One of Nintendo’s most recognizable names is stepping down. Today the company announced that the aptly named Doug Bowser, who took over as president of Nintendo of America from Reggie Fils-Aimé in 2019, will be retiring. He’ll stay on until the end of the year — December 31st, to be precise — and will be replaced by Devon Pritchard, who currently serves as executive vice president of NoA.Bowser, who was in charge of sales and marketing before taking over the top job at NoA, was in the role for six years and oversaw a dramatic expansion for Nintendo, which included forays into theme parks and feature films, as well as the recent launch of the Nintendo Switch 2.Today, I announced my plan to retire from Nintendo, effective December 31, 2025. Nintendo has been an integral part of my life for 44 years, starting with Donkey Kong Arcade as a kid in college. It has been an honor to contribute to this incredible company and bring our beloved… pic.twitter.com/nIzCnHjQ9E— Doug Bowser (@thetruebowser) September 25, 2025“One of my earliest video game experiences was playing the arcade version of Donkey Kong,” Bowser said in a statement. “Since that time, all things Nintendo have continued to be a passion for both me and my family. Leading Nintendo of America has been the honor of a lifetime, and I am proud of what our team has accomplished in both business results and the experiences we’ve created for consumers.”In addition to promoting Pritchard, who has been with the company since 2006, Nintendo’s American arm will be adding Satoru Shibata as CEO. Shibata currently serves as managing executive officer and corporate director at Nintendo’s headquarters in Kyoto, and will continue on in both roles moving forward. In a statement about the moves, Pritchard said that “Doug has been a fantastic mentor, and I look forward to building on the incredible foundation he has helped establish.”

Anker’s 65W 735 Charger is $14 off in the run-up to October 7th. Amazon’s October Prime Day event (also known as Prime Big Deal Days) doesn’t officially start until October 7th, but that doesn’t mean you have to wait to find a good deal on charging accessories. Many speedy wall adapters, power banks, and large battery backup solutions are already on sale now from brands like Anker and Jackery. Most of these products are great for keeping your smartphone, laptop, or tablet charged at a cafe, while others are made to power your small appliances while you’re out camping.For starters, Anker’s 633 Magnetic Battery is available in multiple colors from Amazon and Anker (with code WS7DV2FSCH8D) for $39.99 ($20 off), its best price to date. The compact, MagSafe-equipped battery pack can supply compatible iPhone models with up to 7.5W of power and features an integrated kickstand, so you can prop up your phone while it charges. Alternatively, you can plug your device into its USB-C port for 20W charging, rather than relying on wireless charging, which is ideal when you’re in a rush and have a USB-C cord. Anker’s 633 power bank also supports passthrough charging — meaning you can charge a device and the battery pack simultaneously — and features A USB-A port on the bottom that lets you plug in a second gadget if needed. At 10,000mAh, it also has enough power and capacity to fully charge most smartphones at least once, with some juice left in the tank.Anker 633 Magnetic BatteryWhere to Buy: $59.99 $39.99 at Amazon $59.99 $39.99 at Anker (with code WS7DV2FSCH8D)If you could use a wall outlet, Anker’s 735 Charger is currently matching its all-time low of $25.99 ($14 off) at Amazon and Anker’s online storefront (with promo code WS7DV2L3ORHI). The three-port, 65W charger features a slim design that won’t block other outlets, as well as two USB-C ports with a combined output of 65W, which is fast enough to quickly charge phones, handheld game consoles, and select laptops at or near their maximum speed. It can even charge a 14-inch MacBook Pro from zero to 50 percent in 35 minutes.The single USB-A port tops out at 22.5W, which is still plenty fast for charging devices with small batteries, including mice, keyboards, headphones, and wireless earbuds. The charger will automatically adjust the wattage sent to each port if more than one device is connected, too, and the top USB-C port will always receive the most juice in every instance. One of my favorite touches is that its prongs fold down, which keeps them from getting damaged while traveling.Anker 735 Charger (Nano II 65W)Where to Buy: $39.99 $25.99 at Amazon $39.99 $25.99 at Anker (with code WS7DV2L3ORHI)If you’re an avid camper, Jackery’s Explorer 1000 V2 is a great way to keep your essential gadgets powered up when you go off the grid. The power station has three AC outlets, a DC outlet, two USB-C ports, and a USB-A port. Jackery says its 1,070Wh battery can charge a smartphone up to 74 times, a laptop up to 14 times, or power a coffee maker for over an hour and a half. An early October Prime Day deal knocks its price down to $429 ($370 off) at Amazon, its biggest discount of the year so far. You can top up the Explorer 1000 V2 by plugging it into an outlet, allowing you to take it from zero to 100 percent in as little as an hour with the emergency charging setting enabled. The company also sells a solar panel that’s compatible with it, which increases the charging time but should allow you to get by if you really can’t reach an outlet. The power station typically outputs up to 1,500W but has a peak output of 3,000W in case you plug in multiple appliances at once. Jackery says the power station’s battery cells should retain around 70 percent of their maximum capacity after 4,000 power cycles, which is equivalent to about 10 years.Jackery Explorer 1000 v2Where to Buy: $799 $429 at Amazon $799 $449 at Jackery

Avenir Telecom is making a line of new Energizer-branded laptops aimed at marathon battery life. There are three productivity-focused models: the Energizer EnergyBook Pro 15, EnergyBook Pro XL 18, and flagship Energizer EnergyBook Pro Ultra. The Pro Ultra sports a giant 18-inch display with a meager 1920 x 1200 resolution and an absolutely massive 192Wh battery.It’s listed as including an AMD Ryzen 5 processor, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, and 512GB NVMe SSD. Ports include USB-C, USB 3.0, HDMI, SD card reader, and a headphone jack. There isn’t much more info at this time, except a price of €449 ($523). That’s likely a starting price for one of the smaller models. We’ve reached out to Avenir Telecom for more details.But let’s get back to that big 192Wh battery, claiming to get up to 28 hours of “intensive office use” or seven days of standby time. That ain’t gonna fly. Literally.The FAA does not allow passengers to take a lithium battery greater than 160Wh on a plane, and even one above 100Wh requires air carrier approval. It’s why most big laptops top out at 100Wh. The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority has some exceptions for large batteries meant for wheelchairs and mobility aids, but they’re supposed to be outside the device. Perhaps the Energizer is strictly a road trip laptop?

In a four-part series of religious lectures in San Francisco, Peter Thiel - yes, that Peter Thiel - has argued that the End Times are nigh and that a biblical Antichrist - yes, that Antichrist - will come to Earth in the form of onerous government regulations placed on science, technology, and AI. These are, incidentally, areas where the tech billionaire, venture capitalist, and cofounder of Palantir has a vested financial interest.Thiel, 57, has lately expressed a fascination with eschatology, or the study of the end of the world, taking a notably esoteric interpretation of biblical and philosophical texts. Last December, Thiel recorde …Read the full story at The Verge.

Hollow Knight: Silksong builds on the formula that made Team Cherry’s first game a modern classic. Pharloom is bigger and more vertical, but it’s also full of hidden mechanics that are easy to miss. Beyond Hornet’s needle and silk powers, Silksong packs clever systems that change how you fight, explore, and even spend your hard-earned rosaries. Here are four surprising things you probably didn’t know you could do in Hollow Knight: Silksong.

Grooves etched onto the back of a microchip allow coolant to flow through them. Microsoft is making advances with a new way to cool microchips that it says could lead to more energy-efficient data centers in the future. It's a method called microfluidics that involves liquid coolant flowing directly into the silicon. After lab tests, Microsoft found that this strategy can remove heat up to three times better than cold plates currently used in data centers today. The company announced this week that it was able to develop a microfluidic cooling system for a server running core services for a simulated Microsoft Teams meeting. If they can find the same success outside of a lab, microfluidics could cut down the amount …Read the full story at The Verge.

Twitch is launching a feature this week I’ve wanted for a very long time: the ability to scrub back on a livestream right from a streamer’s main channel page. You can already look back at previous parts of livestreams as they’re going on by clicking through to the Videos section of a streamer’s profile, but it seems like this change will be a much easier way to rewind and see what you missed.Rewinding will be available first on the web, and initially only for Twitch Turbo subscribers or for channels that you subscribe to individually. Twitch is doing this more limited launch to start because the company needs to make sure that the feature doesn’t become a way to get around ads, CEO Dan Clancy says in a livestream. Twitch plans to release the feature to everyone at some point in the future and is also working on bringing it to mobile.

Nvidia is open-sourcing Audio2Face, its AI-powered tool that generates realistic facial animations for 3D avatars — all based on audio input. The change means developers can now use the tool and its underlying framework to create realistic 3D characters for their games and apps.Nvidia’s Audio2Face works by analyzing the “acoustic features” of a voice, allowing it to generate animation data that it maps to the 3D avatar’s facial expressions and lip movement. The company notes that developers can use the tool to create 3D characters for pre-scripted content, as well as for livestreams.Some developers have already used Audio2Face in their games, including Chernobylite 2: Exclusion Zone creator Farm51, as well as the developers of Alien: Rogue Incursion Evolved Edition.In addition to open sourcing the Audio2Face models and software development kits, Nvidia is making the tool’s training frame available, allowing users to tweak its models for different use cases.

After delaying the inevitable for as long as I could, I finally bought an OLED monitor this month. The Alienware AW3423DWF QD-OLED monitor was available at a great price, so I pulled the trigger to experience what an ultrawide OLED display feels like. While games and videos looked spectacular due to the sheer quality of the QD-OLED panel, not everything was perfect. Text rendering was suddenly weird, HDR wasn't functioning like it was supposed to, and I still hadn't completed the OLED burn-in prevention checklist. Here's what I did next.

I've talked about Raycast a few times already here on XDA. Since I discovered this app on my Mac Mini, it's been an absolutely game-changer, saving me time and frustrations with many of the tasks I need on a daily basis. Raycast was exclusive to macOS for a long time, but recently, a beta for Windows launched, and much like my colleague Adam Conway, I love it there too.

The Raspberry Pi enjoys the maximum spotlight in the single-board computer (SBC) category. It’s got a versatile lineup of basic to top-tier boards that cater to multiple segments. The Pico and Zero 2W fit into a single-purpose role, while the 4B and 5 series cater towards the more demanding side of projects. But Raspberry Pi isn’t the only deserving candidate on my list anymore. The competition is noticeably outshining the Pi in many respects, some even offering an NPU and a comparable price-to-performance ratio.

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order recognizing the framework of a deal between ByteDance and the US that would satisfy the TikTok divest-or-ban law. The deal values TikTok’s US operations at $14 billion and puts it under the control of companies based in the US.“I spoke with President Xi [Jinping], we had a good talk,” Trump said during a briefing. “I told him what we were doing, and he said, ‘Go ahead with it.’”Under the deal, TikTok “will be majority-owned and controlled” by companies based in the US. The order states that TikTok’s US-based operations will have a new board of directors that will have to follow rules to protect American data and national security, while TikTok’s recommendation algorithm, code, and content moderation system in the US will come under the control of its new owners.CNBC’s David Faber says Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX, which is based in Abu Dhabi, will get a 45 percent stake in TikTok’s US company. Investors in TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, will get 35 percent, according to CNBC.When asked whether TikTok’s algorithm will show MAGA-related content, Trump responded, “If I could make it 100 percent MAGA, I would. But it’s not going to work out that way, unfortunately.” Trump added that, “every group, every philosophy, every policy will be treated fairly.”Since coming into office, Trump has continued to push back the deadline for TikTok to divest from its Chinese parent company as negotiations dragged on. Last Friday, President Donald Trump said he “made progress” on an agreement with China, with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt later stating that the administration is “100% confident that a deal is done.”Just one day before TikTok’s most recent ban enforcement deadline on September 16th, Trump announced that he would extend it a fourth time while the US continues working out a deal. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent referenced a potential agreement ahead of the extension, telling reporters that the US and China have reached a “framework” deal, and Trump said that big companies were lined up to buy into it.Trump was the first to attempt a TikTok ban in 2020, and the idea gained bipartisan support under Biden, resulting in a 2024 divest-or-ban law. Critics of TikTok contended the app could be used for surveillance or propaganda by the Chinese government, rejecting anything short of a full sale. But Trump’s own stance softened, he said, in part due to his popularity on the app — and a potential backlash from young voters during the 2024 presidential election likely didn’t hurt. “Is it that important for China to be spying on young people?” he said in January 2025. “On young kids watching crazy videos?”