Elon Musk unveiled a prototype of his "humanoid" robot over the weekend, and it's - in my opinion, at any rate - equal parts fascinating and horrifying. Last year during Tesla's annual "AI Day" presentation, Musk teased this new robot by having someone come out in a suit resembling the machine and dancing/demonstrating. I've linked the relevant time stamp below. You have to give them credit for a creative proof of concept...right? Compared to last year's presentation, this year ...
A couple of weeks ago, my colleagues and I breathed a collective sigh of relief as we finally got to share some news we’d all had to keep quiet for entirely too long: Sins of a Solar Empire II is finally happening. While I am no stranger to NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements) at this point, this particular secret had a weight unlike anything else I’ve ever carried in my 7 years here at Stardock. This was big. This was huge. This was something we truly wanted to be a special ...
Stardock Announces WindowBlinds 11, Releases Public Beta A public beta for WindowBlinds 11 is available for Windows 10 and Windows 11 users starting today Get the Beta Now Take complete control of the customization of your Windows 10 and Windows 11 PCs with WindowBlinds 11! Personalize the look and feel of the Start menu, taskbar, window frames, and control buttons with custom desktop interface themes called skins. Modify any skin by adjusting the font, colors,...
Hasbro has teamed up with the 3D-printing company Formlabs back around the time of San Diego Comic Con to offer attendees a limited availability experience: to have their likeness turned into a custom action figure. Today, Hasbro announced that anyone can order their own "Selfie Series" figure starting on September 30th. Marketing action shots aside, I think these are pretty darned cool. A little self-indulgent, maybe, but it's definitely like a childhood dream come true. Although the p...
While bidding farewell to summer is always bittersweet, we do enjoy the autumn season here at Stardock. Yesterday, we decided to usher it in with style by throwing an “end of summer” BBQ in our cafe! At the BBQ, we had a chance to relax and eat food that was lovingly prepared by our incredible operations team! They started cooking at 10:30am so we'd all have enough food ready to eat by noon. We are so lucky to have them; I adore the “Grill Dad” energy that is...
You've probably messed around with some of those AI-generated art memes before. They're definitely neat and super interesting, but they pose a problem for artists these days. According to Practical Ethics - a blog from the University of Oxford - AI generated imagery "draws on the common pool and democratizes much image generation, often in creative ways through prompt writing, selecting the best output, or entirely new visual forms." An image generated via an AI program even won first ...
You've probably messed around with some of those AI-generated art memes before. They're definitely neat and super interesting, but they pose a problem for artists these days. According to Practical Ethics - a blog from the University of Oxford - AI generated imagery "draws on the common pool and democratizes much image generation, often in creative ways through prompt writing, selecting the best output, or entirely new visual forms." An image generated via an AI program even won first ...
You've probably messed around with some of those AI-generated art memes before. They're definitely neat and super interesting, but they pose a problem for artists these days. According to Practical Ethics - a blog from the University of Oxford - AI generated imagery "draws on the common pool and democratizes much image generation, often in creative ways through prompt writing, selecting the best output, or entirely new visual forms." An image generated via an AI program even won first ...
In case you missed it last week - and with all the hype and hullabaloo I’m not sure how you could have! - we officially announced Sins of a Solar Empire II. We are so excited to be working with our friends over at Ironclad Games again after so many years! Following in the footsteps of its critically acclaimed predecessor, this highly anticipated sequel will seamlessly blend real-time strategy and 4X gameplay to deliver a grand space conflict equal parts immersive and intense, while i...
I was fully and completely prepared to write a post about the recent reveals at D23 Expo this past weekend...but then was distracted and entertained by an article I saw over on Gizmodo about a battle between Australians and Cockatoos in the suburbs of Sydney. Birds are smart - so much so that I often wonder why the term "bird brained" is an insult. Cockatoos in Syndey, Australia have apparently learned to open trash bins, and the technique is catching on between other groups of co...
One of the things I have been doing nearly since I started at Stardock is receiving and sorting through emails that come to our marketing and media accounts. We get several key requests every week, and something I learned very early on was that not every one of them is legitimate. People will often pose as media outlets or Steam curators in hopes you’ll send them a key, which then soon appears on resale sites. I’m sure it goes without saying, but these kinds o...
Speedrunner 'star0chris' enjoys challenging himself, but recently took things to a whole different level during a playthrough of FromSoftware's Elden Ring. While some players have beaten the game with an overloaded inventory or modded it to fight as non-canon characters, star0chris had something else in mind: a blindfold. He's already slain Radahn and Rennala and is fixated on his next two big bosses: Malenia and Maliketh. When Elden Ring released, I watched a ...
In the age of streaming, I admit I'm rather spoiled. I subscribe to Disney+ and Netflix and don't think twice about commercials anymore. I dropped traditional cable ages ago and have never looked back. Recently, since Netflix discontinued a show I was watching and it moved to Hulu, I signed up for a free trial so that I could blitz my way through it. The free trial, unfortunately, is the subscription tier that includes ads. I figured, sure, it's annoying, but I can live with my episo...
Recently, Nvidia found itself having to deal with an excess of RTX 3000 GPU stock. Since the launch of the next-gen Lovelace graphics card is looming, they need to sell this stock off ahead of it - which means some price cuts along with it. All of this is based on comments made by CEO Jensen Huang on a conference call regarding Nvidia's Q2 fiscal results and was reported on by The Verge . "We found ourselves with excess inventory," said Huang. "Our strategy is to sell-in well below the cu...
Space has long fascinated us here at Stardock. We built our name up on space strategy games with Galactic Civilizations and have continued to do so over the years with games like Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation and Offworld Trading Company . In many ways, space is at the core of what we do. Screenshot from Galactic Civilizations IV Whenever space related news comes across my feed, I find myself immediately drawn to reading about it. While missions to Mars will al...