Friday 19th April 2024

Cawl Cymreig: A Welsh stew for St David's Day

The annual celebration to honour the patron Saint of Wales includes cawl, an easy and succulent lamb stew with potatoes and vegetables.

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The ingenious wines birthed from black volcanic craters

In Spain's Lanzarote Island, conical hollows built into layers of volcanic ash yield wines that have been created from generations of ingenuity and hard work.

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47 Years Later, One Star Wars Scene Completely Changes How We See the Empire

One of the funniest bits in A New Hope wasn’t entirely written by George Lucas. When Han Solo tries to fake his way through a check-in from Imperial security, he famously concludes the call by blasting the intercom and saying, “Boring conversation anyway.” According to 1997’s Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays by Laurent Bouzereau, this dialogue was punched up by Lucas’ friends Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, a husband and wife writing team who provided more than one iconic Star Wars moment.

Han and Luke’s ad-hoc plan to rescue Princess Leia set a canonical precedent: the Empire has horrible security, and it’s much easier than it should be to sneak into top-secret facilities. Decades later, with The Bad Batch, the franchise is explaining why the Empire has such a tough time being competent. Spoilers ahead for The Bad Batch Season 3, Episode 13, “Into the Breach.”

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A Google Exec Reveals the Company's New Video Game Strategy -- And It's Exactly What You Think

Google Cloud director of games Jack Buser reveals how the company plans to win gaming with cloud servers and AI.

Imagine Baldur’s Gate 3, except the millions of dialogue lines and outcomes are generated by AI aided by humans. Google’s cloud department is exploring the idea of living games, that video games could respond to player input in the moment, and spin off in a million directions that even the game developers may not entirely foresee.

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Netflix's Most Exciting Crime Thriller of the Year Reinvents a Classic Trope

As Glen Powell’s Gary Johnson tells us in Hit Man’s opening moments, the titular figure doesn’t actually exist outside of our collective imagination. It’s a concept, a character invented by noir and generations of paranoia. But that doesn’t make the idea any less appealing; one can get caught up in the fantasy no matter who you are, as Powell’s mild-mannered leading man soon discovers.

The Top Gun: Maverick alum co-wrote and stars in Hit Man alongside a frequent collaborator, director Richard Linklater. Based on an outrageously true story published in Texas Monthly in 2001, Hit Man follows the misadventures of a psychology professor who becomes the world’s best fake assassin. Check out the new trailer below.

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Is 'X-Men '97' Canon to the MCU? Kevin Feige Considered It

Marvel has used Disney+ to rapidly expand the Marvel Cinematic Universe through live-action television, but animation has been a different story altogether. The first animated Marvel series on Disney+ was technically canon to the MCU, but its multiversal hijinks didn’t affect the main storyline.

X-Men ’97 appeared equally ambiguous. While former showrunner Beau DeMayo stated unequivocally that the series exists as its own entity, the situation was a little more complicated. Emi Yonemura, who directed Episodes 3 and 5, tells Inverse that Marvel seriously considered making the series canon.

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Microsoft's New AI Makes Convincing Deepfakes Worryingly Easy

Microsoft introduced the VASA-1 research project that can take a single image and an audio clip and transform it into a high-quality video of a talking head that looks eerily similar to the real thing. We have to stress that it’s just a research project at the moment, meaning it’s not readily accessible, but that doesn’t make it any less disconcerting.

There are innocuous examples with VASA-1, like infusing Mona Lisa with Anne Hathaway’s rap skills but we’re more concerned about the likelihood that this will be used to create deepfakes with a more nefarious purpose — think spreading misinformation or carrying out identity theft.

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Here's Exactly How Long It Takes to Beat 'FFXVI's The Rising Tide DLC

The Rising Tide finally answers one of the biggest burning questions from Final Fantasy XVI: what happened to Leviathan the Lost? The second and final DLC adds on an entirely new area, main quest, and a handful of side quests to boot. As Clive’s final outing, fans will likely want to know exactly what the journey will entail, and The Rising Tide even has a few extra surprises packed in. Here’s everything you need to know about how to start The Rising Tide in FFXVI, and how long the DLC takes to beat.

The Rising Tide is quite a bit longer than the previous DLC, Echoes of the Fallen, and features a good amount of optional content. If you’re just following the main story about Leviathan you’re looking at roughly 4 to 5 hours. The Rising Tide’s battles are also more challenging than the base game, so if you’re playing on Final Fantasy Mode that time might go up a bit.

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No, the 'Fallout' Show Didn't Just Erase the Best Game in the Series

Amazon’s Fallout TV show has been a huge hit with viewers, but some key moments in the series have fans of the games scratching their heads. The fate of the Brotherhood of Steel airship and the city of Shady Sands in the show are raising so many questions about the canon of Fallout as a whole that Bethesda Game Studios director Todd Howard has stepped in to clarify the show’s place in series lore. And while his statement might lay to rest fears of one of the most beloved Fallout games being erased from the timeline, the conversation raises a much bigger question — why do we care so much about canon anyway?

The Fallout canon kerfuffle revolves around two moments in the new show. At one point, viewers see a massive airship belonging to the Brotherhood of Steel, which internet sleuths have discovered is called the Prydwen. That’s led some to believe that one of Fallout 4’s possible four endings has been declared the true ending, since several of them involve destroying the Prydwen.

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Razer's Controller Turns Your iPad Mini Into an XL Gaming Handheld

A larger display may make mobile gaming better on a tablet as opposed to a smartphone, but you still have to deal with those clunky touchscreen controls. Instead of furiously tapping on a tablet, however, Razer now offers the Kishi Ultra controller that can fit an iPad mini or other tablets with displays up to eight inches.

It may feel a little absurd to cram a tablet between a controller, but the Kishi Ultra’s design makes for a more premium handheld gaming experience with better ergonomics. It can still fit iPhone 15 and other smartphones, but since it uses a USB-C connection, those with older iPhones and iPads are out of luck.

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