You know those dystopian notions of seas boiling over thanks to climate change? Well, China has a neat idea to accelerate a process which is already giving us the warmest sea surface temps on record. Heating up the oceans directly with computers.

OK, that’s rather facetious; there have been numerous studies into such an endeavour, with Microsoft running a similar setup for two years near the Orkney Islands just off Scotland with some ecological success. But China has reportedly begun construction on what’s claimed to be the world’s first undersea data center. Allegedly, once complete the facility will have the computing power of “six million conventional personal computers.”

It’s unclear exactly what that means or what the hardware involved comprises. But it will be made of of no fewer than 100 of the huge looking “nodes” pictured above, each of which weighs an incredible 1,300 tons. However, you slice it, then, it’s a lot of kit being submerged 35m under water off the c…

I was excited about Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader when I previewed it in 2022, but the final product left a lot to be desired, according to Jody’s review. The game’s sweeping sci-fi drama was undermined by tedious combat in which “there’s never one interesting tactical battle when there could be three samey ones to grind down your resources,” he lamented, while the experience was further hobbled by an infestation of bugs.

Yet Jody notes in that same review, “if you played Owlcat’s previous RPGs at launch, you’ll be familiar with the feeling you’re playing the worst version of the game” and “it’s not impossible that Rogue Trader could get a significant overhaul.” Well, that overhaul has just arrived. Yesterday, Owlcat issued the mother of all patches. In fact, it’s less of a patch and more a whole new pair of trousers, an overhaul so extensive that the developers have added a special item into the game that lets you respec your characters.

Described as “gargantuan” by Ow…

A lot of cooking games are designed to be stressful: By getting you to cook while jumping in between portals or making you deal with hangry hordes, they change a normally peaceful daily activity into something harried and intense. Not so with Venba, a cooking puzzle game slash visual novel that released on Steam this week. It’s about an Indian family that moves to Canada, and instead of lines of screaming customers, you’ll prepare meals for your family by solving puzzles and unlocking the memories of a woman trying to make a new home.

Each level of the game is tied to a dish, and a year in the life of the family. According to Polygon’s Nicole Carpenter, each dish is presented as a puzzle from the family’s cookbook, which is missing pieces from ripped pages or smudged recipes. By solving the puzzles, players connect Venba with her memories of home and help to connect her family with their heritage… while making dishes that I wish I could pull out of the screenshots and e…