Snap says the basis of a scathing lawsuit suggesting it systematically recommends teens accounts to child predators is backwards the company is now accusing the New Mexico attorney general of intentionally seeking out such accounts before recommendations were made. The company says the AGs case is based on gross misrepresentations and cherry picks from Snaps internal documents. RelatedIn a motion to dismiss filed Thursday, Snap says AG Ral Torrezs complaint makes patently false allegations, and particularly misrepresents its own undercover investigation, in which the AGs office created a decoy 14-year-old account. Torrez alleges Snap violated the states unfair practices and public nuisance laws by misleading users about the safety and ephemerality of its disappearing messages, which he says have enabled abusers to collect and retain exploitative images of minors. But Snap claims that contrary to the way the state described it, investigators were the ones who sent friend requests from the decoy account to obviously targeted usernames like nudedude_22, teenxxxxxxx06, ineedasugardadx, and xxx_tradehot. And Snap says it was actually the governments decoy account that searched for and added an account called Enzo (Nud15Ans) which allegedly went on to ask the decoy to send anonymous messages through an end-to-end encrypted service rather than the reverse, as the state alleges. The state claims that after connecting with Enzo, Snapchat suggested over 91 users, including numerous adult users whose accounts included or sought to exchange sexually explicit content.Snap also says the state repeatedly mischaracterizes its internal documents, including blaming Snap for choosing not to store child sex abuse images and suggesting it failed to provide them to law enforcement. In reality, according to Snap, its not allowed to store child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on its servers under federal law, and says it of course turns any such content over to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children as mandated.Lauren Rodriguez, director of communications for the New Mexico Department of Justice, says Snap wants to dismiss the case to to avoid accountability for the serious harm its platform causes to children. In a statement, she says, The evidence we have presentedincluding internal documents and findings from our investigationclearly demonstrates that Snap has long known about the dangers on its platform and has failed to act. Rather than addressing these critical issues with real change to their algorithms and design features, Snap continues to put profits over protecting children.The company is seeking to dismiss the lawsuit on several grounds, including that the state is attempting to mandate age verification and parental controls that violate the First Amendment and that the legal liability shield Section 230 should block the suit. Snap also says that the AGs claims of Snaps alleged misrepresentation of its services is centered around puffery-based catchphrases (e.g., that Snapchat is a worry-free platform) and aspirational statements regarding Snaps commitment to safety, neither of which remotely guarantees that Snap would (much less could) extinguish all potential risks posed by third parties.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has voted to finalize new spectrum rules that will push cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) communications technology forward. C-V2X will use existing cellular networks to send messages from vehicle to vehicle, vehicle to infrastructure, vehicle to cyclists, or vehicle to pedestrians to warn of each other's presence for safety purposes. It could cross-alert for hazardous road conditions, including speeding cars, weather, or traffic congestion.FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said the agencys efforts will drive innovation in wireless and transportation economies and keep us safe on our roadways when we walk, ride, and drive. The decision on the proposed rule promotes efficient use of 30 megahertz of spectrum dedicated to Intelligent Transportation Systems, or ITS, in the 5.9GHz band. And it also codifies C-V2X technical parameters, including power and emission limits, technical parameters, and message priorities.Companies like Ford have been chasing C-V2X technology for years with the idea that its cars and trucks could audibly alert drivers of a cyclist approaching or vice versa assuming a cyclist is paying attention to their phone.In 2022, the FCC won control over what should happen to the spectrum in the 5.9GHz band, which could be partially used for other technologies, such as Wi-Fi expansion. Automotive industry petitioners wanted the entire band, but the ruling judge determined they failed to point out any significant developments in the field of yet-to-arrive technologies.

The Khronos Group, the consortium managing such important projects as OpenGL, WebGPU, OpenAL and Vulkan just announced a major new imitative, the Slang shader language. Khronos Group just made the following tweet:Details from the press release:Beaverton, OR November 21, 2024 The Khronos Group, an open consortium of industry leaders in interoperability standards, has announced the launch of the new Slang Initiative. This initiative will oversee and advance the open-source Slang shading language and compiler, building on 15 years of research, development, and deployment experience. Supported by NVIDIA since 2017, Slang has been widely adopted in production projects across the industry.Slangempowers real-time graphics developers with innovative features that complement existing shading languages, including modular code development, portable deployment to multiple target APIs, and neural computation in graphics shaders. Hosting under multi-company governance at Khronos will enable and foster industry-wide collaboration to drive Slangs continued evolution.Slang is now a significant shading language option for graphics developers everywhere, as all are enabled to directly influence and participate in its ongoing development, saidNeil Trevett, president of The Khronos Group and vice president developer ecosystems, NVIDIA. Khronoss innovative Slang governance structure blends open-source development agility with the patent safeguards of open standards. Slang is freely available for any platform or API to use, including Khronos, which will leverage Slang in the Vulkan ecosystem while ensuring SPIR-V remains responsive to Slangs requirements.NVIDIA will continue its longstanding investment in Slang, which is designed to meet the needs of todays graphics developers while paving the way for the neural graphics revolution, saidNicholas Haemel, vice president of graphics and system software, NVIDIA. With Slang in open governance at Khronos, the graphics community can collaboratively advance and harness the advantages of cross-platform support, scalable graphics systems, reduced compile times, and enhanced modularity.In terms of what Slang brings to the table:Slang is designed to address the evolving needs of real-time graphics developers, especially those working with large-scale shader codebases. By supporting modular development with features like modules, interfaces, and generics, Slang simplifies shader creation and maintenance while significantly reducing compilation times.Many developers must currently rewrite shader code to run on multiple target APIs and platforms or use complex translation or recompilation toolchains. The Slang compiler directly supports multiple backend targets for portable code deployment across diverse APIs and platforms, including SPIR-V for Vulkan, HLSL for Direct3D, GLSL for OpenGL, WGSL for WebGPU, and Metal Shading Language for Apple platforms. For example,Autodeskuses Slang in theAurora path tracing rendererto enable a single-source ray tracing codebase.The Slang compiler enables ingestion of existing HLSL and GLSL shader codebases for developers who wish to incrementally migrate to Slangs modern language features. For example,Valvecompiled the entire productionSource 2HLSL codebase with Slang while modifying only 10 lines of code.Slang supportsautomatic differentiationas a first-class language feature, making it ideal for integrating neural computation into graphics shaders. Slang can automatically generate both forward- and backward-derivative propagation code for complex functions to easily make existing rendering codebases differentiable, or to use Slang as the kernel language in a PyTorch-driven machine learning framework viaslangtorch. For example, Slang is used in theSlang.D Gaussian Splatting Rasterizer, a unified platform for real-time, inverse, and differentiable rendering which can compile to rendering code for diverse platforms.Key LinksPress ReleaseSlang Project HomeSlang GitHub RepositorySlang PlaygroundYou can learn more about the Slang Shader Programming Language and about the Khronos Group announcement in the video below.

Recent advancements in video generation models have enabled the production of high-quality, realistic video clips. However, these models face challenges in scaling for large-scale, real-world applications due to the computational demands required for training and inference. Current commercial models like Sora, Runway Gen-3, and Movie Gen demand extensive resources, including thousands of GPUs and millions of GPU hours for training, with each second of video inference taking several minutes. These high requirements make these solutions costly and impractical for many potential applications, limiting the use of high-fidelity video generation to only those with substantial computational resources.Reducio-DiT: A New SolutionMicrosoft researchers have introduced Reducio-DiT, a new approach designed to address this problem. This solution centers around an image-conditioned variational autoencoder (VAE) that significantly compresses the latent space for video representation. The core idea behind Reducio-DiT is that videos contain more redundant information compared to static images, and this redundancy can be leveraged to achieve a 64-fold reduction in latent representation size without compromising video quality. The research team has combined this VAE with diffusion models to improve the efficiency of generating 10241024 video clips, reducing the inference time to 15.5 seconds on a single A100 GPU.Technical ApproachFrom a technical perspective, Reducio-DiT stands out due to its two-stage generation approach. First, it generates a content image using text-to-image techniques, and then it uses this image as a prior to create video frames through a diffusion process. The motion information, which constitutes a large part of a videos content, is separated from the static background and compressed efficiently in the latent space, resulting in a much smaller computational footprint. Specifically, Reducio-VAEthe autoencoder component of Reducio-DiTleverages 3D convolutions to achieve a significant compression factor, enabling a 4096-fold down-sampled representation of the input videos. The diffusion component, Reducio-DiT, integrates this highly compressed latent representation with features extracted from both the content image and the corresponding text prompt, thereby producing smooth, high-quality video sequences with minimal overhead.This approach is important for several reasons. Reducio-DiT offers a cost-effective solution to an industry burdened by computational challenges, making high-resolution video generation more accessible. The model demonstrated a speedup of 16.6 times over existing methods like Lavie, while achieving a Frchet Video Distance (FVD) score of 318.5 on UCF-101, outperforming other models in this category. By utilizing a multi-stage training strategy that scales up from low to high-resolution video generation, Reducio-DiT maintains the visual integrity and temporal consistency across generated framesa challenge that many previous approaches to video generation struggled to achieve. Additionally, the compact latent space not only accelerates the video generation process but also reduces the hardware requirements, making it feasible for use in environments without extensive GPU resources.ConclusionMicrosofts Reducio-DiT represents an advance in video generation efficiency, balancing high quality with reduced computational cost. The ability to generate a 10241024 video clip in 15.5 seconds, combined with a significant reduction in training and inference costs, marks a notable development in the field of generative AI for video. For further technical exploration and access to the source code, visit Microsofts GitHub repository for Reducio-VAE. This development paves the way for more widespread adoption of video generation technology in applications such as content creation, advertising, and interactive entertainment, where generating engaging visual media quickly and cost-effectively is essential.Check out the Paper and GitHub Page. All credit for this research goes to the researchers of this project. Also,dont forget to follow us onTwitter and join ourTelegram Channel andLinkedIn Group. If you like our work, you will love ournewsletter.. Dont Forget to join our55k+ ML SubReddit. Aswin Ak+ postsAswin AK is a consulting intern at MarkTechPost. He is pursuing his Dual Degree at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He is passionate about data science and machine learning, bringing a strong academic background and hands-on experience in solving real-life cross-domain challenges. Read this AI Research Report from Kili Technology on 'Evaluation of Large Language Model Vulnerabilities: A Comparative Analysis of Red Teaming Techniques'

As part of the Amazon Black Friday Sale, you can pick up the Anker PowerCore 737 24,000mAh 140W Power Bank at the best price I've ever seen. Right now theprice is down to $79.99 after a nearly 50% off discount. This is one of the best Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally X chargers you can get. I've actually owned this power bank for over a year now for ROG Ally and my kids' Switches; it has been on multiple flights and road trips and is still lasting strong.Anker 737 24,000mAh 140W Power Bank for $79.99Anker 737 PowerCore 24K 24,000mAh Power Bank with 140W USB Type-C Power DeliveryThe Anker 737 is a hefty power bank, measuring 4.6"x2.2"x2" and weighing in at 1.4lbs. This is something you'd put in your travel bag or backpack instead of your pocket. It has two USB Type-C ports and one USB Type-A port. The USB Type-C ports support a maximum of 140W of power delivery. That means a single port could deliver 140W, or both ports will deliver a combination of 140W depending on which devices are plugged in (for example, 70W + 70W or 100W + 40W).In terms of gaming handhelds, the Steam Deck supports up to 38W of charging, the Asus ROG Ally up to 65W, the Asus ROG Ally X up to 100W, and the Nintendo Switch up to 18W. That means the Anker Prime can easily charge all three gaming handhelds even the ROG Ally X at their maximum rate; you'll even be able to play and charge simultaneously.A 20,000mAh battery equates to a 74Whr capacity. An 80% power efficiency rating (which is about standard for power banks) gives you about 59Whr of available charge. That means this power bank will charge a Steam Deck (40Whr) or Asus ROG Ally (40Whr) from empty to completely full 1.5 times, an Asus ROG Ally X (80Whr) 0.75 times, and a Nintendo Switch (16Whr) about 3.7 times. You can see here why we think a 20,000mAh capacity should be the bare minimum for more power hungry gaming handhelds like the Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally (and especially the Ally X).The Anker 737 is TSA-approvedTSA states that power banks must be under 100Whr in capacity for carry-on (check-in is not allowed under any circumstances). This Anker Prime is safely under that at 74Whr. You might get checked simply because the Anker 737 is a hefty-looking power bank, but you shouldn't have any problems getting it cleared. I've gone through plenty of airport checkpoints and have only been checked once at Tokyo NRT and cleared without a problem.Alternative Deal: Anker Prime 20,000mAh Power BankAnker Prime 20,000mAh 200W Power BankClip the 40% Off CouponAmazon is also offering the Anker Prime 20,000mAh USB Power Bank for only $77.99 after you clip the 40% off coupon on the product page. This is the best price we've seen for 2024 (the previous lowest price was $89.99 on Amazon Prime Day). The Anker Prime is the successor to the Anker 737 with a couple of noticeable upgrades like a higher power delivery output (200W vs 140W) and a higher charging rate through USB Type-A (65W vs 18W).The Asus ROG Ally X Is the Best Windows Gaming HandheldNew ReleaseAsus ROG Ally X 7" 1TB Gaming HandheldThe Asus ROG Ally X was just released this past summer and has claimed the title as best Windows-based gaming handheld. It improves on the original ROG Ally in several ways, the biggest upgrades being a much bigger 80Whr battery with nearly the runtime, more RAM, a beefier cooling system, double the storage capacity on the base model, and better controls. It's not inexpensive starting at $799.99, but it's definitely an incredible piece of hardware.Should You Buy Now or Wait for Black Friday?Black Friday is only about a week away and in most cases it's better to wait to buy tech accessories. However, it's very unlikely that these two specific deals will get any better. Both the Anker 737 and the Anker Prime are already at their lowest historical prices, so we don't expect any further discounts to happen this year. However, if you're looking for a slimmer, smaller capacity power bank for travel, then you should definitely wait for more deals to drop on Black Friday.Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.

Without a doubt, Black Friday is one of the best times of year to upgrade your gaming PC. Although the actual event lands on November 29, retailers have been stretching out Black Friday sales earlier. We are now about a week away from the main event and most retailers have released several excellent deals that you could potentially jump on now if you don't want to wait. The gaming PC deals from Dell, Best Buy, HP, and Lenovo are already at the best prices of the year and well worth picking up.Alienware Black Friday DealsIf you're in the market for a prebuilt gaming PC, Alienware is one of best gaming brands we'd recommend. The Dell Black Friday Sale has already started ahead of November 29 with some outstanding deals on Alienware Aurora R16 gaming desktops. Consistent build quality, available inventory, frequent sales, and solid customer service are the main reasons why Dell is at the top of our buying list for gaming PCs.Alienware Aurora R16 i9-14900KF RTX 4090 Gaming PCAlienware Aurora R16 i9-13900F RTX 4080 Super Gaming PCAlienware Aurora R16 i9-14900KF RTX 4080 Super Gaming PCAlienware Aurora R16 i7-14700F RTX 4070 Gaming PCAlienware Aurora R16 i7-14700F RTX 4060 Ti Gaming PCAlienware Aurora R16 i9 RTX 4070 Ti Super Gaming PCBest Buy Black Friday DealsBest Buy has just released its third and final round of early Best Buy Black Friday deals, and a bunch of excellent gaming PCs are included in the mix. If you're on a budget, the iBuyPower Scale RTX 4060 gaming PC for $699.99 is a solid deal and a great candidate for 1080p gaming. For something more powerful, consider the CyberPowerPC Gamer Supreme gaming PC with an outstanding AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU and RTX 4070 Super GPU. The RTX 4070 Super is the best GPU for most people and is perfect for 1440p gaming.CyberPowerPC Gamer Supreme AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D RTX 4070 Super Gaming PCHP OMEN 35L AMD Ryzen 7 8700G RTX 4060 Ti Gaming PCiBuyPower Scale Intel Core i5-14400F RTX 4060 Gaming PCCyberPowerPC Gamer Xtreme Intel Core i5-14400F RTX 4060 Gaming PCiBuyPower Scale AMD Ryzen 7 8700F RTX 4060 Ti Gaming PCMSI Codex Z2 AMD Ryzen 5 8400F RTX 4060 Ti Gaming PCCyberPowerPC Gamer Xtreme Intel Core i7-14700F RTX 4060 Ti Gaming PCHP OMEN 25L Intel Core i7-14700F RTX 4060 Ti Gaming PCiBuyPower Y60 AMD Ryzen 7 7700X RTX 4060 Ti Gaming PCASUS ROG Intel Core i7-14700F RTX 4060 Ti Gaming PCCyberPowerPC Gamer Supreme Intel Core i7-14700KF RTX 4060 Ti Gaming PCiBuyPower Y40 Intel Core i7-14700F RTX 4070 Gaming PCMSI Aegis Z2 AMD Ryzen 7 7700 RTX 4070 Super Gaming PCiBuyPower Y40 Intel Core i7-14700KF RTX 4070 Super Gaming PCASUS ROG Intel Core i7-14700KF RTX 4070 SUPER Gaming PCAcer Nitro 60 AMD Ryzen 9 7900 RTX 4070 Super Gaming PCMSI Aegis R2 Intel Core i7-14700F RTX 4070 Ti Super Gaming PCCyberPowerPC Gamer Supreme Intel Core i9-14900KF RTX 4070 Ti SUPER Gaming PCiBuyPower Y60 AMD Ryzen 9 7900X RTX 4070 Ti Super Gaming PCCyberPowerPC Gamer Supreme AMD Ryzen 9 9900X RTX 4080 Super Gaming PCHP OMEN 35L AMD Ryzen 7 8700G RTX 4080 Super Gaming PCHP Black Friday DealsHP has kicked off its Black Friday Sale with deals on a few of their gaming PCs. Save up to $1,000 off HP's flagship Omen 45L gaming PC, which is equipped with your choice of an RTX 4090 or 4080 Super GPU and 240mm-360mm AIO liquid cooling. For those of you on a budget, the HP Victus gaming PC with RTX 4060 GPU is down to $779.99.HP Omen 45L Intel Core i9-13900K RTX 4090 Gaming PCHP Omen 45L Intel Core i7-14700K RTX 4080 Super Gaming PCHP Victus 15L Intel Core i5-1440F RTX 4060 Gaming PCHP Omen 35L Intel Core i7-14700F RTX 4060 Ti Gaming PCLenovo Black Friday DealsUpdate: Prices have gone up a bit on 11/19. If you've already decided you want a Lenovo gaming PC, I would strongly recommend waiting until these prices drop again. They certainly will before or on Black Friday.Lenovo is offering some great Black Friday deals on budget and mid-range gaming PCs. Get a Legion Tower 5 equipped with an RTX 4060 or Radeon RX 7600 for about $800, or my recommendation is to step up to the RTX 4070 Super model for only $1380. The RTX 4070 Super is one of the best graphics cards for most people; it's not exorbitantly priced, and it's powerful enough to run games at up to 4K resolution (although 1440p is its sweet spot).Lenovo Legion Tower 5 Gen 8 AMD Ryzen 7 7700 RTX 4070 Super Gaming PCLenovo Legion Tower 5i Gen 8 Intel Core i7-14700F RTX 4070 Ti Super Gaming PC with 32GB RAM, 1TB SSDLenovo LOQ Intel Core i5-1440F RTX 4060 Gaming PCLenovo Legion Tower 5 Gen 8 AMD Ryzen 5 7600 Radeon RX 7600 Gaming PCCyberPowerPC Radeon RX 7900 GRE Gaming PCWalmart's best Black Friday gaming PC dealCyberPowerPC AMD Ryzen 7 7700 Radeon RX 7900 GRE Gaming PC with 32GB RAM, 2TB SSDAs part of its first round of Black Friday deals, Walmart is offering this CyberPowerPC Gamer Supreme gaming PC for only $1,199 after a $370 instant discount. This PC features an AMD Ryzen 7 7700 CPU, Radeon RX 7900 GRE GPU, 32GB of DDR5 memory, and a 2TB M.2 SSD. The Radeon RX 7900 GRE is a relatively recent (March 2024) release. It's roughly 10-15% faster than the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 GPU and is more comparable to the new RTX 4070 Super. This rig is ideal for gaming at up to 1440p resolution at high framerates, although it can also run most games in 4K.Amazon Black Friday Deals... Are AbsentAmazon's Black Friday Sale hasn't officially begun. In fact, it only just recently announced that their deals will begin in earnest on November 21. As such, it hasn't yet pushed any seriously convincing Black Friday deals aside from its Fire TV sticks. As soon as we find any gaming PC deals worth mentioning, we'll update this article.DIY PC Builders: The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D Is Back in StockNew ReleaseAMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D AM5 Desktop Processor$479.00 at AmazonIf you're in the process of building out a new gaming PC and you're looking for the best gaming processor, this is it. Right now, the recently released AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D AM5 desktop processor is back in stock at Amazon at its retail price of $479 shipped. This is the official launch price with zero markup, and it's not bundled with anything you don't want or need.The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is the best gaming processor currently on the market and a much better option than the new Intel Core Ultra 9 285K. If you're waiting for a discount on this processor for Black Friday, though, don't hold your breath. There is the slimmest of slim chances that anyone will drop the price of this hot commodity before 2025.In our AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D review, Jackie Thomas wrote that "the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is extremely powerful in games, which makes it easier to recommend than other recent processors like the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K or Ryzen 9 9900X. Especially if youre building a rig with a powerful graphics card, the 9800X3D is going to be the best way to get the most performance out of whichever GPU you pair it with. When Is Black Friday 2024?The actual date of Black Friday in 2024 falls on November 29 this year, but the deals season began a lot sooner than that. Leading up to the big event, retailers have begun to open deals online. (This usually starts in the last week of October, just before Halloween.) Each week leading up to the event will slowly roll out more deals, which ultimately leads to massive discounts on Black Friday. Retailers will not reveal their biggest Black Friday deals until the big day, but most general deals will be available well in advance.Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.

Even the grouchiest viewer of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law swooned a bit when Tatiana Maslanys Jennifer Walters asks the robot K.E.V.I.N. the question on everyones mind: When are we getting the X-Men?While the robot Kevin dodged the question, the real Kevin Feige finally provided a more serious timeline during the Disney APAC Content Showcase in Singapore.I think you will see that continues in our next few movies with some X-Men players that you might recognize, Feige told attendees (via Deadline) while talking about bringing more characters together in future MCU films. Right after that, the whole story ofSecret Warsreally leads us into a new age of mutants and of the X-Men. Given that Avengers: Secret Wars isnt scheduled to release until May 7, 2027, it seems like the proper X-Men are still a long ways off, at least officially.However, Feige does suggest that well still see random mutants pop up between now and then, something thats been happening for a while in the MCU. Weve already seen Kamala Khan (not officially a mutant until the last episode of Ms. Marvel), Namor in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and El Aguila and Mr. Immortal in She-Hulk. Alternate reality mutants have popped up in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, The Marvels, and, of course, Deadpool & Wolverine.Thus, it sounds like Marvel will continue to introduce mutants in this method. Well likely see more variations of the Fox and animated X-Men appearing in alternate universes. Channing Tatum and Ryan Reynolds have called for a Gambit movie after the success of Deadpool & Wolverine and Michael Fassbender recently mentioned that he would return to his role as Magneto, so it wouldnt be too much of a shock to see those characters again.However, the most interesting mutants might be those who appear in the mainline MCU (sigh fine, Earth-616). Sabra aka Ruth Bat-Seraph will appear in Captain America: New World Order played by Shira Haas, but well probably see more C- and D-listers join the universe.Its important that Marvel seed these minor mutants before big guns like Wolverine, Cyclops, and Storm precisely because of the X-Mens central ethos. Unlike the Avengers or the Fantastic Four, the X-Men fight to save a world that hates and fears them. The mutant metaphor always stretched credulity, not just because it was an imperfect way to talk about oppressed groups, but also because it never really made sense that regular humans would love the Avengers, who count the Hulk and former criminals such as Quicksilver and Hawkeye as members, or the Fantastic Four and hate a mutant like Angel, who has the frightening ability to fly with his wings and dodge things.By introducing mutants slowly into a world thats already filled with fantastic heroes who have caused massive amounts of distraction, Marvel has the opportunity to retain some of the central themes of the comic book characters. If bringing the mutants to the MCU is, as Feige told the attendees, one of those dreams come true, then its good that hes doing them right. Only when mutants are feared and hated can we finally get the X-Men.

This Star Trek: Lower Decks article contains spoilers.So, tell me about your gramps, Mariner demands of the new ensign at the end of the latest episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks. Did he smite?On its face, thats a weird question, even for a motor-mouth like Beckett Mariner. Across five seasons, Mariner has established herself as a mouthy and energetic, but shockingly competent, Starfleet officer. Furthermore, Mariner, like her voice actor Tawny Newsome, is a walking encyclopedia of Star Trek lore, which is why she knows about Ensign Olly (Saba Homayoon) and her grandfather Zeus. Or rather, as Captain Freeman reminds Mariner in official Starfleet terminology, Ollys grandfather is the psychokinetic being that presented itself as Zeus.Ollys appearance raises a question for Mariner, who asks, Didnt Kirk kick their asses? I thought they all went off and became one with the wind or whatever. Thats a question most Trekkies share, because Mariners quoting the last time Greek gods showed up on Star Trek. Specifically, they appeared in the second episode of the second season of the Original Series, Who Mourns for Adonais?Written by Gilbert Ralston and Gene L. Coon and directed by Marc Daniels, Who Mourns for Adonais sends the Enterprise to Pollux IV, where they encounter a being called Apollo. Kirk and co. learn that Pollux IV is the home planet of super beings who came to ancient Earth and were worshiped as gods by the Greeks, ruling from Mount Olympus. But as humanity began to put away its superstitions, the beings grew weak and returned to their home planet.While most of the gods allowed themselves to dissipate into some ethereal energy, Apollo (portrayed by Michael Forest) retained his humanoid form and sought new worshippers among the Enterprise crew. And he almost found one in the form of Lt. Carolyn Palamas (Leslie Parrish), the expert in ancient Greek mythology that the Enterprise apparently keeps around. Of course, Kirk outwits Apollo and saves Palamas, sending the rest of the god aliens into the ether.Even for those who love silly Trek, Who Mourns for Adonais? tends to rank toward the bottom of Original Series episodes. Forest has a lot of fun playing the haughty Apollo and theres something delightful about the effect used to make the god tower over Kirk and Chekov. But the episode is neither as goofy nor as serious as it needs to be. The cast plays the conflict a little too straight, which makes it difficult to look past the fundamentally sexist resolution, in which Kirk orders Palamas to get over her silly crush to lie to Apollo about her attraction, thus frustrating his desire for worship.Lower Decks doesnt bother with dealing overtly with the problems in Who Mourns for Adonais? Heck, it doesnt even bother to explain where Olly came from. In that way, Lower Decks differs from the non-canonical works that revisited the episode. Novelist Peter David brought back the gods in a few of his books, including 2001s Being Human, in which Palamas gives birth to a daughter she conceived with Zeus. A descendent of that daughter becomes a regular character in Davids New Frontier novels, Mark McHenry.Yet, as much as these works build on Who Mourns for Adonais, Lower Decks seems to offer the most compelling version of Greek mythology mixed with Star Trek, a woman whose electric powers get in the way of her ability to serve in Starfleet. Fortunately, Mariner knows a thing or two about making a mess and dealing with powerful parents, and the two find a way to use her gifts to solve a diplomatic crisis.Does the solution answer all of Mariners questions about the gods? No, obviously not. But it does help redeem one of TOSs lesser episodes, enriching the world of Star Trek.Star Trek: Lower Decks releases new episodes each Thursday on Paramount Plus.

Following the success of Iron Meats launch back in September, the team at Retroware has been hard at work charting the path forward with planning major content updates to their modern retro gem!With the first major update arriving on Xbox, you can experience a fine platter of new content to sink your teeth into!Mirror, MirrorOne of the highly requested new features in the game is Mirror Modean option that lets you run through every level, but this time to the left! While flipping the x-axis may seem like a trivial update, facing every enemy, every boss, and every level becomes a whole new experience. Players can unlock this mode after beating the game for the first time on any difficulty!Red Rapid FireA second new feature is the automatic Supercharge upgradeor the third tier of possible weapon upgrades. With the Supercharge upgrade active on a player, all of that players projectiles will now have a red coloration, instead of maintaining their blue or green colors, regardless of their current upgrade tier.So, if a player has one or two guns that are fully upgraded (as in, they fire green projectiles instead of blue), they can try to pick up a third copy of that gun(s) and be rewarded with an automatic Supercharge (Rapid Fire) upgrade, coupled together with a new red color for their projectiles!My 1UPs, Thank YouWith this first major update, were happy to announce that all extra lives players earn while playing through a level will be kept as you start a new level. In other words, you now get to keep extra lives if you finish a level with more lives than you started with.Visual Enhancements to Level BackgroundsWeve gone back to the backgrounds of certain levels and added in some more details that we believe will really drive home some of the unspoken narrative points relevant to Iron Meats story. Some of these new details include: adding a brief section where the helicopter flies in shooting down at Meat monsters on Forest, adding in spikes to the midboss on Base, adding in surviving pilots to the ending credits animation, and explosive impacts from the Meat meteors on Train.Other UpdatesIn addition to minor bug fixes on the backend, weve also:Buffed the default damage dealt by the E, U, and M guns.Added more Meat to different sections of the Moon Base.Retooled certain patterns of the MI-24 helicopter boss fight to be more clear.And slightly changed sections of all levels to be more fair to the player (for example: Meat worms are now killable on Base the second they appear, the Meat Mouth Doors on Train are now killable, and other minor fixes).We wanted to give players a taste of what weve got in store for Iron Meats future, and we cant wait to share even more new content with updates later down the line! Iron Meat is available now!Iron MeatRetroware24$19.99Get it nowIron Meat is a fast-paced, run-and-gun shooter that immerses players in a world overrun by The Meatan all-consuming interdimensional biomass. With a mix of classic arcade and console mechanics, players will battle against mutated victims and machines, dodge bullet barrages, and crush bosses in nine levels of gore-ific brutality. As Vadim, fight back against The Meat and stop the terrors spawned from scientist Yuri Markov's experiments on the Moon.MULTI-PHASE BOSS FIGHTSIron Meat pays homage to classic run-and-gun titles from the past, with intense boss fights fixed into multiple phases. With three difficulty settings to choose from, players can put their skills to the test, where a higher difficulty is rewarded with an even more challenging boss battle.MULTIPLAYER COUCH CO-OPWho says you have to take on The Meat invasion alone? With 2-player couch co-op, you can grab a buddy to leave a trail of bloody, Meat-infected corpses together! It's double the firepower, double the carnage, and double the MEAT!OVER 30 UNLOCKABLE SKINSYou don't have to be a soldier to fight against The Meat. Hell, you don't even have to be a HUMAN to do so! With over 30 unlockable skins to choose from, players can customize their character the way they want. Each skin comes with interchangeable parts, allowing for greater customization with mixing and matching. Want a shark head on a robot body with dinosaur feet? DONE. Maybe a half human, half doggo? YOU BET! Or how about a cowboy with a tail and demon wings? HmmYEP!

Hello Xbox fans! Were delighted to announce that our new game, Overthrown, will launch into Xbox Game Preview on Xbox Series X|S and PC on December 10, and will be available with Game Pass. For those of you who might be seeing our game for the very first time, Overthrown is a city builder with more than just one twist our game is all about chaos, and just to throw something a bit unusual into the mix, we allow you to play like an anime character with superhero abilities, and with up to 5 friends. That said, youll still have to build a city, defend it from mutants and bandits, and manage it. Today, Im sharing some insights to maximize your co-op experience.Now, just to set the scene, a bit of background. Thanks to an ancient soul-stealing crown that possesses magical abilities, you have the power to lift anything thats in front of you. Big trees not a problem. Monster nests even easier. Lifting a whole sawmill building so instead of feeding individual trees you can just run through the forest and absorb trees along the way? Why not? Your strength knows no bounds! You also possess supersonic speed, a throw thats made for the history books, and a spin attack so fast that itll make you take off into the sky like a helicopter. Now imagine having all this power with up to five of your friends. Can you already see the shenanigans you can have?To give you a bit of a head start, here are a few tips to get the most from your co-op sessions.One Crown to Rule Them AllWhen you play co-op with friends, the Crown appears on the map for anyone to grab, so youll want to get to it first. Everyone will have the Crown powers, but the person wearing the Crown gets the most reserve crown charge and will be able to perform cool moves faster. Youre all working together, but its always best to be the best at working together, right? During your play session, there might be a moment when the all-powerful Crown might be stolen or lost, which could be the perfect moment for a bit of friendly competition. The Crown can be picked up by an enemy such as a Tuskar or an Outlaw, and you and your friends will have to claim it back. The one who recovers the Crown now gets the extra boost. There is no PvP in Overthrown, so dont even think about trying to kill your friend for the Crown.Teamwork Makes the Dream WorkSecondly, the more workstations you build in your city, the more citizens will start to spawn in your settlement. When youre playing with your friends, you can have different people working in different zones and districts so that you can start to get more citizens a bit faster right from the get-go. And dont forget that not everyone loves all jobs equally. Maybe you love building, but your friend loves combat that is not a problem! Its easy to divide the chores amongst each other.ExperimentAnd the final tip that I have is to go out and experiment. When we first started working on Overthrown it was inspired and built primarily around player curiosity. When playing our game, we want players to ask themselves and their friends Can I do this? and What happens if I do that? To which the answer is Yes, yes you can and, Please try it out! Were crafting the game with as much interactivity in mind as possible so that you can experience moments of surprise, playfulness and just silly goofy fun! Thats what makes playing with friends fun!We hope that you like the sound of Overthrown and are keen to check it out either with your friends or by yourself. In Game Preview, we are building Overthrown with community feedback and would love for you to join us on this ride. Youll be able to start your adventure on December 10 when Overthrown launches into Xbox Game Preview and Game Pass for Xbox consoles and PC.