Age of Mythology: Retold is still mostly a classic RTS, but the visual overhaul makes a big difference.
How the mighty are fallen. In a bygone era, Tiberium harvesters and chariot archer rushes were a mainstay on my monitors, and my keyboards bore careworn lines where the 'build archery range' shortcut keys lay. It was a time of plenty, but modern real-time strategy games are far rarer, and that means the stakes always feel high when one arrives. Particularly one that starts with Age of...
Enter Age of Mythology: Retold—not a 100% faithful translation of Ensemble’s 2002 original but, as the name indicates, a modern interpretation which walks the tightrope of updating the bits that feel clunky by today’s standards without killing the sense of nostalgia. It’s a particularly tricky kind of alchemy, and although there are some tonal mis-steps *cough* voice acting *cough* it largely succeeds in knowing when to stick and when to twist.
That’s despite a list of developers so long that it makes the average Call Of Duty seem like a mad auteur’s passion project. World's Edge, Forgotten Empires, Tantalus Media, CaptureAge, and Virtuos Games have all lent their talents to this one, and maybe it’s unfair for me to be surprised that it feels so cohesive. This is modern game development after all, the pipeline that never sleeps.
Age of Mythology is more or less Age of Empires set in mythical eras, where powerful hero units and mythological beasts fight alongside conventional military archers and spearmen. Friendlier and slower-paced than Starcraft’s ruthlessly aggressive take on RTS, but built around the usual rock-paper-scissors game of unit strengths and weaknesses. Victory is wrought by finding the right army composition and using your limited resources—food, wood, gold and favor—to materialise it.
A UI and visual overhaul occupies the headline billing since it’s the most noticeable element, and it feels in touch with the original game without being overly married to it. The arrangement of your units, resources and build options is logical and clean. Hero units glimmer with a distinctive aura, and the ancient environs hit your eye with impressive detail. One of the many reasons I’ll never rank particularly highly online in this game is that I get distracted by the lovely oceans and spend seconds at a time just… watching them.
Onto more meaningful nuts-and-bolts changes: I’ve chalked up many Ls in RTS skirmishes past and present due to over-adventurous units taking mad hikes across the map, but with the new ‘attack move’ command in Retold comes a lifeline. Micromanagement’s still important for arranging your unit types so that they hit the battle in the right order, but ‘attack move’ tells everyonne to engage with all enemies they meet along the way to your waypoint. That meant no suicidal dashes towards buildings for my campaign armies while ignoring the infantry units pelting them in close proximity. Outside of combat units can still be caught going for an unsanctioned wander off into nothingness, but Retold feels like a big upgrade on the original’s often baffling pathfinding where it matters most.
The best thing about combat in this game is finding the sweet spot between human and mythical units, and knowing when to send super-tough heroes into battle with them. It took me a few skirmishes to find that mix for Nords, whose reworking now involves more ranged units but still play very differently to their enemies (pro tip: their military units also handle building construction).
With apologies to all historical shipwrights, I found great success in naval combat by spamming ships to distract my enemies and keep the pressure off my base. That meant destroying their docks was an important step towards resigning them to the history books. With all ship types available from the Classical age, the aquatic version of rock-paper-scissors is just as tactical as the terra firma equivalent that you’re managing with your archers and infantry.
God powers are no longer one-shot, game-changing cataclysms, but now operate on cooldown timers and can be deployed more than once per round. I can’t decide whether that feels more or less strategic—the gravity of deciding when to use a powerful one-shot in the original game is offset by the depth of timing one just right in Retold so that you’ll get it at a useful moment later. The powers break down into AoE damage-dealing abilities, with some enjoyable twists like Aphrodite’s curse, which turns enemy units into pigs, and resource buffs.
God powers aren’t exclusively about raining death down on your foes with satisfying AoE icons, though. Take wonders, for example. Where before you could construct certain wonders that would win you a round if you defended them for long enough, now they simply provide you with constant passive buffs that hasten your victory. That feels like a less stressful route to the win, but not necessarily a simpler one since you still need to carefully consider how to spend those resources.
The sell here, after sitting with all of Retold's changes to a 22-year-old game, is that the slower pace and the combination of historic and mythological units makes for a relaxing, therapeutic RTS session. The Greeks, Egyptians, Norse and Atlanteans play differently enough to take some pleasure from mastery of each, and although it’s an odd business decision that the Chinese—added as DLC after the original’s release—haven't been bundled in, they are at least being added in Retold’s first DLC.
There have been concerns over the character portraits in Retold, and speculation that the devs used AI to generate them—an accusation that the devs squarely denied, stating clearly that they’re drawn by human artists. The problem to my eye isn’t who drew them, it’s that they lack charm. People get understandably attached to characterful touches in classic games when so much of the presentation was of limited fidelity, so the bar’s high when you’re updating them. It’s a minor misstep that they lack some personality, nothing more.
The same’s probably true of the voice acting. It’s probably just a minor issue. Probably. After all, cutscenes are not the game. They’re the bits that bookend it. But the performances are a rogue’s gallery of slightly off accents, and that does detract from the drama and immersion. I found myself feeling harsher towards this one point as I got deeper through the campaigns, but we should all probably remember that bad cutscene performances are basically mandatory in real-time strategy. The great Tim Curry taught us that.
Retold is brave enough to play with the balance and the stat values of its source material, and that makes for some knotty, tactically fascinating skirmishes. Watching Hittites flanked by Minotaurs lay siege to the walls of Troy has been a genre highlight for me. It could have been braver about the stylistic bits, the way gods and heroes are characterised visually and in motion. But given real-time strategy’s tenuous spot in the current PC gaming pantheon, Retold is an important, if qualified, win.
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Kenyan police deployed to Haiti haven’t received full promised salary in two months
Hundreds of Kenyan police officers leading an international policing force in Haiti have not received their full pay for two months, the latest complication in what has been a rocky start to the security mission in the gang-plagued Caribbean nation.
The first Kenyan officers deployed to Haiti arrived in June, the vanguard of a multinational security support mission (MSS) that is being funded largely by the United States. There are now around 400 Kenyan police in the country, many from specialized units.
In an August 25 statement acknowledging delays to payments, the MSS announced that officers could expect the missing funds to hit their bank accounts this week.
“Therefore, there is nothing to worry about (regarding) welfare issues of the MSS officers, since mainstream processes have been finalized,” the MSS added.
In a “progress report” released Monday, Kenya’s National Police Service (NPS) said that the officers were continuing “to draw their NPS salaries” while waiting for the supplemental pay for their MSS duties.
Kenyan officers had expected to be paid a significant supplement for their Haiti deployment – a grueling assignment more typical of a military than of a police force. Officers are not allowed to leave their base in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince during non-working hours.
Speaking to CNN, some officers expressed frustration and concern about the missing supplemental payments. With schools reopening in Kenya this week, some say they need the money urgently to manage school fees and other expenses for their families back home.
“The officers feel frustrated after not having been paid for two months. And we hear that the money has already been sent to Kenya but they haven’t paid us, so please help us out,” one officer in Haiti told CNN before the police statement was released, requesting anonymity.
The MSS force is expected to ultimately grow to 2,500, with more troops expected from Jamaica, Benin, Chad, the Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados and Belize. The force is hoped to bolster the Haitian National Police’s battles against an alliance of gangs that controls an estimated 85% of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area.
Around 600,000 Haitians have been forced to flee their homes due to gang violence, and some 2 million people live in gang-ravaged areas where fear of attack is constant, Haitian interim Prime Minister Garry Conille said in an interview with CNN in early August.
The MSS is financed through a UN-managed trust fund, to which the US, Canada, France and Spain have contributed millions of dollars. The United States has committed at least $380 million overall in support of the mission, largely in the form of equipment and materiel.
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in 1961, Ranger 1, the first mission in the Ranger program, launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
#OTD in 1961, Ranger 1, the first mission in the Ranger program, launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. A rocket malfunction during launch caused the spacecraft to get stranded in low-Earth orbit. Read More...
The History of Space Exploration
Space exploration is one of humanity's most significant achievements, showcasing our desire to explore the unknown and push the boundaries of what is possible. From the earliest rocket experiments to landing on the Moon and exploring distant planets, the journey of space exploration has been marked by remarkable milestones and technological advancements.
Early Beginnings
The dream of space travel dates back centuries, with early theories and stories about flying to the stars. However, practical attempts began in the early 20th century with the development of rocketry. Pioneers like Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Robert Goddard, and Hermann Oberth laid the groundwork for modern rocketry with their theories and experiments.
The Space Race
The Cold War era saw the rise of the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union, driving rapid advancements in space technology. On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, marking the beginning of the Space Age. This achievement spurred the United States to accelerate its space program.
Human Spaceflight
The next significant milestone was human spaceflight. On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet cosmonaut, became the first human to orbit the Earth aboard Vostok 1. This historic flight demonstrated the feasibility of human space travel and intensified the Space Race.
The Moon Landing
One of the most iconic achievements in space exploration is the Apollo 11 mission. On July 20, 1969, NASA's Apollo 11 mission successfully landed astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin on the Moon, while Michael Collins orbited above. Armstrong's famous words, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," echoed around the world as he became the first human to set foot on the lunar surface.
Space Stations
The development of space stations allowed humans to live and work in space for extended periods. The Soviet Union launched the first space station, Salyut 1, in 1971. Later, the International Space Station (ISS), a collaborative effort involving multiple countries, became a symbol of international cooperation in space exploration. The ISS has been continuously occupied since November 2000, conducting scientific research and technological experiments.
Mars Exploration
Mars has been a focal point of robotic exploration. NASA's Viking program, launched in the 1970s, sent two landers to Mars, providing valuable data about the Martian surface and atmosphere. More recently, rovers like Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity, and Perseverance have explored Mars, searching for signs of past life and studying the planet's geology and climate.
The Future of Space Exploration
The future of space exploration holds exciting possibilities. Space agencies and private companies are working on missions to return humans to the Moon, establish a sustainable presence on Mars, and explore asteroids and other celestial bodies. Innovations in spacecraft design, propulsion systems, and international collaborations are paving the way for the next era of space exploration.
Space exploration continues to inspire and drive technological advancements, expanding our understanding of the universe and our place within it. As we look to the stars, the spirit of exploration and discovery that has guided humanity for centuries will undoubtedly lead us to new frontiers and unimaginable achievements.
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Which state(s) could Kamala and Walz *realistically* try to win that she and Biden did not win in 2020 (flip from red to blue)?
#USElections
I was looking at the 2020 presidential election results the other day on Wikipedia, and based on the states that were won by a narrow margin by either candidate, most were won by Biden.
However, Trump won North Carolina by 1.35% (74,483 votes), which seems to be the most likely state Kamala and Walz could flip.
Although Florida was won by Trump by 3.36% (371,686 votes), it’s likely to remain red especially based on the 2022 governor election results.
I’m not sure how much effort the Harris campaign would/will put into Maine’s 2nd congressional district 7.44%, 27,996 votes).
By this point things are looking like more of a longshot. Trump won Ohio by 8.03% (475,669 votes).
Trump won Iowa by 8.20% (138,611 votes).
Based on this alone, it seems like only North Carolina could be where the Harris campaign could expand from 2020, but of course that would be in addition to holding the close states they won that election (Arizona, Georgia…).
Any thoughts on how the Harris campaign will proceed? Would the Harris campaign be better off with focusing all their efforts on maintaining what she and Biden won in 2020? Or would it depend how polls are trending in the next few/several weeks?
Edited to add: I completely missed mentioning Texas, my mistake. Trump had won by 5.58% (631,221 votes). Maybe if there’s a strong enough push this could be flipped?
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A Triangular Prominence Hovers Over the Sun
Image Credit & Copyright: Andrea Vanoni
Explanation: Why is there a triangle hovering over the Sun? Although the shape is unusual, the type of structure is not: it is part of an evolving solar prominence. Looping magnetic fields on the Sun channel the flow of energetic particles, sometimes holding glowing gaseous structures aloft for months.
A prominence glows brightly because it contains particularly hot, dense, or opaque solar plasma. The surprising triangular structure occurred last week. Larger than our Earth, the iconic prominence was imaged by several solar photographers and documented by NASA's Solar Dynamic Observatory to form and violently dissipate in about a day.
The featured image was captured in a color of red light emitted strongly by hydrogen. Below, solar fibrils carpet the Sun's chromosphere, while the background sky is so faint in comparison that no stars are visible. Our Sun's surface has been quite active this year.
#space #sun #universe
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Runescape's latest content roadmap includes group ironman mode, a new skilling boss, and exciting advancements in woodcutting
Runescape, the game that isn't the old school one that I imagine when someone says "Runescape," just rolled out a new roadmap of upcoming content. On YouTube, Runescape developer Jagex unveiled Runescape Ahead, which it says will be its ongoing format for long-term previews of updates on the horizon. In the first instalment, detailing what'll be hitting Runescape through late 2024 and early 2025, Jagex offered early glimpses at a pile of new features, updates, and content additions, like new story quests and bosses, a group ironman mode, and more. Try to contain your excitement, woodcutters: You're getting a new tree.
Jagex will kick off its autumn updates with a new Underworld dungeon, where players will face a new skilling boss to enter the shrine of an absent goddess and earn new rewards. Later in autumn, alongside a new Halloween event called Harvest Hollow, Jagex is planning on bringing a group ironman mode to Runescape, where a team of players can face the game and earn unique cosmetic rewards using only what they can gather, craft, and loot amongst themselves—all without XP bonuses.
Throughout, Jagex will be implementing player-requested updates to skills. A fourth Necromancy conjure ability will arrive sometime in autumn, allowing players with sufficient skill to summon a phantom guardian. There'll also be a new Slayer monster to hunt, offering a Necromancy upgrade for the Slayer helm.
Winter will bring the first quest in an ongoing series, where players will return to the desert and take up their "unfinished business" with the goddess Amascut the Devourer. Around that time, Woodcutting and Fletching will get a 110 skilling update in line with the recent Mining and Smithing update, bringing a new tree to cut, a new hatchet to cut said tree with, and new level 100 and masterwork ranged weapons. Big disruptions in the wood space.
The Christmas Village event will return to close out the year with new quests, activities, and rewards, with more opportunities to get a Black Partyhat. Across early 2025, there'll be 110 skilling updates for Runecrafting and Crafting and an eventual across-the-board skilling overhaul to make skilling "competitively profitable" with combat loot. Along the way, a second and third quest will arrive for the new desert questline, culminating in a new boss fight with Amascut herself in mid-2025.
Source: PC GAMER
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Vegans: We Only Eat Plants. Also Vegans: * EAT MUSHROOMS*
Vegans: We Only Eat Plants. Also Vegans: * EAT MUSHROOMS*
MUSHROOMS: I N JOKE FOR YOU?
#meme #fun #funny
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She's a model
She’s a model
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#jenniferlopez
#alexandradaddario #AngelinaJolie #MeganFox #margotrobbie
#chrisevans #ChristianBale #AnneHathway #BrieLarson
#ScarlettJohansson #elizabetholsen #JenniferLopez
#JenniferAniston #JenniferLawrence #priyankachopra
#KristenStewart #HaileeSteinfeld #emiliaclarke #galgadot
#wonderwoman #DC #mcu #MeganFox #kyliejenner
#kimkardashian #kendalljenner❤️❤️❤️
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cutdog 🐕 monkey 🐒 funny shorts 💞
cutdog 🐕 monkey 🐒 funny shorts 💞#funnyshorts #laugh #dog #monkey #cutebaby #shortsviral Read More...
Hunt: Showdown enjoys highest-ever player count after 1896 update
Hunt: Showdown enjoys highest-ever player count after 1896 update, but player complaints about UI are pushing down its Steam review score: 'I've never seen such a bizarre reaction to so much amazing content'
Grungy horror extraction shooter Hunt: Showdown just received its biggest update in years, with developer Crytek upgrading its engine, overhauling its UI, adding a fourth map called Mammon's Gulch, and introducing other meaningful tweaks. It's such an extensive rework that the game has even been given a new name—Hunt: Showdown 1896.
The first day of availability saw Hunt reach a new high for concurrent players: 59,968, which is 18,000 more than its previous high in October 2023. Likewise, at the time we're publishing this, more than 51,000 are in-game, chasing and/or being immolated by the new Hellborn boss.
By that metric, the shooter is more popular than it's ever been. But simultaneously, the update has drawn aggravated complaints from a number of negative reviews on Steam, 3,730 of them so far, which have pushed Hunt's short-term label to Mostly Negative, while its longer-term state remains Mostly Positive.
How can Hunt both be more popular than ever and be condemned by a higher-than-ever number of players on Steam? The primary bone of contention is its new pre-match UI, shown in the video embedded lower on the page, with many reviewers complaining that Crytek's changes have made it worse rather than better.
The most common complaint about the UI is that it takes considerably more clicks to do most things in the menu than it did before. "Looks fancy but is a nightmare to navigate" says user Shinigaben. "You need 3 or so clicks per action more than the old UI and it also just gives way less information on one screen without switching between various submenus."
If you've lived through a UI update to a major social media platform like Facebook or Discord, you know that the shift to a new way of presenting information often sparks disproportionate fury. Some Hunt players are under the impression that this more complicated interface has been designed for console first, with players also lamenting the much larger icons and apparent lack of basic keyboard inputs. It's worth noting that Hunt was originally released on PC in 2018 (Early Access), with Xbox One and PS4 releases coming more than a year later, in 2019 and 2020. This new version, however, launches concurrently on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, so it is possible that the UI has been retooled with some compromises between those platforms.
Others accuse Crytek of redesigning the UI to push microtransactions to the forefront, with some comparing the new approach to the monetisation practices seen in games like Fortnite and Call of Duty: Warzone. "The first thing you see after loading ingame is them selling you skins!!!" writes user Asthmaschildkröte, with others saying that the UI pushes players to look at the Battle Pass. Personally, this doesn't resonate with us as longtime players of the game—Hunt's monetization is some of the least-burdensome and least prominent compared to its fellow service games.
It's worth noting that it isn't just the UI that's the object of players' ire. Some players claim that the update has introduced more performance problems than it solves. "With the update my performance has dropped to a level where I cannot play without stutters" says the evocatively named user Sloppy Steaks. Among these are a few complaints about bugs, and a handful of people claiming that the visuals have changed for the worse. These issues are far more sporadically raised than the problems with the UI, however, which seems to be mentioned in nearly every recent negative review left on Hunt's Steam page.
Anecdotally, playing the update last night, there were a couple of areas of the map where we noticed frame rates dropped (at one point our trio all noticed a drop of 10-20 fps, seemingly due to a visual effect that had triggered), but other than that our fps hasn't been significantly different than on last week's build.
It definitely seems like the UI has some problems that deserve some further consideration. But is the strength of the reaction justified? There are numerous reviews that praise the update generally, but ultimately deliver a thumbs down because of the UI. "New engine update has made the game itself much smoother for me. New map is really nice too. I like the increased verticality," says user Sir Fluffy McDuck. "HOWEVER, this new menu UI is such a pain." Furtive Pygmy, meanwhile, compliments Crytek on doing "a wonderful job with the update" but says the UI is "so bad that I simply do not wish to play anymore."
Can a menu UI (none of the complaints, to be clear, are focused on the in-match UI), be so bad that it truly ruins the experience of playing? Or is this another example of the PC gaming community disproportionately hyper-fixating on a facet of a game that they know will resonate in comment threads?
There are certainly some players who feel the latter is the case. "I've never seen such a bizarre reaction to so much amazing content," says Reddit user Redwood-Lynx, a "casual dad" player who praises the "incredible map" Crytek has added. "There has to be some kind of PC cultural quirk I'm just unaware of—being this aggrieved about MENUS is so beyond this old timers understanding. Did any of you actually play the game part? Does no one want to discuss the new weapons, the new boss, the new map, the new traits, the new balance changes, ANY OF IT? No, you just want to review bomb the greatest shooter of the last decade into oblivion because daddy gave your little console brother more attention."
As hinted at in the previous paragraph, this would not be the first time a game has struggled with misdirected anger from its community. Helldivers 2, perhaps the most mechanically ingenious shooter of the year, has been dominated by discourse over the balance of its weapons. Now, weapon balance can be crucial to the fundamental quality of a game. But Helldivers 2 is not an incredibly twitchy multiplayer shooter like Counter-Strike of Valorant, it's a cooperative PvE experience, a goofy Starship Troopers simulator with an emphasis on physics-based slapstick comedy. Balance is not really the point of Helldivers 2.
rom our hours playing Hunt's new update last night, the new UI, yes, does produce an amount of discomfort. Some years-worn habits now require more input—when you want to add several consumables to a character, you are pushed back and forth between the gear menu and the hunter details screen as you add each piece of equipment individually, which feels inefficient. A couple of actions are slightly smoother, like picking different life bar segments for your hunter. We can't dismiss that some players find the changes jarring, nonetheless, there is far more to the 1896 update than just the UI, and the manner in which those criticisms are being made does not paint a complete picture of the update's effect on the game.
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Ubisoft reveals full Star Wars Outlaws system requirements and PC-specific features
Uncapped frame rates, ultra-wide support, the good ray-tracing stuff: It's all here.
With two weeks to go before the arrival of Star Wars Outlaws—August 30 is the big day—Ubisoft has revealed the official PC system requirements, as well as a rundown of PC-specific features you'll be able to take advantage of if you've got the hardware to handle it.
You're going to need some pretty heavy hardware to run Star Wars Outlaws at its "ultra" setting, but it's reasonably forgiving at the other end of the scale. Of course, one of the great things about PC gaming is that you can fiddle: Turn this up so you can turn that down, until you find a balance of eye-candy and performance that makes you happy—or, at the very least, that you can live with until you're able to upgrade your rig.
Minimum
Visual settings: 1080p/30 fps/Low preset with upscaler set to quality
GPU: GeForce GTX 1660 6GB / AMD RX 5600 XT 6GB / Intel Arc a750 8GB (ReBAR ON)
CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K / AMD Ryzen 5 3600
RAM: 16GB (dual-channel mode)
OS: Windows 10/11 with DirectX 12
SSD Storage: 65GB
Recommended
Visual settings: 1080p/60 fps/High preset with upscaler set to quality
GPU: GeForce RTX 3060 8GB / AMD RX 6700 XT 12GB
CPU: Intel Core i5-10400 / AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
RAM: 16GB (dual-channel mode)
OS: Windows 10/11 with DirectX 12
SSD Storage: 65GB
Enthusiast
Visual settings: 1440p/60 fps/High preset with upscaler set to quality
GPU: GeForce RTX 4070 12GB / AMD RX 6800 XT 16GB
CPU: Intel Core i5-11600K / AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
RAM: 16GB (dual-channel mode)
OS: Windows 10/11 with DirectX 12
SSD Storage: 65GB
Ultra
Visual settings: 4K/60 fps/Ultra preset with upscaler set to quality
GPU: GeForce RTX 4080 16GB / AMD RX 7900 XTX 24GB
CPU: Intel Core i7-12700K / AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D
RAM: 16GB (dual-channel mode)
OS: Windows 10/11 with DirectX 12
SSD Storage: 65GB
One interesting thing is all these specs, as hardware writer Jeremy Laird wrote earlier this month when the basic requirements first appeared on the Ubisoft Store, is that "upscaling is the new normal." Even at the minimum setting you'll need to have DLSS, FSR, or some other upscaling tech in order to achieve Ubisoft's frame rate targets, and the game will be running at a lower-than-spec resolution and then be upscaled.
That's not a big deal in and of itself, but some lower-end GPUs may struggle more than expected—note, for instance, that Intel Arc GPUs are only listed in the "minimum" setting. Unlike Nick, I'm not a hardware guy, but it does make me think that maybe the smart play is to treat the "recommended" spec as the minimum, at least until the game's been out for a while and you can see how it runs for other people.
Anyway, speaking of fiddling, here's the lowdown on PC-specific features you'll find in Outlaws—again, the availability of which will depend on the weight of your iron:
Ray-traced global illumination, reflections, and shadows
NVIDIA RTX dynamic illumination (RTXDI) Support
NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 support (ray reconstruction, Frame Generation, Super Resolution)
Intel XESS 1.3 and AMD FSR 3.0 (upscaling and frame generation) support
In-depth customization options
Uncapped frame rate
21:9 Cinematic Display Mode
Multi-monitor and ultrawide support\
"In-depth customization options" is a bit vague, so here's a still from the new PC gameplay trailer to give you an idea of what's in store:
Star Wars Outlaws is set to come out on August 30, and will be available for PC on the Ubisoft Store and the Epic Games Store. You can get into it up to three days early by spending extra (a lot extra, really) for the Gold or Ultimate edition of the game (which also include the season pass and various extra cosmetics) or by subscribing to Ubisoft+.
#Games #Ubisoft #StarWars
Source: PCGAMER.COM
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The tallest mountain in the solar system, Olympus Mons on Mars. It has a height of 25 km, Mount Everest is 'only' 8.8 km tall.
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Iraq postpones plans for US troop withdrawal amid regional tensions
Iraq has postponed announcing an end-date for the US-led military coalition’s presence in the country due to “recent developments,” raising questions about the future of US military presence in the Gulf state amid heightened tension in the region.
Iraq’s Higher Military Commission had aimed to propose an end date for Operation Inherent Resolve, the US military operation combatting terror group ISIS.
“We were very close to announcing this agreement, but due to recent developments, the announcement of the end of the international coalition’s military mission in Iraq was postponed,” a statement by Iraq’s foreign ministry said Thursday, without giving further details on what the “recent developments.”
Tensions are mounting in the region as Israel and the United States brace for a potential Iranian attack on Israel to avenge the killing of Hamas’ political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last month. Iran blames the assassination on Israel, which has not confirmed or denied responsibility.
Iran-backed militias in Iraq are pressuring the Shia-led government to end the US troop’s presence in Iraq.
Several powerful militias in Iraq have stepped up attacks on US sites in the country since October 7, saying in support of people in the Gaza Strip, where they view the US administration as one of Israel’s main allies. In response, the US has launched retaliatory airstrikes inside Iraq targeting the groups.
The US has roughly 2,500 troops currently in Iraq who have been operating there in an “advise and assist” capacity since December 2021, when the US military announced the end of its combat role in the country.
#news #worldnews #cnn
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Venezuelans have seen this movie before, but Maduro should beware. This time, the ending could be different
It happened in Caracas on June 9, 2016, when I was there to cover a series of violent protests that had broken out in Venezuela.
That sunny day, as our CNN team was walking towards the building that houses the National Assembly for interviews, we noticed a group of men heading the same way from the opposite side of the street.
“Hurry up!,” CNN en español’s correspondent in Caracas Osmary Hernández said. “I think the colectivos are up the street.” We all picked up our pace and breathed a sigh of relief when we made it to the building. Colectivos are armed groups that function like a street gang, but are closely affiliated with the socialist government and often do their dirty work.
Moments after we made it inside the building, Julio Borges, an opposition member of the assembly and its former president, arrived in bad shape. He had a bloody nose and said a group of opposition legislators like him had been attacked by colectivos as they were headed to the office of the national electoral authority. The month before, President Nicolás Maduro had declared a “constitutional state of emergency.”
Even before that tumultuous period, it had become abundantly clear that Maduro’s government had absolute control of all three branches of government as well as the the National Electoral Council (CNE).
And, as we had just witnessed, it also controlled the streets of Caracas. Maduro, now 61, is a former bus driver who became a Caracas metro system union leader and rose through the ranks. He is the handpicked successor of the late strongman Hugo Chávez, who ruled Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013.
A new wave of violence shook Venezuela once again in 2019. In January of that year, Juan Guaidó, then president of the National Assembly, had proclaimed himself interim president of Venezuela. The then-35-year-old Guaidó argued that he had the constitutional right to the presidency as leader of the assembly because Maduro, who had been sworn in only days before, was an illegitimate president.
Both the opposition and leaders of several countries in the region had called the previous year’s election a sham. Guaidó convinced 50 countries that he had a right to be president, including the United States.
By June 2019, when I returned to Caracas, Guaidó had already attempted a military uprising that almost succeeded on April 30, followed by weeks of violent clashes between protesters and security forces that left dozens dead.
The world started to pay close attention to Venezuela once again in the last few months as the country was getting ready to hold a new presidential election. Would Maduro allow the opposition to run a candidate of its choosing? Would this be a free, fair, and transparent election? Would the colectivos once again be used to intimidate voters as they had done in previous elections?
The first and second questions were answered in January when opposition leader María Corina Machado was barred by Venezuela’s highest court from running for president (or any other elected position) for 15 years over alleged financial irregularities. Machado had won more than 90% of the vote in last October’s opposition primary. She attracted large crowds everywhere she went, even though the government did everything possible to stop her, even persecuting those who rented sound systems to her campaign.
The third question was answered in the last hours of the election itself on Sunday when colectivos showed up at at least one polling center in Caracas and started beating up opposition sympathizers who had been asked by the leadership to keep an eye on ballot boxes in an effort to prevent tampering.
Those of us who have been following Venezuela for decades have seen this movie before: a “sham” election to justify Maduro’s staying in power. Democracy has been gradually weakening in Venezuela over the last 25 years since the charismatic socialist leader Chávez rose to power in 1999.
While Venezuelans and the world awaited results Sunday night, the country’s electoral authority delayed publication, alleging the system had been targeted by hackers operating from North Macedonia without showing any evidence. This was not surprising in a country where all three branches of government are in the hands of government loyalists, hundreds of opposition leaders have been imprisoned, and true democracy hasn’t existed in a generation.
“Is there anything different this time?” That’s the question I asked Michael Shifter, the former president of the Inter-American Dialogue and current professor of Latin American Politics at Georgetown University, who has been following Venezuelan politics for decades.
Shifter said the Maduro victory was a “blatant, massive and egregious fraud,” but the opposition managed to do something it had been unable to do before: uniting behind a single candidate and going to the polls in massive numbers.
“The alternative [to participating in the election] was taking themselves completely out of the political game, saying ‘we refuse to take part in this unfair and unjust election,’ but that would’ve left the opposition in a weaker position in practical and political terms” as it happened in 2018 when the opposition decided to boycott the whole process.
“I think the opposition learned that refusing to take part in elections was not helping their cause. They recognized that even when the elections weren’t free and fair, they needed to defeat Maduro on his terms, which they’ve done,” Shifter said.
Venezuela’s CNE declared Maduro the winner Monday saying he had won with 51.2% of the votes, with 80% of the ballots counted. His main rival, opposition candidate Edmundo González, had obtained 44.2% of the votes, according to the body.
Critics like former Bolivian President Jorge Fernando “Tuto” Quiroga, who was one of several former heads of state prevented from flying to Venezuela by its government as they tried to serve as observers, called the Maduro government a “desperate regime; an open, pure and hard tyranny that has chosen to steal the presidency staging a fraudulent coronation.” In an interview with CNN, he said that even the math didn’t add up when Venezuelan electoral authorities declared a winner with 80% of the vote counted.
“When you’re in first grade, you learn that 20 is more than seven,” Quiroga said. “The probability that [opposition presidential candidate] Edmundo [González] could’ve won was low, but still arithmetically possible,” at that point, he said, adding that prior to the election there were credible exit polls showing González was ahead by as much as 40 percent.
Just like 2016 and 2019, violence has returned to Venezuela. At least 11 people died during protests in Venezuela on Monday, according to the non-governmental organization Foro Penal on social media. Venezuelan authorities say more than 700 people were detained in the protests. The Venezuelan opposition political party Voluntad Popular said Tuesday that its leader Freddy Superlano has been kidnapped.
Unlike the 2018 election, Shifter says, this time the opposition “knows they won, and the regime knows they won.” The question now is how long the governing coalition that includes not only the socialists, but the armed forces can hold, Shifter said.
If that coalition becomes “divided and weaker, the armed forces may say ‘this ship is sinking and we don’t want to go down with it,’” Shifter said.
SOURCE: CNN
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