League of Legends adding a new set of anime-inspired skins, including sexy Thresh &#8211; Polygon

League of Legends is adding more anime-inspired skins to the game. The Spirit Blossom skin line features Teemo, Thresh, Vayne, Yasuo, and the newly announced champion, Lillia.

The line was originally teased at a panel at Anime Expo Lite and now has been fully revealed.

The most notable thing about this batch of skins is that Thresh has been turned human. And not just human, he’s a hot anime human. Nobody asked for sexy Thresh but Riot Games delivered him to us anyway.

Judging from the splash art alone, we can infer that Yasuo is the hero of this skin line, as he’s sporting obviously brighter colors. Thresh, Vayne, and Lillia are all immersed in darkness, possibly serving as villains. Teemo seems like a wandering nomad, but given that he’s Teemo, it could really swing either way.

These skins should be added to the Public Beta Environment for testing soon with the rest of the patch 10.14 content. Artwork for each of the new skins can be found below.

Spirit Blossom Lillia

Image: Riot Games

Spirit Blossom Teemo

Spirit Blossom Thresh

Spirit Blossom Vayne

Spirit Blossom Yasuo

Tech

The Morning After: Samsung revealed the Note 20 and Galaxy Z Fold 2 – Engadget

Published

26 mins ago

August 6, 2020

Nintendo Switch hardware and software sales exploded in the spring

Engadget

Can anyone figure out the foldable? Samsung hopes the third time’s the charm. Alongside its new Note 20 series, the company revealed the Galaxy Z Fold 2, with more screen on both the folding surface and the secondary outer display. The latter was a weak point on the original Galaxy Fold, a tiny mediocre screen that was hard to use.

The Fold 2 also appears thinner than the original, partly thanks to shorter fiber brushes between the hinge parts, meant to clean out trapped dust and particles. The company has also reengineered the display layers for improved durability — a question that still lingers around foldables.

As the line between the flagship Galaxy S and Galaxy Note series blurs — they’re all big phones now — foldables could be the new Note. Maybe.

For now, Samsung’s third folding phone still doesn’t appear to be reinventing what smartphones can offer. Expect more details (and a hefty price) on September 1st.

— Mat

What you need to know about the new Galaxy Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra

Do you want premium or ‘premium’ premium?

Samsung has officially revealed the Galaxy Note 20 ($999) and Note 20 Ultra ($1,299), and the more expensive model comes with some major differences. The Note 20 Ultra has a 6.9-inch screen, though it has a narrower, taller build, making it easier to handle than you might think. The Note 20 is a little smaller at 6.7 inches, but that still makes for a pretty big phone. It also has a lower resolution and the typical 60Hz refresh rate. Meanwhile, the Note 20 Ultra gets an ultra-smooth 120Hz screen. Camera specs, similarly, separate the two, making the Note 20 a harder device to recommend, at least going on spec sheets. Take a look for yourself.
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Samsung’s Galaxy Buds Live offer ‘open’ ANC and hands-free access to Bixby

They go on sale today for $170.

They’re weird looking, but Samsung’s next-generation wireless buds are here. Their curved bean shape is apparently meant to mimic the crevices of your ear, and they sit flat on the outside of your ear canal without a tip that goes inside. Instead, a pair of speakers on the underside of the Buds Live beam sound in on each side. This allows for “open” active noise cancellation (ANC) tech. Rather than piping outside noise in with an ambient sound mode, the Buds Live has vents that let you hear what’s going on around you. The ANC focuses on low-frequency noise.
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The Yodel: a daily rollup of news, sports, finance, and more going on in your world.

A quick read that you’ll finish before your first cup of coffee.

Disney has no idea what it’s doing with ‘Mulan’

A $200 million Hail Mary.

Is Disney’s direct-to-streaming release of Mulan a calculated shot to kill movie theaters, a dastardly plot to eliminate movie ownership in favor of leases that keep customers hooked on Disney+ or something else? Devindra Hardawar explains the factors that make this look more like a salvage operation than strategic attack, and why fumbling the rollout could upset “premium VOD” possibilities in the future.
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Zoom adds silly filters and more noise suppression options

Reclaim that wacky office worker crown.

Zoom’s upgraded its video conferencing app with a bunch of social media-inspired filters and overlays, as well as settings sliders to improve the brightness and fidelity of your video stream. (So they can better see your janky pirate eye-patch?)

Looking at the more buttoned-down features, background noise suppression will soon have four options — auto, low, medium and high — so you can fine tune your audio levels on calls.
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But wait, there’s more…

Riot Games gives its employees a week off to recharge

Why Trump views TikTok as a threat

Facebook, Twitter remove Trump video for ‘harmful COVID misinformation’

Watch the first trailer for Ridley Scott’s creepy android series on HBO Max

Audi lowers the E-Tron SUV’s starting price by $9,000 for 2021

The first US COVID-19 app built on Apple and Google tracking tech is here

Google’s PIN-encrypted Android ‘Safe Folder’ protects crucial documents

Instagram ‘bug’ heavily favored Trump content over Biden for months

Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S7 and S7+ are the first 5G tablets in the US

Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 3 adds Apple Watch-like features

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Tech

Google’s Pixel 5 and Pixel 4A 5G could be available to preorder on October 8th – The Verge

Published

1 hour ago

August 6, 2020

A now-deleted sentence from a Google France blog post suggests that the Pixel 5 and Pixel 4A 5G will be available to preorder on October 8th. The two phones were announced this week alongside the Pixel 4A (which is available to preorder now) but Google has yet to share official preorder dates for the handsets, only saying they’re “coming this fall.”

The inadvertent leak was reported by 9to5Google, after a reader spotted the preorder date for the Pixel 5 and Pixel 4A 5G mentioned in the official Pixel 4A announcement post from Google France. That mention has since been deleted from the post (though can be seen in the cached page), with Google offering 9to5Google no further comment on the issue.

It’s a fleeting leak and could well be some sort of error, but an October 8th preorder makes sense. Google regularly announces new hardware in October, giving us the Pixel 4 on October 15th in 2019, the Pixel 3 on October 9th in 2018, and the Pixel 2 on October 4th in 2017. There’s no reason to think the company will change this pattern just because delays to the Pixel 4A have led it to announce the Pixel 5 and Pixel 4A 5G early. And to cap it all, an unrelated set of leaked documents from Google also spotted by 9to5Google notes that the Pixel 5 and Pixel 4A 5G are set for an October launch.

In other words: if the midrange Pixel 4A isn’t enough for you, you only have a couple of months to wait to find out more about the higher-specced Pixel 5 and 5G-capable 4A.

Tech

Google plans to release a foldable Pixel in late 2021, according to leaked document – The Verge

Published

2 hours ago

August 6, 2020

A leaked internal Google document suggests that the company has earmarked the fourth quarter of next year for the release of a foldable Google Pixel phone, 9to5Google reports. The device, codenamed “Passport,” is said to be explicitly referred to as being “foldable,” and is included alongside a list of all Pixel devices going back to 2017’s Pixel 2.

As well as the foldable Pixel, the document also mentions a “lower end mid year device” called the Pixel 5A with a “Q2 2021” release date, and two other devices codenamed “Raven” and “Oriole” for “Q4 2021.” 9to5Google speculates these could be Pixel 6 models. Finally there’s the Pixel 4A 5G and Pixel 5, which Google pre-announced alongside the Pixel 4A earlier this week. Officially these devices are due to launch in the fall, but the document suggests they could arrive in October, consistent with a separate report from 9to5Google.

It shouldn’t come as any surprise that Google is working on a foldable Pixel device. Last year it confirmed that it was prototyping the technology ahead of its annual I/O developer conference. However, at the time Google Pixel’s development lead Mario Queiroz tempered expectations by saying that the company had been working on the tech for “a long time,” and added that he didn’t think there was “a clear use case” for foldable devices yet. According to this document, however, it seems Google has plans to move beyond prototyping and use the delicate technology in a consumer device.

As 9to5Google notes, the leaked document is mainly concerned with developing Android for these different devices, and doesn’t reflect the hardware team’s final plans. With a year and a half to go until release, the schedule is also almost certainly subject to change. However, even if the release date shifts, it still suggests that Google plans to actually release a foldable device of its own.

Google announced native support for foldable devices in Android in November 2018, ahead of Samsung’s initial unveiling of the original Galaxy Fold.