Incube8 Games, which sells new games that run on cartridges in old Game Boys, has dropped prices across almost all its titles by an average of 22.5 percent, “to keep retro gaming accessible” as prices rise elsewhere. It insists the price drop is permanent, attributing it to “improved production management and ongoing process optimizations,” and says product quality won’t be changing.
[x.com]
When it’s in the Bay Area. Tesla has sent out invites for its “ride-hailing service,” conspicuously absent any Robotaxi branding.
Tesla doesn’t have permits for autonomous taxis in California, so its rides include a supervisor in the driver’s seat, who Reuters reports must be “ready to take over at all times” — in Austin the supervisor sits in the passenger seat. A first fan video shows the car doing most of the work, but the human driver’s hands always stay near the wheel.
Ofcom is now investigating whether four companies that collectively run 34 pornography sites are complying with new Online Safety Act (OSA) rules that require them to have “highly effective age checks” in place — the same rules that are widely restricting parts of the internet across the UK. Other OSA investigations were already underway, but these are the first to fall under the age verification requirements.
After years of the US casting doubt on Huawei tech for alleged security threats, now China gets a turn. The country’s Cyberspace Administration reportedly called Nvidia execs in to explain “loopholes and backdoor” vulnerabilities in the H20 AI chips designed specifically to sell in China. It follows an antitrust investigation opened last year.
Then again, this could all be posturing — China wants its own chip industry to thrive, and Nvidia’s dominance makes that difficult.
[asia.nikkei.com]
Earlier this year there were a lot of questions over the $100 billion investment into The Stargate Project, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was quick to defend the software giant’s investment in cloud and AI data center projects. Microsoft posted its Q4 2025 fiscal earnings yesterday, revealing that Azure surpassed $75 billion in revenue over the year. Microsoft is also spending $30 billion on its AI infrastructure investments next quarter, which totals $120 billion over a year if it keeps that spending up.
The amount of the investment in Fable, which is making a service called Showrunner, hasn’t been disclosed, Variety reports. The company’s CEO and co-founder also says that it is in talks with Disney about potentially licensing IP.
The latest Mario Kart World update increases “the frequency of lap-type courses” that appear during online races.
The change seems to address concerns over Nintendo’s decision to nerf the “random” track trick last month, which allowed players to avoid having to drive to their next track location, and instead have a traditional three-lap race.
In a letter to Comcast, Carr says he wants to make sure that the company’s “ability to exert influence” over local NBC affiliates doesn’t “undermine” their goal of serving the public interest.
Last week, Carr signed off on Paramount’s merger with Skydance — but only after Skydance said it would install a “bias monitor” at CBS, which recently canceled Stephen Colbert’s Late Show.
(Disclosure: Comcast is an investor in Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company.)
Why reboot your whole SteamOS handheld to desktop when you can visit the desktop from inside the gaming mode? Nested Desktop does have limitations (no file management, no Steam-within-Steam) but gosh are there times this’d come in handy. Jacob at XDA calls it “the best Steam Deck feature you aren’t using”.
Setup: In desktop mode, tap Steam logo on taskbar > scroll down to Lost and Found > Right-click “Nested Desktop” > “Add to Steam.”
Lexar announced that its Play 2280 SE PCIe 4.0 SSD is available at Costco. New SSDs hit the market all the time, but I’m stunned by how affordable this one is. Costco members can snag one online for $224.99. For context on that price, Samsung’s 4TB 990 Pro has never gone below $279.99.
The Play 2280 SE supports 7000 MB/s max read and 6000 MB/s max write speeds. That makes it a touch slower than the 990 Pro, but you likely won’t notice a difference on your PS5 (we didn’t when we tested several options back in 2021).
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In its Q2 2025 earnings call, Garmin CEO Cliff Pemble says, “Glasses have come and gone once, and the utility and concerns around the use of those have always come up in the context.” He went on to say it’s a “wait and see thing.”
He’s not wrong. Privacy is still a major concern with smart glasses. But frankly, Garmin is probably happy enough with another gangbusters quarter in fitness, logging a 41 percent increase year-over-year.
[prnewswire.com]
Actor Sydney Sweeney is currently embroiled in a days-long “discourse” cycle about a campaign she shot with American Eagle. The ad — and whether it’s a eugenics dog whistle — is one thing. But I liked this Atlantic piece that zoomed out and put the outrage and online content cycle into perspective. Chat, is discourse cooked?
[theatlantic.com]
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s latest patch adds an option to retry battles right after you’re defeated. The game’s checkpoints were already pretty forgiving, but this new pop-up will make jumping back into a battle to practice your parries a little bit faster.
Called AlphaEarth Foundations, the model stitches together data from actual satellite images, radar, climate simulations, and more to map Earth’s land and coastal waters.
”The Satellite Embedding dataset is revolutionizing our work by helping countries map uncharted ecosystems - this is crucial for pinpointing where to focus their conservation efforts,” Nick Murray, director of the James Cook University Global Ecology Lab and Global Science Lead of Global Ecosystems Atlas, said in a Google DeepMind blog post.
[deepmind.google]
I helped score the annual Value Electronics TV Shootout. Here’s what goes on behind the scenes.
Drag x Drive, the Switch 2’s 3-v-3 wheelchair basketball game, is coming out next month and Nintendo has shared a new trailer. The game, the first exclusive to make extensive use of the Switch 2’s mouse controls, will test more than just your hoopin’ skills.
The trailer showed off a ton of other things you can do like wheelchair races, skills challenges, and more. You can also create pick-up games with your friends, customize your player and their wheels, or practice against the computer when Drag x Drive comes out August 14th.
The deal, which includes access to the NYT, The Athletic, and NYT Cooking, will have Amazon paying $20 million to $25 million per year, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. In May, the NYT said Amazon will use its content to train AI models and bring article summaries to Alexa.
The guy who renamed Facebook to Meta went long with a blog post this morning about a grandiose AGI-ish vision for artificial intelligence and why his company is so invested in it. It also might help explain why Meta is making huge offers to hire “post-money” AI experts who aren’t completely convinced Meta is the place to be.
We’re still churning through the whole thing, but you can start with Zuckerberg’s accompanying video right here.
