Month: June 2021

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | acilo)

Some broadband users who qualify for the government's new $50-per-month subsidies haven't been able to obtain the discounts because of technical problems in the Federal Communications Commission's rollout of the program.

The problems stem from the FCC's National Verifier and how the broadband providers' systems interact with the FCC database, as detailed in an article published by Protocol today. Small mismatches between entries in databases—such as having an address recorded as Elm St. in an ISP's system and Elm Street in the FCC's—can cause people's applications to be rejected.

ISPs may be partly to blame as some collected information in the wrong format despite having received training on how to use the system from the FCC. In hindsight, though, the FCC could have allowed ISPs to use the program without requiring such strict data matching. The Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB) was rolled out quickly relative to other government programs because of the pressing need to get subsidies to consumers, and the FCC hasn't been able to fully stamp out this problem in the month since the program began.

Enlarge / Tom Hiddleston stars in the latest MCU series, Loki, which premiered last night on Disney+. (credit: Marvel Studios)

It's hard to write a killer TV pilot that compels viewers to come back for more. You have to establish a fictional world, introduce the main characters and core premise, and set up a compelling trigger for the subsequent chain of events—all without making things seem frenetic or incoherent and without employing labored explanatory riffs. That's true even in the case of a well-established fictional universe like the MCU. Fortunately, the first episode of Loki, Marvel's new series reviving Tom Hiddleston's beloved Asgardian trickster god, mostly gets it right—even if it does occasionally lapse into lecturing narrator mode ("talky, talky").

(Only mild spoilers below, with a bit of spoiler-y speculation below the gallery.)

We all remember that scene in Avengers: Endgame when a 2012 version of Loki snags the tesseract containing the Space Stone and vanishes through a portal. That's where the series opens, with our trickster materializing in the middle of Mongolia's Gobi Desert, much to the bemusement of a gaggle of locals. It's not long before another portal opens to bring forth a team of armed guards who "arrest" Loki on behalf of an entity known as the Time Variance Authority (TVA). TVA agents are the so-called "custodians of chronology" in the MCU, monitoring violations to the timeline. Catch their attention by trying to change history, and you just might meet the wrong end of the Retroactive Cannon (Ret Con) and have your entire history deleted from the historical timeline.

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  No, this isn't a Zelda game. This is Elden Ring. [credit: Bandai Namco ]

Over two years have passed since From Software first shared a prerendered tease for Elden Ring at Microsoft's E3 2019 press conference. During a streaming Summer Game Fest event on Thursday, publisher Bandai Namco showed the first gameplay footage from this collaboration between Dark Souls creator Hidetaka Miyazaki and Game of Thrones scribe George R.R. Martin and announced a release date of January 21, 2022, for "next-gen and current-gen" consoles.

The trailer below (and the screenshots above) speak for themselves, and the Dark Souls vibes are apparent throughout. That means a lot of dodge-rolling out of the way of some massive attacks from beasts many times the player's size, including a prominent dragon. It also means lots of dramatic magical effects, including telekensis, fire, and thrown stone amid the vaguely medieval setting.

A voiceover gives some hints about the "tarnished" protagonist, who has returned "in search of the Elden Ring, emboldened by the flame of ambition." The protagonist is shown summoning a ghostly horse and fighting against mounted enemies. At one point, the mount leaps straight up a sheer cliffside. It looks like you can also summon a ghostly companion to fight alongside you to attack from multiple angles.

Enlarge / UnitedHealth Group Inc. headquarters stands in Minnetonka, Minnesota, U.S., on Wednesday, March 9, 2016. (credit: Getty | Bloomberg)

Doctors and hospitals are condemning plans by UnitedHealthcare—the country’s largest health insurance company—to retroactively deny emergency medical care coverage to members if UHC decides the reason for the emergency medical care wasn’t actually an emergency.

In the future, if one of UHC's 70 million members submits a claim for an emergency department visit, UHC will carefully review what health problems led to the visit, the “intensity of diagnostic services performed” at the emergency department (ED), and some context for the visit, like the member’s underlying health conditions and outside circumstances. If UHC decides the medical situation didn’t constitute an emergency, it will provide “no coverage or limited coverage,” depending on the member’s specific insurance plan.

Emergency medical doctors and hospitals were quick to rebuke the plan. They say it sets a dangerous precedent of requiring patients to assess their own medical problems before seeking emergency care, which could end up delaying or preventing critical and even life-saving treatment.

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  An example of Dark Sky's maps from the desktop Web version. [credit: Dark Sky ]

A new blog post from the developers of Apple-owned, hyperlocal weather app Dark Sky has announced that the iOS and web versions of the app, as well as the Dark Sky API, will sunset at the end of 2022.

Here's the exact wording from the blog post:

Support for the Dark Sky API service for existing customers will continue until the end of 2022. The iOS app and Dark Sky website will also be available until the end of 2022.

Dark Sky's developers initially said the API would shut down at the end of 2021, but this new end-of-2022 target obviously moves things back a bit. This is the first time we've heard about an end date for the iOS app, though.

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  The Anacrusis' cast chats plenty with each other mid-mission, much like L4D. In fact, much of this game resembles L4D, and its creators are fine with leaning into these similarities. [credit: Stray Bombay ]

SEATTLE—The makers of new game The Anacrusis, as revealed during today's Summer Games Fest presentation, are happy for you to mistake it for something like Left 4 Dead, only transported to a '70s sci-fi universe. The new game's co-creator, former Valve designer and writer Chet Faliszek, is banking on it.

"I was the project lead on Left 4 Dead 1 and Left 4 Dead 2, and those are two of my favorite games ever made," Faliszek says from his home office in Seattle. "Clearly they're influential to me in deciding what does and doesn't work in co-op games. Having done those, and having worked on Portal 2's co-op mode, I have a good understanding of how players interact and talk, and mistakes we made, in ensuring that people work together. If you like those games, I had a close seat on them, and we're taking that to the next level."

The resulting project, which Faliszek is leading alongside Kimberly Voll (Riot Games, Fantastic Contraption) at their indie studio Stray Bombay, is slated to launch "this fall" on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Steam, Windows Store, and Epic Games Store. All versions will be connected with cross-play. In a conversation ahead of today's reveal, Faliszek emphasized the game's social thrust, along with a new AI "director" that expands on a similar concept from the L4D series. The director's goals are to satisfy players and scale to various play styles.