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Disney reveals its ‘real’ lightsaber, and it looks extremely cool

Disney has finally showed off a first look at its “real” retractable lightsaber, which the company started teasing in April, with a new video showing the saber in action — and it looks very, very cool. As rumored, the new toy lightsaber doesn’t require any awkward plastic prop blades, instead featuring a retractable light-up blade… Read more

Fortnite is planning skins for LeBron James and The Rock, documents show

An internal presentation at Epic Games showed ambitious promotional plans for the game, including a basketball mini-game and a planned “Party Royale” featuring Zion Williamson and LeBron James. Made public as part of the ongoing Epic v. Apple trial, the document comes from a quarterly business review performed in June 2020. In addition to detailing… Read more

30 Apple Music tips, tricks and features

Home Advice Since its launch in 2015, Apple Music garnered 72 million subscribers by the end of 2020 and even more impressively (depending on who you ask) racked up a five-star review from us. Five iOS updates and a couple of hefty interface refreshes later, the arrival of the splendid HomePod Mini (despite the discontinuation… Read more

Netflix

Our Verdict It’s nigh-on impossible to find meaningful fault with Netflix For Excellent video quality Big, easy-to-navigate catalogue High quality Originals Against Rarely first for big film releases Netflix just keeps on getting better, making a more compelling case for your money at every turn. It’s everything you want from a video streaming service: simple… Read more

How a university got itself banned from the Linux kernel

The University of Minnesota’s path to banishment was long, turbulent, and full of emotion On the evening of April 6th, a student emailed a patch to a list of developers. Fifteen days later, the University of Minnesota was banned from contributing to the Linux kernel. “I suggest you find a different community to do experiments… Read more

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is getting upgraded for Xbox Series X/S and PS5

Home / Software & Gaming / Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is getting upgraded for Xbox Series X/S and PS5 Matthew Wilson 15 hours ago Software & Gaming Back in 2019, EA finally broke its Star Wars curse with the release of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, an excellent single-player adventure set between Revenge of… Read more

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart looks incredible in 16 minutes of new gameplay footage

Sony and Insomniac Games debuted 16 minutes of stunning new Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart gameplay footage in a new State of Play presentation on Thursday. For part of the video, protagonist Ratchet traversed through a new town called Nefarious City that was packed with detail — it reminded me of a Ratchet & Clank… Read more

‘Disaster Girl’ has sold her popular meme as an NFT for $500,000

Another internet meme has sold for big bucks online: Zoë Roth, best known as “Disaster Girl” for the popular image macro taken by her father in 2005 of her smirking at the camera while a house burns down in the background, has sold the original copy of the meme as an NFT for 180 Ether,… Read more

If you’re more into hi-fi than music, that’s a problem

Home Features (Image credit: Future / Leben / Fyne Audio / Columbia / Antonio Guillem / Shutterstock) Always give your opinion piece an incendiary or inflammatory headline, and then follow that up with a provocative statement and a hardline stance you’ll spend the rest of the article attempting to climb down from: There is no… Read more

Gaming and Home Working See Microsoft Profits Soar

Home News (Image credit: Rufus46 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported) The popularity of its cloud computing services, as well as the small matter of its software output, sent Microsoft profits soaring in the first three months of 2021 to $14.8 billion. This represents a 38% rise over the same period in 2020 according to… Read more

Respawn is working on a new IP

Matthew Wilson 1 day ago Software & Gaming It looks like Respawn is cooking up another brand new IP. The studio recently put up some new job listings, revealing plans for a completely new game not connected to Titanfall or Star Wars. We first caught wind of this via Vince Zampella himself, who tweeted out… Read more

Lenovo P620 Threadripper Pro 3975WX Review

AMD’s Threadripper consumer HEDT processors continue to be praised strongly for their excellent compute performance and connectivity options. But what if you want more than 256GB of memory? What if you want your RAM to run in 8-channel mode? What if you want more than 64 PCIe Gen 4 lanes? Well… that’s where Threadripper Pro… Read more

PSA: You can apparently still lose jobs and get arrested for an overdue VHS rental

Ever mysteriously lost a job opportunity? Did they treat you like a criminal? Better check to see if your family forgot to return a VHS tape 22 years ago! As utterly ridiculous as that sounds, it’s apparently the true story of Texas woman Caron McBride, who had a warrant out for her arrest in Oklahoma… Read more

EA says FIFA mode with loot boxes is the ‘cornerstone’ of the franchise in leaked documents

Electronic Arts wants to push FIFA players to the FIFA Ultimate Team (FUT) mode, which lets people spend real-world money and in-game currency to buy loot boxes with virtual athletes, according to documents obtained by CBC News. Loot boxes, which typically offer random collections of virtual goods with the tantalizing (and often very small) chance… Read more

China censored social media posts about Chloé Zhao’s Oscar win

The news of Chloé Zhao’s Oscar win for Best Director has been censored on social media and search engines in China at the direction of the country’s propaganda ministry, The Wall Street Journal reported. Zhao, who was born in Beijing, is the first Chinese woman and first woman of color to take home the Academy… Read more