With only three months left until the release of Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, Konami has taken to YouTube to share the game's opening movie. In addition to giving us a whole lot of new footage to swoon over, the three-minute clip also features a new recording of Cynthia Harrell's iconic ballad, "Snake Eater." And yes, she still absolutely knocks it out of the park. Though the song is fairly similar to the original recording, the overall mix feels a bit softer this time around, with the bass in particular standing out as less intense. The opening visuals, however, are substantially different. Whereas the original opening featured almost psychedelic visuals and was more enigmatic in tone, the new version focuses on showing off some of the game's most iconic moments, including a pivotal confrontation between Snake and The Boss.That said, you can rest assured that one of the more beloved parts of the opening is being kept intact. According to the video's caption, fans will still be able to enjoy the "interactive elements from the original, included in the in-game version of the opening," such as using the analog stick to control the snakes that appear on screen.Continue Reading at GameSpot

First impressions can go a long way, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 makes sure that they count, leaning into the type of poignancy and gravitas that comes with the dark world its characters inhabit. Hinging on the tragedy of its people's circumstances, Clair Obscur's character introductions are a lens not just into the universal experience of living under the Paintress, but how they each respond differently to it. From its prologue alone, the level of depth that goes into its side characters shows how their respective attitudes might clash, or how they bond together in the face of the Gommage, endearing players to their individual struggles that make the death of the Continent that much more devastating.

The long-awaited, long-teased live-action movie adaptation of Elden Ring is coming, and it’s got a big name attached to it: Alex Garland, the writer-director behind Ex Machina, Annihilation, and Civil War will helm the film. Garland is teaming up with production company A24, which is also backing the Death Stranding movie, for Elden Ring. Publisher Bandai Namco and A24 confirmed their Elden Ring movie is in the works on Thursday. Details on the movie adaptation are non-existent, but Elden Ring lore co-author George R.R. Martin is set to co-produce, according to Deadline. Elden Ring pushed developer FromSoftware’s brand of challenging action-role-playing games forward by dropping players into a true open-world environment, giving them more freedom than past games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne. The game’s story casts players as a Tarnished, a fallen hero who journeys to the dreary Lands Between to restore the shattered Elden Ring and become the region’s new Elden Lord. The game has been FromSoftware’s most successful game to date; in April, the company announced that sales of Elden Ring had exceeded 30 million copies. FromSoftware released an expansion — Shadow of the Erdtree — for Elden Ring in 2024. A multiplayer-focused spinoff, Elden Ring Nightreign, will be released on May 30. Garland’s most recent movie, Warfare, which he co-directed, was released in April to critical and commercial success.

On May 23, the final installment of the Mission: Impossible saga is set to come to an end with Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. Known for its vicious villains, the franchise sports its Biggest Bad yet: an AI known as The Entity that's bent on wiping humans off the planet. Mashable Senior Creative Producer Mark Stetson sat down with the cast (Simon Pegg, Angela Bassett, Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff, and Greg Tarzan Davis) to discuss the film's themes of humanity and friendship and its exploration of the future of AI. First, Simon Pegg, who has played Benji Dunn since Mission: Impossible III — when we first get a hint of The Entity's existence — helped break down the origins of this Big Bad. "Yeah, I mean, the Entity was around in its nascent form a long time ago. It was a malicious code, basically, which itself evolved into what we are up against in Dead Reckoning, in The Final Reckoning. And I love the idea that McQ [Director Christopher McQuarrie] looked back into the past to see where things may have started, where the rumblings of the Entity may have begun. And further back as well, to, obviously, when Bill Donloe was exiled to Alaska."Hayley Atwell, first appearing in the franchise as Grace in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, goes on to discuss film's theme of friendship and humanity in the face of its AI villain. "I feel like the core theme of this film is friendship. So that, of course, the anti-God and and the Entity...is the sort of the villain...the thing that sets up the stakes. But really it's a film about a team coming together and sacrificing personal ambition for the sake of the good of all people. And it's a triumph of the human spirit... It's so, so beautiful and so heartfelt."Finally, Angela Bassett ties the interview up in a really nice bow when asked why it's important to prioritize humanity: "I mean, what do we have left without it? You know, we have to. We're made to be in communion with one another... So even though it's a great tool...we need to keep [AI] in its lane and [make sure] it's [a] benefit to us, not to the detriment of us."Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning opens exclusively in theaters on May 23.

Do you want to save some time, money, and energy? A new robot vacuum can do that for you, week in and week out. There are all different kinds of models out there, including robot vacuums, robot mops, and hybrid versions that both vacuum and mop. No matter what your home needs, chances are there's an early Memorial Day deal for you. That's right – we're currently seeing mega markdowns on some of our favorite robotic household helpers. The sooner you can clean up one of these great deals, the sooner you can cut down on your chore time (and that means more time for summer fun). So, let's take a deeper look at the best on-sale robotic floor cleaning machines, with more to come. iRobot Vacuum DealsEarning our Editors' Choice award for high-end robot vacuums, the iRobot Roomba j9+ boasts strong suction power, camera vision-based navigation, and class-leading obstacle avoidance. Not only is it smart enough to avoid things like pet waste and automatically adjust suction according to dirt levels, but it also learns which areas tend to be dirty and prioritizes those spots first in future cleaning runs. When you combine the exceptional vacuuming performance with the ability to self-empty and ample app features, it's more than worth the high price tag, according to our expert reviewer Andrew Gebhart – so with an outrageous 56% discount, it's a downright steal!Eufy Vacuum DealsThe Eufy Robot Vacuum 11S Max is an affordable robot vacuum that doesn't sacrifice performance for price. It's one of our favorite budget-friendly models, as it provides strong and efficient cleaning capabilities across various floor types in a quiet and compact machine. In fact, it's small enough to fit under most furniture in your home (which is where the most dust tends to collect). You won't find many fancy features, but at a sale price of just $160, it gets the job done well without breaking the bank.Recommended by Our EditorsRobot Mop DealsIf you're after sparkly clean floors, then the iRobot Braava Jet M6 is for you. It's a highly capable robot mop that can also sweep dirt and debris off your floors, covering up to 1,000 square feet in a single session. It left floors noticeably cleaner after both dry sweeping and wet mopping use during our testing and demonstrated expert navigation, including the ability to avoid carpets. While more of a robot mop than robot vacuum, we recommend this for anyone who mainly has hardwood floors or tile as it can be equally (if not more) effective – and with a $200 discount, now is the time to check it out.These early Memorial Day robo vac and mop deals are just getting started – keep checking back as we'll be updating with new deals throughout the week.

Again, the German-Danish startup using ancient bacteria to turn CO2 into new chemicals, is building a new bioreactor plant in Texas. The facility will be located at Texas City, a major petrochemicals park located on the Gulf Coast. The industrial centre is run by Diamond Infrastructure Solutions — a joint venture between chemicals giant Dow and Macquarie Asset Management.   “We’re building a global company, and that also means taking our technology into new regions,” Again’s co-founder Max Kufner told TNW. “There is a high demand in the US for our chemicals, particularly ones that can be sustainably made on-shore.” The new facility will capture CO2 from one of Texas City’s refineries. Again will then combine the gas with hydrogen and feed the concoction to a host of millennia-old bacteria. The little germs devour the brew, turning it into commercial-grade compounds like acetate. This is the base chemical in everything from plastics and cosmetics to paint.  Grab that deal Most industrial acetate is derived from fossil fuels. By using CO2 that would’ve otherwise entered the atmosphere, Again aims to produce cleaner chemicals. The company claims its CO2 fermenter can cut the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) of chemical-making by up to 80%.   The petrochemical industry is responsible for 4% of the world’s total GHG emissions — twice that of air travel — so Again’s tech could make a huge impact. The company also claims its product is cost-competitive with the same chemicals made using fossil fuels.   Again opened its first pilot plant in Copenhagen in 2023, which converts up to 1 tonne of CO2 each day and turns it into acetate. The company is also currently building a facility in Norway, backed by a $47mn grant from the EU’s Horizon Europe research initiative.    Again emerged from over a decade of research led by Dr. Torbjørn Jensen and Professor Alex Nielsen at the Technical University of Denmark. They teamed up with Kufner, a German former early-stage investor, to found the startup in 2021. So far, Again has raised $150mn, according to Dealroom. The company has already broken ground at the Diamond Texas City site, where it aims to build a new facility and begin production within a year. To bring its low-carbon chemicals to market, Again is partnering with German chemicals distributor Helm, targeting heavy industries in the region as key customers. Story by Siôn Geschwindt Siôn is a freelance science and technology reporter, specialising in climate and energy. From nuclear fusion breakthroughs to electric vehic (show all) Siôn is a freelance science and technology reporter, specialising in climate and energy. From nuclear fusion breakthroughs to electric vehicles, he's happiest sourcing a scoop, investigating the impact of emerging technologies, and even putting them to the test. He has five years of journalism experience and holds a dual degree in media and environmental science from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. When he's not writing, you can probably find Siôn out hiking, surfing, playing the drums or catering to his moderate caffeine addiction. You can contact him at: sion.geschwindt [at] protonmail [dot] com Get the TNW newsletter Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week. Also tagged with

The U.S. government has not yet made its official recommendations for who should be able to get COVID booster shots this fall, but FDA officials published a policy position in the New England Journal of Medicine announcing that it intends to make some drastic policy changes. The changes could result in healthy people under age 65 losing access to COVID vaccines, according to vaccine experts who have spoken about the policies. Here’s what we know so far, and why the announced policy could be a problem. How COVID vaccines are currently approvedScientists have changed the formulation of COVID vaccines a few times over the years, because the COVID virus itself tends to mutate. Vaccines are updated to better match the strains that are circulating, and this has happened roughly once a year—similar to how flu shots are updated each year. Instead of designing new vaccine trials from scratch for each small change in the COVID vaccine, manufacturers conduct studies to show that the immunity people get from the new vaccine is equivalent to what people got from the old vaccine. After approval from the FDA, the CDC then issues a recommendation for who should get the vaccine. Currently, everyone aged 6 months and up is recommended to get a COVID vaccine. What might be changingThe new policy, according to the NEJM article, would be to accept those immunobridging studies only to approve vaccines for people aged 65 and up, and people above the age of 6 months who have one of the high-risk conditions on a list maintained by the CDC. For healthy people under 65, the FDA’s policy wouldn’t approve new COVID vaccines unless they were tested against a placebo. (The type of placebo is phrased vaguely: “The control group could receive a saline placebo,” the authors write.) The FDA doesn’t have the authority to change the recommendations on who should get vaccines that are already approved (that’s the CDC’s purview), but it is in charge of approving vaccines and can approve them only for specific populations. Why placebo-controlled trials are an absolutely wild idea for COVID vaccinesPublic health experts are, to put it mildly, not happy with this plan. That’s because we already have COVID vaccines that work. Doing a placebo-controlled trial would require withholding COVID vaccines from people in the control group; they would get saline instead of a functional vaccine. The normal way to do this type of trial (if you do one at all, rather than relying on immunobridging) is to compare the new vaccine or medication against one that is already considered effective. To use an extreme analogy, you wouldn’t test a new design of seatbelt by randomizing people to ride around without using any seatbelts at all. Vaccine scientist Peter Hotez told CNN that the FDA’s announced approach “essentially denies access to vaccines,” since such trials are not practical for companies to do. In a post on Bluesky, toxicologist Ryan Marino said that it amounts to “scientific misconduct.” Vaccine expert Paul Offit told NPR “I don't think it's ethical, given that we have a vaccine that works, given that we know that SARS-CoV2 [the COVID virus] continues to circulate and cause hospitalizations and death, and there's no group that has no risk.”More vaccine chaos may be comingThe new policy isn’t official yet, but it’s hard to imagine the FDA and CDC being allowed to approve and recommend vaccines the way it always has in the current political climate. Biologics director Vinay Prasad and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, whose names appear on the FDA’s policy statement, have a history of arguing against COVID vaccine access for children. And both agencies are under the umbrella of HHS, the department of Health and Human Services, which is headed by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr—the same person whose anti-vaccine organization financed the movie Plandemic. If you don’t recall the details of that movie circulating in the early pandemic days, it implied both that COVID wasn’t real and that it was a bioweapon created by the government; the logic didn’t hold together but ultimately the point was that we should be suspicious of vaccines. (I have more on Plandemic here.) RFK, Jr has said a lot of bananas stuff about vaccines. He has compared childhood vaccines to the holocaust, claimed that Bill Gates put microchips in vaccines, and loudly questioned whether vaccines cause autism. How this man got put in charge of a health agency, I will never understand. Recent and future vaccine approvals may be at risk in this environment. Moderna had planned to submit a combined flu/COVID vaccine for approval; it has since withdrawn its application. (It’s not clear whether recent FDA policy announcements are directly related.) Novavax’s recent vaccine was approved recently, but only after a delay and only for older adults and for people with high-risk health conditions. Kennedy released a report today that questions the childhood vaccine schedule and implies that vaccines are part of the “stark reality of American children's declining health.” 

If you had trouble using X today, you're not alone. DownDetector reports that over 5,000 people have reported issues accessing the social media platform as of 4PM ET. X's official Engineering account claims the issue is due to a data center outage. "X is aware some of our users are experiencing performance issues on the platform today," X's Engineering account writes. "We are experiencing a data center outage and the team is actively working to remediate the issue." The platform last experienced a major outage in March 2025. At the time, X CEO Elon Musk blamed the outage on a "massive cyberattack." Security researchers who looked into the issue later said it was poor security on X's part that left the company's servers vulnerable to attack. X is aware some of our users are experiencing performance issues on the platform today. We are experiencing a data center outage and the team is actively working to remediate the issue.— Engineering (@XEng) May 22, 2025 Update, May 22, 6:30PM ET: Users are still reporting problems accessing X, though at a lesser rate than its peak of 3:40PM ET. The X Engineering report has not posted an update since its original tweet. Update, May 22, 9:35PM ET: X is still experiencing site-wide outage. Wired has reported that a fire broke out at a data center leased by Elon Musk in Hillsboro, Oregon. It's not quite clear if that has anything to do with the current outage. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/x-is-experiencing-a-data-center-outage-204254880.html?src=rss

Gigabyte’s Aero line of laptops is intended for media pros, those who need production power in a relatively portable package. Or at least they were intended for that. The new Aero X16 model that debuted at Computex 2025 hopes to thread the needle between creators and gamers, both of whom need extra oomph in their laptops. This new design goes with a popular AMD CPU plus Nvidia GPU combo, topping out with a Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and a GeForce RTX 5070 with 85 watts of TGP, and it can be disabled with a MUX switch if you need more battery life than sheer pixel-pushing power. All of that hardware is shoved into a 16-inch chassis that’s under 17mm thick and 4.2 pounds light, an impressively sleek design. There’s a plethora of ports, though only one is USB-C (4.0). You get three USB-A ports, full-sized HDMI and Thunderbolt, and an old-fashioned barrel charger if you need to recharge faster than USB allows. The juicy bits for me are under the hood, where you have two M.2 slots for storage, two user-accessible SO-DIMMs for RAM, and a 76.1-watt-hour battery. But it’s not all good news. PCWorld’s Adam saw it in person and wasn’t impressed with the 2560×1600 IPS screen with 165Hz of refresh. That’s pretty good in gamer terms, but creators might not be satisfied. Adam says that even with a Pantone verification and 100 percent of SRGB coverage, it’s lacking full Adobe RGB color space. It’s an upgrade option Adam would like to see in the future. Gigabyte is also refreshing its A16 and A16 Pro gaming laptops. The A16 is making do with older CPUs from AMD and Intel and an RTX 5070 card with a max TGP of 80 watts. Step up to the Pro version and you get access to a newer Intel Core 7 250H and an RTX 5080 screaming at 115 watts. The Aero X16 is launching in June or July while the A16 should arrive in October. The beefier A16 Pro will be here in August. We have no idea what they’ll cost… which might as well be the official slogan of Computex 2025. For more on the latest laptops, be sure to subscribe to PCWorld on YouTube. Check out our weekly podcast The Full Nerd while you’re at it.

Maxsun showed off a concept RTX 50 series liquid-cooled graphics card at Computex 2025 that is literally filled with RGB LEDs from top to bottom.