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James Howells, a British IT worker, mined over 7,500 Bitcoins back in 2009, when they were worth next to nothing. Now a single Bitcoin is worth nearly $100,000, valuing his stash at well over $700 million. Unfortunately, Howells accidentally threw the hard drive he stored the key on in the trash. He has a scheme to get that money back, according to The Guardian. He wants to buy the landfill where it could be buried and dig it up. Howells doesnt exactly know where the hard drive is, but has a solid guess based on when he tossed it in the trash. He has it narrowed down to a particular section of a South Wales landfill that houses 15,000 metric tons of waste. The landfill is approaching maximum capacity, so Howells wants to buy it off the city. Officials have warned that the hard drive is buried under 25,000 cubic meters of waste and earth as it has been there for almost 12 years. While the city hasnt made a final decision, it doesnt look good for Howells and his needle in a haystack plan. There are serious ecological dangers to haphazardly digging up a landfill. The excavation process would be risky and costly. Afterward, the landfill would have to be resealed, another expensive project. The city also has plans to build a solar farm on part of the land. Finally, theres the hard drive itself. Would there be anything recoverable after laying underneath tons and tons of trash for 12 years? It seems highly unlikely, though Howells and his investors must have some serious data retrieval specialists standing by. James Howells threw away $750 million of bitcoin accidentally a decade ago and has been trying to recover the hard drive from a landfill ever since. Today, a judge has rejected his latest attempt to search through 110,000 tons of garbage for his digital gold. pic.twitter.com/douIDzDdQO Documenting itcoin (@DocumentingBTC) January 11, 2025 This is just the latest attempt by Howells to treat the landfill like an archaeological dig site, looking for his lost fortune. Hes been at this for over a decade. In 2017, he pleaded with the city to allow him to dig and officials said no, citing safety concerns and a fear of inciting treasure hunters to descend upon the landfill with shovels. In 2021, he tried to sweeten the pot by offering the city 25 percent of the recovered Bitcoin. Once again, the city said no. In 2022, Howells came up with a particularly bizarre scheme that involved sending in Boston Dynamics robot dogs to do the digging. You can imagine what the city said to that one (it was no.) There was another attempt to turn the landfill into a mining facility, which didnt gain traction. Finally, Howells decided to sue the city of Newport for the right to go traipsing around in the landfill like a really gross, poop-encrusted Indiana Jones. A judge put the kibosh on the lawsuit, ruling that the case had no realistic prospect of succeeding. I lost, they won. Might appeal.See what happens.It is what it is.End of story For Now!!! James Howells (@howelzy) January 9, 2025 So thats where we are now. Howells and his investors are trying to buy the landfill as the city mulls it over. Well update this post when we get some closure on this particularly bizarre story about one mans quest for wealth. In other news, this is totally going to become a limited series on Peacock or something, right?This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/the-guy-who-accidentally-threw-away-700-million-in-bitcoin-wants-to-buy-a-landfill-to-find-it-165314378.html?src=rss
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Chinese EV maker BYD is pretty much the king of EVs in the country, even challenging Tesla in the country. Yesterday, in a company livestream, founder Wang Chuanfu claimed that the company will make all of its models self-driving, including the cheapest ones like the $9,600 Seagull hatchback, the Financial Times reported. Wang said that BYD is starting an era where autonomous driving is for everyone and that self-driving cars will no longer be an unattainable luxury, but an essential tool. BYD intends to power its cars with the Gods Eye driving system it developed in-house. According to The Straits Times, Gods Eye relies on cameras and radar sensors to perform tasks like valet parking, automatic braking and adaptive cruise control. Additionally, BYD is joining other local EV makers like Geely, Great Wall Motor and Leapmotor to integrate DeepSeeks AI into their autonomous driving systems. However, theres no news about when this will happen. Of course, whether BYD will deliver its promises of accessible autonomous driving remains to be seen as well. Meanwhile, Tesla is struggling to get its software off the ground in China, so whether BYD beats it to the punch is yet another thing to look out for.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/chinese-ev-maker-byd-promises-to-make-all-of-its-models-self-driving-capable-164641323.html?src=rss
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You might have spent the last few years turning your domicile into a smart home with a fancy speaker setup, robot vacuum and voice-controlled lights. Another way to make your home more connected is with a video doorbell, and as it happens, a model from Ring is on sale. The latest version of the Ring Video Doorbell has dropped down to $60, which is $40 off. The discount also matches the record-low price. As the name suggests, this is a battery-powered model, so you won't have to worry about wiring it up. The doorbell has a USB-C port, and all you have to do to top up the battery is detach it and plug it in for a while. The second-gen model offers 66 percent more vertical coverage than the previous one, allowing for a head-to-toe view of whoever is on your doorstep. You can keep an eye on what's going on from your phone, tablet or another compatible device using the live view feature. You can also chat with the person at your door remotely thanks to the two-way talk function. The Video Doorbell has motion-detection capabilities, and you'll receive real-time alerts on your phone whenever it spots movement. For more detailed alerts about whether that motion is because of a person or package delivery, you'll need to sign up for a Ring Home plan, which starts at $5 per month. The subscription also grants access to features such as 180 days of video event history being saved. The premium tier, which costs $20 per month, includes round-the-clock recording on every compatible doorbell and/or camera at your home. Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/the-latest-ring-video-doorbell-is-back-on-sale-for-a-record-low-price-161258034.html?src=rss
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As I sat down to play the 90-minute South of Midnight preview, I had one major question: Why does the framerate look like that? The trailers display a purposefully choppy animation style thats meant to be reminiscent of stop-motion, but it wasn't clear how this effect would be applied in the games cutscenes, combat and traversal moments. After playing the preview, Im still unsure. I should state my bias at the top: I am super primed to enjoy South of Midnight. Ive been a fan of Compulsion Games since the studio debuted Contrast in 2013, and I eagerly followed the development of its follow-up, We Happy Few, through 2018. Compulsions games are stylish, with an emphasis on polished 3D graphics and lanky characters in fabulous outfits. Microsoft acquired Compulsion in 2018 and the studio has been working on South of Midnight ever since. My intrigue has only grown in the past year, following a drip-feed of trailers with luscious Southern Gothic settings, a bluesy soundtrack and the games magic-weilding protagonist, a young Black woman named Hazel. First, lets talk about what the game does well. The preview begins at chapter three, after Hazel has discovered the basics of her magical abilities but has not mastered the power flowing through her veins. Hazel is a Weaver, capable of manipulating the invisible strands that hold reality together, and shes looking for her mother, Lacey, after a hurricane swept through their hometown of Prospero in the American Deep South. If Hazel is the main character in South of Midnight, the environment is her co-star: The swamps of Prospero are lit with a rich, golden hue and theyre buzzing with surreal life. Towering cypresses, lush ferns and thorny vines the size of tree trunks weave their way through the forest and its cloudy pools. The houses, half-demolished shacks connected over the bayou by crumbling wooden platforms, are filled with rotting trinkets and faded photos, and many have eviction notices stuck to the front doors. Car-sized peaches dot the landscape, plump pinkish skin sticking out of the swampwater and buried at the bases of trees. This land is drowning in magic. Compulsion Games Though Hazel is on a linear journey to find her mom, there are plenty of opportunities for light exploring around Prospero. Chapter three features a handful of hidden paths that conclude with glowing bits of Floof, the games currency, for Hazel to collect. These alternative routes are positioned in plain sight, but theyre integrated into the landscape off the beaten path, so theyre easy to miss if youre not paying attention. Hazel explores by running, jumping, double jumping, gliding and wall running, and her movements through the world feel utterly natural. Her abilities build on one another nicely and theyre perfectly responsive, creating a mini parkour flow that I didnt expect in this game. At times Hazel uses magic to turn ghostly objects into tangible platforms, and her double-jump and glide combo is particularly fun. Hazel always looks cool, regardless of the framerate. She moves her long, thin limbs with the haphazard confidence befitting a teenage track star, and her clothes a waffle-stitched sweatshirt tied around her waist, denim jeans, a tank top with a sports bra, leather arm bands and a holster across her chest are heavily textured, lending each piece a tangible feel. Hazels dialogue is delivered with a hefty amount of adolescent snark, too, and I laughed out loud when she met the giant talking catfish and immediately was like, Nope, and turned to walk away. Actors Nona Parker Johnson, who performs Hazels motion-capture and stunts, and Adriyan Rae, Hazels voice, have done some fabulous work here. Compulsion Games In the preview, Hazel encounters an eccentric local, a few magical creatures and at least one powerful ritual, and she eventually finds herself chasing the ghosts of two brothers, one of whom died after being stuffed inside the trunk of a tree. As she hunts their memories and traps their pain in a blue bottle, banjo music trickles into the scene until it becomes a full-on folk song recounting the brothers tragic story. Its a unique and effective mechanic. The world around Hazel is composed of dark and surreal beauty, and after seeing (and hearing) this sliver of gameplay, Im eager to uncover all of Prosperos hidden stories. Combat in the South of Midnight preview takes place in contained stages, with spiky vines blocking off the exits as soon as the fight begins and the haints ghosts, in Hazels vernacular pop up. The enemies in this chapter come in three basic forms: tall floaty haint, stationary haint nest and floaty blob haint. The enemies are made of gooey black tendons and red magic, and they attack in specific ways depending on their type. The tall one moves quickly and rushes forward, the nest spews out exploding bugs and the floaty blobs shoot parryable projectiles. Hazel has a basic attack, dodge, healing move and four magical abilities: weave, strand push, strand pull and a final locked move. Weave freezes an enemy in place, while strand pull and push can be used to throw objects back in the haints faces. Each combat stage starts out with a healing totem that Hazel can tap into once, as long as she can reach it and (on Xbox Series X) press Y. She also receives health regen by pressing Y near a pile of freshly killed haint meat, unraveling their essence for a little boost. These piles are only available for a few seconds after each kill, so theres some light strategizing involved in staying alive mid-battle. Compulsion Games The fights flow just fine, and a lock-on system allows Hazel to swap her attention among the haints on the fly. Parrying projectiles is the toughest ability to master in the preview, but with a little more time to practice, I think itll become second nature. South of Midnight is not an open-world RPG or anything, but Hazel has a small skill tree with three upgrades for each of her magical abilities and nine slots to unlock moves like ground slam. A second screen contains Hazels collection of magical objects (five slots), patterns (six slots), readables (104 slts) and storybooks (14 slots). By the end of the demo, Id collected four magical objects and one readable. Just looking at the menus, it seems like South of Midnight is a contained, sub-20-hour experience. Now, let's talk about the games animations. South of Midnight begins with a gorgeous, handcrafted stop-motion intro movie that brings Hazel and her storybook adventure to life, but after that, the games stop-motion conceit only half-works. Hazels movements and the world at large are supposed to render at 60 fps, while her facial expressions in cutscenes render at something closer to 15 fps, mimicking the animated in twos style of Into the Spider-Verse. This appears to be true for anything in the game with a face, and its particularly apparent with the catfish character, which is basically all mouth. When it all comes together as Compulsion intended, the effect looks and feels very cool. Unfortunately, this is a rare occurrence. In practice, the stop-motion effect is inconsistent during third-person exploration moments and close-up cutscenes, and it tends to feel less artistic, and more like the game simply has an erratic framerate. Its possible to turn off stop-motion effects and I tried this, but honestly, I couldnt spot the difference. Even with stop-motion turned off, Hazel is rendered at an unpredictable rate that often dips well below 60 fps. The framerate issue appears across characters and vignettes, and its especially shitty during brightly lit memory scenes, where NPCs appear in front of Hazel as glowing white ghosts, filled with particles and visually stuttering all over the place. South of Midnight targets 4K/60 on Xbox Series X, but my preview at times felt like it struggled to maintain 30 fps. Whats more troubling, though, is the screen tearing that appears throughout the preview, spawning from the games use of a-sync. The tearing often appears close to the center of the screen, suggesting the game is far away from its performance target. Of course, Compulsion is still working to optimize South of Midnight and theres some time to address these problems before the game comes out on April 8 but theyre cutting it close. I think the stop-motion effect is a grand idea and it would work well if Compulsion committed to the bit. If the framerate is supposed to be low, keep it low, rather than popping in and out of higher framerates, which makes everything feel like a mistake. Consistency is the key, and South of Midnight hasnt nailed that yet. This is Compulsions first attempt at building a game with all of the resources and attention that Xbox provides, and the studio has crafted a beautiful, mysterious world with an ambitious mechanical conceit and a badass protagonist. The stop-motion effect is still hit-or-miss, but that doesnt detract from the games other successes. I remain incredibly stoked on South of Midnight. South of Midnight is due to hit Xbox Series X/S, PC and Game Pass on April 8. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/south-of-midnight-preview-stopped-motion-160003119.html?src=rss
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If you're not one for carrying lots of books around then an e-reader is the way to go. Right now, you can get the 16GB Amazon Kindle Paperwhite for $135, down from $160. The 16 percent discount brings the device to just $5 more than its Black Friday price. Amazon's Kindle Paperwhite came out in 2024 and offers a seven-inch glare-free display with 300ppi resolution. It also has up to 12 weeks of battery, an adjustable warm light and a flush-front design. Plus, its IPX8 certified waterproof and Audible through Bluetooth. The Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition, which retails for $200, is our choice for best premium ereader. It offers 32GB of storage, wireless charging and an auto-adjusting front light sensor. We gave it an 85 in our review when Amazon released it late last year. Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/the-2024-kindle-paperwhite-drops-to-its-lowest-price-of-the-year-151158322.html?src=rss
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