2024 was a year of metamorphosis for Xbox. The long-gestating acquisition of Activision Blizzard finally finished toward the end of last year, and in 2024, we saw the fallout of the biggest gaming company acquisition of all time. A year of high peaks and low valleys for Microsoft’s gaming brand followed. Microsoft laid off thousands of game developers at different points this year. It shut down studios like Arkane Austin, Mighty Dog, and Roundhouse Studios, and sold off Hi-Fi Rush and its developer, Tango Gameworks, after attempting to shut them down. Xbox Game Pass confusingly split into several tiers, getting…
Author: Olsi
Last week, Riot Games revealed the existence of Project K, its real-world trading card game. The timing is perfect for riding the momentum created by Arcane season 2, the ongoing popularity of League of Legends, and the general TCG zeitgeist. Now, the developers have explained how to actually play the game, and unsurprisingly, it takes elements from all of your favorite TCGs. One big detail to note from the start: This is so much more than Legends of Runeterra. Riot Games’ Dave Guskin shared a post on X detailing all of the rules and regulations. The goal is to capture different…
YouTube has had quite a monumental year in terms of user engagement, logging in over a billion hours of content streamed daily on TV sets alone. However, the platform is also home to a sea of content that isn’t safe for children, which is why a dedicated kids’ experience has been there for a while. Now, YouTube is adding a password protocol that will keep young users from accessing any other profile apart from their designated kid’s profile on a TV. In a community update, the company introduced the new Parent Code feature that will block kids from accessing user…
Roundabouts. They trapped Clark Griswold in National Lampoon’s European Vacation and now they’ve tripped up a Waymo robotaxi. A video is circulating on social media showing a Waymo robotaxi going round and round on a roundabout — as if it is stuck in a loop. A Waymo spokesperson told The Tech Spot there were no passengers onboard the vehicle in the video, and said the company has already addressed the issue by deploying a software update to its fleet. TechCrunch has asked Waymo for more information regarding the underlying logic that led to this strange behavior, and how engineers ended…
We often see iPad deals on cheaper models, but the biggest and best? Not so much. That’s changed today, with $200 off the Apple iPad Pro 13-inch M4 at Best Buy. A true laptop replacement and a powerhouse of a tablet, it’s ideal for anyone with ambitions and high-end needs. We’re here to tell you all about it before you commit to the buy button. Our iPad Pro review called it “the best tablet I’ve ever used.” It offers a “lovely design and build” with a “sublime OLED screen,” “top-notch speakers,” and “surprisingly good battery life.” Its blistering performance is…
For one of the best gaming laptop deals around, check out what Dell has to offer. Whether you’re looking for a gift for someone else or you want to treat yourself, you’ll love being able to buy the Alienware m16 R2 gaming laptop for $1,950 right now. It normally costs $2,395, so you’re saving $445 off the regular price, which is a pretty sweet deal. We’re here with all the insight into what this laptop has to offer, but bear in mind that the deal is likely to end soon. Why you should buy the Alienware m16 R2 gaming laptop…
Running a startup can be expensive, requiring a multitude of different subscriptions. Cap table management software, which helps founders organize their funding, can cost thousands of dollars a year. San Francisco-based Carta is the market leader in this industry. But some startup founders say Carta is making it too hard to cancel their subscriptions. The issue first surfaced on X after founder Sudarshan Sridharan of Pipeline posted about his struggles trying to cancel, writing that “I’m speechless at how anti-founder @cartainc is. They make it impossible to cancel your subscription or speak to a human support agent.” Carta required a…
Late-stage deals in space have been on the decline this year, but one notable exception is Fleet Space Technologies’ $100 million Series D. The Adelaide, Australia-based startup raised the new funding to accelerate the development of ExoSphere, a platform to enable real-time mineral prospecting from space. The company currently has two satellites in low Earth orbit that connect to ground sensors; using artificial intelligence, the sensors and satellite data can generate predictive insights and drill targeting for prospectors. Fleet is also sending a payload to the moon onboard Firefly Aerospace’s lunar lander in 2026. That sensor will capture seismic data…
Nearly half of teens in the U.S. are online almost constantly, and the platform they’re using the most is YouTube, a new study from the Pew Research Center has found. The center reports that 46% of teens say they’re online “almost constantly,” and 90% of teens it surveyed said they use the Google-owned video platform, while 73% of them said they use the platform daily. TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat round out the list of the top platforms for teens, as 60% of teens reported that they use TikTok and Instagram, while 55% said the same for Snapchat. While it’s no…
Zoox co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson told the crowd at The Tech Spot Disrupt 2024 that he didn’t think Tesla would launch a robotaxi ride-hailing service in California (or anywhere else) next year, despite what Elon Musk had claimed. The “fundamental issue is they don’t have technology that works,” he said at the time. But it seems that Zoox is interested in some of Tesla’s top talent, however. Amazon-owned Zoox posted earlier this week on LinkedIn that it had hired Zheng Gao as director of hardware engineering. We’re thrilled to welcome Zheng Gao, Director, Hardware Engineering. Zheng spent the past eight…
