While denying he ever changes his mind, Trump has now said he helped out Apple with tariffs because of conversations with Tim Cook.Trump (right) at the 2019 meeting when he praised "Tim Apple" — image credit: AppleIt's up there with night follows day, but Trump has now effectively confirmed that it was after speaking with Tim Cook that he changed his tariffs. His statement has to be defined as effectively, because he was typically unclear and attempting to sound as if he were sticking flawlessly to his original tariff plan."Look, I'm a very flexible person. I don't change my mind, but I'm flexible," he said to reporters while officially meeting with El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. "And you have to be." Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

Kelly Hayes-McAlonie, the current Director of Campus Planning for the State University of New York at Buffalo, has received the 2025 AIA Award for Excellence in Public Architecture. She is credited with founding the AIA’s game-changing Architecture + Education program in 2000, and, more recently, published a biographical sketch on the life of the largely overlooked Louise Blanchard Bethune—who became the first female AIA member in 1888—at the culmination of nearly twenty years of research. She was also cited for her K-12 outreach and other collaborations for public monuments in Western New York.

After a hyped gameplay reveal this weekend, Bungie’s Marathon has been the subject of much discussion. There’s praise and mixed reactions for its look, skepticism over the gameplay, and more than enough questions about the pricing, especially since it has a Battle Pass. Marathon isn’t free-to-play, and though Bungie didn’t outline how much it would (with more details due this Summer), it confirmed that this won’t be a full-priced title. But what motivated the developer to avoid the free-to-play route? On the Friends Per Second Podcast (transcription via VGC), director Joe Ziegler said, “We’re hoping that what we’re showing is exciting enough that someone is going to take the leap with us, but we are also committed to delivering on seasons past this that will continuously offer to evolve the game without an increase to the box price. “What we’re hoping everyone understands is that we’re focused on committing to making this a game that’s really awesome, and we think that starting point is really strong at this current time. Everyone’s got their own definition of what is the right price.” Of course, everyone also has their own definition of value for money. Marathon will launch with three maps and six playable Runners. A fourth map arrives shortly after, and while there are big plans for seasonal adventures, Bungie has admitted that the narrative is sparse out of the gate. Whether all this is enough for players remains to be seen. Marathon is out on September 23rd for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. The closed alpha runs from April 23rd to May 4th.

html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd" [Sponsored] To mark the official release of its new Houdini plugin – and its new free edition – Zibra AI reveals how its ZibraVDB volumetric compression technology, also available for Unreal Engine, is shaking up real-time VFX for virtual production, game development and CGI work. A recent wave of restructurings across major VFX studios — including Technicolor, MPC, The Mill, and Jellyfish Pictures — has sent shockwaves through the industry, highlighting the growing need for more agile, modern production pipelines.Studios face shrinking budgets, tighter timelines, and an ever-growing demand for visual effects that can be rendered or tweaked almost instantly. Legacy OpenVDB workflows, with their heavy storage needs and offline-only approach, simply aren’t designed for real-time iteration, limiting their role in evolving production models like virtual production. These problems become painfully clear on virtual production sets, where teams require high-fidelity effects in real time rather than relying on slow, resource-intensive CGI workflows. ZibraVDB offers a future-aware way to render complex volumetric effects in real time without eternal scene processing and enormous hardware requirements. It could be the next standard in OpenVDB workflows for virtual production, gaming, and beyond, dealing with emerging industry problems and establishing efficient new processes at studios around the world. Why ZibraVDB real-time volumetrics are the future Volumetric effects once relegated to offline processes can now run in real time, thanks to ZibraVDB. The technology has already been adopted by Dimension, ILCA, and other industry leaders, and SideFX supports ZibraVDB in its SideFX Labs add-on tools for Houdini. ZibraVDB doesn’t just modernize volumetric data handling: it redefines it for the era of immediate feedback and budget-conscious production. With near-instant preview and iteration, you can incorporate high-fidelity effects in-camera on set, rather than being tethered to an expensive post-production stage. Powerful file compression for volumetric data As the demand for real-time workflows rises, studios need to rethink their pipelines to stay competitive and cost-efficient. ZibraVDB compression reduces the size of traditional OpenVDB files by up to 98%, drastically cutting down storage requirements and bandwidth overhead.What’s new in ZibraVDB Recent developments have expanded ZibraVDB’s accessibility. Right now, our focus is on widening access and offering deeper flexibility with: An extended trial for indie creators The new free version of ZibraVDB now offers up to five compressions for free, making it possible to convert up to five VDB sequences into .zibravdb format. This means that smaller teams can test real-time volumetrics without up-front licensing fees. It’s ideal for those on the fence, or simply curious about bridging offline and real-time pipelines. Houdini integration in every subscription The Houdini plugin is included in the standard subscription, ensuring that everyone can use ZibraVDB for advanced volumetric effects directly within the leading procedural software, and bringing an instant drag-and-drop workflow between Houdini and Unreal Engine.ZibraVDB Studio subscriptions for custom development and support For larger companies needing an even more tailored approach, ZibraVDB Studio subscriptions offer enterprise-level flexibility. This includes custom feature development, offline licensing, high-touch support, and SDK integrations that adapt to a range of specialized workflows.Whether you’re dealing with substantial data sets or more complex real-time requirements, this tier ensures you have direct support, pipeline consulting, and flexible licensing to match enterprise-scale needs. More details about our offerings for studios and indie artists can be found here. ZibraVDB: the next step in virtual production and gaming These advantages resonate powerfully in virtual production, where compressed data keeps GPU loads light and enables real-time rendering by removing bandwidth bottlenecks. Filmmakers and on-set artists can tweak atmospheric or pyrotechnic effects in seconds, letting them finalize complex shots without endless back-and-forth. CGI pipelines see parallel gains: large files move easily across networks, speeding up work on multiple render nodes. While data is compressed, shifting or archiving assets becomes simpler. This is especially crucial for remote teams or those relying on cloud servers. In gaming, developers can compress volumetric effects for real-time usage, enabling cinematic-quality clouds, fog, or fire to appear without ballooning build sizes. And it’s not just for cutscenes any more: ZibraVDB can also be used for live gameplay. ZibraVDB represents a bold move forward, offering seamless real-time volumetric rendering for virtual production, efficient OpenVDB compression for CGI, and optimized asset sizes for games, cementing its position as a new standard in OpenVDB workflows. With flexible pricing options and extensive opportunities for studios, it is the last missing piece in the Unreal Engine pipeline. Visit the ZibraVDB website for more information on the new pricing and features

New Research Archaeologists Unearth Intricately Decorated Altar That May Have Been Used for Ancient Sacrifices in Guatemala Discovered in the ruins of Tikal, the altar sheds light on strained relations between the Maya city and Teotihuacán—which was located more than 600 miles away  An artist's rendering of the altar Heather Hurst / Brown University An intricately decorated altar that may have been used for child sacrifices has been found in the ruins of Tikal, an ancient Maya city located in present-day Guatemala. Researchers say it illustrates an ancient clash between cultures. The rectangular altar was built around the late fourth century, according to a study published this week in the journal Antiquity. Its painted panels of red, yellow and black depict a figure wearing a feathered headdress and dangling circular earrings beside objects that may be royal shields. The figure “closely resembles other depictions of a deity dubbed the ‘Storm God’ in central Mexico,” according to a statement. Based on the altar’s design, researchers hypothesize that its creator was a highly skilled artisan from Teotihuacán, located in present-day Mexico—more than 600 miles away from Tikal. Known today for its ancient Pyramids of the Sun and Moon, Teotihuacán once housed over 100,000 people, while Tikal’s population peaked at around 10,000. The two cities were trading partners. But tensions developed in their relationship, especially when people from Teotihuacán started to move into the area around Tikal. The rectangular altar is nearly six feet long. Edwin Román Ramírez / Brown University “The growing sense of things is that rather than just a few folks coming down from central Mexico to sort of trade or interact at Tikal, they were more deeply embedded in the politics and the daily life,” co-author Andrew Scherer, an archaeologist at Brown University, tells Ailsa Chang of NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Historians have been studying the ancient cities’ contentious relationship since the mid-20th century, when they unearthed an inscribed stone detailing some of the tensions at play. It revealed that around 378 C.E., leaders from Teotihuacán exerted control in Tikal. “They removed the king and replaced him with a quisling, a puppet king who proved a useful local instrument to Teotihuacán,” co-author Stephen Houston, an anthropologist at Brown, says in the statement. The newly discovered altar was built during this time. Several years ago, lidar surveys revealed that a small replica of Teotihuacán’s citadel lies just outside Tikal’s center. This research suggested that the people of Teotihuacán had occupied Tikal and were surveilling the city in the years before they took power. The newly discovered altar is the latest piece of evidence for Teotihuacán’s domination of Tikal. A limestone temple at Tikal Brown University “What the altar confirms is that wealthy leaders from Teotihuacán came to Tikal and created replicas of ritual facilities that would have existed in their home city,” Houston adds. “It shows Teotihuacán left a heavy imprint there.” Teotihuacán residential complexes were often made of rooms surrounding a central altar—just like the one found in Tikal, as co-author and excavation leader Lorena Paiz tells the Associated Press’ Sonia Pérez D. Researchers think the altar was used for human sacrifices, “especially of children,” Paiz adds. “The remains of three children not older than 4 years were found on three sides of the altar.” Teotihuacán thrived between 100 B.C.E. and 750 C.E., while Tikal’s peak came between 600 and 800 C.E. Both societies conducted sacrificial rituals as part of their spiritual practices. The new discovery may be “the strongest evidence we have to date, possibly of [Maya] people who were deeply familiar with Teotihuacán culture,” co-author Edwin Román, who leads the South Tikal Archaeological Project, tells Agence France-Presse. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Comcast is introducing the option to choose a five-year price guarantee when customers sign up for a new Xfinity Internet package.Read More

"Major" Nintendo supplier warns Nintendo Switch 2 will be subject to 145% US tariffs Tech tariffs continue to confuse suppliers and consumers alike Image credit: Nintendo News by Vikki Blake Contributor Published on April 14, 2025 According to internal assessments by a "major Apple and Nintendo supplier", game consoles in the US will still be subjected to the 145% tariff on goods imported from China. In an assessment seen by Nikkei Asia, the supplier intimated that consoles like Nintendo's highly anticipated Switch 2 will likely not be exempt from tariffs, even though reports over the weekend suggested tech goods like PCs and smartphones could be spared the additional levy. That's because US President Trump has now confirmed Chinese-made electronics will not be exempt but simply moved to a different tariff "bucket," which means hardware created in China - including Sony's PlayStation 5 consoles - and PC tech by Apple, HP, Dell, Lenovo, and more, will likely still be impacted. Consequently, key tech suppliers are rapidly moving production outside China since the Trump administration took office, although right now, the majority of Nintendo Switch 2 consoles are still manufactured in China. As we've learned over the last week or so, this is a rapidly changing situation and may be subject to change, but we'll keep you updated as best we can. Nintendo Switch 2 pre-orders were delayed from April 9 to May 8 in the US due to the evolving situation of US President Donald Trump's "reciprocal" tariffs on imported goods. The console's launch date of June 5 has not changed. Find out why contributing editor Rob Fahey thinks tariffs are an industry nightmare, but digital games seem safe – for now. Even before the furor with tariffs, GamesIndustry.biz spoke to analysts about why Switch 2 prices are so high and how inflation and other factors may have resulted in this decision.

OpenAI has introduced GPT-4.1, a successor to the GPT-4o multimodal AI model launched by the company last year. During a livestream on Monday, OpenAI said GPT-4.1 has an even larger context window and is better than GPT-4o in “just about every dimension,” with big improvements to coding and instruction following. GPT-4.1 is now available to developers, along with two smaller model versions. That includes GPT-4.1 Mini, which, like its predecessor, is more affordable for developers to tinker with, and GPT-4.1 Nano, an even more lightweight model that OpenAI says is its “smallest, fastest, and cheapest” one yet. All three models can process up to one million tokens of context — the text, images, or videos included in a prompt. That’s far more than GPT-4o’s 128,000-token limit. “We trained GPT‑4.1 to reliably attend to information across the full 1 million context length,” OpenAI says in a post announcing the models. “We’ve also trained it to be far more reliable than GPT‑4o at noticing relevant text, and ignoring distractors across long and short context lengths.” GPT 4.1 is also 26 percent cheaper than GPT-4o, a metric that has become more important following the debut of DeepSeek’s ultra-efficient AI model. The launch comes as OpenAI plans to phase out its two-year-old GPT-4 model from ChatGPT on April 30th, announcing in a changelog that recent upgrades to GPT‑4o make it a “natural successor” to replace it. OpenAI also plans to deprectate the GPT-4.5 preview in the API on July 14th, as “GPT‑4.1 offers improved or similar performance on many key capabilities at much lower cost and latency. ” GPT-4o, the current default model in ChatGPT, was updated last month to bring new image-generation capabilities to the chatbot, which proved so popular that OpenAI had to limit requests and put access to free ChatGPT accounts on hold to prevent its GPUs from “melting.” The GPT-4.1 reveal confirms our report from last week about OpenAI preparing to launch new models, and marks a pivot in the company’s release schedule. On April 4th, CEO Sam Altman announced on X that the GPT-5 launch was being pushed back and should now arrive “in a few months,” later than the May deadline that was previously expected. Altman says that the delay is partly because OpenAI “found it harder than we thought it was going to be to smoothly integrate everything.” OpenAI is also set to debut the full version of its o3 reasoning model and an o4 mini reasoning model any day now, with references having already been spotted in the latest ChatGPT web release by AI engineer Tibor Blaho.

After a small leak last week, EA has confirmed the title of its next Star Wars game, as well as who's making it. It's called Star Wars: Zero Company, and it's being developed by Bit Reactor with support from Lucasfilm Games and Respawn.The first and only (so far) official art for Zero Company.We don't know much more about Zero Company, except that it be a "single-player turn-based tactics game". We won't have to wait long for more information, though, as EA says it will be giving a first look at the game on April 19 at Star Wars Celebration in Japan.Developer Bit Reactor is a newly-formed strategy game studio made up of veterans from games like XCOM, Civilization, Gears of War, and Elder Scrolls Online. The studio was founded in 2022, and we've known for a while now that it was working on a Star Wars game with Respawn, but this is the first time we've received any real details about the project.As for Respawn's involvement, it's not 100% clear exactly how involved the studio is. Respawn has undergone a number of difficult challenges lately, including the cancelation of its own Star Wars FPS one year ago alongside mass layoffs at EA, and the cancelation of another multiplayer FPS incubation project just last month.More about Star Wars: Zero Company will be revealed at a live panel on Saturday, April 19 at 4:30pm local time in Japan...which is unfortunately 12:30am PT and 3:30am ET over here in the U.S., so set your alarms accordingly.Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

For the second weekend in a row, Warner Bros.’ A Minecraft Movie defied its original and relatively humble expectations when the film topped the box office with an impressive $80.6 million haul. That’s barely 50 percent down from its $162.7 million debut last weekend, and both figures tower above WB’s original projection for its debut of around $60 million—a lowball number commensurate with studios wanting to damper expectations, but also evidence that no one really understood how big this thing could be, even the studio that greenlighted it. It’s also remarkable for a movie which critics, including our own, have mostly torn to shreds. Yet the actual quality of the movie appears mooted at this point. Barely a week old, what’s become most interesting about A Minecraft Movie is how folks, young and old, are reacting to its success—and perhaps to one another. The definition of a boilerplate kids movie based on a popular brand that’s been shoehorned into the “hero’s journey” narrative (or: an IP movie), Minecraft has left parents and the print publications they subscribe to reeling. “Audiences Are Trashing Theaters, Causing Chaos” lamented one industry trade; “Three Zoomers Dissect How They Really Feel About the Blockbuster,” observed another with the inferred curiosity of an anthropologist studying a primitive and backward culture; and even Jack Black commented on the apparent epidemic of “kids these days” trashing theaters when he surprised an audience over the last weekend to tell them, “No throwing popcorn! And absolutely no chicken jockeys!” To be clear, we are in no way condoning the abuse of movie theaters or their staff in order to create viral social media engagement. And yet, there appears to be something deeper and more familiar going on with all the editorial pearl-clutching and side-eying directed toward young audiences jumping up and down when Black’s character says the much memeified line of “I am Steve,” or indeed utters the words “chicken jockey” onscreen: adults just don’t get what the hell their kids are seeing in this junk. This is a good thing. Indeed, there was a time, maybe not even a full generation ago, where there were movies aimed at children, and movies aimed at adults. And they were not considered one and the same. Furthermore, when adults would indulge in their nostalgia and go see something like, say, Star Wars, they were expected to pick up on the joke that George Lucas was doing a riff on Casablanca in the Mos Eisley cantina, or that Han Solo was a tropey scoundrel played to the hilt by a charismatic actor. In other words: they didn’t take it that seriously. The kids who grew up with those movies did, of course, as many of us are wont to do in our youth. But then each generation has had its own stories that leave their parents confused. In my case, it was probably the absurdly named Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Or perhaps it was Pokémon, a video game and Japanese anime property that defied physics and logic when its “pocket monsters” were transmuted inside little balls, from which they’d only be released in order to seemingly duel to the death. “Is Pikachu a boy or a girl?” I recall being asked by my folks. Pikachu is whatever Pikachu wishes to be identified as! (Rock on, Wokémon.) For the record, the first TMNT movie of 1990—and the two that came after—were loathed by critics as well. They warned fellow parents that it “will not enrich your child’s worldview” and optimistically daydreamed that “the cynicism of the motion picture industry will be apparent to any child who is exposed to the many product plugs for a nationwide pizza delivery company.” But that was high praise when compared to how The First Pokémon Movie was greeted in 1999 by the Guardian’s Peer Bradshaw: “This film is humourless, boring, impenetrable and with animation of such staggeringly low quality that it constitutes an insult to cinema goers of all ages.” None of which is to say those critics are wrong. Pokémon: The First Movie is relentlessly mediocre. The first TMNT has perhaps more going for it than middle-aged critics in 1990 gave it credit for, but that movie also features a scene of a rat puppet performing ninjutsu. There is a high degree of silliness and derivativeness to it that adults with no nostalgic attachments will be able to buy into. Nor should they. This is not to say kids movies are above criticism or reproach. Demanding more from a family film is what produces true multigenerational classics like, say, E.T. or The Lion King, versus flash in the pan fads like… ‘90s relics of the Pokémon, Powers Rangers, and TMNT variety. What is healthy, however, is the ability for kids to have their thing, and adults to feel the need to not subscribe. For all the TikTok-friendly spectacle of obnoxious audiences going nuts for a bizarre chicken wearing a mask derivative of a 90-year-old Frankenstein movie, it is important to recognize these sights are exceptions, not the rule, of how the vast majority of young audiences are watching Minecraft. And it’s a relief that they have something their parents do not understand. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! Because for going on for more than 20 years, parents in the Gen-X and Millennial brackets have generally attempted to not only show kids their favorite childhood movies and TV shows: they’ve attempted to force the next generations to relive them with an often inflated and overbearing sense of awe: Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Ghostbusters, Marvel or DC. Hell, even Ninja Turtles and Pokémon. If you grew up with it in the ‘80s and ‘90s, then some studio has almost certainly attempted to expand it into a cinematic universe at this point, and parents have attempted to relive their childhoods while watching onscreen Zoomers and Gen-Alphas stare admiringly at their old stuff. It should be noted this play is now leading to diminishing returns. Consider that as Marvel Studios struggles to hit the heights of popularity they previously knew via Captain America: Brave New World and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania that someone who was born the year the first Iron Man came out would now be high school age. If they were born the year that Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man set the tone for the modern superhero genre, they’re old enough to drink and have finished four years at university. This stuff is just getting long in the tooth. And studios attempting to scapegoat the blame for their Snow White failures on a 23-year-old star’s social media feed and not the fact that the IP they dusted off is older than most modern kids’ grandparents is… dubious. If adult audiences want to relive the glory days of their youth, perhaps a big part of that is returning to a healthier moviegoing environment where kids are free to have their own stories—no matter how mindless or creatively barren they might be—and parents can scratch their heads and then see movies meant only for adults. It’d be a nice change of pace from continuing to demand the cinematic equivalent of “kids, gather around and hear what real music sounds like…”