What you get is a plug-in indoor 2K camera and a window or door contact sensor in one package. The camera records in Retinal 2K video and supports up to 6x Enhanced Zoom, so you can get a closer look at what is happening in a room. It also features advanced motion detection and customizable motion zones, helping you focus alerts on the areas that matter most.
For talking to people at home, there is a two-way talk with noise cancelation. You also get a remote-activated siren and improved color viewing in low light. The included sensor sends real-time alerts when a door or window opens and does not require a base station when using Amazon Sidewalk.
Setup is also pretty quick. The camera requires a standard outlet and 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, and the estimated installation time is 5 to 10 minutes. The sensor runs on two included CR2032 batteries, with up to three years of battery life. For Prime Day, getting both pieces together at this price looks like a strong value.
Thank you for being part of our community. Read our Comment Policy before posting.
Artificial Extinction 2 is a tower defense hybrid that blends first-person shooter action with real-time strategy control. Survive on a hostile Earth against relentless AI overlords by building powerful defenses, managing resources, and fighting on the front lines. Fears to Fathom – Scratch Creek
Play as a sentient AI commander, switching seamlessly between RTS command view to construct and upgrade your base, and FPS mode to engage enemies directly in brutal combat. Only by mastering both perspectives can you withstand the onslaught.
Your mission: defend your base until critical data decrypts, then call in your mothership for extraction. But the enemy is unrelenting — survival demands smart planning, quick thinking, and precise aim.
Core Gameplay Features:
• Tower Defense Hybrid – Switch instantly between tactical RTS control and FPS combat. • Base Building & Upgrades – Construct power generators, miners, and 8 turret types with unique upgrade paths. • Resource Management – Mine metal, uranium, and thorium while balancing energy and ammunition in real time. • Tech Tree Progression – Unlock new turrets and FPS weapons with a Quantum Computer. • Varied AI Enemies – Battle 8 mech classes, drones, robotic soldiers, and airborne threats. • Support Firepower – Call in a military drone and long-range artillery strikes. • Replayability – Procedural enemy attack paths, resource nodes, and base locations change each playthrough. • Leaderboards & Modes – Compete globally and unlock challenges like: • Nightmare Mode • FPS-Only Mode • RTS-Only Mode
Campaign & Replayability:
Experience 10 handcrafted levels, each with unique terrain and tactical challenges. Replay to face new enemy attack patterns, resource layouts, and survival challenges. Every victory unlocks new ways to play.
Whether you’re into strategic planning, intense FPS battles, or tower defense survival, Artificial Extinction 2 delivers a fresh, high-stakes fight every time you play.
Screenshots
SystemRequirements
Minimum
OS *: Windows 7
Processor: Intel i5-4590
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GTX 960 or equivalent
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 14 GB available space
Support the game developers by purchasing the game on Steam
InstallationGuide
TurnOff Your Antivirus Before Installing Any Game
1 :: Download Game 2 :: Extract Game 3 :: Launch The Game 4 :: Have Fun 🙂
Most marketers have a transactional relationship with AI, A. Lee Judge says. They put in a request. They get out an asset. They edit it until it sounds like their voice or their brand’s. Then, they repeat.
Did you ever fantasize about Ctrl+Zing a botched product design or taking a sneak peek behind your master product veil of your competitors? That is where reverse engineers come to the rescue. These genius sets of people can disassemble, take apart, and reassemble products in ways that accelerate innovation. Of the hundreds of where-to-find-such-talent destinations, Cad Crowd is a hyper-charged magnet that connects companies and pre-screened masters who, following tons of practice, are top at disassembling and reassembling.
1. Cad Crowd
Visualize Cad Crowd as a secret HQ for engineering and design superheroes. These people will disassemble your work, study it, and reconstruct it if need be, or else they will also place something more tangible on what you thought had to be the best. Cad Crowd’s professional designers complete any task with professionalism, whether it is 3D modeling design services, CAD drafting, or full deconstruction. It is efficient, accurate, and the go-to platform for reverse-engineering. The platform is excellent for serious companies that hold quality and on-time delivery in high esteem.
Kolabtree is where science geeks, PhDs, and research magic wizards team up. If the innards of your product are complex and not from a textbook, then these wizards can examine it. They are not run-of-the-mill freelancers; they are experienced engineers who are clever. From consulting on the technical side of things to deep analysis, they will reverse engineer your product using underhanded methods you didn’t even know you would need to employ. It is brainpower, ingenuity, and curiosity in a user-friendly package. It is having Einstein in your corner without dodgy experiments that will not pass.
Arc. dev is the reverse-engineered VIP developer club, but they only take the 2% of the best remote workers in the world, and they pair you up with engineering designers who can reverse-engineer anything from home to product design. They code like clockwork, in time, and with precision. Arc’s professionals are coding ninjas operating behind the scenes to make your project even better. It is easy, hassle-free, and with lightning-speed fast output. Think of dating apps that are fast and help you discover your ultimate tech match. You do not hire a freelancer but buy an expert with a disease of detail, timelines, and reverse-engineered brilliance of your wildest imagination.
You need a coding sidekick. That is Codementor. Codementor gives you direct access to outstanding developers, in case you require help, tutoring, or somebody who will actually roll up his/her sleeves and reverse-engineer your product. Half-tutor, half-miracle-solver, half-freelancer, basically a Swiss Army knife for software and product development. You get access to full project support, quality consultancy, or live support, and learn some Jedi tricks in the process. Quick, nimble, and human, ideally for those who want talent without disrupting the traditional employment or administrative arrangements.
Newxel is your quick route to acquiring a fantasy team of reverse engineering developers. They take care of professional sourcing and integration into your projects in three to five weeks. It is similar to having a high-speed machine of specialists who can deconstruct something positively, examine it, and rebuild it. Newxel, besides recruitment, also manages design teams remotely through workflow and communication optimization to remove the possibilities of misinterpretation. It is similar to having the entire development crew at your fingertips, minus the complex human resource headaches. Intelligent, effective, and quick, Newxel is designed for companies serious about ramping up their reverse engineering businesses with promptness, precision, and expertise.
Guru is like a big talent hub, but with an arsenal of expertise in one place. It is perfect if you’re hunting for freelance reverse engineers who can disassemble, analyze, and rebuild products like pros. You have access to more than a thousand top-notch engineers at your disposal on the project site to handle any kind of project, ranging from minor tweaks to intricate reverse-engineering puzzles. Payment protection and management utilities assure a hassle-free, professional, and hassle-free working environment. An experienced pool of talent to choose from. Easy to work with, safe, and accommodating, Guru is for those who are serious about reverse engineering.
Contra is an excellent freelancing platform with no middleman, no worries about commissions, just projects and skills at your disposal. For reverse engineering projects, it is a network of skilled professionals who will tackle anything from product disassembly all the way to redesigns. Once freelancers are established on the platform, you can hire them outright, keep your projects in-house under your own umbrella, and keep tabs on progress. It is a piece of cake, efficient, and closer to working with a colleague than an unreliable contractor. If you enjoy laid-back but efficient environments with high-quality output, Contra makes it easy to reverse engineer in an efficient, user-friendly, and uncomplicated way.
Truelancer is the first place to turn to for affordable freelance 3D design professionals, and reverse engineering experts are no exception. Whether you need to reproduce mechanical parts or redesign electrical parts, Truelancer freelancers can assist you at no exorbitant cost. The platform is straightforward with ratings, portfolios, and confirmed reviews, so no guessing. It is a Swiss Army knife of freelance services: adaptable, reliable, and reasonably quick. For a business firm or small business that would like to reduce talent costs by 50%, Truelancer offers a variety of experienced freelancers that brings quality and efficiency, making each project a worthwhile experience.
Toptal is the Ivy League of the world of freelancing: only 3% top developers, designers, and design engineering freelancers are accepted. If the reverse engineering work for you demands the crème de la crème of talent, this is where you hire the masters who reverse engineer each product like a Rubik’s Cube, learning, knowing, and duplicating with precision. The site is easy to navigate, making it straightforward for companies to find the right match within days.
Gun.io is perfect for software developers who are experts in reverse engineering. They pair you up with the best freelancers who possess the capability to solve any technology puzzle. All the engineers are personally vetted, thus you are not wasting time with wannabes who are pretending to be something they are not until they discover their tricks through trial and error. Gun.io is ideal for extensive or complicated projects since it supports long-term communication, cooperation, and productivity. You get someone who has the skill and dedication to perform any job, from software teardown to product teardown. Fast, intelligent, and human-centered, Gun.io takes care of your reverse engineering needs while you wait and observe magic unfold.
Hired is a platform where engineers line up with resumes in hand, hoping you will swipe right. If you need reverse engineering pros who are skilled and enthusiastic, Hired’s got them. The site introduces you to the right people to be a part of your project through experience, culture, and smart matching. Users who are efficient and professional can be hired for anything from bug hunting to hardware analysis. The entire process of getting employed is easy, convenient, and hassle-free, so it is more like discovering a treasure chest rather than a complicated task.
With each of them having the expertise of reverse engineering, X-Team provides quality, on-demand developers who disassemble, review, and rebuild products. X-Team not only has access to engineering design talents, but they also focus on a proactive attitude, communication, and accountability that turn tough projects into easy, pleasant experiences. You’ll be in touch with developers who build your product as if it were their own, being proactive about problems before they arise with flair. Experienced, passionate, and über-skilled, X-Team makes reverse engineering an overwhelming, worthwhile experience with the world’s top experts.
Scalable Path is a tech talent agency. They match you with the best developers, including reverse engineers, who can offer anything, ranging from redesigns to product teardowns. They enable you to professionally scale your projects seamlessly by giving you the flexibility of freelancing full-time. You can find skilled 3D design specialists with good communication, project management, and other project-related benefits on their platform. It is perfect for businesses that require effective, skilled people in a hurry but with more professionalism and warmth. Scalable Path doesn’t just offer developers; they build teams of talent, focus, and teamwork for success for your organization.
CloudDevs is a world-renowned talent platform with Latin America’s best software developers. CloudDevs offers accurate delivery and creative ideas for your reverse engineering task. They carefully listen while they choose hardware, software, and product analysis experts to do it for you. The platform ensures remote work is a straightforward, human experience, centered on communication, cultural fit, and technical skill. For businesses requiring the best talent to be hired at an optimal cost without any degradation of experience, CloudDevs is the answer. It is like a pool of worldwide talent just waiting to start developing your product, learn all about it, and become the next top invention.
We Work Remotely is basically a virtual billboard, advertising work-from-home positions, such as freelance reverse engineering jobs. Freelancers register, employers post, and the magic of matching happens. It is prudent to search for mechanical engineering specialists who excel at performing in unstable conditions, whether it is dismantling mechanical devices or breaking down software design. The site is ideal for businesses that need to employ freelancers with an easy and quick website to navigate. For independent workers, it is a pure goldmine of assignments; for corporate businesses, it is a roll call of pre-screened master professionals who will make your reverse engineering work productive, exciting, and even exhilarating to watch.
AngelList is a speed networking site for engineering startups. It is where young engineers are being offered assignments involving reverse engineering proficiency. Startups post job listings for marketing, interview, and even hire full-time or part-time employees. The platform is favorable for new companies because it places so much emphasis on the perfect fit, transparency, and trust. From mechanistic transformation to decommissioning code, AngelList is welcoming to mission-driven design engineering professionals who thrive in high-energy environments. It is a business casual, relaxed, professional, and enjoyable sandbox-type of environment where work is done with imagination and enthusiasm. For businesses on the hunt for high-energy talent, AngelList is a favorable choice.
SimplyHired provides an online list of freelance reverse engineering jobs. It offers an extensive range of reverse engineering jobs as well as other skilled positions for freelancers and clients, making the hiring process more comfortable. Job posters can post positions, search resumes, and search profiles through a simple interface. Freelancers are given diversified opportunities in software, electronics, and product testing. Bare bones, no-frills, and plainly ideal for startups and big businesses alike. Efficiency with attitude, that is what you’ll get with SimplyHired. It is like placing everything under a microscope: precision, visibility, and choice, all in one place.
LinkedIn is, so to speak, a hub of business professionals where reverse engineering skills accumulate. Apart from the bottomless scrolling and recommendations, you can even utilize awesome solo freelancers who would more than gladly assist with your teardown of software or new product design services. You can feel assured that you are employing somebody who is capable of actually delivering what they promise by viewing their profiles that show their portfolios, referrals, and previous work experience. You can sift through job postings, get matched up right away, and even join up with engineering, reverse-engineering, and innovation networks. It is perfect for recruiting and networking. It is a virtual coffeehouse of professionals: everyone’s sipping knowledge, exchanging ideas, and waiting to reverse-engineer your project with panache.
Indeed is an international platform with a range of job-hunting opportunities. The hiring process is streamlined and full of promise. You can post freelance reverse engineering work, screen resumes, and hire specialists with particular credentials. For companies seeking both exposure, transparency, and job perfection, it is ideal. It exposes them to various prospects in software, electronics design experts, mechanics, and freelancers find value. The platform makes the hiring process straightforward with easy communication, simple screening tools, and task-related reminders.
With Glassdoor, you get job postings, company data, and comments from prospective freelancers. To hire reverse engineering professionals, you can try candidate fit testing, rate checking, and even check cultural fit before you invest. Freelancers are able to look at job opportunities, browse through companies, and decide to apply based on data. Glassdoor lays it all out, straightforward and plain, so you can effectively hire the right reverse engineering professional without the risk of making the wrong decision. It is human, business-like, and just right if you prefer inside information.
FlexJobs is an excellent site for remote workers. It gathers actual, flexible, and remote work opportunities like freelance reverse engineering services. Employers get to hire the best professionals for their projects, from software analysis to product teardown and component redesign. Freelancers can enjoy a well-structured, scam-free workplace with high-quality gigs. Notices, postings, and messages make it easy to find product engineering talents to collaborate with. Remote employment becomes easy with Flexjobs, as it offers a stress-free hiring process and a platform where opportunity and talent come together seamlessly.
Remote OK is a treasure map for remote reverse engineering skills. Jobs are ordered by firms, and experienced freelancers globally offer experience and portfolios to back it up. It is ideal for once-off projects or thorough product analysis with the promise of orientation, on-time delivery, and responsiveness. Remote OK can connect you with the right talent to complete projects on a hardware-, software-, or dual-level basis. Easy applications and comfortable communication are some of the advantages companies can look forward to, and freelancers get international exposure.
Working Nomads provides quality, rather than quantity, in terms of a qualified list of individual reverse engineering work. Companies can advertise work that fits their timelines and budgets, whereas design engineers can choose projects that fit their individual skillsets. Working Nomads offers the best matches to simplify project completion, be it circuit design, software reverse-engineering, or redesigning mechanical products. Engineer matchmaking in a nutshell: efficient, precise, and individually selected. The platform enables clients to be matched with appropriate freelancers to make their engineering projects a stress-free and efficient process.
With Jobspresso, each reverse engineering project is approached to acquire maximum skill per role. A straightforward, user-friendly platform allows companies to post a job, browse resumes, and communicate with prospective talent. Jobspresso simplifies the challenge of finding the right freelancers for reverse engineering projects. It is perfect for companies that are looking for a combination of capability, velocity, and human touch because it offers professionalism, efficiency, and a user-friendly interface.
Remotive is a virtual network of remote experts. Its elegantly crafted jobs board provides freelance reverse engineering services to companies looking for access to world-class talent globally. They have a strong foundation for community and an easy, fast, and hassle-free navigation website. Companies post job opportunities and communicate directly with prospects, while product design freelancers are notified of available projects. High-tech, to the point, and professional, it is perfect for careers that demand expertise and dependability. Remotive brings superior opportunities for freelancers and the perfect matches for clients.
Outsourcely is your remote recruitment aid. The site does a great job of matching startups and businesses with freelance experts, e.g., reverse engineering experts. Post an assignment, screen candidates, and organize workflow all in one place. Face-to-face dialogue, equitable pay, and customers worldwide are freelancers’ top choices. From software re-design to mechanical inspection, you are bound to find the right freelancer for your project on Outsourcely.
It is a predominantly creative design site, but you will find reverse engineering experts here and there. Assign work or contests to freelancers to bid and demonstrate skill in DesignCrowd. Not an assignment site, but you’ll find CAD design experts to redesign products or recreate CAD design projects. It is graphical, fast, and efficient, but the result depends on the experience level of freelancers. Use DesignCrowd as a reverse engineering variant ideation platform for ideation, visualization, and exploration. For “technical hardcore” production, it’s best to consider other sites, like Cad Crowd.
The design equivalent of DesignCrowd. A place more specialized in designs, but sometimes it is simply engineers with reverse engineering experience of CAD model or product visualization. Not as appropriate for general technical disassembling or reassembling programs, but very good for conceptual re-design, prototypes, or visual reverse engineering. As freelancers are screened according to their portfolios, it’s easier to determine what value they can bring to your company. Experience is an important factor for hassle-free and professional outcomes. You can use 99designs as a design house for reverse engineering tasks, but it’s not the ideal site for finding engineers with specialized expertise.
Crowded draws 3D design freelance talent from everywhere, including engineers to help with reverse engineering tasks. Convenient and integrative as it is, it is too broad-based, therefore, it might be challenging to find skilled reverse engineering professionals. The site does a great job of bringing a number of prospects to a job in a very short time and in a very effective manner, yet high-quality work must be sourced more intently. It is great for once-off projects, test jobs, or beginners, but not great for professional tearing down or redoing. For professional reverse engineering, consider more specialist websites.
In the middle of an enormous virtual marketplace, freelancers can do just about everything from reverse engineering to product engineering gigs. It is generic and informal, so there is a pool of talent, but sometimes not the expert you’re looking for. You advertise jobs, get bids, and hire at your own discretion, but professional reverse engineering skill might be a waiting game. It is great for low-end or proof-of-concept types of projects, but not ideal for high-precision engineering. Freelancers are graded by ability, capability, and cost, which must be taken into consideration. Less formal, PeoplePerHour is more about being there and getting the work done.
Fiverr is the gloriously unorthodox freelance site where things can go South, pretty quickly. Do you need some reverse engineering done? You ought to be able to get it, just remember Fiverr is a generalist platform. There are plenty of qualified freelancers, but also the less-skilled ones, so proper screening should be done. Fiverr might not be your top choice, but pro sites like Cad Crowd are well worth exploring for real high-risk reverse engineering projects.
Upwork is a well-known site for finding freelance work. You’ll find thousands of reverse engineers, and CAD engineering professionals, but the site itself isn’t very exciting. It does show experience, ratings, and work, but quality is wildly inconsistent. Yes, you can have freelancers ready for reverse engineering, but the site itself is fairly generic. Filtering has to be highly restrictive because of bidding wars, diverse skill sets, and questionable quality. Instead of high-risk engineering projects, it is best used for low-risk work or testing. And although freelancers offer flexibility, world-class access, and hire-on-the-spot convenience, their particular talent is not guaranteed. For serious reverse engineering tasks, expert sites will be well worth the cost.
Reverse engineering isn’t about fixing design flaws – it is about break-throughs. The right professional will start with a jigsaw puzzle of pieces and construct a product design manual from them, and the best place to find professionals in reverse engineering, is Cad Crowd. In contrast to competing websites, Cad Crowd is focused on design and engineering, so you’re not wading through amateurs when you’re searching for the right fit. Contact us for a free quote.
MacKenzie Brown is the founder and CEO of Cad Crowd. With over 18 years of experience in launching and scaling platforms specializing in CAD services, product design, manufacturing, hardware, and software development, MacKenzie is a recognized authority in the engineering industry. Under his leadership, Cad Crowd serves esteemed clients like NASA, JPL, the U.S. Navy, and Fortune 500 companies, empowering innovators with access to high-quality design and engineering talent.
AgentPerf from Artificial Analysis, the industry’s first agentic AI benchmark, gives developers, enterprises and infrastructure providers a clear way to compare systems for agentic AI. In the first round of published results, the NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra NVL72 platform delivers leading performance across the agentic AI workloads tested, running 20x more agents per megawatt than NVIDIA Hopper.
Agentic AI is a fundamentally different workload than conversational AI. A single chat completion is a sprint: one large language model (LLM) call, one response. An agent functions more like a relay: It breaks a goal into many steps and keeps going until the task is done.
Agents chain together multiple LLM calls and tool calls to gather context, observe, reason and act.
That results in dozens to hundreds of LLM calls chained together, each passing growing context to the next, with tool calls like code compile and execution, database search and web browsing at every handoff. The complexity isn’t additive; it’s multiplicative.
The distinction matters enormously for performance measurement. Existing AI inference benchmarks measure one LLM call: how fast an LLM responds to a single request and how many simultaneous requests a system can handle. They weren’t designed for agentic workloads, where chained LLM calls, tool call delays and growing context stress accelerated computing systems in fundamentally different ways than a single LLM call ever could.
For companies building and deploying agents at scale, it’s important to understand how responsive agents are, how many can be deployed simultaneously and how much useful work AI infrastructure can deliver for every dollar and watt invested.
NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 Runs 20x More Agents per Megawatt
In this first round, AgentPerf measures agentic performance with DeepSeek V4 Pro, a large mixture-of-experts (MoE) model that represents the class of frontier models powering today’s most capable agents. On this workload, NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 delivers the highest performance in the benchmark, running up to 20x more agents per megawatt than the NVIDIA HGX H200 system.
NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 supports far more concurrent agents per megawatt than NVIDIA H200 at both service-level objectives of 20 and 60 tokens per second per agent.
The performance advantage comes from extreme codesign across the full stack. GB300 NVL72 connects 72 GPUs into a single rack-scale system, enabling large MoE models like DeepSeek V4 Pro to distribute model execution efficiently at scale.
CUDA kernels accelerate this further by overlapping communication and compute, so the cost of coordinating across experts is absorbed rather than added to latency.
NVIDIA TensorRT LLM sustains efficiency as concurrent agent sessions scale. For example, it separates the processing of inputs from the generation of outputs so each can be optimized independently.
These results are grounded in a benchmark methodology built from the ground up to reflect how agentic AI actually works in production.
Artificial Analysis AgentPerf: Built on Real-World Agentic Workloads
AgentPerf is built based on real coding agent trajectories: an agent receives a task, reads files, writes and edits code, executes commands and iterates based on the results — all drawn from real public code repositories across 12+ programming languages. The long sequence lengths, tool call patterns and delays are all representative of real-world coding workflows.
AgentPerf then measures how many of these agentic tasks a platform can support simultaneously while meeting defined performance thresholds for responsiveness and output token rate. Tool calls are not executed but simulated using representative CPU processing time, so differences in results reflect accelerated computing performance only.
The results translate directly into infrastructure decisions: how many concurrent agentic tasks can be run per accelerator and per megawatt of power. For enterprises deploying AI agents at scale, those numbers determine how much productive work a given infrastructure investment can actually deliver.
NVIDIA Ecosystem Partners Harness Blackwell’s Leading Performance
Leading inference providers including Baseten, DeepInfra and Together AI are already serving agentic workloads on frontier models such as DeepSeek V4 Pro on NVIDIA Blackwell and powering production agentic applications today.
Together AI powers real-time inference for Cursor, an AI-powered agentic coding platform, on NVIDIA Blackwell. Cursor’s agents debug issues, generate features and execute refactors while developers continue working.
DeepInfra powers Pam.ai, an AI workforce platform for car dealerships, which deploys agents to book service appointments, handle calls and run outbound sales campaigns, entirely on NVIDIA Blackwell.
As NVIDIA and the open source ecosystem continue to optimize inference software, performance and efficiency on agentic workloads will only improve. The NVIDIA Vera Rubin architecture is now in full production, bringing the next generation of infrastructure capacity to meet the growing demands of agentic AI at scale.
Dive deeper into AgentPerf’s methodology and NVIDIA’s full-stack optimizations for agentic AI in this technical blog.
One of the reasons I do all of my color corrections in DaVinci Resolve is that I don’t have to rely on what I see on the computer screen to guide me.
I know that every computer screen, tablet screen or mobile screen is going to display the results differently so what I see on my screen tells me almost nothing.
However, with a simple understanding (like mine!) of the very basic tools in the DaVinci Resolve Color Page plus knowing how to read a few of the scopes, I can color correct and even color grade with confidence.
However when to comes to audio unfortunately there are no equivalent tools you can rely on.
You just have to listen to what you have, know what needs to be fixed and understand which tool is going to do that.
The only way I learned how to do that was to watch people doing it over and over until I could stumble along on my own.
So in the spirit of stumbling around trying to work it all out, here’s someone that actually knows what they are doing!
Freshen Your Creativity by Experimenting with Templates – PowerDirector
The vast majority of the editing I do these days is for a very small number of clients and pretty much all of that is for online content.
Each one of those clients and myself included understand that the look and feel of those videos has to remain consistently branded because that what the audience expects.
Now that’s all very well for them but for me as an editor it begins to narrow down my outlook on the task of editing so I end up thinking only in terms of what I have been producing recently.
Sometimes I need to break out of that thinking and one of the tricks I use and you can use it too, is to go into whatever video editing software you are using and have scroll through the project templates they offer.
Now don’t get me wrong here, I NEVER use included templates from any program in my projects!
What I do is use those templates as inspiration for ideas to get started on any project where I need to get outside of my own little bubble.
Remember that those software companies paid professional designers to style those templates so they are at least technically correct as a starting point.
Here are some shown in CyberLink PowerDirector.
How to Remove Video Background Without Green Screen 2026
OK so the bottom line here is that this is a poorly disguised promo for the Movavi Video Editor and includes a little bit of a hatchet job on their competitors… those crazy kids!
Anyway apart from that I have to admit that the results they show are fairly accurate as far as the clip they used goes.
However you also have to take into consideration that all of the A.I. background removers will deal with the task differently so it will very much come down to the clip itself and not the tool.
I have used all of the tools mentioned and have had good and bad results with ALL of them.
At the end of the day I am not (and nor should you!) going to choose video editing software on the basis of available A.I. tools.
All of the A.I tools in any video editing software actually connect to remote services anyway and nine times out of ten, if your usage is low, you are better off dealing directly with one of those A.I. sites.
Wondershare Filmora 15.5.10: AI Vocal Remover and More
Another week and another update from Filmora, how unusual!
The good news is that they have seemingly caught up with whatever A.I. tools they want to introduce and develop and are back to more practical things.
For example they have added a new system for adjusting the speed of clips and segments within those clips.
You can still use the old Speed Ramping module but this new system offers control from the timeline itself.
Of course they just cant let that A.I. stuff go altogether so there is also new new tool to separate vocals from from an audio track as well!
You can see all the new stuff in action in the video below.
How to Get Perfect Green Screen Backgrounds Using AI
This is another valuable video in my opinion from Gripps2211 that bridges the gap between legacy editing software like Corel VideoStudio and current AI technology.
One of the reasons I like to add this stuff to the Friday Roundup is that to some degree it counters the idea that you must have all the latest bells and whistles to be editing videos.
Of course thats nonsense but the problem is the marketing tends to turn our brains to mush and we lose sight of the fact that it IS nonsense!
The reality is that there are old iterations of video editing software out there that are more than capable of running on modern machines and have all the tools to be effective.
So the question is, why waste time and money on updating to the very latest and greatest when you could just use that software in conjunction with the vast array of online A.I. tools at no extra cost!
The 10% Studio Rule
One of first things you may need to address as a content creator for any online service like YouTube is that you may have very limited resources, one of which may in fact be space!
Not all of us have the luxury of a large spare room in out house or apartment we can just set aside for videoing purposes!
In light that here’s another video from GabrielVIP on the subject of maximizing value out of very limited space for shooting content.
This is a particularly good video for that because he goes into shooting distances, lens selection and the arrangement of lighting in detail.
Making Videos in Resolve 21 – Full Course for Beginners
Well in a move that shocked absolutely no-one, Casey Faris has just release his updated Resolve Course for Beginners.
Similarly unsurprising it is of course free!
Generally speaking Casey does this either annually after Resolve has been updating for a while or whenever a new, full version is released.
This one is as a result of DaVinci Resolve moving from version 20 to 21 with the public release Resolve 21 coming out of Beta in the past week or so.
If you are using Resolve or if you are considering switching to it as your editing program then this is definitely the video for you.
For those that are already using the program this isn’t just an intro to any of the new features or changes to settings etc.
It is great way to take a fresh look at the program from a pros perspective and maybe learn a few new tricks or, like me, find out there was always a much easier way to do something!
For anyone new to Resolve then this is a no-brainer.
There is simply no way you can kind of stumble around the DaVinci Resolve user interface and think that somehow you are going to end up working it all out!
There is just too much going on in there for that to ever happen and all you will probably do is deepen the confusion!
Casey is a great teacher and is always careful to explain things thoroughly as he moves along.
On top of that he also provides free access to download all the assets he uses for each step so you can follow along as he goes.
How Music and Sound Design Made This Intro Great
This is a video that is quite obviously operating at a level that you and I are probably not operating at!
However I wanted to add it to this weeks Friday Roundup because although the techniques may be a little out of reach, the concepts behind them are major and basic.
We have probably all heard the statement that the most important part of video is audio and this video really shows how that works for real.
Use This YouTube Video Description Template for More Views Money (2026)
Now I am not saying it is impossible to be successful on YouTube these days but!!!!
The deal is that you have to get just about everything right to even get your foot in the door.
There things that you can control yourself and there are things that remain in the hands of the algorithm gods.
The trick is to take any aspect of the video, your channel or the YouTube interface that you can control and maximize whatever you can.
In the video below you can see exactly how and more importantly, why you should handle the Description section with care and attention.
In the video they mention a link to the template for video descriptions, that link is HERE
Best SoftBoxes for Under $150
I would like think that my journey in creating reasonably good looking footage for social media content was like a sailing trip through the Bahamas… but that’s not how it really went!
It was probably more like a lost and panicked meltdown dragging myself sobbing through swamps of Louisiana but fortunately I managed to get there in the end.
My two main bugbears when I look back on it all were lighting and audio with most of the other problems I had stemming from one of those two.
I spent hours (weeks?) faffing around with trying to deaden the sound in the place I was videoing before I finally worked out that if just used a modern lav mic with noise canceling, I didn’t need to do any of that!
I use this one Hollyland Lark M2 and of course there are others and I could spend more hours researching in circles but at the end of the day it really does the job.
The other big problem was that although I had a good camera to shoot with, my footage always looked kinda bad.
Again I faffed around with all sorts of settings in the camera and other stuff all to no avail.
Ultimately I discovered I had a lighting problem and not a camera problem and that the answer to that problem was a good quality light on a stand with a softbox.
Once I started using that setup, my life became so much easier!
So the thing with softboxes is that there are a gazillion choices out there as far as size, shape and price go so in the video below you can see some choices but more importantly, why certain features may or may not apply to your video style.
Key Takeaways
Color correction in DaVinci Resolve relies on understanding tools rather than screen accuracy; audio editing lacks similar tools and requires listening skills.
Using project templates in editing software can inspire creativity without directly using the templates in projects.
AI background removers vary in effectiveness; consider the clip itself rather than the software for optimal results.
Wondershare Filmora’s recent updates include a new vocal remover and an improved speed adjustment system for clips.
Effective video creation relies on good lighting and sound; personal experiences emphasize the importance of using quality tools like specific microphones and lighting setups.
Nothing announced a product expansion to Best Buy across the U.S., bringing its phones and audio devices to even more people.
The company states its Phone 4a Pro, Phone 3, Headphones a, and Ear 3 are now available with its full portfolio on the website.
Nothing states it recorded a 120% increase in sales in 2025 in the U.S., and it seems it’s looking to keep that streak going.
Nothing believes that there’s no better way to say “Happy Friday” than to announce an expansion of its products in the U.S.
Marking another milestone for Nothing, the company shared a press release today (June 12), detailing its product expansion to Best Buy in the U.S. It states that its phone and audio portfolio “will be available at Best Buy stores nationwide.” Nothing says it’s bringing its products to the store in the U.S. off the back of its success at Best Buy Canada. For phones, Nothing states consumers across the country can find the Phone 4a Pro and the Phone 3 in stores.
However, when it comes to its audio lineup, Nothing’s Headphone a and Ear 3 are listed for availability. The post adds that its “complete portfolio will also be available at bestbuy.com.”
Latest Videos From
Nothing’s latest move can be seen as strategic, with a storied history in the U.S. The company states it recorded a 120% increase in sales in the States in 2025, facilitating a 175% increase in revenue. More than 500 Best Buy stores across the country are reportedly receiving Nothing Phones and audio devices.
Nothing is going places
(Image credit: Nicholas Sutrich / Android Central)
The lineup Nothing is offering at Best Buy can stand on its own pretty well. Android Central’s Nicholas Sutrich was smitten with the brand’s Headphones a when he first put them on. To him, over-ear-headphones might as well be back on the menu. What Nick talked about was the “loud and proud” aspect of these headphones. Other than their sound quality, the Headphones a rock Nothing’s classic design, one that clearly separates it from the rest of the industry.
These headphones are comfortable, while also sporting easy-to-reach buttons. Then you have the Nothing Phone 4a and 4a Pro, which made quite the statement earlier this year.
Along the lines of Nothing’s availability announcement today, the company expanded the reach of its Phone 3 in 2025. Best Buy Canada received the device, while Nothing brought it to more places like Amazon in the U.S., too. Nothing’s CEO, Carl Pei, said the U.S. market is dominated by two players, which is likely a reference to Samsung and Apple. Pei said consumers are looking for change. It’s safe to say that those sentiments haven’t gone anywhere as we see more of Nothing’s products become easily available in the U.S.
Get the latest news from Android Central, your trusted companion in the world of Android
Android Central’s Take
Nothing’s phones have continued to catch my attention. I’ve been impressed with their changes and upgrades thus far, and the Phone 4a series, though it’s more budget oriented, is pretty attractive. Nothing’s moved into the AI space, but more focused on productivity. Users can quickly snapshot details and save notes, which is a boon to the busy bees of the world.
A guide to the most common pop-up mistakes that hurt home-based sellers helps new entrepreneurs protect real income, not just vanity traffic. Many home-based sellers treat markets and local events like casual sales days, only to leave confused when foot traffic never translates into steady revenue. A pop-up gives customers a physical snapshot of the business, and if the setup feels unclear or untrustworthy, buyers often walk away before asking a single question.
Choosing the Wrong Event
A profitable pop-up starts before you pack the car. Too many home-based sellers chase any booth opening with decent foot traffic, even when the crowd does not match the product or price point. A handmade soap seller or custom gift maker needs an event where shoppers expect to browse and ask questions. When the audience mismatch is strong, even a polished booth starts working against it from the first hour.
A better approach starts with event research, not hope. Look at past vendor photos, neighborhood demographics, and the types of businesses the organizer usually promotes. Then ask what type of people the event usually attracts. That distinction helps a home-based business choose income opportunities with a stronger chance of turning one busy afternoon into repeat customers.
Building a Booth With No Clear Offer
Some pop-up booths look full but still fail to sell. A table covered with every product, sample, and payment sign often forces shoppers to work too hard to understand the offer. People walking through a market make quick decisions, so your booth needs one clear reason to stop. When the message feels buried, customers may admire the display and keep moving without buying anything.
This problem hits service-based businesses, too. A home organizer, photographer, or cleaning business needs a simple offer that a stranger understands in a few seconds. That may mean a starter package or a small printed menu with plain pricing.
Making Payment Feel Awkward
A customer who decides to buy should never feel stuck at checkout. Some home-based sellers lose sales because they forget backup payment options, struggle with spotty service, or make pricing hard to confirm. The hesitation lasts only a few seconds, but that short pause gives people time to reconsider the purchase. If checkout feels clumsy, the booth suddenly feels less professional.
Before the event, test your card reader, mobile hotspot, and QR codes at home. Also, make sure prices remain visible to customers on their side of the table, not just from behind the booth. Smooth checkout builds confidence because it makes the whole business feel trustworthy and organized.
Forgetting the Comfort of the Space
Comfort affects sales more than many home-based sellers expect. A booth with poor lighting, loud equipment, weak shade, or a tight table layout gives shoppers a reason to leave before they study the offer. If your setup needs power for lights or checkout tools, the sound and placement of that equipment matter. A quick look at ways to quiet generators for businesses fits into planning, especially for outdoor events where noise can push customers away.
Think about the booth from the customer’s side. They should be able to approach without squeezing around cords or standing in direct sunlight while they make their decision. A comfortable booth gives shoppers permission to stay long enough to buy.
Ignoring Follow-Up After the Event
A pop-up does not end when you fold the tablecloth. Many home-based sellers collect compliments all day, then lose the momentum because they never capture names, send follow-ups, or guide interested shoppers toward the next step. Without a follow-up system, the event becomes a single sales day instead of a customer-building channel.
Use one simple method to keep the conversation going. A QR code for an email list or a post-event discount card gives shoppers a reason to reconnect. Service businesses can also invite visitors to book a short consult during the event while the interest feels fresh.
Treating Trust as an Afterthought
Home-based sellers often underestimate how much trust they need at an in-person event. Customers may love the product, but they still want proof that the business will follow through after the tent comes down. Business cards help, though trust grows faster when the booth shows real reviews, clear policies, social proof, and a direct way to reach the owner. This matters even more for service sellers who ask people to book something after the event.
A small sign with recent testimonials often works better than a long sales pitch. For local service providers, quickly building trust in a service-based business may come down to showing faces, delivering results, maintaining response times, and keeping booking steps simple. Customers want to know who they will deal with after the conversation ends. When the booth answers that question early, the seller does not need to fight so hard for a sale.
Pricing Like a Hobby
Home-based sellers sometimes price products and services like side projects, even when they want business-level income. Pop-up costs include the booth fee, packaging, travel, samples, supplies, and the hours spent preparing for the event. If the price only covers materials, the seller leaves with busy hands and weak profit. That pattern turns an income opportunity into an unpaid promotion.
A stronger pricing plan starts with the full event cost. Add everything, from the table fee to the expected product loss before the event even begins. Then set prices that support the business, rather than apologizing for being small. Customers who value the product or service need clarity, not a discount that trains the owner to earn less.
Treat the Pop-Up Like a Sales System
Treat these common pop-up mistakes that hurt home-based sellers as fixable parts of a sales system, not personal failures. The right event, a clear offer, smooth payment, a comfortable booth, and simple follow-up all help a small business look ready for growth.
Home-based sellers compete with busy markets and cautious buyers every time they show up in person. With stronger planning, a pop-up becomes more than a table for the day and starts working like a practical path toward a steadier income. For more information and business advice, browse Home Business Expo for more information.
All eyes might be on the SpaceX IPO — the world’s largest in history — and its CEO Elon Musk. But lest you forget there is another publicly traded company in the Musk universe that many believe will someday merge with SpaceX.
We’re talking about Tesla, a company that has a current market cap of about $1.26 trillion. Musk, who also leads the company, has pitched Tesla as an AI and robotics company, even if the bulk of its revenue comes from selling EVs. Some see a merger with SpaceX as a critical step to achieve that mission.
And SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell appears to see some benefits to one. During an interview with CNBC, Shotwell said a merger “might make Elon’s life a little easier.”
There is evidence that SpaceX is already preparing for a merger. The company amended its S-1 registration document ahead of its public debut to include new language in its risk factors section about mergers and acquisitions. The sentence, which reads “We may issue a significant amount of equity in connection with future transactions,” is a warning to investors of future dilution. A warning like that wouldn’t be necessary for a small-scale deal; it likely means Tesla.
As a reminder, Musk is quite comfortable bringing the disparate pieces of his portfolio together. SpaceX acquired Musk’s AI company xAI earlier this year. And xAI acquired Musk’s social media company X in an all-stock transaction.
I was never able to get a feel for Funselektor’s top-down driving game Art of Rally, or its predecessor Absolute Drift: I like rally in real life, but sliding cars around corners at screaming speeds from a weird perspective and with no tactile feedback just didn’t work for me. I had higher hopes for the slower pace of the studio’s upcoming Over the Hill, and after trying the demo that dropped today with the start of the Steam Next Fest, I am very happy to say that yeah, this is the one.
Over the Hill is a very stylized take on off-roading: You’re not going to find high-fidelity mud here, or detailed first-person views from behind the wheel. It’s really more about the broader experience of being ‘out there,’ going slow, taking your time, and thinking about how you’re going to get where you want rather than just hammering on it. You can hammer on it if you want, and it’ll carry you for a while, and also likely put you over onto your roof when you’re not expecting it.
over the hill – Steam Next Fest Demo Trailer – YouTube
The game world itself is very much like that too: Not realistic, but evocative in a way that I think makes it more powerful—a bit like Firewatch in that regard, and in visual style too, at least for this demo. This playable portion is set in a beefy chunk of Canadian wilderness, and while Funselektor emphasized that it’s still “a work in progress,” there’s a lot to see and do. Trails of different types lead to points of interest where you’ll find customization items and in-game currency, there are cabins that serve as save points, “challenge trails” wait to test your patience and precision, and scenic lookouts provide an opportunity to just kick back and enjoy the view, and play with the game’s photo mode if that’s your thing.
Latest Videos From
You can (and surely will) also leave the trailers completely and just go bombing around wherever you want, within the limits of your vehicle’s capabilities, which—as an entry-level machine—are pretty limited indeed. But that’s also how you find the interesting stuff: The map will guide you to nearby POIs, but it can be a lot more fun to just get out there and see what comes up.
It’s probably wise to play it a little safe until you’ve got some of those cabins unlocked, though. The first time I fired up Over the Hill I found and immediately embarked on a challenge trail that led me across some rocks to a gorgeous waterfall, and I was this close to completing it when I misread the trail, ended up in the water, and drowned my engine. The only checkpoint I had at that stage was the one at the very beginning, so—right back to the start I went.
(Image credit: Funselektor)
See that very narrow rock trail in front of the falls? Good luck.
But even those long slogs can be almost hypnotic. During another session I came across a vehicle stranded in a bog, and spent more than 30 minutes trying to pull it out. I came so close, so many times, and I kept telling myself one more shot from this angle and I’m done, and then I kept trying—until, well, I got a little rammy, ended up in the nearby lake, drowned my engine, and whoops. Now we’re both stuck.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
(I later found a trail that led me to the stuck vehicle from the other side of the bog, and pulled it out with relative ease. Live and learn.)
It wasn’t all misfortune and failure. A drive up to a distant fire tower left me hung up on a boulder: After a few minutes of gunning the engine and reefing the wheel I was ready to reset, but decided it was time to finally take a dig through Over the Hill’s toolbox. Turned out there was a portable winching point in there, similar to a piton but big enough to yoink a car around. I was able to pull off the boulder, and after a few more stressful moments but no full-on catastrophes, I made it to the top. (And then forgot to take a picture. Isn’t that always the way?)
(Image credit: Funselektor)
This one, well, I did not get out of. But I also have to admit that trying to drive out to the end of a very narrow, rickety dock was probably not my best idea.
(Image credit: Funselektor)
Over the Hill has a day-night cycle that works really well. The game world becomes a very different kind of beautiful over long distances, but this isn’t one of those pretend-nights in videogames where the skybox is dark but you can still see: You’re gonna need your headlights if you want to keep driving.
Image 1 of 5
(Image credit: Funselektor)
(Image credit: Funselektor)
(Image credit: Funselektor)
(Image credit: Funselektor)
(Image credit: Funselektor)
One thing I realized after playing Over the Hill for a good while is that I’d put my truck into low gear range—slow, but better for climbing rocks and powering through muck—and then just left it there. Yes, it was taking me longer than necessary to traverse the game’s safer areas, but I hadn’t noticed because slow and meditative is what Over the Hill is all about. Even after I clocked that I was basically crawling when I could’ve been cruising, I left it alone—apart from being a more relaxing way to travel, running in low gear had the added practical benefit of keeping me from high-speed bouncing my dumb self into roadside trees and rocks.
Along with singleplayer exploration, Over the Hill supports multiplayer for up to four drivers at once. I took it for a very brief spin, mostly just so I could say that I did, and it’s very easy to set up and connect with other players. As for the actual exploration, I didn’t do extensive testing but it looks more or less identical to singleplayer, except you’ve got other people around—handy if you need to be hauled out of some self-inflicted trouble.
How the full game holds up is an open question, but the demo sets a great tone. (Speaking of which, Over the Hill’s music is excellent too: Not as deep a soundtrack as that other great fantasy driving sim, Pacific Drive, but a soothing, gentle backdrop to the demo’s quiet isolation.) A lot of driving games, like the upcoming Clutch, like to churn excitement about “the connection between car and driver, and the raw thrill of speed,” but for my money Over the Hill lands closer to real love of the wheel: Funselektor understands it in a way that an awful lot of studios miss.
The Over the Hill demo is live now and will remain up until the end of the Steam Next Fest on June 22. A release date hasn’t been announced but it’s expected to be out later this year.
