Tuesday, May 5, 2026
c8b2c174-6d9c-40b6-839c-125e5fe59fa1
| Summary | ⛅️ Breezy in the afternoon. |
|---|---|
| Temperature Range | 13°C to 19°C (55°F to 67°F) |
| Feels Like | Low: 50°F | High: 61°F |
| Humidity | 60% |
| Wind | 19 km/h (12 mph), Direction: 251° |
| Precipitation | Probability: 22%, Type: No precipitation expected |
| Sunrise / Sunset | 🌅 05:54 AM / 🌇 07:35 PM |
| Moon Phase | Waning Gibbous (62%) |
| Cloud Cover | 37% |
| Pressure | 1012.86 hPa |
| Dew Point | 47.16°F |
| Visibility | 5.95 miles |
Only 3.1 per cent of Cypriots with disabilities feel discriminated against in administrative offices and public services, Eurostat data published on Monday showed, ranking the island lowest in the EU alongside Italy.
In the EU as a whole, shares of disabled people who felt discriminated against in administrative offices and public services were higher than among those without.
Among disabled people in Cyprus, the share who reported no discrimination in administrative offices and public services was only slightly lower than the share who said they did experience discrimination.
The highest overall shares of disabled people experiencing discrimination were recorded in Estonia, 14.6 per cent, Spain, 14.5 per cent and Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden – all at 12.8 per cent.
Meanwhile, the lowest shares were recorded in Cyprus and Italy, 3.1 per cent, followed by Croatia, 4.3 per cent and Hungary, 4.5 per cent.
On an EU average, 9.4 per cent of people with disabilities aged over 16 said they felt discriminated against when in contact with administrative services, marking a significantly higher number compared to respondents without disabilites, of which only 4 per cent reported feeling discriminated against.
A similar tendency was confirmed in the educational sector and public spaces, where people with disablities tended to face more discrimination than non-disabled people, with 4.1 per cent and 2.3 per cent in educational institutions and 5 per cent and 3 per cent in public spaces respectively.
When it came to finding housing, 8.2 per cent of Europeans with disabilities said they had experienced discrimination, compared to 5.2 per cent of people without a disability.
President Nikos Christodoulides was one of 33 heads of government to sign a joint statement affirming their will to work together to “tackle” irregular migration on the sidelines of the day’s European Political Community summit in Yerevan.
Alongside Christodoulides, the statement was signed by the leaders of Albania, Armenia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, the Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
It said that the leaders of all 33 countries had “identified several critical lines of effort in pursuit of a ‘whole of route’ approach to tackling illegal migration” during the previous European Political Community summit in Copenhagen.
“They underlined the need to take action against smugglers, ensure domestic and international frameworks are robust, accelerate returns, forge new partnerships, manage upstream migration effectively, and tackle the instrumentalisation of migration, among other issues,” it said.
Additionally, it said, “they also agreed on the need to support one another in these efforts”.
It then added that this year, there has been “significant displacement across Sudan, the Horn of Africa and wider Middle East”, and that as such, “these priorities remain as vital as ever”.
In addition, it said that lessons must be learned from the 2015 migration crisis and that “similar situations” should be “avoided” in the future, and that as such, “leaders agreed on how best to prepare and coordinate efforts” to this end.
With this in mind, a total of eight points of agreement were found, the first of which being on the matter of “surveillance and monitoring”, with the signatories agreeing that they must ensure that “up-to-date information and monitoring is shared to best support preparedness and a coordinated response”.
The second point of agreement was on the matter of humanitarian assistance. On this matter, the signatories plan to identify “opportunities for targeted interventions to help those in need, and deter flows from source”.
They also said they plan to work with international organisations, including the United Nations high commissioner for refugees and the Council of Europe, while also “maintaining a core focus on security, protection and the effective integrity of both land and maritime borders”.
Additionally, they said they aim to target “organised immigration crime” and deploy “targeted interventions against people smugglers and human traffickers as well as their supply chains, including through the use of sanctions”.
They added that they plan to ensure that both domestic and international frameworks are “safeguarded from abuse, so they can meet the demands of the day and so assistance can be targeted to those in need”.
On the matter of migrant returns, they said they aim to ensure that “robust agreements are in place to both deter migrant movements from source and transit countries and alleviate domestic pressure, including through new approaches”.
Finally, they plan to implement what they described as a “systems-wide response”, which entails “using all of the above levers, policies and diplomatic tools, to coordinate international efforts and protect the integrity of our borders”.
They added that they intend to “continue the focus on the most pressing global migration issues, and on opportunities for future cooperation”, including at the next European Political Community summit, which is due to take place in Ireland later this year.
Cyprus is one of ten European Union member states which has now sent its loan agreement to receive funds under the EU’s €150 billion Security Action for Europe (Safe) programme to the European Commission for approval, commission spokesman Thomas Reiner confirmed on Monday.
Alongside Cyprus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia have also sent their loan agreements to the commission for approval.
Reiner said that the commission will “now complete its internal procedures” with the aim of approving and signing the loan agreements “as soon as possible” and thereafter proceeding with the first disbursements of funding.
“Time is of the essence, and we will deliver on our commitments to all member states,” he said.
His comments come after Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk had said on Monday that his government is “ready to sign” its own loan agreement while speaking on the sidelines of the day’s European Political Community summit in Yerevan.
Poland has secured almost €44bn worth of funding as part of the scheme, with the country’s Deputy Prime Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz saying on Monday that he expects for the agreement to be signed in Warsaw on Friday.
He said that once the agreement is signed, the Polish government will immediately receive an advance payment of €6.5bn.
Cyprus, meanwhile, secured over €1bn of funding through the programme, with Defence Minister Vasilis Palmas saying at the time that the funding would see the National Guard acquire military hardware to “cover [its] priorities” until 2030.
He added that the Safe programme came about “at a time when the European Union’s needs to cover shortcomings are significant”, and at a time “when the mobilisation of equipment programmes and joint procurement programmes is becoming urgent”.
“The €150bn which will be invested by member states in the joint procurement of high-tech weapons systems is expected to be the trigger for a new promising era for European defence, with the ultimate goal of autonomy, technological dominance, and resilience,” he said.
Cyprus’ investment plan had been approved by the Council of the EU in February, with President Nikos Christodoulides at the time describing the Safe programme as “an important financial tool”.
He added that the Council of the EU’s approval of the funding is “an indication of the correct work which was carried out in Cyprus”, before highlighting the fact that Cyprus is “among the first member states where the relevant amount was approved”.
The Cyprus issue “blocked” Turkey’s journey toward membership of the European Union, the country’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday.
“Recently, some damaging debates regarding Turkey’s position in Europe, again triggered by European actors, have been witnessed,” he said after the day’s cabinet meeting, before pointing out that Turkey first applied for association with the European Economic Community in 1959.
He said that in 1963, an agreement was signed for Turkey to join the EEC in three phases, with the first, preparatory phase, having been completed, and the second, transitional period having been initiated in the early 1970s.
“In the subsequent period, disagreements stemming from the Cyprus issue caused our journey towards the European Union to be blocked. At that time, our neighbour Greece, which applied for membership of the European Union in 1975, was accepted very shortly afterwards. It was accepted in 1981,” he said.
However, he added, “Turkey was completely pushed out of the negotiating table for purely political reasons”.
He then said that the 1980 Turkish coup d’état “severely damaged our democracy” and thus Turkey’s path towards the EU, but that with the coming to power of late prime minister Turgut Ozal following the democratic elections of 1983, “our relations with the union gained momentum again”.
“On April 14, 1987, we submitted our application for full membership of the union, and, in the words of the late Turgut Ozal, we embarked on a long and arduous journey. The commission evaluating our application, in its response given two and a half years later, stated that while Turkey was eligible to join the community, it would not accept new members until it had achieved its own internal integration,” he said.
He added that when the customs union agreement between the EU and Turkey entered into force in 1996, “we completed the transition period and entered the final phase”, but that nonetheless, “the difficulties we faced soon began to recur”.
“For example, at the Luxembourg summit in 1997, while 12 countries were granted candidate status, Turkey was once again ignored. Finally, at the Helsinki summit in 1999, Turkey’s candidacy was approved by the European Council, and it was decided to prepare the accession partnership document,” he said.
When he came to power as prime minister in 2002, he said, “we breathed new life into these activities”.
“Within a two-year period, eight harmonisation packages were passed by parliament. During the same period, we amended 218 articles of 53 laws. Again, in 2001 and 2004, two constitutional packages were accepted by our parliament,” he said.
Despite this, he added, “when the European Union, undertaking the largest expansion in its history, accepted ten more countries as members, Turkey was excluded”.
“Unfortunately, the Greek Cypriot administration was among them. Turkey patiently continued its path, enduring these erroneous and unfair decisions,” he said.
He then said that Turkey “fulfilled its obligations completely in the negotiating process” which began in 2005, but lamented in the years that followed, progress from the EU’s side ground to a halt.
“Between 2006 and 2010, 13 chapters were opened for negotiation. In the period between 2010 and 2013, only one chapter could be opened. The positive agenda, which was put into effect in 2012, lasted only two years,” he said.
He added that “from 2015 onwards, our relations with the union intensified again, partly due to the civil war in Syria and the largest wave of irregular migration Europe has seen since the second world war”, but that even then, “our relations with the union could not maintain the momentum it had gained”.
This, he said, was because “it was late, insufficient, and unwilling to provide the necessary support to Turkey in the face of the July 15 [2016] attempted coup d’état, in which 253 of our people were martyred”.
“In subsequent meetings, we did not encounter an encouraging picture which would overcome the existing deadlock and give impetus to [our] relations. Despite all the double standards to which we have been subjected, we continue on the path to full membership. We persistently continued our work,” he said.
He added that since filing its first application to the EU in the 1950s, “we have been unable to overcome the prejudice against Turkey which have taken root in some circles in Europe”.
“Sometimes, they criticised our democracy, sometimes, they saw our economy as a threat, sometimes, they spread fear based on our population, sometimes, they used our faith as an excuse to marginalise us, but each time, they found an excuse to exclude Turkey, to slow down Turkey’s membership process, to keep Turkey waiting at the door,” he said.
He added that in response to this, “Turkey has changed, transformed, and strengthened its economy and its democracy”, but that “there has been no change in the distorted approach of these circles towards our country”.
“Unlike other candidate countries, we have had to struggle with this mentality and its representatives. As the late Turgut Ozal said, we walked not only a long and arduous road, but also one full of artificial obstacles and bumps,” he said.
He added that “I must regretfully state that this journey continues on the same ground”, and that “the strategic bias against Turkey is unfortunately one very evident in many institutions in the union”.
As such, he said, “as was the case yesterday, the issue today is not where Ankara stands”, but instead “where Brussels wants to be in the world of the future, and where it sees itself”.
“It should now be understood that the European Union without Turkey as a full member will not be a global actor or a centre of attraction,” he said.
He added that Turkey “is not a country whose existence will be remembered only when necessary, whose door will be knocked on only when needed, and which will be pushed aside at other times”.
“The European Union should know very well the value of Turkey’s constructive attitude, should not misuse it, and should refrain from actions and statements which will jeopardise it. Let it not be forgotten that Turkey is not the old Turkey and that the world is not confined to the sphere of western influence, as it once was,” he said.
He said to this end that “a new world is being built in which regional collaborations are gaining importance, new actors are emerging, and the global system is rapidly evolving towards multipolarity”.
Turkey, he said, “is among the strongest countries poised to become one of the poles of this new system”.
“Let me be clear: today, Europe’s need for Turkey is greater than Turkey’s need for Europe. Tomorrow, this will only increase. Europe is at a crossroads. Either it will see Turkey’s growing power and global influence as an opportunity for the union to emerge from this current crisis, or it will allow exclusionary rhetoric to darken Europe’s future,” he said.
He added that “our hope is that the decision makers in Europe will abandon their political and historical prejudices and focus on developing sincere, genuine, and fair relations with Turkey”.
“The winner of such a relationship will be the European continent, of which Turkey is an integral part.”
Journalists’ reporting of the names of high-profile individuals who appear in court accused of crimes was on Monday criminalised in the north, after a bill banning the act was passed through the Turkish Cypriot legislature with the votes of members of the three ruling coalition parties, the UBP, the DP, and the YDP.
As such, the use of the names of any suspects or the taking of photographs of suspects in and around courtrooms is also now a crime.
Those who do take and publish photographs of suspects in and around courtrooms, or who publish the names of defendants, in the media or on social media, will now be subject to sentences of up to three months in prison or a fine amounting to four times the north’s monthly minimum wage.
At present, the north’s monthly minimum wage is 60,618TL (€1,147), with the fine as such set, for now, at 243,272TL (€4,604).
Those who disseminate the image though means other than the media or social media will also be subject to sentences of up to three months in prison or a fine amounting to twice the north’s monthly minimum wage.
The plans were defended in the legislature by UBP representative Alisan San, who said that “the perception of individuals as guilty on social media, in the press, or in society before the completion of the judicial process has much more serious consequences, especially in smaller communities”.
However, opposition figures were less than convinced, with CTP representative Sami Ozuslu descriing the new law as “blatant censorship”.
“What kind of nonsense is it to ban the publication of names and photographs of public figures during this process? This is blatant censorship, and it is very dangerous,” he said.
He argued that while it may be fair for an ordinary member of the public to not have their name and photograph shared in the media when they are accused of a crime, “individuals with public power and financial resources should not be treated the same as ordinary members of the public”.
Later, he warned that the new law could have negative implications on the state of press freedom in the north, saying, “today, we boast that our journalists are not going to jail, but if this bill passes, the picture will change”.
“You are threatening them with prison. This will turn into an operation to silence journalists,” he said, before referencing a recent high-profile incident which occurred over the weekend on the other side of the Green Line and asking what the law would now require in the north.
“Suppose Sami Ozuslu beat the life out of a referee at a football match. Would that not be reported? Would you hide his name and his photograph and then lock up the person who wrote about it?”
The law’s passage comes after multiple high-profile figures in the north have appeared in court and been charged with crimes in recent months, including former ‘education minister’ Kemal Durust, former Famagusta police chief Baris Sel, ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel’s close personal associate Fatma Unal, Ustel’s now former undersecretary Huseyin Cahitoglu, the now former chief of the north’s tender commission Salih Cansec, the son of ruling coalition representative Hasan Tosunoglu, Ugur Tosunoglu, former chairman of the north’s higher education accreditation authority (Yodak) Turgay Avci, and board member Mehmet Hasguler, who is now the chief advisor of ruling coalition party the YDP.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Monday highlighted Cyprus’ proximity to the Middle East as he welcomed German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul to Athens ahead of Tuesday’s Defence Exhibition Athens.
“Welcome to Athens. You are coming at a time of great turmoil, so we have a lot to discuss. We are, along with Cyprus, the country closest to what is happening in the Middle East,” he said.
He then added that Greece “certainly has a very strong interest in ensuring that this situation is resolved peacefully as soon as possible, especially with regard to maintaining freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz”.
Greece maintains this interest, he said, “not only as a European country, but also as a leading maritime country”.
“We consider it imperative that no precedent be set, not only in the region, but also globally, ad I am very interested in hearing your thoughts on the next steps,” he said.
He added that Greece maintains “constructive relations with all the countries in the region”, and that this “makes us reliable ‘bridge builders”.
“Of course, in order to get to the point where we start building bridges, we must first get past the point where we are blowing them up,” he said, before adding that “ensuring that we get to a point where diplomacy takes precedence is … a shared priority” for both Greece and Germany.
Wadephul, meanwhile, said that in view of Greece’s forthcoming term as the holder of the Council of the European Union’s rotating presidency during the second half of next year, “we must intensify our efforts so that the European Union is able to address all the threats and challenges that we face”.
Tuesday’s Defence Exhibition Athens will also be attended by President Nikos Christodoulides, who was to travel to Athens directly from Monday’s European Political Community summit in Yerevan.
He is expected to hold meetings with Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias and European Defence Commissioner Andreas Kubilius while there.
Larnaca mayor Andreas Vyras on Monday redoubled his criticism of the government over the ongoing projects to redevelop his town’s port and marina, saying that he has “reasonable questions” over the matter which “cannot remain unanswered”.
“It was mentioned that the marina docking projects are ready to begin. Are there complete construction plans and all the necessary studies? Have studies of the waves been prepared, as well as the required studies for infrastructure such as electricity, water, and internet?” he began.
He said that if those studies have not been carried out, “for which projects are we being asked to offer consent?”, before asking “if the studies are being prepared retroactively, will they be limited only to the marina itself or will they incorporate the area as a whole?”.
Transport Minister Alexis Vafeades, he said, “also mentioned in his public statements that renovations have also been made to the existing infrastructure”.
He raised doubts over this, saying that “as far as we know, apart from some minor rough repairs, the tender process for the repair and renovation of the existing infrastructure of the marina has not progressed”.
Later, he said he had held a meeting with Vafeades and Larnaca district governor Andreas Hadjicharalambous over the matter, and that during that meeting, “it was mentioned that by early may, the corrected study conducted by [GrowthFund] for the determination of the land area with urban developments will be presented”.
Additionally, he said, it had been expected that by “early June, a detailed masterplan with financing and specific timetables” would also be produced.
“In [Vafeades’] public statements, these timetables are absent. The first [GrowthFund] study did not include any land development at all. Who gave this order and what has changed? The town was and remains clear that such a project requires comprehensive planning with land use, as is the case in modern marinas internationally,” he said.
GrowthFund is Greece’s national investment fund. Its full name is the Hellenic Corporation of Assets and Participations (HCAP), and it undertook the responsibility for carrying out a study and devising a development plan for both the port and the marina when it took control of the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund (HRADF) last year.
The HRADF had initially been placed in charge of this endeavour, having been the operator of a number of ports in Greece. All of its assets and responsibilities were transferred to GrowthFund in July last year.
Vyras on Monday sought to stress that he and his municipality “do not disagree with the gradual implementation” of the project, but that “we disagree with the lack of clear commitment for the project to include urban development” – something he said is “desired by the entire town and all relevant bodies”.
“The transfer of urban developments to an indefinite future is dangerous and will not be accepted,” he said.
He asked if GrowthFund’s study results in it offering different recommendations to those previously having been offered by the ports authority, or recommendations which differ from “the town’s collective will for land development”, will “all of this be ignored?”.
“We want a clear answer. Larnaca has a unified position. We demand transparency, comprehensive planning and clear commitments. The port and marina project determines the town’s future and cannot proceed with uncertainty,” he said.
Vafeades had earlier said that GrowthFund will soon “present the results of the study concerning land development”, allowing the government to devise forward planning on that matter thereafter.
However, he said, “Mr Vyras decided on a different course”, though he said that the government will nonetheless “continue to work in this direction, upon which we had agreed.
“Although Mr Vyras seems to disagree, I insist that we should not wait for all the studies to be finished to start the projects, which are not in dispute,” he said.
He then added that the ports authority has already been given the green light to begin consultations to implement the marina’s development.
Although the banking sector in Cyprus remains resilient, it displays limited vigour, while any tampering with the foreclosures framework could slow the clearing out of bad loans and also raise the cost of borrowing, the International Monetary Fund said on Monday.
The IMF issued its ‘concluding statement’ after wrapping up its latest mission to Cyprus, which lasted from April 22 to May 4.
“The banking sector remains resilient, supported by strong capital and liquidity buffers, and improving asset quality,” read the statement issued by Alex Pienkowski, IMF mission chief for Cyprus.
The IMF said bank solvency and liquidity ratios are among the highest in the EU, supported by strong profitability.
“Asset quality has improved through a steady reduction in NPLs (non-performing loans). While property markets do not appear overvalued, real estate remains systemically important in the banking sector and should be carefully monitored.”
But the international organisation also cautioned that “despite the recent recovery of credit, the banking sector shows limited dynamism.”
The sector’s loan-to-deposit ratio is only 50 per cent, compared to over 100 per cent in the EU on average.
The IMF advised that changes to the foreclosure framework slowing the resolution process should be resisted.
“After years of compromise, the existing framework broadly strikes the right balance between debtors and creditors to support debt resolution. In contrast, some recently proposed legislative changes would significantly slow resolution and increase administrative costs. This could undermine borrower incentives, increase credit risk, and reduce access to finance. Future borrowing – for example, for first-time homebuyers or small-businesses – would become harder.”
Here the IMF was likely referring to the recent changes to the foreclosures legislation, passed by parliament in April.
Reacting later in the day, the Cypriot finance ministry agreed with these remarks, noting that loosening the foreclosures framework risks “abuse by strategic defaulters” – meaning borrowers who deliberately stop making payments on a debt (typically a mortgage) despite having the financial capacity to pay.
On the plus side, the IMF noted that economic growth in 2025 was among the highest in the EU:
“This impressive performance was supported by strong private consumption, and continued expansion of export-oriented services, particularly ICT and tourism. The labour market remains tight, with unemployment at the lowest rate since 2008 and still elevated vacancies.”
Despite disruption from the war in the Middle East, the IMF anticipates growth will remain robust in 2026 – around 2.5 per cent.
At the same time, it forecast that higher oil prices will push up inflation to around 3.5 per cent on average for the year, weakening real incomes and consumption, but underlying growth will remain robust. And while tourism has been affected in recent months it is expected to partially recover during the peak season.
The IMF also gave a thumbs-up to Cyprus’ fiscal performance.
“Despite some easing, fiscal performance has remained strong. While revenue growth was robust, the fiscal surplus narrowed in 2025 due to higher spending on public investment, wages and social transfers. However, strong economic growth, a continued fiscal surplus, and the use of cash buffers reduced public debt to an impressive 55 per cent of GDP, further strengthening economic resilience.”
The organisation also welcomed the recent tax reform undertaken by Cypriot authorities.
But it advised that “zero and reduced VAT rates, excise duty cuts, and other price-based measures to mitigate energy-related inflation are costly, poorly targeted, and distortionary, and should be rolled back.”
On the public payroll, the IMF said wage increases should not exceed the current CoLA (Cost of Living Allowance) index.
The community council of a mountain village on Monday rubbished claims made on social media about part of it being turned into an Israeli community.
The Arsos – Gerovasa/Trozena community council issued a firm denial of online claims surrounding the village of Trozena, dismissing the reports on social media as “unfounded” and “not reflecting reality.”
The council said the rumours, widely shared in recent weeks, had caused “unjustified concern”. It clarified that the village remains freely accessible to all visitors, with no restrictions on entry.
It also rejected claims that the Church of Ayios Georgios is under threat, stressing that “it belongs to the Metropolis of Paphos and that there is no intention of demolition”.
The council went further, calling on “anyone who believes they have been denied access to the area to report the matter to the authorities for investigation”.
The statement follows growing speculation online that Trozena, an abandoned settlement in the Diarizos Valley, has been “bought by an Israeli company” and is being turned into a private development as visible construction works and the coordinated restoration of buildings in the area have fuelled questions about who is behind the project.
Online material linked to the project points to plans involving hospitality and agritourism, including the development of a winery.
Posts on social media said people had been prevented from going into the village and were told it was ‘private Israeli land’.
Public records show that a Cyprus-registered company, THV Home Resort (Trozena) Ltd, was established in April 2023 and lists Trozena as its registered address.
The company is active, though publicly available registry information does not disclose its shareholders. Separately, the Trozena winery project names Lin Gold as its chief executive, with a background in the regional wine industry.
Trozena has been largely abandoned since the late 20th century, following decades of rural depopulation.
The wider area around Trozena is closely tied to the history of nearby Gerovasa, a former Turkish Cypriot village whose name means ‘sacred valley’. Gerovasa was inhabited from the Ottoman period and grew during British rule, but was abandoned in 1964 during intercommunal violence.
By contrast, Trozena was always a small, predominantly Greek Cypriot settlement, first recorded in the 19th century as a rural estate.
It was not abandoned due to conflict but gradually emptied in the late 20th century due to urban migration, with the last residents leaving in the 1990s.
Today, only the church of Ayios Georgios, built in 1885, remains intact, while the rest of the village fell into ruin. It is linked to Gerovasa by a British-era metal bridge and surrounded by natural features such as the Paradisia waterfalls.
For now, Trozena appears to be a case of private redevelopment of houses in an abandoned village.
The anti-corruption authority said on Monday it will release some ‘technical data’ regarding its investigation into allegations of systemic corruption made in Mafia State, a book published by journalist Makarios Drousiotis.
Head of the authority Harris Poyadjis told media that on Tuesday it will make known certain data about the probe – the number of pages, number of evidentiary items, number of witnesses interviewed.
At this time, he added, the authority will not make public any of the actual findings.
The report by the investigators was delivered to the board of the anti-corruption authority late last week. Now, the board will study the dossier and issue its own conclusions.
Earlier, Poyadjis had clarified that the report itself won’t be published – only the authority’s conclusions after it has reviewed the dossier.
If any criminal wrongdoing is established, the anti-corruption authority will relay these points to the attorney-general’s office.
Asked when the authority might publish its conclusions, Poyadjis could not give a date – as the report is voluminous.
But observers have said it’s highly unlikely that the conclusions would get released prior to the parliamentary elections of May 24.
Drousiotis’ book alleges systemic corruption and abuse of power, including claims involving former president Nicos Anastasiades, who has denied wrongdoing and pursued legal action against the author.
Anastasiades has filed a €2 million defamation lawsuit.
The book has done well, although precise numbers on the copies sold are not available.
For his part, Drousiotis called on the anti-corruption authority to immediately release its findings as well as the report in its entirety, without redactions.
The veteran journalist is running for MP on the Volt party ticket.
“If they concluded that I am a sycophant, society needs to know that before the elections,” Drousiotis posted on X.
“And if there are recommendations for criminal or administrative liability, the public likewise needs to know.”
Drousiotis described the findings as a “matter of public interest”, calling it the largest corruption-related investigation in Cyprus ever.
“Personally, I’m ready to assume my responsibilities. I expect the same from the other side,” he wrote.
Volt, too, called for the publication of the conclusions of the investigation into Mafia State before the elections.
“In a democracy, citizens should not be led to the ballot box with half information, a fragmentary picture or findings locked in drawers,” the party said.
“When a finding concerns possible issues of corruption, public interest and shadows in the functioning of state institutions, society has a right to know,” the party added.
Hunters’ Movement parliamentary election candidate Stefanos Rousou Roskos on Monday expressed fury after a banner advertising his candidacy was defaced.
He said the vandalism was “unacceptable”, and that such actions “do not scare us” and “do not stop us”.
“On the contrary, they make us even more determined. We continue our fight, with dignity and determination, with a clear goal: securing a seat in parliament for Paphos and for our movement. We are not going to follow the descent into the mud and into slander. We leave those practices to those who know them well,” he said.
He added that the electorate will “give its answer” on May 24, when the election is held, and that “then, some will understand that respect and purity in the fight is strength, not weakness”.
On Sunday, he posted to his social media a photograph of a defaced banner which he had placed near the village of Chlorakas, and said that the incident was “not the first time” but “a repeated, targeted act”.
“They are tearing up my banners, taking them down, and repeatedly vandalising them. That is it. Tolerance is over. There is a camera in the area and everything has been recorded,” he said.
He added, “whoever is hiding behind these actions will pay in full and they will not be alone”.
Roskos also ran for election in 2021, on Elam’s ballot. He won 719 votes.
Two passengers arrested at Larnaca airport when hundreds of packets of cigarettes were found in their luggage were remanded in police custody on Monday by the Larnaca district court.
The cigarettes were seized by customs officers at the airport on Sunday, following tip offs and checks on the luggage of two passengers heading to Manchester, UK revealed 127 boxes of 200 cigarettes in the luggage of the first passenger and 119 boxes of 200 cigarettes in the luggage of the second.
Authorities said the cigarettes did not carry health warning labels in Greek and Turkish, an indication that they were duty-free products.
The two passengers were arrested on suspicion of offences related to the illegal possession and transport of tobacco products.
The seized cigarettes were confiscated.
A contract for the purchase of 15 buses by the church of Cyprus, to be donated for use by the National Guard, was signed at the Archbishopric on Monday.
“The Orthodox Church has always blessed and blesses defensive and liberation struggles and prays to God to grant victories,” Archbishop Georgios said.
The agreement was signed by Defence Minister Vasilis Palmas, the archbishop and a representative of the contractor, with the buses set to transport contract and conscripted soldiers to and from their units.
The archbishop reiterated the church’s support for the national guard, noting that while resources are limited, the church remained committed to assisting national defence needs.
“We wish we were in a better financial situation to finance their other needs, but we do whatever we can,” he said.
Palmas thanked the archbishop for the church’s support on national issues and reaffirmed the government’s commitment to strengthening the country’s defence capabilities.
“Within the framework of our capabilities, we will do our utmost to shield the defensive armour of the country to the greatest extent possible, as long as there is occupation and as long as Turkish troops are in the northern part of our homeland, and to strengthen the deterrent power of the country,” he said.
An additional €11 million will be allocated to extend a housing subsidy scheme for young people and couples, Interior Minister Constantinos Ioannou said on Monday.
The decision will allow a further 277 applicants, aged up to 41, to receive financial support under the government’s housing assistance plan.
The scheme originally provided grants of up to €50,000 for 400 beneficiaries, based on income and family criteria.
Authorities said the programme received strong demand, with a total of 1,018 applications submitted.
The initial 400 beneficiaries have already been approved, with total funding reaching €14.5 million.
Ioannou said the expansion was decided after reviewing the high response, adding that all applications meeting the criteria will now be covered.
He said the move reflects the government’s effort to support young people and couples in accessing housing.
The housing scheme forms part of a wider national policy focused on increasing housing availability and strengthening affordability, particularly in urban and suburban areas where shortages are most acute.
It also aims to improve purchasing power for young families and vulnerable groups.
Large discrepancy in prices between supermarkets on the e-kalathi application indicate a lack of competition between them, the Cyprus Consumers Association said on Monday.
According to the association, the average price difference between the most expensive supermarket and the cheapest is around 60 per cent, with Athienitis currently ranking as the cheapest supermarket, with a basket of 230 common projects costing €864.69 as of May 2026.
Referring to a survey of 335 products from a supermarket participating in e-kalathi, the association said that the selling prices of its products appeared to be very high compared to the average selling price of other supermarkets participating in e-kalathi, with a the difference exceeding 100 per cent for a certain number of products.
The association said that since April 14, noticeable price increases began to occur for products included in e-kalathi.
The most significant increases were observed in the categories of pasta, cheese, chocolate, domestically produced flour, and yogurt, while in six product categories, price increases were observed only for a specific brand, with increases ranging up to 14 per cent.
The consumers association said that the findings of the survey are based exclusively on prices recorded in the e-kalathi system, as well as prices recorded in the free private app smart kalathi.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Monday thanked President Nikos Christodoulides for his and Cyprus’ “longstanding support for the Armenian people” when the pair met on the sidelines of the day’s European Political Community summit in Yerevan.
According to deputy government spokesman Yiannis Antoniou, Pashinyan and Christodoulides “reviewed the excellent relations between Cyrus and Armenia”, and Pashinyan also thanked Christodoulides for Cyprus’ “constructive stance in the further development of Armenia’s relations with the European Union”.
Antoniou added that the pair had “discussed issues which will contribute to further cooperation between Cyprus and Armenia, especially in the areas of air connectivity, tourism, and trade”.
The shifting security landscape facing Europe was highlighted by President Nikos Christodoulides on Monday as he moderated a high-level panel on Maintaining European Coherence and Unity in times of Polycrisis at the European Political Community (EPC) summit in Yerevan, Armenia.
Opening the discussion, Christodoulides stressed that Europe is experiencing a fundamental transformation in its security environment, with threats ranging from conventional warfare to hybrid challenges that extend beyond the borders of the European Union and require a “whole-of-Europe” response.
He pointed to escalating tensions in the Middle East as a reminder that instability in Europe’s neighbourhood directly affects the continent, including energy security and maritime routes.
“A credible European security policy must be anchored in a 360-degree perspective,” he said, noting that developments in Ukraine, the Middle East and the Western Balkans are not regional issues but strategic concerns for the entire continent.
The panel brought together key European leaders, including the heads of government of Italy, France and the United Kingdom, as well as the President of the European Commission.
Christodoulides also underlined the need to strengthen dialogue, cooperation and collective resilience in the face of geopolitical tensions, economic uncertainty and increasing pressure on democratic institutions.
He described the EPC as the appropriate forum to address these challenges, particularly in maintaining European unity and reinforcing continental security.
The president further stressed that enhancing Europe’s strategic autonomy is now a responsibility, including strengthening its industrial base and deepening partnerships with countries such as Canada, to ensure Europe can act when necessary.
During the discussion, he posed questions to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
The questions focused on Europe’s strategic role in an increasingly complex geopolitical environment, migration pressures and their link to security, the evolution of European strategic autonomy, and cooperation on key challenges including Ukraine and maritime security in areas such as the Strait of Hormuz.
In his closing remarks, Christodoulides highlighted the importance of a united European approach to common challenges, stressing shared values and the need to safeguard sovereignty and freedom across the continent.
The island’s dams are currently 39.6 per cent full, with a total storage of 115.2 million cubic metres of water, the Water Development Department (WDD) said on Monday.
Chief technical engineer Marios Hadjicostis told the Cyprus News Agency there is “good inflow for the season”, noting a clear improvement compared with last year, when dam levels stood at 23 per cent, or 66.7 million cubic metres, on the same date.
Several small dams are already overflowing, while reservoirs in the Southern Conveyor system hold about 67 million cubic metres, equal to 35.5 per cent capacity, he said.
In the Paphos district, dam levels are slightly higher, with storage at 31.2 million cubic metres, or 43.5 per cent.
Inflows are expected to continue increasing gradually in the coming days, but Hadjicostis stressed this is not a period for rapid rises in water levels.
The current season typically brings steady rather than large inflows, he said, adding that overall conditions remain satisfactory for this time of year.
European Affairs Deputy Minister Marilena Raouna and Albanian chief negotiator Majlinda Dhuka on Monday held a telephone call to discuss the next steps as the western Balkan nation aims to join the European Union.
According to Raouna, Albania is “continuing its steady progress on its reform path”, regarding the various legal reforms required for a country to join the EU.
She stressed that enlargement is a “top priority” of Cyprus’ six-month term as the holder of the Council of the European Union’s rotating presidency, which will come to a conclusion at the end of next month.
EU enlargement, she added, is a goal which “we continue to advance with determination and a results-oriented approach, in line with the merit-based process”.
Albania was described by European Enlargement Comissioner Marta Kos in March as “a frontrunner in the EU accession process”, with the final negotiation cluster for EU membership having been opened with the country in November last year.
In April, Kos said that Albania “still has a lot of work ahead, but it has already made substantial progress” toward EU membership.
“We are currently in the process of approving the interim benchmarks related to the rule of law. Once these are in place, Albania can begin closing chapters. So, while much needs to be done, the Albanian leadership aims to conclude negotiations by 2027 or 2028, and we support it,” she told The Parliament magazine.
Meanwhile, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic penned a joint article in German newspaper Frankfuter Allgemeine Zeitung calling for an accelerated process of integration into the EU, which would see both countries gradually incorporated into the bloc.
Their proposal would see both countries join the European single market and the continent’s border-free Schengen zone, but not be immediately entitled to European commissioners, members of the European Parliament, or veto rights at the European Council level – something all 27 current EU member states enjoy.
That article comes after Rama had said words to the same effect as conversations surrounding a “two-speed Europe” abounded at the beginning of the year.
“At the end, they are the adults in the family who make the important decisions,” he said, before adding that in a post-veto EU, one advantage would be that if the larger member states “f*ck up”, the smaller member states would not be to blame.
It has now been almost 13 years since Croatia, the last country to join the EU, did so in 2013, and in the intervening years, one member state, the United Kingdom, has left the bloc.
With this in mind, President Nikos Christodoulides had said last year that the EU “must deliver” on the issue of enlargement.
“Enlargement falls within the European Union’s political range and we must do much more. We must succeed,” he said.
All preparations have been completed for the submission of candidacies for the May 24 parliamentary elections, assistant chief returning officer Menelaos Vasiliou said on Monday.
Vasiliou confirmed that there are no outstanding issues.
Responding to questions concerning cases involving candidates under investigation, he said that a letter submitted by Diko leader Nicolas Papadopoulos is currently being examined by the Legal Service and other competent state authorities.
Referring to a recent incident involving a candidate from the Active Citizens – Movement of Cypriot United Hunters, Vasiliou stressed that under the Constitution, any citizen of the Republic who has reached the age of 21 is eligible to stand for parliamentary election.
He noted that candidates must not have been convicted of a dishonourable or morally reprehensible offence, must not have been deprived of eligibility following a court decision for an electoral offence, and must not suffer from a mental condition rendering them incapable of performing parliamentary duties.
Candidacies will be submitted to the relevant returning officers on Wednesday between 9am and 12:30pm.
For the Nicosia electoral district, submissions will take place at the Archangelos Cultural of Kykkos monastery. In Limassol, Larnaca, Paphos and Famagusta they will be filed at the respective District Administration offices. For Kyrenia, submissions will be made at the multipurpose hall of the Ministry of Finance.
Candidacies for representatives of religious groups in the House of Representatives will be submitted on the same day at the office of the Director General of the Ministry of Interior.
Vasiliou also reminded that each candidacy must be submitted in writing and signed by four voters from the respective electoral district, two acting as proposers and two as supporters. A fee of €500 must be deposited for each candidacy.
Candidates are also required to sign a declaration confirming that they meet the eligibility criteria set out in the Constitution.
I ask stupid questions sometimes, so don't make fun of me if this is stupid. I had an idea for a new console that I may or may not be successful enough to sell that will have a few more inputs than most controllers. Before I decide to try to sell it, I want some info in order to decide. This question might be enough to ask. Have console game developers started running out of buttons for some games? If so, I feel that people might buy it.
I’m part of a group working on a thesis about predicting the success of digital games using publicly available Steam data. We’ve built a working web app that estimates a game’s “success score” based on factors like reviews, pricing, and player engagement.
We’re currently in our evaluation phase and are looking for feedback from people with experience or interest in game development. If you have a few minutes, we’d really appreciate it if you could try the web app and answer this short survey.
The survey focuses on, usefulness of the predictions, clarity of the interface, whether the insights could help in decision making.
Everything is anonymous and purely for academic purposes. We would really appreciate any thoughts or feedback that would help us improve the system. Thanks in advance!
Commissioned an artist for game art on the platform. Looking back, I should've picked it up when he sent me the first sketch and the main character (a scientist) ended up looking like an angry Morty.
I'm currently disputing the order and looking to get it cancelled. (Hopefully)
Not sure if I can trust getting art gigs on the site anymore. Perhaps some advice to navigate around generative AI would be appreciated
Edit: Fiverr managed to cancel and refund.
From support:
Thanks for confirming, Our Freelancers are allowed to use AI, and we can't cancel an order because of AI. I will right now for you, however for future orders, please let the Freelancer know that you do not want them to use AI "
At GDC, the United Videogame Workers announced the creation of a digital developer-ran conference to compete against the rising costs of physical events like GDC. We are 18 days out from this conference and they have only revealed 4 additional panels alongside the original 8 they had slated out.
As a high level we have the following categories represented in the known panels:
Noticeably absent so far are the technical talks you would find at other grassroots conferences like NotGDC, ThinkyCon, GameLoop, and SLICE. They promise there are dozens of speakers covering industry skills but we are still waiting to see what they have in store, hopefully sooner than latter so we can plan our schedule out and know what talks to watch.
The main driving force behind this initiative was the UVW, which began at GDC 2025 and grew to 550 members over the last year. They've been poised to release a "Game Workers Bill of Rights", which was read out during a march at the Yerba Buena Gardens last March. The contents of that bill are currently only known to the 40 or so people who attended the event and we are waiting to see it shared online.
Overall, the UVW seems to want to upset the status quo and democratize game developer conferences, but there is massively little visibility on both their activity and this new event. What things have you all heard about the GWC and are there any panels you are looking forward to?
For reference the link to the conference: https://gameworkersconference.org/
| I’m working on a third-person co-op melee game and recently tested combat with friends. I’m mainly looking for feedback on gameplay readability: - Are the attacks and hit reactions clear enough? - Does the combat look too chaotic in multiplayer? - Is the camera distance working for this kind of melee gameplay? -what did you think about the look ? -and how to make my steampage better ? https://store.steampowered.com/app/4274030/Travelers/ its my first game i build it since 3 years and hope to make it a realy good game help means a lot for real i will read everything be HARD to me [link] [comments] |
For this line of work or alternatively cyber security, should I stick with C.S or make the switch to I.S ? I've been advised the switch is better but I wanted other opinions or perspectives.
around a month ago i startet this personal challenge to get a perfect workflow and get one game a month finished. its so fun! i startet of alone and made my first game around a month and a half ago. now my second one is around a week away thanks to the help of two friends. this challenge made my life better! i start of with one weekend of private gamejam to get the game as finished as possible and then trial and error with playtesters for about three weeks until publishing it on itch.
I would personaly love it if other people would take part in this challenge!
I dont want to make the effort of making a gamejam on itch for this but i will keep posting if another of my games gets released.
and guys try this out if you have the time its awesome!
Hi all,
So opted-in for steam next fest. Is there anything simple tips on the do's and don'ts?
I'm fairly happy that i'm able to put a somewhat of a demo out. Scoping is way out of control but it's a hobby project. If i can get even, I'm a happy man.
But besides spamming youtubers and posting in gaming reddits what are the things you didnt think of doing but wish you had.
Shameless promotion; https://store.steampowered.com/app/3535730/Kikis_Nightmare/
All the best.
That's pretty much the question! There are so many devs getting thousands or tens of thousands of players into their playtests... and a ton that struggle to attract them.
How are you attracting players, getting them to sign up, and then actually encouraging play time, feedback, and more! Would love to start compiling some best practices to share!
Numbers in the article are pretty clear, but what's not clear is amount of effort that is considered normal for those numbers?
I mean you can potentially make 3 Reddit posts and gather 500 wishlists. And then you can make 10 Reddit posts, get IGN posting your trailer, make shorts/tiktoks, and still get the same 500 wishlists.
And if you are in the latter case, does it mean that you can consider your game to be in a silver tier? Or should wishlists come in a more natural way?
Htmag article: https://howtomarketagame.com/2021/12/12/how-many-wishlists-can-you-expect-when-you-launch-your-games-coming-soon-steam-page/
And how do you check for legal/copyright issues?
Hi everyone, we're working on updating our Steam page since we found that we had a really horrible click through rate. We're getting people to our page, but people aren't wishlisting us. I think our trailer is really weak and that would make sense as to why people leave our page.
Has anyone had any success working with a professional company to make their trailer? I know there are a few I didn't know if anyone had any recommendations, big preference if they specifically work with indies.
I found out that between 2020 and 2024, there were some cool salary-sharing initiatives on r/gamedev (this one for France, this one for Sweden, this one for the UK, and some USA/global ones: this one and that one) and I was hoping for an aggregated/updated one. They are not very active since then, and I thought it's a shame to lose this info (and the historical figures).
With the layoffs and the job market being what it is, I think It could be helpful to keep track of the salaries, both for people currently in the industry, and for the newcomers.
So I decided to aggregate all of the legacy sheets, and build a new survey:
Plan is to keep maintaining it over time, so I’m all ears for your comment.
The dashboard: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UJQa8bi4msn3m3ds-XrbnDlhjFH380lSv4vWNTdfxzA
The new survey: https://tally.so/r/eqN0qe
The data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wmM1OC8bW4slfDxkP1HZejrp4bMVjb6JZziKK5mScy4/
2 years ago I've collected data of almost 2 million steam users. What games do they own, how many hours they played each game etc... I've done it for my own research back then but now I want to release this data to the public to everybody could work on them if they want.
I hide steam user name and replaced it with my own id for privacy reasons.
All data were recorded before 2024-10-31. So no newer games than that. Data were also proccesed to exclude bots (at least the most obvious ones).
https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/the1and0nlyhugon/steam-users-activity
Enjoy!
Hi Guys,
almost 4 weeks ago i decided that its time to release my Announcement Trailer for my game which at that point kind of already was outdated but i had to release something before contracting someone to make a new one. So i did what everyone does and wrote a mail to the 3 known emails from IGN (videowire,indies,trailers @ ign) but didnt receive any response for almost 4 days. My gut feeling was to just screw it and upload the trailer on my dead youtube channel, which i did.
I tried everything to boost the upload,
i posted on r/godot where my project is mostly known:
https://www.reddit.com/r/godot/comments/1so2vho/i_released_the_trailer_for_my_godot_project/
i made a steam announcement on my steam page (at the i uploaded the trailer i was close to 5k followers and 61k wishlists)
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/3447280/view/524247815022444959?l=english
and i posted it in my discord community (2k people)
additionally i posted it in around 20 gamedev-related discords:
and it was totally worth it,
through the PR Guy that my Publisher hired for the Demo outreach we got a contact in IGN that helped get it on their Main Channel even tho it didnt perform so great on the gametrailers channel (where it was uploaded after the hype was over)
they posted it today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FsGtQ8nPtg
i wanted to share that "post mortem", i didnt learn anything specific besides that youtube also promotes dead channels if you get enough traffic to the video in the first hours!
i actually also tried 50€ in youtube ads on the same day after i saw that its going great to see if that somehow helps and the answer to that is: from 60k views day1, 10k were from that 50€ ad. Having only experience with Reddit ads i still came to the conclusion that you could actually kickstart any video you upload on your own channel with a combination of youtube ads and posting everywhere you can!
kind regards
Flo
Hi folks,
I wanted to share here our BigNumber implementation in C# for Unity 3D in case it’s useful for other developers:
https://github.com/sonomiogames/lost\_sock\_simulator\_3000
We’ve used it for our upcoming incremental idle clicker and allows to go from zero to 1e30 units in our case (but it allows to go far beyond that number).
That implementation allows to add units every tick of the clock instead of adding a fixed amount each second so the numbers increase in every update giving a much more satisfying feedback to the player.
Hope you find it useful! ☺️
Hello, I created a Godot course as part of my Master's thesis and urgently need your feedback to complete it. A sufficient number of feedback forms will show that the materials can really be used in the curriculum of the GameDev bachelor's program at a major Czech college.
If you have the time, could you please pick a topic that interests you (or a random one) on the homepage of the course, try to go through it, and fill out a short questionnaire? As a token of gratitude, you can use these materials to learn or even share them with other people trying to learn game development.
(For those extra interested, you can even download the provided templates and try to fill them out along with the course.)
Course homepage: https://cent.felk.cvut.cz/courses/39HRY/godot/
Feedback questionnaire: https://forms.gle/XqfZZaJSCSfSGToMA
Thank you for reading this and for any feedback provided.
I am working on a post process material in order to make a Pre-Rendered Background however I am having issues getting it working correctly.
As far as I can tell it should be fine. However the Player Character Mesh which in my understanding is represented by "Scene Depth" does not render when play testing.
Can anyone see something I have missed?
here is my post process material BP which I apply to a static camera, looking at a 3d scene that matches the DepthMap precisely
https://blueprintue.com/blueprint/1b58_yuo/
Thanks in advance!
This blog post explains how Armagetron's "ping charity" works under the hood. It also shows a related technique called negative input delay.
Back in December I joined a small indie studio as their marketing person. No marketing background, no contacts, no budget. My background is game design and education. I just said yes and figured I'd learn as I went.
What'Sub is a 4-player co-op submarine extraction game. We launch into Early Access on May 14. Here's an honest account of the past 5 months, what I tried, what landed, and what didn't.
What I think worked
Influencer list: I spent a lot of time building a list of 500 content creators manually using SullyGnome and YouTube. The rule I set for myself was simple: only add someone if they had already played a comparable game. Lethal Company, PEAK, Sea of Thieves, that kind of thing. No random spray and pray.
Cold emailed them all at demo launch. One of those emails landed CaRtOoNz, who has 6 million subscribers. He titled the video "Lethal Company but we're pirates" which I would never have written, but he knows his audience. 121K views.
The Instagram curator thing: Found an account called u/indiegamespotlights. 26K followers, posts indie games for free. Sent them a pitch. The post got 17,100 likes (currently at 34k likes) and on that single day we got 1,366 wishlist adds, which is still our all-time record. A mid-size account with a genuinely engaged audience converted better than anything else I tried.
Gamebox Festival: Brought the game to a local games festival in Herning, Denmark. While we were there I set up a little contest: if you could beat a specific in-game challenge, you got the game for free. But to enter the challenge you had to wishlist first. Converted foot traffic directly into Steam data, and it was fun to run.
The thing I didn't expect: a bunch of Danish content creators were at the festival, played the game in person, and are now actual contacts rather than cold emails. That feels very different heading into launch week.
Twitch chats during Steam Next Fest: This one most developers skip over. During Next Fest, people watching streams are actively looking for games to try. High intent moment. I dropped into relevant streamer chats while it was happening. Costs nothing, takes attention.
What I don't think worked that well
YouTube Shorts I made myself. Retention was fine but the like-to-view ratio was too low for the algorithm to do anything with them. Good for testing messaging, not much good for reach when you have no existing audience.
Things that surprised me
There are way more Danish content creators than I thought. I assumed local was a thin market. I was wrong, and they're much easier to actually reach than the international list.
Also the Steam page was pulling in wishlists before we touched it or launched a trailer. The game concept was doing work I hadn't given it credit for.
We're at 6,621 wishlists now with 10 days to go (launching May 14th) and no paid ads spent. Still a lot to learn but it's been a genuinely weird and fun 5 months of figuring this out from scratch. As said, I don't know if what I've done is anything impressive, but I wanted to share with you guys and know your thoughts, and hope some of the steps I've done can help you too.
Game is here if you're curious: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4269100/WhatSub/
I have applied to many linkedIn, Godot and some Upwork jobs and none seems to ever get back. Could you guys look at it and give me feedback and some rating out of 10?
Portfolio link: https://shayan-memon.github.io/Shayan-Portfolio/
I recently added sound effects to my small Unity game and I didn't expect such a small change would make the game feel so much more responsive. Also, how do other devs add SFX? Do you add it right away, or wait until later?
If anyone wants to see the little project I'm working on, I can share the link in the comments.
Was curious on how most that get them achieve it.
How hard they go outside of having a killer portfolio
I would imagine top applicants have an impeccable resume + portfolio, seeing that having a good portfolio is a given, what are top things they had on a resume?
What level of ability do they need to have?
Does location matter? (Visa/non visa)
more questions I'm sure but it's definitely the idea of "I don't know what I don't know."
Checkout the repo of the project for showcase, i think you will be impressed :)
graf-rs is a side project of mine which was meant to be a feature in my main project called clin-rs which is a TUI reimagination of Obsidian.
graf-rs is a TUI app built with Rust that creates graph view nodes simulation in the folder it has launched.
graf-rs searches the directory it has launched for markdown files and creates links between them according to wikilinks(forward, backward links inside the files) and forms a interactable graph view with physics.
It is highly customizable, you can change the theme(there are preset themes and color overriding is possible), show/hide UI elements, show/hide labels, change how coloring works(by tags by folders etc.), tweak with the physics of the simulation, change how many nodes are visible or with what conditions are nodes visible with filtering options.
Current features include, keyboard navigation with arrow keys(hjkl movement is in the testing branch), smooth panning with mouse, a minimap which tracks all the visible nodes, you can open markdown files with Enter or by double clicking on them this will open them in your default editor, there is a search function which searches the node by their name, tag, link respectively.
Since this project mainly meant to be integrated into my main project i do not intend to add big features for now maybe in the future. But for now in the testing branch; hot reloading configs and some QOL changes are present for those who want to test.
I am open to any feedback so feel free to ask whatever is on your mind!
For more information: https://github.com/reekta92/graf
Jarred-Sumner, the creator of Bun (a JS runtime), has created a Rust port branch in Bun's repository with Claude AI, which has 760k LoC at the moment.
I'm loading parameters on startup. I test multiple locations for existence of environment variables, or content of file contained in environment, or variable in a configuration file which may be in multiple locations. What I want is an idiomatic way to really return a value upon first success; sort of the opposite of how ? unwraps and returns on failure.
It's there a better way than repeated if let Some(x)/Ok(x) return x
video of a little demo of the column pinning with custom rows rendering a trading terminal. I wanted to see if it could handle lots of little tiny updates without killing frames.
to run it yourself just clone the repo and make sure you have rust installed.
git clone https://github.com/orneryd/uiGrid
cd ./uiGrid
cargo run -p ui-grid-egui --example demo --release
MIT licensed
LMK what you think!
edit: just to clarify i didn’t intend for anyone tot think this is an actual trading terminal, it’s just to show off the update speed per cell.
Hey everyone! I'm a software engineer and musician who got frustrated with every metronome feeling outdated. So I built my own in Rust.
Yames (Yet Another Metronome Everyone Skips) is a free, open-source desktop metronome built with Rust + Tauri v2 + rodio.
What makes it different:
Cross-platform: macOS, Windows, Linux. ~10,600 lines total.
I'd love feedback on timing accuracy, missing features, or bugs. Break it and tell me!
GitHub: https://github.com/turutupa/yames
Website: https://turutupa.github.io/yames/
Install: brew install --cask turutupa/tap/yames
I should preface by saying I hate AI and very much think we're in a bubble.
But I also don't feel strong enough about it to deject it entirely.
IMHO I spend far too much minutes of my life writing/thinking of commit messages. If AI can do it decent enough for me, especially on my throwaway projects, I'll gladly accept its help.
I do not like aicommits (or any of the other existing CLI tools for AI commits) because it's just too much fucking ceremony. You run commit and it's only then that you send a call to your LLM to generate the message and let you pick the one you want. No one wants to fucking sit through that, I might as well have not used it at all.
Over the weekend I wrote up a prototype (no this is not vibecoded nor was AI used to write any of it) that handles all of the work away from the user. I just poll for file edits/saves in a repo, and make the API call there and add a configurable debounce timer to check when/if to make a call again based on how different your diff is from the previously cached entry.
I am biased, but I genuinely think even this poorly written version is better than everything else because it takes away the annoying fucking friction of staring at a rainbow colored terminal prompt asking you which commit message to choose. I don't understand why this has to be a whole new muscle to flex.
I have the UX written in a way where where there's literally zero indication that it's running on your machine (contextually; obviously you can still run sotto and access supporting commands/kill the daemon). It just surfaces the entry within your commit message and that's it. You can look at the demo below.
Anyways, here is the repo: https://github.com/cachebag/sotto
I would love for someone who's good with shell to come help. A lot of it is pretty hackish.
I just wanted to post and gauge if someone would appreciate the more elegant approach to this type of project.
Hello everyone. I've been learning rust for the last month in my break times (my main language is python, for now) After learning rusts basics, as my first project with rust, due to my friend suggestion, I started to write a compiler for c++ For now, I learned about "dfa" and how it works and I implemented the lexical analyzer of my compiler Main goal of this project is learning fundamentals of computer science (I dont have related degree) and getting better in rust Any comments about how the code is and how to make it better and more "Rusty" is very helpful Thank you guys :»
I'm 18, was Backend Dev in school, now in college didn't have much time to code, so after half a year decided to learn rust. Know the basics, have one CLI pet project, use arch btw.
Looking for code buddy to make projects together and learn things together :)
Most ownership explanations stay at the language level.
I wanted to see what actually happens in memory and in the generated assembly.
the post has an interactive rust playground so you can modify and run the examples
directly 😄
GitHub: https://github.com/cubewhy/caffeine-ls
The project is at very early stage, contributions are welcome.
Features:
Lexer/parser that supports full JLS (The Java Language Specification)
Parser-based diagnostic (single file only)
The LSP is designed to be cross-language (like IntelliJ), I'll add Kotlin support when Java support is stable.
Screenshots:
https://tweedegolf.nl/en/blog/237/async-rust-never-left-the-mvp-state
In which I lay out why/how the compiler doesn't do some async optimizations and I humbly ask to reach out to me if you want to help me fix it.
I’m currently working on some code where I found myself repeating the same pattern over and over again:
```rs
let thing = match do_something() {
Ok(thing) => thing,
Err(err) => return self.consumes_self(err),
};
```
Importantly, `self.consumes_self` takes ownership of `self`.
Ideally, I would use `map_err`:
```rs
let thing = do_something()
.map_err(|err| self.consumes_self(err))?;
```
However, because this moves `self` it results in errors if I later try to reference `self`.
Is there some way to express this without constantly repeating `Ok(thing) => thing`?
I could (and have) used a macro for this, but I’d prefer a non-macro based solution if possible.
New week, new Rust! What are you folks up to? Answer here or over at rust-users!
Mystified about strings? Borrow checker has you in a headlock? Seek help here! There are no stupid questions, only docs that haven't been written yet. Please note that if you include code examples to e.g. show a compiler error or surprising result, linking a playground with the code will improve your chances of getting help quickly.
If you have a StackOverflow account, consider asking it there instead! StackOverflow shows up much higher in search results, so ahaving your question there also helps future Rust users (be sure to give it the "Rust" tag for maximum visibility). Note that this site is very interested in question quality. I've been asked to read a RFC I authored once. If you want your code reviewed or review other's code, there's a codereview stackexchange, too. If you need to test your code, maybe the Rust playground is for you.
Here are some other venues where help may be found:
/r/learnrust is a subreddit to share your questions and epiphanies learning Rust programming.
The official Rust user forums: https://users.rust-lang.org/.
The official Rust Programming Language Discord: https://discord.gg/rust-lang
The unofficial Rust community Discord: https://bit.ly/rust-community
Also check out last week's thread with many good questions and answers. And if you believe your question to be either very complex or worthy of larger dissemination, feel free to create a text post.
Also if you want to be mentored by experienced Rustaceans, tell us the area of expertise that you seek. Finally, if you are looking for Rust jobs, the most recent thread is here.
I'm trying to program a simple chess engine and I wanted an easy way to convert an enum into a number and vice versa. For the first case it seemed simple enough, I could just do as usize, but for the second it seemed more complicated. This is the implementation I ended up with:
![[link]](https://i.redd.it/qusv4ecq68zg1.png){kind=link}
![[link]](https://i.redd.it/8zs5sid087zg1.png){kind=link}
#[derive(Copy, Clone, Debug)] pub enum Piece { Pawns, Knights, Bishops, Rooks, Queens, King, } impl TryFrom<usize> for Piece { type Error = String; fn try_from(value: usize) -> Result<Self, Self::Error> { if value <= 5 { Ok(unsafe { std::mem::transmute::<u8, Piece>(value as u8) }) } else { Err("Invalid value for Piece".to_string()) } } } It seems to work, but I was wondering if it's a good idea? Is it going to give me problems down the line?
My girlfriend and I just finished building a laser projector based around a cheap X/Y galvo kit, 200mW RGB laser module, and an ESP32 running firmware written in Rust.
It's surprisingly capable and was a lot of fun to build! It can display vector art, and we've implemented a few basic demos like a simple version of Asteroids or an interactive/scrollable map. There's also a 3.5mm audio input for using it as a music visualizer.
The firmware is written using esp_hal, with Embassy as an RTOS. This is my first time doing firmware development with Rust, and I have to say, the official Espressif documentation and libraries are really good! I was pleasantly surprised by how smooth the development experience was compared to writing firmware with C++.
Writeup with all the details is here: https://breq.dev/projects/laser-projector
| submitted by /u/SnooWords9033 [link] [comments] |
This is the weekly thread for Small Projects.
The point of this thread is to have looser posting standards than the main board. As such, projects are pretty much only removed from here by the mods for being completely unrelated to Go. However, Reddit often labels posts full of links as being spam, even when they are perfectly sensible things like links to projects, godocs, and an example. r/golang mods are not the ones removing things from this thread and we will allow them as we see the removals.
Please also avoid posts like "why", "we've got a dozen of those", "that looks like AI slop", etc. This the place to put any project people feel like sharing without worrying about those criteria.
Testing different Go implementation styles for the 1BRC style measurements.txt problem and wanted to share the results.
The task is straightforward:
and then benchmarked these Go approaches:
Results on the real dataset:
WORKERS=8
parallel-manual: 17.45s
WORKERS=14
scanner: 89.15s
reader: 88.74s
manual: 79.08s
parallel: 13.62s
parallel-manual: 12.37s
All variants produced identical output.
Observations
Scanner vs Reader barely mattered here
manual parsing helped in single-threaded mode
parallelization was by far the biggest win
the best variant changed with worker count:
I’d be interested in feedback from people who’ve done this kind of workload in Go:
Is mmap worth trying here?
What’s the next optimization you’d test after this?
Would you attack parsing, allocation, or aggregation first?
The repo is here https://github.com/anishnath/go1brc/
"Build it and they will come", I realise how naive that thinking is in today's world of AI slop, but I'm clinging to a feeling what iv been building really is worthwhile and since iv built it in go hoping posting here will garner some interest, feedback maybe even a fellow gopher who believes in fmsg too.. i hope to start actively hiring soon..
fmsg is something if been actively building for the last 5 years on and off moonlighting from my career as a programmer. So before LLMs, though they have certainly helped me of late reach beta version (i have couple live servers on the internet).
fmsg is an open distributed messaging protocol, like email. So anyone can build a product on it. However unlike email and more like IM apps fmsg is efficient at conversations (email sends entire history each reply, base64 encodes attachments, making conversations that continue intolerable). I realised the efficiency problem can be solved with referential integrity - if the recipient has previous message no need to send it again. fmsg uses a DAG similar to git to enforce this which doubles as spam filter - can prove e.g. previous participation in a thread..
There's so much to say than I could in a reddit post, I tried Show HN but that's inundated with other posts recently.. So let me jump to the go specific parts of interest to this community.
fmsgd is the main service exposed to the internet for host-to-host comms. Just a few thousand lines of go, my first serious go project. Heavily uses net package for TCP sockets. coroutine in go an absolute delight to hand off incoming comms to, no need to even channel back anything. Seeking feedback anything obvious i structurally can do better, or would be more idiomatic go?
Please do comment, critique, check it out.. at this point I feel like living in my own fiction where it seems so obvious the world needs this new messaging e.g. agent-to-agent communication, but on the other hand no one really gets it. So any feedback would be better than silence. Thanks for reading so far!
I started learning Go and I'm currently working Client-Server app, fully containerized with Docker, but I’ve hit a crossroads with testing.
I'm using testcontainers-go to spin up the server image during the test suite, but managing the network "wait time" between the two containers feels a bit hacky (like lots of time.Sleep or ping loops).
For those running Go apps in Docker, do you prefer Integration Tests that spin up the actual containers, or do you stick to Unit Tests with httptest and just "trust" the Docker networking will work?
How are you guys handling the "is the server ready yet?" problem without making your CI pipeline take more more than 5/10 min?
Thank you!
I rewrote my Go installer script to stop relying on HTML scraping
Originally, my tool parsed Go downloads from the website, which kept breaking.
In v3, I switched to the official Go API and added SHA256 verification.
Other improvements:
- better OS/arch detection (Linux + macOS)
- isolated test environments
- cleaner layered structure
Would love feedback on the approach, especially around reliability and security.
I've spent a lot of time over the past few weeks looking into various ORMs and SQL Builder options. I'm not happy with any of the ORMs, and I think a SQL Builder would be ideal. But they all seem to be in maintenance mode or not actively developed anymore.
Jet is quite popular, but I felt like I was really fighting with the code generation trying to customize it for use with PostGIS.
I know sqlc is very popular, but the lack of support for dynamic queries is problematic.
It seems like every option I look at has fairly significant downsides. I know a lot of people advocate for writing raw SQL, but that is quite error-prone and brittle in my opinion.
Why is the DB landscape for Go so limited, when other languages have much richer, full-featured options (Entity Framework in .Net, ActiveRecord with Ruby/Rails, Hibernate in Java, tons of Node options, etc)?
Creating software has never been easier. Creating good software is still hard. One of the key characteristics of good software is a minimal amount of complexity. One of the ways to achieve this is through deep modules.
Every project I write ends up with map[string]struct{} everywhere. Is there a philosophical reason or just backlog?
I remember from when I was learning Go, in a tutorial they used the term “sniffing” to receive information from a channel, likely a nod to the gopher mascot.
But when I have mentioned this phrase to anyone else, they have always looked at me funny, and have never heard of it. I can’t seem to find this terminology anywhere online either.
So I was wondering, does anyone remember the term “sniffing”? Has this phrase been dropped from the documentation in favour of more professional language, or was this never a thing and I’m just tripping?
Im building a rest api in go and I find it difficult to not forget to initialize all the members of some structs, especially when they are large (10 + members). This becomes a pain especially after refactoring.
How do you protect the app from runtime surprises? I want it to not be a pain for me when writing code.
Im confortable with factory functions like `NewStruct()`, but with many members I have to write a function with many arguments.
I could group tightly related members different structs and then use struct composition, but it complicates a bit the parent struct with unnecessary nesting.
Hey everyone, I (re)created a new Go interpreter and virtual Machine. Fast byte code vm, aims for full Go compatibility, no deps, embeddable.
Hey all,
I’m building Vibez, a Go-based app that integrates with Apple Music via MusicKit JS. Right now I’m relying on a headless Chrome instance to handle the web auth flow and playback context, but this feels pretty heavy and fragile.
Repo is there: https://github.com/simonepelosi/vibez
What I’d like to achieve is:
- Remove the Chrome/headless browser dependency entirely
- Handle auth + playback in a cleaner, more backend-driven way (ideally Go-native)
- Still respect Apple Music’s requirements (user token, DRM, etc.)
From what I understand:
- MusicKit JS requires a browser context for user authorization
- Playback is tied to that web environment
- There doesn’t seem to be an official “pure API” way to fully replace it
So I’m wondering:
I’m open to rethinking the architecture (e.g. separating discovery from playback), but I’d like to avoid spinning up a browser just to make this work.
Curious if anyone has tackled something similar or has insights into cleaner approaches.
Thanks!
| Fleeto is a private local IoT device management platform that runs on Raspberry Pi, uses secure MQTT with mTLS, stores telemetry locally, and provides dashboards and command execution without cloud infrastructure. [link] [comments] |
We use GORM heavily at work. 10+ Go services, all of them leaning on it for the ORM layer. And there's
one thing about GORM that has quietly bothered me for a long time:
db.Preload("Orders").Find(&suppliers)
Preload takes a string. Just a string. Nobody — not the compiler, not your editor, not your tests — can
tell you whether "Orders" is still a real relation on Supplier. You typo it, you rename the field, you
delete it in a migration, you preload a scalar by mistake — the build succeeds anyway. You find out at
runtime. Or worse, you don't find out, because GORM silently does nothing and the endpoint just
returns empty data.
Preload is a stringly-typed API in a statically-typed language. But Go has go/types. Structs are
inspectable. So why is nobody checking these at build time?
I wrote gpc (Gorm preload checker). It walks your AST, finds every db.Preload("X").Find(&T) chain,
resolves T through go/types (handles pointers, slices, embedded *gorm.DB wrappers, cross-package
models, constants), and walks the dotted path "User.Profile.Address" through the actual struct fields.
If a segment doesn't exist or isn't a relation, it prints the file and line.
Then I pointed it at every Go service we have. Ten codebases. 2,571 Preload calls. It flagged 18.
I went through all 18 by hand expecting false positives. There were none. A sample of what was sitting
in production:
- Preload of a relation field that had been commented out in a migration months ago
- Three preloads of a relation that never existed on the struct — copy-pasted from a different model
- Preload("Service") where the actual field was named OrgService
- Preload of a scalar float column treated as a relation
- A preload referencing a field deleted two quarters ago
18 latent bugs across 10 services. Nobody had filed tickets for any of them. They were just sitting
there, waiting for the right query path to hit prod.
The tool is ~640 lines of Go, MIT licensed, no runtime deps: github.com/your-moon/gpc
Run it on your repo. I'd genuinely like to know if you find any false positives — I haven't seen one
yet, but my sample is biased to one company's code style.
If you use GORM, you almost certainly have at least one of these.
| Hope this is OK to share here. Rust gamedev is great, all you see here was built in 6 months. If anyone is curious about implementation details, happy to discuss. I use SVOs for the asteroids, Almost everything in the game world is procedurally generated. Simulating realistic newtonian physics, we track asteroids Center of Mass based on the SVOs and composition. [link] [comments] |
![[link]](https://i.redd.it/fjtmdbydg1zg1.png){kind=link}