Tuesday 4th June 2024
  • Leading With Compassion When a Teammate Has a Terminal Illness

    The spring 2024 issue’s special report looks at how to take advantage of market opportunities in the digital space, and provides advice on building culture and friendships at work; maximizing the benefits of LLMs, corporate venture capital initiatives, and innovation contests; and scaling automation and digital health platform.

    The spring 2024 issue’s special report looks at how to take advantage of market opportunities in the digital space, and provides advice on building culture and friendships at work; maximizing the benefits of LLMs, corporate venture capital initiatives, and innovation contests; and scaling automation and digital health platform.

    When an employee is diagnosed with a terminal illness, the complexities of workplace management deepen significantly. It’s not merely about handling the practicalities of business continuity or addressing the aftermath of a loss; it’s also about navigating the prolonged, emotionally charged period that precedes it. Some employees may choose to continue working through a terminal illness to maintain a sense of normalcy, purpose, or financial stability, which can be crucial for their psychological well-being during such a challenging time. This journey, marked by uncertainty and emotional upheaval, demands a compassionate, thoughtful approach from managers.

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  • 'Venom 3' Trailer Reveals a Head-Scratching MCU Crossover

    After over 15 years of movies and TV shows, it seems like every actor has had the chance to appear in Marvel’s Cinematic Universe. That may not literally be true, but it’s hard not to believe it when Marvel alums pop up again and again in different corners of the franchise. This trend of repeat casting was once pretty rare, a necessary evil that’s given great actors like Gemma Chan (who had a minor role in Captain Marvel before starring in Eternals) another chance to show off their stuff. More recently, though, actors have been using the multiverse to make increasingly meta cameos, creating some interesting (if unofficial) crossovers in the process.

    That might be the case for Venom: The Last Dance, the third (and maybe final) film in Sony’s Venom trilogy. Sony’s made an odd effort to build out its own Marvel Universe, one populated solely by Spider-Man villains. And while it’s occasionally brushed up against the MCU with a head-scratching Morbius cameo and some multiversal hijinks in Spider-Man: No Way Home, The Last Dance may bring these two parallel timelines closer together than ever.

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  • This New Handheld PC Has Specs That Could Crush All Other Handheld PCs

    Asus’ new ROG Ally X is here and it may have all the specs to beat the other handheld gaming PCs — at least on paper.

    Asus officially revealed its latest gaming handheld, which should be considered more of a follow-up or a refresh rather than a next-gen model of its ROG Ally. That’s because the ROG Ally X largely follows the same design, but makes room for a few ergonomic tweaks and internal upgrades.

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  • The Best New Platformer On PC Comes From a Horror Developer Banned in China

    Soulslike games have become so numerous that even fans of the genre might be feeling a bit burned out on the grueling challenge they present by now. I know I have. But while From Software’s Dark Souls and Bloodborne have been imitated and referenced to the point of exhaustion, the studio’s shinobi masterpiece Sekiro hasn’t gotten the same treatment. But a new Sekiro-inspired Metroidvania from a surprising developer shows that more games may want to start looking at Sekiro’s nerve-wracking parry mechanics for inspiration.

    Last week, Red Candle Games released Nine Sols, set in what the studio calls a Taopunk setting, which “blends cyberpunk elements with Taoism and Far Eastern mythology.” Taiwanese developer Red Candle is best known for Detention and Devotion, two psychological horror games that use religion and China’s oppression of Taiwan as the basis for their stories. Devotion in particular got a lot of attention for an Easter egg unflatteringly representing Chinese president Xi Jinping, which got the game pulled from sale.

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  • 'Helldivers 2' Just Spawned A Black Hole, and Players Already Have Wild Theories About It

    The valiant Helldivers 2 community spent the weekend snuffing out the supercolony of Terminids that overtook the remote planet of Meridia. The victory has been immortalized with the creation of a Black Hole in distant space, an anomaly that is most definitely a good thing for the continued fight for democracy. Yep. That’s not weird, and there’s absolutely no way this could backfire on Super Earth at all.

    The most recent major order in Helldivers 2, dubbed “Operation Enduring Peace,” tasked players with eradicating those pesky bugs from Meridia through some unusual means: the deployment of a brand new WMD (short for Weapon of Mass Democracy) called the Dark Fluid.

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  • Netflix's Wildest New Sci-Fi Show Avoids a Tired Genre Trope

    In 2023, Max dropped a haunting and original animated science fiction series called Scavengers Reign. Although the show was critically acclaimed, by May 2024, Max had abruptly canceled the series. But now, Scavengers Reign has made the leap to Netflix, where it’s currently streaming and might just get a Season 2 renewal if we’re lucky.

    Chronicling the machinations of a group of human survivors marooned on a planet called Vesta, this series is one of the best sci-fi shows of the 2020s, and easily the best space-based sci-fi show on Netflix since the Lost in Space reboot debuted in 2018. And although there is much to praise about Scavengers Reign, there’s one specific element that sets it apart from most modern sci-fi movies and shows set in space: This is a space show that doesn’t accidentally become military science fiction.

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  • AI Still Hasn't Lived Up To Its Extraordinary Hype

    Big Tech is telling us that AI is dramatically changing the world, but according to a recent study, most people have never even heard of it.

    Many of us grew up with the looming threat — or excitement, depending on how you were raised — of artificial intelligence. Once just the stuff of sci-fi, storytellers prophesized a dramatic future in which AI would rule over us all.

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  • This Dwarf Planet Is Basically a Sweet Red Snow Cone

    If there were a recipe for Kuiper Belt’s sweetest dwarf planet, it would look something like this: Take one 22-mile long, figure-8-shaped blob of mixed ice, and add a heaping pour of methanol. Bombard with cosmic rays and solar wind for about 2 billion years, until it reaches a nice reddish color. Serve chilled to -390 degrees Fahrenheit.

    A recent study found that Arrokoth, a weirdly-shaped dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt, gets its distinctive reddish coloration from complex hydrocarbon molecules, which form when cosmic rays and solar wind bombard the tiny world’s frozen methanol surface. The same chemical reactions that spawn those hydrocarbons also produce sugars like glucose and glycerol, which means that if you licked Arrokoth, it would probably taste sweet, but also a little like soap. (Please don’t try this, because methanol is poison, and also you shouldn’t open your spacesuit helmet in a vacuum. Safety first!)

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  • Netflix Just Quietly Released the Best Sci-Fi Monster Movie of the Decade

    It’s been six months since Godzilla Minus One emerged — seemingly out of nowhere — to become one of the best films of 2023. Toho took a big risk in rebooting its 70-year-old franchise, and the monster that’s always been at the center of the action. Since the very first Godzilla in 1954, the eponymous kaiju has slowly but surely become a character to root for: a hilarious meme, an unlikely athlete, and even a protector of the innocent. But Minus One reminded us all why Godzilla was originally a tool of horror, and delivered a fantastically heartfelt disaster movie in the process.

    Minus One’s theatrical run was impressive, but ultimately brief. Though its glowing word-of-mouth helped extend the film’s time in theaters, and eventually bolstered its visibility during awards season, Minus One hasn’t gotten much exposure since. Even after securing the franchise’s first Academy Award in March, there was no word on when Minus One would be available on home video... at least in the United States. But after months of false starts and speculation, Godzilla Minus One is finally, officially available to stream.

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  • This 'Team Fortress 2' Spiritual Successor Is Being Made at the Worst Possible Time

    It may seem like a distant memory now, but Valve was once known for making games rather than just selling them on Steam. And not just any games, but great, genre-defining games. Its recent projects, like Counter-Strike 2 and the Steam Deck tech demo Aperture Desk Job haven’t quite lived up to that legacy, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the once-great developer is down and out. Evidence is mounting that a new game from Valve could be on the way, and it’s an entry in a popular genre that the studio itself helped create. But whether that’s something to be excited or worried about is still unclear.

    Valve’s worst-kept secret is a game reportedly called Deadlock. Though the studio hasn’t acknowledged Deadlock’s existence in any way, leaks have allegedly revealed screenshots, in-game footage, and details on how the game will actually play. Last week, Valve leaker Gabe Follower also shared a trademark filing for Deadlock, seemingly confirming that the game is real. It’s always possible that the filing could add up to nothing. Developers — including Valve — frequently file trademarks for projects that never see the light of day. But what’s most interesting about this latest movement on Deadlock is that the game could represent either a rebirth for a struggling genre or a sign of the games industry’s decline.

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