Tag: tech

If you’ve left Muckville clean enough to satisfy even its picky residents, this new task of cleaning up the Ice Rink is perfect for you.

Check out these three underrated movies on Hulu to watch in December 2024. Our picks include an iconic book adaptation, a holiday rom-com, and an action sequel. 

The director published his top 10 list on Vulture, and included the highly divisive sequel to 2019’s blockbuster.

Who are the bad guys worthy of facing 007? These are our picks for the best James Bond villains of all time. And no, Christopher Walken is not on the list.

The actor has maintained that he thinks his former co-star would be a better actor if he ditched the method approach.

Path of Exile 2 is now out in early access, but it was a bumpy start. The team at Grinding Gear Games have laid out their approach to fixing the bugs.

A new game mode called Ballistic is coming to Fortnite in early access on December 11, bringing a 5v5 tactical first-person shooter experience. In Ballistic mode, one team will be tasked with planting a Rift Point Device — which will detonate 45 seconds after it’s placed — and the other team will have to stop that from happening. There will be one map (Skyline 10) to start and a limited selection of weapons and items, but more will be added down the line in “major updates” to come, according to a Fortnite blog post.

“Ballistic is a no-build mode,” the Fortnite team says. “All saved presets from your Locker will carry over into Ballistic, which supports existing Fortnite Outfits, Back Blings, Kicks, Wraps, Sprays, and Emotes! Pickaxes, Contrails, Instruments, Vehicles, and Jam Tracks are not used/supported.” If you get taken out during a round, you won’t be able to respawn. But, you’ll come back in the next round. The teams’ roles will swap after six rounds, and the match will end once one team has won seven rounds. You’ll be able to play Ranked or Unranked.

Ballistic mode will be available everywhere you can play Fortnite, except in South Korea and Russia, but the team says it’s “working to make Ballistic available in both regions.” Since it’s early access, players’ feedback will be used to improve the experience as it expands.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/fortnite-is-getting-a-5v5-first-person-shooter-mode-162200195.html?src=rss

Spotify’s 2024 Wrapped results arrived this week, and while the whole package seems a bit thin compared to previous years, we’re still getting a kick out of seeing our listening habits laid bare. Apple Music also dropped its annual Replay, and Tidal’s 2024 Rewind has landed, so non-Spotify users have some data to pore over too. For those among us who don’t use any of the big streaming apps, well, it’s still a nice time to reflect on personal favorites from this year. 

Here are some of the Engadget team’s most listened-to songs, artists and albums in 2024 (and how we feel about those picks). 

Spotify Wrapped 

I hate to add to the list because of all the controversy around Spotify recently, but I have to say that the layoffs at the company do seem to have impacted how accurate I found my Wrapped report to be. While I certainly have listened to a lot of Ariana Grande in 2024 (I even wrote about it for our site!), I felt that the sections on what I was listening to in August were inaccurate. According to Spotify I was vibing to Rose and Bruno Mars’ APT in August, but didn’t that song get released quite a bit later?

Anyway, judge me or don’t judge me based on my listening — all I can say is the data feels incorrect and incomplete but also fun and inconsequential. — Cherlynn Low, Deputy Editor, Reviews

I was pretty ill this year, and I spent hours in hospital and clinic waiting rooms listening to music on Spotify. Apparently, March was my “Pink Pilates Princess Strut Pop” phase, because I mostly listened to Dua Lipa, Ariana Grande and Charli xcx. My top artist for the year, however, was Fujii Kaze, whose music gave me a lot of comfort when I needed it the most. — Mariella Moon, Contributing Reporter

RIP New Jeans — Aaron Souppouris, Executive Editor

Apple Music Replay

I’ve had GNX on repeat since it came out, and it was one of the things that got me through our incredibly busy Black Friday coverage season. Very excited to see which of these tracks gets played live at the Super Bowl. My guess is we’ll get “tv off” (with at least one “Mustard!” shout) and “squabble up,” at the least.

Brat summer became Brat autumn, and it will continue to be a Brat winter for me. Top tracks: “Club classics,” “Sympathy is a knife,” and “365.”

Grasa is my true album of the year and it’s a must-listen for any urbano latino fans. It’s fantastic experienced as an album from start to finish, and any edit you make based on personal preference is sure to be excellent. My favorite tracks — “Legendario,” “Manhattan,” “Menina” — are still on repeat in my personal playlists and will be carried over into 2025.

While Renaissance remains my preferred album in this Beyonce cycle so far, Cowboy Carter has no skips. “Daughter,” “Spaghetti” and “Sweet Honey Buckin’” are my faves.

The Death of Slim Shady makes sense as a concept album to me and I think it succeeds as such. But “Tobey” is what really prompted me to give the entire album a listen when it came out, and I’m glad I did. “Tobey” remains a top track for me, along with “Renaissance” and “Somebody Save Me.” —Valentina Palladino, Deputy Editor, Buying Advice

Despite the fact that music streaming services push you to playlists and radio channels, I remain an Album Guy. And as usual, my top album of the year didn’t come out this year, though it’s a relatively recent release. Daughter’s Stereo Mind Game was near the top of my list last year, but this April it rocketed up my list and was an obsession for the rest of the summer. That is thanks in large part to a live studio session they released on YouTube that was the only chance I had to hear these songs performed in a somewhat live setting, as Daughter didn’t tour Stereo Mind Game at all.

And since I’m an album guy, the first four songs on the album were my second-through-fifth most played songs of 2024. The absurdly catchy “Blame Brett” by Canadian pop-rockers The Beaches was number one, from their excellent Blame My Ex album that also came out last year. I got obsessed with that album in late 2023 and it definitely carried over to the first half of 2024. The same thing happened with Tool’s 2019 opus Fear Inoculum — I saw the band in November of 2023 for the first time in 21 years, and got re-obsessed and continued playing it throughout the year.

Finally, something new from a very old favorite: David Gilmour, best known as the guitarist and co-lead songwriter of the legendary Pink Floyd, released his first solo album in nine years. He followed that with a very short tour that hit only four cities, New York City included. I was lucky enough to go see him a few weeks ago — at 78, this could easily be the last tour he ever does, but he still brings it. He’s my favorite guitar player of all time, and the last song “Scattered” on Luck and Strange is an all-time great as good as almost anything else he’s done.

Bringing up the rear is another new album from an old favorite, Pearl Jam. More than 30 years after their debut Ten, they still know how to make a damn good rock album. Both Pearl Jam and Gilmour went with producers much younger than they were, trying to find people who weren’t going to be beholden with the work they had done earlier in long and impressive careers. If you ask me, it worked out in both cases.

There are tons of other albums from much younger or less established artists I played all year long, including Bathe Alone’s I Don’t Do Humidity, Adrienne Lenker’s Bright Future, Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft, Medium Build’s Country, Girl in Red’s I’m Doing It Again Baby! and Waxahatchee’s Tigers Blood. They’re all worth a listen — but apparently this was a year for comfort and familiarity when I put things on repeat. — Nathan Ingraham, Deputy Editor, News

Tidal Rewind

This year for me was apparently all about fixating on a handful of new songs and playing them to absolute death. And, um, Ariana Grande. I don’t have Spotify, but my Tidal year-end playlist has every single song from Eternal Sunshine at the top, and I’m slightly ashamed to say I can’t argue the validity of that — I had that album on a loop for months after it came out. She’s really talented, okay?? After that my most listened-to songs were “Cry For Me” by Castle Rat, “Bloom” by Baroness (probably an all-time favorite song for me, really), “How Far Will We Take It?” by Orville Peck and Noah Cyrus, “Birds of a Feather” by Billie Eilish, “Weird World” by Allie X and “Red Wine Supernova” by Chappell Roan. I… contain multitudes… 

There’s a suspicious overall lack of emo on my 2024 wrap-up though, so I’m going to take these results with a huge grain of salt. I mean, my go-to playlist is titled “rawr xD.” — Cheyenne MacDonald, Weekend Editor

Personal Pick

I don’t have Spotify, so any recollection of particularly sticky music for me will necessarily be imprecise and skewed by recency bias. With that said: hooooooly moly can we talk about that Cindy Lee album?? My journey with Diamond Jubilee went something like this:

-What is this?

-No really, what is this??

-Why can’t I listen to anything besides this???

Its two hours of runtime play out like a secret radio station beaming some alternate version of ’60s girl groups into 2024 and I absolutely fell in love with it — and that was before even realizing Pat Flegel was in Women (another extremely cool, but very different band).

Honorable mentions go to Adrianne Lenker’s absolutely crushing Bright Future, which got me through recovery from a major surgery and the nervy bops on Robber Robber’s Wild Guess. As to my actual most-listened songs? It’s probably the stuff on my running playlist (Sheer Mag, Every Time I Die, Red Fang, 100 Gecs, IDLES, Femtanyl, Pissed Jeans etc.) — Avery Ellis, Deputy Editor, Reports

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/music/engadget-wrapped-the-music-we-listened-to-the-most-in-2024-143150906.html?src=rss

Future Exascale supercomputers will be built using these HPE cabinets that can hold nearly 100,000 AMD Epyc Cores.

Just two weeks since raising $125mn in funding, British scaleup Tokamak Energy has secured backing from the US and UK to upgrade its ST40 fusion energy plant. The US Department of Energy (DOE), the UK’s Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), and Tokamak Energy will jointly sponsor a $52mn upgrade to the fusion facility in Oxfordshire.  “Fusion has the potential to be a clean and sustainable energy source, transforming how we power our country, and countries around the world,” said Kerry McCarthy, Minister for Climate at DESNZ.  “This strategic partnership is therefore crucial to develop this new and…

This story continues at The Next Web