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Captain America about to smack someone down with his shiled.

Marvel Rivals May Get Something No One Asked For: Original Heroes

by admin August 19, 2025

The Marvel universe is so vast that games like hero shooter Marvel Rivals and fighting game Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls already have a virtually endless bucket of characters to draw on for their growing rosters. Nevertheless, it sounds like NetEase is at least considering making its own original heroes for Marvel Rivals at some point. You know, if that was something you ever thought about.

MP1st asked Marvel Rivals director Guangyun “Guangguang” Chen if NetEase had considered adding heroes of its own to fight alongside Marvel staples like the Avengers and the Fantastic Four in a future season. After all, other Marvel projects like the MCU movies have created new characters. Would it be out of the question for Rivals to also indulge in making people up to capture an objective or push a payload? Well, Chen says that Marvel has given the team the green light to do that. While he told MP1st the team is “allowed to introduce original characters,” Chen played coy when asked if any are coming down the pipeline, merely saying “stay tuned.”

Maybe my immediate aversion to this is just because Marvel Rivals isn’t even a year old yet, and the thought that someone’s favorite comic book mainstay could get sidelined for some OC cooked up in the NetEase offices feels bad. However, Luna Snow, one of the most popular characters in Marvel Rivals, also started as an original character in the mobile game Marvel Future Fight, which has been a point of contention considering all the attention she gets in terms of cosmetics compared to fan-favorite heroes who originate from the comics. I don’t doubt some interesting heroes might come out of this, but you’re still covering the classics, NetEase, so I hope any original characters you might introduce come after you’ve spent a bit more time filling out the roster with established heroes people are still waiting for.

For more on Marvel Rivals, check out Kotaku’s review.

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August 19, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

ChatGPT asked to play an Atari 2600 at chess then ‘got absolutely wrecked on the beginner level’

by admin June 16, 2025

An engineer toying around with ChatGPT found OpenAI’s apparently world-leading LLM getting a little bolshy about how it would do at chess. In fact, ChatGPT itself asked Citrix engineer Robert Caruso to set it up against a basic chess program to see “how quickly” it would win: and then proceeded to get battered by an Atari 2600.

First things first: chess engines are now unquestionably superior to human players, and an off-the-shelf program like Stockfish will handily trounce the best in the world. There are also AI-based chess engines from the likes of DeepMind. And ChatGPT 4o, the latest model, may be a leader in LLMs—but it is not a chess engine.

Nevertheless, you might expect something a little more impressive than this. Talking to ChatGPT about the history of AI in chess “led to it volunteering to play Atari Chess,” said Caruso on LinkedIn. “It wanted to find out how quickly it could beat a game that only thinks 1-2 moves ahead on a 1.19 MHz CPU.”

And?

“ChatGPT got absolutely wrecked on the beginner level,” says Caruso. “Despite being given a baseline board layout to identify pieces, ChatGPT confused rooks for bishops, missed pawn forks, and repeatedly lost track of where pieces were—first blaming the Atari icons as too abstract to recognize, then faring no better even after switching to standard chess notation. It made enough blunders to get laughed out of a 3rd grade chess club.”

Video Chess is as basic as chess software comes, which is entirely a function of its era: the major challenge for the programmers was creating a working engine within 4KB (which was still double the standard 2KB for other VCS games). It essentially brute forces the best move in a given position, but lacks an overall strategy and doesn’t think ahead.

A decent human player, in other words, should have a pretty easy time conquering Video Chess. But for 90 minutes Caruso “had to stop [ChatGPT] from making awful moves and correct its board awareness multiple times per turn. It kept promising it would improve ‘if we just started over.’ Eventually, even ChatGPT knew it was beat—and conceded with its head hung low.”

(Image credit: Brian Mitchell via Getty.)

ChatGPT itself asked for the game of chess against an Atari, “which it proclaimed it would easily win,” after a conversation about Stockfish and AlphaZero. The LLM was apparently “curious how quickly it could win” and, because Caruso had told it he was a weak player, “offered to teach me strategy along the way.”

The story isn’t entirely one-sided. Caruso says that when ChatGPT had an accurate sense of the board it offered him some “solid guidance” and at times was “genuinely impressive.” But at others, and this will be familiar to anyone who’s spent much time fooling around with ChatGPT, “it made absurd suggestions… or tried to move pieces that had already been captured, even during turns when it otherwise had an accurate view of the board.”

Naturally the AI evangelists will be out in force to say this is meaningless, it’s not what LLMs are designed to do, and so on. But this does raise wider questions about the technology and particularly its understanding of context (or lack thereof). “Its inability to retain a basic board state from turn to turn was very disappointing,” says Caruso. “Is that really any different from forgetting other crucial context in a conversation?”

In a nod to Atari’s once-famous marketing slogan, Caruso signs off: “Have you played Atari today? ChatGPT wishes it hadn’t.”

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June 16, 2025 0 comments

Crypto Trends

Supreme Court asked to Reject Coinbase User’s Crypto Case

by admin May 31, 2025

The US government has urged the Supreme Court not to take up a Coinbase user’s challenge against the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) effort to obtain his crypto transaction records.

In a filing dated May 30, Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that Coinbase user James Harper has no Fourth Amendment right to shield his financial records held by the exchange.

The government claimed that Harper “voluntarily” shared his data with Coinbase, and that the IRS followed proper legal procedures to obtain it through a judicially approved summons.

Harper’s case centers on a 2016 IRS investigation into widespread tax underreporting on cryptocurrency gains. At the time, the IRS discovered a sharp gap between the millions of Coinbase users trading Bitcoin (BTC) and the relatively few taxpayers who reported crypto gains.

In response, the agency obtained a so-called “John Doe” summons compelling Coinbase to turn over records on high-volume customers.

An excerpt of the filing. Source: Supreme Court

Related: Coinbase data breach 2025: What was stolen and what you need to know

Coinbase user sues IRS over crypto records search

Harper, who traded Bitcoin on Coinbase during the relevant years, later sued, claiming that the IRS’s actions amounted to an unconstitutional search of his personal records.

Lower courts disagreed, ruling that Coinbase’s records are business documents — not Harper’s private papers — and that the IRS acted lawfully.

In its brief, the government argued that Supreme Court precedent supports the IRS’s position. Citing past cases such as United States v. Miller, the government emphasized that individuals have no reasonable expectation of privacy in financial records held by third parties Coinbase.

The filing also pointed to Coinbase’s own privacy policy, which warned users that information could be shared with law enforcement.

“To the extent petitioner made those arguments below, the court of appeals correctly rejected them as both foreclosed by this Court’s precedent and meritless,” the government said.

The Supreme Court has not yet decided whether it will hear the case. A denial would leave in place the First Circuit’s ruling in favor of the IRS.

Related: Retired artist loses $2M in crypto to Coinbase impersonator

Coinbase suffers major data breach

On May 15, Coinbase disclosed a data breach in which attackers bribed customer support staff in India to access sensitive user information.

Stolen data included customer names, account balances, and transaction histories. Coinbase confirmed the breach impacted roughly 1% of its monthly transacting users. Among those affected was venture capitalist Roelof Botha, managing partner at Sequoia Capital.

Coinbase also faced a wave of lawsuits following the revelation. At least six legal complaints were filed on May 15 and 16, with plaintiffs accusing the exchange of failing to implement adequate security measures and mishandling its response to the breach.

Magazine: Coinbase hack shows the law probably won’t protect you: Here’s why

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May 31, 2025 0 comments

GameFi Guides

Telegram CEO Says French Intelligence Asked Him to Ban Romanian Election Channels

by admin May 20, 2025

In brief

Durov claims French intelligence demanded IP data and bans on political Telegram channels in Romania.
France denies meddling, insisting its outreach focused on child safety and anti-terror efforts.
The row shows growing concerns over authoritarian state overreach on encrypted platforms.

Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of encrypted messaging platform Telegram, confirmed that France’s foreign intelligence service asked him to ban conservative Romanian voices ahead of the May 2025 presidential election, citing terrorism and child safety concerns.

He refused.

“They met with me—allegedly to fight terrorism and child porn,” Durov wrote on X on Monday.

Durov claims the latter subject “was never even mentioned,” adding that the intelligence agency engaged in manipulative tactics, despite having other intentions.

“Their main focus was always geopolitics: Romania, Moldova, Ukraine,” Durov claimed.

The Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE), France’s foreign intelligence agency, allegedly sought IP logs for users tied to political conversations, Durov said.

“Falsely implying Telegram did nothing to remove child porn is a manipulation tactic,” he added.

Durov’s claims were first made public on Sunday morning, with French officials denying his allegations hours after.

“France categorically rejects these allegations and calls on everyone to exercise responsibility and respect for Romanian democracy,” the country’s Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs stated on X.

Decrypt reached out to the ministry for further comment. Telegram’s press office did not immediately return Decrypt’s request for comments.

Election interference and democracy

When French intelligence head Nicolas Lerner approached Durov, the Telegram head claimed he “flatly refused.”

“You can’t ‘defend democracy’ by destroying democracy. You can’t ‘fight election interference’ by interfering with elections,” Durov said, exposing the matter on his Telegram channel.

The interaction happened sometime in spring at the Salon des Batailles in the Hôtel de Crillon, Durov recalled.

The concerns around election interference using Telegram as an encrypted means of communication center on Romania’s recently concluded presidential elections, where Nicusor Dan, a centrist, defeated George Simion, a nationalist who had publicly claimed to follow President Donald Trump’s political style.

Durov claimed French intelligence had asked him to block Romanian conservative voices in the run-up to the elections. France’s DGSE acknowledged meeting with Durov, but stated these discussions only focused on “preventing terrorist and child pornography threats” on the platform.

Still, the Telegram founder is no stranger to political scrutiny.

Last year, he was arrested and detained over his alleged role in facilitating criminal content. The case remains unresolved.

The move sparked outrage across the tech industry. Notcoin and Toncoin, two cryptocurrencies associated with the Telegram platform via The Open Network, fell as much as 21% on the news.

Following Durov’s arrest, the platform promised to share details and cooperate with authorities.

It’s worth noting that Durov’s indictment came at a time when Telegram was moving to make crypto-backed financial services a core feature of its platform.

Those ambitions were hampered by their brush with authorities, Seth Goertz, a former U.S. Attorney specializing in cryptocurrency and cybersecurity, told Decrypt at the time.

“The more they go down that road, the more they’re inviting scrutiny,” Goertz said, commenting on Telegram’s crypto and finance ambitions.

Asked

Coinbase user sues IRS over crypto records search

Coinbase suffers major data breach

In brief

Election interference and democracy

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