Capcom is preparing for a ‘future where we create games together with AI’
Capcom's Pragmata might be all about the horrors of AI, but in practice the studio doesn't seem so down on the tech. During the Capcom Open Conference RE: 2026 programmer Satoshi Ishida gave a presentation with the mouthful of a title: "The Outlook and Future of the REX Project, Further Evolving the RE Engine for the Next Generation." During the talk he laid out the challenges facing studios producing games at the scale of Resident Evil, which can make even simple tasks extremely time consuming. The solution Ishida said is "successfully integrating AI technology into development workflows."
Capcom has said previously that it will not use AI …
The best early October Prime Day deals happening now
It’s not even October yet and Amazon is already offering some Prime Big Deal Day discounts on its own hardware, along with plenty of other popular products. It’s all to hype up October Prime Day, which starts October 6th at 3AM ET and lasts through 3AM ET on the 8th if you’re on the East Coast (12AM PT).
October Prime Day offers a glimpse of deals that will likely be available again during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. So, with the holiday shopping season officially underway, you can get some of your shopping out of the way before things get busier as we approach the holidays.
The most recent update to this post on October 3rd added a couple of Bose speakers, building on what was added on October 1st (a couple of Belkin deals, plus a discount on a capable 1440p USB-C monitor). This post will be updated ahead of October 6th as new deals become available.
Bose SoundLink Plus
While the Max is an awesome, powerful speaker, the Plus packs a ton of performance into a more portable form factor. It has an IP67 rating, and it’s easy to clean, too. Read our review.
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Bose SoundLink Max
Bose’s SoundLink Max improves on the smaller Flex with true stereo sound — and very powerful sound at that. It’s got a removable handle for easy transport, and there’s an aux input for playing audio when you want to listen at a higher quality than what Bluetooth can deliver. Read our review.
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Belkin Qi2.2 25W 2-in-1 foldable charging dock
Slap a recent iPhone onto this charging pad and it’ll charge at fast 25W speeds. It can also charge AirPods, and includes a cord and wall adapter.
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Belkin Charging Case for Nintendo Switch 2
The case features an integrated power bank and a small pocket to stow an AirTag (or other similarly sized Bluetooth tracker).
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Asus ProArt 27-inch 1440p USB-C monitor
An affordable color-accurate monitor that can easily connect to a MacBook or Windows machine that has USB-C video support. It’s a good price for a fully-featured 1440p monitor.
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Belkin MagSafe 15W 2-in-1 wireless charging dock
A slick 2-in-1 charger that can charge your magnet-friendly iPhone or Pixel at a relatively speedy pace. Its extra charging pad supports AirPods, the Apple Watch, and other Qi-ready accessories.
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Ring Battery Doorbell 2K
At more than half-off, the second-gen version is a good deal if you want 2K video and easy installation. However, its battery is built-in, so you’ll need to disconnect the doorbell to charge via USB-C.
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Bissell ProHeat 2X Revolution Pet Pro Plus carpet cleaner
Bissell’s Little Green is handy, but doesn’t cut it for big jobs. If you have pets and a lot of carpet to clean, this is one of the most powerful upright carpet cleaners in its price range.
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Ring Floodlight Cam 2K
This model requires wired power, and provides 2K resolution (with AI tuning) and 6x digital zoom. It’s bright (2,000 lumens), and provides a loud alarm if you need to use it.
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Ring Battery Doorbell 4K Pro
The highest-end battery-powered option of the lineup. It can record in 4K with 10x digital zoom, and its battery can be swapped for another as it recharges.
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Amazon Fire HD 8 tablet
The eight-inch tablet with lockscreen ads has 4GB RAM (respectable for streaming apps and mobile games), plus 64GB of storage and a microSD slot for viewing locally-stored media. This model doesn’t support Google Play Store, though it’s easy to sideload it.
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Ecovacs Deebot X12 OmniCyclone
The X12 OmniCyclone uses AI to identify and blast stains to help ensure they’re properly cleaned with minimal passes. It includes a dock, which empties the vac, washes its rolling mop with heated, pressurized water, and refills its reservoirs.
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Blink Mini pan and tilt camera
The panning and tilting accessory gives the Blink Mini some new powers, including 360-degree control via the Blink app. Also included is the camera, which is usually $25 by itself.
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Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Plus
The latest version of Amazon’s zippy Fire TV Stick 4K streams in 4K resolution, as its name suggests, and features support for Wi-Fi 6, Dolby Atmos / Vision, and HDR10 Plus.
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Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max (2023, latest model)
Amazon’s highest-end streaming stick supports Wi-Fi 6E and offers double the storage of its predecessor. It also displays widgets and artwork when idle, while continuing to offer a terrific selection of streaming apps. Plus, it runs on the new and improved Fire TV OS, which makes it easier to find something to watch.
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Amazon Fire TV Cube (2022, latest model)
The hybrid Echo and Fire TV is faster than its predecessor with extensive hands-free voice control capabilities, support for Wi-Fi 6E, and excellent performance. Read our review.
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Amazon Echo Spot
Amazon’s smart speaker-meets-alarm clock has a 2.83-inch squared-off display for showing the time, weather, album art, and other bits of info you may want at your bedside. Unlike the original, there’s no camera to worry about having in your bedroom — though it does have a mutable mic for Alexa voice controls. Read our review.
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Amazon Echo Dot Max
The Echo Dot Max is an elegant redesign of Amazon’s orb-shaped smart speaker, with high-quality knit fabric, a flat face, a new LED ring, and touch controls. It’s the first Echo Dot with Amazon’s improved two-way speaker system and support for its new AI-powered assistant, Alexa Plus, which is enabled out of the box.
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Amazon Echo Dot (Fifth-Gen)
Amazon’s Echo Dot is an affordable way to add a smart speaker to your space. The small, powerful speaker offers surprisingly robust sound, and it’s great for controlling smart home devices, including those compatible with Matter. The Dot also offers faster response times than its predecessor, and it can act as an extender for an Eero Wi-Fi system. Read our review.
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Amazon Echo Show 11 (2025)
The Echo Show 11 features an 11-inch screen and 1080p resolution. It includes Alexa Plus and can be used as a smart home hub with support Thread, Matter, and Zigbee smart home protocols. Read our review.
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Amazon Echo Show 15
The new year is the perfect time to reset your routines and get organized, and the Echo Show 15 is a great tool for doing just that. Designed to function as a shared household hub, it keeps calendars, schedules, reminders, to-do lists, and notes visible at a glance, making it easier to keep on top of things. As an Alexa-enabled smart display, you can also add events by voice and control compatible smart home devices.
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Eero Pro 6E tri-band router
Eero’s Pro 6E mesh router is the Amazon-owned company’s last-gen model. It supports the 6GHz Wi-Fi band with speeds of up to 1.3Gbps and covers up to 2,000 square feet with one unit. Wired speeds can go up to 2.5Gbps. Read our review.
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Samsung 32-inch Movingstyle smart display
Similar to LG’s rollable StanbyME display, the Movingstyle Essential is a 32-inch 4K display on a base that’s height-adjustable (and supports swiveling, pivoting and tilting). Unlike LG’s model, though, this one has no built-in battery.
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Dreame X50 Ultra
With high suction power, an improved brush system, and the ability to scale thresholds up to 6cm, the X50 Ultra stands out as a great robot vacuum and mop hybrid.
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Splice CEO Kakul Srivastava thinks AI emails are killing conversations
Kakul Srivastava is the CEO of Splice, the sample platform countless producers rely on for one-shots and melodic loops. Samples pulled from the service have found their way into massive hits like Lisa's "Money" and "Espresso" by Sabrina Carpenter. (The original samples are here and here, for the curious.)
Before that, Kakul held executive roles at Flickr, Yahoo, GitHub, and Adobe. Throughout her career, Kakul has found herself at the intersection of Silicon Valley and creatives. That's been especially true at Splice, where she's not just expanded the platform's footprint by acquiring Spitfire Audio, but also overseen its forays into the wor …
An OpenAI safety employee has quit and is sounding the alarm
David Robinson used to write the safety reports that accompanied every major model release at OpenAI. This week, he resigned from his position and is now speaking out in an editorial in The Atlantic.
It's understandable if you're feeling a bit cynical about everyone suddenly coming out of the woodwork to warn about how dangerous the thing they helped build is. They did, after all, make this mess. But that doesn't mean we should discount their warnings.
Robinson says that the culture in industry is fundamentally broken. That this is a deeper issue than simply slapping a few new rules or regulations on how we handle training models. Silicon …
3D movies are finally worth watching
Why am I suddenly buying up every 3D Blu-ray I can find after 3D became one of the biggest tech flops of all time?
The technology's finally ready for 3D movies to shine, more than 15 years since James Cameron's Avatar wowed me on the big screen and went on to become the highest-grossing film worldwide. Video glasses are giving me the experience I've always desired.
I've always loved 3D movies, but viewing them was awkward. Walking into a movie theater with a pair of polarized glasses, I would only get half the resolution and roughly half the brightness, since those glasses had to split one reflected image between my two eyes. Almost every …
Meta open sources code to let you make Muse AI gadgets
Meta now lets you make your own Muse gadgets that feature the company's new AI agent with code that the company open sourced. The company suggests projects like loading Muse on a color E Ink display to show reminders, adding it to an HDMI stick so you can display Muse on a big screen, or putting Muse on a small touchscreen device to make what looks kind of like a DIY Muse Charm.
"Muse gadgets are open source devices you build yourself," Meta says. "Program an off-the-shelf ESP32 board or set up a Raspberry Pi with our SDKs, then connect Muse to your displays, buttons, sensors, actuators, and whatever else you've got lying on your workbench. …
Netflix is pivoting away from prestige
Many of Netflix's biggest critically acclaimed hits have been the products of its multiyear production deals with noted directors like David Fincher and Shawn Levy. In the past few weeks, though, the streamer has brought some of those partnerships to an end in a way that feels indicative of a larger strategic shift. With rival studios Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery on the verge of a megamerger that will reshape the entertainment landscape, Netflix is clearly thinking about how it can continue to hold its own in the ongoing streaming wars. But as the company charts its path forward, its plan to court subscribers might not put so much em …
Apple will limit Mac disk access as AI agents ‘substantially’ increase risk
Apple will add new limits for "full disk access" on Mac in response to risks posed by AI agents, as reported earlier by TechCrunch. In an update on Friday, Apple says it's rolling out new controls to "ensure that users who genuinely wish to grant an app this extraordinary level of access can only do so with very explicit user action."
The change comes just weeks after Inc's Jason Aten found that Meta's Muse AI somehow knew the contents of his messages, despite not giving the chatbot explicit permission to access them on his iPhone or Mac. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone pushed back on this report, saying access to Messages is "entirely opt-in. …
Sling TV drops its one-day cable passes
Dish-owned Sling TV will no longer be offering its Sling Pass feature that allowed people to buy a single day of cable TV programming at a time, as reported by The Desk.
The feature was announced last year and offered a day pass, a weekend pass, and a week-long pass option to be able to watch channels like ESPN and CNN without a full-month cable subscription. But soon after it launched, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery sued Sling TV over Sling Pass, though a federal judge ruled against Disney in its request for a preliminary injunction to block the feature.
"Sling was built to give our customers the ultimate control over their entertainme …
OpenAI’s Dot agent is enterprise software that can also order your dinner
It's a tale as old as last week: OpenAI's new agent platform, called Dots, is full of cute little guys who can do your bidding.
But unlike the ultra-approachable Meta Muse, Dots feel very much like using workplace software that happens to be able to order you a burrito - emphasis on work.
OpenAI announced Dots earlier this week. Like Muse, Dots have blobby, anthropomorphic avatars and customizable names. In the future, OpenAI says you'll be able to have multiple Dots, but right now you get one. I named mine Dotty McDotface.
The interface looks similar to Muse's; you chat with the agent in one window and follow its work in another as it …