NewsScience & SocietyWhat nuclear weapons experts will watch for under TrumpResearchers will be monitoring arms control, the U.S. arsenal and the possibility of resumed tests The United States has undertaken a massive effort to modernize its nuclear arsenal, replacing or refurbishing its nuclear weapons and the missiles, submarines and bombers that carry them.U.S. Air Force photo/Airman 1st Class Devan HalsteadBy Emily Conover14 seconds agoIts a pivotal moment for nuclear weapons.Tensions between the United States and Russia, the two major nuclear powers,are high. Longstanding nuclear pacts have crumbled. China, which trails well behind the United States and Russia in nuclear arms, is beefing up its arsenal. North Korea is a nuclear threat, and Iran is on the threshold.Meanwhile, the United States is in the midst of an extensive update of its nuclear weapons. And when Donald Trump takes office as president on January 20, he will, for a second time, be responsible for those weapons. Here are some of the big issues well be watching.

Nature, Published online: 17 January 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-00126-yLab-grown viruses make cancer cells resemble pig tissue, provoking an organ-rejection response.

The first pterosaurs had a sail-like tensioning system for flying with potentially cumbersome tail vanes, which they could have used for displays, a new study finds.

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Smite 2 Tips and TricksSmite 2 may be a sequel, but it manages to maintain most of what made the original Smite such a beloved MOBA, opting for iteration over fully overhauling the gameplay experience. The move to Unreal Engine 5 has certainly provided developer Titan Forge with a wealth of opportunities to improve what already works so well about the franchise, though, ensuring that both new and veteran players have plenty to appreciate. If you fall into the former camp--or even if you're returning after a hiatus from the original game and want to brush up on tactics--here are some Smite 2 tips that will help you out. Roles are more flexible this time aroundYou could play any god in any role in the original Smite, but the game had clearly defined classes that often limited your success ceiling in doing so. Smite 2 does away with classes in favor of a flexible role system, which gives you a basic idea of which gods work especially well at playing in a certain lane or situation.This means many gods are listed as excelling at multiple roles, giving you a lot of opportunities to try unique builds and playstyles with them. Of course, there are some gods who won't perform all that well in specific roles, but by and large, you'll find there's just a lot more freedom to experiment. Builds are just as flexibleLike with roles, builds are a lot less rigid in Smite 2, too. Unlike the first game, which provided different classes with different item choices, Smite 2 allows any god to build any item. This is because many gods have abilities that scale off both main stats, Strength and Intelligence, allowing you to decide which abilities your build should cater most to.Maybe you want to bump up your Intelligence to aid with a healing ability, or perhaps you want a Strength-scaling damage ability to hit even harder--build your character any way you want. That being said, there are still certain items that won't be particularly helpful on certain gods, so it's always a good idea to learn what will work best with your god's kit. There's nothing wrong with autobuild for casual playSpeaking of building, the game offers a handy autobuild screen at the beginning of the match. Here, you'll find a handful of build types that you can select to have the game build your items for you. For instance, a frontliner like Chaac--who excels at sustainability and applying pressure--may be presented with Bruiser and Full Tank autobuilds.The former will automatically build you equally for both dealing and taking damage, while the latter will bolster your defenses. Autobuilding is pretty viable at casual levels of play, so if perfecting a build isn't something you're ready to learn, there's nothing wrong with making use of this feature. Aspects can totally change your playstyleAspects is a new feature exclusive to Smite 2. Think of these as modifications you apply on the God Select screen after you've chosen the god you want to play. At the moment, gods only have one Aspect to choose from (and some don't have one at all yet), but they can drastically change how the character plays. As an example, Athena's default ultimate ability allows her to teleport across the map to a teammate.By equipping her Aspect of War, her ultimate ability will instead allow her to teleport to someone on the enemy team and deal damage to them upon landing. Aspects are completely optional, but it's worth checking to see if your god has one that might make more sense for your playstyle. You should at least familiarize yourself with every godVariety is the spice of life--or so they say. While it's pretty normal for most folks to settle on a "main" (a primary god you play and master), it's a good idea to at least play a few rounds with all of the gods, especially as the game's lack of killcams mean you can't learn through the osmosis of getting bested. This can help you familiarize yourself with how their abilities work, how long their cooldowns tend to be, and what type of plays they're able to make. Knowing what they're capable of will grant you knowledge about how best to counter them. Practice makes perfect, and bot games make for good practiceYou may be tempted to jump into matches with real players, and that's totally fine--but it's also fine to play against bots. Each mode has a sub-mode that allows you to play it against AI, giving you an opportunity to learn the maps, practice with a new character, or just kick back and take it easy in a less stressful showdown.However, while the AI bots in Smite 2 can be dumb sometimes, they can also spontaneously become far smarter than you're anticipating. Don't be shocked if they team up on you when you least expect it. Customizing your settings can drastically improve your playThis may sound like a no-brainer, but customizing your controls and settings can help you feel more comfortable in Smite 2. Feel free to dive into the menus and check out everything that can be changed, paying special attention to the Gameplay segment.Here, make sure you decide whether you instant-cast abilities or double-tap the button to use them, and adjust your sensitivity until it feels just right. There are plenty of other important settings to look over, too, so take your time and get it right. Minion waves come first... at firstIt can be tempting to dive after an enemy in your lane just because they're low on health, but Smite 2 is a game where clearing your minion wave is almost always a priority--at least in the first few minutes of the game. Unless you (or someone supporting you) can be absolutely certain you can survive the damage from the minions and clean up a kill, it's best to be happy that you've forced an opponent to back off.It's better you both live to fight another day than it is for you to potentially get too far out of position and die. Later in the match when minions become an afterthought, though, it's probably best to pounce on those pesky low-HP foes. It's not all about killsOn the subject of kills, keep in mind they're not everything. Yes, getting more kills helps you level faster and opens opportunities for taking towers or rotating elsewhere--but the same can be said for the enemy if they win the fight. MOBAs are a game of strategy, so it's important to know when it's safe and worthwhile to chase down a possible kill and when it's best not to put yourself in risky situations where you might die instead.If you spend all your time running down your opponents and dying unnecessarily, your team is forced to compensate by supporting your lane while you wait to respawn. This stretches everyone too thin, and winning the match becomes less and less likely. You can hoard buffs (but you usually shouldn't)The original Smite only allowed you have one buff at a time, but Smite 2 allows you to carry multiple buffs at any given time. This means you could realistically stack up various buffs to give yourself an edge in your lane--but it's probably best that you don't. Each buff tends to be for a god in a specific lane or role--especially early in the match--so don't stack buffs unless you're positive no one else needs them. The grass is for playing peek-a-booSmite 2 has introduced grass around the maps, which allows you to hide from enemy players. You can be seen if an enemy gets too close to you in the grass, or if you cast an ability while hiding, but it's otherwise a great way to wait for players to get out of position before suddenly appearing to strike them down. It's not a great idea to just sit around in the grass all game, of course, but when used strategically, you can make some killer plays from these hiding spots. Wards save livesWhile we're on the subject of hiding and surprising your enemies, keep in mind they'll be doing the same thing. This is why wards are so important. These can be purchased in the store as single-use items to be placed somewhere on the map. These provide recon within a set area and will alert you any time an enemy passes through.This makes them immensely helpful when placed in the jungle of the Conquest map, giving you a heads up when enemy junglers may be rotating over your way. It may be a little frustrating to spend your gold on a consumable item like this, but you'll be thankful when it saves your life.

It's a new year and time for the most recent crop of horror movies that are going to creep out fans and get them talking. The new Blumhouse film Wolf Man arrives in theaters on Friday, January 17th, 2025, and its box office numbers are already looking strong.

(just hoping for a chat, working alone looking to the wall for too long this week!)I'm building my own game engine (for personal development/studding) in C/C++, the Character class (the player for simplicity sake) is working great and I can make unitary actions to different states with little effort now.But when it comes to chaining actions, I'm stuck at this bit for a wile and cant decide on a good way to attack the problem.I'm thinking about each state having it's own

Email us at PSPodcast@sony.com!Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or download hereHowdy, folks! This week, the crew returns for the first show of 2025! Topics of discussion include Marvel Rivals and retro classics Final Fantasy 5 and the Contra series. Plus, Brett joins to close out the PlayStation 30th Anniversary discussion by sharing his favorite PS5 and PS VR2 games.Stuff We Talked AboutNext weeks release highlights:Star Wars Episode 1: Jedi Power Battles | PS5, PS4Synduality Echo of Ada | PS5Dynasty Warriors: Origins hands-on detailsArken Age pre-launch detailsPlatformers of PlayStation PlusMarvel RivalsBrett highlights his top games on PS5 and PS VR2The CastView and download imageDownload the imagecloseCloseDownload this imageSid Shuman Senior Director of Content Communications, SIEView and download imageDownload the imagecloseCloseDownload this imageTim Turi Content Communications Manager, SIEView and download imageDownload the imagecloseCloseDownload this imageBrett Elston Manager, Content Communications, SIEThanks to Dormiln for our rad theme song and show music.[Editors note: PSN game release dates are subject to change without notice. Game details are gathered from press releases from their individual publishers and/or ESRB rating descriptions.]

A recently surfaced research paper has brought the contentious conversation surrounding artificial intelligence into the realm of actual play. Published in July 2024, a paper by graduate student Pavlos Sakellaridis documents his attempts to create a ChatGPT-powered Dungeon Master based off a dataset using the The Sunless Citadel D&D module and transcripts of Critical Role provided by fan work, not members of Critical Role itself. The experiment has raised questions about the hazy nature of fan works as they related to consent in training Large Language Models.As advertisements for LLM-generated adventures have become more prevalent, the research was an attempt to evaluate ChatGPTs ability to not merely create an adventure but maintain narrative coherence and foster player involvement, according to the paper. The academic effort was based on a complex slurry of variously licensed information, with some sourced from private companies, some sourced from a group of performers, and other materials sourced from volunteers. In the body of the paper, Sakellaridis states that he used The Sunless Citadel as a reference file for ChatGPT when acting as the DM, citing proprietary descriptions of characters, locations, and pre-written dialogue from the module during play. The Critical Role transcripts used come from the Critical Role Dungeons and Dragons Dataset (CRD3), which contains nearly 160 episodes of transcription from the first and second campaigns, along with corresponding summaries collected from the Fandom wiki.The dataset, crafted by Revanth Rameshkumar and Peter Bailey of Microsoft was originally made due to their belief that better abstractive summarization tools to distill information is essential given the ongoing growth of unscripted, multi-person dialogues in entertainment and business scenarios, according to their paper on the data set. We hope that CRD3 will support research and development for such tools.Unlike for-profit AI research that is trained on the work of professional artists, Sakellaridis research was done as a student project and was trained on the fan-based labor. As noted by actual play historian and Polygon contributor Dr. Emily Friedman on Bluesky, the citations within Sakellaridis paper show this data has been used in other LLM-based projects (not affiliated with Sakellaridis or his academic research), while much of the work of transcribing these episodes has been done through volunteer fan labor. The greatest contributions are from Stuart Langridge through the site Kryogenix, which has searchable transcripts tagged by speaker and time. Protections surrounding the Critical Role episodes places these transcripts in a precarious situation, potentially endangering the largest source of actual play research data available amidst ongoing legal battles over the use of copyrighted material to train AI. At the original time of writing, Kryogenix had been down, but has since gone back online. [Critical Role] loses out BIG TIME if Kryogenix stays down, said Friedman in a statement to Polygon, as the work by Langridge enables important research into the still-developing medium with little historical or institutional archives.The use of generative AI has been a point of repeated contention in the tabletop industry and beyond, with the technologys critics citing its environmental impact and its foundations on exploitative labor from both workers based in the global south and artists whose work is nonconsensually used to train the tech. Wizards of the Coast, along with other companies, has previously come under fire from its audience for the use (both suspected and verified) of generative AI in their products resulting in explicit statements from the company that AI will not be used in their art, though last year CEO Chris Cocks told VentureBeat that Hasbro is doing some stuff around AI thats really interesting.Critical Role, however, is much less on the fence about its relationship with artificial intelligence, going so far as to say Fuck AI in a recent episode.Polygon contacted Critical Role, Hasbro, and Sakellaridis for comment, but did not receive an immediate response.

The recent fires in Los Angeles have left an indelible mark on the vibrant design community and the rest of the countless individuals whose lives and homes have been upended. At Design Milk, our hearts are with everyone affected by this tragedy. As we navigate the path forward, we want to share resources that can aid those who have lost everything.To support the community in rebuilding, heres a list of organizations and nonprofits that are providing aid to all that are affected in the Los Angeles area.LA Arts Community Fire Relief FundLed by the Getty, a coalition of major arts organizations are providing emergency relief for artists and arts workers of all disciplines that have lost their homes, studios, archives, art, or livelihoods due to the Los Angeles fires.Support Designers and Architects Affected by LA FiresA GoFundMe launched by Joby Blachy of Quintus to provide aid to those in the design and architecture industry who have lost homes or studios.American Red CrossThe Red Cross is a nonprofit providing emergency assistance and relief through its network of organizations.LAFDThe Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation is helps provide necessary equipment and funds the critical programs to support the LAFD.Pasadena Humane SocietyThe Pasadena Humane Society is a donor-supported, nonprofit organization providing care for all animals, and aiding in emergency resources for the animals affected by the wildfires.Los Angeles Regional Food BankThe Los Angeles Regional Food Bank is working alongside government agencies and nonprofit partners to provide food and nutrition assistance to those throughout Los Angeles County.GoFundMeGoFundMe has compiled a list of verified fundraisers for people affected by wildfires throughout Los Angeles County.Direct ReliefDirect Relief is a California-based organization distributing critical aid, like medications and N95 masks, to those impacted by the fires.California Fire FoundationAn organization that provides emotional and financial assistance to the families of fallen firefighters, firefighters and the communities they serve.