Tag:

snag

It’s your last chance to snag the Xbox Series S and X at its current price before they rise tomorrow
Gaming Gear

It’s your last chance to snag the Xbox Series S and X at its current price before they rise tomorrow

by admin


Sadly, the prices of the Xbox Series X and Series S are set to rise in the U.S. starting tomorrow, October 3rd, 2025. That makes today your last chance to snag an Xbox Series S — either the 512GB model for $379.99 (which is even cheaper on sale for $329.99 at Amazon) or the 1TB model for $429.99 (Amazon, Best Buy) before the list price of both increases by $20. You can also grab the Xbox Series X Digital Edition for $549.99 (Amazon, Best Buy) or the standard 1TB model for $599.99 (Amazon, Best Buy) before they each jump by $50. The Xbox Series X 2TB Galaxy Black Special Edition is also still available for $799.99 (GameStop), before its price increases by $70.

If you need help figuring out which console to buy, here’s the quick breakdown: the Series X is the more powerful option, capable of native 4K support, faster performance, and starts with 1TB of built-in storage, which is double what you’ll get with the smaller, less expensive Series S. The Series S, meanwhile, is designed for 1440p gaming and offers less built-in storage at 512GB. Notably, like the Xbox Series X Digital Edition, it also lacks an optical drive, so you can only play digital games.

Other than that, though, both consoles play all the same games and work with Xbox Game Pass, so whichever one you choose, you’ll still get access to the dozens of new titles recently added, ranging from Hogwarts Legacy and multiple Assassin’s Creed games to Hades, Cities: Skylines – Remastered, Stardew Valley, and more.



Source link

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
An Intel Core i7-14700 CPU box, along with a cleaned-off version of the Core i5-13500 that was inside, next to a syringe of thermal paste
Product Reviews

I managed to snag a Core i5 CPU for $10, because someone scammed Amazon out of an i7-14700

by admin



The other day, I stopped into a local Amazon returns store on my lunch break. You probably know the type: chaotically overflowing other people’s returned orders, with half-open boxes scattered about in huge bins. It’s like some kind of post-apocalyptic ball pit game show, where you might find something worthwhile if you wade through enough discarded shelving kits, no-name iPhone cases, and shoe insoles. This particular store is only a few months old, and I’d visited a few times without finding much (other than a pair of insoles, which I needed because I walk 9-10 miles a day).

On this trip, the first day after a weekly restock, when everything in the bins costs $10, I managed to find a roll of Creality 3D printer PLA filament. That’s not a huge discount over its typical Amazon sale price, but I happened to need a new spool for my Anycubic printer, and I was a few blocks from home, so this saved me the hassle of ordering. After a few more minutes pawing through returns, I hadn’t found anything else and went up to pay. But there was a line, and I wound up waiting at the corner of one of the closest bins to the register. Killing time, I idly dug around while I waited, and soon spotted the familiar blue of an Intel CPU box. I flipped it over and saw an i7-14700 sticker!

Could I really have just found the frequency-locked version of Intel’s last-generation flagship for $10? And if so, had someone returned it because of the notorious instability issues? Something else? I could see the CPU in its plastic clamshell through the cardboard window. The back looked OK, but the top was covered in thermal paste.

I was suspicious, but by this time, I was next in line, curious, and decided to gamble $10 on Intel. That’s maybe not the smartest wager I could make in 2025, but I was curious, and figured this would at least be more interesting than wasting money on a scratch-off ticket. I checked out with three items: the filament, the CPU, and another pair of shoe insoles – seriously, I wear those things out and can never have enough.


You may like

(Image credit: Future)

But it was a 13th Gen Core i5 – a Core i5 13500, to be specific. Not quite one of the best CPUs, and a generation older than what the box promised, but still a very usable chip, with 14 cores, 20 threads, and a Turbo Frequency of 4.8 GHz. It’s not the fastest chip, but it currently sells for $264 at Newegg – not a bad pickup for $10. If it works, anyway.

So why was a 13th Gen Core i5 returned in a Core i7-14700 box? For those who haven’t already connected the dots, it’s likely that someone scammed Amazon by buying a new, higher-end chip than what they had, put the old one back in the box (helpfully obscured by thermal paste), and returned it for a refund. And Amazon, dealing as it does with millions of packages a day, seemingly accepted the return without checking that the returned product was actually what was returned, eventually selling it as part of a lot of liquidated returns.

I have no way to verify any of this, of course, but it seems the most likely scenario. And it’s certainly unsurprising that Amazon would just accept a return without paying someone to open the box, wipe off the thermal paste, and confirm they had received the Core i7-14700 the customer had ordered. There’s no way Amazon could continue to run its business if it had to do something like that with even half of its returns.

The only lingering question I had was whether my $10 13th Gen Core i5 CPU actually works. So I grabbed my trusty Hoto screwdriver, removed the AIO waterblock on the system that previously served as our external SSD storage testbed, and removed the 12th Gen Core i5 CPU that previously resided in the LGA 1700 socket. I then dropped my 13th Gen Core i5 into the motherboard, applied five small drops of thermal paste, re-attached the cooler, and plugged the system back in.

(Image credit: Future)

I pressed the power button and stared at the blackness of my test bench monitor for what felt like too many seconds, but eventually I saw the spinning circle and soon the familiar Windows 11 login screen. The old system booted up without an issue, and after running a few benchmarks, it looks like my $10 chip performs as expected.

Now the only question is, what should I do with it? I don’t need another gaming rig – I’m writing this on an AMD Ryzen 7950X / Nvidia RTX 4090 PC I built back in 2023, and I already have a few other systems and CPUs for testing PC cases and accessories. Maybe I’ll build a system for a family member or friend.

All I know is, while it didn’t turn out to be a 14th Gen Core i7 promised on the box, I’m happy with the results of my $10 CPU gamble, and I wonder what I’ll find at the returns store next week. I don’t really need any more PC hardware, but if I could pass up enticing tech that I don’t really need, I probably wouldn’t have gotten into this crazy business in the first place.



Source link

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Escape From Tarkov's Steam release comes with a snag for people who already own it
Game Updates

Escape From Tarkov’s Steam release comes with a snag for people who already own it

by admin



It’s that time of the year folks. The weather’s getting colder, the days are getting shorter, and Escape From Tarkov is getting Tweeted and Skeeted about again because of a controversial decision. This time, it’s because the game is coming to Steam, which in and of itself is a perfectly fine, perhaps even smart thing to do. The thing that’s being called into question however, is the answer to a question on the Steam release’s FAQ page about whether or not you’ll have to buy it again.


“To play Escape from Tarkov through Steam, you must purchase any edition of the game on Steam,” the FAQ page explains. “You can then link your existing Battlestate Games account with an active copy of the game to your Steam profile. If the editions differ, it will automatically use the higher edition of the two when launching the game through Steam.”


It then provides an example, noting that if you buy the standard edition on Steam, but your Battlestate Games account has the Unheard Edition, that’s the one you’ll be able to play on Steam. That’s… something? I just can’t see any particular reason you’d want to buy the game again aside from Steam Deck functionality, except the FAQ also notes that “Battlestate Games [have] no plans to support a version of the game for Steam Deck,” so you can throw that reason out of the window. There will be Steam achievements if that’s something you care about?


All of your character progress will carry over to the Steam version of the game as well, once you’ve linked your Battlestate Games account, and you’ll still be playing on the same servers as people who bought the game on its official website.


I have no idea how easy it would be to guarantee every single person who owns the game a copy on Steam as well, but it still feels like an odd choice in general. In any case, after being in early access for close to a decade, the full version of the game launches in a couple months’ time on November 15th.



Source link

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
'Blade Runner 2099' Gets Official 2026 Window by Prime Video
Product Reviews

The Tesla ‘Blade Runner 2049’ AI Lawsuit Just Hit an Interesting Snag

by admin


In April, movement on a 2024 lawsuit involving AI, Tesla, Warner Bros., and the production company behind Blade Runner 2049 caught the attention of sci-fi fans. Today, there’s an update that skews in favor of Warner Bros.

Alcon Entertainment, which produced the 2017 Denis Villeneuve film and has the Prime Video Blade Runner 2099 series on the way, alleged that promotional material used at an October 2024 Tesla event very closely resembled stills from that film.

Those concerns were further heightened by the fact that Alcon had asked Warner Bros., which distributes its films and was partnering with Tesla for a “robotaxi” or “Cybercab” unveiling, not to allow the use of Blade Runner 2049 imagery as part of the event.

The ensuing lawsuit alleges that Tesla circumvented that request by feeding Blade Runner 2049 stills into an AI image generator, and that’s what was eventually used to backdrop the Tesla presentation.

The lawsuit touches on several complicated issues, including, as the Hollywood Reporter points out, “whether the creation of a visual by an AI image generator by copying a portion of a copyrighted work without a license constitutes copyright infringement.” That’s one of the as-yet undecided issues in the ongoing proceedings.

As THR reports, now dismissed are “claims seeking to hold Warner Bros. Discovery responsible for Tesla’s use of the photos” as well as “another claim alleging that Warner Bros. Discovery had a duty to stop Tesla from infringing Alcon’s intellectual property.”

However, “Warner Bros. Discovery still faces a claim for contributory infringement, which accuses the studio of facilitating the alleged misconduct.”

You can read more about the lawsuit in THR; the complexities of this specific case, however, are coming at a time when Hollywood is facing issues centered on AI’s encroachment of intellectual property on an unprecedented scale.

Earlier this month, we learned that Warner Bros. joined Disney and Universal in filing a lawsuit against Midjourney; as Variety reported, the allegations accuse “the AI image-generating platform of blatant copyright violations” involving copyrighted WB characters.

We don’t know yet how Alcon, which (per THR) has one more try to “fix claims for direct and vicarious copyright infringement,” will ultimately fare in its legal fight. But even if Warner Bros. ends up overcoming the remaining claims in this case, it seems the studio has now taken new interest in protecting its library from copyright infringement with generative AI elsewhere.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.



Source link

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Snag 17 Lego Games For Only $15, Including Skywalker Saga And Batman Trilogy
Game Updates

Snag 17 Lego Games For Only $15, Including Skywalker Saga And Batman Trilogy

by admin



Humble has brought back one of the most popular game bundles from last year as part of its Best of Humble Bundle series. From now until September 24, you can get 17 Lego video games for only $15. Many of the biggest franchises from Traveller’s Tales extensive catalog of licensed games are included in the lineup: Star Wars, Batman, Marvel, Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, Jurassic World, and more. All told, Lego Worlds Collide 2025 is valued at $499, while the 2024 version was worth $419.

All 17 games in the bundle will be instantly added to your Humble account as Steam keys, and the vast majority run wonderfully on Steam Deck. Most of the games have split-screen cooperative modes and are great adventures for parents to play with kids.

Part of the proceeds from your $15 (or more) donation go toward Raiden Science Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to finding a cure for the genetic disorder UBA5 and other rare diseases that affect children.

Get 17 Lego video games for $15

Here’s the full list of games in Lego Worlds Collide 2025:

  • Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga Deluxe Edition
  • Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens Deluxe Edition
  • Lego The Lord of the Rings
  • Lego The Hobbit
  • Lego Batman
  • Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes
  • Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham Premium Edition
  • Lego DC Super-Villains Deluxe Edition
  • Lego Marvel Super Heroes
  • Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2 Deluxe Edition
  • Lego Marvel Avengers Deluxe Edition
  • Lego Jurassic World
  • Lego Disney Pixar’s The Incredibles
  • The Lego Movie Video Game
  • The Lego Movie 2 Video Game
  • The Lego Ninjago Movie Video Game
  • Lego Worlds

As usual, Humble has lower-priced tiers, but the full bundle offers the best value by a considerable margin. For $5, you can get Marvel Super Heroes, The Hobbit, Batman, and The Lego Movie Video Game. Step up to the $10 tier to add Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, The Lord of the Rings, The Lego Ninjago Movie, and Marvel’s Avengers Deluxe Edition.

The Lego Worlds Collide 2025 bundle does have a couple of minor differences compared to last year’s iteration. This time around, you also get Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga’s Deluxe Edition, whereas last year the bundle included a coupon to get the game for 85% off. Additionally, the two Lego Harry Potter games are noticeably absent, dropping the total number of titles from 18 to 17. But you’re getting extra content elsewhere: Four of the games that were standard editions last year are now Deluxe/Premium Editions that include season passes with additional content.

Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga

The headliner is The Skywalker Saga, the newest game in Traveller’s Tales series. The Skywalker Saga broke from the familiar mold by offering large, open-world environments, an overhauled combat system, and a modern third-person camera angle.

The Skywalker Saga was the biggest and most ambitious Lego game yet when it launched in 2022–though we’ll see if that changes when Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight releases in 2026. And what we’ve seen and played so far has been quite promising. With that in mind, now’s a pretty good time to revisit the first three Lego Batman games, all of which are included in Lego Worlds Collide 2025.

For bundle deals on real Lego sets, check out our roundup highlighting all of the great offers in Walmart’s Bricktember Sale. This limited-time promotion includes exclusive bundles for Lego Star Wars, Spider-Man, Harry Potter, Fortnite, and more. Walmart also has exclusive Lego Gift Sets featuring a bunch of Star Wars and Minecraft minifigures as well as discounts on the newly released Lego 2025 Advent Calendars.

Lego Set Bundle Deals (Only at Walmart)

Sign up for GameSpot’s Weekly Deals Newsletter:



Source link

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
BTC Traders Snag Cheap OTM Puts Bracing for NFP Shock
GameFi Guides

BTC Traders Snag Cheap OTM Puts Bracing for NFP Shock

by admin



As the August U.S. nonfarm payrolls report (NFP) nears, bitcoin BTC$109,544.20 traders on the CME are snapping up inexpensive bearish bets by purchasing far out-of-the-money puts, hedging against the possibility of an unexpectedly strong jobs print that could trigger a sell-off in risk assets.

The NFP, due Friday, is expected to show that the economy added 110,000 jobs, up from 73,000 in July, according to consensus estimates from FactSet. The jobless rate is expected to have held steady at 4.2%. Meanwhile, hourly earnings are projected to rise 0.3%, the same as in July.

The labor market outlook has already darkened, with JOLTS data revealing that job openings declined more than expected to 7.2 million in July, while a low quit rate points to moderating wage pressures. Early Thursday, ADP’s private sector employment report revealed that employers added just 54,000 jobs in August, a steep decline from the 104,000 positions recorded in July.

These figures strengthen the case for Fed rate cuts, a bullish development for asset prices. Yet, traders on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) are considering the possibility of an upbeat NFP report, which could dent Fed rate cut bets and send BTC lower.

“We’ve seen robust appetite for leveraged downside exposure through 5-delta, OTM puts, with consistent demand across the curve. This positioning signals investors are bracing for the possibility of an upside surprise in August’s NFP report that could re-anchor the Fed’s focus on inflation and reduce the odds of rate cuts this year,” Gabe Selby, head of research at CF Benchmarks, told CoinDesk.

Put options give the buyer the right, but not the obligation, to sell the underlying asset at a predetermined price by a specified future date. Traders buy puts to hedge against or to profit from a drop in the asset’s price.

The 5-delta put options are deep out-of-the-money puts with strike prices well below the current market price, making them relatively inexpensive compared to options closer to the spot price. Traders often buy these cheap “lottery ticket” puts as speculative bets on sharp downward moves or as low-cost hedges against extreme bearish scenarios.

Downside fear

Selby observed that, unlike previous pre-NFP periods when put buying was mainly focused on long-term expiries, this time the activity is spread across both short-term and long-term expiries.

“The breadth of put buying reflects a market recalibrating around asymmetric risks, as much of this activity is centred around far OTM puts, indicating traders still see a materially strong jobs print as an outside chance. That lines up with our view that even an in-line or slightly stronger-than-expected payrolls number would not be sufficient to tilt the Fed’s balance of risks back toward its price stability mandate,” Selby told CoinDesk.

Options listed on Deribit, the world’s largest crypto options exchange by volume and open interest, also exhibit downside fears, with short and near-dated puts trading at a notable premium to calls, according to risk reversals tracked by Amberdata.

BTC’s daily chart. (TradingView/CoinDesk)

As of writing, BTC changed hands at $109,950, down 2% on a 24-hour basis, according to CoinDesk data. The recovery from weekend lows ran out of steam above $112,000 on Wednesday, reinforcing the Aug. 3 low as key resistance.



Source link

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Close