Path of Exile 2 is out now in early access ahead of its 1.0 launch in the future. Naturally, that means the game will change a lot over the months ahead. While the ARPG will feature three acts of the campaign, a portion of the 12 classes, and additional content, there's still more to come as time goes on. Though the early access version of Path of Exile 2 went live on December 6, there is a key stipulation to gaining access; the game will eventually be free-to-play, but to play during the early access period, you'll need to pay up.You can find out how much you need to pay and other details about Path of Exile 2's launch in the guide below.How much is Path of Exile 2 Early Access?Early access to Path of Exile 2 costs some money.The early access version of Path of Exile 2 costs $30. That $30 is spent on an Early Access Supporter Pack, which gives you a Path of Exile 2 early access key as well as 300 Points and the extended digital soundtrack. The Points can be used to purchase items in the Path of Exile 2 shop and are technically a $30 value on their own.Continue Reading at GameSpot

The massive Palisades blaze in Southern California has prompted production to halt on a variety of projects in and around Los Angeles, including Fallout Season 2. The sophomore season was expected to resume filming today, January 8, following a holiday break, but that's no longer the case.Film LA said in a statement that the Los Angeles County Fire Department instructed permit-holders that anyone filming in Altadena, La Crescenta, and La Canada Flintridge must pause.Soundstages where a number of productions are being filmed are not directly at risk of the fires at this point, but local authorities have advised against non-essential activities, and filming for Hollywood projects falls into that category, it appears.Continue Reading at GameSpot

When it comes to isekai, the majority of manhwa take place in a fantasy or historical setting reminiscent of medieval Europe, utilizing popular cultural motifs to craft the world. Because many manhwa use the same type of setting, authors often use different methods to distinguish their story. One of those methods is introducing modern technology, philosophy, or culture through a character who specializes in that field.

The Assassin's Creed series has been through its fair share of ups and downs throughout the series. Players love the idea of taking on the role of an assassin across various periods in history as they interact with notable historical figures from the time.

Players score lots of multi-eliminations and more accidental wins.

MARVEL RIVALS BOOMING IN POPULARITY MEANS A TON OF NEW PLAYERS ARE LEARNING WHAT A "C9" AND THAT I CREATED IT.. LET ME MOVE ON PLEASEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE Liquid Mendo (@Mendo) January 8, 2025Marvel Rivals has brought back the joys of Overwatch in its heyday: goofy hero interactions, legendary plays, and, of course, critical mistakes that cost the entire match. Overwatchs infamous C9 meme has made a comeback and one of the former esports players responsible for it wishes it didnt.MARVEL RIVALS BOOMING POPULARITY MEANS A TON OF NEW PLAYERS ARE LEARNING WHAT A C9 [IS] AND THAT I CREATED IT. LET ME MOVE ON PLEASE, Lucas Mendo Hkansson wrote on X (formerly Twitter).Hkansson played on Cloud9s Overwatch team in 2017 and was partially responsible for popularizing a term thrown around in the community to this day. The C9 meme was born in a match during Overwatch Apex Season 2 where Hkanssons team failed to touch the objective and lost the round despite decisively winning the fight. And then they made the same mistake three more times, prompting people to spam C9 LUL in Twitch chat. Hkansson happened to be the obvious culprit in the third round when he ignored the point to pull off an ultimate on Soldier: 76, but the meme was a team effort. @z_clipp A c9 on rivals is crazy @Somjuu #somjuu #somjuuclips #marvel #marvelrivalsvideogame #marvelrivals #marvelrivalsclips #marvelstudios #gameplay #trending #new #newgame #newgameplay #twitch #twitchstreamer #streamer #twitchclips #fypage #fyp #gamer #gamestiktok sad SpongeBob music michael C9 is the first thing you see in chat whenever Overwatch players are too distracted with getting kills to touch the objective, and its starting to appear in Marvel Rivals now, too. It doesnt help that payloads in Marvel Rivals keep moving based on the team that touched them last, which makes C9s surprisingly common. Its the curse of team-based games, where so much else is going on that its easy to assume someone else will handle the objective for you. Its just ten times more embarrassing when youre on a pro team and nobody takes responsibility.Even when the exact definition is still debated in Reddit threads (does it count if the point is too dangerous to step on?), Marvel Rivals proves that as long as theres an objective to ignore, there will be a C9.

Cooking sims run the gamut of intensity, but if Diner Dash is at the sweating-bullets end of the spectrum, Galaxy Burger is at the other end. This space-themed burger flipping game, developed by Galactic Workshop, is dripping with the weird astronaut cats, delivery bots, aliens, and elvish humans are your customers across the various planets in our galaxy, rendered in 16-bit art.With each burger joint you open up, you encounter new customers drawn in various art styles youll meet plenty of chibi Robo-Kitties on Venus, while the Earthlings who reside both on Earth and on the moon are Rick and Morty-esque. Some customers are shy, but, importantly, all customers are chill and relatively easy to please. These burger joints are like a pizza shop in a college town run by slow-moving, yet ultimately effective, stoners. Theres no rush, so as the player, you can really home in on lining that burger up perfectly with the bun, or nailing your ketchup art.Galaxy Burger defaults to a mode where you earn wages and tips for correctly making orders for one day at a time. You know how many customers youll see that day from the start of the round, and you can take as long as you want in real time to complete it. In short, its all the satisfaction of a Diner Dash or Cooking Mama game, with none of the stress. The money does function as a motivating reward, though you can use it to unlock new planets (Ive unlocked up to Earth so far) and buy coupons for more tips and faster cook times, among other buffs that last for one day each.Online co-op, endless mode, and time-sensitive mode where customers judge you on order accuracy and speed make Galaxy Burger feel like a full game despite the simple premise. I look forward to the possibility of updates that might bring more variety in dialogue with customers, or a challenge mode to play in between the relaxing default-mode rounds. But as it stands now, its got a loose grip on my attention, and I like that its designed to be respectful of my time. Its become a mainstay in my rotation of games I play while also half-watching an episode of television Ive already seen and having a conversation with my husband. Oh, is that just me? OK

R.F. Kuangs Nebula and Locus Award-winning fantasy novel Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence is widely adored. Polygon considered one of the best SFF novels of 2022. For instance, my colleague Sadie Gennis loved it enough to buy the hardcover version for herself and as gifts for two of her friends, even though she already owned a Kindle copy. While Im very late to the party, Ill finally jump on board thanks to a fantastic deal on the eBook version on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo that knocks the price from $15.99 to just $1.99.I dont want to spoil the full plot for myself, though I know just enough about the book to want to dive in, thanks to Polygons Nicole Clark, who wrote a juicy snippet about Babel for that 2022 SFF novel ranking:While studying at Babel, Robin and his cohort are given access to abundant resources they could have never dreamed of. At the same time, they see the ugly agenda of Oxford, and how even their mother tongues become tools of British imperialism. Their professors and classmates see the value in the silver they may produce, with their knowledge of such exotic languages, but view those who live in foreign countries as less than human and ultimately expendable. Robin and his friends must choose between two paths set before them: comfort and wealth in the bosom of the crown, or simply burning it all down. Its also tough not be intrigued by the drama that this title has endured since it debuted. While it seemed like a leading contender to win the prestigious Hugo Award in 2023, Babel was disqualified during the voting process. There was speculation that it was a result of Chinese state censorship, or the Hugo Awards committees self-censorship to appease the Chinese government, since much of Kuangs work involves Chinese history and culture. Kuang wasnt provided with a reason for the novels disqualification, and Babel was far from the only novel to get a controversial ineligibility ruling for the award that year. Now you can judge the book for yourself for a couple bucks.{default:false,name:Shopkeeper,slug:shopkeeper,listId:Shopkeeper,title:Shopkeeper,promoText:Polygon\u2019s handpicked deals on games, movies, books, and more.,frequency:weekly,image:439313}

We may earn a commission from links on this page.Low-intensity cardiosometimes called LISS or zone 2is a previously-underrated form of exercise. Its finally coming back into fashion after spending years on the sidelines whileHIIT and lifting-only routines ran the field. But what is zone 2 cardio, exactly? How can you make sure you're doing it right? And is it really so bad if your heart rate drifts into zone 3? What is zone 2 training?Zone 2 training is cardio done at a steady, low intensity. It has benefits for aerobic training (so you can run faster), anaerobic training (helping you to recover faster between reps and sets, or between intervals), and it's also an efficient, low-fatigue way to burn calories.Zone 2 is a term drawn from the five-zone system of heart rate training, and the same concept is also known by other names and metrics. To runners, it is easy pace or long slow distance pace. To cyclists, it corresponds to zones 2 and 3 of a seven-zone system of mechanical power. In other sports, like swimming and rowing, its often just called easy or low-intensity exercise.All that said, there is no official definition of zone 2, and different devices won't necessarily agree with each other. The same heart rate might be "zone 2" on one device and "zone 3" on another. So please take the following with a grain of salt.The hallmark of zone 2 training is that its relatively slow and that its done at a steady pace. You'll be aiming for a heart rate of around 70%, but that doesnt mean doing intervals at 90% and then resting at 50%. It means holding that 70% level the whole time youre exercising. You can do zone 2 cardio with any steady, repetitive movement. Popular methods are running, cycling, swimming, rowing, brisk walking, fast hiking, or churning away on the elliptical. (Walking can count if you're new to exercise; as you get fitter, you'll probably need to choose a slightly harder form of exercise.)To be clear, its still workits not the same as sitting around restingbut it should feel like you could keep going forever if you wanted to. You dont stop a zone 2 session when you get tired, you stop it because you set out for a 30- or 45- or 60-minute session, and your time is up. COOSPO Bluetooth Heart Rate Monitor Chest Strap $26.39 at Amazon $32.99 Save $6.60 Shop Now Shop Now $26.39 at Amazon $32.99 Save $6.60 How do I find my zone 2? I'll give you the short answer, but there are some major caveats, which I'll say more about below. So think of this formula as giving you some ballpark numbers, and then I'll tell you how to adjust it for your own, actual body (which will not necessarily match the cookie-cutter formulas). There are two steps: Find your max heart rateYour maximum heart rate is defined as, literally, the fastest your heart can beat. (Sometimes people assume this is a guideline, that you should keep your heart rate under this number. Nopeif your heart rate is higher than the number you thought was your max, that just tells you that number was not your max.) Here are some different ways to find your max heart rate: A max heart rate field test (best for people with healthy hearts and some pain tolerance): There are a few ways of doing this, but basically you're going to try to push your heart rate to its absolute max, and see what that number is. The most common way is to find a long, steep hill, and run up it three times, really sprinting hard on the last one. The number you see at the end is a good estimate of your max. Obviously, don't do this if you've been told you shouldn't exercise at high intensity. Your personal history (best for athletes who have experience using a HR monitor): If you've done high intensity exercise in the past, especially killer efforts that left you collapsed on the floor, the highest number you've ever seen on your watch or heart rate monitor is probably your max, or close to it. A 5K race or an FTP test will often get you close, if you really pushed yourself the whole way. Estimating based on easy exercise (best for non-athletes who have experience using a HR monitor): If you have a sense of what heart rate you see when you're exercising at a steady, conversational pace, multiply the highest number you would consider conversational by 1.25. This is my own based on studies that have found the top of conversational pace to be around 77-79% of max. This isn't as good as a field test, but for many people it will give a better result than the formula below.A formula. I don't recommend using a formula if you have the option of using either of the first two real-world options above. Using a formula to get your max heart rate is like asking ChatGPT for your shoe size. It will give a plausible guess, but it could easily be very, very wrong. Anyway, the easiest formula is to subtract your age from 220. (There are other formulas, but honestly they all have serious inaccuracies. I wouldn't worry about whether any one of them is "better" than the others. They all suck.)I have more here on why max heart rate formulas are pretty much all wrong, but that's beside the point for the moment. If you know your max heart rate, you can proceed to the next step. Use a percentage of your max as your "zone 2"Once you know your max heart rate (or have an estimate you're willing to work with), multiply to get the upper and lower boundaries of zone 2. Multiply by what? Well, there's more than one opinion out there about what zone 2 should be. If you use a smartwatch or other device, go into the settings and set a custom heart rate (all the major brands can do thischeck the instructions to find out where this setting lives.) The zones will usually populate automatically. As I've written before, every device has a different idea of what should count as zone 2. If you'd like me to be the tiebreaker, I'd go with 60% to 75% of your max heart rate. So, multiply your estimated max heart rate by 0.6 to get the lower end of that zone, and 0.7 to get the higher end. For example, if your max heart rate is 200, your zone 2 is 120 to 150 beats per minute. If your max heart rate is 175, your zone 2 would be 105 to 132.What are the benefits of zone 2 cardio?Zone 2 work builds your aerobic base. When you do cardio at this kind of easy pace, your body adapts by growing more capillaries (tiny blood vessels) to get oxygen and nutrients to your muscles more efficiently. You get more mitochondria to power each muscle cellyou have thousands of mitochondria per celland you produce more of the enzymes that turn food into usable energy. Your heart and your lungs get more efficient at taking in oxygen and moving blood to your muscles, and your muscles become able to store more carbohydrates (in a form called glycogen) so that more of the carbs you eat are at the ready when you start a run or ride.For runners, your zone 2 work, often called "easy pace," should make up most (some say 80%) of your weekly mileage. The fitness you build doing easy running is what allows you to benefit from, and recover from, harder efforts like interval training. For people whose main sport is more strength oriented (meatheads like myself), zone 2 cardio strengthens the same body systems that help us recover between sets, and even between reps. It increases our work capacity, letting us get more work done in total. As long as youre eating enough, adding cardio into your routine should make you able to do more work in the gym, not less. (And no, cardio does not kill your gains.)And for people who are just exercising for health, zone 2 cardio is the perfect moderate exercise were all supposed to get at least 150 minutes of per week. Its heart-healthy, and even people with medical conditions that limit their ability to exercise can often do low intensity cardio safely. (Ask your doctor to be sure, of course.)Importantly, zone 2 training is very low fatigue. More time-efficient forms of cardio and conditioning like HIIT, hill sprints, or CrossFit WODs are great for your aerobic fitness, but those workouts have to be high intensity to work, and youll be pooped afterward. Theyre great in small doses, but they kind of have to be in small doses. By contrast, easy pace work is basically free. You can work up to doing an easy zone 2 session every day, in addition to your regular training, and feel fine. Once youre used to it, you can do zone 2 work on your rest days without defeating the purpose of a rest day. As long as you have the time for it, its like a cheat code for aerobic gains.How do you know when youre in zone 2?The best way to know if youre in zone 2 is to pay attention to your effort, and how it feels. Even though zone 2 is defined in terms of heart rate, there are so many caveats to determining your max and deciding on the zone boundaries that I dont recommend that beginners calculate it from heart rate percentages at first. Unless youve actually gotten your heart rate up to a maximum effort level, and know what that number is, you dont really know your max heart rate. Instead, lets talk about what it should feel like. On a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 is nothing and 10 is all-out sprinting, low intensity cardio is about a 3 to 5. Youre working, but not very hard. If your breath starts to get ragged, or if you feel like you're getting pretty damn tired and you can't wait for this to end, you're probably somewhere 7+ and definitely going too hard for a zone 2 workout.A zone 2 pace is conversational, and its sometimes described with a talk test. If you could tell your friend about your day while youre exercising, youre probably around the right level. That doesnt mean spitting out a few words here and there, but speaking in full sentences without feeling out of breath. If you find yourself stopping to catch your breath or if you feel like you need to take a break, youre going too hard. (That said, some of zone 3 is also within that conversational zone, but it's okayzone 3 is still good for you.) That said, it shouldnt feel too easyzone 2 is more like a brisk walk or easy jog than a leisurely stroll. If you stop, you should feel like you took a break from something. It should take a little work and focus to keep up the pace.RunningRunners often have trouble with this, because the dividing line between walking and running is sometimes too high to maintain an easy pace while youre running, if youre a beginner. The next best thing is to jog as slow as you can, and when you start to feel out of breath, switch to a brisk walk. For some people, a brisk walk for the whole session is a perfect zone 2 workout. As you get more fit, easy jogging will become possible. Heres a real world example of how to keep a zone 2 pace: if Im heading out for an easy run, I start at a nice chill jogging pace. But I live in a hilly neighborhood, so pretty soon Ill be chugging up a hill and notice my breathing getting heavier. At this point, if my heart rate is getting higher than I'd like for this workout, I switch to a power walk. Jogging the flats and walking the uphills is a great way to keep your effort level steady, instead of accidentally turning your easy jog into a hill sprint workout. Bundle of NordicTrack T10 Treadmill + iFIT Pro - Annual Membership $1,295.00 at Amazon $1,695.00 Save $400.00 Get Deal Get Deal $1,295.00 at Amazon $1,695.00 Save $400.00 CyclingCyclists often measure their training in a seven-zone system that is based on how much power, in a physics sense, you are putting into the gears of your bike. These are called Coggan power zones, and bike training systems like Zwift and Peloton use the same basic idea. To calibrate these zones, youll take an FTP (functional threshold power) testbasically, a 20-minute race against yourself. From there, you (or your training app) calculates wattage numbers for your zones. Zones 2 and 3 in this system usually correspond to our zone 2 cardio. (Your heart rate at the end of an FTP test will be pretty close to your max heart rate, by the way, if you really went all-out.) If you train with both a heart rate monitor and a bike power meter, dont worry if they dont match exactly. A ride in power zones 2 and 3 will meet your low-intensity cardio needs, even if your heart rate starts in zone 1 and spikes into zone 3 by the end. Peloton Bike+ $1,995.00 at Amazon $2,495.00 Save $500.00 Get Deal Get Deal $1,995.00 at Amazon $2,495.00 Save $500.00 Other cardioFor other forms of cardio, go by feel, or by heart rate if you truly know your heart rate percentages. When youre on the elliptical or the rower or the airbike, you should feel like you could carry on a conversation easily, and stop because time is up rather than because youre running out of gas.

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.Tech enthusiasts are already aware that the most anticipated tech event in the world, Consumer Electronics Show (CES), is currently underway. But most forget that this is also one of the best times to shop for last year's flagship models oreven better for your wallettwo-year-old flagship TVs. If you're looking for a deal on a 75-inch TV, consider Sony's 2023 flagship LED TV, the Sony Bravia 75-inch Class X93L at $1,398 (originally $2,498) at Walmart. The lowest price this model has been since its release, according to price-tracking tools. Sony Bravia 75-Inch Class X93L Panel Type: LED, Screen Size: 75 inches, Resolution: 3840 by 2160, Video Inputs: HDMI, Composite, RF $1,398.00 at Walmart $2,498.00 Save $1,100.00 Get Deal Get Deal $1,398.00 at Walmart $2,498.00 Save $1,100.00 The Bravia X93L is an LED-backlit Google Smart TV (you can use Apple AirPlay and Google Cast), meaning you won't get the contrast of an OLED, but you'll have more brightness with 1,383 nits. It is a 4K TV with a 3,840 by 2,160 resolution, Dolby Vision and HDR-10, four HDMI ports (two of which are 2.1 ports with 120Hz, but one of those is the E-ARC connection for audio), a contrast ratio of 1,383,000:1, a 120 Hz refresh rate, a 9.8 ms input lag in game mode (not the best, but still good), and variable refresh rate (VRR) for gamingbut no AMD FreeSync or Nvidia G-Sync.People looking for a TV for their home theater system will appreciate its design to easily fit a soundbar on the front or below the TV, with adjustable legs for width and height. It also handles reflection very well, in part due to its brightness. If you're not looking to get a soundbar or surround sound, the audio is much better than its competitors (although like all TVs, the bass will always be lacking). You can read more about this TV on PCMag's "excellent" review.