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Atlus first teased that it was working on a new RPG with a fantasy setting in mid-2023 — it also said way back then that it will be available sometime this year. Now, the developer has revealed that the game, Metaphor: ReFantazio, will come out on October 11 at a special livestream event. Katsura Hashino, the director of the game, as well as of Persona 3, 4 and 5, also introduced a 30-minute hands-on gameplay that gives you quite a lengthy look at its story and combat mechanics. Similar to the Persona games, Metaphor: ReFantazio has a turn-based combat system with what Atlus says is a "blend of real-time action."
Also, like the Persona games, you'll have to manage your time, so that you can build bonds with your allies and increase your "virtues" outside of dungeon-crawling. Metaphor: ReFantazio is set in the fictional United Kingdom of Euchronia, which was plunged into chaos after the assassination of its king. In the middle of the royal tournament for the throne, the protagonist and his partner fairy Galica go on a journey to find the cursed prince that was thought to be dead and team up with new allies along the way.
Physical copies of the game, both standard and limited Collector's editions, are
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On Monday, Microsoft introduced "Phi-3-mini," a 3.8-billion parameter language model that the company claims rivals the performance of the slightly older ChatGPT 3.5 and Mixtral 8x7B. The paper is titled "Phi-3 Technical Report: A Highly Capable Language Model Locally on Your Phone," which is clear evidence that Microsoft now has an LLM that can run directly on your PC.
Microsoft hasn't said that Phi-3-mini will be the next Copilot, running locally on your PC. But there's a case to be made that it is, and that we have an idea of how well it will work.
1.) Local AI matters
It's a familiar argument: if you issue a search request to Bing, Google Gemini, Claude, or Copilot, it lives in the cloud. This could be embarrassing ("is this wart bad"?) or sensitive ("can I get in trouble for stealing mail?") or something that you don't want to leak at all like a list of bank statements.
Corporations would like to ask questions of their data via AIs like Copilot, but there are no "on premises" versions of Copilot to date. A local version of Copilot is almost a necessary option at this point.
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Securing your online footprint can seem like a daunting task. We've become accustomed to giving up bits of data for convenience, and have been forced into trusting our internet service providers because access has become so vital to everyday life. You don't have to blindly accept this, though: using a virtual private network (VPN) can be an easy way to gain back some of your anonymity and security while browsing online. Still, it can be challenging to differentiate which service makes most sense for your online needs. We tested nine popular VPNs to narrow down our top picks and provide advice on choosing the best VPN service for you.
What is a VPN?
VPNs, or virtual private networks, mask your IP address and the identity of your computer or mobile device on the network and creating an encrypted "tunnel" that prevents your internet service provider (ISP) from accessing data about your browsing history. VPNs are not a one-size-fits-all security solution, though.
Instead, they're just one part of keeping your data private and secure. Roya Ensafi, assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan, told Engadget that VPNs don't protect against common threats like phishing attacks, nor do they protect your data from being stolen. Much of the data or information is stored with the VPN provider instead of your ISP, which means that using a poorly designed or unprotected network can still undermine your security. But they do come in handy for online privacy when you're connecting to an untrusted network somewhere public because they tunnel and encrypt your traffic to the next hop.
That means sweeping claims that seem promising, like military-grade encry
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 Apple is working to secure an exclusive TV deal with soccer governing organization FIFA, reports The New York Times. FIFA will launch a revamped version of Club World Cup in 2025, and Apple wants the TV rights. Club World Cup 2025 will feature 32 teams from each of the six confederations.
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