The wastelands of the Falloutuniverse are dotted with the surviving remnants of a world before and after a nuclear war. Some of these remnants act as landmarks and safe havens for survivors of the apocalypse. Aside from being environmental buildings or backdrops, these places are also central to the choices that define the players journey.

The popular streaming platform, Netflix, is dealing in more than just film and television now. They have branched out into games too, with their Netflix Games service. Anyone with a Netflix subscription can download and play Netflix Games for free, and they have a large amount of really high-quality titles.

Hello, genuine question, I've been racking my brains, but still can't figure out a solution.What I want: To simulate the Z vector (x,y,z) in a 2D rendering Game, using something like layers when drawing.Context: Game Engine using Monogame Framework to deal with Graphics.Using the 2D Monogame Library.How it works: It draws things in the order that was requested.So, first of all I ask it to draw the map grid(with layers) after the player.The problem: even though

We may earn a commission from links on this page.Welcome to Cookbook of the Week. This is a series where I highlight cookbooks that are unique, easy to use, or just special to me. While finding a particular recipe online serves a quick purpose, flipping through a truly excellent cookbook has a magic all its own.Every time I see a newly budding tree or a daffodil leaping out of a scruffy patch of grass, it brings me a fresh moment of cheer. Spring is coming to New York. That means sun and spring fashion, but mostly Im excited for the variety of veggies thatll be available. Im choosing to celebrate Springs approach with an appropriately veggie-forward Cookbook of the Week: Yassou.About the bookYassou is a Mediterranean cookbook, specifically focusing on Greek dishes, written by Shaily Lipa. This cookbook is brand new; just published in March. Lipa gives the reader a teeny history lesson on how Greek cuisine developed and other cultures that influenced it, and then quickly jumps into recipes.Woven with beautiful photography, youll get lost flipping through sections like Mezes and Starters, Stuffed Vegetables, and (my favorite section) Patties and Savory Pastries. This cookbook has classic recipes youve probably tried at restaurants, like moussaka or stuffed grape leaves, and new ones youve never heard of but are incredibly tempting, like kolokithokeftedes (fried zucchini and feta balls).I dont usually enjoy historical interludes in cookbooks (Im very recipe focused) but Lipa includes brief informational sections that focus on specific ingredients that are indispensable to Greek cooking, like The Cheeses of Greece, and The Path of the Olive. These sections give welcome insight into the culture, and whets your palate for the recipes to come.A great cookbook for veggie enthusiasts who don't mind branching outYou like vegetables. Youre interested in eating them often. However, you still like to have fun. (You know what I meanraw kale salad isnt fun. Ill eat it, but fun is not an emotion I experience when eating it.) Melitzanosalata, aka Eggplant Spread, drizzled with olive oil and served with pita bread is fun!If you want a cookbook with lots of delicious, vegetable-centric options but you dont want to feel like you live off of salad alone, Yassou is for you. Sure, its a Mediterranean diet, but there is no fear of bread, sugar, oil, or pastry. There are fresh salads for sure, but theyre not the only venue for vegetables. There are numerous styles of cooking with produce, putting them in the background, foreground, and slightly off-stage. Zucchinis are shredded and shaped into fritters; crushed tomatoes create a simmering blanket for shrimp; onion and peppers chargrill on a skewer with juicy hunks of lamb.Many of the recipes rely on plants, but you dont have to commit. Some days you just want bread and cheese and there are recipes for those moments in Yassou too. There are pasta dishes, fish dishes, bread recipes, and oh, the cheese. I have truly enjoyed a free pass this week to eat all the feta I want.The dishes I made this weekOne thing I appreciate about Yassou is that you can jump into these recipes with whatever cooking skill level you exist at. Its written simply, and the instructions are clear and easy to follow. There is no preamble about specialty cookware or how to replace ingredients you cant find. Most of the ingredients are things that are common to the Western grocery store. I didnt have to sift for very long to find recipes I was able to do because I didnt have to consider making any special trips or ordering unusual ingredients. Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann I decided to make Kassiopita (Greek flatbread) and Horiatiki Salata (Greek Salad). Yes, I essentially made Greek Olive Garden unlimited salad and breadsticks, but I dont care what you think. Its always been a great deal. Plus, these recipes made for a fabulous lunch.On the surface, Horiatiki Salata looks like any Greek salad you might have had beforekalamata olives, cucumbers, and feta among other ingredients with a simple dressing. But there are good and bad versions of this salad being made, often in New Jersey diners and pizzerias. This version is perfectly crunchy, briny, and herbaceous with as much creamy, salty feta as you please. I knew I could count on this salad recipe as soon as I saw that the first move was thinly slicing the red onion and pickling it in the oil and vinegar dressing. This should be the treatment of all freshly sliced onions in salad. Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann The Kassiopita, entitled Greek Flatbread in the cookbook, might become something I make quite often. Its easy to make, loaded with feta, and cooks up quite dramatically in the oven. The batter is made with a blend of yogurt, egg, and flour, so it has the texture of a giant popover, or Dutch Baby. Its seasoned lightly and then you mix crumbled creamy feta into the batter. The mixture cooks in a casserole dish with a quarter-cup of olive oil in it. I watched the bread bubble and fry as it puffed up in the oven, and broiled it for the last minute and a half to lightly brown the surface. I ate a piece while it was still warm (too hot actually, but I cant be stopped), and the crumbled feta made decadent melty, tart pockets of cheese dispersed in the eggy bread. Eat it with salad or eat it soloI can vouch for both. I made the bread in the instructed size dish, but if you wanted the bread to be thinner then you could easily use a larger pan and reduce the cooking time. How to buy itYassou is available as a hardcover, or as an e-book for a reasonable price. I highly suggest taking a jaunt to your nearest big box book shops or local independent bookstores to see if they have it on their new or featured cookbook displays. And if its not on their shelves, ask if they can order it to their location (sometimes for no shipping fee). Yassou: The Simple, Seasonal Mediterranean Cooking of Greece $16.99 at Amazon Shop Now Shop Now $16.99 at Amazon

Whether you want to quickly check where a particular city is or grab an address to share with a friend, opening a full-blown maps app sometimes feels like overkill. Mappa Mini is a free Mac app by developer Lucas Raggers that lets you do a quick search without taking up all of your attention.Just click the menu bar icon and search for any business or location. You'll see right where it is in a small pop-up, without having to load any application or website. If there are multiple matches, you'll see them all in a listclick any of them to see the location in context. This is perfect for when you quickly need to check where something is.You can get more details by clicking the three dots to the right of the location. This allows you to add the location to your favorites, open the location or create a route to it, or copy the address. Credit: Justin Pot You can choose to copy the full address or just a part of it, such as the full address, postal code, city, or street. You can also copy the coordinates, or just copy a link or picture of the map. All of this is useful if you're texting a friend about where to meet and want to provide some quick context.By default, opening a location will launch Apple Maps. You can change this, if you like, so that locations open in your choice of Google Maps, OpenStreetMap, Waze, or HERE WeGo. Note that the initial map will always be an Apple Mapthe setting only changes what happens when you choose to open the location or get directions to it. There's not much more in the way of settingsyou can change the size of the pop-up window, the map radius, and whether the application launches in the menu bar when your Mac boots.It's not an application that's going to replace your map app of choice, nor is it trying to be. It's great at what it does, though, and that's doing quick map searches before getting out of your way.

Nintendo just held a livestream to drop more details on the forthcoming Switch 2 console. At the very end, it revealed a brand-new 3D platformer starring Donkey Kong. This is the first game of its type since Donkey Kong 64 hit the Nintendo 64 all the way back in 1999. Its called Donkey Kong Bananza and launches exclusively for the Switch 2 on July 17, which is just over a month after the console hits store shelves.It looks cool! Much of the environment is destructible, so DK can get in there and break stuff. It also features sidescrolling segments, sort of like how modern Mario 3D platformers dip into their 2D roots every once in a while. We got to try it out in our hands-on with the Switch 2, and while it looks fabulous, it also feels like the kind of game that would have looked great on the original Switch. With Nintendo's stylized graphics for titles like this, the impact of the Switch 2's upgrades doesn't quite hit the same way it might in other games. That's not a big knock, but just something to be aware of.The whole thing has a funky and cartoonish vibe one would expect from our favorite gorilla. However, I didnt hear one lick of the famous Donkey Kong rap during the trailer but the equally iconic "ooh banana" sound effect from DK64 does make a brief cameo.The trailer does show DK climbing up the sides of mountains (getting his BOTW-era Link on) and rollicking through several locations. These include a forest and an ice region, among others. The footage also shows the meanest looking Kong Ive ever seen.NintendoWe dont know too much about this game beyond what the trailer shows, but we dont have that long to wait. Once again, Donkey Kong Bananza comes out on July 17.Update: April 3 2025, 10:10AM ET: Updated with a few impressions from our Switch 2 hands-on demo.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/donkey-kong-bananza-is-a-brand-new-3d-platformer-for-switch-2-143108835.html?src=rss

The most recent Nintendo Direct went into great detail on the new Switch 2, including when fans will be able to get their hands on the console. According to Nintendo's press release, pre-orders for the Switch 2 open up on April 9 in North America, and the console will be widely available on June 5. The starting price is a whopping $450, and in addition to Nintendos online store, youll be able to get the Switch 2 at participating retailers. We expect those to include Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop, Walmart and others. The $450 price tag is for the Switch 2 console alone, but Nintendo said it will also offer a bundle with the Switch 2 and a copy of the new Mario Kart Worldgame, a Switch 2 exclusive, for $500. There's some fine-print attached to pre-ordering directly from Nintendo. According to the pre-order page on Nintendo's site, you must be 18 years or older, sign in with your Nintendo account and register your interest in pre-ordering. Then, you'll be sent an invitation email when it's time to play your pre-order, and the invitation will be valid for 72 hours. And then there's this bit of info: "Invitation emails will be prioritized on a first-come, first-served basis to registrants who have purchased a Nintendo Switch Online membership with a minimum of 12 months of paid membership and a minimum of 50 total gameplay hours, as of April 2, 2025." That seems to mean those who have paid for Switch Online in the recent past and those who have spent a good amount of time playing Switch games as of late will get first pick at buying a Switch 2. There's no telling if these same restrictions will apply if you want to pre-order from third-party retailers. We knew from the teaser trailer for the Switch 2 that Nintendo's new hardware would be bigger and would have a new approach to the detachable Joy-Cons. The new Joy-Con 2 have a new C button, mouse controls and a built in gyroscope for tilt control. The console has a built-in mic to support a new feature called Game Chat that will let you communicate with friends in-game. The device is indeed a bit larger, with a 7.9-inch LCD screen that supports a 120Hz refresh rate, HDR and a 1080p resolution. When docked, you'll be able to play at up to 4K on your TV, and Nintendo says it improved the consoles internal speakers as well. The new dock also has a built-in fan to keep the console cool and help maintain performance during long play sessions. The Switch 2 has dual USB-C ports for charging, and the base storage amount has increased to 256GB. The Switch 2's storage can be expanded like the previous model, but it will only work with newer microSD Express cards. The Switch 2 has a number of accessories that you'll be able to purchase separately as well, including the new Switch 2 camera for $50, a new Switch 2 Pro controller for $80, an extra pair of Joy-Con 2 controllers for $90, a Joy-Con 2 charging grip for $35 and more. Pre-order the Nintendo Switch 2 starting April 9 from: Nintendo Amazon Walmart GameStop Best Buy Target This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/pre-order-the-nintendo-switch-2-for-450-starting-april-9-140931997.html?src=rss

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Zero Zero Robotics' V-Copter Falcon Mini is the world-first sub-250g bi-copter drone and potential game-changing DJI drone rival.

Earthquakes and the damage they cause are apolitical. Collectively, we either prepare for future earthquakes or the population eventually pays the price. The earthquakes that struck Myanmar on March 28, 2025, collapsing buildings and causing more than 2,700 deaths, were a sobering reminder of the risks and the need for preparation.In the U.S., this preparation hinges in large part on the expertise of scientists and engineers in federal agencies who develop earthquake hazard models and contribute to the creation of building codes designed to ensure homes, high-rises, and other structures wont collapse when the ground shakes.Local communities and states decide whether to adopt building code documents. But those documents and other essential resources are developed through programs supported by federal agencies working in partnership with practicing engineers and earthquake experts at universities.This essential federal role is illustrated by two programs that we work closely with as an earthquake engineer and a disaster management expert whose work focuses on seismic risk.Improving building codesFirst, seismologists and earthquake engineers at the U.S. Geological Survey, or USGS, produce the National Seismic Hazard Model. These maps, based on research into earthquake sources such as faults and how seismic waves move through the earths crust, are used to determine the forces that structures in each community should be designed to resist.A steering committee of earthquake experts from the private sector and universities works with USGS to ensure that the National Seismic Hazard Model implements the best available science.In this 2023 update of the national seismic risk map, red areas have the greatest chance of a damaging earthquake occurring within 100 years. [Image: USGS]Second, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) supports the process for periodically updating building codes. That includes supporting the work of the National Institute of Building Sciences Provisions Update Committee, which recommends building code revisions based on investigations of earthquake damage.More broadly, FEMA, the USGS, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the National Science Foundation work together through the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program to advance earthquake science and turn knowledge of earthquake risks into safer standards, better building design, and education. Some of those agencies have been threatened by potential job and funding cuts under the Trump administration, and others face uncertainty regarding continuation of federal support for their work.It is in large part because of the National Seismic Hazard Model and regularly updated building codes that U.S. buildings designed to meet modern code requirements are considered among the safest in the world, despite substantial seismic hazards in several states.This paradigm has been made possible by the technical expertise and lack of political agendas among the federal staff. Without that professionalism, we believe experts from outside the federal government would be less likely to donate their time.The impacts of these and other programs are well documented. We can point to the limited fatalities from U.S. earthquakes such as the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake near San Francisco, the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles, and the 2001 Nisqually earthquake near Seattle. Powerful earthquakes in countries lacking seismic preparedness, often due to lack of adoption or enforcement of building codes, have produced much greater devastation and loss of life.The U.S. has long relied on people with expertiseThese programs and the federal agencies supporting them have benefited from a high level of staff expertise because hiring and advancement processes have been divorced from politics and focused on qualifications and merit.This has not always been the case.For much of early U.S. history, federal jobs were awarded through a patronage system, where political loyalty determined employment. As described in The Federal Civil Service System and The Problem of Bureaucracy, this system led to widespread corruption and dysfunction, with officials focused more on managing quid pro quo patronage than governing effectively. That peaked in 1881 with President James Garfields assassination by Charles Guiteau, a disgruntled supporter who had been denied a government appointment.The passage of the Pendleton Act by Congress in 1883 shifted federal employment to a merit-based system. This preference for a merit-based system was reinforced in the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. It states as national policy that to provide the people of the United States with a competent, honest, and productive workforce . . . and to improve the quality of public service, Federal personnel management should be implemented consistent with merit system principles.The shift away from a patronage system produced a more stable and efficient federal workforce, which has enabled improvements in many critical areas, including seismic safety and disaster response.Merit-based civil service matters for safetyWhile the work of these federal employees often goes unnoticed, the benefits are demonstrable and widespread. That becomes most apparent when disasters strike and buildings that meet modern code requirements remain standing.A merit-based civil service is not just a democratic ideal but a proven necessity for the safety and security of the American people, one we hope will continue well into the future. This can be achieved by retaining federal scientists and engineers and supporting the essential work of federal agencies.Jonathan P. Stewart is a professor of engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles.Lucy Arendt is a professor of business administration management at St. Norbert College.This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.