Nightdive Studios has reimagined another cult classic game for modern audiences. Killing Time: Resurrected is a refresh of the 1996 3DO and PC original. For the uninitiated, the game was notable at the time for attempting to blend full-motion video (FMV) with a first-person shooter. It truly looked like nothing else when it was released during the heyday of Bill Clinton’s first term as president.

Like most Nightdive remakes, Killing Time: Resurrected isn’t just a simple remaster. This title boasts 4K visuals, a 144Hz frame cap and other modern graphical goodies like anti-aliasing. The menu art and 2D screens have also been redone.

As for gameplay, fans will now have access to all of the weapons from both the 3DO and PC versions of the game. Back in the 1990s, several weapons were exclusive to each platform. There’s also plenty of newly-unearthed content that was cut from the original, including a pool house stage and a shipwreck.

The 50 live-action FMV sequences have been fully remastered, and they really pop in this remake. Players can toggle between the original sprites and the updated visuals, which is always a nice touch. Nightdive promises “upscaled environmental texturing, smoother gameplay, more responsive controls.”

The load times between areas have also been completely eliminated. Those load times were pretty brutal back in the 1990s, if memory serves. Killing Time: Resurrected is available right now for PC via Steam. There’s a launch sale going on, dropping the title down to $20 from $25.

Nightdive Studios has been pumping out all kinds of high-quality remakes and remasters lately. It handled the critically-acclaimed remaster of Star Wars: Dark Forces and a complete remake of System Shock. The company was recently purchased by Atari.

Yuga Labs, the Web3 company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club, is bringing AI to blockchain with the launch of ApeChain, a new creator platform.

In order to future-proof its ecosystem, Yuga Labs is partnering with Wire Network, the universal Layer 1 blockchain infrastructure designed for the AI agent economy. That is, it’s the near future where “AI agents” can be prompted to make advanced actions on behalf of humans. The idea is to create a platform for creators that enables them to engage with their fans more easily and profitably.

ApeChain harnesses the momentum of Yuga Labs’ track record as the biggest name in Web3 games. The company is offering a platform that allows entrepreneurs and builders more creative freedom and facilitates a better overall experience for consumers in everything entertainment from art to gaming, Yuga Labs said.

Yuga Labs has been leading the charge on new tech. It was born embracing crypto and non-fungible tokens. It embraced the metaverse with OtherSide and spun up a games business, and now it is banking on the intersection of AI and the creator economy.

As AI comes to the forefront of conversation in the creator economy, this partnership aims to transform the way consumers and creators interact with AI agents, offering enhanced, meaningful engagement across digital and virtual environments, Yuga Labs said.

In addition to decentralized AI capabilities, ApeChain will also benefit from Wire Network’s additional core strengths: no gas fees, seamless cross-chain operations, and lightning-fast transactions. These features will now be integrated into Yuga Labs’ diverse portfolio of digital assets and virtual worlds, and available to everyone who builds on ApeChain.

Ken DiCross, CEO of Wire Network, said in a statement that he sees the collaboration as a significant step forward in realizing the potential of AI.

“Yuga Labs is an established leader in building digital communities and pushing creative boundaries,” DiCross said. “By combining our scalable, next-generation blockchain infrastructure with Yuga’s creativity and cultural influence, we are opening up new possibilities for AI agent interactions that are more immersive, seamless, and beneficial for everyone involved. Our collective goal here is to create a broader, decentralized, user-driven metaverse.”

ApeChain makes its debut alongside the Yuga Labs flagship event, ApeFest, in Lisbon, Portugal, this week.

Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Devin Coldewey, Margaux MacColl and Anthony Ha are rounding up the week’s startup and venture news, kicking things off with a look at the $400 million raised by Lightmatter, and the importance of fast networking within the fast growing data center industry today — not just in years to come — makes the impressive round a little more understandable.

Our Deals of the Week continue with Paladin’s drone play for first responders and police, and Abel aiming to reduce the substantial paperwork backlog that officers accrue in their everyday duties. According to Margaux, Abel founder Daniel Francis brings a chaotic energy (having landed a Twitter job from Musk after pretending to have been laid off) that could shake things up.

Diving deeper, Anthony breaks down the complex back-and-forth that is the WordPress/WP Engine dispute — and we’re left wondering why the obligations of and to the “open source community” are not entirely clear. What does it mean for an open source ecosystem when one person (in this case WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg) still seems to exercise tremendous influence? And could we say the same of Meta’s Llama or other “open” AI solutions?

Lastly, the crew chats through the “bummer” results from PitchBook showing that although founders are founding and investors are investing, there isn’t a huge amount of money being made. Turns out they weren’t just in it to change the world after all. What could this lack of liquidity be attributed to? Is it the macroeconomic climate, the sectors being invested in, the VC’s strategies changing… or something else? At least defense and AI are doing OK, and Europe seems to be chugging along, so maybe it’s specific to America? Check back in a month.

Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. 

Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.

Intel’s new Xeon 6900P “Granite Rapids” CPU family is here, and the first reviews say it provides solid competition for AMD’s EPYC processors. The top-of-the-line model, the 6980P, has 128 high-performance cores and 256 threads, with a 2.0 GHz clock speed and 504MB of L3 cache.

We know a lot about the 6980P processor, but until now what we didn’t know how much it was going to cost.

While your regular laptop is pretty great, if you want something thin and light that packs a punch, then you’ll want to grab yourself on of Dell’s XPS lineup. They’re Dell’s answer to the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro and they have a wide range of sizes and specifications; plus, they tend to be quite cheaper, which is always good. Of course, the biggest positive is being able to find a configuration that fits your needs, especially since the Dell XPS comes in four different sizes now, and being one of the best laptop brands on the market, you know you’re getting a quality product.

Of course, given that these are pricey machines, going for a deal is probably the way to go, which is why we’ve collected some of our favorite deals below. That said, if you can’t quite find what you’re looking for, be sure to check out these Dell laptop deals and our roundup of the best laptop deals for some non-Dell options.

Best Dell XPS 13 deals

The Dell XPS 13 is the smallest in the Dell XPS line. It’s great for commuters and students. These laptops don’t generally have powerful GPUs, but they’re fast, reliable, and sleek. That said, the new XPS 13 lineup has come out and there aren’t a lot of great deals on them right now, so we’ve mostly focused on older deals.

• Dell XPS 13 (Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, 32GB Memory, 1TB, FHD+) —
• Dell XPS 13 (Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, 32GB Memory, 1TB, OLED, 3K) —

Best Dell XPS 14 deals

The new Dell XPS 14 laptops have come out, and they’re a pretty solid middle ground for those who want a smaller form factor but still need a bigger screen than what is on offer for with the Dell XPS 13. And, given they have a bit more room to work with, it does mean you get things like a better typing experience and bigger speakers. Unfortunately, there aren’t any Dell XPS 14 deals right now, but we’ll update this article as soon as we find some good ones.

Best Dell XPS 15 deals

The Dell XPS 15 is a step up in size and power. You’ll get a much bigger screen than on the XPS 13, and with a bigger chassis comes more demanding components. We see Dell start pulling from Nvidia’s line of RTX GPUs, and we see a bunch more RAM getting crammed in there.

• Dell XPS 15 (Intel Core i7-13620H, 16GB Memory, Intel Xe Graphics, 512GB, FHD+) —

Best Dell XPS 16 deals

While Dell is no longer making the XPS 17, they have replaced that with the slightly smaller XPS 16, which still has a relatively large screen and excellent specs under the hood. As such, it’s a great option if you want a bigger screen and power than your average 15-inch laptop. Unfortunately, there aren’t any XPS 16 deals available at the moment.

• Dell XPS 16 (Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, 16GB Memory, Intel Arc Graphics, 512GB, FHD+) —
• Dell XPS 16 (Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, 32GB Memory, RTX 4050, 1TB, FHD+) —

How we chose the best Dell XPS deals