Ubisofts open-world action RPG Assassins Creed Shadows has been delayed again, launching on March 20th instead of February 14th. While the developer specified it requires a few more weeks for additional polish, the rumored preview events are still happening.Insider Gamings Tom Henderson reaffirmed this in a recent tweet and later reported that the embargo is January 23rd, 6 PM CET. However, media outlets and content creators can seemingly reveal their participation on January 16th. These previews were reportedly meant for late September last year but were cancelled before the games first delay announcement.Launching for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC, Assassins Creed Shadows has received blog posts and gameplay snippets outlining stealth, combat and parkour. Details on the first expansion, Claws of Awaji, have also leaked courtesy of its Steam page. It introduces a new region, enemy types, skills, and gear, offering over ten hours of content. Head here for more details.Despite the delay of Assassins Creed Shadows, the preview events are still going ahead for media and creators next week.Its unclear when previews will be lifted, but I will know soon! pic.twitter.com/n8nZYqY3ti Tom Henderson (@_Tom_Henderson_) January 10, 2025The embargo is January 23rd, 6PM CET. Media can announce they played the preview on the 16th Tom Henderson (@_Tom_Henderson_) January 10, 2025

While Assassins Creed Shadows has suffered another delay, plans are still proceeding apace. A new batch of previews is reportedly going live on January 23rd. However, details of the first expansion have been revealed before that courtesy of the games Steam page.According to the now-pulled description, its titled Claws of Awaji and features a new region to explore (one where players will feel the fear of being hunted and under threat). It also introduces a new weapon type in the Bo, new skills and gear, and fresh enemies to deal with as players search for lost treasure. Perhaps the most notable part of the expansion is its promise of over ten hours of new content.Claws of Awaji will launch later this year for free to those who pre-order the game. Ubisoft may offer more details shortly before launch, so stay tuned for updates.Assassins Creed Shadows launches on March 20th for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. Its recent delay was due to the developer requiring a few additional weeks to implement feedback and ensure an even more ambitious and engaging day-one experience.

Rebellion Developments next title, Sniper Elite: Resistance, is out January 30th, but its next big release, Atomfall, is arguably more intriguing. The post-nuclear survival action title has received a new overview trailer, setting the stage for the story, protagonist, and what they can expect. Check it out below.Occurring years after the Windscale fire in 1957, the player awakens with no memories near a quarantined village. As they deal with its overbearing occupying force and B.A.R.D robots, they must interact with NPCs, follow leads (in the absence of a quest system), and unearth clues to their past. Of course, the world is far from peaceful between the cults, B.A.R.D. Bunkers and mutants.Players can discover and upgrade different weapons, from cricket bats to rifles. Ammo can be hard to come by, which sometimes means crafting your own. Other times, you must scrounge for supplies (which is when the metal detector comes in handy).Atomfall launches on March 27th for Xbox One, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC alongside Game Pass. Deluxe Edition owners get three days of advanced access head here for more details.

As one of 6,000 journalists at the show, I walked around a lot to find the coolest tech. My conclusion: The robots are coming.Read More

At this point, its pretty clear what Donald Trump wants from Mark Zuckerberg. But what does Zuckerberg, who has now gone to Mar-a-Lago twice since the November election, want from the President-elect?Thats the question Ive been asking sources in and around Meta over the last several days. They all described Metas relationship with the outgoing Biden administration as incredibly hostile. Its safe to assume that Zuckerberg wants a reset for the MAGA regime, especially since Trump threatened not that long ago to imprison him for life.In Trumps America, removing tampons from the mens restrooms on Metas campuses, a real thing that just happened is as much a business decision as a political one. Destroying woke ideology is a key pillar of Trumps stated mandate. Others who know they need to play the game, like Amazon, are also starting to fall in line. Even still, Zuckerberg is transforming Meta for this new political reality at a speed thats unusual for a company of its size and influence. Founder mode.In his conversation with Joe Rogan and his video on Instagram, Zuckerberg shares a laundry list of issues that Trump could help him with: fighting other countries that are ratcheting up their policing of his platforms, stopping Apple from dictating how he builds mobile apps and smart glasses (the latter is increasingly important to Metas future), and, perhaps most importantly, keeping domestic AI regulation from slowing his efforts to crush OpenAI. Elon Musk has bought Trumps ear. But the more time Zuckerberg spends in Mar-a-Lago, the more Sam Altman and Tim Cook should be worried.Then theres the US governments case to break up Meta thats set to go to trial in a few months. After the blur that was the last four years, its easy to forget that this lawsuit was filed at the end of Trumps first term by a Republican FTC chair, not Lina KhanMost of the headline reactions from the past week have focused on Zuckerbergs decision to end Metas third-party fact check program. It was a convenient scapegoat for company executives that, frankly, never lived up to the goal of bringing more neutrality to Facebook and Instagram. The Community Notes alternative Meta is cribbing from X was not on the product roadmap before this week, so it will probably be awhile before everyone sees it in the wild.The announcement that US moderators would be moved from California to Texas is perhaps the most cynical of them all; talk to anyone who knows and theyll tell you the vast majority of moderators are already based in Austin.Do you work at Meta? Id love to chat. You can reach me me securely on Signal and Ill keep you anonymous.The hateful speech that is now allowed on Metas is eye-popping on its face and will be deserving of more scrutiny in the coming weeks. The decision to start recommending political content again is a 180-degree turn for Zuckerberg. But insiders believe that the most impactful change for users of Metas apps will be the softening of its systems that remove content for potential policy violations.Out of all the announcements Meta made last week, this is the one I believe is the least connected to Trump. Meta execs have been signaling for a while that they know they are mistakenly removing too much content that doesnt actually break the rules; Im told its one of, if not the, biggest complaint in user surveys. If done correctly, dialing back on moderation mistakes may be the only thing Zuckerberg announced that makes everyone happy.ElsewhereCES is for dealmaking now: Each year, the official CES show the sprawling show floor and flashy keynotes feels more like an advertising exercise and no longer a place to launch real products. Most of the energy has moved to private meeting rooms and happy hours at the Wynn, Aria, and Cosmopolitan, where tech execs are schmoozing CMOs and getting deals done with partners all week. At this shadow CES, everyone seems to agree that the show is more alive than ever. Booths on the show floor have become marketing tools to show clients before you take them to a steak dinner. The challenge for the organizers of CES will be figuring out how to bridge the growing influence of this part of the show with their current business model of charging people to walk around booths filled with smart toasters and concept cars.TikTok may just get banned: Imagine an alternate world in which the Chinese government is about to ban Instagram from operating in the country and Mark Zuckerberg is in hiding. Thats the situation with ByteDance and its founder Zhang Yiming, who stepped down from the CEO role after the last US ban attempt but still controls the company. He let TikTok be banned in India and seemingly has no interest in the app surviving this time, so why wouldnt he let the same thing happen again?Google and OpenAI flick at whats next: Googles DeepMind unit is starting an ambitious project to build generative models that simulate the physical world, which it believes is on the critical path to artificial general intelligence. Meanwhile, OpenAI is returning to its early roots by starting a general-purpose robotics team that will build hardware and push towards AGI-level intelligence in dynamic, real-world settings. We may have hit a scaling wall on text data but the big labs clearly see an opportunity in 3D. (See also what Nvidia announced last week.)Other headlines you may have missed: Tencent (a large investor in Epic Games, Snap, and US tech companies)put on the Pentagons blacklist for being allegedly under the influence of the Chinese military. Tim Cooks totalrose 18 percent last year to $74.6 million. Elon Musk is hosting an inauguration party for Trump in DC with Uber and The Free Press. Sam Altmans sister filed a sexual abuse lawsuit against him.Job boardSome recent, noteworthy job changes in the tech world:A bunch of changes at Meta: UFC CEO Dana White, Exor CEO John Elkann, and Charlie Songhurst joined the board. Joel Kaplan is running policy and comms now. After a stint at Google, Im told Michael Levinson is coming back as VP of product for the Integrity org. (Good luck!) Head of civil rights, Roy Austin, is leaving. And former DEI chief Maxine Williams is now head of accessibility and engagement.Elon Musks X named a couple of new leaders: Romina Khananisho is the new head of government affairs and John Nitti is head of ad innovation.Calista Redmon joined Nvidia as VP of global AI initiatives, where shell drive adoption of the NVIDIA platform for national and regional AI initiatives.Sophia Dominguez, Snaps director of AR platform, is leaving.More linksMy colleagues rounded up the best things they saw at CES this year.Kylie Robison on how Elon Musks xAI is quietly taking over X.Ethan Mollick sounds the alarm about what the AI labs are claiming is coming.Eric Goldmans 2024 Internet Law Year-in-Review.Ming-Chi Kuo is bearish on Apple this year.Derek Thompson on the anti-social century.If you havent already, dont forget to subscribe to The Verge, which includes unlimited access to Command Line, all of our reporting, and an improved ad experience on the web.As always, I want to hear from you, especially if you work at Meta. Respond here, and Ill get back to you, or ping me securely on Signal.Thanks for subscribing.

Autoregressive pre-training has proved to be revolutionary in machine learning, especially concerning sequential data processing. Predictive modeling of the following sequence elements has been highly effective in natural language processing and, increasingly, has been explored within computer vision domains. Video modeling is one area that has hardly been explored, giving opportunities for extending into action recognition, object tracking, and robotics applications. These developments are due to growing datasets and innovation in transformer architectures that treat visual inputs as structured tokens suitable for autoregressive training.Modeling videos has unique challenges due to their temporal dynamics and redundancy. Unlike text with a clear sequence, video frames usually contain redundant information, making it difficult to tokenize and learn proper representations. Proper video modeling should be able to overcome this redundancy while capturing spatiotemporal relationships in frames. Most frameworks have focused on image-based representations, leaving the optimization of video architectures open. The task requires new methods to balance efficiency and performance, particularly when video forecasting and robotic manipulation are at play.Visual representation learning via convolutional networks and masked autoencoders has been effective for image tasks. Such approaches typically fail regarding video applications as they cannot entirely express temporal dependencies. Tokenization methods such as dVAE and VQGAN normally convert visual information into tokens. These have shown effectiveness, but scaling such an approach becomes challenging in scenarios with mixed datasets involving images and videos. Patch-based tokenization does not generalize to cater to various tasks efficiently in a video.A research team from Meta FAIR and UC Berkeley has introduced the Toto family of autoregressive video models. Their novelty is to help address the limitations of traditional methods, treating videos as sequences of discrete visual tokens and applying causal transformer architectures to predict subsequent tokens. The researchers developed models that could easily combine image and video training by training on a unified dataset that includes more than one trillion tokens from images and videos. The unified approach enabled the team to take advantage of the strengths of autoregressive pretraining in both domains.The Toto models use dVAE tokenization with an 8k-token vocabulary to process images and video frames. Each frame is resized and tokenized separately, resulting in sequences of 256 tokens. These tokens are then processed by a causal transformer that uses the features of RMSNorm and RoPE embeddings to establish improved model performance. The training was done on ImageNet and HowTo100M datasets, tokenizing at a resolution of 128128 pixels. The researchers also optimized the models for downstream tasks by replacing average pooling with attention pooling to ensure a better quality of representation.The models show good performance across the benchmarks. For ImageNet classification, the largest Toto model achieved a top-1 accuracy of 75.3%, outperforming other generative models like MAE and iGPT. In the Kinetics-400 action recognition task, the models achieve a top-1 accuracy of 74.4%, proving their capability to understand complex temporal dynamics. On the DAVIS dataset for semi-supervised video tracking, the models obtain J&F scores of up to 62.4, thus improving over previous state-of-the-art benchmarks established by DINO and MAE. Moreover, on robotics tasks like object manipulation, Toto models learn much faster and are more sample efficient. For example, the Toto-base model attains a cube-picking real-world task on the Franka robot with an accuracy of 63%. Overall, these are impressive results regarding the versatility and scalability of these proposed models with diverse applications.The work provided significant development in video modeling by addressing redundancy and challenges in tokenization. The researchers successfully showed through unified training on both images and videos, that this form of autoregressive pretraining is generally effective across a range of tasks. Innovative architecture and tokenization strategies provide a baseline for further dense prediction and recognition research. This is one meaningful step toward unlocking the full potential of video modeling in real-world applications.Check out the Paper and Project Page. All credit for this research goes to the researchers of this project. Also,dont forget to follow us onTwitter and join ourTelegram Channel andLinkedIn Group. Dont Forget to join our65k+ ML SubReddit. Nikhil+ postsNikhil is an intern consultant at Marktechpost. He is pursuing an integrated dual degree in Materials at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. Nikhil is an AI/ML enthusiast who is always researching applications in fields like biomaterials and biomedical science. With a strong background in Material Science, he is exploring new advancements and creating opportunities to contribute. [Recommended Read] Nebius AI Studio expands with vision models, new language models, embeddings and LoRA (Promoted)

The Sun was feeling gloomy.Clouded ThoughtsIn 1831, a volcanic eruption flooded the skies with so much sulfur gas that it cooled the planet by nearly two degrees Fahrenheit, causing all manner of famine, devastation, and social upheaval.So gloomy were its effects that, in the northern hemisphere, it even sullied the beaming visage of the Sun, turning it a somber blue instead. In other mood swings, reports from the period say that the Sun also appeared purple and green.But in the nearly two hundred years since, exactly which volcano blew its top to so shake up the natural order has remained a mystery until now.Ashes to AshesAs detailed in a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists say they've determined the culprit to be the Zavaritskii volcano on the extremely remote and uninhabited island of Simushir, one of the Kuril Islands, in the Western Pacific.The breakthrough, according to the authors, came through examining ash found in ice core examples, providing a "perfect fingerprint match" to the Zavaritskii volcano."Only in recent years have we developed the ability to extract microscopic ash shards from polar ice cores and conduct detailed chemical analyses on them," study lead author Will Hutchinson, a geoscientist at the University of St Andrews, said in a statement. "These shards are incredibly minute, roughly one-tenth the diameter of a human hair."The volcano's Kuril Islands are currently controlled by Russia, though Japan disputes its claim to the archipelago. It contains a number of volcanoes with dozens of them being active but the sheer remoteness of the islands means many of them remain understudied."Finding the match took a long time and required extensive collaboration with colleagues from Japan and Russia, who sent us samples collected from these remote volcanoes decades ago," Hutchin said in the statement.But the hard work was worth it. "The moment in the lab when we analyzed the two ashes together, one from the volcano and one from the ice core, was a genuine eureka moment," he added.Climactic ChangeIn addition to making an impressive achievement in geological forensics, the work is a friendly reminder that many of the world's volcanoes remain unmonitored, including those on the Kuril islands despite being an extremely productive volcanic region, according to the researchers.That doesn't bode well if we're to prepare ourselves for the worst consequences of a similar global disaster to the one the Zavaritskii wreaked."If this eruption were to happen today, I don't think we'd be much better off than we were in 1831," Hutchison told LiveScience. "It just shows how difficult it will be to predict when and where the next big climate-changing eruption will come from."Share This Article

Waymo's cars are still struggling with the basics.Wave Function CollapseFor years, Google's Waymo driverless taxis have been wreaking havoc on San Francisco streets and an increasing number of other cities as the service expands triggering traffic jams, getting stuck in roundabouts, and even colliding with a delivery robot.And when it comes to construction sites, a common fixture in any metropolis, Waymos are having a hard time.Look no further than avideo circulating on social that shows a Waymo cab struggling to decipher the hand signals of a construction worker, judderingto a halt and refusing to turn left.The incident highlights persistent shortcomings with driverless ride-hailing tech, often related to chaotic edge cases: despite years of research and tens of millions of miles driven, simple hand signals can still seemingly pose an insurmountable obstacle.Mixed SignalsIt's unclear what exactly caused the Waymo to become so paralyzed. Confusing matters is the Stop sign the construction worker is pointing at the vehicle, suggesting the car's software was befuddled by the mixed signals."That is a big red stop sign," one Reddit user argued in a subreddit dedicated to the company.Nonetheless, a human driver likely would've had no issues navigating the situation, responding to the construction worker's waving arm with ease.Ironically, Waymo's driverless vehicles recently passed an independent review by German tech inspection company TV SD, which found that the company's First Responder Program "meets industry standards," including the ability to respond to hand signals for traffic cops.In early 2019, Waymo first demonstrated its cars' ability to follow signals from a police officer.But given the latest run-in, the company's software is far from foolproof even over half a decade later. Case in point, last year one of its cars was pulled over by a police officer after driving down a busy road in the opposite lane.And chances are we'll see plenty of similar run-ins in the near future as well. Waymo made its autonomous ride-hailing service Waymo One available in Los Angeles in April and in San Francisco in June, years after rolling out the service in Phoenix.The company is also planning to expand into other US cities including Austin and Miami, as well as its first international foray in Tokyo, Japan.Whether its competitors, including Elon Musk's Tesla, which is planning to roll out a similar service, will fare any better remains to be seen.Share This Article

Image by Getty / FuturismThe makers of America's nonstick cookware are none too pleased about a new law that will bar them from using carcinogenic "forever chemicals."As Minnesota Public Radio reports, the Cookware Sustainability Alliance advocacy group is suing Katrina Kessler, the head of the state's pollution control agency, over a newly-enacted law that will ban the use of cancer-causing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which are used to make non-stick pans.Dubbed "Amara's Law" after 20-year-old cancer victim Amara Strande, who in 2023 succumbed to a rare type of liver cancer linked to PFAS after growing up near a Minnesota-based 3M plant that dumped them into the local water supply, the new regulation bans the chemicals and any items made with them from being sold within the state.Though the cause seems worthy enough, the Cookware Sustainability Alliance which was launched last spring by cooking utensil manufacturers to purportedly enhance "public understanding of the safety of cookware based on scientific research and verifiable data" is calling the law unconstitutional and unenforceable."Everything else that is produced for the consumer cookware industry and 100percentof the Subject Cookware is manufactured, distributed, and sold from outside Minnesota," the lawsuit declares, per Minneapolis' KARE 11. "This out-of-state commerce is, consequently, the sole subject impacted by the cookware ban in the Statute."Though Amara's Law covers everything from rugs to menstrual products alongside the cookware in question, the advocacy group insists that it unfairly discriminates against culinary tools that use these forever chemicals, and violates state commerce clauses to boot. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, which championed the law and spurred on its passage, heartily disagrees."It is estimated Minnesota taxpayers will have to spend $28 billion in the next 20 years to remove PFAS from wastewater and landfill leachate in the state," reads a statement from the MPCA toMinnesota Public Radio. "We simply cannot clean our way out of this problem."Mehmet Konar-Steenberg, a professor at Saint Paul's Mitchell Hamline School of Law, suggested toMPR that the nonstick advocates are questioning the law's worth."Theyre saying that this law doesnt deliver enough public health benefits when compared to the kind of difficulties it creates for out-of-state businesses to conduct business in Minnesota," Konar-Steenberg said. "Theyre saying, on balance, this law just isnt worth it."A glance at the docket for this injunction, which seeks to have the law declared unconstitutional by state courts, shows that the Cookware Sustainability Alliance means business and that they're not going to stop making and selling products using cancer-causing nonstick technology without a fight.Share This Article

Table of Contents Treachery, murder, a roster of reality icons -- After winning an Emmy for best competition program in 2024, Peacock's The Traitorscontinued its ruthless run last Thursday.Season 3 debuted with three episodes, dividing the group into faithfuls and traitors and eliminating four people from the competition. Alan Cumming, who won an Emmy last year for hosting the show, set the dramatic scene in the Scottish Highlands. Contestants still in the running include Bob the Drag Queen from RuPaul's Drag Race, Chrishell Stause from Selling Sunset, Gabby Windey from The Bachelorette, Rob Mariano (aka Boston Rob) from Survivor and more. Season 3 will see a cash prize of up to $250,000 split between truth-telling winners or snatched by their sneaky peers. For more lies, backstabbing and banishing, here's when you can watch the rest of the latest Traitors season on Peacock.How to watch The Traitors season 3The first three episodes of season 3 hit Peacock on Jan. 9 at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT. One new episode will appear each Thursday through March 6. On that date, a reunion special is scheduled to premiere along with the finale. Here's a look at this season's upcoming episodes.Episode 4: Jan. 16Episode 5: Jan. 23Episode 6: Jan. 30Episode 7: Feb. 6Episode 8: Feb. 13Episode 9: Feb. 20Episode 10: Feb. 27Episode 11: March 6Season 3 reunion special: March 6Peacock has two plans: $8 per month ad-supported Peacock Premium and $14 per month Premium Plus, which reduces commercials, lets you download titles and throws in your live local NBC station. You can also choose to pay for a year of either type of Peacock up front and save some money: Premium is $80 annually and Premium Plus is $140. James Martin/CNET Peacock discounts are available for college students, teachers, military personnel and medical professionals and first responders. You can also get the streaming service with Xfinity Internet or Instacart Plus. Read our Peacock review. See at Peacock How to watch The Traitors from anywhere with a VPNPerhaps you're traveling abroad and want to stream Peacock while away from home. With a VPN, you're able to virtually change your location on your phone, tablet or laptop to access the series from anywhere in the world. There are also other good reasons to use a VPN for streaming.A VPN is the best way to encrypt your traffic to stop your internet service provider from throttling your speeds. Using a VPN is also a great idea if you're traveling and want to add an extra layer of privacy for your devices and log-ins when connecting to Wi-Fi networks. Streaming TV can be a bit smoother with a reliable, quality VPN that'spassed our testsand meets our security standards.You can use a VPN to stream content legally as long as VPNs are allowed in your country and you have a valid subscription to the streaming service you're using. The US and Canada are among the countries where VPNs are legal, but we advise against streaming or downloading content on illegal torrent sites. We recommend ExpressVPN, but you may opt for another provider fromour best list, such as Surfshark or NordVPN. James Martin/CNET 2024 Latest Tests DNS leaks detected, 25% speed loss in 2024 testsNetwork 3,000 plus servers in 105 countriesJurisdiction British Virgin Islands If you're looking for a secure and dependable VPN, our Editors' Choice is ExpressVPN. It's fast, works on multiple devices and provides stable streams. It's $13 a month, or you can opt for a deal that gives you 15 months for $6.67 per month if you pay the total amount up front.ExpressVPN offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.Read our review of ExpressVPN. 61% off with 2yr plan (+4 free months) See at ExpressVPN Follow the VPN provider's instructions for installation, and choose a country where The Traitors will be streaming on Peacock. Before you open the streaming app, make sure you're connected to your VPN using your selected region. If you want to stream The Traitors on more than one device, it's possible you'll need to configure each one to ensure you're signed in. Go to settings and check your network connections to verify you're logged in and connected to your VPN account. Now you're ready to open Peacock to stream.If you run into issues with streaming, first make sure your VPN is up and running on its encrypted IP address. Double-check that you've followed installation instructions correctly and picked the right geographical area for viewing. If you still encounter connection problems, you may need to reboot your device. Close all apps and windows, restart your device and connect to your VPN first. Note that some streaming services will restrict VPN access.