Fox’s new Mud Guard solves the one main issue with its near-perfect Podium fork

Fox has released the Podium Mud Guard, finally offering spray and mud protection to its top-tier fork.

The new Mud Guard has been a long time coming, with Fox finally settling on a high-mount design rather than the low-mount approach seen on many conventional mountain bike forks.

Up until now, there hasn’t been a designated mudguard for the Podium fork, with our tester Alex Evans having to take a drill to modify a Mudhugger to shield himself during testing – and while Alex was hugely impressed by the fork, it was a drawback.

Fox Podium Mud Guard front view
The Mud Guard attaches to the fork via a clamp. Fox

Fox says its new mudguard has been designed to protect you from dirt that is thrown up into your eyeline.

Despite the Podium Mud Guard having a shorter tail and longer nose, the coverage it provides is said to be similar to that of a normal long mudguard when the fork is at around 20-25% compression.

Fox Podium Mud Guard on trail
If you’ve set up your sag correctly, you’ll likely be riding at 20-25% compression. Fox

Fox says: “Some people might also assume that having a large gap between the tail and the tyre is ineffective. However, while less efficient at top out, that gap closes significantly under dynamic riding conditions.”

It says fixing the mudguard to the crown reduces unsprung mass, improves mud shedding and reduces rattling when compared to low-mount designs.

Fox Podium Mud Guard on bike
The Mud Guard is something of a throwback. Fox

The design will likely split opinion; for some, it’ll be a nod back to older mountain bike mudguard designs before the fender style took over, while others may see it as an afterthought.

However, looking at the world where many mountain bike innovations are born, off-road motorbikes using upside-down forks also tend to feature top-mount mudguards for the same reasons.

A new Titan emerges in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters S2 teaser

It’s looking to be a solid year for kaiju fans. Not only are we getting Godzilla Minus Zero in November—sequel to the critically acclaimed Godzilla Minus One (2023)—but Apple TV just released a teaser for the second season of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, part of Legendary Entertainment’s MonsterVerse, which brought Godzilla, King Kong, and various other monsters (kaiju) created by Toho Co., Ltd into the same fold.

(Spoilers for S1 below.)

The first season picked up where 2014’s Godzilla left off, specifically the introduction of Project Monarch, a secret organization established in the 1950s to study Godzilla and other kaiju—after attempts to kill Godzilla with nuclear weapons failed. The plot spans three generations and takes place in the 1950s and half a century later. In the first season, two siblings (Kate and Kentaro Randa) follow in their father’s footsteps to uncover their family’s connection to the secretive organization known as Monarch. Naturally, they find themselves in the world of monsters and discover Army officer Lee Shaw (Kurt Russell), a longtime family ally.

Read full article

Comments

NBA League Pass is up to 55 percent off right now

NBA League Pass, the streaming service that lets you catch hundreds of out-of-market NBA games, is on sale right now for up to 55 percent off. The League Pass Premium subscription is on sale for $75, down from $160, while League Pass Standard is marked down to $50 from $110. We’re almost halfway through the season at this point, so it makes sense for a service like League Pass to start offering some discounts.

The Standard plan includes commercials and support for only one device at a time, while the Premium tier offers no commercials, in-arena streams during breaks in the game, offline viewing of full games and concurrent streams on up to three devices at once.

Last year, League Pass added multiview, which allows you to view up to four games at once on a single screen. This is included across both subscription tiers. The service also added a smart rewind tool that automatically selects key highlights and plays from each game.

Outside the US and Canada, League Pass carries every single NBA game live, but within these countries a bevy of restrictions apply. In the US, any games being shown on your regional sports network will be blacked out as the service is meant for out-of-market games only. Also, any nationally broadcast games will not be available live, but instead will be available for on-demand viewing at 6AM ET the following day. The service is only for regular-season games.

If you’re an avid NBA fan that follows multiple teams then the League Pass almost certainly carries dozens of games you can watch even with the restrictions in the US. Subscribers can get a list of applicable blackouts by entering their ZIP code before signing up.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/nba-league-pass-is-up-to-55-percent-off-right-now-163421218.html?src=rss

Zwift Update Version 1.105 (157370) Released

Zwift version 1.105 begins its phased rollout today. This is a minor update containing mostly bug fixes, although it does include a homescreen UI upgrade that will (hopefully) be rolled out elsewhere in game to better inform Zwifters. See details below…

KICKR CORE 2 Bridging Upgrade

Announced with this week’s release is a feature Wahoo actually rolled out last week, allowing Zwift Ride controllers and Click v2 controllers to be bridged through Wahoo’s KICKR CORE 2 trainer.

According to Zwift, this was done to “improve Bluetooth connectivity and to work around the Apple TV Bluetooth connection limit.”

Read all about this firmware update >

Mouseover Route Profiles

Zwift says, “On the home screen, you may see a gradient profile on route cards when hovered/focused. This feature will be rolled out slowly.”

This looks like a helpful and welcome change, although it isn’t live for me yet. I especially appreciate the gradient color-coding, which is a nice upgrade from the one-color route profiles used elsewhere in the game.

Now I’m going to do the most Zwifter thing ever, and complain about a feature before it’s even released.

Yes, the route profile on hover is a good upgrade nobody will complain about. But Zwift should show this color code the route profile sidebar as well:

And much more importantly, this profile should be available on event cards and in the event sidebar:

Notice: the event cards don’t even say which route the event is on. That’s saved for the sidebar, which helpfully shows the route name, number of laps, total distance, and total elevation. But even the sidebar displays no route map and no route profile.

This is all fine, as long as you know the route. But there are now over 300 routes in Zwift. The game needs to do a better job of telling riders what they’re signing up for. Hopefully, this new “mouseover profile” feature is a step in that direction.

Release Notes

Zwift supplied the following additional release notes:

  • Fixed an issue where some ANT+ devices could have a blank name in the Pairing screen.
  • Fixed an issue with extra lanes in New York on Central Park roads; Scotty at NYC DOT corrected the issue.
  • For races with event cooldowns enabled, fixed an issue where race rank could be incorrectly positioned on the Zwifter’s avatar on some devices.
  • Running: Improved the appearance of time input fields in Public Profile settings.
  • In group events, if a Ride Leader or Ride Sweeper have unsupported characters or emojis in their name, their event chat messages in the HUD will be shown as sent by “Ride Leader” or “Ride Sweeper”.
  • Android: Improved Bluetooth connection reliability for Zwifters on Android 15 and newer.

Discuss this update in Zwift’s forum > (link coming soon)

Questions or Comments?

If you spotted any other changes or bugs in the update, please comment below!

Trump Says Microsoft Will Make Major Changes To Prevent AI Data Centers From Spiking Utility Costs

Trump Says Microsoft Will Make Major Changes To Prevent AI Data Centers From Spiking Utility Costs
President Donald Trump has announced a breakthrough agreement with Microsoft to shield American households from soaring electricity costs driven by the surging growth of AI server farms. 

Over on Truth Social, the President declared that tech giants must “pay their own way” rather than passing the massive energy bills of their data centers

Scott Adams, Creator of the ‘Dilbert’ Comic Strip, Dies at 68

Scott Adams, who kept cubicle denizens laughing for more than three decades with Dilbert, the bitingly funny comic strip that poked fun at the absurdity of corporate life, died Tuesday. He was 68. From a report: His death was tearfully revealed by his first ex-wife, Shelly Miles, at the start of Real Coffee With Scott Adams. In May, he said on the podcast that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, which had spread to his bones. “I expect to be checking out from this domain this summer,” he said.

In a statement he wrote that was read by Miles over six minutes, he said, “Things did not go well for me … my body fell before my brain.”

Sprung from Adams’ days as a Pacific Bell applications engineer in San Ramon, California, Dilbert debuted in 1989 and at the height of its popularity appeared in more than 2,000 newspapers across 65 countries and in 25 languages with an estimated worldwide readership of more than 150 million. Though it had the appropriate level of cartoon exaggeration, the strip keenly captured office life and struck a nerve with the white-collar class.


Read more of this story at Slashdot.

JPMorgan Warns 10% Credit Card Rate Cap Would Backfire on Consumers and Economy

JPMorgan Chase’s chief financial officer Jeremy Barnum pushed back hard on Tuesday against President Donald Trump’s proposed 10% cap on credit card interest rates, calling the measure “very bad for consumers” and “very bad for the economy” during a call with reporters.

The proposed one-year cap, which Trump has said he wants implemented starting January 20, sent banking stocks tumbling last week and prompted financial groups to mount a defense. Barnum said JPMorgan would have to “change the business significantly and cut back” if the cap takes effect, adding that he believes the policy would produce “the exact opposite consequence to what the administration wants.”

Wall Street analysts remain skeptical the proposal will survive, noting that only Congress can enact such a measure. The average credit card interest rate in November stood at 20.97%, according to Federal Reserve data. Financial industry groups have countered that a 10% cap would result in millions of American households and small businesses losing access to credit entirely. A banking industry body called the potential impact “devastating.”


Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple Vows Privacy After Inking Google Gemini Deal For iPhone AI

Apple Vows Privacy After Inking Google Gemini Deal For iPhone AI
After months of speculation about what partner Apple would choose to work with to improve its floundering AI efforts, there’s finally an agreement in place between Cupertino and Google. The two companies have signed a multi-year deal that will see Apple’s Foundation Models trained by Google’s Gemini models and cloud technologies.

In a joint

Intel’s Fantastic New Open-Source Demonstrator For AMX-BF16: Over 4x The Performance At 69% The Power

When it comes to software leveraging Intel Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX) functionality in modern Xeon processors, it’s largely been limited to AI applications/libraries like oneDNN, OpenVINO, DeepRec, etc. But Intel now has another great open-source real-world AMX demonstrator with their Open Image Denoise library. This open-source library providing high quality denoising filters for images rendered using ray-tracing can end up benefiting big time from AMX-FP16 (AMX-COMPLEX) found with the newest Xeon 6 “Granite Rapids” processors. I ran some benchmarks of their new Open Image Denoise library with AMX-FP16 and was honestly blown away by the results.

Impossible Shock Wave Discovered Around Dead Star Defies All Known Physics

Impossible Shock Wave Discovered Around Dead Star Defies All Known Physics
Researchers using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) have identified a vibrant, rainbow-like shock wave surrounding a dead star that technically should not exist.

The object, a white dwarf designated RXJ0528+2838 located 730 light-years from Earth, was captured by the VLT that showed the presence of a massive