KRAFTON India has introduced the new Druvaen X-Suit Collection for BATTLEGROUNDS MOBILE INDIA (BGMI) as part of the 4.5 season. The update introduces three new 7-Star X-Suits, including Verdant Druvaen, Pyre Druvaen, and Frost Druvaen. Despite their unique themes, all three belong to the same Druvaen bloodline.

New Upgrade System Lets Players Earn Progress

The latest BGMI update introduces a new way to upgrade X-Suits. Players now earn a special upgrade material by playing matches instead of buying it. This material cannot be purchased, traded, or obtained anywhere else in the game. The new system rewards players for spending more time in matches.

Players who unlock a single X-Suit automatically enter the new upgrade path with that suit. Those who unlock two or all three X-Suits must choose one suit for gameplay-based progression. This choice is permanent and cannot be changed later. Gamers can always upgrade the rest of the X-Suits from the BGMI X-Suit Upgrade Program.

The new set also includes the Naturespirit Growth ACE32, which is an upgradable Level 7 weapon skin. The weapon skin has the same design concept as the X-Suits and allows the user to match both the suit and the weapon in battle.

Availability of Three New Druvaen X-Suits

Players will get access to the whole Druvaen X-Suit Collection between August 1 and September 30, 2026. The new X-Suits can be unlocked, and players will have the chance to try out the gameplay-upgrade feature as well as receive the Naturespirit Growth ACE32. These changes will be announced by BGMI through YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook channels.

Good morning! Let’s play Connections, the NYT’s clever word game that challenges you to group answers in various categories. It can be tough, so read on if you need Connections hints.

What should you do once you’ve finished? Why, play some more word games of course. I’ve also got daily Strands hints and answers and Quordle hints and answers articles if you need help for those too, while Marc’s Wordle today page covers the original viral word game.

public sector

PLUS: DeepSeek to double peak hour prices for new model; Australia hikes fines for Big Tech; Japan’s next moonshot to ride local rocket; and more!

ASIA IN BRIEF Meta last week briefly took down an unremarkable video posted by India’s prime minister Narendra Modi, earning itself days of criticism and regulatory trouble.

The video featured Modi announcing a new task force that will reform the exams required to secure places in many Indian universities. Those exams have become a major factor in the sudden development of a major youth protest movement in India, after the cancellation of one test amid claims that questions had leaked.

As part of his attempts to quell protests, Modi posted his first-ever selfie-style Instagram reel last week and followed it up with others –including the one Meta took down and replaced with a placeholder saying the vid was the subject of a legal complaint.

The social networking giant said that was a mistake, apologized, and restored the video.

That error gave India’s government the chance to beat up Meta in public.

S. Krishnan, the secretary of India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), said he asked Meta “to come in at the highest level and explain what is happening and why.”

“They have agreed to come – well, they have to – and explain what the situation is,” Krishnan said. “We want to have both a policy level understanding and a technical understanding of the issues, and also adaptation to the kind of concerns India has.”

Krishnan said Meta has written to India’s government to express regret over the incident and established new protocols governing moderation of accounts run by prominent people to avoid future messes of this sort.

India has a complex relationship with Big Tech companies, sometimes celebrating their role in assisting the nation’s development, but often also lamenting their monopolistic tendencies and role in spreading content the Modi government would rather netizens don’t see.

DeepSeek teases ‘peak/valley’ pricing for new models which hit beta last week

Chinese AI upstart DeepSeek last week released a beta API for its next model, deepseek-v4-flash, and revealed a new pricing policy for its APIs.

The company says the new policy will apply “soon” and will see the cost of its services double between 09:00 and 12:00, then again from 14:00 to 18:00 – in China’s single official timezone UTC+8.

DeepSeek startled the AI market last year by releasing models that it claimed to have trained without vast fleets of Nvidia accelerators. Those claims didn’t stand up to close scrutiny, but the company is considered a significant challenger to western AI outfits such as OpenAI and Anthropic.

deepseek-v4-flash is likely to reach general availability within weeks. DeepSeek already claims it outperforms its last model, V4-Pro.

Australia proposes new tax on Big Tech – and a new out

Australia’s government has tweaked its plans to tax Big Tech companies unless they pay local media for the right to share links to their work.

The Land Down Under previously threatened tech companies with a 2.25 percent tax if they don’t fund local media. On Monday, that plan changed to a 2.5 percent levy on advertising revenue only and expanded incentives to fund small and regional publications.

Meta has previously slammed the idea as “A discriminatory tax built on a false premise.”

Also in Australia, regulators last week decided to sue Telegram after it failed to take down violent and terrorism-related content.

Kioxia profits jump by billions, as you’d expect from a memory-maker

Japanese memory-maker Kioxia last week announced [PDF] its quarterly revenue grew 451 percent year over year to reach $11.1 billion, plus profit of $5.3 billion – a massive turnaround from the $287,000 loss for the same quarter last year.

According to Japanese outlet Nikkei, CFO Yoshihiko Kawamura said the company expects even better days ahead because he believes demand for NAND storage is “still in the early stages.”

Japan’s next moonshot to ride local rocket

Japanese space startup iSpace last week announced its next mission will ride a Japanese rocket to the moon.

iSpace has launched two moon lander missions, but both failed. The company’s plan for its third mission involves new lander design called ULTRA that is capable of carrying payloads weighing several hundred kilograms to Luna.

This time around, iSpace plans to use the H3 rocket built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, instead of the SpaceX Falcon 9 that carried its first two missions. ®

Strands is the NYT’s latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it’s great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.

Want more word-based fun? Then check out my NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games, and Marc’s Wordle today page for the original viral word game.

What we know so far: AMD is taking a different approach with its upcoming Zen 6 processors, introducing a new type of low-power core built from pieces of several earlier Zen designs rather than a single architecture. The change surfaced in a recent Linux kernel patch, which shows how the system identifies and manages these cores. The patch makes clear that the low-power cores are distinct enough to warrant their own classification, rather than being grouped with AMD’s existing compact “C” cores.

Patch notes that the system needs a way to properly identify these low-power cores in user space, since they currently show up as “unknown” in the CPU topology.

It also specifies that on supported AMD and Hygon chips, these cores should scale performance using amd_get_highest_perf() instead of the fixed CPPC_HIGHEST_PERF_PERFORMANCE limit, aligning them with how existing efficiency cores are managed.

What stands out is how these cores are built. Analysis from leaker InstLatX64 points to a hybrid design that combines multiple generations of Zen. The reported setup includes a Zen 6 instruction set, Zen 5 microarchitecture, Zen 4 floating-point unit, Zen 3 L2 cache, and Zen 2 L3 cache.

– InstLatX64 (@InstLatX64) July 29, 2026

Instead of designing a low-power core from scratch, AMD appears to be reusing and combining existing components. That mix-and-match approach suggests the company is trying to improve efficiency while keeping development time and complexity in check.

These low-power cores would sit alongside AMD’s current Performance and Efficiency cores, creating a three-tier setup. Performance cores handle high-clock workloads, while Efficiency cores are smaller and tuned for lower power use. The new low-power cores go a step further, targeting very light workloads where minimizing power draw is the priority. In that sense, they’re closer in purpose to Intel’s low-power efficiency cores, though AMD’s design is structured differently.

The potential benefit is clearer in mobile devices. Laptops and gaming handhelds could offload lighter tasks to these low-power cores, reducing overall power consumption. That could help extend battery life and let systems run certain processes at just a few watts. How much of a difference that makes will depend heavily on how well software can manage and assign workloads across the different core types.

There are still gaps in what’s known. AMD hasn’t shared performance or efficiency data for these cores, and it’s not yet clear how well this blended architecture will scale under real workloads. The design is unconventional, and its success will likely hinge on how smoothly the hardware and software layers work together.

This development comes as AMD is rolling out its Zen 6 server chips, with desktop versions expected later this year. But the broader market may complicate things. PC shipments have been trending down, and higher memory prices, driven in part by AI demand, are pushing up system costs.

That matters more in laptops and handhelds, where upgrading the CPU usually means replacing the entire device. Even if AMD delivers better efficiency, adoption could be limited if buyers hold off on new hardware.

Still, the idea of building a core from a mix of proven parts marks a notable change in direction. Rather than stretching one architecture across every use case, AMD is carving out more specialized roles for different core types. If it works, it could give the company more flexibility in how it designs chips for power-sensitive devices.