Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is very much not a live-service game. That’s one of the things that felt so refreshing about the sci-fi shooter when players flocked to it last fall. But it felt eerily like one late last month when an in-game reward was locked behind a busted community event. “We are not looking to…
Rockstar Games has acquired the studio that worked on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas VR.
Announced today via Business Wire, Rockstar Games confirmed its acquisition of the Sydney-based studio Video Games Deluxe. Stating the team will be renamed to Rockstar Australia, the studio’s previously released work includes the 2017 re-release of L.A. Noire and L.A. Noire: The VR Case Files, alongside updates to Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition.
While this isn’t mentioned in the press release, likely due to being unreleased, Video Games Deluxe was also the studio working on the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas VR port for Quest. While July 2020 saw Video Games Deluxe reveal it was working on an ‘AAA open world‘ VR game, news emerged shortly after San Andreas VR’s reveal that the studio was behind the adaptation.
Jamie Feltham
Initially announced back in 2021, Mark Zuckerberg revealed the news during that year’s Connect conference, though a lengthy silence followed that announcement. Though Rockstar’s adaptation has not officially been cancelled, last August Meta confirmed that the VR version is “on hold indefinitely while we both focus on other projects.”
Whether we can expect to see Rockstar Games returning to VR anytime soon isn’t clear, though evidence suggests the studio’s at least been looking into it. Back in 2023, actor Michael Ursu listed an “Undisclosed Rockstar Game” under the VR section of his resume. However, that was swiftly deleted once the entry was publicly spotted.
Henry Stockdale
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There’s a difference between cleaning and decluttering. If you have too much stuff (clutter), you’ll have a much harder time sweeping, dusting, sanitizing, and actually cleaning, plus your house will never look clean. But decluttering is harder than cleaning, by far. It’s overwhelming, even, which is why clutter can get out of hand, making cleaning a nearly impossible task. That’s also why we’re always on the hunt for new ways to declutter: Surely, someone out there has cracked the code, right? As it turns out, organizer Kayleen Kelly may have. Her method, Core 4, is wildly popular on TikTok and could be the one that works for you. (Check out all these other pro decluttering methods, too, for more inspiration.)
Kelly’s Core 4 cleaning method is a big hit on CleanTok, with one analysis I was sent by Upmove showing videos on the technique have amassed over 23 million views. Here’s the video that launched it all:
When decluttering, Kelly suggests moving through each room in four stages: Clear out, categorize, cut out, and contain.
If you want to try Core 4 on your own, Kelly advises starting with small areas to avoid getting overwhelmed. Instead of trying to do each stage through your entire home at once, do all four stages in one room, then repeat that process in each room. If a single room has a ton of stuff in it, you can divvy that up even more, focusing first on a closet or the counter space, for example.
Start the first phase, which is clear out, by just removing everything and putting it in a pile. Throw out trash if you see it, but focus on getting your cupboards, table space, and other storage areas completely clear, so they can be filled in a more organized way later.
Next, categorize. You’ll need sorting bins for this (more on that later), so designate a bin for each different category of stuff you’re moving through, like your clothes, a family member’s clothes, makeup, knick-knacks, pet products, etc. Start sorting your pile by putting every item into its associated bin.
The third phase is “cut out.” This one is difficult because you’ll be tasked with going through each bin and determining what can be thrown away or donated. This is a good time to practice putting your clutter in “purgatory”—moving things you’re unsure about getting rid of to a special bin that you’ll hide away somewhere, like an attic, for a month to determine if you can live without it. Otherwise, be decisive and do your best to shrink the amount of stuff in each bin. Here’s a list of questions I recommend asking yourself as you declutter so you can focus on making objective, reasonable choices.
Finally, contain. Reassess your bin situation. If you threw out a bunch of old kitchen tools, you might be able to put the remaining ones in a smaller container, for instance. The bins are key here—you’ll be using them for storage and organizing going forward, not just for sorting and decluttering when you’re working through the steps.
Core 4 relies on principles you’ll also find echoed throughout the wider landscape of organizing and decluttering techniques. Specifically, it works well because it falls back on the principles that make up the Organizational Triangle, namely, that similar items should be stored together and everything you own must have a designated space. The containers are crucial because they keep everything categorized and stored together, but also because they give you a sense of volume. If all of your skincare products are stored in a bin, for instance, you’ll notice if you run out of space to add more, which can signal to you that you need to declutter and pare down your collection. If they’re scattered all over your bathroom and vanity, you’ll have a much tougher time noticing you have too much.
While the containers are important and valuable, they also pose a bit of a problem: With everything boxed up and hidden away, the containers themselves can become cluttered. You’ll still need to repeat the Core 4 technique periodically over time, focusing on that “clear out” step and dumping the bins, so you don’t end up with a bunch of smaller, invisible messes inside your cabinets and closets. Another approach you can use is the “out in the open” method, which is pretty similar, but involves dumping every item in every closet or cupboard in a room right into the center of the space, then going through it. The scale at which you tackle the “clear out” stage as you continue to employ Core 4 is really up to you, but I recommend moving in smaller chunks to avoid getting overwhelmed.
It might seem counterintuitive to buy more stuff to declutter, but to use this method, you really do need the bins. They make sorting easy, plus give you a place to store the things you decide to keep, helping you stay organized so you don’t have to keep repeating the Core 4 all the time. Here are a few bin options to consider:
If you’re focusing on pure functionality, nothing is better for this job than clear, plastic containers with lids. They nest and stack, so whether they’re empty or full, storing them is easy and intuitive. Try the IRIS bins from Amazon, which come in a six-pack of 53-quart bins ($69.99) for larger items or categories and a 20-pack of 5.9-quart bins ($28.99) for smaller needs.
If you live in a small space where the bins are more likely to be visible or you just prioritize aesthetics, you’ll want more decorative bins. Your best bet is to buy sets of matching boxes, like this small and large box set on Wayfair for $58.99, which comes in a bunch of colors and designs. Collapsible fabric boxes, like this set of three from Amazon ($29.95) are good options, too, since they can be folded up when not in use and fit well onto shelving units.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been fumbling so hard through the past few phases that part of me forgot the interconnected superhero movies are all supposed to be building up to something. The studio has pivoted away from the multiversal threat of Kang and instead has its sights set on a pair of Doctor Doom-led…
Marvel Rivals welcomes one of the (literal) brightest heroes from the comics with the addition of the Human Torch. Just in time for his MCU introduction, the cocky resident of the Baxter Building joins the FTP, multiplayer shooter as a Duelist which is Rival’s version of the DPS class. This guide will tell you…
Mozilla has issued
an update to its terms of use (TOU) that were announced
on February 26. It has removed a reference in the TOU to
Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy “because it seems to be causing
“, and has revised the TOU “
more confusion than clarityto more
“. The new language says:
clearly reflect the limited scope of how Mozilla interacts with user
data
You give Mozilla the rights necessary to operate Firefox. This
includes processing your data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy
Notice. It also includes a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide
license for the purpose of doing as you request with the content you
input in Firefox. This does not give Mozilla any ownership in that
content.
Mozilla has also updated its Privacy FAQ to provide
more detail about its reasons for the changes.
This is a video of Fingerbirgit, an automaton built by Hknssn, who describes himself as “creator, inventor and slightly insane.” I trust him. The automaton is powered via hand crank or lowering weight, and uses 1,170 pieces to delicately spin a globe in its five talons while the fingers take turns returning to their starting positions. That’s remarkable. I don’t know why, but automatons have always fascinated me. Maybe if I spent some time really thinking about it I could figure out what it is about me that makes me likes them so much, but I’ve always been fine just watching them thinking, “Holy sh!t that’s rad.” Why ruin a perfectly good thing?
This is a video of Elvis’s longtime personal cook Mary Jenkins reminiscing about The King (including how she once snuck him some hot dogs with sauerkraut into the hospital) and his favorite sandwich — a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich. It’s basically a peanut butter and banana sandwich made on toasted bread that, after assembled, is fried in a pool (like, the deep end) of butter. It looks delicious. Per Mary, “He said that’s the only thing he got any enjoyment out of was, was eatin’.” And after watching the Oscars last night I thought I didn’t have anything in common with celebrities!
Apple’s next WWDC could be a repeat of 2024, with talk of upcoming Siri capabilities in iOS 19.
AMD is also evaluating Intel’s 18A technology, which competes with Taiwan’s dominant TSMC, according to the report. The current tests focus on determining capabilities of Intel’s process rather than running complete chip designs. Intel faces additional setbacks, with qualification of critical intellectual property for 18A taking longer than expected, potentially delaying some customer chip production until mid-2026.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
With mixed reality gaming still in its relative infancy, we interviewed Detective VR’s team about designing a narrative-driven experience for newer tech.
No matter your medium, detective stories often remain a compelling sell for many of us. It’s one thing to witness these suspenseful events unfold across a film or novel, but another entirely when games let you be the active investigator. A good mystery arguably lets you feel smart while actively putting the work in to uncover clues. Following prior attempts like L.A. Noire: The VR Case Files and Home Detective, presenting its case next is Detective VR.
Out now on Quest after starting development in 2022, Detective VR takes inspiration from Minority Report, Return of the Obra Dinn, and Immortality. Scenes swap between immersive VR environments where you investigate for clues, while mixed reality then lets you piece the evidence together on a board filled with photos and string.
Josh Petersel
Our review awarded it 3.5/5 stars, calling it an “impressive effort” that’s both inspiring and suspenseful. While this review was by Josh Petersel, I recently attended a separate hands-on event in London. My initial thoughts are largely aligned with Josh after playing for two hours, which was followed up by an interview with the team.
Speaking with the game’s director, Alexandre Garland from Studio Chipo y Juan, and Valem Studio’s CEO, Quentin Valembois, both developers had prior experience with games before working on Detective VR. Valembois has a YouTube channel dedicated to VR development, while Garland previously designed escape rooms and his focus is on the player experience.
“I want [the players] to have an emotional rollercoaster, and to make everything easy for them. I don’t mean an easy game, but the interaction needs to be simple. Because when you are struggling to remember what you need to do, you are not connecting with it.”
The team avoided too many tutorials to keep things natural, and Valembois also highlighted the game’s use of hand tracking controls. Quest’s Touch Controllers are supported, but everything in Detective VR was designed with hand tracking in mind. This created some initial challenges.
“An example of this is scanning objects by taking pictures. The first thing we tried to do was have a physical Polaroid that you can grab with your hand and that you could activate. It was easier to do with the push of a button because you had a big Polaroid in your hand, which worked, but it was unreliable. With hand tracking, you have no button to push, and we initially used the index curl to do it. That worked, but it didn’t feel good to do that little movement every time you press.”
This saw the team try to find common ground that suits both hand tracking and controllers, leading to the idea of forming a big square to take photos. This involves doing a pinch motion with both hands, then moving your hands apart to create a larger frame. That frame is your camera, and a successful shot of evidence sees you keep the photo.
A key point that comes up during our discussion is the fact that mixed reality is a comparatively new medium. Garland explained that it’s about finding something new, believing that not everything with MR has been “figured out” like with VR. Valembois states there’s “not a common idea of how everything needs to be done,” calling this another challenge in making Detective VR.
“We are just eager to find out how new people that are not familiar with hand tracking or even VR will feel about the game. We have a good feeling about how it can be easily learned, I think we did a good job at explaining how the game works. We made all the interactions simple. At the end of the day, even if the rules of XR and hand tracking are not written, we hope that what we’ve done can help even newcomers to learn how to play our game.”
Asked about the considerations that went into Detective VR’s design, Garland says that it’s sometimes “better to do something more simple, and to be focused on that, than to be distracted by something that is ambitious.” He’s more concerned with the player experience than with new features that don’t necessarily work as well as originally imagined.
“Our goal was not to create any friction between the player and the story; the interactions had to become natural, almost invisible. That’s why mixed reality and hand-tracking were so important… you feel at ease, interacting in the comfort of your environment.”
The team considered using occlusion, spatial anchors and other MR elements and while these didn’t work for Detective VR, Valembois states they’re open to taking another look in the future. He would rather not add something “just for the sake of it” if it’s to the player’s detriment, saying “it needs to be valuable to the game” while also being mindful of feature creep.
Even with these challenges, Valembois considers it exciting to be working on this type of new technology to create a game that’s more unique. Like anything though, it’s about finding the right balance.
“It was so much fun to work on, we made this game with passion while trying to find some cool things to also add. We really wanted to push some new features because we like them but on the other side, we had to sometimes remove them. It’s a hard balance to find.”
Detective VR is available now on the Meta Quest platform.
Water was present just a couple hundred million years after the Big Bang, according to a new study, shaking up the timeline of planetary evolution.
The idea of flying satellites in “very” low-Earth orbit is not new. Dating back to the dawn of the space age in the late 1950s, the first US spy satellites, as part of the Corona program, orbited the planet as low as 120 to 160 km (75 to 100 miles) above the Earth.
This low vantage point allowed the Kodak cameras on board the Corona satellites to capture the highest-resolution images of Earth during the height of the Cold War. However, flying so close to the planet brought a number of challenges, most notably that of atmospheric drag.
For much of the space age, therefore, satellites have flown much higher orbits. Most satellites today fly at an altitude of between 400 and 800 km (250 and 500 miles), which is high enough to avoid the vast majority of atmospheric drag while still being close enough to offer good communications and a clear view of the planet.
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A crevice garden is an exceptional way to deal with one of the hardest terrains to grow a garden. But more than that, crevice gardens can create architectural interest and structure, while growing a drought-tolerant garden that can be full of native plants. You can even create a crevice garden in a place that didn’t previously have rocky terrain, if you like the look of them.
With climate change bringing hotter summers, a garden that is drought tolerant while also improving the soil and providing food for pollinators is a win all around. Since these gardens are so low maintenance, they’re perfect for people who want a dramatic, natural garden without a lot of upkeep.
If you have a patio, driveway or bricked walkway, you know that plants love to grow in the nooks and crannies, whether you want them to or not. There’s good reason these plants grow in the tiny spaces—the surrounding matter, whether that’s rock, brick, or pavement, provide almost perfect germination conditions. They keep the seeds dark, warm, and moist in the soil, shaded from the sun. The roots are protected, and hard surfaces almost always trap heat, offering the plant what it needs to survive.
With a crevice garden, you embrace this idea, and either create or adapt rocky spaces. If you have a rock wall, adding plants between the rocks creates a symbiotic relationship: The roots help the wall maintain stability, holding soil and rocks in place, even in storms; the rocks provide drainage, insulation, and minerals that leach into the soil, providing nutrients for the plants. The rocks also act as protection.
If you have an existing rock wall or outcropping of rocks, you just need to check the conditions to get started on your crevice garden. You’ll need enough soil between the rocks to anchor your plants. Use a cup or scoop to pour garden soil into the crevices, only enough so the seedings you place there will touch soil. Once you ensure that your rock wall has enough soil between the rocks, tuck small plants into the crevices. When you pull these plants out of the plastic containers they come in, be sure to free up and spread out the roots, so they’ll begin rooting into the soil once planted. While they’re establishing themselves, ensure the wall gets watered only enough to keep the plants alive. Don’t baby these plants—overwatering will stop the roots from seeking water deep within the soil. Water the plants once after planting, and then watch for signs of plant stress such as wilting before watering again. Remember, water flows down, so if you’re watering a rock wall, don’t overdo it: Water well at the top of the wall and then allow gravity to move the water down to lower plants.
A new generation of landscapers is using the notion of a rock wall to landscape entire flat yards. Washington State University recently demonstrated this, laying stone slabs parallel to one another, creating gorgeous diagonal lines between which to plant. Plantings are made in small groupings, two or three together.
You don’t need to design your entire yard around the crevice concept: A small outcropping of large rocks creates vertical interest in a large yard. Consider a long, low rock wall to define a change of elevation in your yard, or to shield a sitting area from the wind.
Once you have rocks or slabs in place, the instructions are the same as for a rock wall. Make sure there’s some dirt or soil for the plants to grab onto in the crevices between rocks, or add enough soil to do so. Plant small, drought tolerant plants in the crevices and encourage root growth by watering minimally.
If you’re interested in starting a crevice garden, consider the book “The Crevice Garden: How to make the perfect home for plants from rocky places,” which is full of suggestions for plants and layouts of crevice gardens.
The best way to start is to visit a local nursery that specializes in natives; explain your project and find out what plants are recommended for your zone. This is the perfect time of year, as nurseries are beginning to stock for the spring and summer. This early in the season, you also have time to grow your own seedlings from seed. Seeing what is available will help you envision the colors, shapes and textures your garden can embody. From sedums that will tolerate a Northeast winter to caper berry plants that would thrive in a high desert, your crevice garden has to be suited to the local weather.
If you’re interested in building a crevice garden from scratch, consider working with a landscape designer. If you want to go it on your own, seek out a local rock yard. These businesses have different rocks, soils, and sands are separated out, and you can walk or drive around and look at each. You’ll purchase the material by the ton, not pound, and can usually opt to pick it up yourself or have it delivered. Someone will walk with you through the yard and show you options.
You can be as organic or rigid in your design as you’d like, by just placing a few rocks close together or by laying out an entire yard’s worth of stone in distinctive planes. The formula remains the same: Identify the spaces between the rocks (the crevices), ensure there’s enough soil to plant into, and then place drought-tolerant plants in those spaces.
It’s your lucky day if you’ve been looking for a good deal on a power bank or charging station. A sale on many Anker products is taking place at Amazon. One power bank, the Anker 621, is 35 percent off. That discount brings it down to $26, which is almost a record low. The device typically costs $40.
This model is MagSafe-compatible, meaning it’ll attach magnetically to an iPhone 12 and above (but, annoyingly, not the new iPhone 16e unless you resort to a workaround) and charge your phone wirelessly. However, if you plug a cable into the Anker 621’s USB-C port, you can top up your phone’s battery a little faster — at a rate of 12W vs. 7.5W for wireless charging. The power bank has a capacity of 5,000mAh, which Anker says is enough to charge an iPhone 15 to 85 percent of its capacity from zero and an iPhone 14 to 80 percent.
Anker makes some of the best power banks and best portable chargers around, in our opinion. There are lots of options to consider as part of this sale.
A new power bank that Anker introduced at CES has a large enough capacity to top up an M3-powered MacBook Air’s battery approximately 1.3 times, per the brand. This model has dropped by 18 percent from $110 to $90. This particular power bank can charge four devices simultaneously — it has two built-in USB-C cables, another USB-C port and a USB-A port. It supports fast charging at up to 100W as well.
Elsewhere, a 3-in-1 charging cube is down to $104, which marks a 31 percent discount given that it usually costs $150. This compact device can charge your iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods at the same time.
There are a few other deals that caught our eye. An Anker Zolo power bank with a built-in USB-C cable is just $13, which is half off. It has a capacity of 10,000mAh, which Anker says is enough to fully charge an iPhone 15 Pro twice over. Meanwhile, Prime members can pick up a travel-friendly 3-in-1 charging station (that can top up your iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods batteries simultaneously) for $88, which is a $21 discount.
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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/anker-power-banks-and-charging-stations-are-up-to-35-percent-off-right-now-155626053.html?src=rss
Get the industry-leading cross-platform development and programming software for just $28 after a massive 94% markdown.
