Given that they are most known for their expansive open-worlds, Grand Theft Autogames are notoriously difficult to 100%. With all the side missions, collectibles, and races, ticking off every item on the to-do list requires an almost masochistic level of dedication.

Report says Meta made an $800 million bid for South Korean startup FuriosaAI - but was turned down.

In Confidenza, visual storytelling meets subtle artistry through the impressive work of Frame by Frame S.p.A. The studio delivered seamless and realistic invisible VFX, enriching the emotional weight of each scene without distracting from the narrative. From delicate environment extensions to subtle scene enhancements, their work blends effortlessly into the cinematography.By prioritizing photorealistic integration, the team ensured every visual effect maintained the films grounded tone and visual integrity. Frame by Frames contribution proves that sometimes the most impactful VFX are the ones you never noticequiet, powerful, and completely natural.The post Confidenza VFX Breakdown by Frame by Frame S.p.A. appeared first on Vfxexpress.

Chances are, you or someone you know has been the target of a scam. According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), reported scams cost Americans more than $12.5 billion in 2024a 25% increase from the previous year. But as scams grow more sophisticated, so do their opponents.A growing number of online vigilantes are flipping the script, turning the scam on the scammersand racking up millions of views in the process. Mashables Chris Taylor recently spoke to a few whove turned scambaiting into full-time work.Rosie Okumura got into scambaiting after her mother was tricked out of $500 by a pop-up on her computer. Now, she channels her acting skillsmimicking well-known voices like Britney Spears and Kim Kardashianto waste scammers time while entertaining her audience. Her YouTube channel, IRLrosie, boasts most than 1.6 million subscribers, with another 1.2 million followers on TikTok.I feel like teaching people how to avoid scams is better than helping someone whos lost a ton of money, or putting myself in a dangerous situation, Okumura said.Ashton Bingham and Art Kulik, the duo behind the YouTube channel Trilogy Media, also have 1.6 million subscribersbut they take their scambaiting offline. Their most-watched video, Hunting a Scammer with Cops, has amassed more than 5.6 million views since its 2022 release. In it, Bingham and Kulik team up with law enforcement to confront a refund scammer in person, armed with $40,000 in fake cash and a camera crew. With a subscription platform, Trilogy+, and a freshly signed deal for an unscripted TV show, scambaiting has become a profitable venture.Some scambaiters argue that by wasting a scammers time, theyre preventing real victims from being defrauded. But whether this tactic actually reduces online fraud is still debated. Research has also flagged ethical concerns, as some early scambaiters used racist, extreme, or even violent methods when confronting scammers.Still, for Okumura, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. The best part is getting recognized at restaurants, she told Mashable. They will comp my bill!

The retro post-apocalyptic sci-fi is finally coming to the screen.

The second day of Nintendos Treehouse: Live stream offered even more gameplay for upcoming Switch 2 titles, including Kirby and the Forgotten Land Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Star-Crossed World. The upgraded version of the 2022 action platformer offers a brand new campaign, which sees a mysterious meteor crashing into the land.Kirby sets out to investigate familiar levels which have been remixed and revamped with new routes (though you can still choose from the originals on the world map). For example, the starting level sees the iconic skyscraper damaged by a meteor fragment. Enemies have also changed to have new attacks, and sections require activating new switches to generate platforms.Star-Crossed World will feature new Mouthful Modes, including a spring for jumping high and dropping down with a heavy slam on enemies. If that werent enough, players seeking a challenge can opt for Wild Mode to earn more coins.Kirby and the Forgotten Land Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Star-Crossed World launches on August 28th for the Switch 2. Its also a paid upgrade for owners of the Switch 1 version.

html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"Barcelona-based Garcs de Seta Bonet Arquitectes and Marvel Architects have been selected to adapt and expand a former power plant into the Catalunya Media City in Barcelona, Spain.The architectural competition for the adaptive re-use and expansion of the Tres Xemeneies/Three Chimneys, a former power plant that will house the Catalunya Media City hub, was launched by the Generalitat of Catalonia. A total of 26 preliminary projects were submitted, and the joint venture formed by Garcs de Seta Bonet Arquitectes and Marvel, based in Barcelona and New York, was selected as the winners of the project.Public space over plateau building looking to the logistics streetCalled Tres Xemeneies/Three Chimneys, the facility includes a 500 square meters auditorium with a capacity of 250 seats. Additionally, there is an immersive room measuring approximately 400 square meters, featuring an eight-meter ceiling height.There is also a large studio or set, around 400 square meters in size, with the same eight-meter ceiling height. Two smaller studios, each about 200 square meters, with six-meter ceiling heights, are available as well. A 250 square meter laboratory has a five-meter ceiling height, alongside two recording studios, a mixing room, a color grading room, and an editing suite. The multipurpose open spaces range from 50 to 250 square meters.Further, the facility includes two UX laboratories, a workshop, a fabrication lab, a 1,500 square meter library, and various meeting rooms.North facade of the existing building with balcony towards El MaresmeGarcs de Seta Bonet Arquitectes (GdSB) and Marvel, with their extensive professional experience, champion a space that honors and conserves historical heritages while being capable of envisioning potential futures.Daria de Seta, co-founder of Garcs de Seta Bonet, highlights that the project, which pays tribute to Fellini, is marked by a respect for and improvement of the building's fundamental architectural features while incorporating functional uses. "The Tres Xemeneies represent an icon of Catalonia's industrial heritage that we aim to preserve and enhance," said Guido Hartray, founding Marvel partner.Lobby of the new building addition to the southThe collaborating architects' proposal aims to preserve the existing structure while creating a new addition that extends and completes the building.The new structure links the interior of the turbine hall with the outdoors via lines connecting the Barcelona-Badalona axis and the natural boundaries of sea and mountains.The only significant alteration to the current warehouse involves making transverse cuts that establish a harmonious connection between the terrain and the urban pavement, promoting an organic integration with the surroundings.Connectivity and Accessibility as a Metropolitan BenchmarkThe project suggests open spaces that serve as leisure, interaction, and gathering spots, featuring green areas and elements that promote social engagement. A balcony with a view of the Badalona coastline will be incorporated into the north faade, and the roof will prominently showcase renewable energy production with solar panels covering 4,500 square meters. The new rooftop will provide a visual link among Barcelona, Sant Adri de Bess, and Badalona.The new facility will feature a space for public activities, establishing itself as a metropolitan landmark and a defining element of the Bess area. Significant enhancements to accessibility in the surrounding area and to the beach itself will also be included; these improvements are intended for not just visitors and users, but also for local residents.South digital facade of the new building addition to the south. Image Filippo Bolognese Images"We have designed a proposal that plays with connections and knotstemporal, landscape, and territorial. One of the key features will be linking the city with the sea, where users and residents can share a large communal space. For the first time, there will be a balcony facing Badalona. The architectural elements at different heights will offer new landscape perspectives, as if it were a land art piece," said Jordi Garcs, co-founder of Garcs de Seta Bonet Arquitectes.Sustainability and Passive Architecture to Reduce Environmental ImpactThe team envisages a building that is energy-efficient and generates substantial renewable energy via photovoltaic panels, offsetting the majority of its energy use for lighting and climate control. This helps to enhance the overall sustainability of the building.The intervention's environmental goal is to minimize the ecological footprint in all dimensions over its entire duration. The design of the building incorporates principles of passive architecture and aims to reduce energy demand through bioclimatic approaches.Experience Hall during setup for an event. Image Filippo Bolognese Images"Transforming an infrastructure that has had a heavy environmental impact in the past into one that drives the future of media collaboration while utilizing the existing structures weight to lighten the new programs energy footprint, seems to us, like a worthy goal for the future of architecture," said Jonathan Marvel, founding principal of Marvel.In Barcelona, the Tres Xemeneies will serve as the backbone of Catalunya Media City, establishing an area dedicated to the development, production, and experimentation of digital arts and technology. This sites functional program will consist of various features and services aimed at fostering innovation, creativity, technology, training, and exhibitions of digital culture."The main hall, designed to host large-scale exhibitions, is reminiscent of the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern in London, the Aviva Studios Warehouse in Manchester, or the Park Avenue Armory in New York. All spaces share the same key elements: appropriate proportions, generous heights (approximately 17 meters), strong load-bearing floors, upper-level access points, and the ability to suspend equipment from the ceiling," said Anna Bonet, co-founding partner of the Garcs de Seta Bonet Arquitectes."These elements create a spectacular hall with epic proportions. The main objective of the intervention is to enhance a highly flexible space capable of hosting any event, from intimate performances to large-scale installations with a capacity of up to 4,500 people," Bonet added.Event in the Experience Hall. Image Filippo Bolognese ImagesThe winning design fuses Marvels skill in melding innovative applications with historic buildingsdemonstrated by endeavors such as St. Anns Warehouse and New Lab in Brooklyn, New Yorkwith Garcs de Seta Bonets talent for integrating polished and durable components, as illustrated by the Barcelona Metro Line 9 stations and the Picasso Museum.The team collaborates closely with a local approach while upholding an intergenerational, contemporary, and global perspective, which adds to the complexity.Interior courtyard for social interaction. Image Filippo Bolognese ImagesAccording to Esteban de Backer, partner at Marvels Barcelona office, "It is an honor to work once again with Garcs de Seta Bonet Arquitectes to develop this ambitious project. The goal of this construction and adaptation is to enhance the Bess area by providing interconnected public spaces that become an interurban and metropolitan benchmark."Construction slated to start in 2026 and completion is anticipated end of 2027-first quarter of 2028.Project factsProject:Catalunya Media City Three Chimneys / Tres XemeneiesClient:Generalitat de Catalunya, Department of Presidency/Cultural AffairsDesign CollaboratorsGarcs De Seta Bonet, Barcelona-based architectsMARVEL, architecture, interiors, urban planning and landscape architecture firm with offices in New York, San Juan, Richmond, VA and BarcelonaLocation:Sant Adri de Bess Barcelona, SpainConstruction Cost:$48 million USDProject Size Current /Upon Completion:22,500 sq meters existing /35,000 sq meters242,000 sq ft existing /376,000 sq feetSite Size:13,000 sq meters 140,000 sq feetGarcs De Seta Bonet Architects (GDSB): Jordi Garces, Partner, Daria de Seta, Partner, Anna Bonet, Partner.Marvel: Jonathan Marvel, Founding Principal, Guido Hartray, Partner in Charge, Esteban de Backer, Partner, Barcelona Office, Laura Martin, Design Architect, Gabriel Garcia, Design Architect.The top image in the article Filippo Bolognese Images.All images Studio kmh, unless otherwise stated.> via Garcs De Seta Bonet & Marvel

April 7, 20254 min readObesity-Drug Pioneers and Large Hadron Collider Physicists win $3-Million Breakthrough PrizesAdvances recognized by sciences most lucrative awards include high-energy physics experiments and groundbreaking weight-loss treatmentsBy Zeeya Merali & Nature magazine The Breakthrough prize trophys design is inspired by imagery from science, including black holes, seashells and the structure of DNA. Breakthrough PrizeFive scientists who contributed to the development of the blockbuster weight-loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy have picked up one of this years US$3-million Breakthrough prizes the most lucrative awards in science.Originally developed to treat diabetes, these drugs work by mimicking a hormone called glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) that controls blood sugar levels and helps to curb appetite. This class of drugs truly saves lives, changes lives and brings joy back to peoples lives, says Ziyad Al-Aly, a physician-scientist at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System in Missouri, who recently led a massive study analysing data from almost two million people to evaluate the effects of such medication.This life-sciences prize is shared between the four researchers who discovered and characterized GLP-1 endocrinologist Daniel Drucker at the University of Toronto, Canada; physician-researchers Joel Habener at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts and Jens Juul Holst at the University of Copenhagen; and chemist Svetlana Mojsov at The Rockefeller University in New York City along with Lotte Bjerre Knudsen of pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk in Bagsvrd, Denmark, who spearheaded the development of drugs based on these discoveries.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.In the 1990s, Drucker and his colleagues realized that GLP-1 caused animals to eat less and lose weight. Knudsen stablized the drug by adding fatty-acid chains, enabling it to bind to proteins in the blood, which prevents it from breaking down rapidly once injected. Its a tremendous honour to receive this prestigious award, says Drucker. But the most amazing gratification is when someone comes to my office and says, I lost 40 pounds [18 kg] and I feel healthy.Everyones a winnerThe award is one of six Breakthrough prizes to be awarded this year in life sciences, physics and mathematics.Unusually for a major award, one of the fundamental-physics prizes was awarded to a grand total of 13,508 physicists spanning four collaborations at CERN, Europes particle physics laboratory near Geneva in Switzerland. Through experiments using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), these researchers have taken multiple precision measurements over the past decade to probe, and so far confirm, the standard model of particle physics. Were honoured the award was made to the entire collaboration because without all those people we could not have made these advances, says Patricia McBride, a spokesperson for CERNs CMS collaboration. The prize money will be used to fund international students to visit CERN, she adds.The award is well deserved, says Brian Rebel, a particle physicist at the University of WisconsinMadison. Finding the Higgs [boson] in 2012 was a once-in-lifetime event, but it was only the first step, Rebel says. Since then, LHC scientists have been pinning down the mass of the Higgs and its interactions, as well as discovering 72 new particles, investigating antimatter and probing the nature of the quarkgluon plasma that existed soon after the Big Bang. It takes a small army to create the tools to test and validate these results, says Rebel.Another Breakthrough prize in fundamental physics was awarded to one of the architects of the standard model, theoretical physicist Gerard t Hooft at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, who also won a share of the 1999 Nobel prize in physics for his work on the weak nuclear force, and contributed to understanding the strong nuclear force. A beautiful synthesis emerges when ones mathematics is linked to particles actually seen in the world, says t Hooft, adding that he is honoured to win the prize.A theory of everythingThe mathematics prize went to Dennis Gaitsgory at the Max Planck Institute of Mathematics in Bonn, Germany, for numerous contributions to the development of the Langlands programme dubbed the grand unified theory of mathematics because it brings together the disciplines of number theory, geometry and function fields.And two other prizes in the life sciences were awarded one shared between neuroscientist Stephen Hauser at the University of California, San Francisco, and epidemiologist Alberto Ascherio at Harvard University, for research on the drivers of multiple sclerosis (MS), a disease caused by damage to myelin, the material that surrounds and insulates nerve fibres.In the 1990s, Hauser and colleagues demonstrated that antibodies produced by the immune systems B cells were likely to be behind the damage4. This initially invited scepticism because it had been assumed that T cells were the culprits, and Hauser recalls being devastated at being refused funding because his ideas were deemed biologically implausible. The Breakthrough Prize is recognition of the importance of stick-to-it-ness, says Hauser. Independently, in 2022, Ascherio and his colleagues definitively established that infection with the EpsteinBarr virus drastically heightens a persons risk of developing MS.The final life-sciences prize went to David Liu, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for developing technologies that use CRISPR gene-editing to rewrite segments of DNA. His techniques are being employed in clinical trials for the treatment of T-cell leukaemia, sickle-cell disease, -thalassemia and high cholesterol.The Breakthrough prizes were founded in 2012 and are sponsored by Yuri Milner, a RussianIsraeli billionaire, and other Internet entrepreneurs, including Metas chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on April 5, 2025.

I love Blender......and I love the way it uses HDRIs for lighting, but then they all do that now. I remember when I saw the first animation done with an HDRI lighting it. It was the Holy Grail of lighting, and at the time it all looked a bit complicated. how do I find these things? What do I plug them into? Where will I find the RAM to render this thing out?Well, now it's dead easy. HDRIs are all over the place, and you can even download them for free from places like Poly Haven.But sometimes, you just can't find one with the lighting you want.Well, guess what? you can make your own in minutes with Blender!It's a simple render, but the process to get reflecting lights is a good thing to know, as well as one sided shading so you can move your faux lighting around inside a space and see what's going on!Crack on guys, it's all here to learn!