Earlier this month, Sony revealed its planning to make live-action movies for Horizon Zero DawnandHelldivers. The latter is a co-op shooter about space marines fighting aliens, and its not uncommon for sci-fi war movies to have big stars: your Tom Cruises, Chris Pratts, and the like. If it were up to execs at developer Arrowhead Game Studios, said movie would indeed bring in some big namesand then have them all die horribly. Arrowhead recently held a Q&A on the Helldivers Discord, and some players had questions about the movie. When asked by one player, CEO Shams Jorjani said the studio hopes for as many A-list actors as possible, as long as they all get killed violently immediately. After the movies announcement, fans made joke fantasy castings that included Pratt, Jack Black, and Adam Sandler as creatures or non-descript marines from the game, like a Bile Titan. Jorjanis comment has since spurred players to keep running with the joke, so now stars like Sean Bean, Aaron Paul, and Dwayne Johnson have been added into the cast mix. Got a star youd wanna see get got in this movie? Tell us in the comments! Less jokingly, Jorjani told another player that Arrowheads been kept in the loop on some stuff about theHelldiversmovie. But he and CCO Johan Pilestedt think the studios involvement in the film should only go so far. On Twitter, Pilestedt recently explained the developers are not Hollywood people, and we dont know what it takes to make a movie. Therefore we dont, and shouldnt, have final say. The amount of input game developers have on an adaptation varies: creators of Last of Usand League of Legends are heavily involved in those shows, while others have comparably less cooks in the kitchen. When it comes to the finished products quality, that also varies, and theres no hard science to determine how much creator input makes for a success in the eyes of both newcomers and longtime fans. It sounds like theHelldiversmovie is currently in its earliest stages, if Sony even goes ahead with making it. But given these games influences, it feels like youd have totryat adapting them wrongly. [via VG247] Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, whats next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

SA House / Sandro Ferreira arquitecturaSave this picture! Ivo Tavares StudioHousesBraga, PortugalArchitects: Sandro Ferreira arquitecturaAreaArea of this architecture projectArea:845 mYearCompletion year of this architecture project Year: 2024 ManufacturersBrands with products used in this architecture project Manufacturers: Anicolor Kristal, Fenix NMT Lead Architect: Sandro Ferreira More SpecsLess SpecsSave this picture!Text description provided by the architects. Casa SA is an innovative residential project initiated by a private entity, located on a central street in Braga. This project aims to transform an urban space previously occupied by a ruined building without patrimonial value, creating a new building with a modern character that meets contemporary needs and enhances the quality of life for its residents.Save this picture!One of the main challenges of this project was the steep gradient between the street level and the outdoor area, which reaches about 10 meters. To ensure natural lighting in all apartments, design solutions were adopted that maximize light entry, creating spacious and well-lit interior environments.The street-facing faade was designed as a mesh of solids and voids, with carefully alternated exterior openings. This approach gives the building a modern character and establishes a dynamic relationship with the urban space, promoting the integration of the new building within the city context.Save this picture!The building is organized into four distinct levels, focusing on space optimization and minimizing circulation areas. The garage level, located at street level, is exclusively intended for parking and access to the building. The first floor consists of two apartments, types T1 and T2, offering flexible and functional living options, where the relationship between interior and exterior has been carefully considered, creating smooth transitions that encourage the use of patios.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!On the second floor, we find the social area of the T4 duplex apartment, where the relationship and continuity between interior and exterior have been prioritized to provide a unique living experience. This space extends into a sloped garden, providing a backdrop for social life. The use of natural materials, such as travertine, walnut wood, and slate wall cladding, which extends from the interior to the exterior, emphasizes spatial continuity. Access to the upper level of the outdoor area is made gradually by stairs and landings that culminate in the pool area.Save this picture!Save this picture!On the top floor, set back from the street, is the private area of the T4, where the east-facing bedrooms visually connect with the garden and pool area. Casa SA represents a contemporary approach to residential architecture, featuring innovative solutions and modern design, standing out for the creation of functional and comfortable spaces that promote the well-being of residents, offering a harmonious environment adapted to everyday needs.Save this picture!Project gallerySee allShow lessAbout this officePublished on January 19, 2025Cite: "SA House / Sandro Ferreira arquitectura" [Casa SA / Sandro Ferreira arquitectura] 19 Jan 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1025610/sa-house-sandro-ferreira-arquitectura&gt ISSN 0719-8884Save!ArchDaily?You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream

Nature, Published online: 15 January 2025; doi:10.1038/s41586-024-08244-9The developmental Genotype-Tissue Expression (dGTEx) projects will catalogue and integrate gene expression, regulation and genetics data across 120 human donors from birth to adulthood with developmentally matched non-human primates, including 126 rhesus macaques and 72 common marmosets.

Black holes that have been obscured by clouds of dust still emit infrared light, enabling astronomers to spot them for the very first time.

Marvel Snap was made unavailable in the US shortly after the TikTok ban went into effect on January 19. This was presumably because the game's publisher, Nuverse, was owned at the time of its release by TikTok parent company Bytedance. However, TikTok has now come back online, but Marvel Snap hasn't yet."Unfortunately, Marvel Snap is temporarily unavailable in U.S. app stores and is unavailable to play in the US. This outage is a surprise to us and wasn't planned," said Marvel Snap developer Second Dinner. "Marvel Snap isnt going anywhere. Were actively working on getting the game up as soon as possible and will update you once we have more to share."Marvel Snap has also disappeared from app stores and even if you have it installed, you can't currently play it.In under 24 hours since its ban in the US, TikTok has restored service. Marvel Snap, at this time, however, is still unavailable for US players. It's unknown when and if the game will come back online.Continue Reading at GameSpot

For how sprawling and rich its storylines are, Cyberpunk 2077 somehow manages to give closure to many of its characters while also leaving a lot of throughlines open-ended. Night City is a big place with a lot of moving pieces that Project Orion could certainly explore and, with Vs ambiguous condition at the end of Cyberpunk 2077, it is unknown who the sequel will follow. That said, its possible that any number of characters from Cyberpunk 2077 could return and cross paths with even a newly established protagonist character in Project Orion and no character is arguably more deserving than Judy Alvarez.

All focus was on TikTok in the last week, as the company prepared to and eventually did shut down its video-sharing app to adhere to a national security law explicitly aimed at the ByteDance-owned company. But the the U.S. action has resulted in a broader ripple effect. Marvel Snap players discovered on Saturday night that the card battle game had also gone dark, and had been removed from Apple and Google app stores at the same time as TikTok. The game remains offline, along with several other apps with connections to ByteDance.Second Dinner, the U.S.-based developer of Marvel Snap, said in a statement that it was a surprise that the game had gotten caught in the net of the TikTok shutdown. But since the game is published by Nuverse, a subsidiary of ByteDance, the app was held to the same complicated standards as TikTok. Second Dinner was quick to promise that Marvel Snap isnt going anywhere.Unfortunately, MARVEL SNAP is temporarily unavailable in U.S. app stores and is unavailable to play in the U.S.In a surprise to Second Dinner and our publisher Nuverse, MARVEL SNAP was affected by the takedown of TikTok late on Saturday, January 18th.MARVEL SNAP isnt going Second Dinner (@seconddinner) January 19, 2025The move also came as a surprise to Marvel Snap players, who had received no advance warning that the game would shut down in compliance with the new law. But at least they made some good posts about it.According to users who are also hitting a wall and unable to access or download games, the TikTok ban has affected other Nuverse titles like Land of Empires: Immortal, Land of Empires: Dice Hero, and Mission EVO. Games from the ByteDance-owned Moonton were also affected by the law, including Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, Mobile Legends: Adventure, Watcher of Realms, and One Punch Man: The Strongest.

How I escaped the pull of the pageUI.Image by theauthor.The best writing tool Ive discovered last year was to stop drafting on a page and use a canvas-based user interface (UI) instead. In this article, Ill share what motivated this change and reflect on the strategies that help me make the most ofit.As a professor and researcher in Human-Computer Interaction, my focus is on scientific writing. Still, I expect these takeaways to apply more broadly to any writing involving iteration and engagement with othersources.A year of drafting inspaceMy Miro recap below tells me Ive created about 1500 digital sticky notes. Why so many? Well, I started 2024 off by writing an essay on the fragmentation of writing with AI tools. When a reviewer later asked me to share my process, I ironically noted that I did not myself involve AI tools in drafting it but nevertheless embraced fragmentationvia sticky notes on a canvas. Writing off the page in that project, I have not returned to substantially drafting with a page-based UIsince.My Miro year in review2024.My Miro board for the essay even made it into the appendix of the paper, as shown below. I have since received requests and comments on this figure, which have inspired me to write this short reflection.The canvas I used to develop ideas and arguments and a review of related work for anessay.Non-linear drafting on acanvasHere are the key lessons Ive learned and the reasons I now prefer a canvas-based approach to drafting.Noteworthy beginningsSticky notes on the canvas look and feel tangibly like objects meant to be worked with. For me, they offer much better affordances for an early draft than bullet points on a page. They reify unordered thoughts, allowing me to directly manipulate them: I can move them aside, revisit some later, rearrange them, or connectthem.I beat the blank page with a canvas, one note at atime.Zoom-to-frameAs my draft evolves and grows, I can zoom in and focus on a specific aspect, blocking out the rest. Complementary, I can zoom out to recover the bigger picture. This flexibility allows me to frame and reframe my writing sessions by dynamically adjusting the viewport.Iterating inspaceOn a canvas, iteration is seamless. I can duplicate text objects to explore ideas and variations, keeping the original visible. Afterwards, I decide whether to delete it or retain it for comparison or future use. In contrast to this immediacy, copying a text file to v2 feels disconnected from drafting and the content drops out ofsight.The spatial arrangement of text iterations adds meaning, such as when layouting paragraphs vertically to show progression, while exploring alternatives horizontally.Mapping outmeaningMore broadly, a canvas offers the freedom to map meaning spatially. This area is related work, while that area gathers study findings. I can cross, connect, and redefine these regions as I go. In contrast, files and ordered page sections twist my drafting hand into unwanted linearisation and prematurely defined boundaries.Infinite marginsA canvas offers limitless space to engage with related work. I dont need to cram thoughts into page margins or comment bubbles in a PDF viewer. Instead, I can give a reference space by adding its abstract, text snippets, figures, and so on, via copy-paste and screenshots. Crucially, I can add my own thoughts throughout. By deconstructing and reorganising the presentation of related work, I construct an overview ready to hand, rather than scattering thoughts in margins across documentfiles.Constructing an overview of related work with screenshots, snippets, and annotations.Multimodal referencesOn a canvas, the representation of references can use images, text, even videos, more effectively than on a page view. I dont have to think about page layouts when adding figures from related work for context. I also dont have to worry about images moving on the page as I addtext.Related material and my text are not meant to be linearised at the draftingstage.Let me overlap things, draw onto them, add arrows and text on top and around images, and so on. The canvas supportsthis.Rewarding divergenceAs a side-effect of the above, I experience the result of interleaving drafting with research into external sources as much more rewarding on a canvas than in a text file. Perhaps this is because the multimodal representation better reflects the invested effort. Beyond its analytic nature, it becomes a constructive process in itself. At the end of the session, I see: Today, Ive built this overview of related work. Look at thatamazing!Mise enplaceThis ties together the ideas of mapping, focus, and integrating related work: I rarely write just to produce text but rather interleave reading and writing. On a canvas, I can draft (and think) in context and I can prepare this context material directly on my writing surface ahead of time. Besides related work and results from own data analyses, I particularly like to prepare and lay out argumentation structures in thisway.Gathering and connecting results and argumentation structure, then drafting next tothem.To conclude, Ive (re)discovered the benefits of a mix of Human-Computer Interaction concepts for my personal writing workflow, in particular at the drafting stage. These include zoom-and-pan UIs, focus and context, reification, direct manipulation, and various aspects of interaction design for sensemaking activities and building personal information spaces.Breaking silosThis is not about Miro specificallyor even just about writing. In a broader view, my use of Miro is a workaround for dealing with application silos. Applications today are not truly interconnected. Navigating between them forces me to interrupt drafting, track where information is stored, and shift my focus between apps to gather the required resources.While drafting a paper, instead of tracking information across apps, I want to focus on argumentation, related work, connections, data, meaning, and perspectives.Dropping everything into one canvas app via copy-paste is far from ideal but it bootstraps a seamless information space for writing and referencingand ultimately thinkingthat I can usetoday.ResourcesSome of the canvas screenshots above are taken from the Miro board for this paper. I also wrote about it here on Medium. Finally, here are some suggestions for reading more about the mentioned HCI concepts:Direct manipulationZoomable user interfacesReificationSensemakingPersonal information spacesThe UX of drafting in space was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Want to watch a movie with a friend on your Mac? Perhaps you're stuck on a long flight, or like me, your MacBook Air speakers went bust. Either way, you'll be happy to know that the Mac has a built-in feature that can merge multiple different sound outputsno third-party app needed. You can easily use two sets of Bluetooth headphones to listen to the same audio, without any noticeable audio drift or lag. First, connect both devices to BluetoothThe first step is to connect both devices to your Mac using Bluetooth. You can do this by going to Control Center > Bluetooth. Credit: Khamosh Pathak If your devices aren't yet paired, you won't see them there. In that case, go to System Settings > Bluetooth and pair the headphones to your Mac first.Merge two audio outputsTo start the process, open the Audio MIDI Setup app. You'll find this in Applications/Utilities in the Finder app. Or you can use Spotlight Search or Launchpad to find and open the app.Click the Plus button in the bottom-left corner of the window, and choose the Create Multi-Output Device option. Credit: Khamosh Pathak You'll see all the connected devices here. Choose the two devices that you want to use for media playback. You are free to choose one of the devices as the Primary Device at the top. Automatically, the app will enable the Drift Correction feature for the secondary device to make sure that audio is synced perfectly for both devices. Credit: Khamosh Pathak Next, double-click the Multi-Output Device name from the sidebar to rename it to something you'll easily remember. To test this out now, control-click this group and choose the Use This Device for Sound Output option. The audio output will instantly switch to the headphones pair. Credit: Khamosh Pathak But there is a better way to switch to the headphones pair, by using the Sound menu in Control Center.Click the Control Center icon in the menu bar, and click the Devices menu from the Sound option (you can drag the Sound menu to the menu bar for easier access). Credit: Khamosh Pathak Here, choose the newly created audio pair. If you're doing this for the first time, choose the Multi-Output Device option. It will now be updated with your custom group name, making it much easier to choose the output the next time around. Credit: Khamosh Pathak The next time you're ready to listen in the same configuration, remember to first connect the two devices individually from the Bluetooth menu, and then select them as a pair from the Sound menu (they won't be listed as a pair directly in the Bluetooth menu, for some reason).

Instagram head Adam Mosseri took to Threads on Sunday with yet another announcement this weekend, the timing of which surely had nothing at all to do with TikTok and other ByteDance-owned apps (briefly) going dark: a new, free video-editing app called Edits is on the way. Instagram's Edits will cater to people who edit videos on their phone, and will offer a full suite of creative tools. That includes higher-quality recordings, shareable drafts, trending audio, insights about your Reels performance and an inspiration tab, on top of the usual editing tools.If all that reminds you of CapCut, TikToks sister app for video editing, youre not alone. In response to the immediate comparisons, Mosseri called Edits CapCut, but more for creators than casual video makers.Edits isnt available yet, but you can pre-order it on the App Store if youre an iOS user and Mosseri says an Android version is coming soon. While he puts the release sometime in February, the App Store page says March 13. And dont expect anything too polished when it arrives. The first version is going to be incomplete, so please be patient, but Im really excited to put this in all your hands, Mosseri said.The Edits app logoEdits/App StoreThe announcement came shortly after TikTok said its app was coming back online in the US, a mere 12 hours or so after it shut down. CapCut hasnt come back yet, but its expected to follow suit. Trump said on social media that he would announce an executive order after hes sworn in that would extend ByteDances time to sort out TikToks future.While Threads users have been calling Instagram out for the timing of the announcement, Mosseri said the app has been in development for months, and I think it'll end up pretty different than CapCut. On that note, he said, Edits will have a much broader range of creative tools and probably a smaller addressable audience. Think a place to track all your ideas instead of templates. Think AI video editing tools on a per clip or per video basis. Think new insights on why your videos are succeeding or struggling.One way it appears Edits may have a leg up on CapCut, at least, is the App Store page says videos wont have a watermark when theyre exported. While the free version of CapCut has long added the easily removable ending logo to videos at the time of export, it recently started adding a corner watermark too.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/instagram-is-rushing-out-a-new-video-editing-app-that-sure-sounds-a-lot-like-capcut-205054034.html?src=rss