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Riot's competitive hero shooter 'Valorant' enters closed beta next week
If you've been patiently waiting for a chance to play Riot's new competitive first-person shooter, you won't have to wait much longer to see what the League of Legends studio has been working on in secret all these years. The Valorant closed beta starts on April 7th in the US, Canada, Europe, Turkey and Russia, with expanded availability to come in the months leading up to the game's official launch sometime this summer.
Microsoft's Edge browser will add vertical tabs and tracking prevention
Microsoft finally did the deed and killed Internet Explorer. The company's new browser, Edge, is much more promising, and is even getting some compelling features that differentiate it from the likes of Chrome and Firefox. Today, the company announced enhancements like vertical tabs, password monitoring and tracking prevention -- as well as a mobile version of its useful Collections feature.
Online grocery deliveries are facing an unprecedented stress test
In the past few weeks, cities and states across the country have instructed people to stay home in order to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Going out for essentials like food is allowed, but that can be a risky proposition. Not only can grocery stores get crowded, social distancing protocol often means long lines just to get inside. The obvious alternative to all this is to shop online, but as several shoppers can attest, that experience can sometimes be even more frustrating. The state of online grocery deliveries is apparently a lot more fragile than anyone had anticipated.
Office 365 is turning into Microsoft 365 as it moves into your life
Microsoft wants you to think about its Office 365 subscription service in a whole new light. So on April 21st, the company is renaming the service to "Microsoft 365," as it adds more AI and cloud-powered tools to make you more productive. The pricing stays the same -- $7 a month/$70 a year for personal use and $10 a month/$100 a year for the family plan -- but the scope of the service is much broader. For one, Microsoft is launching a new Family Safety app for tracking screentime and other aspects of your digital life.
Acer's Ryzen 4000 series laptops will be available in weeks
Acer is adding the option to choose Ryzen 4000 series processors to another of its laptops. After announcing the Swift 3 would get AMD chips back at CES, the company has announced that the Aspire 5 will also join the party.
Samsung's 4K OLED Chromebook arrives on April 6th for $999
When Samsung's Galaxy Chromebook arrived at CES 2020 with a beautiful body and 13.3-inch 4K OLED display, we were smitten. Now, it's finally set to arrive at Best Buy in the US on April 6th starting at $999 (in Fiesta Red or Mercury Gray), according to a Best Buy listing and The Verge. (Update: Samsung confirms it will be available at Best Buy and on Samsung.com.)
Elizabeth Warren campaign open sources its organizing tools
The impact of Elizabeth Warren's presidential campaign might be felt well after it ended. The Warren for President team is open-sourcing some of its key get-out-the-vote projects to help other politicians and cause supporters with their own efforts. These include the peer-to-peer texting platform Spoke, the polling location search tool Pollaris, a Caucus App used in Iowa (above) and the data handling app Redhook, among other tools.
Classic action RPG 'NieR Replicant' is coming to PC and modern consoles
NieR fans may have a lot to be happy about in the near future. Square Enix has teased a pair of games in the series, including an "upgraded" version of the cult classic NieR Replicant for PC (via Steam), PS4 and Xbox One. The publisher hasn't said just how it'll improve over the 10-year-old or even provided a general release window, but you can safely presume it'll represent a visual upgrade for the action RPG.
Fox Sports will air a 'Madden NFL 20' tournament on March 29th
Fox Sports' NASCAR esports race was a success, and it's betting that it can repeat that achievement with football. FS1 is planning to air its first ever Fox Esports Madden NFL Invitational on March 29th at 7PM Eastern. The two-hour event will pit players (remotely, of course) against each other in a single-elimination, three-round Madden NFL 20 tournament. There are only eight players, but they include a mix of analysts and pros such as Derwin James (above), Matt Leinart and Michael Vick.
Games Done Quick will host a charity stream for COVID-19 relief
If you want to help people directly affected by the coronavirus pandemic while watching some of the best speedrunners in the world show off their craft, you're in luck. The good folks over at Games Done Quick (GDQ) announced today they plan to host a COVID-19 charity stream next month. Dubbed Corona Relief Done Quick (CRDQ), the event will take place online over the April 17th weekend, with 100 percent of donations going directly to Direct Relief. The humanitarian agency works with doctors and nurses in the US and across the world to equip them with medical supplies to care for people affected by poverty and other emergencies. You'll be able to watch the stream on GDQ's Twitch channel.
The Morning After: Reviewing the iPad Pro (2020)
Hey, good morning! You look fabulous. I spent the last few days talking with Huawei, listening to Huawei and (briefly) playing with its new flagship P40 Pro phone. If you've been following the company's progress over recent years, you'll know it really hit its groove making aggressively high-specced smartphones with incredible cameras and imaging tricks. But hopes of becoming the de facto Android phone maker (and kicking Samsung aside) were crushed when the US government took aim at Huawei, and Google had to stop providing Android services (as you know 'em) for Huawei devices. The P40 is its first P series phone since that bombshell, and it doesn't have the Google Play app store, Chrome or Google Maps. Making things worse, Huawei's app store is still severely lacking, despite huge teams of software engineers and an outreach program to the biggest app developers both globally and in specific countries. So, what do I think of the P40? It feels like a Galaxy phone, to be honest, all curves and sloping sides. It comes with a 5X optical zoom, backed by a huge imaging sensor that would be more at home in a compact camera than a phone. The specs are to die for, but the reality of using it is a dull one. I'll be carrying around the P40 for a little longer -- even if there's really not many places to go at this moment in time. Hey, at least Nintendo is ensuring there's no shortage of games for me to play. -- Mat
'Flight Simulator' developers explain its 'shared world' multiplayer
Last year we got some hands-on time with a pre-alpha build of the next Flight Simulator game in Microsoft's long-running series. While that gave a peek at the game's photorealistic environment and inclusion of information like piped-in live flight traffic and weather data, Windows Central points out a seven-minute video the developers just posted that goes into the game's multiplayer features. The main mode is a shared world where everyone playing Flight Simulator can potentially see everyone else, relying on Azure servers to provide enough capacity. That includes people flying in the real world, with "most" air traffic accounted for, along with AI that will take over if information from the real plane is lost for a moment.
The latest 'Borderlands 3' DLC is an engagement party with guns
Borderlands 3 is a lighthearted take on a Mad Max-style future, and its latest add-on is proof positive of that. Gearbox has released Guns, Love and Tentacles: The Marriage of Wainwright & Hammerlock, and it's just as silly as you'd hope for. You're attending the engagement party of the DLC's namesake characters on a brand-new world, Xylourgos, and it just so happens that the festivities are taking place near a giant creature carcass revered by a cult. You'll have to juggle celebrations with fighting off mutant cultists, bandits and the planet's not-so-timid wildlife.
Google resumes Chrome updates on a modified schedule
Google is ready to restore some semblance of normalcy to its browser release strategy after pausing Chrome updates to adjust to the work-from-home realities of the COVID-19 pandemic. The company is resuming releases for Chrome and Chrome OS on an altered schedule. Security fixes and other crucial patches will come back to Stable releases next week, with Chrome 81 arriving the week of April 7th. Google is still skipping Chrome 82, but Chrome 83 is now due to arrive three weeks earlier than planned, in mid-May -- it'll include all the work from version 82.
Apple Arcade standout ‘Assemble With Care’ is now on Steam
If you're looking for new games to play while you stay at home amid the pandemic, you may be in luck. Today, two Apple Arcade exclusives hit other platforms. As promised, Assemble With Care, one of our favorite Apple Arcade games, is now available for PC. And Capcom's Shinsekai Into the Depths arrived on Switch.
Apple iPad Pro 12.9 review: The rest is yet to come
The message is clear: The 2020 iPad Pro doesn't act the way your computer does, but it's just as capable. The company has spent years pushing that message in one form or another, and every time I heard someone invoke it, the notion sort of fell flat for me. Yes, iPads are powerful and clever and user-friendly, but — and tell me if this sounds familiar — I've always been able to get more done, and faster, on a proper laptop or PC. Apple sees that, and it's starting to change it.
The Morning After: Weightlifting with a robotic exosuit
Hey, good morning! You look fabulous. When the International Olympic Committee decided to make the right call and postpone the Tokyo Olympics, I was disappointed. I was writing a story about Panasonic's robotic exosuits that were going to be assisting Tokyo visitors and Paralympic athletes this summer. I had hoped to report on all the major tech showcases that Japan had planned, too. (Like a broken record, yes, I used to live there and, sure, wanted to visit again.) Whether it was self-driving transport, robotics or 8K broadcast, it was going to be a quintessentially tech Olympics. It still will be, I'm sure, just in 2021. -- Mat
iFixit's MacBook Air teardown confirms 0.5mm thicker keyboard
If you've been lucky enough to get your hands on the new MacBook Air, you know that the keyboard really is excellent. Thanks to the scissor mechanism, which replaced the hated butterfly keyboard, the keys are noticeably cushier, with more travel. iFixit took a closer look at those keys in its latest teardown and reports that the height difference is about 0.5 millimeters.
A hacker stole and leaked the Xbox Series X graphics source code
AMD has been having a particularly rough few months, apparently. The chip designer has revealed that a hacker stole test files for a "subset" of current and upcoming graphics hardware, some of which had been posted online before they were taken down. While AMD was shy on details, the claimed intruder told TorrentFreak that the material included source code for Navi 10 (think Radeon RX 5700 series), the future Navi 21 and the Arden GPU inside the Xbox Series X.
'Below' arrives on PS4 on April 7th with an easier exploration mode
While we knew it was coming to PlayStation 4 this spring, we now have an exact release date for Below. The one-time Xbox One exclusive will launch on Sony's console on April 7th. And when it arrives on PS4, Below will include a new optional "explore" mode that addresses some of the difficulty issues that stopped the game from finding a bigger audience when it first came out.
