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Balatro's big 2025 update won't be coming out this year after all

Fans will have to wait a little bit longer for the hotly-anticipated Balatro 1.1 update. Developer LocalThunk just announced it will not be coming out in 2025, despite previously promising a release this year. Instead, it'll come out "when it's done." It's worth remembering that Balatro was created by a single person, and the same goes for this update. The lone developer also made the original balance patch and the well-regarded mobile port. He says he's "well and truly burned out." LocalThunk

An embarrassing failure of the US patent system: Nintendo's latest patents

The last 10 days have brought a string of patent wins for Nintendo. Yesterday, the company was granted US patent 12,409,387, a patent covering riding and flying systems similar to those Nintendo has been criticized for claiming in its Palworld lawsuit (via Gamesfray). Last week, however, Nintendo received a more troubling weapon in its legal arsenal: US patent 12,403,397, a patent on summoning and battling characters that the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted with alarmingly litt

After Kirk shooting, Utah governor calls social media a “cancer.” Will we treat it like one?

The conservative broadcaster/provocateur Charlie Kirk—murdered this week during a visit to a Utah college—had tweeted some life advice this summer: "When things are moving very fast and people are losing their minds, it’s important to stay grounded. Turn off your phone, read scripture, spend time with friends, and remember internet fury is not real life. It’s going to be ok." Kirk was not himself always a great role model for staying grounded, thoughtful, or caring to others. He was better know

Your Powerbeats Pro 2 are getting a serious upgrade - but there's a catch

'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean? ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie Is Coming: Watch the Title Trailer Here

Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Bowser and friends will be back for a sequel to 2023's Super Mario Bros. Movie. On Friday, Nintendo released a trailer to YouTube revealing the new movie's title: The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. In the video, Mario is snoozing under a tree when a butterfly takes off, zipping through familiar Mushroom Kingdom territory before zooming up to the sky. A Luma star figure cries, "Let's-a-go!" as the title of the film appears. The animated movie is expected to be out on Apr

California bill lets renters escape exclusive deals between ISPs and landlords

California's legislature this week approved a bill to let renters opt out of bulk-billing arrangements that force them to pay for Internet service from a specific provider. The bill says that by January 1, a landlord must "allow the tenant to opt out of paying for any subscription from a third-party Internet service provider, such as through a bulk-billing arrangement, to provide service for wired Internet, cellular, or satellite service that is offered in connection with the tenancy." If a lan

Electric vehicle sales grew 25% worldwide but just 6% in North America

Here's some good news for a Friday afternoon: For 2025 through August, global electric vehicle sales have grown by 25 percent compared to the same eight months in 2024, according to the analysts at Rho Motion. That amounts to 12.5 million EVs, although the data combines both battery EVs and plug-in hybrid EVs for the total. However, that's for global sales. In fact, EV adoption is moving even faster in Europe, which has grown by 31 percent so far this year (Rho says that BEV sales grew by 31 pe

Google is a ‘bad actor’ says People CEO, accusing the company of stealing content

The CEO of the largest digital and print publisher in the U.S. has accused Google of being a bad actor for crawling its websites to support the search giant’s AI products. Neil Vogel, CEO of People, Inc. (formerly Dotdash Meredith), a publisher that operates over 40 brands, including People, Food & Wine, Travel & Leisure, Better Homes & Gardens, Real Simple, Southern Living, AllRecipes, and others, said that Google is not playing fair because it uses the same bot to crawl websites to index them

Mario, Metroid, Virtual Boy and more: all the biggest announcements from today's Nintendo Direct

Whenever there's a Nintendo Direct in September, you can be pretty sure that it'll be a major edition of the showcase. Given that Friday's one was scheduled to be about an hour long and that Nintendo has a whole new console to put games on, it was already likely that there was going to be a lot of news. Even then, it managed to be a jam-packed Direct. Let's take a look at all the biggest announcements from the showcase, including what's obviously the most important one: a Switch 2 version of Ov

iPhone 17 preorders are open: Here's where you can find free phone deals

'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean? ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or

I built my own AirTag-like tracker with this Raspberry Pi alternative - how it works

'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean? ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or

I used this ChatGPT trick to look for coupon codes - and saved 25% on my dinner tonight

Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET's key takeaways Free ChatGPT can surface working coupon codes, but it's hit or miss. Agent on ChatGPT Plus might improve your odds of finding valid deals. Coupon or promo codes can lead to easy savings online. It's Friday afternoon, and I'm wrapping up work. I've got my daughter's 4-year checkup with shots later, which means one thing: pizza night. That should put a smile on her face after our appointm

Building a Deep Research Agent Using MCP-Agent

Documenting my journey building a general-purpose deep research agent powered by MCP, and sharing the valuable (and sometimes painful) lessons learned along the way. Background My name is Sarmad Qadri and I'm the creator of the open source project, mcp-agent. My philosophy for agent development in 2025 can be summarized as – MCP is all you need. Or more verbosely: Connect state-of-the-art LLMs to MCP servers, and leverage simple design patterns to let them make tool calls, gather context and m

'Hades II' Is Coming to Nintendo Switch This Month

Nintendo’s Switch and Switch 2 release calendars are bulking up. During a packed Nintendo Direct livestream on Friday, the company announced on-sale dates for several games as well as the return of the Virtual Boy, the proto VR headset Nintendo originally launched in the mid-1990s. One of the biggest of Friday’s announcements was that of the release date for the sequel to Supergiant’s wildly popular Hades. Hades II will hit Switch, Switch 2, and PC on September 25. The long-awaited new Metroid

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond will be released on December 4 for Switch and Switch 2

The long-awaited Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is coming on December 4 to both the original Switch and the recently-released Switch 2, as announced during today's Nintendo Direct livestream. The Switch 2 is getting a dedicated version with upscaled graphics and some other bells and whistles, just like the upcoming Pokémon Legends: Z-A. We already knew the next Metroid would drop sometime in 2025, but it's nice to have an actual release date. We got a nifty trailer for the first-person adventure earli

FTC investigating ad sale practices at Google and Amazon

The Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether Amazon and Google misled advertisers regarding the pricing and terms for their ads. As first reported by Bloomberg , the investigation is being conducted by the agency's consumer protection unit, and centers around the auction-style sale of advertising space by the companies. Google sells ads using automated auctions that run after a user enters a search query. These auctions take place in less than a second. Amazon uses real-time auctions t

I built my own AirTag-like finder with this Raspberry Pi alternative - here's how

'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean? ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or

A beginner's guide to extending Emacs

With that prelude out of the way, let's begin. Inside of emacs you can call up a list of potential completions by using the keyboard shortcut M-. (that’s "hit the meta key along with period", where "meta" is the Alt key for me). This applies in a wide variety of scenarios, like when completing class names or variables. If we want to ask emacs to hand us a list of potential references, then the system we want to hook into is this completions system. (This is the only time I'll assume we know wh

Many hard LeetCode problems are easy constraint problems

September 10, 2025 Many Hard Leetcode Problems are Easy Constraint Problems Use the right tool for the job. In my first interview out of college I was asked the change counter problem: Given a set of coin denominations, find the minimum number of coins required to make change for a given number. IE for USA coinage and 37 cents, the minimum number is four (quarter, dime, 2 pennies). I implemented the simple greedy algorithm and immediately fell into the trap of the question: the greedy algor

After Anthropic’s Billion-Dollar Settlement, Dictionaries Are Suing Perplexity AI

Anthropic’s recent $1.5 billion settlement could open the floodgates for more publishers to sue AI companies over how they use copyrighted content. Just this week, the Britannica Group, the parent of Encyclopedia Britannica and the Merriam-Webster dictionary, sued Perplexity. Filed on Wednesday in a New York federal court, the complaint accuses the buzzy AI startup of infringing Britannica’s copyright and trademark rights and claims its answer engine is cutting into the publisher’s revenue. Pe

Metroid Prime 4 Goes Open World in December

Mario was the star of Friday's Nintendo Direct, but Samus did make an appearance with some important news about the upcoming Metroid Prime 4: Beyond. A new trailer for the game also showed that it will do something new for the series by having an open world to explore. Metroid Prime 4 will be released on the Switch 2 on Dec. 4, according to the new trailer shown during the Nintendo Direct. Along with the release date, the video showcased Samus' snazzy new motorcycle that will take her across a

This is the Most Effective Type of Creatine You Should Be Taking to See Results, According to Registered Dietitians

If you look in the supplement aisle at your local pharmacy, you'll likely find different forms of creatine in gummies, powders, capsules and even drink mixes. That's because creatine is a popular fitness supplement for those who want to gain strength and power while improving performance. It's also naturally made in our bodies and assists our muscles with energy production when we work out. Though creatine can be found in smaller quantities in foods like salmon, chicken, beef and pork, many peo

Nintendo Drops Surprise Trailer for New ‘Super Mario Galaxy Movie’

Mario is returning to the big screen. Following the massive success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which made more than $1.3 billion worldwide in 2023, animation studio Illumination and Nintendo are releasing a sequel, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, in April 2026. Nintendo dropped a teaser trailer during its Direct presentation on Friday. The teaser doesn’t offer much about the movie, which takes its name from the 2007 platformer. Mario dozes in a field before title credits appear, that’s about

Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade hits the Switch 2 on January 22

Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade comes out for the Switch 2 on January 22, 2026, which was revealed at today's lengthy Nintendo Direct livestream . This is the first entry in the remake trilogy and primarily takes place in the opening city of Midgar. You'll have to wait until Final Fantasy VII Rebirth to explore the overworld map, and there's no Switch 2 release date for that one yet. This release does include the Episode Intermission DLC , which involves the ninja Yuffie on a mission to ste