By Thomas Maxwell Published January 8, 2025 | Comments (1) | Ukranian hackers have knocked a Russian internet provider offline in an attack that "destroyed" its network. Unsplash/Michael Parulava A regional Russian internet provider named Nodex has been almost completely destroyed in an attack by a Ukranian hacking group. Nodex confirmed the attack in a statement on Russian social network VK, saying its network had been destroyed and that it was working to restore infrastructure from backups. The hacking group, called Ukrainian Cyber Alliance, took credit for the attack, saying the St. Petersburg-based Nodex was completely looted and wiped while the empty equipment without backups was left to them. Cyberattacks have long been a domain of countries like Russia and North Korea, using them to infiltrate domestic infrastructure like utility grids and, in the case of North Korea, even steal cryptocurrency to fund nuclear weapon development. TechCrunch earlier reported on the Ukranian attack and wrote that Nodex remains offline as of Wednesday evening.The attack comes as Russia continues testing the possibility of cutting off its citizens from the global web in favor of its own restricted, sovereign network. Last year, Russias federal internet regulatory agency, Roskomnadzor, restricted global internet access for a day in several regions of the country, particularly Muslim-majority ones, even preventing VPNs from reaching servers outside the country.The Kremlin understandably wants to manage the flow of information available to citizens during its ongoing war with Ukraine. Information on the war is heavily censored, with severe punishments for referring to it as anything other than a special operation. YouTube has remained accessible in Russia but with regular significant outages and slowdowns that critics say are the result of intentional throttling by the government to prevent viewing of certain content. Russia surely hopes that by cutting off websites outside of its control, citizens will not stumble onto content that contradicts the Kremlins narrative and will only consider views that it deems acceptable. News operations spreading Western ideas like Radio Free Europe, and online influence campaigns through social media can be neutered if Russians are simply cut off from their reach. Which is all to say, attacks on internet networks by Ukranian groups may not be effective for long if Russia moves forward with unplugging its ISPs from the rest of the world, further splintering the world into disconnected silos.Daily NewsletterYou May Also Like By Thomas Maxwell Published December 20, 2024 By Thomas Maxwell Published December 20, 2024 By Matthew Gault Published December 12, 2024 By Matthew Gault Published December 10, 2024 By Matthew Gault Published December 3, 2024 By Matthew Gault Published November 21, 2024

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GamePass the PopcornOblivion remaster? South of Midnight? More? What can we expect from 2025's first Xbox Showcase in late January?Microsoft plans to start 2025 with a bang, and hopefully we'll hear more about some of Xbox's big ticket games this time.Image credit: VG247 News by Dom Peppiatt Editor-in-chief Published on Jan. 9, 2025 Move over, Indiana Jones: Xbox is on the warpath once again.Today, Microsoft has announced an Xbox Showcase, set to take place on January 23, 2025 at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern / 6pm UK time. The showcase will highlight some of the massive upcoming titles from Microsoft and its partner studios, and whilst we haven't exactly been given a running order of what'll make it into the first big showing of the year, I think it's safe to say we can make some educated guesses.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. As part of the official blog post on the developer direct, we know that we'll get a closer look at Doom: The Dark Ages, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and South of Midnight via quick trips to the stuidos, which should be nice!But what about that mystery game? As noted in the blog post, there's one more developer we're set to see as part of the developer direct. So which one is it? Well, 2025 is set to be a big year for Xbox, especially for any RPG heads amongst you. With the likes of Avowed, Fable, Outer Worlds 2, and a rumoured Oblivion remaster pencilled into the release schedule, the Series S and Series X are potentially lined up for a pretty good 12 months. Xbox knows a thing or two about bringing the pain.Let's start with that last one. We've heard a fair amount about an Oblivion remake or remaster, with rumours going back as far as 2023 that also include hints towards a potential Fallout 3 re-release, too. Previous rumours pointed to Oblivion itself being ready for release as early as 2022 (!), so here's hoping - three years later - that Bethesda actually shows its hand and addresses the whispers across the industry. We know about the Oblivion remaster, mostly, from a supposed ex-employee from Virtuous Games, who revealed that an Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion remake was in the works as early as 2021. "It is done currently using a pairing system, so it means that the remaster is running using both an Unreal Engine 5 project, and the Oblivion one," the leakder said back in 2023. "For instance, new graphics are rendered in the UE5 project, but most of the gameplay / physics /etc is still done in Oblivion. It should be released end of next year/ early [2025] depending mostly if it's a remake or a remaster. It is mostly done in Paris, but Blackshamrock also helps the studio for the art." (These comments were collected by Xfire before an image featuring them was taken down.)Let's hope we actually get some concrete evidence this one exists before the month is out. It's a kinda magic. | Image credit: Obsidian EntertainmentNext, we've got Avowed. The game slipped into 2025 to avoid internal Game Pass competition (thanks, Indy), and Obsidian Entertainments big new risky IP now finds itself slap-bang between two of the biggest releases of the year - Monster Hunter Wilds and Assassin's Creed Shadows. Will this showcase sell the unsure masses on a solid-looking RPG? We'll have to wait and see. For what it's worth, our own Alex Donaldson thinks it looks like an absolute corker. A rolling stone gathers no Moss.I'll group two together, next. We might not know much about The Outer Worlds 2 yet, aside from a few trailers, but I bet that's about to change as we roll into the game's launch year. One little nugget that I'm quite interested in is that the game's devs are getting some helpful guidance from Fallout co-creator Tim Cain.Alongside TOW2, Fable (2025) is probably set to get another showing, soon, given that we haven't seen much of the title since it appeared at Summer Game Feest 2024. Fable is being developed by Playground Games, who you may know from its work on the Horizon series, and looks like it retains the same zany British humour as the original series. That's enough to keep me interested, but let's see if that enthusiasm remains once we actually see some proper gameplay in action. Waiting for the boom.Last, but by no means least, I'd like to give an extra shout out to a game we know will be present at the devleoper direct: South of Midnight. It's the next project from Compulsion Games (the team behind Contrast and We Happy Few) and we got our first first look at its gameplay as part of the Xbox Showcase in summer 2024. The stunning, American South-set game is action-heavy, and stands alone in the Xbox upcoming line-up.South of Midnight is coming to PC and Xbox in 2025, but no specific date has been attached just yet (is this a case of Xbox running from the all-consuming GTA 6? Probably). The game was revealed almost back in 2023, and there's a lot of people especially interested to see what sauce this one is packing. Let's hope we finally get a release date for it during this direct!

Lost QualityAfter Monster Hunter reminded us all of when video game flicks were garbage, Paul W.S. Anderson's next movie brings an overlooked George R.R. Martin short story to lifeThe movie's main villain appears to be the chroma keying.Image credit: Vertical News by Fran Ruiz Contributor Published on Jan. 9, 2025 If you thought Zack Snyder's two Rebel Moon movies were terrible, what about a new Paul W.S. Anderson joint which looks aesthetically similar, but worse? In the Lost Lands promises an exciting adaptation of the overlooked George R.R. Martin short story of the same name and stars Dave Bautista and Milla Jovovich, but the early 2000s might want it back.Anderson was the main creative voice behind the godawful Monster Hunter flick that we got back in 2020 and that somehow didn't nuke mainstream interest in the franchise. Over the decades, he's been attached to a number of game adaptations, with the first Mortal Kombat movie and his fruitful Resident Evil saga being the biggest examples. Many folks (such as me) also have a sweet spot for Event Horizon and his half-baked take on Alien vs. Predator. The more the technology has advanced, the worse his movies have gotten, though.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Via IGN, In the Lost Lands' synopsis reads as follows:Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson and based on George R.R. Martins short story, the story centers on a queen who, desperate to fulfill her love, makes a daring play: she sends the powerful and feared sorceress Gray Alys (Mila Jovovich) to the ghostly wilderness of the Lost Lands in search of a magical power, where the sorceress and her guide, the drifter Boyce (Dave Bautista), must outwit and outfight man and demon.You can check out the trailer for yourself below (if you've got the stomach):While Bautista and Jovovich (both familiar with this sort of production) seem to have had a ton of uncomplicated, campy fun making this one, I'm sorry, but it might be the first wide release that actually feels AI-generated even if it's not. From the glowy lighting to the overdone color grading to the shoddy chromas. Mind you, Anderson is quite capable of delivering absolutely fine B-movie entertainment, but this looks like it'll land closer to his more recent efforts than his actually enjoyable fare of back in the day.IGN also exclusively shared the first-ever poster for the movie, which has prime 'what you'd find at the back of a half-empty Blockbuster in the 2000s' vibes if that's what you're after: Image credit: VerticalIn the Lost Lands' US release is currently set for March 7, 2025.

The year is 2054.Nintendo has released a new trailer looking at the story for Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition on the Switch.Currently slated to release on 20th March 2025, the game is an enhanced version of the Wii U classic, boasting improved visuals and brand new story content. Clocking in at just over 3 and a half minutes, the new trailer sheds light on the game's plot, backstory, and characters to bring you up to speed before its release. There's also a small hint at some of the new content that returning veterans can look forward to.Read the full article on nintendolife.com

In BriefPosted:6:05 AM PST January 9, 2025Image Credits:Getty ImagesTesla directors to pay up to $919 million to settle claims they overpaid themselvesA Delaware judge has approved a settlement that will see Tesla directors including Chair Robyn Denholm, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, Kimbal Musk, and James Murdoch return up to $919 million to the automaker, officially resolving allegations that they overpaid themselves, per Reuters.The settlement concludes a 2020 lawsuit by the Police and Fire Retirement System of the City of Detroit that challenged director compensation from 2017 to 2020 as excessive. The directors will have to pay back stock and options worth up to $735 million and forgo three years of pay allegedly worth $184 million.Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick, the judge overseeing the case, also awarded $176 million in fees and costs to the three law firms that brought the case to court on a contingency basis, meaning they would only be paid if they won. Tesla has asked McCormick to cap the fee at $64 million.McCormick is the same judge who ruled against Tesla CEO Elon Musks exorbitant pay package despite shareholders voting to re-ratify the deal.Topics

French startup Rounded believes AI voice agents are going to become the default way customers interact with companies, so instead of building AI voice agents that are ready to use, the company is building an orchestration platform that lets companies build their own voice agent.Rounded started off working on a web3 product before shifting its focus to explore AI voice agents in June 2023. The idea was that wed simply put ChatGPT after a transcriber and before a synthesizer, and it would be valuable, co-founder Aymeric Vaudelin (pictured above, first from left) told TechCrunch.But the team soon faced the usual product-market fit conundrum. After a few months, we realized that the market wasnt ready yet to hear about voice agents. So we created a product, and packaged everything to create a first agent, Vaudelin added.That effort resulted in Donna, an AI voice agent for anesthetists. While that seems a bit random, the startup picked that market because anesthesia secretaries have to deal with a large number of patients, and its usually a very transactional experience.In France, when you schedule a surgical operation, you have to talk to the anesthetist beforehand so they can make sure you dont have any allergies to anesthetic products or any potential complications.Anesthesia secretaries have to handle a large volume of calls that are pretty straightforward. Typically, people just want to know when the anesthetist is available, schedule an appointment, or change the date.Moreover, these arent sales calls, so an AI agent doesnt have to be persuasive or extremely efficient. In the early days, we struggled with latencies of sometimes 4, 5, 6 seconds, Vaudelin said.Nevertheless, with Donna, Rounded managed to convince 15 private hospitals to let an AI voice agent answer calls, and the company says the agent has handled hundreds of thousands of conversations so far. Over time, Rounded improved its product so that it would be more accurate, better integrated with other products and, importantly, faster.With a web call, for example, we now get a latency of less than 700 milliseconds more like 600 milliseconds. You add 200 milliseconds for phone connectivity, more or less, Vaudelin said.More recently, Rounded broadened its remit with an orchestration product that other companies can use to build their own voice agents.Rounded lets you pick and choose your off-the-shelf AI models, which can be a speech-to-text model, an LLM and a text-to-speech model. For instance, for your first voice agent, you could use Azure to transcribe the call, GPT-4o mini as the LLM, and ElevenLabs as your speech-to-text engine.The platform then helps define the instruction trees and prompts that will make the LLM work for your specific use case. Implementing an agent means finding the right prompting, the right parameters and the right variables in the prompt, Vaudelin said.Our pitch is that were going to enable everyone to create great prompts or great agents, and our product will support them in this iteration process to create super-reliable agents, Vaudelin said.Rounded has raised 600,000 so far (around $620,000) from UC Berkeleys deeptech accelerator SkyDeck, and several business angels. But given that artificial intelligence remains an extremely buzzy industry, Im sure the startup will raise more money in the coming months.

Ask any scientist that has worked with cell cultures in a lab: contamination is high on their list of fears. Even one stray bacterium or fungal spore can spoil an entire experiment.Now imagine scaling that risk up to biomanufacturing, which uses living cells to make a range of stuff, including drugs, food ingredients, and industrial materials. There, contamination doesnt just hamper productivity, it has the potential to harm the public if, for example, bad germs make their way into pharmaceuticals.Not wanting to take any chances, companies take a scorched earth approach to combating contaminants, blasting their equipment with searing hot steam. But its a costly tactic: steam takes a lot of energy to produce, and the equipment has to be hardened against the high temperatures and pressures that occur during sterilization.This was an approach developed by Pfizer in the 40s to make penicillin, Brian Heligman, co-founder and CEO of Biosphere, told TechCrunch. And you look at the original systems, they look kind of the same as today.Steam isnt the only way to sterilize equipment. Another is to grow cells in single-use reactors, which is wasteful. Ultraviolet (UV) light is another. Yet until recently, generating enough UV-C light, which is required for decontamination, has been expensive. Now, thanks in part to COVID, theyre a lot cheaper.During the Covid era, you saw a lot of capital influx into the manufacture of UV-C LEDs, Heligman said. Theyll probably get orders of magnitude cheaper in the next decade.Heligman and his colleagues at Biosphere have spent the last two years designing a three-liter, glass benchtop bioreactor that can be sterilized entirely by UV light. Inside the reactor, four bright LEDs blast every part of the chamber and its instrumentation. The startup is now testing eight of them as part of a $1.5 million Department of Defense project to explore ways to use biomanufacturing to produce high-performance oils.Using LEDs has the potential to bring down the cost of biomanufacturing, allowing such processes to make materials that previously would have been too expensive.As you start to be able to simplify the complexity of these systems, we think we can push to a transformatively lower floor, Heligman said.You can imagine this like an electrification of the bioreactor, he said, adding that replacing expensive stainless steel valves, traps, and other equipment with LEDs and a cable should help drive costs down significantly. Whats more, because the vessels wont have to withstand high temperature and pressure, they could be made out of cheaper materials like plastics for certain applications.The company is currently working to build a pilot bioreactor that can contain around 100 liters and can be sterilized using its technology. After that, Heligman said hes interested in exploring designs that would be capable of holding 40,000 to 80,000 liters.Biosphere has raised $8.8 million in seed funding led by Lowercarbon Capital and VXI Capital, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. Participating investors include B37 Ventures, Caffeinated Capital, Founders Fund, and GS Futures.

Breakdown & ShowreelsThe Lord of the Rings The War of The Rohirrim: Middle-earth and Anime Making ofBy Vincent Frei - 09/01/2025 Step into the world of Rohan! This making-of featurette for The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim unveils the stunning character designs and the intricate animation process behind this epic tale. Dont miss this exclusive behind-the-scenes journey! Vincent Frei The Art of VFX 2025

Why You Should Use the Cinema Track Modifier TagHave you ever heard of the Cinema 4D Track Modifier Tag? Its hidden, and its a gem.Why You Should Use the Cinema Track Modifier TagWhat is the C4D Track Modifier Tag Used For?You can do so much with it: stretch out animations without touching keyframes, change the start range procedurally, make a stop motion or posterized time effect without touching keyframes, make secondary animation boing and spring and delay effects, and even add random motion to an object.Its a tough tag to explain, so let me walk you through it in this short Cinema 4D tutorial! Be sure to like and subscribe Want More Quick Tips?If you want more of these, head to our YouTube channel, leave a comment, and subscribe!Leave a Comment and Subscribe Here