Hades II just received its second major update as part of its early access development, which was a great excuse for me to jump back in. Since its initial release, Iâve logged more than 30 hours and actually held myself back from playing much more â I donât want to get tired of the game before it hits 1.0 â but with the new update, I wanted to see whatâs new and try to beat the new final boss on my very first run.
Sadly, I havenât even been able to see what the boss is yet. I did make it to the updateâs new region, but I got destroyed by a dangerous miniboss. Still, Iâve still been really impressed with what Supergiant Games has added since May to make whatâs already a very good game even better.
The big additions are impressive. Hades II initially launched with six regions â four for an Underworld route and two for a âsurfaceâ route â and with each major update, Supergiant has added a new region with new enemies, characters, and music to round out that surface route.
The first major update, which came out in October, added the gameâs first new region, Mount Olympus, and it feels as epic as Mount Olympus should. It has grand architecture, fearsome e …
Apple is readying its MacBook Air line for an update to M4 chips in March, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in today’s Power On newsletter. With the slim laptops’ spec bump, the MacBook line’s M4 transition will be complete.
Gurman didn’t provide timing beyond that the laptops are coming next month, but as usual before it launches a product, Apple is “preparing its marketing, sales and retail teams for the debut” and letting its retail stock of the laptops clear out. Both the 13-inch and 15-inch models are expected to come at the same time, like last year.
Since the Apple Silicon transition, the MacBook Airs have largely shared specs with the low-end MacBook Pro, just packed into a slimmer laptop with omissions like fewer ports and no cooling fan. The base model 14-inch Pro starts with 10-core CPUs and 10-core GPUs and feature 16GB of RAM — you can get a sense of that configuration’s performance from our review of the base M4 MacBook Pro. Ideally, the new Air models will also get the Pro’s key upgrade of being able to simultaneously connect to two external displays with the lid open.
That leaves only the Mac Studio and Mac Pro, which are still M2-generation machines, without M4 chips. Gurman has pegged the Mac Studio’s M4 bump for “between March and June” and the Mac Pro’s anywhere from June to this fall.
In the latest Power On newsletter, Mark Gurman reports that Apple plans on integrating future modems within the main chipset of the device. This means that, in the future, there won’t be both an A18 chipset alongside a separate C1 modem, instead they’ll all be one. This development will take a few years, though.
more…
According to the Power On newsletter from Mark Gurman, Apple plans to heavily focus on video recording improvements for the new iPhone 17 Pro models. The company has previously focused primarily on photography, so it’s nice to hear that video will be getting some much-needed love.
more…
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple is “gearing up” to launch a new version of the 13-inch and 15-inch with the M4 chip. The company is preparing for a debut in March.
more…
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 72, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If youâre new here, welcome, hope you like gadgets, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, Iâve been reading about Hasan Piker and calculator apps and car thieves and the real economics of YouTuber life, using my month of Paramount Plus to watch Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Yellowjackets, replacing my big podcast headphones with the Shure SE215 in-ear headphones, switching all my reading out of the Kindle ecosystem for increasingly obvious reasons, and taking copious notes on Kevin Kellyâs 50 years of travel tips.
I also have for you Appleâs slightly confusing latest smartphone, a couple of new things to watch this weekend, the best new Xbox game in a while, and much more. Also, the first part of our group project on all the ways we listen to music. Letâs do this.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you watching / reading / playing / listening to / hot-gluing this week? Tell me everything: [email protected]. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tel …
When he realized that Senate Republicans were characterizing his federally funded research project as one of many they considered ideological and of questionable scientific value, Darren Lipomi, chair of the chemical engineering department at the University of Rochester, was incensed. The work, he complained on social media, was aimed at helping “throat cancer patients recover from radiation therapy faster.” And yet, he noted on Bluesky, LinkedIn, and X, his project was among nearly 3,500 National Science Foundation grants recently described by the likes of Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican and chair of the powerful Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, as “woke DEI” research. These projects, Cruz argued, were driven by “Neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda,” and “far-left ideologies.”
“Needless to say,” Lipomi wrote of his research, “this project is not espousing class warfare.”
The list of grants was compiled by a group of Senate Republicans last fall and released to the public earlier this month, and while the NSF does not appear to have taken any action in response to the complaints, the list’s existence is adding to an atmosphere of confusion and worry among researchers in the early days of President Donald J. Trump’s second administration. Lipomi, for his part, described the situation as absurd. Others described it as chilling.
© Getty Images | Tom Williams
Found in the forests of Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, and Eastern Australia, birds of paradise are famous for flashy feathers and unusually shaped ornaments, which set the standard for haute couture among birds. Many use these feathers for flamboyant mating displays in which they shape-shift into otherworldly forms.
As if this didn’t attract enough attention, we’ve now learned that they also glow in the dark.
Biofluorescent organisms are everywhere, from mushrooms to fish to reptiles and amphibians, but few birds have been identified as having glowing feathers. This is why biologist Rene Martin of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln wanted to investigate. She and her team studied a treasure trove of specimens at the American Museum of Natural History, which have been collected since the 1800s, and found that 37 of the 45 known species of birds of paradise have feathers that fluoresce.
© TeeJe
