The opening hours of Metaphor: ReFantazio sends you to a variety of unique places as you’re introduced to its interesting world and gameplay design. After the game’s initial segments play out, you’ll soon find yourself exploring your first main dungeon — a place known as the Nord Mines. This lengthy dungeon stretches on for an hour or so and includes another fight against a human boss. But right as you’re getting ready to reach the end of the mines, you’ll stumble across a room with a sleeping dragon where your team decides it might be smarter to sneak around it and avoid combat.

Because of the way the game pushes you toward stealth in this room, you may be convinced that waking and fighting the dragon is a really bad idea. However, you might be surprised to hear that the dragon actually isn’t that difficult to defeat, and doing so can earn you an extremely powerful weapon. Let’s take a look at what you need to know about the Nord Mines dragon.

How to kill the Nord Mines dragon (and why you should)

When you reach the room with the sleeping dragon in Nord Mines, you can choose to stealth around the outer rim of the area or face the dragon by approaching it. We’d recommend you approach and fight the dragon, as defeating it isn’t as difficult as the game hints it’ll be.

We’d recommend you have at least one Mage archetype with the Blizz spell unlocked, as the dragon is weak to ice. Having multiple mages can make this fight even easier, though you’ll want to make sure they stay on the backline to avoid taking significant damage from the dragon’s various powerful attacks.

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Luckily, taking down the dragon is a straightforward affair. Just wail on it with Blizz and heal when necessary to find that it goes down much quicker than you probably initially expected. And when it’s dead, you’ll be able to loot the Dragon’s Indignation greatsword from a chest behind where the dragon was sleeping. Its whopping 111 Attack makes it the absolute best weapon you can equip at this point in the game, so toss it on whichever character you have running the Warrior archetype and prepare to dish out the hurt with it.

A spacecraft is due to launch from Florida destined for an asteroid that US space agency Nasa knocked off course in 2022.

It is part of an international mission to see if we can stop dangerous asteroids hitting Earth.

The Hera craft will look at what happened to a space rock called Dimorphos when Nasa intentionally collided with it.

If all goes to plan, the spacecraft will reach Dimorphos in December 2026.

The Hera mission, which is run by the European Space Agency, is a follow-on from Nasa’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) project.

Dimorphos is a small moon 160m-wide that orbits an asteroid close to Earth called Didymos in something called a binary asteroid system.

In 2022 Nasa said it successfully changed Dimorphos’s course by crashing a probe into it. It altered the rock’s path by a few metres, according to Nasa’s scientists.

The asteroid was not on course to hit Earth, but it was a test to see whether space agencies could do it when there is genuine risk.

Now the Hera craft will look at the size and depth of the impact crater created on Dimorphos.

Two cube-shaped probes will also study the make-up of the asteroid and its mass.

“We need to understand what are the physical properties of these asteroids? What are they made of? Are they blocks of rock? Are they made of sand inside?” says Naomi Murdoch, a scientist involved with the European Space Agency mission.

That should help scientists understand the best way to attempt to intercept other asteroids, which can be many different sizes and shapes, in the future.

Scientists do not believe that we are currently at risk of a dinosaur-style extinction caused by an asteroid hitting Earth. An asteroid of that size could be easily spotted in space.

The size of asteroid that DART and Hera are targeting are about 100-200m wide and are very difficult to see from our planet.

From time to time they hit Earth. On 2013 a house-sized asteroid exploded in the sky above the town of Chelyabinsk in Russia. The shock wave blew out windows for over 200 square miles and damaged buildings. Over 1,600 people were injured in the blast.

Scientists hope to one day be able to identify asteroids like this and knock them off course.

“It’s not to avoid an extinction of the human race. It’s to create a system to minimize the damage as much as we can. The dinosaurs didn’t have a space program, but we do,” says Prof Murdoch.

But scientists warn that even though Nasa has proved it is possible to alter one asteroid’s course, it does not mean it can easily be done on all space rocks.

Intercepting an asteroid before it hits Earth also relies on being able to spot the incoming hazard in the first place.

Ah, the Galaxy S24 FE. The Fan Edition of the Galaxy S24 lineup. This phone always comes out at a pretty odd time, and seems like the red-headed stepchild of the flagship range. Why? It’s pretty simple. It comes out just a few months before the lineup gets refreshed – this time around, the Galaxy S25 is expected in January, so only three months out. It’s also a lower-end model, despite using the Galaxy S24 name. Though, this year, Samsung did make some larger changes. Including giving it a larger display (the same size as Galaxy S24 Plus), and an Exynos chipset, instead of a year or two old Snapdragon chip.

While the Galaxy S24 FE does look a lot like the Galaxy A55, it does have quite a few upgrades that make it a much better phone. Like a larger and brighter display, a faster processor, more RAM, though it does have a smaller battery. However, the real question is whether it is worth the $649 asking price from Samsung.

Samsung Galaxy S24 FE Review: Hardware and Design

The Galaxy S24 FE design looks pretty similar to other Samsung phones that have launched in the past couple of years. It’s their design identity, so of course it’s going to look similar. That includes the flat back, flat sides, and the individual camera bumps. Surprisingly, the back is covered in glass and not plastic, and uses Gorilla Victus 5 on the back, with Victus Plus on the front. This makes it pretty safe from scratches and shattering. I haven’t done any drop testing with this phone, but it does seem to do pretty well against scratches.

Samsung sells the Galaxy S24 FE in five colors: blue, graphite, gray, mint, and yellow. Our model here is the blue, which is the hero color this year. It’s a good-looking color, almost like a baby blue color. While I do prefer some darker blue colors, this one isn’t bad at all. The sides are going to be silver, thanks to the Armor Aluminum. These all make for some pretty nice upgrades to the Galaxy S24 FE this year.

In the hand, it feels, well a lot like an iPhone. Of course, that comes down to the flat sides as well as the curved corners. It’s not a bad thing, and it’s something that everyone seems to be copying these days, even Google with the Pixel 9 series. My one complaint, and it’s an old one, is to make the camera module flush with the back of the phone. This is something that Google is going to be doing with the Pixel 9a when it launches in March. The main reason for this is that the Galaxy S24 FE rocks quite a bit on a table, and dust does get stuck around these cameras when they come in and out of your pocket. Getting pretty dirty, pretty quickly. It is easy to clean, however.

On the bottom of the phone, you’ll notice there is a speaker grill, a microphone and a USB-C port. Now the first thing I noticed was that the USB-C port was not centered. This is also the case on the Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra actually, but not on the Galaxy S24 Ultra. Why isn’t it centered? The only thing I can think of is, because of the layout on the inside of the phone. But this should not affect cases, really, though we don’t have any here to really test out just yet.

Samsung Galaxy S24 FE Review: Display

If you’re looking for the best display on a smartphone, then you’ll want to keep looking, as the Galaxy S24 FE doesn’t have it – Galaxy S24 Ultra on the other hand. That being said, this display is quite good, and I’d say it’s the best in this price range (sub-$700).

This is a Samsung display, so everything I’m about to say should come as no surprise. But the display is bright, vivid and has amazing color reproduction. Watching videos on this from YouTube, Netflix, and other video apps looks absolutely stunning. Speaking of brightness, this does get up to 1,900 nits. That doesn’t sound a lot compared to what the Galaxy S24 Ultra or Google Pixel 9 Pro can do. However, it is bright enough. Using this outdoors, I had no issue seeing the display. And in our testing, we were able to get it up to about 1,500 nits. You’ll never see the 1,900 nits of peak brightness unless you’re in the perfect environment for it.

Another minor thing that you probably won’t be able to not see, is the bottom bezel. It is thicker than the sides and the top bezel, though it is barely thicker, it is somewhat noticeable. The bezels on their own are a little thick, but nothing to cry about.

Samsung Galaxy S24 FE Review: Performance

Inside the Galaxy S24 FE is the Exynos 2400e, which is one of the rare times that the US actually gets an Exynos chipset. This is a 4nm, 10-core chipset. So it’s not quite as efficient as some of the more high-end chipsets on the market. But it does clock in at over 3GHz. That’s paired with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage (on our unit, there is also options for 256GB and 512GB).

The Exynos 2400e has been pretty pleasant for me. The phone has performed really well, in fact there were times that I forgot this was even an Exynos-powered device. It also doesn’t really get that hot, which we’ll talk more about in our thermal testing in a bit. It runs really smoothly, which was not something I expected from the Exynos 2400e, after hearing all the horror stories from Europe about how bad Exynos is over there.

Even in gaming, the Exynos 2400e performed really well, and when you see the benchmarks, you’ll see why. I’ve played both Genshin Impact and Wild Rift on here with almost no issues. It’s been a very pleasant experience all around.

Benchmarks

As always, we are running three benchmarks on the Galaxy S24 FE. The first one is Geekbench 6. This benchmark tests the raw performance of the CPU in single-core and multi-core, as well as the GPU. And I have to say the scores here are pretty impressive. On the single-core, it scored 2,111 and multi-core was 6,478. That’s pretty similar to the Galaxy S24 Ultra with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy, and a huge upgrade over the Galaxy S23 FE. On the GPU side, it hit a score of 15,309 which is nearly 3x higher than the Galaxy S23 FE, and about 30% higher than the Galaxy S24 Ultra. In fact, it’s the highest GPU score we’ve seen on any Android device, only the iPhones have been able to beat it (quite easily too). That explains why this phone works so well in gaming.

The next benchmark we run is 3DMark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test, which will push the device to its limits and tell us how well it can sustain the performance. This is a twofer as we also use this as a thermal test, since this is about the hottest your phone will ever get. With this test, you get a Best Loop score, a Lowest Loop and from the 20 loops that are run, a stability percentage is made. For the best Loop, it scored 3,475 which is good, but not the best. The lowest loop was 2,269 and that brought the stability to 65.3% which is actually really impressive. Many phones are closer to 50%, including the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

Finally, we run a third benchmark that is pretty tough to “cheat” on. And that is video exporting. Essentially, we load up a 60-second video and then export it, timing how long it takes to export. On the Galaxy S24 FE, this test was done in just 6.8 seconds. That’s a pretty good improvement over the Galaxy S23 FE which did the same test in 14.58 seconds, and even over the Galaxy S24 Ultra which did it in 7.75 seconds.

Thermals

For thermal testing, we do three different tests. First up is a benchmark called 3DMark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test. This is going to push your device to the limits and get it about as hot as it will ever get. So this is the extreme end of thermal testing. The next test is playing Genshin Impact for an hour at max settings and max brightness. Finally, we record video with the camera at 4K60 for 10 minutes, taking the temperature at 5 minute intervals. Here’s how the Galaxy S24 FE performed in each test. All temperatures are in Fahrenheit.

• 3DMark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test: 111.9
• Genshin Impact: 98.1
• Camera, 4K60 at 5-minutes: 89.7
• Camera, 4K60 at 10-minutes: 95.9

Samsung Galaxy S24 FE Review: Battery life and Charging

This year, Samsung included a more powerful processor, as we’ve seen from the benchmarks above, as well as a significantly larger battery. But then again, this is a much larger physical phone, going from a 6.4-inch display on the Galaxy S23 FE, to a 6.7-inch display on the Galaxy S24 FE. So how does that affect battery life? Not by that much.

In our testing with the Galaxy S24 FE, the phone lasted pretty nicely on battery. We’re looking at a full day, with around 6-7 hours of screen on time, with ease. That puts it right on par with the Galaxy S24 Ultra which is about twice as much. That’s not too shabby.

On the charging front, it is topping out at 25W, which is quite low, but expected from Samsung. Only the Galaxy S24 Ultra has faster charging at 45W, but it only sticks to 45W for a minute or two, so it’s not really that useful. Having said that, it does fully charge overnight, since the phone does last me all day long, so I’m not all that upset about how long it takes to charge.

Benchmarks

Similar to performance, we also run a couple of benchmarks on the battery and charging front. For battery life, we charge the phone up to 100% and let it sit at 100% on the charger for about an hour. To ensure that it is actually at 100%. Then we load up a video that is about 24 hours long, and run it on full screen with maximum brightness from 100% down to 1%. Then, record how long it lasted. On the Galaxy S24 FE, this lasted just under 20 hours at 19:58:40. That’s not the best, we consider anything over 20 hours to be great battery life.

On the charging front, we charge the phone from 1% or dead up to 100% and time it. If the phone comes with a charger, we use that charger. Otherwise, we use one that can charge the phone at its maximum charging speed. For the Galaxy S24 FE, it charged fully in 1 hour and 20 minutes.

Samsung Galaxy S24 FE Review: Software

The Galaxy S24 FE is launching with Android 14 and One UI 6.1.1 on top. That’s the newest version of Samsung’s software, which first debuted on the Galaxy Z Fold 6 back in July. It will get One UI 7 (with Android 15) next year, as Samsung has recently confirmed that it won’t launch until 2025, and a beta of One UI 7 will be out by the end of this year. Additionally, the Galaxy S24 FE is set to get seven years of updates. Similar to the Galaxy S24, Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Galaxy Z Flip 6 models.

On the software front, everything is pretty much what you expect from Samsung. That includes Galaxy AI. There are quite a few Galaxy AI features available here, like Photo Assist, which is one of my favorites. This will allow you to resize, move, remove or transform objects you take. This is very similar to Google’s Magic Editor, but in some instances, it’s even better. There are also features like Chat Assist, Call Assist, and Interpreter. There’s nothing new for Galaxy AI on the Galaxy S24 FE; we expect more features to come with One UI 7 on the Galaxy S25 series in January.

The software on the Galaxy S24 FE is nice and smooth, I was pleasantly surprised at how smooth this was. So if you’re worried about the software being janky or anything, don’t be. The software here is very good and runs very well on the Exynos 2400e.

Samsung Galaxy S24 FE Review: Camera

The cameras on the Galaxy S24 FE are pretty good, but the Galaxy S24 Ultra still outperforms it, as expected. On the Galaxy S24 FE, we have a 50-megapixel primary sensor, an 8-megapixel telephoto, and a 12-megapixel ultrawide on-board. That telephoto is capable of 3x optical zoom, and it’s pretty crisp. Of course, with digital zoom, you can get up to 30x, which is not as crisp as expected.

The main sensor does a pretty good job with pictures, though it does struggle quite a bit in low-light. You can check out all of the images that were taken with the Galaxy S24 FE in the gallery below. It’s a pretty solid set of cameras, but it won’t win the best camera phone of the year, as you might expect for its price.

Of course, with the Galaxy S24 FE the cameras are much more than just taking crisp photos and videos. You also get other features like Dual Record, allowing you to record with both the front and rear cameras at the same time. This is actually a feature that LG first introduced with its V series many, many years ago. And speaking of video, 8K video is here, even though Samsung never talks about it. You can do 8K30 video or up to 4K60 video. Unfortunately, the 4K120 from the Galaxy S24 Ultra did not make it over to the Galaxy S24 FE, and that likely has to do with the sensor being used here, the Galaxy S24 Ultra has a much more dense sensor at 200MP versus the 50MP sensor on the Galaxy S24 FE.

As mentioned, there are loads of AI tools available in the camera, too. Photo Assist lets you do all sorts of things with the photo, like removing objects or moving them around. There’s also Sketch to the Image, which debuted in One UI 6.1.1. This lets you draw something like a hot air balloon and have it appear in the image. Surprisingly, Samsung does a really good job with this.

Overall, the cameras are pretty good here and will get you by; just don’t expect this to be the best camera on the market.

Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE?

Recommending the Galaxy S24 FE or not is a bit tough at this point. You see, it’s a good phone until you see the price. We’re seeing plenty of great phones at the same price or cheaper that offer better camera and software performance, like the OnePlus 12R. If Samsung had kept the Galaxy S24 FE at the Galaxy S23 FE price of $599, this would be a much easier one to recommend, but at $649, it gets up into that lower-end of the flagship range for pricing, which is where phones like OnePlus really thrive.

Of course, what Samsung has going for it here is seven years of updates, that larger display, and great battery life here.

You should buy the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE if:

• You want a good phone at a good price.
• You want Galaxy AI at a lower price, but not at a terrible experience.
• You need a phone with at least 3x zoom.
• You want a lightweight phone with good battery life.

You should not buy the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE if:

• You want a Galaxy S24 series phone, this is only a Galaxy S24 in name.
• You want the best display in a phone.

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Data observability specialist Monte Carlo on Monday unveiled root cause analysis capabilities aimed at making it faster and easier to identify and resolve data quality incidents.

The vendor’s new root cause analysis tools are targeted specifically at diagnosing changes to Databricks query code and GitLab pull requests. It plans to add similar capabilities for addressing incidents in other platforms as well, according to Lior Gavish, Monte Carlo’s co-founder and CTO.

Root cause analysis is a method of discovering the underlying reasons for code changes that lead to poor data quality.

By identifying the cause of a change as it occurs, root cause analysis enables developers and engineers to address the change before it has consequences, making it a significant part of the data management process, according to Kevin Petrie, an analyst at BARC U.S.

“A viable data observability program encompasses detection, assessment and remediation,” he said. “Once you detect an issue, you need to find the root cause so you can assess, triage and remediate, for example, by debugging or replacing a bad data pipeline.”

Based in San Francisco, Monte Carlo is a data observability vendor whose platform enables customers to monitor data as it progresses through the pipeline from its ingestion through integration and ultimately analysis. Its purpose is to ensure that the data used to train models and applications, feed dashboards, and inform decisions is accurate and up to date.

A viable data observability program encompasses detection, assessment and remediation. Once you detect an issue, you need to find the root cause so you can assess, triage and remediate.

In 2023, the vendor added data observability for vector databases, which have become a crucial part of retrieval-augmented generation pipelines used to train generative AI tools. Also that year, Monte Carlo launched its own generative AI capabilities, enabling customers to create SQL code using natural language and alerting users to coding problems with suggested fixes.

New capabilities

Data quality is imperative, perhaps more so now than ever as enterprise interest in AI increases and more processes get automated.

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With data being the foundation for analytics and AI, data needs to be accurate for the decisions based on analytics and AI to likewise be accurate. Meanwhile, with data volume increasing exponentially and the complexity of data also rising, it’s impossible for even teams of humans to monitor every data point and data set for quality.

In response, vendors such as Monte Carlo and other data observability specialists including Acceldata, Metaplane and Soda have developed platforms that automatically monitor data for quality and alert users when incidents occur.

Those alerts, however, have to do with the data points and data sets rather than the underlying code. Therefore, to remedy an incident, data engineers and other experts still have to trace the incident back to its source — its root cause — before it can be fixed. That process can take on average 15 hours, according to a survey of more than 200 data professionals by Monte Carlo and Wakefield Research.

That’s nearly two full workdays just to find the source of a single incident and get it remedied. Root cause analysis aims to eliminate much of the time and expense related to discovering and resolving the changes that cause data quality problems.

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Data quality issues can often be traced to one of three causes, according to Gavish: problems with the data itself, something amiss in a system or trouble with code.

Monte Carlo’s new root cause analysis capabilities specifically target issues with Databricks and GitLab code, whether they are simple coding mistakes by developers and engineers or unforeseen consequences of intentional updates.

Developers and engineers get alerts when incidents are detected, including information that correlates the incident with the specific change that caused it. As a result, downtime — the time it takes to resolve data quality problems — is reduced by about 80%, according to Monte Carlo.

“When it comes to resolving data issues, speed is everything,” Gavish said. “Being able to quickly root cause code-related issues leads to faster resolution. When you have visibility into data, systems and code issues all in one platform, it’s much easier to understand the root cause.”

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Specifically, using Monte Carlo’s new root cause analysis capabilities, the data observability vendor’s customers can easily view Databricks query logs and query changes for each table. By doing so, they can see whether there was a query change to that particular table or a table in another part of the data pipeline, and if that change is the cause of the problem.

Similarly, Monte Carlo’s new capabilities enable GitLab users to see which pull requests are linked to which tables. This can help users understand when those requests occurred and new code was merged, and if that new code is causing a data quality issue.

Given the visibility they enable, Monte Carlo’s new root cause analysis capabilities for Databricks query code and GitLab pull requests are significant for the data observability vendor’s customers, according to Petrie.

“Data teams frequently revise transformation code to meet changing business requirements, adjust formats, filter columns and so on,” he said. “While they try to minimize errors by branching and testing pipeline code, some problems inevitably get into production and break data quality. Monte Carlo helps data engineers spot those errors faster by autodetecting anomalous logs.”

Given its potential impact for developers and engineers, Monte Carlo has plans to expand its data observability platform to include root cause analysis capabilities beyond Databricks and GitLab.

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Databricks and GitLab are each popular environments for developers, with Databricks aggressively building an environment for developing generative AI, traditional AI and machine learning models during the past couple of years. However, many developers and engineers prefer other platforms for building data and AI models and applications.

To meet their needs, Monte Carlo plans to expand its root cause analysis capabilities beyond Databricks and GitLab, according to Gavish, though he did not specify which platforms the company plans to target next.

“We are constantly exploring and building new and stronger ways to enhance Monte Carlo’s resolution capabilities,” he said. “We believe strongly in empowering our customers to resolve data issues right where they start.”

Future plans

With root cause analysis for Databricks query code changes and GitLab pull requests now available — and plans already in place to add more root cause analysis capabilities — Monte Carlo’s product development roadmap is focused on three main themes, according to Gavish:

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• Further expediting incident resolution.
• Expanding data observability to cover the entire data management process from ingestion through analysis.
• Applying data observability to AI applications.

More root cause analysis addresses expediting incident resolution. Recent integrations with Informatica and Microsoft’s Azure Data Factory aim to expand Monte Carlo’s data observability capabilities to more of the data management process. And integrations with vendors such as vector database company Pinecone are geared toward applying data observability to AI development.

“It’s our vision to continue evolving Monte Carlo into a platform that can not only detect, but resolve and ultimately prevent issues from wherever they derive in our customers’ data stacks,” Gavish said.

Petrie, meanwhile, suggested that Monte Carlo expand its data observability capabilities beyond monitoring for data quality.

Data observability does not have to be limited to the data itself, he noted. It can extend to monitoring the performance of the processes that make up a data pipeline and prepare data from the time it’s first ingested to the points when it’s ready to inform analysis.

“Monte Carlo traditionally focuses on data quality observability,” Petrie said. “I’d be interested to see them expand in adjacent spaces such as data pipeline observability, which focuses more on the performance of underlying infrastructure.”

Eric Avidon is a senior news writer for TechTarget Editorial and a journalist with more than 25 years of experience. He covers analytics and data management.

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