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Apple’s 15-inch MacBook Air M2 is already more affordable than any other laptop the company has ever offered with this size of screen. Now, you can grab the 256GB model at Amazon for just $1,099 (in midnight and space gray), back down to the lowest price we’ve seen to date. And if you need even more storage, the 512GB model is available for $1,299 ($200 off), also an all-time low price. 

The 15-inch MacBook Air is more than just a larger version of the 13-inch model, as Engadget’s Nathan Ingraham discovered during his review. While it’s still as thin and light as you’d expect, he found that the combination of the large screen and powerful processing made it good enough that he could see using it as his only computer.

That’s in large part due to Apple’s M2 chipset that gives the 15-inch Air a great price to performance ratio. It also offers a comfortable keyboard and trackpad, plus battery life that actually exceeded the company’s 18 hour spec for video playback during out testing. The bigger screen has a 2,880 x 1,864 resolution, but it shares the same pixels per inch (224) as that of the 13-inch version. Though it lacks the punch of the mini LED displays found on the MacBook Pros, the Liquid Retina panel still offers 500 nits of brightness and a 60Hz refresh rate. 

While Apple’s M2 chipset is a year old at this point, the 15-inch Air model only came out in June so it’s unlikely to be refreshed anytime soon. If your focus is content creation, a MacBook Pro might be a better choice. But if you do a mix of things from productivity to video editing, the 15-inch Air is an great choice — especially for road warriors who want to carry the least amount of weight possible. If you want to grab either the 256GB or 512GB models, it’s best to act soon, though, as stock tends to run out fast. 

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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apples-15-inch-macbook-air-m2-falls-back-to-1099-105550693.html?src=rss 

Nightdive Studios, a company known for remaking and upgrading old video games for modern consoles such as Quake II, has announced remastered versions of Star Wars: Dark Forces and Turok 3 Shadow of Oblivion. In the Dark Force’s case, Nightdive worked in collaboration with Lucasfilm Games to breathe new life into the title using its KEX Engine. 

The Dark Forces is a first-person shooter developed by the now defunct LucasArts and first released almost 30 years ago in 1995. This new version supports 4K gameplay at 120FPS and features cut scenes that look like they came straight out of much newer titles. Players can earn trophies and achievements and, of course, it now supports gamepads for modern consoles, because it’s “coming soon” to the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Series X|S, Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam. Nightdive hasn’t revealed an exact release date yet, but it has promised another announcement later this year.

Meanwhile, Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion is a remastered version of the original first-person shooter released in 2000 for the Nintendo 64. Nightdive had also previously updated the first two games in the trilogy, Turok and Turok 2: Seeds of Evil, for young gamers and those who want to play them again on newer devices. Like the Dark Forces, the company remastered Turok 3 using its KEX Engine. The game supports 4K resolution at 120FPS, features improved lighting and rendering, as well as upgraded gameplay and platform-specific features. According to IGN, the remaster contains some new content, including a new area and a new heads-up display (HUD) view. Nightdive doesn’t have a release date for Turok 3 either, but those interested can now add it to their wishlist on Steam. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/star-wars-dark-forces-and-turok-3-to-be-remastered-by-nightdive-studios-114002864.html?src=rss 

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has charged Toronto Cash’s founders with counts of money laundering and sanction violations. The cryptocurrency mixer first faced US sanctions last year for allegedly laundering over $7 billion in stolen funds. The DOJ now alleges that Toronto Cash facilitated $1 billion in money laundering, including $455 million funneled through the mixer by a North Korean cybercrime organization, the Lazarus Group. The overall charges include “conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to commit sanctions violations, and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business.” Co-founder Roman Storm was arrested in Washington State, while the other half of Toronto Cash, Roman Semenov, is still at large.

The US government is attempting to send a strong message about using cryptocurrency for illegal purposes. “These charges should serve as yet another warning to those who think they can turn to cryptocurrency to conceal their crimes and hide their identities, including cryptocurrency mixers: it does not matter how sophisticated your scheme is or how many attempts you have made to anonymize yourself, the Justice Department will find you and hold you accountable for your crimes,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement.

If you’re unfamiliar, a cryptocurrency mixer is a service that makes it harder to track funds from their origin to the new owner. Most blockchains, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, are visible, so a mixer helps individuals hide their money flow — whether it be for reasonable or illegal activities. Chainalysis, a cryptocurrency analysis firm, found that in 2022, crypto addresses known for unlawful activity used mixers in almost 10 percent of transactions.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/doj-charges-tornado-cash-co-founders-for-laundering-over-1-billion-in-crypto-101017912.html?src=rss 

If you’ve been wondering who’s making the most money from the AI boom, NVIDIA may have the answer in it’s latest earnings report. The company announced revenue of $13.51 billion in the second quarter, more than doubling the $6.7 billion it made last year and crushing market expectations. On top of that, it earned $6.18 billion in GAAP net income, nine times the $656 million it made in Q2 2022. 

NVIDIA’s gaming segment did pretty well too, thanks to $2.49 billion in Q2 revenue, up 22 percent from last year. During the quarter, it started shipping the budget-oriented GeForce RTX 4060 GPU, announced the Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE) for games and saw the addition of 35 DLSS games including Diablo IV. (Earlier this week, it unveiled DLSS 3.5 designed to use AI to make ray-traced games look better.)

But it was very much the AI and data center segments that pushed NVIDIA to new heights. It saw a record $10.32 billion in revenue in that sector alone, up 141 percent from Q1 2023 and 171 percent from a year ago. 

Earlier this year, CEO Jensen Huang said that back in 2018, NVIDIA had a “bet the company” moment when it started using AI to power DLSS, “and while we were reinventing CG with AI, we were reinventing the GPU for AI.” He later added that “the future is a large language model (LLM) at the front of just about everything,” from VFX to heavy industry. 

NVIDIA’s prescience is now paying off with the company’s flagship H100 Tensor Core GPU. It’s also been building more complex systems like the HGX box, which puts eight H100 GPUs into a single computer. All of that helped it create immense cashflows with top customers spending heavily on NVIDIA GPU tech to build complex AI models — like Microsoft with its Azure segment. 

In addition, the company’s use of custom software and apps makes it difficult for customers to switch rivals like AMD. “Our Data Center products include a significant amount of software and complexity which is also helping for gross margins,” said NVIDIA finance chief Colette Kress in an analyst call.

All that led to a perfect storm of profit. “During the quarter, major cloud service providers announced massive NVIDIA H100 AI infrastructures. Leading enterprise IT system and software providers announced partnerships to bring NVIDIA AI to every industry. The race is on to adopt generative AI,” Huang said in a statement. “Companies worldwide are transitioning from general-purpose to accelerated computing and generative AI.” The company expects more to come, forecasting around $16 billion in revenue for Q3. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/nvidia-records-mega-profits-thanks-to-its-ai-chip-business-084552302.html?src=rss 

Apple officially endorsed Senator Susan Talamantes Eggman’s Right to Repair Bill in California, according to iFixit. Reuters says the tech giant even sent legislators in the state a letter, urging them to pass Senate Bill 244, which requires companies to provide consumers and third-party providers the repair diagnostics and parts needed to be able to repair their products. iFixit’s CEO Kyle Wiens called Apple’s endorsement “a watershed moment for consumer rights.” He said it “feels like the Berlin Wall of tech repair monopolies is starting to crumble, brick by brick,” because the bill’s passing could lead to a more competitive market offering cheaper repairs. 

If SB 244 becomes a law, the parts, tools and documentations needed to repair products that cost between $50 and $100 will have to be available in the state for three years after the last date they were manufactured. Meanwhile, repair materials for products over $100 will have to be available for seven years. With those rules in place, manufacturers can’t refuse to make information or components available after people’s warranty periods are over. Companies violating the law will be fined $1000 per day for their first violation, $2000 for their second and $5000 per day for more violations after that. 

As iFixit notes, Apple has had a long history of opposing Right to Repair rules and previously said that Nebraska would become a “mecca for hackers” when a bill was introduced in the state. Over the past few years, though, the tech giant has been showing signs of a change of heart. In 2021, Apple announced that it would start selling parts and tools directly to consumers and even offer repair guides to help them fix their iPhones and Macs on their own. “We support ‘SB 244′ because it includes requirements that protect individual users’ safety and security as well as product manufacturers’ intellectual property,” Apple reportedly wrote in its letter. 

Whether Apple’s endorsement can finally give the bill the support it needs to be approved remains to be seen. Eggman introduced the Right to Repair Act in California way back in 2018, but the bill was only able to amass significant backing this year. The Senate unanimously passed the bill, which will have its final hearing next week. After that, it will have to go to the floor and be approved for the final time by legislators before the governor can sign it into law. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-backs-right-to-repair-bill-in-california-072227964.html?src=rss 

Amazon is still working on a Fallout TV series — and we’ll finally find out next year whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. The company has revealed that the Fallout TV show will premiere on Prime Video sometime in 2024, over three years after it first announced that it was developing an adaptation of the franchise with the creators of Westworld. According to GameSpot, Bethesda’s Todd Howard and Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer presented a short teaser of the upcoming series at Gamescom’s Xbox booth. 

The brief clip reportedly showed a nuclear explosion near a city resembling Los Angeles, characters crossing a wasteland and a woman emerging from one of Fallout’s Vaults. And, as you can see above, Prime Video shared an image confirming LA to be the site for Vault 33. In October last year, Amazon’s Prime Video X account posted a photo of characters wearing Vault 33 suits, and before that, a few behind-the-scenes images for Vault 32 leaked online. 

When the series was first announced, Bethesda said it had been looking for ways to adapt the Fallout games into a movie or a TV show over the past decade. The adaptation that it eventually approved, written and developed by Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan, will take on a “serious and harsh” tone but will also feature “ironic humor” and “B-movie nuclear fantasies.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazons-fallout-series-will-arrive-on-prime-video-in-2024-053029884.html?src=rss 

Back at CES in January, Alienware unveiled its first 500Hz Fast IPS monitor, which it designed for high-performance gaming. The Dell brand is set to release a new version of the display geared toward folks who have AMD graphics cards.

Alienware notes that the monitor’s AMD FreeSync Premium and VESA AdaptiveSync certification can enable tear- and stutter-free gaming. The AW2524HF has a low latency response time of 0.5ms which, according to Alienware, eliminates motion blur and ghosting effects.

The monitor is HDR10-compatible and it has 99 percent sRGB color coverage. The Fast IPS panel is said to enable consistent visuals from any viewing angle. Alienware also claims the TUV-certified ComfortView Plus hardware feature reduces harmful low blue light while still ensuring the display delivers true-to-life colors.

The monitor has a built-in retractable hanger for your headset and a height-adjustable hexagonal base that’s designed to take up less space on your desk. As for connectivity, there are two DisplayPort 1.4 slots, one HDMI 2.1 port and five spaces for USB 3.2 cables.

You can snap up the AW2524HF from Dell’s website starting on September 12th. The monitor costs $650. Alienware will reveal UK pricing and availability later.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/alienware-is-releasing-an-amd-freesync-premium-version-of-its-500hz-gaming-monitor-040133349.html?src=rss