Following her son’s suicide, Becca Dallas filed a potentially groundbreaking lawsuit against Roblox and Discord, accusing the platforms of wrongful death. As first reported by The New York Times, the lawsuit recounts the events leading up to Ethan Dallas’ death, detailing his interactions with a player named Nate. According to the report, Nate was likely a 37-year-old man named Timothy O’Connor, who was previously arrested on charges of “possessing child pornography and transmitting harmful material to minors.” The report added that Ethan opened up about these incidents to his mom before committing suicide four months after the confession.

The lawsuit could be the first of its kind against Roblox, according to NYTimes, considering it attributes some blame to the gaming platform that’s home to tens of millions of underaged players. In a statement responding to the report, a Roblox spokesperson said that child safety issues are seen across the industry and that the company was working on new safety features, while also complying with law enforcement.

This isn’t the first time Roblox has faced complaints of being a dangerous place for underage players. In August, Louisiana’s attorney general, Liz Murrill, filed a lawsuit that claimed Roblox doesn’t “implement basic safety controls” to protect its underage user base. That lawsuit follows a similar investigation launched by Florida’s attorney general James Uthmeier, who demanded answers to the reports of Roblox reportedly exposing kids to “harmful content and bad actors.” Roblox has taken steps to combat these allegations, including tightening restrictions on its Experiences, and more recently, expanding its age estimation tool to all users.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/roblox-hit-with-wrongful-death-lawsuit-following-a-teen-players-suicide-201501296.html?src=rss

It was “little more than empty fields” five years ago — but it’s now “a vast, heavily guarded complex stretching for 210 hectares (520 acres),” reports the Guardian, “the frontline of a multibillion-dollar criminal fraud industry fuelled by human trafficking and brutal violence.”

Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos have in recent years become havens for transnational crime syndicates running scam centres such as KK Park, which use enslaved workers to run complex online fraud and scamming schemes that generate huge profits. There have been some attempts to crack down on the centres and rescue the workers, who can be subjected to torture and trapped inside. But drone images and new research shared exclusively with the Guardian reveal that the number of such centres operating along the Thai-Myanmar border has more than doubled since Myanmar’s military seized power in 2021, with construction continuing to this day.
Data from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (Aspi), a defence thinktank in Canberra, shows that the number of Myanmar scam centres on the Thai border has increased from 11 to 27, and they have expanded in size by an average of 5.5 hectares a month. Drone images and photographs of KK Park and other Myanmar scam centres, Tai Chang and Shwe Kokko, taken by the Guardian in August show new features and active building work… Myanmar’s military junta has allowed the spread of scam centres inside the country as these criminal enterprises have become an essential part of the country’s conflict economy since the coup, helping it rise to the top of the global list of countries harbouring organised crime. According to Aspi’s analysis, Myanmar’s military, which has lost huge swathes of territory since the coup and is struggling to retain its grip on power, cannot take meaningful measures against the scam compounds without endangering its precarious relations with the crucial armed militias who are profiting from them.

While 7,000 people were freed from the compounds earlier this year, “Thai police estimated earlier this year that as many as 100,000 people were held inside Myanmar scam centres,” the article notes.

Elsewhere the Guardian reports that “The centres are run by Chinese criminal gangs,” and describes people who unwittingly came to Thailand for customer service jobs, only to be trafficked to Myanmar’s guarded “cyberslavery compounds” and “forced to send thousands of messages from fake social-media profiles, posing as a rich American investor to swindle US real estate agents into cryptocurrency scams.”
Since 2020, south-east Asia’s cyber-slavery industry has entrapped hundreds of thousands of people and forced them to perform “pig butchering” — the brutal term for building trust with a fraud target before scamming them. At first, the industry mostly captured Chinese and Taiwanese people, then it moved on to south-east Asians and Indians — and now Africans.

Criminal syndicates have been shifting towards scamming victims in the US and Europe after Chinese efforts to prevent its citizens being targeted, experts told the Guardian. That has led some trafficking networks to seek recruits with English-language and tech skills — including east Africans, thousands of whom are now estimated to be trapped inside south-east Asian compounds, says Benedikt Hofmann, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s representative for south-east Asia and the Pacific.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader mspohr for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Kodak has shrunk a camera to fit onto a keyring, but it still manages to shoot both photo and video. It’s hard not to compare the Kodak Charmera to the ubiquitous Labubu craze, considering the highly collectible nature of Reto Pro selling these officially licensed mini cameras as a single blind box for $29.99 or a full set of six for $179.94. The keyring cameras, which only weigh 30 grams, are already sold out on the Reto Pro website, but are expected to be restocked.

The blind box can be unwrapped for one of seven designs, including one secret version that has a transparent shell to show off the tiny camera’s internals. According to the website, the basic style odds are one out of six, while the secret edition has a probability of one out of 48. Whichever design you get, each Charmera comes with a keyring to Labubu-bify it to your belt loop or bag and a USB-C cable to export your photos or videos to other devices.

Inspired by Kodak’s first single-use camera from the ’80s called the Fling, the Chamera sports a throwback design that can shoot 1.6-megapixel images with a 1,440 x 1,080 resolution and videos at 30fps. Nobody should expect any ultrasharp images, but you can customize your shots with Kodak frames, vintage filters and a date stamp. We’re not expecting the Charmera to deliver the highest-quality images, but just like the Gameboy Camera, that won’t make it any less fun to use.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cameras/kodaks-mini-camera-fits-on-your-keyring-and-is-smaller-than-an-airpods-case-184227505.html?src=rss

“The United Arab Emirates wants to compete with the U.S. and China in AI,” writes Gizmodo, “and a new open source model may be its strongest contender yet.
“An Emirati AI lab called the Institute of Foundation Models (IFM) released K2 Think on Tuesday, a model that researchers say rivals OpenAI’s ChatGPT and China’s DeepSeek in standard benchmark tests.”

“With just 32 billion parameters, it outperforms flagship reasoning models that are 20x larger,” the lab wrote in a press release on Tuesday. DeepSeek’s R1 has 671 billion parameters, though only 37 billion are active. Meta’s latest Llama 4 models range from 17 billion to 288 billion active parameters. OpenAI doesn’t share parameter information. OpenAI doesn’t share parameter information.

Researchers also claim that K2 Think leads “all open-source models in math performance” across several benchmarks. The model is intended to be more focused on math, coding, and scientific research than most other AI chatbots. The Emirati lab’s selling point for the model is similar to DeepSeek’s strategy that disrupted the AI market earlier this year: optimized efficiency that will have better or the same computing power at a lower cost…

The lab is also aiming to be transparent in everything, “open-sourcing not just models but entire development processes” that provide “researchers with complete materials including training code, datasets, and model checkpoints,” IFM said in a press release from May.

The UAE and other Arab countries are investing in AI to try reducing their economic dependence on fossil fuels, the article points out.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Washington Post notes that past research “indicates that exercise helps some cancer survivors avoid recurrence of their disease.”

But a new study “offers an explanation of how, showing that exercise changes the inner workings of our muscles and cells, although more study is still needed…”

The study, published last month, involved 32 women who’d survived breast cancer. After a single session of interval training or weightlifting, their blood contained higher levels of certain molecules, and those factors helped put the brakes on laboratory-grown breast cancer cells. “Our work shows that exercise can directly influence cancer biology, suppressing tumor growth through powerful molecular signals,” said Robert Newton, the deputy director of the Exercise Medicine Research Institute at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia, and senior author of the new study. His group’s experiment adds to mounting evidence that exercise upends the risks of not only developing but also surviving cancer…

Scientists know contracting muscles release a slew of hormones and biochemicals, known as myokines, into our bloodstreams and have long suspected these myokines fight cancer. In some past studies with mice and healthy people, blood drawn after exercise and added to live cancer cells killed or suppressed the cancer’s growth… [The new study tested cancer cells in high-tech petri dishes with blood drawn from cancer survivors.] Drenched in plasma from either the interval trainers or the lifters, many cancer cells quit growing. Quite a few died. (The blood drawn before exercise had no effects.) The cancer-fighting impacts were greatest with the blood drawn after interval training. Why? Additional testing showed this blood contained the highest concentrations of certain, beneficial myokines, especially IL-6, a protein that affects immune responses and inflammation…

What these results mean, Newton said, is that “exercise doesn’t just improve fitness and well-being” in people who’ve had cancer. “It also orchestrates a complex biological response that includes direct anticancer signals from muscles…” Questions remain, of course. Can any type of exercise fight cancer? Newton and other researchers have doubts. The exercise in this study was strenuous, by design. “Earlier studies suggested that the stronger the exercise stimulus, the greater the release of anticancer myokines,” Newton said… Even the weight training in this study was less potent than the intense intervals. But Newton believes weight training remains key to cancer fighting. “People with cancer who increase their muscle mass through resistance training also experience greater rises in circulating myokines,” he said. More muscle means more myokines.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The rear-wheel drive trim of the Tesla Cybertruck lasted about five months before it was unceremoniously removed from online sales. The Long Range model represented the most affordable Cybertruck option with its starting price of $69,990, but visitors to Tesla’s online configurator can now only choose between the all-wheel drive model that starts at $79,990 and the Cyberbeast trim, which goes for at least $114,990.

Tesla launched the Long Range version of the Cybertruck in April, which arrived at $10,000 more than originally expected. Along with an elevated price tag, Tesla removed several features, including the power tonneau cover, adaptive suspension, a touchscreen for the back row, the rear lightbar and outlets in the truck bed. The RWD version also came with less towing power, a lower payload capacity and only one motor. While unrelated, the federal tax credit for EV buyers in the US is coming to a close at the end of the month, making the purchase of a Long Range model even less of a bargain.

Tesla didn’t officially offer any explanation about the removal of the Long Range option from its website, but it could be attributed to low Cybertruck sales overall. According to a report from Cox Automotive, the parent company of Kelley Blue Book and Autotrader, Tesla only sold 4,306 Cybertrucks in the second quarter of the year, which is a more than 50 percent drop in sales during the same time period last year.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/teslas-most-affordable-cybertruck-gets-scrapped-after-a-whopping-five-months-164322445.html?src=rss

“Freelance developers and entire companies are making a business out of fixing shoddy vibe coded software,” writes 404 Media, interviewing one of the “dozens of people on Fiverr… now offering services specifically catering to people with shoddy vibe coded projects.”

Hamid Siddiqi, who offers to “review, fix your vibe code” on Fiverr, told the 404 Media that “Currently, I work with around 15-20 clients regularly, with additional one-off projects throughout the year. (“Siddiqi said common issues he fixes in vibe coded projects include inconsistent UI/UX design in AI-generated frontends, poorly optimized code that impacts performance, misaligned branding elements, and features that function but feel clunky or unintuitive,” as well as work o color schemes, animations, and layouts.)

And others coders are also pursuing the “vibe coded mess” market:
Swatantra Sohni, who started VibeCodeFixers.com, a site for people with vibe coded projects who need help from experienced developers to fix or finish their projects, says that almost 300 experienced developers have posted their profiles to the site. He said so far VibeCodeFixers.com has only connected between 30-40 vibe code projects with fixers, but that he hasn’t done anything to promote the service and at the moment is focused on adding as many software developers to the platform as possible…

“Most of these vibe coders, either they are product managers or they are sales guys, or they are small business owners, and they think that they can build something,” Sohni told me. “So for them it’s more for prototyping…” Another big issue Sohni identified is “credit burn,” meaning the money vibe coders waste on AI usage fees in the final 10-20 percent stage of developing the app, when adding new features breaks existing features.
Sohni told me he thinks vibe coding is not going anywhere, but neither are human developers. “I feel like the role [of human developers] would be slightly limited, but we will still need humans to keep this AI on the leash,” he said.

The article also notes that established software development companies like Ulam Labs, now say “we clean up after vibe coding. Literally.”
“Built something fast? Now it’s time to make it solid,” Ulam Labs pitches on its site,” suggesting that for their potential customers “the tech debt is holding you back: no tests, shaky architecture, CI/CD is a dream, and every change feels like defusing a bomb. That’s where we come in.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In 2015 Kim Dotcom answered questions from Slashdot’s readers.

Now CBS News reports on “the latest chapter in a protracted 13-year battle by the U.S. government” to extradite Finnish-German millionaire Kim Dotcom from New Zealand:

A New Zealand court has rejected the latest bid by internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom to halt his deportation to the U.S. on charges related to his file-sharing website Megaupload. Dotcom had asked the High Court to review the legality of an official’s August 2024 decision that he should be surrendered to the U.S. to face trial on charges of copyright infringement, money laundering and racketeering… The Megaupload founder had applied for what in New Zealand is called a judicial review, in which a judge is asked to evaluate whether an official’s decision was lawful. A judge on Wednesday dismissed Dotcom’s arguments that the decision to deport him was politically motivated and that he would face grossly disproportionate treatment in the U.S…

New Zealand’s government hasn’t disclosed what will happen next in the extradition process or divulged an expected timeline for Dotcom to be surrendered to the United States
Dotcom “has been free on bail in New Zealand since February 2012,” the article points out — and “One of his lawyers, Ron Mansfield, told Radio New Zealand that Dotcom’s team had ‘much fight left in us as we seek to secure a fair outcome,’ but he didn’t elaborate…”

The article notes that the latest decision “could be challenged in the Court of Appeal, where a deadline for filing is October 8.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Snapchat has introduced a couple of new features it says are “highly requested” by its users. The first is “Infinite Retention,” which as its name implies will allow you to keep a chat history like you could on a messaging app and prevent your messages from disappearing. “We’ve often heard from our community that Snapchatters want to save their chats forever and wish they could build streaks with their favorite groups,” its announcement reads. 

The app has been testing the feature since 2024, and now it’s being rolled out broadly. You could already save messages in the app by tapping on them inside the chat, but this one makes things easier. It’s a setting you’ll just have to switch on or off for each conversation. If you enable the setting, the other person in the conversation will get a notification that you did, and they will be able to switch it off if they want. You can, for instance, switch Infinite Retention on for a close friend but keep it off for acquaintances.

In addition, Snapchat is rolling out Group Streaks that will let you contribute to a collective Streak with your friends. To keep up individual Streaks, you’ll have to send and receive at least one photo or video Snap with a friend every day. Group Streaks are easier to keep going, since several people can participate. You can also restore a Group Streak within a week in case it ends. 

Jim Lanzone, the CEO of Engadget’s parent company Yahoo, joined the board of directors at Snap on September 12, 2024. No one outside of Engadget’s editorial team has any say in our coverage of the company.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/snapchat-rolls-out-group-streaks-and-infinite-retention-for-chats-150048128.html?src=rss

ScienceDaily reports:
Forever chemicals known as PFAS have turned up in an unexpected place: beer. Researchers tested 23 different beers from across the U.S. and found that 95% contained PFAS, with the highest concentrations showing up in regions with known water contamination. The findings reveal how pollution in municipal water supplies can infiltrate popular products, raising concerns for both consumers and brewers…

[PFAS] have been found in surface water, groundwater and municipal water supplies across the U.S. and the world. Although breweries typically have water filtration and treatment systems, they are not designed to remove PFAS… [T]he researchers call for greater awareness among brewers, consumers and regulators to limit overall PFAS exposure. These results also highlight the possible need for water treatment upgrades at brewing facilities as PFAS regulations in drinking water change or updates to municipal water system treatment are implemented.
“I hope these findings inspire water treatment strategies and policies that help reduce the likelihood of PFAS in future pours,” research lead Jennifer Hoponick Redmon said in a May announcement about their research.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

xAI has laid off at least 500 workers from its data annotation team, the company’s largest, according to Business Insider. The annotation team is in charge of categorizing and contextualizing raw data used to train Grok so that it can understand the world better. Business Insider says the laid off employees were informed via email on the evening of September 12, Friday, that it was going to downsize its team of general AI tutors. They were reportedly told that they would be paid their salaries until the end of their contracts on November 30, but their access to xAI’s systems had been cut off after they received the notice. 

When Reuters asked the company for a comment, it referred to a post on X wherein it posted a call for specialist AI tutors instead. xAI said that it will “immediately surge [its] Specialist AI tutor team by 10x” and that it’s hiring across STEM fields. As specialist tutors, the new hires will be “enhancing [the company’s] AI technologies through high-quality inputs, labels and annotations using specialized software.” They’ll gather data and provide their own, not only in text format, but also through audio recordings and video sessions. 

As Reuters has noted, the layoffs come after several high-profile departures from xAI, including the company’s chief financial officer Mike Liberatore. The company launched Grok 4 in July, calling it the “smartest AI in the world.” Elon Musk claimed during the model’s reveal that if you make Grok 4 take the SATs and the GREs, it would get near perfect results every time and can answer questions it’s never seen before. He also proclaimed that Grok is going to invent new tech maybe later this year, and that he would be shocked if it doesn’t happen next year.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/xai-reportedly-laid-off-at-least-500-ai-tutors-working-on-grok-130059624.html?src=rss

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Rainmaker Technology’s bid to deploy cloud-seeding flares on small drones is being met by resistance from the airline pilots union, which has urged the Federal Aviation Administration to consider denying the startup’s request unless it meets stricter safety guidelines. The FAA’s decision will signal how the regulator views weather modification by unmanned aerial systems going forward. Rainmaker’s bet on small drones hangs in the balance.

The Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) told the FAA that Rainmaker’s petition “fails to demonstrate an equivalent level of safety” and poses “an extreme safety risk.” Rainmaker is seeking an exemption from rules that bar small drones from carrying hazardous materials. The startup filed in July, and the FAA has yet to rule. Instead, it issued a follow-up request for information, pressing for specifics on operations and safety. In its filing, Rainmaker proposed using two flare types, one “burn-in-place” and the other ejectable, on its Elijah quadcopter, to disperse particles that stimulate precipitation. Elijah has a maximum altitude of 15,000 feet MSL (measured from sea level), which sits inside controlled airspace where commercial airliners routinely fly. Drones need permission from Air Traffic Control to fly inside this bubble. Rainmaker’s petition says it will operate in Class G (uncontrolled) airspace unless otherwise authorized. ALPA notes the filing doesn’t clearly state where flights would occur or what altitudes would be used. Rainmaker and ALPA did not reply to TechCrunch’s requests for comment.

The union also objects to the flares themselves, citing concerns about foreign object debris and fire safety. ALPA points out that the petition does not include trajectory modeling of the ejectable casings or analysis on the environmental impacts of chemical agents. However, Rainmaker says the flights will occur over rural areas and over properties owned by private landlords “with whom Rainmaker has developed close working relationships.” […] What happens next hinges on whether the FAA thinks those mitigations are sufficient. However it’s decided, the agency’s response will likely set the tone for novel cloud-seeding approaches.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In May, President Donald Trump signed four executive orders to facilitate the construction of nuclear reactors and the development of nuclear energy technology; the orders aim to cut red tape, ease approval processes, and reshape the role of the main regulatory agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or NRC. These moves, the administration said, were part of an effort to achieve American independence from foreign power providers by way of a “nuclear energy renaissance.”

Self-reliance isn’t the only factor motivating nuclear power proponents outside of the administration: Following a decades-long trend away from nuclear energy, in part due to safety concerns and high costs, the technology has emerged as a potential option to try to mitigate climate change. Through nuclear fission, in which atoms are split to release energy, reactors don’t emit any greenhouse gases.

The Trump administration wants to quadruple the nuclear sector’s domestic energy production, with the goal of producing 400 gigawatts by 2050. To help achieve that goal, scientific institutions like the Idaho National Laboratory, a leading research institute in nuclear energy, are pushing forward innovations such as more efficient types of fuel. Companies are also investing millions of dollars to develop their own nuclear reactor designs, a move from industry that was previously unheard of in the nuclear sector. For example, Westinghouse, a Pennsylvania-based nuclear power company, plans to build 10 new large reactors to help achieve the 2050 goal.

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Six decades have now passed since some of the most iconic Project Gemini spaceflights. The 60th anniversary of Gemini 4, when Ed White conducted the first US spacewalk, came in June. The next mission, Gemini 5, ended just two weeks ago, in 1965. These missions are now forgotten by most Americans, as most of the people alive during that time are now deceased.

However, during these early years of spaceflight, NASA engineers and astronauts cut their teeth on a variety of spaceflight firsts, flying a series of harrowing missions during which it seems a miracle that no one died.

Because the Gemini missions, as well as NASA’s first human spaceflight program Mercury, yielded such amazing stories, I was thrilled to realize that a new book has recently been published—Gemini & Mercury Remastered—that brings them back to life in vivid color.

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Welcome to our latest recap of what’s going on in the indie game space. This week, the revived Acclaim held a very fun showcase (and we’ll get to some of the games from that). But on Friday, Nintendo soaked up all the attention with an hour-long Direct. Sure, it included some first-party games, such as Mario Tennis Fever, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and a Donkey Kong Bananza expansion. But Nintendo highlighted several indie games in the newsy showcase, too.

Hades 2 is arguably the highest-profile name among those, and the full version isn’t far away at all — it’ll hit Switch, Switch 2, Steam and Epic Games Store on September 25. Stardew Valley, Human Fall Flat, Overcooked 2 and PowerWash Simulator 2 are getting Switch 2 versions as well.

It wouldn’t be a Nintendo Direct without a shadowdrop. Sure enough, Lynked: Banner of the Spark landed on Switch and Switch 2 on Friday, with mouse control and GameShare support on the newer system. This is an action RPG from FuzzyBot and publisher Dreamhaven that looks a bit like a cross between Hades and Hi-Fi Rush.

I’ll be honest, I’ve had Lynked: Banner of the Spark sitting on my PC for months. I’m definitely interested in checking it out, but it’s just one of those things that’s unfortunately slipped further and further down my to-play list. I’m still hoping to carve out time to properly check it out before it’s time to start putting together our games of the year list.

Popucom (which debuted on Steam earlier this year) also looks pretty intriguing. From Hypergryph and publisher Gryph Frontier, this is a multiplayer-only adventure platformer in which you take out enemies with match three-style shooting. 

Here’s the twist: each player only has two colors, so you’ll need to work together to fire the correct blobs at bad guys and obstacles. Popucom is coming to Switch this holiday season.

New releases

Little Problems: A Cozy Detective Game is a new title from the small team at female-led Indonesian developer Posh Cat Studio and publisher Amplified Games. As the name suggests, it’s a slice-of-life detective game that sees you getting to the bottom of misunderstandings and minor inconveniences.

You play as freshman student Mary, and one of the first mysteries you’ll have to solve involves finding the location where her study group is supposed to meet after she forgets where to go on her first day of school. The game has 10 cases overall and each has a set of puzzles to solve. It’s said to have “simple mechanics that grow into playful twists and surprising solutions.”

Little Problems seems quite charming and just the kind of low-fi puzzle game that I might vibe with. It’s out now on Steam and it usually costs $10, but there’s a 10 percent discount until September 23.

Disc golf feels like it would be a fun sport to get into and while there are a few courses near me, they’re not exactly easy to get to without a car. So I might just have to make do with Disc Golf City, which came out of early access on Steam for PC, Mac and Linux this week. The action takes place in a colorful city, and you can bounce your disc off of objects in the environment to pull off trick shots and try to land it in the basket.

Disc Golf City, which is from Agapo Games, costs $13. There’s also a demo you can check out.

Another game that came out of early access on Steam and GOG this week is Beyond Sunset. This is a cyberpunk (not that one) first-person shooter with RPG elements from Metacorp / Vaporware and publisher Movie Games.

I love when a vaporwave color palette is put to good use and the lo-fi visuals here just feel right. The fast-paced movement looks pretty interesting too — it’s not hard to tell that the developers took inspiration from the Doom series. Beyond Sunset costs $10.

It feels like I can’t go on the internet for five minutes without learning about a new sidescrolling Metroidvania game. Still, Katanaut is one I’ve had my eye on for a while. You’ll be facing the horrors that have taken over a space station using an array of weapons, skills and perks.

This is a roguelite from Voidmaw in which there are new pathways to explore on each run. There is some permanent progression here, as you’ll pick up memory fragments during your journey through the station’s gore-soaked corridors. It was also revealed this week that Acclaim is the publisher of Katanaut, which is available on Steam.

Upcoming

Pacific Drive was one of the more interesting-looking games from last year that I just haven’t gotten around to checking out yet. It’s a driving sim and survival horror game set in a supernatural version of the Pacific Northwest, in which you scour the landscape for parts to upgrade your car and, hopefully, stay alive.

Ironwood Studios and publisher Kepler Interactive this week announced the Whispers in the Woods expansion for Pacific Drive. Slated to arrive later this year, the DLC adds around eight to 12 hours of gameplay with new characters, dangers, mysteries and anomalies to encounter. Other updates include route modifiers and garage cosmetics to find.

The rest of this week’s upcoming games are all from Acclaim, since I found just about everything in that showcase intriguing. The first game that the publisher showed off was GridBeat from Ridiculous Games.

Blending together puzzles, tactics and dungeon crawling, GridBeat will see you infiltrate a corporate computer network and try to escape with valuable data while security programs and malware attempt to stop you. You’ll find more abilities and power-ups along the way. Crucially, you need to move in time to the music, since it’s a rhythm game as well. There’s a lot going on here! GridBeat is coming to Steam, but there’s no release window as yet.

One thing I was really hoping to see during Acclaim’s showcase was the return of NBA Jam. We didn’t quite get that, but I’ll absolutely take Basketball Classics in its place. Acclaim has taken over publishing duties for this retro, NES-style arcade basketball title from Namo Gamo. It features 5-on-5 sidescrolling action with simplified controls, hundreds of teams, more than 1,000 players and multiple modes (including couch multiplayer).

I hadn’t heard of Basketball Classics until now, but it’s been out on Steam for several years. Acclaim is helping to bring it to consoles sometime soon.

I do love PowerWash Simulator and am looking forward to the sequel. Pixel Washer looks like a different flavor of that format. 

As a cute lil’ piggy with a power washer, you’ll be cleaning just about everything in sight. The trailer suggests that things might get weird, and it even seems like there are boss fights. Valadria is the developer behind Pixel Washer, which is coming to Steam down the line.

HyperYuki: Snowboard Syndicate looks like the offspring of SSX and Jet Set Radio, and that’s enough to sell me on the game. An easy addition to my wishlist.

Wabisabi Design is making this snowboarding game that pits you against NPCs and/or human players in races. In the main game mode, you’ll need to complete a certain number of challenges in each level before you can move on, which is very much keeping in with the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater format. There’s also a relaxing endless mode, where you can just hang out and explore or, like, whatever.

HyperYuki: Snowboard Syndicate supports split-screen play and online multiplayer for up to eight people. Again, there’s no confirmed release date or window as yet, this one is coming to Steam.

Acclaim notes that it is “actively exploring console releases” for its games. “Our goal is to bring these experiences to as many players as possible, and we’ll have more updates to share as development progresses,” the publisher added.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/cozy-detectives-urban-disc-golf-and-other-new-indie-games-worth-checking-out-110029695.html?src=rss

Surgeons in London report a surge in severe e-bike-related injuries, putting major strain on NHS trauma units. The BBC mentions a couple e-bike accidents overheard at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel. “A 32-year-old, fit and well student… a couple of days ago he fell off an e-bike sustaining a closed left tibial plateau fracture.” Another case involved a little girl named Frida: “Six-year-old girl, she was hit by an electric bike, she has a closed tib/fib fracture.” From the report: Surgeon Jaison Patel is seeing more and more cases like this. “It’s a massive burden on our department and I’m sure it’s the same across the whole of London,” he tells us. “If we can reduce the number of patients coming in with these sorts of injuries it would be great for the patients obviously, but also takes massive pressure off us in the NHS.”

Jaison deals with lower limb injuries. Just along the corridor his colleague Nick Aresti does the upper limbs. Nick explains that he is a cyclist himself, and it’s something he encourages people to do for the benefit of their health. But, he has real concerns about e-bikes, and says: “What we’ve noticed with e-bikes is that the speed in which people are coming off is much higher and as a result, the injuries are much worse.” He shows us X-rays of someone who has broken their collarbone. He explains that with e-bikes, the injuries they’re seeing are much more severe, and as such, people are “struggling to get back to normality.”

Nick and Jaison both agree it’s something they’re seeing increasingly more of as time goes by, and they think the industry needs better regulation. “We should do something about it, I don’t think we can let this carry on,” Jaison says. Over recent days of course, thousands of Londoners have taken to e-bikes to help beat the strikes. For many it has been an essential way to get about. Currently, anyone aged 14 or over can legally ride an e-bike. The power output of an e-bike’s motor should be capped at 250 watts, and the motor should not be capable of propelling the bike any faster than 15.5mph (25kph), according to government rules.

London’s Walking and Cycling Commissioner Will Norman says the rules need changing and says better regulation of the rentable electric bikes could be on the way. “We need to ensure that the vehicles are safe, that there’s parking, they’re not scattered all over the place, and that the batteries are safe,” he says. “I’m really delighted that the government has now indicated in its English Devolution Bill that London and other cities across the UK will be getting more powers so again we can start regulating that, to ensure that they’re safe for people to use and operate while they get around”. The bill is currently going through parliament, and as yet there is no date for when it will be passed. Duncan Dollimore, head of campaigns at Cycling UK, who are members of the Electric Bike Alliance, argues against the regulation of e-bike usage. “The cost of inactivity-related health issues to the NHS each year is 7.4 billion pounds, and people cycling saves them 1 billion pounds. We have seen a slight rise in the number of incidents involving hired e-bikes in London, but the health benefits of people cycling outweigh the risks by around 20 to one.”

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