Technology

During the Christmas holiday, it was easy to pick up on the theme on Twitter that many of you either bought or received an Oculus Quest 2 virtual reality headset. Well, in perfect timing, Oculus has discounted many of its official accessories for the Quest 2, which can help to protect your headset, as well as make it more comfortable to wear. We’ve seen promotions that discount these add-ons when you purchase a headset, but never by themselves, so that’s why they’re prominently featured today. Best Buy has the best deal on the Elite Strap that replaces the fabric strap that comes with your Quest 2. It distributes the weight of the headset more evenly on your head, with adjusters on the top and rear of the Elite Strap. Normally $49, it’s just $34 at Best Buy (it’s $34 at Amazon, too, but it...

Several members of political opposition groups in Poland have produced evidence that they were hacked by Pegasus spyware, raising alarming questions about the Polish government’s use of the software. The most alarming case involved the leader of Poland’s Civic Platform party, Senator Krzysztof Brejza, whose phone was compromised a total of 33 times in the six months leading up to the 2019 election, as reported by the Associated Press. During the campaign, Polish state media published damaging text messages obtained from Brejza’s phone, leading to concerns that spyware had been used. a threat to “the rules-based international order” The compromises were discovered by Citizen Lab, a spyware research group based at the University of Toronto, which has done extensive work on Pegasus. Citizen L...

XPG has announced the XPG Vault, a “concept” mouse that has a built-in SSD to let you carry around your mouse and storage in one package (via Engadget). While lots of gaming mice have some built-in storage to let you easily carry macros and preferences from computer to computer, and the concept of a mouse doubling as a flash drive has been around for over a decade, XPG is aiming a little higher. It’s promising “to make your gaming libraries conveniently portable,” right from your mouse. There aren’t many details for the Vault in XPG’s press release, but XPG says the “current prototype can integrate up to 1TB of Solid State memory running at 985MB/s” and connects with USB-C. Given that it’s a wired mouse, that performance seems possible — and it’d imply that you could actually play games st...

Final Fantasy XVI is the latest game to be hit by COVID-related development delays, with the game’s producer Naoki Yoshida announcing in a letter posted to Twitter that work on the upcoming PlayStation 5 RPG has been set back by about six months. Furthermore, Yoshida announced that the next major reveal for the upcoming title — originally promised for sometime in 2021 — is now being pushed out to sometime in spring 2022. It’s not too surprising that Final Fantasy XVI has been hit by delays. As the first flagship Final Fantasy game for a next-generation console, the development process is a massive effort spanning development teams around the world. “In an effort to offset the effects of COVID-19, we’ve had to decentralize that workforce by permitting staff to tackle their assignments from ...

The Oura Ring isn’t the only smart ring on the block anymore. For CES 2022, health tech company Movano is announcing the Movano Ring, a wearable that aims to help people affordably monitor chronic illnesses and better understand their data. The Movano Ring will measure all the basic metrics, including heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), sleep, respiration, temperature, blood oxygen levels, steps, and calories burned. However, instead of a raw data dump, Movano says it’ll distill how your metrics relate to each other “take a more proactive approach to mitigating the risks of chronic disease.” For example, the Movano app might tell you how your exercise habits impact your sleeping patterns or HRV over time. This isn’t surprising — more wearable makers are shifting away from steps and c...

LG Display has come up with more uses for transparent screens with its innovative new concepts that will be on display at CES 2022: the OLED Shelf, Shopping Managing Showcase, Show Window, and Smart Window. The company is not to be confused with LG Electronics, as LG Display simply creates concepts that other companies can adopt and introduce to the market. Its OLED Shelf consists of two transparent OLED displays mounted on top of one another, and as its name implies, it can be placed atop a shelf. LG Display says it’s ideal for the living room, where it can display art or a TV show. Always on Display Mode ensures that the screen stays on all the time, so if there was a piece of art on display, that image will stay put just like an actual painting, all while blending into the wall behind i...

Apple has reportedly hired Andrea Schubert, Meta’s communications and public relations lead for its augmented reality (AR) products, according to Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman in his Power On newsletter. Schubert’s LinkedIn page indicates that she’s been working for Meta for nearly six years. “Meta, with Oculus, has been the market leader in headsets, so such a hire makes sense as Apple nears its launch” “Meta, with Oculus, has been the market leader in headsets, so such a hire makes sense as Apple nears its launch,” Gurman explains. On both Black Friday and Cyber Monday this year, Meta’s Oculus Quest 2 was one of the top-selling products. Not to mention that Meta’s Oculus app topped the App Store in the US on Christmas Day, and became the number one free app on the Google Play store toda...

Apple has reportedly hired Andrea Schubert, Meta’s communications and public relations lead for its augmented reality (AR) products, according to Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman in his Power On newsletter. Schubert’s LinkedIn page indicates that she’s been working for Meta for nearly six years. “Meta, with Oculus, has been the market leader in headsets, so such a hire makes sense as Apple nears its launch” “Meta, with Oculus, has been the market leader in headsets, so such a hire makes sense as Apple nears its launch,” Gurman explains. On both Black Friday and Cyber Monday this year, Meta’s Oculus Quest 2 was one of the top-selling products. Not to mention that Meta’s Oculus app topped the App Store in the US on Christmas Day, and became the number one free app on the Google Play store toda...

The Epic Games Store is offering Control for free as part of its 15 days of free games promotion — the game is only available for free until December 27th at 11AM. To get the game, simply log in to the Epic Games Store (or create an account), navigate to Control’s game page, and then hit “Get” to add the game to your library for free. Control was a freebie on the Epic Games Store this past June, so if you missed picking it up then, now you have another chance to grab it for free. The action-adventure game was named one of The Verge’s top games of 2019, and follows Jesse Faden, the Director of a secret agency called the Federal Bureau of Control, as she harnesses supernatural abilities to combat a paranormal force. In addition to the Holiday Sale, which offers discounts on titles like Marve...

The Epic Games Store is offering Control for free as part of its 15 days of free games promotion — the game is only available for free until December 27th at 11AM. To get the game, simply log in to the Epic Games Store (or create an account), navigate to Control’s game page, and then hit “Get” to add the game to your library for free. Control was a freebie on the Epic Games Store this past June, so if you missed picking it up then, now you have another chance to grab it for free. The action-adventure game was named one of The Verge’s top games of 2019, and follows Jesse Faden, the Director of a secret agency called the Federal Bureau of Control, as she harnesses supernatural abilities to combat a paranormal force. In addition to the Holiday Sale, which offers discounts on titles like Marve...

Hello and welcome to the final trailers roundup for 2021, I hope you have enjoyed reading (and watching) these roundups as much as I have enjoyed writing them. There were a lot of really good streaming shows and movies this year despite the persistence of the coronavirus that disrupted so much of our lives. Among my personal favorites were Loki, Succession, Ted Lasso, The Beatles: Get Back, King Richard, and Y: The Last Man (pls someone pick up this show it was just getting started!). This week’s list has Vikings, Hercule Poirot, and a look at the upcoming Showtime series about the early days of Uber. [embedded content] The Northman Director Robert Eggers (The Witch, The Lighthouse), said in an interview with EW that The Northman was “by far the hardest thing” he’s done. These are not warm...