Blizzard’s Overwatch has proven to be one of the most consistently popular team-based shooters of recent years, and fans have finally gotten a good look at the sequel. The Overwatch 2 reveal event included numerous tidbits, perhaps none more exciting than confirmation that Overwatch 2 will not have loot boxes. However, it’s still going to be a free-to-play game. The original Overwatch had an upfront cost paired with loot boxes, a mechanism that grants random items for a fee. Sometimes you get great stuff in a loot box, but usually, you don’t. worked to make the opening experience compelling so people would want to do it over and over… .
Hello, readers, and happy Friday! This week we’ve got some great news concerning maps and asteroids, along with updates from the world’s major space agencies. James Webb has finally powered on all its instruments. And it seems like NASA’s Lucy spacecraft has nine lives! We’ll wrap up with skywatching opportunities for the week, as five celestial bodies come into graceful alignment. Gaia Project Releases Biggest, Most Detailed Sky Map Ever After weeks of suspense, the European Space Agency’s Gaia project has released its gigantic new sky map. It’s the biggest, most complete, most detailed multi-dimensional map of the Milky Way .
SpaceX has made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that criticism of founder and CEO Elon Musk will not be tolerated. Just days after a group of employees , some of those involved have found themselves out of a job. SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell sent an email (that didn’t address the content of the letter), saying the writers made others “uncomfortable” with the release and violated the company handbook by asking employees to sign the statement. The letter, released in an internal Microsoft Teams chat with more than 2,600 employees, asked the company to separate itself from Musk’s increasingly erratic online persona.
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence has been ongoing for decades, but there’s still no definitive proof that someone else is out there. That doesn’t mean we are bereft of evidence, though. Astronomers occasionally spot something unusual but inconclusive, which is how we’d classify the latest report from China’s Extraterrestrial Civilization Research Group at Beijing Normal University. The team has detected an anomalous transmission using the enormous FAST radio observatory that could be evidence of intelligence. What little information we have comes from the state-controlled , which reported on the discovery this week. The site reports that researchers using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) identified several narrow-band electromagnetic signals consistent with what we would expect to see from an artificial source.
Adobe has been largely unopposed in the realm of professional photo editing for as long as computers have had color displays. Until recently, Adobe was resistant to making a cloud version of its most popular application, but this is slowly changing. Adobe now says its new web-based version of Photoshop is available to everyone for free, and it has enough tools now that it’s actually usable. Before the modern era of always-on connectivity, Adobe sold Photoshop as a regular piece of expensive professional software. A license cost hundreds of dollars, and you didn’t get updates. That changed when it moved to the Creative Cloud model, which requires a monthly subscription to use Photoshop and other Adobe products.
(Photo: Roger Starnes Sr/Unsplash)A northern California lithium-ion battery company has devised an electric vehicle (EV) battery that reaches a full charge in just over ten minutes. Enovix’s specialty is a silicon-anode lithium-ion battery it calls 3D Silicon. The name refers to a proprietary 3D architecture and constraint system, as well as the cells’ 100 percent active silicon anode. Enovix has previously used this technology to create batteries for smartphones, laptops, smart watches, and mobile radios. Its latest development, however, is a super fast-charging EV battery that will put even the to shame. The company has demonstrated its 0.27 Ah test cells to be capable of charging from 0 to 80 percent “in as little as 5.2 minutes,” to a press release.
(Photo: Efes, Wikimedia Commons)Microsoft has announced a raft of beneficial new employment policies. The biggest change is it will begin divulging salary ranges for open positions. Microsoft isn’t being benevolent — this will be required by Washington state law starting in 2023. However, the company has also announced three other changes to its employment policies. Given the competitive nature of the tech market, it might just spur other companies to do likewise. The new salary disclosure policy is a huge deal, and makes Microsoft the first “Big Tech” company to take this approach. In its of the new policies, Microsoft said it’s part of the company’s commitment to “pay transparency.
It’s been a good year for fabless integrated circuit (IC) design companies. Without the burden of owning and running a fab, they’ve been free to ship their designs to companies like TSMC to do the hard work of creating their silicon offspring. Trendforce has released Q1 2022 revenue summaries for the biggest fabless companies, and business is good. Qualcomm tops the charts, by a lot, but AMD and Marvell showed the largest year-over-year (YoY) gains. Overall, the top ten companies pulled in a combined revenue of $39.43 billion in the first quarter alone. That represents an impressive 44 percent growth year-over-year.
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence has been ongoing for decades, but there’s still no definitive proof that someone else is out there. That doesn’t mean we are bereft of evidence, though. Astronomers occasionally spot something unusual but inconclusive, which is how we’d classify the latest report from China’s Extraterrestrial Civilization Research Group at Beijing Normal University. The team has detected an anomalous transmission using the enormous FAST radio observatory that could be evidence of intelligence. What little information we have comes from the state-controlled , which reported on the discovery this week. The site reports that researchers using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) identified several narrow-band electromagnetic signals consistent with what we would expect to see from an artificial source.
