In Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, you’ll come across friendly Nevrons that’ll hand out quests for the party to take on. Some are easier than others, including this one located in the Red Woods.
Prices are finally calming down on the Pokémon TCG’s latest set, Destined Rivals, meaning the resale market is no longer quite so bonkers. As such, it makes for a good time to see which pulls from the long-awaited return of Team Rocket are fetching the big bucks, and how much you’re going to need to fork out if you…
It has been a long time coming — seven years since Meta first announced its plan to do so, in fact — but ads are starting to appear in WhatsApp as of Monday. They’ll only be visible on the Updates tab and the company says those who use the app only to chat with family and friends really won’t see any change to their WhatsApp experience. The same goes for two other new features: channel subscriptions and promoted channels. “We’ve been talking about our plans to build a business that does not interrupt your personal chats for years and we believe the Updates tab is the right place for these new features to work,” a company blog post reads.
WhatsApp users will be able to chat to a business that’s using the Status tab to advertise a product or service, according to Meta. The company says it will use some user data for ad targeting, including your device’s language, country or city, channels you follow and how you interact with ads. If you’ve added WhatsApp to Meta’s Accounts Center, the company will use your ad preferences and info from across your Meta accounts. Meta says it won’t sell or share your phone number with marketers. Nor will it tap into your chats, calls and status for ad targeting — those will all still have end-to-end encryption.
The Status tab is valuable screen real estate. Meta says more than 1.5 billion people use it every day. Advertising is still by far the company’s largest stream of revenue so the only really surprising thing about Meta starting to show ads in WhatsApp is that it took so long. After all, the company could probably do with more ways of making enough money to underwrite parts of the business that may take a long time to turn a profit, if they even get to that point.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/whatsapp-has-ads-now-but-only-in-the-updates-tab-144829657.html?src=rss
Pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk forfeited patent protection for semaglutide — the active ingredient in blockbuster diabetes and weight loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy — in Canada after failing to pay a $450 maintenance fee in 2019. The company had paid maintenance fees through 2018 but requested a refund for the 2017 fee, apparently seeking more time to decide whether to continue protecting the patent.
When the 2019 fee came due at $450 with late penalties, Novo never paid despite having a one-year grace period. Canadian patent authorities confirmed the patent “cannot be revived” once lapsed. The oversight is particularly costly given Canada represents the world’s second-largest semaglutide market, worth billions annually. Generic drugmaker Sandoz plans to launch a competing version in early 2026, while Novo’s U.S. patent protection extends until at least 2032.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Meta officially confirmed the expansion of its EssilorLuxottica partnership to include a pair of Oakley smart glasses—possibly arriving soon.
Earlier this year, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported that Meta was looking to expand its line of smart glasses beyond Ray-Ban Meta, which would include two possible new devices: a sportier Oakley-branded model, and a high-end model with built-in display—the latter has yet to be announced.
Now, Meta CTO Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth confirmed that ‘Oakley Meta’ smart glasses are coming in an X post, showing a graphic of both brands merging and linking to a new @oakleymeta profile.
@oakleymeta pic.twitter.com/lRL6oimgMR
— Boz (@boztank) June 16, 2025
Details remain scarce, however Gurman’s January report maintained the Oakley smart glasses would be designed for athletes and could launch sometime this year.
Meta’s EssilorLuxottica partnership has been growing steadily since the release of the first-gen Facebook Ray-Ban Stories in 2021, prompting the company to offer a second-gen version in 2023, Ray-Ban Meta, which which introduced updated styles, improved audio and cameras, and on-board AI features.
In late 2024, Meta announced it was expanding its smart glasses partnership with EssilorLuxottica into 2030. At the time, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg described its long-term roadmap as giving the companies “the opportunity to turn glasses into the next major technology platform, and make it fashionable in the process.”
In addition to Ray-Ban and Oakley, the French-Italian luxury eyewear company owns other major brands, including Persol, Oliver Peoples, and Vogue Eyewear, along with eyewear retailers LensCrafters, Pearle Vision, and Sunglass Hut.
The post Meta Teases Oakley Partnership for Sportier Smart Glasses, Reportedly Releasing This Year appeared first on Road to VR.
Beating Elden Ring Nightreign’s toughest bosses comes down to three things: skill, level, and gear. Some of those things can be easily improved with practice and research, but the gear players pick up during a run is mostly down to RNG. However, it turns out there’s an item duplication glitch that can help level the…
Last week alongside announcing the AMD Instinct MI350X/MI355X and the ROCm 7.0 software preview, AMD also introduced the AMD Developer Cloud as a new means for developers to easy try out Instinct accelerators with their own software and with the ROCm compute stack already setup. Having tried out prior AMD cloud compute environments, as soon as my email invite for the AMD Developer Cloud arrived I decided to give it a try.
OnePlus just announced the Nord 5 smartphone, a refresh of its popular mid-range handset line. This one includes a flagship Snapdragon 8S Gen 3 chipset by Qualcomm, which should provide plenty of raw power for gaming, multitasking and general use.
There’s an upgraded cooling system here, along with support for LPDDR5X RAM. It features a dual rear camera system and will be available in a pale blue finish that’s officially called “Dry Ice.”
The company says the upgraded specs allow the Nord 5 to really shine when gaming, touting “unparalleled performance in its class” with “robust support for leading mobile games.” It mentioned that the device can run Call of Duty: Mobile natively at 144FPS, with real-time ray tracing.
OnePlus is also releasing a companion phone called the Nord CE5. We don’t know much about this one, other than it’s likely to be a slightly cheaper version of the standard headset.
Both of these phones will feature the company’s newly-announced Plus Key, which replaced the Alert Slider. Users can customize this button to perform a number of tasks, but it’s better known as an instantaneous way to pull up AI tools. The cute lil AI button first appeared with the OnePlus 13s, which launched in Asia earlier this month.
In addition to the Nord 5, the company also announced the OnePlus Buds 4. These high-end earbuds offer ultra-low latency audio for gamers, with dual drivers, support for Hi-Res audio and other bells and whistles. They will be available in both green and dark gray. It also revealed a new smartwatch and a tablet.
We don’t have pricing or availability information for any of this stuff just yet. The company has a launch event planned for July 8, which should provide us with all of those relevant details.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/the-oneplus-nord-5-features-a-powerful-snapdragon-8-chip-143206053.html?src=rss
There’s no denying that getting a high-quality computer is going to set your finances back a bit. So, when one of them gets discounted we want to scream it from the rooftops. Such is the case today with a solid sale on Apple’s 2024 Mac mini (M4).
Right now, the newest Mac mini is available for $499, down from $599 — a 17 percent discount. The deal, which is only $10 more than it’s all-time low price, gets you 16GB RAM and 256GB SSD storage, but no AppleCare+. You can also opt for the 16GB version with 512GB SSD storage for $719, down from $799. Then there’s the top storage option, which has a 10 percent discount. The Mac mini with 24GB RAM and 512GB SSD storage has dropped to $849 from $999.
We gave the newest Apple Mac mini a 90 in our review thanks to perks like the impressive speed of its chip (though we did test the M4 Pro). It also offers front USB-C and headphone ports for easy use, along with an overall smaller design. Plus, it’s great that even the base version starts at 16GB of RAM.
Check out our coverage of the best Apple deals for more discounts, and follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/apples-mac-mini-m4-is-back-on-sale-for-499-141523040.html?src=rss
There is a lot of sweet-looking armor in Monster Hunter Wilds, but they’re not all based on the creatures you come across. Some armors require unique materials to be forged. Anyone who has a history with the series likely remembers one such material, the ominously named “Sinister Cloth,” which tasks you with laborious…
Oakley and Meta are teasing a joint launch for Friday.
A new verified Instagram page with the handle oakleymeta and name “Oakley | Meta” posted a collaborative video with the official Meta and Oakley pages teasing the June 20 launch, and the video has been reposted by Mark Zuckerberg.
The branding for the new page mirrors the “Ray-Ban | Meta” branding for the current Ray-Ban Meta glasses, strongly suggesting Meta’s partnership with eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica is about to expand to Oakley too.
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Exactly this was reported by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman back in January.
While the Ray-Ban Meta glasses have a camera on one side and are aimed towards all consumers, the Oakley Meta glasses will have the camera in the center and be intended for “cyclists and other athletes”, Gurman claimed at the time.
The Ray-Ban Meta glasses have been a breakout hit so far. In February EssilorLuxottica announced that over 2 million units had been sold, and said that annual production capacity is being increased to 10 million by the end of 2026.
UploadVRDavid Heaney
We’ll keep a close eye on Meta and EssilorLuxottica on Friday and bring you the full details of the Oakley Meta glasses once they’re officially revealed.
An anonymous reader shares a report: When Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014, the messaging app had a clear focus. No ads, no games and no gimmicks. For years, that is what WhatsApp’s two billion users — many of them in Brazil, India and other countries around the world — got. They chatted with friends and family unencumbered by advertising and other features found on social media. Now that is set to change.
On Monday, WhatsApp said it would start showing ads inside its app for the first time. The promotions will appear only in an area of the app called Updates, which is used by around 1.5 billion people a day. WhatsApp will collect some data on users to target the ads, such as location and the device’s default language, but it will not touch the contents of messages or whom users speak with. The company added that it had no plans to place ads in chats and personal messages.
[…] In-app ads are a significant change from WhatsApp’s original philosophy. Jan Koum and Brian Acton, who founded WhatsApp in 2009, were committed to building a simple and quick way for friends and family to communicate with end-to-end encryption, a method of keeping texts, photos, videos and phone calls inaccessible by third parties. Both left the company seven years ago. Since then, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, now Meta, has focused on WhatsApp’s growth and user privacy while also melding the app into the company’s other products, including Instagram and Messenger.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Bravely Default series has established itself as a well-known RPG franchise that is all but certain to continue growing in the coming years. But the original game has been trapped on the 3DS since its 2014 debut—largely due to its unique two-screen interface—leaving fans to wonder if they’d ever have a chance to…
The traditional summer Nintendo Direct is just around the corner, but it won’t be one of the usual E3-style blowouts. Instead, the upcoming livestream will be devoted entirely to Donkey Kong Bananza, the next big release on the Switch 2’s launch year calendar.
10 million Quest owners have completed at least one track of Beat Saber standalone on their headset.
Beat Saber’s first achievement crossing 10 million unlocks on Quest was spotted by UploadVR reader James Kelley, who brought it to our attention.
Arguably the most widely known VR game of all time, Beat Saber has become somewhat of a cultural phenomenon.
The game originally launched for PC VR in mid 2018, then PlayStation VR in late 2018, and was a launch title for the original Oculus Quest in mid 2019. In November 2019 Facebook acquired Beat Games, though the studio has continued to release all updates for PC VR too, and even launched the game on PlayStation VR2 a few months after it shipped.
Just before the Quest launch, Beat Saber crossed 1 million copies sold, and four months after Quest 2 shipped it reached 4 million.
Meta hasn’t released unit sales figures since then, but in October 2021 said the game had brought in $100 million revenue on Quest alone, and in April 2023 The Wall Street Journal reported that the game had reached $255 million.
UploadVRDavid Heaney
Meta has continued to launch paid DLCs for Beat Saber featuring songs from world-famous artists. Since the acquisition, the game has seen tracks from Imagine Dragons, Panic! at the Disco, Green Day, Timbaland, Linkin Park, BTS, Skrillex, Billie Eilish, Lady Gaga, Fall Out Boy, Lizzo, The Weeknd, Nirvana, Queen, The Rolling Stones, Eminem, 2Pac, The Notorious B.I.G., Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Nicki Minaj, Britney Spears, Metallica, and more.
Beat Saber has been at or near the top of Meta’s weekly top sellers list since the launch of Oculus Quest. And earlier this year, Meta revealed the 50 best-selling paid Quest games of all time via a new section of Quest’s Horizon Store, and Beat Saber holds the #1 spot.
Will any VR game ever top Beat Saber?
Rust developers acknowledge lengthy compiler times can be a significant issue that limits the productivity of developers working with this programming language. For helping in determining different combinations of issues around compiler performance, the Rust team has started a survey to collect more information on the issues…
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild launched with the Nintendo Switch in 2017, and the game’s Nintendo Switch 2 upgrade has ensured that it remains as relevant as ever. And whether Link’s first truly open-world game is calling to you for the first time, or you’re a returning veteran looking to re-explore Hyrule…