Promising review: “Finished using it five minutes ago and it’s the best! My husband uses a Stanley thermos daily to take coffee to work. He tries to remember to rinse it out every day, but that doesn’t always happen. I got the package today, filled the thermos with water, dropped in a tablet, and let it sit. I promptly forgot about it for a few hours. Initially, I was disappointed when I dumped the water, as it was barely tinged brown. Then I put fresh water in, covered the top, shook it, and OMG. The crap that came out was disgusting, yet fascinating. I looked in the thermos and saw almost nothing but sparkly silver! There was a little crud left in the top third of the thermos, but it’s a really tall one, so I wasn’t surprised. Got the bottle brush, swished twice, and bam! All clean! No fumes, no smell, no nothing, just clean. I used to struggle cleaning it with baking soda, vinegar, the brush, soap, and elbow grease. Screw that. I will forever use only these tablets! Here’s to better tasting (and way less gross) coffee!” —BranchingOut
Intel has been getting quite aggressive in its recent campaigns against M1 Macs, as Apple is replacing the Intel processors in the Mac lineup with its own Apple Silicon chips. However, while trying to mock Apple, Intel showed exactly what we expect from the next generation MacBook Pro: an edge-to-edge display.
Intel’s new ads feature Justin Long, the actor who starred as the Mac guy in Apple’s “Get a Mac” ads. In a series of videos, Intel tries to argue that Intel-powered PCs have many benefits against M1 Macs, which cannot be connected to multiple external monitors or lack several popular games.
However, Intel may have further increased the hype for the next generation MacBooks. As noted by YouTuber Rene Ritchie, the ads shared by Intel show a laptop that doesn’t look exactly like the currently available M1 MacBook Pro. Instead of having large bezels, the MacBook shown in the ad has a nearly borderless screen.
Let’s be honest, this is exactly the MacBook Pro we have been dreaming of all this time. But no, Intel hasn’t accidentally leaked Apple’s new MacBooks. The company told The Verge that they in fact used M1 Macs to record the advertisements, but the machines were modified during the post-production process for some unknown reason.
You can even check out a comparison between the real M1 MacBook Pro and Intel’s ad version below:
Jokes aside, rumors suggest that Apple will introduce redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch models of the MacBook Pro sometime later this year. The new laptops are expected to have reduced bezels, a new Mini-LED display, and of course an Apple Silicon chip.
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On March 9th Microsoft released its usual Patch Tuesday set of operating system updates, but after they rolled out Windows 10 users reported problems with printing that included missing graphics and persistent blue screen of death errors. An update to fix the BSOD problems rolled out on March 15th, but now ZDNet and Bleeping Computer report that a second emergency patch is available to fix the layout problems.
Microsoft’s note indicates that you should only install the patch if the problem is affecting you. You’ll know if it hits your computer by the “unexpected results when printing from some apps or to some printers. Issues might include missing or solid color graphics, misalignment/formatting issues, or printing of blank pages/labels.”
The only other problem? Many people, including yours truly, have experienced issues trying to install the patch via Windows Update. If that includes you and you need the fix to make sure all your graphics are printing out in the right place, Bleeping Computer mentioned that you can download and manually install the patch here.
An out-of-band update has been released to address a printing issue on devices that applied the March 2021 security update and the out-of-band updates released on March 15, 2021 https://t.co/CF0k93rpfx
Valheim studio Iron Gate has shared a cryptic teaser image previewing the game’s first big update, titled Hearth and Home.
Celebrating milestone sales figures at 6 million units sold, Iron Gate issued an update to Steam on Hearth and Home’s development. The studio didn’t give specifics on the update’s release, but did say it’s been able to gradually shift resources away from bug fixes and play tests to development on Hearth and Home.
“A lot of you have reached out and asked about the road map. How’s ‘Hearth and Home’ coming along? Much of our focus has been on play testing and bug fixing, but as things are calming down since launch, we can spend more time working on our first big update!” reads a section from the dev update.
So while we don’t know when it’s arriving, it sounds development on the update is speeding up. To hold us over until its release, the developers revealed a little Hearth and Home teaser image you can check out and expand below:
(Image credit: Coffee Stain Studios)
As to what’s included in the Valheim Hearth and Home update, Iron Gate has confirmed that, as you might expect, the new content largely focuses on house building and customization. In a recent interview with our friends at PC Gamer, Iron Gate co-founder Henrik Tornqvist said that Hearth and Home will include “more building pieces and stuff to do in and around the house.”
If you’re enjoying making food in Valheim more than building houses, it sounds like there’s also some stuff for you tucked away in the upcoming patch. “It will probably be pretty focused on the food preparation aspect of the game with more recipes and stuff like that,” Tornqvist continued.
If you’re just starting out or simply need a few good tips, don’t miss our Valheim beginner’s guide on how to get started in this excellent survival sim.
Turns out, making games is hard. Who knew? And it gets way, way harder when you have to make a game function on two completely different generations of consoles at once, according to Control developer Remedy’s communications director Thomas Puha.On Next-Gen Console Watch, Puha outlined the struggles developers go through to bring games like Control from one generation to the next, especially when the studio doing the work is a smaller one with fewer resources (like Remedy).“Whenever you’re in this cross-generational point, to be blunt, it sucks,” Puha said. “You have to support the previous gen, make sure that sings, and then whatever you bring to next-gen is still limited by the choices you made years ago for the previous generation. It’s not a very realistic thing, that this old game, we’re just going to remake everything and then bring it to next-gen. It’s just not like that. It’s not a reality for us, because you’re literally taking away resources that are building the future games and improving the engine for the future.”
Puha continued, saying that this is why PS5 and Xbox Series games right now don’t look as good as we might want them too — better than the previous generation, certainly, but maybe not quite the dramatic upgrade people might have wanted.
Have you played Control?
“The games that will come out, the stuff we’re working on, the visual bar, you’re going to be blown away. And you only need to look at previous generations. You look at something like Modern Warfare. I can’t understand how that game looks so good on Xbox One and PS4. And you’re going to have the same on this current generation. We’re going to see so much improvement.”
Puha pointed out that many of the problems with developing games for new generations are related to developer resources and tools. He noted that Control originally was shipped on a version of its game engine from August 2019, but then the engine completely updated to incorporate next-gen support — effectively breaking everything Remedy already had in place.
“When you get to the point where you have to get [a game] running on next-gen systems, on a new engine it takes several months just to get everything working,” he said. “Nothing works at first. The content looks wrong, the textures look wrong, the lighting is busted, because we’ve made all these improvements but then they’re incompatible with what we had in 2019. It took months — the game is running, we had it running back in summer of last year, but it didn’t have any of the nice things…it just took quite a while to get to the level where we had everything working that we had in the previous-gen version. Now we can actually start doing all that cool next-gen stuff.”
Developers effectively have to pick and choose what they want to work on, he said. But if they want to fully make use of every piece of next-gen tech for a game being brought over from the previous-gen, that can take up time they might otherwise be spending making new games.
“We could keep developing features for this game for months, if not a year, but then you’re already screwing the next project that is expecting to get these developers to work on that game. That’s just the reality of a multi-project organization.”
Control: Ultimate Edition is out now for PS5 and Xbox Series S and X, following an initial kerfuffle over next-gen save transfers. The original version was our 2019 game of the year and our original review praised its “captivating, oddball world.”
Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.
Developer Crystal Dynamics has confirmed a delay for Marvel’s Avengers’ PlayStation-exclusive Spider-Man content, which now won’t arrive until this summer at the earliest.
Spider-Man was revealed to be coming to Marvel’s Avengers – controversially as a PlayStation-only addition – last August, with Crystal Dynamics announcing an “early 2021” release date for the character. However, questions began to arise earlier this week when the studio revealed a new Marvel’s Avengers development roadmap – one in which Spider-Man was notably absent, despite it covering a period through “summer and beyond”.
Fans were quick to wonder if the character was the latest casualty of Marvel’s Avengers’ troubled release – which has so far seen “lower than expected” sales, and delays for the game’s initial two post-launch heroes as well as its PS5 and Series X/S update – and Crystal Dynamics’ studio head Scot Amos has now moved to address Spider-Man’s conspicuous absence.
Marvel’s Avengers – Black Panther Reveal Trailer.
Speaking to IGN, Amos confirmed that “formally, officially, people are working on him right now” and that Spider-Man “is still on our roadmap for the future.”
However, the only character featured in Crystal Dynamics’ newly released content roadmap is Black Panther – whose arrival as part of the War for Wakanda expansion currently falls within the rather nebulous window of ‘summer and beyond’ – and Amos made it clear to IGN that Spider-Man wouldn’t be arriving before Black Panther. Amos didn’t offer a revised timeframe for the character’s release, but insisted, “We still fully expect Spider-Man to come to PlayStation.”
While Spider-Man’s arrival may still be some way off, Marvel’s Avengers’ second new hero, Hawkeye, has finally arrived as part of the Operation: Future Imperfect campaign. Additionally, the game’s long-awaited PS5 and Xbox Series X/S update is also now live, and Digital Foundry has plenty to say on the release if you’re curious about its improvements.
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Don’t get the wrong idea; this isn’t a harem, it’s an army.Image: Atlus / Sega
Shin Megami Tensei III Nocturne HD Remaster launches in North America this spring, developer Atlus announced today. It will be available on May 25 for PlayStation 4, Switch, and Steam, almost seven months after its Japanese release. Those who purchase the Digital Deluxe Edition will be able to play four days earlier on May 21.
The cult-classic PlayStation 2 role-playing game follows a normal Japanese high school student as he’s suddenly thrust into a war between heaven and hell in a post-apocalyptic Tokyo. Much like Atlus’ more widely popular Persona series, battles revolve around befriending, raising, and ultimately fusing a litany of demons composed of mythological figures from history and folklore. Think American Gods but with very little of Neil Gaiman’s sentimentality.
Shin Megami Tensei III Nocturne HD Remaster updates the 17-year-old game with remastered 3D models and backgrounds as well as the introduction of new difficulty settings to make things tougher or easier, depending on your own proclivities. Following in the footsteps of the original’s “Director’s Cut” and “Maniax Chronicle” revisions, Dante from the Devil May Cry series and Devil Summoner’s Raidou Kuzunoha will make appearances, the former in the main game and the latter by way of downloadable content.
Unlike Persona, whose recent games typically favor social-interaction gameplay over hardcore dungeon-crawling, proper Shin Megami Tensei games are known for offering a healthy challenge to even the most diehard min-maxers. That said, the style and atmosphere is more than worth a little frustration. As a one-time player of the original, I can’t wait to hop back into the shoes of the Demi-fiend myself.
It’s not every day that a new player enters the smartwatch game, so I was intrigued when OnePlus’s then-CEO Carl Pei hinted last summer that a wearable might be on the way. The rumors have been ramping up the past few weeks, and now we know what the watch will look like. After months of curiosity, I am…underwhelmed.
Ahead of OnePlus’s upcoming March 23 event, @UnboxTherapy dropped what appears to be a leak of the oh-so-cleverly-named OnePlus Watch. After scrutinizing the image for about two minutes, I can confirm to everyone it looks like every other non-Apple smartwatch out there. There are two buttons on the right side, black straps and a black case, and a fairly standard-looking watch face. Woo. This is some drab, milquetoast design and honestly, I expected a little better from OnePlus.
Smartwatch leaker Ishan Agarwal also dropped some more deets on his Twitter, noting that the watch would be 46mm (a big boy!). It’ll also have IP68 water resistance, 4GB of storage, and the ability to control music and OnePlus TV. In terms of health features, which have become a huge selling point for smartwatches, OnePlus will reportedly offer automatic workout detection, include swimming workouts, and also track sleep, stress, blood oxygen saturation, and heart rate. No word on battery life, but Agarwal said it’ll support Warp Charge, or the ability to get a week of charging in 20 minutes. That implies that you get at least a week of wear out of this thing, which would be great, but who knows.
The interesting part about these rumors is that the OnePlus Watch will not run Wear OS, despite being an Android watch. This has been heavily rumored leading up to the March 23 event, and per the Verge, CEO Pete Lau confirmed in a forum that this will be the case. Instead, the company has opted for an RTOS (real-time operating system) type of OS. No word on what that means for a third-party app ecosystem or a digital assistant. As for why OnePlus didn’t go for Wear OS, Lau says the company wanted to provide a smooth, reliable experience along with great battery life. Wear OS has made improvements over the past year, but battery life is still a sore point for that platform.
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This is all well and good, but it’s not what anyone would describe as terribly exciting. It’d be one thing if OnePlus came barging out the door with a unique design, or decided to put its own spin on Wear OS as the Oppo Watch did. But OnePlus looks to have played it safe—arguably too safe. Unless we see something absurd like 30-day battery life, unique software, or a breakthrough health feature (for which we are not holding our breath), this smartwatch seems like it might be for diehard OnePlus fans only.
CD Projekt Red (CDPR) has detailed the improvements it plans to bring to Cyberpunk 2077 in its upcoming 1.2 patch. The announcement, written as an in-universe newscast, details the planned quality-of-life improvements, including police not instantly appearing when you commit a crime, an improved driving experience, and a setting that should prevent you from accidentally dodging into traffic or off a building.
While the game has received a lot of criticism for being generally buggy — and, in some respects, unfinished — it does seem like CDPR is trying to address some of the most memed-on complaints. In the section of the blog post about the improved police response, there’s a jokey in-universe anecdote that captures an experience many players will have had:
“My choom, Jake, was in a shoot-out with Tyger Claws the other day, when he missed a shot and hit a pedestrian on the other side of the street. In an instant, the NCPD swarmed up on him and put him down. It’s like they appeared out of thin air right behind his back! It’s too brutal of a response for a regular accidental murder if you ask me!” — Mike from Kabuki, 28.
The driving experience in the game is also, uh, not very good. CDPR is hoping to make it better by improving the steering response (you can see a comparison video below) and making it so your car can automatically get unstuck if it finds itself resting on a barrier or other object. While the improved steering should help, there’s also plenty of other issues with driving (such as collision detection) that will have to be addressed before driving becomes, you know, fun.
The patch was initially supposed to come out in February but was delayed when the studio fell victim to a ransomware attack. CDPR is now aiming to release it in “the second half of March.”
It’s now been around three months since the game was pulled from the PlayStation Store due to the immense number of bugs (and the fact that it was nearly unplayable on a base PlayStation 4). So far, Sony and CDPR haven’t responded to requests for comment on when the game will return to the platform, so it’s unclear if this patch will be enough to return the game to the platform’s online shop.
Enlarge / Victoria University of Wellington is in New Zealand. We offer no further defense of this image.
Aurich Lawson | Getty Images
Last Friday, IT staff at the Victoria University of Wellington started a maintenance procedure aimed at reclaiming space on the university network—in theory, by removing the profiles of students who no longer attend the university. The real impact, unfortunately, was much larger—affecting students, faculty, and staff across the university.
The New Zealand university’s student newspaper reported the issue pretty thoroughly this Wednesday, although from a non-IT perspective. It sounds like an over-zealous Active Directory policy went out of bounds—the university’s Digital Solutions department (what most places would refer to as Information Technology, or IT) declared that files stored on the university network drives, or on Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud storage, were “fully protected.”
A grad student reported that not “only files on the desktop were gone” but “my whole computer had been reset, too,” which would be consistent with an AD operation removing her user profile from the machine entirely—in such a case, a user would be able to log in to the PC, but into a completely “clean” profile that looked factory new.
The same student reported hearing that some PhD students lost a year’s worth of data, saved only on their local computers and wiped by the errant maintenance procedure. For those Arsians who don’t work in IT themselves, there’s a lesson here—be careful where, and how, you save your data.
It’s unclear whether the university accidentally wiped users’ files on its network drives at all—but even if it did, there’s a very strong, reasonable expectation that those drives would be backed up regularly and completely. No such expectation exists for the local drive on a user’s PC or laptop—if the only place you saved it is your own C: drive, that’s almost certainly the only place it exists.
For routine data, it’s sufficient to understand company policy on what is or is not backed up and save your data accordingly. For items of significant personal importance—such as a PhD student’s thesis—it’s unwise to rely entirely on the IT department to safeguard the data in the first place. There’s no substitute for taking responsibility for your own data and keeping regular, tested backups of your own.
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