Feed aggregator

At a time when communities feel fractured, here's a look at online communities taking a pragmatic approach to changing the world for the better.

(Image credit: Igor Dudkovskiy)

The road to net zero is a long one. For the UK to hit its 2050 target, there must be a unified effort across all sectors to decarbonize. While highly visible polluters such as heavy industry and transport make up the lion’s share of emissions, we can’t let the invisible activities of the online world off the hook. One polluter we encounter every day but may never consider a carbon culprit is digital advertising.

For years, there has been a concerted effort to optimize the supply chain that powers digital advertising, but the barriers are stubborn and steep: the lack of transparency, the vast number of adtech intermediaries, the spend wasted on low-quality placements. Each of these challenges also drive up emissions, for a global CO2 bill of 7.2 million tons a year, all just to put an ad on your screen.

Programmatic advertising — the automated process for buying and selling ads — is particularly inefficient. Advertisers pour money into the system for the sole purpose of easily reaching consumers at scale, but an audit by the Association of National Advertisers found only 36 cents of every dollar spent reaches its intended destination.

This presents a unique opportunity to the industry: cut bloat in the advertising supply chain and you kill two birds with one stone: increasing campaign performance and reducing emissions at the same time. If there’s nothing but benefits to such optimizations, why haven’t they been achieved yet? It’s simple, we didn’t have AI.

Cleaner, leaner programmatic advertising that delivers on its promise

At its heart, programmatic advertising is meant to streamline digital media buying by automating the process of placing ads in real-time. Instead of manually negotiating with individual publishers, advertisers use demand-side platforms (DSPs) to bid for ad placements as they become available across a vast network of websites and apps, who surface their available inventory on supply-side platforms (SSPs). This entire process happens in milliseconds.

Unfortunately, over time programmatic advertising has become a tangled web of intermediaries, inefficiencies, and hidden costs. The sheer number of players involved means budgets leak away before they reach publisher inventory, and every unnecessary transaction comes with its own little puff of CO2.

Worse still, the sheer volume of bid requests swarming the system is staggering; in the US alone, 647 times more bid requests are sent out every day than there are people in the country. And this pollution is not merely ‘digital’: audits have found that 60% of carbon emissions from programmatic advertising are generated during the ad selection process.

The signal-to-noise ratio is clearly way off, but machine learning and AI — perfectly suited to such messy mathematical challenges — can rebalance the scales. Instead of blindly spraying a “firehose” of requests — as the practice has been labelled — AI-powered bidding technologies take a more calculated approach. By “learning” from prior and real-time digital advertising campaign data, AI can map out the most efficient pathways for delivering ads, reducing unnecessary steps and ensuring more budgets are allocated to actual working media.

The best part? What’s good for the bottom line is also good for the planet: fewer wasted impressions mean lower costs and lower emissions; a rare win-win solution.

Emissions reductions aren’t just a happy accident of supply chain optimization, AI can also deliberately steer campaigns towards low-emission inventory using an array of real-time data signals. Factors like time of day, device type, Wi-Fi versus mobile connections, and even whether the local energy grid is running on renewables can all be accounted for; all without getting in the way of campaign KPIs.

AI’s predictive capabilities can even be trained to prevent unwanted and unintended downstream effects of optimization. For example, if you make the cost per impression cheaper, advertisers could by default buy more of them, causing a “rebound effect” where reducing costs ends up actually increasing overall emissions. AI can keep this unintended consequence in check, ensuring that absolute carbon emissions remain reduced.

Decarbonization so good even climate sceptics won’t resist

With AI taking over the number crunching, digital advertising can evolve beyond the inefficient, carbon-heavy machine it once was. Advertisers now have the means to make their campaigns work harder while using fewer resources. The old trade-off between performance and sustainability no longer applies.

For the first time, AI is enabling climate-conscious advertisers to set custom sustainability goals alongside traditional campaign metrics. Instead of just tracking cost-based performance or engagement metrics, brands can now measure carbon impact and actively work towards lower-emission media strategies without sacrificing results. But even if an advertiser doesn’t care about emissions, they’ll end up cutting them anyway in the pursuit of better performance and boosting the bottom line.

And the best is yet to come. AI isn’t a set and forget solution, it continuously learns and adapts, its scope and capabilities improving as it connects to more data sources, identifying patterns that humans would overlook. Over time, campaigns become even more efficient, with costs dropping and emissions shrinking further.

The impact of this technological revolution goes far beyond individual campaigns. As AI tools become more widespread, platforms and publishers will be incentivized to support more sustainable practices to avoid being left out of AI-optimized media plans. Demand for quality data to power this system will drag digital advertising towards total transparency, through which even more emissions savings can be uncovered.

The beauty of AI-driven programmatic optimization is that it makes doing the right thing the easy choice. As more brands and agencies realize that sustainability and profitability go hand-in-hand, the momentum will only grow. Thanks to AI, we finally have the tools to build a better, more sustainable future for digital media, one campaign at a time.

We've listed the best landing page creator.

This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

The pope was a strong advocate for the poor and the environment and a towering figure on the world stage, addressing not just Catholics but the men and women of our time.

(Image credit: Lisa Maree Williams)

This review first appeared in issue 345 of PC Pro.

The WAX220 is the latest member of Netgear’s Business Essentials range of Wi-Fi 6 access points (APs) and aims to fill the gap between consumer and enterprise use. Targeting small businesses and home offices that require only a single AP, the WAX220 has a speedy AX4200 rating made up of 600Mbits/sec on the 2.4GHz radio and 3,600Mbits/sec on its 5GHz radio.

Performance is a priority as the WAX220 supports the high-speed Wi-Fi 6 160MHz channels and adds the Wi-Fi 6 Release 2 uplink MU-MIMO feature for faster client upload speeds. Its 2.5GbE LAN port supports a PoE+ power source; you’re expected to provide this as Netgear doesn’t include a 12V DC power adapter, which costs an extra £13.

Build quality is good, with the WAX220 endowed with a finned metal back plate that acts as a heatsink. The kit includes a mounting plate and metal bracket so you can fit it to a wall, a normal ceiling or a suspended ceiling T-bar.

Designed for standalone use, the WAX220 only offers local web browser admin access and doesn’t support Netgear’s Insight cloud management, wireless meshing or captive portals. On the positive side, Netgear claims you can unpack the AP and be up and running in ten minutes.

Netgear’s standalone WAX200 is well built and offers good performance (Image credit: Future)

This is easily achievable. We connected the AP to the lab’s Zyxel XS1930-12HP 10GbE multi-gigabit PoE++ switch and followed the browser’s quick start wizard. In a single screen, you set a new admin password, add your first wireless network, provide an encryption key and wait two minutes while it reboots.

The WAX220 delivered good results in our Wi-Fi 6 real-world performance tests using a Dell Windows 11 Pro workstation with a TP-Link Archer TXE75E Wi-Fi 6/6E PCI-E adapter. Starting with the AP’s 80MHz channels enabled, large file copies between the workstation and a Windows server on our 10GbE LAN averaged 116MB/sec at close range, dropping to 88MB/sec with the AP ten meters away in an adjoining room.

With the 160MHz channels enabled, our test client showed a connection speed of 2.4Gbits/sec. Speed improved nicely with our close range copies averaging 180MB/sec and holding steady at 157MB/sec with the AP moved to the next room.

The AP’s web console isn’t as pretty as the standalone version offered by Netgear’s high-end Insight APs but it does provide easy access to all features. The separate management wireless network improves security and it can be set to close down after it’s been idle for 15 minutes, though the AP must be rebooted to enable it again.

The WAX220 presents a simple web administration console (Image credit: Future)

From the console’s management page you can modify the 2.4GHz and 5GHz channel modes and create up to four wireless SSIDs. For each SSID, you can choose personal WPA2, WPA2/WPA3 or WPA3 encryption and enable the guest network option so connected clients get internet access but can’t see other devices on the same network.

If you want to present a safe open public network, the WAX220 supports opportunistic wireless encryption (OWE), which secures endpoint traffic from eavesdropping without the need for an authentication password. We checked this out on our Windows 11 wireless client where it spotted our guest network had enhanced open security and connected using OWE without any problems.

A simple dashboard shows the AP’s status, a connection table reveals all active clients and you can pull up graphs of CPU usage plus inbound and outbound SSID and LAN traffic over the previous three minutes. There isn’t much else to see, although the AP can scan each radio for external wireless networks and list them.

For a basic standalone Wi-Fi 6 AP, the WAX220 isn’t great value; TP-Link’s faster EAP670 has an AX5400 rating, supports standalone and cloud management modes and can be had for under £150. On the plus side, the WAX220 can be swiftly deployed, delivers good performance, and OWE support makes it easy to provision secure public networks.

We've also rated the best all-in-one PCs.

This review first appeared in issue 346 of PC Pro.

Poly, now part of HP Inc, is rightly associated with headsets and meeting room systems. With the latest addition to its Voyager range, however, it’s broken free of its reputation to create a pair of wireless in-ear earbuds that users can pair simultaneously with their laptop and phone. You need a USB adapter for the former, Bluetooth for the latter.

The target audience is clear: anyone who attends meetings on the go. However, Poly evidently hopes to tempt businesses to buy them as well as individuals, as IT teams can manage the buds through its Poly Lens software.

The base model is the Voyager Free 60 for £230 inc VAT, but that doesn’t include Teams certification or a USB adapter. Adding both changes the name to the Voyager Free 60 UC and £50 to the price. That comes with a simple case, but the model I tested was the Voyager Free 60+ UC, with a touchscreen case. This gives an at-a-glance view of how much the buds and case are charged, but turns into a mini control system when you’re on a call. You can even mute calls by tapping the speaker icon, but a minor lag meant I kept on pressing it twice by mistake.

You can use the touchscreen case to mute calls (Image credit: Future)

Extra-long stems on the earbuds can also be used to mute or accept a call, or pause/play music, but the real purpose of that extra space is to house three microphones. This also helps with microphone noise cancellation, blocking out both extraneous noise and wind. There’s active noise cancellation on offer, too, but don’t get excited as it’s no match for the equivalent from Sony’s headphones.

Music sound quality also lags behind the best earphones – and there are no controls in the accompanying app to adjust the balance to your liking – but I don’t wish to be overly critical.

The earbuds are fine for listening to music while working, with a decent amount of detail. It’s just that I always got the sense that audio was tuned for voice rather than pumping tracks.

Still, that makes sense for a pair of professional earbuds, and with good battery life – eight hours with ANC on, plus an extra 16 hours from the case – they fulfil that brief extremely well. Are they worth the high asking price? For most people, probably not. But if you’re in meetings all day and need to jump between phone and laptop, they might just answer your call.

We've also ranked the best cloud storage for photos.

This review first appeared in issue 346 of PC Pro.

Sitting on the rung below Brother’s flagship ADS-4900W scanner, the ADS-4700W offers a more affordable alternative to SMBs on tight budgets. It may cost over £200 less than its bigger brother but still delivers an impressive package with a top scan speed of 40ppm, a hefty 6,000-page daily duty cycle and a slightly smaller 80-page ADF.

It’s well connected, too, offering USB 3, wired or wireless access, though for the latter it supports only 2.4GHz networks (not 802.11a/n 5GHz like the ADS-4900W). There are no compromises with the user interface, though: the same slick 10.9cm color LCD touchscreen offers a wealth of user-friendly scan features.

Installation takes around 30 minutes per PC, with Brother’s downloadable utility getting you started by loading the drivers, iPrint&Scan app and firmware update tool. It also adds Brother’s Utilities app, which you use to download and install Nuance’s PaperPort 14 SE digital file cabinet and Kofax’s Power PDF 3 OCR and document conversion tool.

The large LCD touchscreen offers a wealth of features (Image credit: Future)

The ADS-4700W can be remotely managed via its web browser console and you can monitor it and all other networked Brother devices with the free BRAdmin 4 SNMP-based software. Mobile users also get in on the scanning act; the free Mobile Connect iOS and Android apps remotely connect to the scanner, pull in scans and offer to save them locally or email them as JPEGs and PDFs.

Brother provides the best cloud support as the ADS-4700W can send documents directly to SharePoint Online, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, OneNote, Evernote and Box accounts. They’re simple to set up from Brother’s Web Connect portal, where we registered our Dropbox account, entered the unique 11-digit code at the scanner’s touchscreen and PIN-protected local access.

Walk-up scan features are outstanding. Documents can be sent directly to any networked PC that has Brother’s software installed just by selecting them from the touchscreen. The scanner’s web console can be used to create up to 25 profiles for scans to FTP and SharePoint sites, email servers and network shares, with each destination appearing in the touchscreen.

The touchscreen allows you to create up to 56 scan shortcuts grouped under six custom tabs. Enable the setting lock feature in the web console and shortcut access can then be restricted by requiring a username and PIN.

The scanner comes with the user-friendly iPrint&Scan app (Image credit: Future)

The iPrint&Scan app streamlines desktop scanning with one-touch workflows that define local, cloud, email or other apps as destinations. Add settings such as a resolution and searchable PDF (sPDF) output and you can register them with the scanner so they appear in its touchscreen workflow menu listed under the host’s name for easy selection.

Our tests showed the ADS-4700W was slightly faster than the quoted speeds, with duplex greyscale and color scans of 50 bank statements at 200 and 300dpi delivering between 44 and 46ppm. We chose sPDF for our output format and had to wait two minutes after each scan had finished for the iPrint&Scan OCR service to convert them.

Moving to 600dpi saw speeds drop to 11.6ppm, but you won’t need this for general document archiving as scans at 200dpi produce good-quality, accurate sPDFs. Paper handling is impeccable, too, with the scanner handling our stacks of statements, flimsy courier tear-offs and till receipts without any jams.

The ADS-4700W is a fine choice for small businesses, with an impressive range of scanning features at an affordable price. Performance is good, output quality can’t be faulted and the versatile LCD touchscreen menus provide great walk-up scan services.

We also rated the best virtual desktop services.

This review first appeared in issue 346 of PC Pro.

The first version of the ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED was one impressive beast. Not content with whacking in a cutting-edge AMD Ryzen processor and GeForce RTX 3070 graphics, it offered the novel combination of a built-in dial and glorious 16in OLED panel. This year’s update isn’t radical, but improvements all round make it even more appealing to the creative professionals that Asus is targeting.

I have only one disappointment: at the time that Asus announced this update, it also shared details of a 3D version of the laptop. Just like the Acer SpatialLabs View screens I reviewed two months ago, the ProArt Studiobook 16 3D OLED (note the “3D”) creates stereoscopic 3D images without the need for glasses. Such technology works fantastically, using eye-tracking software and micro lenses to beam slightly different images to each eye. When you want to switch back to 2D, it only takes one click.

Sadly, if that appeals then you must wait for a launch “later this year”. For now, you must make do with the non-3D version. And you will need to still wait until mid-June for that, at which point it will become available from Scan (code LN135615).

The 3,200 x 2,000 OLED screen is sharp, with rich colors and deep blacks (Image credit: Future)

Screening success

In terms of color accuracy and coverage, Asus throws everything it can at the screens in its ProArt range. Here, that includes Calman Verified and Pantone Validated certifications, with the guarantee that each panel’s average Delta E (a measure of color accuracy) will be under two. Our panel’s accuracy was even better: it averaged 0.51 and had a maximum Delta E of 1.12.

Color coverage is superb, too. You have a choice of color profiles, including DCI-P3, where it covered 99% of the gamut. Print designers who prefer to work in the Adobe RGB space should stick to the Native profile, with 98% coverage.

But what really matters about this OLED panel is that it’s gorgeous. You benefit from incredible sharpness thanks to a resolution of 3,200 x 2,000, and whether you’re watching a film or editing photos you’ll fall in love with the rich colors and deep blacks. While a peak brightness of 363cd/m2 may not sound noteworthy, support for DisplayHDR’s True Black 500 shows that it can go higher in localized areas in supported content.

The design is solid but understated, with just a subtle ProArt logo on the lid (Image credit: Future)

Gaming prowess

That includes games, and with a 120Hz refresh rate and 0.2ms response time there’s much here for gamers to love. The Studiobook ships with Nvidia’s Studio drivers rather than its Game Ready option, but it’s easy enough to switch if gaming is your preference.

Its results in our 1080p gaming benchmark suite were predictably high: 186fps in F1 22, 144fps in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, 101fps in Metro Exodus and 88fps in Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition. Those are all at High settings. Switching to the native resolution of 3,200 x 2,000 saw those figures drop to 105fps, 94fps, 56fps and 45fps.

All our results were with the Studio drivers and the laptop in “MSHybrid” mode, where it automatically switches between discrete and integrated graphics. You can choose to use only the discrete GPU, but that made no difference to our results so I suggest sticking with the default.

Not least because using integrated graphics will squeeze some extra life from the 90W battery. The Studiobook is a power-hungry beast, and the best result I saw was in PCMark’s idle test where it kept going for 6hrs 36mins. It lasted around five hours in both the video-rundown and light-use office tests, while switching to gaming reduced life to a mere 1hr 34mins. Those results are typical of a Windows workstation such as this, but the 16in MacBook Pro lasted for almost 20 hours in our video-rundown test.

(Image credit: Future)

Power on tap

Portability is hardly this product’s forte anyway. Quite aside from the 2.4kg weight of the laptop, you should allow for the 740g power supply. In return for the bulk, however, you’re buying an incredibly powerful system. Let’s start with a Core i9-13980HX processor, complete with eight P-cores that max out at 5.6GHz and 16 E-cores with a peak 4GHz frequency. That’s 32 threads ready to tackle any suitable task, which is why it reached 24,801 in Cinebench R23 and 21,043 in Geekbench 5. The MacBook Pro, by contrast, scored 14,700 and 15,061 in those tests.

Mind you, the Studiobook has the advantage of 64GB of DDR5-5200 RAM to the MacBook’s 32GB. And having two M.2 Gen4 SSDs in a RAID0 configuration is never going to hurt: these scorched through CrystalMark 8’s sequential tests with 7,015MB/sec reads and 6,431MB/sec writes. The only downside, especially compared to MacBooks powered by Apple’s M2 chips, is that the fans kick in as soon as tasks become demanding.

You can admire those fans for yourself by removing the ten Torx screws that secure the base. Doing so reveals how easy it will be to replace the memory and SSDs should the need ever arise; not something that’s possible to do on the latest MacBooks.

The Asus Dial below the keys could transform the way you work (Image credit: Future)

Touching interface

Asus also leans into another advantage of Windows laptops: support for touch. The screen is responsive to fingers, of course, but Asus includes one of its active styluses in the box. This works on the touchpad too, so it’s a shame that this isn’t even bigger. Still, a 6in diagonal provides room to play, and the haptic technology built in works brilliantly.

Then there’s the Asus Dial. Invest time to learn how it works and this could become an integral part of your daily workflow. Especially if you use Adobe’s Creative Cloud: the dial can scrub through timelines in Adobe Premiere Pro, adjust brush sizes in Photoshop and make minute adjustments in Lightroom. Anything where it’s useful to make granular or sweeping changes.

It’s also possible to put the Asus Dial to use in Windows and other apps, perhaps to adjust the volume, brightness and cycle through open tabs in your web browser. It’s hard to imagine these will make a great deal of difference to your daily life, though, so the dial is most useful if you’re using creative tools on a daily basis.

The included stylus offers another way of interacting with the laptop (Image credit: Future)

One minor annoyance is that you must load up two different Asus tools to tweak settings. There’s the ProArt Creator Hub, where you control the dial settings and access calibration tools for the screen. But you also have MyAsus, which offers a bunch more options – some of which, such as switching between performance modes, are duplicated in the ProArt Creator Hub. Both have different aesthetics, so they clearly haven’t been designed by the same teams.

When it comes to the hardware’s aesthetics, though, I have no criticisms. There’s none of the RGB bling found on many Asus gaming laptops, just a sleek and understated design. The metal lid is unadorned by fussy logos, with a subtle “ProArt” the only branding on show. It’s even covered with anti-fingerprint coating to keep the black finish looking swish.

This is one solidly built laptop, too, with Gorilla Glass to protect the screen and the promise of testing to military grade standards. These include shock, vibration and extreme temperatures. Nor can I complain about connectivity, with a generous helping of ports – including two Thunderbolt 4 and 2.5Gb Ethernet – and Wi-Fi 6E. And both the 1080p webcam and the speakers are from the top-quality drawer.

There’s no shortage of ports on offer, despite the slender chassis (Image credit: Future)

Final thoughts

This is a great update to the Studiobook and one that should particularly appeal to 3D designers – when that model becomes available. It will then be possible to rapidly iterate through prototypes: design, get feedback, tweak. If you can take advantage of the Asus Dial, the stylus and the sheer firepower within this laptop, then it could be a transformative purchase.

For everyone else, it’s probably overkill. Especially at this price. But if you like the idea of the integrated dial, then Google for “ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED” and you’ll find cheaper options based on last year’s silicon.

The ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED has a unique design, and if you need its skillset then you can be assured of top components and build quality throughout.

We also ranked the best free Adobe Illustrator alternatives.

Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is finally here, and as the first entry in developer SNK’s legendary fighting game franchise in over 25 years, it’s got a point to prove. Especially in the modern fighting game landscape, where things like Street Fighter 6’s complex Drive Gauge system or Tekken 8’s focus on overpowering aggression have become the norm.

Review information

Platform reviewed: PC
Available on: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC
Release date: April 24, 2025

By comparison, City of the Wolves feels refreshingly old-school. Neutral and defensive play is incredibly important here, and thanks to the fun-but-strict REV meter system, lengthy high-damage combos can be very costly. Risk-versus-reward gameplay is a huge factor, and it’s rare you’ll get to brute force your way out of a disadvantageous position; you’ll have to work for it instead.

In terms of presentation, City of the Wolves is utterly gorgeous, with SNK clearly refining the cel-shaded style it’s implemented in recent titles like Samurai Shodown and The King of Fighters 15. Animation is fantastic, characters are highly expressive, stages are awash with color and detail, and it’s all backed up by a tremendously catchy soundtrack.

It’s unfortunately not quite a home run effort, though. Menus still feel incredibly sluggish, with noticeable input lag as you navigate them. And even on a solid-state drive, there are some worryingly long load times even between individual rounds. Furthermore, offline modes are basic at best and uninspired at worst, and the usual Arcade and Survival modes are joined by a tedious main single-player mode that gets old within the first hour.

But overall, if you’re looking for a largely no-nonsense fighting game to learn and improve at in the months to come, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is very easy to recommend. It’s not a full-priced game, and it even includes its first-year season pass absolutely free of charge.

As a side note, before we dive in, I unfortunately didn’t get to test online functionality in the review build of Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, as the servers weren’t ready for prime time.

REV it up

(Image credit: SNK)

Let’s start with the basics. Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is a four-button fighting game, with light and heavy punches and kicks forming the core of your neutral offence. On a per-character basis, some of these buttons can be strung together to form a simple target combo or pressed after directional inputs to perform a special move.

The core gimmick in Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is the REV system, governed by a gauge for each fighter. It starts out empty at zero percent, but fills up as you perform enhanced special moves (done by pressing both punch or kick buttons after a directional input) or by performing moves that are only available to you in the S.P.G. state (more on that soon).

As these enhanced special moves - known as REV Arts - can be canceled into one another for big-damage combos, you’ll find that your REV meter can fill exceptionally fast. If it fills up, you’ll overheat, which means you’ll be susceptible to guard breaks and won’t be able to pull off any more REV Arts or abilities until it fully cools down.

(Image credit: SNK)

While Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves features a relatively small roster of 17 characters at launch, all feel incredibly unique and diverse. Better yet, player expression is wholeheartedly supported with systems like the REV meter, feinting, and braking, allowing for a range of offensive and defensive playstyles.

Complementing REV is the S.P.G. (Selective Potential Gear) system. This is visualized on your health bar as a yellow segment, and it can be placed at the start, center, or end of it before a match. While your health is within the S.P.G threshold, you’ll also have access to REV Blows - a powerful invincible tool that can turn the tide on aggressive opponents, thus allowing you to skip neutral or end combos with it. It is another costly resource, though, and will eat into your overall REV meter.

I get that on paper, all this might sound very complicated, potentially exacerbated by your ability to brake or feint your own attacks. These essentially cut your moves short, allowing you to combo into other attacks or specials, and I found it to be a crucial thing to learn in order to access longer and more damaging combo strings.

It’s certainly a lot to take in, but City of the Wolves does an elegant job of teaching you all its systems via an in-depth tutorial, as well as character combo trials that introduce the concept of brakes, feints, and canceling REV Arts into each other, all in a practical fashion. Once you’ve got a proper handle on it all, it feels incredibly satisfying to take your practice into matches.

Offline woes

(Image credit: SNK)

Speaking of matches, and based on my time with the previous open betas, you’ll probably want to jump online in City of the Wolves as your primary port of call. In comparison, the game’s offline offerings are greatly lacking.

Arcade mode is here as standard, and it’s a good way to get a feel for a character and their story through eight matches against AI-controlled opponents (though bizarrely, guest fighter Cristiano Ronaldo isn’t playable here). Survival and Time Attack modes are also decent endurance challenges.

But it’s the main Episodes of South Town (abbreviated in-game as EOST) that’s the real let-down. An incredibly simple story mode that has you choosing battles on a map, EOST feels extremely phoned in compared to Street Fighter 6’s World Tour or even Tekken 8’s spectacle-filled story mode. There are some fun distractions here, like a bottle smashing minigame and tidbits of trivia for longtime SNK fans, but for me, the tedium began setting in very quickly.

EOST also highlights two of City of the Wolves’ biggest issues: user interface and menu navigation. Menu layout in general is pretty cumbersome, and there is noticeable input delay as you use the D-pad to cycle through options. Worse still, there’s no support for mouse control in this review build, which I sincerely hope can get patched in at launch or at least close to it.

South Town sights

(Image credit: SNK)

On a stronger note, City of the Wolves’ presentation is simply stunning. SNK has really mastered this cel-shaded look now. Characters and stages have a comic book sheen to them, and subtle filters really help to add depth to any given scene. Particle effects caused by special moves or other abilities are also just the right amount of flashy, not coming across as too intrusive.

Things like this create a smart but eye-catching visual style, and when paired with exceptional animation quality, you have a game that I think is going to be a real spectacle at major tournaments like EVO and Combo Breaker.

If that wasn’t enough, City of the Wolves is backed up by a tremendous soundtrack, with artists like Afrojack, Steve Aoki, and Salvatore Ganacci (who, yes, is somehow also a playable character) contributing music to the game. Overall, the presentation is a moreish audio-visual feast and one of the best things about City of the Wolves.

Should you play Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves? Play it if...

You want a fighting game experience that dials back the nonsense
While the REV system does allow for some bonkers combo potential, City of the Wolves is far more readable than Tekken 8’s noisy aggression and simpler to get to grips with than Street Fighter 6’s complex Drive system.View Deal

You’re fairly new to fighting games and want a fresh-feeling roster
If you’re unfamiliar with SNK’s output, chances are you might not yet be acquainted with iconic characters like Tizoc, Billy Kane, Hotaru Futaba, or Rock Howard. Guest characters Cristiano Ronaldo and Salvatore Ganacci are a little unorthodox for sure, but also still offer plenty of fun gameplay styles in their own right.View Deal

Don't play it if...

You like offline casual content in fighting games
Soul Calibur, this isn’t. City of the Wolves has largely thrown its eggs into the online basket, leaving little for casual single-player content.View Deal

Accessibility

Outside of the ability to reduce screen shaking in the options menu, there isn’t anything in the way of meaningful accessibility settings in City of the Wolves. The main gameplay consideration is the ‘Smart’ control style, however, which simplifies inputs and combo routes which can prove beneficial for those less familiar with fighting games or who’re unable to pull off more complex directional inputs.

How I reviewed Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves

I played Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves over the course of a week and a half for this review, totaling approximately 15 hours of playtime. That included Arcade mode runs for several characters, a full playthrough of EOST mode, numerous combo trials, and no shortage of training mode sessions to get familiar with a number of characters.

I reviewed the game on a gaming PC (via Steam) powered by the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, and primarily played with a Razer Wolverine V3 Pro controller.

Progress towards sustainability is rarely straightforward. Building a truly sustainable telecom network is a long and complex journey, one that requires balancing innovation, financial realities, and the constraints of existing infrastructure.

Telecom operators are discovering this first-hand as they strive for more sustainable networks. Compared to other key sectors like utilities or transportation, telecom operators were among the earlier adopters of net zero targets, led by major players like BT, Vodafone, Telia, and AT&T who helped set the pace.

These targets are admirable, but operators have a big challenge on their hands to hit them. As critical national infrastructure, telecom networks can't simply be de-installed or decommissioned and replaced from scratch. Sustainability goals must be balanced against two critical business priorities: competitiveness and financial viability. It’s a fine balance.

Balancing legacy with innovation

Even as they look to evolve their networks with more advanced (and often more eco-friendly) technology like 5G or fiber, operators are wrestling with a hidden beast – maintaining the network they already have. Telecoms is one of the longest-standing forms of what we still consider ‘modern’ technology.

It has evolved massively over time, but in the UK and US for example, some of these networks have existed for over a century. More importantly, even today, many still contain equipment that is up to fifty years old. If you flipped this around on the consumers that use these networks, it would be the same as still using the Nokia 3310 ‘brick’ or the first-ever laptop.

While older technology like copper-based DSL and PSTN infrastructure in fixed networks, along with 2G and 3G hardware in mobile, is being replaced by modern alternatives, this is a gradual process. Several major US carriers have already phased out 2G and 3G, but in the UK, VM02 is only just beginning its 3G phase-out.

Meanwhile, in the fixed space, BT, which has been preparing for its PSTN switch-off for several years, has now pushed the final deadline back from 2025 to 2027. Indeed, 81% of operators expect their copper network infrastructure to remain operational until at least 2028. Meanwhile, 60% say they’ll still be using 2G until around 2030 and beyond. The shift to modern networks is happening, but not at the same pace everywhere.

The legacy burden

This situation is a bit of a catch-22. Operators need to evolve their networks to improve their service, use less energy and drive revenue growth, but ageing infrastructure slows this down in a number of ways. The first is a financial drain. According to data from Omdia, around 50% of total operational expenditure (OpEx) is typically spent on maintaining and operating a network. This includes utilities, leasing real estate and infrastructure, and maintenance costs, with ageing equipment a big driver of this. While newer technology might demand more up-front investment, it is far more efficient in the long run, with lower day-to-day costs.

There are also more second-hand costs that come from legacy infrastructure. The ‘operational toil’ of maintaining, repairing, and replacing faulty equipment is invisible to consumers but demands significant time and resources. Outages on legacy networks are also remarkably common, with 96% of network managers in the US and UK reporting incidents. According to the same findings, the average annual impact of network downtime is £500K-£1M ($632K-$1.2M in the US), with very few respondents reporting losses below this range.

The result of all of this? Slower network evolution. This operational burden has huge implications for telcos trying to roll out new technology and services. 97% reported diverting resources from investing in new technologies like fiber or 5G to maintain legacy networks. Four out of five believe this has hindered their ability to roll out these new services versus newer greenfield operators.

The long road out

This ‘opportunity cost’ is significant, but it is not insurmountable. It just means that operators need to be as commercially and environmentally efficient as possible when decommissioning and evolving their networks.

On the financial front, the burden from legacy networks leaves such fine margins that delivering more cost-positive decommissioning projects is critical. But those ambitious net zero targets can’t be overlooked at this stage – we need to minimize the environmental impact of network evolution.

Modern equipment typically consumes between 20-50% less energy, but embedded emissions (upfront impact) for manufacturing new equipment like fiber cables or 5G radios are significant. So, while long-phase emissions are lower, the full impact depends on how long the equipment is used, how circular the supply chain is and how well the technology it replaces is phased out. Currently, many operators are running both new and old, temporarily adding to footprints rather than reducing them.

Going circular

To address this dual challenge, we are seeing operators increasingly leveraging the circular economy to minimize the environmental and financial impact of decommissioning. This means recovering, and recycling or reselling hardware and raw materials as much as possible.

According to recent research, 80% of respondents plan to resell copper infrastructure for fixed networks, while 72% intend to resell 2G or 3G equipment for mobile networks.

The market for the recycling and resale of copper is huge. At the time of writing, copper prices are at an all-time high, making ‘urban mining’ from telecom networks not just better for the environment, but also financially rewarding. For fixed network operators, this can free up resources that would normally go toward maintaining the network to reinvest in further decommissioning and accelerate timelines.

This isn’t just theoretical - BT’s infrastructure division, Openreach, has already recouped £105M in recycling old copper cables from its network. Telefónica Spain is also actively pursuing large-scale copper recovery as part of its national switch-off plans. On the mobile side, because certain markets (including the US, UK and the Nordics) are slightly ahead on network evolution, there is a market for selling refurbished equipment, but the window is closing.

While there is of course an environmental benefit to reusing and recycling old hardware, it is arguably the financial uplift that the circular economy can give operators that will be more influential in the industry’s journey towards net zero.

We list the best network monitoring tool.

This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

Acer PD3 Dual-Screen Portable Monitor: Two-minute review

(Image credit: Future / Jasmine Mannan)

While we already have a round up of the best portable monitors you can find, Acer aims to shake up the rankings with its Acer PD3 Dual-Screen Portable Monitor. This device, similar in fashion to other portable monitors, is small, lightweight and can be folded up to be taken with you on the go.

However what sets the Acer PD3 Dual-Screen Portable Monitor apart is the fact that it has two connected monitors, as the name suggests, for those who need the extra screen space.

One of the first things I noticed when unboxing the Acer PD3 Dual-Screen Portable Monitor is that the device is actually quite heavy, weighing in at over double that of my MacBook Air. Coming in at 2.33kg (5.14 lbs), it definitely isn’t too heavy to take on the go, but it’s by no means the lightest thing in your backpack and very well may make your bag quite hefty when combined with your current laptop.

(Image credit: Future / Jasmine Mannan)

The Acer PD3 Dual-Screen can be opened up like a laptop and used either horizontally or vertically. Initially I was worried the stand would be quite flimsy, but it's stable and holds up the device perfectly fine. In terms of design, the Acer PD3 dual-screen is very sleek and simple. Contained in a black, metal chassis, the device is simple and blends in seamlessly with any set up.

At 2.45cm (0.96in) thick, the device is quite chunky when compared to other laptops and portable monitors on the market. However, it’s worth noting that it's not this thick all the way around, with a large chunk of the monitor being quite thin, which makes it feel somewhat slimmer than it is.

The ports on the monitor are actually located underneath the stand, meaning the stand has to be pulled out in order to access them. While this isn’t the biggest deal in the world, it’s somewhat frustrating at times as you don’t always need to have the stand pulled out to have the monitor stood up.

(Image credit: Future / Jasmine Mannan)

Despite being an LCD panel, the Acer PD3 Dual-Screen Portable Monitor looks absolutely fantastic with a great range of colors and blacks. However one downside is the 250 nits screen, which isn’t the brightest, particularly when using the device on the go in different lighting environments. My laptop, which I used in conjunction with this monitor, has a screen brightness of 500 nits which makes the monitor appear even less bright in comparison.

With each screen coming in at 1920 x 1080p, it seems perfect as I didn’t have to worry about screen sizes and ratios changing when plugging my laptop in - which has the same resolution screen.

When using the Acer PD3 Dual-Screen Portable Monitor, it sufficed perfectly fine. It was easy to use, essentially just being plug and play with it syncing up to my laptop practically instantly.

It’s worth noting that the device can be VESA mounted - and while I didn’t mount it myself since I used it mainly on the go, it’s interesting that you can add it to a single monitor arm for a dual screened display, saving you even more space on your desk if needed.

(Image credit: Future / Jasmine Mannan)

It was easy enough to chuck the Acer PD3 Dual-Screen Portable Monitor in my bag and use it in different locations but I will say it wasn’t something I was comfortable pulling out while on a long train journey or in a coffee shop. The device itself is pretty large and looks quite elaborate so I didn’t find myself using it often when away from a desk. It was fine enough to take to my workspace, where it’s normal to use multiple screens.

However, considering the Acer PD3 Dual-Screen requires its own power outlet to work, it's not something which would be very easy to use on the go anyway. It comes with its own 45W power adaptor which plugs into the device via USB-C. This was frustrating as it meant I also needed to ensure I had the power supply with me when taking the device, which adds even more weight to my bag.

Acer PD3 Dual-Screen Portable Monitor: Price and availability

(Image credit: Future / Jasmine Mannan)

• How much does it cost? $449.99 / £469.99
• When is it available? Available now
• Where can you get it? Available in the US and UK

While quite pricey, the Acer PD3 Dual-Screen Portable Monitor is definitely a more premium option when it comes to these devices. At just under $450 (£469.99), it’s much more expensive than alternative portable monitor options like the AOC 16T3EA portable monitor which costs $129 / £187. However, the AOC 16T3EA is a single screened monitor, whereas the Acer PD3 is dual-screened.

Alternative dual-screen options like the Uperfect Portable Monitor come in at a similar price point to the Acer PD3, at around $449.99 / £449.99. This places the Acer PD3 Dual-Screen Portable Monitor an average priced option for the functionality, but it’s currently hard to judge as there aren’t many alternatives on the market just yet.

Acer PD3 Dual-Screen Portable Monitor: Specs

Here are the specs for the Acer PD3 Dual-Screen Portable Monitor at a glance.

Should I buy the Acer PD3 Dual-Screen Portable Monitor? Buy it if...

You need multiple displays for the workplace or regular business trips.

If you are going between a home and place of work or need more displays for a trip, then this is a great option.

You want something very simple to set up

Being plug and play, you don’t have to spend time setting this device up each time you use it.

Don't buy it if... 

You want something ultra lightweight

The device is quite heavy and adding the weight of the power supply makes your bag even heavier.

You want a device to use while commuting or in public

Considering this monitor needs an extra plug, and is quite large and elaborate, it likely won’t be something you use on the go.

Acer PD3 Dual-Screen Portable Monitor: Also consider

AOC 16T3EA

The AOC 16T3EA portable monitor is only a single screened display, but is significantly cheaper at $129 / £187. It’s also much lighter at 830g, making it easier to take on the go with you and doesn’t require its own power connector which is even less weight in your bag and easier to use.

Read our full AOC 16T3EA review

Arzopa Z1RC

The Arzopa Z1RC is a cheap and cheerful portable monitor, rated our best portable monitor option. Coming in at $120 / £129, it wont set you back as much as Acer’s edition, but again is only single screened.

Read our full Arzopa Z1RC review

How I tested the Acer PD3 dual-screen monitor

I spent a few weeks using the Acer PD3 dual-screen monitor alongside my laptop as a secondary display. I attempted to use the device on the go and take it to different locations with me.

I primarily used the device for working and productivity purposes like editing photos, responding to emails and writing articles. I also used the monitor to watch videos and movies to see how well it displayed different colours.

I’ve tested a range of different displays, monitors and portable devices over the years.

Read more about how we test

First reviewed April 2025

Vance arrived in India on Monday for a four-day visit as New Delhi looks to avoid U.S. tariffs, negotiate a bilateral trade deal with Washington and strengthen ties with the Trump administration.

(Image credit: AP)

Patrick Crusius has acknowledged he targeted Hispanics on Aug. 3, 2019, when he opened fire in the store crowded with weekend shoppers from the U.S. and Mexico in the border city of El Paso.

(Image credit: Cedar Attanasio)

Bukele proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela on Sunday, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the United States for what he called "political prisoners" in Venezuela.

(Image credit: Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Collagen is more popular than ever for its potential anti-aging benefits, but there's a lot to consider before adding it to your routine.

Additional heavy rain is expected across the Plains this week. With streams already swollen and the ground saturated, that leaves the area at risk of additional flooding.

(Image credit: Richard R Barron)

• GMKTec EVO-X2 offers Ryzen AI Max+ 395 power at a surprisingly low price
• GMKTec’s compact workstation promises serious AI performance
• High-end specs in a mini PC make EVO-X2 perfect for creative and AI tasks

Following the official launch of the GMKTec EVO-X2, a compact yet powerful mini PC powered by AMD’s flagship Ryzen AI Max+ 395 APU, the device was listed on the Chinese market for CNY 14,999 (roughly $2,066), which appeared to be rather on the steep side.

However, the device has now arrived in Europe, where buyers can unlock a reduced pre-sale price of €1,499 for the base model by paying a $100 deposit.

Those who want the higher configuration need to place a €200 deposit to qualify for a discounted €1,799 final price. All orders must be completed by May 7 to receive the full discount.

Ryzen AI Max+ 395 brings workstation-level performance

The GMKTec EVO-X2’s CPU is based on the Strix Halo platform and comes with an integrated Radeon 8060S GPU using the latest RDNA 3.5 architecture. With up to 40 compute units and a total power budget of 140W, the EVO-X2 marks a serious leap forward in AI-capable compact systems.

As AMD’s strongest integrated chip to date, the Ryzen AI Max+ 395, brings workstation-level performance into a smaller footprint, making the EVO-X2 one of the best workstation PC options for creatives and developers alike.

The base model ships with 64GB of LPDDR5X memory running at 8,000 MT/s and a 1TB SSD, while the higher variant comes with 128GB of LPDDR5X memory and a 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD.

These features also make the EVO-X2 an excellent choice for users looking for the best laptop for Photoshop. Even though it’s a desktop, its compact mini PC design is mobile enough to compete with traditional laptops for creatives who need raw power.

The EVO-X2 isn't just about internal specs. It comes with a wide range of ports, including USB 4.0, USB 3.2 Gen2, USB 2.0, HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4, an SD card reader, and dual 3.5mm audio jacks. Network demands are handled by a 2.5 Gbit Ethernet port, and there’s a dedicated button for fan control as well as a mysterious "Performance Mode" switch.

Considering the hardware packed into this device, it could even rival the modular, enthusiast-focused Framework Desktop, while undercutting it in price.

The GMKTec EVO-X2 is positioning itself as one of the best mobile workstations available, combining compact form, cutting-edge performance, and future-ready AI acceleration.

Via Computerbase

You may also like

• These are the best business laptops available to buy right now
• And you should take a look at the best office chairs we've tried
• Millions of UK healthcare worker records exposed in massive software breach

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for April 21.

• Looking Glass 27 offers 16 inches of depth in a one-inch thick frame
• It can project up to 100 views across a 53-degree cone, perfect for shared use
• Built for developers: create in Unity and deploy across platforms using an iPad

Looking Glass has announced a 27-inch 5K light field display which shows 3D content without any need for headsets or glasses.

Looking Glass 27 is designed for shared use, projecting 45 to 100 perspectives across a 53-degree view cone. At just one inch thick and capable of displaying 16 inches of virtual depth, it offers shared 3D experiences that were previously only possible with specialized gear.

Designed for plug-and-play deployment in offices or exhibitions, the display supports flexible VESA mounting and can even run entirely off an iPad. This alone reduces system-level costs by roughly 35%, while shrinking the overall hardware footprint.

A breakthrough moment for 3D?

Developers can build content in Unity on a PC and deploy it to iPads across multiple platforms via TestFlight or the App Store, streamlining workflows. It has broad support for web-based 3D pipelines and simplified cross-device compatibility.

"This is a breakthrough moment for 3D. With the new 27-inch display, we’ve combined major hardware and software advances to cut system costs and dramatically reduce compute requirements," said Shawn Frayne, CEO of Looking Glass. "It’s never been easier for developers and enterprises to build, test, and then deploy applications for their audiences in 3D."

With a pre-order price of $8,000 (currently 20% off), significantly lower than many would expect, Looking Glass 27 sets a new standard for professional-grade 3D displays. The pre-order window lasts until April 30th. You can see it in action in the video below.

You may also like

• These are the best vertical monitors around today
• We've also listed the best laptops for working from home
• Funding for the critical CVE security detection system renewed before deadline

2025 New York Auto Show

The new Solterra gets more range, but less rugged looking. Meanwhile, the new Trailseeker makes room for outdoorsy adventure gear.