Hasta La Gadget!

The British actor who plays Eddie Munson said he was snared on his way to “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.”

Rollerdrome is essentially the video game version of Rollerball, the fabulous 1975 sci-fi film starring James Caan. In Rollerball, monolithic corporations control society and the least powerful citizens are compelled to compete in lethal roller-skating competitions, in the name of entertainment and classism. (Yes, dystopian fiction existed far before The Hunger Games.) The movie is a slow burn of brutality, odd human rituals and shirts with huge collars, and it’s a brilliant time capsule whose themes remain relevant today.

Rollerdrome builds a similarly rich, unsettling world through set pieces, costuming and audio cues, pulling a 1970s aesthetic firmly into the 21st century in the process. It takes place in 2030, in a world controlled by massive companies — the Matterhorn corporation is at the center of a new bloodsport called rollerdrome, where participants are challenged to shoot their way through enemies while completing ridiculous roller-skating tricks. Rollerdrome comes from Roll7, the studio behind the skateboarding series OlliOlli — it just has four more wheels and a lot more guns than those games.

I played a preview of Rollerdrome on Steam, using a controller as recommended. The entire game features bold, comic book-style visuals, with the main character wearing a red jumpsuit and striped white helmet, skates on their feet and a handful of firearms at their disposal. It’s a third-person, single-player shooter with environments ranging from abandoned malls to desert canyons, each one lined with ramps, walls, gaps and breakable windows, offering plenty of opportunities for tricks.

Roll7

Tricks are essential to Rollerdrome, and not just because they look and feel super cool. Completing tricks is how you refill ammo, so it’s critical to keep the moves coming. The game supports the classics, like ollies, grinding, flips and grabs, allowing you to spin every which way mid-air to change things up. Roll7’s expertise with fast-moving action is on full display here — it’s fun enough to simply skate along the ramps, building up speed and trying out new tricks, but this is just one aspect of gameplay.

While rolling and flipping through the maps, you have to dodge incoming shots from enemies, manage your health and ammo, and murder every character you see. Killing enemies leaves behind gems of health, there’s a lock-on option for all firearms, and you’re able to slow down time in bursts. All of these factors combine to turn each level into an action movie with a hand-drawn ’70s filter: The main character flips in slow-motion high above the battlefield, shooting down a sniper before landing back in real time, dodging missiles and rolling at full speed into another jump. Dramatic scenes like this play out again and again, as the time-slowing ability refills rapidly and completing tricks quickly becomes second nature, in the name of collecting ammo.

Roll7

Enemies have a range of weapons, including sniper rifles, bats, handguns and rockets, while the main character gets firearms like dual-wielded pistols, a shotgun and a grenade launcher. There are tokens hovering around the maps indicating trick challenges, but otherwise each environment is an open, dangerous playground. It’s possible to skate off the edge of platforms and mountainsides, and this results in a time penalty, but it doesn’t stop the round. For the completionists of the world, there are specific time- and skill-based challenges in each level, each one raising your overall score at the end.

Once you start moving in Rollerdrome, there’s no need to continually press forward to accelerate, freeing up the mechanics for turning, dropping, flipping and shooting. Dodging is one of the coolest parts of the game, especially when multiple enemies have you in their sights — incoming fire is displayed by a blue line that turns white when the shot goes off, and timing a dodge perfectly results in a satisfying sound effect and the opportunity for a temporary damage boost. It’s a thrill to dodge, dodge, dodge and then leap into the air, slow down time and take out the people shooting at you, refilling ammo and collecting health in the process. And all the while, an original synth-forward soundtrack keeps the energy high.

There are multiple things to keep track of at any given time in Rollerdrome, but the abundance of stimuli never feels overwhelming. Dying in Rollerdrome isn’t the result of poor design; it’s simply a sign that you dropped focus for a second, forgot to dodge or collect health or do a trick for more ammo. It’s a sign that you should strap on those skates again and give it another go.

Rollerdrome feels endlessly replayable, especially with online leaderboards and a challenge mode for an all-encompassing test of skill. Plus, behind the smooth mechanics and retrofuturistic filter lies a dystopian mystery with themes that (unfortunately) feel right at home in 1970 or 2030.

Rollerdrome is due to hit PlayStation 4, PS5 and Steam on August 16th.

The slow-moving trial and Griner’s five months of detention have raised strong criticism among teammates and supporters in the United States.

Ahead of its upcoming Galaxy Unpacked event in August, Samsung is unveiling a new color variant of the flagship S22 it launched earlier this year. Called “Bora Purple” after the Korean word for purple, the new hue will be available only for the smallest S22, not the Plus and Ultra versions, though Samsung said the color will launch on “exciting new Galaxy devices later this year.” You’ll be able to buy the Bora S22 on August 10th for the same $800 as the original model, which also comes in violet, green, pink, white and black. 

We’ve seen Samsung launch purple gadgets before, like the “Orchid Gray” Galaxy S8, “Lilac Purple” Galaxy S9 and the lavender Z Flip 3. The S22 series itself is already available in violet, but the Bora edition’s contour cut camera housing is color-matched to the rest of the phone, while this part on the older handset is gold. 

Samsung’s obsession with the color purple is evident in the press release it issued to announce the launch of Bora. “[P]urple is for everyone, whether you’re a global pop sensation, someone with a playful sense of style or a teen who wants to stand out from the crowd,” the company wrote. “In that sense, the purple stands for the same things as Samsung Galaxy: embracing diversity, pushing boundaries, and relentlessly innovating under the philosophy of openness.”

The company’s executive vice president and head of marketing Stephanie Choi also said in the statement “With its pastel and neutral tones, Bora Purple embodies optimism and a sense of calm. It will unfold your world with the power of choice.” Choi added “You don’t need to be a K-pop star or a mythical creature to embody mystery or power, you just need to be yourself.” 

That is all technically true, with or without a purple phone. During my brief hands-on with the new Bora S22, I did not feel like a K-pop star or a mythical creature. I did not feel like I embodied mystery or power. I did not feel more optimistic or calm, though the phone is indeed quite pretty.

We’re expecting Samsung to launch five new Galaxy products next month, including the next-generation Z Fold, Z Flip, Watch and Buds. Judging by the hint in today’s announcement, it’s likely that Bora Purple will be a launch color for these devices. 

Meta is putting its considerable weight behind the tech industry’s push to do away with the leap second. In a post on the company’s engineering blog, Meta production engineer Oleg Obleukhov and research scientist Ahmad Byagowi talked about how a leap second can wreak havoc on a network, along with the solution Meta implements to prevent outages and any issues it could cause. 

The leap second was introduced back in 1972 as a way to adjust Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and make up for the difference between the International Atomic Time (TAI), which is measured by atomic clocks, and imprecise observed solar time (UT1). They sometimes don’t match due to irregularities and slowdown in the Earth’s rotation caused by various climate-induced and geological events, such as the melting and refreezing of ice caps on the tallest mountains.

As Obleukhov and Byagowi note, the offset a leap second creates can cause issues all over the industry. In 2012, for instance, it took Reddit out for 40 minutes when the time change confused its servers and locked up its CPUs. A time leap added in 2017 also affected Cloudflare’s DNS service.

To prevent unwanted outages, Meta and other tech companies, such as Google and Amazon, use a technique called “smearing.” These companies “smear” a leap second by slowing down or speeding up the clock throughout a number of hours. Meta smears a leap second throughout 17 hours, while Google uses a 24-hour smear technique that lasts from noon to noon and encourages everyone to follow suit. That way, a leap second doesn’t create any weird time stamps that could throw networks off.

But Meta isn’t advocating for the adoption of its smearing technique — its new post’s purpose is to lend its voice to the movement that’s calling for the leap second’s retirement. The body responsible for deciding whether to adjust UTC, the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service, has added 27 leap seconds since 1972. Meta believes that’s enough adjustment for the next millennium.

The company’s post comes over a year before the fate of the leap second is decided. Back in 2015, the International Telecommunications Union discussed the leap second at its World Radiocommunication Conference and came to the conclusion that further studies are needed to figure out the impact of dumping it. The union is expected to examine the studies’ results and to consider the proposal to retire the leap second at its next conference in 2023.

Meta said in its post:

“Leap second events have caused issues across the industry and continue to present many risks. As an industry, we bump into problems whenever a leap second is introduced. And because it’s such a rare event, it devastates the community every time it happens. With a growing demand for clock precision across all industries, the leap second is now causing more damage than good, resulting in disturbances and outages.”