Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was one of two conspicuous, high-profile live-service game failures in 2024. But unlike Sony, which unceremoniously shut down Concord and swept it under the carpet when it became apparent the hero shooter wasnt panning out, WB Games seems keen to try anything to get more people playing Rocksteady Games boondoggle about the DC supervillain team.After trying out a 95% discount on Steam in November, Suicide Squad will be free to all PlayStation Plus subscribers for a month starting Jan. 7. Its one of the three free monthly games offered as part of PlayStation Plus Essential in January, the others being Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered and The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe.This is a pretty tasty trio, actually. Suicide Squad, for all the furore and disappointment surrounding it, is a not un-fun blockbuster romp that takes some wild swings in its storytelling across its now-complete run of four seasons. Itll be available on PS5 for PS Plus subscribers.Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered is the 2020 remaster of the classic 2010 Criterion Games racer the Burnout developers first entry in the Need for Speed series, and still arguably its best. Its all about high-speed police chases across a lovely open-world map with a West Coast vibe. Its available on PS4 (and playable on PS5, of course).The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe is the 2022 expanded remake of the 2013 metafictional indie game. No spoilers, but its a fascinating and funny exploration of the choice or lack of it in the relationship between a games creators and its players. Its available in both PS4 and PS5 versions.All three games will be free to download for PlayStation Plus members until Feb. 3.From now until Jan. 6, its your last chance to download Decembers monthly PS Plus games: co-op megahit It Takes Two, Aliens: Dark Descent, and Temtem.

Teenage Engineering is back with another super cool music machine. The Teenage Engineering OP-XY is a new portable synthesizer and sequencer thats built for upgradeability, and has a heavier focus on layering and effects.The Swedish company has seriously refined its look, and has had a hand in some of the most interesting and influential consumer tech designs of the past few years. Recently, it helped in the design of the Rabbit R1 AI device, but the OP-XY represents a return to its own branded pieces.The sequencer offers a black and white design with a grayscale gradient that progresses along the sequencer buttons in the center of the device. Its less colorful than some of the companys other products but just as unique.The OP-XY is built as an upgraded version of some of the companys previous generation sequencers, as you might have gathered from the OP name. Unlike the OP-Z, which was designed to be used with a smartphone, the new model has a built-in black-and-white screen. Dont expect to be able to touch that screen, though; the OP-XY is exclusively controlled through the knobs and buttons dotted around its face.Also, around the exterior of the device there are a range of different ports. There are a few input options, including a 3.5mm input and a built-in microphone. Theres a 3.5mm output, which can output MIDI signals to allow the OP-XY to control external synthesizers. Lastly, theres a 3.5mm analog audio output. It can be charged through USB-C and has a 16-hour battery.The OP-XY is a step sequencer like the OP-1. The step sequencer is one of the earliest forms of creating electronic music beats. While plenty of people now turn to software for sequencing, theres still something to say for good old hardware step sequencer devices like the OP-XY.The OP-XY has a dual Blackfin CPU paired with 512GB of RAM, as well as 8GB of internal storage and eight unique synth engines. Theres also an accelerometer built into it, which allows the user to move the synthesizer around to change how it sounds.Teenage Engineerings OP-XY sequencer is available for $2,299 at teenage.engineering.com.

Welcome to a new year of Designer Desktops! If youre new here, heres the scoop: every month, we team up with designers, artists, and brands to bring you a free downloadable desktop wallpaper. Think youve got a design that deserves to be seen (and downloaded) by thousands of readers? Drop us an email or slide into our DMs were always on the hunt for fresh, creative talent!Kicking off 2025, were thrilled to introduce Ribbon, a vibrant collaboration between Designtex, a leader in applied materials for the built environment, and UK-based artist Sophie Smallhorn. Inspired by a snuffbox she stumbled upon in a museum, Smallhorn combined her lifelong love of ribbons with her expertise in color and composition to create this lively, dynamic pattern. Her starting point? A childhood favorite: collaging. Using paper and colored acetates, she played with shapes and layers, then fine-tuned the scale to perfection. The idea was to create a playful, meandering, linear composition and to utilize the layering of transparent colors, which is a common theme in my print work, Smallhorn explains.The final result captures the fluid motion of ribbons, with a subtle gridded texture adding extra depth. This collaboration highlights the transformative power of integrating art into functional design seamlessly merging Smallhorns vibrant aesthetic with Designtexs expertise in bringing innovative materials to life. Whether as a textile, wallcovering, or your new desktop backdrop, Ribbon brings an uplifting burst of energy to any space.Download the wallpapers for free with the links below for all your tech devices today!DESKTOP:102476812801024168010501900120025601440MOBILE:iPhone XS iPhone XS Max iPad ProCheck out some of Sophie Smallhorns other work:Learn more about Sophie Smallhorn here and Designtex here.View and download past Designer Desktopshere.

When I bought tickets for Anime NYC, I worried that the chaos would be overwhelming for my daughters' first convention. I started my own con-going tradition a decade ago with New York Comic Con, and I've attended countless conventions since, but Anime NYC was my twin 15-year-old daughters' first time going to an event so massive. To help, I planned to download a scavenger hunt to help guide them through the convention hall, but I couldn't find one anywhere online. So I stayed up late the night before Anime NYC, and I made an anime convention scavenger hunt myself. Credit: Jordan Calhoun / Anime NYC Like New York Comic Con, Anime NYC is held at the Javits Center, a 3.3 million square foot convention hall. Anime NYC was filled with over 100,000 people in 2024, the largest crowd yet in its seven-year history, and if you've been to a con before, you know how overwhelming and exhausting they can be: Countless events, panels, booths, and advertisements compete for your attention as you walk for miles through crowds. They're not beginner-friendly experiences, and Anime NYC was no exception. My goal for the scavenger hunt was to give our exploration more focus and to distract from the fatigue, and it worked. It made the experience much less overwhelming for my familyand a lot more fun. I might never do another convention without one. Customize this comic convention scavenger hunt You can download this comic and anime convention scavenger hunt for free to use at your next convention, or use it as inspiration to make your own. The scavenger hunt is broken down into three sections: The first section has easier searches worth one point each. With a few bonuses involved, there are a maximum of 15 points possible in the first section of the scavenger hunt.The second section has challenges that are more involved or need more social interaction with strangers, and are worth two points each. With bonuses, there are a possible 20 points in the second section. And the last section involves taking videos of group members more actively engaging with the community, each worth 5 points. With bonuses, this section is worth up to 25 points. The scavenger hunt format is malleable to most comic, anime, and gaming conventions, so you should customize it for your group and interests. For example, you may want to swap in other comic or video game characters, or raise or lower the difficulty levels based on age (or nerdiness). My family is Black and likes to notice such characters in anime, so one of our options included asking strangers if they can name five Black anime characters.How long does the scavenger hunt take?For adults, you can expect the convention scavenger hunt to take around 4-6 hours to finish. With kids, you can expect the search to be slower depending on how much walking they can handle. My family spent around six hours at Anime NYC, and out of a total possible 60 points, the winning team scored 48 points against the losing team's 47. Credit: Jordan Calhoun / Lifehacker How to make your own convention scavenger huntOf course, you can make your own scavenger hunt to be as unique as you want. The simplest scavenger hunts just need a list of items to find or tasks to accomplish, along with some basic rules around teams, time limits, and prizes. If your group is competitive, a few common questions to consider include: Whether teams can make alliancesWhether teams can sabotage each otherWhether teams can spend money for clues (This was a particular point of contention during my family's scavenger hunt, as my team paid for an autograph from an anime voice actor for a bonus point.)And a pre-agreed tie breakerScavenger hunts are a great way to organize conventionsOne of my favorite productivity quotes is, There is only one way to eat an elephant: one bite at a time." It reminds me that any large accomplishment can be made less daunting and more manageable by breaking into smaller tasks. I try to keep "one bite at a time" in mind whether training for a marathon, writing a book, or convincing my daughters to love conventions as much as I do: If I organize your tasks and focus on the one in front of me, the goal will happen along the way. Ultimately, a scavenger hunt can function as a great task management toolessentially a checklist, but disguised for funand I plan to use them more often for events like vacations, museums, and trips. And when I can't find a good one online, I hope to find time to keep building them on my own.

Apple Music (previously iTunes) is a behemoth of a music manager app for macOS and Windowsand it has changed and developed so much since its launch in 2001 that you may well have not come across everything this piece of software has to offer. It has evolved almost as rapidly as the digital music industry.Whether you turn to Apple Music as your default audio player or you're wondering if it's worth switching to, these lesser-known features should give you a better idea of what the application is capable ofbeyond the basics of streaming music from the web and playing local files.(The guide below describes the features as they're found in Apple Music for macOS. The same features are all available in the Windows version, but might not be in exactly the same place or on the same menu.)Build a radio station based on your favorite songIf you've got a track you're particularly taken with in Apple Music, you can build an entire radio station mix around itas long as you're a subscriber to the Apple Music streaming service. With a particular song selected in the app, open the Song menu and choose Create Station. It's a really good way of discovering new artists similar to your favorites.Switch to the mini playerApple Music comes with a useful mini player. To access it, open the Window menu and choose Mini Player to see it (click and drag on it to move it around). Via Music > Settings > Advanced you can find a checkbox to keep it on top of other program windows on macOS, so you always have access to key playback controls. You can specify when songs start and stop. Credit: Lifehacker Cut out intros and outrosYou can set timestamps for individual songs in Apple Music that tell the app where to start and stop playback whenever the song is played on any deviceso you can cut out a lengthy intro or outro, for example. Right-click on a track, then choose Get Info and switch to the Options tab, where you'll find Start and Stop fields. Click OK to confirm.Tweak your recommendationsNot every track in your library will be a five-star anthem, and you don't necessarily want the tracks that you like less to influence the recommendations you see across Apple Musiceven if you keep the tracks themselves around. To make a song have less of an influence over recommended music, right-click on it and choose Suggest Less. Use Suggest Less to tweak your recommendations. Credit: Lifehacker Clear out the duplicatesYou don't want your playlists and your Mac storage getting unnecessarily cluttered with duplicate files, which can be a problem for both local and streamed music. Open the File menu, then choose Library and Show Duplicate Items. You can then see all the tracks that are in your library more than once, and remove the extra copies you don't need.Switch to lossless audioThe Apple Music streaming service supports lossless audio nowthat's up to 24-bit/192 kHz in quality across the entire catalogand you can switch to the higher resolution sound if you don't mind the extra demands on your bandwidth and file download sizes. To enable or disable the lossless audio feature in the app, head to Music > Settings > Playback.Add comments to tracksYou can add comments to any of the tracks in your library. Just right-click on a song, then choose Get Info and head to the Details tab. You can use the comments field to label songs in any way you likeas instrumentals, or favorite songs, or upbeat songs, or golden oldiesand then set up smart playlists to pick out tracks using the comments data. Sound Check will level out the volume levels. Credit: Lifehacker Normalize the volumeIt can be jarring when different songs have been recorded at different volume levels, which leaves you continually searching for the volume slider when a new track starts. To stop this from happening, open the Music menu, choose Settings, then head to the Playback tab and enable the Sound Check feature. Apple Music then makes adjustments automatically.Skip songs when shufflingMany of us turn to the shuffle feature to save having to queue up albums and songs manually, but not all songs lend themselves to a shuffled selectionyou might want to cut out those lengthy post-rock tracks or spoken word skits, for example. To do this, right-click on a song, then choose Get Info: On the Options tab, check the Skip when shuffling box, then click OK. Playlists can be made collaborative. Credit: Lifehacker Create collaborative playlistsThis is a newer feature that may have slipped under your radar: You can now work on playlists with other people in Apple Music, which is perfect for parties or road trips for example. With a playlist on screen, click the invite people button on the right (it's an icon of a head and shoulders), then choose Start Collaborating to pick your collaborators.Customize the layoutApple Music offers more flexibility in terms of its layout than you might have realized. If you've got a playlist on screen, you can open the View menu to choose between different groupings for your tracks (including Songs and Albums). You can also select how the tracks on screen are sorted and filtered (by artist name or number of plays, for example).

We may earn a commission from links on this page.As I sit here typing, my Garmin watch tells me that I have 21 hours until Ive fully recovered from the workout I did earlier today. It wasnt even a hard workout, but Ive come to expect long recovery estimates from Garminand I won't let this number stop me from going on an easy run in the morning. The recovery time doesnt mean what you might think it mean.What is the recovery time feature, and where can you see it?Most Garmin sport watches calculate a recovery time after each workout. Youll see this number in the end-of-workout summary that you get right after you finish. Its also available from the Training Status glance if you have that, or the Training Readiness tile in the Garmin Connect app if you have that. On my Forerunner 265S, I can even set it as one of the little complications on my main watch face. Garmin Forerunner 265S Running Smartwatch (Black/Yellow) $422.00 at Amazon $449.99 Save $27.99 Get Deal Get Deal $422.00 at Amazon $449.99 Save $27.99 Garmin defines recovery time as an estimate on how long it will take for you to fully recover and be ready for your next workout of the same intensity. Note that phrase, fully recover. No athlete is fully recovered at the start of every training session; sometimes you carry a little fatigue from one session to the next. This number is just giving you a sense of how long youll be feeling the effects of this workout.The recovery time feature is available on most Enduro, Epix, Fenix, Forerunner, Instinct, Venu, and Vivoactive watches, among others (Garmin has a full list here).Do you have to wait until the recovery time hits zero before working out again?No! This is probably the biggest misconception about the feature (and it explains why the recovery times can be so longup to four days). The idea isnt that you have to rot in bed until the timer is up. Its just that, between now and when the timer hits zero, youll be operating with at least a little more fatigue than usual.You can read Garmins explanation here. They say: When your timer hits zero, it means you are ready to gain the maximum benefit from your next hard fitness-improving (i.e., training effect: 3.0+) type workout.So if I get a 38-hour recovery time after a hard workout, thats just a signal that I wont be in tip-top shape tomorrow. If I were planning the hardest workout of my week for tomorrow, I might want to consider delaying that workout so I can do it later on fresh legs. But if Im planning on going for a recovery run instead, theres no need to change my plans.Should you ignore Garmins recovery time?I mean, theres an argument for ignoring any metric a watch gives you, at least some of the time. You dont need to let Garmins recovery time run your life. If you still want to get your workout in, and you feel up to it, feel free to ignore the recovery numbers.That said, I do find the recovery time useful as a gut check. If I get a long recovery time, thats a reminder that I did actually work pretty hard, and I should make sure my efforts are balanced over time with easy and hard days. Any good training program will keep that in mind, anywaywith or without a watch putting a number on it.Why does my recovery time keep changing?Garmin is constantly updating its estimate of how far away you are from full recovery. If you do another workout before the timer hits zero, the number will go up again because youve given yourself more work to recover from.On the flip side, if you got a good nights sleep, you may find that the number shrank more than expected during the night. Again, you dont want to read too much into this number; its just an estimate, after all. But its a good sign if you find youre recovering quickly from your hard workouts.

Ahead of the official start of CES, Samsung has announced a trio of new Odyssey gaming monitors. Of the bunch, the G81SF is the most interesting. Samsung says its the first 4K, 27-inch OLED gaming monitor. The panel features a 240Hz refresh rate and 0.03ms gray-to-gray pixel response time.At 4K and 27 inches, pixel density clocks in at 165 pixels per inch, meaning the G81SF should produce an incredibly sharp image. As Samsung is the main supplier of QD-OLEDs, the G81SFs panel will almost certainly make its way to other gaming monitors released this year. With CES 2025 about to kick off, some of those could be announced as early as sometime in the next few days.If you dont want to sacrifice motion clarity for sharpness, Samsung has you covered there too. The second new Odyssey gaming monitor the company announced, the G60SF, features a 500Hz refresh rate. Resolution is limited to 2,560 x 1,440 on this model, but both the G6 and the G8 detailed above will offer VESA True Black 400-certified HDR performance, so the G60SF will still be great for single player games and exceptional for competitive titles like Overwatch 2 and Valorant, thanks to that 500Hz refresh rate.SamsungRounding out the new Odyssey monitors Samsung announced today is something of a curio and a CES throwback. The 27-inch G90XF has a lenticular lens attached to the front of its panel and stereo camera, meaning you can use it to watch 3D content without wearing 3D glasses. The G90XF includes AI software Samsung says can convert 2D video to 3D, but if we had to guess, the resulting footage wont look great.If you primarily use your computer for productivity, Samsung hasnt forgotten you and the companys new offerings here arent any less interesting. First, theres the Smart Monitor M9 (M90SF). It features a 32-inch 4K OLED panel that offers True Black 400 HDR performance. It also comes with Samsungs space-saving Easy Setup Stand, but what separates the M90SF from all the other monitors Samsung announced today are the couple of AI features that come included with it. The first, dubbed AI Picture Optimizer, analyzes the input signal from your PC to automatically adjust the M9s display settings to produce the best image possible for the content youre consuming, be that a game, movie or productivity app. The other feature can upscale lower-resolution content to 4K.Lastly, theres the ViewFinity S8. Its not an OLED, but at 37 inches, its the largest 16:9 4K monitor Samsung has ever offered. It offers 99 percent sRGB color gamut coverage, a built-in KVM switch and 90W USB-C power delivery. Its not the most exciting monitor in Samsungs new lineup, but it should appeal to design professionals who want the biggest possible screen but would rather not deal with the line distortion produced by an ultrawide.Samsung did not share pricing and availability information for any of the monitors it announced today. Expect those details to come sometime after CES.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/the-first-27-inch-4k-gaming-oled-monitor-is-here-courtesy-of-samsung-155118244.html?src=rss

The US Treasury Department told lawmakers in a letter back in December that its documents and workstations were accessed by an external party in a security breach. It described the attack as "a major cybersecurity incident" and attributed it to a "China state-sponsored Advanced Persistent Threat actor." Now, The Washington Post has reported that the bad actors infiltrated a "highly sensitive office" within the Treasury in charge of deliberating and administering US government sanctions.As The Post explains, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is in possession of some important information that could be very useful to another country's government. While the hackers were only able to steal unclassified data, they could still have gotten their hands on the identities of potential sanction targets. They could also have stolen pieces of evidence that the agency had collected as part of its investigation on entities that the government is thinking of sanctioning. Overall, the attackers could have gotten enough information to give them the knowledge of how the US develops sanctions against foreign entities.In addition to OFAC, the Office of the Treasury Secretary and the Office of Financial Research were also affected by the breach. The attackers infiltrated the Treasury's systems by gaining access to a key used by BeyondTrust, a cloud-based service that provides the department with technical support.The US government has attributed numerous cyberattacks on its agencies and American companies to China state-sponsored actors over the years. Just last year, the FBI blamed "PRC-affiliated actors" for a massive hack on US telecom companies. The actors, a group known as Salt Typhoon, reportedly targeted the mobile devices of diplomats, government officials and other people linked to both presidential campaigns. According to The Post, Chinese officials called claims that their country was involved in the attack on the Treasury Department "groundless" and insisted that their government "has always opposed all forms of hacker attacks."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/china-linked-attack-on-us-treasury-department-reportedly-targeted-its-sanctions-office-150033082.html?src=rss

Comments by Igor Pavlov on the file compression software's page on the Sourceforge.net repository seemingly put an end to the saga - for now?

From new TV show trailers to some DC movie reveals, here are the biggest news stories you missed over the 2024 holiday season.