The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (KVA) has chosen its 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry winners, and they’re all about quantum dots. The three researchers — Alexei I. Ekimov, Louis E. Brus and Moungi G. Bawendi — will share the honors for their contributions to nanotechnology.
Although quantum dots had been proposed theoretically earlier in the 20th century, this year’s trio of Nobel winners began verifying them experimentally. The nanoscale semiconductor particles exhibit quantum mechanical properties, glowing in different colors when exposed to light. “Quantum dots have many fascinating and unusual properties. Importantly, they have different colours depending on their size,” wrote Johan Åqvist, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, in a press release. The smaller the dot, the bluer its light is; the bigger the dot, the redder its light is. By changing their size, researchers can tune their colors, leading to various scientific advances.
Ekimov, a solid-state physicist, was the first to experimentally discover quantum dots when he synthesized them in colored glass in 1981. Meanwhile, Brus proved their size-dependent effects in particles floating freely in a fluid. In the following decade, Bawendi spearheaded breakthroughs in the nanoparticles’ chemical production, leading to “almost perfect particles,” as the KVA’s press release described.
The three honorees will split (evenly) a prize of 11 million Swedish krona (US$998,515).
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/nobel-prize-in-chemistry-awarded-to-trio-of-quantum-dot-researchers-170057741.html?src=rss
Pulsars are one of the strangest celestial bodies in space. These cosmic lighthouses emit periodic bursts of radiation from their magnetic poles, and now a team of researchers claim they have detected the largest burst ever recorded from a pulsar.
Enlarge/ No bugs, or even weapons beyond a pistol, are seen in Rogue Core’s initial screenshots. But you get the sense that it’s a more cavern-like, combat-minded experience.
A lot of things can go wrong during a Deep Rock Galactic mission. Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core, a new roguelite spinoff from the makers of the cult co-op shoot-and-mine game, suggests that something has gone even more deeply, terribly wrong on Hoxxes IV. Now you, your friends, and a Processor Drone have to figure out what.
And you’ll die—a lot, probably—then try again with new gear and lessons learned, if the title and announcement trailer are anything to go by.
Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core announcement trailer.
You can wishlist Rogue Core on Steam now, and the game will launch in Early Access, which is anticipated to last for 18–24 months, in November 2024. Closed alpha tests will be announced on the game’s Steam page and fan Discord. Deep Rock’s developer, Ghost Ship Games, promises “updates on the game’s direction right from the very earliest stage of development” and will be “adding new features to the game based on feedback and observations of how our community is playing it. Each feature will be tweaked, balanced, and polished as it is added.”
Mikkel Martin Pedersen, co-founder and game director at Ghost Ship Games, said in a press release that the company intends to keep fans in the loop, as “our process of open development helped Deep Rock Galactic be the game it has become.” The developer also emphasized that support for the original game will continue.
The game’s teaser trailer provides only a minimum of context for the plot. It’s heavy on the Ridley Scott Alien touches, right down to a Lego brick of a ship coasting toward a planet where the corporation has lost contact with workers who were mining near the planet’s core. Your “Reclaimers” team has to reestablish the dig. That’s about all we know for now.
A dusty (or snowy?) piece of the abandoned core mine on Hoxxes IV. Your job is to keep moving through it. [credit:
Ghost Ship Games ]
Then again, the plot of Deep Rock Galactic itself, while certainly peppered with lore, is essentially “We need these minerals, these bugs are in the way, sorry if they kill you.” Rogue Core will have the same fully destructible environments, procedurally generated levels, co-op interplay, and greedy corporations, but with a focus on getting farther into a run each time.
Your means of success is through customizing and upgrading your weapons and Phase Suit, using salvaged gear and Expenite, “a new wonder-mineral.” You complete tasks, find stuff, go deeper, and get stronger, until you inevitably fail and start again. Given the roguelite framing, you can expect some upgrades to stick with you from session to session. But Rogue may differ significantly from the far more casual, dig-by-dig nature of its foundation, if the claustrophobic, abandoned-station screenshots and trailer are any clue.
Archaeologists figure we’ve been baking for anywhere from 11,000 to 14,000 years. And while the fundamental chemistry of leavening bread hasn’t much changed over the intervening years, we have developed countless shortcuts to make the bread baking process easier, faster and more convenient through products like baking soda, baking powder, instant dry yeast; and tools like electric ovens, stand mixers and food processors.
With the busy holiday baking season right around the corner and visions of sourdough stocking stuffers for friends and family dancing through my mind, I recently picked up a new starter culture (shout out to MatKat Bakery of Modesto, California). Normally when I maintain a starter it will either live in the fridge or on my kitchen counter. The problem with that is the yeast and bacteria that make sourdough, well, sour, prefer the ambient temperature to be in the mid-70s to low-80s, making my kitchen counter a little too cold — and fridge far too cold — for the starter to expediently rise when I feed it. But you better believe we have gadgets to fix that. Here are three that will maintain an ideal temperature for sourdough starter to live in.
Sourhouse Goldie
That is precisely what the Sourhouse Goldie is designed to do. Growing out of a significantly-overfunded Kickstarter, the Goldie is essentially a small heating pad enclosed by a large glass dome meant to create a tiny, cozy microenvironment for your starter to live in.
An integrated thermometer tracks the temperature under the dome and relays that information via a three-color LED in the base. Blue means it’s too cold, red means it’s too hot and yellow indicates you’ve reached the “goldilocks zone.” If it is too cold, you can turn on the heat which will raise the temperature to the goldilocks zone and then keep it there indefinitely. If your kitchen is too hot, an included “cooling puck” that otherwise lives in your freezer can be set on top of your starter jar to lower the temp.
Andrew Tarantola / Engadget
The dome is quite tall, able to accommodate my normal quart-sized starter containers, though the included pint-sized graduated cylinder is plenty big enough to hold a few hundred grams of fed starter. Despite its height, the bell sits sturdily atop the heating platform and forms a firm seal at its base — enough that things can get rather steamy under the dome if you trap any moisture in there while feeding your starter. Overall the device has a surprisingly small footprint and a sub-six-inch diameter. I can pick it up, move it around my kitchen as I work, shove it into a corner or onto a pantry shelf when I’m not using it –— the thing fits most anywhere. It runs off a USB plug (and an included wall adapter) giving you added options in potential power sources.
Beyond providing a quick visual reference for how the starter is doing, I also like that the Goldie provides a bit of entertainment as the starter rises. I always get a little tingle of pride as I see the culture that I have raised and cared for flourish and grow under the dome.
Overall it’s ludicrously easy to use — you plug it in, turn it on and put your starter under the dome. From there it can keep indefinitely, assuming you maintain power and keep feeding the culture. This method can get labor and resource intensive given that keeping a starter active at those temperatures will require feeding it every 12 to 24 hours. Think of it like a yeast-based teenager — depending on your feeding ratio (starter vs flour vs water added each time) you can end up running through food for it far faster than you realized possible. I like to keep my starter in the fridge if I’m not planning on using it for a few days (to dramatically slow the culture’s metabolism) and I’ve found that I can bring my starter back to activity far more quickly by putting it in the Goldie rather than my kitchen counter.
I’m not so hot on the Goldie’s price point, however. For as much as I like it, $130 for a hot plate and bell jar feels steep to me (they don’t even include the jar for the starter pictured in their marketing), especially when the user has very little direct control, or even understanding of what the starter is currently experiencing. It’s a very vibe-heavy experience for an activity where I’m then expected to calculate hydration percentages out to two decimal places.
Brod & Taylor Sourdough Home
The Sourdough Home, from baking equipment purveyors Brod & Taylor, takes the nearly opposite tack in heating, cooling and maintaining a starter. Where the Goldie is a kitchen gadget, the Home is kitchen equipment.
It’s a mini-mini fridge, one that sits on your countertop to house jars of sourdough starter, and can dial in your desired air temperature to the degree. It’s bigger and boxier than the Goldie; taller, wider and deeper too. The interior is split horizontally by a removable shelf that can hold either a single quart jar or a pair of pints. The front face features an LED touch-sensitive thermostat which ranges from 41 – 122 degrees fahrenheit. It really is a tiny refrigerator that also gets warm on command — or a tiny oven that gets very cold, depending on how you look at it.
Andrew Tarantola / Engadget
With the Goldie, I find myself splitting the starter’s time between living in my regular refrigerator and in the device itself, getting ready for use. And that generally works when I’m only baking on the weekends or need to activate the starter for a spur of the moment project. The Home replaces that entire situation with a single countertop device. The starter lives there — I never get it lost in the back of my full-size refrigerator, I never forget to feed it for a week with it hanging out on my counter.
Getting the starter ready is as simple as adjusting the thermostat up a handful of degrees; preparing it for hibernation is the same, in the opposite direction. The Home incorporates a fan into its design, so it does make slightly more noise than the completely silent Goldie, but the whirring is barely audible to me, a middle-aged guy with moderate tinnitus.
I like the Home. It provides a degree of control and precision that the Goldie cannot match at a price point $30 lower, at $99. Interestingly, it appears that both the Goldie and the Home draw the same amount of power (100 – 240V), so don’t worry about electrical efficiency when deciding between them.
The Breadwinner
While both the Goldie and the Home do an excellent job of keeping your starter at its optimal temperature, neither will alert you when the culture is ready for use. That’s where the Breadwinner comes in. This Wi-Fi connected growth sensor screws onto the top of any wide mouth (86mm) mason jar. It measures the starter’s rate of rise after a feeding and until it peaks a few hours later, marking its readiness to use.
Traditionally I use my eyes and a series of rubber bands around the jar measuring its growth at the top of every hour to figure out when my starter’s rise is slowing down (which means its ready to use). The Breadwinner not only does that for me, but also sends me email alerts when it’s ready. It also saves all of that data to an online portal where I can track it in real-time and mine it for historical trends about the culture’s previous performance. I can also plug into a social network / online journal of like-minded bakers, share recipes I’ve used my starter in and generally keep track of everything I’ve used it for.
Andrew Tarantola / Engadget
This is a really handy gadget when I’m getting ready for a bake but not necessarily able to hang around my kitchen until it’s ready. I can do other chores or run errands and feel secure in the knowledge that the Breadwinner will shoot me a note when it’s time to get baking. I also like that the device can be tuned to the size of the jar — 16, 24, 32 or 64 oz — for more accurate readings. The Breadwinner runs on four AA batteries, which will last anywhere from two weeks to a couple months, depending on how often you’re feeding your starter and using the device. If you want to get really fancy, you can use the Breadwinner and the Home or Goldie in tandem with each other, rapidly rewarming the starter and knowing precisely when it is ready to use.
Engadget
I do wish the activation button wasn’t quite so easy to, uh, activate. I kept accidentally turning it when I was just moving the jar around between feedings, which required me to log into the portal and delete the blank records from my starter’s profile. I’m also not sold on the price of $125 MSRP, which is a solid chunk of change for a narrowly applicable and entirely optional kitchen tool (though we could see a discount arrive ahead of the holiday shopping season). I also have concerns given that the company behind the Breadwinner is still a small startup. If they go out of business, their servers, where the Breadwinner’s data and utility reside, will go offline as well and you’re left with a hundred-dollar novelty jar lid. If Brod & Taylor or Sourhouse go under, yeah I’ll lose warranty repairs, but the devices themselves will keep working.
Who would find these gadgets most useful?
This is $355 worth of gear altogether — a new, not refurbished, KitchenAid 4.5-quart stand mixer worth of gear. That’s a lot of flour. Still, the prospect of having my starter ready to use “in a few hours” rather than “later this evening,” and of not kicking myself for forgetting to take the jar out of the fridge the night before — that’s worth at least $100 to me. Maybe $225, but I’ve been burned like starter in a hot oven by proprietary kitchen platforms before.
Andrew Tarantola / Engadget
Really, the choice of keepers comes down to your personal preference: between the more whimsical vibes of the Goldie and the calculating precision of the Sourdough Home. If you’re only planning on using your starter on one or two bakes a week, splitting its time between your fridge and the Goldie is the way I would go. Conversely, if you’re working with your starter more than half the days in a week and need to keep it perpetually at the ready, a dedicated housing space like the Sourdough Home would likely serve you better. The Breadwinner works equally well with either warmer, or on its own. If you tend to multitask other chores and responsibilities during your recipe’s proofing times, the Breadwinner can help keep you on task and keep your bake from falling flat.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/three-kitchen-gadgets-to-take-the-guesswork-out-of-sourdough-164536914.html?src=rss
When Cyberpunk 2077 first launched after years of anticipation, a litany of bugs—and not even of the thematically cyberpunk kind—and other misgivings led to a disastrous landing. But in the years since, bolstered by goodwill updates and interest through collaborations like Netflix’s excellent anime Edgerunners, Cyberpu…
samleecole writes: 4chan users are coordinating a posting campaign where they use Microsoft Bing’s AI text-to-image generator to create racist images that they can then post across the internet. The news shows how users are able to manipulate free to access, easy to use AI tools to quickly flood the internet with racist garbage, even when those tools are allegedly strictly moderated. “We’re making propaganda for fun. Join us, it’s comfy,” the 4chan thread instructs. “MAKE, EDIT, SHARE.”
A visual guide hosted on Imgur that’s linked in that post instructs users to use AI image generators, edit them to add captions that make them seem like political campaigns, and post them to social media sites, specifically Telegram, Twitter, and Instagram. 404 Media has also seen these images shared on a TikTok account that has since been removed. People being racist is not a technological problem. But we should pay attention to the fact that technology is “to borrow a programming concept” 10x’ing racist posters, allowing them to create more sophisticated content more quickly in a way we have not seen online before. Perhaps more importantly, they are doing so with tools that are allegedly “safe” and moderated so strictly, to a point where they will not generate completely harmless images of Julius Caesar. This means we are currently getting the worst of both worlds from Bing, an AI tool that will refuse to generate a nipple but is supercharging 4chan racists.
Elon Musk doesn’t want any news headlines on the social network formerly named Twitter. A change that started rolling out yesterday strips headlines out of news links, which Musk claims will make links look better on the social network that he renamed X.
“This is coming from me directly. Will greatly improve the esthetics,” Musk wrote in a twitter.com post on August 22 after the change was reported to be in the works. The change is now live on the mobile app and web version but hasn’t made its way to all of the company’s apps. News link headlines continue to be displayed today on the Mac app, which is still called Twitter and hasn’t been updated in nearly a year.
Previously, posting a news link on X/Twitter would create a box with the article’s lead image, headline, and the domain of the news site. Now, a news link on X is just the article image with the site domain (e.g., arstechnica.com) superimposed on the bottom left. Clicking the image will take you to the news site’s article.
Sony has released its own movie streaming app for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. You’ll be able to buy and rent movies through the Sony Pictures Core app, but there’s a decent perk for subscribers of PlayStation Plus Premium and Deluxe (a version of Premium that’s available in select markets).
Members will get access to a library of up to 100 ad-free Sony Pictures films at no extra cost. Sony says the lineup includes movies such as Looper, Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV, Elysium and Resident Evil Damnation. The library will receive periodic updates. The company also plans to add some anime content from Crunchyroll to Sony Pictures Core, and it notes that benefits for all PS Plus subscribers are on the way.
Many observers have long suggested that Sony should grant PS Plus subscribers the ability to stream some movies as part of the subscription, so it’s nice that’s finally happening. Given Sony’s big push to turn its gaming franchises into movies and TVshows, it makes more sense than ever to offer that perk. On the other hand, Sony announced this update only a few weeks after it increased the price of the annual PS Plus Premium plan from $120 to $160.
PS4 and PS5 users will be able to buy some Sony Pictures films during an early access window. Right now, folks in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand can buy Gran Turismothrough their console before it’s available for digital purchase elsewhere. Snap up that film through Sony Pictures Core, and you’ll get in-game credits for Gran Turismo 7too.
The app has been available on Bravia TVs and some Xperia devices for a while. Until now, the app has been called Bravia Core, but Sony is rebranding it on those devices next year.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that the PlayStation version of the app includes one of the key features that Bravia and Xperia users have been able to enjoy. On those devices, the Bravia Core app employs Sony’s Pure Stream tech, which can stream video at up to 80 Mbps. For comparison, Netflix recommends speeds of up to 25 Mbps for 4K video. Sony says the higher bit rate enables it to offer “near lossless” video streaming at a quality akin to 4K Blu-ray discs. That claim more or less holds up: I found that Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse looks astoundingly good with Pure Stream enabled.
However, as things stand, there are no video quality settings in the Sony Pictures Core app on PlayStation devices. Here’s hoping Sony enables Pure Stream there in the future.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ps-plus-premium-subscribers-can-now-stream-up-to-100-sony-movies-at-no-extra-cost-163126159.html?src=rss
The heyday of traditional cable may be over, but that doesn’t mean the two biggest companies in the U.S. aren’t trying to evolve with the times. Late last year, Comcast and Charter Communications announced they’d be teaming up on a streaming box to deter cord-cutters—and now, Xumo is here.
Breaking up is hard to do, especially when there’s a commercial space station on the line. Northrop Grumman is abandoning its plans as a solo contractor to develop a replacement for NASA’s International Space Station, and is instead partnering with Voyager Space to work on Starlab.
Fossil fuel exploration should cease globally by 2030 and funding to rescue poor countries from the impacts of the climate crisis should reach $200bn to $400bn a year by the same date, according to proposals in a UN report before the next climate summit. The Guardian: Countries were still “way off track” to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the report found, and much more action would be needed to make it possible to limit global heating to 1.5C above preindustrial levels. The UN’s synthesis report on the global stocktake, published on Wednesday, will form the basis for discussions at the Cop28 conference in Dubai, which begins at the end of November. The global stocktake is a process mandated under the Paris agreement, intended to check every five years on countries’ progress on meeting their emissions-cutting goals.
Simon Stiell, the UN’s climate chief, said the report offered a range of actions for governments to consider. “[These are] clear targets which provide a north star for the action that is required by countries,” he said. Greenhouse gas emissions are still rising but there is broad agreement they must peak by 2025 at the latest if there is to be a chance of limiting temperature rises to 1.5C. “This is a major opportunity being presented for the course correction that is so urgently called for,” Stiell said. “[The report] lays out elements that can be incorporated into a response.” But while most countries agreed on the need to change direction, he said, there was “significant divergence” on how to achieve the changes needed.
Blizzard’s hit dungeon-romping sequel Diablo IV is officially coming to Steam on October 17. This is a boon for PC gamers, as it was previously only available on Blizzard’s proprietary sales platform Battle.net, and Steam is a more widely-used service. The news should be of particular interest for Steam Deck owners. It was already possible to jump through the hoops required to get the game running on the portable console, but this will radically streamline the process.
Valve hasn’t rated the game for Steam Deck compatibility, but that’ll likely happen closer to launch. Additionally, you’ll still need a Battle.net account to get started, so have those login credentials ready. Just like the Battle.net release, standalone PCs require at least an Intel Core i5 or AMD FX-8350 CPU and 8 GB of RAM, though 16 GB is preferred, to get this running.
The Steam release joins a new DLC called Season of Blood, also launching on October 17. The content drop brings a new questline, updated vampire powers, five new endgame bosses and much more, like the addition of actress Gemma Chan as a vampire hunter.
There’s also a big-time patch coming out on the same day. Patch 1.2.0 brings all kinds of quality of life improvements, like faster XP gain, better navigation around Nightmare Dungeons, streamlined character rewards, more durable NPC companions, reduced backtracking and an increase in world boss spawns for loot gathering purposes. That’s just scratching the surface. For a full list of improvements, check out the patch notes.
We were impressed by many aspects of Diablo IV at launch, praising the world design for having the “most detailed and creative assets Blizzard has ever produced.” We also said that it’s basically the Diablo game we’ve been “dreaming of ever since” the original title launched back in the hazy Clinton-infused days of 1997.
Blizzard has been protective of its IP with regard to allowing them to flourish on other sales platforms than Battle.net. However, Diablo IV isn’t the first high-profile game to migrate to Steam. Back in August, the hit multiplayer shooter Overwatch 2launched on Valve’s storefront. At that time, Blizzard said that several titles would be making their way to Steam, but it didn’t say which ones. Obviously, Diablo IV is one, but we’re still waiting on more releases.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/diablo-iv-comes-to-steam-on-october-17-154524291.html?src=rss
Sony is bringing its own movie streaming service to PlayStation consoles beginning today. From a report: Previously known as Bravia Core, the service is being rebranded to Sony Pictures Core as it arrives on the PS5 and PS4. “Once you sign up for Sony Pictures Core, you will be able to buy or rent up to 2,000 movies straight from your console,” Sony’s Evan Stern wrote in a blog post. “At launch, this will include blockbuster hits such as Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Uncharted, The Equalizer, No Hard Feelings, Bullet Train, and Ghostbusters: Afterlife, among others.”
Now, you can rent or buy those movies in any number of places. If you’re wondering why you’d want to use Sony’s service, the answer is video fidelity. As noted on the Bravia Core website, it includes what the company calls Pure Stream, “which can stream HDR movies at up to 80Mbps — similar to 4K UHD Blu-ray — on a wide range of content.” That is a significantly higher bitrate than anything Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Max, Vudu, or other streamers will give you. So, if you’re a stickler for picture quality and have the right TV for it, you should notice greater detail when using Pure Stream. In addition to all that, Sony also claims it has the largest collection of IMAX Enhanced films of any streaming service.
Microsoft and Amazon are facing more antitrust scrutiny. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) says it will investigate the cloud services market in the country to determine if companies are engaging in anti-competitive practices.
Amazon (through Amazon Web Services) and Microsoft are by far the biggest players in that field in the UK. Between them, they had a market share of between 70 and 80 percent last year, according to a report from media regulator Ofcom, which asked the CMA to investigate the market. Google is in third place with a relatively paltry share of between five and 10 percent.
Ofcom believes that competition in the market is constrained by a number of factors that make it hard for customers to switch suppliers or use more than one at the same time. A key issue is egress fees, which customers often have to pay to transfer their data to another service. “The cost of transferring data between rival providers can discourage customers from using more than one cloud provider and in some cases make switching more costly,” Ofcom said in its report.
A lack of interoperability and portability can make it overly laborious for customers to configure their data and apps to work on different services, the regulator said. Discounts can also dissuade customers from using more than one provider.
Those factors give Microsoft and Amazon a leg up over the competition, Ofcom suggests. “Limits on the ability of customers to credibly threaten to switch away can reduce the competitive pressure on the market leaders, giving them a degree of market power,” the report states. “If customers have difficulty switching and using multiple providers, it could make it harder for competitors to gain scale and challenge AWS and Microsoft effectively for the business of new and existing customers.”
In addition, Ofcom notes that some cloud service providers have raised concerns over the business software licensing practices of some cloud players, especially Microsoft. “We have received submissions that say Microsoft engages in several practices that make it less attractive for customers to use Microsoft’s licensed software products on the cloud infrastructure of rival providers compared to Microsoft Azure,” the report states. “The submissions allege that this limits their ability to compete for customers.” The products in question include Windows and Microsoft 365. Ofcom says that Microsoft has disputed the veracity of these claims.
“We welcome Ofcom’s referral of public cloud infrastructure services to us for in-depth scrutiny,” CMA CEO Sarah Cardell said in a statement. “This is a £7.5 billion [$9.1 billion] market that underpins a whole host of online services — from social media to AI foundation models. Many businesses now completely rely on cloud services, making effective competition in this market essential.” The CMA plans to conclude its investigation by April 2025.
Microsoft and Amazon both say they’ll work constructively with the CMA. Amazon took issue with Ofcom’s claims, telling Reutersthat the watchdog’s conclusions were rooted in “a fundamental misconception of how the IT sector functions, and the services and discounts on offer.”
The cloud has been a sticking point in another Microsoft-CMA tussle. The watchdog initially blocked the company’s proposed $68.7 billion takeover of Activision Blizzard due to concerns that Microsoft would hold too much power in the cloud gaming market. Microsoft later pledged to sell cloud game streaming rights to Activision Blizzard titles to Ubisoft if the deal goes through. That concession, made as part of Microsoft’s revised agreement, “opens the door to the deal being cleared,” the CMA said in September. The regulator will make its final decision on the merger this month.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-and-amazon-face-a-uk-antitrust-probe-over-cloud-services-151515071.html?src=rss
Netflix’s game studio is slowly but surely dropping new titles, adding around 40 mobile releases in 2023. One such game is the universally-acclaimed Metroidvania/roguelike action gem Dead Cells, which was just announced as part of the streamer’s “Netflix & Thrill” promotion for Halloween. I wouldn’t exactly call this a horror game, but you do play as a headless blob-infused ghost and it’s heavily inspired by the Castlevania series, so sure why not.
Dead Cells: Netflix Edition looks to include the full original game along with all kinds of DLC, including the recently-released crossover with the aforementioned genre stalwart Castlevania. A traditional Netflix subscription gives you access to the game on both iOS and Android devices. It remains to be seen if you can use the official game controller app to play the game on a supported television.
If you’ve been living underneath a rock that changes location each day, Dead Cells is a sidescrolling roguelike with procedurally generated maps that reset each run. The world is vast and filled with secrets and power ups. Many of these upgrades stick around from run to run, making this more of a “roguelite” like the equally stunning Hades. The Metroidvania aspect kicks in because there are parts of the map unavailable to you when you first play, requiring traversal mechanics (like the double jump) that you pick up as you play. It’s an addictive formula with one heck of a gameplay loop. There’s a reason it’s sold more than 10 million copies across platforms.
In addition to Dead Cells, Netflix also announced the forthcoming release of an enhanced version of horror puzzler Slayaway Camp. This game has you controlling a cute lil psychotic slasher called Skullface. The heartwarming tale tasks you with solving isometric puzzles and killing annoying camp counselors. Slayaway Camp: Netflix & Kill likely includes DLC from Slayaway Camp: Butcher’s Cut – Deluxe Edition, among other goodies.
Both of these spook-adjacent games are coming soon, though Netflix hasn’t dropped actual release dates. They’ll come out before Halloween, however, or else what’s the point. Just like all Netflix games, they won’t have ads or in-app purchases, just sweet, sweet gameplay.
There’s also a Dead Cells animated series in the works. Interestingly, there’s no home for it yet, but this move certainly hints that it could premiere on Netflix, particularly with the platform’s recent push into animated game adaptations. A recent Netflix animation event teased shows based on Sonic the Hedgehog, Tomb Raider and Devil May Cry. The streamer has also released a couple of well-regarded cartoons based on the Castlevania franchise.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/netflix-nabs-the-iconic-dead-cells-for-its-ever-growing-games-library-150038384.html?src=rss
Star Wars has a long, long history with the collectible card game medium, but as the likes of Magic dabbles with high-profile crossovers and Disney itself gets in on the market with the wildly popular launch of Lorcana, its nearly time for the galaxy far, far away to return to the card-covered tabletop with its own…
Britain’s anti-competition regulators have been tasked with investigating Microsoft and Amazon’s dominance of the cloud computing market. From a report: Media watchdog Ofcom on Thursday referred its inquiry for further investigation to the Competition and Markets Authority, kickstarting the process. Ofcom said that it had identified features which make it more difficult for U.K. businesses to switch cloud providers, or use multiple cloud services, and that it is “particularly concerned” about the position of market leaders Amazon and Microsoft. “Some UK businesses have told us they’re concerned about it being too difficult to switch or mix and match cloud provider, and it’s not clear that competition is working well,” Fergal Farragher, Ofcom’s director responsible for the market study, said in a statement Thursday.
“So, we’re referring the market to the CMA for further scrutiny, to make sure business customers continue to benefit from cloud services.” Ofcom is concerned that so-called “hyperscalers” like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure are limiting competition in the cloud computing market. These are companies that allow businesses of all stripes to carry out critical computing tasks — like storage and management of data, delivery of content, analytics and intelligence — over the internet, rather than through servers stored on site, or “on premise.”
On Thursday, UK regulators initiated a competition probe into Microsoft, Google, and Amazon’s cloud computing practices. The investigation is based on a study by media watchdog Ofcom which forwarded its findings to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to examine U.S. big tech companies’ competitive practices.
