Presenting its findings as “Unlocking the future of computing” Microsoft is edging ever closer to photon computing technology with the Analog Iterative Machine (AIM). Right now, the light-based machine is being licensed for use in financial institutions, to help navigate the endlessly complex data flowing through them.

According to the Microsoft Research Blog, “Microsoft researchers have been developing a new kind of analog optical computer that uses photons and electrons to process continuous value data, unlike today’s digital computers that use transistors to crunch through binary data” (via Hardware Info). 

In other words, AIM is not limited to the binary ones and zeros that your standard computer is relegated to. Instead it’s been afforded the freedom of the entire …

Full disclosure, here—I am not an Old School RuneScape player. I am, however, an avid enjoyer of the absolutely harebrained nonsense its player base is capable of—something that is both terrifying and awe-inspiring in equal measure. Often, digesting these feats involves hunting through wikis to understand mind-bending system tricks. Not this time.

This nail-biting challenge, embarked on by YouTuber Settled, is so tense I’ll be throwing up a spoiler warning for the video below (Settled uploads his challenge run videos regardless of whether he lives or dies). It also hinges on a simple game of rock-paper-scissors via the game’s prayer combat skill.

Watch On

Here’s the run-down of the stakes: On “Nightmare Mode”, Settled dies in one hit. If he dies, he has to delete…

As well as raking it in with his charity stunts, James “MrBeast” Donaldson has been dabbling in the confectionary game with his Feastables brand. Apparently his chocolate bars, which include a peanut butter bar called Deez Nuts (sigh), are pretty popular, though the same could be said for his burgers, which MrBeast says are so “raw” and “inedible” that he sued his partner Virtual Dining Concepts. 

I cannot speak to the quality of his chocolate, though it strikes me that it’s harder to mess up candy than it is beef. Even bad chocolate tastes pretty good, and it looks like a lot of his 240 million fans are more than happy to take a punt on Feastables, because they’ve been flying off the shelves—at least according to MrBeast and his acolytes, who have been struggling to fi…

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty has been a game half on my radar for awhile, but after giving its demo on Steam a try, this Team Ninja-developed Wuxia action game has my full attention. I’m hooked on its combat like with no Souls pretender before it in no small part due to its fantastic counter.

It’s something halfway between the all-or-nothing parries from Dark Souls or Elden Ring and the more forgiving perfect blocks from Sekiro. Your requisite Soulslike dodge is a jaunty little dash that, instead of providing precious invincibility frames, has to be timed with enemy attacks to open them up for a counterattack and raise their stagger meter for critical strikes.

It’s much easier to pull off than a Fromsoft parry, but a short delay and increase to your own stagger gauge whe…

Riot Games has delayed the start of the League Championship Series summer season by two weeks in order to enable negotiation with the LCS Players Association over recent rule changes. But it has also threatened to cancel the entire season completely if an agreement can’t be reached within that timeframe.

The labor unrest began earlier this month after Riot announced rule changes that resulted in most teams in the LCS—the top-tier League of Legends pro league in North America—dropping their lower-tier North American Challenger League rosters, putting as many as 70 players, coaches, and managers out of work. In response, the Players Association voted “overwhelmingly” in favor of a walkout, although not immediately: Instead, it expressed hope that Riot would avert the str…

Those of us of a certain age—or with a certain impeccable taste—will be interested to hear that Pharaoh: A New Era has finally gotten a release date. A remake of Sierra’s 1999 city-builder Pharaoh (and its expansion Cleopatra: Queen of the Nile), the game promises a slick and prettied-up new version of the old classic when it releases on February 15.

The remake boasts over 50 playable missions, 100 hours of gameplay, and 4000 years of Egyptian history, alongside all the usual bells and whistles like 4K resolutions and a UI parseable by mortal eyes. The devs at Triskell have even taken the original soundtrack and rearranged it with “traditional oriental instruments”. It’s the same old Pharaoh gameplay, though: You’ll have to juggle all sorts of weighty responsibilities …

According to a fact on a website I’ve never heard of, the average person spends about five years of their life waiting in lines. Five whole years! Other sites I’ve never visited before say it’s more like 3 years, or six months, or two weeks. The point is, never try to confirm a fact because it takes forever and there are no reliable answers anywhere, ever. 

The real point is: we all spend an unverifiable amount of time just waiting for stuff. We wait in line at the store or for a ride at the bus stop. We drum our fingers impatiently when the doctor’s office puts us on hold and we fidget with rage while the person in front of us takes way too long at the ATM. We even wait for games to download, the most agonizing wait of all. I don’t know it adds up to five years out of a life…

Tim Cain, one of the creators of the original Fallout and a co-founder of cult RPG studio Troika, has released a vlog revealing Troika’s 2003 pitch to Wizards of the Coast for Baldur’s Gate 3. This version sounds like an even wilder departure for the series than Larian’s highly anticipated upcoming sequel.

Cain discovered the pitch document in his personal collection of files related to development of The Temple of Elemental Evil, Troika’s 2003 adaptation of the Gary Gygax tabletop module of the same name. “Making a computer game and trying to make it as true as possible to the paper and pencil game, we did that, it’s done,” Cain said of ToEE, which we previously described as the “most D&D” of all D&D games. “Now I wanted to make what I called ‘adapted D&D.'”

Cai…