VLC will always have a place on any Windows, macOS, or Linux PC I own. It's been the Swiss Army knife of media players for decades at this point, and you'd be forgiven if you simply stopped looking once you found the one media player to rule them all.
Streaming may have made physical media feel obsolete, but that doesn't mean there's no reason to start collecting Blu-rays. In fact, owning your favorite movies and shows on disc can still offer some major advantages, from better picture quality and reliable playback to the simple peace of mind that comes with actually owning what you want to watch. You also don't necessarily need to spend hundreds of dollars on a dedicated Blu-ray player to get started.
Rockstar's complete western epic and every online bonus now arrive as an Xbox key at half the usual price.
The post Get the Red Dead Redemption 2 Ultimate Edition Xbox Key for $50 (reg. $100) appeared first on TechRepublic.
In 2020, Microsoft announced that Game Pass Ultimate subscriptions would include unlimited access to its new Xbox Cloud Gaming service (then still known as Project xCloud). Now, that kind of streaming buffet service is coming to an end, as Microsoft announced strict new limits on how much streaming is included in its various Game Pass subscriptions.
Starting in November, Game Pass subscriptions will include the following monthly limits on game streaming time:
Subscribers who use up their monthly streaming allotment will be able to buy additional time, Microsoft said, without sharing specific pricing or availability for that streaming time. Access to downloadable versions of games included in a Game Pass subscription remains unaffected.
© Microsoft
Xbox Series X25 costs $100 more than the standard Series X without adding performance. Here’s what the anniversary premium actually buys.
The post Xbox Series X25 vs Xbox Series X: Is the $100 Premium Worth It? appeared first on TechRepublic.
Long before the July email arrived confirming she was one of thousands of Xbox employees laid off in Microsoft’s latest round of job cuts, Agnes Kim could feel the impending doom hanging over big tech.
But instead of waiting around for the next pendulum swing, the eight-year Xbox veteran spent her nights and weekends laying the groundwork for a very different kind of reboot: a boutique Korean skincare startup called ViaJiin.
The pivot from big tech and gaming to startups and beauty is an illustration in how preparation can help a laid off worker upend the usual five stages of grief that come before figuring out what to do next. Kim skipped straight to acceptance — announcing her new venture on LinkedIn just two days after getting her pink slip from Microsoft.
Kim joined the tech giant in 2018 after roles at Sony Pictures Entertainment and Deloitte Consulting, eventually rising to director leading Xbox’s market expansion in Asia. For years, she thrived in the role, building teams and expanding the gaming footprint in regions close to her roots. But as post-pandemic gaming demand normalized, the environment shifted from ambitious growth to what felt like a cycle of corporate survival.
Starting in early 2023, layoffs began rolling through the company every six months. Seeing the predictable pattern take its toll on team morale, Kim realized she couldn’t rely on long-term corporate stability to fulfill her goal of becoming an entrepreneur.
“You have a sense of impending doom,” Kim recalled. “There’s a shadow lurking. I felt like every six months we were waiting for the next round. I just didn’t feel like I was in an upswing anymore.”
Determined to take control of her timeline, she began tinkering with her business concept in late 2025, officially forming an LLC for ViaJiin in March 2026 and running focus groups by May — all while balancing her full-time executive role. When the July cuts finally hit Xbox, eliminating 1,600 jobs, Kim had already built six months of momentum.
Kim’s connection to skincare is deeply personal, rooted in her childhood spent living in South Korea from ages eight to 15. She grew up watching her mother religiously follow a multi-step routine and stress the daily necessity of sunscreen — a reflection of a culture where maintaining a youthful appearance carries immense social expectation.
That intense domestic demand has birthed a fiercely competitive market of over 30,000 brands, driving rapid scientific innovation. It has also turned South Korea into a global beauty powerhouse, with cosmetics exports surging past $10 billion as the U.S. recently surpassed China as the top destination for Korean beauty products.
ViaJiin aims to solve the overwhelming paralysis that American consumers face when trying to navigate the K-beauty market. Instead of building a massive retail catalog or pushing complicated 12-step routines, Kim simplifies the process into a streamlined four-product kit — cleanser, toner, serum, and cream — curated through a digital skin quiz. And she bypasses mainstream brands sold at big-box retailers to source exclusively from boutique Korean makers.
“The products I carry, you can only get through me,” Kim said. “I find boutique products that are filled with good ingredients, come to the U.S. compliantly, and turn it into a kit.”
ViaJiin’s full kits sell for $179, while smaller duo sets are priced at $99. Since shipping her first orders in August, Kim has been hand-packing boxes herself with personalized touches, building early traction online while hosting small, local events like “ViaJiin Nights” to let clients test products in person. The kits have also secured retail shelf space at K-Beauty & Skin in Renton, Wash., where Kim lives.
Kim’s transition from managing corporate teams to operating as a solo founder has meant trading human delegation for AI assistance.
Toward the end of her tenure at Microsoft, every conversation and initiative was dominated by a relentless push toward AI. Kim is now embracing those tools to execute work that would typically require a suite of employees or contractors.
She’s relied on Anthropic’s Claude as a virtual strategist and used platforms like Lovable to try her hand at “vibe coding” — the trend of using conversational natural-language prompts to generate functional software code — building out ViaJiin’s website and skin quiz without hiring a developer.
“I don’t have a co-founder… I’m delegating to Claude and GPT,” Kim said. “People are very surprised by my website or the skin quiz. I’m not an engineer, but it looks like I hired a web designer.”
While AI can handle code and logistics prompts, Kim quickly found that software can only go so far when running a physical inventory business. Between navigating complex U.S. FDA labeling regulations, managing customs paperwork, and verifying ingredient compliance, the operational heavy lifting remains resolutely analog.
And the shift from corporate structure to total solitary accountability is daunting at times.
Without a team to delegate to or a clear roadmap of objectives and key results, Kim admits there are moments where the freedom of entrepreneurship gives way to self-doubt.
“I think I understand why some people just work for the man,” Kim joked. “When you work for Microsoft, certainty and structure are more there. There are definitely moments where I’m like, ‘What the f*ck am I doing? What is today’s goal?'”
Still, Kim has no interest in turning back. Energized by the daily hustle and the creative control of building something from scratch, she insists she wouldn’t trade the experience for her old corporate desk. She hopes to grow ViaJiin into a household national brand while staying out of big tech for as long as she can.
“I’m 1,000% energized. I absolutely would not trade it,” Kim said. “This is allowing me to be truly the version of Agnes that I thought I would be when I was 12, and I want to keep going at it.”
— Marc Whitten, a former Microsoft and Amazon executive, was named president and CEO of San Francisco-based Dolby Laboratories. He succeeds Kevin Yeaman, who is retiring after leading the entertainment technology company for nearly 20 years.
Whitten spent 17 years at Microsoft, rising to corporate vice president and chief product officer for Xbox. He went on to serve as chief product officer at Sonos before joining Amazon as vice president of entertainment devices and services, overseeing products including Alexa, Kindle and Fire TV.
He later served as president of Unity Create and CEO of Cruise. Most recently, he was vice president of robotics at Meta.
— Fred Hutch Cancer Center announced leadership changes in two divisions.
Dr. Lawrence Fong was named senior vice president and director of the Translational Science and Therapeutics Division, effective Dec. 1. He succeeds Dr. Geoff Hill, who is departing the organization in December.
Fong joined Fred Hutch in 2024 as scientific director of the Immunotherapy Integrated Research Center and Bezos Family Distinguished Scholar in Immunotherapy. He previously founded the Cancer Immunotherapy Program at the University of California, San Francisco.
Dr. Andrew Hsieh, the associate director of the Fred Hutch Human Biology Division, was named the inaugural Larry and Virginia Gordon Endowed Chair in Prostate and Bladder Cancer Research. Hsieh is a physician-scientist at Fred Hutch specializing in genitourinary cancers.
— Two recent notable Microsoft AI-related exits:
Andréa Mallard is leaving her role as chief marketing officer of Microsoft AI after joining from Pinterest in January, according to Business Insider. She will stay on as an advisor until early next year. Mallard, who is based in the San Francisco Bay Area, previously served as global chief marketing officer at Pinterest for eight years.
Ece Kamar departed Microsoft Research after 16 years with the company. She was corporate vice president and managing director of the AI Frontiers Lab, where she worked on small language models and the company’s agentic AI stack. She has not announced her next role.
— Poppy MacDonald was named president of NationSwell, a social impact membership organization. MacDonald previously served as president of USAFacts, the nonpartisan civic data initiative founded by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, for seven years. A past recipient of an Uncommon Thinkers award from GeekWire and Greater Seattle Partners, she is also the former president and COO of POLITICO.
— Jeff Buhrman joined Seattle startup Tin Can as head of finance. The company is building a screen-free, WiFi-enabled phone designed to let kids connect with friends and family. Buhrman previously served as CFO of Seattle-based Sleep Doctor for more than four years.
— Susan Loosmore was confirmed to the Major League Baseball Stadium Public Facilities District board, which oversees T-Mobile Park. The King County Council approved the appointment Aug. 25. Loosmore spent more than 17 years in executive leadership at T-Mobile and previously served as chair of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce.
— Seattle-based SecureW2, a passwordless security company, named Martin Musierowicz as president and Mark Packham as chief marketing officer.
— Vancouver, B.C.-based Integrated Quantum Technologies, an enterprise AI infrastructure company, appointed Husam Fezzani as CEO. He succeeds Alan Guibord, who moved to chairman. Fezzani spent nearly 30 years at HSBC, where he held senior technology and engineering leadership roles including global engineering head for the bank’s Commercial Technology Division.
For decades, console owners have faced a choice between the convenience of digital downloads and the permanence of physical game discs. Soon, Xbox owners will be able to get the best of both worlds for thousands of supported titles as part of a newly announced disc-to-digital program.
The program—announced today ahead of testing for Xbox Insiders starting August 31—will let players claim a "digital entitlement" for "most Xbox One and Xbox Series X disc-based games" simply by inserting the disc into a console and launching it. That game will then be playable completely digitally, without the need to ever insert the disc, as long as you (or a member of your family account) is logged in. The digital entitlement will also allow access to features like Xbox Play Anywhere (for play on PC) and Xbox Cloud Gaming, for supported titles.
Microsoft says that your physical disc will "continue to work exactly as it always has" after the digital entitlement is claimed. But before you get any ideas, the fine print on the announcement mentions that there is only "one revokable license per game disc," so if you resell that disc or loan it to a friend, that digital entitlement could be transferred to a new account when someone else puts it into their console.
© Getty Images
One of the video game studios impacted by Xbox’s layoffs in July has successfully reclaimed its independence, as well as control over its intellectual property.
Compulsion Games, headquartered in Montreal, was founded as an independent studio in 2009 and acquired by Xbox in 2018. Its one release as a member of the Xbox Games Studio network was 2025’s South of Midnight, an action/adventure game set in a magical Deep South.
In July, Microsoft announced the first wave of a planned 3,200 job cuts throughout its Xbox department, alongside plans to spin out or shut down five of its studios. Compulsion Games was one of those five, alongside Double Fine Productions (Psychonauts), Ninja Theory (Hellblade), Undead Labs (State of Decay), and Arkane Studios (Deathloop, Dishonored).
Subsequently, on Aug. 20, Compulsion CEO Guillaume Provost revealed in an interview with GamesBeat’s Dean Takahashi that Compulsion’s management had successfully reacquired the studio, its staff, and the South of Midnight IP on Aug. 11.
South of Midnight is still available via its previous storefronts, including Steam and the PlayStation Network, but is currently self-published by Compulsion.
Provost told GamesBeat that no layoffs had been made at Compulsion as it transitioned to independence, and most of the team elected to stay together.
As for the other studios affected by Xbox’s July 6 layoffs:
Xbox is currently exhibiting at the Gamescom conference in Cologne, Germany.
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