Brs Cubas, a wealthy industrialist and prominent fixture of Brazilian high society, has been found dead in the back alley of a pharmacy presumably murdered. Youve been hired to deduce the identity of the culprit, or culprits, responsible for Cubas death and bring them to justice. The catch? Your client is none other than the dead man himself, ushering you from beyond the grave and ensnaring you in a time loop until the job is done.Developed by Mother Gaia Studio, The Posthumous Investigation is a murder-mystery adventure set in 1930s Rio de Janeiro; the full game isnt out yet, but the games free demo on Steam gives a great sense of whats in store. Players assume the role of an unnamed detective who, after receiving a letter from Brs Cubas, is tasked with scouring the city in search of clues to solve his murder, interrogating suspects and manipulating events within the span of a single day in order to uncover the mystery of who killed Cubas and why. But since youre stuck in a time loop, you actually have an infinite amount of time to traipse through the streets of the games rendition of Rio de Janeiro and uncover the many secrets of Cubas and his inner circle of shady acquaintances.The demo for the game opens auspiciously enough, with Cubas addressing the player before placing them in control of the games gumshoe protagonist. The Posthumous Investigation is gorgeous, with a black-and-white noir aesthetic and cartoony character designs that strike a fine balance between sober and eccentric. The music, crafted by composer Thiago Adamo (Blazing Chrome, Starved), is evocative and memorable, with thrumming drumbeats, crashing cymbals, and silky-smooth piano melodies. No matter how you look at it, every inch of the games presentation oozes a sense of cool in a way comparable to Nirvana Noir and Ape Out.Every cycle of the game begins with the player waking up at their desk before venturing out into the streets of downtown Rio de Janeiro.To solve the mystery of Cubas murder, youll have to elicit statements from suspects using clues and items collected throughout the world. While important clues pertinent to the case are retained at the end of each day, physical items collected throughout the world are lost, forcing the player to either go back and retrieve them or, failing that, find alternate means and routes of following a plot thread to its conclusion.At the end of each cycle, youre shunted back into the past at the stroke of midnight, but not before making a stop in Limbo to consult with the ghost of Brs himself in order to go over your findings for the day. There, the player is able to draw conclusions on a conspiracy board, not unlike the Mind Place in Alan Wake 2, providing new leads and available dialogue options. Each cycle begets new avenues of investigation as you use your foreknowledge of your suspects daily routine from previous cycles to alter the events of the day in service of uncovering more hidden agendas and new opportunities for exploration.The Posthumous Investigation demo is propulsively playable, with a complex yet cogent gameplay loop thats easy to understand and gratifying to experience from moment to moment. And if that werent enough, the game is a creative adaptation of The Posthumous Memoirs of Brs Cubas, a 19th-century modernist novel thats widely regarded as one of the greatest works of Brazilian literature. To adapt a book with such a lauded reputation is no easy task, especially in the interactive medium of video games. But from what Ive played so far, I think the team at Mother Gaia might just manage to pull it off.Clocking in at just over 30 minutes, I thoroughly enjoyed my time playing through The Posthumous Investigation demo. I cant wait to play the full game when it is released sometime later this year.The Posthumous Investigation is available to wishlist on Steam.

Marvel Rivals is finally reuniting Marvels first family, with its new Season 1.5 update. The new patch will bring Human Torch and The Thing into the game, completing the games addition of the Fantastic Four team. Both of the games new heroes got their own unique trailers on Tuesday, along with another video in which the Marvel Rivals dev team outlined the many other balance changes that are coming in this mid-season patch. To the surprise of absolutely no one, the Human Torch is a high-flying duelist that at first glance has a lot in common with Storm. He hurls fireballs at enemy players, creates a flaming area that damages enemies within it, and can even create fiery tornado. However, it wont take long before you notice that Johnny also has the ability to slam himself into the ground throwing up a huge fiery area, something Storm definitely doesnt do. The Thing, similarly, pulls in a few elements of other characters already in the game, but combines them into something nice and unique. As you might have guessed, The Thing is a tanky Vanguard character, and is mostly focused on charging into the battle sometimes literally. He also has a punch that does area of effect damage, and he seems to be able to launch himself forward to tackle enemies, kind of like Wolverine with the tackle at the end instead of the beginning. His ultimate pounds the ground in front of him and knocks up enemies. As for the rest of the balance changes, nothing the Marvel Rivals team announced in the video will be too surprising. The team is nerfing a few of the Strategist Ultimates, like Loki and Cloak and Dagger, because they recharged so much faster than every other Ult in the game. They hope that this will curb the dominance of the triple Strategist meta, without totally destroying it. Otherwise there are few much needed buffs to characters like Hawkeye, and a few nerfs to some of the games other top characters like Doctor Strange and Magneto as well. For a look at all the changes coming in Marvel Rivals season 1.5 patch, you can watch the video below.

Specifying drapery can be dizzying, sometimes with more options than we could ever parse through in one showroom visit. Blinds, panels, or curtains? Sheers, shades, or slats? Should they be operable from the top-down or bottom-up? How does smart technology apply? The number of solutions will vary by lifestyle and require a level of nuance few window covering companies value as a core tenet. With over a century of experience transforming natural light through thoughtfully executed treatments and tendrils extending to include a network of installers, designers, and gallery dealers industry leader Hunter Douglas walks us through a handful of personas proving their positions as masters of their craft.For the Energy-Conscious Consumer: Duette Honeycomb Shades and Solar ChargerThe Problem: Homes without energy-efficient window coverings can lose up to 30% of heating and cooling energy through fenestration, according to the Department of Energy. And while many standard trappings are operable, homeowners have a tendency to underutilize them with roughly 75% remaining in the same position all day. Youre painfully aware of growing energy costs and know that fighting the climate crisis starts with the individual.Our Product Pick: The Duette Honeycomb Shades and Solar Charger could save you up to 15% on your annual energy bill, according to studies by the United States Department of Energy National Laboratories. The pleated cell design a proprietary technology created by the brand some 30 years ago creates air pockets that insulate and maintain consistent indoor temperatures. When drawn closed, room-darkening, opaque fabrics help keep spaces warmer in the winter by preventing heat loss at night and cooler in the summer by providing shade during the day. With more than 150 fabric and color choices, window treatments may be customized by window size and shape. Adding cordless automation allows you to maintain effortless control over everything around the clock accessible through personal devices, remote control, or voice activation.Lifestyle Perks: A simple smart system ensures your shades are always positioned exactly where they should be to achieve greater command over insulation, solar heat gain, and daylighting for maximum energy savings.Photo: Jacob SnavelyFor the Night-Owl Working Late: Aura Illuminated ShadesThe Problem: As compared to morningness, eveningness is associated with increased morbidity, plausibly because those prone to the latter have a compromised wake-sleep schedule. Maybe creativity comes to you at the witching hour, or twilight is your only free time. Perhaps your job requires overnight shifts. Personal preference or profession, your circadian rhythm is out of sync and youre searching for a solution to manage environmental factors.Photo: Jacob SnavelyOur Product Pick: The three-in-one designed Aura Illuminated Shades integrate a textured front shade for natural light control, a reflective room-darkening liner for blackout functionality, and programmable LED lighting for ambient illumination. You can achieve daylight on demand with a symphony of tunable color temperatures and brightness levels. The proprietary technology, including a parabolic reflector and reflective liner, ensures even light distribution without hot spots, closely mimicking the look and feel of natural light. Whats more, the system operates on the advanced PowerView+ Gen 3 Automation platform, which is both simple to control and easy to integrate into existing smart home networks.Lifestyle Perks: Night-owls and shift workers alike will enjoy circadian-supportive shading and lighting to help mitigate the effects of irregular schedules including: disrupted sleep cycles, fatigue, mood fluctuations, and a lack of productivity due to fatigue. Those looking for similar blackout benefits at a more accessible investment can use LightLock in conjunction with the Duette Cellular Shades.Photo: Genevieve GarruppoFor the Busy Household: PowerView Gen 3 AutomationThe Problem: The contemporary household is complex, from everyones personal taste to the homes unique spatial programming. And its also as if the kids have schedules as packed as their parents with rsums nearly as decorated. Managing routines and room aesthetics takes a great deal of orchestration; youre looking for a beautiful solution with modern conveniences.Photo: Genevieve GarruppoOur Product Pick: PowerView Gen 3 Automation by Hunter Douglas is a state-of-the-art smart shading solution that reconciles schedules and tastes in a convenient, energy-efficient solution. It is built on a reliable Bluetooth Low Energy platform, pairs well with other popular smart home networks, and can be controlled using voice commands or the sculptural Pebble Remote. Heads of household may schedule whatever variety of shades have been installed and integrated to automatically adjust based on daily routines for wake-sleep schedules, enhanced privacy, a sense of security while away, energy savings, and overall comfort. Technology is of no hindrance to style with over 20 shade types and hundreds of fabrics to choose from.Photo: Hilton CarterLifestyle Perks: Whether retrofitting select rooms or integrating into a new build, this product is scalable to meet the needs of growing families as well as expanding households for a system that is future-proof to current tastes and changing technology.For the Tastemaker: Luminette Sheers + Pirouette ShadingsThe Problem: Plenty of places offer custom drapery and shading solutions, but youre unsure of each companys heritage or commitment to craft. And youre design-centric, willing to invest in products that are as functional as they are beautiful with the ability to accommodate changing interior fashions.Photo: Jacob SnavelyOur Product Picks: Some solutions are made more potent when paired together. Consider crafting a custom design starting with Luminette Privacy Sheers for light diffusion and privacy these arent your typical vertical blinds. Their orientation adds height to spaces enhancing the drama while their softness tempers the room with ambient light and organic texture. And with gentle air flow, they appear to dance in the light. Complement them with Pirouette Window Shadings in other spaces to extend an ethereal atmosphere with correspondence in material, form, and command of light. The unique floating vanes feature softly contoured fabric that appears to float, giving windows a striking quality while offering variable shading and privacy control, as well as unobstructed views with the Invisi-Lift system, which allows the vanes to float in place without visible cords.Photo: Jacob SnavelyLifestyle Perks: Used in conjunction, they cater to homeowners who take pride in curating their spaces and accommodate a variety of window orientations by serving as functional and artistic elements, elevating the overall personal narrative of the residence while incorporating benefits typical of Hunter Douglas solutions.To learn more about these and other products by the brand, or to find a dealer near you, visit hunterdouglas.com.Photography provided by Hunter Douglas as noted.

Disney+ is checking its superhero box in March with the premiere of Marvel Televisions Daredevil: Born Again (March 4), the 13th series set in the MCU with Charlie Cox reprising his role as Matt Murdock (Daredevil), blind lawyer by day and vigilante superhero by night. Episodes will drop on Tuesdays beginning March 4. Also coming in March are additional episodes of the emotion-packed Pixar miniseries Win or Lose (weekly on Wednesdays) and the twelve remaining episodes of season two of Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures (March 19). A new Disney+ original comedy film is premiering at the end of the month. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip (March 28) is a sequel to the 2014 film Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, based on Judith Viorst's children's book of the same name. The second installment stars Eva Longoria as Alexander's mother alongside Jesse Garcia, Paulina Chvez, Cheech Marin, and Thom Nemer, who plays the titular character. Finally, Disney+ will get the six-part NatGeo docuseries David Blaine Do Not Attempt, filmed during the performer's trip around the world to explore culture through magic. Two installments will premiere each on March 24 and March 31 (with the final two to follow hopefully in April). Here's everything coming to Disney+ in March.Disney Plus series with new episodes weekly in March 2025Marvel Televisions Daredevil: Born Againnew episodes on Tuesdays beginning March 4Win or Losenew episodes weekly on Wednesdays David Blaine Do Not Attemptnew episodes on Mondays beginning March 24Movies and complete series/seasons coming to Disney Plus in March 2025Arriving March 3Malawi Wildlife Rescue (S2, 6 episodes)Arriving March 5Morphle: Shorts (S1, 15 episodes)Primos (S1, 9 episodes)Arriving March 12Disney Jr.s Ariel (S1, 4 episodes)Port Protection Alaska (S8, 10 episodes)Meet the Pickles: The Making of Win or LoseArriving March 19Life Below Zero (S23, 20 episodes)Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures (Season 2)Arriving March 22Animals, Theyre Just Like Us! (S1, 6 episodes)Arriving March 26Morphle and the Magic Pets: Shorts (S1, 10 episodes)Arriving March 28Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road TripDisney+ Original premiereHulu + ESPN content coming to Disney+ in March 2025Like last month, Disney+ subscribers will also have access to select content from Hulu and ESPN in March, including live streams of sporting events like the NHL Stadium Series, The Players Championship, the Arnold Palmer Invitational, the Texas Children's Houston Open, and the NWSL Opening Weekend matches. Here are a few of the other titles coming to Disney+:Secret Lives of Mormon WivesCastleKing of the HillAmerican Horror StoryTell Me LiesFeudBohemian RhapsodyKingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)AlienPredatorCollege GameDayPardon the InterruptionThe Mina Kimes Show featuring LennyNo Scope: The Story of FaZe ClanDude Perfect: A Very Long ShotBlack Girls PlayMotorcycle MaryLong Beach Lifeguards

On Feb. 11, "volunteer IT consultant" Elon Musk appeared at an Oval Office event to discuss the findings of the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency. Among other claims, Musk said that a "cursory examination of Social Security revealed that people who are clearly dead may be receiving social security benefits.Weve got people in there that are 150 years old, Musk said Now, do you know anyone whos 150? I dont, OK I think theyre probably dead, is my guess, or they should be very famous, one of the two.In a later post on X, Musk provided some numbers and joked, "Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security." This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. Like many hot-button political issues, almost everyone is wrong about this one. Musk isn't pulling numbers out of his ass; he isn't lying about clearly dead people being listed as alive by social security. But he hasn't uncovered any waste or fraud, either. Did Musk's number come from not understanding computer programming?Soon after Musk's press event, online folks were speculating that Musk's "150-year-old" number was the result of not understanding how databases are programmed. They're (probably) wrong. This X post explaining the theory has been viewed over 300,000 times: This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. While it would be funny if this was true, it can't be proven and seems unlikely to me. Musk seemed to be pulling a "shocking" number out of the air, but his figures are roughly in keeping with the data in previous audits of the social security system. There really are a lot of records of people who were born more 150 years ago but who are not listed as dead in the social security database. But this isn't something Musk uncovered and it isn't an indication of fraud or waste.Are 150-year-olds listed as alive by social security? At 116, Inah Canabarro Lucas is the oldest person alive. The oldest person ever lived to 122. But according to an audit of the Social Security administration conducted in 2023 (a real audit, not a cursory examination), 18.9 million people are listed in the database as having been born before 1920 but do not have death information on record. According to the census bureau, there were only 86,000 people alive in the US in 2023 who were over 100 years old. But these "numberholders who exceeded maximum reasonable life expectancies" (as the government calls them) don't seem to be collecting social security benefits. What is "death," anyway?The social security system's database, Numident, is huge and complicated. While the Numident does keep track of people's deaths, its purpose is to "administer its programs"it's not "a comprehensive accounting of all deaths in the country." Ultimately, the database's "living dead" are trapped in perpetual paperwork limbo because "the individuals died decades agobefore the use of electronic death reporting," or so independent auditors concluded. It's a paperwork problem that doesn't necessarily lead to fraud or waste.Did Elon Musk identify widespread fraud in the social security administration?He did not. This is not a smoking gun. Despite the nation's roughly 20 million only-alive-on-paper elders, the Social Security Administration sends benefits to around 44,000 people who are over 100, which is in keeping with the number of super-oldsters who actually live in the nation, according to the census. In fact, a 2015 report found 6.5 million active Social Security numbers for people over the age of 112, but only 13 of them were being used to receive benefitsturns out there are much better ways of defrauding social security than collecting a dead ancestor's monthly check for $22.54the payment a 150-year-old would receive. Ultimately, Musk has not uncovered fraud or waste. He didn't uncover anything. He brought this issue to people's attention, but the bottom line is, social security "vampires" are a clerical problem we've known about for a long time that has already been addressed and doesn't appear to be that big of a problem.The truth about social security is not very sexyAnother social security auditwe actually do these regularlypublished in 2015 stated that 6.5 million people on the Numident database were listed as older than 112. Benefits were sent to 266 beneficiaries (most of them were probably under the age of 112, despite what the database saidthings get messy when dealing with paperwork from the early 20th century). To be fair, the 2015 audit and the one conducted in 2023 reached roughly the same conclusion as Musk: We should probably fix this. "Death information missing from the Numident and the DMF hampers both SSA and Government-wide efforts to prevent and detect fraud and misuse," concluded the 2023 audit. So why don't we fix it? What is "government waste," anyway?The government doesn't just check "yes" in the field for "is this person dead?" for people who were born more than 120 years ago because, according to the SSA, adding "presumed dead" to records in the Numident system would be "costly to implement, would be of little benefit to the agency, would largely duplicate information already available to data exchange consumers and would create cost for the states and other data exchange partners. In contradiction to the conclusion that Musk and co. reached, the SSA thinks it would be more wasteful to fix the problem than to just leave it alone: The Treasury Department already has anyone over a certain age on its Do Not Pay List anyway, so they're just letting the files not list a death date because that's free.

World models AI algorithms capable of generating simulated environments represent one forefront of machine learning. Today, Microsoft published new research in the journal Nature detailing Muse, a model capable of generating game visuals and controller inputs. Unexpectedly, it was born out of a training set Microsoft built from Bleeding Edge.If, like me, you had completely erased that game from your memory (or never knew it existed in the first place), Bleeding Edge is a 4 vs. 4 brawler developed by Ninja Theory, the studio better known for its work on the Hellblade series. Ninja Theory stopped updating Bleeding Edge less than a year after release, but Microsoft included a clause in the games EULA that gave it permission to record games people played online. So if you were one of the few people who played Bleeding Edge, congratulations, I guess: you helped the company make something out of a commercial flop.So what's Muse good for anyway? Say a game designer at Blizzard wants to test an idea for a new hero in Overwatch 2. Rather than recruiting a team of programmers and artists to create code and assets that the studio may eventually scrap, they could instead use Muse to do the prototyping. Iteration is often the most time-consuming (and expensive) part of making a video game, so its easy to see why Microsoft would be interested in using AI to augment the process; it offers a way for the company to control runaway development costs. Thats because, according to Microsoft, Muse excels at a capability of world models the company calls persistency."Persistency refers to a models ability to incorporate (or 'persist') user modifications into generated gameplay sequences, such as a character that is copy-pasted into a game visual," says Katya Hofmann, senior principal research manager at Microsoft Research. Put another way, Muse can quickly adapt to new gameplay elements as theyre introduced in real-time. In one of the examples Microsoft shared, you can see the "player" character immediately react as two power-ups are introduced next to them. The model seemingly knows that the pickups are valuable and something players would go out of their way to obtain. So the simulation reflects that, in the process creating a convincing facsimile of a real Bleeding Edge match.According to Fatima Kardar, corporate vice president of gaming AI at Microsoft, the company is already using Muse to create a "real-time playable AI model trained on other first-party games," and exploring how the technology might help it bring old games stuck on aging hardware to new audiences.Microsoft says Muse is a "first-of-its-kind" generative AI model, but thats not quite right. World models arent new; in fact, Muse isnt even the first one trained on a Microsoft game. In October, the company Decartdebuted Oasis, which is capable of generating Minecraft levels. What Muse does show is how quickly these models are evolving.That said, there's a long way for this technology to go, and Muse has some clear limitations. For one, the model generates visuals at a resolution of 300 x 180 pixels and about 10 frames per second. For now, the company is releasing Muse's weights and sample data, and a way for researchers to see what the system is capable of.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/microsoft-trained-an-ai-model-on-a-game-no-one-played-160038242.html?src=rss

Niantic, the company that developed the wildly popular augmented reality (AR) game Pokmon Go, is reportedly considering selling its video games and according to a source speaking to Bloomberg, the deal could be worth just $3.5 billion. The company raised additional funding at a $9 billion valuation back in 2021.Many people still play Pokmon Go, but the game no longer enjoys the same popularity it had during its launch and the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. There are around 80 million monthly users as numbers reported midway through last year, but that's a steep decline from the game's peak of 232 million active players. During those same heady days, Pokmon Go was generating close to a billion dollars annually; now it's bringing in about half of that.Pokmon Go was also a breakthrough success Niantic was unable to replicate, despite its follow-ups being essentially reskins of the same AR experience. Harry Potter: Wizards Unite lasted around three years, while NBA All World survived only five months. Pikmin Bloom and Monster Hunter Now are still around, but have never been the cash cows of their older sibling. The company also raised funding in 2021 on the promise of creating a real-world metaverse, which has yet to materialize.Niantic also has not been immune to the broad layoffs affecting the games industry. It dumped eight percent of its workforce and canceled four projects back in 2022. The following year, it laid off another 230 employees and killed a Marvel-related project.The reported party Niantic is considering selling its games division to is Scopely, which is owned by Savvy Games Group. Savvy Games Group is part of Saudi Arabias government-linked Public Investment Fund, which has stakes in EA, Activision, Nintendo and more.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/pokemon-go-developer-niantic-may-sell-its-games-division-for-a-mere-35-billion-160027485.html?src=rss

iPhone 16e brings a new name, a new look and yes, Apple Intelligence

Amazon's new Eero 7 and Eero Pro 7 offer the Wi-Fi 7 standard and multi-gigabit support at an affordable price and still offer an easy-to-use, customizable experience.

Etsy, which is known for selling artisan and handcrafted goods, is facing heightened competition from Chinese online retailers Temu, Shein and TikTok Shop.