In Foundation, it can be easy to start to run out of space. It seems like your villagers never build their homes where you want them to, and some of the buildings take up a whole lot of room on your land, like Foundation's sheep farms and wheat farms.

The global mobile gaming market in 2024 is experiencing continued growth, driven by increasing smartphone penetration, particularly in emerging markets where a wave of new users is entering the mobile gaming space. In established markets like North America and Europe, players strong willingness to make in-game purchases provides a solid foundation for growth.While the market presents both opportunities and challenges, expanding into international markets has become a key stra

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.The Apple Watch Series 8 (GPS + Cellular, 45mm) is now $329.99 on Woot, down from its original price of $749a $419 discount available for four days or until it sells out. This model comes in a silver stainless steel case with a white band that gives it a premium look and includes a one-year Apple limited warranty. Plus, Prime members get free standard shipping (while non-Prime users pay $6); note that shipping is not available to Alaska, Hawaii, PO boxes, or APO addresses. Apple Watch Series 8 (GPS + Cellular, 45mm) $329.99 at Woot $749.00 Save $419.01 Get Deal Get Deal $329.99 at Woot $749.00 Save $419.01 This PCMag Editors Choice and "Best of the Year 2022" winner smartwatch is built to handle real life, with its IP6X certification making it dustproof and its WR50 water resistance rating letting you swim with it or wear it in the shower. Additionally, its always-on OLED Retina display is reportedly bright at 1,000 nits, so its easy to read in any lighting. Swiping and tapping on the watch feel smooth and responsive, too (without any noticeable lag), even when you're running multiple apps at the same time. That said, its battery life is where you might pause18 hours on a full charge is standard (you can push it to 36 hours in Low Power Mode), making it good enough for most people, but if you want multi-day battery life, this wont cut it. Also, Apple doesnt include a power adapter, so if you dont have a spare plug, youll need to grab one, which might add to your overall cost.The model isnt just about telling time. Its got cellular connectivity, which means you can send texts, make calls, and stream music without having your iPhone on you. It also supports Family Setup, so you can manage an Apple Watch for someone who doesnt own an iPhone. Now, onto the health perks. The Series 8 monitors heart rate, ECG readings, and blood oxygen levels. Plus, its dual-sensor temperature tracking helps with overnight body temperature monitoring and improves cycle tracking accuracy. Safety is another big plus. Crash Detection can alert emergency services if youre in a severe car accident and Fall Detection does the same if you take a hard tumble. Its one of those features you hope never to needbut its still great to have, notes this PCMag review.

Rumors suggest Powershot V1 will feature a Micro Four Thirds sensor and 3x optical zoom, and will be the first of two Powershots for 2025.

Meta has ended all software updates to the Oculus Quest, which suggests the Quest 2 could enter stasis in 2026.

China's market regulator is considering whether to open a formal probe into the iPhone giant's App Store fees and policies, Bloomberg reported.

Including filming actors on a bluescreen rotisserie rig.Its the scene everyone is talking about. Director Jaume Collet-Serras Carry-On features an intense action moment when LAPD detective Elena Cole (Danielle Deadwyler) is in a car en route to LAX airport with DHS agent John Alcott (Logan Marshall-Green), when she realizes the agent is an imposter.The resulting scuffle results in gunfire, near misses with many vehicles and eventually the car crashing and tumbling over, before Cole is able to shoot Alcott dead while they remain upside downwith the entire action playing out all from inside the car and all in one long oner.The visual effects for this dramatic scene was orchestrated by Wt FX, under visual effects supervisor Sheldon Stopsack. The studio and Stopsack had previously worked with Collet-Serra on Black Adam. When we were doing some additional shooting on that movie, recounts Stopsack, Jaume mentioned Carry-On and that he wanted to try something new, which was this car chase sequence. He described it to me on-set and he was wondering how one would go about doing it.Planning the onerThe car crash would ultimately be filmed with the actors in a partial car buck set against bluescreen, with Wt FX building the world, the vehicles and even the inside parts of the car around the characters. To get there, Day For Nite started by previsualizing the oner. If you go back now and look at it, shares Stopsack, you can literally take the shot, take the previs and play it side by side and theres so many similarities. Theres so many things that were established really early on.Early on, too, stunt coordinator and second unit supervisor Dave Macomber helped plan out the scene. He and his team jumped into Xsen suits and into a car mock-up and captured their motion, outlines Stopsack. Then he put that into Unreal Engine and they previsualized this themselves.These efforts aided Wt FX in realizing that there would be a great deal of action happening outside of the car, as well as everything going on inside the car, with moments of cross-over. To help establish what would be outside the vehicle (ie. the roadway, landscape, other vehicles), the team began a scouting phase. The scene takes place on the I-105 Interstate Highway in Los Angeles, says Stopsack. We said, Lets go on Google Maps and Street View and lets see what takes us down the road.It was also about working out speeds, adds Wt FX visual effects sequence supervisor Ben Warner. We had to work out, how much freeway do you actually travel in that amount of time, and how speed indicates the travel. For as much as it feels like youre traveling a long distance, they actually dont travel that far in the end, only about a 2.5 kilometer stretch.Shooting an array in LAThat scouting process was also done in preparation for a camera array shoot of the highway, the results of which would inform the backgrounds created by Wt FX. We would literally have a car go down that interstate to capture panoramic footage, explains Stopsack. Production hired a car with a video team that had Blackmagic cameras mounted on top of the car, capturing panoramic footage for us to stitch together.When the array footage was being captured, a front-mounted GPS was also installed. It meant you could see what they were seeing at the front of the car, notes Warner. You could match it up with the array but you could also match up the GPS locations. We could use that to always work out where we lived on the freeway and where we wanted to end up. It was somewhat important to have that GPS information, continues Stopsack, because when we shot the array footage, we traveled down at a reasonably consistent speed to have a reasonably steady capture of the stretch of the highway. But with the action beats of the actual Dodge Charger car going down, it wouldve gone with a different speed. So we roughly needed to know how to re-time that footage in order to get us to the geography that we were in based on the speed of the travel of the car in the film. It was an exercise of knowing exactly where it was captured and at what speed it was captured.One interesting aspect of the array shoot was how to manage the traffic on the highway during the shoot. You cant just lock down a 2.5 kilometer stretch leading up to LAX, points out Stopsack. But the highway patrol was kind enough to allow us to drive down it and keep the traffic as far away as possible. They couldnt stop the traffic and lock it off all together, which made for some interesting footage because you had the on and off ramps and sometimes there were cars coming from the on ramp and then the highway patrol blocking them off.Filming the actorsPrincipal photography of the actors on bluescreen made use of a specially-designed car rig, and a Technocrane for shooting, advises Stopsack. We broke down the whole shot into four beats, effectively. Its worth noting that the original plan was for the oner to be a lot longer, with a whole back section where Cole lowers herself out of the seatbelt, crawls out of the car, stops another car and drives off, again, all in the oner. Things were shortened for editorial reasons. The original four beats were, everything leading up to the crash, the crash itself, the post-crash moment with them being upside down, and then Elena crawling out. Breaking it down into these manageable chunks allowed us to target how we were going to shoot it.Everything leading up to the crash was a very well orchestrated stunt performance with Dave Macomber taking the lead there and really hitting the beats, adds Stopsack. They shot this on a bluescreen stage with what we called the rotisserie, which was basically a skeleton of a Dodge Charger mounted onto an absolute beast of a steel metal frame, which weighed a ton. It was mounted in a way that the car could effectively roll over. We had control over it to suggest leaning angles and which side of the car would be swerving. For the crash itself, we could flip it upside down. Indeed, we shot a whole portion of the crash with them literally being rolled over two and a half times with our actors in there flailing their arms.During the crash, the car comes incredibly close to other vehicles; at one point another cars side mirror smashes into the side of Cole and Alcotts cara gag achieved on set with a bluescreen-covered mirror prop that would later be replaced by a CG one. That coordination on set was all Dave Macomber and his stunt team, says Stopsack. The actors had to rehearse all this a few times. Dave would be sitting on a ladder in front of the car on the rotisserie rig, slightly elevated, yelling the beats. It was actually quite the dance because the camera team needed to do its thing, the actors needed to do their thing, and the stunt team was yelling the beats at them. View this post on InstagramA post shared by Netflix Geeked (@netflixgeeked)Assembling the shotEditorial brought together the different takes from the bluescreen shoot, with Wt FX then responsible for figuring out how to seam it altogether. We took on the footage and tried to exactly figure this puzzle out ourselves, says Stopsack. Takeover points was a big one to consider. We also started to figure out how to orchestrate the beats that then affect the world around them. Again, theres the inside world and the outside world, and for this we had an approach called a local space workflow. We tracked everything that happened on stage, including the movement of the buck and the movement of the actors. We were supported by our on-set team here, who came along for the shoot and they provided us with a stereo rig that was mounted to the hero principal camera. It was a similar approach to what was used on Avatar: The Way of Water where an additional stereo pair was shot.This was very useful for us, continues Stopsack, because it allowed us to not only get effectively a camera track from it, but we could also get some spatial awareness of what was happening in front of us. We had our actors in the car and we effectively could generate a mesh from that. We utilized that on our end to determine, say, when is the arm in the right spot for a takeover, or, is the car leaning left and what does it do exactly?Once everything had been stitched and blended together, artists lined up the local space to what was needed for the highway. We still needed to cater for the world outside of the car, says Stopsack. This is where our animation team kicked in who did a lot of the orchestration of the traffic outside. They needed to work towards all those timings wed already established. So, again, the dance continued because a lot of these pieces just needed to continuously be orchestrated.We spent a lot of time taking that local space camera and putting it into the world space, notes Warner. Theres a moment where they cross over onto the other side of the road. Geographically, we knew where they needed to end up. When we backed it up to where they crossed, that point crossing was where the roads were split on two bridges. There were a lot of timing considerations to make sure that when they did cross, they actually were crossing where the roads would actually make sense in terms of the geography that we were using. There was a lot of time spent upfront just making sure all those beats, both the internal and external, were all hitting the same thing. The action inside the carWith the camera moving around a great deal, and with the car buck only being a portion of the vehicle, Wt FX would ultimately replace much of the car interior with a digital version. The brief was, the camera had to stay inside the car, states Warner. Jaume really didnt want a notion of a camera coming in through the window and out the other side. He wanted to keep it internal. One of the big things we had to do was replace the roof. Now, when people are in cars, they shadow from the top and that was something we had to adjust.The seats are replaced almost the entire time, too, says Stopsack. Then theres the dashboard. The interior of the car was probably the most advanced interior that has ever been built here at Wt. A little Easter egg is, try to see if you can spot what radio channel theyre listening to, its playing Wt FM.For the roll-over crash moment, not only was the car interior digital, so too were the characters inside the car. That helped us transition from the first part of the crash to go into an all-digital portion with all-digital characters, describes Stopsack. Then when it ends with them upside down, we transition to the live-action actors hanging in the rotisserie rig upside down. For our digital doubles, we even adapted the facial rigs and facial system used on The Way of Water, which is our Anatomical Plausible Facial System (APFS).Breaking windshield and window glass and then small tumbling pieces of glass were a feature of the roll-over. Wt FX began with a physics-based simulation, says Stopsack. However, youd be surprised how physics doesnt want to give you what you want to see. We ended up cheating there a little bit, more in favor of creating the chaos and the violence and the energy.Stopsack and Warner credit compositor Robert Hall with leading the compositing of the oner. Says Warner: Rob picked and chose where we used the CG, where we used the plate. He found the blend points. He found what was the best solution. It wasnt always CG. It wasnt always plate. It really wasnt a traditional comp. Luckily, he had an input early on about how it was all going to come together, which was nice.The action outside the carFor the outside roadway, the array footage became a starting backdrop for Wt FXs CG highway build. This included all the roadway paraphernalia, side walls, barrels and, of course, other vehicles. Effectively, reveals Warner, Wt FX had to animate everything all twice by first making the scene work on the inside of the car, and then making the outside scenes support what was happening inside. Theres a whole other story being told on the outside! says Warner. Bringing those two together into one continuous thing was fun.At one point, a truck flips in front of the now out-of-control car. Eagle-eyed viewers may have caught that the moment the truck begins edging sideways matches up to a gunshot coming from inside the car, as Stopsack describes. Cole is fighting with Alcott, and Cole has a gun in her hand, Alcott smashes her hand and a shot goes off. Theres a muzzle flash that pierces a hole in the windshield which triggers a tire to be punctured in the truck in front of them, which is why it starts flipping over.If you look for it, says Warner, youll see the tire really goes pop, and that it goes pop maybe two or three frames after the muzzle flash goes off. Then we found the most amazing amount of reference on YouTube for exploding tires, and airbagsall sorts of crazy crashes, says Warner. We just made it bigger and bigger until everything basically explodes. The post How that crazy car crash oner in Carry-On was made appeared first on befores & afters.

The great creative teams in RISE at Berlin and Stuttgart went all out on the visual effects of Red One. It intensified fight scenes and designed the eerie environment where Krampus appeared.The VFX lineup didnt stop here; RISE presented its talent in the creation of realistic flora and fauna, including menacing trolls, fire Hellhounds, and even a fully digital chicken that steals the scene. Everything was very detailed to shape this fantasy world of Red One.It shows how they were able to put together such creative and technical abilities in one, making RISEs work shine in its cinematography storytelling.The post RISE Reel Red One appeared first on Vfxexpress.

After years of pressure from the pandemic, the challenges of managing remote, hybrid, and RTO workplaces, and inconsistent organizational support, managers are on the brink of a crash.The coming manager collapse is kicking off a vicious cycle for organizations. As managers struggle, Gen Z sees the toll of the job and backs away, leaving fewer employees to rise into management roles. This puts more pressure on remaining managers.At the same time, several years of manager layoffs have left fewer people taking on these responsibilities. In 2023 alone, middle managers made up over a third of all layoffs. The remaining managers are under more pressure, with growing stress leading to higher rates of burnout.New research from my organization, meQuilibrium, shows just how deep the manager shortage could become. In addition to higher expectations for their performance, managers experience 59% higher emotional demands than their team members. They often face these elevated risks in isolation, being 12% less likely to receive support when they need it. The risks are also known precursors to burnout, disengagement, and quitting. UKG has found that almost half of middle managers would likely quit within the year due to stress.Organizations cant attain their goals for growth without resilient managers who have the skills to support their teams, says meQuilibriums Alanna Fincke, SVP Content and Head of Learning, who first identified the likelihood of a manager crash earlier this year. Employees who dont feel supported by their managers are more than four times as likely to quit their jobs, and twice as likely to report poor overall well-being. When this house of cards falls, it will impact the entire organization.On the flip side, employees who feel strongly supported are more protected from psychosocial risks at work, such as mistrust, conflict, and excessive work pace. These employees are two times as likely to perceive that conflicts are resolved fairly and 2.6 times more likely to receive help when needed. Strongly supported employees are also much more likely to feel like the pace of work moves at a sustainable rate in which they can complete their tasks.The manager role is indispensable for high workforce performance. But if todays managers crash, who will be there to pick up the pieces?Gen Z Says No ThanksNext-generation employees show little interest in the challenges of management. Despite Gen Zs greater openness to change, a recent Robert Walters survey revealed that 72% of Gen Z respondents would choose an individual route to progression over managing others. Sixty-nine percent say middle management is too high-stress and low-reward. (Its not just Gen Z. CNBC reports 42% of U.S. workers say theyd turn down a promotion.)Theres another complication, too. Even if Gen Z workers were looking for management jobs, our research shows many dont yet have the skills to handle the emotional turbulence of change, which is part and parcel of managing teams. Compared to their older colleagues, Gen Z employees experience 34% higher change anxiety and 25% lower emotional stability in the face of change. This anxiety may be spurring them to self-select out of manager roles they could excel in.To stop and reverse the draining of present and future manager talentand prevent organizational growth from stagnatingleaders have to do two things. First, they have to change how their organizations support their managers. Second, leaders need to equip younger employees with the skills to handle change. The following actions are key:Assess and address workplace psychosocial risksPsychosocial risks are characteristics of work design and management that negatively influence performance. They include high workload, poor work-life balance, workplace conflict, lack of control, lack of meaning at work, and inadequate support. These risks are often measured as environmental impacts, affecting teams, business units, and entire workforces.For example, a meQ customer recently sent a psychosocial risk survey to 34,000 employees and contractors. With a 50% response rate, the company gained significant data to identify risk factors across job functions, such as a lack of meaning for finance employees and a lack of control in the manufacturing unit.Tight deadlines are the most common psychosocial risk, according to research by the University of Washington School of Public Health, with 43% of all U.S. workers exposed. Consider an engineering team that feels like the demands on them are too high. These strains typically lead to anxiety and depression, which both endanger attention and focus on the job and put the entire team at high risk for burnout and turnover.Managers are nearly 40% more likely to cite excessive workloads compared to non-managers. Almost as many report insufficient time for tasks, and 34% are more likely to report needing to work at a very fast pace. These risks have both financial and human costs in increased absenteeism and more workers compensation claims. Poorly managed psychosocial risk also leads to elevated mental health risks and a range of negative physical health outcomes, including cardiovascular disease, musculoskeletal disorders, and diabetes.A comprehensive psychosocial risk assessment, including mitigation strategies and support, is the clearest path to improving managers performance and experienceand changing how the rest of the workforce views the role.Enact clear policies that support manager health and well-beingExplicit policy decisions can help managers protect and promote their own mental and physical well-being. This might look like mandatory disconnect periods, sabbaticals, or easing access to acute mental healthcare resources. Making sure managers have consistent, supportive check-ins with their own supervisors can help reduce isolation.Leaders can also model and reinforce workplace norms that prioritize health. For example, a leader for an R&D unit might maintain consistent boundaries on work hours to sustain the high cognitive demand of the job. He or she might also begin meetings with simple well-being check-ins, modeling the normalcy of mental health discussions in day-to-day work. With these actions, companies set a positive example for the entire organization and invest in the sustainability of their management pipeline.Deploy evidence-based techniques to build resilienceComprehensive, evidence-based resilience programs equip managers with practical tools to improve team interactions, communication, and collaboration. Digital cognitive behavioral therapy tools can also help managers recognize and replace unproductive thought patterns with more effective alternatives.As managers develop these skills and model them for their teams, they become better equipped to maintain clear communication channels, inspire collaborative problem-solving, and guide teams through periods of change or uncertainty. Ultimately, investing in leader resilience translates to improved team performance, increased productivity, and a more positive work environment that drives organizational success.Focus on Gen ZThe previous steps are meant to improve the experience and perception of the manager role. But organizations also need to train their young employees in the essential skills they lack. In our research, Gen Z employees score significantly lower on core capabilities such as emotion control, stress management, engagement, and positivity.At the same time, we have found the employees most skilled in handling change and challengethe realities that managers deal with dailyhave the highest levels of those very skills: emotion control, stress management, engagement, and positivity. These are the specific, actionable areas to focus Gen Z training efforts on in order to improve their ability to handle management demands.Organizations that take a systematic approach to supporting managers and Gen Z workers can end the vicious cycle. The key lies not in grand transformations, but in consistent, practical steps to embed the fundamental capabilities of resilience and support across the organization. The result will be a more stable, sustainable workforce, capable of handling change and ready to lead through it.

On a freezing cold Wednesday afternoon in eastern Kentucky, Taysha DeVaughan joined a small gathering at the foot of a reclaimed strip mine to celebrate a homecoming. Its a return of an ancestor, DeVaughan said. Its a return of a relative.That relative was the land they stood on, part of a tract slated for a federal penitentiary that many in the crowd consider another injustice in a region riddled with them. The mine shut down years ago, but the site, near the town of Roxana, still bears the scars of extraction. DeVaughan, an enrolled member of the Comanche Nation, joined some two dozen people on January 22 to celebrate the Appalachian Rekindling Project buying 63 acres within the prisons footprint.What were here to do is to protect her and to give her a voice, DeVaughan said. Shes been through mountaintop removal. Shes been blown up, shes been scraped up, shes been hurt.The Appalachian Rekindling Project, which she helped found last year, wants to rewild the site with bison and native flora and fauna, open it to intertribal gatherings, and, it hopes, stop the prison. The environmental justice organization worked with a coalition of local nonprofits, including Build Community Not Prisons and the Institute to End Mass Incarceration, to raise $160,000 to buy the plot from retired truck driver Wayne Whitaker. Hed only just purchased it as a hunting ground, and it was an easy sell. Theres nothing positive well get out of this prison, he said.The penitentiary has been a gleam in the eye of state and local officials and the Bureau of Prisons since 2006. It has always sparked sharp divisions in Roxana and beyond and was killed in 2019 after a series of lawsuits, only to be quietly resurrected in 2022. Last fall, the bureau took the final step in its approval process, clearing the way to begin buying land.Some in Letcher County, which saw 5.2% of its population leave between 2020 and 2023 and grapples with a 24% poverty rate, believe the prison will replace jobs and tax revenue lost with the decline of coal. Federal prison construction has boomed in central Appalachia as mining has faltered, with 8 of the 16 penitentiaries built there, often atop mines, located in Kentucky alone.Those are all expressions of the economic crisis that has occurred due to the collapse of the coal industry, and for which the prisons and the jails are proposed, said Judah Schept, a professor of justice studies at Eastern Kentucky University. In his book Coal, Cages, Crisis, Schept noted that mine sites are considered ideal locations for prisons or a dumping ground for waste, rather than places of ecological value, as some biologists have argued. The Roxana site has been reclaimed, meaning re-vegetated with a forest that now shelters a number of rare species, including endangered bats.Opponents argue that a prison will bring more environmental problems than jobs. Letcher County was 1 of 13 counties ravaged by catastrophic flooding in 2022, a situation exacerbated by damage strip mining caused to local watersheds. The prison slated for Roxana will exacerbate the problem. The Bureau of Prisons estimates it will damage 6,290 feet of streams and about two acres of wetlands. (The agency has promised to compensate the state.)DeVaughan said the purchase also is a step toward rectifying the dispossession that began with the forced removal and genocide of Indigenous peoples. The Cherokee, Shawnee, and Yuchi made their homes in the area before, during, and after colonization, and their thriving nations raised crops, ran businesses, and hunted bison that once roamed Appalachia. In all the time since, coal, timber, gas, and landholding companies have at times owned almost half of the land in 80 counties stretching from West Virginia to Alabama. Several prisons sprang from deals made with coal companies, something many locals consider the continuation of this status quo.Changing that dynamic is a priority for the Appalachian Rekindling Project, which hoped to buy more land to protect it from extractive industries and return its stewardship to Indigenous and local communities. DeVaughn said Indigenous peoples throughout the region will be welcome to use the land as a gathering place.The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Cherokee Nation, and United Keetoowah Band did not respond to requests for comment.DeVaughan sees its work establishing a new vision of economic transition for coalfields, one that relies less on dollars and numbers and more on healing and restoration of the land and the Indigenous and other communities that live there. She is working with the Cheyenne and Arapaho nations to acquire a herd of bison and plans to work with local volunteers, scientists, and students to inventory the sites flora and fauna.The plot sits at the edge of the 500-acre site outlined for the prison, which would hold over 1,300 people in the main facility and adjoining camp. A representative of the Bureau of Prisons told Grist land acquisition will continue.This isnt the first time the agency has hit such a pothole. Six years ago, Letcher County master falconer Mitch Whitaker refused to sell nearly 12 acres, requiring the agency to revise its plans. The prospect of doing so again led Representative Hal Rogers, who represents the area in Congress and has been the leading champion for the prison, to lambaste ARP and its allies.This land purchase comes as no surprise from a group led by Kentucky outsiders and liberal extremists, he said in a statement.But many of those on hand that Wednesday to celebrate the sale were local residents like Artie Ann Bates, who grew up in Letcher County and saw waves of strip mining damage her familys land. Its just really hard seeing a place you love be destroyed, she said. The purchase is a sign of progress, she added, bundled up at the foot of the mine site alongside her neighbors.Katie Myers, GristThis article originally appeared in Grist, a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Sign up for its newsletter here.