Posted by Justin Clark from Kotaku
When you finally get to him, the Performer will speak in wistful poetic prose about his homeland, playing lovely shamisen music in a moonlit courtyard, with a gentle lilt in his voice. And no amount of beautiful shamisen playing or poetic turns of phrase changes the fact that the Fox Onryo hired pirates to traffick…

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Posted by Brian Barnett from Kotaku
Peter Quill, AKA: Star-Lord, is a very straight-forward, powerful hero with the ability to keep consistent pressure on the enemy team and flexibility to fit in as both a frontline fighter and a powerful flanker, able to engage against any type of enemy effectively with his suite of tools.

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Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the cease-and-desist department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Microsoft said Wednesday that it broke down the Lumma Stealer malware project with the help of law enforcement officials across the globe. The tech giant said in a blog post that its digital crimes unit discovered more than 394,000 Windows computers were infected by the Lumma malware worldwide between March 16 through May 16. The Lumma malware was a favorite hacking tool used by bad actors, Microsoft said in the post. Hackers used the malware to steal passwords, credit cards, bank accounts and cryptocurrency wallets.

Microsoft said its digital crimes unit was able to dismantle the web domains underpinning Lumma's infrastructure with the help of a court order from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. The U.S. Department of Justice then took control of Lumma's "central command structure" and squashed the online marketplaces where bad actors purchased the malware. The cybercrime control center of Japan "facilitated the suspension of locally based Lumma infrastructure," the blog post said. "Working with law enforcement and industry partners, we have severed communications between the malicious tool and victims," Microsoft said in the post. "Moreover, more than 1,300 domains seized by or transferred to Microsoft, including 300 domains actioned by law enforcement with the support of Europol, will be redirected to Microsoft sinkholes." Cloudflare, Bitsight and Lumen also helped break down the Lumma malware ecosystem.

Posted by Kenneth Shepard from Kotaku
Despite having spent 45 hours with the game, I’m still not quite ready to slap “The Kotaku Review” on anything I write about The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy yet. Too Kyo Games’ tactical RPG has 100 endings and I’ve only seen a handful, the game’s “true” route not among them. But, my god, I gotta get more of my…

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Posted by Zack Zwiezen from Kotaku
Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo’s legendary game designer and the creator of Mario, Zelda, and more, is a busy guy these days. He’s helping Nintendo make movies while also being involved in the construction of Mario theme parks at Universal Studios. But really, it seems like Miyamoto just wants to make more Pikmin games,…

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Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the closer-look department: The U.S. trade deficit persists due to fundamental macroeconomic imbalances rather than just export shortfalls, according to Federal Reserve Bank of New York economist Thomas Klitgaard. His analysis shows the deficit reflects a persistent gap between domestic saving and investment spending, with the U.S. borrowing from foreign sources to fund domestic investment when savings fall short.

This macroeconomic reality means targeting specific trade categories won't resolve the overall imbalance -- even when the petroleum deficit disappeared by 2019 due to increased domestic production, the total trade deficit grew to $441 billion, consistent with a widening saving gap.

Bureau of Economic Analysis data reveals household saving has remained below pre-pandemic levels as consumers spend down accumulated savings from 2020-21, while business saving has remained relatively stable. Reducing the deficit would require significant macroeconomic adjustments, including higher domestic saving or reduced investment spending, which studies indicate would likely cause economic pain as demonstrated during the 2008 recession.

Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the new-world-order department: New analysis by MIT Technology Review reveals AI's rapidly growing energy demands, with data centers expected to triple their share of US electricity consumption from 4.4% to 12% by 2028. According to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory projections, AI alone could soon consume electricity equivalent to 22% of all US households annually, driven primarily by inference operations that represent 80-90% of AI's computing power.

The carbon intensity of electricity used by data centers is 48% higher than the US average, researchers found, as facilities increasingly turn to dirtier energy sources like natural gas to meet immediate needs. Tech giants are racing to secure unprecedented energy resources: OpenAI and President Trump announced a $500 billion Stargate initiative, Apple plans to spend $500 billion on manufacturing and data centers, and Google expects to invest $75 billion in AI infrastructure in 2025 alone. Despite their massive energy ambitions, leading AI companies remain largely silent about their per-query energy consumption, leaving researchers struggling to assemble what one expert called "a total black box."

Posted by from MMO Champion
World of Warcraft: Blood Ties by Christie Golden Now Available for Pre-order

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Officially licensed by Blizzard Entertainment, World of Warcraft: Blood Ties is an original prequel novel to the highly anticipated World of Warcraft: Midnight game expansion, the second chapter in the Worldsoul Saga.



Pre-order Now

Written by revered World of Warcraft author Christie Golden, this novel chronicles the journey of Arator the Redeemer, son of High Exarch Turalyon and the legendary Alleria Windrunner, as he embarks on a journey investigating rumors of a strange glow emanating from the ruins of a long abandoned Legion base, which leads him to uncover more about himself, his parents, and their heroic legacy.

Arator the Redeemer was born to heroism. The son of High Exarch Turalyon and the legendary Alleria Windrunner, Arator has long borne the weight and expectations of their legacy . . . a legacy he inherited as a babe, the day his parents disappeared through the Dark Portal.

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Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the how-about-that department: Sam Altman, OpenAI's chief executive, said Wednesday his firm was paying $6.5 billion to buy io, a one-year-old start-up created by Jony Ive, a former top Apple executive who designed the iPhone. From a report: The deal, which effectively unites Silicon Valley royalty, is intended to usher in what the two men call "a new family of products" for the age of artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I., which is shorthand for a future technology that achieves human-level intelligence.

The deal, which is OpenAI's biggest acquisition, will bring in Mr. Ive and his team of roughly 55 engineers, designers and researchers. They will assume creative and design responsibilities across OpenAI and build hardware that helps people better interact with the technology. In a joint interview, Mr. Ive and Mr. Altman declined to say what such devices could look like and how they might work, but they said they hoped to share details next year. Mr. Ive, 58, framed the ambitions as galactic, with the aim of creating "amazing products that elevate humanity."

Posted by Ethan Gach from Kotaku
Xbox Game Pass has been killing it this year and May is especially packed. The subscription library is getting a load of cool indies as well as 2024 GOTY contender Metaphor: ReFantazio. That’s on top of all of the heavy hitters that already arrived earlier in the month. There is, quiet simply, no time to play them…

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Posted by Zack Zwiezen from Kotaku
Surprise! If you are a Game Pass subscriber, you now have access to dozens and dozens of retro video games. And Xbox and Activision plan to add even more classic games in the future.

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Posted by John Walker from Kotaku
Refreshing the Pokémon Center to see what new items have been added each day has become something of an obsession for me. The site adds new stock so incredibly frequently as to be constantly astonishing, and today is no different. The latest arrivals on the store are a new collection of plushies that feature Ditto in…

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Posted by from MMO Champion
The AWC & MDI Season 2 Global Finals Start May 23!

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

The War Within Season 2 Arena World Championship and Mythic Dungeon International Global Finals are here! Over two weekends, celebrate the top Arena Gladiators and Dungeon Runners as they compete for their share of $520,000 (USD). Tune in live between May 23 and June 1 on Twitch and YouTube!

Arena World Championship Gauntlet and Grand Finals, May 23–25

With three Cups in Season 2, it was all on the line for teams to qualify for the AWC Grand Finals. We’ve seen a variety of compositions and tournament metas throughout the season, and now everything will be on the line in the Grand Finals weekend.

A fierce single-elimination bracket awaits the five teams that qualified for the AWC Gauntlet, where the winner will advance to join the three other teams per region that automatically advanced to the Grand Finals. There, they will compete in enthralling arenas to determine the season’s champions with $200,000 (USD) in combined prizing on the line.

Details

Venue: Online – Twitch.tv/Warcraft and YouTube.com/Warcraft

Watch Parties are invited to participate via the AWC Watch Party Form.

Dates:

AWC Gauntlet: May 23

AWC Grand Finals: May 24—25

Broadcast Start Time: 10:00 am PDT / 7:00 pm CEST

Prize Pool: $200,000 (USD)

Format: Best of 5, double elimination / Best of 7 Grand Final

Mythic Dungeon International TWW Season 2 Finals, May 30–June 1

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Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the great-artists-copy department: Microsoft is introducing a new "Cross Device Resume" feature for Windows 11, enabling app developers to let users seamlessly continue activity between devices in a manner closely mirroring Apple's Handoff for Macs and iPhones. Unveiled at Build 2025 during a session titled "Create Seamless Cross-Device Experiences with Windows for your app," the feature was demonstrated -- before the session was quietly edited to remove this segment -- by showing Spotify playing a song on an Android phone, then surfacing the Spotify app in the Windows taskbar with a phone icon; clicking this launches Spotify on the PC at precisely the same point in the app as on the phone, preserving playback position for uninterrupted use.

Posted by Kenneth Shepard from Kotaku
The Last of Us season two’s penultimate episode was almost entirely flashbacks of Joel and Ellie’s lives together in Jackson. Some of these were plucked straight from the Last of Us Part II video game, others are brand new for the series. The most important one, however, was Joel and Ellie’s final conversation on his…

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Posted by Ethan Gach from Kotaku
PlayStation Stars was Sony’s bizarre overhaul of its existing loyalty program aimed at rewarding players with not just points they could put toward purchases of digital games but also with collectibles they could display on a virtual shelf. It was a neat idea implemented in the worst way possible, and now Sony is…

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Posted by Zack Zwiezen from Kotaku
The first game we officially saw running on a Switch 2 was Mario Kart World. The open-world racing game will be launching alongside the new console next month, but that wasn’t always the plan. Mario Kart World was going to be a Switch 1 game, until the devs realized the aging console couldn’t handle it. So instead the…

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Posted by Brandon Morgan from Kotaku
If you’re playing a Mage-type class in Oblivion Remastered—who doesn’t want to toss fireballs and smack people with a lightning-infused backhand?—then you’ll need to prioritize improving the Destruction skill. It’s a key skill that turns the average magic-wielding wannabe into Merlin. With the right magical artifact,…

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Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the deeper-cuts department: An anonymous reader shares a report: Meta is expanding the ranks of its lowest-rated employees in mid-year performance reviews, a move that could lead to more performance-based cuts. Meta is telling managers to put more employees in "Below Expectations", the lowest performance bucket during this year's mid-year performance reviews, according to a memo shared on Meta's internal forum on May 14, which was viewed by Business Insider. For teams of 150 or more, Meta wants managers to put 15-20% of employees in the bottom bucket compared to 12-15% last year.

The expanded range includes employees who have already left the company as part of "non-regrettable attrition", Meta's term for staff considered non-critical to operations, including those who resigned or were dismissed for underperformance. The mid-year performance review process is "an opportunity to make exit decisions", according to the memo. It added that "there will be no company-wide performance terminations, unlike earlier this year," and leaders are expected to manage the performance of their reports.

Posted by Black Convoy from TFW2005


Via Reddit user u/_alcheim we have our first in-hand images of the new Transformers Timelines Comic Edition Hearts Of Steel Optimus Prime and Starscream which has just been released in stores in Australia. We have detailed pics of each toy in robot and alt mode as well as the packaging from several angles. For those wondering about scale, we also have comparison shots next to Deluxe Devastation Optimus Prime, Leader Megatronus The Fallen and Voyager ER Optimus Prime. Not much left to say, so check the mirrored images attached to this news post and then let us know your impressions on the » Continue Reading.

The post Transformers Timelines Comic Edition Hearts Of Steel Optimus Prime and Starscream In-Hand Images appeared first on Transformer World 2005 - TFW2005.COM.