Amazon just cut their Fire TV Stick 4K from $50 to $25 on Best Buy, so this might just be the perfect time for you to grab a couple of extra ones for bedrooms or guest rooms, maybe snazz it up a little. I've been testing streaming devices for a while now, and getting 4K with Dolby Vision for twenty-five bucks is actually wild.

Amazon has gone one step further by discounting Apple's budget-friendly M4 Mac mini even more — now priced at a record low $488 shipped. Plus, save up to $200 on upgraded models.Grab a new, lower price on the M4 Mac mini.We covered Amazon's M4 Mac mini deal earlier this week at $499, but the retailer has dropped the price by another $11, bringing the total savings to $111 off.Buy M4 Mac mini for $488 Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

According to Bloomberg, the next versions of Apple’s operating systems may be labeled by year, starting now. It makes sense. At this point, we’ve got VisionOS 2, watchOS 11, macOS 15, iOS 18 and iPadOS 18. Instead, they might all be tagged 26 — even if they launch this year. It’s not the first tech company to align new products with the year of release. Samsung started naming its phones by year of release in 2020 with the S20, which followed the S10. We’ll learn for sure in under two weeks: WWDC kicks off June 9. — Mat Smith Get Engadget's newsletter delivered direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here! The news you might have missed Fujifilm GFX100RF review: A powerful, fun camera that’s far from perfect Can you still buy a Switch 2 on launch day? Maybe Weber Smoque review: A simplified smart grill that’s still a workhorse Video Games Weekly: Grand Theft Auto is no friend to the queer community Volkswagen ID.Buzz review: A head-turning EV microbus with unfortunate flaws PlayStation’s DualSense Edge wireless controller is cheaper than ever Sony is discounting consoles, accessories, games and subscriptions. Engadget One of the standout deals of this year’s Days of Play sale is the PS5 DualSense Edge controller. You can pick one up for $169, which is 15 percent off its usual price. The deal is available on Amazon and directly from Sony. The Edge resembles a regular DualSense controller, but there’s a lot more to it. For instance, there are function buttons below each thumbstick and rear paddles, and you can choose between a set of levers or shorter half-domes. If you haven’t jumped on the PS5 yet, the PS5 Pro also gets a $50 discount. Continue reading. The new Opera browser can surf the web for you It’s not Chrome, Safari or Edge, but if you’re willing to be different… Opera has launched another… Opera browser. Neon is its first fully agentic browser. That means it’s baked in AI chat with users and can surf the web on their behalf.  It… clicks for you. It can even fill out forms and shop for you. If you’re feeling more ambitious, you can ask Neon to build websites, animations, even games, and it can continue chipping away at big projects while you’re offline. Will that all be enough to swing you away from all your Chrome plugins or Safari passwords? According to recent figures, just over 2 percent of internet users use Opera. You can try it for yourself now. Oh wait, no, there’s a waitlist. Continue reading. This gaming mouse has a tiny fan inside For the pro gamers. Pulsar Pulsar’s latest competitive gaming mouse features a premium tiny fan from Noctua, the renowned fan brand. (Apparently, no one makes fans quite like the Austrians). With a skeletal shell designed to enhance airflow, it’s for sweaty-palmed professional gamers. Like the original Feinmann mouse from Pulsar, it has a 32,00 DPI sensor and an ultra-fast 8,000 Hz polling rate. Due to the fan, it’s a little heavier than the original at 65 grams. And the price of dry palm calm? $180. Continue reading.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/the-morning-after-engadget-newsletter-121525453.html?src=rss

Women weren’t allowed to officially serve in combat jobs when Emelie Vanasse started her ROTC program at George Washington University. Instead, she used her biology degree to serve as a medical officer — but it still bothered Vanasse to be shut out of something just because she was a woman. “I always felt like, who really has the audacity to tell me that I can’t be in combat arms? I’m resilient, I am tough, I can make decisions in stressful environments,” Vanasse said.By 2015, the Obama administration opened all combat jobs to women, despite a plea from senior leaders in the Marine Corps to keep certain frontline units male only. Then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter told reporters that, “We cannot afford to cut ourselves off from half the country’s talents and skills.”The policy change meant that women could attend Ranger school, the training ground for the Army Rangers, an elite special operations infantry unit. When Capt. Kristen Griest and 1st Lt. Shaye Haver became the first women to graduate from the school in 2015, Vanasse taped their photos to her desk and swore she would be next, no matter what it took. She went on to become one of the first women to serve as an Army infantry officer and graduated from Ranger school in 2017. After the Pentagon integrated women into combat jobs, the services developed specific fitness standards for jobs like infantry and armor with equal standards for men and women. Special operations and other highly specialized units require additional qualification courses that are also gender-neutral. To continue past the first day of Ranger school, candidates must pass the Ranger Physical Fitness test, for which there is only one standard. Only the semi-annual fitness tests that service members take, which vary by branch, are scaled for age and gender.Despite that, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has continued to insist that the standards were lowered for combat roles. In a podcast interview in November, Hegseth said, “We’ve changed the standards in putting [women in combat], which means you’ve changed the capability of that unit.” (Despite Hegseth’s remark, many women worked alongside male infantry units in Iraq and Afghanistan, facing the same dangerous conditions.)In the same interview, Hegseth said that he didn’t believe women should serve in combat roles.In March, Hegseth ordered the military services to make the basic fitness standards for all combat jobs gender-neutral. The Army is the first service to comply: Beginning June 1, most combat specialties will require women to meet the male standard for basic physical fitness, something most women serving in active-duty combat roles are already able to do.Vanasse told Noel King on Today, Explained what it was like to attend Ranger School at a time when some men didn’t want to see a woman in the ranks. What is Ranger School?I went to Ranger School on January 1, 2017. I woke up at 3 am that day in Fort Benning, Georgia, shaved my head, a quarter-inch all the way around, just like the men. Took my last hot shower, choked down some French toast, and then I drove to Camp Rogers, and I remember being very acutely aware of the pain that the school would inflict, both physically and mentally. I was also very aware that there was kind of half of this population of objective graders that just kind of hated my guts for even showing up. They hated you for showing up because you’re a woman?Back in 2016 and 2017, it was so new to have women in Ranger School. I used to think, I don’t have to just be good, I have to be lucky. I have to get a grader who is willing to let a woman pass. I had dark times at that school. I tasted real failure. I sat under a poncho in torrential rain and I shivered so hard my whole body cramped. I put on a ruck that weighed 130 pounds and I crawled up a mountain on my hands and knees. I hallucinated a donut shop in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains and I cried one morning when someone told me I had to get out of my sleeping bag. But I think all of those experiences are quintessential Ranger School experiences. They’re what everyone goes through there. And I think the point of the school is that failure, that suffering, it’s not inherently bad, right? In a way, I like to think Ranger School was the most simplistic form of gender integration that ever could have happened because if I was contributing to the team, there was no individual out there that really had the luxury of disliking or excluding me. When you wanted to give up, what did you tell yourself? What was going through your head? I don’t think I ever considered quitting Ranger School. I just knew that it was something that I could get through and had the confidence to continue. I had a thought going in of What could be so bad that would make me quit? and the answer that I found throughout the school was, Nothing. Did you ever feel like they had lowered the standards for you compared to the men who were alongside you?No. Never. I did the same thing that the men did. I did the same Ranger physical fitness test that all the men took. I ran five miles in 40 minutes. I did 49 pushups, 59 situps, six pullups. I rucked 12 miles in three hours with a 45-pound ruck. I climbed the same mountains. I carried the same stuff. I carried the same exact packing list they did, plus 250 tampons for some reason. At no point were the standards lowered for me. Whose idea was it for you to carry 250 tampons? It was not mine! It was a misguided effort to have everyone very prepared for the first women coming through Ranger School.In Ranger School, there’s only one standard for the fitness test. Everybody has to meet it, and that allows you to get out of Ranger School and say, “Look, fellas, I took the same test as the men and I passed.” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is saying that Army combat jobs should only have one standard of fitness for both men and women. And there’s part of me that thinks: Doesn’t that allow the women who meet the standards to be like, look, We met the same standards as the men. Nothing suspicious here, guys. I think gender-neutral standards for combat arms are very important. It should not be discounted how important physical fitness is for combat arms. I think there’s nuance in determining what is a standard that is useful for combat arms, right? But it’s an important thing. And there have been gender-neutral standards for combat arms. In things like Infantry Basic Officer Leader Course, which is the initial basic training for officers going into the infantry, there are gender-neutral standards that you have to meet: You have to run five miles in 40 minutes, you have to do a 12-mile ruck. All of those standards have remained the same. Pete Hegseth is specifically referring to the Army Combat Physical Fitness test, and to a certain extent I agree, it should be gender-neutral for combat arms. But I think there’s nuance in determining what exactly combat arms entails physically.Secretary Hegseth has a lot to say about women, and sometimes he says it directly and sometimes he alludes to it. What he often does is he talks about lethality as something that is critically important for the military. He says the Army in particular needs more of it, but he never really defines what he means by lethality. What is the definition as you understand it? There’s a component of lethality that is physical fitness and it should not be discounted. But lethality extends far beyond that, right? It’s tactical skills, it’s decision-making, it’s leadership, it’s grit, it’s the ability to build trust and instill purpose and a group of people. It’s how quick a fire team in my platoon can react to contact. How well my SAW [Squad Automatic Weapon] gunner can shoot, how quickly I can employ and integrate combat assets, how fast I can maneuver a squad. All of those things take physical fitness, but they certainly take more than just physical fitness. There’s more to lethality than just how fast you can run and how many pushups you can do.To an average civilian like myself, I hear lethality and I think of the dictionary definition, the ability to kill. Does this definition of lethality involve the ability, physically and emotionally and psychologically, to kill another person? Absolutely. And so when Secretary Hegseth casts doubt on the ability of women to be as lethal as men, do you think there’s some stuff baked in there that maybe gets to his idea of what women are willing and able to do?Yes, possibly. I think the [secretary’s] message is pretty clear. According to him, the women in combat arms achieved success because the standards were lowered for them. We were never accommodated and the standards were never lowered.What’s your response, then, to hearing the Secretary of Defense say women don’t belong in combat? It makes me irate, to be honest. Like, it’s just a complete discounting of all of the accomplishments of the women that came before us. Do you think that if Secretary Hegseth could take a look at what you did in Ranger School, and he could hear from you that there were no second chances, there were no excuses, there was no babying, the men didn’t treat you nicer just because you were a woman, do you think he’d change his mind about women serving in combat? I’d like to think he would, but I’ve met plenty of people whose minds couldn’t be changed by reality. I’d love it if he went to Ranger School. He has a lot of opinions about Ranger School for someone who does not have his Ranger tab.What is a Ranger tab, for civilians? A Ranger tab is what you receive upon graduating Ranger School, which means you have passed all three phases and you are now Ranger-qualified in the military.You have that. And the Secretary of Defense doesn’t. He does not, though he has a lot of opinions about Ranger School.See More:

If you're on grilling duty this Memorial Day and stressing about getting the steak and veggies just right, we've got a deal for you. The MasterClass Memorial Day sale, running from May 22 to 26, offers up to 40 percent off all subscriptions to the video learning platform. Starting at $72, you can learn how to grill from legendary Texas BBQ master Aaron Franklin, then enjoy other courses for a full year. Just make sure to subscribe before the end of Memorial Day itself to take advantage of the discount. When you take a MasterClass course, one of the world's top experts guides you through a series of videos on how to approach their craft. The Memorial Day deal drops the cost of a Standard subscription to $6 per month when billed annually, which comes out to $72 in total. That gives you access to more than 200 courses for a year, though you can only watch them on a device connected to the internet. It makes an excellent gift for someone you love — or for yourself. MasterClass is also discounting its higher tiers for Memorial Day. With a Plus subscription, you can watch MasterClass courses on two devices at once, and download them to watch offline whenever you want. A Premium subscription boosts the number of devices to six. The latter also includes access to MasterClass On Call, which lets you chat with AI recreations of MasterClass experts (Although, as our review notes, that feature still needs a bit of polishing.) After you've wowed your friends and family with your new grilling skills, MasterClass has plenty of other lessons that you can explore to continue your education. Creative writers can check out the BBC Maestro course that "resurrects" Agatha Christie, using her notes, an actress and AI rendering to teach the art of crafting a killer mystery. The platform also just launched a 20-episode series on healthy skin, featuring a panel of accredited dermatologists and cosmeticians. Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/masterclass-deal-get-up-to-40-percent-off-for-memorial-day-121509909.html?src=rss

2026 may still be more than seven months away, but it’s already shaping up as the year of consumer AI hardware. Or at least the year of a flurry of high-stakes attempts to put generative AI at the heart of new kinds of devices—several of which were in the news this week. Let’s review. On Tuesday, at its I/O developer conference keynote, Google demonstrated smart glasses powered by its Android XR platform and announced that eyewear makers Warby Parker and Gentle Monster would be selling products based on it. The next day, OpenAI unveiled its $6.5 billion acquisition of Jony Ive’s startup IO, which will put the Apple design legend at the center of the ChatGPT maker’s quest to build devices around its AI. And on Thursday, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported that Apple hopes to release its own Siri-enhanced smart glasses. In theory, all these players may have products on the market by the end of next year. What I didn’t get from these developments was any new degree of confidence that anyone has figured out how to produce AI gadgets that vast numbers of real people will find indispensable. When and how that could happen remains murky—in certain respects, more than ever. To be fair, none of this week’s news involved products that are ready to be judged in full. Only Google has something ready to demonstrate in public at all: Here’s Janko Roettgers’s report on his I/O experience with prototype Android XR glasses built by Samsung. That the company has already made a fair amount of progress is only fitting given that Android XR scratches the same itch the company has had since it unveiled its ill-fated Google Glass a dozen years ago. It’s just that the available technologies—including Google’s Gemini LLM—have come a long, long way. Unlike the weird, downright alien-looking Glass, Google’s Android XR prototype resembles a slightly chunky pair of conventional glasses. It uses a conversational voice interface and a transparent mini-display that floats on your view of your surroundings. Google says that shipping products will have “all-day” battery life, a claim, vague though it is, that Glass could never make. But some of the usage scenarios that the company is showing off, such as real-time translation and mapping directions, are the same ones it once envisioned Glass enabling. The market’s rejection of Glass was so resounding that one of the few things people remember about the product is that its fans were seen as creepy, privacy-invading glassholes. Enough has happened since then—including the success of Meta’s smart Ray-Bans—that Android XR eyewear surely has a far better shot at acceptance. But as demoed at I/O, the floating screen came off as a roadblock between the user and the real world. Worst case, it might simply be a new, frictionless form of screen addiction that further distracts us from human contact. Meanwhile, the video announcement of OpenAI and IO’s merger was as polished as a Jony Ive-designed product—San Francisco has rarely looked so invitingly lustrous—but didn’t even try to offer details about their work in progress. Altman and Ive smothered each other in praise and talked about reinventing computing. Absent any specifics, Altman’s assessment of one of Ive’s prototypes (“The coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen”) sounded like runaway enthusiasm at best and Barnumesque puffery at worst. Reporting on an OpenAI staff meeting regarding the news, The Wall Street Journal’s Berber Jin provided some additional tidbits about the OpenAI device. Mostly, they involved what it isn’t—such as a phone or glasses. It might not even be a wearable, at least on a full-time basis: According to Jin, the product will be “able to rest in one’s pocket or on one’s desk” and complement an iPhone and MacBook Pro without supplanting them. Whatever this thing is, Jin cites Altman predicting that it will sell 100 million units faster than any product before it. In 2007, by contrast, Apple forecast selling a more modest 10 million iPhones in the phone’s first full year on the market—a challenging goal at the time, though the company surpassed it. Now, discounting the possibility of something transformative emerging from OpenAI-IO would be foolish. Ive, after all, may have played a leading role in creating more landmark tech products than anyone else alive. Altman runs the company that gave us the most significant one of the past decade. But Ive rhapsodizing over their working relationship in the video isn’t any more promising a sign than him rhapsodizing over the $10,000 solid gold Apple Watch was in 2015. And Altman, the biggest investor in Humane’s doomed AI Pin, doesn’t seem to have learned one of the most obvious lessons of that fiasco: Until you have a product in the market, it’s better to tamp down expectations than stoke them. You can’t accuse Apple of hyping any smart glasses it might release in 2026. It hasn’t publicly acknowledged their existence, and won’t until their arrival is much closer. If anything, the company may be hypersensitive to the downsides of premature promotion. Almost a year ago, it began trumpeting a new AI-infused version of Siri—one it clearly didn’t have working at the time, and still hasn’t released. After that embarrassing mishap, silencing the skeptics will require shipping stuff, not previewing what might be ahead. Even companies that aren’t presently trying to earn back their AI cred should take note and avoid repeating Apple’s mistake. I do believe AI demands that we rethink how computers work from the ground up. I also hope the smartphone doesn’t turn out to be the last must-have device, because if it were, that would be awfully boring. Maybe the best metric of success is hitting Apple’s 10-million-units-per-year goal for the original iPhone—which, perhaps coincidentally, is the same one set by EssilorLuxottica, the manufacturer of Meta’s smart Ray-Bans. If anything released next year gets there, it might be the landmark AI gizmo we haven’t yet seen. And if nothing does, we can safely declare that 2026 wasn’t the year of consumer AI hardware after all. You’ve been reading Plugged In, Fast Company’s weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to you—or if you’re reading it on FastCompany.com—you can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard. More top tech stories from Fast Company How Google is rethinking search in an AI-filled worldGoogle execs Liz Reid and Nick Fox explain how the company is rethinking everything from search results to advertising and personalization. Read More → Roku is doing more than ever, but focus is still its secret ingredientThe company that set out to make streaming simple has come a long way since 2008. Yet its current business all connects back to the original mission, says CEO Anthony Wood. Read More → Gen Z is willing to sell their personal data—for just $50 a monthA new app, Verb.AI, wants to pay the generation that’s most laissez-faire on digital privacy for their scrolling time. Read More → Forget return-to-office. Hybrid now means human plus AIAs AI evolves, businesses should use the technology to complement, not replace, human workers. Read More → It turns out TikTok’s viral clear phone is just plastic. Meet the ‘Methaphone’Millions were fooled by a clip of a see-through phone. Its creator says it’s not tech—it’s a tool to break phone addiction. Read More → 4 free Coursera courses to jump-start your AI journeySee what all the AI fuss is about without spending a dime. Read More →

Saucycarpdog Member Oct 25, 2017 20,317 On Steam the game is reaching CCU numbers it hasn't gotten in years. Console is harder to see but the game is #22 on Xbox Most Played charts right behind Overwatch 2. It's usually out of the top 50. Crazy to see. I'm guessing it's the Andor effect?  giancarlo123x One Winged Slayer Member Oct 25, 2017 28,002 The game still fucks. The game was in such a great spot with the anniversary update then they pulled the plug on content.   AgentOtaku Member Oct 27, 2017 4,586 Saucycarpdog said: On Steam the game is reaching CCU numbers it hasn't gotten in years. Console is harder to see but the game is #22 on Xbox Most Played charts right behind Overwatch 2. It's usually out of the top 50. Crazy to see. I'm guessing it's the Andor effect? Click to expand... Click to shrink... Yeah, noticed it creeping up the last few weeks. Insane and probably the Andor effect.  ASleepingMonkey The Fallen Oct 26, 2017 4,579 Iowa This game is very, very popular among gen Z in particular. It is hard for me to scroll Instagram or TikTok without seeing a post about it. Younger people adore this game, particularly those who love the prequels.  Hella Member Oct 27, 2017 24,492 Guess it's time to reinstall Battlefront 2. Game is super fun Thank you for the PSA, OP.  HockeyBird Member Oct 27, 2017 13,798 You have friends everywhere when you play Battlefront II.   Neverx Prophet of Truth - One Winged Slayer Member Sep 17, 2020 3,854 Florida It's a perfect storm of the yearly May 4th resurgence, Revenge of the Sith rerelease and Andor S2. Been playing a bit recently and the game is still great, such a shame they pulled the plug. Really excited for Zero Company and Jedi 3 but we really need a new Battlefront.   Fuchsia Member Oct 28, 2017 7,249 It's honestly a fantastic game after all the work that was put into it post launch. It's still a blast to fire up today. Really sad that they basically killed support right when it was starting to become an all timer.  Nocturnowl Member Oct 25, 2017 28,294 It's all fun and games until the god players who have been playing eternally earn a hero like Yoda early on and the rest of the game becomes a slasher sim where your lil trooper or droid lives in constant terror of the unstoppable turbo speed lightsaber spam racing towards you Neat to see it have a resurgence though, not big on star wars these days but I did have a lot of fun playing this messy arse game with friends  JakeNoseIt Catch My Drift Verified Oct 27, 2017 4,751 Woah I don't watch Andor but I randomly redownloaded the game like a week ago and have been having fun poking around   Zebesian-X Member Dec 3, 2018 25,362 great game kneecapped by its monetization strategy. Sad that they abandoned it right as it was hitting its stride. Glad to see people playing! Shame we never got a third one   Prison_mike Banned Oct 26, 2017 1,676 Hell yeah I bet Fortnight is a reason too. I need to renew my online for this, dammit  DrScruffleton Member Oct 26, 2017 14,887 game was killed way too soon. Imagine all the crazy promotional stuff we couldve gotten over the years with show tie ins and stuff.   dodo Member Oct 27, 2017 4,293 I'm part of the wave!   Creed Bratton Member Aug 29, 2019 782 I jumped back in after playing the new Star Wars Fortnite content. It made me want a true SW experience.   Gleethor Member Oct 25, 2017 4,215 Dot Matrix with stereo sound Coulda had so much new content had they stuck with it. Or at least a third game to break the curse.   AgentOtaku Member Oct 27, 2017 4,586 ASleepingMonkey said: This game is very, very popular among gen Z in particular. It is hard for me to scroll Instagram or TikTok without seeing a post about it. Younger people adore this game, particularly those who love the prequels. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Haha, makes sense. Both my sons adored it. We really should have gotten another one :/  Parker Member Feb 5, 2018 698 Also, the people who got it for free on EGS   Lord Vatek Avenger Jan 18, 2018 24,748 Fortnite, May 4th, and Andor all likely play a part. I haven't checked, but I'd wager that Star Wars The Old Republic is seeing a similar bump.  dodo Member Oct 27, 2017 4,293 I'm still not a big fan of the card loadout system and I wish the vehicles were handled differently, but when it's hitting it has that DICE magic. Great visuals, amazing sound, loving attention to detail.   Corv Member Aug 5, 2022 645 Prison_mike said: Hell yeah I bet Fortnight is a reason too. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Yeah the current Fortnite season made me want to boot it up   Forerunner Resetufologist The Fallen Oct 30, 2017 18,835 Dice dropping support of this right when all the new SW content was being released was weird, they could have added so much to it.   Strikerrr Member Oct 25, 2017 2,858 I've seen a big push from Arc Raiders fans who are suffering from tech test withdrawl. Even though they're very different games, there's some aspects about the movement and shooting which feel somewhat similar considering that a lot of the staff at DICE went to Embark after BF1/V. IIRC some devs who were at Motive during Battlefront 2's development commented that the initial Arc Raiders reveal when it was still a PvE game looked similar to some gameplay concepts that were originally pitched from Battlefront 2. View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuftkDxjGT4 I could see this as built from a discarded Battlefront coop mode where you take down AT-ATs  OhhEldenRing Member Aug 14, 2024 2,860 The Jade Raymond effect. It's been in the news that was her last big release.   Santos Member Oct 25, 2017 1,376 Have they addressed hacking on PC? Tried play again on PC a couple of years ago and there were tons of hackers everywhere to the point they were removing map objectives lol.   Jona Basta Member May 13, 2025 27 Santos said: Have they addressed hacking on PC? Tried play again on PC a couple of years ago and there were tons of hackers everywhere to the point they were removing map objectives lol. Click to expand... Click to shrink... There's a New Project Called Kyber that fixes that + introduces a lot of new things, but they keep pushing back the release date on that while pushing their Patreon so I'm not feeling to hot on it personally.   Fuchsia Member Oct 28, 2017 7,249 Now, more than ever, I feel a new Battlefront would be so incredible. The issue is how do you feasibly make a game that would have enough content from each era of Star Wars to do it all justice? It would take so much manpower and time.   OP OP Saucycarpdog Member Oct 25, 2017 20,317 Also, if any of y'all have Insurgency Sandstorm on PC, you can try the new Star Wars Sagas mod. View: https://youtu.be/1qfHDopTd3k?si=W_vKAw-W4NWNK2ic   Cheesy Member Oct 30, 2017 2,564 Saucycarpdog said: Also, if any of y'all have Insurgency Sandstorm on PC, you can try the new Star Wars Sagas mod. View: https://youtu.be/1qfHDopTd3k?si=W_vKAw-W4NWNK2ic Click to expand... Click to shrink... Oh damn I didn't know that game got any mods that weren't just a bunch of really tacticool guns. I'll have to take a look.  Jona Basta Member May 13, 2025 27 Saucycarpdog said: Also, if any of y'all have Insurgency Sandstorm on PC, you can try the new Star Wars Sagas mod. View: https://youtu.be/1qfHDopTd3k?si=W_vKAw-W4NWNK2ic Click to expand... Click to shrink... there's also the fantastic Squad Mod Galactic Contention: View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIgrE5Bhvxs  Prasino95 Member Feb 18, 2025 6 Such a shame they messed up the remaster of the original so bad, bet that would have got a surge too.   Mocha Joe Member Jun 2, 2021 13,433 I should reinstall. I never gave it an honest try after strongly disliking the first one. Spent $40 on basically a tech demo and I was a fucking idiot and bought the season pass. I never have bought a season pass since then   danhz Member Apr 20, 2018 3,539 Hopefully i can play sone games tomorrow, Game was fire 🔥🔥   luca Member Oct 25, 2017 19,417 Never mind. It's the fps Battlefront game. I loved the single player campaign.   tjh282 Member May 29, 2019 1,097 My youngest brother and his friends have this in their MP rotation and they're not even huge SW fans. Marketing campaign killed this on arrival, but I loved both of the new BFs   Dance Inferno Member Oct 29, 2017 2,739 Saucycarpdog said: Also, if any of y'all have Insurgency Sandstorm on PC, you can try the new Star Wars Sagas mod. View: https://youtu.be/1qfHDopTd3k?si=W_vKAw-W4NWNK2ic Click to expand... Click to shrink... Woah WTF how have I never heard of this? This looks dope, downloading this ASAP.  Richietto One Winged Slayer Member Oct 25, 2017 26,052 North Carolina There's also a huge mod called Kyler that'll really bring life to the game.   Man Called Aerodynamics Member Oct 29, 2017 8,327 I'm not a fan of BF2 in particular (that campaign sucked) but it's always nice to see older games get rediscovered or retain popularity.   Papercuts Prophet of Truth Member Oct 25, 2017 12,726 Feel like this happened a few years back too, I remember actually picking it back up and having a surprisingly good time.   panic Member Oct 26, 2024 83 Last time I tried to play this my team was being completely obliterated on spawn by players using starfighters.   thediamondage Member Oct 25, 2017 13,613 i am jonesing hard for Star Wars after Andor so no surprise, rewatching movies now but i'll probably play Star Wars Outlaws next although Battlefront 2 isn't a bad idea, I loved that game in the first year. Its dumb as hell but it can be super fun too if you are just in it for vibes. Publishers should be discounting star wars games heavy right now, its an automatic impulse buy i think  ASleepingMonkey The Fallen Oct 26, 2017 4,579 Iowa AgentOtaku said: Haha, makes sense. Both my sons adored it. We really should have gotten another one :/ Click to expand... Click to shrink... I would like to see DICE give it another go after Battlefield 6. I assume no matter what, they're going to want to shake it up a bit after close to another decade of nothing but Battlefield and so long as Battlefield 6 is good, it can probably sustain itself for a while. Going back to Battlefront would be great. I just want a better campaign this time, taking some cues from Andor and placing you in the shoes of just an ordinary person in this galactic war would be a great starting point.  BrickArts295 GOTY Tracking Thread Master Member Oct 26, 2017 15,642 It's 100% Andor + Fortnite Star Wars Event /recent rerelease of Episode III. I caught the fever and even went back to get the platinum for Jedi Survivor cause I just wanted to play anything Star Wars. It's crazy how cursed Battlefront 3 is. Seems like both times we could have had the ultimate Star Wars game which would built up from their last 2 iterations. EA seems to be fine with working on Star Wars despite their latest stance on license titles, maybe DICE will be given one more go at it.  Javier23 Member Oct 28, 2017 3,230 I for one have been thinking about giving this a try because of Fortnite's current SW season.   wellpapp Member Aug 21, 2018 531 Gothenburg Wasnt the servers 100% broken by all the cheaters?   The Quentulated Mox Corrupted by Vengeance Member Jun 10, 2022 6,566 On the one hand, I love andor in large part because of how much it does different from the rest of the franchise and I think blending it in with all the rest of the stuff risks diluting it On the other hand, imagine a Ferrix map in battlefront. Imagine a Narkina 5 map. Imagine blasting a truck full of troopers on Mina-Rau from your tie avenger. Imagine switching Cassian's gun into sniper configuration. Imagine spinning your Fondor haulcraft a billion times and shredding everything around you. Need  BubbaKrumpz The Fallen Oct 25, 2017 3,849 Yay Area Papercuts said: Feel like this happened a few years back too, I remember actually picking it back up and having a surprisingly good time. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Yeah, I went in with some of my buds and it was a great time. I've enjoyed the game since release though. I hav a friend who only plays battlefront 2 and most recently fortnite  Excelsior Member Oct 28, 2017 1,058 wellpapp said: Wasnt the servers 100% broken by all the cheaters? Click to expand... Click to shrink... This is what I heard too, is it playable?  Chromie Member Dec 4, 2017 5,742 AgentOtaku said: Yeah, noticed it creeping up the last few weeks. Insane and probably the Andor effect. Click to expand... Click to shrink... I will always love Star Wars but man, Andor has made Star Wars chatter online so positive that I jumped back into BF2.   Doctor Shatner The Fallen Oct 25, 2017 252 Lol I literally reinstalled this because of Andor (have had zero content creators mention it outside of watching old Giant Bomb E3 videos). So at least for me it was that! Funny to see such a weird hivemind esque effect going on there. Game is still fun but I have to pretend I'm a literal stormtrooper with my skill level. The number of crazyhigh ranks who fly around as vader/yoda, etc after a couple minutes into the match and insta gib me would drive me mad if I played seriously. 

ZDNET's key takeaways The Amazon Echo Frames (3rd Gen) are a natural way for glasses wearers to control their smart home, and they're available now for $269.The latest model features a lighter build, longer battery life, improved speakers, and new controls that will take some getting used to.While Alexa in your ears is no ChatGPT voice assistant, it's capable enough to answer general questions and complete most smart home tasks. View now at Amazon The headline for this article could've gone many ways -- I wore Amazon's Echo Frames at an airport, and the TSA didn't stop me or These smart glasses let me take calls hands-free -- but I settled with the comparison angle because one of the easiest ways to talk about smart glasses is by comparing them to the standard. With these being the company's third generation of Echo Frames, Amazon's made mostly iterative updates -- the build is lighter, the battery lasts longer, and there's supposedly more bass -- while staying true to the glasses' original purpose: Giving you a direct (and natural) communication path with Amazon's popular voice assistant, Alexa. And right now, Amazon is discounting the Echo Frames by $90, reducing the price of these glasses to $180. Naturally, you can do other things with the glasses, too, as I'll detail in my two-week account of wearing the Echo Frames below. details View at QVC In the hierarchy of smart glasses, you can think of the Echo Frames as the entry-level pair, ideal for users who want something discrete but with just enough technology to scratch that consumer itch. I've worn a few too many pairs of smart glasses over the past year, and these from Amazon may be the most normal-looking of them all. That's a good thing, as I learned during my flight to CES in early January.Also: Google's upcoming AI smart glasses may finally convince me to switch to a pair full-timeWanting to test both the Echo Frames and the Meta Ray-Ban during my trip, I went through the usual security screenings and found myself stopped twice because my camera-equipped Meta glasses looked suspicious. No one questioned the Echo Frames, which, even from up close, look like a regular pair of plastic-made prescriptions. (Or maybe no one expected me to have two pairs of smart glasses. I'm not sure.) The Meta Ray-Ban (left) has a built-in camera and is noticeably thicker and heavier than the Amazon Echo Frames (right). Kerry Wan/ZDNETTrue to Amazon's word, the Echo Frames feel very light on the face. Most of the weight is distributed to the sides of the frames, where the speakers, buttons, and other minuscule components are stored. The rubberized tips on the ends of the glasses certainly help with the fit, though I've found it harder to fold the glasses after adjusting them. While the glasses are easily stored in the included carrying case, if they're not folded properly, issues arise when you need to charge them. Because, unlike the Meta Ray-Ban's USB-C carrying case, there's a new separate charging dock for the Echo Frames, and aligning the wireless charging coils with the ones on the glasses can be quite the doozy. You either have to force the glasses into the gap -- which feels like something you wouldn't want to do with glasses -- or collapse and slot them in just right. Nine times out of 10, I'm doing option one.In terms of functionality, the Echo Frames don't have multimodal AI cameras built into them like the Meta Ray-Bans or project visual overlays like XR glasses. Instead, they can stream Bluetooth audio, take calls and send text messages, read notifications, and communicate with Alexa-supported smart home devices like how your phone or smart hub normally would. Again, entry-level glasses -- and that's not a bad thing.Also: Get a free pair of Meta Ray-Bans when you sign up for Verizon 5G home internetWhile my house is not as smart as my ZDNET colleague Maria Diaz's, I enjoyed using the Echo Frames to turn on and off various smart switches, which saved me from having to walk over to my phone and use an app when it's charging in the kitchen or on my nightstand. The scale of Alexa-compatible devices is large enough that I could make commands to secure my three-year-old August entry lock, too. The same "Alexa" wake word is used for commands. Kerry Wan/ZDNETBesides the smart features, I've also enjoyed listening to podcasts and making calls during my evening walks. Perhaps it's the ability to listen to my on-device audio while staying aware of my surroundings, or the fact that the speakers on the Echo Frames favor the mid and high frequencies more than the bassy, engulfing lows. It's probably a bit of both. The takeaway is that the glasses are great for vocal-only audio tracks and passable for anything multi-layered.Also: I tried Google's XR glasses and they already beat my Meta Ray-Bans in 3 waysLastly, I wish the button navigations weren't so complicated, but since I'm mainly using voice commands to get things done, the need to press the front or back button to accept and decline things (or mute the microphone) didn't bother me all that much. If you're coming from an older pair of Echo Frames, you'll have to retrain your muscle memory as the touch strip and swipe gestures are no more.ZDNET's buying adviceAt a list price of $269, the Echo Frames (3rd Gen) aren't necessarily priced to compete. The list price is just $30 less than Meta's more capable Ray-Ban smart glasses. However, Amazon's glasses have two big things going for them: Alexa integration and design. Smart home enthusiasts will absolutely reap the benefits of having a controller that they can use at all times (with a battery life that can last them all day), and first-time smart glasses shoppers will find these much less intimidating than the ones with mini projectors and cameras built in. Plus, you'll have a smaller chance of being stopped by the TSA. This article was originally published on January 26, 2024, and was updated on May 22, 2025.Featured reviews

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Image Credit: Chat GPT o3I’ve been using AI coding assistants like Claude Code for a while now, and I’m here to say (with all due respect to people who have substance abuse issues), I may be an addict. And boy is this is an expensive habit.Its “almost there” quality — the feeling we’re just one prompt away from the perfect solution — is what makes it so addicting. Vibe coding operates on the principle of variable-ratio reinforcement, a powerful form of operant conditioning where rewards come unpredictably. Unlike fixed rewards, this intermittent success pattern (“the code works! it’s brilliant! it just broke! wtf!”), triggers stronger dopamine responses in our brain’s reward pathways, similar to gambling behaviors.What makes this especially effective with AI is the minimal effort required for potentially significant rewards — creating what neuroscientists call an “effort discounting” advantage. Combined with our innate completion bias — the drive to finish tasks we’ve started — this creates a compelling psychological loop that keeps us prompting.I don’t smoke, but don’t these bar graphs look like ciagrettes?Since Claude Code has been released, I have probably spent over $1,000 vibe coding various projects into reality (some of which I hope to announce soon, don’t worry).But lets talk about the expense too, because I think there’s something bad there as well: coding agents, and especially Claude 3.7 (the backend of Claude Code), tend to write too much code, a phenomenon that ends up costing users more than it should.Where an experienced developer might solve a problem with a few elegant lines with a thoughtful functional method, these AI systems often produce verbose, over-engineered solutions that tackle problems incrementally rather than addressing them at their core.My initial reaction was to attribute this to the relative immaturity of LLMs and their limitations when reasoning about abstract logic problems. Since these models are primarily trained to predict and generate text based on patterns they’ve seen before, it makes sense that they might struggle with the deeper architectural thinking that leads to elegant, minimal solutions.My human code on the left, Claude Code on the right implementing the same algorithmAnd indeed, the highly complex tasks I’ve handed to them have largely resulted in failure: implementing a minimax algorithm in a novel card game, crafting thoughtful animations in CSS, completely refactoring a codebase. The LLMs routinely get lost in the sauce when it comes to thinking through the high level principles required to solve difficult problems with computer science.In the example above, my human implemented version of minimax from 2018 totals 400 lines of code, whereas Claude Code’s version comes in at 627 lines. The LLM version also requires almost a dozen other library files. Granted, this version is in TypeScript and has a ton of extra bells and whistles, some of which I explicitly asked for, but the real problem is: it doesn’t actually work. Furthermore, using the LLM to debug it requires sending the bloated code back and forth to the API every time I want to holistically debug it.In an effort to impress the user and over-deliver, LLMs end up creating a rat’s nest of ultra-defensive code littered with debugging statements, neurotic comments and barely-useful helper funcitions. If you’ve ever worked in a highly functional production codebase, this is enough to drive you insane.I think everyone who spends any time vibe coding eventually discovers something like this and realizes that it’s much more worthwhile to work with a plan composed of discrete tasks that could be explained to a junior level developer vs. a feature-level project handed off to a staff engineer.There’s also the likelihood that the vast majority of code that LLMs have been trained on tends to be inelegant and overly verbose. Lord knows there’s a lot of AbstractJavaFinalSerializedFactory code out there.But I’m beginning to think the problem runs deeper, and it has to do with the economics of AI assistance.The economic incentive problemMany AI coding assistants, including Claude Code, charge based on token count — essentially the amount of text processed and generated. This creates what economists would call a “perverse incentive” — an incentive that produces behavior contrary to what’s actually desired.Let’s break down how this works:The AI generates verbose, procedural code for a given taskThis code becomes part of the context when you ask for further changes or additions (this is key)The AI now has to read (and you pay for) this verbose code in every subsequent interactionMore tokens processed = more revenue for the company behind the AIThe LLM developers have no incentive to “fix” the verbose code problem because doing so will meaningfully impact their bottom lineAs Upton Sinclair famously noted: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Similarly, it might be difficult for AI companies to prioritize code conciseness when their revenue depends on token count.The broader implicationsThis pattern points to a more general concern in AI development: the alignment between how systems are monetized and how well they serve user needs. When charging by token count, there’s naturally less incentive to optimize for elegant, minimal solutions.Even “all you can eat” subscription plans (e.g. Claude’s “Max” subscription) don’t fully resolve this tension, as they typically come with usage caps or other limitations that maintain the underlying incentive structure.System instructions and verbosity trade-offsThe perverse incentives in AI code generation point to a more fundamental issue that extends beyond coding assistants. When she was reading a draft of this, Louise pointed out some recent research from Giskard AI’s Phare benchmark that reveals a troubling pattern that mirrors our coding dilemma: demanding shorter responses jeopardizes the accuracy of the answers.According to their findings, instructions emphasizing conciseness (like “answer this question briefly”) significantly degraded factual reliability across most models tested — in some cases causing a 20% drop in hallucination resistance. When forced to be concise, models face an impossible choice between fabricating short but inaccurate answers or appearing unhelpful by rejecting the question entirely. The data shows models consistently prioritize brevity over accuracy when given these constraints.There’s clearly something going on where the more verbose the LLM is, the better it does. This actually makes sense given the discovery that chain-of-thought reasoning improves accuracy, but this issue has begun to feel like a real tradeoff when it comes to these almost-magical systems.We see this exact tension in code generation every day. When we optimize for conciseness and ask for the problems to be solved in fewer setps, we often sacrifice quality. The difference is that in coding, the sacrifice manifests as over-engineered verbosity — the model produces more tokens to cover all possible edge cases rather than thinking deeply about the elegant core solution or a root cause problem. In both cases, economic incentives (token optimization) work against quality outcomes (factual accuracy or elegant code).Just as Phare’s research suggests that seemingly innocent prompts like “be concise” can sabotage a model’s ability to debunk misinformation, our experience shows that standard prompting approaches can yield bloated, inefficient code. In both domains, the fundamental misalignment between token economics and quality outputs creates a persistent tension that users must actively manage.Some tricks to manage these perverse incentivesWhile we wait for AI companies to better align their incentives with our need for elegant code, I’ve developed several strategies to counteract verbose code generation:1. Force planning before implementationI harass the LLM to write a detailed plan before generating any code. This forces the model to think through the architecture and approach, rather than diving straight into implementation details. Often, I find that a well-articulated plan leads to more concise code, as the model has already resolved the logical structure of the solution before writing a single line.2. Explicit permission protocolI’ve implemented a strict “ask before generating” protocol in my workflow. My personal CLAUDE.md file explicitly instructs Claude to request permission before writing any code. Infuriatingly, Claude Code regularly ignores this, likely due to its massive system prompt that talks so much about writing code it overrides my preferences. Enforcing this boundary and repeatedly belaboring it (“remember, don’t write any code”) helps prevent the automatic generation of unwanted, verbose solutions.3. Git-based experimentation with ruthless pruningVersion control becomes essential when working with AI-generated code. I frequently benchmark code in git when I arrive at an “ok it works as intended” moment. Creating experimental branches is also very helpful. Most importantly, I’m ready to throw out branches entirely when fixing them would require more work than starting from scratch. This willingness to abandon sunk costs is surprisingly important — it helps me work through problems and figure out the AI’s hangups while preventing the accumulation of bandaid solutions on top of fundamentally flawed approaches.4. Use a cheaper modelSometimes the simplest solution works best: using a smaller, cheaper model often results in more direct solutions. These models tend to generate less verbose code simply because they have limited context windows and processing capacity. While they might not handle extremely complex problems as well, for many day-to-day coding tasks, their constraints can actually produce more elegant solutions. For example, Claude 3.5 Haiku is currently 26% the price of Claude 3.7 ($0.80 per token vs. $3). Also, Claude 3.7 seems to overengineer more frequently than Claude 3.5.Moving toward better alignmentWhat might a better approach look like?LLM coding agents could evaluated and incentivized based on code quality metrics rather than just token counts. The challenge here is that this kind of metric is quite subjective.Companies could offer pricing models that reward efficiency rather than verbosity (I have no idea how this would work, this was Claude’s dumb idea)LLMs training should incorporate feedback mechanisms that specifically promote concise, elegant solutions via RLHF (e.g. showing developers multiple versions of the same code and having them pick the opitmal one, perhaps this is already happening)Companies realize that overly verbose code generation is not good for their bottom line (e.g. Sam Altman admitted that users saying “please” and “thank you” to ChatGPT is costing them millions of dollars)This isn’t just about getting better AI — it’s about making sure that the economic incentives driving AI development align with what we actually value as developers: clean, maintainable, elegant code that solves problems at their root.Until then, don’t forget: brevity is the soul of wit, and machines have no soul.Thanks to Louise Macfadyen, Justin Kazmark and Bethany Crystal for reading and suggesting edits to a draft of this.— -PS: Yes, I used Claude to help write this post critiquing AI verbosity. There’s a delicious irony here: these systems will happily help you articulate why they might be ripping you off. Their willingness to steelman arguments against their own economic interests shows that the perverse incentives aren’t embedded in the models themselves, but in the business decisions surrounding them. In other words, don’t blame the AI — blame the humans optimizing the revenue models. The machines are just doing what they’re told, even when that includes explaining how they’re being told to do too much.The perverse incentives of Vibe Coding was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.