Meta is, by and large, a company built on other companies' ideas. It has almost perfected the strategy: wait for a new platform or social mechanic to take off, then either buy or clone it, put it next to Meta's unmatched user base and advertising engine, and watch the money pile up. Well, the next […]
Category: Gaming
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Creative Assembly confirm Total War: Medieval 3's starting factions, pegging out a complex world of schemers and killers, feudal giants and emerging empires
Creative Assembly have announced the first six playable factions for historical strategy bash Total War: Medieval 3, while also sharing a little insight on the process of choosing Total War factions. Of course, the optimal way to select Twarieval 3 factions would be to mock up a grand tournament, where designers adorned with the heraldry of each realm prove their mettle in the jousts, the melee, and the pas d'armes, while rival spymasters contrive to spike their goblets with arsenic.
Sadly, I don't think Creative Assembly have the budget to build a jousting arena, and poisonings tend to be frowned upon by modern HR departments. But they are, at least, letting players vote on 23 other playable factions they're thinking about adding. Online voting: the tiltyard of the modern era.
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Sometimes, health tracking accuracy is overrated
This is Optimizer, a weekly newsletter sent from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest gizmos and potions that swear they're going to change your life. Opt in for Optimizer here. About three years ago, a doctor told me I had to lose abdominal fat. She didn't care about my lower […]
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How to survive the memory shortage crisis: a PC owner's guide
Urgh. Have you seen memory prices lately? If you somehow haven’t, make sure to look through your fingers, as they are truly terrifying. DDR5 RAM sticks are ungodly expensive, older DDR4's not much better, high VRAM graphics cards are ridiculous, and any PC hardware that includes at least one of these (which is a lot) is suffering ludicrous price hikes in turn. That includes the new Steam Machine, while handheld PCs are being stripped of affordable options, and next-gen, standalone VR headsets are unlikely to do much better.
But we’re been here before, right? We made it through the crypto-mining-induced GPU price spikes of 2018, the 2011 hard drive shortages caused by flooding in Thailand, and the pandemic-driven PC surge. Remember the Discord stock alerts? The retailer lotteries? The waiting lines for websites?
We can do this. We can weather the storm of new memory price hikes. But we don’t have to do it in silence. We don’t need to damn our enthusiasm for the PCs that play our PC games. There are ways to still upgrade and improve your rig, and its gaming prowess, even with memory prices as ridiculous as they are.
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Fitbit’s Charge 6 and kid-friendly Ace LTE are much cheaper for Prime Day
Prime Day is making it much easier to pick up a Fitbit without spending more than you want. Both the Fitbit Charge 6 and Fitbit Ace LTE are on steep discounts today. Right now, you can buy the Charge 6 for $85.45 ($74.5 off) at Amazon, while the kid-friendly Fitbit Ace LTE is $69.99 (a […]
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It’s now the Arduino Uno Q’s turn to get a price hike
Arduino's Raspberry Pi-like microcomputer the Uno Q is joining many other devices in getting a price hike this week. The 2GB version of the Uno Q, which is powered by a Qualcomm Dragonwing QRB2210 processor, will increase in price from $44 to $59, while the 4GB model is getting a slightly steeper increase from $59 […]