Month: May 2022

The weekly Exotic item merchant, Xur, hangs out in random locations around the world of Destiny. In Destiny 2, he can appear all over the map, as well as inside the Tower. This week, you can find Xur in the EDZ, standing on a bluff overlooking the Winding Cove.

Image: Bungie via Polygon

Xur’s inventory this week consists of the following:

• Skyburner’s Oath, Solar scout rifle: 29 Legendary Shards
• Celestial Nighthawk, Hunter helmet: 23 Legendary Shards
• Heart of Inmost Light, Titan chest: 23 Legendary Shards
• Felwinter’s Helm, Warlock helmet: 23 Legendary Shards
• Exotic Engram: 97 Legendary Shards (you can now purchase a second with an Exotic Cipher)
• Exotic Cipher quest: free

As of Season of the Risen and The Witch Queen, Xur sells a random roll of both Hawkmoon and Dead Man’s Tale each week.

Here are the special Exotic weapons he’s selling:

• Hawkmoon, Kinetic hand cannon (Killing Wind): 125,000 Glimmer, 200 Legendary Shards, Exotic Cipher, Ascendant Shard
• Dead Man’s Tale, Kinetic scout rifle (Moving Target): 125,000 Glimmer, 200 Legendary Shards, Exotic Cipher, Ascendant Shard

As of Season of the Lost, Xur also sells a collection of old armor and weapons — similar to Banshee-44 and Ada-1. Usually, these items are difficult to find and from seasons long past. Each item (whether armor or weapon) costs only 1,000 Glimmer and 50 Legendary Shards.

Xur’s Legendary inventory this week consists of the following:

• Last Perdition, Void pulse rifle
• False Promises, Kinetic auto rifle
• Eternal Blazon, Arc scout rifle
• Truthteller, Void grenade launcher
• First In, Last Out, Arc shotgun
• Honor’s Edge, Arc sword
• Talons of the Eagle, Kinetic scout rifle
• Season of the Worthy armor set

Xur’s items drop at a power level similar to that of your character.

Skyburner’s Oath

Skyburner’s Oath is an Exotic scout rifle modeled after the Cabal’s slug rifle. Its first Exotic perk is Slug Rifle, which causes the gun to become more powerful when you’re aiming down its sights and launch heat-seeking grenades when you fire from the hip. The second Exotic perk is For the Empire. This perk makes the gun fully automatic, deal extra damage to Cabal enemies and, most importantly, penetrate the shields of Phalanx enemies.

All of the perks around Skyburner’s Oath make it sound fantastic, but it’s a fairly mediocre weapon. However, it’s getting what sounds to be a major upgrade later this month, so it’s worth gambling on.

Celestial Nighthawk

Celestial Nighthawk is one of the best Exotics in Destiny 2. Its main perk, Hawkeye Hack, causes Golden Gun to fire only one shot instead of three. However, this single shot does about six times the damage of the average Golden Gun. Players who love raiding or PvE in general should buy it. It’s also exceptional for boss damage.

Xur’s roll this week comes with 65 total stats.

Heart of Inmost Light

Heart of Inmost Light is a Titan Exotic from Forsaken. Its Exotic perk is Overflowing Light. This perk causes any ability use (melee, class, or grenade) to empower your other two abilities for a short period of time. Empower, in this case, means faster regen, more damage, or more health. This is an interesting Exotic that plays well into certain builds, but it’s difficult to use if you aren’t paying attention. If you have a Titan, be sure to pick it up.

Xur’s roll this week comes with 65 total stats.

Felwinter’s Helm

Felwinter’s Helm is a new Warlock Exotic from Season of the Worthy. Its Exotic perk is Warlord’s End. This perk causes elemental kills to explode, weakening nearby enemies caught in the blast. Killing a powerful enemy or using a finisher increases the potency. This is an interesting Exotic, and worth keeping in your Warlock’s arsenal. It also looks really cool.

Xur’s roll this week comes with 61 total stats.

Exotic Cipher quest

Image: Bungie via Polygon

Starting in Beyond Light, Xur has a new quest for an Exotic Cipher. The Exotic Cipher lets you buy old Exotics from the Monuments to Lost Light kiosk in the tower. You’ll need these items and some other currencies to pick up Exotics like Heir Apparent and Truth.

This week, Xur wants you to complete 21 Strikes or win Crucible or Gambit matches. By finishing the quest, you’ll earn an Exotic Cipher to use however you want.

Game designer Zach Gage is a conceptual artist and game designer. He loves optimizing the most beloved, popular and ubiquitous games around the globe. Previous targets of his tinkering include solitaire, chess, pool, and sudoku. He and Jack Schlesinger, his co-developer are now back and they will tackle crossword puzzles.

Knotwords — which is out now on Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows PC — is a crossword for people who don’t like solving clues, cryptic or otherwise. In fact, it’s a mash-up of crosswords and killer sudoku. Killer Sudoku and KenKen are similar math games. Players can be guided by boxing in portions of grids and then indicating the sum of all numbers within each “cage”. Knotwords uses similar cages and tells you what the letters within each cage are, but not where to place them.

Crosswords are where you start with a clue and guess the word. Then, combine the clues and place letters to complete the puzzle. In Knotwords, you are assembling words from their raw materials, in a process not entirely dissimilar from the way you narrow down your options after the first guess or two in Wordle.

Playing Knotwords does depend on a decent grounding in vocabulary and the arcane rules and tendencies of English spelling, as Wordle does. But less so. These are really just the foundation for what becomes a pure game of logic and tactics. The way to break into a puzzle is usually via two- or three-letter words, where options are limited. Further solutions will start to cascade from there. If you ever do get stuck, you can ask for a hint, which gives you a dictionary definition for a word you’re stumped on. It’s odd how much this feels like cheating, when it’s the core gameplay of non-cryptic crosswords like the wonderful New York Times mini crossword.

It’s more helpful, really, to think of Knotwords as sudoku with letters, rather than as a crossword variant. As Gage told The Verge, he found the complex grid of letters more interesting than the clues crossword players would focus on. While he and Schlesinger were working on their sudoku app Good Sudoku, Gage’s mother tried to persuade him to make a KenKen game instead — and when he applied the grouped-cells mechanic to a crossword grid, “it worked instantly.” Wordle creator Josh Wardle has called Knotwords “an incredibly elegant daily word game.”

Elegance has been a Gage thing. This partly manifests in the pristine graphic design and snappy interfaces of the apps he and Schlesinger build. His passion is to strip a game of its most essential elements and shine a light on any obscured or unreadable parts. He strives to eliminate risk and randomness.

The results are often objectively beautiful systems and satisfying to play. They can also feel monotonous and over-optimized to the point that they become alienating. Good Sudoku seeks to train and assist the player in the art of the number puzzle to such an extent that it can often feel like the game is playing itself, and you are just a cog in its mechanism. Sage Solitaire blends solitaire and poker in a way that is undeniably clever but academically dry, and loses sight of what makes solitaire such a compelling and capricious way to spend your time. The Flipflop Solititaire is more similar. Card of Darkness, a sort of math-solitaire-roguelite game with gloriously surreal art by Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward, is just coldly brutal to play.

Gage’s purist interest in game systems often leads him to design out the soul of the game, or to ignore the player’s emotional, as opposed to intellectual, investment. Knotwords is no different. It’s a clever word game that’s a pleasure to play, and I do recommend downloading it — the basic daily puzzle and 10 monthly puzzles are free, while a one-off or subscription payment gives you access to the full archive, a daily variant, and extra monthly puzzle books. It’s absorbing, but detached. A game of Wordle feels like a thrilling, emotional journey. A game of Knotwords feels like you’re just filling in boxes.

Apple-1 computers are rare and have increased considerably in value over the past decades with working units going for over $700,000. Now a special Apple-1 first batch computer with its serial number handwritten by Steve Jobs is up for auction.

This Apple-1 includes the original monitor, a Datanetics keyboard, modern cassette interface, power supply, cables, and a reproduction of the original manual signed by Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne with the inscription “Think Different!”

The serial number was authenticated by Steve Jobs.

Presented here is the holy grail of vintage computer collecting, a first batch Apple-1. This first-batch computer is in working condition. This offering, standing at number seven on the Apple-1 Registry, is the only first batch example that has been up for auction in a number of years and is the first Apple-1 ever offered with an authenticated serial number (“01-0050”) handwritten by Steve Jobs.

Auction house Goldin says the Apple-1 has been verified to be in working condition by former Apple employee Daniel Kottke (one of the first to work on the Apple-1).

This rare Apple-1 is up for auction for just over two weeks, with the first bid coming in at $250,000.

Check out all the details in the official auction listing.

Ring had promised HomeKit support years ago, but it hasn’t kept that promise. It seems less likely it will ever occur at this stage. If you’re firmly in the Ring ecosystem, but want to enjoy some of the benefits of HomeKit. All you’ll need to add is a computer running Homebridge, and you can integrate Ring into HomeKit for free. I love HOOBS as a way to use Homebridge. Let’s dive into how to add Ring devices to HomeKit.

HomeKit Weekly is a series focused on smart home accessories, automation tips and tricks, and everything to do with Apple’s smart home framework.

Ring has had its fair share of controversy over the years, but many people love their products. As an Amazon subsidiary, Ring offers low cost cameras, doorbells, outdoor plugs, and security systems with professional monitoring. Ring is a great option if the Amazon Alexa platform is your favorite. What if you have a Ring doorbell you want to integrate into HomeKit for use with your Apple TV or Apple Watch? Homebridge is the solution.

Homebridge offers HomeKit integrations for countless devices that normally wouldn’t be compatible. This integration includes Nest, TP-Link, UEFI, etc. If you want to use a device in HomeKit that isn’t compatible, it’s extremely likely you can make it compatible with a Homebridge plugin. HOOBS, as I have mentioned before, is my favorite method to use Homebridge. It’s an easy-to-use device that allows you to set up and manage Homebridge devices. Homebridge is free if you own an internet-connected computer. HOOBS is simple and easy to use. It’s quiet, low power, and easy to maintain.

Ring with HomeKit

For this article, I am going to assume your Ring devices are already up and running and on your network. Go to the plugin library in the HOOBs web interface and look for the Ring plugin. HOOBs has it listed as a certified plugin, so you’ll enjoy a simple setup experience. In fact, the process was so easy, that I was even unsure what to do next.

Once the plugin has been installed on HOOBs web interface you can link your Ring account with Homebridge. It worked flawlessly with multifactor authentication. I used a ring.com login. I kept thinking I would need to add my devices somewhere in the HOOBs interface, but once I finally opened the Home app, I saw my Ring camera show up right away with full access in HomeKit.

Wrap up

Now that the Ring camera is in HomeKit, I can use it as I would a standard HomeKit Camera. I can use it to automate other accessories based on motion like I would any standard HomeKit device. The integration should be noted that even though the camera is included in HomeKit it does not necessarily mean that it is using HomeKit Secure Video. This may not be an issue depending on the location of your camera in your house. If you want to have a camera in a sensitive area, you’ll want to place weight on that aspect. HomeKit can be used to switch the camera on or off according to who is home. However, this won’t reflect on the Ring side. You’ll need to set those settings separately. The Homebridge Ring can be a good solution for those who are already part of the Ring ecosystem and want to take advantage of HomeKit. HOOBS is the fastest and easiest way to integrate Ring products into HomeKit.

Apple has collaborated with English-Iranian fashion designer Paria Farzaneh on a special edition pair of Powerbeats Pro – the yellow and purple design showcases the London-based designer’s unique style. The earbuds will only be available through Canadian retailer SSENSE.

Aside from the design, the earbuds come with four sets of black silicone ear tips for alternative sizing. The Powerbeats Pro also feature Apple’s H1 chip, along with Audio Sharing and Find My capabilities. The Powerbeats Pro are 3-year-old earbuds and still come with a USB-A charging cable. Customers will receive special Paria Farzaneh stickers inside the box.

While Powerbeats Pro are regularly on sale for under $200, you can purchase these limited edition earbuds for $250. Beats by Dre x Paria Farzaneh limited edition earbuds will be on sale only for a few days.

It’s strange that Apple keeps releasing special editions for three-year-old earbuds. This is probably due to the fact they are the most costly in Beats’ lineup. Just a couple months ago, the tech giant celebrated the NBA’s 75th anniversary with another special edition of Powerbeats Pro. I know there are people out there who prefer the over-the-ear style, but isn’t it time for an update? I’m looking at you, Apple.

Beats Studio Buds & Beats Fit Pro remain new additions to the line-up and may have their own editions.

What do you think about this edition? What do you think of Powerbeats Pro? Let us know if you plan on buying these.