The Liberty City Preservation Project has been taken offline by its creator after discussions with Rockstar Games, leaving GTA 6 fans downtrodden in the processTech12:01, 16 Jan 2025A huge GTA 5 mod has been closed down(Image: Still)We reported yesterday that GTA 6 fans are expecting the game's second trailer in the next couple of weeks, but while all eyes are on our impending visit to Leonida and Vice City, we need to pour one out for GTA 4's Liberty City.That's because a fan-made mod project, The Liberty City Preservation Project, has reportedly been taken down after its creator spoke to Rockstar Games.The GTA 5 mod, which was in development for 6 years, shifted GTA 4's world, including pedestrians, vehicles, and even building interiors, over to 2013's game.Content cannot be displayed without consentAs shared on X (formerly Twitter) by GTA 6 Countdown, the mod's creator, Nkjellman posted the following on Discord.They wrote: "Due to the unexpected attention that our project received and after speaking with Rockstar Games, we have decided to take down the Liberty City Preservation project.""We appreciate all the support that the project has received, and we look forward to continuing to pursue our passion for modding the Grand Theft Auto series".While some fans speculated that Rockstar aggressively tried to take down the mod, Nkjellman followed up by mentioning that it was a "friendly takedown, mutually agreed upon by all parties involved"."There is no negativity between us and Rockstar Games/Take-Two Interactive," they continued, but acknowledged they can't share a download link for the mod on the Discord server any longer.As for what Rockstar is currently working on, GTA 6 fans are still waiting for a second trailer, but an earnings call at the start of February could reveal whether it's on track to hit 2025, or whether it'll hbe pushed to 2026.Article continues belowFor the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters.RECOMMENDED

Anyone else refreshing Nintendos X account over and over again? (Reddit)Despite complete silence from Nintendo, multiple sources remain confident the Switch 2 reveal is just hours away.Video game fans are going to be on tenterhooks today, while waiting for Nintendo to say anything about the new Nintendo Switch 2 console.Multiple, reliable sources have pointed to January 16 as the date for a formal reveal but the expected annoucement of an announcement has not happened, so if it is going to be unveiled today its going to be a shadow drop.Even after near constant leaks since December, Nintendos only response has been to say a Switch 2 replica by accessory company Genki wasnt official. But as scepticism and impatience increases amongst fans, insiders are sticking to their prediction.In the meantime, new leaks continue to happen, include new images of the consoles redesigned Joy-Con controllers. This comes from NextHandheld, the same individual who claimed to have a final unit for the Switch 2 and shared images of its dock and controllers around Christmas time.The last Joy-Con pictures they shared only showed one controller on its side, but now theyveposted a look at both controllers from the front, albeit in the hands of grotesque looking AI-generated Donkey Kong.Although the AI image makes it look fake, the Joy-Cons appear to be legitimate. At the very least, they match with NextHandhelds previous claims that theyll come in matte black, with each controller having blue or orange colouring along the rails and around the control sticks.They also line up with how the controllers on the Genki replica look, complete with the new mystery button, which was included based on previously leaked information.The buttons functionality is one of the few things Nintendo has managed to keep under wraps in terms of hardware, sparking theories that the Switch 2 will have at least one new gimmick to differentiate itself from the original.The Joy-Cons are also believed to have sensors that allow them to be used like a computer mouse. More recently, Bloomberg reporter Takashi Mochizuki has suggested the Switch 2 will have unique aspects besides the sensors, but that third party developers are unlikely to make use of them.I often hear from third parties that they dont want to deal with the unique aspects of the console, especially the sensors, because the benefits are small compared to the labour and cost involved, said Mochizuki.I think that its not the platforms role to differentiate itself by creating original parts, but I also think that its only going to be a topic of conversation for a while after the launch.There was also speculation floating around that Amazon Italy had accidentally leaked the Switch 2s release date, with people spotting a listing of March 6 when searching Nintendo Switch 2 Amazon on Google.However, it appears to be an error on either Google or Amazons part since not only has the search result been removed, but people soon noticed March 6 is the same date Konamis Suikoden remasters launch, so the date could have been drawn from that by accident.Or both could be happening on the same day.Will the Nintendo Switch 2 be revealed today?Ultimately, the only one who truly knows if a Switch 2 reveal is happening today is Nintendo itself. While the company has developed a habit of shadow dropping announcements with no warning, thats usually only for new videos of games that have already been announced.A brand new console is significantly more important and you wouldve expected them to give a heads-up if a reveal video is coming.More TrendingThey certainly did for the original Switchs reveal. On October 20, 2016, Nintendos social media accounts alerted everyone that said reveal trailer would drop in 10 hours time.Nintendos silence does make it seem like plans have changed and its opted to delay the reveal. However, most of the sources who were pushing January 16 as the big day have insisted that today is still the day.Insider Nate the Hate, who was the first to allege a specific date, is standing by his initial claim and acknowledged a shadow drop is possible, with Giant Bombs Jeff Grubb supporting him.Leakers PH Brazil and Pyoro are similarly confident something will happen by the end of the day. The former has even set up a reaction livestream in preparation for a reveal. Is Nintendo going to wait till the last possible second? (Nintendo)Emailgamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below,follow us on Twitter, andsign-up to our newsletter.To submit Inbox letters and Readers Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use ourSubmit Stuff page here.For more stories like this,check our Gaming page.GameCentralExclusive analysis, latest releases, and bonus community content.This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Your information will be used in line with our Privacy Policy

The Moon, Gaza, and Ukraine Among New Additions to the 2025 Monuments WatchSave this picture!Defense wall at the Erdene Zuu monastery at Karakorum, Mongolia. Image Chantal de Bruijne via ShutterstockThe World Monuments Fund (WMF) has announced its 2025 World Monuments Watch, highlighting 25 sites facing significant challenges. This biennial program, launched in 1996, aims to raise awareness and mobilize action for the preservation of cultural heritage worldwide. The 2025 list includes diverse locations across five continents and, notably, the Moon, representing the need to protect artifacts from humanity's first lunar missions. The selection process involved over 200 nominations, revealing regional trends such as climate change impacts in Sub-Saharan Africa and urbanization challenges in Asia and the Pacific.Sites on the Watch illustrate the interconnectedness of heritage preservation and broader societal issues. The inclusion of sites impacted by conflict (Ukraine's Teacher's House, Gaza's Historic Urban Fabric, and Antakya, Trkiye) underscores the importance of heritage in community resilience and recovery. Sites vulnerable to climate change, such as the Swahili Coast and Maine's historic lighthouses, highlight the urgent need for adaptation strategies. Over-tourism at sites like China's Buddhist grottoes and under-tourism affecting Albania's Drino Valley monasteries demonstrate the varying challenges faced by cultural heritage in the tourism sector.The Moon's inclusion marks a first for the Watch, recognizing the need for international protocols to protect the historic artifacts left behind by the Apollo missions and future lunar activities. This underscores WMF's commitment to preserving heritage beyond Earth, acknowledging the universal significance of protecting our collective narrative, regardless of location. The WMF has already secured $2 million in funding for projects at these sites and will partner with Accor to support sustainable tourism initiatives. Related Article World Monuments Fund Announces Financing for New Projects to Safeguard Endangered Places Worldwide Over the next two years, the WMF will collaborate with local partners at each site to develop preservation strategies, including advocacy campaigns, research, and physical conservation efforts. The 2025 Watch serves as a call to action, bringing global attention to these important sites and encouraging international support for their preservation.Read on to discover the list of 25 endangered sites on the 2025 World Monuments Watch, along with descriptions provided by the jury.Monasteries of the Drino Valley, AlbaniaA constellation of Orthodox monasteries, once vital to Albania's social fabric, needs reinvestment after decades of abandonmentbut could be a model for sustainable tourism via preservation.Save this picture!Cinema Studio Namibe, AngolaFifty years after its construction was abruptly halted, this modernist cinema lies in a state of decay, but a community effort could breathe new life into an unfinished landmark.Qhapaq an, Andean Road System, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, PeruAn extraordinary pre-Hispanic road network is facing development pressure and environmental degradation, but local and international advocacy could achieve socially sustainable management.Save this picture!Buddhist Grottoes of Maijishan and Yungang, ChinaTwo breathtaking collections of rock-cut cave temples are feeling the impact of mass tourism, underscoring the need for innovative visitor management strategies.Save this picture!Swahili Coast Heritage Sites, Comoros, Kenya, Mozambique, TanzaniaEast Africa's distinctive heritage reflects centuries of African, Arab, and European cultural exchange, but storm surges and coastal erosion are threatening these sites and the communities that keep them alive.Save this picture!Chapel of the Sorbonne, FranceIn Paris's Latin Quarter, this jewel of French architecture at the Sorbonne has suffered decades of conservation issues that must be addressed before it can reopen after years of closure.Save this picture!Serifos Historic Mining Landscape, GreeceThe rising Cycladic beach destination of Serifos possesses an irreplaceable record of Greece's industrial past, but comprehensive protections and conservation are needed to prevent imminent loss.Save this picture!Bhuj Historic Water Systems, IndiaIngenious water management systems have fallen out of use in favor of modern infrastructurebut as India's water crisis deepens, revitalizing this heritage technology could foster resource security.Save this picture!Musi River Historic Buildings, IndiaHyderabad's Musi River corridor, rich in history, faces mounting challenges from pollutionbut as the city pursues its revitalization, heritage can provide a sense of continuity and other community benefits.Save this picture!Noto Peninsula Heritage Sites, JapanAfter a devastating earthquake in January 2024, restoring historic buildings in this hard-hit region can spur cultural, social, and economic recovery.Save this picture!Erdene Zuu Buddhist Monastery, MongoliaAddressing climate impacts at one of the few Buddhist sites to survive Mongolia's decades of anti-religious crackdowns can help train the country's future heritage experts.Save this picture!Jewish Heritage of Debdou, MoroccoIn Morocco's Atlas Mountains, documentation and advocacy are crucial for the survival of historic Jewish sites, which testify to an inspiring tradition of multi-faith respect and coexistence.Save this picture!Chief Ogiamien's House, NigeriaThis millennium-old earthen structure faces an uncertain future as critical maintenance skills are lost, highlighting the need to preserve local building traditions.Gaza Historic Urban Fabric, PalestineUnprecedented destruction of heritage sites has severed vital connections between the people of Gaza and its urban fabric.Save this picture!Waru Waru Agricultural Fields, PeruAn ancestral agricultural system offers a pathway to resilience and food security in the Lake Titicaca floodplains as local communities face climate change-induced droughts and migration.Save this picture!Terracotta Sculptures of Alcobaa Monastery, PortugalAs environmental changes damage traditional terracotta sculptures, training local artisans to conserve these baroque masterpieces can help revive a local art tradition.Save this picture!Ruins of Old Belchite, SpainConservation of a historic village left in ruins by the Spanish Civil War and neglected in the decades since can ensure that its remains endure as a site of memory and reconciliation.Save this picture!Water Reservoirs of the Tunis Medina, TunisiaPreserving traditional Tunisian water infrastructure, much of which has been forgotten or destroyed in favor of modern piping, can help the country weather increasingly severe droughts.Save this picture!Historic City of Antakya, TrkiyePreservation efforts in the ancient city of Antakya are desperately needed to address the devastation from the 2023 earthquakes and support the return of displaced residents.Save this picture!Kyiv Teacher's House, UkraineThe former legislative seat of a newly independent Ukraine, this national icon was severely damaged by a missile blast in 2022, highlighting war's impact on heritage and the power of preservation to catalyze healing.Save this picture!Belfast Assembly Rooms, Northern Ireland, United KingdomLocal advocates aim to repair and repurpose one of Belfast's oldest civic buildings, transforming it into a museum encouraging reflection on Northern Ireland's Troubles.Save this picture!The Great Trading Path, United StatesPreserving a historic trail can strengthen Indigenous links to ancestral lands, even as poor recognition of its significance and a need for more meaningful participation in decision-making leaves the site vulnerable.Historic Lighthouses of Maine, United StatesFacing rapidly intensifying coastal climate threats, Maine's historic lighthouses can catalyze the development of coastal adaptation strategies.Save this picture!Barotse Floodplain Cultural Landscape, ZambiaWestern Zambia is home to a remarkable landscape whose inhabitants have built their culture around seasonal river flooding, but erosion, droughts, and other climate effects are threatening these living traditions.Save this picture!The MoonAs a new era of space exploration dawns, international collaboration is required to protect the physical remnants of early Moon landings and preserve these enduring symbols of collective human achievement.Save this picture!Image gallerySee allShow lessAbout this authorCite: Maria-Cristina Florian. "The Moon, Gaza, and Ukraine Among New Additions to the 2025 Monuments Watch" 16 Jan 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1025841/the-moon-gaza-and-ukraine-among-new-additions-to-the-2025-monuments-watch&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

Materials innovation is one of the key drivers of major technological breakthroughs. The discovery of lithium cobalt oxide in the 1980s laid the groundwork for todays lithium-ion battery technology. It now powers modern mobile phones and electric cars, impacting the daily lives of billions of people. Materials innovation is also required for designing more efficient solar cells, cheaper batteries for grid-level energy storage, and adsorbents to recycle CO2 from atmosphere.Finding a new material for a target application is like finding a needle in a haystack. Historically, this task has been done via expensive and time-consuming experimental trial-and-error. More recently, computational screening of large materials databases has allowed researchers to speed up this process. Nonetheless, finding the few materials with the desired properties still requires the screening of millions of candidates.Today, in a paper published in Nature (opens in new tab), we share MatterGen, a generative AI tool that tackles materials discovery from a different angle. Instead of screening the candidates, it directly generates novel materials given prompts of the design requirements for an application. It can generate materials with desired chemistry, mechanical, electronic, or magnetic properties, as well as combinations of different constraints. MatterGen enables a new paradigm of generative AI-assistedmaterials design that allows for efficient exploration of materials, going beyond the limited set of known ones.Figure 1: Schematic representation of screening and generative approaches to materials designA novel diffusion architectureMatterGen is a diffusion model that operates on the 3D geometry of materials. Much like an image diffusion model generates pictures from a text prompt by modifying the color of pixels from a noisy image, MatterGen generates proposed structures by adjusting the positions, elements, and periodic lattice from a random structure. The diffusion architecture is specifically designed for materials to handle specialties like periodicity and 3D geometry.Figure 2: Schematic representation of MatterGen: a diffusion model to generate novel and stable materials. MatterGen can be fine-tuned to generate materials under different design requirements such as specific chemistry, crystal symmetry, or materials properties.The base model of MatterGen achieves state-of-the-art performance in generating novel, stable, diverse materials (Figure 3). It is trained on 608,000 stable materials from the Materials Project (opens in new tab) (MP) and Alexandria (opens in new tab) (Alex) databases. The performance improvement can be attributed to both the architecture advancements, as well asthe quality and size of our training data.Figure 3: Performance of MatterGen and other methods in the generation of stable, unique, and novel structures. The training dataset for each method is indicated in parentheses. The purple bar highlights performance improvements due to MatterGens architecture alone, while the teal bar highlights performance improvements that come also from the larger training dataset.MatterGen can be fine-tuned with a labelled dataset to generate novel materials given any desired conditions. We demonstrate examples of generating novel materials given a targets chemistry and symmetry, as well as electronic, magnetic, and mechanical property constraints (Figure 2). Outperforming screeningFigure 4: Performance of MatterGen (teal) and traditional screening (yellow) in finding novel, stable, and unique structures that satisfy the design requirement of having bulk modulus greater than 400 GPa.The key advantage of MatterGen over screening is its ability to access the full space of unknown materials. In Figure 4, we show that MatterGen continues to generate more novel candidate materials with high bulk modulus above 400 GPa, for example, which are hard to compress. In contrast, screening baseline saturates due to exhausting known candidates.Spotlight: Blog postMedFuzz: Exploring the robustness of LLMs on medical challenge problemsMedfuzz tests LLMs by breaking benchmark assumptions, exposing vulnerabilities to bolster real-world accuracy.Read moreOpens in a new tab Handling compositional disorderFigure 5: Illustration of compositional disorder. Left: a perfect crystal without compositional disorder and with a repeating unit cell (black dashed). Right: crystal with compositional disorder, where each site has 50% probability of yellow and teal atoms.Compositional disorder (Figure 5) is a commonly observed phenomenon where different atoms can randomly swap their crystallographic sites in a synthesized material. Recently (opens in new tab), the community has been exploring what it means for a material to be novel in the context of computationally designed materials, as widely employed algorithms will not distinguish between pairs of structures where the only difference is a permutation of similar elements in their respective sites.We provide an initial solution to this issue by introducing a new structure matching algorithm that considers compositional disorder. The algorithm assesses whether a pair of structures can be identified as ordered approximations of the same underlying compositionally disordered structure. This provides a new definition of novelty and uniqueness, which we adopt in our computational evaluation metrics. We also make our algorithm publicly available (opens in new tab) as part of our evaluation package.Experimental lab verificationFigure 6: Experimental validation of the proposed compound, TaCr2O6In addition to our extensive computational evaluation, we have validated MatterGens capabilities through experimental synthesis. In collaboration with the team led by Prof Li Wenjie from the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (opens in new tab) (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, we have synthesized a novel material, TaCr2O6, whose structure was generated by MatterGen after conditioning the model on a bulk modulus value of 200 GPa. The synthesized materials structure aligns with the one proposed by MatterGen, with the caveat of compositional disorder between Ta and Cr. Additionally, we experimentally measure a bulk modulus of 169 GPa against the 200 GPa given as design specification, with a relative error below 20%, very close from an experimental perspective. If similar results can be translated to other domains, it will have a profound impact on the design of batteries, fuel cells, and more. AI emulator and generator flywheelMatterGen presents a new opportunity for AI accelerated materials design, complementing our AI emulator MatterSim. MatterSim follows the fifth paradigm of scientific discovery, significantly accelerating the speed of material properties simulations. MatterGen in turn accelerates the speed of exploring new material candidates with property guided generation. MatterGen and MatterSim can work together as a flywheel to speed up both the simulation and exploration of novel materials.Making MatterGen availableWe believe the best way to make an impact in materials design is to make our model available to the public. We release the source code of MatterGen (opens in new tab) under the MIT license, together with the training and fine-tuning data. We welcome the community to use and build on top of our model.MatterGen represents a new paradigm of materials design enabled by generative AI technology. It explores a significantly larger space of materials than screening-based methods. It is also more efficient by guiding materials exploration with prompts. Similar to how generative AI has impacted drug discovery (opens in new tab), it will have profound impact on how we design materials in broad domains including batteries, magnets, and fuel cells.We plan to continue our work with external collaborators to further develop and validate the technology. At the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), were dedicated to the exploration of tools with the potential to advance discovery of novel, mission-enabling materials. Thats why we are interested in understanding the impact that MatterGen could have on materials discovery, said Christopher Stiles, a computational materials scientists leading multiple materials discovery efforts at APL.AcknowledgementThis work is the result of highly collaborative team efforts at Microsoft Research AI for Science. The full authors include: Claudio Zeni, Robert Pinsler, Daniel Zgner, Andrew Fowler, Matthew Horton, Xiang Fu, Zilong Wang, Aliaksandra Shysheya, Jonathan Crabb, Shoko Ueda, Roberto Sordillo, Lixin Sun, Jake Smith, Bichlien Nguyen, Hannes Schulz, Sarah Lewis, Chin-Wei Huang, Ziheng Lu, Yichi Zhou, Han Yang, Hongxia Hao, Jielan Li, Chunlei Yang, Wenjie Li, Ryota Tomioka, Tian Xie.Opens in a new tab

Stack CommerceShareWe may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn more When you think about getting a tracker for your wallet or keys, the first thing that comes to mind is likely Apples AirTag. But many people are replacing theirs with this other, wallet-friendly device in the shape of a credit card.The KeySmart SmartCard is built for wallets, but it still works with the same Find My system as the AirTag. The SmartCard will fit beside your credit cards and cash, whereas Apples tracker will leave a huge bulge and not fit comfortably in your pocket.These credit card-shaped trackers arent just good for wallets, but also luggage, passports, and pet carriers. You can pick up a 3-pack for $79.97 with free shipping for a limited time (reg. $119.97)just $27 each, which is cheaper than the AirTag. Single units are also available.SmartCard vs. AirTagThis wallet tracker is probably so loved because its basically an AirTag, just in a new form and with some pretty significant improvements. Just like the AirTag, it pairs with Apples Find My app, allowing you to:See your items real-time location on a mapPlay a sound on the SmartCard to locate itGet notifications when you leave your item behindHowever, unlike the AirTag, the SmartCard will never need a battery replacement. Instead, just lay it on a Qi-enabled wireless charger every five months to keep it powered up.The SmartCard is also more water-resistant than the AirTag with an IPX8 waterproof rating (the AirTag is rated IP67). This means its more durable in various weather conditions, ensuring the odds of tracking your items are higher if theyre lost outdoors or submerged in water.Get your wallet-friendly AirTag alternatives in a 3-pack for $79.97 with free shipping (reg. $119.97) for a limited time. No coupon is needed for this price drop.StackSocial prices subject to change.KeySmart SmartCard Works with Apple Find My (3-Pack) $79.97See Deal

Nature, Published online: 16 January 2025; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-08628-5XXX.

Argyria is caused by a buildup of silver in the body, which discolors the skin.

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Remedy shared they discovered one of the bugs in Alan Wake 2 thanks to a speedrun. The team promised not to fix it, as it doesnt affect regular playthroughs in any way.Here's what's broken: https://80.lv/articles/remedy-won-t-fix-a-bug-in-alan-wake-2-used-by-speedrunners/#AlanWake #alanwake2 #games #videogames #gamedev

Nintendo has officially revealed the Switch 2, its successor to the wildly popular Switch console. Like the original Switch, the Switch 2 is a hybrid home and handheld gaming console, but with beefier system specs and several other improvements when compared to its predecessor. In the reveal trailer, Nintendo confirmed that the Switch 2 will be backward compatible with most physical and digital Switch games. "Certain Nintendo Switch games may not be supported on or fully compatible with Nintendo Switch 2," the company added. More details on the Switch 2 console are set to be revealed in a Nintendo Direct scheduled for April 2, 2025.The trailer also revealed the Switch 2 controllers in more detail, confirming the new magnetic Joy-Con design. Compared to the first iteration of the Joy-Cons that slid into position via rails, the Switch 2 controllers snap into place on the console. There was also a brief look at what appears to be a new Mario Kart game, but other details on the launch date, price, and system specs are still being kept under wraps for now.Continue Reading at GameSpot