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Marathon still lives, as Bungie announces new closed technical test ahead of public update

by admin October 8, 2025

Bungie has announced a closed technical test for its forthcoming shooter Marathon, which will take place later this month.

The limited, invite-only test will be in North America and Europe across PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Steam, with players able to sign-up now. The test itself will take place from 22nd – 27th October.

Marathon was fully revealed back in April, but in June Bungie indefinitely delayed the extraction shooter due to “passionate” fan feedback that was heavily critical.

Marathon | Gameplay Overview TrailerWatch on YouTube

Since then, Bungie has run several closed tests to gather further feedback. Now, it’s opening the playtests further.

“This is an important checkpoint for us as we test our improvements since Alpha, including three maps, five runner shells, prox chat, re-tuned combat pacing, solo queue, deeper environmental storytelling, and more,” said Bungie. “That said, the Technical Test build is a work in progress and will only include a portion of what’s planned for Marathon’s full release, focused on the early player experience.”

A public update on Marathon’s development is due “in the coming months”, following this playtest.

The test is also under NDA, meaning feedback won’t be made public.

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Development of Marathon feels like a critical time for Bungie. Following its acquisition by Sony back in 2022, Bungie has failed to release a hit game, Destiny 2 player counts have dropped, and the company has been rocked by accusations of toxicity right up until this year.

Bungie admitted after Marathon’s reveal the game used an external artist’s work without permission and morale was reportedly in “free fall” as it dealt with the response to the game.

CEO Pete Parsons has since left the company after years of criticism and layoffs.

As for Sony, it’s keen not to repeat mistakes made in the release of the ill-fated live-service shooter Concord, which Marathon has already been compared to. Back in August, chief financial officer Lin Tao admitted the company’s live-service strategy is “not entirely going smoothly”.

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October 8, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

I tested NotebookLM and found it very useful for academic, technical, and general research

by admin October 3, 2025

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Navigating the web to analyze data can be tiring. From scouring various websites looking for the correct data to analyzing and summarizing the data you’ve obtained, online research can be hectic. But what if I told you it doesn’t have to be?

Thanks to recent artificial intelligence (AI) advancements, you can have a virtual research partner that helps you analyze and summarize data from the web. That partner is named NotebookLM.

NotebookLM is an AI-based research and note-taking app developed by Google, the company best known for its eponymous search engine. Released in 2023, NotebookLM has amassed a large user base, thanks to its features that help users research and retrieve insights from bulky documents.

How does NotebookLM work, and what sets it apart from similar tools? Is it free or paid, or both? What are its key features? I’ve reviewed the app extensively to answer these essential questions. Read on to learn in-depth about NotebookLM and whether it’s a suitable tool to adopt.

NotebookLM: Plans and pricing

NotebookLM is a freemium tool, i.e., it has free and paid versions. The free NotebookLM is a very capable tool that integrates the latest models of Gemini, Google’s proprietary large language model (LLM). It lets users upload PDFs, Word documents, and presentations to extract data and generate summaries. You can ask NotebookLM questions and get detailed answers under this free plan.

However, the free plan imposes limits on the number of documents you can upload, the number of daily chat queries, notebooks, and audio and video generations. Specifically, the free plan allows 100 notebooks, each with up to 50 sources, 50 daily chat queries, 3 audio overview generations, and 3 video overviews.

You can increase the limitations by subscribing to the NotebookLM Pro plan. This plan allows 500 notebooks, 500 daily chat queries, 20 daily audio generations, and 20 daily video overviews. As a Pro user, you can also share your notebooks with other users and extensively configure the AI assistant’s response style, among other benefits.

To become a Pro user, you need to subscribe to the Google AI Pro plan, which costs $20 monthly. This plan unlocks more than just NotebookLM’s advanced features. It also unlocks access to AI features on other Google apps.

That said, at $20 monthly, the Google AI Pro plan is quite pricey. It’s justifiable if you’ll heavily use the provided features, but otherwise, the free NotebookLM version works well for the average user. You can try the Google AI Pro plan for one month to test its features before making a final decision.

(Image credit: Google)

NotebookLM: Features

NotebookLM is a mobile app you can download on an iOS or Android device. It’s not accessible via a web browser. This app functions as a companion you can use to extract data from uploaded documents or external web pages.

You can create distinct notebooks on the app, with the free plan allowing up to 100 notebooks. On each notebook, you can extract data from up to 50 sources on the free plan and 300 sources on the Pro plan.

Here’s an illustration to make it simpler to understand. Imagine you’re a student tasked with reviewing a research paper and generating key insights. The research paper is bulky, with over 5,000 words.

Instead of scanning through every paragraph manually to extract key points, you can upload the research paper in PDF format to NotebookLM. Then, NotebookLM will study and analyze the paper on your behalf, and you can ask it comprehensive questions related to the research paper.

For instance, if the research paper is about the prevalence of a disease in different regions, you can ask NotebookLM to provide a detailed breakdown of the number of infections observed in each region and the percentage compared to the total number of infections. You can ask it to visualize this data for you.

A research paper is just a single example. Instead of uploading a PDF file to NotebookLM, you can provide a specific web address and ask it to analyze the information on that web page.

For example, NotebookLM can analyze a long news article about recent mergers & acquisitions in the tech industry, and you can ask specific questions like “Which companies got acquired recently?” “How much was [company name] acquired for?” “Give me a breakdown of all the acquired companies mentioned in the article and how much they were acquired for?”

NotebookLM solves a key problem that most people experience. Reading through and analyzing large volumes of information can get tiring. Often, when I experienced this problem, I always wished for a virtual assistant that could help me sort through the information and find the desired key points. I was happy when Google announced NotebookLM in 2023, and I became an early adopter.

My main use case for NotebookLM is sifting through voluminous articles and reports to generate insights. I’ve used it heavily for both personal and work activities. For example, I often read detailed economic reports issued by think-tanks and government agencies. NotebookLM has extensively helped me to analyze and note crucial information from these reports.

I like that NotebookLM lets users share notebooks with friends, family, and colleagues, even on the free version. As a free user, you can grant a collaborator “Viewer” or “Editor” access to your notebook.

(Image credit: Google)

A Viewer has access to uploaded source documents and shared notes, but can’t remove these documents or add new ones. In contrast, an Editor can remove or add new documents to your notebook. Sharing is as easy as generating a unique link and sending it to the desired collaborators, who can access it with their Google accounts.

If you’re subscribed to the Pro plan, you can share a notebook in chat-only mode, wherein the collaborator can’t modify the source documents but can ask the AI system questions related to the documents.

When sharing a notebook on the Pro plan, you can monitor two key metrics about how collaborators have interacted with your notebooks: the number of users who have made at least one query per day and the number of queries made by each user. However, these metrics are only available if you’ve shared the notebook with at least four other users.

NotebookLM doesn’t just issue text answers. It can give audio answers in a creative way. For instance, I used NotebookLM to turn an article into an audio conversation. The conversation was akin to two human hosts discussing a deep dive into the article on a podcast. The AI hosts summarized the article, highlighted key information, and had back-and-forth conversations about the information contained in the article. However, don’t expect perfection.

In my case, I observed several mistakes during the audio conversations, including key information being skipped, factual inaccuracies, and references to information not present in the document. Likewise, the speech sounded unnatural in several cases, owing to excessive use of filler words, such as “you know” and “like,” which isn’t typical in real human conversations.

That’s not to say the audio overview feature isn’t helpful. Indeed, it’s beneficial, and such a feature available for mass usage would have been unthinkable a few years ago. However, you shouldn’t rely entirely on it to summarize documents. It works most of the time, but a minor mistake can be significant when analyzing documents.

Similar to the audio overview feature I just discussed, NotebookLM also has a video overview feature. That is, users can turn documents and articles into AI-generated video narrations. The narrations will include images, quotes, figures, and diagrams pulled from your document, with an AI voice dissecting the key points in a conversational tone.

I liked that I could tailor video overviews according to my needs, for example, by selecting the images and quotes I wanted to include in a video narration. I also liked that I could create multiple video overviews for the same PDF document or web page, gaining different perspectives.

Visual learning is more interactive and fun compared to reading long text. If you have a long text piece, NotebookLM makes the perfect companion to convert the long text into a visual narration that’s easy to learn from. However, beware of the limitations.

I noticed some mistakes in the video overviews I generated, similar to those of audio overviews. These mistakes included inaccurate information and some key data I highlighted being skipped. Just as I mentioned earlier, you shouldn’t rely 100% on NotebookLM to summarize your documents. Manual reading remains important.

NotebookLM is very useful, especially the free tier, but it still needs significant improvements. The good news is that Google is committed to continually improving the underlying Gemini LLM that NotebookLM is based on. It has released various updates to boost Gemini’s accuracy and will continue doing so amid intense competition from the likes of ChatGPT.

(Image credit: Google)

NotebookLM: Interface and in use

NotebookLM is as simple to navigate as a mobile app can be. After opening the app, the homepage lists all the notebooks you’ve previously created, or prompts you to create a notebook if you haven’t done so. The button to create a new notebook is prominently highlighted at the bottom.

You can easily create a notebook, add files, and begin asking questions and generating audio or video overviews. Every feature is neatly arranged at the bottom of the dashboard, and you can quickly upload a file, paste text, or enter an external web address to be analyzed. I give NotebookLM a perfect score in user-friendliness.

NotebookLM: Support

As a NotebookLM user, the first place to consult when troubleshooting issues is the official NotebookLM Help Center hosted by Google. This Help Center has comprehensive details about every functionality accessible on NotebookLM.

From learning how to use NotebookLM to changing configurations and resolving commonly encountered problems, the Help Center provides detailed answers. Personally, I encountered most issues when trying to import files, some of which failed to import initially, but the Help Center quickly solved my problem.

If you’re a Google AI Pro subscriber, you can get direct help from Google’s support team in addition to the self-help resources from the official Help Center. Google’s support team is reachable via live chat, email, and telephone and provides detailed answers.

NotebookLM: The competition

NotebookLM is a unique tool that combines note-taking and artificial intelligence-based research. Most rival apps focus on one of these functions but don’t combine the two. Its main competitors aren’t as popular, and they are mostly new apps launched within the last four years.

A competitor I’d like to highlight is Logically (formerly called Afforai). Just like NotebookLM, Logically lets you upload documents and ask its AI assistant in-depth questions related to the document. It doesn’t stop there, but also helps you add more relevant information to text documents, such as citations, tables, and diagrams.

Logically has a free plan and a paid version that unlocks unlimited access to its AI assistant. Users can also pay for addons like external large language models, a file annotator, and a reference manager.

I can’t confidently say Logically is better than NotebookLM or vice versa. However, Logically has a broader feature set that combines both NotebookLM’s core AI-based research feature and other useful AI-based features like writing assistance, file annotation, and academic reference management.

NotebookLM: Final verdict

NotebookLM is a valuable tool to have in your toolkit. It makes things easier when researching information online, thanks to its ability to extract key insights from long swathes of text and convert voluminous text into engaging visual summaries.

I’ll proudly recommend NotebookLM to students, teachers, corporate professionals, or information sleuths who engage in extensive research. Whether on the free or paid version, NotebookLM offers features that make research less hectic and more interactive.

We’ve listed the best text-to-speech software.

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October 3, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

GOG wants to revive more classic Japanese games on PC: ‘Working with Japanese partners often requires demonstrating both technical capability and cultural understanding’

by admin September 12, 2025

They may not officially be called Good Old Games any more, but GOG still sells plenty of games that are both old and good alongside new releases like Hollow Knight: Silksong. Speaking to Automaton, senior PR rep Piotr Gnyp emphasized that by saying, “GOG has been doing this for well over a decade, and we’re constantly reaching out to secure iconic games. Sometimes, it takes years. Diablo came to GOG after almost a decade of conversations. Preservation often means knocking on the same doors again and again, hearing ‘no’ most of the time, until one day, it’s finally a ‘yes.'”

That paid off with GOG eventually getting to re-release a handful of Japanese games that were difficult to get hold of in the west like Silent Hill 4: The Room, some of the early Metal Gears, and the OG Castlevanias and Contras. Capcom eventually agreed to let GOG re-release Dino Crisis and the first three Resident Evils, though it took “time, persistence, and trust-building,” Gnyp says. A re-release of Breath of Fire 4 earlier this year was one of the stand-outs of GOG’s preservation initiative launched in late 2024.

“Working with Japanese partners often requires demonstrating both technical capability and cultural understanding. In this case, Capcom treated these launches as full new releases, so we followed a complete QA and certification process, just like we would for a brand-new game.”

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Gnyp went on to say that, while sometimes a game’s creators or an external partner is involved at this stage, “in most cases, it’s GOG handling the porting and compatibility work.” Games in the GOG Preservation Program get some extra care and attention, whether they’re packaged with fan-made mods or otherwise altered to run on modern operating systems, have controller support, and generally embrace the modern world.

“Our internal tech team analyzes each game,” Gnyp said, “builds custom wrappers or tools when needed, and thoroughly tests the result. That’s how we make sure the experience is authentic but also practical for today’s players.”

Not every game that makes it to GOG gets to be preserved forever. The first two Warcraft games were pulled by Blizzard, as were Adult Swim games like Westerado and Fist Puncher. Sometimes GOG has to remove a game from sale when it’s delisted for a rights issue and sometimes it’s because the publisher wants to sell it on their own storefront, but recently there’s been a more censorious group trying to get games removed from sale. GOG responded by giving 13 horny games away for free.

“At GOG,” Gnyp said, “as a platform devoted to Good Old Games and videogame preservation, we see it as a game preservation issue. Every year, many games are disappearing, for various reasons. Every game that disappears from distribution is potentially lost to game preservation efforts. It is particularly worrying when games are potentially vanishing due to external pressure.”

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September 12, 2025 0 comments

NFT Gaming

HBAR Slumps 4% as Technical Breakdown Triggers Heavy Selling

by admin September 5, 2025

HBAR suffered a sharp downturn over the past 24 hours, sliding 4.32% from $0.22 to $0.21 between September 3 at 15:00 and September 4 at 14:00.

Selling pressure intensified as resistance at $0.222 capped attempts at recovery, leading to a breakdown below the $0.212–$0.214 support zone.

The move was accompanied by heightened volatility, with a $0.011 trading range reflecting a 4.93% swing. Volume peaked dramatically at 179.34 million during the 13:00 hour, a sign of capitulation as sellers overwhelmed buyers.

Trading turned particularly volatile between 13:30 and 14:29 on September 4, when HBAR briefly spiked from $0.213 to $0.216 on a 42.37 million volume surge.

The uptick was short-lived, however, as profit-taking quickly erased gains, sending the token back to $0.213. A new trading range formed between $0.212 and $0.214, with elevated activity sustaining 3–8 million volume per minute until 14:10. Stabilization emerged into the session close, with HBAR settling near $0.213 as volumes tapered off.

The combination of technical breakdowns and macro-driven selling has underscored market fragility, even in the face of regulatory progress for Hedera. Traders now watch for signs of stabilization before considering long positions, with the $0.212–$0.214 zone a critical area for price action in the near term.

HBAR/USD (TradingView)

Charts Flash Red as Bears Seize Control

Resistance holds firm at $0.222 during early trading session.
Downtrend intensifies with accelerating selling pressure into close.
Support emerges at $0.212-$0.214 before critical breakdown.
Support failure signals deeper correction ahead for bulls.
Volume spikes to 179.34 million at 13:00 marking capitulation phase.
Single-minute volume explosion hits 42.37 million at 13:50 intraday peak.
Range-bound action develops between $0.212-$0.214 after profit-taking wave.
Sustained volume averages 3-8 million per minute through 14:10 session.
Price stabilizes near $0.213 as volume contracts toward period end.

Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk’s full AI Policy.

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September 5, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

As bugs and bad performance spoil an otherwise excellent Helldivers 2 update, Arrowhead CEO says its ‘technical debt is crippling’

by admin September 3, 2025

A major Helldivers 2 update is here, but somebody invited the wrong kind of bugs to the party. The Into the Unjust update takes the fight to Terminid strongholds, plunging Super Earth’s finest into cave systems guarded by acid-spitting bug dragons.

That’s all well and good, but a new wave of bugs (the software kind) is threatening to ruin the good times. Folks are reporting huge, inexplicable framerate drops before and during missions, others are crashing all over the place, and those new cave expeditions have introduced some annoying quirks, like a tendency to respawn on top of the level, where the only option is to fall to your death.

Helldivers 2’s technical state is bad enough that Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani spent hours yesterday responding to complaints in the Helldivers Discord, taking responsibility for the instability and explaining how Helldivers 2 has built up “technical debt” over time.

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“Performance is something we’ve talked about a TON today. It’s not good enough. A fix for some of the most immediate things is being prepped,” Jorjani responded to one fan.

“The technical debt is crippling,” he responded to another. “With the Xbox release behind us, we’ll be able to take a much better stab at it. Like a double stab. With a bigger knife.”

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(Image credit: Discord)(Image credit: Discord)(Image credit: Discord)

In games, tech debt is typically associated with technical problems increasing as a game grows more complex. That’s what Helldivers 2 is going through in a big way, according to Jorjani.

Compared to other games with regular update schedules, Helldivers 2 changes a lot: An average Apex Legends update may add a new character and map element, but Helldivers 2 receives new enemy types, weapons, maps, and missions every few months. It’s enough that a studio of any size would struggle to keep it squeaky clean, and Arrowhead isn’t particularly big.

That said, Arrowhead isn’t making excuses. In a handful of responses, Jorjani reinforced that he considers the current state of the game unacceptable:

“We’ve been lax in setting standards for what’s fine.”

“This is us trying to get our shit in order: make fun content and keep tech afloat. [We’re] not quite there.”

When asked if Helldivers 2 is due for an “Operation Health” update that focuses solely on performance over content, Jorjani said he’d like to avoid that if possible.

“The way we want to operate is that every update is also a health update. But we didn’t hit the mark with this one.”

“We’d prefer not to have to do a performance-only update, but if that’s something that is needed, we’ll do it. But no one update will tackle all tech debt.”

For what it’s worth, I ran a few missions last night with minimal issues (no crashes or major framerate drops), so it’s not exactly unplayable at the moment, but other bugs that predate yesterday’s update have been grinding our gears, like one that causes audio to get horribly staticky and loud until the mission’s over.

Fingers crossed that the planned hotfix will squash the most pressing problems. Jorjani didn’t give a timeframe for such an update, but given the speed of past hotfixes, I’d be surprised if it didn’t arrive by the end of the week.

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September 3, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

It really sucks” Battlefield 6 technical director bummed out about those unable to play due to Secure Boot requirement, believes anti-cheat cat-and-mouse game will “never end

by admin August 28, 2025

The Battlefield 6 open betas proved exceptionally popular earlier this month for many, but a significant portion of the PC playerbase were met with a daunting wall to play thanks to the game’s Secure Boot requirement. This technical hurdle is in place for the game’s anti-cheat, a kernel-level bit of software dedicated to curbing a rising cheating problem across online FPS games.

Alas, the Battlefield 6 beta still had a few cheaters running around and ruining things for their fellow players. To find out more about whether Battlefield 6’s Javalin anti-cheat was successful in the eyes of EA, Eurogamer sat down to talk to Battlefield 6 technical director Christian Buhl. Buhl would express pride at the anti-cheat team’s work, sadness for those unable to play due to the Secure Boot requirement, and resigned to him and his peer’s fate in the endless battle against cheaters.

Cheeck out some Battlefield 6 multiplayer gameplay here!Watch on YouTube

“We were pretty happy with how the anti-cheat performed,” Buhl beamed when asked how he felt the anti-cheat held up during the betas. “Obviously I’ll say we can never be perfect, anti-cheat is always a cat-and-mouse game where we’re constantly going back and forth and keeping on top of what the cheaters are doing. But from the beginning this was something we put a high priority on, so when we launch this game we have a really strong anti-cheat program in place.”

Buhl would elaborate by sharing that Battlefield 6 had two anti-cheat teams working on the game, in what he described as a “pretty massive investment” by EA. There’s the EA anti-cheat team that built the Javalin anti-cheat team, as well as the Battlefield 6 anti-cheat team that focused on “integrating EA’s technology as well as monitoring and all the other responsibilities you’d expect from an anti-cheat team”.

The reason for this expense is to ensure a “fair play experience”, which was “critical to Battlefield’s success” according to Buhl. The cost for the user is granting additional access to Battlefield Studios’ and EA’s anti-cheat, as well as enabling Secure Boot on their PC. This led to many turning away from the PC beta, something Buhl is bummed out about.

Those able to get the game running are having a blast.

“The fact is I wish we didn’t have to do things like Secure Boot” Buhl admits. “It does prevent some players from playing the game. Some people’s PCs can’t handle it and they can’t play: that really sucks. I wish everyone could play the game with low friction and not have to do these sorts of things.”

Buhl continues: “Unfortunately these are some of the strongest tools in our toolbox to stop cheating. Again, nothing makes cheating impossible, but enabling Secure Boot and having kernel-level access makes it so much harder to cheat and so much easier for us to find and stop cheating.”

So where does this cat-and-mouse game end? Does it ever end, and will players have to get used to providing kernel-level access, enabling Secure Boot, and opening their door to other technical requirements for new games?

“The short answer is it never ends,” states Buhl. “We expect our anti-cheat team will continue working on technology, and if at some point there’s a new technological requirement that we’ll have to add that’s critical to securing the fairness of the game, we’ll do that. Or we’ll certainly evaluate that. Anti-cheat never ends, it’s a constant cat-and-mouse game. We’re never going to win. Hopefully they’re never going to win. But in the end, we want to be as safe and secure as possible.

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August 28, 2025 0 comments