Technology

• ESR has launched an Apple Pencil alternative that costs $30
• The Geo Digital Pencil can fast charge and has Find My support
• It lacks many Apple Pencil features, but costs less than half the price

The Apple Pencil is a superb accessory for all the best iPads, but it doesn’t come cheap thanks to its $79 / £79 / AU$139 starting price (which stretches up to $129 / £129 / AU$219 if you want the Apple Pencil Pro). If you’re looking for an alternative pen for your iPad that won’t break the bank, ESR has just introduced a much more wallet-friendly option.

The ESR Geo Digital Pencil is a $30 pen for the iPad that can replicate many of the Apple Pencil’s features. For instance, it comes with tilt sensitivity that lets you easily adjust the thickness of your output by adjusting the pencil’s angle.

As well as that, you can tap the Geo Digital Pencil to quickly interact with your iPad and see the pen’s battery level. That’s similar to the Apple Pencil Pro’s ability to change tools when you tap it and is something that isn’t available on the entry-level Apple Pencil.

ESR says the Geo Digital Pencil is compatible with a range of iPads, including the iPad Air with M2 chip, the M4 iPad Pro, the 10th-generation iPad, and the iPad mini with A17 Pro chip.

What's missing?

(Image credit: ESR)

One of the Geo Digital Pencil’s most useful features is its Find My integration. This will allow you to connect it to you iPhone and locate it using the Find My app. Find My is an incredibly useful tool for Apple devices, so it’s encouraging to see ESR built it into its iPad pencil.

To charge the pen, you can connect it to a power outlet using a USB-C cable. This enables fast charging, which will get it to full battery power within 30 minutes. You can also magnetically snap the pencil to your iPad, but doing so will not charge it, which is something you can do with the Apple Pencil Pro (but not the regular Apple Pencil).

At $30, it’s unsurprising that ESR’s device lacks some of the Apple Pencil’s features, and it also goes without the hover feature that lets you preview a pen mark before you make it with Apple’s device. You also don’t get the barrel roll, haptic feedback or squeeze functionality of the Apple Pencil Pro, although that pen does cost over four times the price of the ESR Geo Digital Pencil.

Still, at less than half the price of the standard Apple Pencil, you might decide that it’s worth taking a punt on ESR’s alternative – we've certainly had some joy previously with more affordable rivals.

We don’t yet know how it compares to the Apple Pencil in terms of precision and latency, but if it turns out to be a solid device, it could take its place among the best Apple Pencil alternatives.

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• The date for your diaries: April 12, 2025
• Over 270 indie shops in the UK and thousands more worldwide
• Exclusive releases from established and emerging acts alike

Record Store Day is Christmas for music fans, with a whole host of exciting new releases as artists raid the vaults for interesting ways to celebrate the joys of independent record retailers. And now Record Store Day has a date and a slogan: you can "celebrate the culture" on April 12, 2025.

This year's RSD, the eighteenth such event, will be supported by long-term sponsor Bowers & Wilkins as well as Miraval wine and the DEYA brewing company, and it'll be happening in over 270 record shops in the UK as well as thousands more worldwide. And as before, it's likely to see a whole host of re-releases, rarities and special editions that'll be worth queuing out the door (yes, at your local bricks and mortar store!) for.

Why Record Store Day is magic for music fans

One of the things we love about RSD, other than the goodies on offer, is that it gives us an excuse to spend tons of money with a clear conscience: it's all about celebrating and supporting indie retailers as well as artists. In the era of Spotify streams and struggling high streets that feels more important than ever.

Last year's RSD line-up featured everything from 100 Gecs to 10,000 Maniacs, Black Sabbath to Boogie Down Productions, U2 to Ultramagnetic MC's and many, many more as record companies re-released classics on heavyweight vinyl and artists went rooting around the vaults for classic cuts and covers. And only some of those releases ended up on eBay for silly sums immediately afterwards…

We'll be covering RSD 2025, of course, but don't forget that indie stores aren't just for vinyl Christmas: many artists release exclusive records to indie shops every month, and this month's crop includes Maribou State, Manic Street Preachers, Anna B Savage, Mogwai and Lambrini Girls, among others. You can stay up to date with those exclusives on the RSD website. Until then, happy crate rummaging!

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• New research has revealed the top-search fitness trends as we enter 2025
• There was a 414% surge in searches for remote personal training between July and September last year
• Other big winners include Hyrox and the viral 30-30-30 TikTok challenge

A new study into the biggest fitness trends we can expect to see in 2025 has revealed a staggering uptick in searches for remote personal training, as well as popular new fitness trends like Hyrox and the viral TikTok 30-30-30 challenge.

Data collated by UK fitness outfit PureGym analyzed the Google search interest for more than 200 fitness trends, comparing interest between Jul-Sept 2023 vs Jul-Sept 2024.

While you might have expected AI, smart tech, and biohacking to be the buzzwords of 2024 and beyond, the biggest surge in interest is in good old-fashioned personal training, buoyed by a relic of the pandemic: the humble Zoom call.

Could remote connection save personal training?

Push is an AI-powered fitness app, the likes of which has eroded reliance on face-to-face personal training. (Image credit: Future / PUSH)

When you look at the fast-moving sweep of technology and fitness, it's hard not to imagine that 2025 could be the year that sees a deluge of AI-powered apps, smart rings, and biohacking that could render the personal trainer obsolete.

Why would the average person fork out on costly hourly training when they can rely on apps and algorithms? The best fitness apps, like PUSH, can use AI to provide progressive overload tracking and rounded fitness plans to help you build muscle and burn calories.

Perhaps, the power of remote technology could remove the physical barriers of personal training such as travel costs or the requisite access to an expensive gym. It makes training more flexible, and means trainers can work with anyone in the world, not just the catchment of their local gym. It could be an obvious and easy solution as personal trainers try to keep up in a world that's increasingly powered by personal tech and algorithms.

As mentioned, the other big emerging trends appear to be Hyrox, the popular fitness competition that combines running and functional workouts, as well as the 30-30-30 TikTok trend. The latter is the hilariously simple (yet effective) art of consuming 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking up, before cranking out 30 minutes of low-intensity exercise, a method first touted in the 2010 book The Four Hour Body.

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• Nintendo has announced a new console... but it's not the Nintendo Switch 2
• A Lego Game Boy will be released in October
• It follows a number of other Nintendo Lego sets

It feels like the Nintendo Switch 2 could be revealed any day now, but it seems Nintendo has a very different kind of console announcement on its mind.

On Thursday, January 9, the Japanese company lifted the curtain on a Lego model Game Boy. According to an X / Twitter post, fans will be able to “build the classic Nintendo System in Lego form” with a new set releasing in October 2025.

The post features a 15-second teaser video, which gives us our first look at some of the pieces that might be included in the set. We see two flat grey tiles, plus a much taller single stud piece.

There are also two smooth circular purple tiles, presumably representing the iconic purple buttons of the original Game Boy. We then get a glimpse of a plus-shaped piece, most likely the Lego interpretation of the handheld’s D-pad.

This is certainly not the post that many wanted to see, especially those who have been feverishly refreshing the Nintendo social media accounts in the hopes of seeing a Nintendo Switch 2 reveal. Even so, I think it’s pretty cool and will probably be keen to pick up the model - if it’s a reasonable price.

The upcoming Lego Game Boy is not the first collaboration between Nintendo and the Danish toy company. Lego has previously released the incredible, but very pricey, Lego Nintendo Entertainment System. It featured a full recreation of the NES, plus a little miniature TV with a scrolling Super Mario diorama. There is also the Super Mario World: Mario & Yoshi model, an adorable moving bricky recreation of Mario riding Yoshi.

This is on top of a more child-focused Lego Super Mario line, which uses unique electronic figurines to recreate moments from the games.

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• AMD’s Frank Azor has fired shots at Intel’s Arrow Lake desktop CPUs
• He called the Core Ultra 200S CPUs ‘horrible’ and said this increased demand for the Ryzen 9800X3D
• That higher demand has led to stock woes, Azor claims, and inventory issues won’t likely ease anytime soon

An AMD executive fired flak at Intel, calling Team Blue’s latest Arrow Lake desktop chips ‘horrible’ no less.

The quote came from a roundtable with AMD execs at CES 2025, where our sibling site, Tom’s Hardware, asked about the ongoing shortage of Ryzen 7 9800X3D stock (regarded as the best CPU for gaming that you can buy since its launch, and a processor that we gave a glowing review).

AMD observed that demand has outstripped supply – clearly enough – and the full quote from Frank Azor, who heads up consumer and gaming marketing at AMD, will surely leave Intel bigwigs suitably unimpressed.

Azor told Tom’s Hardware: “We knew we built a great part [in the 9800X3D]. We didn’t know the competitor [Intel] had built a horrible one [Arrow Lake]. So the demand has been a little higher than we forecasted.”

Ouch. You’ve probably noticed that Intel’s latest Arrow Lake desktop chips, which arrived in October 2024, experienced a rocky launch, with various problems that Team Blue still hasn’t fully put to bed.

We’ll come back to Intel’s misfortunes later, but what about the Ryzen 9800X3D stock situation?

David McAfee, VP and GM of Ryzen channel business at AMD, explained: “It’s crazy how much we have increased [our monthly, quarterly output of X3D parts] over what we were planning. I would say the demand we’ve seen for the 9800X3D and the 7800X3D has been unprecedented. So the demand has been higher than ever.”

McAfee notes that making chips takes some time – “it’s basically 12 to 13 weeks from when you start a wafer to when you get a product out the other end of the machine” – and that the 3D V-Cache stacking process adds complexity and is even more time consuming. Meaning it’s harder to catch up with unexpected spikes in demand.

The upshot? McAfee says: “I think as we go through the first half of this year, you’ll see us continue to increase the output of X3D.” And the exec further notes that in the future, AMD is “ramping capacity to ensure we catch up with that demand for as long as customers want those X3D parts.”

It’s the Ryzen 7 X3D processors which represent most of the demand, you’ll be unsurprised to learn – as the benefits of hopping up to a Ryzen 9 X3D chip are marginal for PC gamers (if anything, indeed, gaming performance may even dip). So the 9800X3D and its predecessor represent the sweet spot for gaming and value.

McAfee said the workhorse 8-core X3D parts outsell Ryzen 9 X3D flavors by a massive 10-to-1, all of which means that the introduction of Ryzen 9950X3D and 9900X3D CPUs (ushered in at CES 2025) isn’t going to ease any pressure on the stock levels of the 9800X3D.

(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler) Analysis: Broken Arrow? Hardly…

In short, don’t expect the Ryzen 9800X3D to become more widely available for some time yet, though as we head into the second quarter of 2025, matters should ease and the CPU may well populate the shelves in greater numbers.

Back to the flak fired by AMD at Intel, and it’s pretty harsh to use a term like ‘horrible’ to describe a rival product. Is desktop Arrow Lake really that awful? Well, the launch wasn’t a disaster, but it was disappointing, particularly as gaming performance did not live up to Intel’s promises due to multiple issues.

That said, Intel’s fixes – which have now been deployed for Arrow Lake, all but one final measure – don’t help much, or at all, at least according to Tom’s Hardware’s (limited) testing. Something we’ll need to verify ourselves, mind you, so take that with plenty of caution at this stage.

At any rate, Arrow Lake desktop has been troubled since it was pushed out, there’s no denying that, and the problem is that this happened against a backdrop of more serious instability issues with Intel’s preceding Core CPU ranges (13th and 14th) on the desktop. Those were really nasty gremlins in the works, and while Intel had them fixed by the end of last year, that whole episode was a very dark cloud over 2024 for Team Blue – with considerable reputational damage done.

So, while that episode has nothing to do with Arrow Lake – which doesn’t suffer those instability woes – it still casts a deep shadow over Intel’s newest desktop range and the separate issues with these chips.

It’s a messy time for Intel in the CPU world, in short, and AMD pulling no punches isn’t really a surprise. Although as we’ve said, ‘horrible’ is going rather too far, and somewhat gleefully playing on Intel’s other mishaps of late.

It should be noted that AMD is not entirely without blemishes with its current-gen processors, as Ryzen 9000 launched to some disappointment with its generational uplift, again particularly for gaming – though the 9800X3D has gone a long way towards addressing that. The only problem is you can’t buy the thing at the moment, a situation which isn’t about to change, clearly.

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• An Amazon S3 bucket is leaking sensitive screenshots of remote workers
• The bucket is owned by WebWork Tracker
• The leak is putting company data and credentials at risk

A storage bucket associated with the WebWork Tracker application has been leaking sensitive info and company data online, with upwards of 13 million screenshots reportedly breached.

The WebWork Tracker software is used by organizations to monitor remote workers by taking regular screenshots of the workers screen to show the employer what they have been working on.

However, the Amazon S3 bucket that the screenshots were stored on was misconfigured, lacking the end-to-end encryption that the Armenian-based company states it uses to safely store sensitive screenshots.

Company data, credentials, and API keys at risk

The bucket was discovered by the Cybernews research team on June 11, with the team reaching out to the WebWork Tracker team on multiple occasions since August 13 to alert the organization to the leaking bucket, but received no response.

As a result, Cybernews notified the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT).

The remote worker tracking software is used by a number of businesses across the US, including remote-hiring company Deel, which is based in the US. Cybernews also found many other businesses across Austria, the Netherlands, and India that also used the software.

As a result of the leaking files, it is possible that the company has violated EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). GDPR fines can be €20 million or 4% of global revenue, whichever is greater, with CCPA fines reaching $2,500 per non-intentional violation.

Redacted screenshots from the database shared by Cybernews show spreadsheets containing credentials and sensitive customer information, making the leaking database a prime target for threat actors looking to use supply-chain attacks to compromise organizations.

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• AirPods Pro 2 will occasionally chime when they're in their case
• It's not a bug or a fault; it's a feature
• Other case sounds can be turned off in Settings

It turns out that people on social media were right: Apple really has increased the chime rate with its AirPods Pro 2. If you've noticed that your AirPods case has been chiming when it didn't chime before, or chiming in new ways, it's not a bug and it's not a fault. It's a feature.

Discussion of the new chime began on the ATP podcast and on Mastodon, where Ian Williamson asked if anyone else was getting an extra chime some time after putting their AirPods Pro 2 back in their case. Yes, came the answer; we've been wondering about that too. And because this is the internet, it wasn't long before they found an explanation.

It's because of woke. Not really. It's a new feature that's part of Apple's hearing health roll-out in its flagship best noise cancelling earbuds.

Why are AirPods Pro 2 chiming when they didn't chime before?

The answer is on Apple's support page, which reads: "To help ensure that your AirPods microphones and speakers are operating at their best (for example, to help provide high-quality hearing test results), your AirPods may periodically play a quiet chime when they’re in their charging case."

The reason the AirPods Pro 2 are checking themselves is because Apple's hearing health tech is designed to personalize the audio you hear based on a hearing profile. In order to maintain that personalization, it seems that your AirPods need to self monitor by performing their own sound-check from time to time, to ensure that everything's still calibrated correctly.

The new chime isn't the only sound your AirPods Pro 2 might make: they also chime when you're running low on battery or when you connect the charger to the mains or stick it on a charging pad. But you can turn those particular sounds off in Settings if they annoy you.

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• Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii will have a free New Game Plus mode
• It's coming via a post-release patch, but no date on that just yet
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Oh, thank goodness; Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii will feature a New Game Plus option, and this time, you won't have to pay for it.

This was confirmed in the Like a Dragon Direct presentation uploaded to Sega's official YouTube channel. Towards the end of the 13-minute showcase, it's confirmed that New Game Plus will be available for free in the upcoming game. However, it'll be added to the game "as a post-release patch."

Currently, there's no word on when we can expect said patch to drop, but we imagine it won't be terribly long after launch. Of course, this isn't too much of a big deal, as players will need to clear the game once first in order to access New Game Plus in the first place.

In case you're wondering why this is a relatively big deal, it's all down to how Sega and Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio have handled New Game Plus in the past. Rather controversially, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth offered New Game Plus as paid downloadable content (DLC). It was included in the game's more expensive editions, but this understandably left folks with the standard version feeling hard done by.

New Game Plus has been a staple feature of the Yakuza / Like a Dragon franchise since its inception, often being called Premium New Game or in the form of a Premium Adventure mode that lets you freely roam the environment to tick off remaining side stories, goals and the like. You're always able to carry over progress like stats, weapons, skills, and items into a fresh save, offering a good bit of replay value.

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AI will start making videos on popular media player VLC more accessible, the company announced at CES. VLC is adding a new feature that uses AI to generate subtitles and translations in real time. No more digging through shady subtitle databases or syncing files. Instead, VLC’s AI will transcribe audio and display it as the video plays, even translating it into any of more than 100 languages.

It's a notable shift from the way you currently have to add subtitles. If your video didn’t come with captions baked in, you had to go hunting for the right file online VLC’s new AI-powered subtitles aim to make that process obsolete. VLC is using open-source AI models for the feature and said that the whole thing will work on your device, meaning you won't need to be online or send any data about what you're watching.

Of course, the AI doesn’t just transcribe; it translates too. Say you’re watching a Korean drama and want to share it with a friend who doesn’t speak the language. VLC’s AI can generate subtitles in English, Spanish, or one of the dozens of other languages.

VLC automatic subtitles generation and translation based on local and open source AI models running on your machine working offline, and supporting numerous languages!Demo can be found on our #CES2025 booth in Eureka Park. pic.twitter.com/UVmgT6K4dsJanuary 8, 2025

Ill communication

VLC's AI plans aren't a perfect solution, of course. Any AI transcription or translation may fall prey to confusion, bad transcription, and awkward translation. Accents, fast-talking, and other elements may make the captions more of a hindrance than you'd like. The feature is also likely to demand some serious processing power. Real-time transcription and translation are no small tasks, and older devices might struggle to keep up. It might be time for an upgrade if you’re still running VLC on a laptop from the pre-HD era.

Still, the potential is enormous for more than just casual viewers. People with impaired hearing or who are learning a new language will definitely benefit from immediate and (mostly) accurate transcription and translation. It could be a real boon for students, international travelers, or others who want or need text to accompany their viewing.

While VLC isn't unique in leveraging AI for subtitles, it stands out in terms of ease of use and practicality. Skipping the need for internet connectivity or a subscription service makes it both cheaper and more private than other options. It might not always get things perfect, but for most users, “good enough” will probably feel like a revelation.

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• Severance's creator already knows how the Apple TV Original will end
• Dan Erickson "has a sense" of what the mystery thriller's final scene will be
• He won't say how many seasons it'll take to tell its full story

Severance creator Dan Erickson says he already knows how the hit Apple TV Plus series will end.

Speaking to TechRadar ahead of Severance season 2's launch, Erickson also confirmed that he "had a sense" of what the highly-rated show's final scene will be. However, while Erickson also admitted that he'd talked to director/fellow producer Ben Stiller and Apple executives about what would be the "ideal" number of seasons needed to tell Severance's story, he wouldn't be drawn on how many it would need.

Erickson discussed the mystery thriller's future with me in the wake of Stiller's own comments on the matter. In November 2024, Stiller told Collider that work on a third season was already in its early stages – remarks that all but confirm that another installment is on the way, even if Apple hasn't officially announced it yet.

Armed with that information, I asked Erickson if Severance season 3 might be the show's final entry. And, if he couldn't say that, whether he knew how many seasons it would take to wrap up its story and/or if he'd already planned the Apple TV Original's final scene.

"Yeah," he replied. "I have a sense of what the final scene will be and, in terms of a number of seasons, kind of where I see it all landing on a character level.

I won't say how many seasons we're thinking we'll last for

Dan Erickson, Severance creator

"We've certainly talked about what we see as the ideal run of the show, Erickson continued. "But, from the beginning, we also wanted to be flexible enough that, if something came along that surprised us [narratively], and we fell in love with a certain storytelling element or a character, we'd want to spend more time with these things or these people. So, we wanted to create a flexible plan that we could turn to if we had any ideas [of where we could take these things].

"I won't say how many seasons we're thinking we'll last for," he added, "But we have that idea in mind, and we're also down to roll with the punches a little bit."

We don't have much longer to wait for one of the best Apple TV Plus shows' long-awaited second seasons to drop. Severance's sophomore outing will make its worldwide debut on one of the world's best streaming services on Friday, January 17. Before it premieres, read my Severance season 2 review to get the spoiler-light lowdown on its first four episodes – and check back in with me in the run-up to release for more exclusive coverage from my chats with Erickson and the show's cast.

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