Dune’s success will hopefully mean more to come
As we, as a collective, slowly emerge from varying stages of lockdown and try to find some sense of normalcy, something everyone has started doing again is going to the movies. If you’re looking for a movie to go see now, we can recommend Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune. It opened locally on Friday, 22nd October and has rather quickly risen to the number one spot on box office charts, which, if you’re a fan of the story, will excite you as now the chances of a part two happening are all the more likely. At $220.7 million it falls a bit behind global favourites like the latest James Bond movie No Time to Die or the ninth Fast & Furious film, F9, at $535 million and $716 million respectively. It doesn’t seem like Warner Bros. was expecting it to do so well, or any of this year’s movies for that matter. It announced its entire 2021 movie catalogue will also be released on streaming platform HBO Max, much to Villeneuve’s dismay. We don’t think it’s that big of a deal though, although if you do want to watch Dune we can highly recommend the IMAX experience.
Source: Gizmodo
Ever wanted a robot mailman? Move to Russia
If you’re one of those people that welcome the robotic revolution with open arms and will be one of the first to line up when human augmentation is a thing, then you may want to look at moving to Russia. For the robot mailman, not for human augmentation. That’s still going to be a while (we hope). Russian multinational company Yandex has, with the Russian Post service, started using robots to deliver mail. At the moment, they’re only testing the pilot program in several districts in Moscow but the head of innovation at Russia Post, Stanislav Chernin, seems optimistic that they’ll see wider adoption.
“Every part of the logistics chain can be automated, and technologies are changing processes at every stage: from the first to the last mile,” said Chernin. Imagine having a head of innovation at the post office. We’ve never heard of any of our local post offices looking for people to fill that position so it might be some time before we see anything like that here. Maybe we should try to fix the power problems and roads first, just a thought.
Source: Reuters
If you wanted Resident Evil characters in Fortnite, you got ‘em
The next gaming crossover that makes you tilt your head to the side and ask “Why?”, is here. Epic Games has added two characters from another Capcom series to Fortnite, Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine from the Resident Evil franchise. They’ll be available in a couple of costumes that make reference to their appearances in Resident Evil: Village and Nemesis. Along with themed pickaxes, players will also get a new emote that pokes fun at the infamous Umbrella Corporation. The new items are available to purchase in S.T.A.R.S. Team and Team Gear bundles. The timing of this crossover is about the only thing that makes sense given it’s nearly Halloween and the droves of Cube Monsters this season.
Source: Engadget
Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy: The Definitive Experience is difficult to say but not to run
When we first got wind that Rockstar might be remaking the first three GTA games we were a little apprehensive. Was this just a quick cash grab or were they actually giving fans what they wanted? It seems like it’s a bit of both. Now we have more info on the upcoming remake including a release date and recommended system specs. If you’re seen the announcement trailer that Rockstar posted on its website, you would have gathered that these probably won’t be melting any PCs. The recommended requirements confirmed that. The minimum requirements list an i5 6th gen CPU, 8GB of RAM and a GTX 760 with 2GB of VRAM while Rockstar recommends you have an i7 2nd gen CPU, 16GB of RAM and a GTX 970 with 4GB of VRAM. The GTX 760 is an eight-year-old graphics card so we think it’s safe to assume most modern systems won’t struggle too much with these ‘new’ titles.
We’re looking at 11 November as the release date on consoles, the Switch and PC via Rockstar’s Games Launcher. It’s available for pre-order for R1,070 which we guess is not that bad for three games. If you already own the games though it might be a good idea to wait and see if these are better than just modding the originals. Rockstar has delisted the games now though, so if you didn’t buy them already, you don’t really have much of a choice.
Source: Ars Technica
