Ubisoft reportedly plans to repurpose an Assassin’s Creed Valhalla expansion into a standalone release. According to Bloomberg, the company is working on a game codenamed “Rift.” What started life as DLC for the latest entry in the company’s long-running historical franchise apparently morphed into a full game sometime late last year.
Per Bloomberg, the game will star Basim Ibn Ishaq (pictured above), a character that appears in Valhalla. What’s more, it won’t be a massive open-world game and will instead focus more on stealth gameplay. Ubisoft may release Rift either this year or in 2023.
According to Bloomberg, Ubisoft made the decision to repurpose the expansion to fill out its near-term release schedule. The company plans to release Rift before Assassin’s Creed Infinity, the project that’s supposed to turn the franchise into a live online service like GTA Online. As the outlet notes, several Ubisoft projects have struggled in recent years. We haven’t seen Beyond Good and Evil 2since 2018, and exactly a year ago this month, Ubisoft delayed Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake indefinitely. And we may not see those release anytime soon either. Beyond Good and Evil 2 is reportedly stuck in pre-production after five years of development.
While I was very distracted this morning by Nintendo’s barrage of game announcements, the big story remains Samsung’s new Galaxy S lineup. Encompassing no less than three new phones and three new tablets, it was a busy day for the biggest and most influential Android phone maker.
While the giant Tab S8 Ultra is literally the biggest announcement (a 14.6-inch OLED tablet built for creating and viewing), the most important might be the Galaxy S22 Ultra — despite the name, to most people, this is really the next-gen Galaxy Note.
Engadget
My colleague Cherlynn Low has written about how the Note’s legacy will live on in any device that works with a Samsung stylus, but it’s a much-needed consolidation of the myriad flagship devices the company often launches at a speedy clip.
Last year, sidestepping Samsung’s cheaper phones, like the A series, it revealed the Galaxy S21, S21+ and S21 Ultra in January. Then, in August 2021, the company marched out its latest foldable devices, the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and the Galaxy Z Flip 3. (Not to mention the S21 Fan Edition that popped up just a few weeks ago…) Phew. There was no Galaxy Note that year, presumably because Samsung needed to figure out where it would belong.
The S22 Ultra, with lots of camera sensors, a huge beautiful screen and space to holster an S Pen stylus, now has enough unique features to differentiate itself from the more standard (and cheaper) S22 and S22+. Now I need to figure out how to stop calling it a Note.
The 6.1-inch Galaxy S22 and 6.6-inch S22+ look very similar to the S21 family they replace, but they include some notable camera upgrades, including a 50-megapixel main rear camera with a sensor 23 percent larger than in the 12MP shooter from their predecessors. There are some new software-based camera tricks, including Auto Framing to keep up to 10 people in focus. Portrait-mode photos should look more natural thanks to an AI-based stereo depth map. Prices start at $800 for a Galaxy S22 with 128GB of (non-expandable) storage and $999 for the bigger S22+. Still not sure? We’ve already written up some first impressions right here, and you can expect our full review soon.
Compared to its S22 siblings, the Ultra model has a flatter design and built-in storage for Samsung’s S Pen stylus, which itself features improved responsiveness. It also comes with a 108MP camera with an f/1.8 aperture lens. The phone includes a 12MP ultra-wide camera and two 10MP telephoto cameras. Pre-orders for the device open today, with prices beginning at $1,200 for the base model with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage. Check out our early thoughts here.
Samsung also unveiled the Galaxy Tab S8 series, which includes the Tab S8, S8+ and the Tab S8 Ultra. It’s the first time Samsung is making a tablet with the “Ultra” name; that branding is normally reserved for its S-series phones, but the S8 Ultra has some high-end specs to match. According to Samsung, it features the “world’s only 14.6-inch Super AMOLED display on an Android 2-in-1” as well as “our smoothest writing experience yet,” courtesy of an upgraded S Pen. Pricing across the family starts at $700 for the Tab S8, the S8+ at $900 and the Ultra at $1,100. They are all impressively slim.
I can’t explain what Samsung’s original idea was. There’s a vague dig at Apple (I think), as an old Mr. Mackintosh pitches a dowdy raincoat before a younger handsome man appears to reveal… oil paintings of Samsung’s newest phone.
The matriarch he’s trying to impress demands her servants carry the paintings around in a circle, by candlelight, creating (possibly) a sort of zoetrope effect. I’m not sure. You won’t be sure.
Almost all of the Starlink internet satellites a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carried beyond the atmosphere on February 3rd won’t reach their intended orbit. SpaceX has revealed a geomagnetic storm a day after liftoff had a severe impact on the satellites, and up to 40 of them will re-enter or have already entered Earth’s atmosphere. The deorbiting satellites pose no collision risk, SpaceX said, and will completely burn up as they re-enter the atmosphere, leaving no orbital debris.
You’ll just need to spend a few hours in bright sunlight every day instead.
Garmin
Garmin’s new Instinct 2 Solar watch will apparently be able to run continuously on smartwatch mode (i.e. with features like heart-rate monitoring, sleep tracking, activity tracking and 24/7 health monitoring turned on), with no need to recharge — so long as you get enough hours in the sun. Garmin says the device needs to be outside in 50,000 lux conditions for an average of three hours a day to maintain the “unlimited” battery life.
The headsets are reported to arrive in 2022 or 2023.
The operating system powering Apple’s rumored virtual or augmented reality headset may be called realityOS, MacRumors has reported. The term was spotted by multiple sources in recent GitHub open source code and App Store upload logs. “What is Apple’s realityOS doing in the App Store upload logs,” tweeted iOS developer Rens Verhoeven. If the references are real, they could suggest that developers are getting or will be getting access to the OS. As another developer, Steve Troughton-Smith, warned, however, they “could just be a remnant of somebody’s pull request from a fake account,” too.
Splitting a restaurant bill or dividing the costs of a group trip can be tedious. Meta is attempting to make this easier by rolling out its Split Payments feature to all Facebook Messenger users. The feature, which was previously in testing, will likely be perfect for occasions when you are dividing the cost of something with two or more people. For example, dividing the purchase of a new microwave with your three roommates, the cost of a new birthday gift for grandma with your siblings, or even this weekend’s Super Bowl party.
If you or your friends are new to using Facebook Payments in Messenger, the feature will ask for payment details (either a debit or credit card or Paypal).
Here’s how it works. First, put all the payers in a group chat on Messenger. Then either tap the plus icon on the very bottom of the screen or tap on the name of the group and then tap “Split Payments”. You’ll see a prompt labeled “Get Started”.
From there, you can select whether you want to split payments with everyone in the group or exclude certain people (including yourself). You’ll then be asked to enter the total amount of the bill or the payment. The feature then automatically splits the cost equal between the number of people you selected. If one or more people owe slightly more, you can also manually enter in a different amount.
Meta rolling out a bill-splitting function for Meta is no doubt another way to keep up with payment apps like Venmo, Block (formerly known as Square) and Splitwise. But given that many people already use Messenger for coordinating group activities or relaying communications within a group, a messaging app may have an advantage here.
The Academy Awards, which are scheduled for March 27 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, won’t require proof of vaccination against covid-19 for attendees, according to a surprising new report from the Hollywood Reporter. The decision runs counter to other entertainment industry award shows like the SAG Awards and…
The Joint European Torus (JET) fusion reactor near Oxford in the UK has produced the highest level of sustained energy ever from atom fusion, Nature has reported. On December 21st, 2021, the “tokamak” reactor produced 59 megajoules of energy during a five second fusion pulse, more than double what it managed way back in 1997.
“These landmark results have taken us a huge step closer to conquering one of the biggest scientific and engineering challenges of them all,” said Ian Chapman, lead of the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE).
The JET reactor is the flagship experimental device of the European Fusion Program (EUROfusion) funded by the EU. It’s mainly designed to help scientists prove that their modeling is correct, with an eye toward future experiments with the much larger ITER reactor being built in France, set to start fusion testing in 2025. “JET really achieved what was predicted. The same modelling now says ITER will work,” fusion physicist Josefine Proll (who is not involved with JET) told Nature.
The experiment pushed the reactor to its “absolute maximum,” said CCFE plasma scientist Fernanda Rimini. JET used a mixture of deuterium (aka heavy water) and tritium, the same fuel mix that will power ITER. Tritium is a radioactive hydrogen isotope that generates more neutrons when fused with deuterium than deuterium fused with itself, increasing energy output. The researchers also replaced the tokamak’s inner wall to reduce tritium waste.
JET hit a Q value of 0.33, meaning it produced about a third the energy put in. The highest Q value achieved so far is 0.7 by the US Department of Energy’s National Ignition Facility, but it only hit that figure for 4 billionths of a second. The goal with ITER is to reach a goal of Q factor of 10 or greater, while creating 500 MW of power for long 400 to 600 second pulses. ITER will not produce net energy in the form of electricity, but will pave the way for future machines that can.
Before that happens, however, researchers must solve several challenges. Principally, they have to deal with the heat created in the exhaust region of ITER, as it will be much greater proportionally than with the JET reactor. Still, the experiment’s success allowed the team to glean a wealth of information that can be analyzed over the next few years. “If we can maintain fusion for five seconds, we can do it for five minutes and then five hours as we scale up our operations in future machines,” said EUROfusion program manager Tony Donne.
A California civil rights agency has filed a lawsuit against Tesla for alleged racial discrimination and harassment at its Fremont factory, according to The Wall Street Journal. “After receiving hundreds of complaints from workers, DFEH found evidence that Tesla’s Fremont factory is a racially segregated workplace,” said California Department of Fair Employment and Housing director Kevin Kish in a statement.
The DFEH said Black employees were frequently exposed to racial slurs and graffiti, with one worker saying they heard such slurs 50 to 100 times per day. “Black workers are subjected to racial slurs and discriminated against in job assignments, discipline, pay, and promotion creating a hostile work environment,” said Kish.
Tesla called the lawsuit “unfair and unproductive” in a blog released prior to the complaint being made public. “Tesla strongly opposes all forms of discrimination and harassment and has a dedicated Employee Relations team that responds to and investigates all complaints,” the company wrote. “Tesla is also the last remaining automobile manufacturer in California. The Fremont factory has a majority-minority workforce and provides the best paying jobs in the automotive industry to over 30,000 Californians.” It also said that over 50 previous DFEH investigations over the last five years were closed without any findings of misconduct.
Last October, Tesla was ordered to pay $137 million in damages to a former Black worker who accused the company of turning a blind eye to discrimination and racial abuse in 2015 and 2016. Tesla disagreed with the verdict, with a spokesperson saying the company was “not perfect” at that time but has “come a long way” since then. Tesla recently moved its corporate headquarters to Texas from California, but has also said it would expand its manufacturing activities by 50 percent in California.
Tesla has previously tussled with the state of California over COVID-19 related plant closures, and isn’t the only high-profile company in the DFEH’s crosshairs. The agency recently sued Activision Blizzard for alleged harassment and discrimination against female employees.
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