GoKawiil
Tech News
Prime Video has launched Neagley, a spinoff of its hit series Reacher, centering on Maria Sten's character Frances Neagley as she investigates the suspicious death of her childhood friend Tommy. The eight-episode series follows Neagley into a cult-run commune where a psychoactive drug tied to a pharmaceutical company appears connected to the death, with Alan Ritchson's Reacher making a brief cameo appearance.
Campari has launched the 14th annual Negroni Week, a promotional campaign that runs at thousands of participating bars and restaurants nationwide to celebrate the classic bitter cocktail. The company tapped 'The Traitors' host Alan Cumming to front this year's 'stay bitter' campaign, linking the drink's signature bite to the show's dramatic eliminations.
A UX designer describes an eight-week collaboration with Raph Koster, author of 'A Theory of Fun,' to study how video game design principles could inform app UX beyond traditional gamification tactics like achievements. The piece explores the initial tension between game design's use of 'juicy' visual feedback and tension-building mechanics versus UX design's typical goal of minimalism and simplicity.
Marvel has finally worked Miracleman, a character it acquired publishing rights to years ago but rarely used, into its main comics continuity. The character appears as part of the 'Avengers: Armageddon' crossover event, though not in the manner most longtime fans anticipated.
Control Resonant is Remedy Entertainment's sequel to 2019's Control, following Dylan Faden as he tries to redeem himself after the Hiss overrun Manhattan and threaten the wider world. The game retains Remedy's signature strange, character-driven narrative but shifts to a broader, open-world structure centered on protagonist Dylan working with field leader Zoe.
Randy Smith, who worked on the Thief series before founding indie studio Tiger Style, argues that game graphics reached a sufficient level of realism with Remedy's Alan Wake back in 2010. He says pouring ever-larger budgets into chasing photorealism beyond that point delivers diminishing returns for most games, even if it still adds spectacle to immersive sims like Thief or Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.
Former Thief designer Randy Smith argued in a recent interview that the games industry should have stopped chasing ever-greater photorealism after Remedy's 2010 title Alan Wake, which he says already delivered enough visual immersion to make players feel part of its world. He said anything beyond that level of graphical polish is just extra 'gravy' that doesn't meaningfully improve gameplay experiences, especially in immersive sims like Thief or Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.
A new essay contends that the main obstacle to wider AI adoption isn't the technology's power but users' inability to know what to ask for. It compares this to Alan Kay's ant-in-the-canyon metaphor: skilled users see a full landscape of possible automations, while everyday users face a blank prompt with no sense of what's achievable.
Alan Waldenberg, longtime outside counsel to Cerberus Capital Management and personal trust manager for Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg, also served as the Pentagon's lawyer on its $400 million equity stake and $150 million loan to rare earth miner MP Materials. Feinberg, Cerberus's founder, now holds vast sway over Pentagon budgets and contracts, and reportedly picked Waldenberg himself to work on the deal. The arrangement surfaced amid a broader Pentagon push, now exceeding $2 billion, to invest directly in critical minerals and battery firms to counter China.