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If you want to know what graphics card you should buy or what's the best CPU for your new rig, we've already got you covered. Today we're discussing something else. Welcome to our second annual hall of hardware shame, where we list what we feel were the worst CPU and GPU purchases of 2018. Some of these products should have never existed, others are just a bit pointless or made promises they did not fulfill. The list is not as extensive as you might imagine (shorter than last year's), and in most cases we were able to warn you when the products launched and we reviewed them, so that's the good news. As for the bad... Nvidia GeForce GT 1030 DDR4 No messing around, this was the worst graphics product released this year. Around July we got our hands on a DDR4 version of the GeForce GT 1030, and boy what a heap of garbage that thing was. It’s one thing to release a really bad product that you try and flog off, but it’s a completely different one to pull a bait-and-switch on your customers. We were surprised more outlets didn’t make a fuss about this. For those who missed the drama, Nvidia released the GT 1030 in May 2017 and it was a rather weak entry-level offering, but it was good enough to play titles such as Rocket League, Fortnite and CS:GO at 1080p, for example. Put in other words, if you’re a parent who isn’t massively into computers and you want to buy something affordable for little Joe to play Fortnite with his buddies, then a $70 GT 1030 will fit the bill nicely. Problem is, if you bought your GPU after March 2018, you could have ended up with a GT 1030 that will average less than 40 fps in Fornite instead of one that is supposed to average 66 fps... both have the same name, look the same, and sell for the same price. Nvidia quietly introduced this GT 1030 DDR4 version that offers 65% less bandwidth than the original GDDR5 model. That is 16.8 GB/s of bandwidth down from 48 GB/s. Unless you knew what to look out for, you’d be none the wiser and even tech savvy users got caught out as they didn’t even know there were two models that were so different, yet were named the same. AMD Radeon RX 580 "2048SP" From one disgusting anti-consumer act to the next, AMD also played dirty in 2018. Hard to argue which was worse, Nvidia’s GT 1030 or AMD’s RX 580 that’s really an RX 570. In a rare move that we feel has no justification, AMD took the RX 570 and rebranded it as the "RX 580 2048SP." At least they slightly changed the name, nevertheless the product name very much suggests to buyers that it’s an RX 580 and might not be any different to any other RX 580. Maybe the seller just added "2048SP" to make it sound more fancy, right? But how many buyers even know what 2048SP means? And how many know that the RX 580 is meant to have 2304 Stream Processors? Now, you could argue that these models are only being sold in China. But why would you? Last I checked Chinese consumers are people, too (ouch!). Also, if you hope on eBay and search for new RX 580s, on the first page you will be met with chinese 2048SP models at around the same price as the fully fledged 2304SP boards. With that, we strongly feel AMD needs to be called out on this one and hopefully we won’t see this kind of maneuver again. But we did say that after they accidently called the RX 460 an RX 560... maybe AMD can work out their naming schemes in 2019. Intel Skylake-X Refresh Next up we have the Intel Skylake-X Refresh, one of the biggest snooze-fests of 2018. Earlier in the year during Computex, the battle of the cores was in full swing, but while Intel was in fantasy land with their 5 GHz 28-core chiller, AMD was showing off a real product that they released a few months later. We still haven’t received the 28-core monstrosity from Intel that requires a completely different socket and likely a motherboard that costs more than an RTX graphics card, so I guess we’ve got that to look forward to. What we did get was a range of new 9th-gen high-end desktop processors. Apparently they’re so good Intel was able to skip the 8th-gen models. Only problem is, they aren’t that good, and they don’t even deserve 8th-gen branding. These are just the same old 7th gen Skylake-X parts but with a soldered TIM that actually manages to make them worse. The $1980 Core i9-9980XE, for example, runs so hot when overclocked that it can’t actually be overclocked as far as a delided 7980XE. And you can’t delid the 9980XE without destroying it. So this means enthusiasts are better off buying the older 7980XE and doing what enthusiasts have been doing to Intel CPUs for years now. That aside, the biggest issue is the pricing. Intel’s still in la la land when it comes to pricing and anyone willing to evaluate their options will seriously question why they would spend so much more on a Skylake-X Refresh CPU when they have arguably better options from AMD available for less. Right now the Threadripper 2950X costs $900 and the 1950X costs $600. Meanwhile Intel’s 16-core/32-thread 9960X costs $1685. In short, Intel recycled their CPUs and pricing from 2017, that weren't that competitive in the first place, in my opinon. These new Skylake-X Refresh parts are pointless and a bad buy. Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 & 2080 We suspect the vast majority of you will agree with our previous nominations, but this one will be very divided, especially put in such bad company. So let us clarify a few things first. At the MSRP that a few models are selling at, the RTX 2070 & 2080 are not bad buys. Certainly not the most exciting products to be released this year, but for the most part they’re a little faster than the outgoing Pascal parts and are now available at the same price. The problem was with Nvidia's sales pitch as the new RTX GPUs arrived with the promise of phenomenal ray traced graphics and big performance gains with DLSS. So initially these GPUs were sold over MSRP in pre-order, while GTX 1080s were dropping in price, some as low as $430. So if you paid $600 for an RTX 2070 you were massively overpaying for GTX 1080-like performance. Both ray tracing and DLSS are underwhelming at the moment. The RTX 2070 is barely powerful enough to showcase real-time RTX effects and even the 2080 Ti is challenged by them. Yes, Battlefield V performance has been greatly improved, but they also had to downgrade the game's graphics to enable those gains and let’s not forget the support list of (future) games is not very extensive. Ray tracing in an optional feature, you don’t have to use it, but this was the key selling point of the new RTX series. Without it, you basically have a fat Pascal GPU. And yes, ray tracing is the future of gaming and computer graphics, but sadly it is not the present, so why pay for it? Two-plus years later, that’s not exactly progress. But with AMD nowhere to be seen, it’s hard to bash Nvidia for giving us almost nothing extra. Frankly, we would have been just as happy if Nvidia went on selling Pascal at a slightly discounted price.

In brief: YouTube is continuing to fight back against inappropriate and offensive content appearing on the platform. In a recent report, the company revealed it removed a total of 58 million videos and 224 million comments in the third quarter alone. The Google-owned site has long faced accusations that it doesn’t do enough to combat videos containing extremism, pornography, abuse, and other policy-violating material. But through a combination of people and technology, millions of these videos and channels are being flagged and removed. The company explains that a channel is deleted if it accrues three community guideline strikes in 90 days, or a single case of severe abuse, which includes predatory behavior. Over 1.6 million channels were removed in Q3 2018, along with the 50.2 million videos they contained. During the month of September, most of these—almost 80 percent—were deleted because they fell under the category of spam, misleading, and scam. Of the 7.8 million videos that were also removed, 6.3 million were initially flagged by machines before being forwarded to human moderators for deletion, and 74.5 percent of these never got a single view. Human flaggers come in the form of trusted moderators, users, NGOs, and government agencies. Like the offending channels, most videos were deleted because of spam, misleading, and scam content (72 percent), while child safety was second at just over ten percent. Violent extremism made up just 0.4 percent of these videos. Finally, YouTube removed a massive 224 million comments during the quarter, the vast majority of which was spam identified by automated flagging. Just 0.5 percent were deleted as a result of human flagging. While Google has increased its number of moderators to over 100,000 this year, the 300+ hours of video that gets uploaded every minute makes it impossible to pre-check every one.

For a long time Windows PCs (OEMs) came with a product key sticker that was often placed outside of the machine or with your computer's manuals, but now manufacturers are storing this license within the machine's UEFI/BIOS and the information is automatically retrieved and applied when reinstalling the operating system. Certainly a better approach overall. Additionally, Windows 10 introduced a "Digital Entitlement" element to Microsoft's license which links your Windows key to an ID generated based on your PC's hardware. But because your hardware can significantly change if you upgrade your hardware, this entitlement was expanded to become a "Digital License" when 2016's Anniversary Update (1607) arrived. This means your Windows 10 license now ties Windows keys to Microsoft accounts, letting you activate a copy of the operating system simply by logging in with valid online credentials. So, if you have a newer Windows PC or you already log in using your Microsoft account, you generally shouldn't have to search for your original Windows 10 key. We will explain that in better detail in a minute. There may be other scenarios where you may still want to manually find a Windows key stored in your UEFI/BIOS, or prevent this key from automatically being applied during installation. Not to mention that different conditions apply for non-OEM retail keys, as well as those given to people who upgraded to Windows 10 for free. And in a worst case scenario, you might be trying to find the license for a copy of Windows that no longer boots. Windows OEM keys vs. retail vs. free upgrade There are many types of Windows licenses with varying terms of use. As a general rule of thumb: OEM keys are shipped with a specific computer and can't be transferred to another machine. Again, these should be auto-applied from your UEFI/BIOS when reinstalling Windows on a modern boxed PC, but you can also retrieve them manually. Retail keys are purchased directly from Microsoft, Amazon etc. -- these can be transferred to another machine and that process should happen automatically for a digital license, though you can also "uninstall" a Windows key from a given PC. Those who upgraded to Windows 10 for free from Windows 7 and 8 don't have a unique Windows 10 key. This can only be transferred to one other machine (not if you upgraded from an OEM key). Free upgrade licenses are a digital entitlement. Do I have a digital license? The Windows 10 Settings app has a page for displaying your activation information, including whether you have a digital license, though your key isn't shown here: Go to: Settings > Update & Security > Activation If you have a digital license, you should see "Windows is activated with a digital license" or "Windows is activated with a digital license linked to your Microsoft account." You can also link a Microsoft account to a Windows license by clicking "add a Microsoft Account" on the bottom of the same page and providing your login information. Find your key from inside Windows Entering the following lines into an admin Command Prompt or PowerShell worked to display the OEM key embedded in our system's UEFI/BIOS. However, these commands didn't return any keys on other two machines we used for testing despite Windows 10 being activated. wmic path softwarelicensingservice get OA3xOriginalProductKey or powershell "(Get-WmiObject -query ‘select * from SoftwareLicensingService’).OA3xOriginalProductKey" There's also a commonly cited Visual Basic script that retrieves registry-based Windows keys (not those stored in the UEFI/BIOS). You can download the script here. Copy this text and paste it into Notepad, saving it as a .vbs file. Then double-click to launch the file. Third-party tools that find Windows keys We downloaded a variety of utilities that can retrieve retail keys from the Windows registry as well as those that are UEFI/BIOS-bound. In testing, some of the applications found both the registry and UEFI/BIOS keys, while others only worked for one or the other: Nirsoft ProduKey - Found both the embedded OEM key as well as the retail key from our currently running copy of Windows. Also includes keys for many other applications such as Microsoft Office and Adobe products (strangely, Internet Explorer was also included in our results, though no key was provided). As with some of the other tools on this list, ProduKey can load Windows keys from external sources/drives. ShowKey Plus - This utility also found both our retail and OEM keys, and can load the SOFTWARE hive file from another Windows installation. Windows 10 Product Key Tool - Made by the developer of EasyBCD, this tool located our UEFI OEM key but didn't find the retail license on our Windows To Go drive. Winkeyfinder - Found our retail key but Dell's UEFI OEM key wasn't displayed. Magical Jelly Bean KeyFinder - Returned the retail key but not the UEFI OEM key. This software can also load registry keys from Windows installations on other drives (tools > Load Hive). Listed our Windows 10 Pro install as Enterprise. Find your key from outside Windows If you can't boot into Windows and want to retrieve that key, you can still access this data from an external environment such as a Windows To Go drive, or by attaching your non-booting Windows drive to another machine. Note that if you're recovering the key from a Windows To Go workspace, the non-booting drive with your Windows key is offline by default and will have to be enabled in Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc). Right-click the drive and set it as "online." As mentioned above, several of the third-party tools that we already listed will let you load the registry hive file from another Windows installation. You can also navigate to your license directly from the Windows registry (regedit via Start) though the key is not in plain text. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ and look for "DigitalProductId" in the right panel. This registry hive is stored in a file on your OS drive at Windows\System32\Config -- look for the file named SOFTWARE. In testing, both ProduKey and ShowKey Plus loaded the SOFTWARE hive file and displayed the key for an external Windows installation via Windows To Go. Also note that ProduKey can search for Windows keys on computers at remote domains among other locations, and that the Windows Registry Editor can load hive files from other installations: Open the Windows Registry Editor (enter regedit via Start) Click HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE so it's selected Click File > Load Hive and navigate to the SOFTWARE file in Windows\System32\Config on your other drive Enter a name for this external hive file The hive should appear as a sub-entry in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE To unload the hive, select the name you chose and go to File > Unload Hive Retrieving the UEFI/BIOS-bound Windows key via Linux was as simple as entering the following line in a terminal, though we couldn't find any GUI applications like ProduKey or ShowKey Plus that would retrieve the license from a registry hive file: sudo strings /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/MSDM | tail -1 The command-line tool Chntpw can be installed on Linux and is able to load Windows registry files. This software didn't return a valid key when decoding the product ID within the tool, though if you had to you could extract the hex data and decode that elsewhere. If you have a boot disc around, Chntpw (also known as Offline NT Password & Registry Editor) is part of many all-in-one recovery solutions such as Ultimate Boot CD and Hiren's Boot CD. Here's how to load a Windows registry file in Chntpw from a Linux terminal and then display the hex value for the key in that hive (use dpi instead of hex to decode the key within chntpw, though again, this didn't give us a valid key): chntpw -e YourDrive/Windows/System32/config/SOFTWARE hex Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\DigitalProductId Additional resources Although it's convenient to have your Windows key automatically detected from the UEFI/BIOS, you'll have to tweak the Windows installation media if you want to use another license. Open the installation media in File Explorer, browse to the Sources folder and create a new text file named PID.txt in the Sources folder. In PID.txt, you want the following text, where the Xs correspond to your license key. [PID] Value=XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX Uninstalling a retail key from a given machine is also possible and while this doesn't automatically update the information on Microsoft's servers, it will prevent future conflicts from multiple machines using the same key. Enter the following line in an administrator Command Prompt to uninstall the currently active product license and clear that key from the Windows registry (here are more slmgr commands) slmgr.vbs /upk slmgr /cpky As a final anecdote from testing, when we uninstalled and cleared the key from our Windows installation, we were able to reactivate that copy of Windows simply by clicking "Troubleshoot" on the activation page. One click and that wizard retrieved our digital license, despite not being linked to a Microsoft account. And again, this was for a retail key that was originally used on a desktop which was cloned as a Windows To Go drive and plugged into another machine with a different hardware profile. In other words, with luck, Microsoft's activation is forgiving enough and you should have no issues validating your OS license on a new machine or after several hardware changes. Article: TechSpot

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Do you desire a desktop that looks and feels like your own? This guide will help you create a fully customized Windows 10 desktop and user interface (UI). A few minutes is all it takes to turn your desktop into a unique UI suited to your needs and wants. It’s fun, it’s easy, and the results will be stunning. Let us take you through the process, step-by-step. 1. Introduction to Desktop Customization 1.1 Why Should I Customize My Desktop? Your desktop is simple. You use it to send emails, write documents, store photos, and watch movies. In short, you do everything on your computer. Yet it sits there, bare and without a personal touch. Besides, why mess with what works? There are some who stop there. Others have grown to love the thrill of customization. First, you begin customizing your Start Menu tiles. Then, program icons. Next thing you know, you’re simulating whole operating systems within your Windows 10 environment. Think of your PC like a desk. Now imagine working at an empty desk every day. No matter your PC knowledge — whether you consider yourself an amateur or a pro — no one has to settle for a boring desktop. Let your personality flow through your screen. Read on to go from drab and default to outstanding in minutes! 1.2 How This Guide Is Written This guide is best read from beginning to end. Since desktop customization often requires both prior knowledge and multiple programs, it’s best to start off with simple feature changes. Slowly but surely — as you gain experience dealing with different parts of the Windows 10 UI — you’ll learn how to customize more and more. If you’d like a simple one-click solution, though, feel free to jump ahead to the Themessection. 2. Themes 2.1 An Introduction to Desktop Themes No matter what Windows version you’re using (Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10), making your desktop look fantastic is super simple. Let’s take our Taskbar, for example. Right-click on your Taskbar. Then, select Taskbar settings. This will open a window which allows users to customize certain simple features in their Taskbar. As you can see, we already have several options to change the appearance of our Taskbar. You can choose to hide it, use smaller Taskbar buttons, and lock the Taskbar so you don’t accidentally delete a shortcut. Just like that, you’ve already started customizing your Windows 10 UI. That’s only the beginning. 2.2 Where Can I Get Themes for My Computer? There are plenty of ways — some official and some not — to download and install themes for Windows 10. For one, Microsoft hosts several Windows 10 themes for free within the Microsoft Store. To access the Microsoft Store, click on your start menu and type in store. Click on the Microsoft Store option. Then, type in Themes in the search bar, hit enter, and select the Get your theme option. This will allow you to install a simple theme quickly, officially, and for free. 2.3 How Do I Use Themes Properly? Before we get into the more nuanced tweaks, it’s best to start with default desktop customization so you familiarize yourself with Windows 10’s UI. We’ll start with themes. Windows 10 themes are basic background and color combinations you can use for your desktop. To access Themes, right-click an empty space on your desktop and select Personalize. This will open the Background section of your Windows 10 settings. Expand your window and select the Themes option in the sidebar. You can access and save themes in this window. Then, scroll down to and click the Get more themes option. From the list provided, select an option and download the theme. Once the theme is finished downloading, select Launch and choose your theme from the selection. That’s it! In a few seconds, we went from the following default desktop: To this: All in a few clicks. Note that not only the background changed, but the Taskbar color and all applicable Windows 10 windows as well. That’s enough on default changes for now. Let’s go over how to install third-party themes. 2.4 Should I Use a Third Party Theme Installer? The following is a very po[CENSORED]r method among Windows 10 aficionados to install third-party themes onto their Windows 10 computers. This method will allow you to control the look of your File Explorer, a major component of the Windows 10 UI, and other applicable programs like the Task Manager. 2.4.1 DevianArt Themes First, head to DeviantArt and enter windows 10 themes in the search bar. You’ll be presented with several po[CENSORED]r options by default. We’re going to be installing the Ades theme located on the first page of our DeviantArt search. Before continuing on, a few words of warning. Always set a restore point before installing a custom theme. Developers will often explicitly state this in their documentation. Since we’re dealing with the Windows UI, we have to take extra precautions when tweaking it so as to not delete a vital part of the UI. Take note of exactly how the developer explains the installation. 2.4.2 Theme Installers As for the theme, you’ll need a few programs before installing. OldNewExplorer, the first program you’ll need, deactivates the ribbon section of your File Explorer. The second program, UltraUXThemePatcher, will allow for third-party Windows 10 themes. Ensure you are using the correct version of each piece of software with the correct Windows version. If you install a version of the software that is not compatible with your Windows version — installing UltraUXThemePatcher for Windows 8 in Windows 10, for example — you may run into problems. Additionally, you can install MacType to render cleaner fonts on your screen. It is not, however, required. The same goes for the WinRemix icon pack, which will require you rename a file to install correctly. 2.4.3 Installing a Third-Party Theme Once you’ve installed these programs, download and install the actual Ades theme. Then, extract the Ades theme ZIP file and move the contents of the folder to C:\Windows\Resources\Themes. Ensure you change the C in the repository address to the applicable driver letter. Finally, select the theme in your Settings options using the method explained above. Voila! You just installed a custom Windows 10 theme. Below is another theme named Arc, correctly installed with its appropriate Arc icon set. We’ve managed to completely change our Windows 10 UI in minutes using a few third-party programs. Keep in mind that third-party software can cause errors. Nevertheless, developers are very careful in explaining fully the possible issues you may run into. Moreover, always remember to read the documentation that comes with the programs. Follow installation steps to the last detail. 2.5 How Do I Revert to the Original Theme? To restore the original Windows 10 theme, simply right-click on your desktop and select Personalize. Then, select Themes and click on the Windows option. You can also use the restore point created earlier. This will not only revert your Theme to default, it will revert your icons and system configurations back to normal as well. 3. Rainmeter 3.1 What Is Rainmeter? A particular dynamo when it comes to desktop customization is Rainmeter. A long-time favorite Windows program, Rainmeter will allow you to include various tweaks to your desktop. There’s no cutoff to what you can do with Rainmeter. Want to create an interactive, parallax 3D wallpaper? Rainmeter can do that. Want to include your favorite images and GIFs directly on your desktop, like one would picture on a desk? You can do that as well. Simply head to the Rainmeter website and download the application. For a complete rundown on how to install and edit widget skins, along with download third-party widgets, read our Rainmeter guide. 3.2 Getting Started With Rainmeter Rainmeter is very simple to use, but will definitely require some getting used to. Rainmeter allows users to load skins and INI files onto their desktops. These files can control music, show time, weather, and the like. Think of them as third-party widgets which allow for far more options than the default Windows widgets. Download and install the final stable release of Rainmeter. Once installed, head to your Taskbar drawer and double-click Rainmeter’s teardrop logo. This will show your Manage Rainmeter window, which will allow you to load and unload widgets or skins. On the left-hand side are all the Rainmeter skins installed on your PC. Your skins are located in the C:\Users\Waves\Documents\Rainmeter\Skins directory by default. New skins are installed to this directory by default. To activate a skin, locate the folder’s INI file and double-click or select the Load option in the Manage Rainmeter window. To unload, right-click your skin and select Unload. You can also unload your skin using the Manage Rainmeter window by selecting the skin in the left-hand dropdown menu and clicking Unload. That’s the basic mechanics of using Rainmeter. 3.3 Where Can I Get Custom Skins? While Rainmeter is a great program, it’s only as useful as your skin selection. Rainmeter is very sparse by default. That means you’ll have to install third-party skins. Luckily, DeviantArt is a dream repository for Rainmeter skins. Head to the DeviantArt website and type rainmeter into the search bar. DeviantArt will be your main repository for custom Rainmeter skins. We’ll install a very po[CENSORED]r Rainmeter skin, Google Now Weather, to show the complete download and installation process. First, head to the skin’s DeviantArt web page. Once the file is downloaded, double-click on the file like you would an executable file. In the following Rainmeter Installer window, click Install. That’s it! You just installed a Rainmeter skin. Now, head to your Manage Rainmeter window by double-clicking its Taskbar icon, locate the INI file in the left-hand selection, and Load the skin. Voila! You’ve just loaded a live skin. 3.4 What If I Want to Modify Something? At times, the default Rainmeter skin will not function on your desktop. The skin will either be too small, too big, or lack your particular weather and location information. Luckily, Rainmeter makes editing their skins straightforward. For example, the Google Now skin presented above gives me the weather for the wrong location. To fix, right-click the skin and select Edit skin. With weather applications, in particular, you’ll note most of them require a LocationCode. This code is based on your whereabouts and will provide the weather using particular websites. I’ll need to change mine to my location. Head to a website like weather.codes, look up your location, and copy and paste the code into the LocationCode parameter. Then, press CTRL + S on your keyboard to save the document and refresh the skin by right-clicking it and selecting Refresh skin. That’s it! You just edited a Rainmeter skin. 3.5 How Can I Connect Rainmeter to Other Applications? Some Rainmeter skins require other programs to control functionality. When this is the case, you’ll need to download and install some sort of Rainmeter plugin. For example, the highly po[CENSORED]r Win10Widgets suite requires a Spotify plugin so you can control the program via a Rainmeter widget. The following link will lead to a Reddit post wherein you can download the plugin we need, aptly called SpotifyPlugin, automatically. That’s it! You just connected Rainmeter to an application. 3.6 I Want to Get More In-Depth. If you’d like to go wandering through Rainmeter yourself, you’ll find plenty of useful documentation on Rainmeter’s official website. There are pages upon pages of official documentation dedicated to explaining Rainmeter parameters and tricks. You can be the Rainmeter developer all other users look to for favorite skins, so feel free to read up as much as you’d like on Rainmeter. There’s no limit to what you can do using this free piece of software. 3D desktop hologram anyone? Article: http://www.makeuseof.com

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Soundtracks are an integral part of the gaming experience that can significantly boost the level of immersion and overall enjoyment of a title. Unfortunately, games that nail the musical score are few and far between. Not all developers have the resources to pour into a quality soundtrack and in the rare instance that a game ships with a great track listing, it’s likely that you’ll simply get tired of hearing the same songs time and again. At that point, your options are to either put up with the soundtrack, mute it or bring your own tunes to the party. If the latter sounds most appealing (no pun intended) and you happen to be an Xbox gamer, Microsoft has some great news for you. On Tuesday, it was announced that Spotify is now available on Xbox One in 34 markets around the globe. The integration will allow players to soundtrack their own gaming sessions for a more personalized experience. Spotify launched on Sony’s PS3 and PS4 consoles more than two years ago. To get started, simply download the Spotify app from the Xbox Store. Those new to Spotify may want to check out the pre-curated gaming playlists in the “Gaming” hub while existing users will likely queue up tracks previously saved. Both the ad-supported (free) and premium (paid) tiers will be accessible through the console. You can control Spotify using the Xbox One controller or through a mobile device via Spotify Connect.

Despite being a tech industry juggernaut, Google has never had much success with its social media endeavors. After Google+ and Buzz proved to be duds, it seems the search giant went after a company that was already well established: Snap, the firm behind Snapchat. Business Insider’s Alex Heath reports that Google started informal discussions about buying Snap just before its Series F funding round in May 2016, which valued the company at $20 billion. One source says more talks about acquiring the firm took place just ahead of its IPO in March this year, and that the $30 billion figure had been on the table since the Initial Public Offering. This wouldn’t be the first big organization Google has reportedly shown interest in acquiring. Spotify, SoundCloud, Twitch, and even Twitter were rumored to have been previous potential acquisitions, but they all came to nothing. Speaking about any formal discussions that may have taken place, a Snap representative told Business Insider “these rumors are false.” Google, meanwhile, declined to comment. If Google really did make inquiries about buying snap for $30 billion and the company turned it down, the news could be a bitter pill to swallow for employees and investors. Snap’s share price has plummeted to around $12.50, and it now has a market cap of about $14 billion, much lower than its $24 billion IPO valuation. Back in 2013, Snapchat refused a $3 billion acquisition offer from Facebook, which then went on to copy most of the app’s best features.

Developers have been finding tibits of information concerning the next iPhone based on accidentally released firmware found on the HomePod. Just recently, developer Steve Troughton-Smith seemed to confirm the existence of facial unlock when he found mentions of "BKFaceDetect" and references to an infrared camera. The firmware also seemed to confirm the final design of the device itself. Now, even more details have leaked as a result of examining the HomePod firmware. Troughton-Smith along with developer Guilherme Rambo have been tweeting their findings. Apparently, the new iPhone will include a tap to wake function (FINALLY!), facial expression and attention detection, and a virtual home button; the latter of which confirms that Apple is removing the physical home button as expected. The references to facial expression detection might hint at the ability to recognize faces in the dark using infrared or even halt notifications if the phone knows you're looking at it. The mention of facial details such as "mouthsmile", "mouthpucker", or "mouthfrown" could also mean that you could unlock the phone using a certain facial action such as smiling or frowning. Speaking of the virtual home button, many have pondered whether Apple will succeed in embedding the Touch ID sensor inside of the screen. But it looks like both Samsung and Apple will probably try to implement fingerprint recognition under the screen in next years' iteration. For Apple Watch users, there's also a mention of a new skiing workout option in WatchOS 4. For a company that used to be airtight when it came to leaks, this year seems to be one of the worst for Apple since the 2010 iPhone 4 debacle. In June, an internal memo about combating leaks was ironically leaked itself. Thanks to case leaks and now actual code leaks, we basically know all the essentials about the new iPhone save for the actual name. Perhaps, Apple still has "one more thing" up its sleeves when the device is unveiled this fall.