Month: January 2025

With Bitcoin near $100,000, even pension funds are buying cryptocurrency

Michigan’s and Wisconsin’s state employee pension funds among top holders.

Pension funds are dipping their toes into buying bitcoin, in a sign that even typically staid corners of finance are finding it hard to ignore the potential outsized returns from cryptocurrencies.

Pension schemes for the states of Wisconsin and Michigan are among the top holders of US stock market funds devoted to crypto, while some pension fund managers in the UK and Australia have also made small allocations in recent months to bitcoin using funds or derivatives.

Advisers say the surge in bitcoin last year, which more than doubled to touch $100,000, has spurred the interest of conservative trustees.

Read full article

Comments

Intel Arc B570 review: At $219, the cheapest good graphics card

Competitive with a 4060, with 10GB RAM and a lower price (if you can get one).

Intel's Arc B580 graphics cards have been its best-reviewed to date, maintaining the aggressive pricing of the old A-series Arc cards with fewer driver bugs, fewer weird performance outliers, and fewer caveats all around.

And this appears to be translating to retail success—the B580 is sold out across the board and difficult to find at its $249 MSRP. It's hard to tell if this is because demand has been good or supply was low (Intel says it has been restocking "weekly," for what that's worth). But regardless, there's clearly been some pent-up demand for an inexpensive-but-competent entry-level graphics card with decent ray-tracing performance and power efficiency and more than 8GB of RAM.

The Arc B570 is a less-powerful, less-interesting card than the B580, with fewer of Intel's Xe-cores, less memory bandwidth, and 10GB of RAM instead of 12GB. But it offers performance very similar to the RTX 4060 for $80 less—at least, if Intel and its partners can keep it in stock at that price—which makes it a dramatically more interesting budget option than $200-ish cards like the GeForce RTX 3050 or Radeon RX 6600.

Read full article

Comments

Civilization VII preview: The most complete package since IV

15 hours in, it seems like an improvement on Civilization VI‘s missteps.

Making the seventh Civilization game is a tall order. With six prior entries, each with a different flavor, it's challenging to create a unique identity to get people to buy it while ensuring it’s familiar enough that it doesn’t drive long-time fans away.

This week, I spent 15 hours playing Civilization VII—which is slated for release next month—through two of its three ages: Antiquity and Exploration. That’s enough time to know that this is the most radical overhaul yet in a single new release without any expansions.

Regardless, my initial impressions are that this is also a return to form for the series. Like many others, I had many gripes about Civilization VI. To be clear, VII isn’t a reset to pre-VI times; many concepts introduced in VI (like the hex-based city district system) are revisited and refined here.

Read full article

Comments

It’s official: Take a first look at the Switch 2

Bigger screen and Joy-Cons, new Mario Kart, and a mouse mode?

After months and years of rumors and official hints, Nintendo has finally pulled back the curtain on the Switch 2 with a first-look trailer (and sparse promo web site) highlighting many small changes from the old Switch.

The Switch 2 tablet, shown with original Switch Joy-Cons for scale. Credit: Nintendo
A close-up of the new USB-C port on the top of the system. Credit: Nintendo
An expanded kickstand can work at multiple angles. Credit: Nintendo

The short trailer shows off the Switch 2's larger tablet and screen, and a slightly more rounded edge on the top and bottom. The new system also sports an additional USB-C port on the top (next to a headphone jack) and a wider, U-shaped kickstand along the backside that can support the system at a number of wider angles.

The trailer also shows off black Joy-Cons that are significantly larger than those on the original Switch, with colored accents behind the joystick itself. An extended, colored Joy-Con "rail" on the inner edge features wider shoulder buttons and a new connector in the center. Rather than sliding in vertically, like the plastic rail on the Switch Joy-Cons, the controllers on the Switch 2 snap in horizontally with what appears to be a magnetic connection, and disconnects with the aid of a horizontal lever to the side of the shoulder buttons.

Read full article

Comments