The Elder Scrolls Online base game – 50% off (from 8/4 through 8/25 on all platforms except PlayStation, which will be from 8/5 through 8/19)
The Elder Scrolls Online: Greymoor – 35% off
The Elder Scrolls Online Crowns – 25-40% off
Wolfenstein Alternate History Bundle – 60% off
RAGE 2 – 80% off
Quake Champions – Log in to Quake Champions on Bethesda.net or Steam between August 6 and August 19 to receive the QuakeCon 2020 Railgun and the Quake Champions Pack (permanently unlocks all Champions) for free
The QuakeCon event is also focused on raising money for charities, and if gamers top the $10,000 mark then you’ll also be able to get a free copy of Quake II later. You can watch the QuakeCon stream on Twitch for more updates, as well as info on giveaways and updates on the various tournaments taking place this weekend.
Of course, if you prefer more modern games, Bethesda has announced that Elder Scrolls Online and Doom Eternal will get free next-gen upgrades to their respective console versions. Also, for Doom Eternal the company announced updates on the way like “Invasion, more Master Levels, new playable demons in Battle Mode, competitive ranked modes and the first single-player expansion, The Ancient Gods, Part One.”
The Wear OS-powered Gen 5 touchscreen smartwatches Fossil rolled out last year are about to get some upgrades. Their phone apps include avatars for contacts and quick access to key tools, as well as new battery modes that include custom profiles for stuff like working out and an extended mode that helps it reach 24 hours.
The updated cardio tracker can estimate your VO2 max — key to everyone now training for the 2021 Olympics — it’s ready for sleep tracking and the Wellness App can track your workouts while using half as much battery energy. The Gen 5 watches are available now on Fossil’s website or Amazon for $295, and the software update is scheduled to start going out on August 19th.
People who run popular pages with large followings are able to appeal fact-checking decisions. And when conservatives who have criticized the social network for being biased against them appeal these decisions, Facebook has reportedly flagged the issue as requiring “escalation.” It’s then that Facebook’s team, “with direct oversight from company leadership,” steps in.
“The list and descriptions of the escalations, leaked to NBC News, showed that Facebook employees in the misinformation escalations team, with direct oversight from company leadership, deleted strikes during the review process that were issued to some conservative partners for posting misinformation over the last six months,” NBC writes. “The discussions of the reviews showed that Facebook employees were worried that complaints about Facebook’s fact-checking could go public and fuel allegations that the social network was biased against conservatives.”
Pages for Breitbart, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, the Gateway Pundit and Diamond and Silk have all gotten a pass under this process, according to NBC.
In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson said the company’s policy allows it to “determine that one or more of those ratings does not warrant additional consequences,” but didn’t elaborate on the process.
“We defer to third-party fact-checkers on the rating that a piece of content receives. When a fact checker applies a rating, we apply a label and demotion,” the spokesperson said. “But we are responsible for how we manage our internal systems for repeat offenders. We apply additional system wide penalties for multiple false ratings, including demonetization and the inability to advertise, unless we determine that one or more of those ratings does not warrant additional consequences. To this day, we remain the only company that partners with over 70 fact-checking organizations to apply fact-checks to millions of pieces of content.”
The report from NBC comes one day after BuzzFeed News also found that Facebook officials, including Brett Kavanaugh bff and global policy head Joel Kaplan, had intervened in order to help prominent conservatives get fact checks removed or otherwise avoid consequences for sharing misinformation. The social network later fired an employee who questioned these decisions on internal forums, according to BuzzFeed.
Cinema buffs have something to look forward to from HBO Max. The streaming service is adapting popular Twitter account One Perfect Shot, which shares some of the most iconic compositions in film history, into a documentary series.
Each 30-minute episode will feature a single director dissecting one of their career-defining shot. They’ll talk about some of the things that went into the composition, with modern technology like 360-degree field of view cameras helping flesh out things. In addition to talking about the challenges they faced, they’ll also touch on lessons they learned along the way. Besides their work, they’ll talk about a shot that inspired them. As they go about talking about their craft, the directors will also touch on a single shot that inspired them. Ava DuVernay, the director of Selmaand 13th, will narrate the episodes. She’s also producing the series.
ESPN+ is getting a price increase, but only for new subscribers. Starting August 12th, the monthly plan will cost $5.99, up from $4.99. If you’ve been on the fence, it might not be a bad idea to sign up before then, because ESPN+ doesn’t plan to increase the price for existing subscribers for at least a year.
The change won’t affect the ESPN+ annual plan, which is staying at $49.99/year — so that’ll be an even more attractive option soon enough. The bundle of ESPN+, Disney+ and Hulu (with ads) will also stay the same at $12.99/month.
Yu went on to say that Chinese chip manufacturers such as SMIC currently don’t have the capabilities to make up for the shortfall. He also warned supplies of the Mate 40 would be limited.
“Huawei spent over a decade exploring chipsets, going from ‘severely behind’ to ‘very behind’ to ‘slightly behind’ to ‘finally caught up’ to ‘leading’ to now being banned,” said Yu. “We made huge R&D investments and went through a difficult journey. Unfortunately, when it came to semiconductor production, Huawei didn’t participate in investing in heavy assets in this field; we only did chip design but skipped chip production.”
The Trump administration’s Entity List ban has already had a significant effect on Huawei. The company already faces an uphill battle trying to make its phones appealing without access to the Google Play Store. However, the fact it can’t make its own high-end chips probably stings worse. If there’s a silver lining for Huawei, it’s that its Kirin line isn’t completely going away. Earlier this year, SMIC, China’s largest chip foundry, started producing a 14nm Kirin chip for Huawei, and it could one day have the process node capabilities to go toe to toe with TSMC and Samsung. But that will likely take time since the company is two chip generations behind Huawei’s former supplier.
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A few days ago Apple announced a new and improved 27-inch iMac. Not a new design and no ARM chips under the hood — just a series of CPU, GPU, camera and audio upgrades, with more generous storage and memory options. All told, it’s too minor of an update to warrant a full review, in our humble professional opinion, but we did want to give you a few impressions.
And what better way to tell that story than through the new webcam, which steps up to 1080p resolution (at last) and promises improved low-light performance. Indeed, that standup you see there is me in my apartment with the lights off; that’s just the webcam and light from a nearby window doing all the work.
However, the highlight is clearly the elaborate system for breathing sounds. The frequency and intensity of breathing changes with a character’s activity, as you might expect, but Naughty Dog also distinguishes between open- and closed-mouthed breathing, injuries, stealth and vertigo. The game blends and transitions between these sounds, and there are custom sounds for emotions in certain scenes, like fear or exhaustion. Breathing even influences the facial animations.
You may sometimes be too caught up in the game to notice the effects. To some degree, though, that’s the point. The goal is clearly to produce realistic sounds (insofar as you can in a fungus-based apocalypse, anyway) that keep you engrossed in the story, and that can include subtle cues you might not always notice.
If you’re willing to sign up for Hulufor an entire year and don’t mind seeing some ads, you can save some cash with the annual plan the service just revealed. You can get 12 months of service for the cost of 10, but only on the ad-supported plan. It’ll cost $59.99, so you’ll save about $12 over the $5.99 month-to-month option.
There aren’t any other annual plans for now, so you won’t get discounts on the ad-free service or the live TV packages just yet. There are a couple of other bundles available if you want to subscribe to Disney+ and ESPN+ too, but they’re also month-to-month plans.
Two of our favorite true wireless earbuds from Sony remain on sale: the WF-1000XM3 wireless earbuds are on sale for $170 at Best Buy and Amazon, and the new Sony WF-SP800Ns are down to $150 at Best Buy and Amazon, too. The WF-1000XM3s (score: 89) hold the top spot as our favorite wireless earbuds right now thanks to their solid ANC, great audio quality, good wireless connection and their six to eight hours of battery life. The WF-SP800Ns (88) are a bit sportier as they offer more sweat resistance than the other earbuds, and they also have good sound quality and ANC capabilities.
A docking station can help you make your new work-from-home space more efficient. CalDigit’s TS3 Plus has basically every port you’d ever need and it’s on sale for $210 right now. Its 15-port array includes five USB-A ports, an Ethernet port, a dual-bandwidth DisplayPort, an SD card slot and more. It even includes a couple of Thunderbolt 3 ports as well. Not only can you connect up to two displays at once along with any other accessories you need to use daily, but the TS3 Plus will also charge your laptop while it’s connected with up to 87W of power.
You can still get a couple of TCL’s 8-series Roku TVs on sale at Best Buy. The 65-inch 4K model is down to $1,000 and the massive 75-inch 4K model is one sale for $1,800. While the latter was $300 lower last week, the current sale price is still a good one as it’s $1,200 off the TV’s normal price. The 8-series came out at the end of last year and these sets have better color performance and more precise backlighting than previous generations thanks to quantum-dot and mini LED technology.
Now’s the time to grab an Echo Dot while you can get one for as low as $1. Amazon continues to run a promotion that allows new Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers to buy two months of the service and then add on an Echo Dot for only $0.99 extra, or an Echo Dot with Clock for only $10 extra. These are the lowest prices you’ll see on Echo Dots, so it’s worth giving Music Unlimited a shot for a couple of months if you’ve been eyeing one of Amazon’s smallest smart speakers. Just remember that your Music Unlimited subscription will renew after the two-month period at the normal price of $10 per month unless you cancel.
You can get two of Amazon’s most popular Alexa devices for less when you buy them together. Now the Fire TV Stick 4K with Echo Dot bundle costs $65, which is $35 less than its normal price. It was only cheaper last year during the holiday shopping season, so while this isn’t the lowest price ever, it’s a good deal if you have an immediate need for both devices. The Fire TV Stick 4K is one of our favorite streaming devices thanks to its compact design and support for HDR10+ and Dolby Vision. The Echo Dot is a good tiny smart speaker that’s one of the easiest (and most affordable) ways to start using Alexa more frequently.
If you need a battery pack that won’t take up too much space in your bag, Anker’s PowerCore Slim is a safe bet — and it’s on sale for $20 on Amazon when you clip the $5 coupon on the product page and use the code ANKER1231 at checkout. It measures just over a half-inch thick and has a 10,000mAh capacity, which is enough to charge newest iPhones and Pixel smartphones twice over. It also has a “rapid charge” feature that lets you power up the bank fully in 4.5 hours when you use a USB-C PD wall charger.
