Even more players than usual are grinding spawns instead of playing the objective
The post <i>Marvel Rivals</i> Promises A Crackdown On The Recent Epidemic Of ‘Lord Farming’ appeared first on Kotaku.
A new feature expected to be merged for the upcoming Linux 7.0 kernel cycle is adding an OPEN_TREE_NAMESPACE flag for the open_tree() system call. This OPEN_TREE_NAMESPACE option can provide a nice performance win with added security benefits if you are dealing a lot with containerized workloads on Linux…
Marathon, Bungie’s long-awaited extraction shooter, will arrive on March 5, the studio announced today. Alongside a definitive release date, Bungie shared a new gameplay trailer, in addition to details about the game’s forthcoming deluxe edition, which fans can pre-order today on Steam, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. All versions of the game will support crossplay, meaning you’ll be able to play with your friends, no matter where they decide to buy Marathon.
Sony, Bungie’s parent company, had previously committed to a March release for Marathon, but stopped short of sharing an exact date. News of that date leaked early Monday after Microsoft published the pre-order trailer you see above early. Sony had originally planned to release Marathon in September 2025, but delayed the game indefinitely in June of last year after a mixed reception to its alpha and an admission Bungie had partially plagiarized some visual assets. It’s safe to say Marathon could decide the future of the studio. In November, Sony said Destiny 2 had not lived up to its expectations and wrote down the value of the studio’s assets by $204 million. This came after the company said it would take more direct control of Bungie.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/bungies-marathon-arrives-on-march-5-193808588.html?src=rss
A British painter who argued that her ex-husband had signed over their $2 million north London home through WhatsApp messages has lost her High Court appeal after the judge ruled that the sender’s name appearing in a chat header does not constitute a legal signature.
Hsiao-mei Lin, 54, presented messages from her former husband Audun Mar Gudmundsson, a financier, in which he stated he would transfer his share of their Tufnell Park property to her. Lin’s lawyers argued that because Gudmundsson’s name appeared in the message header on her phone, the messages should be considered signed.
Mr Justice Cawson disagreed, finding that the header identifying a sender is analogous to an email address added by a service provider — a mechanism for identification rather than part of the message itself. The judge also found the content of the messages did not actually amount to Gudmundsson relinquishing his share.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Elon Musk is going for some substantial damages in his lawsuit accusing OpenAI of abandoning its nonprofit mission and “making a fool out of him” as an early investor.
On Friday, Musk filed a notice on remedies sought in the lawsuit, confirming that he’s seeking damages between $79 billion and $134 billion from OpenAI and its largest backer, co-defendant Microsoft.
Musk hired an expert he has never used before, C. Paul Wazzan, who reached this estimate by concluding that Musk’s early contributions to OpenAI generated 50 to 75 percent of the nonprofit’s current value. He got there by analyzing four factors: Musk’s total financial contributions before he left OpenAI in 2018, Musk’s proposed equity stake in OpenAI in 2017, Musk’s current equity stake in xAI, and Musk’s nonmonetary contributions to OpenAI (like investing time or lending his reputation).
Zwift’s physics model includes varied rolling resistance of virtual wheels across different surfaces, so racers should think strategically when choosing frames and wheels for unpaved or mixed-surface routes like Road to Ruins and Two Village Loop.
Here’s a complete rundown of all the rolling resistance numbers and resulting wattage effects for Zwift wheelsets.
(Note: we update this page as new wheelsets are released and surface rolling resistances are changed. See the changelog at the bottom for a running list of changes.)
Zwift worlds use several different road surfaces. Here’s the complete list from fastest to slowest:
Zwift has built the game so each wheelset can have its own Crr (rolling resistance) value for each road surface type. So a set of road wheels may roll quite fast on pavement, but not be optimal on dirt. Just like you’d expect outside.
When Crr increases, two things happen in game: your speed drops, and resistance increases on your smart trainer.
There are three categories of wheelsets in Zwift, in terms of Crr:
See the full list of Zwift wheelsets >
Each category above has its own Crr value for each surface in Zwift, so each category of wheel performs differently across different surfaces. All wheels within a given category have the same Crr values.
Example: On pavement, Road wheels have a Crr of .004 while Gravel wheels have a Crr of .008 and Mountain wheels have a Crr of .009. This means that, on pavement, Mountain wheels will roll slower than Gravel wheels which roll slower than Road wheels.
Here are the current Crr values for each wheelset category on each surface type in Zwift. I’ve included green and red text to indicate how these values shifted when Zwift modified bike performance in mid-2025.
| Surface | Road Crr | Gravel Crr | MTB Crr |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brick | .0055 | .008 | .009 |
| Cobbles | .0065 (+.001) | .008 | .009 |
| Dirt | .016 | .009 (-.003) | .01 |
| Grass | .025 | .016 | .014 (-.028) |
| Gravel | .012 | .006 (-.003) | .014 (+.005) |
| Ice/Snow | .0055 (-.002) | .006 (-.012) | .014 |
| Pavement | .004 | .008 | .009 |
| Sand | .004 | .008 | .009 |
| Wood | .0065 | .008 | .009 |
You can see why pavement feels tougher on a gravel bike than on a road bike. Because it is! The rolling resistance is doubled!
It’s also worth noting that the Crr value for road tires on pavement (.004) is quite low. We’re virtually rolling quality tires on fresh tarmac. Living the dream!
If you know the Crr value of a particular tire/wheel, you can extrapolate the wattage required to overcome the rolling resistance at a particular speed. This is commonly done outdoors, and in our tests, it seems to work with Zwift’s physics as well (nice work, Zwift programmers).
Doing this shows how much of our power goes toward overcoming rolling resistance. In turn, this tells us how many watts we can save just by moving to a wheelset with lower rolling resistance.
Here are those values, assuming a 75kg rider on a 7kg bike traveling at 40kmh (24.9mph).
| Surface | Road | Gravel | MTB |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brick | 49 | 72 | 80 |
| Cobbles | 58 | 72 | 80 |
| Dirt | 143 | 80 | 89 |
| Grass | 223 | 153 | 125 |
| Gravel | 107 | 54 | 125 |
| Ice/Snow | 49 | 54 | 125 |
| Pavement | 36 | 72 | 80 |
| Sand | 36 | 72 | 80 |
| Wood | 58 | 72 | 80 |
Now things are getting interesting. So if you’re in a race on Watopia tarmac traveling at 40kmh, and you’re on a road bike while the guy next to you is on a gravel bike, he has to put out 72-36=36 watts more than you just to overcome rolling resistance.
But if we move to the Jungle Circuit, suddenly that gravel rider has the advantage, able to keep up with you while doing 143-80=63 fewer watts!
Note: the wattage numbers in these examples don’t take into account additional differences that could occur based on varying rider weights, heights, drafting status, bike frame used, wheelset weight or aero capabilities, etc.
Of course, rolling resistance isn’t the only thing you’re feeling on your smart trainer, nor the only force slowing your avatar in game. In fact, it’s typically the least of the three factors that determine overall trainer resistance. Just like outdoors, we know that wind resistance and/or gravitational force are usually the biggest things slowing us down.
Microsoft appears to be preparing an ad-supported tier for Xbox Cloud Gaming that would let players stream games they’ve purchased digitally without needing a Game Pass subscription, according to a Windows Central report citing sources familiar with the plans. Users last week began noticing a new message pop up while launching cloud games that referenced “1 hour of ad supported play time per session,” though no such tier currently exists.
The ad-supported option, expected to launch sometime this year, would specifically target the hundreds of games available for digital purchase through Xbox Cloud Gaming — titles that currently require at least one tier of Game Pass to stream despite being owned outright by the player.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An unconfirmed report early this month suggested Asus was pulling back on its smartphone plans, but the company declined to comment at the time. Asus chairman Jonney Shih has now confirmed the wind-down of its smartphone business during an event in Taiwan. Instead, Asus will focus on AI products like robots and smart glasses.
Shih addressed the company’s future plans during a 2026 kick-off event in Taiwan, as reported by Inside. “Asus will no longer add new mobile phone models in the future,” said Shih (machine translated).
So don’t expect a new Zenfone or ROG Phone from Asus in 2026. That said, very few phone buyers were keeping tabs on the latest Asus phones anyway, which is probably why Asus is throwing in the towel. Shih isn’t saying Asus won’t ever release a new phone, but the company will take an “indefinite wait-and-see” approach. Again, this is a translation and could be interpreted in multiple ways.
While RMS has continued to speak at occasional events, he’s largely remained publicly invisible until now. Is this about to change?
The post It’s Official: Richard Stallman Will Speak at Georgia Tech on January 23 appeared first on FOSS Force.
Seven out of ten C-suite executives believe traditional enterprise resource planning software has seen its best days, though the category remains firmly entrenched in corporate IT and opinion is sharply divided on what comes next. A survey of 4,295 CFOs, CISOs, CIOs and CEOs worldwide found 36% expect ERP to give way to composable, API-driven best-of-breed systems, while 33% see the future in “agentic ERP” featuring autonomous AI-driven decision-making.
The research was commissioned by Rimini Street, a third-party support provider for Oracle and SAP. Despite the pessimism, 97% said their current systems met business requirements. Vendor lock-in remains a sore point: 35% cited limited flexibility and forced upgrades as frustrations. Kingfisher, operator of 2,000 European retail stores including Screwfix and B&Q, recently eschewed an SAP upgrade in favor of using third-party support to shift its existing application to the cloud. Gartner analyst Dixie John cautioned that while third-party support may work in the short or medium term, organizations will eventually need to upgrade.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Catch up on the latest Linux news: EndeavourOS Ganymede Neo, Plasma 6.6 Beta, GNOME 49.3, Wine 11, Firefox 147, Debian to remove GTK2, Zorin OS hits 2M downloads, Let’s Encrypt launches IP address certificates, and more.
Valve has substantially overhauled its guidelines for how game developers must disclose the use of generative AI on Steam, making explicit that tools like code assistants and other development aids do not fall under the disclosure requirement. The updated rules clarify that Valve’s focus is not on “efficiency gains through the use of AI-powered dev tools.”
Developers must still disclose two specific categories: AI used to generate in-game content, store page assets, or marketing materials, and AI that creates content like images, audio, or text during gameplay itself. Steam has required AI disclosures since 2024, and an analysis from July 2025 found nearly 8,000 titles released in the first half of that year had disclosed generative AI use, compared to roughly 1,000 for all of 2024. The disclosures remain voluntary, so actual usage is likely higher.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Elon Musk posted on X that Tesla will be restarting work on Dojo3, the third generation of its in-house supercomputer project. The Dojo team had been disbanded last year as the company prioritized the AI chips that run on board Tesla vehicles. Musk said the company is returning to the project “now that the AI5 chip design is in good shape.”
The purpose of the Dojo project is to process video recordings and other data from Tesla vehicles and use that to train the “neural net” behind the company’s Full Self-Driving software. Last year, however, Musk posted on X that “It doesn’t make sense for Tesla to divide its resources and scale two quite different AI chip designs. The Tesla AI5, AI6 and subsequent chips will be excellent for inference and at least pretty good for training. All effort is focused on that.”
The AI chips Musk is referring to are ones developed for running FSD onboard Tesla vehicles and are not optimized for training. The AI6 chips will be made by Samsung in the company’s Texas factory, after it struck a $16 billion agreement with Tesla.
Musk has also claimed a lot of things over the years, and many of those assertions either were misrepresentations or simply didn’t pan out. Working against this chip project: Musk said that Dojo3 will be “space-based AI compute,” as he and others believe that data centers in orbit are a superior alternative to the land-based behemoths currently being built. The idea is that space provides easier access to the sun’s energy, and the cold temperatures there might greatly reduce the power needed, among other benefits. While it’s an increasingly popular if entirely speculative idea, experts have their doubts.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/musk-claims-tesla-will-restart-work-on-its-dojo-supercomputer-173127863.html?src=rss
Currently, Microsoft’s long-running Cloud Gaming service is limited to players that have a Microsoft’s Game Pass subscription. Now, new reporting suggests Microsoft is planning to offer non-subscribers access to game streams paid for by advertising in the near future, but only in extremely limited circumstances.
The latest wave of rumors was set off late last week when The Verge’s Tom Warren shared an Xbox Cloud Gaming loading screen with a message mentioning “1 hour of ad supported playtime per session.” That leaked message comes after Windows Central reported last summer that Microsoft has been “exploring video ads for free games for quite some time,” à la the two-minute sponsorships that appear before free-tier game streams on Nvidia’s GeForce Now service.
Don’t get your hopes up for easy, free, ad-supported access to the entire Xbox Cloud Gaming library, though. Windows Central now reports that Microsoft will be using ads merely to slightly expand access to its “Stream your own game” program. That program currently offers subscribers to the Xbox Game Pass Essentials tier (or higher) the privilege of streaming versions of some of the Xbox games they’ve already purchased digitally. Windows Central’s unnamed sources suggest a “session-based ad-supported access tier” to stream those purchased games will be offered to non-subscribers as soon as “this year.”
Marathon‘s accessories look unsurprisingly neat
The post Finally, A Limited Edition DualSense Controller That Actually Looks Cool appeared first on Kotaku.
Netflix has begun asking filmmakers to adjust their storytelling approach to account for viewers who are scrolling through their phones while watching, according to Matt Damon. The traditional action movie formula involves three major set pieces distributed across the first, second, and third acts. Netflix now wants a large action sequence in the opening five minutes to hook viewers.
The streamer has also suggested that filmmakers reiterate plot points “three or four times in the dialogue” to accommodate distracted audiences, he said. “It’s going to really start to infringe on how we’re telling these stories,” Damon said.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.