OpenAI is making GPT-4.1, the latest addition to its collection of AI models, available to all of its paid users. The rollout to ChatGPT Plus, Pro and Team members begins today, while Enterprise and Edu subscriptions will have to wait a few weeks to get access. Once available, GPT-4.1 can be chosen from the “more models” dropdown menu in the model picker.
This version of the ChatGPT AI chatbot rolled out to the company’s developer API last month, offering upgrades in speed and efficiency over the GPT-4.5 model that it replaced (yes, that is a slightly convoluted numbering system). OpenAI is iterating models at a breakneck speed this year; GPT-4.5 just debuted in February and is already being outpaced in stats by a new version.
The company also has a GPT-4.1 mini option that will replace the current small model of GPT-4o mini. That upgrade will happen for all tiers, including the free one. GPT-4.1 mini will be the fallback option for free users once they reach the cap on their access to the heftier GPT-4o model.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-rolls-out-gpt-41-to-all-chatgpt-paying-subscribers-200049384.html?src=rss
The Mission: Impossible film franchise has always dabbled in the, well, impossible. We’ve seen Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt climb his way up the Burj Khalifa, have a motorcycle joust to prevent the spread of a bioweapon and hang off the side of an airplane. Even the most grounded entry, Brian DePalma’s 1996 Mission: Impossible, featured Cruise leaping off of an exploding helicopter onto a train in the Chunnel. But with the previous film, Dead Reckoning, and this year’s follow-up Final Reckoning, the series has jumped completely into science-fiction territory with an AI villain called The Entity. It has the power to control anything that touches the internet, manipulate digital information to suit its needs and potentially wipe out humanity through a global nuclear annihilation.
Stopping the Entity is a mission Ethan Hunt has no choice but to accept. But as a fan of this series from the start — hell, I even like John Woo’s gloriously operatic Mission: Impossible 2 —I can’t help but see the move into true sci-fi as a huge mistake. It makes both Reckoning films far too plot-heavy and impenetrable (Final Reckoning clocks in at three hours!), and they also just don’t have much to say about AI beyond a Terminator-esque extinction scenario. But perhaps worst of all, the shift towards sci-fi inadvertently (or perhaps purposefully) turns Ethan Hunt into some sort of Messiah. Apparently, only Scientology’s greatest son can save us.
The best M:I films are the ones that don’t get bogged down in the intricacies of plot mechanics. That’s a trend that truly kicked off with the JJ Abrams-directed Mission: Impossible 3, which relied on a standard MacGuffin (the “Rabbit’s Foot”) and a powerhouse Philip Seymour Hoffman villain performance to send Ethan and his team gallivanting around the world. With Ghost Protocol, director Brad Bird used his experience in animation and love of silent film to turn Cruise into a modern-day Buster Keaton, hopping from one elaborate set-piece to another.
Paramount Pictures
The series found a new life when writer/director Christopher McQuarrie hopped aboard for Rogue Nation, which introduced Rebecca Ferguson’s enigmatic Ilsa Faust. McQuarrie has previously likened his approach to the franchise as something like action film jazz, wherein he and Cruise would develop some set piece ideas and build a narrative around that. At the same time, they also sought to develop Hunt’s inner-life and team dynamics more than previous films. Plot, once again, was mostly a vehicle to reach those spectacular action set pieces and character-defining moments (which were often one and the same).
McQuarrie mostly repeated his formula for success with 2018’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout, which was notable for featuring a real-time high altitude skydiving sequence. But with 2023’s Dead Reckoning, he faced the limits of trying to improvise a movie as it was being shot. Production was significantly delayed by the pandemic, and the film also had to go through several reshoots. Perhaps not surprisingly, it also became increasingly more complex and plot-heavy.
Paramount Pictures
That movie couldn’t just treat The Entity’s AI like another plot MacGuffin, instead it practically became an anchor for the film’s momentum. We had to learn what the Entity was, why it could be bad and also introduce new characters who were devoted to its ambitions. The final film feels like a hodgepodge of ideas trying to string together a few notable action sequences, like that aforementioned motorcycle jump. The prolonged production also led to the departure of Ilsa Faust, who was immediately replaced by Hayley Atwell’s Grace, an expert thief who’s so thinly sketched she doesn’t even get a last name.
I had hoped that McQuarrie, Cruise and co-writer Erik Jendresen would learn from the sloppiness of the last film and refocus on the characters and action we love in The Final Reckoning, but unfortunately things get even more convoluted. We’re presented with a world where the Entity has already taken over most information systems, can easily reshape digital reality at will and is in the process of taking over nuclear weapons systems around the world. There is no hope but Ethan Hunt, who must seek out the Entity’s source code in a sunken Russian submarine and try to stop it from annihilating humanity (while also trying to survive the apocalypse in an underground data bunker). And if that all sounds tiring as you read it, it’s even harder to swallow as you sit through the film’s three-hour runtime.
Paramount Pictures
Once the film actually starts moving around the half-way point, it delivers some of the most complex set pieces we’ve seen yet. Hunt’s dive into Arctic waters feels as claustrophobic as some of the best scenes from The Abyss, and it’s still thrilling to see Cruise hang onto bi-planes during the climactic chase. I just wish it actually did something interesting with the AI at the center of the story, instead of giving us a basic-ass Terminator/Wargames scenario. We’re told that the Entity has inspired a cult-like following, and that it can completely reshape the idea of truth, but we don’t actually see how it affects people around the world.
That’s a particular shame since the Mission: Impossible series’ has always been about genuine human effort, you’d think McQuarrie and crew would actually have more to say about the impact of AI. Fans want to see practical stunt work being accomplished by a movie star who’s desperate for attention. Now with real-world AI threatening to dumb down the act of creativity and recycle existing content, turning the film’s AI into a simplistic villain just seems like a total waste.
Paramount Pictures
The Final Reckoning also wastes far too much time extolling Ethan Hunt’s virtues as humanity’s savior. No government can be trusted, no elected leaders — just one man who never follows orders. The one man who has given up love and bled for an ungrateful world. Even the people whose lives he has ostensibly ruined can’t help but love him.
The Mission: Impossible franchise has always been a vanity project for Cruise, but he also balanced out his ego by working with talented directors who pushed him and the series in new directions. Now, in his fourth film with McQuarrie, and possibly his last as the main character, Cruise can’t help but remind us how much he’s suffered. And it’s as dull as yet another world-ending AI villain.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/mission-impossible-should-never-have-gone-full-sci-fi-200043337.html?src=rss
The CEO of the company that purchased VPNSecure in 2023 and claimed to not know that the VPN service provider had previously sold lifetime subscriptions has some regrets.
Earlier this week, Ars Technica reported on VPNSecure canceling thousands of lifetime subscriptions, starting in March. In an email to customers, VPNSecure said that it couldn’t afford to maintain the subscriptions and that the current owners, InfiniteQuant Ltd, weren’t told about the subscriptions when they bought VPNSecure. The sudden deactivation of accounts resulted in customer backlash online, including, as of this writing, 24 pages of one-star reviews on Trustpilot.
“… maybe, honestly, we should have just walked away from this ‘opportunity,’” Romain Brabant, the CEO of InfiniteQuant Ltd, told Ars Technica when asked if he would have handled things differently in hindsight.
Gilmour Space, a venture-backed startup based in Australia, is about to launch a small rocket from its privately owned spaceport on a remote stretch of the country’s northeastern coastline.
It’s the first time anyone has attempted to reach orbit with a rocket designed and built in Australia. Gilmour’s three-stage rocket, named Eris, could launch at any time during a 10-hour window as soon as Friday, local time. In the United States, the launch window runs from 5:30 pm EDT Thursday until 3:30 am EDT Friday.
This comes after a 24-hour delay due to an “issue in the ground support system” for the launch, Gilmour said Wednesday.
A plaintiff’s law firms were sanctioned and ordered to pay $31,100 after submitting fake AI citations that nearly ended up in a court ruling. Michael Wilner, a retired US magistrate judge serving as special master in US District Court for the Central District of California, admitted that he initially thought the citations were real and “almost” put them into an order.
These aren’t the first lawyers caught submitting briefs with fake citations generated by AI. In some cases, opposing attorneys figure out what happened and notify the judge. In this instance, the judge noticed that some citations were unverifiable but was troubled by how close he came to including the bogus citations in an order.
“Directly put, Plaintiff’s use of AI affirmatively misled me,” Judge Wilner wrote in a May 5 order. “I read their brief, was persuaded (or at least intrigued) by the authorities that they cited, and looked up the decisions to learn more about them—only to find that they didn’t exist. That’s scary. It almost led to the scarier outcome (from my perspective) of including those bogus materials in a judicial order. Strong deterrence is needed to make sure that attorneys don’t succumb to this easy shortcut.”
We’ve known for months now that Valve is expanding its Linux-based SteamOS operating system beyond the Steam Deck to other handheld PCs, starting with some versions of the Asus ROG Ally. This week, Valve began making some changes to its Steam storefront to prepare for a future when the Deck isn’t the only hardware running SteamOS.
A new “SteamOS Compatible” label will begin rolling out “over the next few weeks” to denote “whether a game and all of its middleware is supported on SteamOS,” including “game functionality, launcher functionality, and anti-cheat support.” Games that don’t meet this requirement will be marked as “SteamOS Unsupported.” As with current games and the Steam Deck, this label doesn’t mean these games won’t run, but it does mean there may be some serious compatibility issues that keep the game from running as intended.
Valve says that “over 18,000 titles on Steam [will] be marked SteamOS compatible out of the gate,” and that game developers won’t need to do anything extra to earn the label if their titles already support the Steam Deck.
ProtonVPN subscriptions are available at a steep discount right now as part of an exclusive sale for Engadget readers. A 12-month subscription is down to $48, which is a discount of around $72 and works out to $4 per month. A 24-month plan now costs just $81. This represents a massive discount of $158 and works out to $3.39 per month.
Proton topped our list of the best VPN services, and with good reason. It’s incredibly powerful and easy to use, which is a boon for those new to the space. The end-to-end encryption is solid and everything’s based on an open-source framework. This lets the company offer an official vulnerability disclosure program.
A subscription includes an IP-masker, so websites can’t track you online, and a built-in ad blocker. We found in our tests that browsing the web and watching streaming content were both speedy while using this VPN, which isn’t always the case with this type of service.
The only caveat? The company will automatically bill you at the normal price when the discounted subscription runs out. Be sure to cancel before that if you aren’t vibing with the platform.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/protonvpn-subscriptions-are-up-to-66-percent-off-right-now-191045586.html?src=rss
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Finally, AI is being put to good use, without taking anyone’s job (I think?). The Soundcore Rave 3S uses a unique AI feature to turn any regular song you play over Bluetooth into a karaoke track by digitally removing the vocals. I praised it highly in my review, and I’ve had a lot of fun making it a centerpiece at my parties this year.
Right now, the speaker has gotten its first significant discount—you can pick one up for $299.99, $50 of the usual price.
If you’ve ever experienced that feeling of disappointment when looking for a specific karaoke song on YouTube and coming up empty-handed, this speaker is for you. It has happened to me plenty, mainly because my taste in music is fairly niche. If the songs you’re searching for are easily found on YouTube and you’d prefer a smaller, more portable speaker, I recommend getting the Ikarao Shell S1 portable speaker instead.
Otherwise, the Soundcore Rave 3S is pretty sweet. The AI vocal remover works well. You can trigger it by pressing a button on one of the two Bluetooth microphones or through the companion app. You can also choose the degree to which you want the vocals to be removed.
The companion app is intuitive and useful and includes fun Vocal Enhancer features that change the sound of the mic (with options for neutral, warm, presence, and bright). The EQ options are also very detailed and change in real time. The battery will give you up to 12 hours of juice, so you can take the party outdoors (it’s splashproof, with an IPX4 rating).
I love movies and TV shows of all kinds, but I have to admit I have a soft spot for HBO. The channel is responsible for some of my favorite TV experiences of all time: Game of Thrones, Barry, Silicon Valley, and now The Last of Us all come to mind. I’ll watch anything on any platform that looks intriguing enough, but when HBO is attached, I’m even more likely to watch.
That’s why it made absolutely no sense at all for Warner Bros. Discovery to remove the name of one of the most respected brands in show business, truncating HBO Max to just Max. HBO hasn’t gone away: The channel is still a massive part of the streaming service, offering its past catalogue as well as producing new shows as it always has. But there are also “Max Originals,” which are not HBO shows but available on the platform formerly known as HBO Max. Not confusing at all.
It’s been two years since the name change, and it seems like the decision has been a success. Oh, sorry, did I say success? I don’t have access to Warner Bros. Discovery’s internal data, but I imagine it hasn’t been a success, seeing as the company is now bringing back HBO Max from the dead.
The company won’t necessarily admit the name change was a bad idea, but it does offer a corporate explanation. JB Perrette, the company’s President and CEO of Streaming, said that “This evolution has also been influenced by changing consumer needs…No consumer today is saying they want more content, but most consumers are saying they want better content.”
Perrette also said they’ve been “iterating” on the idea for the past two years, which sounds to me like the company had immediate regrets after ditching the HBO brand. Perrette references Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav’s, who reportedly championed the idea that the company should “go back to including HBO in the brand, because nothing stands for distinction and quality more than HBO.” Well, duh.
OpenAI has launched a new web page called the safety evaluations hub to publicly share information related to things like the hallucination rates of its models. The hub will also highlight if a model produces harmful content, how well it behaves as instructed and attempted jailbreaks.
The tech company claims this new page will provide additional transparency on OpenAI, a company that, for context, has faced multiple lawsuits alleging it illegally used copyrighted material to train its AI models. Oh, yeah, and it’s worth mentioning that The New York Times claims the tech company accidentally deleted evidence in the newspaper’s plagiarism case against it.
The safety evaluations hub is meant to expand on OpenAI’s system cards. They only outline a development’s safety measures at launch, whereas the hub should provide ongoing updates.
“As the science of AI evaluation evolves, we aim to share our progress on developing more scalable ways to measure model capability and safety,” OpenAI states in its announcement. “By sharing a subset of our safety evaluation results here, we hope this will not only make it easier to understand the safety performance of OpenAI systems over time, but also support community efforts to increase transparency across the field.” OpenAI adds that its working to have more proactive communication in this area throughout the company.
Introducing the Safety Evaluations Hub—a resource to explore safety results for our models.
While system cards share safety metrics at launch, the Hub will be updated periodically as part of our efforts to communicate proactively about safety.https://t.co/c8NgmXlC2Y
Interested parties can look at each of the hub’s sections and see information on relevant models, such as GPT-4.1 through 4.5. OpenAI notes that the information provided in this hub is only a “snapshot” and that interested parties should look at its system cards. assessments and other releases for further details.
One of the big buts to the entire safety evaluation hub is that OpenAI is the entity doing these tests and choosing what information to share publicly. As a result, there isn’t any way to guarantee that the company will share all its issues or concerns with the public.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-promises-greater-transparency-on-model-hallucinations-and-harmful-content-184545691.html?src=rss
Palantir CEO Alex Karp criticized Europe’s AI adoption while praising Saudi Arabia’s engineering talent at Tuesday’s Saudi-US Investment Forum in Riyadh. “It’s like people have given up,” Karp said of Europe, while commending Saudi engineers for their “meritocracy and patriotism” and “deep tradition in engineering excellence.”
Corporations make a lot of stuff they want to sell you, and invest a lot of money, effort, and time into convincing you to not only to buy a product, but to buy a specific version of it. While there’s nothing wrong with pointing out the advantages of one product over another, sometimes marketers use specifically vague or deceptive phrases in order to convince you to choose the one they’re offering up.
The problem with these phrases is that they exist in a kind of gray area—they’re not outright lies, but they’re also not particularly transparent. When you see one of these eight terms printed on a product’s label, it’s a good reminder to engage in some critical thinking about what it’s actually telling you.
FDA-approved
Seeing the phrase “FDA Approved” on a medicine’s product label probably gives you a certain sense of confidence. After all, the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t just approve everything! Getting that FDA stamp of approval must mean it’s safe and high-quality, right?
But that’s not actually what “FDA Approved” means at all. The phrase specifically means “the drug is determined to provide benefits that outweigh its known and potential risks for the intended population.” It has absolutely nothing to do with quality, and it doesn’t even mean it’s low-risk—just that the benefits outweigh the risks. That’s useful information, but in marketing, the phrase is used as an indicator that you’re getting a superior product that you can trust to be safe, when all it really means is that it works, and the downsides are (probably) worth it.
Genuine leather
The word “genuine” is doing a lot of work here. You probably think it must be some kind of industry term, with all kinds of meaningful grading and quality testing behind it. But in the words of Lifehacker editor Beth Skwarecki, “‘genuine leather’ just means it’s…leather.” It literally just means the thing you’re holding in your hand is, in fact, made of leather. It says nothing about the quality of that leather—good or bad.
Patented
If you watch Shark Tank, you probably have a high opinion of the patent process, and assume that if a product is patented—and shouts that information everywhere in its advertising—it must be innovative and unique. You’d better buy this version, is the implication, because no one else can replicate its patented magic.
Eh, not necessarily. Sure, some patents do, in fact, protect innovative ideas. But patents can be issued for a lot of reasons—sometimes minor technical improvements, or new ways of combining ingredients or components. The U.S. issues hundreds of thousands of patents every year, and not all of them are meaningful in the sense of describing amazing breakthroughs or even unique applications. But the term conveys a certain gravitas to a product’s other claims around effectiveness, utility, and value, so marketers use it any time they can.
Maximum strength
The “it goes to 11” of marketing copy. This phrase always looks convincing— it’s usually written in all caps at the top of the label to let you know that the product is not messing around, and that it is the most product you can buy.
The problem is, what does “maximum” mean? Maximum compared to what? If it means compared to the other versions of the product, that doesn’t necessarily mean competing brands won’t be stronger. If it refers to some sort of legal or physical limitation on how powerful a drug or other product can be, then that same restriction applies to competing products as well. It’s a relative term that doesn’t mean anything unless you put in some research to understand what the reference points actually are.
All-natural
Every now and then, someone falls for the classic “dihydrogen monoxide (DHMO)” prank, agreeing that a dangerous chemical like DHMO should be banned after hearing about all the potential hazards it causes, like death if accidentally inhaled. DHMO is, of course, water (H2O)—dangerous under the right conditions, but also necessary for life. The point being, many chemicals are all-natural, technically speaking, and there’s no clear guidance from the FDA on what the term means. Most products are processed to such a degree that it’s impossible to determine what “natural” even could mean, so labeling something as “all-natural” doesn’t mean much.
Doctor-approved
When shopping for health-related products of any kind, it can be persuasive to see one is “doctor approved” in some way. You might think this means that a major medical association has come together to recommend that product, or at least conducted some sort of study and determined that this product did the job best. It probably doesn’t mean that, though. While it often means that at least one doctor tested or reviewed the product, that doctor may have been on the company payroll, and either way the phrase doesn’t mean a more formal or official approval process of any kind took place.
Clinically proven
Similarly, the phrase “clinically proven” can be deceptive because the clinical studies being referenced are often paid for by the manufacturer itself. While that doesn’t necessarily mean these studies are fake, it does call into question how objective the study and its designers were, and whether any independent bodies corroborate its findings.
Worse, sometimes the studies being cited for the “clinically proven” claim don’t actually prove that the product works. Sometimes fine print hidden somewhere on a label or website will clarify this, but not always. Even if a study was reasonably well-conducted and independently organized, you need more than one study to have confidence that an active ingredient or specific formulation of something actually works as advertised.
Recyclable
If you’re worried about the future of the planet, you might be seeking out products that lower your carbon footprint. Seeing that a product’s packaging is recyclable makes you feel better about using it, because you know that when you toss it away you’re not adding to a landfill.
Except, often, you are. Companies sometimes use materials in their packaging that are technically recyclable, but practically not recyclable. In other words, the specific plastic or other material can be recycled, but aspects of the packaging itself—shape, size, and the stuff it contains—mean that it will be separated out and tossed into a landfill regardless. And sometimes the specific material used isn’t recycled universally—for example, HDPE plastic can be recycled, but not all recycling facilities accept it.
Alt-Tab was among the first Windows keyboard shortcuts I learned when I first used a PC over two decades ago, right after Ctrl-C (copy) and Ctrl-V (paste). Alt-Tab opens the app switcher, which lets you quickly bring a different app to the foreground. You can use it to quickly swap between two open apps, or to cycle between all of your open apps. But what you might not know is that the app switcher can so a lot more than that. I’m here to walk you through the best tricks hidden in the commonly used Windows feature.
Cycle through open apps
Hold down the Alt key and keep pressing Tab to open the app switcher and cycle through all your open apps. Once you release the shortcut, the selected app will come to the foreground. You can also cycle through this list in reverse order by holding Alt-Shift and pressing the Tab key repeatedly.
Stop the app switcher from auto-hiding
The app switcher’s temporary nature is a bit annoying sometimes. The moment you release Alt-Tab, the app switcher disappears. You can get around this by pressing Alt-Ctrl-Tab. Now, you’re free to release the keyboard shortcut and keep the app switcher happily floating above all your open apps. Use arrow keys to cycle through your list of open apps, or use the mouse to directly pick the app you need. To dismiss the app switcher, simply click outside of it.
If this shortcut is too difficult to press, try using the Alt key to the right of the spacebar along with Tab. So, press Right Alt-Tab and it’ll also stop the app switcher from automatically hiding.
Use the app switcher to quit apps
Once you have the app switcher open, you can use it to quit apps, too. Press Alt-Ctrl-Tab to open the app switcher, then move the cursor to any of the thumbnails on screen. You’ll see a small X button in the top-right corner of each thumbnail. Click the X to quit that app. Alternatively, you can use the arrow keys to select any app and press the Delete key to quit the selected app.
Enjoy a full-screen view
Credit: Pranay Parab
If a small floating window is not sufficient for you, you can make the app switcher full-screen as well. Press Windows-Tab to open the Task View, which shows a list of all open apps in full-screen. You can use this to switch to any app or to quit apps. Press Esc to leave this view.
Try a third-party customization tool
While Windows’ defaults work well, you can also consider using third-party apps to customize the app switcher’s theme. Both Winaero Tweaker and AltPlusTab let you change the look and feel of the app switcher. You can use these apps to change the switcher’s opacity, fonts, appearance, and more.
A successful co-op shooter feels like a bottomless tub of popcorn, hot and smothered in golden butter, built for bite-sized consumption and impossible to resist. Smooth mechanics and a satisfying, repeatable loop should draw you in for one more bite, one more round, over and over again. FBC: Firebreak, Remedy Entertainment’s co-op shooter set in the universe of Control, almost hits these marks. It just needs a little more salt.
Remedy is a AA studio best known for crafting single-player games like Alan Wake and Control, which feature Lynchian mysteries and hellish twists, and Firebreak is the studio’s first attempt at crafting an online, cooperative, first-person shooter. Firebreak supports up to three players at a time, and it pits your team against hordes of otherworldly Hiss monsters in the bowels of The Oldest House, the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Control. The building was locked up with a bunch of Hiss inside at the end of Control, and Firebreak takes place six years later. You’re a government employee who’s volunteered to eradicate the Hiss in The Oldest House — or try to, at least — and you’re sent inside with some improvised weapons, no extra training and a hearty pat on the back.
Remedy Entertainment
We broke down the specifics of Firebreak’s gameplay loop and upgrade cycles after the developer walkthrough in March, but here are the basics:
Before the match begins, each player gets to select one of three Crisis Kits, loadouts designed with specific playstyles in mind. Crisis Kits come with a tool and an item each. The Jump Kit is based around electricity and it has the Electro-Kinectic Charge Impactor, a portable jackhammer kind of device with a conductive metal plate on the end, capable of slamming into enemies or propelling yourself into the air. It also has the BOOMbox, which plays music to attract enemies before exploding. The Fix Kit gives you a big wrench that’s able to repair machinery and stagger Hiss, and it also includes a turret that you have to smack with the wrench to assemble. The Splash Kit is for all the water signs out there — it features the Crank-Operated Fluidic Injector, an industrial water cannon that can extinguish fires and soak enemies so they’re primed for extra damage, plus a Humidifier, which sprays healing water in a wide area.
The game is broken down by Jobs, which are essentially custom-built missions in specific regions of The Oldest House. All Jobs have three zones, but otherwise each one has a unique objective, crisis, and environment. After selecting a Job, you get to customize your run by setting the Threat Level and Clearance Level — Threat Level determines combat difficulty and the number of rewards up for grabs, while Clearance Level sets the number of zones you have to clear and the type of rewards.
I spent roughly two and a half hours playing Firebreak with two strangers who quickly became the best Hiss-fighting friends I’ve ever had, and we messed around with three different Jobs, and various combinations of Threat and Clearance levels. I stuck with one loadout, the Fix Kit with the big wrench, and was able to purchase upgrades to add the turret, grenades, upgraded guns and an exploding piggy bank accessory to my loadout. The piggy bank slots into the wrench and creates a thunderous AOE tornado when you hit Hiss with it. While I don’t fully understand the science at play with the pig, I immensely enjoy slamming it into monsters.
We ran through three Jobs — Hot Fix, Ground Control and Paper Chase. Hot fix is an industrial level where you have to repair giant fans and eventually fill up barrels with fuel before sending them down a zipline. In Ground Control, you shoot these nasty, wriggling pustules that look like giant botfly larvae to retrieve radioactive leech pearls and throw them in a mining cart. Paper Chase features an office filled with sentient sticky notes, and you have to shoot them off the walls and floors before they consume you or turn into big yellow monsters. Throughout all of these tasks, waves of Hiss appear, demanding your attention and gunfire. There are ammo refill stations and healing showers positioned around the maps, though their positions change with each tweak to the Threat and Clearance levels. You’ll also have to repair some of the environmental features in order to fully take advantage of them — for instance, the shower initially spews out cold water, which can freeze players while they’re trying to heal, but you can send in someone with the Fix Kit (me!) to quickly mend the hot water. This, and fixing the ammo station, were generally the first two things my teammates and I did in each run.
And then, chaos. While each Job has its own goal, there’s a shared cadence to the missions, with moments of calm preparation and exploration violently interrupted by hordes of Hiss. Out of the pistol, shotgun and submachine gun, the SMG was my weapon of choice, and it tore through groups of enemies, spurred along by my teammates’ fire and, every now and then, a grenade. Ammo and health were constant considerations, but it was easy enough to note the locations of refill stations and showers, and or to ask my Splash Kit teammate to throw some healing water my way.
Firebreak does a great job of rewarding teams that stick together — you get an extra shield when you’re near your friends, and a bright visual cue accompanies this bonus, consistently reminding you to stay as a group. Of course, friendly fire is also a thing in this game, and errant explosions and bullets brought down everyone on my team a few times. We laughed and revived our way through it, but this highlighted my main issue with the game: It’s often difficult to discern where any attack is coming from, making it tricky to reposition or avoid damage.
Remedy Entertainment
Overall, I craved a bit more feedback. Firing the SMG was effective, but it also felt imprecise, and this vibe extended to the rest of the gameplay. Gathering ammo, collecting currency, healing, repairing things, using special abilities, taking damage and identifying objectives — all of these actions could be clarified and made more tactile. Remedy isn’t exactly known for its gunplay, but some small tweaks could make the core experience in Firebreak far more coherent.
While we played the most rounds of Paper Chase, Ground Control was my favorite level, featuring wide-open spaces for fighting Hiss and a clear objective in shooting all those gross pustules. The clarity in Ground Control was refreshing, especially when compared with the slight but constant confusion hovering over the rest of the experience.
Once we all unlocked our special abilities, Firebreak really started to flow. Even when we weren’t exactly sure where to go or what to do, my teammates and I grouped up and stood against the Hiss, healing each other, laying down crowd control and, in my case, smashing piggy banks in enemies’ faces. We laughed, we strategized, we accidentally shot each other and we screamed, “Where the hell is the safe room?” into our headsets. We had a fabulous time.
Remedy Entertainment
And this is the highest praise I can lay at Firebreak’s feet: I spent nearly three hours playing Firebreak with two strangers and it felt like the most natural thing in the world. When our session ended, I wanted to keep playing. Though there’s room to clarify some mechanics and add feedback to some functions, Firebreak lays a solid foundation for the modern Left 4 Dead of our collective dreams. I know that’s an outdated reference, but I’m also confident I’m not the only one who’s still chasing the high of the Left 4 Dead series — it was a running point of comparison among my Firebreak crew.
All of the issues I have with Firebreak can be fine-tuned before the game launches this summer, and I have faith in Remedy to do so. Firebreak is poised to be a thoughtful and focused entry in the co-op shooter genre, and it’s already an inviting extension of Remedy’s darkest and silliest sensibilities.
FBC: Firebreak is due to hit the Epic Games Store, Steam, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on June 17 for $50. It’s coming to the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog and Xbox Game Pass day-one.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/fbc-firebreak-preview-controlled-chaos-183106500.html?src=rss
Dominique Thorne is back as Riri Williams in Ironheart.
Ryan Coogler is riding high as his new film Sinnerslights up the box office, and he’s got another major TV project waiting in the wings: the Marvel limited series Ironheart. And the studio has dropped a shiny new trailer ahead of the show’s June release. The six-episode series stars Dominique Thorne as Riri Williams, aka the titular Ironheart, a teen tech genius who is a protégé of Tony Stark in the comics. It’s the final TV series in Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Phase Five.
(Some spoilers for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever below.)
The series was first announced in December 2020 and originally slated for a 2023 release. But then Marvel began rethinking its long-term strategy and decided to scale back on content to counter suggestions of market saturation, and Ironheart was delayed until now. It has been described as “a crime show with an Iron Man twist at the center,” based on footage revealed at 2024’s D23 convention.
As the underground industry of crypto investment scams has grown into one of the world’s most lucrative forms of cybercrime, the secondary market of money launderers for those scammers has grown to match it. Amid that black market, one such Chinese-language service on the messaging platform Telegram blossomed into an all-purpose underground bazaar: It has offered not only cash-out services to scammers but also money laundering for North Korean hackers, stolen data, targeted harassment-for-hire, and even what appears to be sex trafficking. And somehow, it’s all overseen by a company legally registered in the United States.
According to new research released today by crypto-tracing firm Elliptic, a company called Xinbi Guarantee has since 2022 facilitated no less than $8.4 billion in transactions via its Telegram-based marketplace prior to Telegram’s actions in recent days to remove its accounts from the platform. Money stolen from scam victims likely represents the “vast majority” of that sum, according to Elliptic’s cofounder Tom Robinson. Yet even as the market serves Chinese-speaking scammers, it also boasts on the top of its website—in Mandarin—that it’s registered in Colorado.
“Xinbi Guarantee has served as a giant, purportedly US-incorporated illicit online marketplace for online scams that primarily offers money laundering services,” says Robinson. He adds, though, that Elliptic has also found a remarkable variety of other criminal offerings on the market: child-bearing surrogacy and egg donors, harassment services that offer to threaten or throw feces at any chosen victim, and even sex workers in their teens who are likely trafficking victims.
If you’ve seen news stories claiming that more than 89 million Steam user records leaked, don’t panic. Social media posts currently circulating suggest that Steam credentials are up for sale on the dark web, but those claims appear to be untrue. Of course, even if your data hasn’t actually been compromised, it’s a good idea to have additional authentication set up on your Steam account.
What happened with Steam?
Short answer: Probably nothing. As XDA reported, X user MellowOnline1, a games journalist, called attention to a post on LinkedIn from Underdark.ai alleging that 89 million Steam user records were up for sale on a dark web forum for $5,000 via a threat actor known as Machine1337. MellowOnline1 suggested that the leak came not from Valve Corporation—Steam’s owner—itself, but from Twilio, a platform that provides two-factor authentication (2FA) for apps like Steam via methods like SMS, voice, email, WhatsApp, passkeys, push notifications, and time-based one-time passwords.
Upon further investigation, Bleeping Computer received a statement from Twilio denying involvement in any breach (and according to an update from MellowOnline1, Valve has indicated that it does not use Twilio anyway). The data allegedly included SMS messages with one-time Steam passcodes and user phone numbers, but Bleeping Computer could not verify the source, nor could it confirm the threat actor’s claims.
What Steam users need to do
While this supposed threat doesn’t actually necessitate alarm, it doesn’t hurt to ensure you have additional security set up on your Steam account. You can change your Steam password (found under Settings or Preferences) and enable Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator, Steam’s 2FA feature. You should also be on the lookout for unauthorized login attempts and use caution when engaging with any messages about your account that appear to come from Steam support, as these may actually be phishing attempts capitalizing on user panic.
“I’m Feeling Lucky” has been a core feature of Google Search since the company launched in 1998. Most of us, of course, choose the typical Search experience, scrolling through the various links until we find the URL we’re looking for. But when you’re feeling confident that your search query has a clear destination, I’m Feeling Lucky can direct you straight there.
I admit, I haven’t used the button much through all my years of googling. Truth be told, I hardly ever go to google.com—once browsers integrated Google Search with the address bar, I began searching directly from there. But whenever I do find myself on Google’s homepage, it’s nice to see I always have the option—if I am, indeed, feeling lucky.
That might not be the case for much longer, however. As reported by The Verge, some Google users are missing the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button. In its place is something else entirely: AI Mode.
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Google first introduced AI Mode back in March. Don’t confuse this for AI Overviews, the AI-generated summary that appears at the top of some Google searches. Instead, AI Mode turns Google Search into a bit of a chatbot, allowing the user to ask multi-part questions in one go. The feature is meant to combine multiple searches into a single, complex query.
For example, you could ask AI Mode something like, “when is the best time to book a flight to Hawaii, and what should I pack for the trip?” You then get breakdowns of each question in your query—”Best Time to Book Flights,” “Tips for Booking Flights,” “Packing Essentials for Hawaii,” with links to sources you can check yourself. If you’ve ever used an AI chatbot like Gemini or ChatGPT for web search, it’s remarkably similar—down to the warning that “AI responses may include mistakes.”
Credit: Lifehacker
AI Mode is not rolling out in full yet (it seems to be available to Google Labs testers first) nor is it replacing I’m Feeling Lucky for all users who see it. On my personal Google Account, for example, I still see I’m Feeling Lucky. AI Mode just happens to be situated on the right-end of the search bar. But the fact that Google is experimenting with swapping the legacy button with yet another AI feature is disappointing.
The PlayStation Plus Game Catalog for May includes some heavy hitters like Sand Land and Battlefield V. All of the following games will be available to play on May 20.
First up, there’s the gorgeous Sand Land. This is an adaptation of an Akira Toriyama manga, the guy who created the Dragon Ball franchise. He also designed many of the monsters and characters in Chrono Trigger and the Dragon Quest series. The game is, more or less, a beat-for-beat recreation of the manga, wrapped up in a fast-paced action RPG package. There’s also an emphasis on vehicular combat. The game will be playable on PS4 and PS5.
Battlefield V brought the long-standing franchise back to WWII. The FPS also features a battle royale mode that can handle up to 64 simultaneous players. It’s a fun time, particularly for those sick of Call of Duty. It’s only available for PS4.
Soul Hackers 2 is a turn-based RPG developed by Atlus, who most recently made the absolutely fantastic Metaphor: ReFantazio. If you’ve played that, along with every Persona and Shin Megami Tensei game, this could scratch a very particular dungeon-crawling itch. It’s just for PS5.
The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. trilogy is also getting a remaster that drops on May 20, so this will be a day one release for PS Plus. The trilogy features updated graphics, keyboard and mouse support and gameplay modes specifically for PS5 Pro. The games will be playable on both PS4 and PS5.
Other titles for the month include Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, Humankind, Gloomhaven and Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life. That’s a pretty stacked lineup. Again, these will all be available on May 20.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/ps-plus-game-catalog-additions-for-may-include-sand-land-and-battlefield-v-180504708.html?src=rss
Llamafile continues pushing forward as the interesting Mozilla project to allow easily distributing and running AI large language models (LLMs) from a single file and in a cross-platform and cross-vendor hardware manner. Llamafile 0.9.3 is out today with more enhancements to this Mozilla Ocho project…
