Production workers on Rick and Morty and Solar Opposites—both popular animated series co-created by Justin Roiland—are unionizing; they’ve filed to join the Animation Guild, also known as IATSE Local 839. Neither Adult Swim nor Hulu’s parent company, 20th Century Fox, have voluntarily recognized the unit.
The Fairly OddParents is back—but not exactly how you remember it. Paramount+’s new series The Fairly Oddparents: Fairly Odder picks up years after the original animated series ended and reboots the beloved characters… into our world.
It took nearly three years, but Apex Legends Mobile is almost here — for some people, at least. Respawn has announced a “limited regional launch” next week for 10 countries that include Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Colombia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, the Philippines and Singapore. You’re likely out of luck if you’re reading this, then, but these early adopters will get to play on both Android and iOS.
The small-scale release will last through the spring and help the team refine gameplay and features before a wider launch, Respawn said. The initial mobile character roster mostly sticks to those available when Apex Legends launched in 2019, although the fast-moving Octane will also be an option.
Respawn stressed that you won’t see cross-play with non-mobile platforms. You’ll need at least an iPhone 6s to play on iOS, while Android users will need 3GB of RAM and OpenGL 3.0 or higher graphics support. The developers have focused their Android optimizations on popular brands like Samsung, Oppo and Xiaomi.
The limited debut might be frustrating if you’re eager to play a Fortnite or PUBG alternative. It’s easy to understand the cautious approach, however. Apex Legends is one of the few battle royale games to enjoy lasting success, and the mobile debut represents a major opportunity to expand the title’s reach. A careful premiere could be key to competing with other heavyweights and keeping Apex in the spotlight for years to come.
Mark Zuckerberg may still be explaining exactly what the metaverse is, but the Meta CEO just showed off another technology he says will be crucial to the company’s vision of creating immersive environments. Meta’s AI researchers are working on a voice-powered bot that allows users to change their virtual surroundings with voice commands.
Zuckerberg demoed an early version of the concept, called Builder Bot, at a virtual event detailing the company’s latest AI research.
“It enables you to describe a world and then it will generate aspects of that world for you,” Zuckerberg said. In his demo, he and another Meta employee used voice commands to create a very basic beach scene with a picnic table, clouds, and, yes, Zuckerberg’s signature hydrofoil. They also added some sound effects of seagulls and ocean waves.
For now though, the technology seems to be in a relatively early stage. The environment Zuckerberg generated looked much flatter and lower-res than past metaverse demos, though his legless avatar was present much like other recent demos. “As we advance this technology further, you’re going to be able to create nuanced worlds to explore and share experiences with others with just your voice,” he said.
The builder bot is part of a larger AI project called Project CAIRaoke that aims to create the kind of conversational AI necessary to create these virtual worlds. Facebook isn’t the first to experiment with this type of research. OpenAI showed off a neural network capable of generating images from text last year. But Zuckerberg said that project CAIRaoke would be central for the Meta’s future.
“In the metaverse, we’re going to need AI that is built around helping people navigate virtual worlds as well as our physical world with augmented reality,” Zuckerberg said. “When we have glasses on our faces, that will be the first time that an AI system will be able to really see the world from our perspective: See what we see, hear what we hear and more.”
Zuckerberg’s comments come as he is trying to pivot the company from social networking to metaverse technology, a move that has so far proved to be incredibly expensive. But as the core Facebook service starts to lose users for the first time ever, Zuckerberg has said “metaverse” experiences like the company’s VR Horizon Worlds will drive future growth.
The singer is best known for his lead vocal on the 1967 smash hit, “A Whiter Shade of Pale.”
The Environmental Protection Agency has fined Tesla a paltry $275,000 for repeated Clean Air Act violations—chump change for the $800 billion electric vehicle company heralded as an environmental champion. I love a little irony in the morning!
Because all things Stephen King never go out of style—and because pop culture never tires of stories revolving around kids with spooky powers—there’s a new Firestarter movie arriving in May. With that in mind, we figured now was as good a time as any to hop in the rewind machine and watch tiny Drew Barrymore start…
A pair of translucent glass spheres, each measuring over a half-inch thick, have been spotted in an impact crater near the lunar south pole. They’re the first of their kind to ever be discovered on the Moon.
Frontier, the financially troubled telecom previously dogged by lawmakers and consumer rights advocates, has officially become the first national provider to offer a 2Gbps fiber plan across its entire network.
Those who were able to lock in an early shipment date for the Steam Deck are perhaps just a few days away from getting their hands on the system. To give a clearer idea of which Steam games will run on the handheld PC, Valve has set up a page where you can check whether titles in your library are compatible.
After you log in with your Steam account, the tool will organize your library into a few sections. If a game is marked as Verified, it should run on Steam Deck with few, if any, hiccups. Unsurprisingly, Valve games such as Half-Life 2 and Portal 2 are deemed Verified, as are third-party games such as God of War, Death Stranding, Tetris Effect and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.
Those labeled Playable will run on the system but “might require extra effort to interact with or configure,” according to Valve. Valheim, The Witcher 3, Inscryption and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim are among those.
There might be some games in your library that don’t currently work on the device at all. One of those, sadly, is Fall Guys. Virtual reality games like Half-Life: Alyx and the VR version of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice won’t run on it either. The tool will also say how many games in your library haven’t yet been tested on Steam Deck.
Valve has tested a little more than 400 games on Steam Deck so far, according to SteamDB. As of Wednesday, there were 64,679 games listed on Steam, so the company has only checked a fraction of them on its new hardware. Valve is continuing to test games though, so more will be Verified in the coming months.
The tool builds on a set of labels Valve has been adding to Steam games over the last few months. Although there are many more untested games than ones Valve has actually checked, this could still be a handy way to see whether buying a Steam Deck might be worthwhile.
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