The Night Agent season 2 is on the way, though we’ll have to wait a little longer. After a hugely successful launch on Netflix, the action-packed thriller was swiftly renewed, but what’s next for FBI agent Peter Sutherland? Season 1 saw Sutherland deep in government conspiracy, which he successfully uncovered, but not without some incredibly perilous moments. For season 2 then, how will Peter cope with the move to a higher plain with a brand new position as a night agent.

The fact that one of the best Netflix shows is returning should come as no surprise, though. The Night Agent has become Netflix’s new TV show darling boasting some seriously impressive viewing figures. During season 1’s first week on Netflix, it racked up 168.7 million viewing hours catapulting it to the top of numerous charts on one of the best streaming platforms. With all these stats, there’s also some exciting news around season 3. For now, let’s focus on The Night Agent season 2 and everything we know about it, from a release date prediction, to a confirmed cast list, to the possible plot, and much more.

The Night Agent season 2 release date prediction

Strands is a brand new daily puzzle from the New York Times. A trickier take on the classic word search, you’ll need a keen eye to solve this puzzle.

Like Wordle, Connections, and the Mini Crossword, Strands can be a bit difficult to solve some days. There’s no shame in needing a little help from time to time. If you’re stuck and need to know the answers to today’s Strands puzzle, check out the solved puzzle below.

How to play Strands

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strand answers

Today’s spanagram

We’ll start by giving you the spangram, which might help you figure out the theme and solve the rest of the puzzle on your own:

Today’s Strands answers

• FOAM
• TAPE
• DOLLY
• BOXES
• TRUCK
• BUNGEE
• CRATE
• STRAP

Despite all the inroads AMD has made in recent years with its Zen desktop CPUs, Intel has broadly managed to maintain one critical edge against its longtime rival: gaming performance. For those looking to eke every possible frame out of the latest AAA games, the company’s recent Core 5/7/9 often outperformed their AMD counterparts. Historically, however, that performance has come at the cost of power efficiency and thermals. Intel’s best 13th-genereation processors are absolute power-hungry beasts. That has limited their appeal, especially as small-factor PC builds have become more popular.

On Thursday, Intel detailed it’s long-awaited Arrow Lake processors, announcing five new models arriving on October 24. With the new CPUs, Intel is promising a paradigm change. Compared to its previous generation Raptor Lake chips, the company said its goal was to reduce power consumption by 40% and internal package temperatures by as much as 10 degrees Celsius. Judging by the benchmarks Intel shared ahead of today’s announcement, the company did just that.

Intel’s new flagship, the Ultra 9 285K, features a 24-core CPU design consisting of eight ‘Lion Cove’ performance cores and 16 ‘Skymont’ efficiency cores, and a maximum boost clock of 5.7GHz. It, alongside the rest of the current Arrow Lake family, also comes with a neural processing unit (NPU), a first for one of Intel’s desktop CPU. But those specs aren’t what’s interesting about the 285K and its siblings.

In “lightly-threaded” workloads, including tasks such as Zoom calls and select Cinebench benchmarks, Intel recorded the 285K drawing up to 58% less power than the 14900K, the company’s 14th generation flagship. When it comes to gaming performance, the results are even more interesting. In Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, for instance, Intel said it saw the 285K run the game on average 4% faster, while drawing 165W less of system power. Even in more GPU-intensive games such as Black Myth: Wukong, the 285K offers promising efficiency gains, with Intel noting it saw the CPU draw 34 fewer watts of total system power compared to the 14900K.

Those efficiency improvements translate to equally impressive thermal gains, with Intel noting its data shows the 285K runs, on average, about 13 degrees Celsius cooler than the 14900K during gaming loads. The new processor even offers similar gaming performance when users limit its power draw from Intel’s default of 250W to 175W or 125W. For those who like to undervolt their CPU or plan to go with an ITX case and motherboard for their next build, that’s exciting news.

“I think it’s safe to say this is a huge turn of the corner for our desktop portfolio,” said Robert Halleck, general manager of Intel’s AI and Technical Marketing units. “I’m confident your testing will match the numbers we’re talking about today.”

On paper, Arrow Lake is exactly what Intel needs to claw its way back to sustainability; it’s easily the most efficient family of desktop processors the company has put out in a long time. However, whether that alone will be enough to turn Intel’s fortunes around is less clear.

In the short term, the company faces a rival AMD that is more competitive than ever. In the long term, it’s difficult to say how much of Arrow Lake’s efficiency should be solely attributed to Intel’s engineers. As recently as 2022, the company had maintained it would build the new processors using a combination of its own 20A fabrication process and TSMC’s 3-nanometer technology. But then Intel recorded a $1.6 billion loss in Q2 of this year and said it would cut more than 15,000 jobs in an effort to reduce costs by $10 billion. Part of that plan involved fully outsourcing Arrow Lake manufacturing to a third party. At the time, Intel didn’t specifically name TSMC. However, the list of companies capable of producing silicon at the density and scale required for Arrow Lake is very short. With Intel reportedly hitting a recent snag to get its next-generation 18A process off the ground, it’s clear the company still has a long ahead.

When the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K arrives on October 24, it will cost $589. For those looking for a more affordable entry into Intel’s Arrow Lake ecosystem, the company will also offer the 14-core Ultra 5 245KF for $294 and the 20-core Ultra 7 265K for $394. Alongside its KF sibling, which comes without an integrated Intel Xe GPU, the 265K looks like it will be the dark horse of Intel’s Arrow Lake line. The company said that 265K runs about 15 degrees cooler than the 14900K and draws up to 188W less system power.

Alongside its new Arrow Lake processors, Intel also shared more information about its upcoming Arrow Lake H laptop chips, which the company said would arrive at the start of next year.

With October in full swing, you might be looking for some of the best horror movies to stream. But outside of the classics and the spooky new movies, one of the best streaming services has just dropped a contender for my favorite horror series of the year, a perfect adaptation of Junji Ito’s manga Uzumaki. After being let down by the 2000 movie (which is available on Prime Video in the US and Shudder in the UK), it is refreshing to finally see it done properly.

Uzumaki: Spiral Into Horror is a four-part adaptation of Ito’s frankly massive manga that throws you in the deep end from the first episode alone. The show is streaming on Max and Adult Swim in the US and Channel 4 in the UK. It wastes no time in establishing this terrifying world, where citizens in the town of Kurouzu-cho are plagued by spirals. Surreal as the concept is, it grips you immediately, with this obsession and paranoia around spirals resembling that of a disease. People are terrified of it, to the point where some seriously crazy stuff happens. It’s gritty, it’s dark, and Max is really delivering that tone especially when you look at DC hit The Penguin, which we compared to The Sopranos, and rightfully so.

It was an astonishing spectacle. A 70-meter-tall SpaceX rocket performing a controlled descent toward a tiny target where two giant mechanical arms were waiting to clasp it just meters above the ground.

Sunday’s bold effort was SpaceX’s first try at “catching” the Super Heavy booster, and to many people’s surprise, it nailed it.

Thousands of distinct vehicle and pad criteria had to be met prior to catching the Super Heavy booster. Thanks to the tireless work of SpaceX engineers, we succeeded with catch on our first attempt. pic.twitter.com/6wa5v6xHI0

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 13, 2024

So, now what?

Well, the immediate goal for SpaceX is to use the Super Heavy booster to carry a modified version of the Starship spacecraft — called the Starship Human Landing System (HLS) to a lunar orbit in NASA’s Artemis III mission, which could take place as early as 2026.

But until that can happen, the Elon Musk-led spaceflight company will need to carry out many more tests of the Starship system, which comprises the first-stage Super Heavy booster — the most powerful ever to fly — and the upper-stage Starship spacecraft.

In these upcoming tests, which SpaceX will be keen to launch before the end of the year, the team will attempt to repeat and perfect the astonishing “catch” maneuver that it performed for the first time on Sunday. Bringing it home in this way enables SpaceX to quickly refurbish what will soon be multiple Super Heavy boosters before quickly  launching them again as part of a reusable system that drastically reduces operational costs.

SpaceX also needs to demonstrate the ability to refuel Starship in Earth orbit, which is essential for the proposed lunar missions. Additionally, it has to perform at least one uncrewed demonstration mission that sees the Starship HLS land on the lunar surface and then lift off.

The Artemis III mission will see up to four astronauts fly to a lunar orbit aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft, which will be launched by the space agency’s powerful Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.

Meanwhile, the Starship HLS will also arrive in a lunar orbit after being launched by the Super Heavy. The Starship HLS will then dock with the Orion, enabling two of the crew members to transfer to SpaceX’s vehicle, which will then descend to the moon’s surface for the first crewed lunar landing since the final Apollo mission in 1972. Finally, the Starship HLS will carry the two astronauts back to a lunar orbit so they can return to the Orion spacecraft for the journey home.

More ambitious goals involve using the Starship for the first crewed mission to Mars, and even for building a permanent astronaut base on the red planet.

Musk has an even grander plan, however. Commenting on Sunday’s successful mission, Musk wrote in a post on social media that the first flight and landing of the world’s most powerful rocket on Sunday marked a “big step towards making life multiplanetary.” The SpaceX CEO stated in 2016 that the company has an ambition to move 1 million people to Mars to create a self-sustaining city, though that’s surely a challenge for engineers that haven’t even been born yet.

Venmo has both payments and requests, which has been a long-desired feature. People can use this toolset to send out one-time payments or requests, or schedule things to go out monthly, weekly or bi-weekly.

Users will receive a push notification reminder the day before a payment goes out, just in case the funds aren’t available. To that end, the platform will pull from the connected bank account if the Venmo account is dry. These tools are rolling out right now.

This is an obvious boon to those with roommates, as that one roommate who somehow got roped into handling all of the utility bills can let Venmo do the heavy lifting of bothering everybody else. Venmo says that 84 percent of consumers use peer-to-peer payment services to handle stuff like rent, utilities and other living expenses.

It’s also good for those with poor life organization skills. I can’t tell you the number of times I forgot to pay a bill, even though I had the money. Setting everything up in advance could be pretty darn helpful.

This is just the latest quality of life feature added by Venmo. The company recently integrated , with no card reader necessary. The payment platform also now lets users .