Gus, the Young Emperor Penguin Who Made a Surprise Appearance in Australia, Is Now Heading HomeWildlife caretakers released the bird into the Southern Ocean after hed put on some weight and regained his strength Gus did not hesitate to belly flop into the ocean. DBCA / Miles BrothersonThe emperor penguin that made global headlines after waddling ashore on a beach in Australia has been released back into the wild.Surfers spotted the out-of-place bird on Ocean Beach in Denmark, Western Australia, on November 1. Somehow, the juvenile male had ended up more than 2,100 miles from his home in Antarctica.Carol Biddulph, a registered wildlife caretaker, took the black-and-white bird to her home, where she has a dedicated penguin enclosure. The three-foot-tall penguin was malnourished and weighed just 47 pounds, which is well below the average weight of around 88 pounds for the species.Emperor penguin released at sea 20 days after waddling onto Australian beachWatch on For the last three weeks, Biddulph and her husband, Graham, have been carefully nursing the bird back to health, according to a statement from Australias Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions (DBCA).At first, Biddulph didnt know what to call the penguinor whether to name him at all.I really didnt know whether he was going to make it to begin with because he was so undernourished, she says in a video shared with media outletsby the DBCA.But once it seemed like the juvenile would recover, Biddulph started brainstorming. She thought about historical emperorsand her brain landed on Roman emperor Augustus for some crazy reason, she adds.[The] shortened version of Gus just seemed to suit him. So thats what it is, she says in the video. By the end of his recovery, Gus was eatingroughly 20 pilchard fish three times each day. DBCA / Miles BrothersonBiddulph helped Gus regain weight through a gentle process of refeeding him, not too fast, not too slow, just right, she says. She and her husband started by giving him fluids, then moved on to a slurry. Eventually, they began feeding him whole fish.Once hed made a full recovery, Gus was eating roughly 20 pilchard fish, also known as mulies, three times each day. Before his release, he weighed about 55 pounds and was in a much chunkier shape, Biddulph says.As he was regaining his strength, Gus enjoyed standing next to the big mirror in his enclosure. Since penguins are social birds, he might have thought his reflection was a fellow emperor penguin.I find for other species of penguin that I have in care, the mirror is a must-have, especially when Ive only got one in at a time, says Biddulph in the video. When theres two or three [penguins], its great, they can bounce off each other, but when youve just got one, they just need that comfort of knowing theyve got a buddy. The emperor penguin liked to stand next to a big mirror in his enclosure. DBCA / Miles BrothersonOn the day of Gus release, he was placed into a ventilated pet carrier with an ice pack and loaded onto a small DBCA vessel. With Biddulph, her husband, a veterinarian and a wildlife officer on board, the boat sailed out of King George Sound in Albany, Western Australia.Once they reached an undisclosed location in the open Southern Ocean, the caretakers placed the carrier on the edge of the boat and opened one side. Without hesitating, Gus belly flopped into the water below with a splash, took a drink and began swimming.Magnificent. He just knew where he was supposed to be, didnt give a backward glance and just disappeared, says Biddulph in DBCA footage captured on the boat. Its just amazing. He was ready for it. After jumping into the water, Gus took a drink and swam off without looking back. DBCA / Miles BrothersonFor her part, Biddulph says she enjoyed taking care of Gus and will miss him. But at the end of the day, shes thrilled to see him back where he belongs.I got into wildlife care not to make these birds my pets, she says. I want birds to be free, and every one that we care for that goes back to its natural environment means that weve done our job well.Its still a mystery as to how and why Gus ended up so far from home in the first place. Experts believe he may have been looking for food, then got caught up in a current.To ornithologists, Gus is whats known as a vagrant. Especially during the spring and fall migrations, its fairly common for birds to end up in unusual placesand their appearances are always a treat for birdwatchers.Some vagrants get blown off course by storms, while others have been known to catch rides on boats. Since birds use Earths magnetic field to navigate, its also possible that disruptions to that field due to space weather might cause them to lose their bearings. But vagrancy largely remains a mystery to scientists.If a species showed up all the time, wed just consider that to be part of their range, says Casey Youngflesh, a biologist at Clemson University, to National Geographics Tatyana Woodall. Truthfully, we still dont understand a lot about the marine environment and dont have a good idea where many animals spend their time.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.Filed Under: Animals, Antarctica, Australia, Biology, Birds, Conservation, Good News, Oceans, Penguins, Sea Birds, Water, wildlife

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn MoreA modern-day AI agent consists of, at least, a large language model (LLM) that has been enabled to call some tools. Given the right set of tools for coding, it would start by generating the code, be able to run it in a container, observe the results, modify the code and therefore have a better chance of producing useful code.By contrast, a generative AI model takes some input and, through the process of predicting expectations, produces an output. For example, we give it a coding task, it produces some code, and, depending on the complexity of the task, the code may be usable as is.As they take on different tasks, agents should be allowed to talk to each other. For example, imagine your company intranet with its useful search box directing you to the apps and resources you need. If you are a large enough company, these apps owned by different departments each have their own search boxes. It makes a lot of sense to create agents, maybe by using techniques like retrieval augmented generation (RAG), to augment the search boxes. What does not make sense is to force the user to repeat their query once the search box has identified it as useful given the initial query. Rather, we would prefer the top agent to coordinate with other agents representing various apps and present a consolidated and unified chat interface to you, the user. A multi-agent system representing software or an organizations various workflows can have several interesting advantages, including improved productivity and robustness, operational resilience and the ability ability to perform faster upgrades of different modules. Hopefully, this article will help you see how this is achieved.But first, how should we go about building these multi-agent systems?Capturing the organization and rolesFirst we should capture the processes, roles, responsible nodes and connections of various actors in the organization. By actors, I mean individuals and/or software apps that act as knowledge workers within the organization.An organizational chart might be a good place to start, but I would suggest starting with workflows, as the same people within an organization tend to act with different processes and people depending on workflows. There are available tools that use AI to help identify workflows, or you can build your own gen AI model. Ive built one as a GPT which takes the description of a domain or a company name and produces an agent network definition. Because Im utilizing a multi-agent framework built in-house at my company, the GPT produces the network as a Hocon file, but it should be clear from the generated files what the roles and responsibilities of each agent are and what other agents it is connected to.Note that we want to make sure that the agent network is a directed acyclic graph (DAG). This means that no agent can simultaneously become down-chain and up-chain to any other agent, whether directly or indirectly. This greatly reduces the chances that queries in the agent network fall into a tailspin.In the examples outlined here, all agents are LLM-based. If a node in the multi-agent organization can have zero autonomy, then that agent paired with its human counterpart, should run everything by the human. We will need all processing nodes, be they apps, humans or existing agents, to be represented as agents.Lately there have been many announcements by companies offering specialized agents. We would, of course, want to make use of such agents, if available. We can pull in a preexisting agent and wrap its API into one of our agents so we can make use of our inter-agent communication protocols. This means that such third-party agents will need to have their API available for us to use.How to define agentsVarious agent architectures have been proposed in the past. For instance, a blackboard architecture requires a centralized point of communication where various agents declare their roles and capabilities, and the blackboard calls them depending on how it plans to fulfill a request (see OAA).I prefer a more distributed architecture that respects the encapsulation of responsibilities. Each agent, having received a request, decides whether it can process it or not, and what it requires to do to process the request, then returns its list of requirements to its requesting up-chain agent. If the agent has down-chains, it asks them if they can help fulfill all or part of the request. If it receives any requirements from the contacted down-chains, it checks with other agents to see if they can fulfill them; if not, it sends them up-chain so that they can ask the human user. This architecture is called the AAOSA architecture and fun fact was the architecture used in early versions of Siri.Here is a sample system prompt that can be used to turn an agent into an AAOSA agent. When you receive an inquiry, you will: Call your tools to determine which down-chain agents in your tools are responsible for all or part of itAsk down-chain agents what they need to handle their part of the inquiry. Once requirements are gathered, you will delegate the inquiry and the fulfilled requirements to the appropriate down-chain agents.Once all down-chain agents respond, you will compile their responses and return the final response.You may, in turn, be called by other agents in the system and have to act as a down-chain to them.In addition to the set of roles and responsibilities defined in natural language in each agents system prompt, agents may or may not include tools that they can call, with various arguments being passed to the tools. For instance, a product manager agent may need to be able to process various tickets on a virtual Kanban board, or an alerts agent may need to call a tool to issue alerts in an alerting system.Current multi-agent systems such as Microsoft AutoGen have elaborate and often hardcoded agent coordination mechanisms and architectures. I prefer a more robust setup where agents treat their immediate down-chain agents as tools, with loosely defined arguments that can be typed, and the semantics decided by the agents at the time of need.In this setup, a down-chain agent can be defined as a function call:aaosa_call: {description: Depending on the mode, returns a natural language string in response.,parameters: {type: object,properties: {inquiry: {type: string,description: The inquiry},mode: {type: string,description: indicates whether the agent is being asked to determine if the inquiry belongs to itin its entirety or in part. or if it is being asked to provide requirements to fulfillthe inquiry, if any. or if it is being asked to respond to the inquiry.},},required: [inquiry,mode]}}AI agents in practiceAn agent network for a companys intranet. Lets explore an HR agent scenario. A user might inform the main search box agent of a life-changing event, such as my significant other passed away, trigger legal and HR agents that have a role to play in serving the user. This is because they, in turn, received information from some of their down-chain agents, namely legal advice, payroll and benefits agents. The resulting consolidated response that the user receives from the main search box agent will look like this:HR aspects:The benefits agent can the user help understand how the passing might impact benefits, health insurance, and retirement plans. Youll need to provide information about the types of plans involved and whether your significant other was a dependent.The payroll agent can help manage tasks such as updating tax deductions or handling bereavement leave pay. This requires information about company policies on bereavement leave and current payroll setup.Legal aspects:Legal agents can offer general guidance as to how this passing should it relate to company affairs.Each department requires specific information to offer tailored support.An agent network for a telco with a B2B business.In an IT scenario, meanwhile, the single-entry point is the customer support rep agent that can handle complex multi-faceted requests such as: Our network is slow. I think it is overloaded since we recently added personnel to our office. I will also need a quote for an upgrade.An example response will outline the steps: Network performance assessment: Thenetwork ops center specialistcan help address the slowness and potential overload issues. They need access to network performance data, details about the current network infrastructure, information about the number of personnel added and their network usage patterns.An upgraded quote: Thesales engineerandfield techniciancan help provide a quote for an upgrade. To do this they need:Specific information about the current network setup, including equipment and bandwidth requirements.Desired performance improvements.Budgetary constraints and any specific preferences or requirements.The scale of the upgrade and any specific performance goals.I hope this gave you a good idea of what is required to set up a multi-agent network. In the second installment, I will discuss the importance of implementing safeguards when creating multi-agent systems and outline how to build in controls to allow for human intervention and uncertainty checks. I will also detail required steps to create a safe-guard agent to oversee the agent network and dive deeper into challenges of developing multi-agent networks such as tailspins and overloads and how to mitigate them using timeouts, task division and redundancy.Babak Hodjat is CTO for AI at Cognizant. DataDecisionMakersWelcome to the VentureBeat community!DataDecisionMakers is where experts, including the technical people doing data work, can share data-related insights and innovation.If you want to read about cutting-edge ideas and up-to-date information, best practices, and the future of data and data tech, join us at DataDecisionMakers.You might even considercontributing an articleof your own!Read More From DataDecisionMakers

Circana's October best-sellers list is comprised of almost half new games, but Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero! take top honors.Read More

Microsoft has stopped offering updates to Windows 11 version 24H2 on PCs that have certain Ubisoft games installed, Bleeping Computer reports. The company made the move after complaints that Star Wars Outlaws and games in the Assassins Creed series were crashing after installing the new Windows update.Microsoft confirmed the compatibility hold in a status update yesterday evening, and says its working with Ubisoft to find a fix. In the meantime, the company recommends against installing the Windows 11 24H2 update manually. Here is Microsofts description of the issue and games affected:After installing Windows 11, version 24H2, you might encounter issues with some Ubisoft games. These games might become unresponsive while starting, loading or during active gameplay. In some cases, users might receive a black screen. The affected games are: Assassins Creed Valhalla Assassins Creed Origins Assassins Creed Odyssey Star Wars Outlaws Avatar: Frontiers of PandoraMicrosoft writes that Ubisoft has released a temporary hotfix to address crashing issues in Star Wars Outlaws, but says that players might still experience some performance issues.

Chrysler is working on a fully electric version of the Chrysler Pacifica minivan, according to Green Car Reports. The EV version reportedly would likely come a year after the company debuts a Pacifica design refresh that features elements of the Halcyon concept that Stellantis showed off earlier this year. At the moment, the Pacifica lineup includes a standard gas-powered minivan and a plug-in hybrid with an estimated 32-mile electric-only driving range before it switches over to gas. Chrysler CEO Christine Feuell, who confirmed the plans to Green Car Reports during the LA Auto Show on Thursday, wouldnt say whether the company will keep the plug-in hybrid alongside the all-electric model. The bubbly Stellantis Halcyon concept that the Pacifica will reportedly take design cues from. Image: StellantisRelatedChrysler will reportedly need to rejigger the Pacificas Stow N Go seating system, which lets owners fold seats down to make a flat loading floor, to accommodate Stellantis BEV powertrain. Feuell told the outlet that one solution its considering would involve storing the second-row seats underneath the front seats. Another idea reportedly involves putting second-row outboard seats on rails that let them slide sideways.

godot-rust is a GDExtension (also available as a GDNative implementation for Godot 3.x) that brings the Rust programming language to the open source Godot game engine. We first looked at godot-rust two years ago and are revisiting it because godot-rust 0.2 was just released.godot-rust is described as:Thegodot-rustproject provides bindings for theGodot game engineto theRust language.Rust is an alternative to GDScript, with different trade-offs for users. While GDScript enables fast prototyping and short feedback cycles, games of larger scale may benefit from a stronger type system, a rich library ecosystem and native performance.The Rust bindings focus on safety, despite interacting with the engine over FFI. Many APIs are designed to catch errors at compile time, while others offer runtime checks to prevent undefined behavior.We provide bindings for the two major Godot versions:gdnative Godot 3 bindings, integrating via GDNative C interface.gdext Godot 4 bindings, integrating via GDExtension C interface.Key Linksgodot-rust Homepagegodot-rust Bookgodot-rust GitHubDiscord Servergodot-rust 0.2 Release DetailsYou can learn more about godot-rust and how to get started in the video below.

Traditional large language model (LLM) agent systems face significant challenges when deployed in real-world scenarios due to their limited flexibility and adaptability. Existing LLM agents typically select actions from a predefined set of possibilities at each decision point, a strategy that works well in closed environments with narrowly scoped tasks but falls short in more complex and dynamic settings. This static approach not only restricts the agents capabilities but also requires considerable human effort to anticipate and implement every potential action beforehand, which becomes impractical for complex or evolving environments. Consequently, these agents are unable to adapt effectively to new, unforeseen tasks or solve long-horizon problems, highlighting the need for more robust, self-evolving capabilities in LLM agents.Researchers from the University of Maryland and Adobe introduce DynaSaur: an LLM agent framework that enables the dynamic creation and composition of actions online. Unlike traditional systems that rely on a fixed set of predefined actions, DynaSaur allows agents to generate, execute, and refine new Python functions in real-time whenever existing functions prove insufficient. The agent maintains a growing library of reusable functions, enhancing its ability to respond to diverse scenarios. This dynamic ability to create, execute, and store new tools makes AI agents more adaptable to real-world challenges.Technical DetailsThe technical backbone of DynaSaur revolves around the use of Python functions as representations of actions. Each action is modeled as a Python snippet, which the agent generates, executes, and assesses in its environment. If existing functions do not suffice, the agent dynamically creates new ones and adds them to its library for future reuse. This system leverages Pythons generality and composability, allowing for a flexible approach to action representation. Furthermore, a retrieval mechanism allows the agent to fetch relevant actions from its accumulated library using embedding-based similarity search, addressing context length limitations and improving efficiency.DynaSaur also benefits from integration with the Python ecosystem, giving the agent the ability to interact with a variety of tools and systems. Whether it needs to access web data, manipulate file contents, or execute computational tasks, the agent can write or reuse functions to fulfill these demands without human intervention, demonstrating a high level of adaptability.The significance of DynaSaur lies in its ability to overcome the limitations of predefined action sets and thereby enhance the flexibility of LLM agents. In experiments on the GAIA benchmark, which evaluates the adaptability and generality of AI agents across a broad spectrum of tasks, DynaSaur outperformed all baselines. Using GPT-4, it achieved an average accuracy of 38.21%, surpassing existing methods. When combining human-designed tools with its generated actions, DynaSaur showed an 81.59% improvement, highlighting the synergy between expert-crafted tools and dynamically generated ones.Notably, strong performance was observed in complex tasks categorized under Level 2 and Level 3 of the GAIA benchmark, where DynaSaurs ability to create new actions allowed it to adapt and solve problems beyond the scope of predefined action libraries. By achieving the top position on the GAIA public leaderboard, DynaSaur has set a new standard for LLM agents in terms of adaptability and efficiency in handling unforeseen challenges.ConclusionDynaSaur represents a significant advancement in the field of LLM agent systems, offering a new approach where agents are not just passive entities following predefined scripts but active creators of their own tools and capabilities. By dynamically generating Python functions and building a library of reusable actions, DynaSaur enhances the adaptability, flexibility, and problem-solving capacity of LLMs, making them more effective for real-world tasks. This approach addresses the limitations of current LLM agent systems and opens new avenues for developing AI agents that can autonomously evolve and improve over time. DynaSaur thus paves the way for more practical, robust, and versatile AI applications across a wide range of domains.Check out the Paper and GitHub Page. All credit for this research goes to the researchers of this project. Also,dont forget to follow us onTwitter and join ourTelegram Channel andLinkedIn Group. If you like our work, you will love ournewsletter.. Dont Forget to join our55k+ ML SubReddit. Aswin Ak+ postsAswin AK is a consulting intern at MarkTechPost. He is pursuing his Dual Degree at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He is passionate about data science and machine learning, bringing a strong academic background and hands-on experience in solving real-life cross-domain challenges. Read this AI Research Report from Kili Technology on 'Evaluation of Large Language Model Vulnerabilities: A Comparative Analysis of Red Teaming Techniques'

Amazon has just dropped prices across the board on various Apple iPad models for Black Friday, including the best deal we've ever seen on the new 2024 Apple iPad Pro. Right now the 11" model costs $849 (normally $999) and the 13" model costs $1099 (normally $1299). The new iPad Pro boasts a couple of significant upgrades over its predecessor, including a powerful M4 chip and, for the first time ever, a tandem OLED display.Black Friday iPad Pro DealsiPad Pro (M4) 11" 256GBiPad Pro (M4) 13" 256GBIn our 2024 iPad Pro 11" M4 review, Jacqueline Thomas wrote, "For creative professionals, the 2024 iPad Pro is the most powerful tablet on the market and is going to shine if your work revolves around a touchscreen. For the rest of us, though, the iPad Pro is simply the most beautiful display you'll find in a tablet, with hardware that's powerful enough to be a top-end device for years to come."The 2024 iPad Pro is the best tablet on the market, iOS or otherwise, thanks to the new M4 processor which is both powerful and power efficient. Compared to the previous generation iPad M2, it performs about 20% better. However, the biggest update of the iPad Pro is not the M4 chip, but instead the tandem OLED panel which hadn't previously been seen on an Apple product. Tandem OLED is better than traditional OLED in two ways: (1) it's far brighter and (2) it's less prone to burn-in. If you're wondering why this technology hasn't found its way into TVs, the answer is simply because it's not cost effective at larger sizes. The iPad can get away with it because the 11" screen is much smaller, but that's also a major reason why the iPad Pro is priced considerably higher than the other iPads in Apple's 2024 lineup.More Apple iPad Deals for Black FridayiPad 10th Gen 10.9" 64GBiPad Pro (M4) 11" 256GBiPad Pro (M4) 13" 256GBiPad Mini 6th Gen (A15 Bionic) 8.3" 64GBiPad Mini (A17 Pro) 8.3" 256GBiPad Air (M2) 11" 128GBAmazon iPad Air (M2) 13" 128GBIf you're looking for other Apple devices, check out our Apple Black Friday hub with deals on AirPods, Watches, and more.Should You Wait Until Black Friday?Black Friday is the best opportunity to score some great deals on electronics, and Apple products are no exception. You might be wondering just how low these prices can go. Although we have no direct feedback from Apple themselves, we have years of our own historical price trends to back up our predictions. At this point, Black Friday is close enough that there's certainly no harm waiting. We might see as much as a $50 or even $100 price drop on the more expensive models like the iPad Air or iPad Pro. The iPad and iPad Mini might drop another $20 at most if retailers are feeling generous. If Amazon isn't your preferred vendor (or if it runs out of stock), I expect these deals to be available at Best Buy and Walmart as well. The Apple Store will also host its own Black Friday Sale, although these deals usually aren't nearly as good.Looking for more iPad resources?If you're not sure which iPad is best for you, we have an iPad guide which details which iPad is ideal for which use case. If you intend want to get an iPad for schoolwork, we have an iPad guide for students as well. If you're looking for options outside of iOS, check out the best Android tablets of 2024.Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.

Upgrading your gaming laptop can be an expensive proposition. With a gaming PC, you have save money by going the DIY route or you can just upgrade specific components instead of replacing the entire desktop. Also, since the monitor is not a part of the system, you can keep using it for future builds. You can't afford such luxuries with a laptop. You'd essentially have to buy an entirely new system every time. Fortunately, laptop prices have dropped tremendously over the years, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't save even more.Fortunately, Black Friday is fast approaching and there is no better time to invest in a gaming laptop. We are still a few weeks out from November 29, but some retailers like Best Buy and Dell have already released their first set of early Black Friday sales, including some great deals on gaming laptops. As more stores reveal their Black Friday plans and hopefully push out discounts in advance, we'll be sure to update this article.Best Buy Gaming Laptop DealsBest Buy has some great deals going on as part of its Black Friday Sale and that extends to gaming laptops as well. Some of our favorites are the Acer Nitro V 15" laptop boasts an RTX 4050 GPU for a budget price of $699.99, the Alienware m16 RTX 4070 gaming laptop for $1,299.99 (currently cheaper than buying from Alienware direct), and the Acer Predator Helios with a massive 18" display, powerful i9-14900HX CPU, and RTX 4080 GPU for $1,999.99.Lenovo LOQ 15" AMD Ryzen 7 7435HS RTX 4060 Gaming LaptopAlienware m16 R2 16" Intel Core Ultra 7 155H RTX 4070 Gaming LaptopAcer Nitro V 15" AMD Ryzen 5 7535HS RTX 4050 Gaming LaptopAsus TUF A16 16" AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS Radeon RX7700S Gaming LaptopMSI Katana 15" AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS RTX 4070 Gaming LaptopHP OMEN 16" Intel Core i7-13620H RTX 4060 Gaming LaptopLenovo Legion 7i 16" Intel Core i7-14700HX RTX 4060 Gaming LaptopAcer Predator Helios Neo 16" Intel Core i9-14900HX RTX 4070 Gaming LaptopAcer Predator Helios 18" Intel Core i9-14900HX RTX 4080 Gaming LaptopAcer Predator Helios 18 QHD+ Intel Core i9-14900HX RTX 4090 Gaming LaptopASUS ROG Strix 18" QHD Intel Core i9-14900HX RTX 4080 Gaming LaptopHP OMEN 14" 3K OLED Intel Core Ultra 7 155H RTX 4060 Gaming LaptopASUS TUF 15" Intel Core i7-13620H RTX 4070 Gaming LaptopAcer Predator Helios Neo 16 Intel Core i9-14900HX RTX 4060 Gaming LaptopMSI Crosshair 16" Intel Core i7-14650HX RTX 4070 Gaming LaptopMSI Vector 16" Intel Core i9-13980HX RTX 4080 Gaming LaptopGigabyte G6 KF 16" Intel Core i7-13620H RTX 4060 Gaming LaptopMSI THIN 15" Intel Core i5-13420H RTX 4050 Gaming LaptopMSI Cyborg 14" Intel Core i7-13620H RTX 4060 Gaming LaptopAlienware Gaming Laptop DealsThe Alienware Black Friday Sale is already well underway with some hefty discounts on Alienware m-series and x-series gaming laptops. The m-series is Alienware's best-selling gaming laptop; it boasts excellent build quality and powerful gaming components for a very reasonable price. The Alienware x-series is a more recent model that boasts a slimmer and lighter redesign. It's the thinnest Alienware laptop ever and compares to other ultra-thin laptops like the Razer Blade.Alienware m16 R2 16" Intel Core Ultra 9 185H RTX 4060 Gaming LaptopAlienware m16 R2 16" Intel Core Ultra 9 185H RTX 4070 Gaming LaptopAlienware m18 R2 18" Intel Core i9-14900HX RTX 4070 Gaming LaptopAlienware m18 R2 18" Intel Core i9-14900HX RTX 4090 Gaming LaptopAlienware x16 R2 16" Intel Core Ultra 7 RTX 4060 Gaming LaptopAlienware x16 R2 16" Intel Core Ultra 7 RTX 4070 Gaming LaptopAlienware x16 R2 16" Intel Core Ultra 9 185H RTX 4090 Gaming LaptopDell G16 16" QHD+ Intel Core i9-13900HX RTX 4060 Gaming LaptopDell G16 16" i9 RTX 4070 Gaming LaptopHP Gaming Laptop DealsHP has kicked off its Black Friday Sale with some great deals on their Omen and Omen Transcend gaming laptops. The Omen is HP's most popular gaming laptop and is generally more attractively priced than Alienware or Lenovo Legion. The Omen Transcend is a new 2024 lighter and thinner version of the Omen and features better materials like a premium aluminum chassis instead of plastic. The Transcend also has the option to upgrade the display to OLED. It's an excellent choice for anyone who wants a slim and easily portable laptop while still being able to play games.Note: Some configurations below will require you to manually select the upgrades on the product page.HP Omen 16" Intel Core i9-14900HX RTX 4070 Gaming LaptopHP Omen 16" Intel Core i7-14700HX RTX 4060 Gaming LaptopSelect RTX 4080 OptionHP Omen 16" Intel Core i9-14900HX RTX 4080 Gaming LaptopSelect RTX 4060 and OLED Display OptionsHP Omen Transcend 16" OLED Intel Core i7-14700HX RTX 4060 Gaming LaptopSelect RTX 4070 and OLED Display OptionsHP Omen Transcend 16" OLED Intel Core i7-14700HX RTX 4070 Gaming LaptopLenovo Legion Slim 16" RTX 4070 LaptopLenovo Legion Slim 5 Gen 9 16" 2560x1600 (QHD+) AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS RTX 4070 Gaming Laptop with 16GB RAM, 1TB SSDLenovo hasn't kicked off any official Black Friday Sale just yet. However they do have one good laptop deal worth mentioning. You can get a Lenovo Legion Slim 5 Gen 9 16" Ryzen Edition RTX 4070 gaming laptop for $1,121.99 shipped. The Legion Slim model is thinner than your typical gaming laptop, and yet is still equipped with a GPU that has the same high-wattage TGP as the full-sized Legion Pro. It weighs in at only 4.63lbs and measures 0.78" at its thinnest point. RTX 4070 mobile GPU performs on par with the RTX 3080 and you'll want this kind of power to run games comfortably on the laptop's beefed up 2560x1600 QHD+ display.Walmart and Amazon Laptop Deals Aren't Available YetWalmart and Amazon haven't yet included any good gaming laptop deals in their Early Black Friday Sales. Rest assured these two retailers traditionally have some of the discounts on Black Friday, so stay tuned. We'll update this section once thee deals go live sometime next week.Not All Laptop GPUs Are the SameThere are two important tidbits that deserve mention concerning graphics cards found in laptops. First, mobile GPU variants are not as powerful as their desktop counterparts. For example, a mobile RTX 4060 doesn't perform as well as a desktop RTX 4060. The mobile versions are generally about one to two tiers lower in performance. Using the same example, the mobile RTX 4060 performs more similarly to a desktop RTX 4050.Second, not all laptops feature the same performance out of the same GPU. Two laptops equipped with the same RTX 4060 GPU, for example, might perform very different in gaming. In order to roughly tell how good a GPU will be, you can look at the TGP rating. That's basically the amount of power supplied to the GPU. A higher TGP rating means more power will be delivered, equating to stronger performance, however the wattage consumption and heat generated will be higher. Here are the maximum TGP rates for the RTX 40 series graphics cards:Mobile RTX 4050: 115WMobile RTX 4060: 115WMobile RTX 4070: 115WMobile RTX 4080: 150WMobile RTX 4090: 150WShould You Buy Now or Wait for Black Friday?At this point, Black Friday is only a few weeks away and in most cases it's better to wait. There are some deals here that are probably as low as they will go, even on Black Friday. However, it's very likely that the same deals you see now will also be available on November 29, even if they go out of stock. Also, several retailers, including Lenovo, Walmart, and Amazon, haven't released their deals just yet. It might be a good idea to wait and see what they'll bring to the table.Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.

This article contains Arcane spoilers.Whod have thought the ultimate solution to the conflict in Arcane would come from a phantom Silco, existing only in Jinxs mind?We build our own prisons, bars forged of oaths, codes, commitments, walls of self-doubt, and accepted limitation, the spirit of the former crime boss tells his adopted daughter as she wallows in a literal jail in the penultimate episode of Arcane season 2 Act III. We inhabit these cells, these identities, and call them us. I thought I could break free by eliminating those I deemed my jailors. But, Jinx, I think the cycle only ends when you find the will to walk away.Jinx tells her mentor, Im done running in circles, and seeks to solve the problem by taking herself out of the equation. Thankfully, Ekko with his new Zero Drive keeps her from blowing herself up, but it turns out her death wouldnt have been enough to end the killing anyway. Another cycle needed to break in order for Arcanes story to resolve itself: the one that reaches all the way back to Jayces youth shown in the series premiere.It seems that Viktor, just before his ultimate ascension, wasnt wrong when he told Jayce, This chain of events started with you. In my confusion I was unable to reconcile this. While Viktor concluded that Jayces hextech meant the Glorious Evolution was destined to be, it actually turned out to be the instrument of its undoing. It was a cycle that began when an older, more mage-like Viktor went back in time and gave young Jayce, freezing in the snow with his mother, a blue rune-inscribed shard.This single act was the catalyst for both Jayces research and Viktors ascension, but after many attempts with different runes over who-knows-how-many timelines, future Viktor also provided the means for his misguided younger self to walk away from the cycle that only led to fields of dreamless solitude, a future of loneliness where the hive mind of humanity he created left him with no companions in life.As Viktor put it: There is no prize to perfection, only an end to pursuit. His Glorious Evolution meant that there was no human suffering anymore but also no striving, no struggling, no triumph over adversity. But the only way he could stop his younger self from pursuing perfection was by showing Jayce the wasteland that resulted from his partners hubris, awakening him to the dangers of blind ambition and progress.Ironically (or perhaps fortuitously), one of the failed timelines turned out to be a necessary ingredient in persuading Viktor to walk away, a version of history in which he never had access to hextech in the first place. This is the timeline that Ekko and Heimerdinger visited, one in which, because Vi died during the heist depicted in the Arcane premiere, Powder never did anything with the stolen hextech prototype gems, and Jayce likely never made any brilliant breakthroughs for Piltover or for his ailing friend Viktor.However, Ekkos visit to that more peaceful Zaun gave him more than simply the means to stop Jinx from killing herself, not to mention a heartwarming chance to meet a more loving version of his childhood friend, Powder. The Zero Drive also provided the paradoxical power of the Anomaly that was needed to crack Viktors mask and allow him to see the future that was in store for Runeterra if he took away everyones free will.In that sense, Ekko is the real hero of Arcane, both in the defeat of Viktor and in the uniting of Piltover and Zaun, the latter under the banner of a more resolved Jinx. And in the end, Jinx was able to walk away from her own cycle the way she wanted to, but with a lot more reconciliation and meaning behind her sacrifice. Its like Ekko said, even way back in the season 2 trailer, Sometimes taking a leap forward means leaving a few things behind.Sure, theres Mel and her newfound mage powers along with Caitlyns successful disarming of Ambessa that brought down the forces of Noxus, too, but the Arcane finale seems to indicate that at least one of those stories will continue into the next League of Legends adaptation. Never mind the glimpses of Singes clockwork daughter, Orianna, or the three-eyed raven that portends the arrival of League of Legends hero, Swain, the ruthless Noxian tactician!But all of that, perhaps, is reserved for the next cycle.