Technologies

Steam Summer Sale: Snag 4 Major Borderlands Games for Under $25 Before Borderlands 4

This is an amazingly cheap way to get caught up before the new game launches in September.

If you want to catch up on the Borderlands series before Borderlands 4 comes out on Sept. 12, you won’t find a better opportunity than this. Every mainline Borderlands game is steeply discounted for Steam’s Summer sale, with many of them in the single digits.

You can currently get Borderlands Game of the Year Enhanced, Borderlands 2, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel and Borderlands 3 for a grand total of $22. The first game represents about half that cost, so if you’ve already played that one or want to skip it, you can get the other three for just $12. Various downloadable content is also on sale, if you want to add to the base games.

This is an absolute steal. Borderlands 2 is one of my all-time favorite first-person-shooter games, and despite being more than a decade old, it’s worth about $20 just on its own. For me, it’s the pinnacle (so far) of the series’ hero designs and enemy encounters — for my money, Zer0, Gunzerker and Gaige are three of the most fun vault hunters the series has ever made. And the True Vault Hunter Mode and Ultimate Vault Hunter Modes (the new game plus modes) really add a lot of replay value by ratcheting up the strategy through the increased importance of matching your elemental weapons to the right enemy health type — think type matchups in Pokemon, except with guns.

What I particularly love about the Borderlands series is the customization it offers. The games give you at least four vault hunter classes to choose from, and those classes offer additional options via skill trees that let you adjust the way your vault hunter plays. For instance, Zer0 has options for sniping, stealth or melee. Add in different gun manufacturers whose weapons all have a different feel, plus different categories of guns — pistols, submachine guns, sniper rifles, etc. — and elemental weapon types on top of that, and you end up with a veritable treasure trove of ways to tune your vault hunter’s gameplay.

Also, you can throw grenades that explode money. I almost crashed Borderlands 3 because I was exploding so much money.

The original Borderlands established the formula and some of the regular elements, like soldier and siren classes as well as vending machines for gear and health. It also established some of the recurring characters, like de facto mascot Moxxi. Borderlands 2 refined that formula and introduced an amazing villain who added more narrative depth. The Pre-Sequel shook things up by taking us to space and giving us laser weapons. Borderlands 3 took a step back in terms of narrative and characters, but it added some nice mechanical polish, like being able to mantle up ledges or slide into barrels to send them flying into enemies.

All four of those games will take you about 100 hours total to beat if you stick to the main quests, or closer to 200 hours if you’re the type to get sidetracked occasionally. Pro tip: Talk, finagle or blackmail some friends into playing with you. The games are significantly more fun with other players.

For the complete Borderlands experience, you can also tack on the Dungeons & Dragons-inspired spinoff game Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands for $12 and Tales from the Borderlands, an acclaimed narrative choices game, for $15.

With Borderlands 4 coming out in just a few months, you’re not going to get a better chance to start or add to your collection. Catch a riiide, vault hunters.

Technologies

Google Discover Gains Follow Button and Expands Content Sources

Google’s personalized news feed will feature a wider variety of content in the coming weeks.

Google Discover, Google’s personalized news feed, has largely remained the same since its introduction in 2018, but it’s now receiving some new and helpful features.

On Wednesday, Google announced that Discover will soon expand the type of content found within the feed and allow you to follow publications and creators. You can find Google Discover in the Google app, and it will be built into the home screens of some Android phones.

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Instead of just seeing a list of web pages to visit on your feed, you’ll soon see a mix of web articles, YouTube videos and social media posts from X and Instagram, effectively widening the net of content shown in Discover.

Along with expanding content from more sources, Google Discover is allowing users to follow specific publishers and content creators using a «follow» button at the top right of each content card.

Google says that tapping the publication’s or creator’s name will open a new page previewing the content that’s typically shared before you choose to follow the outlet. From our testing across multiple phones so far, it appears the feature is still rolling out.

Your Google Discover feed should now allow you to follow content creators. A more diversified mix of content will roll out over the coming weeks.

Technologies

New Bill Aims to Block Both Online Adult Content and VPNs: How Your VPN Could Be Affected

A proposed bill in Michigan has a broad reach that covers everything from adult AI content to manga and even depictions of transgender people. It includes a VPN ban to avoid workarounds.

If you live in Michigan, you might not be able to legally use a VPN soon if a new bill is passed into law. On Sept. 11, Michigan Republican representatives proposed far-reaching legislation banning adult internet content.

The bill, called the Anticorruption of Public Morals Act and advanced by six Republican representatives, would ban a wide variety of adult content online, ranging from ASMR and adult manga to AI content and any depiction of transgender people. It also seeks to ban all use of VPNs, foreign or US-produced.

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VPNs, or virtual private networks, are software suites often used as workarounds to avoid similar content bans that have passed in states like Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and the UK. VPNs can be purchased with subscriptions or downloaded and are also built into some browsers and Wi-Fi routers.

But Michigan’s bill would charge internet service providers with detecting and blocking VPN use, as well as banning the sale of VPNs in the state. Associated fines would be up to $500,000.

What the ban could mean for VPNs

Unlike some laws banning access to adult content, this Michigan bill is comprehensive. It applies to all residents of Michigan, adults or children, targets an extensive range of content and includes language that could ban not only VPNs but any method of bypassing internet filters or restrictions.

That could spell trouble for VPN owners and other internet users who leverage these tools to improve their privacy, protect their identities online, prevent ISPs from gathering data about them or increase their device safety when browsing on public Wi-Fi.

Read more: CNET Survey: 47% of Americans Use VPNs for Privacy. That Number Could Rise. Here’s Why

Bills like these could have unintended side effects. John Perrino, Senior Policy and Advocacy Expert for the nonprofit Internet Society, mentioned to CNET that adult content laws like this could interfere with what kind of music people can stream, the sexual health forums and articles they can access and even important news involving sexual topics that they may want to read.

«Additionally, state age verification laws are difficult for smaller services to comply with, hurting competition and an open internet,» Perrino said.

The Anticorruption of Public Morals Act has not passed the Michigan House of Representatives committee or been voted on by the Michigan Senate, and it’s not clear how much support the bill has beyond the six Republican representatives who have proposed it. As we’ve seen with state legislation in the past, sometimes bills like these can serve as templates for other representatives who may want to propose similar laws in their own states.

Could VPNs still get around bans like these?

Could VPNs still get around this type of ban? That’s a complex question that this bill doesn’t really address.

«From a technical standpoint, ISPs can attempt to distinguish VPN traffic using deep packet inspection, or they can block known VPN IP addresses,» said NordVPN privacy advocate Laura Tyrylyte. «However, deploying them effectively requires big investments and ongoing maintenance, making large-scale VPN blocking both costly and complex.»

Also, VPNs have ways around deep packet inspection and other methods.

«Some VPNs offer obfuscation — which tries to disguise VPN traffic as standard web traffic — using dedicated servers or custom VPN protocols, like NordVPN’s NordWhisper or Proton VPN’s Stealth,» said CNET senior editor Moe Long. «But note that obfuscation isn’t foolproof.»

There are also no-log features offered by many VPNs to guarantee they don’t keep a record of your activity, and no-log audits from third parties like Deloitte that — well, try to guarantee the guarantee. VPNs can even use server tricks, such as RAM-only servers that automatically reboot to erase data after every browsing session.

If you’re seriously concerned about your data privacy, you can look for features like these in a VPN and see if they are right for you. Changes like these, even on the state level, are one reason we pay close attention to how specific VPNs work during our testing, and recommend the right VPNs for the job, from speedy browsing to privacy while traveling.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for Sept. 19 #565

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for Sept. 19, No. 565.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Do you drink your coffee black? If so, today’s NYT Strands puzzle might be a puzzler. If you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: Pour it on.

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Wow, no cow.

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

NONE, CONE, RICER, SHEW, FAIR, FAIRY, DRAY, YARD, MILK, CASH, DONE, DRAM, MADAM

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers: