter more of those longer contracts.

Plant developers “want to know that the consumers of power are willing to put skin in the game,” Parekh said in an interview. “Without Meta taking a more active voice in the need to expand the amount of power that’s on the system, it’s not happening as quickly as we would like.”


Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta Quest 3S Hits All-Time Low & Includes A Free $50 Gift Card

Meta Quest 3S Hits All-Time Low & Includes A Free $50 Gift Card
Remember when getting into virtual reality was cost prohibitive? Yeah, neither do we at this point. VR has outlasted ‘passing fad’ status and appears here to stay—even Valve is getting in on the action with its upcoming Steam Frame headset (alongside other hardware, including another Steam Machine). Meanwhile, there are a affordable options,

Clang 21 Delivering Nice Performance Gains On AMD EPYC Zen 4 With HBM3

One of the areas I’ve been meaning to run more benchmarks on this season has been for the recently released Clang 21 compiler. Back in September when LLVM Clang 21 was debuting I ran some initial benchmarks and found it to deliver some nice performance gains on AMD EPYC Zen 5 but then have been busy with other benchmarks/articles for expanding that testing. Recently with having some spare cycles and gratis access still to the Microsoft Azure HBv5 instance for AMD EPYC Zen 4 with HBM3, I ran some Clang 20 vs. Clang 21 performance benchmarks there for those wondering about any performance benefits of this new compiler release on Zen 4.

PHP 8.5.0 released

Version
8.5.0
of the PHP language has been released. Changes include a new
“|>” operator that, for some reason, makes these two lines
equivalent:

    $result = strlen("Hello world");
    $result = "Hello world" |> strlen(...);

Other changes include a new function attribute, “#[NoDiscard]” to
indicate that the return value should be used, attributes on constants, and
more; see the
migration guide
for details.

Sovereign Tech Fund Hiring A New Leader For Driving Open-Source Funding

Germany’s Sovereign Tech Fund / Sovereign Tech Agency has been a godsend the past few years for the open-source community. This funding from the German government has led to significant funding for dozens of prominent open-source infrastructure projects to provide more resources for enhancing security, enabling new features, and more. As the Sovereign Tech Fund prepares for the next phase of growth, they are hiring a new head to lead the efforts…

AirDrop Now Works With Android

If you and your friends have iPhones, you might use AirDrop to send pictures and files. If you all have Androids, you might use Quick Share. But if you have a mix of both platforms, suddenly file sharing isn’t so easy. You could email the pictures, but, shoot, there’s a data limit. You could text them, but if your friend isn’t on RCS, videos are going to look horrible. You could use a cross-platform chat app, but good luck agreeing on which one to use. If only AirDrop was available on Android, and Quick Share on iOS.

In a Thursday announcement on The Keyword, Google made history: Quick Share now works with AirDrop—starting with the Pixel 10, anyway. If you or a friend has one of Google’s latest smartphones, you can start wirelessly file sharing to the other platform, as if they were a part of yours.

To that point, it does seem like file sharing between iPhone and Android—and vice versa—feels intuitive. On Android, you can open Quick Share, look at your “Send to nearby devices,” and a compatible iPhone will appear alongside any compatible Android devices. On iOS, opening AirDrop will show a compatible Pixel 10 among the list of available devices. It’s almost like the features were built this way from the beginning. (They should have been.)

The only caveat is the receiver’s iPhone needs to be set to “Everyone for 10 Minutes.” If the iPhone is set to “Contacts Only,” this feature won’t work yet. Google says it’s open to working with Apple to expand this functionality, but at the moment, you can’t leave your AirDrop open to just your contacts, if those contacts happen to be on Pixel.

It’s too bad this new cross-platform functionality is limited to the Pixel 10 series, but, hopefully, it expands to more Androids over time. While iOS and Android aren’t necessarily the easiest operating systems to work across, Apple and Google have made massive improvements in recent years. Now that iPhones support RCS, and some Androids now work with AirDrop, we’re closing the gap between these two once-polar-opposite platforms.

Google Unveils Nano Banana Pro AI Model To Generate Studio Quality Images & Designs

Google Unveils Nano Banana Pro AI Model To Generate Studio Quality Images & Designs
With the arrival of Google’s Nano Banana Pro (officially the Gemini 3 Pro Image model) the AI image generation landscape has once again moved forward into deeper usefulness and hyper-realism. Along with the creative power it now gives users, Nano Banana Pro brings up more debates over digital authenticity and image manipulation, especially

LILYGO Expands T-Beam Series With New 1W LoRa GPS Board

LILYGO has introduced the T-Beam 1W, an ESP32-S3 development board that combines LoRa connectivity, GNSS positioning, an OLED display, and SD card storage. It follows the familiar T-Beam layout while adding a higher-power LoRa front end for long-range communication tasks. The system is built around the ESP32-S3FN8, a dual-core Tensilica LX7 processor with 16 MB […]

Ubisoft delayed its latest earnings report due to an accounting issue.

The possible reasons behind Ubisoft delaying the earnings report it was expected to release last week were the subject of much discussion, especially given the company’s well-documented issues in recent times. But we now know that the delay was forced by an accounting issue relating to its soon-to-be finalized transaction with Tencent.

As detailed in Ubisoft’s now-published first-half 2025-26 earnings figures, the company was required to restate its FY2024-25 accounts, concerning revenue for this period attributed to sales from a partnership. “This position now applied by the Group going forward has also resulted in a partnership signed in Q2 FY2025-26 not being recognized in IFRS15 revenues,” the company said. “The above results in the Company not complying with its leverage covenant ratio under certain existing financing agreements at September 30, 2025. However, this is being addressed by the aforementioned actions relating to the concerned debt instruments.”

With the report now published, Ubisoft has asked Euronext to resume trading its shares. And while the accounting snag led to the week-long delay, the French company said that its deal with Tencent is set to close in “the coming days,” with the imminent €1.16 billion ($1.36 billion) investment expected to help the company pay off outstanding debt. Once finalized, the partnership will also “enable the acceleration” of Vantage Studios, the new Ubisoft subsidiary in which Tencent will own a 25 percent stake. The new studio will be responsible for Ubisoft’s three biggest IPs: Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry and Rainbow Six.

Ubisoft reported net bookings of €491 million ($564 million) this quarter, which it said was a 39 percent year-on-year increase. The company said that Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which is getting a Switch 2 port next month, had overperformed this quarter, likely helped by arrival of its New Game+ mode in the summer.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/ubisoft-delayed-its-latest-earnings-report-due-to-an-accounting-issue-152017119.html?src=rss