Mario Kart World is Nintendo Switch 2's biggest launch title, with a hefty price tag to match – here's how to watch Nintendo's live stream for the game, showcasing all of its new featuresTech10:07, 17 Apr 2025Updated 13:08, 17 Apr 2025Fans have gone wild for the arrival of the Cow as a playable racer(Image: Nintendo)Nintendo is counting on Mario Kart World to help sell the Switch 2, packing a digital download in with the new console.We got to play the game on the new hardware at a hands-on event last week, and it looks very likely that Mario's latest racing adventure will help shift millions of systems, marking a generational leap from the already excellent Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.‌While Nintendo gave us a full Switch 2 reveal last month, we're set for a fresh broadcast from the company later today which will showcase Mario Kart World in all of its glory – here's when and how to watch, and what to expect.The event kicks off at 2pm UK time, or 6am PT/9 am ET. You can find it on YouTube above, which is currently showing a placeholder.Article continues below"Join us on April 17 at 6 a.m. PT to learn more about Mario Kart World for Nintendo Switch 2 in the Mario Kart World Direct. The livestream will be roughly 15 minutes," the video description explains.As for what to expect, a good chance we'll see some new tracks – potentially including Rainbow Road, which recently leaked.Start your engines - Switch 2 isn't that far away(Image: Nintendo)‌Fans have been going wild for the new 'Cow' playable character, so we reckon we may even get some more surprising faces added. After all, Mario Kart World allows for up to 24 players per race, double that of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on Switch 1.Nintendo also needs to do its best to convince gamers on the fence that the new game is worth the investment, especially since if you buy it without the console, it'll set you back £75. With that in mind, we're hopeful of seeing more of the open world sections where players can explore – especially since we didn't get to see that in our hands-on playtime last week.Article continues belowHere's what we said: "While we weren’t able to explore the open world or dig for any secrets just yet, I was able to play both docked and in handheld mode. Both support up to 120 FPS, and even if that means nothing to you, if you’ve played any amount of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe then the visual step up in both resolution and smoothness is immediately noticeable."For more on Nintendo Switch 2, check out our dream ports for the system — including Monster Hunter, Death Stranding, and even Halo.For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters.‌‌‌

Small rewards and a change of scenery can help

If you were hoping to score a brand new TV for real cheap during Amazon’s Big Spring Sale, you haven’t run out of time just yet. Even though event is over, you can still save a ton on a TV as Amazon still has some of its deal prices active. The 43″ Amazon Fire TV 4-Series which supports 4K resolution and HDR had its price drop to $210. That’s a 43% discount, down from $370 and saving you a whole $160 on your big purchase. It’s also an all-time low price for the model. Additionally, you can save 33% on the 50″ when you buy it for $300 or save 40% on the 55″ when you buy it for $310. For spending just barely over $200, what you get with this smart TV is pretty darn impressive. It’s a full 43″ which is pretty sizable for a lot of rooms and it can play media in 4K. Not only that, it supports vivid HDR 10 along with Dolby Digital Plus. With it, you’ll get a beautiful picture quality. It won’t knock your socks off or anything, but it will look perfectly serviceable without anything to compare it against. So I guess just don’t place an OLED TV directly next to it in your living room. See at Amazon As far as ports are concerned, the Amazon Fire TV 4-Series has four different HDMI ports. This gives you a ton of options so you can flip between your game consoles or cable box without replacing wires. It also supports HDMI arc so you can hook up a sound bar over HDMI if you would like. It also supports an optical connection. Alexa-Enabled The Amazon Fire TV interface supports a wide range of your favorite apps from Netflix to Disney+ to Peacock to, of course, Prime Video. Between everything, you can enjoy access to more than 1.5 million movies and TV show episodes, plus millions of songs depending on what you are subscribed to. You can even manage your smart home of devices using the Alexa right from your TV. Start video calls, check on your Ring camera, and more right from the couch. I personally love being able to use Alexa with the remote so I can find a particular movie without having to type it in with the arrow keys into an on-screen keypad. I just say, “My Cousin Vinny” into my remote and the next thing I know, I’m listening to Marisa Tomei yell at Joe Pesci about his pants. Right now, you can still get the Amazon Fire TV for its all-time low price of $210 (43% off). No telling when the price will go back up so act fast before it’s too late. See at Amazon

Urban Green Island / OpenFieldsSave this picture!© Flavio Palasciano Architects: OpenFields Area Area of this architecture project Area:  50 m² Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  2023 Photographs Photographs:Flavio Palasciano Lead Architects: Mark Balzar, Zeynep Aksöz More SpecsLess Specs Save this picture! Text description provided by the architects. The Summerstage, located in Vienna's Museum Quarter, redefines public space as an evolving platform that adapts to both social and climatic conditions. More than just a stage for performances, it is an inclusive urban island, transforming a previously overlooked transit zone into a welcoming and versatile environment. It serves as a resting place for the homeless, a vibrant gathering spot for diverse communities, and a stage for events ranging from Pride performances and DJ sets to philosophical discussions and literary readings. By fostering coexistence, it challenges conventional urban design, encouraging shared experiences across different social groups.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!One of the biggest challenges in realizing the project was the extremely short timeline—only three months for design, development, and construction. To navigate this constraint, we developed a parametric design-to-fabrication system, allowing real-time design updates while automatically generating fabrication drawings for the steel manufacturer. This ensured a seamless transition from concept to realization while maintaining precision and efficiency.Save this picture!Save this picture!The stage is structured into three distinct zones: an urban garden where fruits and vegetables grow seasonally, inviting public participation; a meadow with tall grasses, offering a sense of nature within the city; and an intimate stage that encourages spontaneous gatherings and performances. By integrating greenery into the urban fabric, the project promotes environmental awareness while enhancing public well-being.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Constructed from a lightweight steel framework combined with wooden elements, the stage was designed for durability and adaptability. Budget constraints influenced the implementation of certain sustainable features, such as solar panels and self-sustaining irrigation, which have been reserved for future upgrades. However, the project successfully demonstrates how modular design and careful material choices can create a lasting impact within limited resources.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!The Summerstage embodies an open, flexible design strategy that merges digital precision with traditional craftsmanship. It is not a static object but an evolving structure that fosters interaction, sustainability, and community engagement. By transforming an underutilized plaza into a vibrant space of exchange, it offers an alternative vision for urban resilience—one that prioritizes inclusivity and shared experiences in the heart of the city.Save this picture! Project gallerySee allShow less Project locationAddress:Museumsquartier Vienna, AustriaLocation to be used only as a reference. It could indicate city/country but not exact address.About this officeOpenFieldsOffice••• MaterialSteelMaterials and TagsPublished on April 17, 2025Cite: "Urban Green Island / OpenFields" 17 Apr 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1028857/urban-green-island-openfields&gt ISSN 0719-8884Save世界上最受欢迎的建筑网站现已推出你的母语版本!想浏览ArchDaily中国吗?是否 You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream

Send Particle Systems from Boris FX Optics to Photoshop to add effects. Use simple strokes to define and refine selections, adjust challenging edges, and seamlessly convert your work into an editable path. // K E Y P O I N T S // * 100s of Presets: Boris FX Optics has hundreds of particle presets you can add to your photo compositions. * Composition Style: Change the composition style to send particles over by themselves to Photoshop. * Add Effects as Smart Filters: Add any Photoshop effect non-destructively to Optics particles using smart filters. * Editable Particles: Easily send particles back to Optics for further refinement. // U S E F U L L I N K S // Find out what Optics has to offer: https://borisfx.com/products/optics/ Learn all Optics with free videos : https://borisfx.com/videos/?tags=product:Optics&amp ;amp;search= // D I S C O R D C H A N N E L // https://www.borisfxdiscord.com/ #optics #photography #borisfx

Ask any geologist about the magma reservoir beneath Yellowstone, and they’ll tell you that it’s there. But where, exactly, is a lot tougher to explain.A new paper published in Nature suggests, however, that a team of researchers has finally found the exact location of the upper boundary of Yellowstone’s magma reservoir. Locating the top of the chamber and characterizing its contents, the research reveals important insights into the future activity of the volcano at Yellowstone, indicating that the volcanic system is unlikely to erupt any time soon.Read More: 5 Things You Might Not Know About VolcanoesRevealing the Yellowstone Magma Reservoir Though the existence of the magma reservoir beneath Yellowstone has been well-established, its location and contents are a lot less clear. That’s because researchers have long struggled to pinpoint the precise location and the exact contents of the chamber’s upper portion, which have important implications for predicting the future activity of the volcano.Setting out to precisely map the top of the chamber for the first time, the authors of the new paper sent artificial seismic vibrations through the subsurface beneath Yellowstone. They then used a network of portable geophones to map the subsurface. The seismic reflection images that resulted revealed that the upper boundary of the magma reservoir sits at around 3.8 kilometers (about 12,500 feet) beneath Yellowstone’s surface, and that it is filled with a mixture of solid and molten rock and gas, the latter exsolved (or released) from the magma.“The depth of 3.8 kilometers is important,” said Jamie Farrell, a paper author, a geologist at the University of Utah, and the chief seismologist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, according to a press release. In fact, that depth tells geologists information about the volcano’s future threats. “We know what pressures are going to be and how bubbles are going to come out of the magma,” Farrell said in the release.While bubbles of exsolved gases are an important factor in explosive eruptions, they aren’t accumulating at Yellowstone today. “One thing that makes these eruptions so devastating is that if gases are trapped, they become very explosive,” Farrell said in the release. But most of the gases beneath the volcano at Yellowstone are not trapped, emerging through geothermal features at Yellowstone’s surface.“When the magma rises from the deeper crust, volatile materials such as CO2 and H2O exsolve from the melt. Due to their buoyancy, they tend to accumulate at the top of the magma chamber,” said Fan-Chi Lin, a paper author and a geologist at the University of Utah, according to the release. “But if there’s a channel, they can escape to the surface.”Read More: 5 of the Most Explosive Volcanic EruptionsVibrating the VolcanoTo trace Yellowstone’s magma chamber, past research has turned to the University of Utah’s array of permanent seismograph stations, which monitor seismic activity throughout Yellowstone. Readings taken from these seismograph stations after earthquakes have helped scientists map Yellowstone’s magma chamber in the past, albeit blurrily, leaving the precise limits of the magma chamber unknown.As such, the paper authors looked to the readings of 650 portable geophones scattered around Yellowstone’s roads, which revealed its seismic activity in sharper detail. They then induced seismic activity themselves, using a Vibroseis truck to send artificial vibrations through Yellowstone’s subsurface in 110 separate locations.“In a sense, we’re causing our own earthquakes, and we record all that data on the seismometers,” Farrell said in the release. “And since we put so many out, we can get a higher resolution image of the subsurface.”Rendering seismic reflection images from the readings, the paper authors identified the chamber’s top and contents. While around 86 percent of the top portion of the reservoir is composed of solid rock, around 14 percent is composed of pore spaces, they found, which contain molten rock, liquid, and gas.“That helps us understand more about the heat engine that’s powering Yellowstone and about how melt is distributed. That can have ramifications for how we perceive the volcanic hazard,” said Mike Poland, the scientist in charge at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, according to the release. “Yellowstone in many ways is a laboratory volcano, and what we learn at Yellowstone can be used to better understand volcanoes in other parts of the world that are a lot more active, but are harder to study.”Article SourcesOur writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:Sam Walters is a journalist covering archaeology, paleontology, ecology, and evolution for Discover, along with an assortment of other topics. Before joining the Discover team as an assistant editor in 2022, Sam studied journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 The prevailing consensus in astrophysics is that the universe has spent the past 13-or-so billion years expanding outward in all directions, ever since the Big Bang. It’s expanding at this very moment, and will continue to do so until… a number of possible theoretical endings. Meanwhile, the specific rate at which the universe is growing remains a longstanding point of contention known as the “Hubble tension.” However, there may be a way to finally ease that tension—you just need to put a slight spin on everything. In simplest terms, the rate at which the universe expands on paper doesn’t match actual astronomical observations. That speed—called the Hubble Constant—is measured in units of kilometers per second per megaparsec (km/s/Mpc), with a megaparsec measuring about 300,000 light years. The most widely accepted theoretical model, the Lambda/Cold Dark Matter model (ΛCDM), says the universe is growing at 67-68 km/s/Mpc. But what astronomers see through their equipment is a little faster, at about 73 km/s/Mpc. And therein lies the Hubble tension. In a study published in the April issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a team of researchers including experts at the University of Hawai’i’s Institute for Astronomy argue that introducing a miniscule amount of rotation to standard mathematical model of the universe may provide the way to align both expansion theories.said in a statement. “Even better, it is compatible with other models that assume rotation.” In addition to its mathematical compatibility, the concept also doesn’t break any of the known laws of physics. The problem is detecting this spin, given just how slowly the universe may be turning. But while it is difficult to discern with current tools, the spin is  still fast enough to influence the expansion of space over the eons. Szapudi and their colleagues’ new model indicates the universe finishes a single rotation once every 500 billion years—meaning there’s still quite a bit of time before the universe completes its first full circuit. “To paraphrase the Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus, who famously said ‘Panta Rhei’ (everything moves), we thought that perhaps ‘Panta Kykloutai,’ everything turns,” said Szapudi. Looking ahead, astronomers hope to construct a full computer model of the universe based in part of their new theory. From there, they will hopefully be able to pinpoint signs of cosmic spinning to search for among the stars.

Nature, Published online: 17 April 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-01191-zModels estimate the ginormous potential impact of foreign-aid cuts.

New research suggests that the unexpected intensity of the ongoing solar maximum may be partly tied to a lesser-known, 100-year solar cycle. If true, solar activity could spike further in the coming decades. But some experts are skeptical.

Hi! I've been dabbling on and off with blender for years. A little sculpting here and there mostly but I always got tripped up by anything that didn't feel intuitive. I'm primarily a 2d artist, and I struggle with menus, all the functions, and learning/remembering what nodes do. Lately I've really been enjoying a more "3d sketching" style workflow, and the Deep Paint addons been a lot of fun, especially the GP to mesh features. Blenders gotten SO much more intuitive than when I first downloaded it (2.4 I think? Like I said I only ever dabbled but I have been keeping up with development this whole time lol) Since my knowledge on the technical aspects of blender is still pretty scant, its been a little bit of an uphill battle since I'm stubborn and haven't locked in on that yet, lol. That being said, wanting to make these scenes better has pushed me to learn more than I would have before. I'm mostly making mistakes and learning from them, and learn by running into problems and figuring out how to solve them. Its really fun and satisfying to just be able to draw what I want into a scene. The water was the most fun here. Doing the water effects with grease pencil was delightful. I could draw water ripples all day. I definitely still don't UNDERSTAND blender, but I'm getting to the point where I might be able to understand HOW to understand it, lol. submitted by /u/jackthevulture [link] [comments]