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Widespread power outage hits Spain and neighboring countries France and Portugal

Yellow line shows actual power, red line is projected. | Image: <a href="https://ift.tt/LwQkp1b Eléctrica</a> Power went down Monday afternoon in vast areas of Spain, crossing over into Portugal and France causing widespread outages in homes and businesses and bringing transportation infrastructure to a halt. The cause of the outage is currently unknown. Lisbon, Madrid, Seville, Barcelona, and Valencia are reportedly affected. The outage began at around 12:30PM CET. Play has been suspended at the Madrid Open tennis tournament, according to Sky News . Madrid’s underground rail system has reportedly been evacuated and traffic lights in the city aren’t operating. Air traffic in Spain and Portugal is also reportedly affected by outages at area airports, with Spanish airport operator Aena saying on X that backup generators are currently active at impacted airports. Emergency services in Madrid are also still operational and running on backup generators . Portuguese polic...

Nike is facing a lawsuit from people who bought its NFTs

Nike’s Cryptokicks iRL, a physical sneaker released under the RTFKT brand. A group of people sued Nike this week over its decision to wind down its virtual show project RTFKT last year. The buyers of the digital assets accuse Nike of causing “the rug to be pulled out from under them,” and say they wouldn’t have bought its NFTs if they’d known they were “unregistered securities,” reports Reuters . Filed in New York’s Eastern District, the proposed class action lawsuit seeks “unspecified damages of more than $5 million for alleged violations of New York, California, Florida and Oregon consumer protection laws.” Nike tried to jump into the NFT game by buying RTFKT in 2021 . But, like Starbucks Odyssey , it never quite worked out and the company abandoned the idea, announcing in December via the RTFKT X account that it planned to “wind down RTFKT operations” by the end of January this year. Since then, RTFKT has seemingly been maintained by a single person named Samu...

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s battles are best when you break them

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has flashy, thrilling battles, but the best thing about them is how you can twist the game's many systems to your advantage. The turn-based RPG combat might feel familiar, but it offers a lot of ways to customize your approach to battles so that you can do absolutely devastating amounts of damage. In Expedition 33, you play as a group of Expeditioners who aim to destroy The Paintress, a mysterious being that erases everyone of a certain age every year. In battles, you can have up to three of your party participating in a fight, and should they all die, you can call in your teammates who are in reserve to try and finish off the enemies. To show you how deep the rabbit hole can go in customizing your team, here's my approach to building out just one character, the fencer Maelle. Every character can equip three "Pictos," which offer passive buffs like giving you the defense-boosting Shell status at the start of a fight. But after you win ...

Star Wars is so back

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 80, your guide to the best and Verge -iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, hope you had better luck than I did preordering a Switch 2, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage .) This week, I've been reading about The Telepathy Tapes and extremely online parenting and translation glasses , watching The Men Who Built America , cackling at this incredible star-studded live reading of the original Star Wars , playing the whole archive of 4×3 , doing some writing in the new Easlo Journal app, testing some headphones I impulse-bought on the TikTok Shop, and seeing if the Kagi Assistant fits into my search-engine world. Oh, also: Thanks to everyone who sent me notes with thoughts about wallpapers! You've given me a bunch of fun ideas about how to expand the Screen Share section, including showing off more of your setups. More on that to come really soon. I also have for you a terrifi...

Is Google’s smart tag network any good yet?

The Chipolo Pop, Pebblebee Clip, and Moto Tag are the three main trackers using Google’s network. When Google launched its long-awaited Find My Device network in April 2024 , it arrived to… well, what's the opposite of "fanfare"? A slow network rollout and damning reviews dampened enthusiasm for what was supposed to be a wave of Android-powered rivals to Apple's AirTag. But a year's a long time in tech, and Google has been promising improvements almost since Find My Device was first switched on. I wanted to know: have things gotten any better? To find out, I set about testing the latest trackers from the three main companies that make compatible models: Pebblebee, Chipolo, and Motorola. For now Google doesn't make its own Pixel or Nest-branded tracker, and Samsung's SmartTags use its own SmartThings Find network, not Google's. In the name of science, I also got hold of an Apple AirTag and a Tile tracker to serve as reference points for Google's...

Bionic Bay mixes floppy physics with hard sci-fi

Wandering through Bionic Bay 's dark alien world is unsettling and awe-inspiring. There are massive structures with no clear purpose and autonomous factories filled with whirring saw blades and devastating lasers. It's grim and unforgiving, with little light and harsh shadows that give everything a sinister tone. But then you step on a bomb and your character bounces off of walls like a pinball, and you realize it's a game of contrasts. Bionic Bay is a curious blend of two very different genres. On the one hand, it's an atmospheric side-scrolling adventure in the mold of Inside and Limbo , filled with disturbingly stunning environments to explore. At the same time, it's a hard-as-nails platformer like Super Meat Boy , with elaborate physics that will have you dying repeatedly while trying to find the best route through deadly obstacles. Somehow, the disparate vibes come together surprisingly well. What first drew me to Bionic Bay was that dark world. It's ...