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 here The cutting room floor at Valve is filled with enough scrapped ideas to drown in. Decades after its release, players are still finding new secrets in early builds of Half-Life 2 and other Valve games.  As it turns out, one early build of Half-Life 2 connected the iconic opening of City 17 to the final battle at the Citadel. Found in an early 2003 beta of the iconic FPS game, players would’ve spent far more time in the City 17 sewers as they connected to the Citadel.  Half-Life 2’s massive cut sewers Explored by YouTuber CMDR RileySV, the 2003 build of Valve’s masterpiece focused a lot on the City 17 waterways you can still see in the original game. While these waterways are inaccessible in the released build, earlier versions of the game would have spent considerable time here. Via PCG, the unfinished map designated “streetwars/proto_c17map” was an alternate version of what we eventually see in Anticitizen One. This early map features dense waterways that connect with the City 17 river. However, it also leads directly to the Citadel where you finally confront Breen. In the early build, you would go through a deep underground sewer and fight a massive Hydra instead of the released version’s short trip through a factory. It certainly sounds very intense, but perhaps it pulled away from the game’s pacing. This isn’t the only use of the underground waterways in this early build. In fact, the Uprising chapter would originally shove players back into the sewers with the Scout Car in a high-speed set-piece that would end with an awesome shot of the Citadel that still sends chills down the spine even in its very unfinished state.  It’s always interesting to see more of what Half-Life 2 used to be before its finished release. While the finished version of the game is almost-perfect, earlier builds feel like seeing a sketch of the Mona Lisa instead of Da Vinci’s final work.  For more Half-Life 2 coverage, read our thoughts on Half-Life 2 RTX, the upcoming power-hungry remaster of Valve’s iconic FPS game. Half-Life 2 Platform(s): Android, Linux, macOS, PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox, Xbox 360 Genre(s): Action, Shooter 10 VideoGamer Subscribe to our newsletters! By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime. Share

During the tour, Jordan says he reveled in the intricate brickwork of buildings designed by Eliel Saarinen and how, more generally, Cranbrook’s original chief architect and first president had embedded those facilities within a mosaic of courtyards. For his new design in turn, Jordan conceived the three-bedroom residence as a series of linked pavilions. He says that by designing separate enclosures for each of the house’s various uses, the volumes could “follow the grade on the property.” Jordan nested volumes into one another or connected them via passageway, as well, to yield protected outdoor spaces.The Eliel Saarinen–designed buildings at Cranbrook Schools served as a lodestar for architect Adam Jordan in his commission for a new single-family home not far from the famous campus. Saarinen’s soaring, daylight-filled Dining Hall specifically inspired Jordan’s design of the residence’s dining room. Jordan Jordan, Adam’s wife and interior design collaborator, reinterpreted the cafeteria’s delicate pendants and signature seating as a 12-light chandelier by Danke Galerie and vintage Dialogo dining chairs. Whereas Saarinen looked to the Arts and Crafts movement for inspiration, Jordan and the homeowners decided that the composition should seem like primal outcroppings that escape golfers’ view. Success hinged on finishing the exterior solely in brick and glass, without any accent materials to draw attention to the house. Perhaps more important was finding a brick that blends perfectly with the mature red oaks on site. The exhaustive search for this camouflage turned up sand-textured bricks by Glen-Gery, which a local artisan singlehandedly installed over two and a half years.Geoff confirms that the house occasionally disappears from the links. “If some people perceive the house as rigid by virtue of its form,” he adds, “everybody is surprised to find the interior to be as inviting as it is.” He and Heather attribute that warmth to Jordan’s handling of daylight and his expansive use of white oak and the same Glen-Gery bricks for surfaces. The architect points out that scribing of wood and stone interior surfaces further unifies it to the exterior’s brick courses, so that architecture and nature feel inextricable.Adam Jordan conceived the common rooms as double-height spaces in part to accommodate a Harry Bertoia sculpture—one of six that Geoff and Heather have collected thus far. He and Jordan Jordan introduced human scale in the living room by pairing a low-slung Peanut B. sofa from Bonaldo with side and coffee tables of their own making. The vignette sits atop a custom-sized rug from Loloi’s vintage collection. Jordan also makes sure that his wife and interior-design collaborator, Jordan Jordan, enjoys equal credit for the welcoming rooms. “Adam had a very minimalist upbringing, whereas I have a lot of appreciation for layers, and I think we’ve really influenced one another,” she says. For this project, she also notes, “We were all on the same page that there should be a lot of cozy natural textures, and that green should be the one color in the house.” Vintage pieces by Pierre Jeanneret, Isamu Noguchi, and Carlo Scarpa are combined with contemporary sources and custom designs in spare vignettes that keep Geoff and Heather focused on the landscape.The homeowners are happy to substantiate the designers’ claim of an indoor-outdoor experience. “I feel like I’m at an Aman resort,” Heather says, noting how sunshine follows her daily journey through the house. Geoff meanwhile expresses gratitude to Jordan for advocating for a patio and terrace “that we didn’t understand we’d enjoy as much as we have” and notes, “When you find somebody even half as talented as Adam, you place a lot of trust in them.”

Slim Pickings Diablo 4 isn't getting an expansion this year, but here's what Blizzard says you can expect instead Blizzard has officially laid out a plan of the content you can expect to come to Diablo 4 over the course of this year. Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment. News by Sherif Saed Contributing Editor Published on April 9, 2025 Around the initial release of Diablo 4 nearly two years ago, Blizzard said that it had already been working on multiple expansions, and that we can expect one to be released each year. Blizzard kept that promise; we got Vessel of Hatred last year, but if you’ve been keeping up with the news, you’ve likely noticed that not a word has been said about this year’s expansion. That’s because there won’t be one, and the next expansion will instead be released in 2026. In order to fill that gap in content, however, Blizzard has a plan, and the developer has now revealed it in full. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. The plan comes to us in the form of a roadmap, which covers the entirety of the year all the way until the release of the next expansion in 2026. Blizzard didn’t reveal any details about that - not even which part of the year we can expect it at, but the seasonal narrative is supposed to lead up to it. The roadmap already shows much of the content we’ve been playing since the beginning of this year, such as Season of Witchcraft, and drops a few hints about upcoming seasonal content, as well as some permanent additions that exist outside the Seasonal Realm. The April-July period covers Diablo 4’s next season, which begins later this month. Though the season has yet to be properly revealed, Blizzard gave players the chance to test out many of the major mechanics it’s bringing to the game in a recent PTR. This period will see the first IP collaboration with Diablo 4. This is also when the game will celebrate its second anniversary, and there’s presumably going to be some sort of in-game event to coincide with the anniversary. Seems a bit slim... | Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment. The July-September period is what Blizzard is calling Sins of the Horadrim, and it will see us earning new Horadric powers as part of a new quest (likely only during that season), and a new reputation board. Nightmare Dungeons will see the introduction of activities that raise the dungeon’s difficultly as you go. As with every season, you’ll also be able to earn a pet through the battle pass. September-December is the final section on the roadmap, dubbed Infernal Chaos. You can expect to wield new powers - this time Chaos Powers, alongside a new quest and reputation board. As the name might suggest, the focus of this one will be Infernal Hordes, and the activity will be updated with new modifiers, and more options between waves. The second IP collaboration will arrive during that period, too. Outside of the new content coming with each new season, you can also expect game-wide quality of life updates and new features. Keyboard and mouse support is finally being added to consoles. Blizzard also teased “core system updates” to both the battle pass and Seasonal Journey to make them more rewarding. Alongside the new expansion coming next year, 2026 will also see the introduction of a new ranking system, leaderboards and some other unannounced features teased on the roadmap. Our next event on the calendar will be Blizzard’s official reveal of the game’s next season, which we expect to happen in a matter of days.

Gemini Code Assist, Google’s AI coding assistant, is gaining new “agentic” capabilities in preview. During its Cloud Next conference on Wednesday, Google said Code Assist can now deploy new AI “agents” that can take multiple steps to accomplish complex programming tasks. These agents can create applications from product specifications in Google Docs, for example, or perform code transformations from one language to another. Code Assist is now available in Android Studio in addition to other coding environments. Code Assist’s upgrades are likely in response to competitive pressure from rivals such as GitHub Copilot, Cursor, and Cognition Labs, the creator of the viral programming tool Devin. The AI coding assistant market grows fiercer by the month, and there’s a lot of money in it. Considering the tech’s productivity-boosting potential, that’s not totally surprising. Code Assist’s agents, which can be managed from a new Gemini Code Assist Kanban board, can generate work plans and report step-by-step progress on job requests. Beyond generating software and migrating code, the agents can implement new app features, execute code reviews, and generate unit tests and documentation, the company claims. However, it’s unclear just how well Code Assist can do all this. Even the best code-generating AI today tends to introduce security vulnerabilities and bugs, studies have found, owing to weaknesses in areas like the ability to understand programming logic. One recent evaluation of Devin found that it completed just three out of 20 tasks successfully. So if you tap Code Assist to create or refactor an app for you, it couldn’t hurt to review the code yourself just to be safe. Topics

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In response to Donald Trump’s escalating tariffs, China retaliated in part by placing export restrictions on a slew of rare earth elements. These powerful materials are crucial to the U.S., because they underpin the creation of weapons, computer chips, and electric cars. China  produces a majority of these rare earth materials—and experts say that the U.S. is years away from building its own supply chain. As the U.S.–China trade war ramps up, rare earths are among the most important pieces of leverage that China controls. There are many reasons why China would not want to shut off U.S. access to rare earths completely, most notably that the country makes a lot of money from exporting them. But if China decides to further choke off its supply, the ripple effects could be extremely painful across many industries, says Lyle Trytten, a critical minerals expert. “The U.S. does not have the means to create the materials it needs to create the devices it survives on,” he says. Rare earth’s importanceThe importance of rare earths has only increased over the years, due to the world’s reliance on ever-powerful computers and its search for cleaner energy. Dysprosium and terbium, for example, are found in smartphones’ vibration units. Neodymium powers the motors of electric vehicles. Tungsten, an ultra-hard metal, is used in ammunition, semiconductor chips, and alloys found in jet engines and deep-drilling rigs. Almost all of these materials are mined and processed by China, which has spent decades aggressively building the infrastructure to do so. As a result, many companies, including Tesla and Apple, source their rare earths from China. Recently, China has not hesitated to wield this dominance as a geopolitical bargaining tool. In 2010, China halted rare-earth exports to Japan amidst rising tensions. Over the past two years, Beijing has imposed curbs on other critical minerals, such as gallium, germanium, and graphite. “It’s pretty predictable now that once the U.S. pulls something—whether it's an export control on a particular technology or a tariff—this is China’s chosen weapon,” says Fabian Villalobos, an engineer at RAND. “Critically, the separation of heavy rare earths from the light rare earths is where China has a dominance, and therefore there’s a vulnerability in the supply chain.”The White House signaled its understanding of the fragility of the current ecosystem when it exempted critical minerals from its tariffs regime this month. But that did not stop China from issuing export controls on seven kinds of rare earth elements, to all countries, on Friday. The decision is not a ban, but it does give Beijing oversight and control over access to the rare earth elements. China said that its export controls will not affect the rare earth supply chain. Crucially, China omitted several of the most-coveted rare earth elements, including neodymium and praseodymium. But the controls show that China is willing to use these materials as a bargaining chip and could escalate their restrictions if tensions increase. “Consider this an opening shot across the bow,” says Trytten. The listed elements also include those found in microchips used for AI—a further indication of the ongoing AI arms race between the two countries. Villalobos says that in the short term, there will likely be a slowdown of rare earth exports as companies apply for licenses to adhere to the export controls. “You might see a temporary dip in exports, and then a ramping up as more companies get their licenses,” he says. But Villalobos says the greater threat to U.S. companies could come afterward, once China starts collecting detailed information about the rare earth market—which then gives China the ability to impose damaging sanctions upon specific companies. That could include U.S. defense companies like Lockheed Martin, which needs rare earths for components in missile systems and fighter jets. “This is the danger: The more information you can gather from exporters, the more you can target specific companies that you don't want getting access to rare earth,” he says. U.S. capacityMany experts have long called for the U.S. to wean itself off of this dependence. Some believe that the solution is to mine rare earths on the moon. Other entrepreneurs have started projects building mines and processing facilities across America. Trump’s tariffs, then, could incentivize these kinds of shifts; to force American companies to build up supply chain resilience. “Maybe it will move the ball on investments, which is one of the big barriers to diversifying critical mineral supply chains,” Villalobos says. But rare earths and other minerals are extremely intensive to process—and the U.S. does not have the infrastructure to scale these efforts quickly, Trytten says. The number of graduates of U.S. mining engineering programs has steadily declined over the last few decades, potentially leading to a lack of expertise. Trytten says that there is danger in rushing new mining projects into production. “The history of our industry in the metal space is that when we try to do things fast, we tend to do them poorly,” he says. Because of these factors, Trytten contends that even if a new wave of mining projects is kickstarted now, they will not come to fruition until long after Trump has left the White House. “Call it eight to 10 years before you have significant new capacity for a lot of these raw materials,” Trytten says. “Can he weather the storm that long?”Other experts say that various other parts of Trump’s tariffs make it hard for them to scale up their state-side infrastructure. On the Rare Earth Exchanges podcast, the entrepreneur Daniel O’Connor said that tariffed materials like steel and aluminum are crucial toward mining and processing. “Let’s not do tariffs on things we need to build our infrastructure,” he said. Rare earths in Greenland?Some have speculated that rare earths play a major role in Donald Trump’s interest in Greenland. Tech giants like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos have invested in companies prospecting for rare earths there. But extracting resources out of Greenland poses many challenges. “Greenland has very little domestic energy production, and you can find those resources pretty much anywhere,” Trytten says. “There are much easier mining locations than the Arctic.” Regardless of whether Greenland is a viable option, many U.S. companies are now being forced to pursue non-Chinese rare earth options, even if it takes them years to develop. “Think about every automated thing: If you push a button and it moves, it’s probably reliant on some sort of rare earth magnet,” Villalobos says. “Whoever makes that, if they're in the U.S., Japan, or anywhere outside of China, they’re going to feel the impact from this—and they might be potential targets for sanctions in the future.”

In a nutshell: Google's DeepMind is employing strict noncompete clauses and extended notice periods to limit its U.K.-based AI talent from joining competitors, a tactic that underscores the fierce competition for skilled professionals in the field. The measures have drawn criticism from former employees and industry insiders who argue they stifle innovation and limit career mobility in the rapidly evolving AI sector. Nando de Freitas, a former DeepMind director now serving as Vice President of AI at Microsoft, recently took to social media platform X to voice his concerns. He alleged that Google DeepMind's employment contracts can effectively sideline AI developers for up to a year, preventing them from joining competitors. "Every week one of you reaches out to me in despair to ask me how to escape your notice periods and noncompetes," de Freitas wrote, addressing current DeepMind employees. He urged workers to avoid signing such agreements, calling them an "abuse of power." De Freitas's remarks highlight the challenges faced by AI professionals navigating restrictive contracts during a period of unprecedented growth in the field. While U.S. states like California have banned noncompete clauses, these agreements remain enforceable in the United Kingdom, where DeepMind is headquartered. Under UK law, noncompetes are deemed valid if they are considered reasonable to protect an employer's legitimate business interests. According to former DeepMind employees who spoke anonymously with Business Insider, the company tailors the length of noncompete clauses based on an employee's seniority and role. Individual contributors working on high-profile projects like Google's Gemini AI models often face six-month restrictions, while senior researchers may be bound by yearlong agreements. During this period, some employees are placed on "garden leave," receiving full pay but barred from working elsewhere. Google defends its use of noncompetes as standard practice. "Our employment contracts are in line with market standards," a spokesperson told Business Insider. "Given the sensitive nature of our work, we use noncompetes selectively to protect our legitimate interests." However, critics argue that these clauses are increasingly out of step with the fast-paced nature of AI development. "Who wants to sign you for starting in a year? That's forever in AI," said one former DeepMind employee. The impact of these clauses on careers is so significant that some DeepMind employees have contemplated relocating to jurisdictions like California, where such agreements are unenforceable. Others lament missed opportunities at startups unwilling to wait months for new hires to become available. // Related Stories De Freitas's public critique underscores the broader tension within the tech industry as companies vie for top-tier talent. He urged discontented employees to raise their concerns with DeepMind leaders such as CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu and senior research director Douglas Eck, whom he described as sympathetic to their plight. Ultimately, he stressed that workers should scrutinize contracts before signing away their freedom to move between employers. The controversy surrounding noncompetes reflects a shifting dynamic in the tech industry. In previous decades, even those working on high-value systems could more easily transition between roles without facing such barriers. Now, as AI becomes a cornerstone of global innovation, companies are adopting measures more commonly associated with hedge funds – another fiercely competitive sector known for aggressive contractual terms. For many in the field, the stakes could not be higher. "AI is interesting," remarked one former Google employee. "It seems to be the first time in my career that you have this insane race, like a space race. People really feel like being six months ahead or a year ahead could make all the difference."

Love crossword puzzles but don’t have all day to sit and solve a full-sized puzzle in your daily newspaper? That’s what The Mini is for! A bite-sized version of the New York Times’ well-known crossword puzzle, The Mini is a quick and easy way to test your crossword skills daily in a lot less time (the average puzzle takes most players just over a minute to solve). While The Mini is smaller and simpler than a normal crossword, it isn’t always easy. Tripping up on one clue can be the difference between a personal best completion time and an embarrassing solve attempt. Recommended Videos Just like our Wordle hints and Connections hints, we’re here to help with The Mini today if you’re stuck and need a little help. Related Below are the answers for the NYT Mini crossword today. New York Times Across Word after “cheap as” or “old as” – DIRT Sean ___, director who won four Oscars for “Anora” – BAKER “It’s the Hard-Knock Life” musical – ANNIE Pastry at a tea shop – SCONE Works on a quilt, perhaps – SEWS Down “Never give a sword to a man who can’t ___”: Confucius – DANCE “You don’t need to tell me!” – IKNOW Straps for a horseback rider – REINS One might be shady – TREE Big Mouth Billy ___ (singing animatronic fish) – BASS Editors’ Recommendations

Luxshare Precision Industry, a key assembler of the iPhone and other Apple products, said it will maintain large-scale production in Vietnam and continue exports from there to the U.S., responding to President Trump’s tariffs.