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Round Up: The Reviews For Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen Are In

Here's what the critics think

nintendolife.com logo
Oct 8 • 1:25 AM EDT • Technology • nintendolife.com
Lenovo releases flagship Android tablet with 12,700mAh battery, Snapdragon 8 Elite and 4K display

Lenovo has released the Yoga Tab Plus Gen 2 in the US and several European markets. The high-end Android tablet features a 13-inch 4K 144Hz display, Snapdragon 8 Elite, a 12,700mAh battery, and bundled keyboard and pen accessories.

notebookcheck.net logo
Sep 7 • 6:08 AM EDT • Technology • notebookcheck.net
'It's Not Great Content': Ex-Dragon Age Exec Says He'd Now Change or Ditch Several Key Moments From the Series

Former Dragon Age exec Mark Darrah has revealed what he'd change about BioWare's beloved fantasy series, after spending more than 20 years at the studio.

ign.com logo
Sep 24 • 1:19 PM EDT • Technology • ign.com
The Fierce Battle For Kids’ Eyeballs...Plus Two “Devils” Face Off

(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what’s popular in streaming TV and what isn’t. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.) During the week of this report, Spider-Man: Brand New Day hit theaters and went on to become one of the biggest films of all time. So, you know what that means! It’s time for a poll! Recently, Project Hail Mary came to Prime Video and became a top five film for them, but didn’t smash streaming records, a feat I cautiously thought it could accomplish. Can Spider-Man 4 do better? To set the stakes, some of the biggest films of all time do just okay on streaming. Wicked, Top Gun: Maverick, and Barbie come to mind... But unlike those films, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a Sony film which means it’s headed to Netflix, the world’s largest streamer. Now, per friend of the newsletter and my go-to Netflix expert, Kasey Moore of What’s on Netflix, Sony films usually appear on Netflix 120 days after they premiere, which means Spidey 4 would land on Netflix on, checks notes, 28-November, one of the two biggest streaming weekends of the year! But Sony occasionally delays its biggest hits for a bit longer, to give them more time to make money on PVOD, so Spider-Man: Brand New Day might not swing onto Netflix until late December or even February 2027. Loading... Okay, on to this week’s issue. Since The Super Mario Galaxy Movie made its way to Peacock, I’m looking at the true workhorse of streaming viewership: kids films. And the surprising film that bested most Netflix animated movies. All that, plus Hulu has a new show that might be a hit (for them…?), two “Devils” square off on streaming, Zendaya tries to find some streaming magic, Netflix’s I Will Find You continues to do well, House of the Dragon tries to break into the season three top ten, some big NBC sports and summer programs, what friendly neighborhood Spider-Man character actually generates the most viewership on streaming, all the flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot more. Let’s dive right in! (Reminder: The streaming ratings report focuses on the U.S. market and compiles data from Nielsen’s weekly top ten viewership ranks, Luminate’s Top Ten Data, JustWatch and Reelgood interest data, Samba TV household viewership, company datecdotes, Netflix hours viewed data, Google Trends, and IMDb to determine the most popular content. While most data points are current, Nielsen’s data covers the weeks of July 27th to August 2nd, 2026. You can find a link to my terminology here.) Subscribe Film - As The Super Mario Galaxy Movie Hits Peacock, How Have Kids Films Fared in 2026? Like Mario hopping on a Koopa, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie landed on Peacock on 30-July. (Yeah, I kinda forced that Mario reference.) How did it do? Great, just like the first film. It got 13.0 million hours on its opening, and that’s good enough to take second place among Peacock films on the Nielsen charts all time: As I mention all the time, Peacock just isn’t the world’s biggest streamer—in fact, nowhere close—so its films struggle to put up numbers like Netflix (or even Prime Video and Disney+). So this is a solid debut for that streamer. And as we saw last time, The Super Mario Bros. Movie had a HUGE second life on Netflix when it moved streamers. This chart doesn’t even show how long the first Mario lasted on Netflix: a whopping, KPop-esque 31 weeks. For NBCUniversal, though, the big win was the second Mario movie grossing $429 million in America and over $1 billion globally. But yeah, to add a very strong streaming performance only makes its success even greater. Illumination pretty clearly has another hit franchise on their hands. This is a good time, though, to check in on kids films so far in 2026. We’ve had a few big, big titles, a rare Netflix success, and some disappointments. Let’s start with the top animated films since November of 2025, over their first four weeks on the charts, along with a few of the “best all time” animated films: (As a reminder, if a film doesn’t make the Nielsen top ten lists, I don’t have data for it, so it gets a “zero” in terms of viewership. Now, it had some viewership, but I don’t know what it is, so it gets a zero.) I added a few titles to get an idea of what the best of the best looks like in terms of animation. And you can see, through four weeks, Zootopia 2 can now claim “one of the biggest streaming films of all time” titles. GOAT too did surprisingly well, besting Netflix’s biggest films (Swapped and In Your Dreams) through four weeks. When I’ve talked about how films can have varying performances on streaming compared to their box office, this is what I mean. Goat just managed to gross even $103 million at the box office—so it’s popular, but just barely—but did very well on streaming. Of course, what set Encanto and KPop Demon Hunters apart from the rest was their absolutely insane longevity. Here are the kids film charts through eight weeks to show that: And really KPop Demon Hunters just kept going, and no 2025 or 2026 kids films have had that sort of longevity. I can’t wait to see the sequel in theaters. Film - Two Devils and a Drama As I wrote last week, in the past, theatrical-first film flops weren’t eligible for “Miss of the Week” or “Miss of the Year” honors/dishonors, but since so many more films go to theaters first these days, I’ve made them eligible now! But it’s complicated. You see, this is a Streaming Ratings Report, emphasis on streaming, which makes analyzing this week’s two biggest streaming misses—The Drama on HBO Max (A24’s dramedy starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson) and Prime Video’s The Devil Mouth (a killer shark movie starring young attractive people)—somewhat tricky. The Drama isn’t eligible for Luminate, but The Devil’s Mouth only had 1.5 million hours in its first week: The Devil’s Mouth notched 5.2 million hours according to Nielsen. Meanwhile, The Drama missed the charts entirely. Not great! But Prime Video is a much bigger streamer than HBO Max. That said, HBO Max titles are on Prime Video, but I think Prime Video prioritizes their original/exclusive titles, which helps boost their viewership. Complicating this further, The Drama made $48 million in the US—while A24 sells foreign distribution; the $57 million of overseas grosses helps A24 sell overseas rights for money in the future—off of a $28 million budget (which seems low for Zendaya and Pattinson, so they might have backend). The Devil’s Mouth, though, had zero dollars at the box office. The other stats for The Devil’s Mouth are bleak, and by “bleak”, I mean horrendous: a 4.7 on 15K reviews on IMDb (yikes) and a 46 on Metacritic (double yikes). The Drama, though buzzy online, only has a solid (but far from elite) 7.1 IMDb score on 121K reviews and a 59 on Metacritic (which is far, far lower than I’d have guessed). So which film is the “Miss of the Week”? I’m giving it to The Devil’s Mouth for one simple reason: it’s a horror film. And almost all horror films, even poorly reviewed horror films, should get a shot in theaters to at least try to recoup some of their budgets. The Drama made money at the box office and The Devil’s Mouth didn’t. It’s just like the situation last issue with Obsession and Masters of the Universe. Sure, Obsession didn’t pop on the streaming charts, but at least it already made it money at the box office. And as we’ve been seeing for years now and we’ll see all fall, theatrical films just do better on streaming. After all, the big “devil” winner this week was actually The Devil Wears Prada 2 with 14.8 million hours according to Nielsen. That’s right, The Devil Wears Prada 2—one of the box office success stories of May—came to streaming and parlayed its $220 million box office into 14.8 million Nielsen hours. Disney also put out a datecdote that it had 15.2 million “views” globally in five days, but again we don’t have a lot of great context for what that means. Here’s how it stacks up to other Hulu films, since I’m categorizing this mainly as a Hulu title (though it was also on Disney+): Share Quick Notes on Film We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out… Whether Hulu has a new hit show on its hands... The top first and third seasons of all time and which shows are climbing those charts… What version of Spidey is the most popular... What sport and TV show are performing better on NBC than the NBA... All the flops, bombs and misses... ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support. Coming Soon! Next week, wow, things stay so busy. One of streaming’s biggest shows of all time, Ted Lasso, returns along with new YA-ish shows from Hulu (The Shards, from Ryan Murphy) and Prime Video (Sterling Point). The Challenge moves to Paramount+, plus My Life with the Walter Boys returns to Netflix and Futurama returns to Hulu. And Netflix has a new horror film, The Last House. Lots to talk about! All month, things stay busy. We’re talking Reacher on Prime Video! Outer Banks and Tires on Netflix! Lanterns on HBO Max! UFC 330 on Paramount+ and the MLB Field of Dreams game on Netflix. And a ton of smaller films come to streaming. Long term, the VMAs are back on 27-Sep! I feel like I haven’t heard much about this show in past years, but I’m seeing more news coverage and buzz for this show than in past years. I’m curious to see how it does.

entertainment.substack.com logo
Sep 4 • 3:16 PM EDT • Entertainment • entertainment.substack.com
STUFF Named 2026 NBA Mascot of the Year

The Orlando Magic’s legendary dragon clinches his third career title, cementing a record-breaking season of high-flying stunts, viral digital content, and unmatched comedic performances across the league.

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Sep 16 • 1:34 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Dragon's Dogma 2 Frame Rates Massively Improved with Patch 3.2 on PS5, PS5 Pro

Top Dogma

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Sep 2 • 2:00 PM EDT • Technology • pushsquare.com
Square Enix Shows Off Exclusive Sleeve For Dragon Quest XI S On Switch 2

Available with the "packaged version" in Japan

nintendolife.com logo
Sep 25 • 2:30 AM EDT • Technology • nintendolife.com
Dhani Harrison and Nigel Godrich on their trippy new band Dragonflies

Pals since their days living in L.A. in the early 2000s, the two English musicians have a new group called Dragonflies.

latimes.com logo
Sep 18 • 6:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • latimes.com
The upcoming D&D interpretation of World of Warcraft sounds great, but don't expect it to work like the MMO does

World of Warcraft is being given the Dungeons & Dragons treatment in a massive new book. But D&D: WoW works quite differently to the MMO.

eurogamer.net logo
Oct 5 • 12:25 PM EDT • Technology • eurogamer.net
The Nets almost became the Swamp Dragons in the 90s. Now they’re hosting a night to celebrate it

One of the NBA's most infamous almost-rebrands will now be commemorated as part of the Nets' 60-year anniversary celebration.

nytimes.com logo
Sep 2 • 1:57 PM EDT • Sports • nytimes.com
Which is the best version of Dragon Quest XI S? Switch 2, PC, PS4, Xbox, PS5, Steam Deck, & AYN Thor compared

We compare Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition launches for Switch 2 on September 24

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Sep 24 • 7:59 AM EDT • Technology • rpgsite.net
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: Dragon Pearl of Destruction launches February 4, 2027

Side-scrolling beat’ em up game He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: Dragon Pearl of Destruction will launch for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC via Ste…

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Oct 12 • 9:05 AM EDT • Technology • gematsu.com
'We heard you, we heard media, we heard analysts': Motorola talks about why now is the time North America needs its premium Signature 27 phone

Qualcomm flew me out to Maui to attend Snapdragon Summit, where I got some hands-off time with the new Motorola Signature 27.

androidcentral.com logo
Sep 24 • 4:34 PM EDT • Technology • androidcentral.com
‘Game of Thrones’ movie officially set for 2029

‘Game of Thrones: Aegon’s Conquest,’ the first movie spinoff, gets an official release date.

ew.com logo
Sep 29 • 1:46 PM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com
Which Nvidia GPU Is Equivalent To The Meta Quest 3?

The Meta Quest 3 utilizes the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2, which can rival an Nvidia GTX 960, but a one-to-one comparison doesn't paint the whole picture.

bgr.com logo
Sep 15 • 5:47 PM EDT • Technology • bgr.com
Four AI Agents Have Slain Minecraft's Ender Dragon

"To our knowledge, this is the first end-to-end autonomous completion of Minecraft by AI agents."

gizmodo.com logo
Oct 19 • 5:15 PM EDT • Technology • gizmodo.com
Dragon Lights Reno | Giant Lanterns, Dinosaurs & Interactive Family Fun

Dragon Lights is back in Reno with an all-new nighttime experience! Yu Tong Chen, Event Manager for Dragon Lights, joins Sarah Johns at the Wilbur D. May Arboretum for a

2news.com logo
Oct 2 • 6:33 PM EDT • Entertainment • 2news.com
Minka Kelly and Imagine Dragons singer Dan Reynolds break up

Minka Kelly and Dan Reynolds have ended their four-year relationship. The two met in 2022 after meeting through a mutual friend, following Reynolds' separation from wife Aja Volkman.

latimes.com logo
Oct 8 • 6:43 PM EDT • Entertainment • latimes.com
Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen devs say Western and Japanese players want different things from the game

There's a reason players are split on some of the changes Capcom made to Dragon's Dogma 2 with recent updates.

eurogamer.net logo
Sep 3 • 8:43 AM EDT • Technology • eurogamer.net
Microsoft launches 12-inch Surface Pro with Snapdragon X2 Plus & 5G, 13-inch Surface Laptop too

Microsoft is rolling out refreshes to its smaller Surface Laptop and Surface Pro machines powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Plus...

9to5google.com logo
Sep 23 • 4:31 PM EDT • Technology • 9to5google.com
Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6’s Engineering Prototype Video Surfaces Before Official Launch, Showing A New Packaging, Improved Benchmark Scores & More

An engineering prototype of Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 has leaked ahead of launch, revealing a new SoC packaging design, higher benchmark scores, and key hardware upgrades

wccftech.com logo
Sep 21 • 3:48 AM EDT • Technology • wccftech.com
Motorola's New Signature 27 Is Among The First Smartphone To Use The Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 Processor

Not bad for a quick refresh.

engadget.com logo
Sep 22 • 4:00 PM EDT • Technology • engadget.com
Review: Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen (PS5) - Epic Expansion Is Peak Dragon's Dogma

Top Dogma

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Oct 7 • 7:30 PM EDT • Technology • pushsquare.com
Exynos 2700 Enters Mass Production, Claims Tipster, 10% Higher Volume Than Exynos 2600 & 10% Higher Multi-Core Performance Than Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6

Exynos 2700 is reportedly in mass production, a tipster claims, with 10% higher volume than Exynos 2600 and 10% faster multi-core speeds than Snapdragon

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Oct 2 • 7:55 AM EDT • Technology • wccftech.com
3 ways the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 is actually worse than last year’s chip

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 cuts key features found on last year's Gen 5 chip. Is Qualcomm's new flagship processor a hidden downgrade?

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Sep 26 • 5:30 AM EDT • Technology • androidauthority.com
Valve has ported Half-Life: Alyx to ARM, and it’s free with Steam Frame

One of the best PC VR games now runs natively on a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip.

theverge.com logo
Sep 14 • 1:00 PM EDT • Technology • theverge.com
I wasn't sure about Googlebooks, but after playing with two Snapdragon-powered laptops, I'm actually considering switching

The best of Android and ChromeOS, together.

androidcentral.com logo
Sep 26 • 11:08 AM EDT • Technology • androidcentral.com
Red Magic 12 Pro+ full design revealed ahead of October 15 launch

Red Magic 12 Pro+ gets a full-screen display, flat rear design, Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 and advanced cooling.

gizmochina.com logo
Oct 8 • 12:33 AM EDT • Technology • gizmochina.com
When 1 + 1 = 1: The Miserable Math Behind Many Media Mergers

(Welcome to the “Most Important Story of the Week”, my bi-weekly strategy column analyzing the most important (but often not buzziest) news story of the last two weeks. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. Please subscribe.) The last few issues of this newsletter have circled two topics: September’s streaming viewership and all the Paramount/Skydance/Warner Bros./Discovery merger news. I’m happy to say on the Streaming Ratings Report front, we’ll be all caught up by early next week, then the SRR will come out on a tight weekly schedule. Then, after today, I’ll have slayed my PSWbD dragon. It’s such a big story, it demanded multiple issues. With the announcement of a name (just Skydance) and executive team, though, I think we can almost close the book on this story. In terms of topics, it becomes just another studio to cover. So today, I have one last set of takes on that merger. As I’ve sat with it, reading about who was staying and who was going, a big worry crystallized in my brain, and I gotta get that take out. Plus, I still owe you a host of “ugliness” that didn’t fit in my previous “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” takes. Let’s dive in! Subscribe Most Important Story of the Week - As Paramount Shuffles Deck Chairs, Will They Build or Consolidate? On social media—I try to avoid most social media platforms, but sometimes I end up checking in—the best joke I saw about the announcement of the new name of Skydance was from fellow reporter Claire Atkinson who pointed out… Yeah, I laughed out loud at that one. Later, though, I saw another Twitter response (that later got deleted, so I can’t shout the person out) that did give me pause. The person noted that the Titanic film made the better analogy: a super expensive project everyone in the town doubted that went on to conquer the globe. So yeah: on one hand, the image of the Titanic recalls the actual ship and its infamous end, but that clip is from a movie which proved the doubters wrong. So for all the skepticism of the latest massive media merger, one could wonder which way this one goes. Does it crash like the Titanic or rise to glory like Titanic, the movie? Either way, this deal is “Titanic”, looking at the massive debt required to close the deal, which is not going well when it comes to borrowing costs for Paramount… …or borrowing costs for Oracle. But I’ve started to get worried about another outcome: the sum of this merger will be smaller and weaker and less profitable than its former parts. In other words, one plus one won’t equal three or two, but an even smaller number. Skydance paid to take a traditional studio off the board, but they won’t really capture the upside. Let me explain what I mean, but first, let’s look at the series of news that inspired this thought. Skydance Sets Its Leadership Team As soon as the Paramount-Skydance-Warner Bros.-Discovery merger closed, the new leadership team announced a new name—Skydance, which I’ll use going forward—and a new executive leadership team. You’ve probably read through all the executive shuffling, but if you haven’t, here’s a quick, incomplete summary, in rough order of importance: Mattel’s CEO Ynon Kreiz—who previously ran Maker Studios—joined as co-CEO with David Ellison. HBO/HBO Max’s Casey Bloys will stay and run streaming. Former head of streaming for Paramount-Skydance Cindy Holland—who was also at Netflix—will depart. The former heads of Warner Bros.—Pam Abdy and Mike De Luca—are out. The film studios will be run by Dana Goldstein and Josh Greenstein. George Cheeks of Paramount will run Skydance TV, controlling all the TV production units. In comic book news, the DC films will still be run by Peter Gunn and Peter Safran. Lastly, the head of CNN, Mark Thompson, will stay in place. Let’s quickly opine on the particulars before diving into the broad ramifications. We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out… Who I like and dislike in their next gigs… Why I think this consolidation will likely leave Skydance worse off… The math behind which mergers succeed and which don’t… A lot more ugliness in this merger… And a whole lot more... ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support.

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Oct 13 • 3:20 PM EDT • Entertainment • entertainment.substack.com
Dragon’s Dogma 2: Dark Arisen - The Kotaku Review

Miles to go before we sleep

kotaku.com logo
Oct 7 • 6:00 PM EDT • Technology • kotaku.com
Scientists discover real “dragon” lizard

In the mountainous evergreen forests of the Tak-Kamphaeng Phet Province, Thailand, scientists discovered a new species of lizard. Researchers named the species Acanthosaura syrax, commonly called the Syrax mountain horned dragon, in reference to Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen’s dragon Syrax in the “Game of Thrones” prequel series, “House of the Dragon.” A research team led by...

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Sep 14 • 9:00 AM EDT • Science • theticker.org
SpaceX Dragon Delivers Groundbreaking Science and Solar Arrays to ISS

SpaceX has delivered tiny brain models, 3D heart tissue, and artificial retina technology to the space station in a mission that could open new doors for medical research on Earth. SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft successfully arrived at the International Space Station on October 15, docking at 10:27 a.m. EDT with the space-facing port of the station’s

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Oct 17 • 7:53 AM EDT • Science • scitechdaily.com
RuneScape Arrives on XBOX for the First Time in 25 Years with Survival Adventure RuneScape: Dragonwilds!

Welcome to RuneScape: Dragonwilds, a survival game set in the RuneScape universe for 1-4 players, arriving in 1.0 September 15, on XBOX Game Pass.

news.xbox.com logo
Sep 2 • 10:00 AM EDT • Technology • news.xbox.com
NASA to change how it selects science missions

NASA is rolling out changes to how it selects science missions in an effort to speed up and simplify the process.

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Oct 22 • 5:05 AM EDT • Science • spacenews.com
The Streamers Tried To Conquer Labor Day…and Whiffed

(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what’s popular in streaming TV and what isn’t. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.) What? Another Streaming Ratings Report already? You betcha. Nielsen has moved up the release of their Streaming Ratings data by two weeks, which means I’ve got two extra issues to get out. But I love this change because it will make this report more timely and easier to publish regularly. This week—with the viewership data for the week of 31-Aug—we’ve got some huge, huge topics to discuss. On the film side, two theatrical films (The Mandalorian and Grogu on Disney+ and Scary Movie on Paramount+) contend with two non-Netflix straight-to-streaming films (Mayday on Apple TV and The Runner on Prime Video). The streamers went all in to win Labor Day weekend in America. And we have a bunch of TV shows to analyze, both new shows (Netflix’s The Gentleman, Hulu’s Chad Powers, and an Alix Earle reality show) and weekly shows like Reacher, Ted Lasso, House of the Dragon and Lioness. All that, plus nepotism in Hollywood, some eye-popping fantasy football stats, all the flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot more. Let’s dive right in! (Reminder: The streaming ratings report focuses on the U.S. market and compiles data from Nielsen’s weekly top ten viewership ranks, Luminate’s Top Ten Data, JustWatch and Reelgood interest data, Samba TV household viewership, company datecdotes, Netflix hours viewed data, Google Trends, and IMDb to determine the most popular content. While most data points are current, Nielsen’s data covers the weeks of August 31st to September 6th, 2026. You can find a link to my terminology here.) Subscribe Film - A Slew of Labor Day Disappointments? A lot of streamers released big new films this week, why? My theory is that the streamers know that four-day weekends can propel streaming films to glory. But if you’ve been reading more over the last two years, you know that big holiday weekends aren’t driving big viewership numbers the way they did post-Covid. And interestingly enough, Netflix didn’t put out a big new film this week. But four other streamers did, trying to take advantage of the holiday with some (not cheap) swings, including… The Mandalorian and Grogu on Disney+ (a Star Wars film that cost $165 million and made $177 million at the US domestic box office) Mayday on Apple TV (rumored $100 million budget, no theatrical release) The Runner on Prime Video (at least a $40 million budget, but likely $50 to $80 million, no theatrical release). Scary Movie on Paramount+ ($30 million budget, made $108 million domestically). (Paramount+ also released a made-for-streaming film based on the Thundermans IP, and I’ll discuss that later.) So…how’d they do? The Mandalorian and Grogu Leads The Way (But That Isn’t Enough) Let’s start with The Mandalorian and Grogu (which I’ll abbreviate to Mando for most of this article). We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out… How Mando, Mayday, The Runner and Scary Movie performed on streaming... How the powerhouse weekly released shows (Reacher, Ted Lasso and Lioness) have accumulate a LOT of viewership… How House of the Dragon finished its run… The latest Netflix show to have a sophomore slump… Whether top creators can drive viewers to their shows… Nepotism in Hollywood and the music business... All the flops, bombs and misses for the week… And more… ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support. Coming Soon! Since Nielsen has accelerated their streaming data release schedule, I’ve got a lot of Streaming Ratings Reports coming your way! Next issue, I’ll be looking at the second season of Peacock’s The Paper, the latest season of Hulu’s The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, and a very, very expensive Daily Wire fantasy series that’s now on Prime Video. Plus Crew Girl and Dang! on Netflix, a new Tyler Perry film, and one of the biggest bombs of the summer, Supergirl. In the next two issues, I’ll take a look at the return of the NFL to streaming, Toy Story 5 on Disney+, Backrooms on HBO Max, and The Breadwinner on Netflix. On the TV side, we’ve got Netflix’s Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, Dancing with the Stars on Disney+, Apple TV’s Slow Horses, a Reacher spinoff on Prime Video, and Paramount+’s MobLand, a Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey comedy on Apple TV, a sequel to a Cosby Show spinoff on Netflix, The Great British Baking Show, and the Unabomber film. And while doing all that, I want to take a look at adult animated shows, Ride or Die’s cancellation, and Netflix’s summer films. So much great stuff! Long term, two bits of comic book news. The X-Men cast has been announced, and go ahead and color me bull-ish, if not very, very bull-ish on this bit of comic book IP. In weirder news, HBO Max ordered a “true crime” show by Jimmy Olsen about Gorilla Grodd being falsely convicted of murder. I mean, what? I don’t know, let’s see what happens.

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Sep 29 • 6:45 PM EDT • Entertainment • entertainment.substack.com
Deep dive
😐 Neutral (16%)
wow
100%
Google Pixel can use Tensor as long as it wants; it’s all the other specs I’m jealous of

This week saw the debut of Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon chips and, with it, the usual onslaught of Tensor hate around...

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Sep 27 • 9:00 AM EDT • Technology • 9to5google.com
New insider tip claims the Samsung Galaxy S27 Ultra will only be available with a Qualcomm chipset

The S27, S27+ and S27 Pro are still slated to have Exynos variants in some regions and Snapdragon ones in others. This always seems to be a pressing...

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Oct 11 • 4:31 PM EDT • Technology • gsmarena.com
Castleford captain Mellor heads to Catalans

Captain Alex Mellor leaves Castleford Tigers after four years to join Catalans Dragons in a two-year deal.

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Sep 26 • 9:30 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Motorola's wide-fold Razr Flex runs Geekbench with older Snapdragon chip and 12GB of RAM

Motorola Razr Flex appears on Geekbench with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chip, 12GB RAM, and Android 17 ahead of its rumored December launch.

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Oct 19 • 10:25 PM EDT • Technology • gizmochina.com
The latest game from the creator of Dragon Quest was made in ‘about 30 minutes’ with AI

Horii has previously praised AI technology and its use in video games…

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Oct 12 • 5:33 AM EDT • Technology • videogameschronicle.com
Xiaomi's 18 Pro Series Phones Have The Latest Snapdragon Chip And A Samsung-Like Privacy Screen

You'll have to wait a bit if you're outside China though.

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Sep 24 • 11:23 AM EDT • Technology • engadget.com
Some DragonCon fans furious; Six kids living in deplorable conditions; Entertainment center's upgrade 97.5 Glory FM | North Georgia's Family Radio Station

(GA. NEWS NETWORK) *DragonCon is in Atlanta this weekend, but some fans are not happy. They booked at Stockbridge Suits nearly a year ago. But the hotel clo ...

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Sep 6 • 6:33 AM EDT • Entertainment • wgtjradio.com
Shrewsbury soup-maker sees business soar after Dragons' Den meeting

Bella Acland won the backing of guest dragon Susie Ma, along with a £40,000 investment.

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Sep 18 • 2:08 PM EDT • Business • bbc.com
HIGHLIGHTS: Arizona Compass Prep vs. Odessa

ODESSA, Texas (KMID/KPEJ) – The Arizona Compass Prep Dragons spoiled the Odessa Bronchos’ homecoming as the Dragons won 31-27. With the loss, the Bronchos drop to 2-4, and next week they kick off district play at home against Midland. Watch the video above for the highlights.

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Oct 3 • 1:01 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Voices: Jamey Taylor, Chief Information Officer, Dragonfly Health

This article is sponsored by Dragonfly Health. As hospice and post-acute care organizations look to reduce complexity across care delivery, technology is

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Oct 20 • 10:19 AM EDT • Health • hospicenews.com
Who Won August and September: Original Films or Franchises?

(Welcome to the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a newsletter on the entertainment industry and business strategy. I write a weekly Streaming Ratings Report and a bi-weekly strategy column, along with occasional deep dives into other topics, like today’s article. Please subscribe.) I just heard someone say that if you’re reading a pundit or data analyst, and they don’t tell you that they got anything wrong, they’re not a pundit but an “influencer”. I agree with that. You have to tell your audience when you get things wrong, or they won’t (or shouldn’t) trust you as much. Today, we’ve got another edition of “What I Got Right, What I Got Wrong”. In general, I’m patting myself on the back (and patting very hard) about a few things like IP at the box office, LIV golf, horror films, crowdfunding movies, superheroes, and old people going to the theaters. That said, I also made a couple of data mistakes on the streaming bubble popping and HBO’s datecdotes, so I’m not perfect. But first, I need your feedback... Subscribe Follow-Ups: What Should We Call Mid-Budget Movies Which Aren’t Cinematic Enough for Theaters But Are Too Expensive to Make Money on Streaming? After I asked for feedback on what we should call straight-to-streaming films that are too big to pencil out on streaming but not really big enough to resonate in theaters, I got some great suggestions from you all, including... “Moldilocks” from John Aboud “Little Big Indie” from Travis Frick1 “Midflicks” from Jonathan Funke. “Extra-Medium” from Jona Nwuke. (Read the explanation in the footnote.) Between these and Brandon Katz—who suggested “Bermuda Budget Triangle”, “The Platform Gap” and “The Distribution Deadzone”—we’ve got some excellent suggestions. And they’re better than my suggestion, the “Streaming Budget Dead Zone”, so let’s take a poll! The winning entry becomes the new term. Loading... RIGHT: LIV Golf is Fully Bankrupt…Is Anyone Else Next? A few years ago, I was always a bit perplexed at all the articles I’d read praising LIV Golf and their strategy to disrupt the PGA. LIV Golf, a brand new professional golf league, offered PGA stars ten times what they made on the PGA Tour to join their new league. And folks praised this strategy for its initial “success” in that a lot of big names did indeed leave the PGA. Yeah, of course the players came over. LIV Golf paid them so, so, so much more! But LIV Golf hadn’t discovered a way to increase potential revenue. So think about this in basic business terms… They paid much more in costs… …but had no real way to increase revenue. That’s not a strategy! That’s deficit financing. It won’t work unless you bankrupt the competition (and then turn around and pay those same golfers much, much less). It’s not a sustainable strategy and only lasts as long as the company/person/nation backing it decides they’re cool with losing money. For LIV Golf, that meant Middle East oil wealth, in particular Saudi Arabian money. Clearly, the current Iran War has hurt Middle East finances, so they need to trim their more exorbitant spending. And LIV Golf was part of that trimming. This should be a major warning for others. TGL’s parent company, TMRW Sports, just got a $1 billion valuation, despite TGL’s (the indoor golf league) horrible TV viewership of less than half a million viewers per match. Unrivaled, the women’s basketball league, just secured a $650 valuation, despite its horrible TV viewership and a new rival (Project B) entering the scene next year. To relate this to streaming, Hollywood should ask which streamers may have wealthy patrons funding their losses. (Let’s be clear: Google, Amazon and Apple.) Could those patrons lose their appetite? For Amazon, probably not. But Apple has a new boss, so maybe! WRONG: My Analysis of the Streaming Bubble Was Missing a Week I’m going to be congratulating myself a lot today, but I make mistakes too, like this data goof. When I last compiled the data on the decline in TV shows, I was missing one week at the end of June. If you look at the first image, you can see that one week was mislabelled as “July”. Mainly, this image got updated to show a 27% decline, not 29%: This change doesn’t really impact the overall analysis, but it is two percent better. By the way, through the third quarter, the decline increased and it’s now a 30% decrease since 2022. (I’ll write/visualize this in an upcoming article.) But I want you to trust me and my data. Especially these days, when many people are using LLMs that I know are inserting faulty data into their charts, I want to keep earning my audience’s faith. So that’s the accurate data. RIGHT: IP Remains Very, Very Popular In July, I wrote a giant (and I mean giant) article on Backrooms, Obsession, and the box office, going over what we know, what we don’t know about what works in theaters, looking at YouTubers, IP, the horror genre, comic book movies, and a whole lot more. The month of August really tested a lot of my theses and, being honest, mostly supported my arguments. Let’s start with IP. Looking at 8-Aug (the weekend after Spider-Man: Brand New Day came out) to 18-Sep (the weekend that Resident Evil came out, which I think provides a nice bookend to this time period), there were seven films based on pre-existing IP: Resident Evil (2026) ($126 million) Practical Magic 2 ($65 million) _Insidious: Out of the Furthe_r ($65 million) Coyote Vs. Acme ($59 million) Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie ($53 million) Tony ($15 million) Super Troopers 3 ($7 million) Compare those to the notable original films from the past month—I actually could have included more movies, but here are just thirteen, bringing us to an even twenty films—including.... The End of Oak Street ($54 million) Buddy ($26 million) Mutiny ($15 million) By Any Means ($15 million) The Dog Stars ($14 million) Runner ($14 million) One Night Only ($11 million) Hope ($8 million) Spa Weekend ($7 million) The Uprising ($6 million) Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma ($6 million) Onslaught ($3 million) Eli Roth’s Ice Cream Man ($2.8 million) Here’s that in chart form: Five of the top six films in this time period were all based on IP. I made a big chart of films that grossed over $200 million at the box office before Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey hit theaters. Let’s update that chart! By the way, if you want to see how I categorized each film—so another bar chart—here it is: I know that many of my fellow critics/pundits/analysts dislike films based on IP and how Hollywood is making so many of them. And I’m sympathetic to this point of view. As I’ve written many, many times before, you need a balance between existing franchises, new IP, and original films. And Hollywood clearly needs to make more films like Resident Evil (a well-made film from a visionary director) and fewer Practical Magic 2’s (which didn’t get critical or customer buzz). But at some point, critics and pundits need to contend with what audiences are telling them: Movie-goers aren’t showing up to original films. Audiences are speaking with their dollars, telling you they want more IP and franchises. You can try to convince studio heads to make fewer IP-based films and franchises, but the data and numbers aren’t there. Instead, critics need to work harder to convince audiences to show up for original films. Aim your ire/concern at the average person, not studio heads.2 Because they’re just making the films that audiences are telling them to make. WRONG: Original Horror Films Didn’t Break Out I’ll be honest, even though I wrote an article casting some skepticism on the horror genre in July, if you asked me to make a prediction, I would have predicted that, in August, a new, original horror film would have blown up. No, seriously, I just assumed that Obsession and Backrooms presaged a change in audience behavior. But none of the buzzy new original horror films from August—Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Onslaught (not an action film in spite of the ads), The End of Oak Street, Eli Roth’s Ice Cream Man, or _Buddy—_broke out. To be clear, exactly one of those films (Buddy) had good “ROI”, but again—I try to be specific in my language—none were “popular” in any broad sense of the word. None of them will be “saving” movies theaters like Backrooms or _Obsession_helped save the summer. The new Insidious film and Resident Evil, both based on IP, were far and away the biggest horror films since July. (We’ll see if this changes in October/Halloween season.) RIGHT: Stay Skeptical about Crowdfunding... I’ve long been skeptical about crowd-investing platforms as one of Hollywood’s saviors, mainly because there’s so much hype/buzz. People need to stay more skeptical about more things, explaining both the potential upside but also the downsides. In particular, the media often hypes crowdfunding at the start and never checks in on the actual results after they’ve come in later. And August gave us our first update! _Ice Cream Man—_directed by Eli Roth—grossed $6 million off of a $5.5 million budget. This is a production of The Horror Section, which was one of the first “crowd investing” studios with 2,400 investors, which means that 2,400 investors probably lost money. They certainly aren’t getting as great of returns as if they had just invested their dollars in the stock market. Hopefully Stiletto (Tagline: “Someone’s Going to Make it Rain Blood!”) does better next month. WRONG: Another Data Goof Here’s another data error. When the first episode of House of the Dragon came out, HBO put out that it had 21.5 million viewers in the first three days, and I read that to mean in the US…but no, it was global. So my US-only datecdotes charts shouldn’t have included it. We never got US-only numbers for the first episode, but for the final episode, HBO put out that it had 11 million US viewers. (And that global dropped to 21 million viewers.) Here’s the updated chart (which I’ve since used in the Streaming Ratings Report): Still, this show is absolutely huge. RIGHT: Superhero Films Remain Very, Very Popular After Supergirl flopped, I read a few takes that “comic book movies are going the way of the Western”. Post-Spider-Man: Brand New Day, that take didn’t age well. To be fair, I have a very nuanced take on the superhero genre right now; it’s down right now, for a lot of reasons. But it’s not “dead”. Maybe _Spider-_Man is just a really popular character? I saw that take, and it’s a fair counter-argument. (But pundits arguing that superhero movies were dead should have mentioned this $1.5 billion counter-argument…) But is it just Spider-Man? The next Avengers film already has $50 million in pre-sales (and I was skeptical that that film would do well) and the Avengers: End Game re-release topped the box office two weekends ago (over three original films). And I wouldn’t bet against Batman or Superman. So maybe it’s just Spider-Man, Batman, Superman and the Avengers. Oh, and Deadpool, of course. And Black Panther. And Wolverine. And probably the X-Men. Plus a well-made Wonder Woman or the Hulk film could break out. But that’s it! It’s just those ten characters/teams. Oh, what’s that? Lanterns is also doing well on HBO? (See previous section…) To be fair, I’m actually pretty sympathetic to the argument that more popular characters—like Spider-Man and Batman—anchor more popular films. In fact, I made that exact argument three years ago when I first wrote about the “Marvel-cession”. In many ways, you can blame The Guardians of the Galaxy for fooling Marvel Studios (and the rest of us) into believing that any character could pop. It turns out, the list of iconic characters is probably smaller than most people think. But it’s probably too early to say that superhero films and comic book movies are dead unless “death” means a slight decline over a longtime. RIGHT: Who Killed Theaters? Old People I get frustrated whenever I see headlines or analysis about how young people are “returning” to theaters. As I’ve detailed(for years), young people have always powered the US box office, despite narratives about “kids these days” and their “phones”. Really, what’s changed post-2020/pandemic is that old people aren’t going to the movies nearly as much. This summer, I saw a movie (from an older director) in a theater near a retirement community, and multiple older people at the theater were talking about how this was their first time seeing a movie in years. I dislike personal anecdotes, so YouGov can fill in the data, best summarized by this headline: “Who killed movie theaters? Not the youths”. According to them, 64% of people aged 18-29 have seen a movie in the last year, but only 30% of 65-and-older. 20% of 18-29 have seen a movie in theaters in the last week and 42% in the last month. Here’s the polling data: Most concerning? Many Americans (17%) think theaters are a worse or much worse experience than watching films at home. Slight WRONG: Hadestown Opens Big A live theater capture of the Broadway musical, Hadestown, made $20 million at the US box office, which begs the question: was I wrong to be skeptical about musicals a few years ago? Yes and no. On the one hand, $20 million is a far cry from being “popular”, so yeah, the genre isn’t that popular overall and Hadestown is one of the more popular musicals from recent years (i.e. the “Taylor Swift Data Fallacy” in action). On the other, I doubt filming this cost all that much, and I don’t think that they spent much on marketing, so this is a good source of ancillary revenue. Smaller Updates WRONG: As I mentioned in a Streaming Ratings Report, I underestimated the budget for Enola Holmes 3. It probably cost more like $50 million, if not more. But... I’m not sure that it really matters? At sub-10 million hours, prices have to come down to make this work. WRONG: Netflix is giving Ink a 27-day in theaters! To quote the kids/YouTubers these days, let’s go! Now I might actually have a chance to see Danny Boyle’s latest in theaters. I’d complained about this in a “Coming Soon” section, but I was heartened to read that Netflix is giving multiple films longer theatrical windows this year. RIGHT: Netflix is sending 4-5 films per year to theaters. Netflix is slowly but surely sending more and more films to theaters, as I cautiously predicted earlier this year. For now, it’s just three big films and a number of awards contenders, but still, this is great news. And they’ll be releasing box office grosses! Just this week, Ted Sarandos confirmed that KPop Demon Hunters 2 will come to theaters (and my guess is it performs in the box office top ten at a minimum). WRONG: Angel has 3 million subscribers! How do I know this? Well, they told Deadline, who reported it. I marked this as “wrong”, since they’ve doubled their subscribers in one year but, you know, they don’t really have a hit film to speak of and they’re still losing money. WRONG: Furious was only renewed for one more season. I accidentally wrote “two more seasons” in my latest “Renewals, Cancellations, Un-Orders and Removals Update”. RIGHT: House of David is ending with its third season. In July, Prime Video renewed House of David for a third season, as I just wrote in my latest “Renewals and Cancellations” report. Well, now it’s ending after that third season. Why? As I’ve been writing, its viewership wasn’t great. I got feedback that this show didn’t cost very much, but it cost enough that its limited viewership didn’t save it. WRONG: Adults was a Hulu original! So I missed Adults when it first came out last year; I saw that it aired on FX and just assumed that it was a linear-first program. Turns out, it aired three episodes on FX, but binge-released the rest of its episodes the next day on Hulu. Huh. So I should have covered it last year! But I just wrote about it. 1 “When I was a kid in the 90s, if you wore a t-shirt to school that wasn’t too big and also wasn’t too small, but somehow didn’t quite fit, we’d say you were wearing an “extra-medium” shirt.” 2 As always, a huge exception is Disney, which barely makes anything original anymore.

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Oct 7 • 6:41 PM EDT • Entertainment • entertainment.substack.com
Faile breaks Dragons home run record

A Dayton Dragons record set over 20 years ago has been broken.

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Sep 6 • 2:23 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Galaxy S27 Ultra teased to come with a surprising chip

Samsung might launch the Galaxy S27 Ultra with a chip faster than the latest Snapdragon.

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Sep 2 • 10:09 PM EDT • Technology • phonearena.com
What we know about Lenovo’s mysterious third Googlebook ahead of tomorrow’s NYC media event

Tomorrow morning in New York City, Google is finally taking the stage to pull back the curtain on Googlebook - well, for invited media, that is. Over the last few weeks, the leaks have been flowing...

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Sep 14 • 10:41 AM EDT • Technology • chromeunboxed.com
Review: Dragon's Dogma 2 On Switch 2: The First "Impossible Port" for the New Generation?

An impressive outing for a demanding game - but frame pacing needs fixing.

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Oct 12 • 11:00 AM EDT • Technology • digitalfoundry.net
Will Netflix’s Latest Horror Film Save Its Summer? And Introducing a New Data Source...

(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what’s popular in streaming TV and what isn’t. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.) All month, I’ve been polling you, my readers, on how we think the summer’s biggest blockbusters will do when they eventually land on streaming, and I wanted to share the results. First up, how readers think The Odyssey will perform when it comes to Peacock... People are pretty bullish that The Odyssey will smash it for Peacock. I don’t know that it will have as much rewatchability as Wicked did for kids, but we’ll see. It is now Universal’s highest-grossing film of all time. One note: almost half of Christopher Nolan’s films weren’t available for streaming the week The Odyssey came to theaters, including some of his biggest films like Inception, Dunkirk, Tenet, Oppenheimer and Insomnia. If you did want to watch the others, Prime Video had Memento and The Dark Knight trilogy, HBO Max only had The Dark Knight trilogy (even though Warner Bros. produced most of Nolan’s films), Hulu had The Prestige and Interstellar, and Paramount+ had Interstellar. So you needed at least two streaming subscriptions to catch the rest. Warner Bros. whiffed right here. I know they have long term licensing deals, but they should have tried to get as many Nolan films on HBO Max for launch as possible. Here are the results for Spider-Man: Brand New Day: The audience is a bit more mixed on this one, with everyone agreeing Spider-Man will swing to a big opening, but not necessarily elite or best all time. On to this week’s issue. Netflix continues searching for a hit straight-to-streaming summer film and Lioness and Ted Lasso allow me to look at the difference between a “hit” and a ‘hit for them”. All that, plus new YA/teen melodramas on Prime Video and Netflix, the House of the Dragon finale, USA Network claims a big opening, more big NFL ratings, all the flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot more. But we start with a fun new data announcement. Let’s dive right in! (Reminder: The streaming ratings report focuses on the U.S. market and compiles data from Nielsen’s weekly top ten viewership ranks, Luminate’s Top Ten Data, JustWatch and Reelgood interest data, Samba TV household viewership, company datecdotes, Netflix hours viewed data, Google Trends, and IMDb to determine the most popular content. While most data points are current, Nielsen’s data covers the weeks of August 3rd to August 9th, 2026. You can find a link to my terminology here.) Subscribe A New Data Source: Reelgood’s Data on Content Libraries Here’s a fun new treat for you. Reelgood—an online service and app that lets users track where shows or films are streaming—is providing data every month for the Streaming Ratings Report on the size of each streamer’s catalogue, along with the new shows and films for each streamer. Yay! Previously, I had pulled “new shows on streamers premiering on the first of the month”: While I liked that data cut, it was a big wonky since it didn’t show all of the new shows or movies that came to a streamer each month. Instead, I would have preferred something like this from Reelgood’s annual report: And now we have it! I’m going to feature Reelgood’s data monthly, showing both total catalogue size and new shows and films appearing on the charts. That’s going to make these two cool new charts. First, here’s the size of various streamers’ film catalogues… (By the way, Reelgood offered to make the charts for me, but I like doing that task by hand to understand the data better.) They also provided data back to last year. Here’s the number of films timeline: And here are the new films on each streamer for the month prior to Aug: As I get used to this data, I plan to keep tinkering with how I display it, but I’m excited to feature it monthly. Today, I’m sharing the film charts; next issue, I’m going to feature TV shows by streamer. Now, in full disclosure, Reelgood is a sponsor of this little-newsletter-that-could. But in my constant quest to figure out what streamer various shows and films are on, I was already a Reelgood user before this sponsorship. I go to their website all the time, and their data is very accurate on where shows are (or have been). Plus, I’ve been sharing their weekly top ten lists for years now, pre-sponsorship. For me, this is a great win-win, since I get to amplify a service I love, and I get a cool new data source to play with. Now, normally folks don’t usually mention their sponsors directly, but as I wrote before, as I start featuring ads in my newsletter, I plan to be extremely open about who is sponsoring my writing so you can trust what I write. Television - Two Big Returning Shows Look Set to Take Over The Charts One key question when it comes to judging streaming shows is whether a show is a “hit” or a “hit for them”. To be clear, the former means a show that’s one of the top shows on streaming, no questions asked. The latter means a show is one of the biggest, for a given streamer. That distinction makes a big difference! It’s really good to be one of the biggest shows on a streamer; it’s much better to be the biggest on streaming, despite the size of a streamer. Because, as we’ve seen now, nearly every streamer—while lacking the number of subscribers or usage of Netflix—can make hit TV shows: Paramount released Landman, whose first and second seasons were among the top two TV shows the year they came out. HBO Max’s The Pitt’s second season is the biggest show of the year so far. Love Island USA was the top show in 2025 for Peacock. And, crucially for today’s discussion: Wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy back in 2023, Ted Lasso was actually the top streaming show of the year according to Nielsen! So even Apple TV (formerly +) can make hit shows. It just doesn’t make them that often. And looking at the Nielsen charts this week, we have two prime candidates for this discussion: That’s right: Ted Lasso returned to Apple TV for its fourth season. Did it return in all its expected glory? Sure, though right now it’s still just a “hit for Apple TV”, but we’ll see how long it lasts on the charts. Its ten episodes are coming out weekly. (Smart choice, Apple!) Ted Lasso started out strong, actually making the Nielsen charts the week before new episodes dropped, which is a rare feat. (Shows like Stranger Things or Bridgerton have pulled that off. That’s terrific company to join!) On Nielsen, it opened to 14.4 million hours in its first week, and 16.6 million the week of 10-Aug. Here’s how that compares to previous seasons: Apple put out that this is their biggest TV launch through two days ever, and looking at the chart and Apple TV’s viewership history, I’d believe it. Here’s Apple’s top shows for season two and beyond: Other data tells a (mostly) similar story. Ted Lasso made Samba TV and it has elite IMDb scores, an insane 8.7 on 465K reviews. The only outlier is Luminate, where the latest season only had 7.4 million hours, and no other seasons made the top ten. As you’ll see below, that’s well below some other solid, but not spectacular shows like Sterling Point, Ride or Die or Furious. I’d be surprised if Ted Lasso isn’t bigger than those other shows, but it’s fine for different data sources to occasionally disagree. And while it’s sucky to bring this up, given that Warner Bros. produced this show, I do wonder how the streaming wars may have been different if Ted Lasso landed on HBO Max initially instead of Apple. I don’t think one show can make or break a streamer, but given HBO’s brand, it could have helped bring people to that streamer much earlier in its lifespan. (Though yeah, I don’t love calling out executives for passing on hit shows, since that’s just the nature of the job. Even the absolute best execs will pass on lots of successful shows. The key is not greenlighting the under-performers/misses.) The other show I’m thinking about in the “hit or hit for them” category is Lioness from Paramount+. Like Ted Lasso, its first season missed the charts, but it’s grown its audience since then. Here’s how season three opened: We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out… How Lioness did on streaming... Two new melodramas for Netflix and Prime Video... Whether Netflix’s latest horror film saved its summer... Hulu’s Furious and Prime Video’s Ride or Die continuing their strong runs... The latest high profile showrunner to flop on streaming... All the flops, bombs and misses... And a whole lot more... ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support. Next week, we’ve got a double issue—since the week of 17-Aug had very few notable new shows or films—so I’ll look at HBO’s Lanterns, Prime Video’s Reacher, Netflix’s Tires, Outer Banks (which posted up huge numbers four years ago), an Aussie romance, and another baseball event (that didn’t resonate). And a bunch of movies like the latest dramedy from an Adam Sandler daughter, Don’t Say Good Luck, Camp Rock 3 on Disney Channel and Disney+, Michael on Starz, and more. Later this month, we’ve got a ton of shows and films to analyze! Movies will be the big story, featuring a box office bomb (Supergirl on HBO Max) and an “underperformer” (The Mandalorian and Grogu on Disney+) contending with a bunch of star-studded straight-to-streaming films like Netflix’s The Whisper Man (Adam Scott, Michelle Monaghan and De Niro!), Mayday on Apple TV+ (Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh!), The Runner (Gal Gadot) and The Last Sunrise (Eva Longoria and Maia Reficco) on Prime Video. Plus, a ton of TV shows have sophomore seasons coming out. Will The Gentleman put up big numbers on Netflix or suffer from a sophomore slump? Leanne and Beauty in Black on Netflix seem small, but they both might be bigger than you think. Hulu has a bunch of shows: a new season of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives (the first after all the controversy last year) and the second season of Chad Powers (from Peyton Manning’s production company and starring Glen Powell). This one flopped last year; can it score a touchdown this year? Same goes for FX’s Adults, which I didn’t track last year; will it hit this year? Peacock’s The Office spinoff, The Paper and Apple TV’s Dark Matter also return for second seasons. And Netflix has more Untold specials featuring Vince Young, Raygun (that horrible breakdancer) and Mr. T. Long term, Paramount+ is rebooting yet another franchise, Clueless, and I’m somewhat bullish on this new show. The talent attached (Alicia Silverstone) and creative Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage (of The O.C. and Gossip Girl) also feel solid...if they make it funny like the original.

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Sep 14 • 6:43 PM EDT • Entertainment • entertainment.substack.com
Dragon Age Director Finally Says What Fans Have Been Thinking For Years: The Fade Needs To Go

Mark Darrah also shared what he'd change about the other games in the series

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Sep 23 • 11:30 AM EDT • Technology • kotaku.com
Grand Canyon tour operator says some businesses have been set back worse than during COVID-19

Last year’s Dragon-Bravo Fire on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and this August’s devastating floods that restricted lodging on the South Rim, have been a major disruption for local businesses who rely on tourists.

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Sep 26 • 10:13 AM EDT • Business • kjzz.org
Red Magic 12 Pro+ gaming phone launches with Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, liquid-cooling system, 8,400mAh battery, and more

Red Magic 12 Pro+ launches in China with a 185Hz OLED display, Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, an 8,400mAh battery and active cooling.

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Oct 15 • 5:13 AM EDT • Technology • gizmochina.com
Qualcomm denies rumors about Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 overheating

Don't panic just yet. Yesterday, a Korean news outlet shared some concerning news about the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S27 Ultra. According to the report,...

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Oct 17 • 4:01 PM EDT • Technology • gsmarena.com
Kudos to Motorola for This Actually Refreshing Phone Design

The Motorola Signature 27 is powered by Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 8 Elite Exteme Gen 6, and that pretty much guarantees it won’t be cheap.

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Sep 22 • 4:00 PM EDT • Technology • gizmodo.com
Qualcomm says rumors about Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 overheating are ‘inaccurate’

Qualcomm says that rumors of thermal issues and overheating problems on Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 are "inaccurate."

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Oct 17 • 7:05 AM EDT • Technology • 9to5google.com
Xreal's Aura Android XR Smartglasses Will Cost You At Least $1,279

Xreal’s Aura smartglasses are powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Reality Elite chip.

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Oct 7 • 8:00 AM EDT • Technology • engadget.com
Dungeons and Dragons: World of Warcraft – Everything You Need to Know

Dungeons and Dragons: World of Warcraft was announced way back in July, as the first Universes Beyond release for the storied tabletop RPG. And just like the MMO it's based on, D&D: World of Warcraft is absolutely massive.

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Oct 5 • 12:00 PM EDT • Technology • ign.com
GrapheneOS just confirmed its first supported non-Pixel phone

Motorola Signature 27 is first in line for GrapheneOS support, pairing a flagship Snapdragon chip with Motorola's seven-year update promise.

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Sep 24 • 3:01 AM EDT • Technology • androidauthority.com
Qualcomm announces Snapdragon Sound Elite Gen 2 for AI ‘hearables,’ even ones with cameras

Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon Sound Elite Gen 2 as a substantial chipset for upcoming audio devices, with a massive focus...

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Sep 23 • 2:30 PM EDT • Technology • 9to5google.com
These 3 Major Upgrades Could Be Heading to Your Next Flagship Android Phone

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chip will be in the top phones of 2026 and 2027. Here's what it can do.

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Sep 23 • 12:37 AM EDT • Technology • cnet.com
Review: DRAGON QUEST XI S: Echoes Of An Elusive Age - Definitive Edition (Switch 2) - Square Enix Needs To Get With The Upgrade Path Program

Well, at least it looks a little nicer

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Sep 24 • 8:00 AM EDT • Technology • nintendolife.com
Xiaomi 18 Pro vs. Xiaomi 18 Pro Max: Video shows big difference between the two Leica main cameras

There are obvious and less obvious differences between the two new Leica camera flagships based on the 2 nm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chipsets. The difference between their main camera sensors is far from transparent, but it makes a major difference in daily life, as a comparison video demonstrates.

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Sep 26 • 9:47 AM EDT • Technology • notebookcheck.net
Anscombe's Scarlets debut delayed by paperwork

Scarlets hope Gareth Anscombe can debut against Dragons on Friday after a registration issue prevented him from playing against Exeter Chiefs.

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Sep 7 • 7:06 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Joe Manganiello debuts massive dragon tattoo to cover his surgery scars from mystery illness

The actor revealed his new ink, which extends from his abdomen to his knee.

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Oct 20 • 9:35 AM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com
Sega's President Says There's Been an Increase in Fans Who Don't Play Its Games, But That Doesn't Mean They Aren't Gamers

Sega president and COO Shuji Utsumi says the company has experienced an uptick in fans who don’t actually play the games it develops and publishes.

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Sep 8 • 2:48 PM EDT • Technology • ign.com
Qualcomm launches two new smartphone chips with emphasis on AI

Qualcomm said that its new top chip can run 30B mixture-of-expert model locally

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Sep 22 • 4:00 PM EDT • Technology • techcrunch.com
‘Those interactions won’t always happen through a screen’: Qualcomm

Snapdragon Sound Elite Gen 2 puts Wi-Fi 6E and twice the AI power in earbuds. Qualcomm also showed 1-bit AI glasses platforms and a health alliance.

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Sep 25 • 11:55 AM EDT • Health • thenextweb.com
Prime Video’s ‘Fourth Wing’ series casts Esther McGregor and Emilio Sakraya as leads

Esther McGregor and Emilio Sakraya will play dragon riders Violet Sorrengail and Xaden Riorson in Prime Video’s adaptation of Rebecca Yarros’ best-selling novels.

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Oct 21 • 2:27 PM EDT • Entertainment • aboutamazon.com
Microsoft unveils Surface Pro 12" tablet and Surface Laptop 13" with Snapdragon X2 Plus

The new chipset has 60% faster graphics and a 95% faster NPU compared to the X Plus that powered the previous Surface Pro 12" and Surface Laptop 13".

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Sep 24 • 10:06 AM EDT • Technology • gsmarena.com
Could dragons have ever existed? Science has a surprising answer
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Oct 13 • 1:50 PM EDT • Science • yahoo.com
Microsoft’s New Surface Laptops Embody the PC-Phone Marriage Snapdragon Promised Years Ago

Qualcomm's PC chips were developed with the company's phone DNA. Two generations in, we're seeing payoffs.

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Sep 24 • 2:13 PM EDT • Technology • cnet.com
Microsoft's New Surface Pro 12 And Surface Laptop 13 Feature Snapdragon X2 Plus Chips

Microsoft's smaller Surface Pro 12 and Surface Laptop 13 are getting a much-needed chip upgrade.

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Sep 23 • 4:30 PM EDT • Technology • engadget.com
Microsoft unveils new Surface Pro 12-inch and Surface Laptop 13-inch with Snapdragon X2 Plus, brighter screens, and 5G options

The company is launching its new "entry premium" Surface Pro and Surface Laptop, both starting at over $1,000.

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Sep 23 • 4:30 PM EDT • Technology • windowscentral.com
Blame Snapdragon: An Exynos-powered Galaxy S27 Ultra is now more likely than ever

Samsung might be forced to ship the Galaxy S27 Ultra with Exynos instead of Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 due to performance issues.

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Oct 16 • 4:12 AM EDT • Technology • androidauthority.com
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 comes in an Extreme version too

Do you feel Extreme?

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Sep 22 • 4:00 PM EDT • Technology • theverge.com
SpaceX Dragon Docks with Science, Supplies, and Roll-Out Solar Arrays

At 11 a.m. EDT, the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docked to the space-facing port of the International Space Station’s Harmony module, delivering more than 6,300 pounds of food, supplies, and equipment for the Expedition 75 crew.

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Oct 15 • 10:33 AM EDT • Science • nasa.gov
ASUS launches first Snapdragon X2 Elite mini PC, Ascent QN10 costs $1,350

ASUS has launched its Ascent QN10 mini PC with an 18-core Snapdragon X2 Elite and 80 TOPS Hexagon NPU. The 16GB/512GB model is listed for $1,349.99 in the US.

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Sep 18 • 12:12 PM EDT • Technology • videocardz.com
Welcome, World Travelers! Dreamfinder and Figment Return to EPCOT — Entertainment & Lifestyle

Welcome, World Travelers! Dreamfinder and Figment Return to EPCOTby James Coulter "One little spark of inspiration is at the heart of all creation." For decades, that spark has been kept alive by a certain purple dragon, and now, after nearly thirty years, the dreamer who created him is finally returning to EPCOT. Earlier this year at the — Local reporting from Polk County, Florida.

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Oct 14 • 1:14 PM EDT • Entertainment • dailyridge.com
City travelling squad for FC Porto game announced

Enzo Maresca has named a 22-man squad for Tuesday’s UEFA Champions League clash at FC Porto. Match Preview FC Porto v City: Kick-off time and TV information City’s clash with the Dragons – our f...

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Sep 7 • 11:50 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Dragon Quest Creator Yuji Horii Thinks AI Is Amazing As He No Longer Needs To Code Or Draw To Make A Game

The director has released his own Claude-driven adventure having spent months praising the technology

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Oct 12 • 11:34 AM EDT • Technology • kotaku.com
Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen Switch 2 Update Currently In Development

Capcom confirms

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Oct 17 • 11:05 PM EDT • Technology • nintendolife.com
York run in five tries for dream win over Catalans

York Knights go 10th in Super League as they run in five tries to beat Catalans Dragons in Perpignan.

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Sep 5 • 3:28 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
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iPhone 18 Pro Max in U.S. Equipped With Qualcomm's Snapdragon X80 Modem

TechInsights has published an iPhone 18 Pro Max teardown that confirms the U.S. version of the device is equipped with Qualcomm's Snapdragon X80 modem. The device's modem firmware also points towards the Snapdragon X80 modem. The smaller iPhone 18 Pro and the iPhone Duo use Apple's custom-designed C2 modem worldwide, and the iPhone 18 Pro Max uses the C2 modem in every other country, so the U.S. version of the iPhone 18 Pro Max having a Qualcomm modem is unique.

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Sep 18 • 3:41 PM EDT • Technology • macrumors.com
Burning up with imagination at the Orlando Science Center

The Science of It: Meteorologist Victoria Wisniewski tests her skills to save herself from a fire-breathing dragon during fantasy month

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Sep 6 • 10:12 AM EDT • Science • wesh.com
Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes I & II announced for PS5, PS4, Switch, and PC

Edia has announced RPG collection Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes I & II for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Switch, and PC (Steam). It will launch in 2027 worldwide.

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Sep 17 • 11:59 AM EDT • Technology • gematsu.com
Southampton test a chance to get back on track

Phil Parkinson says Wrexham's Championship contest with Southampton (15:00 BST) gives his side the opportunity to get "back on track" following their 6-0 loss to West Ham United last time out. The Red Dragons had been in encouraging form prior to that emphatic defeat by the Hammers. "It's a great opportunity for us to get ourselves back on track," said the Wrexham manager.

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Sep 19 • 5:14 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Could dragons have ever existed? Science has a surprising answer

Dragons appear in stories as enormous reptilian creatures with wings, claws, armored bodies and, in many traditions, the ability to breathe fire. Science has found no evidence that an animal matching ...

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Oct 9 • 8:11 AM EDT • Science • yahoo.com
Microsoft Copilot+ Branding Disappears from Latest Surface PCs

Microsoft's recent Snapdragon-powered Surface Laptop and Surface Pro launch was surprisingly absent the usual Copilot+ branding, aside from as a callout to the inclusion of the actual AI assistant on the devices. Apparently, this was an intentional branding change, according to Surface Corporate...

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Sep 24 • 10:39 PM EDT • Technology • techpowerup.com
Tuipulotu is called in after Capstick ruled out

EXETER have signed No.8 Carwyn Tuipulotu for the rest of the season. The 25-year-old, who has represented Wales at Under-20 level, played in France last season for Pau and was a free agent. He has most recently been training with Dragons having previously played for Scarlets, and had a spell with Saracens in 2025. “After […] The post Tuipulotu is called in after Capstick ruled out appeared first on The Rugby Paper .

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Oct 10 • 9:59 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Xiaomi 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max arrive with latest Snapdragon chips, privacy displays and more useful rear screens

They also get larger batteries and identical triple cameras. It only took a couple of hours for the first phones with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen...

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Sep 23 • 11:44 AM EDT • Technology • gsmarena.com
"It's Truly Astonishing" - Dragon Quest Creator Yuji Horii Made An AI-Generated Game In 30 Minutes

"I can just give instructions to the AI"

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Oct 12 • 8:00 AM EDT • Technology • nintendolife.com
NASA’s Dragonfly Gets Wired Up While Titan Landing Area Is Named

Peeking into the clean room at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, it might be one of the first things you notice about

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Sep 2 • 3:46 PM EDT • Science • science.nasa.gov
Qualcomm’s Next Flagship Snapdragon SoC To Target Higher Frequencies Of 5.40GHz While Sticking With TSMC’s 2nm N2P Node, But IPC Gains Are Rumored To Stay Under 10%

Qualcomm’s upcoming Snapdragon flagship SoC aims for a massive 5.40GHz clock speed on TSMC’s 2nm N2P process, though rumored IPC gains remain under 10%

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Sep 26 • 6:14 AM EDT • Technology • wccftech.com
A Dragon’s Den: Does Gender Really Matter in Support for Businesses?

When 4,500 members of the public were asked to consider investing, the business idea mattered more than whether a man or a woman was behind it

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Oct 19 • 5:05 AM EDT • Business • newswise.com
Galaxy S27 reportedly skips Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 due to overheating

According to a new report, Samsung’s Galaxy S27 series might not use the latest Snapdragon chipset due to overheating problems....

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Oct 16 • 12:50 PM EDT • Technology • 9to5google.com
Xiaomi 18 Pro series goes official with ‘privacy screen,’ 8,500 mAh battery, and Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6

Xiaomi has just launched its new Xiaomi 18 Pro and Xiaomi 18 Pro Max in China with flagship specs, massive...

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Sep 23 • 10:05 AM EDT • Technology • 9to5google.com
Dragon’s Dogma 2: Dark Arisen Fixes the Sequel’s Biggest Flaw, but Combat Still Fights the Player for Control

We went hands-on with Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen at gamescom 2026, checking out the new features and content in the upcoming DLC.

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Sep 2 • 3:00 PM EDT • Technology • wccftech.com
Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons Doesn't Have Waypoints Because the Devs Want Players to 'Figure Things Out' for Themselves

The developers of Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons have said they avoided putting waypoints into the game because they want players to actually explore.

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Sep 15 • 9:58 AM EDT • Technology • ign.com