Aug 23
After many years of work, NASA plans to launch its first Artemis test in the near future. Even if you can’t attend in person, there are ways to watch.
Aug 23
Bentley will join the EV market with an impressive, if still mysterious, vehicle in the coming years. Here’s what we’ve learned so far.
Aug 23
Dead Island 2 is coming. The long-awaited zombie-slaying role-playing game is set to hit PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Google Stadia and PC via the Epic Games Store on February 3rd, 2023. Deep Silver showed off the blood-soaked sequel with a cinematic trailer and a gameplay video during Gamescom’s Opening Night Live showcase.
You’re the star of the show now.
Watch the first gameplay trailer for #DeadIsland 2 and preorder now: https://t.co/YsBv93WxSL#SeeYouInHELLA 💀 pic.twitter.com/sEUzDO1n4L
— Dead Island (@deadislandgame) August 23, 2022
Dead Island 2 will feature six playable characters with unique voice acting and traits, and it all takes place in Los Angeles. The game is designed as a love letter to cult-classic horror films and old Hollywood vibes: It has a pulpy narrative to follow, classic RPG elements and a co-op mode for up to three players. All six of the main characters are customizable, and a brand new skill system allows players to adjust their specs on the fly. There are dozens of individual zombie types to slay, too.
Dead Island 2 is the full follow-up to the 2011 hit Dead Island, though there have been smaller installments in the series. The game was announced in 2014 and it’s essentially been in development hell ever since, lost among a handful of studio sales and team swaps. It’s now in progress at Deep Silver’s Dambuster Studios, which worked on Homefront: The Revolution.
In an unexpected partnership, Dead Island 2 will be the first title to feature Alexa Game Control, a service from Amazon that allows players to yell at a game and have it respond appropriately. At least, that’s the idea. You won’t need an Echo device in order to use voice commands in Dead Island 2, just a headset with a microphone. And notably, you won’t have to start every sentence with “Alexa.” The tech will respond to key phrases, such as, “swap to my best weapon,” or, “where is the nearest workbench?” You’ll also be able to manipulate hordes of the undead by saying “hey zombie,” which sounds like some good, old-fashioned fun.
Aug 23
Starting today, Yelp will apply a label to business pages for crisis pregnancy centers (also known as anti-abortion centers) to clarify that these facilities usually have limited medical services. The label also notes that crisis pregnancy centers “may not have licensed medical professionals onsite.” The consumer notice could help people avoid confusion with clinics that offer abortion services.
In a blog post, Yelp said it was making the change following the US Supreme Court’s decision in June to overturn Roe v. Wade, a ruling that conferred a nationwide right to safe abortion access for nearly 50 years. “The trust and safety of our community is a top priority, which is why providing consumers with reliable and useful information to help inform their decisions is critical to our mission — this includes access to reliable information about reproductive health services,” Yelp wrote.
Yelp
Many crisis pregnancy centers have religious affiliations, as the Associated Presspreviously reported. Some are said to provide misleading information about abortion and contraception.
Yelp has reviewed tens of thousands of business listings since 2018 with the aim of ensuring crisis pregnancy centers are differentiated from abortion clinics. It noted that moderators have reclassified almost 470 businesses as crisis pregnancy centers or faith-based crisis pregnancy centers this year alone in the US, after reviewing nearly 33,500 business pages. It plans to review more than 55,000 business pages across the US, Canada and Puerto Rico in the coming months.
This is an issue that other tech companies have been contending with. Last week, the Alphabet Workers Union demanded that Google address “misleading search results related to abortion services by removing results for fake abortion providers.” Democratic lawmakers have asked Google to stop directing people seeking an abortion to anti-abortion facilities, while some Republican attorneys general warned the company not to limit such centers from appearing in search results. In early July, Google said it would delete abortion clinic visits from user location histories.
Aug 23
Parkland School Shooter Was Intellectually Slow And Violent As Child, Court Hears
Posted in: Today's ChiliNikolas Cruz, who pled guilty to carrying out the 2018 mass shooting at a Florida high school, would bite and hit others when he wanted something, a daycare worker said.
Aug 23
Fans of The Expanse will have to wait about another year to play Deck Nine’s interpretation of the popular sci-fi series. The studio, best known for its work on Life is Strange: True Colors, and Telltale Games shared a new behind-the-scenes gameplay trailer during Gamescom 2022 and revealed that the title would come out sometime in the summer of 2023. While not revelatory, the clip does show off something we hadn’t seen before. The Expanse: A Telltale Series will feature sequences where you’ll need to navigate zero-gravity environments.
Set before the TV series, which concluded at the start of this year, the game stars Camina Drummer. After her introduction in the show’s second season, Drummer, played by actress Cara Gee in both the TV series and upcoming game, went on to become a fan-favorite character over subsequent seasons. The Expanse is one of two new projects Telltale Games is working on after coming back from financial insolvency. In 2023, the studio also plans to release The Wolf Among Us 2.
Aug 23
Why wait for the blue check mark when you can get a shield with ‘verified phone number’ right above your following count. And since you can have ten different accounts under one phone number, that is ten verified (phone number) accounts for you. So yes it is true, Twitter is now verifying your phone number, but in an…
Aug 23
6 Seconds of New Spider-Man: No Way Home Footage Is Here to Rock Your World
Posted in: Today's Chili
You’ve heard of Five Seconds of Summer, but what about Six Seconds of Spider-Man? That’s what Sony decided to release this week as a tease of what to expect when Spider-Man: No Way Home – The More Fun Stuff Edition comes back to theaters next week. Six seconds. Get pumped!
Aug 23
‘Stranger Things’ Star Noah Schnapp’s Splashy Side Hustle Might Surprise You
Posted in: Today's ChiliThe actor, who plays Will Byers on the smash Netflix series, credited his new gig with keeping him “grounded” amid the chaos of Hollywood.
Aug 23
Precious few details have emerged on the functionality and release schedule for the PS5-exclusive Sony PlayStation VR2 virtual reality system.
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