Latest news with #Myst
Forbes
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Here Are All The Answers To Blue Prince's Puzzles
Blue Prince Blue Prince is a surefire GOTY contender for 2025, racking up the highest critic scores of this first third of the year. As such, I thought you might want the answer to every puzzle to blast your way through it. But no, I'm not doing that. Get out of here. No answers for you. While I know there are going to be a dozens of guides out there unlocking the seemingly countless mysteries of the Blue Prince mansion, I would without question advise that you not look at any of them. At least not for a long, long time. If you want to play this game at all, there is really nothing useful about looking up puzzle answers, as that's more or less the entire game. All the answers are found within the mansion itself, as sometimes they will literally be spelled out if you find certain things, or they are solved in your own mind perhaps before even the game gives you many clues. I've described Blue Prince as a combination of Myst and Gone Home, where Myst has its endless array of island puzzles you need to solve, and Gone Home tells the story of a family inside a mystery mansion which…you did not need a guide for. Blue Prince I am not ready to declare Blue Prince GOTY or even Game of the Generation like I've seen some critics rave, but it's stellar. One reason is that solving one of the bigger puzzles in Blue Prince creates a sense of euphoria that is hard to replicate in other games. I seems basic. A door in a cliff finally opens, and it elicited an audible cheer as I sat in my room by myself playing it. As a compromise here, Blue Price can actually be a kind of fun co-op game, but not in the traditional sense. If other friends are playing, you can share a Google Doc or hop in discord to share clues and puzzle them out between you. In my case, I started out doing this, but now we've stuck to small hints rather than the big answers we really do want to solve for ourselves, much less looking up internet guides to figure them out. I mean ultimately, do what you want. I'm not the puzzle cheating police here. But I will say there's little point to play Blue Prince at all if you're not going to try to solve the house by yourself, even if at times it can be extremely frustrating. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, and Bluesky Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
New York Times
05-04-2025
- Business
- New York Times
How Video Games Ushered In the A.I. Revolution
A challenge of writing a book on the tech industry, especially something as rapidly evolving as artificial intelligence, is that the story will be slightly out of date in the few months between the final draft being turned in and the hardback hitting the shelves. You wish you could tell the future, but you're stuck with what you have when you send the book to the printer. For example, Stephen Witt's 'The Thinking Machine,' a lively biography of the C.E.O. Jensen Huang, whose company Nvidia makes microchips that power A.I. systems like ChatGPT, came out this spring, but it recounts events only up to a mid-2024 climactic showdown between the author and his subject over the possibility of A.I. destroying humanity, which means that a line that appears in an earlier chapter — about how Elon Musk differs from Huang in temperament — mentions that the Tesla C.E.O. has 'at least' 11 children. That count is now woefully behind. By most estimates, he's up to 14. It also means Witt's account doesn't include the recent drama that arose after the release of a new A.I. chatbot from the Chinese company DeepSeek. A rival to ChatGPT, the Chinese chatbot was allegedly built for a fraction of the cost, with fewer fancy chips. This bucked the accepted wisdom that the only way to improve A.I. was to shovel vast sums of money at Nvidia to buy more and more of its hardware. When the markets absorbed this fact in January, Nvidia's stock price tumbled. Before that fall, however, there was an astonishing rise. The story of how Nvidia became the hottest investment on Wall Street and a household name is fascinating because its trajectory differs significantly from that of its Big Tech peers. For most of the time that companies like Apple, Meta and Amazon have been around, regular people used their products and services every day. But, unless you were a hard-core gamer, you probably hadn't heard of Nvidia until recently. Huang doesn't offer Witt much on how his upbringing may have led to his current status as a technology apex predator ('I try not to analyze myself in that way,' he tells Witt), but there are early glimpses of his incredible drive and focus. In 1973, at 10 years old, he immigrated to the United States from Thailand and eventually landed in Oregon, where, between homework and shifts at Denny's, he played competitive Ping-Pong at the national level. By the early '90s, popular video games like Myst and Doom were coming out and the industry around personal computing was ramping up. Like many ambitious people on the West Coast, Huang had been looking for a way to rise up through the hardware market. In 1993, instead of trying to compete against giants like Intel and Sun in the general computer chip space, Huang co-founded Nvidia, a company focused specifically on P.C. video games; their chips were robust enough to process the immersive visuals that the new games were creating. This push for extra processing power would come in handy down the line, but for much of Nvidia's history, success was far from assured. Over 30 years, the company had ups and downs, nearly facing bankruptcy and fighting off activist investors. Huang's tolerance for risk pulled his company through again and again. Huang was also notorious for his management style; his trademark technique is rage and yelling. In 2008, one of the company's new graphics chips had a design flaw that caused mass customer returns and a plunge in stock price. In front of a large group in the company cafeteria, including more than a hundred executives, Huang reamed out the chip architect responsible for the error. 'I still vividly remember Jensen just nonstop berating him for a good hour and a half,' an employee who was there tells Witt. 'Honestly, maybe it was two hours — he was just livid.' The screaming and rage sessions seem at odds with other, kinder aspects of Huang's personality — his friends from his personal life said they didn't ever witness any blowups. And somehow he's retained many longtime loyal employees, even people from the early days when it wasn't obvious that working at a gaming chip company — not the most glamorous part of the tech industry — was a golden ticket to enormous wealth. He's also a loyal boss: The guy from the cafeteria wasn't fired after the showdown. Over and over, Huang made decisions that worked out. He hired well, he saw opportunities around corners. The smartest risk Huang took was listening to a midlevel researcher who, in 2013, pitched him on a technology called 'neural nets,' then a fringe area being explored by a handful of academic researchers. Huang saw the potential, and set Nvidia on a path that would make his chips the premier tool for today's A.I. revolution. I should offer a warning here: 'The Thinking Machine' does contain a fair amount of somewhat technical passages about A.I. and the making of the hardware it runs on. Witt does his best to render all this legible to a lay audience, but you also won't really lose much if you just sort of glaze over those parts. Witt's previous book, 'How Music Got Free,' a history of digital music piracy, had some technical baggage too, describing in detail how the MP3 file format was first developed, but the telling was balanced by the compelling cat-and-mouse drama between record label executives and a CD factory employee who was pirating their music. His task here is trickier. The arc of Nvidia's rise to dominance can't really be built out of explosive interpersonal moments at the office or reflections on its founder's stranger personality traits, as entertaining as those things are. Instead, the drama most naturally arises from a series of technical achievements where Huang and his gang pulled ahead of the competition by sheer feats of computer engineering. Thankfully, Witt does a decent job at drawing the reader into those moments. It's hard not to compare Huang with Zuckerberg, Bezos and Musk and see him as a kinder, less evil version of his tech overlord peers. For all his verbal abuse, he hasn't attempted to reshape global society or exploit low-wage workers. Witt's book suggests that Huang built a highly profitable company by dint of his own brilliance, hard work and a bit of luck. Still, as compelling as Huang and his decades-long journey to get to the present are, the big questions about what's ahead for A.I. are left unanswered: How will it change humanity? Will A.I. lift us up or destroy us? When Witt tries to ask Huang about these things, the C.E.O. brushes him off, saying, 'I feel like you're interviewing Elon right now, and I'm just not that guy,' before getting irate and yelling. That Huang isn't worried about a dystopian runaway A.I. should be comforting, but, on the other hand, he's obviously got a financial interest in A.I. continuing to spread into every aspect of our lives, and his company, although weakened, is still the clear market leader. In the end, 'The Thinking Machine' leaves us unsure of its subject's vision of the future, and Huang will probably never give a satisfying answer. He is someone who dreamed of beating Intel in Q2 sales numbers, not of completely changing the world and ushering in a new technological age. It just so happens that by achieving the first goal, he also ended up doing the latter.
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Globe Metals signs offtake agreement with Myst Trading for Malawi's Kanyika Project
Globe Metals & Mining (Globe) has signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Myst Trading (Myst) for the offtake of phase one production from the Kanyika Niobium Project in Malawi. The MOU includes the purchase of 14 tonnes (t) of refined high-purity tantalum pentoxide and 76t of refined high-purity niobium pentoxide. It outlines the framework for both parties in negotiating a binding offtake agreement for the Kanyika Niobium Project phase one production. The agreement will provide Myst Trading with the right to purchase 100% of the estimated annual production of 14t of refined high-purity tantalum pentoxide. Additionally, Myst will hold a right of first refusal to purchase 25% of the estimated annual production of 76 million tonnes of refined high-purity niobium pentoxide. This agreement marks the second offtake agreement for Globe's Kanyika Niobium Project, which is located approximately 55km north-east of Kasangu in central Malawi. The project lies within large-scale mining licence LML0216/21, which grants the right to mine niobium, tantalum, zirconium and other minor metals. Globe has now secured non-binding offtake agreements for 57% of niobium pentoxide and 100% of tantalum pentoxide production from the first phase of the project. The agreement's initial three-year period will begin with the start of phase one production. The price for the products will be connected to current Asian metals market prices. Globe CEO Paul Smith said: 'The MOU with Myst confirms our significant progress in finalising offtake agreements for all phase one production at the Kanyika Project. Such agreements are a critical component of the project's funding and ultimate development. This is the second non-binding agreement signed by Globe, following our agreement with Affilips N.V on niobium offtake (announced in September 2024). 'The Myst MOU gives Globe access to the lucrative Asian markets for niobium and tantalum oxides. We look forward to a long relationship with Myst. The key non-binding agreements will further support the finalisation of our updated bankable feasibility study and associated funding commitments under way. Globe looks forward to announcing very significant Kanyika Project development milestones in the coming months, which will pave the way for the development of this exciting project.' Globe and Myst aim to execute a binding offtake agreement by the second quarter of 2025, with a full offtake agreement expected by 1 September 2025. In June last year, Globe Metals secured an at-the-market equity facility with Long State Investments, a New York-based company, which will offer up to $20m (A$31.62m) over a two-year period to advance the Kanyika Niobium Project. "Globe Metals signs offtake agreement with Myst Trading for Malawi's Kanyika Project" was originally created and published by Mining Technology, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site.
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Yahoo
Alienware's New Area-51 Desktop PC Makes DIY Gaming Upgrades Easier
The Alienware Area-51 namesake is one I've known since I was a young gamer. Ever since my early years playing the Myst series and Fury 3 on my father's computer, the importance of understanding the components within your machine has been a part of my life. As such, when I consider a new desktop PC, I focus on products that will power my daily lifestyle. I need fast connections to my local DIY networking rack, and a platform I can rely on as a 4K content creator. My trusted machine also has to deliver while gaming, which means being able to handle graphics-intensive AAA titles with ease. The latest Alienware Area-51 Desktop PC delivers on all these requirements and more, and is well-suited for gaming enthusiasts and prolific content creators alike. Each configuration is powered by an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 Series GPU, which means gamers will have access to NVIDIA Blackwell, which powers new graphics innovations like neural rendering and upgraded ray tracing. NVIDIA DLSS 4 boosts frame rates and offers cleaner details to games, while NVIDIA Studio and the newest NVIDIA NIM (Inference Microservices) offer upgrades for creators and developers. Purchasing a gaming desktop PC is an investment, so users should consider both performance and upgradeability when making their decision. The Alienware Area-51 Desktop offers both to serious gamers who don't want to build a new PC from scratch, but also want to own a desktop that makes future upgrades possible for many years. In a year of powerful new GPUs and components requiring more processing power, how is Alienware differentiating itself from the pack? There are three main answers to this: future proofing, upgradeability and accessibility. The Area-51 Desktop still includes bold design choices, with rounded corners and a futuristic, streamlined look that helps the machine stand out in a sea of rectangular sameness. After feedback from the gaming community and many years of development, Alienware has introduced a new, upgraded Area-51. The Alienware Area-51 has a noticeably clean and spacious interior, with a new Alienware-branded motherboard designed specifically for this desktop PC. The included Alienware motherboard supports a dual-channel RAM configuration, with up to 64GB (in a 2 x 32 GB configuration) of DDR5 XMP (Extreme Memory Profile) memory at a fast data transfer speed of 6400 MT/s. (Third-party motherboards can be installed with the purchase of an AlienFX board conversion kit.) At 80L, this is a full-size PC tower, which allows for compatibility with even the largest components and better thermals. Alienware is offering multiple configurations of the Area-51 Desktop, so serious gamers have many options depending on their needs, including the new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 GPU and Intel Core Ultra 9 285K CPU. At launch, the desktop features the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 GPU. The company sells up to 8TB using the M.2 PCIe NVMe slots on the motherboard. In addition, Area-51 includes a 3.5" HDD bay and two 2.5" SSD bays for additional storage expansion beyond the three M.2 PCIe slots. The Area-51 may support more than 36TBs of storage depending on drive availability. Keeping your desktop cool is crucial for longevity, and keeping its noise low is crucial for your sanity. To address both these needs, the Area-51 doesn't have any exhaust fans. Instead, its new positive pressure airflow system uses three different fan sizes (dual 140mm fans, dual 180mm fans and dual or triple 120mm fans, built with compatibility for both liquid and air-cooled options) and a gasket architecture to better enable air intake and keep components cool during intensive gaming sessions. Once that cool air enters the system, it is then naturally heated by the components. Gaskets located inside the chassis prevent air leakage and build positive pressure, pushing the hot air out through a passive exhaust, while also reducing air circulation and noise. According to Alienware, this translates to 25% more air, a 13% cooler temperature, a 45% quieter experience and 50% more processing power. While you have the option of upgrading the fans to a 420mm liquid-cooled option, the tower includes either 360mm LC or 240mm LC. Dust is another common problem for desktop PCs because it can decrease airflow and efficiency over time. The Area-51 introduces three removable and cleanable filters found on the front, top and bottom of the system. Each of these filters can catch dust to help airflow stay unrestricted and reduce the accumulation on your internal components. In my experience building computers, many towers integrate filters, but don't make them easily accessible. The Area-51 allows you to access these filters without having to take apart the chassis, allowing for easier routine maintenance. Alienware designed the Area-51 Desktop with environmentally friendly components. A tempered-glass door protects your tower from heat and scratches, the side panel is constructed from steel and the chassis includes water-based paints that have low toxicity and low flammability. Learning how to replace or upgrade your power supply unit (PSU) can be a complicated task if you've never done it. If you've never switched out components before, how do you educate yourself on the process without potentially damaging your investment? By scanning QR codes located on or near the Area-51 PSU, you'll be redirected to one of several video tutorials showing you exactly how to replace the unit. The videos explain everything from where the screws are located on the tower to how to remove and plug in modular cables. In addition to clear audio and visible directions, captions and transcripts ensure accessibility. Even for a gamer like myself who has invested decades into my library of PC games and hundreds of hours in playtime, the task of upgrading and maintaining can sometimes feel like a chore. I am a true visual learner – it's why I enjoy making videos – so I understand the struggle of trying to learn from a printed guide. Unless you already know where to look or what a component is called, building and maintaining a personal computer can be a daunting task. At the time of this writing, Alienware has produced video tutorials explaining how to install a PSU, a solid state drive, a graphics card, memory modules and maintain your fan filters. The chassis includes grooves or indentations located on the bottom front of the bezel and the top of the rear that are designed for grabbing. This design allows gamers to easily access both sides of the tower to keep cables organized and switch out components as needed. The Alienware Area-51 Desktop includes your choice of either a 1500W Platinum- or an 850W Gold-rated PSU, either of which ensure proper wattage and power efficiency for the included components. And if you get stuck at any point, Alienware Elite Care makes it easy to get help on-demand. While the Alienware Area-51 has been an iconic brand for gamers since 1998, this newest version provides guidance for those who want it, while also letting serious gamers customize their experience. I'm confident my younger self would've been completely blown away by everything this PC has to offer.
Yahoo
31-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Video Game History Foundation's online library is now open
The Video Game History Foundation has unveiled its digital library, a massive undertaking that makes the organization's own materials as well as some private collections available for anyone to read. This project was first announced in December 2023, and the collection is still in early access. The VGHF said it would continually be working to digitize and add more content to the library. Even though this will be an ongoing endeavor, there is already a whole lot to check out. The library includes out-of-print publications like Electronic Gaming Monthly and Nintendo Power alongside industry trade magazines, which casual players might never have the chance to read otherwise. There are also materials from behind the scenes of game development, such as video recordings of developer Cyan's work on the landmark game Myst and interviews with the team. You can also find press kits, promotional materials and all sorts of other ephemera. Everything is free to browse, just like a regular public library. In short, this is amazingly cool for gaming nerds.
