By TREVOR HOGG Images courtesy of Prime Video. For those seeking an alternative to the MCU, Prime Video has two offerings of the live-action and animated variety that take the superhero genre into R-rated territory where the hands of the god-like figures get dirty, bloodied and severed. “The Boys is about the intersection of celebrity and politics using superheroes,” states Stephan Fleet, VFX Supervisor on The Boys. “Sometimes I see the news and I don’t even know we can write to catch up to it! But we try. Invincible is an intense look at an alternate DC Universe that has more grit to the superhero side of it all. On one hand, I was jealous watching Season 1 of Invincible because in animation you can do things that you can’t do in real life on a budget.” Season 4 does not tone down the blood, gore and body count. Fleet notes, “The writers almost have this dialogue with us. Sometimes, they’ll write in the script, ‘And Fleet will come up with a cool visual effect for how to kill this person.’ Or, ‘Chhiu, our fight coordinator, will make an awesome fight.’ It is a frequent topic of conversation. We’re constantly trying to be inventive and create new ways to kill people!” When Splinter (Rob Benedict) splits in two, the cloning effect was inspired by cellular mitosis. “The writers almost have this dialogue with us. Sometimes, they’ll write in the script, ‘And Fleet will come up with a cool visual effect for how to kill this person.’ Or, ‘Chhiu, our fight coordinator, will make an awesome fight.’ It is a frequent topic of conversation. We’re constantly trying to be inventive and create new ways to kill people!” —Stephan Fleet, VFX Supervisor A total of 1,600 visual effects shots were created for the eight episodes by ILM, Pixomondo, MPC Toronto, Spin VFX, DNEG, Untold Studios, Luma Pictures and Rocket Science VFX. Previs was a critical part of the process. “We have John Griffith [Previs Director], who owns a small company called CNCPT out of Texas, and he does wonderful Unreal Engine level previs,” Fleet remarks. “On set, we have a cartoon of what is going to be done, and you’ll be amazed, specifically for action and heavy visual effects stuff, how close those shots are to the previs when we finish.” Founding Director of Federal Bureau of Superhuman Affairs, Victoria Neuman, literally gets ripped in half by two tendrils coming out of Compound V-enhanced Billy Butcher, the leader of superhero resistance group The Boys. “The word that we like to use on this show is ‘grounded,’ and I like to say ‘grounded’ with an asterisk in this day and age because we’re grounded until we get to killing people in the craziest ways. In this case, having someone floating in the air and being ripped in half by two tendrils was all CG.” Multiple plates were shot to enable Simon Pegg to phase through the actor laying in a hospital bed. Testing can get rather elaborate. “For that end scene with Butcher’s tendrils, the room was two stories, and we were able to put the camera up high along with a bunch of blood cannons,” Fleet recalls. “When the body rips in half and explodes, there is a practical component. We rained down a bunch of real blood and guts right in front of Huey. It’s a known joke that we like to douse Jack Quaid with blood as much as possible! In this case, the special effects team led by Hudson Kenny needed to test it the day before, and I said, “I’ll be the guinea pig for the test.’ They covered the whole place with plastic like it was a Dexter kill room because you don’t want to destroy the set. I’m standing there in a white hazmat suit with goggles on, covered from head to toe in plastic and waiting as they’re tweaking all of these things. It sounds like World War II going on. They’re on walkie talkies to each other, and then all of a sudden, it’s ‘Five, four, three, two, one…’  And I get exploded with blood. I wanted to see what it was like, and it’s intense.” “On set, we have a cartoon of what is going to be done, and you’ll be amazed, specifically for action and heavy visual effects stuff, how close those shots are to the previs when we finish.” —Stephan Fleet, VFX Supervisor The Deep has a love affair with an octopus called Ambrosius, voiced by Tilda Swinton. “It’s implied bestiality!” Fleet laughs. “I would call it more of a romance. What was fun from my perspective is that I knew what the look was going to be [from Season 3], so then it’s about putting in the details and the animation. One of the instincts that you always have when you’re making a sea creature that talks to a human [is] you tend to want to give it human gestures and eyebrows. Erik Kripke [Creator, Executive Producer, Showrunner, Director, Writer] said, ‘No. We have to find things that an octopus could do that conveys the same emotion.’ That’s when ideas came in, such as putting a little The Deep toy inside the water tank. When Ambrosius is trying to have an intimate moment or connect with him, she can wrap a tentacle around that. My favorite experience doing Ambrosius was when The Deep is reading poetry to her on a bed. CG creatures touching humans is one of the more complicated things to do and make look real. Ambrosius’ tentacles reach for his arm, and it becomes an intimate moment. More than touching the skin, displacing the bedsheet as Ambrosius moved ended up becoming a lot of CG, and we had to go back and forth a few times to get that looking right; that turned out to be tricky.” A building is replaced by a massive crowd attending a rally being held by Homelander. In a twisted form of sexual foreplay, Sister Sage has The Deep perform a transorbital lobotomy on her. “Thank you, Amazon for selling lobotomy tools as novelty items!” Fleet chuckles. “We filmed it with a lobotomy tool on set. There is a lot of safety involved in doing something like that. Obviously, you don’t want to put any performer in any situation where they come close to putting anything real near their eye. We created this half lobotomy tool and did this complicated split screen with the lobotomy tool on a teeter totter. The Deep was [acting in a certain way] in one shot and Sister Sage reacted in the other shot. To marry the two ended up being a lot of CG work. Then there are these close-ups which are full CG. I always keep a dummy head that is painted gray that I use all of the time for reference. In macrophotography I filmed this lobotomy tool going right into the eye area. I did that because the tool is chrome, so it’s reflective and has ridges. It has an interesting reflective property. I was able to see how and what part of the human eye reflects onto the tool. A lot of that shot became about realistic reflections and lighting on the tool. Then heavy CG for displacing the eye and pushing the lobotomy tool into it. That was one of the more complicated sequences that we had to achieve.” In order to create an intimate moment between Ambrosius and The Deep, a toy version of the superhero was placed inside of the water tank that she could wrap a tentacle around. “The word that we like to use on this show is ‘grounded,’ and I like to say ‘grounded’ with an asterisk in this day and age because we’re grounded until we get to killing people in the craziest ways. In this case, having someone floating in the air and being ripped in half by two tendrils was all CG.” —Stephan Fleet, VFX Supervisor Sheep and chickens embark on a violent rampage courtesy of Compound V with the latter piercing the chest of a bodyguard belonging to Victoria Neuman. “Weirdly, that was one of our more traditional shots,’ Fleet states. “What is fun about that one is I asked for real chickens as reference. The chicken flying through his chest is real. It’s our chicken wrangler in green suit gently tossing a chicken. We blended two real plates together with some CG in the middle.” A connection was made with a sci-fi classic. “The sheep kill this bull, and we shot it is in this narrow corridor of fencing. When they run, I always equated it as the Trench Run in Star Wars and looked at the sheep as TIE fighters or X-wings coming at them.” The scene was one of the scarier moments for the visual effects team. Fleet explains, “When I read the script, I thought this could be the moment where we jump the shark. For the shots where the sheep are still and scream to the camera, Untold Studios did a bunch of R&D and came up with baboon teeth. I tried to keep anything real as much as possible, but, obviously, when sheep are flying, they have to be CG. I call it the Battlestar Galactica theory, where I like to shake the camera, overshoot shots and make it sloppy when they’re in the air so you can add motion blur. Comedy also helps sell visual effects.” The sheep injected with Compound V develop the ability to fly and were shot in an imperfect manner to help ground the scenes. Once injected with Compound V, Hugh Campbell Sr. (Simon Pegg) develops the ability to phase through objects, including human beings. “We called it the Bro-nut because his name in the script is Wall Street Bro,” Fleet notes. “That was a complicated motion control shot, repeating the move over and over again. We had to shoot multiple plates of Simon Pegg and the guy in the bed. Special effects and prosthetics created a dummy guy with a hole in his chest with practical blood dripping down. It was meshing it together and getting the timing right in post. On top of that, there was the CG blood immediately around Simon Pegg.” The phasing effect had to avoid appearing as a dissolve. “I had this idea of doing high-frequency vibration on the X axis loosely based on how The Flash vibrates through walls. You want everything to have a loose motivation that then helps trigger the visuals. We tried not to overcomplicate that because, ultimately, you want something like that to be quick. If you spend too much time on phasing, it can look cheesy. In our case, it was a lot of false walls. Simon Pegg is running into a greenscreen hole which we plug in with a wall or coming out of one. I went off the actor’s action, and we added a light opacity mix with some X-axis shake.” Providing a different twist to the fights was the replacement of spurting blood with photoreal rubber duckies during a drug-induced hallucination. Homelander (Anthony Starr) breaks a mirror which emphasizes his multiple personality disorder. “The original plan was that special effects was going to pre-break a mirror, and we were going to shoot Anthony Starr moving his head doing all of the performances in the different parts of the mirror,” Fleet reveals. “This was all based on a photo that my ex-brother-in-law sent me. He was walking down a street in Glendale, California, came across a broken mirror that someone had thrown out, and took a photo of himself where he had five heads in the mirror. We get there on the day, and I’m realizing that this is really complicated. Anthony has to do these five different performances, and we have to deal with infinite mirrors. At the last minute, I said, ‘We have to do this on a clean mirror.’ We did it on a clear mirror and gave Anthony different eyelines. The mirror break was all done in post, and we were able to cheat his head slightly and art-direct where the break crosses his chin. Editorial was able to do split screens for the timing of the dialogue.” “For the shots where the sheep are still and scream to the camera, Untold Studios did a bunch of R&D and came up with baboon teeth. I tried to keep anything real as much as possible, but, obviously, when sheep are flying, they have to be CG. I call it the Battlestar Galactica theory, where I like to shake the camera, overshoot shots and make it sloppy when they’re in the air so you can add motion blur. Comedy also helps sell visual effects.” —Stephan Fleet, VFX Supervisor Initially, the plan was to use a practical mirror, but creating a digital version proved to be the more effective solution. A different spin on the bloodbath occurs during a fight when a drugged Frenchie (Tomer Capone) hallucinates as Kimiko Miyashiro (Karen Fukuhara) goes on a killing spree. “We went back and forth with a lot of different concepts for what this hallucination would be,” Fleet remarks. “When we filmed it, we landed on Frenchie having a synesthesia moment where he’s seeing a lot of abstract colors flying in the air. We started getting into that in post and it wasn’t working. We went back to the rubber duckies, which goes back to the story of him in the bathtub. What’s in the bathtub? Rubber duckies, bubbles and water. There was a lot of physics and logic required to figure out how these rubber duckies could float out of someone’s neck. We decided on bubbles when Kimiko hits people’s heads. At one point, we had water when she got shot, but it wasn’t working, so we killed it. We probably did about 100 different versions. We got really detailed with our rubber duckie modeling because we didn’t want it to look cartoony. That took a long time.” Ambrosius, voiced by Tilda Swinton, gets a lot more screentime in Season 4. When Splinter (Rob Benedict) splits in two was achieved heavily in CG. “Erik threw out the words ‘cellular mitosis’ early on as something he wanted to use,” Fleet states. “We shot Rob Benedict on a greenscreen doing all of the different performances for the clones that pop out. It was a crazy amount of CG work with Houdini and particle and skin effects. We previs’d the sequence so we had specific actions. One clone comes out to the right and the other pulls backwards.” What tends to go unnoticed by many is Splinter’s clones setting up for a press conference being held by Firecracker (Valorie Curry). “It’s funny how no one brings up the 22-hour motion control shot that we had to do with Splinter on the stage, which was the most complicated shot!” Fleet observes. “We have this sweeping long shot that brings you into the room and follows Splinter as he carries a container to the stage and hands it off to a clone, and then you reveal five more of them interweaving each other and interacting with all of these objects. It’s like a minute-long dance. First off, you have to choreograph it. We previs’d it, but then you need to get people to do it. We hired dancers and put different colored armbands on them. The camera is like another performer, and a metronome is going, which enables you to find a pace. That took about eight hours of rehearsal. Then Rob has to watch each one of their performances and mimic it to the beat. When he is handing off a box of cables, it’s to a double who is going to have to be erased and be him on the other side. They have to be almost perfect in their timing and lineup in order to take it over in visual effects and make it work.”

ActuGaming.net Désormais séparé de Focus Entertainment, Streum On Studio (Necromunda: Hired Gun) prévoit d’annoncer son prochain jeu L’histoire commune entre Focus Entertainment et Streum On Studio ne restera qu’une page blanche, o

The commission, valued at up to £46,000 (including VAT), will see the appointed architect work closely with ateb’s internal teams to deliver a 30-unit housing development, supporting the group’s mission to create better living solutions for the people and communities of West Wales. The two-year contract, running from July 2025 to July 2027, will require the architect to oversee all stages of design, from feasibility through to tender, in line with Welsh Government technical scrutiny and local authority planning requirements. The project is part of ateb’s ongoing commitment to respond to local housing need, regenerate communities, and provide a variety of affordable tenures, including social rent, rent to buy, and shared ownership.Advertisement According to the brief: ‘The ateb Group (where ateb means answer or solution In Welsh) is a unique set o companies that collectively has the shared purpose of 'Creating better living solutions for the people and communities of West Wales. ‘ateb currently has around 3,100 homes predominantly in Pembrokeshire, that we rent on either a social or intermediate rental basis.  ateb works closely with its Local Authority and other partners to develop around 150 new homes every year, to meet affordable housing need through a range of tenures such as, for rent, rent to buy or shared ownership.’ Tavernspite is a small village of around 350 inhabitants located 9.7km southeast of Narberth in Pembrokeshire. Ateb, based in nearby Haverfordwest, is a not-for-profit housing association managing around 3,100 homes across the county. The group’s social purpose is supported by its subsidiaries: Mill Bay Homes, which develops homes for sale to reinvest profits into affordable housing, and West Wales Care and Repair, which supports older and vulnerable residents to remain independent in their homes. Bids will be assessed 60 per cent on quality and 40 per cent on price, with a strong emphasis on experience in the housing association sector and collaborative working with internal client teams.Advertisement Applicants must hold professional indemnity insurance of at least £2 million and be prepared to attend in-person evaluation presentations as part of the assessment process. Competition details Project title Provision of Architect Services for Tavernspite Development Client Contract value Tbc First round deadline Midday, 3 July 2025 Restrictions The contract particularly welcomes submissions from small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and voluntary, community, and social enterprises (VCSEs) More information https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/031815-2025

Requisition #: 16890 Our Mission: Powering Innovation That Drives Human Advancement When visionary companies need to know how their world-changing ideas will perform, they close the gap between design and reality with Ansys simulation. For more than 50 years, Ansys software has enabled innovators across industries to push boundaries by using the predictive power of simulation. From sustainable transportation to advanced semiconductors, from satellite systems to life-saving medical devices, the next great leaps in human advancement will be powered by Ansys. Innovate With Ansys, Power Your Career. Summary / Role Purpose The R&D Engineer II contributes to the development of software products and supporting systems. In this role, the R&D Engineer II will collaborate with a team of expert professionals to understand customer requirements and accomplish development objectives. Key Duties and Responsibilities Performs moderately complex development activities, including the design, implementation, maintenance, testing and documentation of software modules and sub-systems Understands and employs best practices Performs moderately complex bug verification, release testing and beta support for assigned products. Researches problems discovered by QA or product support and develops solutions Understands the marketing requirements for a product, including target environment, performance criteria and competitive issues Works under the general supervision of a development manager Minimum Education/Certification Requirements and Experience BS in Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, Engineering, or other natural science disciplines with 3-5 years' experience or MS with minimum 2 years experience Working experience within technical software development proven by academic, research, or industry projects. Good understanding and skills in object-oriented programming Experience with Java and C# / .NET Role can be remote, must be based on the East Coast due to timezone Preferred Qualifications and Skills Experience with C++, Python, in addition to Java and C# / .NET Knowledge of Task-Based Asynchronous design pattern (TAP) Exposure to model-based systems engineering concepts Working knowledge of SysML Know-how on cloud computing technologies like micro-service architectures, RPC frameworks (e.g., gRPC), REST APIs, etc. Knowledge of software security best practices Experience working on an Agile software development team Technical knowledge and experience with various engineering tools and methodologies, such as Finite Element simulation, CAD modeling, and Systems Architecture modelling is a plus Ability to assist more junior developers on an as-needed basis Ability to learn quickly and to collaborate with others in a geographically distributed team Excellent communication and interpersonal skills At Ansys, we know that changing the world takes vision, skill, and each other. We fuel new ideas, build relationships, and help each other realize our greatest potential. We are ONE Ansys. We operate on three key components: our commitments to stakeholders, our values that guide how we work together, and our actions to deliver results. As ONE Ansys, we are powering innovation that drives human advancement Our Commitments:Amaze with innovative products and solutionsMake our customers incredibly successfulAct with integrityEnsure employees thrive and shareholders prosper Our Values:Adaptability: Be open, welcome what's nextCourage: Be courageous, move forward passionatelyGenerosity: Be generous, share, listen, serveAuthenticity: Be you, make us stronger Our Actions:We commit to audacious goalsWe work seamlessly as a teamWe demonstrate masteryWe deliver outstanding resultsVALUES IN ACTION Ansys is committed to powering the people who power human advancement. We believe in creating and nurturing a workplace that supports and welcomes people of all backgrounds; encouraging them to bring their talents and experience to a workplace where they are valued and can thrive. Our culture is grounded in our four core values of adaptability, courage, generosity, and authenticity. Through our behaviors and actions, these values foster higher team performance and greater innovation for our customers. We're proud to offer programs, available to all employees, to further impact innovation and business outcomes, such as employee networks and learning communities that inform solutions for our globally minded customer base. WELCOME WHAT'S NEXT IN YOUR CAREER AT ANSYS At Ansys, you will find yourself among the sharpest minds and most visionary leaders across the globe. Collectively, we strive to change the world with innovative technology and transformational solutions. With a prestigious reputation in working with well-known, world-class companies, standards at Ansys are high - met by those willing to rise to the occasion and meet those challenges head on. Our team is passionate about pushing the limits of world-class simulation technology, empowering our customers to turn their design concepts into successful, innovative products faster and at a lower cost. Ready to feel inspired? Check out some of our recent customer stories, here and here . At Ansys, it's about the learning, the discovery, and the collaboration. It's about the "what's next" as much as the "mission accomplished." And it's about the melding of disciplined intellect with strategic direction and results that have, can, and do impact real people in real ways. All this is forged within a working environment built on respect, autonomy, and ethics.CREATING A PLACE WE'RE PROUD TO BEAnsys is an S&P 500 company and a member of the NASDAQ-100. We are proud to have been recognized for the following more recent awards, although our list goes on: Newsweek's Most Loved Workplace globally and in the U.S., Gold Stevie Award Winner, America's Most Responsible Companies, Fast Company World Changing Ideas, Great Place to Work Certified (China, Greece, France, India, Japan, Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, and U.K.).For more information, please visit us at Ansys is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, and other protected characteristics.Ansys does not accept unsolicited referrals for vacancies, and any unsolicited referral will become the property of Ansys. Upon hire, no fee will be owed to the agency, person, or entity.Apply NowLet's start your dream job Apply now Meet JobCopilot: Your Personal AI Job HunterAutomatically Apply to Remote Full-Stack Programming JobsJust set your preferences and Job Copilot will do the rest-finding, filtering, and applying while you focus on what matters. Activate JobCopilot

While IO Interactive may be heavily focused on its inaugural James Bond game, 2026’s 007 First Light, it’s still providing ambitious new levels and updates for Hitman: World of Assassination and its new science fiction action game MindsEye. To continue to build hype for First Light and IOI’s growing partnership with the James Bond brand, the latest World of Assassination level is a Bond crossover, as Hitman protagonist Agent 47 targets Le Chiffre, the main villain of the 2006 movie Casino Royale. Available through July 6, 2025, the Le Chiffre event in World of Assassination features actor Mads Mikkelsen reprising his fan-favorite Bond villain role, not only providing his likeness but voicing the character as he confronts the contract killer in France. Den of Geek attended the first-ever in-person IO Interactive Showcase, a partner event with Summer Game Fest held at The Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood. Mikkelsen and the developers shared insight on the surprise new World of Assassination level, with the level itself playable in its entirety to attendees on the Nintendo Switch 2 and PlayStation Portal. The developers also included an extended gameplay preview for MindsEye, ahead of its June 10 launch, while sharing some details about the techno-thriller. Matching his background from Casino Royale, Le Chiffre is a terrorist financier who manipulates the stock market by any means necessary to benefit himself and his clients. After an investment deal goes wrong, Le Chiffre tries to recoup a brutal client’s losses through a high-stakes poker game in France, with Agent 47 hired to assassinate the criminal mastermind on behalf of an unidentified backer. The level opens with 47 infiltrating a high society gala linked to the poker game, with the contract killer entering under his oft-used assumed name of Tobias Rieper, a facade that Le Chiffre immediately sees through. At the IO Interactive Showcase panel, Mikkelsen observed that the character of Le Chiffre is always one that he enjoyed and held a special place for him and his career. Reprising his villainous role also gave Mikkelsen the chance to reunite with longtime Agent 47 voice actor David Bateson since their ‘90s short film Tom Merritt, though both actors recorded their respective lines separately. Mikkelsen enjoyed that Le Chiffre’s appearance in World of Assassination gave him a more physical role than he had in Casino Royale, rather than largely placing him at a poker table. Of course, like most Hitman levels, there are multiple different ways that players can accomplish their main objective of killing Le Chiffre and escaping the premises. The game certainly gives players multiple avenues to confront the evil financier over a game of poker before closing in for the kill, but it’s by no means the only way to successfully assassinate him. We won’t give away how we ultimately pulled off the assassination, but rest assured that it took multiple tries, careful plotting, and with all the usual trial-and-error that comes from playing one of Hitman’s more difficult and immersively involved levels. Moving away from its more grounded action titles, IO Interactive also provided a deeper look at its new sci-fi game MindsEye, developed by Build a Rocket Boy. Set in the fictional Redrock City, the extended gameplay sneak peek at the showcase featured protagonist Adam Diaz fighting shadowy enemies in the futuristic city’s largely abandoned streets. While there were no hands-on demos at the showcase itself, the preview demonstrated Diaz using his abilities and equipment, including an accompanying drone, to navigate the city from a third-person perspective and use an array of weapons to dispatch those trying to hunt him down. MindsEye marks the first game published through IOI Partners, an initiative that has IOI publish games from smaller, external developers. The game did not have a hands-on demo at the showcase and, given its bug-heavy and poorly-received launch, this distinction is not particularly surprising. Build a Robot Boy has since pledged to support the game through June to fix its technical issues but, given the game’s hands-on access at the IOI Showcase, there were already red flags surrounding the game’s performance. With that in mind, most of the buzz at the showcase was unsurprisingly centered around 007 First Light and updates to Hitman: World of Assassination, and IO Interactive did not disappoint in that regard. Even with Hitman: World of Assassination over four years old now, the game continues to receive impressive post-release support from IO Interactive, both in bringing the title to the Nintendo Switch 2 and with additional DLC. At the showcase, IOI hinted at additional special levels for World of Assassintation with high-profile guest targets like Le Chiffre, without identifying who or if they’re also explicitly tied to the James Bond franchise. But with 007 First Light slated for its eagerly anticipated launch next year, it’s a safe bet that IOI has further plans to hype its own role in building out the James Bond legacy for the foreseeable future. The Hitman: World of Assassination special Le Chiffre level is available now through July 6, 2025 on all the game’s major platforms, including the Nintendo Switch 2. MindsEye is now on sale for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

Michael Davies is head of Stix Design, the graphic design and branding arm of architecture firm Sheppard Robson. He’s worked on BBC Cardiff, UCL Marshgate and Freshfields law firm’s London HQ. Design What would your monograph be called? No, I don’t shop at High and Mighty. I am the first-born son of West African parents, and growing up, I stood out because I was very tall – I’m now 6’ 7” – and also one of the only black kids at school. This led to a strong desire to fit in. Maybe this has made me always feel really comfortable as part of the team, working shoulder-to-shoulder to create work that stands out. But, of course, this instinct to collaborate is balanced with my idiosyncrasies and expressing my own perspectives on work and life. And yes, I shop at the same places as everyone else. What recent design work made you a bit jealous? I really like the wayfinding scheme at Borough Yards by f.r.a. When I first went there, the designs really spoke to me as a body of work. The work hit every button – intuition, intrigue, interaction, story-telling. The lot. It’s how I would love to have answered the brief. f.r.a.’s wayfinding work at Borough Yards What’s an unusual place you get inspiration from? I have a few. Salts Mill at Saltaire – a former mill housing art galleries, shops, and cafe and diner – and The Pheasantry Cafe at Bushy Park, but my current favourite has to be the ground floor cafe at the V&A. The sheer scale of its beauty and ambience is always surprising. They’ll throw in a quartet every now and then, in case you might think it isn’t atmospheric enough. It’s great for people-watching, too – I bet it’s a good spot for writers. Name something that is brilliantly designed, but overlooked. It has to be a brand new pencil. The very sight of one conjures up so much potential before you’ve even made a mark. What object in your studio best sums up your taste? Perhaps not strictly an object, but I Iove the cupboard-sized meeting room in the far corner of the second floor of our Camden office. It has a huge, cantilevered window that looks out onto our green roof. In the summer it turns into a full-on meadow. It’s a great place to feel the breeze, feel connected to nature and think. The view from the second floor meeting room Leadership What feedback felt brutal at the time, but turned out to be useful? Earlier in my senior career I worked for someone who’d employed a number of us from a previous agency. The familiarity was a key factor in why I took the position. A good friend and design director there advised me to step up and assume full responsibility for all aspects of the projects I worked on – “Don’t wait for instruction from your design leader, try to come forward with solutions rather than asking what should you do.” His implication was, “Don’t be too comfortable” and try not to lean into my design leader too often. Be more proactive. This proved to be a difficult period of transition for me at the time, with lots of sleepless nights questioning my every decision. Eventually, I learned there’s a value to making mistakes as it afforded me the opportunity to grow. That outcome was career-changing. What’s an underappreciated skill that design leaders need? Make the process as enjoyable as you can. A little self-deprecation and good humour goes a long way. Don’t take yourself too seriously, and be honest with praise – say when something goes well or looks great, just as you would when it doesn’t. What keeps you up at night? I work with a smallish team in a large organisation, so occasionally, several jobs might come in from different directions, all at the same time. That can be quite stressful. There’s always that one job that’s taking too long to land, you take on others to fill the gap and then it suddenly drops – arrrgh! What trait is non-negotiable in new hires? Working alongside so many different skill-sets here at Sheppard Robson affords us the luxury of attacking problems from all sides. The key to doing this successfully is through open lines of communication. I need good communicators and great listeners. Their work will always speak for itself, but those two traits make all the difference. Complete this sentence, “I wish more clients…” …would allow us to just lead the way. I know this isn’t always easy for clients, seeing as creativity is a totally different language/science to some. However, there’s no need to fight the process. Take your time selecting the right agency, then trust us, and enjoy the journey.

AI researchers have recently been asking themselves a version of the question, “Is that really Zuck?”As first reported by Bloomberg, the Meta CEO has been personally asking top AI talent to join his new “superintelligence” AI lab and reboot Llama. His recruiting process typically goes like this: a cold outreach via email or WhatsApp that cites the recruit’s work history and requests a 15-minute chat. Dozens of researchers have gotten these kinds of messages at Google alone. For those who do agree to hear his pitch (amazingly, not all of them do), Zuckerberg highlights the latitude they’ll have to make risky bets, the scale of Meta’s products, and the money he’s prepared to invest in the infrastructure to support them. He makes clear that this new team will be empowered and sit with him at Meta’s headquarters, where I’m told the desks have already been rearranged for the incoming team.Most of the headlines so far have focused on the eye-popping compensation packages Zuckerberg is offering, some of which are well into the eight-figure range. As I’ve covered before, hiring the best AI researcher is like hiring a star basketball player: there are very few of them, and you have to pay up. Case in point: Zuckerberg basically just paid 14 Instagrams to hire away Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang. It’s easily the most expensive hire of all time, dwarfing the billions that Google spent to rehire Noam Shazeer and his core team from Character.AI (a deal Zuckerberg passed on). “Opportunities of this magnitude often come at a cost,” Wang wrote in his note to employees this week. “In this instance, that cost is my departure.”Zuckerberg’s recruiting spree is already starting to rattle his competitors. The day before his offer deadline for some senior OpenAI employees, Sam Altman dropped an essay proclaiming that “before anything else, we are a superintelligence research company.” And after Zuckerberg tried to hire DeepMind CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu, he was given a larger SVP title and now reports directly to Google CEO Sundar Pichai. I expect Wang to have the title of “chief AI officer” at Meta when the new lab is announced. Jack Rae, a principal researcher from DeepMind who has signed on, will lead pre-training. Meta certainly needs a reset. According to my sources, Llama has fallen so far behind that Meta’s product teams have recently discussed using AI models from other companies (although that is highly unlikely to happen). Meta’s internal coding tool for engineers, however, is already using Claude. While Meta’s existing AI researchers have good reason to be looking over their shoulders, Zuckerberg’s $14.3 billion investment in Scale is making many longtime employees, or Scaliens, quite wealthy. They were popping champagne in the office this morning. Then, Wang held his last all-hands meeting to say goodbye and cried. He didn’t mention what he would be doing at Meta. I expect his new team will be unveiled within the next few weeks after Zuckerberg gets a critical number of members to officially sign on. Tim Cook. Getty Images / The VergeApple’s AI problemApple is accustomed to being on top of the tech industry, and for good reason: the company has enjoyed a nearly unrivaled run of dominance. After spending time at Apple HQ this week for WWDC, I’m not sure that its leaders appreciate the meteorite that is heading their way. The hubris they display suggests they don’t understand how AI is fundamentally changing how people use and build software.Heading into the keynote on Monday, everyone knew not to expect the revamped Siri that had been promised the previous year. Apple, to its credit, acknowledged that it dropped the ball there, and it sounds like a large language model rebuild of Siri is very much underway and coming in 2026.The AI industry moves much faster than Apple’s release schedule, though. By the time Siri is perhaps good enough to keep pace, it will have to contend with the lock-in that OpenAI and others are building through their memory features. Apple and OpenAI are currently partners, but both companies want to ultimately control the interface for interacting with AI, which puts them on a collision course. Apple’s decision to let developers use its own, on-device foundational models for free in their apps sounds strategically smart, but unfortunately, the models look far from leading. Apple ran its own benchmarks, which aren’t impressive, and has confirmed a measly context window of 4,096 tokens. It’s also saying that the models will be updated alongside its operating systems — a snail’s pace compared to how quickly AI companies move. I’d be surprised if any serious developers use these Apple models, although I can see them being helpful to indie devs who are just getting started and don’t want to spend on the leading cloud models. I don’t think most people care about the privacy angle that Apple is claiming as a differentiator; they are already sharing their darkest secrets with ChatGPT and other assistants. Some of the new Apple Intelligence features I demoed this week were impressive, such as live language translation for calls. Mostly, I came away with the impression that the company is heavily leaning on its ChatGPT partnership as a stopgap until Apple Intelligence and Siri are both where they need to be. AI probably isn’t a near-term risk to Apple’s business. No one has shipped anything close to the contextually aware Siri that was demoed at last year’s WWDC. People will continue to buy Apple hardware for a long time, even after Sam Altman and Jony Ive announce their first AI device for ChatGPT next year. AR glasses aren’t going mainstream anytime soon either, although we can expect to see more eyewear from Meta, Google, and Snap over the coming year. In aggregate, these AI-powered devices could begin to siphon away engagement from the iPhone, but I don’t see people fully replacing their smartphones for a long time. The bigger question after this week is whether Apple has what it takes to rise to the occasion and culturally reset itself for the AI era. I would have loved to hear Tim Cook address this issue directly, but the only interview he did for WWDC was a cover story in Variety about the company’s new F1 movie.ElsewhereAI agents are coming. I recently caught up with Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi ahead of his company’s annual developer conference this week in San Francisco. Given Databricks’ position, he has a unique, bird’s-eye view of where things are headed for AI. He doesn’t envision a near-term future where AI agents completely automate real-world tasks, but he does predict a wave of startups over the next year that will come close to completing actions in areas such as travel booking. He thinks humans will need (and want) to approve what an agent does before it goes off and completes a task. “We have most of the airplanes flying automated, and we still want pilots in there.”Buyouts are the new normal at Google. That much is clear after this week’s rollout of the “voluntary exit program” in core engineering, the Search organization, and some other divisions. In his internal memo, Search SVP Nick Fox was clear that management thinks buyouts have been successful in other parts of the company that have tried them. In a separate memo I saw, engineering exec Jen Fitzpatrick called the buyouts an “opportunity to create internal mobility and fresh growth opportunities.” Google appears to be attempting a cultural reset, which will be a challenging task for a company of its size. We’ll see if it can pull it off. Evan Spiegel wants help with AR glasses. I doubt that his announcement that consumer glasses are coming next year was solely aimed at AR developers. Telegraphing the plan and announcing that Snap has spent $3 billion on hardware to date feels more aimed at potential partners that want to make a bigger glasses play, such as Google. A strategic investment could help insulate Snap from the pain of the stock market. A full acquisition may not be off the table, either. When he was recently asked if he’d be open to a sale, Spiegel didn’t shut it down like he always has, but instead said he’d “consider anything” that helps the company “create the next computing platform.”Link listMore to click on:If you haven’t already, don’t forget to subscribe to The Verge, which includes unlimited access to Command Line and all of our reporting.As always, I welcome your feedback, especially if you’re an AI researcher fielding a juicy job offer. You can respond here or ping me securely on Signal.Thanks for subscribing.See More:

The 2025 edition of Summer Game Fest saw an 89% year-over-year growth in live peak viewership, according to StreamsCharts. Airing live across YouTube, Twitch and X (formerly Twitter) on June 6, the Geoff Keighley-hosted video game showcase, which was held out of the YouTube Theater at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, reached more than 50 million livestreams. That marks a record high in viewership for the event, which is now in its sixth year. Related Stories Major games announced or further teased during the show included the reveal of “Resident Evil Requiem,” “Atomic Heart 2,” “Scott Pilgrim EX,” “Mouse: P.I. for Hire,” “Game of Thrones: War for Westeros,” “Marvel’s Deadpool VR,” “007 First Light,” “Death Stranding 2: On the Beach” and “ARC Raiders.” Popular on Variety SEE ALSO: Variety’s Summer Game Fest Recap Per a Friday press release from Summer Game Fest, which is produced by Keighley and iam8bit, “In total, the peak concurrent audience for SGF reached more than 3 million live simultaneous viewers across Twitch and YouTube, with significant year over year growth on both platforms in terms of average viewership, watch time and co-streams.” Peak viewership stood on YouTube (via account for The Game Awards, which is the sister event to Summer Game Fest and is used as the feed for the SGF livestream as well) was up 43% compared to 2024, with the average audience up 38%, per StreamCharts data provided by SGF. The archived video version of the live show has currently racked up more than eight million views. In total, the peak concurrent audience on YouTube reached over 1.5 million viewers globally, On gaming-focused social media platform Twitch, peak viewership for SGF was up 38% with more than 8,900 channels co-streaming the show. The total concurrent live audience stood at more than 1.4 million viewers worldwide. SGF was the top global trend on X/Twitter with 17 out of the top 30 trends in the U.S. related to Summer Game Fest, per the event.

Elon Musk may be gone from the Trump administration — and his friendship status with President Donald Trump may be at best uncertain — but his whirlwind stint in government certainly left its imprint. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), his pet government-slashing project, remains entrenched in Washington. During his 130-day tenure, Musk led DOGE in eliminating about 260,000 federal employee jobs and gutting agencies supporting scientific research and humanitarian aid. But to date, DOGE claims to have saved the government $180 billion — well short of its ambitious (and frankly never realistic) target of cutting at least $2 trillion from the federal budget. And with Musk’s departure still fresh, there are reports that the federal government is trying to rehire federal workers who quit or were let go. For Elaine Kamarck, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, DOGE’s tactics will likely end up being disastrous in the long run. “DOGE came in with these huge cuts, which were not attached to a plan,” she told Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram. Kamarck knows all about making government more efficient. In the 1990s, she ran the Clinton administration’s Reinventing Government program. “I was Elon Musk,” she told Today, Explained. With the benefit of that experience, she assesses Musk’s record at DOGE, and what, if anything, the billionaire’s loud efforts at cutting government spending added up to. Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify. What do you think Elon Musk’s legacy is? Well, he will not have totally, radically reshaped the federal government. Absolutely not. In fact, there’s a high probability that on January 20, 2029, when the next president takes over, the federal government is about the same size as it is now, and is probably doing the same stuff that it’s doing now. What he did manage to do was insert chaos, fear, and loathing into the federal workforce. There was reporting in the Washington Post late last week that these cuts were so ineffective that the White House is actually reaching out to various federal employees who were laid off and asking them to come back, from the FDA to the IRS to even USAID. Which cuts are sticking at this point and which ones aren’t?First of all, in a lot of cases, people went to court and the courts have reversed those earlier decisions. So the first thing that happened is, courts said, “No, no, no, you can’t do it this way. You have to bring them back.” The second thing that happened is that Cabinet officers started to get confirmed by the Senate. And remember that a lot of the most spectacular DOGE stuff was happening in February. In February, these Cabinet secretaries were preparing for their Senate hearings. They weren’t on the job. Now that their Cabinet secretary’s home, what’s happening is they’re looking at these cuts and they’re saying, “No, no, no! We can’t live with these cuts because we have a mission to do.”As the government tries to hire back the people they fired, they’re going to have a tough time, and they’re going to have a tough time for two reasons. First of all, they treated them like dirt, and they’ve said a lot of insulting things. Second, most of the people who work for the federal government are highly skilled. They’re not paper pushers. We have computers to push our paper, right? They’re scientists. They’re engineers. They’re people with high skills, and guess what? They can get jobs outside the government. So there’s going to be real lasting damage to the government from the way they did this. And it’s analogous to the lasting damage that they’re causing at universities, where we now have top scientists who used to invent great cures for cancer and things like that, deciding to go find jobs in Europe because this culture has gotten so bad.What happens to this agency now? Who’s in charge of it?Well, what they’ve done is DOGE employees have been embedded in each of the organizations in the government, okay? And they basically — and the president himself has said this — they basically report to the Cabinet secretaries. So if you are in the Transportation Department, you have to make sure that Sean Duffy, who’s the secretary of transportation, agrees with you on what you want to do. And Sean Duffy has already had a fight during a Cabinet meeting with Elon Musk. You know that he has not been thrilled with the advice he’s gotten from DOGE. So from now on, DOGE is going to have to work hand in hand with Donald Trump’s appointed leaders.And just to bring this around to what we’re here talking about now, they’re in this huge fight over wasteful spending with the so-called big, beautiful bill. Does this just look like the government as usual, ultimately?It’s actually worse than normal. Because the deficit impacts are bigger than normal. It’s adding more to the deficit than previous bills have done. And the second reason it’s worse than normal is that everybody is still living in a fantasy world. And the fantasy world says that somehow we can deal with our deficits by cutting waste, fraud, and abuse. That is pure nonsense. Let me say it: pure nonsense.Where does most of the government money go? Does it go to some bureaucrats sitting on Pennsylvania Avenue? It goes to us. It goes to your grandmother and her Social Security and her Medicare. It goes to veterans in veterans benefits. It goes to Americans. That’s why it’s so hard to cut it. It’s so hard to cut it because it’s us. And people are living on it. Now, there’s a whole other topic that nobody talks about, and it’s called entitlement reform, right? Could we reform Social Security? Could we make the retirement age go from 67 to 68? That would save a lot of money. Could we change the cost of living? Nobody, nobody, nobody is talking about that. And that’s because we are in this crazy, polarized environment where we can no longer have serious conversations about serious issues. See More:

Meta is reportedly set to invest $15 billion to acquire a 49% stake in Scale AI, in a deal that would make Scale CEO Alexandr Wang head of the tech giant’s new AI unit dedicated to pursuing “superintelligence.”Scale AI, founded in 2016, is a leading data annotation firm that hires workers around the world to label or create the data that is used to train AI systems.The deal is expected to greatly enrich Wang and many of his colleagues with equity in Scale AI; Wang, already a billionaire, would see his wealth grow even further. For Meta, it would breathe new life into the company’s flagging attempts to compete at the “frontier” of AI against OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.However, Scale’s contract workers, many of whom earn just dollars per day via a subsidiary called RemoTasks, are unlikely to benefit at all from the deal, according to sociologists who study the sector. Typically data workers are not formally employed, and are instead paid for the tasks they complete. Those tasks can include labeling the contents of images, answering questions, or rating which of two chatbots’ answers are better, in order to teach AI systems to better comply with human preferences.(TIME has a content partnership with Scale AI.)“I expect few if any Scale annotators will see any upside at all,” says Callum Cant, a senior lecturer at the University of Essex, U.K., who studies gig work platforms. “It would be very surprising to see some kind of feed-through. Most of these people don’t have a stake in ownership of the company.”Many of those workers already suffer from low pay and poor working conditions. In a recent report by Oxford University’s Internet Institute, the Scale subsidiary RemoTasks failed to meet basic standards for fair pay, fair contracts, fair management, and fair worker representation.Advertisement“A key part of Scale’s value lies in its data work services performed by hundreds of thousands of underpaid and poorly protected workers,” says Jonas Valente, an Oxford researcher who worked on the report. “The company remains far from safeguarding basic standards of fair work, despite limited efforts to improve its practices.”The Meta deal is unlikely to change that. “Unfortunately, the increasing profits of many digital labor platforms and their primary companies, such as the case of Scale, do not translate into better conditions for [workers],” Valente says.A Scale AI spokesperson declined to comment for this story. “We're proud of the flexible earning opportunities offered through our platforms,” the company said in a statement to TechCrunch in May. Meta’s investment also calls into question whether Scale AI will continue supplying data to OpenAI and Google, two of its major clients. In the increasingly competitive AI landscape, observers say Meta may see value in cutting off its rivals from annotated data — an essential means of making AI systems smarter. Advertisement“By buying up access to Scale AI, could Meta deny access to that platform and that avenue for data annotation by other competitors?” says Cant. “It depends entirely on Meta’s strategy.”If that were to happen, Cant says, it could put downward pressure on the wages and tasks available to workers, many of whom already struggle to make ends meet with data work.A Meta spokesperson declined to comment on this story.