Two of the top four chess nations will go head to head in Miami on 27-28 July

The USA and Uzbekistan are among the world’s current four best chess teams, along with India and China, so the announcement that the pair will meet at Miami on 27-28 July in an all-play-all rapid and blitz Scheveningen format is sure to create interest as a guide to what may happen when the 200-nation classical Olympiad takes place in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, from 15-27 September. Full details of the forthcoming match are here.

The two teams in Miami will both be at virtually full strength. The USA will field the world Nos 2 and 3, Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura, plus the world No 7, Wesley So, and the world Nos 17 and 22, Leinier Domínguez and Levon Aronian. Only the world No 19, Hans Niemann, might have made it stronger.

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Evil Empire creatives explain how it is playing to today’s ‘metroidvanias’ and honouring the original’s legacy with much fresh slaying to be done

Since the last Castlevania game hit the shelves (2014’s Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2), Konami’s dormant series has unexpectedly spawned a hit genre. With an entire generation raised on “metroidvanias” – a portmanteau of Metroid and Castlevania – millions of players have only ever seen the games inspired by Konami’s seminal games. Now with Belmont’s Curse, launching in October, Castlevania is finally dashing back to console, where Konami hopes to reclaim its side-scroller throne.

Set 23 years after the events of 1989’s Castlevania 3 – the same setting as the hit Netflix show – Belmont’s Curse shakes off the series’ 3D ambitions and takes the Belmonts back to basics. Dispatching players to the demon-infested streets of 1499 Paris, you’re placed in the tattered boots of Trevor Belmont’s daughter, Rose. As a bishop pleads with the Belmonts to rid Paris of the ancient evil besetting the city, Rose heads into the sewers, longsword in hand, and her demon-slaying adventure begins.

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Microsoft has open-sourced Comic Chat, its short-lived 1990s experiment in turning Internet Relay Chat (IRC) conversations into comic strips – and, for many users, their first encounter with Comic Sans. Microsoft Comic Chat was released in 1996 with Internet Explorer 3. It was conceived by David "DJ" Kurlander of the Microsoft Research Virtual Worlds Group as a new visual representation of conversation histories. Rather than displaying the scrolling sequence of text messages still familiar today, a chat was depicted across several cartoon panels, replete with characters, backgrounds, and speech bubbles. According to Microsoft, "the visual world of Comic Chat was the work of Jim Woodring, a highly regarded independent comic artist whose characters gave the software its distinctive look." This was long before generative AI, and the software generated its scenes using rules. "If someone wrote 'I like that,'" explained Microsoft, "the character might point to itself. If the text suggested anger, the character might frown or cross its arms." "Comic Chat was more than a clever skin for IRC. It was able to interpret conversational cues in the text and choose appropriate poses, facial expressions, gestures, and panel layouts. "That meant Comic Chat was not simply displaying messages but also making real-time editorial decisions about how a conversation should look and feel as a comic." It could be entertaining, even if the novelty wore off quickly for many users – something Microsoft tacitly acknowledged when it pulled the plug on the project in the early 2000s. That said, Comic Chat is a reminder of when the World Wide Web was a more optimistic place, full of experimentation. While the concept didn't really go anywhere (although its spirit lives on in emojis and gifs), it was innovative. Microsoft localized Comic Chat into 24 languages and bundled it with Windows 98. Comic Chat was also a natural home for Comic Sans, unlike an HR handout promoting the latest company event. In its post announcing the code's release under the MIT license, Microsoft stated: "Comic Chat was created during a period when software teams were willing to color outside the lines, literally and figuratively." ®

ON CALL Welcome to another installment of On Call, The Register's Friday column in which readers kindly share their stories of untangling tech support situations. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Steve" who started his IT career doing tech support for a supermarket's own-brand mobile service. "I started in 2006, when many phones still had removable batteries," Steve told On Call. "One day, a customer rang in ranting and raving about how she'd just bought her very first mobile, had used it for two weeks, and now wanted to return it because it was faulty." Steve naturally inquired about the nature of the fault. "This phone is supposed to last for years," the customer replied. "But I've just bought a third battery to keep it running." He soon realized that whenever the customer's phone ran out of juice, she discarded its battery and bought a new one – because she assumed the battery was disposable, like those in many other devices. Steve asked the customer if she was using the charger that came with the phone. The customer was unaware it existed, and was therefore not using it. "I asked her to get the box the phone came in and check, and she quickly climbed down once she found the charger under a layer of cardboard," Steve told On Call. Have you had to support a user who ignored vital equipment? If so, click here to send On Call an email to share your story. No battery required! ®

Vanillasludge posted a photo:

Stueyman has added a photo to the pool:

Cape Naturaliste, north of Meelup Beach.

Stueyman has added a photo to the pool:

Things you find… Shelley Cove WA

Na de hoge temperaturen van de afgelopen dagen is het vanaf vandaag de beurt aan een koeler intermezzo. Een noordwestelijke stroming voert koelere lucht aan en dat weertype lijkt nog wel even aan te houden.

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Wat brengt Grondmarmotdag vandaag? Nou, best veel, namelijk de zwaarste Amerikaanse aanvallen sinds de vijandigheden zes dagen geleden elke dag opnieuw hervat werden. CENTCOM schreef vier uur geleden: 

"Vandaag om 21.40 uur (Eastern Time) heeft het U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) zijn meest recente grote reeks aanvallen op Iran voltooid. Amerikaanse strijdkrachten – waaronder gevechtsvliegtuigen, drones en oorlogsschepen – zetten precisiewapens in die tientallen Iraanse militaire doelen raakten, zoals locaties voor kustbewaking en luchtverdediging, militaire logistieke infrastructuur en maritieme capaciteiten. Dit was de zesde opeenvolgende nacht van Amerikaanse aanvallen op Iran. In opdracht van de opperbevelhebber verzwakt CENTCOM de Iraanse militaire capaciteiten verder en stelt het Iran verantwoordelijk voor recente aanvallen op de commerciële scheepvaart."

De Amerikaanse aanvallen leken zich ook even specifiek te concentreren op Irans belangrijkste diepwaterhaven Chabahar, die buiten de Straat van Hormuz ligt en daarmee directe toegang geeft tot de Indiase Oceaan. MinDef Hegseth deelt zelfs speciaal deze foto van de vernietigde waterverkeerstoren. Ook richtten de Amerikaanse aanvallen zich voor het eerst weer op bruggen en zelfs een vliegveld. Kortom: de escalatieladder is betreden. 

Ook deelde CENTCOM de onderstaande beelden van de hernieuwde maritieme blokkade, waarbij de foto van een Amerikaanse marinier onder de vlag van een Iraanse olietanker toch wel een novum is.

Iran voerde naar goed gebruik weer aanvallen uit op Amerikaanse doelen in de Golfstaten, waarbij naar goed gebruik geen Amerikaanse slachtoffers lijken te zijn gevallen. Wel hadden Amerikaanse luchtverdedigings-Patriots het erg druk met ballistische raketten boven Bahrein, zie video hier.

Vreemd nieuw verhaal overigens ook: Iraanse staatsmedia claimen dat Iran voor het eerst Amerikaanse doelen in Syrië aangevallen heeft, namelijk Special Forces-basis in het al-Tanf-gebied, waarbij "een groot aanval Amerikanen gedood zijn", en helikopters en radarsystemen vernietigd werden. Typisch Iraanse grootspraak, maar wat blijkt? Alle Amerikaanse eenheden werden daar op 11 februari al teruggetrokken, er zijn daar helemaal geen Amerikanen. 

Afijn, wij maar weer live dan hè! Heel veel meer beeld na de breek.

CENTCOM-video maritieme blokkade, enteren van Iraanse olietanker

pic.twitter.com/rkioM37LA5

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) July 16, 2026

CENTCOM-video luchtaanvallen afgelopen nacht

U.S. military:

"Today at 9:40 p.m. ET, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) completed its latest major wave of strikes against Iran.

U.S. forces, including fighter jets, aerial drones, and warships, launched precision munitions that hit dozens of Iranian military targets such as… pic.twitter.com/WsdjupHVCq

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) July 17, 2026

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Irans belangrijkste diepwaterhaven steeds minder bruikbaar

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Patriots hadden het druk boven Bahrein vannacht

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Sam suggests this Error'd indicates "Disney+ preparing the ground for usage-based billing." I'm intrigued by the idea that Disney might charge by the minute, but I suspect the reality is far more mundane.

Silly prices at online shopping sites don't usually make it through the gauntlet here, but I'm making an exception for the math, as Rob H. points out "it ain't mathin'."

and Harrison suggests a novel kind of discounting math "I went to the supermarket later at night for some beers, and had a snoop around the yellow sticker items for anything I might need or could freeze. This bakery item was priced in reverse, Was: 0.00, Now 1.99, discounted by negative infinity percent, and infinity is even printed upside down somehow."

We've got a mojibake from dragoncoder047: "Was browsing through the widget options on my iPhone home screen and found that Game Center had decided to do this. Mind you, my iPhone was, and always had been, set to English."

Finally a combination of typical time travel and package tracker shenanigans, not explained by time zone hijinks. Evelyn notes "Apparently the package was registered in July, on its way during January, and then got back to July."