As soon as Colossal Biosciences declared that it brought the dire wolf back from extinction, everyone felt a sense of wonder. George R.R. Martin himself, who popularized the dire wolf as Jon Snow’s Ghost in A Song of Ice and Fire, posed for a picture with the pups to be part of a historic scientific achievement. He wept at the sight of the snowy fur of the white wolves. To me, along with Colossal Biosciences’ other work of making mice with the hair of wooly mammoths, the work was a reminder of what science can achieve when it’s supported with an amazing amount of talent and capital — Colossal Biosciences has raised $435 million at a valuation of $10.2 billion. It is the stuff of science fiction, as Michael Crichton wrote Jurassic Park based on the notion that genetic material could be recovered for dinosaurs and they could be brought back to life. Colossal’s chief aim is to bring back the wooly mammoth, the dodo and the thylacine. The computing power and the genetic tools finally exist to make that science fiction into reality — which is one of my favorite topics in the world and why I’m straying from games to write about this. After all, the only thing better than the intersection of science fiction, tech and games is the intersection of science fiction, tech and Game of Thrones. The scientists extracted DNA from recovered fossils a tooth from Sheridan Pit, Ohio, where the fossil was 13,000 years old, and an inner ear bone from American Falls, Idaho, that was 72,000 years old. Some critics felt like attacking the company for pulling some kind of scam for dressing up dogs as an extinct species because they used too little of the original dire wolf DNA. More seriously, some say that it was the creation of a brand new species by humans, not the bringing back of a vanished species. Of course, some people had to rain on the parade. Colossal Biosciences saw the objections that some scientists had about how these were not really dire wolves and that they were more like dogs, and that the amount of DNA they had to work with was insufficient. I can’t say, but them wolves sure do look like Ghost, Jon Snow’s dire wolf in Game of Thrones. Kidding aside, we’ll see how their work will stand up to scientific scrutiny soon enough. Here’s the statement that the company issued after the criticism: Only two specimens were available to use to rebuild the dire wolf’s DNA. We understand that some scientists are not comfortable calling these dire wolves because they feel like the wolves are not sufficiently genetically similar to an extinct individual to merit that name. That’s OK with us. We can disagree about what makes a dire wolf qualify as a dire wolf, or what makes a mammoth qualify as a mammoth. Colossal has 500 times more data than anyone has ever had on a dire wolf. We have had a small army of people doing comparative genomics to wolves and other canids for the last 18 months with this proprietary data set. We know what makes a dire wolf a dire wolf including that it is not closer to a jackal. We will be submitting that data next week for peer review. Colossal has always said that we are doing functional de-extinction where are looking to de-extinct the core genes that make a species a species as it relates to their phenotypes or physical attributes. All animals on this planet are ad mixtures. Just like a polar bear is a white adaptive bear compared to a brown bear a dire wolf is a plasticine wolf when compared to a grey wolf – it is 20% to 25% percent larger, more muscle mass, has an arctic white coat, is stronger and bigger, and has cranial facial structure. We have identified the genes that drive those phenotypes and de-extincted them as we are doing on all our projects. The scientific community does not agree on how to classify species because it is a man-made construct that does not apply to nature and that is why there are so many variants of it. Under several of the variants the dire world would be classified as a dire wolf. We are calling it a dire wolf because it is a dire wolf. If you do not want to call it a dire wolf you can always call it Colossal’s dire wolf. Our interview If I were a sheep, I would not want the dire wolf back. In my interview, Colossal Biosciences’ leaders told me that they had abided by ethical procedures in their recovery work. They say that half the species on earth are in danger of going extinct in the next 50 years, and that would be part of an ecosystem collapse like we have never seen. Saving species from extinction is also applauded by indigenous peoples that Colossal Biosciences consulted as it proceeded. It’s interesting that these people can see their myths come back to life, and it conjures thoughts on what it means to play God with science. But rather than play God, the team believes it is saving animals — including some that are gone because of humans. After the announcement yesterday, I interviewed Colossal Biosciences’ CEO Ben Lamm and Beth Shapiro, an evolutionary biologist who specializes in the genetics of ice age animals and plants. She is also chief scientist at Colossal. As professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz and HHMI Investigator, Shapiro was instrumental in the work. She uses DNA recovered from bones and other remains to study how species evolved through time and how human activities have affected and continue to affect this dynamic process. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview. I don’t think we’ll get to the bottom of who is right about whether this is de-extinction or a false claim for a while. But the subject is fascinating and I hope it will make us think about de-funding science in the current administration. Ben Lamm (left) and Beth Shapiro of Colossal Biosciences. VentureBeat: How much time has it taken you to get to this point? Ben Lamm: We’ve been building the de-extinction toolkit since 2021, when we launched the company. Obviously we announced the woolly mouse a month and a half ago, which you’re aware of. We started the dire wolf project about 18 months before we birthed the first dire wolves in October 2024. VentureBeat: How do you extract DNA successfully from such an old fossil? Beth Shapiro: This is the science I’ve been doing in my academic career since 1999. The first time anyone successfully extracted DNA from something that wasn’t alive was in 1984. It inspired Michael Crichton to write Jurassic Park. The field has gotten a lot better since then. We’re much better at extracting DNA from older remains. It used to be that we could only get things from remains preserved in the Arctic, where they were frozen. But we’re much better at extracting from things in warmer places. The record for the oldest DNA that’s been recovered from a bone is a mammoth bone that’s between 1 million and 2 million years old. Probably closer to 2 million. But most of the DNA we’ve recovered dates to the last several tens of thousands of years. One of our dire wolves is actually 72,000 years old, making it one of the oldest genomes that’s ever been recovered and extracted to date. We did the DNA extraction with some academic collaborators. It was done at my lab at the University of California Santa Cruz. We’re the Paleogenomics Lab. We’ve been pioneering new technologies for getting DNA out of old remains, things like rootless hairs and all sorts of cool stuff that’s going on. The DNA is not in good condition. If I were to extract DNA from a cheek swab of my own face, I could get strands of DNA that were tens to hundreds of millions of letters long. The DNA we get out of the dire wolf bones is maybe 35 letters long. We have to extract millions to hundreds of millions to billions of fragments and then use a computer to figure out how they line up against the genome of something that’s still alive, where we have a good quality genome, to piece it together. That was step one. Get the DNA out of old bones, line them up to reconstruct the dire wolf genome, and then compare that – again, with a computer – to a grey wolf genome, a coyote, jackals and all sorts of other canids, wolf-like animals, to figure out what its closest living relative is, and then what genetic variations make it uniquely dire wolf. We knew that dire wolves are most closely related to grey wolves. They’re about 99.5% genetically identical to grey wolves. They look a lot like grey wolves except they’re larger and more muscular. They have different hair patterns, different length and thickness and color. We learned by looking at our grey wolf genomes that dire wolves are light colored in code, which is cool. Obviously we didn’t know that looking at bones. But from the genome we could learn that.. VentureBeat: It seems like George R. R. Martin had done his homework. Lamm: He actually cried when he first saw them. He was so excited. Beth Shapiro, George R.R. Martin and Ben Lamm. VentureBeat: I remember taking a class at Berkeley in anthropology. They were telling us way back then that a very small percentage of DNA separated us from the apes. It sounds like that works in your favor. You can rebuild it by finding a small percentage of DNA. Shapiro: We focused specifically on DNA variants that were most likely to bring back these key traits – the size, the hair patterns, the musculature of dire wolves. It’s not possible to re-create something that’s 100% genetically identical to something that used to be alive, but that’s not the goal of de-extinction. Our goal is to re-create these phenotypes, these key traits, so that we can put these animals back into ecosystems and restore missing components of those ecosystems. VentureBeat: How do you know that the DNA sequence is not somehow messed up? How do you make sure you won’t get some weird variant of a dire wolf instead of the real thing? Shapiro: We’re focusing specifically on DNA variants that are in both of our dire wolf fossils, and we know what they do. That’s one of the other really good things about working with dire wolves. We know a lot about grey wolves. Everyone has their own favorite grey wolf. Mine is right here. Because of that we have lots of information about DNA sequence variants and what they do. We know a lot about what causes eye color, hair texture and thickness and density. When we see particular variants in the dire wolf genome, we can predict with confidence what they’re going to do. One of the benefits of starting with the dire wolf project is that–it’s not easy at all, but it’s simpler than some of our other announced species as far as getting to a predictable phenotype. Obviously we want a healthy animal that expresses these traits that have been extinct. Finding a way to get there using DNA and genome editing, and then cloning, is going to be hard with every animal, but with some animals there are steps that we’re better at already. VentureBeat: With a woolly mammoth being so different from an elephant today, would that task be bigger? Colossal Biosciences brought the dire wolf back from extinction. Lamm: They’re really not. Asian elephants are 99.6% the same genetically as woolly mammoths. They’re actually more closely related to mammoths than they are to African elephants. Shapiro: The challenge with elephants is that we know a lot less about elephants than we do about grey wolves. We know a lot less about elephant animal reproductive biology than we do about grey wolf reproductive biology. We have partners in elephant sanctuaries, elephant conservation organizations on the ground. We’re developing new tools and protocols that will benefit elephant conservation as we learn about what we need to do to make our mammoths. But with grey wolves, a lot of that was already known. We could ride on the shoulders of scientific research that’s happened over the last several decades. For the animal reproductive biology part, that is, not the ancient DNA part, which is brand new. We had to do that ourselves. VentureBeat: That reproductive biology seems pretty interesting in itself, the idea of interspecies gestation. Is that not rocket science so much? Shapiro: It’s hard. But the surrogates for our dire wolves were large domestic dogs, hounds. Domestic dogs have, in the past, birthed grey wolves. They’ve never birthed dire wolves before. But because they’re so genetically similar to each other, we predicted that this would be–it’s not one of the many challenges. We’ll have challenges like that when we move to, for example, the dunnart and the thylacine. They’re more distantly related. We’ll get there. Interspecies cloning has happened before, including things as distantly related as the two different camel species, the one-humped camel and the two-humped camel. It’s just harder. As this technology gets better, it’s also benefiting conservation more broadly. We want to develop technologies to have common species be able to be surrogates for rare species or more endangered species. Again, this is another way that Colossal’s work is contributing to developments that have real utility for conservation. VentureBeat: From here you do go to enable them to breed among themselves, to repopulate? Lamm: We’ve made three. We’re probably going to make another three to five more so we get the right pack dynamics. They live in a 2,000-acre ecological preserve with 10 full-time care providers. They live a seemingly wild life. Six and a half acres of that is a sub-preserve where we have animal husbandry, an animal hospital, storm shelters, natural dens and whatnot, feeding, all that stuff. That’s where they live today. Long term, we’re in talks with MHA Nation and other indigenous people groups that relate them to great wolf in their mythology, in their cultures and their oral traditions. They want them potentially back on their own land. We’re working with them on a potential long-term rewilding plan back to, once again, very secure expansive ecological preserves. VentureBeat: This is a funny question for a serious subject, but I can think of some sheep that would rather not see the dire wolf back. How do you think about that? Lamm: We keep them very separate. There’s a whole lore about wolves in general. But interesting enough, only .02% of wolves ever attack anything livestock-related. It’s very rare. If that ever happens, it’s subsidized by the government. Not that it’s a good thing, but the wolves are–our goal is to never put the wolves back near ranching-type communities. VentureBeat: I don’t know if this is an ethical issue or just an ecosystem issue, but bringing things back that are gone–does that carry with it some decisions about what you ought to do? If you brought a tyrannosaurus back, there are parts of the ecosystem that wouldn’t appreciate it. That’s an extreme example, but I do wonder how you think about these things as you go about the work. Ben Lamm holds one of the dire wolf pups. Shapiro: Our goal for de-extinction is to create technologies, and that includes species that are able to help ecosystems that are threatened because of things that people have done to them today, whether extinction or continued decline, to be able to stabilize. When we make a decision about what species to bring back, we have to understand that there’s a place for them to go, that we’ve corrected whatever wrong it was that caused them to become extinct – like rats with the dodo on Mauritius – and that there are communities of people that want these species here. The dire wolf project was launched after long collaboration and conversation with our indigenous partners, who see this as a culturally important species. They’re willing and would like to become stewards of the species in the long term. There’s a lot of thought that goes into choosing a species for de-extinction. As we do this, we’re developing technologies that we will be able to apply directly to protect and preserve species that are still alive. Some people are always going to be fearful of any sort of new technology. Not even a biotechnology, but any new technology. It’s important that we remember that if we decide not to reach into the trenches of human ingenuity and come up with these new tools and apply them, that’s also an active choice. It’s not just passively saying, “This is too scary. I won’t do it.” It’s an active choice that has consequences. We know what those consequences are. Half the species that are alive today are in danger of becoming extinct in the next 50 years. Habitats around the world are changing at a rate faster than evolution can keep up. If we don’t develop and deploy these technologies, the future will be much less biodiverse than it is today. That’s not a risk I’m willing to take. VentureBeat: Were you all into science fiction when you were younger? Lamm: I was always into science fiction as a kid. I’ve always loved building technologies that are in the future, for sure. I’ve always been fascinated with the concept of de-extinction. VentureBeat: I’ve been fascinated lately with the intersection of things like entertainment, technology, and science fiction. Lamm: We need wins, right? We need people to be excited about technology. We live in a 24-hour news cycle. We’re not reaching kids that much. If we can inspire the next generation, that’s great. VentureBeat: Is there a way that you can also profit from this? What is the ultimate business you think Colossal Biosciences can enable so that you can keep on doing this? Lamm: From a technology perspective, we’ve already spun out three companies. Two of them we’ve announced. One is Breaking, our plastic degradation company. Our first was Form Bio, our computational biology firm for human health care. We’ve done a good job of monetizing the technologies. We’re solving very complicated genome engineering tools and building very complicated solutions to reading ancient DNA. DNA is simply comparative genomics. Embryology and multiplex editing, being able to edit a lot of the genome at the same time. It’s a very powerful thing that we’re working on. It has hundreds of millions of dollars of economic value, in the technologies alone, for human health care. We can easily subsidize our work for conservation. VentureBeat: Conservation gets the benefit of those profitable technologies. Lamm: Right. All the technologies we make on the path to de-extinction, we make them available for free for conservation. In addition to that, we also launched the Colossal Foundation, colossalfoundation.org. In addition to the $435 million we raised for Colossal, we also raised $50 million for our foundation. VentureBeat: At this point, then, does it feel like you’re in a self-sustaining enterprise? Lamm: We have no problem raising capital right now. That’s a good thing. As long as that continues, we’ll be in a good spot. VentureBeat: Have you gotten any interesting feedback? Whether it’s kids or– Lamm: Every single week we get kids sending stories to us. Shapiro: Lots of drawings. Lamm: We get drawings from kids and parents. We get letters from teachers thanking us. They’re inspired. We get a lot of great feedback. We’re bringing more awareness to conservation. Any time you can inspire kids, bring back species that have cultural importance to indigenous people groups, and make technologies to save species from this mass extinction we’re currently in, where we’re going to lose up to 50% of biodiversity, it’s a massive win. I’m inspired by the combination of all that. Cloning is a key element of bringing back extinct species. Shapiro: I’m just excited to finally be able to tell people about this. VentureBeat: How long was it a secret for you? Lamm: It was 18 months to October, and then another six months. Shapiro: A two-year secret. VentureBeat: Was there ever any government crossover with this? Lamm: The Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, just put out a statement on X about us. They’re endorsing our work on dire wolves, as well as acknowledging that de-extinction is critical technology for conservation. We’ve been educating the Department of the Interior on the power of these technologies for conservation. VentureBeat: How do you keep the dire wolves surviving from here, and not going extinct again? Lamm: We have them in a managed facility, that 2,000-acre expanse of ecological preserve. They live there with 10 full-time caretakers. Beyond that, any rewilding project–if you look at Yellowstone wolf rewilding, or some of the stuff that’s happening in Europe, or some of the world we’re doing with the Tasmanian tiger in southern Australia and Tasmania, it’s a very stage-gated process. They will be under some form of managed care. It may take five to 10 years to fully reintroduce them back into the wild in a managed way. The dire wolves at one month. VentureBeat: What else looks promising, or what else is coming next for you? Lamm: We’ll continue to work on our three flagship projects: the woolly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger, and the dodo. We’re making tremendous progress. Based on the success of the dire wolf, we’ll probably look to add additional species on the avian side, as well as on the mammalian side, over time. VentureBeat: How are we doing at finding fossils of everything now? Lamm: They’re not really fossils, because fossils are rocks. But there’s actually a decent amount of ancient DNA, in various forms. It’s constantly a roll of the dice to see what we get. Occasionally we get nothing. Occasionally we get a lot more than we expected. VentureBeat: Do you ever find anything in amber, like in Jurassic Park? Lamm: Amber is actually a terrible material for preserving DNA. It’s very porous. VentureBeat: Did you have to attempt more than one generation to get to the three dire wolves? Lamm: We were done in one generation. VentureBeat: So it’s not as if any attempts started and died. Lamm: No, no. We spent a lot of time on the computational analysis to identify the edits. We spent a lot of time on genetic engineering. We spent a lot of time on quality control and sequencing on the back end. The dire wolf at five months old. VentureBeat: What kind of hardware was behind the computation? Lamm: We use a bunch of computational analysis with a bunch of external partners for compute, some cloud and some internal. We’ve built a lot of AI models. Without the intersection of these synthetic biology tools, AI, and access to compute in the cloud, this would be an impossible project. A lot of it’s human thinking, though. One thing we have, which is in the pictures, is a laser-assisted–this is some of the technology we had to build. We built a laser-assisted somatic cell nuclear transfer system. We use lasers to drill holes in the outer shell of the embryo so that it’s less hard on the DNA when we do DNA extraction and the insertion in the somatic cell nuclear transfer process. VentureBeat: When you think of some of the hardest problems that are out there, where would you put this as far as the scale of difficulty? Lamm: I’d argue that this is the moon landing of genetics. This is insanely hard. We took a 13,000-year-old tooth and a 73,000-year-old skull and we made puppies. We did it in 18 months. When you think about that–we understand what genes made a dire wolf a dire wolf. I said this in my quote, so I’m not trying to paraphrase, but it’s magic. It really is. What’s funny is, we’re only a couple of years old. We just launched the woolly mouse, which was the precision germline edited animal, multiplex animal in the world until now. We’re scaling the technology up quickly. We’ll continue to hopefully make advancements that keep the world happy. VentureBeat: Is there a species you can think of that, if you brought it back, could save the world? Shapiro: The technology is there to save the world. There’s not a single species out there that would save the world, unless humans went extinct. Shapiro: Ecosystem restoration. Stopping the loss of biodiversity, or at least slowing it. Using evolutionary innovation–we have a project with collaborators in Australia where we’ve taken a cell line from a quoll, which is an endangered little carnivorous marsupial. It’ll probably become extinct within the next 10 years without this technology. They eat cane toads, which were introduced to Australia, and they die from the cane toad toxin. We and our collaborators have made a version of the quoll that includes a single change to a protein sequence that evolved in an animal that lives on the other side of the planet that eats toxic cane toads. We put it in the quoll and they can eat the toxic cane toad and not die. It’s that sort of technology, that innovation–we’re discovering what a gene does, transferring that to a different species, and making an animal out of that. Lamm: That one single nucleotide change, one letter in the genome, conferred 5,000 times the resistance to cane toad toxin. VentureBeat: There was Dan Brown’s book Origin, which was about AI concluding that humans were too much of a threat to the Earth to allow them to survive. Maybe if the AI knew about you guys it might not have felt the same way. Shapiro: I think we have a pretty poor track record, as far as being good or bad to the Earth as a species. Maybe we need more training data. This is the entry of some new training data into the model. Eventually we might not be the bad guys. GB Daily Stay in the know! Get the latest news in your inbox daily Read our Privacy Policy Thanks for subscribing. Check out more VB newsletters here. An error occured.

TechTarget and Informa Tech’s Digital Business Combine.TechTarget and InformaTechTarget and Informa Tech’s Digital Business Combine.Together, we power an unparalleled network of 220+ online properties covering 10,000+ granular topics, serving an audience of 50+ million professionals with original, objective content from trusted sources. We help you gain critical insights and make more informed decisions across your business priorities.Report: Nintendo is delaying the Switch 2 in ChinaReport: Nintendo is delaying the Switch 2 in ChinaRumblings of delays in China come after Nintendo scrapped pre-order plans in the United States and Canada.Diego Arguello, ContributorApril 9, 20252 Min ReadImage via NintendoConsumers in China will seemingly be made to wait to get their hands on the Switch 2.According to a report from Nikkei, Nintendo is indefinitely delaying pre-orders in the region to assess demand levels in the notoriously tough-to-crack (and highly regulated) market.It would mean the Switch 2 might not land in China on June 5, 2025—as will be the case in Japan, Europe, and other regions.Unlike the pre-launch delays in Canada and the United States, where pre-orders have been pushed back while Nintendo gets to grips with tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump, the latest curveball is reportedly due to government regulations in China.Nikkei (via a Resetera translation) states that sales of the Nintendo Switch, which was released in China in 2019, have been sluggish due to government regulations that limit the number of games available. This has reportedly led Nintendo to adopt a more measured approach with the Switch 2.It also claims the popularity of mobile games in the region is another factor giving Nintendo pause for thought—with consumers in China reportedly less likely to invest in a game console.According to Chinese firm Gamma Data, the Chinese market was valued at 325.8 billion yuan ($44.4 billion) in 2024."The hurdles to success in China remain high," Gamma Data chief analyst Wang Xu told Nikkei. "They need to improve the consumer experience while complying with government policies, and there is also the issue of whether they will be able to introduce major international software."Related:In China, Tencent has been the primary distributor for the Switch and its software. The company declined to comment on the situation when approached by Nikkei.Last year, Nintendo and Tencent announced the Switch eShop will be closing in China on May 15, 2026.Game Developer has contacted Nintendo for comment.Read more about:Nintendo Switch 2TencentAbout the AuthorDiego ArguelloContributorSee more from Diego ArguelloDaily news, dev blogs, and stories from Game Developer straight to your inboxStay UpdatedYou May Also Like

TP-Link’s Tapo D225 Video Doorbell Camera comes with perks like free local recording. One of our favorite doorbells, TP-Link’s Tapo D225 Video Doorbell Camera, is on sale for just $79.99 ($20 off) at Amazon. That’s a buck shy of its best price. A lot of video doorbells come with extra hidden subscription fees if you want to make the most of them, but this one doesn’t. It lets you record video to a microSD and offers smart alerts for people, packages, pets, and vehicles. You can use it hardwired if you want 24/7 video monitoring or, if you prefer, with a battery pack. Running off batteries would allow you to place it where you might not already have existing doorbell wiring, but removes the constant video recording option. The Tapo D225 can also call your phone when somebody presses the doorbell, even if you don’t have the app installed, which should make it harder to miss a visitor.  Aside from offering perks rivals typically charge extra for, the 2K-capable Tapo D225 has a clear camera with a wide 180-degree field of view that can show your entire porch. It’s a bit chunky, and you can’t really use your existing chime, but it’s a great buy at this price. Read our TP-Link Tapo D225 Video Doorbell Camera review.

Sony has published the list of PlayStation Plus Game Catalog additions for April 2025, revealing a lineup of games that includes highlights like Hogwarts Legacy, Blue Prince, Battlefield 1, and more.All of the newcomers were detailed in a PlayStation.Blog entry posted on the site today. It confirms a list of eight titles set to arrive for PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium subscribers starting April 10, with more PS4, PS5, and Classic games trickling in as the month rolls on.PlayStation Plus Game Catalog members starting at the Extra tier receive access to six titles, two of which launch with the service on day one. Those are Dogubomb’s critically acclaimed puzzle adventure Blue Prince, which launches April 10, and Lost Records: Bloom & Rage Tape 2, which launches April 15.PlayPlayStation Plus Premium subscribers can also look forward to two old-school titles: Alone in the Dark 2 and War of the Monsters. You can see the full list of games coming to the PlayStation service, along with the dates they’ll be made available, below.PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium Game Catalog Additions – April 2025Hogwarts Legacy | PS4, PS5Blue Prince | PS5Lost Records: Bloom & Rage Tape 2 | PS5EA Sports PGA Tour | PS5Battlefield 1 | PS4PlateUp! | PS4, PS5PlayStation Plus Premium Game Catalog Additions – April 2025Alone in the Dark 2 | PS4, PS5War of the Monsters | PS4, PS5For more on Sony’s online gaming service, you can check out all of the titles added to the lineup in March 2025 here. You can also check out which games Essential tier subscribers gained access to for this month.Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

A Minecraft Movie has finally emerged from development hell, only to be greeted by a strangely familiar reaction. Despite critics mostly loathing it, the video game adaptation quietly and confidently went on to set box office records. The whole thing has also triggered arguments about who gets to criticize kids’ entertainment and about how some things are simply “for the fans.”  While it’s pretty tough to call A Minecraft Movie “good” in the classical sense of the word, its quality is probably the least interesting thing about the project. The far more fascinating development is that films like A Minecraft Movie and 2023’s Five Nights at Freddy’s have gotten younger fans of those franchises into movie theaters by pandering to them with memes, familiar names, and references so deep that filmmakers are happily breaking the fourth to include the YouTubers that play these games. It’s a level of fan service rarely seen outside of an anime series beach episode.  Yet I can’t help but be a little jealous of the ways younger fans are celebrating these movies that were so clearly made for them. For decades, I largely resented the live-action video game movies I grew up with and echoed the chorus that often referred to some of them as the worst movies ever made.  Granted, most of the criticisms directed toward the four most notable live-action gaming adaptations of the ‘90s—1993’s Super Mario Bros., 1994’s Street Fighter and Double Dragon, and 1995’s Mortal Kombat—were valid then and now. These movies were not secret cinematic masterpieces, and it’s not like A Minecraft Movie strays so far from them in terms of quality. They were born from a time when there was no concept of what a video game movie “should be.” That lack of a formula or even a collective expectation for what a safe, profitable version of these movies should look like was all the excuse their filmmakers needed to get really weird with it.  Super Mario Bros. features Dennis Hopper playing a dinosaur-descended humanoid dictator chasing a rocket shoes-aided Bob Hoskins across a fungal-covered cyberpunk dystopia—all while Luigi is depicted as the cool one. Street Fighter sees Raul Julia feasting on the scenery while Jean-Claude Van Damme flexes an American flag tattooed across his Brussels muscles. Mortal Kombat dares to ask, “What if Enter the Dragon had a techno house music soundtrack and a four-armed monster being punched square in the scrotum?” Double Dragon includes a scene in which Alyssa Milano force feeds a mutated thug spinach before locking him in a dingy bathroom.  If you are lucky enough to find the time to watch any of those movies today, you’ll likely come away from them saying, “It’s incredible that this thing exists.” It’s impossible to imagine anything like these movies being made in the 2020s, especially if we’re talking about adaptations of established properties primarily targeted at younger viewers. They’re horny, violent, bizarre, and often made by people who didn’t even have to pretend to be fans of these IPs during press tours because nobody had any expectations that they would be.  And for that alone, they are often delightful. They are, at the very least, a cathartic antithesis to what such adaptations have become. As our own Joe George pointed out, A Minecraft Movie is often at its most endearing when it’s at least trying to do something unusual, even if it doesn’t quite stick the landing. By comparison, those ‘90s live-action video game movies are 90+ minute testaments to the raw entertainment value of seeing what you can get away with when you’re playing with house money. They’re filled with veteran actors turning in delightfully villainous performances, genuine attempts to push ‘90s special effects beyond their reasonable limits, and in the case of Double Dragon, an explosion so massive that it reportedly prompted emergency calls from nearby residents. It’s often difficult to tell what these movies’ creators were going for, but you can’t watch these movies and present a good-faith argument that they weren’t going for it all the same.  Even the common argument that these movies weren’t true to their source material often feels reductive in retrospect. We’re talking about movies based on eight and 16-bit worlds that weren’t exactly blessed with the rich narrative and deep lore we come to expect from many modern games. The directors and writers of these films conceivably labored under the delusion that they were being true to what little material their sources offered. Putting Bob-ombs and Bullet Bills in Super Mario Bros. or sneaking the Double Dragon arcade machine into Double Dragon the movie was as genuine an attempt at pandering as what we see in A Minecraft Movie.  To be fair, you also shouldn’t try to paint these movies with the same broad brush in terms of their accuracy. Street Fighter may have jettisoned the whole global fighting tournament concept, but it did its best to fill the movie with familiar faces, much to the detriment of its plot and pacing. Mortal Kombat remained the gold standard for accuracy in a game adaptation for quite some time. That’s largely because of its director’s increased familiarity with a franchise that had actual lore and worldbuilding to work with. It struck a balance between staying accurate and expanding a thin game concept into a full-length film that arguably never really became the standard for such adaptations.  Still, we shouldn’t let these creators off the hook for their mistakes, nor should we completely dismiss the fundamental flaws of these projects. Super Mario Bros.’ directors were clearly more interested in making something along the lines of Blade Runner, Mad Max, or Tim Burton’s Batman than a Super Mario Bros. movie that appealed to that series’ mostly childhood fanbase. They allegedly even tried to insert more scenes involving strippers into the film before those were wisely edited out.  Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! Indeed, the most common theme you find in those ‘90s video game movies is the unshakable feeling that they were made by people who would have rather been working on anything else. Instead they used familiar names and big budgets as an excuse to stealthily pursue their own projects.  All these years later though, I find that trait strangely endearing. These movies were made by people who believed their job was to translate popular video games through the medium of film. Even if they knew those properties well enough to simply pander to young audiences, they didn’t seem particularly interested in doing so. But by taking the path of most resistance, they exhibited the “figure it out” mentality that is responsible for the best and worst of the Hollywood that was—and which has all but disappeared at a time when safe bets have made it easy to romanticize a time when bad movies were at least interestingly bad.  The video game movies of the ‘90s made people scratch their heads and wonder who these things were meant for. They certainly didn’t seem to be made for kids, they rarely spoke to fans, and critics and parents practically convulsed at their mere mention of them. Strangely, it feels like these movies were made for us right now. They’re perfect for adults with vague nostalgia clogging their hearts like cholesterol and a growing appreciation for the charming fallacies of the human-driven creative process. They remind us of a time when someone looked at the hottest video game property in the world and thought, “Everyone is going to love watching Bob Hoskins get his rocket boots from a woman named Big Bertha in the back of a dingy dystopian nightclub called the Boom Boom Bar.” Thirty-plus years later, they’ve finally been proven right

It’s April in Milan, which means Design Week and Salone del Mobile, when designers, architects, editors and makers flock to the city for the biggest and most influential of international furniture fairs. Over the course of a week, ELLE DECOR and its sister publications—25 global editions among them—honor the best of the best in the design and architecture industry with the ELLE DECO International Design Awards (EDIDA); nominees and winners across 15 categories are chosen personally by the editors in chief of each publication. From outdoor furniture to tableware and more, read on to learn about this year’s winners and enjoy the best design has to offer in 2025.1DESIGNER OF THE YEAR: FAYE TOOGOODGiorgio PossentiJust last year we marveled at this multi-talented designer who had teamed with Poltrona Frau to make the seductive Squash chair. “I’d never worked in leather,” Toogood told us then. “It’s the first time that I created something soft; I’ve worked a lot in hard materials. That was a challenge for me.” Now, Toogood is being celebrated as designer of the year for the breadth of her work that spans furniture, accessories, and even clothing. Toogood is known for soft shapes (think squishy, like the chair) and raw materials (think stone slab seating), and painterly shapes, as seen in her collaboration with cc-tapis on Rude rugs. “The last two years I've put a lot of my energy into furniture actually, less into interiors, but it goes in ebbs and flows,” says Toogood. “Inspiration is so deep and so layered and if I think about for me it goes all the way back to my childhood.”2YOUNG DESIGN TALENT OF THE YEAR: ANDRÉS REISINGERGiorgio PossentiWhen we first caught up with the Argentinian digital artist (based at the time in Barcelona), in 2021, he was already making waves by creating cross-genre works for companies like Apple, Microsoft and Samsung. Now, Reisinger is honored for the depth of his scenographic architecture and dreamy imagined environments, both digitally and physically rendered. “I’m not trying to make a chair that is beautiful or will fit into your color scheme,” he told us. “Comfort isn’t the goal. I want people to react to the objects in their environment, be challenged, change their behavior.”Advertisement - Continue Reading Below3INTERIOR DESIGNER OF THE YEAR: PIERRE YOVANOVITCHGiorgio PossentiThis ELLE DECOR A-List titan’s work is inspired by days spent fashioning menswear. Based in Paris, the self-taught designer works on residential, hotel, restaurant, and even set design projects and is known for a mix of meticulous detail, soft lines, vibrant colors, and natural materials like wood, stone, and marble––for example, his 17th-century chateau in Provence––complemented by bespoke furniture––see this apartment he designed––and international art––just visit his gallery.4SUSTAINABLE ACHIEVEMENT: ‘100R’ BY HYDRODesigned by seven international designers, including Inga Sempé, Max Lamb, and Philippe Malouin, the ‘100R’ project by Hydro explores the use of industrial-scale extruded aluminum, made entirely from post-consumer waste with low carbon emissions. The collection features furniture and accessories with unique shapes and colors as proof that a commitment to sustainability can generate endless creative potential.Advertisement - Continue Reading Below5BATHROOM: FORMATION 02 SMART TOILET by SAMUEL ROSS for KOHLERGiorgio PossentiNot just a toilet but a mindset, we were immediately wowed by the Formation 02, and Ross, whose background is in illustration and product design. The toilet, which began as a drawing, comes with philosophical underpinnings made public in a manifesto. “It’s just the way that I work,” Ross told us last year. “Like, how do we kind of break this down into its component parts so that people can follow the journey with us?” The toilet’s seemingly rudimentary design merges advanced technology, employing ultra-modern molding techniques, with a brutalist aesthetic and sophisticated functionality.6BEDDING: SPHERICAL BED by KAARE KLINT for CARL HANSEN & SØNGiorgio PossentiOriginally presented in 1938 at the Danish Cabinetmakers’ Autumn Exhibition as part of A Lady’s Boudoir, the bed faced criticism for being designed for a woman living alone—to which Klint famously responded that “the world could do with more elegance and love.” Inspired by the proportions of the human body, each bed requires wood from a single tree and demands a full month of meticulous handcrafting.Advertisement - Continue Reading Below7FABRICS: AME by TERUHIRO YANAGIHARA for KVADRATGiorgio PossentiAme, meaning ‘rain’ in Japanese, is made from recycled textile waste. This upholstery fabric—Kvadrat’s first fully textile-to-textile recycled product—mimics rain-like patterns of traditional sashiko stitching that once gave new life to farmers’ worn garments. It comes in earthy shades evoking Kasane no Irome, an imperial court tradition of layering fabrics to reflect seasonal color changes.8FLOOR COVERING: JARDINS DU MONDE by TATIANA DE NICOLAY for JAIPUR RUGSGiorgio PossentiInspired by the serene Albert Kahn garden in Paris, these hand-knotted and hand-tufted wool rugs feature motifs inspired by natural landscapes from around the world, from Japanese Zen gardens to green English meadows and French floral gardens, along with forests, mazes, waterways, and pagodas. Behind each rug is made by Jaipur Rugs' network of 40,000 artisans—85% of them women—across 7,000 looms in rural Rajasthan. 9FURNITURE: STRIA TABLE by ANDREA MANCUSO for NILUFARGiorgio PossentiPart of Mancuso’s celebrated work for Milan’s Nilufar Gallery and inspired by nature, this table offers a new take on the traditional ‘terrazzo’ technique by arranging linear fragments of marble into a mesmerizing mosaic that mimics nature’s patient artistry—each tabletop and leg appears to have been shaped by centuries of geological pressure rather than human hands.10KITCHEN: MANTLE by PATRICIA URQUIOLA for SIGNATURE KITCHEN SUITEGiorgio PossentiThis free-standing modular piece is a versatile fixture that incorporates appliances and functional spaces, with advanced technology creating an unusual decorative piece. Its doors, clad in Cimento tiles made from natural materials, give the design a sculptural feel.Advertisement - Continue Reading Below11LIGHTING: LIGHTMASS^ by RAW-EDGESGiorgio PossentiLIGHTMASS^ by Raw-Edges is a collection of sculptural lights—including pendants, floor, and table lamps—that are a poetic exploration of light, color, and materiality. Each item, a 3D-printed ‘skeleton’ made from a mixture of sustainable bioplastics and bipolymers, is designed to appear as if floating in mid-air, evoking a sense of weightlessness and quiet wonder. Whoever said your lighting didn’t have to, itself, be in the limelight?12SEATING: ERNEST by JEAN-MARIE MASSAUD for POLIFORMGiorgio PossentiThe Ernest sofa, designed by Jean-Marie Massaud for Poliform in 2024, embodies a radical approach to comfort through its modular design and soft, deconstructed volumes reminiscent of down cushions. The sofa's structure, made up of three separate parts, combines wood and molded flexible polyurethane with down inserts in the seat and backrest, allowing configurations ranging from small, linear arrangements to expansive L-shaped compositions. But our favorite part about the Ernest sofa is its low-lying profile with concealed feet, creating a floating appearance that enhances its contemporary elegance.Advertisement - Continue Reading Below13TABLEWARE: PEZZENTE by GIO PONTI for VENINIGiorgio PossentiPezzente, designed by Gio Ponti for Venini, is a masterful expression of poetic imperfection rendered in blown glass. The collection was first created in 1946, featuring bottles and glasses crafted with a novel technique of hot-applied colored glass ‘patches’ to transparent surfaces. 80 years later, Venini brings this until now unrealized project to life in a tribute to the artist’s craftsmanship and creativity. Its name, meaning "pauper" in Italian, nods to a deliberate embrace of simplicity and restraint, and a quiet rebellion against opulence.14WALL COVERING: EGYPTOMANIA by LOUIS BARTHÉLEMY for BALINEUMGiorgio PossentiThis collaboration between French artist Louis Barthélemy and Balineum is a vibrant collection of hand-painted ceramic tiles that captures the essence of contemporary Egypt while honoring its rich historical tapestry. Drawing inspiration from ancient frescoes and hieroglyphics adorning Egyptian temples and tombs, as well as the evocative work of French photographer Denis Dailleux, Barthélemy brings to life scenes of elegant figures, playful animals, and lush natural motifs.Advertisement - Continue Reading Below15OUTDOOR: EOLIE by GORDON GUILLAUMIER for RODAGiorgio PossentiThe Eolie collection, designed by Gordon Guillaumier for RODA, is a modular outdoor furniture line that includes sun loungers, coffee tables, and gazebos. The design features wide wooden slats and offers customization through natural or painted finishes in desaturated shades of orange, green, and blue. Eolie's versatile components can be combined to create personalized "islands of comfort," making it suitable for terraces, poolside areas, or seaside retreats.

As Apple continues to grow the catalog of immersive video content for Apple Vision Pro users, we’re now learning more about the production process of this content. In a new interview on the Voices of VR podcast, Kent Bye was joined by Ant Williams, a freediving athlete featured in the “Ice Dive” episode of “The Adventure Series” immersive video show. In the interview, Williams describes the process of shooting the episode, which was a collaboration between Apple Studios and Atlantic Productions: I got contacted by Atlantic Productions, who were looking to make something really unique for the Vision Pro with their adventure series. But they couldn’t tell me back then. They were just like, ‘we can’t tell you who this is for or what it’s for, but we want to go and shoot something under the ice. Are you up for that?’ And I remember thinking at the time, ah, not really. Yeah. Like I got my record, I’m retired. And there are these freedivers that are based up in these Nordic countries who are full-time freedivers who specialize in ice diving. Go and talk to them. So I was really convinced that they wouldn’t choose me, but somehow they liked my story. Williams also shared some details on his reaction when he found out the footage would be shot in Apple’s immersive format: I remember the day that Charlotte Mikkelberg, the director of this adventure series, said to me, ‘okay, well, this is for Apple and it’s immersive format.’ And I was like, wait, wait, wait, what? This sounds incredible. And she explained to me when people get to watch this, it’s not like they’re watching a film and it’s like they’re immersed completely with some of their senses. And they’re going to feel like they’re sitting down next to Johnny coaching you as you’re doing a training swim. They’re going to be next to you while you’re preparing your final breath for this swim. And it’s going to be so immersive that they’ll have a strong emotional reaction to it. I kind of took it as, ‘oh yeah she’s just putting some spin on this.’ But now that I’ve experienced watching it, it’s the most powerful thing I’ve ever experienced in VR. You can listen to the full podcast on the Voices of VR website. Add 9to5Mac to your Google News feed.  FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.You’re reading 9to5Mac — experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Don’t know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel

During his confirmation hearing in front of Congress today, incoming NASA administrator and billionaire fighter jet pilot-turned-SpaceX astronaut Jared Isaacman took a notable turn away from the private space company that enabled both of his trips into orbit.Members of the Senate Commerce, Science and Technology committee overseeing the proceedings repeatedly questioned Isaacman over his conflict of interest — and his relationship with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.After all, the optics of a wealthy individual with a close relationship with one of NASA's biggest contractors is bound to raise some eyebrows. Just this week, House Democrats kicked off investigations into Musk's conflict of interest, probing whether he was using the space agency to enrich himself.When asked if Isaacman had been in touch at all with Musk to privately discuss matters at NASA, Isaacman had a resounding answer."Not at all, senator," he said.Isaacman used today's meeting to head off any concerns that his cozy relationship with Musk's firm won't get in the way, a major contention point that's been brewing ever since Trump appointed him."I want to absolutely be clear," he added. "My loyalty is to this nation, the space agency, and their world-changing mission.""They're the contractors, NASA is the customer," he also said. "They work for us, not the other way around."Isaacman invoked the relationship between private entities and NASA's leadership during its groundbreaking Apollo program over half a century ago to argue that the agency had always valued an outsider perspective."I have to imagine that in the 1960s, [NASA administrator James Edwin Webb] would've taken phone calls and welcomed the input from all the various contractors that were contributing to the endeavor."Isaacman also threw his weight behind NASA's existing Artemis program, which Musk has previously described as a "distraction" and "extremely inefficient."It's a notable deviation. If it were up to Musk, the agency would ditch its extremely expensive and behind-schedule Space Launch System (SLS) rocket in favor of SpaceX's Starship, and fly straight to Mars instead.When asked if Isaacman supported the agency's SLS and Artemis mission architecture, he chose his words carefully."Senator, this is the current plan," he said. "I do believe it's the best and fastest way to get there."However, Isaacman left the door open for future missions, possibly involving SpaceX."I don't think it's the long-term way to get to and from the Moon and to Mars with great frequency," he said, faintly echoing Musk's claims that an entire city could be built on Mars using 1,000 Starships.During his statement, Isaacman repeatedly motioned to the crew of four NASA astronauts, who are scheduled to travel to and around the Moon as part of the agency's Artemis 2 mission, who attended today's hearing."But this is the plan we have now and we've gotta get this crew around the Moon, and the follow-on crew to land on the Moon," he added.During the event, Isaacman also pointedly broke with Musk on the fate of the International Space Station."We need to squeeze every bit of life that is remaining on the International Space Station," he said, "so we can crack the code on the space economy and better hand off those responsibilities to the commercial industry."More on Isaacman: Incoming Head of NASA Defies Elon Musk on Order to Abandon Moon ProgramShare This Article

Apr 09, 2025Ravie LakshmananApplication Security / Vulnerability The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Tuesday added a critical security flaw impacting Gladinet CentreStack to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-30406 (CVSS score: 9.0), concerns a case of a hard-coded cryptographic key that could be abused to achieve remote code execution. It has been addressed in version 16.4.10315.56368 released on April 3, 2025. "Gladinet CentreStack contains a use of hard-coded cryptographic key vulnerability in the way that the application manages keys used for ViewState integrity verification," CISA said. "Successful exploitation allows an attacker to forge ViewState payloads for server-side deserialization, allowing for remote code execution." Specifically, the shortcoming is rooted in the use of a hard-code "machineKey" in the IIS web.config file, which enables threat actors with knowledge of "machineKey" to serialize a payload for subsequent server-side deserialization in order to achieve remote code execution. There are currently no details on how the vulnerability is being exploited, the identity of the threat actors exploiting it, and who may be the targets of these attacks. That said, a description of the security defect on CVE.org states that CVE-2025-30406 was exploited in the wild in March 2025, indicating its use as a zero-day. Gladinet, in an advisory, has also acknowledged that "exploitation has been observed in the wild," urging customers to apply the fixes as soon as possible. If immediate patching is not an option, it's advised to rotate the machineKey value as a temporary mitigation. Found this article interesting? Follow us on Twitter  and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post. SHARE    

It takes a lot of actors to populate an entire galaxy, and sometimes it’s really reassuring to see a familiar face in an alien world populated by creatures whose heads look like burnt taffy. Plus, after nearly 50 years of films, television shows, comic books, and an endless collection of merchandise, an entire generation of actors (not to mention, y’know, half the population of Earth) have grown up loving Star Wars and wanting to be a part of it in some way.The result: A slew of famous faces have popped up in Star Wars through the years; some in early blink-and-you’ll-miss-them supporting roles prior to their elevation to A-list status, and some in blink-and-you‘ll-miss-them supporting roles they got specifically because they’re big-name talents who are such huge fans of Star Wars they would gladly accept a one-off walk-on role for the chance to be a part of this franchise they love. (Can you blame them? Who wouldn’t want to play a water-monger who pisses off Boba Fett? That’s an actual dream come true.)For the proof, check out the list below, which contains 19 big movie and TV stars (plus one very famous musician) who have appeared in Star Wars movies and television series in roles so brief or inconsequential that you probably forgot they even happened. But they did; the history of that galaxy far, far away is vast and intricate.20 Actors You Forgot Were in Star WarsREAD MORE: 12 Actors Who Were Wasted in Bad Star Wars RolesGet our free mobile app10 Actors Who Turned Down Star Wars Roles