This is not a true duffel bag so much as “the world’s first true wide-mouth packing system,” as Rux calls it, but it is nevertheless an impressive piece of equipment from a company known for its modular gear-toting systems. Not unlike a foldable version of the popular 70L storage container, the Duffel box starts completely flat, but the sides pop up, and the patent-pending top rolls down to form a box that stays open on its own. There are no zippers involved in its construction, but there are multiple straps, panels, and pockets, and you will most likely need to watch an instructional YouTube video to make full use of all the features. However, the beauty of this bag is that it can be just about anything you want it to be. Long-term storage, luggage, a gear box—even a backpack. All is possible with the included straps and dividers in the right places.
Over the past four months, my family has used it as a traditional duffel bag, a storage box, and, currently, a portable equipment organizer for my son’s club soccer team. It’s been stepped on, rained on, and thrown in wagons and vehicle trunks, with nary a scratch on the 105D nylon gridstop fabric. (Though it did get stuck in a downpour once, and I will say I’m not sure I’d quantify the fabric as fully waterproof—closer to water resistant.) Lash points along the inside walls allow it to integrate with Rux’s line of accessories and packing bags (sold separately), in which we’re currently keeping pinnies and goalkeeper gear.
The Duffel Box will be officially for sale on March 16 in two sizes, 55L and 75L; pictured is the 55L. Note that a “Plus” version will include a removable universal shoulder strap, which connects to lash points on the outside, for an extra $25. —Kat Merck
Capacity
55L, 75L
Color Options
2
Dimensions
14.2″ x 18.1″ x 12.6″
Materials
Nylon gridstop with waterproof coating and PFAS-free DWR. 3-mm EVA foam.
Additional Features
Zipper-free. Water-resistant. Compatible with various accessories and packing bags.
Finally, it has my two favorite things: drop-bar handlebars and a dropper seat post. I guess I should disclose here that my everyday analog ride is also a gravel bike, and that personally, I like to tool around on a long, relaxed frame with my hands sloppily splayed this way and that on comfortable padded drop bars. I’m on dirt and gravel a lot, but I’m just not a fan of super technical riding.
Also, everyone should have a dropper seat post. I took the bike out for multiple 15- to 20-mile rides over a few weeks. OK, it’s not that hard, physically, to ride for an hour with electric assist while listening to podcasts, but I appreciate being able to move my seat around quickly at stop lights when my butt and quads decide to stop working that well.
Even with these additions and the full MTB front and rear suspension, the bike weighs a surprisingly little 40 pounds for the large frame. From riding a lot of electric bikes, I’d estimate a bike with these specs to weigh around 60 or 65 pounds. (I estimated my XS frame to be around 35 pounds, but that’s just by feel.)
Everywhere at Once
Photograph: Adrienne So
There are a couple of mixed-surface routes I ride regularly that I’m somewhat reluctant to reveal because I worry some of you might see me there. One is a loop that travels around the northernmost point of Portland, Oregon, and goes through a couple sloughs; I also like Leif Erikson Trail, a 20-mile gravel trail in Forest Park, Mount Tabor, and the loop around Pier Park, which was one of the first places where anyone ever raced cyclocross and which is primarily now used by elementary schoolers on teeny mountain bikes.
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As someone who regularly rides a gravel bike, it is cool and freaky to ride a bike that is, to all appearances, a gravel bike, but then feels like a very cushy, premium electric mountain bike once you’re on it. It’s like nibbling what looks like a bit of bitter dark chocolate, and finding it full of puffy, sweet marshmallow. Here I am, braced to roll over some rocks, but … these tires are huge! This suspension is soft! What is this strange sensation? Is it comfort?
The ShinyHunters extortion gang has claimed responsibility for breaching Dutch telecommunications provider Odido and stealing millions of user records from its compromised systems.
Odido is one of the largest telecommunications companies in the Netherlands and offers mobile, broadband, and television services to millions of customers nationwide.
The company disclosed the breach on February 12, revealing that attackers downloaded the personal data of many of its users after gaining access to its customer contact system on February 7. However, Odido added that no Mijn Odido passwords, call details, location, data, billing data, or scans of identity documents were exposed during the incident.
According to the telecom firm, the exposed information varies per customer and may include a combination of full name, address and city of residence, mobile number, customer number, email address, IBAN (bank account number), date of birth, and some identification details (passport or driver’s license number and validity).
It also told local media at the time that the data breach affected 6.2 million customers and that the threat actors reached out to say they had stolen millions of user records.
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After discovering the incident, Odido has reported the breach to the Dutch Data Protection Authority, blocked the attackers’ access to its systems, and hired external cybersecurity experts to assist with incident response and mitigation.
An Odido spokesperson didn’t provide further information on the incident when asked about which threat group was behind the attack and whether they demanded a ransom “due to the ongoing investigations.”
While Odido has yet to attribute the attack, the ShinyHunters extortion gang has now added the company to its dark web leak site, claiming they’ve stolen nearly 21 million records containing data the company already revealed as exposed in the breach.
Odido on ShinyHunters leak site (BleepingComputer)
ShinyHunters also told BleepingComputer on Monday that the stolen data also contains internal corporate data and plaintext passwords.
“This is a final warning to come back to our chat and finish what we set out to do before we leak along with several annoying (digital) problems that’ll come your way,” the extortion gang says on the leak site. “Make the right decision, don’t be the next headline. You know where to find us.”
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However, an Odido spokesperson denied their claims in a statement to BleepingComputer, reiterating that “no passwords, call details, social security numbers, or billing data are involved.”
Some of their victims had their systems compromised in voice phishing (vishing) attacks targeting single sign-on (SSO) accounts at Google, Microsoft, and Okta, where the threat actors call employees while impersonating IT support staff and trick them into entering credentials and multi-factor authentication (MFA) codes on phishing sites that mimic their companies’ login portals.
As BleepingComputer first reported, the ShinyHunters group has also recently adopted device code vishing, abusing the OAuth 2.0 device authorization grant flow to obtain Microsoft Entra authentication tokens.
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After stealing their targets’ credentials and auth codes, the threat actors hijack the victims’ SSO accounts to breach connected enterprise services like Salesforce, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, SAP, Slack, Adobe, Atlassian, Zendesk, Dropbox, and many others.
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King of Meat‘s reign is ending. The game will end service on April 9, less than a year after its October 2025 debut. The Amazon Games-published title will be playable until that date, but will then be taken entirely offline.
“Despite the creativity and innovation Glowmade brought to King of Meat, the game has unfortunately not found the audience we hoped for,” the announcement read.
Developer Glowmade had high hopes for King of Meat, its debut game, but it fell starkly short of expectations. The developer wanted a concurrent player count of at least 100,000, but peaked at 320, according to Insider Gaming. The game had a multi-million dollar marketing budget that included a video on MrBeast’s YouTube channel and custom-wrapped London buses. The company even made a pilot for an animated TV show. Here at Engadget, we were so-so on a preview version of the game.
December brought voluntary redundancies to Glowmade after previous assurances to staff. Anyone who has purchased King of Meat will be able to get a refund through their purchase platform and, in most cases, these refunds should process automatically by April 9.
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While it seems that King of Meat struggled to reach its audience, Amazon has a history of pulling games that are popular. Last fall, Amazon Games announced it would wind down support for New World: Aeternum, which first debuted in 2021. The news came as the division faced layoffs, but just that week the game had reached almost 50,000 concurrent players on Steam.
alternative_right shares a report from Phys.org: A team of researchers working at Quantinuum in the United Kingdom and QuSoft in the Netherlands has now developed a quantum algorithm that solves a specific sampling task — known as complement sampling — dramatically more efficiently than any classical algorithm. Their paper, published in Physical Review Letters, establishes a provable and verifiable quantum advantage in sample complexity: the number of samples required to solve a problem.
“We stumbled upon the core result of this work by chance while working on a different project,” Harry Buhrman, co-author of the paper, told Phys.org. “We had a set of items and two quantum states: one formed from half of the items, the other formed from the remaining half. Even though the two states are fundamentally distinct, we showed that a quantum computer may find it hard to tell which one it is given. Surprisingly, however, we then realized that transforming one state into the other is always easy, because a simple operation can swap between them.”
Asha Sharma, the new CEO of Microsoft Gaming, at Microsoft Ignite 2025. (Dan DeLong Photo for Microsoft)
“And the thing about games is, if you get good at one game, you can be good at any game. … They’re all hand-eye coordination and observing patterns.”
That’s a line from Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin’s 2022 novel about two friends who build a video game company from nothing — struggling with the tension between art and commerce, and ultimately with the challenges of operating a business at scale.
This describes almost perfectly what Asha Sharma will be attempting to do in her new role leading Microsoft’s Xbox and video-game business: She’ll need to take all the patterns she’s observed as an executive with Facebook, Instacart, Seattle startup Porch, and Microsoft’s AI platform, and apply them to a world she hasn’t played in before.
And get this: it’s one of her favorite books.
Speaking last year on Lenny Rachitsky’s podcast, Sharma mentioned she had read the novel every year for the past three years. “I love it so much,” she said, calling it a “beautiful story.”
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She didn’t mention on the podcast speed round that it’s a story about video games. It wasn’t really relevant at the time. But it is now, given the news Friday that Sharma will succeed 38-year Microsoft veteran Phil Spencer as CEO of Microsoft Gaming, in a shakeup that also saw Xbox President Sarah Bond — previously seen as Spencer’s likely successor — decide to leave.
Sharma was a surprise pick, in part because she has no prior video-game industry leadership experience, and limited background as a gamer, which is creating skepticism in gaming circles already. However, she has experience running large tech platforms, the clear trust of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and a belief in the potential of AI to reshape every business.
On that last point, she quickly offered some reassurance to Microsoft employees and the broader universe of Xbox gamers in her introductory memo last week.
“As monetization and AI evolve and influence this future, we will not chase short-term efficiency or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop,” she wrote. “Games are and always will be art, crafted by humans, and created with the most innovative technology provided by us.”
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Sharma laid out three priorities in the memo: great games above all else, a recommitment to Xbox’s core console fans, and what she called the “future of play” — new business models and a shared platform where developers and players can create together.
She vowed not to treat the company’s iconic franchises as “static IP to milk and monetize,” and said she wants to return to “the renegade spirit that built Xbox in the first place.”
Her first act was promoting longtime studio chief Matt Booty to executive vice president and chief content officer, pairing her platform background with his decades of gaming credibility.
“My first job is simple,” she wrote. “Understand what makes this work and protect it.”
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The challenge ahead
There’s a lot to protect, and plenty of work to do.
Microsoft has been in gaming for decades, from early PC titles like Flight Simulator to the launch of the original Xbox console in 2001.
Under Spencer, the company made massive bets on expansion, acquiring ZeniMax Media and its family of studios — including Bethesda — for $7.5 billion in 2021, and then closing the $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard in 2023, the largest gaming deal in history. That brought Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Candy Crush, Diablo, and Overwatch under Microsoft’s roof, making it the third-largest gaming company in the world by revenue.
Spencer also expanded Xbox’s reach across PC, mobile, and cloud gaming, and built Game Pass into a major subscription service, transforming the division’s business model.
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But the financial picture has been rough. Microsoft’s gaming revenue fell 9% in the most recent quarter, with hardware revenue down 32%. The division represents about 7% of the company’s total revenue, and has faced pressure in recent years to meet aggressive profit targets.
Xbox’s challenge has not been a lack of talent or popular franchises. GeekWire gaming contributor Thomas Wilde observed that the biggest problem has been instability: waves of layoffs and studio closures that left even successful teams uncertain about their future.
In his memo about the transition, Nadella said Sharma brings “deep experience building and growing platforms, aligning business models to long-term value, and operating at global scale.”
The implication in the selection is clear: Xbox spans console, PC, mobile, and cloud platforms, requiring an operator who knows how to make all the pieces work together.
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That’s the job Sharma has done everywhere she’s been.
From Wisconsin to Redmond
Sharma’s career and biographical details have been widely scrutinized over the past few days, as the video game and business press have scrambled to figure out who this person is, who arrived seemingly out of the blue to lead one of Microsoft’s biggest consumer brands.
Now 37, she grew up in Wisconsin and started working at 17, with an early role at SC Johnson, according to a 2014 MarTech profile. She earned a bachelor’s degree in business from the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, and by the time she left college had worked at Cargill, Deloitte, and Microsoft, and lived abroad in Hungary.
As of last fall, she was a second-degree black belt in Taekwondo, explaining to Rachitsky on his podcast that the discipline is “more mental than it is physical.”
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She has been at Microsoft for two years, running the CoreAI product organization, the team behind Azure AI Studio, the company’s AI model catalog, and the developer tools for Microsoft Copilot. She was previously COO of Instacart, and before that VP of product at Meta, where she ran Messenger and Instagram Direct. She’s on the Home Depot and Coupang boards.
What’s lesser known is that she got her start at Microsoft, interning at the company and then working in marketing right out of college before leaving to help build Porch, the Seattle home services company, where she was COO during the company’s early years.
In a 2024 interview with GeekWire at Microsoft’s Build developer conference, not long after rejoining the company, Sharma talked about what brought her back. After years working across different types of organizations, she said, the lesson she drew from her career was the importance of working with great people on problems that matter.
She described feeling fortunate to be working on “some of the most important technology of our lifetime” at a critical juncture, with people embracing a growth mindset.
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Winning over the gamers
Part of what made Spencer so beloved among Xbox fans was that he was one of them — a lifelong gamer with a prolific achievement history and a habit of wearing gaming T-shirts under blazers at industry events.
Sharma knows she can’t replicate that overnight, but she’s clearly trying to close the gap.
Over the weekend, she began engaging directly with Xbox fans on social media, sharing her gamertag (AMRAHSAHSA, her name spelled backwards) and listing her top three games as “Halo, Valheim, Goldeneye” — Microsoft’s flagship franchise, a popular survival game, and classic title that first launched on the Nintendo 64 in 1997.
When one fan accused her account of being run by AI, she replied: “Beep Boop Beep Boop.”
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She’s also getting public support from inside Xbox. Longtime exec Aaron Greenberg, the division’s VP of marketing, wrote on X that after spending time with Sharma during the past week, he was “incredibly optimistic about the opportunity ahead under her leadership,” describing her as “exceptionally bright, eager to listen and learn from others, no ego.”
The activity history in Sharma’s Xbox profile, which IGN and Windows Central quickly dissected, shows she’s played about 30 titles since mid-January, gravitating toward narrative-driven indie games like Firewatch, Gone Home, and What Remains of Edith Finch — the kinds of games you’d play if you wanted to understand games as art, not just entertainment.
She unlocked her first achievement Jan. 15, about five weeks before the announcement of her new role. It was a Halo: Master Chief Collection milestone, fittingly titled “Your Journey Begins.”
It’s not even been a week since vivo introduced the new V70 series, which, btw, I reviewed for a month and loved, and the Chinese smartphone maker is already gearing up to introduce a third brother in the lineup. The vivo V70 FE. Speculations about the phone began a couple of days ago, when a tipster posted its specifications and said it could launch globally this month. Well, I have some bad news. The vivo V70 FE is not launching in February, not in India, at least. If it were, I’d already be using it. This means the launch is still a few weeks away, and we could see it by the end of March.
vivo V70 FE Specifications
Since vivo hasn’t confirmed any of the following specifications, take them with a grain of salt. Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, the V70 FE will reportedly come in three colors: Muse Purple, Ocean Blue, and Titanium Silver. The display will be a 6.83-inch 1.5K AMOLED panel that should support a 120Hz refresh rate. The design will take cues from the V70, featuring flat sides and panels, but it will differ by housing a vertical camera module similar to those on Samsung phones. Speaking of the cameras, there will be two of them, including a pretty sizeable 200-megapixel primary sensor with OIS, coupled with an 8MP ultrawide lens.
Everything will be powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 7360 Turbo processor, which scores around 1 million in AnTuTu and should be a decent performer for the price. Storage variants could be three: 8GB+256GB, 12GB+256GB, and 8GB+512 GB. And OriginOS 6 will be running the show on top of Android 16. The leaks also suggest 6 years of Android updates, but that seems unlikely, since even vivo’s flagship phones don’t offer that level of support. Another highlight should be the 7,000 mAh battery with support for 90W fast wired charging. As for protection, the V70 FE will be IP68 and IP69 certified.
Considering the recent price hikes for many phones, launching the vivo V70 FE makes a lot of sense. It’ll be a pretty compelling option for people shopping in the 30K segment, and while vivo hasn’t confirmed the India launch yet, I’m pretty sure it’ll make its way here next month. So, if you’re planning to buy a new phone, maybe hold off a bit, as the 200MP main camera, coupled with a new design, does look interesting.
The US Department of Defense has reportedly reached a deal to use Elon Musk’s Grok in its classified systems, according to Axios. That follows news that the Pentagon is currently in a dispute with another AI company, Anthropic, over limits on its technology for things like mass surveillance.
Last year, the White ordered Grok, along with ChatGPT, Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude to be approved for government use. Up until now, though, only Anthropic’s model has been allowed for the military’s most sensitive tasks in intelligence, weapons development and battlefield operations. Claude was reportedly used in the Venezuelan raid in which the US military exfiltrated the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife.
However, the Pentagon demanded that Anthropic make Claude available for “all lawful purposes” including mass surveillance and the development of fully autonomous weapons. Anthropic reportedly refused to offer its tech for those things, even with a “safety stack” built into that model.
xAI, by contrast, agreed to a standard that would allow the DoD to employ its AI for any purpose it deems “lawful.” However, the xAI model is not considered by officials to be as cutting-edge or reliable as Anthropic’s Claude, and they admit that replacing Claude with Grok would be a challenge. The Pentagon is reportedly also negotiating deals with OpenAI and Gemini, both of which it considers to be on par with Anthropic.
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xAI had announced a version of Grok for US government agencies in July 2025. Shortly before that, though, the chatbot started spouting fascist propaganda and antisemitic rhetoric while dubbing itself “MechaHitler.” All of that followed a public spat between Musk and Trump over the president’s spending bill, after which GSA approval of Grok seemed to stall. Earlier this week, Anthropic accused three Chinese AI labs of abusing Claude’s AI with “distillation attacks” to improve their own models.
If you’ve been to a wedding or a downtown coffee shop in the last 10 years, you’ve probably seen those little lightboxes that are so popular these days. They consist of letters placed on a plastic frame in front of a dim white light, and they became twee about five minutes after your hipster friend first got one. However, they can also make a neat basis for an LED display, as [Folkert van Heusden] demonstrates.
The build is straightforward enough, using daisy chains of 32×8 LED matrix modules, two each for the three rows of the lightbox. This provides for a 24 character textual display, or a total display resolution of 64 x 24 pixels. An ESP8266 is used to command the matrixes, which are run by MAX7219 display controllers. Thanks to the microcontroller’s onboard wireless hardware, the display can be addressed in a number of ways, such as using the LedFX DDP protocol or [Folkert’s] Pixel Yeeter python library. Files are on GitHub for the curious.
Quite a few of these exist out in the wild — [Folkert] has built a variety of modded lightboxes over the years with varying internals. The benefit of the lightbox is that it effectively acts as a handy housing for LED matrixes and supporting electronics, while also providing a neat diffuser effect. The lightboxes are also readily wall mountable and generally look more like an intentional piece of signage than most things we might homebrew in the lab.
OnePlus just gave small-phone fans exactly what they wanted. The company confirmed the 15T, calling it the “dream machine” for people who prefer pocket-friendly devices. A community lead broke the news on Weibo, and the internet immediately took notice.
The phone is a direct answer to anyone tired of palm-filling phablets. Internal letters describe the 15T as the “small screen big demon king,” promising flagship muscle in a smaller body. Leaks point to a 6.32-inch display, a size that’s become rare in a market obsessed with going bigger. If the rumors stick, you won’t have to trade power for portability anymore.
What a 7,500mAh battery means in a small phone
Small phones usually die fast. It’s the one compromise you always make. The OnePlus 15T might kill that trade-off entirely. Reports suggest a battery between 7,000mAh and 8,000mAh, with multiple leaks zeroing in on 7,500mAh.
That’s huge for any device. Inside a compact 6.32-inch frame, it’s practically unheard of. Certification listings also point to 100W wired charging and wireless support. If this pans out, the 15T won’t just keep up with bigger phones. It’ll outlast most of them while taking up less space.
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Everything else you get in a compact body
Battery life is the headliner, but it’s not the only trick. The 15T is tipped to run on a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset with up to 16GB of RAM. The screen is rumored to be a 6.32-inch OLED with a 165Hz refresh rate and 1.5K resolution. That’s flagship territory through and through.
Camera details are still shaking out. Early leaks mentioned a 200-megapixel main sensor, but newer rumors point to a dual 50-megapixel setup with a telephoto lens. The front camera might land at 16 megapixels instead of 32. Internal letters insist imaging has taken a full leap forward. It’ll launch with Android 16 and ColorOS 16.
When you can expect to buy one
China gets the 15T first, and it’s right around the corner. Reports target a mid-to-March launch, backed by certification database sightings and Weibo invites. Expect it in Cloud Ink Black, Morning Mist Grey, or Powder pink.
Global customers might wait a bit longer. Rumors suggest a separate OnePlus 15s for international markets, possibly with tweaked cameras. But the important part is finally official. The compact flagship you’ve been asking for is real, and it’s landing this spring.
The talk started with The Verge’s Tom Warren, who recently noted Microsoft is early in exploring how to grow its Game Pass offerings. Jez Corden later fleshed that out. He claims to have heard Microsoft is specifically looking at tucking those extra subscriptions into Ultimate. Nothing is confirmed. But if it happens, that recent price hike suddenly makes more sense.
What extra services might show up
Names were dropped. World of Warcraft’s monthly fee. Fallout 1st for Fallout 76 private servers and extra stash space. Minecraft Realms for persistent friend worlds. Whatever The Elder Scrolls premium tier is called. Right now you pay for these separately on top of Game Pass.
Bundle them and those individual charges vanish for Ultimate subscribers. The math flips fast if you already pay for one or two. Corden made the point plainly in his video. At $30, stacking all those extras makes the top tier a no-brainer for anyone deep in those games.
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Why Microsoft is pushing now
The $30 price tag landed recently and not everyone loved it. Some subscribers questioned whether Ultimate offered enough over the standard tier. Adding actual paid services answers that question directly.
It also fits what Microsoft has been building. The company now owns Activision Blizzard and Bethesda. World of Warcraft subscriptions, ESO Plus memberships, Fallout 1st fees already feed the same beast. Wrapping them into Game Pass eliminates decisions. You stop asking whether to restart your WoW sub. It’s just there, part of the membership you already carry.
This is still a rumor. Corden stressed he heard Microsoft was exploring the idea with no guarantee it ships. These things take time if they happen at all.
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But the shape of it tracks. Microsoft has spent years and billions collecting subscriptions. Rolling them into one super tier is the natural endgame. Watch your payment method. If you already shell out for any of these extras, Ultimate might soon cancel a few recurring charges for you.
