Week in Review: Good news – the Earth should survive long enough to see Windows 12
Plus: We're feline the love for Stray, and up close and personal with Brian Wilson | Some rare good news for Netflix | Marvel reveals its future plans at Comic-Con
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Hello tech fans, and welcome to our weekly round-up of the biggest stories that have hit the TechRadar home page in the past seven days. Gareth is having a well-deserved break, so I've got the pleasure of your company.
This week we’ve finally seen some good news for Netflix, which looks like it has a hit on its hands in the shape of The Gray Man (make sure you check out our chat with the Russo brothers, who directed it). We also have some exciting Comic-Con announcements from Marvel, while a new game where you play as a cat is taking the internet by storm.
I hope you won’t miss Gareth too much – you can let him know what a good job I’ve done (or not) by sending him an email (be sure to include 'NEWSLETTER' in the subject line).
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Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans) plots to take down Ryan Gosling's Court Gentry in The Gray Man (Netflix)
I think it’s fair to say that Netflix has had a fairly torrid time of it recently. It’s losing subscribers as people look to trim their budgets, and that’s led to cutbacks, with shows being cancelled and staff laid off. So I’m sure it’s come as a welcome relief that its latest big-budget original movie, The Gray Man, is proving to be a huge hit, racking up 88.55 million viewing hours during its first weekend.
Netflix uses the amount of time people watch its shows and movies as a measure of performance, and it should be pretty happy with those numbers. As our Senior Entertainment Editor, Tom Goodwyn, points out, the movie was something of a gamble for the streamer, as it reportedly cost a whopping $200 million to make.
Even without its current travails, the project would have been a risk for Netflix, but it seems to have paid off. It features some big names, including ex-Captain America Chris Evans, Ana de Armas and Bridgerton heartthrob Regé-Jean Page, and it’s directed by the Russo Brothers, who have helmed several Marvel blockbusters. I’ve not seen it yet, but if Tom G rates it highly, then it’s sure to be worth catching.
Anthony Mackie will take the title role in Captain America: New World Order, which now has a 2024 release date (Marvel Studios)
Speaking of Marvel, we’ve now got an exciting idea of what the future holds for the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe, for the uninitiated) movies, thanks to a reveal-packed event at the SDCC (that’s the San Diego Comic-Con, FYI – golly there are a lot of initialisms floating around here).
The aforementioned Tom Goodwyn again delivered the goods, diligently manning a live blog to bring us all the latest news as it happened. Among the highlights, we got a glimpse of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, although we’re still unsure how the film will address the tragic passing of Chadwick Boseman, who played the titular superhero in the first movie (and other MCU films).
That film will be closing out Phase 4 of the MCU, and Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige revealed that Phase 5 will open with Captain America: New World Order in 2024, followed by various TV shows including Daredevil: Born Again, She-Hulk and more.
I’m a big fan of the MCU (and of Marvel comics), but I have to admit that my enthusiasm has been waning lately, and what I saw at SDCC has got me excited again. I’m still waiting for news that my favorite team – the X-Men – will be joining the MCU, though.
Windows 11 only launched last October, but are its days already numbered? Unlike a lot of people, I quite like the latest operating system from Microsoft, though there are some weird design choices that continue to baffle and frustrate me – come on, Microsoft, make the taskbar actually useful again – and I thought it would be around for a good while.
However, while we’re still waiting for the first major update for the OS – Windows 11 22H2, which now looks like it’ll finally arrive in September – it’s starting to look like that could also be the last major update it gets. There are rumors that Windows 11 23H2, which was due to arrive next year, has been ditched, with Microsoft instead rolling out smaller updates throughout the year.
Meanwhile, we’ve heard rumblings that Windows 12 could be just around the corner – which could suggest that our time with Windows 11 may be all-too brief / over mercifully soon, depending on your perspective.
Stray has quickly become an internet sensation (Nexus Mods / Uploaded by JPTHEHERO)
One of the joys of hybrid working is that an increasing number of us are dialling into meetings from home, and that’s led to a welcome increase in instances of pets crashing usually rather dull video calls. A lot of the TechRadar team have cats, and every time one appears I get particularly broody, having lost my beloved old boy Binx a few years ago.
So I’ve been loving the look of Stray, a new game that allows you to play as a stray (obviously) cat, and solve puzzles and mysteries. It’s taken the internet by storm (and is mesmerizing actual cats), and it’s inspired several enterprising gamers to create some excellent mods for the PC version of the game, including one that turns it into a split-screen multiplayer game, allowing you and a friend to play through the game together as a pair of moggies.
Until the inevitable day when I get another cat of my own, it looks like Stray will do an entertaining job of filling that feline-shaped hole in my heart.
Increasingly powerful GPUs come with a cost to the environment (Shutterstock / Future)
Ever since Moore’s Law, which stated that the density of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles every two years, was coined by Intel’s Gordon Moore in 1965, electronics makers have been in an arms race to produce ever more powerful products – and we consumers have lapped it up.
Who doesn’t love getting a more powerful gaming console every generation, or upgrading to an eye-popping (not literally, thankfully) GPU every couple of years? I’m certainly guilty, eagerly swapping out my RTX 3090 for the RTX 3090 Ti so that I can eke out a few more frames per second at 8K.
However, as devices get more powerful they generally get more power-hungry too, and that’s starting to have a worrying impact. It isn’t just about increasing energy bills; as our US Computing Editor John Loeffler explains in this excellent and thought-provoking article, increasing power consumption is contributing to what many believe is a looming environmental catastrophe. If you read one article this week, it really should be this one.
A zoomed-in view of Brian Wilson in concert (Future / Lance Ulanoff)
I love this article from Lance Ulanoff, our US Editor-in-Chief, in which he talks about how he recently saw Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys in concert at a stadium. Lance was sitting in the ‘nose bleeds’ – those seats that are so high up in the stands that the performers on stage look like ants – so he whipped out his Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, and used its incredible 100x Space Zoom as ‘digital binoculars’ to get a close-up view of the action.
While not everyone will want to use an expensive smartphone to zoom in so close that you can count the nose hairs of a pop star, this was an inventive use of the technology. Lance did the same at another gig that featured a more mobile performer (Wilson is 80, and he doesn’t Get Around like he used to), and discovered that the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra's Space Zoom had a surprising additional feature, which cleverly locked on to the performer, keeping him in focus as they moved around.
That sounds pretty cool – just don’t get caught using your phone to zoom in on performers who have a strict no phones/recording policy, otherwise you might find yourself chucked out.
One a side note, I saw Brian Wilson perform at Glastonbury around 20 years ago. The sun was shining, I was a little tipsy, and it was lovely, and I'm glad to hear he’s still out there and bringing his wonderful music to fans old and new.
Don't let a couple of asteroids spoil your weekend (ESA)
Isn’t it fun when you visit a website and get struck by apocalyptic dread? That’s what happened to me when I visited our sister site Live Science, and was greeted with the headline Two skyscraper-size asteroids are barreling toward Earth this weekend, which to be honest put a bit of a damper on my plans for Sunday.
Thankfully, upon reading the story, it appears that while the two asteroids, 2016 CZ31 and 2013 CU83, are indeed hurtling our way, they’re going to pass by without any danger, which is a relief, especially as it looks like the weather is going to quite nice here in the UK this weekend.
I’m still a little freaked out by the story, but thankfully NASA seems to be working hard on ideas to prevent any future Earth/asteroid collisions, including the launch last year of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, a spacecraft which is due to crash into the Dimorphos asteroid later this year in a bid to alter its course.
Don’t panic – Dimorphos is no danger to us either. NASA is conducting this test to see if such a method would work if there was a genuine asteroid threat, which sounds like a very sensible idea to me.
And Finally…
That’s it from me for this week – I hope you’ve enjoyed my selections. Remember to get in touch if you have any thoughts on the subjects I've covered, or if you’d like to see us cover any particular topics in the future.
Have a great weekend!
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