Netgear just announced a new flagship router, the Orbi 970, that’s absolutely brimming with features. The router supports the newest Wi-Fi 7 wireless standard and ships in a quad-band format, so it also handles other formats like Wi-Fi 6, 5 and 2.4. It boasts speeds up to 27 Gbps and includes 12 “high-performance antennas” for 360-degree coverage, with mesh satellite devices available for an even larger wireless footprint.

The Orbi 970 was quite obviously designed with modern consumers in mind, so it should excel when streaming 4K or even 8K video, engaging with high-output VR and AR applications, UHD video conferencing, online gaming and everything else people get up to online these days. The system's also smart-home friendly with the capacity to connect up to 200 devices.

The ultrawide bandwidth router is fully compatible with older wireless standards and it's a quad-band device, so everything should work at once without too much fiddling. The Orbi 970 automatically chooses the correct wireless platform for each device and speeds are increased via a dedicated backhaul feature that Netgear says “doubles” the speed in which the router and any satellites communicate.

The Wi-Fi 7 integration is the big news here, however, as this allows smartphones and laptops to whiz along at speeds up to 5Gbps. This isn’t Netgear’s first Wi-Fi 7 router, that honor goes to the highly capable Nighthawk RS700S, but the wireless standard has significantly increased in popularity throughout the past year. 

The port options here seem on point, as the router itself features a single 10 gig Internet port, one 10 gig Ethernet port and four 2.5 gig Ethernet ports. Additionally, each satellite boasts one 10 gig Ethernet port and two 2.5 gig Ethernet ports. The system also looks pretty nifty, with a cylindrical design and a slim profile.

However, with great wireless power comes great financial responsibility. Like many high-end Netgear products, this thing’s expensive. The base model that includes the router and a single satellite costs $1,700. A three-pack that includes two satellites, offering coverage of 10,000 square feet, costs $2,300 and each additional satellite sets you back $900. The Orbi 970 series is available in white via Netgear or third-party retailers, but the limited-edition black series is only available from the manufacturer. You do get a free year of the company’s proprietary antivirus product, Netgear Armor, with a purchase.

Panos Panay is leaving Microsoft after 19 years with the company, as confirmed via an official tweet. He’s been operating as the chief product officer with Microsoft, heading up Windows 11 development and the company’s Surface line. Rajesh Jha, Microsoft’s vice president of experience and devices, broke the news in an email to employees, as reported by The Verge.

Panay was hired on by Microsoft back in 2004 as a group program manager, overseeing a number of premium products. After heading the development of the initial Surface line of tablets and hybrid laptops, he was named the company’s chief product officer in 2018. His rise continued in 2021 when he was promoted to executive vice president after a successful Windows 11 launch, eventually becoming involved in a leadership team that directly advised CEO Satya Nadella.

There’s been no actual reason given by either party, but Panay says he has “decided to turn the page and write the next chapter.” The timing here is a bit suspicious, as Microsoft’s conducting a livestream event on Thursday that will almost certainly be dedicated to new Surface products. We reached out to the company for clarification as to why Panay left his position and what that means moving forward. We’ll update this post when we hear more.

As for what’s next, Microsoft has already said that Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s current corporate vice president of modern life, search and devices, will take Panay’s place as the head of the Windows and Surface divisions. The company also still seems committed to two areas of the business that Panay consistently championed: integrating AI into Windows 11 and mixed-reality. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a statement released to TechCrunch that the company remains “steadfast and convicted in our strategy.” We’ll have to see how this unfolds Thursday during Microsoft’s Surface-centric event.

Apple is prepping a software update to address alleged radiation concerns regarding the three-year-old iPhone 12s after French regulators alleged that the phone exceeds proper radiation levels. France stopped selling the smartphones after recommendations from the country’s radiation watchdog (ANFR), but Cupertino denies the allegations and seems to place the onus on the European nation’s testing protocols, as reported by Reuters.

To that end, Apple has reiterated that this isn’t a safety concern and notes that the phone was certified by multiple international bodies as compliant with global radiation standards. The software update won’t adjust radiation levels, as that would be a hardware issue, but it will “accommodate the protocol used by French regulators.” So it looks like Apple thinks the software patch will be enough to allow the iPhone 12s to sail through future radiation tests, saying it looks forward “to the iPhone 12 continuing to be available in France.”

France did change its regulations back in 2020. It added consideration for extremities, like hands, when testing for radiation levels and the rate of radio-frequency energy absorbed by the body by using a particular piece of equipment. This is called the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR.) During the country's recently-instituted SAR tests, regulators found that the iPhone 12s exceeded normal levels of energy absorption when holding the phone, despite acing the test when considering the head and body.

Belgium and Denmark have both come to Apple’s aid here, with Belgian minister for digitalization, Mathieu Michel, saying that local tests were “reassuring” and recommending against a suspension on sales. Denmark’s Safety Authority followed suit, suggesting it had no concerns regarding iPhone 12s radiation levels. Industry experts have also weighed in, stating that the findings indicated no risk of burns or heatstroke emanating from the phone’s radiation.

France says Apple’s software fix should be adequate and that they’ll resume testing as soon as it arrives, which was spelled out in a French press release unearthed by TechCrunch. Apple regularly drops software updates for its iPhones, so it should show up in the near future. In the meantime, the company’s focusing its energy away from the three-year-old iPhone 12 and onto the new hotness that is the iPhone 15.

Wizardry took the gaming world by storm when it was released for the Apple II back in, gulp, 1981, and now it’s coming back to enthrall new generations of RPG fans. Developer Digital Eclipse is remaking the turn-based title, which is now called Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord.

The remake is a modernized version of the 1981 RPG and its built right on top of the original Apple II code, so you can easily swap from the old-school interface to the brand-new graphics, similar to how the 'Halo 2: Anniversary' edition handled things, or the just-announced Tomb Raider remasters for the Nintendo Switch.

Modern visuals are nice, but Wizardry is over 40 years old, so the gameplay's likely a bit dated. To that end, the developers promise a number of quality-of-life improvements, including a revamped party management system, new spellcasting options and navigation tools, among other minor upgrades.

Wizardry is generally considered to be the first party-based RPG ever released for computers or consoles and inspired countless modern franchises, including Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. It’s not the first Dungeons & Dragons style RPG to grace computers, but it did invent many mechanics that are still active in JRPGs to this day. It was an instant hit when it launched for the Apple II and was ported over to numerous other systems including the Mac, C64 and even the NES and Game Boy Color.

This is not Digital Eclipse’s first remake rodeo. The team has helmed a number of retro compilations, including Atari 50 and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection, among others.

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord is available today as an early access build via Steam and GOG. The game costs $30, but the developers say that price will likely increase as we get closer to an official release.

The Steam Deck is on sale again, for those on the fence about purchasing the ubermensch of portable gaming consoles. This is part of Steam’s 20th anniversary celebration and new buyers get 10 to 20 percent off, depending on which model you choose. The bare-bones 64GB version now costs $360 instead of $400, the mid-level 256GB iteration costs $450 instead of $530 and the baddest of the bunch, the 512GB behemoth, sets you back $520 instead of $650.

This matches a sale from earlier this summer for the console. Previous discounts have capped out at around ten percent, so a deep cut of 20 percent for the 512GB model is nothing to sneeze at. You’ll have to wait one to two weeks to get your precious portable console, but early adopters had to stand by for months and months, so consider yourself lucky.

The Steam Deck is a powerful portable console that plays AAA titles like Elden Ring and even Baldur’s Gate 3, in addition to hundreds upon hundreds of unique indie games. Some of the more popular releases that excel on the platform include Hogwarts Legacy, The Witcher 3 and, of course, Vampire Survivors.

Valve’s anniversary sale also extends to games, with deep discounts on self-published titles like Half Life 2 and standout hits from the past 20 years, such as Counter-Strike and Left 4 Dead. Newer games are also getting in on the fun, as Resident Evil: Village, Valheim, Mass Effect: Legendary Edition and other modern classics are on sale. The discounts stop on September 19th, so grab your games or console while you can.

The world’s leading Gran Turismo 7 players have had their shot at beating Sony’s AI racer, GT Sophy, and they lost spectacularly. Now, the bot has added drifting to its move set to rub salt on the wounds, as seen in a video from the Gran Turismo World Series 2023 event. The video clearly shows an AI-controlled vehicle drifting around the track like an absolute maniac. Meanwhile, most people can’t pull off successful drifts in Mario Kart, let alone in realistic racers like Gran Turismo.

GT Sophy, you can guess what the GT stands for, is the result of more than six years of development between Sony AI and Sony Interactive Entertainment, and utilizes deep reinforcement learning methods. These methods have trained the artificial intelligence algorithm to control the digital race car within the game’s structure and limitations. When first unveiled, Sophy was a master at various racing tactics like slipstreaming, passing and blocking, though drifting is a new move for the bot.

Sony says that GT Sophy is here to stay, stating that the company’s continuing its efforts to make the AI a “permanent part of the game.” To that end, Sony let regular Gran Turismo 7 players face off against GT Sophy last year for a limited time, so maybe that promotion will return.

For the uninitiated, drifting is a popular move in both real-world racing and its digital equivalent. First introduced in the 1980s by Japanese racer Keiichi Tsuchiya, drifting involves steering a vehicle so it makes a controlled skid sideways through a turn. This allows you to quickly take steep turns, shaving off crucial seconds from a run.

Now that algorithms can perform this feat, don’t count on outracing any evil robots when the AI apocalypse starts. You should probably just hide instead, or ply Alexa with compliments to get on her good side.

PC indie standout Dave the Diver is coming to the Nintendo Switch, the game’s first proper console launch. The title was teased at today’s Nintendo Direct livestream event and it releases next month, on October 26th. However, for the curious, a free demo drops for the Switch today. This is good news for gamers, as Dave the Diver has long-seemed like the perfect match for the Switch, due to its bite-sized gameplay segments.

What’s all the fuss about? Dave the Diver casts you as, wait for it, a guy named Dave who dives for a living. So you spend your days exploring an ever-changing underwater wonderland, catching fish, battling with sharks and, occasionally, betting on seahorse races. Once you finish adventuring, the game shifts gears. You spend your nights operating a sushi restaurant, so those fish you catch get transformed into delectable menu items.

The daytime adventures are sort of like an underwater Metroidvania while the nighttime restaurant management is a combination of a Kairosoft sim and the arcade classic Tapper. It shouldn’t work, as the gameplay loops are extremely different, but everything meshes splendidly. There’s also an overarching adventure that may or may not include a giant shrimp wearing boxing gloves.

The longer you play Dave the Diver, the more gameplay elements it introduces. Eventually, you’ll unlock a simple farming sim, kitchen mini-games akin to something like Cooking Mama and your very own fish nursery so you can breed hammerhead sharks with reckless abandon.

We always knew it was coming to Switch, and now we have a launch date. Check out the demo to see if the gameplay jives with your tastes. There’s no word on if the title will eventually launch on other consoles. In other news, today's Nintendo Direct also teased a remake of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door and a battle royale take on the classic racer F-Zero.

It’s been a really long time since F-Zero fans have had anything to get excited about, aside from an occasional Super Smash Bros. shoutout. Nintendo just changed all of that by announcing F-Zero 99, the first new game in the series in nearly 20 years. The company showed off the game at today’s Nintendo Direct and it looks to be a spiritual successor to recent online battle royale titles like Tetris 99 and Super Mario Bros. 35.

As the name suggests, you race against 98 other speedsters on classic F-Zero tracks. It's entirely based on the very first F-Zero from 1990, with SNES-era graphics, vehicle designs and more. There are quite literally 99 competitors on each track, so the chaos factor here looks to be a whole lot of fun. In other words, you’re going to crash a lot.

To that end, there are numerous power ups, like speed boosts, to help you reach the finish line in a timely manner. There are also collectibles that open up a shortcut path called the skyway that jumps you over dozens of rivals. Though based on designs from the original game, you can also change up the look of your cars.

F-Zero 99 surprise launches today and it’s free, sort of. You need a Nintendo Switch Online subscription to play this game. Now, we can all get back to waiting for an actual F-Zero franchise sequel.

AI is just about everywhere lately, but nobody expected it to be used as a salvo in the ongoing cola wars. Coca-Cola, however, has other plans, as it just launched a new flavor co-created by artificial intelligence. The company’s calling it the soda “from the future” and it’s available for a limited time in both regular and zero sugar varieties, as reported by CNBC.

It’s called Y3000, which is certainly a futuristic-sounding name, though it calls to mind Skynet and its army of evil Terminators more than a refreshing beverage. Coke hasn’t released any information as to how it actually tastes, but testers describe it as resembling a raspberry slushy.

The company did release info on the creation process. It all started with researchers collecting flavor preferences from consumers, looking for trends to understand what the “future tastes like.” Next, this data was fed into a proprietary artificial intelligence system to help create the flavor profile. Before you know it, a new baby soda was born. What a mitzvah.

Doing its best Secret Invasion impression, Coke also tasked AI to help design the artwork on the slim can. The cans have a beachy, neon-purple vibe that absolutely calls to mind an image generation platform like Dall-E or Midjourney. There are also traditionally-sized bottles filled with the futuristic fluid.

Y3000 is described as a limited edition flavor, but Coke hasn’t said when the soda would head to the scrapheap to join other futuristic foods, like Dippin’ Dots freeze-dried ice cream and the transparent (and awful) Crystal Pepsi. It should stick around through the fall, though, as Coca-Cola also announced a partnership with luxury streetwear brand Ambush to release a Y3000-themed clothing collection later in the season. 

Cadillac just unveiled the 2025 CT5 luxury sedan and it ships with a tech-forward feature that’s certain to annoy the “back in my day, cars were for driving” crowd, a 33-inch 9K touchscreen display. The dashboard-based LED screen curves toward the driver in a “single, continuous screen” that spans the entire viewing area.

Like most in-car displays, this is a customizable user interface that you can access in a number of different ways. Cadillac has partnered up with Google, so many of the company’s apps are built-in to the display, like Google Assistant and Google Maps. This allows for live traffic updates, podcasts, music streaming, hands-free communication and more. The inclusion of Google Play lets you shop around for all kinds of apps to help pass the time during that annoying commute.

Cadillac has been teasing this display for a while, after it first showed up at CES in 2021 as part of the Lyriq EV concept car. However, the 2025 CT5 is far from a concept vehicle, as it likely releases next year. It seems as though automobile manufacturers are in a race to push out the widest and more versatile screen, with BMW recently introducing full-width displays on windscreens that are also set to launch with 2025 models.

Of course, the Cadillac CT5 is also a car, and not just a big metal house for a touchscreen display. The CT5 refresh boasts a 2.0L turbo engine, upgradeable to 3.0L, with 237 horsepower and 258 lb-ft of torque, along with dual exhaust tips. The company promises a “quiet, smooth and effortless” ride, thanks to all-wheel drive, Super Cruise drive assistance technology, and something called the Drive Mode Selector that uses a full range of sensors to automatically adjust responses depending on the surface and weather conditions.

Cadillac says the 2025 CT5 will be manufactured at GM’s assembly facility in Michigan, with production beginning in the spring. We’ll have to wait for pricing and availability details, however, as the company says more news will be announced in the future. In the meantime, we can all live in terror at the prospect of a child accidentally breaking that touchscreen during a particularly grueling and anxiety-inducing road trip.