The Gooey Goodness of Velveeta Was a Smash Hit From Its Very Cheesy StartHow Emil Frey whipped up a smooth dairy sensation after two years of tinkeringDavid LevineJanuary/February 2025 A 1951 ad. The FDA informed Kraft in 2002 it could no longer market Velveeta as a cheese. The Kraft Heinz CompanyThe year was 1916, and Jacob Weisl, owner of the Monroe Cheese Company of Monroe, New York, had a problem. Some of the wheels of Swiss cheese made in his factory in Pennsylvania inevitably broke or were misshapen, leaving a plethora of bits and blocks of cheese that Weisl was desperate to salvage. He had this waste shipped back to Monroe, where the solution was concocted by one of his cheesemakers, a caseiculture genius named Emil Frey. On his home stove in Monroe, Frey spent two years tinkering. His breakthrough came in 1918, when he devised a new way to mix the cheese pieces with whey, the leftover liquid from milk curds, while adding an ingenious emulsifier to blend the fats and water. (Frey patented a key part of this process.) The result was a cheese that, when melted, became a smooth, velvety sauce. Frey dubbed it Velveetaand it became an instant hit. By 1923, Weisl had incorporated the Velveeta Cheese Company and was selling his new, sensationally satiny cheese to restaurants and hotels across America and Europe.As industrial agriculture rose in the 1920s, Big Cheese soon took over: Kraft Foods bought the Velveeta Company in 1927, and Borden absorbed the Monroe Cheese Company in 1929. Kraft soon changed the Velveeta recipe, though, crucially replacing real cheese, which has only three or four ingredients, with the paragraph of chemical elements that still graces the package today. In the 1930s and 40s, Kraft began marketing Velveeta successfully, if rather dubiously, as a health food and diet aid, and its low price and conveniencebeloved by kids, shelf-stable, melts like a dreamcharmed Americas homemakers throughout the suburban 60s and beyond. The New York Times in 1976 declared Velveeta a worldwide favorite, although no country could vie with the U.S. for sheer consumption: In 1996, domestic sales hit an astonishing peak of 8.75 pounds for every American.Perhaps Velveetas most remarkable moment was the devastating Cheesepocalypse of 2014. Thats when Kraft announced a Velveeta shortage, just ahead of the Super Bowl. If this is true, Im going to die, one queso-loving fan tweetedrevealing a feverish love for a cheese product that, in fact, technically does not contain cheese.Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine now for just $19.99This article is a selection from the January/February 2025 issue of Smithsonian magazineGet the latest Travel & Culture stories in your inbox.Filed Under: Food, Food History, Food Science

The bald eagle is finally being recognized as America's national bird. John Tlumacki / The Boston Globe via Getty ImagesThe bald eagle is featured on American military insignia, currency, stamps and even the helmets of anNFL team. However, the government has never officially recognized it as the United States national birduntil now.On Christmas Eve, President Joe Biden signed a bill into law making the designation official.Bald eagles are a historical symbol of the United States representing independence, strength and freedom, says the new legislation, which Minnesotas Senator Amy Klobuchar and Representative Brad Finstad introduced over the summer, per theNew York Times Sara Ruberg. The Great Seal of the United States has long featured a bald eagle. Bettmann via Getty ImagesFor more than 200 years, the bald eagle has been featured on the countrys Great Seal, which shows the bird carrying an olive branch and arrows in its talons. Charles Thomson, the secretary of Congress, proposed the design in 1782, though it received some pushback: Benjamin Franklin once called the creature a bird of bad moral character, according to theFranklin Institute.The U.S.s national tree is the oak, and its national flower is the rose. The national mammal has been the bison since 2016, and all 50 states have a state bird. But until this month, there was no national bird on the books.Preston Cook, an avid collector of bald eagle memorabilia, brought the issue to Congress attention after realizing that the bird didnt have official recognition.Scott Mehus, the education director at MinnesotasNational Eagle Center (which houses Cooks collection), says he was shocked when he learned of the oversight.Preston Cook brought that up to us years ago, and it was like, Oh, come on, youre kidding me, he tellsNBC News Frank Thorp V and Ryan Nobles. Ive been talking in classes all of these years, telling [people] its our nations symbol and our national bird.The Senate passed the bill with bipartisan support in July. When it passed in the House of Representatives earlier this month, Finstad said in a statement: Today, we rightfully recognize the bald eagle as our official national birdbestowing an honor that is long overdue. Bird watchers can see bald eagles in most states. Steven King / Icon Sportswire via Getty ImagesBald eagles are native to North America. Bird watchers can spot them in most states, and Alaska is home to the largest eagle population. They were once considered endangered, but their numbers have recovered thanks to government protections.Since 1940, its been illegal to kill, sell, own bald eagles or harm their nests and eggs. In 1972, the government banned the pesticide DDT, which had caused their numbers to dwindle. The eagle population grew in the years that followed, and the birds were removed from the governments endangered species list in 2007.By 2020, theU.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimated that 316,700 bald eagles soared across the contiguous United Statesfour times their numbers from a decade earlier.Still, theres always more to be done. The new bills passage comes as bald eagles are contending with mounting risks, including climate change and habitat loss, asThe Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of Americas Bird, writes in Audubon magazine.Ed Hahn, the communications director at the National Eagle Center, hopes the new designation can also serve as a reminder of the conservation efforts that helped the eagle population thrive.When we look at some of the issues that are facing other natural resources today, we can look again at our living national symbol and now our official national bird, he tells MPR News Estelle Timar-Wilcox. It shows what we are able and willing to do when we truly value something, when its important to us.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.Filed Under: American History, Animals, Birds, Congress, Conservation, Environmental Preservation, Founding Fathers, Government, History, Joe Biden, Law, US Government

For many, 2025 will be the year of AI agents, when pilot programs, experiments and use cases converge into something resembling ROI.Read More

Justin Carter, Contributing EditorDecember 30, 20241 Min ReadImage via SNK.At a GlanceThe just-established KOF Studio is tasked with continuing key SNK fighting franchises like Fatal Fury and King of Fighters.Japanese developer SNK recently established a new studio focused on its various fighting game franchises. Dubbed KOF Studio, it aims to "further evolve the SNK fighting game IP," according to a translation of its announcement.Fighting game properties under SNK include Fatal Fury, Samurai Shodown, and King of Fighters. The latter series had a new installment in 2022, and the most recent Samurai Shodown (or Samurai Spirits in Japan) came in 2019. The next Fatal Fury game is April 2025's Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, which marks its first new title in over 25 years.An action-RPG Samurai Shodown is in development, and SNK is currently hiring for that project.This past June, SNK formally announced a Singaporean studio to help "develop high-quality games through enhanced cooperation" with its Japanese teams. Developers based in that region are rare, and the effort is part of SNK's aim of becoming a "top 10 global publisher" within the next decade.SNK has always had a strong presence in the fighting game genre. But its commitment to revitalizing its franchises within that space is not too dissimilar from what Capcom has been doing with its own game library in recent years, such as Dragon's Dogma and Mega Man.Earlier in December, the Resident Evil developer unveiled new games for its Okami and Onimusha franchises. Both have not had new entries in a decade or longer, but Capcom explained it wanted to try its hand at reviving series it had left dormant.Similarly, PlayStation co-CEO Herman Hulst recently indicated the console maker would be open to "leveraging" its property, potentially with third-party studios.Read more about:Studio announcementAbout the AuthorJustin CarterContributing Editor, GameDeveloper.comA Kansas City, MO native, Justin Carter has written for numerous sites including IGN, Polygon, and SyFy Wire. In addition to Game Developer, his writing can be found at io9 over on Gizmodo. Don't ask him about how much gum he's had, because the answer will be more than he's willing to admit.See more from Justin CarterDaily news, dev blogs, and stories from Game Developer straight to your inboxStay UpdatedYou May Also Like

For months, the location information of around 800,000 electric Volkswagen vehicles was available online due to a data leak, according to a report from the German news magazine Der Spiegel. The leak reportedly stemmed from the software running inside Volkswagen vehicles and could've allowed a bad actor to trace a drivers exact movements, as noted by Electrek.A whistleblower first notified Der Spiegel and the European hacking association Chaos Computer Club of the vulnerability, which also affects EVs from Volkswagen-owned car brands on a global scale, including Audi, Seat, and Skoda.Der Spiegel found that Cariad, the Volkswagen subsidiary behind the automaker's software, made it possible for an attacker to find and access driver data housed in Amazons cloud storage service. The data, which could be linked to the names and contact details of the drivers, reportedly included details about when EVs were switched on and off, along with the emails, phone numbers, and addresses of drivers in some cases.RelatedIt included the precise locations of about 460,000 vehicles, as Der Spiegel says the data was accurate to within ten centimeters for Volkswagen and Seats vehicles, and within 10km (~6 miles) for Audi and Skoda models. Cariad has since addressed the issue, telling Der Spiegel customershave no need to take any action, as no sensitive information such as passwords or payment details are affected. The Verge reached out to Cariad and Volkswagen with requests for comment but didnt immediately hear back.If anything, this leak serves as yet another reminder of the immense amount of data collected by modern-day vehicles, which Mozilla has called a privacy nightmare.

We still havent seen the next generation of CarPlay that Apple first announced in 2022 and continues to say on its CarPlay webpage is arriving in 2024, as MacRumors points out. And barring some spectacular surprise, its not coming today or tomorrow. What gives? So far, weve only seen changes like CarPlay mapping directions appearing in the instrument cluster in cars from manufacturers like Polestar, Porsche, and Lincoln. Thats even the case for vehicles like the 2024 Lincoln Nautilus, which has the screen real estate to support Apples vision for its dashboard-spanning infotainment software. Porsche and Aston Martin had announced their cars would be the first to get the new CarPlay, but both recently declined to give Wired a timeline for its rollout.Apples website still says First models arrive in 2024, which seems... unlikely. Screenshot: AppleOther companies that Apple said would support its new CarPlay have been noncommittal about the software since it was announced. Some have closed the door on full support more forcefully since then, like when Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Kllenius told The Verges Nilay Patel in April that Apple wont be taking over all the screens in its cars.Outside of Apples initial pronouncement that so many cars would use its big CarPlay update, automakers like General Motors and Rivian have taken a stand against both it and Googles Android Auto. Thats not a popular position, particularly for GM, but both have indicated its about having more control over their vehicles. Despite the lukewarm reception of Apples ideas, the company has continued to talk about its plans for the software. Its just not clear what cars, if any, it will ever show up in.

The first time I installed Bazzite on a Windows gaming handheld, I laughed. It looked like such a blatant clone of Valves Steam Deck interface. Its many bugs kept me at bay.Now, an Asus ROG Ally X running Bazzite has all but replaced the Steam Deck in my life. For the moment, it may be the best handheld your time and money can buy because it brings 90 percent of the Decks ease of use to the Allys more powerful hardware, larger 80 watt-hour battery, and variable refresh rate screen. Depending on the game, it can even offer better performance and battery life than the very same handheld with Windows. Ive been testing it for five months, and Ive rarely looked back.This combination wont be for everyone, because the $800 Ally X costs far more than a Steam Deck, and Bazzite still has annoying quirks. But because Bazzite can so convincingly transform a Windows handheld into a true Steam Deck rival, I believe it singlehandedly proves that handheld manufacturers are making the wrong choice if they doggedly stick with Windows, and that others should join Lenovo in hedging that bet as soon as possible. Bazzite is one way another may come as soon as next month, when were expecting Valve to open up its SteamOS to more partners.RelatedIn review after review of handheld gaming PC, Ive tried to explain: Windows isnt a good portable gaming experience. Its bloated, full of self-serving prompts to share your data with Microsoft, subscribe to Microsofts services, and use Microsofts apps. Its not designed to let you navigate with gamepad controls or even do simple keyboarding on a 7-inch touchscreen display. Its not good at making sure games launch full-screen, and worst of all, Ive never been able to trust a Windows handheld to sleep and resume properly when I drop it into a bag.The Steam Deck, with its Linux-based SteamOS, has no such problems. Its far closer to the it just works experience of a Nintendo Switch or PS5. I know my game will almost always be ready to play as soon as I hit the power button, and theres a gamepad-accessible keyboard ready to go whenever I like. But SteamOS hasnt been broadly available for other companys handhelds which brings us to Bazzite.The open-source Bazzite is a way to bring SteamOSs strengths to hardware that doesnt yet have Valves blessing. Its not technically SteamOS, as its based on Fedora Linux rather than Arch Linux, contains many different and/or updated components and a lot of custom tweaks. But it plays the same games the same exact way, and the parts you touch are sometimes even laughably the same. Bazzite includes an exact copy of the Steam Decks UI right down to Valves own tutorial on how to use the Steam Decks buttons all of which should theoretically be OK with Valve, as it expressly allows anyone to distribute an unlimited number of copies of that software under a limited license.Despite what you may have heard, its not true that Windows handhelds offer more games than SteamOS. Not only does Valves Proton compatibility layer run many Windows games better than on an equivalent Windows handheld, many titles that are broken and abandoned on Windows have already been fixed by the Linux community. While the Linux-based SteamOS does have fewer popular multiplayer shooting games because publishers arent willing or able to offer the same anti-cheat solutions, Ive found its a small price to pay.Handheld Daemon, accessible with a double-tap of the Quick Access Menu key just below the Start button.To me, the surprising part is that Bazzite doesnt feel like a hack. For me, its been so much more reliable than Windows that it makes Windows feel foreign on handhelds, even though I use Windows on my desktop every single day. And its fairly easy to set up, with its own installer that walks you through setup. You can even competently dual-boot Bazzite alongside Windows, holding down your handhelds boot menu shortcut button(s) when you restart to swap between the two.And when I did that with the Asus ROG Ally X, directly comparing Bazzite and Windows, I often found games ran faster, smoother, and used slightly less power with Bazzites Linux-based operating system.Its not night and day. While I saw up to 13 percent faster performance in Cyberpunk 2077 and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, sometimes performance was identical in other games. In Returnal, the particularly demanding game where you crash-land on an alien planet full of destructible objects and swarming enemies, my framerate was initially worse, though a recent update put it on par; in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, my framerate was initially better but an update has now made it worse.Even with games that are 13 percent faster, were generally just talking about a small handful of frames; I never saw enough speed increase that a game became playable on Bazzite that wasnt playable on Windows through faster framerate alone.Bazzite vs. Windows, 720p lowGame and power modeAlly X WindowsAlly X BazziteFaster by:Assassin's Creed Valhalla, 15-watt TDP52567.69%17-watt TDP67727.46%25-watt TDP 83852.41%30-watt TDP (plugged in)83897.23%Cyberpunk 2077, 15-watt TDP42457.14%17-watt TDP51569.80%25-watt TDP 687713.24%30-watt TDP (plugged in)707912.86%Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, 15-watt TDP59625.08%17-watt TDP71755.63%25-watt TDP 859612.94%30-watt TDP (plugged in)899911.24%Returnal, 15-watt TDP30313.33%17-watt TDP37370.00%25-watt TDP 40425.00%30-watt TDP (plugged in)42420.00%Shadow of the Tomb Raider, 15-watt TDP5248-7.69%17-watt TDP6458-9.38%25-watt TDP 75761.33%30-watt TDP (plugged in)79790.00%All games tested at 720p low. But they do often feel smoother, with fewer hitches! Like the Steam Deck, I notice that framerate doesnt typically dip as low with Bazzite as it does with Windows. Many feel faster and look better on the Ally X than on the Steam Deck OLED, too, because of the faster chip and especially the variable refresh rate screen, which lets the Ally display every frame its processors can generate instead of capping at an arbitrary number that might feel choppy. (Its a killer feature for GPU-limited handhelds, and its a big deal that Bazzite supports it today.)Similarly, I didnt see battery life savings in every game. I sometimes watch the Ally X drain its battery one, two, even three watts slower on Bazzite than on Windows when I set the chips to identical power levels, but thats not always the case. In Dirt Rally, I saw an identical 3 hours, 8 minutes from both operating systems, and both Armored Core 6 and Persona 3 Reload drained the Ally at the same speed, each offering three hours of play. But in Dave the Diver, I was able to make Bazzite last nearly an extra hour at 4 hours, 14 minutes, far closer to my 4 hour, 42-minute result with the Steam Deck OLED.Thats because like SteamOS, Bazzite makes it easy to tweak how much power and performance youre using on the fly. Not only does Bazzite have the same built-in Gamescope monitoring tool Valve uses on the Steam Deck, you can also double-tap the Ally Xs quick access button to pull up an integrated version of Handheld Daemon, a power user tool that lets you change your chips exact TDP to toggle turbo or battery savings (or RGB lighting, or rumble, or many more) in a snap.Frankly, the interface is more responsive and reliable than Asus own Armory Crate UI overlay, though it cant quite do everything that Asus does with its own hardware. Two key examples: the Ally Xs rear macro buttons dont work unless you instruct Handheld Daemon to emulate a Sony DualSense Edge controller, which is easy but can mean mismatched button prompts in some games. And you cant hold down the power button to quickly access the Linux desktop mode or a shutdown menu.Steam can recognize the back buttons of Sonys fancy PS5 pad, so here Bazzite is telling it that the ROG Allys buttons are coming from that one.But using those chip wattage adjustments, I easily managed to improve battery life even further than Windows in some of the least demanding games I test, ones where the Steam Deck has generally run circles around the competition in the past. In both Balatro and Slay the Spire, I got the handhelds total battery drain down to just 6.4 watts by setting the chip to 5 watts and dimming screen brightness to minimum, which theoretically gives you a maximum of 12.5 hours from the 80 watt-hour pack. That is class-leading battery life, folks even better than the Steam Deck OLED.And when you need more performance, the Ally X has the battery to take it places the Deck OLED cant comfortably compete. When I set the Ally X to its 25W Turbo mode, I get over two hours of Helldivers 2, and nearly two hours of Baldurs Gate 3, at a very playable 900p resolution with a Balanced level of render scaling. (If you can tolerate a lower-res picture, you can get nearly three hours of BG3 at 17W TDP.)In short, I dont worry about the Ally Xs battery with Bazzite any more than I do with the Steam Deck OLED, particularly since Bazzite added support for the ROG Ally Xs extreme standby mode where I find I only lose four percent battery overnight.But there are things I do miss about the Steam Deck OLED and its native SteamOS. While Bazzite does include Steams wonderful controller remapping and support the ROG Ally Xs gyroscope for precision aiming, it doesnt magically give it a pair of twin touchpads to make generations of older mouse-and-trackball games work. You dont get the Deck OLEDs slightly larger screen with more vibrant colors and brilliant HDR light. I personally still think the Deck has better ergonomics, too, though the Ally X is certainly my second favorite among todays leading handhelds.The gamepad controls also sometimes take a little bit longer to come back to life after resuming from sleep, even without extreme standby turned on. Bluetooth microphone support seems entirely borked in Bazzite. Sometimes theres a long delay when Im trying to uninstall a game before the system responds. Whenever theres a Bazzite update, Ill uselessly see Valves last update message instead of Bazzites and have no idea what Im about to get. Occasionally I see performance take a turn for the worse after an update, like how Shadow of the Tomb Raider is suddenly giving me lower framerate than with Windows. And its difficult to tell how long a system update will take to install.Also, theres a weird issue where if I almost fully drain the battery, down to 1 percent or 0 percent, the whole system will slow to such a painful crawl it can take 10 minutes just to save your game and shut the Ally X down. And I need to shut it down, because even charging to 100 percent doesnt speed things up again. This is easy enough to prevent by simply plugging in the system at the five percent or three percent mark, like youd need to do anyway with most other handhelds.Ive told Bazzites maintainers about these things, and they say theyre working on them including a hibernation mode that should alleviate the 0-percent charging quirk in particular, and more intuitive updates. We have also been improving support for other manufacturers, especially OneXPlayer, and for the next update GPD, adds Antheas Kapenekakis, a Bazzite contributor whos also the lead developer of Handheld Daemon.I dont think I would personally buy an Asus ROG Ally X over a Steam Deck, at least not now. At $800, it costs nearly twice the price of a base Steam Deck, and hundreds more than the OLED version I personally recommend. To be worth all that extra money, Id want to know the ROG Ally X isnt just the best handheld today, but also the best handheld tomorrow. I would personally wait to see a new crop of handhelds at CES in January, and hear what Valve, Microsoft, AMD and Lenovo have to say at their January 7th event.But if I already owned an Asus ROG Ally X, or regular Ally, or the Lenovo Legion Go, I would absolutely install Bazzite on it right away, perhaps using a dual-boot configuration to make sure I can easily swap back. You might be surprised by how little youll miss Windows. You might be surprised by just how much better the portable experience can get.Photos by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Medical artificial intelligence (AI) is full of promise but comes with its own set of challenges. Unlike straightforward mathematical problems, medical tasks often demand a deeper level of reasoning to support real-world diagnoses and treatments. The complexity and variability of medical scenarios make it difficult to verify reasoning processes effectively. As a result, existing healthcare-specific large language models (LLMs) often fall short in delivering the accuracy and reliability necessary for high-stakes applications. Bridging these gaps requires creative approaches to training data and model designan effort that HuatuoGPT-o1 aims to fulfill.What Is HuatuoGPT-o1?A team of researchers from The Chinese University of Hong Kong and Shenzhen Research Institute of Big Data introduce HuatuoGPT-o1: a medical LLM designed to enhance reasoning capabilities in the healthcare domain. It is built using a dataset of 40,000 carefully curated and verifiable medical problems. This model outperforms general-purpose and domain-specific LLMs by following a two-stage learning process. First, it develops complex reasoning skills through feedback-driven iterations. Second, it refines these skills with reinforcement learning (RL). This dual approach allows HuatuoGPT-o1 to create detailed chains of thought (CoT), refine its answers iteratively, and align its solutions with verifiable outcomes. These capabilities make it an essential tool for tackling the intricate challenges of medical reasoning.BackboneSupported LanguagesLinkHuatuoGPT-o1-8BLLaMA-3.1-8BEnglishHF LinkHuatuoGPT-o1-70BLLaMA-3.1-70BEnglishHF LinkHuatuoGPT-o1-7BQwen2.5-7BEnglish & ChineseHF LinkHuatuoGPT-o1-72BQwen2.5-72BEnglish & ChineseHF LinkTechnical AdvancementsHuatuoGPT-o1s development brought several significant advancements. The dataset for training was sourced from challenging medical exams, transformed into open-ended problems with unique, objective answers. A medical verifier, powered by GPT-4o, checks the correctness of solutions, enabling the model to develop robust reasoning pathways. These pathways are integrated into the model during fine-tuning, encouraging reflective and iterative thinking.In the second stage, reinforcement learningspecifically Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO)is employed to improve the model further. Sparse rewards from the verifier guide this process, helping HuatuoGPT-o1 refine its reasoning accuracy. This step-by-step problem-solving approach ensures the model can handle the demands of real-world medical applications effectively.Performance and FindingsHuatuoGPT-o1 has shown impressive results in various benchmarks. The 8-billion parameter version delivered an 8.5-point improvement over its baseline, while the 70-billion parameter version outperformed top medical-specific LLMs on datasets like MedQA and PubMedQA. Its ability to perform well on both traditional and complex datasets underscores its robust reasoning capabilities.Ablation studies emphasized the importance of the models two-stage training process. Models that skipped reinforcement learning exhibited weaker performance, highlighting the value of verifier-guided CoT and RL enhancements. Additionally, the medical verifier showed strong reliability, achieving a 96.5% accuracy rate during the first stage of traininga testament to its crucial role in the overall pipeline.ConclusionHuatuoGPT-o1 represents a meaningful step forward in medical AI. By combining advanced reasoning techniques with a structured training process, it addresses long-standing challenges in reasoning and verification. Its success, achieved with a relatively small dataset, highlights the impact of thoughtful training methods. As AI continues to evolve in healthcare, models like HuatuoGPT-o1 have the potential to improve diagnostic accuracy and treatment planning, setting a benchmark for future developments in the field.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. Dont Forget to join our60k+ ML SubReddit. Asif RazzaqAsif Razzaq is the CEO of Marktechpost Media Inc.. As a visionary entrepreneur and engineer, Asif is committed to harnessing the potential of Artificial Intelligence for social good. His most recent endeavor is the launch of an Artificial Intelligence Media Platform, Marktechpost, which stands out for its in-depth coverage of machine learning and deep learning news that is both technically sound and easily understandable by a wide audience. The platform boasts of over 2 million monthly views, illustrating its popularity among audiences. [Download] Evaluation of Large Language Model Vulnerabilities Report (Promoted)

Im starting to feel like Charlie Brown from The Peanuts comics, and Microsoft is the Lucy who keeps pulling the football away right as I go to kick it. Every year I write this feature, and every year I say that this looks like The Year where everything comes together for Xbox. Last year, in fact, I specifically said, Looking ahead to 2024, that positive momentum looks set to continue and, with any luck, snowball. Microsoft arguably didnt live up to that for the first 10.5 months of the year, with only the visually-full-but-gameplay-empty Hellblade 2 dropping in May after many years of waiting. But to the big-spending publishers credit, it did end the year extremely strong, dropping three exclusive bangers in a row: STALKER 2, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, and my personal vote for Game of the Year in 2024 and the game that I think is the best Xbox exclusive in years, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. So, can Microsoft keep that positive end-of-2024 momentum going into 2025? Call me Charlie Brown if you must, but yes, I genuinely believe that 2025 could be Xboxs strongest and most bountiful year since at least 2021, when it dropped Forza Horizon 5, Halo Infinite, and Psychonauts 2. Lets dig into why Im optimisticA Fountain of Fantasy and FirearmsXboxs 2025 kicks off rather quickly and, from everything we can tell, rather impressively with Obsidians first-person fantasy RPG Avowed, due to be released on February 18. This Skyrim Lite is set in the studios established and well-loved Pillars of Eternity universe, its supposed to be around the same meaty-but-not-gargantuan 25-40 hours long as Obsidians most recent first-person RPG The Outer Worlds, and its impressed us more and more every single time weve played it, including quite recently.Next, while it doesnt have a firm release date yet, id Softwares unexpected zag of a prequel, Doom: The Dark Ages, is almost a lock for 2025. In fact, Id wager an In-N-Out Burger lunch that it drops in the first half of the year for two reasons: 1) Doom Eternal shipped in March of 2020, meaning that in just a few months, it will have been a full half-decade since the last Doom (which itself followed four years after Doom [2016]). In other words, its time! Particularly since the idTech engine is already firmly in place despite the jump to a new console generation. And 2) Id bet another In-N-Out lunch that the long- and eagerly anticipated reboot of Fable being cooked up at Playground Games which, remember, got tagged with a 2025 release window in its Xbox Showcase 2024 trailer is going to be Xboxs big Fall/holiday game at the end of the year. That means Doom probably ships before the holidays. But whenever it does and remember that its already confirmed to be a multiplatform release on day one its probably going to kick some serious ass for Xbox next year, judging by how good id Softwares last two Doom games have been.PlayBack to Fable: in my opinion, the revival of Fable has higher potential both critically and commercially than almost anything else in Xboxs portfolio short of Call of Duty, The Elder Scrolls, and Fallout. Weve seen Playgrounds take on the British-charm-tinged action-adventure-RPG a few times now, and each time its been crystal clear that not only does Playground get Fable (its British itself, which no doubt helps), but that the game looks absolutely incredible as well. Who knew that the ForzaTech engine could render a jaw-droppingly beautiful fantasy forest just as well as a racetrack? Theres one other huge reason to be optimistic about Fable, and thats Playgrounds track record. Simply put, this studio has not only never missed, its never made anything less than a consensus 9 out of 10. Its last game, the aforementioned Forza Horizon 5, was IGNs 2021 Game of the Year. And it clearly is being given plenty of time to cook, as Fable was formally announced in 2020 with work having already been done prior to that. Microsoft knows it cant fumble Fable a second time, and I couldnt be more excited about what has been shown so far.Next, while it certainly isnt nearly as big a name as Fable, we cant forget about South of Midnight, the third-person action-adventure from We Happy Few developer Compulsion Games thats leaning heavy into the folklore of the bayous of the Deep South. This ones nothing like the developers past games, which is admittedly riskier but also more intriguing. Microsoft has tabbed this one for 2025, so consider South of Midnight as something of a wild card for next year.PlayAnother smaller-name Xbox exclusive that I think everyone will be talking about if it comes together when it finally ships in 2025 is Replaced. Its a pixel-art, cyberpunk-styled side-scrolling action-adventure game that oozes style and, as I discovered when I played it over the summer, is much deeper than I expected. Replaced has the potential to join the long list of legendary Xbox-exclusive indies that includes games like Limbo, Braid, and Inside.Finally, dont forget about Xboxs actual biggest franchise (since they now own it), Call of Duty. Itll stay on PlayStation, of course, but Xbox fans will get it day one on Game Pass. The 2025 Call of Duty is rumored to be a future-set Black Ops 2 sequel, so perhaps Treyarch is handling the campaign on this one after Raven Software did a stellar job on this years Black Ops 6 campaign. And the other, much quieter juggernaut in the Xbox portfolio, Minecraft, will probably get some kind of big in-game content, what with the Minecraft movie on the way.What About Hardware?Barring a 180 from Xbox boss Phil Spencers previous comments, Microsoft wont be pushing a mid-gen upgrade to the Xbox Series X (an Xbox Series XX, if you will) in 2025, if ever. And though a handheld Xbox is in development, were unlikely to play it or even see it in the coming year. So should we expect any new hardware in 2025? Probably not at least in terms of raw horsepower. The Xbox Series S got a storage upgrade in 2024, as did the Series X. And well no doubt see a bevy of new special-edition controllers and maybe even that upgraded controller codenamed Sebile mentioned in the FTC leaks from over a year ago, but 2025 does not appear to be the year for Xbox to drop any new silicon.PlayAnything Else?Rares Everwild appears to be in limbo and/or development hell, as we havent seen or heard from it in years. Might it reemerge in 2025? Maybe, but Im not holding my breath. Meanwhile, Halo is being reset at the studio level, which in my opinion means the next Halo game is likely to either be a reboot of the franchise altogether or a remake of Halo: Combat Evolved. Either way, its going to be built in Unreal Engine 5, and its probably going to take a while. InXiles steampunk RPG Clockwork Revolution was announced in 2023 with a release window of coming in due time. The Outer Worlds 2 has been revealed, and we now know it is coming in 2025, so that means Obsidian plans to ship two first-person RPGs in the same year. And speaking of first-person RPGs, will that rumored Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion remaster actually happen? How about Contraband, from Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios, which was in the 2021 Xbox Showcase and hasnt been seen or heard from since? All we know is that its a co-op smugglers' paradise set in the fictional world of 1970s Bayan. Should it reemerge in 2025, its unlikely that it also ships next year as well, given the usual PR/marketing cycles on big-budget games. The wild card for 2025 is Double Fine, the endlessly creative and versatile studio headed by game design legend Tim Schafer that is coming off of 2021 Game Awards Game of the Year nominee Psychonauts 2. Id expect Schafer and the studio to announce their new project soon, but as to whether it actually comes out in the next 12 months is anybodys guess. The Best Games to Play on Xbox Series X|SFinally, anything from this years Xbox Showcase that didnt have a release year at the end of the trailer can safely be assumed to be a 2026 (or later) release. That means Im not reasonably expecting to play Gears of War: E-Day, Perfect Dark, or State of Decay 3 in the next year. And thats OK! It finally feels like Xbox is starting to pump out not just a steady stream of first-party games, but a consistently good stream of them. This is what Xbox has been building towards since they first started acquiring studios in 2018 to try and fix their first-party games problem, and dammit I think this is the year they finally do it. Please dont pull that football away from me again, Lucy-Microsoft.More of IGN's Look Back at 2024 and Look Forward to 2025!

This article contains spoilers for What If? If you're not caught up yet, check out our spoiler-free review of What If...? Season 3.Theres a moment towards the beginning of What If? Season 3 Episode 6, What If 1872? where The Watcher (Jeffrey Wright) explains that were at the far reaches of the multiverse, where things get much weirder. Think less What if? he says, And more What the hell? That actually seems to be the ethos for the entirety of Season 3 of Marvel Animations What If? and frankly, its the place the show should have started with. Instead, the animated series is wrapping up its run, just as it found its groove.First announced in 2019 in advance of the release of Avengers Endgame (though more importantly given it was announced on a Disney investors call, in advance of the release of Disney+), What If? was meant to be a bold new expansion for Marvel, the first of its animated series to launch on the streaming service. It would explore alternate takes on the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe). And in an at-the-time unprecedented move, would include the actors from the big screen, playing voices on the small screen. As one time Marvel Television head Jeph Loeb was fond of saying, its all connected The MCU was one, big place whether you were watching TV or movies, live-action or animation.Unfortunately, thats not exactly what happened, on any front. Yes, actors ranging from Tom Hiddleston to Josh Brolin, to Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo reprised their roles on What If? But plenty didnt make it back for the animated series, replaced by excellent, veteran voice actors instead. And it also became clear after Season 1s dark take on Doctor Strange exploring a multiverse of madness had absolutely nothing to do with the dark Doctor Strange who appeared on screen in, uh, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness that its all connected meant as much here in the N MCU as it did with Loebs Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. or Marvels Netflix series like Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and that other one, whatever it was. Not The Punisher. The other one.PlayWhat If? admirably tried to loop it back to the MCU proper at the end of Season 2 with a tag showing The Watcher (Jeffrey Wright) and Captain Carter (Hayley Atwell) looking at the Loktree aka, the multiversal tree Loki turned into/is holding together from the end of Loki Season 2. But as Season 3 picks up, that isnt referred to in any real way. And in the entirety of this new season, the multiverse is instead visually shown as the prism The Watcher is watching through; not any of the other tree-like visual representations shown elsewhere in the MCU.Its particularly frustrating to see this given how slavishly What If? has hewn to MCU storylines throughout the previous two seasons. While there have been variations, the series has mostly presented play-it-safe riffs on MCU movies. As much fun as Atwell seems to be having playing Captain Carter, the episodes shes appeared in ranged from a nearly beat-by-beat recreation of Captain America: The First Avenger, to a mash-up between Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Black Widow. An episode with TChalla becoming Star-Lord in Season 1 was mostly Guardians of the Galaxy. Even an episode that went off-script in Season 2, What if Happy Hogan Saved Christmas? and didnt riff off an MCU movie was still something else: Die Hard, in the MCU.Perhaps more distressing is that most of the episodes didnt function as an actual what if scenario. Theyd start in one place, but then use that less as a series of dominos toppling a la the way the title is treated in Marvel Comics, and end in another place entirely that would instead head towards the plot of an MCU movie. What If Hela Found The Ten Rings? for example, was less about the title question and more about throwing Hela into the plot of Shang-Chi. What If Iron Man Crashed Into The Grandmaster? sent Tony Stark to Sakaar and then stuck him in a Fast and the Furious riff on Thor: Ragnarok.Marvel's What If...?: 10 Epic Battles You'd Never See in the Regular MCUTheres nothing inherently wrong with asking questions nobody had ever asked before, but theres a middle ground between what the comics do which is present those dominos falling from a simple twist on a storyline, to one with usually devastating consequences and tweaking the scenario without presenting any new information.Not to shift shows, universes, and even streaming services, but the final season of Star Trek Lower Decks aired a pointed episode about the issues with multiverse storytelling earlier this year. In the second to last episode of the series, "Fissure Quest," the show checked in with an alternate version of the shows Boimler (Jack Quaid) who was piloting a starship manned by multiversal variants of various Star Trek characters And it was driving him insane. Midway through the episode, while trying to figure out who is causing multiversal riffs, he shouts, They're probably a hacky evil version of someone we all know. A reverse Picard or Borgified Kirk or [bleep] it, I don't know, human Worf. Thats all the multiverse is! Lazy, derivative remixes! Later, he even notes, The multiverse is just a rehash of stuff I already know.Despite his angry protestations, Boimler is presented with another possibility. A multiversal take on the multiverse, if you will, by an alternate version of Lily Sloane (Alfre Woodard) from Star Trek: First Contact. Why is she exploring the multiverse? To better understand ourselves, she says. It's fun to learn about aliens, but learning about humanity, that's something else."What If... Kahhori Reshaped the World?" introduced new ideas and characters without using pre-existing plots as a guideline.While that episode was only released two weeks before What If? Season 3 premiered, the Marvel show has been very slowly coming around to that idea. The majority of What If? episodes have straddled the line of derivative remixes (we wont say lazy given the hundreds of people who have put enormous effort into making these animated episodes), its been clear the heart of the show is more in the ongoing story of The Watcher learning to love and appreciate humanity. And beyond that, the friendship between the cosmic being, and the down-to-earth Peggy Carter. Episodes devoid of nearly anything having to do with the MCU like "What If... Kahhori Reshaped the World?" introduced new ideas and characters without using pre-existing plots as a guideline.And Season 3 goes off the rails almost entirely. While theres still a cursory attempt to connect the show to the MCU, the dominos are less stacked back to back than ever before. The season premiere, "What If... the Hulk Fought the Mech Avengers?" starts with the question weve all assuredly asked before, What if Sam Wilson was running in Washington D.C. and bumped into Bruce Banner instead of Steve Rogers? And naturally, that somehow ends up with the Voltron Avengers fighting a giant Kaiju Hulk. "What If... Agatha Went to Hollywood?" is based sort of on the plot of Eternals, but again is a threadbare excuse to take one musical character (Kathryn Hahns Agatha Harkness) and jam her together with another musical character (Kumail Nanjianis Kingo)."What If... the Red Guardian Stopped the Winter Soldier?" is a ridiculous road trip buddy comedy. "What If... 1872?," aka the one The Watcher calls What the hell is a Western with Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) and Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld). And "What If... Howard the Duck Got Hitched?" is one of the most unhinged episodes of TV streamed this year, featuring Howard the Duck (Seth Green) and Darcy (Kat Dennings) having an egg together that every forgotten villain in the MCU wants to either steal, eat, or both. The episode isnt even a what if scenario, despite the title; its a sequel to Season 1s Party Thor episode, which briefly introduced Howard and Darcy to each other during an intergalactic party in Vegas.PlayWith the series wrapping up, its clear the folks behind What If? went for broke this season, throwing every crazy idea at the wall because they may never get a chance to do any of these ideas ever again. They even end with The Watcher nopeing out of the whole premise of the show, forming his own Watcher Council and battling his uptight mentors in the final episodes of the season. He discovers what Boimler discovered, that it is far more interesting to learn about humanity, heroism, and what characters do when the chips are down, rather than simply rehash what weve seen before. He, like us, is tired of watching the same thing over, and over, and over again.Beyond that, What If? Season 3 works hard to become a reclamation project for the refuse of the MCU. Sure, weve gotten promises that these things will come back and some of them are already in the works. But we havent seen Shang-Chi since his self-titled movie. Kate Bishop popped up in an end-credits scene in The Marvels after appearing on Hawkeye, but thats it. Eternals has been so ignored its a constant meme online about when the MCU will finally recognize that theres a giant hand sticking out of the ocean. What If? explores the events of that movie in not one, but two episodes in Season 3. The second time is to delve into the character of Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), a character who appeared in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and then was spun off into a TV show that has been sitting on the shelf for years at this point (its finally scheduled to premiere some time in 2025).What If?, by the necessity of selling subscriptions to an at the time new streaming service and breaking through the relative stigma of watching animation, was sold on safety. Big stars, premises you know. But it mostly didnt work. Here, at the end, the series has leaned into the weird, wild, and wonderful corners of the MCU. The what the hell, if you will And just as it has found its place in the Marvel Universe, its done.In fact, the season even ends with a montage of all the things well likely never see on TV, barring a one-off What If? special at some point in the future: Weapon X Thanos, Kingo Iron Man, Ms. Marvel Ant-Man, and many, many more. Things that could have explored exciting takes on Marvel characters in a way weve never seen before, one unique to animation. Instead, well just have to ponder the question: what if?