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My hands-off demo starts with a short boot-up sequence that mimics the style, architecture and puzzles of the original game. It's after this that The Talos Principle 2 reveals the ace up its sleeve. You are born into the world—the 1,000th citizen of the city of New Jerusalem, and, according to the rules of their society, also the last. In an effort to avoid the mistakes of the past, the robots strive for ecological austerity. 1,000 people. That's it. That's their lot.

Old YouTube Gameplay Trailer

This easter egg is nestled in Act 1 of the game and highlighted by Reddit user Sapowski_Casts_Quen. They discovered that Auntie Ethel, everyone's favourite hag and charming lass, may actually owe their name to a specific bit of Dungeons and Dragons writing.

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And would you believe it, Auntie Ethel just so happens to be one of the possible outcomes of using said table. This is cool to the layman now, just learning of this little reference now after the fact, but it's especially cool that a Dungeons and Dragons player who really knows their stuff could figure out that Auntie Ethel is a hag before the game tips its hand.

I've had a chance to play Ghostrunner 2 now, and I can't stress enough that it has a motorbike.

To say that developer One More Level has decided that you can't get enough of a good thing would be an understatement. Ghostrunner 2 is precisely that, more of a good thing. Now, the good thing has been expanded in ways to make it an improved good thing, but if you liked Ghostrunner, then Ghostrunner 2 will likely be the game for you. I realise that is essentially the summary of a preview or review, and I will have to explain myself, so explain I will.

IGN's Official Release Date Trailer

FSP has announced that it will update its entire 2023 PSU lineup to the 12V-2x6 power connectors which are part of the ATX 3.0 standard.

This year at Computex 2023, we saw a range of products from FSP which include small form factor and goliath PSUs with up to 2500W power rating and dual 12VHPWR connectors. These were early units so it is expected that we will now see them equipped with the latest 12V-2x6 connectors. The press conference (via QuasarZone) highlighted the Hydrp G PRO series, Hydro PTM series, and the SFF Dagger PRO series as the first to utilize the new ATX 3.0 12V-2x6 connectors,

Intel Graphics has released yet another beta version of the Intel Arc GPU Graphics drivers, version 101.4676 Beta. The new version brings a couple of fixes for Starfield game, with more fixes coming in the future updates. In general, it improves stability of the game as well as fixes some rendering issues.

The latest Intel Arc GPU Graphics driver is still a beta release and hopefully, Intel will eventually launch the full Game On drivers, as there are still plenty of known issues with the game. On the other hand, as reported by Videocardz.com, Bethesda has noted that the Arc A770 GPU does not actually meet minimum requirements for the game, as these still include the Radeon RX 5700 and GeForce GTX 1070 Ti.

Download Link

FIXED ISSUES:
Intel Arc Graphics Products:

• Starfield (DX12) improved stability in different areas of the game.
• Starfield (DX12) may incorrectly render glass surfaces and objects.
• Starfield (DX12) may exhibit missing eyebrows on characters.

(More details at the link)

You see, this isn't just a racing game but a CaRPG with the aim of bringing back fun to the genre. Not only will players be driving high speed cars, they'll be exploring a cartoonish open world, engaging in a choice-based narrative, and heavily customising their character and vehicle. It's incredibly ambitious.

YouTube Announcement Video

Speaking to lead designer Violet McVinnie at Gamescom, it's clear where the inspiration for the game has come from. McVinnie used to work for both BioWare, on the Mass Effect series, and Codemasters, known for its driving games. Resister, then, is Burnout meets Mass Effect.

McVinnie talked me through the main elements of the game in detail.

First up, the racing. Resistor isn't about tournaments or racing to first place. This is a speedy stunt racer, with takedowns, drifts and flips. Players can race up ramps and corkscrew their vehicles for maximum style points, used as a currency to reward spectacular racing, maintaining momentum, and completing Tony Hawk style challenges along the way.

Racing will take place in an open world consisting of six environments just off the ocean floor of San Francisco. Exploration will be both in-vehicle and on foot as players meet various quirky inhabitants and complete quests. It's all presented in a vivid cartoon style, the world run by seven megacorporations that have overthrown the government in a (not-so-distant) future. I suggest there may be some parallels to reality there and McVinnie responds with a sly smile.

At the start of the week, the Hero Pass was added to the MMORPG, which Jagex previously described as an "always-on reward system". However, the reaction from players was overwhelmingly negative, in particular for pay-to-win options like purchasing Underworld Emblems or levels in the Hero Pass. This is in addition to other changes around content buffs and the Daily Challenge system.

Jagex yesterday released an update promising change. However the severity of player feedback meant the developer has now swiftly released another update, admitting: "We messed up".

Community solar and storage could help power California toward its goals for clean energy, grid reliability, energy equity and affordable housing — but only if regulators don’t allow the state’s biggest utilities to undermine it.

That’s the argument a sprawling coalition of solar industry groups, consumer advocates, environmental justice organizations, labor unions and the state’s homebuilding industry has been making before the California Public Utilities Commission over the past few months.

The fight has centered around a new proposed payment structure for community solar called the Net Value Billing Tariff (NVBT), which the coalition says is crucial to revamping California’s moribund community solar market and would make community solar in the state both economical and effective. A structure for community solar payments was ordered up by AB 2316, a state law passed last year.

California lawmakers on Thursday narrowly approved a bill supported by veterans and criminal justice reform advocates to decriminalize the possession and personal use of a limited list of natural psychedelics, including “magic mushrooms.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom will now decide the fate of Senate Bill 58, which would remove criminal penalties for the possession and use of psilocybin and psilocin, the active ingredients in psychedelic mushrooms, mescaline and dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, known as ayahuasca. The bill also would require the California Health and Human Services Agency to study the therapeutic use of psychedelics and submit a report with its findings and recommendations to the Legislature.

Clubhouse, once the Silicon Valley darling of pandemic-era social media, announced earlier this year that it was laying off half its staff as its founders pivoted to building “Clubhouse 2.0.” Now, the company is sharing the results of its big reset, with a redesign meant to make Clubhouse “more like a messaging app.”

The audio app is pivoting from its signature “drop-in” audio conversations to friend-centric voice chats, the company said in an update. Instead of sprawling rooms where users host live-streamed conversations open to any and all of the app’s users, the new Clubhouse will instead encourage users to join groups with people they know.

A coalition of 22 donors today announced Press Forward, a national initiative to strengthen communities and democracy by supporting local news and information with an infusion of more than a half-billion dollars over the next five years. Press Forward will enhance local journalism at an unprecedented level to re-center local news as a force for community cohesion; support new models and solutions that are ready to scale; and close longstanding inequities in journalism coverage and practice.

Since 2005, approximately 2,200 local newspapers have closed, resulting in 20 percent of Americans living in “news deserts” with little to no reliable coverage of important local events. Press Forward seeks to reverse the dramatic decline in local news that has coincided with an increasingly divided America and weakening trust in institutions.

Grindr has lost about 45% of its staff as it enforces a strict return-to-office policy that was introduced after a majority of employees announced a plan to unionize.

About 80 of the 178 employees at the LGBTQ+ dating app company resigned after the company in August mandated that workers return to work in person two days a week at assigned “hub” offices or be fired, the Communications Workers of America said in a statement Wednesday.

The West Hollywood-based company also gave a severance package to staff who were unable to relocate, in what the CWA alleged was an attempt “to silence workers from speaking out about their working conditions,” according to a statement from the organization. The CWA filed a new labor complaint against the company on Wednesday, the second such complaint in about a month.