Elon Musk's X, the company formerly known as Twitter, is planning to build a new “Trust and Safety center of excellence” in Austin, Texas, to help enforce its content and safety rules.
11.01.2024 - 20:35 / theverge.com / Wes Davis / Ai
By Wes Davis, a weekend editor who covers the latest in tech and entertainment. He has written news, reviews, and more as a tech journalist since 2020.
The biggest names in laptops showed up to CES this week with new designs, new chips, and usually some way to sneak in the term “AI.” But most of them also quietly arrived with one of the most important upgrades of all for competitive gamers on the go: better Wi-Fi, with support for Wi-Fi 7. It’s about time, because router companies shoved Wi-Fi 7 routers out the door throughout 2023, and we’ve been waiting on machines that can put the standard’s ludicrous speed promises to the test.
Wi-Fi 7 came to gaming laptops first and foremost, and the focus on gaming makes sense. One of the biggest benefits of Wi-Fi 7 is that it allows for one device to connect to your router on multiple bands — a feature called Multi-Link Operation — which gives your laptop options when it comes to where to funnel its packets. That means that when your 5GHz band is at capacity, it’ll just send the data down the 6GHz pipe, and vice versa. The result should be lower latency when you’re on a busy network, which is critical when you’re not able to wire up with ethernet.
Most of the new laptops equipped with Wi-Fi 7 are on their way very soon. But some of the earliest are, at least for now, very expensive: the 16-inch Razer Blade 16 starts at $3,000, and the 18-inch MSI Titan 18 HX A14V costs at least $5,000. (The only option up for preorder right now comes in at $9,099.) Both of those are due out in mid-January.
If you’re not in the mood to dump your life savings into a laptop, some more affordable gaming models with Wi-Fi 7 were announced, too. There’s the $2,099 Lenovo Legion 7i that’s coming in March or the much more affordable HP Omen Transcend that’s available for $1,499.99. From Dell, two Alienware gaming laptops also got the Wi-Fi 7 treatment, while the company’s well-liked XPS line got the nod in two of its three laptops: the XPS 13 and XPS 16.
The one big exception at the show to the unspoken Wi-Fi 7 gaming laptop rule appeared to be Asus. None of the laptops that the company announced in its ROG lineup, including the Zephyrus line, have Wi-Fi 7 listed in their specs. That’s surprising considering that the company was one of the first out of the gate with a Wi-Fi 7 router.
If you’re looking to upgrade your gaming laptop and you’re not the type to insist on a wired connection, now is a fine time to start looking at Wi-Fi 7 routers. There weren’t a lot announced at the show — Acer has a gaming router coming, and MSI announced a mesh system — but a few hit the market in 2023, including gamer routers from Netgear and ROG. You will probably want to be cautious about pulling the
Elon Musk's X, the company formerly known as Twitter, is planning to build a new “Trust and Safety center of excellence” in Austin, Texas, to help enforce its content and safety rules.
Reikon Games, the developers behind cyberpunky top-down shooter Ruiner, have reportedly become the latest studio to lay off dozens of staff, with over half of the Polish indie said to have lost their jobs earlier this week.
Microsoft will let go of 1,900 employees at Activision Blizzard and Xbox this week, it said on Thursday, the latest cuts in the technology sector that has extended massive layoffs over the past years into 2024.
Update: This story has now been updated with a response from a Microsoft spokesperson.
Microsoft is laying off 1900 people across its video game teams, including Activision Blizzard, ZeniMax and Xbox, equating to approximately eight percent of its gaming workforce.
Riot Games have announced that they will shortly lay off "about 530" people, or 11 per cent of their global workforce, so as to "create focus and move us towards a more sustainable future", in the words of CEO Dylan Jadeja. The "biggest impact" will be felt outside of core development, though they'll affect at least one major internal team - the developers of Legends Of Runeterra. Riot are also binning off the Riot Forge publishing label, under which third-party developers create smaller-scale games based on Riot's own intellectual properties.
Riot Games has announced plans to lay off 530 of their employees, or about 11 % of their workforce.
Tencent Holdings' Riot Games plans to lay off 530 employees, or about 11 percent of its staff globally, the online gaming company said on Monday in a blog that included a letter to employees from CEO Dylan Jadeja.
Palworld first captured the attention of gamers (and their internet sphere) when it was revealed back in 2021. While that reveal included details about the survival aspects of the game, including multiplayer, crafting, and farming, viewers honed in on the idea of it being Pokémon but with guns. You can capture Pokémon-like monsters called Pals in special balls (and you can capture humans, too), but it's smart to shoot them or hack at them with an axe first to lower their health. And then, once under your command, you can give them their own guns to use, of course.
On his private social media account, Oscar nominee Paul Mescal confirmed that production on Ridley Scott’s highly-anticipated has finally been completed. This comes after filming was temporarily delayed last year due to the SAG-AFTRA strike. The long-awaited is currently scheduled to make its debut in theaters on November 22, 2024.
Thunderful Group has announced a major restructuring programme that will see around 20% of its workforce laid off in an effort to significantly reduce running costs and rebalance the business.
CI Games, the Polish game developer and publisher associated with the Lords of the Fallen and Sniper: Ghost Warrior games, is planning to lay off around 10% of its staff.