Image: Supergiant Games Imagine the most perfect barbecue — a prolific spread of smoked meats, all the right sides, every pie, type of cookie or cake, and even your grandmother’s famous dinner rolls. But there’s a catch: most of the food is kept behind glass to be unlocked at a later date, and you are starving. That’s what it’s like playing the Hades 2 technical test.Spoilers for the Hades 2 technical test.Hades 2, like its predecessor, is a roguelike. You play as Melinoë, the long-lost daughter of Hades and sister of Zagreus, the first game’s protagonist. Unlike her brother, Melinoë isn’t trying to break out of hell. Instead, she’s trying to break into it as Chronos, Titan of Time, has taken over, kidnapping Melinoë’s mother, brother, and father. Reaching... Continue reading…

Meta has finally announced the release of Llama 3, the latest iteration in the company's series of Llama large language models. This new model comes with enhanced capabilities and is available in two configurations: 8 billion and 70 billion parameters, each designed to cater to a broad spectrum of AI applications. It introduces major improvements, including more robust reasoning skills, and promises a significant enhancement in its coding and instruction-following abilities, promising to be the most versatile and capable open-source model available to date.

Image: Nintendo If you’re the kind of Mario Kart 8 player who cares about winning and not just playing their favorite characters (Daisy and Peach supremacy), choosing the best combination of driver, vehicle, and wheels gets tricky. Luckily, thanks to data science and 19th-century Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, there’s a way to figure that out. Data scientist Antoine Mayerowitz applies one of Pareto’s principles, the Pareto front, to plot the best combination among the 703,560 possible decisions players must make in Mario Kart. Eurogamer helpfully explains that a Pareto front finds the best possible solution to a problem with different objectives. In a cool piece of data visualization you should definitely check out, Mayerowitz narrows down the... Continue reading…

Image: Target Target is scaling back the presence of physical media in its stores. A spokesperson for Target tells IGN that the company is “transitioning the limited assortment of DVDs” it sells in stores to its website.“Moving forward, we’ll offer select DVDs in stores when they are newly released or during key times throughout the year when they are more popular, like for gift giving during the holidays,” Target says. That will make Target’s physical DVD section even smaller and only available during specific times. You’ll still be able to buy “thousands” of DVDs on Target’s website, but I have to wonder how broad its selection will be.Reports about Target backing away from DVDs first emerged on Wednesday, when the X account @PhysicalMedia posted... Continue reading…

Image: Alive Coverage Four nights of unique set lists and long jams presented a much different production challenge than U2’s 40-show residency. Continue reading…

Kia’s lineup of electric vehicles are growing. | Image: Kia The Kia EV2, the automaker’s small, affordable electric crossover, has been spotted on the street in camouflage. It’s the first time the model has been seen in the wild, although the EV2 is not currently confirmed for the US.The timing of the sighting is particularly significant given recent news that Tesla may have canned its plans for a $25,000 mass-market “Model 2” vehicle. Elon Musk reportedly mothballed the affordable EV in favor of going all in on the company’s plans for a fully autonomous robotaxi.No official price has been set for the Kia EV2, but Electrek says it could be 20 million won, or about $15,000. Other reports have it under $30,000 — which would be considerably more affordable than the current average retail price... Continue reading…

When you're looking for a top-notch gaming handheld, Lenovo's Legion Go is a device more than worth your consideration, even when compared to the best gaming laptops. However, if you want to customize your Legion Go without adding the bulk of a case, a skin is your best bet.

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images The Senate has passed a bill reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a controversial program that allows warrantless spying on foreign “targets,” but a long, knock-down, drag-out fight over amendments kept the Senate in session past midnight on Friday, when the surveillance program officially expired. To be clear, the spying wasn’t actually going to stop. As Sen. Mike Lee (R-OH) pointed out on the Senate floor on Friday afternoon, the FISA court recently granted a government request to allow the program to continue until April 2025. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) claimed that the FISA court’s extension of Section 702 certification “doesn’t mean the program can continue uninterrupted for another year.”“... Continue reading…

Having a negligible market share in the browser space didn’t discourage or stop Mozilla from adding new features to Firefox. It is a solid browser with rich theme and extension support, a long list of features, and capable mobile apps. But how does it fare against the market leader, Google Chrome? If you are on the fence between using Chrome or Firefox on your laptop, read our detailed comparison and pick the better option for yourself.

Intel has an uphill battle with the launch of Arrow Lake, the company's next-gen architecture for desktop-class processors. AMD's Ryzen 7000 series was a hit with the media and general public with many leaping onto the AM5 platform to take advantage of Zen 4's improved efficiency and reliable performance. Intel's 14th-gen CPUs aren't terrible, they're just not as good as they could be from Intel.

After shooting high-quality photos and videos on your iPhone 15 Pro Max, you may resort to iCloud to back them up. After all, this cloud storage service is baked into iOS 17 and works automatically in the background. However, some users may eventually move on to a new cloud service. In this case, they would first need to download all their photos and videos from iCloud and then upload them to the alternative. If you're not sure how to download your media from iCloud, you can follow the steps in this guide.

Valve says each unit has received over 100 tests and meets the same performance standards as new Steam Decks. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge It’s not often we see an excellent portable gaming PC like the Steam Deck on sale for nearly half off, but today’s your lucky day. So long as you don’t mind buying it in certified refurbished condition, you can save hundreds when you purchase it directly (with a one-year warranty included) from Valve right now.The refurbished Steam Deck starts at $279 for the base model with 64GB of storage, which is about $120 cheaper than buying it in new condition. And if you need more storage, the 256GB and 512GB models are both on sale, too, for $319 and $359, respectively. Given they both start at $529 and $649 in new condition, that’s almost like getting them for up to half off. What’s great, too, is that Value says it’s thoroughly tested each... Continue reading…