You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games hereRecently Arrowhead released the patch notes for Helldivers 2 update 01.002.201. This delivered many changes, but it also occurred in a couple of bugs. One of these bugs includes a secret massive buff to one of the coolest support weapons in the game, meanwhile, the other bug has Helldivers 2 fans upset as it has ruined an infamous weapon yet again.Helldivers 2 bug nerfs infamous weaponIn the Helldivers 2 update 01.002.201 patch notes, Arrowhead listed the following fix:Fixed an issue where shrapnel from surface-hits was forced in a roughly south-west direction. Shrapnel should now properly fly out in a 180-ish arc in the direction of the surface hitFollowing this change, fans have lamented a pretty hard nerf to the Eruptor. As pointed out by OP No_Jaguar_2570, the shrapnel now flies back in a 180 degree arc. Away from the thing you just shot, which means its much more likely to hit you or your teammates, and its much less likely to hit the bad guys.In addition, the OP reports that now it cant even oneshot Hive Guards with a headshot, and It no longer reliably pops spewers, either.There are several posts unhappy with the update from Arrowhead. Rather than a nerf, it appears to be a pretty significant bug as it goes against what Arrowhead stated they fixed in the patch notes.Still, although it is a bug, a lot of fans are wishing Arrowhead would have just left the weapon alone. The Eruptor is a weapon that has received numerous balance changes in the past, and its one of the most infamous weapons in HD2 for receiving terrible changes.Hopefully this bug gets fixed in a new update soon. Hotfixes typically come out on either Tuesday or Thursday, but, as of writing, Arrowhead has not responded to the bug on Discord.For more Helldivers 2, check out our guide to thebest warbonds ranked, along with thebest stratagemsandbest throwables. We have also a guide to thebest weapons, and, if youre coming back to HD2 for the first time in a long while, we have a bunch oftips and tricksto help you get reaccustomed to the battlefield.Helldivers 2Platform(s):PC, PlayStation 5Genre(s):Action, Shooter, Third Person8VideoGamerSubscribe to our newsletters!By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime.Share

Atlantis The Lost Empire Fan Trailer By Bart on March 26, 2025 Video Jonathan Munoz shares his stunning fan-art concept trailer. Everything about it is very high qualitym including all CG animation which done with Blender.This project has been cooking fot quite some time nowMy name is Jonathan, Im a Director/VFX artist based in Los Angeles. Back in October 2023 I set out to assemble a production team to shoot a short concept trailer for the famous animated film from 2001 Atlantis The Lost Empire.I wanted this project to be bold, beautiful and most importantly, full of blender FX. Ive been using the program since I was in high school and have leaned on it for many professional animation gigs here in town and abroad. This gave me the confidence to nearly single handedly take on a project of this scale.Jonathan posted the full breakdown on Blender Artists.

How researchers tried to not get any attentionWhen Donald Trump won Novembers election, a small team working on a key new US government tool charting impacts of the climate crisis scrambled into action. They hastily renamed the resource to remove the word climate and quietly released it without fanfare in December, before Trumps return to the White House.However, the unusual precautions taken by staff at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) werent enough to save the tool, which they had rebadged as the Future Risk Index.The new Trump administration, which has eliminated mentions of the climate crisis and its consequences across multiple government websites, deleted the index last month, dashing several years of work and with it hopes it would help cities, states and businesses across the US prepare for worsening storms, wildfires and floods.We changed the name of it, removed mentions of emissions scenarios, tried to not get it any attention, said a source familiar with the Fema project, who asked not to be named. But it was taken down because there is now a fear of anything climate-related. There is such a culture of fear and uncertainty in Fema, people are worried about getting fired or defunded.How we recreated the toolThe Guardian is now helping resurrect and display the short-lived tool, which was keenly awaited within Fema as the first free, localized resource showing how much climate change impacts will cost American communities.Drawing data from across federal government agencies, the index has county-by-county information on projected annual losses this century from threats including extreme heat, coastal flooding , wildfires, hurricanes and drought, all of which are worsened by human-caused global heating. Each county was also given an overall risk rating, which ranked how vulnerable its particular population is to climate shocks.Such information is crucial for planning by local governments, insurers, utilities and others that look to Fema to help contend with a growing list of disasters now rending American communities, according to Victoria Salinas, who was deputy administrator of resilience at Fema during Joe Bidens administration.It doesnt matter if you call it climate change or not, the consequences are getting worse and so we were trying to play catch-up, said Salinas.If youre making a decision about rebuilding a school, would you put it in the same place if it will flood again in 15 years? We have forced people to rebuild in the same places until now because we didnt have this sort of data. Taking this information down really erodes the nations ability to keep communities safe and curtails effective disaster response.Aside from the Future Risk Index, Trumps Fema has also axed its main climate webpage, which called the climate crisis a priority for emergency managers, and expunged a page on future conditions that acknowledges the consequences of global heating. The agency does retain the overall National Risk Index, which shows current risk hazards across the US, but has stripped away anything that might be related to the climate crisis or diversity, equity and inclusion.Weve seen whole pages taken down that relate to hazard reduction for wildfires, things that shouldnt be politicized, just because they mention climate change, said the current Fema worker. Its all very intense and chaotic.Four maps of the USThe Future Risk Index was initially restored to public view by Fulton Ring, a software and data company. The companys founders, Rajan Desai and Jeremy Herzog, said they were aghast at the Trump administrations removal of online climate data and didnt want taxpayer-funded work to go to waste.We knew this was in the crosshairs because other tools like it have been shut down, said Herzog. We felt this would be a high-integrity action to take, more impactful than just protesting. People should be asking why these datasets are being taken down for political motivations.US faces growing impacts of the climate crisisThe sidelining of climate concerns within Fema comes as the agency is increasingly strained by a growing number of catastrophes that are being fueled by rising global temperatures. Last year was the hottest ever recorded in the US and the world. America was hit by 27 disasters costing $1bn or more in damages, including two enormous hurricanes that ravaged large areas of the countrys south-east.Then, shortly before Trump took office in January, entire neighborhoods of Los Angeles were razed by wildfires that scientists said were worsened by the climate crisis. The president, however, has continued to call the climate crisis a giant hoax and has even threatened to dismantle Fema and hand over its functions to the states, which experts say could not foot the ballooning costs of disaster response and recovery.The Future Risk Index shows that such climate-driven impacts will only multiply if planet-heating emissions are not significantly cut. By the 2050s, counties in New Jersey, New York and Texas will be among those at the highest risk from coastal flooding, while the counties that contain Las Vegas, Nevada, Dallas, Texas and St Louis, Missouri, will be most vulnerable to extreme heat.Los Angeles, a site of Januarys devastating wildfires, is among four places in California most at risk from fires by mid-century, the others being San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino. Meanwhile counties in Florida, including Miami-Dade and Palm Beach, home of Trumps Mar-a-Lago estate, dominate the list of the most at-risk places from hurricanes by the mid-part of the century, if emissions are not cut.The projected losses affecting counties from climate-driven events could reach as much as $191m or more each year by mid-century, depending on a variety of conditions such as the path of hurricanes and wildfires and the trend of planet-heating emissions. The biggest losses are mostly anticipated in counties with high hurricane risk in states including Texas, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina and Louisiana.One bar chart, one line chartThe resurrected Future Risk Index provides a snapshot in time of these projected impacts, which will invariably alter as Americas population moves, often into harms way, and demographics evolve. Fema has ended work on updating the index to account for such changes.But the climate crisis is already being felt by its warping of the USs insurance market, making it difficult or impossible for many homeowners to get insured and therefore a mortgage, and the increasing drumbeat of disasters that costs the economy about $150bn a year. Rising heat is also imperiling endangered species, prized ecosystems and US food security.We need to better understand these risks so that we can plan to save lives and also save dollars, said Michael Coen, a former chief of staff to the Fema administrator. Its reckless to take down information that can save lives without taking the time to understand the consequences. It makes me very concerned about the next four years.Fema was approached for comment, but did not respond.Methodology The underlying data behind Femas Future Risk Index, last updated 2 December 2024, was preserved by the data consultancy Fulton Ring. The index uses data from government and private organizations to project the changes in extreme weather events frequency and intensity across US counties. It calculates the relative risk and economic losses from these events under four climate scenarios.The losses are categorized in two ways, as projected annual losses and as projected risk ratings. In both cases, each county is sorted into a risk tier relative to other counties (from very low to very high). Projected annual losses factor in each weather events frequency and intensity and the number of human lives and physical assets at risk. To help compare areas future risk with their current risk from Femas National Risk Index, each counties average expected annual losses are placed in a static dollar range shared by the two indices. The other measure of losses, projected risk rating, includes the same estimate of economic losses due to extreme weather events impact on physical assets and loss of human lives, but it then factors in social vulnerability and community resilience. These social factors increase or decrease the estimated economic losses. The risk rating is not presented in dollar amounts because future social conditions are unpredictable and dollar estimates could be misleading.The climate scenarios include two time ranges, mid-century (2036 to 2065) and late-century (2070 to 2099), and two emission scenarios (lower and higher). The lower emission scenario (known as RCP 4.5) represents the most realistic, in which emissions peak around 2040 but the Paris agreement climate policies are not met. The higher emissions scenario (known as RCP 8.5) is the worst-case, in which emissions increase throughout the century.The risk ratings for counties with no recorded incident of the weather event are categorized as not applicable. Those with no projected increase in risk, sometimes due to data issues, are categorized as no rating.The original index provided four different inputs to calculate risk for extreme heat events. For simplicity we chose to present one: temperatures in the 95th percentile and above using the Localized Constructed Analogs version 2 (LOCA2) data source.See the Future Risk Indexs full technical documentation here.

PoliticsDOGE says it needs to know the government's most sensitive data, but can't say why White House adviser Elon Musk at a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Monday. Musk, who is also the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, is leading the Department of Government Efficiency effort that is trying to get access to data from across the government to find waste, fraud and abuse. Win McNamee/Getty Images hide captiontoggle caption Win McNamee/Getty Images Fewer than 50 people have access to Social Security Administration databases containing hundreds of millions of people's private financial and personal information. But only one also has access to the government's human resources and student loan files. Akash Bobba is one of many Department of Government Efficiency staffers who have embedded in federal agencies the last few months with virtually unfettered access to the sensitive, compartmentalized sources of data collected by the government. The team, which is steered by billionaire Elon Musk, says it's scouring government records for signs of waste, fraud and abuse. Bobba is also one of many DOGE employees who, according to several federal judges, were inappropriately given that access in violation of privacy laws and without proper training to handle the personally identifiable information the agencies collect. In one order last week blocking DOGE's access to Social Security data, U.S. District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander of Maryland said the government "never identified or articulated even a single reason for which the DOGE Team needs unlimited access to SSA's entire record systems, thereby exposing personal, confidential, sensitive, and private information that millions of Americans entrusted to their government." Instead of a more narrow approach to data access and work to "modernize the system and uncover fraud," Hollander wrote that DOGE's unprecedented access to protected data "is tantamount to hitting a fly with a sledgehammer." An NPR review of thousands of pages of records across more than a dozen lawsuits in federal court finds an alarming pattern across agencies, where DOGE has given conflicting information about what data it has accessed, who has that access, and most importantly why. "No need to know" When President Trump signed an order creating the DOGE initiative, it directed agencies to create dedicated teams that would have "full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems" that would also "adhere to rigorous data protection standards." Numerous court filings and affidavits paint a picture of agencies rushing to give DOGE access without accompanying rigor of protecting data or documenting the scope of its work. On Monday, a federal judge in Maryland temporarily halted DOGE from accessing data of millions of union members in a lawsuit against the Office of Personnel Management, the Treasury Department and Education Department after finding the agencies shared private information with DOGE affiliates "who had no need to know the vast amount of sensitive personal information to which they were granted access." "No matter how important or urgent the President's DOGE agenda may be, federal agencies must execute it in accordance with the law," Judge Deborah L. Boardman wrote. "That likely did not happen in this case." In the Social Security Administration lawsuit, Hollander found several DOGE staffers "were granted access to SSA systems before their background checks were completed or their inter-agency detail agreements were finalized." One of those is Bobba, who was given access to the master data warehouse at SSA that includes the Master Beneficiary Record, Supplemental Security Record and Numident files containing "extensive information about anyone with a social security number," according to filings in the case. According to a memorandum of understanding detailing Bobba's work with SSA, the Office of Personnel Management and Education Department that was improperly redacted by OPM, Bobba agreed to do any work on Social Security data from the agency headquarters. But an affidavit from former SSA chief of staff Tiffany Flick said that Bobba was working off-site from OPM where other people "may have also had access to this protected information," Flick wrote. Not even lawyers for the government can account for when and how DOGE staffers received access to sensitive databases. In a Labor Department lawsuit, Judge John D. Bates notes that "defendants themselves acknowledge inconsistencies across their evidence" regarding DOGE. Marko Elez, a DOGE employee who resigned from his post at the Treasury Department in early February after racist social media posts resurfaced, "sent an email with a spreadsheet containing PII to two United States General Services Administration officials," according to an audit of his email account submitted in one court filing. Government lawyers said Elez was "erroneously" and "mistakenly" given the ability to change data on Treasury's Secure Payment System, which a judge said demonstrates DOGE access was "rushed and undertaken by political pressure." In a ruling blocking DOGE access to Treasury systems, Judge Jeannette Vargas warned that "a real possibility exists that sensitive information has already been shared outside of the Treasury Department, in potential violation of federal law." Congress warned against this a half-century ago When Congress passed the Privacy Act of 1974, lawmakers expressed concerns about personal information amassed in digital databases by the "omnivorous fact collectors" of federal agencies. During the debate about the bill, Arizona Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater was worried about the possibility "that every detail of our personal lives can be assembled instantly for use by a single bureaucrat or institution." "I hope that we never see the day when a bureaucrat in Washington or Chicago or Los Angeles can use his organization's computer facilities to assemble a complete dossier or all known information about an individual," Republican Sen. Charles Percy said. Fifty years later, the Department of Government Efficiency effort headed by Musk appears to be doing just that, bypassing the Privacy Act, agency security protocols and training for handling the most sensitive data maintained by federal agencies. The White House did not respond to questions about DOGE following privacy laws, or whether Americans should be concerned about the level of DOGE's access. The federal government maintains a large amount of sensitive data, from health records of veterans and Medicare recipients to troves of information about companies being investigated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the National Labor Relations Board. The rapid insertion of DOGE employees into the system is raising alarm bells for privacy and security advocates. "The government has also repeatedly failed to articulate a clear purpose for the unprecedented access it seeks to deeply sensitive information, and why the data it wants access to is necessary for that purpose," said Kristin Woelfel, a lawyer with the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology. "If the government cannot answer those questions, then DOGE has no business accessing that data." "Part of what is unnerving and is scary both to companies whose data is involved and also Americans whose most sensitive financial information is at risk, is that we don't know what they're doing," former CFPB chief technologist Erie Meyer previously told NPR. Anne Weismann, a George Washington University Law School professor who focuses on government accountability and transparency, said DOGE and its employees have control over a "staggering" amount of data about Americans. "It's so ironic because Trump supporters are so worried about 'Big Brother' and government, and they are allowing this entity to amass that data," Weismann said. "I mean, I don't think there's another entity in the federal government that collectively has access to that kind of data." Weismann is also outside counsel for the nonprofit Project On Government Oversight, which is suing DOGE over access to records about how it operates. Last week, Trump signed an executive action that appears to continue to push agencies toward "eliminating information silos" and sharing more sensitive data across federal agencies, including ensuring that the government has "unfettered access to all unemployment data and related payment records." It encourages federal agency leaders to find ways to rescind existing regulations and guidance about information sharing within and between agencies with no mention of privacy or data security. Have information you want to share about DOGE access to government databases and IT systems? Reach out to these authors through encrypted communication on Signal. Stephen Fowler is at stphnfwlr.25, Jenna McLaughlin is at JennaMcLaughlin.54

SpacewimmerNo Man's Sky's latest update, Relics, lets you become the space version of Ross from Friends by collecting big dead alien fossils(Pushes up the visor of space helmet to reveal look of utter depression) "Hi..."Image credit: Hello Games News by Mark Warren Senior Staff Writer Published on March 26, 2025 Good news, if you've ever wanted to fire up No Man's Sky and roleplay as a guy who likes dinosaurs so much he's made it a career and also somehow managed to shag Jennifer Aniston, today's your lucky day. Developer Hello Games has just deployed the Relics update, and its big thing is letting you collect big alien fossils.This follows the second bit of massive Worlds update arriving in the game back in Jaunary, brining with it "billions of new stars and planets" including huge gas giants and trippy flying squid mums that'd slap you up for fishing just too damn hard.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. As outlined in the blog post about the Relics update and the video below, its big thing is introducing space palaeontology. You know, that thing Ross Geller from Friends does for a living, when he's not being a depressed lump, freaking out about a sandwich, or dressing as a holiday armadillo.Now you too can David Schwim your way through the galaxy on a journey to "unearth hundreds of unique bones" and assemble them in your museum to try and work out how these old, dead things used to look. Can you deliberately stick bum bones where skulls should be and convince NMS' array of fun living aliens that they're all descended from a race of ugly technologically-advanced folks with very bad breath called the Fartongueians? I don't know, but it seems worth a go.Watch on YouTubeOoh, actually on second thought, maybe not. The update also adds Reanimated Guardians, which are "hulking stone lifeforms [which] slumber by planetary fossil beds, defending these ancient burial grounds from Travellers who would seek to disturb them". They also look more like your cool stone robot things than creatures with bums for faces, so there goes my theory. There are also Living Stone Sentries and Colossal Stone Effigies, with the latter being seemingly dormant "monumental stone figures, vestiges of long-dead alien civilisations" that watch over relic worlds.You might also run into some still living fossils, with Titanic Boneworms and "skeletal fauna" roaming around planets where bones can be found and in some purple star systems. Meanwhile, you can "visit Fossil Collectors aboard Space Stations to sell your created fossil exhibits - or trade some of your bones for any of their broad selection of fossils" and cook stuff with bones.You'll also want to sign up for the Galactic Palaeology Society and head off on the new expedition Relics adds, which rewards you with a jetpack made of sentient rock, the ability to override your character's appearance to look like a sentient rock, and a skeletal animal as a companion.Have you longed to be space Ross for ages? Let us know below!

Play ball before it's gone.At the end of last month, Nintendo announced it would be removing a Super Nintendo game from its Switch Online library.Read the full article on nintendolife.com

No, not THAT Direct, THIS Direct!After some vague rumblings earlier in the week, Nintendo has only gone and announced another Direct presentation for this Thursday, 27th March 2025.While we await the big Switch 2 blowout next week, this one will focus on games for the original Switch, clocking in at roughly 30 minutes in length. Nintendo, as expected, hasn't given any indication as to what we can expect from the presentation beyond saying that Switch 2 won't feature. Given that it's neither a Partner Showcase nor an Indie World, though, it's safe to assume that some first-party games will be there.Read the full article on nintendolife.com

OpenAI is embracing rival Anthropics standard for connecting AI assistants to the systems where data resides.In a post on X on Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that OpenAI will add support for Anthropics Model Context Protocol, or MCP, across its products, including the desktop app for ChatGPT. MCP is an open-source standard that helps AI models produce better, more relevant responses to certain queries. People love MCP and we are excited to add support across our products, Altman said. [Its] available today in the Agents SDK and support for [the] ChatGPT desktop app [and] Responses API [is] coming soon!MCP lets models draw data from sources like business tools and software to complete tasks, as well as from content repositories and app development environments. The protocol enables developers to build two-way connections between data sources and AI-powered applications, such as chatbots.Developers can expose data through MCP servers and build MCP clients for instance, apps and workflows that connect to those servers on command. In the months since Anthropic open-sourced MCP, companies including Block, Apollo, Replit, Codeium, and Sourcegraph have added MCP support for their platforms.Excited to see the MCP love spread to OpenAI welcome! Anthropic chief product officer Mike Krieger said in an X post. MCP has [become a] thriving open standard with thousands of integrations and growing. LLMs are most useful when connecting to the data you already have and software you already use.OpenAI says it intends to share more about its MCP plans in the coming months.

Elon Musks rocket company SpaceX has allowed Chinese investors to buy stakes as long as the funds are routed through the Cayman Islands or other offshore hubs, according to reporting from ProPublica.SpaceX is a defense contractor for the Pentagon, one that handles sensitive work like building a classified spy satellite network. Investment from China raises national security concerns, as it could grant a foreign adversary access to sensitive military technology, intelligence, or supply chains.The insight into SpaceXs investment approach surfaces new questions around Musks own ties with China, particularly amid reports that the Pentagon briefed Musk on a potential war with China. The billionaire executive who is leading the charge to gut federal spending has regularly met with Communist Party officials in China to discuss his business interests. Teslas Shanghai gigafactory builds about half of Teslas cars, and the country makes up a significant (if shrinking) chunk of its sales.The details of how SpaceX allows Chinese investors to buy into the company came to light through the testimony of its CFO, Bret Johnsen, and major investor Iqbaljit Kahlon during a recent corporate dispute in Delaware.The dispute centered around an aborted 2021 deal with a Chinese firm that had planned to buy $50 million of the companys stock. When the news became public, SpaceX executives pulled out to avoid potential problems with national security regulators.Kahlon testified in December that SpaceX finds it acceptable for Chinese investors to buy into the company through offshore vehicles, which are often used to keep investors anonymous.Experts who spoke to ProPublica said this practice is troubling because its a potential sign that the company is taking active steps to conceal foreign ownership interests. Its unclear exactly why SpaceX does this; the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.While passive, non-controlling stakes from foreign investors are welcome, it is the Trump administrations position that adversaries like China use concealed investment strategies to obtain technologies, IP, and leverage in strategic industries. As a result, typically such investments would be vetted by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).Theres no public record of SpaceX undergoing a formal CFIUS review. TechCrunch has reached out to CFIUS and SpaceX to learn more.ProPublicas reporting follows an investigation from The Financial Times that found that Chinese investors are using special-purpose vehicles to quietly funnel millions into Musk-controlled companies, including SpaceX, xAI, and Neuralink.

Breakdown & ShowreelsWicked: Visualising Wicked by FramestoreBy Vincent Frei - 26/03/2025 From concept to spectacle! Explore how previs, techvis, and postvis shaped the epic stunts and creatures of Wicked with Visualisation Supervisor Chris McDonald and CCO Lucy Killick in this in-depth Framestore webinar!WANT TO KNOW MORE?Framestore: Dedicated page about Wicked on Framestore website.Jonathan Fawkner: Heres my interview of VFX Supervisor Jonathan Fawkner at Framestore. Vincent Frei The Art of VFX 2025