Login credentials belonging to an employee at both the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Department of Government Efficiency have appeared in multiple public leaks from info-stealer malware, a strong indication that devices belonging to him have been hacked in recent years.
Kyle Schutt is a 30-something-year-old software engineer who, according to Dropsite News, gained access in February to a “core financial management system” belonging to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. As an employee of DOGE, Schutt accessed FEMA’s proprietary software for managing both disaster and non-disaster funding grants. Under his role at CISA, he likely is privy to sensitive information regarding the security of civilian federal government networks and critical infrastructure throughout the US.
A steady stream of published credentials
According to journalist Micah Lee, user names and passwords for logging in to various accounts belonging to Schutt have been published at least four times since 2023 in logs from stealer malware. Stealer malware typically infects devices through trojanized apps, phishing, or software exploits. Besides pilfering login credentials, stealers can also log all keystrokes and capture or record screen output. The data is then sent to the attacker and, occasionally after that, can make its way into public credential dumps.
If you’re a chip architecture addict, better brush up on your Chinese, as there’s steamin’ hot news about the Nintendo Switch 2’s SoC to discuss. Youtuber GeekerWan got a hold of a dead, but fully assembled Switch 2 motherboard and has spilled the beans in great detail about the SoC therein.
2024 was an absurdly crowded year for RPGs, but it’s also a treasure trove—especially if you’re willing to look past all the big names. Fantasian: Neo Dimension is a neat middle ground. It’s a non-franchise IP from a less-known studio, but backed by Square Enix and led by some of the biggest legends from Final Fantasy’…
The Trump administration’s steep staff cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) triggered shutdowns of several climate-related programs Thursday.
Perhaps most notably, the NOAA announced it would be shuttering the “billion-dollar weather and climate disasters” database for vague reasons. Since 1980, the database made it possible to track the growing costs of the nation’s most devastating weather events, critically pooling various sources of private data that have long been less accessible to the public.
In that time, 403 weather and climate disasters in the US triggered more than $2.945 trillion in costs, and NOAA notes that’s a conservative estimate. Considering that CNN noted the average number of disasters in the past five years jumped from nine annually to 24, shutting down the database could leave communities in the dark on costs of emerging threats. All the NOAA can likely say is to continue looking at the historic data to keep up with trends.
Pocketpair, the studio behind surprise hit Palworld, is embroiled in a legal battle with Nintendo and the Pokémon Company, after being accused of having violated several patents. Pocketpair is pushing back against these claims in court, but in the meantime the company will be making changes to core gameplay while the legal proceedings play
Chicago’s comic and entertainment show, C2E2, took place just over a month ago, celebrating all things pop culture. This year’s event saw high-profile guests appearing like Star Wars’ John Boyega, Katey Sagal, Peter Weller, The Last of Us’ Ashely Johnson, and all-time legend Judd Nelson. Andalongside them were guests…
Celebrate Ride Like King’s 17th year (and 8th year on Zwift) next week with events featuring celebrity leaders, product giveaways, jersey unlocks, and even Buffalo bikes!
Every 500km ridden by the Zwift community means one more Buffalo bike donated to World Bicycle Relief – up to 700 bikes. Read on for details…
What is Ride Like King?
In 2007, at age 73, Giant Group King Liu completed a 15-day, 927km ride around Taiwan. This resulted in a renewed passion for cycling and the benefits it brings to the individual, community, and country. Following this, King traveled to countries and spoke with governments to promote the positive impacts of cycling.
His message resonated within the company as well. ‘Ride Like King’ started in 2009 as a small event within the Giant Group to celebrate their founder’s passion for cycling. But it grew to be an annual event and is now in its 17th edition! Zwift is an active partner and has been hosting the event on its platform since 2018.
The WBR Buffalo Bike IRLAnd in game!
Event Details
“Ride to Raise” warm-up rides are scheduled hourly from 6am UTC Monday, May 12 to 3am UTC Friday, May 16th. These rides are 45 minutes long and rotate every other hour between two routes. Finishers will unlock the RLK17 kit (see below), and the distance from these rides counts toward our community distance goal to earn Buffalo bikes:
Open Category D will ride Revolt Advanced Pro gravel bikes with Cadex AR35 wheels
Women-Only Category E will ride Devote Advanced Pro gravel bikes with Cadex AR35 wheels
“Celebration Rides” are scheduled from 4am UTC Friday, May 16th to 6am UTC Monday, May 19th and are full laps of the selected routes led by ambassadors and athletes. Finishers will unlock the RLK17 kit (see below), be entered to win an IRL jersey (see below), and have their distance added to our community distance goal to earn Buffalo bikes.
The schedule rotates through three blocks of events, with each block hosting 7 event time slots which are 4 hours apart:
The big weekend Celebration Rides will feature pro riders from Giant and Liv’s most notable teams, including Team Jayco AlUla, Liv AlUla Jayco, and Giant and Liv triathlon, plus mountain bike and gravel pros, ambassadors like Ayesha McGowan and Louis Hatchwell, Zwift community ride leaders, and more.
Hint: check the signup list in Zwift Companion to see who is signed up as a ride leader for any events you’re interested in!
Giveaways and Prizes
Finish any of the RLK events and you’ll unlock the exclusive Ride Like King 17 kit in game.
Also, each Celebration Ride you complete earns you an entry to win a limited-edition RLK17 jersey along with a signed card by King Liu himself! Three winners will be drawn per main event, meaning 63 winners will be drawn overall.
The Midnight Walk is like taking a stroll through Tim Burton’s mind. As a game its visuals are absolutely unique and darkly beautiful, but is there enough to do along your walk to warrant putting on the headset? Read on to find out.
The Midnight Walk Details:
Publisher: Fast Travel Games
Developer: MoonHood Available On:Steam (VR optional), PS5 (VR optional) Reviewed On: Quest 3 via Steam Link Release Date: May 8th, 2025 Price: $40
Gameplay
The Midnight Walk, as the name implies, falls pretty squarely into the ‘walking simulator’ genre, leaning mostly on its visuals and narrative to carry fairly basic gameplay involving light puzzles and the occasional hide-and-seek with monsters.
The main draw is definitely the game’s unique art style, in which the developers say they hand-crafted nearly all of the assets and then 3D scanned them to be used in the game. The result is a dark, Burtonesque world that’s both artfully grotesque and occasionally beautiful.
Image courtesy MoonHood
Seeing it all up close in VR is a very cool way to experience the work this must have taken. You effectively play a character the size of a mouse, so you can see all the fine textures and surface details of the objects up close. Consistently good attention to lighting and composition means there’s always something visually intriguing to look at along your way.
Photo by Road to VR
Though the game is pitched as featuring ‘stop motion’ animations, only parts of the game are done in that style. Many of the animations are done with smooth interpolation, even in the same sequence of motions from the same character. The jarring combination of both styles unfortunately looks awkward, almost like an unintended bug.
Photo by Road to VR
The Midnight Walk’s gameplay really never expands beyond basic puzzling and the occasional hide-and-seek sequences with some delightfully twisted creatures. I never had any of those ‘eureka’ moments with the puzzles, nor any set-piece gameplay sequences that felt truly memorable. There’s also very little that could be considered ‘VR native’ gameplay… the hallmark of many games designed to be playable on both flatscreen and in VR.
The Midnight Walk isn’t quite scary enough to be called a horror game, despite the overall imagery being that of a long forgotten nightmare.
Photo by Road to VR
While basic gameplay that’s ultimately in service to the visuals and narrative isn’t always a bad thing (after all, I quite enjoyed Dear Esther [2012]), the game’s story feels poetic and obtuse.
Photo by Road to VR
It’s told by many different unnamed narrators, and didn’t establish any characters that I felt attached to. It’s cryptic nature didn’t resonate with me personally, which meant it wasn’t much of a force to carry me forward in the game or make me feel invested in the world.
With basic gameplay and an obtuse narrative, the game stands largely on its unique and well-crafted visuals; my main reason for continuing to play was to see—literally see—what would come next.
Immersion
Photo by Road to VR
I appreciate that we have the option of seeing the game’s darkly beautiful world up close and personal through a headset. But the lack of VR native gameplay means the game doesn’t feel like a ‘must play’ in VR.
For instance, at several points in the game when you find a key to open a door, you don’t even get to physically put the key into the keyhole and turn the lock You simply pull it out of your inventory and it floats into place and magically unlocks the door for you.
At various moments in the game you’re asked to hang onto a bar attached to a flying machine which whisks you from one place to another. Do you reach up and grab the bar with your hand to hang onto it without falling? Of course not… you just ‘Press A’ to magically attach to the machine while it flies you to the next location. Do you reach out with your hand and open the door to enter your house? Of course not, just ‘Press A’.
Photo by Road to VR
It’s these details—these missed opportunities for hands-on interactions—that are so often a hallmark of VR-optional design, and unfortunately detracts from immersion.
The closest thing in the game to VR native gameplay is the ability to close your eyes and ‘listen’ for the direction of audio cues that would guide you to certain key things in the environment (or change parts of the environment if you were looking at them before you closed your eyes).
On PSVR 2 I take it this would be achieve by actually closing your eyes (thanks to the headset’s eye-tracking), but on PC VR (as I played it), ‘closing your eyes’ was done by holding a trigger instead.
While the PSVR 2 version would have been a bit more immersive, the mechanic was never used in a way that felt particularly compelling.
Comfort
Photo by Road to VR
While The Midnight Walk in VR is generally comfortable thanks to slow movement, the game frequently grabs hold of the player’s head during cutscenes, usually panning slowly, but occasionally sweeping your view across a large area. Sometimes in these scenes the horizon is purposefully tilted. For some these moments may be uncomfortable. For me they were infrequent enough to be a little jarring but not outright uncomfortable.
The Midnight Walk’ Comfort Settings – May 8th, 2025
This is a visualization from Global Data (some really hard-hitting data here) comparing the sizes of various monsters and aliens from pop culture movies, shows, and video games. It begins with the tiny soot sprites from Hayao Miyazaki movies, and ends with the 10.45-trillion light year wide Super Tengen Toppa Giga Drill from Japanese mecha anime Gurren Lagann. That sees a little extreme. Was a BILLION light years not big enough? I can’t even fathom the distance of a single light year. Heck, if I’m being honest I can barely wrap my head around the length of a half marathon.
President Trump hit a 90-day pause on a whole raft of “reciprocal” tariffs aimed at U.S. trading partners around the world. While many seem skeptical that the heavily criticized and widely unpopular import taxes could come back, what if Trump decided to do just that? A new report models what would happen under that…
A Florida federal judge has dismissed the majority of claims against celebrities who endorsed Sam Bankman-Fried’s now-collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Judge K. Michael Moore ruled that investors failed to demonstrate the high-profile endorsers — including Tom Brady, Gisele Bundchen, Kevin O’Leary, Larry David, Shohei Ohtani, and Stephen Curry — knew about FTX’s fraudulent activities.
In his ruling, Moore wrote that while the celebrity endorsers may have been “uninformed, negligent, or even reckless,” plaintiffs didn’t adequately establish that defendants had “knowledge of FTX’s fraud” or “the requisite intent to deceive and defraud investors.”
The US Senate today voted along party lines to kill a Federal Communications Commission program to distribute Wi-Fi hotspots to schoolchildren, with Democrats saying the Republican-led vote will make it harder for kids without reliable Internet access to complete their homework.
The Senate approved a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to nullify the hotspot rule, which was issued by the Federal Communications Commission in July 2024 under then-Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. The program would be eliminated if the House version passes and President Trump signs the joint resolution of disapproval.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) announced the plan in January, saying the FCC program would “imped[e] parents’ ability to decide what their kids see by subsidizing unsupervised access to inappropriate content.” He also alleged that the hotspot program would shift control of Internet access from parents to schools and thus “heightens the risk of censoring kids’ exposure to conservative viewpoints.”
Vendetta Forever receives five new levels in today’s free update, and the PC VR edition is now available.
Launched last October on Quest and PlayStation VR2, Vendetta Forever uses a unique ‘LO-KILL-MOTION’ mechanic where you can only move by teleporting to an enemy’s dropped weapon. Developed by Meatspace Interactive and published by nDreams, this minimalist shooter is now available for PC VR, following a previous announcement in March. Five new levels with the ‘Deleted Scenes’ update are also live for free on all platforms.
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PC VR footage captured by UploadVR for the ‘Trench Run’ level.
We briefly went hands-on with the new levels before today’s launch on PC VR, each of which offers a nice variety of new settings. ‘Speakeasy’ is a ’40s themed level filled with tommy guns. ‘Sub’ is a longer but more creative level that involves sabotaging a submarine to escape. ‘Panzer’ requires a sometimes frustratingly precise aim as you try to destroy a slowly approaching tank by shooting a grenade into its gun.
My favorite new level is ‘Trench Run,’ which sees you wading through war across no-man’s land to reach an enemy bunker, and the setting suits the frantic action well by adding an increased sense of urgency. Finally, ‘Escape Velocity’ involves destroying an enemy space station using new weapons, and I enjoyed how this seemingly parodies Moonraker.
It’s a welcome addition to the original game. We previously praised Vendetta Forever in our 4/5-star review on Quest, highlighting how its minimalist approach delivers a “satisfying” action game.
Vendetta Forever shows the benefits minimalist game design can offer, using only the bare essentials to deliver a satisfying action game. While you won’t need ages to see everything and some levels can be frustrating, there’s a clever puzzle game disguised as a shooter with great replayability. It’s a strong debut from Meatspace Interactive that’s worth exploring.
Surviving Mars: Pioneer is a strategic, base-building survival game that launches today on Quest and PC VR in early access. Branching out from their previous Metroidvania-style shooter, Genotype, developer Bolverk Games are trading fast-paced action for slow-burning tension and resource management-driven gameplay.
Surviving Mars: Pioneer begins by establishing players as contract colonists tasked with surviving the harsh Martian environment with only a modest bundle of starting resources. The early game loop revolves around harvesting minerals to sustain you and slowly expand a fledgling settlement. It’s a delicate juggling act: gather enough materials to stay alive while also working towards researching advanced structures and tech.
Screenshot captured by UploadVR on Quest 3
Gameplay seems at its best when you’re teetering on the edge of survival and making potentially life-threatening risk/reward decisions. Do you keep mining copper for that all-important furnace? Or do you harvest the iron you need to sell to afford the food processor blueprint required so you can survive long enough to keep mining that copper? It’s these kinds of small-scale resource management dilemmas that Surviving Mars: Pioneer excels at, and this logistical ballet forms the core experience.
While Surviving Mars: Pioneer nails the quiet isolation of solo colonization, it’s not without its rough patches. There are no enemy encounters (at least not in the first few hours that I played) so the only real threat is dwindling supplies and the ticking clock on your oxygen and nutrition levels. This can make the early game feel like a bit of a slog, especially when trekking across long, barren landscapes to continue your harvesting.
Screenshot captured by UploadVR on Quest 3
Eventually, you unlock a hoverbike and with it, a welcome sense of speed and mobility. But this comes at a price as battery power becomes yet another resource to manage. Every decision and every item used is weighed against not only the scarcity of the resource, but also the price tag you attribute to the somewhat monotonous process of harvesting its replacement.
After three hours, I had more or less exhausted the resources in the starting zone and prepared to venture into uncharted regions. The size of this map suggests a substantial amount of content lies beyond the initial area and as new areas open, it’s likely that the challenges will become richer and more varied.
Unfortunately, this progression system is undermined by a VR interface that feels like it ignores the lessons of the last decade or so. Core mechanics often rely on clunky laser pointer interactions and flat, desktop-like menus. Inventory management is the perfect example: rather than, say, physically grabbing a backpack to access your 16-slot grid of space goodies, the game asks players to press a button that summons a menu that contains only one option – ‘Inventory’. You then need to select this option to call up a grid that then just hovers in front of you without any context in the game world.
Screenshot captured by UploadVR on Quest 3
Mounting your hoverbike? No grabbing handlebars or vaulting into position here. Instead, you aim your pointer at the bike, which brings up another menu consisting of only a single option, which you then need to select. It’s maddening.
These unintuitive design choices feel like a regression, especially considering that 2023’s Genotype offers much more VR-centric interaction design. While you do eventually adapt to the awkward controls, it’s a sorely missed opportunity and one that just should not have happened in 2025.
Screenshot captured by UploadVR on Quest 3
With performance, it’s worth noting that the Quest version actually outshines the PC VR build. While both feature the same mechanics, the Quest iteration currently feels more polished and stable. My time with the PC VR version was marred by technical issues, including a vanished save file and a glitch on the rocket pad that broke the core trading mechanic, among other things.
PC Specs Used
My desktop uses an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 12GB, an Intel i9-11900 processor, 32GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 1TB Gen4 M.2 SSD. For PC VR, this was conducted using a Quest 3 via Virtual Desktop. You can find the minimum and recommended specs on the Steam page to learn more.
Surviving Mars: Pioneer is occasionally frustrating, but ultimately seems compelling if you enjoy survival games. It’s not trying to be No Man’s Sky, so action-hungry players should temper their expectations. But, for fans of slower-paced, systems-driven gameplay and methodical exploration, this might be worth a look.
Surviving Mars: Pioneer is available now on Questand Steam headsets.
Wikipedia is taking legal action against the UK’s new Online Safety Act regulations it says could threaten the safety of its volunteer editors and their ability to keep harmful content off the site. From a report: The Wikimedia Foundation — the non-profit which supports the online encyclopaedia — is seeking a judicial review of rules which could mean Wikipedia is subjected to the toughest duties required of websites under the act.
Lead counsel Phil Bradley-Schmieg said it was “unfortunate that we must now defend the privacy and safety of Wikipedia’s volunteer editors from flawed legislation.” The government told the BBC it was committed to implementing the act but could not comment on ongoing legal proceedings. It’s thought this is the first judicial review to be brought against the new online safety laws – albeit a narrow part of them – but experts say it may not be the last.
“The Online Safety Act is vast in scope and incredibly complex,” Ben Packer, a partner at law firm Linklaters, told the BBC. The law would inevitably have impacts on UK citizens’ freedom of expression and other human rights, so as more of it comes into force “we can expect that more challenges may be forthcoming,” he told the BBC.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has reportedly overhauled a historically wonky Department of Defense-designed tool that automates layoffs of federal workers.
Expected to expedite DOGE’s already rushed efforts to shrink the government, the redesigned software could make it easier for DOGE to quickly dismantle the biggest agencies in a blink, sources familiar with the revamp told Reuters.
Developed more than two decades ago, AutoRIF (short for automated reductions in force) was deemed too “clunky” to use across government, sources told Reuters. In a 2003 audit, the DOD’s Office of the Inspector General noted, for example, that “specialized reduction-in-force procedures needed for the National Guard technicians made the module impractical.” Basically, each department needed to weigh its cuts differently to avoid gutting essential personnel. Despite several software updates since then, Wired reported, the tool remained subject to errors, sources told Reuters, requiring most federal agencies to continue conducting firings manually rather than risk work stoppages or other negative outcomes from sloppy firings.
