Technology

HP’s ZBook Studio is widely acknowledged as one of the best workstation laptops on today’s market. Last year’s model came with a stunning OLED touchscreen, a customizable RGB keyboard, and a versatile set of features that you’ll be hard-pressed to find in too many other business lines. Most impressively, it takes the powerful specs many professionals need and crams them into a chassis that’s under four pounds. Studio fans will be happy to hear that HP has refreshed the device. The new ZBook Studio G9 can be configured up to a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti or an RTX A5000. (The two are comparable in terms of raw power, but the A5000 is meant for heavier production workloads like machine learning and simulation.) HP says that ZBook Studio models will start at 3.81 pounds (1.73 kg), but that “weight va...

Optimus Prime is officially a Lego set — and not just in statue form. With 19 points of articulation, the Danish brickmaker has created a 1,508-piece Optimus Prime G1 action figure you can actually transform. Okay, yes, you’ll still need to do that conversion yourself — it’s no walking, talking robot like the $750 self-transforming Optimus Prime we played with last year. But, for $169.99 and releasing June 1st, the Lego version is a lot more affordable and doesn’t require electricity just to stand. Image: Hasbro Speaking of which, Optimus stands 13.5 inches tall and then folds down into a 27-inch long semi truck — and comes with instructions and pieces to build his ion blaster, translucent orange Energon axe, jetpack, an Energon Cube, and “the Autobot Matrix of Leadership which can be stor...

Starfield, the biggest upcoming title from Microsoft-owned Bethesda, has been delayed to the first half of 2023, according to a tweet from the studio. The game was originally set to launch on November 11th, 2022, an homage to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim’s release date. The new space exploration game, which Bethesda has released precious few details about (and, to this date, no actual gameplay footage of), will get some extra development time, as will Redfall, the vampire co-op shooter coming from the team at Arkane that was surprise-announced last year. It’s likely that both games will be shown off in Bethesda’s upcoming games showcase on June 12th, so this early announcement is likely meant to set expectations ahead of time. Speaking of setting expectations, if Bethesda happens to show of...

The ultraportable space is a crowded one, including long-renowned models like the Microsoft Surface Pro 8, the Dell XPS 13, and the HP Spectre x360 14. These are all excellent laptops that aren’t extravagantly priced, with the potential to appeal to a very wide audience. While the $1,729.99 Yoga 9i isn’t quite on the level of those devices when it comes to artistry, it’s certainly as enjoyable to use, and it has a somewhat eclectic array of unique benefits that make it stand out from that crowd. The main one is the OLED display, which has (thankfully) been moved to the 16:10 aspect ratio, as have many of Lenovo’s premium laptops in the past year. Other upgrades from last year’s model include a new edge-to-edge keyboard with an extra row of function keys, a larger touchpad, and rounded corn...

Disney added 7.9 million new subscribers to its Disney Plus streaming service during the first three months of 2022, the company announced in its Q2 earnings report on Wednesday. That brings the total to around 87.6 million worldwide, excluding the 50.1 million people subscribed to Disney Plus Hotstar internationally. In the US and Canada alone, Disney Plus now has 7.1 million more subscribers than it did a year ago, with 44.4 million. The company also said that the number of subscribers for all of its streaming offerings — including Hulu and ESPN Plus — had grown to over 205 million, an increase from the 196.4 million it reported in January. That’s better news than Netflix’s had recently. Last month, the streaming company reported that it had lost 200,000 subscribers compared to the previ...

Just hours after we got our first glimpse at the potential design of Samsung’s Z Fold 4, unofficial renders of its smaller sibling — the Z Flip 4 — have also leaked via 91Mobiles and OnLeaks. But while the next Fold might get a redesigned camera bump, the Z Flip 4’s design looks almost identical to its predecessor. Externally it still has a two-tone color scheme with a pair of cameras and small notification display, while inside there’s still a 6.7-inch foldable display with a hole-punch selfie cutout in the top middle. That’s not necessarily much of a surprise, nor is it definitely a bad thing. Samsung followed up its first Z Flip with the almost-identical Z Flip 5G just months later, so it’s already proved it’s happy to update the internals of its foldables without changing their externa...

After four years since the introduction of Google Pay, Google has now announced at its I/O developers’ conference that it’ll be bringing back its standalone Google Wallet app. The original Wallet app was combined with Android Pay back at the beginning of 2018 to create Google Pay, but the tech giant says that it thinks the market is now mature enough for a digital wallet once again as more companies are now willing to offer digital cards, which have increasingly become more popular among consumers as they’ve transitioned to a more cashless environment. Aside from payment options, the new Google Wallet will also perform many other functions that its predecessor aspired to do, such as hold transit cards, proofs of vaccination, event and flight tickets, identification cards and driving licens...

Following the release of its Table Lamp Speaker in collaboration with IKEA late last year, Sonos now introduces a new offering dubbed the Ray, its smallest and most affordable soundbar yet. While most of Sonos’ products command a premium price point, with its $449 USD Beam soundbar previously being the most affordable option, the Ray offers an all-in-one home theater experience at just $279,  providing a massive upgrade to any TV’s built-in speakers. Sony Ray’s Trueplay speaker-tuning technology optimizes the sound based on the unique acoustics of each room and can be grouped with other Sonos speakers or subwoofers for additional performance and multi-room playback. Its small tapered design and forward-facing speaker components allow it to be easily tucked inside of a media stand. Tho...

The recent crash of stablecoin UST and sister token LUNA — LUNA’s price dropped over 96% in the last 24 hours — has cryptocurrency investors reeling. Combined with even more bad news with the dropping of BTC and ETH, taking Coinbases share price with it, this outflow in the market has taken quite a chunk out of the wallets of cryptocurrency billionaires. Brain Armstrong of Coinbase was reported to have had a personal net worth of $13.7 billion USD last year but that figure is now closer to $2.2 billion USD. Others like Michael Novogratz of Galaxy Digital and Changpeng Zhao of Binance have seen their wealth drop from $8.5 billion USD to $2.5 billion US, and $96 billion USD to $11.3 billion USD, respectively. Other big names in the crypto-sphere like Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, and Sam Ban...