Re @RepThomasMassie

Yeah!Engineering Ai:Hey @SamsungMobile @Xiaomi @oppo would be cool if we could use @grok as our device's ai assistent instead of forcing us to use Gemini or any other branded device ai assistent, please open it up for the users to choose their own preferred ai assistent.

A movie based on the video game Sifu was first revealed back in 2022, and now it's gathering steam. It was confirmed today that Netflix has signed the movie, which is based on the Slocap game and will be produced by John Wick veteran Chad Stahelski's 87Eleven banner.T.S. Nowlin (The Maze Runner) is writing the script, with Dmitri M. Johnson and Mike Goldberg from Story Kitchen producing. From 87Eleven, Stahelski, Jason Spitz, and Alex Young are producing as well. Deadline was first to report on the Sifu movie coming to Netflix. Story Kitchen, formerly known as dj2, is behind the popular Sonic the Hedgehog series, as well as the upcoming It Takes Two, Just Cause, Vampire Survivors, and Disco Elysium movies and TV series.Story Kitcken's Johnson and Goldberg said in a statement that Sifu has "all the makings of an unforgettable cinematic experience," listing off things like action, emotional stakes, and a unique take on martial arts as being selling points for a live-action feature.Continue Reading at GameSpot

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 hasn't even been out for a month yet, but the wildly successful game already has another patch ready to go from Warhorse Studios. Although there are a handful of crash fixes, there aren't many major issues at all in this patch, which Warhorse is calling Hotfix 1.1.2. Instead, the most exciting revision comes in The King's Gambit, where players can now keep the wine flowing for the king.As related on Reddit, some players ran into an issue in The King's Gambit where the option to pour wine for the king disappears. When the king asks to switch from red wine to white, players failed the task when they couldn't fulfil that simple request.Warhorse shared the Hotfix 1.1.2 breakdown on the official site for Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. According to the developers, the primary adjustments include stability improvements and quest fixes. There's also a specific fix for the game on the Epic Games Store. Taken together, these changes may not seem very significant, but they're meant to help players have a more refined experience.Continue Reading at GameSpot

The Apothecary Diaries Season 2 has been subtly teasing upcoming events, and preparing the ground for major revelations. While the first cour still deals with many one-off situations, the second cour will be a bit more intense, while still maintaining the episodic feel of the series.

The controversy surrounding League of Legends' changes is still at an all-time high, and even the new Mordekaiser skin isn't safe from criticism. It was recently announced that League of Legendsis releasing an Exalted Skin called "Sahn-Uzal Mordekaiser" as part of the Noxus season's second act. Although many fans have been looking forward to this skin for a while now, they also couldn't help but feel disappointed because it will be locked behind a gacha system.

After getting out of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2s mammoth tutorial, I was bestowed with a certain arrogance. Surely, after three hours of learning how to fight, flee, and play Farkle, I was equipped to tackle anything that this massive medieval world had to offer. Boy howdy, did I immediately have egg on my face. I spent my first five hours or so in the game properly getting my ass beat up and down Bohemia. It was an unforgiving, unforgettable experience. Victory can be satisfying, but when it comes too easily, it feels like empty emotional calories. Kingdom Come made me work for every victory, even ones as small as getting proper armor or affording a stay at the inn.Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 picks up immediately after the events of the first game, with protagonist Henry in the sweet position of being an endgame RPG hero. He begins the game kitted out in proper gear, riding a horse, rolling around with a set of pals on an easy milk run gig. When he strips down with his nobleman buddy Hans Capon for a quick dip in the pond, their allies are caught unaware by an ambush. Hans and Henry barely escape with their lives, and to make matters worse, as soon as they get to safety they immediately quarrel with the locals and end up in the stocks.By the time Henry is free to actually explore the open world, all thats left at his disposal is a basic set of clothes, a sword, a few apples, and a set of dice. That should be enough, right? Surely, as an RPG hero, Ill get poor Henry kitted out in epic gear and a trusty steed in no time. This isnt my first rodeo in an open-world RPG; I know how these things are supposed to go.Then the game pulled the rug out from under my feet by throwing poor Henry into the meat grinder. I decided to go check out the last known location of my trusty hound. As I approached the quest marker, I was set upon by wolves who murdered me after a hopeless skirmish. So, I tried again with an alternate route. This time, I stumbled upon a Cuman soldier in a full suit of armor who stood, drew his sword, and murdered me in a few swift strokes.I got an early, low-stakes quest to steal a lute from a guy and deliver it to a couple of musicians. I was able to sneak into my targets house, but upon trying to check a locked chest for the lute, my lock pick loudly broke and the town guard showed up. I had to pay my paltry savings to escape that situation.Eventually, I stumbled upon a camp with a lone man playing dice and rambling in Latin. He claimed to recognize Henry, but was clearly having some kind of confusion or delusion. Despite this, he still handily won at a game of Farkle and took everything I had left in my pouch. I finally had enough, drew my sword, and killed the dude. Was this a cold-blooded murder? Yes. Do I have any moral defense? No. Did I finally get a win out of this? Absolutely, and Id do it again, too.This ended up defining my early strategy in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. If I find you in the middle of nowhere, and no one will witness my crime, youre in trouble. I found a well-stocked vendor sitting under a bridge, offering an array of helpful supplies. As far as Im concerned, thats free real estate. After a few of these opportunistic crimes, I was finally able to navigate Bohemia with some confidence. The game is still unforgiving, but at least Im able to engage with its quests. RIP to the solo NPCs I had to kill along the way, but I am simply built different.

With the finale of the first season of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, the animated Spider-Man series aimed at teens has, perhaps unexpectedly, become one of the best Marvel Cinematic Universe shows to hit the small screen.Granted, thats not that high of a bar to clear. And YFNS is only sort of set in the MCU? Technically its spinning out of What If? and takes place in parallel Earth in the Marvel Multiverse. So its more like a totally original, but MCU-event-referencing, Spider-Man reboot.But forget about all that multiverse stuff: Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is the rare modern MCU project that has the time of day for anybody in the world who isnt currently a superhero or supervillain. Showrunner Jeff Trammell did not skimp on living up to the Friendly Neighborhood in the show title, and in doing so his series does exactly what the Marvel Cinematic Universes television projects promised they would do and almost never did.And that makes for good television, but also and maybe more importantly good superhero stories.[Ed. note: This piece contains spoilers for Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man season 1.]Over the course of its first season, YFNS showed emphatically and sincerely that it was interested in a wealth of characters who were not Peter Parker. Theres a whole episode B plot thats just about Harry Osborn and Nico Minoru learning to like each other via a mostly mundane joyriding adventure, while Peter is stuck doing superhero stuff. Even someone as tertiary as Pearl Panga, Peters old babysitter and his friends girlfriend, gets enough screen time to be seen as a layered person with goals and needs.Of course, the big breakout in YFNS was certainly Lonnie Lincoln, who nearly becomes a whole second protagonist over the course of the season, as his arc toward gang leaderdom runs carefully parallel along Peters growth toward independence as Spider-Man. And rather than sidelining Peter, Lonnies arc supports and amplifies whats going on with our kiddie webslinger and Norman Osborn.YFNS Norman Osborn is such an out-and-out supervillain that his open a dangerous space portal for cold, hard profit and his manipulate a teenager into becoming my superhero lackey schemes arent even connected. Peter isnt key to his big evil plan hes just a teenager Norman saw and thought, Oh, I could totally gaslight that child into an asset. Thats, it needs to be said, the kind of instinctual evil-genius thinking that all superhero writers should aspire to.But its also pretty far out there. And so, on the other side of YFNS, Lonnies lack of support from institutions that ought to be protecting him puts a precipitous swerve on his ambitions. And all of that reminds the viewer that there are real stakes to getting the wrong kind of mentorship, not just that you might have to stop your friends dad from opening a portal to the Dimension of Only Venoms.In the grand scheme of television writing, this is not so remarkable. Parallel character arcs, A-plot-to-B-plot structure, and consistent time spent with secondary cast are the bread and butter of serialized TV. But its worth calling it out, because these are exactly the things that the MCU needs as it struggles to get the audience to reinvest.Even three-hour films lack the time to build this kind of emotional tissue between characters and the audience or even between characters and characters. That goes double when every single new secondary character introduced is promised to return as a hero or villain, which is where well really get to know them. But television does have the time for an ensemble. That was the original promise of the Disney Plus Marvel TV shows, and exactly what they failed at. With very few exceptions, Marvels Disney Plus output has proved itself to not really be television shows, with room to stand on their own but simply eight-to-10-hour miniseries that tee up movies that dont arrive for four years, or maybe never arrive at all.While we wait for Kate Bishop and Ms. Marvel to team up, or for whatever the hell is in store for White Vision, its gratifying to see a brand-new Marvel Disney Plus show like YFNS so confident in its own future that it can introduce well-known superheroes as characters in season 1 and then pass their origin stories off to season 2. When the final episode of YFNS teases three major superhuman transformations (and one thats apparently been the case the whole time) of already established characters (not to mention the whole twist with Peters dad), its exciting instead of exhausting. The folks behind the show were assured enough to give the viewer a whole season with Nico Minoru, Norman Osborn, and Otto Octavius as people before they put on their costumes, so that when they do, we give a shit.This version of the Marvel Cinematic Universe feels fully populated, not as if there are only two kinds of people in the world: Extras and Avengers. Thats not just good for making the audience care and your main characters feel real, its a vital element of the baseline superhero genre.When all superheroes do is fight villains or each other, they become unmoored from who theyre fighting for. Not just their friends and allies, but, to borrow a phrase from Marvel Comics own 1960s revolution: the world outside your window. The reason great power comes with great responsibility is because not everybody has it, but you gotta actually show the audience that gap.Any supervillain can mentor a Peter Parker. But it takes a neighborhood to make a Spider-Man.Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man season 1 is now streaming on Disney Plus.

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.I've been a fan of Ultimate Ears (UE) outdoor speakers since I first got the Megaboom 3 back in 2018, and I'm still using it as my personal go-to portable speaker. The Megaboom 4 is its newer version, which came out last year, but it's already 32% off, bringing its price down to $135.44 (originally $199.99). This is the lowest price it has reached according to price-tracking tools, and it's cheaper than the Megaboom 3. Ultimate Ears MEGABOOM 4 Protection: Water and dustproof, Sound: 360-Degree, Battery Life: 20-Hour, Range: 147Ft. $135.44 at Amazon $199.99 Save $64.55 Get Deal Get Deal $135.44 at Amazon $199.99 Save $64.55 UE is well-known in the portable speaker market for making some of the best outdoor speakers. Its Megaboom series is the brand's flagship speaker, and the fourth reiteration of the speaker was long overdue. The upgrade brings USB-C fast charging, a longer battery life of up to 20 hours, a skip-back media control on its physical buttons, more sub-bass range, and a better sound with more balance. Because of the way UE designs its speakers, you get 360-degree sound, which is ideal for outdoor use (but it sounds great indoors as well). This speaker, and like many in its lineup, floats on water and has a water- and dust-proof IP67 rating. The companion app lets you fully customize the EQ and connect your speaker to other UE speakers to create a stereo sound. The speaker itself already offers stereo, but since it's a single speaker, it'll be hard to notice.Despite the upgrades, the Megaboom 4 doesn't get as loud as its predecessor, maxing out around 83 dBs, and the audio quality will sound a bit compressed at those levels, but unless you like to blast your music, this won't be much of an issue. If you're looking for a great portable speaker with modern tech, the Megaboom 4 will not disappoint, especially at this price.

We may earn a commission from links on this page.Many of us have stairs in our home that could use a bit of a makeover, either due to wear and tear over time or because theyre builder-grade basic and didn't have much style to begin with. If you don't want to spend a lot of money upgrading a space meant to simply get you from one floor to another, though, there are ways to jazz your existing stairs without spending a lot. If youre suddenly thinking that your boring stairs need a glow-up, here are some ways to accomplish that without cleaning out your bank account.PaintPaint is always the easiest and cheapest upgrade you can do, and that applies to your stairs as well. You can easily paint the risers a bold contrasting color that will transform even the most basic stairs into a design element. You can also grab a gallon of floor paint and transform the treads. Doing both together allows you to create a classic black and white look or get creative with a palette that complements the rest of the homes design.And dont forget the railing, balustrades, and newel postgiving these a gleaming new coat of paint is an instant transformation that doesnt break the bank.Wallpaper or tileYour risers offer an incredible design opportunitytheyre essentially tiny canvases that you can dress up in a variety of ways. Applying wallpaper to your risers can give your stairs a punch of color and pattern that will make them pop, and you can probably do the entire staircase with just one roll of paperor buy some contact paper pieces designed just for this purpose. If you have some leftover tile from another project or a line on some cheap tile, you can also tile your risers just like youd tile a backsplash, instantly giving them a finished, stylish look.Youre not limited to the risers, either. You can wallpaper the wall, either covering it completely or creating a skirtboard effect that outlines the rise of the steps along the wall. Just bringing color and design into the space will class up your stairs.TrimStair brackets are trim pieces that are attached to the exterior of the stairs, adding some dimension and design to the part of your stairs that people will be staring at when theyre not actively walking on them. Theyre pretty easy to install (you can use construction glue if youre not comfortable with a nail gun or hammering in trim nails) and instantly upgrade the look of the staircase.You can also add trim to the staircase wall without splashing out. If youre a decent carpenter, you can create and install a skirtboard along the wall, adding dimension and depth to your stair design. Alternatively (and much more easily) you can grab some stick-on wall trim and create a design on the wall to accent the stairs.LightingLighting can be a dramatic element in any space, but its extra dramatic on stairsespecially at night. Adding some simple stick-on lights to the wall close to the treads not only increases safety, it adds an artistic element, and rechargeable led strips under the lip of the treads turn your boring stairs into a focal point.Key things to consider when choosing lights are the brightness and warmth of the lightsyou want them to be bright enough to increase visibility, but not so bright that theyre distracting. The warmth level should be tailored as much as possible to the palette of your homes other design features. This might require a bit of experimentation before you land on the perfect combination.RunnersIf your stairs are fine but could use a little nudge of style (and maybe a nudge of safety), adding a carpet runner down the center is an easy project that adds a pop of color and design while increasing the grip. Installing a runner is a pretty straightforward DIY job that shouldnt take more than a few hours, but you can simplify the task by using stick-on carpet treads insteadnot quite as dramatic, but they still add dimension and safety to your stairs.If you go with a full runner, you can add stair rods pretty easily for an extra pop of design. Stair rods are a classic touch that also helps hold your runner in place so it doesnt slip and pull over time, which can be both a safety issue and ugly as heck.Tread capsYou can jazz up builder-basic treads without tearing them out or sanding and staining them by using tread caps. These are thin veneers that slip over your existing treads, instantly hiding defects and changing the whole look and feel of your stairs. This is a fairly easy DIY job, though youll need to cut the caps to fit your stairs.