What just happened? Apple now requires US shoppers applying for education pricing to verify their status as a student, teacher or staff member to qualify. Up to this point, Apple’s education pricing in the US largely worked on the honor system with the company reserving the right to ask someone for proof of their status…
In brief: Netflix is increasing its portfolio of mobile games available via its subscription with two new additions. These games are the hidden object game Krispee Street and the deckbuilding roguelike Arcanium: Rise of Akhan. Both games are now available to play for Netflix subscribers. Netflix confirmed its venture into the gaming market in July…
The big picture: The metaverse is coming whether you like it or not and big tech companies are scrambling to develop strategies on how to get involved. While some are interested in the NFT side or crafting the fabric of the metaverse, others like Apple and Google are seemingly more engrossed with building hardware to…
Why it matters: When Apple launched iOS 15 last fall, it promised that users who didn’t want to upgrade from iOS 14 would still get critical security updates. That option seems to have recently disappeared, as Apple confirmed this week it always intended to get all iOS 14 users onto iOS 15. The last security…
Editor’s take: A few years back we featured a device from researchers at Glasgow University that was inspired by Star Trek’s famous Tricorder medical device. While neat in practice, the researchers’ version didn’t really resemble the prop used in Star Trek. The latest creation from YouTuber Mangy_Dog, on the other hand, is arguably more polished…
WTF?! In possibly another sign of how bad the PC graphics card market is right now, a sort of loot box system for them has emerged on Amazon Japan. While it does offer a chance to get your hands on an RTX 30 series or Radeon 6000 card, it’s much more likely you’ll end up…
Why it matters: Given its many limitations, the Radeon RX 6500 XT is hardly an exciting product. As it turns out, the Navi24 GPU was really only meant for laptops, and the missing media decoding and encoding capabilities were a cost-cutting measure linked to the upcoming Ryzen 6000 series Rembrandt APUs. By now, it’s no…
Why it matters: Sony’s first official response to Microsoft’s historic acquisition of Activision Blizzard indicates that current multiplatform games will remain on PlayStation in the near term. Comments from Activision support this claim. However, short-term obligations and long-term plans do not necessarily mesh as we saw with the Zenimax merger. In a statement to the…
In context: By now, you’re probably aware that Battlefield 2042 didn’t meet fan or sales expectations. The game’s launch was rough, and two months after, things haven’t gotten much better as the player base drops steadily. However, EA hasn’t quit on the game yet, as they’re reportedly evaluating options, including changing the game into a…
Editor’s take: To be honest, most non-fungible token (NFT) transactions and ideas feel scammy to me. Many people do not fully understand what NFTs are and how they work and are shelling out ridiculous amounts of money for something that does not tangibly exist and is often not likely to increase in value. It seems…