#GamesMix | #Steam | #Windows7

President-elect Donald Trump said on Sunday that intends to name Brendan Carr as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Carr, a commissioner at the FCC since 2017, has made a name for himself by threatening to use the commissions powers to regulate speech online and over the airwaves.Carr authored Project 2025s section on the FCC, using it to propose restrictions on social media platforms meant to bolster conservative speech. He proposed limiting the legal shield that gives websites wide latitude to host and moderate user-generated content. He also suggested putting regulations on tech companies that would limit their ability to block and prioritize that content as they choose.RelatedIn the lead up to the election, Carr threatened to use the commissions powers to punish companies for speech he doesnt like. Just this month, he floated revoking NBCs broadcast license after SNL featured Kamala Harris. As commissioner, he voted to repeal net neutrality rules in 2017 and later voted against restoring net neutrality earlier this year.In an exceptionally vague statement, Trump says Carr will end the regulatory onslaught crippling Americas Job Creators and Innovators. He also says that Carr will ensure that the FCC delivers for rural America.

Were in a pretty good moment for sprawling, complex role-playing games. New releases like Metaphor: ReFantazio and Dragon Age Absolution, along with older titles like Elden Ring (including this years expansion), Cyberpunk 2077, and Baldurs Gate 3 have sucked millions of people into their expansive worlds. They can be all-consuming experiences, offering players all kinds of freedom to explore their worlds and characters. But honestly? Sometimes I dont want to fuss with conversation wheels or make difficult, narrative-altering choices. I just want to go on a big adventure and slowly turn into an overpowered hero fighting monsters and thats where the excellent new remake of Dragon Quest 3 comes in.The game originally came out way back in 1988 (it was initially called Dragon Warrior 3 in North America) and it has a refreshingly straightforward premise: youre on a quest to kill a great evil that your father failed to destroy many years before. There are a few colorful characters, but there isnt a whole lot else to it beyond a quest for revenge. This isnt a game you play for the story. Instead, its about going on adventures, exploring strange and dangerous locations, and killing lots of cute blue slimes.RelatedThat simplicity has stood the test of time rather well, with systems that are easy to grasp while still offering a challenge (even if the regular battles can eventually get tedious). This is a good thing, because the remake doesnt change all that much. The exploration and turn-based battles all still feel largely as they did. This means that the game follows a largely predictable path, as you go from one dungeon to the next, visiting towns in between to rest and gear up for the next challenge. There are some additions, like a new character class that lets you collect monsters, along with additional story scenes to flesh out the barebones narrative.Though its mostly the same as the original, there are major changes to the presentation and some notable quality of life features. To start, this version of Dragon Quest 3 looks incredible. It uses the same visual style as games like Octopatch Traveller and Triangle Strategy, which Square Enix awkwardly calls HD 2D. Basically, these are still games with pixel art characters, but they explore incredibly detailed worlds. The developers then throw in a tilt-shift effect that gives the whole thing a diorama-like appearance. The result is a game that looks decidedly old-school, but in a slick, modern way. I especially love the adorable monster animations in battle. Theres also an updated orchestral score performed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, along with all-new voice acting.Its more than just an aesthetic overhaul, though. The Dragon Quest 3 remake also makes some very smart tweaks that often make it less frustrating to play. These include a more useful map that makes it easier to find where youre headed, an option to speed up battles so you can grind quicker, and a handful of difficulty options. These may sound small, but theyre the kind of modern conveniences that can make many older games difficult to play, especially ones built around repetitive combat like a classic RPG. Smoothing out those few rough edges has a big impact on the overall feel of a game like Dragon Quest 3.Even though its technically the third game of the series, this version of Dragon Quest is also a great place for newcomers to see what the series is all about (and really, things havent changed all that much over the years). Its a pretty, approachable way to experience an epic quest without getting overwhelmed by story or features. Its just you, some swords and magic, and a whole lot of monsters to defeat. Sometimes, thats all you really need.Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D is available now on the Switch, PlayStation, Xbox, and PC.

Self-supervised learning on offline datasets has permitted large models to reach remarkable capabilities both in text and image domains. Still, analogous generalizations for agents acting sequentially in decision-making problems are difficult to attain. The environments of classical Reinforcement Learning (RL) are mostly narrow and homogeneous and, consequently, hard to generalize.Current reinforcement learning (RL) methods often train agents on fixed tasks, limiting their ability to generalize to new environments. Platforms like MuJoCo and OpenAI Gym focus on specific scenarios, restricting agent adaptability. RL is based on Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), where agents maximize cumulative rewards by interacting with environments. Unsupervised Environment Design (UED) addresses these limitations by introducing a teacher-student framework, where the teacher designs tasks to challenge the agent and promote efficient learning. Certain metrics ensure tasks are neither too easy nor impossible. Tools like JAX enable faster GPU-based RL training through parallelization, while transformers, using attention mechanisms, enhance agent performance by modeling complex relationships in sequential or unordered data.To address these limitations, a team of researchers has developed Kinetix, an open-ended space of physics-based RL environments.Kinetix, proposed by a team of researchers from Oxford University, can represent tasks ranging from robotic locomotion and grasping to video games and classic RL environments. Kinetix uses a novel hardware-accelerated physics engine, Jax2D, that allows for the cheap simulation of billions of environmental steps during training. The trained agent exhibits strong physical reasoning capabilities, being able to zero-shot solve unseen human-designed environments. Furthermore, fine-tuning this general agent on tasks of interest shows significantly stronger performance than training an RL agent tabula rasa. Jax2D applies discrete Euler steps for rotational and positional velocities and uses impulses and higher-order corrections to constrain instantaneous sequences for efficient simulation of diversified physical tasks. Kinetix is suited for multi-discrete and continuous action spaces and for a wide array of RL tasks.The researchers trained a general RL agent on tens of millions of procedurally generated 2D physics-based tasks. The agent exhibited strong physical reasoning capabilities, being able to zero-shot solve unseen human-designed environments. Fine-tuning this demonstrates the feasibility of large-scale, mixed-quality pre-training for online RL.In conclusion, Kinetix is a discovery that addresses the limitations of traditional RL environments by providing a diverse and open-ended space for training, leading to improved generalization and performance of RL agents. This work can serve as a foundation for future research in large-scale online pre-training of general RL agents and unsupervised environment design.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. Nazmi Syed+ postsNazmi Syed is a consulting intern at MarktechPost and is pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur. She has a deep passion for Data Science and actively explores the wide-ranging applications of artificial intelligence across various industries. Fascinated by technological advancements, Nazmi is committed to understanding and implementing cutting-edge innovations in real-world contexts. LinkedIn event, 'One Platform, Multimodal Possibilities,' where Encord CEO Eric Landau and Head of Product Engineering, Justin Sharps will talk how they are reinventing data development process to help teams build game-changing multimodal AI models, fast

Author(s): Shashwat Gupta Originally published on Towards AI. Keswanis Algorithm introduces a novel approach to solving two-player non-convex min-max optimization problems, particularly in differentiable sequential games where the sequence of player actions is crucial. This blog explores how Keswanis method addresses common challenges in min-max scenarios, with applications in areas of modern Machine Learning such as GANs, adversarial training, and distributed computing, providing a robust alternative to traditional algorithms like Gradient Descent Ascent (GDA).Problem Setting:We consider differentiable sequential games with two players: a leader who can commit to an action, and a follower who responds after observing the leaders action. Particularly, we focus on the zero-sum case of thisproblem which is also known as minimax optimization, i.e.,Unlike simultaneous games, many practical machine learning algorithms, including generative adversarial net-works (GANs) [2] [3] , adversarial training [4] and primal-dual reinforcement learning [5], explicitly specify theorder of moves between players and the order of which player acts first is crucial for the problem. In particular, min-max optimisation is curcial for GANs [2], statistics, online learning [6], deep learning, and distributed computing [7].Figure 1 : Non-Convex function Visualisation (Source: https://www.offconvex.org/2020/06/24/equilibrium-min-max/)Therefore, the classical notion of local Nash equilibrium from simultaneous games may not be a proper definition of local optima for sequential games since minimax is in general not equal to maximin. Instead, we consider the notion of local minimax [8] which takes into account the sequential structure of minimax optimization.Models and Methods:The vanilla algorithm for solving sequential minimax optimization is gradient descent-ascent (GDA), where both players take a gradient update simultaneously. However, GDA is known to suffer from two drawbacks.It has undesirable convergence properties: it fails to converge to some local minimax and can converge to fixed points that are not local minimax [9] [10]GDA exhibits strong rotation around fixed points, which requires using very small learning rates[11] [12] toconverge.Figure 2 : A Visualisation of GDA (Source: https://medium.com/common-notes/gradient-ascent-e23738464a19)Recently, there has been a deep interest in min-max problems, due to [9] and other subsequent works. Jin et al. [8] actually provide great insights to the work.Keswanis Algorithm:The algorithm essentially makes response function : maxy{R^m} f (., y) tractable by selecting y-updates (maxplayer) ingreedy manner by restricting selection of updated (x,y) to points along sets P(x,y) (which is defined as set of endpoints of paths such that f(x,.) is non-decreasing). There are 2 new things that this algorithm does to makecomputation feasible:Replace P(x, y) with P (x, y) (endpoints of paths along which f(x,.) increases at some rate > 0 (which makesupdates to y by any greedy algorithm (as Algorithm 2) feasible)Introduce a soft probabilistic condition to account for discontinuous functions.Experimental Efficacy:A Study [16] done at EPFL (by Shashwat et al., ) confirmed the efficacy of Keswanis Algorithm in addressing key limitations of traditional methods like GDA (Gradient Descent Ascent) and OMD (Online Mirror Descent), especially in avoiding non-convergent cycling. The study proposed following future research avenues:Explore stricter bounds for improved efficiency.Incorporate broader function categories to generalize findings.Test alternative optimizers to refine the algorithms robustness.The full study for different functions is as follows:Keswani's Algorithm for non-convex 2 player min-max optimisationKeswani's Algorithm for non-convex 2 player min-max optimisation www.slideshare.netReferences:[1] V. Keswani, O. Mangoubi, S. Sachdeva, and N. K. Vishnoi, A convergent and dimension-independent first-order algorithm for min-maxoptimization, arXiv preprint arXiv:2006.12376, 2020.[2] I. Goodfellow, J. Pouget-Abadie, M. Mirza, B. Xu, D. Warde-Farley, S. Ozair, A. Courville, and Y. Bengio, Generative adversarialnetworks, Communications of the ACM, vol. 63, no. 11, pp. 139144, 2020.[3] M. Arjovsky, S. Chintala, and L. Bottou, Wasserstein generative adversarial networks, pp. 214223, 2017.[4] A. Madry, A. Makelov, L. Schmidt, D. Tsipras, and A. Vladu, Towards deep learning models resistant to adversarial attacks, arXivpreprint arXiv:1706.06083, 2017.[5] W. S. Cho and M. Wang, Deep primal-dual reinforcement learning: Accelerating actor-critic using bellman duality, arXiv preprintarXiv:1712.02467, 2017.[6] N. Cesa-Bianchi and G. Lugosi, Prediction, Learning, and Games. Cambridge University Press, 2006.[7] J. Shamma, Cooperative Control of Distributed Multi-Agent Systems. Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, John, 2008.[8] C. Jin, P. Netrapalli, and M. Jordan, What is local optimality in nonconvex-nonconcave minimax optimization? pp. 48804889, 2020.[9] Y. Wang, G. Zhang, and J. Ba, On solving minimax optimization locally: A follow-the-ridge approach, arXiv preprint arXiv:1910.07512,2019.[10] C. Daskalakis and I. Panageas, The limit points of (optimistic) gradient descent in min-max optimization, Advances in neural informationprocessing systems, vol. 31, 2018.[11] L. Mescheder, S. Nowozin, and A. Geiger, The numerics of gans, Advances in neural information processing systems, vol. 30, 2017.[12] D. Balduzzi, S. Racaniere, J. Martens, J. Foerster, K. Tuyls, and T. Graepel, The mechanics of n-player differentiable games, pp. 354363,2018.[13] D. M. Ostrovskii, B. Barazandeh, and M. Razaviyayn, Nonconvex-nonconcave min-max optimization with a small maximization domain,arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.03950, 2021.[14] J. Yang, N. Kiyavash, and N. He, Global convergence and variance reduction for a class of nonconvex-nonconcave minimax problems,Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, vol. 33, pp. 11531165, 2020.[15] G. Zhang, Y. Wang, L. Lessard, and R. B. Grosse, Near-optimal local convergence of alternating gradient descent-ascent for minimaxoptimization, pp. 76597679, 2022.[16] S. Gupta, S. Breguel, M. Jaggi, N. Flammarion Non-convex min-max optimisation, https://vixra.org/pdf/2312.0151v1.pdfJoin thousands of data leaders on the AI newsletter. Join over 80,000 subscribers and keep up to date with the latest developments in AI. From research to projects and ideas. If you are building an AI startup, an AI-related product, or a service, we invite you to consider becoming asponsor. Published via Towards AI

Director Kevin Smith has confirmed that hes currently working on a sequel to his 1999 film Dogma, and he expects Ben Affleck and Matt Damon would return for the project. Smith made the announcement at Vulture Festival, which was subsequently reported by Vulture. Some people will be like, Dont f--king touch it. Youll ruin it. And Im here to tell you: I will, said Smith, revealing that hes f--king tickled and that he had found a way in for the film, which will apparently be more of a companion piece than a conventional sequel.Fans should be able to bank on seeing the stars of the 1999 original, Affleck and Damon, in this upcoming new installment, with Smith joking the pair still owes him for his help behind the scenes on Good Will Hunting. I have been able to hold that over both their heads for 25 f--king years, which is why they keep showing up in all the movies. Expect a cameo from them more than a f--king cameo. The only way we get a Dogma sequel made is if theyre there. So count on those guys being there.Dogma, which also starred Alan Rickman, George Carlin, Chris Rock, Salma Hayek, Linda Fiorentino, Jason Lee, Jason Mewes, and Alanis Morrisette, is a dark comedy about two banished angels seeking to exploit a church loophole that will get them back into Heaven. It was the subject of moderate controversy at the time from some religious groups, but the good-natured satire was otherwise a critical and commercial success.However, up until recently, Dogma has been the subject of a complicated rights issue, which is why its never been available on any streaming service and is out-of-print on physical media. The rights to Dogma were previously personally owned by convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein and his now-estranged brother, Bob. Theatrical and home video distribution had then been licensed to Lionsgate and Columbia TriStar/Sony respectively, but those deals predated streaming and had long since expired. However, Dogmas rights were finally sold off this year to an unnamed company, freeing up Smith to work on the movie again without sharing any subsequent profits with Harvey Weinstein. Smiths plans for the original include another long-awaited home release, a 25th anniversary-adjacent return to cinemas, and a tour.For what it's worth, Matt Damon has actually reprised his role as the angel Loki once already in a small cameo within 2019's Jay and Silent Bob Reboot (which was a sequel to 2001's Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back). Smith's latest film, The 4:30 Movie, was released in September this year.PlayLuke is a Senior Editor on the IGN reviews team. You can chat to him on Twitter @MrLukeReilly.

The following review contains spoilers for the first episode of Dune Prophecy, The Hidden Hand.The tasks assigned to The Hidden Hand seem insurmountable. The premiere of Dune: Prophecy is asked to set up an enormous cast of characters and the relationships between and the conflicts amongst those characters, all the while introducing audiences to an era of the Dune universe never before depicted on screen one that is, in many specific ways, very different from the interplanetary Imperium of Denis Villeneuves Dune and Dune: Part II . And speaking of Villeneuve, The Hidden Hand also has to recreate the vibes of his Dune movies on a much smaller budget. So, honestly, its pretty remarkable how much the episode is able to accomplish in its hour-and-change runtime, while also disappointing that it isnt a complete success.The Hidden Hand is much better at adding to the lore of the Dune universe than it is at telling a story. Im not a big fan of voiceover, but hearing the tale of the Butlerian Jihad and the role the Atreides and Harkonnens played in it is just the right kind of lore dump that will get fans of the Dune universe looking to dive deeper sitting up in their seats (though Im still salty they called it the wars against the thinking machines). Its interesting to see the universe so recently unshackled from the binds of the thinking machines, with people so easily slipping back into trusting them. But when the premiere delves into the nitty gritty of the Emperors political woes with House Richese, it never piques any interest. Its a storyline that feels more in line with the Star Wars prequels and their Trade Federations than the sprawling sci-fi epic weve come to love, and stalls the momentum of the episode.Thats not to say that every element of its present-day thread drags, though. Theres a lot to chew on with the Sisterhood and the war within itself over how to proceed into the future, and the omen of Tiran-Arafael and the reckoning that Desmond Hart (Travis Fimmel) represents. Getting Emily Watson and Olivia Williams for the roles of Valya and Tula Harkonnen doesnt hurt things either, as they consistently elevate the sometimes dry writing. Jessica Barden and Emma Canning arent often able to do the same, coming off as stiff and awkward as the younger Valya and Tula, but it seems more a symptom of the clunky dialogue. There are enough carrots on the stick between Tiran-Arafael, the backstories of the Harkonnen sisters, and the lineage of Sister Lila to keep The Hidden Hand from being bogged down in the mundane. But it certainly feels uneven.There is an imbalance in the premieres presentation as well. With the budget of a premium-cable series and not a major-studio blockbuster, Dune: Prophecy tries its best to fit the molds set by Dune and Dune: Part II, but more often that not it feels like imitation. The Hidden Hand has its ups and downs, with its CGI often cracking under the pressure of comparison to its big-screen counterparts, while costumes and sets feel like, well, costumes and sets, rather than helping to build a cohesive, convincing, and immersive fictional worlds. Every once in a while theres a moment of greatness Kashas nightmare sequence and the horrifying burning of the young Master Richese come to mind but the premiere never fully succeeds at blending itself into the universe of Dune.Dune: Prophecy Series Premiere Gallery

This review contains spoilers for Dune: Prophecy episode 1.For years, fans considered Dune an unfilmable novel. Dense with lore, full of epigrams and aphorisms, and featuring an inversion of a classical messiah figure, Frank Herberts epic seemed to only work on the page, where the omniscient narrator can explain the true meaning behind a characters obscure dialogue.Denis Villeneuves Dune and its follow-up Dune: Part Two seemed to prove that conventional wisdom wrong. Not without its flaws and certainly streamlined, Villeneuves adaptations proved that the story of Arrakis could come to the screen.Now comes Dune: Prophecy to suggest that maybe Villeneuve got lucky.Dune: Prophecy is easily the worst live-action adaptation of any Dune property worse than David Lynchs oddball wonder, worse than the Sci-Fi miniseries of the 2000s. It misunderstands not just the central appeal of Herberts work, but also the appeal of Game of Thrones and other TV epics that HBO clearly wants to replicate.Showrunners Diane Ademu-John and Alison Schapker, the former wrote the premiere The Hidden Hand and Anna Foerster directs, do not make things easy on themselves, choosing to build off a little-loved trio of books (written by Frank Herberts son Brian Herbert and co-author Kevin J. Anderson) set more than 10,000 years in the future but more than 10,000 years before the events of Villenueves Dune movies.The Hidden Hand mostly concerns sisters Valya and Tula Harkonnen (Emily Watson and Olivia Williams, respectively), biological sisters and leaders of a religious order called the Sisterhood, forerunners of the Bene Gesserit seen in Dune. The more enterprising of the duo, Valya wants to continue her mentors desire to put a puppet ruler on the Emperors throne, giving the Sisterhood someone they can control.Valya sees her opportunity during the reign of Emperor Javicco Corrino (Mark Strong), a relatively weak ruler who struggles to keep up with the various power plays in his court. These plays include not only the machinations of Valya, but also his wife Natalya (Jodhi May), his daughter Ynez (Sarah-Sofie Boussnina), and Harrow Harkonnen (Edward Davis), the last of whom arranges a marriage to Ynez to his very young son, in hopes of securing spice flow from Arrakis. And then theres soldier Desmond Hart (Travis Fimmel), who seems to be playing his own game, and Javiccos son Constantine (Josh Heuston), who seems mostly concerned with being handsome, but might also have other motivations.Complicating matters for Valya are the fissures within the Sisterhood, which we only begin to glimpse in the pilot. Were introduced to a number of Sisters who more or less declare their character descriptions and then move on, including Aoife Hinds as the devout Emeline, Chloe Lea as youthful Lila, Jade Anouka as the mercurial Theodosia, and Jihae as the politically-minded Kasha Jinjo.To its credit, Prophecy seems to anticipate audience confusion. To its great demerit, Prophecy addresses the problem by reducing almost all dialogue to exposition, complete with voice over narration from Valya for the first ten minutes or so of the episode, referencing a war against thinking machines and elements that viewers might know from the movies. Even after the voice-over stops, most of The Hidden Hand consists of actors reading the Dune fandom wiki to one another in darkened hallways.Yet, for all its attempts to explain the timeline and characters and basic motivations, Prophecy never creates a legible story, let alone an engaging one. Villeneuves adaptation worked not just because it simplified the machinations upon machinations in the book. It worked because he leads with the emotional truth of the characters, giving the actors something to work with.Because theyre playing wiki entries, even outstanding actors such as Watson, Williams, and Strong get lost. Theres a clear affection between Watson and Williams that gives their interactions some reality, even if theyre just shouting nonsense to one another. Strong isnt asked to do much but look annoyed and beffudled by everything. The younger actors dont fare as well, especially Jessica Barden as teenage Valya. Like everyone else, Barden must try to make exposition sound compelling, but shes also asked to portray a visionary upstart who changes the course of history, a quality thats just not on the page or in the performance. When Valya uses the Voice for the first time, the Bene Gesserit power to control people through speech, it sounds like a whiny screech, unable to compel anyone to do anything but turn off the TV.The most compelling performance in The Hidden Hand comes from Fimmel, strangely. Fimmel plays Desmond Hart like hes Iago in a middle-school production of Othello, broadcasting to the cheap seats his dubious nature. Yet, its the most enjoyable bit of the show, possibly because like Dakota Johnson in Madame Web, another bad actor in a bad production, his disdain for the terrible material captures the audiences frustration.Whatever the reason, the fact that Travis Fimmel is the standout in a prestige show starring Emily Watson and Olivia Williams proves that Dune: Prophecy is doomed. The Hidden Hand ends with a compelling cliffhanger, in which Harts attack leaves several visitors to Javiccos badly burned, including Ynezs young betrothed. But after the fifty minutes of exposition that preceded it, it seems likely that episode two will just be people explaining the attack to one another instead of responding like real people.Anyone interested in what happens would be better off reading the Dune wiki and then rewatching any other adaptation. Even flawed but functional takes on Herberts world are better than what Dune: Prophecy has to offer.New episodes of Dune: Prophecy premiere Sundays at 9 pm ET on HBO and Max, culminating with the finale on December 22.Learn more about Den of Geeks review process and why you can trust our recommendationshere.

Lets say you, like most people, havent read any of Frank Herberts novels, but youve watched and rewatched both of Denis Villeneuves Dune movies again and again. You should be set to jump right in to the new prequel series Dune: Prophecy, right?As much as HBO and showrunners Diane Ademu-John and Alison Schapker want the answer to be Yes, the fact of the matter is that Herbert created a dense world, familiar and foreign all at once. We may be able to see similarities between the Bene Gesserit sisterhood and real-world nuns or the spice production on Arakkis and todays oil mining operations, but Herbert covers those metaphors with unique language and backstory.Dune: Prophecy makes things more complex by building not on any of Herberts works, but on the additional material written by his son Brian and co-writer Kevin J. Anderson. Prophecy builds off of the Great Schools of Dune trilogy, and takes place 60 years after those events. Furthermore, the moral complexity of Herberts world means that we cant even break characters into simple good guy and bad guy categories, as demonstrated by the fact that the show chooses as protagonists Valya and Tula Harkonnen, ancestors of the movies big bads Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgrd) and his nephew Fayd-Ratha Harkonnen (Austin Butler).In short, Dune is complicated and confusing property. But Dune: Prophecy will make a lot more sense if you know a little about the characters, and thats where Den of Geek has you covered.Emily Watson as Valya HarkonnenThe first episode of Prophecy begins with Valya explaining her familys place in the world. While most viewers associate the name Harkonnen with the scheming Baron, Valya insists that her family was unfairly shamed by duplicitous Atreides during the war against Thinking Machines (read: AI) a century earlier. Valya sees a way forward for her family through the Sisterhood, a religious order that eventually becomes the Bene Gesserit.Prophecy overcomes any prejudices viewers might have by casting Emily Watson as Valya. A veteran of stage and screen, Watson has an inherent sweetness and vulnerability, qualities that led to standout performances in Breaking the Waves and Punch-Drunk Love. Watson began in the Royal Shakespeare Company, training that serves her well while delivering Valya long and often deliberately obscure monologues. But will that be enough to make people see Valya as a hero?Olivia Williams as Tula HarkonnenWhere Valya sees the Sisterhood as a means to restore the honor of her family, her sibling Tula sees it as a good unto its self. As a Reverend Mother within the Sisterhood, Tula devotes her time less to scheming power plays and more towards teaching her charges the fundamentals of their beliefs. Despite her differences in approach, Tula still deeply loves Valya and shows a great deal of patience for the latters plans.Like Watson, Olivia Williams has a long and impressive career in film, television, and theaters. Moviegoers may know her best for supporting roles in The Sixth Sense and Rushmore, where she played women who provided stability in complex situations. That experience will serve Williams well while portraying Tula, as will her historical research. As Williams told Den of Geek earlier this year, she and Watson prepared for their roles by studying the portraits of Tudor sisters Mary and Elizabeth in the National Portrait Gallery.Mark Strong as Emperor Javicco CorrinoAlthough he only had a few minutes of screen time, the Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV (Christopher Walken) made his presence known throughout both Dune films. His distant ancestor Javicco Corrino will be much more noticeable in Dune: Prophecy, but will he be more effective? The scion of the house who established itself in the fallout of the war against Thinking Machines, Javicco rules an empire in transition, still trying to figure out how to live without computers. As future institutions such as the Bene Gesserit and the Spacing Guild rise, Javiccos weaknesses will be theirs to exploit.Weakness isnt often a word associated with Mark Strong, and not just because of his surname. Strong loves to play scheming villains, most recently stepping in for John Turturro as Carmine Falcone in The Penguin, but also as Doctor Sivana in Shazam!, Sinestro in Green Lantern, and Frank DAmico in Kick-Ass. Strong will get to show off another set of skills as Javicco, a man who cannot keep up with the schemers around him.Sarah-Sofie Boussnina as Princess YnezOne of the prime schemers with whom Javicco must contend is his own daughter, Princess Ynez. Ynez recognizes that, even 10,000 years in our future, patriarchy still limits the abilities of women, a limitation she rejects. She can play the dutiful daughter in a royal line, even agreeing to a political marriage to the pre-pubescent son of a spice baron from Arrakis. But make no mistake, she is playing, working her own angles until she can find a role that befits her desires.A newcomer to most American and British viewers, Sarah-Sofie Boussnina has done most of her work in her native Denmark. There, she appeared on the 2011 crime series The Bridge and in the historical series 1864.Jodhi May as Empress NatalyaGiven Javiccos weak will, one might wonder where Ynez got such resolve. Those questions fall away the first time viewers meet her mother Empress Natalya, played by Jodhi May. Natalya has not true love for Javicco, but rather married him as part of a political alliance. She finds herself frustrated, then, by Javiccos unwillingness to strengthen that alliance, and especially his failure to recognize the threats around him on every side.May knows how to play characters with great expectations, as shes still the youngest person to ever receive a Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival, having been bestowed the honor at age 12 for A World Apart. Lately, May has played royal figures in the series The Warrior Queen of Jhansi and The Witcher.Travis Fimmel as Desmond HartEveryone in Dune: Prophecy has a secret a long term goal. But Desmond Hart seems to want only chaos. A veteran of wars in service of the Empire, Desmond returns to the palace with a powerful combination of the crowns respect and deep anger. Although the showrunners have described Desmond as an enemy of the Sisterhood, he seems to have no love for the Emperor either, leading to some shocking acts of violence.Travis Fimmel is no stranger to genre television, having gotten his start playing Tarzan and eventually breaks out in the historical series Vikings. The Australian actor also appeared in the Warcraft movie as human hero Anduin Lothar.Chris Mason as Keiran AtreidesOf course, no Dune story would be complete without an Atreides. But because the story comes from the perspective of Valya, the Atreides arent the noble people represented by Paul and Leto. They are just as dangerous as everyone else, as represented by Keiran Atreides. A sword master, Keiran comes into Javiccos service ready to train soldiers for more traditional fights. But hes forced to understand a different type of power as Valya and the Sisterhood make their moves.Den of Geek readers most recently saw Chris Mason playing John Lennon in an episode of Doctor Who. Before that, Mason had parts in Riverdale and Broadchurch.Tabu as Sister FrancescaValyas plans for the Sisterhood dont go unchallenged from within, as many doubt her plans. One of the more notable objections comes from Sister Francesca, who advises a more slow and subtle course. Francescas approach may stem from her comfortable place within the Empire, as she lives in the palace with the Emperor and has Javiccos ear. Before that, she had Javiccos heart, and her emotional attachment creates tension in the Sisterhood and the Palace alike.Hindi acting great Tabu plays Francesca, adding a bit of international prestige to Dune: Prophecy. With a career that stretches across three decades, Tabu has won numerous accolades, including two National Film Awards and seven Filmfare Awards.Jessica Barden and Emma Canning as young Valya and Tula HarkonnenTo add depth to the conflict between Valya and Tula, Dune: Prophecy regularly flashes back to the girls adolescence. Driven by a vision from her mentor Mother Superior Raquella Berto-Anirul (Cathy Tyson), Valya strives to change the Sisterhood and put a leader they can control on the Emperors throne. That certainty gives her a confidence and clarity that often puts her into conflict with her fellow Sisters, as well as her more even tempered younger sister Tula.Before playing the younger Valya, Barden played Alyssa Foley in the original comedy The End of the F***ing World. She also went on to appear in the movies Scarborough and The Lobster. Irish actor Emma Canning has an impressive stage career, which includes performances in Trouble in Mind and The Night of the Iguana, as well as parts in the TV series The Irregulars and Masters of the Air.Dune: Prophecy airs every Sunday at 9 pm EST on HBO and streams on Max.

Originally introduced in 2016, it now seems like Apples Lightning to 3.5mm headphone jack adapter may soon be discontinued (via MacRumors).Apple started selling this product alongside the iPhone 7, which was the first iPhone to no longer include a 3.5mm headphone jack. If you wanted to use wired headphones (aside from the Lightning EarPods that came in the box), you would need this adapter.Apple included it in the box with the iPhone 7, 8, and X, but starting with the iPhone XS and XR, they stopped including it, requiring customers to buy it separately for $9.Obviously, iPhones use USB-C now, and Apple does still make a USB-C to headphone jack adapter for use with iPhone 15 and later. However, if you use an iPhone 14 or prior, time may be running out.Its currently sold out on Apples online store, which doesnt necessarily mean its gone but its a strong sign. As mentioned in MacRumors reporting, this same situation played out with Apples USB SuperDrive, where it sold out a few months prior, and then silently got discontinued.While it is out of stock online in the US and in most countries, it is still available in France, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden.Therell likely continue to be MFi options on the market, but if you specifically want the Apple one time is running out. Amazon seems to be out of stock, but you can still buy it from Best Buy, for slightly under the original $9 price tag.Follow Michael:X/Twitter,Threads,InstagramAdd 9to5Mac to your Google News feed. FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.Youre reading 9to5Mac experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Dont know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel