"No ads, no hosts, no sponsors, just games." The Triple-i Initiative 's pitch for its now-annual showcase of games, crafted by studios working somewhere between "Solo dev or very small team" and "Investor-minded conglomerate with international offices," promises a lot of peeks at games without a lot of chatter, and once again it delivered.

Last year's showcase debuted titles like Norland , Slay the Spire 2 , and The Rogue Prince of Persia , along with updates from Darkest Dungeon 2 , Palworld , and Vampire Survivors . This year featured looks at titles from the Deep Rock universe, the cloning-yourself-to-survive curiosity The Alters , an Endless Legend 2 that continues tweaking the 4X formula, and more.

Below are five selected highlights for the Ars crowd, along with some notable other announcements. The full list is not yet up on the Triple-i site , but you can see what jumped out from the full showcase .

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Back in 2023, we reported on the unveiling of the first full-size 3D digital scan of the remains of the RMS Titanic —a "digital twin" that captured the wreckage in unprecedented detail. Magellan Ltd, a deep-sea mapping company , and Atlantic Productions conducted the scans over a six-week expedition. That project is the subject of the new National Geographic documentary Titanic: The Digital Resurrection , detailing several fascinating initial findings from experts' ongoing analysis of that full-size scan.

Titanic met its doom just four days into the Atlantic crossing, roughly 375 miles (600 kilometers) south of Newfoundland. At 11:40 pm ship's time on April 14, 1912, Titanic hit that infamous iceberg and began taking on water, flooding five of its 16 watertight compartments, thereby sealing its fate. More than 1,500 passengers and crew perished; only around 710 of those on board survived.

Titanic remained undiscovered at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean until an expedition led by Jean-Louis Michel and Robert Ballard reached the wreck on September 1, 1985. The ship split apart as it sank, with the bow and stern sections lying roughly one-third of a mile apart. The bow proved to be surprisingly intact, while the stern showed severe structural damage, likely flattened from the impact as it hit the ocean floor. There is a debris field spanning a 5×3-mile area, filled with furniture fragments, dinnerware, shoes and boots, and other personal items.

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Google has long been on the lookout for ways to break Microsoft's stranglehold on US government office software, and the current drive to cut costs may be it. Google and the federal government have announced an agreement that makes Google Workspace available to all agencies at a significant discount, trimming 71 percent from the service's subscription price tag.

Since Donald Trump returned to the White House, the government has engaged in a campaign of unbridled staffing reductions and program cancellations , all with the aim of reducing federal spending. It would appear Google recognized this opportunity, negotiating with the General Services Administration (GSA) to offer Workspace at a lower price. Google claims the deal could yield up to $2 billion in savings.

Google has previously offered discounts for federal agencies interested in migrating to Workspace, but it saw little success displacing Microsoft. The Windows maker has enjoyed decades as an entrenched tech giant, leading the 365 productivity tools to proliferate throughout the government. While Google has gotten some agencies on board, Microsoft has traditionally won the lion's share of contracts, including the $8 billion Defense Enterprise Office Solutions contract that pushed Microsoft 365 to all corners of the Pentagon beginning in 2020.

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For quick reminders and can’t-miss memos, sticky notes are effective tools, and I'd argue that the simplicity of the sticky note is its best attribute. But the ease behind propping up sticky notes also means that it’s easy for people to find their desks covered in the things, making it difficult to glean critical information quickly.

Rocketbook, a Boston-based company that also makes reusable notebooks , thinks it has a solution for sticky note overload in the form of an app that interprets handwriting and organizes reusable sticky notes. But not everyone has the need—or time—for a dedicated sticky notes app.

Rocketbook’s Reusable Sticky Notes

Like Rocketbook’s flagship notebooks, its Reusable Sticky Notes rely on erasable pens that allow you to use the paper repeatedly. The Reusable Sticky Notes work with the Rocketbook app (available for iOS or Android), which transforms the sticky notes into images that are automatically stored in the app and can be emailed to specified people (as a PDF) or shared with third-party apps.

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The Food and Drug Administration is reinstating telework for staff who review drugs, medical devices, and tobacco, according to reporting by the Associated Press . Review staff and supervisors are now allowed to resume telework at least two days a week, according to an internal email obtained by the AP.

The move reverses a jarring return-to-office decree by the Trump administration, which it used to spur resignations from federal employees. Now, after a wave of such resignations and a brutal round of layoffs that targeted about 3,500 staff , the move to restore some telework appears aimed at keeping the remaining talent amid fears that the agency's review capabilities are at risk of collapse.

The cut of 3,500 staff is a loss of about 19 percent of the agency's workforce, and staffers told the AP that lower-level employees are "pouring" out of the agency amid the Trump administration's actions. Entire offices responsible for FDA policies and regulations have been shuttered. Most of the agency's communication staff have been wiped out, as well as teams that support food inspectors and investigators, the AP reported.

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Chinese companies that sell to US customers on Amazon are reportedly preparing to raise prices or quit the US market because of tariffs imposed by President Trump. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has meanwhile confirmed that he expects the cost of tariffs to be passed on to US buyers.

Reuters talked to several individual sellers and a Chinese trade association that represents over 3,000 Amazon sellers for an article published today. "It'll be very hard for anyone to survive in the US market" because "the entire cost structure gets entirely overwhelmed" by the tariffs, Reuters was told by Wang Xin, who leads the Shenzhen Cross-Border E-Commerce Association. Xin also "not[ed] the tariffs could also lead to customs delays and higher logistics costs."

Trump increased tariffs on China imports to 125 percent yesterday even as he announced a 90-day pause on tariff hikes affecting other countries. The total tariffs are 145 percent because the newly raised tariff "comes on top of a 20 percent fentanyl-related tariff that Trump previously imposed on China," CNBC wrote today.

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Yesterday, OpenAI counter-sued Elon Musk, alleging that Musk's "sham" bid to buy OpenAI was intentionally timed to maximally disrupt and potentially even frighten off investments from honest bidders.

Slamming Musk for attempting to become an "AGI dictator," OpenAI said that if Musk's allegedly "relentless" yearslong campaign of "harassment" isn’t stopped, Musk could end up taking over OpenAI and tanking its revenue the same way he did with Twitter.

In its filing, OpenAI argued that Musk and the other investors who joined his bid completely fabricated the $97.375 billion offer. It was allegedly not based on OpenAI's projections or historical performance, like Musk claimed, but instead appeared to be "a comedic reference to Musk’s favorite sci-fi" novel, Iain Banks' Look to Windward . Musk and others also provided "no evidence of financing to pay the nearly $100 billion purchase price," OpenAI said.

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For its third incarnation, the Mini Countryman now comes in an all-electric variant. The Countryman is Mini's take on the family car, a compact crossover with bold design both inside and out. At time when far too many automakers are supersizing their vehicles, Mini's offerings are still right-sized, even if the Countryman is a bit bigger than the model it replaces . But at times, you might be left feeling that style took preference over substance.

The previous Countryman was available with the brand's only plug-in hybrid powertrain, but Mini now only offers the Countryman with either an internal combustion engine or as a full battery electric vehicle. Consequently, the Countryman SE is a fair bit more expensive now, starting at $45,200 before any tariffs are taken into account.

Much of that money has gone to more lithium-ion—66.5 kWh in total (64.7 kWh useable), coupled to a pair of electric motors with a combined output of 308 hp (230 kW) and 364 lb-ft (494 Nm). That's sufficient for an EPA range estimate of 212 miles (341 km), although that might be a little on the conservative side. Based on the past few hundred miles, the test car we spent a week with averaged 3.4 miles/kWh (18.3 miles/kWh), which should allow for 220 miles (354 km) on a single charge, at least in good weather.

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Framework is opening US preorders for its new Laptop 12 today, a couple of months after announcing the system at an event in February. Framework's DIY edition of the laptop, which is missing RAM, an SSD, a USB-C charger, and an OS and requires some assembly, will start at $549. A fully assembled pre-built version with 8GB of RAM, a 500GB SSD, a 60 W charger, and Windows 11 Home starts at $799.

All preorders placed on Framework's site require a $100 deposit, and almost all configurations begin shipping in July. A first batch of systems is slated to ship in June, but this requires a $250 donation to Hack Club ; Framework says the donation will be used to buy Framework 12 laptops for high school students.

The Laptop 12 was built to be a more budget-friendly system, which is reflected in its specs, screen size, and its mostly plastic construction. But like the Laptop 13, the Laptop 12 prioritizes upgradeability and repairability and retains the USB-C-based Expansion Card system that was the Laptop 13's biggest innovation when it was introduced. Each Laptop 12 has four Expansion Card bays plus a headphone jack, allowing the installation of USB-C, USB-A, DisplayPort, and HDMI ports, as well as the other Expansion Cards Framework offers.

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