Against all the odds, the mythical “Snyder Cut” of Justice League will finally get its day in the sun. You’ll able to watch it in 2021, provided you shell out money to subscribe to HBO Max. On Wednesday, WarnerMedia said it plans to release Zack Snyder’s director’s cut of the 2017 superhero movie on its soon-to-launch streaming service next year.
The Snyder Cut has been a fan obsession since before Justice League came out. The story goes that before Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly creator Joss Whedon came on to reshoot the project, Snyder, who previously directed 300 and Man of Steel, put together a darker and more somber edit of the film than the one that eventually made its way to theaters. Shortly after Justice League came out, fans started to flood social media using the hashtag #ReleaseTheSnyderCut to get Warner to meet their wishes. At one point, even some of the movie’s stars, including Gal Gadot and Ben Affleck, lent online support to the trend.
Scientists believe they have observed a planet being formed for the first time. In a study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics today, a team of astronomers explain how they captured images of a young star, AB Aurigae, 520 light-years from Earth. In a massive disc of swirling gas and dust around the star, they detected a distinct twist, which could indicate where a new planet is forming and validate a major theory about planetary formation.
The discovery was made using the European Space Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) and its SPHERE instrument. In 2019 and early 2020, astronomers from Belgium, France, Taiwan and the US obtained the deepest images of the AB Aurigae system to date. They confirmed past observations of spiral arms of gas and dust, and they discovered the critical twist, which is located about as far from the star as Neptune is from the Sun. They believe that the twist marks the spot of new planet forming.
This is otherwise a run-of-the-mill Galaxy S20 with a 6.2-inch, 1440p display, a Snapdragon 865 processor, 12GB of RAM, 128GB of expandable storage, a 4,000mAh battery and the usual arrays of front and rear cameras. Although Samsung shows the Tactical Edition in a rugged casing, there’s no mention of the phone itself being rugged.
The S20 variant will be available in the third quarter of the year from “select IT channel partners.” If you get one, there’s a good chance it will have been issued to you as part of a bulk order. Still, this might be good news if you’re either a soldier eager for a tactical communications upgrade or an official who regularly handles classified data.
Volvo has followed through on its promise to limit the top speed of its upcoming cars to 180 kilometers per hour (112 miles per hour). Little more than a year ago, the company said it would introduce the cap in an attempt to limit speeding-related injuries and deaths. Additionally, all of the company’s upcoming vehicles will include a feature called Care Key that will allow their owners to set additional speed limits. Volvo suggests one possible way to use the functionality is before letting one of your teen children drive the car.
When it first proposed capping the speed of its cars, Volvo said current vehicle safety technology and city infrastructure weren’t enough to prevent speeding injuries. It’s using that same line of reasoning today. The automaker has also tried to anticipate any potential criticisms of the move.
A 5G connection is still a bit of a luxury. Only a handful of Android phones support the cellular standard, and Apple still has yet to integrate a 5G modem into an iPhone. Those who do have a capable smartphone, use Verizon and live in one of 34 particular cities might enjoy smoother service, though. The provider enabled ultra wideband 5G uploads today in cities like Los Angeles, Miami and New York City. (Uploads will be coming to San Diego on March 28th.) Those faster uplink speeds mean users will be able to send data faster to cell towers and servers. In other words, the quality of their video calls and the speed of their TikTok uploads should be much improved.
Verizon previously routed uploads through 4G technology. The company says the switch will increase upload bandwidth by 30 percent, though PCMag’s testing shows much better performance than Verizon’s own claims. This could be a big benefit, especially for those who use 5G as their home internet connection.
Earlier this month, the MTA started closing subways from 1AM to 5AM in order to provide more thorough cleaning. These devices could help bolster those efforts, and according to the MTA, it’s been working with Puro Lighting since mid-March to readapt the technology for MTA infrastructure. The devices can be installed in the ceiling, mounted on a wall or suspended.
MTA New York City Transit
“We know UVC can help disinfect surfaces in hospital operating rooms, and we owe it to our employees and customers to experiment with it in our system to keep them safe. If successful, the results could help disinfect our buses and train cars, crew rooms, and other facilities in a more timely and cost efficient [manner],” MTA Chief Innovation Officer Mark Dowd said in a statement.
Hopefully, the tech will make a difference in the fight against COVID-19 in New York City. It may also offer a glimpse of how society will move forward after the pandemic is over. We’ve seen UV light clean humidifiers, airplane bathrooms and toilets, and in the future, it may be used more often to disinfect shared surfaces and spaces. As Puro Lighting points out, in addition to killing 99.9 percent of viruses and bacteria, the devices can also reduce the growth of fungi, like yeast and mold.
Medical ID, a feature that allows you to list some of your medical information for emergency use, has also received a timely tweak. You can now set up your device to automatically share your Medical ID with 911 call operators. If you’re calling from an area with Enhanced Emergency Data, your information will be shared securely with the call center. At the moment, this functionality is only available in the US.
The update also includes a quality-of-life enhancement when you’re using FaceTime to chat with several different people. You now have the option to stop the app from automatically resizing video tiles whenever the conversation shifts to a different main speaker. As always, the new software also features a variety of bug fixes, the most notable of which address an issue with the share sheet not properly loading suggestions.
Rare circumstances aside, it’s always worthwhile updating to the latest version of iOS in a timely fashion. Still, given that Apple designed so many of the features of iOS 13.5 to help users through the COVID-19 crisis, you’ll probably want to get this one as soon as possible.
Hulu had these recommendations before; think things like “martial arts movies,” “teen dramas,” “Oscar-winning films” and the like. But the company has a few tricks to make its system stand out a bit from other options. The most obvious to viewers will be that each “tray” can display different-sized tiles. There’s a default smaller size, a bigger one that shows more information about the recommendation, and a full-size banner for additional emphasis.
Hulu
The different sizes provide a much-needed visual break to keep you from getting some “scroll fatigue.” If you’ve ever endlessly gone down lists in Netflix or Amazon Prime, you’ll know the feeling. I haven’t used the new Hulu interface yet, but I can say from the demo I had that the varied sizes helped from going a bit cross-eyed while browsing.
Hulu isn’t just using different sizes to break up the scrolling — they’ll be used in different contexts depending on what the content benefits from. For example, your “continue watching” tray typically has small tiles so you can see more of the shows you’re already watching. On the other hand, a tray imploring you to check out new drama series could have medium tiles, so the art is bigger and there’s more room for information on why you’re getting that recommendation.
Similarly the large, full-screen tiles are used for something Hulu calls “high confidence” recommendations — which could be something trending in a big way, or something custom based on your watch history. As director of product management Jason Wong said, these recommendations are as likely to be a deep cut show or niche film as something that’s being watched by a lot of viewers.
As for what recommendations show up in Hulu’s trays, the company is naturally utilizing both human editors and algorithmic recommendations. But the company is also doing human-curated but machine-assisted recommendations all in one shot. That means putting a few human recommendations in and then letting the algorithm take over — but the algorithm will customize it based on your personal preferences, as well. The goal is basically to have everyone’s Hulu home page look different, even if you’re getting served the same category of recommendations.
The last change Hulu is making is subtle but smart. The top navigation bar has been significantly simplified, with simple headers for browsing all movies, TV shows or sports (along with tabs for the home page and your collection). Previously, the movies and TV show categories were buried among other collections Hulu showed viewers, so having an easy top-level navigation option to get to those is a smart change.
Hulu says these changes will roll out for Roku and Apple TV over the next two months, and the company says it’ll also be rolling out more tweaks to the experience throughout the year, though they didn’t get specific on what we should look for yet. Unfortunately for Hulu users on other platforms, there’s no word just yet as to when the new UI will arrive. But Hulu specifically mentioned aligning its UI with other products like ESPN+ and Disney+, both of which are available alongside Hulu in a bundle. Given that the company is looking to align with those other products, it seems like Hulu will be motivated to get that update out sooner than later.
Moon-mining machinations are perhaps the most grandiose example of space work continuing through the pandemic, but they’re far from the only ones. Few might immediately think of astronauts as essential workers or rocket launches as mandatory for the nation’s survival. But based on the permitted activities of both NASA and private companies, space has managed to encounter relatively few interruptions or delays compared to more present-tense industries.
In some ways, space isn’t so much essential as it is inertial — sometimes literally (as in the case of the planetary alignment-contingent launch of the Perseverance rover to Mars, scheduled for mid-July) but often bureaucratically. Well before anyone even gets to the point of a socially distanced rocket launch, there are budgets to be approved, contracts to be issued and lots and lots of technical work. It’s a huge investment, which is one reason NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine offered for the agency’s continued work supporting the International Space Station (ISS) — which, because it’s collectively owned and maintained by five space agencies, could be understood as both technically and diplomatically essential.
In some ways, space isn’t so much essential as it is inertial
In an interview with the Planetary Society’s podcast, Bridenstine described the ISS as a “$100 billion investment by the American taxpayer.” That investment includes the cost of sending astronauts to the ISS, which for years has happened at Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome to the tune of $80 million per seat (in 2019, four American astronauts went). The crewed launch of astronauts to the ISS from Florida scheduled for May 27 — the first crewed launch on American soil since 2011 — could be seen as essential because it not only supports ISS operations but also demonstrates that the United States can stop paying Russia to send our astronauts to space.
“Our mission fortunately hasn’t really been impacted by COVID-19, at least not directly,” said Ken Shields, chief operating officer of the ISS National Lab, in an interview with Engadget. Since March, crew have returned from and been sent to the ISS, and research continues relatively uninterrupted.
That’s good, since interruptions in space are risky. “In terms of supply chains, the ISS is a pretty precarious place,” explained Fred Scharmen, associate professor in architecture at Morgan State University and researcher of space habitats. Describing the conditions for the rotating crew of the ISS, Scharmen noted, “Those people are trapped up there. They can’t grow their own food, they don’t even do their laundry up there.” (Laundry, along with other garbage, is actually burned up on reentry to Earth’s atmosphere.) It’s kind of important to keep taking care of the people on the ISS.
It’s also important to keep taking care of the research: There aren’t exactly alternative locations for long-term experiments in microgravity (which is of interest to biologists and material scientists), and the ISS’ location in low Earth orbit makes it a unique spot for collecting data for earth sciences. “Most of the research that we plan needs some level of crew attendance,” Shields said. “There are some things that a human in the loop can do that no amount of automation can equal.” A lot of that research is tied to academic institutions and to grant budgets that don’t have a pause button for a pandemic. Inserting an 18-month gap into sometimes multiyear research may not be a loss on that $100 billion investment, but it certainly is a loss to science.
Though Warzone only landed in March, Infinity Ward and Raven Software have already changed a lot about the Gulag in particular. The Gulag has historically been available in any mode — solos, trios or quads — but on May 8th, developers removed it from solos. The Gulag was replaced by a new Stimulus Solos mode, which allows players to buy their way back into the match. It costs $4,500 to respawn in Stimulus Solos, but half of your Cash disappears when you die, meaning players need $9,000 in order to secure a respawn.
All of this places an emphasis on collecting Cash throughout the main game, and developers argue that Stimulus Solos make Verdansk feel fuller, more dangerous and more alive.
“That leads to people carrying less, doing more contracts, trying to acquire money, and more action,” Hodge said. “That was really the genesis of that mode, can we just skip the Gulag and get straight to the action? And what would that do to gameplay? That definitely made it more frenetic, lots of people coming back, lots of revenge fights, which are fun. I think as we continue, you’ll see us playing more and more with respawn mechanics.”
Infinity Ward and Raven Software aren’t done tweaking the Gulag, Stimulus Solos or any other part of Warzone. The game is in live development and updates are rolling out fast.
Activision
“We look at popularity, and the Stimulus one was doing really well so we left it on through the weekend and further,” Cecot said. “But we’ll keep rotating things in and out. Eventually we do want to get to the point where we have kind of like our core BR and then we have our limited-time mode that we’re running. We’re focused and delicate about what we’re turning on, what we’re turning off.”
Take stun grenades, for instance. There’s a contingent of players who despise the inclusion of stun grenades in randomized Gulag loadouts, arguing they’re too powerful for such a fast-paced, close-quarters battle.
“I always get bit in the ass for commenting on this, but some of the elegance of BR is a little bit of the randomness,” Cecot said. “So if you can get a player who gets that lucky stun, then maybe they win a fight that they didn’t have a chance to win otherwise. It’s a little bit of variability. There are more tactics in there. But we’re also switching up the guns in Gulag, I think even with the next update.”
That last part, at least, is true. Infinity Ward and Raven Software released an update for Warzone this week that changes the loadout options in Gulag matches, now randomly selecting from a lineup of six ARs and four SMGs, no stun grenades in sight. The game is continually changing, and in the process, so is the definition of the battle royale genre.
