Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 players lament "battle passes in between battle passes" with Squid Game eventRed light.Image credit: Activision News by Vikki Blake Contributor Published on Jan. 3, 2025 Call of Duty: Black Ops 6's new in-game event based on Squid Game will go live at 6pm UK time today (10am PT / 1pm ET), but its coolest rewards are locked behind the event's own premium battle pass.As detailed in a new blog post, the Squid Games crossover invites players to "win it all or die trying", introducing themed awards and multiple limited-time modes across multiplayer, Zombies, and Warzone inspired by the hit Netflix show, as well as Pink Guards, VIPs, and the singing, slightly-murderous Red Light Green Light doll, Young-hee.Call of Duty x Squid Game 2 Trailer | Call of Duty: Warzone & Black Ops 6.Watch on YouTubeAs noted by IGN, whilst the Squid Game Event Pass offers both a free and premium track, and battle passes are nothing new for beleaguered COD players, this is the first time an event has launched with its own premium battle pass."We got battle passes in between battle passes now," said one unhappy player in the Black Ops 6 subreddit, whilst another opined: "This is just a test to see how much people are willing to pay. They just keep adding more 'premium' stuff until people finally decide it is enough. But that won't come soon I think, the whales will keep whaling"."It all started with the bacon gun skin I bought in BO2 for $1.99. I'm so sorry folks," lamented u/PhDExtreme."But all the actual playable content is free now," reminded u/hypehold. "We have already gotten more maps in BO6 (all free) than we did in the first 6 months of Black OPs 1."Squid Game Premium Track Will Cost 1100 Cod Points byu/Against-The-Current inblackops6To see this content please enable targeting cookies.At the end of last year, we reported that Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 publisher Activision had reportedly replaced some of the shooter's voice actors amid the ongoing SAG-AFTRA actor strike. Video game performers with US actors' union SAG-AFTRA are currently striking over concerns about the use of AI and a lack of protection for actors.In Eurogamer's Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 review, Chris awarded it two stars out of five, writing: "For a series built on high-octane thrills and explosive gratification, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6's withdrawal to the well-trodden formula echoes the wider industry's continued allergy to risk."

You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games here Contents hide The Call of Duty universe continues to collaborate with a variety of franchises from the world of TV and movies, this time with Netflixs record-breaking Squid Game. Whether its The Boys or Fallout, or even Nicki Minaj, Activisions shooter series has featured them within its multiplayer, co-op, and battle royale offerings.Netflixs hit show Squid Game is the first crossover of the Black Ops 6 cycle and while many are dropping into Red Light, Green Light matches, Call of Duty publisher Activision has come under fire thanks to the addition of even more microtransactions into the game. As a result of the new-look event pass, Activision has truly lost its mind by prioritising profits over addressing game-breaking issues.Has Activision lost its mind?After sharing intel on what the Squid Game collaboration has in store across multiplayer, Zombies, and Warzone, players were quick to notice Activision had decided against mentioning the price of the new event pass much to their annoyance.Considering hackers are still infesting most playlists, the arrival of a premium event tier costing an additional $10 shows Activisions priority remains on generating extortionate amounts of revenue instead of choosing to fix the root cause of a huge decline in players. With another price to pay, some fans loading into the action are paying over $100 to access Black Ops 6, its seasonal battle passes, and any new bundles that appear in the store.Previous collaborations featured free events where all players could get their hands on the limited-edition items up for grabs. Now, if you want to get hold of the more desirable items, they come at another unnecessary cost.Will Activision change its mind?Despite the backlash from players, the paid event pass bucks the trend of other popular online games. Fortnite was the first game to adopt a premium tier for its crossovers and its no surprise to see Activision taking advantage of it to bolster its profits even further.If the widespread frustration continues, theres a chance Activision chooses to revert the paid event pass for future events. For now, youll have to pay to get some of the most unique cosmetics.For more CoD intel, check out the best Saug loadout along with the best controller settings to keep you shooting straight.Subscribe to our newsletters!By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime.Share

You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games hereMarvel Rivals made a striking entrance into the gaming world with the debut of Season 0, winning over fans across the globe. This inaugural season was a captivating showcase, featuring exhilarating gameplay, a lineup of legendary heroes and villains, and engaging narratives that pulled players into the heart of the Marvel Universe.In Marvel Rivals, players found themselves either joining forces with allies or engaging in thrilling confrontations, all while enjoying an experience that captivated audiences from start to finish. However, with the thrill of Season 0 hitting its peak, all eyes are now on Season 1, poised to take the experience to new and exhilarating levels. At the forefront of this epic showdown are the Fantastic Four, Marvels First Family who will bring new dynamics and distinctive powers into the fray. The official key art was shared by NetEase offering players a glimpse at character appearances. But one more detail was teased, leading players to believe a new map is also coming to Season 1.Marvel Rivals Season 1 teased to bring new Vampire New York mapThe Season 1 key art of Marvel Rivals has quite an interesting backdrop with the New York city skyscrapers and a blood moon in the sky. The same imagery was also seen in the three-minute cinematic trailer where a Vampire-themed New York was shown.The Vampire New York city was seen in the Marvel Rivals cinematic trailer. Image by NetEase Games.In the same trailer, Magik was seen fighting a giant vampire figure (probably Morbius from Marvel Comics), as it brought down the Sanctum Sanctorum building. Many players believe that the same New York will be a new map in Season 1 after it was spotted in a similar vein on the key art.One such player wrote, This has to mean NYC will be a map right!? The amount of destructible structures will be insane. Another chimed in, So, New York was leaked as an upcoming map, and the 4 are coming season 1. What if the Fantasticar is the Payload, and HERBIE is driving it?Further leaks suggest that four new maps and game modes like Capture The Flag are also coming to Marvel Rivals quite soon. If youre looking for all the leaks and scoop on the upcoming season, check out our full leaks coverage right here.Marvel RivalsPlatform(s):macOS, PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series XGenre(s):Fighting, ShooterSubscribe to our newsletters!By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime.Share

You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games here Contents hide Rockstar Games GTA 6 is scheduled to release sometime in Fall 2025, bringing fans back to Vice City generations after the locales debut. With propositions of episodic DLC releases and a brand-new take on GTA Online, the new open-world game is going to make billions of dollars.However, professional games industry analysts claim that the success of GTA 6 will be final before its release. As soon as pre-orders open for the upcoming open-world crime game, Rockstar is expected to rake in its first billion before launch.GTA 6 to earn a billion before launchIndustry analyst firm DFC Intelligence have already called GTA 6 the biggest entertainment release of 2025, crushing the likes of Zootopia 2, Wicked: For Good and Fantastic Four. The firm predicts that even Disneys biggest releases will be easily beaten by the long-awaited sequel.In an interview with The Financial Times, the firm believes that the new Grand Theft Auto release will manage to rake in double its predecessors first-year sales figures. This would put Grand Theft Auto 6 sales in its first year above $3.2 billion, around three times the global box office of Deadpool and Wolverine.Alongside the massive forecast for the games first year, GTA 6 is expected to have a massive pre-order surge, crushing any other video gane launch. DFC claims that one billion dollars is all-but-guaranteed to be earned before release.The biggest launch in all of entertainmentDFC Intelligences claims were immediately echoed by IDG Consulting, another games analyst firm. Alongside the massive first-year sale, the games release is expected to be a much bigger release than any entertainment product in history. While superlative in claim, the massive sales of the games predecessor does lend credence to this estimation.We think its going to be one of the biggest entertainment launches in history, not just in games but for all of media. The pent-up demand is greater than anything weve seen before, claims IDG Consulting CEO Yoshio Osaki.Now over a year from its initial reveal trailer, fans are still holding on to hear any additional details about the game. After multiple failed theories, a second trailer should hopefully release sometime soon.Grand Theft Auto 6Platform(s):PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series S/X, Xbox Series XGenre(s):Action, Action AdventureSubscribe to our newsletters!By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime.Share

If youre moving into an apartment building, Graber says to ask about its policies and restrictions around moving. Many have specific elevator reservations and insurance requirementsthe earlier you know about them the better, he says.Similarly, if youre planning on hiring any additional workers on or around the time of your move, its best to obtain the COIs for their work in advance as well to avoid last-minute scrambling. Youll also want to make sure the company sends additional COIs for any additional follow-up visits. For instance, we hired someone to wall-mount our television right after we moved. The technician had to return to our apartment a second time to address it being slightly off-center, so having them send a second COI for us to submit to building management was handy.Moving yourself? Make sure you use a properly sized vehicle for your needsKyle Stockford, a Boston-based tasker on Taskrabbit who specializes in full-service help moving, claims that the right equipment can make or break your moving day. Try to visualize your items being stacked and packed to determine the fit and what vehicle you require, he says. Once youre ready to pack up the truck or van, Stockford recommends starting with your biggest items first. Since it can be tough to imagine all of your items fitting into a vehicle beforehand, he notes that loading things largest to smallest always makes things run smoother.Dont procrastinate packingDid you know that if you pack yourself, it takes two weeks on average to pack a two-bedroom apartment?Ayoub shares this surprising stat while pointing out that it typically takes three or more weeks to pack a three-bedroom apartment or house. (I personally packed up my one-bedroom apartment in about five days, but having a few extra days would have made that last night way less stressful.)People often underestimate the time it takes to pack, as well as the importance of using packing boxes and materials made for moving, Ayoub insists. (She lives by the packing motto Start early!) To make the process more streamlined, she advises making a clear schedule of what rooms need to be packed prior to the moving day. Start with items and furniture that are not part of your daily routine so packing becomes more manageable versus leaving it to the last-minute, Ayoub adds .One exception to the pack-early ethos? Theres a very good chance that you'll need cleaning supplies and basic tools during the packing and moving process, says Valentino. Pack this stuff last, and put it somewhere that will be easily accessible on the other end.Skip the cardboard boxesReally just trust me on this one and rent reusable bins from a moving company with good reviews. Whats more, between carbon emissions on the physical relocating and all the trash created along the way, its time we keep sustainability at the forefront when moving too Cardboard boxes vary in quality and need to be built with tape, Graber explains. Reusable bins are sturdier and dont come with the tasks of assembly, break down, and recycling or disposing of them. Just unpack and the company will return to pick them up, he says. Many companies will provide special pencils and labels on the bins so you can keep track of the contents of each vessel, or you can easily purchase these items for a few dollars online. Also inquire if your moving company has wardrobe bins so you can load your clothing directly on hangers into these containers to save you time. Bonus: Reusable bins are an environmentally-friendly choice.Invest in the tools for successAlong the lines of opting for sturdy moving bins over traditional cardboard boxes, Ayoub frequently sees people underestimate the value of proper packing supplies, overpacking boxes and trying to fit too much into a flimsy container. Its common to want to pack boxes to the brim, but distributing weight evenly across boxes is key to avoid overpacking large boxes with heavy items, she says, pointing out that this can lead to damaged items. Picture frame boxes and specialized boxes for items like stemware and dishes are money well spent: These purpose-specific boxes make all the difference in ensuring your belongings arrive safely and in one piece, Ayoub adds.Color-code your boxesTo crank your organizational prowess up a notch, Ayoub says that a simple yet effective strategy for maintaining order while you move is color-coding your boxes with labels. Assign each room or area a specific color and label boxes accordingly with large stickers or colored tape, she says, noting that this makes it incredibly easy for both you and your movers to know exactly where everything belongs once it arrives at your new home. Doing so can save a huge amount of time and eliminates the guesswork in unpacking, especially when youre looking for a specific item, she adds.Consider your furniture carefullyTo pull off a successful move, furniture merits a little extra TLC. Think about what furniture came into your home in one piece and what was built inside. Will all of your furniture fit through the doorways in your home? Graber says. Raise any concerns in advance so that your movers are prepared, he continues.

To give the home a calming effect, Dungan leaned on natural materials. The Hills have an affinity for white Texas limestone, which the architect used for the faade. Oak siding, brackets, and eaves stained black create an appealing visual contrast on the exterior. The homeowners beloved stone also paves the sunlight-filled entryclad in paned glass on two sidesand builds the fireplaces in the great room and on the lanai out back. Accessible from the entry, Melanie styled this large outdoor area as a second living room with performance boucl-covered seating, black leather rocking chairs she acquired in Costa Rica, and unique pieces she purchased at High Point Furniture Market in North Carolina. Dungan also integrated a screened porch so the Hills could host dinner parties without nighttime bugs.Inside, the black-and-white architectural color scheme continues but the materialitys raw edges soften. The walls and sculpted portals are painted Benjamin Moores creamy White Dove to juxtapose black window frames and grilles. The gabled and flat ceilings throughout, with poplar and oak slats and beams, are stained shades from natural to black.A Wellon Bridgers artwork hangs over the sculptural fireplace in the open plan living room, where the sofas are by Lee Industries.In a former life, the Hills lived in Costa Rica, where Melanie ran a thriving design practice. Though she has since retired from taking on projects for clients, she decorated her own house with the same careas a complete representation of her and her husbands life. A commissioned painting by William McLure, now hung over the svelte fireplace in the open plan living room and kitchen, as well as the terra cotta red ceramics they collected during travels through Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Nicaragua inspired the interior color palette. Pets, family gatherings, and indoor-outdoor living required the comfortable seating by Lee Industries be upholstered in performance fabrics and leathers.Seating by Lee Industries and a cocktail table by Century Furniture gather around the Texas limestone fireplace in the sunny great room. Artwork by William McLure.Greeting guests out front is a historic bell that had once hung at Toms grandfathers grist mill in Greenville, Georgia. Dungan designed a new limestone tower for the family heirloom. Local landscape architect Gary Mitchell of Agricultural Services created a rose garden around it. Though each piece in the house is meaningful, nothing is too precious.When we come home from vacation, it feels almost like were on vacation, says Melanie, who notes that her daughter also helped with the interior design. Theres an easygoing spirit to the place, much like its homeowners. A certain honesty and transparency come through in this house, describes Dungan. And I think thats why its one of my favorite ones Ive designed.

When Alyse Archer-Coite moved into the Noxon House in 2020, she expected to hit a few bumps in the road. After all, she was a single woman moving from California to New York, so there were bound to be some pain points during the cross-country transition. Of course, that was only half the battle for the design researcher as she began renovating her rural retreat, a Dutch colonial located in Poughquag, amid a global pandemic.Despite a number of limitations (and a looming recession), Archer-Coite wasnt deterred from curating her dream home and approached every diversion as a fun challenge. Given the 250-year-old history of the property, she had no desire to repeat the past in terms of decorating with a more traditional theme. The people who had owned the house had very much loved the period the house was from and put in furniture and iconography and things that spoke to that time period, which I did not want to do, she explains. I didnt want to have a bunch of Americana, heavy wood references to 19th-century English furniture; all that kind of stuff was just out for me.Jonathan HokkloInstead of restricting herself, Archer-Coites thoughtful curation consisted of different periods, genres, and materials. I wanted a mix of things that were contemporary and craft, industrial, also delicate and feminine; all the things that I like, she adds. I wanted everything to be in conversation. Her strategy for furnishing the space has been based on necessity, so there was flexibility with the timeline, but she was locked into a modest budget that couldnt budge.Maybe this is more typical of my personality, but it was more like [knowing] what I didnt want and having that helped me to define what I did want in the moments that I was purchasing things. I didnt want to have a ton of constraints, she says. I wanted the freedom to make decisions as I went, not trying to back into a style.This past April, the designer researcher decided to drench the walls of her bedroom in Sardine from the Carte Blanche collection by Farrow & Ball and Christopher John Rogers. I am so terrified of color, she admits. I would always go white because I dont want to regret something and have to do it over once I tire of it. But there was something attractive about bringing blue into the boudoir. Although a blue bedroom wasnt initially on her moodboard for the house, Archer-Coite stopped resisting and submitted to the idea. Now that shes lived with it long enough, she now describes the space as very moody, but not too sexy. It might be a bedchamber, but nothing deviant is happening in hereI dont want to make it a dungeon, she adds.The house is very much in its own unique period, the architecture style is very specific and it has its own personality that really cant be ignored so I wanted to play with that as much as possible, but not to stay in that period, Archer-Coite concludes. Looking back at it, I love how unexpected it is, that when you walk in you dont know exactly what youre going to find in each room. Below, the designer researcher discloses all the details that went into the metamorphosis of her moody blue bedroom.What was your approach to furnishing your house?I was limited by the fact that we were in the middle of a global pandemic and lockdown. If any of us even are willing to remember that time, there were things that wouldve been normal to get overnight or within the week delivered to you were no longer available. So a lot of my Hail Mary furnishing choices are like, What does Amazon have in the way of single beds for kids that I can reinforce and make look like theyre for adults? Things like that were decisions I had to make. My strategy was to get individual pieces that I loved regardless of the cost, if I could afford it, but regardless of the cost get pieces that I loved and build out from there. So I went with a lot of big pieces initially because the house is big and anything smaller was starting to look very dwarfed in the house.I didnt bring much furniture with me, I was coming from California, and relocating back to the East Coast. I had some furniture pieces, but they were on a truck that was coming months later. When I saw something I liked, like a bed or a sofa, I would buy it and then wait for it to arrive and go from there. Getting the scale of a room in mind is really hard to do without putting furniture in it, even if you know the dimensions. Until you start to fill it, you dont really know how big it is. Thats my experience. Everything I thought would be right in a room I would put in and be like, Wow, this looks like childrens furniture once its in the room. Getting big things was part of the strategy for understanding the size of the room and how much a room could really handle.Did you have a budget?I mean, if Im being totally honest, I was really moving check to check at that point. I had just purchased the house. Before I bought this house, the most expensive thing I had owned was a Peloton bike. I had very little understanding of the cost of being in real estate, of owning real estate. So for me, when I bought the house, I had an estimated monthly output in mind that was a mix of what my bank had shown me and also what I understood would be the cost of heating and cooling and basic appliances and things like that running in the house.For example, the cost of gas went way up during COVID for various reasons. My house was running on propane, so the cost of heating my house went through the roof. I ended up having to pay over $1,000 a month to heat my house in the winter. I moved in mid-December. My first week there we had a massive storm that took out the power, etc., so I had not anticipated those costs. Any budget I had toward furnishing ended up being my budget for living comfortably and not surviving in the house, so it really was like, after I paid all my bills, what did I have left? Could I really justify spending all that money on furniture?Most PopularArchitecture + DesignThe 11 Most Beautiful Art Deco Buildings Around the WorldBy Maya Chawla Architecture + DesignAD100 2025: See the Full List of HonoreesBy The Editors of ADHomes + Decor35 Soulful Rustic Kitchen Ideas Youll Want to CopyBy Kate JerdeThe answer is yes. I didnt shop anymore for clothing, I spent all my money on furniture items so if I had a check that didnt go toward paying for utilities and my mortgage, I would use that for furniture. I didnt really have a budget so much as I was very, very clear that any overage I had at the end of the month was spoken for in terms of furnishing.The way the house was set up matched with my budget and with what was going on in the world at the time. My experience led me to really have to learn to be comfortable in an empty room to say, This room is not done. This room will not be done until the right pieces show up, so if its just this chair that I love for the next six months, thats okay because you have to settle in a room that is not done and be okay with it. I think the anxiety around finishing, making the room comfortable, or being able to use the room can really force you to make decisions that youre going to regret later. So that was what I was fighting most, it was like, Choose a piece and go with it slowly.Jonathan HokkloWhat was your inspiration for this room?I had never, in my adult life, had a king size bed. I had never had a room in New York where I could even imagine a bed bigger than a queen and this room really just begged for big bed, big luxury, just a place to really luxuriate. The room, in the way that a lot of rooms are in this house, every wall has a different use. Theres windows on one wall and closets on another, theres the entrance door and on the last wall is the door to the bathroom, so youre really limited where you can put your bed. Basically, the center of the room had to be the bed, so those parameters were actually really useful for me because there were only so many ways I could appoint the room. I knew that I wanted it to feel really cozy, but not in the everything is plush way. I wanted it to feel cozy and minimal, really stripped back. The best way to do that was with fabric and then also with color.Most PopularArchitecture + DesignThe 11 Most Beautiful Art Deco Buildings Around the WorldBy Maya Chawla Architecture + DesignAD100 2025: See the Full List of HonoreesBy The Editors of ADHomes + Decor35 Soulful Rustic Kitchen Ideas Youll Want to CopyBy Kate JerdeThe room was painted green when I bought the house, like a Farrow & Ball Card Room Green. I tried to match it for years, I even called the past owners to ask and they were like, We also inherited that green, we have no idea what it is. When I moved in, I thought, Im definitely going to paint this white, I want to start with a clean white space. But after living in it for a couple of months and not really wanting to spend the money to have it painted, I grew to love the color and realized that waking up in a room that was drenched in a joyful color like a green was really good for me. So I knew I wanted color, but I wanted something that felt historical, that didnt feel too poppy or contemporary.As much as I wanted to push against the boundaries or lines of the house, I didnt want to take it to the point of being too whimsical. The inspiration was luxury, but also a little bit of whimsy, a little bit of playfulness. I am definitely a straight lines, clean space girly and that bed was so wild, but it really, really spoke to me and I thought, This could be it. This could be the thing that makes the room and I can work backwards from here. The bed was one of my earliest purchases. It came from Montreal and got broken in shipping, and I had to have an iron worker come out and put it back together on site.The bed has almost like a Cy Twombly drawing feeling. I found lamps that also look very curlicued, those were the first lamps I ever put next to the bed that I thought, These dont take away from the bed or push the bed or feel awkward with the bed. They feel like they were made to be next to it. I had to have those shipped from London. There were three at the time and I couldnt imagine paying for all three, so I only bought two. I now have a lot of regret and should have bought all three, but it took almost three years for those lamps to find me. I didnt know that I needed them.What was your biggest splurge?The most expensive thing actually were those lamps and they were the thing I couldnt deny. I was like, I finally found lamps that can work in this cursed room. My very first week in the house I lost power and I had to read by candle light, I thought ghosts were coming to kill me. The lamps were a big splurge, especially given how much am I using them? The bed Im using all the time, but the lamps. Its the most Ive ever paid for lighting.Jonathan HokkloMost PopularArchitecture + DesignThe 11 Most Beautiful Art Deco Buildings Around the WorldBy Maya Chawla Architecture + DesignAD100 2025: See the Full List of HonoreesBy The Editors of ADHomes + Decor35 Soulful Rustic Kitchen Ideas Youll Want to CopyBy Kate JerdeWhat was your best deal?There are these little chairs from Tubbs of Vermont. I had never heard of them before in my life, but I went to Horseman Antiques in Brooklyn Heights probably six or seven years ago and found these chairs up in the upper levels of that place. The chairs didnt have any price tag on them. The guy at the front was looking and looking, but couldnt find it so he was like, Lets just say theyre $200 for both. I said, Are you sure? And he said, Yeah, whatever. So we took them and I remember posting about them, and a friend of mine whos from Vermont said, Oh my God.I have had so many inquiries about those chairs, people trying to buy them, people trying to find out who made them. Ive seen chairs that are reminiscent, but Ive never seen the exact chairs anywhere else. I know that they were not supposed to be $200 for the pair, maybe they should have been $500, but what they have brought me in terms of satisfaction and as much interest as they garner, I think they were probably the best deal.Even if it wasnt the best monetary deal, what are some things that, to you, were well worth the price?Paint is actually the best investment you can make in a space, and its one of the hardest things to do. I think a lot of people say they want color, but when theyre working with the designers, they get nervous about doing the wrong things and they tend to want to go white. If you can find the bravery to do it, it really has elevated the space so tremendously for me. I knew I liked the green color, that was pretty cool after a while. But choosing this color and having it be on the ceiling and on the outlets and covering the vents. It has made me feel like a grown up, that was a very grown up move. If I took everything else out of the room except for the bed and the paint, I could probably still love that room.Is there anything that wasnt worth the money? Do you regret making any purchases?The tapestry in that room that I bought at this former antiques mall a couple of miles away from my house. You walked in and it was like a junk sale, but there were gems. I went there and found it in a corner and it was priced as is, no negotiations, for $250. I wanted a tapestry, but I didnt want it to have people in it because all the tapestries have these 19th-century French style of white people sitting in the park eating or hunting or whatever. I was like, I dont want to have that visual in my bedroom. I wanted something exclusively with an animal on it. So I thought, This is it. This is such a great deal, Im not even going to ask for a discount.Most PopularArchitecture + DesignThe 11 Most Beautiful Art Deco Buildings Around the WorldBy Maya Chawla Architecture + DesignAD100 2025: See the Full List of HonoreesBy The Editors of ADHomes + Decor35 Soulful Rustic Kitchen Ideas Youll Want to CopyBy Kate JerdeFast-forward to not even three months ago, a friend of mine was at some sort of big open-air antique fair and posted a tapestry she got on Instagram and I said, Thats exactly the tapestry I have. Not reminiscent of, not referencing. My tapestry is a confirmed replica. I sent her a photo and she said, Oh no! How much did you pay for yours? And I said, Well, I spent $250. She said, Oh, okay. Mine was $40. I said, Damn, that really stung! I think in every collector-obsessed persons life there has to be one where you really get robbed, thats how you know you really have skin in the game.Do you have a favorite piece in the room?Yes. It seems so boring to say, but I think it has to be the bed. Its the most fun and funny and enormous kind of bed. It really defines the room. I think its the only piece in the room that if I took out and swapped for something else, the entire room would change and never look the same. Everything else is really special, but Ive played around with getting rid of or bringing back or whatever many times; the bed is the mainstay.How would you describe the vibe of the room?I think its surprisingly joyful. I would say that its mutable. Theres a vibe in the morning, in the afternoon, and in the evening. The light changes so much in the house throughout the day, and the bedroom is a place where you really see that play out throughout the day. It has an en suite bathroom, so if youre upstairs in that room, thats probably the room where you have most of what you need to spend the day. Its self-sufficient. The vibe is elegant and comfortable.Jonathan HokkloMost PopularArchitecture + DesignThe 11 Most Beautiful Art Deco Buildings Around the WorldBy Maya Chawla Architecture + DesignAD100 2025: See the Full List of HonoreesBy The Editors of ADHomes + Decor35 Soulful Rustic Kitchen Ideas Youll Want to CopyBy Kate JerdeAt this point, is the room complete or do you still have things left on your shopping list?There are definitely things I would still like to do. The bedside table situation is not ideal because both lamps are different heights. I would have loved to have had a bedside table that was a little more lean. The space between the bed and the closet doors is very narrow on the left and right side, so whatever bedside table I have has to be narrow like a plank and I have yet to find a matching set that works. Right now I have a single bedside table and then I have one of the shorter lamps on it to raise the height and make it equal to the floor lamp. So theres really nowhere to put your drink. Its just not super useful, you end up putting a lot of stuff on the floor. It looks good in photos, but its not great in practice. So I would love to find a bedside table solution for one or both sides.I am not totally satisfied with the bedding. This bedroom is wonderful and presents challenges every day. Its very hard to do something graphic. Its tricky to do anything dark because the bed is wrought iron so it has almost this inherent gothic feeling. You can see through it obviously, but having white bedding on it breaks in a weird way, the shapes are almost too prominent. So I havent found a bedding color, design, or texture that feels exactly right.Bedding is so expensive and its annoying to get wrong. Its like a rug; once you unfurl that thing, it belongs to you. You dont want to deal with returning it or folding it back up. I feel the same way with bedding. Ive bought so much for that bedroom and either given it away or folded it up as backup in case the cleaning lady needs another set. Im just not happy with the bedding I have on it. Bedside tables and bedding. Its been four years and I still havent found them, its the most trivial thing seemingly, but the hardest to nail.Shop looks inspired by Alyse Archer-Coites BedroomArt Deco Revival Black Gold Flattened Metal Tube Queen Bed by Michele ArchiuttiSardine, Dead FlatCooling Cotton Percale Core Sheet SetZigzag Table LampMiniver Reclaimed Elm Wood Curved Upholstered Dining ChairCinco Faces Vase by Taller Manos Que VenLA FAE Verdure Tapestry IIIEuropean Linen Duvet CoverLouie Isaaman-Jones BookstandShaker-style Candle StandThis story is a part of Room Receipts, a series where we get real about the costs behind one well-designed room. From big budget spenders to thrifty thinkers, were talking to people from different worlds about their worth-it splurges, budget hacks, and purchase regrets. Were always on the hunt for cool homes with a unique story, so if youre interested in being featured tell us more about your space here.Most Popular

Layered Animation Workshop 2024January 3rd, 2025Animation/Rigging, General Developmentdr. Sybren html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"Just before Blender Conference 2025, the Animation & Rigging module held a day-long workshop to discuss layered actions should work in Blender. In this post, well share the outcomes of that workshop.For more context on this topic, please visit Animation 2025: Progress & Planning.Joining in the workshop were Brad Clark, Christoph Lendenfeld, Dorothee Ditrich, Falk David, Lukas Tnne, Marion Stalke, Nate Rupsis, Nathan Vegdahl, Nika Kutsniashvili, Pierrick Picaut, Raymond Luc, Rik Schutte, and Sybren Stvel.Workshop FocusA single day isnt long enough to come up with a full design, so we tried to focus on topics that we could make real progress on within a day, and which would help orient the project. With that in mind, we structured the workshop into two parts:Part 1: decide which use cases and supporting workflows we should target in the initial minimal version of layered actions, and also what features we need to support in service of that. The focus here was on determining a minimal set of features that we can feasibly develop in a reasonable time frame, while still being a useful initial version.Part 2: discuss some of the trickier UI/UX questions raised by the features we decided on, and how they should work in practice.So, without further delay, here is what we discussed at the workshop.Use Cases and WorkflowsWe identified four broad categories of use cases/workflows for animation layers:Creating new animations from scratch via layers. For example, animating a base layer of a character walking and then an additional layer for finer details in the motion, like shivering.Adjusting existing animations. For example, adjusting mocap data non-destructively, or fixing an intersecting hand in someone elses (or your own!) messy animation.Organizing animation data. For example, putting a characters facial animation on one layer and their body animation on another, or storing backups of previous animation stages (blocking, splining, etc.) in disabled layers for reference.Incorporating non-keyframe data. This might be things like simulation layers, layers that bring in motion from cache files, layers that define animation-level constraints, etc.Of these categories, we decided to leave #4 out of the initial version of layered actions. There are a lot of unknowns and potentially hard problems to solve with many of the use cases in that category, and just generally its not the primary reason people want animation layers.We decided that the remaining three categories are all reasonable to accomodate in an initial minimal viable product (MVP) as long as we stick to the basics rather than trying to get fancy.Intitial Feature SetFrom the above use cases, we narrowed down what we thought a reasonable minimal feature set would be. Additional features can always be added later, so the focus of this was on the minimum features needed for it to be useful. We of course want additional features down the line.Here is a list of what we thought we couldnt be without:Layers can be named.Layers can be given a color.Layers can be selected, and there is an active layer.Layers can be reordered.Layers can be added, deleted, and duplicated.Layers can be locked.Layers can be muted/disabled.Layers can be soloed (multiple layers can be soloed simultaneously).Each Layer has a blend mode. For initial release, these will be replace (similar to alpha-over in compositing software) and combine (conceptually an add mode, except data-type aware so that rotations rotate, scales scale, etc.).Layers have animatable influence / weight.Layers can be baked down together with the layers below them, as a way of merging layers togther. For the initial version this will just be a dumb per-frame bake.Layers are contained within, and owned by, an Action. Each Action has its own set of layers.These features may seem quite basic. Thats because they are quite basic, and thats the point. Its a small, basic set of features that are manageable to tackle in an initial Minimal Viable Product (MVP). Additional features (like layer groups, smart baking, time warping, etc.) can wait for after the MVP is completed and in peoples hands.We dont want people to have to wait for all of the fancy features to be done before they can use the system at all. And when we get feedback, we want a simple system we can easily adjust.Where/How Do You Manage Layers?There will be a separate editor for managing layers, and for selecting the active layer within an Action. Maybe this will even start out as a panel in the Action editor for the simplest of implementations.At first, the other animation editors are only going to show data from the active layer.This is just a start to get something simple in the hands of animators as soon as possible. With a more tangible layered workflow in Blender, it will be easier to design the necessary improvements to the UI/UX.Where Do Keys Go?When working with multiple layers, it is not immediately obvious where keys should go when you press the I button to key something. Below is the flow diagram we came up with.Lets talk through the above flow diagram:If there are no layers yet, create one and use that to store the keys.If there is only one layer, use that to store the keys.With multiple layers, there is a choice depending on whether the Available (name to be improved) checkbox is checked.Unchecked: keys should always go to the active layer. Blender ensures that there is always a layer active (if there are no layers see above).Checked: keys should go to the layer that already animates whatever youre keying now. See below.How many layers are already animating this property?none use the active layer (*)one layer use thatmore than one layer: is one of those the active layer? If so, use it, otherwise use the topmost, unlocked layer.(*): The flow diagram also goes into a choice for auto-keying vs. explicit keying. We hope that with this text the rest of the diagram is also clear.That Available checkbox will likely be a user preference, as it is expected that itll be a personal choice and reflect more how you animate than what file youre working in.How Does Blending Work?Blending the animation from different layers together is a fundamental aspect of layered animation, but is also surprisingly tricky to get right. It also impacts how certain other features should work.So how does blending work? was an important question to answer. Below are our answers to that, as well as to the further questions that it raises.What blend modes are there, and how do they work?The initial Minimal Viable Product (MVP) will have just two blend modes: replace and combine. Other blend modes may be added in the future if there are real use cases for them, but for the MVP we will just have these two:Replace is like alpha over, overriding the animated values of the layers below. Changing the layers influence between 0-100% blends between the values of the layers below and the values of the current layer.Combine is conceptually like add, accumulating on top of the animated values of the layers below. For most properties this is a literal mathematical add, but for some properties (such as scale and quaternion rotation) that either isnt really what you want or isnt even sensical. In those latter cases the most appropriate accumulation operation is used instead (e.g. multiply for scale and quaternion multiplication for quaternion rotations). Changing the layers influence between 0-100% blends between the values of the layers below and the accumulated result of those values with the current layer.For both blend modes, layers only affect properties that they animate: if a property is not animated on a layer then its value is simply passed through untouched.What happens when there is no value on the layers below?For replace layers with less-than-100% influence and combine layers with any influence, there has to be something below for the layer to blend with. But what if the layer is the bottom layer? Or what if it animates a property that isnt animated on any of the layers below it? What does it blend with?We considered two alternatives:Not blending: if there is nothing to blend with, dont blend at all and just replace at 100% regardless of the layers actual blend mode and influence.Blend to default: use the propertys default value as the value below to blend with. This means blending to zero for location, one for scale, etc. Effectively, this means bones blend to their rest pose, and objects blend to their delta transform (which is often also zero, so then they blend to the origin, parent, etc.).Neither solution is perfect, each having less-than-ideal behavior in at least some situations.Not blending means that the effective influence of a layer can be 100% even when actually set to 0% or an extremely small percentage. Moreover, that effective influence can be different for different animated properties depending on what is and isnt animated on the layers below, which could be confusing. It could also frustrate certain workflows, such as temporarily muting other layers to tweak the current layers animation in isolation: if the current layers influence is small, then muting the layers below it would effectively jump its influence to 100%, exaggerating its actual effect on the animation.On the other hand, blend to default also has issues. The default values for properties often arent useful/meaningful, so blending with them is likely to be pretty useless in many cases. For example, unparented objects would typically blend to the world origin.In the end we settled on blend to default. Its behavior is more predictable and less disruptive, and the user can work around useless default values if needed by keying useful values on a base layer.What happens when you mute a layer?Muting a layer will affect blending as if you removed the layer entirely. Note that for animated properties that are not on any layers below, this is specifically different from setting the layers influence to zero; that would blend to default, while muting the layer stops animating the property altogether.Terminology note: we may want to call this disable rather than mute. To be decided.Inserting and editing keys on middle layersWhen you have multiple layers, you will often want to insert keys on one of the middle layers. When this happens, the value of that key must be determined.We decided that the inserted value should be whatever value makes the final mix of all layers together produce the current pose. In practice this is almost always what is wanted: any other behavior would mean that inserting a key with the current pose may actually change the pose itself, which would be quite surprising! Accomplishing this means that the keyframing code needs to account for and reverse the effects of the other layers when determining the value to key. This is a bit like crazy space in mesh edit mode, which allows you to directly adjust the deformed positions of vertices.However, just like crazy space, this isnt always the behavior you want. Occasionally you want to specify the exact value to key, regardless of the effects of other layers. For the initial MVP you will be able to more-or-less accomplish this by soloing the layer before posing and keying, but in the future we want to explore approaches to accomplish this more directly.There are also operations other than key insertion that may be useful to do with this crazy space behavior. For example, perhaps you want to add a layer and use it to smooth out the final mixed animation. If the smooth operator in the graph editor only sees the f-curves of a single layer in isolation, this wont work. Instead, it will need to (optionally) perform the smoothing on the final mixed values and then back-propagate those smoothed values, accounting for the effects of the other layers. For the MVP we likely wont be implementing this; there are some subtle and non-obvious details that may be challenging to get right. But it is something we want to support in the future.Finally, there are of course cases where the crazy space keying behavior is impossible. For example, if there is a replace layer with 100% influence above the layer youre keying on: no matter what value you insert a key with, it cannot affect the final mixed pose. We discussed a few alternatives for what should happen in such cases, but ultimately decided that for the MVP we should keep it simple: Blender will simply reject keying and issue an error. After this system is built, we can experiment with other approaches and see what actually works best in practice.Wrapping UpWere extremely happy with how the workshop went, and we believe this is a solid direction for layered actions. Nevertheless, this is not the end of the design process. There is still a lot that needs to be figured out. Moreover, we could only accommodate a limited number of people at the workshop, and we want feedback and ideas from wider community as well. The best way to get involved is to join our weekly module meeting, and we look forward to seeing you there!

Amazon is delaying full RTO for some employees over office-capacity issues.The policy required employees to work from the office five days a week, beginning January 2.Amazon has encountered workspace-capacity issues in the past.Amazon is delaying the start of its strict new RTO policy for some employees because the company doesn't have enough office space in certain locations, Business Insider has learned.The company's real estate team recently started notifying employees that they could continue following their current in-office guidance until workspaces were ready, with delays stretching to as late as May, according to internal Amazon notifications viewed by BI.Affected locations include Atlanta, Houston, Nashville, and New York, the notifications showed. An Amazon spokesperson said buildings would be ready for the majority of Amazon employees by January 2.Earlier this year, Amazon ordered employees to work from the office five days a week, beginning January 2. The company has said the return to office will improve collaboration and bring other benefits. CEO Andy Jassy, in a memo announcing the mandate, said Amazon made the decision to "further strengthen" its culture and teams.Some staff were upset by the change and have argued that remote work provides more flexibility. The five-day-a-week policy is stricter than at some Amazon rivals and, by some accounts, stricter than Amazon's office-work policy before the pandemic.This isn't the first time office-capacity constraints have delayed Amazon's RTO plans. When the company last year ordered employees to start working in the office at least three days a week, many of its buildings weren't ready to accommodate them all.In internal guidelines viewed by BI, Amazon told employees when the new five-day RTO policy was announced in September that they should plan to comply by January 2 whether or not they had assigned workspaces."For the vast majority of employees, assigned workspaces will be available by January 2, 2025," the guidance said. "If your assigned workspace isn't ready by January 2, we still expect everyone to begin fully working from the office by that date."Are you a tech-industry employee or someone else with insight to share?Contact the reporter, Ashley Stewart, via the encrypted messaging app Signal (+1-425-344-8242) or email (). Use a nonwork device.

Hiiiiiii-nahhhhhIndiana Jones and the Great Circle baddie Voss might say karate weirdly, but his actor's glad he didn't have to learn how to whip Indy's bum for realHe did nail some monkey noises in one take, though.Image credit: Machine Games/VG247 News by Mark Warren Senior Staff Writer Published on Jan. 3, 2025 Warning: Spoilers for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle lie ahead.Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is pretty fun, at least in part because its Nazi baddies say some hilarious stuff at times. Everyone's seen Gantz getting his choo-choo on in the cinematic trailer Machine Games put out prior to release, but main baddie Emmerich Voss has some just as wacky lines.For example, towards the end of the adventure, when it's clear him and Indy are set to clash for the final time soon, Voss reveals that he's not a guy to mess with, because he's trained in karate. Or, as he pronounces it karaaaaaaa-teehhhhh. Let's face it, there's a good chance he's the one pronouncing it right, and we're all wrong, but the emphasis is still godly.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Voss goes on to give not quite Harrison Ford a taste of fists and kicks of fury, and he's not bluffing - he is a martial arts fella. Though, the actor who played him - Marios Gavrilis - has now revealed that not only did he not have to learn karate for real as part of the role, he's really glad he didn't.Can you hear that? It's thousands of pretentious method actors rolling in their graves."Thank God I didnt have go through that," the actor replied to a fan on Twitter who asked him how long he trained in the art of Indy bottom-kicking, "Otherwise we wouldnt have finished the game. But we had amazing stunt actors." To see this content please enable targeting cookies.That doesn't mean Gavrilis didn't have his talents put to the test though, as in the same thread he told someone else he nailed the monkey impression Voss does in one of his scenes with Gantz in a single take. Impressive.As you might expect given the cinematic look it was going for, Indy sounds like it was basically a full-on movie-style shoot, as Gavrilis outlined in the "hot take" Tweet that kicked off his thread. "Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was done with motion capture aka performance capture," he wrote, "Not only the dialogues were captured, but also our acting performances in their entirety: our facial expressions, physical movement, interactions and even our likeness was used for each character."It was blocked like a real movie, real film cameras were used as well, and we had stunt actors. The term 'voice actor' is misleading, this was a full on acting gig. All the performers you love from all your fav games - if they include MoCap - are actual actors."He'll get no pushback here - voice actors are actors, and games would be nowhere near as good as they are without the array of voice talent brining characters like Voss to life. Has Voss persuaded you to learn karaaaaaaa-teehhhhh? Let us know below!