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He enjoys soulslikes, character-driven RPGs, and third-person shooters plucked straight out of the Xbox 360 era. He also likes to flex his non-video game nerdy knowledge sometimes, whether that's explaining who's who in the new Wolverine game or recommending a comic book series about a sentient sword.

But the studio stopped short of saying 'Part 3'

Image: Naughty Dog, Nixxes Software, Iron Galaxy Studios/PlayStation Publishing

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Naughty Dog celebrated The Last of Us Day on Monday. The festivities were headlined by clicker-inspired armor for Ghost of Yōtei, but the developer also gave away PlayStation avatars and discounted the PC versions of both The Last of Us games. To close out the day, studio head Neil Druckmann shared a message to let fans know Naughty Dog is working on more The Last of Us projects, but wouldn't say exactly what.

"We have a couple of very exciting new projects in very early stages," Druckmann said. Of course, he couldn't say much more about them at this point — such is the secrecy of big-budget game development. "I will tell you that both projects will expand the canon of The Last of Us beyond Part 1 and Part 2."

Druckmann's been at this game for a while and didn't give fans much to go off of; "expand the canon" is vague enough it could mean anything. "The world of The Last of Us means a great deal to us, and we wouldn’t return to it unless we had something meaningful to say. We believe these stories are worth telling," Druckmann said.

Though the idea of two The Last of Us projects is exciting, fans have reason to keep their guard up. Naughty Dog was hard at work on a multiplayer The Last of Us game for years before it was eventually canceled. There's no guarantee these projects will ever be seen by the public.

Naughty Dog gives an official update on Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet

Those two The Last of Us projects aren't all that Naughty Dog has in the works. Its next game is Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet (say that just one time fast), which debuted at the 2024 Game Awards. Druckmann said the team is "heads down" on Intergalactic, which is becoming the studio's "most ambitious game yet."

As such, don't expect to hear anything more about it soon as the studio is being tight-lipped for the rest of 2026. "In 2027, that changes. We’ll fully reveal Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet and give you a proper look at Jordan’s wild sci-fi adventure."

If you take Druckmann at his word, that means we shouldn't expect any new trailer for Intergalactic at this year's upcoming Game Awards. Sony usually holds States of Play in February and June, so it's possible Intergalactic might show up at one of them next year. %!s()

Dubbed "Halo Battery" by its creator, Reddit user headvox, the tray utility was apparently created with the help of Anthropic's Claude AI model.

According to headvox, Halo Battery "shows the charge status of your 2.4 GHz and Bluetooth devices in one place right on your taskbar. Each device gets its own tray icon: a ring that shows the battery level, with a device pictogram inside. The ring goes amber, then red when the battery is low, and slowly 'breathes' green while charging. Hover over an icon to see the exact percentage."

Among other devices, Halo battery has been tested with the Razer BlackShark V2 Pro (2023), WLmouse Beast X Max, GameSir G7 Pro, 1MORE SonoFlow headphones and the Logitech G502 X Plus. Thanks to a very positive response from the PC community, there's a growing list of tested devices on Halo Battery's GitHub page.

Aside from the obvious ergonomic benefits of having the battery levels of all wireless devices so neatly consolidated with simple at-a-glance cues, there's also the minor matter of avoiding bloatware.

For instance, Halo Battery means you can track you Razer mouse's charge levels without having to install the Synapse app, which by many accounts means avoiding 800 MB's worth of background service memory footprint.

Dare I say it, but one Redditor's rather, er, acerbic comment sums up the implications of Halo Battery for Windows and Microsoft very neatly. "It's ****ing pathetic that a feature which should just exist as standard has to be implemented by a hobbyist ****ing around with Python vibecoding. Microsoft is incompetent beyond description." Well, quite.

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Halo Battery is indeed exactly the sort of neat, simple but worthwhile quality-of-life feature that really ought to be in Windows from the get-go. As headvox says, "Windows shows battery for some Bluetooth devices, but only in Settings, not in the tray. Most 2.4 GHz dongle devices (like my Razer headset and WLmouse) don't report it to Windows at all; you need the vendor's app for that."

Of course, that hasn't prevented the Reddit hive mind from suggesting a few tweaks. Some users would like to see the battery level in percentage shown for each device without the need to hover, rather than just the illustrative ring around each icon. Others have suggested custom per-device audio alerts.

Anywho, if nothing else Halo Battery does also confirm that AI isn't all bad. As headvox says, most of the code was done by Claude. "To be clear, I built this with Claude (AI). I came up with the idea, tested it on my devices and pushed the design, but most of the code was written by Claude," headvox says.

Jeremy has been writing about technology and PCs since the 90nm Netburst era (Google it!) and enjoys nothing more than a serious dissertation on the finer points of monitor input lag and overshoot followed by a forensic examination of advanced lithography. Or maybe he just likes machines that go “ping!” He also has a thing for tennis and cars. %!s()

The new media program, DocLab, has also unveiled the first projects from its 20th anniversary program, including the winners of the Film Fund DocLab Interactive Grant.

IDFA Competition for Short Documentary
The IDFA Competition for Short Documentary has 15 films that “use creativity and imagination to push the boundaries of short documentary,” the festival says.

The tragicomic portrait of humanity and its fallibility, “The Bus of Broken Hearts,” by Björn Carlberg and Johan Palmgren, follows the world’s biggest cross-country ski race, where thousands of disheartened participants fail to make it to the finish line.

Several titles turn their attention to the act of looking itself. Revealing a glimmer of hope in the aftermath of an earthquake in Southern Turkey, Perihan Incegöz’s “Our Village From the Moon” captures Kurdish children as they turn the ruins into a playground and “dream of the moon.”

“Picnic – In Light Invisible to the Human Eye,” by Jan Ijäs, follows Israelis who travel to the border of Gaza to see the devastation of the region first-hand.

IDFA DocLab 20th anniversary
For two decades, IDFA’s new media program DocLab has explored how emerging technologies and new forms of interaction can expand what documentary can be and how audiences experience it.

For its 20th anniversary, IDFA DocLab unveils the first projects, including the two winners of the Film Fund DocLab Interactive Grant and new works developed through a two-year research program, Shared Realities.

The Netherlands Film Fund and IDFA DocLab have selected two participatory works that turn systems that shape everyday life into audience experiences for the 2026 Film Fund DocLab Interactive Grant: “The Love Files,” by Sanne De Wilde and Samir Veen, that invites audiences “to step inside and critically review a ‘love file’ application for a residence permit,” and “All the Downtime,” by Ant Hampton, “immersing audiences in an algorithm-led distribution center, just as a power outage disrupts the order and gives way for creative disorder.” Each receives €10,000 to finalize and present the work at IDFA DocLab.

The 20th anniversary program additionally features new works developed through Shared Realities, including Tamara Shogaolu’s “The Invisible Woman,” a VR opera that recovers the story of Francisca de Angola, a 17th-century Black woman in Amsterdam, and Polymorf’s “Microbiome Restaurant,” with two sensory experiences exploring the human body as an ecosystem.

Other projects include “Orgasmagoria,” by Dries Verhoeven, screened at sex theater Casa Rosso; and “Archive Arcade,” which restores landmark immersive works, including “Thanatorama” by Ana Maria de Jésus, the first project ever selected for IDFA DocLab. The complete IDFA DocLab program will be announced on Oct. 13.

Signed
Signed showcases the “latest cinematic adventures of some of the most original filmmakers of our time.” The selection of films celebrates those with “a unique artistic signature, beyond the canon,” IDFA says.

The selection “reflects on lives lost, those left behind, and what remains after upheaval.”

Michal Marczak’s “Closure” follows a father in search of his missing son along the Vistula River near Warsaw, in “a meditation on grief suspended between hope and fear.”

Turning to the systems that shape everyday lives, Ava DuVernay’s “14th” traces the legacy of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment from Reconstruction to the present. Guillaume Massart’s “Detention” enters a French prison officers’ training school, following recruits as they grapple with the gap between classroom ethics and the unpredictable realities of life behind bars.

Several established filmmakers return to IDFA with short films born from the urgency of the present, responding directly to the times we live in. In “They’re Here,” IDFA’s 2022 Guest of Honor Laura Poitras and Rachel Lauren Mueller offer a chilling account of the show of force by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Minneapolis. In “Wild Asparagus,” Avi Mograbi returns to his archives of a visit to Palestinian village Saffuriya with his friend Ali Al-Azhari, giving new meaning to decades-old footage.

Best of Fests
The Best of Fests section presents “the year’s most eye-catching and celebrated films from various festivals from around the world.” The selection of 59 titles “spans diverse styles and genres, engaging with some of the world’s most pressing topics.”

Several films “engage directly with the state of crisis in the world, tracing how the histories of countries continue to shape the present,” IDFA says.

In a “poignant chronicle of decades of resistance to the regime in Iran,” Pegah Ahangarani’s “Rehearsals for a Revolution” finds a glimmer of hope in those who continue to resist. Amid daily bombardments in Gaza, Ahmed Hassouna’s “Citizen Osama” follows journalist and father Osama as he balances the demands of reporting with the responsibilities and fears of caring for his newborn son. Lukas Marxt’s “>1.5°C: Pyropolitics and the New World” observes the devastating wildfires that swept through Los Angeles County in January 2025, confronting the consequences of increasingly extreme weather.

Other films begin from deeply personal perspectives. In “The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer,” Alessandra Sanguinetti follows cousins Belinda and Guillermina in rural Argentina over 25 years, creating a tender portrait on friendship and the passing of time. IDFA Bertha Fund-supported titles in the selection include “Baby Jackfruit Baby Guava” by Nong Nhat Quang, “Concrete Land” by Asmahan Bkerat, and “Truck Driver” by Francisco Marise.

Paradocs
Paradocs showcases “the year’s non-fiction film art, in which visual artists and filmmakers present their explorations into non-fiction filmmaking,” IDFA says.

The selection of 16 titles “explores the world through bold formal experimentation, genre-bending, and unexpected perspectives.”

A “hedonistic escape to a melting glacier is interrupted by apocalyptic climate change and existential anxiety” in Susanne Regina Meures’ “Eternity”— adapting Florentina Holzinger’s performance art to the screen. In “The Case Against Space,” Graeme Arnfield offers a reconstruction of the first “strike” in space, “reframing the astronaut hero through a critical lens on capitalism and surveillance.” Johann Lurf’s “Forever…Forever” presents an “overwhelming vision of the cosmos in motion, with an ever-accelerating timelapse of the sun’s path filmed over 22 months”—to be shown on 70mm in Eye Filmmuseum.

The selection also includes works by several collectives. “Ãsheghetam,” by Filmsaaz, blends computer animation, fiction and documentary in a “kaleidoscopic portrait of queer love in Tehran.” In “Together,” ecofeminist art collective Neozoon uses archival and social media footage to explore the tension between communal life and the desire for private property.

Selected films: The IDFA Competition for Short Documentary
“All That Appears Solid Is Built on Blood,” dir. Izdihar Afyouni, Gelare Khoshgozaran (Palestine/United Kingdom/United States), 11’ – International Premiere
“All the Hands I’ve Let Go,” Laura Chará (Colombia/France), 23’ – International Premiere
“Another Sky, Evi Cats” (Belgium), 15’ – World Premiere
“The Bus of Broken Hearts,” Björn Carlberg, Johan Palmgren (Sweden/Finland), 34’ – International Premiere
“Canina,” Néstor López (Spain), 17’ – World Premiere
“Certainties,” Calum Walter (United States), 14’ – International Premiere
“Eye Sun,” Maricé Castañeda (Peru), 19’ – World Premiere
“From a Vertebral Collapse Mountains Arose,” Giovanni Benini (Italy/Belgium), 11’ – World Premiere
“Man of Seed,” María Abenia (Spain), 33’ – World Premiere
“One Early Morning, the Alligator Swallowed Me,” Nicolás Palacio (Colombia), 16’ – World Premiere
“Our Village From the Moon,” Perihan Incegöz (Switzerland/Turkey), 14’ – World Premiere
“Picnic – In Light Invisible to the Human Eye,” Jan Ijäs (Finland), 26’ – International Premiere
“Six Weeks, 3 Days, and All the Years Before,” Ankita Gusain (India), 15’ – World Premiere
“Spectators,” Stanislavs Tokalovs, Betija Zvejniece (Latvia), 18’ – World Premiere
“The Unabsorbed Past, Yietnu” (Yi Zhang, Nu Ha) (France/China), 26’ – World Premiere %!s()

To understand agents, leaders need more than a description of their purpose, configuration and permissions. They need to see how agents make decisions, use tools and respond to context in real work.

No single system was designed to explain an agent’s complete operation. Identity systems show access. AI platforms show configuration. Cloud and application tools show pieces of activity. Each produces useful evidence, but rarely a shared view of what an agent was trying to do, how it proceeded and whether its work delivered the intended result.

The executive challenge is to give the teams approving, operating and relying on agents a shared basis for deciding what to expand, refine or stop.

​The Difference Between Design And Behavior

As agents take on work across systems, leaders need an operating picture that connects an agent’s role and permissions with its decisions, resources and outcomes. Behavioral context turns those separate signals into evidence of how effectively an agent is performing.

The employee analogy is useful, provided we do not push it too far. Agents are not people, but in both cases, a role description only tells us so much about performance in changing circumstances.

The distinction I keep returning to is simple. Architecture shows how an agent is built. Configuration shows what it can do. Behavior shows what it actually does when it works.

Why Behavior Is Key

Design-time information is a starting point. It cannot show every decision an agent makes in a changing operating environment. A retry can become a loop, and context can change the systems, data or human review a task involves.

Consider a customer-service agent authorized to query order systems, issue standard refunds and escalate exceptions. Its configuration may remain unchanged. Yet, a shift in demand, a new tool or a pattern of ambiguous requests can change the work it does, the decisions it makes and the outcomes customers receive.

Behavior supplies that missing context. It shows the sequence of actions behind a result and helps teams see where an agent is dependable, where a workflow needs support, and where design-time assumptions should be revisited. Over time, it shows how an agent operates in practice, rather than only what it was intended to do.

For senior leaders, this is as much an organizational question as a technical one. Behavior gives teams a shared object of discussion: the work an agent performed, the context that shaped it and the outcome it produced.

​From Snapshots To An Operating View

Most enterprise operating models rely on periodic snapshots, such as what software is, where it runs, what it can access and whether it meets relevant standards at a given moment. Those checks remain important, but they cannot explain how an agent performs as it makes decisions, accumulates context and carries out work.

A complete operating view requires three layers:

• Architecture: Understand the agent’s purpose, identity, models, tools, data sources and dependencies.

• Configuration: Know the agent’s boundaries, systems and available actions.

• Behavior: Observe how the agent works across real tasks, including how it uses tools, responds to changing context and develops patterns over time.

The employee analogy is useful here. We would not evaluate someone solely through a role description or periodic checkpoint. Similarly, an agent’s configuration tells us what it is expected and permitted to do, but its behavior reveals how it performs under changing circumstances.

Snapshots start the operating picture. Behavior completes it. Together, these layers help leaders decide where an agent can take on more responsibility, where its work needs refinement and where intervention is needed before a problematic pattern becomes embedded in an important workflow.

What To Ask Of Agentic Work

Executives can begin with a practical set of questions. What is this agent meant to achieve? What capabilities and resources are available to it? How is it using them in practice? Which recurring patterns support the intended outcome? How should its performance be evaluated as the agent, its context and the systems around it evolve? Where is the organization learning something that should change the agent, the workflow or the decision around it?

The crucial capability is that the organization can connect the evidence and make decisions with it.

The Bottom Line​

Every task produces more than an output. It can produce evidence about how the enterprise is operating through agents. Organizations that learn from that evidence will be better positioned to improve workflows, allocate responsibility and deliberately extend autonomy.

The opportunity is to learn from agents as they work, then use that understanding to decide where more responsibility is warranted. ​

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The changes would cover the estimated five million leaseholders in England and Wales who can be forced to pay a landlord for simple changes to their home, despite having bought it.

Rayner told party activists she had heard of leaseholders being charged £250 for permission to own a pet and £400 to change their front door.

She said people in these situations were "powerless against the vested interests that only take, while giving nothing back in return".

The government is already legislating, external to ban new leasehold flats, described in Labour's 2024 election manifesto as a "feudal" system where people own the right to occupy a property via a lease for a limited number of years from a freeholder, or landlord, who owns the land.

Through the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill, ministers want a commonhold system where residents collectively own and manage their buildings.

Now, Rayner is taking aim at the web of management companies that operate between leaseholders and their effective landlords.

She said the sector had many decent businesses which were "undermined by far too many cowboys, crooks and con artists".

People excited at buying their own homes are "tricked" into using in-house services, meaning that "with no transparency or accountability, vultures can take advantage", Rayner added.

"We will legislate for an independent regulation to rein these cowboys in," she said, announcing legislation for an independent watchdog of property agents.

This includes estate agents, managing agents and estate managers.

This regulator would be able to set codes of practice, such as standards of conduct and proper complaint handling for those they regulate, and property agents will be required to obtain a licence.

If they fall foul of the required standards, the regulator would have the power to take their licenses away, the government added.

The government said it wanted to bring forward the changes "as soon as possible".

Rayner also said new legislation would create the power for caps on permission and administration fees leaseholders pay to landlords.

These caps would cover freehold estates and privately managed estates where people can face additional fees for making cosmetic changes to their properties and requesting documents like building safety certificates.

A public consultation will be launched to help decide the rate of caps.

It comes in addition to an already-announced £250 cap on yearly ground rents paid by leaseholders in England and Wales, which had stalled during the change of prime minister over the summer.

The government has said it expects the limit on ground rents - an annual fee paid by leaseholders to their freeholder - to come into force in late 2028, but MPs have called for this to be brought forward to late 2027.

Rayner said she was "capping and then scrapping" ground rents, indicating she may try to go further than a cap.

In her speech, Rayner did not mention the government's housing target of building 1.5m homes in England by the next election. She admitted earlier this month there was only a "slim chance" of hitting it.

Last week, ministers announced a new Your First Home policy to help first-time homebuyers in England with a deposit of 2.5%, similar to the Help To Buy scheme introduced under the Conservatives in 2013.

Rayner also said she plans to strengthen council powers to take over empty homes to meet the need for council houses and tackle homelessness.

But this was criticised by the Tories as a "desperate" attempt by Labour to try to hit its housing target. %!s()