For the first time since the late 1990s Microsoft case, federal trials are weighing antitrust breakups, a tactic that harks back to Standard Oil.

OpenAI has announced a new family of models, GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, and GPT-4.1 nano, which it says outperforms GPT-4o and GPT-4o mini “across the board.” In conjunction with the launch of the GPT-4.1 family, OpenAI also announced that it is deprecating GPT-4.5 Preview in the API. GPT-4.5 Preview will be turned off completely on July 14, 2025, because GPT-4.1 offers similar or better performance for many functions at lower cost and latency, the company said. OpenAI said that the new models have significantly larger context windows than their predecessors—one million tokens, compared to GPT-4o’s 128,000—and offer improved long-context comprehension. Output token limits have also been increased from 16,385 in GPT-4o to 32,767 in GPT-4.1.

From a horror-comedy in Tamil to a magical romance in Malayalam, MAMI Select filmmakers are redefining cinema with iPhone 16 Pro Max.

Four Indian filmmakers in the MAMI Select: Filmed on iPhone project explain how the iPhone 16 Pro Max has helped them to create their short films.MAMI Select: Filmed on iPhone | Image Credit: AppleThe Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image (MAMI) Select: Shot on iPhone is an initiative that empowers filmmakers to "push the boundaries of technology and innovation in film." The program is in its second year.Filmmakers in the MAMI Select: Shot on iPhone program receive mentoring from industry giants Konkona Sen Sharma, Vikramaditya Motwane, Lijo Jose Pellissery, and Vetri Maaran. These mentors have taken four emerging filmmakers under their wings to encourage creativity without the normal conventions of mainstream filmmaking. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

Tulane University has revealed a name change for the new Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment at the end of a major renovation that added 17,000 square feet of education and research spaces to its longtime home in Richardson Memorial Hall. The LEED Silver targeting expansion serves students in seven degree programs with enhanced fabrication facilities, renovated offices and studios, portfolio review spaces, new seminar rooms, a graduate student lounge, and a dedicated art gallery. Third-year undergraduate Alexa Trapani says: "The renovation offers a space for students to finally feel united again." "Architecture will continue to expand into a multidisciplinary approach to improve how we live in and engage with the environment around us. After several years of brainstorming and action in this direction, we have aligned our name with the current and future reality of an evolving industry and how our school has grown to support it," Dean Iñaki Alday said. "Tulane School ...

The PS5 Pro, Sony’s mid-gen refresh for its multi-million-selling ninth-generation console, isn’t even a year old, and rumors have circulated about the PlayStation 6. Kepler, who correctly leaked details about the Pro’s usage of unreleased RDNA 4 features, revealed in September 2024 that the PS6 would have two SoCs. It’s assumed that one would be a portable handheld, and evidence is seemingly mounting about its performance. Regarding whether it would be as powerful as a PS5 if launched by 2028, Kepler recently responded on NeoGAF, “No, it’s a 15W SoC on 3nm.” Naturally, this resulted in several follow-up questions, including the point of the console if it can’t run PS5 games. The leaker clarified that it definitely can, but “not at the same resolution/FPS, mainly due to lower memory bandwidth.” When asked if the performance is between the PS4 Pro and PS5, the leaker responded, “Hard to estimate performance since it’s using an unreleased GPU uarch, but I think it’s somewhere between Xbox Series S and PS5.” Interestingly, the alleged handheld “tapes out” a few months after the regular PS6’s SoC. However, Sony isn’t repurposing existing PS6 chips for the handheld by having less usable CUs. “They’re different SoCs,” said Kepler and the portable is “specially designed to run at very, very low voltages.” They clarified that its CUs are a “lot less than 40” and that it’s a “different SoC” despite sharing “a few things with Soundwave.” Sony hasn’t provided a timeline for the PS6’s launch, though Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Hideaki Nishino has indicated that it won’t be affected by the PS5’s lifecycle.

Super-Sniffing Rat Sets a New World Record for Discovering Deadly Land Mines—and He’s Just Getting Started Ronin, a 5-year-old African giant pouched rat, has found 109 land mines and 15 other unexploded ordnances in Cambodia Ronin the African giant pouched rat is one of more than 100 rats trained by a Belgian nonprofit to sniff out deadly land mines. Guinness World Records / APOPO Former conflict zones are littered with land mines, a type of controversial concealed weapon designed to kill or maim anyone who walks or drives over them. For humans, finding these hidden explosives can be difficult and dangerous work. But for Ronin the rat, sniffing out land mines is a breeze. He recently set a new world record for the “most land mines detected by a rat”—and he’s just getting started. At 5 years old, Ronin will likely keep working for another two more years before he enjoys his well-deserved retirement. Between August 2021 and February 2025, Ronin successfully located all of the mines—109 in total—in the commune of Sror Aem, Preah Vihear, Cambodia, according to Guinness World Records. He also found 15 other unexploded ordnances, such as mortars and grenades. HeroRAT Ronin Breaks Guinness World Records® title Watch on Ronin is an African giant pouched rat (Cricetomys ansorgei) that works with APOPO, a Belgian nonprofit using rats and dogs to help solve some of the world’s biggest problems. In addition to finding land mines, the group’s highly trained animals can detect tuberculosis, locate earthquake survivors and sniff out smuggled wildlife parts like pangolin scales and elephant tusks. The organization trains rats like Ronin—which it calls “HeroRATs”—to smell the chemical compounds found in land mines, while ignoring the odors of scrap metal. After humans equipped with metal detectors clear “safe lanes” on the ground, the rats methodically sniff the areas surrounding the safe lanes until they detect the aroma they’ve been trained to recognize. Then, their human teammates take over, confirming and safely disposing of any detected land mines. Handlers say Ronin loves to eat avocado, as well as bananas and peanuts. APOPO African giant pouched rats are among the world’s largest rats, weighing up to three pounds and measuring between two and three feet from nose to tail. But they’re still light enough to avoid triggering the land mines. They’re also speedy, capable of searching an area about the size of a tennis court in roughly 30 minutes, according to APOPO. It would take a human with a metal detector between one to four days to cover the same ground. Born in Tanzania in August 2019, Ronin has earned a reputation for working hard, while also being friendly and relaxed. When he’s not sniffing out land mines in Cambodia’s Preah Vihear province, he loves to nosh on avocado. He takes the crown from another APOPO rat, a male named Magawa who found 71 land mines and 38 pieces of unexploded ordnance over his nearly five-year career. Magawa, who assisted with clearing more than 2.4 million square feet of land, died in January 2022 at the age of 8. Specially trained rats can detect the smells of chemical compounds found in land mines, while ignorning scrap metal. APOPO Ronin is one of more than 100 rats working with APOPO to suss out land mines. And these hard-working rodents are helping solve a major problem: An estimated 110 million land mines are still lurking in the ground in more than 60 countries around the globe. Cambodia alone, which endured decades of conflict, has between four and six million land mines, according to APOPO. The country has the highest number of mine-related amputees per capita in the world. Over the years, these hidden dangers have killed or injured tens of thousands of people, and they still threaten civilians, including children. In 2023, land mines killed or wounded 5,757 individuals around the globe.Slowly but surely, APOPO and its team of skilled rodents are making a dent in the global land mine problem. Since 2000, the organization has cleared 169,713 land mines and other explosives in war-impacted countries like Cambodia, South Sudan, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Senegal and Ukraine. “When we launched APOPO, the common view was that it would take around 500 years to clear all land mines from the Earth’s surface,” says Christophe Cox, APOPO’s chief executive officer, to CBS News’ Kerry Breen. “Twenty-five years later, there is light at the end of the tunnel, and if the international community fully supports the collaboration of all demining operators, we could clear the remaining minefields in our lifetime.” Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Jagex announced that its open world survival game RuneScape: Dragonwilds is now available in early access on Steam.Read More

Dmitry Kachmar, FounderApril 15, 20259 Min ReadImage via author.Over the last couple of years, we’ve been working with developers and platforms from all over the world to remove barriers in the field of web game publication. Through this journey, our team learned a lot and I want to share some of these findings and organize these highlights in a series of articles. We’re going to talk about the distribution, monetization, and the production of web games.In this first post, I want to discuss HTML5 games and where to sell them. This is our first take on this complex problem, and if you find this useful, keep up to date with the rest of the series.So you have a game, ideally several, and all of them are hosted on one platform. Maybe a couple of platforms. Usually when we talk with developers, these are the reasons they give for choosing specific hosting services:Organic traffic—this platform has a lot of users, who are discovering our game and spend a lot of time with it.A lot of visibility—thanks to the peculiar positioning of our platform we are getting additional eyeballs on our game!No marketing expenses—we do not spend any money on marketing, which is kind of insane in the era of mobile stores and over-saturation. It is, frankly, a dream.Monetization—we are getting revenue right here, right now.Easy—we can create a hyper-casual game in under a month and start earning immediately.Web—everyone using the platform can start playing in no time on any device.No region restrictions—no questions here. It just works where I live.Related:Ok, so this is all fine and dandy, but the question still remains, what do I do with all those games? Do I just keep operating them forever? Well, there’s always some challenges to that, here are just some:The long tail is not long.There’s no way to go but down. We’ve learned this the hard way. Most dev graphs (which they will be very reluctant to show you) will mostly look like this. A spike and then a slow death.Image via author.Difficult moderation & competitionPublishing a new game on our platform of choice is getting more and more challenging. The growth of requirements and restrictions is mostly caused by the growth of competition. There are more and more games being uploaded to the platform every day, and our games are just getting squeezed.CostYou could say, “Well, I’m just going to build a new game, and I will keep building these new games, catching waves and capitalizing on them.” However, building a new game requires time and money. Even if you work alone, it’s still going to take time to do and there’s no guarantee your idea is going to work.Related:UncertaintyThe fourth reason is that you don’t know what’s going to happen. You just don’t. Instead of placing all your eggs in one basket and hoping for the best, why not try to diversify, and help yourself make more money in new places.Let’s sum up. You have a number of games, they are localized in English, and can work on the web. You know they are profitable, you know there’s enough retention and ad views, and you know people like them. So here comes the next question - What can you publish?Where can we publish?I’m not going to waste air persuading you to build games for the web. However, I do want to give you some numbers to use as you see fit to figure out what to publish.Time to develop: 1-3 months. Including testing.Cost: under $10 000.Competition: Monkey Mart (300M plays), Level Devil (83M plays), Stickman Hook (574M plays), Subway Surfers (1B plays).The last row of numbers were taken from the presentation done by Poki rep to the Defold community. Yes, Subway Surfers is there, but the other games on the list are much smaller. They do have good quality though, so remember, when you go big - try to keep up.Where can we publish?I think of the web game distribution market as an inverted pyramid.Related:Image via author/respective brands.There’s the top tier that includes platforms like Poki and Crazy Games. Poki has about 30 million monthly active users (MAU) - this is the metric that is traditionally used to calculate the general audience of the platform. 700 billion gameplays/month on Poki. Crazy Games has similar numbers 30 MAU and 300 million games played monthly.The middle layer is all kinds of other platforms. This includes the likes of Y8, Kongregate, and Newgrounds.And then there are these aggregators, like GameMonetize, GamePix, Game Distribution. GameDistribution for example has over 2000 web publishers on their platform.However, this is just the tip of the iceberg. This inverted pyramid is what the platforms want you to think of the web game market, so you don’t move from that platform. The reality is that under that peak there’s a whole other space for web games that has remained invisible for years.Image via author/respective brands.Again, let me take one moment to break it down.First we have websites. Look at the graph from Statista below. In the year 2021, there were 1.88 billion website launches. All of these websites launch and die, with a large number of them growing, maturing, and slowly decreasing their influence. This last part of their journey is something that we are most interested in!Image via author/respective brands.When businesses understand that their website lifespan is close to its end, they need to find ways to revitalize their user base. Another reason to push them towards games— they need to find new ways to show ads. Games often become a perfect medium for this, attracting users and increasing the return on ad spend (ROAS). This is increasingly becoming part of the strategy for not only smaller websites, but also larger media platforms like The New York Times.Social media platforms, chat platforms, streaming platforms—all of these spaces are embracing games! Discord has games, Viber has games, even Linkedin has games. This is possible thanks to the HTML5, and the way this content could be easily integrated into any online service. Even places like Wikipedia could potentially find a place for games.Note about Mobile StoresApart from these general platforms, there are also web-app stores, like Chrome Web Store, where you can potentially distribute games yourself. For this, you can use packaging tools like Electron. You can also go to mobile stores like App Store and Google Play. Currently there are 250,068 mobile games on Google Play, with the top grossing backed by large publishers with deep pockets.Here’s the math for you. If you publish on mobile, you need to invest at least 25% of the budget into marketing, plus pay a 15-30% service fee for each dollar of revenue. If you choose to sign up with a publisher, be ready for the 30/70 split, where 70% goes to the publisher’s pocket. For many developers this kind of spending is completely impossible.With this in mind, the underlying opportunity seems to be humongous. With billions of websites all over the world and easy seamless integration, why do we keep limiting ourselves to chosen platforms, and not diversifying our distribution?With that out of the way. How do you get to that sweet new audience on the web?Challenges of Self-PublishingOn paper it should be easy. You go to Poki and Crazy Games, they approve your game, and you reap the benefits. However, practitioners will know that almost immediately they will be hit with a refusal, or they will just ignore you and never get back. This happens mostly because of quality issues.Moderation on these platforms is usually being done on two levels: technical compatibility and IP compatibility.Technical requirements are usually fairly rigorous, and require important features like a save system, player progression, ad monetization (banner, interstitial, rewarded), in-game purchases, social features (share, invite a friend, add to favorites, etc.), leaderboards, language and device information, and remote configuration.IP compatibility is an overview of all the content you have in the game. The platform needs to make sure that there is no content that violates IP rights from their legitimate owners. This can be quite restrictive, especially for titles with no original content.It is worth noting that even if you go through the moderation process on one platform, you will still have to do it for the competitors: big and small. The further you go, the lower the requirements become, but the higher the risk that the project will not be making any money.Don’t miss out on the opportunityNo matter how you are going to address these challenges, I would encourage you to do it. The main reason being the longer you wait, the more opportunities you are going to miss. The way the web games are progressing today, they have the potential to become gateways to new markets and amazing new adventures for the industry.How to do it—that’s another question. I see three options so far:You can do it yourself. Get a separate employee, or be that employee, who’s going to attack each and every platform, look at each and every store and aggregator, and try to get there yourself. It’s time-consuming, but you’ll learn a lot.Publisher. Publishers are expensive, you will lose on a lot of money, but if they do pick you up, you will know for sure your game is worth it and you will be making money. But note that the publisher will probably take over 70% of it.Game distribution and monetization platforms. To operate in such a vast and fragmented market, new and efficient tools are essential. At Playgama.com, we're bringing to life this kind of vision—a unified platform that connects the entire web and serves as a gateway to the widest possible network of distributors and platforms worldwide (we talk thousands), both gaming and non-gaming. I believe this is the future, and it’s coming very soon.We enter a new stage in the way entertainment is consumed. This new stage will disrupt not only the way we access games, but also ways we monetize and distribute them. We are at the brink of the huge explosion of opportunity for game developers and publishers. The pie is bigger than you think!Image via author/respective brands.Read more about:BlogsAbout the AuthorDmitry KachmarFounder, Playgama.comSee more from Dmitry KachmarDaily news, dev blogs, and stories from Game Developer straight to your inboxStay UpdatedYou May Also Like

A PDF of Meta’s opening statement slides in its FTC antitrust hearing yesterday contains easy-to-remove redactions that make it possible to see everything the company didn’t want made public, The Verge has discovered.  Thanks to the poor redactions, we can see sections comparing the use of Apple’s Messages app to Meta apps like Instagram and WhatsApp. The original slide displayed only a quote from Apple director of product marketing Ronak Shah describing an iMessage “core use case” allegedly similar to Facebook’s. Another, labeled “Snapchat in 2020: Competitors Are Succeeding and Not Just Meta Apps,” says that “Tiktok, Insta, FB, Messengers and YouTube” are “thriving.” Those aren’t especially juicy details; at most, it looks like someone was just being cautious — or trying to be, anyway — with slides that came from other companies’ internal meetings. But the leak calls to mind mid-2023, when Sony spilled PlayStation secrets by using sharpie to hide information — which let the darker printed ink below be visible under, say, the bright light of a document scanner — in court documents shared in the Microsoft antitrust trial.