Spilled! creator Lente in the boat where she lives and makes games.Push to Talk is a weekly newsletter about the business of making and marketing video games, written by games industry veteran and marketing director Ryan Rigney. Subscribe here for eclectic and spicy interviews and essays in your inbox every Friday.Of the hundreds of indie games released on Steam each week, only a fortunate few become breakout hits.Last weeks biggest winner was the viral drug-dealing simulator Schedule I. But it wasnt the only game that managed to crack 1,000 overwhelmingly positive reviews in its first week. The other surprise was Spilled!, a bite-sized game about cleaning up waterways.Spilled! puts you into a cute little solar-powered boat which you use to slurp up oil spills and gently, slowly, push floating cans and bottles into recycling bins, earning coins which unlock boat upgrades to speed up your task. Its a meditative experience that you can finish in about an hour.And you probably will finish it, because theres something viscerally compelling about watching the games muddy brown waters gradually brighten to a clear blue as you putter around. Once each area is cleared, the next litter-strewn and oil-slicked environment beckons. So it goes for eight or nine turns of Spilled!s game loop. And since it only costs $5.99, a solid 95% of Steam reviewers have given it a thumbs-up.But maybe more compelling than the games price is its backstory. Spilled! was made primarily by a 25-year-old Dutch game developer called Lente, who lives on a boat which she purchased and renovated.The sun shines on Spilled!A few years ago, Lente made a YouTube channel and began logging the development of the game that ultimately became Spilled! At first, she was attempting to build the game entirely without a game engine, and though that didnt pan out, her other efforts seemed charmed with preternaturally good fortune.After making a Twitter account to try and make more game developer friends, the very first tweet Lente ever posted went semi-viral, earning her a following and a community. That kinda jump started it I think, Lente says. As buzz began building around her game, she says, I started getting into events and showcases, and those really grew the wishlist count for Spilled!After an early demo for the game did particularly well on Steam, Lente decided to make a Kickstarter campaign, which was successfully funded in the first 12 hours.Lentes streak of good fortune continued when a member of her Discord community reached out with an offer to rework Spilleds 3D pixel art style. The artist, Starbi, had been following Lentes efforts since her early YouTube days.He showed me some of his previous art, Lente says, and made a mockup for Spilled!. I quickly got very excited as he is truly, very talented with 3D pixel art. Starbi joined the project officially, and the duo were able to show off the games visual update when Spilled! earned a promo slot in last Junes Wholesome Direct.More wins followed. By August of last year, the game had over 50,000 wishlists on Steam. A few weeks before the launch, a very simple tweet showing Lente on her boat and a short clip of the game in action went viral on X, earning 26,000 likes. And so it was probably no surprise that, when Spilled! finally launched last Wednesday, it immediately rocketed to the top of Steams coveted New & Trending chart.Fate smiles this brightly on very few indie games. Of the 18,239 games that released on Steam last year, only 445 earned over 1,000 reviewsa common milestone for indie success on Steam. Why does the universe deal so few games a winning hand?Fates reasons are rarely clearsomething Lente knows well. Shes had her fair share of inexplicably bad luck too.A nautical childhoodLentes current boat isnt the first shes lived on. My parents bought a ship 5 years before I was born, she says. For her entire early childhood, that boat was home.I had the best time growing up there, Lente says. It was in the middle of nature, next to a small town. I was playing outside all the time. And when my parents had to run the laundry or something and turned on the generator, me and my brother sometimes played CD-ROM and flash games on the old laptop (it was chunky).When her parents would tie-off on land, Lente and her brother built treehouses and played in the water. The world was our garden, she says.Lentes family lived in a small municipality outside of Amsterdam, where the rules for boat-living werent always totally clear. Usually you pay a yearly fee to put your boat somewhere, she explains. There are spots where youre allowed to officially live, but also plenty of harbors where its not officially allowedbut they dont really care. And then another option would be to roam around a lot. You can stay in most spots in nature for three days in a row. Either by anchor, or by some specially made poles created for recreational boaters.Lente recalls one early story about another seafaring neighbor who ran afoul of the local authorities. Next to the spot where her family usually anchored, there was a big wooden ship, she says. It was from a guy that used to do weddings and stuff on it. But unfortunately taxes caught up to him and he was not able to care for the ship anymore. Eventually the ship sank and slowly the masts would fall over too. It looked pretty cool. Me and my brother always called it the pirate ship.It was a charmed childhood, but around the time Lente turned 9 or 10, her own family began to run into trouble themselves. The municipality started acting a little strange, she says. They said wed have to move the ship because we didnt have a license to live there. This was basically correct, because her parents had simply purchased the ship itself and began living in the location where the boat had long been anchored.Eventually, Lente says, the municipality pushed her family out. Her parents were forced to sell the ship, and took out a mortgage for a small apartment in town so Lente and her brother could continue attending the same school theyd grown up in.That was important to them, Lente says. Talking about this gets me a little teary eyed.Her parents engaged in a long legal struggle with the municipality, and after five years they won: Turns out the ship had been there so long, that they never should have kicked us out, she says. We got a replacement spot somewhere else, and my parents got a mortgage for a houseboat. But to this day, the new spot is only a temporary license, and we for instance cant sell the place if we wanted to.Why do these things happen? One day, some faceless small-town bureaucrat decides that the family thats been living in a local river for 15 years has got to go.From the perspective of a 9-year-old child, it must have felt incomprehensible. You have to leave your home and go live on land like all the other kids. Why?A childhood reclaimedSpoilers for the ending of Spilled! follow.Throughout Spilled! youll occasionally see an unnamed antagonist trawling the watersa sloppy oil tanker that leaves behind a mess wherever it goes.Whos steering this boat, and why are they doing this? Dont they know that people live here? Animals and humans alike are the victims of the villainous boats antics. And you have to clean up behind it.In the games final chapter, youre forced to face off against a supersized oil tanker. Using your boats water cannon, you can flood its decks and sink it to the bottom of the bay.You never learn more about your silent antagonists reasons. The inner workings of the machine are inscrutable. As the last vestige of its damage is undone and it disappears beneath the waves, youre left to wonder why it was so determined to cause all that trouble.In the end, the machines motivations dont really matter. All you know is that, despite the damage it dealt, you have the tools available to do something about it. You can reclaim the water. And with effort, you can turn your fortunes around.

UK-based Jaguar Land Rover says its pausing shipments to the US after President Donald Trump imposed a 25 percent tariff on passenger vehicles and other auto imports. The pause will be in effect this month, the Associated Press reports. While the full impact of the tariffs remains to be seen, analysts have said the move could ultimately drive up the cost of new and even used cars.The USA is an important market for JLRs luxury brands, Jaguar Land Rover said in a statement to AP. As we work to address the new trading terms with our business partners, we are taking some short-term actions including a shipment pause in April, as we develop our mid- to longer-term plans.Trumps tariffs go well beyond the auto industry, and were only seeing the beginning of how the US trading partners will respond. The president announced a 10 percent baseline tariff on all countries this week, and some will face even higher reciprocal tariffs. Among the immediate effects, Nintendo has delayed pre-orders of the new Switch 2 in the US.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/jaguar-land-rover-pauses-us-shipments-while-it-figures-out-a-plan-for-trumps-tariffs-172512506.html?src=rss

It looks as though the range of affordable Walmart streaming devices is about to get a new addition.

Of all the modern parenting paradoxes, navigating screen time usage might be one of the most complexand divisive. Critics of screen time claim it can negatively impact social skills, behavior, and sleep. Proponents say it can help kids learn about living in a digital world, improve cultural awareness, and serve as a means of communication. Parents say sometimes they just need a break.The truth, of course, lies somewhere in the messy middle of it all; like so many aspects of parenting, its all about finding the balance thats right for you and your child(ren).Screen time is just one of many topics explored in Poems of Parenting, a new collection of poetry out April 8 from author and artist Loryn Brantz, a consulting creative director for the beloved kids educational program Ms. Rachel who has won two Emmy Awards for her work on Sesame Street. The mom of two children (one of whom has a disability) offers short, snappy, honest, and often irreverent reflections on everything from trimming tiny fingernails to watching war and famine play out on TV.Its exactly the type of content moms need in todays world. So what about screen time? Here, Brantz shares some insight behind her poem on itplus, an important and powerful reminder that applies to many aspects of parenthood.This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Loryn Brantz (@lorynbrantz)Youve worked on two beloved kids shows and youve struggled with navigating screen time for your own kids. What insights can you offer parents trying to find the right balance?It comes down to what works best for your family. I would never say, This or that is the right thing to do, because it never accounts for kids with disabilities who may rely more on screen time than others for various reasons.That said, I believe there is such a thing as quality screen time, and I would encourage people to be cognizant of what they put on. Also, when possible, co-watching together, asking questions, or interacting while watching the show is ideal.In our household, there was a lot of pressure to pack in as much early intervention therapy as we could during the first years of my daughters life because of all her developmental delays, so we were very strict with screen time. She was only allowed an hour or so per day in tandem with physical therapy, or as much as needed to distract from medical treatments. It was as stressful as it sounds. Now shes older (and doing amazingly), and her neurotypical little-potato brother watches with her, and were not worried about it at all.Sometimes, after a long day of work and school, spending time on the couch cuddling and watching a movie can be the best thing for everyone. I often think, Wow, I cant believe I popped these sweet little people out of my body, and now theyre watching TV with me! Life is pretty magical, isnt it?Every kid is different, and every kids needs are different.How has your work in kids educational programming influenced your own parenting style and strategies?When I was working on Sesame Street at the Jim Henson Co., it was well before I had my own children and I was mostly tapping into my own inner child as far as things I enjoy including The Muppets, Disney World, and picture books.I was making what I enjoy. I figured thats also what a kid would enjoy, too. Nowadays, with my work for Ms. Rachel, I have learned an extraordinary amount about childhood development, not only from the show but through my own experience with early intervention (EI) for my daughter.EI works best when the parent takes on what they learn during sessions and incorporates it into their childrens day-to-day lives. I more or less became a full-time speech, occupational, physical, and special-instruction therapist for the first three years of her life. So now, my work comes from not only a place of genuinely enjoying childrens media, but also thinking about what I would want my own childrenand really, all childrento be watching. Childrens media is so important and needs to be treated as such.Youve said you feel like youve been working toward Poems of Parenting your whole life.Its been quite a journey. This will essentially be my 12th book. So many things set it apart. For one, its the first book that feels like it has a real energy behind it from readers. When I started writing these poems, I immediately began getting messages like, When is the book coming out? or Will you be making a book? And I was just blown away because no one had ever asked me for a book before. Its just a dream come true. ... After over a decade of pushing and pushing to get books made and in front of people, having people come to me asking for a book is a real pinch-me moment. After starting this book, I also decided it was finally time to take the leap to being a full-time artist and writer, primarily for my own projectswhich has been a lifelong goal.Read more with Loryn Brantz on Two Truths.

Design enthusiasts, rejoice! A remarkable discovery has sent ripples through the collectible design world as 500 pristine Enorme telephones, created by legendary designer Ettore Sottsass, have emerged from a time capsule in Stanford, California. These vibrant relics of 1980s postmodernism, untouched since their creation in 1985, represent a fascinating intersection of art, technology, and cultural history. For those who appreciate design artifacts with genuine provenance, this unexpected find offers a rare opportunity to own an authentic piece of design history.The story behind these phones is as colorful as their appearance. The Enorme telephone was born from a collaboration between Italian architect Ettore Sottsass (founder of the influential Memphis Group), IDEO founder David Kelley, and entrepreneur Jean Pigozzi. Together, they formed the aptly named Enorme Corporation with a revolutionary vision: to transform the mundane telephone, at that time a purely functional object, into something that celebrated both utility and beauty. The result was a bold statement piece that challenged conventional thinking about everyday technology.Designers: Ettore Sottsass, David Kelley (Jean Pigozzi, investor)What makes these phones instantly recognizable is their distinctive postmodern aesthetic. The rectangular silhouette features a playful polychrome palette with a red speaker and yellow base, embodying the Memphis Groups signature style. This design language, characterized by bold geometric shapes, bright colors, and playful proportions, became the visual shorthand for 1980s design innovation. Sottsass and his Memphis colleagues deliberately rejected the austere functionalism that dominated design thinking, instead embracing emotional connection and visual joy as legitimate design considerations.The timing of this discovery couldnt be more perfect, as contemporary design continues to experience a renewed appreciation for postmodern aesthetics. Todays designers regularly cite Sottsass and the Memphis Group as influences, with their work appearing in major museum retrospectives worldwide. The Enorme telephone stands as a perfect encapsulation of this influential movement, a physical manifestation of the groups philosophy that everyday objects should bring delight rather than merely perform functions. Its design remains surprisingly fresh despite being nearly four decades old.Whats particularly remarkable about this find is the pristine condition of these telephones. Each comes complete with its original 1985 packaging and instruction booklet, including the controversial sumo wrestler logo. These arent reproductions or reissues; theyre authentic pieces preserved exactly as they were intended to be experienced. For collectors and design historians, this represents an unprecedented opportunity to acquire what is essentially a museum-quality piece of design history directly from its original production run.The cultural significance of these phones extends beyond their visual appeal. They represent a pivotal moment when technology began to be viewed through a more humanistic lens. Before Apple made technological beauty mainstream, Sottsass and his collaborators were pioneering the idea that functional objects deserved thoughtful design consideration.The Enorme telephone challenged users to reconsider their relationship with everyday technology, suggesting that even the most utilitarian objects in our lives could and should bring visual and tactile pleasure. At a surprisingly accessible $495, these phones offer a unique opportunity to own a piece created by one of the 20th centurys most influential designers at a fraction of what his other works typically cost.Photo courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)The post Postmodern Treasure: Rare Ettore Sottsass Enorme Telephones Emerge After Decades first appeared on Yanko Design.

Excited by the launch of Nintendo Switch 2 but not sure if you should upgrade or buy the older Switch OLED? Here are the main differences between the consoles.

One of Nintendos best and most influential controllers is making a comeback on Switch 2, alongside a host of classic games.

To contextualize DeepSeeks disruption, let's consider the broader shift in AI being driven by the scarcity of training data.Read More

People are gathering in cities all over the United States and globally to protest an illegal, billionaire power grab by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Theyre being put on by over 150 different organizations, including civil rights groups, labor unions, and LGBTQ+ advocates, and span more than 1,200 locations.Last weekend, Tesla Takedown protests targeted Tesla showrooms around the country to show disapproval for Musk, its CEO, who has spearheaded an effort to carry out mass federal workforce layoffs and hollow out government agencies. As Teslas sales have plummeted this quarter, Musk has threatened to go after the companys critics, while the FBI has created a task force to investigate individual acts of vandalism and other actions aimed at the company.The scope of these protests is much broader, targeting both Trump and Musk, who the Hands Off website accuses (accurately) of shuttering Social Security offices, firing essential workers, eliminating consumer protections, and gutting Medicaid. The Verges Mia Sato is in Manhattans Bryant Park in New York City, where she took the above video. She told me it wasnt clear how many people are there, but that its wall to wall everywhere despite the fact that its raining here and really nasty.My colleague Lauren Feiner, who attended the protest in Washington, DC, said the protest there is very big, thousands here around the Washington monument. She described it as very peaceful and orderly, with attendees listening quietly to the speakers, occasionally chanting in response.People gather to protest in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Photo: Jessica TomanJessica Toman, who went to the protest in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, texted the above image to me. A person posting images of the same protest on Bluesky guessed that protesters numbered in the thousands.It looks like a similar story in Boston, where thousands are seen in this video from today:Fox 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul posted aerial footage of a massive crowd gathered at the State Capitol building in St. Paul, Minnesota:Demonstrators gathered in massive numbers in Daley Plaza in Chicago, Illinois, too, where a CBS Chicago livestream showed what looked like many thousands of people streaming from one side of the street to another for many blocks while this story was being written. Protests are also taking place overseas, in cities like Berlin, Germany and London, England.Its not just major cities. Hundreds appear to have shown up to protest in cities like St. Augustine, Florida, which the US Census Bureau estimates has less than 16,000 people, and Riverhead, New York, where only about 36,000 people live. Cars honked in apparent support of a protest in Manhattan, Kansas (under 54,000 residents), according to the Bluesky user who posted this video:A similar scene plays out in this video, apparently taken in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, a town of fewer than 4,000 people, today:Heres a gallery with some more images taken by Sato, Toman, and The Verges Chris Welch:1/13Protesters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Photo: Jessica TomanSee More:

Today, Meta AI announced the release of its latest generation multimodal models, Llama 4, featuring two variants: Llama 4 Scout and Llama 4 Maverick. These models represent significant technical advancements in multimodal AI, offering improved capabilities for both text and image understanding.Llama 4 Scout is a 17-billion-active-parameter model structured with 16 expert modules. It introduces an extensive context window capable of accommodating up to 10 million tokens. This substantial context capacity enables the model to manage and interpret extensive textual content effectively, beneficial for long-form document processing, complex codebases, and detailed dialogue tasks. In comparative evaluations, Llama 4 Scout has demonstrated superior performance relative to contemporary models such as Gemma 3, Gemini 2.0 Flash-Lite, and Mistral 3.1 across recognized benchmark datasets.Parallel to Scout, Llama 4 Maverick, also built upon a 17-billion-active-parameter architecture, incorporates 128 expert modules explicitly designed to enhance visual grounding. This design facilitates precise alignment between textual prompts and associated visual elements, enabling targeted responses grounded accurately to specific image regions. Maverick exhibits robust performance in comparative assessments, surpassing GPT-4o and Gemini 2.0 Flash, particularly in multimodal reasoning tasks. Additionally, Maverick has achieved comparable outcomes to DeepSeek v3 on reasoning and coding benchmarks while employing approximately half the active parameters.A key feature of Maverick is its noteworthy performance-to-cost efficiency. Benchmarking efforts, specifically on the LMArena platform, have recorded an Elo rating of 1417 for Mavericks chat-optimized version, indicating its computational efficiency and practical applicability in conversational and multimodal contexts.The development of Scout and Maverick draws heavily from distillation techniques derived from the ongoing training of Metas more powerful model, Llama 4 Behemoth. Behemoth, which remains under active training, has preliminarily shown significant advantages over established models such as GPT-4.5, Claude Sonnet 3.7, and Gemini 2.0 Pro, particularly within STEM-focused benchmarks. The insights and advanced methodologies from Behemoth have been instrumental in refining Scout and Mavericks technical capabilities.With the introduction of Llama 4, Meta AI advances multimodal artificial intelligence through highly refined and technically sophisticated models capable of deep semantic understanding and precise multimodal alignment. This release further exemplifies Meta AIs ongoing commitment to fostering innovation and maintaining open accessibility for researchers, developers, and enterprise applications.Future progress in multimodal AI is anticipated with the finalization and public release of Llama 4 Behemoth. Initial results indicate Behemoths potential to set new standards within multimodal performance, particularly in STEM applications and computational reasoning tasks. Meta AI plans to disclose detailed technical specifications and performance metrics upon completion of the Behemoth model.The announcement underscores Meta AIs dedication to pushing the technical limits of multimodal modeling, supporting the evolution of practical and research-oriented AI applications across diverse sectors including scientific research, education, and complex conversational systems. As Meta AI continues this trajectory, the technological advancements embodied in Llama 4 Scout, Maverick, and eventually Behemoth are expected to facilitate substantial progress in the computational and practical capabilities of multimodal AI.Check outTwitterand dont forget to join our85k+ ML SubReddit. Asif RazzaqWebsite| + postsBioAsif Razzaq is the CEO of Marktechpost Media Inc.. As a visionary entrepreneur and engineer, Asif is committed to harnessing the potential of Artificial Intelligence for social good. His most recent endeavor is the launch of an Artificial Intelligence Media Platform, Marktechpost, which stands out for its in-depth coverage of machine learning and deep learning news that is both technically sound and easily understandable by a wide audience. The platform boasts of over 2 million monthly views, illustrating its popularity among audiences.Asif Razzaqhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/6flvq/NVIDIA AI Released AgentIQ: An Open-Source Library for Efficiently Connecting and Optimizing Teams of AI AgentsAsif Razzaqhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/6flvq/A Code Implementation to Building a Context-Aware AI Assistant in Google Colab Using LangChain, LangGraph, Gemini Pro, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) Principles with Tool Integration SupportAsif Razzaqhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/6flvq/Augment Code Released Augment SWE-bench Verified Agent: An Open-Source Agent Combining Claude Sonnet 3.7 and OpenAI O1 to Excel in Complex Software Engineering TasksAsif Razzaqhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/6flvq/Meet Open-Qwen2VL: A Fully Open and Compute-Efficient Multimodal Large Language Model